Guild Wars 2

Yargesh.4965:

another wall of text good-bye. Did not read, will not read.

It’s actually a good post, and a good read. It is worth your time to read it imo.

I agree with a lot of what is said here, but really, if you get 3000 hours out of a game today, you are doing better than most I hope you can find something that rekindles your love for the game in the future.

Extremely well written, coherent and cogent. Soa Cirri, I hope you enjoy whatever you do next, and I’ll see you in Tyria when you return.

My suggestion to you is to take a break from gw2.
Maybe play some rpg or fps.
Just spend your time somewhere that isn’t guild wars 2, it has burned you out.

In regards to your points, I agree with most of them.

I would like to add in part to the dungeon point. I don’t think guild wars 2 in pve encourages communication, which has made me kind of sad since the launch of gw2.
Everyone is just quiet in the dungeons, it’s all about the dps, there’s no tactic unless it’s a new dungeon – everyone already knows all of the dungeons so there’s no need to talk.
The only communication that happens is “kittening noob why are you standing there?!”
and “You should have done that instead of this.”.
There’s nothing else in the communication. And as such I so far have added 13 friends to my friend list since launch, and have only moderately spoke to about 2 of them regulary. Makes me feel alone like hell.
I have a big guild, I communicate with them too, but even in guild chat there’s not much talk going on.

I don’t know if it’s the game or my server, but people just don’t talk to each other as much as other people do (in my experience) in other mmos and online games.

Thanks guys. Yeah that whole thing is waaaay long, longer than I intended, but I wasn’t sure what could really be cut out.

Maybe you’re right, Oak, and I’m just burnt out. But the communication point is a major one. The frequency of dungeon groups which are silent seems to have increased. Earlier on, aside from CoF, a lot of the dungeons eventually begot groups of experienced players who did them for fun, and communicated well. Emotions tend to be more intense after you’ve spent an hour getting wiped, but with a good group it was tolerable if people supported each other, communicated, and retained their humor.

Rarely do I get to joke around in a dungeon group outside of my guild. The community stuff has definitely fallen by the wayside, and I wonder if it has to do with the reward structure and other changes.

It’s just burn out IMO. I take breaks from time to time or set a goal for a piece of gear or lvl an alt to break up the grind of just going after gear or gold. This game has so much to do in it, it can be overwhelming at times. I’m not sure how many lvl 80s you have at 3000 hours but maybe that could give a fresh feel to the game. Any game with that much time in you’re going to get bored. I played eq1 for 6 years and then eq2 for 6 years and had to take many breaks. Most of those breaks left me far behind the treadmill. In this game you don’t have to worry about that nearly as much especially if you’re already ascended. Good luck!

To touch on the communication in groups, I think it has more to do with the combat and speed of clearing skipping content. When you’re constantly in combat or running it’s hard to type and joke around. In other tab target spam rotation games it was easy to type and joke but it gw2 combat is unforgiving if not paying attention.

Stubie.5834:

To touch on the communication in groups, I think it has more to do with the combat and speed of clearing skipping content. When you’re constantly in combat or running it’s hard to type and joke around. In other tab target spam rotation games it was easy to type and joke but it gw2 combat is unforgiving if not paying attention.

Yeah, I think the problem is the way Pve is in dungeons. Your average boss has defiance, a 1 shot mechanic and stability and chained CC (Cof p1 last boss crystals falling down).
The 1 shot mechanic means you have to stay on your feet all the time, save your endurance for the that needed dodge and then continue to dps. Also the chained CC mechanics of most bosses isn’t verry fun either.

I wouldn’t recommend talking in combat, as it is pretty compromising. I thought you’d meant general communication between combat. Cases where say, in CoF or CoE, where certain people need to perform certain tasks at the same time, I’ve had multiple cases where I would ask, “who’s doing X?” and people would just stand around dumbly.

There’s always the, “Is this anyone’s first time?” that no one responds to, until halfway through when people make it very clear they have no idea what’s going on and end up wiping your party.

But aside from that is just the overall mood. People would poke fun at themselves and each other, spout memes and good-natured profanity, and generally act friendly. That’s the sort of communication I meant.

