Guild Wars Design Decisions - three part article

Discuss & enjoy!

The article is also available here:
Guild Wars Design Decisions - Foreword
Guild Wars Design Decisions - State Of The Game
Guild Wars Design Decisions - The Future Of Guild Wars

Love and best wishes,
Nandor Gyerman
www.AeriaGloris.com

Guild Wars Design Decisions - Foreword


I remember looking at the ArenaNet website well before they announced what they were working on, reading the articles there and wondering what exactly they will come up with.

Fast forward a bit to the first Guild Wars preview event: I had so much fun! The people were nice and there was this sense of great anticipation.


Looking back, ArenaNet and Guild Wars have sure come a long way.

It was interesting for me to see how people reactions slowly went from "Guild Wars, what's that?" to "Ah, Guild Wars!". A small gathering of developers, unknown as a group, created an international phenomenon.

I hoped back then that Guild Wars and the design strategies behind it will achieve the success they deserve. Today it is nice to see this has become true.


I attribute a large part of this success to the attitude of the developers: the pursuit of clarity, foresight, balance, simplicity and perfection. The ability of the collective of these developers is to envision the big picture - and then go on and create it!

This is by no means a small feat, and unfortunately, also quite rare. I believe it requires a great amount of inner, personal clarity.

The other large part of this success I attribute to the community, whose members have embraced this quality of clarity and dynamically co-created the Guild Wars world, game, and social phenomenon.

I find the degree of trust on both sides admirable and of natural ease - which kind of gives me hope for the world we live in.


Those who paid attention could witness something beautiful being created.

Guild Wars Design Decisions - State Of The Game



As I understand it, Guild Wars was created from a set of axioms, unfolded with great clarity to its present state.

The developers chose the axioms with great care, acknowledging the potential drawbacks that may result along the road. At the present time, the drawbacks have become more accentuated and will slowly begin to overtake the benefits.

Thus, it makes sense to assume the attitude of knife and say: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."


Let's take a look at some of these axioms and see what forms and structures they have unfolded:



Seamless patching technology

The ArenaNet devs spent a lot of time developing the underlying technology before they started developing the game world. That time was well spent.

The most visible benefit of the seamless patching technology for me, the Guild Wars player, was that I didn't have to think about downloading patches and whether they would work. It just worked, and I could focus on playing the game.

The most important benefit for the developers was the improved feedback cycle which led to more rapid and more sturdy development.

A side effect of this technology that the devs gained more credibility as the playerbase put more trust in them: "See? They're actively working to make the game better for us!" This improves communication.

I believe the creating the seamless patching technology was a crucial aspect for the clarity of the game as whole.



'District' technology

In a global world communication and accessibility are of utmost importance, and I am amazed that most game development companies still don't get this.

District technology made the underlying server technology transparent for me, the Guild Wars gamer, and once again this enabled me to simply focus on the game.

It improved the social aspect of the game immensely: I was playing with and against (directly and indirectly) the whole global playerbase of Guild Wars! This should not be underestimated, and I believe the importance of this aspect will be even more prevalent in the future.



PvP at core

A decision made early was that the game should revolve around PvP. The balancing process to enable this required extra effort, but once done, the other parts of the game progressed nicely around it.

As I see it, currently other games are nowhere near this level of balance, and the persons responsible for it at ArenaNet should definitely be lauded.



Balance for groups of 8

The balancing process had to be started from somewhere, and to aim for balance for groups of eight proved to be a viable decision.

This decision was basically a self-imposed restriction which created footholds for the balancing process, ensured diversity, and put focus on the importance of teamwork.



Horizontal progression

In accord with the 'PvP at core' axiom, a level cap at 20 was put in place. This was pretty much another necessity for the balancing process to successful.

The level cap put a hold to vertical progression, and to make up for this, later on the possibility of horizontal progression (in the form of 'titles') was created.

Almost all other games focus almost exclusively on vertical progression (and its degenerate form - the 'grind'), which I think is a huge waste of potential.



