Guild Wars 2

I agree with the basic premise here. Dungeon encounters are badly designed to deal with the lack of a trinity. They need to be improved greatly for this game to move forward.

Support roles particularly need some way to be viable in end game.

tbh the classes all bring interesting things to dungeons, but people get so entrenched in the opinion that 4 warr+support is the only way to do things that its hard to shake for them. i’m not sure what would break that general consensus at this point.

-edit- forgot to mention that i do agree though, more interesting dungeon fights would definitely be a boon, instead of the zerk smash n’ dodge that most of them are already.

I’ve been saying the same thing for a while, now. Why build a balanced party with damage, control, support, and possibly even a little damage over time when the dungeons don’t force you to do so? Why build a party consisting of five different professions spec’d to perform five different roles when we can get four ’zerker warriors and a mesmer and blow through the dungeon at a faster clip?

lordmitz.2047:

tbh the classes all bring interesting things to dungeons, but people get so entrenched in the opinion that 4 warr+support is the only way to do things that its hard to shake for them. i’m not sure what would break that general consensus at this point.

The problem is, for the most part, you don’t "need’ those interesting things that other professions bring to dungeons.

There is a group of people who always want the most efficient play possible. Very often they make videos on Youtube, others pick it up and before you know it, people think that’s the only way or “right” way to play. It’s not of course, but that’s human nature.

I’m quite happy running dungeons with pretty much anyone, even if it takes longer to complete them. Doesn’t matter to me. But some people are really bothered by the fact that it takes them longer. Some people are just impatient. They want efficiency.

Those who want efficiency will never understand why people that don’t care about it don’t care about it. Unfortunately, the only way to make it better is to create the need for other professions to be there…which comes with a completely different set of problems.

That’s a good way to articulate my problem with dungeons: They’re full of HP sponges that can one shot you if you haven’t memorized their moves or run out of endurance in the middle of a AOE field. This isn’t fun, it’s lazy design.

Doesn’t really matter though because even if the bosses were fun playing open world PvE would still be more fun than dungeons.

There is holy trinity in this game (for dungeons): Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer.

normally most bosses do have unique mechanics. I’ve seen so many zergs wipe in Arah, CoE and I’m pretty sure that they would even wipe in AC. They refuse to learn how bosses work, refuse to help the team and just continue to smack away. Most of them get carried trough high end dungeons.
Dungeons do encourage learning and different playstyles. It’s just that a lot of warriors like to play them all as if it was CoF.

Sovta.4719:

There is holy trinity in this game (for dungeons): Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer.

It’s actually just guardian+mesmer. Warrior is simply a dps-guys, and can be switched to any other profession. It’s just currently warriors are the best at this job.
Guardian+mesmer oth… Well, a lot of dungeon content is made easier by these two and it’s like anet actually designs encounters around having a guardian in a party.

Not to mention that these classes are also very strong in pvp, unlike the one-trick pony war.

You spend an awful lot of words trying to say a simple thing: “This game needs polish.”

Yes. Some bosses are boring and badly designed (Anet have acknowledged it).
Some classes are stupidly broken while others are very weak (warriors, PVE Thieves respectively).
Many spells and skills are flavorless and boring. (C.f. all elite skills!)
Combo fields are incredibly imbalanced (yep!)

You take forever to make your point, and when you do I’m not sure it’s even the one you intended to make. On the point you do make, however, (whether intentional or not), you are indubitably correct. This game needs polish; major polish. But IMHO, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I have a PVE Thief that I simply won’t play anymore until they’re buffed/fixed/enriched. In the meantime, my Ele is pretty fun and I’m having fun running dungeons, leveling, and doing WvW with friends.

Combat and skill system lacks depth and customization.

And read this Q&A, I find this funny, they’re basically saying they acknowledge the problems, but they won’t change anything. They know what players want but they won’t do it. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

Now, I dont want to be disrespectful, but please …

lordmitz.2047:

tbh the classes all bring interesting things to dungeons, but people get so entrenched in the opinion that 4 warr+support is the only way to do things that its hard to shake for them. i’m not sure what would break that general consensus at this point.

