Learning From Other MMOs the good and bad

After finally hearing a trickle of GW2 news and after having played a couple of recent MMO releases AOC and WAR I started thinking again about what guildwars did right and what they can learn for newer games. There were so many things GW did well and I don't even appreciate them until I play other games. There are of course many things to improve which is why there is GW2. Not everything new is good though.

Things not to emulate from recent MMO's which GW did right the first time:

Don't spread the population too thin. Part of the reason people play MMOs is the group interaction whether its in PvE or PvP (which of course requires it...). The feeling of a full world where you bump into people in busy outposts or the world is good. Doing things that make grouping harder or split parts of your population from others undermines this. Things like (a) Multiple servers that are inaccessible to one another (b) Good side on server or bad side on a server (Chaos/Order for example). (c) within a side splitting people into race factions that start in different parts of the world (elf/dwarf/empire). In short, make it easy for people to bump into one another.

Make travel easy. There is nothing more annoying than wasting time going from (a) to (b) over and over again. Map travel between every outpost was great. It got people to explore the world at least once, made it possible for people to explore if they want/needed to but didn't force people to waste time. AOC and WAR force people to waste time in travel rather than actually playing the game. Mounts ease the burden but should never be a replacement for good map travel.

When you are in a guild in GW and you log in, not matter which character you use, people can identify you as the person you are. There is no need to invite new characters to the guild each time you make one. Or tell friends that this is a new character to add to a friends list. This is really annoying.

Don't make too few skills. Just make a large variety of interesting ones. In PvP, things will naturally whittle down to using the best skills available anyway for a given job. But this doesn't mean you can't have options for people to mess around with and enjoy.

Don't make classes inflexible and uninteresting. The primary secondary class setup was great and added a lot of diversity to the feel of character development. Continue to make it easy to respec. Heavy restrictions on repathing your character simply don't promote experimentation. Bright Wizards in WAR are essentially Fire eles in GW. Instead of having the variety of an Wat/air/fire/earth in one class its like getting to specialize in a damage over time fire ele, a aoe fire ele, a single target damage fire ele. Its dull.

Don't make it too easy to die or conversely too hard to. Combat that reduces to 1 hit kills or stun-> kills is not interesting. Defensive webs were annoying, but at least it allowed complexity in combat encounters. Learn lessons from GW1 and fix things, but don't make combat to fast as to eliminate its subtlety.

Don't eliminate the niche that shutdown style characters (mesmer ranger etc) have. Interrupt skills are preferable to random interrupts on any potential attack. It means more skill is involved in the process - and not just reflex. It means players have to make decisions about when to use these skills rather than leaving it to chance.

In general continue to allow combat to have a high skill ceiling. WAR simply aims for the lowest common denominator.
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Things to Emulate that other games did well

Public Quests in WAR are a great idea and remind me of what was orginally mentioned in GW2 press release material about people coming together to deal with threats in the world. They do a great job of bringing people together and would work even better in WAR if people weren't spread so thin all over the game.

Integrate world PvP into the actual game world. Don't make World PvP instanced. As long as again - you don't spread the player base out too thinly it will work. This doesn't have to mean gank fest all over as in WAR where there are regions where you become flagged for PvP. This can still work without having players split into good guys and bad guys where the division goes too far. Just do it like alliance battles where guilds or players can align themselves to a faction. When they enter the zone the are flagged as a member of that faction. When they leave they can play with people of any faction again.

If you've read all this, thanks. What do think should be emulated should not be emulated in GW2?

World PvP is a very difficult idea to integrate because of the balance system of GW - the game is balanced around organized 8v8. The complexity of this system is in part due to the fact that classes have to work together (ideally) rather than stacking 1v1 templates. It would work if it was grouped, but in essence that's what AB/TA/GvG/HA already represent. Obviously the above is moot if they completely rework how GW PvP functions.

What not to integrate from other mmos:

Grind
Weapon/armor wars

How is it that every point you listed as good I felt was bad?

