Guild Wars 2

Sindex.9520:

One big question Mike, Colin, or any of the A-net team, is this going to be a repeat of what happened with Guild Wars 1 Beyond content? Since I remember a gigantic list of things that you wanted to do for GW1 after Winds of Change and it got killed by May of this year.

That’s because it the Live team from GW1 was needed for the launch of GW2, and it really doesn’t make sense to develop anything for that game anymore, not even a final event when the servers are shutting down. It’d be wasted money and time.

Krosslite.1950:

So they have stated that for FREE they will basically

It’s not really free. There will be cash shop incentives sprinkled everywhere throughout the updates, which apparently makes them enough money to keep developing the game. Its a common F2P business model, which is expected from a B2P title. Also, the smaller the updates, the easier it is for NCSoft to intervene if they don’t like something.

Voodoo.1709:

My main question is do you see a level cap increase in the future and how far off would you estimate it to be?

With the way GW2 is heading in, level cap increases are a definite possibility. I would assume they will increase the cap for their first expansion by 10 to 20 levels, depending on how large the new explorable areas are.

Of course, level 90-100 exotic and ascended gear would be part of that new cap, because a level cap increase is a pretty good excuse for them to add more gear progression to keep people invested without going against their promise of not releasing another tier of gear in 2013. Then again, I wouldn’t think an expansion to be released in 2013 anyway, so by the time the first expansion hits they shouldn’t be bound by that statement anymore.

TrojanBallz.2359:

It makes no sense for them to spend the time on Fractals and its current AR progression through ascended gear, to simply say, "Well, we won’t be releasing anymore ascended gear (for whatever reason)

True. All they said was that they won’t be releasing a new tier of gear in 2013. There’s no quote even remotely addressing ascended gear’s future since that statement.

With ANets current philosophy, it’s far more likely that they will introduce lvl90 exotic gear alongside a new expansion in 2014, which would have the same stats as ascended gear now, just without infusion slot. I feel that a good part of the player base has already been weened off the desire to have a static gear power plateau, anyway, which allows ANet to continue developing their vertical progression in the future without a backlash the likes of Lost Shores.

Korrigan.4837:

Beating the hardest content of a game? Isn’t that enough?

For many, it really is not. A lot of casual and hardcore gamers have been playing games with long term gear progression, both in PvP and PvE, for years now. An extrinsic reward of “I’m +5 better than you.” is a lot more popular and an expected form of reward. Extrinsic rewards are easier for the brain to grasp(and easier to experience joy through), but their drawback is that they don’t last as long, and the fading feeling of being awesome has to be refreshed with something new. Skins and titles alone aren’t tangible enough reward concepts to trigger the pleasure center in most of our brains as hard as “+5”. Beating hard content can be very satisfying, regardless of what kind of player you are, but most of us simply wouldn’t work out weekly or do our jobs if we didn’t get any tangible reward(money/fitness) out of it. Enjoying what you do just makes reaching that gold more pleasurable.

I mean, if you look at GW1, the only reason they didn’t implement long term gear progression seems to be because they didn’t expect PvE to take off as much as it did, and couldn’t rewrite the core of the game without messing it up too much. ANet however never was afraid to put in long term progression that award you a statistical advantage over other players in PvE, as the addition of PvE only skills and stat altering titles with each new campaign demonstrates. Factions has allegiance titles, Nightfall has faction titles with built in enemy resistance, an EotN has quite a few faction titles as well.

A skin or title for most players isn’t regarded as a symbol showing other players that they completed difficult content. What most players see when they look at BiS gear with a unique appearance is the stats behind them, not the dedication and/or skill it took the wearer to attain it. If that skin had no superior stats, most players would feel disappointed, or wouldn’t see any value in it apart from its aesthetics, which is simply not enough value for a big part of the population GW2 has playing.

Whether or not gear grinds, treadmills or superior stats are a negative influence on the evolution of the game(power creep, etc.) remains to be seen, but better stats on prestige gear is simply something that is needed to give players a reward they deem worthy of their time spend playing. I’m not saying that is my opinion, though.

Creeper.9360:

If there is one thing that would make me quit the game, it would be to add exclusive power items like ascended armor and weapons just for raiding.

