Curse

Avarre · Jul 22, 2009, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

The things some veteran players insist killed the game, only killed areas that didn't exist in the times those same players remember.

How exactly are new areas not part of the game?

More importantly, what's your point? 'The game' is everything in it and the overall design concept. If the concept is changed, so is the game, regardless of how old or new areas are. Area and skill changes/implementation are simply evidence of the concept pattern, and hence symptomatic of any changes.

Improvavel · Jul 22, 2009, 01:16 AM // 01:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

How exactly are new areas not part of the game?

More importantly, what's your point? 'The game' is everything in it and the overall design concept. If the concept is changed, so is the game, regardless of how old or new areas are. Area and skill changes/implementation are simply evidence of the concept pattern, and hence symptomatic of any changes.

Because if prophecies was released today, you would destroy everything in front of you and wouldn't call the game challenging at all.

You would be bashing Protective bond, earth shaker, watch yourselves, eviscerate, gale, minions, soul reaping, obsidian flesh, etc.

Basically you and anyone that understand the game would be yawning because PvE was so dull.

If new areas with new monster only skills, new environment effects, etc, would be released today and last year, players wouldn't be complaining about how easy the game has become, since they would be entertained overcoming the new challenges (although, each new challenge would take ever so less time be conquered).

While there was some change in design, with what we know today, that change wasn't unexpected.

My point is - horizontal expansions can't survive unless AI evolves because there is so much challenge you can milk from a static AI.

Then the only thing to keep it refreshing is an arms race. But vertical expansions introduce that in a way that feels natural, opposed to this consumable/bigger level/unique skills thing, that is basically hammered into the game and breaks what existed before.

And if you, I and everyone else weren't busy mastering the game at the time, you, I and everyone else would have realized that the GW AI is pathetic.

The AI/GW wasn't challenging back then - just everyone was noob.

Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 01:55 AM // 01:55

Improvavel, you have made some bad implicit assumptions:

1) Your hypothetical new content would have to be "harder" than existing content. If it weren't, everyone would roflstomp it using existing techniques.

2) AI improvements that invalidate existing techniques are not plausible. (In practice this is at least largely true - I'll grant that.)

3) Alterations to existing content that invalidate existing techniques are not plausible. This one doesn't fly.

4) Minor alterations that add new content to underutilized areas without requiring game updates are not plausible. (Eg: weapons contest goodies.) Ditto.

There's nothing wrong with the horizontal model, as long as it is properly maintained. The issue is the lack of proper maintenance and the introduction of horrifyingly imba skills.

Improvavel · Jul 22, 2009, 03:55 AM // 03:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Improvavel, you have made some bad implicit assumptions:

1) Your hypothetical new content would have to be "harder" than existing content. If it weren't, everyone would roflstomp it using existing techniques.

Lets look at GW history -> FoW/UW/SF ->Urgoz/Deep -> DoA.

What to add after DoA?
Don't exactly no... but I bet it would be harder via frustration rather then challenging.

Maybe Anet doesn't know either, and hence calling a day for GW.

Or would you prefer a collection of places that play much like the same?

Quote:

2) AI improvements that invalidate existing techniques are not plausible. (In practice this is at least largely true - I'll grant that.)

The fact is that AI can't learn and can't adapt.

I don't know if AI can be improved or not for the current GW. Anyway, any improvements is another static script. Once the script is learned, you can abuse it.

The best we can have is random foes/areas, etc. Since 3D games became norm, I cant really recall a game that had this.

Even if there are some games that have it, it isn't that common, so probably not easy.

Anyway, Anet doesn't seem to follow that path for GW.

Quote:

3) Alterations to existing content that invalidate existing techniques are not plausible. This one doesn't fly.

This one can be done. Simply making SF not maintainable would screw UWSC and cause problems for DoA HM.

On the other hand, DoA could really use some changes to make it more enjoyable.

Again, Anet at this moment doesn't seem to have or be inclined to use their resources for this.

Since I'm not inside Game Design, I can't really tell you if this kind of alterations is hard or easy.

Quote:

4) Minor alterations that add new content to underutilized areas without requiring game updates are not plausible. (Eg: weapons contest goodies.) Ditto.

While those alterations can increase the lifespan of the game, in the end its more of the same.

Quote:

There's nothing wrong with the horizontal model, as long as it is properly maintained. The issue is the lack of proper maintenance and the introduction of horrifyingly imba skills.

