Guild Wars 2

stomps bug

Vayne.8563:

What do you think will happen if it’s made really hard? Or content is introduced that most people will never play? How does that really benefit the game?

One word: reputation.

Not long after release, a large amount of players started complaining because of the lack of endgame, but there was endgame, but it was different. I think it’s reasonable to think that what they actually missed was hard, rewarding content. Anyway, word spread fast and GW2 quickly became “the MMO without endgame”, and not in a good way. This quite obviously affected the game sales too over the years.

By creating hard content they target a quite large audience: the ones who left the game because the lack of it, and the ones who never bought the game because it didn’t have any. The purpose of hard content isn’t to let as much player complete it as possible; its there to challenge the players to buy the game and try to beat that content.

I really think at this point in time it’s too late to get those who left because of lack of instanced challenge to come back. At the rate ANet is putting out content, there will not be enough any time soon for a robust, instanced game. Those people have found another game, just as most of my GW Alliance left for games that offered PvP that was to their liking when GW2’s wasn’t.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

What do you think will happen if it’s made really hard? Or content is introduced that most people will never play? How does that really benefit the game?

One word: reputation.

Not long after release, a large amount of players started complaining because of the lack of endgame, but there was endgame, but it was different. I think it’s reasonable to think that what they actually missed was hard, rewarding content. Anyway, word spread fast and GW2 quickly became “the MMO without endgame”, and not in a good way. This quite obviously affected the game sales too over the years.

By creating hard content they target a quite large audience: the ones who left the game because the lack of it, and the ones who never bought the game because it didn’t have any. The purpose of hard content isn’t to let as much player complete it as possible; its there to challenge the players to buy the game and try to beat that content.

Well that’s sort of my point too. It DID get that reputation and that’s what drives some of us TO this game. That’s the game some of us play. You can’t go now mid stream and change that reputation.

It’s like a restaurant that gets a great name as having lots of great vegetarian dishes, and suddenly advertising steak. Even if all the vegetarian dishes are there, vegetarians might well be turned off by the change….even though they don’t plan on having steak. The more meat dishes you serve, the more you kitten off your vegetarian clientele.

There are people, a lot of people, who have a negative associate with raids in general, fairly or unfairly. There’s the elitist mentality people who feel raids would make people less friendly and open to helping new players, again fairly or unfairly. It’s a perception that’s not likely to change.

So yes, you’re right, this game had a certain reputation that attracts certain people. And now you can’t go and change the reputation to get other people without rocking the boat.

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

serenke.4806:

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

First of all, there are already zerg breaking things in this game. If you’ll notice a lot of the new stuff only really works if it’s anti zerg. Even as far back as trying to save people in escape from LA, you couldn’t get the max reward without splitting up into smaller groups. Same with the battle for Lion’s Arch, Triple Threat, the Marionette, Drytop, Silverwastes, all encourage the zerg to split. So nice rhetoric but dated.

More to the point, casuals can be as loyal as hard core players. Because they don’t run out of content as fast and because they don’t have crazy high standards that say we must have this done this way.

A lot of the casuals in my guild are playing since launch. Many of them don’t run dungeons or PvP at all, but they’re happy to wander the world and farm and do events.

And yes, they’re restless too, and anxiously awaiting new content. But I can guarantee you hard core players will run out of content a lot faster than casuals will.

Casual doesn’t mean you’re not vested. It means that you’re not quite a goal oriented or not quite as push yourself hard to get stuff.

A casual person might still be slogging away at their first legendary.

Vayne.8563:

ODB.6891:

What I get from this whole argument….“If its something I might have a hard time completing….then I don’t want anyone to have it!” This doesn’t seem to be a very mature standpoint.

…snip…

In the end, the above quote still holds true….regardless if that is what ANET ends up making their decisions based on or not. You pretty much admitted that this is all about making the content faceroll easy so players can get whatever rewards they want via pay to win or whatever path of least resistance they choose. Your whole argument was about making sure that rewards were not “locked behind” any content type that you either didn’t want to do or can’t complete. This argument logically lead to not wanting any content that you did not desire to do or could not do available to anyone else. Its illogical to get indignant when that is showcased.

ANET has proven themselves to be forum balancers over and over again. Whether or not they make the decision to only include faceroll 11111111 spamming content for zergs or if they choose to add some content to support skilled play…that’s up to them. Ultimately, I agree with you on this being a business decision. If they are even looking at game play numbers…and not true forum balancing again…and they see that 1111111 is the most money…I can’t really blame them for choosing the 1111111. In the end, 111111 is going to be excessively boring and will eventually lead to migration of even casuals to the next game…that does have some excitement level attached. If they want a lasting game…they would allocate resources to both.

I will admit, that your assessment of what they should do may be valid. Neither of us has the actual raw data to show participation in any specific content type or the raw data to show trends on who would participate. Even if we did, the ship has probably sailed on that data no longer being accurate as players who would have participated have long since left this game. I has been years since ANET did provide any content for this type of player. I think the only reason I’m still around is the lack of viable alternative games.

ODB.6891:

Vayne.8563:

ODB.6891:

What I get from this whole argument….“If its something I might have a hard time completing….then I don’t want anyone to have it!” This doesn’t seem to be a very mature standpoint.

