Guild Wars 2

Calae.1738:

It appears to me that developers respond to the lowest common denominator having the loudest voice. Stealth is not a new idea; it’s a borrowed idea.

Developers are like normal people. They fall into patterns and tend to not question how things work or why they work a certain way. Ideas are simply borrowed from the people who invented them.

Triple A game design in a nutshell.

I can’t believe they’re going through with “boon hate.” The thieve’s change is interesting. It’s a bit of an arbitrary addition to the set but it’s at least going to change the playstyle. Increasing warrior dps (through a trait no less) to fix the issue with boon stacking is not only unimaginative but also does very little to address the issue; it’s attempting to address an issue where boon classes are build-locked into a playstyle that involves stacking boons by locking warriors into a build trait. Eles and guardians can’t even fight normally without having at least 2-3 boons on their character and party members at a time. Is their intent to discourage these professions from doing things?

Mirta.5029:

Vayne.8563:

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Confusion is very powerful in PvP…not so much in PVe. If they’re splitting it, I don’t find it so bad. Shutting down people is fine…shutting them down completely for more than a certain number of seconds is no fun for them. So if you’re on the receiving end of that confusion (and remember you can spec so all shatters add confusion, there’s a phantasm that adds confusion and the scepter adds confusion), that can really screw people up in WvW and PvP. In fact, I can often stack confusion as fast as people can remove it on my mesmer in PvP.

That makes it OP.

it’s already 50% less in PvP. They were talking about making it 25% of its original strength in PvP (mesmers only) and 50% of its original strength in PVE, making a condition build for mesmer useless, especially having in mind that stacking confusion is so much easier on an engineer, but engineer confusion wouldn’t be changed, which is weird having in mind that engineer is able to apply lots of different conditions while pretty much the only thing condition mesmers do have is confusion.
I think that what they said in that video was pretty kitten not intelligent and they understood that themselves, because confusion change was not mentioned in patch notes nor future updates.

Am I reading this correctly? Confusion accounts for about 3% of my mesmer’s damage output in PvE. Condition spec mesmers aren’t even viable because of how easy it is to override bleeds and burns. The burst shatter cheese build is the problematic one. The confusion build is only problematic in WvW because the damage unmitigated there, but even then Mesmers can only reasonably apply 2-3 conditions at a time so it’s prone to cleansing. Competent players can often wait it off. It might be more reasonable to cut the duration or tweak the proc conditions and is effects (pure damage is bo-ring). Come to think of it retaliation is a similar condition that could use a lot of work as well.

I pretty much agree with OP, but mainly because they’re focusing too much on numerical changes. Their methodology is to tweak skill damage and space out skill usage in hopes of reaching some semblance of balance, when in actuality it’s just spacing out the use of broken and/or uninteresting mechanics.

What amazes me is that Josh responds to both positive and negative feedback.

zenleto.6179:

Lol. Official? According to who? Gimme links, I love reading about this sort if stuff.

And so what!

Several up to date dictionaries, actually.

And most of the things Asura say are nonsense anyway. It’s annoying, much like the rest of the race and their techno-babble, so one shouldn’t take it seriously.

Slamz.5376:

Aeolus.3615:

The next gen of mmo’s(end 2k13/2k14) will give the option for guilds to change the world, cant you guys imagine what if guilds could build castles from pre-selected models, movable siege?

Yeah, that’s what I said after EQ.
About 15 years ago.
The next gen of MMOs was WOW and we’ve been playing WOW ever since. The name changes, the graphics change, the settings change but it’s WOW.

Meanwhile, Camelot Unchained, which looks to be a real next-generation MMORPG with real block-by-block castle building, can’t even raise the $2 million they need to get started. After 23 days their kickstarter doesn’t even have 9000 supporters.

There are probably easily 200,000 players look for a game like that but only 9000 of them are actually willing to put up $25 bucks for a pre-order to help the game get built.

