Sorry but after a year playing since beta i abandoned this game not because the living world but because is temporary and never coming back so those of us that cannot log in all months everyday miss content forever, the world was made on cycles and i never complain of it but they added this one time events and i got sad for it sorry but bye bye
We are used to static NPC quest hubs, nothing really happends in the zone you quest in your favorite MMO, sure you can read what happend but you really can't see it.
Anet is trying hard with thier living world thing, yes I find some of them boring and grinding but atleast they are trying to make something that few MMO ever dared to try, they try to make the world living and in a flux of change in a minor degree, for me atleast that is a nice kick in the right direction how a MMO world can feel alive and not static, sure Anet have made some blunders but you have to make some errors to learn from your misstakes.
But sadly some people want the whole power for themselves to change the world and that power is a really bad thing, there are so many gamers out there who love and thrives to just fuck things up and that's why I feel Anet is on the right track, they are making the living world not some moronic and sick players.
You can hate or love this living world events but you have to see that this is a first step in something NOT static and I hope more future MMOs takes after Anets bold aproach on how a gaming world evolves and hopefully improves on it.
Ok, I'll accept that.
Do you accept that I still think the game is lame?
When people talk about living worlds I always thought they meant something along the lines of a game that felt alive because of how players were allowed to interact with one another, how they could affect the game world. Not so much in a physical sense like blowing things up in the town square, but more in a social/political/economic sense. Very few games have pulled this off such as UO and EVE. But UO is dated as hell and EVE just isn't accessible enough to get more people into it.
I think that for people who are looking for a "living" world (not GW2 silly living world bi weekly event updates) people should look out for more info regarding World of Darkness. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is an MMO being developed by CCP (EVE Online) Based on the World of Darkness universe that some of you may know from the game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
There isn't a whole lot of info yet, as of Fanfest 2013 (CCP event) I believe they are just getting started on real production. But they have some pretty lofty ambitions for this game including player elected Princes to run entire cities, perma-death if Princes puts a hit out on you, clothing design, "realistic" vampire movement (speedy, acrobatic...etc) I believe real time combat, and best of all no god damned training queue like EVE.
I've already put all my eggs into the WoD basket, but i'm starting to get skeptical. I can't help shake the feeling that it's going to end up being either A) Vampire Skyrim or Vampire: the duel (gunz the duel) or C)VTM:Bloodlines+EVE's depth.
What will happen tho, is that as soon as somebody becomes a prince, a lot of ass kissing will be done just so you can continue playing the game. One wrong sentence or somebody takes something personally, and you get blood hunted into a perma death.
....I Really hope its fun, tho. if WoD doesn't end up as something enjoyable, then i'll just call it for the entire MMO genre.
My immersion in GW2 as a living world kinda died when as soon as I finished doing every dynamic event in the zone saving everything, they all just restarted just as I finished the last one. Almost felt like I was in some kind of bizarre groundhog day loop.
I wouldn't call their bi-weekly updates very living either. The temp ones are just that, temporary events. The ones that create permanent additions, rare as they are, are just content updates or dev team revisions (with player input in some cases). Except on a more fast-paced but bite-sized basis, I suppose.
The GW2 world is not a living world it's in a permanent time loop that jumps ahead a bit every so often when the Dev's decide to give it a push.
I'm pretty sure if I went to the same starter zones I visited when the game launched I would hear the NPC's say the same things and ask me to do the same activities and if I left and came back a month later they would still be saying the same things and asking players to do the same activities.
GW2 may be a good game if its your cup of tea but living world it is not.
I think there are a few interpretations of what a living breathing world means in an mmorpg. I don't feel that a developer making constant changes to the game world makes it a living world. I'm more in the camp of living worlds being something molded by players. Developer driven content is great and yeah it can be seen as a living world from certain perspectives.
But not everyone feels that way which is probably why there are so many stark differences in opinions.
We are used to static NPC quest hubs, nothing really happends in the zone you quest in your favorite MMO, sure you can read what happend but you really can't see it.
Anet is trying hard with thier living world thing, yes I find some of them boring and grinding but atleast they are trying to make something that few MMO ever dared to try, they try to make the world living and in a flux of change in a minor degree, for me atleast that is a nice kick in the right direction how a MMO world can feel alive and not static, sure Anet have made some blunders but you have to make some errors to learn from your misstakes.
But sadly some people want the whole power for themselves to change the world and that power is a really bad thing, there are so many gamers out there who love and thrives to just fuck things up and that's why I feel Anet is on the right track, they are making the living world not some moronic and sick players.
You can hate or love this living world events but you have to see that this is a first step in something NOT static and I hope more future MMOs takes after Anets bold aproach on how a gaming world evolves and hopefully improves on it.
The thing about the living world is, you can see the seams.
The seams are in each "announced" release. People know what's coming and when it lands it's more like a content patch and less like a change in the world that occurred through player action.