…snip…

In the end, the above quote still holds true….regardless if that is what ANET ends up making their decisions based on or not. You pretty much admitted that this is all about making the content faceroll easy so players can get whatever rewards they want via pay to win or whatever path of least resistance they choose. Your whole argument was about making sure that rewards were not “locked behind” any content type that you either didn’t want to do or can’t complete. This argument logically lead to not wanting any content that you did not desire to do or could not do available to anyone else. Its illogical to get indignant when that is showcased.

ANET has proven themselves to be forum balancers over and over again. Whether or not they make the decision to only include faceroll 11111111 spamming content for zergs or if they choose to add some content to support skilled play…that’s up to them. Ultimately, I agree with you on this being a business decision. If they are even looking at game play numbers…and not true forum balancing again…and they see that 1111111 is the most money…I can’t really blame them for choosing the 1111111. In the end, 111111 is going to be excessively boring and will eventually lead to migration of even casuals to the next game…that does have some excitement level attached. If they want a lasting game…they would allocate resources to both.

I will admit, that your assessment of what they should do may be valid. Neither of us has the actual raw data to show participation in any specific content type or the raw data to show trends on who would participate. Even if we did, the ship has probably sailed on that data no longer being accurate as players who would have participated have long since left this game. I has been years since ANET did provide any content for this type of player. I think the only reason I’m still around is the lack of viable alternative games.

So you play a game for 3 years and up until this point, you can basically get everything. Now the company changes the product so you can’t. That’s another form of unfairness.

If I ate at a restaurant every week and they decided to raise the prices so I couldn’t afford them, I’d stop eating there. But I also might feel angry that they raised the prices so much.

I think it’s more immature to not acknowledge basic human nature than it is to try to justify calling people names for no real reason. It doesn’t strengthen your argument.

It’s not a case of I can’t get this so I’m taking my ball and going home. It’s a question if I used to feel comfortable here and now I don’t so I’m leaving.

You don’t have to get angry or throw a tantrum to leave. You’re simply making a decision based on what’s best for you. That’s what mature people do all the time. We look at what we’re doing, see if it’s worth our time and energy, and if it’s not, we walk away. I’ve walked away from TV shows that started strong and suddenly didn’t fit the bill anymore. I can do with same with a game.

This isn’t just about not having. It’s being sold and playing one thing and then switching it to something it wasn’t. Your attempt to make it sound like immaturity shows a lack of understanding of the issue.

You can’t really change a product mid-stream and not expect some backlash, unless you’re changing it to make it better…and by better I mean better for the majority.

Vayne.8563:

So you play a game for 3 years and up until this point, you can basically get everything. Now the company changes the product so you can’t. That’s another form of unfairness.

If I ate at a restaurant every week and they decided to raise the prices so I couldn’t afford them, I’d stop eating there. But I also might feel angry that they raised the prices so much.

I think it’s more immature to not acknowledge basic human nature than it is to try to justify calling people names for no real reason. It doesn’t strengthen your argument.

It’s not a case of I can’t get this so I’m taking my ball and going home. It’s a question if I used to feel comfortable here and now I don’t so I’m leaving.

You don’t have to get angry or throw a tantrum to leave. You’re simply making a decision based on what’s best for you. That’s what mature people do all the time. We look at what we’re doing, see if it’s worth our time and energy, and if it’s not, we walk away. I’ve walked away from TV shows that started strong and suddenly didn’t fit the bill anymore. I can do with same with a game.

This isn’t just about not having. It’s being sold and playing one thing and then switching it to something it wasn’t. Your attempt to make it sound like immaturity shows a lack of understanding of the issue.

You can’t really change a product mid-stream and not expect some backlash, unless you’re changing it to make it better…and by better I mean better for the majority.

This changing of a product mid-stream is exactly what ANET has done. Like so many others have posted…they did start out with both instanced and open world content. They have since broken this contract and only gone with open world content now. You are correct, it is a sad thing that many, including myself have been patiently waiting on them to honor this contract and implement more instanced content. Luckily, this game is F2P, so I haven’t exactly lost anything in the interim. As far as catering to the majority goes…that’s a double edged sword. Eventually, when you cut off enough minorities….then you are left with almost nothing.

Unfortunately, ANet never promised any of us that what we wanted from the game would be on their development schedule post launch. The hype about dungeons was realized by the 28 (iirc) explorable paths that were in the game and launch. FotM was added, and is easily the equivalent of three paths in content, more than that in time. Explorers (like myself) got a bunch of zones to explore at launch, and three permanent have been added. Open world event herders got a bunch of meta events. Some were added in SS, DT and SW. Then there was LS, both the temp S1 and the non-temp S2 solo instanced stuff.

Overall, I’d say the event herders got the most, and explorers/dungeons the least. However, the margin is not that big, it’s just that our perceptions are skewed by the disappointment when something is added that isn’t for us.

ODB.6891:

Vayne.8563:

So you play a game for 3 years and up until this point, you can basically get everything. Now the company changes the product so you can’t. That’s another form of unfairness.

