Guildcast The Guild Wars 2 Show Ep 48 Hawks & Yetis

http://www.facebook.com/Brandon.Luna.62 Brandon Luna

Leviathan?

http://twitter.com/RichardIRL Richard Elder

Richie still stuck without power?

Dekin

Sounds like a new hit TBS sitcom…..Gary, Liz, Hawks and Yeti

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr

Not re-using Holiday content is only super-cool if you don’t have problems like say an entire region-wide blackout that caused many people to miss the bulk of the first content.

Nick Cattane

You’re right – ArenaNet better recode and redistribute it’s content because a natural disaster occurred. They’ve already apologized multiple times and explained why they cannot backdate it. You don’t think there would also be plenty of complaints if they delayed this next content patch to allow a much smaller portion of their gamers a chance to experience content the larger portion has already gone through? It sucks for the people who missed it, but they need to be a little less selfish and realize they are in the minority for this when you measure GW2 pop on a global scale.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
  
  I didn’t say they should. I do think they should repeat it as much as possible next year for those who missed out – there are plenty of circumstances in GW1 where they did reduxes for that very reason. However, I have no problem with their reasoning for not doing it now. I have a problem in general with one-off content of this nature in games. Gary hits upon it slightly in the episode – on the one hand, it makes the game feel more “alive” and makes those who get to experience said content feel like special snowflakes, but the drawback is that you have the potential to turn off the greater portion of your playerbase by limiting the content that people can potentially play with this kind of model.
  
  Ultimately, it comes down to how you like to play games, I think. I prefer to play games and experience content according to my own pace and my own schedule. RL already dictates what I can and can’t do and when I can or can’t do it already. I don’t enjoy games that start to impose those types of restrictions, no matter how minor in their gameplay too. The games I enjoy the most are the ones where I determine how and when to experience the content.
  - Nick Cattane
    
    As you allude to, there’s no pleasing every individual. You repeat content (for those who missed it), and you get complaints from those who claim “been there, done that”. You make it an exclusive event, and you get complaints from those who missed it. If you watch the massively interview Gary referenced, Anet indicates that events like Halloween, etc, are to serve as benchmarks for the next event and that while not all content will return, much will be used as a base to build from. It seems like Anet’s approach to these unique events, thus far, is to make a bulk of the content in these unique events available after the event is over (such as the planned lost shore island, persistent halloween items, etc), but to make things like 1 time cut scenes, etc (e.g. in my opinion the less important things) the very “exclusive” stuff. Anet has always sold the model of an evolving world and while I can agree it’s not ideal to miss things due to your schedule and/or natural disasters, it’s part of their model and consistent with what they have advertised.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1339406775 Matthew Riddle

I hope GW2 doesn’t touch vertical progression with a fourty-foot poll. I guarantee you I will spend 400% more time in-game with a horizontal progression than a vertical progression.

http://www.facebook.com/micah.douglas Micah Bounty Douglas

My guess is Cthulu.

St_Draco

I really hope that ANet does not buy in to the laziness that is “vertical” progression. I can tell you that I love the fact that ANet reduces or nearly eliminates the barrier for entry to things. I tried to go back to WoW (yep I’m dragging WoW into this) and the progression grind and the hard ceiling that you hit once you have completed content turned me off. The “vertical” progression that MMOs offer is an illusion. It is called a treadmill for a reason; you ultimately go nowhere and when you get off, you are right there with with everyone else and nothing to really distinguish you or your accomplishment.

That said, I wish ANet would look at their tuning and follow through with creating content that is difficult to succeed in. Exploration Dungeon content needs to be tuned to be difficult even for those people who get the exotic gear you purchase with tokens or crafting. Epic Meta-event encounters need to follow through with the tactics that are set up to defeat them. If you epic fail, then you fail and learn to do better the next time.

http://www.facebook.com/brandon.hildebrandt.77 Brandon Hildebrandt

What about the “thing” that was at the end of one of the early GW2 trailers?

