Fine, I’ll give it a try.
About Scarlet:
The issue isn’t just with pacing. Revealing a villain and then waiting months to add some depth is a bad idea, of course, but this isn’t even the main issue I have with her. IMO, the most cringe-worth aspect of her introduction wasn’t the “OMG it’s Scarlet!!! …Who’s that again?” aspect, but rather how it was followed by a NPC going on about “Oh right, THAT Scarlet! The world famous Sylvari who has been the only outsider to master all Asura colleges and who the player characters had never heard about!”.
The world of Tyria is huge. We have explored everything that can currently be seen there, so it doesn’t make sense that a character so important would appear out of completely nowhere. This looks like bad writing, but worse, bad planning – as if the idea had just come from a meeting last week, as opposed to a years-long plan we are told exist.
Meanwhile, other areas of the game do a much better work in foreshadowing. If we were told an evil mage has appeared in the south of Kessex Hills turning humans into slaved elementals, our reaction wouldn’t be “…Who’s that?”. No, we would realize it’s the wizard from Wizard Fief, who has been set as a future antagonist, and who’s currently a dangling plot point.
Scarlet should have been the same thing. It’s not (only) a matter of not giving us depth after the character had been revealed – we should have been given hints way before that. During the “Flame & Frost” release, for example, an ambient dialogue could have been added to Rata Sum in which some NPCs talk about the weird Sylvari going around. If ArenaNet is saving on voice acting, it could have been some text-based talk with NPCs in which they mention an outsider excelling on everything in the Asura Colleges. Something done with subtlety so it would be hidden clues, but it would make the Living World characters exist in the world before appearing out of nowhere as they do today.
On voice acting:
Bobby Stein has talked about this, but I want to use it as an example of ArenaNet’s poor planning: it was cool and all to get popular voice actors to voice our characters, but now the price we pay is the incredible cost linked to our characters saying anything at all. Considering how even cheaper voice actors would still be expensive, considering the voice actors’ union, this is something in which ArenaNet should have compromised in the beginning.
Was it really useful to localize spoken dialogue into all those multiple languages? Was it really worth using different voice actors for multiple races? The result is what we have today – the original game was incredibly cripped since characters from every race and every background had to say the exact same thing in every mission dialogue, which means every previous choice means absolutely nothing in the later parts of the storyline. For a so-called “personal” story, this is a disaster. Worse, this means all future stories are crippled, since our characters cannot say anything.
The lack of player agency isn’t new. We had the exact same issue with Master Togo and Mhenlo in Guild Wars: Factions, not to mention Kormir in Guild Wars: Nightfall. The situation here is only worse, due to how ArenaNet has placed itself in a technical trap instead of a purely design-based one.
And this lack of long term planning is very old, too. Taking short-term solutions with long term negative impact was exactly what destroyed the skill system in the original Guild Wars – adding so many skills to the game could have pleased players who wanted “moar and moar” on the short term, but it only led to the massive numbers of skills which ArenaNet would never be able to balance. You should know how to plan better this time.
On the quality of the content itself:
Remember that article about “Is it fun? How ArenaNet measures success”? That was obviously not true. Multiple times we have been told how ArenaNet considered an update to be successful or not based on how much played it has been.
The issue with using that metric is that it leads to false conclusions. You can think the Scarlet invasions were a success, since a lot of people were playing it – but it was just a lot of people farming the event, while creating a rift in the community as people fought among themselves over whether they would finish the event or farm.
This is one of the reasons many Living World updates were poor – they were not designed to be fun content, they were designed to be content people would grind over and over and thus play a lot. This strategy works… If all you want to play your games are farmers, grinders, exploiters and addicts. If you want normal human beings as players, well…
But I feel like MMO developers and players have locked each other into a kind of vicious circle where developers focused on rewarding players with new gear, and then presenting them with new content to use that gear, and players have hooked into this system and now almost refuse to touch content that doesn’t reward them with new gear.
Pretty much. I think that’s all MMORPGs are right now; and even worse, I think that’s all a rather large part of the MMORPG playerbase wants MMORPGs to be right now.
I nominate this for Longest Post Ever award.
Sorry, I am not reading it, even though it looks good.
Meh, read a section or two, based on the topic you are interested the most. I don’t really expect most people to read everything.
You want to be different from all the other MMOs thriving on pointless gear grinds? Then give us REAL progression!
I think ArenaNet has realized that it’s cheaper and easier to be like the other MMOs, and thus thrive on pointless gear grind.
Condition specs are already ridiculously overpowered: can have both vitality and thoughness while still dealing massive damage.
Uh… Is the damage from this spec really higher than the damage from a Power/Toughness/Vitality build? Considering how both are very inferior to a Berseker build, somehow I don’t think condition spects are “overpowered”.
The issue is that the vertical progression system doesn’t really cater to changing builds often. If it takes a long time to make a weapon with a single stats combination, even if you had multiple possible builds you would be limited by what stats your equipment offer.
9. Updates & Expansions
The Living Story would work as monthly and/or bimonthly updates, continuing the story of Tyria by following on currently existing characters and plot points, instead of just introducing new ones out of thin air (hi, Scarlet!). Examples of possible Living Story content would be opening a new dungeon in the floating Wizard Tower, in which players would fight the wizard controlling all those elementals in Garenhoff.
Eventually, we would have expansions, increasing the size of the world to Cantha, Elona and beyond. Those would offer one new race, one new profession, new skills for the original professions, and continue the personal storyline through the fall of the dragons, the return of the gods, and the rise of what the gods were running from when they bought humanity to Tyria all those centuries ago.
10. Conclusion
The idea is to achieve longevity and replayability through fun content, different storylines based on race, and a horizontal progression system ample enough to give even a single profession multiple viable ways to handle a given situation. All that, while making grind-like repetition of content worthless.
It would be a very niche game, for a very small audience; I’m not sure it would be a better game, but I would enjoy it more than the current direction Guild Wars 2 is walking to.
Congrats to those who managed to read this massive wall of text. I would like to invite you (and those who TL;DRed to the conclusion) to share how would your dream version of Guild Wars 2 be like.
