Guild Wars 2

So I was toying around with Rift for roughly 10 hours this weekend. GW2 has the best combat system hands down. It’s also promotes cooperation between player which is also industry leading. So GW2 has the best play experience, but here I was playing Rift. I even spent an hour in Rift just fishing (which is one of my favorite MMO mini-games).

I was enjoying myself but I took a step back afterwards and asked myself “why was I playing this over GW2?” It was a combination of a few things…

1. The world was new and unexplored
2. I was leveling a character with new skills and build mechanics
3. I was completing achievements

These can all be lumped into a singular, broad category which is “progress”. They are all forms of progress. When I’m playing I feel like I’m accomplishing things (leveling, exploring, completing achievements). I’m not a “play just to play” kind of player. I want to progress through goals. Most of my goals fall into those three categories above.

Coming back to GW2:

I cannot explore any more of the world. The only way this is going to become viable is through introduction of lots of new zones. This type of content is very labor intensive though and definitely wouldn’t be on the radar anytime soon.

I can level more characters, but I have done this multiple times, all the way to 80. Replay of leveling doesn’t present anything new. A new level cap would open up more progression options – however that invalidates gear and that would be a horrible experience imho.

New classes present progression options because they are new. This is immediately appealing. This is less developer effort than creating a plethora of new zones, but still significant work load. I think this would be very well received by the player base (all types of players)

Lastly is achievements. I’ve come to appreciate achievements more and more. They provide something to do, provide rewards upon completion, and are satisfying (as in “I accomplished something tonight” satisfying). Case in point: the new collector achievements. These are great because they are something to do and provide progress. Achievements can vary in complexity and thus different levels of development effort.

Anyway, this rambling is my thoughts after playing another MMO which is not as good as GW2, but I was playing it anyway and wondering afterwards why I was doing it. Don’t like any of my ideas? That’s fine. Feel free to post your own.

TLDR: I want to play GW2 but I’m out of enjoyable, goal driven tasks to complete. I’ve posted a few ideas although rather broad in nature. Post your ideas for goal driven content.

I wouldn’t say that you have truly explored the world until you have done some of the more significant forks in the Personal Story. Mainly all of the racial bits, the Order part and the Skritt/Quaggan/Hylek stories.

That is, unless your definition of “explored” is having been to all the places. Ask yourself: Were you there physically and mentally? Do you know the central storylines in each major area of the game?

The problem with adding new stuff is that you simply cannot create it at the pace the players can (and will!) exhaust it. No matter how hard to try, you’ll always have some people who will have done everything within a week or two.

Other than that, adding new professions would be quite unlikely, since there’s a lot that goes into a profession, such as having a unique subset of the weapon useable (no two professions can use all the same weapons) and balancing for PvP, WvW and PvE. And of course, as soon as you add a new profession, people will keep asking for you to repeat it, which just makes the situation worse by adding more skills to the pool to balance.

Although I’m a casual player, I was thinking about goals after finally getting 100% map completion and started working on charging the various items required to build the Mawdrey backpiece.

One of the things I’ve liked about doing this so far has been the scavenger hunt nature that has required me to revisit previously explored areas, often leading me to areas I didn’t know of.

While this might be slightly tangential to the original post, like collections, it’s an example where ANet can reuse existing content in new ways.

juno.1840:

Anyway, this rambling is my thoughts after playing another MMO which is not as good as GW2, but I was playing it anyway and wondering afterwards why I was doing it.

Reading your post, I suspect the answer is quite simple: It’s something new, unknown, surprising to explore and discover. You’ll find that “new” is a very good hook to get you to play something, even if it’s not quite what you’d like it to be. Eventually that new-ness wears off though, it’s inevitable.

Personally, I like “goal-driven” content, a lot more than “reward-driven”. I have goals to fulfill in this game, like filling my wardrobe, gathering collections, discovering stories in event chains or dungeon paths, and a lot more. What I like even more though is that I am able to pursue these goals at my own pace. There is no gear inflation making me re-gear all my toons with every major update. There is no(t much) time-restricted content that I have to hurry to complete (especially now that the LS achievements aren’t timed any more). There is no major loot that I miss out on if I opt to do one kind of content over another (e.g. WvW rather than world boss tour).

The goals people enjoy are vastly different though. You’re not too fond of world exploration after having done it once. For me, it’s a very enjoyable way to play, and I’m closing in on my 6th 100% character, and still find places, events and stories all over the place I haven’t noticed before (or simply forgotten). A friend of mine tries to grab as many daily ap each day as he can, while I don’t care for daily ap at all (aside from the rare day when I just miss one or two daily achievements for the daily laurel at the end, then I might go out of my way to finish those).

