Showing Posts For Chuggs.1682:
To be clear — I don’t want more Tequatl. I want smaller scale, instanced, difficult content requiring coordinated team play.
I want them to go away from instanced content. BUT I also want something similar as you: content for small groups.
This doesn’t have to contradict each other imho. Sure, if you put a huge timer on a homepage, people would swarm such szenarios. If these are found via exploration though, and they are random events in the world, I think people would be excited. I feel that we need such events as rewards for exploration.
Challenging content is crucial to keep people feeling the desire to progress either their skill, gear, or strategy. However, due to logistical reasons, most of it should be instanced. Here is why:
Challenging open-world content is either zerged or ignored by most players
The reason is because if content can be zerged to get the cool rewards for it, it will be because players naturally go towards the path of least resistance (see Shatterer, Jormag, champ trains). If a mechanic is introduced that prevents zerging (Tequatl) but still requires a large group, then only a large organized guild (who has enough members to care) can tackle the content and so most people just miss it since they aren’t part of such a guild. There is currently no in-game mechanism for PUGS to tackle large scale challenging content, and even if there were (see the Expeditions idea mentioned previously, an NPC in town to collects players to portal them) it would be nearly impossible to balance the idea of actual “challenge” with the concept of 50 strangers wandering up to a boss with no raid system or way to coordinate.
Challenging instanced content can be widely accessible and very deep
The reason is because LFG allows you to get five people together easily, and that is a small enough number to work with to strategize and defeat content. It is also a small enough number that large guilds can easily fill such groups whenever the players really feel like going.
Instanced content allows the devs to reutilize the same art/design assets and scale difficulty by adding mechanics, buffing enemies, etc. That dramatically increases replayability, and gives players something to strive for.
That’s why I’m a huge fan of Masters (hard mode, or escalating difficulty) dungeons, because I think the fractal system has been such a success, and there is a TON of content to be explored in the existing dungeons, and most of it is going to waste.
How do we visually differentiate these 3 players? In such a manner that player 3 Cannot look like player 1 and cannot buy his way to it. Player 2 being the average can have some of the pieces player 1 has but would be incapable of getting them all.
I actually do not think that we should be able to permanently differentiate these players. To create a challenge that an average player cannot ever complete, but the best of the best can, would require parsing such a fine line that it would be nearly impossible. Moreover, it would alienate most of your playerbase who are being told they aren’t good enough for X, no matter how much time they sink into it.
The far better way to tier skill is to make things difficult, but provide a mechanism for worse players to catch up. For example the agony system and escalating difficulty of the Fractals: an expert player who understands all the mechanics and avoids most damage can get by with less AR and less gear than a lower-skilled player, which will allow him/her to reach Fractal 50 far faster than a lower skilled player. The lower-skilled player will still be able to get to level 50 in fractals, but only after much more effort/AR is acquired.
Jason
I’d also mention this post by Chuggs as having both an excellent summary of the concept and some intriguing ideas for expanding on the framework – both in terms of stages of progress and added value after the core mechanical goodies are unlocked.
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This is where my concern lies.Part of the . . . shall we say, cerebral bit of any Player-vs-Player encounter (WvW or sPvP) is seeing “Oh that person is a thief and is holding daggers, so that means they can use these particular skills” or “I need to watch out for that hammer warrior’s knockdowns or launches”. It’s in a glance knowing what your opponent has with him and how he can use it. It’s knowing that despite what you can see you know there’s an alternate weapon set they might be using from what’s available.
The New Masters’ options would mean you have no idea if that Engineer has the expanded mastery unlocked and you aren’t facing a standard set of options. It means having absolutely no idea what that thief can do with the dagger until the Extra Skill is dropped on you.
It could give build diversity, but at the cost of this very quick, at-a-glance awareness in PvP situations.
