Guild Wars 2

Instances are better than persistant world. Why is persistant world bad? Here is a list:

1) Success at a given task is driven by number of bodies. Content is either mind numbingly easy and thus boring with a zerg or simply impossible by yourself (depending on the event). Zerging is always incentivized for worthwhile content. The closest thing to an exception is dry top, but even that has too much zerging (skritt queen etc).

2) No coordination or teamwork required for all content except Tequatl and Triple Threat. Your build doesn’t matter unless you are by yourself, and even then most persistant world mobs are fodder. No reason to team up unless you want loot faster.

3) The “Challenging” (and not the good kind here) events like Tequatl and Triple Threat require migraine inducing effort on the part of the organizers and minimal effort on the part of the masses (“zerg”). A member of the zerg need only perform a handful of simple tasks: stand near Teq’s feet. Jump over shockwaves. Dodge stuff. Deal damage. How often does a member of the zerg need to pay attention to his teammates? Almost never. Maybe a warbanner. Maybe. If you replaced the zerg with NPCs I wouldn’t even notice. In a GW1 style instance, party members must be able to perform their role or the team fails. Team awareness and coordination are far more important. Tequatl would be much more enjoyable if it were scaled down and instanced for, lets say 10-15.

4) Playing on an arbitrary schedule is unnecessary and bad. Events on timers? No thanks. How about starting content the moment your team is ready? Gee, I wish we could do Guild Missions, but we don’t have 20 people. Would any of the guild puzzles really fundamentally change for a team of 8 if you scaled them down? Then why require 20? Same question for all other content.

I suppose the existing persistant world content could theoretically stay, for when people want something boring and monotonous to do, but for the rest of us, I beg of you, take a page out of the GW1 manual and release more instances. New living story content? Instanced for a party of 5. All of it. New maps? Instances, tower of nightmares style, but for a party of 5. Maybe 10 if you feel spunky. Maybe add hard mode of existing maps where all waypoints start out contested, and all events are scaled for a party of 5, and the map is…you guessed it…instanced. Give me a single reason to play 80% of the existing content why don’t you?

TLDR: GW1 had more content. Better content. No zerging. At any given moment a player had a long list of instances (100% of the content) that were challenging, compelling, and required teamwork (even if your team was AI characters, I coordinated more with Olias than random Zergling #27). I replay exactly none of the persistant world content in GW2, and I am not alone either.

Based upon what you state above, it almost sounds like you want a single player game and not an online persistent world MMO. GW1 PvE was basically a single player game with the exception of the various PvP areas. There wasn’t an area of the PvE world that couldn’t be played by an individual(and I do mean not one single area, especially with the advent of heroes and being able to turn your own character into a hero). Not saying that instances don’t have their place in a persistent world, but not at the expense of the masses…or those that don’t particularly care for doing group content. As for more instanced content other than additional guild missions, I don’t see it happening, but out of the some odd 6 million copies sold, I’m sure a significant enough amount of people replay that persistent open world content as it is(and I see this myself in my daily play). As for the Guild missions being scaled for 20 people, numbers ranging from 5 to 50 were thrown around…I don’t remember the exact reason for 20, but I’m pretty sure it was a compromise.

GW1 was basically a single player game with up to 8 co-op, if you want to look at it that way, although you generally needed a full party (unless using a solo build). I experienced more teamwork between myself and my AI heroes than I do in any GW2 zerg. There were many areas where ppl would choose to party up (Underworld, FoW, DoA, many story missions) even if it was not required. I played with my friends and guildies often. I’ll just gloss over PvP (GW1 PvP is leagues above GW2 PvP). And since GW2 is supposedly the sequel to GW1, I would hope it would build upon GW1. The persistant world was an experiment for GW and I think it isn’t worth it. It requires enormous effort on the devs part, when an instance is just better all around. And what areas of persistant world do people play in GW2? World Bosses and champ/event trains. Why? Loot. If you nerfed the loot, nobody would play them. Case in point: Dry Top. Place is a ghost town.