Efficient economy structure

For a game that revolves around PvP, implementing an efficient economy structure must have been quite difficult. Yet, I call this one a success.

I never had so much gold that I wouldn't know what to spend it on, nor did I have so little to endanger my enjoyment of the game.

Through the ebb and flow of the game economy, I felt more closely connected to the other Guild Wars players across the world.



Coherent storyline

Even the underlying technology which 'just works' and the finely tuned technicalities of skill balance would have been an empty shell if not imbued by the life-giving touch of a coherent storyline.

Both coherent and immersive, this aspect of the game tied together the others with ease and elegance, successfully enhancing the identity of the gamer.



Clear real-world business model

Now, perhaps this is the axiom I appreciate most greatly. It shows that the founders have not fallen into the trap of the narrow-visioned specialist, and that the very clarity inside the game was applied on the outside of it too.

Thankfully, the choice to go with a new, simple, and clear non-traditional business model (non-exclusive, not forced expansions without subscription) proved to be very successful.



I believe this sums up the major axioms that have been employed in Guild Wars.

Guild Wars Design Decisions - The Future Of Guild Wars



To consider the future of the Guild Wars game world, we have to look back, find the flaws, look deeper into those flaws, track them back to the design axioms mentioned in the previous articles, and figure out whether the problem was in the design or the implementation.

Guild Wars is a beautifully designed and well implemented game, so it's not really flaws that we shall find, rather just simply deficiencies.

It is logical to deduce that Guild Wars 2 will focus first and foremost on remedying those deficiencies rather than just tack on more stuff and hope it will be enough.



To get on with the dissection and analysis, let's pick a starting point!

Jeff Strain, one of the founders of ArenaNet, in his speech at the Games Convention in Leipzig talked about the importance of giving players a 'home'. Although true, it is only partially so. The concept of 'home' runs much deeper and stands for more than simply an in-game location.

Pre-Searing Ascalon is without doubt one of the most beautiful locations in the Guild Wars world, and the graphical beauty definitely helps a newly beginning player make his or her first steps.

However, it is also the first time a player begins to bond with his or her character. Through the mystical process of computer gaming, a human person imbues a piece of graphic with identity, and this marks the beginning of a relationship of the human individual and its enhancement, the game character. Together with oneself, a new world begins to unfold.

On the more technical side, the pre-Searing maps are designed for solo play - smaller groups of monsters wandering and quests which help develop the history between the gamer and the character.

The game character serves as a primary anchor point for the identity of the player in the game world.

Later on, relatively rapidly and exclusively, the focus shifts to group play, and due to this exclusivity, the player's identity uproots from the character and finds secondary anchors (temporary home) in the mists of various metagames.

Sure, you can pick heroes and henchmen, but the game character is slowly reduced from 'character' to 'doll'.



To establish concept of 'home', we need a semi-permanent location, a visual representation of the game identity, a game identity as defined through the storyline, a game identity as defined through game abilities/possibilities, and an identity as defined thorough social interaction.

And we need all of these. The last one should have a 'metaphysical sliding scale', so it is up to the player whether to cultivate his or her identity closer to the game world or closer to the real world, at will.


To remedy this, Guild Wars 2 abandons the 'instance-only' and 'groups of 8 only' design limitations and tries for more persistence and more possibilities to bond and relate.

This requires setting a higher goal for technology and game balance, but I believe the people over at ArenaNet have become capable of handling such a task.



One of the other self-imposed design restrictions was the early level cap. This decision made a lot of sense, but it also killed the vertical progression in the game. Vertical progression is pretty much the equivalent of the social understanding of the concept of 'time' in the game world, and some of the "I'm older, so I'm wiser" kind of thinking transfers as well. Not all of this is bad.

As I understand, the alternative design option of infinite levels that ArenaNet is looking into could have the benefits of level-capped design while still preserving vertical progression.

From a game balance standpoint, using infinite levels together with diminishing return is about the same as having a level cap with an error margin. Once again, this makes game balancing more difficult, but not impossible. For all social needs, the 'level' could be seen as a primary 'title' (a subset of horizontal progression), and provide appropriate rewards.



