Guild Wars 2

HELLruler.4820:

When Diablo 2 was released, it wasn’t as great as it is now. I remember the community saying the game was terrible, that it wasn’t going to be played. But the game got a lot of updates and improved to a point that “Diablo” became a synonym of success

Diablo 3’s release was terrible as well (Blizzard is excellent on that I think), but the community feedback helped the game to take the right direction, and the expansion can prove that is true

GW2 was an outstanding game on the release. I myself played it almost the whole year (bought it on jan/2013 and quit on set-oct/2013).
ArenaNet started updating the game, with good and bad stuff, but the game got more and more like a grind game than something to have fun, and more you were forced to play Guardian or Warrior because they are simply the best classes in the game for PvE.
I hope all that “listen to community” gives us some hope and let us play the game to have fun again

D3 tried to build a game from the ground up around the RMAH. It made it not fun and now they are scrapping that idea and listening to the playerbase. The biggest changes are the fix to loot tables so that you actually have a chance at loot and they are removing the RMAH. I don’t really think they need to remove the RMAH, they just should not base loot drops around it.

GW2 they started with a decent game and then some kittenhead in a suit decided that they wanted to do what D3 is doing and make all content revolve around the gemstore. So they have nerfed loot drops to abysmal levels so you either grind gold for 100hrs or buy gems to get what ever you want. Its like they didn’t learn from D3.

I started playing GW2 at launch and lasted a little bit longer than you. Now I’m just a forum jockey until they start listening to the players. I don’t think its going to happen though. They seem determined to stay the course and there is many defenders of that course. Whether they are just fanboys or paid shills there are many trying to down play the naysayers so I just can’t see any real change happening.

Thedenofsin.7340:

What I don’t understand is how the PVE in this game is more profitable for ArenaNet than the WvW or the PvP?

The PVE in this game is not good. Open world content is nothing more than a massive zerg-fest. Orr has too much trash and not enough waypoints. The Zhaitan was a massive disappointment. Optimally running dungeons means you focus on maximizing dps, stacking and leashing. The Living World, with the shining exceptions of SAB, Halloween and Marionette, have all been zergy disappointments.

I can easily find many MMO’s that have better PVE content: Wow, LOTRO, Rift, etc.

However, the WvW and PvP in GW2 are different. WvWvW content – large maps to explore, huge fights, small skirmishes, etc. It’s better than any of its current competition. PvP has fluid combat and good balance.

But, ArenaNet has let WvW and PvP flounder. If they invested the time and energy into WvW and PvP instead of PVE and LW, they’d have the best world and team-based PvP in any MMO, ever. It had so much potential – and it’s simply being squandered.

Instead of having lousy PVE and outstanding WvW and PvP, we have a game with mediocre PVE, WvW and PvP.

This is basically how I feel right now.

I’m tired of PvE zerg content and gem store updates. I don’t find either very fun and it seems like that is all ANet wants to do.

LordByron.8369:

Is it fun?
For me it is when i am “prepared to have fun”…

But the more we go on the bigger the % of time spent is “preparation to have fun” opposed to “having fun”.

Whoever designed GW2 thougt it perfectly…
Whoever is in care of updates, totally destroyed it for me…..

The process of acquiring wealth in order to get equipment was fun at the beginning, in fact you could obtain it from whatever you liked “playing the way you want”.

Few months later you play whatever developers wants….

This is what a lot of the anet defenders ignore. The game started off one way and it is not that way anymore. I enjoyed the start but its gone down a bad path. People keep saying you can still play the way you want but what they ignore is that the rewards that you used to get are gone. So once upon a time players were able to get actual rewards for playing how they want The rewards used to not be a grind and now they all are. Now to get the same rewards I used to get by playing the way I want I have to grind champions for hours instead. They act like its always been this way since launch and that is wrong. It was not this way at launch.

The reason we don’t just go away is that we still have hope for this game. D3 shows that a developer can see the light and fix things. Is it wrong to hope that arenanet/ncsoft could do the same.

excellent post. what’s missing from gw2 is a “skill sandbox” through which i can explore multiple fun ways to play ONE profession. D3 does this well, GW1 did it well. currently, i play none of my 3 professions the way i want to. this is because one or two specs are vastly better than others. there are STILL dozens of useless utilities, elites and traits.

where is the build variety ANet? where are the new utilities and weapons?

build variety in this game is total garbage and has been since release. the only thing keeping me here is my guild.

Escadin.9482:

Let me broaden your horizon: I know an mmo, that includes infinite VP, mostly timegated and alot of grind as well.

The most common and very successful strategy is to ignore the VP for anything that isn’t automatically fed to you with no effort on your side and pillage anything else you might need.

The most important ressources in that game are in descending order: Prestige and political power, Skill, knowledge of the exact game mechanics (they are a secret even to guides or the wiki), teamplay, VP.
The gap between these ressources is very small though and btw this game has a heavy focus on pvp.

Average hours spent playing this game for anyone I met was 1000+.

Conclusion: If your MMO offers grind as a feature – not a must have you will be just fine, even if hardly anyone important to the pvp scene takes part in it (in a MMO that heavily focuses on pvp).Guess what GW2 apparently does not.

Thanks. Assume that my earlier comments were about MMO PvE. I’m well aware that PvP can be an endlessly renewing endgame pursuit if there is variety in game modes, if balance is worked on continuously, if there is well-designed counter-play, and perhaps if the PvP game provides incentives for those who like that sort of thing. GW2 definitely needs work on its PvP modes.

AcidicVision.5498:

Marionette was not zergy. Great Jungle Wurm is not zergy. Tequatl is not zergy. Tower of Nightmares was not zergy. 1200 Citizen runs in LA content are not zergy (in fact, being zergy ruins the 1200 run for your entire server). Very few dungeon encounters are tank and spank group zergs. Queens gauntlet was not zergy. Aetherblade retreat was not Zergy. New TA path was not zergy. And that is only combat. There is a ton out there to do exploration wise or solo, and there is a healthy portion of the playerbase that enjoys that style of content.

Re-read. I excepted Marionette.

Great Jungle worm and Tequatl have a handful of mechanics combined with a massive DPS race. Tower of Nightmares was most definitely zergy. Nightmare Within was zergy. Lost Shore was zergy. Flame and Frost was zergy. Southsun was zergy. Clockwork Chaos was zergy. Queen’s gauntlet was broken.

AcidicVision.5498:

Very few dungeon encounters are tank and spank group zergs.

except for:

1. CoF path 1
2. CoF path 2
3. CoF path 3
4. AC path 1
5. AC path 2
6. AC path 3
7. TA path 1
8. HotW path 1
9. HotW path 2
10. HotW path 3
11. Sorrow’s Embrace path 1
12. Sorrow’s Embrace Path 2
13. and Sorrow’s Embrace path 3

Aside from those 13 (>50% of all the dungeons), though, the rest aren’t so tank-and-spank. Though they all still heavily rely on leashing and stacking.

