Guild Wars 2

Its not the manifesto, its the business model.

Sub based games see all customers as equal and try to please them all as well as possible.

AH and gem store based games run demographics and then orientate the game further toward that demographic, and the manifesto be kitten if they do not coincide.

Its explains everything we have seen to date. I made an error in judgement in looking at this company’s manifesto only. I should have looked beyond that to their business model and would have realized that they would only honor the manifesto if the sales from the gem store were commensurate.

Here is the lesson. Do not believe one word about what they say they they will do. Rather, try to realize what they will be forced to do if the game starts doing poorly from a financial perspective.

Eveningstar.6940:

It makes me seriously wonder if it’s fair to say that gear progression is an accepted element of MMORPGs, and games without vertical gear progression are therefore outliers.

I think it probably is fair to say this. Many people have been conditioned to expect it an MMO, as seen by the people requesting it in GW2.
It is also the reason why many of us were so invested in GW2 and their promotion of anti-treadmill mechanics, and why this turn of event is so aggravating to many of us.

Earlier you asked why vertical progression had become so prominent if it wasn’t a necessity in an MMO. Many reasons come to mind for me, but I don’t have anything to back them up with:
1) Easy to churn out – much easier to change a number in a database than make interesting new content.
2) Subscriptions – Fear of falling behind the curve makes it difficult for people invested in the game to take any breaks. Companies have stable subscriptions.
3) It is “safe”. Many MMO’s use this system and it clearly works (but not everyone enjoys the same thing) so it makes it a safe bet. Taking risks can be dangerous.
4) Requires less balancing. Players get stronger and stronger so eventually they can beat challenges, no extra skill required by the player and the devs didn’t have to change anything.

I tried to list some things from a development point of view rather than the customers. I do believe many customers are conditioned in to believing they need it rather than for any specific reason.
Some points could prove debatable and there are doubtlessly many more reasons, but I just tried to note a few common ideas this system is so popular with developers.

Edit: 1 more point I think is quite important is to gate content, and try to slow the consumption of content.

Like other posters have stated, MMORPG is just an acronym. Its only real requirement is to have a persistent world (massive multiplayer) and RPG elements.

People expect gear treadmill because that’s how they are conditioned based on past experiences. This is like a child refusing to recognize a house without stairs as a house, because all the other houses he’d been to had stairs. This form of egocentrism should have been grown out of at a young age, yet we see it here.

No disrespect, but after reading certain points you highlighted I didn’t bother to read the rest of your post OP (also due to time constraints). A few people have already pointed out that an MMO isn’t characterized by gear progression so I won’t comment on that.

On your point that a manifesto isn’t a “binding contract?” This is true, but they marketed the game otherwise and people purchased the game because those advertised components appealed to them. The people who wanted more gear progression did not follow the advertisements, and trying to appeal to that audience won’t satisfy them. The majority have likely already left because there are better options out there that will satisfy their need for progression.

Why would anyone play this game for a watered down version of gear progression when other MMOs do it better? I can understand why Arena-net might think catering to them would do be better for the game…but I think it’s too little to late for that at the moment.

The only thing adding gear progression will do at this point will turn off people who already play the game for what it is – which is kind of already happening.

Eveningstar.6940:

Fortuna.7259:

How can it be “wrong” when many, many people obviously want to play that way? Maybe it isn’t “profitable.” (More likely I suspect it merely less profitable short-term). But… wrong? Seriously?

I want to play that way, but I need to make something clear.

I’m not saying it’s not going to damage Anet’s credibility that they broke their manifesto. They did, and it hurts.

What I am saying is that their manifesto was probably unrealistic considering how they designed their game. Their Manifesto describes a game that isn’t an MMO. They made an MMO.

If they wanted to follow their Manifesto more closely, they shouldn’t have designed GW2 to look and feel and play like a classic, run of the mill MMO. But they did. Consequently, some elements of their Manifesto proved wrong in practice.

That’s the argument I’m presenting.

That’s absurd. There is no mandate for an MMO to have gear progression. None. An MMO doesn’t even need to have gear. Period. If you have a game that many people will play online together with some form of massive connectivity, then it is an MMO.

Your argument is they were destined to fail because they made an MMO… that isn’t an MMO because it doesn’t have gear progression…? Which is it? If they designed a game that has no gear progression, and all MMO’s must have gear progression, then they never made an MMO so they don’t have to worry about that.

That’s absurd. There is no mandate for an MMO to have gear progression. None. An MMO doesn’t even need to have gear. Period. If you have a game that many people will play online together with some form of massive connectivity, then it is an MMO.

Your argument is they were destined to fail because they made an MMO… that isn’t an MMO because it doesn’t have gear progression…? Which is it? If they designed a game that has no gear progression, and all MMO’s must have gear progression, then they never made an MMO so they don’t have to worry about that.

I’m saying there’s a fundamental disconnect between the kind of game their Manifesto describes, and the kind of game they actually produced. It’s not that ANet suddenly dropped their manifesto the moment they introduced Ascended gear; rather the way they designed their game made the inclusion of Ascended gear at best unsurprising, and at worst inevitable.

I know this sounds weird, but consider it this way. Even if you remove Ascended gear from the equation, GW2 resembles the stereotypical MMO in a lot of ways—the systems have been polished and improved, but the game never really bucked the conventions of the genre. A high level cap, zoned leveling, a largely conventional crafting system, and even a tiered talent tree in the form of Trait lines.

I’ll be the first to say that GW2 implemented its features differently, but its features are still recognizably conventional. It errs on the side of caution, and it does far less than GW1 to “buck conventions.” This is a game that, by admission of its own Manifesto, wants to undermine tradition and do something radically different, but it never leaves the safety of convention.

So my argument is that GW2 is still fundamentally a pretty conventional game, despite the high aspirations of its Manifesto. Compare GW2 to GW1 and City of Heroes, in terms of pure unconventionality, and both GW1 and CoH are much more radical in their vision.

So what I’m asserting is that the manifesto was unrealistic in relation to the game they actually made, which is a lot more like an MMORPG than expected. Given that they were so cautious about change, is it therefore that surprising that they’d also (very cautiously and in small unthreatening steps) more or less reverse one of their Manifesto bullet points and introduce tiered gear? I’d argue: No.

That’s absurd. There is no mandate for an MMO to have gear progression. None. An MMO doesn’t even need to have gear. Period. If you have a game that many people will play online together with some form of massive connectivity, then it is an MMO.

I’m happy to concede I was hasty, or wrong, or both in the way I asserted one of my points: that MMOs must have a vertical gear progression by definition, in the same way platformers must have platforms and ARPGs must have loot pinatas. There were some good points made in this thread and I admit, I was demonstrably incorrect.

