Guild Wars 2

Combat is critically flawed

Guild Wars’ gameplay was defined by skillsets. Players would travel around Tyria and unlock skills to overcome enemies that used skills of their own, making fights very interesting and challenging.

This meant that players depended on skills to clear content, not on gear statistics. If players did not have the right skillset they seldom succeeded in clearing the content.

There were a few problems with this system. First, many areas could not be cleared without certain skillsets (GLF Monk 7/8 and we go). Secondly, being able to use two professions created a balancing nightmare. Thirdly, the metagame evolved in a way that players would find optimal builds and parties would not consider you if you did not have them.

Guild Wars 2 fights all of these problems, but introduces many more. While removing the “holy trinity” does add more player dependence, its execution in-game is vastly different to their original promise.

Here are several flaws of the current system:

• Jack of all trades, master of none – Classes have one definite purpose: DPS. If you do not DPS, you will not clear content. This also means there is essentially one way to play each class. If you deviate from this and specialize towards a certain role, you lose utility.
• Builds are built around dodging. – Dodging is a skill that gives you temporary invulnerability while moving in one direction for a short period of time. This would be fine, if combat wasn’t developed around it. This design devalues skills and favors reflexes and positional awareness. While many FPS and ARPG players welcome the change, this makes combat trivial: once you can dodge effectively, you can survive in combat.
• Enemies do not have clear abilities. – Almost all enemies in the game function similarly because they use monster skills. It is a challenge for developers to design unique mechanics for each type of enemy so it makes sense why they would go this route. However, this is the reason why dungeon mechanics are extremely uninteresting: the only quick way to make content challenging is to increase DPS and HP.
• Many skills and traits are useless/not properly defined… – Guild Wars 2 will never have a metagame because many skills and traits do not have clear purpose. This is seen in the necromancer, where some skills or traits simply do not work. This is also seen during boss battles where crowd control is negated by “Defiant” and many existing utility skills become useless because their effectiveness is not powerful enough.
• …and others are ruined by cooldown/utility disparity. – Many skills that grant useful boons have long cooldowns and short durations to render resource systems obsolete. This, however, creates an effect where skills rarely affect the course of a battle and instead promote weapon skill spam. This leads to a situation where players seldom cast utility skills and are basically stuck auto-attacking, spamming cooldowns and dodging out of red circles. Hardly a measure of skill here. (thanks Eveningstar!)

Edit: for clarity, grammatical errors and additions.

Game design flaws affect everything

Incredibly, ArenaNet determined that these game designs were better than their traditional ones and moved towards more complex designs that “better fit the game”. Or as I like to say, “please the typical MMO player.” Here are some problems with the deviations by ArenaNet:

Statistics are a mess

In Guild Wars, all armor was classified into armor brackets and each armor set had the same armor rating. Except for the headpiece, every piece of armor was purely cosmetic and had no extra statistical value. Armor could then be improved through through runes and insignias. This allowed players to purchase the armor of their choice and then modify it. It also gave players a reason to have multiple armor sets.

In Guild Wars 2, this simple system is scrapped. Gear now has permanent statistics and there is no way to modify a set. Worse, different gear sets have different statistics. This would be okay with a traditional holy trinity, but in this game it makes no sense. This means players need to transmute hard earned gear to get the skin they want with the right stats. And if that’s not bad enough, runes barely affect builds.

To make matters worse, there is armor disparity between rarities. And they introduced magic find as a gear statistic. This means players now get to sacrifice usefulness for a chance of finding rarer items. This leads to my next point:

Loot/rarities have no purpose

Somebody at ArenaNet thought that using six different rarities will encourage players to farm for loot. In reality, most players simply farm for exotics because they are not only the best looking gear in the game but also the best performing.

Currently, there are six rarities: blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and purple.

This means that almost all blue and green items will sold and converted into gold and provide no real benefit to the player. After all, you can always just go to a karma vendor and get a marginally better item with better rarity. Why not just stick to blue, green and yellow and equal stats? The answer is: vertical scaling.

Yes, that’s right. Vertical scaling has been in Guild Wars 2 since launch. The big backlash that ArenaNet has received recently is poorly timed and simply too late. Exotic gear has always had better stats than rare gear (albeit marginal). All item rarities have different statistics and each perform differently.

ArenaNet must have thought that the general fanbase would be okay with this and decided to sneak in “Ascended” gear, some weird sort of tribute to the original Guild Wars. The irony is that this violates every rule in the manifesto and goes against the very nature of Guild Wars: in order to remain competitive, you will need infusions to progress through their future dungeons. All because the game is not based on skillsets.

