ArenaNet: Linsey Murdock unveils High End Ascended Gear (2012-11-13)

[Centaur]

Sarcasm doesn't become you. Hyperbole doesn't either. You say nothing is important in a game and then use the word dangerous. Make up your mind. If nothing is important than nothing is dangerous either. Maybe you missed my point instead of me missing yours.

I never said there was anything in the game that's "dangerous". That's what you made of it. You as a writer should know how you can change the meaning of a sentence by ignoring certain words. When you do, you may think that you're replying to what someone said, but you're actually ignoring what that person said while staying in your own train of thoughts and twisting what they said to fit your own purpose, and in the original context, your reply doesn't make any sense at all (as you're replying to something that was never said). I'll highlight those words for you, hopefully that will make you realize what you're actually doing here:

Stating that grinding is okay if it's a "choice" is dangerous, as everything in a computer game is a choice. Even whether or not you play the game is a choice. So then every change would be okay.

their very own "Design Manifesto" blog post

See the difference?

There's nothing for you to do at max level, maybe. I have a guild full of people who have stuff to do at max level, before the upgrade and the gear grind. Some are going for legendaries, some are just doing dungeons for tokens, some are just having fun exploring the world. Having 100% doesn't mean you've seen everything. In fact, the faster someone gets 100% the more chance they haven't seen everything. Some people love WvW and do that sometimes, and some people like SPvP and do that sometimes. Saying there's nothing to do at end game is at very least disingenuous. You used to be the person listing all the things that could be done.

The things you sum up only confirm what I said...
- finish exploring the game if you haven't done so already
- do pvp
- grind for gear.

There's a lot more you can do, but once you've done all of it once, there is absolutely no incentive or in-game reason (I'm not counting social reasons such as replaying something with your guild) to ever repeat it again... especially for those who don't care about gear grinding and pvp.

Storm in a teacup. Five guys will leave the game, but you had one foot out the door anyway. You were already bored. You've already said you have nothing to do. So to say now that this change is going to chase players like you from the game is also disingenuous. You can't have it both ways. Either you were bored with the game and putting it down for a while, or this change as incensed you so much that you are using it as a way to justify the fact that you don't like the game as much as you thought you would/should.

You're contradicting yourself. In some posts you state that you don't know how big either group is, now you claim the amount that has left the game (or is/was considering leaving the game) over this, is negligable and they don't matter.

Many people were already bored. Otherwise they wouldn't have needed to rush the fractals dungeon and the ascended gear out anyway. What I'm saying is that they made the intentional choice to address that group that actually wants gear progression at endgame, and ignore the group that hates it (many of which came to GW2 because ever from the start, the devs have given the impression that this game would not be about gear progression at endgame). So this change may reel some of those back in and keep them occupied for a little longer, while it pushes others (like me) over the edge. On top of that, it significantly reduces the faith of a lot of people in ArenaNet, and causes a lot of bad publicity. So in the end, what did they really win?

Final point...you say that Anet never tried anything else. Well, I wonder what they're working on trying that they haven't had time to implement. As I've said all along, and most people agree, this is a fast solution. And people don't have patience. So you think they should wait to try slower solutions or find something to do in the interim.

Actually, I think what's missing should have been in the game from day one. The replayability for the personal stories is pathetic, there's way too few actual dynamic event chains and webs in most zones, the low rewards and the downscaling make going back to lower level zones a joke, and there are absolutely no long-term goals that make it worthwhile to ever go back to those zones and do anything there ever again. After all those years in development, it's sad that they didn't consider this important enough to launch with, and that they never even bothered to address any of this in the months after launch. It would have been better if they had, during their development phase, decided to completely leave out one of the current zones in the game and instead focus on adding long-term goals for all players. They didn't, and now they have to rush and push forth content that actually divides the community, to catch up.
A couple of the things said in their AMA make me believe that there may still be hope for the future (though I sincerely hope that it will not just be about distributing the gear progression all over the game), but the fact remains that ArenaNet has decided to add gear progression at max level (even if they had made people believe there wouldn't be) while ignoring all other replayability concerns.
It's simple: there's a group of players that enjoy gear progression at level cap, there's a group of players that hate gear progression at level cap, and there's a group that doesn't really care either way. Either you choose to go for gear progression at the level cap and keep the players that enjoy it happy (for a while?), or you choose alternatives and you choose to stay away from gear progression at the level cap and keep those happy players that hate it (many of which came to GW2 exactly because ArenaNet has always made everyone believe that the only kind of gear 'progression' at the level cap would be cosmetic). You cannot have it both ways. ArenaNet clearly made their choice.

