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Guild Wars 2: Keeping the Game Solid
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In his latest Guild Wars 2 column, MMORPG.com's David North divines the future for the game and how he believes the developers can keep the game solid for players when it comes to content and patch updates. Check out what David has to say and then let us know how you think the GW2 team can 'keep the game solid' as its future rolls on in the comments.
When a game gets a major update it is either a large patch or an expansion that comes with a lot more content, which means new enemies. In the original Guild Wars campaigns, the story took place in different parts of the world, each with its own environment and new enemies. There were a few types of creatures that would be seen in multiple campaigns, but in many games they will just take a good bit of old creatures and change their color scheme, add a new thing or two to the model and call it new content. This is unacceptable in my opinion.
Read more of David North's Guid Wars 2: Keeping the Game Solid.
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I don’t care if it makes us look Godly, or goofy, please keep those costumes coming!
Comments
Races is a given for a good expansion, there's always new starting areas, quests, etc, but isn't it a bit early to start talking expansions? The game's not even in closed beta testing.
Yeah, I like the whole "Adding races but not classes thing", but wouldn't one believe that the biggest expansion to the Guild Wars 2 universe is ever expanding optional content? We have WvWvW, FPS/Esport PvP, Brilliant World PvE, Instances, and Story. I would imagine that since all 5 of these are optional, that they would add more options rather than just "more".
After all, options are what is making this game so enticing thus far. What if they added stuff like "Minecraft style digging for groups" where players could go on deep underground crafting material gathering missions and face random threats all the way down just to keep the crafting metagame fun and alive.
The above is just an option, but you get my drift - Guild Wars 2 is a perfect game for options, not "additions" like flying mounts and Death Knights were to WoW.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
New races, starting areas, story lines etc. definately adds a lot of content... but I am the kind of player who generally plays one character in a game. That content would be lost or of little value to players like myself.
Of course the game needs to cater to a wide range of playing styles, so just saying, yeah to new races, but not at the expense of everything else.
Yea, I totally hate it when I travel the globe (our globe, not Tyria), and I get to some corner and there is this creature with fur, four paws, whiskers, it sorta resembles a cat, but it's all, you know, wrong!! Where I come from, cats have stripes, not spots, they are small and cuddly, not 300lb monsters!! So, I'm totally on board with the author with regard to re-use of creatures. everyone stays in their corner please! No migration, no differentiation! You want different species of mandragors?! HAH! That's just crazy talk!!
anet has already stated that future expansions will be true expansions, like eotn. they will not be stand alone campaigns with starter areas like nf and factions.
they don't want to waste time recreating starter areas. so with out starter areas, im not sure how they could introduce new playable races (professions could be added to current starter areas, but at the cost of creating a toon from scratch).
one thought on guru2 is that expansions may contain new weapons (with new weapons skills) like scythes, spears, double handed axe, boomarangs etc.
It would still be playable for your one character. Dont forget that your lvl automatically scales down when you visit lower lvl areas. So there is no lineair path for you to follow, you can always go back and play in some other race's starting area.
It would be good if GW2 didn't box themselves into a corner and allow for all kinds of new content. There's no reason not to create new races and sell them separately (with their own starter areas). Create new professions and sell them separately. Create new lands with new levels and sell them separately. Create new PVP maps and sell them separately. Create new dungeons and sell them separately. Create new gameplay (like housing and mounts) and sell them separately.
Free stuff - I can see them swapping in and out Dynamic Event Chains to change up an area, releasing new lands that don't include new levels, and giving away a few maps and dungeons. I can also see them releasing new skills and weapons for existing professions this way.
My worry about the boxed expansion mentality is that the bigger the project the time to complete rises exponentially because of too many moving parts. If you break it down into pieces then you can release them faster. This would especially work well with stuff that is not related to the PVE world such as housing, PVP maps, and dungeons.
Would be pretty cool to play as a Hylek (frog race).
I for oen would prefer to keep the goofy fro mreaching bannanna suits. Keep some integrity to the IPs name and avoid going the asiatic route on costumes.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
the expansions will bring us back to the other compagins....and MY GOD I WANT TANGU
It's B2P with a cash shop.
I wouldn't worry too much about what their plans are. I'm sure they will crank out new stuff very often, and charge you for it.