First, absolutely fantastic post, Soa Cerri! I thoroughly enjoyed your use of vocabulary, player psychology, and compared that to your own experiences to deliver your points. Also, thanks for getting emotional, but not letting it detract from the overall flavor of your post.

My advice would be like the others, just take a break for now. Use the Developer Livestreams or the content preview posts on the official website to decide if a particular Living Story aspect interests you. If it does, sign on and play the content out slowly over a few days, not necessarily going gungho after the achievements (unless those are the sort of thing that drive you).

3k hours is almost an unhealthy amount of time (IMO) to have played the game for only 1.5 years. I believe my GW 1 character is somewhere around 4-5k hours, but that’s over the 4-5 years I actively played the game.

I just did the math, and not counting the few recent months since August, your 3k hours is 34% of a year’s time invested solely on GW 2! The exact math of 477 days and 2988 hours invested calculates 26% of the hours within the 477 days are logged into GW 2!.

If perhaps for the sake of your own health, take a break and find either some other game to play or some activity outside of gaming. You may find a similar spark as to the one you felt when you first started playing GW 2.

Take care, Soa!

Malchior

This is probably one of the most self-aware, fair, and objective “I’m not enjoying the game anymore” posts I’ve seen in a lot time.

I agree with you on a lot of the points you’ve made here. If it weren’t for getting interested in alts or sPvP, I probably would have entirely lost interest a while back.

Ideally, there will be some really good changes that we just don’t know about yet that will address the problems outlined, but in the meantime I have 2 suggestions you may want to consider:

1) Take a break from the game. Since the game has no sub fee, it’s ideal for picking up and dropping, depending on your interest level. Keep a casual ear out for anything new happening in GW2, but go try some other games. Eventually, give GW2 another boot a few weeks/months/years/whatever down the line and it’ll probably be a much more enjoyable experience since it’ll be fresh again.

I tried to do this with WoW, but I was reminded on just how much of an obstacle irrelevant gear,outdated addons, and increasing level caps can prevent veteran gamers from returning. Fortunately, you shouldn’t have to really worry about this (unless they continue this gear stuff even further, in which case, don’t bother coming back, lol).

2) Give sPvP a try. Like PvP in most games, there’s a pretty steep learning curve, but once you start to get the hang of things, it can be really fun. Rewards from sPvP are now better than they ever have been before. If you do this, hop in hot joins for the most casual experience or do some solo q games if you want a bit more of a structured game where everyone is there at the start of the game and (usually) stays until the end.

Anyways, good luck to you. I hope ANet listens to posts like these. I know they often come in the form of barely readable walls of text by people who have already given up, but well-written, constructive posts like this are some of their best chances at really getting a feel for what they need to do to stay on their game (pun intended).

Soa Cirri.6012:

I wouldn’t recommend talking in combat, as it is pretty compromising. I thought you’d meant general communication between combat. Cases where say, in CoF or CoE, where certain people need to perform certain tasks at the same time, I’ve had multiple cases where I would ask, “who’s doing X?” and people would just stand around dumbly.

There’s always the, “Is this anyone’s first time?” that no one responds to, until halfway through when people make it very clear they have no idea what’s going on and end up wiping your party.

But aside from that is just the overall mood. People would poke fun at themselves and each other, spout memes and good-natured profanity, and generally act friendly. That’s the sort of communication I meant.

Are you replying to me or?

Yeah I just ment general small talk or talking in pve dungeons (and outside dungeons), it’s just way too often quiet.

I am in the same boat as you OP and it happened right around Dec 10th when they added the Ascended gear.

In game I do a bit of everything; WvW, RP and dungeons with friends. In that order.

Dungeons with friends is exactly as it has always been. An easy 30 min past time where we blast through them with pretty much no problem as we gear up alts or do them just for fun.

RP is what it is, but is suffering from player burnout and fewer and fewer of the people in my guild and on my friends list are logging on. Which makes for a less than optimal experience due to all my character friends, allies, and enemies not being around and story arcs being left half finished.