10 years from now, we’ll be playing WOW still. It’ll be 3-D virtual reality WOW, but still WOW.

Certainly think it would help if they had a different spokesperson for the Kickstarter ^.^;

And I agree that we’ll probably be playing WoW ten years from now. But that should only hold true for the AAA category, since AAA companies are more likely to be led by the nose with money.

GW2 is more of an onrails experience than an sand box one. It’s basically a bunch of set pieces littered about. This goes for WvW as well. You can easily argue that dev’s design intent overrides player freedom and imagination.

Regardless, the video was talking about difference in kind, or in other words the difference in feel of the experience. How does this relate to wvw? It’s obvious the individual player can choose what they do, but what about the rest of the players and the kind of player environment they provide?

To be fair, I kind of like the prospect of redesigning the entire PvP system…

RNG isn’t bad. GW2’s RNG is just done very, very poorly. So I semi agree with OP.

DrixTrix.7168:

TwoBit.5903:

There’s moving, but it’s not calculated. Dodging so awkward in that it’s not truly dodging but an invincibility toggle + movement; it feels contrived and often overpowered. Skills are balanced via cooldowns, not animations windups, or timing. Players can move while attack in any direction. Seems like a good thing until you realize that it makes both movement and attack rather spammy. I could go on.

so if you dodged you would want to still be hit? if you dodge, you dodge you can also ’’fake’’ people into dodging with some wind up skills, and what games balance has been based around animation wind ups?

so you would prefer to be rooted and use combat skills in some circumstances? i wouldn’t….that then would be incredible inactive, and you can attack while turned away from someone in most cases, strafing needs to be strafed if you go too 90* you can’t cast (auto atleast) also if you are turned away from someone and press #1 (thief auto dagger based on) then you wont hit anything and you miss everything, if your angled wrong you wont cleave everything and so on…

what is so inactive about that?

I want positioning and direction to matter. Dodging anywhere for invincibility contrives positioning. And you don’t need to root people to fix melee, just incorporate movement into the attack itself in a fixed pattern. There would be more depth to those skills as positioning and aiming would matter more, because letting players move every which way removes depth of positioning and execution to those skills. Not to mention letting players move in any direction while attack makes balancing the actual execution of those skills exponentially more difficult, meaning they’ll resort to balance damage rather than actual execution of the skill.

My main gripe with the activeness is that it’s incredibly shallow. It provides no dilemmas, nor is there any skill involved. The combat is only active in the most superficial sense, but apparently if people are moving and dodging mindless without any bit of perception and skill then that’s enough for the designers to pat themselves on the back. Spam is enough evidence, I suppose.

Forward thinking intent, assbackwards methodology. They did sell this game by selling their intent. It’s a marketing strategy and it’s one used by all triple A games these days. It’s a gray area, but IMO if they intended completely honest they would have sold what was actually produced rather than the “itent” in their manifesto. That or they were so into their own rhetoric that they couldn’t see the reality of their design from their intent.

One of many quotes:

If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!

There’s moving, but it’s not calculated. Dodging so awkward in that it’s not truly dodging but an invincibility toggle + movement; it feels contrived and often overpowered. Skills are balanced via cooldowns, not animations windups, or timing. Players can move while attack in any direction. Seems like a good thing until you realize that it makes both movement and attack rather spammy. I could go on.

To be fair, the designers probably didn’t know what they were getting into when they decided to do “active combat.”

Riot games releases videos on balance changes with one or two designers clearly voicing the intention behind those changes. For ANet we have “it’s on our watch list.”

List of things this game needs to discourage zerging:
Larger maps, more reasons to defend, more reasons to do small groups (the fact that it’s technically more efficient to do so ain’t translating to actual gameplay), more strategy, less reward>high strategy mentality, more impact of small group play.

The AoE cap removal might help, but it might also devolve gameplay even more towards AoE spam, the difference being the zerg to most efficiently stack AoE would be victorious.