8. Gem Store
Wouldn’t exist; as in, players would be unable to trade Gems for gold or gold for Gems (see section 2, on the other side of the Great Wall of Text, for the reason why). There would be an in-game store, but players would only be able to buy things using real money.
The store would sell:
• New weapon skin unlocks and backpack skin unlocks. Those would be account-based, and would work, once bought, like other skin unlocks already in the game (available an infinite amount of times). Only new skins would be offered here.
• Minipets. Many would be available in-game as rewards, but others would be available from the store, and from nowhere else.
• Costumes. Those would be like the costumes in the original Guild Wars, as in, they would be skins unlocked for all characters in an account, available as many times as desired. They would work as sets made from only two pieces, one for the head and another for the entire body. This would make costume design easier than armor design, as, since players would be unable to mix and match costume pieces with pieces of body armor, there would be no need to worry about clipping with existing attires. Those costumes would work during battle, unlike the current town clothes.
• Mini Mission Packs. Similar to the Bonus Mission Pack, those would be small sets of solo missions in which we play not as our characters, rather as someone else during an important moment of Tyria’s history. Possibilities include playing as a Mursaat during the previous war against the dragons, playing as a Margonite during the fall of Abbadon, playing as a Norn during the escape from Jormag, and so on. Other than the experience itself, playing through all the missions in a given pack would unlock new weapon skins.
Combat itself would receive some changes. Right now, dodging is the main crutch in the game. For example, the Alpha fights in CoE path 2 have a very interesting mechanic: the boss creates multiple large area of effect attacks, centered on each player, with two concentric circles. The attack either fills the inner circle or the outer ring, and this can be predicted by watching the animation before the attack happens. What do the players do, then? They completely ignore this mechanics, simply count to three, and dodge the attack.
I would, then, significantly increase the endurance cost of dodging so a single dodge costs an entire bar. I would also remove Vigor from the game, as well as all the effects that increase endurance regeneration; this would leave dodging as a last resource when things are going badly, not a crutch to be relied on all the time. I would switch the defensive focus to support skills, such as unidirectional blocks that would allow a character to protect others from an area of effect projectile; and I would change the Defiant system, so it would only add a short timer in which control skills don’t work, to prevent bosses from being completely stun locked while making control skills actually useful.
Bosses would also need to have different mechanics than they do today. Currently, most champions and bosses are based on having a very high health and doing slow, big attacks that players are encouraged to dodge. This means there is little point in using anything other than Berserker stats for almost all boss encounters in the game.
Some “easy” changes include decreasing health but significantly increasing armor, so condition damage becomes more useful than direct damage against some enemies; significantly decreasing damage per attack but increasing attack speed, so players would have some use for toughness; reducing damage from raw attacks but increasing the use of conditions, to make vitality and condition removal more important. Each of those changes would be implemented on different bosses, so we would have variability in the game, and different party compositions would be more suited to different fights.
Instead of just modifying stats, though, the bosses also need more interesting mechanics. The Alpha fight in Coe path 2 would be a great fight if players weren’t allowed to dodge, for example. World Boss fights should be more similar in structure to the fight against the Ancient Karka, in which the boss would move across the map, all the way from the middle of Southsun to the top of the Karka lair, as players had to cooperate through multiple different phases to defeat it.
7. Skills & Combat
I think one of the main sources of longevity and replayability in the game should be horizontal progression, by offering players multiple viable builds, each so different from the other that doing the same content but with a different skill set feels like something new.
This point of view relies on the design of the game, but also on the players. Someone who makes a build and refuses to change it no matter what would be more likely to hit a wall and just keep hitting it until being overwhelmed by frustration than to enjoy the game. Being able to enjoy flexibility and change would be almost a requirement in order to enjoy this version of GW2.
The first big change would be in the link between PvE and PvP. The latter requires near perfect balance, and a bit of variability; but PvE requires a lot of variability, of course with some degree of balance (otherwise variability would not really exist). Those two game modes are not really compatible. Meanwhile, I agree with ArenaNet’s point of view regarding how having two versions of the same skill, one in PvE and another in PvP, makes the transition between both modes harder than it has to be, all well as making balance more troublesome.
I think there’s a somewhat simple solution to this problem: PvE-only skills, weapons and traits. Those would NOT be more powerful than the PvP-allowed ones (otherwise there would not be true variability), but they would allow ArenaNet to keep PvP more balanced while giving more options for PvE players without having to create multiple versions of the same skill. Using the current meta as an example, skills inflicting conditions are too powerful in PvP, but too weak in PvE; removing the worst offenders from PvP would allow them to be properly balanced against AI-based enemies.
The skill bar would work as it does today – half linked to a weapon, the rest split between healing, utility and elite. But not only we would have more options – more weapons and more of each kind of skill -, we would also be able to modify the current skills.
A long time ago, when GW2 was still in development, ArenaNet had traits that actually changed how a given skill worked. There was a trait that made the skill “Bone Minion” summon 3 minions instead of 2; another that changed “Ice Storm” into “Maelstrom”, changing its functionability; and so on. I would like to rescue this system, and change all minor traits to work like that – change already existing skills, especially weapon skills, into something new. The new minor traits would be selected by the players instead of being defined automatically, and we would have a large variety of them in order to make many skills more malleable. We would also lose the traits offering only passive damage increases, and instead keep the traits that add new functionalities and actually change gameplay (such as the ranger trait that makes all arrow attacks pierce targets).
6. Dungeons
Dungeons would follow the current model, in that explorable mode would include three paths; one would be the relatively easy, to teach groups about the area’s mechanics; one would be somewhat challenging; and one would be rather difficult, for those who want a big challenge.
Players would also have the option of using AI-controlled henchmen for help, when they can’t fill a party with real players. Those NPCs (the members of Destiny’s Edge) would come with pre-set builds and skills; they would allow a player to solo the easiest path, but from there they would be better used to occupy a single empty slot than to make a full team.
Dungeons would also receive changes in enemy distribution. Instead of having enemies just standing around that players can (and often want to) run through, the design would be more similar to the current Crucible of Eternity: each part of the dungeon would act as a closed room with a given scenario that players have to go through, like the laser puzzle on CoE, or the computer hacking scenario, or the Norn miniboss. Progression through the dungeon would require completition of the previous scenarios, but there would be no enemy to kill between one scenario and the next. I’ll mention dungeon bosses in the next section.
