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Forbes interview and my thoughts on competitive gameplay development


Swagger.1459

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Found this Forbes interview done recently, that was picked up by Massively Overpowered, and I have some constructive feedback for it.

http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2017/09/22/arenanet-president-qa-on-guild-wars-anniversary-and-path-of-fire/#657946d1b021

“You can’t go halfway on a world,” he argues. “A world is such a powerful thing. It’s where your friends are. It’s the relaxing place where you hang out in the quiet moments between challenges. It’s the home that you grow to love, and that you’re ready to fight to defend when the story asks you to. We came to realize that the world wasn’t the setting; the world was the game.”

“About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

I'd like to address the above 2 quotes...

First, I completely agree with the statements made about the game world. However, I find that professions and combat are as equally important, but both of those areas do not receive enough continued development, balance passes and reevaluation. So there has been a common sentiment along the way, by the critics, that professions and certain combat designs (stuff like stealth and condi mechanics…) are basically “halfway” made and maintained.

The characters we create are used to navigate through the game world, fighting our way through encounters, face off against other players in pvp and wvw... and so much more... Yet, it is the mostly the PvE side that profession weapon skills, slot skills, traits, elites specializations, playable roles, stealth design, condi designs, UI for support roles… are built for. That IS frustrating when “about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”… Reading the article also made me think back to the large “Top 5 wish” thread we had in the wvw section and we were told... (paraphrased) “We are looking for balance wins that won't mess over PvE”… Talk about frustrating.

I am not brining any of this up to be negative, disruptive or trying to make any call outs… but I hope the team can understand the frustration some people in the 40% group feel with regard to profession and combat development here. Anet offered Spvp and WvW as playable modes to this game, yet, two of the most important aspects for these modes, next to the game world, are not given nearly any real dev attention or continued development. I have never in my mmo experience seen as many “please redesign X” threads as I have in this game. Anet created some amazing elements to GW2, yet almost nothing is done to move professions and combat to the next level. None of the frustrating designs, skills and mechanics are changed to make the game more enjoyable, and less frustrating to play… Classes and combat here have potential to be some of the best designed of any mmo, but time keeps ticking away.

I will provide some specific suggestions in the near future about these areas, but I wanted to say this… Anet created a really good game, with some really good designs, but profession, and some combat mechanics, have only gone “halfway” in development. And judging by those quoted percentages, I think maybe it is time to hit the drawing board and make a plan to go "all the way" in these areas. You can have unified profession designs and quality combat mechanics that work well, and fit, into every game mode. You can have active, fast paced and twitch based combat, yet still remove all the clunky controls and skills from the game, so our characters and combat are a ton more smooth and enjoyable to play. You can create quality skills and stealth mechanics and condi mechanics.. for every mode... So much more can be done to make this game far better, you just have to do it!

Now that PoF has launched, and was focused all on content, I do think it's time in the cycle to bring us a professions and combat 2.0 revamp... I believe doing so will create a positive buzz through the game community, generate a lot of great press, competitive sides will grow even stronger and you'll have a lot of happy, old and new, players.

Thanks!

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I can agree they've become more focused on generating pve content to feed the the ever-unsated pve consumer crowd, and why they're doing it if it's really 90 percent of his customers wanting, it makes sense they would.

But I think Mr. O'Brien is misunderstanding something. While I am part of that big number consuming both offerings I am by no means a customer of pve. I may do some PvE, but it's the least unique part of the game. When it comes to single player stories.. well.. pretty much every non mmo does it better. It's an mmo thing, specialist always beats generalist in the specialist's area of expertise.

No, the thing that got my wallet out was WvW, the thing that's kept me buying is the combat. Which I have to disagree with the.OP about, when it comes to the combination of balance, diversification and combat gameplay this game is easily the best mmo at it, and I have played a ton of these things since they invented them. What I do agree with OP on, is that this achievement seems undervalued by Mr. O'Brien and, had a bit more resources gone to maintaining that top-notch fighting and PvP/WvW development and balance, that crowds might still be flooding his queues like they were five years ago.

Instead they're starting to look more like a WoW clone, which is a just plain weird thing to do post release imo.

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"The thing that people don’t realize about Megaservers is that introducing them changed our approach to content creation. Online worlds are at their best when you’re around other people. When players are subdivided onto different servers, then as a developer you always have to worry about the server with the least population."

I wish the above applied to wvw. Maybe I'm just extremely tired, but I find the numbers odd:

"Among our core active players, about 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both."