You have seen some of the problems of the horizontal model:
- player base split;
- new characters having to play more and more of the same low-mid level quests/missions;
- more professions mixing up the roles of existing ones;
- areas becoming harder much more because of "annoyance" than "challenging your game knowledge";
- repetition - what really distinguishes dungeon x from dungeon y?;
- etc.

Lets look at GW if it was a vertical model.

Prophecies was for up to level 20. After that you couldn't win xp from there (lets say skill points would come from quests).

Armor and weapons would have max prophecies stats, etc.

Then factions would come.

Any character over level 20 would be level 20 when returning to prophecies, its weapons would drop to max prophecies levels, same for armor, attributes, health, etc.

Any weapon from factions could only be used by characters over level 20.

Factions would take players up to lvl 30. New armor and weapons (with new max stats), new professions (lets say faction would have a tutorial area for their new professions only where achieving lvl 20 was quite fast, and would show the players how to play their new chars. You could create one character there of the new profession only if you had finished prophecies. Your factions char could backtrack to prophecies).

Lvling to 30 would be quite fast too. The rest was quite similar to prophecies, except now you have a new game mechanic.

You could choose from 2 factions, and each faction (only cosmetic differences, for example) would have 2-3 paths (the paths would be similar for each faction, for example).

These paths would allow you to replace up to 2 skills on your bar. You would have some skills that were profession bound and maybe some that weren't.

Additionally, using a certain path would make you unable to use certain secondary professions. Using some of those path skills would prevent you from using some other skills, etc.

Then nightfall. Lvls 30-40, blah blah. in this one, all the professions would gain a new attribute tree, for example. Or maybe some other mechanic.

Additionally, every chapter would have a hall, where you would could display the "prestige items/armors" from that chapter, that would become obsolete the moment you would move on the new chapter.

Whatever, I'm not a game designer.

In this kind of vertical system, you would never be like "yawn here comes a timed mission again" or "fighting against level 20's again".

Additionally, this system would deny the advantage higher level/better gear players have in most MMORPG when going back to earlier areas.

Every area would have new armors/weapons that wouldn't be only cosmetic. Maybe even upgraders, that could imbue ur favourite weapons/armors with new powers (read boost stats to match new campaign).

More, every area would introduce some new mechanic you would need to master and balance it against what you were using before to overcome the newer mobs, designed to face this new mechanics.

Basically it is very similar to the horizontal design, except what is in later expansions will never interfere with the earlier ones. You will also never (at least if it is well implemented) think you are just doing more of the same with a new dress, due to the fact you are mastering the new mechanics, etc.

Chthon · Jul 22, 2009, 04:09 AM // 04:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by trialist

Therein lay the problem, anet essentially designed themselves into a corner with their low level cap and static weapon stats premise.

That's not a corner. Low level cap plus static weapon stats plus poor AI constitutes the corner that the devs put themselves in.

Let me back up to a very general point and work my way down to specifics. In general, video game foes come in two sorts: First, there is the "worthy adversary" sort. This foe is exemplified by Deep Blue or Ryu. The "worthy adversary" plays by the same rules that you do and provides challenge by playing by those rules nearly as skillfully as you do. Second there is the "dime-a-dozen" sort of foe. This foe is exemplified by the enemy spaceships from arcade shoot-em-ups or the hordes of demons in Diablo II. This kind of foe plays by a different set of rules than the player -- usually they are easily defeated, but for one gimmick that they embody. Here the challenge lies in figuring out how to counter the gimmick, and how to counter layered gimmicks presented by multiple foes. (Aside: The section of the DIII preview video where the dev explains how one should jump over the shield-bearing skeletons to attack the frail demon-summoners before they can summon their demons is an excellent example of the "challenge through layered gimmicks" paradigm.)

I think it's oversimplifying to say that GW's devs had a fully thought-through and coherent conception of what they originally wanted the PvE monsters to be. However, I think there was a definite strong tilt towards the "worthy adversary" model. Monsters played (mostly) by the same rules as players and were supposed to provide a bridge to PvP (played against other players, also playing by the same rules). The crystal desert missions, Elona Reach in particular, are often cited as examples of this design intent.

However, as time went on, players became more knowledgeable. We came to understand the mechanics and skill synergy, resulting in better builds. We came to understand and exploit the AI's weaknesses. In order to remain worthy as "worthy adversary" foes, the monsters needed to get smarter. Early on, a-net tried to do that -- remember the great AoE nerf? (They also tried very late on with EotN monster builds.)

