What would you say made GW1 so memorable vs GW2?
1 Like
Basically the same thing that makes Diablo2 so much more iconic and memorable than Diablo3.
People can say nostalgia and whatever for Diablo2, but why not Diablo1 then if nostalgia just makes old games better?
Guildwars 2 is a VERY different game than Guildwars 1. Itās quite good in its own right, but Guildwars 1 was something really new, that felt like Diablo2 in all the right ways, while also being sort of MMO-lite without being bad in the ways just about all the MMORPGs were.
It also had really amazing PvP that made it the ācounterstrike of RPGsā. Despite not having aiming and such, it was highly skill based, twitch based, very unique. But it had a lot to do for everyone besides PvP.
While most games had the leveling and item grind, GW introduced the āachievement grindā which gave people that love to grind something to do yet without affecting the game at all for people that donāt.
GW2 is just much more like a typical MMORPG but without a monthly fee, and the PvP is not as goodā¦ which is a huge shame especially when the game is called āGuildwarsā. GW2 also seemed to die down a lot faster before its expansion and going F2P, while GW1 had people playing for years and years.
But thatās why GW2 is not going to reside in the coffers of games like GW1, Diablo2, Quake2/3, Doom, UT, Elite, and so on.
Itās not because itās not old enough (GW was 2005 which isnāt that old) itās just the games they make now are made in a way they hope reaches a wider audience with less discerning taste.
GW2 made the game far more like a typical MMORPG which is going to keep it out of those coffers. Itās not a special game. Itās just a game.
None of that really applies here though. Itās really hard to tell if you want to go more niche or more mainstream with a game like this to get the most success.
Iām just saying itās going to difficult to design long battles in a way that people feel theyāve gotten some accomplishment in the 30 minutes or 3 hours they hop in for a day.
Planetside2 has its different maps and you can come on for just 30 minutes and maybe capture a territory or two on one map(and might not even do that).
But does capturing that one territory feel like you did anything? Does it feel like it matters?
Nope.
Iām speaking as someone who was very good at Planetside2, as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXyJj611aAA
I didnāt mind that at all. I liked just going in and killing lots of people. But I knew that the way it works was going to not give the game lasting appeal, but the designers were incredibly bad and didnāt listen to people or watch the objective trends. I have a friend that works at Sony that I used to talk with which I canāt really go into about, but heard some really horrible things about what was going on.
One really fucked up thing was that the designers didnāt have any of the numbers for the balancing and such. It was all in completely illegible tables and hard coded stuff.
So instead they were using a tool I created ( http://www.ps2calc.com super outdated ) through datamining but they were didnāt know what they were doing and so had poor context of how to use those numbers and just made the game worse, while never fixing the overarching design issues.
A lasting appeal and getting people āattachedā to a game is very important with these sorts of games.
1 Like
They distilled EVE nullsec into its own game while building mechanisms in to avert the Blue Donut.
What does that tell you?
1 Like
Havenāt followed EVE lately. What does that mean?
I know nullsec are the areas where anyone can fight. Do you mean Valkyrie? Iād say thatās a totally different game thatās probably much less niche than EVE Online.
And the Blue Donut thing? One coalition capturing it all? Thatās never happened and there is no indication that it would.
Oh the success of D2 (and GW for that matter) had nothing to do with nostalgia - after all, that doesnāt have an effect until years after the fact.
The success of D2 and GW was caused by the lack of competition. Guild Wars was released in 2005. At the time, the only other MMORPG Iād even heard of which didnāt have a monthly subscription was RuneScape, and Iām not sure that game even had 3D graphics at the time, let alone any gameplay more interesting than āgrind stuffā.
Diablo 2 had Diablo to compete with, in itās genre. Since both games were made by the same company, no money was spent advertising this competitor. Oh Iām sure there were other hackānāslash games doing the rounds at the time, but again I never heard of them because they didnāt have the PR budget or word of mouth.
Personally I think Diablo 2 was a much better game than Diablo 3 and it had nothing to do with the available competition at the time. Diablo 3 was easily the worst Blizzard game Iāve ever played, I was truly disappointed with it.
3 Likes
Thatās where I heartly disagree with you.
