I think this article! is also worth a revisit.
“Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?
The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.
When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.
But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?
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!" – Colin Johanson
all the things in HOT is perfect.
Really? Heart of Thorns is perfect? It’s the pinnacle of game development? It cannot possibly be improved upon in any way? One of the following must be true: HoT is flawless in every way or the claim that it’s perfect is absurd.
Grind is, by definition, the antithesis of fun.
ArenaNet to tell us that everything they said about wanting to kill off dungeons was a joke, for starts.
At this point, is there any doubt – any at all – that every single decision ArenaNet makes is designed very specifically to drive cash shop purchases? In this case, they quite clearly want to make the purchase of gems to be converted to gold to buy the materials required to obtain a precursor a far less painful route than earning one in-game.
You’re right, TC. We’re all wrong. Every one of us who has been critical has done so in err. ArenaNet has clearly done an outstanding job with this expansion, and we should all be very grateful. In fact, I’m going to go buy a few extra copies of HoT to show my appreciate right now. Thank you, TC, for opening my eyes to just how wrong my opinion was. You truly are a saint.
There’s been no word of new playable races. And frankly, I don’t think there will ever be a new race added to the game. A lot of work goes into creating a new race – a LOT – and it just doesn’t seem ArenaNet has the manpower and/or desire to tackle such a daunting task. I mean, if adding a full set of legendaries to the expansion at release was beyond their reach, I just don’t see them going through the trouble of creating new armors, a new city, a new personal story, hiring voice actors, etc.
I think it says volumes that even with the gating, the story was this small that people have already beaten it. I hope it’s at least impactful as you suggest it is.
That seems to be the entire expansion in a nutshell: “we don’t have much here, so we’re going to gate literally everything in an effort to trick you guys into thinking there’s more to HoT than this.”
Take this for what you will, but I just want to know when the old philosophy of “We don’t make grindy games” flew out the window.
A lot went flying through the window.
“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun”
And then HoT is basically a couple hours of new content hard gated by massive grind.
“Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.”
HoT is entirely about preparing to have fun by grinding before being able to use specializations.
When asked about GW2’s release date, the answer was, “When it’s ready”
Meanwhile, HoT got released with legendary weapons to be added “later”, the raid to be added “later”, the new squad system to be added “later”, and so on and so on.
ArenaNet turned around and shot most of what they claimed was their “basic design philosophy”.
IMO, that’s a sign of how much they deserve to be trusted.
Excellent post.
Why would AN give us armor skins in the actual game when they can sell them to us via the cash shop instead? Once upon a time, we were told by the developers that cosmetic rewards were going to be the end game. We just didn’t realize at the time all we needed to conquer the end game was a credit card.
you guys cry so much.
you guys just want everything instantly. this is an mmo. I cant even… lol
It’s almost as if the pundits for a political party met this morning and discussed the talking points and buzzwords they’d be using for the day, and this was top of the list.
But why do I have to buy the base game along with it when I already own it? Couldn’t you have made a cheaper option for people who already own the game? Why is that not an option?
Because they knew those interested in the expansion would pay the higher price regardless.
Im not going to stop playing the game but i am going to stop looking at the forum for like a month.
The thing is since HoT drop the forum is dropping like 50 stacks of posion on my mood, it has not even been 24 hours yet. I think the major problem is that people know of days want every thing to be given to them and want to run through content like it was nothing.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Not the grueling amounts of grind just added to a game that billed itself as a “no-grind” MMO, just impatient people wanting instant gratification. Uh huh. Gotcha.
“We don’t make grindy games.”
“No, you cannot play as a Reaper until you’ve “acquired” more Hero Points."
“No, you cannot…”
etc, etc, etcIt’s almost as if you need to play the game to play the game…I’d be furious if I was forced to play a game I’d purchased. I’d go and speak up in the senate about it, the world needs to know your plight.
It’s almost as if you don’t fully understand the subject that’s being discussed.
