In some very strange definition of failure maybe. In reality, no it didn’t.
And what do you think is ArenaNet’s definition of failure?
I see this constantly and I can’t help but wonder, every time… “what does this mean?”
It means that some players have been so well deceived by developers of pay to play MMOs that they truly believe all the flaws in those games – the grindy based time sinks such as raids, mounts and etc – are actually a required part of any MMORPG game.
OP, the issue with your poll is that it was done right after a huge nerf to rangers. It’s only to be expected that people would have a knee-jerk reaction and claim rangers are the world profession in the game.
I find it amusing people think Thieves are the worst open world PVE class.
The archetype thieves comes from is basically the “ganker” – the dual wielding low armor high damage profession meant to use stealth to gank unsuspecting people and run away quickly if the gank doesn’t work. It’s a concept suited for open world PvP, but it does look odd everywhere else.
For-the-love-of-god, Anet, give people the ability to store away those dull, boring, uninspired pets.
That’s more or less the same as removing rangers from the game and replacing them with warriors. ArenaNet should fix how the pets work, not remove one of the very few elements unique to rangers (with the other being spirits, which, well…).
To bad most of the stuff in that post picks on single words, personal interpreations and completely ignores Anet’s clarifications and explanations published immediately after it came out.
You do realize, I hope, that the same could be said about your criticism of those who point how the Manifesto is wrong. You usually pick on single words, personal interpretations and ignore the context of ArenaNet’s claims in order to try to twist reality as much as possible so the Manifesto would be true. The last time you tried doing that and someone called you on it, your next argument was that the Manifesto doesn’t matter because it’s two years old.
My suggestion to ArenaNet: I see two paths they could take:
• Give up. Let’s be frank, the GW1 community cared about a storyline, but the GW2’s community doesn’t; it’s far more interested in farming, grinding and exploiting than in actually enjoying the experience of playing the game. A poor storyline surrounded by a lot to grind (aka the Southsun event, with horrible storytelling but a 200% buff to Magic Find) is more than enough to keep this community busy.
• Stop using the current model in future installments. The personal storyline would have been better if, instead of being a single road with a few detours here and there, the game had five different paths. In other words, if instead of a single storyline with multiple small and pointless choices, we got five full stories – one for each race – without any of the choices but with completely different developments.
For example, the Charr storyline could have been about a Charr recruit of the Iron Legion who fights against the Ascalon ghosts with his/her warband, then later joins the Order of Whispers still together with the rest of the warband, deals with all the issues about working with a gladium (Tybalt), helps to build the flying ships that will be used against Zhaitan, and whose final mission is aboard one of those ships, fighting together with the entire warband and Tybalt while ground troops attack the dragon.
The human storyline would be about a young noble who reveals a conspiracy against the Queen, later joins the Virgil, defends Lion’s Arch against a Risen attack, suffers the loss of his/her order mentor, and becomes the Vigil representative in the Pact. The final mission here would be a ground attack together with the Pact forces, while other troops fight from the sky.
The Sylvari storyline would be about a newly born Sylvari who joins the Durmand Priory, meets Traheanne, later collects allies of all races against a Risen invasion of the Pale Tree, and follows Traheanne at the birth of the Pact. The final mission in this storyline would be an attack against Zhaitan inside the Dream, while other troops fight against the monster in the “real” world.
And so on. Five different stories, one for each race, all ending at the fight against the dragon but each from a different point of view. We would lose the branching structure we currently have in the game, but we would get instead a full story, in which elements of the beginning continue to have impact all the way through the end.
The Destiny’s Edge story would run parallel from those five, being completely based on group content, but never directly interacting with the personal storyline. They would be a sixth point of view in the fight against Zhaitan.
This rigid structure would allow for more complex missions, similar in scope to those in the original Guild Wars, only modified as single player content. Likewise, the lack of variations within a single of the storylines would make it viable to employ more of the full animated concept art cinematics, rather than using only 3 or 4 during the entire game.
• Our characters are clueless. They never know what to do, they don’t have their own plans, and as a result we spend the entire game taking orders from NPCs. This is an old issue with ArenaNet’s writing: Prophecies had a lot of that, in Factions we spent most of the game following Mhenlo around, in Nightfall we were just taking orders from Kormir. In GW2, our character is just obeying our racial mentor, then our order mentor, then Traheanne. We are never the ones making the choices or the schemes, we just do as we are told.
4. The story missions are too bland. The individual steps in the personal storyline are very short and simple affairs most of the time – “go there and kill enemy X” being the most recurrent theme. This is good when designing content that can be played through casually, such as when someone only has 10 minutes of free time; it’s also simple to implement considering how many story steps have multiple possible missions (we are often told we have more than one way to deal with a single issue, so often the missions branch).