GW1 was a better game for many reasons and maybe someday it will get a sequel, but this game is OK for a change of pace. Clearly you prefer instances, others prefer open world (I don’t know why). Now you can play GW1 or this game and pick what you like.

only one thing is needed, really:

I am currently playing GW1 almost exclusively over GW2. Every now and then I’ll check in on GW2, help my guild do missions, try new content, get sorely disappointed, and go back to GW1. GW1 is full of players who tossed GW2 aside. GW1 hasn’t had new content in 2 years, and a sizeable crowd STILL chooses GW1 over GW2. GW2 isn’t beyond saving, but if another developer releases a instanced only high quality MMO, ArenaNet will see a migration.

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

I am currently playing GW1 almost exclusively over GW2. Every now and then I’ll check in on GW2, help my guild do missions, try new content, get sorely disappointed, and go back to GW1. GW1 is full of players who tossed GW2 aside. GW1 hasn’t had new content in 2 years, and a sizeable crowd STILL chooses GW1 over GW2. GW2 isn’t beyond saving, but if another developer releases a instanced only high quality MMO, ArenaNet will see a migration.

GW1 has a much larger base right now than it’s predecessor, at least in NA. I thought I was seeing things when I logged into GW1 and found areas brimming with players. Reminded me when GW2 was still fresh. Something like this was bound to happen. GW2 has gone beyond stale to the point of player desertions. While some of migrated to other MMO’s who are actively working to expand their respective world, GW1 has seen a major influx of players. I’ve gone back to finishing off my GWAMM title with friends I haven’t seen in nearly a year.

Imagine if you took the Straights of Devastation in GW2 and turned it into an instance for 3 parties of 5 (think of the Deep in GW1). One party for each war front. You wouldn’t even need to change the events, just scale them. The whole map starts out contested and the parties move west, one event at a time. It then culminates in the Balthazar event. Wouldn’t that be better?

I completely agree with you. I think the most challenge I got out of this game were liadri and a couple jumping puzzles. Sadly he former was most likely due to lots of lag from having a billion people zerging under me and the latter because this game isn’t designed as a platformer and 90% of the challenge is trying to work the camera angles.

I feel you on Olias, it is more challenging to micro a party of heroes in GW1 than it is to do anything in 2 really. Try doing slaver’s HM with heroes without cheesing longbow and going afk then come back to GW2, you will feel like a god. Hell run some WiK content and then look at 2 and think “wth happened???”

Open world is so dreadful I only do it for the loot, the only ‘challenge’ I see are cheesy instakill mechanics which lol I just afk at range essentially because it’s totally anti-melee with an added bonus of 1 billion HP on champs. Oh so fun!

It really helps that there are so many particle effects flying around that even if I wanted to go melee and do some skillful battle it is completely meaningless when I have blue flames gouging my eyes out on my monitor + whatever the hell else is going on.

DocHolliday.5921:

Actually the problems you list I think have little to do with the lack of instancing, and a lot to do with the removal of healer and true support roles, along with making everything DPS-race zerg-fests, and just dumbing down the skill system in general. I was disappointed with GW2’s skill system less than 15 minutes after I loaded it for the first time, and since then, nothing has changed. GW1’s skill/profession system has always been vastly superior.

I’m not surprised in the least to hear that GW1 is more popular than GW2, because it’s always been better in almost every way. Honestly, the only two things I like in GW2 over GW1 are the persistent world and the ability to jump. Oh, and the AH is way better than traders. Everything else is still better in GW1.

Thing is, they could still overhaul GW2 to be more of a true successor to GW1, and it would probably turn it around completely. How easy it would be would depend on how much GW1 code they could just reuse in GW2.

It is definitely an issue because of the ‘holy trinity’ being removed, or rather replaced with simply DPS. I think we devolved instead of evolved as far as MMOs are concerned, IMO it would have been much better to let everyone be what they wanted. Tank/Heal/Dps instead of just DPS and minor support/self sufficiency.

