Guild Wars 2

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt the way that I do about a game.

GW2 has been competitive with some of the very best subscription-based MMOs out there despite costing significantly less with just their one time payment, which is why I didn’t have as high of expectations. I knew this entire time that a game like this without a subscription fee had to have a catch, especially since its cash shop didn’t even require use of real life money and was only optional.

I figured out over time that the catch was that bugs/popular methods of exploiting would never be fixed unless they were directly tied to living story updates, there would be tons of emphasis on making the game as casual-friendly as possible to make sure that they’d always have new players to profit off of.

I did not anticipate ArenaNet to be so heavily focused on forcing “e-sports” into this game. There is virtually no concern over how balance updates in their PvP portion of the game impact anything in PvE or WvW. I have progressively watched them nerf damage into the ground without making changes to mechanics of bosses or compensating by lowering health pools of any mobs at all. New bugs have been introduced to dungeons without old ones being fixed. Popular world bosses like Tequatl went on with terrible bugs for months before finally being fixed.

As well as the above, there are so many things in this game with meaningless rewards. The fact that over 90% of the items you get are considered ‘salvage-trash’ is pretty sad. Champion bags contain the same dull loot that you get from everything else. Ascended drops from FotM are worth less than rares, since you can’t salvage or sell them and are forced to vendor them.

There’s a lot of people that don’t care about these things at all, but there’s also a lot of people that do. As a PvE player, there’s not a whole lot for me to do. I don’t like this game’s PvP because it makes me feel like a child in a playpen with this awful announcer voice, generic red vs. blue conquest in a restricted pen with equal armor attributes and no consequences at all for losing. To me it’s boring, and I don’t want to take part of it. Because of it, I’m left to mindnumbingly repeat the same things that I have been for such a long time.

There’s been Living Story releases, but the second season isn’t keeping me interested for longer than a few hours on the first day it’s released. There’s no way that it could because it’s designed so that anyone can get it done… so there’s no challenge associated with it.

I’m not mindlessly ranting about how much I hate the game because I don’t. I’m just disappointed to see that once again, they’re nerfing damage, forcing their game to be as casual-friendly as possible yet trying to force e-sports into it at the same time (doesn’t even make sense to me how they think it’s ever going to work), ignoring dungeons and loads of bugs/exploits that have been around for longer than a year, and not introducing any content with meaningful rewards or content to challenge anybody besides newcomers.

I understand why, but it doesn’t mean that I like the way things are.

All of these things on my mind coupled with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch and make it impossible to stream with music make me sad. I have lost all motivation to play and it’s inevitable that I will not remain an active GW2 player for very much longer.

This situation that I’m in reminds me of what happened with another game that I once loved and was part of for many years, Runescape. It was ultimately destroyed and despite how much I hated everything that was happening to it, I stuck around because it’s tough to get yourself to leave something that becomes so routine especially when you’ve been a part of it for so long. Eventually when my nostalgia was ruined I was able to fully abandon it and move on.

It looks like it’s happening to me here, again. :/

Sorry in advance to those of you that get uptight when people vent about the things they don’t like on the forums.

I know how you feel. A lot of my friends from gw1 left a few months into the game. When I kept my head high and told them: “Don’t worry, they will fix things. It will get better.”

Starting to think that they might have been right all along. But I just can’t give it up. At least the game is directed towards casuals and as such I’m playing it as that. A casual game. It’s pretty insulting that they try to force this game into esports, because you can’t make a casual game into a competitive one. In order for this game to become esports they would have to overhaul the entire combat system. Essentially, making a different game.

I agree with you and that’s why it’s so frustrating for me.

Purple Miku.7032:

I don’t like this game’s PvP because it makes me feel like a child in a playpen with this awful announcer voice, generic red vs. blue conquest in a restricted pen with equal armor attributes and no consequences at all for losing. To me it’s boring, and I don’t want to take part of it.

I think I did a good job at explaining how it feels like in a PvP match to me. It doesn’t set the mood for PvP at all for it to seem like such a safe playground. The rewards offered from PvP are completely irrelevant to the activity as well, which also seems really strange. It doesn’t make sense why we should be rewarded with equipment skins that are supposed to be rewards from dungeons.

This is partially why rewards on this game seem so meaningless. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added other methods of obtaining for example, Tequatl weapon skins… like adding the option to purchase them with badges of honor or some crap like that.

Said all from my heart except the casual friendly part,I like it some of us have families job etc
About Loot:I am really dissapointed that I play for almost nothing,few +10 luck sometimes +50 maybe +100 from XXXXX amount of luck required for 1% which is almost useless cuz affects almost nothing.
Here’s the link for salvage from wiki http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Salvage

PvE consist in:World Bosses and dungeons once a day of course beside the fact that they are really easy and the only one which is hard is the Triple Trouble but only because ppl don’t know what to do.But anyway when something is hard ppl complain because they learned the easy way…but as I said earlier easy but without real rewards.

