Guild Wars 2

This article puts down a few points that very much reflect my opinions on GW2.

GW2 is the first game with crafting where I didn’t do any crafting. It is messy and sluggish. Any other game I did crafting.

The roles are indeed not well-defined and there is no clarity on character builds and roles at all. I agree that it would’ve been better if there was more explanation from Anet on how these should work in game. The trait system is laughable to me because it just doesn’t really add anything exciting to the build etc.

Zones are there. I even think there are too many zones and that each zone doesn’t have enough leveling activities. I should be able to port to a zone and have events happening, pinging on the map, so I know where the action is. Not walking around trying to find an event, asking people if any events are up and no answer.

The story is totally how I feel about it. It’s not MY STORY. Not at all. This is the biggest disappointment of them all.

Of course people have different priorities but this was a big one for me. Also where GW2 actually breathed history and cohesion, GW2 doesn’t breathe the history and has no cohesion. It’s like different teams were designing different parts of the world and never talked to each other. The world looks amazing, but it doesn’t give a feeling of depth to it.

Its the difference between a top 40 hit and a classic song. I am sure plenty of people will love the latest Rihanna song, but I am more the Stairway to Heaven type of guy. Whereas GW1 gave something for both, it seems GW2 just went the top 40 way.

That’s why I think that GW2 will still be successful but it needs to keep scoring every month and that’s where the monthly events and content patches come in. Simply to keep people hyped and busy and not look too much deeper, because for me, and yes this is simply MY OPINION, the game lacks depth. It’s too contrived and superficial.

I do not think GW2 is a perfect game, but the article seems to miss the mark by quite a long shot. I think a lot of what GW2 is trying to accomplish is simply to allow people to define their own game, instead of being spoon-fed One Way to level, or One Way to battle, like the other MMOs.

Yes, they didn’t explain combat mechanics and roles, because you do what you want. Aside from the fact that everyone has to attack and heal themselves, everything else is totally up to the player. If you felt challenged you can just focus on staying alive, if you want to be the MVP you can try to protect/heal others and buff them as well. The character builds also reflect this philosophy, and in terms of being complicated and hard to learn, there are far more complex games out there, google up a guide if you don’t want to bother with it.

Crafting, could be a disappointment. There are a lot crafting could have contributed to the game, but then plenty games did well without crafting too. It’s not a very high priority but could be a bonus if crafts are empowered to effect the game in a deeper way. Currently, crafting is mostly limited to asset creation, and yet it’s not the only way to asset acquisition. It will be more powerful if its tied to ongoing operational expenses, such as more consumables, including sieges (for wvw) or other structural things (like housing? if that ever gets in).

Story, yes. The story is bad. No surprises for a GW1 player.Let’s drop this already.

I’ve played pretty much every MMO on the market and some no longer on the market, and I have to say, I disagree with this article completely. I enjoyed all, if not most, of the things he seemed to not like about the game, and all it has led me to think is that this guy does not have similar tastes as me and to not trust his opinion. Because that’s all it is, just this one person’s opinion. Except this guy can put his on the internet for a lot more people to see. That is the only difference. This is why I generally can’t take “video game journalism” seriously. What makes this guy’s tastes in video games more important than someone elses’? Nothing at all.

Whoever claimed GW2 Crafting is great is obviously using a guide to craft.

The Role issues is apparent when you’re introduced to AC for the first time when everyone is still level 35. Game has advanced to the developed stage, roles are becoming more apparent, but there’s still problems with the professions that remain unresolved, like Engineers.

Also
Don’t tell me you’re learned anything from those early encounters when EVERYONE lacks their GM traits at lvl 35 AC and is not ‘top-geared’ for the instance.

Meh, i suspect the real reason for the lackluster “roles” are not the “no trinity” bruhaha but rather ANet’s vendetta against bunkers.

Observe that if you go all in with damage you can output numbers in the 20000s, but doing so with healing will barely grant you a extra 100, if HP has an effect at all.

I have had the same experience across all professions so far, sooner or later i will find myself kiting a mass of mobs around with AOE auto-attacks simply because it is my only defense. I can’t stun them for long so i can focus down on one of them, or in essence control the battle, because the duration of my CCs come in the single digits but have cooldown sometimes measured in minutes (this while if you venture into Orr pulling one mob may quickly find yourself facing a CC lock train).

And when the kiting comes into effect i fight the game controls as much as the mobs, because the camera reacts to just about every low hanging branch in the area, i have to hold down a button continually to even control said camera, and my toon can’t be aimed using the camera controls.

And i have also encountered the issue of while doing what i was apparently supposed to be doing to stay alive the mob will simply loose all interest and head back to its spawn point while regenerating health at an alarming rate. This while i am stuck in combat, no health regen and likely will find said mob return to chew on my face with full health within seconds.

Never mind that often the terrain makes it impossible to move about as a defensive measure, unless you like bumping into walls or fall off cliffs.

End result is that vigor becomes more important than protection or regen for survival, with only out and out attack stoppers like blind or aegis topping it (swiftness and its condition counterparts may apply if you have the actual room to circle strafe).

The game has its flaws (open world instant respawns are my #1 hate) but the writer misses nearly all of them. I can only agree with the story bullet-point.

The area-flow bullet-point is completely off the mark. I am happy that we can wander more or less freely within zones and across the world, without being channelled down corridors (hello Aion) or led by the nose with fed-ex quests (hello LOTRO).

Strongly disagree, yes GW2 wont hold your hand from lvl 1-80 and then carry you through dungeons. If you want to play GW2 you have thinking for yourself – or get someone to do it for you, but the game wont.

