Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing GW2 since beta, and even as a raging fanboy that I am, even I’m getting a bit burnt out, even when a lot of my friends that I came into the game with have left, I’ve tried to stick it out.

So feel I should give my feedback.

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Living Story

While I appreciate the idea of these, in practice I feel they fall flat.
The characters a bland, and the stories are generic, and the enemies are irritating. They a little more then a sad excuse to kill a bunch of dudes, visit a zone that gets a face lift, and maybe get a skin or two.

And while the skins are nice, there are only so many backpack skins one can get before we lose interest. Cosmetics only go so far.

All in all, I feel they are just lacking in substance and depth.
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Now don’t get me wrong, regular content updates is a great idea, it’s just this isn’t it.
Being temporary only adds to the problem. However, I feel being primarily solo content is also a problem. This is an MMO, I want to be not only be able to play with lots of other people, but have fun doing it.

And rehashing the same old types of events, of killing a bunch of dudes, and world bosses that are ungodly dull slogs of a fight, against mindless, barely functional AI, just don’t cut it anymore. (I’m looking at you, Queen Karka)

I think there are better ways of going about content creation. And you’ve done it before.

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Zone Wide Events

You know what the best time I’ve ever had in this game was?

It was the Zone wide events back in beta. Hunger Royale in Metrica Province, and the Branded event in Plains of Ashford. They were so insanely bad@ss, and from what I understand is (at least with the former) it was something you pulled out of your skirt in and afternoon of work.

Why the heck don’t we see these anymore?

Converting a zone, as to turn it into it’s own little mini game, from survival hunting, to a tug of war pitting infected vs uninfected as they bide for control of the zone, or anything else you might think of.

These kinds of events bring players together for some casual PvP, or perhaps something co-operative, anything other then just killing a bunch of mindless AI, as to break up the monotony and get players playing together.

Some of them could be permanent, some could rotate out.
Anything that get’s the playerbase, and even guilds, going out regularly to do stuff together, that should be your focus when it comes to regular updates.

Thou, not necessarily forced group content, like dungeons or fractals, but stuff that scales to whoever shows up.
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However, take this for what it’s worth, but GW2’s single greatest strength is to bring a whole bunch of players together to do an activity together without prior organization or waiting. But for this to work, the content or activity has to be engaging, and that is where you are failing atm.
Largely because your basing it on the back of your AI, which quite frankly sucks.

Use players instead, their smarter. (A debatable point)

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Event Rotation

I’ll try to keep this short, but what ever happened to this?
Didn’t you Arenanet promise that you would have a live team swap out events in zones to update them and keep them fresh?
What ever happened to that?

The events in almost every zone are exactly the same since launch.
And while there is a lot of content, when your leveling your 5th-6th alt, doing the same old bloody events gets old.

So, yeah, change it up would you.
Esp in the starter zones, my word do they need some updating once in awhile.

Time Trial Jumping Puzzles

Wanna know another thing I love in GW2? Jumping puzzles.
Jumping puzzles rock so hard, largely because they are actually pretty challenging.
It takes time and practice to get good at them, and it’s all largely based on timing and positioning, something combat could stand to learn from.

Only problem is that they are rarely worth doing, besides monthly achievements.
The rewards are so paltry, it’s just not worth the time or effort.

So some permanent content you could add is to upgrade these.

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Here’s what I’m thinking.

A: Keep the non-instanced puzzles as they are, just update the reward system so that more difficult puzzles give much better rewards, and all rewards scale to your level, and the best rewards are comparable to world bosses, since they are often times much more difficult and time consuming.
Also, you should get event rewards of XP, Karma and Gold in addition to chest rewards.

B: Make a instanced version of the puzzle that you can access at it’s entrance, which is a time trial. Your given a timer, and your skills are normalized so that no profession has an advantage. Your reward is based on how quickly you complete the JP, with your standard gold/silver/bronze reward structure, but something noticeably higher then normal events, or comparable to world bosses, and better then the non-instanced version.
As with world bosses, these time trials can only be done once a day.
However both the instanced and non-instanced versions give rewards separately and daily.

C: Additional puzzle jumping reward tokens should also be awarded, based on your performance and the difficulty of the puzzle. (puzzle difficulty should also be displayed)
These tokens, like dungeon tokens can be exchanged for exotic gear and equipment, backpack skins, and other various goods and services.
As with dungeon tokens, first completion grants the most amount of tokens, and subsequent completions grant fewer if any.

