Guild Wars 2 Beta: a look at the design manifesto

Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 May 2012 07:16 Written by Kadomi Tuesday, 1 May 2012 07:16

When did the hype cycle begin? I remember there was a time when people waited eagerly for a new release of a game, without heralding it as the second coming. But that was then, and this is now. Since the days of Warhammer Online, I have watched from the sidelines how games were heralded as the WoW-killer, the revolutionary MMO. The game changer. People go into those releases with a heightened sense of expectation, and not once have those expectations been met. This then creates jaded bitterness, until the next game is announced, and the hype machine begins anew. Keen once called it ‘The Vicious Pattern of MMO Rise and Fall‘, a practice he heavily participates in. No game seems to embody the hype cycle so much for me as Guild Wars 2 does.

Before I start looking at specifics of the game’s hype, let me make one thing very clear: I had great fun playing the GW2 beta. It’s a fun game. It’s definitely worth the box price once they have polished the game some more, and with no subscription fees at all, it’s a fantastic deal. It has challenging gameplay, tons of exploration, and that’s enough for me to find this more exciting than the upcoming MoP expansion. And yet I can’t keep quiet about feeling it’s hyped ridiculously, and people should be aware of that.

The hype cycle comes both from ArenaNet themselves and from their fans. Longtime Guild Wars players and hardened MMO veterans alike. Some call the people zealots because they have the tendency to swarm blogs that criticize GW2 and fling poo at them. That’s alright if this happens here today, just like Harry Dresden I can deal with flaming poo. I had the opportunity to check this game out before, and came back for this beta event, to have another look. So let’s look at ArenaNet’s GW2 design manifesto, and how I felt the aspects of it in the actual game. It sounds fantastic on paper! One thing you can say for sure, they’re definitely not having low expectations of themselves. Can they meet them, though?

…if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2

What a curious statement to make. I actually don’t know how I feel about this statement. To me, Guild Wars 2 feels like an MMO that brings some innovations to gameplay, but it’s not revolutionary. You still kill mobs, collect loot, pick herbs, mine ore, complete quests. Sure, the way you receive the quests and experience might be different from the static quest givers we are so accustomed to from WoW and co., but the core gameplay is that of a traditional MMO.

Shouldn’t great MMORPGs be great RPGs too?

I really feel that people who enjoy RP in MMOs and who want to look into the lore of Tyria will have a winner here. The capital cities of Guild Wars 2 ooze personality, are enormous and even I, who never RP in MMOs felt that it could be so much fun to actually indulge in it here. Sunday afternoon, I spent a pleasant two hours or so exploring every nook and cranny of Divinity’s Reach, the capital city of the humans. It’s enormous, has several distinctly different city quarters, including fairgrounds, and is basically Stormwind-like, but on a grander scale. If you prefer the cold reaches, the Norn capital of Hoelbrak is equally grand, and feels very Norse alright. I also did some exploring around the Black Citadel, the fantasy-steampunk fortress of the Charr, which I found very fitting for the race, but extremely confusing. It’s a giant maze of metal ramps and machines, and was my least favorite capital. Nevertheless, in that respect, I feel RPers should be able to thrive. It’s a rich world, with enormous zones.

This section of the manifesto goes on to state ‘Each time you play through the game, you can experience a different storyline‘. Yes and no. The personal story in Guild Wars 2 is determined when you generate your character. You are asked to pick one of three origins. For humans, you have to pick if you are a street rat, a commoner or a noble. As charr, you have to decide if you are the militaristic Blood Legion, the cunning Ash Legion or the gadgety Iron Legion. The level 1-10 storyline is based on the origin. If you only enjoy human characters, you sure won’t have a different storyline every single time. Once you hit level 10, the storyline branches out again. Again, for humans, you have to make a decision of your biggest regret: never finding your lost sister, not joining the circus, or…some other option I just forgot. Then at 20-30 you have to run errands for three different organisations. The design manifesto states that you have to make decisions, and this is correct. There will be parts in the storyline where you have to make an executive decision. But if you compare it to the personal story in SWTOR, it falls incredibly flat. They’re not the same kind of storytellers that Bioware are. It’s not exactly helped by the voice acting being very inferior compared to SWTOR. I know that ArenaNet is probably still working on that, because I saw an announcement that Felicia Day is recording for Guild Wars 2. They better be replacing that female norn voice soon, it haunts my nightmares. You do have options with the story, but they’re not as diverse as they’re made out to be.

