Constructs and Mechanics that lead to the Death of the Game.

In this game there are a large set of mechanics that in the short term lead to instant player satisfaction (instant gratification) but over the long term, are detrimental on a macro-scale level. The way these mechanics allow for instant gratification create artificial constructs, which end up self ful-filling and further leading to the enrichment of said constructs.

There are a large number of mechanics to talk about, but the big one I'm going to focus on for this discussion are waypoints, and subsequent mechanics that are effected by having waypoints existing in the game.

So already i know what you are thinking. Waypoints? How can something SO CONVIENENT ever be BAD FOR THE GAME?

For years, I study a field of science called "Complexity Theory", which is just the science behind complex systems dynamics. Complex systems are essentially how non-linear systems where things interact with each other create higher orders of organization, patterns, and chaotic behaviors. Complexity Theory is used in almost every scientific field known to exist in which the systems are non-linear. This also includes gaming, and many aspects of it. But what I'm going to focus on is more along the lines of Social and societal complexity, and how societal interactions lead to complex behaviours, and how some behaviours are good and how some are bad for the longevity of the game (maintaining healthy player population and interaction)

Waypoints are essentially shortcuts to get from one place to another. The end result is that individuals are instantly gratified when trying to go from point A to point B. Let's imagine for a moment that there was an alternate reality version of GW2 in which way points simply did not exist. What would the difference between the two games be and how would it effect social interaction?

To look at the above scenario in a mathematical sense, one would create a network diagram that would show the density of interactions in particular places on a "network map." In the game in which there exists waypoints, the density map would look something like this.

In a game in which way points did not exist, the density map would look something like this.

Now why would there be such a difference in interaction density with and without waypoints? It's because in by taking a waypoint, potential interactions that could have happened in between traversing between point A and point B simply do not occur because it doesn't exist. Therefor, player density becomes more tightly packed into denser and denser regions, and thus, interactions that could have happened elsewhere do not occur, and the ones that do occur are now confined to a smaller region, because interactions between other individuals, will more likely be found in these major hubs rather than outside of them. We see this behavior in game currently, where the majority of people...perhaps at least 80% of the population inhabit major cities at any given time.

So how exactly is this a bad thing? Well this by itself isn't a bad thing. The problems arise when this amplification of convenience becomes...TOO convenient...to the point where interaction is no longer necessary, because one could be instantly gratified without involving the interaction of others, even within these major hubs. This means that, if people are able to instantly gratify all their needs instantaneously, than the density map becomes more and more concentrated to the point where interaction density is that of just the individual player...in other words players have no need to interact with anything because everything is conveniently available to them...and likewise, players that do not have a convivence available, will find no other players to which that can help them achieve their goals, because the interaction density allows most people to achieve that particular goal by themselves. This is why, in most major cities and instances, you will find nearly the entirety of the cities individuals, stacked onto a banker or a Black Lion company Vendor, in complete silence.

The problems here are on a societal, macroscale level. Interactions give rise to organization, cooperation and competition. If interactions are simply removed for the sake of convenience, via waypoints, Instantaneous Transactions (BLC), Mounts, self-sufficient crafting, and so on, then societal constructs fail to actually work. This is why Guilds(in a game called Guild Wars) actually fails at having guilds be what people envision them to be. Most of the time, guilds are just groups of 500 people, in which very rarely do people actually talk to one another, let alone interact and do content together.

Humans are at the core, social beings...Even in a silent room where it would be awkward to start the conversation, we still want to communicate and engage a conversation. Even if we don't end up communicating, we still WANT to. However, communication requires effort, and when effort is weighed against convenience, convenience will win out, because we will tend toward the path of least resistance.

Game design should not make people choose between convenience and communication...But this is exactly the behavior's that have been eating away at the population for years now since the inception of the game...and this is just one of many of these failed behaviors. It's also not exclusive to just gw2, but many other games that favor instant gratification over effort in cooperation.

Fun fact - your first diagram does not represent the "interaction density" as it was in the core game. That density was always concentrated around major metaevents and farms, or other key places like dungeon entrances, and those often did not match the waypoint spread. This has remained true even now, at maps with much, much lower waypoint numbers (and built around other forms of transport, like mounts or gliding/leylines). In fact, it would be way closer to your waypointless picture.

