It's The Little Things : GW2

Of all the changes that came with the Fall Feature Pack the one that seems to have been an unmitigated success is the Liberation of the Minis. Where other MMOs have vanity pets the Guild Wars franchise has Miniatures; knee-high (or shoulder-high if you happen to be an Asura) copies of mobs and NPCs. It's a great idea but the original implementation, up with which we have had to put for two whole years, was dismal.

You needed to keep the Mini in your bag and re-activate it every time you changed map. On top of that, Minis had a tab in the Materials section of the bank, which meant that if you forgot to put one of  your many Queen Jennahs in your Safe Box or Invisible Bag then the first time you hit the "Deposit All Materials" button to clear your packs of copper and green wood, off her royal highness would fly to a bank slot on the other side of the world.

All in all it was just too fiddly to be fun. Unlike in EQ2, where I often travel around pursued by a duck or jelly mound desperately trying to keep up with my unfeasibly speedy mount, in GW2 I rarely bothered to "have a mini out" as the jargon has it. That's all changed now.

The new implementation, which is blindingly obviously the way it should have been from the start, sees a mini, once summoned, stick with you from the jungles of Maguuma to the snowfields of the Shiverpeaks. Their new state is so persistent they even re-appear beside the character who summoned them each time he or she logs back in.

The slight downside is that they are now one-time consumables incorporated into the wardrobe system rather than permanently tradeable items. They have become account -bound on use, although they can still be freely traded provided no-one actually uses them, and they also have a test-drive function, whereby you can have a good look before you commit. I can live with that. Happily.

It's jolly to see all the strange little creatures milling around. They look particularly, charmingly, out of place in WvW, where a Princess Doll and a Candy-Corn Elemental hardly fit the theme of eternal internecine warfare.

It was in WvW, at Askalion Hills Keep (our spare Hills to be precise, the one we keep on SBI's borderland for convenience) that I discovered something about minis that I didn't know. They can talk.

Well, one of them can: Evon Gnashblade. Scared the bejeezus out of me when his gravelly baritone ground out "I was the favorite". He still hasn't got over that rigged election but then neither have I. I had to tab out and check the Wiki to reassure myself I wasn't having a psychotic episode.

Whether he's the only one that talks I'm not sure. I hope not. Persistent, talking minis ares something I could definitely imagine making some effort to collect.

Run That One By Me Again? : GW2

The Game Update Notes for the Fall Feature Pack that arrived last week bordered on the epic. I fancy myself an aficionado of the form; someone who, not infrequently, visits websites to research and ponder upon the classics; a veteran of the glory days of Everquest, when we'd pore over each enigmatic entry with the focus of a haruspex examining the entrails of a freshly-slaughtered sheep. Even I, however, balked at this Gilgamesh of game changes.

As if the initial torrent wasn't sufficient to drown us in confusion (and map chat and the forums certainly suggest it was) ANet saw fit to shake the fire-hose no fewer than nine more times. Every day is patch day this September.

Each of these patchlets naturally spawned notes of its own but I confess that, in the heat of the intense competition of this first week of the WvW Fall Season, I had been lax in tracking them down. Last night when, during a lull, I finally found a moment to catch up with the ongoing erasing and re-writing of the rules I found this:

• Fixed a bug that prevented some accounts from having vistas now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis.

•  Skill challenges now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis as originally intended.

That's phrasing worthy of SOE at the peak of their powers. The great Abashi himself might have been proud of that convoluted, negatively-inflected, self-footnoted delivery. It takes some parsing but the first entry, if I have the right of it, translates as follows:


There was a bug.
This bug affected some but not all accounts.
The bug prevented Vistas from unlocking for all characters on the account.
Vistas are intended to unlock for all characters on the account.
This is the status quo. (implied).
Vistas formerly unlocked per character.
This was the status quo ante (implied).


The second entry confirms that the same state-change that has already been made to Vistas has also been applied, presumably bug-free, to "skill challenges", which I take to be what are generally known as "skill points" in our house. If they aren't then I have no idea what they could be.

Now, if (and it's a very big "if" because I am far from certain I understand what's going on here) that's what these notes mean, then it would represent a major change to gameplay. Vistas and Skill Points are both intrinsic parts of Map Completion, which has always been "by character", much to the disdain of many, although I don't include myself among their number. I would guess that it would be quite feasible, nevertheless, to transfer vista unlocks to ownership of the Account without upsetting too many people or breaking too many systems.

Skill points, however, are not only required for Map Completion but for direct character development while leveling up and as an important form of currency for a number of late-game activities. Granted most skill points at that later stage come from the ever-rolling level counter and those nifty scrolls that Champs drop but even so to move them from character to account would seem problematic to put it mildly.

Well, it seemed easy enough to test so I tested it.

First I checked two characters on the same account - my most map-completed and my least. Had the latter acquired a hatful of vistas and skill points overnight? He had not. Change not retrospective then.

