Guild Wars 2

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.

The Living World and the Personal Story – There is a serious disjoint between these two that undermines the entire narrative of the game and creates cognitive dissonance. A permanent, sustainable solution integrating the two desperately needs to be crafted. It’s my personal opinion (and I would argue objectively sound) that temporary content should be ancillary while permanent content should be the primary focus and not the other way around like it has been. Additionally, I do not believe it is in the game’s best interest to try to force players into a set schedule of participating in the vast majority of new content. What is currently called the “Living World” would be best split into two different things – a.) deep, saga-styled unfolding stories implemented as expansions to the Personal Story along with PS enhancements (mostly permanent), and b.) yearly festivals or one-off “short stories” that do not involve significant changes to the world and can remain totally independent of the events of the Personal Story without creating lore problems (mostly temporary). The Flame and Frost would be an example of the former, while the Dragon Bash would be an example of the latter. To go along with this, enhancements to the Personal Story ‘system’ are in order, see below.

The Personal Story System – To go along with the fusion of the Personal Story and parts of the Living Story, the systems behind the Personal Story should be upgraded. We should get something like a storybook interface with Lore compendiums, biographies of NPCs you’ve met and interacted with, and the ability to both replay any instance/dungeon (without changing your original decision) and reset your entire story (using a Gem Shop item). Additionally, it would be cool if we saw upgrades to your home instance as well as you played through the story, such as the ability to recruit NPCs as henchmen and take them with you in personal instances and interact with them in your Home Instance and manage certain things about them.

Rewards and player-directing – While I’m not one to complain as much about reward structures as some people are, the most noticeable issue in Guild Wars 2 currently is that often times reward does not properly rise with risk. This is a problem not just in terms of the reward structure, but because of the effect it has on the game world. The entire region of Orr is a great example of this. It’s currently a barren wasteland where most waypoints stay contested the vast majority of the time because there are no players there to challenge them. It’s a snowball effect because the players that would go to Orr otherwise avoid it because they know it’s pointless – they won’t be able to accomplish much there. The fact is most players are champion farming in lowbie zones because they get a significantly better return on investment in those areas. It should be a viable way to play, but it shouldn’t be the optimal way to play. This extends into dungeons as well. Special attention needs to be given to retuning rewards to rise properly with the level of investment and risk.

Dynamic mechanics – Dynamic events should be built around the assumption that the number of players available for participation can vary dramatically. More dynamic events should have pass/fail structures and be part of meta events. More importantly, Dynamic event timers, NPC numbers/strength, and enemy respawn rates should all be increased or reduced based on the number of players in a region. It should be hypothetically possible for a single player to take back a waypoint if there are no other players around, etc. This would help keep zones like Orr relevant forever.

Cantha and Elona, along with additional playable races and classes. Enough said.