Guild Wars 2

Hello, this post goes out to those who understand what I’m going to say and hopefully feel the same way. The intention of this post is to spread awareness to Arena Net about the state of GW2 as a game right now. I’ll talk about each game mode and other reasons why I’m on the verge of quitting. Keep in mind I’m a hardcore PvE player, so my PvE points will be much more justified than my PvP or WvW points. Take the time to read which game mode you are familiar with. Keep in mind as well that this is strictly my and my fellow guildies opinions and we are all very familiar with the game and are speaking from the perspective of players who love this game, have thousands of hours invested, and hate to see the way GW2 is going. I’m simply trying to raise awareness of the game’s major issues that are pushing veterans like myself away.

WvW: This game mode makes me sick and always has but I gave it a fair shot about a year ago in Edge of the Mists to level my Engineer at the time. I had some fun for about an hour but proceeded to get bored quickly. It was soon after my Engineer earned 72 levels from EOTM that I decided it was simply a Zerg fest. A Zerg Fest! Running around with 30+ other players smacking gates all day is not a game it is a freaking grind with no end! I don’t care what people say there is very little strategy or skill involved with regular WvW and the existence of server “tiers” is pretty silly. More like a list of populations with active WvW players. I’m not familiar with the borderlands scene but I have heard from many that it is a huge downgrade. The fact the playstyle and design of WvW hasn’t changed since release is a bit underwhelming as well. Personally, I like to see my own contribution in a party and in WvW you just cannot get that feeling with 30+ other players to compete with for tiny numbers of DPS against a gate. The extent of feeling worthy in WvW is if you solo roam and kill small zergs but that is hit or miss and still underwhelming.

PvP: The PvP leagues are a joke and need to be balanced a bit better. The mere existence of the Amber rank exploit is no surprise but it isn’t a GW2 problem, it is a ranked system problem across all games. I personally know players who reached Legendary rank within 2 weeks of the release date of ranked with only one build and character. The same people are not even PvP players! They are hardcore PvE players who had not played PvP until the release of the Legendary backpiece, just to get it for collection purposes. If PvE players can run PvE builds in PvP, especially during the bunker meta, and win, to the point of reaching Legendary, that’s some poor balancing. Throughout PvP history, either Elementalists, Necromancers, or Revenants have completely dominated the casual and Esports PvP scene, which leads to some boring or very frustrating matches when you, for example, play Thief and can’t kill a squishy caster like the Elementalist. This shows the lack of control Anet has had over their own balancing and meta development. Lastly, some of the changes have changed the PvE meta scene, which is utterly frustrating (admittedly no concern now but it was at the time) and annoying because PvP balancing should not cause changes to the PvE meta-game. i.e Chronomancer shield 4 nerf or the change made to Well of Precognition: Blur to Aegis.

Open World: The original open world in GW2 is okay first time through, however the hearts are a bit tedious. The Heart of Thorns open world was a fresh take on the original formula. I soon realized that it was also a zerg fest across all four maps…the meta events are more face rolling than world bosses (meaning you can afk smash “1”). Once players started to complete meta events with little to no coordination, aside from having 3 tags on Dragon Stand, people got bored and still are. The only reason to run Dragon Stand at this point is for collection purposes or for the Ranger Tiger pet for the PvE meta game. Original open world is dull and way too easy; I remember when I failed Tequatl for weeks and everyone was running it daily to try to figure it out. People became familiar with the fight but could not complete it without the coordination of an open world based guild whether it be TTS or EVOS (there may be others I’m just unaware of them). Changes to condition damage occured making them more balanced with power builds in PvE and the world boss train BLEW UP. Teq was killed with no coordination, Jormag in 2 burns everytime, and every other boss was being massacred within minutes. Then Anet took the Nerf-hammer and made it so we could not crit Teq and oh boy wasn’t that just loads of fun (I can’t remember if this was pre condi buff or post but either way it was terrible). Even now the extent of “exciting” open world gameplay is running Triple Trouble or some HoT content. Lastly, HoT was a step in the right direction for Hero points; making them worth 10 over 1 and much harder than Central Tyria points. For myself and my friends we loved the new points because it require us to actually try, not just smash 1 and dodge sometimes for a minute or two. These HP’s take a few mins and are all tanky, difficult champion bosses. Although I can’t help but consider how casual players or not-very-skilled players handle these hero points alone or with a friend. They would get destroyed! Unless you have an average understanding of your build, class, and the encounter, you will die more often than not if you solo the new Hero points. So what I’m saying is, as much as I enjoy them, I think some are a bit too tricky to be soloed for other players.