As a freelance Game Designer (currently seeking a good home, hint hint wink wink) I've puddled around against the options that Guild Wars 2 already brings to the table, and I thought I may have come up with a few things they could possibly pursue for future content expansions;
Continental expansions. Warcraft did it with Outland, Northrend, and "Cataclysm," and its not entirely a bad idea. As the game is not quite out yet, its hard to define what stands within the canon to be part or the world, or yet to be included in the world. Giving players the opportunity to vie for a new land, new adventures, pillages, quest events, all tied into the storyline of Tyria's nation's presence moving out into this uncharted land. Befriending its locals or winding up on the wrong end of a huge unfolding catastrophic event.
Environmental events. (I'm not sure if something like this is already built into their current system) Not only do the npcs and enemies affect the way the world works, but so does the globe itself. Earthquakes and volcanos are something harder to represent on a persistent world, however fault lines, small scale eruptions, landslides, floods, storms and so on could certainly have long lasting effects on people caught within those areas. It would fall upon our brave heroes to help escort villagers away to safety, or to place blockades in position to help stim the tide waters, or evoke the elements themselves to breach the dam and halt a lava floe in its tracks. In turn, these events would yield more events, like reconstruction of the village in gathering resources, shooing away would-be pillagers, and helping the refugees recover their livelyhoods lost in the natural disasters. In my example using a dam, perhaps the players assist in the dam's reconstruction, which will in turn play a role in a future example of stopping the lava flow by having players re-destroy the dam. Or in the event of storm, players rebracing the dam to keep it from flooding again. Any and all of these events would require massive group scale efforts, people working on many fronts to ensure as few people succumb to nature as possible, and it could really help foster a sense of community when the people who are particularly good at certain tasks recieve recognition for it and are asked to participate again should the need arise again. (As an afterthought, what if the village in question was a position of grave importance or a resource of vast power that was simply not worth giving up, despite nature seeking its destruction at all sides. Just a thought.)
Guild sponsored townships. Guilds that clear content as a team and work through events together should be rewarded together... with guild recognition. By a guild investing a great deal of its time and energy into events surrounding a particular region or town, the town should begin to reflect that guild's influence over the area. Perhaps by hanging banners in their support around, perhaps by offering that guild better discounts, crafting bonuses, so on, to not only benefit themselves as a guild, but to show everyone else what they as a guild can accomplish. On the flip side of the coin, this creates a competitive atmosphere for guilds who want to strive to be the best (certainly, you would want a guild with 15 players to be as competitive as a guild with 50, this sort of system will need some balances in regards to how many players affect however much content). In addition, it could potentially allow other players to benefit, perhaps if there is new content, vendors, and options available within town that might have never been there if the guild had not taken its steps to support and bolster the town (options that would likely be vastly different if some other guild had happened to support the town. Different guilds, different choices, different options).
Default content expansion. Probably the most standard of what players see out of content expansions. More abilities, more content to clear (ie, dungeons, raids, events, etc), more races, and (most tumultuous) more professions. The majority of this would not be too difficult to implement, and the way the ability system works now, by adding a few new types of weapons into the game, you could expect a wide variety of new abilities to be just from a handful of new weapon types (OF COURSE, there will be extensive balancing ;p ). The only issues arise when it would come down to induction of new races, and, given on how finite the world is as is, where you would put those new races to start, and how would you make "Tangu" feel different from any other given race in the game. Its not so much about "its your character, its your look," in Guild Wars 2, it is "YOUR STORY," and homogenizing races is something I doubt ArenaNet would ever want to consider doing. Every race has its own obstacles to overcome, and in inducting a new race to the game, a whole new series of courses must be set so that it can have its own story, YOUR OWN STORY, to carve out admist the world. In regards to adding more professions, 8 is going to be a nice, easy to manage number. Balancing skills in Guild Wars was a absolute nightmare, because it was never "just nerf this one ability," it was "well if I nerf this, then everything over in this tree is going to go splat, and suddenly, this over here is going to go way out of control!" Guild Wars 2 takes away the vast amount of choice (to be both overly amazing and painfully not) that the original Guild Wars had and simplifies it down to something that allows every profession to be competitive, yet not play exactly the same. But therein lies the problem. Adding too many professions, too many abilities to manage, then needing to average them around, and to keep them fluidly working together... It all becomes a big mess in a hurry. After the game has had a year or so under its belt, and things have been very well balanced out, it might seem a easier prospect. I loved the Dervish of Guild Wars 1, and while it was difficult to find a group (because there were only a MILLION Dervishes), it still felt like a neat concept that played in its own way, like many of the individual professions did in Guild Wars. Guild Wars 2 tries to keep that concept in point, that every class will feel wholey different from all the others, and yet, all are capable of being effective to greater or lesser extent regardless of the role they must fulfill. Be it ranged, close quarters, or support, the majority of professions already showcased already hold candles to their original Guild Wars counterparts, and then some. As is, most of the current professions shown for Guild Wars 2 already fulfill one or more fighting styles of the professions in Guild Wars (aside from the Mesmer/Monk/Dervish/Ritualist, (the Necromancer to an extent gets a few supportive roles similar to the Ritualist), and we're all expecting the Mesmer as the 8th profession (the "3rd light armor")).