PvP:I don’t even try anymore.There’s many builds which you just cannot defeat with a specific class and others which are smashed in seconds so I need to be punished because I like to play a Greatsword warrior and not a Hambow?

But the most dissapointing in all is the fact that ppl abuse facts and Anet allows them like the PvP farming.
Or the best the Key farming,yes it’s allowed I know but for this we other who pay real money for those keys are punished.Just think when everyone can farm dozens of key why Anet should change the droprate of value items or skins or whatever is in?

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

IMO, any game that has TIME GATED play requireing you to log in each and every day to obtain IS NOT a game for casuals.

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

I mostly agree with this but I feel the OP still have a valid point with the RNG of drops… it’s not rewarding. What will casuals like me do once we’ve done a full map completion, all achievement boxes, etc? Because I also am not entertained by the new Living Story.

Shouldn’t this be on the PvP board?

Im Mudbone.1437:

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

IMO, any game that has TIME GATED play requireing you to log in each and every day to obtain IS NOT a game for casuals.

Actually it’s perfect for casuals because they can log in for an hour or two a day and still keep up with the people who can play for 8, 10, 15 hours a day because those people are hit by the time gating and can’t get ahead.

Also if you miss a day you’ve only missed one chance at certain things, rather than multiple attempts.

Im Mudbone.1437:

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

IMO, any game that has TIME GATED play requireing you to log in each and every day to obtain IS NOT a game for casuals.

But that isn’t even the case. You can bypass the time gating for dungeons by doing PvP for reward tracks to get the gear, can repeat the same paths as many times as you want to (for 20 tokens instead of 60), can bypass the daily ascended crafting by just buying fully crafted material on the trading post, can bypass the need for daily fotm by getting the rings elsewhere, can bypass the need to do weekly guild missions should you want to by just buying with laurels and ectoplasms, and getting your daily achievements done can often times be done in for example a single Tequatl event.

Daily skill interruptor, daily condition remover, daily reviver, daily killer, daily group event completer, daily dodger, daily harvester, etc… I find it hard to believe that you don’t find this casual-friendly but whatever.

I’ve never once felt forced to join the GW2 e-sport. I log in, stream, play, have fun, log out.

Purple Miku.7032:

T

I did not anticipate ArenaNet to be so heavily focused on forcing “e-sports” into this game. There is virtually no concern over how balance updates in their PvP portion of the game impact anything in PvE or WvW.

I’m going to stop you right there.

If you think ANet gives a single kitten about sPvP, you’re delusional and have obviously spent no time actually PvPing. PvP is a horrible unbalanced mess that has been stuck with a single game mode since launch. You really think they’re balancing with that in mind? Ha.

Well, i wrote a couple paragraphs, but they moved this topic to “Profession Balance”. This topic wasn’t just about professions, but the overall game. It’s sad to see the moderator move this topic off the general discussion section, because he/she didn’t like the criticism.

Hm. I can understand your frustration.
The funny thing is, while I was reading the OP I kept thinking “Why does miku care so much about PvE and bosses und dungeos being fixed”. Like pve would be any fun to play.

Mind I’ve been playing this game for 5 or 6 weeks now I and I am horribly bored of PvE already. I am wondering how you could endure this for so much longer. But I do understand your concern.

Pvp holds no interest to me either, its a playground like you stated.

I do however love, love, love the casual approach in this game. Back in the day where I had loads of time after school I would have maybe thought differently.

WvW is probably what brought me to GW and what makes me stick around.
Back when I played 8+ hours of AION a day and still could not get ahead and was being steamrolled by one guy with 1 tier higher equip. I hated those times soooo much. Because all I ever wanted was a somewhat balanced open world pvp where I dont have to grind for ages. I can do all I ever wanted in WvW here, and it even has some epic large fights, even thought i think the zerging is too much atm.

Anyway for you being a pve player I can fully sympthazise with you. The current state of PvE is a fail in the long run. Sad to see another player loosing its home, again.
We have all been there.
Played LineageII for 3 years back then – got patched to death.
Aion for 1 year – got patched to death.

Even though I did not play it that much, WoW suffered from the same and many other MMOS, yet their designers/developers dont learn much from it and keep ruining their own games. OH well.

Edit:
>“with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch”
You gotta be kittening kidding me, they bought twitch aswell now?
Let me guess, everyone will just accept it and carry on using all their services. wake up…

Honestly, look at it this way.

Even games where you have to pay for a subscription fee suffer from issues you would see from an F2P or a pay once and play. Depending on the company and what not it really isn’t much better sometimes even worse.

I never had the illusion that GW2 would be in any way like GW1, I have to admit.
Not only because I thought the very bite-sized and rather care-free-compatible nature of GW2 was pretty obvious pre-launch, also because… sorry, I can’t think of GW1 as a good game. Had some nice ideas, kept my interesting through all of alpha (yeah!) and beta, but really… not much behind it in the end. And lots and lots of post-release issues.

