Guild Wars 2

BlackGhostz.2483:

These forums are more entertaining than the game is.

I lol’d. And I agree. On your previous post though, feel lucky, since GW1 players waited 5 years for this, but saying that, GW2 was never going to be that kind of game. Open world combat was ruled out since the start, but maybe , if they bring back the kurzciks/luxons it may appear in some form.

pdavis.8031:

Scipio.3204:

pdavis.8031:

Hegediz.1605:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

And I would like to link, for you, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6vRTFU6JI

This is the Cinematic Trailer for Guild Wars Prophecies. If this game was truly as PvP-focused as you’re claiming, then the cinematic trailer wouldn’t be showing off only humans fighting down monsters. It would show humans fighting against other humans, to pump up the “Player versus Player” point of the game.

But, it doesn’t. It’s a PvE monster-slayer, just like it was always intended to be.

I understand what you are trying to say. And the video sure does not mention Guilds in any shape or form indeed.

The bottom line (and also the topic of this thread) is that Guild Wars 1 was a suitable name, while Guild Wars 2 is simply not anymore.

So GW2 is not a suitable name because it doesn’t have GvG? But it is a continuation of the story of Tyria. The events of GW1 have brought the world to the point that it is now.

And WoW is the continuation of the story of the warcraft series, yet it is not called Warcraft 4

No, because Warcraft moved from being an RTS to an MMO. And with an MMO you have a much more expansive, evolving and changing world. Thus WORLD of Warcraft.

And GW moved from being a coorpg to an MMO, my point is the continuation of the story shouldn’t be enough to put a “2” next to its name

pdavis.8031:

Hegediz.1605:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

And I would like to link, for you, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6vRTFU6JI

This is the Cinematic Trailer for Guild Wars Prophecies. If this game was truly as PvP-focused as you’re claiming, then the cinematic trailer wouldn’t be showing off only humans fighting down monsters. It would show humans fighting against other humans, to pump up the “Player versus Player” point of the game.

But, it doesn’t. It’s a PvE monster-slayer, just like it was always intended to be.

I understand what you are trying to say. And the video sure does not mention Guilds in any shape or form indeed.

The bottom line (and also the topic of this thread) is that Guild Wars 1 was a suitable name, while Guild Wars 2 is simply not anymore.

So GW2 is not a suitable name because it doesn’t have GvG? But it is a continuation of the story of Tyria. The events of GW1 have brought the world to the point that it is now.

And WoW is the continuation of the story of the warcraft series, yet it is not called Warcraft 4

They are right, Guild Wars wasn’t named after GvG, but yeah, the first game had an awesome system with ratings, ranks , GHs and tournaments ,this is why a lot of people think it is named after that.

Now if GW2 deserves to be called the first game’s successor that’s an entirely different question.

@Indigo

the other four is Hellfire, Radiant, and the two PvP exclusive sets, the one in the reward track and the tournament rewards

-I don’t know who ignored them , Maybe Galen when he listed the gemstore armors

- I agree with you, but he’s not entirely wrong. Even if they add 100% of the newly added items to the gemstore , some folk is going to say “But that doesn’t count as cash grab since you can earn it with gold”

I think it’s shorter if I list what I don’t miss about GW1:

-After the release of expansions , I do agree the amount of skills was a bit too much
-I always found exploration a little annoying there, especially when I wanted to look for the last 0,1% to complete my title and spent hours looking at the map and thinking “Where the heck is it?”
-the fact I couldn’t extinct the charrs (Believe me, I tried).
- the RNG bosses around prophecies when I was skill hunting.
- I agree the combat could use a lot of improvement, but I would find GW2 a lot more intresting with instances, good AI heroes and trinity.
sorry, I’m not good at this, can’t think about more atm but I’ll try to expand the list.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Still reaching, both gw1 and gw2 have male and female models (aka it cancels out)
changing 3 things on an armor doesnt really make it a new armor. and even if you wanted to claim it does, that doesnt happen for every peice, or every armor. Some armors are exactly the same except warped for a new body type.
Also IF you want to bring female/male into this, you would have to realize that asura uses identical male/female armor for some peices.

regardless i would say its pointless to even look at races or sex, because that doesnt increase the amount of options you have for a specific charachter. Female char will never be able to wear male clothes, and never be able to wear whatever skin looks slightly different on a human.

You’re right, though he counted male and female for gw1, but he didnt so okey fair enough recalculating:
so its actually
Non Gemstore 5 sets x 3 version x 3 races x 6 pieces = 270 + 165 (loose pieces + back items etc..) = 435
Gemstore there were 21 armor skin variants in the gem store x 3 races x 6 pieces = 378
pieces

813 different pieces in total.

as for variation between human asura and char.. those 3 i gave where just examples, the body topology of the 3 races are very different its not just a matter of shrinking armor, it needs to be remodelled to fit the body. Sure its not the same amount of work as starting from scratch but they still had to physically work on them its not just automatic.

We were not really discussing how many options player have but rather how much work on armor anet did in gw1 and gw2

You are right, I did forgot Hellfire/Radiant armors, but those are the same on all armor type ( light,medium,heavy) . Also, you forgot to add individual armor pieces to gemstore armors (or you counted them amongst non-gemstore) . The point is, more individual armor piece was added to gemstore ,than to the game.

And yeah, I did not count the races ,since it’s not different armor , it’s just on different body type. But I also didn’t count the GW1 genders as a factor.

Vayne.8563:

So how much content is in each game is probably very much dependent on the areas of you game you play and enjoy.

I could care less about dungeons on most days. I wouldn’t care if there are thousands of dungeons in one and one dungeon in the other. The truth is, Guild Wars 2 has more of specific types of content and Guild Wars 1 had more of other types of content.

So, if you like the open world, what content did Guild Wars 1 really have? If you like jumping puzzles, what type of content did it have.

PvP, I’ve acknowledged many times is more robust in Guild Wars 1 than Guild Wars 2. No one has ever questioned that to my knowledge.

But in PvE. Well you have your open world players and you have your dungeon guys. In my opinion, and this has always been my opinion, there are more people who play open world than do dungeons. I did dungeons in Guild Wars 1 too, but I was more about the world itself. That’s what interested me.

Just a quick point about listed stuff. Some of those missions that are “extremely complex” as listed, could be done in a tiny amount of time and covered a tiny area. Naturally Chabek Village was a mission but who cared.

As for dungeons, well, Kilroy counted as one of those dungeons and so did the snowman dungeon.

At any rate, I liked the dungeons in Guild Wars 1 far more than I like the dungeons in Guild Wars 2.

But I like the open world in Guild Wars 2 far more than I liked ANYTHING in Guild Wars 1.

If you want open world content, Guild Wars 1 had nothing. It was all instanced.

So, both games have a lot of content, but focused on different content. Guild Wars 2 has far more of certain types of content (ie quests), where as Guild Wars 1 had more PvP and perhaps more (and certainly better) dungeons.

I’ll certainly accept that compromise.

Alright, I can agree with that too.

I also add a note, a few mission were short as you pointed out, I give you that, but it’s also noteworthy to know, the missions in prophecies played in a otherwise inaccessable area ,meaning the first game was bigger than 54 exploreable area with about +25 area.

Vayne.8563:

Yes, I am. Let’s start at the beginning.

Eye of the North had 18 dungeons. Guild Wars 2 has 8 dungeons with at least 4 paths each, so that’s 33 dungeons and 15 fractals.

The starter continent is very very misleading. We had much larger land mass in Guild Wars 1 that was far less accessible. Everything pathed. You couldn’t go underwater. The amount of places to actually explore in Guild Wars 1 was far less because of this.

But this real thing is just in quests and missions. Here’s how it breaks down.

Prophecies: 205 quests/ 25 missions. Source Guild Wars 1 wiki
Fractions: 200 plus quests (as per wiki)/ 13 missions
Nightfall: 250 plus quests/20 missions
Eye of the North: 124 quests, no missions

Total quests in All of Guild Wars 1 = probably under 800, but definitely under 900. Since they don’t give the exact amount of quests.

Total DEs which replaced quests in Guild Wars 2. Over 1500 at launch. 1500>900.

In All Guild Wars 1 you had 58 missions. That’s it. 58 missions. You have to do that many personal story steps in Guild Wars 2 on each character, but there are several different starting stories for each race and that doesn’t include the living story instances we have now.

Jumping puzzles. Guild Wars 2 over 30. Guild Wars 1 exactly none.

As I said before Guild Wars 1 definitely had more skills, because that was what the game was about. It was called Build Wars for reason. And people who liked to make builds, like me, loved it for that reason.

But questwise, mission wise, content wise…Guild Wars 2 has way more content. Source is Anet anyway. They actually stated Guild Wars 2 has more content than all Guild Wars 1 put together.

Feel free to argue with them.

Anet said a lot of things, their word aren’t golden. So , if you don’t mind , I’ll just feel free to argue with those numbers.

I see you counted a dungeon’s story, and three different path as four individual dungeon. If those count as different dungeons ( since they pretty much play at the same place) then a different level in a dungeon in GW1 why not? Lets count with those: Total number of dungeons : 49, counting only those in GW:EN.