I didn't get a good feeling about the future of wvw from that interview. But hey, we have mounts, nothing to see here, move along.

@Junkpile.7439 said:Why they won't add new competitive game mode? Is it too much to ask that players could have at least couple hours real fighting/day?

We do, it's called PvF. Sheesh!

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@LetoII.3782 said:I can agree they've become more focused on generating pve content to feed the the ever-unsated pve consumer crowd, and why they're doing it if it's really 90 percent of his customers wanting, it makes sense they would.

But I think Mr. O'Brien is misunderstanding something. While I am part of that big number consuming both offerings I am by no means a customer of pve. I may do some PvE, but it's the least unique part of the game. When it comes to single player stories.. well.. pretty much every non mmo does it better. It's an mmo thing, specialist always beats generalist in the specialist's area of expertise.

No, the thing that got my wallet out was WvW, the thing that's kept me buying is the combat. Which I have to disagree with the.OP about, when it comes to the combination of balance, diversification and combat gameplay this game is easily the best mmo at it, and I have played a ton of these things since they invented them. What I do agree with OP on, is that this achievement seems undervalued by Mr. O'Brien and, had a bit more resources gone to maintaining that top-notch fighting and PvP/WvW development and balance, that crowds might still be flooding his queues like they were five years ago.

Instead they're starting to look more like a WoW clone, which is a just plain weird thing to do post release imo.

Yeah they seem to be so obsessed with their joy of movement that they forget the joy of combat, which is the main reason i play WvW. I love fighting stuff, be it people or NPCs, ideally in large numbers, yet, update after update all I get offered is dull and scripted dances around bosses. Meh.

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A few things come to my mind having to play this since beta. Things that M.O. seems to be ignoring or just simply unaware of:

  • Initially and for a very long time, it was the other way around, or at least equal in terms of WvW / PvP populations vs PvE population. But then the former started to decline, at some points at very rapid pace for various reasons such as burn-out exodus after the 1st tourney, class exclusion from large group meta (WvW is at its hard a massive battle mode and players need to be included in its primary, not just secondary functions). Server populations drop from the lowest tiers that has spread and crept upwards, caused mostly by population / timezone imbalance. Etc.

So while correct that WvW / PvP player count is lower, it is also correct that it wasn't always this way and it got this way largely due to the top menagement and / or M.O.'s own ignorance and lack of resources assigned to the game modes.

I also disagree about PvE balance being tough, actually its super easy. For example if you reduce damage output across the board by about 10%, this would be noticable in PvP and WvW, in PvE, it will mostly have no effects whatsoever. In open world, fractals, etc. you just pop one extra heal and go one extra cycle, in raids, you can simply reduce the mob HP or just extend the kill time by 30 secs or so. How hard is that ? PvE balance in general is super extremely easy due to the fact that you can manipulate mobs / raid bosses to the players with the overall results remainign the same.

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The mindset of thinking how players choose between one and the other is wrong. Players like me, who focus on pve, go to pvp and wvw when they get pve sick. Such varieties extend the lifetime of the product. It had times that I spent 6 months + only on WvW. I am completely against the idea of "dead content" because it is less played. The WvW is unique and with great potential.

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I've seen him state that before. You can't have 90% mostly PvE and 40% mostly PvP. That makes no sense. Add in the 30% who do both and it makes even less. I'd love to know what the real percentages are. I mean, if the 30% who do both are about 50/50, then they need to be taken out of the pool. So, what's the threashold who does both cut off? A 10% overlap? But maybe the 30% who do both are part of the 90/40, so do we just focus on that? It's idiotic things like this that make me invalidate anything he says.

It's obvious that most of their resources goes into PvE. Like an insane amount. But the thing that really puzzles me is that we have classes that are designed for pvp (WvW). Scourge and spellbreaker. Sure, scourge still does good damage in pve, but there's no reason for the class to be able to convert so many boons with so many skills unless you're playing other players, especially in large groups. Monsters either don't have any boons or very few. So with that in mind, how can they neglect the PvP aspects of this game so much? They wanted us to play this in WvW, but it's melting people. And there are very simple fixes to some things, like making winds and shades red so we can more easily differentiate between friend and foe. (I was PvPing on my war. 1 other on my team, and one on enemy team. There were a lot of winds going down, and I couldnt' for the life of me figure out who's was who's. I was looking for a red circle at the edge, but I think it gets obfuscated by the spell effect.)

