Comments on: Guild Wars 2 Beta: a look at the design manifesto

By: Kadomi

Kadomi — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:28:01 +0000

I agree with you. MMO players seem to be set in a certain mold when it comes to the gameplay they’re looking for. WoW has set the bar, based on EQ, and now it seems nearly impossible to break the mold. I myself am very much a themepark fan, as long as it’s a themepark with freedom, and Guild Wars 2′s concept of a playground as middleground between sandbox and themepark has its lure.

But those who write about MMOs and are the most vocal claim that they want revolution and modern design, a departure from the stale themepark model. No one’s backing it though. All the hype and the expectation, followed by a fast condemnation.

I wish you guys all the best for Storybricks, and hope you can get more funds going .

By: Kadomi

Kadomi — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:18:03 +0000

I am really quite sure that there is no zone chat. There have been discussions about it on the beta forums because people asked for it as default. I can only speak of my own experience, and I did just not experience this really active local chat.

As far as dungeons go, we’ll have to wait and see. The first dungeon is the Ascalonian Catacombs, afaik, and is around level 30-35. That’s a long time to wait for your first dungeon. I like the dynamic events and public questing, I am merely pointing out it’s not the social revolution. People who don’t want to form social bonds still won’t. Talkative, chatty, social folks will probably find the like. Guilds will be important for a well-rounded experience. Despite the statement in the design manifesto, the questing won’t be inherently more social. It will be easy and smooth. Crowded zones especially at launch won’t be an obstacle, unlike expansion releases in WoW where people tag and steal mobs.

I agree with you that the downed state needs a better explanation, at least the first time round. Bigger tooltips, etc. Curious to see how they sort that out.

By: Cluisanna

Cluisanna — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:11:57 +0000

“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.”
When I played, the “local” chat was full of people asking questions and talking, basically like General Chat in WoW. As far as I know, the local chat was actually zone wide, but you couldn’t /say anything, which meant that there were a lot of people saying “thanks” to the whole zone – something I found a little unnerving.
“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.”
Well, the beta weekend was short and most people didn’t even leave the starting area – I think it is likely that this is going to change when dungeons become avialable, because afaik you still need groups for them, and good ones at that. Of course it would be kind of weird if the whole game consisted of people helping each other “by force”, but for a starting area it’s pretty refreshing and nice, especially compared to the rage the mere sight of another player, hostile or friendly, induces in me in WoW when I am trying to do quests.
I agree about the difference between melee and ranged combat dodging… I could often see an arrow or a thrown weapon and dodge it, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to dodge melee attacks, and that as a ranged fighter.
I also think they could improve the downed state and explain it a bit more… at level 10 I finally knew what I was doing, but that was for one class, and they are different…

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Sat, 05 May 2012 10:53:06 +0000

Interesting writeup; thanks for sharing. I haven’t had time to dig into GW2, so I appreciate the posts about it from others.

One comment, you wrote: “To me, Guild Wars 2 feels like an MMO that brings some innovations to gameplay, but it’s not revolutionary.”

The problem is that the audience has a hard time accepting revolutionary. There have been a lot of games that have tried to break the mold, but they just haven’t gotten the attention the more “mainstream” games have. Puzzle Pirates and A Tale in the Desert both offered gameplay that was very much not in the idiom of “kill mobs, collect loot, pick herbs, mine ore, complete quests.” But, these games languish in relative obscurity. If you want a more modern example, consider my current project Storybricks (http://www.storybricks.com/). Our Kickstarter campaign hasn’t exactly been breaking any records (http://kck.st/K0iOqP). To be fair, part of this is our failure to communicate why Storybricks is the vital next step for MMOs (a bit of myopia since we’ve been neck-deep in it for several months) and one we are working to fix, but I think it amply demonstrates that people aren’t going out of their way to find things that break the typical MMO mold.

That means that GW2 really has no option but to have a pretty typical MMO game with a thin layer of innovation on top if they want to success. Deviating too far from the norm would likely alienate the people they need to see financial success. Unfortunate for those of us who want to see MMOs realize the potential we say a decade or more ago, but that’s current business reality.

By: Finding Peace With Massively Single Player Games

Finding Peace With Massively Single Player Games — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:59:44 +0000

[...] death of the MMO genre, such as overly easy world travel and a lack of guild security. And finally, Kadomi over at Live Like a Nerd compares the actual Guild Wars 2 product with Arenanet’s design [...]