Guild Wars 2

Dalanor.5387:

Tatsuo.1478:

I have to agree with OP. I actually find GW2 combat much more boring than in mmo with holy trinity, especially in PvE. Now everyone has one role and its dps. So what that we have evasion, it does not add that much.
And tactics? Give me a break. Stand at one hell of a big boss mob and spam all your skills, evade some attacks, so awesome..

Remember Colin Johanson joke about other mmos? “I swong a sword?..” Well that is a joke on GW2 now

Well to be honest, removing holy trinity didn’t change anything, it just made everything more zergish. So no, there was no innovation here.

Because spammig 4 skills in a “rotation” and side step from an obvius danger zone is soooooooo exciting.

Pfft. Why press 4 buttons when you can macro them and press 1? At least using macros is contraindicated in GW2.

Tatsuo.1478:

I have to agree with OP. I actually find GW2 combat much more boring than in mmo with holy trinity, especially in PvE. Now everyone has one role and its dps. So what that we have evasion, it does not add that much.
And tactics? Give me a break. Stand at one hell of a big boss mob and spam all your skills, evade some attacks, so awesome..

Remember Colin Johanson joke about other mmos? “I swong a sword?..” Well that is a joke on GW2 now

Well to be honest, removing holy trinity didn’t change anything, it just made everything more zergish. So no, there was no innovation here.

If you’re on about open world, sure.

If you’re on about dungeons, then I really don’t want to go over for the umpteenth time about how it isn’t “just DPS” and “just spam 1 and dodge”.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dalanor.5387:

Tatsuo.1478:

I have to agree with OP. I actually find GW2 combat much more boring than in mmo with holy trinity, especially in PvE. Now everyone has one role and its dps. So what that we have evasion, it does not add that much.
And tactics? Give me a break. Stand at one hell of a big boss mob and spam all your skills, evade some attacks, so awesome..

Remember Colin Johanson joke about other mmos? “I swong a sword?..” Well that is a joke on GW2 now

Well to be honest, removing holy trinity didn’t change anything, it just made everything more zergish. So no, there was no innovation here.

Because spammig 4 skills in a “rotation” and side step from an obvius danger zone is soooooooo exciting.

Pfft. Why press 4 buttons when you can macro them and press 1? At least using macros is contraindicated in GW2.

To not fall asleep.

haviz.1340:

Great comparison between full speed clears and solo farming which could be “automated”!

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

haviz.1340:

So in gw1 uw sc you could have come with w/mo warrior?

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

Dalanor.5387:

Tatsuo.1478:

I have to agree with OP. I actually find GW2 combat much more boring than in mmo with holy trinity, especially in PvE. Now everyone has one role and its dps. So what that we have evasion, it does not add that much.
And tactics? Give me a break. Stand at one hell of a big boss mob and spam all your skills, evade some attacks, so awesome..

Remember Colin Johanson joke about other mmos? “I swong a sword?..” Well that is a joke on GW2 now

Well to be honest, removing holy trinity didn’t change anything, it just made everything more zergish. So no, there was no innovation here.

Because spammig 4 skills in a “rotation” and side step from an obvius danger zone is soooooooo exciting.

Auto-spamming 1 skill is a lot more boring.

hannah mee.7925:

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

You still brought up a build whose mechanics cannot be reproduced because, ironically, active defenses that are permanently maintained by those monks allow zerker to shine.

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

I’ve not played PVE in gw1 but I am pretty sure that if I had come with typical wammo build (mending, healing hands) I would’ve been kicked on sight.

I’m well aware that people like to see the past through pink glass.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Auto-spamming 1 skill is a lot more boring.

Which is what bunkers (gw2 tanks) do.

haviz.1340:

hannah mee.7925:

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

You still brought up a build whose mechanics cannot be reproduced because, ironically, active defenses that are permanently maintained by those monks allow zerker to shine.

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

I’ve not played PVE in gw1 but I am pretty sure that if I had come with typical wammo build (mending, healing hands) I would’ve been kicked on sight.

I’m well aware that people like to see the past through pink glass.

Actually, as long as you bring 3 pve skills that deal damage, no one really cares much what the rest of your bar is. Hell I even roll with full tanks on several occassions when doing zaishen bounties. I do prefer a normal bar to full tank though, because having prots and meat shields offsets a lack of ‘tanks’.
Moreover, it’s actually pretty rare for me to play with perma sins (I don’t do speed clears anymore, and believe they ought being nerfed years ago), because they just trivialize the whole pve experience.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Actually, as long as you bring 3 pve skills that deal damage, no one really cares much what the rest of your bar is. Hell I even roll with full tanks on several occassions when doing zaishen bounties. I do prefer a normal bar to full tank though, because having prots and meat shields offsets a lack of ‘tanks’.

You’re comparing zaishen bounties to speed clears right now. I’m comparing uwsc to gw2 speed clears which is more in line. Currently, you can bring anything in gw2 and you shouldn’t be kicked as long as you don’t join those elitists parties.

The reason you see mostly “zerk only” parties on gw2lfg is because they fill out slowly (and they have to kick people that do not read descriptions). Make a post saying just “p2” in any dungeon category and it fills in seconds with people running all kinds of builds. Thus, the build variety is there. It’s just not visible.

Lastly, I do recall reading about people asking to “ping your bar” in gw1 pve. There will always be people who are determined to run specified builds. In both games.

It looks like the issue is the polarization between “any (kitten) build can do” and the “zerk meta”.

There is just simply not enough content that lies between the two. I agree with people saying that the overworld PvE “can be done with any build”. This categorizes the low end of the spectrum. On the other hand, dungeon speed clears categorizes the other extreme.

The only one PvE activity I can think of that requires a higher minimum build/skill quality, yet not enough to force everyone to chase the (current, boring) meta is:

• Casual LFP dungeon. Like parties advertise ‘p2’.

And only for specific, popular paths that are easiest. That list of paths can easily be altered from ninja changes by ANet.

And only giving good reward once a day.

This game does NOT need the trinity. There are numerous games doing that already. If people want the trinity back those games are ALWAYS available.

Just because you don’t like a game or don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean you have to change it for everyone else.

Harper.4173:

This game does NOT need the trinity. There are numerous games doing that already. If people want the trinity back those games are ALWAYS available.

Just because you don’t like a game or don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean you have to change it for everyone else.