-edit- forgot to mention that i do agree though, more interesting dungeon fights would definitely be a boon, instead of the zerk smash n’ dodge that most of them are already.

the 4 warr+support is not just for the hard content, it’s also for easy farming CoF p1 groups as well? Try gw2lfg, every other class takes twice as long to get into a group…

Nick.6972:

Combat and skill system lacks depth and customization.

And read this Q&A, I find this funny, they’re basically saying they acknowledge the problems, but they won’t change anything. They know what players want but they won’t do it. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

Now, I dont want to be disrespectful, but please …

They know what “some” players want. Not all the players. The question always comes back to how many players want more complexity.

There are tons of people who love Guild Wars 1’s skill system, and there were more than a few who really didn’t like it at all. I’m one of the guys who loved it. I loved making builds. I had a ball with it. By the same token, it also made the game much much harder to balance. There was a downside.

I don’t think I’d want to go back to something that complex with that much variety, even though I enjoyed it at the time. The downside was too powerful to justify it in my opinion.

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Even so, apart from Perma Sin, meta game was almost always changing with the regular skill balanced and changes.
As of now, we’ll have same builds, same skills and same fight styles till GW2 dies and nothing will ever change.

Nick.6972:

Combat and skill system lacks depth and customization.

And read this Q&A, I find this funny, they’re basically saying they acknowledge the problems, but they won’t change anything. They know what players want but they won’t do it. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

Now, I dont want to be disrespectful, but please …

Most players have absolutely no idea what they want, have absolutely no idea how to design a game, and have absolutely no idea how to grasp the overarching vision of a game.

They just think they do.

Which is why you don’t design games by committee. You set up a design team of the most talented people you can find and you set them loose to craft a world. When you examine player feedback it still needs to be passed by that team of people, who may well say “that doesn’t fit with the vision we have”, and that’s OK.

You have to bear in mind that the feedback received on the forums is a small but vocal fraction of the playerbase. Many people play the game without visiting the forum on a regular basis, if at all. Many people who do visit the forum read the feedback threads and don’t agree with the suggestions one bit but don’t make a peep because they would have nothing to contribute beyond “I completely disagree with you”.

Case in point: a lot of people want the crafting system to be more profitable, but I personally like the fact that crafting is extremely expensive. This gives it a significant barrier to entry that ensures that the market won’t be flooded by top-level crafters who all have the exact same recipes and can crank out top-end crafted gear cheaply. In return for the expense and difficulty involved in the crafting system, you can actually level a character through it. I feel that crafting should actually be MORE difficult, to the point where crafting could be a dedicated profession like it is in Ultima Online.

The devs cannot and should not listen to every player suggestion, even if it seems to be a popular one.

I agree, combat is quite dull with lack of customization and dungeons are basically zerg DPS that thing down before it 1shots you.

Just wanted to say good break down and I gave you a +1. Game is good, but always room for improvements and my initial impression mirrored your analysis fairly well.

Tiresias.6473:

Case in point: a lot of people want the crafting system to be more profitable, but I personally like the fact that crafting is extremely expensive. This gives it a significant barrier to entry that ensures that the market won’t be flooded by top-level crafters who all have the exact same recipes and can crank out top-end crafted gear cheaply. In return for the expense and difficulty involved in the crafting system, you can actually level a character through it. I feel that crafting should actually be MORE difficult, to the point where crafting could be a dedicated profession like it is in Ultima Online.

Well, I’m a master crafter in many professions. I buy most of my gear of the TP because it’s cheaper than making it myself. There IS a problem here.

stof.9341:

Tiresias.6473:

Case in point: a lot of people want the crafting system to be more profitable, but I personally like the fact that crafting is extremely expensive. This gives it a significant barrier to entry that ensures that the market won’t be flooded by top-level crafters who all have the exact same recipes and can crank out top-end crafted gear cheaply. In return for the expense and difficulty involved in the crafting system, you can actually level a character through it. I feel that crafting should actually be MORE difficult, to the point where crafting could be a dedicated profession like it is in Ultima Online.