How can Arenanet hide the seams? That's the tough question. It's quite hard to do without people totally ignoring the new content patches you put out. If you do manage to get people involved, how do you do it in such a way that they do not feel detached from the story? And if you do figure out how to keep people in the loop with the story, how do you do it without using instances?
These are the question Anet have to deal with.
I personally think that, in order to make the world feel more alive, they need to make scenarios that lead up to the next content patch available in the world. Just like the little bit about the invisible wall in Kessex during Halloween event. Those set things up but they could go a step further.
For example, during the Flame and Frost events, they had refugees leaving their homes from several the Norn and Charr parts of the world but we couldn't see what villages were destroyed, we couldn't see which places were attacked, all we saw were refugees. If they went a step further and actually had villages we knew and have played through getting burnt down and attacked, it would have had more impact and we the players would have felt that there was real danger there.
This event is a step in the right direction though. I do expect them to go a bit further with what they will be doing in the future.
- Level scaling, you can go and level where ever you want.
The thing that I dont like is the skill system, skill bound to weapons is stupid. Also you have all skills very early in game, so you cant look forward to now cool skills as you level up.
However GW2 is very good for casual gamers, doing some events and dailys and having fun. When you want a deeper mmo there is no way around WoW.
Sadly this forum is full of open world geeks, that what a game that will never exist. So, instead of playing they just stay here and bash every mmo that comes around.
We are used to static NPC quest hubs, nothing really happends in the zone you quest in your favorite MMO, sure you can read what happend but you really can't see it.
Anet is trying hard with thier living world thing, yes I find some of them boring and grinding but atleast they are trying to make something that few MMO ever dared to try, they try to make the world living and in a flux of change in a minor degree, for me atleast that is a nice kick in the right direction how a MMO world can feel alive and not static, sure Anet have made some blunders but you have to make some errors to learn from your misstakes.
But sadly some people want the whole power for themselves to change the world and that power is a really bad thing, there are so many gamers out there who love and thrives to just fuck things up and that's why I feel Anet is on the right track, they are making the living world not some moronic and sick players.
You can hate or love this living world events but you have to see that this is a first step in something NOT static and I hope more future MMOs takes after Anets bold aproach on how a gaming world evolves and hopefully improves on it.
Lol, Ryzom's Atys is a living world not GW2's static sorry attempt.
This is true, yet no one wants to play their game. Also, I'm not sure what makes a living world in a themepark will be the same thing that makes one in a sandbox.
It's sort of rude to laugh off the attempt ANet has made with a themepark living world when the rest of Ryzom could easily be criticized for how the rest of the game is assembled. There are some neat systems there, but the game as a whole is really missing that spark. Maybe it holds too true to that sandbox mindset where you have to rediscover the wheel of the game system. Figuring out how to make the game work just isn't interesting. Even if you try and develop your own goals and paths there it's easy to run straight into a brick wall, so to speak, very early with little clue how to resolve it. Then you have to actually find people who might be interested in that same goal when most long term vets seemed interested in things far off and away. It made for a very disjointed and isolated experience.
Like I said, even though ANet hasn't hit the mark yet, their attempts and experiments are definitely commendable. I hope to see more of this thinking when SoE launches Landmark and then EQ:N. My further hope with that game is that they will truly take the better parts of what make a themepark or sandbox interesting and marry them successfully.
Yea I don't have high hopes for SOE(Keeping my expectations in check and in reality), but I really hope they try their vision and take a foot in it like ANET is doing so far.
Very rare when a company talks the talks and actually put effort in it. One good thing about life is the ability to experiment and in ANET case they experimenting and improving on their vision. SOE might or might not do the same but they looking okay so far.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
This is true, yet no one wants to play their game. Also, I'm not sure what makes a living world in a themepark will be the same thing that makes one in a sandbox.
Ryzom has a loyal and fun community, you don't have to have millions playing your mmo to make it fun. Sandbox or themepark is neither here nor there, fact is Tyria is not a living world and doesn't even come close.
Makes me smile how you have to admit it's true and then go off on a rant about something completely different, it's like you are trying to save face for the OP and GW2 lol.
So yes i can laugh when the faithful suggest that the devs have made a living world.
I think many players want a virtual ecosystem, not a fake attempt at making one.
A true virtual ecosystem would have *finite* resources, that's the one obvious problem with every single major MMORPG, you can mine and cut trees and kill animals for leather and they will keep respawning infinitely.
Overfarming of any resource (be it plant, ore, or even goblins, giants etc..) should send ripples through the entire ecosystem - that's the problem, a virtual ecosystem would be VERY hard to implement in a MMORPG without crazy overhead costs.
Every item build could always be deconstructed into raw resources to be remade into something else - this would keep it to where you wouldn't have to farm all the finite resources as if there is too much of item X in the supply, you could break it down and built item Y that is now desirable more than item X.