Bumping into people randomly? That was pretty much impossible due to instanced zones. There were so many outposts in the game that most of them were empty anyway. The only way to "bump" into people would be going to something like ToA, Lions or Kamadan and that would be usually just to trade or UW. My definition of bumping into people would be finding people doing something while you are doing something else and are completely unaware of there presence. This didn't happen at all in GW.

Yeah, travel being easy was great but once again it presented the problem with so many outposts just empty and dead it made it feel like there was no one playing the game. I suppose thats kinda true now considering the ammount of people leaving.

Large ammounts of skills are good? If anything, GW has proven that this is terrible. 3/4 of the skills in the game aren't usable outside a joke build, the others are overused by everyone to get maximum effect from the class. This isn't a bad thing, but the cookie cutter builds always dominated over the hundreds of skills that were unable to be brought up to scratch.


What I'm about to say next may be the whole center of flames but I don't really care. I felt the Primary/Secondary idea was only good in theory. In the game all it did is take roles away from the primary class and make them useless. Mesmers shouldn't outperform Elementalists at their role, Necromancers shouldn't be able to outdo a ritualist and Sins shouldn't be able to tank better than any Warrior can (PvE shadowform before you talk about PvP wise). I feel if they had just kept primarys without secondarys, the game would have more options in using different classes. Ele's would be needed to snare, Warriors would still be good at tanking etc etc.

Also going on to talk about DP. It's one thing that really bugged me about GW for it's lack of thought. Sure, it puts you off dying and doesn't let you have free goes but it's punishing someone who is already having trouble completing whatever they are trying to do? So now they get to go back and have an even tougher time?


Rawr my own opinion, don't get all raged.

Here I believe you are wrong. In fact, map travel works against your prior point about making people easy to bump into, to make the world feel alive. Map Travel reduces the amount of people in the world as people only go straight from objective to objective and don't move between them. In WoW you fly between locations on a gryphon, and although sometimes tedious, this is the best thing they ever did in terms of making the game feel real.
Flying over a landscape where you can see other players questing makes you feel you are moving through a living breathing world, and the time it takes to fly helps impact a feeling on size upon you. Whereas the GW world feels small because you can jump from one side of the world to the other.

In terms of what other MMOs have done that I would like to see in GW2 there are a few things.

Progression and Gear: This is where GW met it's maker, in favour of a pvp orientated game they made gear reach a certain cap where it could improve no longer. Good for pvp, but it meant pve had to be pulled along solely by storyline and vanity items. This isn't good for PvE, and it leads to an inevitable decline in players because there's no way to better your character so once you've completed the storyline you're done.

In GW2 Anet needs to put a deep progression in PvE. There needs to be levels of character quality, making your character better than others. Like in WoW, where there is T4, T5, T6 difficulty dungeons where completing them relies, not only on skill, but on having gear good to enough to enable you to deal enough damage, live long enough, heal enough to counteract the more powerful hits. This gives people a real sense of 'having a direction' until they complete the highest tier. It also makes them feel that they can play more and more, because they are never lacking things to do.

Instead of going for an all out gear approach that WoW has, perhaps GW2 could use a varient of the Elite Skills system. Back in ye olde days of GW PvE was only for capping elite skills to use in a pvp environment, e.g. although all warriors had the same armour and weapon damage, the one that had put in the extra time had an advantage, with a powerful elite skill. Then that all changed with the introduction of Balth points. But, the concept was still there and I think it could be adapted to GW2. Bosses could drop skills (either upgrades of current ones you already had or new ones only available from that boss), not gear, meaning instead of your 'spell damage' going up, your earthquake spell now costs no exhaustion, or more damage, for instance.

It would be an interesting form of progression in my mind.

Anyway, that all depends on how they decide to work the skill system in GW2.

I saw a guy playing WoW a few months ago, and now that you talk about that I remember how epic it was him flying over some town while you could see all the little tiny people running around under him. Was really cool. That and being able to jump.

It's fun the first few times, then it gets boring.
I would still chose GW map travel over it any time of the day, even if it reduces contact with other players and "realism".

Two of my old housemates play WoW and everytime they have to travel anywhere they would go get a drink/food anything other than look at the landscap, as netniwk said it gets boring.

My guess is that this was one of the first things that was either dropped or re-worked based on the single player concept of GW2.