To paraphrase an attitude I’ve heard multiple times from GW2 players(not just on here): What’s the point of endgame/raiding if you don’t get better gear? And in GW2s case, you might argue that they have a point. Ascended gear is viewed by ANet as a successful compromise between the need for hardcore players to feel superior and the oppositions fear that the game forces you to grind for them through having content that cannot be completed without said gear. I’m sure they will add ascended gear as raid reward, because having only exotics would defeat the purpose of satisfying the kind of player who generally want to raid.

Poplolita.2638:

Khisanth.2948:

So anyone here actually know French? From the google translation that looks like they just said Guild Halls. Not really the same as player housing. I could see how that sort of thing could easily be lost in a machine translation.

As for the raid thing … it seems to have said content that allows for more 5 people, LIKE raids in other games. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Unwaking_Waters <- GW1 mission, up to 16 players.

I’m actually french canadian. Can you send me another link? The one from the op doesn’t work for me for some reason.

Seems like the site took down the interview, but google cache still has a copy of it.

Now the claim that there is no way for open world dueling to be introduced into GW2 seems quite ridiculous, does it not? All you need is to keep asking. It worked for gear, it worked for raids. Mounts and real dueling seem to be next!

It can be any handheld item: A bracelet, a dagger, a mug, a cell phone, etc.

Calae.1738:

Don’t need a grind if there is no subscription. It’s pointless.

NCSoft has to keep players playing ANets game and be potential gem buyers in order to decide favorably on GW2s future. Player retention matters just as much as it does for subscription fee games, if not more so, because there is no guaranteed revenue stream after the initial purchase.

And you do know what keeps the masses glued to the seat, don’t you? That’s right: “I’m better than you”-items.

Same with supermarkets putting items they know sell(food, hygiene) in the back so most customers have to “grind” through less popular isles once on their way in and on their way back out again. Maximum exposure increases impulse purchases.

marnick.4305:

Danikat.8537:

Out of interest what did people farm/play end-game for in GW1?

It was all cosmetics.

This is what it boiled down to. And let me add that even as someone who never actively participated in endgame content due to it having been un-soloable for the longest time(never had a guild), I still enjoyed the game for years.
In hindsight, it was all about personal achievements and feeling of not being pressured to play the game to become more powerful.Yes, they added stat progression with titles with each new expansion after the first, but the way they were implemented, how easy most of them could be maxed and how little situational benefit they would actually give you only took a way a fraction of the egalitarian, almost communist philosophy this game embodied progression wise. Everything remotely valuable or prestigious could be traded and you could easily be run through content by others – for a price. The result was an almost prestige, bragging and kitten-free game, where you felt that whoever you played with was always your equal, no matter if they played 40 hours or 4000. You literally had no game mechanical reason, except for a few non-stat altering titles, to do content, but that’s exactly what gave you the freedom to do what you want: Achieve personal victories nobody but you cared about.

Sounds more like a single player game with optional coop, right? Exactly. And guess what my main game I’m playing is right now?(hint: space ninjas)

CMF.5461:

Only thing to be worried about is possibility of exploits

Like forcing players to PvP even though they don’t want to, for example. That reminds me of UO before the PvE/P split. So much frustration…

I always thought Ascalon is located near the gaza strip in Israel. Huh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkelon

When GW2 wasn’t out yet, they answered the question multiple times. No, they don’t want you to be be an antagonist, and no, they don’t want to bring open world PvP into the PvE world. However, they have changed a lot of their philosophies in the past ten months, so I would say there’s a reasonable chance for what you are asking to become reality if NCSoft/Nexon are convinced that they can profit off of it. Keep those suggestions coming and you might get what you wish for!

Well, when we first found out about the world map in beta, I tried estimating the size of the world based on a quote from the first GW1 manual. Yeah, it’s just one quote from a game ANet doesn’t really like talking about positively anymore, but its the best we had at the time. Maybe there’s something of interest mentioned in the books.

Besides, culling would prevent you from even seeing Canthan land on the horizon.

I can only speak for me and my friend, who got me into GW1 years ago: Granting players that played far longer than us have better stats, turning the acquirement of BiS gear for your character, let alone any alts, from a simple short term progression with never-changing plateau into a open-ended(new tiers are fair game starting Jan 1st 2014) long term progression is an unacceptable change in core game design for us.