Or you could say the opposite – Just because you dislike the trinity does not mean you have to deny it for everyone else.

Pot meet Kettle.

The game needs something beyond DPS. As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

GW2 is training wheels for pretty much all other games.

It shouldn’t be that way but after a year stacking in a corner and being full zerk should not be the most viable way to kill most content.

This entire situation is brought on by the lack of a core trinity – Which is something they could move in a direction to and alleviate a lot of these issues.

It’s apparent this game will never have “the trinity” per say – but it could move a bit closer to it and appease both sides while at the same time at least giving some depth to the combat system.

Azreell.1568:

As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

required skill? mmo PVE were NEVER known for required skill or twitch reflexes.

Bread.7516:

Azreell.1568:

As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

required skill? mmo PVE were NEVER known for required skill or twitch reflexes.

Can I have the English translation of your intended response please?

Azreell.1568:

Bread.7516:

Azreell.1568:

As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

required skill? mmo PVE were NEVER known for required skill or twitch reflexes.

Can I have the English translation of your intended response please?

What other mmo requires skills or twitch reflexes for PVE?

Though grammar is incorrect (im chinese) I doubt that it was unintelligible.

Azreell.1568:

Or you could say the opposite – Just because you dislike the trinity does not mean you have to deny it for everyone else.

Pot meet Kettle.

I don’t think it’s right for people to come to a game where it was advertised as ‘no Trinity’, and then expect them to put a Trinity in, but that’s just me.

Azreell.1568:

The game needs something beyond DPS. As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

GW2 is training wheels for pretty much all other games.

It shouldn’t be that way but after a year stacking in a corner and being full zerk should not be the most viable way to kill most content.

This entire situation is brought on by the lack of a core trinity – Which is something they could move in a direction to and alleviate a lot of these issues.

It’s apparent this game will never have “the trinity” per say – but it could move a bit closer to it and appease both sides while at the same time at least giving some depth to the combat system.

I’d have to argue about the Trinity adding ‘depth’. If you require a certain group composition (and by require, I mean ‘need’ and not ‘want because it’s the most optimal way’) and there’s no room for adjustment, then there’s no depth, since depth is brought about through meaningful choices.

There are ways to use the current core combat system to add ‘depth’ to the game without the need of adding static, predefined roles that the Trinity would introduce. Mainly designing the content to utilise some of the less-used aspects of the system.

Maybe it’s just a case that you’re partial to the Trinity, thus you see the Trinity as the go-to solution.

As for GW2 being training wheels for other games? Can’t personally say I agree. I found a whole bunch of other MMO’s to be much, much easier, if we’re talking about level-appropriate content.

Azreell.1568:

Bread.7516:

required skill? mmo PVE were NEVER known for required skill or twitch reflexes.

Can I have the English translation of your intended response please?

MMO’s have never been known for needing skill and twitch in PvE content. His / her English isn’t so bad as you shouldn’t be able to understand it.

I disagree with his statement, however. It’s just a case of different games requiring different types of skills. You wouldn’t use the same skills in GW2 as you would, say, EvE.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I disagree with his statement, however. It’s just a case of different games requiring different types of skills. You wouldn’t use the same skills in GW2 as you would, say, EvE.

As I have no experience of EvE and just only heard stories from my friends i cannot comment on this, but generally I agree with what you say – some games require other skills as i hear EvE is a very economics and social based game.

On the other hand there are games such as diablo or even WoW (I know diablo isnt an mmo but a good example of an extreme) where as long as you have the gear and build a monkey can do PVE, this is what i was pointing to – the typical mmos floating around

Bread.7516:

TheDaiBish.9735:

I disagree with his statement, however. It’s just a case of different games requiring different types of skills. You wouldn’t use the same skills in GW2 as you would, say, EvE.

As I have no experience of EvE and just only heard stories from my friends i cannot comment on this, but generally I agree with what you say – some games require other skills as i hear EvE is a very economics and social based game.

On the other hand there are games such as diablo or even WoW (I know diablo isnt an mmo but a good example of an extreme) where as long as you have the gear and build a monkey can do PVE, this is what i was pointing to – the typical mmos floating around

Ahh, I get you.

Eh, for some aspects of PvE, that’s true (the open world mostly), but for others, you still require a skill called teamwork and co-ordination, as well as understanding your class. If you haven’t got the knowledge on how to play your class, then all of the gear in the world won’t help your group.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Ahh, I get you.

Eh, for some aspects of PvE, that’s true (the open world mostly), but for others, you still require a skill called teamwork and co-ordination, as well as understanding your class. If you haven’t got the knowledge on how to play your class, then all of the gear in the world won’t help your group.

Yep pretty much, but i think i would lump in knowledge of class and encounters under “depth”, where execution and coordination would be under “skill”.

Pretty much the argument of trinity or no trinity depends on the designers perspective of combat. The developers explicitly mentioned in videos before release that this will not be the typical mmo. People with a wider experience with multiple genre of games can see where they are heading, but others who almost only exclusively play typical mmos are confused.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the problem (PVE & Dungeons getting dull) is not solved by putting in traditional mmorpg trinity concepts but rather delving deeper into the genre the developers picked (Action-like games).

One of the things they need more interesting encounters and not gimmicks. Lupi is regarded as one of the more interesting bosses because it employs some elements present in action games, but it still pales in comparison in terms of basic or fundamental aspects; there are so many basic and fundamental design in action games that they ignore which leads to a shallow encounter.

With Anet’s resources, existing skills, and animations it isn’t hard to make boss encounters that are good.

tl;dr – Anet needs to think about giving mobs/bosses a “personality” first. Less stat counting and gimmicks, more focus on mob/boss movements and skills that make sense in execution (rather than giving mobs a playlist of skills to spam).

Im Mudbone.1437:

Dalanor.5387:

Tatsuo.1478:

I have to agree with OP. I actually find GW2 combat much more boring than in mmo with holy trinity, especially in PvE. Now everyone has one role and its dps. So what that we have evasion, it does not add that much.
And tactics? Give me a break. Stand at one hell of a big boss mob and spam all your skills, evade some attacks, so awesome..

Remember Colin Johanson joke about other mmos? “I swong a sword?..” Well that is a joke on GW2 now

Well to be honest, removing holy trinity didn’t change anything, it just made everything more zergish. So no, there was no innovation here.