I have browsed through the suggestions of Guild Wars players for Guild Wars 2, and it seems to me to boil down to the same thing: a call for greater immersion!

Let's see some examples. There are requests for character based immersion (eg. "I want to dual wield!"), economic immersion (eg. "I want an auction house!), game-based social immersion (eg. "I want guild halls in towns!"), etc.

As I see it, immersion in a game world depends on several very important things:

1. Coherency of the game world (mechanics + story)
2. Anchor points of individual identity (eg. game character)
3. Forming of new relations and relationships within the game
4. Anchor points of social identity (social networks => guilds)
5. Well executed integration of the above

Basically, immersion is about placing the game world at proper angles into the collective consciousness of the 'real' world.

If implemented in a way which adds to the coherency of the game world instead of detracting from it, the more options you have for relating and communicating, the better it is.



Considering the options 3-5 above, and current dangling loose ends stemming from design decisions in Guild Wars 1, it seems to me that there is an empty space of potential which could be fulfilled by setting up one more design axiom.

Considering the name "Guild Wars", I'm pretty sure that some form this axiom had quite high relevance during the brainstorm and early design stages, but slowly faded out as other, more technical axioms proved to be pre-requisites and had higher priority.

I call this axiom 'social network integration'.

I'm not exactly sure what it stands for, but I'm relatively sure that if implemented in Guild Wars 2, it would push the gaming industry 15 years into the future instead of just 5 years. (I'm pulling the numbers out of my... hat, of course.)

To imagine what this is about I suggest studying current social networking software and phenomena on the Internet, and how such a thing would fit into a MMO environment. Plenty of possibilities.



Let's consider a more specific potential implementation of this social network integration axiom:

There are three lists: a friends list, a guild membership list, and a guild list. Now, make a separate graph out of each of these lists (circles, connecting lines, all that). To use some color, we can mark relationships of varying quality and quantity.

With these three graphs, we have mapped out the playerbase. The question now is: what can we do with this information?

We can integrate it with the title system of the horizontal progression. (The title system was a great idea, providing rewards based on titles was another great idea, but unfortunately it didn't much fulfill its primary purpose, which was to make an impact on the social environment.) If your rewards from titles carry on to others, well, there's your advanced 'sidekick system'!

We can make quests and parts of the game world dependent on each of these lists.

We can integrate it with guild organization, and provide various game-mechanics based status options in parallel to traditional, manual ones. (Running a guild shouldn't necessarily be a full-time job.)

Since the Mists seem to be such a great setting for randomization technology, it would be interesting to provide content based on achievement and group dynamics.

I'm confident there are plenty of more viable ideas to explore.


I believe this avenue of exploration should be especially interesting to ArenaNet, because they are pretty much in a unique position with their 'district' technology and extensive experience. It wouldn't surprise me if they would single-handedly slingshot the game industry farther into the future.



I also believe, dear reader, that it is time for me to shut up and leave you to your own thoughts and ideas to explore.

Thank you for reading!

I don't think you've been playing guild wars.

This has much more relevance that you make it sound for more reasons.

But it's not 15 years, RPG genre as such is obsolete as it is, this would merely help expand it a bit. It's not revolutionary, but it would be very fitting with the way GW currently works.

Though for some reason, I feel that GW2 will not care about this, and will focus on attracting WoW playerbase, GW:EN does very well at improving on that feeling.

That is where ANet fails miserably. The moment my character makes a story driven decision, that I would never do, I loose all the identification with that character! They did that in NF and in GWEN.

And right now they are retroactively changing the lore and history of the world.

Sorry, probably you had good intentions.

But OVERBLOWN does not equal MAKING SENSE and MAKING A POINT.


Dear poster, please get down to earth, stop smoking pot, then you might be taken serious. Many of your points would be much clearer and people would nod in agreement if you would have stopped trying to sound like a failed Ph.D. student!!

