Guild Wars 2

Looking back at old videos and things i’ve noticed everything you guys hyped was probably the biggest disappointment. For instance Zhaitan. That was probably one of the biggest things we all looked forward to. His epic battle, his epic design, just everything felt so big about him. What do we get? A boss easier than CoF P1. Same with having your own story. I never much cared about stories in game but this one seemed interesting. Because i felt “wow i can actually make a happy character that’s kinda clumsy or a dark angry one” which instead i get a emotionless character that seems kinda heartless. The story kinda fell of around the time treahearne came in and even before that the 1-30 was kinda generic, and don’t get me started on the voice acting. I heard some good ones that actually made me feel emotional when that character was lost (sieren) but the rest i didn’t even care 2 kittens about. For instance Tegwen. Yea, she died and her friend? Her best friend that did everything with her. Sounded like she was depressed because her favorite donut was sold out at the store.

Point is I feel like you guys need to improve everything you hyped because a lot of new players see that and when they buy the game expect it. TBH i woulda waited another year or maybe even 2 if i knew that it would end up like this if being released soon

Live and learn?

Zhaitan’s not even technically a boss, he’s part of the background.

Hype is exactly what you described though. Every game does it. It always looks better when you have a team of video editors trying to make it not look awful haha.

Ask yourself this: Why doesn’t the fast food you buy ever look like it does in the commercials???

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

And this MMO is completely unique. I dare you to find another one with this combat system, with this questing system, with this gathering system, etc.

Mirta.5029:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

And this MMO is completely unique. I dare you to find another one with this combat system, with this questing system, with this gathering system, etc.

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

In this case, everyone does it is literally true. It’s not that they should or shouldn’t. It’s that our entire society, fueled by advertising and self-interest is like that. It’s not just video games it’s everything.

There’s a great TV show in Australia called The Gruen Transfer, where advertising companies are on a panel talking about how they get people to buy different products. It talks about spin and how companies operate.

Imagine a company that came along and said, “we have this game, it’s pretty good and we sorta like it but it could be a lot better.” I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t sell as well and because these games require a mega investment, no one is going to do that. It’s not really reasonable to expect them to. In this case, the onus is on us to be smart about what we buy and how we view hype.

The only thing I’d also say is about Zhaitan. Most people think in terms of boss fights. And in terms of boss fights, Zhaitan was lame.

But I don’t think that way because I’m a reader more than a gamer. I didn’t see the Zhaitan fight as disappointing, because to me, the Zhaitan fight started when we got to Fort Trinity. It was all part of the same battle.

We weren’t fighting a mega strong creature by the time we got him, because we partially blinded him and starved him and broke his ability to create more undead, which was his particular strength. By the time we reached Zhaitan he was a lot less powerful.

And the laser that we used to finally defeat him was a special anti-dragon laser created by Professor Gor just to fight the power of the elder dragons (though only some personal stories will have revealed the sections about Gor).

So to me, I didn’t see it as an individual battle. The entire battle with Zhaitan, to me, was a war that took weeks.

Aeonblade.8709:

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

I will be patiently waiting for your examples then.

Mirta.5029:

Aeonblade.8709:

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

I will be patiently waiting for your examples then.

DEs – Rifts zone events were much more enthralling and encompassing for me. A couple of waves of mobs from a DE is nothing to compare to an army invading from the elemental planes. They did these before GW2 ever came out. Warhammer did them before even Rift did.

WvW – Obvious, but DAoC, Shadowbane, etc.

Fractals/Dungeons – Once again, a staple of nearly every MMO since the beginning.

Personal Story – Yea, EQ and DAoC had these too, and they were better, and gave you unique items rather than some blue or green item.

sPvP – Thanks WoW for making any non siege PvP into an arena based nightmare.

Hearts – Really not groundbreaking, all they did was skip the part where you click accept at an NPC. But I’ll give them that this was a new feature for every MMO I have played personally.

Dodge System – Done by many other games before GW2, but I will say the GW2 system feels much more fluid than others. (TERA just off the top of my head, but it was so clunky!)

Weapon Skills based of Weapon Type – Yep, DAoC did this too, and not only that, you got 25 different skills to choose from. So nothing new here for GW2.

That pretty much wraps it up I think, apologies if I forgot anything anyone else considers a feature, this was a rather quick list at work as I said.

I agree with what you’ve said Aeon, but what about individualized loot and gathering nodes, and shared experience with other players in the world, even when you’re not grouping, and level scaling so you can go back and play in any zone in the game and still have some payoff. I didn’t play too many different MMOs before GW2, but the few I did play didn’t have this stuff, and it improves quality of gameplay a ton for me.

Same foundation. The hearts? No different than any quest giving npc. Events? A series of quests or a single quest with down time.

There isn’t anything unique here. It the same thing with a different pain job.

Aeonblade.8709:

DEs – Rifts zone events were much more enthralling and encompassing for me. A couple of waves of mobs from a DE is nothing to compare to an army invading from the elemental planes. They did these before GW2 ever came out. Warhammer did them before even Rift did.

