Guild Wars 2: Lion's Arch is being rebuilt!

The thing that has changed about modern MMOs is that we're sick of the formula. We don't actually long for the past, because we're done with it.

We long for the FEELING we had in the past, when the genre still managed to engage and excite us so much.

While it's tempting to believe all these multimillion dollar games are complete crap, that's not really the case.

They're just part of something we're no longer willing to invest in.

So, for the MMO genre to excite us again - they don't need to go back in time and redo the past.

No, they need to EVOLVE and change SIGNIFICANTLY - or completely.

You could take any modern MMO like WoW, GW2, ESO and so on - and you could incorporate all these wish-list features like forced grouping, sandbox gameplay, "hard" content and so on - and you'd still be bored very quickly.

We need an entirely new design paradigm - and we need a completely new level of quality and ways of interacting.

When we get THAT, the above features will hardly matter. Even if this elusive new and great design will be fully playable solo and have a ton of handholding features - it will STILL be much, much more interesting than the above.

At least, that's what I believe.
 
What?



I don't follow.

First of all, GW2 forces social interaction if you want to do any of the dungeons.

People who have fun together will enjoy being together. It's that simple. If you enjoy questing alone - you'll enjoy questing with a friend if you're into social interaction. It's that simple.

But I agree that if you force people together, you force people to have the potential fun of being social together.

The thing I don't understand is that the people who long for social interaction need to be forced into having it.

That tells us something about the people in question, I find :)

What I'm saying is that you actually WANT social interaction, but you don't want to bother forming bonds with people and you need the game to enforce the need.

That's YOU being the issue, not modern MMO design.

Currently Dark souls games has "special" position in game circles. Its sort of genre of its own. If Dark souls have difficulty levels then it will be just another action game. So its really the difficulty that defines those games there for you cannot have difficulty levels.

People enjoy social politics in their MMOs. The social politics in itself is huge part of the game play. Now think of forced social game play as higher "difficulty" than optional social game play.

You are confusing this with the ability to make friends and want to play with people etc. That is not it. If you don't know how to make friends in GW2 you are not going to survive in a game forced social game play.
 
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Currently Dark souls games has "special" position in game circles. Its sort of genre of its own. If Dark souls have difficulty levels then it will be just another action game. So its really the difficulty that defines those games there for you cannot have difficulty levels.

I still don't understand the relevance.

Dark Souls isn't really special because it doesn't have difficulty levels - as many games share that feature. Where it stands out is how it takes your progress away when you die. That's like EQ taking experience points away when you die.

You could have difficulty levels, and it would still be special if you played it on the hardest level. It wouldn't be special on the hardest level if you could quick save, now would it.

It doesn't really make the game harder, it just forces the players to work harder - and some people enjoy that, I agree.

A lot of people DON'T enjoy that, which is why EQ2 failed and had to completely redesign its approach to challenge.

WoW came along and demonstrated that people actually enjoy content without having to work so hard for no reason.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's a HUGE social element in WoW - even if you can solo most of the content, like any modern MMO. I certainly enjoyed the social aspects more than I've ever really done before, and this despite being able to play much of it alone. I really appreciate that I could switch between social and non-social and still feel I was making progress.

People enjoy social politics in their MMOs. The social politics in itself is huge part of the game play. Now think of forced social game play as higher "difficulty" than optional social game play.

I don't think of things as something they're not. I can't follow your logic at all.

You are confusing this with the ability to make friends and want to play with people etc. That is not it. If you don't know how to make friends in GW2 you are not going to survive in a game forced social game play.

No, I'm listening to your words.

If you're not interested in social interaction, then you shouldn't talk about it as what you're interested in.

The problem with GW2 and most modern MMO are really designed for the solo player who likes to see other players in their game world but don't really want to interact with them in any meaningful way. Me on the other hand want the full "social" experience when I am playing MMO and my "solo" needs are fulfilled by single player games. This is why I find the most modern MMO "shallow" since they are not designed with any social glues which binds players unlike the older MMOs.

Maybe, what you're looking for is a HARDER game that forces you to grind for the progress.

