Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking that Guild Wars 2 has lost its way.

I listen to the GW2 manifesto, but I do not see any of that being extended on in the game today.

Two issues to clarify my point

1. Moa racing – is having gambling tied to achievement in line with the manifesto?

2. Dragon bashing and cannon firing, how is walking around a town pressing “F” 300 times for an achievement a positive extension of the manifesto?

I hope you can get back on track.

If there is a change in direction please issue a new manifesto to clear the air.

To answer the question in the topic title:

No.

the concerns you present here are way off, there are lots of ways that GW2 could improve especially when getting back to the promises of the manifesto and temporary content is one of the bad things they should definitely not make their main focus (as opposed to permanent content) however, the achievements you present in your argument really aren’t the basis for the problems this game faces.

They did make a major change this time that I think helped part of the problem with LS. This time they actually improved the drop rates of the boxes and spread them out all over the world so they are no longer focusing people into 1 zone like they were.

Now if they could just get to the stage of adding new metas and new DE’s monthly that are permanent, balance PVE properly, stop “fixing” things that were never broken in the first place as far as class design is concern, and remove DR once and for all (because bots long ago stopped farming mobs anyway) at least remove it from the open world, then things would improve immensely.

I’m not saying my issues raised are the biggest examples, they are just the most current I could think of.

To marnick.4305 I’m not sure if you remember the manifesto… but there was a line “In most games you have really fun tasks to do occasionally and then these really boring tasks to do…”

Can you honestly say that the rest of the people posting on the forum are saying moa racing was fun, some did enjoy it others said it’s pointless rng. Then dragon bashing and cannon firing, is that really fun.

Angelweave.1856:

I’m not saying my issues raised are the biggest examples, they are just the most current I could think of.

To marnick.4305 I’m not sure if you remember the manifesto… but there was a line “In most games you have really fun tasks to do occasionally and then these really boring tasks to do…”

I watched the manifesto over and over back when it was released, and I watched it again some time ago because people claim it’s broken. It’s not.

Can you honestly say that the rest of the people posting on the forum are saying moa racing was fun, some did enjoy it others said it’s pointless rng. Then dragon bashing and cannon firing, is that really fun.

There’s people who really seem to enjoy the moa racing. My brother is totally into it and I personally find it fun to watch people running with moa. One of the silliest things I’ve seen people do in an MMO yet.
I for one like the dragon bashing activities. That kind of achievements are exactly what I’m waiting for when I get home from work. Do something in a game that for once doesn’t involve killing stuff.

To each his own though, I like dragon bash a million times more than repeating a raid dungeon with 40 people I couldn’t care less about.

DE’s that will change the world as you do them. Don’t have those.
Play how you want. Yeah, nope.
Don’t grind. Giggle, snicker, right.
The story is about YOU! That walking salad kitten begs to differ.

I could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

I believe you misinterpreted the meaning and value of these side/celebration events like dragon bash, Halloween, Christmas, and so on! They are meant to provide players with some different things with the the same core resources they have with the rest of the game.

- Main game and Living Story – Need to stick to Manifesto guidelines!
- Side events – Not necessarily need to follow the same guidelines!

TL;DR – The answer to your question – NO!

Angelweave.1856:

I’ve been thinking that Guild Wars 2 has lost its way.

Nope. Maybe your perception on mmo’s changed.

Players has to understand nothing force you to do anything in GW2.
You have to build yourself your own objectives. This is your endgame.

Want to build a legendary ? Go for it, but don’t blame Anet for the grind.

Want to rock in WvW ? Train yourself, and don’t blame Anet that you’re getting facerolled by whatever so-called OP build/profession.

Want to just to have fun with teammates in open world ? Do it, playing the puzzle jumps, play the guild mission, and the most difficult PvE events. Yes, there is some.

Want to rock in Dungeons ? Get the Dungeon Master title, then help newbies to pass them, and get a lot of thanks in the process.

Want to rock in Crafting ? Get every crafting profession, then collect every possible receipts in the game. There are some profitable.

One has always to option to whine, or choose to act instead.

If you take the manifesto AND compare it with GW2 and other MMO’s, GW2 is clearly the winner. So no they din’t lost its way at all.

The feeling that gw2 has forgotten the principle set out in the manifesto is one i’ve been having lately.

I’m not sure what happened, but its gradually becoming just another mmo following standard ways of doing things, whereas the manifesto promised so much more, u

stale.9785:

could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

You could nitpick a few things from the manifesto, file them, morph them and jam them squarely in a circle and then say it doesn’t fit. At face value, the manifesto still holds.

