Guild Wars 2

So after playing and reaching a higher level a lot of problems begin to show with the game.

That starts with general PvE design with too high respawn rates even when no player is present and general mob density where you aggro 3 other mobs as soon as you dare to move (remember, the combat system is designed for mobility).
Bugs are frequent, either by having events bug out and at worst contesting a waypoint for days or classes where a lot of traits and abilities are simply bugged.

And if they are not bugged, they are not balanced. In the worst case a quarter of your class skills are simply weak (Engi turret skills for examples) and very often the elite skill you saved your skill points for is horrible (mortar). Racial skills are all around lackluster, although that is by design.
And it is not only the classes that have balance issues its also the content. “Trash” mobs are frequently more difficult than bosses, boss design is generally lackluster (Shatterer for example) and the rewards do not justify the effort in most cases. And the difficulty of personal story quests are all over the place ranging from cakewalk to horrible zerg of death, especially for elementalist or other non plate wearing classes.

And this are just the major problems. There are a lot of minor ones too like the Charr armor.

But the real issue here is that at least I haven’t much confidence in ANet to fix this issues any time soon. Many of those problems come from bad design and not bugs which means they won’t be changed or only after a very long process. And when you look at the patch notes they also do not inspire much confidence. How often has ANet fixed “Ship of the Line” by now? And there are still broken events, quite frequently actually.
And the only thing I get to hear from ANet is about their “Vision” of the game but not a single word about the problems people report except maybe a “We are looking into this issue”.

I have to say I am also concerned about bug resolution. It simply isn’t happening quickly enough, whatever the reason. Many De’s are borked and it kills immersion when I’m leveling. The worrying part as you mentioned is that they’re aware of the bug but they just can’t get it fixed even after multiple attempts. Seems like troublesome code or something.

Some people seem to think the process of fixing a bug is changing a single line of code.

I expect a newly released MMO to be buggy. They almost all are (and usually when someone claims that’s not the case it’s due to rose-tinted glasses and other players of the same game disagree with them).

I don’t judge an MMO based on the first month. And anyone who does had better be rich, because I suspect they will just continually buy new MMOs, play for a month, quit because it’s not perfect, and then buy the next one.

This is mostly completely opinion, not “cracks”. And bugs are being fixed. Nothing to read here.

Jestunhi.7429:

Some people seem to think the process of fixing a bug is changing a single line of code.

I work in the software industry. In many cases it is.
But then, I don’t work in the games industry so we can’t deliver code as unfinished as how many games are released.

Fiennes.9568:

This is mostly completely opinion, not “cracks”. And bugs are being fixed. Nothing to read here.

So it is “opinion” that many Events, after several attempts to fix them, do still not work, that the balance in dungeons and story instances is “strange” or that many abilities of certain classes are unusable?

its a crap boring game. too hard or too easy,almost never balanced,repair cost too much. maps too big and cost of traveling too high. dont tell me to quit,i play rarely anyway. i was waited for gw2 for years. now i just wait for soul&blade

Ixal.7924:

Jestunhi.7429:

Some people seem to think the process of fixing a bug is changing a single line of code.

I work in the software industry. In many cases it is.
But then, I don’t work in the games industry so we can’t deliver code as unfinished as how many games are released.

As am I, which is why I know how complex it can be.

What I meant to imply is that it’s not as easy as removing the line “BuggedContent = 1”. And even if it is a single line it could be buried somewhere in thousands of lines of code.

:edit:

@ Mods who deleted my previous post and threatened me with an infraction – thanks. I meant to delete the dummy post as soon as the quote buttons appeared, but I don;t appreciate being threatened with punishment for having to make a dummy post to enable the quote buttons.

:edit2:

And if you didn’t disable the reply on the PM’s that you send I could have responded directly instead of publically.