That has nothing to do with solo vs group.

I agree that most modern MMOs are too easy - but my point is that making them harder won't change that the formula is stale and dead.

WoW demonstrated that challenging content for its own sake isn't actually what makes the genre work.
 
I want meaningful social interaction that have consequences, which will in turn leads to social politics in game and the politics itself then becomes the game play on its own right. In order for this to happen the game has to have support for it in all aspects.
 
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I want meaningful social interaction that have consequences, which will in turn leads to social politics in game and the politics itself then becomes the game play on its own right. In order for this to happen the game has to have support for it in all aspects.

I don't understand why such a game couldn't work while allowing people to play solo if that's what they wanted to do :)

But it sounds cool, but also incredibly hard to infer from your original post.
 
I don't understand why such a game couldn't work while allowing people to play solo if that's what they wanted to do :)

But it sounds cool, but also incredibly hard to infer from your original post.

If majority of the game can be played solo, then history shows us that majority of the people just play solo :)
 
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If majority of the game can be played solo, then history shows us that majority of the people just play solo :)

I don't know what history you're talking about.

All the popular modern MMOs I'm aware of, and I think I've played more than most (as in pretty much all of them) - have large active guilds in them.

Just because people don't play in groups constantly, doesn't mean they're not part of the social interaction. That's a popular misconception. If you trade, fight or quest with anyone - at any time - you're part of the social interaction.

What does it matter what the majority does, anyway? There's still a large segment interested in the social aspect - and if the game is designed around having advanced social interaction and consequences, people will want to do that.

If you force the social aspect, however, you will drive the majority of the population away because people don't WANT forced social interaction.

So, you're dead wrong, imo.
 
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I want meaningful social interaction that have consequences, which will in turn leads to social politics in game and the politics itself then becomes the game play on its own right. In order for this to happen the game has to have support for it in all aspects.

That is what you could have expected from MMO games but history has shown that developpers are limited to do what they know to do.
And they know how to do MMOs based on single player gameplay. Multiplayer gameplayer, not so much.

It is reflected in the avatar.

Either the avatar is an extension of the player's self, leading, for example, the player's avatar to join other avatars because these avatars belong to friends in life, or players who have the same tastes etc
Conditions in life command.

Or the avatar has an existence of its own in the gameworld, existence that commands the player's decisions.

Been following Ark: Survival Evolved. At low levels, on PvP hardcore servers, this could happen. For example, when running through a region infested with saber tooth tigers, when stumbling accross an unknown player, negociations could lead to travelling together because of the avatar's situation. All starts from the gameworld in this situation. Very often, in other games, encountering an unknown avatar in a PvP server is usually synonym with trying to kill it as the game is based on SP gameplay.

Ark started as many MMOs started 15 years ago, with the idea of creating a virtual community. The avatar is permanent, when the player disconnects, the avatar sleeps. At start, other avatars could act largely on sleeping avatars, they could rob it, they could make it eat shit, they could kill it.
In the meantime, the developpers have backrolled on most of these points.

Players expecting the kind of experience as quoted should no longer expect it from developpers.

It will mostly likely come from the streaming scene.

A popular enough streamer will use his revenues to fund a reality show set in a game world.
Same model as a reality show. People will pay the streamer to gather players into a fictional community where they will be able to stage their oppositions in order to win some money themselves.
Just like in the other reality shows, the involved players will play politics.
The game will be irrelevant, so it could come from any title.

A streamer with a large audience will be needed as the show must be funded: the streamer and the cast will have to be paid.
 
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I loved Guild Wars 2 at release too and suppose can't complain, since I got several months out of it, which is more than I expect from most games.

I just wish that instead of trying to compete with WoW in making a full blown MMO they had continued to develop some of the unique gameplay ideas in Guild Wars 1:

Multiplayer game designers need to appreciate that the number of people who wish to be thrust into a dungeon with a bunch of (mostly unpleasant) people they don't know and who want to rush through the content ("go! go! go!") is somewhat limited. Extending the optional cooperative multiplayer model, they established in Guild War 1, could have resulted in an awesome second game.
 
