Guild Wars 2

Before I start this, I want to make sure that people who replay aren’t going to be complaining about my criticism about the game. If you disagree, do it constructively and please don’t say stuff like “Hey! Stop complaining you b%&%^! Go back to wow!”

I will only talk about PvE, I don’t do PvP, and I don’t care for it. I don’t play WvW, I don’t play sPvP, and I didn’t do any kind of PvP in any other game. For me, an MMO is all about PvE.

PvE – Good:
1. Combat –
This was done well. It feels great and it’s fun. There isn’t that many skills but then again, we don’t need that many. The combat is done, it’s perfect for PvE. Is it balance in PvP? I don’t know, don’t talk about it. But there is one problem and very bad that ruins everything else, Dodging, more about that in the dungeons part down there.

2. The world –
It is gorgeous. Every area feels unique and alive. I have never walked around an MMO to stop an look at the place. Almost all MMO’s do nothing but cut/paste a lot, anyone that played FFXIV should know about it. But, Everything about Gw2 feels new. The areas are not big but they don’t need to be, they accomplish what we want in an MMO.

3. The gear –
It’s great, nothing else to say. Dyes, transmutation to make your unique look, come on? What else could you want? Well… Maybe dyes for weapons, that was really disappointing but not enough for me to complain about it.

PvE – The bad
1. Events –
They aren’t hard. When everyone can revive while in combat, it takes the danger away from the fights. I don’t feel in danger, I don’t feel excited, and I don’t feel like my contribution matters when there is 30 people attacking the same guy, everything becomes a huge blur. I am sure a lot of people are familiar with spank and tank, that is how most of the events feel, minus the tanking. We need more danger, we need to know that if we don’t move out of the AoE we are going to be screwed. How to fix it? Make it dangerous, at the moment, it is not and we all know it.

If there is going to be no raids, then the events need to be harder. I do want raids though, I don’t care about better equipment, it’s not like it matters for me to have better stats. I would like unique skins for those who tackle raids though… That wouldn’t be a bad thing, or even a simple achievement. The evens just aren’t good enough right now when you are playing with your friends and want to tackle big huge bosses together, it doesn’t feel like we need any team work…

1. Dungeons -
I really don’t know if the dungeons are broken or design this way. Are we suppose to be getting killed by single shots from range foes? Are we suppose to blind them? Because it doesn’t work, my skill do not last long enough to really make a difference in the dungeon. Earlier today I was shot once by an archer, went down right away, and then was shot by another archer and killed. There was never any chance for anyone to come and save me. I just don’t understand enough and right now they seem to be a huge mess.

The only way to beat the dungeons is by killing one foe at a time. This is every dungeon to me at the moment. Pull! Kill one! wipe! revive and repair! rinse and repeat, it is not cheap to repair my armor… This is not fun, this does not feel like “controlled chaos”. When there is no tank, the mobs attack whoever they want, this leads to a lot of single hit kills. The only way to do well is for us to have the right stats, I shouldn’t have to have the stats of what a tank needs for me to do well in a dungeon. The amount of stamina we get to dodge is not enough. How am I suppose to dodge three foes hitting me when I only have enough to evade two attacks? The only thing I can do is hope that when I get hit I don’t go to the ground because it’s pretty much impossible to get help without putting them in the same spot.

how do you guys feel? Maybe, you guys actually like the way the game is right now and it is just not for me as it is right now. Please, don’t fight like 10 year olds… Be constructive with your opinions about the game.

I’ll comment on the Events and Dungeons as I agree with you there.

The events are a bit too easy for the most part. I’m not sure if it’s because there are so many people zerging them or what. Even on Orr, events are laughably easy and the population actually farms them.
The best events I’ve been in are the one early in beta and head start where there was a struggle to succeed.

Dungeons… I really don’t know what to think about the dungeons. IMO, they are a train wreck. I want to see them, yet, don’t want too. Dungeons also tie into a complaint of mine (and where I disagree); armor. There isn’t enough armor variety (IMO) to put so much more possible options behind dungeons in their current state.

I’ve done several of the dungeons and I enjoyed none of them very much. At best, they were “OK”. I certainly wouldn’t go into them very many times and especially not to farm tokens.

The one hit downed state needs some serious looking into (again, IMO). I can understand and accept a boss smashing my face in (and will often laugh at myself if that happens), but not dungeon trash mobs. That’s annoying.

Rewards in dungeons are also bad. My lvl 80 thief left a failed* dungeon run with some friends the other day and I ended up losing a lot of money. So, dungeons also come across as a gold sink.