It's only the end of the world if you don't think they're also working on those other things.

As of this moment, they still haven't confirmed in any way that they are working on any other methods of replayability or long-term goals than gear progression. So will the kinds of things I need to enjoy the game again, ever be added? No clue.

For me, there is one last statement from Colin that matters:

"So you could take 3 months off, play a whole bunch of new games that came out, come back and you're gonna find a completely new Guild Wars 2 experience waiting for you, that you don't have to pay that monthly fee to keep doing it."

I just hope that "new experience" is better than the current one.

[Fey]

I just hope that "new experience" is better than the current one.

Subjective.

Even in WoW, most of us that played in vanilla miss it more than any other expansion. And that changes from person to person, as newer players join and older players quit, new content is added and each player gains their own experiences. For better or for worse. Change will happen and people will learn to deal with it or they'll move on. And the game will continue to shift.

[Vayne]

I never said there was anything in the game that's "dangerous". That's what you made of it. You as a writer should know how you can change the meaning of a sentence by ignoring certain words. When you do, you may think that you're replying to what someone said, but you're actually ignoring what that person said while staying in your own train of thoughts and twisting what they said to fit your own purpose, and in the original context, your reply doesn't make any sense at all (as you're replying to something that was never said). I'll highlight those words for you, hopefully that will make you realize what you're actually doing here:





See the difference?



The things you sum up only confirm what I said...
- finish exploring the game if you haven't done so already
- do pvp
- grind for gear.

There's a lot more you can do, but once you've done all of it once, there is absolutely no incentive or in-game reason (I'm not counting social reasons such as replaying something with your guild) to ever repeat it again... especially for those who don't care about gear grinding and pvp.



You're contradicting yourself. In some posts you state that you don't know how big either group is, now you claim the amount that has left the game (or is/was considering leaving the game) over this, is negligable and they don't matter.

Many people were already bored. Otherwise they wouldn't have needed to rush the fractals dungeon and the ascended gear out anyway. What I'm saying is that they made the intentional choice to address that group that actually wants gear progression at endgame, and ignore the group that hates it (many of which came to GW2 because ever from the start, the devs have given the impression that this game would not be about gear progression at endgame). So this change may reel some of those back in and keep them occupied for a little longer, while it pushes others (like me) over the edge. On top of that, it significantly reduces the faith of a lot of people in ArenaNet, and causes a lot of bad publicity. So in the end, what did they really win?



Actually, I think what's missing should have been in the game from day one. The replayability for the personal stories is pathetic, there's way too few actual dynamic event chains and webs in most zones, the low rewards and the downscaling make going back to lower level zones a joke, and there are absolutely no long-term goals that make it worthwhile to ever go back to those zones and do anything there ever again. After all those years in development, it's sad that they didn't consider this important enough to launch with, and that they never even bothered to address any of this in the months after launch. It would have been better if they had, during their development phase, decided to completely leave out one of the current zones in the game and instead focus on adding long-term goals for all players. They didn't, and now they have to rush and push forth content that actually divides the community, to catch up.
A couple of the things said in their AMA make me believe that there may still be hope for the future (though I sincerely hope that it will not just be about distributing the gear progression all over the game), but the fact remains that ArenaNet has decided to add gear progression at max level (even if they had made people believe there wouldn't be) while ignoring all other replayability concerns.
It's simple: there's a group of players that enjoy gear progression at level cap, there's a group of players that hate gear progression at level cap, and there's a group that doesn't really care either way. Either you choose to go for gear progression at the level cap and keep the players that enjoy it happy (for a while?), or you choose alternatives and you choose to stay away from gear progression at the level cap and keep those happy players that hate it (many of which came to GW2 exactly because ArenaNet has always made everyone believe that the only kind of gear 'progression' at the level cap would be cosmetic). You cannot have it both ways. ArenaNet clearly made their choice.



As of this moment, they still haven't confirmed in any way that they are working on any other methods of replayability or long-term goals than gear progression. So will the kinds of things I need to enjoy the game again, ever be added? No clue.

For me, there is one last statement from Colin that matters:



I just hope that "new experience" is better than the current one.

I've already covered most of your complaints in various posts. Your assertion that Anet chose one group of players over another is incorrect. They chose to do what they could do on short notice, while working on other stuff. As you said, they had to do something and they did it. If it was your business and your time, energy and money invested, you'd have done the same. You'd have done what you could short term while working on longer term solutions. Expecting them to just let things go til the longer term solutions are done is unrealistic.


