Guild Wars 2

Hello.

I’ve spent about a month with this game -it’s not as much as most of you have, but I’ve noticed some glaring mistakes.
Some people would tell me to get gud out of reflex, but inability to progress is not the issue, rather the general annoyance factor.
Let’s begin;

1. Knockbacks;

A lot of enemies knock me down, interrupt my best attacks, slow me down, and they do so with infuriating frequency. My character is often turned into a pinball, thrown around helplessly in a stunlock until his health depletes.
In less severe cases, it just prolongs the fight to several times the length it would otherwise be.
Some would say, evade them.
Thing is, there’s no evading all of it. Most of these attacks are fast and come with no warning.
Some are slow and telegraphed, and might even paint an indicator on the ground – Even these can be impossible to evade when fighting multiple monsters, or might still happen with such frequency that there is no time for attacking between trying to avoid danger.

In short, it’s just not fun. A disabled character is not fun. Wasted time is not fun.

2. Damage.

It’s okay in the early game, but the further I reached the more of a problem it became; Every monster deals too much damage, and takes too little.
By the time I hit 80 on my guardian, it became clear I have to abandon “Knight” stats in favor of a full “Soldier” type outfit, just so the most basic monsters would not present lethal danger.
A pity, for the class would have some interesting crit based procs.

Even fully equipped with exotic gear, the expansion zones are just ridiculious;
I’ve often been jumped by a group of mobs and slain in seconds, when all I wanted was to travel from point A to point B. I’ve seen complete raids form just to earn a hero point. In fact, the only way to do anything without undue hassle, seems to be to move in packs of 10+ players.

3. Traps

Some are avoidable. Some have way too short timers, especially in some dungeons. The ones that include them always see a couple of wipes, and more wasted time at such spots.

Once again, not fun. Just frustrating. Eventually everyone gets through, but time was wasted.

4. Travel

For a game with such huge zones, it was a surprise to learn there are no mounts.
Clearly, a way to move 2-3 times faster would be a great boon. Why do we not have them?

Heart of Thorns zones made this issue worse;
Many narrow paths are full of dangerous monsters that are difficult to avoid and slow to kill, while they are equipped with many knockdown and cripple spells, making the simple act of travel a veritable nightmare.

I’m not sure if the developers were aware, but their maps weren’t the greatest to begin with; Many unimportant details clutter up the page, making important ones harder to see. It’s difficult to tell where a road leads, where are impassable barriers, and how high or deep something is located.
And while things were this messy, they made the expansion zones so kitten ably vertical, with many paths underneath each other.

Don’t get me wrong, these zones are nice looking and very interesting, but with the method of travel and the quality of the maps the game has, navigating them is a terrible experience, and finding a place has more to do with luck and memory of previous fails than map reading.

It causes problems like finding out after long minutes of travel that I can’t reach my destination on the path I took, or dying to overpowered mobs just before I’d get there, and I have to start over from a distant waypoint – IF it is not “contested”.

-How to fix it?

Gliding and jumping mushrooms are not enough. It’s unlikely the expansion zones would ever get redesigned, but clearer maps, and FLYING MOUNTS would make them enjoyable.

And a massive nerf to every monster’s damage, hp, and the frequency and strength of their CC abilities, especially in the case of special enemies, like bosses, veterans, inhabitants of dungeons, or event monsters.

I’d really like that. Of course I don’t have any realistic expectations to actually see any of this happen, but I had to vent.

Lesser issues:

-Gathering tools

Make them permanent. It’s an annoyance to run out, or spend cash on fancy versions from the item shop – which I understand still cost copper to use.
Lame.

-Item skins:

Many weapon skins exist in the game. Yet with a few exceptions, all the items I find are the simplest versions. They should be tiered. Like lvl 0-10; uses this skin, lvl 10-20 uses that, etc. It’s kinda stupid to keep finding the same iron greatsword /iron chainmail at any level only with better stats.

-The cash shop.

I know, the studio has to make a profit somehow. But while the game is definitely not free – the expansion at least, yet some aspect are as limited as in any f2p game. Bank storage, bag slots, material storage, transmog charges and character slots should NOT cost money!

There. Venting done, textwall over.

So basically you dislike the entire game?

Fortius.3648:

I’ve seen complete raids form just to earn a hero point. In fact, the only way to do anything without undue hassle, seems to be to move in packs of 10+ players.

Those aren’t complete raids. They’re usually one person tagging up to show new people around/collect hero points. Not just one hero point, mind you, usually most if not all of them in the map. Those groups aren’t something to be angry about or avoided. They’re a pretty fun way to complete the expansion content, imo. Now, you don’t have to join those groups. I did most hero points on my main classes without them. But if you’re having trouble or think the mobs have too many hit points and you don’t have enough, join a “raid”. This is an mmo. People are there. Use them.

The amount of CC can get somewhat stupid because they just give it to everything and have very short cooldown on them for both hard and soft CC. Many mobs’ balance also end up failiing once scaling is in effect.

You can have a squishy mob that hits very hard which is mostly fine but then you scale it to a champion and it stops being squishy and it how hits even harder. It also gains a breakbar so all forms of CC is useless against it as well.

The most important thing I would personally advise you OP is to get LS2 in the gemstore. I will say that the game does a poor job at making the transition between core game to HoT if you only recently hit lvl 80. You should also take a look at doing fractals and dungeons to take a better look at what guardians can do. Try also a bit of PvP to have better reflexes in terms of mechanics. After that HoT will become way easier for you imo.

Fortius.3648:

Bank storage, bag slots, material storage, transmog charges and character slots should NOT cost money!

Really ? I totally disagree , it should cost some money because bank/bags slols are one of the source of money for Devs , and I really love to have this game working for long time , so for f2p game it’s how it suppose to be.