D: Introduce a server wide leader board, showing the characters with the fastest times for that week, per JP. This leader board should also show your relative position and time no matter where you are so long as you have completed the JP at least once that week, and guilds could also have their own internal leader boards.

At the end of each week, the top 3-5 players with the fastest times, get additional rewards, and perhaps a chance at exclusive rewards. Each JP has their own leader board and weekly rewards, so that it is possible for a single player to win multiple weekly JP time trials.

Each server wide leader board winner, could also have their time compared across all servers, where a single JP each month is picked and the top scores from all servers get even better rewards and bragging rights.
Nothing like a little healthy competition.

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So long story short, I love jumping puzzles, they just need better rewards and some meta game contents such as leader boards and the like, that would be awesome.

Long Term Content

Long term is a little tricky, it’s hard to tell what you need a far as content is concerned, but for me it’s most certainly AI and challenge. Esp at endgame.

Nothing kills the mood quicker then creating an awesome build, getting to level 80, and having precisely nothing worth while to do. Dungeons stop being difficult once you figure out the tricks, Fractals likewise, and world bosses and champions are a joke.

Which is why I advocate, at least in the short term, for content that doesn’t rely on the AI, but rather players instead.
So that long term, something can be done to make the AI a little more engaging.

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Now to be fair, when I say ‘AI is bad’, I don’t mean the regular run-of-the-day mobs, their mostly pretty decent, actually quite good compared to a lot of MMO’s.
I mean boss monsters, world bosses and champions. They suck. They suck hard.

Champions are the perfect example of everything that is wrong with the way Anet designs AI.
1: Their blown up version of regular mobs.
2: They have little to no movement beyond simply chasing you mindlessly.
3: No movement patterns.
4: No attack patterns.
5: They hit like a dump-truck with little to no telegraphing.
6: Have a tendency to stun-lock you.
7: Their absurdly tough, for no real reason other then to waste time.
8: Often riddled with gimmicky skills.
9: Little to no reward, that does not scale with difficult.
10: They scale poorly.

I think it’s fair to say, everyone hates champions. With a passion. Of a thousand suns.

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However it’s not all bad, some AI is actually pretty good. I just wish there was more of it.
Like the Molten Allience Berserker, that guy is awesome. He’s intense and puts the pressure on, without being overpowered or gimmicky, he just moves a lot.
And a couple of the other MA veterans were pretty decent as well, as you actually had to move and think about what you were doing, even if it was just a little.

If they had more attack and movement patterns, I think they could be really great.

If we had bosses like that, now we’re having a conversation.
So, basically bosses that relied on movement and attack patterns, with easily discernible telegraphing. Adding UI elements could help, since the pathetic red-ring of deathyness just doesn’t cut it half the time, if you can even see it in the clusterFk of particle effect maelstroms players put out.
Oddly, Wildstar kind of gets this part right, go learn from them.

That, or go play Monster Hunter or something.

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So that’s basically my opinion.
I’d like to hear what anybody else thinks of what I mentioned above, or just what you think GW2/Anet needs to be focusing on in the short and long term.

GW2 is a great game, and Arenanet are full of really talented and hardworking individuals, but we’re they are right now is not nearly as good as it could be, and I for one want to do what I can to help them find a way to make this work, and hopefully begin to bring back some of those who have left us since launch.

Hopefully their is something in my inane rambling that could be somewhat useful to them, who knows.

~Yoh

Completely agreed, nice post !

I’ll have to mull over this….you’ve made a lot of good points…but one thing I’d question is the better rewards for jumping puzzles. As long as mesmer portals are in the game, you’d have to disable them. Otherwise, people doing nothing or next to nothing would be getting those better rewards.

Vayne.8563:

I’ll have to mull over this….you’ve made a lot of good points…but one thing I’d question is the better rewards for jumping puzzles. As long as mesmer portals are in the game, you’d have to disable them. Otherwise, people doing nothing or next to nothing would be getting those better rewards.

Mmmm, yes, true, that is an issue.
Maybe if they just had a debuff that disabled portals, that could do it.
Of coarse with the instanced version, you won’t have access to your normal skills, so it wouldn’t be an issue there.

