Bits & Pieces of… Guild Wars 2! (and Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire)

ArenaNet just announced their second expansion for Guild Wars 2, a game which might be living a love-hate relationship with for various reasons, personal or objective enough. I was immediately thrown into a cup of mixed feelings coming from different people with different backgrounds of playing Guild Wars in my Guild. Shout out to Zaishen Expedition! People who loved the announced content and people who weren’t so amazed by it. I liked the content they’re about to bring but as I’m one of those people that get extremely exhausted by repetition, I just left the game for another time. Probably will go back when Path of Fire hits the release and see for myself how they’ve handled the second expansion after Heart of Thorns. Then, there will be a decision for it. — I don’t pre-order anything.

Mount system will probably end up as a go to example for many other games. They serve a specific purpose rather than just a speed buff in x, y and z; their differences are not just in numbers or in appearance but in functionality which is how mounts should’ve been handled in many, especially open-world games. So having huge maps bigger than Heart of Thorns combined is a great thing and will end up with puzzles that weren’t possible up until now. I was somewhat skeptical about it, but I’m convinced after the announcement. This mount system is what Guild Wars 2 needed in exploration and puzzle solving aspect. They clearly showed how interested they are in elements other than blunt action. I believe one other game that tried to do something similar because they had a close-enough idea about mounts was Allods Online. But they eventually ended up with “war mount” system that served no purpose but lolstomp opponents in contested areas. Which was one of the reasons why it was hit hard by a scary decrease in population and ended up changing their business model and completely eradicated third party publishers. I should probably check it out after all these years.

I had a weird decision in 2012, either I was going to buy World of WarCraft: Mists of Pandaria or I was going to play Guild Wars 2. I chose Pandaria, no regrets. Was a great expansion; had a lot more to offer and I mean actually offering unlike Warlords of Draenor, a mobile app that had nothing to do with anything ever. Surely a linear game with some non-linear choices to make and evolving its gameplay around instanced content as the playerbase including me finding it desirable. On the other hand, Guild Wars 2 was a unique experience for many many people. From how it handles the User Interface to how it handled instanced progression as well as shared progression and some choice in decision making process. Ended up as an attention grabbing experience and an amazing example of how human beings like virtual progression as a form of entertainment. You either like the challenge you take up while trying to get to a Vista Point or you like having the fruits of your endeavor. OR, you just find yourself in need of getting one more point, for more spoils to conquer.

There’s this thing about Guild Wars 2. We had this conversation the other day in our Guild and people seemed to agree with the notion that Guild Wars 2 isn’t necessarily a newbie-friendly game but not because of gameplay and leveling reasons, it’s way too unique of a game to point out the issue. I found myself agreeing with this argument from different, bit technical stand points.

One of the strong arguments was game being too fragmented for a typical MMORPG. From various features of gear pieces to a cluster of UI it has to offer and the functionality of various elements. For example, the Market screen is actually an in-game browser and being a client it that loads content, translating it into the UI you got used to. That’s not an uncommon practice. But it doesn’t feel like as if it’s a part of the game. Because it’s not, it’s a fragment on top of an activity that exists on attached in the eyes of the user. But it’s fine, because it works and it works as it was intended. — Same things could be said about the Hero Screen since it’s also a fragmented piece apart from the gameplay, that exists of it’s own but updates itself according to you. How about Traits or Specializations etc.

That’s how a game works? Yes, but the point here is not why UI was designed in such a way. The point here is that there’s a baseplate for layer over layer development. Adding an extra form of progression while keeping everything below intact and is a huge gateway for newcomers. That’s actually one of the main problems with World of WarCraft today. Cataclysm added on top this problem while trying to solve it by different progression enhancing systems. Nowadays they’re trying to simplify and fix the problems caused by previous expansions, especially with currencies and gear progression. I assume. Wasn’t paying much attention to news lately. But another example would be Warframe. An amazing game, the development is making it even more astonishing with every update, a mind blowing lore that sucks you in but a complete mess under the hood. It’s so gated, even after investing hundreds of hours and a good chunk of money into it you feel like missing a lot. Because something gets overhauled, because some other form or progression is introduced and because UI does absolutely nothing to tell you about your position in your progression towards absolute void that is your goal.

These aren’t games that are mechanically incompetent or poorly designed. They’re well-thought and well-executed titles. But they’re overdeveloped, over sighted and overthought titles. The uniqueness is one thing and trying to be unique is another.

I got derailed. Alright, gonna wrap this up, because it’s 23:32 here right now and I’m getting dizzy. I’ll eventually end up in a place where I don’t know what the hell I’m writing about.

Here’s the point: Minimalism is not having just-enough UI with minimal indicators, designing your fragments in a way which they have to communicate on demand or having hardware acceleration where it doesn’t have to exist. Minimalism is keeping your design simple enough while handling a complicated architecture.

Path of Exile has a minimal UI, has some flaws with unnecessary layers of progression; might end up as a progression system graveyard but I highly doubt that since Grinding Gear Games knows what they’re doing. Their approach to a responsive UI with enough exposition on the very start ends up with a thirst of exploration in newcomers. Guild Wars 2 on the other hand, does hand over a chunk full of points of interests for the new player but this non-linear training ends up with question marks while the certain design choices especially of UI ends up being a punishment.

I’m not trying to say Guild Wars 2 has huge problems, these are merely minor annoyances as newcomers end up trying much harder to understand this beautiful looking game with amazing event systems that offer more immersion than many, many other competitors. — However, Guild Wars 2 is not a user-centric game at the end. For better or worse. It’s good when you have a group of people but otherwise… Yeah. If anything, Guild Wars 2 is a co-op game and perhaps co-op only.

I still love it, though. I’m still amazed by it. I still love what it has to offer. That ain’t going to change any time soon.

For me, in every single game, the problem is repetition. I can’t fix that.

Have a lovely night!