If I ate at a restaurant every week and they decided to raise the prices so I couldn’t afford them, I’d stop eating there. But I also might feel angry that they raised the prices so much.

I think it’s more immature to not acknowledge basic human nature than it is to try to justify calling people names for no real reason. It doesn’t strengthen your argument.

It’s not a case of I can’t get this so I’m taking my ball and going home. It’s a question if I used to feel comfortable here and now I don’t so I’m leaving.

You don’t have to get angry or throw a tantrum to leave. You’re simply making a decision based on what’s best for you. That’s what mature people do all the time. We look at what we’re doing, see if it’s worth our time and energy, and if it’s not, we walk away. I’ve walked away from TV shows that started strong and suddenly didn’t fit the bill anymore. I can do with same with a game.

This isn’t just about not having. It’s being sold and playing one thing and then switching it to something it wasn’t. Your attempt to make it sound like immaturity shows a lack of understanding of the issue.

You can’t really change a product mid-stream and not expect some backlash, unless you’re changing it to make it better…and by better I mean better for the majority.

This changing of a product mid-stream is exactly what ANET has done. Like so many others have posted…they did start out with both instanced and open world content. They have since broken this contract and only gone with open world content now. You are correct, it is a sad thing that many, including myself have been patiently waiting on them to honor this contract and implement more instanced content. Luckily, this game is F2P, so I haven’t exactly lost anything in the interim. As far as catering to the majority goes…that’s a double edged sword. Eventually, when you cut off enough minorities….then you are left with almost nothing.

This game, as I’ve said over and over again, was sold on dynamic events and open world and anyone who bought it for dungeons and instances wasn’t paying attention. I knew it wasn’t going to be a instance-centric game before launch. I’m not sure why you didn’t.

The big push has always been living/breathing world. Originally the plan was to do that was DEs but that didn’t work, since they added new DEs and hardly anyone noticed or did them. So they tried another way to bring the world to life instead, which was the Living Story Season 1. Arguably that was very successful when it comes in terms of the companies goal of a living/breathing world. The world moved forward in time. But it was unsuccessful due to fan complaints and so Living Story Season 2 was launched.

Again the world was alive, Waypoints were attacked and some were destroyed. Forts were destroyed. The world progressed.

The living breathing world is what Anet has been pushing since their first panels on world building, before the game even launched. That’s what they pushed.

Not to say they wouldn’t have instances, but I’m not sure how anyone could justify that the game was centered around them. I mean Anet directly said that DEs were at the heart of the game. They never said that about dungeons.

I is not changing the product, it is merely adding different content, no content is compulsory, many people do no do fractals because they find it too difficult for whatever reason, others love it. I see no reason they couldn’t add genuinely difficult content such as UW or FoW back to the game. Many people in GW1 never did UW or FoW. With the lack of general invulnerability type skills and the balance GW2 has compared to GW1, you couldn’t farm it, it would be quite difficult. No stacking in corners when the Aatxe hits you for 5k per AA.

Zaklex.6308:

spoj.9672:

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

Reread my post again, I specifically stated my hypothetical game is PvE only, there is no sPvP or WvW, therefore my percentages are more accurate than you would care to believe(they are also based somewhat on reality, from a old post about WoW’s community breakdown). Also, from a purely business perspective, anyone that is of sound mind would concentrate on the 90% market and dismiss the 10%, let the smaller percentage go elsewhere and don’t waste resources on them.

Again with WoW’s community, why are people still using that as an argument against instances? I already posted above about those claims of WoW’s community. The low numbers of players that are raiding were pre WLK. 2% in vanilla and 5% in the expansion (BC) After WLK the percentages are much much higher so can we go away of the 90/10 please?

I’m not following WoW and I’m NOT a WoW player so someone who is more actively interested in WoW might have more specifics than me, so feel free to help me out here.

So the BIG question is, how much of the playerbase of WoW is interested in RAIDS?

Take a look:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2614-Dragon-Soul-and-Firelands-Statistics-Blue-Posts-Poll

They have a sample of 6 million characters (also contains alts though). I want to focus on this part: *Only 4% of the population managed to do Normal difficulty Dragon Soul so far, and 34% completed it on LFR or higher difficulty. *

So I ask once more if you don’t want Normal or Heroic raids it’s fine I don’t want it either this isn’t a hardcore raiding game. What about LFR-difficulty “instanced content”?

And even more recent:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/3608-Armory-Stats-Player-Raid-Completion-Blue-Tweets-Poll-World-PvE-Content-Fan-Art

So as you can see some raids are being completed by 70%+ of the sample size… who is saying raids aren’t popular? Who is saying that only 10% of the population is doing raids? Even if the number of players doing dungeons/fractals in GW2 is very low compared to those doing open world content that’s BECAUSE we have very little instanced content. Give us more (and better) instanced content and the percentages of instanced over open world will change rapidly.