Besides while portals are cool n all, as someone who actually learned how to do them well, portals just defeats the purpose of having JP’s in the first place, and it’s lazy.
As a Mesmer, I’m happy enough for people to learn how to jump, so long as I can get a better reward for doing well.

i agree with you on almost all points you got a well written feedback. even this i sort of agree but i have noticed a few dynamic events have disappeared and they added afew in wish there was more of this to make it feel like the world was changing. one for instance it seemed like the bandits were setting up the roadblock in queensdale all the time i do believe they removed that one although i wish they would remove that one in wayfarer hills seems like i destroy that one two times a day from my trips back from the maw. so i do agree i wish they would remove more and update other way more then they do

Hi everyone,

Thanks for this well written feedback. Very interesting points here.
We will forward this to the team.

Thanks again for the post. As usual, we would like to ask you to keep a constructive discussion.
Should new ideas arise, please keep them organised so the team can browse the post and find them as easily as possible,

Thanks for your understanding.

I bet a whole lot of people expect me to come to this thread, jump up and down and complain, but actually I agree with most of it. A lot of stuff in Guild Wars 2 can be better, and most of the ideas in this thread are pretty good.

What I’d like to see in the game is something that really hasn’t been brought up here. I’d like to see longer, more involving quest chains. Perhaps missions for the three orders that can be done after the personal story is finished. It would give players continuity with the order they represent, and further flesh out characters.

Because this, to me, is the biggest single problem in Guild Wars 2. It’s really not that easy to care about my characters. They’re a means to an end, instead of an individual. A lot of things go to making this happen, including account wide achievements. Who do you do your daily on? Anyone you happen to be playing. This is a good thing from one point of view, but a bad thing for trying to make your character feel like an indivdual.

After you finish your personal story, what really is there? Living story is account bound. Everything else is account bound. But each character, nothing further’s them. There are many things in the game that compound this issue.

In other games (not most MMOs however), even in Guild Wars 1, I was far more involved with each individual character. They had life for me. In Guild Wars 2, I don’t feel the same way. I like the game. I like the idea of the personal story…but I need to feel my characters. And I finished my personal story on five of them so long ago, I feel like I have to put them on ice to work on other characters, because what else is there for them that makes them unique?

They’re already wearing and wielding stuff that fits them fine.

I don’t know if we needed three posts for all this…. but this definitely needed Two posts so I therefore agree 100% with 66% of these statements

Well stated, and more than just well-intentioned.
Another thing we really really need is “Combined” Zones in NA and EU… Perhaps call it the “In*tra*national” instance. Basically just one set of all the zones for NA, and another set for EU that’s meant to get EVERYONE accross all 20 servers into the same zone and stop these older zones from feeling SO EMPTY ALL THE TIME.

I pretty much agree with everything OP said.
One thing i’d like to add, world dragons/SB.
These are trivialized to the point of being a joke.
When I did my first world dragon event, i was expecting it to be like the ones in that “Other MMO”. Now those were hard. These are simply stand in this spot and spam your 1 key.
Take Shatterer for example. It stands there, facing the same direction, never moving, while everyone stands on the hill and shoots it from range until it dies. The fix to me seems pretty simple. Allow him to turn/move. Movement might be a bit much, but if dragons (Teq/Shat), or SB actually turned, the fights become a bit more difficult.

Jormag isn’t much better. stand over here at the edge of this cliff and shoot rockets at shield. Shield down, run up to range and shoot dragon, since it’s stunned and can’t hurt you. Repeat a few times.
Run over to this other spot, shoot pillars until Jormag is stunned, then whack him since he can’t hurt you. repeat until dead.

Granted, the loot isn’t spectacular which is fitting since the fights are so simple, but still…

In that “Other MMO” when the big world dragons spawned, I remember entire guilds wiping (BIG guilds) and it taking a substantial effort to kill them. The rewards were good too, at the time. I realize they were uber in the day, and with the progression since then, they might be a joke. But i’d still like to see GW2 world boss events of that level of difficulty.

Stubbies.4526:

In that “Other MMO” when the big world dragons spawned, I remember entire guilds wiping (BIG guilds) and it taking a substantial effort to kill them. The rewards were good too, at the time. I realize they were uber in the day, and with the progression since then, they might be a joke. But i’d still like to see GW2 world boss events of that level of difficulty.

Priests of Grenth & Balthazar are actually HARDER than that even. (the big “catch” being gimmicky mechanics involved though). Straights of Devastation Chain is also just as epic on a map-wide scale and requiring just as much if not more coordination than WvW ever did. Yet…that entire zone is empty as heck except for a few Lemongrass farmers up in the tiny little corner of it that stuff like that actually grows in. (hmm… I wonder if linking NODES to event chains could be part of the solution??)

ilr.9675:

Stubbies.4526:

In that “Other MMO” when the big world dragons spawned, I remember entire guilds wiping (BIG guilds) and it taking a substantial effort to kill them. The rewards were good too, at the time. I realize they were uber in the day, and with the progression since then, they might be a joke. But i’d still like to see GW2 world boss events of that level of difficulty.

