Guild Wars 2

The root of why no one cares to play together? No actual need to group outside of dungeons because encounters are faceroll, classes are homogenized, and depth is almost non-existent.

I truly feel that some of what they listed is a welcome change, but i also feel that they’re kinda missing the mark on what the game is lacking. The combat / skills / traits / need the most attention in my opinion. They are the core of the game that needs to be strengthened, not adding more fluff and useless rewards that don’t make the game inherently fun, just more grindy.

The PvP needs to be FUN like in GW1 or they’re not gonna get anyone to play it. I don’t understand the direction. Hopefully we see more of what matters down the road.

They will or GW2 world will be empty beautiful place .

GW1’s PvP was so well liked because it was diverse. There were tons of different modes of play, ranging from small to large groups of people. Basically, everyone had something for them.

Take me for example: I hate PvP in general. Yet I found a bit of an enjoyment for the Jade Quarry’s hectic nature, having everyone run around capturing points and defending them. I like WvW for the same reason, as it’s that same basic game on a much larger scale.

But there’s not nearly as many options for PvP as in GW1, and that turns a lot of people off after coming from such a diverse PvP-centric game. I think if they just open up more options and deal with some of the OPed builds out there, we’ll see more player interest in PvP.

I heard they will release some head-bands which will allow us to port our mind into the characters and we will really be the characters.

@Grouping:

I’d like to see new group system added with dynamic events, where when you participate in an event, you’re automatically grouped with players within 1500 distance who are also participating.
The group limit would be like 25 just like squad; this would allow for players to better coordinate their actions when they see an ally go down.

And the group doesn’t disperse as soon as the event is over, giving players a chance to stay together in they so choose.

There would be no in-game bonus, as it would make solo players feel sub-optimal.

@PvP:

They just need to remove AoE caps on siege weapons.

This in turn will cause players stop zerging almost completely.
Players will actually have to use map chat and ask what to do, coordinate, fund their own siege weapons, and properly take down a tower/keep/castle siege warfare style.

No more roaming around like the man-eating horde, because you’ll get mowed by arrow carts or bombed by trebs.

@Skills / Traits:

If what you want is more of them, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

GW1 is flawed in ANet’s eyes.
They couldn’t balance anything because all the skills and builds and game modes made it impossible to set a standard. Tons of builds were OP in one mode/area and UP in another.
The game was also designed without the possibility of increasing the level cap, which turned out nice, but wasn’t ideal for them. It gave them less control on content.

They’re trying to do better with GW2, and while you may not like what they’ve done so far, they are not going to go back to GW1. They are going to move forward and do new things to try to fix the existing issues.

If you like GW1, ANet’s advice would be: Play GW1.

I think they need to focus more on skill synergy between classes. I’d like to see the combo system overhauled. There just needs to be more reason to play what very indistinct roles each class serves in a team environment rather than another. Some of them do that well now, others fail miserably. Everything could be expanded…i just think these systems are what’s causing disinterest and lack of community, not what they are adding, which just seems like fluffy grind rewards. It really trivializes the game for me as a 6 year GW1 player and fan of ArenaNet.

There is no disinterest or lack of community.
The game is thriving as well as any other game, if not better (cause we all know games like TERA flopped).

The only problem is lack of communication and a lot of player-traffic problems.

1. Spectator Mode is still not here – Isolating sPvP from the rest of the game
2. Guesting doesn’t work.
3. Karma-rates make beginner-areas and Cursed Shores the only go-to destinations.
4. Ascended gear makes many players gather at LA and disappear into Fractals.

These fracture the player base, leading players to believe the game is becoming desolate.

There ARE problems with GW2, but lack of interest is not one of them.

I dont think its a problem with the class’s i think its a problem with the World mobs. I mean there is good reson why i like Warrior, thief and Mesmer, and why i don’t like Gard, elie and Ranger in PVE content ((have yet to try necro, but i dont think thats my thing ether))

JemL.3501:

I heard they will release some head-bands which will allow us to port our mind into the characters and we will really be the characters.

