Haishao

I feel that Guild Wars 2 is missing this. The game is too much designed as a game, rather than a world.
Yes, they have all the events and stuff, but no one is doing them after having explored the map once, and going there alone is a sore single-player experience in a huge online world. Then all the endgame is forced into 5-man instances, which is where all the best rewards are at, so players have no reason to go out in the world at all after exploring the map. There are a few exceptions, which would be Orichalcum mining, god temples and the dragon events.
So after exploring the map once the game pretty much turns into a lobby system where you sit in Lion's Arch and wait for people to join to your party so you can speedrun a dungeon for tokens. The fact that GW2's combat isn't very chat-friendly doesn't help either.

Now I'm going to use RuneScape (as it was in 2005-2008) as an example that did this world thing pretty well. And no, RuneScape isn't a great game, but I'll admit its world was pretty well done, and supported this quasi-living thing.
First thing that RuneScape did right is that there's plenty of things to do outside combat. Not just a variety of mini-games to play, but all sorts of non-combat skills to train. In GW2 the only thing there is to do is combat.
Second thing that helped make the world come alive is that different skills require different materials (woodcutting for logs, mining for ores etc.) The difference between GW2 and RS is that RS has set gathering locations, while in GW2 you run all around the map. In RS if you decide you want logs for money or for own use you would go to one of the popular tree spots (there's several different spots) and join fellow woodcutters. What this does is create a small sub-community of people who regularly visit these spots. There were sub-communities for woodcutting, fishing, mining (although this was more competitive), combat/slayer training, bank-standing skills, trading etc.
In GW2 everyone is clustered together in 1 city, solo running around high-end areas to gather materials, zerging meta-events or PUGing an instance.
Third the economy was alive, and more than just that. Trading was one of the major activities in RuneScape, especially before the Grand Exchange (RS's version of a trade post). Every player was pretty much forced into trading, because it was the only way to get rid of your materials while making decent money as well. Playing the market was more than staring at the trade post window all day long, and certainly more than over/undercutting other players by 1c like there's no tomorrow.
Fourth there were no server restrictions whatsoever. A player could go to whichever server he wanted, no costs, no limits. Easy to meet up with people on other servers. In GW2 I feel stuck on my server because if I change I lose my guild reputation. I have to wait a full week before I can switch again (or pay money once they drop the free switch), I lose WvWvW benefits. Also I can't play instances with people from the USA. This makes it harder to meet up with people that I know from outside the game that happen to be playing on other servers.
Fifth I feel I have to add this. RS had no instances. At all. Every player was out there in the world, not hiding in an instance. Since GW2's endgame is based on instances, the world loses a lot of players just to these instances.

What Guild Wars 2 needs to have players quasi-living in the game (in my opinion):
-More useful activities than just combat.
-Unique incentives/rewards for different activities. Set spots for different activities rather than making people run around the map.
-Make player trading alive and rewarding.
-Add at least guesting to the game already.
-Much lesser focus on instances.

I totally disagree MMO players , usually , demand to much.

I blame the companies , for never trying to hit one market , is always: "Everyone should have something to do in our game."

That does not work , because one side is always trying to pull them more to itself , middle ground does not satisfy people.

They should target a market and stick with it , instead they keep running around trying to please both.

Unfortunately i dont see this changing, after all it is just business and this appear to give more money , do not matter how much people complain.

Robsy128, on 27 November 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

And as I said, THAT was what happened next. That was their second chance.
GW2 isn't a fantastic game. It's a game that needs help. And since we are a bunch of fanboys, we gave A.Net a second chance instead of simply leaving - we wanted them to improve the game. And Ascended gear is what they gave us.

Chance used. Wrong answer.

3 weeks ago anet didn't completely abandon the game that they set out to make with the manifesto.

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Everything is easy! Except the hard stuff, but I'll skip it!

Waaah, everything is so easy, why isn't there anything difficult?


Modern gamers truly are a bad joke. No wonder we need tutorials for braindead people in most games nowadays.

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Not all developers are male.
Not all male developers are so insecure with their masculinity that they can't make rainbows.

Waar Kijk Je Naar, on 27 September 2012 - 06:46 AM, said:

Dyes aren't required to play the game or be more effective with your character.
Dye drops are generous. Easy to get several drops a day.
I can't think of any reason why anyone would buy dye packs in the store unless they are extremely impatient, are extremely vain about their ingame appearance, and have very little time to actually play the game.

First:
Y'know what, I'm going to say this in an arrogant and bigoted way: 3D visuals are overrated.  The 2D cinematics are designed as an information collage, NOT an active sequence.  As such, I consider that part to be a solid design decision, and I see nothing objectively wrong with them.

Also, your "quest" text part is phrased really, really oddly.  I'm assuming you mean the personal story dialog segments?  Y'know, the parts where you're literally transplanted out of the world in the first place?  "Open World Questing" (hearts, DEs) have absolutely no cutscenes, the quest text is optional, and you get farmers running up to you and yelling that bandits are burning their farm.  In other words, the places where cutscenes are used is appropriate, and everywhere else they use the "Skyrim way" of expression during gameplay.