Vertical scaling has always been there. Throughout my entire playthrough I was always thinking: “yes, I have a yellow item! Now my character will be stronger!” Or kitten this is just a blue item. Time to vendor it”.

Edit: for clarity.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are so many other problems with the game, including:

• Multi-guild system discourages players to stay loyal to one guild. The argument “just stay in one guild” is invalid. Guilds were originally used in Guild Wars to fuel PvP, or most notably, Hall of Heroes (GvG). Guilds are now nothing more than glorified chat channels.
• Weapon skills are not customizable. No matter how much you switch your weapons, combat will eventually become stale.
• Crafting is both tedious and expensive. It is designed as a money sink to keep an economy bustling. To make matters worse, you need to craft useless items to create useful ones.
• Dungeons are poorly designed and are not fun. High level fights are generally uninteresting and involve dodging and reviving players.
• Underwater combat sucks.
• World events have no real consequences and there is no real incentive to complete them. There is no challenge in them and they eventually become stale.
• No guild halls.
• There is only one mode of SPvP.
• WvW is great in theory but is plagued by culling issues and server imbalances.

Conclusion

I waited for Guild Wars 2 for over four, maybe five years. I followed ArenaNet through every single step of development. Their transparency with the playerbase gave me confidence that this was going to be the game for me. When I first got my hands on it, it was surreal. Playing through Guild Wars 2 at first was a toxic experience: I couldn’t stop playing it. Frankly, the leveling from 1-80 was fantastic.

But the more I played through the game… the more I noticed its flaws. As I’ve been posting on the forums regarding Guild Wars 2’s game design flaws and I have received nothing but backlash and flaming. Surely, there was nothing wrong with the game. So I stopped posting. Now that my predictions are coming to pass just three months after release, I think players are finally starting to realize there are game breaking problems that go against ArenaNet’s manifesto.

The simple solution to this is: don’t play Guild Wars 2. If you don’t like how ArenaNet has lied to you, then quit and do not support them. This is the simplest way of showing ArenaNet and NCSoft that what they did is wrong: bait-and-switch only works for a few quick bucks but does not contribute to long term revenue.

I really do hope they fix all of these flaws, or at least attempt to address some of them. To me, it seems like ArenaNet simply tackled a project that was much too big for them to handle. Apart from the visuals, there is not much that makes me want to log on to the game. Maybe once players see big changes in the game design, they will log onto the game as it was meant to be: to cater to everyone, not just the casuals, not just the hardcore players, but the gamers. That is what made Guild Wars so beautiful, it was a game that anyone can play.

That’s a beautiful and well stated write-up.

I think ANet chickened out when they decided to even have numbered levels, they had flirted with dispensing with levels entirely. I’d love to see the game truly holistic in how the zones are scaled, I can understand having some introduction areas for new players but after that there’s be no real need to have this loot and difficulty curve.

I saw someone else on the forums saying that ANet tried to do horizontal and vertical progression at the same time, and that’s what killed them. I agree with that. I think they pursued the vertical progression style because WoW has the mega-numbers and money is awesome. But they kept horizontal style for their fans. The end result is just a mess. If they’d stuck with one method it probably would have been a better and more stable piece of content that would have would up with more active players by now.

I agree with everything said, but i feel the most important part is where you described the disconnect and flaws created beween GW1 and GW2 combat and skill systems. The game is not better for most of what they innovated, it’s actually worse than the first.

Lysserd.4618:

I saw someone else on the forums saying that ANet tried to do horizontal and vertical progression at the same time, and that’s what killed them. I agree with that. I think they pursued the vertical progression style because WoW has the mega-numbers and money is awesome. But they kept horizontal style for their fans. The end result is just a mess. If they’d stuck with one method it probably would have been a better and more stable piece of content that would have would up with more active players by now.

lothefallen.7081:

I agree with everything said, but i feel the most important part is where you described the disconnect and flaws created beween GW1 and GW2 combat and skill systems. The game is not better for most of what they innovated, it’s actually worse than the first.

The entire system is a huge mess. There are exotic items that give you seven stats. Then there are exotic items that give you four.

All in all, ArenaNet tried to do something they weren’t accustomed to doing and failed. If they would’ve followed their traditional GW model and introduced WoW players to the beauty of Guild Wars, they would’ve made much more money and scored a much more dedicated fanbase.

In fact, many players left Guild Wars because of the level cap and the heavy instancing. If Guild Wars 2 was Guild Wars with similar concepts and a persistent world, it would be in much better shape than it is now.

Granted, the sound, art direction and programming in Guild Wars 2 is top notch. But the story and the game design are abysmal.

