It was probably being said already, but it should be said again.
You can't have a living world in a themepark where everything is happening in instances, period! To have a living world things must happen on the open world.
Wow, some of you are still drinking that left over kool-aid from last year I see...GW2 is the best marketed MMO since WoW and is very slick and polished but a lot of the stuff that it claims is unique is just recycled and polished up from other MMOs (Hearts are just quests with no quest giver, dynamic events are the same idea and usually less "dynamic" than rifts in Rift, "Living World" is just pretty much the same thing that LOTRO developed 6 years ago with their periodically updated epic quest and I believe even the original Guild Wars had something kind of similar and I might add that LOTRO's story is much better written and more coherent.
I still play and like the game but it's kind of like being promised a Ferrari and getting a Toyota. Sure, the Toyota is a perfectly fine car that will do what you absolutely need it to do but if the dealer promised you a Ferrari you're still gonna be kind of let down.
Ryzom and SWG had a living world. In Ryzom you had a for that time convincing eco system where hunting animals would hunt prey. Where animals would actually notice you being near. Herds of animals moving across the land, with the hunters keeping close. Hunting animals that would attack you as player if you got to close. Or large herd animals that attacked you if you came to close or started to attack them for resources. In SWG it was a bit more crude, but the random spawns of animal lairs fitted well in the landscape and you could tame them or hunt them for resources. They could be very dangerous too. Creature handler was one of the things that made the worlds feel more alive And the animals felt actually as part of the world like in Ryzom. The wildlife was also not just a gimmick for the typical hunter like class, but usefull for all.
GW2 has a very nice looking world. No doubt about that. But it also feels like little landscape boxes connected with loading screens and barely anything that makes the wold feel living. The mobs that participate (convincingly for a MMO) in a dynamic event look more like very nice animations in front of a landscape painting. This is partly due to that (very isolated) neutral animals have barely any use, except as pet for the typical hunting class. They are more props then anything else.
I hope we get a MMO with a world that looks at Ryzom as example for a living world and will improve on that. And that uses day/night cycles to give sentient npc's actually a day/night rhytm (and animals like in Ryzom). Day/night cycles in current themepark MMO's feel very artificial and would not change anything if left out. Also, those questnpc's stay outside, day and night.
GW2 looks awesome, has fun action and I love the dynamic events. But to me it still feels very artificial and gimmicky in the way it does that. Not like a virtual world anyway.
Yes... Ryzom had a great world yet people still abandoned that game and now it has what less that 2k active players?
What is your point? Living breathing world is bad for a MMO? I never claimed that it is all that a MMO needs or that I am still playing it. I don't like Ryzom for other reasons. But the world is awesome in that game. So please stay on topic. The OP wondered why some don't see GW2's world as a living world and I just gave examples of MMO's that did it better on that point.
ANET didn't really do anything new here. They just made quest hubs even more simplistic by eliminating the need to bother talking to someone for a quest in the first place. The system actually makes traditional quest hubs look amazing in comparison, since you actually talk to people and get to hear their story, etc. In GW2, about the closest you come to that, aside from your "personal story" thing that happens every blue moon, is the scouts who kind of give you a run-down of what's happening in the region.
That's it. The whole "living world" thing makes no sense to me, because the world feels even more dead and static than most MMO's, which is really saying something.
Umm have you played GW2 at all?
GW2 don't have a wall of quest text that few bother to read, GW2 have talking NPC that explains whats going on at every DE, you just have to stick around and listen to what they have to say and then you know why that specific DE is all about.
GW2 has very few instances of talking NPC's that I've encountered. Maybe I need to just sit around for 10 minutes waiting for their "conversation" to trigger so that I know why I'm collecting a bunch of food while avoiding rabbits... or what special reason there is for me to kill grub worms in a brewery.
You are talking about heart quest not dynamic event system, learn the difference between those two.
Oh, you mean the "dynamic events" that aren't really dynamic? The ones that are basically just events that play out at a fairly regular basis? Very few of those are interesting or even touch up on the lore of the world, much less create any sort of impression of the world being some kind of living breathing entity. It's just a bunch of random scripted events, most of which just get zergged through by whatever "train" of players is in the area. Yes, few are actually kind of interesting, but the vast majority of them are mindless zergbate.
Sorry bro, its very obvious you never played the game.
