“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Then leave the rest to Batman.”
As a GW1 player, GW2 is not for me
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Since it took waaaaaaaaaay to long for them to develop this, I’ve kind of got the feeling that somewhere in the middle of the process something really big changed. Management philosopy, for one. Other major aspects of the game as well.
Sadly, we’ll never really know. But I’m quite sure that the team that built Guild Wars and started GW2 is different than the one that finished GW2, both in (some) personnell, and in general philosophy.
All speculation, I know…
That may well be the case. Any large-scale projects spanning several years cost significant amounts, and it’s incredibly rare for such projects to actually deliver everything they say that they will. That’s just the way that things are, and it may well be that ANet’s desire to appease the community and stick to principles actually resulted in them having to tighten belts years down the line. A lot of people seem to enjoy painting the development team in a negative light for results that failed to deliver – either what was promised or what was imagined to have been promised – without seeming to consider other implications or contributions.
In our bubble as consumers, we tend to see things in a very polarised light, and many seem to think that having certain things compromised due to tactful and occasionally painful business decisions are more akin to grievous treacheries by the developers. But we never had to mind the process, only the product, and that’s only a fraction of the story.
Behold: Opinions!
My very fist MMO was a korean one, so basically fully open world, all skills available at all time, 10 bars to put shortcuts to skills, gear, macro… and grind, grind, grind. I really loved this game but after 3 years I was forced to stop because I could not launch it anymore due to a bug on my computer.
So I tried GW1. At first it was a real shock! Instance everywhere, only 8 skills available at the same time? Only 20 lvl? omg wtf?!
Still I played to GW1 more than 5 years. And I still feel like I want to play it (too bad it’s so empty now).
Why? Because I felt in love with what I consider to be the true essence of GW1 : Build decking. Getting to lvl 20 was only the beginning. The more I played the more I realized how deep and interesting the combat system was. I loved to test a lot of strange builds, finding a solution for every situation. Trying again if it was not such a great idea after all. And that feeling when I had created a great build, really there’s nothing comparable here. There is no way I’m going back a to a korean style grind fest MMO after that.
However in GW2 we only have cookie cutter builds which are so dull. Except for dodging aoe here you can just press the keys randomly while watching TV. Sometimes I even go back and forth to win for some facebook chat during dungeon fights, because there are plenty of time when it’s not such a big deal. (And no I was not killed and my group did not wipe). That’s really something I would never have done during a fight in GW1.
I wanted to love GW2 so much! It’s supposed to be GW after all and I anticipated this game for so long… But to be honest I’m really disappointed.
Yet I don’t want to give up hope on GW2 already, I can’t help but thinking that maybe they’ll do something about it… hopefully
After playing GW2 since early (public) beta as well as everything I have read/heard about GW1 (never played it) – I think I’m sad I missed out on GW1 as it sounded like the superior game as far as fun factor. GW2 sure looks pretty though…
you appear to prefer online rpgs, i can see why, there are definetly benefits to doing things how offline rpgs, but you have to consider somethings
offline rpgs dont need to be balanced, dark souls is not really balanced at all. Dark souls is mostly single player, so one player has access to most of the skills in the game. Youll find the GW2 probably has more skills/traits, and more skill trait combinations/builds across all 8 charachters than dark souls has. (could be wrong but id be willing to bet on it)
That said i hear its a great game, and i do wish that MMOs would be less willing to destroy fun and innovation in the name of balance, but i realize there will be a lot of differences between them just based on the fact that one is an orpg and one is an mmo
Ok, really i played gw a lot, i enjoyed it a lot. But GW had many problems that GW2 didnt want to take with it by having the same exact structure. While i think the mission system was good, because it essentially allowed you to just play the game, and by the time it was like half way finished (in prophecies) you were max level (it took a bit longer to get the gear you want, and close to the end to get all the skills you wanted)
However, until vanquishing arrived, AND a reason to vanquish, it was mostly a bunch of zones you never had a reason to come back to, the PVE world felt really small once you were done with the story, and the fact that it was instanced made it a very different experience.
ah the skill system of GW, you know it was pretty cool, but its design also made many things semi lame.
GW1 skills were required to be driven mostly by stats, to reduce the workload and make it easier to alter existing skills, and create new ones. Most of the skills looked the same, and had similar animations, you basically played the UI in terms of seeing what skills your opponent was using, many skills seemed virtually the same as one another. I think many GW1 players prefer this playstyle over all, but honestly imo its not even close to a superior playstyle.
As far as difficulty, ehhhhh gw1 was really easy, you could literally build a party that could play with you completely afk and defeat hard mode enemies. Some people love this about the game, it was a sort of simulation pet management style of play, but is that superior gameplay? not really its just different, and i think we should all note it was not part of the original vision for the game, and didnt come around till nightfall. (hench were a lot weaker, and a lot more limited).