Then, with the release of the Ruins of the Tombs of the Primeval Kings, a-net seems to have abandoned the "worthy adversary" model altogether. Loaded with stat-pumped monsters wielding monster-only skills in population-pumped numbers, Tombs was given over to "challenge through layered gimmicks."

Why this happened, no one knows but the devs; and it may not have even been a conscious decision on their part. But I do have a theory: I suspect it had a lot to do with the fact that Factions was underway and it dawned on the devs that they were about to increase the number of skill synergies available to players, without simultaneously improving the monsters. More importantly, they saw that the same thing was going to happen with every expansion -- players were going to get more and more complexity to exploit while monsters stayed static, and sooner or later the monsters were going to become unchallenging as "worthy adversaries." The devs realized that they had to make the monsters "smarter" to handle the increased complexity, or they had to get their challenge in a completely different way. They chose to get their challenge in a different way.

I think there were three reasons behind this decision: First, making monsters able to deal with the increased complexity would have required giving them cross-campaign skillsets, which flew in the face of a-net's "campaigns stand alone" marketing. Second, (games amenable to the standard min-max algorithm aside) programming AI that can complete with a human is just really damned hard. The people who can do it are pretty rare and sometimes almost idiot-savant-like. (I can attest that the one really good AI I've written in my life was the result of some bizarre trance state that I can't reproduce.) I'm not sure a-net even has someone able to write AI like that on staff. Third, the resources for a major AI and monster design overhaul just were not something a-net could afford while they were hard at work on Factions.

From there on out, "challenge through layered gimmicks" was the new model for the PvE game. That's what we saw in Factions, then Nightfall, then DoA, then Hard Mode, then EotN. And that's the state of the game now. The monsters present various gimmicks and you've got to form a party that neutralizes each of them -- insane damage is countered by PS/SY; insane armor is countered by armor-ignoring damage; super-powered healers are countered by BHA; etc. Or, as you put it, countering the gimmicks "force[s] players to play a certain way."

To return to where I started, it's the lack of good AI that put a-net into the design corner they're in now. Even with a low level cap and fixed weapon stats, they could have maintained a "worthy adversary" foes model if they had invested in sharpening the AI; but failing to do so forced them into the "dime-a-dozen" foes model. That's what really put the game on its current path. GW would have been a very different, very unique, and better game if they had chosen differently.

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@Fril: Thank you for another thought-provoking thread. You're the best.

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@Avarre:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Sure, Guild Wars PvE is pretty difficult if I balance a cat on my head while eating dinner and juggling at the same time as moderating Guru and punching myself in the testicles,

I'd pay good money to see that.

Avarre · Jul 22, 2009, 04:09 AM // 04:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

Because if prophecies was released today, you would destroy everything in front of you and wouldn't call the game challenging at all.

I did trample Prophecies. But there are some key differences: we had the same skills as our opponents. I could 3-man FoW all I wanted, but it wasn't because my team was statistically more powerful. I wasn't immune to damage (SF/SY), for example - it was more to do with mechanical precision. More importantly though, there were a lot of ways to play the areas that were viable. I doubt I would bash most of those skills (well, Prot Bond was a bit much), because they're hardly unfair when used in the same capacity against me - in PvP as well.

Of course, given the same period of time, it's a certainty we'd have been bored of Proph (if we all aren't already). PvE, however, rather than extending in a similar fashion, got dumber. If you combine improving players with shallower content, people are going to be displeased.

The primary complaints against PvE have taken two forms from the majority of experienced players.

1) PvE design is one-dimensionally buffed rather than skillfully designed. This refers to areas such as Urgoz (more mobs = more challenge!) and DoA. This takes out the subtlety of the game and boils it down to mass DPS.

2) In order to balance the 'challenge' of such areas, excessively strong and equally one-dimensional skills were added to compensate. Skills that have to be banned from equal competition for being better than the other thousand in Guild Wars.

