I actually see the exact opposite happening. Noone is accountable about playing bad. You show up in a DE and your just faceroll your people being bad and noone notices or cares. Same with world PvP, you can be as bad as you want and there is no way to tell. I don't see any kind of accountability whatsoever about being bad (with the possible exception of hardmode dungeons).
So, where you see skill, I see total absence of. Why bother to be any good when you can be as bad as you want and noone will be able to tell, or care?
Regarding Funcom, yes, their games have numerous flaws. But they are among the very few developers that risk trying new stuff. Pretty much no western developer risks deviating from the mold and very few eastern. People should be really thankful that Anet is owned by NCsoft (and not Activision or SOE or EA, for example).
SO let me get this straight. People are actually bad at killing standard quest mobs in the world? People actually judge others for that? Because that's all DEs are. They are this game's version of standard quests.
As for World PvP, one person being bad doesn't mean shit. This type of world pvp is more about having good leaders and massive amounts of people following their orders to achieve goals as a team. I don't see how this is any different from 40 man raids where people can slack off and get carried by the rest of their raid.
I'm also curious as to why it's important to spot bad players? I never understood the urge for people to call out others. The only time bad players annoy me is when I'm in a small group and they are ruining my fun. If DEs allow bad players to have fun without being ridiculed, I'm all for it. Not everyone will be great at the game, but everyone is playing to have fun. For example, my brother is horrible by my standards, but I would very much like for him to enjoy the game.
Also, if nobody bothered to be good, wouldn't anything remotely difficult be impossible to do?
You know, I sighed a heavy, soulful sigh when you mentioned not calling people out...
You're right, you're completely right and I agree. And in the game I don't think it will happen much. But to me it highlights just how much the traditional MMORPG has broken people. Even in PvE people have been conditioned to see people as enemies that they have to compete with. What they won't be used to is getting called out for calling someone out. They'll have people who'll actually call them jerks for that, since it won't just be their friends in a massive circlejerk there, it'll be lots of different people.
So in fact, the person who starts bitching in the middle of a dynamic event is likely the one to be ostracised for starting drama. Does it matter who's doing well or who isn't providing that everyone is having fun? I'm no slouch myself, and I know there'll be people worse than me. But really? Don't give a shit. So long as they're having fun, that's all that matters to me... and I'm going to be blunt here...
I would rather carry the weight of someone who's nice, but new at the game, rather than have to deal with someone who's a misanthropic jerk and constantly causing drama (no matter how good this person is).
I'm sure that there'll be a lot of people who'll feel the same way.
Guild Wars 2 is a social game, so skill won't count for everything. It'll matter, but if you want to be some kind of hero then you have to both treat people with dignity and be good. The problem is that traditional MMORPG players have forgotten that you can treat your fellow player with dignity and respect, they've had that conditioned out of them because they've been trained to see another player as the bad guy - as much as any mob.
This is why it's going to be so, so hard to snap them out of this in Guild Wars 2. I suspect though that if they can't break their own conditioning, they'll get pissed off at GW2 for being 'a game for carebears,' and then they'll go back to playing whatever they were playing before. This filtration will help the community grow, because GW2 from the outset pretty much encourages people to be social, to get together, to have fun.
Whether you're good or not will have some small factor on the battlefield, but the most important factor as to whether you're remembered as a hero or an arsehole is whether you treat other people with dignity. If you're self-important and you're calling people out on every little mistake, and saying that they're a dick for arguig with you, and claiming that they should be playing your way... well, I've known people like that, and let's just say that they are not popular.
So I wouldn't worry, blayze. If we have someone on the battlefield who calls someone out for being bad, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the players on the battlefield turn against the guy doing the calling out, the one causing drama, rather than the person who's not playing as well as they could be.
What people need to realise is: Not everything is a competition.
You may have been programmed to believe that it is, but it's not applicable to GW2.
