0
Part Two of GW2Hub's interview with Colin Johanson is available. In this part of the interview, they discuss hearts and renoun, content difficulty and more. Here's an excerpt:
Quote
Lewis B: One particular criticism I saw leveled at “renown” and “heart chasing” was that their grandeur changed so heavily. One minute you could be battling dozens upon dozens of centaur, the next picking apples. Was this always the intention?
Colin: This is indeed intentional! We want to give folks a sense of pacing and a real diversity of content and experiences in the game. When everything is an over-the-top, epic war against centaurs, for example, it can get old and feels like you’re doing the same thing, even if it’s large in scale. We want to provide a real range of content and experiences to folks in the game. In real life we’re not all intense 24/7—and people who are, aren’t much fun—and we don’t want the game to be either. It’s worth noting that as you progress through the game, the event chains get much more involved and intricate, and in Orr—since there are no apple trees—things like the more relaxing, fun minigame-type stuff is left behind to help set the tone of the epic nature of the end of the game.
One of the things we’ll be focusing on as we continue to polish and prepare the game for release is identifying the renown regions that feel like they are dull, or repeating nearby content, and redesigning those to really be more unique and fun. Internal and beta-weekend tester survey scores help us find these, so thank you!
The renown regions are the closest thing we have to traditional MMO quests, and though they play more of a supporting role in the game (there are hundreds of hearts while there are thousands of events), we want to make sure they are fun as well. Generally, they are either minigames of some sort to help break up the pace, or they provide you a list of objectives to pick from, so you can do a single activity from the list or a mix of them depending on what you actually feel like doing at the time. Going forward, if anything, you’ll probably see more of the renown regions that feel a little generic changed over to become more minigame-like to help provide a better change of pace and variety in gameplay.
Colin: This is indeed intentional! We want to give folks a sense of pacing and a real diversity of content and experiences in the game. When everything is an over-the-top, epic war against centaurs, for example, it can get old and feels like you’re doing the same thing, even if it’s large in scale. We want to provide a real range of content and experiences to folks in the game. In real life we’re not all intense 24/7—and people who are, aren’t much fun—and we don’t want the game to be either. It’s worth noting that as you progress through the game, the event chains get much more involved and intricate, and in Orr—since there are no apple trees—things like the more relaxing, fun minigame-type stuff is left behind to help set the tone of the epic nature of the end of the game.
One of the things we’ll be focusing on as we continue to polish and prepare the game for release is identifying the renown regions that feel like they are dull, or repeating nearby content, and redesigning those to really be more unique and fun. Internal and beta-weekend tester survey scores help us find these, so thank you!
The renown regions are the closest thing we have to traditional MMO quests, and though they play more of a supporting role in the game (there are hundreds of hearts while there are thousands of events), we want to make sure they are fun as well. Generally, they are either minigames of some sort to help break up the pace, or they provide you a list of objectives to pick from, so you can do a single activity from the list or a mix of them depending on what you actually feel like doing at the time. Going forward, if anything, you’ll probably see more of the renown regions that feel a little generic changed over to become more minigame-like to help provide a better change of pace and variety in gameplay.
Comments
#1 dawnq
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 03:05 PM
#2 Kymeric
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 03:16 PM
Thanks, Lewis and Colin for a good read!
#3 DarkWasp
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 03:31 PM
Bolded for sentence structure lols.
Otherwise great interview!
#4 blindude
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 03:49 PM
Bolded for sentence structure lols.
Otherwise great interview!
[/quote]
lol:)
#5 takiwaki
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 04:18 PM
#6 Sarge
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 04:22 PM
Actually the whole interview really showed that ArenaNet really care how fans respond to the game, especially from BWE's. Cheers for the post!
#7 not_they
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 11 July 2012 - 04:35 PM
#8 Athlonpv
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 04:37 PM
Or you must be the single person on the WWW to ask decent questions
#9 Izardoz
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 04:52 PM
#10 takiwaki
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 05:06 PM
I am just poking fun.
Great interview, and for some reason, it was grammatically fun to read. If that makes any sense.
