What kind of game GW2 is and who is it for?

[Vayne.8563]

> @"Aeolus.3615" said:

> @"Vayne.8563" I see your point but gw2 achieves all that trough another path, instead of gear to gear progression they focus on making players to go from elite spec to new elite spec, it’s actually like making new build for new set...where the new set is the new gimmick...

>

> Gw2 being a pve game also gives u breadcrumbs for the pve history, dungeons , raids , fractals are just like farm hubs wich don’t fit on sandboxing but rather instanced adventures wich are very well themeparked.

> Well the heart system m8 be another story, since they actually change the game, if player fails or wins, but somehow its a weird system, few auto atacks and heart is done or event is done, even the big event are ktrains of "wackamole keybord festivals" w/o any objectives(hearts ktrains lol) or just to kill 1 mob, this is pure themepark elements disguised.

>

> Gw2 is very strong themeparked, players evolution is defined by Anet dev's with gimmicks wich is tied to the classes/builds Anet wants overperforming to carry/help the players on having better success with lesser effort, where they added the elite spec system for their progression, maps progression are limited to content defined by history only and not by player interaction ence why i talked about the event and hearts, they barelly put the sandbox element noticed to the player due how weak their effects and impact are to the game, this is themepark design as well, due how poor the options of coice for players are, actually here is 0...

> Maybe that's the problem the few sandbox elements the game have are so weak and poor cared that the game feels actually empty and almost every one ending ignoring this aspects of the game.

> Guild system is inexistent besides puzels, spidey races, and keybashing on a mob that is basicly a husg health spoonge to feel "hard", has i talked on another topic, guild are just chat rooms rebranded ot guilds where players have a limit of 5 to cut the effect of guilds looking actually like what they are , chatrooms.

>

> Now WvW, well besides freedom on changing color of a zone/map and siege deployment theres no more aspects of sanboxing elements, all the damage structure , repair are actually themepark mehcanics that make players feel they are on a sanbox game, the mechanics of WvW itself promote fight with your zerg when there isnt any defense than actually siege something to fight for it, WvW ended being another instanced farm hub for easy low effort iventory filling.

>

> So, im still confuse to whom the game is ment to be, but that's due the strange and useless changes game has been sufering due how rather than improve game mechanics it is moslty, gimmicks powercreep down and up, or the class progression trough new gimmick.

>

 

I have to disagree. Elite specs didn't exist for the first 3.5 years of this game. It takes me about 2 hours to unlock any elite spec, just running HPs in HoT or PoF,, but I can do them in any order. Or I can play WvW, and unlock them. The truth is I have enough currency to unlock about 12 characters now. Without doing anything at all. So elite specs are not really the same. I can even get most of it doing core Tyria mastery points more slowly.

 

The reason I say this game is different is that I help new players all the time. I even have a character named New Player Helper. And I have lost track of the number of people who come into this game from other games and have no idea what to do because there is no breadcrumb trail. No quest hubs. Nothing to really guide you through the game. These days, even the personal story doesn't begin till level 10 and only lasts for 2-3 levels and you're on your own again.

 

I can waypoint to any start zone from the moment I've level 2. I can jump into PvP quite early and be fully geared. I play this game in a completely non-linear way on new characters and I can't do that in most MMOs I've played. It's obviously not a sandbox MMO. But it offers far more freedom than most MMOs with regard to leveling and advancement. It's simply not on rails, and many games are.

[Zaklex.6308]

I personally think they wanted to tap in to the 3 billion people that play mobile games and spend millions of millions of dollars on them, but that's just my personal opinion.

[Erasculio.2914]

> @"Kurrilino.2706" said:

> It is supposed to be a RPG but it certainly isn't.

> You wanna be a treasure hunter ?? You wanna be bandit ?? You wanna be trader or an animal trainer ??

> Just forget it !!!!

 

Doesn't the same apply to many other fantasy RPGs?

 

In the Witcher series, you can't really be a bandit or an animal trader. In the Final Fantasy series, you don't really have any choice in how the story will happen. In the Phantasy Star series, you had absolutely no control over what your characters could or couldn't do.

