(edited by Evon Skyfyre.9673)
I Gave Up On This Game Am I Wrong?
Its sad but pvp is the absolute last thing on anet’s “want to do” list. they literally could care less about it and its pretty evident.
The odd thing is, that almost feels like what the last couple years before GW2 in GW1 were like, aside from the usual balance patches. It just . . . was kind of there.
We both know that’s not because of GW’s original design principles. ANet’s philosophy changed over the years and wanted the game to shift to the PvE side, and they did just that. Not to mention power/skill creep being a huge factor in the disillusionment of the PvP community.
Calling early GW and late GW the same thing is like calling Roth’s Van Halen and Hagar’s Van Halen the same thing…
And yet, people aren’t differentiating, and as such we have a problem you put your finger on. ANet started focusing on PvE because . . . and I recall seeing this in a Q&A but can’t find it again . . . they intended the first game’s PvE to be a somewhat learning process to get the player to learn the basics of the system and then immediately jump into PvP. That . . . didn’t happen, for an overwhelming amount of players, so they shifted gears.
In short, even way back then the players and ANet weren’t in tune for the game’s ultimate purpose. (What a shocker.)
Overwhelming is an overstatement, GW1 had one of the healthiest PvP communities around at the beginning. The issue was that it didn’t happen in the kinds of numbers that they wanted. PvPer’s, especially the hard-core ones, are notorious for being both hard-to-please as well as the minority. That “shift” came about with the realization that they could simply make more money(and have an easier time of it) by courting the PvE crowd. It’s no coincidence there was a rather large staff shift that occurred simultaneously with this. ANet hedged their bets with this and went whole hog on the PvE train with EotN and GW2 development.
They could have tried to stay relevant in the hard-knock world of PvP game development. Instead they chose the safe route in fear of losing a healthy bottom line. There’s nothing really terribly wrong with that I suppose, you gotta pay the bills right? I guess ANet never struck me as the kind of game studio to give up so easily. /shrug
Obsidian Sky – SoR
I troll because I care
I troll because I care
(edited by Obsidian.1328)
And yet, people aren’t differentiating, and as such we have a problem you put your finger on. ANet started focusing on PvE because . . . and I recall seeing this in a Q&A but can’t find it again . . . they intended the first game’s PvE to be a somewhat learning process to get the player to learn the basics of the system and then immediately jump into PvP. That . . . didn’t happen, for an overwhelming amount of players, so they shifted gears.
In short, even way back then the players and ANet weren’t in tune for the game’s ultimate purpose. (What a shocker.)
Overwhelming is an overstatement, GW1 had one of the healthiest PvP communities around at the beginning. The issue was that it didn’t happen in the kinds of numbers that they wanted. PvPer’s, especially the hard-core ones, are notorious for being both hard-to-please as well as the minority. That “shift” came about with the realization that they could simply make more money(and have an easier time of it) by courting the PvE crowd. It’s no coincidence there was a rather large staff shift that occurred simultaneously with this. ANet hedged their bets with this went whole hog on the PvE train with EotN and GW2 development.
They could have tried to stay relevant in the hard-knock world of PvP game development. Instead they chose the safe route in fear of losing a healthy bottom line. There’s nothing really terribly wrong with that I suppose, you gotta pay the bills right? I guess ANet never struck me as the kind of game studio to give up so easily. /shrug
Has any game ever had a truly successful PVP system? I hear so many say some game was great until… It seems no game has been 100% successful with PVP. That said I have heard a lot of praise for the system in GW1. Me personally, I have a moderate interest in pvp. Seems MMO’s add it for two reasons. It’s user driven content, and they fear not having some form of pvp will cause the failure of their game. War hammer tried to be 100% PVP as have others, and well we know what happened there. SWTOR wasn’t going to have PVP, then panicked in the 11th hour and added it just before launch, and it shows. Players never know what they want, structured pvp is too confining, open world is too easy to dominate. It’s never balanced and has caused the death of pve in every game with both.
