Thanatos

I get the point about currency multiplication, but If GW2 as a whole is "too complicated" for an MMO, I may have to give up all hope in humanity.

I'm on Gandara and I really like it here. I play with PuGs very often and it's mostly fun and most players are nice. Community in general is also nice so far and I found people to be helpful both outside of town or in town with answering questions etc. I do dungeons every day and hardly ever had much trouble finding a team, I don't even remember a single run that was stopped before it was done.

The only bad thing (atm) is WvWvW. We had some good times but it seems as soon as we get a higher rank, we have a lot of trouble. XD Other than that it's a very nice server imo.

The Comfy Chair, on 16 January 2013 - 09:46 PM, said:

+1

The first year of Guildwars1's release, I think I played all of 2 or 3 weeks before I got too frustrated with trying to get my NON-Minimaster Necro over IronHorse Pass ... I went and played City of Heroes the rest of the year instead.  I didn't come back until my CoH supergroup all decided they needed a break from COH and we all played through Prophecies together and that's when I really started getting into GuildWars.  Then they released Nightfall with customizable heroes, and I never looked back, I quit playing COH almost completely and did nothing but Guildwars & TF2 averaging 4000 hours each of playtime between both of them.  It's fine if the first year doesn't appeal to EVERYONE.  It doesn't have to as long as they actually try to innovate later on and add things people want.


This time around, instead of just waiting and hoping that they'll add the right things, I plan to be more pro-active by trying to more directly provide the more diverse art resources that others were obviously clamoring for in this thread..  I've already got a good start on some of the more classic styles from Gw1 for the Seraph theme and hope to start building them in Maya once I get the whole Workflow learning hurdle out of the way.

This really. Content and social interaction in itself is the best reward, which in our commodity-driven mindsets may be somewhat alien but no less true. I challenge anyone who played Guild Wars 1 to list their best memories of the game. Popular recollections might be winning the Hall of Heroes, finishing UW with your guild in record time, or finally building your runner character and experiencing the thrill of running past a ton of ice wurms for the first time.

These took front and center over obtaining gear. At some point, however, even these social achievements lose their veneer and gear grind becomes the order of the day. It works out in much the same way in GW2. The thrill of obtaining vistas, capturing a WVW keep, or finishing a story dungeon happens ONCE per. This may seem obvious, as anyone who grinds the dragon fights can attest. These are long, drawn-out, repetitive events that feel more like mowing the lawn than playing a fun game. But how else should it play out in a scenario that pits hundreds of players against a single target?

I can propose a few ideas off the top of my head that could change things up a bit.

PVE

Open-world zones remain empty after you level your character through them, with the exception of end-level areas like the Cursed Shore and Southsun Cove. Even then, replaying these areas is simply done to grind for materials or the chance for rare drops. Outside of a guild setting, there is no excitement or feeling of group accomplishment. It's a very hollow feeling.

Solve this by expanding the dynamic, persistent event chains of each zone. Give each zone a cohesive story-driven event chain that spans the entire zone. Zone-wide notifications alert players to urgent quests that must be completed to advance the event chain. Rather than creating the events as token, optional, make sure there are concrete consequences for failing the zone's event chain.

I'll use Gendarran Fields as an example.

- - -

Zone Event - Prevent the Gendarran Pirates from Obtaining the Vizier's Staff

The Pirate crews have united to attack the Undead stronghold and obtain the Vizier's Staff. With this, they can control the Undead host and lay waste to the farms of Gendarran Fields. Band together and prevent their assault!

Benefits of Success:

- Increased appearance of gathering nodes
- 30% increased drop and gathering rate
- Players gain 15% to vitality

Consequences of Failure:

- Large bands of undead with large aggro range rove the countryside
- 30% reduced drop and gathering rate
- Players suffer from 15% reduced vitality

Event Chain One (North Sector) - Build Trebuchets on the Provern Shore and Sink Paz Gorga's Pirate Fleet

Main Quest - Man the trebuchets and sink the fleet (after Minor Quest completion)
Minor Quest (req'd) - Clear the Provern Shore of Basilisks and their Den Mother
Minor Quest (req'd) - Find and eliminate the Pirate assassin Vexx before he kills Priory Engineer Taluth
Minor Quest (req'd) - Use Peacemaker Malthus' weather modification device to produce favourable conditions for the upcoming battle
Minor Quest (bonus) - Rescue Peachy Pie the Quaggan soprano from the clutches of Skank the Pirate

Event Chain Two (East Sector) - ETC

Event Chain Three (South Sector) - ETC

Event Chain Four (West Sector) - ETC

- - -

You get my drift.

These four event chains would have to be completed within a few hours of each other, or else players would face the consequences until a "take-back" event chain occurred. This allows sufficient time for players to just go in and farm if they want without participating in the event. At the same time, the consequences make it unfavourable to simply go and farm, but not impossible (except maybe for bots who would suffer from the randomized mob movement patterns upon event failure).

