Let me give you another perspective on play it your way, perhaps different than the OP or Dashingsteel who has made excellent points. I had no problems in terms of play it your way in GW2 so let’s go back to the beginning of HoT. …lots to address, but don’t want a tl;dr…
OK, I understand the frustration with HoT and the level design (as I too had/have issues with those), but that is more a gripe about not wanting to run around on poorly designed maps, with a broken minimap while also trying not to die to anything that is just outside the one or two safe way points on the map.
All that being said, you can very easily play HoT story almost straight through, with a few side runs for a handful of mastery points to help round out the ones you get during story mode stuff to complete the main story. After that, yes, getting full map complete will require taking the time to do some extra MP giving meta events (especially in Dragonstand where they are handed out like candy) so you can get the masteries fully unlocked. And here’s the kicker: you don’t have to even get them all unlocked. You can if you’re a completionist, but in reality you don’t need them all. As of right now I’m just casually getting MPs to chip away at a few last ones that are nice to have but are completely not necessary.
Now, did i like them sticking aspects of the story behind needing to unlock a mastery to even do the next step? No. I thought that was poor game design. And I too griped that I wasn’t being allowed to just play the game. So I skulked off to grind experience and find random MPs I hadn’t gotten and in doing so I visited parts of the map the story and metas hadn’t taken me before. I started just exploring the map. As a vet I had lost the explorer mindset by HoT and just wanted to push through it and this forced me to sit back and essentially enjoy the view.
In hindsight I’m glad I did.
Tangled Depths still eats a bag of Richards, but I don’t think anything can fix that map.
I believe we have a lot we can agree on. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and perspective.
Major snip
So for me, I’m glad they went the route of having a vertical HoT. It is indeed frustrating at times, but it is super unique! I haven’t seen a map like it in any MMO, ever. It is grand, beautiful, and exploring is more fun than any area of any MMO.
It really sucks that you don’t like having to explore to get to your places, but I understand thats part of “Play your way”, but in this instance, there isn’t a way to get a unique feeling like this without it being kinda slightly niche.
My complaint though, which we both agree on I believe, is the part where you mentioned you need 2 abilities which you don’t have yet to get to an event. That right now, is what sucks about HoT. Not only that, but having to chase down masteries makes it even worse.
Thanks for the thoughtful even-handed response. The only thing that I would like to emphasize is that I actually love exploration. True fact: my first title in WoW was the Explorer. And I don’t have a problem with the vertical element per se. It’s really the platforming aspect that I have a problem with. And, the nature of the puzzle, at least in the initial examples, was that there were no clues about where to navigate to you just had to kind of brute force it. I get that the puzzle aspect implicit in platforming is fun for a lot of people. I think part of it has to do with my age. I actually was old enough to enter bars when Pong was just making its way into bars as a novelty game. By the time I was playing arcade games (other than pin ball) I was old enough to just be able to marvel at the dexterity of 13 year olds playing Defender. I could never play it competitively. Respect!
That’s my story. I loved that GW2 had platforming and I loved that I could avoid it. I was disappointed that is was so center stage in HoT. Between the platforming and the annoying mobs I decided within a couple hours that I wouldn’t be playing HoT beyond getting gliding (worth the cost of the expansion) and the ranger pets. Cheers!
Ok guys, you really need to work on the movement of mounts. They feel slow and clumsy. I understand that you wanted to make them feel special, since they are bigger and all, but really, their movement sucks. Make it faster, crisper and smoother.
And please make the movement (navigation) correspond to my navigation keybinds. I have strafe-left/strafe-right bound in place of turn-left/turn/right. I would intuitively expect that the mount would navigate using the same keybinds. And, this is, not unexpectedly, how mounts work in other games as well. I wonder if the devs bench-marked mounts in other games before creating them here. And, before you say this is not other games, of course it is. The GW2 that shipped was distinctive; the GW2 today not so much.
I hope the skimmer mount mantra ray thing has a strafe movement for all you strafe lovers. Would give it a different flavor from the raptor mount. Personally love the raptor’s movement.
The problem here is that you navigate from muscle memory and keybinds. Your character and each mount should navigate in a similar manner given the setup of your keybinds.
Take it from one who has years of experience with mounts in other games. They should move in a manner exactly corresponding to your character navigation. I have a modified wasd shifted one key to the right so that my little finger rests on ‘a’. ‘s’ is strafe-left and ‘f’ is strafe-right. When I press those keys the mount should move in a manner corresponding to how my characters move. I’m not saying that a mount should ‘feel’ like a character just that they should navigate exactly like a character.
No they shouldn’t and this is not other games. What you described was weightless, lifeless reskin of superspeed, current control of mount is way better, it adds weight to the control and makes you feel like actually driving something.
I said explicitly that I wasn’t talking about ‘feel’. Would it help if I referred to it as ‘weight’? Very good, the mount may feel like it has weight, but it should respond to my navigation keys as I’ve set them up. If it does it will make you feel like you are actually driving something.
Yeah, “no updrafts” made me want to pre-order. But then the thread on mounts. They don’t correspond to character movement, so I can’t strafe right or left. I’ve been riding mounts since forever in several games and they all work the same—why does GW2 want to break this mold? I guess that it is a fact that mounts don’t gate content in other games so maybe anet feels they can innovate here. I certainly don’t like it.