The person swimming underwater and a giant monstrosity just kinda…goes by

http://www.devstyle.org/ Daniel Firing

Doug Maxwell plays on beastgate *lol

http://twitter.com/Veldara Veldara

As I said before vertical progression is not simply trying to make your character the best it’s also much to do with ego. I hate to be crude but a lot of it is about epeen contests in “traditional endgame” MMOs.

For plenty of players that’s a primary reason to play, not just about playing for fun but also wanting to prove you’re better than other people. Guild Wars 2 struggles with players like these because it doesn’t feel like it does that in a tangible manner. There’s little motivation to run a dungeon in GW2 when all you get is a skin and none of the better stats.

You do their hard dungeons and it has no gear that offers a bonus to melting someone else’s face faster. It’s not simply about having a cooler looking armor skin or an “I am a God” title, there’s also something that has to affect gameplay in a real way.

Don’t get me wrong though, I played GW1 as well and I like Anet’s style of MMO. I just wish people read more about GW2 to understand their philosophy so the official forums wouldn’t be flooded by complaints from people used to “traditional” style gameplay.

St_Draco

It’s funny you mention this. It’s an MMO/RPG related problem. If you look at the rest of the gaming universe, stat/power progression is a non-issue. The most popular games do not have stat/power progression or at least they have power plateau that is easily reached. It is the skill and challenge and overcoming that challenge that is the reward for playing. What you gain from every other game out there is not the stats to “melt someones face” but rather the skill and know-how to do it. In MMOs you add in not just the skill and the know-how but also the artificial stats, and those stats out weigh the skill and know-how almost everytime and once you start that claim you end up in an power-creep/build-up that results in a massive problem of bloat. Once you have the BiS gear in an MMO, often the content becomes so easy and trivial it isn’t worth doing. Once you’ve run the raid and gotten the gear, why run it again?

What is missing from GW2 isn’t power progression, it’s the tuning that needs to be in place that makes overcoming content both fun and rewarding in and of itself. It has the cosmetics that allow people to show off their achievement, they just need to make those achievements meaningful. That said, they have the content there, they just need to tweak it and follow through and stop being concerned with people not being able to complete something and complaining about it.
- the founderx
  
  but those traditional MMOs then keep adding more, and harder content so that BIS doesnt trivialize things for long. Warcraft does a great job (obviously) at allowing their hardcore players to get to the top of the pile just long enough to feel accomplished and powerful and strut and flex a bit… before they crash them down to earth with a new tier. its a brilliant and psychologically powerful cycle…hence the nickname “Warcrack”. and yes it takes alot of coordination and teamwork skills as well as a deep understanding of your character class to get full BIS from Heroic Raids in Warcraft. this is coming from someone who is a very vocal critic of Warcraft and quit after being forum banned for relentlessly posting about the weaker aspects of Warcraft. so there is zero fanboy in me.
  
  but i also enjoy GW2 to some extent, altho the sense of “power” or “growth” or “accomplishment” is not present. THOSE are the real carrots, and any economist, marketing, psychologist and social scientist will tell you how powerful and rewarding those experiences are. i went from 79 to clearing Arah Explorable in the same night. i dont find any sense of “growth” or achievement there. GW2 is about VANITY. and wrapped up in vanity is what? ya ego. LOTS of it.
  
  so im fine without “gear stat” progression rewards.. but as you pointed out astutely, GW2 just lacks tuning to make these game encounters more challenging and fun and rewarding psychologically. ill keep taking vanity rewards.. alot of people are fine with that. people are getting bored because there are very little reasons to feel “proud” or “attached” to their characters/accounts. WvW is an exception but also not without MAJOR issues like the invisible army draw distance bug that has sent more of my guildmates screaming out of Vent than any game ive played lol
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
  
  I think part of the problem is that GW2 was mis-marketed. It was marketed as an MMO, but it really isn’t if you think about it. The same core philosophy was used to create GW1, but they made GW more “MMOish” and that’s part of the problem.
  
  I don’t think the MMO genre needs to be re-defined or re-imaged. There are plenty of people who hate the traditional mechanics of MMOs, and that’s why its a good thing that Anet came along and made GW1 and GW2. But ultimately there are as many, if not more players who do enjoy those traditional elements. There is nothing wrong or superior to Anet’s model, just as there is nothing wrong or superior to the traditional model.
  
