Guild Wars 2

Well another year done and I was thinking about what the developers of 2014 have brought the GW2 community. I thought of some basic things, but the more I keep thinking about the more the list grows. In the spirit of things, I’ll start, but it is by no means exhaustive, I’m sure that after I’m done I will think of more things to add.

1. So, what do you think was good this year? What did the devs do “right”? Things that you’d like to see more of.

2. What was bad this year. Maybe it’s good for the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn’t really apply to you, but perhaps it’s good for something else.

3. What did you find ugly this year. This is something that you just don’t find good for anyone. “Like what the heck were they thinking when they did this?” sort of thing.

The Good

1. Two new maps
2. Improved Living Story ( not perfect, but better than the 1st season)
3. SW mechanics
4. Account binding of:
   *dyes
   *wardrobe
   *legendaries
   *ascended gear
   *WXP
5. PvP Reward Tracks
6. Free Repair Armor and Free refunding of traits and it’s on demand too!
7. Battle for LA (and the corresponding and permanent map change)
8. (Fill-in-the-blank) Tron
9. UI changes to inventory especially with salvaging!

The Bad

1. LS 2 Time schedule. Started in July with 2 long breaks in between so far.
2. Megaservers
3. Empty WvW (at least for me)
4. This new trend of Outfits
5. The new dailies (4th ver)
6. Drama from this new trend of working on things not really broken, but instead they are “improving” them and for the most part just causing community unhappiness. Don’t get me wrong there have been some good out of it, but man there’s been a lot of it and the corresponding drama this year!

The Ugly

1. New trait system (Just allow us to do it once and it’ll be better)
2. Most (if not all) NPE Including:
   * Locking of skills by level
   * Locking of Personal story by level
   * Re-organizing Personal Story and eliminating some content
   * Locking out of things previously accessible in general
3. Ironically, new players playing through their personal story do not find themselves in the Pre-destroyed LA map and are confused about WTH is going on.
4. New players coming can’t play Season1 and are even more confused
5. Unhappy Veteran players
6. Bringing in new content (Collections) that are crippled by bugs. Some bugs have been here since launch and still not fixed, but new stuff is dependent on xyz event working, but doesn’t because of bug and . . . /sigh
   
   Bottom line for me: first half of year tons better than last half. But this last half scares me. I hope they don’t continue to fix what’s not broken, in turn making more issues and to only fix what IS broken.

The Good: New maps and updates on a regular basis. Restart motes. Free armor repairs. Making longbow a viable choice finally. The overall community. The wardrobe changes. Free trait changes or respeccing. Instant summon of minis. Minis linked to your account.

The Bad: Repeating Halloween without any changes from last year. Missing restart motes. The inability to skip cut scenes, and dialogue, after doing it once already. No chance to get minis from previous seasons. The inability to repeat or play Season One content if you’re a new player. Idiot Plot Syndrome. Grinding for random organs and badges in Silverwastes. Nerfing the trains in Queensdale and the Coil. Megaservers displacing communities.

The Ugly: The new leveling system. Period.

I can agree with the majority of your post. The NPE single-handedly stopped the last two people i knew irl from playing and i haven’t leveled an alt since it came out.

The NPE and trait reworks have stopped ALL twelve of my real-friends friends who joined the game from progressing past level 20, and many others from continuing playing the game during the free trial period.

I’d say the wardrobe was really the only “good” thing in 2014; the rest is either average in what a studio should be doing for QoL changes, or simply despicable like the trait and NPE changes which have received zero dev or management response.

Good: The event fiasco that can only be known as “The Amber keep chest farm”.

Bad: The killing of Scarlet which will prevent any kind of future Aetherblade invasion (especially another LA invasion)

The Ugly: The distribution of the Spring WvW tourney rewards and ensuing months of forum flames.

The good:

• EoTM

The bad and ugly:

• Everything else.

I liked many things this year… Wardrobe, reward tracks, account bound gear, changing builds on the fly, EotM BEFORE it became a kittened karma train, etc etc…

What I do NOT like is the stupid gold sink of the NPE, the overly long breaks of Arenanet and the lack of transparency..

The good: LS season 2. Pretty much every aspect except the rate of release is better than season 1.

