Guild Wars 2

Guildwars2 Lacks something, I couldn’t pin point it before but after playing a few other games, I’ve pinpointed what I believe it be. So we shall begin.

Topic One: Content.

There trying to fix this one first, as it’s the one that is most visual. content can be split up into a few topics.

PVE Open world:
Two problems with this area: Scaling and Rewards.
Scaling: Events are plagued by swarms of players, which is cool for about five minutes. Then you realize that 80% of play-styles don’t Scale.That’s right, this is not about the poor dragons getting beat up by 200 players. This is about the reverse synergy of large groups. In fact, I would go as far to say all out DPS is the only scaling play-style in the game. When the games premise is about giving players the freedom to play how they would like, this is a terrible thing indeed. Conditions are the peak example of this, being limited per monster, instead of per player. Supports are cool, until you realize you can only help maybe 5 of your allies even though you can fit about 20 in your bubble. Tanking “doesn’t exist”. While characters can build Tanky, I would list anyone who does so a “support”. If no one dies, or if I can get everyone up again, we win.. right? Right? RIGHT? well sort of.. until you compare that to the DPS monsters doing the same content easier, with fewer deaths, and in less time.

Rewards: Killing monsters basically doesn’t drop loot, so why even do it? The Example of this was when “dungeon running” was possible. You run past as many mobs as you can, kill the boss, and get the “rewarding content” of Tokens. As it stands, the only meaningful loot is high ranked crafting materials. It would seem that they don’t want people playing there game, given how “rewarding” it is to do normal content.

Topic Two: Progression
In Guildwars1, there was normal armor. It was pretty, cheap, and came with everything you needed. But Wait! There is More! The had an “improved” or elaborated version of each of these armors. Stat bonuses? non existent. So why did people spend so much time getting them? Why did people want them?

Guild-wars 2 Made the mistake somehow (after coming from guildwars1) that stats are progression! It’s not. Let me explain this. Progression is the feeling that you can do more, look better, or be unique. Guildwars2 Offers very little of any of this. Sure your ascended rings make you do 25% more damage, cool. It however matters very little when the last time you had any Meaningful choices, was level 30. Meaningful choices are also Progression.

Meaningful Choices: things that effect your Play-style

New Skills: different ways to interact in combat.
Skills that shoot fireballs, shield allies, or plummet arrows. Getting any one of these makes you feel good. It makes combat unique. There just aren’t that many skills in guild-wars two, and there in all the wrong places. New Skills are very obvious in that they affect how your character plays and feels.

Changing Skills: Locked weapons, Long Utilities, Stale Game play

Giving lots of options, with relatively few slots, means your choices matter. Do I want to heal my allies? Poison my enemies? Chop off there heads with a battle axe? Well half the time, guild wars says “to bad”. The reason for this is your Weapon skills are Locked. If your Battle Axe does not have innate ability to poison, you cannot poison enemies even if your class is otherwise able to do. You can “somewhat” bandage this by Utility skills. This means your only allowed three meaningful choices skill wise, all of which by design influence your total play-style as little as possible (long cool downs mainly). If you don’t like one skill on your weapon, your stuck with it, Forever.

Skill Interactions: Power because you played well, not because you spammed 3

The obvious example of skill interactions are Chains and Combo’s. Chains simply lead into one another, combos use fields and finishers for additional effects. There are however few skills that mesh well together, most feel completely separate. Mesmer staff is an example of one of the few kits that works with itself. It has a field and a finisher, it’s phantasm scales in damage with the amount of conditions in the field, conditions which it likes to apply with all of it’s other skills. I have no doubt that the staff is one of the more popular Mesmer set ups because of this. This is the kind of synergy that other weapons should be updated to have.

Character aesthetics:Armor vs Town Clothing

This is something guild-wars2 got mostly right. They have a lot of gear that can be “transmuted” to look like anything you want. I would say the main problem here is the separation of “Town Cloths” and “Armor”. You should be able to chose which, for any given piece, is worn. This should be especially so for Head Gear since helmets are optional in Guild-wars Universe. What is the point of buying glasses, if my ranger can snipe people from 1200 units away without them.

Stats:Combinations vs Numerical Increases

Stat increase is not progression. If your character is doing 10% more damage because of gear, you have not progressed. You don’t feel you have progressed, you feel like you have wasted your time getting to an even playing field. How you play stays the same. Stats are only Progression when, and only when, they change your Play style. Having Soldier gear over Rabid gear allows you to play differently, this is a meaningful choice. Guild-wars 2 should probably stopped “ascended gear treadmill” before this, but it’s a little late now. One thing they did get correct in that mess, was they increased the number of stat COMBINATIONS you could have. That added more meaningful choices to the game, I could chose the stats I want and not the “lesser of two evils”.

Guild-wars 2 should allow for any combination of minor and major stats. They already allow “the most broken” one. (power, critical%, and critical damage all feed into each other. No other stat combo can possibly do this).

Content Locks
As a continuation to this I’d like to go into Locks. Content Locks. The thing that makes people leave, and never return. The worst content lock is Money. Guild-wars hasn’t done that, yet. The Second Lock is.. time… I’m looking at your, laurels. Locks mean, no matter how good you are, how much you play, how much you pay, no matter what you do. You can’t ever get that content faster then the lock allows. I know, it’s disgusting. It’s the opposite of Gaming. Laurels themselves are not the problem, rewarding people for playing daily is great. Using them as a gate for content is Terrible. Capitol. T.

