Guild Wars 2

I want to preface this post with the fact that I don’t want this to be a “I hate everything about GW2” post. Since we’ve been in this lull between content being released, I thought it would be a good time to collect my thoughts on the game so far and pass them along to the devs and fellow Tyrians.

Living Story
Season 1 of the Living Story was an interesting ride. I enjoyed a lot of it, for the most part. I thought the unique open world battles that we got to have, especially towards the end were brilliantly crafted and a pleasure to play. I still wish the Marionette fight was a permanent boss because it was a lot of fun! Honestly it was probably the most fun fight in GW2.

I also felt that the assault on Lion’s Arch was fun and terrifying. Many people complained about the “zerg” aspect of it, but I feel that it was appropriate to the frantic nature of the siege and trying to usher people out. The siege went on long enough that I actually got more angry with Scarlett and enjoyed the final showdown with her. Speaking of, I LOVE Destiny’s Edge 2.0. The characters are interesting, their interactions between each other and we the player is fun and engaging and I find myself eager to see what happens in season 2.

However, I feel like the season dragged on FAR FAR too long and Scarlett, while crazy, wasn’t a particularly interesting foe. My hopes for Season 2 are that we will get an enemy that is more menacing, vocal and has more clear objectives.

The World
Along with a more interesting foe with more clear objectives, I desperately want the explorable world to expand. In comparison to Guild Wars 1, the amount of places we can’t access is outrageous. I’m sure the Devs are tired of hearing about it, but I want to visit Cantha, Elona, the Crystal Desert, Maguuma and beyond! My hope is that Arena Net will continue to invest in GW2 and expand the world like they did with GW1, and soon.

We’re nearing the 2 year mark and Tyria is feeling rather cramped. Unfortunately the WP system makes that feeling even worse as I never have to bother with actually exploring or seeing the world since I can simply jump to wherever I want to (after zoning in to the one uncontested WP first). While I like the convenience of the WP system, I do hope that in the future we get some more methods of travel that allow for more scenic routes. I’d love being able to jump in some kind of Asura made air taxi that offered a longer version of Vistas.

I guess what I’m saying is that I love Tyria and all it’s beauty. But I don’t often have an excuse other then leveling an alt to explore it. I’d love a new way to do so and pairing that with some new places to see.

Dungeons
Oh boy, dungeons. Dungeons are part of my daily routine. I login, join TTS for a quick Teq and/or wurm kill, then AC 1/3, CoF 1/2, and SE 1/3. I have literally thousands of tokens for each of those and I don’t imagine that’ll stop anytime soon. They’re lucrative runs and don’t take hardly very long at all with a good group.

Generally I actually quite enjoy the dungeons as they exist right now. But they are the perfect example of the “no trinity” system breaking down. Zerker builds are still the defacto standard even more now after the feature pack because of the way damage works in the down-scaled dungeons (read: almost all of them). What incentive do I have for running a healing build when I don’t get experience for healing people? Why would I run a higher toughness build when I can increase my damage output and kill bosses before they even get a chance to get going? This is a problem, and one I don’t imagine will ever go away.

However, along with that, I AM getting tired of running these 3 dungeons. TA Aether is a great step forward in terms of dungeon design and I hope that future dungeons are just as engaging. However, the rewards for doing these harder/longer dungeons must be looked at. While I do enjoy TA Aether, the rewards do not match the time investment necessary and as such, almost no one runs them regularly.

Gear
I already touched on the Zerker build issue, so I won’t continue to beat that dead horse. But I do feel that it’s worth mentioning that the continued release of armor sets via the Gem Shop should stop. Full stop. I understand the need for money to continue flowing in, but the addition of armors via the gem shop and the complete lack of meeting those additions with in-game content-acquired armor sets is ridiculous.

Making my character looks awesome is great, but it’s better when I feel like I earned that armor. Remember during the first couple months after release when seeing someone in Arah armor showed how awesome they were? Or when you saw someone with a legendary and everyone Oo’d and awww’d over it? I would LOVE to get that back in some way. While I loathe using this game as an example, WoW manages to maintain that sense of “Holy crap that dude is in full raid gear. Step back, bada** walking.”

Personally, I feel like armor crafted from the new unique drops from world bosses would be a great way to start. For example, say you assist in the killing of The Shatterer, and one of the drops you get is a [Crystal Dragon Scale] that you then have to collect and use as a crafting piece to make a Shatterer branded Dragon armor? I would love for something like that because it would be a reason to fight the world bosses other then Dragonite and a way to add more unique armor sets.

Conclusion
Overall, I love Guild Wars 2 and think it’s done a lot of things right. But I do also feel that there are a number of things that can improved on.

So Devs, fellow adventurers; What say you? Do you agree? Have anything to add? Think I’m wrong? Discuss.