10-year-old game; still bleeding edge world content design

[Shrike Arghast.3856]

Just wanted to praise the development team - if they read these forums at all - for the way that world content is designed. I know a lot of people have hangups about various aspects of the game, but I cannot see any reason to complain about how Tyria actually functions in a zone-to-zone manner.

What am I talking about? A combination of the following:

• Events that players can trigger.
• Events that ALSO trigger on their own, so that NPCs will embark on miniature quests, fight, and - if no help arrives - die and fail all on their own.
• Events that trigger succeeding events - even if you fail. I love the way, say, towns can be defended, or they can fall and then be recaptured. 
• World bosses that anyone just passing through can participate in, even if they're just zooming around playing medic the entire time.
• A tally of goals for each zone that never feels particularly tedious to tick off (yes, sometimes I don't enjoy the jump puzzles, but then I just go do something else for a while).
• A large number of towns, hamlets, hovels, and camps dot the map. Even if they serve no profound purpose, they make the world feel lived-in.
• Similarly, there are downright pointless ruins everywhere - small tombs, shattered castles, eroded walls, and so-on. Although many of them have no distinct history of their own, collectively, their presences makes Tyria feel ancient.
• A superb score that I have never once turned off (although it can seem slightly limited at times - I just wish there were more tracks). 

Clearly, the game DOES have major issues. But when I compare the state of the world to something like World of Warcraft or FFXIV, the difference is just day and night. Both those games have near completely-dead overworlds: WoW's is truly vacant; almost nobody does anything as a group in FFXIV in the main world ~two weeks following an expansion launch (fates, which used to be the backbone of leveling, are now essentially dead content).

Even at odd hours of the day - 3 or 4 am west coast time - I can log onto GW2, head to any random zone of my choosing, and find people doing stuff solo or as a group. And let me tell you: that is NINENTY PERCENT of what I want from an MMORPG - just to see the world live. 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Shrike Arghast.3856

[Crono.4197]

15 minutes ago, Shrike Arghast.3856 said:

• Similarly, there are downright pointless ruins everywhere - small tombs, shattered castles, eroded walls, and so-on. Although many of them have no distinct history of their own, collectively, their presences makes Tyria feel ancient.

 

GW2 takes places 250 years after Guild Wars 1. Many of the ruins in the game are actually past locations from Guild Wars 1. So can't say they have no distinct history. In many locations, either you had a GW1 mission, either it was a GW1 outpost, either an important character lived there or something important happened.

For example the walls in the charr territory are the remains of the great wall of Ascalon, which the humans built in order to keep the charr out (walls were still intact in GW1). The ruins below the Black Citadel are the remains of the City of Rin, which was the human capital after Ascalon City has fallen to the charr in GW1.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Crono.4197

[Shrike Arghast.3856]

4 minutes ago, Crono.4197 said:

GW2 takes places 250 years after Guild Wars 1. Many of the ruins in the game are actually past locations from Guild Wars 1. So can't say they have no distinct history. In many locations, either you had a GW1 mission, either it was a GW1 outpost, either an important character lived there or something important happened.

For example the walls in the charr territory are the remains of the great wall of Ascalon, which the humans built in order to keep the charr out (walls were still intact in GW1). The ruins below the Black Citadel are the remains of the City of Rin, which was the human capital after Ascalon City has fallen to the charr in GW1.

I guess I was more talking about, say, random dwarf tombs that you can wander into and such. Some of them do play a role in the personal story - others are just names on the map.

[Mungrul.9358]

My only problem with the open world design, and one that's more prominent in later living world maps, is that they are frozen in time in relation to story events. So revisiting zones is like stepping back in time, and can break the illusion.

The biggest offenders are maps like Drizzlewood Coast, Domain of Kourna / Istan, Dragonfall, Dragon's Stand (well, pretty much the whole of HoT to be honest, thanks to much of the terrain actually being Mordremoth) and Dragon's End.

I find that core Tyria zones are better in this respect, as they mostly exist outside the events of the story, with the most glaring exceptions being Orrian maps.

 

But otherwise, yup, ANet have excelled at creating open world zones, at least in the past.

[Labjax.2465]

Yeah, its open world PvE design is unparalleled in the MMO space, as far as I've seen.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Map(and content in) design is by far the strongest point of anet.

 

even super-expensive stuff like dragon age series, cant catch up.

[ugrakarma.9416]

11 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

My only problem with the open world design, and one that's more prominent in later living world maps, is that they are frozen in time in relation to story events. So revisiting zones is like stepping back in time, and can break the illusion.

The biggest offenders are maps like Drizzlewood Coast, Domain of Kourna / Istan, Dragonfall, Dragon's Stand (well, pretty much the whole of HoT to be honest, thanks to much of the terrain actually being Mordremoth) and Dragon's End.

I find that core Tyria zones are better in this respect, as they mostly exist outside the events of the story, with the most glaring exceptions being Orrian maps.

 

But otherwise, yup, ANet have excelled at creating open world zones, at least in the past.

i disagree, being frozen in time is intrisec to any game.

[Mungrul.9358]

20 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

i disagree, being frozen in time is intrisec to any game.

What an odd thing to say.