Priests of Grenth & Balthazar are actually HARDER than that even. (the big “catch” being gimmicky mechanics involved though).

Balthazar is actually ok. It’s a pain, but it’s doable, as are most temples. Grenth is downright silly. Stuck fighting in such a cramped space with AoE from hell, an NPC you’re supposed to keep alive who obviously doesn’t know what PVT gear is, lol, and an insanely long run-back. And because of the runback, people refuse to release, and others stop dpsing to rez which just exacerbates the issue.

your point of the temples being harder is noted, but like you said – cheesy mechanics.

I remember the one time I took Part in the a Grenth that actually SUCCEEDED… and I think was was in January maybe before they royally screwed it up worse…

I noticed the same pattern with people no releasing b/c the run back to was too long… and right down the path we came from near that Melandru Statue area was a Contestable Waypoint. After the Shade stage was clear and a Kiting-Monk-Healer (me) wastn’t needed anymore, I went back to that WP and single handedly kept it unconstested in my Monk gear along with Staff & Hammer and that’s how it was finally won…

Probably the single most substantial contribution I ever felt I made to a Meta Event…
…in ANY mmo game. It was almost as hard as soloing Giganticus Lupicus

Vayne.8563:

I bet a whole lot of people expect me to come to this thread, jump up and down and complain, but actually I agree with most of it. A lot of stuff in Guild Wars 2 can be better, and most of the ideas in this thread are pretty good.

What I’d like to see in the game is something that really hasn’t been brought up here. I’d like to see longer, more involving quest chains. Perhaps missions for the three orders that can be done after the personal story is finished. It would give players continuity with the order they represent, and further flesh out characters.

Because this, to me, is the biggest single problem in Guild Wars 2. It’s really not that easy to care about my characters. They’re a means to an end, instead of an individual. A lot of things go to making this happen, including account wide achievements. Who do you do your daily on? Anyone you happen to be playing. This is a good thing from one point of view, but a bad thing for trying to make your character feel like an indivdual.

After you finish your personal story, what really is there? Living story is account bound. Everything else is account bound. But each character, nothing further’s them. There are many things in the game that compound this issue.

In other games (not most MMOs however), even in Guild Wars 1, I was far more involved with each individual character. They had life for me. In Guild Wars 2, I don’t feel the same way. I like the game. I like the idea of the personal story…but I need to feel my characters. And I finished my personal story on five of them so long ago, I feel like I have to put them on ice to work on other characters, because what else is there for them that makes them unique?

They’re already wearing and wielding stuff that fits them fine.

I don’t disagree with you, the personal story is rather important, even thou it is not at the top of my list.

The early leveling in this game is fantastic, and it’s largely because of the personal story.
The first 20 levels of the personal story is excellent, easily the best and well written, as it is about you and your character and your characters problems.
The order stuff all they way up to Claw Island, is pretty decent as well, not quite as good in my opinion and as it could have stood have spent more time with certain characters and developing them more, but for what it is it’s good.

It’s just everything else after the battle of Claw Island falls off a cliff. It completely forgets about your character and anything you had once done, and becomes an incredibly generic story, with little to no character development.

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So I would love to see more character development of your characters, more order and racial stuff, but here’s the problem: Voice actors are expensive.

Writing and implementing more in-depth character story arcs is by it’s nature, expensive and time consuming, so this clearly falling in the ‘long term’ idea bucket.
And like AI, I’ve love to see this as soon as possible, but I realize that doing it well takes time, which is why I concentrated more on quick and easy improvements that can use content and systems we largely already have in place.

Awesome post, and I agree with everything you said. I think a major issue with the game is that it’s 100% cooperation all the time. There is not friendly competition for anything in the game. Not for resources, or discipline-specific crafts, or anything. Adding in a small bit of fun competition against others would be great. Trying to put yourself on leaderboards for things other than PvP and Achievement Points would definitely make players want to try their hand out and test themselves.

Just my opinion, though. There’s a lot in the game that are great ideas. I just feel like none of them came to their full potential yet. (Dynamic Events, Dungeons, World Bosses, Crafting, Jumping Puzzles, Mini-games.. etc.)