Mike talks about fun and the social aspect. I cant' think of a better example that WvW. Maybe raids, but WvW has just more variety. Raids in this game are not challenging and get stale fast. But WvW has become deserted. I play on a very populated server and there's very few people on. More good players leaving means there's no one to lead the new players. It's a snowball effect that started with HoT. We were screaming for class balance, and after a couple years of tweeking, we finally got in a pretty good place. Then PoF hits and it's all thrown out the window.

Do they honestly think that we can do bounties for 2 years? No. Another LS episode every 3 months that takes a day to complete? No. Raids? sure, that will occupy people for a bit longer, but every day? WvW and PvP are the endgame that keep people from playing other games. They're destroying it with neglect.

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AS a player i dont agree with anything that MO says on thsoe interviews??? are those interviews from 3-4 years ago????That might be how the game is on the dull pve.. that offers nothing that keep spamming your aoe skill against static mobs...

This only show how he is diconected or no care about what is happening in its own game company... sadly he only cares about spam the keyboard from dullness against static mobs... and low effort rewards systems, and not see the game as a whole, just a fraction of it.

@Nuzt.7894 said:Um 90%+40%+30% = 160% ?Shouldn't it be 30% pure PvE, 40% WvW/PvP, 30% All of the above for 100% ?

No wonder the game is messed up, their statistic are messed up to sart with.Joking asside i think the writter or MO wanted to ment, 100% is to total players, from those 100% , 60% play pvX, and 40% play on PvP or WvW, something like that.Aloutgh i think he didnt want to admit there are WvW players XD... arent those pve players only????

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@Swagger.1459 said:Found this Forbes interview done recently, that was picked up by Massively Overpowered, and I have some constructive feedback for it.

http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2017/09/22/arenanet-president-qa-on-guild-wars-anniversary-and-path-of-fire/#657946d1b021

“You can’t go halfway on a world,” he argues. “A world is such a powerful thing. It’s where your friends are. It’s the relaxing place where you hang out in the quiet moments between challenges. It’s the home that you grow to love, and that you’re ready to fight to defend when the story asks you to. We came to realize that the world wasn’t the setting; the world was the game.”

“About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

I'd like to address the above 2 quotes...

First, I completely agree with the statements made about the game world. However, I find that professions and combat are as equally important, but both of those areas do not receive enough continued development, balance passes and reevaluation. So there has been a common sentiment along the way, by the critics, that professions and certain combat designs (stuff like stealth and condi mechanics…) are basically “halfway” made and maintained.

The characters we create are used to navigate through the game world, fighting our way through encounters, face off against other players in pvp and wvw... and so much more... Yet, it is the mostly the PvE side that profession weapon skills, slot skills, traits, elites specializations, playable roles, stealth design, condi designs, UI for support roles… are built for. That IS frustrating when “about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”… Reading the article also made me think back to the large “Top 5 wish” thread we had in the wvw section and we were told... (paraphrased) “We are looking for balance wins that won't mess over PvE”… Talk about frustrating.

I am not brining any of this up to be negative, disruptive or trying to make any call outs… but I hope the team can understand the frustration some people in the 40% group feel with regard to profession and combat development here. Anet offered Spvp and WvW as playable modes to this game, yet, two of the most important aspects for these modes, next to the game world, are not given nearly any real dev attention or continued development. I have never in my mmo experience seen as many “please redesign X” threads as I have in this game. Anet created some amazing elements to GW2, yet almost nothing is done to move professions and combat to the next level. None of the frustrating designs, skills and mechanics are changed to make the game more enjoyable, and less frustrating to play… Classes and combat here have potential to be some of the best designed of any mmo, but time keeps ticking away.

I will provide some specific suggestions in the near future about these areas, but I wanted to say this… Anet created a really good game, with some really good designs, but profession, and some combat mechanics, have only gone “halfway” in development. And judging by those quoted percentages, I think maybe it is time to hit the drawing board and make a plan to go "all the way" in these areas. You can have unified profession designs and quality combat mechanics that work well, and fit, into every game mode. You can have active, fast paced and twitch based combat, yet still remove all the clunky controls and skills from the game, so our characters and combat are a ton more smooth and enjoyable to play. You can create quality skills and stealth mechanics and condi mechanics.. for every mode... So much more can be done to make this game far better, you just have to do it!

Now that PoF has launched, and was focused all on content, I do think it's time in the cycle to bring us a professions and combat 2.0 revamp... I believe doing so will create a positive buzz through the game community, generate a lot of great press, competitive sides will grow even stronger and you'll have a lot of happy, old and new, players.

Thanks!

That was an interesting read Swagger. Thanks for sharing it as well. I completely agree.

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