Guild Wars 2

NOTE: There is a tl;dr after each of the points I make marked with “—->” if you don’t feel like reading a huge paragraph, but do note that you may not fully understand my viewpoints. I am also at reddit formatting so If this looks very mushed together I apologize deeply.

SPOILER NOTE: I won’t mention any specifics of the story. Many aspects of the game (locations and mechanics, etc.) may be mentioned, and certain parts of the story will also be addressed (beginning of game, when location shifts to somewhere else, “end of the story”, etc.) but no specifics will be given.

This is the first time I’ve ever written more than a paragraph about a game, but I feel GW2 deserves a bit of extrapolation in my thoughts than that.

I have been playing MMOs for a little over a decade now. I have gone from Runescape to Adventurequest to BOTS! to Maplestory and beyond. I enjoy all qualities of every game I play (both MMO and single-player) from Scenery to Story to Art to Music to Gameplay to Community Interaction and beyond.

I criticize games very often, but I try to be very fair about it. I do not whine for changes, but I like to very firmly stand behind my opinions and suggestions for changes. If something is proven otherwise to me, or I find a way to deal with something I don’t enjoy, then I will usually accept that I have found a solution and drop my arguments (mostly).

Guild Wars 2 had me very hyped up from the moment I saw trailer for it. I kept hearing “Reinvent the MMO” and such talk and was skeptical, but eventually started to believe it. What I was expecting was a reinvention of what an MMO is, but it appears the main focus was more towards changing how people go through an MMO (which is alright as well)

There are a few things that, after a couple hundred hours of gameplay, are the main problems I have with GW2, and the main reasons I have decided to take a break from playing to pursue other games (Borderlands 2 and more).

=NUMBER 1 – The Grinding Situation=

I personally love grinding on mobs. I played Maplestory for years and I actually had TONS of fun killing mobs over and over because you can mess around with how you kill them. For example in GW2 you can try using different weapons, dodging, adding little extra challenges to yourself (AKA MAKING YOUR OWN FUN) like don’t take more than one hit fighting this enemy. It’s very relataeble to a childhood where there wasn’t a ton of fun things to do, so you had to invent your own fun with what you had, and that’s a wonderful thing with games.

However when ANET tried to “reinvent the MMO” I feel even more restricted than before. In normal MMOs you have to do something many times over for the BEST possible outcome (AKA grinding mobs or events). And if you didn’t like it then you could go do something else in the game for slightly worse outcome for the sake of your enjoyment.

With GW2 I feel like I’m not allowed to do what I like doing. If I find an event where “oh god dude that was SOOOOO much fun! that was amazing!!!” I want to keep doing it because hey: Its Fun!!! Unfortunately I can’t do it because I don’t get the “slightly worse outcome” that I would in other MMOs, I get very harshly negative outcomes from repeating something I found fun. It feels like a very: “I’m having so much fun!!” “Okay well you’re not allowed to enjoy this anymore for right now, go somewhere else.” and I feel like a teacher is calling me inside from playing on the playground because I only can have fun doing one thing for so long.

>tl;dr I feel like my option are:

Regular MMO:

Can I farm one thing that I enjoy doing? – OF COURSE!

Can I run around and do different things because I get bored of repetition? – OF COURSE!

GW2:

Can I run around and do different things because I get bored of repetition? – OF COURSE!

Can I farm one thing that I enjoy doing? – Sorry that type of enjoyment isn’t allowed

=NUMBER 2 – Lore and Story=

I absolutely loved the lore of this game. Before release I read through a huge portion of the wiki and learned a lot about all the races, gods, history, etc. I fell in love with the Asura and that’s what I played. The first 30-40 levels of storyline was some of the most enjoyable story I’ve played through in a very long time. I loved the way the Asuran race, with its technology, moral practices, and general cultural paradigms operated and affected the story and how my character interacted with everything. Once I hit level ~40 and the story moved away from Rata Sum I felt a little less interested, but the characters will still engaging and enjoyable. As the story progressed I felt less and less intertwined, and more like I was watching a movie or reading a book than participating and shaping events.

The largest issue was how ‘that one guy’ very much stole the show from the player. I felt like a small little side note in the storyline. While this worked in the sense of “you won’t always be the center of attention” I felt very little like a great hero and a lot like a lacky. This may be okay with many and I’m not saying ANET was wrong to do this, but it very much hurt the later parts of the story for me.

As a final note about the story: The ending of the game was probably one of the worst ending to a game I have ever experienced. Even when I felt like a lacky the story was still very interesting as a story and as part of a game. The ending REALLY felt like they said “Oh kitten the game comes out tomorrow and we haven’t finished! Quick throw something simple and easy together!” I won’t let the end take away from my enjoyment of the rest of the story (especially the very early parts) but it still hurt me to experience it.