One-dimensional makes the implication that it can be hard-countered in a single way - and GW has not only provided huge openings for that, but handed out repeatedly more effective ways to exploit them. This cuts the number of effective viable options, while making the best options too good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre pre-EotN

Having to create imbalanced skills for PvE is just proof that Anet failed to balance the PvE challenge. If the purpose of PvE is to wield your 'special PvE skills' to kill monsters, which wouldn't have to be introduced if the standard skills were balanced against enemies in the first place, what does that mean for all those thousands of other skills? Time would be better spent simply tweaking PvE development to not require a completely new line of skills, because if restricted skills have to be added to keep things in check, that's not solving the problem - just covering it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign pre-EotN

They created thousands of skills for Guild Wars, and while the balance is nowhere near what it could have been, all aspects of the game share a common thread - you pick the eight skills that you want to use for your build and try it against some challenge or another. Unlike other games in the genre, there are limitless combinations of builds that you could make or try, and twiddling with all of the different combinations to deal with different obstacles is part of the fun.

Contrast that with a small subset of "PvE skills" that are much better than all of the others, by design. That flies entirely in the face of the core design of Guild Wars, of build diversity and experimentation. That makes it a game with increasingly predetermined skillbars. I was not happy about the Realm of Torment effectively reducing everyone from 8 skills to 7 skills plus Lightbringer's Gaze, I think that was a huge blow to the foundation of the game. If the decision is to abandon that foundation in favor of more skills like Lightbringer's Gaze, then Guild Wars will have truly lost it's biggest selling point on merit.

GW has a whole bunch of easy buttons, and the game lacks depth for the wider range of possibilities.

trialist · Jul 22, 2009, 04:28 AM // 04:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

That's not a corner. Low level cap plus static weapon stats plus poor AI constitutes the corner that the devs put themselves in.

Heh, we are actually on the same page you know. Look at what i replied to from fril's quote and my ending statement for both my posts and you would know i was hitting on the AI all this time. Good points though.

Chthon · Jul 22, 2009, 05:01 AM // 05:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by trialist

Heh, we are actually on the same page you know.

Yes, I think we are.

Bryant Again · Jul 22, 2009, 05:01 AM // 05:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kashrlyyk

If you want GW to be harder there is a LOT that players can do themselves! Why do the "good" players want the designers to gimp the players and not do it yourself? The latter case gives much more control over the result.

It all depends on what the developers want us to do - which in ANet's case I'm quite afraid of when they toss such powerful abilities for all of us to use.

In a nutshell, when the developer's make their game shallower and shallower, it's akin to them saying "we don't caaaaaare".

Plus, a true challenge doesn't need self-restrictions.

Improvavel · Jul 22, 2009, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

I did trample Prophecies. But there are some key differences: we had the same skills as our opponents. I could 3-man FoW all I wanted, but it wasn't because my team was statistically more powerful. I wasn't immune to damage (SF/SY), for example - it was more to do with mechanical precision. More importantly though, there were a lot of ways to play the areas that were viable. I doubt I would bash most of those skills (well, Prot Bond was a bit much), because they're hardly unfair when used in the same capacity against me - in PvP as well.

There still are lots of viable ways to complete those areas.

Unless you define viable as being as fast.

Quote:

Of course, given the same period of time, it's a certainty we'd have been bored of Proph (if we all aren't already). PvE, however, rather than extending in a similar fashion, got dumber. If you combine improving players with shallower content, people are going to be displeased.

The primary complaints against PvE have taken two forms from the majority of experienced players.

1) PvE design is one-dimensionally buffed rather than skillfully designed. This refers to areas such as Urgoz (more mobs = more challenge!) and DoA. This takes out the subtlety of the game and boils it down to mass DPS.

2) In order to balance the 'challenge' of such areas, excessively strong and equally one-dimensional skills were added to compensate. Skills that have to be banned from equal competition for being better than the other thousand in Guild Wars.

One-dimensional makes the implication that it can be hard-countered in a single way - and GW has not only provided huge openings for that, but handed out repeatedly more effective ways to exploit them. This cuts the number of effective viable options, while making the best options too good.

GW has a whole bunch of easy buttons, and the game lacks depth for the wider range of possibilities.

I agree with that.

And I would prefer that kind of challenge. Maybe that is why I generally play PvP in games, but GW PvP (at least the worthy one) is time consuming setup wise and I started GW in Factions, meaning I was a year late. And nowadays, I'm not interested in PvP as my friend has a nasty temper around critics and I don't think competition stress is what she enjoys for fun.

Where we seem to disagree is that I'm not against coining my own challenge, because I don't see PvE as a competition between players, so I really don't care if I take more time to do something because I'm not using consumables, for example.