But that is what I'd like to see - a naturally balanced system that responds to players actions - you think killing all the goblins might be a good thing, but you didn't know that goblins also kept the undead in check, and without them now you are engulfed in undead, and they are 5x worse. Also without the goblins - the knowledge and magics they used is almost impossible to find, so entire branches of goblin magic and crafting would not be able to be progressed anymore for example - real impact to players.
The AI would have to be pretty phenomenal, but the game with finite resources would revolutionize MMORPG genre entirely.
Imagine where players actions made a real drastic impact on the world - I know lots of games advertise this, but NONE have even come close to delivering on this.
We can achieve great things in games - you can develop a strong character and get great gear, but why can't we experience great loss as well?
All player actions should send ripple effects on the game world, upset the balance too much, you should have a real risk of losing it all.
This is where the indie developer comes in. I don't think a AAA title is going to attempt such a risky system. The ultimate problem with the living ecosystem in a game is the players. You will always have a group who will try to purposefully attempt to ruin the gameplay of anyone else.
In your example, so we've nearly wiped the goblins out, but we now realize we need to allow them to repopulate in order to put the undead back in check. However, xXTrollfaceXx comes along and decides to wipe out the last remaining goblins, and the landscape is forever changed. Sure, it's more realistic, but from a gameplay stand point, it's now a fiasco since the goblin magics are now lost forever, and the undead plague is going to be the focus from this point forth.
On a smaller server, or private server, this style of play would be freaking amazing, but tossed in with too many anonymous people, it's mass chaos.
This is also why the Living Story from Anet is only going to be band aid content, rather than super sweeping and permanent changes. There's too much risk involved with drastically changing the original landscape. Hell, Blizzard did it with the overhaul of the vanilla areas, and it's great, but it's also extremely underutilized and ultimately was a waste of developer resources. The overall blandness of Cataclysm is the result in a large amount of focus being placed on throwaway content.
I too want living and breathing ecosystems and players having an actual impact upon the world around them. I just don't think it's going to fit very well into the mmo anytime soon. There would need to be better content delivery options, and the ability to generate more content over shorter periods to keep things evolving. Mix Skyrim, MineCraft, Asheron's Call and Ryzom together and you may get something we want
This is where the indie developer comes in. I don't think a AAA title is going to attempt such a risky system. The ultimate problem with the living ecosystem in a game is the players. You will always have a group who will try to purposefully attempt to ruin the gameplay of anyone else.
In your example, so we've nearly wiped the goblins out, but we now realize we need to allow them to repopulate in order to put the undead back in check. However, xXTrollfaceXx comes along and decides to wipe out the last remaining goblins, and the landscape is forever changed. Sure, it's more realistic, but from a gameplay stand point, it's now a fiasco since the goblin magics are now lost forever, and the undead plague is going to be the focus from this point forth.
On a smaller server, or private server, this style of play would be freaking amazing, but tossed in with too many anonymous people, it's mass chaos.
Oh, I'm positive it could work given a good enough AI. We just don't have the computer power required to pull it off yet. It would work like:
Griefer dude comes along and kills the last goblin so the undead take over....but then an order of NPC paladins springs up to fight the undead which the players can join...But also circle of necromancers decide to try to preserve the undead against the new threat from the paladins.
You need an AI that can constantly create content which reacts in a sensible way to player actions even if the players are just trolling. I am sure there will eventually be MMOs along this line but not sure I will live long enough to see one. Maybe with those quantum computers I heard they recently invented in Australia?
This is where the indie developer comes in. I don't think a AAA title is going to attempt such a risky system. The ultimate problem with the living ecosystem in a game is the players. You will always have a group who will try to purposefully attempt to ruin the gameplay of anyone else.
In your example, so we've nearly wiped the goblins out, but we now realize we need to allow them to repopulate in order to put the undead back in check. However, xXTrollfaceXx comes along and decides to wipe out the last remaining goblins, and the landscape is forever changed. Sure, it's more realistic, but from a gameplay stand point, it's now a fiasco since the goblin magics are now lost forever, and the undead plague is going to be the focus from this point forth.
On a smaller server, or private server, this style of play would be freaking amazing, but tossed in with too many anonymous people, it's mass chaos.
Oh, I'm positive it could work given a good enough AI. We just don't have the computer power required to pull it off yet. It would work like:
Griefer dude comes along and kills the last goblin so the undead take over....but then an order of NPC paladins springs up to fight the undead which the players can join...But also circle of necromancers decide to try to preserve the undead against the new threat from the paladins.
You need an AI that can constantly create content which reacts in a sensible way to player actions even if the players are just trolling. I am sure there will eventually be MMOs along this line but not sure I will live long enough to see one. Maybe with those quantum computers I heard they recently invented in Australia?