WvW being my go to game mode has been the saving grace for this game for me, but now with the new tier of gear I have lost the drive to keep playing it. I can still kill most people just fine in my exotics and I am sure some math whiz can spout off the numbers and tell me the new gear is not even noticeable in Zerg vs Zerg combat, but it still bothers me.

My favorite thing about this game was the play as you want and not get left behind attitude I felt in the beginning . No longer did I have to suffer a dungeon long after I was bored with it, no more were the days of being in a huge guild full of strangers so I can get in on the raids to get a chance to roll on the piece I need to go do the next set of raids and no longer were the days of getting ROLFstomped by someone in PvP due to them grinding the game mode and having more of the special PvP stat than I.

But now after GW2 has added a whole tier of gear only available through crafting, I want the old system of MMOs back. I’d rather run a dungeon 30 times then spend 30mins crafting.

In the end I can’t change Anet’s game. So, in light of all this and the fact there won’t be an update for a month I have picked up another MMO and have been having a blast. Maybe one day they will go back to the “play as you want and not be left behind” policy they had back in 2012, but until then I got other things to do.

Really excellent post. I’m not at this point yet, because I was forced to give up most of my time due to graduating from college and getting a job, but I think you point out a lot of really interesting flaws (?) in the game design. The grind for ascended gear I think is a huge one. I have decided to be a hipster and just not do it. But in 4 months if people don’t play with me because I lack the proper gear, I guess I’ll either quit or have to spend more time and gold than I want to making the crap.

I loved the Secret of Southsun too. And Zephyr Sanctum. I haven’t participated in much else in terms of Living Story…. I felt like too much of it was so out of place and so focused on grinding out achievements that it felt forced and unfun. Like Tequatl. That could have been an amazing event, but what it turned into was a stressful festival of trying to join overflows so you could join a server that was actually organized enough to kill him. There could have been some intense lore, or a whole new dragon, but instead the old Tequatl was deleted and now I never see anyone in a once heavily populated area. Splintered Coast is always contested, and the shores are permanently poisoned. I guess it’s true, it is a living changing world, but so much was taken, I feel like, to make room for unfun releases (tafu too).

I don’t know. I hope once this LS is wrapped up, we get to move on to things more like the original bits of the LS where we got new areas, new enemies, new fun without taking away old fun, and getting fun cosmetic items and not vertical stat progression.

IMO the biggest problem this game has is the lack of real direct competition.

1.- No duels.
2.- No clan wars.
3.- Not hard reach top lvl. (maybe add 10 lvl with new good skills but a lot harder to get)
4.- Not real raid bosses with very long spawns (once at week but very hard with guarantee drop)

I use to love Lineage 2 because there was a lot competition everywhere.

-Siege were between guilds and allies for castles that gives stuff to the clan.
-Dueling was everywhere, people motivates to improve their gaming not only spamming 1 skill.
- Crafting was a big deal, unique items like boss jewels game unique bonuses that you could not find anywhere else.

I’ not saying lineage 2 is a better game, i’m just saying that if they were merged the result will be the perfect MMO.

. . . just an my opinion.

An Oak Knob.1275:

Are you replying to me or?

Yeah I was, sorry.

Malchior.5042:

I just did the math, and not counting the few recent months since August, your 3k hours is 34% of a year’s time invested solely on GW 2! The exact math of 477 days and 2988 hours invested calculates 26% of the hours within the 477 days are logged into GW 2!.

You’re totally right. I’ve been only sporadically employed the last year and a half, which is a major contributing factor to that amount of time. GW2 gave me something fun to do, especially on the relative cheap. Healthy? Probably not, and believe it or not there are people who’ve played even more than I have.

Thank you to everyone who read the whole thing, and I think I’m going to take the general advice to take a break. I actually have nine characters now all at 80, about half with multiple gear sets.

Not a single legendary, believe it or not.

I tried SPvP a few times and just couldn’t get into it. Maybe when I get back into GW2 with a fresh outlook I’ll be more receptive.

I’ll be looking for the inevitable post when you return, stating you’ve found the spark again!

Like all relationships, its normal for things to cool off after a year or 2.

Explored whole world. Slayed countless monsters. Reached maximum level. Had fun!
….
….
What now?
….
….
Grind you say?
….
Quit.