As a longtime player of Rift, I disagree here. DEs feel far more dynamic and interesting. When I complete a GW2 event, it changes what event is going to happen next. When I close a rift in Rift… it could reappear within minutes. It’s really REALLY awesome the first 10-20 times, but it gets really boring after a while. I think, more than anything, Rift didn’t make enough use of it. DEs here at least have different stories in each zone, even if the general content is the same. In Rift, the only difference between the zones is their rift elements.

Aeonblade.8709:

WvW – Shadowbane

MASSIVE agreement here. Nothing will beat that for WvW, IMO.

Aeonblade.8709:

sPvP – Thanks WoW for making any non siege PvP into an arena based nightmare.

Also agree.

Aeonblade.8709:

Dodge System – Done by many other games before GW2, but I will say the GW2 system feels much more fluid than others. (TERA just off the top of my head, but it was so clunky!)

I used to like TERA’s system more than GW2 before they added their version of the endurance bar (back when you could dodge as much as you wanted). Now, I like GW2 more. If they added 1 more bar to your endurance meter, I would LOVE GW2’s version.

Facepunch.5710:

I agree with what you’ve said Aeon, but what about individualized loot and gathering nodes, and shared experience with other players in the world, even when you’re not grouping, and level scaling so you can go back and play in any zone in the game and still have some payoff. I didn’t play too many different MMOs before GW2, but the few I did play didn’t have this stuff, and it improves quality of gameplay a ton for me.

Good points! I will say the individualized loot is something I forgot about that I do think is a nice feature. Shared experience may or may not be something I have run into before on another game, memory is kind of fuzzy on that one. Level scaling was done in EQ2 and Rift as well for games I have played.

You are very right about individual loot being an important one I forgot, it makes the game much more manageable, and was a good addition as I can’t think of another game that does it quite like GW2

Aeonblade.8709:

Shared experience may or may not be something I have run into before on another game, memory is kind of fuzzy on that one.

Rift does this as well.

Aeonblade.8709:

Mirta.5029:

Aeonblade.8709:

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

I will be patiently waiting for your examples then.

DEs – Rifts zone events were much more enthralling and encompassing for me. A couple of waves of mobs from a DE is nothing to compare to an army invading from the elemental planes. They did these before GW2 ever came out. Warhammer did them before even Rift did.

WvW – Obvious, but DAoC, Shadowbane, etc.

Fractals/Dungeons – Once again, a staple of nearly every MMO since the beginning.

Personal Story – Yea, EQ and DAoC had these too, and they were better, and gave you unique items rather than some blue or green item.

sPvP – Thanks WoW for making any non siege PvP into an arena based nightmare.

Hearts – Really not groundbreaking, all they did was skip the part where you click accept at an NPC. But I’ll give them that this was a new feature for every MMO I have played personally.

Dodge System – Done by many other games before GW2, but I will say the GW2 system feels much more fluid than others. (TERA just off the top of my head, but it was so clunky!)

Weapon Skills based of Weapon Type – Yep, DAoC did this too, and not only that, you got 25 different skills to choose from. So nothing new here for GW2.

That pretty much wraps it up I think, apologies if I forgot anything anyone else considers a feature, this was a rather quick list at work as I said.

Rifts DEs, even their zone wide events are NOT what you have in Guild Wars 2. Do you know why Rift failed as a game for me.

Because they left in the traditional questing to level. People ignored Rifts and later zone events because the rewards for them were neglible. And people were kitten off because they couldn’t turn in quests to a quest guy because their zone was taken over and there weren’t enough people on their server to take it back, so they’d have to wait an hour for the zone to despawn.

I agree that when people did them they were exciting, but they were repeated every hour or so all night long, completely disrupting the entire zone. The problem is Rift did everything in half measure. They kept all the old stuff like traditional questing, raidiing and all that. Guild Wars 2 is the first game that went the whole way. Heart quests have multiple ways to fill them (something you couldn’t do in anything in Rift). Dynamic events chain, something that didn’t happen in Rift either. Some of them tell stories. They have have different conditions which can change the follow up event, none of which happened in Rift.

Please don’t try compare what this game offers with dynamic events compared to what Rift had. Sure some of the events are extremely repetitive, but some of the big event chains are far beyond anything Rift did with dynamic events.

I’m the same way man but in other areas of the game.

If only I had known, __________ ,I would have never wasted my money:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content
2. that instead of learning from every mmo that’s tried this and failed, they still used DR on loot and that’s only affected open world drops severely ( there’s some moderate stuff in dungeon but being cut off 99.999998% is not a good thing in open world after explaining that we would have any gameplay choice we want lead to the same rewards)
3. that there will come a day when agony is expected in the new dungeon content despite re-assurances that they wouldn’t cut off content via a gear treadmill.
4. that the only way they will ever fix all of the bugs and design flaws is to actually start work on an expansion with no official launch date
5. that they’d only have two people (it’s gotta be) working on class balance in PVE, neither of which actually like playing an engineer (including most everyone at their company) as the main so it’s testing is very lacking
6. that they’d never use the standards of successful unbiased testing every other AAA mmo out there has used successfully for years, a PTR
7. that they’d cause class imbalance by not separating the behaviors between PVP PVE WVW in skills since day 1 instead of when it’s almost a year old and thus too late
8. that they’d only have 85% of all new cosmetics available for RL money in the shop instead of in the game available from play not designed to require a very large guild that’s constantly online and grouped

If people go back and actually look at the videos with their interviews, they’d see what I’m talking about.