PvE: This is where it gets juicy and I have strong opinions to share. I’ll begin by saying this is from an “elitist” point-of-view and these are things present in the minds of the hardcore community and high-skilled players. Let’s start off with Dungeons. Dungeons used to be fantastic. They gave great money, loot, experience, and involved MANY tactics and strategies for speedclearing and efficient boss killing. Many issues surrounded them though such as the iconic FGS meta (lawl) or Line-casting exploit on Icebow 4. Regardless of the issues that were present, many people and guilds completed most paths of every dungeon, every single day because it was fun, rewarding, and brought people together by sharing strategies, finding new ones or finding new team compositions and tricks to save a few seconds (Mesmer portals). To make things even better, the meta constantly evolved and then condition builds became viable and everyone was happy! Then HoT came and ruined the rewards from dungeons and made them too easy because of elite specializations. They can be duoed in under 6 minutes -.- really Anet, come on. Now dungeons are near worthless aside from running them for nostalgia or something to do. Even casual players don’t run dungeons anymore and it is impossible for Free-to-play players to enjoy the original game for that reason. I couldn’t imagine how lame F2P GW2 is right now in PvE. Onto Fractals; Fractals were designed to be “challenging group content” (don’t we all love that quote hey Anet?). Since their inception Fractals have been either buggy, broken or boring and I’ll explain. Originally, Fractals were okay, they were difficult and were content other than Dungeons to run with a 5 man group. Anet promised Fractal leaderboards twice and never delivered both times which was really upsetting for me personally because I love Fractals and their design and I truly felt I could’ve been number 1 or I would have aimed to become number 1. Fractals evolved into running 4 scales each day hoping for ascended chest drops or infused rings. Doing this plus a dungeon tour everyday took a few hours and was awesome and it was a healthy time for the competitive PvE scene in GW2. Metas were made and changed, guilds competed in tournaments and it was awesome. Then HoT came and butchered Fractals to be absolutely worthless in rewards and boring because you ran the same fractals over and over again. Thankfully they buffed Fractal Encryptions and made them worth opening and collecting but the act of running the Fractiers daily is less than an hour worth of gameplay and repetitive to no end. Now the argument could be “well you don’t have to run swamp, daily, molten, daily, swamp, molten, swamp, swamp, swamp.” True but imagine running other scales with pugs or running level 100 Mai Trin with 4 random players…no. Even doing the achievements for the Fractal scales is not rewarding enough to entice players to reach personal level 100 or get 150 agony resistance. Seriously, high level Volcanic fractal with pugs is just…no I’m sorry, impossible even when I’m the Mesmer controlling the flow of battle. Arena net says they are working towards focusing on Fractals and Raids but currently are not doing a very great job at making them fun in any way at all. Lastly we will discuss Raid(s). Raids was an EXTREMELY exciting idea for the hardcore community of PVE in GW2. We theorycrafted during all of the betas, devised new team compositions and strategies within weeks and loved doing so. Once the entire Spirit Vale wing was released we were able to run full clears consecutively and be successful in doing so, while still making changes to optimal rotations and best in slot builds etc. But as weeks passed players started to realize “hey were is the next wing? This is too easy now.” And those players are right, even pugs can clear Spirit Vale with people they don’t even know. Now this is the breaking point for most players and myself included. We are tired of waiting a week, A WEEK, to get mediocre rewards again from each boss and run them over and over to cap out on Mag shards with no other rewards worth noting. One thing about Raids that is a personal complaint is that you don’t even need Ascended gear if you don’t want to and can still clear Gorseval, which is a DPS check fight, with everyone in Exotic. I just thought full ascended on everyone would have been necessary and it simply wouldn’t let you enter the Raid wing unless all of your gear was Ascended rarity. But nope. Anet had to make everything in GW2 easy and easily accessible. Nobody runs Fractals now that it is too repetitive, nobody runs dungeons because it is not rewarding and is Way to fast to be fun and everyone is fed up with waiting a full 5+ days to even have a reason to run Raids again. If you are capped on shards there is ZERO reason to run them at all. Spirit Vale was released near the end of 2015, we are almost 1/4 of the way through 2016 and still have not even a word about new raid wings or boss fights and it is just disappointing really. So far in PvE, I’m still waiting for my “challenging group content”.