Take it from one who has years of experience with mounts in other games. They should move in a manner exactly corresponding to your character navigation. I have a modified wasd shifted one key to the right so that my little finger rests on ‘a’. ‘s’ is strafe-left and ‘f’ is strafe-right. When I press those keys the mount should move in a manner corresponding to how my characters move. I’m not saying that a mount should ‘feel’ like a character just that they should navigate exactly like a character.
Wow. Ok.
I can level my character from 1-80 however I want. That has not changed. In fact as a vet player I can scroll/tome to level 80 and then run like a mad man through the core maps hitting every hp and then do the same on the HoT maps just so I can have a surplus come PoF should i choose to get it.
And while some of the masteries (specifically for core tyria) can be annoying to get (I’m looking at you LW season 2), there are a bunch more that are easier to get and encourage doing different things in the game to get them. As for HoT mastery points, sure they can be difficult to get, but that’s part of the fun. I know i have a handful I still need to earn in Dragonstand at some point and a few others probably hidden about, but I’m not overly pressed since I got the important ones out of the way. I still play as i like and where I like.
Let me give you another perspective on play it your way, perhaps different than the OP or Dashingsteel who has made excellent points. I had no problems in terms of play it your way in GW2 so let’s go back to the beginning of HoT. Upon entry probably most players immediately died a few times to mobs who looked the equivalent of gnats or mosquitoes but they were mosquitoes who drank your blood by the pint. Annoying but maybe things will get better. After X number of deaths you spot an objective on the mini-map and it’s an objective that will advance the game. Yay! You then navigate towards the objective and to the edge of a cliff. You see a platform below and the objective appears to be there so you jump down. You look around for awhile and its nowhere to be found. So you make the logical next jump from the platform you are on to the youtube platform where you discover that the objective is on still another platform and that, moreover, you will need two additional abilities (that you don’t currently have) before you can reach the desired platform.
To my horror, platform by platform, I was discovering that HoT was nothing but a extended platformer but not strictly as usually, in platformers, the next platform is visible in the user interface, and here it’s not. HoT is a Platformer Obscura where the first logical jump is always to the youtube platform (if you don’t want to brute force it). So, what’s my issue with this? I hate platformers. I actually thought jumping puzzles were great and brilliantly implemented in GW2. They were there for those who loved them and could be avoided without penalty by those who didn’t. Brilliant!
So, my immediate issue with HoT is that platforming is not my way of playing an MMO. I had no issue with GW2 in this regard, but it’s in my face constantly in HoT. It is such an obvious violation of play it your way that it’s probably going to be observed and commented upon by the player base. And witness this thread and the hundreds of others like it since the release of HoT. There will probably be hundreds more after the release of PoF. Why? Because many people bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the big ideas of GW2. And, play it your way was one of those big ideas.
I think the general trend in gaming is simplification and is most easily seen by a screenshot of a WoW build in Wrath and a current one. The idea is that there are training wheels on so that it’s easier and more likely to arrive at a decent build while simultaneously making it difficult to arrive at a horribly bad one.
Still it is possible to erect barriers to entry in the form of game systems that grow ever more complex as they grow by accretion. GW2 was simpler and less complex than HoT in this regard and I’m talking game systems and not referencing the combat discussion above. Parsimony is a good design goal to maintain near the top of the list.
Because, Raine, sometimes “balance” patches are an opportunity for the developer to change how a spec functions at a core level. It seems that, in your perfect world, every spec is 100% functional, smooth, and fun, and all that needs to be adjusted are simple percentages. Sadly, this is not reality. If a spec does not play well in the eyes of most players, the developer is obligated to change it. If a spec does not fit the developer’s design philosophy, either current or future, and they wish to change it – regardless of what players think – then that’s also their right. Ultimately, you’re playing their game, not yours.
The Berserker Power change was meant to encourage a different gameplay style for Warrior. ANet wants Warriors feeling better about using bursts at less than 3 Adrenaline, for whatever reason – perhaps because of Spellbreaker, or perhaps because they just felt like having 3 Adrenaline bars was pointless when only 3 (or 1, during Berserk) were ever used. Was the change less then ideal for current balance? Of course. Should ANet change Primal Bursts so that they give the bonus of 3 bars, not 1? Obviously. But the change itself had nothing to do with balance – yet it was done anyways. Ask yourself why. No, the answer isn’t “to drive away customers!”.
As a side note, Blizzard was notoriously bad at balancing during Cataclysm.
That, Corax, would be class redesign. And the desired output of redesign would be a balanced state. So, whether it’s peaks and valleys balance of, ideally, properly designed classes or class redesign, the goal is the same, a balanced state of the game. My question remains.
Also interesting is your notion of it being their game. This is a common perception and usually employed as in “they want you to play this way”. I think differently about games and gaming. Consider you character(s) and the notion of character progression. If you understand the dynamics their is massive ownership going on and this is true for the heavy fantasy roleplayer and the gamer who just enjoys playing the game. Typically you care about your skills and abilities, how your character looks, etc. You invest and to some degree identify. This is a given and understood implicitly by players and developers alike. But, for some reason this knowledge remains hidden to some when you move to the level of the game. You inhabit the game world, you “live” there sometimes for significant portions of each day. And, if the game has succeeded you will have a sense of it being your game. This is why “play it your way” was understood and taken up by the player community. And, it is simultaneously why it is dangerous for a game when it becomes obvious to players that the game is not theirs, that they are merely there to satisfy the game god’s list of does and dont’s. Food for thought.
