Guild Wars 2

Let me begin by saying that I mean this as a polite but serious message to ArenaNet. Guild Wars 2 is in many ways a fun game, but is riddled with problems that impede and negatively impact the game to its very core. While many of these should have been addressed in earlier stages of development, many issues could also be attended to now or could have been over the many months of release GW2 has now weathered.

These range from basic issues, gameplay flaws and mechanics/balance issues, to the lack of interesting additional content. While I partially enjoy the game as a whole, it’s very clear it needs a lot of improvement that goes beyond simple fine-tuning. But quite honestly, I’m not even seeing fine-tuning.

The question is, where on earth are your priorities? New cash shop items, a single underwhelming event that was mostly broken? And now with the Wintersday stuff coming up, I find myself honestly preferring that you’d just forget about the holiday flavor entirely and work exclusively on gameplay. No Wintersday in exchange for real, necessary changes? I know it won’t happen, but that’s a purely fair trade.

People who think the game is fine in its current incarnation are quite simply wrong. There are too many inconsistencies and imbalances in core class design and gameplay mechanics; the only way not to notice them is not to play the game or to play it through a thick cloud of denial. A very long article could be written detailing exactly what sorts of changes need to be looked at and what currently isn’t working very well in the game, but this isn’t the point of this article. If one should be written, that can be arranged; that may be beneficial, since by all outward appearances, key people working on the game are either clueless or being barred from making appropriate changes.

I know I don’t speak for only myself when I say that the lack of progress in continuing to expand on GW2’s gameplay and iron out issues has been very disappointing and discouraging. And again, I’m really not trying to stir up any conflict or arguments; I and others just feel very strongly that ArenaNet is currently exhibiting a very misguided and unproductive set of priorities which do not appear to be on the brink of changing, as they very much need to do. Thanks for reading.

I don’t want you to write a whole thread on it, but a few specifics would be nice. I think ANet’s priorities are on increasing the longevity of the game and keeping players interested. This certainly requires content updates every so often. As for the cash store – you paid $60 bucks for the game. They need to make money in order to pay people to fix these issues that you fail to specify. They need to make money in order to pay people to create new content. They need to make money in order to do something about this pitiable endgame. Fundraising is essential, and the less you attack that, the better.

Now I can agree with you in a few places. The core game doesn’t appear to be getting a ton of attention, and if it is, it’s just taking them a lot of time to do it or they’re just going to release one big fix instead of a bunch of smaller fixes. I wish they would detail the fixes they make instead of simply “routine maintenance,” which would confirm or deny any hopes we have for a fix of certain smaller things.

But at the end of the day, we are all human, and we all want to make money. That’s why WoW is still on the subscription-based model, that’s why it’s taken so long for games to move to a B2P model. GW2 is no different – they need money. So I feel that they are doing what they can to make money AND satisfy the player base at the same time. So thats why you might find a BLTC update before you find a content fix – because most players seem relatively content even with out the content fix for the most part. And ANet needs its money like anyone else.

That’s my idea anyways.

I’ll try to lay out some areas I think need improvement:

First of all, gameplay:

Skills and the skill system desperately need a second look in two major ways:
Skill diversity:
-Weapons
-Utilities and Elites
Skill effectiveness:
-Absurd cooldowns
-Overly situational or underpowered abilities

It’s VERY IMPORTANT to note that not every skill suffers from being underwhelming; a handful in every class are quite good, a shining few are even overpowered at times. But with the skill selection already so limited, a prevalance of underwhelming utilities, and on top of that, only three to choose from, creates a very restricted and unfun experience.

In lieu of adding an additional utility slot/s, a nice fix could be to increase utility effects and effectiveness. Most classes need this across the board, and the players of most classes draw from the same pool of commonly-known good utilities, futher decreasing any semblance of build variety.

Additionally, utilities and elites often have ridiculous and completely unwarranted cooldowns which does not seem to synergize very well with a game that often prolongs conflicts, requiring you to employ all assets generally when they come off cooldown to stay alive and inflict DPS/control. And why so few elites? Look to GW1, which had numerous diverse and usually fun and intersting elites that entire builds could be formed around. In GW2, some classes are forced to pick the one of several elites that is “not the worst”.

I didn’t mind the weapon-skills system in the betas, but after playing longer, it’s really worn on me and I find myself very tired of being restrained by the same 5 first skills. A couple classes have synergy in switching weapons/attunements/kits, but for the majority, you have a weapon that’s good and a weapon that rounds out ranged options or tight situations. So, effectively, a single weapon the vast majority of the time.

Customization of the weapon bar by having pools of weapon-specific skills would add an entirely new level of depth and customization to the game that, frankly, does not seem to have many drawbacks. There are any number of ways this can be done, and (a group of people and I who play GW2 regularly talked this out for quite some time) there are several different systems where any drawbacks or balance questions this could introduce would be negligible. All that additional variety and gameplay, and at practically no cost except some work and testing by ArenaNet.

Those are just some ideas that come to mind, and really, even an amateur game dev should be able to see glaring parts of GW2 that beg to be enhanced and retooled. Can Anet not see these things? Are they unwilling to? I feel like personally I will never know because of a fundamental lack of communication aside from trite offerings now and then, so I’m not confident that they are considering or have the ability to turn this into a better game.

You have a good point there. I think the lack of communication is one of the biggest concerns. Sometimes it seems like AN just makes random choices or have different priorities than the community. Do they really listen to the players?
I would like to hear some more about the future plans for GW2. Which suggestions of the players will be used and worked on? Which things are long-term plans and which can we expect in the near future?
“Customization of the weapon bar by having pools of weapon-specific skills” would make it so much more interesting! Better than adding more weopons. I think more customization in general would make the game more interesting.
I would ask AN not just to re-evaluate, but also to reveal their priorities!