Well, I’m a master crafter in many professions. I buy most of my gear of the TP because it’s cheaper than making it myself. There IS a problem here.

well it’s just how economic ended up at this point. It’s not Anet’s fault. All players are responsible for it. And besides, if you get an exotic drop you’re going to sell it cheap because it cost you nothing to make.

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Balance became a problem after they introduced new skills and classes, which GW2 has neither done and which you yourself agree they should not do without balancing things first.

The fact is that GW1 WAS balanced early in the game. It was much more balanced in the first year of prophecies than GW2 is now in its first year.

Mirta.5029:

well it’s just how economic ended up at this point. It’s not Anet’s fault. All players are responsible for it. And besides, if you get an exotic drop you’re going to sell it cheap because it cost you nothing to make.

It’s not entirely ANet’s fault, but it is partially their fault. They designed the game. They decided to remove competition from resource gathering. They decided to give all characters access to all crafting discipline. This has made it very easy for players to use crafting solely as a means of gaining experience, which in turn has lead to a glut of finished goods on the Trading Post.

darkace.8925:

Mirta.5029:

well it’s just how economic ended up at this point. It’s not Anet’s fault. All players are responsible for it. And besides, if you get an exotic drop you’re going to sell it cheap because it cost you nothing to make.

It’s not entirely ANet’s fault, but it is partially their fault. They designed the game. They decided to remove competition from resource gathering. They decided to give all characters access to all crafting discipline. This has made it very easy for players to use crafting solely as a means of gaining experience, which in turn has lead to a glut of finished goods on the Trading Post.

the thing is not doing what they’ve done
- making access to crafting harder
- adding competition for gathering (when a node is gathered by anyone it will disappear)
- crafting not giving exp
would have regressed this MMO back. A lot of people love the fact that we all can gather (myself included), because we remember just playing with a friend and having to chose different gathering professions so we wouldn’t steal each others stuff. Or at higher levels camping a node spawning point and trying to be the first one to get there when it respawns. So while it’s partially their fault if it wasn’t done this MMO would be less satisfying.

First post: excellent. Second post: almost, but not quite.

The design philosophy for the game is not to adapt one’s playstyle on the fly so that you can shift focus between multiple roles in one build. The design goal is to allow for focusing on different roles through shifting builds. The Elementalist is an exception in this regard, not the rule or design goal.

Actually the problem with crafting is mostly that crafted exotics aren’t valuable enough to be sold for more than the mats. The reason? The mats used to craft them are used ALL over the place and those decide their values. And crafting isn’t the only source of exotics by far so the price of the craft results is decided by other external factors.

IE : exotics cost too much mats to craft currently, mats that are better used towards making a legendary or some other mystic forge item.

Very well-stated, OP.

I told a friend of mine it would be kind of fun to be able to bring a GW2 character into a heroic WoW dungeon and see how different the playstyle would be.

Mirta.5029:

the thing is not doing what they’ve done
- making access to crafting harder
- adding competition for gathering (when a node is gathered by anyone it will disappear)
- crafting not giving exp
would have regressed this MMO back. A lot of people love the fact that we all can gather (myself included), because we remember just playing with a friend and having to chose different gathering professions so we wouldn’t steal each others stuff. Or at higher levels camping a node spawning point and trying to be the first one to get there when it respawns. So while it’s partially their fault if it wasn’t done this MMO would be less satisfying.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I disagree with the direction they took crafting. I personally would have limited each character to just two crafting disciplines, but I actually like that there’s no competition for crafting nodes and that crafting gives experience. All I’m saying is ANet shares an equal share in the blame when it comes to the economy with regards to crafting.

The lack of trinity in this game is not the provblem It’s arguably one of its few strongest points.

There’s a host of other problems that detract from the game. You are more or less locked into a build by traits and your two weapons. Same is true of armor. The whole thing is very limiting

Secondly, The game herds you into a zerg style of play that rewards you for tagging large groups enemies. Almost everything else falls to the wayside. Support roles are not effective and they actually punish the player. You will lose drops, and XP. You realize very quickly that it pays to do mild damage to a lot of mobs than to synergize with you team mates.