Because spammig 4 skills in a “rotation” and side step from an obvius danger zone is soooooooo exciting.

Auto-spamming 1 skill is a lot more boring.

Don’t play just WvW then and enable auto-attack, it helps a lot.

haviz.1340:

hannah mee.7925:

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

You still brought up a build whose mechanics cannot be reproduced because, ironically, active defenses that are permanently maintained by those monks allow zerker to shine.

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

I’ve not played PVE in gw1 but I am pretty sure that if I had come with typical wammo build (mending, healing hands) I would’ve been kicked on sight.

I’m well aware that people like to see the past through pink glass.

The active defense mechanics were the entirety of the GW1 metagame and, even more specifically, they were used for speedruns. In GW2 there are active offensive mechanics. Next time a profession can completely play GW2 without dealing damage and just using reflects, Aegis, and occasional blind – that’s when it will have an active defensive structure. All defense in GW2 is just a glorified offense.

Mending/Healing Hands were never part of the typical wammo build, that was so 2007. Those were part of the solo farming builds. Wammos in manly spikes used 100b, which was a build you could change on a dime and you could still probably bring Mending or Healing Hands as long as you didn’t remove 100b, Whirlwind Attack or take anything away from the 12/12 Sword/Strength. It was the bare minimum of required functionality that made GW1 so great and allowed for great diversification even with the same build.

Sure, it kind of exists in GW2, but my argument is that it’s not as extensive. Bearbows/turret engis/conditionmancers/minion masters/rifle warriors and more tend to not have any trucking with their builds with most groups – or most groups will talk bad about it. There’s no bare minimum of required functionality which is kind of disheartening, a player who knows what they’re doing will never be able to perform as competently with all of the mentioned methods as they will with a bannershout warrior, mesmer, guardian or thief. While in GW1, all you needed was the competency to use the bare minimum of like 3-4 skills and the rest was completely optional to your personal tastes. People might say that wasn’t the case in speedruns, but really you saved like a grand total of 5 minutes in most SCs if you ran the most optimal build. With my mesmer and sin in GW1 I have ran/helped friends through speeding UW, FoW, Urgoz and dungeons in 20-45 minutes depending on the location. UW can take about 25-30 minutes, Urgoz takes a long time because it’s a lengthy dungeon, FoW takes a while too because it’s a lot of running back and forth – but that’s just large map areas, like trying to do map completion on GW2 practically.

The fact is, that someone who understood what the required bare minimum for speeding through dungeons were in GW1 could competently play and speedrun at near-fast rates as someone using all of the PvX builds because it was that bottom line of efficiency.

Azreell.1568:

Harper.4173:

This game does NOT need the trinity. There are numerous games doing that already. If people want the trinity back those games are ALWAYS available.

Just because you don’t like a game or don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean you have to change it for everyone else.

Or you could say the opposite – Just because you dislike the trinity does not mean you have to deny it for everyone else.

Pot meet Kettle.

The game needs something beyond DPS. As it stand now GW2 combat is out classed by pretty much every other mmorpg on the market in terms of depth and required skill.

GW2 is training wheels for pretty much all other games.

It shouldn’t be that way but after a year stacking in a corner and being full zerk should not be the most viable way to kill most content.

This entire situation is brought on by the lack of a core trinity – Which is something they could move in a direction to and alleviate a lot of these issues.

It’s apparent this game will never have “the trinity” per say – but it could move a bit closer to it and appease both sides while at the same time at least giving some depth to the combat system.

You seem to not understand the fact that GW2 was marketed and intended as a game that does NOT have the trinity.
That’s why I’ve explained to the people asking for one that they’re asking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. People who play GW2 in their majority play it because of its uniqueness – which is in large part due to the lack of said trinity.

I’m not the one trying to change the game to meet my needs – I’m a person who agrees that the game is fine as it is and I don’t feel it should be changed just because a few players want it to change to make it more like their own favorite MMO.

You seem to believe GW2 combat to be simple and stale yet I haven’t seen another MMO that does dynamic and fluid combat just as well.
The dodge system promotes skill, awareness and experience – and while the skill pallet is less numerous than other MMOs this particularity of combat makes up for it.

No other MMO mixes in these action elements just as well.

And no – I don’t believe moving in the direction of a trinity could " appease both sides " since the hardcore Trinity fans want what they want and the people opposed to the trinity will abandon the game ( myself included) the moment we see the game shift towards something like that.

If you want THAT MMO – where the combat is crisp and trinity like the go play THAT MMO.

Not only did GW2 remove tanks, healer and DPS as group roles but they completely made all of the boss NPCs immune to CC in all forms which leaves only DPS faster as the only option. Removing the holy trinity without adding something else leaves only one aspect of PvE gaming which is DPS, DPS, DPS and DPS.

They didn’t gain anything from removing the “holy trinity”…

GW2 lost 95% of what makes PvE interesting. The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

. As for the zergfest, they tried to do that with the last few installments of the Living Story, but a LOT of people QQ’d so they changed it several times to appease them. Can’t ave things where we have to be organized and work together, no, just throw a huge group at it, that should work. (where is the sarcasm font?)
I love this game. As a light armor class, if you build it right,(read put in survivability) you can take on heavy armor classes and win because of the typical mentality of “me smash, you die” but to do that they have to neglect some armor rating. You don’t get the consequences of your build to the degree you do here (if people would actually play around with something besides ‘zerker) in any other game.
Not saying there aren’t ways to tweak the game some, but the Trinity isn’t one. If you think that is the only aspect to an MMO, I agree with others above-Go play that game

I agree that GW2 isn’t ideal in many areas, but it surprises me how many people seem to want to solve those issues by making GW into a standard MMO clone. I thought the whole point of GW was that it doesn’t work like a standard MMO.

The standard solutions have side effects. Progressive dungeon tiers leave the entry dungeons empty for new players, but if you give entry players a gear ladder past all the older dungeons and you dilute the rewards of the players that played through them to get to the top ones. Implementing the “trinity” means certain classes are needed and others aren’t in order to make a dungeon run successful. Grinds give frequent players a time sink to work on but quickly separate players that play a lot into a different class than players that only play occasionally.

There are huge challenges to trying to make a MMO equally rewarding for min/maxers, people who play what is fun rather than most efficent, people who play a lot, people who play only a little, etc. Going back to the traditional solutions just eliminates any chance of progress toward finding better solutions.

