Guild Wars 2

I don’t normally post on the forums, but the recent changes to the game (i.e. the new player experience) made me want to say something, even if it feels like a drop in the bucket right now.

I’ve played GW2 since beta. I played GW1 for years before that, and since the first information on GW2 started coming out, I was more excited than I’d ever been (and have been since then) about an upcoming game. Once I actually got to try it out in the first beta event, it was basically love at first sight (or more like at first weekend of compulsive gaming). And ever since we were given the first solid idea of gameplay in GW2, I’ve been recommending it to just about all of my friends. That’s not to say I thought GW2 was the perfect game, as there have been plenty of both existing flaws, as well as changes over the last couple years I wasn’t too happy with. But I was generally able to look past them, groan a little at the people saying how the game was so terrible in every way, and keep encouraging my friends to join in the fun (which did indeed bring in some people with whom I’ve had some great times in GW2).

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t bring myself to keep encouraging all of my gamer friends to try out this game I’ve invested so much time in. With previous patches, even though they generally had some flaws, I was still able to tell anyone who asked about updates things like “the new wardrobe gives players more customization options” or “now you can AoE loot so that collecting drops is a little easier.” But earlier today, someone who hadn’t been on in a while asked me, “What changed?” and the best thing I could think of was something along the lines of, “Well, a lot of stuff is now gated by level, and low level zones have been drastically simplified…but I guess the new trading post UI is cool?”

If this were just about any other game, I would quit at this point. I wouldn’t write a long forum post complaining about it. But both GW games have been such big parts of my life that I still have some hope, naive as it may be, that the game won’t keep going down this path. I don’t want to unfairly bash GW2, or ArenaNet. I still think the game has a lot to offer, and I still think that it can become even better, but not like this. Instead of hearing about an update and getting excited about whatever is being added, I now find myself worrying over what might be removed. And that sort of mentality is just awful. I don’t want people to see the game like this. If I brought in a new player today and they complained to me, “This game is boring as hell,” what more could I say? “Yeah. It kind of is.”

Now, I’ve seen the post about how extensive testing found far too many players confused by early gameplay before the feature pack. I can’t do the same sort of testing, so I won’t dispute that result, and I can see why it’s a valid concern for ArenaNet if confusion over mechanics is driving players away from the game. Potential fans won’t get the awesome GW2 experience so many of us know and love. However, gating the content that players have access to is not the solution. Leaving the game like this will simply deter both new and veteran players. Creating a new system might be ideal, but honestly, right now it seems to me that the game would benefit from simply reverting the changes to leveling.

If the game has to cut content to attract new players, they’ll still be missing out on the full experience anyway.

TL;DR: I’ve encouraged friends to play GW2 from the start, but now I can’t bring myself to drag them into boring, oversimplified content. I believe the “new player experience” is only going to make it harder to convince new players to try the game, while also frustrating veterans. I can’t recommend the “new player experience” to potential new players.

Thank you if you bothered to read all of the post.

I’m a new player and I would definitely recommend this game to someone who enjoys adventuring, exploring, and an overall immersive fantasy experience. I already feel like I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth so anything on top of this is just gravy.

I don’t think I would recommend the game unless I added two things:

“Stay off the forums. Stay off Reddit.”

Well, you just said everything I came here to say. I’m also a long time GW1 player and been playing GW2 since Beta as well. I finally purchased 3 new character slots last week so I would be able to have one of every class. Now I feel completely ripped off because new characters are unplayable, so all 3 of those purchases are wasted money. This is now the worst leveling system I’ve ever seen in a game.

I thought the changes to traits were bad, but that pales in comparison to this. I can’t even find joy in playing my 80’s anymore.

Sad to say, but after nearly a decade, Guild Wars is dead to me until this is fixed.

For the past 2 years people have managed to figure out how to play the game just fine with the way it was originally. This ‘new player experience’ change just feels like a direct insult to the intelligence level of the average MMO gamer.

ArenaNet’s postrelease team has been so incredibly negligent with what this game actually needs. Now I’ve got a PS4 and I’m playing Destiny. I really wish I could say that I’m sad to have to move on. This game has so much potential. But the masterminds at Anet have just repeatedly dropped the ball over and over again, and I’m simply no longer interested.

I’m going to start by saying this is my first ever post which I believe says a lot in itself after playing for 2 years now.

At first I wasn’t too bothered by the update and didn’t understand all the complaints. I can safely say now I completely understand.

3 days ago I persuaded my brother to get the game and today it arrived in the post. I feel as if I have stolen his money. 3 days ago I couldn’t recommend this game enough and now I’m not sure what to think.

The level restrictions are ridiculous and the hand holding is so frustrating, it feels as if there is no freedom whatsoever anymore. I can’t even put on diving goggles..