Last but not least. They have all these great specs and traits that go basically unused. Why? Because one, resetting is a pain and costly. Two, you are going to be solo a lot in this game, so damage/defense has to be priority. (at the cost of everything else)

We have no trinity but still have bucket-o-hp mobs designed for a trinity system. Re-tooling AI would go a long way.

Acelerion.6820:

We have no trinity but still have bucket-o-hp mobs designed for a trinity system. Re-tooling AI would go a long way.

Agreed.

This would be a decent opportunity for tweaking. While we do have a soft trinity, (damage, control, support) it would be interesting to see all those mobs gathered up by the control and support guys in the group, while the damage group does their part in taking them down.

As it stands now the current strategery is “just run, don’t fight.”

Shootsfoot.9276:

As it stands now the current strategery is “just run, don’t fight.”

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

clay.7849:

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

I’ve wondered why they haven’t implemented a system wherein every trash mob killed increases your odds of rolling better loot from chests by a percentage large enough to entice players to fully clear dungeons but not so large that clearing dungeons becomes mandatory.

clay.7849:

Shootsfoot.9276:

As it stands now the current strategery is “just run, don’t fight.”

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

GW2 is the only one I know of that has dungeon trash mobs on leashes.

Avoiding agro of mobs is one thing. I love having to sneak around mobs and we always had fun giving grief to guildies who accidentally pull mobs.

But just outright running through them and hoping you don’t die knowing they will eventually give up is another.

darkace.8925:

clay.7849:

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

I’ve wondered why they haven’t implemented a system wherein every trash mob killed increases your odds of rolling better loot from chests by a percentage large enough to entice players to fully clear dungeons but not so large that clearing dungeons becomes mandatory.

+1 to this. I think this would be a great idea.

Been my belief from the beginning. There really isn’t anything wrong with the basic setup of GW2’s combat. There just isn’t much if any content or encounters that take advantage of it.

All of the most interesting fights I can recall in WoW were always about the specifically designed mechanics of each encounter and not because of any inherent advantage to the holy trinity paradigm.

If it weren’t for the fact that bosses did this or that because the developers decreed that it be so, every single group encounter in the game would indeed not be very entertaining as the basic gameplay cycle of the trinity is contrived and silly as all hell.

They need to tweek the dungeons or all of pve in general such the game rewards support and control builds just as well as it does to damage builds.

SHM.7628:

The lack of trinity in this game is not the provblem It’s arguably one of its few strongest points.

There’s a host of other problems that detract from the game. You are more or less locked into a build by traits and your two weapons. Same is true of armor. The whole thing is very limiting

Secondly, The game herds you into a zerg style of play that rewards you for tagging large groups enemies. Almost everything else falls to the wayside. Support roles are not effective and they actually punish the player. You will lose drops, and XP. You realize very quickly that it pays to do mild damage to a lot of mobs than to synergize with you team mates.

Last but not least. They have all these great specs and traits that go basically unused. Why? Because one, resetting is a pain and costly. Two, you are going to be solo a lot in this game, so damage/defense has to be priority. (at the cost of everything else)

That is correct..the term/issue is ‘limited’.

I re-subbed to WoW while still doing GW2 to see MoP and how it was.

I still prefer GW2 world and graphics, but overall WoW still has the better fight and PvP mechanics and overall ‘customization’

What bugs me about GW2 is that the lack of combat ‘style’ on your toon. Having 5 attacks and then a few more extra things to do honestly isn’t enough diversity. Going back, I definitely liked the new talent trees and picking my ‘style’ for my Warrior. On top of that, having 15 or so buttons to use during combat is a lot better then 5-7.

I have an engineer main in GW2 and it is absolutely BORING doing fights. It’s honestly monotonous. It makes me not want to play the game.

I think GW2 needs to up the number of buttons from 10 to 15 at least. I’d like to see them add some trinket/effect buttons and also maybe 2 more unique abilities that you can choose to use in combat. I don’t like how my weapon determines for example that I can charge. Charge should be a baseline ability of a Warrior.

I love the armors, but honestly they need a little more to them…a little more ‘style’.