Anyhow, i like gw, but i like the base of GW2 more, if they improve things it will be an awesome game.
quick rundown of what i think would take it to the next level
Better rewards
(not nec quanitity, but better, skills in GW1 was a good reward)
More expanding on the Quest aspect,
(dynamic quests need to be more involved, and go to interesting places, with interesting encounters) Also make personal story more robust, with actuall battles, and areas, drop Voice if it increases cost too much. Have a few more traditional quests for big things, like legendaries.
More skills, and skill selection
I think Weapons probably need a little bit of swappability like utility, even if its only one option per slot, you have two possibilities for the 1 for the 2 skill etc.
as well as some new enemies
more elites, more interesting elites.
less nerfing,
more synergy and effective sequences (that can be blocked or mitigated through reactionary play) This is a super heroic adventure game, dont make us feel like gimps after years of reducing effectiveness of anything that is effective, interesting or powerful when used properly with a good sequence of events.
So yeah the things that would make GW2 a better game are not, to me, the things that would make it more GW1 like
As a GW1 Mesmer, GW2 is for me. Though, I do agree that PvP (not WvW!) is less intriguing due to lack of options of modes. I think WvW is great.
As far as PvE goes, it is much superior. Though there were hundreds of skills in GW1, you only used probably 20 of them (2 builds, plus a couple of flexible skills). The only other time you’d use (maybe) a different build would be in a dungeon, but even in dungeons (elite areas) there were only so many builds and you would be expected to use a particular build (Mesmers had practically one use after they were updated: Use Panic in any dungeon/elite area/PvE/whatever reducing the amount of elite skills possible to use from probably 3 prior to that update to 1 – and they had far more than 3 elite skills to choose from). The reason I played PvP was so that I could use different builds (even then, I only used basically 3 different builds that were solid)!
Stats? You were expected to have a particular set of stats for your profession. And they severely limited the amount of effective skills you could use on your bar. You could use at most 3 skill types to be effective. With a Mesmer you needed Inspiration (to manage energy) and Fast Casting (which had basically no useful skills, but it made your profession and enabled you to be less likely to be interrupted, to get the “first shot in,” and to interrupt better, which, I admit, I kind of miss that role in GW2) so you couldn’t blend Domination and Illusion magic efficiently (and they would have worked so well together if it weren’t for the necessity of Inspiration magic for decent energy management). The energy management required 1-2 skills, along with a healing skill, and a resurrection skill. This resulted in only have 4-5 skill slots open on my bar for any build (which is, guess what, lower or equal to how many we have in GW2 to choose from any skills not stat-dependent!). This isn’t even taking into consideration that we have 15 skills available to use not including profession skills in GW2, whereas we only had 8 in GW1 (and were locked into those 8 ) and in GW1 we didn’t have traits to add effects.
Other professions were similar as you got into the game. My husband was a “splinter-Barrage” ranger. He hardly ever used any other elite/build just because nothing was as effective in PvE. In PvP, he could have more variety! He also had to keep stats heavily on his profession one for energy management, have stats on marksmanship, and he had to secondary as a Ritualist and have stats on Channeling for splinter weapon. He hardly ever changed a skill once we got deep enough into the game. But at least his build had more flexibility. Note: Though he had many options for elite skills, he (practically) could only use one if he went into Hard Mode or an elite area, etc. Whereas now, in GW2 he has more, valid, options for elite skills.
I played GW for a little over 2 years and it was long-in-the-tooth for me then (I’ve done all content but the Underworld, which I have no desire to do considering my three-man group). I’ll definitely be able to get 5+ years out of GW2.
Keep in mind, too, that GW has expansions and GW2 has not had one yet (adding to the number of skills in GW).
I bought GW2!
I have not bought GW1, I hate gw1!
Thanks for keeping the discussion guys, it’s good to hear from both sides of the page.
i actually hated gw1 as well. ok on its time it was good, but playing it right now ? Hell no. I have mates doing gw1 just for the gw2 ach… whatever
To be honest WoW really has almost no similarities to this game.
Either you never played WOW or else you’re being deliberately misleading: character leveling is a very similar process in both, both are quest-based leveling systems where mob killing is a small part of it (unlike more conventional grind-fests such as FFXI).
True, WOW has a raid-based end-game while GW2 has .. nothing .. but the PVP aspects of both are similar, except of course WOW has no equivalent to WvW.
Sure, GW2 has some features WOW doesn’t, and vice versa, but saying they have “almost no similarities” is laughable.
As a GW1 Mesmer, GW2 is for me. Though, I do agree that PvP (not WvW!) is less intriguing due to lack of options of modes. I think WvW is great.
