Guild Wars 2

Although the Marionette fight can be coordinated ad hoc via map chat and voice chat services, the content’s population requirements are not met in an automated way that allows players to focus on playing rather than simply hoping that enough people happen to show up to fulfill the requirements. Wouldn’t it be nice if players could simply queue up for the event and play it when the population requirement was met, like they would if they were playing a first person shooter?

Dropping massive content in the world on a respawn timer may be easier to program; but, it creates situations like massively doomed to fail Marrionette sequences running with 10-20 hopeful (and unwitting) players at 3 a.m. server time.

Does anyone else feel like a robust queue system like those used in modern shooters would make mass events like the Marionette more enjoyable and rewarding?

English language fluency aside, I get your point that there is something — unfulfilling — about the constant waves of content that are consumed quickly and serve no other, lasting purpose. Grinding through a new bit of material every fortnight with a zerg until I’ve completed a list of “achievements” isn’t the least bit fun for me. Improving game mechanics such as skill selection, interface design, item variety and creature artificial intelligence would be much more interesting to me. Of course, I understand that the churn of new players gained and old players lost with each Living Story release is probably more important, fiscally, than whether or not anyone is actually enjoying the game from a long term perspective.

Often in large battles in the game, it is impractical to run around hitting the [F] key to pick up loot. This, in and of itself, is not an issue at all. The problem is that the timers set on loot mean that players lose rewards they have earned simply because they were too busy playing and helping their team members to pick the loot up. This is frustrating in dungeons, where the whole point is really to reap the rewards of clearing a path to a chest.

I realize that the designers have their reasons for implementing this system, most likely tied to technical issues with the programmers and bandwidth. Still, those reward timers are like having a debit card that charges you a fee if you don’t spend your own money within a specific time frame. How fun is that?

The irony is that a better loot/reward system already exists in the game:
Daily/Monthly/PvP Ranking rewards in the game appear as chests that never disappear or expire on a time and can be collected by players, at their discretion, whenever it is best for them. If all loot in the game followed this same system the possibility of missing the sparkling loot indicator in a map full of fire particle effects would disappear, along with many other opportunities for players to lose the rewards they have earned through play.

Since beta, I’ve felt that the action pace of the game required a reward system that could keep up with it, regardless of antiquated, popular looting systems that work great with paper games and slower paced games like GW1. Even though many players who love hitting a key to pick up loot might protest, I’m sure that never losing an earned reward would make them feel better about the change.

Homeworld: Ehmry Bay
Guild Name: Brown Fang Ardour Legion (BFAL)
Primary Language: English

Guild Website: TableauBFAL.blogspot.com
Focus: Friendly play and chat with positive, mature players

In-Game Contact: Brown Fang Thump.9482

Quick Notes: We play a lot of PvE with some PvP. Helpful camaraderie is the real soul of the guild. Our precepts are posted on our site. We love to help new players and are open to players of all levels. We have no problem with players representing multiple guilds.

We do not tolerate racism, sexism, trolling or bullying.

Though I wasn’t expecting to see it very often after beta, I do agree that the survey system would give better quality data to base design decisions on than forum posts. Still, I’m a pragmatist who was disappointed the first time I saw centaurs standing around in a field after hearing a manifesto professing that there would be no such thing.

I’ve met many GW2 players that didn’t play or didn’t like GW1 who are thrilled with the game. Most of them weren’t around during beta. A lot of them have asked me about features that are popular in other games. I think they would be shocked to be asked what they really liked.

@ Raksha

I absolutely expect some folks to adamantly disagree with me.

I’m not saying that GW1 is the greatest game ever, blah, blah, blah. I am saying that in the case of ascended gear, as I understand it, the game mechanic used for infusion in GW1 was a more fun option than that proposed for GW2.

You do make 1 point I have to admit to: I did like GW1 so much that I still play it sometimes (along with other games). I didn’t quit years ago then come back looking for a completely different experience.

@ Gilgamesh

You make some valid points. I’ve based my conclusions on the officially posted information which includes a screen capture that compares an ascended ring to an exotic ring. Both rings have distinct icons and statistical information. The article also includes information on how ascended gear is acquired and used.

Check it out: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Whether or not the first piece of ascended gear is free is not as important to me as whether or not a new tier of gear for a new class of enemy improves the play experience for the player or the profit potential of the developer.

@ Trock Bronze

You can find more information about ascended gear from the ArenaNet news site:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

There is a picture of an ascended ring compared to an exotic ring there.

Adine.2184:

Except for the fact that if you had armor runed a specific way for specific builds you still had to have all your armor infused as Spectral Agony would kill you in a heart beat if if you weren’t infused . Additionally your unenthusiastic armor comment wouldn’t of held up in the early days of GW1 as your stats were determined by the armor set you wore forcing you into some pretty ugly looks .

As you know, runes could be swapped at will, as long as you could afford them; so, swapping runes and insignias on a single set of armour was always cheaper in GW1 than buying a brand new set of armour to special purpose. Also, if you did keep alternative armour for specific purposes it could still be any armour you liked. You were never forced to wear Obsidian Armour because it was the only armour that could be infused against foe X.

