Guild Wars 2

Now that I’ve fully analyzed the feature update, I am providing a feedback critique.

To weigh the features of this updates I will be sorting them into PROS, CONS and NEUTRAL followed by a summary of what I think.

PROS

Making WvW XP account bound – I don’t play WvW but this seems like a good idea.

Conversion of Transmutation Crystals and Transmutation Stones into charges – Finally I am able to put my piles of transmutation stones to use. This is a good move.

Two sigils for two-handed weapons – Excellent. Two-handed weapons are finally on par with one-handers.

Sigil changes – Most of these seem good. This was long overdue.

Reset Traits when you want – Yes, it’s true, people do not like having to go to town (or spend gems) to reset these. It’s good that this part of the game is finally on par with Guild Wars 1.

Account bound legendaries – Also good.

Ferocity and global monster HP adjustments – This has helped lessen the grind. This is a welcome addition. I don’t know if it will lead to the build diversification intended but it’s a step in the right direction.

Account bound dyes – This is a welcome change, though players who paid 200+ gold for abyss dye on all their characters might have a right to be annoyed.

Courtyard – This is a great map. I hope it ends up in the normal rotation at some point.

NEUTRAL

Wardrobe system – All this does is slicken the transmutation system we already had. That’s good, but it doesn’t really provide the player with a “feature”. It’s simply an easier way for people to spend their money. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not as great as it sounds – especially when features people loved were removed or changed (the town clothes being made into tonics, for example). Outfits are also a step backward in terms of functionality. All of this will potentially help ease the burden on inventory and bank space, but being unable to mix and match rightfully will kitten people off.

Removing Underwater PVP – Underwater PVP was annoying, it’s true. Removing it entirely is one way to deal with it, I suppose, though ideally it would have simply been worked on and improved.

Rune changes – Some of these were good, some not so much. Increasing attribute gain across the board is good but some of the changes to these left some people scratching their heads.

No repair costs – Good in a way, but also trivializes death even further than it already was.

Getting rid of heart mail – Not sure why this was done. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The new heart dialogue does look nice though.

PVP Reward Tracks – Overall this is a much better system than Glory ever was, but the time-gating ensures that people with busy schedules will be discouraged. The time-limited reward tracks now have the same problem that Living Story had – It forces you to play a certain number of days in order to get your reward, regardless of whether your real life schedule allows for it. This serves no purpose other than to frustrate your players. I cannot imagine why you would do this.

(continued)

CONS

Megaservers are Crap – The megaserver system has effectively smashed community cohesion. If you insist on going forward with this, at least leave the cities alone so people can RP and give shout-outs to their fellow servermates when they need help in WvW (as of now, any number of spies can be listening in). There are other reasons why these will cause problems too, but I’m not going to go into detail here, since it’s a topic worthy of its own thread, and many have been made already.

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains – Yet another way to smash community cohesion. Queensdale in particular was a very social area where people could relax and chat, and now there isn’t much of a reason to stick around since the loot is not worth it anymore. Even if you don’t care about the loot, the social aspect will now be more fragmented due to megaservers.

Removal of Town Clothes – Way to screw the RP community again, guys. Making town clothes into un-dyeable tonics and removing people’s ability to mix and match their outfits is a great way to kitten off a large portion of your playerbase. RPers probably made you a lot of money in gem sales, and now all those people are going to be asking for refunds. Everyone loses.

Restrictive Dailies – When you diversified the dailies, people breathed a sigh of relief. People don’t like being forced to do things they don’t want to. For example, PVP players don’t play PVE because they don’t like it. Forcing them to do so to get their daily is not going to make them happy. Dailies had been improved in previous builds and now they’re back to where they were originally. Why would you deliberately make your game worse when you had already taken steps to improve it? Makes no sense to me.

PVP Gear Erasure – A year and a half worth of work just so all those skins could go up in smoke. This won’t anger everybody, but it will anger anybody who A) plays pvp a lot, and B ) changes their outfit a lot. PVP players have every right to be kittened about this. Removing glory was a good move, but taking away all of our rewards? Not so much. And no, the wardrobe does not compensate for this.

