After much deliberation and perusing the forums, I have decided that this game is not being taken in a fun or sustainable direction.
The game is being taken in a direction contrary to that of the manifesto by implementing grindy things that provide stat bonuses that are not fun. I don’t want to have to play every day to get my laurel or do my fractals or be scared that I’ll be left in the dust. GW2 should leave the grind to other games – that do it much better. Because ultimately GW2 will fail if it tries to be like WoW with gear acquisition – because people like me will simply go back to WoW.
I cannot play every day because I have a very demanding job that keeps me busy. But I am able to play mammoth sessions on weekends when I have time to enjoy myself. The laurel system discriminates against me. It makes me sad because it means that I’ll have a hard time keeping up with other players.
GW2 is not fun because of the impossibility of changing your spec in PVE. Because it’s so difficult to acquire a secondary set of Ascended Gear, the Build Wars of GW1 are impossible. My character is going to be locked into a single role when I purchase his Ascended Gear. And, even then, I still cannot get the Knight’s prefix. One of GW1’s beauties was being able to switch it up – I could be a million of different builds whenever I wanted. I simply had to run into the nearest town, swap my skills, and try again. While there is a lot of skill variation in GW2 that I adore, lacking the gear makes switching your spec impossible.
GW2 is grindy and lacks a sandbox feel. I feel like I’m pidgeonholed into doing the FOTM (flavour of the month, lol) tasks in order to maintain stat parity with my peers. In GW1 I had no such pressure – once I had my set of Level 20 Armor I was free to explore the vast world and simply experience for its own beauty. In GW2, I don’t enjoy doing this because I feel like I’m being left behind. An example of this was the time I spent searching for Easter Eggs and Buried Treasure in Nightfall. I simply roamed, enjoyed the landscape, and really enjoyed the feeling of finding something that I didn’t know was there.
GW2’s “gear progression” sucks. It is such a chore – there is too much RNG and grindy tasks to get the latest gear. If GW2 wants gear progression, it should do it more like WoW does. Gear progression should feel less like a chore and reward tasks that you enjoy doing anyway. The revamp of the dailies does not do this. Because of the intended ease of completion, it simply rewards playtime instead of task completion. This is not fun.
GW2 does not care about class balance. I have not seen a substantial class balance patch in the last three months. D/D Elementalists and Thieves reign supreme and make sPVP unvaried and boring. Warriors have no place in sPVP. Imbalance is natural, but the fact that nothing is being done to address this is unacceptable. If GW2 wants to be taken seriously, it has to take balance seriously. There has not been a meaningful patch to balance Warriors in over three months. That is approaching ToR levels of apathy where Mercenaries are still unusable in PVP.
GW2 has no reason for guilds. Guild Missions are coming out soon, but I cry that it’s too little too late. There are still no guild halls either.
So, I will be going back to GW1 and I will get my grindy-progression from WoW. The reason why I’m standing on my soapbox to write this post is because I deeply care about the game and would like to provide feedback to the developers as to why I no longer find their product fun.