ArenaNet Designer Lays Out Guild Wars 2's Core Principles

Written by: Jason Winter (@winterinformal) | July 3, 2012 3:30 pm

50 Comments

Guild Wars 2 Game Designer Ben Miller is the author of the latest piece on the ArenaNet blog, where he talks about the golden rules of game design, at least as they pertain to GW2.

No, “more cowbell” isn’t one of them.

At the forefront, he stresses that making games isn’t just about taking a bunch of premade ingredients and tossing them into a blender to see what comes out — which is how I typically prepare dinner.

Mostly, Miller’s list reads like the core design principles of the game that we’re already mostly familiar with: encourage cooperation, utilize a minimal UI, and so on.

One interesting bit is filed under “Do it well or not at all,” where Miller says:

“Every feature you choose to invest resources in something means some other element gets less attention in one way or another.”

Kinda dashes the usual MMO PR line that we hear whenever something new is put in the game while something old and broken is allowed to remain, doesn’t it? “We’re working on all parts equally hard, and putting in this new thing does not in any way mean we’re not also 100% committed to fixing the old thing.” O rly?

In any case, we’ll know in just under two months how well ArenaNet was able to stick to its principles.

ArenaNet Designer Lays Out Guild Wars 2's Core Principles

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http://twitter.com/nemui_89 Nemui

also in the “Do it well or not at all” paragraph:

“It also means we chose to cut features.” It’d be interesting to know which features they had to cut. Apart from things like energy and potions, that we already knew about.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Or which features they will cut before launch. Maybe guesting on another realm? Who knows. May be reading too much into it.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
    
    Cutting guesting would be in a completely category of things. You can’t say “we cut feature X so we can focus working on feature Y” when feature X is already working.
    - Old Ben
      
      > Cutting guesting would be in a completely category of things.
      
      There seems to be a missing from that sentence.
      - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
        
        ”different”
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
  
  The companion system. That was probably the last nail in the coffin for me.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
    
    That doesn’t really seem like it could have worked if I am remembering the feature correctly. It would just seem a bit odd to have everyone with an extra “person” following them.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
      
      Well, I guess that depends on how you view playing the game. For me, the system works well enough to be enjoyable in SWTOR without it seeming odd at all. Old Ben brings up the critical point in AI – a complaint now with the Ranger pets, and always a lingering issue in GW1.
      
      However, the system at least worked well enough in GW1 to allow players to be able to form groups at will and succeed just about anywhere in the game. It was one of the primary factors for me getting into the game – it was a party based game, but allowed for player control of how and with whom to group. Again, the AI wasn’t (and still isn’t) the best, but I think that can be said of any game. I would imagine AI to be one of the toughest and most resource intensive things to try to get “right” in a way players have been desiring for years.
      
      The removal of the companion system in GW2 was one of many design decisions that ultimately cemented my decision not to play the game. I played the betas in the hopes that I could be wowed enough (no pun intended) to change my mind, but alas it is not to be. Where GW1 seemed so revolutionary and fresh that it compelled me to play and keeps on doing so, GW2 just seems so average and uncompelling to me at this point. It almost seems that they tried too hard to be anti-WoW and ended up just making an average, typical featured MMO, but with a couple of different twists/skins.
      
      I would have liked to have liked the game enough to continue my adventuring in Tyria, but for me the $60 price tag is too much to justify on a game where my enjoyment isn’t as great as the myriad of others I still have on my 5 shelf bookcase.
      - http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
        
        Well GW2 certainly isn’t the GW1 sequel I was looking for but for me it’s still a fun game.
        
        The only place I would see a need for henchmen is the dungeons and for that it would still be possible to implement them without the issue I mentioned.
  - Old Ben
    
    I think the main problems of the companion system were that it made classes with pets (ranger, necro) less distinctive and the AI probably just wasn’t good enough to make them believable.
    