>tl;dr first 50% of the story was absolutely amazing, second half felt very disconnected but still good, ending was just insulting

=NUMBER 3 – Bugs and Testing=

Having as much experience as I do with games, I understand that no game can come out bug-free. Its pretty much impossible (at least in any sense of practicality) so I’m not going to get on the fact that “Eww there’s bugs in the game!”

However I do feel that the bets testing was very well done. From my experience the games that release the most bug-free and well-polished are ones that have closed beta lasting about 1-2 week long (sometimes more). These let players reach slightly higher level stuff (or as far as the company wants them to see before release) and let people reach the point where they’re not just playing storyline; they’re jumping around corners of the map, trying to do 100% of everything you can do and running into the tiny hidden bugs.

I was very upset (not because I couldn’t play for long) that ANET decided to have 3x 3 day closed betas and a similarly long open beta as spread out as they were. I felt very worried that the huge lack of playtime would allow a lot of issues (both bugs and game mechanic/community interaction problems) to slip past due to lack of testing.

It turns out it did happen. Lots of bugged events (I was in a couple zones where around 85% of all events were bugged) along with all the simple exploits (someone forgot to add a couple zeros amirite? =P) were in a large abundance and I felt less anger and “gah ANET is incompetent” outrage and more upset that they chose the path they did. I’m not saying I’m right about this, but I feel they could have done a little more testing.

>tl;dr although no game can be perfect and bugs are guaranteed to be present, I feel ANET really needed more testing time to iron out bugs/exploits/discrepancies, etc.

=NUMBER 4 – Lack of Rewards or Feelings of Accomplishment=

One of the most important things for a video game is rewarding the player: Making them feel like all the time they’ve spent is well worth it. Guild Wars 2 has many instances that leave me feeling unrewarded.

Firstly, the skill system, while well designed and fairly well balanced, is extremely far from rewarding or enjoyable. From level 2/3 you already have all the main skills you will use for the next 98% of the game. While this works out for convenience, later on you feel like your character isn’t really improving skill-wise, and leaves the game feeling EXTREMELY gear dependent; a lot like Diablo 3, except Diablo 3 was less-so because you still earned new skills and augments for them.

The most you get is a few passives and maybe a few actives for utility spells along with a very slow progression for stat bonuses (trait trees) and some seldom-exciting passives. That’s all good in terms of character capabilities, but I don’t feel like I’ve suddenly become stronger, I just feel “Woooo I deal 5% more damage in 10 levels…”

I greatly understand the “When they said no grind, they meant in leveling” aspect, but when I want to buy something from the Trading Post, and it costs 10 gold, I know the grind is on because its very difficult to make money in this game.

While everyone was praising the game for having a very balanced money distribution I felt the opposite. I like the idea of having the intelligence and sense to buy low-> sell high or farm up some high-valued items to make money. That’s how an economy works; people who put in extra work get more money, sure, but those who think outside the box/take advantage of information are more rewarded than those that don’t. However if you look at the Trading Post, almost everything besides rare exotics are selling for about 5 copper above vendor price. This makes using the economy of the game almost not worth it. Almost everything sells for more to the vendors than to other people. This probably comes from things like the fact that there’s over 4 million copper in the trading post.

The economy while the trading post was down was amazing: Everyone was trading on what they thought their item was worth. People were working on an honor system (which I’ll admit wasn’t the best, but it did bring out the good in the community) and there was simply ‘general’ pricing on items. You could but something from someone for 10s and then sell it for 30s later on to someone who really needed it. It was an economy to love. But now when you get something it’s pretty much a “eh just sell it to the karma vendor, it’s nobody is going to buy it/it’ll never sell”

I suppose I can’t talk about rewards without quickly touching on dungeons/boss rewards. I feel it’s ridiculous that you can kill a single zombie (of which there are obviously thousands) and get a yellow level 80 items, then kill the final boss (who is the focus of the ENTIRE game) and get two lower level blue items. I have never received a single yellow or better item from any dungeon run or zone boss. This makes a huge portion of the game a complete waste of time after doing it for the sake of experiencing it.

>tl;dr A lot of the rewarding parts of MMOs are not rewarding and take away the enjoyment one should receive from putting in time and effort into a game

These are simply some of the few feelings I have about the game. I would absolutely love to hear the views and opinions of others, and if I have missed anything/am wrong about anything, I would be more than happy to be proven as such.

Thank you for your time and please keep any discussion civil!