Jump to content
  • Sign Up

What Are Your Wishes?


Tsakhi.8124

Recommended Posts

I often read threads regarding people's personal grievances about Guild Wars 2. To me, it's kind of a 50/50 ratio as to what's really constructive and what is construed hyperbole. That being said, it really doesn't matter what I think about people's opinions; that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about the following questions:

What would you do differently?

So often I see threads about the game being too dark, not dark enough, poor storytelling, rushed content, and all things in between. My question is this. Where is the happy medium? Where is that balance of good storytelling and being able to keep the story in line with what MMORPG's entail? If you could rewrite the story, in what direction would you take it? What are your thoughts on realistically personalizing the Guild Wars 2 experience?

On the subject of "explicit" (for lack of a better word) content: Speaking from personal experience, I've played games that got into some deep, disturbing, subjects (children being sold into slavery for all kinds of reasons, sexual assault, suicide, genocide, and almost constant swearing) from the same game (I'm looking at you Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, thank you for being a game that made me pause and shut down for an hour because I didn't want to fight a broken person). Is that the kind of content that people seek? If so, chances are they won't see it here; what with the game being rated Teen here in the US. Well, at least in the first three instances, the genocide thing sort of was touched on. If this isn't what people are looking for. Then how dark do you want it, again, speaking in realistic terms.

How would you budget it?

This game isn't made for free. With this in mind, how would you work within the creative confines? What changes would you make to the existing code within realistic means? How would you delegate tasks? If people were not performing well in their appointed department, would you change their station?

How would you handle Public Relations?

I think this speaks for itself. If not, let me know, because I've been known to be vague. (I'm working on it.)

Finally, would you feel comfortable to be in the position to make these decisions?

And that does it for me, for now. I hope this makes sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Reduce PoF and LWS4 enemies aggro range back down to 600. Dealing with a chain of aggro after aggro is so annoying some players just avoid these maps like the plague. Occasional enemies with 900 range is fine, but giving all enemies such long aggro range like in PoF/LWS4 is very annoying.

2) Reduce visual clutter so that players can actually see. Right now, metas are a mindless and incomprehensible mess. It's like we're fighting flashing lights that may randomly kill us. Not very engaging gameplay.

3) Let us move the target UI to the side. Again, we can't see the enemies.

4) Let us turn off the player names (displayed as blue text on field) while in a squad. Again, we can't see the enemies.

5) Reduce the unhealthy and painfully bright visual effects. The brightness/contrast on some maps is so extreme it is literally painful to look at the screen. Then there are the ridiculous bright camera flashes every time a Holosmith uses a skill, whenever a Soulbeast mounts (exiting Beastmode), whenever gathering with the Volatile Magic gathering tools, etc.

6) Change Gift of Exploration requirement to any 25 map completions (from any chapter, LWS, IBS, etc.). Not only is core Tyria map completion mind-numbingly boring for veterans, this would also give incentive to map complete outside of core Tyria. Another option is to let all legendaries use either the Gift of Mastery, Gift of Maguuma Mastery, or Gift of Desert Mastery.

7) Give us more repeatable solo stuff with meaningful rewards. Too many solo events are only worth doing once for a collection/achievement. Solo maps are often dead. Contents with good repeatable rewards are mostly for groups, but not everybody likes to mindlessly zerg constantly. Also, sometimes, we want to play specific maps, but there are no groups available.

HoT Maps: Pre-meta events reward keys and materials, but too many event chains require groups. Not worth playing outside of metas. Change the event chains to be solo friendly and slightly increase rewards to make them worth repeating.Dragonfall: Pre-meta events reward keys. Good, but so few events are solo-friendly. We need more solo events that reward keys.Bjora Marches: Lots of solo events, but with no meaningful rewards, there's no reason to go back there. The solo events should have a very small chance to reward some good stuff, like the Drakkar's Hoard or something.Drizzlewood: Pre-meta events have a lot of good rewards, but like Dragonfall, so few events are solo-friendly. We need more solo oriented events.