Long story short, default content expansions are the easiest to predict, easiest (relatively) to implement, especially if you are playing on top of your previous layers of content that already exist in the game. Unfortunately, these sort of expansion are (historically) quicker to tire players out (see Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm) where there are massive burnouts after all the buzz about pretty new content disappears. To truely captivate the audience, ArenaNet has to put forth new innovations within game, showing players what can be actually done with what they give us, and us, as the players, show *them* what we can do with that new content. New pvp game modes, new mass event types, fun group games, things that make players stop and say "Wow, I've never seen that before." Its almost a given that any game will eventually out grow its diapers and need to develop some additional content for its expanding community, but its the innovations that will truely capture the masses and keep them coming back for more.
Regarding content at launch;
We'll probably be sitting at a good spot when the game launches, and it has a substantial amount of content right off the bat. With 30 combinations of instances (A story mode for each instance, plus 3 alternate explorable branches per instance), hundreds upon hundreds of dynamic events, WvWvW PVP, high speed, high intensity competitive PVP, and your own player story that evolves as your choices influence the world around you, its probably going to be a good few months before people start looking at it from a spectator's chair to really ponder if its all worth it... Then they remember they have no subscription fee and can dive right back in whenever they're ready.
It is certainly not the end all of MMOs, (even though I am WAY too excited over it) it will certainly be a step in the right direction, showing people what PLAYERS can do to make a game the experience it is (through dynamic event/player dependent persistent world), not what its developers can do to cater to the people (recycling tried, true, and tired methods).
I'm not against the reskinning/reuse of mobs. So long as its not the ONLY content. I thought WoW did a good job with it in Outlands. Yes there where plenty of reskins but there where a fair amount of "new" mobs as well. In wrath they did alittle worse. Mostly reskins with only a couple "new" mobs. Now I didnt play cata but I still look at WOW to see what its doing and from what I saw they did a TERRIBLE job in Cata. 99% reskins and went as far as to simply reskin some bosses/raids? Now to me THAT is unacceptable.
As to adding more and more options of things to do I just dont think its possible. The more "diffrent" things you have to do the more Devs you need or the more it takes away from other aspects of the game. That doesnt mean I dont want to see diffrent things added. I just feel they should be fairly minor things that just add to the funfactor. The moment you start adding so much that the origional stuff that made the game what it was starts suffering is the moment you have tried to do to much.
I think new races and/or weapons (thus skills) makes more sense than new classes would for Anet. I say that because of ballencing (ok I know I destroyed the spelling). A new race is just that. New weapons though would add alittle more to the metagame of PvP without adding alot of balence issues and for PvE just adds new skills and flare which is good. An Asura with a giant scythe? Yes please.
As for the costumes I'm personally all for it. I never really played GW1. Back when it first came out I didnt have a computer that could really handle it. Nor did I really have any friends other than in asherons call and I was anti social irl. For some reason I never really picked it up though I might just to get a few HOM items. Just the idea of goofy costumes sounds like fun to me and stuff like that is perfect imo for the cash shop. Any of us looking at GW2 understands there will be a CS and they have to put something there right? The one thing I would say is they really need to make roleplay servers for people who really REALLY dont wanna see me running around in a nanner suit of awesomeness.
All that said, this was a fun topic but really we need to see if GW2 does what it claims first lol.
If they added a frog race it would definitely be a direct competition with SOE and personally that's awesome for two reasons competition and gathering players from SOE EQII X who happened to like that type of race. They should think outside the box and keep the content fresh they and every other company owes that much at LEAST to the players who buy their game. WE are seeing a change coming folks. If more companies thought like this we would be confused as to which game we would want to play today because we would be overwhelmed with awesome.
Tyria have other more unique races that would fit better as player races than the hyleks. I don't mind if they eventually would add them but the first few races should feel unique.