I’m not going to spend all day reading this argument but…let me, pry to you why i stopped playing MMOs for a while.

I -hates- the trinity, with a passion. I hated the idea of being forced into a stereotype position where my only idea’s didnt exist. I stopped playing MS in end not because of arguments, but because I got tired of being called an idiot for not biulding my warrior for pure strength. I still think that ‘build’ idea is terrible, but they were half right, I was going to be a pure strength build no matter what I wanted. That followed in every, single, MMO, and I got tired of being pushed into stereotypes so extreme. Even DnD did this, do you have any idea how boring it was to be pushed into a spell slinger that never fought at .blank and depended on everyone -else- for damage? (this was in 2nd edition BTW.)
I bought GW2 because it had the balls to stand up and say “I’m going to let people play the way they want, without being restricted to those builds”(not an actual quote). I was and still am excited to see the AMAZING amount of different builds and ideas that GW2 can do. I feel like I’m actually fighting again, making real styles and real ideas, and real character who understand those style. There more passion and imagination than the sets the holy trinity have.

thats my 2 cents, take it as you will. also, ladyhellfire makes good points, as any class I can play however I want, in -any- class. I’m restricted by the style of how I fight, not on a single idea a designer thought of.

Harper.4173:

Azreell.1568:

Or you could say the opposite – Just because you dislike the trinity does not mean you have to deny it for everyone else.

You seem to not understand the fact that GW2 was marketed and intended as a game that does NOT have the trinity. That’s why I’ve explained to the people asking for one that they’re asking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. People who play GW2 in their majority play it because of its uniqueness – which is in large part due to the lack of said trinity.

I’m not the one trying to change the game to meet my needs – I’m a person who agrees that the game is fine as it is and I don’t feel it should be changed just because a few players want it to change to make it more like their own favorite MMO.

Exactly. ANet could not just add taunts and single target heals and call it a day. In trinity games, the entire game is based around that mechanic. Introducing trinity would mean completely reworking the game. Not only would that involve a prohibitive cost in dev resources for what might be little return, it would not be fair to anyone who came to the game because of the way it was advertised.

Game features like trinity/no trinity are an either or prospect. There’s no win-win for both sides of the debate. Given trinity availability elsewhere and the scarcity of other no-trinity options, coupled with how the game was advertised and built, the difference of opinion is clearly more than just one want vs another.

Delar.9456:

Not only did GW2 remove tanks, healer and DPS as group roles but they completely made all of the boss NPCs immune to CC in all forms which leaves only DPS faster as the only option. Removing the holy trinity without adding something else leaves only one aspect of PvE gaming which is DPS, DPS, DPS and DPS.

They didn’t gain anything from removing the “holy trinity”…

GW2 lost 95% of what makes PvE interesting. The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

Do you even play in full zerker groups ? Because if you did I doubt you’d call the situation " no skill " and " rudimentary team work" .

Full zerker groups at launch were SUICIDE. The content has not changed – and if anything with the bug fixes and tweaks it has become HARDER.
The issue here is that the players have become very good, and now know the content by heart – which is why people like you get the impression that it takes " no skill".

Hawke.9013:

You’ve obviously never played a healer at endgame. It’s arguably one of the hardest of the three. The combat in WoW is much more fluid and moving than this, it is clunky to move, and ineffective.

A-Net wants everyone to work together, but personally I’d rather spend my three measly utility skills on saving my hide, (since I have to worry about that as theres no tanks or healers) than to waste one slot on others.

I have played endgame healer. Endgame tank. Endgame dps in WoW through classic, BC, Wrath and Cata. I remember in classic when druids in raids were all expected to be heals, and if you used your innervate on yourself you got raidkicked and gkicked.
I remember people’s specs being told to them on PvE servers, and I recall the very few who bucked the system and dared to play bear tanks before there really were those, or dps priests before they were permitted.

I do, very definitely, know whereof I speak.

And I love gw2. I love the combat methodology. Sure the encounters and bosses could be tweaked. No doubt. But what things do now is demand that players show an ounce of common sense.
No more rogues with their eyes locked on the DPSMeters trying to top the charts and draining healers’ mana.
No more tanks frothing at the lips because their assigned healer couldn’t keep them up through a cleave when they forgot to pop their blocks or soaks.
No more healers with eyes crossing staring at bars after hours in a raid wiping on a new encounter standing in fire healing themself because they didn’t even notice beyond the dropping hp.

I have a geared 80 of every profession in this game, just as I once did in WoW. Yes, my bunker shout spec guardian is in demand in dungeons because she can survive things and works mojo involving conditions to buffs.
But my ele is as viable in some dungeons, or my thief, or my mesmer, etc.

And I specced as I wanted. I love, LOVE, LOOOOOVE that every class can self heal. My good gods, how did I survive seven years in WoW without a self heal on my original and beloved hunter? I remember knowing to the marrow in MC that if I wanted to survive, it was a case of learning to bandage, because the heals went tanks-healers-anyone worthwhile. My job was to pull back then, and I cannot even believe I played for so long so UTTERLY dependent on other players to save my kitten if bandage was on cool down and FD got resisted. I like to play without needing others to keep me alive. I like my own skill to suffice. And as a hunter I generally did succeed at that bar some encounters. As a tank I was totally dependent on my healers not to let me die, and as a healer I relied on tanks and dps to make the mob die before my mana ran out.

I love this game. I love that every one of my characters can successfully dungeon run, solo, kite a mob to death, or explore without knowing I’m going to die shortly.

I could never – and will never – return to the Holy Trinity of Dependency.

hannah mee.7925:

The active defense mechanics were the entirety of the GW1 metagame and, even more specifically, they were used for speedruns. In GW2 there are active offensive mechanics. Next time a profession can completely play GW2 without dealing damage and just using reflects, Aegis, and occasional blind – that’s when it will have an active defensive structure. All defense in GW2 is just a glorified offense.

Mending/Healing Hands were never part of the typical wammo build, that was so 2007. Those were part of the solo farming builds. Wammos in manly spikes used 100b, which was a build you could change on a dime and you could still probably bring Mending or Healing Hands as long as you didn’t remove 100b, Whirlwind Attack or take anything away from the 12/12 Sword/Strength. It was the bare minimum of required functionality that made GW1 so great and allowed for great diversification even with the same build.

