Guild Wars 2

Jonathan Sharp. I am directing this at you personally because of your position, and because you have the power. There is so much I would like to say to you regarding this game, but to be honest, it would take me days of typing; and you reading, to convey my thoughts. I will try to keep this as brief. Before you dismiss me, please, take a while to read through this and appreciate my thoughts. I used to be very active here, but once I realised it was futile, I took a break from the forums, and the game, for 7 months. I understand FULLY, EVERY aspect that you have to deal with, truthfully.

I was a hardcore GW1 player. Since my departure from the scene, I have eagerly awaiting GW2. I changed my alias, and have two active alternate GW2 accounts. One for PvP, one for PvE and WvW. This is not a topic about rose tinted memories, this is the opposite. I have one question for you, personally.

Why?

It’s a very vague question of course, but that’s the point. Everything in this game, is vague. The balance, the skills, the pros, the cons, the whiners, the glorifiers. Why is there so much segregation?

Before I start, let me tell you, that I’ve wholeheartedly agreed with mostly every decision you’ve ever made, from a business point of view, and a player’s point of view. Unfortunately for the playerbase, most of us do not see outside of our tunnel-visioned glasses, or are able to see the picture. We know why the state of the game is the way it is, and why the business model is the way it is. However, the game is to be played. Why is it that you are unable to make a few changes that will satisfy nearly everyone that will not affect the business model?

Living Story

Please, stop wasting our time, and more importantly- YOUR TIME, by developing these two week events. Not only does it encourage the wrong sort of behaviour from players, and for those are couldn’t participate, it most likely will kitten off the entire of your team. You are no doubt wasting money by doing this.

I am by no means saying elimate the living story short term content, but slow it down. If you are going to proceed with them, do not do them so frequently. Do not make them last so short. Content should be a permanent addition, and living story style events should take place for big, and MAJOR things that need to take place. Just because the living story contains the events after the Zhaitan incident, doesn’t mean it has to be time-gated, in short intervals. You can add permanent content that encourages players to move forward to the events, and not the events to come to the players. This is why GW1’s PvE mode worked so well for the most part.

Balance
Balance, is always going to be an issue, but here is where you need to listen. For the love of god- STOP BALANCING AROUND METRICS. Metrics cause you to balance around averages, and ‘missed opportunities’. Let me explain something to you. Missed opportunities are subjective to each player. This can mean that the skill is sub-par, or that the character doesn’t want to use it. There is NO WAY to verify which of the two these are. Instead, what ends up happening is that you nerf or buff things unncessesarily. Balance should be done around top player capability. You know why, and I know why. Yes, this means skill ceilings are increased, but it also introduces risk vs reward.

I really didn’t want to talk about classes here, for reasons I’ll explain afterwards, but let’s use the elementalist as an example.
Since post-beta, players have been constantly moaning about how hard the elementalist is; how weak it is compared to other classes. Till this day, people are still complaining about the class. What is the truth here? The truth is, as you said yourself, eles are fine for the most part. What is occuring here partially, is the L2P factor.

This factor unfortunately is thrown around by every average john who thinks they’re good at the class they play. However, as bad as this may sound, most of the complaints about this, and many other classes, are L2P issues. This is why the theorycrafters, are the top players, and the sheep are the bad ones.

You guys have truely done a wonderful job at balancing, and eliminating the “trinity”, but one thing you failed to remember is that players want to play what they imagine. If a player wants a trinity, he/she will find one. This is the sole reason why people who make such claims, make them. This includes traits, and skills. You need to make sure everyone can craft their character how they want. Cantrip utility water builds on ele are still the most viable option, despite your teams effort to make other utilities and options available. Like fresh air, make sure improvements synergize with the outcome.

There is nothing wrong with that, but it is something to consider. You guys need to have a focus group composed of the greatest players of each class that can provide unbiased INPUT to compliment your team’s balance decisions. Balancing at high level play ensures balancing remains constant.

