For many people, GW2 is an enjoyable, shared experience in the here and now. I think that obliging yourself to grind away at a piano or martial art when you would enjoy yourself more with another activity is problematic because it seems like a lot of people put an emphasis on these hobbies as a form of self-betterment, and judge each other based on each individual’s participation in such things. Therefore, a lot of the pressure to do those kinds of things results from a fear of being different, or a fear or people, or a fear of shame. These are unhealthy motivations.
- I was thinking that spending time with low-quality game is pretty bad way to spend one’s life. Not in a sense that it would be morally wrong, but the alternatives are better. I think these things can and should be judged. A picture with high resolution is better than same picture in low resolution. Food that has no flavour in it is worse than same food properly flavoured. Same way a game that contains grind is worse than a game made in good faith. Grind invokes compulsion and eventually existential crisis. It feels like working in a sweatshop where you’re toiling away day to day for paltry reward, receiving no appreciation from anyone. It’s not something to take lightly. Many players have lost their satisfaction in life as a result of these MMO games.
You believe old games didn’t talk about market share? Yeah maybe in the 80s, that was true, but no time since.
- I believe they simply talked about sales. How much sales a company needs to turn profit. Buying a game was like buying a book or a movie. Some games like RPGs were marketed for their higher content amount, but generally it was the experience everyone was after. Nowadays player experience doesn’t matter or it’s regarded side issue. The concepts of MMOs are those of operant conditioning. How often item should drop? For how long players should play this quest/zone/event?
Natural result of strong reinforcement and lack of focus on player experience is that these forums are filled with negativity and complaints. People are both invested and not satisfied. It’s not because “that’s how Internet communities are” like is often said, take a look at Civilization and other single player game forums. There is vast difference between developers who want to create a game in good faith and those who think fixing a game means more rewards.
So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.
- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.
The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.
- The numbers on the weapons and armor are meaningless. What does that 5-figure number measure? Rolling 6 on a 6-sided dice is the best outcome, but does 14,890 power mean you’re powerful or not? That’s nonsense.
Content means graphics, storyline, unique dialogue, music and so forth. Something that requires effort to create. Good games have generative mechanism that allows for variations with finite content (like Chess). MMOs have no such mechanism and they take repetition to absurd levels. Farming 1 wood log is the same as farming 10,000 wood logs. The experience doesn’t change, you just waste your time.
HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.
- I don’t know what long terms goals you have for your own life, but there are people out there who aren’t actually happy to announce that playing some MMO is the thing they plan to do the next five years in absence of more fulfilling hobbies. Calling it grind puts the focus on the mind-numbing activity it is. Cook for 10k hours and you’re a chef. Play piano for 10k hours and you’re a pianist. Farm game for 10k hours and you’ve just wasted your life.
TL;DR: I would highly recommend that while the forums are great to get feedback from the most ardent fans of the game, that Anet actually offers an in-game poll by game mail, asking each player to give input to what they’d like to see in changes. (And be prepared to alter existing plans if the data goes against current programming changes). Any time a player logs in, they are given this poll about potential changes, and can click off multiple choice radio buttons of what they prefer. This absolves the company of reacting (stomping out fires) to vocal manipulation and social engineering on forums. It also gives them an accurate head count of interest to proposed changes.
It just seems to me to be the more sensible thing to do.
- They already have the data what their players are doing, how often they log in and for how long. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what a player thinks if he logs in and plays for many hours each day anyway. Also there’s a fundamental discrepancy between what good business plan looks like and what a good game look like. We have no idea what’s going on in the company, how they see the game and what kind of players they’re making this game for. All these years are evidence of something, however. If someone dislikes everything Anet does and disapproves all the changes, there’s no reason to stick around and hope for change.
Complaining changes nothing. These people were here at the launch day and they will be here complaining until the last server is shut down.
Sounds like you just hate all the features. What do you want? A small flat piece of land where zergs can duke it out? The old borderlands were just that. Large flat areas with no features, a couple of ramps, choke points and towers that didn’t block anything or serve any purpose.
What pray tell do you mean by “fixing WvW”? Fixing something means that you know how things should be. A car that won’t go might be broken or out of gas. Broken from whose point of view? You went to battle and got beaten, so now it’s broken to you? Wall took too long to bring down and defenders showed up → “defending is too easy”.