Sure, it kind of exists in GW2, but my argument is that it’s not as extensive. Bearbows/turret engis/conditionmancers/minion masters/rifle warriors and more tend to not have any trucking with their builds with most groups – or most groups will talk bad about it. There’s no bare minimum of required functionality which is kind of disheartening, a player who knows what they’re doing will never be able to perform as competently with all of the mentioned methods as they will with a bannershout warrior, mesmer, guardian or thief. While in GW1, all you needed was the competency to use the bare minimum of like 3-4 skills and the rest was completely optional to your personal tastes. People might say that wasn’t the case in speedruns, but really you saved like a grand total of 5 minutes in most SCs if you ran the most optimal build. With my mesmer and sin in GW1 I have ran/helped friends through speeding UW, FoW, Urgoz and dungeons in 20-45 minutes depending on the location. UW can take about 25-30 minutes, Urgoz takes a long time because it’s a lengthy dungeon, FoW takes a while too because it’s a lot of running back and forth – but that’s just large map areas, like trying to do map completion on GW2 practically.

The fact is, that someone who understood what the required bare minimum for speeding through dungeons were in GW1 could competently play and speedrun at near-fast rates as someone using all of the PvX builds because it was that bottom line of efficiency.

I brought up mending and healing hands because I thougth they were equal to todays so called bearbows and here I learnt that they were used in farming. Well, forgive me then.

My point is that in both gw1 and gw2 there are builds which are being used by casuals (hence wiki entry like this) and they all work in the sense that you can complete the content. The other point was that the diversity in gw1 is false because you were obliged to run certain builds for certain farms/speedclears. Yes, there were more builds overally but the game had about 1200 skills and dual profession system. Right now you can complete content very fast just by having zerk gear, any class (excluding necros) will do. In gw1 you had to had a very specific build (like t4 for uwsc iirc).

The diversity is in both game, it’s just never going to be on the farming meta level because those builds are optimized and that means there can only be one certain build that meets the criterias.

Right now you can complete content very fast just by having zerk gear, any class (excluding necros) will do. In gw1 you had to had a very specific build (like t4 for uwsc iirc).

I’m pretty sure this why gw1 has more diversity. One would specialized builds/equips for different areas of the game, while in gw2 it’s a hot piece of uninteresting, homogenized mess.

Yes. GW1 had tons of skills; it’s one of the reasons made that game have diversity. It doesn’t logically translate into we GW2 should set lower level of expectation. Diversity should be achieved one way or another. Since ANet would rather break down and die instead of adding more skills and more weapons to the game, they need to find a solution another way.

Azreell.1568:

Harper.4173:

This game does NOT need the trinity. There are numerous games doing that already. If people want the trinity back those games are ALWAYS available.

Just because you don’t like a game or don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean you have to change it for everyone else.

Or you could say the opposite – Just because you dislike the trinity does not mean you have to deny it for everyone else.

Pot meet Kettle.

That’s one of the worst uses of this argument I’ve ever seen. It’s like you don’t even know what it means.

Oh yes, Anet please bring the Holy Trinity to GW2, since there’s nothing like spending 45 minutes in Duty/Party Finder because you’re DPS (along with everyone else and their mother) to get into a dungeon, or being a tank (expected to lead) for the first time in a dungeon and getting kicked because you don’t know where to go, who to mark first, second and third , or painfully leveling a healer then getting blamed for the tank’s death. Cuz you know if the tank dies it’s the healer’s fault and visa versa. Then having to roll on loot like on FF xiv. Good times
I love the fact that GW2 does NOT have a “holy trinity”. I’m responsible for my own viability. After 5,000 hours and 13 level 80’s. all professions plus extra guards, rangers and warriors (not to mention the ones I 86’d because I didn’t like how they looked, their race or talked) I know my jobs, know which of them would be best during a certain dungeon or event and proceed accordingly. Not all are zerker , some PVT for WvW, others CD, but they work for me. If the day came when Anet started using the Trinity system, that would be the day I’d quit.
If every other game out there (which I doubt) has the Trinity, then to the OP, I suggest you go play them.

haviz.1340:

I brought up mending and healing hands because I thougth they were equal to todays so called bearbows and here I learnt that they were used in farming. Well, forgive me then.

My point is that in both gw1 and gw2 there are builds which are being used by casuals (hence wiki entry like this) and they all work in the sense that you can complete the content. The other point was that the diversity in gw1 is false because you were obliged to run certain builds for certain farms/speedclears. Yes, there were more builds overally but the game had about 1200 skills and dual profession system. Right now you can complete content very fast just by having zerk gear, any class (excluding necros) will do. In gw1 you had to had a very specific build (like t4 for uwsc iirc).

The diversity is in both game, it’s just never going to be on the farming meta level because those builds are optimized and that means there can only be one certain build that meets the criterias.

And bringing up skills like Mending or Healing Hands doesn’t really help your case because they were certainly use-able with the right team setup. While you can certainly take a bearbow into Fractals, no combination of the other four teammates will quite make up for its lack of contribution to the party. Again, it comes down to only needing a bare minimum to perform competently. In UWSCs, unless you wanted to run Terraway where the team used optimal multitasking to complete it fast (not metagame builds), it was still possible to bring a mesmer that knew what they were doing with some necro heroes, a monk and carry 2-3 players. And, on top of that, they could use this loose team structure and still complete it in about 30 minutes with cons.

GW2 does not offer that. Although the recent blog post regarding the new traits does seem to remedy a lot of GW2’s problems almost immediately just with the trait changes.

I am sure this doesn’t need saying and yet I rather want to anyway because I think it is important to speak up when a discussion is being held and the outcome is important to you.

I never want to get into another game situation in an MMO where I need to memorize my part, memorize the meta, and where the outcome is entirely predictable as long as the people with the “aggro me” buttons remember to press them at the right times. To me that’s just abusing game mechanics – if you are going to build a threat system it should mirror the decisions made by actual players in PvP scenarios and you should not be able to press a button which, if you tried to use that ability on a real player, would do nothing, and instantly “manage” the situation.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I’m not quite sure what you really want. If you wanted a game like WoW where the combat is more static and encounters are much more scripted, then frankly, GW2 just isn’t your game because that’s what the devs wanted to avoid.