Gift of Exploration is one of the few solo stuff that's worth repeating (creating and selling gen 1 legendaries), but even that is restricted to mind-numbingly boring core Tyria maps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like an employee that just plays once a week and answers questions the community has. The same person could be in charge of connecting with the playerbase with polls, and talk with prominent members about what would be good additions to the game. People like commanders of wvw, and somelike mr Teapot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I could name a few things, but when I come to think about it. It most of the time boils down to "stick with something and improve on it insead of trashing and replacing it with new stuff soon to be trashed and abandoned."

Just as an example: Anet trashed dungeons for fractals, then fractals for raids, then raids for strike missions, then strike missions for dragon response missions. Maybe, just maybe, if they stuck to dungeons, the dungeons we'd have by now would be beter than the strikes and drm's we have now because devs could have concentrated their effort on quality and working with existing systems, instead of having to come up with a new system and then not having time for quality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"lokh.2695" said:I think I could name a few things, but when I come to think about it. It most of the time boils down to "stick with something and improve on it insead of trashing and replacing it with new stuff soon to be trashed and abandoned."

Just as an example: Anet trashed dungeons for fractals, then fractals for raids, then raids for strike missions, then strike missions for dragon response missions. Maybe, just maybe, if they stuck to dungeons, the dungeons we'd have by now would be beter than the strikes and drm's we have now because devs could have concentrated their effort on quality and working with existing systems, instead of having to come up with a new system and then not having time for quality.

Except that the dungeon team was disbanded and sacked.Noone left in the company knew how to touch the spagetti code the dungeon team left behind so they made fractals instead.

Some would say fractals dident get trashed as we recently got a fractal released, they are just on a 1 fractal every 1-2 year schedule now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My only problems with the game is in this order:

Mount skins being overpriced.Sun's Refuge oversold by Anet and setting that overselling precedent for minute content.Build Loadouts being OVERPRICED.EVERY Icebrood Saga crafting collection being a heaving gold sink on par with legendaries, with NONE of the benefits.Champions being awfully implemented.

Anet likes hearing proposed solutions. Every solution to these problems is common sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Making map design impressings, and events mechanics interesting, doing it a way the player take a good slap in it face when entering the map seeing how good it is. That what I felt when I entered Old La: "Holy SKRITT this is amazing!" never got that ever again apart in a bug in the system, grothmar and while exploring core.

Making the maps featuring a lot of details, not only the base modeling but also the uses of assets, I will simply redirect to looking ingame for maps that just feel empty: Bitterfrost, siren landing, desolation; those maps are huge, but a lot of wastes without anything in them, take caledon, or metrica, you can't do 500m without finding a house or an npc; and no beeing a map away from conventionnal area isn't an excuse.

So often I see threads about the game being too dark, not dark enough, poor storytelling, rushed content, and all things in between. My question is this. Where is the happy medium? Where is that balance of good storytelling and being able to keep the story in line with what MMORPG's entail?

If I got free card, I wouldn't done at all living story. Only expansions, and they would have been the following in order:1-Core game. (Personnal story like how we know it. LS1 would be side quest.)2-HoT Heart of Thorns (After thorns started to invade all maguuma and more and more mordrems assaulting the differents towns, pact react to save sylvaris)3-DoF Depths of Fire (The kill of Zhaithan, and now mordremoth released a good a mount of magic, and awoke primordius who emit an intense energy signal)4-PoC Path of Crystals (The stigmatized forces push more and more teritories, and recently got report that blood legion homelands fell facing kralkatorrik)5-EoI Empire of Ice (Like current icebrood story, but only focusing on jormag, since primordius had a story)6-RoW Realm of Water (Several map on archipelagos and underwater, filling the areas between ring of fire and sandswept, largos and tengus call for help in the dominion)

The goal is to stick to the roots: With every expansion, 6 Big maps, 1 elite spec for all profession, 2 raids, 2 dungeons. (In that reality, fractals, strikes, DRM don't exist)and racial armors/weapons corresponding to the expac: 2 new cultural tiers (charr during PoC, human during PoF, Sylvari duing HoT, Asura during DoF, Norn with EoI)With a story, in the style of the personnal story with some branch and choices: They end at the same conclusion, but, you would recruit different allies, or bring a thing or another to your home instance. Experiencing some lores/dialogues and not another... also 1 guild hall by expansion. Each expansion can add a new feature that change the way to play, HoT with glider, DoF can be an armor bar with an exoskeleton allow you to farage through walls or ground at indicated spots for hidden areas or chests.PoC is mount, EoI with the ability of driving a charrcopter or vehicle and being parachute, and RoW having a boat and ability to use skimmer underwater.