In this article: the editor attempts to play GW2 with a very limiting playstyle – gets frustrated when it doesn’t go his way.

• Leveling: The editor wants to only do each event once in a zone, before being at an appropriate level for the next zone. The game offers multiple paths for leveling that rewards players for diversifying.

• Crafting: The editor wants a guided, clear cut path for crafting, possibly allowing 1-400 to be achieved with far less resources. The game offers multiple recipes and paths for leveling each craft, that rewards players for finding efficient recipe paths and discovery (a new recipe every 25 craft levels for max mats consumption efficiency, researching recipes with low fine mats prices on TP, use karma recipes where possible with cooking, use recipes that provide good TP returns).

• Character roles: The editor wants to be told what his role is supposed to be in parties and group encounters. The game offers multiple ways to build your class that can be hot swapped (with traits), enabling players to discover and augment their own unique playstyle as they gain more experience.

• Map transitions: The editor is confused, he believes there is no incentive to move onto other maps, while complaining that karma gear rewards in low level maps don’t provide enough benefits to remain. He glosses over the fact that personal story gently pushes players into new zones, and provides an incentive to “explore” new areas.

The key theme that the editor doesn’t seem to grasp (in all of his points) is that personal discovery, experience, and exploration is built into nearly all aspects of the game. GW2 in this sense is more of a sandbox than a guided, pathed road. This key aspect is what attracted me to the game, and even after creating multiple alts, continues to drive me to play/enjoy this game.

It is about time the media started looking at the game critically instead of fanboi blinders.
This is the only way to force Anet to make real productive changes in game for the better.
It is about time and I hope more of the gaming population and media start to do this.
Everything isnt fine and there are issues that need to be addressed. And with Anet content to sit quiet and say NOTHING is killing it also. (I dont use twitts & Farcebook -they are not communication tools -your forums are HINT!!!)

Turtle Dragon.9241:

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.

The problem with that is that it’s mind-numblingly non-interesting.

If the only requirement is to “show up” that lacks the depth and the engagement that players like the author are looking for.

sinisterpink.7912:

• Character roles: The editor wants to be told what his role is supposed to be in parties and group encounters. The game offers multiple ways to build your class that can be hot swapped (with traits), enabling players to discover and augment their own unique playstyle as they gain more experience.

Hot swap? Not by a long shot!

If we had true hot swap, ANet would allow us to store whole templates, potentially complete with gear, that we could swap to anywhere by hitting a single load icon, and perhaps paying the equivalent of a trait reset, no matter where we were in the field.

Right now the best i can do is carry extra gear in the bag and swap around the major traits and utility skills. but to really be effective you need to swap whole trait lines when you swap gear.

The removal of Trahearne-or-what’s-his-name and making it truly our personal story would do wonders, I reckon.

Won’t ever happen though.

But still…

digiowl.9620:

sinisterpink.7912:

• Character roles: The editor wants to be told what his role is supposed to be in parties and group encounters. The game offers multiple ways to build your class that can be hot swapped (with traits), enabling players to discover and augment their own unique playstyle as they gain more experience.

Hot swap? Not by a long shot!

If we had true hot swap, ANet would allow us to store whole templates, potentially complete with gear, that we could swap to anywhere by hitting a single load icon, and perhaps paying the equivalent of a trait reset, no matter where we were in the field.

Right now the best i can do is carry extra gear in the bag and swap around the major traits and utility skills. but to really be effective you need to swap whole trait lines when you swap gear.

Sounds like a good idea, perhaps you should suggest in the suggestions forum
You can hot swap swap with traits to a limited to degree yes, a full reset to completely overhaul your build tho is only a class-trainer-npc away: found in every major city, starting zones, wvw borderlands accessible immediately via the GUI. I imagine that by addin some permanence to choosing where to invest trait points, Anet wants to allow players to feel they are crafting a build and investing in it (unlike say Diablo 3, where there is no feeling of identity at all with being able to hot swap everything)

GW2 is far from perfect, but the article mostly highlights the shortcomings of the writer as a player, rather than the shortcomings of the game.

I’m not saying there aren’t things to improve on, such as story, dungeon mechanics and more defining class roles.

But every single suggestion made to improve these would seriously hurt the game, are really a desire of someone who misses his old mmo’s and wants to implement his own twisted version of what he believes is fun into GW2. This game isn’t perfect, but it certainly doesn’t need what he’s suggesting. In fact the reasons it’s lacking on some parts is because it still struggles to break away from the standard mmo structure.

The 2 things wrong with GW2 atm according to me:
-The story is weak.
-You don’t feel rewarded at all for doing any content but fractals atm, wich limits the game in a huge way.

OK so for the most part I disagree with what this article says, the only points I do agree on are that I do always out level my crafting making it kind of redundent and that it’s hard to get the materials as you out level the drops and are left with hopping on bags.
On the other hand this does help to promote trade which is a good thing.

I kind of agree on the personal story but this isn’t a dedicated RPG so what do you expect.

The rest I have to disagree with, it sounds like the guy/girl who wrote the article needs someone to hold his hand and tell him where to go what to do and how to play his class…I personally like working these things out and not having a cookie cutter set of predefined options…I’m not told to go there do that, I can do what I want. I don’t need to be told to “now go to this area complete and move on”, that’s not what this game is about.

I guess all on this is coming from normal MMO burnout, I just can’t stand the normal quest dynamics game employ now or the whack-a-mole healing. I prefer the fluidity and flexability of the systems in GW2

I disagree with the most points in the article.