Next I found two characters neither of whom had done a particular vista, the one by the steam bath in the Norn starting area, Wayfarer Foothills. I climbed the hill and opened the vista on one character then logged in the other to see if he had magically received credit for a view he'd never seen. He had not.

Conclusion: either its still bugged or I have completely misunderstood the patch notes. Having trawled both the official forums and Reddit for comments and opinions on what would be, if it were true, a highly controversial change to the structure of the game and having found absolutely no mention of it whatsoever I have to conclude that it's the latter.

The only grasping-at-straws idea I can come up with is that these are changes somehow related to the NPE and therefore only affect new characters leveling up under those rules. I don't have a new character to hand to test that right now but in any case it seems highly unconvincing as a possibility.

I have to conclude that I'm baffled. If anyone has a clue what's going on perhaps they'd care to explain in the comments.

The Backpack Feature. A Feature In Which I Back A Feature Pack That Features Backpacks : GW2

This week's Feature Pack for GW2 fell at an awkward time for me to make a thorough examination and assessment before penning a pithy post on its benefits and shortcomings. Fortunately Jeromai and Ravious have both found time to give it the once-over in some detail.

With luck and a following wind I may find time to give a more considered impression later although the upcoming World vs World tournament may have something to say about that. Whatever, we're certainly going to be chewing on this Feature Pack for some time given the unwelcome announcement that we'll see no more Living Story this side of November.

For the meantime I do have a few scattered thoughts.

Crafting and Backpacks : Undoubtedly the standout feature of this update and quite possibly this year. Being able to click through recipes to their sub-components is a joy. Of course it's also a feature that most MMOs include from the start but better two years late than never.

There are forty new backpack designs, all different. They are all extremely cheap and easy to make. Mrs Bhagpuss made all forty on the first evening. Some are the exact type of realistic, practical-looking affairs I've longed for since beta, others are utterly insane. Something for just about anyone. Now can we have some decent hats, please?

Collects : Good framework for future development. Deeply uninspiring use of said framework so far.

Trading Post 2.0 : Embarrassing attempt to sell the addition of basic features that should have been there in beta, like a proper search function, as "upgrades"we should all be gosh-wowing over. New interface is clumsier and harder to navigate than the one it replaces. New back-end does not appear, as claimed, to be faster to access and use.

Selling things is now particularly painful. What used to take me a single click now takes several. The lack of a single-click "sell stack" option is physically painful.

Commander Tags :  A hideous blot on the landscape! We are now in desperate need of a "Do not display" toggle at least in PvE. I cracked and bought one last week but only on one account. Don't judge - it was a bargain!

Minis : Embarrassing attempt to sell the addition of basic features that should have been there in beta, like cross-map persistence, as upgrades. Still, better two years late than never. I'm beginning to sense a theme here.

Class Changes : My eyes started to blur half way through the patch notes for the second class. Frankly, who cares? It's not like I knew what most of this stuff did before. Why would I start caring now? I play all the classes and I was happy enough with each of them. I do quite like the marginal extra control over summoned elementals, although I'm pretty sure it's mostly cosmetic.


And the BIG one...

New Player Experience : Otherwise know as the NPE. Hmm...that has a ring to it, doesn't it? Reminds me of something though...


I was in Wayfarer Foothills for my usual couple of hours last night. It's the Norn 1-15 map and since Megaservers arrived last April the conversation there has mostly been cheerful and upbeat, mainly new players (of whom there appears to be no shortage) asking questions and getting helpful replies. After the patch that changed to a non-stop rolling debate about the changes to the leveling process. Suffice it to say I did not hear a single positive comment in two hours.

Established players hate the changes because they perceive that they make leveling both slower and more tedious. New players, from that sample at least, hate the changes because they feel they are being held back from getting to the good stuff and treated like incompetent children to boot.

I don't have a really low level character, nor a free character slot, and even if I did I don't have time to level one up right now. I'd like to reserve judgment until I give it a go but on paper it does look like a very odd way to address the perceived problems.

It transpires that the port of these new functions from the Chinese version has glitched somewhat and the version we are seeing has a number of bugs. Colin Johansen posted a long, detailed and very interesting explanation on the forums, where tar and feathers were being readied and torches lit. By the time I get to try out the NPE it will probably already be the New NPE.

As things stand I very much agree with both Ravious and Jeromai that the NPE represents a significant shift away from the Explorer paradigm GW2 started out with. It also indicates another strong move towards a much more traditional themepark approach. I think  ainekitten on the forums sums it up beautifully in his elegant and heartfelt comment.

Anet thanked him on his feedback. I hope they also take it to heart.

Test Result Negative: GW2

The Level-A-Guardian Project came to an end some time ago. The original intention as detailed here was to start a new character and take her to the cap under the new conditions imposed by the Feature Pack. Back then there was a lot of concern that the changes to Traits would make leveling slower, harder, less entertaining and I wanted to find out for myself if those concerns were justified.