I think ANET thinks the same, there is a reason that they revamped the sylvary who just looked too elvish before.
Besides, who want to play a frog? I only grouped with 2 during 5 years of EQ2, 90% of the players there are human, elfs or feys anyways.
I think GW2 will have a more evenly distribution of players among the races, I predict that asuras will be a little rarer than the rest though. They are rather alien while the other races are easier to figure out.
Making races no one or close to no one will play is a big waste of time, and even if having the option to play something odd is good it is better to make races people actually play.
Adding races has always been an excellent way of delivering new content, especially in regards of keeping the lower levels fresh for those of us with alt addictions. New classes are also another good way to extending the life of a game, but they can also bring about severe balancing issues for the dev team (Death Knights anyone?).
The lore behind GW2 actually plays well into the hands of the devs to create new playable races with each expansion. The Elder Dragons aren't just a localized problem of one race. They have affected the entire world profoundly, and as they create more mayhem and destruction, they more we'll see various races come together to defeat a common foe.
I imagine that the cash shop is going to be left for costumes, and other optional content (as has been stated by ANet on numerous occassions), and that we will see a new xpack every 12-18 months. Expansions adding new races, potentially new classes, and more lands to explore for all levels. I also somewhat doubt we will see a level increase over the initial 80 levels. Since our characters can "delevel" to take on lower level content more appropriately, and ANet has a good grasp on horizontal progression as opposed to verticle progression. Awesome looking armor and weapons will be enough for many to go out and explore new content.
Agreed, as long as all races feel unique and fun to play.
Char and Asura looks very interesting to me but i know myself and will prolly level a few other races to for the fun of it.
I just hope GW2 bring that fresh wind into the copy pasted market we have today.
Im so tired of hunting down 5 sheeps and kill 10 wolves and collect 25 bear furs.
Warhammer had dynamic events also but they where horrible to say the least.
In GW2 those events look alive and make you feel part of a changing world.
Also like the races in GW2 alot wich helps building that bond with your character.
But i must also admit i have seen to many hype with mmo's and get disapointed after a week of playing and i realy hope GW2 will do that trick other studio's have lacked.
The PERFECT content system for GW2 would be this imo :
- Free monthly updates (patches) : Dynamic events, storyline Branches, Dungeons, Events, fixes.
- Expansions (Boxed Copies) : A different world like Cantha or Elona that has a new playable race and proffession. Also usual stuff like dungeons, PvE PvP maps.
Microtransactions - Cosmetic items and character slots only, no dungeons or content.
uhhhhh!!! I would love to have dwarfs join the party
I think I am the opposite here. I think early on that if they were to introduce a new race then it would be fine. But as the game ages they need to also include new classes rather than just races because some people will have tried all the classes, or all the ones they care to try, and with the addition of races and no classes it gives little reason to go try that new starter zone when you dont have a new job to play through. This takes me back to WoW's worgen and goblin crap they released. By that time all the classes had been played so it was boring as hell to roll another character just to play a newe race. Problem they had with the deathknight was it was the ONLY new class in all the expansions so of course there was a huge amount of people rolling one.
I am aware the game isn't out yet and I am aware that new classes isn't easy because of balancing issues so I am just stating my opinion on the new race/class portion of an expansion. FFXI got me pretty spoiled on new classes to play through every expansion. Even though the game itself was a grind fest and you were in the exact same zones killing the exact same mobs, it didn't feel as much like a repeat with a new class. If Anet does the same then I won't complain.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
I definitely would like to see the Wardens and Tengu from Cantha be playable races.
When I played my first MMO (EQ) I found that there were two races I enjoyed 'being' the most. A Frog(lok) and the Lizardude. The Lizard guy was hated by ALL other races so I wasn't able to travel much and it was frustrating to leave my starting area. But boy did I love the Lizard Monk! And my Frog was just fun to watch and play.
What I am saying is that the bipedal humanoid form is not necessarily boring but actually can be very enticing if given a shape and environment that has some familiarity as well. Multi-limbed creatures are almost certainly a challenge for game engines but I would hope programmers will be able to eventually solve this problem. There is an insect type race of enemies in SWTOR that looks promising.
Expansions are actually a good possible place to have such new races introduced. Playing exotic lifeforms is a real drawing card and would provide variety in a game where standard bipedal PCs gets a little same-ole same-ole. When you get to look different you may also get to feel different. There is no reason why 'more' cannot also be 'different'.