In this section of the design manifesto, my biggest beef is that they proudly announce their dynamic world, and how you can directly make an impact on it, citing the defense of a village as example. Unfortunately, it’s not anymore dynamic and world-changing as rifts are in Rift. Let’s take the Wayfarer Foothills, the norn starting zone. Around level 10 you reach a small town that is frequently attacked by Sons of Svanir, the crazy cultist type in GW2. You can stick around and defend the town as dynamic event. Should this defense fail, you can also participate in a follow-up event and defeat the invaders, retaking the town and the waypoint for quick travel. So yes, this type of defense is available in all zones. It ultimately feels pointless, because when you leave, and come back 30 minutes later, the dynamic event might have fired again, and the Sons of Svanir might own the town again. Nothing lasts forever, events are on timers, the only impact for me was that you can never really win. It gets as old as rift invasions got, regardless of how fun it is initially. And if you are actually on your own and just want to talk to a vendor, it’s a pain, because you get overrun in no time.

It’s time to make MMORPGs more social

Word, bro. With the advent of LFD, MMO players weened on WoW seem to have lost the ability to be social without the aid of a crutch like the LFD tool. I can only commend a game that is trying to bring back a social element. Questing is very public in Guild Wars 2. See what I did there? Welcome back to Warhammer’s innovation, public quests. Not that that saved the game. You do not tag mobs, so if you see someone out there killing the bandits you need to kill as well, you can go right along and help. You are a passionate crafter and see some ore? Hooray, because that dude over there rushing to get to it as well can’t steal it from you. Resources are shared, you both get the ore. You start a dynamic event, killing a huge spider, and then others come to join you? The spider scales accordingly, so the more people, the merrier. Those are all good things I approve of.

Do they really make the game more social though? I don’t think so. I have only been invited to a party once, when a guy and I tried to tackle a fairly difficult skill challenge boss in Queensdale in the bandit caves. There is no zone-wide chat at all, so if you are a solo player, you will not hear anyone talk whatsoever. You can only talk locally, with people in your immediate vicinity. The only time I have seen people talk in local was if you happen to resurrect them. If you run into a social person, they might thank you for the rez! Amazeballs. That’s about all the interaction I have had. Mind you, I am strictly speaking PvE. I have never been a PvPer in any form, so the experience there might differ hugely. I have also not been a member of a guild in the beta event. As you simply do not need to group to play with other people, you also do not develop any form of connection to other people. There is no need to have a friends list because you’ll simply join others, no word spoken. That’s my personal experience, and from reading beta forums, I know I wasn’t the only one with that impression.

The sidekicking system is a great social tool. You will automatically be kicked down to an appropriate level for segments in a zone. What will likely be wonderful for joining friends who join the game, is a giant PITA for solo play though. It’s a beta, so they might figure out how to solve this better. Currently, there are areas where you get knocked down to underneath the mobs’ level so you never really get the feeling that you are powerful. A group of level 8 mobs will be able to tear you apart if you are level 16 and sidekicked down to 6 because you wanted to go back to mine some copper. Been there, done that. Still, I won’t complain too loudly about this feature, because it offers amazing play value if you are a completionist. You can explore any zone below you in level without ever facerolling your way through it. Challenge in games is good! It’s actually one of the most innovative features for me.

Rethinking combat

Guild Wars 2′s combat system has been heralded as innovative, action-packed, ‘immediate, active and visceral’. It’s not in any form like combat in say, WoW or SWTOR, because constant movement is a requirement. This took me forever to get my head around. I kept dying and dying, until I got it into my head that I needed to move, constantly. I think in other games you can call it kiting or strafing. You have a dodge key for fast movement, but you also have a stamina bar which limits how many times you can dodge. In other words, be ready to get your circle strafe on. Is this highly innovative and awesome? Not exactly. It’s different. It’s also a giant PITA if your preference is to play melee characters because it’s inevitably much harder to circle-strafe and still stay in range for melee attacks. I’ll give Guild Wars 2 one thing. Weapon-swapping in combat is fantastic. GW2 has a very unique weapon system. Once you swap a weapon, you get specific abilities for that weapon. Your main hand weapon is abilities 1-3, your offhand weapon is 4-5 and 2H weapon is 1-5. As a warrior, you have a huge amount of possible weapon combos, and you need to learn all those abilities. To actually learn an ability you don’t go and see a trainer, you active use any previous abilities you have and learn the next ability after a certain number of kills. I have spent some time playing a guardian, and I can effortlessly swap from my ranged weapon set with scepter and focus to my melee set with sword and board and close in. The whole skillbar based on what weapon you are wielding can make a really boring profession become a fun profession to play. It can also be a pain because I feel that in a set of 5 skills per weapon-combo, if only one is really weak it might already make that combo obsolete because I am looking for five fun skills, not just four. It suddenly feels very limited if you are used to games that offer you tons of different skills. Compared to a WoW warrior, you don’t have a lot of buttons to push unless you’re not swapping weapons constantly, and playing that for 80 levels might turn into drudgery.