You can say DEs make the world big , but no, areas does : GW1 areas: Tyria: 54,
Cantha: 33, Elona 34 , together 121 . You can argue GW2 areas are bigger and you could go underwater but that won’t change the fact GW1 had more than 4x more exploreable area, GW2 exploreable area: 27

Now Lets see Elite Areas since you counted jumping puzzles
GW: UW,FoW, Deep, Urgoz, Mallyx (counted as 4 since four individual path too lol)
9
GW2: 0

PvP modes : GW 2 : 1
GW1 :7
PvP Maps: GW2: 7
GW1 : 46

In a different topic I made a comparsion about armor pieces released since release of GW2 & GW1 cantha. Not completely off topic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-GW2-just-isn-t-working/page/9#post4442387

Also Comparing GW1 missions to personal story steps, I can see why you do that, since these things progressed you through story but… nah , these two things are completely in different category, since you can complete every personal step solo. GW1 missions were pretty complex and you could actually fail those.

Also Challenge missions: GW1 : 9, GW2: 0
I would count everything you can do in HM too, but now I don’t really feel like it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You left out all the costume packs they released in the gem store as well. Town clothing, and holiday costumes, also count.

I did not, I counted every costume as two piece (Body & chest) , and things like bunny ear or grenth hood has been counted on individual pieces

munkiman.3068:

Scipio.3204:

Galen Grey.4709:

Or we’re seriously spoiled. Sure a good number of skins are sold on at the gem store. That being said nearly every 2 weeks we get new skins that can be earned in game sometimes even more then one in a single release. Which other MMO does that? I bet Gw2 has released more free skins then even Gw1 did with its expansions. Yet people seem to have tunnel vision and only see the paid skins.

Ohh boy I see I have my homework for today! Lets try it with only cantha:

GW1 Armors in cantha, there was: Shing Jea, Kurzick/Luxon & Elite Version, Canthan, Elite Canthan. Thats for 6 professions and they had all these versions for Ritu/Sin+ Exotic Armor sets. That means 8 (Profession) * 7 (Version) * 5 (Armor Piece) + 10 ( For ritu/Sin exotic armor) That’s 290 different armor piece.

Now on GW2 Non-gemstore armor pieces
2 new PvP set , Ascended armor . Thats three version from each means 9 different armor with 6 individual piece. 54 in all , now let’s count small things:
In the recent patch 6 new backpacks for every crafting profession : 48
Living story backpacks since release ( Check it on wiki if you don’t believe me): 30
+ 1 PvP Backpack
3 craftable, god themed back & fractal backs (4)
Collection reward backpack (1)
Standalon armors (Like dry top glasses etc, counted on wiki) : 27

Total Individual armor number: 165 ,

and Just for fun!
GW2 Gemstore Armor pieces since release!

6 Gemstore armor packs have been released ( means 6 medium, 6 light, 6 heavy.)
That means : 18*6 individual armor piece : 108
Number of individual armor pieces: 43 + 5 from black lion chest.
Also costumes: 8 added since release, lets count with two/ each : 16

Total armor pieces added to gemstore since release : 172 Individual armor piece

If I miscalculated something feel free to correct me.

Figure i’d add that, that was in one years time, for the Cantha stuff

Yeah, and it’s also sad if I ignore backs & standalone skins, cantha had more armor pieces than gemstore & non gemstore combined after two years.

I would also do this counting on weapons released, (My guess is that gemstore would dominate cantha lol) , but doing it wouldn’t be fair ,since in GW1 you could dye weapons and in GW2 a lots of weapon has been released as different pieces yet they are the same ,but in different colours.

Galen Grey.4709:

Or we’re seriously spoiled. Sure a good number of skins are sold on at the gem store. That being said nearly every 2 weeks we get new skins that can be earned in game sometimes even more then one in a single release. Which other MMO does that? I bet Gw2 has released more free skins then even Gw1 did with its expansions. Yet people seem to have tunnel vision and only see the paid skins.

Ohh boy I see I have my homework for today! Lets try it with only cantha:

GW1 Armors in cantha, there was: Shing Jea, Kurzick/Luxon & Elite Version, Canthan, Elite Canthan. Thats for 6 professions and they had all these versions for Ritu/Sin+ Exotic Armor sets. That means 8 (Profession) * 7 (Version) * 5 (Armor Piece) + 10 ( For ritu/Sin exotic armor) That’s 290 different armor piece.

Now on GW2 Non-gemstore armor pieces
2 new PvP set , Ascended armor . Thats three version from each means 9 different armor with 6 individual piece. 54 in all
Hellfire/Radiant, 12 different piece.
now let’s count small things:
In the recent patch 6 new backpacks for every crafting profession : 48
Living story backpacks since release ( Check it on wiki if you don’t believe me): 30
+ 1 PvP Backpack
3 craftable, god themed back & fractal backs (4)
Collection reward backpack (1)
Standalone armors (Like dry top glasses etc, counted on wiki) : 27

Total Individual armor number: 177 ,

and Just for fun!
GW2 Gemstore Armor pieces since release!

6 Gemstore armor packs have been released ( means 6 medium, 6 light, 6 heavy.)
That means : 18*6 individual armor piece : 108
Number of individual armor pieces: 43 + 5 from black lion chest.
Also costumes: 8 added since release, lets count with two/ each : 16

Total armor pieces added to gemstore since release : 172 Individual armor piece

If I miscalculated something feel free to correct me.

Edit: Added hellfire & radiant to the numbers.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Kurrilino.2706:

Vayne.8563:

But no other game I can remember had as much ambient dialogue in cities that you could just hear in passing. And that’s part of the living breathing world.

No game that I can remember have NPCs what walk from one event to the next, and you can follow them and see where they go.

That’s a living breathing world.

---

Oh i see you never played Oblivion then…..
They have living cities

Sure, single player games aren’t MMOs. I agree 100%. However, Guild Wars 2 is a living breathing MMO.

Pretty disingenuous to compare different genres.

Single player games have more variety in their plotlines too.

Question : what makes Guild Wars 2 a living, breathing MMO in your opinion? The living story , the way the world evolves around a story, the fact it’s an open world MMO and you can potentially meet random strangers and help out eachother? Dynamic event system? Or something else?

A combination of things rather than one individual thing. I’ve played a lot of MMOs. You know…a lot of them. There’s a town in Rift that is on fire. It’s on fire all the time. It’s near a quest hub. You have to go into the burning town, and it’s locked in time. It’s never not on fire. It’s never completely burned down. It’s always in this state.

In Guild Wars 2, I walk through a zone and one day the centaurs have a fort, next time the humans hold it. Sure it see-saws back and forth along chains, but it’s still an improvement for living over other games. I don’t have a guy saying please help me or these guys will destroy my house…but it never gets destroyed. If guys are going to destroy someone’s house they DO destroy it.

There’s a ton of ambient dialogue, in the world and especially in the cities. The further you are from something, the softer the voice. It’s very cool. And sometimes, even now, I hear conversations I’ve not heard before.

There’s little things that just make the game very cool. There was a kid on one of the personal story segments who does a magic trick for you if you talk to him. He comes running up to you…want to see a magic trick?

And if you say yes, he does it. But perhaps better than I could ever explain it is this video. I don’t know any other MMO that has this or anything like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes

Unfortunately a lot of these things are in instance you could miss, I do remember a magician(It was/is in the open world) that turned his assistant into a Moa, after that he started to dance with 2 other moa and you had to tell which one was the assistant.
And agreed, open world is very detailed ,but I feel like they are moving away from that direction. Every time there was a living story I thought through what should I visit ,what could hide some hidden information. Two example comes in mind : the first was when (Don’t know how to do spoiler things ,sry) Rytlock went after magdear , after that I visited his quarters in black citadel and his assistant still thinks he is in bloodtide coast. Or when I visited the pale tree after the last episode and everyone there (expect the tree) acted like nothing happened.

On other notes I think you were too quick to judge Wildstar. I only played a beta ,but it does some thing intrestingly . If your complaint is it’s not living ,it does have a lot of great ideas, see the part when players can expand cities via Settler path, or the phasing which still enable you to play with anyone who didn’t complete it yet and it has player triggered dynamic events things as well as normal events.

Vayne.8563:

Kurrilino.2706:

Vayne.8563:

But no other game I can remember had as much ambient dialogue in cities that you could just hear in passing. And that’s part of the living breathing world.

No game that I can remember have NPCs what walk from one event to the next, and you can follow them and see where they go.

That’s a living breathing world.

---

Oh i see you never played Oblivion then…..
They have living cities

Sure, single player games aren’t MMOs. I agree 100%. However, Guild Wars 2 is a living breathing MMO.

Pretty disingenuous to compare different genres.

Single player games have more variety in their plotlines too.

Question : what makes Guild Wars 2 a living, breathing MMO in your opinion? The living story , the way the world evolves around a story, the fact it’s an open world MMO and you can potentially meet random strangers and help out eachother? Dynamic event system? Or something else?

fireflyry.7023:

In saying, and to counter, your saying GW1 would have been a success regardless of any additional releases. Just Prophecies….of course your not…get my jist?

Proph was a succes without expansions. Proof: they made expansions.

fireflyry.7023:

In my honest opinion it dates back to GW1 and GvG. The game slowly but surely slid towards PvE. I don’t blame Anet or hold that against them…it makes good business sense. PvErs grinding equates to a better business model overall….and your right…they make great PvE and have created a great world here but it’s full of braindead mobs.

Look at the world boss loop…a bunch of players spamming 1-3 range skills till chest then mapping to the next boss. That’s GW2?

I guess I’m jaded, I bought the collectors edition of Nightfall. After the goodness of Factions I was stoked to hear that they were going to release NF as a mainly PvE content expansion as they also announced, in the DVD included with the CE, the next release would be focused on PvP.

