Guild Wars 2

For the love of Sigmar can we just finish off the Elder dragons and salvage the horrible personal storyline already? Then focus on living world content? or better yet, don’t make things up(like Southsun) but rather have it evolve around the main story.

*I understand the need for a breath of fresh air but we need to get back on topic.

Idk about getting excited, but they way some pvpers treat someone who is new to pvp is enough to put you off ever doing it again, so perhaps if pvpers need more peeps, try being nicer to new players who join.

Wolfheart.1938:

If you are referring to the song, that certainly was a weird moment for me. Is that a reference to something?

Pirates of Penzance, only one of the greatest comedy operas of all time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Penzance

i think jumping ultimately should serve to have sense, i mean the problem in gw1 was that in order to exit from a fence you had to find a door and it didn’t make any sense because a little jump would do. jumping should be a way to break barriers in the world and feel it like it is more open with no barrier put there because they are needed.

look at skyrim, there was no barrier at all in the open world, the only barrier used made very much sense.

but when jumping become the core of the game, and even the profession you chose doesn’t matter anymore, what is the difference between my mesmer and super mario?

in dragon ball arena, super adventure box, mad king clock tower, wintersday jumping puzzle, wintersday mini pvp game, halloween mini pvp game and lastly the sanctum sprint i wasn’t my profession anymore, i was just somebody with same skills and stat like anybody else and my profession couldn’t do any difference, only the lag made the difference and the pc performance.
and that is a way to try to be fair but fail miserably. if i have to defeat other players in a race we should gather around a wii and have all the same performance, based on the same internet connection…

don’t get me wrong, i can still enjoy this new content but it’s not the reason i play on line. and to be honest i complete it only because i want reward and achievement, if it was optional (no reward and no achievement and no title) i would completely skip most of them, maybe i would give it just some try

Ratty.5176:

The issue I feel is that we can’t ever go back to those days. With the advent of the internet it’s far too easy to bypass them with guides. It’s really noticable in GW2. There is a fair amount of story there, and there are some puzzles. But I get the feeling that any content that is based on this now will last no time at all, due to the fact people will log onto Dulfy, and just follow the step by step guide.

I don’t think we will see a return to it until AI gets high enough that quality content (not just sprawling Diablo style random dungeons) can be generated on the fly to the extent that making Guides is nigh on impossible.

Very good points on people using spoilers to blow through content, and that ultimately the fix to that is AI which does not allow rote or practiced responses.

But there’s another point which is important to me as a customer (player):

I buy an MMO to adventure, sometimes solo and sometimes with friends, in an immersive world. I commit time to learning not just a particular world, but to learning and advancing my character, my presence in that world.

In the next room over, I have both a Playstation 3 and a Nintendo Wii. Their power cords are not connected to the wall. After trying both, I prefer an immersive MMO world, thank you.

The MMO has both a server somewhere across the internet and a client, which are exchanging protocol to stay reasonably in sync on where I am and what I am doing. The representations of the world in client and server are mostly congruent, but they do deviate and there are artifacts in game play which result. Roughly speaking, it’s good enough for the client and server to update each other every second or so. And if my screen shows me 5 feet away from where the server thinks I am at any instant, it doesn’t make a lot of difference.

The Playstation or Nintendo has a single piece of software, only one view of the world, and can be precise to within a pixel and is quite capable of updating my position at frame rate (sub millisecond response and tens or hundreds of updates per second). Position is as precise as the ground coordinate system.

This means the Playstation or Nintendo is fundamentally much more fit for twitch content, and for the kind of precise movement or positioning one sees in a jump puzzle, than an MMO engine is.

Just as an FPS, with a much smaller world that does much more frequent updates of the position, direction, and action of each player than an MMO does.

Likewise, an MMO (like GW2) uses the same engine to support open world adventuring, close combat around bosses and in WvW, twitch response like sPvP, jump puzzles, Nintendo-like content like SAB and other recent events, and the like. Because it’s massive and they’re paying by the megabyte for data movement, communication with the server has to be short and infrequent, hence we get culling and other effects.

So, I’ve chosen a game whose base content is what I came here to play, and whose engine is not just fit but tuned for what I came here to play.

And I play at a rate that has not exhausted the content of the game yet, and will use maps but use spoilers only infrequently.