  However, by marketing them as MMOs I think they did a disservice to the games. Ultimately (and SWTOR can be included to some extent as well) these are not real MMOs but On-line RPGs that have a multi-player component to them. To expand upon what you said, no one complained about lack of end game or lack of character progression in games like Wizardry, Forgotten Realms, Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. Those were games that had a finite story and once you completed the story, you completed the game. Your choices then were either to go play a new game, or re-play that game to try different paths and see the content from a different point of view.
  
  Guild Wars is structured very much in this vein and I think that’s the point a lot of people are missing here. You don’t need vertical progression in this game because you can pretty much play the game, finish the story, then either go play something else or re-play the game with a new character until the next game in the series comes along. The bonus is that Anet also included several MMO elements (like crafting and mini-games) to give players something additional to do in the meanwhile. I think if they marketed it more as a traditional RPG that is played on-line and less of an MMO it would have helped keep perceptions and expectations in check a bit better.
  - St_Draco
    
    Um… get out of the past old man. GW2 is an MMO. It is a persistent environment where large numbers of people interact and play together.
    
    When you talk about other RPGs, you are still describing the “progress” issue. For many people RPGs mean “get the most powerful stuff, then finish the story”. They are games of power creep. The difference is that those games end, where an MMO does not and so there is nothing to cap the creep in an MMO, if you keep with that mechanic.
    
    How you described playing RPGs is how people play WoW, EQ, and every other traditional theme-park MMO. You get the best rewards you can, play through the story elements, then put the game down until the next expansion/patch comes out that makes your character irrelevant, so you can do it again.
    
    GW2 is not structured that way. It is structured so that you can put it down and come back to it and know that your character is not irrelevant when you come back. You’ve got this game figured all wrong.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
      
      “How you described playing RPGs is how people play WoW, EQ, and every
      other traditional theme-park MMO. You get the best rewards you can,
      play through the story elements, then put the game down until the next
      expansion/patch comes out that makes your character irrelevant, so you
      can do it again.”
      
      I could be wrong, but wasn’t that the very purpose for designed GW2 the way they did? You progress your character until level 80, finish the story and either put it down or re-roll. Just like I have played every other SPRPG in the last 30 years. The only difference would the the irrelevant part, unless Anet sticks with the original way they did GW1 and not raise the level cap with each new expansion.
    - St_Draco
      
      Jim, by your definitions there isn’t a single game out there that is an MMO. You don’t define what an MMO is. Give me some examples of actual MMOs, tell me what they have that makes them that way.
      
      I don’t think you even know what you are saying or trying to argue against here. My statement was to point out that traditional MMOs are played in the exact same way that static RPGs are played. To call GW2 a non-MMO is the same as calling those MMOs, not MMOs.
      
      And no GW2 was not designed for you to progress your character to level 80, do all the stuff, and then put it down and wait. It was designed so that you could play the game and go as far as you wanted to and then be able to come back and not feel like you had to catch up just to enjoy the game all while still being able to play with other people and enjoy a social gaming experience.
HartsHope

naw… you really missed the target here. ive played GW2 since BWE1. and if anything, i’ve experienced MORE gamer ego in GW2 than ive ever seen in traditional MMOs like WoW. you do realize that Anet and the GW community have been waving the “SKILL BASED GAME” banner for years now, right? “WE GOT SKILL! YOU SUCK YOU NEED GEAR STATS TO WIN!”. every night my friends and i come across these pro-skillz Explorable mode players that want to tell you exactly how to do each boss and freakout, point fingers, laugh if people fail.

