Guild Wars 2

Looking through some of the old posts on the Forum regarding Mesmer builds I was suddenly struck by a wave of nostalgia for the way we used to put together builds before the June 2015 updates. I seem to remember there was quite a bad reaction to the new streamlining of the trait lines and the way that skills could only be unlocked at certain levels. I suppose it is in the nature of an online MMORPG that we are all swept along with the changes the developers make to the game, like them or no. If you don’t like them you don’t play the game anymore. However, I wonder how many players out there would like to be able to turn the clock back to play the game at a certain point and at what point that would be?

I would definitely like to go back in regards to the following two changes:

• Trait rework (it needed a rework, but this one turned out to be nearly worse than the original).
• New Player Experience (the starting zones used to be full of flair and theme, now they feel rather sterile and broken, even to a new player)

I think the game is much better than it was at launch. However, I wish I could get the feeling back I had when playing during the betas and when the game had just launched. In other words, I don’t want the game to turn the clock back, I want myself to be able to play the game fresh.

I don’t want to go back either. We have seen so many improvements to this game (wardrobe, masteries, fractals and raids, reward tracks, collections, all of the awesome new maps, and much more) that I would sorely miss if we went back in time.

• I’d like the merchants, BLTP and so on back at the starting area’s
• I’d like the story to start at lvl 2 again so you could level doing story instead of the you need to be lvl 10 to start story, which is frankly a problem as ppl tend to use their level 80 boosts now and get a totally wrong view of the game, on the other side the F2P’s tend to move away from the game before level 10 in some cases. Then again this is less important
• I’d like more attention to the written off dungeons. It’s good content and yes it can be abused and solo-ed, duo-ed and trio-ed. But we can play how we want can we? Fix condition usage in dungeon pls.
• I’d like an ingame movie theather with all movie bits ingame you’ve unlcoked so we can view the storyline (including LS S1 bits.) instead of the Ella Makkay short.

But I’m pretty happy as is, but these things would improve my experience as a whole.

• I’d prefer new content, a new expansion and the return of Queens jubilee event, Dragonbash, and the return of the remaining zephyrites in Labyrinthine Cliffs….

This content can be fitted in between LS S3 (and on) updates and keep the game healthy during so called “content breaks” also know as “content voids” and “just login for the laurel time”…

Minor effort could be used to refresh content and keep it enjoyable, but since Halloween and last Wintersday only saw some weapon skins and Gems Store items released:

I REALLY WONDER WHY WE STILL LOG IN AT TIMES!

But I’d say we are still okay, making the game water down will mean less players which will water the game down more…….

I played the core game
I quit the core game
I played HoT
I stayed

gw2 at release was a glorified indie game to be honest, incomparable to how finished and polished gw1 is

gw2 still has plenty of those indie artefacts from before but the game is slowly starting to take shape of something serious finally, even if not all HoT decisions were good

The only thing I’d turn back, and I’m probably alone in this, is Account-wide Dyes (or the way we acquired Dyes, anyway). I miss the thrill of looting a Dye when gathering and hoping for a new color.

Rasimir.6239:

I don’t want to go back either. We have seen so many improvements to this game (wardrobe, masteries, fractals and raids, reward tracks, collections, all of the awesome new maps, and much more) that I would sorely miss if we went back in time.

People are blinded by nostalgia and forget all that.

While I wouldn’t mind having that ‘new game smell’ again I think the game has finally started moving in the right direction. The temporary living story was an interesting experiment that unfortunately wasn’t right for a game. This newest LS is much better in terms of pacing, story and dialogue and the new maps and new expansions will finally open up the world. Along with the quality of life changes since day one, no. I wouldn’t want to go back.

Everything! Everything must go. AAAAAAAHAHA HA HA!
Especially the miniature system. Even more than the NPE.

But generally the first feature update and everything after that. What new story and maps can stay as long as it is not gating anything, or being gated by stuff, I guess. I don’t particularly care about it.

(I am angry and hateful person)

Tick Tock, goes the clock, it’s almost time for time to stop
-Scarlet

Oh, I would bring back LWS1-type releases, as well. For me, the game was never so exciting and so look-forward-to-able. (I know, made up word.) =P

i missed the originally trait system that leveling is more fun than now.

Besides this, i like everything we have now.

Amaimon.7823:

Tick Tock, goes the clock, it’s almost time for time to stop
-Scarlet

oO
Time travel confirmed!