    Pets and minions are pretty dumb, and even in single-player games like Skyrim (where the AI can use your system’s CPU) the companions are often more trouble than they’re worth. In an MMO, the AI of every character needs to run at least partially on the server, which means it will be even more simplistic (i.e., dumber).
http://twitter.com/kerozinn1981 king kazma

features like DX11 maybe
- Old Ben
  
  There were some hints in developer posts, in the official forums, that they’re either working on a DX11 renderer or that the DX9 renderer makes some DX11 calls if it detects support for them.
  
  Designing the game for DX11 from the ground up would have had some big advantages in terms of model detail, but I guess they need DX9 compatibility to make sure the game runs on older systems, and increase their sales.
Old Ben

Arena Net’s blogs are getting vaguer, wankier and more yawn-inducing with each update. They actually gave more solid information about the game two years ago than they do now. Then again, I guess they’ve come to regret some of that.

State a handful of obvious design principles, ignore the fact that the game doesn’t actually follow half of them, pat themselves on the back, wait one month, repeat. Sigh…

> Make the world come alive [...] In our environment design we add
> caves for creatures to live in and nests for things to lay eggs in.

Wow! They have cave and egg technology! World first!

Unfortunately they seem to lack the technology required to make creatures spawn somewhere logical (or to delay the spawn), instead of popping into existence two feet in front of players, out of thin air.

> Play the game, not the UI

Is that why you make us constantly look at the bottom of the screen (to see if the cooldowns are over, if our target is in range, etc.) ? Is that why you don’t let players reorder the weapon skills to suit their own preference? Is that why you force players to fight the camera every time they go into downed state? Is that why you picked team colors that color-blind players can’t distinguish in WvW? Is that why (in a game where kiting is encouraged), enemies are on a leash, forcing players to keep track of each creature’s spawn location to avoid having it reset in the middle of the fight?

> Do it well or don’t do it at all

Personal stories. Enough said.

> Respect the player

You mean like Crystin Cox’s claim that the change to dyes was “to tie the color palette to each character’s progression”… while letting level 1 characters get dyes from the cash shop? That’s not just disrespectful because it’s false; it’s disrespectful because it’s so _obviously_ false. If you’re going to lie to your clients (which you don’t even need to), at least respect our intelligence and come up with _good_ lies.

I’d gladly trade this entire blog entry (and the previous ones, too) for confirmation that the game will have adjustable FoV and camera distance.
- Kyle Robinson
  
  Why are you being so harsh on a game that has no subscription fees?
  - Old Ben
    
    I didn’t make any comments about the game (which is still unfinished and naturally needs a lot of polish and bug fixing). I commented about the self-congratulatory blog post.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/APHJB3QZIDC34QYRLE2RAUSLMU TJ
      
      All i heard from you Old Ben is qq
      - Old Ben
        
        And you still considered it so important that you decided to register just to post that. I would say I’m honored, but to be honest I don’t really care.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
  
  I don’t see an issue with the dye. You just pulled that one out just add another complaint. Then again, most of your rant is pointless. Like the UI, you have to look to see if you’re within range? Oh wow, that’s ridicul…. oh wait, this isn’t the first game to have range in it. Enemies have an aggro range? Whhhaaaaaat!?!?!!?!? Their aggro range should be the map, period. No, wait, that would be a disaster. I wont continue as it’s clear you’re just moaning to moan. All you do is complain about this game, yet you still click on their videos.
  - Old Ben
    
    > I don’t see an issue with the dye.
    
    You must have been living under a rock for the last two months, then.
    
    And the issue isn’t “with the dye”, it’s with the (false) justification given by an Arena Net representative, because she didn’t want to be honest and admit that the policy change was motivated by commercial reasons (which I’m sure the majority of players would have been fine with).
    
    > Enemies have an aggro range? Whhhaaaaaat!?!?!!?!?
    
