Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I saw a post in the WvW forum that I’m quoting just here.

CHIPS.6018:

I can say so much more. I had been playing since the beta of GW1. So I was there when we had like 200 skills for each character to work with. And now we have like 10 skills in GW2, and everyone in WvW runs the same bar. Because there is only 1 skill bar that is effective. I know having 200 skills is hard to balance. But Anet has totally turn 180 degrees in GW2 and KILLED all creativity. It is almost like they are making a DOTA or LOL, which limit your character to 4 skills. This is one of the biggest reason that the game got boring for me. I honestly has been running the same skill bar (same 10 skills) for like the past 2 years. Buffing and nerfing skills DOESN’T fix anything. We just have 10 skills in GW2 compared to like 200 skills back in GW1.

Oh and back in GW1 the mobs (yes now I am getting into PvE) would actually try to fight the players on an even level. Mobs actually have unique skill bars that they know how to use to try to beat the players FAIR AND SQUARE. Now in GW2 we have mobs that is TOTALLY OPed stat wise but TOTALLY MINDLESS. Even the most regular mobs have like 10 times the health of the player, but they do not know how to play the game at all. The mobs just overwhelms the players by higher stats and numbers. Anet you honestly have no idea how disappointed I was, coming from GW1, when I walked into a GW2 dungeon for the first time. Honestly Anet you should have seen a problem with the game when the players feels like they are in a DIFFERENT UNIVERSE from the mobs. When the players have 20k hp, even the most regular mobs often have like 200k hp. When the players hit for 2k damage, the mobs hits for like 8k. etc

As a fellow GW1 player, I must say that I saw the light falling from the sky. Because there’re things that I find irritating, and I feel like there’s a trend in this that may be dangerous, because of design flaws :

• Roles vs. Professions : GW2 initial design was to remove the trinity. Why not ? Even if in GW1, every professions had at least one heal. In the beginning of GW2, mobs were flavoured, yet roles are now back in business (just think of mordrem menders). The issue is : players still don’t have role based professions. They have flavours with elite specs, but no roles.
• Design priorities : character skills have known ne “big” revamp, and tweaks here and there, but nothing new. Which means that if you’re running staff ele since beta, you’re still casting the 20 same spells ever since. Monster skills pool is swelling and swelling…
• Difficulty design : Back in GW1, monsters had their profession and skill bar, which led to think of team composition and learning to beat them. Now, it’s 1 – swarms of mobs 2 – insane amount of HP 3 – ridiculous damage output. Just think of that storm icebrood kodans can summon. Just think of how roughly every world bosses are.
• “Do as I say, not as I do” : Stealth gliding ? Let’s make a map where mobs can see through it. Interrupts ? Let’s make mobs insta re-cast their skills. Stun breakers ? Let’s make CC that work another way. The list could drag.
• Lore : people don’t feel involved in the story, because everything runs without them. They’re bare witness of events. Whatever the player think his character should do doesn’t matter because there’s no choice.

TL;DR : Conclusion :
I feel like the path GW2 is taking is dangerous. Because there’s a gap that’s getting bigger and bigger between what players options are (skills, lore choices) and what is given to them (lore, mobs with their new skills). as CHIPS stated, all points above makes me feel like my character lives in a different universe than the rest of Tyria : he doesn’t share the same skills, nor the same stats, and whatever he expects to do doesn’t really work because of… reasons. That leads to lots of frustration and helplessness. or now, players can still omniblob things so that the shift reduces… yet, it leads to HoT meta-events being impossible because maps are deserted. It also leads to bandit champions being nerfed because when the omniblob is not here, they shine for what they are : insane stats mobs with insane skills any player would dream of.

I strongly suggest the whole crew to get a closer look as these design flaws, otherwise, devs may some day raise their heads off their design circle, in which they were deafly talking lore and skills and “let’s create that mob that can do ….”, to realize that players don’t care anymore.

That may not be for GW2, not even for the next xPAC, but should there be a GW3 some day, better take tough designs ideas, and stick with them.

Thanks for reading.

meh. Known problems since the beginning of the game.

Anet have been trying to improve the mob situation. As you can see, the ai system is a rather complex weight base system. I wish anet export the weights so players can create complex mobs. The first mmorpg that can figure out how to monetize player made creation will be much more self sustainable.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

I think game designers are the issue and raids are a step back.

I agree op, but inb4 the usual suspects tell us we’re blinded by nostalgia or wearing rose colored glasses.

