Guild Wars 2

I appreciated chatting with you Sorann. Have a good night

Sorann, happy to oblige.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-14-guild-wars-2-in-steep-decline-in-weak-q4-for-ncsoft

For me… I just don’t think the balance is there. The hero doesn’t feel like the main character, and for me, that betrays one of the fundamental rules of a narrative. The perspective character should be the main character, unless there is an extremely compelling reason for that not to be the case. There’s no reason the storyline cannot show a living breathing world through the eyes of your character instead of NPC spotlighters.

Sorann, I think the only part of the personal story that I didn’t play was the very last mission, so I missed that and will absolutely concede the point there… However, with the living story, I still feel like the focus isn’t on the character, but on the world, as Arena Net has all but directly said.

This is also demonstrated in their priorities; By deciding not to make new dungeons, and focusing instead on this living story of the world, they’ve very clearly drawn their line in the sand. This year’s earnings reports ($32 million, down from $112 million) is easily explained away by saying “Well people aren’t buying the game anymore, but revenue is still coming in from the gem shop”. I will be interested to see if their strategy will see a growth in the next quarter, or if it will decline.

Later after I put GW2 away for a while, I said many disparaging things about her. Some of them were even true… I blamed the lack of emphasis on dungeons, the unappealing and unenjoyable nature of said dungeons, and the overall disorganized feel of this new “living story” made me seek for new horizons, but… the truth is, all of these claims aren’t the reason I uninstalled Guild Wars 2. I uninstalled because Arena Net lied to me. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but they did.

You see, after about thirty or forty levels of personalized story (which was amazing) the game’s tale began converging. No longer were you the Asura’s most promising upstart, or one of the most promising hunters among the Nords… you became a fledgeling in one of the three huge organizations in the guild. Then you became Trehearne’s right hand man. It didn’t matter where you started, but in the end, you always ended up in the same place. A story that didn’t really belong to you. Ultimately, the story was about another group of adventurers that you had to harangue in to doing the right thing. Then, though, it got worse with Living Story. From one group of NPCs to another, you’re still “the main character’s friend”.

In one of the message forums complaining about how the living story was spotlighting the “GMPCs” too much, BobbyStein’s comments perfectly summed up why I quit GW2, and why I probably won’t be reinstalling unless there’s some pretty major changes.

“For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.”

Read more at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please

To Bobby Stein and the GW2 staff, your game promised me something… It promised me a story about my character. You’re right, choosing the world over an individual character is not an invalid choice… but it’s not the one you said you were pursuing. This change from values is the real reason I am unhappy with GW2. I thought, for once, that an MMO got it right, that an MMO remembered for once that in storytelling, the perspective character should ALWAYS be the main character. No MMO has really ever prioritized my character’s story… but they didn’t tell me they were going to.

To this day, I want to love Guild Wars 2. I DO love parts of it. But much like an ex-girlfriend from five years ago, I love the memory of the game more than the game itself. Maybe they’ll change, maybe it could come around, and I keep coming to forums and occasionally reinstalling to see… but… well, for now, back to Wildstar. (And they charge me monthly for that one.)

It was the summer of 2012. Obama’s reelection campaign was in full swing, the word “Santorum” got redefined, and if you believed a good tenth of America, the world was about to end. I was in the basement of my friend’s house in Bellevue, Washington, and I had just fallen in love. No, it wasn’t to my current fiancée, who I didn’t meet until later that year. It was to an MMORPG: Guild Wars 2.

I had a long history with MMORPGs. I had an immature and ill-advised relationship with Runescape at one point, but other than that, my first true love was World of Warcraft. When I realized WoW was just using me for my money, I dumped it, and uninstalled. Afterward, I had a couple one night stands with Mabinogi and a couple of other fly by night games. I tried Eve Online, but we ended up being interested in different things. I hung out with Aion for a bit, but that game was just too high maintenance. I even hooked up with World of Warcraft again, for a couple months… but I’m pretty sure it started using drugs. I left it for good when they started spouting some nonsense about pandas and karate.

Then… came Guild Wars 2.

When my friend invited me to try the beta, I was already pretty jazzed for the game. The classes looked fun and interesting, and they promised some new innovations with crafting. I was skeptical about their combat systems, but I was open to trying it. I sat down, and she allowed me to make a character. I started basic… I made a human, and chose the Ranger class (er, profession. Whatever.) and did some physical customizing.
I actually was a little discouraged when I was choosing hair and body types. The choices I had were limited, and frankly, I wasn’t all that impressed with what WAS available, but I kept an open mind. I don’t think I’m all that shallow (Except that one time I dated ahem played Vanguard. I’m… sure she has a great personality.) Then… something unexpected happened. The game asked me what my character’s biggest regret was. I blinked.

