How Massive Multiplayer Should Work

hellsop

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fmatthew5876 said:
Grouping can be amazing with the right people. When I was an everquest junkie I had a group of friends I would always go out with and do stuff outside of raids. It was so efficient and we made so much progress because everyone was a good player. Grouping with random retards can be frustrating.
That's kind of the point being made. Here, in GW2, the grouping with random retards is still better than not grouping. Maybe they won't help much, but they're still helping, and there's not really any way that they can accidentally hurt, short of ... well, doing *nothing at all*. Or maybe running around and collecting a train of critters and leading them into you. But that almost takes deliberation.
 

Something Amyss

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Rainboq said:
Always nice to see more Shamus.

OT: This. So much this. Now someone show this to Gear Box. I hate having to fight for loot with friends in Borderlands 2.
YES.

I hate having "that guy" pick up all the crap, too.
 

Darkness665

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hellsop said:
fmatthew5876 said:
Grouping can be amazing with the right people. When I was an everquest junkie I had a group of friends I would always go out with and do stuff outside of raids. It was so efficient and we made so much progress because everyone was a good player. Grouping with random retards can be frustrating.
That's kind of the point being made. Here, in GW2, the grouping with random retards is still better than not grouping. Maybe they won't help much, but they're still helping, and there's not really any way that they can accidentally hurt, short of ... well, doing *nothing at all*. Or maybe running around and collecting a train of critters and leading them into you. But that almost takes deliberation.
Is it even better to group with sequential retards?
Or a set of retards?
How do you establish the level of retardness? Anyone that is not you?
 

Dastardly

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Shamus Young said:
How Massive Multiplayer Should Work

There may be other players around, but most MMOs make you feel like it's best to play alone.

Read Full Article
Good to see you back! And I'm in total agreement.

We've been adding a lot more competitive flavor even to our ostensibly cooperative gameplay. That kind of competition turns fun into a limited resource, and you're racing to make sure you get more of it than the next guy. Even when you're "cooperating" with your raid group, the nature of the gameplay makes us highly intolerant of mistakes or inexperience in our party members -- their mistakes cost us time/money/etc.

While more and more MMOs push the focus to PvP or RvR gameplay (hypercompetitive play), I feel like MMOs need to be doing almost exactly the opposite. Competition motivates the top 10% of any group, but cooperation brings in many, many more. Not just allowing but encouraging cooperative play can bring back the "massive" part of our MMO experience.
 

IBlackKiteI

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Wow.
This sort of thing is only happening now? How long have these games been around for again?

I love RPGs and MMORPGs, but after reading this it feels really weird that we tend to only criticise shooters for apparent stagnation and lack of innovation.
 

the doom cannon

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IBlackKiteI said:
Wow.
This sort of thing is only happening now? How long have these games been around for again?

I love RPGs and MMORPGs, but after reading this it feels really weird that we tend to only criticise shooters for apparent stagnation and lack of innovation.
Oh ppl have been criticizing the mmo industry for years. You just don't hear about it because mainstream mmos dont get released several times each year like mainstream shooters. Gotta love GW2!
 

0over0

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I have had the same experiences and it's so refreshing. And such simple fixes for these issues--it's really great and only makes me wonder what the hell took so long!
 

Aaron Sylvester

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Just letting people know that Guild Wars 2 WASN'T made by Jesus himself, it definitely has it's own list of issues and concerns. For the amount of mind-blowing fun that I've received (and still receiving) for $60 I would still rate it no less than 9.5/10, also the visuals are nothing short of breathtaking. I could amost compare the draw distances, water effects and beach views to what I saw in Crysis (might be exaggerating a bit here but you get the idea). The game genuinely rewards you for teamplay and exploration, and for the first time I've actually WANTED to find out what's just over that hill or inside that cave because I know for sure it will reward me with fun and experience to boot!

As for grouping - even though you're automatically grouped with others and get to run around as a sleek team of 2-3 players or an army of 20+ players (the events/bosses scale dynamically!) the actual COMMUNICATION needed is almost zero. You'll often hear the word "zerg" pop up when it comes to escort/champion events, and that's what they are really, zerg events where you get to fight waves (like they're ants) or champions who have silly amounts of health (to the point where it took our group of 30+ players almost 10 minutes to kill 1 fucking champion, no skill or dodging, just everyone spamming all their buttons till their fingers bled).

Also for 5 man dungeons (which reward you some decent gear) still require manually forming groups on your own and hoping that nobody in your team is fucking terrible, especially on explorable mode. Because this game has no designated healers/tanks, one person can't pick up the slack for another person (e.g. in WoW you could have 1-2 shit DPS in a 5man and still be totally fine as long as the tank+healer were decent), everyone has to actively mitigate/avoid their own damage AND toss out AoE heals/boons to help the group survive, because everyone has support utilities (there are no "pure" classes).

But I'm just being extremely picky here because overall as a game, it does far more to encourage grouping than any MMO has done. The fights are genuinely hard and encourage proactive and reactive movement/use of abilities.