They aren't. Yep, it's that simple. Having leveled nine characters to 80 under the old system I can honestly say I noticed no difference whatsoever leveling the tenth under the new, or not, at least, in how much fun I had doing it. Leveling in GW2 was straightforward, simple and fun before and it still is. As I observed in an earlier post, The Trait Unlock mechanic remains sadly underdeveloped and peripheral but on the other hand you don't need traits at all to level up. At worst it's a botched opportunity to make Trait-hunting something to look forward to but in no way does it constitute a roadblock to fun or progress.

By the time my Guardian hit the sixties the project was more or less off the rails anyway. The lure of World Bosses and WvW pulled her from the true path of leveling by Hearts and Map Completion. After a brief flurry of excitement in the forties, when she realized she could wear and wield Rares, good housekeeping took over and any that dropped went onto the Trading Post to feed what I presume must be the min-max market. Given that each level in GW2 takes about an hour at the outside and you can change your entire armor set every five levels it can only be obsessive number-crunchers who find it worthwhile spending that kind of money but I'm happy to be the one taking their silver.

So my Guardian dinged 80 decked out in a motley collection of level 55-60 green quality drops and karma-vendor trinkets, in which she'd had not the slightest difficulty progressing smoothly and enjoyably. At this point a genuine first-time character might run into a speed-bump trying to scrabble up Exotics. I don't think you'd earn enough Karma for a full set at the Temples just by leveling up the regular way. You might get enough Badges from 80 levels of WvW although the life of an uplevel in the Borderlands can be trying.

To test that I'd either need to buy a third account or run a spreadsheet and enter every single Karma award and Badge earned on the specific character I was leveling up and, while I'm not saying that doesn't tempt me, unless I can find an institution willing to accept it as the basis for a Master's thesis I don't think I'll bother right now. It was thoroughly enjoyable instead to take her up to the vendors in the Yak's Bend Citadel and kit her out with a full set of Berserker armor and some more tanky accessories courtesy of the thousands of badges already earned by the rest of her team. Or I could have gone the Temple route and used some of my five million karma...

As for the Traits, I'd drifted so far from the original plan I'd forgotten about them to the extent that I'd only eve gotten around to spending the first couple of points, a situation which wasn't corrected until this weekend, by which time she'd been eighty for a couple of weeks or more. I finally got around to visiting the Trainer, buying the three or four Traits I needed and putting her into some kind of "build" that I got off the forums. It cost me about three gold and thirty or so Skill Points.

You can easily make three gold in a couple of hours doing World Bosses and I had over 80 skill points banked from leveling up alone, so again the barrier presented by the Trait Revamp is trivial. Yes, if you wanted to open all your Traits by adventuring it would take you weeks and to buy them all would cost scores of gold and heaps of skill points, but why would you need to do that? Even if you're the sort of person who likes to swap builds you'll probably never use the huge majority of traits. Just buy the ones you need when you need them.

My curiosity is satisfied. Neither the Trait Revamp nor the Megaserver turned out to be as disruptive or deleterious to a good, casual romp as had been bruited. Of the two the Megaserver remains the more problematic but that, too, has settled down into a background hum, easy to ignore. I see people I recognize often now so the sorting seems to have become more consistent at least. They still aren't the same people I saw regularly before the change but I can live with that. At least we can get Teq done on a regular basis in pick-up maps now, which is nice.

One thing the Project has made certain: there will be more characters. Leveling up is the most fun GW2 has to offer. I was in Wayfarer Foothills yesterday and one of the many new players (a half price sale will do that) asked if it got boring leveling up new characters after the first. Map chat resounded with a volley of variations on the theme "Like hell it does!". As one veteran player put it "Why do you think we're all here in a starting zone?".

Next up, Charr engineer or Asuran Mesmer for me I think. Mrs Bhagpuss has been leveling a Sylvari Thief because cultural armor. I sold a stack of ectos yesterday when the price was sky high so I can afford another character slot.

Before all that, though, comes Living Story Season Two. After watching the video (those explosions come from inside the ships) and listening to the soundbites all I can say is I told you so and so did Taimi, only unlike her I never trusted those Zephyrites.

Picking At The Threads : GW2

I'm just glad I have the week off work, that's all I can say. Although, come to think of it, that's hardly the most apposite turn of phrase, because there's quite a lot I could say about yesterday's Feature Pack Patch. The main problem would be knowing where to start. Or more likely when to stop...

Let's try and keep it short, unlike Anet, who opened nine dedicated comment threads in the hope of containing the howls of anguish from nerfed berserkers, crashed trains and other disgruntled customers. I'll stick with their categories.

Wardrobe

Some people were really stoked for this. I wasn't one of them. GW2 is one of those annoying MMOs where you step out of character creation looking, there or thereabouts, like a regular Joe or Jane, at least in the context of the imaginary world you're about to explore, only to find yourself descending the spiral staircase of surrealism until you end up in a Daliesque daze, dressed like the third runner-up in an Ace Frehley lookalike competition. The recent flurry of screenshots from TESO on various blogs serve as a disturbing reminder of just how garish and tasteless GW2 has become. Roll on WildStar so we can go back to feeling all sophisticated by comparison, like we did back in 2012.