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This question has mystified me from the beginning of my MMO experience. Some 7 or 8 years ago I was happily playing a survival hunter in another game. The game thought that survival was too strong so they nerfed a key ability to the ground while simultaneously buffing the marksmenship spec to a point where it was stronger than the original too strong survival spec. Patch day came and all hunters switched to marksmanship. I stood there scratching my head. Why would you even think that this behavior would remotely contribute to game balance. And, look, you have three specs there why wouldn’t you want each to be viable.
My own philosophy is that all dps classes and specs provide the same basic functionality (reducing an opponents hp to zero while maintaining yours) but do so in different ways. So, we have notions of direct damage and dot damage, burst and sustained, and so on. We also have different classes/specs as possessing interesting counters to both game mechanics and other classes/specs. All classes should be similarly serviceable at doing their thing, which they do, perhaps, differently. Patch day should never simply be a signal that everyone needs to change their spec. Balance of properly designed classes should merely be addressing obvious and unintended peaks and valleys—balance should never be perceived by players as gutting an existing class /spec. I understand the complexity inherent in the undertaking of balance but I still don’t understand why it can’t be done way better than it currently is.
If you go to the wiki (google mystic coin) you’ll see that mystic coins are used for a whole bunch of stuff. And, generally speaking, for items in inventory I maintain an inventory and periodically sell off 50 or 100. Because, you just never know…
Didn’t even the devs admit that that was a stupid quote?
I don’t recall them calling it a stupid quote but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. That’s exactly how you go about changing your mind and heading in a different direction. When they reversed themselves on vertical progression, Mike said “How is introducing VP respecting the player? Because it’s fun to be challenged and rewarded. Because it’s fun to have the character you play grow and evolve over time.Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” He was, in effect, saying that their pre-release position on vertical progression was wrong, or as you say “stupid”. Same difference.
The point is that “play it your way” was a big idea at the release of GW2 along with the absence of vertical progression, non-competitive resource nodes and the like. It was not an idea that was bounded or qualified as suggested above, it was rather one of the big ideas of GW2. These design principles distinguished GW2 as another kind of MMO, something different than WoW. This is exactly what caused me to pre-order and play beta. And, GW2 was everything they promised—it was a breath of fresh air. And, this is precisely why a lot of us have problems with the direction the game took after launch, here the current absence of “play it your way”. And, it’s been awhile, eh? Some of us really, really liked GW2.
To empower player freedom with the mastery system all that needs to be done is the elimination of mastery points and allow experience to fill the mastery bars to achieve the mastery.
This was also my realization. (It actually, for me, came from the paragon system in Diablo.) XP based horizontal progression is the only thing that will absolutely guarantee progression from playing the game your way. I don’t believe it needs to be the only way to progress your character. I actually feel a well-rounded game will have multiple lines of progression possible and there can certainly be options that a player decides among. For instance, I’m perfectly OK with the notion of faction rep and rewards and the like. It’s just that there must be something progressing the game in a meaningful way from your play of the game alone.
All of the core principles the game launched with were up for grabs by November of the first year. I think that GW2 maintained play it your way up until Dry Top/HoT. (The idea that you wouldn’t have to prepare to have fun was gone with the implementation of vertical progression in November 2012.)
With HoT you have required platforming with the addition of masteries which initially are nothing more than platforming tools. From that point play it your way was gone.
With PoF it looks like some of the heavy-handedness of HoT has been toned down but mounts will gate content. PoF is not play it your way. They should have been a fun and travel QoL addition to the game. You should have been able to do anything in PoF without a mount. The easiest way to understand it is that they want you to use mounts and you must play it their way, not yours, if you want to play the game.
It would be interesting to have Jason articulate the current design philosophy the way all of Anet did prior to the launch of GW2. Anet largely went dark after the 11/2012 AMA on reddit. There has never been a true communication of principles since the launch of GW2. We’re pretty much left in the dark to suss out our surmisings from their actual behavior. I prefer a more collaborative relationship.
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Certainly an interesting idea that others have found compelling. However, it’s really not anything I’ve longed for. I have 25+ characters at max level and I don’t believe that concentrating them down through multi-professions is really what I was going for.
I’m not going to argue about how players should use the level 80 boost. I’m not a badge wearing member of the play police and I prefer to leave those decisions to players. I believe it is extremely valuable to play through the game several times, but after 8 or so times a boost is probably in order. I have 25+ (I forget) max level characters and I don’t want to ever level another one 1-80. It’s nice to have this option for players who desire it. Good for the game, good for the players. Nothing but winning here.
Balance is hard to pull off in any game and I’ve never played one where balance wasn’t heavily criticized at every juncture. I do remember thinking that SWTOR was very well balanced at inception but that all changed soon enough.
