Guild Wars 2

So I read this thread:

It seems like feedback finally got back to ArenaNet that we don’t see you enough on the forum. So I thought to myself, something went into that post. A post like that does not just pop randomly. And I would like to return that favor. So here are some suggestions from a player who has been everywhere but World Versus World. (It simply does not interest me, so I will leave that to someone else).

But hey, let me start outside the actual game.

Forum activity: Well. I’m going to cut some slack here, given the thread I linked, but what I do want to mention is, there seems to be progress! Your (visible) activity on the forums used be abysmal. It is still very hard to get answer from you, but all in all it is getting better. As an example, the Mini Mr. Sparkles that had a lot of players upset (10.000 views in general discussion, still active in BLTC subforum), could have been shut down with any kind of answer. People, myself included, keep coming back to the thread to keep it alive, to hope that you will see it at some point, to let us know whether this will stay exclusive or be added to the game. But on the other hand I see more helpful responses lately, even if it’s a simple “I will pass it on to the team”. That’s great to see. More of that! It gives players comfort that their concern has been noticed.

Communication (Patches): You are great of giving tasteful previews of upcoming patches. There is however one thing that really really sucks. It’s not that it happens often, but there were two bad incidents lately. The first was the lack of info that karma would be changed. I personally had (with boosts) around 2.500.000 million karma stored. All of a sudden that karma was around 2.000.000. Ouch! At least we got a chance to use it, thank you for that. But then came the crafting patch. I was just about to level 6 crafting disciplines from 1-400 to receive 60 levels across 3 characters. Patch comes around and since I didn’t pull it together to do it a few days earlier I got 42 levels instead. Ouch. What I’m getting at here is, when you change elements of the game that affects the player, please give a warning ahead of time. There is however one exception to this! Please do not leak market info first on other sites. I have seen before that because of some MMO site interview, certain items rocketed in price. The info they share on their blogs should be available for everyone who browses GuildWars 2 official sites in my opinion. It sucks a bit to miss out on some market shift because of an interview you made. What am I getting at? – Well, either make some very visible links to whoever posts interviews you made or make sure the information that people could make a profit on is available here too.

With exception of your US Texas server sometimes displaying on my current logins (Seriously, why is that??), which would very much freak out a lot of players, that’s pretty much it for the outside of the game. In every other aspect I think you do a nice job here.

Let’s jump inside the game. The elephant in the room? Bugs, bugs, bugs.

Bugs: Well. Seriously. Fix them. Yes, that is easily said, but the amount of bugs in the game is really really bad. A sign of that? Well, how about players making their own bug tracker on the forums?
It’s not that you don’t fix bugs. You fix lots of bugs. But there are also some that just should have been gone so long ago. A very simple example is the PvP Catcher backpieces. When will we be able to simply deposit these into the PvP locker? They were introduced months ago. I understand that it is a low priority as it does not break anything, but still. But okay, that’s a quality of life fix. How about the really bad ones? This one have been stickied in SPVP forum for nearly a year. Since release, if PvP players change between EU and US servers they will simply stop receiving reward chests – Which is the only reward you receive from playing tournaments. I personally missed out on 100 chests as I have announced vocally in that thread – around 200 matches with no rewards, which means I missed around 100 chests. 20.000 rank points. 20.000 glory. Around 500 pieces of gear/dyes/boosters. When contacting support they don’t even know about the bug, nor will they replace those chests. People left over it according to the thread, and I understand. It’s not exactly motivating. Imagine for a PvE player if a bug caused him to gain 70% less XP and 95% less gear. How long would you expect him to stick around? I know that it’s a kittene to fix, but in my opinion it’s a priority fix. If not, I ask that you re-evalue how much time you set off to bugfixing.