For a game with such huge zones, it was a surprise to learn there are no mounts.
Clearly, a way to move 2-3 times faster would be a great boon. Why do we not have them?

You can have speed buff for each class , so no need for mounts in GW2 , As soon as you have opened waypoints on maps you can travel fast , way faster than in same other games with mounts system

Many weapon skins exist in the game. Yet with a few exceptions, all the items I find are the simplest versions. They should be tiered. Like lvl 0-10; uses this skin, lvl 10-20 uses that, etc. It’s kinda stupid to keep finding the same iron greatsword /iron chainmail at any level only with better stats.

Looks like you don’t really understand about skins in GW2 at all .

Gathering tools

Make them permanent. It’s an annoyance to run out, or spend cash on fancy versions from the item shop – which I understand still cost copper to use.
Lame

Why permanent tools should be free ? Play the game , make gold , exchange for gems , buy tools , easy.

And about damage and that everything is difficult to play/survive for you ?
Well , it’s all about learning class you are playing , I am great on my 2 mains, but struggle a lot with alts I don’t play often .
Just learn to play.

Perhaps, like many of us, it may require more than 1 month to learn to play your Profession. Take your time exploring all that Tyria has to offer. Complete the higher level maps before venturing into launch-HoT maps. Learn all the mechanics of the game, and that doesn’t mean just combat.

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.

Been playing GW2 since pre-release in August 2012, but am in no way a hardcore player. I feel a lot of what you’re complaining about is because of what you’ve been taught when playing other MMO’s. Also sounds like you just don’t like the game.

Knockbacks:
Depending on the build you’re using, they can become pretty infuriating. But there’s a great number of ways you can counter these. Especially since the expansion came out, a lot of large knockback attacks are tied with what we call a defiance bar, where you get a 2-3 second window to apply CC (Fear, stun, knockback, chill etc…) to the enemy and interrupt whatever large knockback attack they’re about to perform if you do enough. You also get skills that apply a boon called Stability, others that block incoming attacks or mitigate them entirely depending on your profession. And of course what every profession in the game has, dodge. Using a mixture of these and moving around cleverly should put you in a fairly good position most of the time.

Damage:
Having full toughness/vitality gear isn’t going to help you much if you’re expecting to be able to face tank the game and never die. Even our ‘tanks’ in GW2 need to learn how to dodge appropriately, bring proper skills for damage mitigation and time their heals to when they’re really needed while dealing as much damage as they can. More experienced players in the game will more often than not take more damage orientated stats (Berserkers, Assassins, Sinister, Viper etc…) as this results in being able to kill the enemy far more quickly, and spend less time trying to mitigate the damage the enemy is trying to unleash on you.

Traps:
Will need some specific examples before I can really comment here. I imagine dungeons are difficult if you’re running with a group of 5 who are doing their first time run. But with those of us who are familiar with them, there are no unavoidable traps that wipe the team.

Travel:
Beating a dead horse. Game has plenty of waypoints you unlock as you explore, mounts are not needed. If you’re desperate to ride something around in the game, buy either the flying carpet or flying broom toys

Excelsior.

The only problem of you I can agree to is the knockback issue. Being bounced back and furth 6 or 7 times in a row by 10 mobs that are gangb… you is very annoying indeed, but flying mounts – apart from being generic and totally out of any relation story-wise* – would totally render any danger on the ground as skippable.

(*) In HoT for example, why would you fly trough the jungle with a winged something? Isn’t it supposed to have a, uh, “depressing” feeling to you? It’s war after all. And not like “kitten kitten let’s skip all the dagner. Hey, NPCs, why don’t you do it too?”. Gliding is way cooler than I expected it to be and makes more sense, because it’s not some huge compagnon, but more a tool of yours.

1 month and you’re already in HoT….

Its not your weapons or your choice of utilities or your choice of traits that will make you survive in HoT and in any other part of the game, but rather your knowledge of the game.

Learning to dodge was the best thing that happened to me in GW2.

Zedek.8932:

Excelsior.

The only problem of you I can agree to is the knockback issue. Being bounced back and furth 6 or 7 times in a row by 10 mobs that are gangb… you is very annoying indeed, but flying mounts – apart from being generic and totally out of any relation story-wise* – would totally render any danger on the ground as skippable.

(*) In HoT for example, why would you fly trough the jungle with a winged something? Isn’t it supposed to have a, uh, “depressing” feeling to you? It’s war after all. And not like “kitten kitten let’s skip all the dagner. Hey, NPCs, why don’t you do it too?”. Gliding is way cooler than I expected it to be and makes more sense, because it’s not some huge compagnon, but more a tool of yours.

npc’s tried flying to skip the jungle… it didn’t work…

Fortius.3648:

Hello.

I’ve spent about a month with this game -it’s not as much as most of you have, but I’ve noticed some glaring mistakes.
Some people would tell me to get gud out of reflex, but inability to progress is not the issue, rather the general annoyance factor.
Let’s begin;

1. Knockbacks;

Most knockback attack are pretty well choreographed. This is partly a L2P issue, wherein over time you’ll learn the tells and when to dodge/block to avoid this. That said, I agree that its annoying. GW2 has no mechanic to stop chain CC, which gets especially bad in Bitterfrost Frontier and Lake Doric. It is getting to the point where I think the game does need this, because you mess up once and will get knockbacked/stunned 3-4+ times in a row, and most builds don’t carry more than 1 stun break in PvE. It does get ridiculous sometimes.

2. Damage.

I can’t agree here. You are using very defensive gear, with few offensive stats. That is why your damage is so low. If you want to deal more damage, consider using assassins or berserker gear, or something similar. As to monsters dealing lots of damage, that’s how combat in GW2 works. Its not an attrition game like some others are, the longer a fight drags on in GW2, the more dangerous it gets. Because mobs hit hard. That is by design. So by using more offensive gear, you should find that you will do a bit better

3. Traps

Traps in dungeons? or the traps that you have to disable for a few hearts? Either way, most of them have tells and specific graphics. Some of them are hard to see, but with more practice you will learn what to look for. Here’s a tip specifically for dungeons though, if the walls/floors in a passage way change, or you are walking through a doorway or around a corner, expect spike traps and dodge through there instead.