On topic tho:
My opinion is no… No need to revert, turn back, start from the beginning nothing.
I have been enjoying all that is GW2, hiccups and all.
(If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it)

I prefer the game as it existed at launch (excluding launch bugs which are common) to what we have now. Very little of what has been added or changed balances what has been lost (IMO). Still a decent game however.

Pre (Megaserver, Ascended gear grind, Trait rework, Dungeon neglect, HoT Powercreep.)

But at this point I don’t think I could live without wardrobe and gliding.

So many nice features have been added, so I would not want to hit the reset button. No gliding? No thank you. I already suffer that on my non-HoT alt accounts. You’d want to give up multi-salvage, shared slots, permanent harvest tools, and mega-expanded materials storage? The list goes on.

No, no roll back.

I would not want to give up:

• Permanent and actual “autolooting” (as opposed to the manual ‘area-looting’ we had before).
• Gliding
• Elite specs & Revenant
• Ember Bay & Bloodstone Fen
• The changes to infusions and fractals.
• All the loot, unlocks, achievements, and other ‘progress’ I’ve made since.
• “Salvage all”

Carighan.6758:

I would definitely like to go back in regards to the following two changes:

• Trait rework (it needed a rework, but this one turned out to be nearly worse than the original).
• New Player Experience (the starting zones used to be full of flair and theme, now they feel rather sterile and broken, even to a new player)

+1

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

No, no roll back.

I would not want to give up:

• Permanent and actual “autolooting” (as opposed to the manual ‘area-looting’ we had before).
• Gliding
• Elite specs & Revenant
• Ember Bay & Bloodstone Fen
• The changes to infusions and fractals.
• All the loot, unlocks, achievements, and other ‘progress’ I’ve made since.
• “Salvage all”

+1 to all minus Ember Bay & Bloodstone Fen. Those two need to be done far more diligently.

Lexander.4579:

gw2 at release was a glorified indie game to be honest, incomparable to how finished and polished gw1 is

gw2 still has plenty of those indie artefacts from before but the game is slowly starting to take shape of something serious finally, even if not all HoT decisions were good

Something to ponder.
I want to go to the original Tyria again.

Only thing I would like to change was the dev asigned to Engie, when HoT was being made.

I would like to turn back the time – to skip FF14 and dive right into this game.
Lalafell are nice, but… Asura, holy moly, someone at ArenaNet created a race and a lore about a racist, arrogant, clever, long-eared and diminutive race in a perfect virtual realm. And Zojja was even on the cover art, how could that happen that I did not notice back then??……(Also, Laptop with a GT540M)

It’s like someone built a game tailored around my wishes.

GW2 is the only fictional franchise in my life I will follow, but I joined the party kinda late… 3 years to be more precise.

Heck yeah it’s not like we have living world season 1 or anything

Turn back the clock of time into an alternate world where GW2 was instead and improved and updated game based on the core systems of GW1. My favorite class was Paragon and the least represented class from GW1 is indeed the Paragon whose primary mechanics are basically non-existant outside a single skill in this game.

In the end I rolled Mesmer for GW2 based on clone death and the idea of stealth in open daylight through clones. Then that entire mechanic was gutted from the game and clones have been heavily outclasses ever since.

What we got in HoT was disgusting and still needs work the current LA doesn’t match up with the designs of anything in the game the old LA held the game together in both lore and design. They’d have to revert way to many things for me to give them anymore money out of my pockets in fact they’ve gotten zip since HoT. So yes please I’d like for the clock to be reset at least to give us back old LA.

No not really. I would like another trait system revamp (not necessarily to redo how it works, but to actually make as many traits as possible feel useful and give all 3 traits in each line/tier competitive abilities to make it an actual choice instead of 1 being so clearly superior to the other 2). I would like for some mesmer skills in particular to function closer to how they did when the game was launched. But overall I think that the game went in a very positive direction since I started playing.

There are of course some changes made that I disagree with. But overall the changes to the game have been largely positive in my opinion

I think the only thing we had that’s gone that I still feel should come back is how the starter zones were before the NPE. I don’t mind the additions that came with it — dodge training, changes to weapon unlocks, popup hints, etc, I think those do help new players. I’m not even really upset by the lack of PS until level 10, though I don’t think that was a great change.

But oh, how I mind the subtractions! The convenient TP npcs, the bundles, golem chess, actually feeding cows … the NPE sterilized the starter zones of a lot of their rich whimsy and I continue to feel that was a mistake.