Communication (ingame): While I personally browse forums and such generously, I often find that of my 97 member Guild, only one or two people know about what’s going on outside the game. Now, of course it’s their own fault. They don’t bother reading up on the game. But for most of them it simply doesn’t cross their mind at all. Wouldn’t it be possible to have an ingame screen with announcements? A screen to make people aware of important topics? I wanted to suggest making the game launcher bigger, but everyone has it on autologin, and therefore sees it for 5 seconds at the most. How about adding an extra icon to the top left of the ingame UI, which pops a screen with announcements -> “Read the newest patch notes here!” – “Info on the upcoming content update!” – “Interview with MMORPG.com, read here!” – “Recognized Bug: Twilight Arbor, Aetherpath” – “Developer Livestream 16:00 GMT, check it out!”
While I would of course prefer that the content of these posts also displayed ingame, even a click-to-open-webbrowser would be great. Just please add an ingame screen to direct the sheep to the latest info. People are so lost when new content/changes arrives, you wouldn’t believe it. I think something like this would help it tremendously.

Tutorials. Where are they?: This game really really needs some tutorials. I often recruit Guild members in low level areas. The amount of completely lost players I have seen. Wow. Of course, if you are a MMO veteran you will get the hang of things. But for those to who GW2 is their first MMO. Let’s just say that most of them do not stick around for long, and often it seems like it is simply too much work for them to understand the game properly. My suggestion? In-game small videos. You already have the “unlocking system” where a player unlocks one weapon skill at a time, the ability to swap weapons, pets, virtues, attunements etc. Make a video available every time the player unlocks something. Put it in the corner like a daily reward chest (with another icon), so that whenever the player wants to click it, the video will pop, showing exactly what the player can do now. But don’t stop there. Show people how to salvage and the difference between kits. Show people how collectibles work. What to do with junk items. How the world works (hearts, vistas etc). Make small videos for this and you will have kept many new players in the game for at least a while longer. The game really really needs introductionary steps.

Guild Tools: Gah. Managing a Guild is horrible. I appreciate you just improved message of the day, but it gets so messy. There are so many problems with guilds, let me try getting through it: Okay, message of the day – Well. It’s fine, but not what we really need. When your Guild grows big enough you need to display some info. As in a lot of info, easily readable without scrolling for every 2 lines. We need a tab. Call it “Guild Biography” if you like, where people can display the info they need – Next weeks events, teamspeak, website, things to be aware of, rules or whatever people need. We need a big window for it. Next up, when was the member last online? At 20 members I could manage. Now I have no idea. There is a workaround to use achievement leaderboard as a work around since you can see when a player last earned a point, but that’s just not ideal. Please just give us the “Last online: xx.xx.xxxx” and let us sort our Guild after it. Huge boost to guild leaders quality of life. Next up, I really want my members to be able to invite new people to the guild. But I do NOT want them to kick other members. How is this attached to the same permission? It really makes no sense?? I don’t think any elaboration is neccessary. Last thing; A social hub! I believe you have Guild Halls planned still, but just a reminder to please make it happen. I want a Guild Hall, upgradeable with Influence and Merits to get Merchants, BLTC traders, bank, guild bank, crafting stations and the like into the Guild Hall which I’m hoping would be the Guilds Lion’s Arch – The place everyone goes to after doing something in game to clean up their inventory, store/take something, buy/sell on trading post and such. A place that Guildies have a reason to go to. Help us get more social. One note on that though – We need to be able to map to anywhere in the world from there. Don’t make it some kind of closed-off instance. People needs to be able to waypoint directly to/from the Guild Hall. Otherwise it won’t be used. And while you might be able to offer Guild Hall upgrades for gems, please, please don’t make it like the Royal Pass. Guilds run on influence and merits.

Instance owner rage quits? Too bad: I know. It has been brought up so many times. But only because it is that important. Possibly an hour wasted every time this happens in the game. I have learned to always create the instance to ensure that the instance will finish, but come on. I would skip a content update if it meant not having to do this. I know it is a rather complex problem as you would have to redesign something.

