Guild Wars 2

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/183304/Rift_MMO_hit_hard_by_layoffs_at_Trion.php

As much as one-third of the development team working on MMO Rift at Trion Worlds was let go on Tuesday, Gamasutra has learned.

An affected source tells us that the number of developers out of work today — developers spanning several disciplines, including artists and designers — numbers somewhere in the neighborhood of 40.

The company confirmed that there were layoffs today “in response to market conditions, product timelines and the natural evolution of our company,” though refused to confirm either the number affected or whether it was the Rift team specifically.

The first expansion pack for Rift launched just last month. Trion does not share its subscriber numbers (or the sales of expansions such as this), but it may be worth noting that the expansion became accessible for free just one month later as part of a promotion.

So originally Rift looked like it was going to be an awesome game about invasions and, well, rifts. In beta, NPCs from the other player team would mount invasions which players could join in on and capture villages with. The owning team would have to take them back to get their NPCs (including quest NPCs) back. PvE whining ensued and that whole idea was gone on launch day. Rift invasions by hostile NPCs were toned down as well and in the end, Rift was basically just another PvE MMORPG. It was a pretty good one, really, but it ran into the same problem as all PvE games:

PvE players run through content faster than any developer can create it, then they get bored and quit. They also complain about gear grind. They also complain about the lack of new items.

In short, I don’t know why every MMORPG developer continues to focus on them.

WvW/PvP is where it’s at.

Look at us.

We have basically two maps.

TWO.

A lot of people are like me and have done almost nothing except WvW and all we’ve had to play with are two maps. I haven’t even done my story quest. I have one level 80 with like 300 spare skill points and another level 40 all done 99% in WvW. And all I have access to are two maps! (Well, four maps but one of them is copy-pasted three times. Laaaame.)

Imagine how entertaining and long lasting WvW would be if it was the size of the PvE world. Like, what, 25 maps? That would be crazy. I’d have to quit my job. And every zone would still be useful, instead of like now in PvE, where mid level zones are mostly empty except for the occasional alt or genuinely new player passing through.

WvW is the future of online gaming. Developers focusing on PvE are just going to get run over by the fickle dungeon crawl players who are quick to abandon ship for a new shiny dungeon crawling game.

This is an interesting topic.

As a former DAoC player on a server where we are often outmanned, I miss large zones and the ability to affect the game even if we’re not as populated as our enemies.

I keep wondering if there would be some way to change WvW from a ladder system to a campaign map system, but that’s a far away dream that might not even turn out to be fun.

Well .. I love the idea .. since I´ve been spending a lot of time in WvW & even now, still learning new stuff about it – in my opinion WvW system is the most balanced & best so far, that I´ve seen in any game.
New context would be greatly appreciated in any aspect .. altou at this moment, there is still plenty to discover, which we as players didn´t figure out yet. (at least that´s what I believe at the moment)
*new context was promised to be available in February – and a “trailer” for it, with some data beforehead – so waiting is the only think left for us atm

Anyhow, to the topic. Look at the numbers & think. Servers usually have high population, but WvW presence on those servers is low – explanation – PvE players. Each servers has a certain % of population that attends this aspect of the game. I know a PvE player that has finished one legendary weapon, and since he has 7more characters to play with – he wants each to have a legendary weapon. Still didn´t understand the point of that, but whatever.

PvE players are the main source of income for any MMORPG – cos there is plenty of them. So to ask the developers to pay less attention to them, might literally “kill” GW2 as a project.

My advice in this matter would be simple. Trust & believe, in those few, that have been sheltering the WvW aspect so far, within the ArenaNet team. We might have not received many updates .. nor got many intell on what is comming. But I´m quite sure, that these guys are refining & developing new stuff ..

That’s an amusing thought. WvWvWvWvWvWvWvWvWvW with 25 maps…

Planetside 1 did a few of interesting things that I think Arenanet should be pondering when they think about future WvW development:

1) Not every map has to be full.

Planetside had more player slots per map than could be logged in at a time. There would generally be queues on a couple of maps but there would be other maps with no queues and still other maps with nobody on them at all. You always had an option to go somewhere else. In GW2 a lot of times you can end up stuck.

But XP rewards were based on conflict. You could roll onto an empty map and take it over but you got very little XP for this until the enemy showed up to start fighting you for it. GW2 rewards you for no-contest takeovers the same as for hard-fought battles, which is a problem.

2) “The Lattice”.

World War 2 Online and Planetside both ran into the same problem: players spread out too much and there was no real “front line” or focus to the fight. They both added their own style of “lattice” system — Given bases A-—B—-C—-D—-E, you own B and the enemy owns C, you can attack from B to C but you cannot attack D or E. You need a link to them. Of course, the real lattice was multi-pronged so you always had options on where to attack next but you couldn’t just abandon “B” to go on the offensive somewhere else because if the enemy took it behind you, your offensive would be dead in the water with no friendly territory to link to.

3) Total map population is less than the 3 teams combined.

I’m not sure what the actual numbers were but, say, if a map could hold 500 people then each team could have 200 people. There were 3 teams, though, so this meant you could run into situations where two teams had 200 each and one team had 100 and that was the poplimit for the map.

It was interesting, I think, because it meant each map was largely a 1v1 battle with the third team taking a “spoiler” role. And usually, due to the lattice, they could only attack the winning team (they would likely have no links to the losing team and vice versa).

I think this added up to a situation where you never had the “1st place + 2nd place beating up on 3rd place”, which happens all the time in GW2.

Basically, I think WvW/RvR is a rich topic that doesn’t get enough attention (most of what we talk about in this forum is class balance or server arguments).

I recommend everyone goes to check out Planetside 2. It’s free and even if you hate it, at least play it to get an idea of alternative ways to handle WvW maps and “lattice” type systems.

Long after so many other PvE games died out, Planetside 1 and Battleground Europe (aka World War 2 Online) kept players interested enough and these were not terribly strong entries. EVE Online is another good “Guild vs Guild” PvP game and it has also survived (and grown) for many years.

I hope Arenanet looks to these for inspiration and sees Rift for the warning it is.

allways.9270:

PvE players are the main source of income for any MMORPG – cos there is plenty of them. So to ask the developers to pay less attention to them, might literally “kill” GW2 as a project.

Yes but the game’s content is 95% PvE.

PvE has, I think 26 maps, not counting dungeons and storyline content. WvW has 2, or 4 if you count the copy-pasting.

WvW players also had to contend with long queues and highly annoying culling issues which no doubt caused a fair number to quit.

Imagine if this game had launched with 50% WvW content, more maps than players could fill and culling that worked at least as well as Planetisde 1 (which came out 9 years ago…) I think we’d be wondering why they even bothered with PvE because WvW would be the whole game.

If you build it, they will come. That’s my word to developers on PvP content. When your game’s content is 5% WvW and yet so many people spend so much time there, that’s a hint!