I think, like ANET you are overstating the issue with nightcapping. They have said its one of the major issues with WvW atm. It’s not, we have had a healthy population for 3 years and it’s always been an ongoing issue but it’s not THE issue. It’s player created for the need to win. I’d rather they put that issue on the backburner while the more pertinent problems are resolved
- Nightcapping makes the point system meaningless and it would be rather easy to fix it too. Nightcapping is literally 4 guys building a single catapult and capturing keeps with it, moving to next undefended objective afterwards. Been there, done that. Nobody captures them back, since they are sleeping or at work. 500 tick every 15 minutes brings one server to massive score lead by the morning and all the prime time fights don’t matter at all. I don’t see why this kind of thing should be rewarded.
Problem: Nightcapping gives huge point lead. Points should be awarded for tactical fighting. Holding and capturing should be equally viable.
Solution: Keep objective points as they are, but change how score is awarded. The server with most objective points get 100 score every tick, second place server gets 70 score every tick and last place server get 50 score per tick. Nightcapping servers would still probably win, but at least there wouldn’t be huge disparity in scores that couldn’t be overcome during day.
Problem: We’re playing on empty borderlands! Where is everybody?
Solution: There are probably individual roamers, but we don’t know about them. It’s much more fun to play with other players. See how sentries report about enemy players in their vision? Similarly ally positions should be automatically visible for friendly units so that we can coordinate our team playing better. This could even lead to more fights and that’s what makes WvW fun.
Right, thanks for sharing this JustTrogdor. Personally I’d much rather have those “quality of life” changes, because they stick to whatever you’re doing in the game and makes your gameplay experience less like a chore it currently feels like. Expansion content you’re going to play through once and then move on.
They could remove loot bags from WvW and instead put the bag in inventory straight away:
- Less sparkling clutter on screen
- Players could concentrate on fight instead of spamming F
- No accidentally lost bags
Only thing just like GW2’s WvW is GW2’s WvW. You were asking about other games so I guess there’s got to be some common features or themes between different games. I figured features like playing a single character, multiplayer, 3D-battlefield, medieval siege theme would be close to what GW2’s WvW represents. And of course for PvP you could be thinking the essense of GW2’s PvP is having capture points, so I guess my suggestion was quite far off.
I hate PvE and almost everything in it, but I love WvW and PvP. Please give me an example of a better game that gives me a better WvW and PvP experience.
- How about Chivalry: Medieval Warfare? Mount & Blade: Warband also seems like a fun game for large scale medieval warfare. For PvP, any fighting game should offer better experience. Street Fighter IV for example.
If you choose to zerg, that is your decision but it is not the whole of game play. There is plenty to do individually or in small groups.
- A game tries to please everybody ends up pleasing nobody. Good games tend to be very well defined in what they attempt to do. Once you’re defined your goal, you can allocate your resources appropriately and hire the right people for the job. Look at Hearthstone for example. Meant to be a side project on Blizzard’s roster and ended up being such a solid card game that it holds consistently high viewer count on Twitch. Once they got the core gameplay down, they could focus on the aspects that make the game have that high quality feeling: card animations, voice-acting, sound effects, card backs, interactive environment, changing playfield and so on.
Story, PvP mode, WvW mode, persistent world. You’ve got to like the whole packet or you’d be wasting your time on sub-par game. For the person who is focusing on one mode, there’s lots of better games available due to how thinly split Anet’s resources are.
Odd to me that the new group content, dynamic events, guild halls, and possible dungeons they’re adding are worth nothing to you. …would you honestly prefer to have each bit separate from each other kitten DLC? Because that’s what you’re asking for. I personally think it’s much better to do it the way they’re doing as a complete package.
- I think he means he has no interest in that kind of content, thus it has no value for him.
I don’t think everything has to have some deep didactic purpose. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to decompress and relax your brain. I use the game to relieve stress, and relieving stress is healthy.
- Fair enough. But is it relaxing though? My experience of logging into game has been that the game gives me laundry list of tasks that I should be doing. I think fun things are those that are spontaneous, the opposite of goal-oriented and organized behavior.
As far as the grandchildren reference, why do you play games at all if that is going to be your legacy? No game you play today will exist when your grandchildren come along. What would be the difference between telling your grandchildren what you said above and saying, “Well, I had the most amazing experience playing a game that doesn’t exist now and you have never heard of.” Either way, your grandchild will not care. So by your measure, no one should play games at all. Yet, you obviously are.