I suppose pve in GW2 will always be boring because of this.. I hate how ANet just adds instakills and more HP but honestly can we think of anything else they could do with this system?? We are so limited with just DPS + dodge.

I feel a lot of it comes down to the particle effect issue, the game would be much more enjoyable if I could see what a boss is doing. It’s just not fun being downed and not knowing why because it was literally impossible to see. In the end I just range everything while watching TV…

Actually the problems you list I think have little to do with the lack of instancing, and a lot to do with the removal of healer and true support roles, along with making everything DPS-race zerg-fests, and just dumbing down the skill system in general. I was disappointed with GW2’s skill system less than 15 minutes after I loaded it for the first time, and since then, nothing has changed. GW1’s skill/profession system has always been vastly superior.

I’m not surprised in the least to hear that GW1 is more popular than GW2, because it’s always been better in almost every way. Honestly, the only two things I like in GW2 over GW1 are the persistent world and the ability to jump. Oh, and the AH is way better than traders. Everything else is still better in GW1.

Thing is, they could still overhaul GW2 to be more of a true successor to GW1, and it would probably turn it around completely. How easy it would be would depend on how much GW1 code they could just reuse in GW2.

While I agree with the premise of the OP (“instances are better than open world”) I have to disagree with the reasons provided being the motivation behind going with instances over open world, and add an addendum to the phrase. In full:

“Instances are better than open world, for the mindset of ArenaNet’s content.”

Aside from balance – which is far easier to balance for a specific number of players (party max) than it is for a variable size that could make any content ever to be either face-rolling-on-keyboard easy or instantly-kill-lots-of-players frustrating – you have the Living World.

Looking at Season 1, and at Guild Wars Beyond, it is plain as day that War in Kryta content was a prototype for the Living World. It received a huge appraisal, while Season 1 was not. And, to me, there are three reasons why:

1. Guild Wars players were deprived of content for two years, so they put up with the lack of ultimate quality brought on by the fact the content was made by a very skeletal crew team. Though there was still a lot of quality in it.
2. The story; unlike War in Kryta, Season 1 did a lot of lore bending and lore breaking (at least from the perspective of the playerbase) and idiot ball handling to make Scarlet such an ultimate foe. War in Kryta, while introduced different story elements, did so in a believable way, by using pre-established stepping stones. Season 1’s story literally came out of nowhere using old factions, with no pre-existing reasons for said factions’ involvement.
3. Relevant to topic: Most importantly for the grand playerbase: Instances versus temporary open world content. Even today, you can go through and experience War in Kryta in the exact same way it was experienced at release – as well as pre-WiK content. The Living World, even if they kept things to the latest update, cannot. It is now impossible to experience Kessex Hills before the Tower of Nightmares, or even during. Instances allowed the world to evolve at the pace of the players, while the Living World evolves at the pace of ArenaNet’s plot-making.

The way the base game was designed is definitely suited more for the open world, but the concept that ArenaNet’s going with the Living World is not really that suited for an open world game without creating zone separations based on position in the storyline, but would be absolutely perfect for an instanced game like GW1.

There’s nothing really wrong with an open world game. But I think ArenaNet’s mentality is still stuck on thinking for an instanced game.

If the first post will come true…its like a dream will come true…
For me i think there should be something like a hardmode (and pls dont tell me solo arah or take off all ur stuff, i heared it so often)…it could also be with opened world…that a character just get downscaled..but the rewards should be better..so u have the same profit (like 300% more mf and 200% more goldfind or something)

Gw2 became a game for noobs…not new player but really noobs….i once made a group event with 3 player…and there were 5 monster per wave..and i 2 shoted them by mistake before anyone else could hit them…..

If there are no much and nice and rewarding difficult and challanging things this game will destroy itself…

Encounters in GW2 do not scale very well. As said multiple times in this thread, many of the large scale fights are mind numbing boring and easy, or just plagued with one shot kills (that many times you cannot even see coming). Besides the downside of individual contribution and satisfaction becoming less and less important with the more players involved, the massive amount of particle effects are at embarrassingly large amounts (view attached images of typical zerg bosses, NOTE: the “low particle effects” option is enabled). As a side note, the reason given for no cast bars is that you can see animations (how is anyone supposed to see attack animations from a big blindingly bright ball of particles?).