Agreed. In all honesty the only thing I got out of this dragon bash was the wing skin. How did I get that? Not from the 400 gems i spent on chests, or the 100 other green chests that dropped but from repetitvely farming CoF to pay the 27g for it. Not very lively, and there wasn’t any other option that had a clear result other than just buying it off the tp.

marnick.4305:

stale.9785:

could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

You could nitpick a few things from the manifesto, file them, morph them and jam them squarely in a circle and then say it doesn’t fit. At face value, the manifesto still holds.

Okay so let’s have some direct quotes from the manifesto:
“Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1” – literally none of the mechanics have been carried over; all similarities between the two games are either cosmetic or common to RPGs in general
“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” – ascended gear says hi… and whatever happened to the supposed scavenger hunt for precursors?
“you affect things around you in a very permanent way” – LOL no, all that stuff resets and we get the same DEs over and over!

The game is just one zone repeated over and over for +30 times with some variations of the landscapes and a lot less variation on the foes or quests (hearts, PoIs, Vistas etc) The down scaling system makes this repetitiveness even more clearer.

Arena net has not stuck to their manifesto. Anet has created a stunningly beautiful game but some of the aspects of the game are just a grind. The holidays for example; in GW1, players looked forward to the holidays as a way to MAKE money (I kid you not), but now they’re just a money drain. Right on the heels of the Southsun event (which I borrowed gold from my roommate to afford) is the Dragon Bash, I’m already in debt and am grinding to be able to afford Dragon Bash goodies in addition to my regular expenses.
Allowing players to choose from a list of options for their daily requirement was an improvement but it just feels like a to-do list when I log on. I have to finish my chores before I can play. That’s not how a game should operate. To the individuals who say “no one is forcing you to…” there is a larger picture at hand. True, no one is forcing anyone to do anything, you could sit in town and not level or craft but when the basis of a game’s objective (level up, learn to craft, collect minis, forge the good armor) relies heavily on a player’s laundry list, then yes, players are forced to finish their laundry lists before running around and having fun. It’s a requirement which, if unfulfilled, feels like a penalty for not keeping up with the Jones’s.
Arenanet kept a tighter rein on trollish players in GW1, I do not want to blame the WoW recruits of poisoning map chat, so perhaps GW1 was easier to manage because it was smaller.
I am wondering if with GW2’s growth, a change of management may be behind the effecting changes in how GW2’s atmosphere and overall feel are perceived.
One thing I am noticing in the suggestion forums are players who seem to be form other MMOs do not have an issue with how GW2 is going, while GW1 vets are raising their voices and hoping for a higher standard.

You know what might be fun? A bunch of us scheduling original GW play at the same time. If we miss it, why not play it, at least part time? Especially at festivals, which were way more fun than (to me) than the GW2 events/celebrations.

Who’s up for some fun that does not involve a wretched checklist indicating how we must “accomplish” what should be a fun party?

I don’t mind moa racing, except its price and rewards, since you’re mostly losing money, especially if you’re saving for mini, or earning just a bit if you win second place, so it’s a money sink in my opinion.

As for the fireworks, firing it 300 times might seem like a grind, but 300 isn’t that much, you can earn it in a day. I got it in few days without too much hassle, so I don’t see a problem.

It’s not like 1000 or 100 000 fireworks, although that could also be attainable but extremely grindy.

marnick.4305:

stale.9785:

could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

You could nitpick a few things from the manifesto, file them, morph them and jam them squarely in a circle and then say it doesn’t fit. At face value, the manifesto still holds.

At face value, the manifesto is, best case obsolete wishful thinking, and worst case, an outright lie to the people who supported the original game and the development of this one.

In terms of other games, GW1 was Magic: The Gathering. GW2 is… checkers, maybe. I can’t think of anything that points out how extremely dumbed down and one dimensional this game is compared to it’s namesake. The sad truth is that; the whole connection between GW1 and GW2 are some names and scenery.

I played both games, from Beta. GW2 was far more polished than the original on release, but the bugs that are (still) here are glaring. The difference between what was promised and what was delivered? I can’t think of any other example in commercial history.

This is not to say that it’s a bad game. GW2 is fun. It’s just not what we were told we were buying. Each change put in pushes it even further from what we were buying.

The manifesto said:

“GW2 takes everything you loved about GW1 and puts it into a persistent world.” Nope. Not even close. It takes the names from GW1, and puts them into a different game.