I hadn’t expected this, that was for sure… but the game didn’t stop there! It asked me about who raised me. Then it asked me what God people thought I was closest to! And then, if it were possible, the game shocked me even more. It’s strange that I only played GW2 for about a year, but I still remember the moment I thought I’d never play anything but… It was one line. Later, I found out that your character actually says the line, but we had our sound muted. It didn’t matter; just reading this one sentence sent shivers down my spine. It made me feel powerful. It made me buy the game just to get early access. This one sentence is why I kept playing two months or so after my guild collapsed and I wasn’t having fun. This one sentence:

“I am Litany Duskbreaker, and this is My Story.”

bewhatever.2390:

Shotgun Sonata.5017:

I really appreciate the voiced support of my original post. I’m glad to hear more people like me clamoring for some permanent content.

Here’s my confusion. From a player standpoint and as a business standpoint, why does temporary content make any sense? (Holiday dungeons not withstanding) Think about it. If they make a new dungeon for the rise of the new Rainbow Dragon or whatever, why would they make it disappear in two months? I would occasionally want to return to that dungeon if I enjoy it. Oh and by the way? Making dungeons isn’t easy. So why waste the effort by throwing it out the window? -_-

I’m not looking for a difficulty increase. What I am looking for is more dungeon style content at THIS difficulty. I wouldn’t object to harder content per se, but what I want is variety.

Picture a game developer, who sees “the players” blow through any new content in a week, and then get bored.

This isn’t really the majority of the player base, it’s just the few percent with a lot of time on their hands (and probably a lot of player skill and a lot of focus on blowing through the content as well). These are the achievers as described by Bartle some years ago, not the explorers or others.

Now, let’s let the developer get fixated on those few players and the fact that they are getting bored with nothing to do, and that they do not need quality content because they don’t go deep in it, they just blow through it. So the answer is frequent content of modest depth and whatever quality can happen on that schedule.

We saw this developer prioritization error occur before early in WoW, where Jeff Kaplan got fixated on the raiders who’d beaten his raid instances ahead of schedule, and diverted what seemed like the majority of development resources to raid content only 0.1% of the players would ever see. Same error, different result.

I personally am part of what I would hope are the majority of players, who go through the content a lot slower, can’t make it through many of the living story events in the 2 weeks allowed, and place no value on content which vanishes before I can complete it.

Can you see the business rationale, given the (what I hope is incorrect) assumption?

Actually yes, that makes an unfortunate amount of sense.

So another MMO, Aion, had a system they never used for its intended purpose: Surveys. It ended up being a resource for giving players rewards and free items at certain levels and accomplishments.

I think Guild Wars 2 needs to do a survey and get the voice and the pulse of its player base. Offer some cool skin, or maybe 300 gems, or a small handful of gold, and get people to answer some questions that I think Arena Net NEEDS to hear the answers to.

Forums are great for us to vent to each other, but they can never be indicative of the majority, only indicative of a vocal group of dissenters. People who are happy with how things are going never make their voices heard.

I really appreciate the voiced support of my original post. I’m glad to hear more people like me clamoring for some permanent content.

Here’s my confusion. From a player standpoint and as a business standpoint, why does temporary content make any sense? (Holiday dungeons not withstanding) Think about it. If they make a new dungeon for the rise of the new Rainbow Dragon or whatever, why would they make it disappear in two months? I would occasionally want to return to that dungeon if I enjoy it. Oh and by the way? Making dungeons isn’t easy. So why waste the effort by throwing it out the window? -_-

I’m not looking for a difficulty increase. What I am looking for is more dungeon style content at THIS difficulty. I wouldn’t object to harder content per se, but what I want is variety.

I’d like to preface this thread a bit by saying I am not trolling. I am not trying to elicit anger or extreme reactions. What I would like to do is express concerns and see if anyone echos them. If I am alone in these, well, I suppose I shall once again brave the barren wastes, looking for an MMO that suits what I want in a game. If I am not alone, perhaps we could get some feedback from ANET about these concerns.

I am a dungeoneer. I greatly enjoy dungeon running and organized content. That being said, I’ve won. I’ve beaten every dungeon and gotten down to as far as fractals interest me. I participate in end game content and “living story” when I can, but here’s my concern… What am I reaching for now? I’ve hit level 80, I’ve explored the majority of the world, I’ve begun working on some ascended gear, but… What’s the point? I have no interest in going deeper in to fractals. I have no interest in making MY damage output a slightly higher percentage of the overall damage output on events. There’s nothing more to reach and strive for, except maybe WvW, which really only provides a meta benefit to PvE (and I’m not a PvP player, so I don’t like WvW for WvW’s sake.)

Are there going to be more dungeons? Should there be? Am I alone in wanting more consistent content? Yes, living stories have individual dungeons (that go away) and you are focused on the living story more than dungeoneering, but is there any intention at all to set a new bar for us to reach for? I feel like I’ve beaten Guild Wars 2, and while yes, I can explore some extra content, there’s nothing more for me to strive for.

If the intention is to not set that bar any higher, but to just give us more and more living story events… I think I may be done. I am not threatening or giving ultimatums, but to me, the point of a video game is trying to get better, to improve the character, to make more progress. I’m not making progress in GW2. I’m watching filler episodes.

So Arena Net, fellow players, am I alone in these concerns? Does anyone else wish the bar could occasionally be moved up once in a while? Will there be new, harder dungeons? Or is it time for me to move on?