The whole situation reminds me of the fall of Runescape and honestly it worries me. It all just seems so childish… the stupid arrow telling me to head this way to discover a certain POI or waypoint. What happened to just loading into the map and allowing the player to decide what to do.

I certainly won’t be making any more characters on my account and I’m not even sure if my brother will continue playing.

FuthaMuka.3509:

I certainly won’t be making any more characters on my account and I’m not even sure if my brother will continue playing.

ArcheAge releases in North America in six days. You and your brother should give it a try. It couldn’t be any worse than China Wars 2. Well, it could, but at this point I’m willing to try anything other than this game.

Sokia.3710:

FuthaMuka.3509:

I certainly won’t be making any more characters on my account and I’m not even sure if my brother will continue playing.

ArcheAge releases in North America in six days. You and your brother should give it a try. It couldn’t be any worse than China Wars 2. Well, it could, but at this point I’m willing to try anything other than this game.

That’s not a bad idea.

I can’t believe Anet are the same company that created GW1 .

Rathon.5840:

Now, I’ve seen the post about how extensive testing found far too many players confused by early gameplay before the feature pack.

This extensive testing failed to reveal the actual cause of said confusion, that being an extremely limited and kitten UI.

A Necromancer can’t even see what stats are on his Death Shroud skills in the skills panel of the Hero window. There isn’t a single blurb anywhere in game about movement speed and how different types are not additive.

No game stays fun for very long if every player has to do research on external websites about how core game mechanics function.

WoW is quite a bit more complex in many respects, but the UI is not only customizable but very informative, and tends even on default not to hide information from the player. If you’re going to dev an MMO, you can’t go into it with the idea of obscuring basic gameplay concepts as some sort of playstyle philosophy. Especially when your game, even with just 5 players on screen, can fill the view of a player solid with particle effects such that a 30 ft. tall boss is totally obscured, you cannot expect a player to “read enemy tells and cues” when they can’t even be seen!

GW2 has one of the worst UIs I’ve ever seen to be honest, and is likely one of the main reasons why people tend to leave the game AND why the idea of competitive gameplay is laughable.

FuthaMuka.3509:

I can’t believe Anet are the same company that created GW1 .

They aren’t the same ANet.

I have already packed my bags. Funny thing is, I was that friend who defended GW2 talking about how great it would eventually be, “GW2 is bad!? its only been a year or so, they will make better changes soon.” And as I continue to play, each patch continued to prove why my friends decided to stop far ahead. What did we get after 2 years? Over simplification, dumb down content, more zerging, and little to no balance changes.

And now having to wait 2 months to move forward in the content that supposedly matters the most to this game, content that the devs are supposedly putting much of their resources in, I can not proceed to even play anymore. I have sadly uninstall with the rest of my unspent gems that I have and honestly could care less. So many friends have left and I feel shameful for even trying to have such hope after the recent changes this game has gone through.

Uriel.6310:

I have already packed my bags. Funny thing is, I was that friend who defended GW2 talking about how great it would eventually be, “GW2 is bad!? its only been a year or so, they will make better changes soon.” And as I continue to play, each patch continued to prove why my friends decided to stop far ahead. What did we get after 2 years? Over simplification, dumb down content, more zerging, and little to no balance changes.

And now having to wait 2 months to move forward in the content that supposedly matters the most to this game, content that the devs are supposedly putting much of their resources in, I can not proceed to even play anymore. I have sadly uninstall with the rest of my unspent gems that I have and honestly could care less. So many friends have left and I feel shameful for even trying to have such hope after the recent changes this game has gone through.

Same way man. 8226 hours and 31 minutes playing this game and that feeling of hope and vast potential in it is completely gone for me.

I said the same thing after checking out the new patch. This used to be my go-to game. I have 25 character slots, ten 80s, one 80 of every profession. Been playing since beta. Been a die hard fan since beta. It used to be I couldn’t recommend this game enough, and I recommended it to anyone halfway listening.

After the new traits, I still recommended the game although some of my enthusiasm for it died. Nonetheless, overall it still had a great deal to offer and excellent potential, so I felt like I could still encourage people to give it a try. I was also so certain they’d do something to retool what they did to break traits.

Now that this patch has dropped, I can’t in good conscience recommend this game to anyone. It’s not limited to just the poor decisions and bad designs in this one patch, it’s the constant feeling of ANet not knowing how to deliver things we actually want and need. We waited two years for a couple measly quality of life fixes, and then a bunch of level gating no one wanted and no one asked for.

Enough is enough. I’m not hopeful for this game anymore. It’s increasingly becoming sad, squandered potential which is heartbreaking to me because I still love the aesthetics and the lore. Unfortunately, the game itself is unplayable. Every time we players find something to do, we get steered back to dungeon runs and world boss train.