The issue is that what the game gains in accessibility and economy, it loses in quality. The missions are not memorable, nor particularly interesting, with very few exceptions. The irony, then, is that despite having multiple different missions available, this actually hurts replayability – almost all missions feel like the same thing, so even when picking different paths, it doesn’t feel like something new.
The mission system in the original Guild Wars, despite all its flaws, was far better than this due to how it could create more complex and interesting scenarios.
5. The story mixes different kinds of content. The last story mission is a dungeon, while everything else are solo missions. This is bad, by changing the way the content works at the very end – someone who likes solo missions does not necessarily like dungeons, and someone who likes dungeons does not necessarily like the solo missions required to understand the story behind that final step.
More importantly, though, the last story mission actually takes something that has not really been a part of the story and shoves it into the players’ faces. The entire Destiny’s Edge situation is something external to the personal storyline (no, a few mails from the racial mentor don’t really address this issue), but reaching the end of the game without bothering to do all the story dungeons is like reading the third book in a trilogy without reading the second. The entire Destiny’s Edge content should have been kept apart from the main storyline and given its own conclusion.
6. Quality is low. Dialogue in the personal storyline is terrible, which is odd considering how the world dialogue heard when exploring or doing dynamic events is often much better. The Destiny’s Edge dialogue in particular is horrible, as bad as the “Edge of Destiny” book – it reads like a child writing how other kids talk.
Cinematics are bad, too. I don’t have issues with using the “concept art background while two characters talk” approach in the open world or in the tutorial – it’s far better than just showing the world itself, with the NPCs talking to half a dozen player characters. However, there isn’t any excuse to use it within the personal storyline instances. Even the few in-world cinematics we get during the story are incredibly bad, like the cinematics we saw in Prophecies and Factions. Where are the extremely polished cinematics we saw in the Bonus Mission Pack, when Turai Ossa defeated Palawa Joko or when Gwen found the Ebon Vanguard?
Lastly, the more cinematic pieces of concept art, such as in the first Guild Wars 2 trailer or right after character creation, are incredibly missed through the game. They appear once in a while, but that’s not nearly enough for something so unique to Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet. I understand most of the team who did them no longer works at ArenaNet, but still, the company should do what it can to recreate this style.
I believe the personal storyline is one of GW2’s most disappointing aspects, considering everything it could have been. I would like to go in details about why it’s so lacking:
1. The modular design doesn’t work. The story is roughly divided in chapters, with each one corresponding to 10 levels intervals. The chapters have a modular design – they have been designed so all stories can mix and match, allowing for example both the Sylvari and the Charr to join the same order and have the same storyline later on.
There is a clear advantage to this design: it allows the players to make choices, and still tell a coherent story taking a bit from all possible options a player has.
It simply doesn’t work, though. The price we pay for the modular design is that a given chapter has no impact on what happens later on. If you are a human noble? It won’t ever be mentioned again after the first few chapters. Have you rescued a family member? Forget about him/her. Those NPCs who recruited you into an order? Gone, and won’t return.
There are almost no recurring characters in the game (and ironically the single exception is incredibly annoying). All those choices we make are irrelevant, since they have no long lasting impact beyond at most a couple chapters. The Manifesto claimed the storyline would be about the players, but in the end it isn’t – what we choose doesn’t matter.
The personal instance was meant to address this issue, but it fails at that. Not only it’s irrelevant – there is little point in going there at all – but the NPCs we meet through the game either don’t appear there, or they appear and just don’t say anything.
2. ArenaNet cut too many corners. Now, I know Guild Wars 2 has a lot of voiced dialogue, and that voice acting is expensive. Yet, there are many moments in which it’s clear ArenaNet was cutting costs. When you play the order mission to help a lesser race, you will notice that our characters never say the name of the order itself – only “my order”. This was clearly made to cut costs – so instead of having to record the line 30 times (once for each order and race and gender combination), ArenaNet could simply record it 10 times. Does that save money? Sure. Is it incredibly cheap and a way to rub in our faces how our choices don’t matter? Sure, too.
Then we have Traheanne. In almost every game, the player character is the protagonist – and that’s because, due to the way most games are designed, our characters have the active role in the world. We don’t play as the king who asks the knights to go kill the dragon while we wait doing nothing in a castle – we are either the knights, or we control the entire army in the assault. In Guild Wars 2, it’s the same thing – our characters are the heroes. But Traheanne takes the credit – he is the leader, he gives the “this is the final battle” speech, and so on.
I have a strong feeling that part of this is just to have less voice acting in the game. If our characters were the ones telling the army to go fight Zhaitan, those lines would have been recorded 10 times; with Traheanne saying them, they were recorded once, and that’s it.
