Category: Guild Wars 2

The game’s problems will shift over the next few months. Some things will be fixed with further development, like the trading post. The grouping issues that so annoyed me seem better, at least as I type this. What more interests me are the problems caused simply by the size of the Day One population lump: some will go away and some will transition into related endgame problems.

For example, take the human-centaur war. For the next month, the centaurs are screwed. They are just going to be completely and utterly oppressed with a few little wins and a small chance for a tiny bit of glory at server reset if states are not saved. Beetletun is utterly safe. There are too many players in that level range for the good guys not to win that war. But if you are at the front of the leveling wave, you can see areas where the players are not dominating the meta-events, and that will become more spread over time as the population lump moves.

The next question is how much better it will work out at level 80. I have yet to see the highest level zones. We have a problem if they replicate the same situation when we get a lump of level 80 players, although without the leveling incentive, you might have fewer people just hanging around those zones. With increasing levels, the meta-events seem to be getting slightly more complex, so there will be multiple fronts and a larger area covered. Players learn as a zerg, and they still join into a massive wave for a frontal assault, but you will see multiple events going at once as part of the meta-event. This could work. There will also be so many events available that the players will likely be losing some because they are happening unseen. You see this on a small scale all the time: you come upon an event where the bad guys are 80% of the way there; it fails within a few minutes; you move to the next step, fixing whatever just went wrong. I have yet to see that “fix it” step fail in a way that leads to an even worse state, but I have seen the grawl complete human sacrifices and the bandits successfully poison the water supply.

Place your claims now: which current problems are transitory because of development, transitory because of population, or permanent because the same design will fail at level 80? This is your chance to lock in “I told you so.” Please include a specific “I was right” condition, including a “the bet’s off if the devs…” Beware of untrue Scotsmen.

: Zubon

Pro-tip to people at events: while you are fighting the boss, normal enemies continue to spawn, and sometimes the event even spawns more. You should kill those, too.

This weekend, there were forty to fifty people piling on a champion centaur boss (one of those fights that takes 5-10 minutes because its hit points have scaled up for forty to fifty people), and perhaps two of us were watching the outer edges for respawns. Melee respawns were no problem; they ran into a cloud of AE and fell down without anyone noticing them. Meanwhile, the Harathi Sharpshooters were forming a line. Fun math: assume 1/3 chance of getting a ranged attacker each spawn; assume death within 5 seconds if melee and respawn 15 seconds later; assume 12 spawns; how long until you have a solid line of 12 “Sharpshooters” casually standing 4 meters behind a horde of oblivious, unmoving PCs and just picking them off? Identifying where the damage is coming from can be a problem in games, and it can be loud with 40 to 50 people attacking constantly, but at some point you need to look around.

: Zubon

Going through the PvE zones at a calmer, realer pace is an eye opener compared to the brief periods of play I had before launch. The questless design is simply a different animal than a quest-based MMO. I wouldn’t say that one has victory of the other, but I do know that I am having more fun in Guild Wars 2 than I’ve had knocking out all the quests in a hub and then moving on.

The biggest side effect is the “who cares” effect. I am not fighting for resources or time against other players anymore. We are not racing to the shiny moss or seeing who can tag the respawn first. I am just about to kill a centaur and Joe Bob Ranger runs up and hits it for a few shots. I know he will get experience and loot, and who cares. Some people still do, it seems, as I’ve seen a few chat occasions where players whine about leeching.

For the most part open world PvE can be played “solo”. Ignore downed players. Don’t join events. Play how you want to. The game, I feel, is a lot more fun when my actions do respond to the nearby players. If I see a player taking down a normal mob, I will help out. I may have only saved that player a second or two of their time, but I also get an easier pass at experience and loot. Not a bad tradeoff. Continue reading [GW2] Questless Side-Effects

In a change from earlier stated plans, GW2 dyes are unlocked per-character rather than per-account. Boo.

Once you use the dye interface, all future armor you acquire will be automatically dyed with the same color scheme when you equip it. Auto-dyeing is a nice, intuitive quality of life improvement..

: Zubon

That the trading post is nigh perpetually “down for maintenance” is annoying but ignorable. I’m sick of trade spam in every zone, but I’m sick of guild recruitment spam in every zone, too.

What is really bothering our guild is that the grouping interface is not working properly. I think players can get to the same overflow/layer of the world/whatever. It can be hard to tell because, unless you are within sight distance of each other, the avatars are blanked out and you get a “join” button they way you would if you were not in the same instance of the world. Speaking of instances, joining each other there can be spotty. We have had people unable to join each other in personal stories and in dungeons.

Some of the pain is ameliorated by the game’s mechanics that make formal grouping less necessary, and this is less bad than Asheron’s Call 2’s lack of functional chat around launch, but one of the basic things you should be able to demand from a multi-player game is being able to form groups with your friends. Well, we can form groups, but they don’t work right, which is just inviting us to try it and hate the experience.

: Zubon

Finding family members at grocery stores and real theme parks would be so much easier with dots on a mini-map.

You are the crowd in this context, and Guild Wars 2 uses events to collect groups of players and channel them between theme park rides. In the early days, when everyone is the same level, this creates massive zergs that are fun although not necessarily optimal. This will really pay off in the coming years as a solution to the common problem of finding groups after the population center is at the level cap.

First, we collect the players. Continue reading [GW2] Crowd Control

Many people have observed how Guild Wars 2 content flows naturally across the map. In WoW or LotRO, you know you are done with your current quest hub when your quest list fills up with “go talk to Alice, Bob, Cogsworth, and D’rkesh in the next hub.” In GW2, theme park ride A exits by the entrance to ride B, and because you do not need to go back to town to turn in your quests, you just keep rolling. “Protect the caravan” events are an obvious, justified way to move people between towns, and frequently a defense event will transition into an assault event that has a similar effect. (More on that tomorrow.) Scouts also point out the rides in advance, in case the flow fails.

My point today is simpler: the mini-map design is excellent. The right side of your screen naturally pushes you to keep rolling through new content. I have often spotted and followed a trail of resource nodes into a new area. More importantly, the map includes things that are off-map. A waypoint you have yet to find will appear at the edge of the map, guiding you toward that new content. It hovers enticingly, retreating as you approach until it is legitimately on the map. I never would have thought that I would want a map that shows things not on the map, but it works beautifully. Look, a dully colored thing! Go light up the dully colored thing!

Just above it, you have a list of hearts and events. Those work beyond the mini-map, too, particularly the events that alert you to nearby opportunities. Look, an orange thing! Go see the shiny orange thing!

: Zubon

The grinning bobcat refused to disclose why he grinned.