NewTrain.7549, they are balancing around PvP. It’s not delusional, it’s all over the forums and they have a livestream with people talking about it. Just because it’s in a terrible state doesn’t mean that they aren’t balancing around it, it just means they’re doing a trashy job (I’m inferring that this is how you feel based off of the way you responded to me).

Flitzie.6082, the kind of PvE that I’m talking about is generalized as all PvE but the kind that I focus on the most is dungeons & fractals and to be even more specific, I even solo all of this stuff as well. I understand your love of WvW and I can relate to how you feel, but to me interest fades in it fast as well because of how dead it tends to be unless you’re following a commander with just about everybody else. The whole “capture points” thing gets old fast for me and it’s bothersome that the borderlands maps are all the exact same. For me to hold interest, some pretty large changes would need to be made. It’s a great game mode but it’s not intense enough for my tastes.

Purple Miku.7032:

NewTrain.7549, they are balancing around PvP. It’s not delusional, it’s all over the forums and they have a livestream with people talking about it. Just because it’s in a terrible state doesn’t mean that they aren’t balancing around it, it just means they’re doing a trashy job (I’m inferring that this is how you feel based off of the way you responded to me).

There are ANet devs all over the forums discussion how they’re balancing around PvP? News to me.

I’ll ask you this, in what game does PvP-centric balance take months between updates? I mean, Dark Souls 2 gets PvP balance updates more often than GW2 gets ANY balance updates. If you’re really deluded enough to think that this game is balanced around PvP, there’s no point in having a discussion.

The problem is ArenaNet has NO idea where to start. Thus they are not doing a lot.

This is a good thing that they are being careful.

But the answer to the problem is a scarey one but will benefit the game and all players in the end.

Start over.
There are so many systems and mechanics that must be rebuilt from the ground up ArenaNet might as well release them all in an expansion pack.

Combat has hit it’s apex because of the mechanics attached to it. Dungeons cannot be improved as long as you must have an NPC attached. sPvP cannot be improved beyond point capture. Crafting cannot be improved from the base it currently has.

It’s almost like ArenaNet lacks a guide to focus their team. So what is left is a lot of stuff unfinished and never going to be finished because of a lack of united teamwork.

Don’t get me wrong, Season 2 living story proves ArenaNet can pull through with teamwork, with flying colors no less, it’s a shame their talent isn’t being used elsewhere in the game.

Allelya.6830:

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

I mostly agree with this but I feel the OP still have a valid point with the RNG of drops… it’s not rewarding. What will casuals like me do once we’ve done a full map completion, all achievement boxes, etc? Because I also am not entertained by the new Living Story.

That’s the problem with designing casual games, they come in a casual territory that’s a bit new to the MMO world. A single player game might not hold interest for 2-3 years and that’s expected, a MMO is supposed to thrive for half a decade or longer. I think it’s a nice experiment but ANet could use a return to the MMO roots with some hardcore rewards (cosmetic, that is – no game has ever been successful by locking functional rewards behind hardcore content).

The closest they have for this kind of reward program is the gem store (the more gold you can earn, the more stuff from the gem store you can buy unless you want to use real money). That’s not a thriving system to support the hardcore playerbase, I believe in exclusive cosmetic rewards for people who put the time, effort and energy into something – it just makes sense. GW1 hit that nail on the head.

I agree with the premise of this thread 100%.

I’ve always thought it to be highly ironic that Anet is pushing so hard to make this game both casual-friendly and a high end e-sport. The two seem quite contradictory to me, and the current balancing method where usually non-substantial changes (that typically shift the meta of each game mode in different directions) are spread out months apart just shows how much of a mess it seems to be.

The season 2 living story content seems pretty solid IMO, but all it’s doing is leaving me wondering why they aren’t bothering to go back and fix the stuff that we were given at launch; the bulk of the game that we all paid our money for. The open world that is largely ignored nowadays because there’s nothing really to do once you’ve done original map completion. The dungeons that have poorly designed enemies that provide virtually no valuable reward other than a small fraction of a percent of the gold required to get the ACTUAL rewards. Hell, even PvP, where it’s either zergtrains in WvW or a single bland point-capture game in sPvP.

It just feels like Anet looked at this game and said, “Well, it’s not completely broken, so let’s not waste our time worrying about it.” It feels like they’re trying so hard to be new and innovative and different with this whole living story thing that they’re not paying attention to the fact that it’s only a small portion of the game, and everything else needs to receive adequate attention as well. It feels like they’re largely ignoring a community that at times seems to know their own game better than they do.

And the most frustrating part of it all is that I can’t just drop everything and leave. I just see all of this potential in this game because of what it DOES have. The combat mechanics are excellent. The visuals are amazing. The world and lore is unique and fascinating. It just hurts so bad to see all of this potential go to waste because it’s lacking the necessary content to take advantage of these things. It’s like having a fine china plate with polished silver utensils, but no food to eat with it. And the players are getting very, very hungry.