The point of this thread isn't to argue semantics about carrots, it's more about endgame freedom. Players can enjoy the content they want whenever they want, not within a given time frame of when the devs want you to play the content. Any achievement you acomplish in GW2 will never become obsolete or redundant because it's old.
The only reason a dungeon will become empty is because it wasn't designed well or isn't fun. There aren't numbers tied to the content to decide if it's worth your time or not.
Think it comes down to semantics, because when you use a metaphor, people are bound to have different interpretations. Especially with metaphors that get so overused, like the carrot on a stick - look how many people seem to forget that the stick was even part of it.
I think the issue is progression. Do MMOs need progression systems? If they don't, if it's all about the simply fun gameplay, why even have levels?
Is it just that much less important at endgame? Maybe endgame is the carrot. Unlike a neverending gear grind, the average player can actually get it, but you have to go through the levels first. And sure, a lot of players will lose interest at that point, but at least they'll have been hooked for a while, and maybe even consider it to have been (past tense, but still) a great game. That may be enough to keep the game popular for a long time, even if it does lack retention.
Just seems like a bit of a gamble to me, and maybe I'm biased, because I'd love to find an MMO that manages to keep progression going month after month. That's just the sort of player I am. An explorer and an achiever, and not really much of a socializer or killer. Once I've seen most of the world, and my characters are no longer improving, I need a new game.
More like DAOC progression, than WoW though. I never could get into gear as a progression system, at all.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Why have levels? Again, optional carrots. Some people will want to just blast through to get to the end of the game as quickly as possible. The optional carrot is the end. Others, like myself, just won't give a shit. What many people forget is that there were levels in GW1. And in Prophecies the levels remained with you right up until the end of the game (you don't hit 20 until near the end).
If you can design a game where levelling up isn't that important, but solely cathartic for carrot people, then you've won. And I think that's the design they're going with for Guild Wars 2.
---
The reason GW1 had levels was as an optional carrot. It was almost an illusory carrot, even. These are pretty much just afterhtought things that they've thrown into the game for people who need it to feel like they're getting some sort of carrot-laden progression.
ArenaNet realises that it's not a magical act of snapping one's fingers and freeing these people from their conditioning. And if you want your game to sell to them, then it needs to look like you have the odd carrot there. But if you've been following Guild Wars and 2 for as long as I have, you realise just how optional these carrots are. They might as well not exist. They're there purely so ArenaNet can say "Hey, look you guys. Carrots! If you need them. Carrots are there if you desperately need them. Andthosethatdon'tcanjustignorethem. BUT HEY, CARROTS IF YOU NEED THEM. Buy our game?"
That's pretty much what it is.
---
Also, all this carrot fetishism is making me think of hardcore MMORPG players as rabbits.
I've already dealt with this in a very long reply in another post that dream chaser started.
Gear, for many people, isn't the carrot. Community-driven events (raids) and completing said events IS. Shinies are just a nice extra that makes completing these events a little easier.
Some people focus JUST on the shinies, but most mmos these days have really downplayed the importance of the shiney by making it easier to get them. The guilds that really push content are pushing it because they want to be the first people to complete something - NOT because they want teh phat lewtz; as you seem to SO adamantly believe.
I've been in 'progression' guilds and I've been in casual guilds. The common denominator between the two is a group of people who want to share a common interest and see as much content in the game as they can. PvE content that requires a large number of people is just more epic. The purpose of devs these days is to make PvE raid content more difficult without throwing up a 'gear check' roadblock, or at least as few of them as possible. That's the way design philosophy has shifted and it works surprisingly well. In other words, PvE content is ALREADY being designed to still be 'epic' without as much a focus on the shinies that people have.
Since you fail to grasp this concept I'm not really sure you're qualified to comment on GW 2 or anything else in this industry.
I can spend about an hour or two a few nights a week doing 'end game' content and EASILY get shinies in almost any current mmo. Shinies aren't difficult to get, so they're just an afterthought.
I suppose you could argue that since they're an afterthought that why have them at all. The reason is obvious, really. Gear is a method of throttling pve difficulty by small increments.