So why is it that the existence of a set of people who blow through content and move on to another game — really an un-servable population in an MMO because you can never create enough content — even relevant? ArenaNet should accept that the revenue from such customers is sporadic and they are not a source of profitable and stable revenue over multiple years, and go focus somewhere else where it’s possible to make money.

Using GW2 to host content for which the engine is only marginally fit has short term novelty value, but shifting direction to deliver a hybrid MMO / Nintendo game seems like something which would neither satisfy the customer who wanted an MMO (me) nor the customer who wanted a Nintendo game, because it is doing neither well.

Doing neither well is a recipe for failure.

Hence the concern over the long term consequences to GW2 of its apparent direction.

goldenwing.8473:

I, too, am an old RPG player for close to a decade and a half. I’ve helped alpha and beta a fair amount of games, and sat in on a lot of internal discussions over the years, and would like to think as a retired software developer (Fortune 20 company), that I’ve contributed. I’m a big proponent of the genre evolving and have left countless posts and discussions (both publically and internally to devs) over the years advocating such, including on this board.

The problem here isn’t that the game is evolving more in the direction of an MMO or an RPG, but rather devolving in the direction of Nintendo-style play. The best examples of “old-school RPGs” that I can think of are the gold standards set by the Infinity Engine (BGII: SoA) and subsequent Forgotten Realms games like NWN. Tremendous quantities of these games focused on exploration and problem-solving. The Forsaken Halls open mini-dungeon is a great example of the classic “Dark-room” problem-solving style play that was the hallmark of these games. In BGII, there were plenty of puzzle rooms where you only even began fighting mobs if you did something horribly wrong. These games were deeply immersive with well-written characters, including those that the player interacted with in the environment. The choices that the player made, including in seemingly inconsequential dialogues impacted the game world at a time when MMOs were in their infancy.

This sort of creative problem-solving, whether it’s finding the right lever or finding the right NPC to talk to in a crowded city in order to uncover a secret plot, being kidnapped and disguised as a Drow and hauled through the underdark, etcetera, are the hallmark of old school RPG. They were immersive and required thinking.

What many members of the GW2 community are concerned about is not the relative return to old school RPG encounters and immersion compared to recent MMOs. What we are deeply concerned about is that much of the new jump-puzzle related content has nothing to do with either MMOs or RPGs. MMOs are vast, persistent worlds populated by players and NPCs alike where a community of players blends with the game world to create an experience that goes beyond what’s possible in a campaign-driven single player game. RPGs are role-playing games where you the player can slide into an immersive world and feel like you are making a difference in that world.

Jump puzzles are a return to old Nintendo-style, single-player hopping from one rock to another to get the chest at the end

Most old-school RPGs did not even have a mechanic that allowed characters to jump. The old Infinity Engine games certainly didn’t. Short-range screen blackouts and cutscene-style teleports were required to even move characters across a chasm. Instead, the player was asked to think: strategically, tactically, creatively, to problem-solve their way through situations that sometimes had heavy combat, and sometimes just presented a challenge for an explorer to get through. But the point was that they didn’t take twitchy reflexes, and they were never in isolation from the game world.

Evolutionarily speaking, many players, myself included, have expressed their concern that jump puzzles are not evolving the MMORPG genre but are grafting in a kind of gameplay that harms both the MMO and RPG aspects of the game. That’s not evolving role-playing or community-building content, it’s replacing both of them with single-player twitch-reflex movement games that don’t appeal to me or many other players. I don’t personally have a problem with people who love jump puzzles. What I and many other players are frustrated by is that this niche style of content is not only potentially crowding out content that is both MMO and RPG, it is increasingly being forced on everyone (having it linked to rewards/achievements.) This does not even address the issue of whether technically the engine can properly support this style gameplay for all players, latencies, and machines.

Great post, totally agree on all points. I especially agree with how, in the games of old, narratives were often delivered through critical thinking challenges.

The proper narrative design seems to take a backseat in most games these days and it’s obviously escaped the content designers of the living story. Given the tight release schedule of the LS and the fragmentation of ANet’s content design teams, I don’t see them making any strides in releasing meaningful and deep narratives. Story writing is hard and often bottlenecks development if its given priority. That’s what I hear, anyway. However, if JPs and the occasional dungeon are things that are within their capabilities ANet should at the very least try fix the engine and camera. >.< “Do it right or don’t do it at all.”