Other: Some of the overall aspects of the game are worth mentioning here just stating why GW2 is on a downwards slope. The attention to balancing in GW2 feels a bit lacking compared to other games I have played in the past. I don’t understand why the Elementalist has consistently been a ridiculous powerhouse in the PvE and PvP meta game yet has gone unchecked. The FGS and Icebow metas for dungeons, the raw power of Glpyh of Storms, the sheer DPS their builds deal and overloads make it more so. The versatility and tankiness of the old PvP D/D fresh air build that could upkeep 25 might at all times was a terrible time to play PvP if you were not an Ele. Just lower the damage coefficient on Eles skills to bring other classes closer in DPS and maybe things will be a bit more fun in the PvE scene instead of bring 4 Eles for optimization. Mesmer gets no love, ever and Thief feels a similar pain. Mesmer pre HoT was only brought for Arah and speedclears. Guardian was preferred because it could keep allies alive through attacks which would otherwise down everyone and the Mesmer’s DPS was a sick joke (still is) aside from reflect damage. So not only was Mesmer “meh” pre HoT but has also got the Nerf hammer again, cutting alacrity from 66% to 33%! Anet please! Chronomancer was a “well” deserved buff to the Mesmer and it made Mesmer meta in every instance finally! (see that “well” pun?) It still is but you made it less exciting and useful than it once was. Thief. Oh Thief. Thief gets nerfed every patch I swear. Whether it is Stealth mechanics or DPS reductions or trait changes, something Always happens to Thieves and it is stupid. The class was renowned in dungeons for its stealthing capabilities and there was a sense of pride and skill for Thieves because they knew they were needed. But post HoT, Daredevil was a great addition but wasn’t enough to make Thief the best choice in any Raid, even today. One smaller thing was the economy crash post HoT launch. Oh my goodness it was like the Great Depression all over again; Ascended mats were 16g a piece! 16g!! And with dungeons being nerfed your best gold making method was either flipping the TP or Silverwastes! Omg hate Silverwastes, Zerg fest gone wild. Lastly, everything just feels handed to the casual playerbase including Raids. Basically, if people complain something is too hard, Arena Net has historically nerfed it to the floor (dungeons used to be hard if you can believe it). Spider Queen in AC was “hard” and soloing it made you a god at some point. RIP that era of difficulty. Time and time again Arena Net fails to update the game with anything that veteran players get excited about and don’t tell me the Gem store counts because it doesn’t. This is supposed to be Guild Wars 2, not Fashion Wars 2 like it is today.

To close out this rather long post, I just want to say I wrote this because I’m truly upset with the way the game is going and I have invested many hours and good times into this game so I’m trying to raise awareness and speak out against the downfall of GW2. To those who have read to this point so far, I thank you greatly for reading what I had to say, and if nobody reads this then I have wasted 2 hours of typing and strong, valid opinions have fallen on deaf ears; nothing will change. If you agree with anything I have to say here, reply with it or add to it. Think of this as a petition for change in GW2 as it is today. Share this link with people who you know want the game to change as well.