VictorTroska.3725:

Explored whole world. Slayed countless monsters. Reached maximum level. Had fun!
….
….
What now?
….
….
Grind you say?
….
Quit.

I got world completion on my first level 80 a couple hundred hours in, over a year ago. A year should probably be more ellipses between “Had fun” and “grind.”

Very good post. I think it says a lot about some of the underlying problems with the game without pointing fingers and adding “Anet needs to do (X)” every other sentence.

I agree with some of the others. It sounds like you’re overloaded and just need a break.

As far as the Ascended gear and whatnot, it will still be there later. So will the 90% of the content that can be done without it.

A word on the Dungeon issue:

Are you using the LFG tool and websites solely to find groups, or are you trying to start groups? Sometimes, there could be people out there who feel as you do, and they’re not seeing it either. Before you leave, you might try posting a LFG saying something like “Looking for casual run, no speed clears or ‘pros’…Chatty folk encouraged!” and see where that gets you. Who knows? maybe it’ll be a new “career” for you and you’ll be known as the go-to guy (or girl) for casual, fun dungeons instead of farming runs and speed clears. If I had the time, I know I would do it. Alas, I am lucky to have an hour at a time to log in any more. Real life sucks that way sometimes.

Agree with the comments on ascended. Exotics were in such a good place before.

Ashabhi.1365:

Sometimes, there could be people out there who feel as you do, and they’re not seeing it either. Before you leave, you might try posting a LFG saying something like “Looking for casual run, no speed clears or ‘pros’…Chatty folk encouraged!” and see where that gets you. Who knows? maybe it’ll be a new “career” for you and you’ll be known as the go-to guy (or girl) for casual, fun dungeons instead of farming runs and speed clears. If I had the time, I know I would do it. Alas, I am lucky to have an hour at a time to log in any more. Real life sucks that way sometimes.

That’s a great suggestion. Guy, by the way.

Back in the day before account-bound dungeon rewards, I had a magi/knight warrior buff/heal bunker I made for the express purpose of carrying undergeared/leveled groups through dungeons, and after doing a speedrun on my zerker, I would switch to this build to offer a noob-friendly instructional run.

The results were mixed, but as often as not, people were pretty receptive and most importantly, communicated. They were open about what they did or didn’t understand.

I did that for four or five months or so until after they majorly revamped the dungeon rewards. By that time I honestly began to lose patience. The communication problem began to expand and become more endemic, and it became more and more time consuming to do this.

I notice recently that in the groups I did join recently, there have been a lot of people who clearly didn’t read the headline for the LFG. When I did put up LFGs I would make the headlines silly and goofy in the hope of attracting like-minded players, and the joinees were typically more of the usual, silent, sort. I suspect that would continue to happen for more friendly LFG headlines as well.

But I haven’t tried anything as explicit as you suggest, and you could be completely right. In any case I just uninstalled GW2, but when I come back around to it, I’ll look at putting up a LFG that’s more specifically silly.

Well conceived and written post. Thank you for sharing your insights.

How I feel about GW2 these days…

I think OP just hit that content burnout stage; they’ve played the hell out of the game and need a break.

IMO, take a sabbatical, go play something else, and wait until ANet updates with a bigger content patch that freshens stuff up.

Gamblit.5041:

Soa Cirri.6012:

Not a single legendary, believe it or not.

You haven’t really played Gw2 untill you crafted a legendary weapon.

Actually i think that’s exactly the reason why he doesn’t have a Legendary. Because he just played the game the way he liked the most.

@Soa : all good games come to an end.
People this days need “a reason” to play something, fun has been replaced with a shiny reward to show off to other people that probably couldn’t care less.

Old fashioned mindset like yours are a dying race and sadly the game industry have to move on to keep getting money from us.

That said, i feel you.

i dont normally read long #$% posts, but i read Soa’s long @#$ posts, and they were really good.

i loved GW2 once too.

but darkness falls type wvw balance mechanics never came. only 1 wvw patch in more than a year, while dozens of half baked pve patches fly out the door. they never gave us a reason to not zerg. never got rid of arrow carts. kept adding ascended gear even despite community blowback, despite it being the antithesis of their manifesto.

now they are shutting down the wvw matchup forums and adding a really cool waiting room for when the queues are full.