Vayne.8563:

Aeonblade.8709:

Mirta.5029:

Aeonblade.8709:

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

I will be patiently waiting for your examples then.

DEs – Rifts zone events were much more enthralling and encompassing for me. A couple of waves of mobs from a DE is nothing to compare to an army invading from the elemental planes. They did these before GW2 ever came out. Warhammer did them before even Rift did.

WvW – Obvious, but DAoC, Shadowbane, etc.

Fractals/Dungeons – Once again, a staple of nearly every MMO since the beginning.

Personal Story – Yea, EQ and DAoC had these too, and they were better, and gave you unique items rather than some blue or green item.

sPvP – Thanks WoW for making any non siege PvP into an arena based nightmare.

Hearts – Really not groundbreaking, all they did was skip the part where you click accept at an NPC. But I’ll give them that this was a new feature for every MMO I have played personally.

Dodge System – Done by many other games before GW2, but I will say the GW2 system feels much more fluid than others. (TERA just off the top of my head, but it was so clunky!)

Weapon Skills based of Weapon Type – Yep, DAoC did this too, and not only that, you got 25 different skills to choose from. So nothing new here for GW2.

That pretty much wraps it up I think, apologies if I forgot anything anyone else considers a feature, this was a rather quick list at work as I said.

Rifts DEs, even their zone wide events are NOT what you have in Guild Wars 2. Do you know why Rift failed as a game for me.

Because they left in the traditional questing to level. People ignored Rifts and later zone events because the rewards for them were neglible. And people were kitten off because they couldn’t turn in quests to a quest guy because their zone was taken over and there weren’t enough people on their server to take it back, so they’d have to wait an hour for the zone to despawn.

I agree that when people did them they were exciting, but they were repeated every hour or so all night long, completely disrupting the entire zone. The problem is Rift did everything in half measure. They kept all the old stuff like traditional questing, raidiing and all that. Guild Wars 2 is the first game that went the whole way. Heart quests have multiple ways to fill them (something you couldn’t do in anything in Rift). Dynamic events chain, something that didn’t happen in Rift either. Some of them tell stories. They have have different conditions which can change the follow up event, none of which happened in Rift.

Please don’t try compare what this game offers with dynamic events compared to what Rift had. Sure some of the events are extremely repetitive, but some of the big event chains are far beyond anything Rift did with dynamic events.

I disagree completely, I feel like Rift events were epic and awe inspiring, I wasn’t even surprised the first time SB popped out of the swamp, but I kitten sure crapped my pants when I saw 50 invaders plowing through a hole torn in the sky. GW2 has not once given me that feeling, even at the dragons I really wish I could say it did.

It’s an atmosphere thing, and personally I don’t mind the quest system, it’s the same thing as hearts to me, without clicking accept. I even think the Rift living story ( or chapters) is much better than GW2.

To me it sounds like you played Rift at release, and I played it 6 months after. When I got there, population was booming, people were friendly, and the game was fun. I always had plenty of people to do Rifts and Zone events with. The only time I noticed a drop in zone event participation is when they added the Instant Adventure quests, which were an awesome idea that GW2 could learn a lot from.

tigirius.9014:

I’m the same way man but in other areas of the game.

If only I had known, __________ ,I would have never wasted my money:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content
2. that instead of learning from every mmo that’s tried this and failed, they still used DR on loot and that’s only affected open world drops severely ( there’s some moderate stuff in dungeon but being cut off 99.999998% is not a good thing in open world after explaining that we would have any gameplay choice we want lead to the same rewards)
3. that there will come a day when agony is expected in the new dungeon content despite re-assurances that they wouldn’t cut off content via a gear treadmill.
4. that the only way they will ever fix all of the bugs and design flaws is to actually start work on an expansion with no official launch date
5. that they’d only have two people (it’s gotta be) working on class balance in PVE, neither of which actually like playing an engineer (including most everyone at their company) as the main so it’s testing is very lacking
6. that they’d never use the standards of successful unbiased testing every other AAA mmo out there has used successfully for years, a PTR
7. that they’d cause class imbalance by not separating the behaviors between PVP PVE WVW in skills since day 1 instead of when it’s almost a year old and thus too late
8. that they’d only have 85% of all new cosmetics available for RL money in the shop instead of in the game available from play not designed to require a very large guild that’s constantly online and grouped

If people go back and actually look at the videos with their interviews, they’d see what I’m talking about.

I’m mystified. How have they decided that dungeons are their new focus?

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

I’m the same way man but in other areas of the game.

