Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if all the anet staff were thrown out long ago to be replaced by others, but from the creeping monetization of ascended, clueless “balancing”, and useless weapons on chars forcing players to use one of the 2 (if you are lucky) builds that actually works, and the contempt shown for players pointing this stuff out in the forums, looks like it.

gw1 was fun not because of racing for higher stats through some kitten dungeon or buying kitten on tp, but because the huge number of skills per class (not tied to weapons, stupid idea that) made many builds available for pve and pvp, and left room for creative experimentation.

tl;dr

bring the gw1 staff back from their cardboard boxes in the alley and get rid of the jerks you have now

Balancing here only looks worse because they’re actually trying to balance it.

On GW1, it’s been said by a former staff that balancing was virtually impossible due to the variety in content. There was simply no way to set a standard, because it would ruin other modes of the game and balancing them separately would be immensely harder.
All they could do was crank everything up, and let everything be overpowered in their own niche on a respective map or area of the game.

While you may have enjoyed it as a player; that, in itself, was considered a mistake from the designers’ perspective.

That’s why they’re doing it differently – They’re trying to do better then GW1 and not hide under a veil of complex game mechanics that only work in their own niches.

That will take time, and whether you like it or not, this is what they want to do.

I, for one, do not want them hauling GW1 stuff over to GW2. Go back to playing GW1 if you hate the new game so much.

I like that they’re trying to move forward, even if they’re running into a ton of kinks.

The only things I think they clearly need to work on over skill-balance is launching Spectator Mode, so sPvP can take off into the eSport stuff, and remove the AoE cap on siege weapons, so WvW can start feeling like siege warfare instead of ‘attack of the swarm’.

Response to below

Nurvus.2891:

• GW2 isn’t more balanced than GW1.
  The mechanics ANet implemented in GW2 give them LESS means to balance the game than GW1 had.

You’re one of those ppl who doesn’t read a person’s post before replying, aren’t you?

I did not say GW2 is more balanced.
I said GW2 looks worse because ANET is actually bothering to balance the game.

It’s the difference between

• having a messy house and saying you’re okay with it
• and actually trying to clean up the house and make it presentable.

ANet is trying to make GW2 presentable as an eSport. They did GW1 for years, so there’s definitely going to be a ton of growing pains as they figure out what does or does not work in their new direction.

I’d like to see them add deeper horizontal Character development by adding extra skills that area learned out in the world as we level.

Perhaps …
* Special quests at skill points or on NPC’s in cities/wilds that must be completed to learn a certain skill

• Get rid of the Magic Find stat and instead add wilderness or lore skills that can be learnt (and taught to other players by players?) for these sorts of things.
• Special Dynamic events that reward a certain skill at the end.

Thus as well as normal skills, give us harder to get skills that can then be added to our pool of options for us to choose and change builds.

Even Heroic Professions at end game that allow us to change things up and give us more to think about.

I never played GW1 but I love the start of GW2 and there’s so much potential here to go away from other MMO’s and become something truly special.

TheLaughingMan.4320:

1) but from the creeping monetization of ascended

2) but because the huge number of skills per class (not tied to weapons, stupid idea that) made many builds available for pve and pvp, and left room for creative experimentation.

Aggressive much? How do you know that people who worked on GW1 didn’t leave on their own accord?

1) Ascended is monetized? What?

2) There actually were a lot of skills that were tied to weapons. There were Hammer Skills, Axe Skills, Dagger Skills, Sword Skills, Spear Skills ect.

You get the gist of it. The only skills that weren’t tied to weapons was magic and skills that didn’t revolve around the use of a weapon (Utilities in this form) / were tied to a Primary Attribute (i.e. Strength).

Also, your mention of there being a lot of skills. Earlier on, you mentioned that the team didn’t know how to balance. How would having a large number of skills improve that?

All that being said, while I don’t think that we should go back to the ridiculous amount of skills there were in GW1 (1319 altogether), I do wish that:

1) We had a choice of maybe 2 or 3 skills per slot, per weapon.

2) Skills had additional effects and synergy, depending on certain conditions (for example, Auspicious Blow, which was unblockable if the target was Weakened, or Shatterstone [Water Hex] > Teinai’s Crystals [Cracked Armour if Water Hexed] > Teinai’s Prison [Health Degen if Cracked Armour]), which is what made the system interesting (and not the amount of skills).

Agree with tc. How hot would it be if an update comes and they unload 700 skills for us to chose and have elites that are actually better than utilities ***cough* on some classes

Here’s a fun fact:
- Almost nothing in GW1 was made to waste your time.
Exception: Death Penalty.
- Almost everything in GW2 is made to waste your time.
This includes Downed.

@DreamOfACure
Of the various points the OP mentioned, all you talk about is balance.

But you aren’t being objective.

• GW2 isn’t more balanced than GW1.
  The mechanics ANet implemented in GW2 give them LESS means to balance the game than GW1 had.
  They had Energy + Recharge Time. With the combination of those 2, they could fine tune each skill.
  Now they only have either Initiative for Thieves, or Recharge for the rest. This means their skill balancing is more limited.
• You don’t have a bigger amount of balanced builds in GW2.
  ANet only manages to make 1-2 competitive per profession.

1. In GW1, you had skill hunting, a true, fun form of progression. Why did ANet throw that away?
2. In GW1, the benefits of higher item rarity were lower attribute requirements, and higher likelyhood to come with better properties.
3. In GW1, the thrill of getting loot was to customize your character and acquire specific properties to aid you in your build.
   Example: +20% Enchant Duration, your weapon deals Fire Damage, +15% damage when above 50% Health, etc.
4. In GW1, you could extract and replace item properties through the use of expert/superior/perfect salvage kits.
5. In GW2, everything is made a grind. If you want the same skin on 3 sets of gear (for 3 different builds), you must farm the skin 3 times.
   In GW1 you could just replace the properties and voila, fits the chosen build.

Nurvus.2891:

4. In GW1, you could extract and replace item properties through the use of expert/superior/perfect salvage kits.
5. In GW2, everything is made a grind. If you want the same skin on 3 sets of gear (for 3 different builds), you must farm the skin 3 times.
In GW1 you could just replace the properties and voila, fits the chosen build.

These 2 are just unfair/false. You can salvage Sigils in GW2 just like in GW1 (with the difference how the perfect salvage kit / black lion kit is optained)

In GW1 you also needed the same skin 3 times if you want to use it with 3 different inscriptions/prefixes . Unless you always have inscriptions in the inventory to change your weapon – but that’s also possible with the GW2 sigils (and they even stack in GW2!)

Nurvus.2891:

- Almost nothing in GW1 was made to waste your time.

Riiiiiiiight……

I did love GW1 but the balancing in it was horrible and made worse by expansions. ANet clearly (to me at least) took the limited skill route to easily accommodate future expansions, new classes and races without them being game breaking. The release of Factions and Nightfall made for some ridiculously OP’d builds that you couldnt get into a party unless you were using one.

I do have to admit though it was a lot of fun playing with different skill combos and unusual secondary professions and I do miss it, but if I missed it that much I can always go play GW1.

Also GW1 was very grind heavy especially in EotN, You had to Vanquish some zones a lot of times to max the title and even if you just wanted an armour skin you still had to go out in the relevant zones and grind for the points so you could even speak to the merchant, this I do not miss and was all I had left in GW1.