ANET didn't really do anything new here. They just made quest hubs even more simplistic by eliminating the need to bother talking to someone for a quest in the first place. The system actually makes traditional quest hubs look amazing in comparison, since you actually talk to people and get to hear their story, etc. In GW2, about the closest you come to that, aside from your "personal story" thing that happens every blue moon, is the scouts who kind of give you a run-down of what's happening in the region.
That's it. The whole "living world" thing makes no sense to me, because the world feels even more dead and static than most MMO's, which is really saying something.
Umm have you played GW2 at all?
GW2 don't have a wall of quest text that few bother to read, GW2 have talking NPC that explains whats going on at every DE, you just have to stick around and listen to what they have to say and then you know why that specific DE is all about.
GW2 has very few instances of talking NPC's that I've encountered. Maybe I need to just sit around for 10 minutes waiting for their "conversation" to trigger so that I know why I'm collecting a bunch of food while avoiding rabbits... or what special reason there is for me to kill grub worms in a brewery.
You are talking about heart quest not dynamic event system, learn the difference between those two.
Oh, you mean the "dynamic events" that aren't really dynamic? The ones that are basically just events that play out at a fairly regular basis? Very few of those are interesting or even touch up on the lore of the world, much less create any sort of impression of the world being some kind of living breathing entity. It's just a bunch of random scripted events, most of which just get zergged through by whatever "train" of players is in the area. Yes, few are actually kind of interesting, but the vast majority of them are mindless zergbate.
Sorry bro, its very obvious you never played the game.
Actually I agree with him. I love the dynamic events, but they are at their best when there are not too many players participating. With too many players he is right that it just turns out into an AOE spamming zergfest. Back when I still played a lot, some of the highlvl areas just had zergtrains going from one DE to the next. It was as mindnumbing as he portrayed. Zergs are just the easiest way to complete them. But to be fair, I have no solution for that.
Players leave when the games are not good enough or boring. Gildwars 2 is boring. and has faild. It'll Never get on their feet again and get a second Shangs !
ANET didn't really do anything new here. They just made quest hubs even more simplistic by eliminating the need to bother talking to someone for a quest in the first place. The system actually makes traditional quest hubs look amazing in comparison, since you actually talk to people and get to hear their story, etc. In GW2, about the closest you come to that, aside from your "personal story" thing that happens every blue moon, is the scouts who kind of give you a run-down of what's happening in the region.
That's it. The whole "living world" thing makes no sense to me, because the world feels even more dead and static than most MMO's, which is really saying something.
Umm have you played GW2 at all?
GW2 don't have a wall of quest text that few bother to read, GW2 have talking NPC that explains whats going on at every DE, you just have to stick around and listen to what they have to say and then you know why that specific DE is all about.
GW2 has very few instances of talking NPC's that I've encountered. Maybe I need to just sit around for 10 minutes waiting for their "conversation" to trigger so that I know why I'm collecting a bunch of food while avoiding rabbits... or what special reason there is for me to kill grub worms in a brewery.
You are talking about heart quest not dynamic event system, learn the difference between those two.
Oh, you mean the "dynamic events" that aren't really dynamic? The ones that are basically just events that play out at a fairly regular basis? Very few of those are interesting or even touch up on the lore of the world, much less create any sort of impression of the world being some kind of living breathing entity. It's just a bunch of random scripted events, most of which just get zergged through by whatever "train" of players is in the area. Yes, few are actually kind of interesting, but the vast majority of them are mindless zergbate.
Sorry bro, its very obvious you never played the game.
Actually I agree with him. I love the dynamic events, but they are at their best when there are not too many players participating. With too many players he is right that it just turns out into an AOE spamming zergfest. Back when I still played a lot, some of the highlvl areas just had zergtrains going from one DE to the next. It was as mindnumbing as he portrayed. Zergs are just the easiest way to complete them. But to be fair, I have no solution for that.
There are thousands of dynamic events. If you wan to troll you can at least learn a thing or two about the game, even better would be to actually play the game (such a shocking proposal)
Yes some are zerged. the other 99% aint. And they all tell a story. Yes not every one is of "epic proportions" but i would say, in your own description, that would add to the world.
But nah, lets just baselesly bash, thats the shit!