4. Travel

I actually love the travel system, and don’t really want mounts. I feeel they would detract from the game, as they would make you pay even less attention to this wonderfully amazing world that ANet has designed and built. The HoT maps can be tough at first (and in all likelihood you will never like TD), but they were designed for someone with max masteries. This means lean techniques gliding and nuhoch wallows. They are navigateable without those, but those masteries make them infinitely easier and more fun to navigate. In the LWS3 maps, bouncing mushrooms and the thermal propulsion tubes make traveling much quicker (as well as ley line gliding).
.

OriOri.8724:

Fortius.3648:

4. Travel

I actually love the travel system, and don’t really want mounts. I feeel they would detract from the game, as they would make you pay even less attention to this wonderfully amazing world that ANet has designed and built. The HoT maps can be tough at first (and in all likelihood you will never like TD), but they were designed for someone with max masteries. This means lean techniques gliding and nuhoch wallows. They are navigateable without those, but those masteries make them infinitely easier and more fun to navigate. In the LWS3 maps, bouncing mushrooms and the thermal propulsion tubes make traveling much quicker (as well as ley line gliding).
.

Are we even playing the same game? I must agree i pay some attention to the beautiful map art but thats pretty much while im looking for a wp, the actual world? haHAA why would i when i can teleport whereever i want witout a care in the world?

And you say mounts would detrack from actually paying attention to the world, the mounts which will carry you physically and naturally through the actual world and not some artificial teleportation with constand loading screens?
Sure its on an increased movement speed (40%~ maybe) but thats what makes them mounts and not… lazy kitten walking.

Waypoints are what detrack players from the wonderful world and i can’t stop praising Anet for making the new maps less wp heavy while giving us actual means to traverse them which are all physical and they dont take your eyes off of the actual world.

I hope Anet whereever we go (crystal desert or w/e place) puts way less way points and gives us actual means to move around the map like mounts.

That’s exactly what they did with masteries though…..

HoT and LWS3 maps have vastly fewer WPs than core tyria maps, and traveling is heavily dependent upon the masteries that move you through the world (with the exception of nuhoch wallows, which are essentially targetted WPs).

Jumping mushrooms, gliding, and thermal propulsion tubes all allow you to travel quickly while still looking at the world.

I don’t think mounts will add anything to that.

OriOri.8724:

That’s exactly what they did with masteries though…..

HoT and LWS3 maps have vastly fewer WPs than core tyria maps, and traveling is heavily dependent upon the masteries that move you through the world (with the exception of nuhoch wallows, which are essentially targetted WPs).

Jumping mushrooms, gliding, and thermal propulsion tubes all allow you to travel quickly while still looking at the world.

I don’t think mounts will add anything to that.

It will make tyria feel more real and immersive and not just a map on which i can wp where ever i want. True mounts will not add anything that isnt in the hot maps or lw3 maps yet but they will do the same in a more down on earth and immersive way and im cool with that.

Traversing the deserts with a big kitten wurm or lizzard and lakes that that lizzard an swin fast in will only add to the experience. While the rest of tyria wouldnt suffer from it since it doesnt suffer from glidders. And in the end mounts would sell in the gemstore and would be great as rare drops from world bosses/ rewards from fractals (cm collections?) raids, wvw, pvp etc.

And hell ofc they will tie mounts to masteries. Each rank a diff type of mount or a diff mount skill or w/e. This was ofc a given….

Fortius.3648:

Hello.

I’ve spent about a month with this game -it’s not as much as most of you have, but I’ve noticed some glaring mistakes.
Some people would tell me to get gud out of reflex, but inability to progress is not the issue, rather the general annoyance factor.

Yes, “most of us” are now closing in on having played this game close to 5 years. I would bet many of us would be overwhelmed aswell if thrown into the deep end of a game which is over 4 years old. From this month of experience, exatly how much time have you actually spent learning or understanding mechanics or the basics of how the game works, besides the quite fun leveling process I mean?

Fortius.3648:

1. Knockbacks;

A lot of enemies knock me down, interrupt my best attacks, slow me down, and they do so with infuriating frequency. My character is often turned into a pinball, thrown around helplessly in a stunlock until his health depletes.
In less severe cases, it just prolongs the fight to several times the length it would otherwise be.
Some would say, evade them.
Thing is, there’s no evading all of it. Most of these attacks are fast and come with no warning.
Some are slow and telegraphed, and might even paint an indicator on the ground – Even these can be impossible to evade when fighting multiple monsters, or might still happen with such frequency that there is no time for attacking between trying to avoid danger.

In short, it’s just not fun. A disabled character is not fun. Wasted time is not fun.

Yet thousands upon thousands of players manage just that, evade or counter the things the npcs throw at them. I’m not even talking about some of the insane solo stuff people have been doing but simple open world traversal and mechanics. I will give though, HoT will be very punishing to new players with its difficulty ramp up, especially on ones who barely have any gametime or experience.

Fortius.3648:

2. Damage.

It’s okay in the early game, but the further I reached the more of a problem it became; Every monster deals too much damage, and takes too little.
By the time I hit 80 on my guardian, it became clear I have to abandon “Knight” stats in favor of a full “Soldier” type outfit, just so the most basic monsters would not present lethal danger.
A pity, for the class would have some interesting crit based procs.