I agree with everything stated in the OP. Private instanced zones for things like the Straits of Devastation, instanced zones for Vanquishing, and instanced zones for guild missions/RP events and the like were something that I was hoping for for almost the entire time… until megaservers showed that Anet was moving in the opposite direction.

The “holy trinity being removed” is not the issue with lack of meaningful cooperation from my perspective, its simply that much of the content is just so simplified (and easy mode). There are many, many games that do not rely on the holy trinity gimmick, and heralding it as the reason why GW2 PvE is so simplistic is a bit of a close minded opinion from MMO players who only really play MMOs.

The other thing to remember is that ANet knows how to make an excellent instance. Many of the main story/living story instances are great, and might be even better if a party was required and the challenge was ramped up a bit. And I already hear the community responding with: “You can’t require ppl to party up for the story, you’re just creating a barrier for newer players, the friendless, etc, etc.”, and “You can’t make the main story challenging, otherwise ppl won’t find out what happens.” Yes, you can actually. It’s been done well in many games, including this one game called “Guild Wars”. The thing is, you might need to bring recruitable AI characters back. It’s a stretch I know. Baby steps first. I’d be happy just starting with some new instances.

I’ll take the GW1 halloween quests over the GW2 labyrinth every time.

In the interest of keeping this thread alive, GW1 folks, what are your favorite GW1 content?

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

In a GW1 style instance, party members must be able to perform their role or the team fails. Team awareness and coordination are far more important.

Yeeeeeeeah but…you didn’t necessarily need to be that competent in your role for GW1? The only time it ever truly mattered was with a human healer or a diversified SC (I’m looking at the MQSC/MTSC and UWSC more than anything else). For anyone who utilized good builds in GW1 they had to have the awareness of perhaps a dead squirrel in order to perform well.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it was definitely a very, very easy game if you used the right builds – to maintain enough of a challenge for the people who didn’t want to get MQSC times in under 25 minutes or people who weren’t thrilled about mesmer midline strategies…

IMO – that’s the point of GW2 as well. Content feels menial and easy and spam-1 because that’s what some players have made it. People are using the best builds and then complaining everything’s too easy or frustratingly difficult. But content’s designed in mind to be completed either laughably easy with proper techniques or with some efficiency with less-than-perfect builds.

It’s a bit of a relief from games like WoW, where it’s stressful to participate in the most recent raids/dungeons when you don’t want to be pigeonholed into min-maxing performance.

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

In the interest of keeping this thread alive, GW1 folks, what are your favorite GW1 content?

I miss the diversification most of all. I miss having 4 different strategies for 4 different professions utilizing 4 different teams. My mesmer uses surgeway, ritualist uses necro machine, my paragon utilizes kway and my warrior makes use of some necros and paragons. It didn’t feel like I was playing the same character (but slightly differently) – it truly felt that every build was diversified and distinguishable enough from the next.

While it exists in GW2, the gap between a d/d elementalist and gs warrior is a bit less than the gap between a melee support group and surgeway.

I just miss the heroes and team composition. Utilizing and synchronizing every build to work fluently with one another was great.

Cuddy.6247:

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

In a GW1 style instance, party members must be able to perform their role or the team fails. Team awareness and coordination are far more important.

Yeeeeeeeah but…you didn’t necessarily need to be that competent in your role for GW1? The only time it ever truly mattered was with a human healer or a diversified SC (I’m looking at the MQSC/MTSC and UWSC more than anything else). For anyone who utilized good builds in GW1 they had to have the awareness of perhaps a dead squirrel in order to perform well.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it was definitely a very, very easy game if you used the right builds – to maintain enough of a challenge for the people who didn’t want to get MQSC times in under 25 minutes or people who weren’t thrilled about mesmer midline strategies…

Everything becomes easy eventually. To say a game like GW1 is very, very easy once you have the perfect builds and you know exactly how to do all of the content kinda misses the point, because you had to get to that level. PvE got easier and easier over time, especially as PvE only skills were introduced, but you can’t tell me you beat every GW1 instance on the first try or have never had a party wipe. I saw lots of party wipes and party fails over my time in GW1, and I loved every minute of it. The first time through each campaign I bet you failed at least one mission, at least once.