As such, a wide array of possible goals (low-profile enough to make people not worry about going after them if they don’t care for the activity involved) would be awesome. We already have a lot of them, but we can always use many more.

My (incomplete) wish list:

• craftable minis with components spread all over the world, either through recipes (found as rare dungeon or boss loot, sold by karma and event merchants etc.), through unique mini ingredients used in discoverable recipes, or a mix of both
• “junky” collections similar to the trash collector, filled by collecting or using random weird stuff (trash, event trophy items, environmental weapons, …) and with some just-for-fun reward
• “interactable” collections, e.g. a collection to use all the transformation potions that can be found in dungeons, or one to use every available pet consumable (ogre whistle, fire elemental powder, …)
• “themed” collections like a golem collection that requires a portable golem bomb, a golem part event trophy item (dropped from the golem parts event near the northern-most waypoint in Metrica Province), a superior rune of the golemancer, a siege golem blueprint and more
• a “vista library” that allows me to store the view of a vista I have been to and to re-view it either through an in-game item (event reward? collection reward?) or at a special (but central) location/npc any time without traveling to the vista
• regional event-chain achievements similar to the ones introduced with the recent living story (e.g. the 5 events for the coiled watch chain), serving as an indicator to show me if I’ve been near the major stories/event-chains in the different regions/maps
• scavenger hunts for special crafting items spanning different kinds of content, like what they did with the Mawdrey backpiece

i’m kind of in the middle here, there are only certain achievements i go after.. it can be fun or it can be a chore, i really liked the idea of collections too.. but some of them were implemented without a second thought.. arena net has their own spin on things, but they left out a lot of standard time proven mmo implementations.. if you’re really interested in suggestions, mine is in my signature.. and to answer your question, you’re playing rift because arena net tried to reinvent the wheel instead of just taking their game’s innovation and applying reasonable mmo standards to create a phenomenon.. so what’s left at the end of the day {2 years} is gimmick.. i wasn’t with all the doomsayers snickering about ‘all the new games’ this year but nightmare tide and draenor are going to put a hurting world of perspective on things.. i really hope arena net finds their backbone and keeps a good place in the genre..

Olba.5376:

…The problem with adding new stuff is that you simply cannot create it at the pace the players can (and will!) exhaust it. No matter how hard to try, you’ll always have some people who will have done everything within a week or two.

Other than that, adding new professions would be quite unlikely, since there’s a lot that goes into a profession, such as having a unique subset of the weapon useable (no two professions can use all the same weapons) and balancing for PvP, WvW and PvE. And of course, as soon as you add a new profession, people will keep asking for you to repeat it, which just makes the situation worse by adding more skills to the pool to balance.

I agree that a developer can’t create content as fast as players consume it. While a valid point, it shouldn’t be a rationale for not ambitiously creating swaths of new content.

New classes are definitely a challenge because they can upset the balance in competitive play. However new classes are a really compelling and magnetic feature for the player community. It’s something you can genuinely call “entirely new” content. It freshens all your existing content as everyone will replay it with the new classes. So it doesn’t fragment your community, it brings them back together.

Two new professions (a la factions or nightfall) would generate sooooo much enthusiasm. Toss in a few new weps for those classes which also sprinkle into the existing classes is just more frosting on that awesome-cake.

Yes it’s hard, but not as hard as other development efforts (like massive new zones with hearts, vistas, dynamic events, etc). Also the payoff is enormous — so great RoI.

If players ask the devs to repeat it, then win-win… they did a great job.

cheshirefox.7026:

~Snip~

…because arena net tried to reinvent the wheel instead of just taking their game’s innovation and applying reasonable mmo standards to create a phenomenon…

~Snip~

This is your opinion, if you like doing the same thing that has been done for the past 20 years great, but personally, I’m tired of every game company that puts out an MMO using the same ideas and standards that have been around fro the past 20 odd years. It’s time for innovation and a new direction, the problem is people are conditioned to the same old, same old…no one likes being taken out of their comfort zone, and A.net is trying to do that. I say toss those "mmo standards’ out the window and reinvent the ‘wheel’, the ‘wheel’ is old now, it’s time for something new and if people don’t like it, then stay with your old tried and true standards and let those of us that want something entirely new embrace it. I’m not just talking change for changes sake either, I’m talking real innovation, and yes, I understand most people don’t want to play a game to confront the same thing they do in RL, but why not? Why not take what happens in every day life and translate into a game world? You can put a new spin on it so that it fits what ever fantasy world you’ve come up with. I think the market is much bigger for something new than most people realize, just that most people are lazy and don’t want to step out of the comfort zone, so they don’t try anything ‘new’ and innovative the majority of the time.

Well there are some things I would like to see as Professions.. Such as Alchemy… Or scroll making type…..