Killzone: Mercenary shoots onto Vita on September 10
Trion Worlds hit with more layoffs, Defiance team impacted
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault defending Vita next week
Game & Wario was originally going to be pre-installed on Wii U
The Last of Us digital download lets you start playing sooner
Guild Wars 2 dev: MMO subs can hurt fun design
by Alice O'Connor, Jun 20, 2012 10:30am PDT"If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?" asks Colin Johanson, Guild Wars 2 lead content developer. As ArenaNet's subscription-free MMORPG isn't motivated by "the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible," he claims, design is led by a simple question: "Is this fun?"
In a blog post, Johanson says that subscription MMOs "run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time." This often manifests as grinding for levels and items, repeating daily quests, having to organise huge raids, and generic kill/collect quests.
In Guild Wars 2, though, content is geared around having fun rather than swallowing time. The rarest items merely offer a new look rather than better stats, dungeons can have multiple paths and random events, players don't compete for resources nodes, quest difficulty scales to match the number of players, and heaps of such little touches. "Is this fun?" is a question still asked constantly at this stage of development, he says.
Do read the full post, as it's awfully interesting. Clearly he's talking up his own product but in a world of direfully dreary MMOs, it's nice to hear about good, clean, honest fun.
Comments
"What if your content-design motivations aren't driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible?" asks GW2 lead content developer Colin Johanson. The answer for ArenaNet's subscription-free MMO, he says, is to ask "Is it fun?"
"What if your content-design motivations aren't driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible?" asks GW2 lead content developer Colin Johanson. The answer for ArenaNet's subscription-free MMO, he says, is to ask "Is it fun?" : Shacknews
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 15 replies.
i agree that lot's of people wont the best stats and all, but i think the way Anet is seeing it is:
1 - for people that like RPG, they have PVE, that is a bit different than all others and there is no need to say that it gets repetitive, it is an mmo after all, if it wasn't repetitive and grindy everyone would be done with it in 2 weeks and would move on...
2 - for people that love guild vs guild or mass battles, they have WvWvW, that depends on your lvl and your weapons and armos, so you want to be 80 with best weapon... as i bet there will be tons of people that just create a character and go in WvWvW and think that that scale up will help them... no, real lvl 80 will be better!
3 - competitive pvp, they want to have so sort of real PVP, esport like, and from what i played, i think they are on the right path, i play dota, i play lol, i play smite, i play hon, and i think sPvP in GW2 will be another thing that people play just like the games i mentioned.
on the + side, they have no monthly feem so everyone (and their mother) from MMO world will buy this game = profit.
You must be logged in to post.