30th September 2010, 5:29 PM
Quote:I'm playing all these games right now, I'm not going to swoon over Guild Wars for getting their first if both it and another game do exactly the same thing.
... How does this matter? I mean, honestly, you're actually saying that all games should be held to the same standards, no matter when they came out? That's patently ridiculous. When a game came out matters. Being the first game to do something matters. It doesn't matter if I haven't played the game before, if I know it's doing something no game had done before, it's potentially impressive for that.
Considering how much I've gotten into classic games over the last five years or so, there are many examples of that I could give...
Quote:My problem with Guild Wars is that the explorable areas are absolutely massive and rarely have anything in them other than monsters. They feel massive and empty, and lack the sorts of things that I liked about exploring in most RPGs [NPCs to talk to, quests to find, dungeons to fight through, and good loot to pick up]. Guild Wars just doesn't have that.
As you say, that isn't a problem with Guild Wars. That's a problem with the entire genre, and no other MMO I know of does things any differently from GW -- get quests in a town area, then go out and do them. That's how GW works, with modifications (the story-based missions, for example, aren't like anything in most MMOs, but they're one of the things I like best about GW), and it's how everything in the genre works.
I should say, though (because it's one of the many things I am very worried about, conceptually), the upcoming Guild Wars 2 tries to change that. See this: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/
We'll see how it works, but they're definitely trying something new again. Guild Wars 2 really is a new game, and not a sequel to Guild Wars in many basic ways. Bad for big GW fans like me, good for ... um, their potential WoW/other MMO playing prospective audience I guess? Yeah, I don't quite get it, but it's what they're doing.
Anyway, I agree -- one of the biggest problems with the MMO/online RPG genre as a whole is the lack of gameplay variety. All you do in MMOs is kill things, and yes, it definitely gets old after a while. Even in GW, I definitely get bored sometimes, and that is why I've played it off and on for years now -- like all online RPGs it has little variety.
I do wish that there was a way for online RPGs to have the kinds of puzzles and conversations of a single player RPG, but sadly it seems impossible. GW2 for instance is trying to make quest-getting and the world more dynamic, but I don't see any sign of puzzles or dialog trees... somehow they just don't happen in MMOs, just go back and kill more stuff. I can understand this to a degree -- writing a good story that would branch enough to keep MMO players occupied would be borderline impossible -- but still, why not have an online RPG with puzzles and stuff in the dungeons, beyond the extremely basic stuff you see in these games...
Some of the GW EotN special dungeons try to mix things up more, and implement some basic puzzles. They do somewhat succeed, and those are some of the most interesting areas in the game, but they really do require other humans (the EotN dungeons are hard!), so it can definitely take a while to find a good group, and you still mostly do just kill stuff. Still, for an online RPG, they definitely tried there, and it's a good start at least...
But yes, until the genre can come up with ways to have more of the gameplay variety single player D&D-style RPGs have, online RPGs will not be the conceptual equal of games like Torment, BGII, etc.
Quote:My biggest gripe about Guild Wars is the exactly that: wide open but empty. You can wander through some massive zone for a dozen hours and find nothing but monsters to battle for simple loot and minimal experience. I simply don't care for that at all. Other MMOs at least have other people wandering around to give the semblance of life to the world.
"Empty" is one of the last possible words I could ever use to describe Guild Wars. It's so ridiculously far off base that I can't think of any way to justify it apart from if you don't like fighting monsters, but you play MMOs so it can't be that.
I mean, the zones are huge, but varied. There are things in every zone you won't see anywhere else, the art design (as I've said) is amazing and always helps keep me interested, the basic gameplay is brilliant, there is a lot of variety of enemies, encounters, and areas to explore... I have no idea what you want. I mean, there is a world map. You can warp straight to any city, outpost, or mission within your current campaign, or go to another campaign (Prophecies/EotN, Factions, Nightfall) or to the Battle Isles multiplayer area with ease.
OHJ yeah, and of course you can't wander a zone for "a dozen hours", the zones aren't anywhere near that large.
Also, if you want to play with other people, try to find a group to play in... it can be annoying sometimes, waiting, but if you have some quest, mission, etc. you want to do with others, with patience it's usually possible to find others to do it with. This is particularly true for missions.
Also, of course, GW has a much stronger narrative and story than most any MMO, thanks to the missions which tell a continuing story. This is a good thing. As I've said I've always liked doing missions best with other people, thanks to the lobby areas it's not very hard to find others wanting to do the mission, and it's more fun to play in groups than just with heroes and henchmen. It is harder to have player groups for overworld exploration, aside from ones for specific quests or (in EotN) dungeons, but that makes sense because the overworld is large and expansive, and player groups would have to have a specific goal while most people just want to wander around in the overworld and do their own thing, I think.
Also, of course, as I've said, the vast, vast majority of overworld exploration is far from required. I love doing it anyway to see all the different areas and environments the designers have created, there's just so much awesome stuff to see and so much to explore, but people don't have to do that.
But anyway, GW is designed to be both a single and a multiplayer experience, and isn't an MMO. It should be compred as much to something like Diablo as to World of Warcraft. Did you dislike Diablo II's multiplayer mode because it wasn't massive, but instead you had to do everything in groups? Or Phantasy Star Online, another likely inspiration? From your description there, I would think you would...
I personally didn't find Diablo II's multiplayer very interesting at all, but I did like it single player. PSO though is a pretty good game, though like Diablo I had the most fun just playing it through once -- neither game interested me enough to make me want to play the same levels over and over and over to the point you'd have to to level up in those games. I don't care enough about collecting loot for that to interest me for that long. Both games were pretty fun the first time through, and to occasionally go back and play, but not to play for hundreds of hours. Guild Wars, however, has so much content that this isn't an issue...)
Quote:Of course, most MMOs don't. But Jade Dynasty has a feature that allows you to automatically travel directly to the point you need to be for a quest and Aika Online has a more compact world with relevant points closer together.
Um, only quests require you to travel very far to get to them, missions of course have quick-travel points on the map... only the quests, which you get in towns and do in the overworld, are different. And for those the whole point usually is to get to that point and then back, or somewhere else, so some kind of instant warp to that point would completely defeat the entire purpose of the quest.
Quote:Vindictus sidesteps that by having instanced dungeons with you and your party and all the other people present in town and at the docks. Much smaller world, everything is very compact and to the point. Avoids the massive, but empty world syndrome.
That sounds like D&D Online's system. I definitely found it (in D&DO) boring compared to GW.