The bad: Rhendak. Honestly, that particular collections achievement is not conducive to good game play.

The ugly: My inventory management after the farm fests that are Wintersday, Halloween and Silverwastes.

THE GOOD:

• GW2 is s till fun to play, even after 2+ years.
• Outfits (Hey, I like having a look I can live with while leveling, and not burning 8+ Charges every 5 levels)
• Trait change anywhere
• Wardrobe (better than the old system, not as good as it could have been)
• Chris Whiteside in CDI’s
• New mini-zones

THE BAD:

• Trait hunting implementation (the idea was OK, but putting traits for L36 in much higher areas is objectively bad; not to mention the alternative cost for full unlock being a >1000% increase in cost over the old system on top of expending more skill points than you earn while leveling to 80 and doing all the skill challenges in map completion)

I’m only listing one under Bad. That one is so bad that nothing else compares.

THE UGLY:

• Funneling daily hunter zergs into lower-level areas where mobs die in less than a second
• The endless round of the same old topics on the forums

I agree with the OP. Perfect list.

Yes. The trait unlocking system is definitely the worst that ever happened. It simply prevents fun. Good job pinpointing that out.

Just don’t give LS 2 too much credit. It might be better then LS 1, but let’s not forget:
-You’re now a meaningless, mute bag of meat running around that can’t say a word because reasons(mb voice actor issues, but i have no idea wtf is that all about)
-The whole “your own adventure” stuff is out the window in favour of some wierd story that makes no sense and is impossible to get into for people who haven’t played the first season.
-Idiotic difficulty level- i get killed in like 3-4 hits with a warrior, so that doing this alone is frustrating, irritating and FAR away from being fun.
Plus the “new areas” are just copy paste generic desert terrain and slap some events on. They didn’t even bother to put POI’s(which was supposed to be another “COOL” thing) or any real completion in those areas.

Overall i’d say that this is the WORST and UGLIEST thing that has happened to this game in the last year, and if things don’t change(Which they propbly won’t cause you know-doesnt cry on the forums=likes what we do with the game >.>) the game will futher drift away from what was supposed to make it cool in the first place. There’s still many nice things about it, but the personal story aspect is as dead as it can get.

slamfunction.7462:

I agree with the OP. Perfect list.

I know, isn’t ironic that the first feature patch was mostly a step towards less restrictions and greater freedom (except for the traits). While the second one was a step in the other direction with more locks, restrictions, and time-gates.

Like yin and yang.

I would pretty much agree with those lists, although I would swap the “bad” for the “ugly.”

The beautiful: Account wide dyes.

The bad and the ugly: Well…

Ardenwolfe.8590:

The Good: New maps and updates on a regular basis. Restart motes. Free armor repairs. Making longbow a viable choice finally. The overall community. The wardrobe changes. Free trait changes or respeccing. Instant summon of minis. Minis linked to your account.

The Bad: Repeating Halloween without any changes from last year. Missing restart motes. The inability to skip cut scenes, and dialogue, after doing it once already. No chance to get minis from previous seasons. The inability to repeat or play Season One content if you’re a new player. Idiot Plot Syndrome. Grinding for random organs and badges in Silverwastes. Nerfing the trains in Queensdale and the Coil. Megaservers displacing communities.

The Ugly: The new leveling system. Period.

whats restart motes?

The good:
1. Filtering in the trading post!
2. Adding in a wardrobe system.
3. Dismantling the champ trains in the low-level zones.
4. Bobbleheads
5. Halloween was much more rewarding than last year.
6. Zephyrite Sanctum’s return, and another chance at S1 rewards.
7. John Smith’s interactions with the BLTP community.
8. Outfits being free to apply.
9. Dyes being account-wide.
10. The compass! (I just got 100% map completion because of it)
11. New hair colors.
12. The mini interface.
13. The crafting interface.
14. Improved combat log.
15. The dodging tutorial, and some of the new level-up rewards.
16. Some of the smaller QoL changes, like the merchants recognizing currency that’s in your bank and new items being highlighted.
17. Account-wide commander tags.