If only I had known, __________ ,I would have never wasted my money:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content
2. that instead of learning from every mmo that’s tried this and failed, they still used DR on loot and that’s only affected open world drops severely ( there’s some moderate stuff in dungeon but being cut off 99.999998% is not a good thing in open world after explaining that we would have any gameplay choice we want lead to the same rewards)
3. that there will come a day when agony is expected in the new dungeon content despite re-assurances that they wouldn’t cut off content via a gear treadmill.
4. that the only way they will ever fix all of the bugs and design flaws is to actually start work on an expansion with no official launch date
5. that they’d only have two people (it’s gotta be) working on class balance in PVE, neither of which actually like playing an engineer (including most everyone at their company) as the main so it’s testing is very lacking
6. that they’d never use the standards of successful unbiased testing every other AAA mmo out there has used successfully for years, a PTR
7. that they’d cause class imbalance by not separating the behaviors between PVP PVE WVW in skills since day 1 instead of when it’s almost a year old and thus too late
8. that they’d only have 85% of all new cosmetics available for RL money in the shop instead of in the game available from play not designed to require a very large guild that’s constantly online and grouped

If people go back and actually look at the videos with their interviews, they’d see what I’m talking about.

I’m mystified. How have they decided that dungeons are their new focus?

Well they did add Fractals and an entire tier of gear to the game just for dungeon players…meanwhile….WvW got a culling fix, broken ACs, and skill lag. It’s not hard to see the heavy dungeon focus in this game. Even the F&F event culminated in ANOTHER dungeon run.

Vayne.8563:

Aeonblade.8709:

Mirta.5029:

Aeonblade.8709:

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

I will be patiently waiting for your examples then.

DEs – Rifts zone events were much more enthralling and encompassing for me. A couple of waves of mobs from a DE is nothing to compare to an army invading from the elemental planes. They did these before GW2 ever came out. Warhammer did them before even Rift did.

WvW – Obvious, but DAoC, Shadowbane, etc.

Fractals/Dungeons – Once again, a staple of nearly every MMO since the beginning.

Personal Story – Yea, EQ and DAoC had these too, and they were better, and gave you unique items rather than some blue or green item.

sPvP – Thanks WoW for making any non siege PvP into an arena based nightmare.

Hearts – Really not groundbreaking, all they did was skip the part where you click accept at an NPC. But I’ll give them that this was a new feature for every MMO I have played personally.

Dodge System – Done by many other games before GW2, but I will say the GW2 system feels much more fluid than others. (TERA just off the top of my head, but it was so clunky!)

Weapon Skills based of Weapon Type – Yep, DAoC did this too, and not only that, you got 25 different skills to choose from. So nothing new here for GW2.

That pretty much wraps it up I think, apologies if I forgot anything anyone else considers a feature, this was a rather quick list at work as I said.

Rifts DEs, even their zone wide events are NOT what you have in Guild Wars 2. Do you know why Rift failed as a game for me.

Because they left in the traditional questing to level. People ignored Rifts and later zone events because the rewards for them were neglible. And people were kitten off because they couldn’t turn in quests to a quest guy because their zone was taken over and there weren’t enough people on their server to take it back, so they’d have to wait an hour for the zone to despawn.

I agree that when people did them they were exciting, but they were repeated every hour or so all night long, completely disrupting the entire zone. The problem is Rift did everything in half measure. They kept all the old stuff like traditional questing, raidiing and all that. Guild Wars 2 is the first game that went the whole way. Heart quests have multiple ways to fill them (something you couldn’t do in anything in Rift). Dynamic events chain, something that didn’t happen in Rift either. Some of them tell stories. They have have different conditions which can change the follow up event, none of which happened in Rift.

Please don’t try compare what this game offers with dynamic events compared to what Rift had. Sure some of the events are extremely repetitive, but some of the big event chains are far beyond anything Rift did with dynamic events.

You know we can say many things about how Rift wasn’t on par with DE’s but there are plenty of things that Rift did right that GW2 did wrong. They never limited loot or currency acquisition, they gave us mobile apps where we could hourly pick up a chance to win the end game gear currency and highest level rare materials for crafting, they had housing (I remember the home zone was supposed to change what happened to that), they have fishing and camping activities, they have cosmetics that doesn’t require a store purchase, the list of things right in Rift is not as long as the things done wrong in GW2 by any means but they actually tried to make a game for the players’ enjoyment whereas despite the claims made by the devs in this title about how they understand the problems the gamers faced with certain mmo’s they have done everything they can to the opposite of what they claimed they would do starting in the famous patch of Nov 2012 and going downhill from there. Rift added another kind of zone events other then Rifts in multiple locations and added solo dungeons as well as post max level advancement as well as other activities to help players spend more time there and enjoy their world, none of that has happened in GW2 and Rift did that just after their launch at about the same amount of time we are in GW2 lifespan right now.

Let me clarify the only reason why I personally left Rift was because I contracted a lifelong disabling disease that prevented me from being able to afford a monthly sub on any game title. That’s the only reason.

Aeonblade.8709:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

I’m the same way man but in other areas of the game.

If only I had known, __________ ,I would have never wasted my money:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content
2. that instead of learning from every mmo that’s tried this and failed, they still used DR on loot and that’s only affected open world drops severely ( there’s some moderate stuff in dungeon but being cut off 99.999998% is not a good thing in open world after explaining that we would have any gameplay choice we want lead to the same rewards)
3. that there will come a day when agony is expected in the new dungeon content despite re-assurances that they wouldn’t cut off content via a gear treadmill.
4. that the only way they will ever fix all of the bugs and design flaws is to actually start work on an expansion with no official launch date
5. that they’d only have two people (it’s gotta be) working on class balance in PVE, neither of which actually like playing an engineer (including most everyone at their company) as the main so it’s testing is very lacking
6. that they’d never use the standards of successful unbiased testing every other AAA mmo out there has used successfully for years, a PTR
7. that they’d cause class imbalance by not separating the behaviors between PVP PVE WVW in skills since day 1 instead of when it’s almost a year old and thus too late
8. that they’d only have 85% of all new cosmetics available for RL money in the shop instead of in the game available from play not designed to require a very large guild that’s constantly online and grouped

If people go back and actually look at the videos with their interviews, they’d see what I’m talking about.