Oh, and its so amusing "look! a zerg train! i can go with it or i dont have to go! hmmm, lets roll with it!" -> complain on the forums about zerg trains rofl
Did i mention something about not allowing players to be in charge of anything remotely important in MMO? Yes i did lol
At least GW2 lets you do variety of things and offers choice, you are not locked in single path like endless farming of latest raid like rest of them. You can roll with the zerg or you dont have to. Its your CHOICE.
Players leave when the games are not good enough or boring. Gildwars 2 is boring. and has faild. It'll Never get on their feet again and get a second Shangs !
RIP Gildwars 2
Yea I heard Gildwars 2 was terrible as well that's why I never played Gildwars 2 myself.
I just thought about something in this thread, also Ender it's not monthly updates it's bi weekly updates which might be first IDK unless Asherons Call did bi weekly.
Let's see, questing in Guild Wars 2 is not the same as questing in(For the games I tried) TSW, SWTOR, and all the other MMOs, I would even say Warhammer as well.
I think what's being compared for those who really don't like the game are trying to balance it out with negatives, are basing this on the actual story but not the way everything is set up hence why it gives a different experience.
Far as it being a quest hub in disguise, I guess hearts can do that but even hearts are a bit different as most quests have you do only one or two things and doing anything else while completing it doesn't help the cause.
The living story events are a step into the right direction or at least give a different experience than normal questing and raids, however different is never better or worse for all people. Of course the majority now on this forum would lead you to believe that it is worse but really it's subjective.
Then we have the video that was posted on I believe page, least for me they delivered on what I expected, course again all I use is common sense when it comes to PR, I keep my expectations in check, understand the limits and progress of technology and base what was said in ANET's videos on actual reality, like what can it really look like in a world for Massive amount of players, not something unrealistic that will then make me feel disappointed.
Then it comes down to catching on quick and the odd thing is people want different things and on this website especially or least MMORPG forums, what people want is essentially what they don't want. Sure this doesn't make sense, but then again when you look at what they ask for then turn around and complain about, it does. People don't want change and if it is change it has to be a certain or carefully detailed change that they will like it.
Most of the time people ban together because they like or hate the same thing, but when you hear why and what they dislike it's for different reasons, meaning if it fit that persons perception of what he/she thought living story or world meant, it'd still leave someone either wanting more of or less of what is presented...or hell even opposite.
Sidenote - First few pages, TSW nad SWTOR magically became great questing, which is subjective, but both games questing where very single player focused, and not as great as they where claimed in those first few pages of this thread, but well shit that's just my opinion. I think for personnel story SWTOR and TSW beat GW2 far as cutscenes though.
TL:DR - First off don't dumb yourself down when watching PR videos, joke is naturally on you not the devs, especially when it's the year 2013, we got to wise up more to survive these days.
Anyway it is true GW2 didn't "master" or "perfect" their vision(Like any human on earth would and does), yet it is also true they at the very least went that direction with their vision and tried something different and went away from the norm more than any MMORPG so far to date has, that there is fact, whether it's better or not that is up to the player.
Everybody and peace.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Originally posted by Z3R01 Years ago i realized that players in this sub-genre will never be happy and they have no idea what they want.It doesn't matter if a game offers a massive world with thousands of activities and ways to shape it with multiple rule sets to engage different player types.They will still hate it... If i was wrong games like Darkfall wouldn't be empty, same with The Secret World, RIFT, Fallen Earth and other games that had devs that listened to players only to be betrayed by the same players they catered to. OP forget these players, and this forum. Just play the games that are fun for you.
When you include Rift it completely kills your point. Rift is about the biggest WoW clone ever made and a pretty awful game in general.
Because... Guildwars 2 DOESNT create a living world. It feels very static. The events aren't very dynamic at all, feeling to be the same thing over and over. When you have an event that plays out the same way over and over each time, always ending in the same fashion (either pass or fail) its not very dynamic. Rift had a feeling of being dynamic by having things cause noticable differences. Sure it was simple "Rift takes control of area, foothold there" but it had a feeling like things were happening and it wasn't some static change. GW2 fails to do that.
The fact you 'run in circles' doing all the events as they pop IN ORDER is FAR from 'living' and it ends up causing the game to feel perhaps one of the weakest games in terms of making dynamic events feel alive, just more so staged and predictable. To be fair its difficult to pull off, but I feel GW2 having such a reliance on dynamic events and needing them for people to 'progress' ends up causing them to feel far weaker and no where near a living story.
