Curse

MoldyRiceFrenzy · Oct 10, 2007, 04:18 PM // 16:18

i because i dont change games often... to much downloading on dial up. =(.

Nadula · Oct 10, 2007, 04:27 PM // 16:27

Any game can only last so long, ANet have done a good job with expansions and so on but the game engine is still pretty much the same so essentially it still feels like you're playing the same game as when you first bought Prophecies (or whichever was your first).

Experienced players are likely to be bored and play less because they've been playing long enough to become 'experienced players'.

It's not rocket science to figure out that to get better at something you need to play more, the more you play the less interesting something becomes naturally.

GW2 will hopefully bring a fresh set of challenges, maybe we won't be able to jump still but it is dubbed to be a decent evolution of the original chapter(s).

Not sure how long I'll continue to play but one day I'm sure to find myself bored (And wondering what I could have done with my life instead of spending 4000-5000+ hours of my life playing a video game)

I would like ANet to remove the /age function, I'd rather not think about how much time I spend playing GW... Hehehe

BlackSephir · Oct 10, 2007, 04:38 PM // 16:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nadula

Any game can only last so long, ANet have done a good job with expansions and so on but the game engine is still pretty much the same so essentially it still feels like you're playing the same game as when you first bought Prophecies (or whichever was your first).

Experienced players are likely to be bored and play less because they've been playing long enough to become 'experienced players'.

It's not rocket science to figure out that to get better at something you need to play more, the more you play the less interesting something becomes naturally.

I dunno, people still play Ultima Online after all these years. Guess it's just the matter of adding interesting content.

The Shelf · Oct 10, 2007, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nadula

GW2 will hopefully bring a fresh set of challenges, maybe we won't be able to jump still but it is dubbed to be a decent evolution of the original chapter(s).

I thought ANet already confirmed we'd be able to jump in GW2. Are they only considering it?

On another note, isn't it funny that with most $50 games people only expect to get 50-100 hours of gameplay out of it if even that, but when it comes to Guild Wars they complain that it gets boring when they've played for 1000+ hours? Kinda unfair, don't you guys think?

Kalendraf · Oct 10, 2007, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karyuu

I don't think I want a game to be broken down into 15-minute intervals. As much fun as GW, you really shouldn't be playing an MMO if you only have that amount of time. To me, it's kind of silly.

Casual gamers (including those with time constraints) were supposedly the audience that the game was originally intended for. The original version of Guild Wars was perfect for us, and the fact that most tasks could be completed in short timeframes was one of the main attractions for casual gamers like myself.

As the game has grown, the time issue has started to become more of an issue. For the most part, ANet kept true to the game's roots and made most quests, missions and exploring able to be completed within short periods of time. However, they began introducing more and more notable exceptions, such as various end-game areas (Tombs, elite missions, etc). Unfortunately, with GW:EN, a large portion of the actual gameplay occurs in dungeons which require significant amounts of time to complete.

I agree that trying to break the game into 15-minute segments is probably a bit extreme. What I would be willing to accept as a compromise is allowing it to be digested in say 30-minute chunks by offering some method to allow check-pointing/saving/whatever for areas that take longer to complete. Waypoints after each level or two of a dungeon seems like a good solution to that.

Back to the topic at hand, I know the time issue is just one reason why some casual players I've met have given up on the game. Another major issue for several of them is title grinding. If the titles were at least account based, it might not be quite as bad. However, the title stuff still represents something that the original game was supposed to avoid - grinding.

When I first started playing GW, it reminded me of earlier games like Diablo or Sacred. What made those games fun was the lure of finding cool loot. Grind wasn't an issue. The games could usually be saved off on a moments notice, and at worst you might need to re-explore a level or two which might equate to 10 to 15 minutes of time. The original GW had that feel. The changes in the game (loot scaling, lengthy dungeons, title grinding, etc) are all changes for the worse that make GW feel less like those earlier gems. They are also reasons that several players I know have moved on.

I'm hoping that ANet understands this, and steers GW2 back toward those things that originally made GW a great game.

