Guild Wars 2

I have seeing alot of people compelling in the forums about many things in the game.
I Would Like To Know What Are The Main Issue YOU Have With The Game?
Mine are:
1) Gem Store:
I don’t have any problem with the concept of the Gem Store but I have a problem with the luck of choice you have when you want to buy items.
When you look at other games with Gems Store you can see a massive amount of choices for weapon and armor skins. And in GW2 a lot less choices not because you don’t have alot of skins, rather because Anet is blocking skins then I have to wait like few month to be logged in at that week to get the weapon/armor skin want to put realy money on.
Anet just put all the skins you have in the gem store at once (except for the holidy skins).
2) Black Lion Ticket:
Please Anet remove the Black Lion Ticket system and just put the skin on the Gem Store with fix price. Black lion weapon skins wasted explain the thing better the I can.
3) The Change In Philosophy Since HoT Launch:
This game was not publish as a grindy repetitive game from launch. But in HoT it became graindy A-s game with no real point ot it. I have no problem with a grind game but the current problem is that you have a game with a system that wasn’t design to grindy (the realeseed game), being grindy (Hot Launch) and it’s a mess, the game don’t know what it is anymore. Look at Black Desert it knew from the start it was going to be a grindy game so the did anything they can to prefect that play style. If you wanna be a grindy game be a grindy game all the way, if you don’t wanna be a grindy game then don’t half a-s it.
4) Fractals:
I have made another threads in that matter. My Main Issue with Fractals and “Fractals or Dungeons What Do You Prefer?”https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractals-or-Dungeons-What-Do-You-Prefer/first#post6391391
5) Luck of Content Updates:
The game updates really slowly and when you get content it’s usually like 2 hours (max) LW story. I remember that since Hot launch it’s has been like 8 mounth since we got any real content (except raid wings). MMO at it’s core is a game that you play for a very long time with other players and for that you need constant game update that gives alot of content. I know they gave us new map but there is nothing to do there beside some dalies.

And don’t get me wrong I love this game and it’s community but it my personal main issues with the game.
I Made Some Changes To The Thread Hope It Helps To Make Things Clearer

All MMO’s have grind and that’s what keep players playing. GW2 has far less grind than other games and the grind that we have is for the most part optional. HoT is hardly a grind unless you make it out to be one.

(2) Weapon skins. I too would buy more weapon skins if I could simply pick and choose from the gem store, rather than deal with tickets. Right now I have 7 tickets in my bank, but I hold onto them “just sure the next set will be better.”

(3) Grind. I’m not sure what exactly you’re complaint is against grind — what are you grinding, exactly? And throwing out the name of another game means nothing to me, you would have to make actual arguments or comparisons.

(5) Lack of Content. I’m not a WoW player, but since you brought it up… Looking on the wiki I see WOW expansions every two years. Anet is working on the next expansion. Game release, 2012. Expansion, 2015. In between, multiple LW releases. How is this different?
——————————
I’m not thrilled with the mastery point system and “disappearing XP.” I think XP should always count for something. That probably goes back to my pen & paper gaming days. My main account right now gets nothing for XP unless I’m leveling an alt. My four non-HoT accounts get nothing for any level 80. Yes, I know I could finish masteries blah blah blah, but I’m not always focused on that and am “playing the way I want” so am not there yet. Thus, wasted XP.

Ayrilana.1396:

All MMO’s have grind and that’s what keep players playing. GW2 has far less grind than other games and the grind that we have is for the most part optional. HoT is hardly a grind unless you make it out to be one.

Error

Gw2 has grinds for even the smallest of rewards

People like to be rewarded in games and in other MMO’s a simple task may unlock a skin and the loot tables for mobs are quit massive dropping all sorts of goods. Their are easy rewards and their are grindy rewards whether it’s cosmetic or not doesn’t matter as long as the player feels they are being rewarded.

Games like WoW and FF14 have grinds yes but not all their rewards require heavy grinds in fact you can get mounts and mini pets just for playing the main story through.

GW2 has grinds and collections on top of collections you may think your getting a reward but that item is actually part of a collection that serves no purpose other than being part of a collection. Even the most mundane of items can take days of grinding to collect. The reward system for GW2 doesn’t vary it’s either an RNG so horrendously small that items like Queen bee end up being sold well beyond the price range of your typically player. Also that people will literally grind gold instead of crafting or trying to roll the dice or the item is pilled under bags and bags of items used to unlock multiple collections then requiring a heavy gold and mat deposit to get anywhere.

GW2 falls under the modern korean grinder in terms of its reward structure it will never reach higher numbers of that of more open MMO’s with the stance the developers have taken especially with HoT.

Doam.8305:

Ayrilana.1396:

All MMO’s have grind and that’s what keep players playing. GW2 has far less grind than other games and the grind that we have is for the most part optional. HoT is hardly a grind unless you make it out to be one.

Error

Gw2 has grinds for even the smallest of rewards

People like to be rewarded in games and in other MMO’s a simple task may unlock a skin and the loot tables for mobs are quit massive dropping all sorts of goods. Their are easy rewards and their are grindy rewards whether it’s cosmetic or not doesn’t matter as long as the player feels they are being rewarded.

Games like WoW and FF14 have grinds yes but not all their rewards require heavy grinds in fact you can get mounts and mini pets just for playing the main story through.

GW2 has grinds and collections on top of collections you may think your getting a reward but that item is actually part of a collection that serves no purpose other than being part of a collection. Even the most mundane of items can take days of grinding to collect. The reward system for GW2 doesn’t vary it’s either an RNG so horrendously small that items like Queen bee end up being sold well beyond the price range of your typically player. Also that people will literally grind gold instead of crafting or trying to roll the dice or the item is pilled under bags and bags of items used to unlock multiple collections then requiring a heavy gold and mat deposit to get anywhere.

