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  1. #1
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    Endgame obsession?

    The launch of Guild Wars 2 is just the start. With the game now out in the hands of the players, we can focus our efforts to adding new types of events, new dungeons, new bosses, new rewards, and new places for players to explore. Together, our journey is just now beginning, and I hope to see you in-game.
    I'm sure developing content is not as hard as some other MMO's try to teach us, giving 1 buck for developers to create content and 1000 bucks to shareholders.

    I hope this company wont fail my expectations as some others did.

  2. #2
    It depends on your expectations, like anything else
    With regards the title, it's because people are so used to the model made popular by other games they can't or won't adjust. Hopefully as GW2 ages people will be more open to the different style.
    The thing to know about GW (as a franchise), new content isn't always (and likely will be a minority) added to what people think of as endgame zones. ANet doesn't want people congregating in any specific location, be it a town or a specific map. This is obvious based on both how they executed GW1 added content (and hardmode made that even easier for them to implement), and how they've previously stated they'll be adding a large amount of DEs to every zone.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ryngo Blackratchet View Post
    Yeah, Rhandric is right, as usual.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by rhandric View Post
    With regards the title, it's because people are so used to the model made popular by other games they can't or won't adjust. Hopefully as GW2 ages people will be more open to the different style.
    How it is with me:

    I like raiding, I have nothing against it, but I don't like it when raiding becomes all that's worth doing. That's the problem, I like having my options open for raiding, but I don't like feeling like I'm wasting time that I'm not spending working towards my endgame rewards because there's always that treadmill. GW2 is more rewarding as it isn't a complete waste of time going out and doing stuff. I still have the rewards and (almost) a challenge of going back and doing the low level content for map completion, and I think that if GW2 introduced raids then tonnes more people will be happy. I just don't want the entire game ending up like WoW and being no longer about playing a game with a big game world to explore, and more about getting fast mounts and flying to the raid instance, doing it, hearthing back to stormwind and sitting in the AH.

    I think more people agree with this than would let on.

  4. #4
    High Overlord Reaperr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hjalmtyr View Post
    How it is with me:

    I like raiding, I have nothing against it, but I don't like it when raiding becomes all that's worth doing. That's the problem, I like having my options open for raiding, but I don't like feeling like I'm wasting time that I'm not spending working towards my endgame rewards because there's always that treadmill. GW2 is more rewarding as it isn't a complete waste of time going out and doing stuff. I still have the rewards and (almost) a challenge of going back and doing the low level content for map completion, and I think that if GW2 introduced raids then tonnes more people will be happy. I just don't want the entire game ending up like WoW and being no longer about playing a game with a big game world to explore, and more about getting fast mounts and flying to the raid instance, doing it, hearthing back to stormwind and sitting in the AH.

    I think more people agree with this than would let on.
    I'll let on... this has become more of a problem as time goes on... that's why GW2 is so refreshing to me... it took me the first 2-3 days of playing to break out of the other mentality, it was very disorienting at first for whatever reason. Even little things like guild text not being green lol, I truly appreciate Anet for breaking away from the mold.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by EvcRo View Post
    I'm sure developing content is not as hard as some other MMO's try to teach us, giving 1 buck for developers to create content and 1000 bucks to shareholders.

    I hope this company wont fail my expectations as some others did.
    Yes, all it takes to write content is

    #include <Content.h>

    int main(){

    content* c = (content*) malloc (PATCH_SIZE * sizeof(content));

    c.boss1 = bigassdragonthatgoesRAWR;
    c.boss2 = bigassdragonthatgoesHWEEEER;
    c.setting = bigasscavern;

    return 0;
    }

    This true, factual and coming from someone who worked in every company that ever developed an MMO, with over 60 years of experience in the MMO market and who beat Jesus in a staring contest.

    ...