Iāve been playing GW1 since its origins and been a great supporter of GW2 project. Had a lot of fun, until Iāve seen the end game.
What made GW2 fall down compared to GW1? It all comes down to a few answers:
- Shitty ending. And I mean it. Youāre supposed to battle a huge undead dragon, one of the end-time bringers. But the platform being on a moving airship, it was still buggy and the rushed end-development made the combat totally frustrating and uninteresting. This is also globally true for end zones that got rushed to meet the deadlines.
- Poor gameplay management when lots of player in one zone. Even with their āinstanciedā zones, players participating in world events or going in WvW (big PvP) had big problems with culling, that only got resolved last year.
- Dungeons not that fun and limited to 5 players. They removed the āhealerā character and everyone could potentially heal others / himself. However some were still better at protecting or dealing damage. This lead to regular abuse of over-efficent composition like āall warriorsā, and sadly little to no āmesmersā (a control mage we can say).
- Exploit bots. Litterally teleporting from one node resource to another, gathering in one-hit, then moving on. They heavily hurt the game economy and when ANet fixed the loopholes, others were found. It took them a while to bury all the holes.
Those (mostly) technical problems made GW2 lose quite a lot of players that never truly came back, whatever regular āstory questsā they released and whatever āget an achievement for connecting to the gameā they made.
Was the game different from other MMORPGs? I would respond yes. They tried new things, some worked and other didnāt. The dynamic events, though a bit rough on the edges, are trully an inspiration for any future MMORPG out there. World events would have been a great idea were not for the grinding and culling problem.
I enjoyed the puzzle games which is a refreshing idea and not compulsory unless you aim that 100% achievement. I had fun when leveling up, which canāt be said for quite a lot of other games.
Unfortunately, the high level game was not there, unlike GW1 where the leveling could very easily be rushed.
What makes you say so?
Well, I would agree with Keith somewhat.
I loved Diablo, it was great. I liked D2 for the MP, and playing LAN with my brother.
When I sat down to play D3, I was like, meh, Iāve played this before. I tried to rekindle the old days playing MP with my brother, but we both got disinterested rather quickly. I could also blame it on the fact that I was turning age 40 at the time. When you get to be my age, games have a hard time impressing you, you may not think so, but just wait. Itās kind of sadā¦
2 Likes
From a narrative perspective, there is this video. A bit old - server connect has been fixed for a while and Path of Exile is long released - but with valid points regardless. It shows why some describe D2 and even more D1 as āthick with ambienceā, but not D3.
Interestingly, PoE does something different but simple and rather clever to raise the tension before meeting their Butcher-like Brutus (just in case, I wonāt spoil it).
Iāll add, though, that calling D3ās story ādecentā is way too charitable; it was poor at best. (Which was a slight improvement from the pinnacle of wasteful incompetence that was unleashed on Starcraft 2ās narrative, actually.) And there were more disputable art choices than in the previous two. And also, they clearly didnāt understand the concept of D2ās Cow level.
This illustrates an important point, actually: even a minimal story can be told effectively, through other means than a wealth of ātraditionalā (cut)scenes. You can tell quite a lot about the workās universe and what happened in it through worldcrafting and presentation. A subset of āshow, donāt tellā(*).
A recent non-game example is Fury Road, where the carefully crafted setting pieces tell us as much about its universe than the story
.
The obvious example for I:B is ship design. At the simplest level, Centauran smooth, harmonious shapes tell something about them, as do SFCās utilitarian look. Beyond design, there is probably not that much to be done in a game like I:B, but still an important point to keep in mind.
(*)
Actually, Diablo and Path of Exile do ātellā as well, but avoid framing it as blunt narration. In addition to a better than average use of āaudiologsā, or rather as it is called in the video, āepitaphsā, the NPCs wonāt simply tell you āthereās this really bad dude, hereās why he needs to be stoppedā.
In D1, as seen in the video, the Butcher is introduced by the last words of one of its victims, right before the claustrophobic in-door crawl leading to him.
