Guild Wars 2

Prologue

Please keep in mind that this is my own personal experience of Guild Wars 2.

Tyria

Let me first explain that this world is absolutely stunning. But I did hope for more. For example airborne areas to explore as well as an underwater city.

Rata Sum ? I get the impression that Asura & Sylvari share the same home since both live so close to each other and they both are living in the forest. There’s no obvious transition when you leave The Grove and go to Metrica. I thought I would enter a floating city when I got to Rata Sum where you’d be using portals to get around up there; struggling with some heavy winds mabye and be doing a lot of jumping puzzles.

PVE

Hearts ? Events all over Tyria feels the same. The most reasonable ‘repetitive’ chain event must be “Defend this city from the enemy attacks”. Kinda obvious there would be a lot of conflict between races and mobs as they would attack each other. But stumbling on several chain events which are all the same wasn’t very fun. I’m talking about your beloved “Get me 5 apples! (1/5)” events… There’s a lot of collectible hearts as well as chain events out there I think you should have left out to live up to your promise. I think I’ve stumbled on only a few fun hearts out there. Like “Snowball fight!”. My argument on hearts will be that they reflect questing in other MMO’s which you promised they wouldn’t.
Vistas ? Implemented feature from Assassins Creed. The idea was mutual and I get why you’d implement it. But in my opinion you could have removed 85% of that feature due to the lack of environmental discovering. The level designers did a great job designing Tyria; don’t get me wrong ? but you have to draw the line somewhere on some Vistas which are worthless in my opinion. I get that you want to show off your beautiful world of Tyria but you could’ve left out the “collectible” feature since it’s not much to discover. At least not in my opinion. “Oh, another rock with a Vista on…”
World Bosses must be my biggest concern in PvE. You fight these giant dragons and they go down the same way. Fight the legs, head, arms; what ever and it will eventually die. I saw on a video where you used siege weapons on it. I haven’t stumbled on a dragon that you could use siege weapons on in PvE yet. So the dragons were really boring.

Dyes were rather a disappointment too. I thought you went all in with “personalize your character”. I expected pattern dyes and glowing dyes.

I also play a Charr and I think customization were very limited. I wasn’t expecting 100 different hairstyles as in Saints Row The Third, The Sims 3 or any other hard-core customization game but there really weren’t much to choose from at all.

WvWvW

This must be my greatest disappointment. You got 3 borderlands which all look the same. Let me talk about Guild Wars 2. You have a game; supposedly to be representing epic battles between guilds; and then you go to WvWvW with your guild and what ever borderland you choose, it looks the same. The Elder Dragons did NOT carve the world of Tyria the same way on 3 different locations. That’s my greatest disappointment on WvWvW.

As we proceed I have to say that you lack of siege weapons in WvWvW. The catapult is fine; the Goblin fine; the Trebuchet and Ballista; fine but where’s the “Battering Ram” with a tower to get on top of your enemy forts with? That should be the first siege weapon to be implementing next into WvWvW. The fire catapult is missing and the cannon from “Raid Of The Capricorn” to be bought from Siege Weapon vendors in WvWvW. A lot of medieval siege weapons really need to be implemented since you obviously are running a medieval theme in Guild Wars 2.

PvP

Now, you have 5 maps to play (Temple Of The Silent Storm) included. Legacy Of Foe Fire, Battle Of Kyhlo, Forest Of Niflhel, Raid Of The Capricorn and Temple Of The Silent Storm. I think this must be the last thing you worked on since you expect hard-core PvP people to stick around to glory level 80 on 4 maps. (Temple not included since it’s in beta testing). Your lack of PvP maps have forced you to loose those PvP players coming from World Of Warcraft, Battle Of The Immortals, DOTA, RIFT and several other huge MMO’s out there. I hope you knew that you would loose those players. I’m still questioning if I will be able to stand more PvP myself to glory level 80 on 5 maps only? And I recall to have read and/or heard in one of your videos that you will be able to get PvE experience in PvP which I haven’t seen. However. This is what I got for PvP.

Thank you for reading if you made this far. Feel free to start a discussion about my experience. But keep in mind, this is how I experienced Guild Wars 2 and my opinion may change over time. I might even add things to this topic in the future if necessary.

Aeranima (Aeonixus in game)

You expect too much. But yeah, I agree with most stuffs you wrote… now that you brought them up. I wouldn’t have thought of them before.

For example, even the vistas in AC were pretty much meh to me. The 360-degree surround cinematic when you reach a vista in AC is actually much better than in GW2, imo. I don’t like their execution of that part.

But more importantly, its a matter of player gameplay preference. I mean, its there if you want it. But most mmorpg gamers (maybe me included) have a more practical outlook – nobody’s gonna go there just for the view (in AC, its for the map). They had to integrate it into some kind of achievement system.

projectcedric.6951:

You expect too much.

Am I really wrong for expecting Guild Wars 2 to be the best MMO out there? I mean, they nearly nailed it in my opinion. There’s still time to fix these topicsthings I’m longing for and I’m more than sure that they will keep polishing this game as they’ve done so far with PvP and other aspects of this game.

I had a 10.000 long list of things that disappointed me with this game so I had to short it down to their limit of 5.000 characters. However.