I'm under the impression, and apologies if I'm mistaken, that you on the other hand would refuse to play a build that is slower, although more challenging, because you would be gimping yourself compared to other players.

That is why I'm less interested if things like XTH or SF kill GW economy and more interested in things like 7 heroes or changes to stupid environmental effects in places like DoA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

It all depends on what the developers want us to do - which in ANet's case I'm quite afraid of when they toss such powerful abilities for all of us to use.

In a nutshell, when the developer's make their game shallower and shallower, it's akin to them saying "we don't caaaaaare".

Plus, a true challenge doesn't need self-restrictions.

Hehe.

Here comes the other "faction" I was talking about - we all can identify the problems, can theorize how to solve them, but we want them solved for slightly different purposes and so the routes we would follow to solve them are somewhat different, sometimes even the opposite, although if we could do all in a single step instead of multiple small steps, the end result would be very similar.

But since, small steps would have to be taken, we can't agree what route to take first

Avarre · Jul 22, 2009, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

There still are lots of viable ways to complete those areas.

Unless you define viable as being as fast.

For the most part, that's what PvE balance is - having more than one equally viable option. On one hand, build specialization deserves rewards, but builds centering on imbalanced PvE skills are not specialized for the area so much as getting the most power out of an already broken skill.

More simplification of roles and elimination of player skill is the result, rather than providing options.

Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 07:19 AM // 07:19

While there may be more than one way to complete an area that is viable, there is only one that is efficient.

In any area that players repeatedly complete, players are going to insist on the efficient build. The reason is simple - if I want to farm an area, and you want to bring a suboptimal build that takes longer to complete the area or introduces an additional risk of failure, you are asking me to let you waste my time. Such inefficiency adds up over time, making me poorer as measured in shinies, time or both.

This boils down to: you want me to let you screw me over, but you don't offer to compensate me for doing so. A real world example serves to illustrate the point. Suppose that I, as a consumer, want to get the oil changed in my car. I can take it to repair shop A, which will change the oil in X time for Y dollars. Or I can take it to repair shop B, which will change the oil in X+Z time for Y dollars. Easy choice, right?

You'd never choose to go to repair shop B. So, if you stopped to think about it, why would you ever choose to let an inefficient farming method invade your group?

Returning to GW: once you introduce overpowered PvE skills, it's a given that their use will be demanded by groups of players as a condition of entry into the group. Further, if the skills are sufficiently overpowered, players never have to learn to resolve problems with tactics. They simply abuse the overpowered skills and roflstomp the monsters regardless of the tactics they choose. Those players then get exposed as inadequate and incompetent if you remove the crutch that is the broken skill.

4thVariety · Jul 22, 2009, 07:45 AM // 07:45

The rush for efficiency is merely an expression of people realizing the time requirements of their goals are way over their head. Usually that's the time to quit, but after a short round of denial, people tend to try anyway; or use a bot. Now you can argue who's to blame for it. The player for using the bot or ArenaNet for making a bot look like a good thing by handing out 1000h grinds.

But ArenaNet is actively fighting that. The Zaishen quests try to mix up your consumption of content by sending you in all directions. The rewards are in place, once they deplete they are easily replaced, people earn a lot of faction points on the side.

As a result we see far more lenient puggin on the Zaishen Quests combined with a very pleasant stream of rewards trickling in. If we take that small step as the direction of what's to come, then the period of excessive grinding might coming to an end. I suppose SF will stay around until the next PvE centric update will give users better things to do than to farm the same mob over and over.

It's also not a crime to buy Wipeout Fury

Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 07:59 AM // 07:59

There is no reason in the world to settle for inefficiency when efficiency is possible. Irrespective of the goal, anything that can be done faster without incurring other costs should be done faster. Your alloted lifespan is a finite quantity. Why let other people choose how to spend that time for you by wasting it?

The Zaishen Quests are nothing more than a magician's trick. "Look over here where I want you to look!" They're a nice fringe benefit for players that were going to complete those tasks anyway, and they provide a focal point for daily play that brings a fragmented casual player base to specific locations, but they don't actually alter the fundamentals of player behavior in any meaningful way.

Sure, if you wanted to complete a Zaishen quest by pugging players you'd settle for players with inferior builds, because you'd have no other alternative. Of course, the sensible resolution is to develop an available network of more capable players that will abuse the imbalanced skills and get the job done faster.