Excellent post.

I too have been following GW2 for many many years. I remember watching the manifesto video and how excited all the developers were, I could tell they were so passionate about this game and… I just didn’t think in a hundred years that all those happy smiley faces who I genuinely believed were to be complete two faced liars.

I can’t explain enough of my disappointment any better than the OP, but the nail in the coffin for me was the Ascended gear. Hell, I don’t even pve but just the concept of anet going against everything they said just infuriates me.

I so wanted this game to be everything they promised, yet it barely achieved a fraction, due to broken promises.

Max level 30 would have been great, and the fact that gear had built in stats made me sad from the start.

I may not stop playing GW2, but I’ll definitely be more wary of purchasing any expansion packs in the future.

Excellent posts.

I also dislike levels. It’s such a relief to hit 80 and have the freedom to go anywhere, it’s a shame you have to slog through many hours of “leveling” to get there. Heck, if they scaled everything like WvW it would probably work fine.

I honestly don’t understand people’s obsession with “progression” when they just mean bigger numbers on their character sheet. Does that actually impress people? Player skill, talent, ingenuity impresses me. Not time spent.

Agreed that the whole item rarity thing is silly. You need to have the best items to be on equal ground with others, so that’s some unnecessary grind. I intensely dislike gear quality being a factor in winning or losing. If I had known about that during the beta I would’ve complained, but I was too enthralled with the events and world.

I’ve noticed how PvE is generally very easy. Enemies don’t do anything interesting like they did in GW1. They don’t form coherent groups. I guess part of that is because open world stuff needs to be solo-friendly, but dungeons don’t have that excuse.

But at this point it’s largely beating a dead horse. Anet (or whoever’s running it now) decided to turn up the vertical progression, so I’m taking a break from gw2. Maybe in a few months when the content locusts are bored something will change, but I expect it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

At this point, it’s very hard to believe they can change anything about the game without upsetting a large portion of the playerbase.

Dodge is kitteny. Trust me it has no bearing on your desire to stand still and press tab 1,2,3. =\

WoW… just WoW, literally.

Very well written post. Every point you had I agree with. Anet really dropped the ball with this game, and it is extremely depressing to watch unfold.

Hey, great post. I agree with some of the point, while others are a bit meh for me.

For instance, I don’t believe that there’s a problem with dodging. Guild wars 2 isn’t Dark soul ; the dodging system worked the only way it could’ve worked. If Guild war 2 functions like dark soul or Tera where the combat is free form, then the current dodging system would have been ridiculous. But Guild war 2 is pretty much the same as any other ‘locked on’ MMO where you press skill at a certain distance and expect numbers to turn up. They added dodging to add some variety to the old system. Whether this work well or not that’s all perception – I personally think it’s ok. Other may not agree. The point is Gw2 could not have done anything different – either they go all the way and do it like wow, or they go the other and be like Tera – and I don’t agree that the combat is built around dodging, as having the ability to dodge once in a while (or twice in a row depends on how you use it ) does not guarantee you victory. Learning when to dodge is also part of the ‘skill’ that one needs to master besides when and how to use their utility correctly.

There are also issue with the following point:

Dungeons are poorly designed and are not fun. High level fights are generally uninteresting and involve dodging and reviving players.

^ this is subjective. Some find them fun – I do.

Underwater combat sucks.

^ again, subjective. I personally think most of the underwater combat are quite fun with the exception of thief – i believe the toolset for thieves under water is just downright stupid. You’re invincible in 1 vs 1 but anytime you fight more than 2 mob you find yourself struggling. I dont think there are any other class that has the same issue. But not going to say much because again this is subjective.

WvW is great in theory but is plagued by culling issues and server imbalances.

^Server Imbalance occur because Anet – for some misguided belief – wouldn’t disable free transfer, resulting a massive amount of coattail rider transferring to high pop server. By the time they’ve gone and stopped it its already too late. However, Tiered battle somehow address the issue so you won’t have an extreme high pop server vsing smaller ones. The biggest problem I find with wvw is the fact that it NEVER stops. There is no break or anything during the week; even after winning a match you are thrown into another right the way, and you know what they say about things getting stale after doing it too much.Culling issue is just engine problem; nothing they couldn’t fix if they put their minds to it.

As for vertical progression, I find it extremely laughable that so many people complain about it, and yet have trouble realizing that the entire game is pretty much gear progression all the way.

A true game without gear progression would be having the best possible gear (stat wise) at level 1, and so far not even GW 1 dared to try this out.

