Guild Wars 2

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/19/where-guild-wars-2-goes-wrong/

I think this is an excellent basis for the foundational problems with the game. Try and read it objectively and see if you agree.

absolute spot on article and i fully support it. They forgot to mention that guild wars 2 has NO SPOT FOR GUILDS AT ALL. Guilds give you a glorified chat program, which is maybe a step up from shouting LFG in all channels. Instead, you have an extra channel with people who may or may not like you. And it only works for certain dungeons, ie. it does not work for fracts, because if someone in the damn group is 1-2 levels above you in fracs, hell 10 levels above you, they wont run it with you. WHy should they, they already had to stand in lions arch or using gw2lfg.com to find a damn group to do the stupid fracts already… i dont get mad at them because im standing in the same damn location shouting the same thing.

wake up anet, are you listening?

I disagree with every point there except for the last point.

I didn’t agree with quite a lot of the article, but it is (in the main) well argued and certainly an interesting read.

A good scriptwriter and some half decent voice acting would certainly go a long way and I’m personally a big hater of the crafting system. Then again, GW1 had some serious poor story writing until Nightfall (Factions story was so badly written I almost couldn’t finish it) and the voice acting was never beyond acceptable.

I disagreed with the comments about being directionless vs levelling. If anything that’s a great strength to us casual players. Being able to wander off and not be prompted where to go is a huge selling point for me and not something I’d personally want changed. Level based rewards? Yes, that would make more sense, and I could see that being implemented down the line.

None of which are game breakers for me mind – I thoroughly enjoy the game and add my voice to some of the suggestions of chnage the article makes

I found the part about crafting funny, it does not tell you what parts you need for each bit…. So I guess its hard to figure out that a Sword blade, goes with a Sword hilt! ^^

was a good read, but felt some of it was rather wrong. I do agree about the rolls, they are not defined enough, I don’t think it needs the trinity however.

I disagree with most of the article.

I would love to see the same thing, but written by someone who had never played a MMO before. Someone who could have an opinion about GW2 without comparing it to the old and bad mechanics of classic MMOs, or who doesn’t have the “number crusher” mentality so common in MMOs these days.

Im halfway through reading the ‘lack of trinity replacement’ argument and I cant just sit here without saying my piece. I had no idea how to play my warrior…..UNTIL I worked it out for my self by taking builds other people had posted, thought to myself how they would fit with my playstyle and adapted them accordingly. Why is it that people (like the article writer) need everything spelled out for them? I heard about how a ‘Shouts Heal’ warrior build could be beneficial to the group and used my own brain and a little research to figure out the rest. If you cannot understand that giving other players healing is helping the party, and would rather have that spelled out to you, then id rather not party with you because youre an idiot.

Im sorry, but already the writer of this article has annoyed me….

I guess it’s related to point #1, but I’m surprised they didn’t mention the horribly shallow combat system. Actually I’d say point #1 is not really a problem, it’s just a symptom of the shallow combat system.

There’s no tanking, no aggro management (if the game has a hate system it’s so incomprehensible it might as well be random).

There’s no control (defiant buff on anything worth controlling),

Buffs are short duration and long cooldown, and healing coefficents are almost universally terrible. There’s no mana/energy or anything like that either making support not particularly viable.

Probably 70% of your survivability comes from the two dodges every single class gets free, 20% from utilities/traits, and 10% from toughness/health. Meanwhile, due to the downed system (and to rez zerging which thankfully they are starting to fix with fractals), it’s not much of a problem if you die anyway.

Meanwhile ANet’s idea of making a fight harder is to slap on absurdly large health bars to the same boring mechanics of every other fight.

They don’t explain the roles better because there is only one role – DPS. Sure, maybe you want to sacrifice a little damage so you die in two hits instead of one, or maybe you give up a damage skill for a banner or shout, but in the end every single classes is invited to that group primarily to do DPS.

Second issue is that with dynamic events. He obviously knows nothing about map completion and renown hearts for leveling outside of dynamic events. He also thinks that events that have one person helping should still succeed. Im sorry but if youre one man taking on a centaur army youre not going to succeed, are you? Its called realism. Yes it can be annoying but id rather have that than events that automatically succeed no matter how many people are participating.

BurnedToast.3781:

There’s no control (defiant buff on anything worth controlling)

This is something that has bugged the kitten out of me since launch. This game feels like oldschool final fantasy where every skill that caused a status effect might as well not existed since you would never waste the MP on a random encounter and any boss worth trying to blind or put to sleep was completely immune to status effects.

BurnedToast.3781:

I guess it’s related to point #1, but I’m surprised they didn’t mention the horribly shallow combat system. Actually I’d say point #1 is not really a problem, it’s just a symptom of the shallow combat system.

There’s no tanking, no aggro management (if the game has a hate system it’s so incomprehensible it might as well be random).

There’s no control (defiant buff on anything worth controlling),

Buffs are short duration and long cooldown, and healing coefficents are almost universally terrible. There’s no mana/energy or anything like that either making support not particularly viable.

Probably 70% of your survivability comes from the two dodges every single class gets free, 20% from utilities/traits, and 10% from toughness/health. Meanwhile, due to the downed system (and to rez zerging which thankfully they are starting to fix with fractals), it’s not much of a problem if you die anyway.

Meanwhile ANet’s idea of making a fight harder is to slap on absurdly large health bars to the same boring mechanics of every other fight.

They don’t explain the roles better because there is only one role – DPS. Sure, maybe you want to sacrifice a little damage so you die in two hits instead of one, or maybe you give up a damage skill for a banner or shout, but in the end every single classes is invited to that group primarily to do DPS.