which is all odd btw because these Exp mode dungeons are speed farm easy with random players. very little need for teamwork. dont stand in the red circles, got it. zzzzZZzzz. probably the most challenging aspect of boss fights (especially for the melee classes) is being able to see the target’s animations amidst the pixel vomit chaos. welcome to Skill Based MMO gaming.. enjoy lol

and i dont understand what you mean about “theres little motivation to run dungeons in GW2…” i mean thats all there is basically to do for PVEers. of course there is motivation… Legendary grind and cosmetic sets are sorta tied to running a billion dungeons, isnt it?
- Nick Cattane
  
  talk about zzzZzzzz.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/OHWQGNJD7ATU5YSO3C4BKOJQTI Learning-to-Fly
    
    youtube “7minute Citadel of Flame” and tell me GW2 isnt fall asleep easy. but of course i bet you find tying your shoes hard so nevermind.
    - http://www.facebook.com/tomasz.guzik.927 Tomasz Guzik
      
      So what? Ppl always find effective and fast ways to do content. There is still a bunch of stuff to do in gw2. Some of it more challenging, some less CoF is regarded as the easiest of the dungs so it may be a bad example.
      Still it’s not a game for everyone, I’m sad to see it obviously wasn’t the game you we’re expecting.
    - Nick Cattane
      
      PvE is quite easy, especially dungeoning with good players, I still enjoy it though - I also think they’ve identified a need for more “end-game dungeons’ – e.g. raids and that is also why they plan on releasing a new dungeon type nov 15th - one that progresses in levels and gets more and more difficult as you descend into it.
      
      As Tomasz indicates, the game isn’t meant for everyone. And hey, tying your shoes is hard… (sweet insult by the way, clearly a well thoughout dig designed to cut me to the core).
- http://twitter.com/Veldara Veldara
  
  The keyword is “cosmetic” though, the point I was trying to make about motivation was there wasn’t any real stat boosts to a Legendary that you can get that’s equally on par with an Exotic level item for a paltry 3 gold in the trade.
  
  Considering all the effort and work required to craft a Legendary most people would pass it up. I’m sure someone will point out and say that’s the whole point of a Legendary and I’ll agree, but that’s not the point. I’m talking about other Exotics which can be had from dungeon running.
  
  Why put the effort into running them when you can easily just buy the gear you need from crafting? Visual cues bonuses are a way to differentiate yourself from other players but beyond that vanity they offer no more of an advantage in pvp or pve beyond easier to acquire Exotics.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/CDKVF5ZCFFVZ4JMOEPBAXBQ4YM J

does Gary Gaynon block Elizabaths face on this episode?

MMO_NewSkool

GW2 is a pathetic shallow mess of fluff.

want evidence? youtube the “12 minute Ascalonian Catacombs”… oh ya, done by a group of 2. say it with me.. a duo, 2, deux, dos. 2 players completing Explorable mode in 12 minutes. welcome to skill based MMO… what a joke. and if you think those 2 players must be elite skilled, no. watch the warrior, he makes a ton of sloppy mistakes to the point where it seems like this is his first time fighitng the final boss.

tonight i did a 3 man Twilight Arbor.. PUG group and we couldnt find 2 more so i said lets 3 man it. they laughed at me, said it was impossible. took us 38min. you can pretty much fall asleep on some of the bosses, especially Nightmare Tree.

this sad excuse for a game cant offer a sense of accomplishment or achievement or meaningful progression… and it cant even offer a challenge.

got one HELLISH LEGENDARY GRIND THOUGH… thats tough right? like sitting through a dental procedure tough..

http://profile.yahoo.com/OHWQGNJD7ATU5YSO3C4BKOJQTI Learning-to-Fly

agreed ;(( btw there are 7 minute Explorable runs on youtube but it took a full group. 7minutes for a Explorable Dungeon; what Arenanet said would be challenging and demanding to the most organized and skilled players. /WTFyousmoking?!?!? Im a casual player but even I dont want this easymode faceroll. sux.

my guild is already looking past gw2 towards more promising games
Nick Cattane

lol
Sharuko

Yeah but there are some positives that came out of all of this. Now we know:

*MMOs will fail quickly without progression elements in the game. Including vertical progression.
*MMOs will fail quickly if they are launched incomplete with lack of features.
*Trinity is almost necessary in a group based MMO.
*MMOs will fail quickly without end game content. ”The whole game is end game” crap really doesn’t fly.

I find it funny how they got so much of it so wrong. You need marketing research before developing a product, especially if you are trying new things. Don’t listen to what people want. People don’t know what they want. Go with the actual facts and stats.