I never said that Flying over the landscape doesn't get boring, but the fact that you have to expend time to travel somewhere greatly contributes to how big the world feels, and how real it feels. I hope Map Travel is GW is less important, better if you could only travel between some of the larger towns, e.g having one Asuran Gate only in each major area, one for Kryta, one for Southern Shiverpeaks, One for Orr....

While I applaud you for you taking your time to write out your thoughts, there are a few points I wish to talk about:

I am on the fence about the starting place idea. As long as the amounts are few, it's ok. But lore-wise, having all races start at the same place doesn't make sense. While it is good to have people together, sometimes people wish to play alone, with no one else near. With this, imo, the best combination would be a *big* Persistent world or a *small* instant world. GW1 is medium sized, imo, but it shows a lot of empty outposts. Because of this, the population is too thinned. Then there are also the American, Europe, Asian districts and on and on. Too thinned. A Large Persistent World with as few servers as possible would be best.

As brought up, this goes against your prior statement. I think that while there should be map traveling, it should only exist in the forms of Asura Gate NPCs and only in the bigger towns - for example, in Prophecies, it would only be in Ascalon City, Yak's Bend, Lion's Arch, Temple of the Ages, Henge of Denravi, Druid's Overlook, Amnoon Oasis, Droknar's Forge, Deldrimor War Camp, Ember Light Camp, and the missions. The way to unlock them would be to talk to the NPC. I would suggest an Asura to be the NPC to talk to, and an un-interactive Asura Gate behind the Asura. In other words, I want a mix of walking/mount travel, and map travel. I hope we can ride Yaks and Siege Devourers in GW2.

This is something I agree fully with you. There is no need to have each character in different guilds, with different friend's lists, and different ignore lists. This is defiantly something ANet did right.

There is one issue with the large amount of skills. You need either a lot of time to balance, or you need multiple people. If Izzy is the only person who is balancing skills, they need a few more people to help out. Because clearly they are not all balanced. While a good variety is, well, good, it can get stressful on the staff for balancing. And balancing, imo, is a must.

This I must agree with as well. Being able to go back and do something new is definantly fun. However, I dislike the secondary system. While some combinations are fun to test out, it brings too much imbalance in the game. Whether it's for farming (i.e., perma-sin) or PvE gimmick builds (i.e., Splinter Barrage) or in PvP gimmick builds (i.e.,SWay), it allows far too overpowering balances, and the primary professions usually suffer because of them (look at what happened to "For Great Justice!" (PvP)). I think a new system is in order.

While this started out as a good point, now, for PvE, it's becoming a bad point. PvE getting PvE-only skills ruined it by making it too easy to kill creatures. I'm glad that people who had troubles before can progress, but that only further removes the first point you brought up. Same with heroes, but that's a different topic. While I don't use EN PvE skills, nor do I use cons, I still find it annoying and it makes things too easy. I'm not trying to be an elitist, although I'm sure I am, but it removes all non-self given challenge from the game. I hate giving myself handicaps, and I hate not having a challenge.

Irritating? yes. Necessary in this game-style? yes. Remove? No. Add Chronomancer to GW2? yes.

Agreed completely. No downside to this other then trolls purposely trying to make people lose these quests. But Trolls will always exist.

In other words, imo, make PvP in GW2 similar to how it was with Prophecies. A part of PvE, but yet also not a part. Give PvE a better access, by not making some separate map for PvP areas. Give PvE characters more benefits for playing PvP, which according to interviews I've seen, will happen (with all attributes being equal).


What else to add? Full-Terrain exploration. "If you can reach it, you can get on it" king of idea. The only MMO (don't count GW as a MMO) I've played has this, and it's VERY fun for me to climb mountains, buildings, etc. Trying to reach as high as I can and exploring every nook and cranny there is. More places to explore the better.

And a second note on the servers idea: Like I said, as few as possible. Only open up a second server when it gets to say 70% capacity with players, then open another. And have it free interchangeable like the American, European, Asian districts. That way when people want to meet up, they don't have to make new characters, or pay to change servers.

Actually I suspect that role won't go away, only the classes able to perform it will gain some solo capability and be able to specialize at the end-game.