Couldn’t agree more about the buff/debuff system. Its unusable and uninteresting in it’s current state.

The combat system is the BEST IVE EVER EXPERINCED. That guy is only right about the story, the story is horrible, why couldnt they have hired me? I’de be their story righter for 12 dollars an hour aslong as it was permanet and i would come up with WAY better storys then the ones were told here, hell even just copy a good story with your own gw spin on it and it would be miles ahead of what we got now.

Also the personal story needs more grouped missions with more narration and epic fealing, phopecies had the epic fealing SOMETIMES but it just got redic when you had 8 people trying to kill one dwarf for 5 min, its more fun fighting hordes of enemies then just slapping a lvl 1 looking char in their iwth 100000000hp, makes you feal weak, make us heros, if you want us to fight high hp bosses please make them look epic and give them reason for being so strong.

TL;DR VERSION:

NO TRINITY, NUMBERS GAMES ARE BORING, WOW IS BORING 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN

i do agree that we need more types of game mechanics for dungeons and such.

I think the story quests are a slightly more effective breadcrumb than he gives them credit for, if only because its function as a breadcrumb is pretty explicit. Other than that, I actually agree with him on pretty much everything. I also agree that it doesn’t make GW2 a bad game. Nothing is perfect.

It really hammers the point that people want to be told what to do and where to go. At least those first three points really show that for the OP of that article. It’s why a real sandbox mmo will never be popular.

I think if the author really wanted to be critical of the game he picked the wrong points.

Thereon.3495:

Second issue is that with dynamic events. He obviously knows nothing about map completion and renown hearts for leveling outside of dynamic events. He also thinks that events that have one person helping should still succeed. Im sorry but if youre one man taking on a centaur army youre not going to succeed, are you? Its called realism. Yes it can be annoying but id rather have that than events that automatically succeed no matter how many people are participating.

Yes, but that is a bad design if you are building a game to last. A new player is going to have a hard enough time trying to get a feel for the game with low level areas devoid of life and will get even more frustrated by impossible quests that were designed to be done with large groups that would have only ever been found during the launch of the game. If you start to cut off the supply of fresh players the game stagnates and won’t last very long.

Also, let’s not invoke realism in a game where I can be shot in the face with a gun and be totally okay.

Blissified.8369:

The combat system is the BEST IVE EVER EXPERINCED. That guy is only right about the story, the story is horrible, why couldnt they have hired me? I’de be their story righter for 12 dollars an hour aslong as it was permanet and i would come up with WAY better storys then the ones were told here, hell even just copy a good story with your own gw spin on it and it would be miles ahead of what we got now.

Also the personal story needs more grouped missions with more narration and epic fealing, phopecies had the epic fealing SOMETIMES but it just got redic when you had 8 people trying to kill one dwarf for 5 min, its more fun fighting hordes of enemies then just slapping a lvl 1 looking char in their iwth 100000000hp, makes you feal weak, make us heros, if you want us to fight high hp bosses please make them look epic and give them reason for being so strong.

TL;DR VERSION:

NO TRINITY, NUMBERS GAMES ARE BORING, WOW IS BORING 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN

i do agree that we need more types of game mechanics for dungeons and such.

It is so hard to not feel like AN’s target market is ADD Teens when most of the people defending the game sound like this…

but lets not invoke non realism where a rabbit can one hit a lvl 80, or where a dragon has 1 hp, or where you a gun doesnt do any damage or were falling 10000 feet is survable or explosions do kno damage.

Some realism is cool, fantasy genre’s anrt devoid of ANY realism gravity exists, their ARE rules they can just be bent.

(i get a cooky for matrix quote)

BurnedToast.3781:

I guess it’s related to point #1, but I’m surprised they didn’t mention the horribly shallow combat system. Actually I’d say point #1 is not really a problem, it’s just a symptom of the shallow combat system.

There’s no tanking, no aggro management (if the game has a hate system it’s so incomprehensible it might as well be random).

There’s no control (defiant buff on anything worth controlling),

Buffs are short duration and long cooldown, and healing coefficents are almost universally terrible. There’s no mana/energy or anything like that either making support not particularly viable.

Probably 70% of your survivability comes from the two dodges every single class gets free, 20% from utilities/traits, and 10% from toughness/health. Meanwhile, due to the downed system (and to rez zerging which thankfully they are starting to fix with fractals), it’s not much of a problem if you die anyway.

Meanwhile ANet’s idea of making a fight harder is to slap on absurdly large health bars to the same boring mechanics of every other fight.

They don’t explain the roles better because there is only one role – DPS. Sure, maybe you want to sacrifice a little damage so you die in two hits instead of one, or maybe you give up a damage skill for a banner or shout, but in the end every single classes is invited to that group primarily to do DPS.

Umm what? No tanking…well I can tank pretty fine for a short period of time before someone else in the party (if we’re talking about dungeons here) takes over. There is tanking in the form of damage reduction skills, just no prolonged facetanking.

No agro management? So all the knockback, fear, stun, root and daze skills are for nothing? Oh dear, ive been playing the game all wrong!

Control…see above.

Buffs are not long cooldown, short lasting. I have a constant 20+ stacks of might, perma-fury and perma-swiftness along with any other buff anyone wants to give me x1.5 due to my %boon duration armour set. If you have just a few boons for a short persiod of time youre not using the skills/equipment needed to get them so its your fault.

Survivability. Well looking past your clearly fabricated numbers, its all about how you use those separate damage reducing abilities and stats. Two miss-timed dodges and dodge itself means nothing in damage limitation. Know how and when to use each skill, how your character reacts to being damaged (traits and equipment that give bonuses to damaged players) and understand that different forms of damage limitation work better in different situations. As for going down ‘so it doesnt matter’ I can see youre just a PvE’er and dont play dungeons much.