I agree with most of the things Dawn Argent has said, however I just have one question...

Why is it that Anet can seem like a company full of geniuses one minute, and in the next minute make you want to administer IQ tests?

For instance, I love the way prophecies was almost entirely open, you could start in Ascalon City and just explore your way up a little past Lions Arch without ever having taken a quest. The rest of the game required some missions along the way but mostly it was open and generally encouraged exploration.

Then with all the outcry from people upset that Prophecies was so open people were exploiting that by getting runs everywhere cause us to be given Cantha. A totally closed game, it was very regimented, do Primary Quest, get to mission town, rinse and repeat through the whole game.

This change seemed so completely over the top, from wide open, to slammed shut. Exploring was pretty much out of the question and I feel this took alot away from a game which could have been awesome. At least with Elona, they allowed you to explore a little, but still tied down to Primary Quest, Mission, rinse repeat.

Let's talk about visuals, Prophecies was beautiful, each new location was more pretty than the last, even Fire Islands was beautiful in it's own way.

Then comes Cantha, Shing Jea was beautiful, then you get to the main island, and brown, boring, drab buildings greeted you. Sure there was the occasional pretty looking area, outside Matuu Keep, Kurzick and Luxon areas could almost be pretty, but mostly struck me as bland.

With Elona, again they returned to prettier landscapes, but ultimately, everything in Elona land looks the same after a while. Don't get me wrong, I do think some areas are stunning, but not when they are repeated over and over again.

Then there is the complete and utter lack of any organized way of trading/selling in-game items. Oh yeah, they did give us a trade channel which was quickly discarded because everyone just turned it off. District 1 in LA, and Droks was littered with spam selling all over the local channel. How did Anet not see this coming? How come the way they choose to correct this is by giving us a Search Feature which seems just as bad as spamming? It's messy, it's unorganized, and took almost 2 years to be added to the game.

Let chat about GW:EN for a second. It is brilliant looking, we are back in Tyria and looking good. GW writes the BEST quests (at least compared to WoW's kill x amount of this, until you are sick to death of that kind of quest), quests that are missions in disguise. Dungeons are a nice addition, although I could have done without all the re-using areas. I could do without all the re-skinned armors, and the re-skinned weapons.

But as we all know, the major selling point to GW:EN was the Hall of Monuments. Anet messed up during preview weekend, not allowing us to see the entire monument system then. The week between preview and live was filled with endless amounts of threads complaining about it. Some of those complaints and ill-feelings could have been avoided had they just shown everything, or shown nothing, or at least said you won't be seeing all of the Hall of Monuments in the Preview.

Monuments is still with many shortcomings. Yes I understand you don't want everyone being able to share the mini's so that everyone has access to all minis in GW2. But character based and not account based is something somebody at Anet should have considered before hand, and if they did, certainly account based would have been picked. I don't really see how they would not have gone this way.

The weapons monument is just awful. Only Destroyer Weapons can be added, how in the world did they come to this decision. Do they not know that there are many, many people playing and every single one of them has their own idea on what makes a weapon special enough to display?

The armor monument is also just awful. Only 15k and above armor can be added, again, how did they come to this decision. Again, many people playing, many different tastes.

The "title" monument is also just awful. How do you let us add all of our accomplishments and not give us the option to pick exactly which ones we want on display. For the same reasons as stated above.

I'm not saying that everything we'd want to display should be given some type of special consideration in GW2, but at least let us play and be happy with displaying what and how we want to. It is our Hall of Monuments is it not? Why all the restrictions? Who thought this would be a great idea? Who isn't able to see what these things will do to your community?

I could go on and on and on, but I'm not going to bore people more than I've already done. I'm not saying I do not like GW or Anet, or that I won't be around for GW2, because I most certainly will be there for the next generation guild wars.

And why would I do that? Because I know that there will be many genius moments in GW2, the part that has me worried and shaking in my boots is that I know their retarded cousins will be coming along as well. Those retarded idiots that make all of the mind boggling decisions we have all witnessed through out the life of GW 1.