Considering the amount of content in the holiday events, I’d say they were planned & started far in advance. I assume ANet thinks it would be too much of a waste to just throw all of that work into the closet to keep for next year (and it might interfere with their current plans for next year as well.)

There’s been various posts about major themed (PvP / WvW / PvE / etc) updates coming, starting from Feb. I think this is the result of ANet already reconsidering its priorities. Just that large scale software development is a big ship that turns very slowly.

toastlord.1608:

The question is, where on earth are your priorities? New cash shop items, a single underwhelming event that was mostly broken? And now with the Wintersday stuff coming up, I find myself honestly preferring that you’d just forget about the holiday flavor entirely and work exclusively on gameplay. No Wintersday in exchange for real, necessary changes? I know it won’t happen, but that’s a purely fair trade.

The thing is, GW2 doesn’t have a gear treadmill. So once you get to 80, you’re left with Legendaries, exploration, WvW and sPvP. The events spice it up for those who don’t really have much to do.

It’s VERY IMPORTANT to note that not every skill suffers from being underwhelming; a handful in every class are quite good, a shining few are even overpowered at times. But with the skill selection already so limited, a prevalance of underwhelming utilities, and on top of that, only three to choose from, creates a very restricted and unfun experience.

What do you mean with “overpowered”? Or “underpowered”? What is your “balanced”? Is it the relation of effect-to-cooldown? In that case Frenzy is underpowered. Is it how effective it is in practice? In that case, the same Frenzy is overpowered.

Is it the actual effects skills have?

Honestly, the underpowered/overpowered thing depends on what you’re doing and what your level is. For example, Deep Strike is considered an excellent skill to use while you’re leveling, but crap when you’re 80. Similarly, Frenzy is often considered overpowered in PvP when coupled with 100 Blades, but you don’t see anyone using that in PvE.

In lieu of adding an additional utility slot/s, a nice fix could be to increase utility effects and effectiveness. Most classes need this across the board, and the players of most classes draw from the same pool of commonly-known good utilities, futher decreasing any semblance of build variety.

So you want more effects and for them to be more powerful? Great, so you’re rooting for everyone being overpowered.

Additionally, utilities and elites often have ridiculous and completely unwarranted cooldowns which does not seem to synergize very well with a game that often prolongs conflicts, requiring you to employ all assets generally when they come off cooldown to stay alive and inflict DPS/control. And why so few elites? Look to GW1, which had numerous diverse and usually fun and intersting elites that entire builds could be formed around. In GW2, some classes are forced to pick the one of several elites that is “not the worst”.

Yes, in some cases the cooldowns are a bit ridiculous, most notably the transformation type elite skills. But in most cases, the cooldowns are neatly fit. For example, a lot of powerful skills have long cooldowns so that you cannot spam them constantly. On the other hand, a lot of boons have shorter cooldowns, enabling builds that have those boons on permanently.

Customization of the weapon bar by having pools of weapon-specific skills would add an entirely new level of depth and customization to the game that, frankly, does not seem to have many drawbacks. There are any number of ways this can be done, and (a group of people and I who play GW2 regularly talked this out for quite some time) there are several different systems where any drawbacks or balance questions this could introduce would be negligible. All that additional variety and gameplay, and at practically no cost except some work and testing by ArenaNet.

One of the key reasons they made GW2 was because they felt that the quantity of skills was getting out of hand. In interviews they said that they’re going to focus “more on quality than quantity”. And I think that’s apparent from all the tweaks they’ve been pushing.

Well well… here this again…
I agree they need to do something about game mechanic. I think they made most beautiful cities in the game. I prefer all other cities over Lion’s Arch! Still, those cities seem deserted now. Why putting so much effort in the first place then?

As for weapon slot skills, it does sound fun and interesting but only to us after playing for so long the game and know quite a lot about our professions. The potential new player will be overwhelmed by the amount of abilities regardless of the profession and they did pointed out it was an issue to many new players in GW1 so they deliberately wanted to avoid that.

For the lack of communication – that is debatable. almost no answer on anything from Arena Net officials for weeks. This assumes that they all working very hard on upcoming Wintersday combined with “everybody needs money” they probably need more staff to do things yet you can’t spend too much on the employees due to monetizing system. They don’t have endless fonds so new people that would work with Arena Net need a lot of time to get the grip on the project. It looks simple when you play it, but it is very complex under the hood. Trust me I am programmer, I know how it looks my project to me and how pale were new guys when I started to explain to them complexity of the code.

Game divided sections are also making thing more complicated. We have huge PvE world, we have SPvP, we have WvW and now we have FotM “entity”. Each one of those require a lot of work to make it functional and even more to make it fun and amusing – regardless of technical superiority of the project itself. But, they are also humans and they can’t work on the same sections for many reasons. One of most obvious they will mess up the work of someone else working on the same thing. Other is that sometimes one type of people (programmers) don’t need to do designing content stuff. All in all, they have to spread manpower on different sections and do things all at once which is slower, fix bugs, find new bugs, fix exploits, find new exploits…. List is endless.

To wrap up, I like the game, but think there could be a lot of improvements. some things to be changed, but not in the way QQ ppl spam posts here. It makes one thing to me they could fix quick and easy but that is the thing I saw. What they see is really huge things to do all over the place + (and this is big one) pressure of producers. I am sure they have priorities, but I think they should plan future development more carefully. I am pretty sure they are overwhelmed with stryboard things to do.