Wow something I agree with you on! The bosses need more skills and mechanics for you to respond and survive through as their health decreases.

Only one class eh? Well players are in the party to do DPS yes, but that doesnt mean its everyone’s class. There are no classes, just individual builds that work better or worse with other individual builds. I cant count the amount of parties ive been in where ive recieved no buffs and seen no combo fields on the floor. These are players that know very little about how to best support the group. I lie, there are two classes- the smart ones and the idiots.

LordNat.4963:

Blissified.8369:

The combat system is the BEST IVE EVER EXPERINCED. That guy is only right about the story, the story is horrible, why couldnt they have hired me? I’de be their story righter for 12 dollars an hour aslong as it was permanet and i would come up with WAY better storys then the ones were told here, hell even just copy a good story with your own gw spin on it and it would be miles ahead of what we got now.

Also the personal story needs more grouped missions with more narration and epic fealing, phopecies had the epic fealing SOMETIMES but it just got redic when you had 8 people trying to kill one dwarf for 5 min, its more fun fighting hordes of enemies then just slapping a lvl 1 looking char in their iwth 100000000hp, makes you feal weak, make us heros, if you want us to fight high hp bosses please make them look epic and give them reason for being so strong.

TL;DR VERSION:

NO TRINITY, NUMBERS GAMES ARE BORING, WOW IS BORING 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN

i do agree that we need more types of game mechanics for dungeons and such.

It is so hard to not feel like AN’s target market is ADD Teens when most of the people defending the game sound like this…

lol I love the “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN” when that’s all combat in GW2 is. Being pigeonholed into DPS and locked attack bars leaves little room for creativity. The age of people coming up with things like touch rangers and 55 monks is over.

Substance E.4852:

Yes, but that is a bad design if you are building a game to last. A new player is going to have a hard enough time trying to get a feel for the game with low level areas devoid of life and will get even more frustrated by impossible quests that were designed to be done with large groups that would have only ever been found during the launch of the game. If you start to cut off the supply of fresh players the game stagnates and won’t last very long.

Also, let’s not invoke realism in a game where I can be shot in the face with a gun and be totally okay.

The devs have already acknowledged that they need to do something to get more people into lower level zones and im confident they will act on it. But for the article to say that dynamic events are REQUIRED to level is just false. Theyre an added extra that are not on the main map and lower level players are encouraged to complete the renown hearts and map completion. Dynamic events arent needed and im sure anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise this before quitting the game.

Substance E.4852:

LordNat.4963:

Blissified.8369:

The combat system is the BEST IVE EVER EXPERINCED. That guy is only right about the story, the story is horrible, why couldnt they have hired me? I’de be their story righter for 12 dollars an hour aslong as it was permanet and i would come up with WAY better storys then the ones were told here, hell even just copy a good story with your own gw spin on it and it would be miles ahead of what we got now.

Also the personal story needs more grouped missions with more narration and epic fealing, phopecies had the epic fealing SOMETIMES but it just got redic when you had 8 people trying to kill one dwarf for 5 min, its more fun fighting hordes of enemies then just slapping a lvl 1 looking char in their iwth 100000000hp, makes you feal weak, make us heros, if you want us to fight high hp bosses please make them look epic and give them reason for being so strong.

TL;DR VERSION:

NO TRINITY, NUMBERS GAMES ARE BORING, WOW IS BORING 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN

i do agree that we need more types of game mechanics for dungeons and such.

It is so hard to not feel like AN’s target market is ADD Teens when most of the people defending the game sound like this…

lol I love the “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN” when that’s all combat in GW2 is. Being pigeonholed into DPS and locked attack bars leaves little room for creativity. The age of people coming up with things like touch rangers and 55 monks is over.

GW2 is an Arcade style action game with RPG elements, not a MMO RPG.

LordNat.4963:

Substance E.4852:

LordNat.4963:

Blissified.8369:

The combat system is the BEST IVE EVER EXPERINCED. That guy is only right about the story, the story is horrible, why couldnt they have hired me? I’de be their story righter for 12 dollars an hour aslong as it was permanet and i would come up with WAY better storys then the ones were told here, hell even just copy a good story with your own gw spin on it and it would be miles ahead of what we got now.

Also the personal story needs more grouped missions with more narration and epic fealing, phopecies had the epic fealing SOMETIMES but it just got redic when you had 8 people trying to kill one dwarf for 5 min, its more fun fighting hordes of enemies then just slapping a lvl 1 looking char in their iwth 100000000hp, makes you feal weak, make us heros, if you want us to fight high hp bosses please make them look epic and give them reason for being so strong.

TL;DR VERSION:

NO TRINITY, NUMBERS GAMES ARE BORING, WOW IS BORING 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN

i do agree that we need more types of game mechanics for dungeons and such.

It is so hard to not feel like AN’s target market is ADD Teens when most of the people defending the game sound like this…

lol I love the “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, REPEAT IS NOT FUN” when that’s all combat in GW2 is. Being pigeonholed into DPS and locked attack bars leaves little room for creativity. The age of people coming up with things like touch rangers and 55 monks is over.

GW2 is an Arcade style action game with RPG elements, not a MMO RPG.

I would say it is an MMO in the strict definition of the term. However, comparing it to other games in the genre is like comparing Candy Land to Risk.

if your standing in one spot ur doing it wrong and if ur just doign 123456 and not usng skills when needed and using ur utilties ur doing it wrong

Creeper.9360:

I disagree with every point there except for the last point.