People say ‘We don’t want carrot’, but the skins and exotics are carrots. Carrots that you have to farm in order to get. ‘People say you don’t have to be rewarded for playing game. Game itself should be a rewarding experience." This is simply untrue.

Take dark soul for example. Some gears are still better than the other, and fighting hard monster will likely to give you those gears. When it comes to a game – especially RPG (FPS and RTS can often get away with this ) – reward is the most important thing ever. IF today Dark Soul doesn’t give you any form of reward (better gear, special ring, souls…etc) and instead give you a hallow armor set and starter weapon and ask you to complete the entire game the game probably wouldn’t sell so well.

The point is, if you don’t have problem leveling from 1 to 80 swapping gear as you go, ( with your old gear becoming completely obsolete ) and if you’re happy to grind for skins, how is it you have such a hard time accepting Ascended Gear?

1. You don’t actually need it until you’re level 6 fractnal. As for wvw, you can easily offset the balance with siege weapon. That and following a zerg. And NPC.

2. Spvp don’t use gear progression at all.

3. If you don’t do any form of pvp, and pve is the only thing that’s left, what are you going to do without Ascended Gear? Grind the dungeon for a new set of ‘exotic’? Well if you’re already grinding for exotic you might as well grind for Ascended Gear. The point is, you’re grinding. Exotic or Ascended Gear, they make little impact since you will be able to complete this ( and possibly all future dungeons ) in exotic.

I would really like someone to shed some light for me, because I simply don’t understand the issue here.

And please don’t say ‘because ArenaNet lie to us’.
Some actual answer would be nice.

i dont have a lot of time to post, so ill just address one thing.

the combat system. i personally enjoy it. while its not the end all be all and certainly has room for improvement, its certainly a step up from the old hit table system. never could understand things like why my character would only have a chance to block x amount of incoming damage, or why my character would need things like hit rating or expertise when he/she is supposed to be some sort of fantasy hero or something. always seemed stupid and its good to at least see that it isnt there and is replaced by some mitigation that the player has control over. i find moving around a lot fun. just makes things more interesting. in other MMOs i would just jump to have something to do other than spam the same two or three keys over and over again.

All excellent posts.

I agree with all but one or 2 bullet points. It was always clear to me where the flaws were and where the devs were “chickening out”, but I had decided to live with it. I was still ok with everything GW2 wasn’t vs what GW2 was… until the middle of last week. I could have given them all the time in the world, even if that was ‘never’ for most things. But ascended is an insult. That made totally intolerant to everything I had decided to accept/avoid/compromise/rationalize. They just finished breaking the whole deal. I think it’s time to admit the last attempt at something better for the genre, that would turn skinner boxes into real games, failed miserably.

The fact we’re still here with some hope at all is the saddest part, though. Still managing to let it go. It would have been a lot easier to swallow if it was just an unfortunate set of events and not just outright lying to your face.

forrae.6708:

i dont have a lot of time to post, so ill just address one thing.

the combat system. i personally enjoy it. while its not the end all be all and certainly has room for improvement, its certainly a step up from the old hit table system. never could understand things like why my character would only have a chance to block x amount of incoming damage, or why my character would need things like hit rating or expertise when he/she is supposed to be some sort of fantasy hero or something. always seemed stupid and its good to at least see that it isnt there and is replaced by some mitigation that the player has control over. i find moving around a lot fun. just makes things more interesting. in other MMOs i would just jump to have something to do other than spam the same two or three keys over and over again.

Probably because they couldn’t really introduce a system like Dark Soul where you can block and you lose endurance with all these “cc” and “utility” skill. I’m currently in discussion with a few guys from my course about creating a concept for a MMO where there’s no class and just weapon – like Monster Hunter, but with dark soul difficulty.

I think that’s definitely where the future of MMO lies.

Harbard.5738:

All excellent posts.

I agree with all but one or 2 bullet points. It was always clear to me where the flaws were and where the devs were “chickening out”, but I had decided to live with it. I was still ok with everything GW2 wasn’t vs what GW2 was… until the middle of last week. I could have given them all the time in the world, even if that was ‘never’ for most things. But ascended is an insult. That made totally intolerant to everything I had decided to accept/avoid/compromise/rationalize. They just finished breaking the whole deal. I think it’s time to admit the last attempt at something better for the genre, that would turn skinner boxes into real games, failed miserably.

The fact we’re still here with some hope at all is the saddest part, though. Still managing to let it go. It would have been a lot easier to swallow if it was just an unfortunate set of events and not just outright lying to your face.

This is what I don’t understand.
Can you please explain to me what would you be doing without Ascended Gear?