GW2 falls under the modern korean grinder in terms of its reward structure it will never reach higher numbers of that of more open MMO’s with the stance the developers have taken especially with HoT.

Nothing you stated went against what I said.

My biggest issue is raid design, but that’s been talked about to death in other threads.

I have no opinion on Gemstore/Black Lion stuff, I love Fractals, I don’t think the game is grindy, and the other thing I don’t really understand what you mean.

1. Very few in-game armor additions. Nearly all armor skins/outfits/toys are released through the gem-store and not through in-game quests/events. It’s quite dumb. An MMO is supposed to feel like a virtual, immersive world, but when you’re forced to whip out a wallet to buy armor, it breaks the world.

2. The game world feels ridiculously small. It’s never a good idea to implement an idea that makes your game world feel smaller. Waypoints allow you to travel much faster, but they also make it so that you don’t pay attention to beautiful landscapes by walking to your destination. There are also very obvious mountain ranges where the map gets cut off. I know there are limitations in this aspect of programming, however, the fact that you have to load the game again when you enter a new map is tedious and it makes the world feel closed off.

3. RNG is friggin everywhere. It’s truly sad that RNG has become the daily norm for MMOs. I’m okay with a small or even medium amount of RNG, but GW2 has taken it to the next level. Mystic fountain, BLC chests, ascended drops, precursor drops, material drops, etc… the RNG is ridiculously low on everything in this game. I feel as though this was a desperate attempt at holding the hardcore players in the game because they feel the need to complete everything the game has to offer. Yes, other MMOs have RNG, but at least you have a chance at getting a decent drop.

4. The content updates are less than thrilling. It seems as though Anet hasn’t quite figured out what they want to do with the game updates and are kind of feeling their way around. The content updates are super small and have grindy characteristics that make it so players stay there longer than needed — or wanted. I would rather have content updates every 5 or 6 months that are larger and are more thought-out than have small updates fairly often. And the landscapes of these new updates are mostly barren of any cool landmarks. There aren’t any extra castles that you can explore in your free time, there aren’t any catacombs that you can explore. It’s simply a barren wasteland with scattered rocks and stuff.

The way veterans are treated at times.
The shameless money grabs.
The inconsistency.
RNG.
Lack of communication.

I hate their ideas of progression.

For me, it’s the change of overall philosophy and lack of constant updates. More than anything, the updates kept me interested for years. And then the expansion came. And then the content drought. And then the copy and paste job for events.

It’s ironic. The very reason I didn’t stick with other MMOs and stayed with Guild Wars 2 is now the reason I’m playing other games more instead of this one.

How it went from the champion of casual games to a grindy, raid infused, PvP will balance everything MMO mess is beyond me.

And I’m hating it.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

For me, it’s the change of overall philosophy and* lack of constant updates*. More than anything, the updates kept me interested for years. And then the expansion came. And then the content drought. And then the copy and paste job for events.

It’s ironic. The very reason I didn’t stick with other MMOs and stayed with Guild Wars 2 is now the reason I’m playing other games more instead of this one.

How it went from the champion of casual games to a grindy, raid infused, PvP will balance everything MMO mess is beyond me.

And I’m hating it.

Lack of updates is pretty much why I only log in to do my daily routine before logging off. I miss S1.

The every 2 week thing was unsustainable , but it sure was fun!

For a while now I’d have to say more and more of the games reward and progression design now.
Guildwars has increasingly done less and less of a job at making myself and other players feel unique, individual or straight up rewarded.
I’ve played other MMO’s for short amounts of time say 200 hours and felt like an absolute god in comparison to other players with ten times my playtime, here i’ve played 3 times more than any other MMO I’ve ever played and I feel I’ve progressed less, you couldn’t pick me out of a crowd of players in LA.

I mention the playtime specifically because it’s one of the issues I’ve identified as causing an issue for myself but before I get into it we need to identify that the core goal of an MMO is to win, so I need to define winning in this games context is for myself:
Disclaimer: This is my personal view What I define as “winning” in an MMO is having
1.More (they have 100 skins I have 110)
2.Better (their skin has no particle effect, mine does, nicer design etc. while semi-subjective you can pick out high end weapons in most games)
3.Unaccessable (If the other player can’t get it then your account stands out more.) 4.Unique skins (This is the hardest one and you can win without it but it also provides the biggest boost, this would be something like "this item is one of only 10, they were awarded to the first 9 players to clear x , or even just we randomly have out 5 of y to people and will never give out that item again, it makes your account unique instantly.)
items,skins,access to content and other rewards than other comparable players.

This Issues:
The economy The precious gold based economy is a gameplay nightmare for me, an item locked behind an achievement and untradable/ unpartyable is great for me I’ll likely get it in a reasonable short amount of time and if it’s a difficult achievement others might never get it giving it some value.
A gold based item however has 2 issues.
1. Grind, rather than doing a new piece of content or an existing piece of content in a new manner, I am mindlessly grinding gold not for the contents reward but purely to generate currency, I despise this and its always been my believe that a high end players gameplay should never feel like a grind even when it is.

2. Value, the item if purely a tp item likely holds no personal value to me I’m just getting it to not lose place in comparison to other players. Which is an issue from point one of my definition of winning. Point number two comes into effect as several TP skins look better than in-game skins such as say the T3 Sereph skins or story rewards.

3. Rate of earning rewards due to Gemstore and TP. According to GW2efficency my Gold:Time ration is my lowest stat with 17.5g/h The highest player has a roughly 100g/h: is that because they’re better at the game than me? possibly but the most likely cause in this case of such a large gap is the external influence of Gems, As gold permeates nearly EVERY aspect of the game by conversion so do Gems, even in areas you wouldn’t think of that mini you want? costs 25 guild coms but also 25g.