I felt the same way. There were a few things I agreed with and that was that the story is bland and disconnected, and side-kicking could be better.

I disliked the story and the NPCs of Destiny’s Edge, I just don’t feel that there needs to be NPC heroes in an MMO. One example is when Eir disturbs the ghosts in Ascalonian Catacombs, personally I think it would have been better if YOU the player disturbed them in a solo mini-dungeon and when you go back to the Group Dungeon, it is YOUR actions that caused the disturbance and YOU need to gather friends and fix it.

Side-kicking is a great concept, I love that lower level zones are intended to be a challenge for a level capped player, I just don’t think it’s challenging enough and there is no reason to go back because Orr, Dungeons and Fractals are more rewarding.

Those two gripes aside:

• I love the way levelling is handled with tasks and events instead of quests, the best thing about it was that I wasn’t lead by the nose or as the article put it “forced” into the next zone. I adventured and explored and naturally progressed in places that I naturally felt interesting enough to explore. Not once did I feel like I had to stay in one sone longer than I had to and I levelled at a natural and enjoyable pace from 1-80 on 2 characters.
• I love that I had to find my own way with profession mechanics and learnt what worked for me and what didn’t. Even now I’m still finding myself collecting gear for new build ideas.
• Crafting and gathering is the best I have seen. I’m sure there are better systems (SWG & VG) but I haven’t had the privilege of trying all of them.
• I love that there is no trinity and actually find dungeons to be more about a group of adventurers exploring a dungeon and less about a guy in heavy armour that magically forces monsters to attack him while soaking up all their damage, being backed up by a magical religious nut and his three sociopathic friends.

There are a few things that I would add to gripes from a PvE point of view (Wv3 is a different kettle of fish):

• Chest rewards in dungeons don’t have the cool items that you purchase from a vendor, it would be better if there was both systems, tokens AND chance to get it from chest.
• Weapon skills or lack thereof. I wish that each weapon had more than one option that we could interchange, don’t like pistol whip on slot three? replace it with Blade twist for a condition attack.
• No option for having a free offhand. I really wanted to play a thief with just one dagger but it’s not viable due to loss of stats and only 3 skills.
  The article raised some good points from the opinion of the author but it is an opinion nonetheless.

Thereon.3495:

BurnedToast.3781:

There’s no tanking, no aggro management (if the game has a hate system it’s so incomprehensible it might as well be random).

No agro management? So all the knockback, fear, stun, root and daze skills are for nothing? Oh dear, ive been playing the game all wrong!

The skills you have listed are called CC (Crowd Control), they have nothing to do with aggro though they could cause it to register. An aggro management skill would be a skill like a taunt that will move you to the top of the aggro meter. Also, with the trinity most dps classes have skills to either redirect or drop aggro. These are “aggro management” skills.

I have also pondered the hate system or the lack thereof. I’m really not sure what there is in GW2. I first started pondering it at level 35 when mobs began ignoring my pet and making a beeline for me. I did an experiment. I targeted a mob and sent my pet in. I meanwhile did not attack with any ability. The pet attacked the mob and the mob headed straight for me and I was outside a normal ‘aggro’ range. Hmmm, how exactly did I top the charts without doing damage. (BTW, I later learned that putting 5 points in Beastmastery solved my pet tanking problem.)

But, the whole ‘hate’ system remains as much a mystery as ever.

I can only agree with the Personal Story part…

not having something that tells you what to do is part of the fun, I started playing my mesmer being new to the GW world, probably started with very bad trait choices, but then did a little reading on the forums, actually looked over all my traits and skills looking for synergies and settled with a nice build that fits my playstyle, for the 1st time i felt like the character is built as I want it, and not led by a cookie cutter build to “max dps”

Not having clear roles in dungeons, well you just gotta communicate with your party, i’ve been in all kinds of groups, some of them really messy, some others really well organized and yes, being organized does make the ride a whole lot funner, but the good thing is that the messy group can still pull through, probaably gonna spend more on your repair fee, but still made it!

Dynamic events? I was convinced that DE were suposed to be there just to spice things up, I allways did levelling through heart completion and exploration, so this “levelling up with dynamic events” thing is new to me.

The freedom to explore is other thing i really apreciate, I came here from WoW, and it was so anoying to be in this really cool area and suddenly run out of quests, “now gotta move on” and didn’t even explore 50% of the whole map, now here i take my time, i can actually take my time and still gain levels!!

crafting can be a pain sometimes, specially low levels, but is in no way mandatory, and putting some effort to level it up actually rewards you with exp, still Anet could give some love to crafting, but i don’t see it as such a “bad thing” as it is now

tl;dr: I do not agree, the game has its flaws? yes, but those are NOT… except the Personal Story, but I still hope we will see some more in the future to make up for the lack of “personal” stuff

Seems to me his major complaint is that the game doesn’t hold your hand 100% of the time for everything.

Thereon.3495:

Substance E.4852:

Yes, but that is a bad design if you are building a game to last. A new player is going to have a hard enough time trying to get a feel for the game with low level areas devoid of life and will get even more frustrated by impossible quests that were designed to be done with large groups that would have only ever been found during the launch of the game. If you start to cut off the supply of fresh players the game stagnates and won’t last very long.

Also, let’s not invoke realism in a game where I can be shot in the face with a gun and be totally okay.

The devs have already acknowledged that they need to do something to get more people into lower level zones and im confident they will act on it. But for the article to say that dynamic events are REQUIRED to level is just false. Theyre an added extra that are not on the main map and lower level players are encouraged to complete the renown hearts and map completion. Dynamic events arent needed and im sure anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise this before quitting the game.