Then EotN dropped. The biggest grindfest I’d had the displeasure of playing .PvP was totally neglected and died. So I waited for GW2…and then that released which PvP wise is basically one format AB, one of the least favored formats of PvP in GW1.

How people take it seriously or tourny it baffles me. It’s fun for sure but compare it to GvG in GW1.

This game is screaming for GvG or at least some form of variation in PvP.

Like I said in another thread, there was not much else to add to PvP after factions. There were no casual forms of PvP and anet solved that with AB/FA/JQ. They made PvP more rewarding than any other part of the game by adding tournament reward points and zaishen keys, and the meta changed quite often. HA/GvG is still my best PvP experience and if the game industry goes this way it will stay like that.
Also I’m not sure GW2 has the potential to be as good in PvP as the first was.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Suggestions would be wonderful: Practical, reasonably expressed, and clear. Here’s the challenge, and we’ll see if it’s possible and reasonable: Share your opinion about how to improve the end game in (roughly) 100 words or less.

I want to define my version of endgame before suggesting: It is a series of increasingly hard content that provides unique, untradeable/unsellable , Visible rewards. With an aim of distinguishing skilled players allowing them to stand out visually from the masses.
[/spoiler]

I’ll disagree with you there. If they do introduce hard/reasonably long content, it will have a lot more adventage to have the rewards sellable, but hard earned. By making it sellable that content will have a lot more replayability, and if you don’t like those thing that content has to offer, you can sell that item to those, who don’t actually like hard content. Also even after you earned that content’s skin, you can replay it to make reasonable amount of money.

Also, and it’s very important, I don’t consider winning the lottery hard-earned money, in other words, don’t rely only on RNG. You can make RNG a player’s friend but the way it’s in the game right now it’s the player enemy. Look at TA aether path,fractals or the black lion chests. What I suggest is a system like DoA had with rewards. You can earn your gemstones by completing content 100%, but they also drop from random enemies. You can put RNG on chest to contain additional unique rewards too, or on bosses.

dannyteo.5864:

I always see people trying to compare GW1 to GW2.

Well you know some of us were naive enough to think a game’s sequel is going to be better in every aspect. Also every improvement GW2 has, often came with a big downside. Take the five race for example. By making 5 race playeable probably we won’t hear our character talk again, lots of armorhas clipping issues and personally I think the races were a lot more intresting as non-playeable, also human history is forced in the background.

fireflyry.7023:

Suxon ftl!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fixed that for you :P

Scipio.3204:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s the challenge, and we’ll see if it’s possible and reasonable: Share your opinion about how to improve the end game in (roughly) 100 words or less.

Alright, I’ll try.

There is no challenge in anything after two years, you can pretty much complete everyting on autopilot.(PvE side) Also the fractal rewards, especially on high levels doesn’t reward you as much as they should. (And after a while rings/duplicate weapons are useless)
If feel like WvW/PvP is getting neglected , PvP side is lacking after the size of GW1 PvP and WvW still has problems since launch ( Achievement numbers, PPT problems etc.)
Also there should be other ways to add content to the game other than living story. For example, when people say they want underworld and anet decides to release it, (Just an example) you can’t release it through feature patch ,since its not content patch and you can’t release it through living story since it doesn’t fit.

Tried to cut it short

I also realised I posted mostly problems, not improvements. Let me try again.

- A new, elite area, with hard-earned ,unique skins (sellable)
- GW1 GvG tournament system (With ratings and rankings)
- Make ascended rings salvageable , rework fractal rewards
- make our home instance reflect our accomplishements
- give more support on guild missions for small guilds
- Big reward on full world completion
- content delivery beside living story for reasons stated above

Gonna add more to this list but I’m in a hurry now

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s the challenge, and we’ll see if it’s possible and reasonable: Share your opinion about how to improve the end game in (roughly) 100 words or less.

Alright, I’ll try.

There is no challenge in anything after two years, you can pretty much complete everyting on autopilot.(PvE side) Also the fractal rewards, especially on high levels doesn’t reward you as much as they should. (And after a while rings/duplicate weapons are useless)
If feel like WvW/PvP is getting neglected , PvP side is lacking after the size of GW1 PvP and WvW still has problems since launch ( Achievement numbers, PPT problems etc.)
Also there should be other ways to add content to the game other than living story. For example, when people say they want underworld and anet decides to release it, (Just an example) you can’t release it through feature patch ,since its not content patch and you can’t release it through living story since it doesn’t fit.

Tried to cut it short

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

Yet season 2 is 90% instanced and if they want to continue to tell a decent story, they have to stick to instances and ignore everything in open world, or maybe even worse, make changes to open world and confuse everyone who isn’t at that part of the story.
Like I said, my problem is not with the open world , but that their highest priority is something that’s not an open world material.

Have you played Season 2?

There is instanced content, being backed up by the zone. Dry Top is open world, not Season 2. But what’s happening in it is tied to the Living World instances.

The only real downside to it, is that it will probably be locked in time like Orr is. But it’s more effective for story telling than just instances.

Yes, but if you look at new players, it will be confusing to see tybalt selling apples in a burned down city or having a meeting with the pact in a fort destroyed by mordremorth. And on the locked time thing: yes that’s a big downside too , they can continue to introduce new parts of a zone ,which is great, but if they change anything outside of newly released zones that won’t make sense for those who aren’t cathed up with the story. I wouldn’t call that a living world.

It’s living AND locked in time. That is to say, within that time frame it’s alive. It’s living because it evolves with the story as the story evolves. Orr feels quite alive to me. But it’s locked in time.

In you know, that was Guild Wars 1 too. Until they did War in Kryta, that game was completely self contained. Every time you did something, you entered the past. Abaddon was still alive no matter where you played in Nightfall, even up to this day.

Agreed but with GW1 they never intended to create “Living World” ,yet they had the tools and the system to make one in a sensible way. If they wanted to, they could change the world Elona for example to reflect Abaddon’s defeat by simply removing the margonites or by addig a new questline to defeat them. They can’t do the same with Zhaitan’s undead ,they will be there forever no matter how many years ago we killed zhaitan.
Also , not only the world was better for story telling in GW1 but also the features. Let’s take heroes for example, I don’t think I have to tell much about it since you are familiar with it too, but in GW2 what do we have? We have a lot of personal story friends (Charr warband, Asura krewmates, Human sister etc) ,but what do you think what’s the chance we ever see them again? Also with the introduction of WoC you had the chance to “visit” the past by talking to an NPC ,this way you could kill of the Plague again. These kind of things can’t happen in GW2 since it’s open world, yet if there is no such an option, people will miss out.

And besides, we know time progresses in tyria too, two years has passed since the defeat of Zhaitan, yet only those areas aren’t locked in time which gets touched by living story.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

Yet season 2 is 90% instanced and if they want to continue to tell a decent story, they have to stick to instances and ignore everything in open world, or maybe even worse, make changes to open world and confuse everyone who isn’t at that part of the story.
Like I said, my problem is not with the open world , but that their highest priority is something that’s not an open world material.

Have you played Season 2?

There is instanced content, being backed up by the zone. Dry Top is open world, not Season 2. But what’s happening in it is tied to the Living World instances.

The only real downside to it, is that it will probably be locked in time like Orr is. But it’s more effective for story telling than just instances.

Yes, but if you look at new players, it will be confusing to see tybalt selling apples in a burned down city or having a meeting with the pact in a fort destroyed by mordremorth. And on the locked time thing: yes that’s a big downside too , they can continue to introduce new parts of a zone ,which is great, but if they change anything outside of newly released zones that won’t make sense for those who aren’t cathed up with the story. I wouldn’t call that a living world.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

@Vayne

The tequatl example has as much downsides as upsides. Like you said , it’s not always there, but what if I want to defeat it? Maybe I even gotta wait hours for him to appear. If Tequatl were to added to GW1 I could kill him whenever I want, but this is also true for Scarlet.

And I never said I have problem with DEs and not seeing the same thing twice when I enter a zone. My problem is their highest priority is the story in a world which isn’t the best to tell it(And they had a better system to tell it). And it is not unreasonable for me to assume, they created a new world which isn’t better for storytelling than the previous just to have their top focus in this world as the living story.

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

Yet season 2 is 90% instanced and if they want to continue to tell a decent story, they have to stick to instances and ignore everything in open world, or maybe even worse, make changes to open world and confuse everyone who isn’t at that part of the story.
Like I said, my problem is not with the open world , but that their highest priority is something that’s not an open world material.

@Vayne

The tequatl example has as much downsides as upsides. Like you said , it’s not always there, but what if I want to defeat it? Maybe I even gotta wait hours for him to appear. If Tequatl were to added to GW1 I could kill him whenever I want, but this is also true for Scarlet.

And I never said I have problem with DEs and not seeing the same thing twice when I enter a zone. My problem is their highest priority is the story in a world which isn’t the best to tell it(And they had a better system to tell it). And it is not unreasonable for me to assume, they created a new world which isn’t better for storytelling than the previous just to have their top focus in this world as the living story.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Orr was already a giant champ train before then.

Champ trains wouldn’t make sense, karma trains perhaps, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the creation of living story. Trains are not really a fun way to play the game and people aren’t playing them to have fun. Southsun cove was probably already in the works not long after release which means they had plans to do that without any information on what is going on in the game.

Yes I meant a karma train. There was a train. That’s the point. It probably wasn’t quite how Anet envisioned the game going.

