What ever happened to the MMO Manifesto?

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Zaklex.6308" said:I don't know about you, but I could care less what a person background is or where they are from, what ever title they're holding at the moment is how I see and treat them, since I'm the Commander in GW2 that is how I expect to be addressed and treated by everyone, regardless of which race I am or my origin background, that is exactly how the story was written and how it continues to be written, you were in a specific element of your races organization at the beginning and got shuffled off to something bigger...why would you even refer to your past?It's not about insisting on referring to the past. It's about the story (not) ignoring obvious relations when they're relevant, or (not) forgetting about things that should have been a major point for the player.

For example, having someone explain who and what Pale Tree is, when my character is a Sylvari, without even noticing that my character is supposed to already know that. Or having Pale Tree's dream-like divination be equally important to a Sylvari and to a (supposedly looking at magic, prophecies, divinities with scorn and suspicion) Charr. Having all five races react with equal suspicion to a Mursaat (when practically only humans, and maybe charr should even care). Having all five races react in pretty much the same way to a certain divinity returning in a mostly hostile way (again, when the reaction of, for example, charrs should have been wildly different than one of humans).

And in the case of "important things from the past". Does anyone even now remember that a charr player is supposed to have a warband? And that warbands for Charr are supposed to be a really major thing, not something that can be swept under the rug or conveniently forgotten?

So no, it's not just a matter of being addressed "commander".

[Obtena.7952]

Here is what happened ... whether they did things or not, GW2 is successful. So instead of running an MMO experiment and seeing how far they could change things, they took a successful formula and ran a business with it.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Mourningcry.9428 said:Things change.

And not always for the best, because this was the best part about GW2:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:

"MikeO'Brien" said[it has] a fully branching, personalized storylineWe used to have this. I liked it. I liked that it was worth repeating the personal story several times because there were branches to the story you hadn't taken before.. But we haven't had that SINCE Zhaitan was killed. We've been railroaded narratively since Living Story started. Even HoT and PoF stories have no branches, they're railroads. Nothing I picked about my character has mattered at all since the death of Zhaitan, and the things I picked at creation stopped mattering around level 30. LS2 had some story steps worth repeating for rewards and so did HoT.. PoF is worth repeating maximum 3 times for the different backpacks (the only consequence for the only choice we made since Zhaitan was defeated).. but LS3 and LS4, not worth repeating for any reason outside of getting achievements you missed the first time through.. I miss the branching storyline.

:+1: I, too, want personalized story content back. Paths based on your personality, profession, race, and choices.

[Blude.6812]

I guess it was abandoned a long time ago

[TheOrlyFactor.8341]

@Blude.6812 said:Re:original Manifesto(basically a lie)-- MO abandoned it a long time ago! It meant nothing as does his his leadership mean today. Game is increasing pay to get stuff (not Pay to win). Not that is o to play, but it isn't what was was promised (lied about) as times change--Colin saw writing on the wall and made the right decision--ignore the lies of leave--he left!

Can I have your stuff?

[battledrone.8315]

@Hypatia.3160 said:On the first characters I leveled to 80 I landed in Orr around level 72. Did stumble upon a couple of event and was happy there wasn't any more hearts to do and the events seem to be popping fairly regularly. The bloom fell off that rose pretty quickly. The next day I logged in there was barely anybody there and certainly not enough folks to do the events. So I left Orr and spent two hours on lower level zone map completion until I was 80.

GW2's event driven design is awesome and I'm a huge fan of the HoT metas. But I recognize that events have a significant weakness. They need a critical mass of players to function. The other characters I levelled were done primarily through map completion (including hearts) unless one of the dailies involved Core Tyria events. Unfortunately that creates the opposite problem: Too many players often made the events trivial.

As lame as most of them are Task Hearts have a legitimate function. They offer progression for times when map population is light or you just don't want to deal with any more people that day.

hearts arent masterpeces of entertainment, sure, but most of the events dont make any sense at alltake the huge dragon on the ice map (jormac?) :1: the size is all wrong, if it was that big , you couldnt come close to it, due to the wind from its wings2:we have a evil creature WITH WINGS, but still it stays IN THE SAME PLACE, AND LETS THE PLAYERS WHITTLE IT DOWN3:it doesnt feel heroic to be ant nr. 529, hacking away at its left footmetas suck

[Airdive.2613]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@Hypatia.3160 said:On the first characters I leveled to 80 I landed in Orr around level 72. Did stumble upon a couple of event and was happy there wasn't any more hearts to do and the events seem to be popping fairly regularly. The bloom fell off that rose pretty quickly. The next day I logged in there was barely anybody there and certainly not enough folks to do the events. So I left Orr and spent two hours on lower level zone map completion until I was 80.

GW2's event driven design is awesome and I'm a huge fan of the HoT metas. But I recognize that events have a significant weakness. They need a critical mass of players to function. The other characters I levelled were done primarily through map completion (including hearts) unless one of the dailies involved Core Tyria events. Unfortunately that creates the opposite problem: Too many players often made the events trivial.