You say the replayability from personal stories is pathetic, but I'm having fun with them. Compared to Prophecies and it's 25 missions, half of which were crap anyway (for example just about everything in the Maguuma Jungle) I think the personal story is successful. I'm not sure what you expected? A million instances? Ten thousand? Do you know how much work was put into what they did deliver.

There's plenty of different variations on a theme. They couldn't do more than variations on a theme, the game would have taken 15 years to launch. It's not practical. Maybe your expectations are skewed. As I play each race, I see the input of each into the final scene. I see how the threads weave together. It's clever and it's fun.

It's not, of course,. ground breaking RPG, but I don't know why anyone would expect it to be. It always had to stay within the limitations of the system. Ten level mini scenarios that joined up.

I agree they could have made three different endings, one for each of the factions, but joining them together fits the theme as well.

I get that you don't like it, but that doesn't make it bad. I know people who don't like it and I know people who do. Sorry to see you're one of those who don't, but it's still your opinion.

So, how many times did you end up running those 25 Prophecies missions and what percentage of them were actually "fun". I'm really curious about this?

I think you're reacting more to shattered expectations than realistic ones.

[Vayne]

@ Centaur

I'll even go you one better, actually. How much replayability did prophecies really have, when you get right down to it? That's what you have to compare it to, not all four games. Six professions and 1 race. One starting area. No personal story, everyone had the same story. No options to change things up at all. 25 missions without even hard mode. When you finished the game, you had the Underworld and you had the Fissure of Woe, two big instances. You had, of course PvP, but clearly, you're not a PvPer so that wouldn't have counted.

Do you really remember Prophecies? I mean REALLY remember it. With Prince Rurik running off in missions being an idiot and Aleshia dropping dead every two seconds? Before heroes were available or even hard mode?

How much more content is there here, for pretty much the same price? How many times the content? Eight dungeons, four paths three each dungeon at launch. Five starting areas. Personal stories with subdivisions so if you go through again you can take another path. I'm not really sure what you expected.

Prophecies didn't have half, not even a quarter of the exploration potential of this game. You couldn't climb anything, there was very little hidden, per se, you could map it, if you wanted to edge every zone, but really, what was there that was so great to do in Guild Wars 1 after you finished the 25th mission?

Grind for cosmetic gear. That's pretty much all there was, until Factions came out. And Factions, as fun as it was, was still a short game with only 13 missions.

I really think you had expectations for this game that were completely beyond any reality. I have yet to see any MMO launch with more content than Guild Wars 2 offers, no matter how quickly people consume it. Every MMO has the same problem. All of them. Go to any MMO forum a month or two after launch and watch what people say. There's not enough content. Well, you know, that's because it takes time to get more content out, usually a lot of time. Rift had a great launch but a tiny world. Where was the great end game content in SWToR? Lotro when it launched? Every game that comes along suffers this problem. No one could possibly make enough content, no matter how much, to keep everyone busy.

1500 dynamic events isn't enough even though most games only launch with 500 static quests. Are you really saying that there's not enough to do for an MMO at launch?

[Jim Hunter]

It's not the amount of content, it's that there is no reason for a lot of people to go back and replay it. I personally like going back and running through DE chains but the rewards from them are complete crap and most people won't do it just for the fun of it.

They should have implemented the really low chance for champion mobs to drop a rare skin to give people a reason to go back and run through the events. Very simple solution that would have kept a lot of people happy and kept the lower zones alive.

Same with dungeons, bring back my voltaic spear runs, let the boss at the end of AC drop a silverwing bow.

Just for the record I think prophecies had a way better story and I ran through it probably about 30+ times. I think the cinematic cut scenes really helped as opposed to watching two people talking.

[Vayne]

It's not the amount of content, it's that there is no reason for a lot of people to go back and replay it. I personally like going back and running through DE chains but the rewards from them are complete crap and most people won't do it just for the fun of it.

They should have implemented the really low chance for champion mobs to drop a rare skin to give people a reason to go back and run through the events. Very simple solution that would have kept a lot of people happy and kept the lower zones alive.

Same with dungeons, bring back my voltaic spear runs, let the boss at the end of AC drop a silverwing bow.

Just for the record I think prophecies had a way better story and I ran through it probably about 30+ times. I think the cinematic cut scenes really helped as opposed to watching two people talking.

I don't know, I get pretty decent drops from low level areas, fairly frequently. And now there's an increased chance in any map 55 or higher level, so there's plenty of reason for people to go back.

But you don't need or want a zerg in the earlier areas anyway. On my server there are literally always people around in every zone. Maybe again, because it's an RP server, I don't know, but really I'm leveling a lot of alts and I'm always running into people. Not a ton of people, but I don't need a ton of people.

Is it really so different on other servers?