There’s no mandate at all. I’m submitting the idea, however, that the de facto definition of an MMORPG is a game which includes, along with a big concurrent online community, some kind of gear progression. It’s not a mandate, but it’s a pattern of MMO design that defines the genre. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I think it’s fair to say that the genre has been built on vertical gear progression for so long that it’s essentially a given in most games.

gwawer.9805:

To the people who are saying “I didn’t buy this game to grind dungeons I just wanted to stroll about in the world and do my thing and enjoy dynamic events la la la”…

Are you actually doing that? Are you actually going back to zones and re-experiencing the events and the world? Or is this just an ideal that you wish you could do, but never actually could get yourself to do?

Maybe this is why Anet is being flexible now with their original philosophy, because they see that despite their own ideals of having players go out into the world and just “having fun” people simply don’t do that anymore.

i am levelling alts and doing wvwvw, yes. If the manifesto is wrong, why don’t they simply admit it and move on, not string us on like this?

Eveningstar.6940:

I’m submitting the idea, however, that the de facto definition of an MMORPG is a game which includes, along with a big concurrent online community, some kind of gear progression.

You can’t simply change the definition of something or twist it to conform to your pretenses in order to justify your argument. “Well I would be right if we defined X as Y.” It doesn’t work that way.

On another note, the Manifesto, as it is called was nothing new to people who played GW1. By logical extension when they said they wanted to give us all the features of GW1 but put it into a persistent world, we believed them. Their model was successful in that game, which sold over 7 million copies, so there was no reason to believe that that by expanding the audience of GW1 to casual MMO fans (of whom are the majority in most games) they could not continue to be successful. Clearly something went wrong, and I doubt any of us will be informed as to why exactly that was, other than vague PR speak.

So no, I don’t think the manifesto was wrong. I believe at lot of the things they said were very right, and judging from the postings here and on other threads, I am not the only one. Though, I do think is that while they may be right, the side of profit is in fact against us. I think many people forget that a corporation’s legal mandate is to make money for their shareholders. If the shareholders want more profits out of this game, then they will pressure or force whoever is in charge to create or direct the game to do exactly that. Problem is, typically such a view is short sighted. Cultivating a strong community is difficult. Dividing it however, is extraordinarily easy.

Hence here we find ourselves, fighting over esoteric views on the game’s vision and direction and arguing with each other… instead of playing it.

Eveningstar.6940:

I have, however, played City of Heroes for years, and while CoH had a brilliant alternative to traditional gear progression, it did have a gear progression system—it was just abstract: enhancements, rather than equipment. And it did grow over time, especially with the introduction of the Incarnate system.

I think you need to consider how the concept of gear in City of Heroes, such as it was, was implemented. When you talk about gear progression as defining attribute, you’re not referring to just the existence of such a system, but also the degree of its profile in gameplay.

When designing City of Heroes, Jack Emmert and crew were angling for a loot-free game. The enhancement system is what they ended up with. While enhancements required updating, doing so was not in any way central to the game experience. The “gear” did not drive play in any way, which is key. It was not a “defining attribute” of the overall design.

Even when the system was later expanded upon by Paragon Studios, the expansion remained completely optional, because the game continued to be balanced around the basic enhancements. Furthermore, everything was available through the market, something that you won’t see in a conventional approach.

Even the “end game” Incarnate system, which can be argued to have been a serious misstep for the property, was pretty much wrapped up in itself, having little impact outside of its specialized content. It could be completely ignored (and often was).

The underlying constant here is that gear progression never became a centerpiece of the design. Even at its highest profile, it was off in a corner. And, as it happened, the majority of the community didn’t seem to really engage in it.

So, yes, while there was gear progression, when we measure it against what you’re referring to, it may as well not have been there.

I haven’t played Ultima or DAOC. If you say they’ve eschewed the vertical gear progression, then I’ll take your word for it.

I believe both these games, much like City, came to adopt some form of “end game” gear progression. However, and again much like City, this didn’t happen until the properties were well in decline.

I don’t think Anarchy has ever had one, and I don’t believe TSW has one either.

Why does “CORPG” have to be a marketing gimmick? Why can’t it be a valid description of GW1’s genre?

Because…
1. A single game does not a subgenre make.
2. The game didn’t really depart from the norm all that much (I’d say City and EVE were far, far more divergent).
3. The official description of the game acknowledges that it is an MMO and also an RPG game.

The label was invented to draw attention to the game’s departure from MMORPG convention. That is, in a word: marketing.

But this is all an irrelevant digresssion, because even if we accept the “CORPG” label, it doesn’t really change the underlying dynamics of the argument. We’re still talking about MMO and RPG conventions. “CORPG” would still be a subgenre of the MMO category.

Shouldn’t it follow that, if GW2 were to actually fulfill the principles outlined in ArenaNet’s manifesto, it would resemble GW1 more closely?

Not necessarily.

The game described in ArenaNet’s manifesto is a radical departure from the vein of a traditional MMORPG. Guild Wars 2, in practice, is not all that different from what we’ve seen recently. Consequently the inclusion of gear progression should seem almost inevitable.

The thing is, as far as I’m concerned, gear progression isn’t really the issue. It’s all in the delivery, as they say. It’s the implementation that matters. ANet has claimed to be aiming to avoid grind and treadmill. Can you do that and still have vertical gear progression? I believe so. Multiple obtainment paths would be a good start.

But, y’know, I do agree with you to an extent. I think ANet has painted itself into a bit of a corner by cleaving so closely to most current FMMORPG conventions. When I first started playing, I was actually kinda surprised at how standard it all felt. I was expecting much more of a departure from the norm.

But now, when I look back on it and take proper stock of the various interests involved, the climate of the market, and the overall culture of the industry, I realize I shouldn’t have been that surprised.

I’m sorry if I offended you; it wasn’t my intention

No, sorry, it wasn’t you specifically. It was more to do with the general tone of the forum these past days, and that assertion in particular (rapidly becoming a peeve of mine). The fact that this recent expansion has really dampened my enthusiasm didn’t help either. Your reasonable, thoughtful response has actually helped lift my mood. So thanks for that.

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

gwawer.9805:

To the people who are saying “I didn’t buy this game to grind dungeons I just wanted to stroll about in the world and do my thing and enjoy dynamic events la la la”…

Are you actually doing that? Are you actually going back to zones and re-experiencing the events and the world? Or is this just an ideal that you wish you could do, but never actually could get yourself to do?