AsgardNation.2953:

its a crap boring game. too hard or too easy,almost never balanced,repair cost too much. maps too big and cost of traveling too high. dont tell me to quit,i play rarely anyway. i was waited for gw2 for years. now i just wait for soul&blade

Completely agree with everything you said, I mean I loved the game when I was leveling up. But now…not so much. I haven’t logged on in quite a bit. I waited for this game since it was announced, I feel like I got kicked in the sack. Oh well. I sure do hope that they fix/address all these problems though. So much potential this game has.

heh…

“too hard or too easy”

What, you can’t tell?

This is NOT a pve game, yes there is pve part but go back to WoW or whatever grinding pve game if you really want to beat subpar AI mob all day long, aka pve.

This is a PvP game go play pvp and leave the BS mobs alone, and voila now u can enjoy a great game, as simple as that.

PvE is weak, people complaining about costs and whatnot ? ROFLMAO
Its so cheap u can travel everywhere for nothing, mobs so easy u never die, all content = move there, beat everything, quest done before you know it, move next spot. So kitten hard lol, gaining 10 levels a day while having a job and family .. Rarely seen so casual friendly pve :p

But again go play PvP, skill and game knowledge matter, and challenge is up there too.

I think you need to look at things in perspective and not just take a totally negative viewpoint, because some things need further work. You have to appreciate that MMOs such as Guild Wars 2 are huge software development projects and that is why many past efforts have been so conservative in not moving away from previously established conventions.

Guild Wars 2 on the other hand is very innovative in many ways and so it’s not surprising that some of the new ideas are going to need further iteration to get right. However, I think, the fundamental ideas underlying the game really can be made to work; and many of us are having a lot of fun with the game already and will continue to do so.

CeCaKonVeu.5734:

This is NOT a pve game

For that it has quite a lot of PvE content.
8 Dungeons, loads of overworld areas, quests and PvE Events. And when you deliver content than this content has to work and be of quality.

Arguing that you are not supposed to access the majority of content the game gives you is just stupid.

Dungeons are terrible as well. Many players already drifting back to WoW’s superior end game

The end game PVP is a joke. World vs World sucks and there are no rewards. OF course people will leave for the superior game that has proven end game content. AT LEAST THERE ARE REWARDS!

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

What exactly do people expect?

I love reading peoples opinion, but thats all it is..
Sure the game needs fixing up in places, same for lots of games, and these things get fixed in time. Games these days, especially mmo’s are constant works in progress

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

What exactly do people expect?

If you want to reduce it to End Game content, TOR has more end game content, heck Mists of Pandaria alone has more end game content.

The problem is not the that there is to few end game content, its the whole design of how ANet wants end game to be which has issues.
Just ask yourself if 3 more dungeons designed the same way as the current ones would make the game better.

Xericor.9103:

I love reading peoples opinion, but thats all it is..
Sure the game needs fixing up in places, same for lots of games, and these things get fixed in time. Games these days, especially mmo’s are constant works in progress

Which is sadly always used as excuse to release it half working. What most companies overlook is that many people are not willing to wait till the progress reaches a point where the game could actually be considered bug free for 99% of the players. The only advantage GW2 has here is that no monthly costs mean that players are a bit more willing to wait.

Dungeons are not the be-all and end-all, and personally I couldn’t care less about them.

And I wonder what the difference is in budget between the latest expansion for WoW compared with Gw2…

It’s obvious that there are cracks and they’re being discussed all over the forums. They’re likely being fixed too. A thread like this, with the tone that the OP used, is just throwing salt to the wound that’s in the process of being healed. My 2 cents…

The game was rushed out to beat MoP. Think back to before release. The devs stated that the total time developing gw2 was 5-6 years. yet after the first 3-4, they scrapped the entire initial design of the game and engine and started fresh. This left them 2 years to get the game out of the door. No MMO can be designed in that time and be decent.

Saying that, they still have time to get the bugs fixed and content sorted in game before people start leaving in droves. But judging by the latest dev comments and indeed blogposts, it’s like the devs are living in a different world right now.

They are a company and at the end of the game you really can’t blame them but…

GW2 is a sell out game. They hyped it up way too much (go watch their manifesto now, they are so full of it) and they are more concerned with balancing ways to entice you to buy gems than fixing bugs. They dumbed down the mechanics, they gutted the classes, they went full theme park.