I think, it’s intended that no real guidance exists for professions. Players should be engaged to discover things on it’s own rather then a guide that tells them how it works. It’s a part of gaming experience that would toned down if everything is discovered by design.

Either leveling and Events. I can’t see any problems in there. Every zone offers many things to do to raise up the experience bar, i never had problems to level up and the way how this is implemented. It’s refreshing not to have a common thread where you have to go.

All in all the article screams to an overall guide for everything or an implementation of a themed gaming platform. This is sadly a sort of mistake by the time how mmorpgs have been developed. Look on WoW, this game is an entire guide to all that exists in the game. There is no space for your own creativity, everything is predetermined.

I’m happy that gw2 feels different in this case.

GW2 is far from perfect but the article misses the ball a few core points:
- the crafting is very good in GW2 and once you realize discovery, is easier, cheaper and more fun than any other RPG. Granted it is non intuitive to grinders but I consider that a good thing.

- in the same vein, WoW veterans still do not understand how the dynamic event system works. Ride the chain. Have fun. That’s the best way to level.

The biggest thing IMHO the article misses out, and imho is the largest flaw in GW2 at the moment is the complete lack of community building mechanics and tools.

You can have all the content and game mechanics in the world but if there is no reason 95% of the time to do stuff together the whole game suffers.

You end up with a Tin Man game. Very, very clever but no heart.

The design of the game as present divides players up rather than gives them a reason to be together.

They split players into servers
When it finally arrives guesting will limit players movements those servers where they already know people
These players are then further split up by mechanics such as FOTM where a single level discriminates player against player.

In the open world, the bond that grouping and teaming forms is reduced to a one night stand mentality or even rendered largely pointless.

Waypoint costs reduce the incentive to travel to places especially when those places offer little challenge or rewards to higher level players.

Double wammy death penalties discourage people from ‘just having a go’ which breeds an elitist attitude.

The multi guild system means people cant communicate across guilds, no custom chat channels means that groups of friends can’t share a common chat even if they are in a guild of not and no alliances means that Guilds that share a common culture cant band together.

WvW concerns prevent guild members on different servers getting the same buffs amd upgrades, thus either forcing players to move to servers outside of their timezone, have lag issues or that may not be as popular.

There is no single unique common ‘hang out place’ where guilds can just go to chill out, play games and have parties.

The main failure of the game is’nt that there is’nt enough to do. Is that there is not enough reason, nor is it easy to do stuff together..

Trinity: He’s correct in that the replacement of the trinity system isn’t explained to the players, but this is a problem with the game as a whole, not just the trinity replacement system, i.e. many concepts in the game isn’t discussed.

Though, it could be argued that GW2 is all about self-exploration and discovery. It is not noob-friendly, thats for sure. Players must do their own research to get good at it, as you have said, which traits have synergy with which weapons and utilities. And to be fair, I am not sure spoon-feeding all that to a GW2 noob is ideal, as they would miss out learning how to really play the game. I do agree though, there should be some simple explanations on the fundatmentals of support/heal/control, i.e. what they are, etc. The rest should be done via self-discovery.

DEs, leveling and Area flow: Hearts wasn’t even mentioned. Hearts form part of the leveling process. There are some flaws with Dynamic Events, as was pointed out, but it’s not so much in relation to levelling but rather fine-tuning to cater better to the number of players and adding more paths for variety.

He mentioned that there’s not enough DEs to help level a zone, and yet under “Area Flow”, he also said that he would hit the level cap long before moving onto higher level areas, which is contradicting itself.

When a zone is outleveled, a player gets both types of drops (in 60/40% ratio, iirc), i.e. zone level drops and character level drops.

In regards to ‘No breadcrumb quests to move on to another zone’. This is by design. GW2 is designed to be a very free flowing game, apart from personal quests (cause it’s personal). One shouldn’t need to be told where to go, if he/she is high enough level, they should go wherever they want. Why is “having the freedom to do anything” is good, but “nothing forcing you to move on is SIGNIFICANTLY less awesome”?

I think many gamers are still very linear in their gameplay. It’s the reason why I love GW2, cause one can do whatever and has so many paths of achieving the same result (bar the new Ascended gear, though I would think ANet will rectify that in future patches).

Crafting: I’ve not played FFXIV, but I don’t really see any issues with crafting. There will always be things you craft that you end up salvaging or selling or whatever, and crafting is quite easy (with both discovery and finding mats).

Tailoring/Leatherworking are probably slightly harder than Blacksmith/jeweller, due to supply/drops, but at least crafting can gives Best in slot (not counting Ascended gear since that’s for one dungeon use only), unlike WoW or SWTOR.

Story: I agree the story at times feels lacking. I myself couldn’t even bother to finish it.

Personally, what I consider things going wrong…are:
- bugs are not getting fixed for a long time. Game has been out for almost 4 months and many simple bugs are still not addressed.
- Halloween patch was done well but the Lost Shore event wasn’t. It felt rushed, bringing in 2 changes (Ascended gear and FOTM) that impacted the player base in negative ways, i.e. the possbility of vertical progression and pulling players to FOTM.

I don’t get why he complains about not being to level up through DEs alone but in the next point complains that there is too much stuff to do in zones and you will end up out leveling them before you have finished.

I also don’t know why he is complaining that if you do all 5 starter zones you end up at level 30. Well obviously. If you want to be level 10 when you do the next zone don’t do all 5 starter zones before hand. It is like complaining that if you make a new character then level 2 crafts up to 400 then you won’t be level 1 when you finally do some PvE.

Some problems I have with Guild Wars 2:

1. In development it said that there were so many dynamic events that you wouldn’t see the same one twice. That was clearly a lie.