Karyuu · Oct 10, 2007, 06:25 PM // 18:25

Well, I'm not sure I always agree when people take up the torch in the name of "casual gamers"... :] I am one, and I don't feel like I have to fight for my cause. There are quite a few missions in Prophecies that take more than half an hour to complete, especially if you're a new player and don't have much experience with builds or guildies to help you out. These are part of the original game. Not all of Prophecies is like that by far, but certainly not all of it is digestable in half-hour intervals either. And to reach certain characters levels, you might have had to "grind" in Prophecies as well, outside of missions and quests.

I won't argue that the "grind" aspect hasn't increased throughout campaigns, but I keep saying that it's a matter of your perspective and mentality. Once you are completely done with missions, have all the bonuses, did all the NPC quests, what is left for you? More campaigns and more missions that do take a lot of time to put together by the dev team, or something lighter that can keep us occupied until their next big thing? Developers have a limit - they can't produce new content all the time to keep everyone doing things they haven't seen before. And between these content gaps, we have alternatives. I can vanquish, explore, and skill cap all at once. I'm not grinding, I'm having fun. I'm also free to switch goals at any moment. I've completed Nightfall missions without achieving even the first rank in the Lightbringer title, because... Well, I kept forgetting to advance :P I also had to get bounties only to advance once in the Sunspear rank, as a mission requirement. Then once I'm done... what else is there for a PvE player?

What do you expect to be doing now?

Antheus · Oct 10, 2007, 06:54 PM // 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

The Guild Wars® $100,000 tournament series takes place online and culminates each month in Guild-versus-Guild and 1v1 Hero Battle championship tournaments that feature over $10,000 (retail value) in prizes for the top finishers.

That means the prizes are worth that much money. $100k is also the overall value of the tournament. Then that much be split up between each tournament and then each team will have to split it between teammates.

I have a friend that plays WC3 and has made $36K in the last 6 months. There are other competitive games out there offering real money with a nice size purse.

So, it's not about GW not offering money rewards, but about the fact you make more money on other games? In that case, you're professional gamer, and game is your job, along with 14 hour training days for the rest of the time.

GW wasn't designed as a job. It was originally envisioned as a game for people with jobs, and to be playable by those who cannot give up on real life to play online.

But how is this relevant? You're either one of the best (think pro tennis player who earns millions each year), or you play for sport alone. Or does that mean that only a dozen people can play tennis, but it shouldn't be played by anyone else, since they don't make money.

Money rewards in GW exist. WC3 is not MMO type of game. It falls in the same genre of small multi-player games that are very popular in Korea. But it's unrelated to GW.

Online poker and casinos in general are games as well. But they don't relate to GW in any way whatsoever.

But since you're a professional gamer who lives off money earned by playing games, the game you play is irrelevant, you'll do whatever you can compete in, right?

arcady · Oct 10, 2007, 08:23 PM // 20:23

School year and natural result of progress through the game.

I can say the same things about WoW and my WoW guild that some in this thread have said about GW and their GW guilds. When school started up, even in a guild with a rule of 18+ adults only, we lost half our members to inactivity. They're still listed, but haven't logged in for some time. The server overall population (which you can track in WoW) dropped by a similar ratio, and the active population (those who play regularly rather than just log in for the one or two times a month it takes for the stat-gathering mods to register them) dropped to 1/10th of what it was maybe 3 months ago (people who tout how popular WoW is often forget that Blizzard tracks paid accounts not played accounts. There's a big difference, and looking at third party mod-based server pop trackers tends to show much lower results - especially on the active end).

Population picks up during holidays, weekends, and summers - but goes down again afterwards. It also picks up with expansions, but only when those expansions address new players. Expansions that address older players get -some- people returning, but that is working with a smaller piece of pie than an expansion that brings in new players. So while Nightfall gave GW a big boost in playership, GW:EN has given it only a very small increase. I'd wager 90% of sales of GW:EN went to existing players, rather than newbies who bought it alongside one of the earlier chapters. I could be wrong, that's just a guess, but it seems logical.

Come the holiday events, we should see some spikes in population. And come next summer, a larger spike.

