I guess thinking outside the box is a rarity in the MMo audience these days. If the so called "treadmill" is the only thing in your mind when you login to a game, then you picked up the wrong game. When I go for 100% Map completion in-game or participate in WvW, gear isn't the first thing on my mind. It's really quite sad that modern MMo gamers these days have lost touch with that side of the genre.
---------- Post added 2012-09-16 at 06:23 PM ----------
I rest my case
What people who are hating on the GW2 grind seem to fail to realize is that the core mechanic of every MMO is the grind or replayability. Successful MMOs do one of three things:
1. Make grinding enjoyable
2. Disguise the grinding so you don't think you're grinding when you actually are
3. Appeal to the crowd that likes the monotonous grind
Unless you can pump out new content at an unprecedented rate, a grind is almost always necessary to retain players.
An MMO without a grind is just a social game that people play merely for interaction with other players.
It was a pretty bold move for them to claim that there wasn't going to be a grind (and I'm sure I'm going to have my post jumped all over for this next part...) but I'm pretty sure they meant they were removing the traditional grind that most MMOs have to get into the end game that you enjoy. That you can jump right in at any point and start working for rewards you want right from level 2. Karma, gold, and other things can all be worked on right out of the gate without having to hit cap first.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
I find it funny that WoW has made "End game" synonymous with raiding to the point that people don't think a game has it unless it has raiding.There IS no endgame.
Ever played Skyrim? Once you get the best armor, what else is there to do in the game? Explore, quests? Pft, no reason, you already have full Draedic armor! Time to quit playing!
MMOs used to be about the exploration, discovery, and just doing things for the sake of doing them. How did WoW breed a culture of the raid gear treadmill that makes people think a game NEEDS it? Oh right, because people need a way to measure their epeens.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
First off, no one (Anet or the regulars on these subforums atleast.) claimed that GW2 revolutionized anything. I actually find it funny how often people toss this term around but feel free to prove me wrong by quoting someone. And 2nd, in reply to your comment I simply like the way designed their PvE and PvP in comparison to other games. It's just like saying I prefer TF2's style of FPS when compared to CoD's, I know totally foreign concept right?!
/sarcasm right back at ya
Already commented on this from previous posts, I hate repeating myself.You don't HAVE to grind, sure. Because there's no content to bother grinding for. But the grind is still there, and it's a HUGE grind for some items and sets.
A game doesn't need to be revolutionary to have fun, again though with the revolutionary jaz. O_oYou can roam the world and do quests? Yay, you can do that as far back as EverQuest. Is GW2's presentation a lot better? Yes. But don't act like just roaming around and doing quests is some revolutionary new thing that you couldn't do in other games.
Simply not your cup of tea I guess, which is understandable. I can only see former DAoC, WAR and SB players enjoying this aspect of the game for the most part.PvP? Yeah, c'mon. Every game has PvP. WvW is a neat idea, but there's barely any actual PvP involved.
Welcome to the business world? You act as if Anet is the first company to ever do this. Vanilla WoW was suppose to have hero classes right off the bat but that was taken out just weeks before launch. Hell, my original instruction booklet had a description of each hero class.It's just really frustrating to hear these sound bites about "No grinding!" and "You can do stuff other than raid!!" as if they're these amazing selling points. They're really carefully worded marketing tricks.
What if you have 100% map completion and completed the personal storyline. What is left to explore or discover? So what if you have the armor you want, did all the map and did all the explorable dungeons? Just pvp? Yea you can roll another alt to do see some of the other scenarios I guess, but it sucks for your main who has basically everything you want on it and mainly just have pvp left.
Here's a more efficient way of answering your question:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-skinner-box
What endgame?
Completely agree, which is why I didn't get heavily into it. In fact your post could have been copy/pasted from several of mine while the game was in beta. I did buy it like a dumbass just to play with guildies, even knowing full well it offered nothing after the leveling process was over. Meh, I've wasted 60 bucks in worse ways.
Apply blizzards model to any other subscription service,you'd be outraged:
Netflix adds no new movies for a year, you click a new movie, there's a $5 fee.
You're in an accident, click your onstar button, but there's an addition $20 fee for them to help.
You turn on your tv only to find all you get are the infomercial channels. Every other show is pay per view.
See how dumb that model is?
There are plenty of post in this sub-forum from users as such. But that's not really a big deal. Pretty common of any game truthfully.
That being said... Anet do claim Guild Wars 2 is a revolution. They advertise it as such indirectly and directly. There is the "Join the MMO revolution!" banner ad on sites and the live action trailer w/ that message.
I understand the point you are driving at. This is fine. However, Anet have claimed the game is revolutionary. Facts, regardless.
Because the majority of the people who have a problem with this game state that they have no end game or gear treadmill to keep them playing. Not EVERYONE has said it needs raiding, but that seems to be a common theme. Raiding seems to be the only thing a lot of people are interested in, thus my post. Just because you aren't arguing about raiding doesn't mean it isn't extremely common.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
Aye, I never had problems with people liking GW2. I have problems with people claiming it's something we never saw before...wich it is far from. There are plenty of MMORPG's that I liked, Rift, Tera and Aion for example. They offer the same content that Blizz does, the only reason I stick with WoW is because I already progressed so far on WoW. If have to pick out of 5 games wich all offer the same thing in a different theme, than I'd just pick the game I started with first...or the theme is appealing to me that I can neglect my progress on the other game (unlikely).
I've yet to see any "real" new MMORPG that brings something so special that I'd stop playing the older ones over...and with the state of game design at this point I'm guessing we won't see anything for the next 10-20 years.
Baseline: Theres nothing wrong with people speaking out of how and why they like a new game, just don't go around spreading bullshit about how it's original and groundbreaking when it's not. Theres Nothing wrong with more of the same, some grow tired of the old and some don't.
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.
Not really "endgame" but fucking with people in WvW as a mesmer is a lot of fun. Especially in the jumping puzzles.
When I'm not doing that I'm generally just farming and playing the TP which gets horribly boring, the only thing exciting is raking in the gold.
SPvP I haven't done at all, I don't really have anything short term to work towards, and I don't have as much fun playing alone than I do with friends, though I doubt I'll be able to convince them to join since they're altaholics.
Dungeons so far are pretty boring. To be honest I wasn't really interested in dungeons to begin with, I'd just like to clear all the modes, MAYBE farm TA for the Nightmare Greatsword, though I haven't really done that many other than story/exp AC, story CM, and story SF. From my limited experience, most dungeons just didn't seem involved other than AC the fights they seem to just be simple fights that just drag on forever.
I still have quite a few things to work towards. Mainly getting different exotic sets, two PVE for power/crit and condition, one WvW set with tougness, and maybe work towards getting the legendary sword Bolt.
Apart from stupidly long grinds, there is no end game. I knew the end game was bad before buying the game though, so I got exactly what I expected.
I was hoping to enjoy alt levelling more, but I'm getting rather bored on my 2nd character.