- Zedd

Seriously, EotM is NOT WvW, it is a bad parody, I too spent total of 15 minutes there before running away back into real WvW. If you like WvW, you will hate EotM.

As about pretty much everything else about your post, I disagree on most points and have completely different opinions about where the game failed. But I wont spend next 2 hours typing it all up here since you probably have no interest to argue about it forever

WvW: This game mode makes me sick and always has but I gave it a fair shot about a year ago in Edge of the Mists to level my Engineer at the time. I had some fun for about an hour but proceeded to get bored quickly. It was soon after my Engineer earned 72 levels from EOTM that I decided it was simply a Zerg fest. A Zerg Fest! Running around with 30+ other players smacking gates all day is not a game it is a freaking grind with no end! I don’t care what people say there is very little strategy or skill involved with regular WvW and the existence of server “tiers” is pretty silly. More like a list of populations with active WvW players. I’m not familiar with the borderlands scene but I have heard from many that it is a huge downgrade. The fact the playstyle and design of WvW hasn’t changed since release is a bit underwhelming as well. Personally, I like to see my own contribution in a party and in WvW you just cannot get that feeling with 30+ other players to compete with for tiny numbers of DPS against a gate. The extent of feeling worthy in WvW is if you solo roam and kill small zergs but that is hit or miss and still underwhelming.

The zerg is not the issue. It’s how the game is designed. You can (and for that matter I have) play with dozens of other players and still feel you have a role to play. I even remember 100 vs 100 fights in W:AR where I could play actively and do some strategic stuff.

The problem in WvW is basically how the game is designed: Anet wanted every class to have access to everything. When it means “tank, heal, DPS”, it’s cool. But when it means: massive spammable AoE, stealth, invulnerabilities, every conditions and CC, and probably a few more things I’m forgetting, it sucks. Squishy characters can’t even approach the enemy zerg without instantly dying. The only thing that matters is how many red circles there are on the ground, and how often you can stun.

The other main issue is how hard it is sometimes to finish players when 2 zergs are simply skirmishing due to the downed state. It should simply be removed from WvW, or at least have its HP pool halved.

And finally, there are the maps. There are huge, and not straightforward. If you die, it takes ages to join the action again. Mounts would help. More WP would too, provided there’s some “death sickness” debuff for a couple of minutes after you die, to prevent guys you’ve just killed to immediately join the battle again.

I’m not sure how someone can take you too seriously when February is 1/4th through 2016.
Which is just one of the problems with your post.

Other things include:
- Edge of the Mists isn’t played as WvW. It’s mostly played as a karma chain. Mostly because there’s no reason to win the 3 hour match, and because the teams are full on pugs. That said I personally think WvW isn’t that amazing in confronting people in any combat. If it isn’t the tactic itself to just avoid the enemy all together most of the time.
- PvE players aren’t automatically bad PvP players, mechanics are the same. It’s very possible that hardcore PvE players can be really good PvP players as well. Given the incentive these PvE players like (legendary backitem) I would say the PvP leagues were a success for that matter in bringing new people to the scene. The PvP scene in GW2 is fairly small so any newer players can rise through the ranks pretty fast if they are that good. Whether they actually care for it is another matter.
- Raids being designed for exotic is indeed a problem. But instead of requiring ascended, it could be interesting to see if it’s possible to nerf any ascended to exotic stats instead. Imo making raids ascended exclusive doesn’t make raids better at all. It just creates an unnecessary gear-check.
- Being as good as you claim to be obviously has it’s downsides. If there’s no challenge left because it’s all too easy (or too time intensive) doesn’t mean the game is going downhill. I personally see it as able to complete a puzzle and knowing the solution just on a more complex level. Hence you don’t like to run with pugs because you know it can be done so much faster and easier and time efficient. Though I would say that is ultimately more challenging. (Saying that it’s impossible is imo not thinking like someone who claims to be hardcore. You should have said it’s pretty time intensive and annoying instead. :P)
- Claiming everyone thinks like that is obviously because you surround yourself with people like yourself. Not everyone thinks the same nor has the same opinion. There’s loads of people who think HoT is too hard.
- That you only run swamp in fractals and then claim it’s repetitive is pretty funny, considering you claim yourself to be hardcore. Doesn’t that just mean you’re willing to get easy completions, but if it takes a bit more time or challenge you suddenly back out? If that’s the case, then ArenaNet needs to really buff up the swamp fractal.