Maybe this is why Anet is being flexible now with their original philosophy, because they see that despite their own ideals of having players go out into the world and just “having fun” people simply don’t do that anymore.

Yes I was.

I was too.

Do you know what… this game was years in development… if ANet had decided they were wrong or even changed their minds about the game they were making there is such a thing as communication. They should have been honest and COMMUNICATED with their player base.

They still aren’t doing that the Manifesto remains the same and the fluffy PR statements they use to communicate with us – don’t tell us anything.

Eveningstar.6940:

There’s no mandate at all. I’m submitting the idea, however, that the de facto definition of an MMORPG is a game which includes, along with a big concurrent online community, some kind of gear progression. It’s not a mandate, but it’s a pattern of MMO design that defines the genre. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I think it’s fair to say that the genre has been built on vertical gear progression for so long that it’s essentially a given in most games.

It hasn’t even been that long. Look back to less than a decade ago. The field was growing quite diverse. Anarchy Online and DAoC, EVE and City of Heroes… the genre was going in all sorts of directions, challenging the existing conventions, and playing with a variety of ideas.

Then along came World of Warcraft.

The anomalous success of that game had a stagnating effect. Suddenly, everyone wanted to grab onto its coattails and copy the formula.

Thing is, I’ve never believed the formula was the big draw. I think the title’s success had more to do with it being built on an already well-established IP that was native to the medium and backed by a highly respected studio.

Be that as it may, I’ve come to believe that the WoW phenomenon was perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to the MMORPG genre. If you look back over the games that’ve been released since, you start to see a growing uniformity in design.

Add to this that the gaming industry is currently staid and repetitive across the board, and well… it’s just a very bad time for innovation.

But it’s starting to turn around again, thanks to the indie scene. We just have to wait until its momentum gets to the point where it can actually develop and produce something as ambitious and costly as an MMORPG. Given the existence of things like Kickstarter, that day may not be far off.

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

OP’s TLDR: No MMO should ever be different or deviate from the norm.

Amra.6028:

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

It’s more than 8%, and there’s no WvW availability.

Astralporing.1957:

Amra.6028:

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

It’s more than 8%, and there’s no WvW availability.

Source on the second?

Amra.6028:

Astralporing.1957:

Amra.6028:

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

It’s more than 8%, and there’s no WvW availability.

Source on the second?

there is no way to get ascended gear from any activity but fotm yet. they said themselves they would add existing activities to be able to get them “eventually”

sorry i can’t link you to the post with this info. i learned not to do that the hard way.

dirtyklingon.2918:

Amra.6028:

Astralporing.1957:

Amra.6028:

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

It’s more than 8%, and there’s no WvW availability.

Source on the second?

there is no way to get ascended gear from any activity but fotm yet. they said themselves they would add existing activities to be able to get them “eventually”

sorry i can’t link you to the post with this info. i learned not to do that the hard way.

It’s about asc. gear being used there, imbalancing Wv3 even more.
But I’d be glad to get it there. At least some sort of proper thinking to make it easily and widely attainable.

If you were writing this post three to six months from now, maybe I could see more value in some of your claims, but this is three months after launch. The game is very successful and many casuals didn’t even reach the exotic ceiling , let alone the imaginary “exotic-legendary gap”.

1. A Manifesto Is Not A Binding Contract

Sure, it’s not a binding contract and that’s why they are legally able to do what they did. There are plenty of things which are legal which are not right, especially when it comes to customer relations. The manifesto wasn’t the only place where horizontal progression and skins are the reward, not stats. This idea was wide-spread throughout their marketing and promotion of the game. Mike O’Brien (one of the founders of ArenaNet and current president and executive producer of GW2) said they don’t want the rarest items to be the most powerful, the distinction should be visual. The most powerful back slots (currently one of the few ascended items in the game) cost 50 ecto(that’s 10 gold worth of ecto for a single item, multiply this by every armour slot and you have many hours of grinding ahead of you), a bunch of expensive tier 6 mats (depending on the stats you want) and incredibly rare and untradable item from one dungeon in the game.

Look at what Colin said in a blog article (it’s not just an off hand comment made by someone inexperience with interviews, this is a prepared blog) about loot.

“Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

– Colin Johanson

The ascended items are by far the rarest items of their type in the game. Those who choose not to participate in this new grind, those who choose not to grind 50 ecto, an ascended quality RNG crafting material, a stack of tier 6 mats, are not just as powerful as the people who did. The people who did grind this stuff, who put in more time – those people are more powerful.

It’s not just their manifesto, it’s specifically stated several times by several people. You aren’t supposed to be statistically weaker than someone else because you didn’t chase down the incredibly grindy items, because you didn’t farm ectos for thousands of hours, because you didn’t participate in that elite dungeon. You are not supposed to be statistically inferior to another player for opting out of the gear grind. It’s more than just the manifesto.

2. An MMO Is (probably) Defined By Gear Progression

No, they are not. They are massively multiplayer online games. This is about playing with a lot of other people, not about gearing up. Some MMOs choose to focus on gear progression as their key motivator for content and progression, but a lot of people associate that kind of design with offering a poor gameplay experience and resorting to skinner box psychology to distract and occupy player’s time. MMOs are about playing online with other people. You can do that without gear progression. GW1 did it for seven years.

The idea that the model failed is premature. GW2 is three months old. It was very successful at launch because of its vision. Because of its design, because of the promises they made in the promotion. It was successful because of what it was supposed to be. GW2 sold many copies. Three months the population is still strong – I’m in overflow every week when WvW resets, I can see dungeon groups forming every day (although all ym regular friends farming alternate sets on their toons stopped since ascended was revealed). I’ve not once been in the new map unless I was in overflow, the game is thriving. A complete and total abandonment of one of your core design philosophies is only justified if your game is in big trouble. If you are haemorrhaging players at a damaging rate, if the community is outright rebelling, if the game isn’t selling and if all your attempts to alleviate the situation through other solutions or strategies fail. None of these things are happening. The game is only three months old. I have seen nothing dramatic enough to justify this after only three months. I haven’t seen attempts to solve this problem through other means (three months isn’t enough time to do anything). They went straight out and scrapped their philosophy and betrayed the player base in the second content update three months out.

“…what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible?”

The fact is, players were very happy with the game. Players were actively playing the game. Players had multiple sets of exotics, multiple toons with exotics and they didn’t feel the need for another tier (it offers no new experience, it just invalidates the rewards of the old one and puts you through the same thing again, only longer this time, to reach the same place you used to be at, this move just brings us backwards). You are wrong about MMOs, that might be what MMOs offer you, but that’s not what MMOs are, they offer a wide variety of experiences, of which only one is a grind based gear treadmill and progression. Your definition of action RPGs is also way off. This was unnecessary, it’s not mandatory for an MMO and GW2 is too young to claim the business model failed.