Tobias – I actually agree with you that it is good to be able to make some judgments about the opposition at a glance, but a certain amount of uncertainty is also good. In the case of GW2, you can’t really tell class until they start using skills, but then you can see their weapons and know at least their 1-5, and maybe make educated guesses about the other half of their skills in heal/utility/elite based upon your knowledge of popular skills/builds.
Under the New Masters system Nike initially raised and which I sort of riffed on in the post linked in the quote above, those things would still be in place.
The way I envision Mastery working is that you open up access to a new weapon(s) for your class, and then a handful of new skills that are themed with the area of Mastery. You still have access to all your initial weapons and skills. So you have unlocked the Gladiator mastery for your Warrior, but you are still fundamentally a Warrior with a slightly expanded weapon/skillset.
So you would still be able to tell class/weapon set by looking at someone and their attacks, and the degree of uncertainty over whether they were using any Master utilities/elites/heals is only slightly more uncertainty than you already face. It just adds a handful of potential skills into the mix rather than changing how you evaluate the encounter.
I think we have a lot of fun ideas in here for the journey unlock specific aspects of that mastery, but what if you first had to unlock the core “mastery” track, which then allowed you collect the smaller components? What kind of experience do you think would be compelling here as an over-all journey?
How to Introduce Players to Mastery
This one seems clear to me – the Personal Story alerts. That way it pops up on their screen, and since it involves developing their character and evolving his/her particular journey that makes sense. This way even casual players who just log in every now and then will have a pop-up to get them started and alert them to the new system. Perhaps even a cut-scene introducing the new kind of Mastery to be obtained and who will be guiding their progress —a themed NPC that relates to the area of mastery, like the Assassin thief, or the Paladin guardian, or the Sorceror elementalist.
The Journey to Mastery
I can’t remember who said this, but each chunk of this journey should probably be able to be done in less than 2-3 hours so that even a casual player can feel a sense of accomplishment towards their goal. At each major waypoint along the journey to mastery you meet with the Master NPC, who unveils the new weapon/skill/skin you have obtained for your next step in mastery.
Steps of Mastery
New weapons (!!!!!!1!one!1!!) – if this comes first, it is immediately apparent to players that Mastery is worth pursuing, and it immediately offers fresh fun gameplay.
New skills – I would like to see at least one new skill for each slot related to mastery. Learn a heal, learn 3 utilities, and an Elite once you complete mastery. These skills should complement EXISTING aspects of the class so that they open new doors, and hopefully buff some of the potential areas of building which are currently under used.
Purpose of Skills – I think the two best things that could be done are to open new build options, and to make skills more dynamic. By dynamic, I mean that they make combat more fast-paced, feel more epic, and thus more fun. One easy way to do this is by adding lots more movement elements (particularly on the vertical, rather than just horizontal, planes). Leaps to enemies, ground-targeted leaps, leaps to allies to add defense, pushes, pulls… these are all really cool and work SO well with the dodge mechanic already in place because they encourage skillful and strategic play both in pve and pvp.
New Skins/Titles – The weapons and skills should all be obtainable in each step in a few hours, but then there can be a whole nother level of expressing Mastery which is more time intensive to unlock vanity items related to the mastery.
Mastery Content
The weapons and skills need to all be unlockable by a single player, and could be progressed through a combination of open world and instanced actions similar to Personal Story. After that, however, the idea of Mastery can be brought to bear on a lot of aspects of the game to freshen up other aspects of the game. Vanity skins/titles can be earned once Mastery has been demonstrated in various ways. Many of these suggestions have been made elsewhere, but a few of my favorites:
Mastery level dungeons – Kick up the difficulty, add new mechanics, and have players conquer every path of every dungeon. Or give currency rewards/account bound crafting items for completing Mastery level dungeons.
Mastery of Vanquishment – Vanquish idea, branded through Mastery to show your total domination of a zone/instance.
Mastery of Mechanics – Untie the mastery from specific content, and instead relate it to specific actions like successful dodges, cleansing conditions, killing certain types of mobs, interrupts, etc.
