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[Column] Guild Wars 2: Polish or New Content?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Smooth animations, fantastic audio quality, and a good UI are essential for making a good game no matter what genre you’re talking about. When it comes to MMO’s it’s hard to find a game that has a true polished feel. A lot of these games try to fill that gap by just reskinning old content, and slapping it on top of everything to make their game seem larger. Then there’s Guild Wars 2. An MMO so polished, it’s actually hard to believe. In fact, it’s still being polished!
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: Polish or New Content?
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With a lot of other games, the UI feels like it’s jumping out of the screen and attacking you.
Comments
I really don't get this.
One of the BIGGEST complaints about GW2 (for over a year now) has been it's lack of an expansion. Most people I talk to who have ever enjoyed this game say they will come back if it has an expansion, and that the game needs one.
Now that it's becoming a reality, all of a sudden, 'oh no, an xpansion would be awful'. Come on people...
This is why we can't have nice things.
They've already started to make some of those changes. Part of that's where Edge of the Mists came from (testing out megaserver campaigns and new zone mechanics).
It would be nice for that to be expanded on, though. Honestly the largest issue w/ WvW is burnout. WvW is at it's most fun when people care about winning and winning fights. However people (and commanders especially) get burnt out doing that all week long for months on end. Then you get people that essentially just farm points (ignoring fights and focusing 100% on PPT). If they can do something to encourage more battles (and less point farming) that would go a long way to making WvW more interesting again.
However, even if they can pull that off the previous problem will still be there. i find myself having to question just how viable WvW is longterm today. It can be one of the most rewarding forms of PvP i've played in any game, but it requires large numbers of people who are not only intelligent, but actually care. And too many people are neither these days.
Polish or New Content?
LOL,is there third option?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I hate, HATE HAAATE how the fanboys are absolutely adamant that no new weapon sets or classes are added to the game because QQ MY ESPORTS!
If we went by the players' satisfaction about the pvp balance in a mmorpg, we'd trying to balance crap until the heat death of the universe. Look at actual esports games like LoL, not even they get balance right and there's still a giant pool of champions that routinely go unused and abandoned.
What's happening now is that the playerbase is being thrown snippets of (not poorly but not spectacularly well written) "story" content that gets chewed through, but otherwise there's very little to play with, no new toys in 2.5 years. I want new toys, I don't care about your esports that, let's face it, is NEVER going to be a real esport anyways.
Problem is: that was done in GW1 and that game had piss poor balance. For PvE and PvP to co-exist together, there is a fine knife edge that the developers have to thread in order to get it right. GW2 is not perfect but it better than most in that respect.
GW1 was an esport, they had 1 million dollar playoffs, etc.
That is funny because when i stepped into GW2 i thought it looked like crap,i mean seriously it was using grass textures that looked like free to play Asian games from 15 years ago.I remember when people were shouting Aion and TERA were amazing and to me both looked like crap,well Tera more so than Aion which was actually on average with msot games but still Aion was a cheap 2d game buildings had no doors or insides,npc's would stand in front of buildings just like all Asian f2p games.
Now to be fair ,i was playing a free trial maybe they had the game dumb down a lot for the trial,idk possible.The game play and looks turned me off so much i quit on the first day.Also to be fair i got caught up in the Skyrim hype as well,went out and bought a new PS3 for it and was never more disappointed in my life for spending so much money and came away truly unsatisfied.
As for UI and screen clutter,you won't get any better than FFXI because the UI was not on screen,you had to bring it up ,so the game itself was full focus on screen.
What really stood out to me is watching the videos of pvp combat,i was like wow just wow,arrows fired like a machine gun ,fire bolts cast that looked unreal and a female player who was running away yet swinging her sword sword sort of behind her head like she had no clue what she was doing and still won the pvp albeit was her team that won not because of her lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
As a former MMO worker, keep in mind that each section of a game has its own dedicated/specialized set of developers (ie combat, UI, character/terrain modeling, animation, writers, sound, etc). This article primarily comments on the UI. So a UI team, that is not working on say new PvP maps or anything else other than UI-related tasks probably has a lot more time to reiterate and improve upon their components than other groups/teams that have bigger/more complex tasks/systems. This is not the days of the Atari 2600 where a single developer wrote an entire game by themselves, especially for big studios that have more specialized staff. They are just doing their part, which typically has shorter dev and QA cycles than other, more complex, content.
I doubt that those f2p Asian mmos have grass physics though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKlppK3fg2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2iwUUL3eFs
I heard that a certain $billion/year MMO finally got some grass physics.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I don't think the fans are responsible to release or not an expansion
Unless you blame them for spending money in the GW2 cash shop.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Besides the fact that this person is mistaking graphics for polish. He's clearly blind anyway and/or making ridiculous exaggerations. If I cared more I'd actually go find a picture of some Asian F2P MMO from 15 years ago. It probably didn't even have grass... I don't think EverQuest did and that's 15 years old American, and P2P(at that time).
an MMO thats over 2 yeares old with no expansion and little to no new content from launch besides a handful of zones and your seriously asking people if they want new content?
People hate on WoW but at least WoW gets new content every year and a half. Its more then GW2 and ANET can say for there game besides a few tiny zones and new purses and dresses.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
How about just adding content? Along with getting rid of The Sims "end game". The game is made for people who do not normally like MMOs. The game also prides itself on being the trendy hipster that just wants to be different without any reason most of the time - yet has dailies.
A complete expansion that adds a ton new content, a trinity system,new race and new class is sorely needed obviously.
I have never seen anything like it in my entire 15+ history with MMOs. When it comes to GW2's fans. As in you tell the game's fans you would love a new expansion and they flip out on you - while screaming for you to go back to WoW. They do it with the trinity system too, which makes stupid like sense, since they do not want to change their glass cannon boring zerg gameplay and learn a more complex system.
But never no matter how toxic a MMO have I ever seen it's fans attack someone for wanting an expansion. Wanting a expansion with a certain theme? Yes. Just a expansion? No.
Have you actually heard any GW2 players say that they don't want a new expansion?
The ones who say they don'tt I know say they instead want a new campaign like Factions or Nightfall.
Plenty of GW2 fans don't want more levels though but that is another matter. New skills, maybe a new race and a new class would be way sweeter than another 10 levels.
Yeah, we need a new expansion or a new campaign ASAP. We should actually already gotten one last summer.
GW2 is hardly the worst game with adding new content, 3 new zones and a bunch of fractals are however not enough. And a new expansion brings in new players and I think a new campaign would bring in even more. Just look on how the players increased in GW after Factions and Nithtfall came out.
Sure, their might be some players who don't want anything more for some bizzare reason or who just claims the game is perfect no matter but just mention the possibilirty of an expansion in the chat and it lit up with people who can't wait.