Umm Dynamic Events are required to level. You can’t just do 100% map completion. You will never net enough experience to move on to the next area if you just do that. You have to do Dynamic Events to get enough experience to level and move on.

And they are not an “added extra”. They are your main source of experience while leveling. Dynamic Events provide more experience than anything else on the map. They are your “quest” when compared to other MMOs.

I disagree with almost everything in the article.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Thereon.3495:

Substance E.4852:

Yes, but that is a bad design if you are building a game to last. A new player is going to have a hard enough time trying to get a feel for the game with low level areas devoid of life and will get even more frustrated by impossible quests that were designed to be done with large groups that would have only ever been found during the launch of the game. If you start to cut off the supply of fresh players the game stagnates and won’t last very long.

Also, let’s not invoke realism in a game where I can be shot in the face with a gun and be totally okay.

The devs have already acknowledged that they need to do something to get more people into lower level zones and im confident they will act on it. But for the article to say that dynamic events are REQUIRED to level is just false. Theyre an added extra that are not on the main map and lower level players are encouraged to complete the renown hearts and map completion. Dynamic events arent needed and im sure anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise this before quitting the game.

Umm Dynamic Events are required to level. You can’t just do 100% map completion. You will never net enough experience to move on to the next area if you just do that. You have to do Dynamic Events to get enough experience to level and move on.

And they are not an “added extra”. They are your main source of experience while leveling. Dynamic Events provide more experience than anything else on the map. They are your “quest” when compared to other MMOs.

No Dynamic Events are not required when you can level up to 80 on crafting alone and through WvW. Heck you can level all the way to 80 by just rezzing people if you have the patience.

lol@voice acting. I think (without any exaggeration) this is the game with the worst dialogues/voice acting i’ve ever played on pc/consoles. Been over three months and i still can’t believe how bad it is, like wow a BurgerKing game that was given to you for free with a purchase of a burger back in 06 for the 360 had better voice acting and im not trolling, dead serious.

The writer of the article need to create his own MMOrpg game. I disagree with most of his/her points.

I dont get this ROLES thing. I honestly dont. When people asked me what my role in the team is, i always told them “I am party member #3 and he is party member #2”. What’s the difference between party member #3 and party member #2? None, but both spots need to be filled to form a team.

Your team having party member #3 is Absolutely Vital for the team to succeed. Your team having a Tank/DPS/Healer/Control/Support or whatever you call it is NOT essential.

Math
Given that party member #1 to #5 are Awsome, you get
Awsome member + Awsome member + Awsome member + Awsome member + Awsome member = Awsome team.
What the team consists of does not matter.
Proof? Take 5 Warriors team, run a dungeon. If you tell me you cant, then you are not Awsome and thus does not apply. Makes sense?

You want a role? You could be Party member #3, it is a valid role. You could be Guardian#2 on the team, it is also a valid role. You could even be “person who carries 10 supplies and will build the Flame Ram in WvW” and it is still a valid essential role.

Versatility vs Pigeonhole
Amazing Party member #3 > Dead Glass Cannon DPS.
I dont need a dead dps dude who will die in 1 hit after we res him. I do need party member #3 alive though.

Scroo the Roles, I am invisible and have pink hair at the same time.

About classes:
He is kinda right but words it rather odd, people don’t play right now control, support or damage, you see a few support people you seen even less pure control builds, you see a fair few pure damage, but mainly you see mixed builds as in balanced builds. Having a pure control and a pure support and three pure damage does actually work very well, but it is done so rarely in pugs, that the game gives no direction towards it, and that is what I think he means. On a warrior with Hammer & Mace+Shield you can control a boss effectively, some times it may be worth a pure damage having some form of daze or knock back to help tick the anti-cc effects over however.

Crafting:
Made no sense in all honesty, if you cannot work out a sword hilt goes with a sword blade then it has very little to do with in game issues!

Story:
Yes it was bad

Questing:
I totally disagree, the questing system with hearts to ease you in and then more dynamic events later on is perfect, the first time in an mmo I have enjoyed leveling up via questing.

Over all, it is written very well, his articular that is, I just feel it has very little weight behind it because most people still playing Gw2 will disagree with a great many things s/he has said. I feel his point about class roles was rather awkward as I am not sure if he meet he didn’t know how to play his class or build a roll for a dungeon group, the fact is, if your going to play a pure role you should really be doing it in a guild group, because you never know what the other 4 people will be playing, I would not like to be in a group with 5 guardians in full support cleric gear using the staff.

saying that, dual builds that could be changed on the fly would help that situation a great deal.

The only non-idiotic bullet-point in the article is the “Story is Weak” point. Because that’s actually a valid complaint and a clear weakness of the game.

Absolutely rubbish, it must be a slow news days for Massively, they obviously want to stir things up so they get more views. None of the points raised are actually valid. That is not to say Guild Warts 2 does not have things it could improve on, just nothing mentioned in that article.

My problem is that it is an opinion piece with absolutely no objectivity, it is actually quite embarrassing that Massively thought it a good piece to add to their site. It does damage Massively’s journalistic integrity a fair bit, for a moment I thought I was at IGN.

That write up is spot on, everything he brought up is exactly right and i hope Arena net take it to heart, and overhaul a lot.

I just wish he’d brought up the terrible open world loot issues, unbalanced classes and insane amount of bugs this game has and the Artical would have been a clean sweep for me.

Yes the game has great points, but are so marred by the problems its hard to see its strong points..

Aedelric.1287:

Absolutely rubbish, it must be a slow news days for Massively, they obviously want to stir things up so they get more views. None of the points raised are actually valid.