Since the game is supposed to be vertical progression, the first thing people are going to do is fill up there 5 character slots. I get to 30 (fun), grind to 80 (bleh) and Walla. I have a full functioning ch… wait a minute, what is this. 20 days per amulet. 25 days per ring. 30 days per amulet. 5 months per character. 5 times. I could chose to be Statistically (it doesn’t matter if people insist it’s “small” and “not needed” you feel it, in the “oh look, no ascended no invite” and knowing your character isn’t finished) under powered. or I could spend 25 months on Meaningless gear grind which adds no form of progression to my character. You hit all the wrong buttons with that one, Guild-wars 2. Those times are including the laurels at one per day AND the monthly as an additional source. Remove the time locks, and never add them again.

Things to Add
Weapon variations: a way, no matter how small, to make your weapon skills swap. Some weapons skills just feel clunky. You can add optional swap in skills. tweaking a skill for less damage, but more of whatever utility it provides, anything. The need for you to increase weapon customization is huge right now. The last resort would be releasing new weapon(s) for some of the classes.

PVE: while I understand you don’t want to punish players who decide to build damage, as damage is naturally contributing to any fight, I think you should increase the Risks. People who build survivability should be rewarded just as evenly for there choices as those choose to take the risks and build a glass cannon, and right now there not. I feel this is more of a “state of the game” change so I don’t expect anything soon. The best way to do this would be adding content where taking those few extra hits is important, and only someone with a lot of support or skill would be able glass cannon it.

Crafting: One of the things that my brother leave this game, was he enjoyed crafting. Sounds weird I know but here’s why! The first that was pretty bad was the market. The value of loot was very low, so crafting professions for armor/rings and stuff was very low, you could make SOME money out of it.. but for the time investment it was better to do something else. So the next cool thing about crafting right would be, of course, you could always have the stats you want! And you wouldn’t have to worry about the randomness of regular drops… perfect!.. Except they didn’t have all of the available options (not even some that were available in dungeons :c). ok.. ok.. fine! Have it your way! Then it’s an easier way to access max level gear! 8D amiright? No, sir, you are not. you would have almost been right at launch, but now (jeweler specifically, my brothers favorite since every class needs rings and stuff right?) exotic isn’t even the max gear if it was reasonably efficient to make it. Congratulations on your Gold sink and a waste of 400 crafting level grind, because you can get in line for ascended Time Locked gear with the rest of us.

Recipes: one of the cool things they ninja’d in, was Recipes specific to dungeons. I think that adding new recipes (missing stats, Custom looks ect) to the game( as loot, from forge ect ect) would really make crafting viable again.

Reserved for break time

I’d like to add my concerns about gear.
While not having “end equipment” or general gear progression is fine for most of us, the lack of variety is disturbing.

Why does every armor have the same stats? like a berserkers chest will always have the same stats.
Why is there no variety on armor?
Why are there no “on hit” effects and stuff like that on weapons?
Why are there no special effects or on-use abilites on ANY type of gear?

As the game is right now, once you have a full set of x (mostly berserker because everything else stinks in PvE) and your desired skin the game is most likely over gearwise.
This few choices you gave the players for character customization made PvE content pretty kitten boring.

Nomi Barom.7149:

Rewards: Killing monsters basically doesn’t drop loot, so why even do it? The Example of this was when “dungeon running” was possible. You run past as many mobs as you can, kill the boss, and get the “rewarding content” of Tokens. As it stands, the only meaningful loot is high ranked crafting materials. It would seem that they don’t want people playing there game, given how “rewarding” it is to do normal content.

For many of us not even the T6 mats drop much less the bags that contain them so we’re out. It’s part of that Wi Flag/Perma DR problem seen by alot of people since November that no one’s ever checked on or taken seriously, meanwhile people affected by it are getting fed up and leaving for other games that don’t do that to the players. I hope their Rewards revamp will solve it I really do.

The temporary content thing is old as well. We need permanent stuff both personal stories more solo dungeons more exploration ways of getting rewarded. the ability to do dailies on multiple characters not 1 per account.

As for Progression, I believe I’m one of the few that remembered how they promised prelaunch to have armor sets with 0 stat increases that they’d all be cosmetic only.

The problem with that is there doesn’t seem to be enough of the carrot on a stick.

I also agree with you that they need hidden or earnable abilities. I would suggest they take a page from their own book for skills that are earned in GW1 and a page from Rift’s book in the post max level progression called Planar Attunement. Minor buffs and bonuses one can earn by just playing the game and gaining levels. They already have that built into this game, so why not make it worth something so people can further customize their characters a bit more. They can easily cut it off from PVP so it doesn’t become a problem there and make it PVE only.

I personally would love to see them revamp some problematic issues in the skill system. Having run speed bonuses for only two classes for example, every class should have at least 1 skill that allows them the 25% run speed because let’s face it, they aren’t ever going to add mounts so we might as well have this as an option and on the engineer side of things it would make it possible to increase our skills a bit since we’re stuck in every build getting the Speedy Kits just to travel.

I like how you said content locks haven’t occurred in this game “yet” because many of us saw them heading towards that with the implementation of the Agony gear. Content in dungeons being cutoff from players who don’t have the right gear already happens on a daily basis due to there not being a balanced system both with classes and roles, it already happens due to the design of their bosses. So I can totally see this happening very easily with Agony, people would not only be shunned due to their class but also due to their lack of agony resist gear. Never a good thing.