Guild Wars 2

I’m more on the disapointed side of things.

Don’t get me wrong: the area’s are great, the freedom while leveling is superb.

The game lacks a bit of ‘fun and sillyness’ perhaps, just in between the rest, but it’s not that that element isn’t there at all. It’s there, but rather minor.

My biggest issue: respawn rates and rather empty mid level zones… I like seeking challenges alone, even in an MMO, and that’s nearly impossible because of these two reasons.

Anyhow: leveling and such: great, not perfec.

My first disapointment is that downscaling only works half, and that there is little to no incentive to go to lower area’s as max level.
This was a major selling point for me: I wanted the world to be big even when outgearing it all. I wanted it all to be challenging as well.

My other major disapointment is the total lack of pvp variety.
A game selling itself as pvp game that has only one game mode.
I still can’t grasp that notion. I had no idea before I came here, I didn’t inform myself about the pvp variations because I simply assumed there would be plenty… boy, was I wrong.

And in that one game mode, the spvp is a zerging mess because they throw 8v8 on a 3 point map. On top of that the point system doesn’t even reward strategic play, it rewards selfish play.

As for tpvp: a lot better of course, aside one little detail: premades vs pugs? Seriously?
And paid tournies won’t change that since the premades will still be testing comps etc in tpvp.

This isn’t a pvp game by my standards. It’s not even balanced yet, partly because of that one game mode making some builds better than others.

Pvp simply feels like a beta to me.

Is it a great game?
of course.

Am I disapointed?
Sadly yes.

note: depending on how they handle the ‘BLC affair’ the next days, I might or might not be disapointed in the goldselling business this company throws in your face in the game itself (50 chests, 5 keys if lucky… that sort of thing)

This is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a game were I could AFK for about 3hrs to do an event and kill a dragon and in the mean time I could do Uni. assignments and get a few Blues and greens worth some copper each every 3hrs.
This is what I wanted from GW2 for sure.

/sarcasm.

In all honesty, I’m underwhelmed. I genuinely believed GW2 was “the” MMO for me. After getting one max character I feel the title “been there, done that” couldn’t be more fitting for this game. I’m left with nothing much to do, going for a legendary is out of the question since I do not have the time or the will to farm. WvWvW is/was out of the question since I have limited time and the queues were crazy (not sure if the queues have changed now though).
Playing an alt solo is brutal since I leveled my main with a friend.
So in the end GW2 has nothing left for me.

A resounding YES!

I bought this game for PVP, sadly I realized that the gear difference in WvW is HUGE and it really does make a difference. Same with having all your traits and such.

I don’t mind the PVE, but it sucks I have to tread through it for 2 months + before I become really viable at (and be able to afford) WvW.

In the end I learned no game will ever give me exactly what I want but this game comes pretty kitten close.

GW2 disappoints in some parts and it’s awesome in others.
But in short, I wanted an easy casual mmo where I can get my best gear fast and easy, where I won’t be forced to do anything if I don’t want to (no pvp, no raids, no dungeons, no forced grouping with ppl, no even guild) and that’s exactly what I got.
WoW has all what I hate in mmos — gear progress, best gear is as hard to get as it can only be, I have to group and play with ppl, I have to do hard raids, I have to attend. In GW2 I don’t have to do anything like it. GW2 has my money and will have more. WoW doesn’t.
Ofc there are many problems with GW2, it’s pve sucks, legendary too hard to obtain, WvW — the biggest fun in game, is ridden with bugs and glitches, classes not balanced and spvp just sucks. However it’s still much better to me than anything else on the market currently.

Well I didn’t have any expectations about this game at all. I decided to get it more or less last minute before launch. I only found out what classes were available 2 days before the launch. There’s still a lot I don’t know.

So far, yes, this is what I want in an MMO. I’m having fun. The aspect I enjoy the most (other than the graphics which are great) is the idea that I’m in world where things are happening all the time. Not just a stage for things to happen whenever I show up. I’ll see about end game when I get there. I’m enjoying leveling for now.

I haven’t learned anything new but more like re-enforce something I knew since leaving WoW almost a year ago:

I just cannot play these games in the same manner I used to.

I used to be able to raid 4 hours a night, 4 nights a week in hopes of getting my Sword of Pwnage or whatever. I cannot do that anymore. I’ve done that grind for years. I can’t anymore.