- There are games whose goal is to waste your time, and there are games that offer an experience. I can see how someone who picks up a game like Civilization would utilize it’s gameplay to cultivate curiosity of history and politics. I can see how chess players would transfer their analytical skills to other tasks in life. Playing a role in a game with actual story could help to appreciate different viewpoints to life. Even first person shooters are said to develop hand-eye coordination and perception.
What does this teach? Turn your brain off, join the zerg, beat the bad guy and collect your RNG loot. Gives you a rush to see rare item drop. Rinse and repeat.
I keep seeing so many people say things like “Hmm, I don’t think I’ll buy the expansion because for probably 30$ I’m just getting a new class and a bit more.”
- Have you thought that maybe free time is precious? Why would I spend any money on a game that’s going to be soul-crushing grind that makes me question the meaning of my existence? If the game doesn’t teach you anything and if it’s not even fun, what’s the point? Are you going to tell your grandchildren about that time when you farmed 500 gold and 15k achievement points on a game that no longer exists?
Yes, I’m so excited for HOT. Guild Halls, Gliders, Specializations. Why not buy it? It sounds great!
- Many things sound great on paper, because it’s your mind that’s creating the fantasy where boredom and bugs do not exist. That’s why I’d much rather wait and see how things are actually done to determine if the game brings me satisfaction worth my time.
Probably not. I’m not convinced ArenaNet is committed to creating quality games. I guess their vision is too different from that of the original Guild Wars game creators. This is just another korean MMO with a skin of a great game.
Wait… you’re aware they aren’t adding new levels or new tiers of gear right?
- Yes, they’re adding mastery system instead. It was so tragicomical how Mike was careful about not wrecking the “max level, top tier equipment” system. At this point it seemed like the audience would be expected to respond “oh thank heavens!” as if being given a gift. All I could think about Is this how far your ambition goes?!
A game that doesn’t function isnt much of a game, but I will give you that one. It is pretty safe to assume that a game that cannot be played will not be preferred over one that can. Still kind of an odd example IMO.
- Account wardrobe and getting rid of culling are examples of improvements that are non-conditionally improving the game. I haven’t seen anyone complaining about those clearly because there’s nothing to complain about. Things are usable and working. Great.
What about the controversial updates then? Adding new tier of gear gives illusion of progress, but makes playing alt characters more difficult. It also contributes to inequality between players who have played for long time and those who are just starting. It doesn’t make the game better to focus on “progression”. It makes the game worse. This kind of focus was their argument for selling the expansion and cause of disappointment.
You see, anything that is right for one person is wrong for someone else.
Game 1: Tetris. Crashes all the time.
Game 2: Tetris. Never crashes.
Would someone pick game 1 over game 2?
Game 1: WvW. The biggest decision player can make for winning is selecting a server with more population and coverage.
Game 2: WvW. Winning is based on personal accomplishments and teamwork.
i’m personally thrilled in what i hear but most people, being people….you know, will whine and whine and whine no matter what a net does. so…eh.
- People complain when something is wrong. They don’t complain when something is right. The way this company operates is that they create sub-par content, hardly ever update it and then move on to create something else. That’s what I expected to hear and that’s what we got. What we didn’t get is aknowledgement that not everything they’ve done has been up to their standards and that they’d step up their game in the future.
They apparently believe that the problem with the game is lack of progression. Do you agree that this is a problem? I think this is very much not a problem. On the contrary they’ve regularly added new gold sinks, tokens and tiers.
They’re basically saying that everything is continuing the way it has been and there’s nothing that would change. They’re selling the expansion on progression.
Guild Wars 3: Heart of Thorns is a new first-person shooter, exclusively for Xbox One.
$60 at retail, $15/month subscription fee, cash shop and paid DLC
Over 30 varieties of pre-order bonus packs, available exclusively at GameStop!
20+ hour long tutorial featuring Trahearne telling you how to jump and climb ladders
50% of the game is NPC escort missions
The other 50% is PvP arenas with paid boosters that increase your attack and defense, as well as mandatory voice communications with all players
Sends non-stop updates and notifications to your Facebook, Twitter, Google +, MSN, MySpace, Friendster, Tinder, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and whatever else there is
Every time you run out of ammo, you must pay $2 to reload
Totally in-your-face rap/dubstep hybrid OST!
Featuring the voice acting talents of Megan Fox, Adam Sandler, Keanu Reeves, and Eddie Murphy!