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I just started the 'new' (to me) story arc that has you begin to explore Maguuma. Although this stuff was released last year, I never really did anything beyond logging into the game to get it for free…

Verdict: SO MANY GAMEPLAY GIMMICKS! If the buffs to enable high-jumping/phase-sprinting/teleporting in Dry Top are any hint of things to come in Heart of Thorns with its Glider mechanic, you can definitely count me out. Very glad I chose not to bother with a pre-purchase of that expansion.

Instead of shoring up the game's gameplay and grouping weaknesses, they're implementing mechanics that take make it even more simplistic with silly, improvised skills to further develop your Super Mario jumping skills in specific locations. Ugh. The game is such a joke; it's as if ArenaNet has embraced the concept of what a mobile game would be like if turned into an MMO.

Definitely done with it - disgusted with what they did with what used to be a great series - GW1.
 
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I just started the 'new' (to me) story arc that has you begin to explore Maguuma. Although this stuff was released last year, I never really did anything beyond logging into the game to get it for free…

Verdict: SO MANY GAMEPLAY GIMMICKS! If the buffs to enable high-jumping/phase-sprinting/teleporting in Dry Top are any hint of things to come in Heart of Thorns with its Glider mechanic, you can definitely count me out. Very glad I chose not to bother with a pre-purchase of that expansion.

Instead of shoring up the game's gameplay and grouping weaknesses, they're implementing mechanics that take make it even more simplistic with silly, improvised skills to further develop your Super Mario jumping skills in specific locations. Ugh. The game is such a joke; it's as if ArenaNet has embraced the concept of what a mobile game would be like if turned into an MMO.

Definitely done with it - disgusted with what they did with what used to be a great series - GW1.

I think GW1 still stands as a great game design that could be developed further. GW2 had some good ideas pre launch - dynamic events with dynamic mob scaling, for instance. But instead of developing those further they were just adding a bunch of silly mad king events when i was playing. I haven't played for a while, but I don't see anything to pull me back. I suppose it is somewhat inevitable that when a small innovative developer gets taken over by a large conglomerate that the design flare they once had sinks into the corporate mire.
 
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I think GW1 was pretty awful, personally.

The only good part was the deck-building approach to character builds, but the actual progression was mostly terrible. It was full of awful writing and shallow quests. The PvP was meaningless as it had no structure in place to support any point except fighting for the sake of fighting.
 
I think GW1 was pretty awful, personally.

The only good part was the deck-building approach to character builds, but the actual progression was mostly terrible. It was full of awful writing and shallow quests. The PvP was meaningless as it had no structure in place to support any point except fighting for the sake of fighting.

I agree with awful writing and shallow quests etc however if you had group of friends then its was very good co-op game. At that time it was the only good co-op game I knew which had a fantasy setting. The combat and character building mechanics were good enough to support a co-op nature of the game.
 
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I think GW1 was pretty awful, personally.The only good part was the deck-building approach to character builds, but the actual progression was mostly terrible. It was full of awful writing and shallow quests. The PvP was meaningless as it had no structure in place to support any point except fighting for the sake of fighting.

I respect your opinion, and I know that GW1 was offputting to some - that was what they were trying to remedy in GW2, by making it more like WoW and less complex. But I and all the core fans of the game would strongly disagree with most of your points and in fact see as strengths what you consider to be weaknesses:

In GW1 - progression is/was largely horizontal (capping new skills etc), after your short journey to level 20. That meant that you could meaningfully do far more content than you can in any MMO, especially after they introduced hard mode.

Loot in GW1 does not seriously unbalance the game and make your characters too strong for the content - it is mostly cosmetic in fact. I found finding a black dye just as exciting (and far less unbalancing) as finding (or even worse crafting!?) "The Uber Sword of Smite Everything so that there is no challenge left in the game" TM :).

It is true that the overall plots of all the different parts were pretty lame (GW2 is hardly better ITR) you always end up in a barren landscape with some big foozle. The Shiro stuff in Factions was particularly horrible. But most of the individual areas, missions etc were atmospheric, well designed and I think adequately to well written.