All other points of critique, like a weak story, characters, VA, class balance(traits, unreasonable buffs) and the focus on RNG for example we would’ve been able to deal with and still enjoy the game, but not a grindy first step on a treadmill.

Most other people I know who stopped playing GW2 complained more about the grind in general(including gear), though.

pricer.5091:

No mob, be it a boss, a mob, a world boss or anything else should be immune to whatever damage is generated by whatever type of build you have decided to go with.

Adaptive mob properties is something that hasn’t been done in MMOs for a long time, if ever. If the game would analyze and tailor content – especially mobs – to what classes are doing it with what kind of gear, skills and traits players have equipped, the experience would improve tremendously. It would also drastically increase the replayability, especially if there is some hidden algorithm that can be changed every now and then to slightly modify AI composition and behaviour.

Oh well, maybe the next big MMO in 2018 will be able to do that.

The Stain.4169:

So Anet, what are PVE players supposed to do?

Why, farm slower of course. The longer the farm takes, the longer progression lasts.

This is bullkitten! Actually, it’s even worse: It’s bullcat!

The way the main story was handled in GW2 vanilla leads me to believe they don’t have a lot of lore worked out and ready to be presented, or they simply don’t want you to know more about the dragon/human god relationship at this time.

Strifey.7215:

Just searched online and here’s a better version of it on the intothepixel actual website:
http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork/2013_contest_winners.asp

Just link it directly.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2013/06/03/Crossroads.jpg

ANet hates stagnancy, which is one of the defining properties of consoles. Yeah, not gonna happen anytime soon.

Well that’ll go over well with Spanish soccer moms.

They have been there since the beta, but I wouldn’t read too much into it. There’s also an “awesome smiley” gif in the dat and descriptions about all kinds of unimplemented guild upgrades(wvw spies, guild leader portal, etc), which tell us that you can’t reliably predict the future based on what you mine from the files.

Why not post your “idea” in the suggestion forum where it belongs?

ANet’s not against farming, but against there being a possibility to significantly decrease the amount of time they think legendaries and other endgame items should take to acquire. Same reason they added or were forced to add ascended gear – People plateaued too fast for their liking.
Once a player stops playing the gamer, temporarily or not, he is no longer a potential cash shop customer.

The reason they don’t nerf CoF is probably the same reason they never really nerfed ShadowForm in GW1: To not enrage the people that REALLY want to progress faster than their peers. They don’t want to encourage farming and supercharged progression, but they know making it entirely impossible will do them more harm then good.

Rebound.3409:

@AnthonyOrdon. Out of curiosity, does anet have the tools to check how many ppl are on map “X” ?

https://twitter.com/mkerstein/status/170659741574496256

They have tools to display player movements and congregation of maps in real time(or close to real time), so yes.

Easy to attain BiS gear(like go to a main city and buy them for a few gold) and heroes/hench for dungeons.

Katreyn.4218:

I dunno. Has there been an MMO that has offered permadeath?

Trials of Ascension?

Well I’d suggest the same thing gear progression supporters suggested old GW1 fans: Pretend that that’s how the game is. When you die for the first time, delete your character with everything that’s on him and make a rule not to never ever use the name you used for the character that died again. Done!

The most convenient and least elitist-encouraging lfg system I’ve experienced in an online game so far has to be the one in Warframe. You select the content you want to do and it hot joins you automatically with a group that is not too far into it, no questions asked. No “ping build plz, no gear checks or show X”. Problem with implementing something like that in GW2 is that dungeons are a pain to complete with less than 4 people, while in Waframe, you can solo pretty much anything.

Fear not this night? How can I if I can still see just as far as during the day?

I would have liked to see night time having an effect on rendering distance of enemies in WvW, so it would be possible to “hide in the shadows” and use that window of time to do some risky stuff.

I don’t think they will change it because some players might get annoyed with not being able to see as well as during the day. Not for PvE and certainly not for WvW.

Crespus.7405:

My point is, no matter what game you’re playing, you need goals to keep you interested.