    Who said anything about aggro…? And you might want to check your keyboard, it looks like some keys are repeating too quickly.
    - pandora005
      
      I dont think the dyes is that much of a problem, because you get them pretty fast anyways from playing the game and looting the stuff. Allowing those dyes for all characters on an account seems wrong to me since everyone should be working for his own set instead of being able to create a new char with all 400 colors after your main unlocked them all.
      
      That is my own personal feeling about the change, so the reasoning that “money is the main reason they changed it” MIGHT BE wrong …
      - Old Ben
        
        I don’t think the dyes being character-bound is a problem at all. But I do think that coming up with fake justifications for that change (instead of being honest about the reason) is a problem.
        
        You can send unidentified dyes (or dyes bought at the cash shop) to low-level characters, so saying that “this change is to tie each character’s color palette to that character’s progression in the game” is obviously not true.
        
        I think the problem with dyes is their randomness. Few people will pay real money for a box of unknown dyes, but would gladly play $5 or $10 for a single dye if they were allowed to pick the color. I think Arena Net will eventually realize this and make it possible to buy specific dyes at the cash shop.
- http://www.youtube.com/user/cpjontek cpjontek
  
  You may have been “trying” to have some constructive criticism which could have been helpful if all that BS didn’t come out instead. For some reason this quote came to mind after I read that steaming pile:
  
  “You’re talking to my guy all wrong. It’s the wrong tone. Do it again… I’ll stab you in the face with a soldering iron.”
  - Old Ben
    
    And do you have anything to say about the article, or are you just an itinerant literary critic?
    - http://www.youtube.com/user/cpjontek cpjontek
      
      The article was fine in my opinion. You did point out some things about the game that could use some very slight improvement imo, however your tone was all wrong in addressing the matter. I can’t tell if you are trying to bash the game or you just expect a $60 game to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.
      - Old Ben
        
        I guess you completely missed the point of my post then. I didn’t make any comments about the game (which isn’t finished yet, won’t be released for another two months, and will probably continue to be improved after that).
        
        The first three words of my post might be a clue about its subject.
      - http://www.youtube.com/user/cpjontek cpjontek
        
        I got the “point” of your post completely. The first 3 words may have been your opinion about this recent blog but the body of your post states your negative opinions about the game itself. You might want to re-read it.
      - Old Ben
        
        > The first 3 words may have been your
        > opinion about this recent blog
        
        The first three words are “Arena Net’s blogs”. You think that constitutes “an opinion” ? I’m starting to wonder if you know the meaning of the word “opinion”.
        
        > the body of your post states your
        > negative opinions about the game
        
        Can you please quote which parts of my post are “opinion” ? In fact, you’ve managed to make three posts about my comment without addressing a single thing I said. I guess it’s the fanboy reflex:
        
        “Someone pointed out some flaws in the game, I must defend it without actually addressing any of the statements in the original post!”
        
        Don’t creatures spawn out of nowhere in front of players? Yes, they do.
        
        Don’t those creatures reset if you kite them beyond an invisible and arbitrary “leash range”? Yes, they do.
        
        Isn’t the bottom of the screen the only place where you can see ability cooldowns and range? Yes, it is.
        
        Doesn’t the camera angle change when players go into downed state? Yes, it does.
        
        Aren’t there a red team and a green team in WvW (hard to distinguish for color-blind players, unlike red and yellow, for example)? Yes, there are.
        
        Shall I go on?
        
        The only part that might be construed as opinion is my comment about the personal stories, where I didn’t elaborate (but the original quote was also subjective: “do it well”).
        
        If you want to know my “opinion about the game”, it’s that it is the most important MMORPG of the last seven years, possibly of all time. It recovers a concept that used to be the basis of the RPG genre, which is the creation of a dynamic and consistent world, where NPCs interact with each other independently of player actions, and will influence every MMO developed in the future.
        
        There, did that disturb your preconceptions? Guess what, it’s possible to like a game and still be able to point out things that need to be fixed. And it’s certainly possible to like a game and dislike the tone and opportunity of a “developer blog post” which is really just a marketing tool.
        