I’ve helped to complete a bounty for a friend’s guild. These bounties basically large bags of hp tied to random encounters. The only thing new about them are the methods of encounter, and even that’s too random to be interesting.

The intention was most definitely “fun” but the execution dissatisfied me as a player and apparently others as well. ANet really needs to learn that there can be a very large and very real disparity between intention and reality.

My GW2 routine:

Log in to see if other friends still log in. Log off shortly after.

Go on forums to play Spot the Logical Fallacy, a mental exercise I’ve developed partly for fun and partly out of necessity.

Post occasionally. Get infracted customarily.

Yargesh.4965:

“The main suggestion I’ll make in this thread”

Put it in suggestions.

Suggestions can be included in discussions too, can’t they?

…if the game feels the same but with bigger numbers.

I’m just a player so I can only assume about certain things. The November patch added the first stages of a treadmill to GW2 due to, what I can safely assume from ANet’s statements, a large drop in the playerbase. From the trends following the patch, I can further assume the VP has worked to a degree and that they’ll stick with the model. Hell, one of the designers even said they liked the model.

However, as a player there is one thing I can most assuredly say: VP is only working in a superficial sense. This is because statistics are superficial. They were a tool that worked in the olden days where dilemmas could more easily be delivered through math. In a game in a game that tries to get away from UI based combat, they become even more superficial; they’re benchmarks that motivate, but they don’t change the way players look at the game nor do they really change the actual gameplay. As a player who’s played many RPGs, I can at the very least say for myself that GW2’s progression system feels the most skin-deep and unengaging.

At this point, I’ll allow myself to indulge in one final assumption: players are not dumb. They may not be versed in the ways of game design, have the best spelling nor be familiar with the intricate workings of a GW2, but if the game gets boring (read: feels the same/ no decision making) they’ll eventually move on. They’re certainly free to do so in this day and age. Designers can constantly pump out new content to keep them coming, but that’s not a reasonable alternative even with the most efficient development pipeline and it won’t be effective if it all feels the same.

The main suggestion I’ll make in this thread is for the designers to move away from the current model of statistical progression. In a game that focuses less on stats and more on execution, progression should focus less on raw statistics and more on the elements of execution: timing, spacing, positioning, movement, windups, etc. Don’t bother with balance (the game’s not that balanced anyway), but focus on interesting decision making paths. PvPers have either stuck to PvP or have moved on. PvErs will group and play with others if they feel like it, and it’s all fine and dandy as long as everything does something. The TP where players can trivialize the time it takes to “progress,” in other words they’ll play less if they can buy everything. RNG can be a good method of setting players on unexpected paths of decision making, thereby increasing the replay value. They may even like the paths they’re presented with. Extending the life of a game by creating unexpected dilemmas is really the premise behind RNG in the first place.

Sandra Martino.3870:

True daecollo, however we are the only class that suffers from its slow speed attack and thus is more susceptible to the strafing problem, to the point of unplayable (in pvp). I doubt this is intentional but i’m afraid they choose to ignore since there isn’t enough fuzz about it on the forum. If there were 10 threads up about this problem with 20 pages each, it would be fixed in no-time.

Obvious problems such as such as these should already be known to the developers before they finish internal testing. My guess is that the Dev’s can’t do anything about because of the corner they’ve designed themselves into; they have to change the fundamental mechanics behind projectiles and the player’s ability to aim them in a 3D environment to actually fix the problem. Bandage changes like changing the AA to a beam or increasing the speed will only further damage the design intention of the skills.

A roguelike mode with randomly generated floors that can be done in groups.

IMO, the backpeddling/strafing mechanic should be disabled in SAB. It’s a cumbersome mechanic, unnecessary for the level of combat in SAB, and it forces players to have to re-angle their cameras needlessly.

The game uses predictive aiming for ranged attacks. This is obviously an act of exploiting the mechanic and it used to happen to Rangers until ANet increased their firing speed (which obviously isn’t going to happen to an attack described as "slow). If it was intended, it’s incredibly sloppy design.

