Guild Wars 2

Criticism is unfair now? Fantastic, I AM in the Twilight Zone!

Am I hallucinating? Is this thread real? Am I real? Have I stepped over the boundary of death and life into the Twilight Zone? What dark recesses of the Guild Wars 2 community have reared their monstrous heads here?

I’m getting to old for this crap.

Newer player here wondering why Boon Duration is such an opaque stat. From what I’ve seen of what the game used to be, it’s one of the only stats left to hold over percentage-based boosts rather than rating points, and is also the only remaining stat with a very direct name, its alternate name being the more interesting Concentration.

It’s also incredibly hard to get. Some classes boost it naturally; otherwise it’s doubloons (which seem invariably more valuable when used to create Runes and Sigils) or snowflake/watchwork recipes, which are still confusing and limited to me as a new player.

It seems like a compelling stat for my Guardian and Engineer to have during dungeon runs, and I think it would be fun if it were simply renamed Concentration, given a rating equation, and a whole new set of upgrade components, armor prefixes, and crafting recipes were fleshed out for it.

Does this run counter to the game’s design? Would stacking boon duration close to an extra 100% (which is apparently the hard cap) diminish the importance of activated skills which apply the boons? Would it make support classes too powerful? Because from what I’ve seen, hard, straight deeps is the dominant dungeon build strategy for…well, everything. I’d love the option of building in other ways.

Arghore.8340:

@Nerve, hey, you are the one that bolded ‘Expansion’ … as far as your, well it wasn’t so much about an expansion, but… check out who started this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/2-weeks-enough-What-about-when-its-done/first#post4261915

I never said my post wasn’t an argument for expansions, nor did I swear off my stance on expansions anywhere in this thread. The post was instead an implicit qualification for the expansion argument.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Is this the same one which made quaggans? Because if so, I’d rather they pass it off to someone else. Like the guy who wrote for Trahearne.

NO DON’T

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I was more talking about how zergfests don’t have to be asocial. It’s very rare it has been . . . mmm, unsatisfactory, or to the point where I felt like hitting someone through the monitor.

I will say that world bosses are generally an exception to the rule. When people are standing around waiting for a boss, they’ll socialize. But for every other part of the game, it’s map chat. The vast majority of public events are get in, get out affairs, asocial to an alarming degree; I’d imagine there’s a way to require players to communicate during more public events while not making an encounter especially difficult. Maybe Anet should get their crack R&D team working on that right away.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Semantics bit.

My original post used gameplay to differentiate content that centers around the game’s mechanics and the encounters and places in which they are used from story content that revolves around instances where a bunch of text and half-baked gimmicks are the norm. I suppose that “new gameplay” as a descriptor has become less useful as the discussion has progressed, so might we agree on “new gameplay mechanics,” “new gameplay content,” and “new story content?”

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

World bosses and Triple Trouble

World bosses, by nature of being located in larger world instances where people are actively engaging in other activities, are not well-suited to organized play. Like you said, they’re simple and can be relaxing when mechanics are not demanding, but as soon as any semblance of coordination is required, the presence of people having casually arrived on-scene who are uncoordinated with each other dooms these encounters from the start. A mix of new players, uncoordinated players, and organized groups combine to scale the difficulty of the encounter such that the organized players could never finish it, nor will they ever be able to force anyone to leave the instance because, let’s face it, the zone is public and that would be terribly unaccomodating design. This is why raid instances exist in other games. Difficult encounters are not a fun public endeavor.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Easy GW1 armors and making armors obtainable outside the gem store.

I’m all on board for stuff not in the gem store. ArenaNet has no obligation to honor such a concept, but we are talking in hypotheticals.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Gimmicks and non-linear dungeon design.

Not necessarily quick time events, but neat gimmicks like the Jade Maw crystals (though the rest of that encounter is boring), or, if you’ve played WoW recently, the conveyer belt from Siegecrafter Blackfuse, in which one group member must make split second decisions for the rest of the raid. And yes, non-linear dungeons would be very cool; each route would simply need to be roughly equal in clearing length while also being well-paced from boss-to-boss. This would minimize the possibility of a boring path-of-least-resistance farming scenario, while allowing groups flexibility in what route to take with each clear. Or, make routes such as jumping puzzles much more difficult than the vanilla trash routes they run alongside, making players weigh risk to reward. Not that any of the jumping puzzles in the game are actually difficult, but I’d love to see something like it.