The reward system for dungeons would also be different. Completing one unique path a single time would unlock the runes and sigils associated with a given dungeon. Completing two unique paths would unlock a dungeon’s armor skin. Completing all three paths would unlock the weapon skins.
“Unlock? But the dungeons would be dead, because no one would receive any reward for repeating them!”
Yes. Arguably, dungeons are half dead already, and some of the most played are more ran through and exploited than really fully played. We would still give players a reason to experiment them, and hopefully repeat them simply because they enjoy them. But there would be no carrot linked to grinding a dungeon over and over.
5. Orr
Exploring the world is currently one of my favourite parts of GW2; the ambient dialogue, the beautiful landscapes and all the great Easter eggs in the world make exploration a joy…
… Other than in Orr. And in Southsun Cove, but IMO it should never have existed. Orr is a pain; it may be a farmers’ paradise, but the lack in enemy variety, the very shallow Dynamic Events, all the multiple annoyances in the area (the statues, all the enemies with pulls and immobilizes) and the repetitive and somewhat ugly landscape make exploration there a pain.
I don’t know how to fix it. In fact, I wouldn’t even try. I would make four changes:
• Merge all 3 maps into a single large one. The player limit before creating overflows would increase accordingly (but c’mon, if GW2 were like I’m describing almost no one would play it, so the point is moot :-P). I’ll explain why later.
• Remove skill challenges. No time for that with Risen stomping everything.
• Remove the statues. Just a small quality of life improvement.
…And, the real thing: defeating Zhaitan would unlock a new version of Orr. Those who have finished the storyline would be able to choose, whenever they enter the map, between the old, Risen-filled one, or the post-Zhaitan one. The new Orr would have no Risen, would have a renovated landscape (trees, grass, common animals, etc), and would have new outposts for each of the major races. The Norn would create a new huge lodge near the Temple of Melandru, enjoying the hunting possible by all the animals that would move there; the Asura would build an outpost near the Temple of Dwayna, using her lights to power new inventions; the Charr would somewhat begrudgingly make a large forge near the Temple of Balthazar, using the fire-improving properties of the area; the Sylvari would occupy part of the island with the Temple of Grenth, as only them wouldn’t be annoyed by the surrounding aura of death. The humans would build a new temple, the Temple of Kormir, as a symbol of hope; and the Temple of Lyssa would receive a monument to the Pact, commemorating the victory against Zhaitan. All those would have their own dynamic events, talking about the aftermath of the war, and foreshadowing the future of the storyline.
Arah would become a personal instance, serving as a player housing area. It would act as an epilogue to the personal storyline, showing many of the NPCs met through the game; Charr characters would have a section with an apple tree garden, cared by Tybalt; meanwhile, for Sylvari characters it would have a lush garden, watched by Traheanne, who, after being terribly burned and losing his legs in the ritual to revitalize Orr, would be taken care of by an eternally sunny Sieran; and so on. Arah would also work as a gallery of skins unlocked by the character, through an armory section, as well as a repository of collectibles unlocked by playing through the game (interactive statues like an improved version of the Zephyr Sanctum model, and so on).
4. Dynamic Events
The idea behind Dynamic Events was great. The flaw has been in the execution, though: we have few events that tell a story or show a significant impact on the world, and basically no event that deals properly with scaling (which is why zergs can stomp everything).
Dynamic events often are repetitive because they offer at most two situations. Most of the “keep this camp!” events, for example, consist on a camp owned by the characters’ faction being attacked by a given group of enemies; if it succeeds, everything continues on the status quo; if it fails, those enemies control the camp, and soon the characters’ faction will launch a mission to retake it. This setup isn’t interesting from a gameplay point of view (both events boil down to “kill a bunch of these same enemies!”), or from a replayability point of view (you know what you will find – the camp owned by allies, or allies fighting to retake the camp).
The events need to branch more, and to be built more like trees than the binary distribution we have right now. Say a camp in the Shiverpeaks is owned by the Vigil; there could be an event in which they are organizing a fighting tournament to practice, leading to stronger soldiers in the camp if it succeeds. The camp could then have an event in which the Icebrood attack it; and an event in which the Skritt attack it. If the Skritt win, the camp becomes hostile and is filled with shiny baubles; from there, it would trigger an event in which the Skritt try to bring more of their own to the camp, and it that succeeds the baubles begin to turn into defensive weapons. Then there would be an event in which the Order of Whispers try to gather information about the Skritt, and if that succeeds the Order sends an expedition to offer baubles and shinnies to the Skritts, making peace, which would turn the camp back into a friendly state, but this time it’s occupied by friendly Skritt and the Order of Whispers, not by the Virgil. And so on… A player going to the camp could find it in multiple different states (friendly with the Virgil; friendly with the Order; hostile with the Skritt; hostile with the Icebrood), and each state would have its own DEs so the camp wouldn’t be just eternally locked in a tug of war.
We would also have more events that tell small stories in the world (like the Rani versus the grawl chain), or that actually interact with each other (such as the ale dropped by pirates in the Captain Penzan event being later found by Norn researchers from the Durmand Priory during another event).
The reward system for dynamic events would be based on participating in any step of a given chain for all events in a zone, and on defeating the world bosses. For example, participating on all event chains in Kryta would unlock the human cultural weapon skins, with multiple tiers unlocking each of the 3 sets. The tracking system would list which chains a given character has already done, so players would easily know when a new event chain had been added to the game.
3. Personal Storyline
This one would receive a big overhaul. Instead of our characters making minor choices that have little to no impact in the plot, as everyone is fueled through the same storyline, we would have the opposite: few options, but each race would have its own story. A human character, for example, would be a noble who ‘s friend of Lord Faren, later joins the Virgil, loses its mentor in the invasion of Lion’s Arch by the Risen, joins the Pact, and leads the ground assault against Zhaitan. A Charr would be a member of the Iron Legion who joins the Order of Whispers, meets Tybalt, never goes to Lion’s Arch, helps to build and protect the airship factory of the Pact, and becomes the captain of the airship used in the aerial assault against Zhaitan. A Sylvari would join the Durmand Priory, meet Sieran and Traheanne, fight against the Risen as they try to invade the Pale Tree, join Traheanne as he tries to cleanse Orr, and would fight Zhaitan from within the Dream.
