Guild Wars 2

I think GW1 had a larger set of “optimal” and “near-optimal” builds than GW2 does.

There were also many more exotic/gimmick builds that were somewhat viable, which I thoroughly enjoyed making/using. I can’t think of any wacky builds in GW2 like touch rangers, for example…

I suppose that’s expected, since GW1 had more skills, a more flexible skill bar, and dual professions.

GW had different instances where different mob characteristics warranted using different builds and/or different party compositions. For example, enchantment-heavy builds worked quite well in some places, but were unusable in others. Differing circumstances in various areas in GW2 seldom warrant a change in build or team comp, and are instead usually handled by changing weapons and/or utilities.

Nerelith.7360:

Galphar.3901:

ANet “dumbed down” GW2 because they said after adding so many skills to GW it became almost impossible to keep balanced.

I find that unnacceptable as a" reason"… that boils down to " it’s easier for us, so you need a simpler game. We don’t want to do our best to provide you with the best gaming experience. If we need to sacrifice fun gameplay, to make our jobs easier…. we will do it, cause it makes our jobs easier."

Basically you are saying that the devs chose to be lazy, even if the product suffers for it. That they gave less than their best because less is Not as hard to do.

Personally, I think that equating designing a new active pvp and pve combat system with less skills than GW1 that involves 50 or more players on a semi-open world map with laziness is a bit disingenuous. That does not sound lazy to me, but then again I chose to highlight/include/exclude different parts of what it takes to design a combat system. GW1 devs made sacrifices in designing their combat system that some felt made it suffer as well. Namely, designing maps and encounters only for small parties, no open world, no taunt mechanics, etc. You may not agree with these criticisms but that is my point. GW2 is a different game with different challenges and sacrifices than GW1, they really only shifted the difficulty in balancing the game away from balancing hundreds of skills to other areas of the game design. Easier does not mean easy. One monster for another.

Despite the (unwarranted?) doom and gloom, GW2 still has room to grow. Anet even said that one of the benefits/reasons they redesigned trait acquisition was to allow a more coherent seamless integration of new skills/traits going forward. Take that for what you will.

Haven’t read through the whole thread so don’t know if this was already said.

What people always seem to forget when comparing games to prequels and whatnot, and not just in this game but in many other mmo/rpg/similar game. Is that we now live in 2014 and most of these games that are being praised are from 2000-2005 and not much later. I’ve been a serious gamer since about 1998 and the trend that I have seen over the years is a shift from gamers who just played games to gamers who suddenly have opinions on game design/development/balance e.g. basically criticizing as if they were game designers themselves. Back when I first started gaming you didn’t have community managers and CDI’s and a bunch of that crap. You simply played the game and if something bothered you you simply looked for another game that was more fun. No raging on forums. I think as games and developers evolved so did the gamers. Gamers are now very picky and opinionated and generally have more knowledge about the games they play too. This results into the formation of the concept of a ‘meta’. Sure GW1 did have favorable builds and guides and all that but those were a few people making those. Not many stuff was actually calculated as thourough as it is being done today. Nowadays everyone is a theorycrafter and min-maxer and tries to calculated the exact dps under perfect unrealistic conditions. This was hardly ever the case in older games except by maybe the 0.1% most hardcore of players. So maybe all these older games really had only 1 or 2 viable builds if they were being viewed through the eyes of the gaming community of present day? Maybe every GW1 class did have1 optimal DPS build (I can say that with almost 100% certainty as no game has ever been created where there wasn’t one specific way to get at the very least a 1% better performance which would then constitute as meta. But the reason people remember GW1 being all super diverse is because back then concepts as ‘theorycrafting’ ‘meta’ ‘optimal’ and the like were not nearly as important as they are now. The main aim of this post is to make you guys realise that this discussion leads nowhere. They are two completely different games from two completely different era’s of gaming, different types of gamer mentality, gamer/developer relations etc etc etc. Peoples judgments are clowded. You must understand its trying to compare apples and oranges. Let go of nostalgia. Maybe GW1 had some parts you liked more maybe it had the illusion that it had some parts you liked more. The fact is, we are playing gw2 right now in a different age and the past of gaming will never be present again.

Verificus.4320:

But the reason people remember GW1 being all super diverse is because back then concepts as ‘theorycrafting’ ‘meta’ ‘optimal’ and the like were not nearly as important as they are now.

Nope. If anything, GW1 had a more active build-making scene, because its PvP was more popular. It even got the nickname “Build Wars”, which was quite accurate.

We’re not talking about 1998 here. GW1 is a relatively new game, too, especially its later chapters.

Fyrehawk.1674:

Certainly from my recollection of GW1 the fun times happened after establishing a small selection of core builds either through player suggestions, forums or PvXwiki. I personally took no pleasure in fighting through a massive skill list filtering out all the PvP focused, downright useless, repetitive or situational specific skills just to establish some sensible and decent PvE builds.

Unsurprisingly, I find GW2’s skill and trait system much more manageable while still providing me the same playstyle diversity feel I got from GW1.

Each to their own!

This ^

I do remember as I played Guild Wars (along with other more traditional MMOs) that the vast number of “useless” skills and the clutter of them was considered a NEGATIVE by much of the MMO “community”, and not a positive like the GW1 veterans consider it.

I suspect that dissonance is coming into play here. GW2 was (and still is) trying to hit a larger market than GW1, and for the rest of that market (by my experience), the glut of skills and builds was NOT well received.

chemiclord.3978:

I do remember as I played Guild Wars (along with other more traditional MMOs) that the vast number of “useless” skills and the clutter of them was considered a NEGATIVE by much of the MMO “community”, and not a positive like the GW1 veterans consider it.