If PvE encounter difficulty were SOLELY based on player skill there would be an even larger portion of players that would be unhappy with it. These encounters have to be difficult enough to provide an engaging challenge, but easy enough that the heavy majority of your players can actually overcome the challenge. Since most casuals seem to think that being good at something is 'hardcore' they, more often than not, fail at anything that's complex. You see this all the time where a new raid or dungeon will be released that the devs spent a lot of time doing really clever things, but it proves too difficult for too many people so they dumb it down.
The solution to this was to create 'hardmodes' for people that wanted more of a challenge. A problem of resource management came in to play and the best way to make minute adjustments to difficulty is to make adjustments to character stats - GEAR!
It's POSSIBLE that you could create a difficulty slider to let people set their dungeon and raid difficulty in smaller increments. Inso dong you could completely remove gear from the equation, but then you have to deal with how you dole out character skills. Research and decades of evidence shows that you CANNOT give a player everything right out of the gate and you certainly can't give them their 'coolest' stuff early on. There needs to be some sort of progression for people to actually get engaged.
Gear is NOT the progression, it is a MEANS to progression. Like having a key that unlocks a special chest or a horse that's fast enough to outrun a dragon; gear is just a means to make progressive steps in content and character development.
Sure, there -are- other ways of doing this, but are they ACTUALLY better? Where is your evidence? All anyone is doing is railing on about how gear-based progression is the devil, but nobody is actually providing evidence of another system that would work better. GW 2 isn't out yet and ANet is being painfully vague about their game systems. If I had to take a guess I'd say that GW 2 is going to use a remarkably similar progression system to GW 1 and what currently exists, but they're putting a slightly different spin on it so they can go around and fuel their PR machine.
I would say there are carrots lots of them and it's up to the player which carrot they want. The thing about these carrots that evan the most long winded and eloquent replies seems to have missed is these carrots arn't tied to a stick and then poitioned such that you can't quite reach them(1). These carrots are just lieing around and your free to pick them up and munch on them till the carrot is all gone then you can find another carrot if you so desire. So yes there are carrots and yes they are needed.
(1) I feel carrot on a stick anology is quite wrong. The clasic carrot on the stick is designed such that it's just out of reach of the ass or mule you need to keep moving. The more accurate is (at least in MMO's) carrot on a string where you are able to reach the carrot and nibble it for a bit before someone tugs the string and moves the carrot so you have to go chasing it to get another nibble.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer.
Comments
SO let me get this straight. People are actually bad at killing standard quest mobs in the world? People actually judge others for that? Because that's all DEs are. They are this game's version of standard quests.
As for World PvP, one person being bad doesn't mean shit. This type of world pvp is more about having good leaders and massive amounts of people following their orders to achieve goals as a team. I don't see how this is any different from 40 man raids where people can slack off and get carried by the rest of their raid.
I'm also curious as to why it's important to spot bad players? I never understood the urge for people to call out others. The only time bad players annoy me is when I'm in a small group and they are ruining my fun. If DEs allow bad players to have fun without being ridiculed, I'm all for it. Not everyone will be great at the game, but everyone is playing to have fun. For example, my brother is horrible by my standards, but I would very much like for him to enjoy the game.
Also, if nobody bothered to be good, wouldn't anything remotely difficult be impossible to do?
@blayzewun
You're my favourite person, today.
You know, I sighed a heavy, soulful sigh when you mentioned not calling people out...
You're right, you're completely right and I agree. And in the game I don't think it will happen much. But to me it highlights just how much the traditional MMORPG has broken people. Even in PvE people have been conditioned to see people as enemies that they have to compete with. What they won't be used to is getting called out for calling someone out. They'll have people who'll actually call them jerks for that, since it won't just be their friends in a massive circlejerk there, it'll be lots of different people.