It’s a feature! Look how that Asura is using movement to dodge those orbs. Clearly this is counterplay in action.

WakeskaterX.6947:

The jumping takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s pretty easy once you do. Dodge jump ftw and the Frog Boss is so stupidly easy once you get the rotation down. I solo him with no problems after doing him a few times.

In fact he’s easier solo because he has less HP and you don’t have 3 people who don’t know what they are doing

Idk, I probably sympathize with Josh because I make games really hard at first but that are easy once you know exactly what to do. Old school games that kids today don’t favor as much as when I was a kid. Mabye that’s why I love SAB so much.

Old school games were more about timing based on perception, so the potential skill ceiling is could be very high and the game can become challenging again once the player’s learned reflexes dull. I think I’ve finished the very first Castlevania many times over, but the game still remains one of the most challenging games I’ve played every time I went back to it. Speaking of games with high difficulty ceilings, a very recent game that comes to mind is The Binding of Isaac, although that’s more of an old-school action shooter, rogue-like, whatever it is and not a platformer.

Relic.7148:

ArenaNet has already done work with the camera, it’s a problem with any jumping puzzles in the game. The camera is still a problem, it constantly readjusts itself at different distances, sometimes fixing itself when it zooms in. The bug with staying zoomed out after leaving during boss battles should be an easy fix, the camera should just reset itself after leaving a zone, just like a readjusts itself when entering a zone. I’m use to the wonky camera otherwise and don’t battle it much.

I think it would help if the team could somehow slow the readjust speed within certain thresholds. For instance the camera won’t adjust as fast until the player moves ~20% from the center of the screen. Additionally, I think centering the camera above the players model would help too as it would increase the vertical field of vision.

Aside from the readjust speed, the problem with the camera is that it zooms in whenever a static, interact-able object comes between it and the player’s view. I’m not sure if this can even be fixed at this point in development but maybe if some exceptions to the rule were written for certain objects. For example tree trunks would cause the camera to zoom, but the roots, leaves and branches wouldn’t.

IMO, f they could somehow do this, the game’s camera would be infinitely more fluid and intuitive not just for SAB, but for the entire game.

I think a lot of the jumping issues have to deal with the camera. In 3D platformers like Mario 64 and Spyro, the camera was smooth (most of the time) because it didn’t follow the player’s vertical motion so closely.

Edit: Come to think of it, the camera in those games were mostly fixed as part of certain set pieces, and players at the option of rotating it.

Game development requires many different specializations, so it’s not unheard of to shuffle or even lay off personnel once the is little or no use for their specialization. It all depends on which direction management wants to take development, not necessarily the health of the game. Unless knowledge of at least the kinds of employees laid off is provided, information of layoffs may as well be pulled out of thin air.

Speaking which, what happened to certain designers at GW2? We don’t really hear from designers like Eric Flannum anymore. Speaking of which two of the three founding members of ArenaNet aren’t here anymore. I’m not trying to insinuate anything (well, I am actually and insinuate is all I can really do), but maybe there have been major layoffs at ArenaNet as well.

spconder.2489:

I’m just going to throw this out there: The Rapids level needs more checkpoints, due to how… glitchy, the hit detection is on the rapids. I’ve had cases where I’d be swept away mid jump, or swept away and hit a rock, only to be teleported further down the rapids to my doom, or knocked off my feet while standing perfectly still on a platform.

That level almost made me throw my computer through a wall.

Agreed. The scaling down models certainly helps with jumping (or at least the animations) but the hit detection is still finicky as kitten, especially with the rapids.

Vayne.8563:

TwoBit.5903:

Vayne.8563:

TwoBit.5903:

I don’t think the presence subs is a good basis for argument. There are too many problems with that premise. First of all, MMOs are in competition for people’s time. If people aren’t willing to give the game their time (much less their money), then it can’t rightfully factor them into their playerbase. And then there’s the issue with knowing the relative sizes of the ones willing to pay subs and the ones who aren’t, and more importantly how loyal the latter group will be.