 

A lot of RPGs are less about giving players freedom to change who their character is and how the story will end, and more about playing in a role of someone who is not yourself, making, at best, a few changes to the main storyline.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Erasculio.2914" said:

> > @"Kurrilino.2706" said:

> > It is supposed to be a RPG but it certainly isn't.

> > You wanna be a treasure hunter ?? You wanna be bandit ?? You wanna be trader or an animal trainer ??

> > Just forget it !!!!

>

> Doesn't the same apply to many other fantasy RPGs?

>

> In the Witcher series, you can't really be a bandit or an animal trader. In the Final Fantasy series, you don't really have any choice in how the story will happen. In the Phantasy Star series, you had absolutely no control over what your characters could or couldn't do.

>

> A lot of RPGs are less about giving players freedom to change who their character is and how the story will end, and more about playing in a role of someone who is not yourself, making, at best, a few changes to the main storyline.

 

Only RPG I've played which gave you that kind of freedom in what your character did was Ultima Online, which is very much a 'sandbox' type MMO - you make a character (and in that game classes were just preset skill combinations, you could do any combination of skills you wanted) and then you were basically dropped into the world and left to work out what to do. There was no overall story and relatively few quests (this was about 17 years ago, it may have changed since) but you could stay in town and work as a blacksmith, explore distant corners of the world, tame wild creatures to fight for you (or to sell to other people) fight your way through dungeons and whatever else.

 

But like I said very little story. That's the trade-off. The tech doesn't exist yet to make a game where players can create any kind of character, focus on specific areas and still have a coherent story, especially not one with lots of meaningful characters with actual character development and things in the world changing as a result of their actions. In Ultima Online the solution is that players are expected to make their own stories - it's basically a MUD with graphics (and was called a graphical MUD before they decided to promote how many people could be on one server and started calling it a Massively Multiplayer Game). But that takes a lot of time - you need to be able to commit to being online at the same time as your guild/friends/other group/s for long periods of time, on a regular basis.

 

For anything more than that you're looking at MUDs (yes they still exist) or pen and paper games...and then the stories you get are limited by what the rest of the group wants to do. If you're the only one who wants to RP an animal trainer seeking out exotic creatures and everyone else wants to go save the world from bandits you're going to get out-voted.

[Griever.8150]

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> its for casual gamers who casually grind for skins/titles to be worn in a casual manner. sometimes you will engage in combat casually, and learning how to dodge casually will allow you to casually win sometimes, plus the casual salt from casuals is always as plus.

 

The older i get, the less i see that as a bad thing, go figure.

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> I personally think they wanted to tap in to the 3 billion people that play mobile games and spend millions of millions of dollars on them, but that's just my personal opinion.

Unlikely, considering capable phones (like, the original iphone) was barely entering the market while GW2 was being developed and the mobile market was just getting ramped up when it released.

 

No, if they wanted to tap into something it was the people that didnt want to pay the monthly cost of WoW, Eve, asian MMOs etc. At the time with barely any "modern" competition from the old monolithic sub MMOs, it was easy. That GW1 was a good game helped too.

[starlinvf.1358]

If you want really break it down..... GW as franchise is a philosophy. And thats important to keep in mind, since trying to describe the game as mechanics doesn't make sense or seem impressive on face value. However, when you look at what the mechanics are FOR, everything about becomes much easier to grasp on every level. And this same thought exercise applied to any other game reveals a LOT about what that game is, and what it doing.

 

Using Anthem as an example, what it wants to be, what it is, and what its for, are all in heavy conflict with each other. Which is why, in isolation, each of its elements sound incredible; yet in practice the game feels like its doing nothing with itself. And with the recent report about the game's development direction since its inception, What it wanted to be, what it could had been, and what it is, both are and aren't in alignment with each other. And this is a problem with a lot of games, GW2 included.

 

But one thing you can't fault GW2 for is "knowing what it doesn't want to be". It doesn't want to WoW, it doesn't want to be enslaved by a class trinity, and it doesn't want the player base to spend more time fighting themselves then the Enemy. Not everyone will agree with this design, but Anet has done far better at attaining this goal then most other games do at copying other game's designs.

