Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a long term Guild Wars fan since the days of pre-seering. I have just decided to log onto the forums because I’m just about fed up with this all. I know I’m going to be coming off as a bit ranty. I really love Guild Wars 2 and I know it can be so much better then it currently is.

There are a few problems that are really killing what would otherwise be my most played game since Phantasy Star Universe.

1) Pay off. I don’t mean gold, karma, or experience. I mean that throughout my entire experience with Guild Wars I’ve felt a lack of reward. Where after everything is all said and done there is only a few items and some silver jingling in my pocket. After going through a tough challenge, I’m left with 30 tokens that I can only use once I have ~170 more. It gives me this sense of defeat. I’m feeling drained by the day to day activity. When I do something hard, or find something cool, I really want to feel like that. Right now I feel like I’m running around on a mouse wheel then going for a few bites to eat then right back on it. Another thing is that map completion rewards have almost never given me something that I could use. Over my 85% map completion there has been only 1 item that I’ve used and it was an exotic great sword.

2) The bugs, oh god the bugs. At first when I was leveling the bugs really didn’t get to me. There were just small things, that some of the time could be fixed with a little bit of thinking. But the more and more I experience of this game, the more and more seems to be broken. I have at least a full 1% I can’t complete because of dungeon bugs, skill point bugs, event bugs. When you get to see all the game has and it keeps having these hiccups it really breaks my pace and once again I feel like it’s a draining experience. Given it’s only about a month or so, but you would think some of the really polished things like event would be the one thing that always worked.

3) Crafting is not really there for profit. Now there may be exceptions, but for the most part crafted goods are really not necessary. This is good for the non-crafters, but bad for people who wanted to make goods to sell to people. Now you can say this is fault of supply and demand, but the supply is directly made by Anet. The spawn rate of rare mats is slightly higher than gear. Making it so crafting gear is expensive and has no advantage over the alternative. I’ve killed myself trying to buy, sell and otherwise make money in this game and after about 230 hours or so I have a wonderful heap of 16 gold pieces… There have been only a few things that really turn a profit for me and even then it takes forever.

4) Anet’s constant “rethinking”. I know they are still working out the kinks of the game to make this a long term success, but with all eyes on the horizon what about what’s right in front of you? Every new patch brings new bug fixes (YAY!), but it always has this small hit to something. Like Anti-bot code, or more recently the Dungeons. They made a game for the player 4 months down the road, but I think they forgot all about the today. They keep trying to push the market their way with odd gimmicks instead of going to the root problem. It seems like they keep making band aid fixes to the problems.

5) Spawn rates. They are often fine for an area, but some time when I complete an area and collect X thing for Y person, I have to fight both ways because they’re spawning so fast. I always feel stuck in combat when I just need to get to my destination. Which leads to me teleporting, which leads to poor me X.X Given that it is my fault and I “don’t” have to, but it really pushes me in that direction.

6) GOLD SPAMMERS. Wow in my entire life, I’ve never seen so many people spam “area” chat with gold adds. It’s getting to be a lot. Even a quick pass through LA nets me 4 people selling. I block and report, but more and more show up.

7) Anet’s “Harsh” stance on everything. They seem to see the player as the fault in this. (in the case of 21 karma weapons yes), but they never seem to blame themselves. I’ve never once seen “my bad”, “sorry”, or “this was a mess up.” Mixed with this is how they are handing out permanent bans to people on the first week. I know they need to send a message, but boy did they send it, I’m afraid to take 2 steps in any direction with them watching because I’m not “playing the game as intended”.

8) Only ~3 true areas for “high level money making” I know there is other profitable ventures, but it seems like too much of the population is going to be compressed into these few zones and they will be farmed to bits.

9) Acknowledgement.. They come out and say reasoning behind something which is good. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about real concerns of the people on the forums. Just a little message here and little message there would be nice. I don’t need fixes today, or even this week. I just need to know “We got you”.