The point is, trains or no trains, they released a new area with one time events ~ 80 days after release, which means they had to work on it not long after release or maybe even before release, which means the creation of the living story wasn’t based on anything going on ingame. (and during that release I was part of the biggest train ever ingame which means during the creation of it they didn’t count with the downsides of the trains. Only releases after this they tried to break down the train somehow. )

Okay, I agree with this. You may very well be right.

Thanks
But now the real question remains. If they had a system in which they could tell better stories easier, why create an entirely different system in which it’s much harder to tell any story, and on that new system even focus mainly on story?

Because having an open world is better than having an instanced one to a whole lot of people, including me. If you’re only talking about story, and that’s all that matters, instanced content is better. I dislike instanced content as the main content of the game fora whole lot of reasons.

It doesn’t tell stories better, but it does other stuff better.

For example, every time I walked out into Guild Wars 1 into a zone, I knew what was in the zone, where every creature was, and I knew for a fact that I was on my own or with the people I was with.

Some of my favorite moments in Guild Wars 2 have been coming upon someone who randomly needed assistance and helping them out. Rezzing them during a champ fight, or whatever.

That can’t happen in an instanced game. It’s not as alive. If you want to make a living breathing world, instances are not sufficient, even if they do tell a story better.

I don’t deny having open world is a bad thing, but the the last two years was “Living story is our highest priority” , which, like we said, isn’t the strongest part of an open world. And that doesn’t look like it will change. If they wanted to create a world in which the story is the most important , open world shouldn’t be the way to go, even if some people wouldn’t like it that much that way.

And I gotta disagree " I walked out into Guild Wars 1 into a zone, I knew what was in the zone, where every creature was," part. If we put the living world into guild wars (See GW:B) it is much easier to change the world. You could see different things based on your previous accomplishements. You could take part in building cities , extinct enemies , make new allies in a better way we see it now with the living world. Temporary content is even out of question , the content will wait for you as long as you want. And when you complete specific content the whole world could change by it. Yeah , Season two is now waiting for you too , but what exactly changes when you complete it?

and when you said "If you’re only talking about story, and that’s all that matters, " that I think perfectly describes the direction of GW2 . See the most recent SAB statement: “SAB won’t return because it doesn’t fit the story” . Or any statement about the future. If this system does better at other stuff, why does it focus on something it doesn’t do better?

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Orr was already a giant champ train before then.

Champ trains wouldn’t make sense, karma trains perhaps, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the creation of living story. Trains are not really a fun way to play the game and people aren’t playing them to have fun. Southsun cove was probably already in the works not long after release which means they had plans to do that without any information on what is going on in the game.

Yes I meant a karma train. There was a train. That’s the point. It probably wasn’t quite how Anet envisioned the game going.

The point is, trains or no trains, they released a new area with one time events ~ 80 days after release, which means they had to work on it not long after release or maybe even before release, which means the creation of the living story wasn’t based on anything going on ingame. (and during that release I was part of the biggest train ever ingame which means during the creation of it they didn’t count with the downsides of the trains. Only releases after this they tried to break down the train somehow. )

Okay, I agree with this. You may very well be right.

Thanks
But now the real question remains. If they had a system in which they could tell better stories easier, why create an entirely different system in which it’s much harder to tell any story, and on that new system even focus mainly on story?

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Orr was already a giant champ train before then.

Champ trains wouldn’t make sense, karma trains perhaps, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the creation of living story. Trains are not really a fun way to play the game and people aren’t playing them to have fun. Southsun cove was probably already in the works not long after release which means they had plans to do that without any information on what is going on in the game.

Yes I meant a karma train. There was a train. That’s the point. It probably wasn’t quite how Anet envisioned the game going.

The point is, trains or no trains, they released a new area with one time events ~ 80 days after release, which means they had to work on it not long after release or maybe even before release, which means the creation of the living story wasn’t based on anything going on ingame. (and during that release I was part of the biggest train ever ingame which means during the creation of it they didn’t count with the downsides of the trains. Only releases after this they tried to break down the train somehow. )

Vayne.8563:

Orr was already a giant champ train before then.

Champ trains wouldn’t make sense, karma trains perhaps, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the creation of living story. Trains are not really a fun way to play the game and people aren’t playing them to have fun. Southsun cove was probably already in the works not long after release which means they had plans to do that without any information on what is going on in the game.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

I feel lore-wise gw2 has always lacked. Other than Tybalt, I’ve yet to care for any character in the game, including my own. And on that point you’re right, I loved the GW1 missions back in the day and yes, you really did feel connected to your character a lot more.

Still, there’s no way I could go back to GW1 after playing this game. I simply love the combat, mainly because it’s fast and there’s no trinity. Now if they would only add difficult dungeon/fractal content this game would be perfect.

So yeah, both have their pro’s and cons, but personally I feel GW2 has more replay value.

I think you’re confusing lore and story. Story wise is probably what you’re talking about. Tybalt is part of the story, rather than the lore.

The lore is the background, the build up, the history. The games share history and both have great stories. In fact, much of the lore of Guild Wars 2 is the lore of Guild Wars 1.

It’s the stories that are the issue. I only clarify, because it’s important that people realize the difference so they get their message across to Anet.

Mind you it seems a lot of people do like Tiami. And I sort of like the new group, particularly Marjorie.

The most hilarious thing is when I think about GW2 is this: When they started working on it, they said they want to do things they can’t do in GW1. If living world was what they meant back then, GW1 (with some modifications) system with instanced areas would be much more fitting for it. In the very beginning of GW1 you saw a nation fall, cities getting destroyed , thousands getting slained. And this was the first few hours.
I don’t expect anything this big from living story since it can’t be done in open world, but in instanced you could fight off the titans , making them disappear from every region. You could kill off the plague , you could fight for the luxons/kurzicks to claim territory.

Also I have problems not only with the stories, but the lore. I feel like lore is getting ignored, especially with Scarlet. And there isn’t much intresting lore in GW2 we didn’t know already before launch. And the intresting ones aren’t gettin used. (prior LS2 , but LS2 feels more like a checklist, players want to know more about the Ascalonian Twin swords/ghosts? lets put that in one episode, check, Krytan politics? Check etc.)
White mantle/mursaat , Scepter of orr ,bloodstones , dwarfs , the three order is getting ignored, isolation of cantha, palawa joko , human gods … All we can expect is dragons in the next 6-8 years.

Maybe the thing they were talking about that they wanted to do was have over a hundred people on screen at one time fighting something. It wasn’t necessarily pertaining to story telling.

Probably we never know for sure what they meant. My two cent is they wanted to escape from the balance of thousands skills , but the classic “Can you jump?” question also could get on their nerves. But I don’t think the main reason is bigger fights, they already could do that with merging parties like they did it in Vizunah or on Alliance Battles.

Swimming and underwater combat, jumping puzzles, these were introduced with the game that couldn’t have been done in the old system. I just see no reason to think they were talking about story. Stories they could already tell, as you pointed out.

Yeah I find it funny that jumping was missing from the first game and now they built whole releases only on jumping. Still ,like I said with some modifications to the original system these still could be part of the game. SAB was instanced after all. Yet if the new system wasn’t created for living world why is the living world the highest priority right now?

The new system wasn’t created for the Living World. I’m pretty sure they came up with that when they saw people weren’t interested in DEs as a way to progress. They thought DEs would interest more people. They never counted on champ trains.

Even when they started addig new events I’m pretty sure they had a living world in mind .The first update was Halloween , that was the first time when they introduced an one time only event with the Mad King , then with the karkas. This was an early concept of living world ,yet they didn’t call it living story at that time. Champ trains didn’t really exist back then , if I remember correctly they started appearing when they introduced champ bags. And I Can’t really blame people for not doing DEs, they don’t have much replay value or reward. They are not even a challenge.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

I feel lore-wise gw2 has always lacked. Other than Tybalt, I’ve yet to care for any character in the game, including my own. And on that point you’re right, I loved the GW1 missions back in the day and yes, you really did feel connected to your character a lot more.

Still, there’s no way I could go back to GW1 after playing this game. I simply love the combat, mainly because it’s fast and there’s no trinity. Now if they would only add difficult dungeon/fractal content this game would be perfect.

So yeah, both have their pro’s and cons, but personally I feel GW2 has more replay value.

I think you’re confusing lore and story. Story wise is probably what you’re talking about. Tybalt is part of the story, rather than the lore.

The lore is the background, the build up, the history. The games share history and both have great stories. In fact, much of the lore of Guild Wars 2 is the lore of Guild Wars 1.

It’s the stories that are the issue. I only clarify, because it’s important that people realize the difference so they get their message across to Anet.

Mind you it seems a lot of people do like Tiami. And I sort of like the new group, particularly Marjorie.

The most hilarious thing is when I think about GW2 is this: When they started working on it, they said they want to do things they can’t do in GW1. If living world was what they meant back then, GW1 (with some modifications) system with instanced areas would be much more fitting for it. In the very beginning of GW1 you saw a nation fall, cities getting destroyed , thousands getting slained. And this was the first few hours.
I don’t expect anything this big from living story since it can’t be done in open world, but in instanced you could fight off the titans , making them disappear from every region. You could kill off the plague , you could fight for the luxons/kurzicks to claim territory.

Also I have problems not only with the stories, but the lore. I feel like lore is getting ignored, especially with Scarlet. And there isn’t much intresting lore in GW2 we didn’t know already before launch. And the intresting ones aren’t gettin used. (prior LS2 , but LS2 feels more like a checklist, players want to know more about the Ascalonian Twin swords/ghosts? lets put that in one episode, check, Krytan politics? Check etc.)
White mantle/mursaat , Scepter of orr ,bloodstones , dwarfs , the three order is getting ignored, isolation of cantha, palawa joko , human gods … All we can expect is dragons in the next 6-8 years.

