Guild Wars 2

People like clarity. A clear cut objective is a wonderful thing.

I have a simple question. What objectives do people have in PvE?

One of the most obvious objectives I see is character progression.

• Get to level 80
• Unlock all weapon skills
• Unlock all utility skills
• Get max gear
• Get your look

Another very obvious objective I see is experiencing the story

• Personal story
• Story mode dungeons
• Living story

Yet another obvious objective I see is completing challenges

• Doing jumping puzzles
• Doing explorable mode dungeon paths
• Doing mini dungeons
• Doing fractals
• Doing meta-events

Another objective I see is this idea of being a completionist

• Completing all jumping puzzles
• 100% world exploration
• Finishing all dungeon paths
• Getting all achievement points
• Collect miniatures
• etc

This seems like a lot to do at first glance. However, I would argue that most of these things aren’t obvious within the game itself. To take it even further I would argue that many of these are not clear.

If you come from an RPG background at all, you’re probably familiar with character progression. That one is mostly obvious. However, what’s not obvious is how to get max gear. Exotics, ascended, and legendary appear to be overwhelming to obtain at first. The same can be said of getting the look you want. Where does one start with obtaining these? Just looking at the break down of how to obtain Exotic and higher gear, it’s like a cryptic puzzle, execpt for exotics when you realize you can get those via the trading post and some grinding.

There is, however, the clarity of the story. You must fight the elder dragons. You must help the orders. You must help your race. You learn that you must help Destiny’s Edge. Now you also know that there is a story that is progressing every two weeks. This is mostly clear, as you just need to show up wherever the story takes you. The challenge is that content is always consumed more quickly than it can be produced. The other challenge is seeing new stories that aren’t tied into the main storylines that people were excited about in the first place, fighting dragons, working with the orders, and helping your race. It’s great that there are these other storylines going on, but how are relevant? The time lapse between progressing the main storylines is a frustrating, and importance of the living story up to this point has been unclear.

Next, completing challenges is great, but the existance of mini-dungeons and jumping puzzles is not obvious at all. To the average player, I wouldn’t be surprised if they feel like Dungeons and Fractals are the only challenging content that exists in PvE. Also, meta-events seem like they should be challenging, and Tequatl was the first step in making them so, but overall they aren’t challenging at this point.

Finally there’s the completionist objectives, which are going to be obvious because if you are a completionist, they are a different kind of person that’s going to look for things to complete, meaning it doesn’t even have to be as obvious as it is that there are things to complete.

All that said, I don’t see PvE as being very clear after level 80 to the non-hardcore types of pve players. I would ask the question what is coming to draw more players to this product? Because keeping players in game to further the MMO experience seems difficult with the challenges I am observing. If the game after the story is largely unclear, what is coming for people to get value out of playing?

In reference to your comments about the story, OP. The helping your race issue ended when you started helping everyone else. We all start with racial stories but quickly learn no race can stand alone. By the time we end the personal story we’re not longer just fighting for our race anymore…we’re fighting for the world.

You don’t think the dredge and flame legion making new weapons is something the world needs to worry about? Or the Toxic Alliance making that new tower in Gendarran Fields?

We’re no longer local heroes at that point. And those threats are, at this point, more immediate threats than the dragons. The dragons are big powerful threats, but do we even know where they are to strike at them?

We knew where Zhaitan was and we went to defeat him, which we did. That threat is over. Not every threat to world peace is necessarily going to be a dragon. Sometimes smaller threats and more immediate menaces need to be taken care of.

I think the not leading you around by the nose decision is something that’s done intentionally.

Most games have these threads you follow and that’s why I dislike most games. Those who play RPGs where you have a bit of freedom, or sandbox MMOs will tell you the one thing they don’t want is to be led around by the nose. It’s bad enough as it is with the checklist of things to do.

I’d prefer to be led around less, not more. I don’t want certainty in what I should do, I want freedom in the things available for me to do. This game does that better than most MMOs, but it’s still a far cry from a decent RPG.