And again, the amount of fun I've had for $60 really puts every game I have played in the last DECADE (no seriously) to shame. Multiply Skyrim x 100 in terms of content and variety, then do it again as a completely different class.

Don't even get me started on PvP - arena tournament-style maps where you get scaled to max level (and given all talent/trait points), handed out a standard set of PvP gear (which everyone must use, no more "gear > skill" crap!) but you can still customize colors and stuff, and PvP away to glory! You get rewarded with more sexy-looking gear but it's all cosmetics (and trust me, you will LOVE the cosmetics in this game). You can literally make fashion statements with the amount of customizability that exists with armor, no two people I have come across in the game have looked exactly the same.

Buy GW2. Buy it now.

IBlackKiteI said:
Wow.
This sort of thing is only happening now? How long have these games been around for again?

I love RPGs and MMORPGs, but after reading this it feels really weird that we tend to only criticise shooters for apparent stagnation and lack of innovation.
Well because MMORPG's are drastically more complicated and generally "bigger" than shooters in most cases, so each one tends to offer something noticeably different even if it has blatantly copy-pasted off Everquest/Lineage/WoW/whatever.
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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PsiMatrix said:
City of Heroes didn't force you to team till the Incarnate trials (read: RAIDS) came along. And it had the most robust chat system.
Doing things right didn't stop the game from being shut down.
 

Therumancer

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Hmmm, well Shamus the problem with your article is that it the narrow focus means that the opinion you express isn't really relevent.

The thing to understand is that what supports a game IS the endgame and what people do at level cap, the rest of the stuff is just filler to get to that point. In the end if people just play their way to max level a few times the game dies, it's the endgame that keeps people re-upping subscriptions or spending money and is the focus of any successful MMO, thinking the wrong way is actually responsible for the decline of the genere (but this is an entirely differant discussion). In most cases making things too easy or cooperative actually means the casual players leave too quickly, which is part of why a lot of things are designed competitively. Make things too easy accessible and that content is depleted and burned out far more quickly.

Guild Wars is a PVP focused game, I mean even the name tells you that, as a result the enviromental stuff is intended to be easy, to usher you through to the eventual max level end game where your presumably going to be thumping the crap out of your fellow players in whatever style floats your boat.


To be honest I *do* sort of feel your pain to an extent, but honestly I've noticed an opposite problem. With so few true "newbies" to the MMO genere anymore in most games people come into them with a pre-existing group of friends and social infrastructure. In a lot of games the reason why people don't seem to group up with strangers anymore is a mixture of elitism, not wanting to deal with the problems you mention, and simply having a preferred group of people to play in. Today when a new MMO launches you see guilds/peer groups discussing moving there in a pre-existing formation, rather than them showing up as individuals.

At any rate, in playing Guild Wars 2, ask yourself that for all of this great experience how many times are you going to want to level a character to max level without getting into gameplay that more or less encourages the opposite of what your talking about. Also consider that Guild Wars 2 is running without a subscription fee, or at least it's trying to, that means it doesn't have to worry as much about the time it takes for people to complete and move through content.

I also imagine Guild Wars 2 (which I own, but have only played a bit) will run into a similar problem that RIFT suffered. After a while less newbs will come into the game, the player base will be focused on whapping the crap out of each other in the intended endgame. This means that in trying to wander the world and play those "clever events" which are based around groups of players in many cases, your not going to be able to succeed. Sure some of them might be soloable at the intended level, but a lot of them will probably kill you off rather handily, all comments about adjusting difficulty aside. RIFT ran into this problem with it's "zone events" the RIFT phenomena itself, where lower level zones would be decimated due to not enough people playing in them to keep them under control, which could make starting a new character an exercise in masochism. They managed to fix this to an extent, but it sort of shows that Guild Wars 2 wasn't actually being *that* creative, and the likely problems it's going to face. Right now there are enough people running around newbie land where a zerg rush of 20 bandits every 30 seconds on a farm is no big deal, but imagine doing that alone when everyone else is running around world vs. world because they have advanced several characters, seen all the events dozens of times, and really have little left.
 

kyoodle

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Therumancer said:
The thing to understand is that what supports a game IS the endgame and what people do at level cap, the rest of the stuff is just filler to get to that point.
That is exactly the wrong way of looking at it, the whole game should be fun, not a slog to get to the endgame where things are suddenly interesting. Also the PvE isn't there just to usher you to the highest level as everyone goes into it at level 80.
 

Scars Unseen

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I like what I'm hearing about GW2, but I've pretty much taken the stance that I don't like MMOs. I like the idea of them, but the reality is that I really just want a game that supports(not merely allows) role-playing because I usually find "the game" to be highly inferior to what I could be playing single player. So the only draw for me is the social in character aspect, and most MMOs I've played do nothing to facilitate that.

I may try GW2 if people are still raving about it in 6 months.
 

luckshot

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damn it shamus, im trying to save money here. BUT NOOOO! All you can do is talk about how awesome this game is, when my car is repossessed im blaming you...while in game
 

Dreadjaws

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luckshot said:
damn it shamus, im trying to save money here. BUT NOOOO! All you can do is talk about how awesome this game is, when my car is repossessed im blaming you...while in game
I'm having the same problem. I want to save money, but Shamus keeps going on and on about how awesome this game is. I hope you know, Shamus, that I'm holding you responsible for when I eventually have to sell all my belongings... Except for the PC and the games, of course.