Never go full theme park.

In my opinion GW2 is the best MMO launch since WoW. It has more content than WoW had at launch too. People coming in here and calling it “Rushed” needs to gain some perspective because clearly they have none

Jestunhi.7429:

Some people seem to think the process of fixing a bug is changing a single line of code.

Party-leader logs out, or crashes, or logs on an alt -> dungeon instance disappears.

A developer comes here and talks that bug, and says “the magic that the programmers do”.
Heck, fixing that bug is minor work. Indeed a few lines of coding, at most 1 page of code. Heck, it is a disgrace that the system even worked like that in the first place ! When writing the code, you should immediately realize that making the party property of a single character is asking for problems. It is as if some of the developers (programmers, but mostly gameplay-designers) have never played an MMO before.

In my opinion GW2 is the best MMO launch since WoW. It has more content than WoW had at launch too. People coming in here and calling it “Rushed” needs to gain some perspective because clearly they have none

If you think this game had an amazing launch, you can’t have played many MMO’s in the last 8 years.

Zzulu.5489:

In my opinion GW2 is the best MMO launch since WoW. It has more content than WoW had at launch too. People coming in here and calling it “Rushed” needs to gain some perspective because clearly they have none

The world is beautiful. I fully agree.

But when you look at the gameplay-mechanics, I think were are a lot of decisions in it, that I consider broken. Or dumb. Or clueless.

I think the decision that all dungeons have to be super-hard is a dumb decision.
I think that the traveling system (waypoints) is bad.
The decision that money is gonna be made via the cashshop, and thus that in-game gold has to be in short supply, is a decision that has a huge negative aspect on so many parts of the game.
No gear grind ? Everything else has turned into a grind in stead.
Lack of gear progression removes something that many players found fun.
No trinity ? It simplifies team-play into some kind of zerg where everyone plays for themselves. Another solution would have been better, like allowing all classes to spec into tanking and healing.
Give all classes melee and ranged abilities ? And then make ranged gameplay so much easier, that almost everyone is forced/tempted/encouraged to play ranged mostly. Makes gameplay less fun.

So many little design-decisions like this.
The game could have been a lot funner.
It’s a shame for the art-designers and level-designers, the modellers, the texture-artists. They did a great job. And then they have it spat on my the PvE-gameplay designers. I can’t understand how upper management lets this happen.

it is not as simple as changing one tiny thing, every change can effect a multitude of other things and it takes time to test the new build and find out. Thats why for example when end game stuff was fixed beginning areas had some issues, the changes effected other areas.

Zzulu is right though, it is a release and at release its gonna be buggy, but its had a better release with more content then even WoW. What needs to hapkitten not on A-Nets part, they are already doing what needs to be done, everyone else needs to calm down and stop demanding instant change, it simply can not happen that fast. If you want instant gratification perhaps play a facebook game and pay to win there.

“I think the decision that all dungeons have to be super-hard is a dumb decision.”

Not all dungeons are super hard. Most explore ones are, but even then they’re usually not too difficult. If you get a decent party, they’re only moderately difficult.

“I think that the traveling system (waypoints) is bad.”

Care to elaborate? Do you not like the contested system? Costs? Just Waypoints in general?

“The decision that money is gonna be made via the cashshop, and thus that in-game gold has to be in short supply, is a decision that has a huge negative aspect on so many parts of the game.”

So you’re saying that people who buy Gems should not be able to make money with them? Let me tell you, unless they spend a lot of money, they will not get a lot of in game money out of it. More than that, the two currencies being exchangeable gives access to everything they have access too for us non-paying players. Either they shouldn’t have any shop (no revenue stream for the game, which is necessary for long term health) or they should keep it this way. Really it’s one or the other, anything in between will usually suck.

“No gear grind ? Everything else has turned into a grind in stead.”

Yes, but it’s all optional. In order to be powerful in other MMO’s, you have to grind for gear, there is no other option (short of throwing real life money at it). However, in this, most grinding is for purely cosmetic things — not character power.