2. Enemy AI is rather dull. Most of the time you can just sit there and spam your auto attack and a couple other skills. This even happens with bosses. An example is the boss in Citadel of Flame path 1. All you do is stand there and auto attack it while occasionally dodging out of the aoes. The player skill variety is there, but the enemy skill variety is not.

3. This point is similar to number 2, but for what the AI currently has, it’s not structured very well. Enemies (at least non-bosses) need to be a bit more random in when they use certain skills. It just seems like enemies are programed to use a certain skill at a certain time. An example of this is when there is a mob that has knockdowns and they all keep using knockdowns on you and get you perma-knockdowned and then you die (I’m looking at you, Twilight Arbor).

4. The scale of the encounters is not as grand as I was hoping. I was expecting big bosses like in Sorrow’s Embrace story mode. Even the boss of Citadel of Flame story mode was interesting because it played sort of like a mini game. However bosses like these seem to be fairly rare.

5. There is no reason for high level characters to go to lower level zones. Whenever I hear a dev say “well.. low level zones lower your level so it’s fine” I want to smash my face into the keyboard. Part of the problem I think is that there are no rewards worth getting for high level characters in low level zones. I almost think what items creatures drop should be based on what your character’s level is, not what the level of the creature is. Also making events that move through zones could help too.

6. Things like Karma and skillpoints seem underutilized. I don’t care for getting a legendary weapon so when I get more and more karma and skill points I just go “what am I supposed to do with all of this?” I know you can get exotics with karma but it’s a small pool of exotics. I think I’ve only bought 3 of the exotic karma pieces (precision/condition damage/toughness) and that was for my flamethrower engineer. None of the other ones really interest me.

7. There’s no real way for a server to properly communicate. The best there is is map chat, but that’s not good enough. There needs to be something more encompassing than just map chat.

8. Can’t talk to multiple guilds at once. The fact that you can only talk to one guild at a time stops me from wanting to join other guilds.

Zeldain.5710:

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.

I can’t understand his issue on the “roles” part. It’s pretty simple: There are no roles.
I play D&D board game and have done that for the past 15 years. There are no roles there either, just the classes and what they bring to the table. The fact that you need to be able to stay alive on your own and assist your team mates in the best way possible is not new to me. It might be new to a guy with WoW as him/her only RPG experience, but those players are usually pretty narrow-minded anyway.

The rest is just personal preference I guess. I haven’t completed my story, but that’s not because I find it weak, I just find the rewards for it non-existent . The same thing goes with crafting. I’m gonna loose more gold by crafting than I’m gonna gain from it.

There are far worse issues with the game than those mentioned in that review..

Author was exaggerating heavily on most things. Crafting is fine, leveling is fine, and the story, while not amazing, is still better than like 75% of the MMO’s out there.

I do agree though that traits are a mess and need a lot of work. Not so much because they lack direction, but a ton of them are underpowered, misplaced, or bugged.

He’s right about the story, that’s about it.

Chipster.6713:

Zeldain.5710:

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.

I can’t understand his issue on the “roles” part. It’s pretty simple: There are no roles.
I play D&D board game and have done that for the past 15 years. There are no roles there either, just the classes and what they bring to the table.

Except that you can clearly see roles in how only certain classes get heals, others get massive HP and an arsenal of weapons, and yet others get lethal abilities but can’t take on a stiff breeze without falling over.

There are two things people talk about when they say “trinity”. The first is that you need a certain mix of roles filled to have anything close to a smooth instance run.

another is the pigeonhole-ing of classes into tank, healer, DPS. Or if you will, warrior, white mage, black mage. This is similar to how D&D classes have been structured since almost forever.

The tank/warrior classes will have the ability to take massive damage (tho not infinite) and grab the attention of enemies no matter what the rest of the group do.

The healer/white mage will have all the serious single and group heals, but can’t take damage beyond whatever the heals can counteract or do much damage.

DPS/black mage is all about damage. Alone their best bet is to outdamage the opposition by dropping a massive amount of hurt on them before their minimal health runs out as their heals are nonexistent.

Thing is that with ANet’s “no trinity” effort they not only removed the pigeonholed classes, but basically neutered tank and healer. End result is that everyone runs around with DPS that are sometimes sprinkled with weaker elements from tank and/or healer.

Funnily ANet, or some element within the game community, has come up with what is effectively an alternate trinity. One replacing tank with control and healer with support.

Control would mean using various effects like immobilize, push, pull and others to control the behavior of the enemy.

support broadens the healer into also providing various defensive and offensive benefits like aegis, protection, might and fury.

While a nice attempt, i am of the opinion that they are lacking compared to the tank and healer. For one, the control effects are balanced for PVP over PVE. This means that they are short duration, long cooldown (to abvoid CC locking, tho you can see plenty of mobs doing that in places like Orr or any dredge infested area). So if you push or pull a mob away from a downed group member, you at best only buy them some seconds. This compared to a proper tank that would be able to grab the mobs attention and so get him away permanently. It is not unheard of that a mob that got pulled across the room with a CC effect will promptly turn around and run back to continue hunting its selected prey.

And the same with support. While boons like aegis and conditions like blind can stop the mob from hurting someone, they are rarely readily available like the heals of a trinity healer. And the out and out heals in the game are weak from the outset and hardly, if at all, benefit from trait and gear expenditure. This compared to say DPS where you can have 99% crit chance with ease, and via that have two trait lines that boost damage (power and crit damage bonus percentage).

And that is before we consider that dynamic events favors those that can wipe out masses of mobs rather than help their fellow players.