Because... Guildwars 2 DOESNT create a living world. It feels very static. The events aren't very dynamic at all, feeling to be the same thing over and over. When you have an event that plays out the same way over and over each time, always ending in the same fashion (either pass or fail) its not very dynamic. Rift had a feeling of being dynamic by having things cause noticable differences. Sure it was simple "Rift takes control of area, foothold there" but it had a feeling like things were happening and it wasn't some static change. GW2 fails to do that.
The fact you 'run in circles' doing all the events as they pop IN ORDER is FAR from 'living' and it ends up causing the game to feel perhaps one of the weakest games in terms of making dynamic events feel alive, just more so staged and predictable. To be fair its difficult to pull off, but I feel GW2 having such a reliance on dynamic events and needing them for people to 'progress' ends up causing them to feel far weaker and no where near a living story.
The only amusing thing is that people were expecting actual independent self evolving world where there would be indefinite variation of indefinite events which would forever change.
But yah, most of people kinda kept it realisitc (including ANet).
And mentioning Rift in there totally kiilled anything you were trying to say.
And yes, GW2 is the best appearance of living world out there, just look FFXIV take on it rofl, its pathetic.
And TERA is probably best example of anti-living world (undead? seems so lol), but others (like SWTOR/AoC/LOTRO/WoW...) are not far behind, those are completely static worlds.
ANET didn't really do anything new here. They just made quest hubs even more simplistic by eliminating the need to bother talking to someone for a quest in the first place. The system actually makes traditional quest hubs look amazing in comparison, since you actually talk to people and get to hear their story, etc. In GW2, about the closest you come to that, aside from your "personal story" thing that happens every blue moon, is the scouts who kind of give you a run-down of what's happening in the region.
That's it. The whole "living world" thing makes no sense to me, because the world feels even more dead and static than most MMO's, which is really saying something.
Umm have you played GW2 at all?
GW2 don't have a wall of quest text that few bother to read, GW2 have talking NPC that explains whats going on at every DE, you just have to stick around and listen to what they have to say and then you know why that specific DE is all about.
GW2 has very few instances of talking NPC's that I've encountered. Maybe I need to just sit around for 10 minutes waiting for their "conversation" to trigger so that I know why I'm collecting a bunch of food while avoiding rabbits... or what special reason there is for me to kill grub worms in a brewery.
You are talking about heart quest not dynamic event system, learn the difference between those two.
Oh, you mean the "dynamic events" that aren't really dynamic? The ones that are basically just events that play out at a fairly regular basis? Very few of those are interesting or even touch up on the lore of the world, much less create any sort of impression of the world being some kind of living breathing entity. It's just a bunch of random scripted events, most of which just get zergged through by whatever "train" of players is in the area. Yes, few are actually kind of interesting, but the vast majority of them are mindless zergbate.
Sorry bro, its very obvious you never played the game.
Actually I agree with him. I love the dynamic events, but they are at their best when there are not too many players participating. With too many players he is right that it just turns out into an AOE spamming zergfest. Back when I still played a lot, some of the highlvl areas just had zergtrains going from one DE to the next. It was as mindnumbing as he portrayed. Zergs are just the easiest way to complete them. But to be fair, I have no solution for that.
There are thousands of dynamic events. If you wan to troll you can at least learn a thing or two about the game, even better would be to actually play the game (such a shocking proposal)
Yes some are zerged. the other 99% aint. And they all tell a story. Yes not every one is of "epic proportions" but i would say, in your own description, that would add to the world.
But nah, lets just baselesly bash, thats the shit!
Oh, and its so amusing "look! a zerg train! i can go with it or i dont have to go! hmmm, lets roll with it!" -> complain on the forums about zerg trains rofl
Did i mention something about not allowing players to be in charge of anything remotely important in MMO? Yes i did lol
At least GW2 lets you do variety of things and offers choice, you are not locked in single path like endless farming of latest raid like rest of them. You can roll with the zerg or you dont have to. Its your CHOICE.
And of those thousands of dramatic events, how many are NOT Kill X mob till this bar fill's up, or X mobs killed, now kill this boss mob. or gather these things till a bar fills up, or escort this npc or, play super mario 64. . .
not a whole lot. .