Maybe the thing they were talking about that they wanted to do was have over a hundred people on screen at one time fighting something. It wasn’t necessarily pertaining to story telling.

Probably we never know for sure what they meant. My two cent is they wanted to escape from the balance of thousands skills , but the classic “Can you jump?” question also could get on their nerves. But I don’t think the main reason is bigger fights, they already could do that with merging parties like they did it in Vizunah or on Alliance Battles.

Swimming and underwater combat, jumping puzzles, these were introduced with the game that couldn’t have been done in the old system. I just see no reason to think they were talking about story. Stories they could already tell, as you pointed out.

Yeah I find it funny that jumping was missing from the first game and now they built whole releases only on jumping. Still ,like I said with some modifications to the original system these still could be part of the game. SAB was instanced after all. Yet if the new system wasn’t created for living world why is the living world the highest priority right now?

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

I feel lore-wise gw2 has always lacked. Other than Tybalt, I’ve yet to care for any character in the game, including my own. And on that point you’re right, I loved the GW1 missions back in the day and yes, you really did feel connected to your character a lot more.

Still, there’s no way I could go back to GW1 after playing this game. I simply love the combat, mainly because it’s fast and there’s no trinity. Now if they would only add difficult dungeon/fractal content this game would be perfect.

So yeah, both have their pro’s and cons, but personally I feel GW2 has more replay value.

I think you’re confusing lore and story. Story wise is probably what you’re talking about. Tybalt is part of the story, rather than the lore.

The lore is the background, the build up, the history. The games share history and both have great stories. In fact, much of the lore of Guild Wars 2 is the lore of Guild Wars 1.

It’s the stories that are the issue. I only clarify, because it’s important that people realize the difference so they get their message across to Anet.

Mind you it seems a lot of people do like Tiami. And I sort of like the new group, particularly Marjorie.

The most hilarious thing is when I think about GW2 is this: When they started working on it, they said they want to do things they can’t do in GW1. If living world was what they meant back then, GW1 (with some modifications) system with instanced areas would be much more fitting for it. In the very beginning of GW1 you saw a nation fall, cities getting destroyed , thousands getting slained. And this was the first few hours.
I don’t expect anything this big from living story since it can’t be done in open world, but in instanced you could fight off the titans , making them disappear from every region. You could kill off the plague , you could fight for the luxons/kurzicks to claim territory.

Also I have problems not only with the stories, but the lore. I feel like lore is getting ignored, especially with Scarlet. And there isn’t much intresting lore in GW2 we didn’t know already before launch. And the intresting ones aren’t gettin used. (prior LS2 , but LS2 feels more like a checklist, players want to know more about the Ascalonian Twin swords/ghosts? lets put that in one episode, check, Krytan politics? Check etc.)
White mantle/mursaat , Scepter of orr ,bloodstones , dwarfs , the three order is getting ignored, isolation of cantha, palawa joko , human gods … All we can expect is dragons in the next 6-8 years.

Maybe the thing they were talking about that they wanted to do was have over a hundred people on screen at one time fighting something. It wasn’t necessarily pertaining to story telling.

Probably we never know for sure what they meant. My two cent is they wanted to escape from the balance of thousands skills , but the classic “Can you jump?” question also could get on their nerves. But I don’t think the main reason is bigger fights, they already could do that with merging parties like they did it in Vizunah or on Alliance Battles.

Vayne.8563:

cranos.5913:

I feel lore-wise gw2 has always lacked. Other than Tybalt, I’ve yet to care for any character in the game, including my own. And on that point you’re right, I loved the GW1 missions back in the day and yes, you really did feel connected to your character a lot more.

Still, there’s no way I could go back to GW1 after playing this game. I simply love the combat, mainly because it’s fast and there’s no trinity. Now if they would only add difficult dungeon/fractal content this game would be perfect.

So yeah, both have their pro’s and cons, but personally I feel GW2 has more replay value.

I think you’re confusing lore and story. Story wise is probably what you’re talking about. Tybalt is part of the story, rather than the lore.

The lore is the background, the build up, the history. The games share history and both have great stories. In fact, much of the lore of Guild Wars 2 is the lore of Guild Wars 1.

It’s the stories that are the issue. I only clarify, because it’s important that people realize the difference so they get their message across to Anet.

Mind you it seems a lot of people do like Tiami. And I sort of like the new group, particularly Marjorie.

The most hilarious thing is when I think about GW2 is this: When they started working on it, they said they want to do things they can’t do in GW1. If living world was what they meant back then, GW1 (with some modifications) system with instanced areas would be much more fitting for it. In the very beginning of GW1 you saw a nation fall, cities getting destroyed , thousands getting slained. And this was the first few hours.
I don’t expect anything this big from living story since it can’t be done in open world, but in instanced you could fight off the titans , making them disappear from every region. You could kill off the plague , you could fight for the luxons/kurzicks to claim territory.

Also I have problems not only with the stories, but the lore. I feel like lore is getting ignored, especially with Scarlet. And there isn’t much intresting lore in GW2 we didn’t know already before launch. And the intresting ones aren’t gettin used. (prior LS2 , but LS2 feels more like a checklist, players want to know more about the Ascalonian Twin swords/ghosts? lets put that in one episode, check, Krytan politics? Check etc.)
White mantle/mursaat , Scepter of orr ,bloodstones , dwarfs , the three order is getting ignored, isolation of cantha, palawa joko , human gods … All we can expect is dragons in the next 6-8 years.

falchion.3652:

Time gating

• Remove the dailies – they are a chore. Double or compensate with the monthly.
• Remove the timer on charged quartz or make charged quartz tradable (in line with time gated ascended materials).
• Remove the daily dungeon token restriction as account and restore to previous character limit.
• Remove guild missions or rework.

Farming

• Some people actually like farming. Have periodic events that allow for injection of t5/t6 mats. Examples – 1st Crown pavilion. Use and alternate when extensive down periods are expected from the living story.
• Put world temples on timers that start at absolute, instead of relative to completion. Megaservers have warped that timing, making it excessively annoying to unlock traits on multiple alts.
• Lower/remove diminishing returns.

Instancing

• Start numbering overflows and being able to pick existing overflows to join.

Dungeons/Fractals

• Revise rewards for higher end fractals.
• Use some existing dungeons to make into fractals, and fractal portions into dungeons.

Account bound

• Newly added recipes (nomad/zealot/celestial) to be traded or existing crafted armour be made account bound.

Living story

• The usual – skip cutscenes. Achieves on first attempt.
• Actually scrap all that. Remove LS from the game. Retrocon the lore with a dream sequence.

PvP

• Delete Spvp from game. Link Spvp players to gw1.

Items

• Make all items salvagable – notably karma/wvw rewards/adventurers mask. Adjust drops/items/costings prior.
• Introduce new legendaries – kick the can down the road some.

WvW

• Rewards for seasons – An individual and server based reward. The individual reward can be used as an additional token count or used as a gap filler for those on lower ranked servers.
• New maps.
• Alternate rewards for badges that have some monetary value – t5/t6 etc.
• Outnumbered buff now lets you carry 100% more supply.
• Don’t display enemy name on /invite in WvW/eotm

Wrong thread I suppose.

Vayne.8563:

munkiman.3068:

Vayne.8563:

I’m thinking it would be nigh on impossible to do The Deep or Urgoz’s Warren with three heroes. Henchmen couldn’t enter elite areas, and using 7 heroes wasn’t allowed until much much later in the game’s life cycle.

Yeah, you could 2 man Urgoz post full parties of heros patch, but The Deep, if i remember correctly you need at least 4 players, since you have to do each pad separately or deal with a whole world of aspect pain.

My wife and I duoed DOA with heroes. I can’t really imagine anyone soloing it with just 3 heroes though.

I once completed UW with two of my friends and with kitten SF tank heroes. Best. Times. Ever. That was before dhuum though.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

On liadri, I’m not sure about NA servers, but I often could find empty arenas on EU to complete it.

On other changes: anet had to make changes to launch their game in china. The games are quite different there , and they play their games quite differently. I even read about a dev’s opinion when people discussed about the new NPE ( If you want I can send you the link in PM ,but I don’t want to make trouble for that dev by posting it here) . We know anet has been busy with the chinese launch at that time, which means they had to work on something. Probably not on localization, since that’s not an average devs job ,but on something that affects the game. We know most of the september feature pack was already available on the east ( Global guilds, crafting backs, NPE , not sure about the rest) which means those were ready before april. When I say I think the NPE changes were made to make the game eligible for the chinese launch I’m just connecting dots .

But these changes don’t really affect me, so I try to not care. But what I really care about is the company policy and the living story not being up to bar. Like I said, just by numbers, anet could produce maps, dungeons etc much faster rate prior to launch . Since Living story doesn’t provide that amount of content what will? And about the company policy… why? The only reason I could imagine for this kind of policy is because there is nothing in the background to talk about , to keep people dreaming, hoping they will stay .

Company policy could be simple. You know they announce something and if they change it, the forum runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. Easier not to say anything. Particularly with regards to something like an expansion, you announce it when it makes sense to do so from a business point of view. Usually to combat what some other game is doing.

Rift went into a promo black out when SWToR was released. They realized they couldn’t advertise as much as EA so they didn’t waste money trying. They waited 3 months until people were annoyed with SWToR and then got a bunch of people to come back. It’s about timing a lot of the time.