This creates an insurmountable wall not based on in-game performance (it would be fine if it was) but rather due to what should legitimately be considered straight up cheating. I have seen other players drop 4000 Euro on this game (they made a reddit post about it a while back), if they converted all of that directly into gold that would be 54,000 gold. That is pretty much my accounts value after 3 years, and they could get it in an instant.

If gold related skins counter for 10% of the game and it was then largely useless in progressing this would be an issue, but 90% of game rewards directly or indirectly revolve around gold. And every secondary cost is effected too I.E I have to spend an hour grind out the 25 gold for a certain reward while the other person can instantly work on the other requirement, meaning even if I’m several times more efficient than the other player they could still come out on top.

Time
This is also a big one, in most other MMO’s I play smart not long. I time my game-play to coincide with events that give specific access to items, or increase the gain of currencies. In general game-play timing/ planning activities to earn multiple types of currency’s at the same time.
Additionally I generally do skill based achievements faster than most of the player base and get to do some that most people never see. The combination of having a large quantity of event items, high end achievement rewards and doing it faster than others can,
That usually lets me just relax and enjoy wandering around the game and just messing about.

I don’t feel that here, since after the battle of lions arch I feel my rewards being eroded away, my progress being diminished. More and more items that were once in-game rewards are being subtly made acquirable through convoluted gold routes, the recent introduction of the instant skin unlock item was a massive blow, I watched someone use 100 of them and get a bunch of IN GAME skins I spent several hours getting through gameplay instantly, even special rewards like the Royal guard outfit and certain achievement mini’s have now become yet another gold reward.

All in all it makes me feel like I have to make every hour count and that people are breathing down my neck catching up in a fraction of the time it took me without being better than me, I feel more obliged to play to maintain position than playing for fun. Which makes me play far less because that is not a feeling I enjoy.

TL/DR: I feel nothing I’m doing here lends value to My time and that I’m being treated as generic which is what I play MMO’s specifically to avoid.

(apologies that turned into a rant and a half but its been eating at me for ages).

1. Black Lion chests as RNG-within-RNG gambling.
   Quite frankly, it’s despicable and predatory. With the amount of content that could be unlocked with it, and at $1.50+/key, ANet would make more than enough money opening up the faucets a little on their rewards. Especially after the change. So many great options for guaranteed-but-RNG drops, but they didn’t take it in that direction. Instead, we get “seasonal” crap worth 5 silver.
2. A love/hate of “the economy”.
   GW2 has probably the most stable MMO economy on the market. At the same time, the false scarcity produced by certain things leads to a ton of unfavorable outcomes.
   We have currencies and items that border on useless, instead of giving them intelligent sinks or other conversion methods. (Blade shards, Mordrem blooms, keys upon keys, tenebrous crystals, all of the Ascended materials) Cloth and leather are completely out of control, even with new micro-faucets, because sinks were applied far too aggressively.
3. Clock gating.
   Boss rotations, map-wide metas, Dragon Stand…
   I’m not even trying to drag out the poor bloody-and-beaten manifesto, but having to wait 90 minutes for a meta to finish so I can get permission to join the next meta map that last two hours… that’s not encouraging.
4. Lack of attention to armor design.
   Charr player.
   Mostly male characters.
   Enough said. ;_;
5. Incomplete or bugged skills
   Following up on bug reports, not so much. It’s galling that some things remain incomplete (underwater skills, especially Revenant) or go unfixed without so much as a mention (e.g., Honorable Staff’s boon duration). Yes, I realize time is limited, but now the Known Issue Tracker is on the fritz. (I wonder if someone added the Known Issue Tracker to the Known Issue Tracker list…)
6. The 5-Second Rule of stuns.
   A punchy way of saying that CC from enemies is too prevailent. So much so that it devalues Stability. Why have it on your bar when the dino with one attack rips every stack off before he’s done charging? HoT is significantly more guilty of this, but I recall getting Daze-hammered by some guards in EotM too.
7. Overall lazy but “difficult” enemy designs.
   I’m all for nudging up the complexity of encounters. End-game or elsewhere (core Tyria is pretty easy and could use a tweak). But what we got with HoT was more toughness/HP-sponges and amped up damage with little else to show for it. Creatures with a total of one or two attacks and no cooldown that do huge chunks of damage and knockback/stun. That’s not complexity, it’s artifical difficulty and, more importantly, not engaging.
8. Poor scaling
   Not that the scaling is baaad, but it still needs refinement. And anything that requires a group that doesn’t show up, and it hedges out the ability to accomplish goals.
9. Lack of proper map tools.
   It was noticable, but not game-hampering, until HoT. Now, trying to tell what one brown ink blob is versus another and how they coordinate into actual direction borders much more on impossible. That wouldn’t even be as hurtful if we had custom tools, but we’re left with a lackluster map option even though the maps themselves grow more complex. I appreciate that complexity, but I hate the map tools.

DeanBB.4268:

(2) Weapon skins. I too would buy more weapon skins if I could simply pick and choose from the gem store, rather than deal with tickets. Right now I have 7 tickets in my bank, but I hold onto them “just sure the next set will be better.”

(3) Grind. I’m not sure what exactly you’re complaint is against grind — what are you grinding, exactly? And throwing out the name of another game means nothing to me, you would have to make actual arguments or comparisons.

(5) Lack of Content. I’m not a WoW player, but since you brought it up… Looking on the wiki I see WOW expansions every two years. Anet is working on the next expansion. Game release, 2012. Expansion, 2015. In between, multiple LW releases. How is this different?
——————————
I’m not thrilled with the mastery point system and “disappearing XP.” I think XP should always count for something. That probably goes back to my pen & paper gaming days. My main account right now gets nothing for XP unless I’m leveling an alt. My four non-HoT accounts get nothing for any level 80. Yes, I know I could finish masteries blah blah blah, but I’m not always focused on that and am “playing the way I want” so am not there yet. Thus, wasted XP.

