Guild Wars 2

Edit: Be warned, long post, good points, worth reading. Leave a comment below so we can get a discussion going.

Retired player here, regaining some interest back into this game. 200 or so hours in beta (literally, every minute of beta), 900 hours after launch. Really tired, didn’t sleep last night, but I feel an insightful rant coming on that should interest a good number of you (if you can make it passed the first part).

I’m just going to talk about what this game really is, and what it can be.

Simply put, it is every themepark MMO you’ve ever played except probably better in most ways, without a lot of the annoying stuff and with a bunch of things you’ve craved for a long time.

This is important to recognize, because there are essentially two types of MMO content. Sandbox and Themepark. Sandbox is where players generally create their own fun or control the game themselves, themepark is where the player enjoys content made by the developer.

Each type of MMO will probably have aspects of both. PvP is almost entirely sandbox in every game. PvE is mostly themepark in MMOs.

The point is, Guild Wars 2 is a game just like most other MMOs. Meaning, it’s going to function in the same way long-term.

In every themepark MMO you’ve played, it’s gone like this:
1.) Level through PvE doing a couple dungeons or instanced content as you level in zones with quests.
2.) Get to maximum level and gear up to the minimum
3.) Choose either instanced PvP, open world/large scale PvP, or raids/dungeons where your gear will usually get better, or you’ll get cosmetics.

Same thing with WoW. Same thing with Guild Wars 2. Etc.

The point is, the future of any themepark MMO resides on your sandbox PvP run by the players, and the themepark PvE continually created by developers.

This is why you see ArenaNet creating Fractals and then the Living World. Fractals creates long-term content that people are still doing, that rewards you with cosmetics and better gear (sound like any other MMOs you’ve played)? Living World applies a concept of continuous content to keep players interested until the next update, and so on. However, Fractals is more toward the hardcore and Living Story toward casual.

In the future you WILL see both in balance.

The bottom line is that Guild Wars 2 DOES have endgame. Just like any other MMO. And like any other MMO, you’ll see the endgame controlled by PvP and content the developers regularly push out.

ArenaNet could do what most themepark MMOs do, but there’s so much potential that would be wasted. There’s half the game ArenaNet is ignoring that they have spent a large amount of effort to turn into endgame later: all of the open world and dynamic events. Their big thing pre-release was that this WAS the endgame. However, they haven’t supported this to pump out a huge variety of events.

I’m not sure if many of you were there, but during the beta weekends ArenaNet shocked everyone with 2 particular events…

1.) Invasion of Plains of Ashford

Literally, the Shatterer flew in, corrupted half the players into minions of Kralkatorrik, and an epic battle ensued with monsters all of the place, giant demonic crystals, Eir and Rytlock, and manhunts for the last of the player survivors.

2.) The Hunger Games

The next weekend, we had The Hunger Games, gw2 style. 4 teams, 8 abilities, your health dropped over time and you had to scavenge for food and ammo, and abilities. Pretty intense.

These kinds of things are what they’re capable of doing with the open world. If ArenaNet focused on the zones themselves since release, we could be seeing huge variations of events in every zone,

In the future, why not focus the Living Story team onto new event chains in a specific zone? Say “This month, we’ve focused on X zone” and everyone will flock there to discover the new events.

Better yet, add new BRANCHES to old events. Make large variations on ones we used to know well. Etc.

I would play that for sure. 1-80 was the best time I’ve had in this game minus some memorable WvW or dungeon moments.

An even better idea: we’ve got all these Elder Dragons. Why not make their minions invade certain zones and require players to push them out? Utilize the dynamic event technology and make push/pull for control of the zones?

Look at the first zone in Orr. Apply that to meta events all across Tyria. You can do this in Harathi Hinterlands with the Centaurs, or Fireheart Rise with the Flame Legion.

What do you guys think?

This is something that plays to the strengths of the game, can interest all types of players, and gives something most games can’t come close to.

And if people wanted BWEs’ events back, let’s say a magical cloud flies through Planes of Ashford or Metrica Province and can transport players (with their consent) to an alternative reality when the event happens. This is a lore reason how it would happen, because players have their own personal story missions or want to do normal stuff, so let there be an option to join it or not.

World bosses are kinda meh without such preparations (destroying 3 portals to spawn Shadow Behemoth is a lame preparation).

I think at this point they want to make the game as mindless as can be for casuals to enjoy. I’d love a contextual world event, but you saw what happened with the Karka Queen – people refuse to do hard content when they can press one button and get a dragon chest.

We, and I’m sure many others, we want the world to mean something. Problem is Guild Wars 2 is so set in its tracks now that unless a massive rework of the rewards in the game is launched, it’ll be just another series of amazing, yet pointless Dynamic Events.

Why the living story is the focus of Arena.NET blows my mind. What’s the point of creating all these events if they’re not gonna play a part in the end game? People love saying “Guild Wars 2 is different from the other MMOs, that’s why I’m playing”. Wrong! It used to be, now it’s just a carrot-on-the-stick once a month experience I loathe, because it turned Guild Wars 2 into an abomination.

I wasn’t in the beta but I’ve heard so many amazing things about it. These events sound so cool but they’re not in the game… it’s like an A.net developer was testing GW2 and went like “phew… almost had fun back there”. I know they can make better stuff than this, you know it, GW1 fans know it, so why is this game such a massive chore now instead of the epic adventure it could be?

I’ll end my rant here. I’m optimistic about PvP because it seems they’re working to improve it. I’m not a fan of MMO PvP, but if others are happy with the balancing work and the new shoutcaster program and spectator mode, then at least Arena.NET is pleasing a part of its community. I would love if they went back to Tyria and made it an engaging world. Sadly, their priority now seems to be cashing in on micro-updates and we can’t argue against a whole company. Heck, if the community can’t see what potential Arena.NET is squandering with the Living Story, then it’s just a lost cause.

@ OP
Good post- I remember the Betas and the epic events at the finale of each weekend.
I have often wondered why we do not see the like any more.

Your suggestions are good and I still have hope that Anet will do something like this with the DE system- we would have a truly living world that relies on player participation.
At the moment they are experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.
I am sure they have fond memories of the BWE’s too and keep it in mind

Exactly what i wanted to post
Good suggestion!
But I think we should wait until the lfg tool is released.
I really hope it wil be a boost of life in the game.

i’ve been meaning to post something in these lines this week.

I stayed up all night just for that shaterer event back in the BWEs and, despite the technical difficulties, it was a wonderful idea. I DO HOPE that’s the plan for the future and that the current “living story” is just a test tos ee how much awful we can take :P

But I do wonder if that BWE event model was sacked because it’s too prone to technical difficulties? Maybe that’s why we’re getting this bi-weekly checklist crap now?

But I do make a plea for the live team, DO THAT BWE STUFF! Do Live events! Run “dev controlled stuff!”. Play god with your world! Send entities, send mob hordes, send zone changing stuff! We will play along!

And when not doing that, add stuff that revolve around the regular scripted Dynamic Events. DEs are THE THING about this game. USE IT for Hodor sakes!

Insignya.8625:

I think at this point they want to make the game as mindless as can be for casuals to enjoy

Quit insulting casuals. I’m casual and I like complexity. I hate mindless grinding tho. Ironically it’s hardcore players, not casuals, who make the game mindless by supporting mindless grinding.

wolfie.7296:

Insignya.8625:

I think at this point they want to make the game as mindless as can be for casuals to enjoy

Quit insulting casuals. I’m casual and I like complexity. I hate mindless grinding tho. Ironically it’s hardcore players, not casuals, who make the game mindless by supporting mindless grinding.

While I do agree with you, don’t fight it over here. This thread is important. Were you at the BWE events? Do you have something to say? Do you support the idea of DEs being the center of GW2 development going forward? Would you like PvP, or just PvE events? Do you agree/disagree with the OP? Don’t know? Don’t post. Don’t let it derail into “casual/hardcore bickering”, there are plenty of threads for that.

I actually really like this idea of fighting over zones and pushing forces out etc. In fact from the first preview trailers I thought that was what the DE system would be used for. For example centuars begin to invade take over an area and the map has to get together and push them back. It would be nice. But they would have to be pretty beefy events that played out over a fairly lengthy time. Imagine defending your home instance (Divinty’s Reach, Hoelbrack, etc) and then slowly pushing out taking back territory. That would be cool.

Insignya.8625:

I think at this point they want to make the game as mindless as can be for casuals to enjoy.

What’s been added/changed for casuals?

• Orr mob density reduced
• Busywork (click F at X spot)

What other content has been added or improved?

• Fractals added, scaling in difficulty by fractal level
• Ascended gear pursuit
• Krait changed to be more challenging
• Risen changed to be more challenging
• Scaling changes to Orr events to make them harder
• Molten Alliance mobs harder than other open world mobs
• Guild Missions
• AC Changes
• Living Story Dungeons, arguably better than some of the regular dungeons

It looks to me like the overall focus is more on pleasing the not-casuals than the casuals.

If your statement is rooted in lack of personal difficulty, then you’d best get used to it. The imbalances in PvE class effectiveness pretty much guarantee that content challenging for optimum team setup or an optimum build will not be made.

Mr Pin.6728:

I actually really like this idea of fighting over zones and pushing forces out etc. In fact from the first preview trailers I thought that was what the DE system would be used for. For example centuars begin to invade take over an area and the map has to get together and push them back. It would be nice. But they would have to be pretty beefy events that played out over a fairly lengthy time. Imagine defending your home instance (Divinty’s Reach, Hoelbrack, etc) and then slowly pushing out taking back territory. That would be cool.

Yeah, to a extent some zones are like this in a small scale, in regions and stuff. But an overarching “hold terrain” event across entire zones would be awesome.