Removal of the personality system because of… Reasons? – Seriously, just think up a new word for “ferocity” already. There’s no need to completely remove this from our UI.

PVP Build System is restrictive – Sure, it’s convenient, but not being able to mix and match runes is going to be a pain, especially when the changes to some of the runes were not great. This isn’t going to result in “build diversification”, in fact it will ensure that less-useful runes will be ignored completely.

New Traits are Gold Sinks – Yes, you can hunt all over the map for them, but for those who don’t have the patience (and resent the fact that they have to buy something that they traditionally have had access to for free) will have to spend gold they never had to before. It’s an obvious gold sink.

New World Boss schedule equals FPS death – The ridiculously dense crowds of people showing up at these events will ensure that people with low-end PC’s will not have a good time. Even people with high-end PC’s (like me) get a headache-inducing 15 FPS or lower. But even for people who do have the money to play GW2 on a military-grade supercomputer, all they have to do is show up on time, spam #1, and get their reward. Somehow it cheapens the experience. There was a certain satisfaction you could gain from beating one of these events with a small crew, and now you’re pretty much guaranteed never to have to bother.

SUMMARY

All in all, this feature patch is dressed up to look like we’re getting a lot of good stuff, but we didn’t. It simply changed things, and not always in a good way. The pros and cons sort of balance themselves out. Certain things were fixed, others were made worse.

This update gave us tweaks, not features. Actual features would be things like skills, zones, classes, races, dungeons, guild halls, more PVP maps, etc. We have gotten some features over the past year, but they’ve come in a small trickle: A handful of healing skills, a handful of traits, one new WvW map, one new PVP map, one PVE zone. What else? Nothing noteworthy.

It feels like the Living Story took us for a ride this past year and left us with nothing. By now the game should be filled out in ways that anybody (new players included) can enjoy. But that’s not what we have, and that’s certainly not what this feature update has given us.

All I can hope for is that Living Story Season 2 learns from the mistakes of Season 1 and we finally get the game we all thought we were paying for.

PeterThomas.7243:

This update gave us tweaks, not features. Actual features would be things like skills, zones, classes, races, dungeons, guild halls, more PVP maps, etc. We have gotten some features over the past year, but they’ve come in a small trickle: A handful of healing skills, a handful of traits, one new WvW map, one new PVP map, one PVE zone. What else? Nothing noteworthy..

I think the things you’re requesting are generally referred to as content, not features.
This feature patch added quite a few features, actually.

viralthefrog.6130:

I think the things you’re requesting are generally referred to as content, not features.

This feature patch added quite a few features, actually.

Allright. If we’re going to split hairs, then I guess I mean “content” rather than “features”. We need more content.

However, it still doesn’t change the fact that many of the features included in this patch didn’t improve things and in some cases made things worse.

spot on, Peter

and so it will be locked, merged, or deleted.

The playerbase seemed to actually ask for (in the CDIs) the ability to go out into the world and chase down progression (such as was implemented with Trait acquisition) in the Feature Patch. I think it is a great idea. I hope more progression is implemented in such a manner. I’m not sure I will ever use it, as almost all my Characters are Level 80 (well, one is almost…76, I think).

I am pretty sure PvP players can get the Daily strictly in PvP, as some of the PvE activities now count in PvP. I could be mistaken, as I don’t really PvP much.

The Personality system seems to still be intact, you can interact with NPCs and choose from the dialogue options. It is true that you can no longer see anything on the Hero window. This may be intended, or it could be an oversight. We really don’t know yet.

Whenever I go to Queensdale, the Champ Train is still running full bore. I’m not sure where it has been ‘dismantled’.

I happen to enjoy the MegaServer implementation. DEs that haven’t been done in ages now have people actually participating in them. I guess some like the new Feature, and some do not.

As I understand, PvP players can earn Charges to change their Gear. I am sure some feel it does not compensate them. But, it is nice that some people can now wear their PvP gear outside the Mists, so kind of a wash there.