In D2, the first time you hear the name of Andariel is probably when youāre told how many of the local (sort of) Amazons were corrupted and joined her on the demons side; before you slowly discover the extent of her forces in the region - and youāll spend quite some time actually fighting said corrupted Amazons. At this point, you donāt know who or what she is, or even if it is a she, IIRC.
In PoE, you are explicitly told by the NPCs to not go against Andaā¦ I mean Merville(**). And as you continue to progress toward her, an NPC will call you a fool with a death wish, and with reasons. And the corruption/enslavement of the mind aspect is played more, including with some clever staging when you are approaching her. (Funnily, at first Merville, as a boss fight, was a pretty harsh difficulty spike - for a gameplay perspective, it was bad, but for a narrative perspective, it was very fitting.)
()
Iām a bit unfair. As much as I like Andariel(*) and the Butcher, PoE was wise enough to simply copy them. Merville and Brutus are clearly inspired by them including in their place and role in the game, but are still their own characters (in their own game). That itās fitting tribute, not plagiarism.
(***)
Which is for some unknown reason my favourite one-dimensional character ever.
1 Like
For me, it was the gameplay.
First thing, they made a bunch of powers, but dumbed it down to console levels with only being able to use 6 of them at once. Then they put several mechanics that discouraged switching them in and out. On top of that, there were some abilities that were lackluster. This quickly led to boring, repetative gameplay.
The monsters were stupidly easy up until you got to the second nightmare mode at the time and then they went 180 and became impossibly hard, though they went and fixed it later.
Finally, as was mentioned before. Ambiance. The gameplay felt closer to a bland adventure game than the previous and noticeably darker diablo games.
1 Like
Itās not like youād really used all 6 abilities at once, in any game. Some of them can be auras / passives or long-CD skills. Also, in D2, you were supposed to heavily invest your skill points into one or two skills max, if memory serves, to be efficient.
As to discourage switching skills and items in D3, this was mainly to limit game breaking bugs and power spikes even though you had minimal gearing, before the console was even out.
I remember the ābrick wallā in Caldeumās desert, and also their first (and pathetic ^^) attempt to make legendaries truly useful. I dropped D3 until the extension came out and fixed a lot of things. I still donāt know yet If that was a genuine gameplay mistake or if it was a machiavelic marketing coup, coming from Blizzard.
EDIT: whoa, what was this threadās purpose again? 
Itās looking in bad shape, almost as much as my avatar 
To answer the original post, if anything, a long-lasting MMO starts with bringing new stuff and making a first good impression.
That guy hits the nail on the head and summarizes my thoughts regarding the game perfectly.
Hay guise, lets kill Deckard Cain offscreen.
2 Likes
ā¦ And GW1ās ending and story was good?
They put no effort into it until Factions. And that was probably the high point.
2-4 describe āmuch more like a typical MMORPGā just in more words. Not every MMORPG has the āholy trinityā as well, and GW1 never had true tanks so it didnāt either.
GW1 was not an MMORPG.
Anyway. D2 left an impression because at the time it was impressive. It had really nice voice acting. It had a clever and addicting loot system. The skills and different builds you could do were cool.
D3, for the time it came out, itās likeā¦ why would I want to play this junk? Especially with all the massive failures Blizzard repeatedly had with the real money trading system and many other things.
And from what Iāve heard from a lot of PoE players is that thereās just nothing to do in D3, that itās just boring, unless thereās some big patch that drops that has some new content to get bored of after another 3 hours.
So yeah, sure, if you just released D2 today, itād be crap. Itād be much worse than Grim Dawn outside of the voice acting and atmosphere D2 had. But D2 didnāt come out today.
GW1 though is still a game that holds up today game mechanics wise. There were a lot of masterpieces of its design.
And its programming too, with the streaming patches and never having downtime.
Anyway, the topic was how large and long battles could work in a way that doesnāt just sound neat on paper like when youāre watching a 7 minute scene from a movie, but actually playing it so doesnāt feel pointless. So it doesnāt feel increasingly frustrating when youāre on the losing side and can probably only do so much.
Iām not trying to be cynical, itās just itās something that does need working out. I point it out because I want it to be designed well and asking the questions that good design needs to answer helps that.
