Guild Wars 2

I’ll give you the TL;DR Version first. If you care to, please continue reading and voice your opinion for A-Net to hear as well.

In short, many tooltips on many player choices in this game – Runes, Sigils, Skills, Traits, Spells, Consumables, etc. – are either ambiguous, misleading, missing important info, or outright WRONG. We invest a great deal of time and to an extent money in collecting many of these mislabled “choices” only to find out after the fact that we were misled. Individually, each discrepensy may seem trivial and hardly a priority, in the aggregate the entire game is compromised though. For certain this presents undo difficulty in each of our efforts in “building” our character. More importantly though, how does A-Net make accurate changes to hone and balance the classes and content and ultimately the game in it’s entirity?

… or maybe misdefined, or falsely advertised would be a more appropriate descriptive? I don’t know, the point is it’s aggrevating and I have a good feeling that all players have experienced to some degree the issue I’ll go on to describe here . I’ve seen several threads in several forums here and on other GW2 site forums but so far I haven’t seen where anyone identified the overall issue which applies to more than just a specific piece of gear or skill and so on. Please read on, comment and discuss. I think it’s past time that the developers and producers learned that we’ve taken notice and it is a big enough issue to their customers to warrant attention, sooner rather than later too.

Each one may just be a little piece of flotsam on a relative mountain of things that, in an individual sense, seems small and not really ranking on the priority list. When you take all these little bugs like the set bonuses of several Runes / Sigils, the “Invulnerable” bug most prevelant in under water combat, the bugs to each class’ skills, etc., in the aggregate you have a HUGE problem that really needs attention A.S.A.P.

Often, considering Rune sets and other purchased buffs / items we’ve farmed up the in game money to buy a set, which represents a decent time commitment, or purchased gems with RL cash which ultimately turns out to be a waste regarding the rune set, items, procs, and thus key parts of our goal of a specific build. Anyway you cut it you’ve made a significant investment towards something that plain does not do what it claims. Kind of like buying a lightbulb or something that doesn’t light, it fits the socket, but when you expect it to emit light you get nadda. These Rune’s we spent our money on fit in the upgrade slot on our armor, but when we need em to do what they’re advertised to do – nadda.

It’s come to a point that a player that’s got any experience in these kind of let-downs has been burned often enough to know to go and hunt through what they can find on the net to find out if their prospective “purchase” is going to be more “money” down the drain.

Personally, I love GW2 despite many of it’s flaws. It still gets the benefit of the doubt being just 3 months in. Every MMO is still a mess 3 months in. Most who’ve played a couple accept this as a simple fact of the genre. This is however, the ONLY MMO (or game period, really), that the players have to deal with the fact that whatever the tooltip says about an item, skill, buff / upgrade, whatever, has about maybe a 50% chance of being correct, correct in part, or even just plain untrue. Ultimately it’s making it so the community needs to come together and try to identify just what the actual truth of any of these choices are. Trying to figure out what the best choices are is pretty much entirely superfluous until we finally identify just what item, skill, spell, buff, etc. and so on, truly is. You can’t even start to try and “think outside of the box” in this game because none of us know the very basics about that box. It’s dimensions and barriers are essentially a complete and total mystery to the player base 3 months in still, and no one (who reps. A-Net that is) has even uttered so much as an acknowledgemnt that they know these discrepensies exist, let alone if and when they may be fixed.

In just it’s most basic sense, how does one plan and work toward a build when at least some of their skills, traits, armor & weps, accessories and runes & sigils don’t actually do what the very game it’s self is telling us they do? Even more so, how as producers and developers of this game do you balance classes, content, etc. with out a rock solid foundation of clear and accurate knowledge of all the facets of the player’s choices toward builds and the interplay of those choices with those of another player and their choices? Any attempt at balance and honing of the game is going to be faulty from the ground up because the very foundation of what you’re attempting to balance is faulty at best or at worst just plain completely untrue.

I just want to shout “Yarr!”

you mean you dont enjoy it when your sigil says something like “% chance to heal allies” with no other information? GASP

As someone who actually enjoys learning everything I can about the “system” for lack of a better word, the distinct lack of information presented stuns me. It feels like it was all slapped together last minute, or rushed through.

Zenyatoo.4059:

you mean you dont enjoy it when your sigil says something like “% chance to heal allies” with no other information? GASP

As someone who actually enjoys learning everything I can about the “system” for lack of a better word, the distinct lack of information presented stuns me. It feels like it was all slapped together last minute, or rushed through.

Yes, but much more so I hate when it says something like “% chance to heal allies” and then doesn’t ever heal any ally… ever.

The lack of specifics is quite annoying as well but at least in situations like that you, or some member of the community can research and experiment until there’s at least a loose idea of the “numerical how much” and can post it for the beneift of the community (well the community that at least first recognizes the question and then wants to proceed to hunt down the specifics).

When it plain doesn’t do what it says, at worst you’ve put together a build that probably won’t work or at worst you’ve dedicated a great amount of time and possibly RL money in the pursuit of that build that hinges on a lie in some tooltip. Then ultimately you come to realize after this happens to you enough that the prospect of widely varying builds and specs is really a pure illusion. If you can whittle down the list of all those different “choices” that do really work as advertised you find that your right back to the same old “cookie cutters” that nearly every MMO boils down to.

P.S And the situation where in the community has to research and experiment to figure out how and to what extent these ambiguous or outright inaccurate tooltips and descriptives exists in the released version is concerning in it’s self.

Mayam.8976:

If you can whittle down the list of all those different “choices” that do really work as advertised you find that your right back to the same old “cookie cutters” that nearly every MMO boils down to.

Sorry to break it to you, but every game is going to have something that works better, and people are always going to find it.