As far as PvE goes, it is much superior. Though there were hundreds of skills in GW1, you only used probably 20 of them (2 builds, plus a couple of flexible skills). The only other time you’d use (maybe) a different build would be in a dungeon, but even in dungeons (elite areas) there were only so many builds and you would be expected to use a particular build (Mesmers had practically one use after they were updated: Use Panic in any dungeon/elite area/PvE/whatever reducing the amount of elite skills possible to use from probably 3 prior to that update to 1 – and they had far more than 3 elite skills to choose from). The reason I played PvP was so that I could use different builds (even then, I only used basically 3 different builds that were solid)!
Stats? You were expected to have a particular set of stats for your profession. And they severely limited the amount of effective skills you could use on your bar. You could use at most 3 skill types to be effective. With a Mesmer you needed Inspiration (to manage energy) and Fast Casting (which had basically no useful skills, but it made your profession and enabled you to be less likely to be interrupted, to get the “first shot in,” and to interrupt better, which, I admit, I kind of miss that role in GW2) so you couldn’t blend Domination and Illusion magic efficiently (and they would have worked so well together if it weren’t for the necessity of Inspiration magic for decent energy management). The energy management required 1-2 skills, along with a healing skill, and a resurrection skill. This resulted in only have 4-5 skill slots open on my bar for any build (which is, guess what, lower or equal to how many we have in GW2 to choose from any skills not stat-dependent!). This isn’t even taking into consideration that we have 15 skills available to use not including profession skills in GW2, whereas we only had 8 in GW1 (and were locked into those 8 ) and in GW1 we didn’t have traits to add effects.
Other professions were similar as you got into the game. My husband was a “splinter-Barrage” ranger. He hardly ever used any other elite/build just because nothing was as effective in PvE. In PvP, he could have more variety! He also had to keep stats heavily on his profession one for energy management, have stats on marksmanship, and he had to secondary as a Ritualist and have stats on Channeling for splinter weapon. He hardly ever changed a skill once we got deep enough into the game. But at least his build had more flexibility. Note: Though he had many options for elite skills, he (practically) could only use one if he went into Hard Mode or an elite area, etc. Whereas now, in GW2 he has more, valid, options for elite skills.
I played GW for a little over 2 years and it was long-in-the-tooth for me then (I’ve done all content but the Underworld, which I have no desire to do considering my three-man group). I’ll definitely be able to get 5+ years out of GW2.
Keep in mind, too, that GW has expansions and GW2 has not had one yet (adding to the number of skills in GW).
I disagree with almost everything :/
I was playing a lot of builds at the end, and I have been playing even more since some skills were often balanced. If you couldn’t make your own build, yes, it was limited. You was probably playing too “mainstream”, only the OP skill of the moment.
And mesmer was SO better in Gw1 cO
You could rupt when needed, use hex spells, or even max fast cast with secondary attribute “for fun”…
To say a word about speedclear, yes it was nice, but only a small part of what was great in Gw1…
Balanced team (even in PvE) were the strongest, and the most interesting.
Gw1 was not born with Sf…
And to answer the person who’s saying you couldn’t play “different” things in Gw1 if you wanted to be taken in a team…
Guild was made for this…
Test new teams, new builds, was great, even if it sometimes failed.
There is one good thing about gw2. I play gw1 again.
You say WoW, i say Fractals.
You say WoW, i say Fractals.
You say WoW, i say Fractals.
Im sitting on the fence of this, I understand people who say “i dont like the game” as i dont… yet if you didnt see the potential in it.. why bother posting on here..
Im on your side.. The game isnt right.. It seems Anet concentrated on trying to get a new fan base from other game genre, rather than listening to its old beloved guildwars 1 fanbase..
That being said, Anet can make changes to the game, and im hoping they do, The majority of people who like WOW will continue to play WOW untill they dont support it.. However us GW1 Faithfull will only stick around in GW2 for so long.. ill continue to play untill i give up hope anet have stopped listening, which i dont think they have as there working on PVP.. which currently lacking somewhat..
Started to make a long post, but there’s too many factors to add and it’s late.
Just ditto to many of the points made in this thread.
[KnT][KnM] – Blackgate
(edited by Siliconmana.3816)
I’ve enjoyed this thread so far, but I have to say that a lot of the GW1 nostalgia is very general and all-encompassing.
