One person's opinion
PvE: I liked it going through the first time, but it has become pretty blah over time.
- Harvesting was interesting at first, but it has been replaced with purchasing because harvesting is much more inefficient than obtaining gold and buying the same things instead.
- Dungeons are IMO shallow and the rewards are mostly gold, not any special or interesting items with nice/unique/worthwhile effects. The only dungeon that actually provides rewards that are usable (literally usable) for end-game is FOTM dropping ascended rings. No other dungeon drops any items that are actually usable for end-game. A few of a given crafting item you need hundreds of to make a single useful end-game item is really not a satisfactory reward.
- Someone else mentioned that gold farming has become the main way to do everything in the game: You grind boring dungeons/etc. to make money every day to buy in TP the things you want/need, e.g. crafting items. I would like to see a revitalization of harvesting usefulness. In order for that to happen, they have to be more valuable and gold less plentiful – but in order for THAT to happen without becoming too boring/difficult, there must be a relative increase in the reward of harvesting efforts.
- Dungeons IMO need more depth and to require puzzles/challenges to be beaten successfully to earn various rewards.
- IMO most/all end-game items (equipment/etc.) should be obtainable by MULTIPLE different pathways, possibly including converging pathways, and preferably with very little time gating. Every daily-only system makes this less satisfying and enjoyable. One thing I’ve heard and agree with is that the singular and time-gated pathway for making ascended weapons/armor/etc. deters experimenting with different builds/having multiple alts with ascended/the best equipment because of the extreme amount of time (not necessarily effort) required…but what makes it worse is that it FEELS like an extreme amount of time required.
PvE Continued:
- To expand a little on part of the last point: The feel is more of a grind of something that does not require a lot of actual skill to do. You can repeatedly hit a limited number of boss events daily to get dragonite for ascended gear, but in the end it isn’t a lot of effort – only time. It’s not challenging most of the time, and it’s not very engaging. And the reward is typically too small for the amount of time. IMO the equation works best with when time + challenge = reward. Lesser vs greater rewards, but each reward feels like it was worth the time, and there was challenge to the greater rewards…but it was WORTH it. IMO I would place more priority on challenge than time, and I would rather have more challenging but shorter events that provide good rewards than longer/more drawn-out but less challenging events.
- On that point, I think tequatl is too challenging because it requires the coordination of a much larger number of people than will practically coordinate on any given server most of the time. if it was more scalable – meaning a group of 10-20 people could do it if they were coordinated and knew fairly well how – and if the reward was worth the challenge relatively speaking, then it would be more fun/more desirable to do. In its current state, it requires more than most people are willing/able to do, even for the reward chance of an ascended weapon. Another issue with this is how many tequatl events go undermanned as a result of the peak/offtimes crowds. If the event was playable and winnable during off-times with smaller numbers of people, then it would be much, MUCH more accessible. As it is, many servers never beat it or only rarely beat it, and the few that do with any regularity only do so at very limited times of the day. Not everbody is playing the game at those times of the day, so either you’re in it at prime time or you’re never going to have a chance at all. Why even have it run during those times if it is basically not winnable without the big coordinated groups that only come on a few hours per day?
- PvE common events are extremely shallow, typically not difficult, and provide very limited rewards (a tiny amount of karma/experience). It’s like playing two pennies at a time at the casino: You never really have a chance to win that much and it isn’t very engaging. On the other hand, playing multiple dollars – or perhaps thousands – at a time becomes VERY engaging because the rewards are high (and so are the risks). IMO this needs a rework, perhaps increasing the challenge AND rewards, encouraging a small number of people to coordinate, and perhaps making some unique and interesting rewards for many of them.
- That leads to a whole risk system…a gambling risk system. You might even use skill points as currency for the cost of entry to play challenging dungeons with high rewards and a chance to get equipment/crafting materials for ascended or legendary gear. Not talking about a few sparse t6 materials, but rather items of a higher value or many more t6 materials than 1-10 of a given material. Skill points are not technically time-gated.
- On the note of time-gating: IMO it should be removed and replaced with a system that does not technically time-gate, but is limited by the amount of time a person is capable of spending playing the game to obtain items/etc. This way doesn’t “feel” time-limited, and therefore provides a better subjective feeling to the players. Subjective feeling makes a huge difference IMO.
Living world: This part of PvE seems often to result in a moderate time expense with very limited/redundant/event-specific rewards. I would like to see more relevant rewards. The backpack is the best thing about the current (LA attack) living world event, but the rest of the stuff is generally too much grind for too little reward. The other things you can purchase are OK, but while you are grinding the event for them you are hardly getting any materials or money as compared to other things like PvE champ farming or dungeons. The result is it feels like I am getting less for my time with the living world than I would be if I just did dungeons/PvE champ farming.
WvW: This is dependent on PvE in its current state because of item and gold acquisition, crafting system, etc…and IMO this is not the correct direction.
- I believe that WvW and PvE could/should feed and benefit each other instead of it being almost exclusively one-sided like it is now. IMO they should be two different pathways that can both lead to the same end-result (best equipment, special features/rewards/etc.). However, in WvW it would take an infinitely long time to earn the materials, money and levels to build your character up and get the best equipment.
- The rewards in WvW are shallow in a similar way to general PvE events: Limited rewards for most/all activities and challenges. Some of the things that IMO should be rewarded the most, e.g. well-coordinated defenses fending off large groups (especially with smaller ones) or winning an offensive push by playing smarter should give more reward than a few karma, wxp and a very small amount of silver, plus a few loot bags (mostly giving off t5-level crafting materials in minute amounts). What else could those loot bags contain that might make it more rewarding? What other rewards could make it so WvW could be more competitive to PvE for earning the resources needed to get the best equipment/etc.?
- I think the repairing system needs to be adjusted. Many times stonemist castle’s outer wall is bashed down and stays down for an hour or longer because it takes too many resources to repair it. AFAIK there’s no auto-repair feature or way that a wall left untouched by the enemy – and when an ingress is not performed by the enemy for a long time, it just stays down…because it’s too expensive to repair. It’s only one example of how the repair system IMO needs a rework.
General:
- I think Exotic, Ascended, Legendary weapons/gear should have special features besides sigils and runes accessible and applicable to any gear you choose. I think the special features could be skill-related, bonus-related, stat-related, trait-boost-related, etc.
- I think that traits and skills might benefit from modifiers, like the above, possibly item-based. Possibly related to cooldowns or efficacy or number of stacks or number of conditions applied/removed or various other things that traits and skills do. Just please don’t turn it into a blizzard failure released near the same time as GW2 was…
- I think customization…and personalization…need to be increased overall. With rewards, I think different events could have different chances of obtaining any particular unique trait as I’m describing above, but for the most part there shouldn’t be a sense of 0% chance of EVER getting a drop from X event/enemy that could be useful in end-game, and so on. Currently, only a very few enemies ever drop anything above an exotic item (which is pretty much only useful for salvaging now), and this…is no good IMO.
I’m going to leave sPvP/tPvP alone because they feel like a different game altogether and belong in a different post.
fairly objective analysis of game +1