ESO probably wont be amazing, but the bar to beat GW2 is getting lower and lower.

Brilliant post and pinpoints a lot of the reasons i stopped logging in and just check the forums once a week in case something really exciting has shown up.
After looking forward to wintersday every year since the first gw1 event I just couldn’t face the way the game direction has shifted and have moved on to other games.
I’ll pop back if I catch note of the sanctum showing up again but i’ve mapped/dungeoned more than enough and I feel the shallow depths of the game compared to gw1.
Vanquishing, hard mode and collecting every skill were great ways to extend the lifespan of gw1 (and WiK was awesome) and there was always something to do, some carrot to chase but gw2 is just missing that endgame component that keeps pulling you back daily after a year.
Loved it, wish it the best but unless theres another shift in direction its done its dash for me.
Thanks for the awesome post.

@Soa Cirri. Good post. A lot of people feel the same way, and many have quit because of the points you made.

I disagree with you on the dungeons part though. Groups are really easy and fast to form. As i was leveling, i would advertise for new players and it would literally fill up in less than a minute. The reason you see groups advertised for, “experienced 80s only”, is because they have a harder time getting people, but it’s the opposite for other groups. They form much quicker.

SoLeciTO.3490:

IMO the biggest problem this game has is the lack of real direct competition.

1.- No duels.
2.- No clan wars.
3.- Not hard reach top lvl. (maybe add 10 lvl with new good skills but a lot harder to get)
4.- Not real raid bosses with very long spawns (once at week but very hard with guarantee drop)

I use to love Lineage 2 because there was a lot competition everywhere.

-Siege were between guilds and allies for castles that gives stuff to the clan.
-Dueling was everywhere, people motivates to improve their gaming not only spamming 1 skill.
- Crafting was a big deal, unique items like boss jewels game unique bonuses that you could not find anywhere else.

I’ not saying lineage 2 is a better game, i’m just saying that if they were merged the result will be the perfect MMO.

. . . just an my opinion.

You’re right. the competition is lacking. I realized that a few months ago and decided to quit. I was farming everyday to complete my legendary…and for what? To show it off in some dungeons or LA? I didn’t need the extra stats for face roll content.

Also still waiting for that condition overhaul for PvE.

Well, for me I think it is partly content burnout and largely that there is no RP in this RPG. All my characters feel the same, even their voices sound the same.

I cannot choose to sympathise with the Separatists. I cannot be initiated as a Flame Legion soldier. I will never enter the Inquest labs as an apprentice.

Any illusion of free choice ends at lvl28 in your racial storyline, when you choose which Order to join. Following that, you have no choice as such, unless you count choosing which near-useless and barely seen minor race you study.

Because of this, reaching 80 feels like a game completion. Now, I love playing the old game Freedom Fighters on the PS2, but if I finished it 5-6 times, I’d probably never want to see it again. That is how GW2 starts to feel after a few alts.

I have 2 warriors. I have little/no reason to variate from one play style and setup – Rifle and GS, traited for maximum GS efficiency.

We need variation, we need choice. GW2 offers little. I still -adore- the game, but that is how I feel.

It is worrying when European Truck Simulator 2 offers a LOT more variety in gameplay than an award winning, multi million £/$/€ game like GW2.

GuzziHero.2467:

Any illusion of free choice ends at lvl28 in your racial storyline, when you choose which Order to join. Following that, you have no choice as such, unless you count choosing which near-useless and barely seen minor race you study.
…
I have 2 warriors. I have little/no reason to variate from one play style and setup – Rifle and GS, traited for maximum GS efficiency.

I agree with your first point. The illusion of choice is revealed as a paper thin veil in many cases, and story choices seem to exist purely for the sake of providing replayability, and not as much to explore the consequences of those choices.

I don’t think the story of GW2 has ever been its strong point, and the LS stuff I mentioned had far more depth than most of the baseline story mode content.

