Feathermoore

Lordkrall, on 17 May 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

Don't expect to get anyone to listen to or think about your comments when you trivialize the opinion of anyone who happens to disagree with you.  Intelligent people can reasonably disagree on this point, so you claiming that anyone who sees it differently than you do is just "nostalgia" is not only disrespectful, its plain factually incorrect.

Dasviidonja, on 16 May 2013 - 05:15 AM, said:

This is like saying that the alpha wolf of a pack is the alpha because it howls, or that the queen of ahive is the queen because she eats honey (not royal jelly - ordinary honey). When WoW release, 100% of its direct competitors also used vertical progression, and now it's still used by the greater majority. If everyone else is doing it, it's not what puts you on top.

What gives WoW its position is a combination of the following:

1) It used a well-known franchise with a large starting fanbase, giving it a target audience that were near-guaranteed to take it up if they had any interest whatsoever in a vertical progression MMO.

2) For all their faults, Blizzard is near-unmatched in making highly polished, professional games with all the bells and whistles. Nine months after release Guild Wars 2 is still weighed down with well-known bugs (including traits that simply don't work), aggravating control issues, and complete lack of a viable group finding feature in a modern MMO - it's unlikely that Blizzard would have allowed such a state of affairs to last nearly so long.

3) While WoW has become the poster child for hopeless grind, gaming addiction, and other undesirable MMO traits, it's still a darn sight less vertical-progression-focused than what came before it. Compared to what else was on the market when it released, WoW actually differentiated itself by making a substantial move away from the mountainous vertical progression of its predecessors. This is how its seen as being more casual than it's predecessors... because it IS.

4) Size builds momentum. When you're the biggest in the market, that means it's going to be your game that people pick up because their friends already played it or simply because they've heard it's the biggest in the market.

These are the reasons why WoW is on top - and none of which have vertical progression in them.

If you look through the MMOs that have come even close to WoW's success, the overall trend you'll notice is that they set themselves distinctly apart from WoW. Not simply by having a strong licensed franchise of its own to start from or some gimmick that WoW can simply steal - they have some fundamental distinction that calls to players that are turned off by WoW's fundamental mode of operation. In the case of Guild Wars, this has always been a substantially reduced focus on vertical progression.

The result? Well, I noticed a few years back that whenever the Blizzard fanboys wanted to claim the superiority of WoW over some other MMO(-type) game, it was Guild Wars they kept coming back to. Why? Because in Western markets, it was the only credible and stable competitor for a fantasy MMO, keeping it on their radar rather than flaring up over a couple of months and disappearing like all the other MMOs that just tried to copy what worked for other MMOs. When Warhammer Online, D&D Onlne, LOTRO and scores of other vertical-progression-based MMOs were crushed beneath WoW's iron heel, it was Guild Wars that stubbornly persisted like a thorn slipping through a crack in the boot even in the face of near-abandonment by its own company.

Why? Because it didn't just try to copy WoW's success. It did something different, and in doing so, it claimed for its own a portion of the market that was dissatisfied with WoW, and part of the reason for that dissatisfaction is that not everyone likes vertical progression.

Seriously, if your claims were accurate, we wouldn't even be having this discussion because from what you're saying, everyone agrees that vertical progression is the best thing for an MMO. But we're disagreeing with you because many people think it's not the best thing for their MMO, and that's why their not playing WoW in the first place. If your game is going to be based off the same assumptions that WoW is, your game had better be so kittenly awesome that it's not only accepted by the people who try it as being better than WoW, but that it also overwhelms the massive incumbent advantage that WoW already has.

The truth is... it sounds like vertical progression, grinding (arbitrary term of difficulty) content to get all the (arbitrary term of quality) gear so you can move on to (arbitrary term of the next level of difficulty) content is your thing. There are lots of games on the market that supply that, including WoW. You're literally spoiled for choice.

Me? I get literally nothing from replacing my +4 Sword of Awesomesauce to +5 Sword of Greater Awesomesauce That Is Fundamentally Identical To The +4 Sword Of Awesomesauce Except With A Larger Number so that I can progress from fighting monsters that were balanced with the +4 SOA in mind to monsters that were balanced with the +5 SOGATIFITT+4SOAEWILN in mind. Instead, I gain my enjoyment from overcoming challenges with tactics (not just repeating things I've already mastered until my numbers get high enough) and by trying new ways of doing things using new builds and professions.

Vertical progression doesn't just do nothing for my enjoyment, it actively hinders it. Having a requirement to collect gear to support a new build because my old gear wasn't compatible with that build is, to me, a barrier to fun, not a contribution to it. Needing to repeat what might have been hundreds of hours of grind to get a character of a new profession up to a point where it can meet the challenges my first character can is a major barrier to fun, possibly even dealbreaker-level.

It may be pat, but it's true - it sounds like the WoW-style of game is what works for you. Play one of them. There are enough of them on the market. Stop trying to hog the entire market and let me have the game that works for me. Please.