“Lack of gear progression removes something that many players found fun.”

It also gets rid of something that many players hate. Do you want people to have to grind to keep up, and be stuck doing stuff they don’t want to do just to be effective? Or would you rather people have the option to grind if they want to look absolutely sick, but make strong gear fairly easy to obtain?

“No trinity ? It simplifies team-play into some kind of zerg where everyone plays for themselves. Another solution would have been better, like allowing all classes to spec into tanking and healing.”

I disagree entirely. You’re still left with elitism in your system, where some people are considered far better to have with others. “Need healer/tanks for dungeon!” You miss that? I most certainly do not — I like to play how I like to play and still be able to get into dungeons. At least this way it’s more dependent on the individual skill of the players, as opposed to whether they’re a healer or a tank. But this is all just opinion.

“Give all classes melee and ranged abilities ? And then make ranged gameplay so much easier, that almost everyone is forced/tempted/encouraged to play ranged mostly. Makes gameplay less fun.”

Fair enough point.

I love how everyone here is claiming that so many events are bugged, that Orr is just impossible and similar things to that.

1. If you’re having trouble getting through Orr (Cursed Shore specifically) you need to stop trying to run through. It’s not a particularly big zone, and at 80 mobs should die relatively quick. Kill them 1 by 1 if necessary.

2. Some events are bugged, true, but not a huge amount. Seriously people, there’s only a few dozen out of thousands that are bugged (I’m being pretty generous).

3. ANet has fixed many bugged skill points and events recently, it’s not like they’re doing nothing.

I agree with the OP except for the last paragraph. MMO design takes time, and for each bug you are aware of that is being fixed there are dozens you are not aware of being worked on and fixed. The bugs and flaws in game design keep getting more and more severe the further towards “endgame” you get, which is logical, since that is the part of the game that is least tested. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve had my share of “WTF were they thinking?!” moments, but I see more things done right in GW2 than I saw in a long time since quitting WoW years ago and the general ideas the devs have are mostly great, and despite the bugs etc. I STILL enjoy this game a lot, which is why I have faith that the game will further improve, given a (hopefully not too long) bit of time.

I also completely agree with the OP. I understand that bugs come up in games, and no I don’t expect all bugs to be solved within 24 hours (or even 4-7 days) after they’re found. What does discourage me though is that a Skill Challenge or DE can bug out on Wednesday, and then it remains bugged and undoable until the next patch. No mid-week reset, or weekend reset… if you needed/wanted to do it and didn’t get a chance to do it before it bugged out again, well, better luck next week.

Why can’t they reset them daily. Maybe “reboot” the servers on friday/saturday at a scheduled time just to give players more chances to actually experience the content.

But I do expect eventually they’ll be fixed. How long? I don’t know. At this rate I wouldn’t expect them to be running reliably before Thanksgiving (US). I don’t mean that as a put-down to ANet or anything, that’s just my genuine opinion.

They need to take a look at respawns though. It is making some parts of the game much more difficult than necessary. And by ‘difficult’ I mean “annoying, tedious, time-consuming, and anti-fun”.

Skill bugs and trait bugs and (hopefully) trait redesigns, I can wait for. Better looking medium armors (enough with the kitten trenchcoats already x.x) I can wait for. More functionality in the AH (being able to search only for Light/Medium/Heavy armor, for instance) I can wait for. New content I can definitely wait for.

Repeatedly & often bugged skill challenges/DEs/story missions? Insane monster respawn timers? Yeah, those ruin the game for me. I’d rather not wait months for those.

ukraniangrl.2897:

Dungeons are terrible as well. Many players already drifting back to WoW’s superior end game

The end game PVP is a joke. World vs World sucks and there are no rewards. OF course people will leave for the superior game that has proven end game content. AT LEAST THERE ARE REWARDS!

Playing for rewards just means you were conditioned by previous games to perform X and recieve Y. It’s very difficult to reprogram your brain. In the old days people played game for FUN. Imagine that.