(edited by Evon Skyfyre.9673)
All my friends and me completly agree and feel like the OP. We are currently playing 2-3days after patch day to do new achievement and play the new story, and than we play other games for the rest 10 days until a new patch comes out. I think if a game development house releases a great new and innovative game right now would just get an enourmous quantity of people from all the games that exists right now. They all feel oldschool with no innovation in anything. I miss GW1 too so much but playing it right now after 6 years it’s kinda boring, we really need something new.
“I gave up on this game, am I wrong?”
No. Guild Wars 2 is a video game you can come back to at any time. If you feel like you are not satisfied, leave for a bit, play some Call of Duty, then come back later.
Chances are, if you take a long break, and come back after a few months, you’ll feel refreshed and have a bunch of new awesome living story content open to you.
Has any game ever had a truly successful PVP system? I hear so many say some game was great until… It seems no game has been 100% successful with PVP. That said I have heard a lot of praise for the system in GW1.
This is going to be a bit of a “you’re right/wrong” but I would say yes. There was an older mmo called Silkroad Online. It had 4 types of pvp in it.
Open World “MURDER”
You could control click and kill someone in open world. While most people might not be into that it did come at a VERY heavy penalty. You had a murder timer on you that would only tick outside of safe zones. In that time, people could openly PK you and you’d lose a hefty chunk of EXP (even delevel). It was rare to see, but it did happen every now and then.
Cape system
This was another form of “open world” pvp. Basically you had a slot that would hold a “job” accessory. Capes of various color could be put in that. Red/Blue/Black/Green etc. Anyone wearing that cape color was an ally, anyone else was an enemy. There was also a gold cape which was the “free for all” cape to just go and kill any color including gold capes. Most of the pvp was quarantined around the outside of safe towns and people generally had respect for ongoing duels/group fights. Sure you had the occasional kitten but that happens.
Guild War system
No pun intended. You were able to invite another guild to a guild war which would start a fully open world war between both clans. Points would be awarded every kill based on killer’s level vs victim’s level. You could also dedicate the war to end at a specific time or point limit. Guilds were also able to place wagers during the “acceptance” phase of the war. You’d sometimes see guilds better top tier items over it as well. Kept the game really fluid and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Only downside is if you had a guild that would scum out 1 point then hide in town till timer was over. Those guilds were generally placed on a community watch list however.
Job system
This was my personal favorite pvp mechanic introduced in ANY game to date. The game had 3 very large maps:
Jangan- Beginners capital
Donwhang- Central trade city
Hotan- Richest Capital (high level/end town)
There were 3 “jobs” in which you would simply equip an appropriate job accessory to start.
Merchant Flags
Hunter Outfits
Thief Garments
Merchants were the central job. They would go into towns and buy “Stock goods” and a transport. Transports would range from low inventory/high speed horses to high/inventory low speed yaks. Goods were placed into the transport and given a “star” rating. Depending on how many stars you carried, NPC thieves corresponding to the number would randomly spawn and attack you. The merchants main goal was to transport all their goods from wherever they started to any other town. The game had a built in supply/demand system so prices would fluctuate depending on how many merchants were bringing in the same goods. you were also handsomely rewarded if you were able to bring goods all the way from Jangan to Hotan.
Hunters were the protectors of merchants. Not much to explain here, your job is to fend off anything that tried to kill your merchant pal. Killing skilled thieves/high level npc thieves would also yield you a bounty for your efforts.
Thief was easily my job of choice though. You would start at the thief hideout and buy transports/recall pills. After that, go find yourself a 2 star merchant or higher. 1 stars had immunity on them and couldn’t be attacked by players. Anything else, you attack without discretion. After killing a transport (merchant was optional), you would summon a transport of your own and pack as many ill-gotten goods as you could. Immediately afterwords you would pop your recall pill which would put you on a timer. When the timer is ticking, it’s your job to protect yourself and your goods. As you now have a transport with “x” stars the same rules apply as that of a trader. NPC enemies will spawn to attempt to kill you and stop your journey. Not only did you have to watch out for other merchants and hunters, but your fellow thieves were also looking to get a taste of whatever profit you got a hold of.