The class does have some interesting crit based procs, unfortunately you lack the gear or the critical hit amount to make use of those. This isn’t WoW. Your damage is actually defined by the stats on the armor you wear. Here a small link to the itemnomencalture picture which nicely depicts the vanilla stat variations and how they relate to each other: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/5/55/Nomenclature_graph.png

Your Knights set provides you with 58% of the offensive stats which a full damage set would provide. Bad news, soldiers gives even less damage stats. Switching to soldiers from knights due to lack of damage is like poking your eye out because you have a problem with your vision. That’s not even getting into how the damage formula works.

Fortius.3648:

3. Traps

Some are avoidable. Some have way too short timers, especially in some dungeons. The ones that include them always see a couple of wipes, and more wasted time at such spots.

Once again, not fun. Just frustrating. Eventually everyone gets through, but time was wasted.

Ah the time when dungeons were wipefests. How long has it been for the vast majority of the community? 3.5 years now? Don’t worry, just takes practice.

Fortius.3648:

4. Travel

Yes, the HoT maps do require some memorization and have a learning process attached to them (well one of them does, the rest are very straight forward). Unlike some other MMOs you can’t just autopilot while watching the map autopiloting from quest objective to quest objective (well technically you can once you know the map and the npcs and their voice work). If you spend a couple of hours figuring the maps out you’ll soon come to realize how well crafted and designed they are. That of course requires some dedication and time investment.

Fortius.3648:

-Gathering tools

Make them permanent. It’s an annoyance to run out, or spend cash on fancy versions from the item shop – which I understand still cost copper to use.
Lame.

What you are thinking of are the infinite salvaging tools, the gathering tools are free per use and infinite and yes, bought in the gem shop. Arenanet are a company after all and they do have to make money on something, you know without the monthly price model or the blantant pay-to-win some other non subscription games have.

Fortius.3648:

-Item skins:

Many weapon skins exist in the game. Yet with a few exceptions, all the items I find are the simplest versions. They should be tiered. Like lvl 0-10; uses this skin, lvl 10-20 uses that, etc. It’s kinda stupid to keep finding the same iron greatsword /iron chainmail at any level only with better stats.

There are literally thousands of skins. You have either not spent even 10 seconds looking for some or are just trolling. Here a link to the dulfy guide for the fashion collector achievement: http://dulfy.net/2014/04/17/gw2-fashion-collector-title-guide/

Fortius.3648:

-The cash shop.

I know, the studio has to make a profit somehow. But while the game is definitely not free – the expansion at least, yet some aspect are as limited as in any f2p game. Bank storage, bag slots, material storage, transmog charges and character slots should NOT cost money!

Sure, let’s hear your alternative suggestion as to what they should charge for. Remember though, your suggestion better be an improvement over the existing system, a simple “it should be free because I want to” very seldom is a valid businessplan.

It most definitely took me more than one fully leveled char to even get a glimpse of the games mechanics.

But reading your post, you simply hate GW2. So, instead of demanding that a game that has been established for almost 5 years changes completely just because YOU say so, I propose you just take your time to re-orientate in this vast ocean of possible games and play something you don’t hate every second of.

Fortius.3648:

Every monster deals too much damage, and takes too little.

Is this about core Tyria in the game called Guild Wars 2? Because in core Tyria (not expansion zones) monsters die in 2-3 hits and deal a negligible amount of damage that you can stand still and completely ignore it. Is your gear exotic (orange)? Did you upgrade your gear when you reached level 80 or you are playing with low level gear? Did you use your traits?

I’m going to start from the bottom of the list and go up.

-Cash Shop
Most games I’ve played don’t even have transmog charges. Increasing bank storage, more character slots; these are characteristics not of F2P games, but MMO games in general. It’s not only F2P games that have these items in cash shops. Most MMO games run cash shops in a similar manner. The cash shop is perfectly fine as is.

-Item Skins
Yes, many skins exist. Yes, the skins don’t really change much when you’re looking at masterwork weapons. One possible reason is because Arena Net wants to make you work for certain skins that you want. Giving you all the cool skins during your 1-80 experience, which is arguably an extended tutorial, would really reduce the amount of play time the game got. That’s one reason among many others for not having the skins change too much during the 1-80 experience.

-Gathering Tools
The permanent ones don’t use copper. So you’re flat out wrong there… lame. I imagine ArenaNet makes a small fortune off of those permanent tools; in the recent shared inventory slot sale, many people were asking for recommendations for what to store in these slots. It seems that certain permanent gathering tools from the cash shop were recommended fairly often. As you say in your last point, the Devs still have to make money, and the permanent gathering tools are a great way that a majority of the community has no problem with.

-Traveling
Navigating in the new zones can be particularly painful, especially if you are going from point A to point B for the first time, but ArenaNet had to strike a balance somewhere. These maps are more complex than the base game maps, and were meant to encourage exploration, and also made to make the jungle feel more threatening. The jungle is huge; in the base game, its easy for the character to thing themselves powerful, especially because everything is a walk in the park. These newer maps present huge maps with threatening verticality. The developers really wanted these maps to feel dangerous, and I don’t think many would deny that the first steps into these maps were fearful and exhilarating.

-Mounts
These maps aren’t big enough to warrant mounts, especially with how common way points are, and considering the amount of speed boost that every class has access to in form of weapon, utility, or trait. In fact, it’s ironic that you mention the word “boon” in a post that you complain about speed, because there is literally a boon dedicated to increasing a character’s movement speed.

-Traps
You seem to have this idea that wasting time is not fun. There are some people playing this game that like to stop and smell the roses. There are some people in this game that enjoy being challenged, instead of face rolling over all the content. There are some people in this game that want exploration that is actually risky and time consuming. If wasting time isn’t fun for you, perhaps video games are not the best use of your time.

Oh, and if traps are taking your group so long to complete that its frustrating, either there’s some miscommunication going on, or, as they say… “get gud”. I’ve never seen a trap in this game that was actually frustrating, unless it was part of a jumping puzzle, which aren’t huge parts of the game.