Vayne.8563:

I feel for you…because genres evolve. What used to be an RPG is nothing like any MMO really. MMOs are TERRIBLE RPGs. I’m an RPG guy from a long time ago and this is the first mmoRPG I can play for any length of time.

The genre is evolving. Rift had some jumping. SWToR had some jumping and I suspect future games will have a lot more of it. Genres evolve all the time. If you don’t like the way it’s evolving, it will simply evolve without you.

I don’t usually like legitimizing personal attacks like this by responding.

However, there is an issue that is important for the future of the game, and that issue deserves a response.

I, too, am an old RPG player for close to a decade and a half. I’ve helped alpha and beta a fair amount of games, and sat in on a lot of internal discussions over the years, and would like to think as a retired software developer (Fortune 20 company), that I’ve contributed. I’m a big proponent of the genre evolving and have left countless posts and discussions (both publically and internally to devs) over the years advocating such, including on this board.

The problem here isn’t that the game is evolving more in the direction of an MMO or an RPG, but rather devolving in the direction of Nintendo-style play. The best examples of “old-school RPGs” that I can think of are the gold standards set by the Infinity Engine (BGII: SoA) and subsequent Forgotten Realms games like NWN. Tremendous quantities of these games focused on exploration and problem-solving. The Forsaken Halls open mini-dungeon is a great example of the classic “Dark-room” problem-solving style play that was the hallmark of these games. In BGII, there were plenty of puzzle rooms where you only even began fighting mobs if you did something horribly wrong. These games were deeply immersive with well-written characters, including those that the player interacted with in the environment. The choices that the player made, including in seemingly inconsequential dialogues impacted the game world at a time when MMOs were in their infancy.

This sort of creative problem-solving, whether it’s finding the right lever or finding the right NPC to talk to in a crowded city in order to uncover a secret plot, being kidnapped and disguised as a Drow and hauled through the underdark, etcetera, are the hallmark of old school RPG. They were immersive and required thinking.

What many members of the GW2 community are concerned about is not the relative return to old school RPG encounters and immersion compared to recent MMOs. What we are deeply concerned about is that much of the new jump-puzzle related content has nothing to do with either MMOs or RPGs. MMOs are vast, persistent worlds populated by players and NPCs alike where a community of players blends with the game world to create an experience that goes beyond what’s possible in a campaign-driven single player game. RPGs are role-playing games where you the player can slide into an immersive world and feel like you are making a difference in that world.

Jump puzzles are a return to old Nintendo-style, single-player hopping from one rock to another to get the chest at the end

Most old-school RPGs did not even have a mechanic that allowed characters to jump. The old Infinity Engine games certainly didn’t. Short-range screen blackouts and cutscene-style teleports were required to even move characters across a chasm. Instead, the player was asked to think: strategically, tactically, creatively, to problem-solve their way through situations that sometimes had heavy combat, and sometimes just presented a challenge for an explorer to get through. But the point was that they didn’t take twitchy reflexes, and they were never in isolation from the game world.

Evolutionarily speaking, many players, myself included, have expressed their concern that jump puzzles are not evolving the MMORPG genre but are grafting in a kind of gameplay that harms both the MMO and RPG aspects of the game. That’s not evolving role-playing or community-building content, it’s replacing both of them with single-player twitch-reflex movement games that don’t appeal to me or many other players. I don’t personally have a problem with people who love jump puzzles. What I and many other players are frustrated by is that this niche style of content is not only potentially crowding out content that is both MMO and RPG, it is increasingly being forced on everyone (having it linked to rewards/achievements.) This does not even address the issue of whether technically the engine can properly support this style gameplay for all players, latencies, and machines.

Well I want to start this off with how a lot of end game players complain how end game content is so little and even then you are unable to repeat things for money without hitting the anti-farm code. In this topic I will talk about some things that can be added to increase the amount of things that a player can do to make money/get rare items/have fun.