Also, from a purely BUSINESS standpoint, adding more instanced content will be GOOD for the game and the company. It’s not a little 10% that they are “missing”, it’s a wooping upwards to 70% that they are missing.

maddoctor.2738:

Zaklex.6308:

spoj.9672:

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

Reread my post again, I specifically stated my hypothetical game is PvE only, there is no sPvP or WvW, therefore my percentages are more accurate than you would care to believe(they are also based somewhat on reality, from a old post about WoW’s community breakdown). Also, from a purely business perspective, anyone that is of sound mind would concentrate on the 90% market and dismiss the 10%, let the smaller percentage go elsewhere and don’t waste resources on them.

Again with WoW’s community, why are people still using that as an argument against instances? I already posted above about those claims of WoW’s community. The low numbers of players that are raiding were pre WLK. 2% in vanilla and 5% in the expansion (BC) After WLK the percentages are much much higher so can we go away of the 90/10 please?

I’m not following WoW and I’m NOT a WoW player so someone who is more actively interested in WoW might have more specifics than me, so feel free to help me out here.

So the BIG question is, how much of the playerbase of WoW is interested in RAIDS?

Take a look:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2614-Dragon-Soul-and-Firelands-Statistics-Blue-Posts-Poll

They have a sample of 6 million characters (also contains alts though). I want to focus on this part: *Only 4% of the population managed to do Normal difficulty Dragon Soul so far, and 34% completed it on LFR or higher difficulty. *

So I ask once more if you don’t want Normal or Heroic raids it’s fine I don’t want it either this isn’t a hardcore raiding game. What about LFR-difficulty “instanced content”?

And even more recent:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/3608-Armory-Stats-Player-Raid-Completion-Blue-Tweets-Poll-World-PvE-Content-Fan-Art

Polls are filled out by harder core players by nature. As I said before, though only 10% of the Lotro population raided ever, they accounted for 50% of forum posts. So I wouldn’t say it’s an accurate analaysis anyway. It’s a guess at best, based on harder core fans who actually care about polls for the game.

The WoW community is indeed a crappy community. The logic is this. The more you attract testosterone, the more competitive you get. Why is PvP more toxic than PvE and why are speed running dungeon groups more toxic than casual groups.

It’s due to the competitive edge. That drive to be the best and to care about being the best. If someone gets me killed in a dungeon, I shrug my shoulders and tell them it’s no big deal. In a hard core group, someone gets you killed, you hear it. I remember in WoW and later in Rift, people blaming tanks and healers for all their wipes. And you know, maybe it was the fault of a tank or healer, but people were rude and cruel over it. Why? Because it was harder and took longer and we don’t want to be here all day doing this. It doesn’t promote the best community.

Arguably the areas of the population you hear the worst stuff about are the hard core guys. Hardcore PvPers think nothing of sledging. Hard core speed runners are not usually relaxed and patience, tolerant people…not during a speed run anyway. When harder content was added to open world PvE, like the marionette, you heard people screaming in map chat all the time. Rangers in lane 2 put your pets on passive, are you stupid? The harder the content the more likely you’re going to get a strong response when something goes wrong. Those that play games to have a good time and blow off some steam, without taking it too seriously end up being the targets.

Vayne.8563:

Polls are filled out by harder core players by nature. As I said before, though only 10% of the Lotro population raided ever, they accounted for 50% of forum posts. So I wouldn’t say it’s an accurate analaysis anyway. It’s a guess at best, based on harder core fans who actually care about polls for the game.

The data on my links are not from polls or forum posts. The data on both post come from the WoW ARMORY… It’s actual official factual Blizzard data. Because Blizzard has a website with all the player data open and anyone can go there and parse the data and see how much of the population has the raid completion achievements. So we get that 70%+ of the WoW playerbase has the raid completion achievements on MANY of those raids.

The WoW community is indeed a crappy community. The logic is this. The more you attract testosterone, the more competitive you get. Why is PvP more toxic than PvE and why are speed running dungeon groups more toxic than casual groups.

It’s due to the competitive edge. That drive to be the best and to care about being the best. If someone gets me killed in a dungeon, I shrug my shoulders and tell them it’s no big deal. In a hard core group, someone gets you killed, you hear it. I remember in WoW and later in Rift, people blaming tanks and healers for all their wipes. And you know, maybe it was the fault of a tank or healer, but people were rude and cruel over it. Why? Because it was harder and took longer and we don’t want to be here all day doing this. It doesn’t promote the best community.

I’m countering the argument of “10% of WoW is doing Raids” with actual Data that suggests that the MAJORITY of the population is in fact raiding. Now toxicity is different subject altogether. That’s true I won’t deny the community part. However harder content can also create BETTER and STRONGER communities. If you play with your guild every week to complete a specific goal it will create a much greater bond between guild members.

Doing instances like The Deep or Underworld in GW1 with guildies was an excellent experience to know each other. Raiding in other MMORPGs has a much similar effect too, I was raid leader for my guild back in Lotro and gathering every Sunday to attempt our next raid was something everyone in the guild was looking forward to. What do guilds have to look forward to in the open world? Guild missions are hardly content that requires pre-work or coordination, with some rare exceptions, like most challenges (except for the skritt and the iron marches ones).

There is nothing else to do as a guild in the open world with your guildies. Just join a big blob and play in SW/DT or follow a train. You do NOT need a Guild for those.