And before you call me a troll for disagreeing with you, I still play every once and awhile. but get bored with the repetitiveness quickly. . .
When people talk about living worlds I always thought they meant something along the lines of a game that felt alive because of how players were allowed to interact with one another, how they could affect the game world. Not so much in a physical sense like blowing things up in the town square, but more in a social/political/economic sense. Very few games have pulled this off such as UO and EVE. But UO is dated as hell and EVE just isn't accessible enough to get more people into it.
I think that for people who are looking for a "living" world (not GW2 silly living world bi weekly event updates) people should look out for more info regarding World of Darkness. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is an MMO being developed by CCP (EVE Online) Based on the World of Darkness universe that some of you may know from the game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
There isn't a whole lot of info yet, as of Fanfest 2013 (CCP event) I believe they are just getting started on real production. But they have some pretty lofty ambitions for this game including player elected Princes to run entire cities, perma-death if Princes puts a hit out on you, clothing design, "realistic" vampire movement (speedy, acrobatic...etc) I believe real time combat, and best of all no god damned training queue like EVE.
Well in the game chat itself I don't see very much complaining. The forums are another story altogether. People will complain about anything.
Was it revolutionary ? No. But GW2 is still, in its own right, a very good game. I didn't fall into the hype, therefore what they promised in a game has been delivered to my expectations. I had realistic expectations unlike most forum dwellers.
Sure it may not be perfect, but no game is. You cannot please all the people all the time, that is a simple fact. There are many limiting factors including resources and hardware, but they did what other companies didn't. They actually moved the genre forward.
Quest hubs were replaced by location events. You no longer have to finish a quest a certain way, you can chose alternate paths to finish a "heart" quest. That was brilliant in my opinion. Events chain into other events. NPC actually talk to each other making the world feel somewhat alive. There are many places to explore. They have, in my opinion, one of the best underwater experiences of any MMO I ever played.
They have pumped out quite a few of content updates, albeit not to everyone's taste. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I returned to GW2 was because I looked over all the living world updates they ran over the past year and was kicking myself for missing some of these.
ANet has learned a few things over the year:
They finally realized there has to be some sort of gear progression. Ascended gear or agony resistance ring a bell ?
They finally accept that players are going to farm SOMETHING, no matter how many times you change it. Champ train ring a bell?
Now if only they realize that having healers and more defined support roles will be a good thing and introduce new skills into play supporting these playstyles, they can finally redeem some more players. Why you ask? Because ANet has also learned that dungeons will be elitist even without the trinity, so lets make them fun again. I've seen group members kicked because they were not a high dps class and/or not in all zerker gear. I've seen people kicked from groups because they were inexperienced about a dungeon. THE SAME THINGS ANET WAS TRYING TO AVOID. Well it failed.
If their goal was to make the world alive then the dynamic events have to be more inter connected to players and their actions.
For example, clearing a forrest of wild life allows for something else to replace it.
Or the npcs have a routine that shows their purpose or what they care for. A blacksmith hammering on the anvil, moving about to get resources. Moves to a local inn with other npcs for a break, and at night they go to sleep. Then other npcs are available, night watch, bandits etc.
The way it is now, is a public quest that is more fluid than previous iterations. Its a lot of hype, and people are seeing beyond the hype.
They want their world to make sense. That their actions have some kind of effect depending on the area. Eqn is doing something like that, but i am not sure what other mmos are doing about npc life. Im guessing not much or nothing at all.
Wouldn't it be nice that at happy hour you can gamble with a certain npc, or at night time there are bandits that play at different stakes which might result in a 'bar brawl'.
So, on other words, its just more fluid sequencing to combat. Not much more than just having an mmo that is mostly combat without any connection to how it fits with the world. You could just button mash any dynamic event, since they are easy, and the result doesn't really matter, especially after the first completion.
Well stated.
They took a tiny step forward by making a small rotation of dynamic events. What many people are hoping for is a leap forward with dynamic events created more organically based on the changes in the zone.
If i was wrong games like Darkfall wouldn't be empty, same with The Secret World, RIFT, Fallen Earth and other games that had devs that listened to players only to be betrayed by the same players they catered to.