“A fully branching personalised story mission.” Nah – I played a story that was remarkably uniform despite choices (biggest choice difference being what race you wanted to help) and wasn’t even about me. It’s about Trahearne, and I’m just an interchangeable part.

“Still no monthly fees.” Hey, one accurate statement! Woohoo!

“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.” Yeah, do I even have to touch this?

“We don’t want to build the same game, the same MMO everyone else is making.” But we’re going to do it anyway.

“You’re seeing people who you’ll see again, and rescuing a village that will stay rescued.” Except you’ll never see them again, and the village needs rescuing again 5 minutes later…

I skipped the bit about the art, because that is truly subjective. I believe the visuals are probably the best done part of GW2.

Again, I’m not saying the game is bad – it’s very fun. It just should have been called “zerging melee wars” and not pretended to be a sequel.

If by “manifesto” you mean “Lie to our players, take all their money, PROFIT”

Then yes, they have followed it.

Angelweave.1856:

2. Dragon bashing and cannon firing, how is walking around a town pressing “F” 300 times for an achievement a positive extension of the manifesto?

I have to say, I think that’s really funny too. Not really much of a challenge.

Mist Y.5214:

marnick.4305:

stale.9785:

could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

You could nitpick a few things from the manifesto, file them, morph them and jam them squarely in a circle and then say it doesn’t fit. At face value, the manifesto still holds.

Okay so let’s have some direct quotes from the manifesto:
“Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1” – literally none of the mechanics have been carried over; all similarities between the two games are either cosmetic or common to RPGs in general

Guild Wars 2 is exactly what I’d expect from Guild Wars 1 in a persistent world. I don’t know what you expected but I was pleasantly surprised that they managed the impossible.

“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” – ascended gear says hi… and whatever happened to the supposed scavenger hunt for precursors?

It is impossible to grind for ascended. No matter how much you grind, you can only get 1 laurel and one pristine relic per day.

The scavenger hunt is in development, as has been confirmed by Colin. Shouldn’t be too long anymore, check the relevant thread for that. That said, Mike O’Brien specifically said before launch there’d be grind but only for cosmetics, not for stats. That’s exactly how precursors are currently implemented. If you expected different, you only have yourself to blame.

“you affect things around you in a very permanent way” – LOL no, all that stuff resets and we get the same DEs over and over!

They hit the limitations of a persistent world, and people were trigger happy to exploit all that with timer websites. But overall, I find they did a pretty good job. At the very least, they went way and beyond other MMOs, even though it’s not Fable just yet. There’s over 1500 DEs in the game currently. I’m still seeing new ones every day, because I’m not just timer hopping. Some of those events have quite some visual impact on the world, even if it resets in 30 minutes (plenty to move on to the next). If you expected differently, you should have waited for Guild Wars 4. Technology just isn’t there yet.

In your imagination, the manifesto is broken. In reality, the world I live and breath in … it still holds.

stale.9785:

“You’re seeing people who you’ll see again, and rescuing a village that will stay rescued.” Except you’ll never see them again, and the village needs rescuing again 5 minutes later…

Bahaha, that is so true.

Well if it losts its way, it lost it all the way back in Halloween. Bashing pinatas isn’t any different than carving pumpkins. Did you complain then?

I do sort of agree with you on the moa race thing, however, Not to say it’s lost its way, but that one single event seems poorly thought out to me. I don’t think I’d want to encourage that kind of gambling.

I am honestly kitten ed that people dont get what GW2 actually stands for.
Devs put a lot of work to achieve what we have now, to produce the game they thought we like best. GW2 is not about raiding or gear progression! It’s also not about competing with others for loot.

This game is all about grinding!
GW actually means Grind Wars. People just try to deal most damage to as many creatures they can to get loot. As everybody gets loot there is no competition regarding this. (carefull, irony)
Grinding would be boring if ANet wouldn’t throw some rocks in your way, thats why we have beloved DR.

Meaningfull Events? – nopes
No Grind? – nopes
Character centered story? – nopes

The best part is where they made fun about “swinging a sword. And then swing it again”. That’s 100% how Grind Wars actually is, with dodging in between every now and then.

I think the devs have left out one of the best aspects of GW factions which was the ability of a lowby to head out into Shing Jea and occasionally get lucky with a black dye drop from a mantid. First time it happened to me it was like “holy cr*p… this thing is more valuable than an ecto??”. This has been lost imho due to the amount of new content (ie many more dyes etc). Sure it’s random but back then the chance of getting a black seemed a lot higher than the chance of getting an abyss in GW2.