E.g. rangers in GW now can deal damage fine and would be ok to level with, however in a group the could use the 'other side' of their nature, with interupts, conditions and such. Same with mesmers, there'll be leveling skills and utility/end-game skills.

Two things which GW did wrong and should not be carried over into GW2:

1. Protection skills which reduce incoming damage to a percentage of the avatars health. The entire concept is counterintuitive (why would you take less damage the weaker you are?) and is the basis of nearly all the truly ridiculous builds in GW. Case in point: the 600 monk, which tanks better the worse armor it's got.

2. Separate PvP and PvE skills. The introduction of separate PvP and PvE, together with consumables, was when PvE went to sh!t. Dear ANet, do not listen to farmers. Farmers don't want a fun game, they want easy money through repetitive play. No matter how much they whine and beg you should never give in to the demands of anyone who consider themselves "elite PvE'er".

Other than that I have to say that what I've heard about GW2 has already put me off it. Persistent world = noobs milling around when I'm questing, having abusive farmers upset that you're stealing the mobs they're spawncamping, and waiting in line to kill the boss badguy. No H/H = forced grouping or get easymode drops.

Prot spirit is a balancing skill against death penalty and high-damage spikes. There'd have to be something to take its place, or a bunch of changed mechanics to remove the point of it.

E.g. skills which reduce incoming damage to a percentage of the incoming damage.

WAR Public Quests are a lot of fun, and I do hope, not just GW2, but every MMO that comes out, impliments something similar. Heck, WoW's newest expansion might just steal the idea as well.

Thanks for the feedback,

A number of people have suggested that there is a conflict between a full world and easy travel. First, in GW1 map travel did nothing to make places feel empty. Outposts feel empty because people are spread over 3 expansions and now add to that the fact that many people have quit playing the game. People always gravitated to certain outposts - Captials (LA, KAM, KC) or farming zones (TOA, etc.). What would happen if there were no map travel? Players would likely spend more time in certain locations - Important outposts- or areas given the difficulty in travel leaving many outposts feeling lonely.

Bumping into people in the world will happen even with map travel as long as you create reasons for people to be in the world. Public quests would help accomplish this, placing world PvP in the world would do this. As long as there are motivators there will be people. Certain areas might still be less busy than others due to importance, but this is due to the content in those areas not the existence of map travel. Forcing people to spend time in the world because they have to travel through it to get from A to B is not a good way to get people in the world. If I want to get somewhere I'm not going to stop and smell the roses anyway.

If there is a reason to be in the world people will be there. Map travel simply makes it possible for players to not waste time going through the world when they have other things they want to do. For example, in WAR suppose some of my guild mates are in another part of the world (elf land and I'm in Empire land) and I want to group up with them for World PvP (open RvR in WAR) or PQ's or whatever. There are many cases where I have to waste tonnes of time literally running through the zones to get to a warcamp (outpsot) where I can pay a flight NPC for a ride to go join them in their part of the world. This sort of thing should never happen imo. Giving people the chance to cut to the chase and not waste their game time (and their guildies) would eliminate this.

As for primary/2ndary classes. There are of course know issues with the application of a classes primary attribute to their 2ndary skills. Ranger expertise, Mesmer fast casting etc. This should be addressed and fixed, but that can be done while maintaining the primary/2ndary classes. It brought a lot of positive diversity to characters as well.

As for lots of skills. There are balance issues, but I'm asking for a balance between a poverty of skills and too many. I know I miss this in about every other game I play. Again, having worse skills is not a bad thing. It allows diversity where its acceptable (people messing around in PvE) and doesn't harm competitive play since people will just use the better skills anyway.

World PvP is a kind of for kicks addition for people who want casual and not competitive PvP. As such you are going to get wierd team makeups no matter what you do. Its going to be like playing aspenwood or AB to some extent. There will be some more organized teams but a lot of random stuff as well.