At the end of the day an MMO is about progression. From leveling to end game. There is no point in playing an MMO without progression. Period. And the quick demise of GW2 is a good example of that.
- Nick Cattane
  
  Yay the ultimate troll makes his appearance. Like this post if you didn’t even read it!
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
    
    I was wondering when he would return. I do have to agree with one point though. Asking the consumer what they want isn’t a bad thing, but basing your product solely on the responses is – in the end, all you will end up with time and again is the Edsel. Fortunately, despite the flaws, GW2 is still better than that.
- HarmonBlues
  
  .
  - Sharuko
    
    I am sure your limited playtime has a lot to do with how the game is. You were disappointed and decided to play less. That was me with SWTOR.
    
    I played to level 30 and got bored. I bought it because of the hyped and it was a major disappoint.
    
    TESO to me is DAoC 2.0, everything about the game from the factions leveling in their own areas to the RvR is almost exactly like DAoC and Matt Firor running the show helps. That appeals to me. TESO is the last big MMO hope before Titan.
    
    I quit Tera for 4 weeks and now I am back in Tera. But I play WoW and Tera. I wouldn’t play GW2 if I was paid too.
    
    More MMORPG’s, and actually MMORPG’s. Games with all types of content from PvP to PvE with progression. Games you can play for years.
    
    I post on almost every genre of video games GBTV. I rarely post on Guildcast though.
    - HarmonBlues
      
      MMPR- Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. For the longest time I was a console gamer, only dabbling in PC a little to play some adventure, puzzle and FPS games in the mid-90′s. In the late 90′s I got really into FPS on the PC and didn’t really touch MMORPGs until the middle of the last decade.
      
      While I definitely had fun playing them for a good 6 years or so, it was only rarely that I exclusively played an MMORPG title or played it more than other games. It’s just gotten to the point for me that MMORPGs as a genre offer little enjoyment. GW2 provides just enough enjoyment to keep me playing an MMORPG at all, even if those sessions are short and irregular.
      
      Do you play any games outside the genre?
      
      “Games you can play for years”. For me, the modding scene for first person shooters really kept me going for years. Outside of that, one title really shined. The HL1 mod era was really great and I certainly miss it.
      
      One RPG had a constant spot on my hard drives for quite a long time. I always kept going back to Neverwinter Nights. The multiplayer mod community really did some great stuff that breathed life into that game for years. Honestly, I was never even that big of a fan of the single-player campaigns for the game. Similar to HL2, the core game and the modding community for NWN2 didn’t seem to embody the same spirit and quality.
      
      I was really into Planetside 2 for a while, but the servers were renamed and I couldn’t find the 50-75 people from the beta community that I used to regularly play with. I should have planned ahead and gotten contact info outside the game. XD That game is definitely far more exciting when you regularly play with the same people.
      
      Yeah, I haven’t been as active watching GBTV videos lately, so I likely haven’t noticed any comments. While it should have lead me to watch even more videos on Gamebreaker, the staff/host content on their twitch and youtube channels kind of pulled me away from the GBTV site XD.
      
      I hope TESO delivers on what you’re looking for.
      
      Take care.
- St_Draco
  
  Oh man Sharuko, you didn’t even lead in with your own troll, you had to do it on the back of someone else’s. Lost your step have you?
  Funny you talk about an MMO as being about progression… last I checked MMO stood for Massively Multiplayer Online. I don’t see progression in there, nope progression is not a word in that acronym. How do you explain that one?
St_Draco

So tell me NewSkool, what game do you play… oh wait you still play GW2. I guess you are one of us people who “suck” and continue to play this “pathetic shallow mess of fluff”

I guess you haven’t found a better game to play… that says a lot doesn’t it.

Just biding your time until TESO comes out are you? Just waiting until you can call that game garbage and complain about it?