It probably also helps GWs anytime some other pay-per-month MMO is far enough from its last expansion that most of its players have finished the new content...

But that means that right now, GW should be seeing a boost - so this is probably just a minor factor.

Kalendraf · Oct 10, 2007, 08:26 PM // 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karyuu

There are quite a few missions in Prophecies that take more than half an hour to complete

I solo'd and PUG'ed Prophecies, and found I was able to complete most of its missions rather quickly. 30 minutes was about tops for most missions there (at least w/o bonus). There are a couple that may take a bit longer, but with a good team you can even complete those pretty fast. If you take heroes into them now, you can complete them even faster. Also, just to be clear, I'm referring to normal mode, not hard mode.

Quote:

And to reach certain characters levels, you might have had to "grind" in Prophecies as well, outside of missions and quests.

Huh? I never did any grinding and easily made 20th level around the Crystal desert area with 4 different characters. Doing missions and quests along with normal exploring was adequate for that...even for someone with time restrictions.

Quote:

Once you are completely done with missions, have all the bonuses, did all the NPC quests, what is left for you?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I originally liked the idea of hunting lots of stuff and collecting all the loot. A personal goal was to craft 2 to 4 sets of 15K armor for every character (4 chars originally, now 8), and to do that it required lots of gold and crafting materials. Obtaining that was once achieveable via solo hunting. I found solo builds very interesting, since I would often tweak skillbars to try to find ones that were faster and/or easier to use. Unfortunately, between loot scaling and various nerfs, soloing is no longer profitable or enjoyable.

Quote:

Developers have a limit - they can't produce new content all the time to keep everyone doing things they haven't seen before.

Several casual gamers I know think that ANet pumped out too much, too quickly. Releasing campaigns and expansions every 12 months would have been more than sufficient for us. I know a few very casual players that have never even completed a single campaign yet. You may consider yourself a casual player, but there are in fact many much-more-casual players out there.

Age · Oct 10, 2007, 09:09 PM // 21:09

My Guild and Alliance are kind of quiet atm but that doesn't mean we have retired.There maybe player retired or just moved on to greener pastures as Anet has given up on GW1 it seems as it has a lot of potential still but their heads are in GW2.You can still do a lot with GW1 expand pre so char can get to 20 set up some more out post more important ones.

Make up some PvE-PvP battle maps where you only use your PvE char on it similar to AB.Then there is all the nerfs as my former Alliance leader has moved on to LoTR.It is these nerfs that is making players leave.That is when the good players just left.

Kenect · Oct 11, 2007, 01:28 PM // 13:28

My guild and friends list is dead, so now the only thing of GW I can stand to do is RA but thats only because I don't care about winning. After 28 months I can't keep playing GW, I create a character but delete it 10 minutes later due to boredom and thinking about all those missions I've got to redo.

So with all this free time on my hands I looked at other games and WoW was the only game that caught my attention (and could play on my laptop). I'm hoping Anet will get GW back to its former glory to bring back players.

2005 ftw

Kalendraf · Oct 11, 2007, 02:51 PM // 14:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by zakaria

1- heroes that ruined this game totally, made it like single player with no social interacts between players anymore.

For myself and my friends (all casual players), heroes were a godsend. Without them, we would have left by now. Just goes to prove that different sets of players have different needs and desires.

Quote:

4- My 8 char. caught in the middle of the grind fest of titles that A.Net created after NF, which made me confused to concentrate on just 1 char or all of them

Many players hate the title grind, especially the fact it is per character. It's one of my main beefs with GW right now.

GloryFox · Oct 11, 2007, 03:00 PM // 15:00

I know of many players who have left including close personal real life friends. The title Grind for Armor was the last straw for many of them. Now we play counter-strike on the weekends.

ANet failed with GWEN grind.

garethporlest18 · Oct 11, 2007, 03:29 PM // 15:29

It'd be great if GW did die, but it won't. Although the highest population was in 06 during the Dragon Festival, over 200 districts, haven't seen that since. Although the Halloween and Christmas events of that year were in 2 different places, so the number could have been a bit higher.