I get the part that Anet ‘somewhat’ lied, but I really have trouble comprehending what’s the difference between grinding for Exotic, and grinding for Ascended Gear.
It’s all grinding anyway.

Without ascended gear you’re probably gonna be grinding Fractnal for exotic gear, so you might as well get Ascended Gear instead, right? Plus, you’re not forced to grind it until you are level 5 + in FoTM. And let’s face it if you’re that far in most of the mini dungeon are on repeat mode, so in essence you didn’t miss out anything.

You can’t use Ascended Gear for Spvp.

For Wvw it hardly matter because if you run with the zerg even if you’re level 1, as long as you have some range weapon you can still get kills. WvW is the last place where people look at your ‘skill’ – rather its all zerg, coordination and coverage.

So really Ascended Gear changed nothing.
If you dislike it because you feel like you have been lied to, then it’s a sentimental issue. The system is fine as it is, unless you can point out actual problem that prevent you from enjoying the game.

I agree with many posters regarding the subjective nature of a few bullet points. I haven’t tried the dungeons post-patch, however, I doubt the game mechanics have changed much. I find them generally uninteresting and I wish ArenaNet could’ve come up with something more creative. I feel that CoF and AC are pretty much as creative as it gets in terms of dungeon mechanics.

I also have to say I’m pretty biased when it comes to underwater combat. I’ve hated it in almost every game.

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

Sure, for those coming World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 is refreshing. But for those coming from Guild Wars it’s a huge let down. In fact, it’s odd how muddy my builds feel and how my character generally doesn’t play any different no matter how much I change my builds.

dimgl.4786:

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

.

I heard you still get a bit of vertical gear progression in gw1. Now keep in mind that when I talk about gear progression I’m talking about the ability to get better gear starting at lvl 1.

A true game without vertical gear progression – as I have stated – would be one where you are given the best gear at lvl 1 and everything you do later are for skins/money.

Can you confirm this seeing as you have played it?

I left literally inside of a couple of days after launch due to the slow camera rotation speed issue. They fixed it weeks later. Yay I thought, and toyed with sinking my teeth into GW2.
Sadly IMO this game blows hard, in too many ways that I won’t bother going into. I’m sure there’s umteen threads on whats wrong with it.

showatt.9413:

dimgl.4786:

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

.

I heard you still get a bit of vertical gear progression in gw1. Now keep in mind that when I talk about gear progression I’m talking about the ability to get better gear starting at lvl 1.

A true game without vertical gear progression – as I have stated – would be one where you are given the best gear at lvl 1 and everything you do later are for skins/money.

Can you confirm this seeing as you have played it?

Sure. Guild Wars does have vertical progression from level 1-20. When Guild Wars was first released, this vertical progression was pretty harsh due to the disparity between levels. However, there is no vertical progression at end game. Once you became level 20, the playing field evened out and the armor you had from 1-20 became useless.

This was quickly fixed in future campaigns by introducing tutorial zones. Players would level from 1-20 very quickly and the vertical progression was barely felt.

dimgl.4786:

showatt.9413:

dimgl.4786:

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

.

I heard you still get a bit of vertical gear progression in gw1. Now keep in mind that when I talk about gear progression I’m talking about the ability to get better gear starting at lvl 1.

A true game without vertical gear progression – as I have stated – would be one where you are given the best gear at lvl 1 and everything you do later are for skins/money.

Can you confirm this seeing as you have played it?

Sure. Guild Wars does have vertical progression from level 1-20. When Guild Wars was first released, this vertical progression was pretty harsh due to the disparity between levels. However, there is no vertical progression at end game. Once you became level 20, the playing field evened out and the armor you had from 1-20 became useless.

This was quickly fixed in future campaigns by introducing tutorial zones. Players would level from 1-20 very quickly and the vertical progression was barely felt.

Ok thanks.
Yeah lvl 1 – 20 is nothing. It is gear progression but the fact that you get to endgame so quickly it’s almost obsolete.

This should be stickied and the developers should read it every day when they come to work.

Very interesting post.

I would like to reply to this point:

Enemies do not have clear abilities. – Almost all enemies in the game function similarly because they use monster skills. It is a challenge for developers to design unique mechanics for each type of enemy so it makes sense why they would go this route. However, this is the reason why dungeon mechanics are extremely uninteresting: the only quick way to make content challenging is to increase DPS and HP.

In my opinion, there IS a way to content challenging. Do it like how Ninja Gaiden or other games do it. Keep monster HP the same, but increase the number of mobs, increase the frequency of attacks and increase the burst damage done by each of those mobs. It will definitely require players to pay attention to the game if they wish to succeed, even in zerg situations, instead of selecting a mob, hitting “1” and tabbing out all the time.