So in fact, the person who starts bitching in the middle of a dynamic event is likely the one to be ostracised for starting drama. Does it matter who's doing well or who isn't providing that everyone is having fun? I'm no slouch myself, and I know there'll be people worse than me. But really? Don't give a shit. So long as they're having fun, that's all that matters to me... and I'm going to be blunt here...
I would rather carry the weight of someone who's nice, but new at the game, rather than have to deal with someone who's a misanthropic jerk and constantly causing drama (no matter how good this person is).
I'm sure that there'll be a lot of people who'll feel the same way.
Guild Wars 2 is a social game, so skill won't count for everything. It'll matter, but if you want to be some kind of hero then you have to both treat people with dignity and be good. The problem is that traditional MMORPG players have forgotten that you can treat your fellow player with dignity and respect, they've had that conditioned out of them because they've been trained to see another player as the bad guy - as much as any mob.
This is why it's going to be so, so hard to snap them out of this in Guild Wars 2. I suspect though that if they can't break their own conditioning, they'll get pissed off at GW2 for being 'a game for carebears,' and then they'll go back to playing whatever they were playing before. This filtration will help the community grow, because GW2 from the outset pretty much encourages people to be social, to get together, to have fun.
Whether you're good or not will have some small factor on the battlefield, but the most important factor as to whether you're remembered as a hero or an arsehole is whether you treat other people with dignity. If you're self-important and you're calling people out on every little mistake, and saying that they're a dick for arguig with you, and claiming that they should be playing your way... well, I've known people like that, and let's just say that they are not popular.
So I wouldn't worry, blayze. If we have someone on the battlefield who calls someone out for being bad, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the players on the battlefield turn against the guy doing the calling out, the one causing drama, rather than the person who's not playing as well as they could be.
What people need to realise is: Not everything is a competition.
You may have been programmed to believe that it is, but it's not applicable to GW2.
Think it comes down to semantics, because when you use a metaphor, people are bound to have different interpretations. Especially with metaphors that get so overused, like the carrot on a stick - look how many people seem to forget that the stick was even part of it.
I think the issue is progression. Do MMOs need progression systems? If they don't, if it's all about the simply fun gameplay, why even have levels?
Is it just that much less important at endgame? Maybe endgame is the carrot. Unlike a neverending gear grind, the average player can actually get it, but you have to go through the levels first. And sure, a lot of players will lose interest at that point, but at least they'll have been hooked for a while, and maybe even consider it to have been (past tense, but still) a great game. That may be enough to keep the game popular for a long time, even if it does lack retention.
Just seems like a bit of a gamble to me, and maybe I'm biased, because I'd love to find an MMO that manages to keep progression going month after month. That's just the sort of player I am. An explorer and an achiever, and not really much of a socializer or killer. Once I've seen most of the world, and my characters are no longer improving, I need a new game.
More like DAOC progression, than WoW though. I never could get into gear as a progression system, at all.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Why have levels? Again, optional carrots. Some people will want to just blast through to get to the end of the game as quickly as possible. The optional carrot is the end. Others, like myself, just won't give a shit. What many people forget is that there were levels in GW1. And in Prophecies the levels remained with you right up until the end of the game (you don't hit 20 until near the end).
If you can design a game where levelling up isn't that important, but solely cathartic for carrot people, then you've won. And I think that's the design they're going with for Guild Wars 2.
---
The reason GW1 had levels was as an optional carrot. It was almost an illusory carrot, even. These are pretty much just afterhtought things that they've thrown into the game for people who need it to feel like they're getting some sort of carrot-laden progression.
ArenaNet realises that it's not a magical act of snapping one's fingers and freeing these people from their conditioning. And if you want your game to sell to them, then it needs to look like you have the odd carrot there. But if you've been following Guild Wars and 2 for as long as I have, you realise just how optional these carrots are. They might as well not exist. They're there purely so ArenaNet can say "Hey, look you guys. Carrots! If you need them. Carrots are there if you desperately need them. Andthosethatdon'tcanjustignorethem. BUT HEY, CARROTS IF YOU NEED THEM. Buy our game?"