There’s also some good points in there, though there’s more people than just the hardcore PvE players.

Firstly, you joined eotm for easily level, from that ktrain, you conclude it is a zerg fest, genius. Enlighten me, which MMORPG’s castle siege, invasion, war, etc do not have large number of players?

Raid isn’t hardcore, at all. It is simply nothing but gear requirements and memorization of patterns. The raid content is semi-hardcore at best. A hardcore raid content involve randomization and not fixed patterns. I can foresee large number of players, even hardcore wannabe will be QQing if anet really implement a hardcore standard raid.

The dungeon nerf and focus on raid indeed made quite a number of people quit the game. Dungeon is casual, if you complain it is too easy due to specialization, that’s where the raid come into picture. The nerf on the dungeon is a big slap to the casual population and a number of people quit the game due to the emphasizing of raid content, just like many quit the game because wvw is neglected (only children will be happy with that once a while “enhancement” to wvw).

PvP indeed is terrible, classes that have cheesy builds didn’t get their cheesy builds nerfed. Other classes that require some level of understanding to maximize the potential got nerfed. After the season, pvp looks more empty than pre-hot.

You know, I started to type something amazing and eloquent for your eyes, but I deleted it all an decided to keep it short.

WvW: Lame
PvP: Meh
Open world PvE: Snore. Literally fell asleep during AB Meta and still got rewards.
Instanced PvE: Unrewarding, casual, repetitive, and unpromising.

I think the consensus at the moment is that every single game mode is completely mediocre, ANet. This is pathetic. I mean, how do you expect to keep us faithful players? I’ve played since open beta and I’m beginning to regret ever paying $50 dollars for your expansion. Do you know how many lattes I can get for that kind of money? That’s like breakfast for a year.

In all seriousness, go look at your streamers. They’re losing hope in the game too. There’s nothing to stream except Silverwasting my life away, flax farming, and downed state RP. I’m not mad, Arena Net. I’m disappointed in you.

It’s nice to see he got some replies. His two hours wasn’t wasted after all.

People asked for
New dungeons/fractals
New wvw borderlands
New pvp maps
More armor sets in the gemstore
(and ofcourse Capes)

What we received was
Pve received a kittenload of maps and content (good for them)
Pvp received a New map, stronghold…. (and some more unbalanced patches/nerfs)
Wvw received a legit eotm map (how to make wvw people angry)
Some people said we received 3 New boarders, but in my opinion copy paste doesnt count.
Gemstore received more outfits then before…

But hey, atleast we got elite specialisations, grind halls, and gliders….

FrizzFreston.5290:

I’m not sure how someone can take you too seriously when February is 1/4th through 2016.
Which is just one of the problems with your post.