Well we can disagree on tower of nightmares. I thought the mix of story instance, along with multiple paths through the tower, instanced solo encounters for each floor, environmental debuffs based on quadrant, and random party for final boss managed to break up the zerg nicely and did an awesome job of having you coordinate with different small groups and NPCs on the fly. It was a very well done piece of content.

For the other bosses, those handful of mechanics are exactly what makes it impossible to zerg. The dps groups cannot succeed without teams working on those other objectives and micromanaging the groups cooldowns and consumables.

Otherwise, you basically corroborated what I said. There is a variety of content to appease players whether they want to farm, explore, do something very organized, or relax through something faceroll easy. Claiming that its all just “zerg style content” is extremely hyperbolic.

Also, I’d like to see how exactly you and your groups are face tanking Kholer and the Patriarch in AC.

I definitely empathize with many of the views held be people in this thread. I also think there’s always a contingent of people who are disappointed with any one game(even GW1). However, it should be noted that much of this disappointment comes as a result of expecting a true sequel to GW1.. which GW2 is not.

GW2 on it’s own is a fairly decent game, albeit a little too simple at times for my tastes.

The skill system has been simplified. This makes it easier for players to make the most of skills and reduces the problem of being ostracized from groups for having the wrong skill bar. They did add slightly more complex rune sets and the trait system to give an extra layer of customization, but the overall effect doesn’t change how the game plays much. Where as the large skill pools in GW1 could change everything about how the game plays. Now only did this system allow for more build variety but players enjoyed meddling with the “skill sandbox” so to speak. I think Anet really underestimated this aspect of GW1 and it’s importance to it’s fan base.

There’s no “trinity” as it’s been called. Well, actually there is still some semblance of roles. We know the Guardian is a healing/support class, the Warrior is a heavy DPS melee class, the Mesmer is a light control class, etc. Of course each of these classes can perform different roles if needed but generally speaking they are best at specific things. However, you can assemble teams of any of the five classes and romp through most instances without trouble. That has it’s perks, but there is a dynamic of planning and specialization that is lost when you don’t have to think about team cohesion.

There are no more hexes, conditions, enchantments, shouts, weapon spells, stances(they are not stances in GW2), etc. There is simply boons and conditions. I realize that simplifying this aspect of GW1 probably makes the development process easier but it sure made GW1 more interesting from a gameplay stand point. Sure, hexes could be a bit overwhelming at times but that could be scaled back. For those of you who didn’t play GW1, think of it as boons and conditions that did very specific things.. does that not sound more interesting?

There are many, many more issues of note.. i.e. skill disruption, skill micro vs. macro, pvp play, line of sight etc. but it’s not worth going into.

The point is, in the process of developing GW2, there’s been so much changed about the core game play that the game plays nothing like it’s predecessor.

GW2 is a decent game but it is a terrible, atrocious sequel to GW1. Shame on you, Arenanet.

Seriously can we stop this people are leaving in throves. Its been going on since day one yet the game is still full of players, NC Soft’s 2nd most profitable game, last quarter saw an increase of 30% compared to quarter before that, Did a total of $265m up to last quarter in a year and 1/2 ie about $176m per year on average so far. Lets put some perspective the whole Webzen 2013, we’re talking about 12 mmos including Allods, C9 and Archlord made $67m. Gw2 on its own made more then twice the money of 12 mmos combined.

NCsoft has repeatedly said gw2 continues to exceed their expectations. Arenanet have repeatedly said that that since the start of LS player count has increased and they also play more.

And I dont know but my personal experience is there is a ton of players playing the game and I am on pikensquare which is a high population server not even a very high one. I even tried guesting on medium population servers (the lowest you can find in europe) and there were plenty of players there too. I tried guesting on french servers, plenty of players there as well.

anyhow, did some players leave since start. Of course the game is definitely not for everyone and I am sure a good number of players left, others play on and off, some left and came back. But no troves of players are not leaving the game and its most definitely healthy.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

LordByron.8369:

Is it fun?
For me it is when i am “prepared to have fun”…

But the more we go on the bigger the % of time spent is “preparation to have fun” opposed to “having fun”.

Whoever designed GW2 thougt it perfectly…
Whoever is in care of updates, totally destroyed it for me…..

The process of acquiring wealth in order to get equipment was fun at the beginning, in fact you could obtain it from whatever you liked “playing the way you want”.

Few months later you play whatever developers wants….

This is what a lot of the anet defenders ignore. The game started off one way and it is not that way anymore. I enjoyed the start but its gone down a bad path. People keep saying you can still play the way you want but what they ignore is that the rewards that you used to get are gone. So once upon a time players were able to get actual rewards for playing how they want The rewards used to not be a grind and now they all are. Now to get the same rewards I used to get by playing the way I want I have to grind champions for hours instead. They act like its always been this way since launch and that is wrong. It was not this way at launch.

The reason we don’t just go away is that we still have hope for this game. D3 shows that a developer can see the light and fix things. Is it wrong to hope that arenanet/ncsoft could do the same.

which rewards that you used to get are gone exactly?

It’s a mixed bag of emotions for me concerning Guild Wars 2. All of us GW1 vets fell victim to the hype. “How could GW2 possibly fail our expectations???” I like Guild Wars 2 a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun playing. Looking at the current state of the game though, I ask myself, “Will I play this game for 4000+ hours like I did GW1?” The answer is, no. Not until something new and refreshingly permanent is added to the game. What this game sorely needs is the return of the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. Along with their return, would be a plethora of end-game content. Legendary armor sets could be obtained by playing these areas. Was getting Obsidian armor a grind in GW1? Most certainly. The difference is, that it was a FUN grind. (in my opinion anyway) I had some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming, when entering the FoW and UW and spending hours there on weekends. This is what GW2 needs.

Slither Shade.4782:

It was only $60. I would not feel guilty over trying every single other game out there. We take this too seriously. Have you tried Eve Online? Everyone should try it once. There is no going back, I tried to go back it did not work second time around, but once was epic.

tried it, if there is an even bigger grind anywhere then it’s eve online.
it’s confusing, boring and has absolutely no action, let alone the drive to play trough it since no one has any control over their ship.

i am bored with GW2 (and mostly because of the community) but eve tops it.

sorudo.9054:

Slither Shade.4782:

It was only $60. I would not feel guilty over trying every single other game out there. We take this too seriously. Have you tried Eve Online? Everyone should try it once. There is no going back, I tried to go back it did not work second time around, but once was epic.

tried it, if there is an even bigger grind anywhere then it’s eve online.
it’s confusing, boring and has absolutely no action, let alone the drive to play trough it since no one has any control over their ship.

i am bored with GW2 (and mostly because of the community) but eve tops it.

Can’t speak on EvE Online. But I do know I face a bigger grind going back into GW1 to finish my Hall of Monuments title track. Not to mention the grind for “God Amongst Mere Mortals”. There will be an incredible grind for those last 15 points or so, not to mention 20 title tracks.

