Guild Wars 2

Hey Anet people, I dont think you will answer this, but I believe there is a small chance you will read at least. I will leave here my feedback about the game, from what I have seen so far. As this is a personal feedback thread (if this is not the right place, please move it) destinated to Anet, and not to the game community, I will probably not answer to the comments about the topic, unless they bring something relevant to my points. I will certainly NOT answer fanboys, neither the ones who say the game is perfect, nor the ones who say “it is better than WoW”, “go away”, “quit the game”. You can cry all you want, I will just ignore you.

1) Item system

I personally do not like the level based item system that you have implemented in GW2. Actually, I dont like your item system at all. It is the same old system used in WoW, Lotro and dozens of older titles. I loved the original GW item system, specially the way weapons worked. You had random factors (requirement, stats, damage, etc.), the possibility to add/change upgrades to fit your needs and the chance of having a very unique item (those req 7 15^50 celestial daggers or the perfect q7 vs demons outcast shield). In GW2 you have what you have. No random stats, level based items, nothing is really unique. That (amongst with a lot of other things) leaves me the impression that you wanted to make the game with a simple database, with zero chance of having unique items (I dont mean the green ones, I think you got this). That is one of the things you copied from other games that you shouldnt. You could have mantained the GW system or, if you wanted to copy a different system, you could have implemented something like the Diablo system. Of course, not that random, what would be crazy for a MMO, but with some random stats. I would stick to GW system though.

2) Crafting

As a consequence of a poor item system, you have a boring crafting system. Not sure what was the 1st game using this, but your system is based in the Lotro system, which is pretty boring. You add new stuff, like the mystic forge, which is cool, the discovery system, which is also nice (even though some crafts require the “physical” recipe, which sounds stupid to me), but the “refine, craft hal weapon, craft other half, put them together” is boring. As it was in Lotro. Again, the complete lack of random components in your item system makes craft not fun in general.

3) Story line

I thought about not commenting this part, becuase it might sound like I hate the game, which is not true. It is a good game. But the story line is just stupid. The 1st part of it is kitten (oh, I am a poor idiot in a small village in the middle of nothing who have some minor personal problems that I need to solve while dragons eat the land). The acting is bad, the texts are bad, everything is bad. While it starts to go epikittentle by little, the pace is so slow that when you go kill a dragon it just dont look like something important. It sounds like finding a lost heirloom or finding your dead parents graves. This is the 1st game I play I dont want to read/listen to the text for quests. It completly lacks meaning. In GW (in all 4 campaigns) you had a good story, with a good pace. In GW2 you did a terrible job with this.

4) Dungeons

I havent done all dungeons yet, but mostly they feel like EotN dunegons. AC was really boring, but SE was really fun to do. So I believe there are dungeons for all tastes. But so far I havent seen anything as cool as FoW or Underworld. Lets wait for future dungeons. And as your item system (again) lacks personality, I miss having “exclusive” skins for each place, like you had in FoW, UW, The Deep and so on. ATtleast I didnt notice anything like that. Also miss somthing like Sorrow’s Furnace, which was awesome.

5) Auction House/Trading Post

Ok, you dont have many new things to do to an auction house, but lets see what we have. Actually, I will comment all the Black Lion thing. The possibility to place buying orders is very cool and the “home broker” feeling of it is very nice. The possibility to get the things with any character is also very nice, so you dont have to map from the other side of the world to trading post just to get your item/cash. Also great to be able to browse and place orders from anywhere (of course that lacks realism, but come on, it is a game). Although, there are some problems. One of them is the terrible browsing system. It lacks filters (light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, “usable”, etc.) and it is really boring when it resets while tabbing (sometimes I want to check the item I have a buying order to compare to the one Im looking and the form resets and I have to search again). Also, the trade gems for gold thing is terrible. It is not market based, since you cannot place buy/sell orders like normal items. So, if you want to set conversion rates, just do it openly, you dont need to fake a market based system where you dont have one.

6) Graphics

The game is beautiful. It is easy to see that you put a lot of effort in details. Lions Arch is astonishing, the explorable maps have stuff that make you feel like “wow, look at this”, the underwater areas are well constructed and there is not much to complain about graphics. There are some clipping issues (like any other game) and some minor bugs (on the 1st days I had some pants that had norn size while using in a human, which made me look like having a huge butt), but overall you did a great work.