Event? Nerf. Champ train maps? Nerf. Roleplay? No more town clothes, no more home servers in cities, no acknowledgement or help for even basic requests like ability to be sorted into a megaserver with other RPers. “Just join a guild,” we’re told, but then the state of guilds in a game with ‘guild’ right in the title is a mess.

I’m not sure what class of mythical gamer ANet is catering to here. I’m Chinese myself so I’d appreciate no pseudo-racist comments of ‘blame everything on China.’ I’m sure the Chinese release has something to do with it, but these problems have been a long way in the making, predating the China launch by far.

I’m disappointed and I’m tired, and I can’t hold on to this game any longer than I have. Unless I hear from someone that ANet miraculously starts listening to their playerbase, and I’m not hopeful that they will, I’m moving on.

Going to go give ArcheAge a try when it’s out, but for the moment I’ve found a nice home in The Secret World. Buy to play model, lots of emotes, chat text is selectable, interactable furniture you don’t have to fight with to sit in a chair— Yeah, I’ll catch you all later.

Thanks for all the good times the past two years.

I only started playing this game within the last 30 days, so I cannot boast any measure of dedication to this franchise.
What I can say, though, is that I feel the same way. Since I started playing I was floored by how open and free and immersive the game felt, and how much fun each class was to play right out of the gates. I’ve never once played an MMO where I looked forward to playing alts, and this game had hit the sweet spot.
… until I logged in today and noticed the changes.
That hand-holding arrow around the heart (huge immersion breaker), the inability to access the extent of my abilities until level 10 (excluding traits which have fared worse), even some of the quest objectives have changed from being at least mildly believable to insultingly stupid (entertaining cows instead of feeding them, how useful.)
This game was the first genuinely enjoyable, novel MMO experience I’ve had in YEARS, and with one patch they have reduced it to being another streamlined generic chore of a game.
Words can’t express my disappointment because I was seriously looking forward to having more of my friends join me in playing this game. Now I can’t recommend this game to anyone, and unless they fix it (which I strongly doubt) they’ve lost me as a player too. I was so excited about this game and now I get to uninstall it…. ugh….

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Same way man. 8226 hours and 31 minutes playing this game and that feeling of hope and vast potential in it is completely gone for me.

11.5 hours a day, seven days a week, for two years ?

Wow.

I’d recommend it.

Create new character: Hard Mode unlocked.

Considering the number of fans Dark Souls has, I’m sure there’s a market out there who’s happy to kill everything using skill 1.

Or maybe I’m thinking of champ trains.

I agree man I’m very disappointed with how they made this “new player experience” I bought the game for my 12 year old daughter and she started a new character today and got bored after 30 minutes and quit due to the game not being very engaging or challenging which kinda saddened me I’ve always loved GW2 and GW1 I beta tested both of them and played the first game sense launch I fear this update may be the start of something worse to come and may end up hurting the game permanently I really hope Anet hears the player base on this issue and makes changes accordingly I really dont want to quit the game because its quality continuously decreases.

KeikaStrife.6147:

I only started playing this game within the last 30 days, so I cannot boast any measure of dedication to this franchise.

I’ve been playing GW2 since a month after it launched. I LOVED the first Guild Wars. Even Guild Wars 2, which I was a huge critic of, had a lot more going for it than most other MMO’s at the time.

I was so excited about this game and now I get to uninstall it…. ugh….

It’s a pity you never got to play the “real” Guild Wars 2. You know, the one that we had before April of this year. This game had a lot going for it. In fact, several months after this game launched, I might argue that it was the best MMO on the market. I’m talking MMO in general, not just action-combat MMO’s. We had questing that was streamlined that was generally more interesting than quests in most MMO’s. There was WvWvW, and we had jumping puzzles which were LIGHTYEARS beyond jumping puzzles in any other MMO I had ever played or read about. But, it didn’t take long before strange design decisions started happening and the game was taken into a direction that I did not find interesting or even fun in some cases. But the game still had a lot going for it (particularly WvWvW mode) but it seems that all of the “fun” stuff in the game keeps getting removed or changed every few months.

You never experienced trait points at level 11, getting stomped by champions in low level zones because you don’t know how ridiculously strong they are. You missed a lot of the stuff that made the game truly fun. Sure, this game was a buggy mess at launch, but there was a lot of fun within the mess. The mess that they’ve made now is just a mess.

Also, QUEEN’S GAUNTLET. Those were the days, man. Queen’s Gauntlet. Even the Super Adventure Box which is really popular but I never really cared about. It’s just a glorified minigame, but it’s a pretty entertaining minigame. So much cool stuff that could be in this game, and instead we get level-gating underwater combat. What Arenanet should have done was add a “Queen’s Gauntlet” type of section, but with kid-gloves instead of hard bosses. They could use this to have a REAL tutorial section that actually teaches players how to dodge and use skills. Some profession trainer could teach you skills and you could have mock fights and stationary targets. I think even the original Guild Wars games had something like this. Well, maybe not the very first GW. But, I seem to remember the other campaigns having target practice where you could learn the range of your skills, etc.