Black Box.9312:

. It’s like having a fine china plate with polished silver utensils, but no food to eat with it. And the players are getting very, very hungry.

quoted for absolute truth.

@timegating being casual or hardcore;
Casuals can’t log in every day and they don’t necessarily care to. Saying “okay i’m going to log in every day for 3 months to make silk weaving thread and this means i will be able to sell off 90 bolts of damask and make a zillion gold”; does that sound like a hardcore or a casual thing to do?
A casual goes “you know what, i feel like doing some pvp/pve/wvw/rp on gw2! i am going to do that”. They don’t have structured plans, they just get in and they do stuff.

The game is stale.

No new weapons for professions, no new professions, nearly no new traits, utility, whatever.

With this bloody focus on eSports kitten, ANet fears to introduce anything new to the game to unbalance the already unbalanced.

I, by now, would be even willing to play ESO, if someone sends me a free code and time card, just to see something new…

There are a lot of things in your op I agree with, miku, I just think your balance specific message is getting lost in the other stuff. It’s good feedback, I’m just afraid its going to be brushed over by a dev looking for your problem with balance. I assume you want the damage reduction on greatsword to be pvp only? You say “damage nerfs”, but a dev would need to know 1) you are talking about warrior 2) you aren’t considering the f1 rework or axe 5 buff as fair compensation in pve.

If you just need to get stuff off your chest, I get that. If you are interested in giving feedback (which josh said they are open to listening to), I’d tease out the argument about what specifically you want split in pvp and pve, and save the rest of the complaints for a GD post. This is not me trying to split hairs, this is really me agreeing with you and wanting to make sure what you’ve written get’s seen by the right people.

I think as far as balancing goes, just being more daring would help a lot. I mean look at WoW, 6,8 million subs still, 12,1 mil max, and 10 years going.
And what do they do? They change tons of skills constantly, exchanging the entire functionality, merging them, splitting them off, removing them, adding them.

Yes, this upsets the balance, constantly.

But, between the frequent wild swings in balance, the devs get very very useful input about what the actual underlying problems are. So over time, the WoW-balance-line slowly homes in on the target.

Ofc, being not nearly there after 10 years, and WoW still being easily best-balanced MMO I’ve played, might also bring you to the – IMO correct – conclusion that balancing MMOs is a futile task. I agree, complexity of combat + skills + classes + gear is way too high to be balanced or even close to balanced, no matter what.
Still, if nothing else WoW’s way of constantly re-mixing their classes keeps things more fresh.

At it, ANet! Come on, try it a bit! The combat and it’s balance are stale from 2 years of neglect outside of ignorable miniscule sPvP-centric changes. Do something big. Give me 16 glamours as a Mesmer. Swap Clone / Shatter skills, making clone-generation the class ability. Make elites (across the board) low-cooldown super-power skills which completely define your current playstyle due to dominating it.
Will these work? Probably not! But you won’t get any input without trying it out!

I agree with many things you said in your OP Miku, sometimes i have no idea where these changes pop up from, it seems we hear nothing for ages then BAM take this new trait system, oh and by the way we are going to alter your skill bars.

I missed the first living story as i hadn’t joined the game then, i just don’t understand why it could not be implimented then the way it is now where you can still get it later if you miss it. Dungeons aren’t my thing so can’t comment on the bugs personally but have seen you battle with them on stream many times.

On another note Miku,Twitch have stated that they will not mute music in live streams while broadcasting it, even if they had the technology to do so but you are not allowed to make a recording of it, so your music will be muted for playback.
As a lover of your music selection i can understand why you are saddened by it.

Black Box.9312:

I agree with the premise of this thread 100%.

I’ve always thought it to be highly ironic that Anet is pushing so hard to make this game both casual-friendly and a high end e-sport. The two seem quite contradictory to me, and the current balancing method where usually non-substantial changes (that typically shift the meta of each game mode in different directions) are spread out months apart just shows how much of a mess it seems to be.

The season 2 living story content seems pretty solid IMO, but all it’s doing is leaving me wondering why they aren’t bothering to go back and fix the stuff that we were given at launch; the bulk of the game that we all paid our money for. The open world that is largely ignored nowadays because there’s nothing really to do once you’ve done original map completion. The dungeons that have poorly designed enemies that provide virtually no valuable reward other than a small fraction of a percent of the gold required to get the ACTUAL rewards. Hell, even PvP, where it’s either zergtrains in WvW or a single bland point-capture game in sPvP.

It just feels like Anet looked at this game and said, “Well, it’s not completely broken, so let’s not waste our time worrying about it.” It feels like they’re trying so hard to be new and innovative and different with this whole living story thing that they’re not paying attention to the fact that it’s only a small portion of the game, and everything else needs to receive adequate attention as well. It feels like they’re largely ignoring a community that at times seems to know their own game better than they do.