IMO, the other issue with Traheanne is…
3. Our characters don’t have personality. They are blank. This has two huge impacts on the game:
• Our characters don’t really grow over time. We don’t really get to have emotional attachment to their personalities since there isn’t anything there. Compare this to Shepard’s story in the Mass Effect trilogy, Tera’s story in Final Fantasy 6, the Witcher’s story in The Witcher and so on. Those characters change over time; they have a journey and said journey changes them. Even when we can control some of their personalities, like in Mass Effect, they are still characters with their own personalities.
“But that’s how all MMOs are! You are comparing them to single player RPGs!”. No. I’m comparing poor and overly glorified excuses for Skinner boxes with RPGs that actually happen to tell a good story. MMORPGs are mediocre, but that’s not because the genre cannot improve, rather because the current MMORPG community is willing to settle for mediocrity.
“But people like to think their characters are them, so our characters cannot have a personality in game!”. That is, well, ridiculous. I remember the guy here furious because he met a lot of men playing as female characters, and he had assumed all those were girls he could hit on. The “role” in “role-playing game” doesn’t mean “tank/healer/DPS”, it means playing as someone who is not you.
I’m very happy there is no open world dueling in this game, and that players cannot spam others with duel invites.
The idea with this boss fight is to focus on the aspects of combat neglected in the rest of the game – support, control, condition damage – while avoiding the aspects of the game players currently rely on – direct damage and dodging. At the same time, this boss fight – unlike many of those currently in Guild Wars 2 – don’t rely on an enemy inflicting Fear, stuns, or knock backs (which are effects all bad MMOs rely on to make an enemy challenging). In fact, Stability would be nearly useless in this fight.
This is a suggestion for a dungeon boss I would like to see in game, hopefully exemplifying some new ideas. This is meant more as a sub boss than as a final boss.
The boss is fought in a circular platform without anything else inside (no places for players to hide behind, no places to climb, nothing), and once players enter they cannot leave unless the entire group is defeated. The fight is against a humanoid enemy, be it a human or a norn, nothing bigger than that. The boss uses a device, let’s call it a Mists Modulator, against the players.
Phase 01: the enemy activates the Mist Gas mode. The entire room is filled with an environmental effect that creates 100% endurance degeneration per second – in other words, players cannot dodge. This effect covers the entire room and lasts the entire fight. The boss attacks with a strong melee attack that can cleave and that can hit multiple players, if they are stacking in front of the boss (not strong enough to one shot players, but strong enough to be dangerous), and uses a Swiftness effect that lasts 10 seconds, applied each 10 seconds. When the boss is at 75% health, phase 02 begins.
Why: dodging is a crutch. Players are so used to dodging that they don’t see a point in any other kind of defense. This makes support and control basically irrelevant, and allows players to focus purely on damage instead of bothering with any other kind of defense. By removing that crutch, players need to adapt and figure out new strategies. Without dodging, players are going to be forced to do something about the boss’ main attack; due to his swiftness, players will either have to immobilize him, cripple him, find ways to remove his swiftness by using boon removers, or block his attacks. Just stacking on him would lead to a quick death, but using positioning would allow players to win without too many issues.
Phase 02: the enemy overcharges the Mists Modulator, activating Liquid mode. The endurance degeneration continues in effect, and the boss becomes immune to all sources of direct damage. However, he takes double condition damage, with the caveat that whenever a condition is placed on him, the player inflicting it also receives the same condition (removing it from the player doesn’t remove it from the boss). The enemy switches to a ranged attack, and once in a while does a charging animation to launch a bouncing attack; a single hit does little damage, but if players stay close to each other and allow the attack to bounce, it would do a lot of damage. When the boss is at 25% health, phase 03 begins.
Why: today, direct damage is king in Guild Wars 2. By removing it while removing the ability to dodge, players are forced to think of new ways to win. All professions have conditions, so requiring them isn’t much of an issue, and this would help the professions that rely on condition damage, so often neglegected from dungeons. The fact the boss takes double damage from conditions, together with the condition reflection, helps with the 25 cap on conditions – not only less conditions do more damage, but also a single player inflicting 25 stacks of a given condition would likely kill himself. Considering the amount of condition damage required to kill this boss, players would need to suffer more conditions that a single person can remove, requiring the team to coordinate in removing conditions from each other. At the same time, if they just stack on each other to benefit from area of effect condition removals, like Healing Rain, the boss’ bouncing attack would make short work of them.
Phase 03: the Mist Modulator is charged to maximum, and Solid mode begins. The boss becomes immune to all kinds of damage, players still cannot dodge, and the entire room plunges into the Mists, changing its appearance (to look more otherworldy) and losing the walls of the room; it’s now surrounded by the raw emptiness of the Mists. How are players supposed to defeat the boss? By throwing him out of the room, into the void around them. Using any kind of launch effect (be it a knock back, a launch, a push, or whatever) when the boss is near the edge of the room is enough to accomplish this. Meanwhile, the boss alternates between the melee and ranged attacks used in the last two phases, and he still has Defiant, so each missed push requires four more interrupts until the party can try again. Once he boss falls from the room, his health goes from 25% to 0, and players have seen the last of him.