Never mind the ethos, what about the implementation? Not bad. Slightly odd that you can only access the Wardrobe from the bank, but given it works the same way as the Crafting and Mini bank tabs that kind of makes sense. Also odd to hear the little zinggg! sound every time you salvage some eminently forgettable item, thereby adding an equally forgettable appearance to the invisible, intangible wardrobe, when all you meant to do was grab a scrap of Luck, but, hey, it's a nice little sound sample, don't mind hearing it twenty times a minute. And of course as the Wardrobe fills up you'll hear that sound sample less and less often. Probably going to miss it in a few days.


With the five free Transmutation Charges and the twenty or so I got from converting the old stones and crystals clogging up my bank I now have about five times more conversions in hand than I've used in total since the game began, so I think I'm set. It's neat that they're now a Currency, too. What with that and Wardrobing all the unused skins I was hoarding, even though I knew I'd never use them because if I did I would have to play blindfolded, I've regained a dozen or more bank slots. On balance I approve of the Wardrobe although probably not for the reasons I'm supposed to.

Well, that was hardly keeping it short. Must do better. On to

PvP Reward/Gear/Ranks/Maps

Don't PvP. Pass. Wow, that got things back on track!

World Boss Synchronization

Immediately after the patch last night I logged in, arriving in Wayfarer Foothills just as The Frozen Maw was starting. I helped send the Shaman packing, grabbed my rares and retreated to Krennak's Homestead to try and make sense of my new Traits. Ten minutes later Brogun started yammering on about the Grawl and the whole thing started up again. And ten minutes after that. And ten minutes after that...

When Brogun kept getting as far as destroying the Svanjir totem then declaring the threat over and stumping back across the snowfields to reward himself with a fine ale everyone on the map assumed the event had bugged. Not so. Oh no, that would be infinitely preferable to the truth. After the cycle had repeated several times I went to check the immense patch notes , which I'd been avoiding on the grounds that I wanted to get in and play sometime before the sun came up. Here's the relevant section:

"If the event to destroy the dragon totem has succeeded when the boss is not activated, Scholar Brogun will declare victory and return to Krennak’s homestead without fighting the shaman."

In other words, in order to make this whole fixed schedule work, ANet have chosen to have the pre-events run on a continual loop (in the case of The Maw literally once every ten minutes). It's like watching Groundhog Day on fast-forward. I have yet to go see for myself but apparently the same is true of Gamarien's stroll, the Karka Queen pres and for all I know every other series of events that could, potentially, result in the appearance of a chest-dropping Boss.

Even in a "virtual world" that already resembled nothing so much as a series of animatronic tableaux, this takes some beating. It's one of the most openly cynical revisions to content I think I have ever seen in an MMO. Pragmatic, yes, I'll give them that, and at least it works, unlike the changes to the Shadow Behemoth event, which were supposed to increase the difficulty in preparation for the upcoming Megaserver population focus, but which initially made the event very hard to complete with the unmegaservered map population we still have and then bugged out entirely, so the event is currently not completable at all.

The feedback thread on World Bosses is extremely critical. Indeed, all the threads I read were. The forums have a reputation for negativity but in this case almost all of the commentary is well-reasoned, coherent and seems justified. I won't re-hash all the valid points in detail, such as the effect fixed timers have on people with jobs and families or the prohibitive costs of the Guild Event option that might otherwise be used to restore some flexibility. They're all there on the thread if anyone's that interested. I'll just observe that I don't think you'd be taking too much of a punt if you bet on quite a few tweaks to some of these "Features" in the coming days and weeks.

Guild World Events/Megaservers/WvW

Bit of an odd bundle. There are four people in my guild and one of them doesn't play any more so we won't be starting any Events. Pass.

The whole Megaserver thing hasn't really made itself evident yet. Whichever maps are using it aren't ones I've been on, or if they are then the population of GW2 really has taken a nosedive. The only place I did see it working was when I passed through the PvP lobby on the way to Lion's Arch Vigil Keep (they really need to put a new sign on that Asuran Gate), where I saw a large number of people standing around, presumably trying to work out what the hell had happened to their Traits or whatever it is that PvP people use. I'll take a rain-check on commenting on the Megaserver functionality until I actually see some.

As for WvW, that was one unalloyed positive for me. I'd been saving all my drips, tastes, and thimbles just for this day. I even had a keg. Drinking them all was good fun, even if every rank chest was stuffed with nothing but greens (I got one Exotic between two accounts and about 25 ranks and that was a speargun...). Ended up Rank 204 (I think it was) on one account and 115 on the other. Now I just have to decide where to spend the points.