That said, this particular package of balance changes is one of the worst I’ve seen in my years of gaming. Too much it continues to marginalize build diversity in the core builds and merely serves as a pointer to the solution: buy PoF. Pretty sad if you ask me.
The changes to the Guardian Staff were perhaps the most perplexing of the lot. The Staff was never a strong weapon. But, I almost always had one equipped in the open world and actually felt good about it. I felt good about playing my Guardian with a staff. With this change I will be angry when playing my Guardian with a staff. I guess it’s kindest and most charitable to assume that Anet made these changes on purpose, with the idea that they were improving something and not just to make players angry.
I think it was a joint lobbying effort by the art teams and their supporters; they just wanted a way to show-off their work. The art remains the singular standout feature of GW2. While there have been issues aplenty with GW2, art has never been a problem.
We can use gliding in core Tyria as well since it was introduced with HoT, so of course you will be able to glide in PoF. As for updrafts etc., no, they want you to use mounts, so those HoT specialties will be marginal at best.
“they want you to use mounts”
This really illustrates my point above. It’s descriptive of a heavy-handed design philosophy that needlessly discounts the way players may want to play. It’s like the WoW meme where a players asks whether they will ever have servers with previous expansions as they were and a dev informs the player that he doesn’t really want that: “you think you do, but you don’t”. It the meme that best describes the heavy-handed approach native to WoW.
So, I agree that they really do want us to use mounts and they’re going to design it such that you will really need them. I wish the “play it your way” meme had won the day with GW2. I can understand WoW dictating play but it really doesn’t fit somehow here.
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It’s interesting how you frame it with gliding that it has a “marginal role” in core Tyria. I myself see it as fundamental in core Tyria as it’s how I navigate and travel. I think the better distinction is around whether it gates content. In HoT gliding is a REQUIRED platforming tool that gates content—you can’t do the content without gliding. From what we’ve seen so far it looks like mounts will function in a similar manner, they will be required to access some content.
The distinction is useful, gating content, as you would never gate content behind an ability like gliding or mounts if you had an overarching philosophy of “play it your way”. You should be able to reach core game objectives any way you want and not have to pick up a required tool. But, as GW2 has ditched this element of design philosophy, play it your way, it really doesn’t matter that much now.
but how do you buff core specs without simultaneously buffing the elites?
if you make core things better then the people with elite specs will simply incorporate them into their spec.make axes and blood magic better for necros and you’ll have reapers taking blood magic and using axes.
make staff and fire tree better for eles and you’ll have weavers using staffs and the fire tree.
The way to do it and promote true build diversity is to treat all potential specs the same. What do I mean by that? In some sense you need to anticipate what builds are present; the builds you are creating. And, what you are doing is packaging various trade-offs. Different builds offer different playstyles and counters to game mechanics and other player’s. You have elements such as direct damage and DOT damage, sustained damage and burst damage. You don’t set out to make anything more powerful, you want interesting playstyles and counters to everything, which make for interesting playstyles.
The problem here is that Anet is not trying to achieve balance, and it’s elusive regardless, but rather they are selling something new and making sure it is shiny.
I think the ability to gather mounted should be limited to Druids in flight form. Oh wait!
The game has chosen the value of offering the players a choice of what to do. It’s actually limited, but I think this is good and fits with the “play it your way” value that GW2 shipped with. However, the game no longer is “play it your way” in any principled meta sense so it could certainly be more prescriptive.
I don’t actually see a problem with the choices offered though. When you start you need to pick a starting zone. If you really don’t want to make a decision here pick your racial starting zone—problem solved. Then “uncover” the map. This is an ARPG concept of simply systematically navigating around the zone and, here in GW2, completing the objectives which appear on the map: poi’s, vistas, hearts, etc. When you are 100% go to a usually adjacent zone rinse and repeat. Simple.
As this is essentially what all games require of the player while leveling I can’t work myself up to finding a problem with GW2’s implementation of it.
Yes, core builds, except for a couple niche ones, are gone and forgotten. One person above misunderstood the presence of core trait lines meaning that core builds were still relevant—not so. Anet has chosen to simply create new fotm options, i.e., too powerful to pass up. It’s pretty much the opposite of fostering true build diversity but it’s the road Anet has taken and it looks like PoF simply continues down that path.
On WoW as an RNG factory, the other day a guildie swore he picked one character on the loading screen and the game loaded a different one. I thought (and said), well, RNG has finally hit the loading screen—I knew it would happen eventually.
But, as others have mentioned, Warrior might be the class you are looking for. And, power would be the way to go initially. Metabattle.com has lots of different builds and ideas that are helpful. As you are leveling you might want to work towards something like:
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Phalanx_Strength
This is before you get Berserker. But, just use it for ideas. Warrior will be relatively easy to level and you just want to make trait choices that make general sense.
When I look at spellbreaker I see fun. That said, I hate how they have done elite specs as it runs counter to every notion of build diversity I have ever held. Except for a couple niche applications of core builds anything “new” (elite/spec) will simply function as a new fotm build. Pretty much what you want to avoid in class and build balance, but it’s the path Anet has chosen. They often take the road less traveled, even if it’s a road less traveled for a very good reason.