Yeah they are, some of what he wrote isn’t correct but some definitely is: The story is weak; and there are clear issues with crafting around loot drops that don’t enable you to level crafting organically.

1. Roles are horribly under-explained and unclear

While it is certainly true that there is no hand-holding by ANet, it certainly seems like many players have figured out what they want to play and how. It also seems that dungeon roles, the primary (and really, the only) place where roles are important, have been figured out by those groups who are breezing through dungeons fast enough to complain about DR. In GW1, ANet did less to try to teach players how to build and play, and more to encourage them to have to figure it out. The real issue with GW2 with regard to roles is lack of depth in build options, not lack of explanation.

2. Dynamic events don’t work in their role as quest replacements

There certainly are issues with dynamic events, and some of them get nailed here. However, having played Rift, I’ve never gotten the feeling that DE’s are as repetitive as rifts. Maybe that’s because the combat in GW2 flows so much better than Rift’s antiquated GCD, static play.

3. Area flow is problematic

I’m beginning to see a pattern here. The writer seems to think that a game needs to point people in the “right” direction. While some direction seems in order, I am less fond of feeling like the developers are holding my hand, telling me, “Go here until you get to level x, then go there…”

4. Crafting is a freaking mess

Hmm. Same issue, really. “They didn’t hold my hand so I think it’s a mess.” His point about salvaging parts is well taken. However, “In other words, if you want to craft, odds are good-to-definite that you will outlevel every single item you can make until the level cap, at which point there are a handful of relevant things to make and a lot of lower-level junk you don’t need…” is directly counter to my experience.

5. The story is weak

OK, it IS weak in many places, and the good parts are drowned out in the rest. While I don’t hate Trahearne the way some seem to, and I understand that making each player the "Marshal’ might be problematic, I would rather they’d gone for a feel of the PC as the head of a commando team, with team build-up and interactions, missions, failures and successes, instead of the endless, “Accompany Trahearne while he …”

6. So it’s bad, then? Oh, heck no.

He got that part right.

I agree with every part, this was supposed to be a complete product it doesn’t seem to be it’s like it’s just in beta 4 in many aspects of the game. heck even my favorite class hasn’t even been taken out of beta production yet. engineer.

I agree in some points, and others i disagree.

In roles, meh, easy to argue that its unexplained. But, it’s easy to decide what you want to do as with any MMO. Once you decide, google a build of your preference, and you have your defined role.

Dynamic events, I whole heartily agree. the last 2 zones 70-75 and 75-80, were down right dreadful, considering they booted out the heart events in favor of dynamic events. When i first arrived there, i thought it was a cool concept. Treating the entire zone as it’s one big battle field against the risen and advancing in land. But the concept falls flat on it’s face when the zone is barren and you have no RL friends to play it with you and not enough people in your guild to help out. You will find yourself constantly dying and running miles back because all the waypoints are contested with no one to free them up. They need to rethink those zones, or find a method to bring people back to them. I gave up, spent $10 for gold, bought mats and crafted my way from 72 to 80.

area flow, sort of. i mean, if you want to complete all the starter zones to get to 30, thats up to the player, i tend to move on to a more challenging zone. However, your next destination is problematic. the story does take you around alot for one or two story quests and then moves on to a completely new zone and having to travel through to find it, making leveling inconsistent with the story missions.

Crafting, I think we can all agree that it’s very time consuming if you wish to farm the mats and not have to pay money for gold for mats. But however, let me play devil’s advocate for a second. This is a f2p game, so how does Anet make money without subscription? Cash shop, Gems, and converting gems into gold. So, for instance, if crafting required less mats, then there would be no motive to go buy gems for gold. instead, not a single person (atleast not as many as there are now) would buy gems for the mats needed, thus Anet would not be making the money needed to keep this game running, to bring out new content, and pay their staff. However, i do think some tweaking needs to be made, either lessen the amount of mats needed to craft by a little, or up the drop/ salvage rate by maybe 20%.

The story… yea, i feel a bit underwhelmed when it comes to immersing myself into the story, i don’t feel like i did much of anything most of the time. i feel the NPCs are given credit that i deserved. Some characters are lacking yes, cough cough Trahearne cough cough. But some are very likable, such as a certain character who i actually got attached to and when that character died, i felt sad and alone (wont say any names due to spoilers) as far as acting goes, I felt it was good in most places, but as with all games, you will come across some poorly acted dialogue cough cough Trahearne cough cough

still one hell of a game! and Hope Anet will improve on these flaws in future updates.

Kalaster.9014:

Crafting, I think we can all agree that it’s very time consuming if you wish to farm the mats and not have to pay money for gold for mats. But however, let me play devil’s advocate for a second. This is a f2p game, so how does Anet make money without subscription? Cash shop, Gems, and converting gems into gold. So, for instance, if crafting required less mats, then there would be no motive to go buy gems for gold. instead, not a single person (atleast not as many as there are now) would buy gems for the mats needed, thus Anet would not be making the money needed to keep this game running, to bring out new content, and pay their staff. However, i do think some tweaking needs to be made, either lessen the amount of mats needed to craft by a little, or up the drop/ salvage rate by maybe 20%.

I disagree with this, when crafting to make basic exotic armor and weapons, we should not have to resort to buying gold or grinding to get the mats needed for them, and indeed this is what anet originally promised. If we want special items sure.

I actually disagree with all points on that article. I honestly expected to see ascended gear not only on that list, but at the top of it, especially considering the negative impact they have had on the moral of a large portion of the playerbase, as well as slaughtering the population of open world zones… but instead it was a list of things that I actually think work really well for the game.

