Guild Wars 2

Hi,

This post is as much for us gamers as to any developers reading. I have been listening to a lot of lectures this year and discussing with a lot of professors all kinds of things related to the development of ideas. It’s a tortured subject that wanders, backtracks, and rarely seems to afford a lot of clarity when viewed from any modern perspective. For me, this sort of random-walk describes very well the same situation as our attempts to talk to one another, the devs, and every variation of the vice versa.

I’ve tried to think about how to talk about this for awhile, but I really did not imagine there was an immediate way to get there. Then a few days ago I found something that I think we all could benefit from hearing. I came quite randomly as I was given a number of lectures to hear and they were all relevant to this.

I’m starting with Toynbee, which encapsulates this topic. I cite from War and Civilization, published 1950. Page 19.
“… the spectacle of a community which ventures to grapple with an environment that daunts this community’s neighbours, in order to wring from this excessively formidable enterprise an exceptionally rich reward. In the first phase, this act of audacity seems to be justified by the results. The Esquimaux find better huntng on the Arctic ice than their less adventurous Indian cousins can find on the North American prairies; the Spartans, in the Firs Messeno-PSartan War, win richer lands from their fellow-Hellenes across the mountains than the contemporary Chalicidian colonist can win from the barbarians across the sea. But in the next phase the original -and irrevocable-act of audacity brings its ineluctable penalty. The conquered environment now takes it audacious conqueror captive. The Esquimaux become prisoners of the Arctic climate and have to shape their lives according to its exacting dictates down to the smallest detail. The Spartans, having conquered Messenia in the First War in order to live unto themselves, are constrained, in the Second War and ever after, to give up their lives to the task of keeping Messenia.”

What I want to point out from this quote is that every development in a game comes with an inverse captivity by that development. We are each of us host to experiences, but once having had them we are their captives.

So, if you have played all the MMOs before this one you have a firm grasp of just how gaming development has taken place from their invention until now. The earliest games built on those before them. Each absorbed the standards of the former, but also had something new to offer not previously available. For the most part, these older games had the fortune of being truly innovative. Ultimate Online was very much Diablo II with more going on. This transformed into the first real feeling of 3D with the advent of Everquest. It was limited by technology such that it could only ever be a series of zones, albeit vast zones typically still unrivaled today. Dark Age of Camelot brought about the first and only sustained community experience right down to hug gestures, WvW in the form of Realm vs. Realm, and truly epic raids of 170 people or more. Then game World of Warcraft, which developed the first fluid animations and very low RAM requirements. Unfortunately World of Warcraft was unexpectedly popular and its developments of the non-transferable item became standard thereafter for all MMOs and thus we entered the age of gated content.

We are the recipient of a declined space that has slowly been recovering from Blizzard’s decision to break up the player community in their games with such things as Soulbound items (a kittenation of content rather than development in the truest sense). Similarly, we have a game that has mimicked WoW’s crafting system which costs us a great deal and affords us no items of any value for trade nor incentivizes any reason to pursue such activity from crafting. I could go on about this for hours. What I want a person reading this to understand is that before Blizzard (2004) entered the MMO the games did not gate content and what existed could be freely traded even should have it been used or worn. After 2004 every single video game company has mimicked WoW in some way, they have not innovated independently: only copied.

ArenaNet has somewhat demonstrated a willingness to break this convention by building this game, largely, around those attributes of MMOs that arose from the era before World of Warcraft. The benefits are immediately obvious. We have a community and it is thriving. We have some capacity to see real benefits from our efforts to craft gear and gear is not the primary content of the game. This may change now that Ascended Gear and Raiders are replacing the priorities of the developers for content, so we should be wary of their claims the are doing this in benefit to us or the game at large. The firm reality is that such gear-grinding and gear-locking of content, as well as an over focus on raiding has always ultimately lead to the decline of all other content within that particular MMO. Further, it slaves those players who pay for it into either a perpetual grind or forever bars them from escaping it. This latter most indicates the company has abandoned all, but the pretense of ethos because it cannot defend itself against demonstrated favoritism (intended or merely resultant).

We should distinguish between what is intended and resultant, but be careful not to lend undo tolerance of a short coming. Intended malice by ignoring or disengaging from one portion of the community only demonstrates a willingness to accept due retaliation. However, more often what is seemingly intended is indeed merely resultant.
Resultant outcomes, be it over-focus, disengagement, or other products of product production (not necessarily development in any novel sense) are part of this captivity which Toynbee points out.

To give an example of a resultant outcome consider the state of PvE. For most of the game’s existence PvE has largely been a solo experience requiring practically no consciousness in order to explore, acquire, and generally succeed at any given intention we players might set ourselves upon.
However, with the attempts to genuinely develop the possibility for other builds having utility in this game we must necessarily be in anticipation of those ‘outcomes’ which are either intended or resultant from the product production process. Nerfing is usually an indication of ineptitude in game, as every single nerf is always later overturned and demonstrated to be unnecessary when viewed through the course of later developments. Further, restriction of content – be it from Soulbound Items to Gated-Content – is a demonstration of the same ineptitude, short nearsightedness, and expedient behavior players will always cry fowl about. This has nothing to do with a player having a thing and then having it taken away. Rather, it demonstrates to a player that they should without confidence in those with whom they have invested: the gaming company.

