To the people who see this game as just a fun, casual alternative to the molded in MMO structure. I say, have you even played Guild Wars 1?
The underline problems in this game I see are, lack of strategy, a lack of player-to-player communication and skill cap.
Preface to the point:
comparative to Guild wars 1 this game has been so bled of strategy it boarders on a chore to even play, it’s mundane to be perfectly frank. I find zero pleasure in auto attacking the same mob with 50 other people, whilst said mob sits still, using heavy 1-hit KO AoEs and CCs. This style of combat may be fun to some (those of you who like to feel like a mass and not an individual) but not I, I’m sure many others have the same feelings. But Stefan what about dungeons?! I’m glad you brought that up! A dungeon would be an excellent show of skill and strategy if they didn’t take the skill system/role system and run it through a blender and serve the concoction to every class in the game and call it “new and innovative classes” and “Weapons based skill system”. Let’s look at that closely, your weapons determines skills 1-5 you have no control over those skills other than that you choose said weapon(verity is the spice of life, yet A-net gives us none), you have no resource system other than the cool downs of the skills, which on paper looks good but in practice is bland long CD combat that leads to, rolling on the ground for your life while getting murdered by a ghost because your utility/healing skills are on such a ridiculously high CD. If you aren’t the target of the mobs all you’re doing is auto-attacking and casting skills on recharge… Is that really fun? No, it is not.
So let’s look at what the original franchise did, every profession had a set of attributes – The main attributes, so your classes and the secondary classes. Ex. An Assassin could be anyone of the other classes as a secondary and you could switch your secondary class whenever you wanted. So you have every skill at your disposal (1319) making yourself diverse was really easy to do. You could customize your build however you wanted for whatever you wanted to do, everything felt unique for the most part. This showed heavily in the combat.
They took everything that made Guild wars 1 exciting and fun out of Guild wars 2. But Stefan Guild Wars 2 is a different game!? Oh it sure is, from a person looking in at having NEVER played the first game I’m sure all of it looks vast and new, a fresh start from the stagnant WoW hellscape. Honestly you probably don’t understand real PvP/E strategy or even PvP/E that requires actual skill. I can draw far more parallels between WoW and Guild wars 2 than I can between Guild wars 1 and 2…
The Point: Guild wars had a hard cap system, so level 20 armor was the same AR as other level 20 armor, same for weapons. Guild wars had no “Top Tier Gear”, they had gear that look better than other gear, much like in GW2. In guild wars 1 you didn’t grind because you had to, but because you wanted to, you had goal for the better looking stuff, but to get that stuff was actually a really difficult thing to do.. Everything in the game took high levels of team work that felt very rewarding and fun, you all had to synergy together to accomplish a goal, you all had a role to play. (oh noes I said “role”) Everything was fun because it actually took some skill to accomplish the task, not the artificial skill this game creates by making every boss mob have 4254385473541354 health and do 123435435413213543543543 damage……………….
In short summary: they took out of the game anything that requires skill, to accommodate the hordes use to mindlessly grinding the same thing, the same way. This isn’t a fun game model, it’s a rehash of a failing game model. Fun doesn’t have to equal reward, but on the same token, no fun can’t equal little to no reward.
In no way was Guild Wars 1 perfect, it is just a better, more fulfilling experience. Okay Stefan why don’t you just play GW1?! Well, simply put, GW1 died.
I can’t even speak to the PvP right now(that is another thread in another place)… just trust me when I say GW2 PvP is laughably, hilariously, pathetically easier than any other form of PvP in Guild wars 1… You don’t even know.