Calae.1738:

ukraniangrl.2897:

Dungeons are terrible as well. Many players already drifting back to WoW’s superior end game

The end game PVP is a joke. World vs World sucks and there are no rewards. OF course people will leave for the superior game that has proven end game content. AT LEAST THERE ARE REWARDS!

Playing for rewards just means you were conditioned by previous games to perform X and recieve Y. It’s very difficult to reprogram your brain. In the old days people played game for FUN. Imagine that.

Because the dungeons are so much fun…

If you don’t think the dungeons are fun that’s your opinion, Ixal. Try doing something else if you don’t like the dungeons.

Ixal.7924:

Calae.1738:

ukraniangrl.2897:

Dungeons are terrible as well. Many players already drifting back to WoW’s superior end game

The end game PVP is a joke. World vs World sucks and there are no rewards. OF course people will leave for the superior game that has proven end game content. AT LEAST THERE ARE REWARDS!

Playing for rewards just means you were conditioned by previous games to perform X and recieve Y. It’s very difficult to reprogram your brain. In the old days people played game for FUN. Imagine that.

Because the dungeons are so much fun…

That’s subjective. What is fun for person X might be very boring for person Y.

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

Except it doesn’t. Unless they changed it up in MoP, endgame consisted of running the same instance hundreds of times for that “special” drop. Maybe pet battles are now endgame content, idk:)

Gilandred.9870:

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

Except it doesn’t. Unless they changed it up in MoP, endgame consisted of running the same instance hundreds of times for that “special” drop. Maybe pet battles are now endgame content, idk:)

For the new player and not one that has played the game since creation, wow has an overwhelming amount of endgame.

Renegadeimp.8439:

Gilandred.9870:

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

Except it doesn’t. Unless they changed it up in MoP, endgame consisted of running the same instance hundreds of times for that “special” drop. Maybe pet battles are now endgame content, idk:)

For the new player and not one that has played the game since creation, wow has an overwhelming amount of endgame.

Yeah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2saAgaJ6p54

Renegadeimp.8439:

Gilandred.9870:

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

Except it doesn’t. Unless they changed it up in MoP, endgame consisted of running the same instance hundreds of times for that “special” drop. Maybe pet battles are now endgame content, idk:)

For the new player and not one that has played the game since creation, wow has an overwhelming amount of endgame.

I like the end game more in Guid Wars 2 than in WoW by a long shot. I would prefer to repeat the Guild Wars 2 content more so than WoW.

For one, the open world is actually challenging. There are a lot of threatning NPC’s that swarm me and kill me If I’m not paying attention. I actually have to run for my life in an MMO in the open world. WoW was a snooze fest. No NPC was ever threatning.

Dungeons are challenging and offer different mechanics not found in WoW. Like avoiding and dodging traps and running for your life.

WvW. Enough said. Probably the most fun gaming experience I have ever had. I’m in a big organized guild with a lot of field commanders though, I can’t say the same for people who are not.

Spvp. Balance and gameplay are not very enjoyable right now. I tried it and it’s not my cup of tea. You can tell that there are very few people who play Spvp.

nerva.7940:

this thread needs to be locked down fast. i thought we were talking about bugs, yet flametards are venting about their frustration with core gameplay design, WoW, etc. ANet has been very patient this these threads….they need to start disappearing faster at this point.

Why are you so quick to try and supress opinion? The main problems with this game is the core gameplay and mechanics. They were reported in beta to be very buggy and needed time to fix, yet Anet decided to ignore everyone and still release the game with bugged skills.

Yes, it is their game, but if they want it to survive longer than the last few MMO’s that were released, they need to bite the bullet and start listening.

Renegadeimp.8439:

For the new player and not one that has played the game since creation, wow has an overwhelming amount of endgame.

They have an overwhelming amount of “leveling” content, not endgame. Endgame is still running the same instance multiple times to get the best gear.

Please re-read my comment. You seem to be glossing over it and misreading it.

Renegadeimp.8439:

Gilandred.9870:

Jestunhi.7429:

Game that’s almost a decade old (WoW released Nov 2004) is bound to have more end-game content than one released a month ago.