And the most frustrating part of it all is that I can’t just drop everything and leave. I just see all of this potential in this game because of what it DOES have. The combat mechanics are excellent. The visuals are amazing. The world and lore is unique and fascinating. It just hurts so bad to see all of this potential go to waste because it’s lacking the necessary content to take advantage of these things. It’s like having a fine china plate with polished silver utensils, but no food to eat with it. And the players are getting very, very hungry.

This is an absolute fantastic post. Thank you for the reply!

Glad we agree with each other. It’s a rather relieving feeling to read posts like this so that I don’t feel alone with my dissatisfaction and disappointment, but at the same time kind of sad as well.

MMO’s are primarily PvE games. That is where the largest playerbase is in most MMO’s. So yeah its kind of ironic how they put so little into their largest gametype. 2 year old game, no new weapons, no new skills, no new dungeons, no decent skill based rewards.

Things really do need to pick up soon because I honestly dont know how long they can keep us straggling along. I managed to last almost 2 years but ive barely logged in for the last month. Its finally got to that point where i cant motivate myself to play even for those shiny skins i want so much anymore. And i was already in a state of “theres nothing to do” a year ago.

rfdarko.4639, thanks for the feedback. It was mostly to get things off my chest, as you said. I also sincerely doubt that I’ll be taken seriously from any developers because I’m just one player and I’m a part of the community that they least care about.

Shandia.1934, the twitch changes coupled with the things mentioned in my OP have killed my motivation to continue. I also want to add that as a competitive dungeon runner, it disappoints me that I have no competition these days for anything other than the huge number of people that only just started learning to solo Arah and only care about selling the path… for cheap prices as well. I can’t convince anyone to compete with me for the fastest Lupicus solo times, I can’t convince people to race and challenge me to different bosses (like Korga, for example) and I can’t convince people to stop undercutting each other. Even prior to the twitch changes all I was really doing the past two weeks was streaming myself on my mountain goat adventures.

I think it might be a sign for me to move on. Glad you’ve enjoyed my music though… to entertain was always what I’ve wanted.

spoj.9672:

MMO’s are primarily PvE games. That is where the largest playerbase is in most MMO’s. So yeah its kind of ironic how they put so little into their largest gametype. 2 year old game, no new weapons, no new skills, no new dungeons, no decent skill based rewards.

Things really do need to pick up soon because I honestly dont know how long they can keep us straggling along. I managed to last almost 2 years but ive barely logged in for the last month. Its finally got to that point where i cant motivate myself to play even for those shiny skins i want so much anymore. And i was already in a state of “theres nothing to do” a year ago.

Hey Spoj! I thought the very same thing— how ironic it is that the majority of the playerbase partakes the most in PvE related content yet that’s what tends to get the least attention. However, it’s worth mentioning that Living Story releases are PvE-related content. This is the biggest focus on the PvE side of the community as it’s what most of the playerbase would prefer. Dungeons are miniscule by comparison as far as popularity is concerned so they don’t care as much. I don’t think that’s good enough of a reason to justify abandoning them entirely which is exactly what has happened.

So it looks like we’re in the same boat— I don’t really know what else to do either. I’ve been patient but I think it’s been long enough for me to express my distaste in the direction that this game’s been heading.

Carighan.6758:

I think as far as balancing goes, just being more daring would help a lot. I mean look at WoW, 6,8 million subs still, 12,1 mil max, and 10 years going.
And what do they do? They change tons of skills constantly, exchanging the entire functionality, merging them, splitting them off, removing them, adding them.

Yes, this upsets the balance, constantly.

But, between the frequent wild swings in balance, the devs get very very useful input about what the actual underlying problems are. So over time, the WoW-balance-line slowly homes in on the target.

Ofc, being not nearly there after 10 years, and WoW still being easily best-balanced MMO I’ve played, might also bring you to the – IMO correct – conclusion that balancing MMOs is a futile task. I agree, complexity of combat + skills + classes + gear is way too high to be balanced or even close to balanced, no matter what.
Still, if nothing else WoW’s way of constantly re-mixing their classes keeps things more fresh.

At it, ANet! Come on, try it a bit! The combat and it’s balance are stale from 2 years of neglect outside of ignorable miniscule sPvP-centric changes. Do something big. Give me 16 glamours as a Mesmer. Swap Clone / Shatter skills, making clone-generation the class ability. Make elites (across the board) low-cooldown super-power skills which completely define your current playstyle due to dominating it.
Will these work? Probably not! But you won’t get any input without trying it out!

They have already tried it, and did an amazing job at it. The monthly skill balance changes in GW1 was what kept the game fresh. A small changes to a few skills would completely overhaul the entire meta, and this happened every month with every class.