I don’t. Example: GTA4. The game had skin rewards for PvPing in ranked matches and no other way to obtain them. Fortunately, it was quite easy to use mods that unlocked every reward tier clothing, so that’s what I did, along with a lot of other people. Did it diminish the fun of working for them? Hell no. Even if I could have collected them in Free For All mode(which was used mainly for racing and coop against cop AI), it would have been a chore rather than and give yourself highest tier clothing right away. I play games in the long term for their mechanics, not the rewards. Looking the way you want to look and be the most powerful you can be right when you start leaves me to enjoy the game itself fully, instead of having to worry how effective I am playing to get to X skin or Y BiS gear.
I enjoyed playing The Sims in the past, and usually the first thing I did is gave myself a million bucks to be able to design the house I imagined. I also played as intended on occasion, but only in short bursts with the odds turned against my Sims, as sort of a “survival mode”. The key is, it’s my decision whether or not I want to play the game with progression, or

I’m not unable to enjoy progression if it’s within certain strict boundaries, or if I can choose to forgo the progression entirely.

In a game where everything has a durability, and RNG events prevent you from amassing a lot of currency, I’d welcome progression immediately, because the game’s mechanics prevent grinders and hardcore players from getting anymore powerful or exclusive than the guy who just started, except through careful management of risk and knowledge of the game world(where resources are, etc.) I guess you could call that a rogue-like MMO if you want, but there I’d have no problem with constantly starting over and working my way up towards whatever it is that is you work for, knowing that I could loose everything I have by simply going to bed one night(in game) and getting robbed and killed. As long as everybody else’s fate is also not in their hands, and that they can’t possibly get a significant headstart over me.

I’m not usually into rogue games, but I’d play one over a “slowly work your way towards what you want” MMO every day.

If those long term rewards enable other players who played a lot longer than me to be more powerful, even by a small bit in a totally non-competitive PvE scenario, I can’t enjoy that game. Though I rather not, I can live with skin progression, or short-lived vertical progression to gradually introduce you to the game’s mechanics. Or even a vertical progression from like in Planetside and Warframe, where you start with the most balanced gear, but can unlock weapons and equipment that allow you to specialize yourself and shift your stats towards one end or the other, because if you add it up, the high end mods and weapons have the same power as the starter ones, just distributed differently.

Anyway, my ideal MMO would have everything power wise unlocked at the start, or after a short, 1 hour tutorial. Every skin the game has to offer is buyable in the store, as well as every weapon combination, for gold or cash. There’s a lot of other things I’d like to see mechanics wise to ensure long term fun, but rewards shouldn’t be the driving factor to make players play. Again, that’s my personal picture perfect game.

http://kekai-k.tumblr.com/post/44430379094/guild-wars-dragons-circa-2007-the-first-designs-i

Kekai Kotaki:

Guild Wars Dragons circa 2007, the first designs I did for the potential Elder Dragons in GW2. Designs were unused which is common.

Nothing to see here. Moving on.

A serpentine race like the Naga(Krait won’t be playable) would be something I’d like to see, simply because non-humans are far more interesting by default, and with their undulatory locomotion, their armor design would be really unique.

But Tengu seem to be a given.

Ensign.2189:

You’d have to pair them with damage taken, prevented, and healed meters for this not to devolve into a bunch of idiocy.

Good idea. A weighted average called DATA!
Dd – Damage dealt * 0.5
At – AoE damage taken * 0.8
Tt – Targeted damage taken * 0.9
Ahm – Ally damage healed or mitigated * 1.4

Maybe even differentiate between armor classes.

skullmount.1758:

Its temporary, just like the holiday stuff.

At least the holiday events can be experienced every year, because I doubt they will design brand new ones for every Christmas, Halloween and whatever else they decide to celebrate.

What is the community consensus on whether or not there are enough incentives and rewards for players to dedicate their endgame farming time on running around the open world? Things seemed to have gotten better since the FoTM was introduced, but I don’t play anymore, so I don’t really have any first hand experience.

Takes me back to GW1 ToA.

Magic is part of nature. It’s a fundamental force that can be manipulated just like electromagnetism or nuclear fusion/fission. Since magic can interact with any other fundamental force(gravitomagical, electromagical, etc.), it’s at the very least part of the basic set of natural laws governing the universe.

Tyrian lore says the gods gave the creatures magic, but that statement can be interpreted in different ways. Did the Gods imbue the whole planet and everything sentient on it with magical radiation, or did they just teach everyone that was intelligent enough to understand such fundamental concepts how to use it? Much older races lived on the planet eons ago, before the Gods’ interaction, and they supposedly knew many many times as much about magic as even the smartest Asuran think tank today.