Yes, im sure AI is just around the corner and that MMO company will develop fully fledged AI first. not
But you are right, what these people want wont be possible in near or somewhat distant future so its amusing to see them rant how game isnt true AI that can intelligently create content on the fly carved after their whims
I guess they watched too much Star Trek and nothing short of holodeck will suffice rofl Everything else is just trash and "below them"
But ANet has a best shot at living world, they even improved on ordinary quests (hearts) so you can do 3-4 things to finish those (which usually involve non-combat ones). Just that (for instance) is giant leap over games released during last 10 years lol
Its also amusing to watch hype around EQN. I really wonder do these people think that SOE will develop different specialized content for each server? lol I can already see ranting about it "its not living, its just scripted crap!" lol
O, and yes, i would very much like holodeck too, im just realistic about it that were not just quite there yet lol
Its still not living just quest hubs hid differently I have not played for about 4 months now but I come back all the hearts will be pretty much the same in every area.
Also I had the pleasure of speaking to a developer before the game released and this was how he explained how the world would change and evolve.
Stage one - So a group of centaurs are banding together and starting build a small war band at this stage players could come across this and stop it before it grows too large or its missed or ignored because there not seen as a threat
Stage two - So nobody has dealt with the centaurs and the band has moved towards a small village/outpost and started too attack same again players could come stop them but if they don't the centaurs kill everyone and and take the village/outpost all the services and fast travel are gone from this place now.
Stage three - After the success of the first attack more centuars flock to this outpost the army build sand they spread out takeing more villlages/outpost killing more npc's removeing more services from our world. Now same again players could come along and fight back take the villages and outposts back but it will take time to rebuild.
Stage four - So this army grow and grows and after capturing and pillaging there way through the world they stand at the gates of a main human city. Defeat them or they crush the city and now own the humans last safe haven is gone.
And the world is change forever.
OK so I know some of this exists in the game in hearts and a few events but nothing changes theres no real threat if you fail a event you just come back ten minutes later and try again it doesn't effect the world in fact you will barely notice or care about some of these events. And that is my biggest problem they promised big world changing events but all this content they roll out every few weeks little things may change or we get daft mini games but at the end of the day I could return in a year and the world wont be much different.
According to most of the pro-GW2 poster's logic in game design, WoW phasing would qualify it to be a 'living world'.
Which means WoW had the 'living world' MMO in the market quicker than GW2 did.
I don't think some posters thought this through....
Well yeah. It's actually worse than WoW.
Is not a living world where everything you did just resets back after an hour. At least with phasing you'll always see that zone changed. On GW2 if you go back to that area you "changed" it will be like you first found it.
We are used to static NPC quest hubs, nothing really happends in the zone you quest in your favorite MMO, sure you can read what happend but you really can't see it.
Anet is trying hard with thier living world thing, yes I find some of them boring and grinding but atleast they are trying to make something that few MMO ever dared to try, they try to make the world living and in a flux of change in a minor degree, for me atleast that is a nice kick in the right direction how a MMO world can feel alive and not static, sure Anet have made some blunders but you have to make some errors to learn from your misstakes.
Enjoyed a lot first 3 to 4 months .... but - imo of course - nothing beats old good classic quest hubs. "Hearts" in Gw2 are much inferior, less fun. And besides all Gw2 lack quests in number. Yes, yes, .. you can jump to any lower level area and still have fun playing as level downgrades .... but loot is not suited for player actual level.
About "world living" ... well nothing makes me feel Gw2 "world living" any more then Wow, Swtor, ...
I like the changes that Arena Net has made to GW2 to be honest like the money shared between characters, marks, resources etc.
But the game still needs major improvements in my Eyes, the game is dead compared to what it was at launch people only login at peak hours for the most part.
Things that would make me return to be a active player of GW2 instead of just to do daily missions.
1.) Player Housing, Allow me to live in an instanced house and allow me to put in crafting stations and place items just like in Rift basically I can craft in my house any time I want.
2.) Allow unlimited crafting and learning of crafts so basically I don't have to spend 50 silver to switch about them.
3.) Add Perm. Pick Axes and so on back to the store keep them there no limited time sells (Make them all account bound I like the molten pick axe not the bone one I bought I want it account bound.)
4.) Make it so that one character can play all (Classes in the game.) Each one has to be level up individual but a user can actively play every class and swap between them in a city freely in the game such as a warrior, elementalist and so on.
5.) Add Skill customization so players can add certain effects to each spell and customize it to deal more damage, or be wider area of effect, add more class combo's and choices for each weapon in the game.
Since GW2 is a F2P or B2P Game I am willing to pay for additional content such as customized housing instances, and so on with Real Money, but only if all characters on an account can access the same house and so can my friends etc.
The game is great don't get me wrong but the game was not properly designed in my opinion and lacks what todays MMO's should have to even be called a RPG.
According to most of the pro-GW2 poster's logic in game design, WoW phasing would qualify it to be a 'living world'.
Which means WoW had the 'living world' MMO in the market quicker than GW2 did.
I don't think some posters thought this through....
Well yeah. It's actually worse than WoW.
Is not a living world where everything you did just resets back after an hour. At least with phasing you'll always see that zone changed. On GW2 if you go back to that area you "changed" it will be like you first found it.
To be fair, ANet did say before the game was launched that we would actually have a 'living world'.