Although, the reason that this was possible, was that there were countless of interactions between countless of skills. in GW2, there is nothing of that, there is no Sever Attery -> Gash, none of the skills interact with any of the other skills in any way.

And so far with GW2, anet has been completely reluctant to change any of the core mechanics, even if they are flawed to the core.

ocirne.7915:

They have already tried it, and did an amazing job at it. The monthly skill balance changes in GW1 was what kept the game fresh. A small changes to a few skills would completely overhaul the entire meta, and this happened every month with every class.

Although, the reason that this was possible, was that there were countless of interactions between countless of skills. in GW2, there is nothing of that, there is no Sever Attery -> Gash, none of the skills interact with any of the other skills in any way.

And so far with GW2, anet has been completely reluctant to change any of the core mechanics, even if they are flawed to the core.

I wouldn’t say that none of the skills interact with each other. The combo system is actually quite well done IMO, allowing for skill interaction not just between skills but between classes as well. The problem is just that Anet is just moving too slowly and making only minor changes months apart, which doesn’t solve anything.

The combo system is well done? The failure that is the combo system is the reason for melee stacking.
The combo system is the reason everything feels the same, because it is all you got to understand and then bunch up and burn down whatever gets close (or stuck in a corner).

Purple Miku.7032:

I’m not mindlessly ranting about how much I hate the game because I don’t. I’m just disappointed to see that once again, they’re nerfing damage, forcing their game to be as casual-friendly as possible yet trying to force e-sports into it at the same time (doesn’t even make sense to me how they think it’s ever going to work), ignoring dungeons and loads of bugs/exploits that have been around for longer than a year, and not introducing any content with meaningful rewards or content to challenge anybody besides newcomers.

I understand why, but it doesn’t mean that I like the way things are.

All of these things on my mind coupled with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch and make it impossible to stream with music make me sad. I have lost all motivation to play and it’s inevitable that I will not remain an active GW2 player for very much longer.

I’m sorry what damage was nerfed exactly? If what you’re talking about is the PvE damage of mobs then I get your post but if it’s Warrior damage then all I’ve got is laughter for you.

Oh yea, everyone in Arenanet is working on esphats. I mean, they couldn’t possibly be working on anything else with over 300 employees. Esphats definitely has to be the reason they haven’t fixed all the things wrong with the game.

Behellagh.1468:

Shouldn’t this be on the PvP board?

Only if you want to see that side of the games hospitality (and by hospitality I mean vitriolic filth and complaints of PvE getting all the content).

Dirame.8521:

Purple Miku.7032:

I’m not mindlessly ranting about how much I hate the game because I don’t. I’m just disappointed to see that once again, they’re nerfing damage, forcing their game to be as casual-friendly as possible yet trying to force e-sports into it at the same time (doesn’t even make sense to me how they think it’s ever going to work), ignoring dungeons and loads of bugs/exploits that have been around for longer than a year, and not introducing any content with meaningful rewards or content to challenge anybody besides newcomers.

I understand why, but it doesn’t mean that I like the way things are.

All of these things on my mind coupled with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch and make it impossible to stream with music make me sad. I have lost all motivation to play and it’s inevitable that I will not remain an active GW2 player for very much longer.

I’m sorry what damage was nerfed exactly? If what you’re talking about is the PvE damage of mobs then I get your post but if it’s Warrior damage then all I’ve got is laughter for you.

Oh yea, everyone in Arenanet is working on esphats. I mean, they couldn’t possibly be working on anything else with over 300 employees. Esphats definitely has to be the reason they haven’t fixed all the things wrong with the game.

Laugh all you want. I’m still correct, so whatevs.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The combo system is well done? The failure that is the combo system is the reason for melee stacking.
The combo system is the reason everything feels the same, because it is all you got to understand and then bunch up and burn down whatever gets close (or stuck in a corner).

The stacking meta is in place because of an easily exploitable AI system that basically hand feeds you PvE mobs to be cut down simply by hiding behind a corner. It’s true that stacking helps the combo system be more effective, but it is definitely not the primary reason for it.

Hold on.

Is this whole wall of text because they reduced Hundred Blades damage?

you’re speaking about PVP-Changes ruining the PVE aspect of the game, right? Only two classes have gotten a nerf so far because of issues with PVP content.

I’m probably crazy, but I squeezed that whole wall down into “Damage has been nerfed into the ground, PVE is now boring because it’s more friendly to newcomers.”

Even though:

Ranger got a buff
Warrior got a buff that almost supercedes the hundredblades nerf.

The rest is fluff.

…We’re getting LS updates every two weeks, and its L80 only. There will be bugs, Tyria is huge, and they constantly have to update large swaths of it with every living story update.

I’m hardly uptight regarding your complaint, but more confused as to what the nature of it is.

Purple Miku.7032:

Laugh all you want. I’m still correct, so whatevs.

Really? This is all about the 100B nerf? How is the game catering to newbs with that?