#11 Vahkris
Vigil Crusader
Posted 11 July 2012 - 06:15 PM
Probably the best lines in the entire interview...IMO, at least.
#12 Kel
Asuran Acolyte
Posted 11 July 2012 - 06:27 PM
Probably the best lines in the entire interview...IMO, at least.
[/quote]
Agreed. Though I'm torn between getting super crazy excited and expecting it to be referencing the vistas that were introduced in the asura walkthrough.
Also? I'm adding this to my signature in every single forum I currently frequent:
Orr -- where there are no apple trees.
#13 Lewis B
TTH/GW2 Hub
Posted 11 July 2012 - 06:30 PM
Nice one Lewis, not sure why Colin sucked up so much about "I truly appreciate your thoughtful questions that let us as developers really talk about the design process!".
Or you must be the single person on the WWW to ask decent questions
[/quote]
Maybe I am?
#14 Priince
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 06:42 PM
#15 NeonArlecchino
Seraph Guardian
Posted 11 July 2012 - 06:57 PM
I just thought of something; wasn't this interview taken before we all found about about them having the other races in? Could that be the big exciting things for the next beta he was talking about? Or a substantial portion of it at least?
[/quote]I'm thinking that too.
#16 OdinWalhalla
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 09:46 PM
I really loved the part about making a great game, you can't copycat a game and expect similar success. The game he mentioned is the absolute solitary exception not the rule. Thats why I am a heavy believer in knowing your audience and create a game as a gamer you want to create!
Even if I don#t agree with some of their design choices I admire their passion (comparable to Trion) and see a lot of former Blizzard-Greats at this team.
Probably the most important not exactly GW 2 related sentence "MMORPGS are the most expensive thing, period. You are betting your company against a wall" this ladies and gentlemen is 100 % the best reason, why not every damn franchise should become a MMORPG.
#17 NikaroTheSwift
Vanguard Scout
Posted 11 July 2012 - 10:37 PM
#18 Von Skleeve
Vanguard Scout
Posted 12 July 2012 - 04:28 AM
#19 Datenshi92
Golem Rider
Posted 12 July 2012 - 04:58 AM
I am going to make a thread -[b] Anyone one else disappointed that there are no apple trees in Orr?[/b] Why would anet do such a thing =/
I am just poking fun.
Great interview, and for some reason, it was grammatically fun to read. If that makes any sense.
[/quote]
Given the amount of whiners we've been getting lately, I wouldn't be surprised. But if it happens, I'm blaming you for giving them the idea
#20 Shiren
Vanguard Scout
Posted 12 July 2012 - 11:08 AM
That ending was great.
Actually the whole interview really showed that ArenaNet really care how fans respond to the game, especially from BWE's. Cheers for the post!
[/quote]
The whole interview (and pretty much most of the recent stuff ArenaNet comes out with in interviews or blog posts) shows how out of sync the design team and the other departments of are at ArenaNet.
Taken from the thread about Colin's "Is it Fun?" blogpost.
[quote name='Colin Johanson' timestamp='1340156089' post='1534827']This blog post was written from the perspective of the content design team and the folks on it who are directly responsible for the production of event, story, and dungeon content in Gw2. Stuff like cash shop, traits, skill progression, etc. are all handled by other teams in the company, and as such really aren't the focus on this article. The focus here is how we develop content specifically at ArenaNet on the Content Design team, and the metrics we use to help track the success of that content specifically, vs. how content is developed for games with subscription models. The cash shop isn't mentioned in the article because quite frankly, we simply don't design content on our team with the intent of the cash shop being needed to do any of it. Our bonus hope from this article was also to help explain why you should fill out those little surveys in the BWE events!
[/quote]
The game isn't designed with the cash shop in mind, so when the monetization people come in and tear apart systems and exploit features that were developed as is, all of the design goals, objectives and intentions are thrown to the wayside. The feedback is even being ignored - look at the outcry on account wide dyes - the most popular, or should I say unpopular, thread on the official forums (and multplie fan forums) and they've come out and said they aren't even considering reversing the decision. Certain departments at ArenaNet care about what players think but I think it's clear you can't say as a whole, the company is like that.