No company can put out enough content to keep people busy anyway, particularly in a theme park MMO. However, it’s not just the living story. Drytop was pretty cool and I spent an awful lot of time there. So did many in my guild.

It’s like anything else. If you like the content you can get hours out of it. The Marionette fight was like that. If you liked it, you could do it a lot. If you didn’t like it, you had no content.

It’s one thing to say they are working on something and another when it will be ready. They said almost a year ago pre cursor crafting is coming and they tried to release it in half year, but when they couldn’t people went mad. On the other hand they’ve been saying new pvp modes incoming at least 1.5 year now, yet people don’t riot. My point is, they don’t have to say dates when they talk about something ,but people want to know what to expect. For example it is public information that blizzard is already working on the next expansion after the new hits. They really don’t need to go into details, some words could be enough. ( yet I feel like the term “expansion worth of content” is a bit overused by now and I wouldn’t take it for granted if they say that again)

And also sometimes I feel like it it’s not just the company policy, its like the devs choose not to talk about something. For example is the recent interview at gamescom about SAB/Dungeons. If that interview doesn’t happen would we ever know they are not working on SAB or dungeons?

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Still no answer? But I enjoyed our discussion

There’s not much to say. I didn’t end up killing Liadri, because I didn’t really like the setup. I don’t play MMOs to solo mostly anyway, and sitting there, waiting my turn to get to Liadri was not all that interesting to me. I’d love to have the minipet. I’m sure I could have beaten her if I banged away at it, but the reward wasn’t worth me doing something annoying. Particularly because latency where I am is such that it would make it harder for me than someone who actually saw where they were.

Anet didn’t tell us much, so I don’t think they’re hiding stuff. If they didn’t have reason to change the early game, they wouldn’t have changed it. I mean it’s a lot of work. Obviously they thought it was necessary. I feel I have to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I don’t really expect them to consult me on major decisions….or at all for that matter.

I believe the test was done in the west, because I help people in starter zones quite frequently and I see the questions people ask and how confused they are. This isn’t some random thing that happens to a couple of people. People really don’t have a clue what’s going on, and I’ve seen several people ready to give up because of it. I don’t see why anyone would think otherwise.

On liadri, I’m not sure about NA servers, but I often could find empty arenas on EU to complete it.

On other changes: anet had to make changes to launch their game in china. The games are quite different there , and they play their games quite differently. I even read about a dev’s opinion when people discussed about the new NPE ( If you want I can send you the link in PM ,but I don’t want to make trouble for that dev by posting it here) . We know anet has been busy with the chinese launch at that time, which means they had to work on something. Probably not on localization, since that’s not an average devs job ,but on something that affects the game. We know most of the september feature pack was already available on the east ( Global guilds, crafting backs, NPE , not sure about the rest) which means those were ready before april. When I say I think the NPE changes were made to make the game eligible for the chinese launch I’m just connecting dots .

But these changes don’t really affect me, so I try to not care. But what I really care about is the company policy and the living story not being up to bar. Like I said, just by numbers, anet could produce maps, dungeons etc much faster rate prior to launch . Since Living story doesn’t provide that amount of content what will? And about the company policy… why? The only reason I could imagine for this kind of policy is because there is nothing in the background to talk about , to keep people dreaming, hoping they will stay .

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

I’m pretty sure that Anet would look at the percent of active players doing it. They’re professional developers, in spite of the fact that some people think they do stuff for no reason. I’m sure Anet has a reason for every change they make even if it might not look like they do.

When they run metrics, they look at the percentage of people playing doing a dungeon, not the percentage of people who have ever played, because that wouldn’t show them any thing.

But I’ve been thinking about it, and I think that it’s not wrong to say people want challenging content. The problem is, challenging means very different things to different people.

Challenging to younger guys who grew up playing this games and play a lot is different than challenge to me.

With the age of the average gamer on the rise, and many people only being able to devote a few hours a week to the game, it’s hard to believe most people want the kinds of ultra hard content other people want to keep them challenged.

I bet if they put in stuff that challenged the hard core guys, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to do it. It wouldn’t be challenging for them anymore, it would become frustrating.

That’s where the problem really starts. The more frustrating stuff, the more people feel they can’t handle the game, the more likely they are to walk.

I’m sure anet knows what would be best for GW2, but anet also knows what is best for anet. The launch of living story wasn’t based on metrics. The fact is, like you said yourselfs, it’s easier to cater to casuals than to anyone else, and for that the concept of living story is perfect. The last two year was casual priority, and I don’t expect much in the future either, this would explain the company policy too.

And on challenge: it’s optional. Have you ever completed something that was hard and frustrated you for a long time? It’s well worth it.

Some things I’ve completed that were hard and felt they were well worth it. Other things that are hard I consider to be not worth it, but frustrating, if I feel the challenge isn’t fair somehow. Or if there’s a lot of wasted time to get to try it. That annoys me. I don’t like to play through an entire living story to try to get one achievement, miss it and have to play through it again. That isn’t fun for me.

But Anet isn’t just making things the way they are to save labor. That’s a misnomer. It would have been far less work for Anet to create a tutorial then do the NPE. They did it because it tested best. Tested is the key word here. Not your opinion. Not my opinion. They ran tests and had a result and based what they did on that result. Like it or not, that’s how it went down…unless Anet is lying.

Agreed, Challenge/reward factor could be improved in this game, but liadri is a great example for a challenge that frustates you for some time , but killing her after numerous trying , that feeling makes it worth it.
And actually I disagree with your second pharagraph’s first sentence. The last two year have been lacking, no matter how I look it. Anet proved they can do faster, and I’m not talking about the first game’s expansion frequency. I’m talking about the 5 year they made GW2. I’m just gonna say a number, but I could say a lot: Explorable areas, GW2 launched with 26 in PvE, that means during the 5 year development they created 5 every year on average. This number is also sad on a lot of things (Professions, Races, events, skills you name it.)

And on those tests… I don’t believe anet is lying…but I also don’t believe they told us everything. They said they made tests , did they say where? Probably not on the west, if they did recruit 10k tester in the west that would leave some kind of mark. I do believe those tests took place on the east. There were tests before launch with a loads of people, yet anet didn’t make these changes back then. And its slightly suspicius that china launched with these changes.

Still no answer? But I enjoyed our discussion

munkiman.3068:

Liadri was annoying because of the way the encounter was designed. The whole wait after each round, was bleh. It was cool to be able to watch others do it, but they could have gone with an observer mode in an instance fight for the same affect.

I actually liked what they did there. It was unique and creative , the way they did , it made it possible to learn through other’s faults, give them feedback what they did wrong or congratulate them if they were successful. Or just stand near an arena and do an evil laugh when a competitor has only a few seconds left, then watch them fall to death.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

I’m pretty sure that Anet would look at the percent of active players doing it. They’re professional developers, in spite of the fact that some people think they do stuff for no reason. I’m sure Anet has a reason for every change they make even if it might not look like they do.

When they run metrics, they look at the percentage of people playing doing a dungeon, not the percentage of people who have ever played, because that wouldn’t show them any thing.

But I’ve been thinking about it, and I think that it’s not wrong to say people want challenging content. The problem is, challenging means very different things to different people.

Challenging to younger guys who grew up playing this games and play a lot is different than challenge to me.

With the age of the average gamer on the rise, and many people only being able to devote a few hours a week to the game, it’s hard to believe most people want the kinds of ultra hard content other people want to keep them challenged.

I bet if they put in stuff that challenged the hard core guys, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to do it. It wouldn’t be challenging for them anymore, it would become frustrating.

That’s where the problem really starts. The more frustrating stuff, the more people feel they can’t handle the game, the more likely they are to walk.

I’m sure anet knows what would be best for GW2, but anet also knows what is best for anet. The launch of living story wasn’t based on metrics. The fact is, like you said yourselfs, it’s easier to cater to casuals than to anyone else, and for that the concept of living story is perfect. The last two year was casual priority, and I don’t expect much in the future either, this would explain the company policy too.

And on challenge: it’s optional. Have you ever completed something that was hard and frustrated you for a long time? It’s well worth it.

Some things I’ve completed that were hard and felt they were well worth it. Other things that are hard I consider to be not worth it, but frustrating, if I feel the challenge isn’t fair somehow. Or if there’s a lot of wasted time to get to try it. That annoys me. I don’t like to play through an entire living story to try to get one achievement, miss it and have to play through it again. That isn’t fun for me.

But Anet isn’t just making things the way they are to save labor. That’s a misnomer. It would have been far less work for Anet to create a tutorial then do the NPE. They did it because it tested best. Tested is the key word here. Not your opinion. Not my opinion. They ran tests and had a result and based what they did on that result. Like it or not, that’s how it went down…unless Anet is lying.

Agreed, Challenge/reward factor could be improved in this game, but liadri is a great example for a challenge that frustates you for some time , but killing her after numerous trying , that feeling makes it worth it.
And actually I disagree with your second pharagraph’s first sentence. The last two year have been lacking, no matter how I look it. Anet proved they can do faster, and I’m not talking about the first game’s expansion frequency. I’m talking about the 5 year they made GW2. I’m just gonna say a number, but I could say a lot: Explorable areas, GW2 launched with 26 in PvE, that means during the 5 year development they created 5 every year on average. This number is also sad on a lot of things (Professions, Races, events, skills you name it.)