Hydrophidian.4319:

Eveningstar.6940:

• Gear progression is as essential to an MMORPG as copious loot drops is to an Action RPG and jumping and climbing are to Platformers and combos are to Fighting Games. It’s just a part of the genre.

No, it’s part of a design model.

Please go research MMORPGs and the history of the subgenre, before making blanket statements about it. There have been many models. I personally played an MMORPG for several years that didn’t have any gear progression or loot to speak of.

So stating that ‘gear progression is essential to the subgenre’ is demonstrably false.

If you want to have a serious dialogue, I think you ought start it that way. I’d suggest you do your homework. There’s about 20 years of background that you should be at least casually familiar with.

Right Ultima Online was the grand daddy of MMORPGs and did not have gear progression. I loved that game back in the day.

Eveningstar said: “What I am saying is that their manifesto was probably unrealistic considering how they designed their game. Their Manifesto describes a game that isn’t an MMO. They made an MMO.”

No, the manifesto describes a philosophy that breaks the current, standard mold of how MMOGs have been designed – that was the whole point of GW2, and up until release – yes, all the way up until release – they were reiterating that philosophy in all their media. They had developed an enormous, avid – even rabid – fan base and glowing reviews throughout the MMORG industry based upon that philosophy.

Because of the philosophy promoted and hammered and reiterated, they had a very successful pre-purchase system and launch.

The problem is that this huge update/free expansion must have been in the works since before launch, or at least immediately after, because it’s only been about 10 weeks. They never even gave their original model a chance to work beyond the launch.

IMO, the original development team must have been dismissed sometime prior to launch and a new live team put in, and they simply abandoned the original premise of the game. Either that or it’s all been a con job from day one.

they set expecations themselves. fanboys did not have to do it this time. the tone of the prelaunch hype was set entirely by the masters of this enterprise.

they did not even bother to attempt to expand or improve upon their stated intentions of horizontal progression. what we got at launch was a tease of that. there jsut wasn’t much of a variety of skins, and the prospect of grinding out multiple sets of the same stat allocation to have what skins there are was a bit silly.

i would’ve loved to be en able to have multiple outfits to switch between every day at my own pleasure. i would’ve loved to continue playing farming etc and dumping cash into the cash shop for cosmetic items. i know i’ve already done a great deal of that already up to and maybe past the point of it being sefl defeating and redoncuorus.

anyways, how can we know if the manifesto or anything said prelaunch was wrong or not? it was not purused any further afte rlaunch. there was absolutely no attempt to improve upon or expand it. it was abandoned immidiately in favour of catering to the wow clone raider demographic and zerg guilds.

“The Manifesto is not a binding contract” = last refuge of an ANET apologist.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

“The Manifesto is not a binding contract” = last refuge of an ANET apologist.

Plus, who cares about this being a binding contract or more of a guideline? They broke a promise and leaving players will break their finance planning. That’s how it works, that’s what they opted for. We’re not bound to anything.

I read half of the first page, and it’s pretty heavy to read…

And all I could think about is that life itself is a gear threadmill. It’s Darwin’s theory of evolution! You have a given environment and given abilities, adapted to this environment but the world is dynamic, so you constantly have to evolve and become better adapted to changing conditions.
We wouldn’t exist in a static world. There would be no need for us. No conditions to require something as complex as us.
If we suddenly didn’t need to learn to walk, we’d still be born with legs. And not using them would cause them to become unusable, withered and deformed.
If we don’t have something to work towards, to become better at, we wither and die. Or, quit the game. Pun intended.

I play guitar. Playing the same old songs gets boring, even if I love these songs and I always want to play them better. I need to learn to do things I think as hard, so they eventually become easy and boring and leave room for the need of something harder to learn to do. In turn, this new knowledge makes those old songs easier to play. Progression.

Just a note, musicians use chord progressions to make a song interesting…

A fashion sense is only gonna take you so far in a game, but that is a progression in itself. Better looking, more wardrobe and attitude options, etc.
Some people, like me, also like better stats, so we can do better in the game world, take down bigger mobs. Do things we weren’t able to do before.

Seeing the constant yet?

The status quo constantly needs to be challenged for things to become better. For things to evolve and for players to evolve, which is what keeps us interested.

Saying that a defining trait of mmo’s is progression (story, gear, difficulty) should be obvious to anyone. Life is progression. Everything in it progresses and changes to adapt to new conditions. Everything we create mimics this principle.

Anet’s manifesto is just a guiding ideal. An Ideal is static. Reality is dynamic. That’s why ideals don’t do well in the real world. That’s why when you put 2 volts signal through an amplifier that multiplies it by 2, you don’t get 4 volts. You get 3.9 volts. There is always some loss in one way or another. There are always conditions that require you to adapt, as in putting in a stronger signal to be amplified if you really want that 4 volts.

I’m just rambling. Meh, I felt like replying. Sorry if I sounded moralizing. Sue me.

Point is, things change. And staying or leaving is a choice. Just like when volcanoes erupts and destroys cities, some people chose to stay and rebuild, others leave to build away from volcanoes. They just have to deal with a new environment, with its own challenges.

They’re both right. They both adapt. That’s all we’ve ever done.

Let me be a nerd and quote my favorite movie: “All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you”.

Maybe the manifesto is wrong. Maybe Anet thinks that the playerbase can’t be entertained throught years without vertical progression and maybe they broke the manifesto because they realised that Gw2 is a mmo and gw1 wasn’t.
But what really disgusts me is the complete lack of any communication. The playebase is not stupid and everybody knows that Anet have been working on ascended items and a dungeon based on vertical gear progression at least since two months. And they said nothing.

I was discussing this with a friend when the tri-forge pendant was discovered though I was not aware they had made this an official stance.

I think they are going in the right direction though. As long as they keep this new gear within reasonable reach of the average player, there should not be a significant issue.

The problem with a model of gear where stats are the same and only appearance changes is, although it’s very balanced, there’s also a sense where there’s no more character developmenet, no more getting stronger or moving forward. To an extent, this goes against the appeal in an RPG and part of what makes it addictive.

I appreciate GW2 for how innovative it is on many fronts but sometimes with innovation, it turns out not to be the right direction.

As far as I’m concerned, a new tier of gear is a good direction to move in and as long as they keep the gem shop on the sidelines, I will continue to play and appreciate this game.