Dye system was not much different than Eden Eternal which is a Free-To-Play MMO I played for very long. It’s just a color you can put on your armor… Nothing fancy and new to the MMORPG genre at all. Patterns however WILL make GW2’s dyes system different from other MMO’s out there. Still this is my opinion.

And yes Cedric. I think AC did a greater job serving a purpose for those viewpoints.

Its not wrong to expect something to be the best game. I had very high expectations for this game as well. But just like with all expectations, it binds you to an almost definite chance of frustration.

Its definitely helpful when players like us write about our disappointments and what we deem are failures of the game in the forums. But the other side of that coin also is (and what I see in most games’ forums) is when high personal expectations start to determine your enjoyment of the game.

If you can balance that out, then cool. It’s the key to enjoying a game really. And well, happiness in general, I think.

projectcedric.6951:

Its definitely helpful when players like us write about our disappointments and what we deem are failures of the game in the forums. But the other side of that coin also is (and what I see in most games’ forums) is when high personal expectations start to determine your enjoyment of the game.

I understand. But I wouldn’t let my expectations effect my enjoyment. Just that after World Completion and getting to level 30 in PvP things start to get pretty boring and I invest enough time writing down my opinions to have a chance to improve the game instead.

I find it hard to believe, given all the constructive criticism I’ve given, but I don’t share any of your problems with the game. Everything mentioned, I’m fine with. There are many areas for constructive criticism and I get that you don’t like these things, but in a new game these are the things that improve over time like a fine wine. I’m much more concerned with changes in design philosophy which seems much more serious to me. To each his own.

I agree with some of your statements.

Pvp feels slow, The down state does not help this.

WvW could use more siege weapons. I’d personally like something like a Stealth Tent. Build it, and people can walk inside the invisible fort to be cloaked from view.

Easy way to goad an enemy team into trying to zerg the smaller force, or hiding a force inside the enemy walls. The Reason the 3 borderlands are the same is to keep each side balanced. If they were different, some might be harder to defend than others.

My Personal biggest gripe with this game, is the meager rewards for doing events. Even the harder one’s that take a chunk of time to do, such as the Risen Legendaries.

Aeranima.2853:

Am I really wrong for expecting Guild Wars 2 to be the best MMO out there? I mean, they nearly nailed it in my opinion.

Pre November 15th GW2 was the closest to the perfect MMO that I had seen. A beautiful, immersive world. Horizontal progression. Rewarding exploration. A focus on open world play over instanced dungeons. Alternate level routes (can level entirely on crafting if you can find a way to afford it!). Awesome diversity in armor styles. A stat plateau, something that all those WoW clones lack miserably.

I was like a preacher, screaming of salvation on the shores of new Tyria. It had a few quirks, but they were things we expected would be fixed at some point so it didn’t matter. And expansions would increase the content of the game without power creep, just like its predecessor did.

Unfortunately, things change. The stat plateau was scrapped, the open world play was slapped in the face and the focus was shifted towards dungeon grinding for bigger numbers on your gear. It changed from trying to be a sequel to GW1 and more to be a hybrid of the story of GW1 and the gameplay focus of WoW. It was the greatest disappointment of my MMO career.

However, for those 2 months I got to experience a truly unique and different MMO. I logged well over 500 hours during that time, and bought quite a few gems. At the end of the day, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Even though this is no longer the game I enjoyed, with its dead zones and everyone standing around LA screaming “LFG LFG LFG” for the latest and greatest gear that the treadmill has to offer, I won’t forget the fun I had in it originally and will give credit where credit is due.

For 2 months, Arenanet held the single greatest MMO I had played.

Tolmos.8395:

Aeranima.2853:

Am I really wrong for expecting Guild Wars 2 to be the best MMO out there? I mean, they nearly nailed it in my opinion.

Pre November 15th GW2 was the closest to the perfect MMO that I had seen. A beautiful, immersive world. Horizontal progression. Rewarding exploration. A focus on open world play over instanced dungeons. Alternate level routes (can level entirely on crafting if you can find a way to afford it!). Awesome diversity in armor styles. A stat plateau, something that all those WoW clones lack miserably.

I was like a preacher, screaming of salvation on the shores of new Tyria. It had a few quirks, but they were things we expected would be fixed at some point so it didn’t matter. And expansions would increase the content of the game without power creep, just like its predecessor did.

Unfortunately, things change. The stat plateau was scrapped, the open world play was slapped in the face and the focus was shifted towards dungeon grinding for bigger numbers on your gear. It changed from trying to be a sequel to GW1 and more to be a hybrid of the story of GW1 and the gameplay focus of WoW. It was the greatest disappointment of my MMO career.

However, for those 2 months I got to experience a truly unique and different MMO. I logged well over 500 hours during that time, and bought quite a few gems. At the end of the day, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Even though this is no longer the game I enjoyed, with its dead zones and everyone standing around LA screaming “LFG LFG LFG” for the latest and greatest gear that the treadmill has to offer, I won’t forget the fun I had in it originally and will give credit where credit is due.

For 2 months, Arenanet held the single greatest MMO I had played.

I agree on everything you just said. I could have deleted this post and used your reply to show my frustration. The first steps I took in Tyria at Ascalon was the greates experience I’ve ever had. And notice, I used “had”. Because now the game feels like any other games. The endless wait in LA for a solid and experienced party… So I have to agree to everything you just replied me with. I stand on your side on this.