[Jim Hunter]

What do you do with the drops you get? I'm guessing it either goes to the tp or it's merchant fodder. For the people that need the carrot it makes more sense to make gold quicker in orr or dungeons.

I'm not trying to offer suggestions to make people like you or I happy with the world. This is for the people that need the carrot to keep them playing

[Vayne]

What do you do with the drops you get? I'm guessing it either goes to the tp or it's merchant fodder. For the people that need the carrot it makes more sense to make gold quicker in orr or dungeons.

I'm not trying to offer suggestions to make people like you or I happy with the world. This is for the people that need the carrot to keep them playing

I'm getting level appropriate drops at least some of the time...probably more than I should be I think. Even the starter zone the other day, I got a gold, level 76 sword which salvaged to 3 ectos. But there's no real challenge to playing that zone, I was just with a guildie...which is probably the problem. Would I have been there if the guildie wasn't? Probably not.

Though sometimes, I go to earlier zones to finish off dailies if I'm tired and I want them done. But I do spend time in lots of different zones during the course of the day and there are usually people around is my point. Not a lot of people but I don't know why earlier zones need a lot of people.

[Centaur]

I've already covered most of your complaints in various posts. Your assertion that Anet chose one group of players over another is incorrect. They chose to do what they could do on short notice, while working on other stuff. As you said, they had to do something and they did it. If it was your business and your time, energy and money invested, you'd have done the same. You'd have done what you could short term while working on longer term solutions. Expecting them to just let things go til the longer term solutions are done is unrealistic.

You keep repeating that. But ArenaNet did make a very clear choice. You cannot choose a 'gear progression at level cap' solution for the short term, and a 'no gear progression at level cap' solution for the longer term as those two solutions are mutually exclusive. Choosing for this short term solution means they already decided which path they want to go and which group of people they consider more important. Once that choice is made, the longer term implementation will not change that fact.

As for replayability... ArenaNet never claimed replayability of the Prophecies storyline would give you a different experience the second time, and I never did replay Prophecies for its story. They did make very bold claims on the replayability of the personal story in GW2, which greatly raised expectations. For example, Colin Johanson made this very clear statement:

So every character you create can have a completely unique storyline from levels 1 to 80 that is completely different than another character. Right from levels 1 thru 10 there are 15 unique storylines available in the game, and each of those storylines have branching in them to change the story and send them in different directions. So the amount of replayability and the amount of different stories that you can experience is completely massive and is greater than anything you'll find in a console game.

That statement is just downright false. The number of different story options is extremely limited and most actually merge back to the main storyline instead of branching out further. Many other games (even many with a significantly smaller development team) have more branching storylines and still didn't take 15 years to launch. It's all about what you say you are going to do vs what you prioritize and actually do. As of this moment, there are just too many of these differences in the game... aspects that sounded great on paper, when ArenaNet described how they were going to make the game, but that turned out extremely disappointing in reality. Shattered expectations? Definitely. But given everything that ArenaNet stated they were going to do, I definitely see them as realistic ones as well.
And who knows, it might still turn into what they said it would be sometime in the future, but right now, this game definitely isn't.

@ Centaur

I'll even go you one better, actually. How much replayability did prophecies really have, when you get right down to it? That's what you have to compare it to, not all four games.

See what I said in reply to an earlier post you made about Prophecies in this same thread.

And it's not about the amount of content. The keyword is replayability. If you give someone good reasons for replaying existing content, then less can even be more. Right now, GW2 doesn't have those.

[Vayne]

And it's not about the amount of content. The keyword is replayability. If you give someone good reasons for replaying existing content, then less can even be more. Right now, GW2 doesn't have those.

Opinion stated as fact, and I'm calling you on it. I have as many characters as you, probably more, and I'm happy to replay, same as Guild Wars 1. I don't know where you fell of the train, but I ENJOY playing the story and different characters and seeing how things fit together.

Basically there is no reason for YOU to be playing. That's really what you can say. There's reason for SOME people to replay and not others. But not having replayability is NOT a fact. It's only the opinion of some people.

Edit: I followed the game as closely as you. Saw the same interviews. Read the same articles. I pretty much knew/expected what was coming, before the game came out. I don't know why you had the expectations you did, even with that quote. I can read that quote and see what's being said. Again, how replayable it is is a matter of opinion. I'm still finding story missions I haven't done. That's pretty replayable.

Will it be infinitely replayable? Probably not. But it's far more replayable than most MMOs generally and pretty much all of them at launch. Maybe you haven't played enough MMOs to really see what's out there. This really is better than any of them. It's not, of course, better than Dragon Age, but that's a different kettle of fish.