Some players are going to farm the same mob over and over because it's the efficient solution to accomplishing the player's goal. This may not be your cup of tea, but some people have higher tolerances for boredom or repetition than others. The only resolution is to make all prospective farms equally (in)efficient, which is hard to do as a designer.

Fril Estelin · Jul 22, 2009, 08:21 AM // 08:21

Martin Alvito: the zquests are IMHO an incentive, and one that works to a certain extent. You do find groups, although you have to be quick on the day of the zquest. It's just sad that the grouping is so "punctual", but I (someone who has only completed 1/10th of HM missions, it'd be a totally different story for an experienced player) appreciate it very much, it sounds like good design. Even if I'm still 1/5th of the way to the biggest bag, I'm enjoying the experience very much, and getting titles along the way.

But your comment, and others, can steer the discussion in a new and interesting direction: did Anet at one point forgot the coop dimension of GW? Or did they simply notice it late and attempted to rectify some mistakes? We talk about OP, consumables and PvE skills, but what about heroe buildsets like Sabway, Cryway, Discordway, aren't they rducing the coop dimension of GW the same way that OP/consum/PvE skills remove some of the difficulty of the game?

Chthon: very interesting theory, which sounds quite solid. Somewhere after NF was released, the designers realise the skill system is out of control and they can't do a U-turn, so they decide to offer a new dimension to the game mechanics with monster teams growing in numbers (number of monsters and skill impact) while giving new specific tools to beat them, including the OP ones that they fixed afterwards.

I would extend this comment to titles: did they drive the game, and the playerbase, in the wrong direction? They seem to be one of the two main reasons why farming pollutes the game so much (the other one being "rare/exclusive/shiny stuff"). Are the skill explosion plus the title madness problems the expression of a global state of GW where Anet lost control of the overall design?

Or, more controversial on Guru but IMHO very relevant, did fansites lost track of who the average player is? I wonder whether 4thVariety is right and player will see consumables and PvE skills advantage, maybe simply by experiencing less game difficulty and DP? Has Guru become, via the layering of discussions and forumers, a theoretical discussion that has nothing to do with the reality? This question is for people like Ensign, Avarre, Bryant Again, TO NAME ONLY A FEW (I don't want to introduce more layering or make it explicit, this would defeat my purpose of making the community better): if we look at your goal to put diversity back in the game, it only makes sense if you make sense of the game, so isn't your viewpoint flawed because it is limited to a tiny fraction of the population? (strange question to ask you if you're no longer playing the game)

Another food for thought: since Regina became CM, there's a more "formalised" relationship between fansites and Anet, including the building and consolidation of the official wiki. I know and believe Regina when she said she relayed the concerns expressed here, but I have to raise 2 difficult questions: how is this "concern" described, perceived and taken into account by Anet designers? how do they keep track of the history and diversity of viewpoints?

I'll symbolically rez my idea of a "council of players", which is to say that the dimension of the community wasn't explicit in the game design. Guilds have even become tools for unexpected abuses (pay 100k to get into a gold cape guild then 10k a week, pay 50k to get in the guild that hold Cavalon since Factions, etc.).

Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 08:39 AM // 08:39

It's not that ANet forgot the co-op dimension of GW. The fundamental problem is that developing and maintaining a network of players that is both active and not full of fail takes more time than most casual players are willing to commit.

Enter heroes, which make it easier for the go-it-alone types to accomplish tasks, are available when you don't quite have enough people for a full group and are vastly superior to henchmen, and which provide some degree of control over the inadequacies of the AI.

Few actions are without unintended consequences, however. While the Guild Wars AI is terrible at a great many things, it turns out that it is much better than a human player at certain categories of tasks. It cheats at interrupting, is quite good at dividing its attention between huge numbers of tasks, has perfect recall, and is privy to data that players don't get.

It took people a good long while to figure this out. I seriously doubt that ANet anticipated players breezing through HM with heroes and henchmen. This is simply another example of how time and iterations undermine challenge.

There's not a lot you can do about the situation as a designer. Players have come to rely upon heroes, and will be upset if you gimp them. You marketed Nightfall to players as providing this new system, so you cannot very well take the feature away once you determine it is producing results that you do not prefer. All you can do is nerf the mechanics that the players are abusing and let it go at that.