Sweet, I’ll order my Nerve Gear right away.

http://avvesione.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/sword_art_online-21-asuna-human-nerve_gear-coma-hospital-bed.jpg

Many people i talk to cite their disinterest as the lack of tangible effectiveness in speccing into a certain role, lack of depth to the team play, and other various problems with lack of depth in the skill / trait / combat system.

Of the 40 or so people i’ve talked to, 26 cite one or many of these reasons as grounds for ditching the game. It’s also important to note that only 4 of them had ever played WoW previously, so don’t bring that crap in here, warning ya’ll now.

Just wanna get some on-topic discussion going.

The latest blog post already addressed these concerns with these quotes:

“Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.”

“Guilds are extremely important to the game. We need to ensure there is a volume of content to foster this strong community/social bond. To that end, we’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements, while others will see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience. Over time we’ll continue to expand this system with new guild rewards, missions, and tools to allow guilds of all sizes to play a stronger part in solidifying the communities of the GW2 world.”

As a person that’s played this game for 900+ hours, I think the core game plays just fine. My only problem with the game is that for most of the mobs in the open world, you can essentially use the same strategy to defeat them, which makes the open world feel very repetitive at times.

In the future, I’d like to see much different varieties of mobs that involve different strategies to defeat, much like the Karka we saw at Southsun Cove. However, I don’t expect these changes to come until a major expansion come out.

Hopefully, with these early 2013 changes, we can hopefully expect some of the really gigantic world bosses to be re-designed so they become more difficult and actually fun to do. I’d be content with seeing the starter area meta-bosses not go down in like less than five minutes.

These guild missions sound very intriguing too, and I’d very much like to see group events in the open world that require real coordination to do with like 20+ people, much like the Temple of Bathlazaar boss event.

lothefallen.7081:

Of the 40 or so people i’ve talked to

That sample size is tiny.

Get back to me when you hit 500+

Wift.9862:

The latest blog post already addressed these concerns with these quotes:

“Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.”

“Guilds are extremely important to the game. We need to ensure there is a volume of content to foster this strong community/social bond. To that end, we’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements, while others will see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience. Over time we’ll continue to expand this system with new guild rewards, missions, and tools to allow guilds of all sizes to play a stronger part in solidifying the communities of the GW2 world.”

As a person that’s played this game for 900+ hours, I think the core game plays just fine. My only problem with the game is that for most of the mobs in the open world, you can essentially use the same strategy to defeat them, which makes the open world feel very repetitive at times.

In the future, I’d like to see much different varieties of mobs that involve different strategies to defeat, much like the Karka we saw at Southsun Cove. However, I don’t expect these changes to come until a major expansion come out.

Hopefully, with these early 2013 changes, we can hopefully expect some of the really gigantic world bosses to be re-designed so they become more difficult and actually fun to do. I’d be content with seeing the starter area meta-bosses not go down in like less than five minutes.

These guild missions sound very intriguing too, and I’d very much like to see group events in the open world that require real coordination to do with like 20+ people, much like the Temple of Bathlazaar boss event.

Thanks for the contribution, i too am interested in these guild events, but it seems like they will just be achievements for fastest dungeon clears or races for existing content completion. This is not something i want in GW2. This is something that belongs in WoW and bringing it here just shows a lack of creativity in my opinion.

On another note, i’d like to see mob difficulty and depth scaled up as well. Maybe some areas will have roaming mobs that require a group of player coordination to take out, much like GW1. This would foster more structure and group integrity in the content with just a simple series of number tweaks. Anything that gets people playing together in a meaningful, engaging way.

I still think the combat / skills / traits systems need to be expanded along with these changes if this game hopes to bring in more players down the road.

DreamOfACure.4382:

lothefallen.7081:

Of the 40 or so people i’ve talked to

That sample size is tiny.