Mursaat were introduced to players in Prophecies as maximum level content, as noted on the wiki, which also gives more information on infusion:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mursaat
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Infusion

As to whether or not, and how, armour statistics were bound to armour type, the history of the most early form of the game is irrelevant in light of how the game evolved over time. Still, if you need specifics to remind you what the state of GW1 game is now (which is more relevant) you can look at the following urls:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prestige_armor
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Armor_calculation

What you should note is that “Prestige armor is no different from any other max armor apart from its appearance and cost. Although you do not need to be ascended to wear prestige armor, some sets are unavailable until you have completed the relevant campaign’s storyline.” Prestige armour does not have stats determined by armour set the statistics for the armour are based on character profession, level and player selected upgrades. This is not the case in GW2, which has more inherent statistics bound to each piece of gear.

It would also have been nice if you could have included a direct answer to my question in your comment.

According to the news post by Linsey Murdock (13 Nov https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/ includes a screen capture comparing an ascended ring to an exotic ring) “The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.” These infusions can only be placed in special slots that are available only on the newly introduced gear type known as “Ascended”, which means that to fight specific types of high level foes infusions are necessary. It also means that players better love their Ascended gear, because they won’t be able to fight these special foes in anything else. This is a limitation that means that players will have to choose between the aesthetic styles they like and the mandatory Ascended gear they need to play end game content. The overall effect of the mechanics of infusion slots on specific, limited rarity items is choice constriction.

In Guild Wars 1 infusion was something more akin to a title that could be applied to any armour that a player had chosen to equip. Thus, the player had the freedom to control all aspects of the style of armour they wanted for their characters, without worry about function. Players who chose to mix and match parts of various sets of armour to set themselves apart from others could simply infuse that armour to go kill the Mursaat that used the Agony condition that infusion mitigated. They were not forced to stow the armour they liked and equip an entirely new set of armour (that they may not be as enthusiastic about) to fight off the effects of a condition that most enemies in the game didn’t apply.

From a purely financial standpoint, as a “money grab”, the mechanic of creating an exclusive type of enemy that requires an exclusive kind of gear drives micro-transactions and helps fill player storage that can be monetized through storage space sales. It makes financial sense and is supported by a glut of similar “features” in many free-to-play and pay-to-win games currently on the market. It also controls players by limiting their choices and constricting their options.

From a player perspective, as a “fun enhancer”, giving players the freedom to choose any armour they like and infuse it as necessary to engage a specific type of challenge respects the choices that players have made while playing by empowering them to keep the rewards they have earned, regardless of the type of game content they are playing. The original Guild Wars seemed to understand this kind of play system and use it to great advantage, while the new game tends to penalize players more often than reward them. This is exhibited to great effect in the fact that GW1 infusion respected player freedom of choice while GW2 infusion slots on exclusive Ascended gear disrespects the time some players have invested in exotic/cultural gear acquisition by deprecating that gear in favour of new gear that will take as much or more time to acquire.

It could be argued that transmutation stones could be used to make the Ascended gear look like the exotic gear so players “don’t lose anything” except for the fact that they do lose the time they invested in earning that exotic gear. They also lose more time attempting to acquire Ascended gear to replace what they already earned. The key here is that players have earned what gear they have in the game. Developers need to respect the fact that players have jumped through the required hoops to earn the desired baubles and empower those players to take on more challenges rather than penalize players by deprecating their achievements.

All in all, is creating a new tier of exclusive gear really creating a new reason to play the game or is it simply a way of devaluing gear to cajole players into making choices they might not like? Are exclusive infusion slots on exclusive gear more fun for players than earning an “infused” unlockable label for any gear a player chooses?

I’m very interested in knowing what other players think about this type of mechanic and how well they think it rewards their time commitment to the game, whether they are hardcore or casual.

Thanks Wasselin for posting this topic before I did!

True auto-loot would be greatly welcome in that it would keep the pace of the game quick. God of War and the Ratchet and Clank series do an excellent job of providing auto-loot that give plenty of visual feedback and doesn’t obstruct the flow of action at any point during play. The question is not whether or not hitting the ‘F’ key is easy or not. The question is “have you ever lost loot while you were busy fighting because the battle took longer than the loot availability timer allowance?” If you’ve been playing well, the answer to that question is most likely YES. If you’ve been playing in the middle of a zerg anywhere in the game the answer is definitely YES.

Obviously if loot is the reward for killing, it should not arbitrarily be taken away simply because the player failed to pick it up. If your boss were to keep your pay because you didn’t walk into his office and take it from his hand within a day of a pay cycle you would feel cheated. Every time I miss chest or mob loot because I’m busy killing stragglers and resurrecting fallen allies I feel like my boss just kept my pay, which I earned.

I challenge anyone to find an example of a AAA quality action game that takes rewards away from players after a time limit rather than simply giving players everything they’ve earned instantly.

As it stands, the difference between the auto-loot function being on or not is nominal at best. It also doesn’t address those instances when the sparkly loot indicator is obscured by large creature models because it does not scale to the model size.

The argument that other fantasy MMO’s don’t do it is as viable as saying that we shouldn’t aspire to improve the RPG model because we’ve never done it before. That kind of stagnating thought makes dull things more dull. Guild Wars 2 should aspire to make their action RPG use ACTIVE play systems. True auto-loot is the least of these active systems that should be standard.