(MMO) The Unwinnable Battle
You just can't win with MMOs. And I'm not talking about the evolving gameplay and additions to content making the path for players endless. No, I mean for the designers/coders/whatevers on the other side of the affair. Any truly "massively multiplayer" game has, practically by definition, too large a player base to please everyone.
This came to mind when a friend pointed out Arenanet's solicitation of community feedback on their "living story" content. commented that he liked it, but felt excluded by the elements that were hard - like some specific mechanics-heavy 5-man dungeon fights. I can totally feel for him, because I've been right there lately, wondering if we can get a group of five together who 1) won't have to leave after half an hour and 2) won't go down like wet tissue paper before boss fights. While I probably could get into these encounters with groups in the other guild, I don't care quite enough to work at it, so I've missed things like the Aetherblade base and the new Scarlet path in Sorrow's Embrace.
That said, I'm highly aware that this is only one viewpoint. And in that he takes the time to comment on the official forums and is pushing for more "easier" content, it's probably a minority - at least in my experience, the people active and motivated to read and comment online tend to be the ones putting more time into games and urging for harder things. And while I understand where he's coming from, I haven't always been there myself. Heck, I enjoyed playing WoW way more than any other MMO before or since when I was part of a group that both could and did have success in dungeons and raids. Back then, I found GW (1) absolutely boring because there were essentially no mechanics or tricks to the PVE content. Push your buttons and watch things die unless you get overwhelmed, in which case things are reversed - snooze-worthy.
I was never a top-tier player. I never did much (at-tier) heroic raiding or anything, but I still enjoyed having actual challenges to overcome. The losses could be demoralizing, but even then I was more interested and engaged because I felt like part of a team playing toward a goal. Now, I just don't have that. And so, I'm not fully sure what I want to see out of a game because I find what I am missing most isn't technically offered by the game.
So... what would I want from the living story itself? Eh...
- I would like to see more cohesion and feel more included. The Molten Alliance felt like prelude to something, the Aetherblades felt like they came out of nowhere, and then Scarlet is revealed as being behind them both in a manner that feels almost more like a retcon - she's all super special herself, but it's unclear how or why all these groups are actually following her craziness while nothing about it has felt particularly personal to me. The election was an interesting idea, but while we got a little face time with Kiel prior, Gnashblade seemed to come largely out of nowhere.
- Mindfulness of technical issues. The Tequatl revamp was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it runs smack into weaknesses of the game system, with full instances pushing people to overflows in peak hours (disrupting that encounter as well as others like guild bounties) and any off-peak encounters being essentially an automatic failure. We ran into this with some of the climactic battles in the Lost Shores event as well, magnified by the limited time frame.
I don't really know what the solution is. Any new, especially temporary, event is going to funnel a lot of people into a small area. And as much as I think being able to play cooperative PVE without grouping is a highlight of the game, it breaks down at a certain point. Encounters become trivialized. Server instances break up groups and divide people between "haves" who make it into a main, full instance and "have nots" who don't. At that point, it stops being fun.
- While I don't know how practical it is for Living Story updates, what I find myself really wanting to see is more development of the player characters, the Pact, and the Dragons. The Personal Story had its flaws, but I was far more invested in all of that (including the Dragons we haven't directly seen) than I'm likely to ever be in Scarlet.
This came to mind when a friend pointed out Arenanet's solicitation of community feedback on their "living story" content. commented that he liked it, but felt excluded by the elements that were hard - like some specific mechanics-heavy 5-man dungeon fights. I can totally feel for him, because I've been right there lately, wondering if we can get a group of five together who 1) won't have to leave after half an hour and 2) won't go down like wet tissue paper before boss fights. While I probably could get into these encounters with groups in the other guild, I don't care quite enough to work at it, so I've missed things like the Aetherblade base and the new Scarlet path in Sorrow's Embrace.