Get back to me when you hit 500+

It wasn’t meant to prove anything objective and i never stated this was a topic built on a shining beacon of objectivity. Thanks for the contribution anyway.

There are two things I’d really like to see.

1. A bit more customization in weapon skills.
Perhaps there can be a trait line that solely change the functionality of your weapon skills. Perhaps they can implement a separate system, which will allow you to spend skill points to buy some extra weapon skills, or even change the way a certain skill works.

2. Some more diversity among the profession.
Each profession has it’s own trademark mechanic, be it adrenaline or stealing. But I feel there should be more that backbone to the professions that make them stand out in parties for being strong on their own right.
Such as the guardian possessing aegis, I think more professions should have a function that only they can fulfill in a group. So instead of worrying about the trinity, people will start focusing on each profession’s strength and that something extra they add to combat.

Well sorry to tell you, but boss encounters in any game mmorpg are like this. Once you know the rotation is just a matter of not making mistakes. They a little easy maybe, but if you harden it no one will go, since the reward for it it’s just fluff. You could give a good boss chest although.

The system of classes and pvp seems to me fine, FORGET what was gw1. That is unique and unrepeatable. No game will ever get to that. And the system is already made and they have no plans on changing it neither in the next 6 months.

Besides those, the rest of the things said in this post are supposed to be coming in the jan-march patches, so i don’t see the problem of those.

lothefallen.7081:

Wift.9862:

The latest blog post already addressed these concerns with these quotes:

“Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.”

“Guilds are extremely important to the game. We need to ensure there is a volume of content to foster this strong community/social bond. To that end, we’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements, while others will see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience. Over time we’ll continue to expand this system with new guild rewards, missions, and tools to allow guilds of all sizes to play a stronger part in solidifying the communities of the GW2 world.”

As a person that’s played this game for 900+ hours, I think the core game plays just fine. My only problem with the game is that for most of the mobs in the open world, you can essentially use the same strategy to defeat them, which makes the open world feel very repetitive at times.

In the future, I’d like to see much different varieties of mobs that involve different strategies to defeat, much like the Karka we saw at Southsun Cove. However, I don’t expect these changes to come until a major expansion come out.

Hopefully, with these early 2013 changes, we can hopefully expect some of the really gigantic world bosses to be re-designed so they become more difficult and actually fun to do. I’d be content with seeing the starter area meta-bosses not go down in like less than five minutes.

These guild missions sound very intriguing too, and I’d very much like to see group events in the open world that require real coordination to do with like 20+ people, much like the Temple of Bathlazaar boss event.

Thanks for the contribution, i too am interested in these guild events, but it seems like they will just be achievements for fastest dungeon clears or races for existing content completion. This is not something i want in GW2. This is something that belongs in WoW and bringing it here just shows a lack of creativity in my opinion.

On another note, i’d like to see mob difficulty and depth scaled up as well. Maybe some areas will have roaming mobs that require a group of player coordination to take out, much like GW1. This would foster more structure and group integrity in the content with just a simple series of number tweaks. Anything that gets people playing together in a meaningful, engaging way.

I still think the combat / skills / traits systems need to be expanded along with these changes if this game hopes to bring in more players down the road.

I want to fight you and the group you run with some day, see how well you actually understand this game’s combat.

Why fix what ain’t broken?

marnick.4305:

Why fix what ain’t broken?

What do you mean? Almost everyone on this forum wants much more skills, swappable weapons skills, useful elites and more/better utilities. The only people that are fine with the tiny amount available haven’t played the game enough so to them its still ‘fresh’. I was thinking they were to add a new weapon for every class at the end of this month and they haven’t even mentioned anything for the whole year? w t f! I dunno how its even possible to spam same skills/builds for the next 12 months lol its like a torture not giving us choice of builds. Its like every single warrior spams 100b (always with GS equiped), every guardian spam GS as well, every mesmer spams sword/pistol, every ele spams d/d in spvp and staff in pve and so on. Plain boring if you ask me.