Except it doesn’t. Unless they changed it up in MoP, endgame consisted of running the same instance hundreds of times for that “special” drop. Maybe pet battles are now endgame content, idk:)

For the new player and not one that has played the game since creation, wow has an overwhelming amount of endgame.

You have managed to prove the original argument in your attempt to disprove it. Good work!

Rofl why are you playing a pvp game for its pve? Op is ridiculous, some “bugs” are cracks? hardly. its clear you have no software coding experience if you expect a 1 month game to be completely bug free, you live in a dream world.

pvp is a small part of the game. GW2 isn’t a pvp game lol. If you want your ‘pure pvp’ experience, go play fighting games or shooters or games built entirely around the competitive experience. Competition is a part of GW2, yes, a part, not the entire focus of the game.

I think GW2 will struggle to hold players interest in its current state, forced grinding to obtain anything is a big turn off, and the rewards for big meta events are really lacking, with the added nerving to the farming experience is a stab in the groin. 24hr respawn on high level Orichilacum ores was really a kick in the gut for people like me who craft. On top of the former mentioned problems and other issues I havn’t touched on are the botters and Gold-sellers that plague nearly every area, and don’t get me started about Anets promises in its manifesto.

Renegadeimp.8439:

The game was rushed out to beat MoP. Think back to before release. The devs stated that the total time developing gw2 was 5-6 years. yet after the first 3-4, they scrapped the entire initial design of the game and engine and started fresh. This left them 2 years to get the game out of the door. No MMO can be designed in that time and be decent.

Saying that, they still have time to get the bugs fixed and content sorted in game before people start leaving in droves. But judging by the latest dev comments and indeed blogposts, it’s like the devs are living in a different world right now.

^This…..I believe this is the heart of the issues. Modern day MMO designers have a lot of historical content to learn from. An MMO released without basic movable UI frames is astonishing to me. Its like buying a new car with fixed seats. Flexibility goes a long way to appeasing the masses.

Cod Eye.1632:

I think GW2 will struggle to hold players interest in its current state, forced grinding to obtain anything is a big turn off, and the rewards for big meta events are really lacking, with the added nerving to the farming experience is a stab in the groin. 24hr respawn on high level Orichilacum ores was really a kick in the gut for people like me who craft. On top of the former mentioned problems and other issues I havn’t touched on are the botters and Gold-sellers that plague nearly every area, and don’t get me started about Anets promises in its manifesto.

Its not the game thats forcing a grind, its players who force themselves to grind because they arent willing to get a marginally smaller reward even when factoring in Risk vs Reward they’re probably identical!

You want gold, you want karma? you got the whole game world to play to get those, people grind the same event / the same few events are doing that because they choose to do it!

Even for crafting, the fine crafting material are a grind if you choose to make them a grind, play anything you want in the game, PvP, PvE, Dungeons whatever and you make gold with that gold you can then buy the fine crafting materials themselves if you dont enjoy farming the mobs. Same goes for Orichilacum, farm it and buy the rest, no need to have a bad experience, the game is purposely flexible so you can avoid that!

Renegadeimp.8439:

nerva.7940:

this thread needs to be locked down fast. i thought we were talking about bugs, yet flametards are venting about their frustration with core gameplay design, WoW, etc. ANet has been very patient this these threads….they need to start disappearing faster at this point.

Why are you so quick to try and supress opinion? The main problems with this game is the core gameplay and mechanics. They were reported in beta to be very buggy and needed time to fix, yet Anet decided to ignore everyone and still release the game with bugged skills.

Yes, it is their game, but if they want it to survive longer than the last few MMO’s that were released, they need to bite the bullet and start listening.

Why so quick to try and suppress opinion? Because “white knights” know that others opinion has a lot of merit and they don’t want to admit it to us or themselves.

Anet ruling with an iron fist, such as locking/deleting constructive post, will not turn out well.

Anet dont rule with an iron fist. If the topic/thread is constructive and doesnt ramble on or mock others as you do in your post, then it will be left, until such a time the thread outlives its usefulness.