Guild Wars 2

Lot of changes made this patch, some of which may be good eventually, But while some of the basic ideas are good, the implementation is not. With the current rate of fixes/UI changes/etc it doesnt look good, feels like the game is going to probably feel even more unpolished for some time

Traits:

• Starting at 30 is bad, leveling, the amount of interesting things you get for leveling always felt low, now it feels lower. Its too bottom heavy now.
  • this change is the most odd, really feels like you gained nothing here. The leveling process was actually one of your strengths, now it feels pretty bad. I really think you need to roll back to starting at 10.
• The UI feels clunky, before you would click on what you wanted to change, now you have to click on what you want to change, then look to the left scroll and click
• The level 80 quests require you to play events which are currently pretty unrefined, and have some flaws in the dynamic event/event lines
  • High Priest requires you to do an escort which notoriously overspawns champions and enemies who kill npcs super fast
  • Grenth scales really poorly with lots of people around, and retraining people who dont listen is ehhh
  • Karka queen event is super rare now, and apparently bugged, or not very intuitive on whats required to make it happen.
• Essentially you are highlighting some things that work kind of poorly right now

World Events

• Not enough variation in events/options

• NEEDS notification now, even more than before. I have no idea when most of this stuff can even happen and figuring it out via looking at patch notes and translating PDT is really not fun and takes you out of the game.

• A lot of your content feels very bad in a large scale event. Slowdown, inability to tell whats going on. Mobs that take forever and one shot players. Pretty fun with small numbers and mid range numbers, really bad/boring/annoying with 40+ yes now you are creating situations where this will be more likely. (there are some events which feel good with big numbers, but its not that common)

• feels a lot less dynamic world, things can happen now.

Wardrobe

• for the most part, functionally a definate improvement
• UI is really bad, and feels a bit confusing
  • interaction with other things on hero panel is also confusing
  • skins need to have more organization options and UI settings
• From what i have seen on development until now, you guys really cant push out UI changes that much, so this type of refinement probably will take awhile/or use up resources that are needed for other content. So while this seems like a small thing, it will either bottleneck new developments, or be put on the backburner, kind of sad.

Ferocity Change

• Makes Power builds feel weak.
  • not just talking berserker here, any build which was focused on direct dmg feels less worthwhile (any combination involving crit dmg)
  • the game wasnt too great at making you feel powerful as you level up/gear up, now it feels even less so.

• weakness creep feels a heck of a lot worse than power creep. (deflation feels worse than inflation)

Overall the game feels generally unpolished now, Some of this is highlighting things that werent too great to begin with, some of it is newly introduced. So the game feels like it needs polish, at a time when the game also feels like it needs something new. Back when the game/events were new, the fun of new content/challenges adventures and not knowing what was around the corner made polish not as important. But now that all of this is old hat, the lack of polish and regression in some areas tends to grate against the nerves when you play.

At the end of the day i just felt like i would probably need to log back on when you improve the new basics, and hopefully finally have some new content (big stuff, missions, over arching quests, new weapons, proffessions, animations) to play while enjoying the new basics.
However since we are going on two years and the game doesnt feel super polished, and there is not that much new… yea.

All I agree with is Starting at 30 before being able to invest in your characters traits is bad, leveling, Everything else I think are great changes and I, personally, completely thing your wrong on.

Oh yea,
Spvp

• feels a lot more rewarding
• missing a few things
  • mists needs a bank now, you need to manage your items/change builds, look at wardrobe place items etc, but far as i can see there is no bank.
  • game really needs templates now. PVE and PVP require very different sets, its annoying to have to carry around extra items that i cant get to a bank for. And even if i could get to the bank, dont feel like redoing builds i already came up with.

dancingmonkey.4902:

All I agree with is Starting at 30 before being able to invest in your characters traits is bad, leveling, Everything else I think are great changes and I, personally, completely thing your wrong on.

thats fine, maybe its just me.

phys.7689:

Oh yea,
Spvp

• feels a lot more rewarding
• missing a few things
  • mists needs a bank now, you need to manage your items/change builds, look at wardrobe place items etc, but far as i can see there is no bank.
  • game really needs templates now. PVE and PVP require very different sets, its annoying to have to carry around extra items that i cant get to a bank for. And even if i could get to the bank, dont feel like redoing builds i already came up with.

