Golvellius

Just another reason for trolls to be trolls and fanboys to be fanboys, while most casual gamers just enjoy themselves and the more hardcore gamers move on.

Seriously? If it breaks the game don't do it. It's really not that hard of a concept to grasp people.

Rickter, on 04 January 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

Good God, man.

That would drive me crazy, doing the same thing for that many levels.

yes. you can always do this. but if your opinion was backed with 50 other names from a site that grew a reputation for serious fandom and not howling... it could possibly mean more.

We're a game forum, meaning there are 3 types of people:

The Good: They have criticism, but they also appreciate the overall quality of the game. Nothing to complain about.

The Bad: This person chews on their fingernails waiting for responses for a living. Generally pessimistic, this forum-goer likes to attack other people's comments and make fun of Justin Beiber and other unrelated topics on a daily basis. Though called out several times, he doesn't care because work starts at 8 and they, 'Like, think sleep is totally useless lol #yolo'.

The Ugly: This person is somewhere in between the ranks of belly button lint, a floor made of legos, and a 4 week old lasagna casserole with green beans and mushrooms. They attack forums with everything bad about the topic, and will not rest until they make everyone feel like a pile of dog crap. Which they can't do. They'll suck life out of a game, in this case, GW2, and regurgitate it into words that are probably scrawled onto satan's forearm as his list of insults.

So there you have it. The forums of every MMORPG and game in general ever played.
Good luck out there, you're gonna need it.

I've been stalking the forums for awhile and I'm wondering why there so many people on here that have nothing but bad things to say about gw2. I for one think Anet has done a good job at giving us a good dependable game.

Before fixing anything, let's quickly identify the core problems with GW2's PvE today. And by "PvE", I mean only the open-world PvE here, not personal story or dungeons.

So, the problems:
- The world is dead. Other than cursed shore, the dragons, and lion's arch, it's largely empty.
- "Dynamic" events are hardly dynamic, as we were led to believe.
- The reward structure is really, really bad. This is actually the main reason for the first problem.

...aaand now how to fix all this, starting with the pre-requisites and moving on to more complex changes:

1. Better event scaling. Currently events don't scale well for large number of players (10+). You just get more mobs in pre-set spawn points that get aoed down just as easily. Anyone who's spent 30 minutes in Cursed Shore knows this. Some improvements were made in this regard compared to a few months ago, but it's very little. Events with more players around need to spawn veterans and champions and add additional spawn points, not just additional mobs. Basically, things that are not negated by AoE.

2. Iterative difficulty scaling for events. Most events never fail. Why not? Because they're too easy. Anet needs to add difficulty scaling that's not dependent on number of players, but based on the number of times the event was successfully completed previously (on top of number-of-players scaling in #1, not instead). Every event stats at difficulty 0 after a server reset. Each time it's completed successfully, the difficulty goes up by 1 point. 1 point of difficulty translates into 1 additional mob per wave, +3% mob health and damage, etc.

So instead of facerolling Shelter's Gate Camp for loot every 10 minutes, one day you might come there and get zerged by veteran spiders. Woah, what happened? Well, see, the last defense barely succeeded and turned the difficulty from 7 to 8. And they had more people than you did, so tough luck. But now that the event failed, the difficulty scale goes down by -3, so next time the event will be at difficulty 5. This system will calibrate itself to the average number of players in an area and add a huge amount of variety to the same events, while the +1/-3 system still ensures it succeeds most of the time. (The scale is hidden, so people don't intentionally avoid scaled-up events.)

3. More events. More, more, more. There are a handful of basic event "templates" in the game and 95% of all events fit in these: defend a point, assault a point, escort an npc, kill a boss, kill mobs until the bar gets to 0 (or 100%). I honestly don't see why anet isn't minting these like crazy. I highly doubt they take a lot of time to make, given that you already have all the components... just need to put the pieces together in a slightly different configuration in a different area. BAM, new event. Reduce the frequency of each individual event to keep the number of concurrent events the same, but increase the variety. I'm not asking here for a brand-new zone with brand-new armored crabs and a ton of scripting to be used one time and then abandoned. This would probably take far less work.

4. Balancing rewards. The base reward for completing an event is pitiful. 1.5 silver, some experience that you don't need at 80, and a bit of karma that's grossly outweighed by the daily jug. (The daily jug was a good idea, but it's just... difficult to outperform it. That's a different subject.) The bulk of the reward comes from the drops and drops from a single champion are much worse than from aoeing waves of mobs for 4 minutes. Most of the time the champion takes more effort too!

The second problem is the disparity between zones. Events in Orr are well-known (so everyone does the easy ones), highly populated and give max rewards for level 80. Events in every other zone are the complete opposite. To balance this:

- Normalize the silver/exp/karma rewards for lvl 80s throughout the world. Seriously, it's a tiny amount of money anyway and getting 1.5s or 0.9s won't really impact anything. All it does is make lower-level events look bad.
- Improve drops from champions. Duh. To avoid causing inflation, do not flat-out make them drop 15 silver, but simply add a chance for each champion to drop zone-specific items. Each zones or a group of zones could have things like unique armor sets and unique weapon skins. There are zone-unique weapon skins in the game currently, such as "Steam" weapons in Charr areas, but they're easily obtainable and thus can't serve as an incentive to go there.
- Also add tokens to champions. For X tokens from champions in Charr lands, you can buy a rare armor skin (that also drops only in this areas), but weapons can only be gotten as a drop. Something like that.