Other things include:
- Edge of the Mists isn’t played as WvW. It’s mostly played as a karma chain. Mostly because there’s no reason to win the 3 hour match, and because the teams are full on pugs. That said I personally think WvW isn’t that amazing in confronting people in any combat. If it isn’t the tactic itself to just avoid the enemy all together most of the time.
- PvE players aren’t automatically bad PvP players, mechanics are the same. It’s very possible that hardcore PvE players can be really good PvP players as well. Given the incentive these PvE players like (legendary backitem) I would say the PvP leagues were a success for that matter in bringing new people to the scene. The PvP scene in GW2 is fairly small so any newer players can rise through the ranks pretty fast if they are that good. Whether they actually care for it is another matter.
- Raids being designed for exotic is indeed a problem. But instead of requiring ascended, it could be interesting to see if it’s possible to nerf any ascended to exotic stats instead. Imo making raids ascended exclusive doesn’t make raids better at all. It just creates an unnecessary gear-check.
- Being as good as you claim to be obviously has it’s downsides. If there’s no challenge left because it’s all too easy (or too time intensive) doesn’t mean the game is going downhill. I personally see it as able to complete a puzzle and knowing the solution just on a more complex level. Hence you don’t like to run with pugs because you know it can be done so much faster and easier and time efficient. Though I would say that is ultimately more challenging. (Saying that it’s impossible is imo not thinking like someone who claims to be hardcore. You should have said it’s pretty time intensive and annoying instead. :P)
- Claiming everyone thinks like that is obviously because you surround yourself with people like yourself. Not everyone thinks the same nor has the same opinion. There’s loads of people who think HoT is too hard.
- That you only run swamp in fractals and then claim it’s repetitive is pretty funny, considering you claim yourself to be hardcore. Doesn’t that just mean you’re willing to get easy completions, but if it takes a bit more time or challenge you suddenly back out? If that’s the case, then ArenaNet needs to really buff up the swamp fractal.

There’s also some good points in there, though there’s more people than just the hardcore PvE players.

I want to clarify I shared my opinion which happens to be the same as the people I play with on a daily basis. Yes it sucks running triple swamp for the last tier, however other instabilities on certain fractals make it completely and utterly annoying or too frustrating to bother. Not saying it is hard, but it limits what you are able to do to the point where you can’t do much; it is boring, not challenging. Lastly, my comments about reaching Legendary so fast were said because these were people who had never played PvP before and stomped teams easily, with PvE meta builds. None of this Celestial stuff or bunker builds (which are now gone regardless). I posted this 1/4 through February because Anet claims to be focusing on Fractals and Raids yet we have no mention or word about any progress towards creating a new wing or anything. The best we get is them saying “you’ll get new Fractals. Yes, New fractals.” But even then, there is no more information aside from that. I back down from nothing but the fact of the matter is, Fractals are not fun and dungeons are semi-pointless. Raids are just a bust at the moment. They removed party swapping for Mesmers which added a new bump in the road but surely enough, we have resolved that issue already. What I’m saying is there is very little love for the veteran players who are highly skilled. Release some content which pugs can not complete with random players and little to no coordination. See we were expecting a full raid to take at Least an hour, even for the speedclearing community. What we received was a 30 min run of 3 bosses…that’s the time it takes to run 5-7 dungeon paths.

FogLeg.9354:

Seriously, EotM is NOT WvW, it is a bad parody, I too spent total of 15 minutes there before running away back into real WvW. If you like WvW, you will hate EotM.

As about pretty much everything else about your post, I disagree on most points and have completely different opinions about where the game failed. But I wont spend next 2 hours typing it all up here since you probably have no interest to argue about it forever

What can you possibly disagree with and share that is different from what I said? How else is the game falling? Keep in mind this was from a player who has played since beta and is PvE mainly. So most of my friends and guildies are fed up with that scene of the game, which encompasses most of GW2.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

More armor sets in the gemstore

Just a friendly reminder, anet’s said that armor sets will only be obtainable INGAME NOW. Gemstore = outfits. Getting your kitten together and doing things ingame = armors.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

What can you possibly disagree with and share that is different from what I said? How else is the game falling?

You see, different people play the game for different reasons and like different parts of the game. I understand what YOU like and what YOU want, but its just YOU. Other people like other stuff and want other parts of the game changed in some other ways.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

WvW: This game mode makes me sick and always has but I gave it a fair shot about a year ago in Edge of the Mists to level my Engineer at the time. I had some fun for about an hour but proceeded to get bored quickly. It was soon after my Engineer earned 72 levels from EOTM that I decided it was simply a Zerg fest. A Zerg Fest!

You say in one breath that you got bored with EoTM in an hour, but then proceeded to earn 72 of your engineers levels in EoTM. And yes, EoTM is largely a zergfest.

It’s not the actual WvW experience. You played in the training area.

You haven’t given WvW an honest try, you kittened around in EoTM and suppose you’re able to speak about WvW like you’re a seasoned pro or something.