Being willing to give time is completely different than being willing to give money. I paid for Guild Wars 2. If I am willing to wait for it to mature, then I can do so without throwing money at it every month. So many people play and leave and come back.

With a pay to play MMO there’s an extra barrier to coming back. You have to like it enough to pay again to try it. That’s not really the case with a buy to play MMO. A lot of people who got bored or tired of the game came back and feel refreshed. Would they have paid to come back? Logically some would have and some wouldn’t have.

At any rate, like I said, a whole lot of people in the thread I mentioned specifically said they’d never pay a monthly fee for any game. They don’t believe in it. And we still need to know how big that group is.

It might be noted however that in similar polls, Guild Wars 1 players often said the same thing over the years, and many of those people played Guild Wars 1 for years. After all, if you’re not willing to spend monthly money on entertainment, are you going to go out and buy a ton of games all the time?

If players aren’t willing to give an MMO their time or attention, they naturally aren’t going to invest any money the goods it offers. By comparison, B2P MMOs have advantages over P2P in the lack of subs, but it’s still a stretch to assume that no subs=retention. MMOs aren’t the only type of entertainment available. How likely is it that players who left will come back at all for more of the same when there’s so much else they could do? On that note, how likely is it that the GW2 players who have left will come back at all even if they didn’t have anything else going on? Is the quality and quantity of content offered by GW2 enough to bring these players back and get enough of them to shell out money to support the developers?

If it sounds like I’m asking too many questions, that’s because the presumption of B2P=retention has that many holes in it.

On the other hand, P2P games have gamers that are generally happy to be paying for a premium service in the first place. However, the service acts as sunk cost over time and had other implications that many GW1 players wanted to get away from. I don’t think it means that these players didn’t have the money to spend (although that is true for some). It likely means they didn’t want to spend that much money or time on one game, because of financial reasons or otherwise. If could very well be worth it for them to go out and pay for or rent other shiny titles, or do real life stuff.

I never said B2P=retention. Totally putting words into my mouth here. What I did say was that there is an audience of people who will NEVER play an MMO with a monthly fee, and we don’t know how big that audience is.

You you certainly did make it sound that way, especially when that’s the rhetoric commonly associated with GW2 and B2P.

As for the audience, we also don’t know how likely they’ll be retained by GW2, or if these types of players spend enough to justify the overhead.

If only part of that audience is retained, that means you have a base of players that aren’t ever going to play WoW unless WoW drops its monthly fee, which I don’t see happening.

I think that retention requires players. If you don’t have players, you can’t retain them. So this base of people who’ll never play a monthly fee have to be factored into any equation.

A theoretical equation under the conditions that these players would be playing, paying, and coming back to repeat. And we don’t know the size.

Vayne.8563:

TwoBit.5903:

I don’t think the presence subs is a good basis for argument. There are too many problems with that premise. First of all, MMOs are in competition for people’s time. If people aren’t willing to give the game their time (much less their money), then it can’t rightfully factor them into their playerbase. And then there’s the issue with knowing the relative sizes of the ones willing to pay subs and the ones who aren’t, and more importantly how loyal the latter group will be.

Being willing to give time is completely different than being willing to give money. I paid for Guild Wars 2. If I am willing to wait for it to mature, then I can do so without throwing money at it every month. So many people play and leave and come back.

With a pay to play MMO there’s an extra barrier to coming back. You have to like it enough to pay again to try it. That’s not really the case with a buy to play MMO. A lot of people who got bored or tired of the game came back and feel refreshed. Would they have paid to come back? Logically some would have and some wouldn’t have.

At any rate, like I said, a whole lot of people in the thread I mentioned specifically said they’d never pay a monthly fee for any game. They don’t believe in it. And we still need to know how big that group is.