I don’t remember many lore/story choices in Guild Wars (One).

I thought most players said they used the same build(s) in Guild Wars (One).

No matter the game, or time, it seems the same lamentations appear. /shrug

Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t remember many lore/story choices in Guild Wars (One).

Indeed, there wasn’t any choice either. I only put that issue along with the others to emphasize the overall disconnection problem.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I thought most players said they used the same build(s) in Guild Wars (One).

Just to make sure. Was the same build than one’s neighbour, or the same build over time ? Running the same build over time is not a big issue in itself : people may like a specific way of playing. Yet, GW1 allowed players to change because there used to be choice. And at the same time, GW1 allowed to run a build that was different from your neighbour. One of GW2 issues is that players use the same build over time and than the neighbour’s.

Tru Reptile.6058:

I agree op, but inb4 the usual suspects tell us we’re blinded by nostalgia or wearing rose colored glasses.

There may honestly be some nostalgia. Yet, I feel like GW1 had major qualities, and it was dangerous to change them. Of course, it could have been a good idea. It was a bet, and I feel like it’s been lost, because, as I stated, there’re trends showing that the devs are eventually taking a 180 turn.

Tension comes when that turns involves non-playing content, while players are still stuck to initial ideas that happened to be flawed.

I suppose some players use the same build in GW2 as others. And some players do not. I’m sure the same held true in Guild Wars (One).

I think there is always a choice; I also think there are a segment of players that don’t really pay that much attention to builds. They might be considered to be the ‘casual’ segment of the playerbase; I’ve heard it said that that segment might be quite substantial. /shrug

I remember in GW1 when I left Sanctum Cay into the Crystal Desert for the first time. I didn’t bother upgrading my armor and weapons and walked outside. In missions I might need players. But for exploring henchmen has served me well. What can go wrong right?

I died and I died. Over and over again. I still remember when I went outside to fight a group of Hydras for the first time and I got “spiked” by 3 Meteors+Fireballs. I was like OMG this game was so hard!

Then I see that the mobs uses the exact same skills available to the players. They didn’t cheat at all. Hydra was level 22 which was nothing, when compared to other harder foes.

And does anyone remember the very first time they tried Elona Reach in normal mode. Do you remember trying to fight Wissper Inssani without a mesmer? Back then I didn’t even know what a Mesmer does. XD

Childhood’s end. It is time for me to grow up and play with the big boys. Or die and disappear from history.

Of course I did improve and eventually I defeated even foes that are level 28+. I even finished the whole Winds of Change in hard mode. I know for a fact that I became a much better player. Because I remember how badly I used to play the game.

This is one of the reason GW1 was such a good memory for me. And I played it from beta till the start of GW2.

With regards to the trinity comments, there have been several devs over the years state that GW2 is built on a “soft” Trinity, in that the trinity is still there and still something every class can build towards. Every single class available in the game has builds and skills that contribute in some way to one corner of the classic trinity. Sure, the typical healspammer support might be rare (but possible), but every class has some supportive, dps and tanking capacity that can be built on.

Some classes are definitely geared more towards a certain play style than others, for sure, but that doesn’t mean that oher options are not available. What is “meta” is player defined, not made by ANet. No matter what changes ANet were to make there would always, always be a meta build that is most efficient.

As for the lore, everyone’s different in that respect. Sure, some people might dislike not being the star of the show, but I actually find GW2’s take refreshing. You are not the star in the centre of the universe, but rather an important character in a much larger plot that involves the world and your guild as a whole, rather than just your character’s personal journey.

Difficulty is difficult to manage in an action game where damage negation is something every character has access to. How does one provide a sufficiently challenging encounter that takes in to account dodge mechanics and does not shoehorn people in to having to use specific builds to prevail (something that Anet have said they never want to do), all while maintaining the action aspect of things and taking in to account any one of a large number of team comps?

As far as new character skills. It would definitely be nice to see something new there, I have to agree. But I also don’t want to have to deal with the 6 toolbars of skills I have in other MMO’s. Each skill needs to be worth it’s place on your 6-0 keys.
We know at this point that new weapon skills will come pretty much only with new expansions. The point of multiple weapon classes was to expand the skill pool by changing weapons, rather than locking everyone to a single weapon type and making skills generic. I like this choice, myself, that every weapon has it’s own unique combat style, it’s not just a tool to hit things with while spamming generic skills.