Eveningstar.6940:

So my argument is that GW2 is still fundamentally a pretty conventional game, despite the high aspirations of its Manifesto. Compare GW2 to GW1 and City of Heroes, in terms of pure unconventionality, and both GW1 and CoH are much more radical in their vision.

So what I’m asserting is that the manifesto was unrealistic in relation to the game they actually made, which is a lot more like an MMORPG than expected. Given that they were so cautious about change, is it therefore that surprising that they’d also (very cautiously and in small unthreatening steps) more or less reverse one of their Manifesto bullet points and introduce tiered gear? I’d argue: No.

So I can’t make a car that runs on bio fuel because it has a steering wheel and headlights? I’m sorry. The premise behind your argument, that something must be radically different or essentially the same, is not only false but is contrary to typical evolutionary processes. You are saying the first fuel injection car had to fail because it looked too much like other cars with carburetors.

Eveningstar.6940:

There’s no mandate at all. I’m submitting the idea, however, that the de facto definition of an MMORPG is a game which includes, along with a big concurrent online community, some kind of gear progression. It’s not a mandate, but it’s a pattern of MMO design that defines the genre. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I think it’s fair to say that the genre has been built on vertical gear progression for so long that it’s essentially a given in most games.

It is a given in most games. This is irrelevant because GW2 was STRONGLY sold as a game where that would not occur. Hence, they sold copies to people that would never have touched the box otherwise. I wonder how that would make anyone mad?

Whether this is true or not, this is what it appears they have done to a whole lot of people.

Appeal to the no grind/stat progression crowd pre-release, and get them to buy the game. 2.5 months in, change the game to appeal to the progression crowd in order to try and sell even more copies of the game.

After you have recieved your money, hope that enough people are invested enough in thier characters to accept whatever you decide to do to increase revenue.

Brilliant.

populationcontrol.5072:

I read half of the first page, and it’s pretty heavy to read…

And all I could think about is that life itself is a gear threadmill. It’s Darwin’s theory of evolution! You have a given environment and given abilities, adapted to this environment but the world is dynamic, so you constantly have to evolve and become better adapted to changing conditions.
We wouldn’t exist in a static world. There would be no need for us. No conditions to require something as complex as us.
If we suddenly didn’t need to learn to walk, we’d still be born with legs. And not using them would cause them to become unusable, withered and deformed.
If we don’t have something to work towards, to become better at, we wither and die. Or, quit the game. Pun intended.

I play guitar. Playing the same old songs gets boring, even if I love these songs and I always want to play them better. I need to learn to do things I think as hard, so they eventually become easy and boring and leave room for the need of something harder to learn to do. In turn, this new knowledge makes those old songs easier to play. Progression.

Just a note, musicians use chord progressions to make a song interesting…

A fashion sense is only gonna take you so far in a game, but that is a progression in itself. Better looking, more wardrobe and attitude options, etc.
Some people, like me, also like better stats, so we can do better in the game world, take down bigger mobs. Do things we weren’t able to do before.

Seeing the constant yet?

The status quo constantly needs to be challenged for things to become better. For things to evolve and for players to evolve, which is what keeps us interested.

Saying that a defining trait of mmo’s is progression (story, gear, difficulty) should be obvious to anyone. Life is progression. Everything in it progresses and changes to adapt to new conditions. Everything we create mimics this principle.

Anet’s manifesto is just a guiding ideal. An Ideal is static. Reality is dynamic. That’s why ideals don’t do well in the real world. That’s why when you put 2 volts signal through an amplifier that multiplies it by 2, you don’t get 4 volts. You get 3.9 volts. There is always some loss in one way or another. There are always conditions that require you to adapt, as in putting in a stronger signal to be amplified if you really want that 4 volts.

I’m just rambling. Meh, I felt like replying. Sorry if I sounded moralizing. Sue me.

Point is, things change. And staying or leaving is a choice. Just like when volcanoes erupts and destroys cities, some people chose to stay and rebuild, others leave to build away from volcanoes. They just have to deal with a new environment, with its own challenges.

They’re both right. They both adapt. That’s all we’ve ever done.

Let me be a nerd and quote my favorite movie: “All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you”.

Your guitar playing analogy would make sense if you would have to have a better, more expensive guitar to be able to play more complicated songs. You don’t, a guitar wizz can play anthing on the cheapest guitar he can find. No matter how expensive your guitar is, if you are bad you won’t be able to play those songs.

You’ve just described a horizontal progression where your skill alone is a factor in your progression. Better amplifiers, guitars, effects, etc provide you with a different/better sound but that’s subjective and personal preference.

If you can’t play not even the most expensive guitar in the world will make you a good guitar player. Practice will.

ckeeton.4907:

they never said they would never add it either so that argument can go both ways. wow theres vertical progression omg worlds going to end because someone has better gear then i do. i really dont care about having the best gear if im HAVING FUN.

And I’m trying to have fun.
And I’m sure the new dungeon is at least as fun as the others.

I’m sure I’d even have fun running the dungeon… for a while, at least.

Here is the issue. I don’t like treadmills. I don’t like hamster wheels. I already know this, and it’s why I bought GW2.

Even if the content is fun, I ultimately will despise it. Maybe not this patch. Had I not been so set and so happy to not have mudflation here, I’d probably not be throwing a fit and just jump in and try it out. And I’d probably have had fun, too. I really like this game. It’s been a blast.

But then there will be more Ascended gear. And after Ascended? You can claim there won’t be anything after Ascended, but Anet has never said that, never even implied that. The way gear progression works is.. it keeps going up forever. They’re introducing gear progression. Ascended gear will not be the last tier of gear.

Even if it’s fun, it’s not for me. One day, I’d come to and realize that I’ve felt obligated to grind for this gear to keep up with content and peers, even if it wasn’t fun for me. Then I feel bad because I was playing a game to have fun, but was NOT having fun in a quest to get to some point where I COULD have fun.

So what options do I have? I quit now with fond memories of a great game, or I keep playing and at some point in the future hate every minute I spent in this game running in some developer’s little hamster wheel all so that I could later run in some developer’s little hamster wheel..

populationcontrol.5072:

Some people, like me, also like better stats, so we can do better in the game world, take down bigger mobs. Do things we weren’t able to do before.

You mention you play guitar.

When tackling a song that’s very hard to play, do you ever find your equipment is what prevents you from playing it (aside from, y’know, if it requires effect peddles or that neat thing that Frampton sticks in his mouth or a 7-string with splayed frets like Charlie Hunter)?

I’m guessing no.
I’m guessing that as YOUR skill increases, so does your ability to play harder and harder songs. Your guitar isn’t holding you back — at worst, it might look chintzy and sound bad, but getting a better one wouldn’t change the fundamental fact that it is YOUR ABILITY ALONE that determines what you can or cannot play.

