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[Column] Guild Wars 2: Experience Tyria All Over Again
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
I remember playing the Guild Wars 2 Beta, and entering my first event. Eight other players were in the area, and without needing to say a single word to each other, we grouped up and brought some justice in a small part of Tyria. It was such an awesome feeling! I recently started a new character, and was in that same area, and the very same event popped up. I couldn't find a single other player near me. I played through the rest of the map, mostly alone, which was rather boring. I wish things were like the early days, where exploring a new area was exciting. My wish may be granted!
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: Experience Tyria All Over Again.
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Exploration is about to become fun again.
Comments
People will hate my response. But something akin to SWTORs legacy system would be perfect for this game. Make rolling alts another form of endgame activity.
Alternatively put in meaningful carrots for people to re-vist older areas especially if they havent done so before, make short term and long term goals for characters tie into this not just the legendary grind but smaller more bitesized things.
I have 8 level 80s one of each, I have done almost everything in the game and made my characters as different as a can, Elementalist healing, gaurding tank, necro survival with minions, berserker warrior and so on. I have opened up two more character slots were I am waiting for a new, class, proffesion, race whatever just something new so I can start leveling up instantly again.
I love the world of Tyria, never played a more beutiful game at any point in the mmo gaming world. But with this new megaserver start I just might find myself leveling up a second elementalist just for the fun of it and going for dps.
The megaserver is a great idea aslong as it doesn't make grouping with your friends harder in heavy populated zones.
David really?
If I were to create a new Character during the Spring WvW Season and find Tyria teaming with players that were ready to group for every zone event that popped I would probably delete my toon and re-roll on a different server.
This event is a big deal on not only our server but I suspect on Every Server. I have friends that have come over taking advantage or the 50% off sale and they understand that because of this event the majority of the population is in WvW ore in queue for WvW. These friends are jumping in WvW and running the EB Karma train to take advantage of fast XP, fast Karma and fast WvW Levels from the time they get out of their starter instance. They understand that this game is set up so that you can explore Tyria at any level and still get good rewards.
I really think that not only is it unfair but almost laughably bias to write an article about World Exploration and PvE Events when a WvW Seasonal Event is going on where servers are fighting tooth and nail to get a better piece of the Prize.
You are right, I had to que up for eternal battleground for almost 2 hours before I got in.
Here is the evolution of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQbB2BzjGd0
Considering the fact that they were crowing about something big coming down from Colin as of last Friday: https://twitter.com/mmorpgcom/status/454629286360911872
"Access" has the high cost of "integrity."
Expect this site to continue provide ArenaNet with knob shines unless you hold them accountable for honest reporting.
We'll see if it ends up being a mess. My guess is that it may have a rocky start considering the testing of new architecture on live servers with a patch that a lot of people are anticipating.
This is not a game.
There probably won't be too many technical issues with Megaservers. It's the exact same tech that allowed for overflows, but now every instance of a given zone is essentially an overflow, as there are no longer guaranteed instances of each zone for each game server.
I think this feature is very much a double edged sword though. One one side, it should mean more people in each zone you enter to play with, on the other side, server based community is lost, as the people you encounter will be from a mish-mash of servers. If being in overflow always felt not quite right to you, knowing the people you were running around with would likely never be seen again, that what the entire game will feel like now. If being in overflow never mattered one bit to you, then this new system probably won't bother you either.
It's great for the mostly solo player who isn't looking to find friends and guilds organically through game play. (MMO players are far less sociable with strangers today than at any other point in MMO gaming history). For those who like to parley chance cooperative efforts into potential friendships, or chose a guild based on which guilds they see most positively represented out in the game world, this change will be disastrous.
As to the point on how great the game world is and how worthy it is of exploration, I agree. However, most explorers have already relived the world via multiple alts. If the game world had evolved with new dynamic event content, as originally promised, then there would be much more incentive to revisit the world once again. However, since Living Story and it's temporary content replaced ongoing development of permanent world content, revisiting the world once again just serves as a reminder of how static the world that once felt so dynamic has become.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Big guild wars 2 fan here-
Until they add more skills and traits (no, one Grandmaster trait per line is not enough) this game is just too boring. Builds are all the same without new utility and weapon skills for classes.
/Shelve until new GW2 release that actually increases builds and viability of choice amongst professions. Warlords of Draenor is looking pretty interesting, as is Wildstar.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Agreed. I can't understand why they're so reluctant to add more skill variety to the classes. Megaservers are a nice touch, but so many previous additions to the game just feel like a waste of time..
I don't understand why you think there is not enough build diversity? You can build your character in many different. ways.
I've changed my Warrior builds from playing as a straight up Berserker Damage dealer going for the highest damage numbers in the game with the greatsword and the rifle in power/prec/crit gear with sigils and runes that increases damage per kills.
