Guild Wars 2

A key part of online games, especially MMOs, is their ability to get players invested and keep them playing. One of the best ways to do this is create content with a lasting value that players will go back to many times. Content which does this well can allow players to enjoy it for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.

A great example of this is dungeons. I’ve spent hundreds of hours running them and have achieved over 200 ranks of hobby dungeon explorer (5 dungeon runs per rank), not to mention how many fractals I’ve ran, and I still find them entertaining to do. It’s this sort of thing that keeps players interested in the game outside of living story releases.

However since release (nearly 2 years now) we have had very little content added with a lasting value and this is deeply concerning. For season 1 the only things added with a lasting value were guild missions, fractals, southsun cove, and a new WvW map. Everything in season 2 has been permanent so far, but sadly nothing in it has a lasting value.

As a result, players who are invested in this game have almost nothing new to do once they complete a living story chapter and the achievements when by now, a properly updated game should have enough content to double the amount of lasting value in the game!

Furthermore, many parts of the game that have been here since release also lack a lasting value. Look how few people go around and do dynamic events, jumping puzzles, and the countless other things this game has to offer on a regular basis. The open world, which was meant to serve as the core game experience, is pretty much dead outside of world bosses and daily achievement after you experience it a single time.

So what is causing this issue? You can break it down to three things which aren’t being met.

The content needs to be available to do, obviously, and that was the issue during season 1 of the living story where nearly everything was removed after the segment was over.

The content should still be enjoyable after completing it many times. In the case of living story season 2 you are forced to stand there and listen to the same conversations, lasting over a minute in some circumstances, which get very annoying. In the case of dynamic events there is too much waiting for timers or wandering around looking for an event involved. Both these things create a poor pace which ruins the feel of the content.

The content needs to give the player a reason to repeat it. This is most easily achieved by rewards, which is something a lot of content has an issue with. Why do a jumping puzzle when it hardly gives anything? Why do a dynamic event for a tiny bit of karma? Why do any of season 2 again when they give nothing?

Lasting value? Sure. Bang for your buck? Sure. The real question is: is the value sufficient to require a daily investment of time and routine investment of money… Your mileage might vary here. Some only get maybe a few hours a week out of GW2 other’s get a few hours each day and so on.

Bri.8354:

In the case of living story season 2 you are forced to stand there and listen to the same conversations, lasting over a minute in some circumstances, which get very annoying.

Some people like the story… so mileage being all variable again.

Bri.8354:

The content needs to give the player a reason to repeat it. This is most easily achieved by rewards, which is something a lot of content has an issue with. Why do a jumping puzzle when it hardly gives anything? Why do a dynamic event for a tiny bit of karma? Why do any of season 2 again when they give nothing?

Some people do things because they’re fun. Others do it for reward.
Reward is not fun, but reward can have long term appeal (think about watching a fun movie, it’s only fun for the first few times then it loses fun-ness. A slot machine people will keep pulling that lever until the sun goes down). However balancing for both can be difficult (reward is basically just a skinnerbox) while entertainment is significantly more difficult to quantify (engagement, novelty, challenge etc. etc. etc.).
So that varying mileage again.

Lasting Value isnt a universal truth etched in stone though.

For you dungeons have lasting value, for me actually the living story has a lot more lasting value because I really hate repeating the same content over and over again. Its a problem I have with many MMOs. While I know an ocean of people find lasting value in traditional endgame (raids, dungeons etc..) end game is where I walk away cause I just cant seem myself doing that small amount of content over and over again for months if not years until the next batch is available.

I also disagree with your statement that by this time other MMOs would have double the content that has lasting value. They would have replaced it not doubled it. In most MMOs you get vertical progression and power creep. When the next expansion comes all that came before becomes obsolete and all thats left to play is the new stuff. Ergo the content for me as a player didnt double it simply changed from what I had till now to the new stuff.

As for repeat-ability or what you call lasting value it all boils down what you personally value. Do you value intrinsic rewards or extrinsic rewards? Depending on the type of player you are Doing Dynamic events might be far more rewarding then repeating a dungeon even if the reward is vastly different.

Its not so easy for arenanet to decide which type of content makes the largest number of people happy however they dont need to know per-se, what they do and what they have always done is try to do a little bit of content for every type of player which is why some people enjoy some releases but not others.

I think Bri has a point. There needs to be content of lasting value in an MMO, simply because the lasting value of the game is what keeps people playing. Unfortunately that’s where my agreement ends, because everyone has different stuff that they consider to be lasting value.

I don’t consider PvP, WvW or dungeons to have lasting value for me and my play style. I thoroughly acknowledge that there are many people who do like those things and feel those things are lasting value.

The problem is, if the stuff that’s coming out doesn’t entertain you, the game doesn’t have any lasting value to you. But everyone is different.

I love the open world. I mean I really love it. I was in Sparkfly the other day and came upon two event that I really liked that I didn’t remember. I may have done them a year ago, but for all practical purposes I haven’t.