No one considers it a positive. However, even with the large number of useless skills, GW1 had more useful skills than GW2.

dekou.6012:

chemiclord.3978:

I do remember as I played Guild Wars (along with other more traditional MMOs) that the vast number of “useless” skills and the clutter of them was considered a NEGATIVE by much of the MMO “community”, and not a positive like the GW1 veterans consider it.

No one considers it a positive. However, even with the large number of useless skills, GW1 had more useful skills than GW2.

Allow me to clarify (as I think I worded it poorly):

The build system in and of itself was not highly regarded by the MMO market (it was often likened to a trading card game, and not as a compliment, with all its useless skills and limited number of truly “effective” decks). While the system clearly had a niche, by my experience, it was not particularly well received by the larger MMO “community.”

It’s one of the things that was sacrificed to try and reach a larger audience base, in my opinion.

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

iphaded.7308:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

GW2 is not over simplified. GW1 just had too many skills that were useless and/or situational. The player meta was very simple in GW1 – player plays his build – has 1 or 2 healers/protectors – an MM – a fire ele or 2. The others were heros and that is all you needed. Gw1 was simple to the extreme in PvE.

nightwulf.1986:

Nerelith.7360:

Galphar.3901:

ANet “dumbed down” GW2 because they said after adding so many skills to GW it became almost impossible to keep balanced.

I find that unnacceptable as a" reason"… that boils down to " it’s easier for us, so you need a simpler game. We don’t want to do our best to provide you with the best gaming experience. If we need to sacrifice fun gameplay, to make our jobs easier…. we will do it, cause it makes our jobs easier."

Basically you are saying that the devs chose to be lazy, even if the product suffers for it. That they gave less than their best because less is Not as hard to do.

Personally, I think that equating designing a new active pvp and pve combat system with less skills than GW1 that involves 50 or more players on a semi-open world map with laziness is a bit disingenuous. That does not sound lazy to me, but then again I chose to highlight/include/exclude different parts of what it takes to design a combat system. GW1 devs made sacrifices in designing their combat system that some felt made it suffer as well. Namely, designing maps and encounters only for small parties, no open world, no taunt mechanics, etc. You may not agree with these criticisms but that is my point. GW2 is a different game with different challenges and sacrifices than GW1, they really only shifted the difficulty in balancing the game away from balancing hundreds of skills to other areas of the game design. Easier does not mean easy. One monster for another.

Despite the (unwarranted?) doom and gloom, GW2 still has room to grow. Anet even said that one of the benefits/reasons they redesigned trait acquisition was to allow a more coherent seamless integration of new skills/traits going forward. Take that for what you will.

maps with fewer players means everyone’s contribution is important. When the result is good, when the team wins everyone contributed. Having hundreds on a map, means all you need to do is zerg, hit someone once or twice…. hide.. and win.

In My mind …in my opinion… gw2 trashed the core that made the original game… replayable, and enjoyable, for simplicity, and ease of balance.

Simple, because what I have heard is…." The Players need a simpler game…. they cannot figure out Guild Wars without making sub-par builds."

and Easier to balance…….

THEY wanted less to do than what the developers had to handle with Guild Wars.

I understand Guild Wars was 3d chess on an 8×8×8 grid. When it comes to both complexity, and depth of play and diversity. And maybe it did need SOME simplification…

But in my opinion they went too far in the opposite direction, Instead of regular chess, they gave us tic-tac-toe. For the worst of reasons… what I have heard from Gw2 defenders is:

1. We as players need a simpler game, because Guild Wars is too hard for the average casual player.

2. The developers need a simpler game, because balancing Guild wars is Hard.

The former is insulting to the average casual player. The latter is insulting to the Anet development team.

I am not the person saying these things…. Some Anet defenders are.

See I do not accept either, but I do not blame the developers, I blame the players In general. If you don’t demand more than Bread and water, that’s all you will get. Why would the devs give more? We don’t want more, we are content to accept a barebones game in comparison to what they themselves can provide. I know they can do better, because with Guild Wars in my opinion, they did better.

Dusty Moon.4382:

iphaded.7308:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

GW2 is not over simplified. GW1 just had too many skills that were useless and/or situational. The player meta was very simple in GW1 – player plays his build – has 1 or 2 healers/protectors – an MM – a fire ele or 2. The others were heros and that is all you needed. Gw1 was simple to the extreme in PvE.

Cool story bro, now illustrate to us how GW2 isn’t simplified in the least, not compared to just GW1 but to many other MMOs out there. I like how you focused on one particular aspect of GW1 to make your case while ignoring others such as PvP. Okay then, so let’s compare the PVE, in GW2 you have even simpler choices to make… just run berserker gear regardless of the skills you choose and button mash to win.

I think people also forgot one aspect of GW1 that made the game more interesting: you start off with decent skills but as you progress you find better versions of increasingly more powerful abilities. This did have the consequence of making many skills obselete and I don’t particularly think this was good game design as the focus on having useful skills isn’t really there… but at least the illusion of variety was.

Dusty Moon.4382:

iphaded.7308:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

GW2 is not over simplified. GW1 just had too many skills that were useless and/or situational. The player meta was very simple in GW1 – player plays his build – has 1 or 2 healers/protectors – an MM – a fire ele or 2. The others were heros and that is all you needed. Gw1 was simple to the extreme in PvE.

The depth in Guild Wars was in it’s ability to allow a player to play any type of Build they could imagine. Whether that build ended up sub-par or not.

We are talking past one another, the gw2 players that love gw2 …say " Both had an equal number of optimal builds." Which makes sense. There are usually maybe 2 or 3 “optimal builds” that lend themselves to multiple situations.

For me… it ‘s Not about " Optimal" builds it’s about playing fun…. viable builds.

Guild Wars allowed for more viable builds. The sub-classes, the number of available skills, the number of elite skills, the elite skill capture system… having 9 “trait” lines…. 5 from the primary, 4 from the secondary… The “traits” also allowed for vastly different playstyles… the skills synergized better with One another…or worse. Borrowing a term from Statistics The Standard deviation for Guild Wars was larger. You could build a LOT better, or a lot worse. Some of us like that.

ALL of these led to a game system with a LOT more VIABLE builds… so if you and I were BOTH Elementalists, chances are we had VASTLY different playstyles.

Gw2….not so much.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

There were way more builds in GW1. Just looking at my folder of saved build templates, it is gigantic. And most of those are necromancer builds for different parts of the game. I wish GW2 had that much build diversity.

I’m with Malafide here.
My favourite was designing Mesmer builds. I had incredibly specific builds for different scenarios, and coming up with a successful build was a kick with a real sense of achievement associated with it.
GW2?
Yeah, not so much.
Builds are inflexible thanks to the inherent inflexibility of the gear system, resulting in a very stale metagame that very rarely changes. And when it does, it upsets a lot of people because it forces a re-gear. And even if it weren’t held back by a restrictive gear system, there’s just not that much variety to be had.
I suspect part of this is from over-complicating the trait system in an attempt to emulate the skill trees from more traditional MMOs.

It’s just a very messy system with very few builds and therefore no room for individual expression.
Your character is rarely very different from A. N. Other player’s.

Nerelith.7360:

nightwulf.1986:

Nerelith.7360:

Galphar.3901:

Snip

Basically you are saying that the devs chose to be lazy, even if the product suffers for it. That they gave less than their best because less is Not as hard to do.

Personally, I think that equating designing a new active pvp and pve combat system with less skills than GW1 that involves 50 or more players on a semi-open world map with laziness is a bit disingenuous. That does not sound lazy to me, but then again I chose to highlight/include/exclude different parts of what it takes to design a combat system. GW1 devs made sacrifices in designing their combat system that some felt made it suffer as well. Namely, designing maps and encounters only for small parties, no open world, no taunt mechanics, etc. You may not agree with these criticisms but that is my point. GW2 is a different game with different challenges and sacrifices than GW1, they really only shifted the difficulty in balancing the game away from balancing hundreds of skills to other areas of the game design. Easier does not mean easy. One monster for another.

Despite the (unwarranted?) doom and gloom, GW2 still has room to grow. Anet even said that one of the benefits/reasons they redesigned trait acquisition was to allow a more coherent seamless integration of new skills/traits going forward. Take that for what you will.

maps with fewer players means everyone’s contribution is important. When the result is good, when the team wins everyone contributed. Having hundreds on a map, means all you need to do is zerg, hit someone once or twice…. hide.. and win.

In My mind …in my opinion… gw2 trashed the core that made the original game… replayable, and enjoyable, for simplicity, and ease of balance.

Simple, because what I have heard is…." The Players need a simpler game…. they cannot figure out Guild Wars without making sub-par builds."

and Easier to balance…….

THEY wanted less to do than what the developers had to handle with Guild Wars.

I understand Guild Wars was 3d chess on an 8×8×8 grid. When it comes to both complexity, and depth of play and diversity. And maybe it did need SOME simplification…

But in my opinion they went too far in the opposite direction, Instead of regular chess, they gave us tic-tac-toe. For the worst of reasons… what I have heard from Gw2 defenders is:

1. We as players need a simpler game, because Guild Wars is too hard for the average casual player.

2. The developers need a simpler game, because balancing Guild wars is Hard.

The former is insulting to the average casual player. The latter is insulting to the Anet development team.

I am not the person saying these things…. Some Anet defenders are.

See I do not accept either, but I do not blame the developers, I blame the players In general. If you don’t demand more than Bread and water, that’s all you will get. Why would the devs give more? We don’t want more, we are content to accept a barebones game in comparison to what they themselves can provide. I know they can do better, because with Guild Wars in my opinion, they did better.

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

The topic under discussion is… Guild Wars is it more diverse. The implication raised was that no, it wasn’t more diverse, which to many of us Guild Wars veterans seems to be an interesting position.

Now the OP tries to say that because BOTH have " as many optimal builds" that Gw2 is as diverse as Guild Wars.

To me this is nonsense. I have explained why. Now you want to derail the issue to " Gw2 made the game less diverse than Guild Wars, and had awesome reasons."

That is not the topic of this thread.

Someone that feels Gw2 is as diverse has basically said that the game many of us enjoyed playing was " full of useless skills." And that that is why gw2 is “as diverse” because it has the same number of " optimal " builds.

As I said…Nonsense. If one defines " Optimal" as" The absolute best for a given situation" then they obviously have the same number of “optimal” builds..since that = " the best build for a given situation" and that will be 1. By the definition of “Optimal”

MY position has always been that Guild Wars had more viable alternate builds that lent themselves to play…where content could be experienced, without having to play “the meta”.

THAT is the topic. Does Guild Wars having more viable alternate builds, that could be enjoyed " for fun" without having to " do the meta" or " only do the optimal"
provide more divergence in playstyles , so that If you have 2 Necromancers, could you have each play a totally different playstyle and still be viable? I say that since each necromancer had anywhere from 5 to 9 sub-classes, and each combination had hundreds of skills, and 9 " trait" lines…. THIS meant that each necromancer could play totally differently from one another and STILL be viable. STILL complete content.

Not whether the devs had reasons for making gw2 less diverse.

Seems that you agree with me, Gw2 is less diverse. WHY it’s less diverse is a topic for another thread.

Nerelith.7360:

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The issue is build diversity. How many different types of builds can you play ? snip..

Nearly all of them? The build diversity wasnt removed it was just shifted from pre-planning to the execution. Infact my gw2 necro is way way more flexible then my gw1 necro. thing is my gw2 necro can do nearly everything (lets say 95% as a general approxiation) my gw1 necro even when factoring in the secondary class its how that diveristy is achieved thats changed, now its no longer about picking the right skills for the right job, now its about using the right skills for the right job .

Nerelith.7360:

In Gw2, your skills are few… and 2/3rds are weapon locked. snip…

necro has 102 skills if you consider all(downed skill, death shroud, elite forms etc…) 37 of them are weapon skills counting aquatic weapons as well. so its more like 1/3 of them are weapon skills and 102 while much less then a gw1 necro has isnt exactly a few. not just that but those 102 can do everything (except for weapon management) that the gw1 necro skills could do.

Nerelith.7360:

In Guild Wars, How you trait changes How you play. The fact that most of the skills were situational doesn’t mean they are useless, Just Not usable 100 % of the time.

Situation skills are a requirement if you’re basing your strategy in the building of the combat skills rather then the execution. If you took bleeding skills when facing golems well there is nothing strategic about it during execution, nothing you can do the bulk of the strategy is about getting the build you’re going to need.

Nerelith.7360:

I think the players that Anet wants to play Gw2, are " set it and forget it" type players, that use one build for almost everything.

Guild Wars demanded you think dynamically about your build.

Gw2 want players to think dynamically about the fight and personally I like that a lot more. To me it makes sense from all angles. Think about a new player in both games. If you didnt cheat the first time you play a zone, dungeon, etc.. you dont know what you’re going to face so you have no way of knowing what you’re going to face so how can you bring the appropriate build? Then you have another issue, 100s of skills that you have no way of referencing before you actually acquire them (again unless you cheat and check builds etc..) I mean if I am facing a horde of enemies Spiteful sprite is a useful elite skill to have. But how am I to know about it? It also synergises with arcane echo but again unless I already have that skill how will I know about it and create an effective build using it. Thats 3 barriers a player faces in Gw1 (unless the cheat) I didnt know I would be facing hordes of enemies and I dont know what skills are great at confronting hordes of enemies and I dont know what skills can help increase effectiveness of other skills. Gw2 removes all of these barriers, Most of what my necro can do is available to me. If I come across a horde of enemies and I wasnt planning for it I might not have equiped epidemic but I can still have them cluster on me and use my marks to bleed a group and if I survive the encounter and I got tools for that,blinds, fear, regens I can equip epidemic and be more effective at dispatching hordes. I dont need to fail first and I dont need to cheat / scoure the four corners of tyria for a skills thats useful in that situation

Nerelith.7360:

Holy Water is awesome against Vampires, useless against Robots unless you pour it down a vent or something snip..

Actually its the prefect anology. in Gw1 you essentially have holy water you ckittene on vampires, water you ckittene on robots, water bucket you ckittene on fires, water spray you ckittene on fire elementals etc.. The same holy water would work great against all of these but in Gw1 they’re split into skills that can only be used for specific situation, Gw2 gives you holy water and leaves it up to you how you use it instead of wondering why the holy water doesnt cause a short when poured down the robot vent.

Nerelith.7360:

I LOVED situational skills in Guild Wars. it was a way of making you THINKsnip..

Thats still there but has been moved to the execution layer, Epidemic is useless if you’re facing singular targets, Buring is useless if you’re facing destroyers, reflect projectile is useless when facing melee mobs but hey melee need to reach you to hit you so chilled is great to slow them down while you move away as you hit them, when they break free and reach you, fear will give you distance again and when they reach you again a blind will buy you the time you need for your chill to come out of cooldown and thats when you’re 2nd fear comes into play, have the mob run away and chilled to restart the cycle.

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

The topic under discussion is… Guild Wars is it more diverse. The implication raised was that no, it wasn’t more diverse, which to many of us Guild Wars veterans seems to be an interesting position.

Now the OP tries to say that because BOTH have " as many optimal builds" that Gw2 is as diverse as Guild Wars.

To me this is nonsense. I have explained why. Now you want to derail the issue to " Gw2 made the game less diverse than Guild Wars, and had awesome reasons."

That is not the topic of this thread.

Someone that feels Gw2 is as diverse has basically said that the game many of us enjoyed playing was " full of useless skills." And that that is why gw2 is “as diverse” because it has the same number of " optimal " builds.

As I said…Nonsense. If one defines " Optimal" as" The absolute best for a given situation" then they obviously have the same number of “optimal” builds..since that = " the best build for a given situation" and that will be 1. By the definition of “Optimal”

MY position has always been that Guild Wars had more viable alternate builds that lent themselves to play…where content could be experienced, without having to play “the meta”.

THAT is the topic. Does Guild Wars having more viable alternate builds, that could be enjoyed " for fun" without having to " do the meta" or " only do the optimal"
provide more divergence in playstyles , so that If you have 2 Necromancers, could you have each play a totally different playstyle and still be viable? I say that since each necromancer had anywhere from 5 to 9 sub-classes, and each combination had hundreds of skills, and 9 " trait" lines…. THIS meant that each necromancer could play totally differently from one another and STILL be viable. STILL complete content.

Not whether the devs had reasons for making gw2 less diverse.

Seems that you agree with me, Gw2 is less diverse. WHY it’s less diverse is a topic for another thread.

Well according to that logic this thread should have been closed. Guild Wars 1 had more build diversity. Discussing why it’s a good idea to or not to have that is perfectly on topic, or close the thread. Those are pretty much the only options.

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Idk how people can even begin to argue that GW2 has more diversity, when a large majority of the skills are locked to your weapons, and utilities more or less predeterimed (because most are underperforming). Not to mention gear is a major bottleneck to build testing in pve, coupled with a lousy ‘damage is king’ design. Even D3 has more build variety than GW2 does…which is good, because the devs don’t have to waste time trying to balance the cheese that might come with buld variety (owait).

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

This discussion is actually reminding me about a major issue a ton of people had with Living story season 1. I am sure some of you remember we used to get a short story with every living story release that provided additional background and lore. It stopped because a ton of people complained how they didnt want to leave the game and got to some website to experience the story.

Which brings us back to why Gw1 didnt appeal to a broader set of players. Thing is for gw1 you had to consult external websites, even if you didnt go for the flavor of the month (which I bet the bulk of players did) You had to do it to learn about what skill options there were and were you get them.

So you had the bulk of players who didnt really benefit from this complexity because they just copied the meta of the month. You had a group of players who found this a barrier because they dislike playing the game outside of the game. You have a group of players that play casually, they just got an hour or two to burn at most and they just dont have the time to do a couple of hours of research to come up with a build, they just play whatever the game gives them. So I wonder, do you feel there was a good amount of people who actually enjoyed theory crafting and building their own specific builds using resources outside of the game? Cause another option why they might have moved away from it could also be that it was a ton of resources poured into something only a few actually enjoyed.

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

From a pve standpoint all of my builds in GW are still viable for what I built them to do.
I have 320 builds. Some are single situation builds. Some are idiot proofed for Heroes.
Some are enemy specific, ie destroyers. Some are for solo.. some for VQ, some for VQ in 4 member group areas. I have NM builds for goofing off, and HM builds. RoJ is awesome in NM, in HM.. not so. Meteor the same.

I have builds simply for DoA to synergize with LB skills. Builds changing up 2nd profession. on and on. I have builds that work only if my enemies are not human, or even narrower, Charr specific. I built anti res builds just for HM WIK. Full group build sets tailored to specific challenge missions.

And I have idiot builds so I can run 8 heroes with pets, because it is amusing. Not optimal at all.

If you want to blather about Meta only, well Meta is Meta, in all games, and always restrictive and undiversified.

I cannot see how anyone can shrug off the fact that GW has far more builds and variety, more than any other online game I’ve played in 12 years.

Shrug. That is probably why my /age there is over 10k hours. And why I didn’t complain about less bank, no housing, no mounts, no big MMO bling.

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

That, my dear, is beside the point (as also pointed out by Tenofa).

Another thing I forgot to mention – most of those builds do not include HA/GvG builds, as I was primarily a 4v4 player (TA/CA). And that speaks volumes.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

From a pve standpoint all of my builds in GW are still viable for what I built them to do.
I have 320 builds. Some are single situation builds. Some are idiot proofed for Heroes.
Some are enemy specific, ie destroyers. Some are for solo.. some for VQ, some for VQ in 4 member group areas. I have NM builds for goofing off, and HM builds. RoJ is awesome in NM, in HM.. not so. Meteor the same.

I have builds simply for DoA to synergize with LB skills. Builds changing up 2nd profession. on and on.

And I have idiot builds so I can run 8 heroes with pets, because it is amusing. Not optimal at all.

If you want to blather about Meta only, well Meta is Meta, in all games, and always restrictive and undiversified.

I cannot see how anyone can shrug off the fact that GW has far more builds and variety.

That’s odd, because when I cleaned out my build folder I found about 80% of my builds, while perhaps viable, where no longer optimal due to changes that had been made in the skill sets. Of course, no changes have been made for a couple of years now, but prior to that, I had to adjust builds and after I did I found the old builds to be far more meh.

You’re trying too hard.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You’re trying too hard.

I’m really not. I seriously deleted most of my builds, because most of them weren’t really optimal anymore. There wasn’t a point to keep them.

I’ve already said in this thread multiple times that Guild Wars 1 has more build diversity than Guild Wars 2. You can’t find one place where I’ve said otherwise. So why would I be trying at all?

Then you may stay silent and let facts speak for themselves instead of throwing around strawmen. Thank you.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You’re trying too hard.

Far too hard. Viable is good enough and allows far more variety and individual tastes.

MBomb Heroes were more “Optimal” I ran curse heroes a lot just because I disliked looking at a flock of minions. And succeeded anyway. Prior to buying Mercs I didn’t run heavy Mes group builds because I simply didn’t want to look at Fat Norgu, “optimal” or not.

You changed the question mid stream Vayne. And optimal on what? Glint challenge? Z Elites? UW vs DoA? Feather/Raptor/Veattir farm? HM Vanq? WoC HM MinCho’s? Shiro? Gate of Madness? etc.

Even restricting the question from “Viable” to “Optimal” still will show a much larger number of “optimal” builds.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Then you may stay silent and let facts speak for themselves instead of throwing around strawmen. Thank you.

I’m sorry can you explain how what I’ve said is a strawman? Assuming that Guild Wars 1 had more build variety (which it clearly did), there’s still the tendency of people to overstate how much more variety it had.