The loss of confidence by a player community in its developers is not always justified. Frequently, a community has been given few or no tools with which to understand the course of development despite frequent news updates. Unfortunately, it has proven universally to be the case that a gaming company has more interest in a profit, favored communities of players within its consumer base, or a mission to create a consumer base it can reliably milk.

For all of these reasons we arrive upon “the crisis”. I’d refer to it as “the crisis point”, but this rather misses the point. “the crisis,” is not necessarily real, but it IS the sense of an immanence: a moment nearly upon us. Further, “the crisis” cannot be defined since it is the sense that what is present will soon be eliminated by a future events resultant from this moment. It is only intentionality can change it, but in this the consumer is powerless. We can only speak. It is the developer that must demonstrate they will not steer the results into a destructive territory.

What is the destructive territory? It’s counter to development. That’s quite plain. When a development aims to or successfully destroys its own innovation it is no different to the observer than a person burning down their house to remove a spider from their bed sheets. Confidence in the developer, from that point forward, has simply gone to zero regarding whatsoever they have destroyed from that point forward. The only redemption thereafter is as many non-destructive acts forwards, successively, as had taken to arrive there – like a repayment – plus one. This last is a freely given act and the only act that will ever resolve that former moment of crisis to a point of equilibrium with those who were there and experienced its impact negatively.

As a community, we have had two years without reliable contact from the producers of this product. Our confidence with them before this year had begun to plummet into deep negative territories. In a year and one month, if communications continue, we’ll know better if we are willing trust the product producers at their word about being developers. However, we have as much a burden on us to determine if we can reduce much of our toxicity towards them.

One area we can work on this is probably the state of the Open World Content. Specifically those areas made former to Heart of Thorns. In the future, this content is going to be the only remaining solo content as it has originally been and only content where those builds that formerly worked universally in this game will reliably apply. We’re about to have a moment to view this game with a perspective of living contrast to what we had before, but existing and not destroyed. One area we can speak to the devs about in the future is whether or not we want to see more of that and how? We’re also going to have to really help out the new players who are about to get slammed with a massive gear ladder on top of the new player experience to overcome before they can play the game.

For the devs we’re going to have to see if you’re incredibly positive behavior this year doesn’t plummet suddenly post-HoT. We’re going to have to see if you understand the creation of content isn’t mistaken for the expedience of destroying existent content. In this, I would say your greatest challenge is not wiping out the former PvE Open World with “play as WE have made it content”.

The great less for all of us, and this goes back to Toynbee is, anything we want and make make we’re then the captives of… I don’t think this something any of us are miraculously going to process after reading this or for most of our lives. That’s not what this post is about. It’s about processing the situation a little better.

Thanks

You sound so much like my dad. (Is that you, Dad?) He’s into philosophy too, and long essays on the nature of things. And getting me to proof-read his essays, which isn’t something I’m keen on but I try to help. I know you put a lot of work into this, and it is an extremely impressive piece of work. I hope you won’t be offended if I make a few (constructive) comments based on some similar issues I see between my dad’s work and yours. I don’t claim any great expertise in English and, like you (I suspect), English is not my first language. I offer these suggestions only as what would make this essay clearer to a reader like me.

You really should run something like this through a spell-checker, or better yet get someone to proof-read it. After the many, many hours you must have spent writing this you’re going to be too tired and too familiar with it to spot mistakes that make your message harder to understand.

There are a couple of passages that seem to be at odds with each other, for example
“As a community, we have had two years without reliable contact from the producers of this product.” and “For the devs we’re going to have to see if you’re* incredibly positive behavior this year doesn’t plummet suddenly post-HoT.” (* should be “your”)
This is confusing. Is the lack of contact negative behaviour or positive?

You also make some generalisations, e.g. “In the future, this content is going to be the only remaining solo content as it has originally been and only content where those builds that formerly worked universally in this game will reliably apply.”
Is there such a thing as a build that worked “universally”? I guess maybe the “meta” builds, but even so I’ve never heard of a meta that was considered “universal”. People still acknowledge using different metas for dungeons, pve, pvp, etc.

You also set arbitrary time limits: " In a year and one month, if communications continue, we’ll know better…"
I know this goes back to your premise that it if you have X bad actions, it will take X + 1 good actions to make up for them. This is debatable in itself if applied to specific actions, but even more debatable when applied to time limits. The real world doesn’t work to such an exact schedule. You might talk about averages, or you could just indicate a personal time limit: “In one year and one month, I will know better…”
But speaking for an entire community in this way is of no use to your argument.

That’s enough from me. I’ve indulged my own proof-reading ocd (thank you for the opportunity). Good luck to you and thank you for presenting an interesting essay.