Nat.4029:

QFT

The fact this game launched with neither UW or FoW is a travesty of monumental proportion. Even ToPk would have been welcome kitten . Ogre slaying daggers and all (since we actually have ogres now).

If those things aren’t in the works already in the background then it would be hard for me to believe Anet hasn’t totally lost touch with the fans that made this sequel a possibility.

What I like to think is that they have them in development and are just taking their time because launching those zones (and they should be full zones, not just dungeons) and having them be awful would be almost as bad as not launching them at all. Take Orr for example, you could draw a lot of parallels between open world Orr and FoW; likewise for Arah Explorable dungeons and UW. But those were both met with heavy criticism.

FoW and UW kept people busy for hundreds of hours. For what? Small chance at super rare mats you needed a lot of to craft rare items (T6, Orr), or end completion chest that had a few unique guaranteed items (Orr temple karma vendors) and super small chance at highly valuable items (Orr temple boss chests). And if your party wiped or failed at an event you got kicked and had to start all over again (Orr temple chains). But a large portion of people hate Orr. Anet had lightning in a bottle the first go’round and I think it’s just taking them a while to figure out how to reproduce it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Can’t speak on EvE Online. But I do know I face a bigger grind going back into GW1 to finish my Hall of Monuments title track. Not to mention the grind for “God Amongst Mere Mortals”. There will be an incredible grind for those last 15 points or so, not to mention 20 title tracks.

I am not one of those who will argue that GW1 did not have grind. I didn’t encounter it, but I know others did. Still, GWAMM and HoM grind were for cosmetic options, something we were told would be how grind was handled in GW2, for cosmetics only. GW2, instead, has implemented time gated vertical progression gear grind.

AcidicVision.5498:

Nat.4029:

QFT

The fact this game launched with neither UW or FoW is a travesty of monumental proportion. Even ToPk would have been welcome kitten . Ogre slaying daggers and all (since we actually have ogres now).

If those things aren’t in the works already in the background then it would be hard for me to believe Anet hasn’t totally lost touch with the fans that made this sequel a possibility.

What I like to think is that they have them in development and are just taking their time because launching those zones (and they should be full zones, not just dungeons) and having them be awful would be almost as bad as not launching them at all. Take Orr for example, you could draw a lot of parallels between open world Orr and FoW; likewise for Arah Explorable dungeons and UW. But those were both met with heavy criticism.

FoW and UW kept people busy for hundreds of hours. For what? Small chance at super rare mats you needed a lot of to craft rare items (T6, Orr), or end completion chest that had a few unique guaranteed items (Orr temple karma vendors) and super small chance at highly valuable items (Orr temple boss chests). And if your party wiped or failed at an event you got kicked and had to start all over again (Orr temple chains). But a large portion of people hate Orr. Anet had lightning in a bottle the first go’round and I think it’s just taking them a while to figure out how to reproduce it.

Agreed. Orr aggravates the kitten out of me. FoW is infinitely better.

AcidicVision.5498:

Nat.4029:

QFT

The fact this game launched with neither UW or FoW is a travesty of monumental proportion. Even ToPk would have been welcome kitten . Ogre slaying daggers and all (since we actually have ogres now).

If those things aren’t in the works already in the background then it would be hard for me to believe Anet hasn’t totally lost touch with the fans that made this sequel a possibility.

What I like to think is that they have them in development and are just taking their time because launching those zones (and they should be full zones, not just dungeons) and having them be awful would be almost as bad as not launching them at all. Take Orr for example, you could draw a lot of parallels between open world Orr and FoW; likewise for Arah Explorable dungeons and UW. But those were both met with heavy criticism.

FoW and UW kept people busy for hundreds of hours. For what? Small chance at super rare mats you needed a lot of to craft rare items (T6, Orr), or end completion chest that had a few unique guaranteed items (Orr temple karma vendors) and super small chance at highly valuable items (Orr temple boss chests). And if your party wiped or failed at an event you got kicked and had to start all over again (Orr temple chains). But a large portion of people hate Orr. Anet had lightning in a bottle the first go’round and I think it’s just taking them a while to figure out how to reproduce it.

This!!!!!!!! Absolutely true!

FOW, oh how I wish you had made it to GW2.

As to the OP – while I complain incessantly about Scarlet and the terrible writing behind her, I still hold out hope that something interesting (i.e. and expansion) shows up.

I’m not really sure about something like FoW or UW working in the curretn state of the game.

One of the beautiful things with FoW and UW was, IMHO, the ability to enjoy them by many different ways.
They were fairly big zones, divided into sub-zones with different types of enemies. You could use a build for solo farming one or several of these zones, group up with a mate in order to handle a bigger part of the map, or just make a full group and complete every quest for the final chest.

With the current loot system, there wouldn’t be any reason for entering zones like these with less than the whole group. It probably could be (and would be, that’s for sure) soloed/duoded for the shake of fun and/or challenge but, as I posted earlier, this kind of things get old pretty fast and lack proper replayability.

Without variations of the core mechanics, FoW and UW would probably be either something really close to a dungeon or just another zergfarm.
The only possibility I can imagine outside of this would be about scaling instances (like the chambers in the Tower of Nightmares), which unfortunately prevents the content from being challenging at all.

Really good personal feedback. Captured the essence of what A-net did so right with their original offering and politely underlines the thinking of, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

I will always be a A-net fan, but I think you’ve pretty much put into words how I feel about gw2. I can clearly see a lot skill and vision went into this. I can happily admit there is many moments in this gaming experience that have been done very right, but to me there does seem to missing elements from the first that I enjoyed heavily and just kinda miss in this modern version. I truly don’t believe they did any very-very wrong..just aspects that are missing.

I miss being kurzick. I could just never bring myself to be luxon. I miss the multiple pvp arena’s and halloween costume brawls. I miss the unique armor for each profession. I miss the primary/secondary profession system. I miss the roaming mobs. I miss the solo farming. I miss how major cities felt alive with all the WTB/WTS spam.

I hope earnest feedback such as this helps them with future idea’s for gw2. There was just so much unique stuff to guild wars 1 that should have not been left by the road side. One has to remember A-net was the people who bought as Mesmer. The most innovative, unique and new profession to be added to any RPG/MMO in decades. I hope they go back to their roots a little more in the future.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I miss the unique armor for each profession

No joke, this infuriates me every single time I log in and look at my characters. kitten, T3 profession specific armor is a thing that needs to happen.

The orders armors look cool, and were a great concept, but once you get past personal story (many don’t even bother with it any more), the orders and the Pact play such a minor, impersonal role and the story converges in such a way that your alliance choice doesn’t even matter.

I would have traded the entire existence of the orders for profession devoted NPC guilds that our heroes earned membership to , with guild hall outposts that are entry exclusive, and have tiered armor sets.

Why? Why, why why why why?! ugh.

