Gaming: When Guild Wars 2 disappoints

I've tried to write this post a number of times in order to express my disappointment in and frustration with the new "Feature Pack" that Guild Wars 2 released on April 15, 2014. It's taken me nine days to personally digest the monumental game changes, sort through public opinion of them, and boil it all down into something that makes sense to me.

Then I realized that through out the whole process one important question remained unanswered. "Why?" Why did the development team at ArenaNet feel these changes had to be made? Sure, they gave a myriad of reasons in the teaser articles they shared under the guise of keeping us informed. Those reasons ranged from the typical need to balance the game to untypical need to keep our armor from clipping during combat. In fact, pre-release the game developers seemed very free with information, as if they wanted us to understand what was going to happen to the game. Looking back now, I see that those articles are full of just enough of the right kind of information to head off a pre-release revolt.

I have eight characters. Seven of them are below the maximum level of 80. Thanks to the reengineering of traits, I now have no desire to level them the rest of the way to 80. My sense of progression, my sense of accomplishment, has been completely wiped out. If I wanted to grind levels, I'd go back to Lineage II! The really sad thing is, though, that when I heard about having to hunt grandmaster traits in the open world a la the original Guild Wars, I was very excited. I loved the thrill of finding the boss, killing it, and taking it's elite skill for my own. How much fun would it be to do that in Guild Wars 2? Well, not much, to be honest. Join a zerg (if you're lucky enough to be on at event's scheduled time - because everything's scheduled now), auto-attack, and go get a snack. No thrill. No excitement. Whooo, you got the grandmaster trait. Whoopee. Pretty soon I'll be able to face-roll the keyboard and win the game!

One group this "Feature Pack" has shined a lot of light on are the role players. I'm not a role player myself but I feel for them and the fact that their communities, and role playing in the game in general, have been shredded by the institution of the mega-servers. Not only are they are being trolled (sometimes rather rudely, too), but they've lost the ability to tell the stories they want, how they want, when they want, and with whom they want. They can't meet up with friends or guild mates to role play because the mega-server has spread them across various shards with no way to sync up except to log in and out repeatedly. Even then there is no guarantee they'll all make it to the same shard.

I'm not even going to go into the new wardrobe, dye, transmutation, and town clothes fiasco except to ask, "Why?"

Why, ArenaNet? What was the thinking behind the redesign of these game systems? As professionals, you should know that to take away a player's sense of progression in a game is a huge, HUGE, no-no. You should also know that messing with the cosmetic elements of the game is also a huge no-no. As an aspiring game and narrative designer, I'd love to know what the thought process was behind these changes.

As an avid player that loves Guild Wars 2, I'd love to see these changes rolled back. Please. Give back my reason to pla

Gaming: Interview with Angel Leigh McCoy of ArenaNet

Recently, I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Angel Leigh McCoy, a narrative designer at ArenaNet, who is currently working on Guild Wars 2. She has written about the Asurans and helped develop the new Sylvari race. Outside of ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 she is the head editor of WilyWriters.com and a published author with a penchant for horror and dark fantasy.

Follow me behind the cut for the interview and a look into how art influences games and game writing!

An Analysis of Game Balance/Ramping in a Video Game: Skill Balance in Guild Wars (MMORPG for the PC)

Positives:
+ Prevents a set of skills (a build) for any one class from becoming overpowered and over used.
+ Promotes diversity in skill builds as players create custom builds that fit their play style instead of relying on a premade build that most others are using.
+ Balanced skills allow the players to surprise their opponents by using less popular skills successfully.
+ Balanced skills remove the ability to abuse a specific skill build to farm NPCs that drop certain items. This stops the game’s economy from being flooded with the items and helps keep inflation in check.

Negatives:
- If one class’s skills are overpowered then there will be an overabundance of that class in the game. The game offers no challenge to the class’s abilities.
- Balancing skills can break good builds that aren’t overpowered or abused requiring the player to redesign their skill bar and, sometimes, even replace weapons, insignias and runes. This can be quite expensive.
- Balancing some skills can break or decrease the usefulness of others. On the contrary, sometimes balancing those skills cause others to become overpowered.
- Relearning how to effectively use a newly balanced skill or creating a good build with newly balanced skills can be time consuming and have a bit of a learning curve depending on the changes made.

Thoughts:
~ A lot of time players complain because a certain skill or skill set seems overpowered to them. It’s actually not overpowered. More than likely it is that they either lack the skill to play or came up against a player who is more skillful.
~ Some skills are identical to each other. The duplicate skills came with one of the additional campaigns to provide those missing one or more of the campaigns with the basic skills all classes had. So, if a player has all three campaigns then they will have duplicated skills. This can effect skill balance in gameplay because one player may only have one campaign and therefore no duplicate skills while an opposing player may have two campaigns and so two duplicate skills. This gives the player with duplicate skills two opportunities to use the skill where the previous player has only one opportunity.
~ PvP and PvE are so different that many skills need to be split into a PvP and PvE version to address the different situations. I find it interesting that a skill that is balanced perfectly for PvE may be considered over or under powered for PvP. This is a fine example of AI versus player skill when it comes to gameplay.
~ Some classes are the main focus of skill balances, like the Dervish, because of their prominence in PvP. ArenaNet tries to keep the PvP playing field as level as possible. Unfortunately this means that classes that are not prominent in PvP, such as the Monk, do not get much attention.

Would Like:
* Skill descriptions can be a bit unclear at times and rebalancing doesn’t help. Often I’ll be looking at a skill wondering what had changed. I know that the developers post blogs addressing the changes but this does nothing for me in game. So, I’d like for rebalanced skills to have a more clear description of what they now do. I’d also like a way to compare pre-balance skill to the post-balance skill to judge the changes and decide if the skill is still worthy of my use.
* I’d like classes that aren’t as prominent in PvP, such as the Monk, to receive some skill balance attention. They really need it as their healing and protection prayers are in a major need of a tweak.

Credit where credit is due:
Various. (2007-2011). Guild wars official wiki. Retrieved from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

Various. (2003-2011). Guild Wars. Retrieved from http://www.guildwars.com/

A Highly Rated Video Game - Guild Wars (MMORPG for the PC)

I used Gamespot's Top Rated PC Games List to choose a game for my analysis of a highly rated video game. Guild Wars was rated a 9.2 and, while it's not the highest rated game I've played, it is my favorite. The fact that I'm a huge fan of Guild Wars made its choice for this analysis that much easier. I tried to be objective in my analysis but it was difficult considering how much I like the game.