*Failed cause it was late and we didn’t want to bother trying the boss a 3rd time. We have jobs. :P

Anyway, I am hoping dungeons get some fine tuning or even multiple difficulty modes for explorable. Hard Core players can enter “Hard Mode” and maybe be rewarded more tokens. A Normal Mode (not story, only one path on story mode) that is easier with less tokens… I can hope can’t I?

I think it’s more of a learning curve in explorable dungeons that most people haven’t figured out yet. Some people are running glass-cannon builds while you should really invest in toughness and vitality. Also changing your utility skills and weapons for every boss is really helpful. A lot of people are just zerging the bosses and not figuring out the tactics. And that is the part where you start killing mobs “1 at the time”.

The game isn’t supposed to be difficult every single second. That would be incredibly frustrating. Dynamic Events are more relaxing to do I guess.

However there is a big difference in difficulty between explorable dungeons. Some dungeons like Arah Explorable are a real challenge and meant for hardcore players, bosses have complex patterns and phases and can whipe your party instantly. Other ones like CoF explorable are easily farmable in 30 minutes and have more tank-and-spank style bosses. I’m not sure if this is a balance issue though.

If you get a good group together and communicate on Teamspeak or whatever it’s really doable. Yes you will die, but that’s part of the game isn’t it.

It seems as though all the danger got put into the dungeons and none was left over for the world DE’s. Dungeons are just a train wreck, you don’t really see anyone doing them atm, and all you really see is a zerg of people doing DE’s and just grind grind grind. I actually think I have done more grinding in this game than any other MMO, as much as I hate to say this, even WoW has it’s PvE progression done right. Dungeons are a good challenge, you get rewarded for doing a good job, and then you move on to the next challenge. With GW2 I find myself in Orr, trying to find one DE that isn’t broken, and farming it for the max possible KP and gold, over and over and over.

The problem with the events is the ZERG. Remember this: ZERG > all. Even with the “more people, more difficult” some events are a joke when there are 10-15 ppl. I think that will be improved the difficult when more ppl are in the event.

DEs are the biggest disappointment in the game imo. They are not dynamic, they are faceroll easy and they are all extremely generic.

WAR’s public quests were better, by a long shot.

Don’t get me wrong, GW2 is a solid game, DEs are just crap.

Dungeons are a train wreck and noone is playing them? Seriously, have you even looked at the dungeon entrances? They are quite popular and quite manageable.

Cawesome.1580:

It seems as though all the danger got put into the dungeons and none was left over for the world DE’s.

Normal PvE was more difficult in the earlier BWEs.

But then whiners and bads got it nerfed to the snoozefest it is now.

Apathy is right, normal PvE was hard in beta, but so many people whined they reduced the difficulty (or so it seems).

now that the game is easier people whine even move…

I love dungeons, i am constantly switching between utility skills and my weapon sets depending on whats coming next, whether im using duel pistols just to blind the main damage dealers or cloaking an ally who is getting his butt kicked.

people are too used to just rushing in and expecting to kill things easily.

I don’t know that the event difficulty was reduced so much as it really doesn’t scale well with the huge number of people doing them. Although, there was that one event in the beta where you had to kill the champion grawl shamen by the lake with the tar elementals – I think that was toned down quite a bit from the beta because I don’t see big piles of dead players there anymore

I’ve done a few events where it was just myself and one or two other folks and they were fun that way. The problem now is that tons of folks are farming events where they weren’t so much in the betas. I think after there is a certain saturation of players on the field, the event doesn’t change in a way that increases the challenge. I don’t know that there’s a solution because it might be really unfair to dramatically change the nature of the event when a critical mass has been reached.

As far as the dungeons, I’ll only do those with guild mates. Our first run through a story mode was a repair fest. Our second run through was challenging, but not so frustrating because we had a better idea of what to expect. I can’t imagine doing them with a pug instead of an organized group on TeamSpeak.

I like that dungeons are really hard and that you have to think a bit about your tactics instead of just sending an over-geared tank in and doing what you normally do. Everyone on the team has to carry their weight and stick with the plan, even if it means two people are pretty much tossing boulders to each other for an entire fight. I thought it was awesome that the knock down from chucking an environmental weapon was the key to making the fight easier.

It was fun to have to figure stuff out, although I wouldn’t want GW dungeons to become like WarHammer Online instances where there was basically a script and everyone had to stand in the right spots at the right times and use the right skills – ugh. Once folks figured out how to bug out the bosses, no-one wanted to fight them straight up, even if it really wasn’t that hard. So frustrating to spend 4x as long trying to bug the boss than it would have taken to just fight it :/