The story would also show our characters’ personalities. While some players like their characters to be blank canvas in which they could imagine themselves, from a storytelling perspective this doesn’t really work – it turns our characters into mindless drones, who just go from one place to the other blindly following orders (and so being eclipsed by NPCs). Each race would show a different kind of personality, but our characters would actually plan and take charge, instead of just following others.
The story structure would be changed, as well. The current very short missions used through the personal storyline have the advantage that they may be played quickly and very casually, but the price we pay is having extremely simplistic and forgetful missions. They would be replaced by longer and more complex scenarios, similar in length to the missions in the original Guild Wars, but still focused on solo play.
Beyond those five stories, there would be a sixth one – Destiny Edge’s tale, told through dungeons’ Story Mode. Those would also be made for solo players, like all other storyline content, and would show Destiny Edge getting back together, plus their contribution in the fight against Zhaitan.
2. Items, Loot & Rewards
This one is simple. No loot. No currencies, either; no gold or karma. Killing a monster doesn’t give anything other than a bit of experience. For the records, I have never been fond of the idea that our characters, the heroes trying to save the world, always stop after killing someone to steal the armor and the weapons from the body, leaving a sea of half-naked corpses behind.
There would only be a single tier of items, and all players would begin the game with this basic equipment: armor with maxed static defense (but no upgrades), and all weapons with maxed weapon damage, but no sigils. Changing weapons would be a matter of picking among options in a menu; there would be no inventory at all.
The main reward system for the game would be based on skins. A new character would begin with access to only the most basic skin for weapons and armor; new skins would be earned not as items, but as unlocks. For example, someone who had unlocked the Acolyte armor skin and the Embroidered armor skin would be able to change each armor piece between those skins freely, as many times as desired. Armors would be unlocked as full sets, as well as weapons, so a player wouldn’t unlock the Zodiac sword skin; he would unlock the Zodiac weapon skin, and then be able to change the look of all his weapons as often as he desired, to and from the Zodiac skins.
The second item customization system would be upgrades – sigils and runes. Since stats wouldn’t come from items, rather from the attribute system, sigils and runes would work by adding new functionalities, like the current Sigil of Fire, and some of the effects from runes (such as the sixth level of Rune of Vampirism). Those upgrades would also work under an unlock system, so once available players would be able to change between them in the same circumstances in which they could change attribute points (outside instances, when out of combat).
In practice, players would change their equipment in the current Hero window. Each of the current weapon slots would show three kinds of option: weapon type (mace, sword, etc); weapon skin; and sigil. Changing one option would keep the others instead of defaulting to nothing, so someone currently using a Zodiac Sword of Fire could change to a Zodiac Mace of Fire just by changing weapon type from sword to mace. Armor pieces would work in the same way.
Other rewards would include minipets, tonics, titles and other aesthetic features, also working as unlocks. Together with skins, they would be rewards for doing (once) specific activities in the game, to be mentioned below.
“So the point of the game is to play dress up?”
No. The point of the game is to have fun through gameplay, not to get shiny stuff. The above systems are ancillary to the main experience, not the main experience itself. This is a different point of view from those players who play to get stuff, and so believe they have “beaten the game” once they have everything; but this version of GW2 would be specifically tailored to not fit that audience anyway.
1. Progression System
The idea behind the progression system is to have next to no vertical progression, and instead focus on horizontal progression. Players would go through the game unlocking more options, not more power.
The level cap would be 10. The idea is to have level progression as a tutorial for the game, so a new player would not be overwhelmed by new mechanics once starting; but the cap would be reached extremely soon, before leaving each starting zone. Experience would continue to be earned, resulting in more skill points, as today.
Our current stats – Power, Precision, etc – wouldn’t come from gear, but rather be chosen by players, in a new mechanic combining the trait system from Guild Wars 2 with the attribute points system from the original Guild Wars. Each attribute would have its own line, so players could increase it or decrease it as desired, from a single pool of attribute points. For example, a character with 1.000 attribute points could invest 500 in Power and 500 in Vitality, or spread 500 in Power and 250 in Precision and 250 in Critical Damage, and so on.
Similar to the current trait lines, players would be able to pick traits at specific breakthrough points in the attribute progression – for example, minor traits would open at Power 100 and 200, major ones at Power 300 and 400, and a Master one at Power 500.
A character who has just reached the level cap would have full attribute points, and begin from a baseline that includes all attributes above zero… But he would have access to only two attribute lines, Power and Vitality, as well as access to only one of each kind of trait in each trait slot. Access to the other attribute lines – Precision, Toughness, Critical Damage, Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Boon Duration and Movement Speed – would come by accomplishing major challenges in the world; minor challenges would give access to new traits. Both attribute lines and traits would be unlocked in any order the player wanted – he could unlock first Critical Damage and then Precision, or the other way around, for example.
Skills and skill acquisition would work as they do today, with weapon skills being unlocked by using the weapon (it would be faster for elementalist due to the attunements) and other skills unlocked through skill points. There would be no tiers of utility skills; they would all cost the same, so players could choose freely in which order unlock their abilities. Elite skills would become available at level 10 and would require more skill points than utility skills, as today.
Disclaimer: this isn’t a suggestion list. This is what I would have liked Guild Wars 2 to be, my “dream version” of the game. I’m posting it here to show those curious a different (and admittedly rather extreme) take on the game, as well as hopefully spark a discussion about what others would have liked Guild Wars 2 to be.
The first change is that I wouldn’t have called the game a MMORPG – I would have called it a “cooperative online multiplayer RPG” like the original game. No, we wouldn’t have more instanced content than we do today. The new designation would serve a single purpose – it would tell MMORPG players that GW2 wouldn’t be one more game for them to farm in. In fact, the main idea behind this re-imagination of the game is to remove grind. Do you know the players who don’t care about fun content, but rather want to farm as much as possible through content no one else can stand, so they get some kind of semi-exclusive reward and then try to use it to show off? This game would basically be for everyone but them. Yes, it means the game would be rather niche, with only a very small fraction of the current players.
“Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to?”
I guess the answer to his questions turned out to be no.
I’m not sure the flaw lies entirely on ArenaNet’s troubles with making content fun enough. I think a large part of it is that they built too much content catering for players who don’t care about having fun, rather about receiving rewards (the “rational” thing to do), and eventually ArenaNet learned that it’s a lot easier to make bigger and shinier rewards than to make fun content.
It’s still ArenaNet’s fault for catering to the lowest denominator, as well as going against their original filosophy, but the main tragedy is that ArenaNet could make really fun content if they wanted to.
And then the rest of the playerbase will continue to complain that effort =/= reward.
No, people already complain that skill =/= reward.
Grinders don’t want skill to be a requirement, only time, since they want the only thing they have to be the limiting factor in acquiring stuff.
Why do I get the feeling that casual players hate it when other people make more gold than them?
I think it’s more likely that human beings look at Skinner rats and wonder if the game couldn’t have a better reward system than that.
From previous posts...
What people don’t seem to understand is that for a lot of us, getting gold, gearing up, getting minipets, buying skins and armor to show off etc is fun. It’s why we play the game. For some people fun can be running around with friends. Others (like me) don’t care about friends and exploring etc, but just want to get better gear, weapons and show off.
I’m not surprised someone who doesn’t care about friends, exploring, and any other similar aspect of the game, just just wants to “get better gear, weapons and show off” is happy with this update. I somehow doubt the reasons have anything to do with doing the content itself, though.
Dont worry guys, Anet does not make grindy games™.
But NCSoft does. And they dont want to disapoint their eastern audience.
I’m not sure it’s NCSoft’s fault. That site with company reviews, Glassdoor, has an interesting and relatively recent entry about ArenaNet here. It’s a mostly positive review, but I like the cons:
Cons – Poor pay. Poor leadership. Many, many mangers, all with differing visions/opinions. Losing company culture to big business.
“Losing company culture to big business” is something I read as “selling out their core principles after finding out there are easier ways to make money”. Which IMO is exactly what has happened.
No, I’m arguing that I’m misunderstood in what I argue about. When language is used to mislead..or tacitly implicate…it’s sort of like a sneak attack. It’s the kind of thing lawyers and politicians do.
Indeed. And when they do so, it’s not just to argue for arguing. It’s to argue for winning. Like this:
And having recently fought a very long legal battle (which I won)
So when you say…
I don’t just argue to argue.
…It doesn’t really mean much.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
They were supposed to be a fun reward for grouping together and taking down a champion, a nice group activity that brought people together.
No. It was supposed to be a tool to keep people playing the game, even if all they are doing is a mindless, easy grind. And it’s working as intended.The issue was that people had little to grind for left, but ArenaNet has fixed it with Ascended weapons, and they have Ascended armor on the backburner for when people are finished grinding for the weapons.
I don’t really believe most people have fun farming the champions, as much as they enjoy receiving the rewards and consider enduring the farm to be an acceptable compromise. For ArenaNet, this is great – they get to keep people playing the game without having to worry about making fun content.
The thing that I don’t like about ascended items is they’re not tradeable.
If your going to make legendaries, one of the biggest" achievements"in the game, tradeable then why not make everything tradeable. HC players create the supply. Casual players create the demand. Everyone can get geared at their own pace and not feel forced to grind for mats/crafting.
Maybe because they realised that making Legendaries tradeable was a bad idea and since they can’t take it back (or can they?) they can at least make all Ascended gear consistent un-tradeable.
I think it’s because they want Ascended gear to be time consuming to create, and they have envisioned it as a tool to keep the grinders around (as a goal to give them something to grind for). Since the grinders already have a lot of gold (they do keep grinding), they would be able to buy Ascended weapons the first day people made them and go back to asking ArenaNet “What’s next?”.
All Ascended gear was followed by the introduction of a new currency to achieve this. The initial batch of accessories were linked to collectibles from inside Fractals, so grinders would have to begin grinding them from zero. The second batch of accessories were linked to laurels, so grinders would again have to begin grinding them from zero, regardless of how much gold they had farmed. The weapons now have a bunch of new account-based materials plus the time-gated refinement, also to slow grinders down and prevent them from getting the weapons on day 1.
Remains to be seen what is ArenaNet going to do when the grinders have a full Ascended set (weapons, armor, accessories), turn and ask the developers, “What’s next?”.
…And the search feature does not work.
…We don’t have an Ignore feature.
…The last forum update was almost 5 months ago.
…The forum is still as barebones as it was during release.
…We still get crippling bugs even without having forum updates (see the latest one, the “500 Internal Server Error”).
…Moderation is very scarce, in that they rarely see a post if it’s not reported. Whenever a post is deleted, moderators NEVER bother looking at the rest of the topic to delete posts that were quoting it, so effectively it’s as if the post had not been deleted in the first place.
I really wish ArenaNet had not bothered with official forums for Guild Wars 2, and had kept the “fansite forums only” policy from the original Guild Wars. Having a forum that they don’t want to invest in doesn’t really cut it.
I don’t know what happened when ascended was first introduced, since I didn’t purchase gw2 until mid December, and ascended was already a tier in game when I started, but from videos I’ve watched, I’m under the impression that a lot of the truly hardcore people jumped ship long ago.
I think too many players were willing to give ArenaNet a chance. Just to take a random sample, looking at those on the first page of the 10 months old ascended gear topic who were against those items, only 7 people stopped posting by the time Ascended gear was introduced; the great majority of the others had more recent posts mentioning more recent game developments. For all the talk, I guess too many players were not willing to stop playing the game.
ArenaNet needs to realize that they can’t possibly appease the GW crowd and the WoW crowd at the same time. They need to pick an audience and stick with it before it’s too late. I know a lot of old GW players are looking to EQN now.