ANet just failed to deliver what they promised. They aren't the first and they won't be the last.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
O, and yes, i would very much like holodeck too, im just realistic about it that were not just quite there yet lol
I didn't expect the holodeck from GW2 but I did expect the dynamic events to be more than rifts with some added quest text. The world doesn't feel any more living to me than any other themepark MMO . They made a good game. I still would have bought it and liked it without the rather deceptive marketing. I just don't really like being misled and feel what they said about the dynamic events before the game came out was deliberately misleading. Why promise something if you can't deliver ?
The way they call their story a "living world story" is the same kind of thing; more marketing BS. So they have a story that they update regularly , it's no different from what LOTRO and some other MMOs do other than that the events go away after 2 weeks which is actually kind of annoying if you miss out on them.
But it's water under the bridge now. If you think it's the best thing ever and everything they promised, I'm happy for you.
BTW, I'm not holding my breath for EQ:N to be much more "living" but maybe it will surprise me. I don't think the tech exists yet to really do this properly though.
If you were willing to look a little further then you would see that GW2's world is the opposite of living. Arenanet did a great job at giving the player the illusion of being in a living and breathing world, but thats about it. The living and dynamic aspect is nothing but coded fluff that isn't really interactable or has any impact on the actual experience of the game. It is just there for you to look at.
Same goes for the dynamic quests, which i honestly felt were less enjoyable than most of the fetch quests WoW had. Actually the static hearthquests of GW2 were some of the most fun quests I have ever done in any MMO. They actually require some other sort of gameplay than the constant 'epic combat' EVERY dynamic quest had. Dynamic quests were always exacly the same: escort, defend or kill this. Every single dynamic quests had only one gameplay mechanic in it and it was COMBAT.
The real problems with GW2 sits in the details and cannot be seen directly. Which is the reason everybody was so hyped for this game. The gameplay videos looked really incredible. But a few months aftere launch people noticed that a lot of the great promises were only delivered upon in very shallow fashion. It felt like a very well executed magic trick to me. GW2 ultimately lacks depth in prety much every aspect that is important tot mmorpgs. For this reason it is often regarded as an action game with some rpg-light elements in it that also happens to be massive multiplayer. The massive multiplayer is more like a massive co-op, cause you essentially play GW2 like any co-op game but with loads of people.
Originally posted by Ppiper I'm sorry, but this game is dead from the neck up. One of the most boring games I have ever played, ever. To even suggest that this game is a living world is hilarious. OP, for real?
If you were willing to look a little further then you would see that GW2's world is the opposite of living. Arenanet did a great job at giving the player the illusion of being in a living and breathing world, but thats about it. The living and dynamic aspect is nothing but coded fluff that isn't really interactable or has any impact on the actual experience of the game. It is just there for you to look at.
Uh-oh, no AI doesnt exist yet and if you know how to make one please share it with ANet, until then were stuck with coding and scripting. But sure is amusing to read "holodeck" rantings
Originally posted by impiro
Same goes for the dynamic quests, which i honestly felt were less enjoyable than most of the fetch quests WoW had. Actually the static hearthquests of GW2 were some of the most fun quests I have ever done in any MMO. They actually require some other sort of gameplay than the constant 'epic combat' EVERY dynamic quest had. Dynamic quests were always exacly the same: escort, defend or kill this. Every single dynamic quests had only one gameplay mechanic in it and it was COMBAT.
If you know of some exlusive way to completely new never seen quest expereince please share it with ANet (or whole MMO industry, im sure youll be rich after that). Oh, and btw, not remotely all dynamic events are just combat. But yah.
Originally posted by impiro
The real problems with GW2 sits in the details and cannot be seen directly. Which is the reason everybody was so hyped for this game. The gameplay videos looked really incredible. But a few months aftere launch people noticed that a lot of the great promises were only delivered upon in very shallow fashion. It felt like a very well executed magic trick to me. GW2 ultimately lacks depth in prety much every aspect that is important tot mmorpgs. For this reason it is often regarded as an action game with some rpg-light elements in it that also happens to be massive multiplayer. The massive multiplayer is more like a massive co-op, cause you essentially play GW2 like any co-op game but with loads of people.
Weird, all this time i was mislead that MMOs are actually games when you play co-op with massive amount of people. Damn!
Yah, GW2 just accidentaly happens to be pretty much only MMO among lobby games like WoW/SWTOR/Rift/AoC/TERA/FFXIV/LOTRO... ... ...
O, and yes, i would very much like holodeck too, im just realistic about it that were not just quite there yet lol
I didn't expect the holodeck from GW2 but I did expect the dynamic events to be more than rifts with some added quest text. The world doesn't feel any more living to me than any other themepark MMO . They made a good game. I still would have bought it and liked it without the rather deceptive marketing. I just don't really like being misled and feel what they said about the dynamic events before the game came out was deliberately misleading. Why promise something if you can't deliver ?