“Play how you want” represented the notion that you got all the fun stuff early so that you could actually experience the bulk of the game with the fun stuff. Now people are being asked to grind and grind and grind to unlock the fun stuff only to find out they themselves completely burned out and left with little desire to rerun the same content they’ve already exhausted. This doesn’t apply to everyone, but there are people who aren’t going to appreciated this shift in paradigm.
Simple question here,
How exactly am I supposed to gain the XP required to unlock the mastery when I (along with most people I guess) have already got 100% map completion? I tried some fractals level 25-30 and was barely getting anything noticeable. There must be some more efficient way of gaining mastery xp for central Tyria, or is this really going to become a massive grind-fest – which is extremely disappointing if so.
Don’t be silly; ArenaNet doesn’t make grindy games. They told us so themselves.
“We don’t make grindy games.”
“No, you cannot explore this new zone until you’ve “mastered” hang gliding."
“No, you cannot play as a Reaper until you’ve “acquired” more Hero Points."
“No, you cannot…”
etc, etc, etc
But hey, at least now those who want to throw the Manifesto at them can do so without worrying about being challenged by those who believe ArenaNet can do no wrong. “We don’t make grindy games” referred quite specifically to the notion of grinding before you could enjoy the game, and now that’s exactly what the mastery system forces players to do.
Want to explore these new maps? Too bad, you haven’t ground enough to unlock the gates that block your progress. Want to play as a Tempest? Too bad, you haven’t ground enough to unlock that specilization. These aren’t cosmetic features or minute gear upgrades; these are fundamental features of the expansion that have been locked behind a gate that can only be opened after the kind of grind this game was promised to be above.
PS – I’m sure there’s an incoming counterpoint that argues the semantics of what does and doesn’t constitute a promise, but that’s the sort of mental gymnastics I have no interest in participating in.
Going way back to HoT’s initial reveal, the mastery system immediately screamed to me that the expansion was going to be very light in content. There’s few reasons to gate so many features behind a grind, and artificially padding the life of what little content there is is chief among them.
It’s been about seven months or so since I played, so I’m just skimming over some of the various changes that have been made since I quit paying attention to the game. It appears that rifle and/or gadget builds for Engineers have been effectively sent the way of the dodo.
Sitting Duck, Scope, Speedy Gadgets, and Incendiary Powder and Modified Ammunition synergy (IIRC, it used to be possible to run both of these at once) are all gone. What’s a rifle-toting, mine-laying Engineer to do now? And whose idea was Gadgeteer? Getting hit five times in order to gain a CD reduction on ONE gadget is hardly what I’d consider a worth slotting.
My poor Engineer seems forever fated to be a doormat, it seems.
How has this not been obvious already?
Anet doesn’t generate revenue with subs. It has to have other means of income.
This is where it comes in… it makes logical sense to entise players to BUY the xpac….
At the end of the day, Anet is a business, and they need income to operate it.
They will do whats best for them, its a business decision.
They don’t give a crap that core game players are HILARIOUSLY left behind in terms of making progress in GW2….
All the good money making strategies are now tied behind HoT…(raids and fractals, SW will be chump change compared to the new HoT Map rewards)
Want a more diverse and potentially BETTER spec to PvP/WvW with? pay up and buy HoT for elite specs… otherwise, you will get roflstomped in PvP/WvW by better specs.
its a cheap move, no doubt, but at the end of the day, anet is a business. They value THE PAYING CUSTOMER. NOT THE FREE.
Call me crazy, but I’ve always felt more inclined to purchase a product when I’m enticed to do so by a carrot rather than a stick.
It is not a disaster just because you are too cheap to afford an expansion. The fact of the matter is, Arena net seems genereous when you compared to other companies.
Also, if you are not going to buy the expansion why bother run dungeons? Those things are never going to be improved and it makes everything pointless.
hes talking about fractals, not dungeons. Do you even read bro?
He/she, like far too many of the Guild Wars 2 fanbase, is in too big a hurry to victim-blame to bother reading – let alone actually consider – any criticism or concern being addressed by those who haven’t waterlogged themselves with Kool-Aid.