The first thing I do, literally, and I learned this from others, is to disable auto-targeting in any game I play. With auto-targeting deselected, I now only acquire targets upon selection, usually via tab (target nearest enemy). Consequently, I have no problem with auto-targeting. BTW, auto-targeting is one of the ways hunters earned the distinction “kitten” in WoW dungeons. Having auto-targeting on is usually a prescription for unintended pulls.
Anyway, you might like to try this as well. In terms of targets with or without invulnerability, I would not want targeting to make a decision for me, I would want it to function consistently, i.e., target nearest enemy.
Not everything is going to appeal to every player. I don’t see it inherently wrong to require players to experience a little bit of everything that an expansion has to offer when progressing their character/account. As long as there are enough choices where someone doesn’t have to reasonably do a lot of what they don’t enjoy, there shouldn’t be any issues.
The condition wherein one has to do as little as possible to progress is inherently better than one in which no choices are available. That said, progression in MMO’s usually involves doing things that are typically found in MMO’s. This can include open world quests, dungeons, and sundry other things that involve playing the character, build included. Minigames involving different skill bars that have zero connection to the character the player chose to build is not something that usually gates MMO progression.
ANet may think it benefits them to “force” players to try fringe content. There will certainly be cases where it does. However, ANet has repeatedly demonstrated they either do not care about or do not understand the psychology of people. As a result of such gating, there will always be cases where “forcing” such play by gating near-universally desirable progression systems behind fringe content is going to anger and cause resentment in some players.
It would be better, psychologically speaking, to entice people to try such things via intrinsic rewards. That way, the probability of resentment is much less. Those who like such content can still do it. It will still be rewarding. This is a win-win. The ANet way, at least as it was at launch HoT, will always be a win-lose.
Agree on this…well said. I really see no benefit coming from a totalitarian approach in requiring niche content (advancing the core game) whether with mini-games or jumping puzzles. Thanks for sharing this.
Not everything is going to appeal to every player. I don’t see it inherently wrong to require players to experience a little bit of everything that an expansion has to offer when progressing their character/account. As long as there are enough choices where someone doesn’t have to reasonably do a lot of what they don’t enjoy, there shouldn’t be any issues.
If someone doesn’t want to do adventures then there should be enough mastery points elsewhere so that they’re not required to obtain a ton from them. If someone doesn’t like platforming, there should be enough options so they don’t have to get a ton of those which they don’t like such as most commune mastery points and stringboxes in HoT.
Requiring players to walk in lockstep with a developers vision is a horrid way to design an MMO. Arenanet understood this with a strong “play it your way” design principle at launch. Sadly, they’ve forgotten many of the original big ideas so I would agree you are in alignment with the current vision. It’s far better to leave niche content on the side (as in the original GW2) where players can choose to enjoy it or avoid it with no penalty. It was a brilliant idea and would make the game so much better going forward.
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Personally, I’d hate to see adventure:
- They take people out of the MMO part of the game.
- They run the same regardless of profession.
- If I wanted to play console games, I would, you know, buy a console.
However, there’s no question that some people love having these in the game. So, I sort of hope that ANet hasn’t wasted the time developing the tech for these only to drop them already.
Have to agree with this. Do you remember when SAB dropped. There were a few more people in one corner of Rata Sum, but the net effect was emptying the world—never a good thing.
Any new content will do the exact same thing until players get bored of it or it goes away (such as with festivals).
Instead, I’d focus on the major complaint from those against adventures in HoT which was with mastery points tied to them. They could have bronze and silver give mastery points with gold reserved for unique rewards. I’m sure that would satisfy many people from both sides.
No, any new content won’t do the same thing. New content, an expansion for example, will change the distribution of players in the open world but it won’t take players out of the open world. Mini-games and other instanced activities will take players out of the open world. That’s what I was talking about. And, I said I actually don’t have a general problem with mini-games—at all—as a thing in themselves. I wasn’t familiar with adventures in HoT because I don’t play platformers. But, if they award mastery points, i.e., are core game by definition, then I would be opposed to them. Mini-games, of any type, jumping puzzles, and the like should be there for those who enjoy them. But, they should not be a vehicle for advancing the core game. Those who don’t like them should be able to avoid them entirely without penalty or opportunity cost. In other words, they should be exactly what they were in GW2. GW2 got it right. HoT was, and is, a completely different game.
IIRC, only a few adventures were in an instance separate from the open world map.
Whether or not mastery points should be rewards from adventures is a matter of opinion and will be nothing more than that. We each have our own opinion. There’s nothing stating what should and shouldn’t be included in PvE progression. That’s entirely up to Anet.
For those curious about one of the PoF adventures:
Whether or not mastery points are awarded for side content is not a matter of opinion. It is, rather, whether or not the core game is advanced by niche content that some enjoy and others detest. Arenanet had an answer for this.
Let me put it into perspective from an arenanet interview pre-release:
“There is, however, a fine line to walk here, and ArenaNet’s fully aware that one wrong move could wreck the nice balance of different elements Guild Wars 2 currently has going for it. So, for now, platforming’s a sideshow – not an individually viable means of progression.”
This was stated many times by Arenanet directly because it was of concern to many of us. These games within the game would be there on the side but wouldn’t be used to advance the core game—what is called a “viable means of progression” above. Mastery points would represent character progression.
