Yes even with some new content and fairly significant changes to the game I’m pretty disillusioned with GW2 at the moment. I’ve played GW2 since beta but I’m not bored for the same reasons as I became bored with other games (MMOs). It’s worse than that – I’ve become disillusioned, and I know I’m not alone going off comments in /map and the guilds I am a member of. There are a few reasons:
1) Basically GW has devolving into little more than farming.
I am on one of the most populated servers and we can barely get 12 people to do world events (dragons) anymore. If it’s not champion farming it is live event farming. I know world events are not as efficient and the returns are not as good as farming is NOT FUN. The farm for legendary mats was excruciating but that was entirely optional, and it was for the highest level item in the game, so was also understandable to a point (still not worth it IMHO). Correct me if I am wrong but I recall farming/grinding being one of the most attractive selling points about GW2 before its release. I know due to commercial decisions a number of concepts were ‘betrayed’ but up until recently farming has not been a major annoyance (-lets face it CoF P1 was discretionary too and the game was never going to allow you to get rich quick or without ALOT of work or a lucky drop).
2) Poor event design
Ignoring bugs, with the current events, they are directly related to the farming problem. I have the remainder of today to try and repel two more invasions to get the 25 APs for that achievement but I know its not going to happen – I have been trying for about 5 days and I have only been involved in 1 successful invasion repulsion; I don’t consider myself hardcore as I have a fulltime job but I’m no casual either – I play everyday for at least 5 hours. But the majority of people just want to farm, so even if you have a good number of people who want to do the event, you can’t because the farmers hold you back. Given an invasion lasts 45mins, of my 5 hours, that’s a fair chunk of time lost if it results in a fail, which it almost always does.
(I suspect the last event was just to all-but force ppl to buy extra bag/bank slots)
The events themselves have been oriented towards farming and zergs – the pavilion, the invasions.
Speaking of the Pavilion, while the gauntlet was a solo affair, it was yet another exercise in frustration with most fights barely offering a challenge but a handful being largely gimmick, and class, dependant. It seems obvious to me that certain classes had much better chances, especially factoring in gambits. I made the unfortunate mistake of not completing the entire gauntlet early so by the time I came back to it, it had been ‘fixed’ – certain multiple gambit fights I found impossible as, for example, the behaviour of Sure-Shot was different to what was in the guides and when I did manage to close in, with frailty, you would receive a 21K kick. As a result I’ve got a couple of hundred of unused entry tickets…yeah I’m going to really subject myself to that…no thanks.
In fact the golden rule of this game seems to be exploit/take advantage early until its ‘fixed’, which means either rewards are nerfed or the content is made harder often to the point it becomes unenjoyable.
3) Grinding
I thought achievement point rewards were a great idea however the limited time to complete events means that unless you don’t have a job, life, whatever, you are all-but compelled to concentrate on this content in order to get the substantial achievement points on offer. Chasing achieves, not in my own time, is simply not fun and dictates how I have to play to the game which is probably the biggest turn off. I have give up doing certain things, some of which I enjoy, in order to complete events/achieves of limited duration…because frankly, that’s what other people are doing and I cant do some content alone.
As a result of this im looking at other games ive bought but not yet touched. I want to keep playing GW2, I enjoyed it, but not anymore, and with the ascended gear-treadmill grind about to start I am repelled at the thought of arming my level 80 characters. It is painful to invest in more than one character in GW2 yet more grind is being injected into the game.
4) Class balance
Still ppffftt
A few other points of annoyance:
*Communication and information is underwhelming. You have to do a lot of research just to find out what the heck is going on with the game. I don’t use reddit and I wont so if I don’t here it in chat in LA or a guildee mentions it, I don’t know about it.
*Guild Challenges – do they scale???
*Legendaries should be unlocked per account just like skins from achievement tiers or at least made account bound.
(edited by Moderator)