One last thing to add. Make sure you keep a form of competitive team oriented PvP like GvG/HA/TA. I know this will be there, but I just want to reinforce how important that is. WAR has nothing like this and it really detracts form the game for me. There are 2 kinds of PvP there; scenarios which are instanced and like a cross between alliance battles. and RA. Team makeup is in general far too random to be interesting and there is no que for guild teams to play other guild teams (or pre orgnaized teams of players in genera). Open RvR turns into a zerg fest or 50+ people smashing into one another. Both of these can be fun, but its not that interesting and doesn't really provide venue for structured team vs team combat.

I'd say quite the opposite. With GW1, one of the most chief things ANet learned was how much they can handle, and they obviously could not handle what was created by them. Things were much more decent around the time of Proph, then when they added more and more and more to PvP there was too much on their plate.

So for GW2, watch the load - especially when considering adding new professions. Many, many problems stem directly from them alone.

ANet's stated that GW1 is much more now a "test" for GW2, and if we look at GW:EN we can see a few of those tests and why they'll be in GW2. For example: notice how there were instances where you were asked to fight alone against 1 big bad guy, like that griffin or that bear? We should expect GW2 to follow the same route. If it's an important quest mob, we should hope to expect to have our own instanced little area when it spawns. ANet knows how bad waiting in line for one is.

And the whole game, save for the end-game areas, is going to be entirely soloable. No need to party with other people except for fun.

I can concur an agree with this part as this is what happened to Everquest and then there was nobody to group with in the first three expansions plus the main after they made like 7 or 8 expansions. Plus EQ was never solo friendly unless you twinked your character to the maximum from level 1 on and even then once you got to oh level 35ish you couldn't solo very good or it took a long time just to get one kill.

Here I will disagree with this method and policy it's too fantastic for a fantasy world for EVERYONE to be able to teleport to ANY city or outpost they have visited after they've arrived. This is a player feature that never should have been changed and druids and wizards should be the ones who can teleport you around the world and I'll even allow sorcerers and mages, but, give this back to the PLAYERS as an INCOME as it was meant to be. This was where EQ began to die when Planes of Power was introduced and allowed EVERYONE with this expansion to teleport to every major city in the game from POP.

To add to this I would like my setup for online or offline or do not disturb to remain what I set it at once and not have to set it everytime I log on. Also I would like an email and PM feature that doesn't allow anyone to PM you unless you are in the TRADE channel or they are in your friends list there is entirely too much PM spam in GW right now.

The problem is they made too many unbalanced skills and the PVP system has been bonkers ever since. Rangers are still too overpowered (thanks to izzy's love for them) and there are so many other skill combos that are way overpowered still. The separation of PVE from PVP is at least going to be one improvement for this game.

Yes please take out stupid classes like the assassin and bring back the thief and allow us to pickpocket. I also think it was better when you had to save your points and respec at intervals instead of just respec at will once again this just isn't realistic in ANY WORLD. It turns what could have semblance of realism into just a changling fest world and everyone is a changling.

I disagree here in the PVE game it's too easy to complete all the chapters with just yourself and henchies. Buff up the AI more this time around and make people WORK for their kills not just press buttons 1234 dead.

Please remove ALL interupt skills as they are annoying as hell on the receiving end. Daze is rediculous as well. Bring a game where power and dps rules not how many times you can disrupt somebody down.


No never bring full world PVP to this game or any other game. It is what will send people flying AWAY from them faster than you can say scat. The origional UO tried that method and Everquest quickly showed them what the MAJORITY of people want out of these games. NO GANKING unless they/I say so. In other words make a special server for these types of people, but, don't make the whole world or every server WORLD PVP. I personally have enjoyed the arena PVP most as that is what I did in Everquest as well friendly arena PVP not those world ganking servers where level 50's come down and respawn camp and kill you over n over again until you just have to log off to stop those antics. So, no never world pvp as it just won't work or never works as a successful mmorpg. Just take a look at Shadowbane if you want to see what happens where there is world pvp constantly.

I'd bet that soloing will net you worse drops than grouping, but even if that's not the case: I like H/H'ing. Designing and testing builds and the small-unit tactics of playing with H/H is fun to me. That, and very casual PvP, is most of the reason I'm still playing.
Going to a Neverwinter Nights type setup with 'sidekick' tanking and me nuking means losing all that.