I would prefer it that PoF stood on the shoulders of GW2 and extended it rather that continuing down the road of HoT.
This worked brilliantly in GW2. In HoT it is a constant irritant to the extent that many of us simply don’t play it.
Personally, I’d hate to see adventure:
- They take people out of the MMO part of the game.
- They run the same regardless of profession.
- If I wanted to play console games, I would, you know, buy a console.
However, there’s no question that some people love having these in the game. So, I sort of hope that ANet hasn’t wasted the time developing the tech for these only to drop them already.
Have to agree with this. Do you remember when SAB dropped. There were a few more people in one corner of Rata Sum, but the net effect was emptying the world—never a good thing.
Any new content will do the exact same thing until players get bored of it or it goes away (such as with festivals).
Instead, I’d focus on the major complaint from those against adventures in HoT which was with mastery points tied to them. They could have bronze and silver give mastery points with gold reserved for unique rewards. I’m sure that would satisfy many people from both sides.
No, any new content won’t do the same thing. New content, an expansion for example, will change the distribution of players in the open world but it won’t take players out of the open world. Mini-games and other instanced activities will take players out of the open world. That’s what I was talking about. And, I said I actually don’t have a general problem with mini-games—at all—as a thing in themselves. I wasn’t familiar with adventures in HoT because I don’t play platformers. But, if they award mastery points, i.e., are core game by definition, then I would be opposed to them. Mini-games, of any type, jumping puzzles, and the like should be there for those who enjoy them. But, they should not be a vehicle for advancing the core game. Those who don’t like them should be able to avoid them entirely without penalty or opportunity cost. In other words, they should be exactly what they were in GW2. GW2 got it right. HoT was, and is, a completely different game.
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The most beautiful and satisfying skills I’ve ever experienced in game are those associated with the historical d/d Ele. Unfortunately, it was recognized as a successful build that was fun to play. The nerf bat is the crudest skill in the developers toolkit and the one particularly well suited to removing the twin demons of success and fun.
Personally, I’d hate to see adventure:
- They take people out of the MMO part of the game.
- They run the same regardless of profession.
- If I wanted to play console games, I would, you know, buy a console.
However, there’s no question that some people love having these in the game. So, I sort of hope that ANet hasn’t wasted the time developing the tech for these only to drop them already.
Have to agree with this. Do you remember when SAB dropped. There were a few more people in one corner of Rata Sum, but the net effect was emptying the world—never a good thing.
But, my overall feeling is that mini-games serve a fun purpose for many and I wouldn’t want to see them removed en masse. Rather, I think it’s a question of balance and timing through the liturgical calendar of game. My only issue is when they cross over into the core game and become a required activity the way “jumping puzzles” became the meta-activity of advancing the game in HoT.
All that happened is Guildwars 2 found an identity, and tried to run with it. The vanilla game didn’t know what it wanted to be, so it spitballed everything. Some was good, some was bad…. but not nearly enough of it work in concert.
In the time since then, particularly leading up to HOT, the game was forced to pick a path, and used that choice to make itself more coherent. So while it gave up some of its potential in one area, it became cohesive in several others.
There is a running joke in the industry about how the MMO market base wants “something like WoW, but different”. Guildwars 2 tried to be the Anti-WoW, thinking that if they avoid being compared to WoW, that it wouldn’t have to compete with it. What they weren’t expecting was getting the attention of half the WoW population, much less a sizable chunk of them playing the game just to check it out. Even to this day, WoW players who get burnt out on it will ask about this game to see if they want to try it.
And to its credit, Guildwars 2 manages to avoid the more egregious traps WoW clones tend to fall into when trying to replicate concepts popularized by WoW in its hayday. Most people forget that, despite the game play it enabled, the design of Guild wars 1 is a cosmic horror when it comes maintaining it. The fact GW1 didn’t implode under the weight of its skill list, is a testament to how good a job they did for coming up with very distinct, coherent skills and effects. But there is no denying that the movement was awkward most of the time, the kind of things they could mechanically was actually very limited, and that the popularity of the game rested very heavily on the locations, presentation of the story, and very heavily integrated exploration aspect in the game play. Even to this day, the most recalled aspect of the game was wandering around, enjoying the scenery, and treking to remote locations to find rare or unique things. I myself would replay the whole Prophecies story line at least 3 times a year just to relive the story. There are very few single player games I would play more then once…… so that says a lot about where the strength of the Guildwars franchise seems to be found. Which is odd when you consider, overall, the story summery being very mediocre, standard fantasy fare.
Simply put…. Guildwar’s greatest strength is its sense of presentation. If you look at the past complaints of this game, much of the loss of depth in the buildcraft was a secondary concern to how little mileage we get from the game’s story, locations, and sense of purpose. Even today, there are still prominent arguments about figuring out what to do with your time; where as in GW1, that was only problem if you were the type that never thought to look past the quest markers.
The idea that GW2 found an identity and ran with it is absolutely false. Go back and watch the pre-release videos. GW2 was rich in identity and how it differed from everything that had gone before. It was principle rich and had a design philosophy that was explicated for miles.