One, I wasn't posting it as an argument, simply something I don't like about the open world design.

 

And two is a very weird opinion to hold when you look at genres like 4X, colony management sims, single-player RPGs, roguelikes, the list goes on.

If you think being frozen in time is intrinsic to games, you can't have played many games.

[DeanBB.4268]

None of those are MMOs, though. How would it work in an MMO? After completing the core story, and then returning to Orr, how could it be different? I suppose you could have a pre- and post- Orr map, but would that really be desirable? Splitting population, never being able to go back to the pre-version? How would it work?

[Mungrul.9358]

9 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

None of those are MMOs, though.

But @ugrakarma.9416 didn't say "MMOs". They said any game.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're falsely representing something someone else said to create a point of contention in order to make me look bad. But you wouldn't do that, would you? /s

Edited September 10, 2022 by Mungrul.9358
ORDER!

[Shrike Arghast.3856]

9 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

None of those are MMOs, though. How would it work in an MMO? After completing the core story, and then returning to Orr, how could it be different? I suppose you could have a pre- and post- Orr map, but would that really be desirable? Splitting population, never being able to go back to the pre-version? How would it work?

You'd have to develop the game world from the ground-up to essentially be dynamic content that changes for everyone regardless of where they are in the story (if the story exists at all). This is the approach Ashes of Creation seems to be taking - and the result will be that every server will look significantly different from others after only a few weeks.

However, AoC isn't even close to launching, and it still remains to be seen how deep or superficial these server differences wind up being. For an MMO with any kind of a story, the approach taken by GW2 is probably the best-possible solution.

[Gryphon.2875]

22 hours ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

None of those are MMOs, though. How would it work in an MMO? After completing the core story, and then returning to Orr, how could it be different? I suppose you could have a pre- and post- Orr map, but would that really be desirable? Splitting population, never being able to go back to the pre-version? How would it work?

Devil's advocate... That's how it was in Ascalon in GW1.

[Beast Sos.1457]

13 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

But @ugrakarma.9416 didn't say "MMOs". They said any game.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're falsely representing something someone else said to create a point of contention in order to make me look bad. But you wouldn't do that, would you? /s

I dont understand why you would jump to the worse case scenario. Sometimes people get lost in translation or read something differently. If anything that is the least likely case. You're just being defensive/negative for no reason. 

[SinisterSeven.2781]

On 9/9/2022 at 12:57 AM, Shrike Arghast.3856 said:

Just wanted to praise the development team - if they read these forums at all - for the way that world content is designed. I know a lot of people have hangups about various aspects of the game, but I cannot see any reason to complain about how Tyria actually functions in a zone-to-zone manner.

What am I talking about? A combination of the following:

• Events that players can trigger.
• Events that ALSO trigger on their own, so that NPCs will embark on miniature quests, fight, and - if no help arrives - die and fail all on their own.
• Events that trigger succeeding events - even if you fail. I love the way, say, towns can be defended, or they can fall and then be recaptured. 
• World bosses that anyone just passing through can participate in, even if they're just zooming around playing medic the entire time.
• A tally of goals for each zone that never feels particularly tedious to tick off (yes, sometimes I don't enjoy the jump puzzles, but then I just go do something else for a while).
• A large number of towns, hamlets, hovels, and camps dot the map. Even if they serve no profound purpose, they make the world feel lived-in.
• Similarly, there are downright pointless ruins everywhere - small tombs, shattered castles, eroded walls, and so-on. Although many of them have no distinct history of their own, collectively, their presences makes Tyria feel ancient.
• A superb score that I have never once turned off (although it can seem slightly limited at times - I just wish there were more tracks). 

Clearly, the game DOES have major issues. But when I compare the state of the world to something like World of Warcraft or FFXIV, the difference is just day and night. Both those games have near completely-dead overworlds: WoW's is truly vacant; almost nobody does anything as a group in FFXIV in the main world ~two weeks following an expansion launch (fates, which used to be the backbone of leveling, are now essentially dead content).

Even at odd hours of the day - 3 or 4 am west coast time - I can log onto GW2, head to any random zone of my choosing, and find people doing stuff solo or as a group. And let me tell you: that is NINENTY PERCENT of what I want from an MMORPG - just to see the world live. 

 

yeah you know what, gw2 really nails that.

 

ffxiv, despite being arguably more populous, tried its best with the FATE and hunt system, but they feel terribly scripted and robotic.

 

gw2 walks away from that by blending the area's events with the story for that section, with their own individual struggles. it has more soul, or.. more fleshed out, if that makes any sense.

Edited September 10, 2022 by SinisterSeven.2781

[ArchonWing.9480]

It's been the most impressive part about the expansion. EoD zones are a lot more interesting than PoF ones. I like how mounts aren't necessarily mandatory, but they sure help.

They also like to hide seemingly pointless dead ends that don't do anything. But it's like some extra bonus for the curious. There are extra touches like that Rata Sum jail.

Also, fishing.

Edited September 10, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gibson.4036]

On 9/10/2022 at 3:00 PM, Gryphon.2875 said:

Devil's advocate... That's how it was in Ascalon in GW1.

But GW1 is entirely instanced outside of the hubs. There aren’t any open world zones.