However there were a few choices you could make that had pretty interesting moral complications. For example, in the Sylvari story mode, there was a choice where you could trick centaurs into thinking you were a god, then lead them into a trap where they would be slaughtered on both sides by risen and humans. Horrible. When I made that choice I had no idea how that would play out and the consequence was truly quite surprising. I actually felt guilty.

But choices like that were few and far between, and events in the open world exhibited a similar rate of impact. Some open world events are really quite funny and compelling (cattle-pault, Bjorn’s brew, to name a couple) but story-wise the rest are pretty dull and standard.

What makes most of the game fun is the game mechanics, which is where I will disagree with you.

I have two warriors (and two guardians). Sure, if you want max damage the build choices are few, but if you experiment and shift your points and traits around, the game mechanics can surprise you. Getting 25,000 crits on warrior is fun, but so is being the last one alive to solo the Big Boss in [insert_PvE_content] with a tanky build. Or sniping people from a tower in WvW with a ranger (or engie).

Each class has its flaws, and some more than others (anything but warrior), but the gameplay always seemed rewarding to me. It was an area where ANet has always been very responsive, where balance and improvement has always been continually progressing, and so is something I had no real complaints about. It was one of the primary reasons I kept playing.

Many of the thing’s in the OP’s post are the reasons I don’t log in any more, I may be back some time in the future, but right now I’m bored with GW2.

2014 looks to be a promising year for MMO’s, so I’m going to see what develops.

I loved GW2 also. The art is top-notch in the industry and I fell in love with the world over and over again just visually. After grinding out that last ascended item I had, I realized that is all the game had come to be for me: Log in, grind, log out. My guild died, my friends left and the only social I was getting was in Map chat, which wasn’t much.

I’m more of a world-builder player anyway, so I’m really looking forward to the games coming out with building elements and housing. Before release of GW2, Anet said player housing would be implemented after release. Over a year later and it’s been pushed back to “no estimate on when” and no explanation of why. That’s my favored and preferred playstyle, so I have a feeling I won’t log into GW2 again after one of the others coming out releases – unless they finally get around to implementing housing that’s not limited to 5 people. GG.

Has anyone noticed how rarely any of the servers, even TC, rates as ‘Full’ these days?

I feel the same. And no, taking a break doesn’t help. Furthermore, the longer is the break, the less I want to play the game because I’m losing the Living Story.

A very oh so common I am bored thread. Very well written though without the usual bitterness. It’s simply burnout. When something is new and shiny you overlook the flaws. As time goes on the flaws start to bother you more (sounds like a relationship)

That has happened to every single game I have played.

i think it’s burnout too. 3k hours is definitely too much for nearly everything

nonetheless, the post is quite interesting.
i share many of these thoughts, although played less than a tenth of that time xD

but, IMHO, gw2 greatest issue is the grinding they introduced. it’s not what they promised. that’s all.
and they didn’t try to justify it to angry players.
i could stand bugs, lag, poor storyline…everything.
but the no grinding manifesto is the very reason i bought this game.
this “high treason” drives me crazy. no excuses.
farewell gw2…

GW2 is still the best MMO in terms of art direction and action combat, beats all the others.

But – pay attention – to face WildStar and Everquest Next, GW2 needs desperately of:

- Factions
- Open PvP everywhere and duels (with option flag: pvp on ou off.
- Police, trial and prisons
- Better and valuable loot everywhere
- More Pve maps (open PvP)
- Housing in WxWxW
- More traditional quest and better rewarding
- Portuguese translation

By the way, from another forum:

“Hello!

Games are a psychological experience. And the way they feel is of paramount importance.

That being said, let me use examples from original ____ to show what constitutes ____ feel:

Real danger was often imminent, and you really didn’t want to die. This kept players in a state of high awareness and thus complete immersion.

Players relied on each other for both complex and mundane tasks. (res, TP, buffs, CR, etc)

Trade skills required devotion to max out, causing those players to become highly valued.

Players could engage in complex tasks and build a reputation in the community.

This led to appreciation, attention, and new relationships.

Quests could be long, hard, and elusive… but very rewarding. (epic weapons)

Players valued what they earned, since it usually required considerable effort.

Traveling was not always trivial, and was often scary.