As for your other cons, I can’t really offer an opinion, as I am not that familiar with those areas. =)

Yeh I’d hardly call a one off payment of 5g for a trait a gold sink either…

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this post. Nice job. Sadly I am not convinced that Anet will listen/read/care.

For me the Cons (and you’ve listed several that affect me) are outweighing the pros with this “Feature” update. The megaserver system is going to fracture the RP community and I am very disappointed that Anet didn’t even consider that when they made came up with this idea. it just shows how little they think of a portion of their playerbase.

OP: Very nice way to approach things. I agree with most of your points but also the way you have presented them. I was thinking about making a post like this myself.

One thing I hadn’t yet realized — underwater PvP was removed?!? I’d put that in the CON category. While it could be admittedly annoying, I would also feel stupidly pleased with myself when I did well.

BUT the bigger issue with this is…… It directly conflicts with the reason for a lot of the other changes in the game, which is a more consistent experience across game modes. My dailies are all smooshed together, and now my look is the same in PvP and PvE (to the detriment of PvP players, as pointed out)….but now there only is underwater fighting in PvE? Makes me seriously question the reasons for any of the decisions being made. I would much preferred to have seen it improved. Especially since it is one of GW2’s claims to fame.

The only ‘con’ I have is the megaserver. I really wish and pray that it would go away.

Peacenote.1698:

Makes me seriously question the reasons for any of the decisions being made. I would much preferred to have seen it improved. Especially since it is one of GW2’s claims to fame.

According to the Feature Pack update notes, Raid on the Capricorn was little more than an experiment that ultimately didn’t work out. It’s highly possible that there wasn’t much in the way of improvement prospects for underwater PvP, without making things like skills and traits far too situational to be viable or overcomplicating existing systems, but this is just a suspicion.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am pretty sure PvP players can get the Daily strictly in PvP, as some of the PvE activities now count in PvP. I could be mistaken, as I don’t really PvP much.

Nope. This is not possible. Even if you play sPVP and WvW you will still only get 4/5.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Whenever I go to Queensdale, the Champ Train is still running full bore. I’m not sure where it has been ‘dismantled’.

You’re right, my wording was a bit strong. They’ve simply been nerfed. A lot. (Edited my original post to reword it).

Sube Dai.8496:

Yeh I’d hardly call a one off payment of 5g for a trait a gold sink either…

It is if you have seven level 80 alts.

PeterThomas.7243:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am pretty sure PvP players can get the Daily strictly in PvP, as some of the PvE activities now count in PvP. I could be mistaken, as I don’t really PvP much.

Nope. This is not possible. Even if you play sPVP and WvW you will still only get 4/5.

We’re talking about Daily Achievements right? Cause I do nothing except WvW and I always get them.

I agree with most of what you said, except for a point or two.
Also, what do you mean by “Removing Underwater PVP”? Are you talking about sPVP?

Ziwdon.3075:

Also, what do you mean by “Removing Underwater PVP”? Are you talking about sPVP?

Most likely. The Feature Pack saw the removal of the game’s only PvP map with underwater combat, Raid on the Capricorn, and a new land-only map added in its place.

The Pointless.3869:

Ziwdon.3075:

Also, what do you mean by “Removing Underwater PVP”? Are you talking about sPVP?

Most likely. The Feature Pack saw the removal of the game’s only PvP map with underwater combat, Raid on the Capricorn, and a new land-only map added in its place.

Oh OK, thanks for the clarification. =)
So it’s more like “Removing [the only sPVP map with] Underwater PVP”. =P

Ziwdon.3075:

We’re talking about Daily Achievements right? Cause I do nothing except WvW and I always get them.

True, you can get some of the PVE dailies from WvW. I guess WvWers will be fine then. sPVPers not so much.

Thank you for your subjective opinion. There’s nothing I don’t like about the feature patch.