The design manifesto speaks about combos, and I have to admit, I don’t understand those at all. I have not once seen them in action. This might require a better tutorial. Combos, chains, finishers, they’re all a complete mystery to me after significant hours of gameplay. ‘Then we add environmental weapons to mix up combat even more.’ They are so-called bundles. They’re everywhere. Planks, boulders, metal bars, sticks, etc. If you pick them up, your skill bar changes. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Only they do significantly less damage than your normal weapons, and feel non-intuitive to use. When an elemental flings a boulder at you, you don’t really have the time to pick up the boulder, read what the abilities of the boulder are and then use them. Mobs are no joke, by the time you’re done reading, you have been downed. Instead, you simply don’t pick up the boulder. I have the same issue with the downed system. In Guild Wars 2, you do not die immediately, you are in a so-called downed state. You get a second health bar, four abilities and you have until the healthbar is at 0 to actually kill any mob. When you first get downed, prepare for some confusion, because it’s absolutely not clear what those abilities do. You are about to die! If you read the tooltips, you will be dead. Button-mashing, woo-hoo! Also, it’s not clear that you might want to tab target to find a mob at really low health so you have a chance to get back up. Once you understand the downed system, it’s fine, and it’s super-cool to actually get up again, quickly get off your self-heal and save the day. It’s also extremely frustrating if the mobs wipe the floor with you twice. Chain-downed state, I had it.

I know this all sounds incredibly negative, but it’s all an example how ArenaNet has turned on the hype machine from the get-go, and that might mean they shot themselves in the foot. Overhyped games that don’t fully deliver will pay the price, as Warhammer Online and SWTOR had to learn. I am always finding that if I keep my expectations low, the reward is much greater. Enjoy a game for the game’s sake, don’t go in expecting always expecting more. I am convinced that if WoW was released today, it would bomb. That’s the power of the hype cycle. I wish it was a cycle we would break.

I will go into Guild Wars 2 with realistic expectations: to have as much fun as it can offer me. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not need to change my world.

Tomorrow, I will post part 3 of my initial GW2 impressions that I had to get into written form, and ultimately, my biggest disappointment with the game: the presentation and over-sexualization of female characters.

Newbie Blogger Initiative: Join the bloggerati masses!

Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 May 2012 10:28 Written by Kadomi Tuesday, 1 May 2012 10:28

It’s May 1, which means today is not only a public holiday over here and I am off for brunch soon, it also means that today the MMO and gaming blogosphere will explode with posts about the Newbie Blogger Initiative. It’s all the brainchild of Syp who you might or should be reading over in his blog Bio Break or at his gig at Massively. He asked more than 70 bloggers to take part in this month-long event, to act as sponsors and offer advice, help, answer questions and share some mighty link love with everyone who wants to jump into the blogging pool. Now is a perfect time to get out there and start blogging, if you were thinking about it.

My personal goal is to finally convince my friend Jules to start blogging, I’ll keep you posted how that goes.

There will be a master list of participating blogs for you soon, but in the meantime, I have a couple of blogs who already started the event and who have posted their intros:

• Dragonchasers
• Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle
• Stropp’s World
• Jedi Gambit
• Welcome to Spinksville
• Games and Geekery
• Ardwulf’s Lair

And that’s just a few of those over 70 bloggers kicking it off!

If you have thought about starting your own blog, about whatever subject you fancy, now is a perfect time to start. You’ll never get more support than this month. If you’re interest in joining the fun, head on over to the Newbie Blogger Initiative Forums, register, and head on over to the Newbie Blogger Instructions.

So what’s my role in all of this? I am really excited that Syp invited me, and I am hoping to some insights about why blogging is fun, how to start from scratch, and find your own niche that you are comfortable in. I obviously am not the greatest example of posting regularly, or how to make money with your blog, but I like to think that I blog with love. As I only recently blogged about why I actually started blogging myself, I won’t bore you with repeating the details.

I invite you to post any and all questions you might have about the NBI or blogging or me in general. Let’s make this an awesome month for new bloggers!