Mastery of World Bosses – Encourage people to do the events or world bosses which are sometimes missed. I think the “Expeditions” NPC in major cities to recruit people for events which are live/are going live is a great way to do that.
Well, I stand by my initial thoughts in The New Masters, as a workable example with NPCs that act as a mini quest-hub for all characters but with added benefits for character’s of the corresponding class.
New Mastery allows you to develop and expand the skills and roles available to your class by unlocking access to new weapons, a new line of utility skills and an elite, and by unlocking Mastery-specific skins and titles to show your mastery of this new subset of skills.
There is one sentence distilling the best ideas I’ve seen for subclasses (or Mastery). It creates progression along all three axis: Rewards, Gameplay Variety, and New Content.
It leads to distinct rewards — new skins and/or titles to show you have mastered that line/subclass, new skills to use, and opens access to a new weapon or previously unusable weapon.
It leads to Gameplay Variety by adding a new line of weapon skills tied to the new weapon, by adding new utilities/elites, and therefore expanding the playground for new builds without cornering anyone off from their old skills. It also avoids the trap of overcomplicating the Trait tree, or creating power creep by upping the trait max to 40. The fresh new Gameplay Variety will apply to all existing content as people can use their new builds/weapons/skills in all content – refreshing the game for everyone.
New Content is created as the player goes along the path to Mastery (I suggest using the Personal Story to guide people, but a trainer/mentor would also work). The New Content can be a mix of open world and/or instanced areas, allowing Anet to recycle or repurpose some old content and also introduce some new things. I think the coolest way to culminate this would be with a story mode dungeon related to Mastery, and then open that dungeon to explorable mode with increased difficulty and different paths so that players can master new content.
Design Options
If you rename the idea of subclasses as “Masteries” then you could potentially add them piecemeal, and indefinitely. You could release one new mastery for all classes to start with, and then keep adding new masteries as time goes on. That would keep expanding the variety of builds and gameplay options without changing core mechanics, or creating an overload on Anet resources as they expand the options available to the classes. This also gives a definite beginning and endpoint to all characters for this skill – “Oh, my Warrior can now master Chi which will unlock his ability to wield a staff, and then as I progress the Mastery storyline/tasks he will also unlock new skills and utilities? Cool!” And then you have achieved full Mastery once you unlock the Elite. Or you could gate more Mastery-related skins or titles even beyond that, encouraging players to utilize their newfound skills by conquering further tasks in the world or accumulating materials/currencies for the skins.
Mastery Dungeons
As part of the Mastery upgrade, all dungeons should be given a Mastery option beyond Explorable Mode. It wouldn’t take much scaling up to make these dungeons challenging and fresh again, and encourage people to revisit content which has become a bit too Faceroll (especially since Ascended was introduced). While you are scaling up, new mechanics could be added to expand viability of builds by adding monster autoattacks to reduce the dominance of Berserker gear and make Confusion viable, retooling condition stacking on bosses to make condition builds more viable, etc.
Maybe you could implement Expeditions.
- NPCs in cities would have short timers where they gather people (1-4min). They would then open a small portal to the borders of a zone where a meta-event might start soon. You then follow these npcs through the portal, to the event-location, and start the eventchain together. (like WvW breakout events)
- these NPCs would be doing this constantly. Once NPC a is through the portal, the portal disappears and a new NPC arrives with a new portal. You never know where the next portal takes you. As tons of event-chains in the game start constantly, there should be no downtime. New players could just go to the NPC (a big orange event-marker on the map, like the breakout events in WvW) and wait for a short time, to participate in any of the event-chains in the game.
- you could make this a daily: help NPC xy on his expedition.
- a few of the really big boss-event chains are added to these expeditions as well, so you don’t have to rely on boss-timers anymore.