-Damage
Yeah, core Tyria let us roll over everything without any effort. Things practically rolled over at the sign of a breeze. Even the event bosses were “stand still and press 1 with a ranged weapon”. It was about time that I met enemies that actually posed a threat to me, rather than enemies that are just hanging around the environment just so I can hit them to appease to my hypermasculine need to hit things all the time.

This post came off a little saltier than I had hoped, but I’m fine with that. Your original post expresses opinions that are largely based on incorrect premises, so your induction for your conclusions fail you. Most of your reasoning is “wasted time is not fun” which is seriously ironic considering that this is a video game forum. It really just seems like you played this game for a month and started off searching for reasons to dislike it, because some of the items you present can be explained or understood with fairly little research and just some slight amount of mental energy on your part.

The worst part for me is you labelled these things as “glaring mistakes” instead of “your opinions”. 2+2 = -36 <- That’s a glaring mistake. What you have are opinions on ANet’s design decisions, not an answer sheet of all the mistakes they made.

1. Knockdowns/backs. Yeah, the stunchains are obnoxious. Fortunately, you have stunbreaks and stability. Enemies have them to make getting hit feel punishing (Learn to manage dodge/block/evade/stability), without needing to kill your character. The better you get at the game, the less time you spend with your face in the dust. Honestly, I like that it makes combat more kinetic than other games. You are also able to knock enemies around.

2. Damage – You went the wrong way. Yeah, a Guardian has a frustratingly low health pool (Same as Thief and Elementalist – lowest in the game). You should have gone for… Valkyrie, I think? is Power, Ferocity, Vitality. Or Cavalier, which gives you Ferocity instead of Precision (Your crits hit harder instead of more often). Also – with Knights gear, remember to use Sharpening Stones – it gives a boost to Power based on Toughness. The problem with Knight and Cavalier gear is that they’re Toughness mainstat, giving you pretty terrible damage output. That said, Guardian healing gets a lot of mileage out of toughness and armor.

3. Traps – They’re an encounter. Learn to get through them. Dodging and blocking are your friend.

4. Travel – The zones aren’t really huge, and there are waypoints. You’re supposed to take your time exploring between waypoints, then use waypoints to travel (I kinda wish we had Free Waypoints instead of Free Armor Repairs. Curse you, Ellen Keil!). In the Heart of Thorns zones, it actually gets better thanks to the masteries opening up more paths. Learning the maps is part of the challenge and experience. It’s not supposed to be a simple cruise-through. Mounts are ugly, too. That said, I wish there were more conveniently-located waypoints.

5. Yeah, I keep forgetting about the inconvenience of nonpermanent harvesting tools(Which don’t cost copper to use) and the Salvage-o-Mat. Fortunately, the game does allow Gold-to-Gems conversions, so you can use in-game gold to get anything you need.

6. Actually – the game DOES have a progress of weapon and armor skins. Unfortunately, the game was developed with somewhat limited resources, so they padded out the item list with reused assets (And the basic weapons were just cheap re-tints, which is REALLY lame). The armors and weapons do have a progress based on level and rarity, though. First time I played through on my Charr Warrior, I distinctly remember going through a whole chain of armor, and the Cultural weapons are used to fill out the leveling loot tables (I had gone Chain through Scale with Basic weapons, then Banded and Tempered Scale with Flame weapons… but I stayed on top of the qualities.)

I see a lot of people replied to most points already, I just wanted to add my experience with the game concerning difficulty (Damage received vs done)

I’ll tell you about my history with MMOs first:

I had played GW1 for several years, and also raided a lot in WoW from the start of TBkittenil the end of Cata. Finally I tried LotRO a bit, but never went higher level than 55.

I’ve been playing GW2 since the first public beta in april 2012. I prepurchased the Collector’s Edition, loved the game, but struggled with it at first. It seemed a lot harder than what I was used to!

Especially the dungeons, which I did with my raiding buddies from WoW, whom I had played with for years. We wiped more often than we liked at first. But after a while (MORE THAN ONE MONTH!) we got the hang of the game, and started doing pretty well.
No more wiping.

When most of my friends were still playing, we got bored and we made a team of new characters and jumped straight into fractals, at level 2. This was back when Fractal levels weren’t account wide. So the characters would just start at level 1.
But, Apart from having boosted stats, we didn’t have any utility skills, no elite skill, no talent points at all, and we didn’t have any gear, or weapons other than what you get at the start of the game. We even still had to unlock most of our weapon skills, while a lot of the mobs in fractals didn’t give XP when killed (mostly the events where they spawned and you had to fight off waves, like start of Volcanic Fractal), and therefor didn’t even advance our weapon skill levels most of the time!
Back then you also didn’t get to choose what fractals you would be doing. You got 3 random ones and that’s what you had to deal with.
We made it work anyways, and managed to repeat the “joke” until the characters hit fractal level 10, which was when agony started back in the day. We quit by then as we obviously couldn’t equip Ascended lvl 80 gear with AR on our (by then) level 8 characters.

Nowadays a lot of them stopped playing, but I occasionally still play with one of my friends. We no longer seem to need the whole group, because we can 2-man pretty much all dungeons and fractals, unless mechanics require more people. Like the domes to open the gate in CoF1, you NEED 5 people as far as I know. Or the pressure plates in Underground Facility, 1 mesmer, 1 thief, and one random as pressure plate weight can get through the first bit.

We have yet to encounter content (apart from very high level fractals, raids and large scale events) we can’t finish between the 2 of us, even though a lot of it was actually meant for 5 people. There were 1 or 2 Hero challenges in HoT we didn’t manage between the 2 of us, so we had to wait for others to show up.