So, it seems the very basis on which you built your whole thesis is false.

If you want to talk to people, just talk to them, put in some effort.You shouldn't need the game to conveniently place you into groups, instant gratification much? ;)

Forced grouping doesn't always lead to communication. Just look at games with forced grouping like League of Legends. There's a reason why Riot added a way to mute multiple people at once, and some players use that at the beginning of the round.

Guilds with 500 people "fail" being Guilds because they are just groups of people that don't know each other.Discord replaced most guild chats, since you can reach people there even if they're offline and it's easier to find people that share your goals. Discord even allows you to join a social community that transcends one game, creating lasting friendships that don't disappear once one player doesn't log on anymore.You just have to put in some effort and seek those communities, instead of joining a Guild that was able to add a multitude of players due to population density.

Not everyone "WANTS" to communicate in a silent room. People are complex beings, not everyone has the same personality.Some are fine and even enjoy the silence. The awkward one is the one that has to comment on that silence.

Game design should be convenient and allow people to play the way they want. Anything else will just make players leave the game for a more convenient one.

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Fun fact - your first diagram does not represent the "interaction density" as it was in the core game. That density was always concentrated around major metaevents and farms, or other key places like dungeon entrances, and those often did not match the waypoint spread. This has remained true even now, at maps with much, much lower waypoint numbers (and built around other forms of transport, like mounts or gliding/leylines). In fact, it would be way closer to your waypointless picture.

So, it seems the very basis on which you built your whole thesis is false.

Yeah, but he gets to talk about complexity theory again. He loves that.

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Fun fact - your first diagram does not represent the "interaction density" as it was in the core game. That density was always concentrated around major metaevents and farms, or other key places like dungeon entrances, and those often did not match the waypoint spread. This has remained true even now, at maps with much, much lower waypoint numbers (and built around other forms of transport, like mounts or gliding/leylines). In fact, it would be way closer to your waypointless picture.

So, it seems the very basis on which you built your whole thesis is false.

Specifically, the game draws attention to dynamic events, guiding the population into interactions.

Waypoints are an abstraction of a previous system of flight-points that would visually carry the player from place to place. Ugh, I still remember going AFK in WoW when taking a flight out from Moonglade or whatever it was. Literally 10 minutes. Someone programmed a Bejeweled clone in lua to help people be not bored on flights. GW2's waypoints remove the excess waiting so players spend more time engaged with the game. (Now if their other events/bosses would come off the clock a bit...) It does seem the devs noticed something about waypoint density and changed their stance on it from HoT on up, because we have fewer of them now.

If there needs to be discussion of a macro-level system causing agony in the game, it's probably how the megaserver assigns players and how the players abuse taxiing to leave other maps bare of participation.

Sorry, I kinda glossed over at the first diagram. What problem is this attempting to fix?

You used way too many words to try and describe a problem that doesn't exist. I've never seen literally everyone just bunched up around a waypoint. Many places you still have to traverse to. If you wanna interact with people there is a map chat. What is the issue? Never have I seen someone complain about waypoints existing...

I really don't see 80% of the population in a city (unless it is hosting a festival). There's always way more players in a popular map (or 10).

Fun fact: I didn't use Waypoints for several years. Not until I had amassed plenty of Gold to pay for it. And, to this day, I often travel via Mount rather than Waypoints in a map (or sometimes just run).

80% of the population is in towns? How do you know this? And not talking? Could that be because of the massive amount of stuff the game throws at us, filling inventories, requiring interactions with banks, merchants, and other vendors?

I would hardly consider waypoints to be an issue. If I had to run from, what, LA? to get to Orr any time I wished to do so...well, I think those zones you have to pass through multiple zones just to get to would be severely lacking social interactions. I guess people could park alts in all the distant places. But why?

@kharmin.7683 said:Sorry, I kinda glossed over at the first diagram. What problem is this attempting to fix?From what i understand, all of them.

