Returning to the MMO Space: Guild Wars 2 and my Experience of the Previous Week

Resuming play of an MMO can be met with a number of reasons; social circles and renewed interest from your peers; lack of interest from current titles available to the player; new content via an internal patch or external expansion would name a few.  For me, I’ve experienced a mixture of these factors alongside keeping up to date via YouTube channels and livestreams via Twitch and in short, this last week has been really enjoyable for me getting back into the world of Tyria.  The new areas create an interest mix of verticality and meta-events and although the most recent story arc (Season 2 Living World) has come to its conclusion as of January 2015, I’m looking to set aside some time to go through it all sometime in the next couple of weeks.  With all this being said, my observation of the playtime I’ve had has brought up a number of topics I’ve discussed previously that I want to bring up in a retrospective manner. 

Initial playtime: Exploration

After getting to grips with the changes made to the UI, I travelled to the new areas of the Maguuma wastes which feature heavily in season 2 of the living world.  I first entered the Silver wastes, not knowing much about the zone and roaming around getting an eye on the environment; being quickly met with a cavalcade of events situated at a fort in the south / south-eastern part of the map.  For the next hour or so, my gameplay was exploration through combat which felt frantic but natural in the journey, leading to a boss battle similar to the marionette event of season one where I had previously stopped playing.  In this short period, I had re-learnt my favoured profession (Engineer) to a workable fashion and explored the entire zone reinforcing my desire to keep playing and see what was next. 
Dry top (the second new zone to explore) for me was an unguided journey through the vast verticality that the zone presented, much to the enjoyment of myself.  Exploration and finding new stuff has always been a draw for many players of MMOs (and all types of games to a certain extent) and for me this is no exception.  Seeing a distant treasure or high platform and figuring out the path to take up there without a guide can be an experience met with both enjoyment and frustration but for me it’s all a part of that casual sense of seeing where the road takes you.  I still need to explore the entirety of this area, but I’m looking forward to seeing what it has to offer. 

Mid-week playtime Experiencing Content and Changes

After a couple days playing in the PVE world, I rocked up into the PVP content of both structured PVP (sPVP) and world vs world (WvW) to see how I would fair in such an environment.  I had previously partaken in these game modes in a casual sense with a desire to try different builds and see how they worked, but had an mind-set of being a responsive player in terms of the play/counter play.  To go back to our spectrum from last week, I was moving from the ‘casual’ sense of initial exploration into a more centred position in which I wanted to perform well.  My first couple games went very well with very few deaths and good contributions through kills and capping, but as I met more skilled players my lack of current experience showed.  That being said, I do have a feeling that I would want to get better and maybe in the future be involved in an organised pvp team.  Whether reality will allow that is another thing (as the last time I was massively involved in pvp was WoW some 7-8 years ago, when I was in my teens) but there is definitely a view of mine not just to use pvp as a means to get rewards and grab achievements. 

Mid-late week playtime: Achievement Points and a dip into min-maxing

When I was playing last year, I had a sizeable achievement point score that very few of my guild mates had.  At that point, it was a combination of playing since the 3 day head-start and purposely hunting specific achievements to improve my score but if you were to say I was ‘hard-core’ into something that was the closest I got to.  Now I have returned, my point score is naturally far behind those who kept playing so there is pretty much no way in which I can compete with people who have double my score.  That being said, achievements in a sense of completing challenges set in specific areas or gameplay modes still interest me so I have been slowly racking up the points getting around 500-600 in a week (which is close to what I averaged in a month depending on the content).  This is of course bloated due to a number of ‘fluff’ achievements that I’ve got this past week, but I would say that this is my ‘endgame’ in a roundabout way. 
I have done a small amount of min-maxing in terms of ‘if I’m in zone x and achievement y is here I should do it’ but I’m not going out of my way to make sure this happens.  Where I currently sit is positioning my alts in specific areas to gather materials and the likes on a daily rotation while I continue to have the bulk of my playtime on my main characters (which are currently my engineer and warrior).  However, I am using the warrior rather than resource gathering to get a couple weapon and enemy type kill achievements so in a roundabout way I’m still min-maxing but it’s through natural play and not specifically choosing an area that gets the job done in the fastest way possible. 

