Category: Guild Wars 2

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[GW2] Crafting Storage

The “collectibles” tab in the Guild Wars 2 bank seemed like a neat idea at launch, but it has become apparent that it is essential to the crafting design and that crafting as implemented would be completely untenable without the storage component. Alternately, one can take the lesson that storage problems are a feature, not a bug, and potentially see merits in competing designs.
Continue reading [GW2] Crafting Storage

[GW2] 59-123% Completion

Just to make me look silly, between the time that I wrote about meta-achievements and the time that I posted, the new GW2 update went live and did something different with a Living Story meta-achievement. There are 13 achievements, and you need to complete 16 to get the meta-achievement.

Someone in guild chat wondered if they were hiding achievements for later parts of the story, rather than showing them all in advance like in earlier Living Story updates. This is possible, but the explicit answer is that there are now Living Story daily achievements that count towards the meta-achievement. If the event is live for two weeks, with a Living Story achievement each day, you now need 16 of 27, and some things you do will count for two or more achievements.

What does this do to players’ incentives? Continue reading [GW2] 59-123% Completion

75%-90% Completion

There are two standard “complete” points for a single-player game: beat the final boss and 100% completion. Steam achievements and similar systems usually mark both of those endpoints. There is one achievement for each, along with at least a half-dozen achievements for each aspect of the game you might take to 100%. These collective 100% achievements are what we call meta-achievements: the achievement for gaining achievements, in this case all the other ones. MMOs are fond of having many achievements that build to meta-achievements for each dungeon, special event, etc.

Guild Wars 2 has moved to setting meta-achievements below 100% without a 100% completion achievement. As mentioned, I think that is a great idea, particularly when the achievements are scattered across different types of content. You encourage diverse play without making someone feel “forced” to do everything to get the shiny prize. This is especially true for events and new content, because sometimes the new content does not work as intended or is radically polarizing, and you should not encourage people to play your most painful content. Team Fortress 2 learned this lesson with its class updates, originally going with “complete all the achievements to get the meta-achievements” and tying new equipment to those meta-achievements, which led to radically aberrant gameplay; class meta-achievements are now done with about half the achievements.

I think I still want 100% completion for single-player games. Those are for completionists, not everyone, although I want no one-way doors on that path. For my MMOs, I like having a bar below “do everything” because I hate that night where you make 20 attempts in a row because the event is going away tomorrow (or worse: time-limited, attempt-limited, non-tradable, random drop collection achievements).

: Zubon

The Queen’s Jubilee does this somewhat differently, and I will address it in a separate post.

[GW2] The Core of Queen’s Jubilee

Each month in Guild Wars 2 the Living World seems to be a little different. Two months ago the Dragon Bash had a formulaic, festival feel, but was followed up by one of the best dungeons Guild Wars 2 has seen. Last month there was an amazing, playground of a mini-zone coupled with a swath of instanced activities (a couple of which are now in the daily rotation). This month was another festival, which raised the hackles of many. Anthony Ordon, who graces the Guild Wars 2 forums quite a bit (thankfully), did his best to curb too much speculation on what made a Guild Wars 2 festival.

He’s right. Queen’s Jubilee is not a festival in the relaxing click-about-town sense. It’s a blood-filled, armor-breaking gladiatorial arena. And, in my opinion it was the best opener for a month-long Living World update, but perhaps not for what you would think. Sure, the rewards are amazing. Everybody is watching gold fall from the sky. The Crown Pavilion is full of high energy. The permanent features, the currency wallet and daily activity rotation, are very welcome additions. But, those are not the main reasons I really like Queen’s Jubilee. The main reason is…

Queen’s Jubilee went back to its roots of playing core Guild Wars 2 to set the stage for August. Continue reading [GW2] The Core of Queen’s Jubilee

