I’m really glad I purchased Guild Wars 2. It has been fun to watch the dev team put so much of their heart and soul into the game and I really feel like GW2 has set a new benchmark for MMOs to surpass. Today, I take my leave of GW2 for the time being, so I thought I might leave some “exit feedback” before taking off. If anyone else is in the same boat, I thought this might be a good place to put it (in a positive, constructive state) so that the devs have some good feedback to continue improving the product.
What I loved:
-The game world was beautiful and fun to explore. I had several “gasp” moments when I just had to stop and appreciate how wonderfully the game was crafted. One of my favorite moments was coming across underwater lava… so cool!
-The classes are fun and distinctive.
-The armor sets look fantastic and I love the way that they tend to mix together well. Coupled with the dye system, it was really fun designing epic-looking characters.
-I love that crafting allows you to get legendary items. I never made it to one myself, but it’s neat to see that crafting has a cool end-game component.
-There are tons of amazing features in the game. Crafting from banks, down-leveling, map travel, instant level 80 spvp, the ability to play WvW from level 1, rewards scaled to level, and other features like these make this game extremely fun to play with friends.
-Dynamic events are a really fun concept. They got progressively less fun after I left the starter zones because there were significantly fewer events and fewer players to play them with, but I definitely support Dynamic Events as a design decision.
-ArenaNet’s goal of making me want to play with other players was a huge success. I was always excited to see other players in my zone. I love not fighting players for resource nodes.
Why I am Leaving:
-Combat is repetitive in terms of skill usage. My profession is a thief, and I basically have been doing either a “Death Blossom” (Condition Damage) or “Pistol Whip” (Power + Precision) build for the ENTIRE game. I stopped having new skills to look forward to around level 30. Utility skills are sometimes interesting, but have very long cooldowns and generally involve passive upgrades. (Example: While it is beneficial to apply venom to a weapon and get might boosts through traits because of it, passive abilities like the “venom line” are not very FUN compared to active abilities like Caltrops).
-Related to the above note: I find the limited number of active skills on the skill bar to decrease the fun factor of the game. I understand that having a limited number of skills was an intentional design decision, but more skills would = more choices in the moment and reward players who can keep up. If there were more weapons to swap between and good reasons to swap between them (much like having a variety of weapons in an FPS), this problem may not have been such a big deal for me.
-The story content, while somewhat enjoyable, is not really all that gripping. For example, I just completed a chain of personal story quests that had me repeatedly climbing the same tower and fighting krait or exploring the waters underneath that tower (name escapes me, but involves a Norn named Apatia). Some of the boss fights in the game have extremely fun mechanics, such as the final boss in Sorrow’s Embrace Story Mode. I wish that more encounters with unique mechanics like this had made it into the personal story.
Conclusion:
-Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee, so I definitely plan to return in the future when new content patches are released and I would love to buy more gems simply to support the development team. Until I return, I hope that this exit feedback proves useful in making the game better.
Sincerely,
A satisfied customer
(edited by Tozen.9814)
