Hi everybody! Oft-accused White Knight Apologist here to discuss the tension between what players want and what ArenaNet wants for us. This is something that’s bothered me over the last few LW patches and after trying to do Boss Blitz last night, I feel like I’ve got to get this off my chest.
What ArenaNet Wants To Give Us
They haven’t quite said this, but ArenaNet seems to want GW2 “endgame” to be massive open-world content. I’d say they want to give us open-world raids. Difficult fights which require coordination… but in the open world, not in an instance. This has been obvious with megabosses, but other events – Marionette, Scarlet’s Knights/Holos, now Boss Blitz – follow the same pattern.
The problem is that this game had none of these mechanics at launch. They’ve also recognized this and are now trying to “teach” players how to do these events. (I think it was) Josh Foreman talked about this at one point, they are hoping to gradually scale up the difficulty level of these events.
What Players Want
Varies. Many players are chasing loot or chivos. Many players are looking for a challenge. Many players are just looking for a relaxing way to kill a couple hours.
Where I Think the Problem Occurs
I’m not a traditional MMO gamer. In fact, if we don’t count GW1 (because we shouldn’t), GW2 is my first and only MMO. <3 That said, raiding in other MMOs required huge amounts of coordination but worked because everybody had the same goal: kill the boss.
In GW2, players show up to the same events with drastically different goals. Just there for loot? You can AFK in the corner and get the top-end rewards like all the players participating. Want achievements? Hide in the corner where Scarlet’s holo can’t hit you with the gun. Want to kill the boss/complete the event? You’re stuck spending time in mapchat trying to convince people to play the content the “right” way (or perhaps the “coordinated” way) while being ignored/told that they are just “playing the way they want”/told “ArenaNet wouldn’t have done X if they didn’t want me to do Y.”
Inability to Take a Hint
How many of you had people doing Boss Blitz who thought the loot was bugged? Who didn’t realize the goal of Boss Blitz was to kill bosses, not farm mobs?
How many of you had commanders tagged up drawing most of the moths to the blue flame dorito? And 4 or 5 bosses with absolutely nobody?
How many of you, when trying to explain the event in mapchat, were told off by people “playing their way” or “farming” or “getting chivos?”
Pulling in the Same Direction
I understand that game design requires building content for multiple types of gamers, but I am continually astounded that ArenaNet doesn’t build content with this as a strict requirement:
For challenging content which requires coordination, all incentives should point in the same direction: completing the content to achieve the highest reward.
You can still provide reward for failure, but even here you need to be careful. Tequatl’s staged rewards are better than Wurm’s per-head rewards, for example. The Wurm rewards split players who would like to attempt to kill all heads from players who just want to kill one for the “Best Loser” reward.
These events eventually get better. That could be because players “learn” the encounters, but I think it’s because they finally get the achievements and start playing the content as intended. That means that people like myself who are more interested in completing the content than lootz/chivos are stuck headdesking for a couple weeks before we can “play how we want.”
I know this was super long, but PLEASE ArenaNet, if you’re going to give us hard content which requires coordination, don’t also dangle shinies in our peripheral vision.
(And this is an entirely separate topic, but we need better communication/coordination methods as well. Potential idea: Commanders can set a “Players Desired” number and the tag can report that as well as the players in the area. This will greatly ease the process of splitting players between multiple locations like in Marionette and Boss Blitz.)