(3) As for the luck of content. I have to say I only linked the video, because he said that mmo needs to give constant updates in a short period of time to stay relevant. He also said that sometime quantity = quality. He just explained it a bit better then I. Also WoW release expansion every 2 years but it gives alot of BIG content patches (sometime game changing) during these 2 years.
(5) As for the grind part it will take me like a whole page to expain so maybe I will do it later (also I felt like the thread was getting bit big so I didn’t elaborate on that.

I would like to add one more thing.
Unfinished Expansion On Release:
Hot was released in October 23, 2015 and gave us 3 maps and living story. One of the main things that was advertised to come with HoT is Raids, So as expected (at least from me) is that you get a full raid at release and maybe 1-3 Raids (Full Raids and not just wings). Instead we got 0 Raids at the launch, 1 Raid Wing at November 17, 2015 almost a month after the game release. Also they advertise that players will be able to get Legendary Armor and it’s been a year and we still haven’t got a glimpse of a release date on them or how they are going to look (except heavy armour for a glimpse of a video). There were legendary weapons that till this day we only have like 5 of them. And many more promises that were not released on game launch but were released down the line, or aren’t yet released till this day.

option 1 they underestimated the cost of building of raids and legendary armor. Raids are expensive to build – we know this from every mmo that produce raids.

option 2 the majority of customers wanted more investment in other areas of the game.

What would you want them to do?

vesica tempestas.1563:

option 1 they underestimated the cost of building of raids and legendary armor. Raids are expensive to build – we know this from every mmo that produce raids.

option 2 the majority of customers wanted more investment in other areas of the game.

What would you want them to do?

Not promise somthing they can’t keep.
If they advertise something to get people to PAY REAL MONEY from there pocket, they should do it. Also we also only got 5 legendary weapon sets, and they advertised that we gonna get full set of legendary.
You would expcet that after 3 YEARS of no expansion that the devs will release a massive expansion with alot of content, but that wasn’t the case.

1. The Gemstore

I’d like to begin by linking a Reddit thread on the topic of raid rewards in the gemstore.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rde2u/gemstore_update_xeras_maskmake_over_kit/d51t04o/?context=1000

There are items in the gemstore that would’ve made for great in-game rewards. Back items, armor pieces, and even entire weapon sets. Items from GW1 that held prestige and are now mere cash vanity. Even the recent addition of the wardrobe unlock item in the black lion chest has it rewarding items from collections, prestigious items like the Royal Guard outfit, and achievement items.

Not only are skins a problem, but borderline pay-to-win items too.

Items like boosters that, at launch, landed ArenaNet in a bit of controversy since they gave combat benefits. Items like the upgrade extractor that extracts runes and sigils without destroying the armor/weapon piece they were extracted from. This stuff shouldn’t be in the store. There’s also the skinless, average unbreakable harvest tools IN THE GEMSTORE. I thought the whole idea of selling these was to sell animations. What’s left to justify these being in the gemstore if they’re average sickles, pickaxes, and axes?

I get that ArenaNet must do business to survive and thrive, but games shouldn’t be treated like this when core problems still persist. Content drought after content drought and the gemstore is overflowing with so many items that ArenaNet had to remove a portion to make room.

2. Removed Content

How many minigames have we lost or failed to come back for a year or multiple years?
How many recipes have we lost?
How many skins disappeared?
How many festivals gone for years or events removed?
How many..— we’re missing a kitten LS season, people. That comes with missing world bosses, story, and a whole list of other items.
Who here remembers ArenaNet removing a part of the personal story and calling it a feature?

Content is removed, left behind to rot away, or reintroduced in some way that diminishes its place in the world. Why go backwards like this?

3. Balance

At the root of every problem, that catch-22 that gets in the way of ArenaNet, lies a balance issue.

We still have skill types that are not viable, traits after the trait rework that nobody uses, gear stats that make no sense in all game modes and on some game modes, sigils and runes that are worth less than merchant price on the trading post, foods that are never used, ranger pets that are never used, weapon types that are regarded as a hindrance, etc. etc. etc. Why must some conditions and boons be so useless in PvE, PvP, or both?

The birth of Ascended gear rode on the failed ambitions of Exotic gear. It was too easy to acquire so ArenaNet added another tier of gear instead of tweaking the methods of acquiring exotic tier gear. Entire dungeon paths were largely ignored back during the golden days of dungeoneering because they were too long and unrewarding for the effort to complete them, it remained so when dungeons were given a gold reward with the promise of tweaking said gold rewards to incentivize those longer, harder dungeon paths. The way dynamic events scale up from embarrassingly easy to 10 minute zerg champion pinata fights. People have manipulated this by limiting the number of players in an area to avoid higher tiers of mobs AND to farm champions in the past.

I could go on, this ties together with what I said earlier on aspects of the game being left behind to drag on like a corpse.

4. Lack of an in-game tutorial

Who here knows what brutal bolts do?
Who here blasts a poison field and is glad AoE weakness was placed on PvE mobs for like 4 seconds?
Of course none of this matters outside of fire fields and water fields, it’s fluff for combat.
I’ve heard of people who made it to the mid-levels and didn’t know how to jump.
There’s no tutorial guiding players on how break bars work.
The tutorial for GW2 is running to the big and bad Earth Elemental and smacking it with auto attacks and there. That’s it.

That’s why we lost the tic-tac-toe golem minigame thing from Metrica Province, that’s why we’re dancing for cows and rubbing crops to grow in Queensdale. Combined with low build diversity and useless options when it comes to building your character’s capabilities, newbies have to resort to googling builds or fetching YouTube vids to know just what isn’t lousy in a team environment AND learn how combo fields, break bars, unique class mechanics, etc initially on their own.