As time goes by, I find myself playing less and less.
It’s just not jaw dropping, and I feel like it was overhyped. Too much promised in the manifesto, not enough delivered.
I just got my 7th toon to 80 the other day, and I’m working on getting all of them into exotics.
I also bought in to Star Citizen two days ago, and while that game has a ways to go – I find myself spending more time on their forums learning about it than I want to log into GW2.
My biggest gripe is with how little there is for exploration. I’m primarily an immersion/exploration player, and while I dabble a little in other things like PvP just for fun, most of all I want explore the game world.
GW2 was promised to be a great game for explorers, but I found this was not really true.
Some of it was – it is certainly very beautiful. The art style is one of the best I’ve ever seen in an MMO.
But Tyria feels tiny. I also really hate the zones – I’d prefer a truly open world with no zone walls/invisible walls. And the whole rectangular zone thing was extremely off putting. It just screams lazy design principles, and does a massive disservice to exploration.
Downleveling is a drag – there’s lots of places, like a champion spider queen somewhere near the Saltflood waypoint in Sparkfly, for example, that I cannot come back to at a higher level – no matter how high a level I get, I can never kill that spider unless I bring a bunch of other people, and I am often just exploring solo.
There’s also just not enough hidden content for explorers to find. I think there ought to be vast – hundreds of square miles worth – of underground structures and complexes hidden all over the world. Massive dungeon complexes underneath Divinity’s Reach, for example.
It just feels like the ‘Open World MMO’ aspect was tacked on to a PvP game, but I hear the PvP aspect isn’t that great either.
I did a little WvWvW and it was ok – as with all large scale PvP in MMO’s, the only problem I have with it is that they still haven’t figured out hot to make it less zergy – but this isn’t a problem that is unique to GW2, it plagues every MMO with PvP, so they kinda get a pass on that. There seems to be a ton of potential in PvP – from the siege weapons (which are really cool) to the destructible forts and bases. But, a lot of this seems to get very little use. Just like in WAR, I’ve noticed that primarily people run around ‘capping’ various objectives to score points, and battles are massive eye sores (graphically, my screen just explodes, and epileptics are sent to the hospital in every major battle) with very little actual tactics involved. Everyone just spams their attacks until one side or the other falls back. The zerg is the least interesting part of PvP, because no one really knows what’s going on, it’s just a spamfest of hitting all your skills and hoping something happens.
Combat is ok in GW2, but again I feel like it was overhyped. I thought it would be more action based, more like an FPS. But we got tab targeting, and substantial CD skills. And ultimately, I don’t like the weapon skill system – it lacks customization. I DO like the fact that we are limited to only 10 skills at any given time, but I wish I could pick and choose exactly which 5 skills were on my weapon bar instead of having to take all the skills associated with a particular weapon. Dual wielding makes this a little better, as you can at least mix and match 3 and 2 of those skills, but 2-hdrs. are worse in this regard, and I’d still rather be able to choose a skill independently for each slot. I don’t care if it’s easier for Anet to balance, or whatever their excuse is, the skill bar grows bland and I want more customization of my loadout.
But, if exploration was more fun, I could even forgive the combat, because at the end of the day it’s not bad – in fact, it’s way better than WoW, and just about every other MMO I’ve played.
If there were more to explore in Tyria I’d probably be hooked – but the draw of exploration quickly dies here.
Also, I found dungeons to be highly disappointing too – primarily because they are extremely linear. Rather than vast complexes with multiple levels and huge areas to explore, they’re really just extended arenas with specific kinds of enemies in them.
Also, I don’t like the forced grouping in dungeons. Again, this comes down to my explorer approach to gaming – I want to delve into dungeons on my own a lot, and I’d like it if dungeons were challenging for solo players, but not next to impossible because of the way mobs are designed, with massive health pools, one shot mechanics, and bad AI’s.