A lot of games have experimented with things like where winning one battle moves a front around that changes a map. That was like āthe thingā to do for a few years because all the other developers were doing it and no one cared about it at all and it was so meaningless.
Then you have those browser āMMORTSā games like Clash of Clans which are just awful.
The OP said he loves MW:o but thatās a pretty loathsome and unpopular game even if a few like it so not something to aspire to. No offense to people that like it, Iām not saying you arenāt allowed to like what you like, just that we want Infinity to be this big massive world teeming with life, right?
It seems like something that would work best if you had infantry to board ships and fight over ships for a good 12-25 minutes. That would then put a lot more perspective on the scale and timing of things than if you just had ships do horribly low TTKs.
But thatās not really in the scope of Infinity.
I remember on the old forums there was this idea that like what you would normally consider ākillingā a ship could be doing only like 3-5% of its real total hitpoints in damage. Where you could spend hours to blast a ship into nothingness, but to simply āsinkā it wouldnāt take that much and then you could take their cargo and blah blah and leave someone else or that shipās owner to deal with the āwreckā.
But thatās out of the scope of I:B.
So I:B is shooting for 150-200 players right?
What can one player do that is going to make an impact if they have the skills/tactics?
Are like 90% of players going to be relegated to a fighter?
What is the goal length for a āmatchā in I:B?
2 Likes
Thatās one of the goals, yes.
Pilot a capital ship. Scout out resource nodes. Mine resources. Build structures and emplacements. Disrupt the other teamās efforts to do the same. Just off the top of my head.
Doubtful. Considering that a clip of the opening space battle from Revenge of the Sith was confirmed as an example of the kind of experience that the devs are trying to create, I think itās safe to assume that medium, large, and capital ships are going to be plentiful.
Unless they get that much funding. Then no one gets capitals.
Ideally? Days or weeks, until one team manages to gain uncontested dominance of the map, at which point it would reset.
Otherwise? Minutes.
1 Like
It is heartening to see that nearly two years after I created this topic, literally none of the extremely important questions posed (or that are still being posed) have been answered in a definite way. At least we have the kickstarter to look forward toā¦ soonā¢
2 Likes
Actually I think Keith answered you question in this reply to someone else āI:B is about getting the tech stable and building out the foundation for the team and company infrastructure we need to really tackle as something as big and complex as the MMO we want to build. The plan is to build the MMO after I:B if possible.ā
Weāve described what Battlescape is, yet many still want MMO-like features. As an example, youāve asked about a galaxy map with territories, but weāve described many times I:B takes place in a single solar system. In any event, our Kickstarter page will explain the proposed gameplay/funding goals in more detail than we have to date on our forums, so please stay tuned for that.
4 Likes
I think youāve misread my paragraph.
Battling a huge dragon is epic and good. The bad ending was rather on a technical side: the combat gameplay was so poor and glitchy that I didnāt enjoy it.
GW1 was first of all simpler to code and the end battles were somewhat more interesting.
Donāt read me wrong either on this: vanilla GW1 had huge plot holes, and the only story I really enjoyed was the last extension āEye of the Northā. All the others were going up, quality wise, until Eye, but had those annoying āMenhloā guys (aka undying but useless NPC that shouts obvious things while you try to survive).
Also, the background and detail given to every area (much less in high level one though) is really good and the main reason why I loved leveling up and visiting all the areas in GW2.
You mean like not being able to jump at all? Yeah, totaly a classic masterpiece to be used again in MMOs.
Again, GW2 has innovated in its domain. Not to sound too caustic but it looks like youāve ignored all the good sides of GW2 Iāve mentionned.
Dynamic events should definitely be the future of any MMO and the WvW (world vs world) holds some pretty intersting stuff also. Donāt know much about the āclassicalā arena though, havenāt played them at all.
I donāt see much the point of it, especially in a battle with a lot of players. Also, the pilotable ships so far have only one person as a crew.
Iāll go ahead and make some shameless auto-highlitghting: not so long ago Iāve suggested what could be interesting to be used in a space MMO. Anyway, not it the direct scope of I:B, but there could be some ideas to be recycled.