        GW2 isn’t finished, it has several design flaws (and several others which were corrected after players complained), and this kind of self-congratulatory blog post makes no sense until the “golden rules” it describes have actually been implemented (if they had actually been followed from the start, the issues I mention above wouldn’t exist). It’s just an inelegant display of arrogance and hubris.
      - Jay
        
        I think it’s a little unfair to imply his response was a “fanboy reflex”, just for disagreeing with you. I do agree with you on the camera zoom, and you brought up a few good points in your original post.
        
        “> Do it well or don’t do it at all
        
        Personal stories. Enough said.”
        
        Whether or not the personal stories are done well, is an opinion. I’m not trying to get in the middle, I’m just trying to keep the peace.
        
        I think we all agree that GW2 is worth the $60 purchase price.
      - Old Ben
        
        > just for disagreeing with you.
        
        He didn’t disagree. To disagree, he would have had to actually address at least one of the statements I made, which he didn’t. His “argument” boiled down to “I don’t like what you said and want to stab you in the face with a soldering iron”.
        
        And he actually had to _quote_ a movie to come up with something that clever.
        
        > Whether or not the personal
        > stories are done well, is an
        > opinion.
        
        As I pointed out above, no? The concept of “well” is inherently subjective.
      - Jay
        
        Lol he may have quoted a movie, but at least it was clever.
      - Old Ben
        
        Yep, right up there with the Chewbacca defense.
      - http://www.youtube.com/user/cpjontek cpjontek
        
        Semantics sir. You do not know how to read. Yes the first 3 words were not an opinion but let me spell it out clearly for you as you can’t understand.
        
        You said, “Arena Net’s blogs are getting vaguer, wankier and more yawn-inducing with each update.” That is your “opinion”, which I fully understand the meaning of, and you do not.Also, please do not quote things that I did not say to make your argument seem right.
        
        As far as addressing your post I do not need to point out what you’ve already said. I’m addressing the post as a whole and yes, there are opinions in your post. Like I said, re-read it.
        
        In my opinion you can’t see fault with yourself. You believe what you write to be fact and insist on trying to make yourself seem right. Go ahead and respond again though because I know you won’t be able to resist spewing more BS is this thread lol.
      - Old Ben
        
        > You said, “Arena Net’s blogs
        > are getting vaguer, wankier and
        > more yawn-inducing with each
        > update.”
        
        Which is clearly an opinion about the _blog_, as anyone with the ability to read can understand.
        
        > As far as addressing your
        > post I do not need to [...]
        > you can’t see fault with yourself.
        > You believe [...] blah blah blah
        
        Yes, by all means make your post about me. I guess that’s easier than actually providing any examples to support your accusations…
      - DoctorOverlord
        
        I’ve come to much the same conclusions you state in last paragraph about posters like that one.
        
        The easiest thing in the world is to be an armchair game developer. You never have to actually prove your theories so you can always assume they’re right.
        
        ArenaNet has shown they actually deliver on their theories and promises. That means I’m more inclined to trust what they say over any forum poster.
        
        I simply ignore posters like him. I’ve found any attempt at a meaningful discussion to be pointless.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Thanks Old Ben for posting this. I’ve been way to cranky on the GW2 comments lately.
  - Old Ben
    
    Oh, I’m fine with GW2; I think they will eventually fix most issues (except the personal stories, which are beyond salvation). My problem is with their inept marketing and the way they keep patting themselves on the back for stating obvious design principles that they’re not even following very well.
- João Colaço
  
  1. When they say play the game not the ui they mean to put more emphasis on the game but you still have to look at your ui for obvious reasons.
  
  2. Color-blind I’m assuming must have difficulty playing other games aswell, and in wvw even if they can’t spot an enemy by color the enemies are referred as invaders so they actually have some help and attention.
  