And finally, because it bears repeating, if you take just one thing from this post it should be this:

If your claim that vertical progression was what everyone liked was true, nobody would be arguing to the contrary. The very fact that so many people are disagreeing with you demonstrates better than any specific argument that your claim is flawed.

90% of the MMOs provide vertical progression because 80% of MMOs are basically WoW-clones with some twist or another that the designers are hoping will allow them to steal WoW's fanbase and success. They invariably fail, because Blizzard is just too big for anyone else to effectively compete with in their own domain as well as being very good at what they do - and part of what they do is taking any good idea that another developer has that's compatible with the WoW core model, improving it, and putting it into their game.

You're also falling into the fallacy of assuming that what motivates you is what motivates everyone else. Studies have actually shown that there is a set of different gamer motivations, which are present in different mixes in different gamers. Only two of those motivations (the achiever and griefer motivations, the latter being the type who like to hang out in low-level zones with high-level characters in games that have unavoidable world PvP and gank newbies) are really supported via vertical progression. For roleplayers, explorers, and competitors, vertical progression can be pointless or even a barrier to enjoyment of the game.

Part of ArenaNet's method of distinguishing itself from WoW is that it makes vertical progression less of a barrier to players who are less motivated (or even demotivated) by it. This is part of why their manifesto had the "if you hate MMOs..." line - the reduced vertical progression is intended as a draw for players who are turned off by the idea of being on the constant gear treadmills offered by most MMOs. By necessity, reducing the barrier presented by vertical progression means, unsurprisingly, having less vertical progression. When people say things along the lines of "if you prefer the way WoW does things, go play WoW", they're not (entirely) being flippant - if what you want is better catered for in another game, it's completely legitimate to expect you to play a game that's better suited for catering to what you enjoy in a game.

There's also an unspoken "and stop trying to ruin our game" in there... which I'm going to put out in the open. When 90% of the MMOs out there are designed for people who enjoy constant vertical progression treadmills, that makes the 10% that don't work that way all the more precious to those of us that don't. The majority of MMOs out there are already being made for your playstyle. Please leave something for the rest of us and stop trying to convert the few that don't.

Kaaboose, on 13 May 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

The battle between the farmers and anti-farmers makes for a hell of a better Living Story than the one they are currently giving us. Maybe they are working on a way to make this epic struggle a part of the game?

Things were getting a little heated in here for a while. Lets try to keep it civil.

I think there definitely is a problem here, and it isn't based o the shakeup of the trinity. From what they were saying in development, they actually weren't planning to abolish the trinity entirely, but to expand it, allowing multiple means of achieving something rather than just red-bar-whack-a-mole and tanking.

The problem is, the other mechanics of the game have rendered support and control... less than entirely useful. With the following mostly written from a PvE perspective:

Where support is concerned, the issue is that most of it doesn't actually do a lot and is often not worth the effort of getting. Guardian bubbles and walls have been mentioned - but while they'll stop projectiles and that is useful, they don't do squat against most AoE, and if there's a lot of AoE circles going down, it's just not worth gathering for the sake of an insufficient protection.

Ally healing is in a similar boat - it has its uses for keeping NPCs arrive, but all it takes is for one red circle to appear in the healing field you've painstakingly put down, and all your effort is wasted. Condition removal, another traditional part of support, is... well. In my experience, often the only conditions that are really worth the effort of removing are cripples and immobilisations - everything else either isn't enough of a problem to be worth removing, or will just be reapplied anyway. Stunbreaks are more important for high-end PvE, but there are few if any options to stunbreak for someone else. The most effective forms of support is buffing other players' damage, but that's really just DPS in another form.

When it comes to control... the resistance of large bosses to control effects has rendered control pretty close to pointless. While clearly they needed something to stop bosses being trivialised through stunlocking, but they took it too far - mass Defiant stacks and near-immunity to blind basically means that the only control that really works is... well, basically old-fashioned tanking. And since there's no aggro control mechanic (not that I'm saying there should be something so artificial) you basically need to have everyone able to do their own tanking - and that's probably part of the reason why it's pretty much the tougher professions that rule.

The problem with Combos is the scalability.

With a group of 1-2, you'll have one trigger every 10-15 seconds
With a group of 5, you'll have one trigger every second or so.
With a group of 20 you'll have dozens triggering every second.

If it's meaningful for smaller groups, it is going to be insane against world events and WvW. That's even ignoring the inherent flaws of timed short duration combos paired with uncoordinated PuG groups, and "fixing" that makes the scalability even more insane.

It's an interesting mechanic that unfortunately pigeonholes itself into being incidental at best.

Personally, progression is probably the only thing I am not that fond of in this game (and even more of it might make me quit - I nearly did so in November), and I don't really see a particular need for it. Games don't have progression because gamers ACTUALLY want it, games have it because progression is cheap. You need to balance comparatively little for it, no area needs to be designed, and so on. It's just a dial.

Let's say that Arenanet finally sticks to their original plans and has no progression anymore. What happens?
Gear gets cheaper.