I love the events and they easily acted as a quest replacement for me. The story actually almost engrossed me. I say almost, only because I hit a story bug that held me on my level 45 quest for over a month, until long after I hit 80. By the time it got fixed on Nov 15th, I no longer cared what happened next. But up until that point I actually was really interested in what was happening.

His crafting section I only mildly, mildly agree with in the regards of “you will likely outlevel what you need”. But honestly, that was fine. The requiring prerequisite items for another was really engrossing to me, and the gaining experience was a huge boon. My only complaint about crafting is that it is practically worthless for making money with the way the market has been since release. But for getting experience and being a generally amusing way to waste some time? I like it.

The area flow paragraph I’m not really understanding at all. There were times where I ended up getting left behind by the zones I was in, unable to do the next heart quests because I somehow finished the rest but didn’t level at an appropriate rate… but nowhere near to the extent he is talking about. I almost always ended up in the right zone at the right level, getting level appropriate gear from the karma vendors. And it happened thoughtlessly. No planning necessary on my part. I just did everything in one zone, moved to the next.

All together I have to say that while I was expecting to agree completely with the article, given my complete disdain for the direction this game is heading in since the November 15th reenactment of Star War’s Galaxy’s NGE patch, it instead chose what I consider to be the games strongest points. I simply can’t find myself agreeing at all with what they wrote.

I disagree with the entire article, it sounds to me like the author want his hand held and feels lost when he needs to think for himself.
He also sounds like a long time MMO player that expects things to be a certain familiar way and if it is not, he cannot adapt.
A lot of the things he says makes me think that he missed the point in some fundamental way.
I don’t have any of his issues, the issues I have, he didn’t mention.

I totally disagree with the article. Want the trinity back? Go play World of Warcraft.

Dynamic events are NOT quests replacement. “Heart” quests are. Dynamic events are DYNAMIC which means it happens from time to time. Yes it could be a bit more dynamic, but in comparison Warhammer totally gets blown away.

GW2 isn’t a theme park like any others. There’s a little sandbox side in it that let’s you decide how you want to play your character and I think it is awesome. This is so refreshing from the pre-defined builds of WoW, but then again just go play it.

As for crafting, some of it is a mess yes. But for the most part, I think’s it’s thousands times superior to other MMOs currently on the market. Salvaging is an awesome idea took from the first version of GW and crafting as a whole is fun (at least for me).

I always felt crafting was worthless in other games, but not in GW2 since it provides me with very good XP.

That’s my two cents. It’s brand new, no you’re not used to it but trust me this is for the better.

morrolan.9608:

Kalaster.9014:

Crafting, I think we can all agree that it’s very time consuming if you wish to farm the mats and not have to pay money for gold for mats. But however, let me play devil’s advocate for a second. This is a f2p game, so how does Anet make money without subscription? Cash shop, Gems, and converting gems into gold. So, for instance, if crafting required less mats, then there would be no motive to go buy gems for gold. instead, not a single person (atleast not as many as there are now) would buy gems for the mats needed, thus Anet would not be making the money needed to keep this game running, to bring out new content, and pay their staff. However, i do think some tweaking needs to be made, either lessen the amount of mats needed to craft by a little, or up the drop/ salvage rate by maybe 20%.

I disagree with this, when crafting to make basic exotic armor and weapons, we should not have to resort to buying gold or grinding to get the mats needed for them, and indeed this is what anet originally promised. If we want special items sure.

well, i never said i agreed with how they’re doing it, that’s more of what Anet is probably thinking and i understand why, but its unbalanced to us players, Mat farming in this game is too much (for me atleast) i dont have enough time in the day to even come close to farm and craft my exotics. so i spent a few bucks, and got them. Im having too much fun in this game, i cant afford to ruin it by mining veins and salvaging equipment and chopping trees. That’s what killed WoW for me.

There is also much to be said about the lackluster-ness of dungeon how and they fail to really tell a worthwhile story or give a memorable experience. In my case, I skipped the majority of the story mode’s simply because leveling my personal story and doing hearts/dynamic events were more than enough to lvl me quickly. Going back, there was no reason to replay those story mode’s, effectively loosing out on a large chunk of the story plot that we are all supposed to be following (Destiney’s Edge). Then once you hit 80 the goal is to grind ONE dungeon until you get a set of desired exotic armor/weapons. This makes you less motivated to venture out and do other dungeons due to the fact that the only reason to do dungeons at 80 is for the respected tokens. Then once you get your cool gear set…then what? You get into fractals and have to repeat the same frustrating process of finding a group, dealing with DC’s, etc. all so that you can get ascended gear? But on top of that, the drive to get the best in slot gear is non-existant really. There are few instances where the difference between your dungeon exotics and ascended gear will make a big enough difference in PvE. So then you feel like your doing all this work for little reward. It just feels like there is little motivation to be constantly getting better gear because there doesn’t exist the exclusion of raid spots where gear scores are relevant. This game has alot of elements that are superior to WoW, but something that WoW did well was have raids that felt epic (to a degree). Every raid run was a challenge and every boss could drop an amazing item for you. You were excited to participate and EARN your spot in that raid. That excitement does not exist in GW2 PvE.