I too played both games and where GW1 was about choices and progressively learning different combat strategies from kiting to stealth, GW2 is mostly about “farming” and the cash shop. There is a “loose” personal story that pulls you through the content, but mostly its about farming materials and crafting weapons and armor to get stronger to take on these OP’ed enemies. If you are a strong player, you blow right past the content even without upgrades, while people like myself need ascended armor and weapons just to enter fractals and survive a few minutes. Eventually, everyone can master the content as updates and new releases make characters stronger or you can “buy” your way to a stronger character through the trading post. This is Arenanet’s strategy for GW2 and yes, this is much different than GW1 because it focuses more on profits and less on choice and less on strategy and player choice.

Rush is Right.9723:

I too played both games and where GW1 was about choices and progressively learning different combat strategies from kiting to stealth, GW2 is mostly about “farming” and the cash shop. There is a “loose” personal story that pulls you through the content, but mostly its about farming materials and crafting weapons and armor to get stronger to take on these OP’ed enemies. If you are a strong player, you blow right past the content even without upgrades, while people like myself need ascended armor and weapons just to enter fractals and survive a few minutes. Eventually, everyone can master the content as updates and new releases make characters stronger or you can “buy” your way to a stronger character through the trading post. This is Arenanet’s strategy for GW2 and yes, this is much different than GW1 because it focuses more on profits and less on choice and less on strategy and player choice.

Sounds like you’re describing a learn to play issue if one player can do content easily that another player has to overgear for.

rapthorne.7345:

Difficulty is difficult to manage in an action game where damage negation is something every character has access to. How does one provide a sufficiently challenging encounter that takes in to account dodge mechanics and does not shoehorn people in to having to use specific builds to prevail (something that Anet have said they never want to do), all while maintaining the action aspect of things and taking in to account any one of a large number of team comps?

That is an excellent question. Issue is : ANet’s consistent answer over the years has been and roughly still is : “just spam damage.” Raw damage is usually better than condition damage in PvE.
Of course, there’re some exceptions, the biggest one may be Vermignus : players usually don’t strike the worm. The golem does it. The mission is to keep it alive and fed. I think it’s interesting because it could provide a big incentive for buff roles and heal roles. Yet, it eventually comes down to smash all the trash wurms. The golem is never truly endangered. In a similar fashion, Triple trouble or Tequatl have gimmicks between burn phases, but it ends up smahing the boss as hard as possible afterwards.

So, the point is : open PvE roughly only offers “just smash it” content, which involve no tactics at all. And the few “tactics” thing for world boss becomes a compulsory mechanic in a matter of days. So where is actually the challenging content ?

All of this leads there :

rapthorne.7345:

With regards to the trinity comments, there have been several devs over the years state that GW2 is built on a “soft” Trinity, in that the trinity is still there and still something every class can build towards. Every single class available in the game has builds and skills that contribute in some way to one corner of the classic trinity. Sure, the typical healspammer support might be rare (but possible), but every class has some supportive, dps and tanking capacity that can be built on.

That’s indeed true. It’s what I call flavours and not roles. The issue is : if the only thing to do is “just smash”, then the trinity gets useless ! Look at Ventari rev or overall healing classes : they’re not really seen in open PvE. It’s sad because it eventually leads to a whole bunch of utilities being put aside because they’re related to a way of playing that’s not “just smash it” and therefore, not really needed nor effective. It’s a waste of time and resources. Likewise, some classes are more “duel” oriented instead of AoE, and they sometimes suffer in open PvE.

So content really matters when it comes to encourage build diversity. This is ANet’s problem. If they provide content where heals and boons and buffs really matter, while smahing the enemy is useless, then, maybe, such builds would shine more ? As long as it’ll only be a matter of “just smash it”, then players will run builds that smash hard.

rapthorne.7345:

As far as new character skills. It would definitely be nice to see something new there, I have to agree. But I also don’t want to have to deal with the 6 toolbars of skills I have in other MMO’s. Each skill needs to be worth it’s place on your 6-0 keys.
We know at this point that new weapon skills will come pretty much only with new expansions. The point of multiple weapon classes was to expand the skill pool by changing weapons, rather than locking everyone to a single weapon type and making skills generic. I like this choice, myself, that every weapon has it’s own unique combat style, it’s not just a tool to hit things with while spamming generic skills.