So yeah while I agree that harder content and raiding has a negative effect on pugs, guildless people and those who play alone, it has a GREAT positive effect on guilds and communities.

Vayne.8563:

serenke.4806:

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

First of all, there are already zerg breaking things in this game. If you’ll notice a lot of the new stuff only really works if it’s anti zerg. Even as far back as trying to save people in escape from LA, you couldn’t get the max reward without splitting up into smaller groups. Same with the battle for Lion’s Arch, Triple Threat, the Marionette, Drytop, Silverwastes, all encourage the zerg to split. So nice rhetoric but dated.

More to the point, casuals can be as loyal as hard core players. Because they don’t run out of content as fast and because they don’t have crazy high standards that say we must have this done this way.

A lot of the casuals in my guild are playing since launch. Many of them don’t run dungeons or PvP at all, but they’re happy to wander the world and farm and do events.

And yes, they’re restless too, and anxiously awaiting new content. But I can guarantee you hard core players will run out of content a lot faster than casuals will.

Casual doesn’t mean you’re not vested. It means that you’re not quite a goal oriented or not quite as push yourself hard to get stuff.

A casual person might still be slogging away at their first legendary.

Breaking the zerg down into smaller zergs is even worse than one blob. At least you can still complete the event in a big enough blob. Watching something as simple as the Vinewrath or breach fail because of a bunch of people who have no clue is not exactly fun. Nor can you do anything about it. No, explaining it does not work, i’ve tried. If the challenge in content is to find/organize people who are competent enough, then that is not the kind of challenge this thread is looking for.

Casuals slogging away at their first legendary after a year won’t put their boss solo fights on youtube, spurring people to better their gameplay. Maybe you are right and the “casual” group is full of people who don’t even want to come out of their comfort zone of “i press 1 and win” but i refuse to believe that.

Vayne.8563:

Well that’s sort of my point too. It DID get that reputation and that’s what drives some of us TO this game. That’s the game some of us play. You can’t go now mid stream and change that reputation.

It’s like a restaurant that gets a great name as having lots of great vegetarian dishes, and suddenly advertising steak. Even if all the vegetarian dishes are there, vegetarians might well be turned off by the change….even though they don’t plan on having steak. The more meat dishes you serve, the more you kitten off your vegetarian clientele.

There are people, a lot of people, who have a negative associate with raids in general, fairly or unfairly. There’s the elitist mentality people who feel raids would make people less friendly and open to helping new players, again fairly or unfairly. It’s a perception that’s not likely to change.

So yes, you’re right, this game had a certain reputation that attracts certain people. And now you can’t go and change the reputation to get other people without rocking the boat.

I’m pretty sure the majority of the vegetarians wouldn’t care what other people get to eat, as long as their menu doesn’t change at all.

Right now, anet is putting a lot of resource and time into a project we barely know anything about; but we know that whatever they are doing, they will try to sell as much as possible and in order to achieve that they have to widen their target audiance. There is a reason “Challenging group content” was a highlighted feature of the expansion next to things like specializations or guild halls.

serenke.4806:

Vayne.8563:

serenke.4806:

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

First of all, there are already zerg breaking things in this game. If you’ll notice a lot of the new stuff only really works if it’s anti zerg. Even as far back as trying to save people in escape from LA, you couldn’t get the max reward without splitting up into smaller groups. Same with the battle for Lion’s Arch, Triple Threat, the Marionette, Drytop, Silverwastes, all encourage the zerg to split. So nice rhetoric but dated.

More to the point, casuals can be as loyal as hard core players. Because they don’t run out of content as fast and because they don’t have crazy high standards that say we must have this done this way.

A lot of the casuals in my guild are playing since launch. Many of them don’t run dungeons or PvP at all, but they’re happy to wander the world and farm and do events.

And yes, they’re restless too, and anxiously awaiting new content. But I can guarantee you hard core players will run out of content a lot faster than casuals will.

Casual doesn’t mean you’re not vested. It means that you’re not quite a goal oriented or not quite as push yourself hard to get stuff.

A casual person might still be slogging away at their first legendary.

Breaking the zerg down into smaller zergs is even worse than one blob. At least you can still complete the event in a big enough blob. Watching something as simple as the Vinewrath or breach fail because of a bunch of people who have no clue is not exactly fun. Nor can you do anything about it. No, explaining it does not work, i’ve tried. If the challenge in content is to find/organize people who are competent enough, then that is not the kind of challenge this thread is looking for.

Casuals slogging away at their first legendary after a year won’t put their boss solo fights on youtube, spurring people to better their gameplay. Maybe you are right and the “casual” group is full of people who don’t even want to come out of their comfort zone of “i press 1 and win” but i refuse to believe that.

Here’s another theory then. I’ve done every dungeon in this game and couldn’t care less if I ever saw another dungeon again. Now what?

If you give a reward like an achievement, people will do it. Some people even pay for runs.

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run through arah in my guild for their achievement, but they’ll never do another dungeon again.

dlonie.6547:

Obtena: A lot of us are done holding out. I was very interested in Wildstar, but not for $60. Now its $20 with a free trial and soon F2P. Been playing it for about a week, and having a blast.

Haha exactly like me just that it wasn’t only the initial price but the very bad performance.