 

Now to start off this next part, your friend is an asshole. Unfortunately this is pretty common. Society in general is in place where it needs an antagonist to both dismiss and feel threatened by. A paradoxical need to affirm ones superiority, while also justifying hostility against outsiders as an nebulously defined threat. This is reflected in many people's attitudes as there being a definitive "right way" for things to exist, and nothing will convince them otherwise. In otherwise, flimsy at best, and results in massive insecurity when that truth is threatened. Mixed in here is a compulsion to dog pile on something/someone as a trend, mostly out of fear of missing out, wanting to belong, or to gain a sense of group-confidence.

 

This is what makes GW2 weird as a concept to so many people. Many are caught in the idea that games are inherently competitive, especially with other players. The fear of PvP has never been as systemic or vocal in the now decades I've been playing MMOs, nor has players been so adverse to assistance, despite a compulsive obsession for success, gains (not growth), and domination. Having recently seen some philosophical break downs of Nier:Automata, the significance of the message has become almost blinding in the short 2 years since it came out. Without empathy, there is only endless conflict.

What GW2 does against the trends of age, fosters something I think not enough players are aware of..... some even subconsciously fighting against it to maintain their existing beliefs. If you play the game selfishly and self-centered, it has little to offer in the long run. That even includes helping others with the expectation of being rewarded..... something we've been trained heavily to accept is the normal structure. But whats initially strange is how this game knows how to subvert tropes in a good way. We have classes, but they aren't classes. We have quests, but they aren't quests. We are the Hero, but by being the hero we bring escalation and destruction everywhere we go. The game's combat and build systems isn't about growing stronger, but getting smarter. We see ourselves as powerful individuals, yet all of our greatest strengths are in how we play off our allies. And unlike the majority of MMOs that see team comps as Solution to a puzzle, teams in GW2 operate as an organism.

 

It simultaneously plays to and goes against the majority of what we've been conditioned to think in multiplayer games, as those are that way specifically to drive a conflict. Much of Core Tyria isn't difficult, because it wasn't designed to be difficult on an individual level. More importantly, you can't have both individual contribution and group performance be central to success, without it directly butting heads with each other. Instead, much of Core Tyria's content is focused on ad-hoc organization, and group polarization. The tasks are straight forward, and the goal is to make sure they get done to the benefit of the world state (in abstract, or in function). The heart quests train you to assess the environment, and exploit it for advantages. The Dynamic events teach you to act with urgency, without direction, and to cooperate with others for force multiplication. While PvE overall is most general in these concepts, PvP and WvW teach you how to exploit those concepts with deliberate action. Knowing what your allies are capable of, so you can all play off each other for much greater effect. This is something Anthem copied wholesale for its combat system, and would make a lot more sense if each player wasn't so front loaded on power due to the Ironman fantasy. So its not surprising GW2 has this same problem with Espec balance, because of how much power amplification they have internally.

 

So to keep this post short...... What GW2 is an imperfect, but earnest attempt at building a game around the Philosophy of Implicit Collaboration; but uses subversion and intuition to drive these behaviors, rather then explicitly and heavy handedly forcing it as the only solution. Raids came late to this game, and does these things explicitly.... and you can see the difference it creates in that sub-set of the community. sPvP has similar issues due to its emphasis on personal performance in its game play, scoring, and rewards. Mechanics wise it benefits greatly from experimentation, but the reward and gearing system hamstrings it every step of the way. But the one area this game is undisputed in is World exploration. The spaces are filled with coherent details, and directly rewards those with a sharp eye and good spatial sense. However, it may not capture the minds of Bethesda/Bioware style WRPGs. The difference I can only describe as WRPGs worlds don't exist without the player to drive it.... that sense of importance is core to how those games work. Where as the style of world building GW2, and many other atmosphere heavy games, give the sense the world exists regardless of the player, and you simply happen to be there. This is a hall mark of many exploration games, and GW2 encourages and rewards a player to poke it at every opportunity.

So its deliciously hypocritical that the game claims you do be the most important person in the world, and dedicates story arcs to that..... but out in the world, you're just another adventurer causing chaos, fighting evil, and suffering at the hands of your own enthusiasm.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> So to keep this post short......

 

o.O