(Or have they?)
Why: to make control relevant, and teach players to deal with Defiant in a situation in which going for raw Berseker gear is useless. It would require some coordination to use the proper interrupt at the proper time to defeat the boss, at the same time it would empower the players by taking a boss from 25% health to zero health so quickly.
How do you like your waffles? I like mine with a bit of cinnamon and maple syrup.
You haven’t eaten waffles properly if you never tasted them with large amounts of dulce de leche.
Don’t be lazy; if you’re speaking about your own opinions you really do have to say so.
Isn’t it kinda of obvious that almost all the time people here are talking about their opinions?
When dealing with success or failure of subjective elements you need only look to the target audience and gather votes. In this way the success or failure of Guild Wars 2 is decided democratically, and while I have no hard data to offer, the fact that the game does continue to thrive leads me to believe that the majority of players (Meaning all players, not just the relatively small minority who posts on the forums one way or the other) do find the game fun or otherwise engaging
Following similar patterns of previous MMO releases (how most of them had a lot of subscribers in the first few months, and lost most of them later), I somehow doubt we could say that the majority of those who bought and played GW2 continue to play. In fact, following similar patterns of previous MMO releases would hint that a large number of players left the game a bit before Fractals of the Mists was introduced.
Regardless, though, your argument has a flaw – you are trying to define failure or success democratically, as in, considering the population as a whole. When we consider that yes, we can gauge success or failure based on something subjective, we open the door to an interesting statement:
To me, Guild Wars 2 has failed.
Now, is that wrong?
Regardless of what you may personally think about recent design decisions or your interpretation of the manifesto Guild Wars 2 has not failed. Indeed it has proven to be rather successful.
Depends of your definition of failure. Don’t you think it’s viable to gauge Guild Wars 2’s success (of lack of success) based on if the game is fun or not?
No.
Success or failure is an objective thing.
ArenaNet disagrees with you, as seen on the blog post Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on how ArenaNet Measures Success.
Do notice I asked the question knowing your answer, just to point how ArenaNet itself has asked us to consider other ways in which we can measure the success of a MMO.
Now, if you want to report ArenaNet for trolling, be my guest.
I can start out with some background:
- Thanks to the trading post function, you can sell from anywhere. You don’t have to be at a trading post merchant to post up your items.
- Person to person trading is non-existent, so there is no need of a major hub in the game. The trading post is nameless and faceless.
- The deposit all function performs the majority of the role of a bank, in an instant.
- There are portals and paths in the game that lead here and there, but waypoints lead anywhere and everywhere in the game in an instant. The only advantage of a portal is that it is free.
One more list of complains that can be summed up with, “I wish Guild Wars 2 was more like all the other MMOs out there, with the same inconveniences and time sinks in place to deceive people into thinking they are fun, while they are just tricks to keep people p(l)aying longer”.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Regardless of what you may personally think about recent design decisions or your interpretation of the manifesto Guild Wars 2 has not failed. Indeed it has proven to be rather successful.
Depends of your definition of failure. Don’t you think it’s viable to gauge Guild Wars 2’s success (of lack of success) based on if the game is fun or not?
They announced it at last year’s September.
Wrong. Try paying attention to the link in my previous post.
I’m posting a guess. Because all we can do is guess, because no official numbers were announced since.
Wrong. Try paying attention to the content of my previous post. Sales have not gone past 4 million copies yet.
I would say that the bought copies are at about 6 million or so and we have about 2-3 million of players that show up and play.
Rose collored glasses are bad for your health, kids.
ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars 2 sold 3 million copies. They had also announced that the game had reached 2 million copies, and with GW1 they always told us whenever the game had reached past a new million mark.
To claim the game has sold 6 million copies by now and ArenaNet would not have announced so is one of the most preposterously ridiculous arguments I have ever seen.
As it was in gw1 or is everyone supposed to look the same?
Profession specific armor was a very bad idea. It meant that every time ArenaNet released a new chapter, they would have to either work more per chapter to make new armors for all professions, or just make less armors per profession. Prophecies had a lot of armors for 6 core professions, Factions had some armors for 8 professions, Nightfall had a few armors for 10 professions, and Eye of the North had a few reskins for 10 professions.
The current system is much, much better on the long run.
If you say that GW2 failed, you’re either trolling, you have an awkward perception of the word failure, or you’ve accustomed yourself into believing it’s failed.
In other words, “if you disagree with me you are a troll, no matter what you have to say”.