  I mostly agree with the personal stories, but then again I’ve only played up until lvl 11, and with the dyes justification. The other stuff you mention I couldn’t understand exactly what you were referring to.
  - Old Ben
    
    > but you still have to look at your ui for obvious reasons.
    
    Except the reasons _aren’t_ obvious (or the position of the UI isn’t ergonomic). WoW’s default interface is also terrible, but with a couple of UI mods (ex., IceHUD) you can play it without _ever_ having to look at your action bar in combat.
    
    If Arena Net doesn’t want to include support for UI mods, the least they can do is learn from the solutions that players adopted in other games, and implement those directly in the base UI. Even Blizzard finally acknowledged that it wasn’t practical to make people look down to check the cooldowns, and added some warnings to the middle of the screen, near your character (ex., Pyroblast, Maelstrom Weapon, etc.).
    
    Range is another issue. In most games, if you use an ability with a target selected, and the target is out of range, your ability doesn’t “fire”. In GW2 it does, which means that, if the target is out of range, your ability will miss but still go into (a potentially very long) cooldown.
    
    But the only way to know for sure if a target is in range in GW2 is to look down at the tiny action button numbers right at the bottom of the screen (which turn red when out of range). But all the “action” is taking place in the top half of the screen (because the camera points at your character’s waist), so (to avoid wasting cooldowns) you have to keep looking up and down, up and down. On a large screen, this can be really tiring after a couple of hours.
    
    There are three (obvious, I would say) solutions:
    
    a) Make all ranged abilities have the same range and give players a range indicator on the target itself (ex., different marker or outline).
    
    b) Add an option to make abilities fire only if the current target is in range (so players don’t waste a cooldown if they fire too soon). If no target is selected, fire anyway.
    
    c) Remove the range indicator from the buttons, so that players have to learn the ranges through experience, and aren’t encouraged to keep looking down.
    
    Personally, I’d go for c) or a), although I suspect most people would prefer b) because that’s what they’re used to in other games.
    
    > Color-blind I’m assuming must have difficulty playing other games aswell
    
    That’s not the issue. The issue is that, if Arena Net had used red / yellow / blue (instead of red / green / blue) they would have avoided that problem. It’s a simple and obvious solution which any interface designer should know right from the start.
    
    > the enemies are referred as invaders
    
    But, to see that, you have to actually read the text above their heads (focusing on the UI), which is why I mentioned this as a case where a design flaw forces some players to “play the UI” instead of the game.
    
    Anyway, I hope that Arena Net will eventually fix most of those issues; my problem isn’t with the game itself (which is still in beta, and will continue to be improved even after release), it’s with these lofty and self-congratulatory blog posts where designers praise themselves for design principles which they didn’t invent and which they haven’t even implemented very well yet.
    
    Fix the issues first, _then_ pat yourself on the back. Meanwhile, give us blog posts about something actually new or interesting.
- Revanhavoc
  
  This was a good honest critique of Guild Wars 2. Since I haven’t played beta yet I was sharing in some of your concerns hoping that when I do get a free trial or something eventually I would realize the new and innovative outweighed the old and stale.
  
  We will just have to see, but I was looking for something deeper from the developers other than the vague PR lines about vision discussed in the article above.
Old Ben

> putting in this new thing does not in any way mean we’re
> not also 100% committed to fixing the old thing

Does anyone actually say that, though, Jason? In my experience, most companies just keep very quiet about broken features, or “pull a Blizzard” and simply say it’s working as intended (even if they have a fixed version about to be released).

