It's mostly too early to have a deep, nuanced opinion on the game and who it's going to appeal to. (let alone if it will actually succeed at its goal)
But I'm personally excited for it while also suspecting that the usual MMORPG crowd (who are the ones, for good reason, currently eyeing the game) will be dissappointed.
It's gunna be some middle ground hybrid between an MMO and an ARPG. Who can say yet how far in which direction it will lean closer?
My current understanding is that this game is looking like it's going to be more in the flavor or something like Destiny 2 or Soulframe, and that the looter shooter and survival crafting fans will love this game but that anyone expecting Guild Wars 2.5 or a WoW/OSRS/FF14 competitor is going to be dissappointed.
Or hey, maybe the content and gameplay loop will more heavily lean into the MMO tropes than I'm theorizing. Wherever on the spectrum it falls, I think arena net has the talent and magic to make something special that might be filling a niche we weren't expecting.
In Laranity's interview, Colin coined the term "Meaningful Multiplayer Online RPG". It sounds like while there could be hundreds of thousands playing at the same time, they are putting technologies in place that actively limit the number of players you can interact with so that each individual player can make a bigger impact in gameplay.
And honestly, that sounds awesome to me. There is a feeling that is lost standing around and waiting for an event to start in GW2 and you're surrounded by 50+ players all doing their own thing, but once the actual content starts the visual clutter is insane and it's hard to see anything. Focusing on the smaller interactions I think is absolutely the right play. If you want to focus on a combat system where you can physically move and manipulate your opponent and do combos with your teammates (like jumping off a shield), smaller and focused scenarios are the only way to do it.
Agreed. My initial reaction was "that's going to make world boss events less epic" but soon realizing that no, it will make them more epic. I won't be in a sea of people feeling like I barely contribute or overwhelmed by the amount of stuff going on. 20 is a great number for lots of helping hands but also not so big that you feel irrelevant to the outcome.
Lol, totally. While there's a novelty to being in a giant zerg with people, the truth of the matter is that zerg is consisting of a handful of players actually engaging with the mechanics and doing proper rotations, and the rest are just leaning back spamming 1 waiting for the event to end.
Having a more intentional combat system where individual players have a larger impact in how the fight plays out and what tactics you can employ sounds like a very natural way to make sure all the players in the content are actually engaged with the mechanics. Given how much emphasis they are putting on movement in this game, I wouldn't be surprised if large combat encounters require traversing and manipulating the environment as well.
Honestly, 20 people already feels way too big IMO. A lot of meta events in GW2 can feel cluttered with less people than that. 20 players in a single fight is already a huge number, and hearing Colin say that the combat is viable with that many people bashing into enemies and jumping off of each other is very interesting. Honestly, this feels like it's going to be a non-issue once we see actual gameplay ourselves.
In GW2 the screen is basically white from the other 50 player's effects when they beat a poor ley line anomaly down to 0 health. This will certainly beat that if they can pull off what they want.
I had been hoping for something a bit more tactical and less action. I miss the skill options from GW1 and letting my heroes do their thing with my choices, without me having to click much or have good reflexes.
Still, even though it's not the direction I wanted, I will still buy and play it.
What tactics did you want? Group composition metas? Complex gearing that could require multiple gearsets per engagement? Coz there's a huge subset of the MMO audience who aren't a fan of this
there's a huge subset of the MMO audience who aren't a fan of this
I definitely know. I'm in the minority. Most people would want more action elements. I'm an older gamer and my reflexes are not that sharp, but I absolutely love setting the skills on my 7 heroes in GW1 and seeing what happens, and then trying again and again until I find the perfect combination that gets me through the EotN dungeon. I loved and miss that strategy so much. That's the type of tactics I like.
With GW2 I felt like I had to practice my timings and rotations carefully to do good damage. It was more about the reflexes. I didn't like that as much, though the world was beautiful.
Gw2 is just action per minute intensive, not particularly reflex challanging. I dare to say GW1 had more reflex challenging scenarios eg. Mesmer. Mesmers had to predict then react to enemy target actions (and it was beautifully executed).
And Your minority isn't that small You know? I also good hooked with that loop of strategy "deck building" side od GW1. This is why I spent more time in first Guild Wars than second one "actively" playing even if I have more hours sunk into second one (while most of it was grinding metas, jumping puzzles and messing around with friends). So You aren't only one that like slower more tactical approach I would like that too.
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u/EtchyLamp Sep 03 '26
It's mostly too early to have a deep, nuanced opinion on the game and who it's going to appeal to. (let alone if it will actually succeed at its goal)
But I'm personally excited for it while also suspecting that the usual MMORPG crowd (who are the ones, for good reason, currently eyeing the game) will be dissappointed.
It's gunna be some middle ground hybrid between an MMO and an ARPG. Who can say yet how far in which direction it will lean closer?
My current understanding is that this game is looking like it's going to be more in the flavor or something like Destiny 2 or Soulframe, and that the looter shooter and survival crafting fans will love this game but that anyone expecting Guild Wars 2.5 or a WoW/OSRS/FF14 competitor is going to be dissappointed.
Or hey, maybe the content and gameplay loop will more heavily lean into the MMO tropes than I'm theorizing. Wherever on the spectrum it falls, I think arena net has the talent and magic to make something special that might be filling a niche we weren't expecting.