GW2 doesn’t go wrong with the “no-trinity” or “no clearly defined roles”. It goes wrong with all the RNG, grind, and imbalance(traits, skills AND profession). The story isn’t even so bad until the whole Pact thing starts.

I totally agree with the issues involving dynamic events.

Now that most zones are basically empty…DEs spawn very very infrequently. With no DEs you only have a handful of renown quests. My newest alt is having an incredibly tough time leveling without hoping from zone to zone and basically getting most of my xp from exploring. I can play for like an hour and encounter one DE. It’s pretty sad.

Oglaf.1074:

The removal of Trahearne-or-what’s-his-name and making it truly our personal story would do wonders, I reckon.

Won’t ever happen though.

But still…

I don’t mind Trelagne or whatever. I don’t need to be the one saving the world, I have gotten really tired of that cliche about being the only one who can stand against “Teh Ultmate Evulzzzz!”. It was actually a refreshing change.

The author hit the nail on the head time after time after time. I wish he would have touched on the poor class balance too, but that would sound too controversial and open up attacks.

Edit: I like removing the Trinity, but the problem is they didn’t put a system in its place. They put a clusterkitten in its place instead. Changing the “Trinity” isn’t that unusual or revolutionary. Hell at one point the “Trinity” was “Tanks – Healer – Crowd control”. It seems like they half heatedly tried to return that the CC meta. Groups still have tanks, and they still have “support”/healers and now people need to use CC more.

The worst thing is that at times the encounters feel like they where designed for a Trinity and you are sitting there with a Tank that can’t Tank and a Healer that can’t Heal.

Most of the Story modes and low level dungeons are complete clusterkittens of poorly designed or bugged encounters.

Zeldain.5710:

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.

I don’t agree with any of it.

First thing you did wrong was link a Massively article. Those kitten wouldn’t know quality if it hit them square in the face.

Massively exists off of nepotism and poor journalism, also ad revenue of anyone that will pay for it and most of those games are considered “good” by their standards.

Massively

Roles are horribly underexplained and unclear

That author must absolutely hate Dungeons and Dragons with a fiery passion.

Having the freedom to figure out your own builds and styles is one of the things that I enjoy the most about this game. And for those that dislike making their own builds and figuring out what role they should play, they can just look at forums and copy other people’s builds and play styles.

Area flow is problematic

This entire section was whining about the lack of hand holding. Whatever happened to exploring for the sake of exploring? If you really need to have to hand held so much, maybe video games aren’t what you should be doing as a pass time. Just watch tv or movies, that way you don’t even have to provide any input to advance the story.

Crafting is a freaking mess

Doesn’t seem to understand the concept that you can trade on the Trading Post, or that certain enemies have certain loot tables. I thought certain enemies having certain loot tables was fairly common knowledge as it is a fairly common practice in games. As for crafting taking a while, well ok sure I don’t enjoy grind either, but I don’ think these guys are going to be suggesting to do away with levels because that’s not what “the other guys” do.

The story is weak

I think this is a commonly held belief. Yup, the 1-20 story is great, the 20-40 is a different episode… also good, but doesn’t really seem to be connected to the previous part. And the rest of the story is “Trahearne saves the world while whining the entire time”.

I thought the article made some good points, but unfortunately they were kind of buried among points that were specific to the writer’s play style preferences being treated as objective critiques of the game, and points that seemed to be based on misunderstandings of the game mechanics.

I think the most solid critiques were of dynamic events and story.

DEs do get repetitive, and aren’t always appropriately scaled to the number of players in the zone. That’s very true, even though the part about leveling through DEs alone seemed kind of off-base.

Trahearne issues aside, I also think the article makes a good point about the personal story not feeling very coherent. It’s extremely episodic, and important characters and plot points from previous arcs either disappear without a trace or start from scratch with no one remembering what came before when they appear again later. I think ANet was too focused on giving loads of choices, and so didn’t fully think through the fact that those choices seem pointless unless they actually affect the story beyond their own ten level arc.

As a disclaimer, I enjoy this game very much, and I think it deserved to win game of the year. I don’t think it’s perfect, though, and I’m glad that ANet seems to be taking customer feedback seriously to make it even better.

If anyone wants bad voice acting, I suggest you to back to the harvest temple in Factions.

1. Roles

Don’t agree. It’s pretty clear whether your role is melee, ranged, and with no Trinity, it’s clear we’re looking out for ourselves even when grouped. Not an issue at all.

2. Dynamic Events

They are not the replacement for quests. Hearts are the replacement for quests with Dynamic Events being a nice supplement. Yes, they are not random, but IMHO that is good.

3. Area flow

Sort of agree on some of the points here. Especially the one about your Personal Story jumping you all over the place.

4. Crafting

Don’t agree at all. If you’re trying to do discoveries on your own, you’re doing it wrong. Find out what you need to do from a web-site.

5. Story

Too soon to tell for me. My highest is about 56 and I recently finished the Battle for Claw Island, which I thought was awesome. I think the story telling is fine at the moment.

Cheers.

Blissified.8369:

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

I hope this is a joke.

Zeldain.5710:

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.

Except for the first point, this is complete crap by a person who obviously totally misunderstood this game. It’s obvious that this article was written by a WoW clone fan who couldn’t adapt to GW2.

The first point has some merit, because I think GW2 could have use more “tutorials” about how it was meant to be played. All those disappointed players tried to play this like if it was “WoW clone number 1283974”. And of course, it didn’t work. Old habits are hard to break, specially for those who never knew any better.

The point about dynamic events is the first hint that the guy played GW2 like he would have played any of the bad WoW clones we got served these last 8 years.