(1) Change In Philosophy Since HoT Launch
This is my biggest gripe. I was hoping for an expansion that simply added more of the content I enjoyed since starting GW2 – Customizing armour, dungeons and fractals, festivals and seasonal events and so on. Needless to say, I wasn’t too pleased with the way this content was largely abandoned and neglected. While I do understand many of the factors that went into these decisions, it is still an issue for me.

Also, one of the main reasons I stuck with this game so long is that it wasn’t especially demanding, and offered multiple options for progression. Want to run dungeons all day? Sit at a table and craft kitten? Zerg around in WvW? Go ahead, here’s another level! HoT required me to complete a series of very specific (and often tedious) content in order to progress my Masteries. Didn’t enjoy most of it.

Overall, HoT seemed to be designed in such a way that everything worth doing would take really, really long because there was relatively little content added to begin with.

(2) Economy
I’ve hated the prominence of the in-game economy since I started in 2013, tbh. It’s probably a necessary evil, though. What bums me out is not having any clue how kitten is going to progress, because there’s stuff I used to give away or just straight up vendor a year ago that’s worth 1g each now, and things I spent a fortune on that are now effectively worthless.

There’s also way, way, way too much stuff. Loads of junk, currencies, keys, low-value odds and ends that are somehow needed recipes and take up space in my inventory. Entire tiers of items that are functionally worthless. Sifting through rubbish takes up way too much time.

(3) Imbalanced PVE Instances
Specifically dungeons, fractals and raids.

I really wanted to like raids, but I’m probably just too old for this kitten. Like much of HoT, it’s too time consuming. Waiting forever for someone to fill that one role no one can or wants to, waiting for everyone to get into voice chat, failing miserably, finding people willing to show me why I failed miserably and then failing miserably with them for hours before even getting one kill. I mean, the encounters are cool as hell… just far too intense for a moderately skilled player to actually enjoy.

But the real issue is having virtually all of the new instanced content at top tier difficulty. There are lots of ‘casual’ players who don’t want to spend their time zerging around a map, completely lost in a blob. I don’t spend 500g on cosmetic kitten not to bloody look at it, after all. The wonderful thing about most dungeons and fractals is that the challenge was doing them well. Run through ‘em at breakneck speed, or take a slow and steady approach. You were basically guaranteed to beat it eventually. We definitely need more content like this. I don’t care if it’s new dungeons, fractals or an easy-mode option for raids.

Jahroots.6791:

(2) Economy

There’s also way, way, way too much stuff. Loads of junk, currencies, keys, low-value odds and ends that are somehow needed recipes and take up space in my inventory. Entire tiers of items that are functionally worthless. Sifting through rubbish takes up way too much time.

Oh, man! I completely forgot to complain about the amount of garbage/currencies in this game! Anet really needs to reduce the amount of currencies that have been implemented in the past. They improved the interface of the currencies, but you still have to sift quite a bit and it’s really an eye strain to look through every single currency to find the right one.

Also, the junk in this game is getting quite annoying. Since blues/greens are essentially worthless nowadays, they serve as more of a hindrance than a positive benefit. I literally have to sit down every half hour to sift through my inventory to delete blues/greens and other junk items that I randomly picked up. A lot of the time, I don’t have the patience to do it, and when faced with sifting through my inventory or logging out, 85% of the time I choose the latter.

Many of the players. The rest of the game is great.

~EW

Galtrix.7369:

Jahroots.6791:

(2) Economy

There’s also way, way, way too much stuff. Loads of junk, currencies, keys, low-value odds and ends that are somehow needed recipes and take up space in my inventory. Entire tiers of items that are functionally worthless. Sifting through rubbish takes up way too much time.

Oh, man! I completely forgot to complain about the amount of garbage/currencies in this game! Anet really needs to reduce the amount of currencies that have been implemented in the past. They improved the interface of the currencies, but you still have to sift quite a bit and it’s really an eye strain to look through every single currency to find the right one.

Also, the junk in this game is getting quite annoying. Since blues/greens are essentially worthless nowadays, they serve as more of a hindrance than a positive benefit. I literally have to sit down every half hour to sift through my inventory to delete blues/greens and other junk items that I randomly picked up. A lot of the time, I don’t have the patience to do it, and when faced with sifting through my inventory or logging out, 85% of the time I choose the latter.

You literally delete your blue/greens? For real?

I’m going to assume that anyone who is deleting loot doesn’t know this
- salvage kits have a ‘salvage all’ function now that shows up on right click
- the salvaged gear can be sent directly to your bank inventory mats panel using the icon on the right hand side of your inventory. Select: Deposit all materials.

That’s 2 clicks as opposed to individually deleting each item separately. When you get a stack of mats in your bank, pull them out and sell them. You’d be surprised at how much they’ll be worth.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Many of the players. The rest of the game is great.

~EW

Agreed.

And lol at the person deleting blues / greens.

1. Lack of ongoing support for guild missions.

2. Severe imbalances between professions in PVE (difference in the value of top performing professions/builds vs those at the bottom).

Still a very fun game though. Don’t really have a ton of issues.

-Lack of meaningful updates: We have to wait a very long time to get any sort of interesting updates to the game. Look at the NCsoft sales report this year and you will see something: Wildstar and GW2 are the games struggling the most, and they’re the ones with the least content updates. Blade and Soul launched early this year and since then they’ve been getting periodica updates, and they were way more generous to the new players giving away new character slots when new classes came out.

-Mechanics that don’t go well together, at all: We have a game completely dependant on combo fields, that are static, against mobs that move a lot and bosses whose mechanics involve moving often. The way combos work now is what leads people into stacking and elaborating metas that make it easier to ignore the battle mechanics in order to blast the heck out of stuff. Also, they introduce a large variety of stats that are never used during play, like Vitality and Toughness; it’s a game with many forms of active damage mitigation, including the Evade, and it’s been proven many times that for high tier content, the way Toughness and Vitality scale against mob damage makes almost no difference than going full berserker.