Players learned to share, since for a long time, instances did not exist. Instancing disconnects players from the living world, thus breaking the feeling of truly being part of it.

The game was a rich journey to be savored, instead of just an aggressive min-maxing hunt.

These were the things that made ____ so memorable. There was persistence of alertness, determination, length, care, accomplishment, proper rewards, and daily collaboration among strangers. This is what I believe ____ needs.

Modern games are too often designed to cater to the lowest common denominator. Spoon-fed quests. Mindless killing. Minimal thinking. Content fed through a fire hose. Instant gratification. Short-lived gear. Flashy character appearance. Horrific communities. User interfaces that automate everything.

I hope the development team reads these forums.

Thanks"

Goodbye. You are right with a lot of that. Beautiful stories don’t last forever, though. If the game becomes stale… switch to something you enjoy. It’s what I did.

A really well written post. So much to agree with as well.

It would be nice to believe that someone of influence from Arenanet might actually sit down and fully, comprehensively, read that entire post, instead of just skimming it and making assumptions based on key words they picked up on.

Is there a tl;dr? Sheesh!

I love what you wrote about how difficult it is to type in the middle of a dungeon. I know Tabula Rasa was only a hit with a small segment, but one of the things it absolutely did right in my mind was squad voice chat. For PUGs who might all use different 3rd party chat systems for their server/guild it just makes a whole lot of sense. I love taking newbies through things, but it involves long periods of us standing there while I try to find the right words to explain, whereas voice chat gets me instant feedback and hearing your party all shout “DODGE! MOVE!” to eachother is it’s own kind of high.

And I also love what you wrote about the personal story. The PERSONAL story is what really excited me about the game. I like interacting with NPCs and having them remember me, or having them reference something we did together. But I’m worried that with the Living Story, it’ll never be like that again. I hope they prove me wrong, because as much as I am digging the progression of the Scarlet storyline (though I loather her), there’s something about quieter moments of character development and comraderie and hometown joy that I really treasure in any story. The more we move to fighting world-level evils, the more I’m concerned they’ll forget where our characters came from.

<3 good luck with wherever you end up, Soa.

docMed.7692:

Is there a tl;dr? Sheesh!

…There is much more to life than sound bytes and happy meals.

Sorry, that was probably too long to read, let me do a tl:dr: Get out.

kntz.1420:

GW2 is still the best MMO in terms of art direction and action combat, beats all the others.

But – pay attention – to face WildStar and Everquest Next, GW2 needs desperately of:

- Factions
- Open PvP everywhere and duels (with option flag: pvp on ou off.
- Police, trial and prisons
- Better and valuable loot everywhere
- More Pve maps (open PvP)
- Housing in WxWxW
- More traditional quest and better rewarding
- Portuguese translation

By the way, from another forum:

“Hello!

Games are a psychological experience. And the way they feel is of paramount importance.

That being said, let me use examples from original ____ to show what constitutes ____ feel:

Real danger was often imminent, and you really didn’t want to die. This kept players in a state of high awareness and thus complete immersion.

Players relied on each other for both complex and mundane tasks. (res, TP, buffs, CR, etc)

Trade skills required devotion to max out, causing those players to become highly valued.

Players could engage in complex tasks and build a reputation in the community.

This led to appreciation, attention, and new relationships.

Quests could be long, hard, and elusive… but very rewarding. (epic weapons)

Players valued what they earned, since it usually required considerable effort.

Traveling was not always trivial, and was often scary.

Players learned to share, since for a long time, instances did not exist. Instancing disconnects players from the living world, thus breaking the feeling of truly being part of it.

The game was a rich journey to be savored, instead of just an aggressive min-maxing hunt.

These were the things that made ____ so memorable. There was persistence of alertness, determination, length, care, accomplishment, proper rewards, and daily collaboration among strangers. This is what I believe ____ needs.

Modern games are too often designed to cater to the lowest common denominator. Spoon-fed quests. Mindless killing. Minimal thinking. Content fed through a fire hose. Instant gratification. Short-lived gear. Flashy character appearance. Horrific communities. User interfaces that automate everything.

I hope the development team reads these forums.