The point about area flow only confirms that. That guy has his head so deeply stuck in the WoW clone model that he can’t admit something different can even exist.

The point about crafting is pure nonsense, first he seems to not have understood how crafting works, and maybe he should learn to use the net, wikis and google when his own intellect is not up to the task for something that simple, and fact is crafting in GW2 produces more useful items than in any other recent AAA theme park MMORPG. He’s just doing it totally wrong, and blames the game for it.

The point about story is pure opinion. No problem with that, I personally enjoyed the stories quite a bit, notably the Norn ones, and am still going through new ones on my alts.

And then comes the worst part:

When some guy adds “consider this as a reality check” at the end of his “article”, my conclusion is obvious: it’s another of those arrogant reviewers who think their opinion is the end of it all. And the fact that he tries to minimize the negativity with his “Is it bad then? Oh heck, no” don’t change his arrogant tone which peaks at the “reality check” part.

Here’s a real “reality check” for Mr Eliot: your opinion is just that… another opinion. You don’t hold “The Truth”.

That’s my review of that “review”.

There were some points of the article I agreed with, and some I didn’t.

I’m not impressed with the storyline at all. But that was because I was hoping I could actually play the game via the storyline itself as opposed to a couple of instanced missions placed throughout the map. I don’t hate it, but it’s not what I hoped it would be.

I love the fact that there is no trinity and no specific “roles”. But this aspect fits my particular playstyle. Not everyone enjoys this type of playstyle as some people prefer to stick with one particular role and be the best of the best in that particular role. Nothing wrong with that.

I don’t find combat “chaotic” as everyone is working together to defeat the mob. Some people are running around reviving, some are supporting other players with boons, buffs and combos while some are doing direct damage. However, I do understand that some players prefer to work a mob with a specific well planned out strategy.

I haven’t delved into crafting yet, other than to make a few of the 8 slot bags.

I like GW2, I enjoy playing it. But I’m a “casual” player and don’t play on a daily basis so I see it from a different perspective than a “hardcore” player might.

Guild Wars 2 went from *"our endgame starts at level 1!" to “come get clustered up in Lion’s Arch to farm Fractals for money and pink Ascended items!”

They only keep nerfing farming spots in the game world. Geez, how will I make money? Playing the Trading Post and controlling markets? Nah, don’t have much experience in flipping 1 gold into 400 gold and buying anything I please from ArenaNet’s gemstore. Playing the game? Nah, I can just run AC/Fractals 24/7 and get good money running passed-around builds from the forums with pugs and guild mates. Forget the outside world.

Harathi Hinterlands? Kessex Hills? Brisband Wildlands? Fireheart Rise? Bloodtide Coast?

Nah. I’ll just look at my Dragon Timer and see when to visit the three BIGMCHUGE DRAGONS for a chance at the precursor weapons. I rather not kill champions in random dynamic events for 1-2 junk gray-colored items or kill bosses from meta events to get blues and greens. Not like I can do them anyways, hahah, mid-high zones with no BIGMCHUGE DRAGONS are dead.

Fractal Wars 2 is the way to go. That or play the TP.

I agree that Dynamic Events aren’t really very dynamic and can sometimes be downright annoying. I also agree that the story (and voice acting) are lacking.

Aside from that, I disagree with the article. Players can figure out the roles and specs by…playing the game. That’s half the fun.

There are so many people bashing this constructive criticism as WoW fanboyism and other nonsense. As someone who picked the game up about 5-6 days ago and is having a blast, I agree with pretty much all the points through my leveling experience.

Roles: I’m a huge fan of playing a tank, healer, or support class. DPS bores the snot out of me in games. Unfortunately, dps seems to be the main focus of every single class. I do like that everyone gets at least some sort of heals, boons, conditions, etc to help out with, but it’s lacking in terms of the direct contributions I would like to see. I want to play a healer or a tank. Or I want to play someone focused on boons and conditions to help my team. As it stands, you can’t really do those things as an actual role. For some, this is great, for others: not so much.

The biggest problem I see here in terms of the discussion is that some people have a mindset that having clear roles available means that you must have the trinity. But that just isn’t so. City of Heroes/Villains did things perfectly in this regard. While they had classes that were designed for tanking(Tankers), you didn’t need them. And while you had setups that were focused on heals(Empathy defenders), you did not need them either. Instead, you could work together to form any sort of team together and survive with buffs, debuffs, heals, tanking, damage, etc. Whatever it is your team makeup had, you could play to those strengths to form a competent group. Want to run with 8 Tankers? Go for it. Want to have 8 Defenders? Go for it. Want to have some weird mishmash of Melee and Ranged dps with no real tank or support? Go for it.

You can have clear roles for your classes without having the holy trinity style of gameplay. As it stands, with a lack of tanking/aggro control and a lack of healing/support, every fight I’ve been in has been just a mishmash of chaos.

Zone progression/Dynamic Events: I’m pretty much on the fence here, but I agree with the article writer on a few things. For once, Dynamic Events are required to level up. I know this because I’m new to the game and currently leveling multiple characters. I’ve found that I have to go back to previous zones to do Dynamic Events just so I can get my level to keep up with the zone I’m supposed to be in. I’ve completed every single thing on the map for the zones as I progress through, yet I always seem to be behind the level curve. I’m harvesting all materials and crafting to get that XP as well, yet still just flailing behind the curve of the heart quests and my own story quests.

Because of this, I’ve been doing the same DEs over and over and over again. Why? Because there really aren’t that many of them and there’s only a handful of those that other players want to do(The Overlord for example). It’s not a bad thing and I enjoy the DEs, but when you progress into zones with less population it is very difficult to find other players who want to actually complete those events.