Those games are prime examples of not really giving players what they really want. Listening to players doesn't really matter if the launched product doesn't meet their needs. That's what Beta was for.
Originally posted by Badaboom The reason why the "living world" is not active enough is there are too many instances taking people out of the open world.
Instancing isn't that much of a problem. There is a lot action outside of the dungeons. The bigger problem is the design of that "living" world. GW2 uses a cycle of repeating events ranging from 10mins to 2h. That cycle is way to short and instead of bringing life to a world it becomes extremely artificial. Another problem for me is that the story itself is too splintered and locked to the individual zones and thoose zones are caught within an infinite time loop.
When thinking of older games i tend to remember things like contested bosses spawning once within a window of two weeks(GW2 bosses more like 2h), world events with progress of weeks to month(GW2 events are not based on player progression and consists of pure repetition of 10mins event-farming), raidbosses more like once a week or every 2-3 weeks(Tequatl every 2h). At the same time GW2 still shares the negative aspects of the artificial world like players not being able to make any changes to the world.
There's nothing that can be said to people who believe these games are "living worlds". They aren't even remotely close. When you play one, you will understand the difference. Until then, I sincerely hope you continue enjoying GW2.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
yes yes .. UPS questing is oh so innovative .. /facepalm
I mean it's yellow and brown instead of blue and orange ...
it does the EXACT SAME THING in a different way .. which means it gets just as boring just as fast.
the 5th word in the OP pretty much defines the problem ... how he/she sees gw2 as non-static is beyond me. all the same events in all the same places. worse, at release there were 1000000 ppl at every event. how they didnt see that coming or how that would make the events pointless is beyond me.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Comments
It was probably being said already, but it should be said again.
You can't have a living world in a themepark where everything is happening in instances, period! To have a living world things must happen on the open world.
Wow, some of you are still drinking that left over kool-aid from last year I see...GW2 is the best marketed MMO since WoW and is very slick and polished but a lot of the stuff that it claims is unique is just recycled and polished up from other MMOs (Hearts are just quests with no quest giver, dynamic events are the same idea and usually less "dynamic" than rifts in Rift, "Living World" is just pretty much the same thing that LOTRO developed 6 years ago with their periodically updated epic quest and I believe even the original Guild Wars had something kind of similar and I might add that LOTRO's story is much better written and more coherent.
I still play and like the game but it's kind of like being promised a Ferrari and getting a Toyota. Sure, the Toyota is a perfectly fine car that will do what you absolutely need it to do but if the dealer promised you a Ferrari you're still gonna be kind of let down.
What is your point? Living breathing world is bad for a MMO? I never claimed that it is all that a MMO needs or that I am still playing it. I don't like Ryzom for other reasons. But the world is awesome in that game. So please stay on topic. The OP wondered why some don't see GW2's world as a living world and I just gave examples of MMO's that did it better on that point.
Sorry bro, its very obvious you never played the game.
Actually I agree with him. I love the dynamic events, but they are at their best when there are not too many players participating. With too many players he is right that it just turns out into an AOE spamming zergfest. Back when I still played a lot, some of the highlvl areas just had zergtrains going from one DE to the next. It was as mindnumbing as he portrayed. Zergs are just the easiest way to complete them. But to be fair, I have no solution for that.
Players leave when the games are not good enough or boring. Gildwars 2 is boring.
and has faild. It'll Never get on their feet again and get a second Shangs !
RIP Gildwars 2
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There are thousands of dynamic events. If you wan to troll you can at least learn a thing or two about the game, even better would be to actually play the game (such a shocking proposal)
Yes some are zerged. the other 99% aint. And they all tell a story. Yes not every one is of "epic proportions" but i would say, in your own description, that would add to the world.
But nah, lets just baselesly bash, thats the shit!
Oh, and its so amusing "look! a zerg train! i can go with it or i dont have to go! hmmm, lets roll with it!" -> complain on the forums about zerg trains rofl
Did i mention something about not allowing players to be in charge of anything remotely important in MMO? Yes i did lol
At least GW2 lets you do variety of things and offers choice, you are not locked in single path like endless farming of latest raid like rest of them. You can roll with the zerg or you dont have to. Its your CHOICE.
Yea I heard Gildwars 2 was terrible as well that's why I never played Gildwars 2 myself.