Tyrian magic is a resource, an energy with limited capacity. It can be harnessed, stored, and converted. Just like photonic or kinetic energy. The people of Tyria use magic in different states of purity, with Mesmers being masters of it in its least refined and controlled form.

Out of all the ways of vertical progression, increasing the level cap is the least problematic one, because unless the game doesn’t give you enough xp and forces you to repeat content, you can progress naturally and max out simply by experiencing content.

However, level cap raises are not without problem either. Sitting through an one hour movie is much less taxing than watching a trilogy back to back.

As long as available trait points aren’t increased, level cap increases wouldn’t have been a gamebreaker for me, but I had preferred not to have them at all.

http://cghub.com/images/view/45762/

The artist calls it “Risen Arch”. What their purpose is/was is unknown, as far as we know, there are at least two of these arches, one starting at the northern and the other one starting at the Cathedral of Silence. Adjusting for the the cataclysm, and assuming the arches are equal in size, they would meet somewhere northeast of the area where we start the Arah storymode dungeon.

I have never done any explorable of this dungeon, so I don’t know where exactly the city center of Arah is.

Serelisk.6573:

That first part is actually incorrect

I stand corrected. It was probably my wishful thinking that gave the Charr capital its own minigame.

More ascended gear for PvE and WvW maybe? Level increase?

Adding skimpy-scanty clothing can be easily construed as pandering to hormone driven male adolescent and teen players through sexual exploitation of women, especially these days where we keep growing more and more sensitive to such things. You’d have to add 3 times as much non-skimpy armor alongside the more revealing one in order to dismiss most people’s skepticism about whether your motives are artistic expression or pure pandering.

However, if you are advocating for more revealing clothing on male characters, which is not regarded as pandering or exploitation by the general public(yet), then your chances are a lot better.

If you can sell it in the Gem store, it fits.

So yeah, I guess.

But be prepared for a larg opposition arguing against solo dungeon play, because it removes dependency on other players and therefore the required social interaction in dungeon play, as minimal as that might be.

Not taking sides, just laying down arguments.

Mercenary Heroes were cool, though.

The charr dueling mini game was called bar brawl and would obviously be held in an instanced version of that bar in the Black Citadel you visited in your personal story. I forgot its name, it’s been too long since I last played.

ANet didn’t have time to implement all the games. Those games have been already planned and worked into the design of the cities, such as the shooting gallery and polymock arenas. The moa race track and miniature duel rink can be visited in game right now. They just don’t take you to an instance with the actual game, like keg brawl does.

I would like to see them being able to make games take place in the main map sometime in the future. I don’t know if that’ll be feasible or possible, though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Which is why I gave up trying to argue that point. It’s evident, but the fact people feel otherwise means it’s a lost cause trying to argue it.

Not necessarily. Discussing these subjects can help players on either side realize what exactly bothers them with the way GW2 turned out to be. Analyzing and understanding what you as a player want, what you are willing to compromise on, and what breaks the enjoyment of the game are vital if we want to progress (no pun intended) the discussion. The question everybody that’s not satisfied at the moment has to ask themselves is simple: Can you enjoy the game enough without having BiS gear easily available for every character?

If the answer is no, then you might want to take an indefinite break from the game and hope that sometime in the future GW2 will evolve to a point where BiS gear is indeed easily available.

That’s what I’ve been doing since the day I realized that I can’t enjoy the game without trivial gear and level progression.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They don’t want to feel they must do this content to stay competitive. They’d like to choose not to do it, and not be at a disadvantage. It’s not just about stats either!

Bolded the important part. Even if the advantages of better gear or tools would be next to non existent, these players feel pressured into going for those things despite actually wanting to work towards something else. Titles, cosmetics, horizontal stuff.
These players won’t be able to enjoy going for things they like until the nagging voice in the back of their head constantly whispering “…you could be as efficient as everybody else if you did the other content instead…”
Just as a lot of players crave the need for constant improvement and progression, there are players that crave a feeling of not wasting their time with trivialities when they could go for better stats.

Those two mindsets are direct opposites of each other(at least on the stat level), and from what we have seen, the number of people wanting meaningful progression is… well, orders larger than the niche GW1 managed to satisfy.