That’s all I was looking for here. Not just another game where skill is determined by your gear, where player ability is meaningless and all that counts is your gearscore.

warmonkey.8013:

ckeeton.4907:

they never said they would never add it either so that argument can go both ways. wow theres vertical progression omg worlds going to end because someone has better gear then i do. i really dont care about having the best gear if im HAVING FUN.

And I’m trying to have fun.
And I’m sure the new dungeon is at least as fun as the others.

I’m sure I’d even have fun running the dungeon… for a while, at least.

Here is the issue. I don’t like treadmills. I don’t like hamster wheels. I already know this, and it’s why I bought GW2.

Even if the content is fun, I ultimately will despise it. Maybe not this patch. Had I not been so set and so happy to not have mudflation here, I’d probably not be throwing a fit and just jump in and try it out. And I’d probably have had fun, too. I really like this game. It’s been a blast.

But then there will be more Ascended gear. And after Ascended? You can claim there won’t be anything after Ascended, but Anet has never said that, never even implied that. The way gear progression works is.. it keeps going up forever. They’re introducing gear progression. Ascended gear will not be the last tier of gear.

Even if it’s fun, it’s not for me. One day, I’d come to and realize that I’ve felt obligated to grind for this gear to keep up with content and peers, even if it wasn’t fun for me. Then I feel bad because I was playing a game to have fun, but was NOT having fun in a quest to get to some point where I COULD have fun.

So what options do I have? I quit now with fond memories of a great game, or I keep playing and at some point in the future hate every minute I spent in this game running in some developer’s little hamster wheel all so that I could later run in some developer’s little hamster wheel..

to avoid this hamster wheel you have another choice, the B2W option to craft a full set of legendaries because, legend will always be the BIS items.

I really dont know if they think we are all stupids or something else :\

Ganzo.5079:

to avoid this hamster wheel you have another choice, the B2W option to craft a full set of legendaries because, legend will always be the BIS items.

How do you know legendary will stay as the best? At some point they might go “Oh, look. 50% of the people has crafted a legendary. We need Mega-Legendary gears now.”

Zephyrus.9680:

The problem with a model of gear where stats are the same and only appearance changes is, although it’s very balanced, there’s also a sense where there’s no more character developmenet, no more getting stronger or moving forward. To an extent, this goes against the appeal in an RPG and part of what makes it addictive.

How about feeling like you are getting stronger because you get better skills or refine your build? In GW1, they introduced new things to aid character progression, none of which was higher stat gear. They introduced new elite skills and had those on world mobs that you had to find and kill (skill progression using their open world environment). People came to this game for progression based on skill not gear stats. That is the target customer base that Arenanet said they built the game for. That is the customer base that is pissed off now because they have radically redesigned their product.

This is a major marketing failure and will end up costing them in the end. Unfortunately, by the time they realize it, it may be too late to win back their original intended customers. I really wish managers would study corporate history before making strategic blunders of this magnitude. Coca-cola, Turbine with LOTRO, Sony with SWG. Myself and others have cited these as examples of other companies that made major overhauls in core design and regretted it later. They regretted it because they experienced financial losses due to the change.

Just how many “gear progression” customers do you think will buy Cash Shop items?

Are you going to buy things in the Cash Shop now because they have made this change?

People who agreed with their original game design did just that. Some have stated that they purchased from the Cash Shop just to show their support for this game that they love. I even spent $50 in the Cash Shop because I was enjoying the game so much. I had not planned to spend that much but what the heck, I really loved the game. Now, I will not spend another dime while this change in philosophy exist.

Hydrophidian’s response

Your recent points are very well taken. I spent a fair portion of the morning mulling over City of Heroes, and why it managed to not only successfully eschew conventional gear systems, but inexplicably fly under the radar of the discourse.

I think, fundamentally, you’re right. I can’t offer a rebuttal here. There are games with successful, nuanced and complex progression systems which do away with the de facto assumption that tiered gears constitute endgames, and endgames likewise constitute an MMO’s lifecycle.

But what really struck me is this: DAoC, UO and City of Heroes either predate or mirror WoW’s release. Champions Online and Star Trek Online were released after WoW, but the designer, Cryptic, was responsible for the original vision behind City of Heroes. Consequently, even though Champions did have a gear system, players were never saddled with the drudgery of pushing through tiered endgame.

Therefore I’m drawn to a conclusion similar to yours: WoW was (and perhaps remains) a supermassive presence in the industry, and following Blizzard’s success we saw a glut of MMORPGs uncritically following WoW’s design philosophy, a phenomenon encapsulated in Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuk’s (I think it was him) infamous comment that if a game deviates from “The WoW Model,” then they did something wrong.

So it isn’t that gear progression is an inherent element of MMORPG design—it’s that titles released after or developed during WoW’s phenomenal success rarely took the risk of innovating. Therefore I’m starting to suspect that—no, it wasn’t the manifesto that was wrong. A manifesto is an expression of a high ideology, the design document for your dream game. It’s not that the manifesto was wrong, but that…the design of Guild Wars 2, the overall experience of the game, is, at least in retrospect, pretty conventional.

When we look at what’s already been done, by City of Heroes, by Guild Wars 1, by Champions and DCUO, the admirably lofty design goals outlined in ANet’s manifesto have been implemented in one form or another. They’ve just never come together in a mainstream title and successfully shifted the industry into a Post-WoW phase. At least not yet. Maybe that’s why the new Ascended gear has caused such a massive uproar.

Amra.6028:

Ryan.6951:

“8%, wvw availability”

Get your facts right and I might read the whole post next time. Both of those are flat out wrong.

Correct them, then.

fine, I shall. 8% is the lowest level of increase in stats vs exotics. They haven’t said the drop rate in wvwvw or even when they will allow us to get them in wvwvw.

In the threadnaught on this, it’s clear that Nexon, the partial owner of Ncsoft has inserted someone into Anet to improve monetization. I think the Anet guys had no choice but to accede to the demands of their Korean overlords. Another once great American company has been invaded.

Zephyrus.9680:

I was discussing this with a friend when the tri-forge pendant was discovered though I was not aware they had made this an official stance.

I think they are going in the right direction though. As long as they keep this new gear within reasonable reach of the average player, there should not be a significant issue.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s already beyond reasonable reach of average players. And if they’ll continue on that path, it will always stay so. Unless of course an even newer gear will make them obsolete.