PeterThomas.7243:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am pretty sure PvP players can get the Daily strictly in PvP, as some of the PvE activities now count in PvP. I could be mistaken, as I don’t really PvP much.

Nope. This is not possible. Even if you play sPVP and WvW you will still only get 4/5.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Whenever I go to Queensdale, the Champ Train is still running full bore. I’m not sure where it has been ‘dismantled’.

You’re right, my wording was a bit strong. They’ve simply been nerfed. A lot. (Edited my original post to reword it).

Sube Dai.8496:

Yeh I’d hardly call a one off payment of 5g for a trait a gold sink either…

It is if you have seven level 80 alts.

I’ve gotten my daily with nothing but PvP several times since the update. Some of the categories can take a little longer than in PvE (salvage kit uses, kills) but they’re still doable.

PeterThomas.7243:

CONS

Megaservers are Crap

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains

Restrictive Dailies

New Traits are Gold Sinks

New World Boss schedule equals FPS death

Allow me to critique your critique then. Firstly, I agree with all of your positive and neutral responses. The Cons you list above are those I differ from.

Megaservers are Crap.
Megaservers are not crap. In general, they bring many more people together to play a massively multiplayer game. This is a good thing. They can be improved however, with two significant changes:

• Events need player mitigation. The event chains should not have been left as they are for the Mega-server implementation. What we have now is for example Maw, which is one boss standing in one spot while every single player attacks him. There is nothing more to it and even the whirlwinds do nothing to effect player actions. Anything needs to be done to stop this.
  An example of the mitigation – how about each 20% HP have him mirror-image into another maw with a random location. Or split him into 10, with only one being the real Maw. Or add an AoE with inner or outer circles or random patterns. Take anything from Marionette and you will likely end up with a better event that requires players to ACT to earn the rewards.

• Private Events need privatising. You can’t have an open world event that requires ultra organisation to succeed. Well you can, but it will fail. There needs to be some method of allowing players (say guild leaders) to start a private map that they can pull other players in to. This needs to be a free service.

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains.
These players are not playing and should equally not be rewarded so. But who am I to dictate what player is considered playing? I’m not, Arena Net is. The social aspect of a farming group is a horrible place to be in my opinion, and this is where Megaservers help. You get rid of the farming group, you have open diverse player map chat that is useful for all.

Restrictive Dailies.
I dislike this change greatly, but I also accept it. Right now I think the limited selection is to push more players into PvP.. hell yesterdays only had 5 I even felt like doing. But, I believe this is for a reason – the gearing up of Living Story 2. When this arrives, each patch will add 3-4 more dailies directly aimed at LS2. Given they’ve capped the number of daily points though, this could also be cause to limit the players reaching that cap very quickly.

New Traits are Gold Sinks.
The new traits are geared for new characters, where the questing to earn them will gel neatly with the entire levelling experience from 1 to 80. Existing players simply want them now, because they are used to that and expect it.

New World Boss schedule equals FPS death.
The FPS is customisable with graphics options, therefore irrelevant. The ‘schedule’ however, is the one significantly bad decision that has been made, and I think was a real after-thought by Arena Net who focused more on Megaserver success than how it impacts world boss events. Hopefully this improves in time.
The reason I hate (yes, hate) this change so much is because you are obliged to play WHERE Arena Net wants and WHEN Arena Net wants. Choosing not to do so is also choosing not to get loot! It’s counter-intuitive. It’s also really tedious when 15 minutes after 15 minutes you and 500 other people all move to the same place, to do the same thing. Usually without a break, and with no time in-between to do what you want unless it’s to clear-your-bags.

The schedule pushes the feeling that what you do is irrelevant.