@kharmin.7683 said:Sorry, I kinda glossed over at the first diagram. What problem is this attempting to fix?

I think they they are saying is too much I in Team in this game and it's because of core mechanics. Though I will agree we could use expanded guild activities, for all sizes of guilds.

@DeanBB.4268 said:80% of the population is in towns? How do you know this? And not talking? Could that be because of the massive amount of stuff the game throws at us, filling inventories, requiring interactions with banks, merchants, and other vendors?

The problem I'm highlighting in the discussion is about social interactions. Interacting with an NPC, or a piece of content is not social until it involves interaction with another human being.

I would hardly consider waypoints to be an issue. If I had to run from, what, LA? to get to Orr any time I wished to do so...well, I think those zones you have to pass through multiple zones just to get to would be severely lacking social interactions. I guess people could park alts in all the distant places. But why?

I mentioned this already in the original post, but waypoints by themselves aren't the root cause of these problems. Waypoints are one part of a larger array problems in the games design, of being encouraged to exercise instant gratification and convenience over social interaction.

the fact that waypoints exist is great for me in terms of convenience because it is useful for me to achieve my goals, but this comes with a hidden cost...the cost of simply removing from existence, social interactions that could have occurred were i to just traverse point A to B without a waypoint.

Like someone mentioned above, Anet recognized this as a problem a few years back and changed how many waypoints certain zones have in their new maps, and used the waypoints that do exist to funnel players into certain content. This is one way Anet has tried to address this problem, and for better or worse, has been moderately successful in making player interactions occur in those regions.

So ya, you love convenience and so do I, but whether we like it or not, that convenience comes with a hidden cost. That hidden cost is the potential of socially interacting with someone else on the way from point A to point B...or for that matter any interaction that requires a point A to Point B (Like a commodity transaction)....if the process is made to be self sufficient to the point of not requiring human interactions then you pay a price for that convenience through social deterioration. In other words, In certain places in this game currently, it is more convenient to do things in general by yourself, than it is to do it with other people.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Like someone mentioned above, Anet recognized this as a problem a few years back and changed how many waypoints certain zones have in their new maps, and used the waypoints that do exist to funnel players into certain content. This is one way Anet has tried to address this problem, and for better or worse, has been moderately successful in making player interactions occur in those regions.Cite your source? I don't believe that this was the reason for fewer waypoints. I'm pretty sure mounts had something to do with it.

Personally, I prefer my in-game social interactions to be on my own terms. Limiting or removing waypoints would not encourage me to be more social. It would be more of an inconvenience than anything.

Are you suffering from some sort of withdrawal due to covid lockdown? O_o

The interactions you speak of sounds like you are the crazy guy on the street trying to talk to every person that passes by.

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684"

"Game design should not make people choose between convenience and communication...But this is exactly the behavior's that have been eating away at the population for years now since the inception of the game... and this is just one of many of these failed behaviors. It's also not exclusive to just gw2, but many other games that favor instant gratification over effort in cooperation."

Stop making up stuff.

@kharmin.7683 said:Personally, I prefer my in-game social interactions to be on my own terms. Limiting or removing waypoints would not encourage me to be more social. It would be more of an inconvenience than anything.

@"Khisanth.2948" said:Are you suffering from some sort of withdrawal due to covid lockdown? O_o

The interactions you speak of sounds like you are the crazy guy on the street trying to talk to every person that passes by.

I actually have a strange story that aligns with this discussion...in how i met a billionaire venture capitalist in a Shared AirBnB in Los Angeles years ago. Won't really go into full detail...but basically at this...rather dinky Airbnb i had coffee and made friends with one of the 1%er's of the world. When i think back at this moment in time, i always think that, if i had gotten an airbnb that wasn't shared and exclusive only to myself, then i would have never met that person and never had an interesting experience that i would remember for a life-time.

My point here is that, you don't know if you are going to meet your new best friend, or your soulmate, or have some meaningful experience on the way from point A to point B if you never give it the chance to happen.

If everyone never gives those things a chance to happen (because of how the game is designed) then "things" just don't happen. Not saying gw2's picture is this black and white, but as the gap between veterans and new players shrinks, it will reach that point eventually.