Iāll just leave this link here 
1 Like
You seem to have missed the entire purpose of this thread so I guess Iāll explain it again: this thread is about the long term playability of the game. Once a player has completed one campaign/match/war/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, why should they play the next one? or the one after that? or the one two years from then?
A territory map was a (quite basic, actuallyā¦) suggestion that would keep large groups of players focused for longer periods of time since they had a larger goal to work towards. It also helped to demonstrate what the thread was about. I do not consider it an āMMO-likeā feature. Arena shooter games such as World of Tanks and MechWarrior Online both have similar versions of what I am talking about, and especially in World of Tanks case, it has kept the player-base interested far longer than it should have.
These are serious issues that should not be ignored, especially when your existing fan base is as small as it is (and appears to be shrinking). Personally, if you guys released I:B today, and it was just a week long campaign for a solar system that reset every weekā¦ Iād play it for exactly one week and then probably drop it and go back to something more rewarding.
I mean look, heres the deal, I wouldnāt still be around on these forums if I didnt want inovae studios to succeed. Iāve been a member of this community for almost ten years now, which is just ludicrous to me when I think back on it, and I think that says something, but the point is that even I wouldnāt keep playing a simple space shooter for more than a week if I didnāt feel like I had purpose. The only reason I keep playing MWO is because Iām heavily involved in its (admittedly laughable) e-sports scene, which gives me a sense of purpose (no thanks to you if you are reading this, PGIā¦).
What sense of purpose will the player have in in I:B? From what I can tell, your answer is a firm āthey donāt need oneā.
1 Like
ā¦.just got the itch to add somethingā¦ so here goes:
I think Inovae has
to decide what kind of game they want to create.
hmm what kind of games do we have in this generaā¦ā¦
1)Long term progress
I believe games like Mechwarrior Online, War Thunder, World of Tanks, Star conflict and not only them:
EVE ā although full blown MMO ā all play the card of long term investment.
Essentially in these games player progression is relatively slow.
You would need many months to gain access to a certain vehicles in these games.
In case of EVE it can be decades !
Have you ever used cheat or exploit in some action RPG game like Diablo ?
Game where the gameplay and atmosphere is the very important element ?
Where storytelling takes second (or even thirdā¦) seat.
If you did, suddenly game became ā¦.boring.
If your avatar gets too much power in every situation - game looses its atmosphere.
You no longer have much to strive for.
So in these games
(MWO,WT,WoTā¦.) there has to be something to tease you.
You need to see that carrot dangling there in the distance.
- For this to work we would need a substantial number of vehicles.
(this might be our problem)
2)Short term progress
Then there are games like Counter Strikeā¦ā¦ Crossfire i guessā¦ā¦ (Killing floor ?)
hmmmm this never occurred to me.
Seriously there really is not that many games like CS ā¦.interesting
In case of CS, every player should more or less be able to gain access to any equipment in the game in time of one match.
- These games tend to attract pro gamers
- Balance can be issue
- Location diversity
3) Team deathmatch
Team fortress, Unreal tournament, Battlefield series
No progression here just pure RAMPAGE ! 
- maps maps maps
- balancing
4) Mobas
DOTA + League of legends, Stellar impact
Blend of 1) and 2)
In case of Dota:
Progression here isnāt the long term goal, but the means to be useful in the match.
All players can use every equipment and character from the start
(well almost from the start)
It is fascinating that, so many players keep playing game on the one single map for
years
- Main draw is most likely in the good balance and teamplay
mixed with - giant variety of skills and equipment.
League of legends, Stellar impact:
these two are special, they have progression from group 1)
where in Dota, there are same conditions for everyone.
I have a feeling that Inovae is aiming at something like thisā¦.
But who knows how will it work with such giant scale.
And also ā¦.that ship and equipment variety could be REALLY big problem here.
5)?
Or perhaps they want to mix it with elite/privater like elements.
There were games such as Hardwar , Sub culture , Aquanox(oh look who i found 
)
That didnāt need the galaxy sized world to work.
But how would it work with multiplayerā¦.?
???)??!!
Or something completely original
It all most likely again boils back to money issue.
Depending on the game funding we get different game styleā¦. funny
ā¦ ā¦ .ā¦ā¦ 
ā¦ā¦. 
ā¦ ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