That's pretty much what it is.
---
Also, all this carrot fetishism is making me think of hardcore MMORPG players as rabbits.
I've already dealt with this in a very long reply in another post that dream chaser started.
Gear, for many people, isn't the carrot. Community-driven events (raids) and completing said events IS. Shinies are just a nice extra that makes completing these events a little easier.
Some people focus JUST on the shinies, but most mmos these days have really downplayed the importance of the shiney by making it easier to get them. The guilds that really push content are pushing it because they want to be the first people to complete something - NOT because they want teh phat lewtz; as you seem to SO adamantly believe.
I've been in 'progression' guilds and I've been in casual guilds. The common denominator between the two is a group of people who want to share a common interest and see as much content in the game as they can. PvE content that requires a large number of people is just more epic. The purpose of devs these days is to make PvE raid content more difficult without throwing up a 'gear check' roadblock, or at least as few of them as possible. That's the way design philosophy has shifted and it works surprisingly well. In other words, PvE content is ALREADY being designed to still be 'epic' without as much a focus on the shinies that people have.
Since you fail to grasp this concept I'm not really sure you're qualified to comment on GW 2 or anything else in this industry.
I can spend about an hour or two a few nights a week doing 'end game' content and EASILY get shinies in almost any current mmo. Shinies aren't difficult to get, so they're just an afterthought.
I suppose you could argue that since they're an afterthought that why have them at all. The reason is obvious, really. Gear is a method of throttling pve difficulty by small increments.
If PvE encounter difficulty were SOLELY based on player skill there would be an even larger portion of players that would be unhappy with it. These encounters have to be difficult enough to provide an engaging challenge, but easy enough that the heavy majority of your players can actually overcome the challenge. Since most casuals seem to think that being good at something is 'hardcore' they, more often than not, fail at anything that's complex. You see this all the time where a new raid or dungeon will be released that the devs spent a lot of time doing really clever things, but it proves too difficult for too many people so they dumb it down.
The solution to this was to create 'hardmodes' for people that wanted more of a challenge. A problem of resource management came in to play and the best way to make minute adjustments to difficulty is to make adjustments to character stats - GEAR!
It's POSSIBLE that you could create a difficulty slider to let people set their dungeon and raid difficulty in smaller increments. Inso dong you could completely remove gear from the equation, but then you have to deal with how you dole out character skills. Research and decades of evidence shows that you CANNOT give a player everything right out of the gate and you certainly can't give them their 'coolest' stuff early on. There needs to be some sort of progression for people to actually get engaged.
Gear is NOT the progression, it is a MEANS to progression. Like having a key that unlocks a special chest or a horse that's fast enough to outrun a dragon; gear is just a means to make progressive steps in content and character development.
Sure, there -are- other ways of doing this, but are they ACTUALLY better? Where is your evidence? All anyone is doing is railing on about how gear-based progression is the devil, but nobody is actually providing evidence of another system that would work better. GW 2 isn't out yet and ANet is being painfully vague about their game systems. If I had to take a guess I'd say that GW 2 is going to use a remarkably similar progression system to GW 1 and what currently exists, but they're putting a slightly different spin on it so they can go around and fuel their PR machine.
I would say there are carrots lots of them and it's up to the player which carrot they want. The thing about these carrots that evan the most long winded and eloquent replies seems to have missed is these carrots arn't tied to a stick and then poitioned such that you can't quite reach them(1). These carrots are just lieing around and your free to pick them up and munch on them till the carrot is all gone then you can find another carrot if you so desire. So yes there are carrots and yes they are needed.
(1) I feel carrot on a stick anology is quite wrong. The clasic carrot on the stick is designed such that it's just out of reach of the ass or mule you need to keep moving. The more accurate is (at least in MMO's) carrot on a string where you are able to reach the carrot and nibble it for a bit before someone tugs the string and moves the carrot so you have to go chasing it to get another nibble.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer.