Guild Wars 2

Outlined Below: TLDR I do not do those if you can not be bothered do not read.

-Origional design of GW2
-Design Traps that GW2 will have hard time recovering from
-State of the game
-What can be done
-I will refrain from talking about world bosses they will always be loot piniata’s or timed challenges in which a few newbies can mess the fight for everyone, this is what Anet chose and it will not change.

Guild Wars has was originally touted as game where in which your abilities as a player leads to success. Dodge mechanic added to the game to lead to more active combat and give all classes a way to negate damage. The basic idea is sound.

State of the Game:

Somewhere along development they fell into some design traps that I think they just can no longer escape. Dodge mechanic was smart but they created a trap and fell into it, dodging enables all players to be immune to all relevant monster abilities which is nice but to make dodge skills relevant all bosses have 1 shot 2 shot skills with a low attack frequency enough for endurance to keep up. The over use of this mechanic has hindered development and has lead to the stale game play we see today. Memorize pattern of bosses, learn to melee strafe and never get hit. Part of the reason why you see so many dungeons being able to be solo is due to this design for better or for worse that is how the game is.

Berserker meta and why it will never change:

Due to game design of slow hard hitting enemies demonstrated above. Defense stats never matter almost never matter. Also they fell into another design trap that GW2 may never recover from. Bosses have 500k hp because the only way for a experienced player to die is well to make an error, high hp on bosses ensures that players need more time to kill a boss therefore more time to make an error. Due to the combination of defense stats not helping much damage stats become the most important, the faster you kill the less chance you make an error. This is why berserker meta will always be the meta. Using their game design strategies they made only possibly only 3 item stat sets relevant for 90% of the game. The trade off of higher defense for more stable runs is non existent. obviously the best players will always shoot for least defense required to finish a run smoothly but in GW2 trade off is not there.

What needs to be done to make the game exciting and fresh?

-Monsters need less HP, to compensate. monsters need to use more special skills and combination attacks.
-Enemies need increased attack frequency if they want to make defense stats relevant.
-AI needs to be smarter which is not going to happen, AI in this game worse than GW1. AI should act smarter and move around instead of standing or rushing players making positioning matter. Example ranged enemies without line of sight will charge around a corner into melee range instead of flanking around out of melee range. Monster movement would also serve to stop the corner stacking strategy which devoid of smart game play. Almost all bosses boil down to stand here melee dodge this and that.

Sadly Anet seems amendment in its direction and never admits its mistakes I do not foresee, GW2 becoming fun to play ever again. Once GW2 loses its luster you to will find it very hard to get into the game. I only play when there is new content after that I quit. If LS stays poorly written and designed people like me will not be motivated to log back in.

Yeah, I made a similar post a while back. For PvE to really work right, it needs to be more like pvp – mobs need less health, smarter AI, more ways to mitigate damage, attack more frequently, and do less damage on most attacks.

Until those things are done PvE will be more or less broken.

The game will change on the feedback they get from China now, the OP’s post has been mentioned time and time again on these forums, nothing will change, they cant change zerker unless they remove it completely, and that in itself will cause people to leave, so they remove the rewards instead, its a lose/lose for anet on this topic,

If however China start complaining about the lack of rewards etc or bugs that we have suffered from since launch, it WILL be fixed, because China means way more to them than us, given the game is pretty much a P2P out there, so hold tight for up coming changes in the next few months.

Remember this game is for the causal player, you mention about world bosses etc, given that there are way more people than ever at each one, and most burn down in minutes yet give little loot is nothing new, I really cannot see a way they can change that without making it hard for the causal ping ping I win player.

I made a post about 18 months ago about why cant we have instanced Hardmode for zones……….that might make things interesting.

As someone very familiar with the concept of the “berserker meta” and also someone who has played since beta, I can honestly say it has never affected me.

I never run berserker, yet I have no trouble getting into any groups to run content. I take a look at the LFG list, maybe 1 on there is saying zerker only, the rest say nothing, I join those. Nobody asks me to ping gear, nobody really says anything except for “hi!”. We run the dungeons, give our “good run”s all around, and then move on. I’ve run FoTM up to 30 without ever needing zerker gear (I just now hit 55AR so will start 40-49—but in PVT w/ cleric trinkets, which has never been questioned).

I guess I personally don’t see this meta being a meta at all, except for speed running specifically. I’m honestly trying to think of a time I’ve even had someone ask if I was wearing zerker and I can’t think of one scenario. At this point most speed runners will request zerker only, just don’t join those speed run groups. Those seem to be the minority these days more than anything.

Is it the best set-up for killing things quickly? Absolutely! Is it the only set-up viable to run dungeons? Not even close.

If I can run CoF p1 in 12min with 2 level 80s, and the rest non-80s in Rare gear (none of us zerker builds), then what does it even matter. Gonna save myself 4-5min? Meh. Not worth it.

It really comes down to being a good player or not. I’d take a good Cleric’s build Guardian over a bad Zerker Guardian any day of the week. Gear doesn’t = skill. Skill = skill. 5 awesome Zerker players will be able to clear content faster, yes, this is true. But so what? Why does that bother anybody? 5 awesome players in any other gear set-up will still be able to clear content easily, just not as fast.

I really like your post and totally agree with your points. Just to refer to one thing, I read and my friends who participated in the beta told me that in WS any monster ( not to mention raid bosses etc. ) use random skills out of the pool of tens of different skills. This kinda makes it more unpredictable and challenging at the same time, I think. If this is indeed true, I am yet to play WS myself when it launches on 3 June, I’d believe it to be a great idea, something to be introduced in GW2 for sure. Let’s be honest, we all know how PvE monsters/creatures look like, lol.

Monsters, maps, and encounters need to have more random elements in them.

• Accomplished by making new niches for professions to exploit
• Changing encounters and monster mechanics
• Other things

Randomness is a good thing up to a certain amount. If there’s very little random events happening in nature, then populations will likely go extinct when a disruption occurs. Likewise if there’s too much random events occurring.

I would really like to see more procedurally generated content and the combat to have a much greater need for Control and Support roles. Until the superiority of the damage role becomes useless for some situations, then the other roles will not be optimal or used as widely.

Monster, map, and encounter design changes need to happen coupled with changes to the professions for this to work. New niches need to be made for each profession. Killing an enemy has to make some events FAIL. Invent a different way of succeeding that does not involve killing the enemy(s).