Raids and Dungeons for MMOS are halo content. Few people will every do them – but its important to have them because so many players THINK they will. People need a goal and something to aspire too in MMOs. And you want the hardcore in your game.

So I think GW2 is hurting themselves by not adding any instances. Toyota sells mostly Camrys and Prii but that doesn’t mean they don’t make RC-F sport or the FR-S. Not everyone is going to be elite – but that doesn’t mean the elite is not helpful.

MMOs benefit hugely from the elite class with evangelizes their game. Where to I get my builds from? Well Nike and his elite PVE players and guild.. I always appreciate the good players – they make the game so much more fun.

Neox.3497:

dlonie.6547:

Obtena: A lot of us are done holding out. I was very interested in Wildstar, but not for $60. Now its $20 with a free trial and soon F2P. Been playing it for about a week, and having a blast.

Haha exactly like me just that it wasn’t only the initial price but the very bad performance.

Meh. I played Wildstar from the start. It’s not that good. The combat is actually fairly primitive if you look beyond the graphic splash..

Hume.2876:

Raids and Dungeons for MMOS are halo content. Few people will every do them – but its important to have them because so many players THINK they will. People need a goal and something to aspire too in MMOs. And you want the hardcore in your game.

So I think GW2 is hurting themselves by not adding any instances. Toyota sells mostly Camrys and Prii but that doesn’t mean they don’t make RC-F sport or the FR-S. Not everyone is going to be elite – but that doesn’t mean the elite is not helpful.

MMOs benefit hugely from the elite class with evangelizes their game. Where to I get my builds from? Well Nike and his elite PVE players and guild.. I always appreciate the good players – they make the game so much more fun.

Here is what I don’t understand, this is a thread about instanced PvE content, there are others about challenging content/raids etc. Why does instanced content has to be “for the elite” and “hardcore”? This is a mistake all non Blizzard companies did/do with their MMORPGs, they make their end-game instanced content (raids) very hard. And then they nerf them every patch because their communities can’t finish them. Instead, what WoW can teach us, is that you can have a scaling difficulty on those instances so players of various skill levels can enjoy them. Easy – Normal – Hard, with each previous difficulty being a learning step towards the later difficulties.

And the amount of effort required is limited for the benefits it offers because Lore/Story and even the maps and mob designs can be exactly the same. Only the boss mechanics need to change (and have different numbers in hit points/damage, skill recharge timers etc)

Hume.2876:

Neox.3497:

dlonie.6547:

Obtena: A lot of us are done holding out. I was very interested in Wildstar, but not for $60. Now its $20 with a free trial and soon F2P. Been playing it for about a week, and having a blast.

Haha exactly like me just that it wasn’t only the initial price but the very bad performance.

Meh. I played Wildstar from the start. It’s not that good. The combat is actually fairly primitive if you look beyond the graphic splash..

I’ll mostly agree with that. I have yet to find a game that does fluid, twitchy combat as well as GW2, including Wildstar.

However, it’s still much much better than most of the other MMOs I’ve tried (e.g. FFXIV, ArcheAge, etc). ESO being somewhat actiony as well.

At this point, I’m willing to accept a slightly less fluid combat system if the developers behind it are actually interested in pushing the system as far as they can, rather than just repeatedly nerfing content so people can get their shinies with less effort WS has quarterly updates with significant amounts of replayable content, regular fixes, and a development team that actually engages, listens, and values their community.

It is a trade-off, but it definitely feels like a win from my perspective

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

What do you think will happen if it’s made really hard? Or content is introduced that most people will never play? How does that really benefit the game?

One word: reputation.

Not long after release, a large amount of players started complaining because of the lack of endgame, but there was endgame, but it was different. I think it’s reasonable to think that what they actually missed was hard, rewarding content. Anyway, word spread fast and GW2 quickly became “the MMO without endgame”, and not in a good way. This quite obviously affected the game sales too over the years.

By creating hard content they target a quite large audience: the ones who left the game because the lack of it, and the ones who never bought the game because it didn’t have any. The purpose of hard content isn’t to let as much player complete it as possible; its there to challenge the players to buy the game and try to beat that content.

Well that’s sort of my point too. It DID get that reputation and that’s what drives some of us TO this game. That’s the game some of us play. You can’t go now mid stream and change that reputation.

It’s like a restaurant that gets a great name as having lots of great vegetarian dishes, and suddenly advertising steak. Even if all the vegetarian dishes are there, vegetarians might well be turned off by the change….even though they don’t plan on having steak. The more meat dishes you serve, the more you kitten off your vegetarian clientele.

There are people, a lot of people, who have a negative associate with raids in general, fairly or unfairly. There’s the elitist mentality people who feel raids would make people less friendly and open to helping new players, again fairly or unfairly. It’s a perception that’s not likely to change.

So yes, you’re right, this game had a certain reputation that attracts certain people. And now you can’t go and change the reputation to get other people without rocking the boat.

:D, I’ve been using the flip side of that argument to explain my view on Challenging Content. It’s the vegetarian dish at a steakhouse. It may not be your bread and butter, and it may be a minority clientele, but by having that one or two meals on your menu you’ve suddenly made yourself an option for any group of people that has vegetarians in it. It has an impact.