And I’ve also been bothered by the lack of direction as to where to go. This isn’t because the game fails to hold my hand the whole way(I go back to the 2d era of MMOs where the trinity wasn’t even thought of yet, let alone the idea of questing and tutorials). It’s because the game fails to give you explanations of just about anything. It is only because I do a lot of research on forums and websites that I even know where my bank is. It’s only from reading the forums that I found out I could send my crafting mats to my collectibles stash from anywhere(and when I told my guildmates, some of them hadn’t a clue they could do that either, despite being here for months).

These are just basic game design flaws. Trying to say that it is part of the experience is only kidding yourselves. There is a reason games have transitioned away from novel-thick manuals and moved into in-game tutorials. They make the experience more engaging and rewarding for the player while allowing them to actually play the game. I should not have to read forums and search for information on google to figure out how something works.

Crafting: I’ve no real beef with the crafting system as a whole. It’s a little clunky and awkward, but this is again, a problem with no explanation being offered. It didn’t take me long to get it figured out though, so that’s not where my main issue is. As the author of the article said, there is a problem in how long it takes to increase your crafting as compared to how fast you level. Despite gathering and crafting everything I find, the leather working skill on my level 35 character is still only making level 5 items. Once I got past the initial starting areas, I stopped obtaining new materials to raise my crafting skill with. This is just flat-out bad game design. If the things you can craft cannot possibly keep up with your actual level, then there is no point to doing it outside of making things for your alts.

@Rhysati: dynamic events are the CORE of GW2’s PVE gameplay. The hearts where only added late in beta to make people used to the “WOW clone” system feel more comfortable.

And your paragraph about roles shows that despite your little introduction, you are still so used to the WoW-like trinity that you can’t imagine something else working. You only play since 6 days… let the game take you in, instead of trying to compare it and make it match with past experiences. Forget those hearts, go explore. Find those events, those puzzles, dungeons, that are all over the place.

Another hint… if you’re doing the same dynamic events over and over again, you are doing something wrong, not the game. The problem with people used to the WoW model like you is that you are used to the game holding your hand all the time… GW2 doesn’t do that, the game expects that you are a human being, not a machine following a predefined path, it expects you to go out of the way and explore.

If you keep on playing GW2 like you played WoW and its clones before, then YOU are doing it wrong, and it won’t work. It’s not the game’s fault. It’s the fault of all those WoW clones we got served during 8 years who tried to tell people there’s only one way to play a MMORPG. All veterans who played games like UO or AC1 know that’s not true.

Korrigan.4837:

@Rhysati: dynamic events are the CORE of GW2’s PVE gameplay. The hearts where only added late in beta to make people used to the “WOW clone” system feel more comfortable.

And your paragraph about roles shows that despite your little introduction, you are still so used to the WoW-like trinity that you can’t imagine something else working. You only play since 6 days… let the game take you in, instead of trying to compare it and make it match with past experiences. Forget those hearts, go explore. Find those events, those puzzles, dungeons, that are all over the place.

Another hint… if you’re doing the same dynamic events over and over again, you are doing something wrong, not the game. The problem with people used to the WoW model like you is that you are used to the game holding your hand all the time… GW2 doesn’t do that, the game expects that you are a human being, not a machine following a predefined path, it expects you to go out of the way and explore.

If you keep on playing GW2 like you played WoW and its clones before, then YOU are doing it wrong, and it won’t work. It’s not the game’s fault. It’s the fault of all those WoW clones we got served during 8 years who tried to tell people there’s only one way to play a MMORPG. All veterans who played games like UO or AC1 know that’s not true.

No, sorry. Actually, I’m not sorry.

The game’s design doesn’t flesh out the systems how you are “supposed” to play. And if it aint happening naturally, then guess what? It’s the game’s fault, not the player.

Any game designer worth their salt will back that up.

I agree with most of his points, and I’d say this thread has been having some rabid fanboys who, not being able to (or not wanting to) undertand the criticism, cheaply accuse the author of WoW fanboyism.

If I could sum the entire article in a few words, it would be the following: GW2 has great ideas, but some of them were not as well executed as they could have been.

There. When the author mentions the lack of clarity behind roles, I do not interpret that as a wish to go back to the trinity, or the desire to have someone hold his hands, but more an observation about the shallow party building this game suffers from. After all, GW2’s builds, although being a jack-of-all-trades, can focus on defense, crowd control, single target disruption, burst damage, sustained damage, offensive party support, etc. But all those roles are unclear to most casual players, and this blurs the fun out of making a strong party build. This becomes especially worse – and now I’m adding my own opinions, when most of those roles are absolutely useless outside of dungeons.

Another thing the author mentioned very well is the structure of the game, the progression through the game, which is vague and bland. Having a stronger progression structure does not means the game is telling players where to go – afterall, you still have the option to follow it or not. The story progression, in general, is poor in GW2. It jumps from place to place, it forces you to pay for teleporting whenever you need to backtrack, it is gated by levels, and there’s no story quests inbetween. This breaks up the narrative flow.

Not all players enjoy being at the middle of a huge world and having, as the only meaningful option, the choice to grind for map completion. There ARE more choices, like the story instances, and the dungeons later on, but both of those feel like side mechanics, that you see every once and then at a corner in the map, while the bread of the pve game is about playing solo – and thus restricting most of your build options – against enemies with mindless AI, while doing repetitive heart tasks, and participating in some events inbetween, sometimes interesting, sometimes mindless zergfests.