I just thought about something in this thread, also Ender it's not monthly updates it's bi weekly updates which might be first IDK unless Asherons Call did bi weekly.
Let's see, questing in Guild Wars 2 is not the same as questing in(For the games I tried) TSW, SWTOR, and all the other MMOs, I would even say Warhammer as well.
I think what's being compared for those who really don't like the game are trying to balance it out with negatives, are basing this on the actual story but not the way everything is set up hence why it gives a different experience.
Far as it being a quest hub in disguise, I guess hearts can do that but even hearts are a bit different as most quests have you do only one or two things and doing anything else while completing it doesn't help the cause.
The living story events are a step into the right direction or at least give a different experience than normal questing and raids, however different is never better or worse for all people. Of course the majority now on this forum would lead you to believe that it is worse but really it's subjective.
Then we have the video that was posted on I believe page, least for me they delivered on what I expected, course again all I use is common sense when it comes to PR, I keep my expectations in check, understand the limits and progress of technology and base what was said in ANET's videos on actual reality, like what can it really look like in a world for Massive amount of players, not something unrealistic that will then make me feel disappointed.
Then it comes down to catching on quick and the odd thing is people want different things and on this website especially or least MMORPG forums, what people want is essentially what they don't want. Sure this doesn't make sense, but then again when you look at what they ask for then turn around and complain about, it does. People don't want change and if it is change it has to be a certain or carefully detailed change that they will like it.
Most of the time people ban together because they like or hate the same thing, but when you hear why and what they dislike it's for different reasons, meaning if it fit that persons perception of what he/she thought living story or world meant, it'd still leave someone either wanting more of or less of what is presented...or hell even opposite.
Sidenote - First few pages, TSW nad SWTOR magically became great questing, which is subjective, but both games questing where very single player focused, and not as great as they where claimed in those first few pages of this thread, but well shit that's just my opinion. I think for personnel story SWTOR and TSW beat GW2 far as cutscenes though.
TL:DR - First off don't dumb yourself down when watching PR videos, joke is naturally on you not the devs, especially when it's the year 2013, we got to wise up more to survive these days.
Anyway it is true GW2 didn't "master" or "perfect" their vision(Like any human on earth would and does), yet it is also true they at the very least went that direction with their vision and tried something different and went away from the norm more than any MMORPG so far to date has, that there is fact, whether it's better or not that is up to the player.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
When you include Rift it completely kills your point. Rift is about the biggest WoW clone ever made and a pretty awful game in general.
Because... Guildwars 2 DOESNT create a living world. It feels very static. The events aren't very dynamic at all, feeling to be the same thing over and over. When you have an event that plays out the same way over and over each time, always ending in the same fashion (either pass or fail) its not very dynamic. Rift had a feeling of being dynamic by having things cause noticable differences. Sure it was simple "Rift takes control of area, foothold there" but it had a feeling like things were happening and it wasn't some static change. GW2 fails to do that.
The fact you 'run in circles' doing all the events as they pop IN ORDER is FAR from 'living' and it ends up causing the game to feel perhaps one of the weakest games in terms of making dynamic events feel alive, just more so staged and predictable. To be fair its difficult to pull off, but I feel GW2 having such a reliance on dynamic events and needing them for people to 'progress' ends up causing them to feel far weaker and no where near a living story.
The only amusing thing is that people were expecting actual independent self evolving world where there would be indefinite variation of indefinite events which would forever change.
But yah, most of people kinda kept it realisitc (including ANet).
And mentioning Rift in there totally kiilled anything you were trying to say.
And yes, GW2 is the best appearance of living world out there, just look FFXIV take on it rofl, its pathetic.
And TERA is probably best example of anti-living world (undead? seems so lol), but others (like SWTOR/AoC/LOTRO/WoW...) are not far behind, those are completely static worlds.
And of those thousands of dramatic events, how many are NOT Kill X mob till this bar fill's up, or X mobs killed, now kill this boss mob. or gather these things till a bar fills up, or escort this npc or, play super mario 64. . .
not a whole lot. .
And before you call me a troll for disagreeing with you, I still play every once and awhile. but get bored with the repetitiveness quickly. . .