(edited by ipan.4356)
As time goes by, I find myself playing less and less.
It’s just not jaw dropping, and I feel like it was overhyped. Too much promised in the manifesto, not enough delivered.
I just got my 7th toon to 80 the other day, and I’m working on getting all of them into exotics.
I also bought in to Star Citizen two days ago, and while that game has a ways to go – I find myself spending more time on their forums learning about it than I want to log into GW2.
My biggest gripe is with how little there is for exploration. I’m primarily an immersion/exploration player, and while I dabble a little in other things like PvP just for fun, most of all I want explore the game world.
GW2 was promised to be a great game for explorers, but I found this was not really true.
Some of it was – it is certainly very beautiful. The art style is one of the best I’ve ever seen in an MMO.
But Tyria feels tiny. I also really hate the zones – I’d prefer a truly open world with no zone walls/invisible walls. And the whole rectangular zone thing was extremely off putting. It just screams lazy design principles, and does a massive disservice to exploration.
Downleveling is a drag – there’s lots of places, like a champion spider queen somewhere near the Saltflood waypoint in Sparkfly, for example, that I cannot come back to at a higher level – no matter how high a level I get, I can never kill that spider unless I bring a bunch of other people, and I am often just exploring solo.
There’s also just not enough hidden content for explorers to find. I think there ought to be vast – hundreds of square miles worth – of underground structures and complexes hidden all over the world. Massive dungeon complexes underneath Divinity’s Reach, for example.
It just feels like the ‘Open World MMO’ aspect was tacked on to a PvP game, but I hear the PvP aspect isn’t that great either.
I did a little WvWvW and it was ok – as with all large scale PvP in MMO’s, the only problem I have with it is that they still haven’t figured out hot to make it less zergy – but this isn’t a problem that is unique to GW2, it plagues every MMO with PvP, so they kinda get a pass on that. There seems to be a ton of potential in PvP – from the siege weapons (which are really cool) to the destructible forts and bases. But, a lot of this seems to get very little use. Just like in WAR, I’ve noticed that primarily people run around ‘capping’ various objectives to score points, and battles are massive eye sores (graphically, my screen just explodes, and epileptics are sent to the hospital in every major battle) with very little actual tactics involved. Everyone just spams their attacks until one side or the other falls back. The zerg is the least interesting part of PvP, because no one really knows what’s going on, it’s just a spamfest of hitting all your skills and hoping something happens.
Combat is ok in GW2, but again I feel like it was overhyped. I thought it would be more action based, more like an FPS. But we got tab targeting, and substantial CD skills. And ultimately, I don’t like the weapon skill system – it lacks customization. I DO like the fact that we are limited to only 10 skills at any given time, but I wish I could pick and choose exactly which 5 skills were on my weapon bar instead of having to take all the skills associated with a particular weapon. Dual wielding makes this a little better, as you can at least mix and match 3 and 2 of those skills, but 2-hdrs. are worse in this regard, and I’d still rather be able to choose a skill independently for each slot. I don’t care if it’s easier for Anet to balance, or whatever their excuse is, the skill bar grows bland and I want more customization of my loadout.
But, if exploration was more fun, I could even forgive the combat, because at the end of the day it’s not bad – in fact, it’s way better than WoW, and just about every other MMO I’ve played.
If there were more to explore in Tyria I’d probably be hooked – but the draw of exploration quickly dies here.
Also, I found dungeons to be highly disappointing too – primarily because they are extremely linear. Rather than vast complexes with multiple levels and huge areas to explore, they’re really just extended arenas with specific kinds of enemies in them.
Also, I don’t like the forced grouping in dungeons. Again, this comes down to my explorer approach to gaming – I want to delve into dungeons on my own a lot, and I’d like it if dungeons were challenging for solo players, but not next to impossible because of the way mobs are designed, with massive health pools, one shot mechanics, and bad AI’s.