And on those tests… I don’t believe anet is lying…but I also don’t believe they told us everything. They said they made tests , did they say where? Probably not on the west, if they did recruit 10k tester in the west that would leave some kind of mark. I do believe those tests took place on the east. There were tests before launch with a loads of people, yet anet didn’t make these changes back then. And its slightly suspicius that china launched with these changes.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

@Vayne,

I do see one big flaw in your argument: “Most people are casuals, they don’t even try out hard stuff”. Let me explain through an example: Lets say anet releases the most hardest thing ever, and they look at the numbers how many people tried out 1 month after release. Let’s say about 15% and they even make this number public to demonstrate why they don’t make hard content, but something is missing.

For this information to even worth something we need to know another thing: The percentage of active players during that time. This is an information that’s never going to be available for us to see. But lets say during that month 30% of the playerbase was active. That would mean about 50% of the active playerbase tried it out.
That would mean the casuals who don’t even try out the hard things are in the other 50% together with PvP/WvW exclusive folks, new players & etc. which would mean they are a minority. But we don’t see that.

Also some other informations would also be useful like, how many people completed it , the percentage of active players before the release (if it’s like 25% that would mean the release drawed back 5% of the players) The next month’s data etc.
My point is, you can’t draw a conclusion like that from a tiny bit of information.

I’m pretty sure that Anet would look at the percent of active players doing it. They’re professional developers, in spite of the fact that some people think they do stuff for no reason. I’m sure Anet has a reason for every change they make even if it might not look like they do.

When they run metrics, they look at the percentage of people playing doing a dungeon, not the percentage of people who have ever played, because that wouldn’t show them any thing.

But I’ve been thinking about it, and I think that it’s not wrong to say people want challenging content. The problem is, challenging means very different things to different people.

Challenging to younger guys who grew up playing this games and play a lot is different than challenge to me.

With the age of the average gamer on the rise, and many people only being able to devote a few hours a week to the game, it’s hard to believe most people want the kinds of ultra hard content other people want to keep them challenged.

I bet if they put in stuff that challenged the hard core guys, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to do it. It wouldn’t be challenging for them anymore, it would become frustrating.

That’s where the problem really starts. The more frustrating stuff, the more people feel they can’t handle the game, the more likely they are to walk.

I’m sure anet knows what would be best for GW2, but anet also knows what is best for anet. The launch of living story wasn’t based on metrics. The fact is, like you said yourselfs, it’s easier to cater to casuals than to anyone else, and for that the concept of living story is perfect. The last two year was casual priority, and I don’t expect much in the future either, this would explain the company policy too.

And on challenge: it’s optional. Have you ever completed something that was hard and frustrated you for a long time? It’s well worth it.

@Tomas

Don’t expect that to happen. At least on dungeons. They don’t want to split the dungeon community further by creating alternate versions of dungeons available.

I wouldn’t expect the others either, even though I find some of them great ideas.

@Vayne,

I do see one big flaw in your argument: “Most people are casuals, they don’t even try out hard stuff”. Let me explain through an example: Lets say anet releases the most hardest thing ever, and they look at the numbers how many people tried out 1 month after release. Let’s say about 15% and they even make this number public to demonstrate why they don’t make hard content, but something is missing.

For this information to even worth something we need to know another thing: The percentage of active players during that time. This is an information that’s never going to be available for us to see. But lets say during that month 30% of the playerbase was active. That would mean about 50% of the active playerbase tried it out.
That would mean the casuals who don’t even try out the hard things are in the other 50% together with PvP/WvW exclusive folks, new players & etc. which would mean they are a minority. But we don’t see that.

Also some other informations would also be useful like, how many people completed it , the percentage of active players before the release (if it’s like 25% that would mean the release drawed back 5% of the players) The next month’s data etc.
My point is, you can’t draw a conclusion like that from a tiny bit of information.

@Vayne,

Agreed on last sentence. Also I don’t think EotM was for WvWers, it was to play somewhere during long queues, and for that it’s perfect.
And I think we can say there is never a guarantee it will be popular . But I think anet took it too seriously a few times, see SAB world 2 or TA aether. (Also I don’t think the aether unique rewards was that much work)

And yes, obviously it’s easier to cater to people who are easily pleased. But probably those people never left the game, so why would they? Also I think too much focus on new players. I think there is a lot more potential in ex-players. Yeah probably free trial is incoming , which would explain the NPE, but right after china launch? I wouldn’t call it a wise move.

#MyLastPostForTheDayGn

Vayne.8563:

@Scipio

My point is we know that a dev said only 10% of people playing Lotro ever raided or did PvP. We know that the PvP population of Guild Wars 1 was higher than that, but I do remember a dev talking about DOA and how few people ever completed it. I wish I dev would come here and confirm that, because at this late date I’ll never find the quote.

Over years in this industry, we’ve seen devs make hard content that most players never get through, but you think, for some reason, Guild Wars 1 was different.

The elite zones in later games were nowhere near as hard or as long as the ones in Prophecies. Anet spent less and less time on them as the game advanced.

Who said I thought GW1 was different? I’m sure a lot of player didn’t complete the elite areas, YET they still continued to roll them out. Elite areas aren’t meant to hold the entire player population ,why would you think that? Same with PvP. But does that mean they shouldn’t make them? Let’s say Elite areas and a GW1 sized pvp holds additional ~20% player. The last number we heard about sold GW2 copies was 3.5 mill (+1 mil china), that would mean + 1 million active players. But ATM nothing holds the dedicated players but the living story.
My point is I think the development of GW2 follows a big mistake. Be new >> Be successful. Also a little bit of overdo on gemstore side but thats a different story.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

I never said I meant UW or even hard content. And I have to agree with the “Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE”. I mostly meant PvP , but it’s true for a lot of PvE parts as well. But on PvP : GW1 had the best PvP I ever played, Observer, Rating , tournaments, rewards , variety of game modes. In gw2 almost none of these returned, and the only mode we got is not even similar to the ones in 1.

I think I can say what we had was well functioning, popular and had levels from casual to hardcore. Now look at GW2 PvP: I can’t even spot a similarity.

Did you notice that as Guild Wars 1 got older and older, it shifted it’s focus away from PvP? Because I noticed that.

Many new PvE only skills. Less PvP support in each update. Again, Anet found which side their bread was buttered on.

But I believe they didn’t find it with the hard core “raiding” crowd. The UW, DOA guys. THey found it with the casual guys that just did more basic stuff.

That’s why they made Guild Wars 2 the way they did. In my opinion.

And you know, I have 50/50 in my HoM and I have my GWAMM title, but I almost never did end game instances nor did anyone in my guild or circle of friends.

It looks like a lot of peope do it, because they all crowd into Temple of Ages, but I believe it’s a small percentage of people who played the game.

Because many people don’t like to group, don’t like to speed run, don’t like to run specific builds, don’t like to be yelled at if they make a mistake, dont’ like to die over and over again to repeat content and pay a gold to get in.

Most people didn’t enjoy that…in my opinion.

But those that did, absolutely loved it.

To be honest, I think after factions they didn’t need to add anything to pvp, like I said they already had modes to casuals and to hardcores, and it already had variety with it’s 8 game modes and god knows how many maps.

But let’s turn our head to PvE . With the launch of the game we got UW & FoW ,yeah? After that they they decided to release another elite area known as Sorrow’s Furnace.
After that, with the release of factions they released even harder elite areas with bigger teams and after that DoA (And with the release of the battle isles the tomb of primeval kings). These were all HARD. If UW/FoW wasn’t that popular at the first place, why did they keep rolling out these? Not to mention Hard mode.

Now: GW2 didn’t start with any area considered as “elite”. I don’t think it’s because they think it would be unpopular. Also I think the some goes with expansions: GW1 working model with multiple released campaign or expansion(alongside with other games ofc).Can’t do that again , would be unoriginal, so Living World it is!

Are you really comparing Sorrow’s Furnace to UW? Really? Sorrow’s furnace was casual and a whole lot smaller. Sure it was an elite area, but it wasn’t the Deep or Urgoz’s warren.

They added a hard hard area with each game, just like Lotro added raids to each game, even though only 10% of the player base ever raided, according to one of their devs.

Compare? No. All I said was the first content patch they released (Probably based on numbers , how many played UW/FoW) was Sorrows (For those who don’t know, it was a free update, introduction of uniques and even a new zone + elite dungeon) an elite area. After that they decided to increase the difficulty with the newly released elite areas. I don’t think because it was unpopular

Also you completely ignored my point.

UW and FoW was significantly bigger than the Deep and Urgoz. Those zones are much faster to finish and more easily done.

Are you sure so many people did UW and FoW.

More to the point, the first elite area they added after those others was smaller and much much easier.

That should tell you something.

UW/FoW is accessible from any campaign and they are full of easily farmable ,generic mobs. Also fun fact: UWSC is much faster than clearing Sorrows chain quest.
Sorrows was the first released elite area after launch and the difficulty only increased after that.

Also you said “It looks like a lot of peope do it, because they all crowd into Temple of Ages” . That means a noticeably large amount of players did it and probably loved it.

Still not my point though

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

I never said I meant UW or even hard content. And I have to agree with the “Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE”. I mostly meant PvP , but it’s true for a lot of PvE parts as well. But on PvP : GW1 had the best PvP I ever played, Observer, Rating , tournaments, rewards , variety of game modes. In gw2 almost none of these returned, and the only mode we got is not even similar to the ones in 1.

I think I can say what we had was well functioning, popular and had levels from casual to hardcore. Now look at GW2 PvP: I can’t even spot a similarity.

Did you notice that as Guild Wars 1 got older and older, it shifted it’s focus away from PvP? Because I noticed that.