- People in the same area as the NPC are scaled up to the zone-level
I had to stop catching up with this thread to highlight this excellent idea. There are many events (particularly group events) throughout the world that often lapse. Particularly the chain events, which can be a lot of fun to watch progress. If each capital city popped an NPC who did a zone-broadcast asking for volunteers to help with the Expedition, and put up a portal in a high-traffic area, people would naturally flow to these and go do the events in a live zone. Incorporating these as possible Daily options is great, and would naturally get people out in the world doing new events they haven’t experienced before.
The NPC could run a script to select between a list of potential events to visit, and check to see how long it has been since that event was last completed, and take players to the oldest event. That would guarantee all the events on the list eventually get visited, and keep content fresh.
This is more content than progression, but it could be tied into progression either by awarding skill points, contributing to daily, or completing X number of them being an alternative path to getting some other currency like laurels, or rare mats like Dragonite.
As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.
And they absolutely should improve crafting in such a way that people can make a profit off it, because until now it’s been largely impossible. But crippling players who want to use their own materials with time-gating for best-in-slot gear is not the answer.
Time-gating or soul-binding key ingredients are basically the only way to guarantee profits, because an efficient market will drive the cost of the end-product toward the price of materials. This is because the effort or skill involved in crafting is just pushing a “craft” button, so you aren’t really bringing much value to the table vs. the other 10,000 max level Tailors out there.
Time Gating guarantees that demand will outstrip supply, and thus guarantee profits for crafters.
Soul binding/account binding ingredients also works, but will reward heavy grinders/farmers much more heavily than the common producer. If the grinders/farmers produce enough to drive supply up, you still might not even be able to make a profit this way.
TLDR: Time Gated crafting is an AWESOME solution to a very vexing problem, and although it SEEMS annoying, it is actually really really good for you.
Rewards vs. Content
I just want to talk about this design element/philosophy, since I think it is easily blurred but is incredibly important to growing/retaining a player base.
A reward is what you get for completing a task.
Content is what you do and what you have fun with while you move toward a reward.
A lot of the “horizontal progression” ideas thrown out here are purely Rewards. More skins! More dyes! Guild halls! Player housing!
Rewards are important! Very important! But what I would like to see if an emphasis on how Rewards increase the incentive to enjoy content. Because people like games when they get new shiny Rewards, and they like games where the content is fun even if they aren’t being Rewarded, but they LOVE games and stick with games where they are being given fun and fresh things to do, and also get cool new rewards.
So I’m not disagreeing with the people who ask for these rewards, but I think the real challenge for Anet is: “How do I put new Rewards into the game that effectively lead to people enjoying more content.”
One way is New Content. Dungeons/zones. I love those things, but they take time and resources to build for Anet and so they are sometimes not the most cost-efficient way to grow content. New content is best content, but we can’t always have just new content.
Another way is Recycle Content. Oh, you’ve done COF 10 times? Do it 100 times and get legendary dye, or a Charr statue for your house!
Finally, you can Renew Content. A lot of content is missed by most players, particularly the harder dungeon paths, and the leveling zones. My first 80 finished with only 25% map completion, which I suspect is probably pretty average. I still don’t have most of the map uncovered, but I have little Reward incentive to do so unless I’m going for Map Completion for a Legendary. There are a lot of ideas which could give people an incentive to go out into the map, or do dungeon paths they haven’t completed yet.
For example:
Leveling a subclass. It renews the content not only because you have a reason to explore new areas of the map, but also because the experience is fresh with new skills/weapons.
Vanquishing. It renews content by driving you to areas you haven’t been, and making you visit a dungeon/zone from a different perspective of killing every single last living thing there (killing it with love!).
Dungeon Progression. Escalating difficulties of dungeons (either through a fractal-like system, or a Nightmare mode, or some other scaling) keeps them fresh and a Reward system that encouraged completion of more paths and varied dungeons would wipe out the monotony of running the same handful of quick/easy ones once a day to get the Daily rewards.
Order/Racial Rewards. New quests and events centered in the world and built around building faction or building personality points (to attain race-specific or personality-specific Rewards) would encourage people to go back and experience content they may have skipped before.
