Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,
I have observed and analysed the developement of different multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) over long terms (for example GW1, GW2 and WoW) and I am concerned about the coming changes with HoT. I play GW2 since release. I think that there are different mistakes and perils in the game developement.

I fear for example that the Revenant will be better than every other class in melee and range. If it will be too strong, everybody will play it and the other classes will lose much popularity. It seems to be really cool but you will have to nerf it and your popularity will decrease or the game balance will be lost. It will be really hard to adjust the other classes.
This would be a predicament and seems to be a characteristic mistake in game development of different games. It is really hard to preserve the game balance and to enthuse the players at the same time.
A better idea would maybe have been to implement more than one class (with contrary strengths and weaknesses, like two parts of the same medal). This could retain game balance and variety.
The variety is the key for every really good MMORPG, because this kind of games need social contacts and a huge number of players shows a great variety that changes over time. So it is absolutely essential to respond a maximal number of different people and to adapt continous new ways in gameplay (without losing the contact to the primal game). Otherwise the MMORPG will die in long terms, because the disaffection in parts of the community will destroy the whole network like a slowely desease spreading over social connections. Stagnation is a main pool for disaffection and leads to inactivity.

I am sad because I saw many guilds die. Many good friends leaved GW and will never come back (this is what they said). For example players which played dungeons in major and felt neglected, because there is no dungeon team anymore. Or players (like me) that loved the felt never returning and highly innovative (related to GW2) “Super Advenutre Box” and bought a endles coin for jewels.

It is not the best idea to focus a MMO only on one thing like the living story because not every player will like it, but all GW-players are part of the same network. This is natural and a result of pure logic.

You have to be fast in adaption not to lose too many players to other games. So I think, it was a big mistake, to wait so long time with HoT. No developer of MMOs should wait more than one year for the first addon…. It is impossible and uneconomic to bring enough content only with updates… After this expansion the next will wait to be born.

I hope I am wrong and the waiting will be worthwhile. I am a big fan of GW1 and GW2.

friendly greetings
Cals

Oh dear, the Devs could make an obvious and grotesque balancing mistake of the exact sort they check for every second of every day with their game metrics tracking, thereby throwing their player base into a tizzy and sink the game.

Or they might not be idiots, but instead the caretakers of a tens-of-millions-of-dollars-per-quarter undertaking with years of experience not ramming the ship right onto the rocks at full speed (I’m talking the design team – marketing at ANet throws out some epic fail that should be career terminating in my book).

I’m pretty sure which way I’d bet.

That is not what I meant with continous adaption. it is also wrong to change the balancing every day because many players want continuity. Extreme changes would be also a high risk because of possible losing old players because of alienation. I meant to add new content that is fresh and multi-variant like the SAB. Old game structures should remain, while the game will be evolved in different directions (new Dungeons, new Areas, new Minigames, new Classes).

An expansion has two important main tasks:

1. to motivate and reactivate old players with new content.

2. to bring new players into the game. (Advertisement)

(3.) to bring more money for the developer.

They brought many expansions for GW1 but no one for GW2 until now after over two years. They seem to have forgotten this great game in this point. Naturally there were bigger Problems with balancing in the end of GW1 but GW2 hasen’t to be evolved in such short time like GW1. The payment concept of GW2 (over jewels and game selling) and GW1 (over addons) are absolutely compatible. More ways to earn money lead to more safety for the game. One addon with 1 new class per year would be enough. There could be also new playable races (like the centaurs and quaggan for example) which have no real effect on balancing, but would bring more variety.

Cals

If there is one thing the GW2 devs are good at, its disappointing class mechanics. Up until Shiro, the Rev was a complete mess….. painfully rigid, its existing support role skills were questionable at best, of its best features were 1 trick ponies, and its skills were simply too slow to keep up with the fast pace of the game. Shiro added the much needed speed to the class.

The Rev is good on paper, but its execution is severely flawed due to assuming certain things about the game that aren’t true. Thats very disturbing considering they work on the game, nor is this the first time this has been a problem for them.