What are your thoughts on realistically personalizing the Guild Wars 2 experience?--> In parallel, side stories, using the personality system or a kind of reputation based one: Depending of your character creation choices and race, you can speak to somes NPCS around the world for side quests to earn tokens to exchanges against ascended, gh decos, skins, infusions. It would act like shining blade bounties, you speak to an npc and it gives you a choice between different orders, some nice, some neutral, some evil, and the npcs around you can change affiliation (only to you) depending on the fact you have more a rogue evil or a peaceful guardian angel personality.

I know that personally, I would like to have another crafting discipline, artist, that can make assets or stickers usable anywhere, only seen by you apart in guild hall and home instance. You see that clothes designer in animal crossing? kinda like that. You draw a thing and you can put it where you want, you could make a regular asset to, "personalized decoration" you would have 5 slots.

The big thing missing too is custmization, how can I have a personalized experience, if I can't even find a good set of skins for my light asura female? God! Human have so much skins, I just wish there were way far more high-tech, sci-fi, cyberpunk skins for asura, leafy, flowers, branching ones for sylvaris.... And way far more faces too, with beards and goatee, some scars and different aging, I would enjoy creating a old grumpy dude with a big scar on the eye and a goatee.

Then how dark do you want it, again, speaking in realistic terms?

See bjora marches, the creepy whispers and visions are good, dead corpses with blood in long live the lich too.How can you do that, but, somehow, for the boneskinner or the test subject don't put blood on cadavers? Or a blood stain under like long live the lich?It is really a matter of how it is done too, again if you take the bonneskinner, the only cool thing is when it disapear and hunt for a target before killing it, I would have preferred there was an event of investigating in the forrest and you see from time to time creepy visions or vague ghostly boneskinner head behind trunks. And during the fight itself, a way far more intense fog and mechanics with some wisps having to protect someone casting a spell. From time to time hearing screams....I don't necessarely want Gore or Vicerous looking eel mouth creatures... but that the thing is scary in itself, if you take the bug in the system trailer that awakened abobination walking in tunnel is cool but it isn't seen in game.

How would you budget it?

I wouldn't lose any time. A team for PvP, one for Expansion, one for WvW and one for Festivals/Side quests/Dungeons. And a gemstore one. Artist and Audio too.If someone is not doing right, woop put in another. And if I see it doesn't work at all, fired.All gemstore goods would be based on a specific race or the current expansion.I would sell also everything possible to customize your way to play on gemstore: Change your projectiles!!!! Change your turrets look!!! Buy look slot!!! Buy Housing Plot!!!Buy Lounge!!! Buy weapon skin!!! Buy racial guild hall decos pack!!! Buy home instnace nodes!!! Buy gathering tool!!! Buy Projectile appearance modificator!!! Buy disguises tonics!!! (bypass foes, have no damage racial skills) Buy finishers!!! Buy Character Selection screen!!! Buy mount skins!!! Buy Glider skins!!! Buy boat skin!!!

How would you handle Public Relations?

I would ask the community to give a feedback on a thread or anything, then I close it and recover it, I search the more repeated words and read the sentences about them. If positive, I consider adding it to the game, if not, I put it on a shelf but not totally trash bin it in case off.I would organize 1 or 2 contest per year, about a weapon, an armor, a new item or a map.But the priority stay bugs of course.

-No crazyness huh, this is what I would do with money and a solid team, I don't have the knowledge of money management sadly.-

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Two things I would institute, both kind of oriented around achievement:• Hard push for story replayability with some kind of fast retry option for achievements. This is necessary to feel good about skill-based challenges.• Change the philosophy of rewards from grind to effort. This notion of 1-in-a-billion drops for item scarcity or spending literally 200 hours for a single achievement has got to go. They don't need to be presented to players on a silver platter, but let players achieve things without devoting absurd sums of time (via repetition or utter time-gate waiting) for it. Depending on the end goal, no more than a week to a month of daily, invested effort before the goal is finished. Especially, especially, if it's going to have Mastery points or other character-enhancing benefits attached.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Iskander.6309" said:I would like an employee that just plays once a week and answers questions the community has. The same person could be in charge of connecting with the playerbase with polls, and talk with prominent members about what would be good additions to the game. People like commanders of wvw, and somelike mr Teapot.