Nuka Cola.8520:

marnick.4305:

Why fix what ain’t broken?

What do you mean? Almost everyone on this forum wants much more skills, swappable weapons skills, useful elites and more/better utilities. The only people that are fine with the tiny amount available haven’t played the game enough so to them its still ‘fresh’. I was thinking they were to add a new weapon for every class at the end of this month and they haven’t even mentioned anything for the whole year? w t f! I dunno how its even possible to spam same skills/builds for the next 12 months lol its like a torture not giving us choice of builds. Its like every single warrior spams 100b (always with GS equiped), every guardian spam GS as well, every mesmer spams sword/pistol, every ele spams d/d in spvp and staff in pve and so on. Plain boring if you ask me.

These are all things concerning expanding the combat system. The OP wanted to improve it, which is not necessary. With improvements I understand an overhaul of the underlying mechanics which are actually fine as they are. OK more skills and more options are fun but that’s expanding on a good system, not improving one.

But if intelligently chooosing when to cast the same 20 skills for months is a big deal to you, I strongly recommend going to any other mmo. You would find that either spamming 1 skill or adhering to an extremely strict rotation is much more rewarding /sarcasm.

I too find the combat becomes tedious, especially in the open world where you’re basically fighting the same fight hundreds of times. The terrain doesn’t have any real effect (ie: ranged doesn’t do more damage from a higher position), and even if you find a good position the monsters just turn Invulnerable.

Right now I’m able to stave off boredom by switching weapon sets. But eventually I’ll run out of weapons, and I’m not sure where that’d leave me.

What would be nice would be uniquer monsters that do cooler things. All the time. Everywhere. Is a battle against a Charr archer really any different than a Carrion Devourer? Maybe even random spawns or a wide set of abilities per monster that differ per individual creature. For example three Charr archers spawn. One can pin down, one can bleed, and one switches to a backup melee weapon when you get close. Then you’d have to evaluate each encounter instead of just “Bladetrail, Rush, Hundred Blades, loot, repeat forever”.

Oh, and at this point I think it’s safe to say they aren’t going to make weapon skills customizable. That is a core part of the game and a design decision they probably made years ago. But a monster spawn based approach like I outlined would hopefully be achievable.

I would have to agree that the combat system does need some tweaks to make it more interesting but, what REALLY needs tweaking are NPC’s.

You could quite literally face tank any NPC and kill them by just pressing your auto attack button once. It’s almost as boring as chopping a tree.

There are no threats in the world. The world is so safe that you could cross it from one end to another blind folded.

What people really want when it comes to skills, is the same as with gear – cosmetic variety. You want to feel you’re using different skills, even though the stats and effects are pretty much the same.

So there really is no real reason why ANet shouldn’t just release a truckload of skill “skins” you can get from various places such as dungeons, open world encounters, bosses etc. – the skills would basically be the same, but the visuals and animations wouldn’t and you could swap and mix and match these skill “skins” on your 1-5 bar at will.
There. Variety without a balancing nightmare.

Strengthening the game world they have now, as stated can encompass nearly every aspect of the game itself and combat model can be one of those. It’s a very broad stroke.

The only thing I consider should have its use more encouraged are combos.

I’ll throw my hat in the “We need more interesting enemy AI” category.

If we had more NPC packs ala GW1, we’d see much more interesting decisions to be made in the open world. In BWE1, the AI was fine because the mobs wanted to kill you and even better, they could do so easily. Now that enemies don’t do much in the way of damage, you can stand there mashing autoattack.

I’ve gone around this issue while leveling by moving to higher level zones (5-10 levels higher) and it’s pretty fun. On my 80 however, I don’t have that option. I can get 6 or 7 risen to attack me and have a good time, but single, double, or triple pulls end with me melting the mobs quickly.

