As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2. I’m still pretty early in the game at this point, but I wanted to put together a post about some of the things that I’ve liked, and some of the things that seem a bit off, from the content that I’ve experienced.
Exploring
The main thing that I have really enjoyed thus far is the exploration mechanics of Guild Wars 2. Between the Vistas, Points of Interest, and the rewards for completely exploring a zone, I have found myself spending most of my time doing just that. I find it really cool that it is not only possible, but also really fun. An unfortunate side effect of my doing all this exploration is that I have gotten almost nothing done on my personal story (primarily because I have been saving it to do with Jessa). This leaves me with a bit of a power gap between where I should be at my point in the game exploration-wise and my actual level (which is much lower).
Levels and Leveling
As a result of this power gap, I’ve noticed that being under-leveled is a severe handicap. I didn’t really notice this during the beta weekends, but it’s something that I’m finding now to be more than a little frustrating. I know this is a staple of modern MMOs, but I had gotten so used to the very low level cap of Guild Wars that this threw me off. Specifically, being only a level lower than where I should be makes the exploring possible but not at all a pleasurable experience. It’s not even so much that it’s difficult, so much as that it takes so long to kill even one enemy, who can so easily squish me, making the whole heart-quests a lot of a grind.
As a generality, this epitomizes my frustration with level-based RPGs. It’s very easy for me to see how your level is more a barrier to entry, and less a measure of progress. To me, this seems a big step backward from Guild Wars, where I can honestly say that the progress I made after achieving level 20 was much more interesting and rewarding than the progress between levels 1 and 19 where my numbers got bigger. The higher level cap in Guild Wars 2 was one of the things that was very worrisome to me prior to release, and I haven’t yet been convinced that it is beneficial or necessary.
Non-Instances
Though it was one of the things that I was most worried about before release, I am finding that the non-instancing of Guild Wars 2 really works. I’ll go further to say two things: In Guild Wars 2, they have made a game that (1) actually rewards having other people around in a way I would not have thought possible playing other modern MMOs, and (2) wouldn’t really work any other way.
Specifically, I really enjoy how in almost no circumstances is it a detriment to have other people around. This is in stark contrast to my experience with WoW where having other people around was a competition for resources; in GW2, having other people around means that you are both gaining resources faster, even if you are both after the same thing. That’s easily true with the static events (“Heart Quests”), since drops are not dependent on whether you got the killing blow, only if you “helped”, and not all rewards are also not combat based. With the dynamic quests, this is even more true, as you can get credit for the event by doing something as useful as resurrecting dead PCs that are doing the brunt of the work.
These questing mechanics are why I say that it wouldn’t really work any other way. If you are the sole focus in an instanced area, you are forced to do all the work for a quest. Even in a group instanced, someone who is not completely pulling their weight is a detriment rather than a benefit. In GW2 quests, there’s no way someone can be a detriment. If they are not actively participating in some way, then they aren’t affecting a dynamic event (not even making it more difficult), and they aren’t getting any rewards either. If they are only passingly participating, then things are scaling appropriately – again, no harm done. This allows people to play at their own pace, which is something I can really appreciate. I’ve never been a fan of Pick Up Groups, but I like how GW2 is built with the idea of “people just playing together” works.
The Market
While I hope that the market eventually matures into an interesting part of the game, I am currently somewhat disappointed by the execution. At first, I was really annoyed by the stability – not having a market around stunted my ability to play around with the crafting system, as they forced the players to use the market as the only way of trading goods. While it is possible to mail goods to other players, there is no trading system, so if you can’t buy/sell your thing on the market for gold, you’re basically stuck. Again, I found this to be a regression in mechanics as it forces everything to be convertible to currency for trade, and it disallows “favored trader” status to a small group that you want to work with.
The other issue I take with the current market is the lack of an interesting economy. This was a huge part of what I enjoyed about EvE, and so far, it’s kind of a bust for me in GW2. I guess this bears a bit of clarification – In Guild Wars 2, you can craft stuff (yeah!), but so far, I haven’t figured out how to do so profitably. For example, as an artificer, I can make staves, scepters, and focus items. If I want to make a mighty crude staff, I need to use 18 wood, 3 “fine” materials, which (at current market prices) will cost me a total 156 copper. What I build then, goes for 45 copper on the market. However, to level my crafting profession, and have any chance of making a profit on higher-level items (which I’m not sure is possible, but hold out hope), I have to make a bunch of these and do something with them… …This, to me, is a design that promotes forced supply without demand (because, let’s face it, I’m not going to buy a staff when a better one will drop soon anyway, and I’ll out-level that one before I really get much use out of it). In most cases, it’s not worth building anything unless you are only doing it to level your crafting skill, and even then, it’s usually better to salvage your creation back to it’s raw materials than sell it or use it.