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time in Guild War 2 over the past week and as long as it keeps my interest level at this point I can see myself playing for the foreseeable future.  If I have something to learn from my original playtime, I would say that I should take on a wider range of the spectrum between ‘casual’ and ‘hard-core’ as a means to not burn-out on content as well as being involved in what the world has to offer.  My week of playtime has featured this range of play style and taught me a little about my gaming habits from a teenager into an adult so here’s to future and finding more weird architectural theory crossovers to talk about.  

The ‘Map’ and player movement through a MMO environment

With the recent announcement of Heart of Thorns in Guild Wars 2 and feeling a bit bored of my current game library recently, I’ve re installed the ~ 25gb of data and looked to jump back into Tyria.  Unfortunately, this has been met with a minor drawback needing to go through support to reset my password (which thankfully only took a day to resolve as of an hour ago) but after writing this I’m gonna rock up on my Charr Engineer and roam around the newer zones.  I’ve kept up to date with information via a couple YouTube channels (Matt Visual and Wooden Potatoes) so I’m not going in completely dark, but that love for discovery that grabs me in games of this nature is still present for my enjoyment. 

While I’ve been downloading the game over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about the MMO as a ‘thing’ and something that perked my interest is movement; in particular the way in which players interact with the environment in a range of styles depending on the type of player.  To give a rough spectrum, on one hand we have the seasoned player who goes from A to B in a highly efficient manner and the other roams picking up on minor tangents onto their destination.  Situations where this can be apparent are things like auction houses/ trading posts/ markets to banks; trade-skill / crafting profession work areas to banks; resource gathering paths and boss / event trains which can all feature precision down to a tee or a lackadaisical stroll (e.g. Queensdale Champ Train from Guild Wars 2).  As well as the literal movement of the player, content can be calculated in a similar manner as new zones, story arcs and achievement tracks can feature guides on how to min-max content.  I briefly touched on this subject in both “Boundaries and Dungeon Keeper” and “Spatial Awareness Self-reflection” in regards to how we regard ‘space’ and ‘place’ from an architectural through the idea of the ‘map’. 

The concept of the ‘map’ is one of which looks to take note of how we interact with our environment through a series of physical and mental actions.  To give a simple example of this a house may involve walking through the front door and taking off your shoes; sitting down in the living room and looking around at a décor while the TV is playing in the background; having a conversation over a beverage and finally leaving through the same door to continue your day.  Bringing this back to MMO players, this is most apparent during the early stages of content being available where there can be a feeling of a ‘gold rush’ in the air as people dart in multiple ways to explore the environment and complete the present objectives.  Being able to find a spot to sit and watch as the mass of players can be an interesting experience to behold, but if you’re not a MMO player I’d recommend a town centre / city shopping district / out of town shopping centre; with the thrall of shoppers going from shop to shop going about their business. 

Going back into the world of MMOs for me every so often presents itself with a mix of intrigue and optimism; particularly nowadays with having an interest in how we design our environment physically and theoretically to invoke a range of emotions.  My delve back into Guild Wars 2 reflects a more ‘casual’ journey in comparison to the min-maxing of my original playtime, but I’m looking forward to how the game makes me feel in the coming weeks.  

Spectrum of Architecture and 'Man-Made Mountains' in Gaming

Architecture, like any visual medium, has the ability to invoke a wide range of emotional reactions from how it’s formed and the aesthetic direction that is used.  The traditional cottage can invoke feelings like nostalgia, warmth or community whereas modern flats may present more of a cold, functional vibe with individualism.  In a previous post, I mentioned a phrase called ‘The Nest and the Pillar of Fire’ and today I want to expand on that idea.

The phrase in question gives a rough spectrum of architecture in which we design our environment.  The ‘Nest’ describes the basic requirements of self; in that shelter gives us protection against the elements and others as well as being a representation of settlement.  Another way to describe it is using the term ‘function’ (in regards to form vs. function) where design is purely out of necessity for its inhabitants.  Examples of these can be such things as Neolithic huts, cairns, longhouses and other early civilization settlements where survival was the highest of priorities.  This is not to say that the concept of ‘Nest’ doesn't exist in today’s world just that these examples are generally given when describing the concept. 