Its exactly what I’ve wanted. I dont need a carrot on a stick to have fun, I dont need to chase that next epic to gain some sort of self worth. I can come and go as I please without falling behind. I can play way to much and out level my friends but can go back and play with them without screwing them over. So yes this game is just what I wanted. I just hate that so many people want to change it into something its not. There are tons of games out there that fit other peoples playstyles why are so many people hell bent on changing this one.

Yes.

Exploration? Check.
No gear treadmills? Check.
Play anytime as you please without worrying of your subscription? Check check check.
Have a break for days, weeks or months without being behind on gear? Why do I suddenly have these checkmarks?

@ Roven Leafsong: I agree with a lot of what you said. Concerning the comment “I must not be as much of an explorer as I thought”… could it be because there are less and less reasons to actually explore? By explore I would like to say it means to wander aimlessly..finding interesting things in the distance and heading toward them. Once arenanet put in place points of interests, vistas, skill points, renown hearts, scouts, and circles on the map where dynamic events are happening…it became less of a game of exploration and more of a game of map completion.

While poi’s, vistas, hearts, and skill points are all very interesting and I like them, they drastically reduce the need to explore anywhere else in the game and simply “get lost” in the environment around you. Once you explore that point of interest, you turn around and run the other way, because mobs are most likely running after you. This is exacerbated in Orr.

Scouts are the worst feature added to the game, imo. “Hey we want you to explore and be immersed…but hey, explore HERE and HERE and HERE”. I do not use these scouts so I am largely unaffected, but by the majority it is a feature that deturs from random exploration.

With all of this said, its still a better game for exploration than ANY, and I do mean ANY, game out there. Its just not as immersive and captivating as I thought it would be, which is a serious disappointment.

I learned that despite the trends laid down by other games, and despite ArenaNets design principles, people have formed their own expectations and standards based around die hard habits and the shock at having to adapt to non-gated content and progress and not having a bread crumb path to guide their play is met with an instinctively negative response.

A player may have accepted years ago in another game that to get the piece of gear he needs to be relevant enough to find a group to get the next piece of gear he needs, that he must grind this same dungeon and boss dozens of times and hope to get lucky. But for some reason that player thinks they should get dungeon gear from GW2 in one pass.

Some players remember the experience of an MMO and having to trudge around on foot for 30-50 levels while saving every single copper they came across so they would have enough money to buy a mount when they were high enough. Only to then find out that the level appropriate areas after most people attain mounts have everything spread further apart so the amount of time wasted traveling is roughly the same. But despite that, they will come on forums and complain about the cost of instant travel to anywhere in the world.

Pick your feature…

Crafting – we were used to having to watch a little bar slowly fill maybe or maybe not accompanied by some idle character animation. Painfully boring if you were crafting in bulk. Recipes were expensive and had to be hunted down, and crafted gear was almost always inferior to looted gear. In GW2 your crafting speed doubles for every item you make, you can discover nearly every recipe you want on your own and gain 15 levels for maxing a craft, and you can effectively gear yourself up to 80 if you so choose with items on par with or better than what you will loot and with the exact stats you want. But people complain it’s boring do to and there’s no point.

I could do this all day. But i’m sure everyone gets the idea. It’s a really interesting social commentary. You have a group of people reared on Oranges that are suddenly given Apples. They were self-reportedly sick or oranges, but the apples skin is too red, there aren’t enough seeds, the apple would be better if it were green, they only like apples cut in to slices, they are over oranges but these apples would be better if they had more orange like qualities. But despite all of the problems they have with apples, they join an internet community and wile away the day talking about them!

There is a grad student psychological thesis paper to be written there. What makes MMO players, apart from fans of other genres, want to be put in a Skinner Box? In a console game or non-mmo, we as players can adapt to new systems and mechanics to absorb the experience the game has to offer. But when an MMO comes out that removes the limitations players built habits around, everyone loses their kittening mind and doesn’t know what to do, they just default to “this new thing is bad”.

As an aside, the “new thing isn’t enough like old thing I don’t like it” mindset is exactly why video games are so derivative. Developers and publishers can’t afford to take chances with something new because even though everyone says that want something different, they are resistant to change. This is why we have things like: Medal of Duty Calls 45, Street Brawler IV: The eighteenth edition, WoW clone: WoW killer for realz this time.