I’m mystified. How have they decided that dungeons are their new focus?

Well they did add Fractals and an entire tier of gear to the game just for dungeon players…meanwhile….WvW got a culling fix, broken ACs, and skill lag. It’s not hard to see the heavy dungeon focus in this game. Even the F&F event culminated in ANOTHER dungeon run.

It’s not hard to see, it’s the key reason they lost so many people in November it wasn’t really about the ascended armor and the promises they had made about no gear treadmill, it was really about their new dungeon focus. Watch at the end of this sequence of three living story patches, if we see a dungeon, you’ll see what I mean.

People are STILL en mass only hanging out in LA to this day for FotM.

tigirius.9014:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content

Dungeons have NEVER been the focus of the game…. They are just an afterthought that was never implemented properly. There is nothing in dungeons that’s worth more than doing open world events, if you “farm” the World Bosses you will end up with more gold/loot than dungeon farming, with the sole exception of CoF P1 maybe.

If anything dungeons have been neglected since release and never got what they should have. Dungeon loot is still horrible, especially at high level fractals where you actually have to try and play the game to win (unlike anything in the open world), there is still a huge difference in rewards between dungeon paths, effort isn’t rewarded AT ALL.

maddoctor.2738:

tigirius.9014:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content

Dungeons have NEVER been the focus of the game…. They are just an afterthought that was never implemented properly. There is nothing in dungeons that’s worth more than doing open world events, if you “farm” the World Bosses you will end up with more gold/loot than dungeon farming, with the sole exception of CoF P1 maybe.

If anything dungeons have been neglected since release and never got what they should have. Dungeon loot is still horrible, especially at high level fractals where you actually have to try and play the game to win (unlike anything in the open world), there is still a huge difference in rewards between dungeon paths, effort isn’t rewarded AT ALL.

And see that’s what really irks me. The whole kitten system seems so broken at this point it’s going to be impossible to make everyone happy. There are no tanks, no healers, but they focus on dungeons, but they don’t really because not all paths have equal rewards, etc.

I mean seriously, it’s like dating someone with multiple personality disorder sometimes

Vayne.8563:

So to me, I didn’t see it as an individual battle. The entire battle with Zhaitan, to me, was a war that took weeks.

That’s kind of how I saw the dungeon as well.
Yes if you specifically pick on the big Godzilla Dragon moment only then the fight was a bust.
However if you factor in that you had to fight your way through three zones, liberate some temples (just to make things easier), blow up his boats, cut out his eyes, destroy his mouth, storm the beaches, take over his artillery, clean out Orr, and then deal with whatever mobs he frantically throws at you as a last ditch defense then the battle on Z felt better. Those three zones were him, parts of him, big BIG cooperative dungeons that were hair pulling insane at times.

Aeonblade.8709:

Well they did add Fractals and an entire tier of gear to the game just for dungeon players…meanwhile….WvW got a culling fix, broken ACs, and skill lag. It’s not hard to see the heavy dungeon focus in this game. Even the F&F event culminated in ANOTHER dungeon run.

Ascended gear is available outside dungeons, and lots of pieces are not even available in Fractals, can’t get Amulets, can’t get Earrings. And still, the old dungeons offer no ascended gear, nothing at all is worth doing those. Better farm the big bosses if you want loot/gold

Let me clarify the only reason why I personally left Rift was because I contracted a lifelong disabling disease that prevented me from being able to afford a monthly sub on any game title. That’s the only reason.

Boy I’m about to make both our days. No pay to win and all the bonuses if I have already bought Storm Legion? Ownage! New Raid, Chronicle and Dungeon as well coming with the F2P patch. Very glad they took a non P2W stance as well, very happy reading over that page.

http://www.riftgame.com/en/promo/freetoplay.php

Read over it some more, it’s pretty much a carbon copy of the EQ1 F2P model which is AMAZING. Patron game time will be available for in game currency. Wow. Way to go Rift And not a single mention of a gambling box. My god.

There is much to be learned from Trion already Anet and they just stepped into the F2P realm.

Vayne.8563:

Rifts DEs, even their zone wide events are NOT what you have in Guild Wars 2. Do you know why Rift failed as a game for me.

Because they left in the traditional questing to level. People ignored Rifts and later zone events because the rewards for them were neglible. And people were kitten off because they couldn’t turn in quests to a quest guy because their zone was taken over and there weren’t enough people on their server to take it back, so they’d have to wait an hour for the zone to despawn.

I agree that when people did them they were exciting, but they were repeated every hour or so all night long, completely disrupting the entire zone. The problem is Rift did everything in half measure. They kept all the old stuff like traditional questing, raidiing and all that. Guild Wars 2 is the first game that went the whole way. Heart quests have multiple ways to fill them (something you couldn’t do in anything in Rift). Dynamic events chain, something that didn’t happen in Rift either. Some of them tell stories. They have have different conditions which can change the follow up event, none of which happened in Rift.

