Should Anet go back to their roots?

[zombyturtle.5980]

Well, just my 2 cents but if anet stopped developing raids or fractals anymore, 90% of my guild would just up and quit. Open world doesnt have enough replayability or challenge to keep the people i know around at all.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The vast majority of the game is open world/story-instanced PvE. That is already "back to their roots." If ANet entirely stopped developing new raids, it would make hardly any difference to the rest of the game, because so few people work on raids.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"Carighan.6758" said:

> > @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> * Fractals... I honestly don't know. They seem to be doing alright I guess? Cheaper-to-develop dungeons I guess? With raids cut and the art people freed up from LS a bit it should be possible to fire up a solid cadence here, bringing in new fractals constantly.

 

The dungeons have super-complex scripting and stuff. Partly, I suspect, to get everything behaving in four different ways through. Fractals reduce the complexity, so they don't break nearly as often. So ... cheaper to develop is true, by virtue of choosing a better balance in terms of technical costs.

 

I'd love to see a parallel "fractal-technology" dungeon series developed. Instead of four paths in the same instance, have a choice of direction using the fractal model, and four "fractals" that tell shards of a small story in a similar way. Use the same difficulty ramp model, but ... don't offer 25-ish, offer four or five connected things using the same base map, and the same "internally contained" story model.

 

I like the fractal story, honestly, but I understand not everyone does, and I certainly would be happy to see smaller and more obvious stories played out dungeon style within basically single, related fractals. That, too, is quite enjoyable.

 

(Also, I don't know where you need got to see the actual ending of the Fractal story, but I have a nasty suspicion it requires T4, so many players will never see the conclusion.)

[thruine.8510]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> This probably seems like a stupid question but for those of us who don't have much experience with other MMOs: What's a normal raid/dungeon release schedule?

>

I didn't see this directly addressed so thought I'd take a crack at it. A normal schedule is subjective because not every MMO operates at the same pace. Some aren't even equipped to do more than one thing but we've seen except for a few exceptions most MMOs come to having content sort of designed like one book in a series. That is where the new expac/patch or what have you having one theme which delivers several dungeons and/or raids to compliment the story of that release. Exceptions to this are games such as WoW or SWTOR. SWTOR has gotten into a rhythm of a new dungeon (flashpoint) with a story followed by another to continue the story. Raids have been basically broken down to one boss of the entire raid at a time. I think they are planning releasing a new raid fully complete later probably with a new expansion. Very small amount of content reflecting the small amount of developers left working on the game (some were taken to Anthem).

 

The WoW method was releasing an expansion with probably around six or seven dungeons and a raid to be opened up soon after. Then later patches will add more dungeons (perhaps two) with another raid up to probably a total of three raids with that expansion. The progression through the content is you start with the normal dungeons then progress through the heroic and then you're ready for the raid. Their mythic dungeon system isn't designed as part of the progression path to the raid but more as its own activity after the raid or in place of it as they usually offer the same or slightly better gearing than the raid itself but that's only after the raid has opened. Then the raid goes into the LFR tool which allows folks to play through it without having to meet gear requirements as most mechanics are scaled back. Can still be deadly but you're most likely going to die standing in the wrong place than not meeting a gear check requirement. And expansions probably are designed to last at least two years until you repeat the cycle.

 

Where people get burnt out with this system is that you are always on a gear treadmill. As soon as you get best in slot gear, the next raid or expansion starts. There are still times when content seems to have dried up but that usually only happens in top raid guilds who have pushed through all the content, gotten the very best that they can before the next raid has started. This is rarely true for everyone else which makes the cycle seem non-stop. Blizzard is either too stupid to keep content flowing or too dumb to design doable content depending on how good your guild is. And you will be in a guild or accept that you'll never wear good gear. The game is definitely about gear. This has been my experience with WoW over the years where I've been a raider pushing the highest content to just piddling about doing much of nothing or PvP which really isn't affected by the PvE releases but is never balanced to a good point according to players. In the end, complaints are always leveled at a game from some portion of players sometimes wanting things that would destroy other parts of the game (where they have a lot of PvE vs PvP anger where both sides want the other wiped out).

 

All the rest of the games I've played have had some form of WoW with a few like SWTOR. For instance, ESO reminds more of games like WoW with the expansion releases and dungeons (this time around, last time they didn't have any only one or two raids or trials as they're called there). Its like they want to be like WoW but can only do the amount of content of SWTOR. Its more but not a heck of a lot more. SWTOR's in a bad place at the moment without releasing an expansion. Just in my opinion and observation, it doesn't seem any game can keep up with WoW. Given their subscription numbers, its easy to see why.

[particlepinata.9865]

I think it would be much easier for them development wise and managing wise if they developed a modern corpg (with modern mechanics and a new game engine) game instead of a mmo. It could have story missions, explorable areas, dungeons, good pvp and guild/aliance battles with a contained amount of players (no performance breaking/visual clutter zergs). Group games seem to be more popular in these days then massive games, so it would be easier to market to a bigger public i think, with less operation cost. Back to the roots, with fresh new mechanics etc. That would mean a new game of course, in my opinion the way to go for the future.

[Zaklex.6308]

Funny, I didn't get the same timeline that you did....what I got out of it is that they are going to alternate Fractals and Raids, so that with every LW episode there would either be a new/revamped Fractal or a new Raid. So that is either a new Raid/Fractal approximately every 3 months give or take a week here and there. Also I don't think the teams were shrunk but combined so they could work on bigger things than the two small teams could on their own...i.e., it's a lot easier to develop content when you have 6, 7 or 8 people working on it than it is when you have 3 or 4 people working on it.

 

P.S. - There are still a lot of Devs from GW1 working at ArenaNet, you probably just don't know it because they've been moved up from developers/designers to leads, supervisors, managers, etc..