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Originally Posted by arcanemacabre
You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
I know this is all very obvious, but you can see where the problem is - how to balance it so that most of the community is in that "flow" zone.
If Anet is doing the right thing here based on their statistics and research of the community, it means there is a much larger percentage of new and unskilled players than there are skilled. I think that, too, is obvious. I suppose in order to keep the masses playing, they have to dumb everything down. |
Your link and explanation about this "flow" thing is very good.
The bolded part is the dilemma.
Why does GW have so many people that are really terrible players?
To keep them playing, things have to be easier. But this is the problem.
People do not learn when they are not challenged. GW has no real learning experience.
Let's examine the 3 chapters:
Factions: People were quickly levelled up, they never learned the tricks of the trade. And then they had to fight exploding mobs, and if they were Assassins, they were not only screwed, but totally screwed. I would say for veteran Prophecies players the difficulty was a logical progression and just right, on the other hand!
Nightfall: The two new classes have much higher survivability even if you are dumb, the game is easier. But people can still get to the Realm of Torment and THEN they are handed their butt on a platter. We all know how Gate of Madness and many other missions there had to be toned down once or even several times. There was also no real learning curve in the campaign, it was in general easier than Factions. We had a starter training area similar to the isle of the nameless, which might have helped interested players, but many will simply have ignored it. And it cannot teach people basic game/teamplay either.
The Domain of Anguish is a beast of its own. At first it required specialized builds and experienced teams. People did not like it overly much! Then it was dumbed down, people still did not return en masse. But since the BEAR is there, it has become a joke.
Prophecies: Actually, that sever artery and conjure phantasm rocks in Presearing ... and using Mending till the teen levels...^^ it did not really teach people how to play GW. The desert missions did not prepare them for PvP either. The slow progression made people experiment, but it is for sure not viable for later chapters. People just had a lot of time to figure out strategies. And for starters without a clue, the difficulty was about right!
Later we got more and more skills, power creep happened, and then even more powerful skills.
We would not need all that if the playerbase would be mildly challenged and forced to think about better ways.
ANet should think of ways to gently force people to become somewhat better players in both pvp and pve. PvP has a steep learning curve and forces people to learn quickly. Some just give up. In PvE, people do not need to learn, they can chose to grind for the BEAR or use a popular and tested build of near equal power.
But ANet dumbs things down.
Then we have dumb game for the dumb masses. With little lasting value besides eternal "optional" grind and farming as the only thing left to do for those who like it.
A horror vision of how GW2 should not turn out. I am sure especially veteran GW players expect something better.
But if they cater to the very lowest common denominator in this way, the game will only get dumber to the point where everyone is bored and starts playing another game. We already have games that are like that, and they are better in this regard than GW can be due to balance restriction to items and whatsoever.