Before you say “But you played for 4,5 years, you have the best gear in the game by now!”: The only ascended gear I have on my main are the accessoires, rings, backpack and necklace. I never bothered to get my armor or weapon beyond Orange level. And some of that armor isn’t even suitable for my current build, since I changed from condition build to Reaper recently. It doesn’t seem to hold me back.

So sure, the game can be a bit rough at the start, but once you get the hang of it I don’t see why anyone would have trouble with it at all.

Ban Sidhe.9637:

I see a lot of people replied to most points already, I just wanted to add my experience with the game concerning difficulty (Damage received vs done)

I’ll tell you about my history with MMOs first:

I had played GW1 for several years, and also raided a lot in WoW from the start of TBkittenil the end of Cata. Finally I tried LotRO a bit, but never went higher level than 55.

I’ve been playing GW2 since the first public beta in april 2012. I prepurchased the Collector’s Edition, loved the game, but struggled with it at first. It seemed a lot harder than what I was used to!

Especially the dungeons, which I did with my raiding buddies from WoW, whom I had played with for years. We wiped more often than we liked at first. But after a while (MORE THAN ONE MONTH!) we got the hang of the game, and started doing pretty well.
No more wiping.

When most of my friends were still playing, we got bored and we made a team of new characters and jumped straight into fractals, at level 2. This was back when Fractal levels weren’t account wide. So the characters would just start at level 1.
But, Apart from having boosted stats, we didn’t have any utility skills, no elite skill, no talent points at all, and we didn’t have any gear, or weapons other than what you get at the start of the game. We even still had to unlock most of our weapon skills, while a lot of the mobs in fractals didn’t give XP when killed (mostly the events where they spawned and you had to fight off waves, like start of Volcanic Fractal), and therefor didn’t even advance our weapon skill levels most of the time!
Back then you also didn’t get to choose what fractals you would be doing. You got 3 random ones and that’s what you had to deal with.
We made it work anyways, and managed to repeat the “joke” until the characters hit fractal level 10, which was when agony started back in the day. We quit by then as we obviously couldn’t equip Ascended lvl 80 gear with AR on our (by then) level 8 characters.

Nowadays a lot of them stopped playing, but I occasionally still play with one of my friends. We no longer seem to need the whole group, because we can 2-man pretty much all dungeons and fractals, unless mechanics require more people. Like the domes to open the gate in CoF1, you NEED 5 people as far as I know. Or the pressure plates in Underground Facility, 1 mesmer, 1 thief, and one random as pressure plate weight can get through the first bit.

We have yet to encounter content (apart from very high level fractals, raids and large scale events) we can’t finish between the 2 of us, even though a lot of it was actually meant for 5 people. There were 1 or 2 Hero challenges in HoT we didn’t manage between the 2 of us, so we had to wait for others to show up.

Before you say “But you played for 4,5 years, you have the best gear in the game by now!”: The only ascended gear I have on my main are the accessoires, rings, backpack and necklace. I never bothered to get my armor or weapon beyond Orange level. And some of that armor isn’t even suitable for my current build, since I changed from condition build to Reaper recently. It doesn’t seem to hold me back.

So sure, the game can be a bit rough at the start, but once you get the hang of it I don’t see why anyone would have trouble with it at all.

You can actualy solo cof p1, not saying its easy tho.

Linken.6345:

Ban Sidhe.9637:

I see a lot of people replied to most points already, I just wanted to add my experience with the game concerning difficulty (Damage received vs done)

I’ll tell you about my history with MMOs first:

I had played GW1 for several years, and also raided a lot in WoW from the start of TBkittenil the end of Cata. Finally I tried LotRO a bit, but never went higher level than 55.

I’ve been playing GW2 since the first public beta in april 2012. I prepurchased the Collector’s Edition, loved the game, but struggled with it at first. It seemed a lot harder than what I was used to!

Especially the dungeons, which I did with my raiding buddies from WoW, whom I had played with for years. We wiped more often than we liked at first. But after a while (MORE THAN ONE MONTH!) we got the hang of the game, and started doing pretty well.
No more wiping.

When most of my friends were still playing, we got bored and we made a team of new characters and jumped straight into fractals, at level 2. This was back when Fractal levels weren’t account wide. So the characters would just start at level 1.
But, Apart from having boosted stats, we didn’t have any utility skills, no elite skill, no talent points at all, and we didn’t have any gear, or weapons other than what you get at the start of the game. We even still had to unlock most of our weapon skills, while a lot of the mobs in fractals didn’t give XP when killed (mostly the events where they spawned and you had to fight off waves, like start of Volcanic Fractal), and therefor didn’t even advance our weapon skill levels most of the time!
Back then you also didn’t get to choose what fractals you would be doing. You got 3 random ones and that’s what you had to deal with.
We made it work anyways, and managed to repeat the “joke” until the characters hit fractal level 10, which was when agony started back in the day. We quit by then as we obviously couldn’t equip Ascended lvl 80 gear with AR on our (by then) level 8 characters.

Nowadays a lot of them stopped playing, but I occasionally still play with one of my friends. We no longer seem to need the whole group, because we can 2-man pretty much all dungeons and fractals, unless mechanics require more people. Like the domes to open the gate in CoF1, you NEED 5 people as far as I know. Or the pressure plates in Underground Facility, 1 mesmer, 1 thief, and one random as pressure plate weight can get through the first bit.

We have yet to encounter content (apart from very high level fractals, raids and large scale events) we can’t finish between the 2 of us, even though a lot of it was actually meant for 5 people. There were 1 or 2 Hero challenges in HoT we didn’t manage between the 2 of us, so we had to wait for others to show up.

Before you say “But you played for 4,5 years, you have the best gear in the game by now!”: The only ascended gear I have on my main are the accessoires, rings, backpack and necklace. I never bothered to get my armor or weapon beyond Orange level. And some of that armor isn’t even suitable for my current build, since I changed from condition build to Reaper recently. It doesn’t seem to hold me back.