5. Worldwide and zone-wide event notifications. Another very simple addition, but once you've really made events dynamic (points #1 and #2), added more of them (#3), and gave the players a reason to go there (#4), tell people about them! Display all events happening in the zone on the map, with an option to toggle it off, and display MAJOR events happening in other zones on the world map, like Orr temple assaults, dragons, swamp monster in Queensdale, etc. People will see events and flock to them instead of wandering about empty zones alone or farming events in Cursed Shore as a zerg.

Also, display this next point in the corner of the screen (under your personal story) at all times:

6. Daily zones. Now we're getting into more ambitious things. It's time to really create a dynamic world. Each day 1 or 2 zones could become event hubs. Balefire means business today and made a pact with the ogres to attack Ebonhawke! The entire area turns into a warzone. You know, the Charr are really attacking. Basically, turn the area into Cursed Shore + difficulty scaling (#2).

Hearts are disabled (Farmer Joe doesn't really care about shooing away the gryphons from this cabbage when THE CHARR ARE ATTACKING). All regular events that fit the war theme are enabled with a majorly increased frequency (remember, we reduced it in #3 and increased the total number of events). There are additional events active: every outpost gets assaulted on a regular basis and after a successful defense, there are events to march out and take down a champ or recapture a lost outpost. Again, this is all just copy/paste stuff (#3). Optimize the templates and then make more events!

As a bonus, drops of zone-specific rewards are doubled for the day when that area is a warzone.

As a second bonus, if a critical number of events is failed during the day (this could be a rather high threshold), the zone is under Flame Legion's control for next 1-3 days, every waypoint is disabled, you still can't do hearts in it (Farmer Joe is dead, his head is on a spike, and so are the cabbage-loving gryphons), and after these 3 days, the map becomes a warzone for the day again. Same events are running with the aim of recapturing it. This time it can't fail.

7. Live GMs. All of the above would do a good job of making the world appear dynamic, as it was advertised in the beginning, but dedicated game-masters controlling the world would make it REALLY dynamic. Provided there's a good framework for creating events (#3), anet could expand it to create events out of pre-set pieces on the fly. Starcraft's map editor did it in 1999 by allowing you to create custom missions using building blocks already provided with the game, why can't we do it on a live server in 2013? This outpost is getting attacked by X waves, each one consisting of Y mobs for Z minutes. Oh and there's a dragon at the end, which I'm going to personally control and target people with it. Go!

A GM per server or even 1 GM per few servers could further spice up the "daily areas" and add an occasional special event to other places in the world. And once again, I don't mean "occasional" and "special" a la brand-new invisible precursor-dropping crabs that take months of development for one night of lag. No, "special", as in, there will be a unique event somewhere a few times per day that's not part of the game's default package. You know, something new.

-------------

Well, that's pretty much it. A game like this would almost certainly keep me playing for years, paying a sub fee, and buying all the expansions. (Provided those expansions also expanded the above model).

Well, problems aside, I'm still playing GW2. When I hit 50 in SWTOR I quit almost immediately. Hit 80 and still playing so... and I stopped playing WOW a year and a half ago.

Since there's no monthly fee, you can still login and play/give it time/see what happens; which I will keep doing. Grindy or not, the combat is fun to me.

Protoss, on 26 November 2012 - 10:04 AM, said:

The MMO genre is not as it was.  The majority of players are not back in the days of EQ spending 16 hours a day doing a plane of air raid 3 days a week. We're not talking about a genre with a few hundred thousand people playing all the games (or tens of thousands before UO, EQ, etc.).  We're talking millions and millions now.

The fact is around the time of WoW and beyond the genre has grown from it's infancy.  There are not 15 million people all spending 13 hours a day in a single game.  I could probably dig around for statistics but I believe when wow was at around 6 million people something like 80% of the player base was "casual" and never set foot into a raid zone.  The average ACCOUNT level was in the 30s (discounting trial accounts).  Iirc this was the accepted concensus data at the time.

The people that played MUDS, EQ, UO, DAOC, etc. or any game that started the genre have grown up too.  Many are older with jobs, families, etc.  And in general kids dont have 13 hours a day to invest because your average western or eastern child is in school most of the day (even on saturdays) and doesn't stay up until 6am.

The sorry fact is, they dont make these games for people who have insane amounts of time to invest because that's impossible.  You cannot afford to produce content fast enough to keep people satisfied if you take the stance that your client base all have 11+ hours a day to play.  Labour law in many countries would prevent them from working as long to produce content as customers have to play it.  There is only so much in ANY game one can do if one has 13 hours a day to invest in it.  We're not playing doctors without borders here with an unlimited number of patients to see here.  It's a game with a finite amount of things to do, even if cleverly disguised.