As lame as most of them are Task Hearts have a legitimate function. They offer progression for times when map population is light or you just don't want to deal with any more people that day.

hearts arent masterpeces of entertainment, sure, but most of the events dont make any sense at alltake the huge dragon on the ice map (jormac?) :1: the size is all wrong, if it was that big , you couldnt come close to it, due to the wind from its wings2:we have a evil creature WITH WINGS, but still it stays IN THE SAME PLACE, AND LETS THE PLAYERS WHITTLE IT DOWN3:it doesnt feel heroic to be ant nr. 529, hacking away at its left footmetas suck

I'm not sure any dragon could fly using just its own wings. They tend to fly magically whenever they feel like it.It seems you might be applying real world logic to fantasy fiction.

[Pifil.5193]

@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@"Chasind.3128" said:I don't even know what's going on in the story mainly because I absolutely HATE how the commander acts to braham/ etc. It's boring, the characers are boring. Why even have custom options to pick from if they only matter in vanilla? In WoW, you're addressed as what you are. In GW2, you're the same person with the same background, whether you're a Blood Legion Charr or an Asura of the College of Dynamics. It's mainly why I maybe pop in once a week just to raid with my guild and I just ignore anything with lore in GW2 because it doesn't matter.But, Guild Wars 2 is not played for the story, it's utter garbage. It's played for everything other than the story.

In WoW, they literally only call you by your class through most of the game.

Yes, {classname}, they do! They do occasionally do call you by name though, {charactername}, but that's easy to do when all the quests are really just written text and regardless of whether or not they're calling you {classname} or {charactername} you're still doing the exact same quests and seeing the exact same dialogs. There are some interesting class specific quests in WoW but they're a tiny, tiny fraction of the games content. I'd like to see them add more (non-voiced) profession and race specific content.

Now in GW2 I think they could and should cut down on a lot on the "Commanders" in spoken dialog. It's not neccessary to say Commander in what sometimes feels like every second sentence; the characters in game are normally talking to the player. I mean, if Canach says "look at this" or "help me here!", it's pretty obvious that he's talking to the player. If he's not talking to us then he'll say something like "look at this, Rytlock" or "Rox, help me here!". In other voiced games I've seen the voice actor would say something like "look at this!" and the text on screen would say something like "look at this, Pifil!".

I've known these guys for years, I think we should be on first name terms by now. :)

[Gomes.5643]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:You may not believe it, but it's stil the fact that gw1 AI was more advanced. Thus, the only explanation for the current state of mob AI is what was given then - the mobs were made dumber on purpose.

Then I really dont know what was going on in the mind of the person who made that decision. Exspecially when they announced a few years later their big new AI Technology which should exactly incorpared that. Like it was something completly new ......

So hopefully they will go back to the system were they had smart enemies which dogded attacks and run out of AoEs instead of bulletsponges with One-Hit-Ko-Attacks for "difficult encounters".

[battledrone.8315]

@Airdive.2613 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@Hypatia.3160 said:On the first characters I leveled to 80 I landed in Orr around level 72. Did stumble upon a couple of event and was happy there wasn't any more hearts to do and the events seem to be popping fairly regularly. The bloom fell off that rose pretty quickly. The next day I logged in there was barely anybody there and certainly not enough folks to do the events. So I left Orr and spent two hours on lower level zone map completion until I was 80.

GW2's event driven design is awesome and I'm a huge fan of the HoT metas. But I recognize that events have a significant weakness. They need a critical mass of players to function. The other characters I levelled were done primarily through map completion (including hearts) unless one of the dailies involved Core Tyria events. Unfortunately that creates the opposite problem: Too many players often made the events trivial.

As lame as most of them are Task Hearts have a legitimate function. They offer progression for times when map population is light or you just don't want to deal with any more people that day.

hearts arent masterpeces of entertainment, sure, but most of the events dont make any sense at alltake the huge dragon on the ice map (jormac?) :1: the size is all wrong, if it was that big , you couldnt come close to it, due to the wind from its wings2:we have a evil creature WITH WINGS, but still it stays IN THE SAME PLACE, AND LETS THE PLAYERS WHITTLE IT DOWN3:it doesnt feel heroic to be ant nr. 529, hacking away at its left footmetas suck

I'm not sure any dragon could fly using just its own wings. They tend to fly magically whenever they feel like it.It seems you might be applying real world logic to fantasy fiction.

lol..if that was the case, then it could save a lot of energy, by simply not flapping its wingsin fact, it wouldnt NEED wingsand the problem still remains: you have a huge energy force, that no person could stand againsta human boss can do knockbacks , that throw everyone back....but a giant dragon cant do the same? lol...

[Ephemiel.5694]

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@"Chasind.3128" said:I don't even know what's going on in the story mainly because I absolutely HATE how the commander acts to braham/ etc. It's boring, the characers are boring. Why even have custom options to pick from if they only matter in vanilla? In WoW, you're addressed as what you are. In GW2, you're the same person with the same background, whether you're a Blood Legion Charr or an Asura of the College of Dynamics. It's mainly why I maybe pop in once a week just to raid with my guild and I just ignore anything with lore in GW2 because it doesn't matter.But, Guild Wars 2 is not played for the story, it's utter garbage. It's played for everything other than the story.