Because I have the unshakable impression this expansion is going little more than Silverwaste 2.0 with some new features gated behind grind-walls, the anticipation I had for the expansion is all but gone.
I can’t help but feel they’re wanting to abandon underwater combat and exploration altogether. I consider that unfortunate, but I get the impression I’m in the minority on that one. I guess we’ll know how committed to it they are if the list of new Legendaries doesn’t include a spear, hapoon, and trident.
]M rating is all about sex, drugs and brutal violence. That’s it. Sex, drugs and brutal violence aren’t required to make a villain interesting.
Mature content is, you know, mature and closer to the ground. Sex, drugs, brutal violence is here, irl. What do you expect, fairies and Final Fetish stuff?
Andred explained that pretty well. Mature content allows characters to be more human-like and to blend the good-bad differences into grey. They can have good reasoning, act more naturally, use less deus ex machina solutions.
The notion that sex, drugs, and brutal violence are required for a story to be mature or for a character to feel grounded is an immature one. Up features no sex, drugs, or brutal violence and is appropriate for children of all ages. Pineapple Express features plenty of of each and is intended to be watched by adults. Is there anyone who would argue the latter is a more mature story than the former? Don’t confuse “mature content” with “adult content”. A story does not require “adult content” to be a good one.
…I don’t think we’ve seen the end of exploration.
Of course we haven’t. But there’s “stop and smell the roses” exploration, and there’s “get across the street as fast as you can before you get hit by traffic” exploration. Lately, Guild Wars 2 has been far too much of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.
A trip through Silverwaste is like a walk through Time Square; it’s constant motion and noise. Sometimes I just want to peaceful hike through Yellowstone where I can enjoy the lovely vistas.
The supply of the other materials is too high… I thought I made that pretty clear. Mithril gets produced in the largest quantities, but forging for precursors keeps the amount in check. Once you no longer need to forge precursors its supply will quickly outpace even that of leather. leather is so oversupplied that it has been more profitable to sell it to the vendor for over 2 years now.
I will certainly not be crying. In an average 2-3 hour play session in SW I get 200-300 silk scraps. That is one ascended silk mat every day, sometimes 1 in 2 days. That means in 30 days, or only 1 month of play, I will have enough to craft an entire end game set of armor that is the most powerful gear that will ever be in the game. If anything that is too short a time. I would expect an endgame armor set to take 2-3 months like in most MMO’s. And that is without ever buying any silk, I could do it in 1-2 weeks if I bought silk with the other mats I sold.
Well if you don’t have time to play the game then don’t play the game. Don’t try and ruin the challenge and investment of the game because you don’t have good time management skills.
You’re gonna have to explain this one to me, because I’m really not seeing where “skill” and “challenge” come into play when all you’re doing is repeating the same simple, repetitive group content for two to three hours a day every day for a month to a month and a half.
PS – living in Silverwaste doesn’t earn you the right to condescend to others about their time management.
(edited by darkace.8925)
Outfits are great for players who don’t have the skills needed to mix and match as well as dye the result in a pleasing manor.
What skill is involved in choosing a set of armor skins and/or colors that please you? As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, all you’ve got to do is pick skins and dyes that you like, so I’m failing to see where skill comes into play in this regard.
Supply and Demand does not always favor everyone. I’m happy with the way it is now. Honestly if they somehow changed it to where it requires less silk… I would probably be upset after all the work I’ve put into crafting Ascended materials up to this point.
So because you suffered the grind, you’ll be unhappy unless everyone has to suffer the grind? I see.
Does anyone have an actual argument as to why silk needs to be changed, other than “I don’t want to work for it, make it easier”?
It’s been presented in this thread more than once, you just chose to ignore it.
supply and demand
Yes, thank you for reminding us all of that most basic of economic principles. The question was why aren’t supply and demand of cloth kept in par with those of other materials.
Cloth and Leather are primarily produced via NON-targeted (incidental) ways, while Wood and Ore and primarily produced via targeted (non-incidental) ways.
This distinction certainly plays a large role in the why question.
