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Guild Wars 2's data and design in detail
MMO player and writer Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats knows how to ask the hard questions. Questions that other journalists are afraid to ask. Questions like, "If you were omniscient with regard to all corollary Guild Wars 2 data (including player emotion, all chat including voice chat, current snacks eaten, etc.), what crazy thing would you most like to know?" Happily for the Guild Wars 2 fanbase, he also asks much more practical questions, and he directed some of those questions at ArenaNet's Izzy Cartwright. He even got some answers! Cartwright talked about how ArenaNet's ability to track players led to the implementation of certain dynamic events, meant to split up the player population in a map, which would trigger when there were too many players in an area. Another benefit of the team's data gathering is the ability to see where players are dying most often in order to adjust content difficulty as necessary. The economy is especially dependent on player activity, and Cartwright says that the team keeps a very close eye on item fluctuations to be sure that a relatively healthy stat is maintained. Read the full interview over at KTR. If data, design, and programming really get your gears turning, consider checking out ArenaNet programmer Cameron Dunn's GDC talk on that subject.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Waiting for Guild Wars 2
There are two weeks left until the official launch of Guild Wars 2. That's a little nutso because a significant portion of my (and a great deal many other folks') energy in last few years has been dedicated to anticipating the game. Seeing it live will be something of an adjustment. I keep wanting to talk about memories of development and standing in lines at PAX and meeting devs and other fans as a way of describing my involvement with this game up 'til this point. I sometimes feel that that's odd, saying that the most exciting part of following Guild Wars 2's development has been the people I've met rather than the game that we're all congregating around. ArenaNet seems to agree with my take on things, though, if global brand manager Chris Lye can be trusted. He says of ArenaNet, "We're not a video game company; we're a community building company. We just happen to have one of the coolest ways to build a community, which is through a video game." Be it trite or not, I find that that kind of statement aligns nicely with the reason I, someone who plays MMOs largely for the sense of shared experience, have enjoyed Guild Wars 2 and its community so much.
ArenaNet talks energy and group dynamics in Guild Wars 2
After the recent Guild Wars 2 news drought, new information is certainly welcome. Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats provides just that today with a new interview with several members of the ArenaNet team. Ravious chatted with community managers Martin Kerstein and Regina Buenaobra as well as developers Jon Peters and Isaiah Cartwright for some fascinating discussion on part of the development process. The group discussed energy use in Guild Wars 2, and gave us some interesting news on how your gameplay style will affect it. They also covered some ground on group dynamics and how you can best work with your teammates in Guild Wars 2. The best part of this interview is that it ends with "to be continued." Head on over to Kill Ten Rats to see the interview for yourself, then join us in anxiously awaiting the next installment! If you are looking forward to GW2 but aren't a current Guild Wars player, you might want to check out the great deal on the Guild Wars Trilogy at Best Buy. What better way to pass the time while you wait for more GW2 news?
The Daily Grind: Characters go around again?
One of the features that's become more and more de rigeur for single-player games is the concept of a "new game plus," a second go-through of the game with all of the abilities and equipment you picked up the first time around. In some cases, you can't even actually play the full game until you've managed to beat it once, at which point you earn a number of rewards that would have been useful to beat the game the first time around. (Insert your own jokes about boss loot here.) Kill Ten Rats recently suggested the idea of allowing a similar mechanic in MMORPGs, borrowing from games such as Torchlight that allow you to retire a character and pass benefits on to a new one. Certainly it has advantages -- we've all had a character or two that's sat at a level too high to be deleted that we don't want to play any longer, and it'd be nice to pass along something useful for the playtime. On the other hand, a forced cycle of leveling followed by retirement followed by another level grind could get tedious quickly. What do you think? Would this sort of feature be an enjoyable way to expand your character stable, or a searingly obnoxious grinding treadmill?
Chasing carrots, and why we do it
A while ago, Kill Ten Rats advocated a rather interesting approach to solving the problem of any tedious grind: cheat. More viable in a single-player game (but still possible if you're willing to use methods of dubious legality), the reasoning was to cut away the reward portion and see if you were enjoying what you were doing on its own merits. Two follow-up posts have been made since then, further extrapolating the question and getting into the way our brains fire in response to anticipation of reward. Grind, of course, is both a dirty word and a quintessential part of any current MMO, which means that we generally aim at games with the most enjoyable grind. But are we focusing on an enjoyable grind, or just one that's not too painful as we head toward the end goal? Is the problem with Aion (to pick a game routinely raked over the coals for its grind) the basic structure, or could the grind become irrelevant if it were just a hair more enjoyable? The very structure of MMOs encourages a certain amount of grinding, and it's interesting to take a look at whether we're doing it because the grind is fun, or just because we've tricked ourselves into thinking it's not all that bad.
The balance of force in Star Wars: the Old Republic
It might be a slight exaggeration to say that everyone in the world is looking forward to Star Wars: the Old Republic... but only slight. With the latest class reveal, the Imperial Agent is poised to give an excellent sneak-and-snipe playstyle to the Sith side of the game. All well and good... but as Kill Ten Rats notes, how is this game going to get any PvP balance? To the best of everyone's knowledge there's no equivalent ability in the Smuggler's arsenal, the Republic's counterpoint to the Agent, and it's not much of a matchup when one side is invisible and the other side isn't. Overly Positive recently made a few observations regarding the class balance, noting that BioWare seems to be taking an approach a la Warhammer Online -- each class has a loose equivalent on the other side, but they don't result in being direct copies of one another. However, the downside to this approach is that you can easily wind up with one side's class being overpowered in relation to the other. Direct equivalencies leech some of the flavor, but they ensure that the game remains perfectly balanced for both factions. It's a question worth considering and keeping an eye on as the game moves through development -- after all, if a Jedi and a Sith Warrior can't face off in fair combat, it'll be a sad day for many players.