The way they call their story a "living world story" is the same kind of thing; more marketing BS. So they have a story that they update regularly , it's no different from what LOTRO and some other MMOs do other than that the events go away after 2 weeks which is actually kind of annoying if you miss out on them.
But it's water under the bridge now. If you think it's the best thing ever and everything they promised, I'm happy for you.
BTW, I'm not holding my breath for EQ:N to be much more "living" but maybe it will surprise me. I don't think the tech exists yet to really do this properly though.
No, you expected "holodeck" experience. Once you relize everything in MMO needs to be programmed and scripted to work in predictable fashion. Pretty much any attempt to artificially overcome this resulted in....crap...to put it mildly. Events reset, they go back and forth and until devs change it it will be so, theres no mysterious force (nor ANet promised one) that will magically change this.
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DARK AND LIGHT I GOVERN BOTH
Ok, I'll accept that.
Do you accept that I still think the game is lame?
I've already put all my eggs into the WoD basket, but i'm starting to get skeptical. I can't help shake the feeling that it's going to end up being either A) Vampire Skyrim or
Vampire: the duel (gunz the duel) or C)VTM:Bloodlines+EVE's depth.
What will happen tho, is that as soon as somebody becomes a prince, a lot of ass kissing will be done just so you can continue playing the game. One wrong sentence or somebody takes something personally, and you get blood hunted into a perma death.
....I Really hope its fun, tho. if WoD doesn't end up as something enjoyable, then i'll just call it for the entire MMO genre.
My immersion in GW2 as a living world kinda died when as soon as I finished doing every dynamic event in the zone saving everything, they all just restarted just as I finished the last one. Almost felt like I was in some kind of bizarre groundhog day loop.
I wouldn't call their bi-weekly updates very living either. The temp ones are just that, temporary events. The ones that create permanent additions, rare as they are, are just content updates or dev team revisions (with player input in some cases). Except on a more fast-paced but bite-sized basis, I suppose.
The GW2 world is not a living world it's in a permanent time loop that jumps ahead a bit every so often when the Dev's decide to give it a push.
I'm pretty sure if I went to the same starter zones I visited when the game launched I would hear the NPC's say the same things and ask me to do the same activities and if I left and came back a month later they would still be saying the same things and asking players to do the same activities.
GW2 may be a good game if its your cup of tea but living world it is not.
I think there are a few interpretations of what a living breathing world means in an mmorpg. I don't feel that a developer making constant changes to the game world makes it a living world. I'm more in the camp of living worlds being something molded by players. Developer driven content is great and yeah it can be seen as a living world from certain perspectives.
But not everyone feels that way which is probably why there are so many stark differences in opinions.
The thing about the living world is, you can see the seams.
The seams are in each "announced" release. People know what's coming and when it lands it's more like a content patch and less like a change in the world that occurred through player action.
How can Arenanet hide the seams? That's the tough question. It's quite hard to do without people totally ignoring the new content patches you put out. If you do manage to get people involved, how do you do it in such a way that they do not feel detached from the story? And if you do figure out how to keep people in the loop with the story, how do you do it without using instances?
These are the question Anet have to deal with.
I personally think that, in order to make the world feel more alive, they need to make scenarios that lead up to the next content patch available in the world. Just like the little bit about the invisible wall in Kessex during Halloween event. Those set things up but they could go a step further.
For example, during the Flame and Frost events, they had refugees leaving their homes from several the Norn and Charr parts of the world but we couldn't see what villages were destroyed, we couldn't see which places were attacked, all we saw were refugees. If they went a step further and actually had villages we knew and have played through getting burnt down and attacked, it would have had more impact and we the players would have felt that there was real danger there.
This event is a step in the right direction though. I do expect them to go a bit further with what they will be doing in the future.
This is not a game.
First, GW2 is a good game.
The things I like about it:
- Good dynamic combat system
- Level scaling, you can go and level where ever you want.
The thing that I dont like is the skill system, skill bound to weapons is stupid. Also you have all skills very early in game, so you cant look forward to now cool skills as you level up.
However GW2 is very good for casual gamers, doing some events and dailys and having fun. When you want a deeper mmo there is no way around WoW.
Sadly this forum is full of open world geeks, that what a game that will never exist. So, instead of playing they just stay here and bash every mmo that comes around.
Step in the arena and break the wall down
Lol, Ryzom's Atys is a living world not GW2's static sorry attempt.
Read what a living mmo world should be like http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/katriell/052009/3746_How-Ryzom-creates-the-sense-of-a-living-world
GW2 a living world, don't make me laugh.
Yea I don't have high hopes for SOE(Keeping my expectations in check and in reality), but I really hope they try their vision and take a foot in it like ANET is doing so far.
Very rare when a company talks the talks and actually put effort in it. One good thing about life is the ability to experiment and in ANET case they experimenting and improving on their vision. SOE might or might not do the same but they looking okay so far.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Ryzom has a loyal and fun community, you don't have to have millions playing your mmo to make it fun. Sandbox or themepark is neither here nor there, fact is Tyria is not a living world and doesn't even come close.