    Really, since when did programmers and software engineers become one of the "evil" professions?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Hjalmtyr View Post
    I think more people agree with this than would let on.
    More importantly, I think that more than a few MMO companies agree with you. What you can observe in quite a few games is a repurposing of pre-endgame content (mentoring and instant adventures in Rift, for example), plus some games that always had it (City of Heroes).

    Even WoW, which has been fairly neglectful of its pre-80 content has added achievements such as Loremaster and mount drops from old world raid bosses in place, not to mention transmogrification; and there are more players that do this kind of stuff than you'd think.

    What I do find odd is that GW2 of all games provides relatively little motivation to revisit earlier zones once you've gotten 100% zone completion (other than for gathering and jumping puzzles) and in some cases even actively prevents you from redoing content (such as the battle pits in eastern Gendarran Fields).

  7. #7
    Not sure what the OP is getting at exactly. So if I am off base here, apologies.

    That being said. I suspect we will see content additions more or less as it was in Guild Wars 1; general balance changes, new quests [DEs here], assorted collectables and the like. Perhaps a few new zones or areas occasionally. Holiday events and stuff.

    As pointed out above, I don't think we will see much in the way of strictly level 80 content. Certainly not bimodal end of game content.

    Something very important to point out in both the design of GW2 and franchise history; the Guild Wars series is intended to be a pick-up & play/drop anytime casual game experience. A lot of the conventions of more intense games are not always applicable.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grimord View Post
    Really, since when did programmers and software engineers become one of the "evil" professions?
    you got it wrong when 90% of the profit goes in to dividents and yachts they tell us "we cant do more content because there arent many designers of so high level". content is not easy but its also not something very complicated, you just have to pay the right people the right amount of money while you settle for 1 less ferrari in the garage.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by EvcRo View Post
    you got it wrong when 90% of the profit goes in to dividents and yachts they tell us "we cant do more content because there arent many designers of so high level". content is not easy but its also not something very complicated, you just have to pay the right people the right amount of money while you settle for 1 less ferrari in the garage.
    That's wrong in so many ways I just can't... Developers aren't content machines that will produce raid bosses depending on the amount of $100 bills you throw at them. A developer doesn't go "Mr. President, sir, we need to make new content!" and Mr.EvilGreedyPresident goes "MWAHAHAH YOU PUNY PROGRAMMER, I'M BUYING A NEW FERRARI AND THERE'S NO MONEY LEFT FOR YOUR PUNY CONTENT, WITHER AND DIE AND SCREW THE PLAYERS MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA *thunder echoes in the distance*"

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Sylvanie View Post
    What I do find odd is that GW2 of all games provides relatively little motivation to revisit earlier zones once you've gotten 100% zone completion (other than for gathering and jumping puzzles) and in some cases even actively prevents you from redoing content (such as the battle pits in eastern Gendarran Fields).
    There are some cases of this that I've seen, where you do a one-off activity for a heart but as soon as you complete that heart you're unable to interact with anything related to it. I've submitted a few reports when it's something I enjoyed doing, hopefully they'll take the feedback and make something of it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ryngo Blackratchet View Post
    Yeah, Rhandric is right, as usual.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Grimord View Post
    A developer doesn't go "Mr. President, sir, we need to make new content!" and Mr.EvilGreedyPresident goes "MWAHAHAH YOU PUNY PROGRAMMER, I'M BUYING A NEW FERRARI AND THERE'S NO MONEY LEFT FOR YOUR PUNY CONTENT, WITHER AND DIE AND SCREW THE PLAYERS MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA *thunder echoes in the distance*"
    I see you have never spoken with Kotick or Riccitiello.

  12. #12
    Pandaren Monk Beefsquatch's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    I'll admit that I wish there were more challenge and/or accomplishments in GW2 right now. The closer you look at a lot of the content, the more you realize that the overwhelming majority - even large scale boss events - are designed to simply be steamrolled by players. Most of them are actually soloable if you look at the mechanics.