Experience levels not earned, but rather you get a chance to win a “Level Up” code found inside specially-marked cases of Doritos and Mountain Dew.
Guild Wars 1 and 2 shut down. No, not just lack of updates. Actually taken offline. Because reasons.
- I miss having a team and a role. Even playing with AI henchmen made it feel like I was doing things as a group. Whether you wanted to aid your teammates, disable enemies in subtle ways, or just straight-forward bashing them down the game would cater to your needs.
I miss being able to design my own builds on a system that allowed wide range of customization on per-character basis. Capturing new elite skills felt like I was making my character more flexible.
I miss the exploration where the map completion depended on actually visiting a place. Not every place was conveniently waypointed, you could actually get lost in the wilderness. Exploring for 100% map completion felt like adventuring.
I miss guild battles. Morale boosts, death penalty, skill cooldowns and alternate strategies made every game exciting. There was even ranking tables that told how well your guild was performing.
If there was another game like Guild Wars, I would buy it on the spot!
When the game launched there were no achievement chests, no one complained.
Then they add chests and people complain it’s not good enough.
You people are never satisfied.
- When you add reward to something, you change the motivation for doing the thing. If you’re doing it for the sake of having high achivement point count it’s different motivation than doing it for the reward chest.
With all the fuss over the new Dailies it makes me wonder what exactly we are all doing them for?
- You’re doing them for Anet’s metrics. Every time you log-in and complete dailies, Arenanet gets the information that players are still playing the game.
The engine defines the basic interaction of entities in the game world and what properties they can have. For example character place on the world is defined on X and Y axes, but not on Z in Guild Wars. This means that character standing on a bridge would block characters walking underneath them. Since Guild Wars 2 has Z axis, transforming the engine would mean restructuring every object and map feature to define their height.
That’s what makes games the artform they are. Guild Wars is a unique game, and all its anomalities and quirks made the gameplay experience the way it was.
I’m not an expert on game engines, but my understanding is that the engine is basically the heart of the game. There’s no ability to jump because the engine doesn’t allow it and thus none of the maps have platforms that you could jump to. GW2’s engine is very different from GW’s engine. I don’t think such a move would be possible, even in theory.
I’m not worried if there’s a level cap increase or a new level of gear.
No one can rightfully call it an endless gear treadmill/hamster wheel if the hamster wheel was removed from the cage way back in 2013. Your hamster’s been getting a little pudgy since then. Its time to put that wheel back in the cage and let the thing exercise a little.
- I see no reason why I would pay a company to make my existing gear obsolete.
That’s what we’re likely going to see though: making old systems obsolete and providing alternatives. Driving the player population from place to place. Still the same low-quality project management and QA.
basicaly you are trying to compare a end-user grade product(RPGMAKER) with a full blown engine dedicate to the game, what’s the point? so where is this better game you can make then? how would you design the server side code?
- It’s an analogy: every engine does only what it’s capable of doing, so expecting miracles is going to end in disappointment.
Why does AoE effect go through doors?
Why can’t there be moving platforms in the air?
Why can’t NPCs have unique reactions based on the player talking to them?
The answer to these questions is that the engine doesn’t support it, which puts strict limitations to what can be made.
Then I would simply say their game don’t deserve the “GW” name. There are things that are unavoidable (or really difficult to fix), but many of their releases aren’t even tested (and if they are… Well the testers don’t do much).
- NCSoft bought ArenaNet and two of the original three founders of ArenaNet have left the company. It’s like writing fan fiction to book by different author. You have the names and characters but can’t see with the mind of original authors, who had the vision and the passion for the game. Rest is going through the motions.
Many of us want more skills, weapons, races and classes. These are the expectations we have been told about months and months ago, yet we only got 9 new (useless and expensive) healing skills. So these are our expectations: what we have seen for the past two years is not the full potential of ANet. If what we had was the best they could do… I can make a better game on RPG Maker…
- But what if the game was like RPG Maker and the stuff you can make is limited by what the engine is capable of doing? You’ll see them making tokens, skins and new maps because fixing something fundamental like bad UI and collision problems is beyond their abilities.
However, whatever it is, it must live up to the community’s expectations, because most of us are going 1000mph aboard the hype train… And an accident would be devastating, on both sides.
- What expectations? It’s the same guys doing the same thing you’ve seen them do for 2 years already.