The equivalent would be a newby heading out into their first area and getting a pre-cursor. I beleive in theory this can happen but I don’t know anyone it has happened to. Likewise with so much content being account bound or soulbound, a newby would be unable to profit from many of the rare items (like the jade tickets they might find at the moment for example).

I was lucky enough to find a jade ticket by the time I completed the achievement but it was only when I went to the vendor that I saw the fused skins for the first time. It does seem a shame that there aren’t other ways to aquire some of this content which the graphic designers & artists have obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating. If these things ever become available any way other than the rng boxes, I will happily buy gems or grind or visit NPC’s at opposite ends of the map to get the materials. Whatever it takes (except gambling with real $).

stale.9785:

DE’s that will change the world as you do them. Don’t have those.
Play how you want. Yeah, nope.
Don’t grind. Giggle, snicker, right.
The story is about YOU! That walking salad kitten begs to differ.

I could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

Well, the release version is quite the game they told us about, but everything after the release … well from there on you are right. So GW2 has not lost its way, it just stopped walking any further on that way. Sadly.

marnick.4305:

Mist Y.5214:

marnick.4305:

stale.9785:

could keep this up for pages, if you want – do it for every single line of the manifesto. I don’t see the point. We’re not playing the game we were sold. It’s a good game, it’s just not at all what they spent the last few years telling us it would be.

You could nitpick a few things from the manifesto, file them, morph them and jam them squarely in a circle and then say it doesn’t fit. At face value, the manifesto still holds.

Okay so let’s have some direct quotes from the manifesto:
“Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1” – literally none of the mechanics have been carried over; all similarities between the two games are either cosmetic or common to RPGs in general

Guild Wars 2 is exactly what I’d expect from Guild Wars 1 in a persistent world. I don’t know what you expected but I was pleasantly surprised that they managed the impossible.

“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” – ascended gear says hi… and whatever happened to the supposed scavenger hunt for precursors?

It is impossible to grind for ascended. No matter how much you grind, you can only get 1 laurel and one pristine relic per day.

The scavenger hunt is in development, as has been confirmed by Colin. Shouldn’t be too long anymore, check the relevant thread for that. That said, Mike O’Brien specifically said before launch there’d be grind but only for cosmetics, not for stats. That’s exactly how precursors are currently implemented. If you expected different, you only have yourself to blame.

“you affect things around you in a very permanent way” – LOL no, all that stuff resets and we get the same DEs over and over!

They hit the limitations of a persistent world, and people were trigger happy to exploit all that with timer websites. But overall, I find they did a pretty good job. At the very least, they went way and beyond other MMOs, even though it’s not Fable just yet. There’s over 1500 DEs in the game currently. I’m still seeing new ones every day, because I’m not just timer hopping. Some of those events have quite some visual impact on the world, even if it resets in 30 minutes (plenty to move on to the next). If you expected differently, you should have waited for Guild Wars 4. Technology just isn’t there yet.

In your imagination, the manifesto is broken. In reality, the world I live and breath in … it still holds.

You certainly can acquire multiple pristine fractals relics each day. You can do multiple dailies on each character… you also need 1850 fractal relics for each ascended backpiece.
Link me to this thread with the promise of the scavenger hunt coming soon??

Resetting after a few minutes doesn’t qualify as “very permanent”. Okay, so expecting the world to actually change like that is unrealistic… so why did they promise it? I was really looking forward to being pleasantly surprised, but the reality is that most DEs leave the world in the same state it was before the event started. Event chains last longer, but they don’t even vaguely resemble permanence.

Here are a few things they could have carried over from GW1 but didn’t:
1. click-to-move and auto-follow – instead we have jumping and dodging, which they didn’t bother to program for NPCs
2. secondary professions – combined with the tiny handful of useful skills, this leaves GW2 with almost no build diversity at all
3. displaying the target’s skill activations – without this we have to rely on learning every enemy’s skills from experience
4. free map travel – say what you like, waypointing costs are NOT an effective gold sink

I could go on and on, but first perhaps you could explain to me why you EXPECTED those 4 changes as a necessary part of moving GW into a persistent world?

stale.9785:

The manifesto said:

“GW2 takes everything you loved about GW1 and puts it into a persistent world.” Nope. Not even close. It takes the names from GW1, and puts them into a different game.

we have – same professions, same land, many many things that is something like “I was here” for gw1 players many skills that is implementation of old gw1 skill to a whole new (in many things better) mechanics. If You just try You’ll see so many things from gw1 in gw2 – but You didn’t.