My favorite GW1 content (I’ll stick to PvE, although I was heavy into PvP also) was: the Underworld, Domain of Anguish, missions like Thunderhead Keep and the Ascension Rites, and Glint’s Challenge.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The GW2 world is not persistant. Never has been. It creates the illusion of persistance.

Conner.4702:

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The GW2 world is not persistant. Never has been. It creates the illusion of persistance.

That’s no secret. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct (RIP futurama). Yeah, it’s giant hot-joinable instances of 250-300ish (not sure what the cap is, also don’t really care). Yay semantics. I appreciate the pursuit of accuracy tho. All my complaints about persistant world still apply directly to giant pseudo instances tho, so, moving right along…

Another thing I’d like to add here is a request to the WoW community. When comparing GW2 to WoW and making suggestions to devs, please remember what game GW2 is a sequel for. GW2 is the only sequel to GW1 we are likely to get. If you want new GW1 content, GW2 is your only option sadly. WoW on the other hand, is still updating and releasing new content. Believe it or not, lack of mounts and anything involving precursors or the gemstore are the absolute last thing I care about in terms of stuff wrong with GW2. I’m not at all interested in a WoW clone, so please, don’t ask that this game be turned into a copy of WoW. There’s a WoW expansion coming out soon, just play that. There is a reason WoW has a subscription fee, their business model requires it (turns out, open world content is a huge pain for devs, go figure).

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

Conner.4702:

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The GW2 world is not persistant. Never has been. It creates the illusion of persistance.

That’s no secret. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct (RIP futurama). Yeah, it’s giant hot-joinable instances of 250-300ish (not sure what the cap is, also don’t really care). Yay semantics. I appreciate the pursuit of accuracy tho. All my complaints about persistant world still apply directly to giant pseudo instances tho, so, moving right along…

~Snup~

You’re both wrong, under this definition: Persistent; continuing to exist or endure over a prolonged period.
As long as the servers are on, the world is there…irregardless of if it holds 1 person or 150(max), and a particular zone is open, it’s persistent.

Zaklex.6308:

You’re both wrong, under this definition: Persistent; continuing to exist or endure over a prolonged period.
As long as the servers are on, the world is there…irregardless of if it holds 1 person or 150(max), and a particular zone is open, it’s persistent.

Sigh. Point taken. Call the gw2 maps what you like. Persistant. Giant pseudo instances. Depressing. My point is, they are less fun than GW1 maps. If you take all of the open world GW2 maps, the living story, and the main story of GW2, I’d estimate it is around 80% of the existing GW2 PvE content. It is generally thought of as more casual, and overall easier than the GW2 dungeons and fractals. We’ll call it the GW2 PvE lower 80%.

Compare that to the easiest 80% of the GW1 PvE content. I’d guess that would be everything except maybe the elite dungeons in each campaign (Underworld, FoW, DoA, the Deep, Urgoz, Slaver’s Exile, Sorrow’s Furnace, etc), the Eye of the North dungeons, and the Tomb of the Primeval Kings. We’ll call this the GW1 PvE lower 80%.

The lower 80% of the GW2 content includes a story that can be done solo, regardless of build. This also applies to all season 2 living story instances. If a particular instance is difficult, you can add bodies till it has no challenge whatsoever. It includes an open world containing promising events with interesting mechanics that are reduced into the giant, epileptic seizure inducing, graphical nightmares commonly referred to as zergs. In general, failure is rare and challenge is low (unless there are not enough bodies present, in which case, failure is guaranteed, and the players leave). Then you have Tequatl and Triple Trouble, where the masses have a few simple tasks to accomplish such as: stand by Teq’s feet, jump over shockwaves, do damage. Look at me, I’m killing a dragon! Meanwhile the handful of player’s organizing, get the migraine inducing pleasure of trying to get 50-100 players to simply stand in the right place. What fun!