What we have witnessed over time is the devolution of GW2 and a faltering sense of identity and mission. Within three months of release GW2 added vertical progression to the game. Who would have predicted that from the identity that GW2 launched with? No, we are not witnessing the finding of an identity. HoT was a mad lurch away from the founding philosophy. And, now with the PoF trailer we have allusions to and fond remembrances of what GW2 was at some indeterminate point in the past. If so, it could be the finding of an identity, but it would be the one it already had.
It’s conventional in MMO’s with mounts to restrict their use in certain areas (e.g. indoors, in caves, etc.). I’m mixed on cities and perhaps I’m polluted by fond remembrances of riding through Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
I won’t lie when I say that I was super dissapointed with HoT. I have over 5000 hours played on the core game and stopped playing HoT a few weeks after release.
However, Path of Fire looks absolutely amazing from what I’ve seen so far! The new specializations look amazing. I’ll be really happy to get back to the game.
Agree 100% on HoT. My experience with HoT is similar to yours. With PoF, the jury is still out for me on whether it includes HoT elements that diverge from classical GW2. It looks beautiful, I’ll give it that. Anet is second to none in the art department.
I find this mount aversion perplexing. A mount, at least in this case, is like a tool. If I didn’t like keys, I wouldn’t avoid locked doors. I’d pick up the key, open the lock put the key away and not think about it.
This just feels like taking a stand to just to take a stand to me.
I don’t like mounts because immersion. How is a mount less immersive than walking everywhere? There are animals in the game. Races domesticate animals (including devourers used by charr in the game), seems to me that nothing could be more natural than riding a mount…for immersion.
In truth walking everywhere doesn’t make as much sense as riding a mount.
I think a lot of it has to do with mount trolling in other games. Standing on top of NPCs, blocking views, clutter everywhere, etc.
I myself, was rather anti-mountish, but that’s because I was a a Guild Wars 1 traditionalist.
Now, after seeing them in the announcement video, I’m reservedly excited. I’m just hoping they’re disabled in cities.
I think this is something everyone in the thread can agree with. We should have “no mounts zone” areas mainly around heavily populated zones (like entering the trading post or crafting area) or stopping NPC interaction while mounted. I doubt many people would be oppose to that.
Exactly. WoW does a good job at this. I can’t remember ever being hindered in my interactions with NPCs, vendors, etc. by other people with mounts. All the important vendors are inside a building and in WoW your char automatically dismounts the moment you walk inside a building. But even outside while being out- and about, questing etc. I don’t think I’ve ever successfully been trolled by mounted players.
So really, this ‘mountphobia’ I’m seeing from some people makes no sense to me.
Actually, WoW does a crap job with this. In the main cities, that are the main hubs for pretty much all socializing, people purpously stand over NPC’s, Mailboxes and whatnot. I’m not even talking about the mess with the prattling heirloom mount that are seemingly always manned by AFK people at mailboxes and NPC’s. Also not talking about the seasonal events where seasonal NPC’s are blocked off with mounts that are big as mountains or bellowing smoke and are preferably stacked by hundreds to make the server lag out…. because ‘fun’.
I have no idea what version of WoW you played, or even when, but it has nothing to do with the massive trollfest it is today.
Again, mounts are fine as long as their implementation is well thought out. Not just plonk ’em in everywhere without so much as thinking it through.
That hardly qualifies as ‘mountphobia’, does it? It’s more ‘educated criticism’.
If anything, the group of people that want them ‘no matter what’ seems a bunch less empathetic about it than the ones that want a bit of restrain and thoughtfullness to it.
I played vanilla WoW, TBC, and I recently started playing retail WoW (Legion). I’ve never seen anything you described. Maybe it’s an Alliance thing? Horde people are often more mature, or at least on my servers (Kazzak and Defias Brotherhood) they are.
Besides, last time I checked WoW is programmed in such a way that when a player overlaps a vendor and you try to click on the vendor, the game will understand it’s the vendor you want to click and not the player and thus the vendor window will pop-up with no problem.
And even more so, GW2 doesn’t have this problem at all since we interact with nearby NPCs by pressing ‘F’, not by clicking on them. So you could stack your entire server on the banking NPC and I’d still just as easily access my bank just by pressing ‘F’. No problem whatsoever.
Look, I’m not gonna lie and pretend there will NEVER be ANY problems at all with people trolling with mounts. Players will ALWAYS find new ways to troll other players. That is never going to change, with or without mounts. The only thing I’m disagreeing with is the severity. The nay-sayers think it will be all doom and gloom with mounts and think the game will be a horrible cluttered mess. I think they’re vastly overreacting. It’s not that bad, not even in WoW.
You are correct. If there are five Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth’s sitting on top of a mailbox you can shift your perspective and do a mouseover to access the mailbox. Nothing has ever blocked my ability to access a mailbox. Mounts can be visually annoying at times, obscuring interactables visually and the like; I’ll give him that.
Played since before release. Much, much preferred vanilla in most regards, and in terms of builds especially. I remember pulling off interesting hybrids which was great fun. Today we walk in lockstep and anything new added to the game simply becomes the new FOTM. It was fun designing builds back in the day.
I think about the changes in terms of a great conspiracy. (Here read The Stepford Wives if you haven’t read it or seen the movie.) My theory is that the original developers were replaced by surrogates to despoil the grand thing that was GW2 at release. The Stepford developers were all pretty much in place by November 2012.