I’m not sure if it’s deliberate (because they think acknowledging a bug is somehow worse than pretending they don’t see it) or if the PR and tech support departments are just totally in the dark about what the developers are working on.
- pandora005
  
  “Everything is working as intended” is a direct quote from Everquest forum moderators when adressing a bug which players can clearly replicate. So its rather “a Sony” than “a Blizzard” IMO. It sure was at the core of many many jokes at their expense.
  - Old Ben
    
    I played Everquest (briefly), but I guess I didn’t visit the forums often enough to notice that. I did get that several times from WoW’s GMs, often one day before a patch that fixed the obvious bug that (supposedly) had been “working as intended”…
    
    Even if they completely ignore bug reports, it’s more efficient to just tell people “thanks you for the report, we will pass this information along to the developers”. Most Blizzard GMs wouldn’t pass a Turing test.
Old Ben

(duplicate)
http://profile.yahoo.com/Z36GPOU3Q2QIQYBIDVNQAVGNGE Raul

I am honestly enjoying another game in beta waaay more
than my pre-purchase gameplay in Gw2
I can honestly say it’s my fault from playing 6 1/2 years of wow.I know there are major differences, but compared to what will be coming out……I love to explore, so maps and movement through them are important things to me.I hate invisible walls and Terrain blocks channelling me where the designers want me to go.Severely dents my immersion.quests can be themepark, in a really really detailed sandbox map.. with today’s newer enginesRagnor says He hates invisible walls, but there they were in the upgraded AOC engine (TSW)I actually liked swtor’s climbing tbh. -GW2…not so much so, at this point.In the game I am lucky enough to be alpha & now stage one beta testing, Content is not released in patches and there are no invisible walls. -But rather story and player driven content. as we are fighting to hold on to the Map we have uncovered. Don’t get me wrong, I dropped My sub to wow because of the many plusses it GW2 offers.I hope they can make quality content releases without the monthly sub, at close to the rate of wow.I know they will be better than Wows, and worth the wait, and Blizz knows this, too.*Would you still be playing this game if it were a monthly sub*-would be a fantastic Over or Under poll, *to be taken about 8 months from now*
- Jay
  
  What other game are you playing? Blade & Soul is the only other MMORPG I see worth playing in the near future… Even that has it’s own flaws though… For a game of GW2′s quality without a sub, I find it pretty impressive.
transtemporal

I don’t think the “every feature” comment is contradictory.

The developers have a list of prioritised requirements that they have to assign resource to. Not all of those requirements will be things players want, and of the requirements that players want, not all of those will be at the top of the priority stack.

All they’re saying is that whenever you prioritise one feature over another, the prioritised thing gets done first. That doesn’t mean the other thing won’t get done in the future, just not in this round of changes.
http://profile.yahoo.com/5PXG4B3NI2OVBVB4ZDITRK2LXQ Kayla

For EVERYONE here that’s letting Old Ben get to them: Seriously, just
ignore him. He posts on every video like 30 times and is the constant
troll here, he lives here and will not go away. All he does is complain,
he never has anything good to say, so get used to it. Dularr is another
one of them. You will see both of them comment on every single post.
The moderators really should give a couple swift-boots, but I think they
like the drama of it all in the purpose of entertainment for others and
themselves. IMHO.
- Old Ben
  
  It seems that most of the people “letting Old Ben get to them” (typically by not actually reading his posts, but nevermind that now) aren’t even GBTV users, and felt the need to register today just to post that.
Old Ben

(duplicate)
DoctorOverlord

Thanks for linking the blog post GBTV. I saw it here before I got around to going to the ArenaNet site

I like how Jason focused on the same point I found most interesting in the blog. The issue about resources. Too many times I’ve seen those who to think successful game design is only about developers making uber-cool mechanics with awesome graphics.

Making a game is a business and any good business needs to balance their budget, worry about their profits and keep track of the finances. ArenaNet clearly has this worked out looking at the success of GW1 but it’s good to see them emphasizing the importance of this often overlooked element to the community.

I’ve seen people talk about how MMOs should have servers that can support millions of people with worlds that filled thousands of square miles with ever inch filled with content and real-time weather patterns and ecology etcetc. All those cool idea are easy to dream up but they never account for the cost and whether the expenditure of resources is worth the return in profits.

MMOs are a business first. If the business and profits fail then the servers shut down and nobody gets to play your game.

ArenaNet Designer Lays Out Guild Wars 2's Core Principles

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