There is absolutely no requirement to use waypoints if you don't want to. Many of the maps are directly connected to each other and even ones which are distant can be reached without waypoints if you want to (for example taking an airship from LA to Amnoon and then a boat to Istan). If you have the time and the inclination you can go overland to your destination, and be distracted by whatever catches your interest along the way.

That's how I normally play, and I agree that it can lead to a lot of unexpected enounters and fun along the way. But I also really appreciate having waypoints for when I need them, like when I want to do something far away and on a timer and wouldn't have time to get there by other methods. Even Especially when I'm joining in with those social interactions you talk about. For example today I'm in Istan, collecting kralk ore, and in between brandstones I saw someone asking for help with a bounty, so I decided to join in. It would have taken too long to get there from my starting location on the far side of the map, but fortunately I was able to use a waypoint to cut a huge chunk off the journey and arrived in time to help them beat the bounty.

For me that's a normal experience playing this game. I start off focusing on my own goals, then I see people asking for help or advertising what they're doing and I join in and end up doing a bunch of stuff I wasn't planning on, just because it was happening on the same map, and I see lots of other people doing the same.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:This is why Guilds(in a game called Guild Wars) actually fails at having guilds be what people envision them to be. Most of the time, guilds are just groups of 500 people, in which very rarely do people actually talk to one another, let alone interact and do content together.

This sounds like a problem with the guilds you're in. Most of the guilds I've been in have been very talkative, unless and until they go inactive. But then I specifically look for casual-friendly, social guilds who don't use voice chat, so there's a lot of incentive for members to use guild chat. We don't always do activities together (again, that's something I look for, a guild that demands participation in their activities doesn't work for me) but people will often call out what they're doing and invite others to join in.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Personally, I prefer my in-game social interactions to be on my own terms. Limiting or removing waypoints would not encourage me to be more social. It would be more of an inconvenience than anything.

@"Khisanth.2948" said:Are you suffering from some sort of withdrawal due to covid lockdown? O_o

The interactions you speak of sounds like you are the crazy guy on the street trying to talk to every person that passes by.

Then walk around the fantasy world of Tyria and make friends. And don’t worry about what other people do with their time in-game.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

“Like someone mentioned above, Anet recognized this as a problem a few years back and changed how many waypoints certain zones have in their new maps, and used the waypoints that do exist to funnel players into certain content. This is one way Anet has tried to address this problem, and for better or worse, has been moderately successful in making player interactions occur in those regions.”

Bc mounts...

You don’t seem to be following this game very closely.

I mean by that logic we should get rid of mounts as well.Why add an overall inconvenience of less waypoints for the off chance that players interact on their journeys along the way, I doubt they even would. People mostly interact in groups during events or at specific locations, Waypoints make it easier to get to these congregation points.

@Solanum.6983 said:I mean by that logic we should get rid of mounts as well.

And you would be correct.You can look at WvW to see how mounts have destroyed the game mode there....mounts also contribute to less social interaction (and less non social interaction) by just running to the their next goal without a second thought about what's happening along the way. They both contribute to the same problem...for WvW in particular it was so much more devastating because the mode actually depends on people interacting.

I see merit in your thoughts. However, in this game players are, as I see it, led by events, not the waypoints. Sure the waypoints get you to where an event happens, but people don't stick around a waypoint. It's like a train/bus station. You don't live at the bus station near you home or work at the bus station near your office, but it is where you cross paths with people. You meet another set of people, people you interact with for more time and more intense either at home or at work.

Core maps have many waypoints, where this analogy holds up better. New maps on the other hand, seem to be more railroaded through eventchains on the other hand.

Removing waypoints would not increase interaction in the world because the open world, with very few exceptions, does not require cooperation or any other form of interaction.

Proximity only matters for Say chat. Map chat, whispers, guild chat, party squad and WvW Team chat occur over much broader areas of the game. The thesis, if it is applicable at all, would apply mostly to free accounts.

Also, in my experience, there is a lot more interaction going on over 3rd party voice coms than in-game chat. Ommv.