Beta PvE impressions. The feel of the game is... Very much like a generic MMO.

[Alaris]

Really?

I played LotRo just a bit during beta. But spawning was more of a problem in WoW than GW2, even post-cataclysm. The problem isn't just whether it happens, but what can you do about it. In a game without dodge, spawning in your face is more of a problem.

[RD]

Well, I found the spawns in LotRO to be pretty slow. I could do a whole quest and get out of the area without respawns. Sure, stuff spawned on me sometimes, but I didn't think it was bad.

No idea about WoW.

[Radioswim]

Welcome to the forums Troy, I don't think I have seen you here before!

Anyway, GW2 isn't conventional, but it has elements of generic MMOs.
As you point out, some events have wolves and some have bandits and it's really the same thing apart from a few skills being different. But that's not what I mean at all. I wouldn't even care if there were bandits in both events because hey, why not? Anyway, events actually change the game world, and are pretty cool. I meant the "heart" quests scattered across the map.

THANKS!

Make no mistake about it, I was talking about the Heart quests as well. I completely agree that all they are is glorified quests... but to me that's beside the point.

Now I'm purely speaking from my own experience in the BWEs and stress tests I've taken part in. Perhaps I need to step back and look at WoW when it first started, people were giving it insane praise with statements like "WoW has no grind!" Now, it's true that Blizzard did a very good job disguising the grind with seemingly meaningful tasks, but the grind was still there, you just didn't notice it so much. Now that quest grind has become the norm... players need something else to 'hide the grind'.

Enter heart quests and dynamic events (and they are by definition dynamic, unlike many events in other MMOs) which in all fairness should be lumped in with these glorified quests that are "heart quests" as they are very much a part of the 'experience grind'. Now with the dynamic events, I shouldn't need to explain how that hides the grind... but with heart quests, there's no numeric progression to be seen. There's no "4/30" display that you constantly keep an eye on for maximum grind efficiency. With heart events... you simply 'DO'. One might argue you don't even really need to read the objectives, you could just run into a heart area, see that it's a heart area and just "do stuff" and be rewarded.

What I was talking about with cokes and fish tacos before, was the synergy one experiences with things like heart events in which you just "do" and nearby dynamic events, married with the innovative combat system, beautiful graphics, and various aspects that meld you with the players in the world (shared exp, loot, event progress).

They've simply combined many greats things with a few new, in a way that's never been done before, in a revolutionary way. Sure when you look at just one aspect of the game (heart quests) it seems like an ordinary quest grind with a different mask (in a large part it is just that) but once you add on the other layers, you see a much more engaging adventure.

I hope I've made myself clear. Can't wait to get out there and "do stuff"

[raspberry jam]

The part that confuses me is why are you debating about fighting around one location and making it seem like a failure if there is a cycle to quests in one area. By time the zone repeats, you probably are no longer there so it will feel less static then it is. I don't think it's possible to compare a theme park mmo to a sand box mmo. I can't imagine the coding involved in creating a system that makes you go fight a random mob at a random location. I'm sure there will be less variety and less quests in general.

But the point of downscaling is that you can go back, or play in an area forever. Besides, MMOs are played for years and years and you'd run out of new places to go to.

But I see what you mean. If we really want to fix that, we would need to make the wolves population grow REGARDLESS of the current population. So let's say no one helps the farmer for 2 days (real time), there would be 1,000+ wolves on his farm. His farming operations will be totally shut down. In fact this sort of became a world event simply due to mob spawning none stop.

Yeah no, that's not what I mean. Only a complete retard would even think that anyone meant something like that.

THANKS!

Make no mistake about it, I was talking about the Heart quests as well. I completely agree that all they are is glorified quests... but to me that's beside the point.

Now I'm purely speaking from my own experience in the BWEs and stress tests I've taken part in. Perhaps I need to step back and look at WoW when it first started, people were giving it insane praise with statements like "WoW has no grind!" Now, it's true that Blizzard did a very good job disguising the grind with seemingly meaningful tasks, but the grind was still there, you just didn't notice it so much. Now that quest grind has become the norm... players need something else to 'hide the grind'.

Enter heart quests and dynamic events (and they are by definition dynamic, unlike many events in other MMOs) which in all fairness should be lumped in with these glorified quests that are "heart quests" as they are very much a part of the 'experience grind'. Now with the dynamic events, I shouldn't need to explain how that hides the grind... but with heart quests, there's no numeric progression to be seen. There's no "4/30" display that you constantly keep an eye on for maximum grind efficiency. With heart events... you simply 'DO'. One might argue you don't even really need to read the objectives, you could just run into a heart area, see that it's a heart area and just "do stuff" and be rewarded.

What I was talking about with cokes and fish tacos before, was the synergy one experiences with things like heart events in which you just "do" and nearby dynamic events, married with the innovative combat system, beautiful graphics, and various aspects that meld you with the players in the world (shared exp, loot, event progress).

They've simply combined many greats things with a few new, in a way that's never been done before, in a revolutionary way. Sure when you look at just one aspect of the game (heart quests) it seems like an ordinary quest grind with a different mask (in a large part it is just that) but once you add on the other layers, you see a much more engaging adventure.

