Guild Wars 2

I really want to know which direction Anet is taking with gw2, do they intend to go deep into story telling an deliver low end unpolished gameplay additions. In season 1 only a few content felt polished and engaging gameplay wise and the most of the time the story telling was completely disconnected from the gameplay, heck the study in scarlet investigation which the developers seemed to be so proud of had no gameplay element, it was not even a game. So what should I expect from season 2 a game or a movie wanna be.

It is a RPG after all, stories tend to be rather important in those.
Would you rather run around killing the same mob over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just for the sake of killing them?

A game. With a story.

Unpolished? You mean unpolished as in buggy or unpolished as in missing content? There has been some buggy releases (although ANet usually fixed it quickly enough), but I’m not sure if they ever had particularly lack-luster releases (well the first few were a bit meh).

lordkrall.7241:

It is a RPG after all, stories tend to be rather important in those.
Would you rather run around killing the same mob over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just for the sake of killing them?

RPG games aren’t really about story but more about the immersion of the player in the world, and gameplay elements are not limited to combat, a jumping puzzle is a gameplay element. If you take skyrim as an example the lore around the quests is not that good, but the game have another way to give lore through investigation(which is a gameplay element) finding and reading books will give you lore in a much more ludicrous way. Finally what the rpg genre does best is to let the players create a story by themselves and this is only achieved through gameplay.

Teckos.1305:

lordkrall.7241:

It is a RPG after all, stories tend to be rather important in those.
Would you rather run around killing the same mob over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just for the sake of killing them?

RPG games aren’t really about story but more about the immersion of the player in the world, and gameplay elements are not limited to combat, a jumping puzzle is a gameplay element. If you take skyrim as an example the lore around the quests is not that good, but the game have another way to give lore through investigation(which is a gameplay element) finding and reading books will give you lore in a much more ludicrous way. Finally what the rpg genre does best is to let the players create a story by themselves and this is only achieved through gameplay.

I beg to differ. RPG games are ALL about the story. Because as a player, you are taking the ROLE of the character within the story. Meaning YOU are the character in the story, main or otherwise. While immersion into the world is a major part of that, having a character that is part of the world but not part of the story relegates the player to an insignificant role and they might as well be an NPC. Every RPG, from tabletop to video game has placed the player as either the main character, or in a role that has a very signifiacnt impact on the story. Also many RPGs, except open sandbox games, which are rare in the RPG world, basically drag the player along the story line, with few illusions of choice. This is called linear story or railroading. The older Final Fantasy games are a great example of this. While there was the main story arch, there were a few “side quests” that allowed the player to explore different paths and find new things and character back stories, they all tied into the main story arch, and there was NO getting away from it. Everything you did was to progress the story. Even the side quests had ties to the main story arch, just from that characters perspective, and their motivations for joining the main character(s) on their quest.

lordkrall.7241:

Would you rather run around killing the same mob over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just for the sake of killing them?

So basically what we’ve been doing during Season 1?
5% story
95% ‘gameplay’

Teckos.1305:

RPG games aren’t really about story

Actually they are. It’s usually the RPG games that are mostly focused on story, and rightly so.

pdavis.8031:

Teckos.1305:

lordkrall.7241:

It is a RPG after all, stories tend to be rather important in those.
Would you rather run around killing the same mob over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just for the sake of killing them?

RPG games aren’t really about story but more about the immersion of the player in the world, and gameplay elements are not limited to combat, a jumping puzzle is a gameplay element. If you take skyrim as an example the lore around the quests is not that good, but the game have another way to give lore through investigation(which is a gameplay element) finding and reading books will give you lore in a much more ludicrous way. Finally what the rpg genre does best is to let the players create a story by themselves and this is only achieved through gameplay.

I beg to differ. RPG games are ALL about the story. Because as a player, you are taking the ROLE of the character within the story. Meaning YOU are the character in the story, main or otherwise. While immersion into the world is a major part of that, having a character that is part of the world but not part of the story relegates the player to an insignificant role and they might as well be an NPC. Every RPG, from tabletop to video game has placed the player as either the main character, or in a role that has a very signifiacnt impact on the story. Also many RPGs, except open sandbox games, which are rare in the RPG world, basically drag the player along the story line, with few illusions of choice. This is called linear story or railroading. The older Final Fantasy games are a great example of this. While there was the main story arch, there were a few “side quests” that allowed the player to explore different paths and find new things and character back stories, they all tied into the main story arch, and there was NO getting away from it. Everything you did was to progress the story. Even the side quests had ties to the main story arch, just from that characters perspective, and their motivations for joining the main character(s) on their quest.

Japanese rpg (which are not really rpgs but story driven games) maybe, but the Occidental rpg(much closer to the aper rpg) is all about playing a character and immersion in a world.

@teckos

I have yet to play an RPG, japanese or otherwise, that has not been story driven. Even tabletop RPGs are built entirely around a story.
“A common criteria for whether a game is an “RPG” is whether the game has a complex storyline, and whether the character goes through different places, fighting bosses and communicating with both friends and enemies." wiki article

The very definition of an RPG is one that invloves a story. Even the wiki on tabletop RPGs say that tabletop RPGs are a form of interactive storytelling. Key word being storytelling. An RPG without a story is little more that a simulation. And thus, an MMORPG without a story line of some sort, is a fantasy simulator with other people and not really an RPG.

Teckos.1305:

Japanese rpg (which are not really rpgs but story driven games) maybe, but the Occidental rpg(much closer to the aper rpg) is all about playing a character and immersion in a world.

Consider this, how can you immerse yourself in a world you know nothing about? how can you develop a character that relates to the world without knowing what the world is all about? Its like getting amnesia without the history that makes you who you are you will always feel out of place. History and Lore are the basis on which immersion is built.