I think there’s a few misconceptions going around. First of all, the holy trinity isn’t bad. It has worked in dozens of RPG’s for many years, and it still does. The holy trinity is a game mechanic. It’s the idea that in a roleplaying game, each class must fill a role. It’s the idea that you need a healthy mix of classes in any group, to meet the needs of a dungeon/raid (which means DPS, tanking, healing, buffing, aoe spells). It basically adds strategy to a game that would otherwise just be a game of wack-a-mole.

But it is a boring staple of RPG’s, and people are ready for something new. Something refreshing. That said, simply removing the trinity from your RPG is not the answer. Like I said above, then you have a game of wack-a-mole, and that’s not very interesting. GW2 tried to replace it with something new, but they failed. You don’t have to take my word for it, we all know how zerker dominates the game. And we all know how all the one-hit kills basically make building defensively almost pointless. So what you end up with, is basically still the game of wack-a-mole. It’s a game where it’s all about how fast you can clubber those monsters back into the ground. A clear element of strategy is missing.

The initial idea of doing away with the trinity was good, I have nothing against that. And replacing it with a soft trinity of DPS/support/control is also a good idea. But the numbers are skewed. This is mostly due to the way encounters are set up. Monsters do ludicrous amounts of damage, which are not mitigated enough by armor and toughness. Monsters also have a lot of unbalanced abilities, that negate some of the main game mechanics (Defiant and Unshakeable). Those are badly designed abilities.

The reason a lot of bosses have Defiant/Unshakeable, is because Anet did not want players to stunlock their bosses, or keep them permanently blinded. Well that’s a fair point, but don’t you want to prevent players from being stunlocked and perma-blinded as well? And here lies one of the principle flaws of the design, they didn’t solve stunlocking or perma-blind. They just slapped an immunity and resistance on all bosses, and considered their job done. But they didn’t actually fix the problems. Is it any surprise stun-locking is all over wvw right now?

But this also shows poor design of the boss encounters themselves. Any decently designed boss would have ways to defend himself against these things, just like a player would. And if bosses had a decent mix of melee and ranged attacks, along with proper ai, we wouldn’t need artificial gimmicks: Such as bosses going invulnerable and healing to full health, if they can’t reach the player.

You can have roles quite easily without the trinity. To me, the trinity is good as aspects of a character’s properties, but just like strength/dex/int/vit/etc, forcing a character to just have strength and nothing else makes things rather boring.

There is a point to building defensively, if I just even change the traits around and stay in zerker gear on my Guardian, I find that my surivability goes up by a ton. If I go full bunker, its almost impossible to get killed in PvE.

1. Going more defensive means 1hko attacks often won’t kill you. There’s a huge difference between being left on 1k HP and being dead.
2. Once you stop getting hit by 1hkos, there still a lot of things which you will just get hit by. As a example, on a DPS Guard, since you can’t blind dredge, sometimes you will just take hits because you can’t dodge/reflect everything, at least not in a not-very-organised party, and that extra survivability helps there.

I’m not too sure a boss can possibly defend against CCing without some sort of immunity. That’s not really even something the trinity can solve anyways, every MMO, trinity or not, has some sort of Defiance mechanic. I got no problems with Defiance, but it just isn’t being used properly here.

From what I can see, no, GW2 definitely isn’t there yet, but its making progress. We’re definitely getting more encounters where there are definitive roles, a personal favorite being Subject Six.

Also, I’ve always believed that some stuff just aren’t supposed to have roles. It really depends on the fight, for example, trying to slot roles into the Thermanova Anomaly fight would just end up with a mess, because that fight just wasn’t designed to have any particular roles; but it doesn’t make it a bad fight, quite the opposite in fact.

Hawke.9013:

It works. I don’t mean to burst A-Net’s bubble with the whole, “ground shaking” idea of removing the trinity, but there’s a reason why every MMO uses it. It’s not as frustrating as every mob being uncontrollable; since, with no tank I guess that’s what A-Net wants. As a thief, it is very frustrating to have a boss turn around and one shot you in a split second. Everything PvE oriented is uncontrolled, and very badly structured.

The fact that a boss can aggro you is not a problem. That makes the game more interesting. The problem is the one-shotting. That makes the game less interesting, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a thief or a heavy. OHKOs basically invalidates having defensive stats, and that destroys build diversity. Guess what also destroys build diversity? Assigning fixed roles to players. Holy Trinity is not any better than Holy Zerker, it’s just a different kind of lame. Basically what you want is to be dps who is effectively immune from damage, because that’s what other MMOs gave you. It’s worth pointing out that this is why the MMO genre has a pretty poor reputation for being video games. A game ordinarily requires the player to be an active participant. Guild Wars was always a bit unique as an MMO that actually felt like a video game.

In GW1, all enemies would actively prefer to target light armor. Oh did that Monk just heal someone? Every moving enemy will aggro on him. But how you protect your backline is by putting down cripples. To tank, you have to force the enemy to fight you. Just like players would in a small-team match. Heavy armor is a deterrent because attrition takes longer. Trinity is just a fancy way of describing a crutch that forces the AI to act stupidly by attacking the hardest target. Tanking should require skill as with any other role. But again, in GW1 you had time for tactics because the enemies weren’t one-shotting everyone. Boss damage needs to be slowed down a bit to allow for more varied tactics, and as a corollary dodging should be seriously revamped or removed because it spoils the flow of combat. That’s all there is to it.

I don’t know about others, but while forming groups for dungeons there is always a need of a tank, A-Net will never officially take away the trinity anyways, guardians will always be there for tanking. As a thief, will always NOT tank.

Only bad groups think that a tank is required. If someone is tanking then you’re not stacking. And if you’re not stacking you should be good at kiting. I reiterate, tanks are for people who just want to have effective invulnerability, and most MMOs are not games.

WoW’s endgame is very much so superior to GW2’s, and will forever be, unless some sort of trinity is occurring. And GW2 will always be inferior for this reason.

Let me make something very clear: as much as I think GW2 needs improvement, it is still a game worth improving. Using WoW as an example of any game design principle demonstrates extremely poor taste in video games. We need less of WoW infecting Guild Wars, the fact that GW2 is so much closer to WoW than GW1 is the cause for most of its failures. We need more of Guild Wars 1 in Guild Wars 2. The game’s combat needs to be more tactical, and completely dispose of the idea that it should cater to one type of mindless drone or another.