Sterz.2463:

There is also much to be said about the lackluster-ness of dungeon how and they fail to really tell a worthwhile story or give a memorable experience. In my case, I skipped the majority of the story mode’s simply because leveling my personal story and doing hearts/dynamic events were more than enough to lvl me quickly. Going back, there was no reason to replay those story mode’s, effectively loosing out on a large chunk of the story plot that we are all supposed to be following (Destiney’s Edge). Then once you hit 80 the goal is to grind ONE dungeon until you get a set of desired exotic armor/weapons. This makes you less motivated to venture out and do other dungeons due to the fact that the only reason to do dungeons at 80 is for the respected tokens. Then once you get your cool gear set…then what? You get into fractals and have to repeat the same frustrating process of finding a group, dealing with DC’s, etc. all so that you can get ascended gear? But on top of that, the drive to get the best in slot gear is non-existant really. There are few instances where the difference between your dungeon exotics and ascended gear will make a big enough difference in PvE. So then you feel like your doing all this work for little reward. It just feels like there is little motivation to be constantly getting better gear because there doesn’t exist the exclusion of raid spots where gear scores are relevant. This game has alot of elements that are superior to WoW, but something that WoW did well was have raids that felt epic (to a degree). Every raid run was a challenge and every boss could drop an amazing item for you. You were excited to participate and EARN your spot in that raid. That excitement does not exist in GW2 PvE.

I think you are missing something there bud, when you gear up your character and, lets say, you have a “complete character” what’s left to do? PLAY THE GAME!! why are you gearing? to play the game!! you shouldn’t be allways chasing the shiny gear-carrot, i enjoy running dungeons with my guildies, then sometimes i’ll go to WvW or just go arround from map to map chasing some events, do some Legendary farming level up that profession you never cared about, there is always something to do… but dont think that every single thing you do has to be rewarded… when you were a child and you played with your toys, you did it for the fun!! not to get a “toy upgrade” xD am I right?

I agree that the game is not very bread crumb friendly and that the story is really bad. But to say the non-trinity is game is too confusing is stupid. It’s not cookie cutter anymore in this game. Author needs to realize that. There are good builds obviously but you can get away with whatever you want.

I think that is a pretty decent article.

Overall I like GW2. I have some issues with it, sure, but overall it’s pretty fun.

But to address his points – I think I agree with them all.

As for no trinity – I played a healer main/tank alt in pretty much every MMO I’ve ever played. I’ve never had any problem with the trinity system because I’ve rarely been stuck for hours LFG. I’ve always found DPS rather boring, to be honest.

In GW2, my overall feeling for the group dungeons is that they are simply chaotic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s an actual improvement over the trinity – it’s just different. Asheron’s Call 1 was like this (well, not really, there weren’t even parties, but there were also no tanks or healers).

And the kiting/dodging nature of this game causes mobs to reset during fights quite often – because while the combat system is different from other MMOs, the mobs don’t seem to be designed with a different combat system in mind. Early on (and still occasionally now) on my Mesmer, I’d be fighting something and dodging/kiting, and even though I wasn’t running away (just trying to avoid being hit while hitting the mob) I’d inadvertently go out of it’s leash range and it’d reset. Pretty annoying.

And to the not explaining things – GW2 fails to explain a LOT about the entire game – not just class roles.

As for the dynamic events – again I tend to agree with him. They are, basically, repeatable quests that you can’t, generally, control when they start. They’re often buggy or broken (basically any event that involves NPC allies with their poor AI and/or scripting).

For area flow – on my first character, leveled up to 80 before Labor Day, I had absolutely no problem outleveling a zone before I 100% it – and that’s how I approached it – I’d go to a zone my level, and 100% it. I was never less than at least 1 level above the zone when I finished it – I’m guessing due to so many dynamic events completed due to so many people in the zones.

On my 2nd character, leveled to 80 some time later, nearly every zone I would 100% at least 1, if not 2, and sometimes even 3 levels below the level of the last heart. The zones were, and still are for the most part, barren of other players. It was either Gendarran or Kessex where, on this 2nd character, I started the zone 2 levels above the level of the lowest heart, and finished the zone THREE levels below the level of highest heart. It was a zone I had done on my 1st 80, so there was that, but there was not a single dynamic event to be found the entire time I was in the zone. And this was with XP food (from my main) on the whole time.

Crafting is, like nearly every MMO out there, nearly useless. It’s great that it provides character XP (I have a level 38 ele with 2 max professions, and I have a level 2 war that will max my last 2 professions – I have 2 maxed ones on my 2 80’s), but keeping your craft level appropriate isn’t easy, and you really don’t make anything useful until you can make level 80 rares/exotics. On that first character, I simply did not find enough drops to keep 2 crafts (with one being cooking) up to my character level – but this was when the TP was down, so there was no way to get the mats besides asking via mail or farming.

Sure you need crafts to make legendaries, but since you can apparently just buy legendaries from the TP, that doesn’t matter much.

The story – one of the worst stories in an RPG I’ve ever seen. I’ve only advanced one char to the level 71 step and that was only because at the time you needed to get there to get a POI – no longer necessary, so I won’t be doing the story on any character unless I complete everything else there is to do in-game and every other video game, book and TV show in existence is destroyed for some unknown Mayan-esque apocalypse reason.

Mistranslated JRPGs from the 90’s have much more interesting and engaging stories than GW2’s story.

Overall GW2 is a good game. I don’t particularly like the grinds needed to do so much of the “content”, but for the most part that stuff isn’t needed, and as long as there’s other stuff to do, that’s ok. I do not, at all, like the idea of vertical progression (if I want to play a vertical progression game, TBH I’ll do it in a game that does it well – not GW2’s RNG FotM vertical progression), and I think they have gone way overboard with the incredibly low RNG stuff all over the game, but there’s quite a bit to love about GW2.

Whether it stays that way (lots of stuff to love) really depends on the forthcoming communication and development that was promised a month ago in O’Brien’s AMA (and really hasn’t appeared in any form since).