First, let me there is a lot to love about Guild Wars 2, and this is not intended as a rant. I think at its heart it is a great game with phenomenal potential, but it often seems like not enough attention is being devoted to certain (in some cases obvious) things that are holding it back from being as great as it could be. So, here, I wanted to leave my comprehensive feedback on where I feel Anet should be focusing its development efforts for year two. Here they are, in no particular order:
Profession balance in general – In any MMO, classes are king because they control and direct the player experience. The resources allocated to class balance are just not good, with changes happening too infrequently, involving too little communication, and often being too small in scope. PvE balance issues seem to be hardly ever addressed, and even changes that do occur often feel sloppy and inconsistent, such as changes to traits that have unaccounted for ripple effects, nerfs to one thing due to problems caused by something else (Pistol Whip -> Quickness), and weapon speed issues being fixed on one class/weapon but not another (Longbow – Ranger/Warrior). There seems to be an overemphasis on Traits (fine tuning) with a haphazard/indifferent approach to bigger issues like the relative balance of autoattacks, which is very, very important. Also, some classes have significantly worse attrition than others without really getting anything in return and it’s very noticeable even in the introductory levels. I would recommend doing a thorough review pass of all skills (including most importantly the #1 skills) before moving onto to traits. I would also recommend reducing the gap between the three health tiers because it’s currently needlessly large for the minute differences in both offense and utility that exists between the professions.
The dominance of Berserker Gear – This is an issue caused by two fairly major design problems: a.) dungeon content in particular is not designed well to encourage build diversity or challenge people in anyway other than “dodge and do lots of damage really fast”, and b.) The Zerker triad of stats is more synergistic with a more significant buff to your capabilities than any other combination even when you remove the “offense over defense” mentality. The former means there should be teams dedicated to diversifying PvE encounter design, and the latter means there should be people analyzing ways to revise calculations to bring the different stat combinations into a more equivalent playing field with one another. While I definitely do not want to see a hard trinity in the game, dungeons should facilitate a soft role structure where you get greater benefit out of build diversity within the party than you do out of having everyone min/maxed for direct damage.
Condition damage – Condition damage is great in solo play but pulls significant diminishing returns in group content, which is another (less overt) reason why Zerker rules in group PvE. This is a relatively simple change and I’m not sure why it hasn’t happened yet. There is no cap for direct damage, so there should not be any cap for condition damage either, or at the very least the caps should be based around an individual rather than a group.
Real, permanent exploration-based content – Any MMO will start feeling stale the longer it goes without significant new content, and the Living World in its first year did not do an adequate job of creating meaningful content that actually pulls players back into the game. The bits of engaging content it did have were yanked out (justifiably or not) within a short period of time. Because of that, the game now feels ‘behind’ in terms of growth as a result, and development should be seriously focused on creating substantial content like new zones (with greater variety), new weapons, new dungeons, etc. Whether it’s contained within the Living World or standalone development pieces doesn’t really matter as long as it’s being done.