I hope I've made myself clear. Can't wait to get out there and "do stuff"

Um... No... You were talking about DEs. Because hearts don't have differently effecting interactions. You do the stuff and there is no way to fail (except walking away from it all). It doesn't really matter if the farmer gives you 9 silver afterward or if the asura scientist tells you to get out of his lab without a reward. You still did the heart and apart from skins it was the exact same thing.

You're right though, there's no numeric progression in hearts. Instead, there is a progress bar.

No, seriously, yes you just go out there and do stuff. However, you only get rewarded for the first X things you do. The two differences compared to standard quests are:

1. The heart is auto-added to your quest log, meaning that instead of being rewarded for the first X things you do after accepting the quest, you get rewarded for the first X things you to, period. I don't see this as an improvement, except that it permits me to be a little bit lazier.

2. You get a choice of Y things to do, instead of getting a very strict list of things. In other words, instead of killing X thieves, you can either kill X thieves or feed Z cows, or a combination of those. This does, in fact, hide the grind, and it also allows you to be lazy (there is a cow 10 meters away and a bandit on the other side of the farm, so the cow is a juicier target). The question is, though, how long it will stay hidden. Not only will people learn to see through the veil, they will also start to time optimize: killing thieves might move the progress bar quicker than feeding cows will, so they might start going for thieves more. Or the other way around (killing enemies is more action/danger oriented so it might give a greater reward though).

A good question would be why does the grind exist to begin with? Or rather, why are people rewarded for grinding? I would welcome a game where all the grindy things to do were still there, but didn't give any reward. If people think that the actual content was fun, they would play it, right?

[Wethospu]

Grind is simply there to give us something to do. It is the easy solution. Sure, I would love to see less grind and more fun stuff but I fear that would actually mean a lot less stuff to do (making PvE quite short).
And reward is there to get us hooked. Why anyone would bother with grind if it didn't give anything?

[nkuvu]

Well, I found the spawns in LotRO to be pretty slow. I could do a whole quest and get out of the area without respawns. Sure, stuff spawned on me sometimes, but I didn't think it was bad.

No idea about WoW.

Missed this from a few days ago, but...

The respawn rate in WoW varies. The more people that are in an area, the faster the respawn. Also, the starter areas (akin to the tutorial areas in GW2 without the boss fight at the end) have a very high respawn rate at all times. This isn't a huge problem for most, as many of the foes in the starter area are neutral and won't swarm a character.

Some areas in the first region have a high respawn rate at all times, and they can be quite problematic for low level characters. For instance, in Elwynn Forest there's a lake with murlocs, just east of Goldshire. Goldshire is a high population town on many servers, with lots of high level characters coming back to show off or duel or meander around doing a whole lot of nothing. My theory is that this is why the murlocs have such a high rate of respawn -- too close to the large population of Goldshire. In many cases I'd kill a murloc only to have another respawn immediately after. There's another murloc "village" east of there with a high respawn rate, but it's not quite as bad as the lake.

This respawn rate is not very common, though. Some exceptions (like the Felstone Field in Western Plaguelands, near instant farmer respawn even if the zone is empty). For the most part, though, it's not usually a significant issue.

[sorudo]

Grind is simply there to give us something to do. It is the easy solution. Sure, I would love to see less grind and more fun stuff but I fear that would actually mean a lot less stuff to do (making PvE quite short).
And reward is there to get us hooked. Why anyone would bother with grind if it didn't give anything?

grind is doing something an enormous amount it time over and over again, i would say GW2 has barely anything like that.
sure the hearts seem like that but you're still going for something with the minimum amount of time wasted, i can do a heard within 5 minutes while allot of "regular" MMO's take around 20-40 minutes to get trough one kind of grind.
it isn't perfect but it's the best we can get for now, heck, i can't even find any other MMO getting close to the low grind GW2 has.

[raspberry jam]

Grind is simply there to give us something to do. It is the easy solution. Sure, I would love to see less grind and more fun stuff but I fear that would actually mean a lot less stuff to do (making PvE quite short).
And reward is there to get us hooked. Why anyone would bother with grind if it didn't give anything?

But PvE could still be endless. I mean, adventure is cool isn't it? And you could have just that. The grind part isn't needed... at all. How much do you need to grind in GTA 4? (except for the stupid friends calling you at every time of the day or night wanting to go bowling or visiting strip clubs or whatever)

[Alaris]

@Wetho: this... one's grind is another's content, and it's really a matter of whether you enjoy it. Now I for one would bother with grind if the gameplay is fun, because really, grind is an excuse to play a game that I enjoy playing. When I don't enjoy the game anymore, the grind won't keep me playing.

@nkuvu: the spawn rate changing to player density is fun, it's like scaling when you think about it. What bothered me though was less the spawn rate, but a combination of where they spawned (sometimes in your face), whether others helped you out (in WoW and LotRo, not really) and what you could do about it (no dodge, not much you can do if you're already cutting it close). Compare that to GW2 where spawns are often (but not always) made so they don't appear in your face, others actually help out, and you can more easily dodge and run out of danger.

[raspberry jam]

one's grind is another's content, and it's really a matter of whether you enjoy it. Now I for one would bother with grind if the gameplay is fun, because really, grind is an excuse to play a game that I enjoy playing. When I don't enjoy the game anymore, the grind won't keep me playing.

What are you babbling about exactly? Plenty of people don't enjoy the gameplay during grindy sections of a game, yet play that game even though it has lots of grind, because they enjoy the rewards that they get by grinding.

Are you trying to define rewards as gameplay now?