I'd love a job at Anet, of course I'd lose it after the very first staff meeting when somebody would mention something that would have me yelling at them across the table, are you @#$%^&* kidding me? And my personal favorite, "Where is your brain?" LOL.

Ugh, I thought this was something official from ArenaNet!

I smell company-paid-for propaganda... and yeah the OP obviously doesn't play Guildwars lol... you know cause standing there spamming wtswtswts wtbwtbwtb makes me feel all connected ;p.

Carebear attack :|

GW isnt that bad of a game, thats true, but saying it has no flaws, just "deficiencies" is ridiculous. This game has many HUGE flaws, thus why they are scrapping it and making GW2.

"Make sure you talk about how awesome we are and oh yes, take this thesaurus along with you so that you can replace everything with a massive, unneeded word. Remember, talk about how awesome we are, ok?"

"Right!"

Well, fist an axiom is a statement of process based upon a given. What the OP gives are principles, ideas, from which Axioms may be drawn.

Second, I agree the OP is as gracious concerning Guild Wars as I am crittical. For that reason, much of what he taughts as success I could not. But then an Axiom from Kafka states: It is given to us to explore the negative, as what is possitive is already accepted.

Personally:

The trade system has always sucked, takes too long, and costs too much. I have never once felt like the economy was working or workable.

In his five points:
There is good direction toward Role Play - something developed more with each of the games (from Prophecies where there is little or none, Factions where there is faction, Nightfall where independent decisions direct plot line flow, to GWEN which integrates the last two systems). Perhaps in GW2 we will actually see something closer to an RPG with both interpersonal decisions and decisions as segues directing both plot and theme changes. Such an achievement would indeed be monumental in an MMO, of which only KotoR and its spin-offs have been close.

Almost all of my difficulties with GW1 have stemmed from unequal treatment of players between PvP vs. PvE, and *Elite* vs. *Casual.* This includes acquisition of skills, acqusition of gear (armor, mods, weapons, etc.), through acquisition of access to content and content areas. PvP ios promised all the stats and limited skins as long as they are excluded from the story side. PvE is allowed all the story side they want as long as their gear stats and skins are capriciously achieved/granted. And ofcourse, only elite players deserve to ahve anything nice. All the rest of the unbearable and pathetic masses should accept their status as servants of the elite and kowtow to their demands and superiority. That part, I have, and shall always have, objection to.

Did you read http://www.aeriagloris.com/ yet? Great stuff there.


Also, a lot of people think they know how to make video games.

Right...



So did the makers of Lair. Apperantly even if you are in the gaming business, there are people that only think that they know how to make a video game.

This statement used to be true

Comments like this (or "company-paid-for propaganda") are so unfair. One has the free will to decide what one thinks, you know? It's not "there's Anet on one side, and me and the rest of the world on the other side"!

Oh, and if you're not interested in a thread topic, I guess you should ignore it...

(sorry for the counter-flame)

Savio, I did not read the link before.

I think the thread should be closed - the hidden intention has nothing to do with GW, it is just promotion for this odd kind of belief, which definitely should not have a place on a public forum focused on GW.

I was sort of hoping this could give me a glimpse of what Guild Wars 2 has to offer, big boi.

But, uh, yeah, you're right. I support company paid propganda, and I do not support freedom of speech, or whatever.

You realize the creators of Lair created the successful Rogue Squadron games on Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube, right?

Longasc might have a point here.



They sure dropped the ball bigtime then. Maybe they got paid off by Nintendo to release a bad game.

I don't get it. Besides being a plug for your silly website, all you have done is basically restate the same stuff that we have all been seeing, saying (or saying is bullcrap), and playing for like, two or three years.

Oh wait. I see what you did there.

Posting in an EPIC THREAD.

You don't know Nintendo, then.

But, yeah, I'm not sure what the dealio is with Factor 5 and Lair either. But at least they know how to really push Gamecube hardware, and thus push Wii's hardware, too.