When people talk about living worlds I always thought they meant something along the lines of a game that felt alive because of how players were allowed to interact with one another, how they could affect the game world. Not so much in a physical sense like blowing things up in the town square, but more in a social/political/economic sense. Very few games have pulled this off such as UO and EVE. But UO is dated as hell and EVE just isn't accessible enough to get more people into it.
I think that for people who are looking for a "living" world (not GW2 silly living world bi weekly event updates) people should look out for more info regarding World of Darkness. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is an MMO being developed by CCP (EVE Online) Based on the World of Darkness universe that some of you may know from the game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
There isn't a whole lot of info yet, as of Fanfest 2013 (CCP event) I believe they are just getting started on real production. But they have some pretty lofty ambitions for this game including player elected Princes to run entire cities, perma-death if Princes puts a hit out on you, clothing design, "realistic" vampire movement (speedy, acrobatic...etc) I believe real time combat, and best of all no god damned training queue like EVE.
Any games like that which aren't about vampires. No way are you going to get me to pay money to pretend I'm a vampire.
Well in the game chat itself I don't see very much complaining. The forums are another story altogether. People will complain about anything.
Was it revolutionary ? No. But GW2 is still, in its own right, a very good game. I didn't fall into the hype, therefore what they promised in a game has been delivered to my expectations. I had realistic expectations unlike most forum dwellers.
Sure it may not be perfect, but no game is. You cannot please all the people all the time, that is a simple fact. There are many limiting factors including resources and hardware, but they did what other companies didn't. They actually moved the genre forward.
Quest hubs were replaced by location events. You no longer have to finish a quest a certain way, you can chose alternate paths to finish a "heart" quest. That was brilliant in my opinion. Events chain into other events. NPC actually talk to each other making the world feel somewhat alive. There are many places to explore. They have, in my opinion, one of the best underwater experiences of any MMO I ever played.
They have pumped out quite a few of content updates, albeit not to everyone's taste. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I returned to GW2 was because I looked over all the living world updates they ran over the past year and was kicking myself for missing some of these.
ANet has learned a few things over the year:
They finally realized there has to be some sort of gear progression. Ascended gear or agony resistance ring a bell ?
They finally accept that players are going to farm SOMETHING, no matter how many times you change it. Champ train ring a bell?
Now if only they realize that having healers and more defined support roles will be a good thing and introduce new skills into play supporting these playstyles, they can finally redeem some more players. Why you ask? Because ANet has also learned that dungeons will be elitist even without the trinity, so lets make them fun again. I've seen group members kicked because they were not a high dps class and/or not in all zerker gear. I've seen people kicked from groups because they were inexperienced about a dungeon. THE SAME THINGS ANET WAS TRYING TO AVOID. Well it failed.
Well stated.
They took a tiny step forward by making a small rotation of dynamic events. What many people are hoping for is a leap forward with dynamic events created more organically based on the changes in the zone.
Those games are prime examples of not really giving players what they really want. Listening to players doesn't really matter if the launched product doesn't meet their needs. That's what Beta was for.
A living world is only part of what players want, and certainly not top on the list.
Instancing isn't that much of a problem. There is a lot action outside of the dungeons. The bigger problem is the design of that "living" world. GW2 uses a cycle of repeating events ranging from 10mins to 2h. That cycle is way to short and instead of bringing life to a world it becomes extremely artificial. Another problem for me is that the story itself is too splintered and locked to the individual zones and thoose zones are caught within an infinite time loop.
When thinking of older games i tend to remember things like contested bosses spawning once within a window of two weeks(GW2 bosses more like 2h), world events with progress of weeks to month(GW2 events are not based on player progression and consists of pure repetition of 10mins event-farming), raidbosses more like once a week or every 2-3 weeks(Tequatl every 2h). At the same time GW2 still shares the negative aspects of the artificial world like players not being able to make any changes to the world.
They add a few temporary quest. That's all.
I think living world means a totally different things aka sandbox stuff.
That being said I love the 2 week update.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
yes yes .. UPS questing is oh so innovative .. /facepalm
I mean it's yellow and brown instead of blue and orange ...
it does the EXACT SAME THING in a different way .. which means it gets just as boring just as fast.
the 5th word in the OP pretty much defines the problem ... how he/she sees gw2 as non-static is beyond me. all the same events in all the same places. worse, at release there were 1000000 ppl at every event. how they didnt see that coming or how that would make the events pointless is beyond me.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already