The event will happen, and because there are so many people the boss will spawn, and it will die. I personally enjoyed moving around the world at my own pace choosing which boss timers to attend and which pre-events I would complete, knowing that I personally spawned the boss, even if 100 people port to it right after. Now it just doesn’t matter. What would be better? That’s a tough question. Scrap all timers for sure. Perhaps longer pre-event chains to world bosses that might even take up to 1 hour to complete the full chain, but offer significant reward for completing in themselves. It needs a proper analysis to fully understand what will work though…

/end critique.

biofrog.1568:

Megaservers are not crap. In general, they bring many more people together to play a massively multiplayer game. This is a good thing. They can be improved however…

The megaservers seem to be doing good in zones that were previously unpopulated. But that does not necessarily outweigh the problems they are creating in other respects. I’m not going to expound at length about this because it is really quite overwhelming. Browse this thread if you want to see reasons from the playerbase as to why the megaservers are indeed causing problems. A few of my stories are in there, too.

biofrog.1568:

Private Events need privatising. You can’t have an open world event that requires ultra organisation to succeed… There needs to be some method of allowing players (say guild leaders) to start a private map that they can pull other players in to.

I couldn’t agree more. I honestly don’t see a reason why they can’t instance more of the content in this game. It would make things more accessible to all players. Imagine if Tequatl was a raid-style mission that took, say, 16 people to complete – It would get a lot more traffic, that’s for sure. Keep the difficulty super high, but get the logistical bullcrap we wrestle with out of the way. The open world content simply can’t be organized effectively, especially since the game lacks a built-in voice communication system.

biofrog.1568:

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains – These players are not playing and should equally not be rewarded so… The social aspect of a farming group is a horrible place to be in my opinion, and this is where Megaservers help. You get rid of the farming group, you have open diverse player map chat that is useful for all.

Yes, but you also divide the populace all over the place. Human social interaction generally likes to congregates in a few central locations (in this game, it’s traditionally been Lion’s Arch and Queensdale). It might be good for the game in theory, but it does damage community cohesion and interaction.

biofrog.1568:

Restrictive Dailies. …I believe this is for a reason – the gearing up of Living Story 2. When this arrives, each patch will add 3-4 more dailies directly aimed at LS2.

God I hope you’re wrong. I hated the Living Story dailies and I hate the Living Story in general. I would really rather not participate in it at all, even to get my dailies.

biofrog.1568:

The FPS is customisable with graphics options, therefore irrelevant.

I disagree. The FPS and performance problems that the world events cause (partly due to megaservers) is simply not acceptable. My PC is not low-end. In fact my specs blow the minimum requirements away. I usually get 60-90 FPS in most areas of the game, anbd yet my framerate plummets to lower than 15 when I’m running with a huge zerg to the point where my GW2 client regularly crashes. Turning my detail down only reduces the frequency of my crashes. I don’t feel like it’s an irrelevant point. People with lower pc specs than mine are going to have it even worse than I do, and that’s probably a sizeable portion of the playerbase.

My game experience is best when I’m running graphics on high. Why should I have to turn down my graphics simply because the game hasn’t been coded properly? One of the reasons I still play this game is because it is the best looking MMO out there, and now I am being asked to make it look like crap just to have the privilege of playing it. Sorry, no. I’d rather just avoid the meta events altogether. The loot isn’t worth the literal headache I get when trying to play these.

biofrog.1568:

The ‘schedule’ however, is the one significantly bad decision that has been made… you are obliged to play WHERE Arena Net wants and WHEN Arena Net wants. Choosing not to do so is also choosing not to get loot! It’s counter-intuitive. It’s also really tedious when 15 minutes after 15 minutes you and 500 other people all move to the same place, to do the same thing. Usually without a break, and with no time in-between to do what you want unless it’s to clear-your-bags.

I agree with you on this point completely. The meta events are now a mindless treadmill. That was my original point.

PeterThomas, I agree with you an almost everything you’ve said. The exception being your statement that the Pros and Cons seem to balance out. Not for me.

The Town Clothes issue has been a point of contention for me since before it was implemented, but they stuck to their guns and told us we’d be surprised how many pieces made the transition into skins. So I waited and I was surprised all right. Pretty much nothing except hats became skins. From my standpoint, “idle time” clothes are completely gone now. For me anyway, this was a substantial blow.