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It’s pretty much like it is with everything that Anet does: love the concept, hate the implementation. Loved the mastery idea (horizontal progression), hated it’s implementation. Love the idea of mounts, hate that they will be used to gate content. I love mounts in MMO’s, but I don’t want to have to have a mount to advance the core game. It’s the equivalent of a soft totalitarianism in game design philosophy.
Speaking of design, I was kinda hoping that Jason VandenBerghe would interact with the community on issues of design. But, I guess here he will follow the Anet philosophy and stand aloof.
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Yeah, gliders were the best QoL update to the game ever. I played enough HoT to get that skill and I was out of there. Gliders weren’t the problem, obscure vertical maps which required platforming and platforming tools were the problem. It was an odd kind of platforming where you knew you needed to jump to some platform but didn’t know where it was, so your first jump was always to the youtube platform to find out where the next platform was.
I honestly don’t know whether the mounts are solely platforming tools. I have no problem with them being able to jump over stuff, I love that. If they are required for platforming in the core game for objectives like HoT I’m definitely outta here for another expansion.
You get to play it a little this weekend so there’s that. From the announcement video and after show it looked decidedly better and different than HoT and there were many references to building on GW2. Wooden Potatoes was able to run by mobs and not be swarmed and swallowed alive unlike HoT. I’m ever hopeful but after HoT I won’t pre-purchase. I’ll wait for release, in depth reviews, and feedback on the forums before I buy. If it involves platforming or puzzles in the core game or densely packed annoying mobs I won’t buy.
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I too would prefer more viable options than just the new fotm shiny. Sure it’s a balance issue but here it also has a lot to do with the introduction of new specs. I realize they need to be good but often they’re too good at least in terms of maintaining diversity.
Am I the only one who still doesn’t understand why the stat types were ever changed in the first place? Concentration and expertise are far from intuitive, and ferocity somewhat sits in the same boat. The labels don’t really correlate to their properties.
Critical damage, boon duration, and condition duration make a lot more sense label-wise. I mean, you could better argue that concentration would be a word better fit to add critical damage, and expertise would better fit critical chance.
The way the numbers work in the stats is just fine to me, but the names are goofy.
My thought exactly. The old nomenclature is by far clearer, more straightforward, and preferable. Why would you want to obscure the concepts?
Hmmm, obscure??? This is the equivalent of a HoT map (obscure) but applied to naming. I wonder if HoT was the inspiration for this.
That’s pretty much my whole thing with PoF and the reason I won’t pre-purchase. Does it stand on the shoulders of GW2 and extend it or does it take us down the path of Dry Top and HoT. I won’t buy PoF if platforming and puzzles are required to advance the core game.
Edit: Yes, JustTrogdor, forgot to mention I’ll be looking for the absence of densely packed, annoying mobs as well in making my purchasing decision.
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Racial mounts and class mounts are coming. Count on it.
And let me give one final example. I’ve talked about XP as a basis for progression of some kind post cap. What is XP? Well, let me google ‘XP in games’:
First hit: “An experience point (often abbreviated to exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and role-playing video games to quantify a player character’s progression through the game.”
Ah, experience denoting progression in the game. Why would they use the term experience to denote the thing gained from playing? Let me give an analog. You take a job for which you have no experience and start at minimum wage. Time goes by and you gain experience. As you gain experience your salary goes up. Why? You’ve progressed in terms of your abilities and knowledge gained; you’ve progressed in terms of your experience. Your reward (salary) now reflects your gain in experience. BTW, was that experience gained passively?
This is the concept I’m talking about, progression through experience. It doesn’t mean there are no other mechanism’s for character progression, we want those too (horizontal anyways). What I’m talking about is a baseline form of progression gained by experience, i.e., by playing the game.
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What’s the point of progression if it’s done passively?
It’s not done passively if done through XP. Progression will then occur through playing the game. Playing the game is never passive. Progression, and reward itself, should always come through playing the game. The benefit with using XP is that it allows the player to largely play the game their way and still progress along the horizontal scale.
I know “play it your way” sounds foreign to many ears, but it didn’t to the original developers of GW2.
Earning XP from just playing the game is doing so passively. It’s the difference between farming gold in SW or Fractal 40 vs earning gold from monsters/events as they do whatever. It’d be like Anet removing all farms and increasing that players earned from just playing the game. Earning that gold becomes a passive effect just as earning progressing masteries if they only needed XP.
You also forget that the masteries of HoT tended to be spread out to get players do to a wide range of content to experience more of HoT. Otherwise, players would have done the AB farm only and have all of their masteries maxed. It makes the masteries kind of pointless as a progression system at that point.
Please demonstrate earning XP passively. I’ve never seen it done. Try it for yourself. Make a character and go stand in a corner of Lion’s Arch and watch your XP bar. What happens?
Yes, I understand perfectly well that masteries in HoT are meant to channel players into game modes and activities. This would be the very definition of “play it our way, the way we intend it to be played”. I was championing the opposite: play it my way. It’s an old value from before the release of GW2—admittedly it hasn’t been gaining ground as a principle of design since then.
And, progression through playing the game would never be pointless—it would rather be progression.