It might be noted however that in similar polls, Guild Wars 1 players often said the same thing over the years, and many of those people played Guild Wars 1 for years. After all, if you’re not willing to spend monthly money on entertainment, are you going to go out and buy a ton of games all the time?

If players aren’t willing to give an MMO their time or attention, they naturally aren’t going to invest any money the goods it offers. By comparison, B2P MMOs have advantages over P2P in the lack of subs, but it’s still a stretch to assume that no subs=retention. MMOs aren’t the only type of entertainment available. How likely is it that players who left will come back at all for more of the same when there’s so much else they could do? On that note, how likely is it that the GW2 players who have left will come back at all even if they didn’t have anything else going on? Is the quality and quantity of content offered by GW2 enough to bring these players back and get enough of them to shell out money to support the developers?

If it sounds like I’m asking too many questions, that’s because the presumption of B2P=retention has that many holes in it.

On the other hand, P2P games have gamers that are generally happy to be paying for a premium service in the first place. However, the service acts as sunk cost over time and had other implications that many GW1 players wanted to get away from. I don’t think it means that these players didn’t have the money to spend (although that is true for some). It likely means they didn’t want to spend that much money or time on one game, because of financial reasons or otherwise. If could very well be worth it for them to go out and pay for or rent other shiny titles, or do real life stuff.

I don’t think the presence subs is a good basis for argument. There are too many problems with that premise. First of all, MMOs are in competition for people’s time. If people aren’t willing to give the game their time (much less their money), then it can’t rightfully factor them into their playerbase. And then there’s the issue with knowing the relative sizes of the ones willing to pay subs and the ones who aren’t, and more importantly how loyal the latter group will be.

Information without proper context is often useless.

Why is ArenaNet hiring? Is it because ArenaNet wants to expand? They’re certainly trying out new things, and it shows in their recent patches. Maybe the game failed expectations and NCSoft has allowed ANet to hire developers to help to salvage the game’s assets. * cough * sPvP and WvW * cough * In which case, the game was dying and they’re doing the best to halt the process.

Anyway, and arbitrary link is about as valid as saying something along the lines of, “the game is dying because almost all my guildies have left and aren’t coming back,” except the latter has more context.

Essence Snow.3194:

Elentari.9156:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We are aware of the reward discrepancy between dungeon and open world boss loots, and we’re trying to resolve things. As you may have noticed though, the new open world chests caused a problem with our economy that we are trying to fix, so bringing dungeon chests up to that level would only further hurt the economy.

As for the increased yellow loot supply causing “problem with our economy,” could you specify what exactly was deemed a problem? Ecto prices came down significantly but seemed to stay fairly stable in the mid-20s, which, given how much of them is needed in the endgame in comparison to the average player’s income, feels reasonable. If part of the problem was their value in comparison to other crafting mats, I would argue that the underlying problem there is that the other crafting mats are too scarce, not that ecto’s are too plentiful. When most players have to go out of their way to farm gold in order to afford things they need, intuitively that seems like an indicator that supply is too restricted.

Lastly, with regard to how to increase rewards in other areas of the game without further devaluing rares/ectos, may I suggest that the yield of lodestones and T6 fine mats be increased for doing dungeons etc. Perhaps make the daily dungeon reward chest have a loot bag similar to “Heavy Moldy Bag” but with decreased cloth and leather on the drop table. This gets two birds with one stone: the value of dungeon rewards are increased, and the scarcity of basic crafting mats is alleviated. And since you’re not handing out the same reward for all activities, it ensures that the reward from any particular activity is not devalued because not everyone gets them easily. Players that focus on one activity will not get everything they need, but they can obtain them via TP, supplied by the players that focus on a different activity.

I am also curious to how it threw off the economy. I know it was creating some coin from the merch value of greens and blues, but the rares? Cof p1 is surely creating more coin.

Now that I think about it more I would need to have more insight…what is meant by “problem”?