Leablo.2651:

WoW’s endgame is very much so superior to GW2’s, and will forever be, unless some sort of trinity is occurring. And GW2 will always be inferior for this reason.

Let me make something very clear: as much as I think GW2 needs improvement, it is still a game worth improving. Using WoW as an example of any game design principle demonstrates extremely poor taste in video games. We need less of WoW infecting Guild Wars, the fact that GW2 is so much closer to WoW than GW1 is the cause for most of its failures. We need more of Guild Wars 1 in Guild Wars 2. The game’s combat needs to be more tactical, and completely dispose of the idea that it should cater to one type of mindless drone or another.

+1

If only Anet shared that view.

Question to a few posters above.
Which bosses one-shot you outside of Lupi, Mossman and Archdiviner?

Leablo.2651:

Hawke.9013:

It works. I don’t mean to burst A-Net’s bubble with the whole, “ground shaking” idea of removing the trinity, but there’s a reason why every MMO uses it. It’s not as frustrating as every mob being uncontrollable; since, with no tank I guess that’s what A-Net wants. As a thief, it is very frustrating to have a boss turn around and one shot you in a split second. Everything PvE oriented is uncontrolled, and very badly structured.

The fact that a boss can aggro you is not a problem. That makes the game more interesting. The problem is the one-shotting. That makes the game less interesting, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a thief or a heavy. OHKOs basically invalidates having defensive stats, and that destroys build diversity. Guess what also destroys build diversity? Assigning fixed roles to players. Holy Trinity is not any better than Holy Zerker, it’s just a different kind of lame. Basically what you want is to be dps who is effectively immune from damage, because that’s what other MMOs gave you. It’s worth pointing out that this is why the MMO genre has a pretty poor reputation for being video games. A game ordinarily requires the player to be an active participant. Guild Wars was always a bit unique as an MMO that actually felt like a video game.

In GW1, all enemies would actively prefer to target light armor. Oh did that Monk just heal someone? Every moving enemy will aggro on him. But how you protect your backline is by putting down cripples. To tank, you have to force the enemy to fight you. Just like players would in a small-team match. Heavy armor is a deterrent because attrition takes longer. Trinity is just a fancy way of describing a crutch that forces the AI to act stupidly by attacking the hardest target. Tanking should require skill as with any other role. But again, in GW1 you had time for tactics because the enemies weren’t one-shotting everyone. Boss damage needs to be slowed down a bit to allow for more varied tactics, and as a corollary dodging should be seriously revamped or removed because it spoils the flow of combat. That’s all there is to it.

I don’t know about others, but while forming groups for dungeons there is always a need of a tank, A-Net will never officially take away the trinity anyways, guardians will always be there for tanking. As a thief, will always NOT tank.

Only bad groups think that a tank is required. If someone is tanking then you’re not stacking. And if you’re not stacking you should be good at kiting. I reiterate, tanks are for people who just want to have effective invulnerability, and most MMOs are not games.

WoW’s endgame is very much so superior to GW2’s, and will forever be, unless some sort of trinity is occurring. And GW2 will always be inferior for this reason.

Let me make something very clear: as much as I think GW2 needs improvement, it is still a game worth improving. Using WoW as an example of any game design principle demonstrates extremely poor taste in video games. We need less of WoW infecting Guild Wars, the fact that GW2 is so much closer to WoW than GW1 is the cause for most of its failures. We need more of Guild Wars 1 in Guild Wars 2. The game’s combat needs to be more tactical, and completely dispose of the idea that it should cater to one type of mindless drone or another.

Can you tell me exactly how heavy defense is not functioning in this game?
Have you seen the video of the party doing Arah without even dodging ONCE? The hardest dungeon in the game without ONE dodge – and you’re telling me heavy defense is not an option?

What do you people want? Complete immunity to damage 24/7?

Xae Isareth.1364:

You can have roles quite easily without the trinity. To me, the trinity is good as aspects of a character’s properties, but just like strength/dex/int/vit/etc, forcing a character to just have strength and nothing else makes things rather boring.

There is a point to building defensively, if I just even change the traits around and stay in zerker gear on my Guardian, I find that my surivability goes up by a ton. If I go full bunker, its almost impossible to get killed in PvE.

1. Going more defensive means 1hko attacks often won’t kill you. There’s a huge difference between being left on 1k HP and being dead.
2. Once you stop getting hit by 1hkos, there still a lot of things which you will just get hit by. As a example, on a DPS Guard, since you can’t blind dredge, sometimes you will just take hits because you can’t dodge/reflect everything, at least not in a not-very-organised party, and that extra survivability helps there.

I’m not too sure a boss can possibly defend against CCing without some sort of immunity. That’s not really even something the trinity can solve anyways, every MMO, trinity or not, has some sort of Defiance mechanic. I got no problems with Defiance, but it just isn’t being used properly here.

From what I can see, no, GW2 definitely isn’t there yet, but its making progress. We’re definitely getting more encounters where there are definitive roles, a personal favorite being Subject Six.

Also, I’ve always believed that some stuff just aren’t supposed to have roles. It really depends on the fight, for example, trying to slot roles into the Thermanova Anomaly fight would just end up with a mess, because that fight just wasn’t designed to have any particular roles; but it doesn’t make it a bad fight, quite the opposite in fact.

While I agree with most of what you’ve said, I have something more to add.

• Defiance mechanic is fine. It may need a bit of improvement but it works with the intelligent use of CC in a coordinated group. If people complain about Defiance while pugging is their only experience then they need to step up their game; communicate with your pug or get into a guild run.
• A lot of bosses are trivialized by smart uses of CC such as the Golem boss in all paths of CoE, Subject Six in Thaumanova fractal and Shoggoth (tar boss) in Arah p1. They are bosses that zerker group can just not stack and dps.
• There are soft roles in the Thaumanova Anomaly fight. If everyone is running around like headless chickens, quite a few would fall to their death.

Dalanor.5387:

Question to a few posters above.
Which bosses one-shot you outside of Lupi, Mossman and Archdiviner?

Enrage Grawl Shaman, Brie and Golem’s pink pewpew, Risen Deadeye, Risen Illusionist (Elite), Subject Alpha, Abomination… :P

Technically, all the one-shot can be dodged, block or evaded.

If you payed attention before release, anet didn’t want to remove the holy trinity for the sake of removing it, they wanted to change the combat system from something that games back in the early 2000s used that we’re still using today because no one wants to try anything new.