Thank you for echoing my sentiments
Talent customization is also terrible, probably because it’s so completely linear and streamlined.
I mean, we don’t unlock any new skills through talents, it’s all just static stat modifiers (occasionally, one will trigger a skill you already have – like Caltrops, for example – or even give you the skill of another class or a random boon – but none of it truly unlocks any ‘new’ skills).
It’s just +5 to this and +5 to that, and when you drop below 50% blah blah blah blah apply condition blah blah blah blah gain boon.
I mean, at the end of the day, what really matters are the skills you actually see on screen, how they make your character move (and positioning) and their timing (fast attacks/slow attacks, tells, etc.) and all that.
Not whether I get +5% crit when I wield swords, or whether Regeneration is applied whenever I get a bleed on me, or whatever.
I mean, you can’t even feel those things – they’re just these little blinking status thingies above your hotbar – their purely statistical, mathematical abstractions that have almost no connection to the kinetic feel of the game.
So talents are completely intellectual – it largely boils down to doing some math and figuring out which ones will benefit your particular skill set mathematically. Aside from this, they do almost nothing.
And that makes it terribly boring. As a comparative example, in D3 every skill rune fundamentally changes how every skill functions, often giving you a completely new skill.
In most MMO’s the skill tree even unlocks skills that aren’t available anywhere else.
And then there’s gear.
Gear I believe suffers as a side effect of the boring talent system. Gear is just as boring as talents in this game, and for exactly the same reason – but I believe this is an extension of the problems the talent system has.
Gear – especially at higher levels – should provide unique and interesting effects.
Legendary equipment – which should be available for every gear slot in the game – should have proc effects or other mechanics that give their users an advantage, not just a static damage or stat boost. They should actually do cool stuff. That would be interesting.
It’s hard to think of any game where the gear and loot is as boring as it is in GW2.
Gear is merely functional in this game. It’s not awe inspiring or mysterious. It isn’t even flashy.
And lots of the skins aren’t even cool looking – they’re extremely dorky. Like the Apothecary medium armors. Terrible. Or the Zenith skins. Awful. I mean, who designed that crap?
Once you’ve played through the theme park once or twice – seen a couple dungeons, played through most of the world’s zones (up to Orr/Frostgorge), maybe done a couple Fractals (which were my favorite part of the game btw, but I think they should have poured way more time and effort into developing them further), and seen most of the side games, like Super Adventure Box (which there should also be a lot more of – we were promised all kinds of side games from the beginning) then there’s just nothing left that’s appealing.
I don’t care to grind for Ascended, and the rest of the gear is just a gold grind for nothing more than a different skin and a slight stat boost.
Gear sucks in GW2 – and I think this alone is killing it. Without awesome gear to fight for, people aren’t motivated.
It’s just too boring.
Another gripe I have about dungeons:
You know how you beat dungeons in GW2?
With awesome combat prowess, team coordination, and skill? Nope.
Sheer audacity and persistence? Nope.
Godlike ninja skills? Nope.
Get 5 people together so you can zergfest/spam your skills all over the hardest (read: massive healthpool) Champ/Legend/Elite bosses.
A couple days ago I just started running Citadel of Fire P1 over and over to farm tokens, because I happen to really like the medium armor set from this dungeon, and all it is is running in there and spamming all your attacks over and over.
I can’t solo it on any character, because of 1-shot attacks and too little DPS to kill anything quickly enough.
But, get four other people and we just steam roll the whole thing.
Rinse repeat.
This is terrible dungeon design.
Again, laziness.
Why not create dungeons that are 20x larger, design them so that there is no set goal to ‘completing’ them (what I mean is, maybe an entire wing of the dungeon has certain rewards based on killing particular enemies in those locations, or even finding out how to access really hidden places, while other wings of the dungeon have completely different rewards, independent of any other part of the dungeon – multiple layers/levels to dungeons, etc.)