The reason why I didn’t want to talk about specific classes, is because they’re all balanced reasonably well on the whole, but in specific scenarios, certain classes excel. Unfortunately, this means in the players eyes, the game is broken. The players know what classes these are, I know, and you should know. Each class in this game has broken attributes to it, some of which are yet to be explored by the general population, but your job as designer should be to limit potential exploitation.

People WILL EXPLOIT whatever they can. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

There are some really OP things certain builds can do (that fall across ALL classes)that are not yet known to the general public, that a few of the theorycrafters (including myself) keep to ourselves, to save further wrongdoings on balance because of both your decisions, and the community’s outrage, and general bad playing.

Look, we can go on all day regarding balance, but let’s be real here. You get the point. Do yourselves, and us, a favour. On top of this, consider:

- Making the elite slot an OPEN slot, for both utility and elite.
- Adding deathmatch and team deathmatch modes alongside conquest (horrible, and the source of all this imbalance) mode.
- Making kills against players in wvw count towards points. One point per 10 kills. Adding 1 point per 3 kills whilst under the “outnumbered” buff.

Last but not least, Players.

Guys, there is nothing worse, than having to deal with imbeciles on a daily basis. From a company point of view, both internally and externally. The sad truth is, most gamers do not know what they want, but instead cry, and throw out random suggestions based on what they think will be cool.

Can you guys please, keep your outrageous thoughts, and comments to yourself. I do not need to elaborate here. The game is no where where it should be in terms of progression because you clowns are drowning out the legitimate, and truely need information given by skilled and educated players, who are concerned, or are having genuine problems.
P.S – Devs, and you Mr Sharp. The potential is still there to make this game genre changing. Hang in there.
There are so many more topics that I wanted to discuss, but to be frank, you guys have already seen and heard them from the well outspoken players that haven’t given up on your game, or your boards.

Oh my! It seriously can’t be the loud minorities, lack of physical testing and poorly managed priorities!

Those are the most immaculate things that could ever exist! Shame on you OP for not being a suck-up fanboy. >:(

Read it, disagreed with most points. Where’s the -1 button?

+1 for the OP. A thoughtful criticism. And, I use criticism positively. It’s where we get critical thinking, eh?

Why are you directing it to Johnathan Sharp? Is he a lead designer? Because none of this diatribe is in his power.

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

Razarei.2809:

Balance
I really didn’t want to talk about classes here, for reasons I’ll explain afterwards, but let’s use the elementalist as an example.
Since post-beta, players have been constantly moaning about how hard the elementalist is; how weak it is compared to other classes. Till this day, people are still complaining about the class. What is the truth here? The truth is, as you said yourself, eles are fine for the most part. What is occuring here partially, is the L2P factor.

This factor unfortunately is thrown around by every average john who thinks they’re good at the class they play. However, as bad as this may sound, most of the complaints about this, and many other classes, are L2P issues. This is why the theorycrafters, are the top players, and the sheep are the bad ones.

You guys have truely done a wonderful job at balancing, and eliminating the “trinity”, but one thing you failed to remember is that players want to play what they imagine. If a player wants a trinity, he/she will find one. This is the sole reason why people who make such claims, make them. This includes traits, and skills. You need to make sure everyone can craft their character how they want. Cantrip utility water builds on ele are still the most viable option, despite your teams effort to make other utilities and options available. Like fresh air, make sure improvements synergize with the outcome.

This is also partially because people are so unreceptive to good advice. They hold on to their ill informed beliefs on weapons and dps and dont take advice from good players who have great builds. Every single class in this game can do really great damage and provide good utility people just need to find the right weapons. I dont think they should make every build viable in pve but they should make every build viable in some game type. So for example the best elementalist build out there is either d/d or s/d. however i still see many people wanting to use staff so if they want to use staff give them the option to use it in wvw and be OP. Personally i cant say much about ele because i deleted mine at level 60 because i didnt like norn light armor but im speaking from what ive read on other forums and the builds ive seen.

That was more than a few words —> This is a few words.

AntiGw.9367:

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

I’ll help.

TLDR: The OP knows how to fix the game after being gone for 7 months. Most everyone else on the forums are idiots with bad suggestions. ANet needs to do what the OP says instead of making changes based on the idiot’s feedback.