Just to clarify on my original post seeing as Tobias touched on the idea, “new gameplay” does not always mean gimmicks and radically altered gameplay as with the Super Adventure Box; “new gameplay” can refer to various pieces of new content that amount to more game, such as zones and events, new ways of encouraging group cooperation that aren’t the asocial zerg-fests of said events we have now, new boss encounters with interesting mechanics beyond stack and attack, new items that influence world events, new armor skins that are difficult to obtain and become sufficient motivation in themselves (Guild Wars 1, anyone?); simply, new stuff do to. As MMOs have effectively demonstrated, gimmicks are rarely as polished and fun as developers want them to be, and are largely side-shows on the first run through a new area. I would find ways to integrate these gimmicks into group content, such as against bosses or in dungeon encounters.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t think an expansion is the answer for what you see as ailing the game. I think if there was an expansion, it would change things for exactly four weeks before it became “business as usual, let’s farm stuff”. (Barring the inclusion of time-gating, or entry ‘quests’ needed to reach certain areas of the expansion.) Either that or the expansion is then where all the action is, because it’s new and fresh and probably “better” than the older stuff, which leaves people out of luck all over again.

I say this largely because that’s how I recall expansions mostly going when I still played games which used them as a means of delivering content in great amounts. There was one exception, which was Ultima Online . . . and that’s due to that game having a peculiar focus on a lot of sandbox play before sandbox play really was “a thing”.

Much of this is due to what some see as an inherent obligation to raise the level cap. Here’s a dangerous idea: Don’t. ArenaNet hasn’t added much in the way of better gear aside from Ascended items, and they’re vehemently against the gear treadmill, so there’s little motive for a raised level cap. This is much like how Guild Wars 1 added its enormous amount of expansion content with the vast majority designed for level 20s; gear was still sitting at a homogenized baseline over the game’s lifetime, and no content became obsolete.

Why not make expansion content stick to level 80 for every release? New content could be zones made for both 80 characters and middle levels, and new dungeons and world events would complement what’s already in the game to expand choices for level 80s. None of the content they’re making now is raising the cap and obsoleting old content; why do it in an expansion? This strategy seemed to work out fine for Guild Wars 1.

kasoki.5180:

Why would you compare a video game with airsoft, or any kind of physical activity? Why not compare it with book or a TV show, which are story driven? Such analogies are matter of perception and only corrupt our discourse since they stream it in a certain direction (and wrong one that is)

I for one am completely fine with LS and wish more of it, since my main interrest in GW is story. For me, personally, if a game lacks any decent story, I won’t be interested. So, in my opinion ANet pushing with the story is a good thing

Airsoft and Guild Wars 2 are both games, by their very nature interactive. TV and books are linear storytelling, by their nature non-interactive. My analogy is valid, and physical activity or the lack thereof is poor grounds for its disqualification; such an issue is irrelevant to the argument at hand.

Arghore.8340:

Let me just say that I would love an expansion, as this was a wall of text to merely say ‘expansion is the only saviour’ but I do not agree with the OP and some of the statements in this thread…

snipped

Another reductive “wall of text” qualifier. Wonderful…

My argument and the contributions of several people in this thread have already taken the stance that, while ArenaNet is turning the ship in the right direction, as you said, the creation of meaningful gameplay and replayable content that is both fun and rewarding will still be next to impossible to do on the breakneck, production-line development pipeline of the Living World.

Production lines as a concept were designed to ensure a safe level of quality control over the production of physical goods which are exact copies; same materials, same process, every time. No Model T rolled out of assembly with any significant differences from any other. By optimizing the process in this way, companies like Ford ensured that each individual unit could be made in exactly the same amount of time; any optimizations to the process would reduce the production time of every unit.

While the nature of creativity is still up for debate considering the modern world’s shift towards neural nets and thinking machines, right now, human creativity is incredibly difficult to regulate to that degree. The incubation of both high-quality ideas and high-quality execution requires time as the most important resource; time and again, companies have learned the hard way that throwing more people and more money at a product does NOT counteract cuts in production time.