I had builds that evolved over five years. I had four less builds in the first 2 years I played. As I moved through the game, a lot of my builds were no longer optimal. Sure I could keep them forever and not delete them, but you know…I’ve also had a couple of dozen builds so far in Guild Wars 2 as stuff changed. It’s not as much as Guild Wars 1, but then if the point if this thread is just a yes or no question, it’s been answered and it should be closed.

However, I think it’s worth discuss WHY Anet made changes to things like number of skills and second profession. Surely if the build diversity changed for a reason and that reason has some positive connotations they’re worth mentioning here.

Surely if people want to exaagerate, or forget certain details it should be pointed out.

Point was that GW had immense build variety, and builds that fell out of flavour could always be replaced by other, unless the entire zone/encounter or key skills were nerfed. But even then, past builds are evidence of the sheer variety it boasted at one point in time, something GW2 cannot do now, and could not do in the past.

GW2 is simpler because of the sheer number of players and new players who could not grasp that being a Frenzy/Mending WAMMO wasn’t going to work universally.

See Zerker/War meta here. No argument from me that simpler may be more popular. Doesn’t make it “better”.

I think part of the blame actually lies with Anet and their premade templates… Remember the ‘abominable snowman’ w/e with frozen burst? Pretty sure the HH wammo with healing breeze/mending was one of them!
haha, fun timez

The difference with zerk warr is (from what I’ve read) that it actually does/can work universally though. Or anything zerk, really.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I think part of the blame actually lies with Anet and their premade templates… Remember the ‘abominable snowman’ w/e with frozen burst? Pretty sure the HH wammo with healing breeze/mending was one of them!
haha, fun timez

The difference with zerk warr is (from what I’ve read) that it actually does/can work universally though. Or anything zerk, really.

Yup, it seems to. And I guess people want that. Simple /shrug.

lol funny Anet. Some of those templates were sooo bad. The stuff they gave NPCs even worse. Poor Alesia.

Hehe, yea. But I suppose part of the idea was so that people would not automatically opt for henchies instead of real players, as the case is now with heroes (but more so due to general low activity), because they usually outperform the typical pve player…by a large margin. At the same time, there are missions or dungeons they simply cannot do because of certain objectives that require more than just 1 real person per group.

Well whatever, now you just zerg things down anyway while facerolling most content on zerk. And many seem to like it, for reasons unknown to me, so heh. /shrug indeed

Galen Grey.4709:

necro has 102 skills if you consider all(downed skill, death shroud, elite forms etc…) 37 of them are weapon skills counting aquatic weapons as well. so its more like 1/3 of them are weapon skills and 102 while much less then a gw1 necro has isnt exactly a few. not just that but those 102 can do everything (except for weapon management) that the gw1 necro skills could do.

i could not let this sit by and get on with all the BS in this post section.
in GW1 you can actually choose which skills to use even while we have only 8 skills in a bar at any given time, that’s both the first half of the bar, the second half of the bar and the massive more elite skills available.
in GW2 you’re still stuck with weapons deciding the build, a healing skill slot that decides you should take a healing skill and allot less skill choices in both utility and elite skill slots.

to let you comprehend the difference, i can take curse and death skills which ever one i want to take.
sure you can’t take 20 skills at one time like in GW2 but i rather have less skills with me and make my own build then get forced with builds that might not even fit my play style.(the extra 5 skills are in dead shroud, skills i can understand to be predetermined)

we can do the same with the engineer, a profession that is IMO designed wrong.
the reason is because Anet forces you to use kits in order to compromise for the lack of weapon swap, but what if i want to use only turrets?
that flaw needs to be fixed because it means in order to play in your own style you need to suffer under the mistake they made, if they just made weapon swap possible while not taking any kit it would solve the flaw.

however, if we take their supposedly equal from GW1 (not really true but let’s let them delude them selves), let’s look at the ritualist.
you can take any skill you want in any order and guess what, you don’t need to be an attacker or spirit spammer.
you can do whatever you want and nothing limits your from making the build you want, it doesn’t have to be a meta build but it’s still the build you made, something to be proud of.

can you honestly tel anyone that GW2 has no limits in builds, can you really say that GW2 has as much, if not more, skill diversity as GW1?

KarlaGrey.5903:

Point was that GW had immense build variety, and builds that fell out of flavour could always be replaced by other, unless the entire zone/encounter or key skills were nerfed. But even then, past builds are evidence of the sheer variety it boasted at one point in time, something GW2 cannot do now, and could not do in the past.

Remove any attack type immunities from gw1 mobs (destroyers immune to fire attacks etc.) and the respective builds built around that. How many builds does that remove? Remove hero builds because you do everything in gw2 dungeons 5-man with real people. How many builds do you have now? Sounds to me a lot of this diversity was just tailoring to specific mob types, which gw2 mostly removed, and I don’t think it’s really that interesting having to shift builds because you’re going from fighting mob type 1 to mob type 2. Here’s the thing – anet simplified traits (70 points down to 14) because players were dumb and weren’t picking up minor and major traits like you are meant to – there are people in the game who would literally stick 18 points in to a trait line. So if you want any sort of complexity, this is not the game you are looking for.

maha.7902:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Point was that GW had immense build variety, and builds that fell out of flavour could always be replaced by other, unless the entire zone/encounter or key skills were nerfed. But even then, past builds are evidence of the sheer variety it boasted at one point in time, something GW2 cannot do now, and could not do in the past.