ArenaNet already did pick an audience. It’s the WoW crowd. You, me and the rest of the GW crowd are likely seen more as a liability polluting their forums than anything else.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
Will we eventually create these books? I hope so. But for the immediate needs of the Living World story, a tracking system is more important, followed by some type of journal support. We’ll build those first before committing to anything like books because our lack of a LW tracking system is making it difficult for people to follow the LW story, plain and simple.
It’s somewhat annoying to consider that maybe rushing to a solution now would lead to further problems later on; maybe there would be an elegant solution to the books issue that would also work for the LW journal, but rushing to get the journal out now would prevent people from finding the best solution. And with something else in place, adding proper support for books would demand the addition of a second new mechanic, as opposed to unifying everything under a single system.
IMO, this is the kind of thing the Hero panel should be used for, as mentioned above. We already have a “My Story” tab to keep players up to date with their own personal storyline, in case they forget it. It would be logical to have a “Living Story” tab using a very similar interface, telling people about the happenings of the Living World.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
snip
I agree with your arguments, even if I think ascended weapons are worse for the game than you think they are. But I’ll respectfully agree to disagree in that aspect. Thank you for a civil discussion.
I wonder this, too. I think the locusts are going to head for the next AAA MMO releases, as they always do, and the game will be left with those who really like it. Unfortunately, I think ArenaNet have alienated many of their Guild Wars playerbase…so yea…how many will remain?
I was thinking the same thing… But I think Guild Wars 2 has two barriers protecting it:
1. ArenaNet was lucky, in that no big AAA MMORPG was released in the months after the GW2 release. Farmers now have spent a lot of time grinding in GW2 to agree to leave their rewards behind so easily. I believe one of the reasons why WoW still has so many players is that a lot of farmers realize how much time of their lives they would have wasted if they simply left Azeroth and their fully grinded characters behind.
2. The developers of the incoming MMORPGs are not very smart. There was an article in a popular gaming news site titled, “Did The Elder Scrolls Online commit suicide by having a monthly fee?”. While those games will probably go free to play after six months of being released, this will be seen as a sign of failure, so it won’t help their popularity with the MMO locusts.
Not that I don’t expect the MMO hoppers to hop from GW2. But I think a lot less will leave than if the next wave of MMOs had been released 3 months after GW2, or if they had a similar business model as ArenaNet.
Or try to continue on the current path and win back the locusts?
Win back the locusts, no doubt. That’s what they did the last time the game lost a high number of players (a couple months after release).
Yes, my mistake. But to get to 500 Weaponsmithing you need to craft exotics, salvaging those exotics should give you enough Dark Matter for a few Ascended Weapons.
We would then have to add the cost of crafting to 500 beyond all the other materials you listed. I have no idea if just crafting the required materials for an ascended weapon would be enough to level from 450 to 500, but it could become rather costly to increase crafting to 450. I did something like that – I levelled crafting disciplines on my characters while levelling them, so I could make items I would use when I could use them – and it was expensive. I couldn’t get enough fine materials to keep up with my level without buying them from the trading post.
I’ll take the Ascended type “grind” over the previous type of “grind” any day. At least I can get my Ascended Weapons by playing HOW I WANT.
I’m not so sure it’s that different. What many others have told me when I complained about similar things was that we could get nearly everything else in the game by playing how we wanted, since doing whatever would give us gold and that could be used to buy most things (other than some Legendary components, but the most time-consuming ones are things that require gold anyway).
IMO, both grinds are bad for being grinds. I think both were designed with the purpose of being grinds. I personally enjoy more getting the materials I need myself than having to trade with other players, but I think the real reason why ascended weapons require new account-bound mats is so farmers who were already rich would have to grind a bit more to get them, as opposed to being able to buy everything in a single day and then ask ArenaNet “what’s next”.
You get different scenery and get to fight different champions since you can farm champions basically anywhere in the world (it’s just Frostgorge/Orr have the most efficient trains)
But if Frostgorge/Orr have the most efficient trains, doesn’t it mean that it’s better to always farm there than to farm in other places? Just like farming CoF1 was better than farming other dungeons because it was also more efficient?
I get your point. I also think champion farming is less deleterious for the game than CoF1 farming, since it avoids the issue of profession discrimination, /kicking players, asking people to use a specific set of gear, and so on. But I’m not sure it adds more variety to the game, since there are one or at most two places more efficient to farm than everything else.
make it impossible to get anything without boring yourself to death farming CoF p1
Is it really better to bore yourself to death farming champions?
I m in forum to be informed about the game . Only for knowledge. But i see only complains.
That tells you more about the game than the entire wiki, for the records.
Let’s take a look at the materials needed to craft an Ascended Greatsword and how hard it is to get them before you even reach level 80
You forgot about Dark Matter.
And that people usually have more than one weapon.
And, more importantly, that the point behind ascended weapons is that players are not meant to be able to get them before they reach level 80. Otherwise, ArenaNet’s comment about how it should take time to get ascended weapons wouldn’t make sense.
They were added to the game with the purpose of being a grind.
Game Statistics was very effective in the past !
Tell that to every other MMO that has failed.
Numbers don’t tell you reasons, they just tell you numbers. If interpretating them were so easy, we wouldn’t have had our TORs, Furys, Vanguards, Teras, etc.
I implore you to find a MMO that does not have any grind, in any form, in any manner, in any way
ArenaNet: “If you don’t like MMOs, you should REALLY check out GW2”… And one of the many reason why some people don’t like MMOs is because they are usually mediocre games hidding basically a grind-based treadmill.
Saying “GW2 is the best MMORPG in the world!” means little. In the land of the blind, the guy who has one eye is king, but he still lacks depth perception.
Exotics aren’t the equivalent of rares now. Aside from future fractal content, things will still be designed under the premise that players may be wearing masterwork, rare, or exotic gear. (hopefully)
I could reply, but I would rather leave Mike O’Brien to tell you why Ascended gear is bad:
We even have the inverse motivation against having that continual gear grind as it would separate players so they wouldn’t be able to do these things together. If there is a dragon attacking in the open world, with a vertical progression would it end up being too easy for some people and too hard for others?
