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Because GW2 offers choice, people will see want they want to see...
Vesavius
Member RarePosts: 7,908
...and, while I get that some simply don't like what's on offer (which is fine), I have a feeling a lot of the time that is what we are seeing on these forums.
If People want to see grind, 'quest hubs', map markers, zerging, linear play, whatever else, then that's all they will see.
They will not see progression through natural flow, non marked events, small group organised action, freeform play, or whatever else.
I have a feeling why there is somewhat of the disconnect here on these forums as shown by a handful of dissatisified (but very active and very vocal) posters and the game.... simply because, simply, GW2 allows the player to see what they want to see and quite a few are failing to see beyond the standard themepark conditioning.
If you go in expecting to see WoW it is extremly possible to relate what you see to that game and shout loudly that it's the same old in a different skin. BUT, I think, if you go in prepared to adapt, take your time, and allow the game to unfold itself to you it pays off.
What's the point of this thread? Just an expression of thought really... what are yours?
Comments
Well to be fair, I think if you're playing a game and not enjoying it, something is probably going wrong. :c
I can't play a game very long after I stop enjoying it.
There's lots of games I can't stand the thought of playing, but lots of people do, so I figure I must be doing SOMETHING wrong. Thankfully it doesn't bother me that I'm no good at enjoying say.... sports games.
I save my skill point purchases for critical enjoyment skills for other types of games.
No, it really just isn't. But you thinking that is obviously an example of what I am talking about.
You are seeing just what you want to see and stopping there.
This easily could be, for example, a discussion about the viability of choice as core design for the mass market, amongst other things. Throwing up fashionable memes from the 'net is the easy route though I guess.
"The game is not bad, you are playing it wrong".
This can be said about every freaking game ever made.
I actually recognised in the OP that the game is not to everyone's taste and that is valid.
No. They just may not like the game. It has nothing to do with playing it wrong.
Also, you really don't have to think that differently to enjoy this game if coming from WoW or any other themepark based game.
Played WOW for 5 years and EVE for 4 and yet i fail to see what is so deep and complex about GW2. A lot of players are capable of enjoying all type of games really.
GW2 is a fun game but not all that deep as some of the over the top fans try to make it and that is what is getting on nerves of real fans like Sylvari (i think he is the most honest and level headed GW2 fan around here)
But anyways this is another version of 'you are doing it wrong' topic which has been posted and closed by mods 4 times already.
Bite Me
You see, THIS is a perfect example of what I am saying in the OP.
Imm, I think, has this opinion because the game gives him the choice to not think differently and just play the way he is used to. So that's what he sees when he logs in. He sees what he expects to see and dosen't see the other choices on offer, so the experience is judged accordingly.
This is fine, I don't knock anyone for a chosen playstyle, but it underlines why you have some here talking about one game and others talking about apparently a pretty different one.
He mayeb dosen't even recognise that there is a more subtle experience then this on offer and so he judges it by what he knows. He simply does not believe what he dosen't see, and there is the dissconnect that I am refering to.
(Again, for maybe the third time, I have recognise fully that some may just not like the game)
I mean wrong as in the sense of 'wrong way to enjoy it'.
Because that's the point to games. To enjoy yourself.
If you're not enjoying yourself, something definitely went wrong!
If you don't like a game, then you're the wrong audience for it.
I dunno. It makes sense in my head! I might be sleep deprived.
I am not using 'wrong' in this sense as a pejorative, by the way. Somebody is not 'wrong' because they are a failure. I am wrong for Justin Beiber's music, but I don't consider that to be MY failing. Or, if it is my failure, it is not one that bothers me, no more than I am bothered by my continued failure to have my head explode, for example.
The way I'm thinking of it, and probably explaining it poorly, is that if you look at it with the right light, 'not liking a game' and 'playing it wrong' don't have to be that far off. Maybe you have to play it in a way that you don't play games, or in a way that doesn't appeal to you, to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't HAVE to be an insult, unless you take it that way.
Am I making sense? I should be in bed.
How can I play it any differently to other mmo's? I create a character, go explore for some quests (DE are still quests) in the world to do and have some fun.
How else can you play this game? You can level by crafting. However the crafting isn't anymore deep or complex than any other TP MMO.
Crafting was okay.
Then they removed chocolate from every single store in the world, and now you only find chocolate on the corpses of bandits and other ne'er do wells.
BANDITS STOLE ALL THE CHOCOLATE IN THE WORLD.
In order to craft you must kill horribly evil pirates who stole from all the sweet shops!
... I think that makes this game have the best crafting ever, in the existence of all crafting systems that have ever happened, simply because it's the most logical reason to dispense so much murder, that I have ever seen in a video game.