4thVariety · Jul 22, 2009, 09:35 AM // 09:35

Quote:

Another food for thought: since Regina became CM, there's a more "formalised" relationship between fansites and Anet, including the building and consolidation of the official wiki. I know and believe Regina when she said she relayed the concerns expressed here, but I have to raise 2 difficult questions: how is this "concern" described, perceived and taken into account by Anet designers? how do they keep track of the history and diversity of viewpoints?

If you want to be nitpicky, Regina's title is "community coordinator". But I doubt any member of community has ever been coordinated. A coordinator is a leader, not merely an interface; which boils down to describing Regina's job better: interface. The question is whether there ever was a goal to which we are being coordinated towards. Total fandom? Ravenous viral marketing? Flashmobs? It ain't happening. She does stuff and then Linsey does stuff... ...I don't know beyond that. I just know she's always friendly and I'm told she does a lot of work and I congratulate her on a safe job for that, but the impact on the single user is not that large. The forum freaks might know her, but there is no way to communicate with the user on the streets of Lion's Arch. Games will change in that regard, you do reach more players with an ingame paper than with another overhyped proprietary communication thingy such as twitter.

Looking around in the industry we can identify two companies being ahead in that department: Nintendo and Blizzard. Both have carefully hedged communities with a strong positive bias towards ANY of the products the company is releasing. Sure, you ask why an ArenaNet community guy is supposed to pimp a NC game, but that is beside the point. They have always been a 100% subsidiary. The reality of marketing today is that almost every WoW player is made into buying D3 or SC2. Hence the unified Blizz achievement system that crosses between games. That is the step they are ahead. While GW players see the drought ahead, the Blizz player is happy about D3 and SC2. He is not complaining about the lack of Wow2, or another expansion, he wants the next game from that company.

NC never made an aggressive attempt to capture GW players. Not with Dungeon Runners, not with Tabula Rasa, not with Aion. Those games often have a worse standing with the GW community than with random people. Which would never happen to Blizzard or Nintendo, no matter what they release.

So of course the GW fansites take a hit once the river runs dry. The sites are overspecialized towards one game and even the community revolts if you merely mention another NC game. GW sites were for the most time some sort of html based "social mod", or an extention to trade. But development there is also at a halt. So all the sites can do is wait for GW2 and then start programming again. Standalone map software, real guides, build creators, character calculators, trading platform, social connectivity, character show off pages.... Personally, those are the areas of coordination that we are looking into for GW2.

Bryant Again · Jul 22, 2009, 04:10 PM // 16:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Or, more controversial on Guru but IMHO very relevant, did fansites lost track of who the average player is? I wonder whether 4thVariety is right and player will see consumables and PvE skills advantage, maybe simply by experiencing less game difficulty and DP? Has Guru become, via the layering of discussions and forumers, a theoretical discussion that has nothing to do with the reality? This question is for people like Ensign, Avarre, Bryant Again, TO NAME ONLY A FEW (I don't want to introduce more layering or make it explicit, this would defeat my purpose of making the community better): if we look at your goal to put diversity back in the game, it only makes sense if you make sense of the game, so isn't your viewpoint flawed because it is limited to a tiny fraction of the population? (strange question to ask you if you're no longer playing the game)

Fan sites as a whole don't have a collective view of the average player, that is dictated personally from poster to poster.

That aside, the people who know most about the game are always going to be put in the tiniest minority. That doesn't mean you can shit on depth, though. The average and casual player does need to be catered for, but so does the high-end player. That's what separates the good games from the bad: appeasing both ends of the spectrum. This is where Guild Wars doesn't really succeed, since the high-end player will have a very easy time "mastering PvE" and also with little variety.

JR · Jul 22, 2009, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Hard Mode should have been about better AI, or failing that simply better mixes of classes within mobs.

I want to see mobs with healers, hex/condition removal, strong direct damage, anti-melee, party heals and shut-down. Not only would that provide more of a challenge, it would discourage gimmicky builds that steamroll through some parts of the game, and it would actually be better preparation for PvP.

Shursh · Jul 22, 2009, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Hard Mode should have been about better AI, or failing that simply better mixes of classes within mobs.

I want to see mobs with healers, hex/condition removal, strong direct damage, anti-melee, party heals and shut-down. Not only would that provide more of a challenge, it would discourage gimmicky builds that steamroll through some parts of the game, and it would actually be better preparation for PvP.

or just make mob spawns in explorable areas random. skill sets for classes would be variable (but include some type of untargeted/nonspell enchant removal).