If the time window for completion and the difficulty scaled with the current zone player population, could this be a positive step for dynamic event development? If bosses encountered during the Main and Minor Quests dropped unique loot that scaled to a player's level (not necessarily skins but stats), it would be an added incentive for players.

Needless to say, the quest and story execution would need to be above par. Nobody wants a boring zone-wide event chain that ultimately becomes a gathering quest. That's BS. These events must somehow strive to be on par with dungeons, while realizing that dungeons are top-tier (difficulty, drops) content that can't and shouldn't be experienced in any old zone.

As it stands, many open-world zones remain empty except for the obligatory story instances. These can remain unaffected by the persistent event chains so as not to handicap new players.

The game infrastructure for a development like this already exists. Heart quests and event chains are already scattered among every zone. They only need refinement and the injection of social and material incentives.

Thoughts?

Rickter, on 14 December 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

I can tell you never managed a company or a area for a company.  The people you hear from are the complainers.  The majority who like your product have no reason to go and complain like children on a message board.

Just like hard core raiders.  Multiple studies have been done and they only make up 10% of the population of MMO's.  But if you read message boards you would think they are 80%+.  You and the rest of the people who come here to whine and tell Arenanet how to change their game to what you want and not what they said they were making are just the super loud voices that people see.  

The vast majority love the game and dont come here to explain to you all that everything you complain about was told to you so many times its not funny BEFORE THE GAME WAS RELEASED!  But like I said earlier... you act like 7 year old kids who didnt get what they wanted from their parents so they keep asking over and over again still getting the same NO answer till the parent just blocks them out and ignores them.

Arenanet doesnt care about your complaints.  Go over to the official boards and spam all these "I WANTS" and see how long they stay up.  You dont see the people over there acting like you because arenanet will just erase the posts and ban the people from the boards.  

ArenaNet is the first game to get it.  Casuals are much easier to keep happy,  they have real lives outside the game so they have more disposable income to spend in the shop, they want to play a fun game that takes skill not time = power.  I play with people everyday who love how well they did at making a fun game.  And I do tons of pugs and guild runs with 1-3 outsiders in group.  Never seen people complain like you all do here.. and I am on one of the FULL servers.

Your part of the vocal minority and arenanet doesnt care... because if they did they wouldnt just erase every whine thread you make on the offical boards and if you do it to much block your ability to post on those boards.

I should be hitting 80 in the next week or so.  I'm one of those "wander all over Tyria, smell the roses, hop characters frequently" types.  I'm very interested to see for myself whether the game suddenly feels grindy.

I'm guessing it won't, because I'll probably hit 80 before even stepping into a 70-80 level zone, which leaves me a decent amount of Tyria still to explore, and, at first, I won't be focused on making sure I get all of my gear maxed.  Money will come as I play, much like it has over the leveling experience.

I could be wrong.

It strikes me that perception plays a huge role here.  If you are focused on farming gold so you can reach a given goal, the stream of income is going to seem like a trickle.  If you aren't focused on it, eventually you'll just accumulate enough cash to buy something cool.

ANet did a great job of creating a game that frustrates grinding out experience points, and instead rewards immersing yourself in the world.  Is it possible they are trying to do the same with money, at least as much as they are trying to incentivise gem purchases?

If people can farm large quantities of gold, those who play a lot will complain that they have nothing to work for, and those who play less will complain that everything is so expensive they can't hope to buy it.

farkov47, on 07 December 2012 - 08:45 AM, said:

Maybe objectively, sure.
But that's in a perfect world.

I compare GW2 to the first 3 months of:
UO
Lineage
EQ
AO
DAoC

RS
AC2
EVE
CoH
EQ2
WoW
WW2OL
AoC
PW
ROSE
DDO
LoTRO
Tabula Rasa
AION
WAR
Champions
LEGO
Vindictus
DCUO
Rift
Star Wars
Tera


...all of which I played in their first 6 months.  (yes, obviously I must be a masochist?)

And let me tell you, GW2 is quite polished and stable compared to the BULK of them as of 6 months out.

I'm no fanboi of GW2, but I'm getting a little sick of people whining because this game didn't match up to their magical, heavenlike preconceptions (that have apparently no history of reality).  Get a little perspective people.  This game is by no means perfect but for chrissakes it's at the very least decent, personally I'd say it's pretty good.

Many people coming into gw2 are coming from different games that have had their problems of their owns.

Thus we have two things happening

1) The shiny new game phenomena
2) The expectations that this new game will exceed the problems of their other arsenal of games.

3 months in two things happen

A) 1 fades away like that feeling for that hotty you picked up at the bar a few days ago
Expectations weren't met therefore doomsayer posts on forums that say the game is dead, the game is broken, the game won't meet up to the WoW giant and a whole list of other things

So what do i think?

1) People who have come from other games realize that GW2 is already built on a community of core gw1 players which was a 7 year predecessor of gw2. Anet is not some new company on the block trying to make a buck, they have had enough time to work out the kinks of their company and deliver great quality stuff

2) Community is what makes the game alive. This game has tons of mini communities supporting the game and most posts, though many are valid, are also majorly underestimating the potential of these communities. Gw1 was about guilds, either your guild was a zerg guild, or you just didnt have communities in these guilds.