Remove any attack type immunities from gw1 mobs (destroyers immune to fire attacks etc.) and the respective builds built around that. How many builds does that remove? Remove hero builds because you do everything in gw2 dungeons 5-man with real people. How many builds do you have now? Sounds to me a lot of this diversity was just tailoring to specific mob types, which gw2 mostly removed, and I don’t think it’s really that interesting having to shift builds because you’re going from fighting mob type 1 to mob type 2. Here’s the thing – anet simplified traits (70 points down to 14) because players were dumb and weren’t picking up minor and major traits like you are meant to – there are people in the game who would literally stick 18 points in to a trait line. So if you want any sort of complexity, this is not the game you are looking for.

It meant you had to know your mobs, which I felt was a good thing. I hate that I can make earth elementals bleed.

maha.7902:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Point was that GW had immense build variety, and builds that fell out of flavour could always be replaced by other, unless the entire zone/encounter or key skills were nerfed. But even then, past builds are evidence of the sheer variety it boasted at one point in time, something GW2 cannot do now, and could not do in the past.

Remove any attack type immunities from gw1 mobs (destroyers immune to fire attacks etc.) and the respective builds built around that. How many builds does that remove? Remove hero builds because you do everything in gw2 dungeons 5-man with real people. How many builds do you have now? Sounds to me a lot of this diversity was just tailoring to specific mob types, which gw2 mostly removed, and I don’t think it’s really that interesting having to shift builds because you’re going from fighting mob type 1 to mob type 2. Here’s the thing – anet simplified traits (70 points down to 14) because players were dumb and weren’t picking up minor and major traits like you are meant to – there are people in the game who would literally stick 18 points in to a trait line. So if you want any sort of complexity, this is not the game you are looking for.

Firstly, destroyers weren’t immune to fire damage, but rather highly resistant. If all of your group was fire-based (unlikely), all you had to do was take things like winter on any character that could spare a slot, even a monk. Swapping to water or any other attunement also did the trick, and you didn’t even have to swap your gear out, bar for the headpiece, and even that wasnt a must.
Secondly, GW building was actually pretty straightfoward (bar perhaps for pvp) and fun, if only you had proper reading comprehension, decent overview over the skill list (team builder ftw), and was able to put two and two together.
Dumbing the game down because some players roll bad builds is an effort wasted, simply because there will ALWAYS be players with bad builds around.
And in all honesty, I think building in GW2 is a rather tedious and unintuitive process, and a lack of templates coupled with gear-based restrictions only makes things worse.
But hey, that seems to sit just fine with the average Joe Pve.

KarlaGrey.5903:

maha.7902:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Point was that GW had immense build variety, and builds that fell out of flavour could always be replaced by other, unless the entire zone/encounter or key skills were nerfed. But even then, past builds are evidence of the sheer variety it boasted at one point in time, something GW2 cannot do now, and could not do in the past.

Remove any attack type immunities from gw1 mobs (destroyers immune to fire attacks etc.) and the respective builds built around that. How many builds does that remove? Remove hero builds because you do everything in gw2 dungeons 5-man with real people. How many builds do you have now? Sounds to me a lot of this diversity was just tailoring to specific mob types, which gw2 mostly removed, and I don’t think it’s really that interesting having to shift builds because you’re going from fighting mob type 1 to mob type 2. Here’s the thing – anet simplified traits (70 points down to 14) because players were dumb and weren’t picking up minor and major traits like you are meant to – there are people in the game who would literally stick 18 points in to a trait line. So if you want any sort of complexity, this is not the game you are looking for.

Firstly, destroyers weren’t immune to fire damage, but rather highly resistant. If all of your group was fire-based (unlikely), all you had to do was take things like winter on any character that could spare a slot, even a monk.
Secondly, GW building was actually pretty straightfoward (bar perhaps for pvp) and fun, if only you had proper reading comprehension, decent overview over the skill list (team builder ftw), and was able to put two and two together.
Dumbing the game down because some players roll bad builds is an effort wasted, simply because there will ALWAYS be players with bad builds around.
And in all honesty, I think building in GW2 is a rather tedious and unintuitive process, and a lack of templates and gear-based bottlenecks only makes things worse.

But far less so in Guild Wars 2, where five skills were linked to a weapon. It ensures everyone can at least play. I don’t think that’s a waste of time, and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either.

Pretty sure they cant play – or rather, their input in the zerg is negligable – when they bring a cond build using a random gear pieces, most of which are power-based, and no points in cond trait trees. So it is much like fighting the destroyers with a regular fire build, I’d say. Which brings me back to all the effort wasted in dumbing things down because some players don’t know/want to skill their character properly. It’s a lose-lose situation – the bad usually won’t miraculously get better, and the good will suffer from the imposed restrictions to building their character.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Pretty sure they cant play – or rather, their input in the zerg is negligable – when they bring a cond build using a random gear pieces, most of which are power-based, and no points in cond trait trees. So it is much like fighting the destroyers with a regular fire build, I’d say. Which brings me back to the effort wasted in dumbing things down because some players don’t know/want to skill their character properly.

Making the game more inclusive to casuals in the open world isn’t a waste of time…to me. If you want to believe it’s a waste of time, you’re certainly entitled to that opinion.

I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t think it was a waste of time.

But there’s an in between group of people two. There are two types of people. People who can learn and people who can’t. Not everyone is a “gamer”. Some people need a lot longer to get the hang of stuff.

Guild Wars 1 was unfriendly enough to frustrate and lose people before they could get the hang of it. I’ve watched some of the people you’d have described as hopeless and not worth it become pretty good, even very good players. But it took a long time for some of them.