Granted, I'm not the biggest fan of super old fashioned "Two Characters One Screen" cutscenes, but oh well.

Second:

My best rebuttal is


You do NOT need a segment which goes "Use WASD!  Now press 1!  Now jump over this obstacle!"  And quite frankly, the little popups during gameplay are just fine, so long as you actually bothered paying attention to their neon orange brightness.  If people aren't learning, then I'd sooner blame the game for not requiring you to do things (eg: dodging is 100% optional in the 1-15 zones, but not dodging get you killed everywhere else).  And if that's the case, then it's something that can be improved, because that would also improve the experience for experienced players.

Third:

More video rebuttals!  

Basically, the story is there.  It's not readily apparent if you just stand there looking at the world, but if you actually bother exploring and searching, there's a fairly solid, overarching plot, interwoven with dynamic events.

Fourth:

I'm going to start off by saying that the GW1 system was broken.  Yes, you had tons of customization, and from a casual standpoint it was loads of fun to use all sorts of random skill bars.  From a PvP standpoint though, it was basically impossible to balance.  So many bloody combinations meant that even if you nerfed one build, another one would pop up and we'd all wonder why we didn't notice it before.  Rinse, lather, repeat for 7 years.

However, I actually do agree that the current customization options are weak.  Not because of limited options, but rather because the options given do not create a distinct difference.  Hurray for Rangers, where all our customization basically boils down to "Which passive bonus do I want?"

Lastly:

Ehhh, preferences are preferences.  You say you want there to be a constant gear curve, I say I'd rather not bother with the gear curve.  You say that crafting takes forever to level, while I say that it's fun to spend all that time trying to figure out how to piece together recipes.  You say enemies hit too hard, and oddly I'm saying that enemies don't hit hard enough (maybe it's because I haven't done EMs yet).

Lappdancer, on 27 August 2012 - 05:00 PM, said:

On contrary, I linked this in similar thread and I will do it again, since we can't avoid the comparison between the two in any case.
http://us.battle.net...e/naming-policy

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What you will notice once you read through Blizzard's name policiy is that it is accurate and far from being so vague that could include the Moon in. At the same time, it more forgiving when it comes to witty or funny names in comparison to Arenanet.

Just to make things clear, here is Arenanet's naming policy:
https://www.guildwar...-naming-policy/

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Now lets make a paralel analysis of those two naming policies.
1. Racial etc connotation, They both match. No discussion there. Makes all sense.
2. Now, here they start to differ one from other. While Blizzard does not tolerate any kind of extreme or violent sexuality and extreme violence. Arenanet does not allow any kind of sexual  references altogether. All kinds of violence are not allowed as well.
3. When it comes to sexual orientation Blizzard does not allow any kind of hate names. Arenanet is silent on this, but I would like to see how long a character named "Gay Smith" would last before getting a ban-hammer in his ass.
4. Next is, what Blizzard calls obscene and vulgar. This includes any kind of naughty references to human anatomy in pornographic conext. We can see that Arenanet's references of bodily functions and human anatomy fall under this as well. Arenanet's rule about pornographic falls under this.

5. Next category, are milder breaches, that still get sanctioned. First as such is insulting others. Either players, Blizzard Employees or groups of people either in or out of the game. Arenanet has biggoted slurs and hate speech.
6. Imersonating Blizzard employee. Ok, Anet has nothing similar, closest to what they have is reference to real-life people. But this in itself is as vague as it could possibly be.
7. Inapropraite names that go all the way from in game character NPC names, realm names to referencing great religion figures like Jesus and Budha. For Anet this would include copyrgihted and trademarked characters including referencing real-life people.
8. Next one on Blizzard's list is advertising, in WoW this is a No-No. It seems advertising gold selling with your name is legit as far as their name policy goes.

The third category of Blizzard's adresses minor breaches that will not end up in severe measures, but will instead bring warning. This include any trademark names, real world people names and similar. But puns of this were and are always a fair game. You do not get banned for calling your character Vodka, or CritneySpears.

What you should notice by now is that Blizzard's policy is all encompassing, it has more categories and is defined, not vague. It is precise.
Arenanet's in comparison is like some strange orders that no matter you do you will dissobey.. There is no breathing space, even worse anything you call yourself could potentialy be breach of that policy.

My real life name is 'Muhammad' and I just made an Asura with the variant 'Mohamad' as somebody already stole my real name (blast!). I don't think I'll get banned, and I really shouldn't, however I'll be sure to post back here if I do. I mean they can't seriously consider all religious names bannable, especially if there's no offensive qualifier (e.g. "Muhammad sucks" instead of just "Muhammad"). Also pretty much every single name ever is religious anyway - so unless they're willing to ban Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...

When the servers came up last night I played for about 5 hours problem free before I finally needed some sleep. I woke up expecting something to have broken and lots of whining. I haven't been disappointed in either regard so far.

For more immersion obviously.

Stickied for being the best thread in Gamer's Lair.