3) Gw was realeased at the start of a school semester. Exams and finals are rolling around now.

4) The game has been out for 3 months. This is by far one of the worst criterions to judge the success of a game. Just like many things in life, time decides alot and it is also important to know, many features are still in the works, and not "ideas in consideration" but the game is done sort.
___________

My gripes are with how making money is a little harder but other than that, this game has core features that makes this game more forgiving and more generous to those who aren't constricted on time. Not every person wants to make a video game a job or a second life. I'm in the pvp group waiting for some gvg mode to return and until then, i have a few more months to really determine this state of the game.

Oh please, he didn't share this to be hammered by people. He knows what he did and has learned from it.

Chris Whiteside has repeatedly proven to be completely wrong. I might be wrong. Let's see what happens (e.g. removing/destating ascended tier, adding guesting, making dyes account unlocked).

I just want to point out a few things which were interesting in the latest AMA with Chris Whiteside. They admitted some mistakes here but there is reason for hope that things will get corrected.

Chris about the implementation of Ascended gear only from Fractal-Runs:

Quote

...and his solution that this will be corrected in the future updates.

Quote

he admitts that they are aware of certain grind situations in the game, no PR talk here... he plays with open cards and states a honest answer + looking for solutions

Quote

there was this discussion about "minimal grind". A user stated:

Quote

Chris answers:

Quote

they totally see it the same way we do, and they plan to fix this, just as they fixed the dungeon tokens which now are much less grindier than before.

Trahearne's horrible voice acting. He's supposed to be an inspiring marshal and he sounds bored beyond words.

Hi. I'm Proseidon. I've been playing MMORPGs since I was 12, starting with Maple Story. I've played the original Guild Wars, WoW (and all expansions), Age of Conan, WAR, SWTOR, and multiple free korean grind fest games.

I'm your average player. I have a girlfriend and a full-time job, but I still love to play games all day. Even when I can't, I love to read the forums and learn about everything. This isn't what I'm here to talk to you about, however. I'm here to bring you a message. A message that is very important to me, and that I think you need to hear.

Are you ready? "Shut up."

Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. Seriously. Let me address some of the most mind-bogglingly stupid things I've read on this forum.

Grind.
You don't know what grind is. If you use this phrase to describe Guild Wars 2, you are so very, very wrong. Do you want to know what a grind is? A grind is playing Maple Story, where to progress to the next level (out of 250+ levels), you have to spend one or more entire days only killing one type of monster over and over again. THAT is a grind. Doing quests is not a grind. Playing PVP is not a grind. Daily events are not a grind. Hearts are the closest thing to a grind in this game, and they aren't grinds, either.

Horizontal Progression.
Here's one I've been seeing recently.
"Proseidon, I hit level 80 and I don't have max gear! I'm supposed to have max gear now because it's horizontal progression, just like guild wars!"
Okay. Let me lay some logic down on your neurons. Guild Wars 2 is the very definition of Horizontal Progression. Once you get max gear, you never upgrade again. Ever. Across any new dungeons, new pvp, new expansions, etc. Not once. That's horizontal.

And you bring up Guild Wars? Are your rose tinted glasses messing with your eyes? Let me run down the list of what you had to do in Guild Wars after hitting 20.

• Get Droknar's Forge gear (the first gear that had max stats). 5k, not even including mats.
  
  
• Get a 9 req max stat weapon. Sorry, did you forget how expensive these were? 5k+.
  
  
• Get the appropriate max-stat upgrades for your weapon. The best ones were expensive. I'll be generous and say it was only 5k.
  
  
• Get a full set of the best runes for your armor. Depending on your class popularity. Still about 10k.
  
  
• Get all of the appropriate skills (and elites) necessary for your build. At least a day or two worth of playing.

So we're looking at LEAST (and I do mean least) 25k, the time spent farming that, and the time spent farming skills, all just to be equal to a PvP character. And you have the audacity to say that Arena Net has "fallen" or "changed" because you have to do some work after hitting max level? You barely have to do as much as the original game! I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

So, to wrap this all up. For the Love. Of. God. Stop whining. Stop making up stories. This game is very simple. You play it and enjoy it or you don't. No subscriptions, no worry, no hassles. If you have legit criticisms, by all means, say them, but sometimes this feels like I walked into a kindergarten class and one kid said "There's too many vegetables, we wanna eat cookies for every meal!" And of course all the other kids love cookies too so they're like "YEAH $^@$ HEALTH LETS GET SOME COOKIES!" And logic and reason flies out the window and an angry mob of 5 year olds destroy an entire town.

Thanks.

Kufode, on 06 September 2012 - 03:54 AM, said:

So we shouldn't accept one of the best mmo launches I've ever seen? Spoiled much?

GW's skill system was terrible.

Glad it's gone.