Most of them REALLY don't want to do this.

Way back when Raymond and Co. (not a hair salon) used to do the WvW livestream, they tried to get other devs to join in - not many did. I guess it's because a mode where players can attack the devs is always going to be brutal.

They used to do a regular PvE stream, back when there were "spare staff" for that kind of thing. Now that the love is gone, I suppose it's all shoestring budget stuff and getting away from work for as long as is humanly possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my wish?a better use of immersion, this game has so much potential it's just nuts but Anet doesn't even see any of it.i don't want more areas when the old ones suck, i don't care for new armors when the current ones are boring.i really don't want to see more, i want to see better, much better than this petty quality.

towns need streetlights, taverns with sit-able chairs and a barmaid asking if you want a drink, night and day matter both with lighting and enemy spawns.i want GW2 to breath, to see it bloom and show how a world can really be.better yet, i want some animals to flee, a deer isn't going to just sit by when you are running around with a weapon, they will run away as far as possible. (and faster than the player running speed)i want a traveling merchant, some have special clothing while others have jewels and weapons for sale.i want to see a market every X day of the week in cities, i even want to see a bar fight or street argument from NPC's that you can solve.

GW2 is really dead, not in a sense of "the game is dead" but it feels so empty and desolated that i wonder why Anet even took the time making big cities when only 10% of it is used.the game is beautiful but it's time Anet actually uses that beauty and exploit the heck out of it, it can be so much more but they are not doing anything with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Totally agree there. Don't know why no devs think about it, it can be added little piece by little piece between releases. Adding events like bartender, shooting stand, and more talk options in cities.... half of those are already coded an can be reused: cook/bartender and shooting event in grothmar. Bar fight in ashford plains... I would like dynamic weather, one day you wake up with fog around the map, next day it's sunny... And for such a big world it is strange to not see merchants with cart passing from a map to another selling daily "exclusivities". So rich lore and environment and somehow a living fealing absent everywhere. I mean what the point of those private gardens in the grove or those dormitories in rata sum if they cannot be explored? Through saying big cities is only worthy in Case of Divinity reach or Black Citadel. Can it be used for hoelbrak? Without lounges it's nothing. Grove? It miss coasts and garden? Rata Sum? 80% Of land around the cube itself, and in the cube, the whole bottom half is unused. But anyway all those changes would require a thread for itself.

TLDR, I read fanfictions more living than the cities of the game, and saw fanarts using better the ambiance of maps and lores of the races.

And it's sad that nothing is done about it, it literally tickling me a lot and give me ants in the limbs of wanting to use a pencil on the maps to add things. I know that I would enjoy add things into the game without receiving a dollar in return. What the point of those anet creative partners anyways? Doing artshowcases and gems give away? Really? Better using them to design content and extras freely for the game you can't add yourselves because teams mobilized.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For things to do I would like new dungeons, overhauls of some of the more interesting old content, fractal style tiers/difficulty levels for raids and strikes, more scrying pool missions, and a massive Selbubb underwater boss battle where we can swim around the elder dragon so I can appreciate the scale of the fight.For cosmetics I would want a bigger variety in style of armors, smaller more symmetric pauldrons/shoulderpads and a texture update for the old stuff that has aged poorly.For the gemstore I would want all build and equipment templates to be account wide upgrades (maxing out build slots on all my characters would literally cost me half my savings).For guilds I would want more guild missions, better ingame comunication tools and a new guild hall carved out of the side of a massive seaside cliff.Lastly I would want an option in the settings to make ingame nights darker. I almost never notice the difference between night and day ingame.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ANet does not deserve any constructive criticism from me because everything I have appreciated or hoped to appreciate about the game has, to some extent or another, been wrecked or abandoned. An important requirement for being worth talking to is knowing they have ears they are listening with and a will to do the work. They have repeatedly been lacking in both. Despite efforts in my past to offer such constructive criticism, it has gone nowhere for that very reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Tsakhi.8124" said:I often read threads regarding people's personal grievances about Guild Wars 2. To me, it's kind of a 50/50 ratio as to what's really constructive and what is construed hyperbole. That being said, it really doesn't matter what I think about people's opinions; that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about the following questions:

What would you do differently?