Makes me smile how you have to admit it's true and then go off on a rant about something completely different, it's like you are trying to save face for the OP and GW2 lol.
So yes i can laugh when the faithful suggest that the devs have made a living world.
This is where the indie developer comes in. I don't think a AAA title is going to attempt such a risky system. The ultimate problem with the living ecosystem in a game is the players. You will always have a group who will try to purposefully attempt to ruin the gameplay of anyone else.
In your example, so we've nearly wiped the goblins out, but we now realize we need to allow them to repopulate in order to put the undead back in check. However, xXTrollfaceXx comes along and decides to wipe out the last remaining goblins, and the landscape is forever changed. Sure, it's more realistic, but from a gameplay stand point, it's now a fiasco since the goblin magics are now lost forever, and the undead plague is going to be the focus from this point forth.
On a smaller server, or private server, this style of play would be freaking amazing, but tossed in with too many anonymous people, it's mass chaos.
This is also why the Living Story from Anet is only going to be band aid content, rather than super sweeping and permanent changes. There's too much risk involved with drastically changing the original landscape. Hell, Blizzard did it with the overhaul of the vanilla areas, and it's great, but it's also extremely underutilized and ultimately was a waste of developer resources. The overall blandness of Cataclysm is the result in a large amount of focus being placed on throwaway content.
I too want living and breathing ecosystems and players having an actual impact upon the world around them. I just don't think it's going to fit very well into the mmo anytime soon. There would need to be better content delivery options, and the ability to generate more content over shorter periods to keep things evolving. Mix Skyrim, MineCraft, Asheron's Call and Ryzom together and you may get something we want
Oh, I'm positive it could work given a good enough AI. We just don't have the computer power required to pull it off yet. It would work like:
Griefer dude comes along and kills the last goblin so the undead take over....but then an order of NPC paladins springs up to fight the undead which the players can join...But also circle of necromancers decide to try to preserve the undead against the new threat from the paladins.
You need an AI that can constantly create content which reacts in a sensible way to player actions even if the players are just trolling. I am sure there will eventually be MMOs along this line but not sure I will live long enough to see one. Maybe with those quantum computers I heard they recently invented in Australia?
Yes, im sure AI is just around the corner and that MMO company will develop fully fledged AI first. not
But you are right, what these people want wont be possible in near or somewhat distant future so its amusing to see them rant how game isnt true AI that can intelligently create content on the fly carved after their whims
I guess they watched too much Star Trek and nothing short of holodeck will suffice rofl Everything else is just trash and "below them"
But ANet has a best shot at living world, they even improved on ordinary quests (hearts) so you can do 3-4 things to finish those (which usually involve non-combat ones). Just that (for instance) is giant leap over games released during last 10 years lol
Its also amusing to watch hype around EQN. I really wonder do these people think that SOE will develop different specialized content for each server? lol I can already see ranting about it "its not living, its just scripted crap!" lol
O, and yes, i would very much like holodeck too, im just realistic about it that were not just quite there yet lol
According to most of the pro-GW2 poster's logic in game design, WoW phasing would qualify it to be a 'living world'.
Which means WoW had the 'living world' MMO in the market quicker than GW2 did.
I don't think some posters thought this through....
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Its still not living just quest hubs hid differently I have not played for about 4 months now but I come back all the hearts will be pretty much the same in every area.
Also I had the pleasure of speaking to a developer before the game released and this was how he explained how the world would change and evolve.
Stage one - So a group of centaurs are banding together and starting build a small war band at this stage players could come across this and stop it before it grows too large or its missed or ignored because there not seen as a threat
Stage two - So nobody has dealt with the centaurs and the band has moved towards a small village/outpost and started too attack same again players could come stop them but if they don't the centaurs kill everyone and and take the village/outpost all the services and fast travel are gone from this place now.
Stage three - After the success of the first attack more centuars flock to this outpost the army build sand they spread out takeing more villlages/outpost killing more npc's removeing more services from our world. Now same again players could come along and fight back take the villages and outposts back but it will take time to rebuild.
Stage four - So this army grow and grows and after capturing and pillaging there way through the world they stand at the gates of a main human city. Defeat them or they crush the city and now own the humans last safe haven is gone.
And the world is change forever.
OK so I know some of this exists in the game in hearts and a few events but nothing changes theres no real threat if you fail a event you just come back ten minutes later and try again it doesn't effect the world in fact you will barely notice or care about some of these events. And that is my biggest problem they promised big world changing events but all this content they roll out every few weeks little things may change or we get daft mini games but at the end of the day I could return in a year and the world wont be much different.
Well yeah. It's actually worse than WoW.
Is not a living world where everything you did just resets back after an hour. At least with phasing you'll always see that zone changed. On GW2 if you go back to that area you "changed" it will be like you first found it.