Nerfing 100B (the most spammed ability in all of PvE) = Catering to newbs

My brain just imploded.

Black Box.9312:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The combo system is well done? The failure that is the combo system is the reason for melee stacking.
The combo system is the reason everything feels the same, because it is all you got to understand and then bunch up and burn down whatever gets close (or stuck in a corner).

The stacking meta is in place because of an easily exploitable AI system that basically hand feeds you PvE mobs to be cut down simply by hiding behind a corner. It’s true that stacking helps the combo system be more effective, but it is definitely not the primary reason for it.

You both hit some of the reasons, I think Kai just had some wording that made it seem like that was the only reason stacking and combos are useful.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Hold on.

Is this whole wall of text because they reduced Hundred Blades damage?

No, it’s not. You should read the entire OP and then try again.

GW2 was actually marketed as an e-sport at launch, just as it was marketed as a non-trinity MMO. I think a lot of people just didn’t pay attention to the marketing though, and were just expecting a game like others (and were surprised to find something quite different).

Anyway, something I find quite interesting about the development and balance in GW2 is how damage has changed over the course of the game’s history. In the beginning, damage in PvE was stupendously high, crit damage allowed players to do absolutely monstrous damage, while in PvP it was much much lower. Forward to today, and we see that the curve of damage has really changed for both game types. ANet nerfed a lot of the damage in PvE (the crit damage -> Ferocity change was the biggest, but a lot of things such as moving the Warrior’s Heightened Focus from Adept to Grandmaster also show how ANet slowly worked to lower damage in PvE over time), but it also greatly increased the damage in PvP. Double Sigil procs (such as Fire+Air now working together) carry more defensive specs such as S/D Acro Thief, or even older builds like Shatter Mesmer, and have them do FAR more burst damage in PvP than they ever did at the start of the game. Celestial Stat buff and Strength Runes made all defensive specs that much stronger. The result is that all classes can now run builds that are tankier, can do more burst damage than at launch, sustain more Might than at launch, but the sustained damage of PvE Zerker DPS builds has significantly gone down since launch as well (ferocity nerf, stacking sigil nerf, etc.).

Basically, ANet increased player damage in PvP, while it decreased player damage in PvE, which is arguably the opposite of what they should be doing to keep the game interesting and balanced. It’s kinda baffling when you think about it. Heck, the change to Warrior Greatsword (nerfing the damage of Hundred Blades, while increasing the damage of the burst skill) shows that they intend to continue this trend of making classes do more PvP damage but less PvE damage.

Dirame.8521:

Purple Miku.7032:

Laugh all you want. I’m still correct, so whatevs.

Really? This is all about the 100B nerf? How is the game catering to newbs with that?

Nerfing 100B (the most spammed ability in all of PvE) = Catering to newbs

My brain just imploded.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Hold on.

Is this whole wall of text because they reduced Hundred Blades damage?

you’re speaking about PVP-Changes ruining the PVE aspect of the game, right? Only two classes have gotten a nerf so far because of issues with PVP content.

I’m probably crazy, but I squeezed that whole wall down into “Damage has been nerfed into the ground, PVE is now boring because it’s more friendly to newcomers.”

Even though:

Ranger got a buff
Warrior got a buff that almost supercedes the hundredblades nerf.

The rest is fluff.

…We’re getting LS updates every two weeks, and its L80 only. There will be bugs, Tyria is huge, and they constantly have to update large swaths of it with every living story update.

I’m hardly uptight regarding your complaint, but more confused as to what the nature of it is.

I’m confused as to why you two gentlemen are posting on my thread if you’re too lazy to read it all. What gives?

Sure I understand it’s a long read to many, but no one’s forcing you to come here. If you’re looking for a thread that requires less reading, there’s plenty of other ones to choose from. Go on and see for yourselves.

Neko.9021:

GW2 was actually marketed as an e-sport at launch, just as it was marketed as a non-trinity MMO. I think a lot of people just didn’t pay attention to the marketing though, and were just expecting a game like others (and were surprised to find something quite different).

Anyway, something I find quite interesting about the development and balance in GW2 is how damage has changed over the course of the game’s history. In the beginning, damage in PvE was stupendously high, crit damage allowed players to do absolutely monstrous damage, while in PvP it was much much lower. Forward to today, and we see that the curve of damage has really changed for both game types. ANet nerfed a lot of the damage in PvE (the crit damage -> Ferocity change was the biggest, but a lot of things such as moving the Warrior’s Heightened Focus from Adept to Grandmaster also show how ANet slowly worked to lower damage in PvE over time), but it also greatly increased the damage in PvP. Double Sigil procs (such as Fire+Air now working together) carry more defensive specs such as S/D Acro Thief, or even older builds like Shatter Mesmer, and have them do FAR more burst damage in PvP than they ever did at the start of the game. Celestial Stat buff and Strength Runes made all defensive specs that much stronger. The result is that all classes can now run builds that are tankier, can do more burst damage than at launch, sustain more Might than at launch, but the sustained damage of PvE Zerker DPS builds has significantly gone down since launch as well (ferocity nerf, stacking sigil nerf, etc.).