In WoW, they literally only call you by your class through most of the game.

Yes,

{classname}

, they do! They do occasionally do call you by name though,

{charactername}

, but that's easy to do when all the quests are really just written text and regardless of whether or not they're calling you

{classname}

or

{charactername}

you're still doing the exact same quests and seeing the exact same dialogs. There are

some

interesting class specific quests in WoW but they're a tiny, tiny fraction of the games content. I'd like to see them add more (non-voiced) profession and race specific content.

Now in GW2 I think they could and should cut down on a lot on the "Commanders" in spoken dialog. It's not

neccessary

to say Commander in what sometimes feels like every second sentence; the characters in game are normally talking to the player. I mean, if Canach says "look at this" or "help me here!", it's pretty obvious that he's talking to the player. If he's not talking to us then he'll say something like "look at this, Rytlock" or "Rox, help me here!". In other voiced games I've seen the voice actor would say something like "look at this!" and the text on screen would say something like "look at this, Pifil!".

I've known these guys for years, I think we should be on first name terms by now. :)

Don't forget that, once you're no longer in the Pact, someone [i think it was Taimi] mentions if they should call you something else and both your character and Almorra Soulkeeper mention that Commander is a title for life.

[Hypatia.3160]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@Hypatia.3160 said:GW2's event driven design is awesome and I'm a huge fan of the HoT metas. But I recognize that events have a significant weakness. They need a critical mass of players to function.

While this does tend to be the case for Core and HoT, I think they smoothed out the edges of scaling events properly around the Lake Doric patch. I find the content since around that time has not required that critical mass of players for the dynamic events to be absolutely great. PoF event chains are a really good example of this. They scale from solo to about 30 players rather elegantly.

For some of the minor events perhaps (Refugee escorts in CO, Kossan's Patrol in the Desolation, etc.) Bounty scaling is far more erratic. Depending on the randomized ley effects, what's doable at 6-10 folks becomes impossible from 12-15 and trivial at 30+. I've seen so many failed attempts at Maw of Torment and the salt spewed forth by those trying Serpent's Ire would make a ranked PvP'er blush. Deadhouse is another event that folks have trouble with.

Even when it's working it only goes in one direction (spoiler: up). I needed to complete the third event from an event chain in Tangled Depths for a Mastery Point. It was an off-meta map so there were two of us working on it when an HP train rolled on through the area on their way to their next stop. For whatever reason (mere presence, aggro, incidental mob kill, etc.) they got added to the participant count and the collection event all of a sudden jumped from needing 12 eggs to 120 even after they left.

Note that I don't believe the major metas need to be soloable they just need to be worth doing to attract the level of coordination some of these require. That said, there does need to be some events that does scale up from solo without making it impossible to complete if there's a temporary boost in participation. Finally for a completely event driven design there has to be enough on-demand events available so that somebody joining a map has something to do in a reasonable amount of time.

[Nuka Cola.8520]

It was replaced by the gem store.

[battledrone.8315]

@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@"Chasind.3128" said:I don't even know what's going on in the story mainly because I absolutely HATE how the commander acts to braham/ etc. It's boring, the characers are boring. Why even have custom options to pick from if they only matter in vanilla? In WoW, you're addressed as what you are. In GW2, you're the same person with the same background, whether you're a Blood Legion Charr or an Asura of the College of Dynamics. It's mainly why I maybe pop in once a week just to raid with my guild and I just ignore anything with lore in GW2 because it doesn't matter.But, Guild Wars 2 is not played for the story, it's utter garbage. It's played for everything other than the story.

In WoW, they literally only call you by your class through most of the game.

Yes,

{classname}

, they do! They do occasionally do call you by name though,

{charactername}

, but that's easy to do when all the quests are really just written text and regardless of whether or not they're calling you

{classname}

or

{charactername}

you're still doing the exact same quests and seeing the exact same dialogs. There are

some

interesting class specific quests in WoW but they're a tiny, tiny fraction of the games content. I'd like to see them add more (non-voiced) profession and race specific content.

Now in GW2 I think they could and should cut down on a lot on the "Commanders" in spoken dialog. It's not

neccessary

to say Commander in what sometimes feels like every second sentence; the characters in game are normally talking to the player. I mean, if Canach says "look at this" or "help me here!", it's pretty obvious that he's talking to the player. If he's not talking to us then he'll say something like "look at this, Rytlock" or "Rox, help me here!". In other voiced games I've seen the voice actor would say something like "look at this!" and the text on screen would say something like "look at this, Pifil!".

I've known these guys for years, I think we should be on first name terms by now. :)

Don't forget that, once you're no longer in the Pact, someone

[i think it was Taimi]

mentions if they should call you something else and both your character and Almorra Soulkeeper mention that Commander is a title for life.

if it was only for life, shouldnt it be removed by your first death?bad writing