So sure, the game can be a bit rough at the start, but once you get the hang of it I don’t see why anyone would have trouble with it at all.

You can actualy solo cof p1, not saying its easy tho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js-G7fQsqsw

and duo the underground facility presure plate part with a mesmer and a thief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnqno-cEeXA

You’re welcome to your opinions, but you might want to give it more than a month before you decide the game is too difficult and everything needs to be turned on its head in order to make it right.

There is a lot to learn in this game, particularly when it comes to combat and class mechanics. You might surprise yourself at some point down the road when you find yourself conquering challenges you previously thought were impossible to do with your class.

I know because I had a similar initial experience. In retrospect, I was making a lot of new player mistakes. I just didn’t realize it because up until I hit the jungle, my build and tactics were working out great! I totally steamrolled the personal storyline and core Tyria maps! Then I entered the jungle and fell flat on my face! Ouch!

It sounds like you’re in the same place I was. Yet today I can solo those hero challenges you think require a raid and charge right into those camps full of chak and mordrem. Give it time. Explore your options and practice. You might surprise yourself.

Linken.6345:

You can actualy solo cof p1, not saying its easy tho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js-G7fQsqsw

zealex.9410:

and duo the underground facility presure plate part with a mesmer and a thief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnqno-cEeXA

Thanks Linken & zealex. I watched both videos. Interesting! I might suggest it to my friend as a next challenge

I never considered the stability in the pressure plate puzzle, as I kinda assumed once the doors closed the channeling of opening the door would just stop regardless.

In CoF, does he just teleport through the lava boulder bit without triggering the event? I have teleported through with a mesmer to make a portal on the other side for the party in the past, but I had no idea you could get through without triggering it, or that the door on the other end would be open if you did. Would a Mesmer teleport far enough to do that trick?

To fix the game accordingly, is

1) greatly overhaul your character build, bring defensive utilities, stun breaks, stability etc.

2) greatly improve your combat skill, map awareness

1. Knockbacks;

Knockbacks and many other types of cc are a big part of the game. There ARENT that many around in general as you may think when you look troughout the entire map, yes they can be dodged, yes they can be negated via stability, yes they can be interrupted and yes,they can be simply outran.

2. Damage.
Again, same thing as with knockbacks. Almost any attack can be completely ignored by dodging. As a guardian you have tons of (actually spammable) blocks to negate attacks completely, you have lots of regeneration and heals and you can even spam protection boons (-33% incoming dmg).

Personally i tend to always get to the 2600-2800 armor (depending on class) and the rest goes into power and precision. I also switch my weapons,utility and traits to counter the area and situation im in, and yes, any profession can adapt in any situation everywhere.

Btw, the game can be plaid from start to end in full glass cannon (berserker) stats without any problem. Many maaany players do that (it just takes player skill)

3. Traps
Are you talking about environmental traps inside dungeons? Personally i dont have any problems with them, and im actually happy to see those things inside those kinds of places cause it makes the dungeon more rich instead of just a simple 1 way track from adds-boss-adds-boss…

4. Travel
The talk about mounts have been talked since forever and nothing changed cause they aren’t really needed in this game.

All professions can pretty much spam 33% movement speed swiftness buffs, almost all of them have some form of permanent 25% movement speed trait/skill, many have mobility skills such as leaps, rushes, teleports and blinks.

There are plenty of waypoints which save time far better than if you had a mount that lets you run 50-100% faster (you would still have to navigate trough various terrains and trough “overpowered” packs of mobs that will put you in combat.

Then HoT came with large jungle areas filled with modrem enemies and other jungle dangers. We ,as players, adapt to the jungle by learning the maps “shortcuts” and using masteries that help us reach many areas with ease.

Not much waypoints in those areas cause the entire place is dangerous and ..well..lore but who cares.

-How to fix it?
Imo, and as far as ive seen lots of other people (playing other games with flying mounts), flying mounts that allow you to get high in the sky and go from point a to b pretty much destroyed any sort of player interaction. You might just as well spam the entire map with free waypoints next to all events then

Bosses, veterans, elites ,specially the special monsters are supposed to be harder and have special attacks and abilities, which again you can counter and negate in sooo many ways. To be honest i ,and many many other players find it extremely boring to fight most core tyria monsters who attack once every 2-3 seconds and are unable to move while performing the attack. A large portion of the players were super happy when they started fighting enemies in dry tops and silverwastes cause those monsters all had special abilities and mechanics, strengths and weaknesses and you can even read the small text under their names to see what they are.

Have a lot of players complained about HoT maps being too deadly? Yes, and new players still do, but thats just cause they were used to fight moas and bandits that attacked once ever 2-3 seconds and had 1 special attack they had to wind up for 3 whole seconds in order to either miss you or deal slightly more dmg than usual. And then they come to HoT where there are pocket raptors, mobs with break bars and many other types.

But guess what? People learned, adapted and everyone is returning to full zerker glass cannon builds inside HoT maps

-Gathering tools

Just take a few extra cheap tools and keep them in your inventory, same goes with salvage kits.
The permanent gathering tools dont cost anything when you use them, the permanent salvage kits (copper and silver fed) do cost, but slightly less than the ones you can buy from the merchants.

There is nothing wrong with keeping 4 salvage kits in your inventory, and nothing wrong with having 3 tools equiped and 3 more in your inventory.
And there is certainly nothing wrong with offering the same tools/kits in permanent versions in the $shop (which you can spend gold to buy them anyway)

-Item skins:
Item skins are “region” specific as well as “npc” specific + 1 set of “general” skins.

This means you will usually get general skins, but if youre in kryta you will get krytan skin as drops. If youre in shiverpeaks you will get norn skins ect.