I look at challenging content the same way. Always have that one challenging bit of content. Of course one instance or whatever won’t last forever, people will get bored of it, and it’ll lose it’s challenge as people perfect it and the strategies are spread. When your general PUG group is walking through it with ease, then it’s time to serve up a new bit of content.

Hume.2876:

Raids and Dungeons for MMOS are halo content. Few people will every do them – but its important to have them because so many players THINK they will. People need a goal and something to aspire too in MMOs. And you want the hardcore in your game.

So I think GW2 is hurting themselves by not adding any instances. Toyota sells mostly Camrys and Prii but that doesn’t mean they don’t make RC-F sport or the FR-S. Not everyone is going to be elite – but that doesn’t mean the elite is not helpful.

MMOs benefit hugely from the elite class with evangelizes their game. Where to I get my builds from? Well Nike and his elite PVE players and guild.. I always appreciate the good players – they make the game so much more fun.

I can’t help but feel the need to quote this just so it’s posted again Very well put.

dlonie.6547:

Hume.2876:

Neox.3497:

dlonie.6547:

Obtena: A lot of us are done holding out. I was very interested in Wildstar, but not for $60. Now its $20 with a free trial and soon F2P. Been playing it for about a week, and having a blast.

Haha exactly like me just that it wasn’t only the initial price but the very bad performance.

Meh. I played Wildstar from the start. It’s not that good. The combat is actually fairly primitive if you look beyond the graphic splash..

I’ll mostly agree with that. I have yet to find a game that does fluid, twitchy combat as well as GW2, including Wildstar.

However, it’s still much much better than most of the other MMOs I’ve tried (e.g. FFXIV, ArcheAge, etc). ESO being somewhat actiony as well.

At this point, I’m willing to accept a slightly less fluid combat system if the developers behind it are actually interested in pushing the system as far as they can, rather than just repeatedly nerfing content so people can get their shinies with less effort WS has quarterly updates with significant amounts of replayable content, regular fixes, and a development team that actually engages, listens, and values their community.

It is a trade-off, but it definitely feels like a win from my perspective

DCUO is the only other game that has the quality of systems that GW2 has that I’ve played. Though, instead of neutering their content they neutered their systems to cater to the less active player (going from 5+ actions per second at times to an average of 1 action every second or two)… such a pity.

serenke.4806:

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

I think your assessment of ‘casuals’ is rather general and that makes your scenario very unlikely. While my experience isn’t broad enough, the ‘casual’ people I know fit this game’s model really well because:

1) They care less about how long it takes to do something, so they don’t just ‘leave’ once they have leveled to 80
2) Their goals tend to be more superficial, so they continually move to the next ‘thing’ to do. This happens to be alot of things for a casual player.

Not only do I have my own experience to guide me, we have the fact that the game persists for much longer than it would take a casual player to reach level 80 as well. Therefore, you’re missing something in the way you think about how casuals interact in this game and what that impact is on the game’s longevity.

I’m going to throw another thing out there that I think everyone is either ignoring or forgetting…and this is in regards to “casual” players. Where are the two biggest places that currently draw the largest amount of “casual” players… FB and mobile games. Compare the size of that “casual” market to the current “casual” market that plays MMO’s, that is the market I believe ArenaNet is looking at…the 10’s of millions that play games like Farmville and Candy Crush Saga, etc.. Most of the people don’t even consider themselves casual gamers, but that is exactly what they are, and they tend to spend real $$ on the games they do play. If any company could ever lure 10% of that group to play an online MMORPG, WoW would look like a pea next to a pear in terms of players base…but that’s just my opinion.

I’d play WildStar if you want challenging instanced content. Anet has made it pretty clear they want to maintain their current open world zerg fest where you have no real control on who is able to participate in fights and are left with afkers/dead/incompetent that upscale the mobs. Most of the elite open world bosses such as tequatl and the jungle worm would have been easily killed when they were released if they were instanced

Suinz.5968:

We need more instanced content instead of boring open world zergs. This game needs CHALLENGING instanced PvE content.

Umm…do Fractals not apply to this for some reason?

Obtena.7952:

serenke.4806:

That’s nice but if you totally forget/dismiss people who would like to have harder content, you will end up with tons of casuals. Casuals will get to 80, then nicely leave (maybe craft some shinies, maybe not even that).

If for nothing else, the “hard core” crowd is good for population. But no worries, apparently instances are not on the table and we can all rejoice in zerg wars 2.

I think your assessment of ‘casuals’ is rather general and that makes your scenario very unlikely. While my experience isn’t broad enough, the ‘casual’ people I know fit this game’s model really well because:

1) They care less about how long it takes to do something, so they don’t just ‘leave’ once they have leveled to 80
2) Their goals tend to be more superficial, so they continually move to the next ‘thing’ to do. This happens to be alot of things for a casual player.

Not only do I have my own experience to guide me, we have the fact that the game persists for much longer than it would take a casual player to reach level 80 as well. Therefore, you’re missing something in the way you think about how casuals interact in this game and what that impact is on the game’s longevity.