I loved the big zone events, and always did them. I also don’t see the traditional questing as a problem. When i started to dislike the game was, when at level 50 there were no level 50 items you could get for the purple shards, and in the end it turned again into a dungeon/raid grind for good gear. And i simply am not a big fan of that.

Ishimata.7816:

Looking back at old videos and things i’ve noticed everything you guys hyped was probably the biggest disappointment. For instance Zhaitan. That was probably one of the biggest things we all looked forward to. His epic battle, his epic design, just everything felt so big about him. What do we get? A boss easier than CoF P1. Same with having your own story. I never much cared about stories in game but this one seemed interesting. Because i felt “wow i can actually make a happy character that’s kinda clumsy or a dark angry one” which instead i get a emotionless character that seems kinda heartless. The story kinda fell of around the time treahearne came in and even before that the 1-30 was kinda generic, and don’t get me started on the voice acting. I heard some good ones that actually made me feel emotional when that character was lost (sieren) but the rest i didn’t even care 2 kittens about. For instance Tegwen. Yea, she died and her friend? Her best friend that did everything with her. Sounded like she was depressed because her favorite donut was sold out at the store.

Point is I feel like you guys need to improve everything you hyped because a lot of new players see that and when they buy the game expect it. TBH i woulda waited another year or maybe even 2 if i knew that it would end up like this if being released soon

Honestly I am not sure why they even bothered with the “personal story”. It felt really kitten and, frankly, it stopped being a “personal” story as soon as the tree guy (Trahern, sp?) shows up. Working on my 4th 80 and wont even bother with the “story” except as filler XP , and even then it will be “skip to the end” of every dialog (that started on my first 80 about the time of the retake of claw island mission…have yet to see dialog past that point).

Mirta.5029:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

And this MMO is completely unique. I dare you to find another one with this combat system, with this questing system, with this gathering system, etc.

Gathering? How is the gathering in any way unique? The rest I will grant you to a certain extent, though I would argue that different isn’t necessarily better.

Aeonblade.8709:

Mirta.5029:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

And this MMO is completely unique. I dare you to find another one with this combat system, with this questing system, with this gathering system, etc.

Pretty much every major MMO on the market has SOME element of GW2 already in it. They didn’t do anything groundbreaking with this game really other than a non clunky dodge system, and possibly hearts. Everything else was borrowed from previous MMO’s. I could list examples if you want but it may have to wait until I get home from work.

Hearts aren’t really all that unique either. Lots of other, older, MMOs had public quests.

Phaedryn.3698:

Ishimata.7816:

Looking back at old videos and things i’ve noticed everything you guys hyped was probably the biggest disappointment. For instance Zhaitan. That was probably one of the biggest things we all looked forward to. His epic battle, his epic design, just everything felt so big about him. What do we get? A boss easier than CoF P1. Same with having your own story. I never much cared about stories in game but this one seemed interesting. Because i felt “wow i can actually make a happy character that’s kinda clumsy or a dark angry one” which instead i get a emotionless character that seems kinda heartless. The story kinda fell of around the time treahearne came in and even before that the 1-30 was kinda generic, and don’t get me started on the voice acting. I heard some good ones that actually made me feel emotional when that character was lost (sieren) but the rest i didn’t even care 2 kittens about. For instance Tegwen. Yea, she died and her friend? Her best friend that did everything with her. Sounded like she was depressed because her favorite donut was sold out at the store.

Point is I feel like you guys need to improve everything you hyped because a lot of new players see that and when they buy the game expect it. TBH i woulda waited another year or maybe even 2 if i knew that it would end up like this if being released soon

Honestly I am not sure why they even bothered with the “personal story”. It felt really kitten and, frankly, it stopped being a “personal” story as soon as the tree guy (Trahern, sp?) shows up. Working on my 4th 80 and wont even bother with the “story” except as filler XP , and even then it will be “skip to the end” of every dialog (that started on my first 80 about the time of the retake of claw island mission…have yet to see dialog past that point).

Sadly I ended up doing this too, I remember almost distinctly getting tired of the Personal Story around Claw Island and skipping the rest of the dialog.

Facepunch.5710:

I agree with what you’ve said Aeon, but what about individualized loot and gathering nodes, and shared experience with other players in the world, even when you’re not grouping, and level scaling so you can go back and play in any zone in the game and still have some payoff.

Individualized loot/gathering nodes and shared exp alone are what will keep me in Guild Wars 2. I am so sick of fighting every other player for resources. It’s just not how I want to play an mmo anymore.

“GW 2 takes everything you love about GW 1.”
Where? Maybe I missed it.
/thread

Phaedryn.3698:

Mirta.5029:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

You know, “everybody does it,” has got to be one of the LAMEST support arguments out there. I seem to recall a time where the developers were telling everyone they were unique, they were creating something bold and new and had never been done. When they were called out, the fanbois rallied around them, yelling, “Everybody does it!” Well, even if they do, it doesn’t make the OP’s statements wrong, does it? It just tells those of us with our eyes opened not to trust what is being said by this company.