Sometimes I still have fun even though I hate GW. I also have more hours than most people in this thread, and yet I still hate it, but I still play it.

Effendi Westland · Oct 11, 2007, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Guild has become alot less active with the casual players losing interest in GW:EN quickly after they figured how much grind content it has, and players who did not get GWEN because of that stopped playing altogether. But that is just what I see in my guild, I'm sure others have different experiences.

cthulhu reborn · Oct 11, 2007, 03:33 PM // 15:33

I haven't stopped playing but since GWEN came out (except for the first week or so) my gaming time has cut in half by itself.

I love armours...I have 26 elite armours and wanted more. But after my first 2 GWEN armours I gave up on the other 8 I wanted to get. Just don't care to get to level 5 on each char (I have 12 of em and really think level 4 would've been enough) and consequently don't care about the game as much anymore.
I feel that GWEN is great if you have like 3 or 4 chars or something. I played it to the end with 6 now and really don't wanna do the other 6. I do like GWEN but at the same time I just can be arsed anymore with it.

Still sucks that you can only put destroyer weapons in it so I have very little reason to game at the moment.
This weekend should help but of course I am working this weekend...

Darksun · Oct 11, 2007, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by garethporlest18

Sometimes I still have fun even though I hate GW. I also have more hours than most people in this thread, and yet I still hate it, but I still play it.

So how does the hate make it fun?

WinterSnowblind · Oct 11, 2007, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Been busy at Uni, I just started my fourth year.

And I've been a little burned out on Guild Wars since I finished Eye of the North. Unlike most people, I did really enjoy pretty much all of it, but I had been playing it a lot even before GW:EN came out, and now I just really need some time away. I'll probably start playing more during he Halloween event though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zakaria

reasons why left GW:
1- heroes that ruined this game totally, made it like single player with no social interacts between players anymore.

I can't believe some people are still going on about Heroes. I really can't be bothered getting into it again, especially in this thread, but for me and a lot of other people, Heroes are the reason I came back to Guild Wars. I don't completely solo GW, I enjoy playing it with a few friends, and that's the way I enjoy playing games. If they removed heroes, or even just didn't add them, I wouldn't be playing the game, and neither would a lot of others. Why should I have to rely on teaming up with others (which was a lengthy process even before heroes) just because that's the way YOU feel the game should be played? One of the things that drew me into Guild Wars was the fact it can be played solo, or in small groups.

Heroes changed very little. And if you believe otherwise, you haven't been playing GW for very long.

Shuuda · Oct 11, 2007, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Something I find very odd, is that lots of people claiming to have quit GW, or even hate GW still post on FAN forums. Why? do they enjoy flaming or advertising their new game... or are they weak willed and so pathetic they can't beat old addictions? The onlt good reason to ever go on a forum of a game you quit is too see if it is any better or worth coming back too, and you don't need to post stupid flames at the game to do that, now do you?

P.S: I'm not being an A-net fanboy or nothin', I'm simply attacking these people for something that seems illogical to me.

SpaceGh057 · Oct 11, 2007, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kenect

My guild and friends list is dead, so now the only thing of GW I can stand to do is RA but thats only because I don't care about winning. After 28 months I can't keep playing GW, I create a character but delete it 10 minutes later due to boredom and thinking about all those missions I've got to redo.

So with all this free time on my hands I looked at other games and WoW was the only game that caught my attention (and could play on my laptop). I'm hoping Anet will get GW back to its former glory to bring back players.

2005 ftw

+1, 2005 ftw.
I've deleted and remade so many characters since the beta days, but, it's still a good game, someone else commented that you can come back to this game without having any obligations, which is why I keep coming back. Take a few months off, and most of the stuff feels just like new again.

All games do get old, everyone ALWAYS quits a game eventually. The preaching of never quitting lasts only as long as your friends do.

I've been on a mac since college started... and I'm hoping some of my friends are going to go through GWEN with me, if not, I'll just swing by around Christmas. Breaks from this turn out better than other games because of monthly payments.

In response to the why do people post after quitting, trolling and lurking are always wonderful pasttimes for someone who's bored and has already put a significant chunk of time into the forum/game.