I can agree to this.
gw2 is different yes more free flow.
it is a world with his stories and lore, a themepark like some call it.
but still it got also it's sandbox parts in it.
you don't need to grind to progress , you don't need to follow the storyline all the time to progress.
You don't need to read through a long pack of text to follow the story and lore in the world, no its told through interesting video's with you're char in it. also the storyline got multiple routes to go through and try. giving you choices to make.
if you go through area you here the life of npc's around , some come to you for help . wich you can with to trigger events.
jumping puzzles in land .
being able to play and gain experience in low level areas while you're a much higher level. still being it a challenge to do. I got a char level 30 and he got there only doing stuff in the level 1-15 area's wich is great.
there is so much more if you just look on beyond the old "wow" stuf. it is not wow in other skin.
as for the other posts of bug this, bug that.
no mmorpg has released clean of bugs up to now. wow had even a very bad start years ag from what i've heard.
no mmorpg can be tested complete all area's all features , on all different kind of pc's before release.
yes there are bugs , but i find that areanet is doing a good job in it to clear them and doing also many improvements to systems they had at release.
simple example to this is on the crafting.
at release we had a bank where you can deposit materials in for crafting.
a nice button in the inventory to drop them straight in the deposit any place any time.
only problem when you want to craft something you need to get materials out of the bank into the inventory during crafting to be able to craft with it., now last week or so they upgrade that you've got straight acces to craft from out you're account bank.
only for discovering new recipes you need to get the materials out but for the rest this is a great improvement.
so people look beyond the old themeparks and adept.
don't start looking for bugs , because if you're looking for them you will find them . look for the other things. and if you come across a bug . report it and let them fix it.
not cry it out on the forums.
I was under the assumption you mean't that certain people played the game wrong. Not the game wasn't their cup of tea.
I think its bedtime.
But when people say 'you are playing it wrong' doesn't it contradicts Anet's own philoshpy of freedom and play it however you like? at one hand you are saying it GW2 offers freedom and choices on the other hand in same topic if you say you are playing wrong that is why you are not enjoying it....seriously..how does that even make any sense?
There is no right ot wrong way to play a game. One can not like the game even after playing it in a manner you consider it to be the right way. Is that really that impossible? but then that would be dictating and telling players how to play which is again contradictory to original point of choice and freedom.
Bite Me
Actually, I think if you try hard enough you can play ANY game in a way you won't enjoy!
For example, there are people who have played say... Final Fantasy 4 and beaten it with a party consisting of nothing but white mages. For them, they enjoyed it, and that is the right way (For them to enjoy it).
If I tried to play it that way, i would stab myself in the eye with a fork. Since I dislike being stabbed in the eye with a fork, I would consider that the wrong way to play it.
It's possible that for some people, there IS no right way to play GW2.
I certainly haven't figured out the right way to play football games, for example.
The way =I= look at it (Ignore everybody else's way for a moment), to me, the right way to play a game, is the way where you enjoy it.
Because that's the point to a game. If somebody plays a game with cheat codes so they can get all the stuff, and they like being awesomely powerful, then that's the right way for them (Assuming a single player game for a moment, let's not get into the issue of cheating to ruin other people's gaming experience). For many other people, that would be TOTALLY the wrong way to play the game, and sucks all the fun right out of it.
So, to reiterate and encapsulate my entire point.... by the way I structure things in my head...
Playing a game a way and enjoying it = playing it right.
Playing a game a way and not enjoying it = playing it wrong.
It's not a personal judgement on the person. Games aren't that important. Playing a game wrong doesn't mean the person is wrong, bad, improper, or anything, it just means that you're playing it in such a way that you're not getting enjoyment out of it, and you should either switch how you play it, or stop. Or suffer for some reason, if you're into that, hey, I'm not judging people's gaming tastes, and I'm not going to judge people's masochistic kinks.
For reference, I play most MMORPGs wrong. It's why I don't play them. They're not made for me, and I'm not made for them. People explain what they do to enjoy these MMORPGs, and my thought patterns tend to fall into either 'No way in hell am I doing what you just said, and even if I did, it wouldn't work for me', or 'I'm just not seeing it. This must be a difference in brain chemistry, but I'm not going to torture myself to find out'.
...The same can be said about any game though. Some people see quests hubs as not being a grind. The choice really does nothing to what people see of the game. Heck, you could claim that it forces grind by making you PvE if you want to WvW otherwise get no where quick.
GW2 offers just as much choice as other games despite what you bring it out to be. Other games have had the exploring experience before for some time now, points of interest being the only more 'advanced' version. Zerging on here (Which does happen, mind you a lot) is something other games have to.