The ugly:
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not going to bother listing things I’m indifferent about, because the worst of it is bad enough that outweighs the rest, for me.
1. The trait system. It’s bad. Other than the ability to retrait anywhere, out of combat, it is all bad. There’s a 70-page thread detailed all the many ways in which it is bad. And it’s not just the trait system, it’s ANET’s response, or lack thereof. I just cannot express my utter disgust at the whole situation adequately.

2. No Super Adventure Box. It’s now been a year and several months since the infinite continue coin was sold in the gemstore. I will never buy anything in the gemstore that lacks a distinct, transparent timeline, because of this debacle. Please note: Refunds for this item have been denied.

3. The complete lack of foresight with just about any of the changes implemented this year. Notable examples include: The trait system (it’s so nice, I had to say it twice), megaservers (low level events don’t scale with the world boss train), the gem conversion UI, commander tags (thankfully changed before implementation due to the uproar it caused), the silverwaste chest farm, the impact of removing town clothes, among others.

4. The communication policy, despite repeated claims at attempting better communication.

5. The level-gating implemented by the NPE for weapon and utility skills.

6. The enforced level-gating of the personal story, also implemented by the NPE.

7. The removal of things like golem chess from the entire game.

8. An exceedingly rare Halloween mini that was RNG-based and also account bound.

9. The lack of comprehensive patch notes.

10. The loss of the Black Lion Trading Company subforum.

11. Absolutely no flexibility in the Wintersday meta achievement.

12. This philosophy shift to less choice that I’ve observed.

13. Did I mention traits?

Reserving the right to add more.

The good:

Megaservers. (yes I grumbled about these at first and they could be improved…)
Account binding dyes
Wardrobe
Outfits
New areas
Continued improvement in LS
Compass
Some aspects of the Trading Post
Thaumanova fractal

The Bad:
Traits. Make us do them all once (aka one found finds them for all characters) and its all good.
Pointless removal of content such as mini games and low level environmental weapons
Marjory and Kasmeers awkward les-be-friendship
Bad VA choice for Marjory’s sister
Town clothes. Make them outfits and I will be cool with them

The Ugly
Ascended gear and how it screws people with alts
Basic removal of choice in how we play the game. Over and over and over
Having one forum account currently suspended and the other on 30s post cooldown because I can’t contain my anger at the above. I’ll try better, I promise!

Linken.6345:

whats restart motes?

We first saw them in Glint’s lair. If you messed up an attempt at an achievement, you could go to a nearby mote and restart that part of the achievement . . . as opposed to redoing the entire instance, cut scenes and all, in order to try at the achievement again.

Edit: I find it telling how everyone agrees about the new leveling/trait system.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Linken.6345:

whats restart motes?

We first saw them in Glint’s lair. If you messed up an attempt at an achievement, you could go to a nearby mote and restart that part of the achievement . . . as opposed to redoing the entire instance, cut scenes and all, in order to try at the achievement again.

Oh i havent done a ls sine s02p01 so no wonder I dident know what they were

The good:

-slightly more dev communication (still not there.. but gotta start something)
-account wide dyes
-wardrobe (so much yes)
-mawdrey II \star of gratitude (god thanks so much, make a dragonite one too please)
-silver wastes (cept the zero drops, not even junk of the mobs who attack forts)
-quite some balancing choices that finally make a lot things viable
-that recent rytlock ls teaser and the armor he got (i skin somebody if thats an outfit)
-glints lair\library
-free armor repair
-EOTM
-half of a teaspoon more quality in charr and asuran armor (keep it coming…PLEASE)
-new traits
- collections (but curse the teq spoon to hell and back and to hell again >:( )

The bad:

-trait system revamp (cept the free re-assign)
-NPE all of it down to its black, foul rotten and with fail oozing core, may it burn in hell.
-too much sylvari focus in the LS
-too many cliffhangers in the LS
-too few new armors in the game\gem store (make more, people WILL buy em)
-the shift to more outfits then armors (just split them into pieces for those who wanna
mix and sell outfit and skin versions back to back darn it)
- the slap into the face with the blowtorch not beeing an engi weapon (for me atleast)
- too much fixing whats not broken and not fixing whats broken
- the new dailies (but not the rewards, they atleast help level alts now)
- nothing new in form of skills cept the useless healing skill (i know nobody who uses it

The ugly:

-NPE (yea its bad and ugly)
-NPE (3 times for good measure)
-Anything else that came with the NPE patch (even the air arround it)
-still no hobosack fix (two years a-net.. TWO SODDING YEARS get it together darn it)
-the new gem conversion (even after the revamp)
-the new TP (it still cant show me ALL results, i want everything and not 200 or so)
-tequatl´s kittening spoon (guess who only got that thing since they added it -_-)

I want to know how come there are two negative categories, but only one positive category. It’s automatically biased, even if it’s cliche. That said:

Lots of things I loved this year, including the Wardrobe, the new dailies, Drytop and Silverwastes, the NPE (Yes I prefer it to the old system), the megaserver (probably did more to save the game for me than any other change), pvp reward tracks, EoTM, the account binding of commander tags and WvW XP (and dyes for that matter), Escape from Lion’s Arch, the improved combat log, and some of the skins and some of the UI changes particularly in regards to inventory that I’ve particularly liked.

The real negatives for me (I feel no need to separate them into bad and ugly) is the new trait system, which has slow my leveling of alts to a crawl, the changes to the end of the personal story, lack of communication with regards to some sort of road map for the future.

Everything the OP listed in the exact places they were listed? Those go here. I have nothing to change from that list.

The Good: Wardrobe, dyes, TP, Megaservers, account-bound ascended gear

The Bad: Traits

The Ugly: Can’t think of anything ugly right off the top of my head.

Really want to get back into GW2 now, only thing stopping me is the horrible trait unlock system. Bring back old system PLEASE

Good:
Wardrobe;
Account dyes;
Free repairs;
New daily system (doing fractals because of them and like it. Finished Mawdrey II because of it).

Bad:
Long breaks in LS2;
Still no real use for going for a condition build in PvE (still love my Necro’s though);
Zerker meta;
No alternative way to get a precursor (scavenger hunt where are you);
RNG.

Ugly:
Trait unlock system;
Trait unlock system;
Trait unlock system.

I’m going to make a short version, one of each.

Good: Living Story
Bad: NPE
Ugly: Trait system rework

Good:

• LS2
• Collections
• Balance changes
• Doing work on the PvP queuing system
• Some hints on how a staged crafting system could work (Mawdrey)
• Dry top and Silver Wastes zone designs
• I still love the fight system

Bad:

• NPE
• Another unbalanced WvW season
• Latest daily rework

Ugly:

• Megaservers (it will never become good, only less ugly)
• New Trait system (I call it “the disaster” meanwhile)
• The fact that nothing gets done on WvW

The good:
- Megaserver (finally maps feel alive)
- Living Story S.2
- Improved crafting interface
- New maps

The bad:
- Trait hunting
- New dailies
- Dumbing down the game too much for new players (please add a “skip tutorial mode” option).

The ugly:
- Outfits that don’t allow mix ’n match
- Two huge breaks between Living Story episodes

Vayne.8563:

I want to know how come there are two negative categories, but only one positive category. It’s automatically biased, even if it’s cliche. That said:

That’s why I only had the two categories. I skipped the one that was basically “indifferent.”

Maybe you could have done the Good, the Pretty/Beautiful, the Bad, and the Ugly?

Donari.5237:

Maybe you could have done the Good, the Pretty/Beautiful, the Bad, and the Ugly?

Eh, more categories are too confusing for new players.

The Good:
*basically what the Op said and many others put in the good

*An actual response about tribal armor and other armors that disappeared during wardrobe patch

*The return of CDIs and CDI forum.

Neutral (Not bad, but not good)
*megaservers – I think there is still room for improvement for these. I still say there should be districts again, with one labeled “Server” so you know its your server district.

*NPE – for all its flack, I don’t get the hubbub about it, even as a vet. Are some things still not right? Of course, tweaks are needed. But half the complaints I hear are just lies. I had two people come back to playing, both going through the NPE, and not one complaint. Heck, the one guy actually LIKED a lot of the stuff they did like the compass and the level up rewards.

*Dailies – I think just to please those who dont want to go out of their comfort zone, at one or two more categories to each area. So like 4 or 5 pve ones, etc. Then people dont have to do a level 1 fractals anymore.