Sokia.3710:

KeikaStrife.6147:

I only started playing this game within the last 30 days, so I cannot boast any measure of dedication to this franchise.

I’ve been playing GW2 since a month after it launched. I LOVED the first Guild Wars. Even Guild Wars 2, which I was a huge critic of, had a lot more going for it than most other MMO’s at the time.

I was so excited about this game and now I get to uninstall it…. ugh….

It’s a pity you never got to play the “real” Guild Wars 2. You know, the one that we had before April of this year. This game had a lot going for it. In fact, several months after this game launched, I might argue that it was the best MMO on the market. I’m talking MMO in general, not just action-combat MMO’s. We had questing that was streamlined that was generally more interesting than quests in most MMO’s. There was WvWvW, and we had jumping puzzles which were LIGHTYEARS beyond jumping puzzles in any other MMO I had ever played or read about. But, it didn’t take long before strange design decisions started happening and the game was taken into a direction that I did not find interesting or even fun in some cases. But the game still had a lot going for it (particularly WvWvW mode) but it seems that all of the “fun” stuff in the game keeps getting removed or changed every few months.

You never experienced trait points at level 11, getting stomped by champions in low level zones because you don’t know how ridiculously strong they are. You missed a lot of the stuff that made the game truly fun. Sure, this game was a buggy mess at launch, but there was a lot of fun within the mess. The mess that they’ve made now is just a mess.

Also, QUEEN’S GAUNTLET. Those were the days, man. Queen’s Gauntlet. Even the Super Adventure Box which is really popular but I never really cared about. It’s just a glorified minigame, but it’s a pretty entertaining minigame. So much cool stuff that could be in this game, and instead we get level-gating underwater combat. What Arenanet should have done was add a “Queen’s Gauntlet” type of section, but with kid-gloves instead of hard bosses. They could use this to have a REAL tutorial section that actually teaches players how to dodge and use skills. Some profession trainer could teach you skills and you could have mock fights and stationary targets. I think even the original Guild Wars games had something like this. Well, maybe not the very first GW. But, I seem to remember the other campaigns having target practice where you could learn the range of your skills, etc.

That really is a pity, because that sounds like it would have been fun. Maybe not getting randomly owned by mobs of high level players out of nowhere (I had enough of that in TERA) but everything else…. :/ Man.

I’m enjoying the game well enough because I have plenty of level 80s, but I definitely couldn’t recommend any of my friends start the game from scratch. If I really wanted a friend to play, I might just send them enough gold to craft to 80 so they can go out and have fun with the game.

KeikaStrife.6147:

That really is a pity, because that sounds like it would have been fun. Maybe not getting randomly owned by mobs of high level players out of nowhere (I had enough of that in TERA) but everything else…. :/ Man.

It was fun. I’m not talking about players, though. Champions are just really strong monsters. There used to be quite a few of them, even in the very low level areas. You’ll be walking along and say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” so you waltz in there thinking you are all tough and you get killed by some bandit cannon.

So, a couple of levels later you see that the event is up and you say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” so you waltz in there and kill the cannon even though it takes you down to very low health. You heal up, kill the bodyguards, and then the Lieutenant kills you….quicker than the cannon did.

So, a couple of levels later you say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” and you notice that three other people are about to fight him. So, you wall waltz in there and take out the cannons and the bodyguards. Lieutenant is sitting there. You rush in and you die, along with the other three people you joined.

Of course, once they added “champ bags” people just farmed the champions for the loot bags, so there was always a huge group of players there to kill them. But, in earlier versions of the game, it was almost impossible to kill a champion with less than three players unless one of those players was a really high level or you messed with the AI by obstructing their line-of-sight, or something. Champions were ludicrously powerful, which was fun. They removed all of the champions from starter zones because once they added loot bags people realized that they could run-around killing champions non-stop and get good loot, and often karma and experience as well. So, basically, new players weren’t even exploring anything because they would get just as much experience following a huge group of players around and pressing the 1 key on their keyboard. Champions were a lot more fun before the special champ loot bags, because there was rarely ever a large group of players assembled to fight them.

I’m guessing that the other reason that they removed champions from starter zones was that most of them were simply too powerful. For example, in Queensdale there was maybe only one champion that you could defeat by yourself unless you were massively overleveled for the area. So, what it meant is that most champions would just sit there and kill any player that got close unless there was a sizable group of players who got together to kill it. I could see how this could be considered a bad idea to have in a game which has no real tutorial or tutorial-like area. You could literally be level six and run into a monster which could kill you in two hits. It seemed really punishing because we had armor repair costs and waypoint fees back then.