The ‘Pillar’ is the complete opposite where its use is most likely itself; where the object may provide no substantial use for us other than aesthetics or prestige.  Also known as ‘High-Art’ or ‘Form’ (see above) these pieces of architecture can represent expressions of emotion, ritual, ideology and anyway in which the designer is tasked to create art in the built environment.  Monuments, obelisks and similar sculptured structures share this view, but it can be expanded into pieces like towers and skyscrapers like the recent ‘Shard of Light’ in London, England.  Looking at these examples of the ‘Pillar’ you may get the feeling of height being a defining characteristic that connects them.  Although it is true that not all objects that fit into the ‘Pillar’ demand sky-piercing attributes, it does bring us onto the idea of the ‘man-made mountain’ to which one may argue that the ‘Pillar’ originates from. 

The concept of the ‘man-made mountain’ generally comes from early civilizations and the rituals that come with them.  To keep the gods pleased (in which I mean polytheistic religion) temples were built and offerings made to keep the crops bountiful and danger at bay.  Temples generally wanted a sense of prestige about them, as it would show the gods that they were important to the worshipers, meaning that the way they were constructed had to reflect that; with lavish materials and size that could dwarf all other nearby structures.  As god could make great natural structures like mountains, valleys, etc their followers wanted to replicate that, hence the term ‘man-made mountain’.  Examples of this are places like Chichen Itza in Mexico, Borobudur in Java and the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt where ancient civilizations have made objects with specific geometry and vast manpower so that its prestige is unprecedented. 

In today’s world, we do continue to see this, but whereas these early examples are based in ritual, modern interpretations have a more human prestige or organisation achievement (arguably).  Skyscrapers that litter are larger cities of world are grand towers that look go higher than ever thought accomplished to show what we can do as a race (on a more general idea) or the presence of a particular organisation / business in its ability to produce such a structure.  These structures can bring on a number of different emotions like awe, fortitude, impression, suppression, etc but they still follow this original concept of the ‘man-made mountain’. 

If you've played games anywhere over the past 20 or so years, it’s easy to assume you've probably experienced this in some fashion.  Antagonists being at the end of some large settlement or structure like Mario, Castlevania or similar title are often used to show the strength that said character has and what the protagonist needs to overcome to accomplish their objective.  One title that I feel does this well is the Half Life 2 series (including episode 1+2) with the combine tower at the heart of city 17.  For a long period of the game, it features in one way or another to keep the player informed about a goal on the horizon and an ever present threat (in particular moving into episode 1 post-endgame half-life 2).  Somewhat similar to this concept, Dear Ester does this with a tower which has a flashing red light as a means to guide the player towards an ever present goal.  This idea can potentially be seen in how present particular mechanics, for example how a skill tree in an RPG works upwards as you gain levels to portray an advancement in power or survival game where players tend to start thinking about aesthetics once they get past the challenge of surviving in the designated environment (of which those of you who've played Minecraft will understand). 

Bringing all these concepts together one can naturally see the design concept of the ‘tower’ within Ubisoft which has kind of become a parody of itself.  For those of you unaware, Ubisoft’s titles of 2014 (Watch_Dogs, Far Cry 4, Assassin’s Creed: Unity and The Crew) all feature towers in some fashion designed to progress the game and unlock more content.  Although some of these titles do make sense in world, they do seem rather odd as a player for example, The Crew is a racing game where you don’t leave your vehicle but you go around unlocking radio towers.  I’m quite indifferent to the towers (probably because I don’t play many AAA titles and don’t experience this repeat as often) but looking back on these concept of the monument and ‘man-made mountains’ I feel its shifted a bit towards the ‘Nest’ or ‘Function’ ideology; as its presence can be describe as somewhat mundane being a means to continue play rather than holding a sense of accomplishment or prestige. 

The spectrum of architecture is a simple one, but it does allow us to consider a wide range of concepts and emotions in our built environment.  Game present this spectrum in a pretty cool way and I hope to see the idea explored further in future as we are currently doing with the idea of ‘what is a game?’.  As a player, consider how things like the progression of the characters, story, aesthetics or mechanics come along and see if you can find links into the concept of ‘man-made mountains’.  I hope you found this interesting and if you have any questions feel free to ask.