Thanks for the read!

What mostly hit home for me was the section about “levels are obsolete”.

On paper downscaling seamed awesoe as a solution to getting the whole world feel alive and important. In reality, downscaling feels of but I never managed to put my finger on why accept for the worse rewards.

When you talked about how GW1 actually worked and with the introduction of “hard mode” it hit me, downscaling really isn’t the same thing as every zone being max level as in GW1, sadly, without the instancing hard mode can’t be implemented in GW2.

Maybe they can solve the rewards at least. I remember how mad I was when I realized that the talk about “level appropriate rewards only where half true”. Rewards are better for a 80 in a low level zone, but they aren’t the same as in a 80-zone. I think they should fix this. Also, start daily or weekly achivments for different zones (like the Zhisen quest) to make people go to old zones again.

The second part that stuck with me was the change in skill builds. I agreed that GW1 was to complicated, especially for new comers. The game was to unfriendly for new players with thousands of skills.

So even if I agree on the simplification they took it to far. A simple fix as having 3 optional skills or something for all weapons would be great. Right now build diversity is to small, not only in viable builds, but also how different does builds really feel as a playstyle.

Thank you for a great write up and while I do agree with some of you bullet points, personally I find it hard to leave GW2 because of the community I have found within it.

Nice topic but tbh Rome wasnt built in 1 day ! If you say you waited for 4-5 years for Gw2 then you can have 1 more year to give it a chance ! Dont forget how other games started , wow gw1 and alot more ! This is the best MMO i’ve played , with all the bugs and nerfs and all the things i dont like ! It got ups and downs like a real person , nobody can be perfect ! Maybe you get mad on the game but maybe 100 persons love it ! We all got different taste and views of the game ! I will play it and support it in future DLC ! GG ANET !

It really is a shame, there are a ton of things that GW2 did wonderfully but most of what you said is correct. I guess the first real expansion is what will determen the fate of this game, if they correct there mistakes and become more GW1 like or sell out and end up like every other MMO out there today

Thanks for the wonderfully written post. I find myself agreeing on a lot of your points (being one of those SNIDE GUILD WARS 1 ANCIENTS), especially with your section on combat and gear progression.

…But I still like to have hope, especially for all the frequent and FREE content updates. I couldn’t play Prophecies without feeling discouraged, possibly because I was complete garbage at it. It took me late into EotN before I was hooked—perhaps because all my friends were playing pretty religiously by that point—but yeah. I think this game will benefit greatly from expansions, be it more skills or dungeons or whatever. I didn’t really ENJOY GW1 until Nightfall, and I didn’t get sucked into it ‘till EotN (but I probably still would’ve hungrily scarfed down Nightfall and Factions if I wasn’t so ronery ;_; at the time).

What I really want right now is more weapon skill customization, and a less kitteny trait system. Seriously, it feels like I’m playing League of Legends again.

Just a small thought from me however, that’s sort of banking on how well-written your post was. If ArenaNet wants to deliver on armour sets being cosmetic only they need to do what DotA2 does: implement a ‘workshop’ where those players that are skilled enough with 3d software and whatnot can create their own armour sets for approval and then they can be sold at the gem store as skins or as drops or whatever! This would be an excellent way to further involve the community and create more gear that’s not based purely on stats. And like in Dota2 the content-creators can get a share of the profits. Come on ArenaNet!

It’s a game in transition. Take it as that and wait until they have fully moved from a horizontal progression to a vertical progression system.

It’s more than a game in transition. It’s a game heading over the cliffside…….fast! Manifesto anyone?

Gombar.7324:

It’s more than a game in transition. It’s a game heading over the cliffside…….fast! Manifesto anyone?

This game is far from going bankrupt. Give them six months and I’m sure we will have a much beefier cash shop and more stabilized game where the direction of the game is clear to the players.

illgot.1056:

Gombar.7324:

It’s more than a game in transition. It’s a game heading over the cliffside…….fast! Manifesto anyone?

This game is far from going bankrupt. Give them six months and I’m sure we will have a much beefier cash shop and more stabilized game where the direction of the game is clear to the players.

I didn’t say that they would go bankrupt anywhere.

However, the line they have taken with the new patch, is to throw their main selling point and core belief out the window, which was the old manifesto. The way they’re going you’ll see more scaled gear implementation, one of the main points of their game design that they were against to have in GW2…………..that is the proverbial cliffside they have passed and are currently crashing down along…..fast!

dimgl.4786:

At this point, it’s very hard to believe they can change anything about the game without upsetting a large portion of the playerbase.