I no longer “play” this game anymore. I come to the forums from time to time and occasionally log on in hopes there new updates that drastically overhaul the game entirely. My first game was gw1, I loved that game so much and when I heard there was a 2nd one coming, it was like Jesus was coming back to save us all (ok, not to that extent but, you get what I meant). After a year of playing, I can now see this was a totally different game. Why the hell did they call it Guild Wars 2? Totally false advertising. I am very disappointed like a lot of other people who came from gw1, it was a gem..

There are a couple things I like about GW2, and I had fun when I first started playing, but I’ve hardly logged in at all in the last two months.

I have 6 characters at lvl 80, a 7th around 70, and an 8th around 20 (I have one each of every class – my Warrior is about 70, and my Engi about 20 or so).

The things I liked:

Immersive details. I love the background noises in the cities – people talking to each other, etc. The level of detail that went into designing some of these environments really blows me away – the first dozen times I visit an area. Lots of little things – like walking under a tree, and snow falls out of it onto your head. Innocuous things, that make you look twice to make sure they even happened. Immersive details Truly wonderful.

Control of my character. Basic movement of my character in this game is incredibly fluid and smooth, even with all graphic settings set at maximum. I was surprised at how well these models move. Jumping, dodging, running, everything. Excellent. Most of the time animations blend really well with anything else you do, and I’ve only experienced an occasional bug. Movement animation in general is superb.

Overall, the art direction is absolutely stunning. The environments are…..well, kitten pretty (most of them anyway, there are a few I care for less, like Ascalon). My single complaint with the art is that zones in general feel like theme parks, but this goes to overall environment design, and not specifically to the art itself. Which is to say, you go to the Shiverpeaks and it’s….snow. And then some more snow. And ice. More snow and ice, and in case you get bored of snow and ice, have some more snow and ice. Not that it isn’t pretty, as far as snow and ice goes, but it seems as if each zone has a single “theme” that pretty much overrides all diversity within that zone. Go to the West, to the Sylvari and Asura zones, and it’s all jungle. All night, all day, 24/7. as far as the eye can see, just endless jungle theme. Take some geography classes. Learn to teraform. Throw in some kitten variation. This isn’t SUPER MARIO WORLD. Otherwise, kitten fine job on the art.

Now, for the things I don’t like:

COMBAT

This is the huge one. I thought I’d love GW2 combat, because it was hyped as “action based combat” – but it isn’t. At least not enough. Still have tab targeting, and I think that’s a huge mistake. Should have made it reticule based FPS style. That would have been so much better. Or, at bare minimum, like DDO with it’s mouse-look lock. I mean, sometimes GW2 feels a little like that, but most of the time it still feels like tab-target skill-rotation style combat, and I was really hoping for more ACTION based combat – as they promised.

Also, I thought I’d like the skill locked to weapons at first – but turns out, I didn’t. I DO like having 10 skills, and no more. I like having to choose my ‘loadout’ instead of having access to every skill my class can use, and I also like how little clutter there is on my screen because of that. Those are good aspects of this system, but I realized that I’d rather be able to customize those 5 skill slots exactly to my liking, instead of being limited to whatever 5 skills come with that weapon – just to make Anet’s balancing job easier.

Yeah, 10 skills only was a good idea – locking those skills to each weapon was bad.

GEAR

Absolutely the most boring gear I’ve ever seen in any game. It’s all just a uniform. This is my zerker uniform, this other one is my valkyrie uniform, and this is my apothecary uniform, etc.

In addition to being so streamlined as to make me gag, there’s no interesting Legendeary equipment with unique abilities that make you gasp. It’s all so tame.

Yeah, sure, balance. Big whoopty whoop. I don’t care about balance nearly as much as I care about EPIC. EPIC makes me want to spend money. LOTS of MONEY. Make it epic and I will pay for it.

All the gear in this game sucks. It’s mostly boring to look at, and it doesn’t really do much. Another stat bonus.

EXPLORATION

The world, after the first time exploring it, gets really boring, fast.

First, it’s way too kitten small. It needs to be 50-100% larger. Second, I really tire of the invisible walls and zoning. When will they learn? Us immersion players want a METAVERSE. We want realism (within the internally consistent logical rules of your universe). We want endless exploration. Tombs and cemeteries and vaults and caverns galore. 666 levels of dungeons to grind away in. Cloud castles floating above (all explorable! Why weren’t the Aether pirates ships boardable?!?!?!?!) and sunken cities and jungle ruins and lots of things that have nothing to do with your stupid primary story plot.

I want little threads of adventures that pull me off the beaten path for weeks at at a time, to the point where I find it difficult to remember where I started, and where I was originally going.

I want a mountain that takes an hour to climb, just to find the entrance to a temple that then takes me 4 more days to descend to the bottom of.

Vast, intricate complexes that defy attempts to map them.

I want to be able to try, as hard as it may be, to find alternative routes into new regions. If I can climb up that mountain by jiggling my mouse and jump buttons for half an hour, bypassing the road you intended my to take into that region, then so be it – my patience and tenacity should pay off. NO MORE INVISIBLE WALLS OR ZONES. I want one seamless WORLD.

Too many waypoints. Making it so easy to travel around just makes it into a theme park ride. There’s no danger, there’s no challenge. No suspense. Get rid of at least half the waypoints, if not all of them.

Put waypoints in towns, and nothing else.

INTERACTION

Related to exploration. Being able to interact with the environment is important to immersion. I want to be able to take torches off of walls. I want to interact with more than just resource nodes. I want to be able to open and close doors, take drinks from fountains, burn down foliage, and fart. I want more emotes. I want to be able to take milk from a cow, churn it into butter, and then use that butter on a loaf of bread (that I made myself from the wheat I collected from the field, ground at the millstone into flour, and then finally baked in the kitchens).

I WANT THE METAVERSE

MORE ITEMS

Items that you don’t even consider useful or directly relevant to the game. Wooden spoons that do nothing (except, spoon stuff). Nails. Horseshoes. Wax. Paper. Twigs.

PLAYER HOUSING

PvP is actually ok, but I think you guys need to shake it up once in a while, keep it fresh.

WvWvW could be ok – but do more to break up the zerg. Zerging is just people’s herd instinct. We will always do it as long as the game mechanics reward us for doing so.

The zerg should not be outright eliminated, there is a time and place for it – sometimes epic battles are cool to watch on video.

However, zerg play makes for a really boring game, when that’s 90% of what you do.

THere’s actually very little strategy or tactics involved in zerging. It’s usually quite boring.

So, break it up. Do more to encourage people to play in small, coordinated groups.

Add collision mechanics.

I don’t have any hope really that Anet will be able to do any of the things I talk about, not even a fraction of them.

I’ve spent about $130 on this game so far, and now I can hardly bring myself to log in.

It’s just another theme park game.

Can’t wait for the first Oculus Rift MMO.

I don’t like the downleveling.

I do agree that griefing is an issue, but I decided that once I’m powerful, I want to remain that way.

This particularly irks me concerning dungeons.

If you have to, uplevel mobs – don’t downlevel me.

But I realized that insanely large health pools for dungeon mobs is incredibly boring. It railroads people into some very limited options for play.