The Megaservers haven’t affected my ability to locate the people I want to play with too much, but it has made things WAY overcrowded. I had to turn off Player Names the very first day, and I still can’t see the Merchant/Bank NPCs in town. World Bosses are indeed a nightmare of lag and disconnects. I can’t find a quiet place to do “dodging” or “interrupt” Dailies without someone coming along and “saving” me from the terrible monster.

These two things, combined with a complete absence of DEV response in the Guild Wars 2 Discussion forum since a week before the Feature Patch, have made me seriously consider the possibility of exploring other games. I have devoted myself to them since the GW1 Betas, and I have paid them far more money than they would have gotten out of me if they were a pay-to-play game. (They have records of my transactions, I’m sure). And in one fell swoop they have not only trashed much of what made the game fun for me, but they aren’t even acknowledging coherent, non-combative threads such as your own. Much less their “official” threads.

If they want to keep this loyal customer coming back with more money, they MUST announce that they will be offering individual pieces of Town Clothes as armor skins. They should be able to release 1-2 per month without much trouble. They MUST remove the Towns from the Megaserver. They MUST do whatever tweaking is necessary to make World Boss events playable again.

And most importantly they MUST talk to us. This more than anything else is infuriating. I thought I was cooling off after my initial outrage, but their seeming indifference is keeping that fire smoldering. If they still aren’t talking next week, then I will assume they don’t care about us anymore, so why should I care about them anymore? I don’t want to leave. But if silence remains the case in the Guild Wars 2 Discussion forum next week, then they are leaving me no option but to explore other options.

PeterThomas.7243:

My game experience is best when I’m running graphics on high. Why should I have to turn down my graphics simply because the game hasn’t been coded properly?

Because common sense would dictate that, optimised or not, if you don’t want to develop a fit from a single-digit framerate, you’d do well to crank that thing down.

Secondly, I don’t think any amount of “proper” coding, whatever that is, can do a great deal for the insane amount of actors that the game has to draw on-screen, along with ALL the effects they bring. Again, optimised or not, at least one of your system’s components is going to be strained in those situations regardless of where the load might be.

To the OP, I like your well-thought-out synopsis and opinions.

So here’s how the feature pack affected me personally:
1. I no longer do world boss train because megaserver and different timing killed that on my server, and I would be mad in about 10 seconds to WP to Mrs. Boss and run my heart out to get to Mrs. Boss only to see it already dead from the other 200 people who showed up and ran faster.
2. Lack of community feeling. Hate it. I hate how densely packed Divinity’s Reach has become. I feel a stranger in my own land.
3. I do like that map completion is easier. I am completing Orr on my necro and it’s truly a delight to do the events and actually have a chance to survive an encounter with a champ or vet.
4. Love account bound dyes. I had always held off getting those 200g dyes because they were sould-bound. Now I will save up and buy a few.
5. I like the wardrobe but wish I didn’t have to go to a bank to try on stuff conveniently.
6. I don’t mind the transmute charge. Honestly, ya, I had 115 stones sitting in my bank doing nothing since I have 5 x level 80s.
7. Speaking of level 80s; being a casual player, I spent 100g or so on unlocking the grandmaster traits for all my characters. That sucked. Hard.
8. Account bound WxP is awesome.
9. Not happy about less choice for dailies. I never miss the daily. Ever. I liked having lots of choice so I could do what I actually wanted. Now I don’t have that so it feels like more of a chore. REALLY want this to revert back.
10. No repair costs. Great, because I WvW a lot and I’m not on BG so I get killed often.
11. Nerf of Frostgorge champ train. I hate this also. This was the one thing other than WvW that I enjoyed doing most in the game. It was my fun, chatting, relaxing, have a coffee time on weekend mornings. I made decent gold to buy all my shinies. It made me HAPPY. Now, no happy. I always avoid QD train because it’s just stupid. Only do it when I have to get events + kill a champ.

I don’t PvP, so can’t comment on those changes. I haven’t even had a chance to play with any builds with new rune/sigil changes so can’t comment on that either.

Sorry for wall of text.