——————————————————————————————————————

Solo or Party Instances

1. Instances will range from defend this outpost from bandits, capture the bandit camp and release the hostages, etc.
2. Instances are scaled depending on group size just like normal events but are solo friendly as well.
3. These can have a cool-down period like events but are only started when you start your instance.
4. They can have a reward with each instance having a equipment set that can only be obtained as drops (not tokens etc).
e.g. Bandits Set – Medium Armour that has space for Runes however it also has a set bonus so 1 piece = 0 bonus 2 pieces = + 50 precision etc.
5. Rewards can also include rare crafting materials depending on their difficulty so the easiest instances can give tier 1 materials where as harder ones can give higher tiers of materials. There can also be a Hard-Mode version of all instances for a real challenge.

——————————————————————————————————————

More Titles

1. The titles from the original Guild Wars worked very well due to the fact that they had incremental stages and also because there were a very high amount of titles which did not require a lot of gold. e.g. Sunspear, Lightbringer, Luxon, Kurzick, etc.
2. This will motivate players to do more things in lower level areas as there is a reward which can make up for the fact that the drops are worse.
3. The incremental titles will make the final target much more achievable as every long term achievement is just a collection of short time goals. Legendary weapons are an example of how long term aims with no intermediate achievements can become boring very fast

——————————————————————————————————————

Guild vs Guild PvE

1. These will have a particular boss (which can be randomly chosen) given to each guild of a particular size. e.g. only 5, 10, 15 or 20 people can join if one guild has less people then the guild with more people has to reduce the size of their group
2. The bosses can include Champions from events, Legendaries from fractals, Guild Mission targets, etc.
3. The guild who defeats their target first will receive a large prize and the guild who lost will win a small prize.
4. This will improve teamwork and the community as all guilds will get involved so show their superiority.

——————————————————————————————————————

Arena

1. This can also be solo’d or done as a group.
2. The arena will have stages which get incrementally harder.
3. The each stage will consist of either a boss or a hoard of enemies. Higher level stages can involve more than one boss, a boss and a hoard, or a boss with area affects like the goblin fractal boss’ “The floor is lava” affect.
4. Each stage will have a reward which can start at 2 silver and rise as the stages continue.
5. You will have to pay to enter and therefore it will only be truly worth it if you are able to pay for an amount of stages which you are able to complete.

——————————————————————————————————————

Heroes in dungeons

1. They worked very well in GW as they removed the requirement to find other players, though having other players does mean a stronger party.
2. They allow casual players to have a team who moves at their own speed.
3. They are really fun to customize.
4. They can cost in gems so that NCSoft can make a profit from making peoples time in GW2 easier and a lot more enjoyable.

——————————————————————————————————————

I will continue to add more ideas as they come to me.

All feedback is appreciated!

GW2 doesn’t remember all of my settings when I log out and back in again. Please remember:

- My CHAT preferences. I always use the Guild tab, and always set it to speak in Guild. When I switch characters, the Guild Chat window has reset iteself to speak in SAY. I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally told the local crowd “BRB – Potty”.

- My DYE SORTING preferences. It is only logical to sort by HUE, especially as we get more and more dye. Occasionally I will temporarily sort by MATERIAL (metallics have more contrast). But what the heck good is sort by “SET”, and why do we always default to that when we restart the game?

- My GW-MAIL Messages. There is no send-to-multiple-recipients ability, so please don’t erase my message from the body of the letter when sent. Let me select a new recipient and resend the same info again without retyping (as there is no copy and paste ability).

- My NOTIFICATIONS. If I minimize my Daily Achievements, I want them to STAY closed until I open them again. And if I open them, I want them to STAY open until I close them again. Right now they have a mind of their own. (This is not a log in/log out issue. It never holds your preference for any length of time).

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Andy.1943:

Nobody is forcing you to get them.

/thread.

I have to agree. Guild Wars 2 can be very rewarding if you simply stand in Lions Arch for a few hours. All these achievements, stories, gear, etc…they’re all just nonsense. The REAL game is how long you can stand in one spot and do nothing.

I’m starting to agree. These “updates” seem very rubbish to me. I’m all for distraction and diversions in MMOs, but they can’t be the core of the game. That is really off.