The fighting animations need improved. I feel like characters ‘skate’ over combat and please for the love of god fix the Warrior whirlwind..looks really stupid.

Ryth.6518:

SHM.7628:

The lack of trinity in this game is not the provblem It’s arguably one of its few strongest points.

There’s a host of other problems that detract from the game. You are more or less locked into a build by traits and your two weapons. Same is true of armor. The whole thing is very limiting

Secondly, The game herds you into a zerg style of play that rewards you for tagging large groups enemies. Almost everything else falls to the wayside. Support roles are not effective and they actually punish the player. You will lose drops, and XP. You realize very quickly that it pays to do mild damage to a lot of mobs than to synergize with you team mates.

Last but not least. They have all these great specs and traits that go basically unused. Why? Because one, resetting is a pain and costly. Two, you are going to be solo a lot in this game, so damage/defense has to be priority. (at the cost of everything else)

That is correct..the term/issue is ‘limited’.

I re-subbed to WoW while still doing GW2 to see MoP and how it was.

I still prefer GW2 world and graphics, but overall WoW still has the better fight and PvP mechanics and overall ‘customization’

What bugs me about GW2 is that the lack of combat ‘style’ on your toon. Having 5 attacks and then a few more extra things to do honestly isn’t enough diversity. Going back, I definitely liked the new talent trees and picking my ‘style’ for my Warrior. On top of that, having 15 or so buttons to use during combat is a lot better then 5-7.

I have an engineer main in GW2 and it is absolutely BORING doing fights. It’s honestly monotonous. It makes me not want to play the game.

I think GW2 needs to up the number of buttons from 10 to 15 at least. I’d like to see them add some trinket/effect buttons and also maybe 2 more unique abilities that you can choose to use in combat. I don’t like how my weapon determines for example that I can charge. Charge should be a baseline ability of a Warrior.

I love the armors, but honestly they need a little more to them…a little more ‘style’.

The fighting animations need improved. I feel like characters ‘skate’ over combat and please for the love of god fix the Warrior whirlwind..looks really stupid.

At the same time, with all those spells for, say, paladins in WoW, your optimized rotation was still 6 or 7 spells. Sure there were big CD spells and such, but it was still only 6 or 7 main spells. And they never ever changed, even if you changed talents/weapons.

So I guess what I would like to see in GW2 is a mix of what we have now and a bit more of an active-feeling combat system. I love how spells change with weapon swaps. But I would like to see something like 15 choices of spells per weapon, of which you can choose 5.

I would also like to see the first attack not be chained. As a guardian with sword/shield for instance, my main attack/dps is my auto-attack..three spells which cycle automatically. All the rest of the time I’m waiting on cooldowns so I can eventually use them while I dodge.

There seems to be a lot more downtime in GW fighting than in WoW. I’m not saying I want 30 spells/attacks available at once, but I would like the current system to be a little more active feeling and with a bit more flexibility per weapon.

Probably never will happen, but a man can dream.

Ryth.6518:

That is correct..the term/issue is ‘limited’.

I re-subbed to WoW while still doing GW2 to see MoP and how it was.

I still prefer GW2 world and graphics, but overall WoW still has the better fight and PvP mechanics and overall ‘customization’

What bugs me about GW2 is that the lack of combat ‘style’ on your toon. Having 5 attacks and then a few more extra things to do honestly isn’t enough diversity. Going back, I definitely liked the new talent trees and picking my ‘style’ for my Warrior. On top of that, having 15 or so buttons to use during combat is a lot better then 5-7.

I have an engineer main in GW2 and it is absolutely BORING doing fights. It’s honestly monotonous. It makes me not want to play the game.

I think GW2 needs to up the number of buttons from 10 to 15 at least. I’d like to see them add some trinket/effect buttons and also maybe 2 more unique abilities that you can choose to use in combat. I don’t like how my weapon determines for example that I can charge. Charge should be a baseline ability of a Warrior.

I love the armors, but honestly they need a little more to them…a little more ‘style’.

The fighting animations need improved. I feel like characters ‘skate’ over combat and please for the love of god fix the Warrior whirlwind..looks really stupid.