    Anyway, what I *wish* GW2 or some developer would do in a game:

    Adventure Mode: Your standard "leveling experience" PvE. Mostly what GW2 has right now, left as-is. Tons of storyline elements, solo content, group instances, all that exists now. You'd level as normal, get gear upgrades as you go, etc.

    World vs. World: Basically leave this as is...Maybe remove a lot of the PvE elements and add more non-siege objectives so it involves more actual PvP and less PvE-farming and RvD (Rams vs. Doors).

    Structured PvP: Again, basically leave this as is.

    Structured PvE: The big thing. Essentially the same concept as sPvP, where you begin the process at max level, with all the gear and upgrades of your choosing. The content would consist of difficult, well-tuned encounters, perhaps with bosses that are mirrors of bosses that appear in Adventure Mode events. Just like in sPvP, you don't get gear upgrades from doing the content and you don't get to wear your sPvE gear anywhere else. As players defeat the tougher tier encounters, they'd gain access to higher levels of sPvE gear, just like in sPvP.

    Now you might say..."If you want raids, just go back to WoW!" but this doesn't HAVE to be standard raiding. It could even be 5-man content. The point is that GW2 has made such an issue out of "bringing the content to the players" and did an excellent job on the PvP side, but seems to have oddly left challenging, well-tuned PvE encounters completely out of the equation, or has made grinding levels and gear a part of the equation.
    Dude, yes, this. More of this. This is exactly how I feel about the game, worded it much better than I could have.
    Last edited by Beefsquatch; 2012-09-14 at 10:03 PM.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    I'll admit that I wish there were more challenge and/or accomplishments in GW2 right now. The closer you look at a lot of the content, the more you realize that the overwhelming majority - even large scale boss events - are designed to simply be steamrolled by players. Most of them are actually soloable if you look at the mechanics.
    I think a lot of this has to do with how many players are around. There are quite a few area's I've found challenging / entertaining so far simply because the encounter was devoid of other players. Once that changes, things do get much easier.

    Structured PvE: The big thing. Essentially the same concept as sPvP, where you begin the process at max level, with all the gear and upgrades of your choosing. The content would consist of difficult, well-tuned encounters, perhaps with bosses that are mirrors of bosses that appear in Adventure Mode events. Just like in sPvP, you don't get gear upgrades from doing the content and you don't get to wear your sPvE gear anywhere else. As players defeat the tougher tier encounters, they'd gain access to higher levels of sPvE gear, just like in sPvP.
    Not a bad idea, though I think this is the goal behind dungeons already. Sorta.

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer barackopala's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    *Snip*
    Sounds quite interesting, as a PvE kind of player it would make me somewhat happy.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclone Jack View Post
    I see you have never spoken with Kotick or Riccitiello.
    I presume therefore that you're close to both gentlemen? Share a cup of tea, perhaps, and talk about the struggles of the lowly Raiding Man?

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    Structured PvE: The big thing. Essentially the same concept as sPvP, where you begin the process at max level, with all the gear and upgrades of your choosing. The content would consist of difficult, well-tuned encounters, perhaps with bosses that are mirrors of bosses that appear in Adventure Mode events. Just like in sPvP, you don't get gear upgrades from doing the content and you don't get to wear your sPvE gear anywhere else. As players defeat the tougher tier encounters, they'd gain access to higher levels of sPvE gear, just like in sPvP.
    The problem with this is that there is no such thing as an objectively difficult, well-tuned encounter. That's because the spectrum of player skill is just too broad. This is something that Blizzard has been struggling with for years and hasn't succeeded at. For example, it took my guild the 30% nerf to beat heroic Spine and Madness, but even being (literally) months behind, we were still among the top 100,000 or so out of Blizzard's millions of players. There are still players for whom normal mode Dragon Soul is too hard even though they're genuinely trying.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    But that's not a terrible thing. Just like sPvP tournaments, it has to be available to everyone and have no barrier to entry but that doesn't guarantee automatic victory. In fact, the majority of players will probably never stand a chance in the paid or rated tournaments down the road. But that content is still brought to them with no barriers, and that's what is important.
    MMO companies are still businesses and have to justify the expense. There's a big difference between PvE and PvP in that PvE has much, much higher development costs than PvP. The primary cost factors that drive PvE development are art and animation (though encounter design and testing are also significant). That's why you see Blizzard holiday events (or, if you played vanilla, the tier 0.5 encounters) in existing dungeons. That's why ZG and ZA were remade rather than new dungeons being created. That's why ArenaNet has explorable modes for dungeons rather than separate instances. It's not that either company lacks imagination, it's that they're dealing with very real constraints.