Right. I wish we could downvote posts.
That isn’t what he said. He said it’s possible that a person could be trolling, or that they have a point of view he feels is skewed, which ultimately is his opinion.
Reading comprehension.
Irrelevant. His point is that anyone who thinks differently than him is wrong without even trying to listen to the different opinions.
Ironically, a hater could say the same thing: “If you think Guild Wars 2 has not failed, you are wrong, no matter what you have to say”. It would be equally ridiculous, and equally pointless.
People don’t do AC anymore.
Your own screenshot shows two entries from the same guy… You are kinda ruining your own argument there.
If you say that GW2 failed, you’re either trolling, you have an awkward perception of the word failure, or you’ve accustomed yourself into believing it’s failed.
In other words, “if you disagree with me you are a troll, no matter what you have to say”.
Right. I wish we could downvote posts.
For example, say you kill a Champion First Mate in eh… Genderran Fields. He would first of all, either drop a rare or better of your level and good coin, but he would also have a possible chance to drop new, unique loot (maybe a possible pirate headpiece that would be a new design.) That would:
1. Give a new method of farming.
That’s bad. It’s too exploitable, I’m not sure we need one more way to farm, and so on, but the main issue is something else.
RNG is bad. The reason why dungeons give tokens and not a chance for random drops is because the “rare item drop” system is ultimately unfair – someone who does a dungeon a lot of times can get nothing, while the person who did it once and was mostly carried by the rest of the team could get the place’s most desired item.
Some parts of the GW2 original design made a point in trying to avoid this kind of RNG – dynamic events not only always give the same rewards, but they also reward you based on contribution; map completition gives more or less the same rewards (as in, you know if you will get exotics, rares, or masterwork items), and so on.
At the same time, the original GW2 design also had a lot of very stupid RNG (ectoplasm, Mystic Toilet, ectoplasm, all the RNG in the gem store, ectoplasm and so on). In this we can see how different designers had different opinions on applying fair content or not to the game.
But in the end, it’s a bad system from which we should see less, not more.
Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW.
And Rift has gear grind, and yet there are a lot less people playing Rift than WoW. TOR has gear grind, and there are a lot less people playing it than WoW. And so on, and so on.
You are assuming gear grind makes a game good. You are wrong.
I also disagree about “grinding” in your job to make ends meet, and that you should enjoy your job as much as possible. However, reality (for some unlucky ones) is quite different from that ideal. There are also quite a number of people who, despite hating their job, stick to it because of the big fat paycheck they receive at the end of each month (hint: look at the job conditions at Singapore, S. Korea and Japan).
Some people simply don’t have a choice. If I had a family to feed and the only job available to me were something like a grind, I would probably take it. Meanwhile, to some people grinding is the easy way out so they decide to grind in real life as an excuse to not have the effort of seeking something better.
In a game, the first situation doesn’t happen, though. We are not forced to play a game and so to pick the “least bad” option. Even the guy who wants delayed gratification should demand the game to give him fun content while waiting for something he enjoys even more later on. Otherwise, games are simply allowed to be bad, as most MMORPGs are.
As for AC, its a fact no one wants to do anymore. At this point in time, it isnt because of buggy mechanics, annoying CC spam or inexplicable frame lags but its because everyone got what they needed and only do COF to farm gold. One can only conclude that in attempt to appease the ,,elitists", Mr Hrouda satisfied no one and wasted his design team’s time.
I agree.
People don’t do AC anymore. It’s easy to say “some people like content that requires coordination”, but you don’t see even those groups doing AC nowadays. Same thing with the Karka Queen event in Southsun – it requires some coordination to capture and hold all camps and later to defeat the Queen. But people simply doesn’t bother with it.
Making challenging content is nice. But the dungeons are badly designed now. They are too time consuming for PUGs and so PUGs don’t bother with them, and too easy and simply not fun for coordinated guild groups, who also don’t bother with them.
Besides, making extensive content exclusively for coordinated groups isn’t a good idea – it’s wasting too many resources on too small a group. In this context, the idea that ALL paths of ALL dungeons would require organized groups is bad.
What ArenaNet should have done was making all dungeons so the first path is easy (as in, doable by the majority of PUGs) and making sure the important rewards are only given once per day per path (unlike CoF, in which the important reward – gold – is given as many times as you do the dungeon).
This way, PUGs would have access to those rewards and would have ways to understand a bit how dungeons work, while the organized groups would have access to the same rewards in one third of the time. This would even encourage PUG players to try to become better so they can also do the other two paths and get their rewards faster.
Allowing for permanent pet stow and immunity to AoE damage would help a lot for example.
Pet stow is an incredibly bad idea. To make it simple to understand, it’s almost as if ArenaNet told us tomorrow that, in order to balance rangers, they are removing them from the game and all ranger characters will be changed into warriors.