TL;DR: The game can be so much more, but right now it feels just demoralizing to play. The devs are working hard, but I worry that they might have lost a little focus being tunnel versioned on this game for so long.

TL;DR of the TL;DR: THIS WHACK YO!

Wow, that a bit longer then I wanted. Thanks for the read. I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Aezion, it’s really the general feeling of the game right now.
GW2 is a superb game but it most of the recent changes are adding flaws instead of real fixes.

While I know that other MMOs had similar problems at some point, it just feels like they don’t have any real idea of the impact on things they changes/add or remove.
And the total silence on the board is anything but friendly to their customers.
It’s a new game, I have lot’s of hopes for this game and I just hope they will get back on track by not adjusting everything every week (which is almost a nerf to a certain farming zone)

We’ll see. Maybe I’ll go buy Borderlands 2 while they get their stuff together.

DanZero, already 2 steps ahead of you. Just started playing Borderlands 2 today while I wait.

What I think needs to be done.

Add proper death penalty. Fix bugs. Waypoint costs to scale with distance not level.

i agree. the game is no longer fun for me. Nothing to do. But grind dungeons or farm orrs de’s for 35 minutes b/c of code. Im ashamed i payed 170$ for a game i had such high hopes for. What i didnt realize was everything Anet told me pre release was a lie. I HAD LESS GRIND IN WOW. AND I DIDNT EVEN LIKE WOW ALL THAT MUCH. tbh ill pay a sub if i can have a fun gw2 game. The lack of loot in this game is like playing diablo 3 all over again. What are they thinking. Thats what i really wanna know. Why so shady with the chests and rewards. You spent your budget on artists making pretty things. And forgot to design a game. A rewarding game. B/c Anet. your rewards for everything in this game sucks. <———- period. Any one who says otherwise is either a blind dumb fanboy or hasnt hit 80 yet.

DanZero.4956:

Aezion, it’s really the general feeling of the game right now.
GW2 is a superb game but it most of the recent changes are adding flaws instead of real fixes.

While I know that other MMOs had similar problems at some point, it just feels like they don’t have any real idea of the impact on things they changes/add or remove.
And the total silence on the board is anything but friendly to their customers.
It’s a new game, I have lot’s of hopes for this game and I just hope they will get back on track by not adjusting everything every week (which is almost a nerf to a certain farming zone)

We’ll see. Maybe I’ll go buy Borderlands 2 while they get their stuff together.

Total silence? No there hasn’t. Read the Dev Tracker. There are a lot of dev posts and there is patch notes on these forums in the News section. There is also articles on the gw2 home page. You are only perceiving what you want to perceive.

Agree, no they aren’t saying anything about the real issues with the game. I can only expect they’re waiting to decide what to do or gathering more data before making any decisions.

nexxe.7081:

DanZero.4956:

Aezion, it’s really the general feeling of the game right now.
GW2 is a superb game but it most of the recent changes are adding flaws instead of real fixes.

While I know that other MMOs had similar problems at some point, it just feels like they don’t have any real idea of the impact on things they changes/add or remove.
And the total silence on the board is anything but friendly to their customers.
It’s a new game, I have lot’s of hopes for this game and I just hope they will get back on track by not adjusting everything every week (which is almost a nerf to a certain farming zone)

We’ll see. Maybe I’ll go buy Borderlands 2 while they get their stuff together.

Total silence? No there hasn’t. Read the Dev Tracker. There are a lot of dev posts and there is patch notes on these forums in the News section. There is also articles on the gw2 home page. You are only perceiving what you want to perceive.

Nexxe, I know the devs are doing their best. But setting the bar high is how things get done. I don’t realistically think that they can go into every detail, but I do know that when people lash out it’s some times because of a certain degree of neglect. They tell us what they do and why they do it, but they never seem to hear our side.

I agree. The grind at level 80 is enormous yet they are putting in place more and more ways of stopping you from doing it. Karma armor costs a lot, yet now they’ve come up with an event limit; dungeon armors cost a lot, yet the dungeons are the most unrewarding experience I’ve ever had in a game and the list goes on.