Basically, ANet increased player damage in PvP, while it decreased player damage in PvE, which is arguably the opposite of what they should be doing to keep the game interesting and balanced. It’s kinda baffling when you think about it. Heck, the change to Warrior Greatsword (nerfing the damage of Hundred Blades, while increasing the damage of the burst skill) shows that they intend to continue this trend of making classes do more PvP damage but less PvE damage.

But that’s precisely what I find so bizarre. They’re doing everything that they can to make this as casual-friendly as possible and ensure that even the newest players are able to get everything done in new content updates (is it so much to ask for some content that’s challenging enough to keep me busier than an hour or two…?), yet at the same time want to try to force the notion of the game being competitive? Wat…? It just doesn’t work, and the reason for it is because the bulk of the players that are attracted to competitive gameplay are probably not going to choose GW2 for their cravings. I chose to play initially because of friends that were on it and pretty much made challenge for myself by soloing all of the group content. I’m to the point where I’m finding myself doing “naked” dungeon solos now, for christ sake. I’m bored. Even if I log in sparingly for just the Living Story, I’m done with it so soon it’s disheartening. :/

It really seems like they’re trying to give people out there the impression that they can satisfy the cravings of gamers like those in the tournaments of League of Legends, for example. I’ve watched gameplay on there and tournament rounds on twitch for GW2 and that’s something that’s run through my mind before.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to be continuing the trend you’re describing with increasing PvP damage and decreasing PvE damage. They aren’t doing anything to improve the existing PvE content at all or make the encounters more interesting/engaging, so what’s the point in decreasing damage? It doesn’t make it harder and it doesn’t make it more fun for anyone to just repeatedly increase how long it takes to kill trash mobs. If a dungeon is to take longer, then mechanics should be changed; change a boss’s attacks to be less generic. All of these highly-telegraphed and slow attacks and copy/paste mob AI result in really stale encounters.

It’s extremely annoying how they’re leaving rewards the way that they are; just a bunch of trash to salvage and not care about, lower damage repeatedly, not fix bugs, ignore dungeons and those that want new ones…

Neko.9021:

GW2 was actually marketed as an e-sport at launch, just as it was marketed as a non-trinity MMO. I think a lot of people just didn’t pay attention to the marketing though, and were just expecting a game like others (and were surprised to find something quite different).

It was?
I’ve barely ever heard anything about sPvP pre-launch. It was in there, sure. I knew that from beta. But all the interviews, all the hype, it was about the world of tyria, about WvW in particular, about how the class-system and skill-system is different.

Not seen any marketing about sPvP.

Which is why I dislike the focus on it so much. People (as in: at large) don’t seem to have come here for the arena-like PvP. That’s also ignoring that those who enjoy arena are still happily playing WoW. And the people who did come here because of the outstanding points about the game are being ~ignored by the balance/bugfix team.

I don’t see what anyone expects anyone to be able to do about pve. It doesn’t matter how many dungeons you make or how ‘hardcore’ you try to make it, at the end of the day it’s still pve. You’re still just fighting against AI that’s been programmed to lose.

Coldtart.4785:

I don’t see what anyone expects anyone to be able to do about pve. It doesn’t matter how many dungeons you make or how ‘hardcore’ you try to make it, at the end of the day it’s still pve. You’re still just fighting against AI that’s been programmed to lose.

I understand your point, but that’s something I’m advocating against. I want AI that isn’t programmed the same way that we’re all used to. I want to be challenged with really hard encounters. I know that it won’t happen, sadly.

Well, what I’m saying is I’m not sure that what you want is actually possible. AI being scripted means you can always win by following the script. If it’s meant to be able to be beaten, by definition it must be designed to lose. A lot of games try to make things harder, but it nearly always comes down to trial and error rather than anything you can deduce logically.

It can still be challenging even if its predictable. Increasing the number of attacks bosses use would be a good start.

On the other side of the coin. I dont see why anyone plays sPvP. Its a mess, its boring and unintuitive to watch. This makes it a poor candidate for esports. If you want a competative fix there are plenty of better games.

NewTrain.7549:

Purple Miku.7032:

T

I did not anticipate ArenaNet to be so heavily focused on forcing “e-sports” into this game. There is virtually no concern over how balance updates in their PvP portion of the game impact anything in PvE or WvW.

I’m going to stop you right there.

If you think ANet gives a single kitten about sPvP, you’re delusional and have obviously spent no time actually PvPing. PvP is a horrible unbalanced mess that has been stuck with a single game mode since launch. You really think they’re balancing with that in mind? Ha.

The same could be said about PvE and WvW. Seems like they’re trying to make everything perfect, but every aspect of the game is just… falling apart.