That part is a given. The real question is why are we allowed to focus-farm ore and lumber while we must resort to RNG or the TP for our leather and cloth. The followup question is if cloth is so hard to come by, why is so much more of it needed compared to its ore and leather counterparts?
There’s no reason for silk to take 100 per ascended mat when it’s over 4x the price of other ascended mats.
there is also no reason for taking less than 100 in an arbitrary setting. No, your need for cheap silk is not a proper reason.
What? Every other ascended mat only takes 50 things not 100, silk takes 100 for absolutely no reason. It had a reason, silk was useless, that reason isn’t true anymore.
There is a reason. You just havent been playing long enough to know that (granted, I didnt know the reason at first either). The reason that damask takes double the silk to craft is that there was such a glut of silk, that it was gw2’s thick leather sections of today. That massive oversupply was the decisive factor in anet making damask take 100 silk as opposed to 50. Consequently, that decision is half the reason why silk is at the price it is. The other half of the reason being silk/damask a required material for all armors.
“Was”, not “is”.
supply and demand
Yes, thank you for reminding us all of that most basic of economic principles. The question was why aren’t supply and demand of cloth kept in par with those of other materials.
I’m still hoping they’ll eventually give us the ability to dye it.
The big problem are Mordrem themselves: they’re beyond boring lore wise. They look nicer that the undead, but they’re still a bunch of evil things that want to kill you. They don’t talk, they don’t have conflicting thoughts, they just whack stuff until it stops whacking them back. This forces the Pact into being a bunch of generic good guys, because when things try to kill you you can only kill them back, with little in-between. I suppose now we’ve got corrupted Sylvari to kill, as well, but brainwashed puppets don’t make for particularly interesting antagonists, either.
Lol, if you’re looking for a compelling story in a T-rated MMO, you’re going to be looking for a long, long time.
What does the game’s rating have to do with the quality of its story?
A bunch of people trying to learn the mechanics of a new, difficult fight can be fun, but a bunch of people trying to learn the mechanics of a new, difficult fight while being sandbagged by a bunch of people trying to learn a new class at the same time isn’t going to be. If the expansion has any Tequatl or Marionette style fights wherein players must show at least some semblance of skill, all the newly power-leveled Revenants are going to make the first few days of that fight very frustrating experience.
So I hereby request all new Revenants show a little respect for their fellow Tyrians and learn their class before diving into the new, supposedly-more challenging group content.
With so many people trying to learn a new class on the fly, the world boss fights (if any) are going to be absolute train wrecks.
leman, I feel sure you’ll find that the concern you’ve expressed has been and will continue to be a focus of the entire dev team during the process of development, testing, polish, beta testing, balance, more polish, and so forth. The last thing an expansion pack would be intended to do is to put one profession at the top of the pyramid, where all others are “inferior” in some sense.
I have every confidence that all the other professions will do just fine playing in with, and against, a Revenant.
I don’t believe ArenaNet would use power creep as a selling point, but they wouldn’t be the first company to do so if they did.
If in the maps there were no AFK players you’d still have the exact same issue. What if they weren’t AFK but doing something like the jumping puzzle or collecting the 30 badges/crests. Should these players be kicked as well? After all, the end result of both are exactly the same: they’re not contributing to the progression of the map toward breach/VW.
Can you seriously not see the difference between losing out to someone actually playing the game and someone alt-tabbing out to surf the web while leeching off of others?
Revenants are the new Dervishes: Confirmed!
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: darkace.8925
Well, since this means Dervish is unlikely as its own class, I hope this means Dervish becomes a Revenant Specialization that allows them to channel the gods instead of legends and rethemes their attacks to be more whirling.
There are no gods anymore. They’re just really power humans now. I’ll leave it to the lore-nuts to decide if that constitutes a retcon or not.
I will say that I am targeting the inactive people on the map and not the people whom get pulled away from their PC because of life reasons.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you’re got something to take care of IRL that pulls you away from the game for more than a few minutes, you SHOULD be kicked from the map. If whatever pulled you away was an actual emergency, getting kicked from Guild Wars 2 should be the last of your worries. If it wasn’t an actual emergency, then you were dragging down everyone else for your own selfish reasons.