Your entire premise is that people like clarity and a clear cut path. I’m not sure that’s true for all people…or even most people.

Everything in moderation as they say. I would not discount the very real lack of clarity/direction. I would prefer a better balance.

The MMO genre only pulls in 20% of the revenue for the entire gaming industry, not that every single other game has clear direction, but I think it’s safe to say that the majority of them do.

There’s definitely money to made by making things clear and potentially more users to be gained as well, not that this would solve every problem like the barren world all by itself as design changes are necesary.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games. Where’s the direction there?

I agree there could be a bit more direction…not so far as telling us what to do, but in giving us clues as to what there IS to do, but I wouldn’t want to be pushed into doing specific things, even as much as that happens now.

I’d prefer more of a sandpark than a themepark or a sandbox.

Some interesting points shockwave. Its not so much the lack of direction but the lack of risk vs rewards as a whole.
I am honestly kind of surprised you didn’t put the idea of ‘loot’ and ‘farming’ and ‘camping’ in there and im looking at this is the positive light as opposed to the negative connotation these words usually get. While they are prevalent here in gw2 in some terms, mostly not what some of us gamers are used to as in previous games(daoc, eq, wow, aion, ac) we have played, which is great, but really that needs more addressing than the lackluster direction you take when you get to 80.
Here are some examples of what I mean.
-Looking at how no items that are white/blue/green/yellow are useful or exciting to get, other than a free mf shot at a precursor or salvageables for luck.
-The idea or liking to farm things instead of farming gold to get items you need, and no this doesn’t mean champ bags. You need 250 charged lodestones, cool x,y,z can drop them, have fun. That doesn’t really exist here anymore.
-90% of the exotics are trash, skins included and while this is more subjective, I still see people selling exotics or salvaging them over how cool they could be. In a skin based game, this is weird and hurts pve and this direction you are looking at as a whole.
-Everything can drop anywhere which is a cool idea, but there needs to be more focus on where to get specific things.
-Farm gold, not items. What kind of pve motto is that anyways. I love the illusion that I’m playing my way.

-From a more lore driven standpoint, where are the level 80 epic quests that you can do x times per month, or per week or whatever they deem. Even if its for some crappy items( since it would be based on how the loot system works), something to do is something to do. This can be in both pve and wvw.

The list can go on and on, which is an kitten backwards way to make a game. Even if you wanted to argue the cash shop and the longevity of the game and things are free and blah blah, there are so many routes to add items in the cash shop to funnel that its irrelevant.
I guess in the end there are so many things already WRONG with pve and no huge steps to fix it, its hard to say posting something like this is going to matter. here’s to hoping December 10th is as gnarly as they are pretending its going to be.

Make your characters pretty and show off in LA. That is the true end game

kill all ze thingz

The only thing unclear is how to work on legendary’s.

The direction is where the Zerg™ runs at.

That is what you do at 80.

Vayne.8563:

Minecraft is one of the most popular games. Where’s the direction there?

Because the personal housing is better than what Guild Wars 2 has?

Because exploration is endless and better than what Guild Wars 2 has?

Personally I like the lack of fixed direction. The reason I liked getting to level 80 and getting a full set of exotics was because it gave me a sense of freedom. I didn’t need to worry about where I could, or should, go or what I was supposed to be doing.

If I feel like doing dungeons I can. If I want to go and explore the map I can do that instead. Or I can go back over an area I’ve been to before and enjoyed. Or whatever.

It’s much nicer than logging on and knowing I have to go and do X so that I get access to Y to prepare me for Z.

I think as long as people are aware of what the options are – what they can be doing (and by level 80 they should have some idea of that) they don’t need to be pushed into specific things.