7) Sounds/Music

Well, the same as GW. So I can say they are very good. Not much to tell about this. Also a great job.

8) Explorable areas

Well, they are beatiful, but rather small. You can fully explore an area very fastly, which was ok for GW (instanced areas), but they could be a lot bigger in GW2. Other then that, I can say they are beautiful, but too easy to explore most of the times.

9) Quests

Well, here we have problems. The main story quests, as I mentioned before, are really boring. They just cant be compared to Prophecies, Factions or Nightfall. Maybe to Eye of the North, but they are much worse. Main quests are really boring in general. The heart quests are generally boring too. Lots of grinding if you decide to stop to complete a heart and they completely lack a story, what brings immersion problems. I just cant feel like being part of a story because a dont see a story happening. The dynamic events are great sometimes and boring some others. I just dont participate in the boring ones, so this is not a problem. They are where the game gets good. Not all of them, but the bigger chains are fun to do. Dynamic events is where you join the epic battles, where you feel part of a comunity. But that happens in bigger servers. In the smaller ones, it is not common to find a zerg to kill the bad dragon or the champion grawl.

10) Jumping puzzles

While my 1st impression of them wasnt good, now I like them. They are fun, sometimes challenging (sometimes frustrating, like the Halloween one, which took me 4 hours to finish) and a breath of fresh air in the game.

11) Skill/Trait system

Disappointing. You had a huge skill system in GW, with a load of build possibilities, and again you decided to make it simpler, like the item system. You gave us an incredible small pool of skills with huge limitations. This is my biggest disappointment with GW2 and I hope you fix this. WHere is the “hunt the bosses to get new traits” thing that you have announced during beta? Where is the hunt for elite skills? Or even to new common skills? Your skill system is an epic fail if compared to GW. The only reason I can see for this is lazyness to balance PvP with a bigger pool of skills and traits.

12) Guild

Ok, we have a chat and some bonuses. Is that it? No content for guilds? No GvG? No AB? No group quests for guilds? No Guild Hall?

13) Bugs and glitches

Ok, this is where we have the biggest problems. The game is crowded with glitches and bugs. Dynamic events that just stop in the middle, underwater foes that goes invencible for no reason, glitched hearts, glitched skill chalenges, there is a huge list. Every game has problems on their release, says the fanboys. Well, the release was 3 months ago. There a bugs and glitches who wasnt fixed in 3 months. Some of them ae game breaking. Some of them are in dungeons. Some of them makes impossible to earn achievements. And what we get from Anet team? Silence. I will not invite any friend to the free weekend or to any free weekend until the game is fixed.

14) Costumer support

Well, this part makes me angry. Because I have spent 250 bucks in this game so far, and when I needed the costumer support, all I got was pasted stupid messages who didnt even adrress my question. It is the WORST costumer support I have EVER seen in a game. In the last years you could easily see in GW that the support was terrible (while in the beggining it was very good), but not even in my nightmares I could expect a suport so stupid, so disrespectuful as the one I see in GW2.

15) Final considerations

Overall, GW2 is a good game. Not great, but good. I believe that it can be a great game someday, but unfortunatly, with this new armor thing, I think that Anet is walking in the oposite way. I expected a lot of inovations, and didnt see that. Ive seen a better version of Lotro, with some Ryft touches. It lacks a solid build system, it lacks content (some people have made nearly everything in less then 3 months) and it is a shame how Anet is not able to fix bugs/glitches in months. Instead of fixing problems, Anet choses to release new (and I believe bad) content, making high end armor obsolete in less then 3 months and promising there will be more armor soon. Worst of all, except for the lore and the music, it lacks GW, which was my favorite game for a long while.

I will keep playing the game, want to finish more achievements, complete more jumping puzzles and do more dungeons. But I really hope that Anet opens their eyes for the bugs and glitches and think again if they are moving the game on the right direction.

By the way, I didnt mention PvP or WvW because I havent played them long enough. Actually, I didnt even touch PvP and my 1st impressions of WvW werent good (too much walking, but I didnt play it a lot, so maybe its me doing something wrong).

Ill eventually come back here to add things I think are relevant. A lot of the things Ive said in here, Ive said after beta, but Anet either didnt read or just ignored, so I decided to register them again. This way, I feel like doing my part to make GW2 better.