At this point, you really can’t do anything about it.

The game is already in place. If they were to follow OP’s comments, it’s like back to square one for them. I’ll just accept it as a broken game as it is, except that I don’t see myself spending any additional cash for in-game items at all.

I agree in particular on the active defense/dodge. As was seen in the last event, server culling of distant objects makes a mockery of the system. Several servers reported whole groups being wiped because of the sudden appearance of high strength poison fields or rolling veteran/champion karka. You can’t dodge what you can’t see.

I strongly disagree with the OP.

Combat system:
GW had/has a much more stale combat system then GW2, dodge makes the GW2 combat system. No more standing semi-afk pressing the same standard combat sequence.

If you dont move and dodge you die = skill
Standing more or less still and pressing the optimal combat sequence = fail.

Jack of all trades, master of none:
Another great thing about GW2, no more team wiping because one guy doesnt do his job/remember the correct skills.

Enemies do not have clear abilities:
i dont get your point, most if not all bosses have clear tells on their main attacks

Many skills and traits are useless/not properly defined:
And GW had 100s of skills that no one ever used, because there was a few optimal skill builds and everyone and their mother used those.

Vertical scaling criticism:
Yea i agree with this one, but its a MMO and a lot of ppl wants vertical scaling/gear grind. Its only the degree of the gear grind ppl disagree about.

Multi-guild system:
My guild doesnt have a problem with it. My guild is 9 years old and we dont have a problem with guildies being in multiple guilds. But i do agree that there is a lack of “guild” in GW2. Server Wars would have been a slightly better title.

Crafting:
Crafting is always tedious no matter the game, sell the mats and make a profit.

Dungeons:
Couldnt disagree more, GW2 dungeons might be one of the best dungeon designs around. Rewards individual skills, punish the weak and makes group play a bonus, not a must.

Underwater combat sucks:
No argument here, its sucks. ohh and plz remove it from dungeons.

One mode of SPvP:
They need/should change that, but give it time.

WvW problems:
WvW is one of the best open PvP systems around, it only lacks a title system.

To sum up:
I think you, OP, are overreacting. Its seems like you are stuck in the old way of doing things, seeing all the small faults and not the big picture. Is GW2 perfect? No, its a 3 month old MMO and as all MMOs it needs to get the polish right. I think that GW2 is not the game for you, since a lot of your complains are down to the skill/combat system.

I don’t know i really like the game overall. However the ascended gear is freaking huge let down, for me at least. 2 biggest reasons I bought the game was 3 realm wvw and not having to grind gear every few months.

Two and half months later BAM. I spent a good amount of time getting my gear the way i wanted runes of divinity tri forge pendant everything…… now that’s all going to be replaced???

I agree with everything the OP has pointed out, and I adore this game. I’ve always felt that the whole game should be centered around character growth, not gear growth. In the first Guild Wars the game was more centered around acquiring skills and customising your abilities. I loved that part of the game and I have no idea why they opt’d for set-in-stone skills from weapons for GW2.

Don’t like how stale combat gets when you can’t even experiment fully beyond the very limited utility skills, would rather the weapons (could even make them special weapons that you explore and unlock) just allowed you to learn a set amount of skills and customise them from the pool of skills already unlocked.

I don’t like how much they have gone back on what they originally said. I won’t demand they change it but I’ll not support them as much in the gemstore as I did in the past. A large part of my gem buying was for me wanting to give them my support, but now I don’t feel I want to anymore.

I disagree with almost everything in the OPs post. I hated GW1, as did most of my friends that play GW2. If this was GW1 with new graphics most of the people I play with wouldn’t be playing. This says nothing about the GW2 community as a whole but neither does the OPs opinions. I enjoy GW2 more than I’ve enjoyed any MMO in many many years.

As for the latter part of his post"

“There are so many other problems with the game, including:
•Multi-guild system discourages players to stay loyal to one guild. The argument “just stay in one guild” is invalid. Guilds were originally used in Guild Wars to fuel PvP, or most notably, Hall of Heroes (GvG). Guilds are now nothing more than glorified chat channels.”

I disagree. I’m a part of a couple guilds and both have a strong sense of community. One guild I do organized WvW with, the other I PvE with. If it wasn’t for the multi-guild system neither guild would fill my needs. So I think the multi-guild system is a great design.

“•Weapon skills are not customizable. No matter how much you switch your weapons, combat will eventually become stale.”

I find the combat in GW2 to be engaging and fun. I’ve never played an MMO where the combat did not get stale. In fact GW1 went stale faster than most.