That system works until your players get a taste of a more advanced system, megaten or FEZ (the mmo not the stupid platformer), and then after that it’s really hard to go back to having no control over your character in combat, basically having the game decide your fate for you. Especially after FEZ in which getting hit in combat is entirely your fault, all damage is 100% avoidable and battles between players of equal skill could take awhile (Or in a few cases be so evenly matched that the battle never ends).

Here’s the fun thing about GW2 that the OP doesn’t seem to or want to understand.

Let’s first push aside what is “mathematically correct” when it comes to doing dungeons, or PvE stuff in the game and put aside the ZERK ALL THE THINGS that we all know to be true currently.

If you are just getting together with some friends to play some content in a game like WoW, and you load up together the moment you see your friend’s toons you know what you are in for. Oh, you’re cleric and you’re the warlock, I’m the rogue and he’s the Warrior. OK, everyone has their part so yeah, let’s DO THIS. Problem is its boring and predictable. Horribly predictable.

In GW2 however, simply seeing an Ele or Warrior or Guardian show up in your party doesn’t mean i know what all everyone is doing. My favorite dungeon run i did recently was a TA run with my asuran warrior. She was the “healer” in the group. The Guardian was the DPS, and the ranger was DPS/condi. We also had a DPS war with us and a condi Necro. We weren’t doing a speed run through the dungeon and you know what? It was a blast. We had…wait for it…FUN. Also, no one in the party really had a healing warrior in their group like that before and it was interesting seeing their reactions to the spec. GW2 gives you that flexibility to go full on with one of those classic roles, or hybrid it out, and unless you are looking to do something very specific like a dungeon run in under 5 minutes, then your build is whatever you feel like since you don’t NEED the trinity anymore.

But, OP, if you really love WoW that much…i hear there are some people that still play it.

Delar.9456:

The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

I tried reading this entire thread, but it became tedious due to the endless beotching, so I started skimming and saw this part of a comment. I’m pretty sure that phrase “rudimentary team work” is highly dependent on WHAT you are doing in game and HOW you are doing it.

I totally get that you are referencing PvE, not WvW, but seriously – go play something that you find fun rather than complain on the forum (no offense meant to you, it’s just that a TON of people do this and all I can think is that the game is much larger than the PvE stuff). Here’s an example:

I know that a VERY small percentage of the people who play GW2 actually read the forums and then a very small percentage of those people actually post on the forums. With that said, it seems the majority of the people who do post on the forums have nothing good to say about the game…. SO WHY ARE THEY PLAYING IT?!? Go find a different game to play if you don’t like this one and stop being toxic and unhelpful on these forums! If ANet isn’t living up to your expectations, then leave, nobody will miss you, including ANet.

Harper.4173:

Can you tell me exactly how heavy defense is not functioning in this game? Have you seen the video of the party doing Arah without even dodging ONCE? The hardest dungeon in the game without ONE dodge – and you’re telling me heavy defense is not an option?

What do you people want? Complete immunity to damage 24/7?

Since this is what trinity provides, I’d say yes. As someone else pointed out above, well-played trinity encounters ensure that the big hits all go at the damage sponge, providing functional damage immunity to everyone else.

SonOfJacob.7396:

Delar.9456:

The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

I tried reading this entire thread, but it became tedious due to the endless beotching, so I started skimming and saw this part of a comment. I’m pretty sure that phrase “rudimentary team work” is highly dependent on WHAT you are doing in game and HOW you are doing it.

I totally get that you are referencing PvE, not WvW, but seriously – go play something that you find fun rather than complain on the forum (no offense meant to you, it’s just that a TON of people do this and all I can think is that the game is much larger than the PvE stuff). Here’s an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlh-DBLjzYk

top level players and teams are not playing this game because professions and combat are shallow, and there has been very little improvement in these two areas for almost 2 years. also, the forums are here so we can share thoughts, opinions, info, ideas and concerns so i’ll turn this back around on you. if you don’t like reading criticism from players that hope to see improvements, then get off the forums and continue playing the game you are content with. no, not everyone is constructive with their feedback, but simply made (and more accurate in my opinion) general thoughts hardly deserve the white knight treatment.

Swagger.1459:

SonOfJacob.7396:

Delar.9456:

The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

I tried reading this entire thread, but it became tedious due to the endless beotching, so I started skimming and saw this part of a comment. I’m pretty sure that phrase “rudimentary team work” is highly dependent on WHAT you are doing in game and HOW you are doing it.

I totally get that you are referencing PvE, not WvW, but seriously – go play something that you find fun rather than complain on the forum (no offense meant to you, it’s just that a TON of people do this and all I can think is that the game is much larger than the PvE stuff). Here’s an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlh-DBLjzYk

top level players and teams are not playing this game because professions and combat are shallow, and there has been very little improvement in these two areas for almost 2 years. also, the forums are here so we can share thoughts, opinions, info, ideas and concerns so i’ll turn this back around on you. if you don’t like reading criticism from players that hope to see improvements, then get off the forums and continue playing the game you are content with. no, not everyone is constructive with their feedback, but simply made (and more accurate in my opinion) general thoughts hardly deserve the white knight treatment.

Did you watch the video? There are plenty of top level players and teams in GW2. I’m not one of them. But my suggestion is that if you are one of them, there are more aspects of this game than just PvE.

As for the purpose of the forum: yes, I know. That’s why I responded in the first place. Complainers don’t hold the rights to the forum.

Lunchbox.6970:

I know that a VERY small percentage of the people who play GW2 actually read the forums and then a very small percentage of those people actually post on the forums. With that said, it seems the majority of the people who do post on the forums have nothing good to say about the game…. SO WHY ARE THEY PLAYING IT?!? Go find a different game to play if you don’t like this one and stop being toxic and unhelpful on these forums! If ANet isn’t living up to your expectations, then leave, nobody will miss you, including ANet.

Maybe because posting on the official forum doesn’t require one to be an active subscriber? It can be logically concluded that if people aren’t happy about the game, they’ll spend more time pushing for change instead of playing the game. From that stand points, most replies in this thread are useful… the only unhelpful ones are like the reply you made which adds nothing to the discussion. ANet will miss their players because less players → less people spend money on buying gems → less revenue. If you don’t care about a discussion and cannot make an intelligent reply, the best choice of action is not posting at all.