No, some of the NPE stuff should be taken back but the trait streamlining was good, makes it easier for them to add new ones (aka elite specs). Not to say that some of them dont need a rework because they may do but the streamlining itself was positive

Yes, as I say, the only part I consider a bad idea is the loss of starter area flavor. Actual game systems work very well as revamped.

Just my taste, but I lost my passion for the game in April 2014. The changes that began back then pushed me further and further from the game.

I like the ability we got to respec in the field, but that is about it. I loved the core game, but since that time I only come back toy around a bit. Every so often I log in, and now I just came to peek at the forums. Loved the game before, now….not very much.

But I always hope something will change in a way I enjoy. So I check in from time to time.

To each, his own. Such is the nature of MMOs, they change a lot.

This is going to be intrinsically biased because the people who have been made upset have largely already left, and left a long while ago.

Frankly, I’d much rather play the game without anything that came with HoT.

DeceiverX.8361:

This is going to be intrinsically biased because the people who have been made upset have largely already left, and left a long while ago.

Frankly, I’d much rather play the game without anything that came with HoT.

Well… I came back.

Kinda agree with you though. The maps may be pretty but navigating them has a difficulty curve all of it’s own. You can’t keep immersion when you’re checking the mostly useless map every twelve seconds.

And the old way we had to acquire skills was so, so much better. I don’t know why Guild wars changed it to the boring normal style. One of the old selling points was unique it was..

Crinn.7864:

I played the core game
I quit the core game
I played HoT
I stayed

This.
Core game bored me very quickly.
Living Story, Fractals, Gliding, HoT maps are all great to me. Ane elite specializations. I really love chronomancer more than I loved my mesmer.

Now I regret I ever left because there’s so much to catch up.

I don’t know about turning the clock back entirely, but there are certainly some features I miss. If we could transdimensionally fuse the parallel timelines – i.e. NPE vs Non-NPE – into an evolutionary-mutational amalgam retaining desirable traits of each while discarding undesirable permutations… that would be great. I shall include a condensed overview forthwith.

Translated for bookahs: Not want go back to start, but there bunch of kitten me can’t now do; want do again. Make short list.

-Manually unlocking weapon skills. I liked the idea of using a weapon to get better at using that weapon. I also liked having my second, and perhaps third attack unlocked before leaving the tutorial. I get that some considered it an extra grind; I get that maybe sometimes you forgot to fully unlock a weapon by max level and then unlocking the skills became a chore. Seriously, though, basic weapons were so cheap and easy to get, not unlocking your skills was entirely your own fault. This provided an actual, though temporary, in-game use for weapon vendors and white-level trash… to “try out” a new weapon type.

-No level locks. Okay, that’s not entirely true. Some stuff was level-gated, such as weapon-swapping, but the great majority of content was wide open for us to set the pace. Personal Story started immediately after the tutorial and progressed as you located and completed steps. You could jump to LA from your Home City right out of the gate and explore anywhere, regardless of level; limited only by your own ability to evade stronger mobs.

-Freedom of choice with skills and traits. The simple ability to choose the order in which skills and traits become available, and unlock the rest at my leisure. Coupled with this: the ability to have a (mostly) complete build by level 21. I get that not everyone liked the quicker pace, many complained that levels 30-60 felt “empty” without more stuff to unlock, but I disagree. The ability to have a complete build early-on and then tinker with it as you obtain more abilities is my favorite part of RPGs, especially Guild Wars. Conversely, looking at blank spaces in my build that I can’t fill in until I level up annoys me.

Carighan.6758:

I would definitely like to go back in regards to the following two changes:

• Trait rework (it needed a rework, but this one turned out to be nearly worse than the original).
• New Player Experience (the starting zones used to be full of flair and theme, now they feel rather sterile and broken, even to a new player)

I CANNOT +1 THIS ENOUGH.

For sure, to the time when 800 gems are sold for 3 Silber. Would invest everything.

I would love to go back to the old fravtals tbh. I only made it to lvl50 back when jade maw was the only boss AND only on even lvls. I would of loved to be at the lvl80 with the others

Not really. I actually love the variety HoT introduced, I’m just not a fan of the power creep.

If they could tone it down a little it’d be great.

There are a few major things that have mostly killed my interest in the game. These things are: the wardrobe system and the elimination of town clothes; the new “streamlined” trait system that is actually a straitjacket on character development; and the way that everything now feels monetized for Heart of Thorns, which I don’t have.

Yes, if I could turn back the clock to the original heyday of GW2’s first year and the implementation of the first season of the Living Story, I absolutely would.