Oh the internet, never satisfied, forever complaining, forever finding ways to shit on beautiful things.

poisonsenvy

lmfao people are still playing thia crap I told yall Storm Legion was going to be way better than this GW2 crap.

mgnexus

Unfair comparison much? I found Rift to be uninspired and boring as hell when I played it at launch. I’m sure it’s been vastly improved since then, and Storm Legion probably builds on that twice over. GW2 has a lot to improve before it becomes a staple of the MMO world, but I believe ArenaNet can get there, but they’ll need time just like Trion did. I think both will end up examples of what great MMO’s do…while SWTOR will be in the “what not to do” guide.
St_Draco

Lol people still trolling posts calling their game better and trying to irritate fellow gamers.

SaksMan

ok… tell me why I cannot find the desire to get past level 31 on my norn ranger? I so want to love the game, but I think all the players must have leveled past my area because I am always alone… soloing hearts is not that fun Back to LOTRO I guess

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

I’ve always said level 1 to 30(40) is the sweet spot in GW2. Personally, I still need to finish leveling my level 60 Charr Elementalist. Figure, I’ll level up using crafting.

pandora005

GM events in Everquest were a HUGE pain because too many people were watching and the lag was abysmal AND a few idiots were ruining the immersion.

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Asura, a huge wheel they ride inside, but powered by magical hamsters.

Sylvari, a wind powered land yacht, with a huge leaf as the sail.

When I tried out the Rift beta, I did think, GW2 really should have gone with ground mounts.

http://twitter.com/QSatu QSatu

So many angry people here.
In the meantime I have fun with the game and still can find people on lower levels to do some group events.

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

While I havent played GW2 in a month or so and just logged in last week to see the holloween event, I am a little surprised by some of the posts for this video. Guess I’ve been relying on the hosts for how peachy keen GW2 has been.

http://twitter.com/Khelendross Chris Black

I predicted that Arenanet would add raids (but not vertical progression). This dungeon I think will be sort of like a dungeon for all types of players. I suspect what they mean is something like Darkness Falls in DAOC. If you guys will remember a couple of the former Mythic (when it was its own company) devs are working on GW2.

For those unfamiliar with Darkness Falls it worked like this. It was a massively huge dungeon that connected the three realms. In DAOC it was had open access to whoever controlled the majority of the objectives in RvR. Now this was in fact a tiered PVP dungeon. There was special currency in this zone which allowed you to buy gear and it was for all levels. The first few floors of the dungeon could be done solo or with a small group. There was even a floor for max level that could be done with just 2 or 3 people. At this point the 3 realms seperate areas converge and then you progress into group content. 5 to 10 people could do some of these bosses. And then finally the the higher level demon bosses were raid content and the final boss Legion was for well over 50 people (it wasn’t uncommon for Legion raids to be well over 100 people). There was another similar boss that was a rare spawn.

Now I don’t think this dungeon will be linked to WvsW, but this may be sort of a trial to see if people like this sort of content. If its popular I can see them working in a WvsW controlled dungeon that has pvp enabled. In Darkness Falls part of the fun was if the dungeon changed hands while you were on your way to Legion the other faction could organize a raid and wipe you. It was also common for stealthers to move to another realm’s spawn area and try to gank solo players.

I think people are looking at the idea of a dungeon getting harder in concrete terms of it being a instance. I think it will be a open world dungeon and I don’t think it will be tied down to say “5 man”. The biggest issue with GW2 right now is they can’t really support raids with the current game structure (UI etc). Maybe that will be snuck in with this update?

http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Interesting, you can see some of that in the way WvW maps and the jumping puzzle dungeon are interlaced.

SaksMan

lookie lookie… GW2 also sponsors Gamebreaker…I guess we know why GW2 gets all the gamebreaker love… pay to podcast!!!!

DoctorOverlord

Well with the Lost Shore info being revealed now we know the new PvE mechanic is not a raid but an endless dungeon which is still 5 man. I’m actually glad to hear that, I know some people want to see large group raids in GW2 but I think it’s nice to see an MMO that doesn’t slavishly follow all of the standard tropes.

I’m still hoping they introduce mounts into the game in some fashion. I miss not having options for sparkle ponies.

Guildcast The Guild Wars 2 Show Ep 48 Hawks & Yetis

Last Stand At Southsun May 28th

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

This Week in MMO Ep 144:
WildStar, Rift, Dust 514

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