And this MMO is completely unique. I dare you to find another one with this combat system, with this questing system, with this gathering system, etc.

Gathering? How is the gathering in any way unique? The rest I will grant you to a certain extent, though I would argue that different isn’t necessarily better.

nodes don’t disappear for other players when you pick them up.

I definitely agree. A LOT of what this game does is great, don’t get me wrong. But the hyped up large-scale events (Specifically The Shatterer) aren’t cracked up what they were made to look like. “This is one of our smaller dragon lieutenants that you’ll fight! He’s a pesky little weakling compared to Zhaitan or any other Elder Dragon!”

Right. People stand at his armpit and shoot at his foot for ~3 minutes. What an epic engagement. I understand the players learning about exploitative things like places to stand to minimize damage, effort, etc. isn’t Anet’s fault, but it’s still a problem.

And Zhaitan.. the boss we were hyped up to kill for 5 or so years, is seen only once in a story mode dungeon where he hangs on to a tower for 5 minutes while you spam 1 key. Not only that, he's certainly not as large as Collin and the rest of them said he was gonna be.

Oh well, what can you do right? Aliens: Colonial Marines was supposed to be an amazing shooter and look what hype did to that game once it was released. GW2 as far as I’m concerned is a great game, adding a LOT to the genre and making a lot of things more convenient than most MMOS as well as providing great gameplay options. But yes, some of the hyped stuff wasn’t as great as they made it out to be.

Nick.6972:

“GW 2 takes everything you love about GW 1.”
Where? Maybe I missed it.
/thread

Yeah I remember hearing that and thinking “Oh my God! insert fanboying here”
Then when I got the game, it was very apparent from the get-go that it was going to be nothing like GW1. Games change, they need to change, but all in all I still prefer GW1 to GW2. Refer to my last post though because I still love GW2 as well, it just could have been made so much better if it stuck to its GW1 roots (gameplay, build customization, cash shop, mob packs, etc etc).

Aeonblade.8709:

maddoctor.2738:

tigirius.9014:

1. that they would have suddenly decided that dungeons were their new focus instead of open world permanent DEs and permanent metas every month, and then try to make up for it with lousy temporary content

Dungeons have NEVER been the focus of the game…. They are just an afterthought that was never implemented properly. There is nothing in dungeons that’s worth more than doing open world events, if you “farm” the World Bosses you will end up with more gold/loot than dungeon farming, with the sole exception of CoF P1 maybe.

If anything dungeons have been neglected since release and never got what they should have. Dungeon loot is still horrible, especially at high level fractals where you actually have to try and play the game to win (unlike anything in the open world), there is still a huge difference in rewards between dungeon paths, effort isn’t rewarded AT ALL.

And see that’s what really irks me. The whole kitten system seems so broken at this point it’s going to be impossible to make everyone happy. There are no tanks, no healers, but they focus on dungeons, but they don’t really because not all paths have equal rewards, etc.

I mean seriously, it’s like dating someone with multiple personality disorder sometimes

Yep I’ve noticed too, and that bothers me. If you’re anything other then zerker then people tell you GTFO. There are no healers no toughness tanks and no other kinds of builds to even consider because everyone wants DPS and not just any DPS but burst.

So if you come up to anyone wearing condi damage gear spsssh forget it pal they’ll laugh you back to launch day.

Now I’m not saying the entire game is a bust but there does seem to be some issues with their managerial staff concerning end game content and what that should be. It’s like everything changes overnight when you reach level 80. Ding! dungeon only time, or WvW only time because you might as well forget the rest especially if you still have that loot thing that people have been plagued with since November.

Mkalafut.1273:

Nick.6972:

“GW 2 takes everything you love about GW 1.”
Where? Maybe I missed it.
/thread

Yeah I remember hearing that and thinking “Oh my God! insert fanboying here”
Then when I got the game, it was very apparent from the get-go that it was going to be nothing like GW1. Games change, they need to change, but all in all I still prefer GW1 to GW2. Refer to my last post though because I still love GW2 as well, it just could have been made so much better if it stuck to its GW1 roots (gameplay, build customization, cash shop, mob packs, etc etc).

Hi, My name is tigirius, and I was a fanboy.

Yep couldn’t tell from all my posts huh. If you look back at my earliest ones tho you’ll notice a completely different theme to most of them.

That was before November tho. When November came along I too hoped for the best and hoped that even tho they were focusing on dungeons now that it wouldn’t be exclusively because that’s what we were all told then too. “Don’t worry even tho we have this dungeon FotM we will continue to put out content in the open world” however many months later living story was born, with content one could finish in 1 day that only lasts a month before it’s gone. How is that anywhere near permanent DEs or permanent metas added every month?

Anyway, I have to apologize for my posts on other websites including mmorpg for leading you here if I did because at that time November hadn’t happened yet and they hadn’t added DR, or the lopsided loot code to the game either.

tigirius.9014:

Yep I’ve noticed too, and that bothers me. If you’re anything other then zerker then people tell you GTFO. There are no healers no toughness tanks and no other kinds of builds to even consider because everyone wants DPS and not just any DPS but burst.

So if you come up to anyone wearing condi damage gear spsssh forget it pal they’ll laugh you back to launch day.