The current state is good enough. They will keep adding more stuff during the coming months so I think I will get even better.

Bennyandthejets, on 26 November 2012 - 09:08 AM, said:

And yet you are still here posting?

For starters welcome to 80.  Go buy a full set of level 80 Rares (people used to say level 78 exotics) but rares go for so little now they are the way to start gearing.  Hold onto your karma and use it to mix and match Cursed Shore vendor exotics (80) that run about 42k karma each.  This is the best way to gear up from the 80 rares.  Also go with 80 rare weapons to start out with and buy either dungeon weapons (for skins and such) or buy the exotics off the TP eventually for 2 goldish each as you make more money later on.

Dedicated players are people that race through all the content as fast as possible so they can live in Orr.  They tend to bore easily.  Gee, I wonder why.

A not-so-dedicated player like myself spends time playing the game.  I take my time leveling and try to experience everything the game has to offer while working towards my goals.  I have logged nearly 850 hours, have several 80s in exotic gear and I don't have a legendary yet.  I'm not bored.  I'm obviously not a dedicated player according to Anet.

As of Yesterday

https://www.guildwar...-ascended-gear/

"This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.  As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game.  Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content."      

- Lindsey Murdock, Game Designer   

3 Months Earlier

http://venturebeat.c...s:guildwars2-16

"Here's what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can't realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game.  Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear.  We don't make grindy games -- we leave the grind to other MMOs."

  -Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

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While it is pretty clear of what Arenanet has in mind going forward, many of us want to know "What happened?"  One does not simply decide to simply build a MMO claiming to "defy all existing conventions" & 2 months down the road completely change ones business practices & betray its playerbase without reason.

Some speculate "No endgame, not enough micro-transactions, player activity declining" & well I have a opinion on those matters which I will share, but none of these issues should have been addressed with a gear treadmill/power creep.  This is one of the milestones Arenanet promised its playerbase which made it unique in the MMO industry & now threatens to go back on.


No Endgame:

While I am sure to get opposition on this, I happen to agree on this matter.  GW2 is very limited on endgame.  Here is #1 reason.  Players are limited to 2 Zones.  We have a MASSIVE world out there & only 2 zones are populated.  Why has this issue gone overlooked.  Currently the majority of the 80 population is found in 1 of 3 areas.  Lions Arch, Orr, Frostgorge.  Why?  There is no incentive/reward for players to be active in the other zones.  T6 crafting materials, exotic/rare drops, higher exp/karma/silver for participating in dynamic events.

Suggestion:

Zaishen Daily Dynamic Events - Each day 1 zone is selected (Outside of Orr/Frostgorge).  For the first completion of every dynamic event in that zone the player would be rewarded a large % increase to Dynamic event rewards.  Significantly higher than that of Orr/Frostgorge.  For example:  Orr/Frostgorge reward something like 378 karma for completion.  ZDDE would reward 500.  Once every dynamic event in the zone was completed the player would be rewarded with a 20-30 T6 mats of their choice & a fair sum of silver.  ZDDE applies to 80's only.  (Yes, I'm aware it would have to be affiliated with some other organization, just using Zaishen as a GW1 reference)

Not Enough Microtransactions:

This is 100% on Arenanet.  Currently there is nothing in the gemstore that appeals to me as a player.  I do not speak for everyone but I think many would agree that items such as Black Lion Keys are not a viable purchase.  I conducted a study on these very forums & the numbers speak for themselves.

http://www.guildwars...een-r-d-thread/

The probability of a player getting a desirable item such as the permanent bank/trader is likely less than 1%.  When Black Lion Keys are going for roughly 1G which equates to $2.00 US Dollars, its hard to justify such a gamble.  

Suggestion:

New additions need to be added to the gem store more frequently & not just during holiday events.  Additions such as unique emotes, musical instruments etc.  Black Lion Chests need to have a much much more appealing drop % for desirable items.  5-6% would be more realistic for items such as permanent bank/trader etc.

Player Activity Declining:

I don't necessary agree with this.  I will say that of my 6 friends who started playing GW2, I am the only one continuing to do so but my inner circle is not indicative of the games population as a whole.  GW2 is unique in that there are no monthly fees.  So one has the freedom of coming on & playing when he/she chooses.  I think we will always see a increase in activity during event weekends & lulls when there is not.  I feel GW2 is fine, but when one fundamentally changes the games core philosophy with additions such as the one that is coming it is very possible that players will move on/leave.  After all, "No grind/No treadmill" was one of if not the main selling point of this franchise.

Finally a reason to GRIND STUFF

FFS ArenaNet, what is the point of this addition? It's not going to appease the lootwh... hounds who got bored and left the game already. They're gone, they're not coming back. And it's clearly not a show of good faith for those of us who were on board with your vision for the role of Exotics.

Like others have said, I say suspending final judgment is probably a good idea. But on paper, this sounds like an awful design decision.