Guild Wars 2

AlekseiFL_sl said:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/01...2-looks-to-th/

They sold 3 million copies.

Not bad for pretend mmo that has no end game content, dungeons that suck and mean nothing.
The main carrot is the Grindy pvp zergfest.

Click to expand...

Go away.

Intersting read I suppose. There was one part that made me kind of laugh though.

To make playing in our open world worthwhile, we?ll make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels. It?s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.

Really? Please refer to the legendary weapons as an example of "not playing the way I want to play a game" to get an item. Either spending real money or repeat farming over and over and over and over again to build up the gold needed for these weapons is not how I want to play a game.

There were only two things that stand a chance of helping thier game in that entire article.

1. Fix Culling
2. Add a WvW reward based system that makes a player a LOT more interested in the idea of WvW, over just a " Lets go kill some players" form of motivation. For a fantastic example of this please go see the 11 year old game "Dark Ages of Camelot".

There MUST be an alternate reason for killing a player other than just killing a player to be successful.

1. Ultima Online : Killing a player allowed you to loot everything off the player.
2. EvE: killing a player allowed for both looting and destroying something they spent time creating. In large campaigns it also allowed for territory control that aided with crafting and politics.
3. Dark Ages of Camelot: I get to kill players and at least look at an EXP bar that tells me how much longer I have to go for my next spendable point in a certain skill. This in turn allows me to become more efficient at killing players and by way of titles, shows I have experience in the field.

If there is no carrot then players stop playing the game. It really is just that simple.

This part has me interested:

"We're adding new features as well. We'll introduce a system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW. This will give players a progression path where they earn newWvW-only abilitiesand bonuses, and with them gain prestige and visible titles/recognition. Also, we'll add a new motivation to the WvW domain that goes beyond the overall weekly score to give more short term reasons to be winning in WvW as well. We'll discuss all these features in more detail as we get closer to release!"

Lol, that was an epic post of marketing pablum bs.

Looks like they will not be implementing the most important feature for PvE, default overflow for all zones. Guesting will not help players stuck on servers with empty zones. So if you better transfer off now before they force you to pay for it.

What you should be excited about:

Leaderboards and tournaments. This will help a lot.
WVW skills and a progression system.
Open World development. Finally we may see some more interesting things done with the event system all over the world.

Wow.

I didn't think I would be that disappointed.

Really? My expectations were pretty low and I think they were met. But I don't have the W3 details yet. Could get better or worse.

Expectations with what though? That post was 80% vague PR/Market spin where Anet is saying they are going to make things better and more awesome by improving things while neglecting to state how exactly they are going to do that and why they need to.

There is some specific information that is new like an achievement vender, a new achievement system, guild quests, and the WvW abilities (although this was mostly assumed by everyone to be included in the WvW patch already), but everything else is "we're going to improve the game in 2013, stay tuned." I'm disappointed because for months this blog post was hyped by Anet as the post by Colin that would address the community concerns and lay down everything they were working on.

Normally that's fine, but we've heard this talk before both in their manifesto before release and in holiday patches and we're still waiting.

My expectations were "leaderboards and WVW progression stuff". I got that. I wasn't expecting any detail today.

I would really like to know whether they plan to launch an expansion this year or not. If not, what they announced is not enough to keep the playerbase alive.

From what I understood about the achievement rewards, it will be for daily ones only at first and they will expand it to include others over time, so it's basically Zaishen quests in disguise.

I can see why people who just want PvP stuff are excited as some long awaited features were confirmed to be coming out.

Are you disappointed over everything else though?

I'm with Draegan on this but will reserve final judgement until more details come out. How anyone could have great expectations of what the devs can put out in this amount of time is just flat out unrealistic. If you've been paying any attention to some of the discussions that the devs have commented on, you'll see they really limit the number of resources they assign to a project. (ie: the entire ability system is 1 person)

Hopefully the WvW abilities will be akin to Realm Abilities and the new leaderboards will have some meat to them.

Skinner_sl said:

I can see why people who just want PvP stuff are excited as some long awaited features were confirmed to be coming out.

Are you disappointed over everything else though?

Click to expand...

Not really. I just hope it's going to be enough to invigorate interest and it's not too late.

When I had the devs on my show, they said leaderboards were not coming any time soon. I got the sense they were like 5-6 months out rather than 1-3 months out. I talked to Habib who actually puts out the spreadsheet scores once a week and he can't wait to be done with it.

The PVE stuff will be fluff though unless they really add dynamic event stuff. It'll just be another token/currency overlay to work with.

The game's PVE is pretty decent for what it's worth in a non-raiding game. It's not long term stuff, but it's fun as hell a few times through. sPVP is really really lacking leaderboards, scores, seasons, tournaments and the whole nine. Without a way to make people winners outside a quick 5v5 match is key. If they bring the systems that support sPVP it will improve a lot. Right now, hardly anyone gives a shit from what I notice.

WvW is getting stale by the week. From what I get by talking to all of the major guilds on the net, everyone is getting tired of the server merry-go-round and is looking for something more engaging. There is a tipping point for critical mass coming, and soon.

Zaphid_sl said:

I would really like to know whether they plan to launch an expansion this year or not. If not, what they announced is not enough to keep the playerbase alive.

From what I understood about the achievement rewards, it will be for daily ones only at first and they will expand it to include others over time, so it's basically Zaishen quests in disguise.

Click to expand...

My understanding is that, while they called this their plans for 2013, this is really more their plans for the first part of the year. I can't imagine an expansion release until at least October, so they'll probably start talking about it sometime in the summer.