I've played AOE healing Warrior that healed my teammate and cured conditions with my buffs. I've played a Warrior WvW stability tank that made all the difference with all my banners.
And in the early beginning of the game as I was trying to learn to play, I was playing a Signet Warrior that ran around with 5 signets. Then I started working for my tier 3 cultural gear (125 gold in total) and for that I swapped to an AOE farmer build with the Sword + Axe and the Longbow (to tag mobs).
Damn I've even played Warrior builds that worked well as ENTIRELY ranged. Longbow / Rifle gave me a lot of powerful AOE power and single target DOT madness. I've played my warrior as a gap closer with the sword and warhorn, and as a knockdown hammer warrior.
Depending on what stats you take on the gear, and what rune sets you use, can make you able to do A LOT of things. Like seriously. Once I swammed all my gear for Healingpower and my runes for healing, and and took just 1 single trait that allowed my shouts to heal, my class was turned upside down.
The real problem here is that people don't know how to make unique builds. The game doesn't explain itself well enough and most people don't get it. A few are sitting with excel spreadshits and doing the numbers in spvp, while others like me go to youtube and just try everything.
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I am not an expert on any class, nor do I know all of them well enough, and I guess I don't believe you can build as diverse sets of builds as in Guild Wars 1.
But on the flipside, I think there is much less clutter and useless skills in Guild Wars 2 than in Guild Wars 1. And I think this idea of just throwing more skills in, more weapons and more everything is not a good way to solve problems. You don't solve the real problem. You don't clear the root of what is going on here. You are just trying to confuse the gamers by giving them more supposed options, but if they don't "get it" to begin with then what is that gonna help.
Infinite options don't make people happy. Read Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point or see his TED.talk . He uses examples from real life how too much choice makes people unhappy. His point being that choice is important, but took much becomes a stick in the wheel. ( http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce )
I am not against adding more skills to the game, but GW2 is one of the most balanced well rounded MMOs I have played and I am convinced it's because they have a conservative and mature approach to adding skills to the game. I hope we get more weapon sets in the expansion. I would love to see Flails and Whips and Polearms and Two-Handed Axes. But these things needs to be added while offering new gameplay to the game. Every weapon is a sub class of it's own. A Hammer Guardian is supposed to be it's own class that differs from a Greatsword Guardian. It's your instant-swap specialization.
If they make new weapons the weapons should allow for different things. How would an Elementalist work with a Whip? what can it do? Should Engineer have a real non-kit melee weapon?
Well,
I would like to see more player indused influence that just doing events. I wish there would be areas players could take over for their guilds or alliance, or the guild that did the most events in a zone or killed a rare mob or difficult boss could sort of alter the entire zone.
We need a meta-game for PvE. This is sandbox mentality.
Are you thinking about creating a new character? Has anything stopped you from creating a new toon before? Tell us in the comments below.
I have played 5 chars to 80 and did never like the LS approach of the game. I played one and a half year with the content of the initial release. I don't rush games. But after that, the game is pure boring (and shop centric which I hate, I prefer subs). For me, there is no such thing as fresh content since the day of the release.
Nothing short of a full blown expansion will get my interest back. I will need stuff to explore for more than one or two hours to ever login again. I don't care for skill and trait mishmash. An expansion of consederable size would get me play for months again. A new character now? For what? No, thanks.
who care what you think, if you dont like it , move on, dont put other new player down, because of your boring ness, I say move on, the ship had sail. If you not happy dont play, let other enjoy.
Obviously the site cares, or the column wouldn't end with "Are you thinking about creating a new character? Has anything stopped you from creating a new toon before? Tell us in the comments below."
There are quite a few people who have issues with the focus Anet has had on the LS, as the primary way of adding content to the game.
I'm on the fence about it myself. I like that they've let the new content revolve around the existing world, it fits the design goal of keeping zones relevant, even after you've leveled through them once.
On the other hand, if you miss an arch, that part of the story is gone forever, nevermind the rewards that came with it.
That is the paradox of the dynamic content and sandbox elements a lot of people want in a MMO – we want features that feel connected and have an impact, but also enjoy the content at our own pace. Those two wishes are hard, if not impossible to combine.
Have been playing for months at start, leveling of course all my alts as I'm altholic .-), ... but for long now I login from time to time to ... just logout after few minutes. Not sure why, have been very very happy once, still is best game ever made in B2P model .... but I'm always resubbing only and between Wow and Swtor.
About "as it softens the death penalty." this is great. As death penalty is just one big ANNOYANCE, does nothing for gameplay or enjoyment. Maybe somebody does not care to die, but this is his/her problem. I hate a lot to die so will do anything in my power not to ... and if inevitable is close I will make sure I bring with me as many mobs as I can.
I see what you are saying. But on the bright side, you levelled 5 characters to level 80! In my eyes that speaks to the games strengths.
The question is that everybody wants to know: Can they make an expansion while simultaniously have 4 development teams at the same time doing 1 month worth of content that gets released in 2-week cycles?