I just want them to hire a writer or two from SWTOR. Just one or two. Might be expensive but I really think that the only place the game is falling behind the competition, where they are not excelling, is the writing.

hey, lets put fps (first person shooter) in guild wars 2! It’s another genre! And puting more genres into a single game will make it better! Yeah! Lets do that!

Belcher’s Bluff is more like Rock-Paper-Scissors

While I don’t disagree that other things from other genres of game should be added, they should be added only if they add something to the game. Not merely just for the sake of adding it, otherwise it feels forced. Extra Credits actually done an episode on this.

For example, JP do add something to GW; exploration that isn’t bound by a flat plane. Finding an old ruin and having to make your way across the decrepit architecture to explore.

This non rpg content is either buying time for something else or GW2 is now like a fast food restaurant. Fast food is quick and cheap to make.

I’d be very curious to understand the design intent behind all of this too. I’m so confused.

Bubbles.1047:

You know you have a decent thread on your hands when you get Good Guy Vayne to defend Anet.

Agreed very much with OP. Less Super Mario, more RPG, pretty please.

So every thread is decent?

Jski.6180:

mesme.5028:

Jski.6180:

mesme.5028:

Jski.6180:

mesme.5028:

Vayne.8563:

mesme.5028:

doubleomar.2165:

I really, really hope the devs realize that this is a too vocal, but very small community of complainers, and that the rest of us lurkers or even non-forum dwellers really adore their bravery at breaking MMO conventions.

And where do you get this from ? how do you know how many peeps like or dislike anything in gw2?

If anything going by this thread alone, most want the sequel to gw1 not the sequel to ( insert random Nintendo platformer ).

I bet the devs know what content is being played. You don’t know. I don’t know, but they do. And since this is the content they’re creating, one would think that it’s popular. Otherwise why bother?

But you forget one thing, jumping is forced upon us, from completing a zone to fracts, to just about all jumping in gw2.

Nothing IS forced on you. YOU chose to play this game and you knew or had ample opportunity to find out what the game was about. Your simply forced upon your self to complete things in effect YOU are your worst enemy.

Not true tbh i purchased gw2 as a sequel to gw1 marketed as being focused on dynamic events and living story, like many others in gw1 we waited for the sequel to our fav game with baited breath.

So your saying you blindly buy things with out looking up any info on it and viewing no videos? I think your doing your self a great disservices if you cant look up info on things before you buy them video games is one thing but if you do this for everything you buy i think your in for a lot more problems then missing out on a few competition in a GAME.

I waited years for this game, the sequel to gw1 a game without jumping, sure i knew we could jump in gw2, you can jump in for example wow too, just the full game doesn’t evolve around jumping, so if i dont want excluded from just about everything in gw2 im forced to jump to be involved.

Why having jumping if it not used?

Making use of jumping is one thing, turning gw into a platform game is another.

if i need to be honest here, i do all this new content only because there are achievement points and because i cannot do it later since it’s temporary.
i actually don’t like most of the mini games here but i do them only for the sake of these achievements and daily requirement.

and for jumping puzzle, they were ok, at the beginning, and i’m ok with occasional jumping during festival and festivities.

now where is some story like flame and frost?
i loved flame and frost story, with istances and so much detailed characters, and there were no minigame or jumping puzzle involved, where the hell finished all this??

who are these zephirites? why they jump all around instead of running, walking or learning to fly?
don’t get me wrong, i like the idea of a travelling bazaar and the graphic is awesome, the feeling too, but why?

You know you have a decent thread on your hands when you get Good Guy Vayne to defend Anet.

Agreed very much with OP. Less Super Mario, more RPG, pretty please.

I’m currently in a conversation with the latest ‘owner’ of the camera system and we’ll see what comes of that.[/quote][/quote]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, my issue with the jps is not camera angle but the jps themselfs, i hate jumping and now its a huge part of the game, this restricts me from going places, take fracts for example, now with a gear progression i cant get, i only pve and got gw2 for the way is was marketed, dynamic events etc.

I can honestly say, if id known gw2 was going to be more about jumping and a platform game styled i wouldn’t have bought it.

Why can we get more dungeons, ones without the platform jumping, cant gw2 be more like the mmorpg is was marketed as?.

If i wanted to play a game which involved jumping, id have chosen that line of game, perhaps assassins creed or something. I know a-net are trying to make gw2 as fun as possible with max diversion, but cant we just have an mmorpg? as you said yourself gw2 isn’t the best at jumping, so why all the focus on something the game is bad at? can’t there be more focus on what the game is good at?.

I’m just as confused as you are about this content. It’s like making a PAC MAN mini game inside a racing game.

Makes no sense at all.

The problem is, not that it has….but that it ONLY has…
Having a few is not ap roblem…but this is supposed to be an RPG, not to mention a MULTIPLAYER rpg….not a single player platform game.
I dont have a problem dooing a few, but the new content keeps going that way…THAT is my problem !!!

Its kittening unbelievable that they base entire content releases with permanent rewards around it then.

Well if you developed a game for 8 years without a jump button, you would also overcompensate in the sequel too!

I play GW2 because i enjoy the combat. I like how boons work and effect gameplay and i love combat fields/finishers. I mostly play WvW and can’t be bothered with most of the patch content.

I have had fun with some of the mini-games, but it’s shallow fun. I enjoyed playing Dragon Ball, but after 5 or so games i had seen it all and it was back to WvW for me. Same thing with the race… a couple times through to familiarize myself with the gameplay, then after a couple runs i just go back to the stuff that drew me into the game in the first place.

While I acknowledge the quality of the new temporary map, I have to agree they are over-doing the jumping wars in this game.
With every patch the game gets goofier and it’s loosing direction and purpose.

I’d like to see more permanent additions to open world events (you know, DE that were supposed to be the bread and butter of this game) and meaningful content that involves combat mechanics (yes, using the normal skill bar). For example they could have Hirathi Hinterlands completely invaded by centaurs, and a month-long event for taking it back, with lots and lots of dynamic events. Going on that theme, they could add new skills to centaurs that would make players think what skill-build is best suited to counter them (both solo and in groups).

No more jumping games please.

I don’t dislike the idea of jumping puzzles, but if they want to implement more of them I think they should first address the engine. Otherwise, their content will be like Mario but not designed as well and not nearly as fun to play.

Ronah.2869:

I don’t know your opinion, but it seems that GW2 turns into a platform game with the lately content. That wouldn’t be a problem, but I am sorry to say, GW2 platform jumping is one of the crappiest if not the ultimate crap regarding jumping platformers on the game market today or in recent gaming history.

I’ve played Mario since the very beginning (DK anyone?). This definitely isn’t a game made for platforming, and this game definitely isn’t being taken over by platforming. The “lately content” is absolutely amazing and contains much more than just platforming. I’m not sure why you are complaining. Then again, I’m never sure why anyone is…

I play MMOs because I do not want to play platform games. Platform games are about timing and pattern recognition. MMOs from their inception is about bringing roleplaying to life.

It permits an individual to live a fantasy epic vicariously through his character. I’m sorry but you do not watch epic heroes spending hours hopping from platform to platform picking up crystals.

This new content from my perspective is trash and leading us away from what makes for good storytelling. You are forcing a story to make a mechanic works which goes against human nature.

Humans develop tools to make life easier; like electrons we take the path of least resistance.. a race who creates some mundane magic which “might” get you to the objective when a frigg’n ladder or set of stairs would suffice is just pantently ridiculous.

I would rather have random airships appearing over zones deploying raiders via repelling lines or steam powered jump packs.

Have them actually “take over” certain towns like the humans and centaur do if not defeated.

Not give me a worthless zone designed to deplete players stores of craftables to balance the skewed economy.

Why go to the big ship? Simply because it’s there is not enough reason. Going to get help against the invaders and sent an a series of missions throughout the world befitting your current level makes for an epic story; not find 50 kitten crystals.

You guys have lost your way and it’s leading me to look at other games preparing for release on the horizon.

Although I personally don’t mind minigames, I DO mind if it becomes major content to get nice armor- and weapon skins. I mean: I’m a horrible platform player, can’t solve ANY jump quest taking more than 2 jumps lol! So now I’m supposed to work my way to a final stage or just leave it and forget about all kinds of nice new skins? I tried, failed and won’t try again. Come on, this is a MMORPG, its supposed to be about action roleplaying. So leave mini games for visiting taverns and to socialize. Aquiring nice skins should be done by slaying enemies. Nothing else…