Sigils/Runes

ANet made two threads out of that but I've conflated it because I don't have anything to say, at least not yet. I was mostly already using full sets, not mix-and-match, and a cursory check suggests nothing much has changed. Browsing the Rune thread, the word that comes up most often seems to be "underwhelming", while the Sigil thread barely gets started at all and even when it does it mostly contains off-topic comments.  Confirms what I always suspected: no-one gives a damn about Sigils.

Traits

This is arguably the biggest Feature in the Pack. A full revamp of the Trait system, everything from the traits themselves to when and how you acquire them. Sitting on nine level 80s, all of whose traits have been grandfathered in, it doesn't seem terrible, just very confusing. I began this post by saying I was glad I have the week off work and this is why - it's going to take me a week to get all these traits sorted out.

The new interface is okay. Kind of a sideways move. I wouldn't call it an improvement but it's easy enough to follow. Being able to chop and change Traits infinitely, instantly, at no cost certainly removes all of the usual pressure these kinds of revamps bring, that of making a horrible mistake that will haunt you or cost you or both.  I found myself quite enjoying playing around with "builds", if you could dignify what I was coming up with such a description.

It's not really my thing, though, nor Mrs Bhagpuss's. We decided we'd just bang something in for now and wait til the theorycrafters come up with a new meta.Then we can ignore it and feel superior follow the herd.

Reading the forum thread, however, the most poignant and heartfelt comments came from new players, all of whom felt thoroughly shafted by the new system. This comment by Robert sums up the issues very well and looking at it from the outside it's hard to argue with his conclusion "If this is somehow supposed to make the game more enjoyable for new players, I fail to see how this is accomplished.. Sadly, for me, the opposite is true."

I'm very tempted to buy a new character slot, go try it for myself, see how "bad" it really is. It's too long since I leveled up and I never did get around to making that Charr Engineer I wanted. I suspect that the new, slower version of leveling, with its requirements to unlock traits by doing content might suit me rather well. I also think I'd be in a very, very small minority if that turned out to be the case and I fear this move could be commercial suicide when it comes to persuading new players to stick with the game.

The new Elite traits that my characters will have to unlock if they want to use them don't  look like being any kind of an issue. Two reasons: firstly, most of them look like they wouldn't warrant a slot anyway and secondly the price to buy them from the trainer is much, much cheaper than I was anticipating. I was guessing at 50g per unlock. I wouldn't have been surprised to see it pegged at the same as a Commander tag - 100g. When I got to the trainer it turned out to be 3g. Three! Oh, and 20 skill points. My ranger has nearly 500 of those, plus another 200 skill scrolls in the bank. Not seeing a problem there, other than it spikes the whole idea of going out to search for the things as a form of new content. Why the hell would anyone bother if they're only 3g a pop?

Profession Balance

Yada yada yada...

Every MMO does this all the time. Never worth getting worked up over. If you enjoyed something it got nerfed. If something was broken it didn't get fixed. A's still better than B, C's overpowered and D is gimped. Next time round move one place to the left. I treat class changes on a need-to-know basis. If something seems weird in play I'll investigate. Otherwise they  generally pass me by.

That's the gist of it although there's a lot more grain in the detail. There's the derailment of the Champion trains and the Contested Waypoint debate for a start, and dyes, but the change that got Mrs Bhagpuss the most irritated was one that's barely been mentioned anywhere: consolidation of Daily Achievements.

She took it as slap in the face for casual players, a demographic to which she somewhat confusingly aligns herself despite her thousands of achievement points, hundreds of WvW ranks and eight level 80s, half of them already kitted out in full Ascended. This pruning of dailies that limits choice and drops the old standby, Gathering, is more of a slap in the face of the hardcore than the casual, I'd say, since they're the ones chasing the Laurels, and whether it really will take longer to do the dailies now I'm not sure but, hardcore or casual, I can't say that I'm any more thrilled at being funneled into fewer areas to do them than Mrs Bhagpuss is.

Looking at the Feature Pack as a whole I'd say it's exactly what ANet claimed - an expansion-size patch with none of the content you'd find in an actual expansion.It's a bit like going to the cinema and having to  sit through all the commercials, trailers and safety warnings without ever seeing a movie.

I read the motivations behind the whole enterprise as a combination of three things:

• A desire to drive substantially more business through the Gem Store

• An attempt at avoiding the negative marketing hit that comes from server merges

• The perennial inability of MMO developers to leave anything well alone.

I imagine having to do a lot of the background work to re-tool the game for the Chinese market has something to do with it, too. Probably gave them ideas. Oh well, if nothing else it gives us all something to talk about other than why we aren't playing TESO.

Unpacking The Feature Pack : GW2

The Big Reveal is over, the bags are all open, the cats all run free. Just ten more days to Magic Time, the Glorious Fifteenth, First Coming of The Feature Pack. Tyria will never be the same again.