It’s not about World of Warcraft, in the sense that GW2 should be like it. But WoW executes and fleshes out some of its ideas better than GW2, and this is something that this game should be improved on, and this is something that has nothing to do with copying WoW, because it doesn’t needs it.

And finally, the devs in this game need to design a more solid structure for progression. Especially for the story, but also for a more exciting character building system. The game suffers from a lack of progression, and devs made the mistake to interpret out of that a need for more gear-grinding. GW2 needs more progression, but it has not much to do with gear. It’s deeply related to how you enjoy the game – or better, to prevent the game from becoming a repetitive grind for map exploration after some time.

I like the fact that the reveiewer likes the game, but points out many of the weaknesses of the game. In my opinion he is spot on, crafting is pretty useless, leather and Tailoring are two very hard crafts to get up because of the lack of materials. At least in Warcraft and Rift, you can skin to get leather, and often humonoid creatures drop farbric. While Salvage works, there are often not enough drops to make it worthwhile to spend any time crafting.

I think we also level way to fast, scaling allows for us to stay in zones far longer that we should. My level 80 has only seen 43% of the map. In some cases, evening finding how to get to a zone that is the appropriate level can be fustrating. While the class quest helps move you a long, I think alternate quests lines should be available, if you belong to the order of whisperers maybe you should be able to pick up quests lines that move you through other zones in quest chains.

Fortunetly there is more right with GW2 then wrong.

Rhysati.4932:

Roles: I’m a huge fan of playing a tank, healer, or support class. DPS bores the snot out of me in games. Unfortunately, dps seems to be the main focus of every single class. I do like that everyone gets at least some sort of heals, boons, conditions, etc to help out with, but it’s lacking in terms of the direct contributions I would like to see. I want to play a healer or a tank. Or I want to play someone focused on boons and conditions to help my team. As it stands, you can’t really do those things as an actual role. For some, this is great, for others: not so much.

The biggest problem I see here in terms of the discussion is that some people have a mindset that having clear roles available means that you must have the trinity. But that just isn’t so. City of Heroes/Villains did things perfectly in this regard. While they had classes that were designed for tanking(Tankers), you didn’t need them. And while you had setups that were focused on heals(Empathy defenders), you did not need them either. Instead, you could work together to form any sort of team together and survive with buffs, debuffs, heals, tanking, damage, etc. Whatever it is your team makeup had, you could play to those strengths to form a competent group. Want to run with 8 Tankers? Go for it. Want to have 8 Defenders? Go for it. Want to have some weird mishmash of Melee and Ranged dps with no real tank or support? Go for it.

If you think there’s no tanks or healers in GW2. You are not exploring the game fully. Before you denounce GW2’s combat as unstructured and chaotic, think back to your CoH/V experience, apply the same framework to GW2. The two systems are very similar.

/Signed
Completely agree with all points mentioned in the article.
And pretty much all the points lead to the same conclusion:
All in all it’s not very immersive and nothing you do leads to a sense of achievement.

Many argue that the lack of this trinity is good because they don’t want to be placed in either 1 of the 3 predefined boxes.
However instead of 3 choices, we now have only 1 choice.
And that is the jack of all trades box; excel at nothing and be mediocre at everything.

Which is exactly what GW2 is at the moment.
A time sink that leads to achieving things you normally wouldn’t becoming mediocre.
If your goal is to blend in with the rest this is definitly your kind of game.

And imho the title mmorpg doesn’t even apply to this game.
How can u call something role playing when there are no roles to be played?
You are not the hero of the story, you do not excell at anything specific, your crafts have no mention of your existence and you are in no way different from the next guy.

Don’t get me wrong tho..
Comparing to what is out there at the moment it was worth the 50 euros i payed for it.
But calling it RPG of the year just tells me 2012 was a slow year for gaming entirely.

I would recommend that you closely read and consider digiowl’s posts on the combat roles. I believe he nails the problem better than the author of the piece under consideration. What it says to me is that the roles have not been thought through and then polished to the point where they yield truly rewarding gameplay. Let me give you a different view of combat example. What if our roles were resolved and they made perfect sense to everyone. But what if mobs spawned instantly, had extrasensory-aggro, and had the ability to apply continuous major CC. Would take make for interesting, rewarding combat? I’ve just described Orr and the answer is no, the combat would not be satisfying.

It’s a question of initial design, experience, and stepwise refinement. What we are talking about is the game coming together into a more cohesive whole. I am optimistic that Anet can pull off the issues the author of the piece says need to be hammered out—it’s really not that hard. He ends the piece suggesting they can hammer out the issues “Or we could keep going with Ascended gear. That went over real nice.” Don’t ignore the last paragraph of the piece; last paragraphs are usually significant. And, it’s interesting he’s posing it as an either/or. Either we can hammer out issues that are relatively easy to hammer out, or we can continue with headscratcher missteps.

I don’t agree with massively article at all.

This game has problems. But none of them is among the ones mentioned by them.

I don’t see why people want pre defined roles. Getting rid of holy trinity just to create a new similar system seems kind of pointless to me and I feel build choices are much more free because many traits don’t point to a certain role (though they do point to a playstyle fairly often). I do understand that the system can make it hard to inform a pug what you’re running though.
I definitely agree that DEs don’t replace quests. While they are fun and add to the game, they don’t really make up for the storyline that makes many side quests fun, and the main story line is too weak to do that and I have to start a new character if I want to explore the other storylines… but I never really expected much from GW main storylines tbh.

Fuz.5621:

I don’t agree with massively article at all.

This game has problems. But none of them is among the ones mentioned by them.

Do you seriously think that everything about the story and the “progression” of this game is fine?