For me GW1 was *the* PvP game, because of the even playing field. Guild vs Guild was extremely skillful and interesting. Best of all was alliance battles, which is I think the model they should have developed further - a limited scenario with equal sides and some objectives.

Where GW1 stands out though - is that it isn't an MMO. You can play almost the entire game single player with a few friends or just NPCs, if you want (I did both). And in fact creating parties and their skill builds was one of the most engrossing parts for many. Unfortunately Arenanet continued to try and force people to play together in large groups until very late on and didn't develop the small coop/single player part of the game. I wonder if Shroud Of The Avatar will do that? I haven't really been following it.
 
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I agree with awful writing and shallow quests etc however if you had group of friends then its was very good co-op game. At that time it was the only good co-op game I knew which had a fantasy setting. The combat and character building mechanics were good enough to support a co-op nature of the game.

You must have missed the best cooperative games, then, including Neverwinter Nights :)
 
I respect your opinion, and I know that GW1 was offputting to some - that was what they were trying to remedy in GW2, by making it more like WoW and less complex. But I and all the core fans of the game would strongly disagree with most of your points and in fact see as strengths what you consider to be weaknesses:

I don't really know what they tried to do in GW2, but I think they failed.

To me, it seems they designed GW2 around what they perceived as issues in WoW, without recognising the best parts of WoW.

In GW1 - progression is/was largely horizontal (capping new skills etc), after your short journey to level 20. That meant that you could meaningfully do far more content than you can in any MMO, especially after they introduced hard mode.

To me, one of the most fun aspects of any RPG is the progression and development of my character.

That includes both horizontal and vertical development, and it makes absolutely no sense to me to try and get rid of one of them.

Beyond that, I think story and exploration are the most important parts of an RPG to me. GW1 had rigidly straightforward level-design and a terrible story, so it just didn't work for me.

Loot in GW1 does not seriously unbalance the game and make your characters too strong for the content - it is mostly cosmetic in fact. I found finding a black dye just as exciting (and far less unbalancing) as finding (or even worse crafting!?) "The Uber Sword of Smite Everything so that there is no challenge left in the game" TM :).

Yes, I absolutely hated the gear design.

I think there's much more to interesting loot than straight-up power, though.

But if you're smart about how you design your game, you can have powerful loot and balanced PvP.

It is true that the overall plots of all the different parts were pretty lame (GW2 is hardly better ITR) you always end up in a barren landscape with some big foozle. The Shiro stuff in Factions was particularly horrible. But most of the individual areas, missions etc were atmospheric, well designed and I think adequately to well written.

Both GW1 and GW2 have awful writing, I agree.

For me GW1 was *the* PvP game, because of the even playing field. Guild vs Guild was extremely skillful and interesting. Best of all was alliance battles, which is I think the model they should have developed further - a limited scenario with equal sides and some objectives.

It would have been fun for me too, if they'd included a point beyond the fighting itself. I need something to fight for beyond victory.

Where GW1 stands out though - is that it isn't an MMO. You can play almost the entire game single player with a few friends or just NPCs, if you want (I did both). And in fact creating parties and their skill builds was one of the most engrossing parts for many. Unfortunately Arenanet continued to try and force people to play together in large groups until very late on and didn't develop the small coop/single player part of the game. I wonder if Shroud Of The Avatar will do that? I haven't really been following it.

I don't think it was particularly unique in this lobby-based design. It was essentially a larger Diablo 2 with inferior story, loot, progression and so on. The skill system WAS interesting, however.
 
The only MMOs to come close to the sheer scale of GW1's character building would probably be City of Heroes and DDO. Unfortunately, the former was canceled and the latter's content is stale beyond measure these days.
 
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Unfortunately, the former was canceled and the latter's content is stale beyond measure these days.

You can say the same about DAOTC - but it is still out there.
 
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You must have missed the best cooperative games, then, including Neverwinter Nights :)

I played lot of NWN solo but most people didn't like it due to the top down view thing compared to the fully 3D stuff of GW1.
 
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