If they have to be AFK for whatever reason at the Pact base then that’s their prerogative. They don’t need to justify it with anyone. Should those who AFK for the Modniir world boss be kicked from the map as they’re not helping with the event chain? How about for Karka Queen? What about those that get ferried over at the end? Should they be allowed into the map?
All of the SW events, including breach bosses, can be completed with a group of five players. I’ve actually defended a fort with two other people before. Those who AFK are not hurting you.
If they’re taking a spot from someone who actually wants to participate, then I won’t shed any tears if they’re kicked to the log in menu because they couldn’t take handle their affairs away from the keyboard in a timely manner.
I will say that I am targeting the inactive people on the map and not the people whom get pulled away from their PC because of life reasons.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you’re got something to take care of IRL that pulls you away from the game for more than a few minutes, you SHOULD be kicked from the map. If whatever pulled you away was an actual emergency, getting kicked from Guild Wars 2 should be the last of your worries. If it wasn’t an actual emergency, then you were dragging down everyone else for your own selfish reasons.
Funny how 9-10 months of no releases in WoW (which requires a subscription) is okay, but as soon as Guild Wars 2 goes a month or so without releases it is the end of the world.
Why do you always deal in hyperbole and straw man-arguments rather than discussing the topic at hand in a mature, constructive manner? Show me one person who has made such a claim.
You know what? Don’t. For the sake of argument let’s just assume there have been lots of people who have taken such a stance. They’re right to do so. The two games aren’t held to the same standard because Guild Wars 2 content updates are bite-sized and quickly consumed while World of Warcraft’s content updates are more substantial and take longer to digest. But I’m quite certain you knew already knew the difference.
WoW comes out with an expansion every 1.5 to 2 years with almost nothing in between…and you pay a sub for that. And there’s a cash shop.
I don’t even play WoW and even I know this assertion to be false. Or are you going to play the “well I consider content patches featuring storyline continuation, new raids, new in-game armor sets, etc, to be ‘almost nothing’”?
You should talk to some wow players. They go in for 2-3 months, do the content and unsub till the next expansion. I have two of them in the house.
I don’t doubt you there. I’m sure a great many WoW players subscribe for short spans immediately after expansions and content patches – just long enough to run the content and/or chase the newest tier of gear – before unsubscribing again. But to dismiss all the content released in the interim between expansions as “almost nothing” is rather disingenuous.
WoW comes out with an expansion every 1.5 to 2 years with almost nothing in between…and you pay a sub for that. And there’s a cash shop.
I don’t even play WoW and even I know this assertion to be false. Or are you going to play the “well I consider content patches featuring storyline continuation, new raids, new in-game armor sets, etc, to be ‘almost nothing’”?
a percieved problem is a real problem.
Which is easily fixed by changing the perception.
Then convince me that those needing to ore can focus-farm it with 100% reliability while those needing cloth cannot is unfair is a good thing. Convince me that inequity on both ends of the supply and demand equation for cloth compared to ore is a good thing.
If they’d add pork, fish, and honey as cooking ingredients, they could easily fill any stat combinations not covered by existing cooking recipes.
Since the exact same thing can be said for metal and wood, I ask you why there are ore and lumber nodes in the game.
Because it makes SENSE that you chop down Trees and mine Ore? I know that sounds silly in a fantasy game setting, but if you think about it, NODES of Cloth and Leather existing in the game world is kind of “immersion breaking” (and I HATE that term).
Why would refining harvested jute, cotton, or linen fibers into bolts of cloth break immersion? Why would skinning a slain boar, stag, or similar animal break immersion?
Someone broke the hype train.
It’s not broke, it’s in the shop getting fitted with a cattle catcher so it can plow through player feedback without slowing down.
Well. The problem is that these recipes are expensive (require lot of ingredients)…
Quite. Which is why there are none of the foods on the trading post at all.
The reason there are none on the Trading Post is because for some inexplicable reason they’re account bound.