It’s like each dungeon is a one trick pony.
Here, kill this Legendary boss monster, which is almost impossible on your own, but a piece of cake if you team up with 4 random people you’ll never see again, and then collect some tokens and useless rares you can sell on the auction house for 30 silver.
Rinse/repeat.
Again, totally lazy design.
They could have tried to stay relevant in the hard-knock world of PvP game development. Instead they chose the safe route in fear of losing a healthy bottom line. There’s nothing really terribly wrong with that I suppose, you gotta pay the bills right? I guess ANet never struck me as the kind of game studio to give up so easily. /shrug
Eh, so they’re not Riot Games (I’m glad for that). I’m rather happy with the PvE content developed by ANet.
. . . don’t take that to mean I’m salivating over it and waving signs going “the story is teh awesumm!”. It’s serviceable for me, and it’s pretty much what I wanted and expected out of it. (GW1 and GW2)
Seeking assistants for the Asuran Catapult Project. Applicants will be tested for aerodynamics.
The problem is that everything Anet does – trying to herd people into the gem store – actually will have the opposite effect, as it pushes people away from the game itself.
The only salve they can apply is to actually create more – and better – game content that draws people back to the game to play.
No players means no gem shop customers.
I was, in the beginning, a happy gem store shopper. I actually like buying cosmetic stuff – especially for a game that has no sub, and gives me access to all the content for free (after box purchase).
I bought 3 additional character slots, an extra bank slot, 3 unlimited mining tools (Dream Axe, Bone Pick, and Jack in the Box), and my gf bought a flying broom.
I would buy more clothing, except there just aren’t that many choices. I expected dozens, if not hundreds, of outfits to choose from.
They should also create mini events that promote showing off these clothes, like costume balls and the like.
I am happy to spend money on stuff like that.
But, and here’s what actually keeps me from doing so: there’s no new game to come back and play.
The biggest issue is the lack of content, and without new content to keep me logging in, neither do I want to spend money.
And, since I’ve learned to recognize this death spiral from dozens of failed MMO’s over the years, I’m also not confident in Anet keeping this game up for very long – they are showing all the signs of a decaying MMO.
I watched Rift go through the same thing until they finally hit F2P – all the fanboys said it couldn’t happen, and then it did. I don’t know if it’s doing any better, but the point is so many people think that doesn’t happen, but it seems to happen to every MMO, except WoW – and even WoW’s not doing that great.
Wildstar will go through the same thing eventually – it looks kinda interesting, but not worth a sub. I’ve heard it described as, ‘The best MMO of the last generation of old school MMO’s’.
Archeage did look pretty interesting, I’m glad to hear positive early reports about it. I might check it out.
Honestly though, the only thing that has piqued my interest at all is Star Citizen – it even has some very limited, early Oculus Rift support.
And that’s it – this is the sunset for games like GW2. It made a little progress – great art work, a couple interesting combat mechanics, shake up of the trinity.
But in the end, it’s just kind meh.
And, the worst part is that Anet shows every indication that they will continue to completely ignore what’s wrong with it.
They are in the denial bubble right now, and it’s going to cost them their game.
GW2 might survive with a tiny fanbase – it might not disappear, most MMO’s don’t completely fall off the face of the planet, at least not for a few years.
But it’s shrinking.
And soon we have Archeage, Star Citizen, and the Oculus Rift.
GW2 is so last decade, that it won’t stand up to these new games. It’s old hat already.
Mostly due to lazy design, and attempting to milk as much as they can out of little content, instead of just doing what everyone wants and making more content for people to play.
Why can’t we play Tengu or Kodan characters yet? Why don’t we have more classes? Why don’t we have more weapons/skills for old classes?
Where are the half a dozen new dungeons? Why aren’t old dungeons revised to be more fun?
The LS is ok, but it’s not enough.
Not nearly enough, and that’s why I haven’t even logged in today, even though I thought about it once or twice – I found talking to people about new and upcoming games actually more fun than even playing a game I already have.