Do you really think it’s fun to kill every single mob in a zone with respawning enemies and other players who kill “your” mobs?
It’s tricky. My suggestion of finding and killing each veteran in a zone suffers from the same problem: what if an other player kills it in front of you? One solution could be: each veteran guards an item which has to be collected (channel). This could be a trading card of that mob or a part of a treasure map.
Good point Marcus – I think there are two solutions. One would be to tag all mobs on your entry into the zone, but then if anyone kills them it counts, but that would encourage zerg-clearing zones which might be briefly hilarious but is also kind of ridiculous and doesn’t lead to a sustained population in the zone.
I don’t think that Vanquish would actually cause a major problem though. Even if someone else tags your mobs before you can get to them, and you have to do a second lap through the zone to clean up, it seems very unlikely to me that you would end up having to spawn-camp a mob spawn for more than one spawn.
A third option would be to put a kill tally for each TYPE of mob in the zone that represents the total population, but then count all kills. So if there are 50 moas spread all over the map, as soon as you kill 50 moas you’ve got that part of the Vanquish done, even if what you actually did was kill the same 10 moas in one corner of the map five times each. As I write this, I think I actually like this solution the best. That way if you did a full comb-through of the map you’d probably get 80%+ of the way through the Vanquish, but then you could go back and clean up wherever you could find the right mobs.
Vanquish obviously works much more smoothly in an instanced dungeon, but I think the benefits (increased Zone participation and population) make it worth trying to work through the logistical difficulties.
Subclasses/Hero Classes/Jobs
This is my favorite idea, and since Chris was just talking about it I wanted to flesh out some more thoughts. This idea is so awesome because it is very deep – you can add a ton of playability to the game with it. First, by giving people an incentive to level and visit content they haven’t experienced. Second, by adding a new layer of skills and combat mechanics which will keep the gameplay itself fresh.
You could literally double the amount of time someone wants to spend on a character just by giving them a new suite of skills to play with and level up. In terms of design efficiency, this is fantastic because you wouldn’t need to spend an ounce of content design resources. This game is already vast, and the average person probably experiences only 25% of it while leveling the first time. Releveling with a new suite of weapons/skills/mechanics would allow people to experience fresh content (which has already been designed!) with new skills.
The How
Subclasses/jobs should be leveled to 80 just like your primary class. One way to do this would be to have the subclass unlock once you leveled another class to 80 (so my Guardian levels as a Warrior to 80 to unlock Paladin subclass for example) or you could unlock the subclass which would start at level one and level to 80 with a combo of your old skills and the new ones. (So Guardian unlocks level 1 Paladin and then levels it up while still being a Guardian). The latter system is probably easier technically, and would only require opening up one hero/subclass/job for each primary class (at least to start, you can always add more later!).
However – I think there is an interesting debate as to whether leveling the subclass/hero class/job should occur in the background or whether you should physically change classes/levels/skill suites (like with an F5 swap or something). If it is in the background you are always a Warrior or Guardian, and don’t have to switch classes, but as you gain experience you will unlock a wider variety of access to weapons/skills that belong to the subclass. If it is actually a separate class that switches your weapons/traits/skills upon swap then you might as well expand it to include swapping to all of the original classes too (see FFXIV).
The What
Subclass/hero class/job opens up access to new weapons… either previously unusable weapons, mainhanding previous offhands, or access to entirely new weapons (for serious how are there not Great Axes or Crossbows???). That means a whole new skill set to play with. Also you can space unlocks of new utility/elite skills along the leveling curve. This is also consistent with Anet’s plan of using the vertical progression of leveling to teach class mechanics.
I think that the new skills should open up greater variety for the base class, rather than replace it. So you are constantly growing your character rather than making tradeoffs.