-An original game that tries to emulate other games: This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s something called inspiration, and another one called emulation. LoL didn’t become the king of e-sport games by emulating DOTA 2, in fact, it created a more casual friendly MOBA, it tried to be similar to a succesful game of the same genre, but not to copy it. GW2 is really, really trying to much to be more WoW and less GW. While adding features inspired from other games into the formula is not a bad idea (I like the concept behind Raids, and I think havng customizable housing like in Wildstar would be cool), abandoning the core of the game to pursue revenue trying to imitate the success of others isn’t.

-The silence of the dev team… When they’re not being flattered: I like this game, and I like what Anet managed to create, however, I get the feeling we are not seen as customers, but as people who SHOULD appreciate what they do, and by should I mean buy it or GTFO. We have been waiting a year for Revenant bug fixes, we try to give feedback to them because they promised some form of cooperative development with us, we have been reporting a bug about bright areas on the map that they kinda fixed and then relinquished, and when we ask them something, they remain silent… Unless it’s to praise them. An example here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/New-Swampland-Fractal-is-Fantastic

-Too much bugs for a paid game: This one is for real. Even the bot fiesta that Blade and Soul is had way less bugs at NA launch than GW2 4 years after its own. Sometimes I feel I’m playing a Bethesda game, then I remember this is supposed to be an MMO, where we should be getting constant fixes, but as my point stated above indicates, the team behind the code of the game seems to fix stuff at the pace of a snail or just pretends the errors do not exist and keep acumulating mistakes on top of mistakes.

-Class Balance: Class balance is abysmal for competitve play. The so called “flavor of the month” is a cold dish; the same classes keep working while the rest are kept on a bench, or get worst with every coming patch. On a game supposed to be the predecessor of one of world’s most varied MMOs out there, where you could create your own build, and be functional, this just has no excuse to be a thing.

-Dolyak Cruelty: ……….For real, the ammount of agressivity against poor Dolyaks isa disgusting <n<

It’s boring, too many outfits, and not enough armor skins.

My only gripe is lack of seasonal repeatable content. The Living Story back then every two weeks, as unsustainable as it was, was amazing.

Mastery points, and them being tied to achievements. That needs to change.

Mastery points being tied to adventures and then those adventures being locked so you can’t do them/practice them when you want.

Ugh.

We need more elite specs.

The complaints I see in Pvp, Pve, and Wvw all focus around a lack of content and build paths. This game needs diversity to get it back up and going again.

Edit: While we’re at it fix Revenant. More skills, actual dialogue from the legends. That class should have felt legendary from the start.

Finalfreefall.8247:

We need more elite specs.

The complaints I see in Pvp, Pve, and Wvw all focus around a lack of content and build paths. This game needs diversity to get it back up and going again.

Edit: While we’re at it fix Revenant. More skills, actual dialogue from the legends. This stuff should have been in the game at launch.

Diversity is a myth. There will always be one build that works better than the other’s for a given class. It’s a fact and we have to get use to it.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Diversity is a myth. There will always be one build that works better than the other’s for a given class. It’s a fact and we have to get use to it.

I disagree, different styles can counter one another.* The moment we have counters for the current meta people will start branching out. The problem’s not the meta, it’s the lack of combat options. Additional elites would fix that.

*or be made to counter each other fairly easily.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Finalfreefall.8247:

We need more elite specs.

The complaints I see in Pvp, Pve, and Wvw all focus around a lack of content and build paths. This game needs diversity to get it back up and going again.

Edit: While we’re at it fix Revenant. More skills, actual dialogue from the legends. This stuff should have been in the game at launch.

Diversity is a myth. There will always be one build that works better than the other’s for a given class. It’s a fact and we have to get use to it.

There will always be a best option, but what matters is how much better it is than other options. If alternative options are for example 30% worse, they will never be used. However, if some options are 5% worse they will be used and that is something that can create a rotating PvP or WvW meta due to the nature of counter-builds.

As it is now elite specs have dramatically increased the gap between meta and non-meta builds. At least with more elite specs, there will be more options that are relatively close to each other, compared to what we have now.

• The lighting. It is ALWAYS from the top right. If the moon is on the left, I have two angles from which light comes. Why?

• Becoming bald with hats…

• A loading screen that, once disappeared, reveals it’s actually still loading…

False (No) sens of progress (grinding for legendaries (same stats as ascendend) is not progress)!
Legendary journeys are money grabbers (nothing legendary about that)

Content.

The story and new open world maps don’t last long, and raids aren’t my thing. I like the fractal updates, but one map every 6+ months doesn’t cut it.

Most of the content in the game is now so old, and I’ve exhausted it long ago, so I’m looking for things to spice up the game. Unfortunately they haven’t been delivering, and I can’t find the motivation to log in any longer.

The ships are sitting too low in the water.
It’s as if Anet has never seen a wooden sailing ship before and dont know how they work.

Seriously, this is a major issue.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Galtrix.7369:

Jahroots.6791:

(2) Economy

There’s also way, way, way too much stuff. Loads of junk, currencies, keys, low-value odds and ends that are somehow needed recipes and take up space in my inventory. Entire tiers of items that are functionally worthless. Sifting through rubbish takes up way too much time.

Oh, man! I completely forgot to complain about the amount of garbage/currencies in this game! Anet really needs to reduce the amount of currencies that have been implemented in the past. They improved the interface of the currencies, but you still have to sift quite a bit and it’s really an eye strain to look through every single currency to find the right one.

Also, the junk in this game is getting quite annoying. Since blues/greens are essentially worthless nowadays, they serve as more of a hindrance than a positive benefit. I literally have to sit down every half hour to sift through my inventory to delete blues/greens and other junk items that I randomly picked up. A lot of the time, I don’t have the patience to do it, and when faced with sifting through my inventory or logging out, 85% of the time I choose the latter.