If you want high-quality content, there is little debate to be had. Updates need to be made semi-regular, and the teams working on them need more time.

I’d much rather write a lengthy, reasonable argument than an elevator pitch to be dismissed off-hand. People tend not to take sweeping, declarative statements seriously without qualification. To each their own, though.

Imagine an airsoft establishment which announces plans to expand its facility regularly with cool new stuff for its patrons. A million dollars and a massive time investment from the owners yields not new fields and layouts which might facilitate new game modes or larger games, nor an expanded armory with special equipment to change the dynamic of their existing games, but a single room. And every week, the most expensive ex-special forces trainer available comes by to give a new 10 minute sit-down recital of a mission he once partook in.

The patrons didn’t come to the establishment to listen to this guy discuss past glories. They came to play airsoft. They can’t help but imagine what it might be like if this guy would play games with them while telling the stories, or if the investment had instead been directed towards the expanded play facilities mentioned previously. So, they see that their admission fees aren’t being used to meaningfully maintain and expand the facility, and decide to attend a competing establishment which is constructing those very improvements on a regular basis.

This establishment sounds like an isolated Bizarro-ville, with owners completely detached from the realities of their business and their competition. And yet a similar mindset has existed at ArenaNet since before GW2’s release. They have made a game for which their express priority in ongoing to development is to not expand it with compelling gameplay on a regular basis. New gameplay is a rarity, and in interview after interview, ArenaNet continues to support that development philosophy as some evolutionary innovation in the industry, when all evidence supports the contrary.

For the vast majority of the video game industry, new gameplay is a common thread that connects all downloadable content updates and expansion sets of all kinds. With each new update, additional facets of gameplay are added, explored, fleshed-out, and given to players to keep the game fresh and exciting, and to add value for newer players as the game expands. Iteration on existing mechanics, or simply adding more game, is never a bad thing; even when mistakes are made, improvements result over the long term.

But Guild Wars 2 exists in a vacuum where story takes overwhelming priority over gameplay. Its developer, rightfully inspired by the likes of tabletop RPG’s, have arbitrarily decreed its characters and stories to be the most valuable form of “content,” and missed the fine print that states that a DM has to continually create a massive world full of interesting places and fun encounters in order to keep his players engaged, regardless of the static nature of the game mechanics. Alas, they haven’t made a tabletop RPG. They’ve made an MMORPG. A video game genre which, more so than any tabletop campaign, lives and dies on its ability to provide players with exciting things to do.

And yet here we stand, over a year and a half later, with little by way of additional engaging gameplay. Living World has turn out like a collection of very short stories tied together into a small novella. The Season 1 novella was simply burned chapter-by-chapter with a “Too bad, we’re being innovative” excuse. The Season 2 novella is shaping up to be its own waste of time, a collection of story beats with deplorably half-baked mechanics thrown in which will have eaten up development time that could’ve been spent on a massive collection of zones and dungeons and fixes to WvW complemented by appropriate story beats. Time that could’ve been spent on enormous amounts of gameplay. An expansion. (An obscenity, I know.)

Every interview ArenaNet partakes in concerning the Living World development pipeline makes them seem like they’re constantly on the verge of exploding. It’s as if artists and writers and designers don’t have enough time to flesh out their ideas with any true depth before they cycle on to a future update. They’ve constructed a production line in a creative business, the dangers of which I should not have to elaborate on.

Fact is, improvement in voice actors aside, the otherwise decent story Season 2 is telling would work far better as the aforementioned novella or as a series of released short stories, with playable content tying into these characters and places tangentially as a pacing element for new, exciting gameplay and tons of awesome content (like a potential HOST of new Maguuma zones). But our “new” gameplay is instead Zephyrite crystals, we have one new zone, and our time every couple of weeks is spent clicking through too-simple dialogs and engaging mediocre mechanics. That party in Divinity’s Reach would’ve made for a fun read, but instead it made for a tedious slog.

There’s a reason GW1’s expansion structure was so successful. There’s also a reason your community insists on new Super Adventure Box content. It’s because they were meaningful, engaging, fun gameplay. Do not underestimate the value of those lessons.