I know what I want from an MMO, and other games for that matter. And that’s an experience different than the generic mold for the genre. For my money I want something new. Not an “Un-official, spiritual successor sequel made by another company to a game thats still available version 2.0: Now with Pokemon and Zombies!”. But never having participated in an MMO forum before (besides Guru for a brief stint before launch), and from the chatter here and on /m, I can say I learned a lot about MMO players.

I feel that Guild Wars 2 is exactly what I expected it to be, and that players who are disappointed can basically be put into four categories: People who didn’t read enough into the game before buying, and therefor expected endgame content to be radically different from the content you experience while leveling up. People who came to realize that they actually love playing more for rewards, then for the experience of the game. People who are fans of the original game and expected this to be Guild Wars 1.5. Or people who had way too high expectations, and doesn’t have the patience to wait for updates.

Its is what I wanted. No stupid stat grind every couple months , no sitting in town trying to find a healer or tank , being able to do everything in the game with just my irl friends.

The game is great but having no ladder system in spvp keeps many competitive players away from the game.

AlexanderFaust.4518:

Raf.1078:

No….I didn’t learn anything about myself. Never expected to. Its only a game. Another time sink for anyone with a bit free time. Not unlike, though vastly superior, IMO to television.

I’ll leave philosophical revelations to RL…where they belong.

With a response like that, I don’t think you actually watched the video or understand the topic tbh =/

I answered your question…

“….~ After all the “fuss” about GW2.. have you learned anything about yourself as a player and what you want from an MMO?….”

I don’t have time to watch every silly video link posted by gamers to lazy to write what they would like to say.

GW2 is almost exactly what I am looking for in an MMO. I canceled my WoW account a month before GW2 came out… and I played WoW since day 1.

What I want from an MMO is what Vanilla/BC WoW gave me and I love what ToR gave me although yes needs some improvements but it has and still does keep my interest a lot.

GW2 I wasn’t expecting exactly what I wanted because I know this was supposed to be more pvp based. After playing it and getting bored extremely fast, no this wasn’t what I wanted from an mmo. The graphics and major cities were awesome. The terrain in all the zones and graphics were amazing, but the leveling for me was extremely boring and repetitive and preferred “the norm” way of questing to level.

For being a pvp centric game, I really feel it lacked to some of those pve based games with pvp. Of course I wasn’t looking for this to be like WoW or a pve based game, but at least something different and fun. I don’t mind pvp but hearing they were also going to add a lot more pve compared to GW1 then I had to try it. Was hoping for more and maybe a lot better pvp but it is free monthly so maybe one things get fixed and a lot more things get added I will try it again.

I did not though buy into the hype. I mean sure the hype is what got my attention but I wasn’t counting down the days or anything.

No. There are too many downsides. Here are a few:

- content is easy. The only challenging thing were story mode dungeons (may have had bad pugs), everything else can be facerolled. In Orr people are smashing in empty air for Dynamic Events, hoping that when mobs spawn, they can get a hit in before the mobs are dead again, which is usually in under half a second.

- There is no immersion. For me, it’s pretty much impossible to get any feeling of immersion in GW2.: NPC text is not realistic (funny that this is the worst in the personal story), elder dragons are nowhere to be seen, underwater swim sound is fake and kills immersion, every NPC in the game is a very weak fighter, even if it’s a Vigil soldier (and Vigil is the fighter order of Tyria), and even if it’s a Destiny’s Edge member, they nearly took down Kralkatorrik but now they would probably die to moa.

- The PvP is not something I’d want to play. There is only crappy conquest mode. Where is death match? King of the hill? Capture the flag? Any random mode that doesn’t involve capture points? And then there’s the stupid amount of NPCs in PvP (minions, clones, pets, spirits, etc), the fact that tournaments only have 3 rounds…

- There is very little character progression. This is actually my biggest point. Currently, all I can do is go for a legendary. Which I am doing. But this will take months, with no other goal it will probably get too boring before I reach it. This is an MMO, there needs to be some goal, something to play for. “log on and have fun” is cool for a few days, but after that people get bored and quit. (my first guild already died because of this, and it had 30-40 very active members in the first weeks, only 3 still log in). And something to play for doesn’t need to be super gear, just look at GW1.

Hi everyone

By request of the OP, this thread is closed.

Thanks for your understanding