If that’s true, then why do we even get an expansion? Your definition of casuals would love to have the monthly/bi-weekly updates for the “next thing to do”.

Also, my definition of casual is someone who does not care what traits they are using, which stats, does not bother learning the tells or capabilities of mobs therefore they don’t know what to use and when.

ArrogantHero.4965:

Suinz.5968:

We need more instanced content instead of boring open world zergs. This game needs CHALLENGING instanced PvE content.

Umm…do Fractals not apply to this for some reason?

It does and we need an update to fractals badly.

Yet another week comes and still nothing new to do in Guild Wars 2 while waiting for HoT….
Probably, this afternoon the game will patch itself to include more crap in the gemstore, 2 fixes and 20 unintended bugs such breaking the TP for 3 hours or awarding undeserved achievements and titles.
I’m bored to death of playing over and over the same dungeons, the same PvP maps, grinding SW till I get sick..

How long this content harvest will last?

ArrogantHero.4965:

Suinz.5968:

We need more instanced content instead of boring open world zergs. This game needs CHALLENGING instanced PvE content.

Umm…do Fractals not apply to this for some reason?

If we got at least one new fractal every 6 months then yes. Also, they need to fix the instabilities so players don’t just play the “easy” ones, it’s funny how the top tier of Fractals (50) has one of the easiest instabilities ever, making the entire system nearly worthless. Otherwise the instabilities would indeed make the game much more challenging and fun, because some of them require a change in builds and how you play.

The instabilities should just be scrapped altogether. They werent fun and only a few were challenging but that was because they were just incredibly punishing in certain encounters (43/44 vs imbued shaman). They can do an optional perk for extra rewards system if they want to keep the instability effects. But otherwise it was a failed system.

I feel that Dungeons and Fractals are too much alike in the way they are both focused on small organized group play. Why have dungeons the way they are when Fractals are a better system. What I’m trying say is that Fractals are the better system for small organized group play and that I feel Dungeons should offer a completely different style of gameplay.

spoj.9672:

The instabilities should just be scrapped altogether. They werent fun and only a few were challenging but that was because they were just incredibly punishing in certain encounters (43/44 vs imbued shaman). They can do an optional perk for extra rewards system if they want to keep the instability effects. But otherwise it was a failed system.

I don’t think instabilities are a failed system, where arenanet failed was to make it desirable (rewarding) to run all levels. Imagine having something truly unique at the end of a level 39 or level 43 that can be earned there and only there. Doesn’t have to be frustrating RNG, it can be a token system but with tokens that drop only on said levels.

ArrogantHero.4965:

I feel that Dungeons and Fractals are too much alike in the way they are both focused on small organized group play. Why have dungeons the way they are when Fractals are a better system. What I’m trying say is that Fractals are the better system for small organized group play and that I feel Dungeons should offer a completely different style of gameplay.

I think what they should do with future (and current) instanced content is to take a few hints from the most widely successful instanced content of Guild Wars 2, the Super Adventure Box. What did SAB have that other instances do not?

a) It was fun. This is a hard thing to measure, because even for SAB itself it wasn’t fun for everyone, but “fun” is the most important thing. I think an important part of SAB was that each part of the instances had some unique feeling to it, unlike some dungeons who feel exactly the same throughout

b) It had difficulty levels, to satisfy a diverse range of skill levels, Infantile, Normal and Tribulation mode. Unlike the Story – Explorable modes in Dungeons, the difficulty levels of SAB did NOT affect the story or the overall content, map design etc, someone who never played Tribulation did NOT lose important parts of the game

c) It has scaling. You could play SAB solo or in a group of up to 5 players. The content inside SAB was doable with any number of players, unlike current dungeons which are not designed to scale

d) Progression. SAB has a progression system, you feel like you are moving towards a goal. Fractals also have progression in levels, but it’s not the same, SAB urges you to play more to see what’s next, in Fractals you just get more and more mob hit points

e) Unique rewards. SAB has rewards that cannot be found anywhere else, giving an extra incentive to try it. The different difficulties offer the same skins but with different colors, so it’s not an amazing deal if you miss the higher difficulty skins

f) Reward for exploration. SAB rewards exploration and finding those extra baubles, instead of focusing on finishing the run as fast as possible. This means the entire map of SAB is a playground, and players don’t just run and skip everything. Also, SAB has loads of secrets with interesting rewards to find. Imagine if they added hidden secret “shops” in Fractals that allowed you to buy items that let you skip instabilities (or change them) using currency found inside fractals. Rough example but you get the idea

g) Checkpoints. There are a lot of good things about SAB checkpoints, first they are more frequent than dungeon waypoints, second in order to activate them you need the entire team to get to them, a single player can’t just rush through then port everyone there. Also, checkpoints are used to measure your progress, there is no way to port to them, but it’s hardly needed in SAB because the paths are more defined

So 7 things Anet can take from SAB and apply to future dungeons, fractals or instanced content in general to make it more fun and engaging to the players.

SAB was god awful.

serenke.4806:

SAB was god awful.

Sure it wasn’t content for everyone that doesn’t mean it didn’t have some very good quality feature that can be applied to other types of instanced content.