New problem – Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore – Let’s just say the other day I realized I had hit 10.000 Bloodstone Dust. Just a simple note to please not make numbers excessively high when a stack is only 250. There is no need for so much dust. Scale it down. 10.000 dust is 40 inventory slots. Seriously.

Waypoint costs – They simply make this game anti-social. I do not want to bother helping a random guy out yelling from across the map. Why? Simply because it’s 1.5 silver to go help him and 1.5 silver to go back where I came from. I do not want to go out of my way because I’m charged by doing so. Egoistic? Yes. But honestly the gold sink from waypoints makes little sense. I would rather have an increased fee on trading post rather than considering if it’s worth helping someone out. If you need to keep the goldsink, that’s fine, but put it somewhere else.

Heart rewards are simply not in line with anything. 2 silver for completing a heart is nothing. Either remove the reward and present more clearly to the player that he/she has unlocked a karma vendor and let that be the reward, or/and bump up the reward. How about for example a taste of liquid karma + an item (green, if lucky a rare) and a small coin bag with 5-8 silver? Much in line with completing a round of one of the daily activities.

PvP gear collectibles – It begs to be collected and I have been doing so for a long time. But there is a split here that I’m really missing. Please make a seperate category for a) armor/weapon skins gained from Gemstore and b) One from “special items” – Anything else not introduced through PvP rewards. For a “pure” PvP player it would suck not to be able to complete even a part of a collection because it includes gemstore and PvE obtained gear as well.

PvE “Hall Of Monuments” or “Timeline” I would prefer a timeline style window, so I will explain the idea of that. Let’s just say we have a lot of weird items associated with PvE events over time. Instead of letting us carry them around, make a system like how we get achievement reward skins – A pretty window showing a timeline of the content updates and items associated to these – For example under Zephyr Sanctum you would be able to withdraw the model showing the cutscene. From Queens Jubilee you can withdraw your balloon and the torch and so on. Not only could this be a nice “locker” for those weird items that we get, it could also sum the Living Story up nicely, allowing us to keep track of the plot.

PvE locker – It has been asked for before, so I won’t go into details, but let’s just say town clothing and skins for one.

Lore – I know it’s there – This is one that I don’t really know how to solve, and I know it has been brought up on numerous occations. While the game is fun to play, I keep missing the stories. And yes, it is probably because I don’t take the time to do so. I’m not sure whether I find it un-interesting or just too hard to bother with, but well.. The game feels thin lore-wise even though I know it’s all there. What to do, what to do.

Valued items of no value – It just feels bad. Handing over that soulbound exotic rune you just got from a dungeon to the merchant. Merching the ascended ring you just got because you don’t have room for another. 4 silver 95 copper. Thanks, merchant. It would be nice to receive some kind of feelgood here; The obvious solution would be to let us forge these things. I understand why rings looted in Fractals are account bound, but what about letting us either salvage these rings for some of the new materials or forging 4 different rings for a new ring? How about letting us sell the runes we loot in dungeons or letting us forge 4 of them to receive another exotic rune? It feels so bad to just throw them away.

Although new content is nice, even having played 2.400 hours, having over 10.000 achievement points, having achieved being in top 10% in solo PvP, content is not a problem. Even without new content for a month or two, I would stick around generously if that meant getting just half of the suggestions above. It’s not an issue to find something to do in this game. But I find the quality of life can be improved a lot for almost all players if you took a month to fix up what you already have, making it stronger/better/right/fixed

One addition to the Guild Interface: Something like a “Last represented”. Many of us want people to consider us their main Guild. But while you can roughly use the leaderboards to check when people were last online, there is no way to see how often people represent except doing it manually. Once a Guild hits 100 members that’s already a hard thing to do. What I would prefer is probably a percentage timer that counts something like a month into the past and then just gives a percentage.

Example: A player has been online 100 hours in the last month. The player has represented the Guild for 22 hours. All i want to see is “Representing: 22%”. It would be very helpful as a lot of people decide they want multiple guilds at the same time, but often only really play for one of them.