Guild Wars 2

ANet is great about adding new content….but not good about maintaining it.

It seems like for every major update they will add a new currency, and then forget about it completely.

Case and point – the Fractals of the Mists dungeon. It was designed to be challenging content and easily expandable. It added a myriad of new currencies to the game in form of Fractal Relic and other things.

But then nothing changed about it since it’s introduction roughly a year ago. It’s stagnant and dead, like it’s been complete;y forgotten about despite having so much potential.

Laurels are in a similar boat. Originally introduced as a new currency for earning exceptional rewards it too hasn’t had anything of value added to it since its introduction.

WvW badges to be fair, did have more gear options added later on. But given how common they are in WvW and how little ways there are to spend them, they too lack a real purpose.

ANet reminds me of a child with ADD. Always adding new things but completely forgetting about features they already added and intended to build on.

That, combined with an overabundance of different currencies (is every Ascended slot going to have its own currency to achieving it?) leads me to conclude that there is a lack of vision or overall concept for what the game is supposed to become.

It’s a shame really since even a small change would be an incentive to go back and experience some of that old content.

It’s a problem with the game as a whole. There’s usually too much focus on quantity over quality (see: those generic LW updates that add a few generic “kill 10 rats” quests and only very little more), and a lack of attempts to expanding or improve existing systems.

Take a look at guild missions. That system can be expanded in so many ways. Tequatl could be attached to it, for example. They could be used to make some places more alive. They could be expanded for a more player-generating type of content. All this would be true to the word “Living World”, wouldn’kitten They could feature extremely hard end-game content. They could be expanded in such a way as to keep whole guilds consistently alive. And you know what’s more important? Guilds actually want that kind of stuff.

But nothing. They designed and coded an entire new system, and then just left it to die. Is it currently being worked on? Was it completely abandoned? Anet has been completely silent.

This can apply to many other situations.

They’ve added so many races to GW1’s Eye of the North, and made so many awesome racial towns, and now we’re in a situation where most of those towns are empty, and where most of the armor skins for non-human races are lazy due to the lack of resources or something.

They’ve made this massive world with awesome art and music, but hey, all maps play the same, with the same generic systems and enemies. And when they finally add something unique and very fun (Bazaar), they remove it to focus on new stuff again.

This goes as far as game balance. Why so many different profession’s mechanics? Wouldn’t the game be at a better state if all professions shared one or two well-crafted mechanics, instead of eight different and unpolished mechanics? Initiative is spammable due to the lack of cooldowns, Shattering is not fine-tuned for some pve/ wvw environments, Pets are stuck with bad AI, etc, etc, and Anet can’t fix all of it because it’s just too much. Again, quantity over quality. If there was an universal system across all professions, like if all of them had a burst system, or all of them had an attunement system, Anet could simply improve all professions through a single system. Besides, it would make them all similarly difficult/ easy to play, instead of the current situation where some are much harder (elementalists and engineers, for example), while others are mind-numbing simple (rangers where the AI play for themselves in pvp, warriors with no complexity behind a burst system that they don’t even want to use in pve because of traits).

Quantity over quality is a general trend in GW2, and is especially worse because Anet doesn’t even have the resources to fix in time all of their countless systems, currencies, etc.

If I was arena net I would strongly consider switching to an expansion pack model. I would just focus on creating new skills, new abilities, new dynamic events in conjunction with a living story.

Scrap the whole personal story. The personal story is preventing arena net from designing impactful living world content that changes the face of Tyria.

-Imagine an expansion pack where the Sylvari get invaded, their home burnt to a crisp and become an endangered species. Entire forests burning from invaders coming out of the Ring of Fire islands.

-Imagine an expansion where Lion’s Arch pirates steal player’s items and gold from their vaults. Players and guilds would have to hunt down the pirates to recover their lost wealth. Think of an epic treasure hunt with traps and pirates.

Currency overkill is always a sign of little organization in the DEV department. Some games get fixed at one point, when the amount of currencies reaches ridiculous numbers.
LotRO had the same problem. Then they added a wallet and then they just simplified the currencies.

GW2 already introduced the wallet, but there are way more currencies in a game this young than needed. It is an artificial gating to limit your options. Like every dungeon has its own currency. The currency is so limited that after a point, it becomes worthless.
GW2 will have a huge graveyard of currencies, if they keep up the inflation with new coins for this and that. Karma was a great idea, one currency for most things, but they messed that up badly.

I hope the DEVs will reach a point when they give us a few currencies with some value, instead of a lot just for the sake of it.

Sometimes, Less is More.

GW1 had, for example, a much better skill system, that contributed more to world exploration and character customisation, and there was no need for passive traits, no need for profession mechanics, and so on. Some say it was harder to balance for, and I say, what about the current system where each profession has drastically different mechanics? Since when has GW2 been balanced?

GW1 also had a focused vision for storytelling (missions with primary quests in between) that was far more effective than the current jumpy personal story that takes a lot more resources for content that the game forces you to skip, or the fragmentary living story content.

A good example of lack of vision in GW2 is when they added the wallet and account magic bonus systems to make playing with alts an actual option, and then completely destroyed any motivation towards alts with the way they designed ascended gear progression. It’s as if each Anet designer does whatever he wants regardless if their vision contradicts or not the other designer’s visions. It’s a mess.

So yeah, quantity over quality, and lack of vision, are clear issues with this game. And they seem to be related to each other, imo.