Guild Wars 2: About Social Interactivity, Cooperative Play, and Organic Grouping

The MMO genre has lost its way of being a genre primarily about social interactivity. Furthermore, the the mechanics in place for cooperative play greatly reduces the feeling of playing the game in this manner with other players. The group mechanic is completely broken in the stagnated MMO genre.

Arena Net, the developer of Guild Wars, is trying to solve these issues the genre with Guild Wars 2. One of the problematic areas that Guild Wars 2 is trying to address is fostering a better sense of cooperative play and social interactivity through organic grouping. This is a more natural way to actually be able to socialize and play the MMORPG with other players. It is all about not forcing players to join up in a group to actually be part of a group.

It all happens naturally while the player is out in the game world.

The first way to solve a problem is to examine the problem and figure out what is causing the problem in the first place. The problem of forced grouping really comes from one issue in the MMO and that is mob tagging. It is why groups are needed so that players can share the experience and loot that comes with playing a MMO. Thus, the solution to the problem is the removal of the problem, mob tagging.

Guild Wars 2 is one of the first games, the other being DC Universe Online, that is removing the cumbersome and competitive mechanic of mob tagging. Of course, if you are trying to solve one problem it is important not create another with your solution this being that of mob stealing and loot stealing.

Arena Net also has this covered with Guild Wars 2 in that with the removal of mob tagging, all the various aspects of being grouped with another player still applies. For example If a player comes across another player who is attempting to kill something and helps this player. What takes place is that if this other player begins to attack this enemy and help the other player kill it, the group mechanic kicks in naturally. The initial player and the player that helped both get rewarded the same amount of experience. Furthermore, unlike even games with mob tagging and forced grouping, both players will receive loot from the mob all based on a separate loot table as well. There is no mob stealing, there is no loot stealing, both players receive a reward, both players receive experience, and both get credit towards quest fulfillment. It should be noted of course that this mechanic will have a limit in place. This limit will be that if a mob is below a certain threshold of health and near death, than the player that helps will not be rewarded.

All of this comes naturally in Guild Wars 2 with out having to waste a players time looking for a group and waiting around for the group to arrive to complete a quest. It is both a simplistic solution to an inherent design flaw in how past MMOs have attempted to tackle all the issues of mob stealing, loot stealing, and mob tagging. Yet, the removal of tagging itself, though making it easier to cooperate with other players through a more natural process of grouping, in the end doesn’t mean that it will bring about better social interaction.

Arena Net with the removal of tagging solved one issue, then it was ready to tackle the next issue. What is the inherent problem with in the MMOs that doesn’t foster the social interactivity that MMOs are supposed to be about? Once more Arena Net identified this issue and that is in current MMOs there is no mechanic that helps keep players together. The main culprit of this, and the one that was identified, is through the current questing model of most MMOs.

The current questing model does nothing to really foster any type of social interaction among the player base, the only exception being the force grouping quests that are offered. The issue with the questing model is that it separates the player base in two ways. The first way is just the questing mechanic itself. Players accept quests at the questing hub from the quest givers. After this is done players then go to the area specified to do the quest, complete the quest, and then return to the quest giver to turn in the quest. Sure, there might be other players there trying to complete the quest, but with mob tagging in place, there is no cooperation and everything is just a competition then with other players. It should be obvious that the current questing model does nothing to bring players together and keep them together in the area of the quest. The other issue of the questing model is that players will often become separated just by the fact that they are all on different quests.

Yet, with the removal of tagging done by Arena Net, what this has allowed them to do is to rethink this approach to questing and also resolve the issue of social interaction and cooperation. There solution is called the Dynamic Event System, and it actually resolves several issues inherent in the current MMO Model. Yet, what it has done for questing is that it keeps players together in an area working on quests. It does this in two profound ways.

First, is that it removes the entire quest mechanic of get, go, do, and return. Instead there is none of this going on, though mechanics are in place to direct players to areas of interest. Instead, similar to Elder Scroll games, the player is just thrust into the game world for the most part and asked to go out into the game world. As the player goes about the game world he will naturally come across parts of the world were aid and assistance is needed instead. So, you come across a farm that is being attacked and the farmer cries out for help. You have the option of going over there and helping this farmer out with this issue. Furthermore, the player is not limited to helping the farmer out only one way. It is up the player to choose how to help the farmer out. The player can kill the bandits, put out fires, or even gather crops. The player can focus on just one particular task or a little bit of all three; it is up to the player’s choice.

There are two types of Dynamic Events in the game. The first is that of the Static Dynamic Event. A static event is an event were it is there all the time and will eventually reset to be done by players again if they desire to repeat this event and the tasks of the event. The other type of Dynamic Event is the evolving event. An evolving event is one in which the event takes place on a chain. Players are giving a certain amount of time to complete whatever tasks the event asks them to actually complete. Unlike static events that reset, these ones don’t though. If the player fulfills the requirements, lets say saving a town from bandits, then the area shifts and the town people now rescued need you to go and collect wood to help rebuild the town, or go and fight of a camp of bandits, or go and rescue captured townspeople by another group of bandits. If this is accomplished, then the event moves to the next chain and so on and so forth until the chain reaches its final link. The chain will also move in the opposite direction as well if the players fail to achieve these goals of the event. The bandits will actually over run and secure the town, the next event then is to try to recapture the town from the bandits and on down the chain until the failure aspect reaches its end. The only instance when these events reset is when the successful end of the chain is fulfilled. Thus, if players don’t do reach this end of the chain, there is a tug of war that is taking place along the event chain.

Of course with the removal of quest givers the one other important aspect of completing quests needs to be addressed and that is reward. Similar to the removal of tagging, Arena Net took a simplistic approach in regards to this. All players who actively participate in an event will be rewarded with three key rewards. The first two is the standard of experience and some monetary reward. Yet, instead of rewarding a piece of gear, that may or may not be useful for your character, instead you will also be rewarded with Karma points. Karma points are then spent at Karma Vendors who will trade your points for various items, including gear upgrades. This allows for the player to choose what is actually most helpful to them, instead of being handed what could be nothing more than vendor fodder.

Through only two key changes, Guild Wars 2 is already addressing one of the biggest issues currently facing MMOs in trying to get players once more to cooperate instead of compete with one another. Of course there will still be the issues that have crept up in other MMO games when it comes to player interaction in Guild Wars 2. Despite this, these methods should help alleviate these issues greatly as players players will begin to adjust in time. What do you expect? MMO players have only known one way to play an MMO for seven years. Guild Wars 2 is trying to take a fresh and much needed different approach to the MMO Genre with the removal of mob tagging and the dynamic event system being only the start of this differing approach to the stagnated genre.