…Which is exactly what more gear tiers create. Is the new Tequatl going to be too hard for people using rares or too easy for people using ascended? It cannot be the same challenge for people with differente degrees of power.
You are basically posting the same thing from here, so I’ll give you the same reply:
One year ago, people were whining here about the lack of “gear progression” beyond exotics, about the little rewards for mindless grind, and so on. We told them that people who were happy were busy playing and not complaining on the forums. What did ArenaNet do? They listened to the whiners, and thus ascended gear (and everything in the game since then).
So really, don’t expect your argument to convince anyone. We have seen how pointless whining was very effective in the past.
The people that are happy are busy playing and not complaining on the forums.
Please stop flooding forum with complains!
One year ago, people were whining here about the lack of “gear progression” beyond exotics, about the little rewards for mindless grind, and so on. We told them that people who were happy were busy playing and not complaining on the forums. What did ArenaNet do? They listened to the whiners, and thus ascended gear (and everything in the game since then).
So really, don’t expect your argument to convince anyone. We have seen how pointless whining was very effective in the past.
If they didn’t have ascended gear, or even legendaries for that matter. EVERYone even casual players. Would complain about the lack of end game gearing.
In the original Guild Wars, players didn’t complain about the lack of end game gearing.
MMORPG players cannot understand that not everyone shares their point of view – that some players are not interested in being donkeys mindlessly chasing a carrot, rather in having fun and interesting content.
Do you guys still had/have any doubts that Ascended items were a panic reaction?
They were.
Worse, they were a panic reaction to a very predictable ocurrence. Every big MMO released in the last few years has had a massive spike in players at release, followed a few months later by the loss of most of those people. That’s very easy to see. It’s also very easy to understand – those are basically the MMO locusts who jump from MMO to MMO seeking a perfect clone of their first online world. They jump to a new game, complain that it’s not exactly the same as whatever MMO they were really looking for, and then leave.
It speaks rather poorly of ArenaNet that they didn’t predict this would happen (after watching the exact same thing in multiple recent MMOs), and that they decided to cater to this playerbase instead of to their original fans.
This isn’t a video game. It’s a community of sheep, all playing the same cash crop of lies where worth is determined by gear and achievements. That in itself just spits on any foundation this game may have had since it’s very inception.
That’s how all MMORPGs are. GW2 was meant to be somewhat different, but on release the game was flooded by players from other MMORPGs asking for the exact same thing you described. ArenaNet decided it would be better to listen to them than to the players who wanted something different, and thus the current direction of the game.
Hey, Erasculio.
We’ll see if you’re right once Everquest Next is released. That game is pretty much following (and expanding upon) GW2’s original design manifesto (plus taking a bit from GW1 and Minecraft). I wonder: should EQN become a success, would you rethink your views on GW2’s current “need” to appeal to farmers? Would it really be the fault of the players?
I think it was a bit ArenaNet’s fault, for adding features to the game that appealed to farmers even before release. Had they taken a firmer instance about this kind of thing, the farmers would have left quickly and then everyone else would have the game for ourselves. I’m not sure if Guild Wars 2 would have been a success then, though.
I’m actually extremely pessimistic about EQ Next. I think that yes, they will make a very innovative and unique online world, based on dynamic content and with relatively little grind… Only to have it filled with farmers, who will demand more and more grind or threaten to leave and significantly reduce the game’s population. I doubt any game that calls itself a MMORPG can escape this kind of thing.
But, “que será, será”, né?
Is GW2 shifting its target group? from casual gamers to hardcore gamers?
I think the way you worded your statement is a bit vague, considering how there are many definitions of “hardcore”. But I agree with your point – I think ArenaNet is changing its target audience.
Before release, ArenaNet said, paraphrasing, “if you like MMOs, you should try Guild Wars 2; if you don’t like MMOs, you REALLY should try Guild Wars 2”, hinting that they were aiming at the players who skewed classic MMO conventions. At release, we got a game filled with content for players focusing on having fun, with all the little bits of world dialogue, all the nice Easter eggs hidden in many out of the way places, and so on; sure, the game had its flaws, but it had a lot of potential to improve and become something truly unique.
Since release, ArenaNet took the game in the opposite direction. They have focused on introducing farming content, be it the second Southsun Cove with 200% Magic Find, or the Queen’s Pavillion, or the invasions. All of those had very shallow events repeated over and over, completely disconnected from the world around them, without the charm or care seen in much of the game at release. This content was not aimed at the players who “don’t like MMOs”; it was aimed at the MMO locusts who want to farm, grind, and exploit.
What probably happened is that ArenaNet noticed the MMO players not only are the majority of their current playerbase, but also the easiest to please. If you don’t have to worry about the quality of the content you build, only that it will give a reward shiny enough, it’s easier to make a game than if you are trying to please a group who wants fun content (and all the subjectivity implied there).
Thus, then, the reversal of GW2’s target audience. Not players who don’t like MMOs, but MMO players who play (farm?) Guild Wars 2. Those are who the game is currently being made for.
Now stop coming here and complaining non-stop.
Ascended is basically it gear wise.
Only not.
Ascended gear was introduced because, when the number of players began the typical “post MMO release” fall, ArenaNet noticed many of those leaving were asking for things to grind for, and to grind in order to become more powerful.
So then, ArenaNet began introducing new, more powerful items, one type at a time, and each new type requiring a new currency, so it would take a long time for people to get that gear.
Tell me one, thing, though – what do you think is going to happen when those players ArenaNet listened to, the ones who wanted something more to grind for, get all the Ascended gear?
Do you think they are going to stop and say “wow, I wasn’t happy with exotics but NOW I’m happy”? Honestly?
Prepare for a new carrot making people more powerful. Even assuming ArenaNet won’t introduce a new set of gear (and I don’t believe it), it would be easy for them to keep fueling the gear treadmill in other ways, such as by increasing the level cap and thus turning all Ascended items obsolete.
What has this game turned into?
The game has turned into something that is not meant for you.
Have you played the original Guild Wars? I did. Once in a while, a new player would appear in one of the GW1 forums saying, “Why is the level cap so low? Why can’t we keep grinding for better gear? Why aren’t there mounts?”, and we would reply telling the player that Guild Wars was not the kind of game he was asking for.