Back in GW1, there were “weapon skills”, i.e. skills that required you to equip a specific weapon. All others were utilities. And weapons had an auto-attack.
In itself, the current system is a better idea, but it truly suffers from a lack of update.
And it’s not as if other possibilities didn’t exist ! Just check Instructor Gabrielle in DBL. She clearly is a staff ele ! So there’re skills ! Why would it be impossible to have them given to players ? Even in a less OP version, it’d be nice.

Too many skills may indeed lead to some confusion. And the condi/boons system would have to expand, should new effects be added. Yet, there’re clearly too few skills in the current release.

loseridoit.2756:

meh. Known problems since the beginning of the game.

Anet have been trying to improve the mob situation. As you can see, the ai system is a rather complex weight base system. I wish anet export the weights so players can create complex mobs. The first mmorpg that can figure out how to monetize player made creation will be much more self sustainable.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

I think game designers are the issue and raids are a step back.

Actually, we never had this problem before they redid the mob priority AI a few times. You should have seen how bad it was before they rebalanced it again. A single zerker character could pull aggro of a team of 8 from a single crit.

Did that more than a few times myself.

Honestly speaking, and as a player who has only been here since early access, the game has gone through a few very unfortunate changes.

The first was the change to mob priority in aggression AI. Everything went to kitten for a time and it was A Bad Time. Eventually they got that figured out — same with converting Critical Damage (as a static +Percentile) to Ferocity — and things weren’t so bad anymore. They in fact were not all that different from where we started.

Thereafter we saw the introduction of specializations. Player choice, flexibility in professions, and a lot of utility traits went out the window. This is why a lot of people run the exact same builds nowadays, because many builds were effectively lost. Gone. Kaput. You just won’t get that silly little build back that you loved.

On top of that, stats were decoupled from traits. This was at first lauded until some of us — myself included — realized that we just lost anywhere between 300 and 1200 points to our stats. This furthered the punishment to more eccentric (or compensatory builds) by forcing a lot of us to re-gear our characters to make up for the differences (and in many cases, what has been introduced requires an insane investment of grinding from someone with a full-time job and no further interest in the expansion).

And then we had Elite specializations. I’ll just leave that one be, because anything that can be said about them has been at this point.

Lastly, though is what OP posted and quoted, and what I think is the real core of what’s wrong with Guild Wars 2: the mobs.

Yes, a lot of the foes have similar skills to what we can do, but too many of them don’t. Yes, Guild Wars 1 had lots of unique Monster skills (like Agony) that players would never get to, but they were often just different forms of the same things we might have had in other ways. And what that left us with was something you could observe, learn, and eventually overcome through cleverness and the proper use of your own skills — or those of your henchmen or friends.

I played through some 80% of GW1 (Prophecies, Factions, and maybe two-thirds of Nightfall) completely solo, using only henchmen outside of a few story missions that kicked my tail. Because the game was balanced by virtue of how its skill system (and its Traits) worked.

But also because there were no super-mobs with special attacks that could wipe out a party or hit you from infinite range or without line-of-sight. Because nothing had obscene health or armor while still being at your level. Because no development team made a conscious effort to “kill the berserker meta” by ramping up the burst damage of every monster in the entire expansion.

Simply put, other than the addition of things like inscriptions and new professions, Guild Wars 1 was a game that played by its own rules. By contrast, GW2 is a game that can’t seem to keep the same kittened rules for a single year’s time without changing them for the worse.

I don’t really play the game much anymore. I pop on from time to time, but there’s nothing left that I want to work toward. Because either I’ll get punished for doing so and playing the same build I have for some two and a half years now, or because my efforts are likely to be in vain come the next balance patch. At this point, I hope for “Guild Wars 3,” which will be a clean slate that learns from all of this and revitalizes the ingenuity, tactics, synergy, and expressiveness of the GW1 mechanics and its legacy and all its lore while retaining the exploration and beauty of Pre-Scarlet (oh gods is that like Pre-Searing?) Tyria that was what made me fall in love with GW2.

ThomasC.1056:

Back in GW1, there were “weapon skills”, i.e. skills that required you to equip a specific weapon. All others were utilities. And weapons had an auto-attack.
In itself, the current system is a better idea, but it truly suffers from a lack of update.
And it’s not as if other possibilities didn’t exist ! Just check Instructor Gabrielle in DBL. She clearly is a staff ele ! So there’re skills ! Why would it be impossible to have them given to players ? Even in a less OP version, it’d be nice.

Too many skills may indeed lead to some confusion. And the condi/boons system would have to expand, should new effects be added. Yet, there’re clearly too few skills in the current release.