Anyway, OT: This is one of the things that frustrated me the most with Champions Online. It's a game about superheroes, why should you be penalized for helping people? If anyone makes another superhero MMO with the mechanics of GW2, I'm selling my soul for a lifetime account.
 

Sehnsucht Engel

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Never thought I'd experience a MMORPG that I actually liked playing. I've played a few that were free and I tried WoW when they offered a free trial for some weeks. None of those were very enjoyable when compared to Guild Wars 2 though. Yes, I've encountered several bugs during my 300+ hours that I've played so far, but I still love this game. It's easily made it into my top 10 of all the games I've ever played. It's genuinely fun, something MMORPG has not been to me before.
 

Nimcha

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All of this sounds nice, until you come to the point where you realize that while you're playing with other people, you're not actually talking with them. The best thing about teamwork in games is coming up with a strategy and executing it. That requires communication In GW2 that's hardly possible since you basically play the same as you would on your own, except the monster you're hitting is being hit by a few other people as well. Maybe you heal someone once in a while.

In my opinion, the best form of multiplayer is formed out of communication. The WoW group finder threw that concept out of the window.
 

WanderingFool

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Irridium said:
Which is why I love it. Sadly, years and years of MMO's have drilled into player's minds that others are your rivals. There's plenty of times when I'm questing and reviving NPC's, and people will walk by and revive another one. I always end up getting up, going to where they are, and help them revive that one. Then we go back and revive the one I already worked on.

Same with fighting. I'll be fighting something, a guy doing the same quest will attack a separate monster. I'll then lead mine into his, and make it a group thing so we both get the xp/loot/quest reward.

In other MMO's, all players are rivals. Even those in the same faction. In Guild Wars 2, everyone is an ally. And I love it.

Also what's great about the game, you can level up wherever you want. From the start you can go to any starting area, and level there. And since the game de-levels you when you go into a lower-level zone, there's no high-level players griefing people by killing everything. The mechanics of the game make griefing a very hard thing to do, if not outright impossible. Oh, and when de-leveled, if you fight in a low-level zone, you still get the same amount of experience you would if leveling in a zone equal to your level. This means you're always leveling where you want to level, and not where the game tells you to level. It's also great if a friend just starts. Since you'll be de-leveled, you and him can quest together wherever he wants and it won't be a "sit back while the high level guy kills everything" deal.

And the skills... the game does away with normal skill trees and the whole "tank/healer/DPS" trinity. Everyone has a healing skill. Sure some are better at it than others, but everyone can be that supporting character if they want. And there aren't any skill-trees. Each weapon has its own skill-set and gameplay style. This means you can fight with the weapon you want.

So in Guild Wars 2, you're playing how you want, where you want, in a group where everyone benefits. It's just... why the hell did it take so long for something like this to happen?!
Holy shit... thats sounds awesome. Now I gotta try GW2.
 

excalipoor

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Nimcha said:
All of this sounds nice, until you come to the point where you realize that while you're playing with other people, you're not actually talking with them. The best thing about teamwork in games is coming up with a strategy and executing it. That requires communication In GW2 that's hardly possible since you basically play the same as you would on your own, except the monster you're hitting is being hit by a few other people as well. Maybe you heal someone once in a while.

In my opinion, the best form of multiplayer is formed out of communication. The WoW group finder threw that concept out of the window.
My thoughts exactly. I feel that while GW2 ditched much of what was wrong with groups in MMOs, it removed the good as well. I don't need game mechanics to tell me to help people, and playing in a mob doesn't do anything for me if I'm playing exactly as I would by myself. I like planning groups and encounters. I like discussing strategy. Most of all I need synergy! Also, some of the best moments in my MMO life were born out of things completely unrelated to gameplay. Sometimes it's nice to sit down in the middle of a burning inferno to talk about the weather. Or is that just me?
 

Lunar Templar

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PsiMatrix said:
City of Heroes didn't force you to team till the Incarnate trials (read: RAIDS) came along. And it had the most robust chat system.
you forget about the Task/Strike Forces, you needed a team for those

but even then there's a LOT of leeway with the team builds you could get away with and win.

OT:yeah, i noticed that about GW2 in the short time i had with it, its neat, but, untill they start doing that in games i actually WANT to play VS the one that just 'ok' but ridiculously over hyped, I'll keep on soloing
 

ischmalud

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I have to agree with everything Shamus said,
I think it was Justin in his review who said that it felt as if GW2 is the next step in MMORPG evolution. Back than I thought thats a bit much (and was confused since usually justin is pretty realistic about his assesments) but having played the game since headstart all I can say.
my hats of to arena net -
YES there are still bugs and not having a way to properly trade with people for the first 2 weeks sucked
BUT at this stage its nothing but fun.

anyway i cant waste anymore time here i gotta go PLOOOYYYY!!!