That said, I'm highly aware that this is only one viewpoint. And in that he takes the time to comment on the official forums and is pushing for more "easier" content, it's probably a minority - at least in my experience, the people active and motivated to read and comment online tend to be the ones putting more time into games and urging for harder things. And while I understand where he's coming from, I haven't always been there myself. Heck, I enjoyed playing WoW way more than any other MMO before or since when I was part of a group that both could and did have success in dungeons and raids. Back then, I found GW (1) absolutely boring because there were essentially no mechanics or tricks to the PVE content. Push your buttons and watch things die unless you get overwhelmed, in which case things are reversed - snooze-worthy.
I was never a top-tier player. I never did much (at-tier) heroic raiding or anything, but I still enjoyed having actual challenges to overcome. The losses could be demoralizing, but even then I was more interested and engaged because I felt like part of a team playing toward a goal. Now, I just don't have that. And so, I'm not fully sure what I want to see out of a game because I find what I am missing most isn't technically offered by the game.
So... what would I want from the living story itself? Eh...
- I would like to see more cohesion and feel more included. The Molten Alliance felt like prelude to something, the Aetherblades felt like they came out of nowhere, and then Scarlet is revealed as being behind them both in a manner that feels almost more like a retcon - she's all super special herself, but it's unclear how or why all these groups are actually following her craziness while nothing about it has felt particularly personal to me. The election was an interesting idea, but while we got a little face time with Kiel prior, Gnashblade seemed to come largely out of nowhere.
- Mindfulness of technical issues. The Tequatl revamp was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it runs smack into weaknesses of the game system, with full instances pushing people to overflows in peak hours (disrupting that encounter as well as others like guild bounties) and any off-peak encounters being essentially an automatic failure. We ran into this with some of the climactic battles in the Lost Shores event as well, magnified by the limited time frame.
I don't really know what the solution is. Any new, especially temporary, event is going to funnel a lot of people into a small area. And as much as I think being able to play cooperative PVE without grouping is a highlight of the game, it breaks down at a certain point. Encounters become trivialized. Server instances break up groups and divide people between "haves" who make it into a main, full instance and "have nots" who don't. At that point, it stops being fun.
- While I don't know how practical it is for Living Story updates, what I find myself really wanting to see is more development of the player characters, the Pact, and the Dragons. The Personal Story had its flaws, but I was far more invested in all of that (including the Dragons we haven't directly seen) than I'm likely to ever be in Scarlet.
They blew all their wad on ooh and ahh dragons being back in Tyria. Now that you've faced off with a few, uhm.. crap.. out of "big bads" so.. politics and crazy people?
ReplyDeleteSort of. The revamped Tequatl fight is pretty impressive, but that is 1) a fight with a dragon lieutenant and 2) a recurring open world event with weak tethers to storyline. The Lion's Arch counsel election was neat and can potentially have ramifications down the line, but as I commented, one candidate had foundation in story events prior and one really didn't. Scarlet has some potential as a villainess, but it isn't fleshed out well, especially in the game (unless, of course, I'm missing something that played out in the dungeons). She had a decent back-and-forth in the queen's pavilion encounter, but as near as I can figure, she's sort of nihilist, so attracting all the followers makes little sense and her "I'm a genius who's mastered all these sciences in no time" bit makes her less interesting to me as a character rather than more convincing as a threat. But they haven't touched on what was the main "personal" story, no. And I can sort of see why. That is more expansion material than event material because it presumes the events in the personal story have happened - which isn't the case for anyone who hasn't finished it. Low-mid level characters can participate in at least a good chunk of the living story events without any problem because they exist on their own. Start adding story that's written with the assumption Zhaitan is dead, and you basically exclude any sub-80 characters in a story/continuity sense. I can see why they might be reluctant to do that. It would be more interesting for me (I like story), but I'm just one person. I doubt my interests represent any clear majority in the game.
ReplyDeleteJust one person whose opinions I value highly. :I
ReplyDelete