What is Anet going to do about this? I know there are a ton of people who feel the same, but my guess is that they’ll continue sweeping all the real problems under the rug, while pretending to address things the community doesn’t even care about.
How about a couple more skill facts, Anet? We sure could use some more of those.
To me GW2 is too much like other games that I already played and it has been a disappointment for me because I was hoping to continue GW1 in an updated version that offered more of the same play style but with a complete facelift to it.
This sums up my disappointment as well. But it’s their game and many devs have said that GW1 did things wrong and they won’t replicate them. Or words to that effect. As is, the recent update has really driven me away. I try and try to get interested and just can’t. Be it me, or the game, or both, it’s time to log out and stay gone I guess. I loved the festival of the 4 winds, and to be equally as blunt, I hate the new area, etc. Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but I get angry there, and frustrated, both I can do without the game trust me. I want to have fun in game.
I have wondered if the updates going further will be like the recent one. That is to say 1.5 hours of play, another 2 weeks of waiting. I purposely didn’t complete the story for days. I didn’t burn through the achievements either. I did a few and goofed off. For me I love the aspect skills, I was excited to explore. Then saw the timers. That ruined it for me completely. And to those clamoring to reply, I can only speak for me. I am not interested in, “oh there is so much to do..” Maybe in your eyes there is. In mine, not really. I want/need completely new content and story.
I played GW1 for a long time. I started about 2 weeks after launch. I used to explore most of the time and just follow my nose. I try to do that in GW2, and while the scenery is par with GW1, I’m just not feeling it.
Rather then rant and complain any more, I have one last thing to say, and it may seem snarky and I know it will never happen. That said, I really miss the days of Jeff Strain and his vision.
You can read about it here, it’s still posted on the GW1 site.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
Thank you for posting that link. I had puzzled where the soul of the old Anet had wandered off to. It is kind of sad to see how much of that wisdom has been tossed aside since launch.
New Anet may as well be EA.
Ley lines. The perfect solution to deadlines and writers block. Now in an easy open Can.
And, the worst part is that Anet shows every indication that they will continue to completely ignore what’s wrong with it.
They are in the denial bubble right now, and it’s going to cost them their game.
I don’t really care about anything else you wrote. It’s your opinion. I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it. But this is just not on.
Ignore what’s wrong with it from your point of view. Which doesn’t mean that’s what’s wrong with it. Because some of the things you list that are wrong with it are reasons some people play the game.
It’s not a game for everyone but I can pretty much guarantee there are enough people out there who think differently from you that will support the game because it is the way it is.
You talk about dungeons like most people in most games love and run dungeons, when we often know that’s not the case. I’ve seen complaints about downleveling and not being powerful enough, but I think a lot of people love downleveling. In Rift I never really had a reason to go back to an early zone. When I did it was pointless.
Here I can go anywhere, get drops at levels, gather what I like and still fight some stuff. And yes, I am more powerful. And if there are a few challenges in the world that remain more powerful, all well and good. That’s how it should be in my mind.
But you see that’s the thing. You’re saying all this stuff as if everyone who plays the game feels this way. I don’t believe that’s true at all.
Now, if 500,000 people feel like I do, there’s no other game for them to go to. None.
There are tons of things about this game that I find flawed. Not a couple. Tons.
But it’s less flawed than any other MMO I’ve tried and I’ve tried lots of them.
So saying this whole doom and gloom prediction based on your personal opinion has little relationship to reality. It’s not even a guess. It’s just baseless.
I will respectufully disagree about guilds not being needed. Just do some pugging in dungeons and either bow down to zerk-zerg-sheep meta, and groups disbanding after a single wipe, or get a guild with some hopefully mentally stable folks that don’t jump off a building cause their joghurt was rasberry and they wanted banana…
Also combat system is kitten good. It’s not perfect (condition caps!) , but it’s good. The encounters are the problem. They just (in most cases) let zerk-zerg fest slide by and so everyone thinks this game has one profession (warrior), one stat set (zerk), and one skillset (whatever meta mouth breathers warship at given time).