It’s too hard to solo dungeons. I know you intended them for group play, and I also know that if you follow a formulaic set of actions and principles, that you can still solo the dungeons.

But they should have been made difficult through challenging game mechanics, not through artificial means like giant health pools and anti-cc mechanics.

The first time I walked into the Ascolonian dungeon with my Thief alone I got my kitten handed to me by the first trash mob I encountered, and I thought to myself, ‘Jeez, I can’t even kill a single trash mob and I’m like 15 levels higher?’ WTF!!!

It’s very frustrating. Yes, I eventually joined a group. And yes, I eventually saw the videos on how to solo – but that’s all boring. I wanted a dungeon that was challenging to figure out on my own. One where it was possible to stand toe to toe with any monster in it – if you were sly and quick on the mouse.

Instead I found formulas for beating everything.

PERSONAL STORY

Absolutely terrible. Haven’t finished any of that nonsense. I don’t know what else to say, it was awful.

LOOT

This just goes back to itemization in general and how terrible it is, but I don’t look forward to killing anything because it generally doesn’t drop anything I want, so there’s no enthusiasm there at all.

The best loot is the dungeon armors – and they’re just skins! Seriously, wth is wrong with you guys? Just skins!

Even so, I really wanted some, but I haven’t yet saved enough of any single dungeon currency to get one! Who thought up that brilliant idea???? Why don’t they drop when you kill a dungeon boss?

Furthermore, they should have EPIC abilities. And, why did you put dungeon vendors in Lions Arch? I’ll tell you why this peeves me, because even after I accepted that the only reason I wanted these skins was because of the way they looked, I had an awful time when I was trying to mix and match them in the equipment preview window right there in Lions Arch (that is, I had to walk back and forth between vendors to attempt to get a mix n’ match preview). So, why not just add a tab to the Hero window instead? It would be so much easier. Get rid of those vendors, they’re stupid.

I do enjoy GW2, but for me personally the times have changed. I was 17 or 18 when GW1 came out, I played it OBSESSIVELY. I loved every aspect of it (mostly). I’ve spent countless hours on it. Now I’m 26, I have a full time job and am married. GW2 is a fun way to decompress after work, but I don’t live and breathe it like I did GW1.

I logged into GW1 yesterday and I got a little misty at it- it’s so sad to see only one district in LA, with a handful of people standing around. I got REALLY nostalgic about it- not to sound totally cheesy but GW1 felt like a ‘place’ I went to, with the great music and now sort of oldish looking graphics. I think I realized I will probably never really forgive them for abandoning GW1 the way they did- and then taking the mythology and building on it SO much that it’s WAY too far away from GW1. Maybe this setting would have been better for GW3?

When I first logged into GW2, I wanted to see good old Lion’s Arch with better graphics. I wanted my eight person parties with meticulous builds. I wanted skill capping and profession specific armors. I REALLY wanted FoW and UW and FoW armor. I wanted to see all those things UPDATED, not just left behind in GW1, and not only in GW1. I wanted to see familiar places actually LOOK like familiar places. Do you have any idea how let down I was when I first went into AC and didn’t see the big room with all the candles from pre-sear? When Yak’s Bend was totally gone?

But I’m not saying I hate GW2, it’s does bear some resemblance to GW1, however minor (a big one being reused music, which I actually like that they did). And though there are aspects that are grindy, I can still jump on and enjoy some WvW or events or dailies. But yeah, there is a feeling that GW2 just does not evoke. And the fact that they will probably never recapture that feeling makes me really sad.

Nat.4029:

It’s a mixed bag of emotions for me concerning Guild Wars 2. All of us GW1 vets fell victim to the hype. “How could GW2 possibly fail our expectations???” I like Guild Wars 2 a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun playing. Looking at the current state of the game though, I ask myself, “Will I play this game for 4000+ hours like I did GW1?” The answer is, no. Not until something new and refreshingly permanent is added to the game. What this game sorely needs is the return of the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. Along with their return, would be a plethora of end-game content. Legendary armor sets could be obtained by playing these areas. Was getting Obsidian armor a grind in GW1? Most certainly. The difference is, that it was a FUN grind. (in my opinion anyway) I had some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming, when entering the FoW and UW and spending hours there on weekends. This is what GW2 needs.

Sorry to disagree but “all us Guild Wars 1 vets” didn’t fall victim to hype. I bet I have as many hours in Guild Wars 1 as you do, and I’ve played over 5000 hours of Guild Wars 2. I didn’t fall victim to hype.

You make it sound like most people who played Guild Wars 1 enjoyed FoW and UW, but I’m thinking that that’s not the case. I don’t know any statistic that shows it. In fact, I bet most GW 1 players barely ever set foot in those places. I know I didn’t do them much and didn’t enjoy them when I did.

This is like the raiding community in most games thinking most people love raiding. It’s not true.

I played Guild Wars 1 for a ridiculous amount of time and I see Guild Wars 2 as an improvement in most (but not all) ways.

Azreell.1568:

Just an FYI – It would take me less time in Wow to get a full set of current tier raid gear then it would for me to craft 1 set of ascended in GW2.

This is also assuming I would be playing wow VERY VERY casually and at my own time schedule and pace.

Wow is the most casual game on the market atm – so using that as an example is a very poor choice.

I have never found this to be the case. To be current at the highest tier in WoW required access to a regular heroic raiding guild. That simply is not an option for many people, myself included. Be it scheduling, or even simple motivation/enjoyment.

If you are fortunate to have the time/connections that would allow you to piggyback on a raid and have free pick on gear, then, yes, you could very likely gear faster than in GW2. But in the time I did seriously raid, fully gearing took far longer. Even in MoP, while more forgiving in many aspects, I was never able to gear up as effectively as I am able to slowly work towards in GW2.

It isn’t a bad example. Because it is a direct “this is exactly my case” example. I also know from my peers that play games that I’m not an exception to the rule. Most such players likely don’t post on the forums, however- the two posts I’ve made in this thread are my first on these forums ever, for example.

For myself, or someone in anything like my situation, GW2’s system is substantially more rewarding. I can largely play by my own terms, and advance to the highest level of gear. Unless heroic raid level gear is now dropping in LFR? That will never be an option in WoW.

Ashen.2907:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Can’t speak on EvE Online. But I do know I face a bigger grind going back into GW1 to finish my Hall of Monuments title track. Not to mention the grind for “God Amongst Mere Mortals”. There will be an incredible grind for those last 15 points or so, not to mention 20 title tracks.

I am not one of those who will argue that GW1 did not have grind. I didn’t encounter it, but I know others did. Still, GWAMM and HoM grind were for cosmetic options, something we were told would be how grind was handled in GW2, for cosmetics only. GW2, instead, has implemented time gated vertical progression gear grind.

I’m going to try not to laugh loud and hard about that statement of “Time gated vertical progression gear grind”.