[GW2] New Player’s Guide to Queen’s Jubilee

Queen’s Jubilee is the first release for the August content release in Guild Wars 2. The Queen’s Jubilee is a festival centered on the human capital city of Divinity’s Reach. This guide is written for those just buying Guild Wars 2 now or returning after a long break. Any level character may participate in the activities below, unless otherwise noted. Continue reading [GW2] New Player’s Guide to Queen’s Jubilee

[GW2] Come Together for the Queen’s Jubilee

ArenaNet did a few things differently this time around with the press preview for the upcoming Queen’s Jubilee. Instead of being granted full access, which allows some to write full guides and spoilers, ArenaNet prepared a private Twitch stream. The main reason seems to be that this next update is chock full of story happenings, and the team did not want anything spoiled. So my first impressions are going to be narrower than previous ones.

Anyway, the human queen decided that a hole in her capital city was not a good symbol of human resilience and triumph, and so she decided to make it in to a fierce battleground, the Crown Pavilion. The Crown Pavilion is a new sub-zone in Divinity’s Reach split up in to a 6-piece pie shape. All around the Pavilion are the mechanical representations of humanity’s enemies (the new Watchknights with a layer of mesmer magic).

01 - Hot Air Balloons Continue reading [GW2] Come Together for the Queen’s Jubilee

[GW2] The Orrian Interview

The Guild Wars 2 Living World has been giving us a world tour throughout Tyria. There have been amalgamated armies in the Shiverpeaks, ancient amphibious creatures claiming island territory, sky pirates, and now a celebration of human resilience complete with hot air balloons is coming our way. And there sits Orr, where the personal story ended. I asked ArenaNet if they would be interested in discussing their thoughts on Orr nearly a year after launch. I got one of the best when Colin Johanson, one of the Guild Wars 2 leads, decided to jump on this plague carrier of an interview and discuss this region.

Continue reading [GW2] The Orrian Interview

[GW2] Freshman Year Storytime

“It’s like a teenager figuring out who they are.”

“Yeah, but that’s every [MMO] their freshman year.”

-Chris and Celeste, Guild Wars Reporter Episode 70

A month from now Guild Wars 2 will be one year old. I’m sure I, and everybody else, will have memoirs of journeys, troubles, and a look back when that time comes. For another month, though, we’re still in the freshman year. Except, it would be like if the freshman’s big sister went to high school in a conventional way, and then the freshman (and school) changed everything. There is no convention to follow. ArenaNet is trail blazing the entire way, good or bad, for the rest of the industry to follow (or not), and for a cohesive story in the Living World, it’s been a rocky path.

In the fantastic GW2Hub interview with Bobby Stein, Stein remarks that they don’t yet have a mechanism to log what’s past and what’s to come for the Living World story. It’s slated to come later this year. ArenaNet understands that it’s hard for an average player to make sense of it all with the two-week increments. I agree that the road the past couple months has been jarring. Conventionally, MMO players are used to festivals as being… breakaways. For Guild Wars 2 (post Flame & Frost) it feels like each month is a new breakaway. Continue reading [GW2] Freshman Year Storytime

[GW2] Three Cutthroat Activities

With my tongue-in-cheek rage dissipating, I wanted to talk in a more rounded way about the three new activities that came with the latest Guild Wars 2 update, Cutthroat Politics. The official site lists these as “activities”, and they are all repeatable mini-games of a sort. Two are of a PvP nature, and one is PvE.

Last night I spent way too much time playing Southsun Survival. Of the three new activities that came with the Cutthroat Politics update, Southsun Survival is the only one that appears to be a permanent fixture as part of a rotating daily activity. Southsun Survival is best explained as Hunger Games on Southsun Cove. It is one of the best PvP experiences I’ve had in a while, and each round lasting almost 6 minutes on the nose each time (out of possible 15 minutes) feels different. In one sense it feels very rogue-like, which is something I am not sure I would ever apply to an MMO. Continue reading [GW2] Three Cutthroat Activities