Guild Wars 2 - The ArenaNet Way - Parte III

Guild Wars 2: The ArenaNet Way - Parte III

After having proposed the first and second parts of this series of articles, could not miss the third. This take our cue from the statements of the Game Designer at ArenaNet Colin Johanson, who told her to explain the method which attrraverso softco Seattle measuring the success of his highly anticipated Guild Wars 2.

To begin this new blogpost let me ask you a question: how to measure the success of an MMO?

In the past it was easy to assess the success of a traditional MMO: the number of subscriptions was the value used by the company to determine how well the game was going, and players could look at those figures to understand the level of success of the title. The number of concurrent users - ie the number of players online at any given time - it was equally important, but that figure was usually kept hidden from the users as it is usually left to glimpse a far less rosy picture of the health of the game as it emerged from the active subscriptions .

Let me now ask a second question: whether the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of paying players, how this influences decisions on the development of the title?

The answer can be obtained by looking at the mechanical and the choices made for the monthly subscription MMO, trying to keep players active inserting content that can take longer to be completed. In other words, the designers of traditional MMOs create content that requires a long time to be completed so that the players want to play longer. If this is your model of motivation and gain everything makes sense and is the most reasonable thing to do, so you find yourself having to support this choice.

When your game system is based on the principles of the MMO fee to find you run the risk of sacrificing quality for lowest possible so as to occupy the time. Create systems that require a leveling absurd amount of grinding to achieve a level, loot systems which require complete dungeons with an infinitesimal probability of obtaining the desired object, raid systems that require huge groups of online players to be simultaneously completed, thousands of quests and daily quests that require you to collect items or kill mobs with long explanations accompanying text, the highest level of equipment that require long game times to be obtained, etc..

But what happens if your business model is based on monthly fee? What happens if the push for creation of content is not to let the user play for as long as possible? In designing the content for Guild Wars 2 we tried to ask ourselves the question: What can happen if the development of the game is based on ... here comes ... fun?

If we choose the fun as the main meter for measuring the success of a title can change perspective and make design decisions based on what we like to do as a player? We can focus our time on delivering rich content and significant impact on the game, rather than on content that simply seek to prolong the experience? We can make something so funny that players will want to repeat many times as fun, and not because they are obliged by the way you set the game itself? And 'the way we played while growing up. I can not tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory, the game does not give me a 25 daily quest for which I had to log in and play - I played many times simply because I thought it was fun!

So if we use the yardstick of success is to have fun, how can we create content that point to this goal, and how can we know if we have succeeded?

It 's easy to tell if a game canon is achieving its objectives: just look at the number of subscriptions. The fun is much more difficult to define. To achieve our goal we have redefined the process of developing Guild Wars 2 around the concept of fun, starting with ourselves a simple question that emerges strangely almost never when creating a game: "You're having fun?".

The yardstick of success chosen had a significant impact on many of the decisions taken to developing Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

Collection of Loot. The rarest object of the game is not more powerful than others, so you will not need to be better. The rarest item in the game has a unique look to instill a sense of "conquest" to your character, but is not required to play. We do not need to create necessary equipment, so who is fun to get the most prestigious objects can engage in the enterprise, while those who can not find it interesting, however, be equally powerful.
- Decisions. Every time you complete a dungeon you get a token that can be mistaken for a desired reward. You will not find with a minimum probability of randomly drop the object you want. This is because it is always more fun to be rewarded with something that you want!
- Developing. The explorable dungeons offer multiple paths and various random events. Therefore you will not feel the need to repeat the same dungeon numerous times if you really want to get the prestigious final reward. You can always choose different routes to always have something fresh and fun!
- Customizing. Systems and Events History Staff offer a sense of customization for your character. Addressing the game, each character can be in front totally different content, and the world will always remain fresh and new as it follows a new storyline or moving into a world of constant change. This means that back to a place where you have already can be fun, and also means that creating a new character on a whole new personal history can be equally fun.
- Gameplay. The goal of creating entertaining content led us to make many decisions about the gameplay: everyone helping to kill a creature gets experience and loot, so you do not have to compete with other players, everyone is rewarded for participation in an event with karma that can be spent to buy items you want, rather than random drop that may be entirely unnecessary; content for climbing difficulty, so even if more people attending there will always be things to do, everyone is able to resurrect allies, then the other players can be seen as useful to achieve their objectives, rather than as people who can hinder you, everyone can gather resources together and get the rewards of the world, no need to rush out of fear that someone comes before you and you subtract what you want . All these things bring just more fun.

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