I could list, again, a lot of things I know I found grindy in GW1 and I only just hit the tip of the iceberg. While “none of it was mandatory” (a fact I still lightly dispute) . . . none of it is mandatory over here either. Save for one place and detail. Agony Resistance. (Ah, ye olde infusion run, we meet again…)

But what I think of these two games? Most of it is centered on two things which I say with little trepidation:

- Guild Wars 1 was not a very good model for an MMO to be built from. It was more like a semi-advanced Diablo 2 type game, without the insanity of the gear ladder. But it was really rather boring once you completed the missions, “Hard Mode” added as many frustrations as benefits, the concept of cosmetic progression very often was sidelined for people showing off hard to attain armors/dyes without really thinking about aesthetics, and the balance was rather wonky for most of its life. It was a fun game, but the best draw was it not having a monthly fee and being relatively low-level on minimum specs you needed to run it.

- Guild Wars 2 is what happens when that same company gets to do an MMO. It’s serviceable, but not “great”. It still has surprisingly good minimum spec requirements (and still look decent), but unsurprisingly there’s a lot of the same thing going on here there was before. Namely, “chase that skin” requiring tons and tons of good luck or good funding. But at least Black Dyes aren’t consumed on each set of armor requiring an nigh infinite sink for you to use them? The gameplay is mostly uninspired even if it is fun at times, and the active combat of the game barely holds a candle to things Capcom makes/made.

It doesn’t surprise me the game we got is a decent game for $60, but not a great MMO to be remembered for all times. It’s nowhere near perfect, I don’t really expect it will see great advances to unseat WoW as the king of MMOs (Blizzard is going to do that themselves), but it’s not going to roll over and die because something new and shiny came along. This game is robust enough in its core to still be entertaining, in small bites.

It’s the Olive Garden of MMOs. Decent enough at what they do, cheap and accessible enough to be successful, and not as front-loaded with instant gratification. And while it’s okay to like it, you shouldn’t choose (or expect) it as a paragon example of good cuisine.

Nage.1520:

Sorry to disagree but “all us Guild Wars 1 vets” didn’t fall victim to hype. I bet I have as many hours in Guild Wars 1 as you do, and I’ve played over 5000 hours of Guild Wars 2. I didn’t fall victim to hype.

You make it sound like most people who played Guild Wars 1 enjoyed FoW and UW, but I’m thinking that that’s not the case. I don’t know any statistic that shows it. In fact, I bet most GW 1 players barely ever set foot in those places. I know I didn’t do them much and didn’t enjoy them when I did.

This is like the raiding community in most games thinking most people love raiding. It’s not true.

I played Guild Wars 1 for a ridiculous amount of time and I see Guild Wars 2 as an improvement in most (but not all) ways.

I don’t want UW, FOW, DOA. I didn’t really want them before, even if I did eventually do them. They were not enjoyable for me with anything other than a bunch of alliance mates who were less likely to complain I brought a ranger without being assassin secondary.

I also want to note, I knew almost exactly what I was going to see when I got into the second Beta Weekend Event. Except for Hunger Royale, that was . . . not . . . not very fun or good.

About the only surprise was how much I actually hated playing a guardian. It just didn’t click for me, and one of my two mains on GW1 was a smite monk.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m going to try not to laugh loud and hard about that statement of “Time gated vertical progression gear grind”.

I could list, again, a lot of things I know I found grindy in GW1 and I only just hit the tip of the iceberg. While “none of it was mandatory” (a fact I still lightly dispute) . . . none of it is mandatory over here either. Save for one place and detail. Agony Resistance. (Ah, ye olde infusion run, we meet again…)

I hardly think infusion runs are a good comparison to the “vertical progression gear grind” that is ascended gear with AR. That’s not really being honest to the folks who don’t know what an infusion run is. Dealing with AR is more like dealing with radiance in LotRO, except it’s slightly worse progression-wise. The upside is that you can still enjoy fractals with small sums of AR where as in LotRO if you didn’t meet the radiance requirement you simply couldn’t participate. To Turbine’s credit they saw the error of their ways and removed the mechanic entirely.

- Guild Wars 1 was not a very good model for an MMO to be built from. It was more like a semi-advanced Diablo 2 type game, without the insanity of the gear ladder. But it was really rather boring once you completed the missions, “Hard Mode” added as many frustrations as benefits, the concept of cosmetic progression very often was sidelined for people showing off hard to attain armors/dyes without really thinking about aesthetics, and the balance was rather wonky for most of its life. It was a fun game, but the best draw was it not having a monthly fee and being relatively low-level on minimum specs you needed to run it.

Actually the PvE balance wasn’t wonky, it was almost completely out of whack as the other campaigns were released and power creep set in. The system of using player skills as monster skills and just the very nature of the game allowed for far too many gimmicks. Add in the very overpowered PvE-only skills and you’ve got a cooperative game that’s mostly just too easy if you’re in the know. Still, I somewhat enjoyed it to the very end, just because of the nature of the skill system and yes, heroes. It gave me a lot to play with even if the challenge wasn’t always a factor.

The main reason for this, however, is that GW1 was designed from the ground up as a PvP game. It’s a brilliant PvP game and was very much in the vein of Diablo’s hack n’slash model. I would say it has much more in common with today’s moba craze than MMOs. The balancing from a PvP standpoint was very good, not always perfect, but certainly very good and the developers did a nice job of mixing up the meta by changing skills.

mooty.4560:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m going to try not to laugh loud and hard about that statement of “Time gated vertical progression gear grind”.

I could list, again, a lot of things I know I found grindy in GW1 and I only just hit the tip of the iceberg. While “none of it was mandatory” (a fact I still lightly dispute) . . . none of it is mandatory over here either. Save for one place and detail. Agony Resistance. (Ah, ye olde infusion run, we meet again…)

I hardly think infusion runs are a good comparison to the “vertical progression gear grind” that is ascended gear with AR. That’s not really being honest to the folks who don’t know what an infusion run is.

You have a point, but way back when you had to rerun a mission to get one piece infused so you didn’t melt under one particular skill attack? Yeah, that was just ludicrous and changed.

It’s what sticks out as the only piece of necessary gear grind GW1 had going on if you’re talking about pure progression and not aesthetics. And it was still an annoyance greater than what I’m dealing with with Ascended Gear now (which is just “hang in there and you’ll eventually get it if you’re interested”).

But it ticks the boxes of “repetitive, bothersome, and required”. Ascended, well, doesn’t hit all three.

Actually the PvE balance wasn’t wonky, it was almost completely out of whack as the other campaigns were released and power creep set in.

Should say, when I use the words “balance was wonky” I mean it in the sense of “it really depended on which balance patch you look at whether it was broken one way or another”. 55 Monk, perma-SF, do-everything rits . . . and my personal favorite from the Jade Quarry matches? Suicide bombing necros. This is, indeed, without actually touching those PvE skills from Eye of the North.

. . . Guild Wars 1 was just a weird game when it came to using skills. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I remember from it. (Second best was pretty much solo-killing Duncan through degen on my ranger . . .)