If there were 3 builds to choose from literally labeled A, B and C, the community would figure out which one was better and that would be the “cookie cutter”. Hiding information doesn’t stop that, it only serves as a hindrance for people who don’t look up information.

I don’t think this is about cookie-cutter builds. This is about bugs.

This is about trait combinations that say they remove conditions and convert to boons, but in actual game play they never give a boon and only sometimes remove conditions. It’s an expensive rune that says it grants all boons when elite is used, rather than saying “has a chance to apply runes when elite is used.” My sigil says I’m supposed to get a stack of 10 precision (up to 25 stacks) upon defeating a foe. Yet can go dozens of mobs in some dungeons without gaining any stacks.

Maybe the bugs are by design, a special treat for necros so they can really get into character, or represent the fickle sleeping gods. Who knows.

These issues—and more—are why I’ve argued against monthly events. Do you know the development resources it takes to do these events? As a paying customer, they are like a slap in the face given the game quality post-launch. Had they stayed true to their vision I would have happily cut them slack as it is a new game and bound to have “new” issues. But, the events happening with the “new” issues is unacceptable.

Raine.1394:

These issues—and more—are why I’ve argued against monthly events.

The counter to this is that they have a huge staff and the teams for the one-off events aren’t the same. /shrug

Given that every single step of the losts shores event was plagued by performance issues and bugs, I think the sloppy code issue permeates all aspects of GW2.

This is my biggest gripe about the game. There is a staggering amount of incorrect, misleading, and/or uninformative tooltips on just about everything (traits, skills, runes, sigils, etc.)

I completely agree. I wish they would dedicate more people to fixing what’s broken rather than releasing rushed new content out each month. They are going to see diminishing returns in how much people are willing to look the other way when the new content is as bugged and messy as what we have now. They really need to get their priorities in check.

I don’t get how can someone not enjoy playing a warrior with “Fast hands” trait that doesn’t work for the 1st swap everytime you enter combat and sometimes turns your “out of combat” swap into a 5s cooldown.
Or paying over 7 gold for a set of Superior rune of Lyssa only to find out that the effect that should grant you all boons everytime you use an elite skill only works 80% of the time and NEVER occurs underwater. (there’s no hidden internal cooldown… sometimes doesn’t work with the first use of the day)

But then, the game would become so boring and predictable if we actually got what the tooltips say.

Apathy.6430:

Mayam.8976:

If you can whittle down the list of all those different “choices” that do really work as advertised you find that your right back to the same old “cookie cutters” that nearly every MMO boils down to.

Sorry to break it to you, but every game is going to have something that works better, and people are always going to find it.

If there were 3 builds to choose from literally labeled A, B and C, the community would figure out which one was better and that would be the “cookie cutter”. Hiding information doesn’t stop that, it only serves as a hindrance for people who don’t look up information.

Oh, no need to apologize for having to “break that to me”, I was well aware but, erm… I think you may have missed the point of what I was getting at.

Look at it like this, in a vastly generalized way of putting it, it’s not that, of A, B, and C, A is generally superior because of reasons X and Y, it’s that A is superior because B and C just plain don’t function as described if at all.

Now, I don’t have a clue how the production team is structured at A-Net. I’m perfectly willing to accept that it’s compartmentalized and that the people responsible for class skills and traits have nothing to do with the team that designs armor and runes and gear and even less to do with the people who design special events and content. Whatever their structure is, I’d just like it if I could go to select my traits and skills and purchase my gear, runes, sigils, etc. and have clear descriptions of what each of these choices do for my character. Oh yeah, and then actually have them do that too.

To be honest, through all the games and MMOs I’ve played throughout the years this is one point of design that I took completely for granted. The thought has never crossed my mind that I would go to the trouble of acquiring a spell or set of armor because it offers me X benefit and then it um…. well, just doesn’t.

Robique.8279:

Or paying over 7 gold for a set of Superior rune of Lyssa only to find out that the effect that should grant you all boons everytime you use an elite skill only works 80% of the time and NEVER occurs underwater. (there’s no hidden internal cooldown… sometimes doesn’t work with the first use of the day)

It does work underwater.
While underwater, your helmet is replaced by the Aquabreather’s stats(if you dont believe me, check your stats on the right of Hero panel while above and below water, it will subtract your helmet’s stats and add your aquabreather’s stats), and so is the Rune in the Aquabreather. You need to buy an Aquabreather(like the one in Cursed Shores for karma) with a Rune slot in it and put the Rune of Lyssa in it for it to work underwater. Thus, to have Rune of Lyssa’s 6th activation both on ground and underwater, you need to buy 7 Runes of Lyssa and place one in each piece of armor+aquabreather.

My friends and me have begun to refereeing to this game as “Bug wars” due to the fact that we are still struggling to find a single aspect of the game that isn’t riddled with issues and “bugs.” The game has clearly been launched way before than it should have, huge chunks of necessary balance testings have never been properly executed, UI and tooltips resemble something more likely to be found in a pre-release alpha phase of the game more resembling a placeholder scribble than actual interface expected of a finished product. The massive amounts of content related to quests, events, dungeons were clearly never properly tested, which in itself is somewhat acceptable oversight due to the massiveness of playable content in an MMO world, what isn’t remotely acceptable however is the non existent rate at which this issues are being addressed. There are numerous glitched chain events perverting people from entering dungeons, finishing quests or even their personal storyline, there are hundreds of pages of bug reports on this forum alone and now months after release vast majority of them haven’t still been addressed. This is a huge problem to guild wars community because we are not talking here about minor glitches and “funny bugs” but game breaking flaws that are ruining the game play experience of millions of people.

Don’t forget foods. % more damage while moving doesn’t work sadly. I haven’t used many food items but tested that one and it was doing nothing. How many untested are broken?