Don’t be so quick to write people off.

Linked skills. bleh. In the case of Offhands, sometimes the skills linked to the “weapon” make it basically useless. I’ve played sword n board Warriors for years, but not here. Two fairly useless long cooldown skills does not a “shield” make. Skills linked to weapons > the weapon itself. My tiny human mes uses a GS, not because it makes any sense, but because of the skills linked.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Linked skills. bleh. In the case of Offhands, sometimes the skills linked to the “weapon” make it basically useless. I’ve played sword n board Warriors for years, but not here. Two fairly useless long cooldown skills does not a “shield” make. Skills linked to weapons > the weapon itself. My tiny human mes uses a GS, not because it makes any sense, but because of the skills linked.

Oh yeah, shield skills are relatively weak in this game…possibly with the exception of the engineer. But it’s still better than some of the builds I saw in Guild Wars 1 when people had complete freedom.

Freedom to mess up is still freedom. Its how I made better builds.

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Pretty sure they cant play – or rather, their input in the zerg is negligable – when they bring a cond build using a random gear pieces, most of which are power-based, and no points in cond trait trees. So it is much like fighting the destroyers with a regular fire build, I’d say. Which brings me back to the effort wasted in dumbing things down because some players don’t know/want to skill their character properly.

Making the game more inclusive to casuals in the open world isn’t a waste of time…to me. If you want to believe it’s a waste of time, you’re certainly entitled to that opinion.

I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t think it was a waste of time.

But there’s an in between group of people two. There are two types of people. People who can learn and people who can’t. Not everyone is a “gamer”. Some people need a lot longer to get the hang of stuff.

Guild Wars 1 was unfriendly enough to frustrate and lose people before they could get the hang of it. I’ve watched some of the people you’d have described as hopeless and not worth it become pretty good, even very good players. But it took a long time for some of them.

Don’t be so quick to write people off.

I’ll just leave this here.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Galen Grey.4709:

By default the game is easy, no doubt about that and its not a flaw its a design choice they made to be casual friendly.

Having content that appeals to casuals is a design choice, but having everything being easy is a design flaw, because professions were designed and balanced around a much more competitive and complex combat environment.

When you look at, say, the Mesmer, with boon stripping, confusion and reliance on burst damage, and then you look at PvE, where sustained damage is king and burst damage is bad, where confusion does not have the power it was meant to have, and where mobs barely have any boons to strip, then we can only reach one of two conclusions:

Either the mob design is flawed
or
Mob design was always meant to be like this, but anet wasted too many resources adding useless tools to professions.

Either way you see it, there’s a flaw in design here. There’s a contradiction between how the professions were designed, and how the pve mobs were meant to be fought against.

EDIT NOTE: Challenging content does not always mean something ultra hard for hardcore players, nor does it always means that its only purpose is to make players feel like they have acchieved something. Challenging content is also good for another thing: to make us improve, to make us diversify our experience and, in turn, to make professions more distinct from each other and more fun to play.

And this one

Galphar.3901:

Nerelith.7360:

The problem I have is, that they insult casual players. The idea that for casual players to enjoy it, it needs to be dumbed down. I would think casual players can learn how to theory craft as much as anyone else. I think the problem is, some casual players… do nto wish to, and dislike that there are those that can, that then find a more viable build that is hard to counter from something on gw2wiki, since it is original.

I agree 100%. GW was actually more of a “casual” player game than GW2 is. Gw you didn’t have to find groups for your missions/dungeons. You could role a PvP only character and jump right into a match in RA. And if you belonged to a guild; which most of us did, you could usually jump right into any group play.

“Casual” doesn’t mean stupid/lazy. It means you don’t have as much time as the “Hardcore” players.

ohoh and dis (abridged for relevance)

Algreg.3629:

b) combat and builds: combat sucks, builds suck – I cannot deliver that more nuanced after having experienced a better game. Characters are different only in low percentages. Sure, half a second more of blind, an additional burn. In “that other recent game”, I build a skill deck like this: “oh, if I can remove some interrupt resistance from a boss with that skill, I can then add a freeze lockdown, port behind him and unleash my full barrage empty all clips skill” – or something completely different.

c) that casual thing: I´ll be honest – I hate casual players invading mmorpg, not that this is a secret if you followed my posts in the past. BUT GW2 is not casual friendly. It tantalizes all kinds of players, casuals probably even more so. You scrounge and scrounge and scrounge. There is no cool thing to find, no improving your character. In those “hardcore” games, well, you maybe won´t ever get that raid loot as a casual, but who cares? Some great drop from some more difficult mob, some dungeon played with your friends at your own pace, fun. GW2 sucks all excitement and fun out of gaming, for you casuals and for “hardcore gamers”.

Believe as you will Karla, but stating something doesn’t make it true.

There has to be a range of activities for different people, including some really hard stuff. It was like that in Guild Wars 1 also. Open world not too hard but as you progressed through the game it got harder and harder.

The new content is far far harder than the original stuff. Even the open world. There’s been talk about the AI of the Inquest has been improved. The player base is getting better. Not willingly perhaps, but it’s happening, a bit at a time.

Of course if you’re not playing you wouldn’t know.

I don’t know if the player base is getting better or just being conditioned to playing GW “right”.

A player getting better would be soloing champs. A player doing GW “right” is rolling over them in a 40 man zerg and not learning a thing.

This “play your way” game is the most oppressive and restrictive game I’ve seen. It’s why I ignore most content added that requires conformity.

I used to pull a Bear out with my longbow waiting at Marionette just to fire up the crowd.