No.. just, no. I’ve seen some screenshots of wow mods and its ridiculous as to the amount of buttons and keys you have on screen. It may be a synch for vet players but it easily daunts new players. I tried to play wow, and the normal hotkey bars were enough for me. I find the notion that you NEED mods to play a game more effectively ridiculous.

penatbater.4710:

No.. just, no. I’ve seen some screenshots of wow mods and its ridiculous as to the amount of buttons and keys you have on screen. It may be a synch for vet players but it easily daunts new players. I tried to play wow, and the normal hotkey bars were enough for me. I find the notion that you NEED mods to play a game more effectively ridiculous.

Personally, I deplore that game in large part for the very reason you’ve mentioned. I’m all for a very small number of skills on a skill bar and a clean UI, I just wish we had more flexibility in how we constructed our characters.

I always wondered why they didn’t design Warrior banners Samurai style, in that they were placed on your back and the buff traveled with you.

Then the trait line for banners would have 2 5pt level buff to increase range and effectiveness and then a Grandmaster skill to allow you to have more then one on your back at a time.

This would mean that the Warrior now basically carries around a group signet, if they don’t spec Grandmaster they have to decide which to use and when. You could even go so far as to remove signets from Warriors, so that unused banner provide a minor passive buff to the Warrior alone.

I could do with more than 10 skills, to be honest, but yes having access to all available skills at all times WoW-styled is not only unnecessary, it’s actually kind of the opposite of engaging.

Apart from the general UI issues it causes, a lot of the reason why simply revolves around build customization and experimentation. It’s much funner that you are forced to work with a subset of your available skills as a way to play around and customize your character.

Well, short of engineers without any toolkit and some thieves that take twice the same weapon set, every player has access to 15 skills and not 10. Just not access to all 15 at once which has it’s own tactical considerations since weapon swap has a cooldown.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Balance became a problem after they introduced new skills and classes, which GW2 has neither done and which you yourself agree they should not do without balancing things first.

The fact is that GW1 WAS balanced early in the game. It was much more balanced in the first year of prophecies than GW2 is now in its first year.

The problem is that they’re GOING to introduce more. NO MMO is going to leave skills untouched forever. So starting here, where it can be balanced is the smart thing to do long term.

In a perfect world people don’t get bored of the same skills. In this world they do. Therefore, for the long term health of the game, starting this way is smarter. As more skills come out, the game becomes deeper.

Easy solution buff cof part 1.

darkace.8925:

clay.7849:

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

I’ve wondered why they haven’t implemented a system wherein every trash mob killed increases your odds of rolling better loot from chests by a percentage large enough to entice players to fully clear dungeons but not so large that clearing dungeons becomes mandatory.

You win the interwebz. This is a great idea!

I agree and while a “trinity” system can be avoiding. It would be nice to have some kind of “role” within the dungeons and bigger open-world events. Requiring at least some kind of condition application, condition removal, ranged only, melee only and MoBs or encounters that simply require “something” would be awesome.

Just having a LFG system that was as basic as say Melee/Ranged/Support would at least give the developers and designers something to work with. Knowing that each group had at least 1 of each would also let them be more creative and give us better challenges with out reverting to a full on trinity.

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Balance became a problem after they introduced new skills and classes, which GW2 has neither done and which you yourself agree they should not do without balancing things first.

The fact is that GW1 WAS balanced early in the game. It was much more balanced in the first year of prophecies than GW2 is now in its first year.

The problem is that they’re GOING to introduce more. NO MMO is going to leave skills untouched forever. So starting here, where it can be balanced is the smart thing to do long term.

In a perfect world people don’t get bored of the same skills. In this world they do. Therefore, for the long term health of the game, starting this way is smarter. As more skills come out, the game becomes deeper.

I’m must saying that the introduction of new skills created imbalance in GW1. It is my opinion that the balance in the game now is way off compared to Prophecies. Actually, I think the balance is way off in general. Not between professions, but between making something other than direct damage the best and only route to winning.

I agree that they will need to add more skills to keep people happy. Doing that responsibly would be appreciated. But, fixing team combat now would be nice first.