I don’t really get people why they keep comparing GW1 to GW2.
Despite the title, both are supposed to introduce different gaming experience.
I see loads of people complaining that GW2 doesnt’ have this and that from GW1.

Question is: why would GW2 has anything from GW1? Except some Lore continuation?

If GW2 would have same skills, plenty of the same stuff that GW1 had, then it wouldn’t be GW2. Or even if they called it, it would be a joke.
It would be just a remastered GW1 with new engine.
Won’t that just make it a warmed up steak?
And was GW1 so awesome from day 1?

Also comparing GW2 to ESO is hilarious.

Laugh and sneer all you want, people did really expect or want GW1 remastered with a new engine and little more. Especially since by the time of EOTN it was showing its problems trying to handle PvE in a game originally designed more for PvP.

Now GW2? It’s designed in the other direction, seemingly. And much like the predecessor it manages to hit the target in the middle ring. Missed the mark by a bit, but still hit the target.

The thing is, I still find it great fun and enjoy it quite a bit. It’s just not the best at any one aspect I could say I enjoy in GW2, even within my limited library of games.

Nage.1520:

I’ve played over 5000 hours of Guild Wars 2.

Seriously ?

Not trying to flame you or anything but 9 hours a day, every single day of the week, every single day of the month, since launch ?

Wow. That is amazing to me.

Tao.5096:

Question is: why would GW2 has anything from GW1? Except some Lore continuation?

Because the developers said it would when selling the game to GW1 players.

If I understand this article (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26258662) correctly GW2 would need to be for some people twice as good in personal terms to make up for the loss of GW1. Twice as good just to stay on an even footing with your old ideas is not going to happen. It seems though that no matter what is said it will not be possible to change anyone’s mind.

ipan.4356:

snippiesnip

A large collection of opinions there, but I’ll agree with the headlines. Basically it comes down to this for me: GW2 did a lot of stuff better than GW1, BUT a lot of stuff worse than GW1 too. In some ways, I love GW1 most, in some I really like GW2’s system.
Overall, I wish there were more of the good features of GW1.

Wanted to add: do I like it enough to keep me playing? I love my guild, I like to play with them, but sometimes I get so frustrated at all the pointless things in the game that it makes me quit (5th time I have quit so far, ranging from 2 weeks to 2 months of time I haven’t logged in).

A lot of times I have been on the brink of permanently leaving the game, but my guild is the one thing getting me back. Once they move for another game, though… I will move along.

Lol d3. That is a great example of how to make a p2w game that kills a great series. I love d2 and lod but d3 is absolute garbage with every patch being wtf why ? If you think this last patch is the savior, you must not have read all the patch notes completely. While the removal of the rmah is a great change. It’s complete counteracted by legendaries and elite set are now account bound with the ONLY POSSIBILITY to trade them is a 2 hour window with players who were present during drop. Lol yeah have fun with that gem.

Gw2 by no means is perfect. As it’s been beaten already the skills being dumb down for the masses, plague of players who think their every action deserts exotic, ascended and precursor drops ( what games doesn’t have this though ), dungeon that give out now 2nd bis gear easy mode.

Lmmmao gem store is p2w. Please flatter Me more with how the skins that give no stats make me op. K thx

I actually agree with OP I was suppose to play this game with my brother but he quit in the first week because he basically got hyped for a gw1 update not a new game. I was also going to quit but then I thought – 50 pounds to my wallet

Year and a bit later I enjoy gw2 much better but still miss gw1 and in a way fell deceived

That said I think Anet has worked really hard and is producing epic content

First devs need to remove jumping, because jumping is just so mainstream. Heros would be good idea too because why play with friends when you can play alone?

ipan.4356:

LOOT

This just goes back to itemization in general and how terrible it is, but I don’t look forward to killing anything because it generally doesn’t drop anything I want, so there’s no enthusiasm there at all.

The best loot is the dungeon armors – and they’re just skins! Seriously, wth is wrong with you guys? Just skins!

Even so, I really wanted some, but I haven’t yet saved enough of any single dungeon currency to get one! Who thought up that brilliant idea???? Why don’t they drop when you kill a dungeon boss?

Furthermore, they should have EPIC abilities. And, why did you put dungeon vendors in Lions Arch? I’ll tell you why this peeves me, because even after I accepted that the only reason I wanted these skins was because of the way they looked, I had an awful time when I was trying to mix and match them in the equipment preview window right there in Lions Arch (that is, I had to walk back and forth between vendors to attempt to get a mix n’ match preview). So, why not just add a tab to the Hero window instead? It would be so much easier. Get rid of those vendors, they’re stupid.

I have stated this numerous times.

They truly need to revamp the reward system.

They game has become far to grindy to not offer rewards that will interest players. Prior games have proven – grinds aren’t a bad thing IF and only IF the rewards are worth the time investment for players.

As it stand currently not many players feel rewarded enough for their time investment.

Look at the guy who opened 80+ Teq bags one of the supposed most difficult encounters in game and he received only blues and greens. How would that make anyone interested in doing that encounter knowing these facts?

Worthwhile rewards in this game (subjective) are to far and few in between.

Junkpile.7439:

First devs need to remove jumping, because jumping is just so mainstream. Heros would be good idea too because why play with friends when you can play alone?

If they added all legendary skins to accounts, gave us all the daily AP without needing to do it and let us start level 80 with full ascended trait-switching gear, then a lot of players would be happier.

Honestly, why not just cut straight to the point and remove all dungeon jargon up until the boss so that I can just get the stuff I want?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You have a point, but way back when you had to rerun a mission to get one piece infused so you didn’t melt under one particular skill attack? Yeah, that was just ludicrous and changed.
…
But it ticks the boxes of “repetitive, bothersome, and required”. Ascended, well, doesn’t hit all three.

It was somewhat required but I just didn’t find it overly difficult to deal with. It could be done in a day where as getting the most from your ascended gear can take months. That’s really where the comparison ends, when you start comparing the time scale of a day(or even a few hours) to maybe a quarter of a year. So yeah, you’ll get there… by the end of the day, how’s that ascended gear coming?

. . Guild Wars 1 was just a weird game when it came to using skills. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I remember from it. (Second best was pretty much solo-killing Duncan through degen on my ranger . . .)

The system in itself is a great idea, imho. The execution is what sputtered for GW1 PvE. Perhaps if there was more advanced threat mechanics a la the generic MMO model that’s out there atm and the monsters had used more specialized skills, it would have been more interesting. I just think they didn’t want to make that kind of effort with it.

Tao.5096:

I don’t really get people why they keep comparing GW1 to GW2.
Despite the title, both are supposed to introduce different gaming experience.
I see loads of people complaining that GW2 doesnt’ have this and that from GW1.

Question is: why would GW2 has anything from GW1? Except some Lore continuation?

Because the game carries the franchise tag. It’s “Guild Wars” 2 and it’s not a spin-off. If you spent a significant time playing the original game, you might expect the sequel to build upon the original. This game is very different from it’s predecessor. So now you have a large contingent of the GW1 fan base that can’t find many of the things they liked about GW1 in GW2. Most of us have been vocal about this since GW2’s release because it’s really disappointing and we want Anet to know.

