Heart of Thorns: Design philosophy change?
Sunday, August 9th, 2015 09:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cashewSo, I'm playing the Heart of Thorns (GW2 expansion) beta weekend and I feel like there's been a change in the design philosophy.
In the original GW2, the philosophy seemed to be "reward good play". For example, you get bonus experience when you use combo fields or cooperate with other players. You get extra stuff from going out of your way to do obscure things. You get more experience from completing events and hearts than just mindlessly grinding mobs. In other words, players are incentivized with more stuff when they play well, instead of being punished for playing badly. You will not receive less or no experience for playing in an area below your level or not use combo fields. You aren't locked out of map completion for not completing jumping puzzles or doing difficult bosses. You don't die just because you missed a dodge on a knockdown or AoE attack.
However, in Heart of Thorns, it's starting to feel like the design philosophy is now "punish bad play". Instead of giving your bonus experience or a shiny item for killing a hard mob, now it's kill you with one shot if you don't dodge in time. If you didn't see the sniper or didn't time your dodge right? Immediate death, do not pass go, do not collect 200, start over. Essentially, the game is now punishing instead of rewarding. Sure, some of the hardcore thinks that the only rewarding game is a punishing one, but for the most of us, it's just straight up frustrating.
Quite frankly, I wish Anet will just come right out and say it. They've decided to make Heart of Thorns a punishing game instead of a rewarding one, that way the rest of us can just avoid the expansion altogether.
In the original GW2, the philosophy seemed to be "reward good play". For example, you get bonus experience when you use combo fields or cooperate with other players. You get extra stuff from going out of your way to do obscure things. You get more experience from completing events and hearts than just mindlessly grinding mobs. In other words, players are incentivized with more stuff when they play well, instead of being punished for playing badly. You will not receive less or no experience for playing in an area below your level or not use combo fields. You aren't locked out of map completion for not completing jumping puzzles or doing difficult bosses. You don't die just because you missed a dodge on a knockdown or AoE attack.
However, in Heart of Thorns, it's starting to feel like the design philosophy is now "punish bad play". Instead of giving your bonus experience or a shiny item for killing a hard mob, now it's kill you with one shot if you don't dodge in time. If you didn't see the sniper or didn't time your dodge right? Immediate death, do not pass go, do not collect 200, start over. Essentially, the game is now punishing instead of rewarding. Sure, some of the hardcore thinks that the only rewarding game is a punishing one, but for the most of us, it's just straight up frustrating.
Quite frankly, I wish Anet will just come right out and say it. They've decided to make Heart of Thorns a punishing game instead of a rewarding one, that way the rest of us can just avoid the expansion altogether.
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Date: 2015-08-09 16:57 (UTC)Of course, given what happened to Orr after the game originally came out, we can predict what's going to happen eventually here: HoT will come out. The casuals will play it and get frustrated, finally motivate some parts of this largely silent majority to finally start complaining about it on forums and such. And then Anet will nerf the hard things or add more options to make it easier.