The pet is the ranger’s main exclusive mechanic. It isn’t even the most subpar mechanic, between traps and spirits. ArenaNet should fix the pets, not take the easy path of making it easier to ignore them.
What you fail to realize is that some people get their “fun” from delayed gratification. Some people purposely delay their gratification because the enjoyment is much sweeter the longer the wait. This concept might be foreign to you, but it certainly is something not new, especially to game developers. So no, you’re wrong to assume that a particular playstyle is not “fun”.
Nope.
I understand your point. I simply believe you are wrong. I think that kind of reasoning is used everywhere as an excuse for accepting something bad instead of trying to do better.
Using real life as an example: you described “grinding” your job daily to be successful. I think that’s wrong. I believe people should have jobs they enjoy so the experience of working itself is good; I see a lot of teenagers who think that “working” means being a McDonalds employee and nothing more, usually in the context of someone who doesn’t bother to do better than that. But those who seek a career – the doctors, engineers, and so on – pick a career based on what they like to do, not on what they can make do.
Same with MMORPGs. “Sense of progression”, “delayed gratification”, “rewarding dedication” – those are all excuses. There is no acceptable reason for a game to not give a fun experience, with or without a reward later. Accepting flawed content just to get a reward later on is accepting mediocrity, which for the records is all the majority of MMOs has been for the last years.
NCsoft won’t have problem scratching it off their investment schedule – if Wildstar becomes the next big thing you’ll see this game with so much potential suffer because of your inaction.
Meh. Wildstar will see the exact same thing that has happened to every other big MMO released in the past few years:
A casual player base can deal with time gating far more easily than it can deal with skill gating.
Not really. In MMORPGs, the difference between “casual” and “hardcore” is basically the time spent grinding. Doesn’t really make a difference if a casual player could possible achieve something with enough time spent or not. A Legendary, for example, has been almost exactly described as a reward for hardcore players, yet it’s something any casual player could get one after playing ten years or more.
You can count them successful when they’ve lived as long kitten years, which all of them have.
Uh… Not really. The Old Republic was considered a failure by EA itself. All the games you mentioned, sans WoW, lost most of their players a few months after release. See by yourself.
Meanwhile, which MMORPG without a gear grind has suffered the same?
How many games with gear grind can I consider successful? Nearly every single game with gear grind has been successful. WoW, Runes of Magic, Rift, every korean mmorpg on earth, Everquest, Lord of the Rings online, Ragnarok, Star Wars the Old Republic, Fiesta online, Perfect World, and the list goes on.
Most of those failed, at least in the West.
How many MMORPGs without gear grind have failed in this side of the world?
The GW2 community is very polarized. Anet’s failure to come up with a solid middle-ground solution is slowly making the game bleed out. I would be very interested in seeing an official census of players today vs a year ago.
I disagree. I think it’s exactly the fact that ArenaNet is trying to come up with a middle-ground solution that is driving people away. They are not going to please everyone. They have at least two opposite groups with very different wants and needs playing the game, and both of those do not work together. ArenaNet is trying to make something pleasant for both groups, but it’s not going to work (as it has not been working). If they made a stand and said “this is the kind of player we want” and actually went through with it (they said it in their manifesto, but backtracked from there), the game would lose players from one group, but hopefully get more from the other. And maybe we would stop having the same discussions over and over.
Let me tell you this. In every single successful mmo out there, the developers have made a goal once you reach the max level. Can you guess what that goal might be? Getting armor.
…Which “every single successful MMO”? Rift? Went free to play due to the loss of players. The Old Republic? Was described as a failure by EA itself. Aion? Never became a success in the West. Age of Connan, WarHammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online? All lost huge chunks of players soon after release.
We have far more examples of failed MMOs with the end game goal being to grind for armor than examples of failed MMOs without gear grind.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
For example, I think most people who like instances in most MMOs would probably have enjoyed Fissure of Woe, The Underworld, Domain of Anguish, The Deep, Urgoz’s Warren and Slaver’s Exile.
They wouldn’t.
The goal of “instances in most MMOs” (aka raids) is to get more powerful gear. None of your examples provides more powerful gear. Ergo, raiders would have hated them.
In fact, adding raids to Guild Wars 2 without giving them more powerful gear would only make raiders complain about how they wouldn’t be properly rewarded for their “work”.
Although I’m sure ArenaNet knows about this. I will be surprised if the GW2 “raids” aren’t when we will see the introduction of Ascended weapons and armors.
. So what? How pretentious of you to presume that your way of fun is “better” or more justifiable than theirs. So long as they don’t intrude or impede another player’s gameplay (like those rude farmers above), they’re alright.
