Guild Wars 2

GW2… a very good game with unique and well-designed skill system, beautiful terrains, and epic battle-grounds. The fundamental requirements for an excellent game are all there for this game to become extremely successful. Only time will tell.

However, let’s get down to business – because this game is still a work in progress & far from being what it is capable off – do to major MAJOR game play design polishing issues (heavily accounted for the balancing aspects). Let’s get to these issues.

A) Dungeons Difficulty Balance.

1) Bosses & mobs either hit you for too hard or too less. The dumbest thing that happens in a dungeon when boss mobs are overly difficult is that players die constantly, and they’re doing “hit-die-revive RELAYS” from the wave-point back to the boss so that the boss doesn’t re-heal. Or, when a boss mob glitches out and so everyone in the party simply spams skills at the mob and wait 2 mins for it’s HP to drop from 100-0 – large hp pool without good mechanics = boring.

2) Major mob telegraph issues during fights (predictability varies too much from one type of mob to another – on some mob it’s too slow while others its too fast). A player often goes down without knowing why because the telegraph never showed (or was blurred out by the graphic effects compounding on top of one and another).

3) Most rewards you get from story mode are junk, while the only reward that’s good in explorable modes are simply the coins. This results in the fact that there’s really no point to run explorable mode until lvl 80, and so what it does is it encourage people to power-lvl to 80 so their cost-benefit for doing an explorable dungeon would be more balanced (not constantly breaking armor and wasting money to fix it). That takes away all the fun of dungeons from anyone who’s not 80.

4) Bosses & mobs have really terrible physical interaction with its terrains & players, it seems like they’ve pasted a beautiful picture in the background while the mob & you are just fighting in this void platform on top of it (like checkers). One panic I miss the most is when a mob crutches and you know it’s going to ‘leap’ at you – or when you see a dragon’s hand do a big swipe and everyone gets thrown back; these mechanics simply are none-existence in GW2 (and that really kills it for a player in PVE fights when the mob are like stoned & don’t have any specific movement patterns).

5) Mob agros. Enough said (I’m so confused by how it works… between me and my clones hitting, we hit the same time and its 50-50 as to whether it picks the clone or me). Y’all can probably fill me in on the exact issue cuz I clearly have no idea “how I get a mob to agro me” after someone’s hit it first.

B) World Events:

A) Repating a DE means nothing, since every-time something is successfully defended nothing gets accomplished (especially at Orrr around lvl 80), it’s really pointless to go on and take back a terrirtoy when it doesn’t give players any rewards for like “holding” the point and such. I have literally not done any DE’s more than twice because I feel like nothing is accomplished – just keep on going on to higher level stuffs. Case & Point: It becomes really a mentality where we keep moving on but never think about what we’ve done, and what impact we’ve made that will effect our future — because it doesn’t (like the past has nothing to do with the future).

B) Primitive grouping system. There’s a lot of communicatation going on in small grouping, but when it’s a large group ie. 30-40 people – having no party simply makes it difficult to interact with one and another. I would prefer if they implement the same party system as found in Warhammer where if a player walks into a zone – they’ll be ask to join an ‘event party’.

Many have suggested ideas of how to fix these issues, but I personally think that there are so many ways of doing it that I feel there’s no need to repost some of the solution suggestions. I’m simply summarizing the major issues in PVE that Anet hopefully addresses – because these issues are mostly very well-known & (dare I say it)
‘annoying’ to have to deal with in-game.

I agree with everything in the dungeon difficulty section. It needs work, lots of it.

Dungeon mobs should get lower pure DPS while having more telegraphed attack skills, or at least be forced to keep a greater distance between each other to give players a better idea of what they’re facing.

I think you have outlined a good number of issues that I feel the same as you about.

While I am really fond of the difficulty found in dungeons, as it does make it interesting, I don’t think it is the correct difficulty, bosses need see-able strategies that work (Don’t get me started on keeping the lovers apart in Ascalonian Catacombs). Also, it seems to be that every non-boss enemy, especially in high numbers is extremely powerful, too strong even and it sort of makes the bosses feel weak in comparison, as some are really easy to kill.

I should also add, as a nitpick, I have been a little disappointed graphically speaking with the dungeons I have played. They feel very underwhelming and not very special at all. =(

I also agree entirely about the dynamic event issue, even world bosses, though I think that is a matter for another thread. The problem I see however, is fixing it. I feel that this sort of issue would require a large design of the system which I don’t think Arenanet would want to do so early on.

What I would like to see, is better scaling. Events with 20-30 people are incredibly boring and hard to participate in, and more story threading. Or even better stories in general. If we also talk about tasks here, I feel that the entire “Questing System” needs to be looked at. If you ask me, every zone should have one story, and even multiple zones having one story. That story should be realized with the tasks and events.

For example, Queensdale and Kessex Hills has a centaur problem. Rather than splitting everyone asking for help for their own little, irrelevant, lazy and boring things, put everyone into an overarching story about fighting and stopping the centaurs. This could include, making or looking for plans/equipment that would help against them, defending places from their own attacks and plans. (Creativity would have to ensure that the enemies are versatile, or if it really cannot be done include a few, and I mean a few sidetasks.)

If you ask me, there is nothing more boring in a game than not doing something for the story. Now in an MMO it is very hard to get people to care about helping people with little things than in other games, especially when those little things are usually finding objects, or clearing areas.

Lastly, I am not saying that Arenanet have not tried to do this. Yes, there a few subtle links between tasks, events and stories but those links are just not enough to feel grand and epic. I hate to say, that this is still coming from a level 70 player. Perhaps simple, lazy story-less tasks can be forgiven for the first 10 or 20 levels, but it is unforgivable this late into the game that it still feels the same. In-fact every zone feels identical to tasks and events. Just reskins.

@Fluffydoe & Huknar

Good points – I particularly agree that the renown hearts are a bit directionless. Since they are essentially sequential they should be used to tell the story and have tasks that are relevant to the story. There is a bit of this in Kessex Hills, for instance, but then it degenerates into put the squished frogs in the bucket and stuff like that – not that I mind some of those, it’s just that the main theme of a heart should surely be story related.