“•Crafting is both tedious and expensive. It is designed as a money sink to keep an economy bustling. To make matters worse, you need to craft useless items to create useful ones.”

I love the crafting system. It’s fast and easy and once you’ve leveled a couple characters you get tons of fast levels for a 3rd character. It only takes around an hour to get a craft from 1-400. And even if you have to buy the mats I don’t find the process to be expensive.

“•Dungeons are poorly designed and are not fun. High level fights are generally uninteresting and involve dodging and reviving players.”

I almost agree with this point. On the first run or two I find them to be fun then they just become tedious. That pretty much sums up how I’ve felt about every MMO though.

“•Underwater combat sucks.”

I completely agree.

“•World events have no real consequences and there is no real incentive to complete them. There is no challenge in them and they eventually become stale.”

I can agree with this. But at the same time I like that they’re there. I can cusually go out and do them here and there with little effort. I’ve found some of the even chains to be fairly interesting. But when you have a massive zerg engaging in an activity it’s hard to feel like you have much impact. It’s also hard to impliment interesting mechanics because there’s so many models and effects you can’t really see what’s going on. I’ve never played an MMO with this type of activity that was better. So I have a hard time faulting Anet for something they’ve done better than anyone else.

“•No guild halls.”

Really? No guild halls on realease is a game breaker for you?

“•There is only one mode of SPvP.”

Yeah, SPvP is boring. But that’s my opinion. I know there’s a lot of players that really like it.

“•WvW is great in theory but is plagued by culling issues and server imbalances.”

WvW is the best aspect of this game. It’s what keeps me playing. The design of the borderlands is great and can lead to some very creative play. I can run with my guild’s zerg, run solo, or with a small group and all are great fun for me. Culling needs work but it’s definitely not a game breaker for me.

In summary, your post is well thought out and well stated. But almost everything listed is personal opinion and preferance. And I disagree with almost all of your opinions. I really like GW2. It could definitely be better. But I don’t think most of the things you’ve posted would make it so.

“Rather than make a typical complaint post, I’ve decided to explain why I think Guild Wars 2 is a flawed game.”

“The simple solution to this is: don’t play Guild Wars 2. If you don’t like how ArenaNet has lied to you, then quit and do not support them. "

Interesting intro/outro for someone who thinks stated manifestos are written in stone.

Loxias.2375:

“Rather than make a typical complaint post, I’ve decided to explain why I think Guild Wars 2 is a flawed game.”

“The simple solution to this is: don’t play Guild Wars 2. If you don’t like how ArenaNet has lied to you, then quit and do not support them. "

Interesting intro/outro for someone who thinks stated manifestos are written in stone.

I think it’s more a question of sincerity and forwardness with a player base than anything else…..If ANet had been forward and told this as it is instead of going back on a core value of the game, much of what we have seen so far of forum posting would have been greatly deminished.

+1 Great post.

Real conclusion suppose to be this: Every decision they’ve made, every change they did and every system they’ve designed is bad or broken. But in gw1 they did everything just perfect. Is that what you mean?

This is just silly…

Konfuzfanten.6503:

If you dont move and dodge you die = skill
Standing more or less still and pressing the optimal combat sequence = fail.

Except for when the game itself makes those skills worthless (see culled veteran karka roll of wipe).

And i am unsure if it is skill or simply wired to the max reflexes to hit a “make me invulnerable” when the big shiny lights up. To learn, something has to hurt but not instantly kill on first encounter.

Great post! I’m still playing the game and enjoying it, but I feel like it could have been so much more, what you wrote here perfectly summarized how I feel.

digiowl.9620:

Except for when the game itself makes those skills worthless (see culled veteran karka roll of wipe).

Thats one time event, yes it was laggy like hell for some of my guildies, didnt experience lag myself in the 3. event (sunday event).

digiowl.9620:

And i am unsure if it is skill or simply wired to the max reflexes to hit a “make me invulnerable” when the big shiny lights up. To learn, something has to hurt but not instantly kill on first encounter.

Nothing in this game kills you with one shot, yea you can get one-shot-downed, lesson learn, move out of the way. GW2 combat system has a lot more actually skill involved then GW or your standard hotkey MMO combat system.

If you think that GW2 comabt system is stale, then 90% of the rest of the MMOs have terrible combat system.

Veteran kara one-shotted whole groups, because they could not see the roll coming thanks to server prioritizing nearby players over distant mobs.

And i just now had a champion mob in a DE drop me out of Death Shroud with a single swing, meaning i would have been downed had it touched my health. No real warning, just a simple weapon swing.