Now, the table has turned. ArenaNet realized that, whatever definition of “success” they have, it’s easier to be successful through the farmers than through other players, like you and me.
So they have changed Guild Wars 2. You are not its target audience anymore. Neither am I. GW2’s target audience are the farmers, grinders, addicts and exploiters who want every new content to be almost intolerable, so they can be one of the few who can endure going through it, in order to get some kind of reward and then try to show off; those players call this “dedication and effort”.
Other players are not really wanted; the kind of content they want is far more expensive and harder to make than easy mindless grind.
You can just look at the quote in my signature to see ArenaNet contradicting itself. Saying:
Mike OBrienI think players are kind of maturing past the point of wanting to be on that treadmill – wanting to be in that obvious pattern of every time I catchup you’re wanting to put that carrot in front of me
…One week before Ascended gear is insulting the players’ inteligence. We know they are adding Ascended gear slowly because they want to keep using it as carrots – weapons were introduced some time after people got accessories, and armor will be introduced some time after people got weapons, to keep the “must have progression!” players eternally chasing a carrot. We also know ArenaNet promised they would not release a new tier of gear this year… And it’s interesting to see how the last kind of Ascended gear will be released by the end of this year.
This is exactly what Mike O’Brien described above. A new carrot being introduced as soon as the previous one is reached.
That interview has many similar things. How could ArenaNet say:
Mike OBrienWe even have the inverse motivation of not wanting that continual gear grind because if we have too much of that, it means players are separated and it means they can’t do those things together. When there’s a dragon attacking, is the dragon too easy for some and too difficult for others?
…Considering how the main answer from those who tell people to stop complaining about Ascended gear is, “you don’t need it to play the game”, what we have is exactly the scenario described above: will a piece of content be designed for those with exotic gear, and so may be too easy for people with Ascended gear? Or will it be balanced for people with Ascended gear, and maybe too hard for those with exotic gear?
What really amazes me is how there is no reason for those comments. We understand the direction the game has moved to. There is no justification for ArenaNet to say GW2 is a “game that’s not about continued vertical progression” when they have been telling us for quite some time that yes, they will continue to add vertical progression to the game. This kind of speech may have been fitting to the game by the time the Manifesto was released, or maybe with the release hype (does someone else remember the “Prepare for the revolution” marketing?). Saying it now… Is simply a lie. A pointless, transparent lie.
Actually I know quite a few people who have paid a sub and don’t play a game. In fact, I know people who continue to pay for subs for games they don’t play.
Vayne, you are not too complex to understand. The reason why so many, including myself, don’t care your comments seriously isn’t because, as you claim, others see you as someone who thinks ArenaNet can do no mistake. No, it’s something subtler than that.
I went to Guild Wars 2 looking for a fun game. Others came here looking for a way to “work” in order to show off in front of fellow players. Others wanted a place where to socialize with other people, some wanted a place where they could be the annoyance that gank fellow players from the shadows without the chance for a fair fight, and so on.
All those groups are different, but there is one even more different than all of those: the players who came to Guild Wars 2 looking for a life. Those who embrace escapism to an infinite degree.
You talk a lot about your life. We know you are 51 years old, retired despite being relativelly young, and that you spend your days taking care of someone who’s crippled (in some meaning of that work), probably your wife or your yourself. You mentioned in that /age topic that you spend more than 12 hours per day playing this game.
In other words, Guild Wars 2 is your life. You or the person you are stuck with cannot run through a grass plain like the one in Queensdale. You cannot do something productive with your (real) life. GW2 is pretty much everything you have.
That’s why it’s hard to take your opinion seriously. All the “I know a lot of people who like this”, “I have talked with a lot of editors who agree with me”, “everyone in my guild loves that aspect of the game” comments are empty – they are just baseless comments lacking any evidence, from someone who plays this game because he has no other option, not because he simply wants to.
I actually saved that blog post and copied the text to the wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Is_it_fun
Nice job. I’m surprised the wiki admins haven’t deleted it yet, though.
And funny to read this quote…
ArenaNetHe didn’t start in QA, but Eric “The Commissar of Common Sense” Flannum deserves a shout out for helping make all of this possible by building a design culture that lets us chase fun!
…And now I understand why Eric Flannum isn’t Lead Designer anymore. For the records, he has been replaced by Isaiah Cartwright, who worked on the economy and reward systems before release; and that is rather telling of ArenaNet’s priorities.
When ANET says we listened to the players they really mean: We looked up the graphs stating x amount of people did y in z time. So lets try and please those players.
Its like this is not even a game company any more. Their original game has been completely trashed by such horrible design decisions over the course of the last year.
Where the core values at game launch were:
Fun, build variety, storytelling, action combatThey are now:
Progression, time gating, farming, zerg fests
True. There was a blog post before release talking about how ArenaNet defined success, considering that GW2 does not have a number of subscribers in which to base it; the conclusion of the blog was that success could be measured on how fun the game was.
That was a falsehood. We have seen multiple times ArenaNet mentioning how they saw a given piece of content as successful if a lot of people played it. This is a considerably different metric – it can show that content that a lot of people grind, farm and exploit is a huge success, even if those same people don’t see it as being fun.
IMO, that’s what happened. ArenaNet saw that the best dynamic events in the game take a lot of work to create, and are one of the least played features in GW2. They saw that the personal storyline was something very expensive (all those voice actors are very, VERY expensive) yet it’s proportionally empty considering the rest of the game. And then they saw how the content that is the easiest to make – grind – happens to be the most popular. So, they chose the logical path – instead of trying to make a good game, ArenaNet decided to do the same thing all other MMORPGs do and make a grind-based game. Hence all the grind-based content we have been receiving, with more to come soon (ascended weapons and etc).
I don’t really know who’s at fault. ArenaNet, for giving up artistic integrity (I don’t expect most people here to understand what is that) in order to make easy money? The farmers, grinders, addicts and exploiters, for flocking to a game that was originally meant for a different target audience? Said target audience, for simply not playing enough of the “fun” content in the game in order to show ArenaNet how the better content could also be the most played content?
Probably all of the above.
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