If the mobs had more “avoid this or get punished” moves, or if a pack of 3 were programmed well enough to use their signature moves together (1 mob uses cripple to have a big mob knockdown while a caster mob drops a nuke where you land, immobilizing you to setup again) I think it would make for a much more entertaining experience.

I like not having to group or being forced into certain roles and enjoy the underlining mechanics of GW2, aside of some needed fixes and balance changes I think the game play is fine so I’m happy with what’s coming.

I love the combat system. I hope they don’t touch it.

There has been nothing posted about improving the combat system because it does not need an overhaul. Players from classic MMOs who don’t want to understand anything more complex than “tank/DPS/healer” settings don’t know how the combat system in GW2 works, so they keep pointing flaws that do not exist.

For example, some people assume the game has been balanced around dodge. Those players usually don’t understand the game as well as they think. The fight against Alpha, in Crucible of Eternity path 2, has been mentioned a few times here as one of the most difficult boss fights in the game. A lot of people use dodge to stay alive there. However, when you understand how that fight works, there is no need to dodge at all. ArenaNet could add an environment effect that negates all endurance and a group of players who knew what they were doing would still be able to defeat that boss, without the need to death zerg or any other similar trick. However, ArenaNet doesn’t do that considering how many people don’t understand that dodge isn’t the mechanic GW2 has been balanced around.

To give one more example: In other topic, I saw someone using the Graveling Scavangers to demonstrated how “broken” the combat system is. The Scavangers have a charged attack in which, if they hit, they knock a character down and basically kill it while it’s on the ground. The poster was using them as a way to illustrate how combat is either DPS – and you kill them before they use this attack – or dodge – the only way to avoid this attack – or you die, no other option available.

That comment showed a profound lack of knowledge about the game.

Against the Graveling Scavangers, a character can:

• Interrupt the charging animation. Any kind of crowd control works for this.

• If the character cannot interrupt the attack, use some kind of defensive skill to prevent the attack from hitting. Aegis for Guardians, Mist Form for Elementalists, and so on.

• If the attack cannot be defended against, use some source of Stability to prevent the knock down and thus avoid the killing attacks.

• If the character cannot prevent the knock down and is actually thrown on the ground, use any kind of stun breaker to leave the knocked down state and just walk away from the killing attacks.

• If a character cannot do any of that… Just ask for help. Party members can do all of the above, plus interrupt the killing attacks themselves.

Dodge is not the only, nor the best, way to avoid taking damage. It’s likely the simplest, which has led some players to assume it’s the only one.

But the combat system is even less complex than a trinity set-up so your whole post is pretty much invalidated. You can go AFK on mobs and bosses even because they are braindead. In GW1, every foe had player skills, which added to the strategic depth. In this game, we have generic MMO encounters with a slightly above average skill system. The thing is, the combat system is fun (although a direct healer would make it more engaging and diverse for group play) in PvP, but it’s clear they put very little thought into the PvE encounters. Why not redesign the encounters to have player-available skills? Why not design skills and roles in encounters that need specific skills and roles to in turn counter them? That’s depth. That’s how you get people in an MMO playing together. The difficulty on bosses and mobs is artificial, numerical…the boss hits like a truck and lasts longer than Jared Fogle in Subway’s marketing division. It needs to be less artificial, more mechanical. More engaging. The skill / trait system needs more variety and reason to spec into one over the other. Don’t come in here saying Damage/ Control / Support is a better trinity because it’s not. It’s an excuse to casualize and homogenize combat mechanics for the console babies. Dodging red circles or interrupting one animation is not depth. Cooldowns are too long on block skills, so it’s not efficient to say yeah, there’s so much depth in taking a 3 second block on a 30 second recharge just for one fight. The encounters are braindead zergs. Get out of here with that copy pasta. Saying the game isn’t balanced around dodge just because a faultily designed encounter allows you to stand in the middle of a red circle to avoid damage…dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about.