The funny thing is I wouldn’t have agreed with much of what the OP wrote at and shortly after launch. To me, GW2 was anything but another genre clone. It may be because I studied and understood the Manifesto and all the other insights on the game’s design that they shared during development. What they were trying to do was different than what other MMOs had done.

To my mind, with the launch of the game, they succeeded at about 80% of what they had set out to do. I could also see the path forward where they could continue to fill in the things they didn’t quite manage to achieve.

I felt more freedom to just log in and play, with out pressures of a treadmill and endless carrots to grind for, than I did with GW1. GW1 always felt a bit too linear for me, but GW2, with the redundancy of content and level scaling, brought me more and more freedom to enjoy game play with out feeling I was on rails.

People here from the start know that ANet placed great stress on the lack of grinds. They tossed in a prestige grind with Legendaries, but they vowed that these would just provide a cosmetic reward, with Legendaries being no better than any other Exotic.

There would be no gear inflation beyond level 80 Exotics. Reaching level 80 would just mean that now the entire game world was open to you. They even originally pledged that since they wanted you to play the way you found most fun, that when you played content you were level scaled down for, you would only see the slightest decrease in your rewards per hour of play.

Karma was supposed to be a big element in allowing people to spend their time the way they wished, rather than being forced to do content they didn’t like for X rewards. Karma would be rewarded for all forms of content, at roughly the same rate per hour whether you were roaming the world, doing dungeons or playing in World vs. World. Playing would yield equal access to substantive rewards, while rewards tied to specific content would only be cosmetic, e.g. Dungeon specific skins.

I think, at launch, the system worked, even though the balance between play modes still needed to be tweaked. I played GW2 much the way I played Skyrim. I explored the world and participated in what content I discovered. I was immersed in the world and due to level scaling, I would often find myself in zones much below my level, because that’s where my exploration had taken me and the game made it possible to have fun and adventure with out the level gap being a negative.

However, with the game being so different from other MMOs, some people had difficulty adjusting to the new way of playing an MMO presented in GW2. Where is the end game? Where is the loot grind? Why should I view the game world as anything other than something to blow through on my way to end game?

I played with a small guild of RL friends, six of us in total. All WoW vets, some of us vets of many games over the years. I understood the new paradigm going in, so I embraced the game the most quickly. Everyone else had trouble, to one degree or another, for their first month or two of play and still occasionally yearned for more direction as to what to do once they hit the level cap.

Eventually, we all adjusted and embraced the game as it was designed.

Unfortunately, Arenanet didn’t make much effort or allow much time for people to adjust before they started to panic and find ways to give WoW fans and players of every other WoW clone out there more of what they were used to.

The past year and a half has been a rapid retreat away from the game’s original ideals and a race into the arms of familiar, failed, status quo game design.

We have grinds out the wazoo. We have extreme linearity enforced by temporary content that requires a checklist of things you need to do to be rewarded and keep up with the chase for carrots on sticks. Playing the game organically, exploring the world and finding your own adventures, just is not viable with in the game’s current economy and with so many “end game items” tied to very specific grinds.

Living Story did more to destroy the game than just entice people away from free form exploration and adventure and into an endless pursuit of Adventure by Checklist events. It also soaked up all the resources that were originally supposed to be spent on adding a plethora of new Dynamic Events to the game world. Colin teased that approach in late 2012, with the stated goal being a doubling or tripling of DE content in the first two years via free content updates. He even talked about how all those new DEs would allow rotation of events in zones, which would keep the game world feeling fresh and alive. A true Living World.

Of course, that didn’t fit in with their decision to abandon the organic play model where people never felt forced into doing specific content for specific rewards. They decided what the game actually needed was all the directed, carrot on a stick driven, linear game play found in every other MMO title.

Karma, instead of evolving into a currency that equalized one’s efforts, allowing access to worthy rewards for playing the game “your way” and doing the content you enjoyed, was frozen out of most new rewards and gutted as a currency that rewarded play focused on fun, rather than play focused on narrowly laid out, linear objectives.

I could go into great detail about the continual devolution of the game and it’s design, but that’s pointless.

I’ll just say that the game’s design goals and principles have morphed significantly since launch. Most of those changes have been fun killing, exploration killing, living world killing. Most of them have introduced and reinforced linear, highly directed and very grindy game play, at the expense of the original ideal which was “you can play the game the way you want to play and still earn the same rewards as everyone else with similar time commitments”.

Dailies were a key element in the slide. Though they ostensibly offered enough freedom to allow for some spontaneity, they still changed the focus away from free form exploration and toward the Adventure by Checklist mentality. If the rewards for dailies had only been Karma and the depth and breadth of items available for karma had expanded, the negative impact may have been lessened. However, there was a very deliberate change in design philosophy based on the carrot on a stick metaphor. Rewards would be used to motivate very specific game play, at the expense of “play the way you find most fun”.

Living Story has taken things further in the wrong direction. Not only taking resources from the true Living World concept, but further solidifying the model of “do these specific tasks and earn these very specific carrots”. Made more insidious due to the temporary nature of the content, the time limits on completing the linear checklist of activity and the exclusivity of rewards to that specific content and that limited timer for participation.

I’d argue that GW2, at launch, offered GW1 players the option to play GW2 in a fashion very similar to the way they played GW1. In fact, if ANet had stuck by the promise that there would be very little difference in rewards per hour between doing at level content and doing content you were significantly scaled down for, the expanded level cap and greater time to reach the level cap would have been largely moot for those who liked the GW1 model. Leveling up would just have opened up more and more content to the character, but all content would have been equally rewarding.

However, GW2 is a very different game than it was at launch. It has embraced most of the worst elements found in every other WoW-clone. In fact, I think we would be hard pressed to find another AAA MMO that has gone to such extremes to force linear content on it’s players and discourage adventure in the greater game world.

GW2 has become a Skinner’s Box. Levers to pull for specific rewards. Following the latest checklist provides you with exclusive, time limited rewards. Chase the carrot. Chase the carrot. Chase the carrot.

I asked this in another thread. How many people would actually play the current event in LA for more than an hour if there was no checklist and no grand carrots to chase? How many find the zerg fun enough that they would zerg sans any reward, or if the rewards were non-exclusive and weren’t in any way superior to the rewards for playing any other content in the game?

GW2 has stopped being about players playing because it’s fun to play. It’s all about chasing carrots. New, yummy, shiny carrots, each available for a limited time and each requiring a specific list of hoops to jump through before getting the pat on the head and your special dog treat!

It’s more than an affront to GW1, it’s a cynical, disgusting affront to the GW2 Manifesto and the limitless potential this game possessed at launch. It’s also very insulting to players, who have been reduced to the role of pets or lab rats in the minds of the Developers, who must marvel at the willingness of people to do elaborate lists of tricks for trivial treats.