Gibson.4036:

AntiGw.9367:

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

I’ll help.

TLDR: The OP knows how to fix the game after being gone for 7 months. Most everyone else on the forums are idiots with bad suggestions. ANet needs to do what the OP says instead of making changes based on the idiot’s feedback.

It’s funny because OP is a random poster too. Irony hits hard sometimes, I suppose

Gibson.4036:

AntiGw.9367:

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

I’ll help.

TLDR: The OP knows how to fix the game after being gone for 7 months. Most everyone else on the forums are idiots with bad suggestions. ANet needs to do what the OP says instead of making changes based on the idiot’s feedback.

Of course, no one who actually works on the game on a day-to-day basis, let alone someone who studies feedback from players through multiple channels and analyzes logs of player activity could possibly know more about the game or make better decisions than someone who played the game last winter and quit when he saw the first, experimental, chapters of the Living Story.

I think the CEO of Anet should step down so they can hire the OP to replace him.

AntiGw.9367:

Why are you directing it to Johnathan Sharp? Is he a lead designer? Because none of this diatribe is in his power.

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

Game Design Lead. Some people do their homework before posting.

You know, you could have saved yourself and a whole lot of people a lot of time if you’d just written “L2P imbeciles!”, because that’s pretty much what your post boils down to. In fact, I’d say that’s the real point of the post. It’s nothing to do with communicating with devs, you just want to be smug about insulting everyone that you don’t consider as l33t as yourself.

Neural.1824:

You know, you could have saved yourself and a whole lot of people a lot of time if you’d just written “L2P imbeciles!”, because that’s pretty much what your post boils down to. In fact, I’d say that’s the real point of the post. It’s nothing to do with communicating with devs, you just want to be smug about insulting everyone that you don’t consider as l33t as yourself.

Its more along the lines of scrubs that want to be scrubs are bringing down the goods who want to be good. Not some power play for superiority.

Neural.1824:

You know, you could have saved yourself and a whole lot of people a lot of time if you’d just written “L2P imbeciles!”, because that’s pretty much what your post boils down to. In fact, I’d say that’s the real point of the post. It’s nothing to do with communicating with devs, you just want to be smug about insulting everyone that you don’t consider as l33t as yourself.

Well its not a bad point. Most people who complain about classes use terribad builds and expect to do really well with them. Others just have bad experiences in pug groups and make generalizations.

The game has a lot of shortcomings, but really, I am sick and tired of posts consisting of “I was a GW1 hardcore player”. Does that make you a great game designer or give your opinion some special weight? no.

Yours sincerly,
a GW1 hardcore player

everything the OP said is right.
but it was 100% obvious close minded kids are going to take over this thread.

for example ele players still run around with staff in pve. or rangers with bow.
…. then they come to the forums and cry about how bad their classes are.
seriously…

you just cant continue to fill a full glass of water.

Raine.1394:

AntiGw.9367:

Why are you directing it to Johnathan Sharp? Is he a lead designer? Because none of this diatribe is in his power.

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

Game Design Lead. Some people do their homework before posting.

I’m not sure if that means what you think that means.

NoTrigger.8396:

everything the OP said is right.
but it was 100% obvious close minded kids are going to take over this thread.

A lot of us aren’t taking him seriously because he has been away from the game for 7 MONTHS. A lot of things changed in those 7 months. Had he been continually playing this game for that long and then posted what he thought, we wouldn’t be this close minded.

NoTrigger.8396:

everything the OP said is right.
but it was 100% obvious close minded kids are going to take over this thread.

for example ele players still run around with staff in pve. or rangers with bow.
…. then they come to the forums and cry about how bad their classes are.
seriously…

you just cant continue to fill a full glass of water.

Everything he said was right? lol

Some things he said were right, some were just opinion, which can’t be right or wrong, but the OP is stating them as if they are a fact, and in my opinion that’s wrong.

So I don’t think everything he said was actually right.

This was a very amusing OP. Too bad it will be closed due to calling out a Dev.