What your claiming you can change the name from GW2 and say practically any game and make that claim.
Haha..i don't know why someone would try so hard to not enjoy something but i am sure it is possible.
However, i feel that a personal can simply not enjoy the game even after playing in whatever way 'others' consider to be the right way. I don't think one has to go completely out of its way to make game not fun. Moreover, in GW2 everything self explanatory/ One has to just open the map and everything is just there. So it is hard to mess things up.
What i am saying is that msot of the time a person not enjoying himself is automaticaly by default considered as someone 'playing it wrong'. Even though for all we know he is playing GW2 exactly the way devs intended it to be played.
Bite Me
Too much freedom and you make too many poor choices possible, such as bad stat point distribution in games such as Diablo 2. Sure, it's the way they chose to spend their attribute points but it will certainly impact their gameplay negatively as they may find it too hard to progress or even use level appropriate gear.
You can't blame the player for the poor choices, which is why stat distribution in that way is dead nowadays, at least in Diablo 3. Heck, this might even be the reason sandbox MMOs are such a small niche compared to themeparks, one can easily end up playing EVE in a way he/she will get bored quickly and quit only to months later in another attempt to play it actually find a pleasant way to play and subscribe to the game for years.
In Guild Wars 2 to make a few examples you could spend too much or too little time in an area, resulting in an unintended game experience for DEs, the frequency of those events is hugely unbalanced, there are areas they happen too fast and end up repeating too soon. Meanwhile there are areas with bugged active events and events that won't even trigger so the player doesn't find it attractive at all to never find a working active DE. Finally you also have the scenario of someone doing their zone checklist in the most efficient way possible, rushing through the map and never finding a DE on their way, quickly finding themselves underleveled for the content (this initially happened to me on my first zone a few times but never again since I decided to do all maps by order of level range and not in an efficient way, I spend like 4-6 hours in a zone).
Who cares ? Milion pre-orders, 400.000 players on day-1 even before release and servers full of people + crowder doverflow servers prove that their narrow minded thinking is not impressive.
We're having a PnP game. Bob joins.
The party starts in a basement. There's a kobold. We agree a strategy and kill it! It drops a hammer.
After much argument Bob convinces us to stay, as the kobold will respawn and we can get another hammer... 10 minutes later the GM finally agrees to respawn the hammer if Bob will leave the basement.
The party takes the new hammer, and moves outside. It's snowing, there's a temple in the distance with a strange sound eminating - it seems to be chanting... there are a pair of kobolds that seem to be preparing a yak to make the journey, a cover of one caravan flaps invitingly....
Bob turns to the party and says "I've a great idea on power-leveling"... the GM starts crying.
-> It is entirely possible to "play a game wrong".
Really? You think Rift, as an example, offered as much choice in how you approached the game as GW2 does?
Also, you don't think it is possible for people to be conditioned by what they are used to into not seeing choice?
Can I ask what game you consider your 'main' and what type you normally play?
(Not bagging on Rift here btw, before we are forced to go down that road... I respect Trion as a dev and thin Rift as it stands today is a good game).
People just like different things and what some see as grind, others see as additional long-term objectives you could achieve in a month or two. One such thing is dungeon armor. Some think of it as a goal, while others (including me) think of it as a reward. Those who belong to the former group will think it's grindy and they're not factually wrong.
The bottom line is that GW2 isn't for everyone. No game is. Those who don't like it usually aren't playing it wrong, even though some people probably are. For their sake, GW2 needs a better tutorial, because old school "learn it yourself" doesn't work well nowadays.
But you do... It's been discussed to death in game chat about people dieing in story mode or explorable mode in dungeons.
People are just thinking it wrong... Pepople expect the "ordinary" tank/spank with few heals thrown around at them and they enter the wipe-fest which lasts for 3 hours until they decide to split. It's really hard to adjust at first and it gets frustrating just because people think this game is the same in mechanics when it's really nothing like we've played before.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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This, pretty much. I love GW2, but in many ways it feels like WoW, or any other theme park. I am having fun, and I like the pricing model. But to say anything is earth shatteringly new or deep, well, I just don't see it, and I am a fan of the game.
DEs fell way *way* short of what they could have and should have been. I have several friends who talked about DEs like they were going to change the face of MMORPGs, and all the ones I have been in pretty much feel exactly like PQs and RIFTs. Skills and weapon switching, fun, but also, don't feel like they are breaking any molds here.
I love playing this game, and for the time am having a lot of fun. But I really do not feel like I am plunging ahead into virgin MMO territory. Maybe a little deeper than some MMOs, but no olympic sized swimming pool, for sure.