You literally delete your blue/greens? For real?

I’m going to assume that anyone who is deleting loot doesn’t know this
- salvage kits have a ‘salvage all’ function now that shows up on right click
- the salvaged gear can be sent directly to your bank inventory mats panel using the icon on the right hand side of your inventory. Select: Deposit all materials.

That’s 2 clicks as opposed to individually deleting each item separately. When you get a stack of mats in your bank, pull them out and sell them. You’d be surprised at how much they’ll be worth.

I knew the first one, but the second one is news to me. I kind of always assumed that I could only use that function near a bank :/

Thanks for the info!

Doam.8305:

Games like WoW and FF14 have grinds yes but not all their rewards require heavy grinds in fact you can get mounts and mini pets just for playing the main story through.

Objection, your honor. Mounts in WoW are primarily given out through reputations and RNG. Nearly anything outside of the limited selection immediately available to your race or faction requires a reputation ground to exalted (usually daily quest or strait up mob grind) plus a currency cost which may also require grinding, grinding a boss until RNG submits at droprates of less than 1%, or waiting at a spawn point until RNG decides it’ll spawn TLPD instead of Vyragosa and hoping you’re first to the target. The lion’s share of minipets are obtained through pokemon, which is a grind.

You could equate the mounts and minipets you get through story or leveling in WoW to the basic skins you get as common drops or from basic profession patterns in GW2. Very limited in number, scope, and look.

I collected mounts until WoD bored me out of WoW. I know the grind. I know it intimately. The end result wasn’t pride or joy, it was relief that the stupid thing finally dropped or when I no longer had to grind reputation.

People were grinding long before HoT: Fractals, Silverwastes trains, Events in 1 specific map.
HoT just gave the senseless grinding a backstory or at least a reason for it with little bits of lore.

players.

Majority of players are not game designers. I see tons of threads where players are asking something that does not solve whatever they are asking.

I do not mind players complaining about the problem; however, I mind anet implementing a terrible solution base on useless suggestions.

Milling Stones

cadmiumgreen.8712:

Doam.8305:

Games like WoW and FF14 have grinds yes but not all their rewards require heavy grinds in fact you can get mounts and mini pets just for playing the main story through.

Objection, your honor. Mounts in WoW are primarily given out through reputations and RNG. Nearly anything outside of the limited selection immediately available to your race or faction requires a reputation ground to exalted (usually daily quest or strait up mob grind) plus a currency cost which may also require grinding, grinding a boss until RNG submits at droprates of less than 1%, or waiting at a spawn point until RNG decides it’ll spawn TLPD instead of Vyragosa and hoping you’re first to the target. The lion’s share of minipets are obtained through pokemon, which is a grind.

You could equate the mounts and minipets you get through story or leveling in WoW to the basic skins you get as common drops or from basic profession patterns in GW2. Very limited in number, scope, and look.

I collected mounts until WoD bored me out of WoW. I know the grind. I know it intimately. The end result wasn’t pride or joy, it was relief that the stupid thing finally dropped or when I no longer had to grind reputation.

Objection to your objection. Since you haven’t played WoW in awhile, I’ll update you. Upon logging into the game as a new player, you receive a shadow horse… which already disproves your point. There’s quite literally a plethora of various ways to earn mounts in WoW nowadays. Achievements, PvP, the in-game store, tournaments, quests, and heck, you can even craft some mounts. So, essentially, the guy above you was right. You earn mounts by playing the main story and completing your choice of any of the listed items above.

Here’s a list of all the mounts and my source: http://www.warcraftmounts.com/gallery.php

Running is the biggest offender. You have to waste one of your spec talents (Warrior), or one of your utility slots (Mesmer) to get any kind of boost to run speed.
The tedium of running everywhere — that’s one of the most annoying issues.

Galtrix.7369:

Objection to your objection. Since you haven’t played WoW in awhile, I’ll update you. Upon logging into the game as a new player, you receive a shadow horse… which already disproves your point. There’s quite literally a plethora of various ways to earn mounts in WoW nowadays. Achievements, PvP, the in-game store, tournaments, quests, and heck, you can even craft some mounts. So, essentially, the guy above you was right. You earn mounts by playing the main story and completing your choice of any of the listed items above.

Here’s a list of all the mounts and my source: http://www.warcraftmounts.com/gallery.php

Your list of mounts is a list of all mounts, not a list of mounts by how they are obtained. It also includes mounts that are no longer obtainable (Gladiator mounts, launch swift mounts, AQ event mount).

I haven’t played the current expansion due to vomit cam, but I had 285 mounts before WoD launched. Obtaining mounts has not significantly changed. But since you seem to be talking about boosted characters, let’s address that. Upon boost you receive a swift faction flying mount (200g, never required reputation). I think you also get a swift ground mount for your race (10g, not rep required), which would be where you got your ‘shadow horse’ from- boosting an undead character. If you play Hearthstone you may have the Hearthsteed from winning 3 games against other players (free, and not from questing or story). First login if you only bought the base game or are using a starter account gives you bupkis, as you start as level 1 and can’t ride until level 20 unless you’re using the heirloom chopper or the Riding Turtle.

Even if everyone received a ‘shadow horse’ when they create a new account, this does not change the fact that obtaining most mounts in WoW requires exalted reputation, currency, and RNG… or I guess you can make a DK of every race and and level it out of the starting zone to buy every race’s basic and swift mounts. The plethora you claim is limited and pretty much always has been: occasional quest rewards (vanilla class mounts, cloud serpents, garrison, sea horse from Vash’jir, upcoming order hall?), open purchase, purchased at exalted reputation, RNG drop, RNG spawn, PvP grind. Crafted mounts has been expensive and a grind since their introduction (Looking at you, Sandstone Drake). On top of that I guess you could include the cash shop, eBay, and Black Market Auction house if you want to include real money ways of obtaining mounts or paying gold cap.