I’m not sure how many of the nostalgic folks in this thread played GW1 at release (or near to it), before Prophecies was Prophecies, but the amount of content in the game was severely limited compared to what there is now. The game has had 3 campaigns and an expansion that added an obscene amount of content over several years. One particular thing I’ve seen mentioned a few times that people liked were heroes, which weren’t even introduced in the game until Nightfall. You had to henchman everything prior to that campaign, or (gasp) actually run with friends! Do you remember actually having to get a group for basically anything in Crystal Desert and beyond? How many people rerolled monk in the base game because finding a group was about 1000 times easier? How about being forced to go E/R or asking your ranger to bring Winter for the Ring of Fire missions, because Elementalists didn’t deviate from a fire spec, and the mobs were immune to it? After completing Prophecies, what did you do? Underworld and Fissure of Woe farm? Grind money?
People talk about the amount of content GW1 had, but in reality, it was grind content for money or for titles (which weren’t even released until Nightfall iirc). The point of both games beyond the story line so far has been to make your own fun within the content. Guild Wars 1 had a way of doing this in the form of deck building that Guild Wars 2 does not. But that does not mean Guild Wars 2 does not have ways to make your own fun, and although you don’t have an “endless” amount of options, you still have variety within a class via traits, utilities/elites, and weapon choices. The game gives you non-essential things to work towards; achievements, aesthetics, a progression of sorts through Fractals, WvW or TPvP, and possibly more. Additionally, innovative players will find new ways to challenge themselves and make their own fun; attempting to solo dungeons is one of these methods.
There is stuff to do in GW2, and I would argue the game shipped with more options as to what you can do than GW1 did. And development with new content for the game will continue, releasing more content to clear and tasks to complete. Comparing the two games in terms of amount of content and options as to what you can do (independent of deck building) is unfair until both games have finished releasing new content. GW1 has an over 7 year head start.
Now, if your issues are with the gameplay in some way, whether that be how combat and skills work and such, then you just might not be into MMOs, or into the flavor of MMO that GW2 is. I think GW2 combat is one of the better combat systems MMO wise. Being restricted to 10 skills and looking for synergy within those 10 skills is definitely more intriguing than having access to all your abilities and requiring 50 hotkeys and no less than 4 skill bars. Could there be more variety? For sure. But is ANet done with the game? No.
AV good post mate. But this exactly backs up my point about how people from different background on Guild wars 1 have diffrent perceptions.. And the large pvp background has been left behind.. Sure if you played PVE guildwars 2 looks and is amazing.. I huge… Has a cool story, has some nice skins.. Yeah its good..
But where does that leave me.. The Guy that used to GVG or HA nightly.. The guy that used to enjoy sitting for hours making builds that would sync with my team mates to make a a strong build..
PvE players have been looked after by Anet.
PvP players haven’t. I understand your side, i really do. im not disputing that your right on many levels, but (without sounding like a tool) unless you experienced the side of guildwars that i did, you wont really know where im coming from.. GW2 promised me this thing called e-sports.. which to me fails to live up anywhere near to what the competitive side of gw1 was.
This is why i say in my post that i haven’t give up hope however what we must remember.. Guild wars 1, and 2 are the same company, so for them to start the way they have, there not going to backtrack and bring back things surely..
(edited by I Fuzion I.2546)
I played some Competitive PvP in Guild Wars 1. The reason it did not appeal to me was because there was little room for innovation or variety. Sure, you could come up with a cool individual build or even team build that might be effective. But as soon as people noticed, people either copied or countered. A lot of PvP in GW1 was rock, paper, scissors. Team A run X build, which counters Team B’s Y build, which counters Team C’s Z build, who counters X. Obviously it wasn’t that simple and there was a bit more to it, but really the only enjoyment out of PvP I got was the teamwork aspect; to be successful you really had to work as a team.
Of course, later PvP became elitist, and anyone without experience couldn’t play because teams only wanted people who were experienced.
ANet has also said they are working on PvP and e-sports. Their PvP team is separate from their PvE team, and most class balances in the game so far have been focused on PvP. This is why the mesmer (my main class) has been nerfed almost every single patch. They are perfectly fine in PvE, and even have a higher learning curve than some other professions. But because they are so complex, they are hard to pin in PvP, and ANet can’t allow them to have utility AND damage, because that’s not fair to other professions, so they get spanked because PvPers cannot handle them.
Your stance still falls under the “game is new and not enough content has come out yet” argument. Yeah, GW1 had more PvP options on release, I’ll concede that. But ANet is still working on it for GW2. Give it time.
PvE players have been looked after by Anet.
PvP players haven’t.
That’s a matter of perspective. I really enjoyed PvE and PvP in GW1. In GW2 I find it very difficult to enjoy anything but WvW.
I’m not a farmer but I’m not super casual. I don’t spend 40 hours a week on but I spend more than 20. That’s just enough to play and enjoy the game more than a couple hours a day but not long enough to gear out every character in exotics (or any character). And I think most people who play MMO’s fall in to the same category. Once we’re done leveling one character to 80 there’s not much reason for us to play GW2 other than WvW.
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