So trust me when I say that the Rev being OP is among the least of our worries.

Also, using GW1’s release schedule is not a fair comparison. GW1’s development, from the ground up, intended to have each release distinct stories…. the core of the game ultimately remained the same through factions.

GW2 on the other hand had Living story…… New content that would serve the function of XPac, but at no charge to participate. Instead, the core game would sustain itself on Gem store sales. And you’d have to be completely brain dead to claim that this didn’t make them lots of money.

What failed and caused player retention problems? The constant abandonment of existing content, the lack of core content improvement (which was supposed to work in parallel with Living story), and an increasing reliance on low cost farming events, which were released in fragments. But by far the greatest sin that mark’s Anet is the throwing away their best content from Season 1 due to abysmal planning.

My biggest complaint about South Sun was Karka being insanely hard to fight (at the time), and only having a bunch of short achievements before nothing but farming was left. Fast forward to now, and we see the same type of problem with Silverwaste, except SW has 1000x more loot, and the achievements hard to the point where its more a relief then a sense of accomplishment once its over with. Troll’s Revenge is evil, but its nothing compared to Gold badges in Silver wastes, of which 75% of the map is white space dedicated to punishing you for misreading the unintuitive traction mechanics of the game.

Let me rephrase that…. Troll’s Revenge is a “Challenge”. A real challenge. It doesn’t mislead you with inconsistent mechanics, the terrain behaves exactly how you expect it to, it doesn’t pop random surprises on you just to throw you off, nor does it leave you in a state of confusion at to whats next. It clearly lays out the evil in front of you, knowing full well what could go wrong.. and sometimes it does. It frustrates you some times, and you’ll even swear at it…… but even if you never go back, you will never feel like it cheated out.

These gems of the game are so rare in its development, that it makes me wonder why the quality of content in this game is so wildly inconsistent. Even in their attempts to recreate past greatness (SAB world 1), they often so horribly misunderstand what it was we liked about it (SAB world 2). Its so bad, its like they don’t even take into account the factors involved with pursuing them, leaving us to the mercy of bugs and broken code that have existed for months, even years (Orrian Pearl – Treasure Hunter). Yet new content still falls into these same traps; Forcing us into group dependance that will eventually abandon it over time (Dry top favor levels now, Silver waste achievements soon after HOT.)

The problems run much deeper then you think.

You are true there are much more and deeper problems that I didn’t appoint. Like the new farming content that brings imbalance to the players motivation. I didn’t want to write a too long review (which would have been an unavoidable consequence) and the most points of critism were named in other threats already. So let me try a more fundamental way.

The fundamental need of MMOs is a maximum of equivalent motivation pillars (for example collecting, story, exploring, leveling, challenge) that respond a big number of different players.
To focus the developement only on the story or farming without looking on the other pillars is a destructive way of game developement. So the dismiss of the dungeon team was a realy bad signal (even if it follow an economical logic). Also that the SAB won’t come back in the foreseeable future is a bad signal, indifferent you like it or not.

Reputation is an important factor, that can be lost if the players receive the impression you do only a minimum to make more profit or that you are unable to understand there different demands.

Neverless the Shiro form of the Revenant seems too be really strong and more funny than all other forms of the Revenant and the most other classes (this is only my personal view). But we have to wait for the final game with all elite specializations.

Clearly they make money with jewels but they would make more money if they would combine the paying model of GW1 and 2 that was all I wanted to say. In fact it is nothing more than a logical consequence in the long term …. It is like I said impossible and uneconomic to bring enough motivating deep content only with patches in a short period of time. If they would wait a too long period of time they will lose the community. The permanently loses will increase and the flow of new players will peter out. And so they will also lose the profits of the jewels.
But they have to create expansions AND content (like special events) by patches parallel. So they need perhaps more developer teams if they want to fight against the sprawling feeling of stagnation. This feeling will be gone at the release date of HoT but it will fast return if there is not enough deep content for every game pillar. The perhaps most important point is that the demands of the players grow up and that they are widely socially connected in subcommunities.,,,

I will continue writing tomorrow. ^^