Guild Wars 2

This could just as easily go in the Suggestions or even Lore forums, so if any of the mods think it wise, feel free to move it, but I really genuinely hope that Anet will hear me out here and give this a full read.

Three quick disclaimers up front: as much as I’m sure everyone is sick of hearing this game be compared to WoW, I’m trying to provide truly constructive criticism and if the best way to do that is to draw on my experiences as an ex-WoW player, then so be it. The other disclaimer being that I haven’t done all of the explorable dungeons yet so I could be wrong in my assumptions, but from what I’ve read about them I don’t believe I am. Thirdly I love this game, and I love Anet, and I really, really want to see this game succeed, so I hope that they’ll consider my ramblings.

Guild Wars 2 has been failing to hold my attention of late, and I feel like I’ve finally pinpointed why. I feel very little motivation to do explorable dungeons. Honestly a lot of that is because it feels like the story of my character is finished now that my Personal Story is finished and I’ve completed all the Story modes for the dungeons. All of the important baddies (Zhaitan, Faolain, Kudu, Gaheron, etc.) have either fled or been slain with extremely little effort.

Although I feel like there should definitely be a major capstone accomplishment for the end of the personal story (and Zhaitan fits that role quite nicely, even though I feel his fight should be a bit harder) I also think that there should be other major lore characters to work toward defeating AFTER that, who are much harder to defeat. It makes sense for Zhaitan’s death to not require a ton of skill on the player’s part, because they’ve spent their entire personal story building up a coordinated military effort to bring him down, and this way a much, much larger portion of the player base gets to complete that story. I consider that a sound decision.

However none of the explorable dungeons to my knowledge feature prominent lore figures like Faolain that I’m interested in defeating, instead leaving me to mop up some separatist underlings or gravelings left over from the story mode events. That’s my first criticism of explorables. I simply don’t feel like the events in them have
enough impact on the world and its lore/story.

The second thing that causes me to leave the dungeon unsatisfied is that it doesn’t feel like there’s real build up to any boss. This is the part where I’m going to hearken back to WoW for a moment, for better or for worse. I played WoW mainly during Wrath of the Lich King, and defeating a boss at the end of a raid that my guild had been fighting through for months is the most satisfying feeling I’ve ever had in a video game. Unfortunately it took that long for all the wrong reasons (Gear treadmill, organizing 10 people and the scheduling conflicts that arose from not being able to replace healers or tanks, and weekly resets) but the point is that we were fighting our way through a massive dungeon fighting bosses that would take a minimum of four or five hours to defeat the first time, and finally at the end was Arthas, or Yogg-Saron, or Ragnaros; somebody important to the lore and a true genuine threat to Azeroth.

My point is that I did the entirety of AC explorable (all three paths) in the time that it would have taken my guild to progress through one new boss in WoW on a very good day. However I am absolutely not advocating the implementation of a gear treadmill to pad out dungeon length. I’ve put a lot of thought into exactly what I’d want from explorables in my ideal vision of GW2, so I’ll outline my little prototype below.

-Make the bosses much harder, nerf the trash a little bit, and give better rewards for killing an individual boss to account for the change in difficulty.

-Do away with the paths, instead making one big open dungeon so that players can choose their OWN path through the bosses, until they are all defeated, at which time final boss emerges.

-Some feature which allows a party to save their progress in an explorable to account for the newly lengthened dungeons and loss of paths.

-Perhaps organize bosses in tiers instead of paths, giving access to three easiest bosses, then opening up a deeper section of the dungeon with the next three. Maybe allow party to save dungeon progress by tiers.

-Significant and meaningful lore figure at the end of each dungeon so that players are motivated to finish the dungeon and tack another achievement onto their character’s history.

I remember a lot of discussion about the gear treadmill before the game launched about how there were two parts to the cycle, getting gear and defeating bosses. There were then also two kinds of players depending on which part of the cycle motivates them, a player that defeats bosses to get gear, and the player who gets gear to defeat bosses. I also remember being told that those in the former camp would likely be disappointed with GW2 and that those in the latter camp would be fine. Unfortunately, I’m definitely in that latter camp, but I don’t feel fine. Thankfully the game just came out quite recently and MMO’s are always improving. I’ve offered my feedback, if you agree with me feel free to comment, if you disagree intelligently feel free to comment too. If you disagree rudely and unintelligently, feel free to waste everyone’s time and be ignored.

I agree completely. What I’d really like to have is a reason to keep me fighting. Gear treadmills would actually be preferable to the current system for me, simply because it means that I’m fighting bigger and better bosses.

I believe an important part of any MMO is keeping the players really interested in the content (Even though some people disregard the lore and play for WvW and/or sweet loots). A huge part of WoW for me was the lore. Killing even an unimportant boss felt like a major step for the cause and more importantly, I felt like the world was really in danger. I felt this way because the bosses took a long time to kill! You had to have a strategy, and you had to be good. Killing a boss in WoW really felt like I was acomplishing something sort of like, “The world just got a little bit better now that that guy is dead!” I don’t get this feeling with GW2, simply because everything is so kitten easy to kill.

As it is now, I can walk into Arah with four other people and kill bosses with ease. I don’t feel like I’m a hero, or that the boss was any great threat. These are high ranking Risen minions with enough power to be in Zhaitan’s personal frivolous smelly corpse palace! Shouldn’t it take more than five minutes for five “adveturers” to dispatch them?

So far the whole game has been about working together towards the common goal of the Elder Dragons. That’s why we have an army in our Personal Story; to prove that we’re not the only ones fighting, even if we are the “star of the show”. I want it to be difficult for my team of five adventurers to slay a huge monstrous Risen threat. The work up to a final boss should not be gratifying, not more trash!

Furthermore, I know that Anet doesn’t want to drag out content. There is a difference between making it difficult and dragging it out, though.

I would have much preferred for Kudu, Faolain, etc to be like “raid bosses” from WoW. They are all huge figures in the lore, and yet they are represented with a two hour dungeon and a ten minute fight!

I beg of you Anet; spread out the lore! Kudu especially was a huge villain, and killing him should have had a drastic change on the world. It would feel that way if he took two hours to kill, I guarantee it. Also, no, the fight should not last two hours. It should only last about fifteen minuted, but it should take two hours to develop a strategy and kill the boss.

Please consider Prismatic’s thoughts! Make bosses more challenging, and make highly lore-important individuals stand out. Not only via a unque set of skills and harder mechanics, but by making them the result of a built up war effort. Right now, the build up for killing Zhaitan is in the Personal Story, and it shouldn’t be! It should be in the dungeon, killing hard bosses to progress and fight a war.