Let's hope not, anyway. It would seem like an awful lot of fuss about nothing if, as I suspect might happen, the world just goes on turning in much the same old way. With game historians of the future in mind let's have a quick flip through the program and scribble down some notes while the orchestra's still tuning up.

Traits - A big change, for sure and, now I've had time to mull it around for a bit, one that I quite like, on paper at least. Hunting for traits in the wild sounds disturbingly like New Content, while being able to buy our way out of playing through parts of the game that we don't care for seems like a sound compromise. Being able to change trait builds free and on the fly is intriguing. Chances are I'll never remember to do it but so long as it remains "may" not "must" then I'll go along for the ride.

Runes and Sigils - Can't see any downside to this. A ridiculous amount of worthless runes and sigils rain down every day as I salvage the equally ridiculous downpour of worthless armor and weaponry. Probably three-quarters of them could vanish overnight and no-one would notice. Anything that streamlines the system has to be welcome although I don't see much in the blurb to suggest we'll see the back of all the +10% vs Dredge space-wasters and their pointless ilk.

Famous last words

Critical Damage - Nerf! Nerf! After a year of resisting the 'Zerker Meta I find I'm absolutely loving my Full Berserker Elementalist build, especially in WvW, where the supposed "Glass Cannon" factor rarely seems to come into play. Somehow, very few people seem to pay any attention to the Norn woman in dark blue lurking at the back even though she's raining continual fiery destruction on their heads and when the Commander yells "Push!" my main problem seems to be trying not to impersonate Sky Saxon. The number of times I've found myself behind the opposing zerg all on my own after two dodges and a Mist Form - and still they don't notice me, even as I pump fireballs into their backs!

I console myself with the thought that it's only supposed to be a 10% nerf and my DPS went up about 300% when I went berserk, so it shouldn't hurt too much. Of course, if a nerf doesn't feel like a nerf it probably won't shake the Meta up much either, assuming that was the intention.

Wardrobe  - Replace a cumbersome system with a slightly less cumbersome one, so net gain, I guess. I'd peg this as one of the many income-driving changes, where the secondary, if not the primary, function is to drive more traffic to the Gem Store. Since I very rarely change the looks of my characters once I've got them how I like them (hard enough to remember who I'm playing as it is without having them confuse me by looking different) I don't see this affecting me greatly one way or the other. For a change that's long been demanded, though, forum response has been more mixed than you might expect. I wouldn't be surprised to see more tweaks to this as the months wear on.

And put a sweater on, too!

Dyes - Changes things to the way most players probably thought the system should have worked from the get-go. I'll be in a tiny minority in preferring it the way it was but it's hardly a major issue - give up a small degree of character individualization and a self-created mini-game (who gets which dye) in favor of undoubted convenience. The really annoying (and entirely player-unfriendly) aspect is the removal of dropped dyes, another change blatantly intended to increase ANet's income stream, albeit with the rather happier side-effect of allowing crafters a rare opportunity to make a little silver on the back of it.

Social Play Improvements - I had to re-read this one just to remind myself what these "improvements" were. Meh. And that's over-egging it.

Account Bound Changes - At last! The long-trailed move to account-based ranks for WvW is finally (almost) here. Again, another anti-character move but that ship sailed so long ago and there were so many planks missing it must have sunk even faster than this metaphor. I'm just going to go with it from now on - The Account is the Prime Directive - All hail The Account. Now just give me my furshlugginer points already!

As for account-bound ascended gear, that does make it slightly more likely I might one day get around to getting some. Legendaries? I should coco.

Somehow the new champ bags didn't seem quite so exciting as the old ones...

Repairs and Champion Loot - I think I learned the expression "Indian Giver" from a Superboy comic in about 1966. I was never entirely sure what it meant. and by now it's probably one of those turns of phrase that can no longer be uttered in polite society but I'm pretty sure it applies to ANet here. How the removal of the minuscule cost of repairing your armor, somewhere around 8 silver if you turn up at the repair shop in your underwear at level 80, is supposed to compensate for what might be a heavy nerf to cash income from Champion bags, any one of which can theoretically provide enough silver to pay your repair costs for the whole day, beats me and everyone else.

Mystic Forge - ANet buried that in the same announcement but I've pulled it out. It seems to have passed almost unnoticed. Hardly surprising because there's precious little information there. It's more just putting us on notice that big changes to the money pit often unfondly referred to as the Mystic Toilet are on the way. Could be good, could be terrible, except that the Forge is so terrible already any change almost has to be good.

As opposed to all those other proverbially trustworthy genies?

PvP Stuff - Pass. Oh, wait, no...that's just what these changes are supposed to stop me doing, aren't they? This whole everyone-must-play-all-parts-of-the-game trope that ANet desperately hope might catch on. Nope, sorry. Not playing. Next.

Megaserver - The Big One. Literally. Didn't see this coming. Don't much want it, either. I thought I'd again be in a tiny minority not getting out the flags and bunting for this but although first reaction was predictably positive, the sprawling threads all over the forums suggest that, given time to consider the implications, quite a few players could see the holes in the Emperor's New Clothes (yes, I know...).