Thanks"

Very thoughtful post. Thank you. In reading over this more than once, I agree with some, disagree with some…but mostly it reinforces my central belief about games and that is that people come to games with different perceptions, expectations, and preferences. Characteristics that some view as ideal others may view as horrible ideas. Bottom line, though, is that these things are subjective. Examples…

Factions, open world PVP, competition, etc…not for me. I own a business and my work days are consumed with competition just to earn a living. My game time is my relaxation time and the last thing I want is aggressive competition.

Real danger….indeed, sometimes a lot of fun. Sometimes I just want to mindlessly wander around the world doing something where I do not have to be constantly on guard. Several days ago I spent about an hour and a half mindlessly mining platinum in Sparkfly Fen. Since my toon was a well geared 80 guardian…I just wandered about getting the ore I wanted without much regard for anything. Listening to some music, chatting with my wife as she walked in and out. Sometimes this is nice…and then again, sometimes the danger is good.

Player collaboration – sorry…GW2 seems much better for this than any game I have seen. I spent 7 years playing another MMO and while it is true that people occasionally helped each other, the overall approach was to screw the other guy before he screwed you. If you were fighting a mob beside an ore node, it was not unusual for another player to swoop in and grab the ore while you were fighting…laughing all the time. Yes, the nature of that game, and many others…is conflict over resources. This does not, in my experience, tend to bring out the best in people. Again, just my observation.

Travel. Again, mixed agreement. I like the excitement of immersive exploration on a toon…the first time through. After I have cleared an area…not so much. For example, several weekends ago, I needed some eggplant for my cooking. It is readily available from a Karma vendor down in southern Mount Maelstrom. A quick WP down and back and I can head back to the kitchen to cook. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes fighting my way all the way there to buy a couple of bags of eggplant.

Long difficult quests…tend to agree on this one. I do like the long and involved quest chains that offer some really nice reward at the end. Caveat…I would not want all quests or events to be this way…perhaps a nice combination.

So, again, nice, thoughtful post and I appreciate your views. Some I agree with; some not so much but I do appreciate that you took to time to offer these thoughts.

I’m totally in agreement and in the same place as you are, Soa. Nice posts by the way. I’m sitting on 4.5k hours, x3 100% world, thirteen 80’s and two 20’s (I know… I know…). I still very much love the base of gw2 but since I’ve had less free time to play for the last few months my motivation to play when I do get time to login is diminished. Temporary time gated achievement farming or long term grinding for ascended gear.

I have ascended GS on my guardian and I could probably have a full armour set in not too long if I made an effort but . Had this big grind for mats or gold spending resulted in awesome awesome awesome skins only, I might have been much more enthusiastic.

I really enjoy farming dungeon tokens so that I can make a new toon and its optimal level 80 gear is already sorted so I could in turn use that toon to grind tokens for my next alt, that’s how I enjoy gw2 and I could probably play like that forever. However I don’t enjoy pugging dungeons anymore, I used to do it for fun, the randomness on the group I’d get was enjoyable but now it’s silent elites or silent newbies which are just boring and annoying, least of all when someone flips out because something went wrong. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky there though.

I’ve gotta say the biggest thing that puts me off right now is living story content. I like the concept of the world changing around us and everything, that’s great! But if I can’t login much or at all for two weeks and miss a whole segment (which has happened a few times) I feel like “What’s the point making sure I login for the next part?” it’ll be gone, non-re-playable, I’ll have missed out on points, items, Lore. I don’t really understand why these things have to be temporary so much.

Love the combat engine. Love the lore (not including most of the personal story or living story). Love the skins/armour system. Love the exploration. Love the event system. Love being able to waltz in and save people from certain death, solo. LOVE the dungeons (when we’re not all stacking in a corner for every single bleeding boss).

I know I’m burned out as well. But with 4.5k hours I definitely got my moneys worth so all in all it’s fair game. So I think I’ll also be taking a varied break from GW2, might pick up GW1 again despite my having zero social structure there now. I miss the bday gifts, the mob AI, body blocking, permanent achievement lines that take a long time/effort to finish, being THE hero.

If this doesn’t tell Anet to wake up, nothing will.