Agree that it pvp feels more rewarding. But having to do the story modes AGAIN, just to be able to pick the specific reward track that I may want?!? Eeeewwwww.

If devs want people to play story mode at the very least add token and gold rewards similar to all of the other paths.

thehipone.6812:

phys.7689:

Oh yea,
Spvp

• feels a lot more rewarding
• missing a few things
  • mists needs a bank now, you need to manage your items/change builds, look at wardrobe place items etc, but far as i can see there is no bank.
  • game really needs templates now. PVE and PVP require very different sets, its annoying to have to carry around extra items that i cant get to a bank for. And even if i could get to the bank, dont feel like redoing builds i already came up with.

Agree that it pvp feels more rewarding. But having to do the story modes AGAIN, just to be able to pick the specific reward track that I may want?!? Eeeewwwww.

If devs want people to play story mode at the very least add token and gold rewards similar to all of the other paths.

yeah a lot of little things like that, that the new stuff is highlighting.
Story mode isnt that much easier/less time consuming than explorable, so i dont really get why it rewards less.

sPVP changes come in and make you remember that story mode is kind of less rewarding for no good reason.

What exactly is the point of connect sPvP to PvE? Do I really enjoy sPvP to get PvE skins?? I sure don’t. Who does?

Give sPvP folks new mode to play, not effing dungeon skins to play dress-up.

velmeister.4187:

What exactly is the point of connect sPvP to PvE? Do I really enjoy sPvP to get PvE skins?? I sure don’t. Who does?

Give sPvP folks new mode to play, not effing dungeon skins to play dress-up.

this is another flaw, which wouldnt be as bad if they had more reward tracks based on SPVP activities/achievements

Rune/Sigil changes

• Remind us that we cant salvage certain items with no fore warning, now getting some runes off karma/wvw items is nigh impossible without a fairly expensive gem item.

So basically, this update was for PVP and again PVE got screwed?

Personally I think traits should have started at 20, but lets see how it goes instead. Rather than leaping to the conclusion that it will obviously suck. It might, but unless you’re leveling / releveling you can’t know. I have a free character slot specifically saved to give this a try….eventually. I have some unique profession specific starter gear to unlock first…and some charges to farm. grin

Yes, the new UIs will take time to get used to, but again I don’t think they are bad as many make them out to be. They are just different than what we are used to, and we all know how people react to change.

Ferocity, I feel, was a step in the right direction. The critical damage stat needed to be normalized like other stats, instead of being a hard %. This will scale better. I also feel that the straight damage needed the toning down. Might it end up being too much? Sure, but they can easily address that with a simple change to the ratio in the new system.

World events… both a blessing and a bane I suppose. I’ve never been big on world events, but maybe that’s because I could never be bothered to watch the timers. Again, we’ll see how this goes. They did say that the initial set up is not set in stone and the some times could adjust…

Normally I’m not a pvp person, simply because I suck, but the reward tracks do make me more inclined to try. Since I progress even by losing… Obviously they take longer if you don’t win, but you don’t get any better if you don’t try I suppose.

Shen Slayer.3058:

So basically, this update was for PVP and again PVE got screwed?

It was for PVE as well, its just that the PVE stuff feels pretty unpolished and highlights some game flaws.

I think the biggest thing to note is this update is not really for veteran players, its basically a reworking of things for new player experience. If you did everything before, you get to do it again mostly.
Only really new thing is the new traits, but to do it, you have to go back and do that same event you did 100 times before.

Probably i am more entertained by sPVP changes because i didnt play it that often before. Some one who played it alot already unlocked most skins, and probably just wants new maps/modes and new interesting metas

I haven’t seen one person say the change to traits at 30 is good. Not one.

And getting 1 trait point every 6 levels or whatever makes attaining a level feel so unrewarding. Kinda similar to WoW, when you’d gain a level, get excited, visit the skill vendor only to find you had nothing new to learn. At least before we’d get some stats for each trait point and feel some kind of progression thru a trait line. All this has done is make players weaker longer, and stave off build experimentation longer. Why/how is that a good thing????