*Communication – Better than what it use to be, but not great. I like Gaile talking to us and passing along info. But the secrecy policy is so stupid. We can’t give good feedback when we know of a new feature like 5 days before it comes out, and if the feedback is overwhelmingly negative, they gotta rush for a fix over the weekend (see commander tags. Also, hope whoever thought of the original idea of charging for each color got both a front and back slap)

*LS2 – its better than the first, definately, but not great. The gaps are annoying (though understandable with holidays, but the gap till nov….huh?). The constantly cliff hangers with no resolution that happens in the story, thus just playing an adventure that solved nothing only to give backstory. And yes, being a mute. When I look back at gw1, i feel more of an impact with my character talking. But at the same time, I understand that they would need a potential 10 different voice actors for each character. So while yes I want it, I can understand why it would be hard.

*No State of the Game – I technically blame some members in the community for this, for not being able to read “Things may change” at the bottom of every one of these, and then screaming “BROKEN PROMISE” if it doesn’t happen. I would still like to see these as they give some insight to whats being attempted, but yeah, as long as people believe that its considered a “promise” I can understand why its avoided.

The ugly
*Trait system

*Trait system

*Trait system

*Throwing around “White Knight”. Its at the point that if anyone dares say they like something anet does, and someone else hates it, the person who likes it is labeled immediately as a white knight, and should feel bad for even daring to like something.

The Good:
LS2…I like the more challenging direction. Plot is interesting if a bit uneven.

The new Daily system

Megaserver…more ability to do events that had been all but abandoned on my server.

The Bad:
LS2…who are these characters that are referred to as my, “friends?” If I wanted to play a female Sylvari thief with a bad build I would have created one.

Megaserver….without the ability to turn off graphical SFX more populated events can be a laggy blur.

The Ugly:
NPE….a system to help new players get into the game is fine and dandy, imposing it on veterans is not.

The trait acquisition revamp.

Concerning WvW

The Good (aka clint eastwood):
…. they removed. no! wait , they added… something…. one sec.. .. guys what did anet add to WvW that was good? They removed some bugs they created to begin with…

Ok back.. So Anet removed bugs in WvW! and they … ehrm.. one sec..

Guys anything else they add in WvW? didn’t they add tournaments? no that was 2013 Oh .. well they did.. ehrm.. they added traps and siege and started working on splitting the zerg trough removal of white swords as a test. Cool thanks

So.. anet added the removal of white swords and started working on population balance.. i think!?

Further they added small things like more hp the back door of garry so it can now take a good pounding before prolapsing.

The bad (aka Lee van Cleef):

Not much bad things have happened to WvW, since not much has changed not much could go wrong, besides the population diminishing and people all moving up to higher tiers wasting their gems (that are hard to earn in WvW).

Guys what bad stuff happened to WvW in 2014? nothing changed and it became the stale same old same old repetitiveness.

But can you call that bad? No dude, i call that ugly! . but to come back to your previous question, i did find that they fixed the “stuck bug” and they made people re-spawn when dead In august.
Ah good , so they did add stuff to WvW? No dude, they fixed stuff. Awh come on, they must have added some content that made the gamemode more attractive and fun right? No dude, It depends on what server you are on and what population that server can muster, but even if you are on a stacked server and have fights, nothing has changed in 2014.

The Ugly (Eli Wallach):
Ok moving on, i guess we can skip the ugly huh guys? Dude i havn’t played the game in a couple of months why are you asking me these questions?

Oh sorry, i thought because you were logged in you still play
Naw dude i am only here for the rewards for doing nothing
and chatting with you because you don’t want to install skype.

Ah ok.. wanna do some pve? i need this reward thingy to add to other thingies making me spend 20 gold to have a backpack thingy that i have to grow nto another thingy to spend another 20 gold to finally have the thingy become acsended.
No kitten off.

(The unsalted opinion of “the guild”) ^^

The Good:

Daily rewards. No more need to play, can level alts without playing them, get stuff for free. The game literaly plays itself.

The Bad:

Both feature patches. Who ever thought most of that stuff was a good idea? DEV’s must live in an ivory tower.

The Ugly:

More communication they said? It is worse than ever. That’s why we got all those features in the first place. Welcome to the Metrix!