Now, my opinion is that all of this is to encourage you to buy gems and trade them for gold. That, however, doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the cause, but until they actually start making the game more rewarding and less punitive and remove all the stupid anti-grind mechanics when they clearly meant for us to grind (the anti-farm code, the event limit, the dungeon reward diminishing), I will not be logging into the game anymore.

I will, however, probably keep posting on these forums in the faint, faint hope that we might be heard.

Look i agree with you on some points, such as all the event/skill bugs, crafting, and payoff, but i don’t agree that they aren’t listening to us. They always take feedback and improve on the game. They can’t magically snap their fingers and fix things. It takes a process. I hasn’t even been a month. Patience is a virtue.

I’m also really disappointed in how this game is turning out. I adored Guild Wars and was really excited when they announced GW2. Now that it’s out though it just seems like I’m racing to enjoy the fun parts before Arena Net changes it. There’s no point in bringing up complaints about money and the ever increasing grind. I’m just disappointed that Arena Net isn’t making the effort to care about the players. I had fun doing CoF, but now I just have to watch Magg run off and die in fire that our group has already passed. Arena Net isn’t even trying to keep the game fun they’re just trying to make it stretch. All the fun parts of this game is being made into a grind just because Arena Net doesn’t have a strong understanding of what is actually fun in MMO’s and I see no efforts on their part to listen to the player complaints about it.

“1) Pay off.”

Isn’t the pay-off about the same as the original game? I mean you completed missions and received a rating and some cash. You completed a campaign and get an item and some cash. Almost all of the title tracks and Armor sets required a fair amount of menial grinding for something which made you look slightly cooler. I agree with your other points but #1 is par for the course with this series.

I said it once and I will say it again, this is NCsoft influence (bad drop rates and big penalites). Please look at the lower right corner at the bottom of this screen. NCsoft philosophy is more grind = players spend more time playing and spending their money. The cash shop will eventually evolve into P2W (this is happening in Aions next big patch in October and I fear it might spill over to this game eventually).

nexxe.7081:

Look i agree with you on some points, such as all the event/skill bugs, crafting, and payoff, but i don’t agree that they aren’t listening to us. They always take feedback and improve on the game. They can’t magically snap their fingers and fix things. It takes a process. I hasn’t even been a month. Patience is a virtue.

I even said that I don’t realistically seeing all my points being fixed even within the span of a few months. I just want more of the issues I’m following to actually have some feedback along the way. Like “The anti-bot code is a temporary correction in till we can work out a long term plan that will suit all parties.” or “We are focusing more on the dungeons themselves rather then the rewards. We did this because ultimately if you want it you will get it.”

I just want some dang feedback to let me know where these problems are at. I find them more and more “infallible”, they make choices based on how they want to treat it. Which is fine because it is their game, but just because you can does not mean you should.

A DM has full control over his world, but that does not mean he can ignore his players. Eventually they will get fed up and leave. Then the DM looses all power.

djlowballer.7460:

“1) Pay off.”

Isn’t the pay-off about the same as the original game? I mean you completed missions and received a rating and some cash. You completed a campaign and get an item and some cash. Almost all of the title tracks and Armor sets required a fair amount of menial grinding for something which made you look slightly cooler. I agree with your other points but #1 is par for the course with this series.

yes that can be said. But gear was far less important in the first. Most of your strengths came from levels and builds. Gear was a option to often sack some health for a bonus to a stat. A person with all starter gear could make a build and kill incredibly tough foes.

Guild Wars 2 puts more focus on the gear and that’s why it is more satisfying when you obtain it. Right now though I feel like everything I do is for scraps. Every time I do something cool like kill a huge world boss, or do a tough path in a dungeon, I often only walk away with about a few silver and a couple of blues and greens. Where when I’m killing random mobs I get a rares and some times exotics all the time. It just feels like its all luck and it won’t matter what I do.