Because it is better. Grinding is a mix between a Skinner rat pressing its lever and a donkey being told where to go by having a carrot dangling in front of its face. Human beings should know better.
It’s the real life equivalent of demanding to be paid in order to go to the movies, and then watching every single mediocre movie out there just to get paid.
The concept that they don’t intrude in your gameplay is a farce. Using the same example above, if people watched any movie in order to get paid, why bother trying to make a good movie if people would watch anything? It’s the same with grinding. Grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters don’t care about fun content, they are going to grind anyway; so why would a MMORPG developer even bother with fun content, when it’s not needed to get millions of players in their games?
Sarcastic demonstration that I can pull facts out of my kitten as well as you can, fun is subjective. Your entire position falls apart because you do not get to define what is fun for everyone else.
With the main difference being that I am right and you are wrong. Farming and grinding (and exploiting, which is nearly the same thing) are not about having fun. They are about enduring content in order to receive the satisfaction of getting a reward in the end, more often than not by going through mediocre content.
MMO developers know about this. They don’t have to work to make their games fun (which is incredibly hard, considering how fun is subjective) since they know there is a large contingent of players who are addicted to grind and will do it as long as there is a big reward waiting for them. The result is what the MMORPG genre has been ever since it became popular – mediocre games swimming in cesspools of bad content with relatively large followings.
A manifesto is something that is a statement of intent. You intend to do something. Obviously,. that has to be accomplished with the parameters of existing technology.
See, all of those are just excuses. Just as it was an excuse to claim that the Manifesto doesn’t matter just because it’s two years old. I hope you have read my comment above about players extremelly concerned about finding excuses for ArenaNet.
If you make a Manifesto claiming you will do something, and said something is not possible within the parameters of existing technology, then you still have failed to achieve what you claimed you would do.
If you make a Manifesto claiming you will do a list of things, and you still don’t manage to do one of those things, then you still have failed to achieve everything you claimed you would do.
By your own statements, ArenaNet has failed in achieving their Manifesto. Ergo…
I don’t really wonder, I know. Its because some people judge a group by the behavior of a minority within that group.
Not really. It’s because farmers make the game worse for everyone else.
Even ignoring the economic impact farmers have, the fact is that farmers allow MMO developers to make mediocre content that said developers know will sell. That’s because farmers don’t need fun content, they are happy playing mediocre content as long as they get a shiny reward in the end.
For everyone else, who would actually like to have a good game… Well, those players are told to find something else to play, MMOs are for grinders only. Until the grinders go find the next MMO to grind, leaving behind an empty game devoured by locusts.
I think most farmers are quite okay. They’re doing what they enjoy.
I wonder if a Skinner rat actually enjoys the action of pressing its little lever.
It’s so sad that you can’t see the difference between opinion and fact. In your OPINION that game doesn’t live up to the manifesto. In my OPINION it does.
Told you one week ago that you need better arguments than “it’s just your opinion!!!!11!”. Besides…
I disgree. I think they did attain, within the limits of current technology, pretty much what they set out to do in the manifesto.
I could list out in text the entire manifesto and with the exception of a single line, I think they’ve accomplished what they’ve set out to do.
…In your own opinion, it looks no, the game doesn’t exactly live up to the Manifesto.
To me, ArenaNet’s failure to follow their own Manifesto is the perfect symbol as to how they have failed with Guild Wars 2.
I disgree. I think they did attain, within the limits of current technology, pretty much what they set out to do in the manifesto.
You are wrong.
I mentioned how haters are people who want the game to fail. What would you call someone who is willing to give excuses for whatever flaw is pointed in the game, instead of accepting criticism as something ArenaNet could use to improve Guild Wars 2?
I’m not wrong just because you say so. I could list out in text the entire manifesto and with the exception of a single line, I think they’ve accomplished what they’ve set out to do. They’ve certainly accomplished most of it.
I wouldn’t call that a failure at all.
You can say you are not wrong, but it appears you show I am right.
I disgree. I think they did attain, within the limits of current technology, pretty much what they set out to do in the manifesto.
You are wrong.
I mentioned how haters are people who want the game to fail. What would you call someone who is willing to give excuses for whatever flaw is pointed in the game, instead of accepting criticism as something ArenaNet could use to improve Guild Wars 2?
No matter what attacks me I always fight them roughly the same way based on the weapon I have at the moment and the distance the person is from me.
Then you are not a very good player.
There isn’t much more to say than that.
In the original Guild Wars, costumes (the better designed version of town clothes) couldn’t be worn in PvP either.
It is an awesome game and it won’t fail. Some here seem to almost want this game to fail.
Yep, a lot of people here want the game to fail, that’s pretty much what a hater is.
You haven’t stated what is your definition of “failure”, though.