Enjoyed a lot first 3 to 4 months .... but - imo of course - nothing beats old good classic quest hubs. "Hearts" in Gw2 are much inferior, less fun. And besides all Gw2 lack quests in number. Yes, yes, .. you can jump to any lower level area and still have fun playing as level downgrades .... but loot is not suited for player actual level.
About "world living" ... well nothing makes me feel Gw2 "world living" any more then Wow, Swtor, ...
Gw2 is still good, very good game.
I like the changes that Arena Net has made to GW2 to be honest like the money shared between characters, marks, resources etc.
But the game still needs major improvements in my Eyes, the game is dead compared to what it was at launch people only login at peak hours for the most part.
Things that would make me return to be a active player of GW2 instead of just to do daily missions.
1.) Player Housing, Allow me to live in an instanced house and allow me to put in crafting stations and place items just like in Rift basically I can craft in my house any time I want.
2.) Allow unlimited crafting and learning of crafts so basically I don't have to spend 50 silver to switch about them.
3.) Add Perm. Pick Axes and so on back to the store keep them there no limited time sells (Make them all account bound I like the molten pick axe not the bone one I bought I want it account bound.)
4.) Make it so that one character can play all (Classes in the game.) Each one has to be level up individual but a user can actively play every class and swap between them in a city freely in the game such as a warrior, elementalist and so on.
5.) Add Skill customization so players can add certain effects to each spell and customize it to deal more damage, or be wider area of effect, add more class combo's and choices for each weapon in the game.
Since GW2 is a F2P or B2P Game I am willing to pay for additional content such as customized housing instances, and so on with Real Money, but only if all characters on an account can access the same house and so can my friends etc.
The game is great don't get me wrong but the game was not properly designed in my opinion and lacks what todays MMO's should have to even be called a RPG.
To be fair, ANet did say before the game was launched that we would actually have a 'living world'.
ANet just failed to deliver what they promised. They aren't the first and they won't be the last.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I didn't expect the holodeck from GW2 but I did expect the dynamic events to be more than rifts with some added quest text. The world doesn't feel any more living to me than any other themepark MMO . They made a good game. I still would have bought it and liked it without the rather deceptive marketing. I just don't really like being misled and feel what they said about the dynamic events before the game came out was deliberately misleading. Why promise something if you can't deliver ?
The way they call their story a "living world story" is the same kind of thing; more marketing BS. So they have a story that they update regularly , it's no different from what LOTRO and some other MMOs do other than that the events go away after 2 weeks which is actually kind of annoying if you miss out on them.
But it's water under the bridge now. If you think it's the best thing ever and everything they promised, I'm happy for you.
BTW, I'm not holding my breath for EQ:N to be much more "living" but maybe it will surprise me. I don't think the tech exists yet to really do this properly though.
If you were willing to look a little further then you would see that GW2's world is the opposite of living. Arenanet did a great job at giving the player the illusion of being in a living and breathing world, but thats about it. The living and dynamic aspect is nothing but coded fluff that isn't really interactable or has any impact on the actual experience of the game. It is just there for you to look at.
Same goes for the dynamic quests, which i honestly felt were less enjoyable than most of the fetch quests WoW had. Actually the static hearthquests of GW2 were some of the most fun quests I have ever done in any MMO. They actually require some other sort of gameplay than the constant 'epic combat' EVERY dynamic quest had. Dynamic quests were always exacly the same: escort, defend or kill this. Every single dynamic quests had only one gameplay mechanic in it and it was COMBAT.
The real problems with GW2 sits in the details and cannot be seen directly. Which is the reason everybody was so hyped for this game. The gameplay videos looked really incredible. But a few months aftere launch people noticed that a lot of the great promises were only delivered upon in very shallow fashion. It felt like a very well executed magic trick to me. GW2 ultimately lacks depth in prety much every aspect that is important tot mmorpgs. For this reason it is often regarded as an action game with some rpg-light elements in it that also happens to be massive multiplayer. The massive multiplayer is more like a massive co-op, cause you essentially play GW2 like any co-op game but with loads of people.
So just because you dont like the game, its dead?
Uh-oh, no AI doesnt exist yet and if you know how to make one please share it with ANet, until then were stuck with coding and scripting. But sure is amusing to read "holodeck" rantings
If you know of some exlusive way to completely new never seen quest expereince please share it with ANet (or whole MMO industry, im sure youll be rich after that). Oh, and btw, not remotely all dynamic events are just combat. But yah.
Weird, all this time i was mislead that MMOs are actually games when you play co-op with massive amount of people. Damn!
Yah, GW2 just accidentaly happens to be pretty much only MMO among lobby games like WoW/SWTOR/Rift/AoC/TERA/FFXIV/LOTRO... ... ...
No, you expected "holodeck" experience. Once you relize everything in MMO needs to be programmed and scripted to work in predictable fashion. Pretty much any attempt to artificially overcome this resulted in....crap...to put it mildly. Events reset, they go back and forth and until devs change it it will be so, theres no mysterious force (nor ANet promised one) that will magically change this.