It's important to remember, that a lot of game features have been added since release, as well as things that are not LS. Dungeons, Edge of the Mists, Southsun which is a big zone, massive expansion on the achievement system, dailies and monthlies, the account wallet, luck%, new healing skills, Fractals of the mists dungeons, new spvp maps. I mean.. if you look at the entire breathe of all the content they did, a lot more has been added than the living story side of things. And that's important to remember.
I get what you are saying about a full blown expansion. But lets say they work on that for 2 years, and then release it. Then most people will play through it a couple of times, and then people want more and more and more. And then you end up like Everquest with 11 expansion packs, while you anihilate a lot of players and have entire continents worth of content that are just forgotten.
We need world expansion (Elona, and Cantha) but we also need to keep making the old world relevant. Meta-game. Sandbox elements.
WvW is amazing because it's a never ending mode. The content itself is the competition against the other servers. That's all it is. There is no real "content". It's just tools and rules and parameters provided by the developers. Finders keepers, winners takes it all. And like that people can run around in circles in PvP and do the same thing over and over again.
Compared to PvE style content you have a linear progression, you see a boss, you kill it, and then you are bored. if you have to be forced to do it again you want a carrot like epic loot or a goal, but your still bored with killing that monster boss again and again.
You get diminishing returns because that boss monster took an army of developers to model, skin, animate, sound proof, balance testing, implamenting and so on, and gamers are sick of it, by the 5th time they kill it.
So the inherent problem here is that the developers can never keep up. My friend who is playing Diablo 3 ROS, loves it, but he is already twice times through it and now he wants more. They just spend 1-2 years developing that expansion and he burned through it in two weeks... there is no way that developers can keep making content at a steady pace as it is currently.
One of my pet peeves with LS is that your doing these achievement things like finding all the pumpkins and press F.. time consuming but not really that interesting. However, when you fill up an entire living story update with small things it seems like you are doing more things. So I think ArenaNet are already desperate to make enough content every 2 weeks.
Living Story has gotten so much better over the months, and it ended strong. The post - Scarlett cutscene was satisfying and set up the expansion perfectly. It showed what we all wanted to see.
TL;DR - It's time to put some sandbox into the PvE maps in GW2. No developer can keep up with the pace at which gamers consume the content. It will forever be a unstable relationship between creator and user.
Sandbox and gameplay systems like WvW and player run economy, however run themselves. Player compete against each other, simply using competition as the content. ArenaNet provide the groundfloor rules, but can sit back and rest while gamers tire themselves out trying to be the best.
This was the entire philosophy about SWG. Who could build the best city? who was the most liked social entertainer that made people stop playing the game and just sit there and laugh all day in chat? Who made the best weapons/droids/vehicles/foods/houses/spaceships/bio-engineered-pets/armor/mods/stims/harvesting tools with the randomly generated unique % materials that made every single piece of ore/hide/bone/metal unique in quality, and who were the best at scouting the world for all these materials from deep in the earth, from the creatures, from kills and from trading?
All these things encompasses people playing against each other by using the sandbox tools. Make more and better sandbox tools and gamers create their own narrative. then they dont need Living Story type content. Simply more features and tools.
Sorry, I guess I didn't answer the main question.
I've logged around 1800 hours on two accounts. I leveled 8 characters to 80 and have four more lower level alts as well. Most of my play time was spent exploring the vast game world. I approached GW2 world content as if I were playing a giant Skyrim.
Been there, done that times eight. Has it been long enough that I might enjoy one more run through? Maybe. However, I'm so disgusted with Living Story, as well as the general move, via LS and Dailies, towards the "Adventure by Checklist" approach to game design, that I just can't make my self go back to Tyria.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
WoW -
Comments along the lines of "I've levelled 5 characters to 80 over the last 18 months - but now I don't like the game and can't recommend it to anyone"
It was a 1 off payment, you have had to have had at LEAST 250 hours out of it.
That's BRILLIANT.
Like those numpty's going "Skyrim is rubbish - after 500 hours in the game it's really dull£
That is a sense of entitlement that's almost GODLIKE
I don't like GW2 - but If I'd played 100+ hours in it, I'd be satisfied that I got my money's worth. You're buying a single game for a few tens of dollars/pounds/euros, that doesn't entitle you to an endless refillable cup of gaming goodness. If you think it does you need to re-adjust your thinking.
Glad I don't know some of you people IRL. Selfish, spoilt, bratish and entitled
You picked out half of their posts and fixated on only one side of what they said in order to dismiss their opinions. Yet you make no mention of the reasons they stated as to why they aren't playing anymore.
That being the direction the game has gone. No one ever looks at a WoW player who said they quit because they didn't like the change in direction that Blizzard took the game. But for some reason, it's not allowed for GW2?
this, you speak the true bro !! baby gonna keep cry lol