Fortuna.7259:

Eveningstar.6940:

So my argument is that GW2 is still fundamentally a pretty conventional game, despite the high aspirations of its Manifesto. Compare GW2 to GW1 and City of Heroes, in terms of pure unconventionality, and both GW1 and CoH are much more radical in their vision.

So what I’m asserting is that the manifesto was unrealistic in relation to the game they actually made, which is a lot more like an MMORPG than expected. Given that they were so cautious about change, is it therefore that surprising that they’d also (very cautiously and in small unthreatening steps) more or less reverse one of their Manifesto bullet points and introduce tiered gear? I’d argue: No.

So I can’t make a car that runs on bio fuel because it has a steering wheel and headlights? I’m sorry. The premise behind your argument, that something must be radically different or essentially the same, is not only false but is contrary to typical evolutionary processes. You are saying the first fuel injection car had to fail because it looked too much like other cars with carburetors.

I don’t know much about cars. So I can’t follow you into that analogy without getting lost in the metaphor. I’ll try to clarify though.

It’s not that a game must be radically different or destined to conventionality. There’s a false dichotomy to that premise, which I’m not suggesting.

It’s that the game described by ANet’s manifesto is radical. And yet the game actually published—the one we’ve been playing since BWE1—errs on the side of caution, leans toward conventionality, and innovates in small, careful steps. This is a game that talks about bucking convention in its manifesto, but in practice, prefers the conventional to the offbeat.

I’ve been typing out, deleting and re-writing this paragraph a half-dozen times to try and figure out a nice way to say it, but I’ll just be blunt: GW2 never resembled the game described by the manifesto all that closely. It was always pretty conventional. It was always trying to satisfy—in Linsey Murdock’s own words—“hardcore and casual players alike.”

It is a given in most games. This is irrelevant because GW2 was STRONGLY sold as a game where that would not occur. Hence, they sold copies to people that would never have touched the box otherwise. I wonder how that would make anyone mad

Yeah, I agree that they promised we wouldn’t have gear progression, and now we do, and that’s a perfectly valid reason to be incredibly upset. But what I’m saying is—look back at the game we’ve been playing since Beta. This is not a game that tried terribly hard to rewrite convention and take huge risks. The Manifesto does not describe a game that’s “inclusive to both hardcore and casual players.” The Manifesto describes a game that does away with everything that created the hardcore/casual dichotomy in the first place.

If the game we got was at all like the game the Manifesto described, hardcore/casual wouldn’t even be a distinction made by the developers, let alone a demographic the developers try to design for.

It’s perfectly valid for you to feel betrayed or lied to. I sympathize powerfully. But what I’m trying to get at is this: the game never actually followed its Manifesto from the very start. We just didn’t notice it until they went ahead and announced Ascended gear.

Eveningstar, I’m going to comment on what you said here:

“The question, however, is whether that gear progression will be prohibitively inaccessible as it was in WoW, in which getting new gear meant raiding, meant showing up 3-4 times a week and grinding out instances for upgrades. ANet doesn’t want this. They want gear progression to be there for everybody, to be available for everybody, and to be open to you even if you aren’t a hardcore player.”

WoWs two endgame activities, raids and PvP, are separated by gear type. You needed to grind out two different sets of gear to be most competitive in either activity. However, unless this has recently changed, you could exchange tokens in order to get PVE gear by playing PvP, and vice versa. In effect, you could still “play your own way” as it were.

Anet has one type of gear that is useful for any type of activity. The only difference is you grind out one gear set instead of two. In my opinion, that is not fundamentally different, and no less “prohibitively inaccessible” than WoW.

CJAncients.6907:

People expect gear treadmill because that’s how they are conditioned based on past experiences. This is like a child refusing to recognize a house without stairs as a house, because all the other houses he’d been to had stairs. This form of egocentrism should have been grown out of at a young age, yet we see it here.

I was just having a conversation about egocentric thought in Psych class earlier this week. Piaget theorized that children should overcome the idea that everyone shares their perspective and knowledge by the age of about 7. Kinda says a lot about the playerbase that’s heavily entrenched in the idea that everyone wants a gear grind, yeah?

Ultimately, only time will tell us what ANet’s next move is going to be. We can anticipate the slow trickle of Ascended gear into the game- it’s already been foretold. Once all that gear has made it into the game, that becomes the time when we have to wait and see. The next four to six months are fairly predictable in terms of the gear progression. It’s after that, when players will hold their breath and wait to see if ANet makes good on their manifesto, or if Eveningstar is right, and it’s been decided that the model they dreamed up simply wasn’t feasible.

Eveningstar.6940:

Therefore I’m drawn to a conclusion similar to yours: WoW was (and perhaps remains) a supermassive presence in the industry, and following Blizzard’s success we saw a glut of MMORPGs uncritically following WoW’s design philosophy, a phenomenon encapsulated in Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuk’s (I think it was him) infamous comment that if a game deviates from “The WoW Model,” then they did something wrong.

So it isn’t that gear progression is an inherent element of MMORPG design—it’s that titles released after or developed during WoW’s phenomenal success rarely took the risk of innovating. Therefore I’m starting to suspect that—no, it wasn’t the manifesto that was wrong. A manifesto is an expression of a high ideology, the design document for your dream game. It’s not that the manifesto was wrong, but that…the design of Guild Wars 2, the overall experience of the game, is, at least in retrospect, pretty conventional.

Yah, exactly. There’s been a good deal of hype about how innovative this title is. But it really isn’t all that groundbreaking. It’s only innovative in the narrow context of the dominant genre conventions, and even then there’s not a lot there that’s genuinely novel.

An example you’ll be able to relate with: downscaling. I’ve seen much ado made of this game’s downscaling system. “People can now play with their friends at any level!”

But this isn’t some radical, new thing. City of Heroes introduced the sidekick/exemplar system almost a decade ago, which scaled both ways. Most of GW2’s “innovations” have been around in other titles for a long time. It’s just that those titles were never in the top tier, in terms of profile.

What really baffles me is the crafting system. It baffles me because all the building blocks are there for a truly different system… yet they decided to put those blocks together in a decidedly conventional and stale way. For me, that will probably remain one of this game’s Great Mysteries for years to come.

Gilandred.9870:

Eveningstar, I’m going to comment on what you said here:

“The question, however, is whether that gear progression will be prohibitively inaccessible as it was in WoW, in which getting new gear meant raiding, meant showing up 3-4 times a week and grinding out instances for upgrades. ANet doesn’t want this. They want gear progression to be there for everybody, to be available for everybody, and to be open to you even if you aren’t a hardcore player.”

WoWs two endgame activities, raids and PvP, are separated by gear type. You needed to grind out two different sets of gear to be most competitive in either activity. However, unless this has recently changed, you could exchange tokens in order to get PVE gear by playing PvP, and vice versa. In effect, you could still “play your own way” as it were.

Anet has one type of gear that is useful for any type of activity. The only difference is you grind out one gear set instead of two. In my opinion, that is not fundamentally different, and no less “prohibitively inaccessible” than WoW.

Yeah, I see your point. As a preface, I quit WoW in late 2010, at the end of Lich King, so I can’t really comment on their recent direction with respect to Cataclysm and MoP. But yes, there was definitely a shift toward making gear more accessible over time. If you hang WoW’s design decisions on a timeline from Vanilla to Wrath, you’ll see a demonstrable shift in attitude, and an attempt to at least try to make gear and content more accessible to more players, and narrow the gap between Casual and Hardcore. (A distinction I hate using, but it makes sense here.)

You could make a perfectly salient argument that, right now, as of the release of Lost Shores, the means of progressing gear progression is more prohibitive and exclusionary in Guild Wars 2 than it is in World of Warcraft. Reason being that while WoW’s raiding system was originally pretty exclusive and inaccessible, that changed over time, while GW2’s gearing model went in the opposite direction, introducing an exclusionary gearing system in a game that was otherwise pretty egalitarian.

Which is just sadly ironic.

Eveningstar.6940:

The point is this: It’s possible that the manifesto was just unrealistic to begin with. The manifesto describes a game that barely resembles an MMORPG. But the game itself is very recognizably an MMORPG. Quest hubs, theme-park style zones, a high level cap, gear upgrades while leveling, unlocking new abilities—it even as a rudimentary talent tree (the Trait system). GW2 is an MMO. It’s going to have some form of gear progression because it was designed like an MMO.

I felt that I should tell something about this point.

And that something is this: what we call the Manifesto is, in pragmatic terms, advertising. “We will publish a game that will be X, Y and Z.” Customers make a decision to buy the product using that advertising as part of the available information at hand, before the product is out (other things may be graphic appealing, classes available, infos about combat mechanics, etc.).

It’s the same things if they’d have introduced different classes from the one advertised, or a different graphic style, etc. At release or after the release.

Now, my point is that this is called false advertising. And, mind you, this is punishable by law in most countries too. For good reasons.

If I buy, for example, a car that is advertised to go just on water (hyperbole, but it’s just an example), and after 3 months the manufacturer tells you that after that period you need to use gasoline, it’s false advertising. We can make a lot of such examples, but I’m sure you get my drift.

And, usually, a company who makes false advertising, loses all the acquired “faith” from its customer base. That’s the least, apart from law enforced punishments etc.

To the core, this is the real problem: Anet made false advertising about cap stat items, and that’s enough to be “mad” at it.

What really baffles me is the crafting system. It baffles me because all the building blocks are there for a truly different system… yet they decided to put those blocks together in a decidedly conventional and stale way. For me, that will probably remain one of this game’s Great Mysteries for years to come.

Exactly. The crafting system did a few things differently: no grind (usually), since you just had to make one copy of an item via discovery. Cooking was an exception. And gathering skills were universal. But if you stop and look at it: these aren’t radical changes to the way crafting works. These are tweaks to the way crafting’s worked since WoW (and possibly earlier?). They’re Quality-of-Life adjustments that don’t fundamentally question why we craft at all and what we should accomplish by crafting.

I know some of you called me an apologist for ANet for bringing this topic up the way I did, but nothing is farther from the truth. This is the kind of discussion I want us to have. I honestly believe that if you’re shocked, upset, dismayed or betrayed by the recent changes, then we shouldn’t just question the gear treadmill or Ascended armor.

We should question everything. Why do we have a Crafting system so reminiscent of crafting systems in every other game released in the last six years? Are Hearts/Dynamic Events really all that fundamentally different from the “Theme Park” stereotype where you level by hopping from zone to zone and doing circuits between quest hubs? What does the Trait line system accomplish in the first place, and how does it distinguish itself from Talent trees that we’ve seen in other games?

Like I said in an earlier page, I have to take an opposing position in order to try to look at things rationally. To that end I’m perfectly happy to admit I’m wrong in my assertion that MMORPGs are categorically and essentially defined by having gear progression. But that’s the kind of conversation I’m really hoping we can have as a community after this fiasco blows over: Was the Manifesto realistic in the first place?

And if it was, where did Guild Wars 2 go wrong? Because my feeling is that it wasn’t with Ascended armor and Infusion slots. It had to have happened before that, somewhere in the prototype stage, during which the developers decided to have a combat system, a crafting system, a trait system and a leveling system which were more like variations of the mainstream rather than something radically new.

Eveningstar.6940:

Yeah, I agree that they promised we wouldn’t have gear progression, and now we do, and that’s a perfectly valid reason to be incredibly upset. But what I’m saying is—look back at the game we’ve been playing since Beta. This is not a game that tried terribly hard to rewrite convention and take huge risks. The Manifesto does not describe a game that’s “inclusive to both hardcore and casual players.” The Manifesto describes a game that does away with everything that created the hardcore/casual dichotomy in the first place.

It was a game that took a very solid position on a couple of risks. It doesn’t matter if they were rewriting convention, were radical, took huge risks and lots of them, OR if they were taking minor risks, only those risks, and sticking mostly to convention. Completely irrelevant to whether it is possible to deliver an MMO without grind.

Show me an argument where something you are arguing (grind is to be expected) FOLLOWS from the other properties of GW2. Because honestly your argument by association is far from conclusive.

Lost in a car analogy? How about…

The flying machine must flap its wings, because just look at birds and show me a bird that does not ever do so.

Fortuna.7259:

show me a bird that does not ever do so.

Penguins.

(sorry, I just couldn’t resist)

Eveningstar.6940:

Like I said in an earlier page, I have to take an opposing position in order to try to look at things rationally. To that end I’m perfectly happy to admit I’m wrong in my assertion that MMORPGs are categorically and essentially defined by having gear progression. But that’s the kind of conversation I’m really hoping we can have as a community after this fiasco blows over: Was the Manifesto realistic in the first place?

In what way are you suggesting it was not realistic? By what measure and standard?

Eveningstar.6940:

And if it was, where did Guild Wars 2 go wrong? Because my feeling is that it wasn’t with Ascended armor and Infusion slots. It had to have happened before that, somewhere in the prototype stage, during which the developers decided to have a combat system, a crafting system, a trait system and a leveling system which were more like variations of the mainstream rather than something radically new.

You think so? What then is inherent about those systems that require a perpetual gear treadmill? You are making no case for any connection whatsoever.