Just have to point out that in Heart of the Mists, there are a bunch of training dummy AI’s that does exactly this, basically follow the players rules, and use same skills. They’re far from perfect, but they’re fun to fight against. This is how I wish all veterans in the game was handled. Or most mobs was made a variation of at least.

Really miss the Charr Warbands from GW1, that was 4-5 random classes using normal class skills against you, forcing you to prioritize which to take down first etc (Monk, always down first!, stupid heal other skill)

fluffdragon.1523:

Honestly speaking, and as a player who has only been here since early access, the game has gone through a few very unfortunate changes.

The first was the change to mob priority in aggression AI. Everything went to kitten for a time and it was A Bad Time. Eventually they got that figured out — same with converting Critical Damage (as a static +Percentile) to Ferocity — and things weren’t so bad anymore. They in fact were not all that different from where we started.

Thereafter we saw the introduction of specializations. Player choice, flexibility in professions, and a lot of utility traits went out the window. This is why a lot of people run the exact same builds nowadays, because many builds were effectively lost. Gone. Kaput. You just won’t get that silly little build back that you loved.

On top of that, stats were decoupled from traits. This was at first lauded until some of us — myself included — realized that we just lost anywhere between 300 and 1200 points to our stats. This furthered the punishment to more eccentric (or compensatory builds) by forcing a lot of us to re-gear our characters to make up for the differences (and in many cases, what has been introduced requires an insane investment of grinding from someone with a full-time job and no further interest in the expansion).

And then we had Elite specializations. I’ll just leave that one be, because anything that can be said about them has been at this point.

Lastly, though is what OP posted and quoted, and what I think is the real core of what’s wrong with Guild Wars 2: the mobs.

Yes, a lot of the foes have similar skills to what we can do, but too many of them don’t. Yes, Guild Wars 1 had lots of unique Monster skills (like Agony) that players would never get to, but they were often just different forms of the same things we might have had in other ways. And what that left us with was something you could observe, learn, and eventually overcome through cleverness and the proper use of your own skills — or those of your henchmen or friends.

I played through some 80% of GW1 (Prophecies, Factions, and maybe two-thirds of Nightfall) completely solo, using only henchmen outside of a few story missions that kicked my tail. Because the game was balanced by virtue of how its skill system (and its Traits) worked.

But also because there were no super-mobs with special attacks that could wipe out a party or hit you from infinite range or without line-of-sight. Because nothing had obscene health or armor while still being at your level. Because no development team made a conscious effort to “kill the berserker meta” by ramping up the burst damage of every monster in the entire expansion.

Simply put, other than the addition of things like inscriptions and new professions, Guild Wars 1 was a game that played by its own rules. By contrast, GW2 is a game that can’t seem to keep the same kittened rules for a single year’s time without changing them for the worse.

I don’t really play the game much anymore. I pop on from time to time, but there’s nothing left that I want to work toward. Because either I’ll get punished for doing so and playing the same build I have for some two and a half years now, or because my efforts are likely to be in vain come the next balance patch. At this point, I hope for “Guild Wars 3,” which will be a clean slate that learns from all of this and revitalizes the ingenuity, tactics, synergy, and expressiveness of the GW1 mechanics and its legacy and all its lore while retaining the exploration and beauty of Pre-Scarlet (oh gods is that like Pre-Searing?) Tyria that was what made me fall in love with GW2.

If only we had the same Dev team from Pre-Nightfall GW1.

fluffdragon.1523:

But also because there were no super-mobs with special attacks that could wipe out a party or hit you from infinite range or without line-of-sight. Because nothing had obscene health or armor while still being at your level. Because no development team made a conscious effort to “kill the berserker meta” by ramping up the burst damage of every monster in the entire expansion.

Simply put, other than the addition of things like inscriptions and new professions, Guild Wars 1 was a game that played by its own rules. By contrast, GW2 is a game that can’t seem to keep the same kittened rules for a single year’s time without changing them for the worse.

So much this ! The whole play by the rule thing ! I couldn’t have put it better than you did, thank you. Indeed, GW1 played by its own rules when it came to mobs. GW2 has one set of strict and narrow rules for players, and elusive ever-changing rules for mobs. That kind of double vision leads to the most frustrating gameplay, and is usually an evidence of poor game design. How do you want players to fully enjoy the game if devs can’t even use the very same set of rules to make new challenging content ?