The lower 80% of the GW1 content is not soloable (without heroe’s/henchies, excluding very specific solo farm builds). You cannot throw more bodies at content to make it easier. Frequently, content will not be cleared on the first try, and failure is a part of learning the game. You will learn your build, try new builds, and/or work with a team to eventually succeed.

When I compare the lower 80% of the GW2 content to the lower 80% of the GW1 content, the GW2 content is unappealing to the point of being unplayable.

Anyways, still like to know what players favorite thing in GW1 was.

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

Anyways, still like to know what players favorite thing in GW1 was.

As a PvPer, I personally enjoyed Alliance Battles (AB, 12vs12) and Fort Aspenwood (FA, 8vs8) the most. Both were fairly PvP balanced game modes that allowed for a large number of players to compete. There weren’t so many players that your contribution didn’t matter (very much unlike WvW, specifically zergs), but there weren’t so few that victory depended on the competency of a single player (unlike 5vs5 sPvP). You could find fairly balanced engagements (3vs3, etc) very quickly, unlike WvW where you could go 30+ minutes solo or in a group before finding something remotely similar. Most importantly, those game modes allowed for an unparalleled variety of builds to be played; if you wanted to play a Grenth’s Balance spike necromancer or some other non-meta build, you could and could still be very effective. In sPvP, if you’re not running something close to the meta, then you probably don’t have enough teammates to cover your build’s weaknesses or you might be running something that their compositions can’t cover for; like using full berserker stats on a team with no bunkers/tanks, even though there’s nothing wrong with your individual build. If sPvP were 8v8 or 10vs10, you could hide behind teammates for a little while if your health dropped too low, then reengage once you recovered; you’re disappearance for 20 seconds isn’t going to be critical to victory. In 5vs5 though, it will be.

Anyways, as for GW2’s persistent PvE world, overall I like it but the biggest thing holding back the game relate to core design decisions made very early in development that would be very time-consuming to change for existing maps. GW2 is designed so that the maps and most events can handle anywhere from 10-300 players; they might not handle it well or be as fun, but at least they don’t bug out, can be completed, and everyone can still get credit for participating. Most of the small and large events in the game are actually fun and can handle groups of around 20 players well, ranging from low-level events in Queensdale to world bosses such as the MegaDestroyer (MD). The issue is that there is nothing preventing that from that limit from being surpassed. And since more players makes events easier, you could argue that the game’s design encourages that limit to be passed. The world boss schedule also encourages this: although now more people can experience the MD event since its easier to get the necessary 20 players, it also waters down the experience because instead of 20 you get to 200. The Marionnette event, Dry Top, the map wide Scarlet Invasions: all of those and more were Anet experimenting with remedying this problem by spreading players out; and had various levels of success. Personally, I don’t think it’s something that can be solved well without reducing the map limit to around 100 for (most) future designed maps which would be smaller, with no modifications of existing maps since that probably isn’t the best use of their time. Basically, the existing maps were made for 300ish players to be spread out, not all grouped up in one area.

The second biggest issue, AI competency, is heavily linked to the first; and is an area where GW1 greatly surpasses GW2. The reason though is that if you have events such as the Orrian Temples and Tequatl where 100’s of creatures are fighting in a small area, you not only can’t afford to spend the server’s processing power on more complex AI, but no one would even notice if you did: there are too many particle effects and the creatures would die too quickly. So it’s not worth it in the open world. Some system of scaling AI based on player population could possibly be developed but that would be a massive undertaking: not only to develop and test, but to then implement to all of the game’s events. While open-world events wouldn’t benefit from more complex AI, creatures that would benefit from more complex AI include dungeons and player-owned summons. And in fact, some player owned summons such as ranger pets and mesmer clones have seen improvements. Unfortunately, whether for technical or for developer-time related reasons, NPC enemies haven’t seen similar improvements.