Keep in mind open purchases can also be a grind: 16k passenger mammoth from Wrath, 150k passenger yak from Mists, 50k basic hippo from WoD, 2million spider from Leg. Even DMF open purchases are a grind- 500 fish or however many tickets from the bear and tallstrider (150? I don’t remember). The tournament mounts are 500g plus something like 5 tokens, 100 tokens, and 150 tokens. Tokens have to be ground from daily quests (14 a day once all quests are unlocked, I think, maybe 3 from the instance), and the mounts require exalted reputation on top of quest progress and god forbid you changed faction at any point since doing any of the quests because you are kittened.

I also expect the new class mounts to require several weeks of order hall questing combined with raiding and mythic dungeons to obtain, and probably a bunch of expensive mats too if they’re going to echo to original class mount quests.

Edit: Actually, I really shouldn’t include RNG spawn as a ‘common’ mount source in WoW. I admit to being particularly bitter about it after camping Aeonaxx. It’s pretty bad game design when obtaining something means sitting at one point for hundreds of hours tabbed out waiting for NPC scan to go off.

cadmiumgreen.8712:

Galtrix.7369:

Objection to your objection. Since you haven’t played WoW in awhile, I’ll update you. Upon logging into the game as a new player, you receive a shadow horse… which already disproves your point. There’s quite literally a plethora of various ways to earn mounts in WoW nowadays. Achievements, PvP, the in-game store, tournaments, quests, and heck, you can even craft some mounts. So, essentially, the guy above you was right. You earn mounts by playing the main story and completing your choice of any of the listed items above.

Here’s a list of all the mounts and my source: http://www.warcraftmounts.com/gallery.php

Your list of mounts is a list of all mounts, not a list of mounts by how they are obtained. It also includes mounts that are no longer obtainable (Gladiator mounts, launch swift mounts, AQ event mount).

I haven’t played the current expansion due to vomit cam, but I had 285 mounts before WoD launched. Obtaining mounts has not significantly changed. But since you seem to be talking about boosted characters, let’s address that. Upon boost you receive a swift faction flying mount (200g, never required reputation). I think you also get a swift ground mount for your race (10g, not rep required), which would be where you got your ‘shadow horse’ from- boosting an undead character. If you play Hearthstone you may have the Hearthsteed from winning 3 games against other players (free, and not from questing or story). First login if you only bought the base game or are using a starter account gives you bupkis, as you start as level 1 and can’t ride until level 20 unless you’re using the heirloom chopper or the Riding Turtle.

Even if everyone received a ‘shadow horse’ when they create a new account, this does not change the fact that obtaining most mounts in WoW requires exalted reputation, currency, and RNG… or I guess you can make a DK of every race and and level it out of the starting zone to buy every race’s basic and swift mounts. The plethora you claim is limited and pretty much always has been: occasional quest rewards (vanilla class mounts, cloud serpents, garrison, sea horse from Vash’jir, upcoming order hall?), open purchase, purchased at exalted reputation, RNG drop, RNG spawn, PvP grind. Crafted mounts has been expensive and a grind since their introduction (Looking at you, Sandstone Drake). On top of that I guess you could include the cash shop, eBay, and Black Market Auction house if you want to include real money ways of obtaining mounts or paying gold cap.

Keep in mind open purchases can also be a grind: 16k passenger mammoth from Wrath, 150k passenger yak from Mists, 50k basic hippo from WoD, 2million spider from Leg. Even DMF open purchases are a grind- 500 fish or however many tickets from the bear and tallstrider (150? I don’t remember). The tournament mounts are 500g plus something like 5 tokens, 100 tokens, and 150 tokens. Tokens have to be ground from daily quests (14 a day once all quests are unlocked, I think, maybe 3 from the instance), and the mounts require exalted reputation on top of quest progress and god forbid you changed faction at any point since doing any of the quests because you are kittened.

I also expect the new class mounts to require several weeks of order hall questing combined with raiding and mythic dungeons to obtain, and probably a bunch of expensive mats too if they’re going to echo to original class mount quests.

Sorry, but aren’t you both right here? In that Wow has many mounts that require grinding to receive, but some are given away for free?

So here’s a good one. Gertrude, remember her? That servant girl who had to carry around all the crap for that one minister early on in Hot? I found her today in Tangled Depths, standing on a cliff staring across to “Gertrude’s bag” which happened to be on the opposite cliff. Being the kind adventurer that I am, I went over to retrieve it for her.

And I looted the bag.

This shouldn’t be happening. I signed on to this game to be a hero, not to steal kitten from some girl who’s had nothing but grief the past few maps. There’s no earthly reason to have me steal from a character while they’re powerlessly watching me.

I’ll be back for the next expansion but this time, I’m out.

Finalfreefall.8247:

Sorry, but aren’t you both right here? In that Wow has many mounts that require grinding to receive, but some are given away for free?

My silly beef, due to mount collection trauma, was that the poster I was originally replying to seemed to suggest that mounts come grind free in WoW. Your first basic race pony? 1 gold at a vendor. You want TLPD? Your life will likely be boredom and suffering as you camp the floppy, yellow dragon. It’s not unlike what GW2 offers you: A chance at a skin from your the key you get from your level 10 story line. Simple, easy, fast. Nevermore? Prepare to grind.

There’s a lot of grind in the game, where there doesn’t need to be.

Say for example a weapon has 90 skins you can collect. It honestly feels like the majority of those skins are treated as end-game singular goals, each one taking a freakish amount of time/mats to acquire. I would excitedly spend ages doing them all if each one was less than a grind so that I felt like I was progressing my account’s collection at a reasonable pace.