Speaking of those new skills – DYNAMIC! Explore more movement on X, Y, and Z axis. Leaps that can go vertical, skills that target allies instead of enemies, and pulls/pushes. This is actually a hugely effective thing – it makes your character feel truly heroic to leap onto an enemy, or leap to an allies salvation, or to push and pull your enemy around the battlefield. This was one thing that SWTOR excelled at – Force Leap to jump up onto a roof to assault your enemy, or the Warrior Defensive Leap where you jumped to your ally to give them a huge defensive boost, or Grappling Hook to pull enemies towards you (or potentially into environmental hazards), or Force Push to throw them away. Particularly since GW2 has stability, these mechanics would be really fun and would spice up both PvE and PvP.
The When
These could be pretty significant updates, and which leads me to a design philosophy question. With biweekly updates, there are always little things going on, but these sorts of big changes will require months of dedicated working resources. Biweekly updates are good little things to keep players who love this game around, and purchasing gems for the fun little things that happen or to accelerate progress by buying gold. However, biweekly updates don’t bring new players in, and don’t bring back many old players.
If you look at subscription and profitability curves for games, there is always a huge spike around expansions. I think GW2 needs to have occasional, bigger content drops, and they need to be called expansions. I don’t care if they are free, or can be paid for with gems, or if they cost real dollars. But those are the rallying points for new players, and are the income sources which let the game really grow in a major way.
Shallow vs. Deep Horizontal Progression
There are many excellent ideas for what I would call shallow horizontal progressions – these are things which are one-and-done, and which will change with player fancy with some high degree of frequency. Dyes, skins, titles, shouts, finishers, emotes… these are all fun but they are the kinds of things which provide short-term interest but little long-term staying power. These are the kinds of things which are great for biweekly updates.
I’m more interested in deep horizontal progression – what things can be done to make the game richer and more challenging. These types of improvements are things that keep players around for months and months, that draw old players back, and draw new players in. They are characterized by affecting how players play the game, and having a lasting effect upon a character. A few of the ideas I have seen and love:
Subclasses/Jobs
These could be a way to either unlock additional skills (utilities, elites, heals), or a way to unlock access to different weapons for a class. Staff Warriors? Pistol mainhands? Melee Rangers? New weapons entirely like Sickles, Great Axes, Crossbows, etc? That adds so much depth and playability, and gives players a whole new suite of fun options and things to grind for.
There are a few ways to do this – have a subclass be an actual variant of the class, that you leveled, and that you switched between main class/sub class while out of combat. Alternatively you could just add a new weapon option. The “whole new class” thing is attractive because it would give players a reason to level and revisit old zones. FFXIV didn’t do very much right, but their Job system was revolutionary. It basically turned every person into an altoholic, and gave them a reason to keep playing low level zones their entire time with the game. Subclasses/jobs here would reopen all of the fantastic low level content which is currently very underutilized and thus very empty and not-fun. This would also synergize with people seeking World Completion, spurring them possibly to seek out that legendary they had been avoiding due to the chore of Completion.
Underflow Servers
The backend tech for this would be challenging, but it requires no new art and no new design. Just make it more viable for people to play low level content, and they will. Right now low level zones are empty except for when Scarlet attacks, but even then they fill up but no one does the original content. Underflows also solve the problem of having to consolidate/erase any servers.
Skill Gated/Time Gated Dungeon Progression and Zone Progression
Fractals are beautiful. They are fresh, ever-changing, provide good rewards and have a very long time-scale to reach level 50. Why doesn’t something similar exist to incentivize people to do something similar with dungeons or even with zones? I like the ideas thrown out of Vanquisher variants, I also like the idea of scaleable dungeon runs which increase in difficulty and also in rewards. Incentivizing different paths, or lesser-run dungeons.
Something similar can be done with entire PvE zones – put a Vanquisher option into those by coding each mob upon zoning in with a tag that pops up on your map. Hunt down and kill every single tagged mob in the zone for the achievement. This also synergizes with World Completion. Vanquishing world zones would also provide a possible alternate pathway to Ascended or some of the other high-end itemization so that players who prefer solo-grinding in the world to instanced/group content can do that.