While I do know teams that are like that toughness builds certainly have their uses and are capable of tanking.
We were having problems with the destroyer of worlds in SE today. Tried a few strategies but we just couldn’t execute them. What worked: we sent a mesmer with 3200 toughness to kite all the adds. He had 6-8 adds on him most of the time. Held perfect aggro and help them off until we burst them down. Because we’re not elite players there were some new players without exotics and some lower levels in our team so bursting him down took what? 7 minutes? Yet the toughness player was able to hold perfect aggro and perfectly survive all the hits that he had to take.
You can tank in this game. But don’t expect tanking to be standing in one place like it is in other MMOs.

Don’t believe the hype. Ever. Just experience something if it takes your fancy and make up your own mind. Either like it and stick with it, or don’t like it and ditch it.

I’m just glad that someone who knows what I like recommended this game to me. I’d hate to feel the same disappointment some of you guys are feeling.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ask yourself this: Why doesn’t the fast food you buy ever look like it does in the commercials???

Still tastes delicious though so I couldn’t care less. The same can’t be said for GW2 in many aspects (IMO)

@tigirius

Funny, I was an alpha and a beta tester for Rift and many of the fans felt that the game went in the wrong direction starting from beta 4. In the early betas, if creatures took a town, that town stayed taken…it made the player base fight back. But too many people complained, so they made it so that a Rift invasion vanished after an hour, even if no one touched it. This, to me, was the first major Rift betrayal.

Rift’s first big world event was far worse than Guild Wars 2’s karka event for the majority of players. So much so that the company had to make an apology for it.

Rift had a single epic quest line that took you through every dungeon and culminated in a raid, because dungeons and raids were the focus of the game. That ALONE made the game unplayable for many of us (and leaves me wondering why people think dungeons are the focus of this game).

Rift had a few very nice ideas, some of which Anet would have done well to copy, but for an immersion player, who wants to be immersed in the world, it really was terribad. The most fun thing in the game for some people was collecting sparklies when no one would participate in Rifts or zone events on their server.

Rift did some things right, no question, but I paid for a year sub and left the game completely after four months. In other words, I could have gone back and played for free at any time, but the game wasn’t good enough to warrant it.

Admittedly it did catch a lot of WoW players, who wanted WoW in a new skin (they didn’t call it WoW 2.0 on the forums for nothing). But in the end, it was just another trinity game focused on the raid crowd. I wont’ even begin to talk about the appalling PvP.

it is still the best mmo that i have ever played before but gw1.
the shared nodes and exp and personal reward is a deal for me. no more grieving (or at least that kind of grieving, unfortunatelly players are smart enough to find new ways to grieve you anyway).

that said sorry if i go off topic and talk about tank, but my warrior guild mate is a tanker and he could tank lupicus, just not in the traditional way of standing still, hold aggro during all the fight and just waiting for heals… and i must say that the same boss is easier when he is around.

i’m a condition mesmer most of the time and while the fight gets longer the condition damage take over in time making the battle easier for anyone, and nobody ever told me, run berserker or get out

Nick.6972:

“GW 2 takes everything you love about GW 1.”
Where? Maybe I missed it.
/thread

It took it and threw it in the bin ha ha

I definitely agree. A LOT of what this game does is great, don’t get me wrong. But the hyped up large-scale events (Specifically The Shatterer) aren’t cracked up what they were made to look like. “This is one of our smaller dragon lieutenants that you’ll fight! He’s a pesky little weakling compared to Zhaitan or any other Elder Dragon!”

Right. People stand at his armpit and shoot at his foot for ~3 minutes. What an epic engagement. I understand the players learning about exploitative things like places to stand to minimize damage, effort, etc. isn’t Anet’s fault, but it’s still a problem.

And Zhaitan.. the boss we were hyped up to kill for 5 or so years, is seen only once in a story mode dungeon where he hangs on to a tower for 5 minutes while you spam 1 key. Not only that, he's certainly not as large as Collin and the rest of them said he was gonna be.

Oh well, what can you do right? Aliens: Colonial Marines was supposed to be an amazing shooter and look what hype did to that game once it was released. GW2 as far as I’m concerned is a great game, adding a LOT to the genre and making a lot of things more convenient than most MMOS as well as providing great gameplay options. But yes, some of the hyped stuff wasn’t as great as they made it out to be.

Its actually the 2 button, the 1 button points the cannon away from him….yet it still hits him i think

I was way too hyped for this game hehe. I was turned off by the zergy gameplay, which made me immediately realize that the trinity is necessary for me, and I realized this just by playing at a convention before release! I was really expecting DEs to be great content that I could repeatedly do, I quickly realized(about 30 levels in) that it feels like everything is stuck on repeat doing the same thing over and over again. They would have been a good replacement to mobs around the world, but not even close to good/fun enough to be considered meaningful content and not something I should be expected to do more than a couple of a week. I personally would rather see strategic/difficult content over what we have now.
Dungeons would have been a lot better if we had the trinity. Anets definition of fun is too just add more adds with more life and call it a day. That is boring and further encourages the zergy gameplay that the game is littered with. meh, I’m done ranting… GW1 is close to being reinstalled and will play their masterpiece.