Cof farm quite literally produces coin, therefore it increases the supply of gold. This gold either stays on the character farmed or flows into sinks, precursors and legendary materials (including ectos) for example. This would drive prices up. On the other hand, world boss chests indirectly increase the supply of ectos, driving prices down. My guess is that world boss loot was a “problem” because it was devaluing an important commodity.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

As per wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement), and I quote:

“Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder’s “exclusive rights”, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the copyrighted work, spread the information contained within copyrighted works, or to make derivative works. "

There has always been one major loophole in the copyright infringement act and it basically is summed up in the bolded words in the above paragraph:

Derivative Work- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
What is considered “derivative work”. IMO, my examples clearly show derivate work of copyright material.

Then there is this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia
Where it basically said that you can use copyright material as long as you don’t make profit – but isn’t ANet making profit out of GW2 which includes content that contains derivate work of copyright material?

I would really like an ANet representative to respond at this stage. Perhaps they have gotten written/oral permission, but I don’t know this. Just curious.

You can’t copyright everyting in a game. You can copyright unique aspects of a game such as the story.

Nintendo wants 3d party developers to have some freedom in their game design.

I’m no law expert, but irrc game rules and mechanics are not protected by law. I believe this is because rules and mechanics are considered underlying ideas, or genre. Kind of like how shooting is one of the underlying ideas to so many shooters. If they were protected by law, we’d see far fewer expressions on game genre (no Halo, Gears of War, or Half Life. Only quake). Assets like art and story, however, are IP because they original and expressive works.

The line between mechanics and expression can often be blurred, and it’s tricky to decide what’s expression or mechanic. If Ninty feels like their IP was infringed upon, then they can always take ANet to court, but I doubt they will since there’s nothing to be gained from it.

1) I don’t think any company owns the copyright on the blocky or pixelated look, and SAB is unique enough artistically. The resemblance to minecraft is probably incidental because the inspirations were clearly taken from elsewhere. People refer to it as minecraft-like because minecraft is currently a popular game.

2) References and parody do not constitute copyright infringement. However, selling something as the material referenced is copyright infringement. That is not the case with Super Adventure Box. It’s not Super Legend of Zelda Box. It’s Super Adventure Box and it is clearly its own thing.

3) & 4) See number 2.

Seras.5702:

Just gonna throw this out there: could the lack of finesse be intentional, mimicking the games of old? And if it is, is it acceptable to do this in a throw-back homage game placed inside a polished game?

I would argue against the premise that the games of old lacked finesse. Their mechanics were of course simple, but because they were simple the developers could more easily calculate timing and telegraphing of obstacles. Some of the more memorable games were all about finesse.

I said this before but probably not as well as I should have. IMO, attacking is OP in that you can spam it with full impunity. The player isn’t locked into animations when they attack, so there’s no leveraging of movement and position. It takes quite a bit of the challenge out of enemy encounters.

Edit: Grammar. Should not be typing while half asleep. :P

The boss is a cakewalk once you learn its attacks. One thing you should take into consideration is that it’s far safer to dodge by running to safe spots than to dodge by using the dodge button. You can very easily roll off the lily pads and take damage from the swamp water as a result.

aaron.7850:

TwoBit.5903:

This game needs fun content and SAB is fun content, so….

You are missing the point

I love eating chocolate cake on my birthday, that doesnt mean that I NEED chocolate cake every single day after it, even if I really wanted to. It does more harm than good.

You are the kid wanting to eat chocolate cake every day.

So the game should be boring? Without SAB GW2 quite banal to be perfectly honest. It’s like toast, without butter or sugar.

And considering metaphor was valid, then I’d rather eat chocolate cake than toast because for me games are for occasional enjoyment. They’re not sustenance.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

Maybe Anet trusts you to moderate you chocolate cake intake? An honors system!

Wait.. no.. we exploit everything in this game >.<

QFT
Just look at CoF farming.

I agree with TC and Esplen. The aesthetics are amazing, but the engine and physical mechanics work against experience. It’s literally in beta, so it’s likely that some of the already obvious issues will be addressed, but I’ll go ahead and state my gripes as well.