Npc specific skins are different. There are a few different armor skin sets that you can obtain trough karma vendors (that do change depending on the zone level they are bought in)

And then we have “special” skins in special places such as dungeon skins (which are also kinda “level tiered”) cultural weapon skins , cultural armor skins (also "level tiered) and “unique” skins from various specific places.

-The cash shop.
Im sure you understand the need for limitations of f2p players…and im sure you understand the amount of content in the f2p version of the game is as large as the one all players have been playing for 4 years before the expansion…..

Personally (as a non f2p player) i never had problems with:
-only 5 character slots
-100 inventory slots (that arent filled with crafting materials cause i can instnantly deposit 250 of them in my material bank)
-30 bank storages (im not even sure what to place inside them?)
-250 material storage is plenty (stop hoarding, sell it on tp for gold or use it for crafting)
-transmog charges ( i have over 600 unused…cause i get so many of them for free)

PS: I actually have 9 characters, along with the 4 character slots i bought:
-1 silver fed salvage kit
-many bag expansions ( about enough to max out 2 characters)
-a few hair styles
-even a name change!!
-3 permanent gathering tools
and all that with in game gold….

Cyninja.2954:

The class does have some interesting crit based procs, unfortunately you lack the gear or the critical hit amount to make use of those. This isn’t WoW. Your damage is actually defined by the stats on the armor you wear. Here a small link to the itemnomencalture picture which nicely depicts the vanilla stat variations and how they relate to each other: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/5/55/Nomenclature_graph.png

Your Knights set provides you with 58% of the offensive stats which a full damage set would provide. Bad news, soldiers gives even less damage stats. Switching to soldiers from knights due to lack of damage is like poking your eye out because you have a problem with your vision. That’s not even getting into how the damage formula works.

Been playing GW2 for just over three years now, and I’ve never noticed that graph before, thanks for pointing it out. Makes me very happy with the Berserker sets my characters use.

But to the OP, I came from a “WoW” environment and there was certainly a learning curve to get used to GW2, but in the end, I found it offered a lot more and, in my opinion, the basic mechanics of combat and player cooperation are second to none here. But it took me a lot longer than a month to come to that conclusion. It took a good month to just “unlearn” WoW

Fortius.3648:

1. Knockbacks;

A lot of enemies knock me down, interrupt my best attacks, slow me down, and they do so with infuriating frequency. My character is often turned into a pinball, thrown around helplessly in a stunlock until his health depletes.
In less severe cases, it just prolongs the fight to several times the length it would otherwise be.
Some would say, evade them.
Thing is, there’s no evading all of it. Most of these attacks are fast and come with no warning.
Some are slow and telegraphed, and might even paint an indicator on the ground – Even these can be impossible to evade when fighting multiple monsters, or might still happen with such frequency that there is no time for attacking between trying to avoid danger.

In short, it’s just not fun. A disabled character is not fun. Wasted time is not fun.

Truth. Some of the worst offenders are HoT enemies with charge attacks. That is their one and seemingly only attack. Cripple doesn’t slow them, because charging skills are immune to the effects of cripple after a patch a long time ago. Their knockdowns penetrate stability, because each little step removes a stack. Yes, I’ve had Juggernaut Engis knocked down by a charging enemy…
PS. Anything with Jade in the name can get kittened for the amount of perpetual CC.
PPS. 5-second stuns aren’t amusing, ANet. Just stop.

Khisanth.2948:

The amount of CC can get somewhat stupid because they just give it to everything and have very short cooldown on them for both hard and soft CC. Many mobs’ balance also end up failiing once scaling is in effect.

You can have a squishy mob that hits very hard which is mostly fine but then you scale it to a champion and it stops being squishy and it how hits even harder. It also gains a breakbar so all forms of CC is useless against it as well.

Specifically, Mordrem Stalkers. -_-
They spam Death Blossom with far more frequency than a Thief can, making them immune to attacks half of the time while they churn out player-killing damage. The Elite/Champ versions are absurd.

2. Damage.

I often agree with this as well, but I do have to say:
You’ll get better. Give it time. I know it’s frustrating, but you’ll get more awesome, and the damage might not seem as bad as it does now.

That said, the Hero Point Champions still need to go. Especially Tangled Depths’ mushroom queen of AoE bombs in tight quarters. Again, ANet, just stop…

For a game with such huge zones, it was a surprise to learn there are no kittens.
Clearly, a way to move 2-3 times faster would be a great boon. Why do we not have them?

It’s generally considered that waypoints are superior to mounts. That was more or less true in classic Tyria. HoT and the later zones saw much fewer waypoints per square foot, probably as a way to encourage participation in events.

Most players have found a way to coax their characters into moving at +25% faster with traits/skills/runes or try to get Swiftness uptime as much as possible. It helps, definitely, but sadly, it also forces a build to be defined with those skills in mind.

I’m not sure if the developers were aware, but their maps weren’t the greatest to begin with; Many unimportant details clutter up the page, making important ones harder to see. It’s difficult to tell where a road leads, where are impassable barriers, and how high or deep something is located.
And while things were this messy, they made the expansion zones so kitten ably vertical, with many paths underneath each other.

THIS. I’d very much like custom mapping tools. I might even be willing to reinstall Overwolf if anyone has recommendations for awesome map tool mods that won’t get me banned. :\

AliamRationem.5172:

I know because I had a similar initial experience. In retrospect, I was making a lot of new player mistakes. I just didn’t realize it because up until I hit the jungle, my build and tactics were working out great! I totally steamrolled the personal storyline and core Tyria maps! Then I entered the jungle and fell flat on my face! Ouch!

Played since beta. Had the same experience! XD

Getting into the HoT beta and not knowing wth I was doing, that had me spitting mad about the future of the game. Didn’t ease much when I started in Verdant Brink, but it’s still up there as one of my kinda-favorite zones. Knowing how to get around and opening up those travel options will be a great help.
So give it time, OP.