“A fully branching personalised story mission.” Nah – I played a story that was remarkably uniform despite choices (biggest choice difference being what race you wanted to help) and wasn’t even about me. It’s about Trahearne, and I’m just an interchangeable part.

not personalized? so We have many places when our character need to make choices and most of them, are different in effect – for example When You are human street rat You can save Your friend at the middle of this part or save the city from being poisoned – don’t know what happens with those poison if chose path 1 but if You choose to save the city – Your friend is very-killed.

“Still no monthly fees.” Hey, one accurate statement! Woohoo!

as for me we are at third point not one :P

“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.” Yeah, do I even have to touch this?

define what grinding means to You. As for me I’m not grinding in the whole game (Yes I have only one ascended amulet because I wasn’t spending my laurels for a long time and that was an option :P I also have two complete set of exotic armor and many more exotic weapons – still never grinded) – if You grind that can means two things: We have different definition of “grinding” or You just want to.

“We don’t want to build the same game, the same MMO everyone else is making.” But we’re going to do it anyway.

at which point?

“You’re seeing people who you’ll see again, and rescuing a village that will stay rescued.” Except you’ll never see them again, and the village needs rescuing again 5 minutes later…

live is brutal villages can be atacked more than just once :P

I skipped the bit about the art, because that is truly subjective. I believe the visuals are probably the best done part of GW2.

Again, I’m not saying the game is bad – it’s very fun. It just should have been called “zerging melee wars” and not pretended to be a sequel.

as for me – I don’t agree with last statement. I saw too many times great zergs wiped by 3-4 skilled players, to agree that game should be named “zerging wars”
and I see to much conection to pretend GW2 as a sequel (and there are much more games that first game is connected to sequels ONLY by lore and developers)

This game has definitely lost it’s way. But that is not to say there isn’t hope. I’m not saying stick around forever hoping things get better, but maybe, just maybe, with the bug/balance patch coming, and the general uproar about how many people hate the temporary content, we may see some meaty updates coming out soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if the LS idea was put on the back burner or scrapped soon, and if we can get them do that there is hope the actual game will get some love.

Then we can add something tangible and permanent, like an expansion pack, after bug fixes.

I don’t want freaking pinatas. I want my class to function the way it’s supposed to and to have trait swapping and multiple builds. I want more than Berserker and Knight’s gear to be good. There is no reason to keep ignoring the glaring balance problems of the game in favor of freaking pinatas and fireworks. I think they may realize this soon.

Pressing “F” as part of quests and achievements should be changed to something more challenging, like solving a puzzle or something like that. They don’t need to remove pressing “F” completly but right now there is too much of it. If you are not hack-n-slashing mobs, you are pressing F. That’s boring.

When people bring out the line about grind, they have picked out one line from the manifesto and then misapply it to the whole game.

The “no grind” comment from what I could find seems to refer to COMBAT only. People take the no grind to refer to the game as a whole. But if you read his statement, that’s not what he said.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet's_MMO_Manifesto_trailer

Colin Johanson: “When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

The key phrase here, right after saying that they don’t want people to grind is “We want to change the way that people view combat”.

He is not talking about grind in any other part of the game. He did not say the game would not have grind, only that you wouldn’t have to grind mobs to level.

Spectrals.4682:

Agreed. In all honesty the only thing I got out of this dragon bash was the wing skin. How did I get that? Not from the 400 gems i spent on chests, or the 100 other green chests that dropped but from repetitvely farming CoF to pay the 27g for it. Not very lively, and there wasn’t any other option that had a clear result other than just buying it off the tp.

Play the game. My friend and I both had them drop off of random mobs, one in Kessex, one in Fractals I think. With their price tanking I’m assuming this isn’t uncommon.

Has it ever had a way ? (couldn’t help myself after seeing this thread )

But yeah i think GW2 had its own vision (even tho a lot from gw2 is a copy paste from other games) but it’s just that it was not implemented properly

Then instead of calling it grind call it hack-n-slash. Guild Wars 2 is a hack-n-slash game…at least for alot of the normal quests.

You run in, gather up 5 mobs and press all the buttons that shine and make sure to heal when you are low on HP. Then you win

While I dont necessarily disagree with the OP I think you posted this in the wrong forum. How about some concrete suggestions for fixing the problem?

Astral Projections.7320:

This was in the discussion forum. It was moved.

Interesting. I wonder why?