There’s tiny changes all over the place that amount to big changes when you add them all up. The Skritt burglar wasn’t always here, and because of that, when he pops up (sometimes in places I don’t expect), I’m always excited to see him. It’s a different kind of event.

Toxic spore events weren’t always here. Anet even added about 30 random events at one point, which very few people commented on. There are some events that are pretty cool that are quite well hidden.

In general, I spend more time in the open world than at boss fights, at dungeons, or in any form of PvP. To me, the world itself is replayable. Of course, many people, even most people might not see the game the way I do.

I guess there are a whole lot of games that cater to dungeon people and PvP people. I’m sure glad one of them caters to my crowd.

Bri: If I understand your Dungeon example correctly. So if ANet added let’s say 10 new Dungeons permanently to the game starting in the next update AND promised to add a new Dungeon every month till the servers shut down, then you would be satisfied?

Ok, I appreciate that and am glad that would work for some players.
But now consider a different group of players. There are some of us (myself included) that have Never done an open world Dungeon in the two years that we have been playing. Have never completed the Personal Story because the very last mission is a Dungeon and have never stepped foot into any Fractal cause well, they are just more Dungeons.
For Us all the effort that ANet would put into making the Dungeon loving group happy, would yield Zero satisfaction for those in my group who despise them.

I think the unfortunate truth is that different people are playing for different (sometimes diametrically opposed) reasons. The problem is ANet has to find the happy medium and try to please as many people in as many varied ways as possible.

I really think that is the intention of ANet. Sure the first 2 years have been a somewhat rocky road but I honestly believe they are trying. I mean sure LS Season 1 didn’t work out very well but from what I have seen of Season 2 it is much, much, much better. Hopefully they take all that they learned from the stumbles up till now and implement the successes from the past into the future released content.

As for your 2nd post:

• The content needs to be available to do
• The content should still be enjoyable after completing it many times
• The content needs to give the player a reason to repeat it

Though your main bolded lines are all very good points and I agree wholeheartedly. I do not agree with some of your punctuating examples.

1. There was much more involved in why Season 1 failed then lack of permanency, though that is surely one of many.
2. The miscellaneous timers and randomness is the premise that dynamic events were built around and actually what I tend to like about them.
3. Jumping Puzzles I do almost daily, not for the rewards that I usually get, but for the rewards that I potentially could get.

If I may also add,

• The content has to be diverse

You can please some of the people all of the time
You can please all of the people some of the time
But you can’t please all of the people all of the time
And on the Forums you can’t please any of the people any of the time

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Bri: If I understand your Dungeon example correctly. So if ANet added let’s say 10 new Dungeons permanently to the game starting in the next update AND promised to add a new Dungeon every month till the servers shut down, then you would be satisfied?

Well I’m not Bri but allow me to weight in none the less.
One of the issues with constantly adding more dungeons is that you wouldn’t be adding more dungeons but (to borrow a phrase from Galen Grey.4709) rather you’d be replace them. Only a handful of dungeons are actually actively run (the more rewarding ones) and any new dungeons would fall into either rewarding and not-rewarding and as such would either replace a current farmed dungeon or not be as rewarding and disappear into obscurity.
It’s a difficult problem to solve really. Adding more content inherently leads to spreading the user base (and for group content this can be problematic) but adding more content is also important to ensure player investment.

I’d have to go with the ‘adding more dungeons would not do it for me’ crowd. I’m not sure what would ‘do it for me’. Maybe because I’m not that dissatisfied with how things are now. I always find something to do that entertains me.

I do enjoy new content, sometimes. It depends on the content. No matter what the Devs add, some will embrace it, some will not. Anything new only stays new for so long, and then it becomes…well…not so new, and mundane to many.

I guess I would like some things like the Black Moa Chick quest. A lot of varied things to accomplish that work toward something I would like to obtain. But, that can be a problem because what some would like to obtain, others would not, and what it might involve doing could be considered exciting by some, and ‘grindy’ by others.

It can’t be easy to be a Game Developer. It truly can not.

Personally I’d prefer a wider diversity of activities over more dungeons. The reason I run so many dungeons is that the game doesn’t offer much for me outside of them.

I know a lot of people don’t like comparisons to GW1, but they put a lot of work into making content have a lasting value. Missions were repeatable. Areas offered unique skins giving a purpose to every area. Hard mode gave incentives to do every area at the “end game” level. Vanquishing gave a reason to kill everything in a map. Locked chests were located around the map and in some missions that you could open for skins and other good items. Dungeons were rewarding and fun.

And what do we have in GW2 on the same scale of lasting value? Dungeons, world events, WvW, and PvP? Its not that I’m overly in love with dungeons, its that this game doesn’t have much variety in each format after you’ve experienced it once, for people like me.

My issue with most of the game is that they don’t give people like me a strong reason to go back. I’m not like Vayne; when I go into the open world I have a mental picture of everything that is there and everything I can do. I’ve already experienced enough of it to the point where exploration is no longer fun. Whats left are the activities which are largely unrewarding or tedious to do.