(Then again I’ve played a lot of games with no fixed direction, sometimes right from the start. So maybe it’s a matter of what you’re used to.)

lightning.8039:

Make your characters pretty and show off in LA. That is the true end game

But if you have to make 5 copies of the other characters you already have (all looking pretty) it’s very boring

Azure Prower.8701:

Vayne.8563:

Minecraft is one of the most popular games. Where’s the direction there?

Because the personal housing is better than what Guild Wars 2 has?

Because exploration is endless and better than what Guild Wars 2 has?

I think you completely missed my point. I’m not saying minecraft is better or worse than anything. I’m saying that it’s a sandbox game that’s very popular. The OP is suggesting that most people want to be told exactly where to go and what to do. I used Minecraft’s popularity as an example of why that might not be the case.

My play-style preference is Explorer. Seeing all of the exploration goals on the map and just having to go to them is not really exploring. Sometimes, knowing exactly what you have to do is not a good thing.

For me, once I hit 80, it closely corresponded with a nasty open world/dungeon loot nerf. So with farming being so incredibly bad, at least for me, and I still think my account was bugged, it was time for other tasks, world completion, jumping puzzles, etc. Once these were out of the way, loot was still terrible, veterans/champions rarely dropped anything, world bosses rarely dropped anything better than a green (And sometimes not even that) and the few decent placing to make money and the occasional T6 mat, such as Shelter, Penitent, Jofast, Plinx, etc were nerfed in to the ground or made so difficult that they weren’t worth doing. (Most of my gold in those days came from porous bones) Cursed Shore became a baron, player free wasteland. It got so bad with champions that even suggesting taking on a champion in world chat often garnered scoffing and outright negative comments. It was really bad for the game.

Being a reward driven player, Anet had taken away all the ways I liked to make money and with it my desire to play the game, so I stopped, for 7 months, until the Halloween patch and wanted to do the Clock Tower. The reward system is now vastly better than last winter, though still not nearly as good as last fall before November, champions are somewhat worth doing again, bosses feel more like bosses should, though the rewards still suck. Sadly, there is still heavy emphasis on the gem store and I worry that the increased crafting level of 500 and emphasis on Ascended will make legendaries even more expensive. Right now I take the game one day at a time, until Anet does something else to drive me away.

I do wish they would take such a heavy emphasis off fractals and work on more open world content. And really, c’mon, some useful infusions for those of us who don’t want to do fractals would be nice. +4 condition damage, for what, 20…25 laurels? That’s obscene and not even worth 5 laurels when one considers my base condition damage is over 1500. What about effect infusions that add an effect, or an aura to an item? That would be cool.

I see… no, no… in fact I had one tell me… that if they increase the level ratio beyond 80, he’ll QUIT. All the work he had done, money and time he spent to get armors or… his legendary… that would all be negated if the level cap was raised. That he’d have to buy knew armor, his legendary no longer max’d… All the work, blood, sweat and tears to be where he wanted to be at 80, just goes to put if they increase to level cap.

Jaymee.1560:

All the work, blood, sweat and tears to be where he wanted to be at 80, just goes to put if they increase to level cap.

You should have asked him, if he played a game.
Work? Blood? Sweat? Tears? Seriously? Sometimes I secretly hope for a level cap raise just for ANet having a chance to finally do horizontal progression right by neutralizing the playfield.

You should have asked him, if he played a game.
Work? Blood? Sweat? Tears? Seriously? Sometimes I secretly hope for a level cap raise just for ANet having a chance to finally do horizontal progression right by neutralizing the playfield.
[/quote]

LOL… well, he was an old guild leader of mine, one I am no longer in, this guild was a 400+ member guild and he is a huge gamer… very protective of the work he’s done, and what he had to go through to do it. When he told me he would quit… I told him to “Grow up, sparky…”

Nothing in these games are ever 100% permanent.

Example? (2 weeks ago, I took this… What to you see?)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200756652533875&set=a.2776923857468.2115794.1089260959&type=1&theater

Now what if I told you I am down to 70g as of this morning?

What’s ever permanent?