But an intelligent player who likes to think for himself can find the depth and diversity he seeks in professions.
Also A-net seems to be learning the lesson as Teq, Wurm and Marionnete(when it was around), most certainly aren’t happily brain-off zergable bosses.
Either way, on the plus side as long as ANet maintains their servers, nothing is preventing you from logging in and playing again… well except maybe the downtime you might have to do endure if you uninstalled.
The problem is that everything Anet does – trying to herd people into the gem store – actually will have the opposite effect, as it pushes people away from the game itself.
While the prices and uses of somethings I do not like (cough assassin outfit) at the same time I am way more ok with them focusing on the gem market than say what The Old Republic is doing. They actually take out lousy tiny elements and force you to sub in order to have those unlocked, or you have to unlock most features in order to use them. You take an experience hit and you can’t get exp boosts via the rested bonus as this is locked away from players who are F2Ps or Premiums. Plus, you can’t take in game credits and turn them into CCs – but you sure hell can in GW2 via their in game currency.
(edited by Ronin.7381)
There were a couple of things that struck me from the Jeff Strain speech posted earlier:
It is a truism that MMOs are all about community, and the success or failure of your MMO will largely be gated by how well the community coalesces and feels a strong sense of place in your world
And yet the megaserver destroyed those very communities that servers had built.
And
It is tempting to believe that because a player is playing an MMO, and because good MMOs are social games, every player must therefore like to play with other players in a group. Our experience with Guild Wars is that this is an erroneous and dangerous assumption. On any given day, a player may want to play with his guild, or he may want to play with his best friend, or he may want to play alone. The fact that he is playing in a large communal environment is not a predictor of how he wants to play. We should be striving to make games that let you play how you want to play right now, and offer you the flexibility to progress with any combination of players you like.
I see you guys strech huge walls of text but in the end, one does not simply quit GW2. Being B2P, I see people leave for a short time, then come back playing and vice versa. Solid arguments are yhrown here but they will stay to wither and die here in this thread. Let it be..
Drop Acid Not Bombs (Richie Hawtin)
To me GW2 is too much like other games that I already played and it has been a disappointment for me because I was hoping to continue GW1 in an updated version that offered more of the same play style but with a complete facelift to it.
This sums up my disappointment as well. But it’s their game and many devs have said that GW1 did things wrong and they won’t replicate them. Or words to that effect. As is, the recent update has really driven me away. I try and try to get interested and just can’t. Be it me, or the game, or both, it’s time to log out and stay gone I guess. I loved the festival of the 4 winds, and to be equally as blunt, I hate the new area, etc. Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but I get angry there, and frustrated, both I can do without the game trust me. I want to have fun in game.
I have wondered if the updates going further will be like the recent one. That is to say 1.5 hours of play, another 2 weeks of waiting. I purposely didn’t complete the story for days. I didn’t burn through the achievements either. I did a few and goofed off. For me I love the aspect skills, I was excited to explore. Then saw the timers. That ruined it for me completely. And to those clamoring to reply, I can only speak for me. I am not interested in, “oh there is so much to do..” Maybe in your eyes there is. In mine, not really. I want/need completely new content and story.
I played GW1 for a long time. I started about 2 weeks after launch. I used to explore most of the time and just follow my nose. I try to do that in GW2, and while the scenery is par with GW1, I’m just not feeling it.
Rather then rant and complain any more, I have one last thing to say, and it may seem snarky and I know it will never happen. That said, I really miss the days of Jeff Strain and his vision.
You can read about it here, it’s still posted on the GW1 site.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
Thank you for posting that link. I had puzzled where the soul of the old Anet had wandered off to. It is kind of sad to see how much of that wisdom has been tossed aside since launch.
New Anet may as well be EA.
He started a new company: http://undeadlabs.com