From my point of view, ArenaNet has already failed. They made a manifesto with their intention, and they didn’t really managed to accomplish most of what they stated as their goal.
Does this mean Guild Wars 2 is a bad game? For some people, yes. For others, no. For me, yes.
Others have brought up good points about content in general. GW2, at launch, got that fun trumped carrot on a stick as a motivator. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten how they created the core game and the principles it was built around, so it’s not a huge surprise that they might decide to fall back on the old design paradigm.
I don’t know what’s happening at ANet, but I don’t think there is any way the current ANet could create a game any where near on par with what GW2 was at launch.
I agree. Although, if you look into the small details, even at release GW2 had a few systems with a lot of grind, which were far from being fun. They have increased those systems so much after release that they have engulfed all of GW2, probably due to panicking after the first wave of MMO locusts left the game.
The thing is – we know who were the responsible for those initial grind-based systems. We know who are the developers that were bad from the beginning. It’s easy to see whose influence is growing within ArenaNet, and who is to blame for the state the game currently is in.
This is exactly what each and every special monthly event has been about. Stupid cosmetic trinkets, stupid cosmetic minis, long achievement checklist grinds all for said cosmetic trinket mini junk.
What you are asking for is to replace that by stupid more powerful trinkets, stupid stats altering minis, long achievement checklist grinds for all said more powerful trinket mini junk.
It’s not only equally ridiculous – it’s even more so.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Unwaking_Waters <- GW1 mission, up to 16 players.
And that mission was SO MUCH FUN.
Only not.
Meaningful rewards that give you a sense of character/gear progression is a key component to keeping players interested.
I can show you hundreds of games in which character and gear progression didn’t even exist, yet people played and enjoyed those games. What you call a way to keep players interested, I call a way to keep people addicted, nothing more.
GW2 is like a carnival. It’s fun to pass the time and look at all the cool sideshows, but there is no overall epic adventure. Just mindless wandering.
Quoting the OP from another topic:
Do you honestly think most MMO players are thinking “oh sweet I cant wait for this awesome challenge in this dungeon”…no they want to get that sweet rare reward at the end.
So no, you are not looking for any “overall epic adventure”. By your words, all you want is “mindless” grind. I’m happy that there isn’t enough of the gear grind you want in this game.
I know that there is a large team of Developers, but I was wondering if we could find out what they like in the game, like whats there favorite class to play, favorite world bosses, events, and dungeons.
Do you honestly think most MMO players are thinking “oh sweet I cant wait for this awesome challenge in this dungeon”…no they want to get that sweet rare reward at the end.
Yep. And that’s why MMORPGs are all mediocre games – because their players are willing to stop being human beings and instead lower themselves to the level of Skinner rats, blindly pushing their little levers hoping for a new shiny.
Good games are fun, and said fun is its own reward. Unfortunatelly, WoW and alikes taught developers that there are a lot of players willing to accept content that is not fun (and fun content is very hard to create) as long as it’s content they can get addicted to.
Unfortunatelly (or fortunatelly, depending of your point of view) most of humanity is made by human beings. Thus, while millions of players are willing to lower themselves to gear grind, there aren’t more players so easily deceived than that. The result is that no MMORPG has been hugely successful after WoW, because there are not that many more players entering their niche market (the Skinner rat audience).
Trying to make one more Skinner box is not going to work. There are a lot of those out there and none of them has been a huge success in the last years. If Guild Wars 2 were to be successful, ArenaNet should have embraced the philosophy they stated in their Manifesto – it’s in my signature, but the idea was to make a MMO for people who don’t like the current MMO, in other words a MMO meant to be fun, not a MMO meant to be an addiction.
Too bad they have changed their minds.
This is somewhat of a poll. Just imagine that Guild Wars 2 created five new, playable, malignant monster races in the next expansion
You know, this is an incredibly bad idea.
In the original Guild Wars, the game was ruined because ArenaNet added too many new professions and too many new skills per chapter. They decided to add skills and armors for all professions in each chapter, which effectively led to a (very dumb) system in which content demanded more content: chapter 2 had skills and armors for 8 professions, chapter 3 had skills and (very few) armors for 10 professions, chapter 4 would have skills and armors for 12 professions, and so on.
Now, in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet risks doing the same thing. If they added a lot of races to the next expansion/chapter/whatever, what would happen? They would have to add A LOT more of voice acting to the game (infinitely more if they did the very dumb move of making the new races compatile with the current PvE campaign, so they would have to record almost all the currently spoken lines at least twice more), they would have to add more racial skills, they would have to add more cultural armors that would be useable by a smaller percentage of characters, and so on.
This is the kind of thing ArenaNet should not listen players about. The great majority of players simply doesn’t stop to think beyond “more is guud!!!!1111!!!shifoneoneone!!11”.
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