    Creating PvE content has to be justified from a business perspective, and that means that it has to be playable by a sufficient number of players (or have some other benefits that offset the cost).

  18. #18
    The Undying Cthulhu 2020's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grimord View Post
    I presume therefore that you're close to both gentlemen? Share a cup of tea, perhaps, and talk about the struggles of the lowly Raiding Man?
    It's no secret that before Activision, Blizzard had no problem pumping out lots of content and rolling out the patches. Playing the original beta, I can say that new dungeons and zones were thrown out near monthly. That goes for any MMO beta really. It's become clear that Blizzard developers have put their development into low gear, and it's not at all hard to believe them when they say that "they want to release more content faster" and then you can just read between the lines for the "but" in there.

    There's not some evil corporate CEO sitting at the top, smoking a cigar, pinching his evil mustache, and denying Blizzard money to develop game content... but there is Bobby Kotick, who has many famous quotes about how his employees should not be having fun, that they should be scared for their jobs, and more worried about the bottom line than a quality product. It's no big secret that Bobby Kotick is your extremely stereotypical money grubbing CEO who runs companies into the ground for maximum profit.

    Rift has pretty much proven that quality raid content can be put out on a very regular basis, and is an example of what happens when a majority share holder doesn't have their fingers in the development company's business. As long as nobody puts their hands in ArenaNet's business, I'm sure we will see a lot of quality content coming down the pipe.
    Last edited by Cthulhu 2020; 2012-09-15 at 12:46 AM.
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  19. #19
    The Lightbringer fengosa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aleros View Post
    It's no secret that before Activision, Blizzard had no problem pumping out lots of content and rolling out the patches. Playing the original beta, I can say that new dungeons and zones were thrown out near monthly. That goes for any MMO beta really. It's become clear that Blizzard developers have put their development into low gear, and it's not at all hard to believe them when they say that "they want to release more content faster" and then you can just read between the lines for the "but" in there.

    There's not some evil corporate CEO sitting at the top, smoking a cigar, pinching his evil mustache, and denying Blizzard money to develop game content... but there is Bobby Kotick, who has many famous quotes about how his employees should not be having fun, that they should be scared for their jobs, and more worried about the bottom line than a quality product. It's no big secret that Bobby Kotick is your extremely stereotypical money grubbing CEO who runs companies into the ground for maximum profit.

    Rift has pretty much proven that quality raid content can be put out on a very regular basis, and is an example of what happens when a producer doesn't have their fingers in the development company's business. As long as NCSoft keeps their fingers out of Arenanet, I expect we can see a lot of new, original content released on a regular basis for GW2.
    1) GC recently said on record that Activision has little to no influence on the direction of warcraft
    2) http://www.trionworlds.com/en/about/investors

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Aleros View Post
    It's no secret that before Activision, Blizzard had no problem pumping out lots of content and rolling out the patches. Playing the original beta, I can say that new dungeons and zones were thrown out near monthly. That goes for any MMO beta really. It's become clear that Blizzard developers have put their development into low gear, and it's not at all hard to believe them when they say that "they want to release more content faster" and then you can just read between the lines for the "but" in there.
    That sounds more like a conspiracy theory. See here.

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