The question here is: Why is this a problem? Why should that gear always retain the value or even grow in value? This argument you make isn't logical and doesn't follow - if gear has less value, then other things grow in value instead. Like it always happens in games without gear progression.

Additional tiers aren't inevitable - they're just the laziest way to appease the lowest common denominator. If they actually do it, it'd show they really didn't have much in the idea department.

Personally, I'd prefer progression in form of being able to discover more by the world actually changing large scale frequently. That, by the way, fuels progression-less games.

I haven't been able to get my virtual hands on it since, but there was an interview or article early in GW2's development where they basically acknowledged all the problems the OP mentions with adding new professions after the fact, along with others the OP hasn't mentioned (such as the pressure to keep coming up with profession ideas on a twelve-month cycle*). Their conclusion, to summarise, was that having new professions as a marketing tool for expansions was a Bad Idea.

Their solution and plan for GW2 was to try to encompass every possible playstyle they could think of in the professions that were available on release (apart from styles like dedicated healer and dedicated twitch-interruptor they expressly chose to eliminate) and then to concentrate on expanding the existing professions rather than creating more. They didn't rule out introducing new professions entirely, but they did specify that they would only do so after careful consideration over whether it would improve the game more than it would unbalance it.

*ArenaNet's original structure had two campaign development teams on alternating cycles after Prophecies released - one went straight to developing Factions and then onto Utopia, the other made the postrelease additions to Prophecies (Sorrow's Furnace and the Titan Quests) before moving on to Nightfall.

st_clouds, on 20 February 2013 - 10:32 PM, said:

You're overgeneralising.

My elementalist, for the most part, was a prot monk, as well as an axe/hammer warrior, because lolmelee. Very diverse class.
My necromancer, for a lot of my seven hero time, was a warrior. In player teams, a monk or ritualist support healer, etc. Very diverse class with soul reaping.
My mesmer took monk melee buffs too with monk signets to abuse fast casting's reduced recharge. Very diverse class.
Rangers ran all the weapons because reduced energy costs. No other profession could run daggers as well as ranger or assassin. Same goes for scthe, axe, etc. Very diverse class, with many options.

And these are just the funny options you can get with a deeper skill system when you can mix professions. What do we have here? you are pidgeonholed into playing DPS or being bad players.

st_clouds, on 20 February 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

The reason why there is barely any class discrimination is because everyone is just doing damage in GW2 (and even here we can see that certain classes are preferred because they simply do more damage). That's all you want and all you need need and that's all that every class is offering. 8 GW1 bars are shoved into a single GW2 bar - sure, there might be some differences, but ultimately GW2 characters differ only in the colour of their big, bad skill of doom.

Khalija, on 26 January 2013 - 02:34 AM, said:

Cool, thanks for the info. In that case, I'll throw my hat into the ring.

Five Champions - a bunch of personal GW2 character illustrations
FULL-SIZE: http://changinghand....it&ga_changes=1



Elemental Lord - character illustration of my elementalist
ANIMATED VERSION: http://www.deviantar...241747#/d4xkcsz



Gunslinger - character illustration of Tzu's Norn thief, Saga
FULL-SIZE: http://www.deviantar...241747#/d55a7n4

Question 1: Name a game similar to GW1.

Question 2: Name a game similar to GW2.

I'm guaranteed you can answer Question 2 faster than #1 because there was, possible is, no game similar to GW1.

Yet ANet swore GW2 would be the game different from the other MMOs out there...

By now it should be clear who I am. I am The Greatest Player In The Game! The last thread I posted generated a more positive response than I expected. THREE players from different servers came over to Anvil Rock to join the Crusade on Kaineng. To bring DEATH to War Machine!

As a result, I founded a guild called "Undeniably Superior Army" AKA Team [USA]! On our first few runs as a group, we have pillaged and looted the lands of both Kaineng AND NSP. While the majority of Anvil Rockers cower in fear at the thought of this "War Machine!" We fight the good fight!

Unfortunately, however. The good fight requires more than 5 people. It requires more than one Catapult, one Arrow Cart, and one Ballista as you will be able to see by the following video.

Note* The last thread, some awestruck mouthbreather said:

Goojilla, on 12 January 2013 - 07:57 PM, said:

Of course he was wrong. Because THIS is how you do a recruitment post.

****CAUTION! This may be the greatest Guild Wars 2 video of all time. Language may not be work safe*****



Be advised. Admission to Team [USA] is not automatic. Passing an intelligence test is required.

Official recruitment message found here:

http://www.guildwars...to-war-machine/

**This thread will be used in the future to document all actions taken against the abominable War Machine. For the liberation of Kaineng!

Add/mail/whisper Mighteous in game to join the Crusade! War Machine asked to be joined on their trip to Hell. Well we'll bring Hell to them!

There will be a reason if many of us had 8-10+ chars max'd in GW1 with each story campaign completed and here struggle to choose a class for an ALT and feel the boredom of going through the story even before making said char...