Many new PvE only skills. Less PvP support in each update. Again, Anet found which side their bread was buttered on.

But I believe they didn’t find it with the hard core “raiding” crowd. The UW, DOA guys. THey found it with the casual guys that just did more basic stuff.

That’s why they made Guild Wars 2 the way they did. In my opinion.

And you know, I have 50/50 in my HoM and I have my GWAMM title, but I almost never did end game instances nor did anyone in my guild or circle of friends.

It looks like a lot of peope do it, because they all crowd into Temple of Ages, but I believe it’s a small percentage of people who played the game.

Because many people don’t like to group, don’t like to speed run, don’t like to run specific builds, don’t like to be yelled at if they make a mistake, dont’ like to die over and over again to repeat content and pay a gold to get in.

Most people didn’t enjoy that…in my opinion.

But those that did, absolutely loved it.

To be honest, I think after factions they didn’t need to add anything to pvp, like I said they already had modes to casuals and to hardcores, and it already had variety with it’s 8 game modes and god knows how many maps.

But let’s turn our head to PvE . With the launch of the game we got UW & FoW ,yeah? After that they they decided to release another elite area known as Sorrow’s Furnace.
After that, with the release of factions they released even harder elite areas with bigger teams and after that DoA (And with the release of the battle isles the tomb of primeval kings). These were all HARD. If UW/FoW wasn’t that popular at the first place, why did they keep rolling out these? Not to mention Hard mode.

Now: GW2 didn’t start with any area considered as “elite”. I don’t think it’s because they think it would be unpopular. Also I think the some goes with expansions: GW1 working model with multiple released campaign or expansion(alongside with other games ofc).Can’t do that again , would be unoriginal, so Living World it is!

Are you really comparing Sorrow’s Furnace to UW? Really? Sorrow’s furnace was casual and a whole lot smaller. Sure it was an elite area, but it wasn’t the Deep or Urgoz’s warren.

They added a hard hard area with each game, just like Lotro added raids to each game, even though only 10% of the player base ever raided, according to one of their devs.

Compare? No. All I said was the first content patch they released (Probably based on numbers , how many played UW/FoW) was Sorrows (For those who don’t know, it was a free update, introduction of uniques and even a new zone + elite dungeon) an elite area. After that they decided to increase the difficulty with the newly released elite areas. I don’t think because it was unpopular

Also you completely ignored my point.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

I never said I meant UW or even hard content. And I have to agree with the “Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE”. I mostly meant PvP , but it’s true for a lot of PvE parts as well. But on PvP : GW1 had the best PvP I ever played, Observer, Rating , tournaments, rewards , variety of game modes. In gw2 almost none of these returned, and the only mode we got is not even similar to the ones in 1.

I think I can say what we had was well functioning, popular and had levels from casual to hardcore. Now look at GW2 PvP: I can’t even spot a similarity.

Did you notice that as Guild Wars 1 got older and older, it shifted it’s focus away from PvP? Because I noticed that.

Many new PvE only skills. Less PvP support in each update. Again, Anet found which side their bread was buttered on.

But I believe they didn’t find it with the hard core “raiding” crowd. The UW, DOA guys. THey found it with the casual guys that just did more basic stuff.

That’s why they made Guild Wars 2 the way they did. In my opinion.

And you know, I have 50/50 in my HoM and I have my GWAMM title, but I almost never did end game instances nor did anyone in my guild or circle of friends.

It looks like a lot of peope do it, because they all crowd into Temple of Ages, but I believe it’s a small percentage of people who played the game.

Because many people don’t like to group, don’t like to speed run, don’t like to run specific builds, don’t like to be yelled at if they make a mistake, dont’ like to die over and over again to repeat content and pay a gold to get in.

Most people didn’t enjoy that…in my opinion.

But those that did, absolutely loved it.

To be honest, I think after factions they didn’t need to add anything to pvp, like I said they already had modes to casuals and to hardcores, and it already had variety with it’s 8 game modes and god knows how many maps.

But let’s turn our head to PvE . With the launch of the game we got UW & FoW ,yeah? After that they they decided to release another elite area known as Sorrow’s Furnace.
After that, with the release of factions they released even harder elite areas with bigger teams and after that DoA (And with the release of the battle isles the tomb of primeval kings). These were all HARD. If UW/FoW wasn’t that popular at the first place, why did they keep rolling out these? Not to mention Hard mode.

Now: GW2 didn’t start with any area considered as “elite”. I don’t think it’s because they think it would be unpopular. Also I think the some goes with expansions: GW1 working model with multiple released campaign or expansion(alongside with other games ofc).Can’t do that again , would be unoriginal, so Living World it is!

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

I never said I meant UW or even hard content. And I have to agree with the “Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE”. I mostly meant PvP , but it’s true for a lot of PvE parts as well. But on PvP : GW1 had the best PvP I ever played, Observer, Rating , tournaments, rewards , variety of game modes. In gw2 almost none of these returned, and the only mode we got is not even similar to the ones in 1.

I think I can say what we had was well functioning, popular and had levels from casual to hardcore. Now look at GW2 PvP: I can’t even spot a similarity.

Vayne.8563:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Vayne.8563:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

phys.7689:

Beldin.5498:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Beldin.5498:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

If you’re complaining about this content, which is widely considered the end-game content for pretty much every other MMO out there, then what content do you expect to get when you’re asking for an endgame here?

Running Underworld 2920 times in 8 years .. that is fun endgame for the GW1 players i always have the feeling.

Repeating stuff is always boring .. as long as it is not Underworld.

This means nothing to me, because I don’t know what Underworld is, and I’m sure a lot of other users also don’t know. Be descriptive, man. :-|

No problem .. i also don’t know what Underworld is .. but reading the forums and
especially comments from all those GW1 fans then there were maybe 3 zones
called Underworld, The Deep and Ulgoz (or something like that) that were soooo
amazing that they played them endloss for 8 years .. and while everything else
gets boring after doing it 5 times, those zones were sooo amazing that they will
not be boring even if you continue playing them until 2250 at least

Underworld was one of the main dungeons in the game, but it was a dungeon designed like a small zone, with like 8 quests in it. It was relatively fairly difficult (compared to the standard content in the game)
you can think of it like dungeons are in this game, except larger, with more paths all at once.
People didnt always go in with the intent to play the whole zone, they would sometimes just do a couple areas.

Full party death kicked you out of the instance.
you could get tired of it, but it was fairly challenging to complete, and it would take many runs before you saw/did everything for most people. Different order events made the run a bit different depending who you played with.
it had good random drops from enemies, so people were happy to even play the parts of it they liked, as opposed to the whole thing.

game design wise, it was a pretty good game mode.

they also added new dungeons, so people who played it for 6-8 years actually wanted to play it for that time.

I was thinking about this.

Do you think the UW design was so good because of the quests/map textures and overall open-ended nature of the content?

Looking back and thinking about it, I think the reason why UW was so fun was that:

a. It was a challenge that you could LOSE.
b. There were penalties for dying.
c. Both a. and b. meant that team cooperation was paramount.
d. The rewards were rewarding if your party played well, you lost money if your party played poorly (due to the entrance fee and being kicked out for a full wipe.)

There is not a single dungeon in game that meets ANY of those criteria, EXCEPT maybe a few particular fractals or a few Arah paths.

Any composition can complete nearly any path. You can’t LOSE. Your team may rage quit if it’s terribad, but you can’t actually lose if you keep trying.

There are no penalties for dying. None.

Teams don’t NEED to plan. Sure the speedrunners will might stack, some pugs may decide which warrior is taking which banner, but overall it’s enter dungeon and YOLO mode everything. Bearbow rangers, flamethrower engis, staff guardians, full necro party? Who cares, the content is so easy that you hardly have to plan. Maybe put some walls down here and there for reflects… but really… there’s just no complexity.

Finally, the last point. Rewards. There seems to be two categories of rewards in this game. The guaranteed reward and the so-RNG-gated-that-you’ll-never-see-it-drop reward. Why not something in between? Why not content that is more rewarding the better your team performs?

It was good for a percentage of the playerbase. I’m relatively sure most people that played Guild Wars 1 never even attempted the Underworld and that’s the problem.

The people who liked it and swear by it, in my opinion are nowhere close to any kind of majority. Which might be why Anet didn’t make something else like that.

I’m relatively sure most people who played Guild Wars 1 attempted Underworld many times and enjoyed it.

The people who liked it and swear by it, in my opinion, are the clear majority. ANET should make something else like it.

If they were a clear majority, what’s the reason that Anet hasn’t made that or anything like it?

To innovate ofc. GW 1 had a lot of unquestionably popular features that anet refuses to carry over. A lot of these features made GW1 popular in the first place , but since making these features would be unoriginal in gw2, there is no place for them.

Paulytnz.7619:

Scipio.3204:

Announce GW3

/15char

No, just NOOOOO. That would be like, what a phone app or something right? Because seriously, you can’t get any more dumbed down than this…

Well, I’m glad you asked! GW3 will take everything you loved about GW2 , but we found GW2 too confusing in general. We drastically decreased the amount of skills , and we made PvP even more simple by addig only one PvP mode with only one map , deathsmatch ,this way casuals could get into it easier.

Also I realized there are far more people who play far less than actual gamers , so GW3 wont be for gamers at all, it is as casual as possible. We made it a lot like popular games like facebook games. Also we made combat more simple , so now it will be possible to play GW3 on PS4, XBOX1 and even on Wii U!

GW3 will be pegi 3.