Can't have a Themepark without a Schedule

World Bosses - And this is why. Leaving aside the disorderly retreat from the moral high ground of a " living, breathing world" (whatever happened to Martin Kerstein, anyway?) plenty of people see the combination of ever-changing maps, no firm home ground and fixed daily boss timers as things that will reduce their fun and stop them doing things they enjoy. Where's the value in all those Infinite Harvesting Tools now all the nodes wriggle about like bait in a bucket? How are you going to run a World Meta Train if there aren't any worlds? How can a Commander gate into LA (or I guess now Gendarran Fields) and rally the PvE troops for a golem rush when half the people listening might come from the Other Side?


A million increasingly angry questions and so far precious little in the way of answers. Oh, and that "all waypoints are now contested" thing? Why didn't you just schedule that for it's own Reveal and call it "Huge New Gold Sink"?

Guilds and the Future - And out we go with a whimper. I don't like guilds and I don't much care what happens to them in any game just so long as I can go on ignoring them. Plenty of bad feeling about this one from small guild players who do care, though. At least WvW is "safe" ... for now.

When ANet came up with the idea of rolling a whole lot of structural changes into one big "Feature Pack" and plonking it down in the gaping content hole between the end of Living Story Season One and the start of Living Story Season Two, some dev I can't be bothered to look up and link made the cardinal error of likening it to the amount of content you'd expect from an expansion. Cue frenzied forum speculation on the Coming of the Tengu, Dragons, Housing, Mounts and the Moon on a Stick.

Happens to the best of us

The Official Wet (Safety) Blanket was deployed to dampen down ardor and enthusiasm and someone probably got a right ticking off but in essence the comparison wasn't unwarranted. The Feature Pack does contain about as much in the way of structural and systemic change as the average MMO expansion. It just comes unsweetened by any actual content.

I'm sanguine. I no longer feel emotionally connected to Guild Wars in all its forms the way I am to, say, the Everquest franchise (as it now appears officially to be known). It's become no more nor less than a rather amusing, entertaining game that I play, not a virtual world in which I imagine I am living. On that basis I'm willing to entertain any changes that might make it more amusing or entertaining. Whether these are those changes only time will tell.

Oh, and there's one more similarity between the Feature Pack and a real expansion. I bet lots of these changes won't work properly for a good while and we'll be patching well into May before things settle down. Fun times ahead!

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others : GW2

ArenaNet don't have a new game to put up against the upcoming onslaught of ESO and WildStar. They don't even have an announced expansion to mollify the faithful but that doesn't mean they're going to sit back and watch the servers bleed. They're fighting back with a three-pronged defense strategy:

1. The Tourney

2. The Tournament of Legends

3. The Feature Pack

The Tourney is just the new World vs World "Season" that everyone's either been anticipating or dreading since the last one ended, way back before Christmas, given a new lick of paint. The Tournament of Legends is the latest step in the eternal plan to make GW2's PvP something that matters to someone other than the closed coterie it currently attracts, while keeping that coterie firmly onside. The only mildly surprising aspect is the prizes, which include Legendaries and Precursors.

The Feature Pack - now that's something else entirely. It's a bundle of game-changing revisions, heavily trailed and hyped in a way that's frequently been misinterpreted and misunderstood by a segment of the playerbase, who've decided it's an expansion in everything but name. It's not an expansion but it looks set to disturb the peaceful waters every bit as much as a real expansion would, only without the ameliorating benefit of any actual content.

It consists of ten Features, each of which gets its own separate news release/PR puff/blog post according to a schedule. So far we've had The Great Trait Revamp, Runes and Sigils and Crits. Dulfy, as always, has the clearest and most succinct overview. There's also apparently a Livestream, which I haven't watched because, frankly, life is just too short.

We have a few days to digest the first three before Tuesday brings what looks to be something about outfits and dyes. There's some speculation that it'll be a Wardrobe  and Account-Wide Dye System, a hint of which was apparently data-mined from the upcoming launch of GW2 in China. Further out floats a whole raft of mysteries culminating with an introduction to something enigmatically labelled "Friendly Play" that's apparently so momentous it not only comes as the climax of two weeks of PR blitz but requires three days to explain.

Reaction on the official Forums has been surprisingly muted. There are no threadnaughts building, no protests forming, no harassed Moderators slapping down bans. In fact, no one seems all that interested, possibly because the changes so far announced are largely pushing against an open door.

But..but..I liked being a Berserker!

Nerf Berserker builds? Everyone saw that one coming (apart from me, it seems. I finally succumbed to the zeitgeist and spent all last Sunday converting my Elementalist to full zerk mode. Been enjoying it, too).

Hunt your skills (okay, traits) in the wild, GW1 style? Should have been that way from the start is a popular view and for those that don't agree they'll all be vendor-purchasable anyway.