And yeah, you had to dig through a lot of marketing talk to get to the substance of what their doing, but what substance there is sounds promising; not "this will completely transform the game!" promising, but promising nonetheless.

pyksel_sl said:

I'm with Draegan on this but will reserve final judgement until more details come out. How anyone could have great expectations of what the devs can put out in this amount of time is just flat out unrealistic. If you've been paying any attention to some of the discussions that the devs have commented on, you'll see they really limit the number of resources they assign to a project. (ie: the entire ability system is 1 person)

Hopefully the WvW abilities will be akin to Realm Abilities and the new leaderboards will have some meat to them.

Click to expand...

Stop with the hyperbole. No one said they have great expectations and I don't think anyone is expecting a miracle patch, let alone a miracle patch in a short time. This game has been out going on 5 months now though and they still can't fix the issue of Champions/Vets dropping loot. People aren't upset that the dev's are not working on what they personally want done but that the stuff that needs to be done to help save this game, like default zones, are not even mentioned.

Skinner_sl said:

Stop with the hyperbole. No one said they have great expectations and I don't think anyone is expecting a miracle patch, let alone a miracle patch in a short time. This game has been out going on 5 months now though and they still can't fix the issue of Champions/Vets dropping loot. People aren't upset that the dev's are not working on what they personally want done but that the stuff that needs to be done to help save this game, like default zones, are not even mentioned.

Click to expand...

There was no hyperbole and no finger pointing but since you brought it up, then it should come as absolutely no surprise that Anet doesn't like to talk about features that aren't fully tested and playable. The problem that they're up against is that if they don't throw a bone to their player base by mentioning what's coming to some degree (be it large or small) they stand a chance to lose more fans. Guesting is what happens when you promise a feature but don't deliver in time. But what does that mean for a game that has no subscription? People just don't log in? I don't claim to have a crystal ball so I don't know as to what degree the game is in need of saving but if they sold over 3 million copies then it's pretty obvious this is a success for them. Makes no difference to me as I haven't played in a couple weeks now, let alone stepped foot in WvW so I will be one of those that is waiting with unrelenting patience to see what is in store for Feb/March. Saving the game in this case means something completely different for me than it does to you, obviously.

Claiming why people are upset and making uneducated guesses as to what will fix the game is no worse than hyperbole. If you really had higher expectations then I don't think anything will save the game for you.

I couldn't give 2 shits about pve as I have 8 level 80's and did most of it through crafting so what's important to me is getting the WvW overhauled which I honestly don't see happening but I will take any small hope they want to throw my way and if in the end it doesn't work out, so be it. I wait for the "next big thing" to hit and I'm not out anything but my time and maybe a forum post or two.

pyksel_sl said:

There was no hyperbole and no finger pointing but since you brought it up, then it should come as absolutely no surprise that Anet doesn't like to talk about features that aren't fully tested and playable. The problem that they're up against is that if they don't throw a bone to their player base by mentioning what's coming to some degree (be it large or small) they stand a chance to lose more fans. Guesting is what happens when you promise a feature but don't deliver in time. But what does that mean for a game that has no subscription? People just don't log in? I don't claim to have a crystal ball so I don't know as to what degree the game is in need of saving but if they sold over 3 million copies then it's pretty obvious this is a success for them. Makes no difference to me as I haven't played in a couple weeks now, let alone stepped foot in WvW so I will be one of those that is waiting with unrelenting patience to see what is in store for Feb/March. Saving the game in this case means something completely different for me than it does to you, obviously.

Claiming why people are upset and making uneducated guesses as to what will fix the game is no worse than hyperbole. If you really had higher expectations then I don't think anything will save the game for you.

I couldn't give 2 shits about pve as I have 8 level 80's and did most of it through craftingsowhat's important to me is getting the WvW overhauledwhich I honestly don't see happening but I will take any small hope they want to throw my way and if in the end it doesn't work out, so be it.I wait for the "next big thing" to hitand I'm not out anything but my time and maybe a forum post or two.

Click to expand...

If you admit to not even playing a specific aspect of a game who are you to tell people who do that what they are saying is an uneducated guess? It's one thing to have discussions and disagreements, but it's another entirely to admit you don't even play and know something and argue with those who still do. Outside of you and Draegan no one is/was talking about WvW, and that was pretty fucking clear. If you don't care about other aspects of the game then don't talk about them and ignore all the posts that do.

Skinner_sl said:

If you admit to not even playing a specific aspect of a game who are you to tell people who do that what they are saying is an uneducated guess? It's one thing to have discussions and disagreements, but it's another entirely to admit you don't even play and know something and argue with those who still do. Outside of you and Draegan no one is/was talking about WvW, and that was pretty fucking clear. If you don't care about other aspects of the game then don't talk about them and ignore all the posts that do.

Click to expand...

Saying that I couldn't give 2 shits about PvE is not the same thing as never playing it. I've cleared many a fractal and most dungeons but only have about 50% of the map completion. No one is ignoring anything but you're going to have to do better than "boo hoo champion mobs don't drop loot" in a game that's touted as having very limited vertical progression.

The point I am trying to make here Skinner is that you're claiming that you know what the "people" want and what you believe will fix the game but in all honesty that's what YOU want, not necessarily others or the majority and claiming you DO know what the majority want is pretty damn arrogant. Same shit that goes on in other forums, other threads, about other games. I made a statement about what I wanted to show you that not everyone wants what you want. I thought that was pretty obvious but it's apparent it needed to be spelled out.

My statement about being uneducated stands.