So often I see threads about the game being too dark, not dark enough, poor storytelling, rushed content, and all things in between. My question is this. Where is the happy medium? Where is that balance of good storytelling and being able to keep the story in line with what MMORPG's entail? If you could rewrite the story, in what direction would you take it? What are your thoughts on realistically personalizing the Guild Wars 2 experience?

It's a bit late, but I never liked the idea of having our character be the Pact commander and have such an instrumental piece to play in every single major event of the game. I think the story would've been much better if we were relegated to a lesser rank or assigned to a special team (like Dragon's Watch) BUT under a major character. Just my opinion, but having the story surround what we do makes the world smaller - I'd much rather tag along for the ride and watch major characters develop in more depth than ArenaNet has made them so far. It'd give us opportunities to make more meaningful connections with a small group - I really don't feel anything for the members of Dragon's Watch, but a squadmate that's been with me since the beginning of the personal story would be a great relationship.

On the subject of "explicit" (for lack of a better word) content: Speaking from personal experience, I've played games that got into some deep, disturbing, subjects (children being sold into slavery for all kinds of reasons, sexual assault, suicide, genocide, and almost constant swearing) from the same game (I'm looking at you Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, thank you for being a game that made me pause and shut down for an hour because I didn't want to fight a broken person). Is that the kind of content that people seek? If so, chances are they won't see it here; what with the game being rated Teen here in the US. Well, at least in the first three instances, the genocide thing sort of was touched on. If this isn't what people are looking for. Then how dark do you want it, again, speaking in realistic terms.

Lots of carebears in the game wouldn't be able to handle it. We did see a literal nuke get dropped in one of the recent episodes, but there's really no need for excessive violence just for the sake of having it. If it adds to the story, sure - but if not, no need.

How would you budget it?

This game isn't made for free. With this in mind, how would you work within the creative confines? What changes would you make to the existing code within realistic means? How would you delegate tasks? If people were not performing well in their appointed department, would you change their station?

If EoD flops massively, either hand off GW2 to a studio that knows what they're doing or get rid of their current "leadership" - ArenaNet has talent but it's being mismanaged because they have no sense of direction with weak leadership. Allocate more resources to developers working on meaningful endgame content and allow players to "create" their own content. We've seen players deck out their guild halls with racing tracks, so something like this on a larger scale would provide more engagement than an entire season of Living World. If people can't perform, fire them. This is a business and if the entire ship goes down, everyone on board does - there's no need to sacrifice the entire game if a person can't pull their own weight.

How would you handle Public Relations?

Hire a CM who's competent and not afraid to speak their mind. No need to have a carebear that asks meaningless drivel like "what's your favorite quaggan?"; stuff like that doesn't make games last. If ArenaNet wants to keep GW2 going, they need to listen to constructive criticism and communicate some approaches they can take to it.

I think this speaks for itself. If not, let me know, because I've been known to be vague. (I'm working on it.)

Finally, would you feel comfortable to be in the position to make these decisions?

Well, we're all armchair warriors here who all believe that we'd do a better job. We have no idea of the inner workings of the company. The Game Director needs to be someone with strong organizational leadership skills, passion to see the game succeed, and the willingness to make hard decisions. If ArenaNet doesn't have anyone with those qualities willing to stand up, they need to find someone in the industry that does.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

overall anet does a better job on many fronts than on release. I don't really care about what they decide to title their latest idea for challenging group content, I just want it to be fun. A lot of stuff gets left behind, but i dont really see a reason to get so hung up on it. The new ideas keep the game fresh and they're probably as hit or miss as they would be if they were released as new dungeons or fractals. Playing release content has its charm but i cant deny the new stuff is fun and more polished.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...