Rationalize runes and sigils so they actually a) work and b) make sense? Who's going to argue with that? Well, people who spent a fortune on expensive upgrades that are no longer fit for purpose but hey, there are winners, there are losers, right?

So far, so uncontroversial. Still, there's a lot of oddness in there when you dig down. For example, if the intention is to "foster a healthy balance environment that encourages players to experiment with their builds" how is that achieved by rationalizing Critical Damage and reducing it across the board by 10% ? As plenty of people are pointing out, in relative terms that that leaves a Berserker build exactly where it is now, at the front of the DPS parse, only in a new world where everyone's Time-To-Kill is reduced.

As if they weren't already hard enough to kill.

People are crunching the numbers but as yet we don't really have the numbers to crunch. We don't know the full detail of the changes to runes, sigils and traits for one thing. Maybe when we see all the changes in action ANet's Grand Plan will fall into place and the Day of the Berserker will be over after all. I'm not holding my breath on that one, though. If there's any build that kills faster than the rest, it'll be the new orthodoxy within days of being discovered.

More puzzling to me is this, from the Rune and Sigil announcement:

 "...we’re making it easier to understand the benefits of sticking with a single rune set....we simply want the PvE rune system to be as clear and approachable as possible for new players, so we’re making it easier to understand the benefits of sticking with a single rune set.".

What? Why!?
 
Why would ANet even care what runes a new player chooses to slot? I very much doubt the player does. Leveling up in GW2 is so straightforward, it really doesn't matter what gear you use, let alone what upgrades you put into it for the few hours you might keep any given piece of armor or weapon. When I was leveling up I just put in anything I found, if I bothered at all. Trying to convince new players it "matters" to have the "right" gear and the "right" upgrades is untrue and a terrible idea.

Don't say it out loud! Someone might hear you!

ANet seem to have some peculiar ideas about new players all round, though. The revamp of the Trait system includes this:

 "...we’ve pushed back the level at which the different trait tiers unlock for new characters in order to better pace the early game experience and to add more meaningful character progression from levels 30 to 80. Starting with this feature pack, new characters will unlock the adept tier at level 30, the master tier at level 60, and the grandmaster tier at level 80."

Because making new players wait longer until their character gets a fresh trick always makes things more fun, right? New players just love that! Nothing builds affection and loyalty to an MMO in a new player faster than making him use the exact same set of abilities for 20 or 30 levels at a stretch. Of course, as has been observed, not least by me, new players don't have the same points of comparison as veterans and so may not feel nerfs as strongly but even so, this logic does seem more than a tad unconvincing.

The counter-argument would be that leveling in GW2 is already very fast and somewhat trivial and that anything that makes it feel more solid and substantial is at least worth trying. I'm sympathetic to that. On the other hand, unless there are some radical changes in the works then I would guess plenty of new players and most experienced ones are going to be bypassing the whole "better pace" by using one of the many existing means of avoiding the entire open-world leveling process altogether.

Ah, but of course there are radical changes coming. There's that whole "Facilitating Friendly Play" thing. That's got to be radical if it's going to take three days to explain. There's been some wild speculation on what it could include; even some crazy talk about the implementation of player housing and Guild Halls. Good luck with that.

Friendly? Oh yes, we're "friendly" alright...

I have my own theory, which I'll outline now so that I can look smug if it turns out to be anywhere close to the mark or an idiot if it turns out to be completely barking. From the changes so far announced I discern a pattern. My feeling is that, after a year and a half of seeing their game spin away in directions they almost certainly never expected or intended, they are going to attempt to wrestle it back onto the track they were hoping to travel before launch.

GW2 was very heavily touted as a paradigm shift in MMOs, where players would seamlessly co-operate with each other in an ever-changing, dynamic world. There would be no need for formal groups or raids since wherever players happened to find themselves in proximity all their efforts and rewards would be shared equally by default. Outside of instanced content, which at that time was only going to be a handful of dungeons and the Personal Story, we'd all be in it together.

One Charr's View

Over the months that promise has eroded. Fractals added a significant amount of instanced content that required formal grouping while players increasingly decided that all instance groups should follow a rigid formula. The Holy Trinity may have been at least partially expunged but it wasn't replaced by  "pick five, any five". Meanwhile, open world content increasingly devolved to large gangs of roaming berserkers chasing Champions and meta-events in a never-ending lust for gold.

Increasing utilities directed at helping others around us while at the same time reducing our ability to kill so quickly alone suggests an attempt to make both supporting and being supported by others a more valued and valid playstyle. Sending us out to hunt for our traits in all kinds of content, much of which I am guessing will not be easy to solo, adds motivation to find people to help. And it all fits with the clear direction of most of the Living Story updates this year - encouraging players to operate as a team, not just as individuals, in or out of a zerg.

Anet have always been fond of social engineering. Most MMO developers are. It looks as though they've decided to come out into the open about it for once. That's my take, for what it's worth, and there's not long to wait to find out if I'm right.