• The game physics makes jumping too awkard and floaty. This is especially noticeable when trying to jump on small platforms or hugging ledges. It doesn’t feel right, especially for the ledge hugging jumps in stage 4, where you have to mash directional keys in order to make the jump.

• The game uses the standard knockdown animation to simulate water physics and getting hit. The animation, in my opinion, is a bit too exaggerated and it just plain doesn’t feel right for a platformer. A flinch animation would suffice for taking enemy damage. For the stage 4 rapids, teleporting players back to the beginning of the puzzle (not the entire stage) if they fall into the water would suffice as punishment. The random and constant knockbacks are tedious and they take away control from the player for too long.

• No jumping to dodge. It’s a platformer, so positioning and movement should play some role in dodging attacks and obstacles. This is a learned bias but it’s one that’s been ingrained in players for so many games that it just doesn’t feel right to not jump and dodge obvious attacks.

• Attacks have a tell but little rhythm. This is a problem with GW2 in general, and it makes dealing with multiple enemies more tricky than it should be. In many platformers, obstacles are telegraphed in a safe environment so that players can learn the tell and rhythm and therefore deal with them in more dangerous situations. In SAB all enemies simply attack the player after they see them, and moreover they attack in whichever direction the player is. Sometimes they don’t attack at all (I’m assuming this is a glitch). It’s not necessary that all enemies follow set patterns but if none of them do, then there’s really very little pattern to follow.

• Camera issues. Same deal with overworld jumping puzzles. They make certain jumps harder than they should be, and it’s incredibly frustrating for larger characters.

• There’s no noticeable pattern to the player’s attacks. Very little timing is required to attack enemies as a result.

This game needs fun content and SAB is fun content, so….

1 up

It’s a fun mini-game.

They found clever ways to make it fit lore-wise.

It still hasn’t reached its potential.

1UP

Reason: Alot of old time players have played the old “NES”, “Atari”, “SuperNES”, “Sega”, and ect. It taught us how bugs exist, find hidden bugs, exploits, glitches, and tricks to bypass or play the game.

Not only that most video games, console or online, follows the same binary coding rule. I notice in this Super Box, its showing and teaching all the basics of simple puzzles, problem solving, secrets, exploring, and tricky jumping. Its also teaching players on timed attacks in simple mode.

Aka for short “Its teaching players how to understand and play GW2 better.” While the dodging is not necessarily needed in “Super Box” its showing how dodge exist in the old games by timing things.

So if anything, it contributes GW2, one way or another but it can never replace nintendo from our hearts.

Agreed. Dodging in the olden days wasn’t a contrived button press. It was taking careful consideration of positioning and movement. Come to think of it, better hit detection and physics is something that would make SAB already fun gameplay infinitely more enjoyable.

+1
If the glow must remain, then at least remove the blue coloration.

The keys inside the SAB would be perfect as dagger skins. I know I’d want a set.

I agree. Super Adventure Box is amazing and deserves to stay as permanent content.

It does, however, highlight the GW2’s poor hit detection and physics, but it’s basically a prototype and I’m sure they’ll find a workaround to those limitations.

They should use SAB as a template for future updates, and I’m not saying this sarcastically or anything.

Depends on what aspect you’re talking about.

If you’re talking about the game by reducing it down to the mechanics, the game certainly is evolutionary as others have put it. However, I feel that I must point out that the term “evolution” is often used within the context of creatures adapting to survive in very specific environments. The same concept could be applied to define GW2; it’s an evolution (or at least an attempt at it) done in the vain of surviving in an environment where players have less time to play, because of life and an ever growing videogame library.

In terms of gameplay aesthetics- the general feel and impression of the game (not to be confused with art style and quality)- GW2 is a major step back for the genre.

Totally skimmed over this part, but as a counter to the “win mechanic” some might not consider themselves winning when they playing through Spec Ops: The Line, yet they do so anyway for the experience.