That’s not how one goes about this friend.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

PvP: The PvP leagues are a joke and need to be balanced a bit better.

It’s their first league ever, they took steps to improve on it mid-season and they’ve promised the next season won’t be a rough as this one was.

You can afford to cut them a bit of slack on that.

I will concede that the league was rough around the edges. I’m not impressed with the thought that several teams probably made the leaderboards on the back of that exploit.

Even with these issues, I’ve managed to enjoy the first season and done well enough to wrap things up in the second one with any luck and a bit of determination.

The exploit didn’t hurt me directly. I did well in spite of what people were doing to game the system, but it does damage the integrity of the league system.

There’s no value in being the “best” when it’s a real possibility that those who got there didn’t get there by being the best, but by gaming the system.

Even if you got there legitimately, the existence of the exploit will cheapen your efforts by extension. So, why bother? Everyone will think you just cheesed it.

It’s something I’m sure they are well aware of and determined to stop from happening a second time around. I’m good with that.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

Open World: The original open world in GW2 is okay first time

I like the open world in GW2. It’s gorgeous and engaging. Sorry to hear you’re burnt out on it, I’m still good with it myself. Because that’s what it sounds like.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

PvE: This is where it gets juicy and I have strong opinions to share. I’ll begin by saying this is from an “elitist” point-of-view

Thanks for the heads up. I sincerely appreciate it. I’ll be skipping this wall of text.

Open world and PvE are pretty much interchangeable terms for me at any rate, but I’m sure you’re breaking them up like that for some reason or another.

Good luck with that.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

To close out this rather long post, I just want to say I wrote this because I’m truly upset with the way the game is going and I have invested many hours and good times into this game so I’m trying to raise awareness and speak out against the downfall of GW2. To those who have read to this point so far, I thank you greatly for reading what I had to say, and if nobody reads this then I have wasted 2 hours of typing and strong, valid opinions have fallen on deaf ears; nothing will change. If you agree with anything I have to say here, reply with it or add to it. Think of this as a petition for change in GW2 as it is today. Share this link with people who you know want the game to change as well.

- Zedd

You’re obviously very passionate and you care for the game a great deal, I’ll give you that. I’m sorry the games losing you.

I can’t really follow what it is exactly that’s soured your experience, but in a lot of these kinds of posts it basically breaks down to burnout.

And you know, even if they made the game exactly “perfect” for you?

You’d still be sick of it. It wouldn’t last you very long before you came back again to complain because “something” is off.

It wouldn’t lessen the burnout effect. You’d still be tired of the game overall. And you know what? That’s natural. It’s okay to take a break from the game. It’s healthy even.

Too much of a good thing is in fact a bad thing.

• EotM = WvW
  which isn’t true IMHO, EotM = karma train to nowhere, WvW is Weekly Matchups of server vs server vs server in a open PvP mode. WvW is broken. Still, mostly due to inaccesible buffs/rewards from guilds => very bad design choice.
  The players allways tried to help you, now you shouldhelp the players ASAP.
• PvP is unbalanced and the ladder mechanics are unfair
  I have no opinion, The idea ranked PvP could become an E-Sport is plainly rediculous, and has been laughed away by many times many people already and A net has been confronted with these facts over and over to no avail. Balance patches destroyed PvE and PvP and the feel of characters uniqueness has been lost in the changes.
• PvE
  - INSTANCED:
  Dungeons have been destroyed by the idea they were no good content.
  Admittedly they suffer quite some bugs, mostly to do with failing triggers due to skipping, bugging, exploiting and really lightning fast speedruns
  The massive overpowered feeling which many feel, is mostly due to the fact all bosses stayed the same in a game which was developed for rare/exotic gear with any build, but the gam evolved differently, to a game with full ascneded optimized builds with optimized rotations and synergizing groups destroying the balance.
  rare gear is ~ 145 % of basic stats, ascneded 175 % of basic stats , + 20 % difference
  Vulnerability = + 25 % dmg,
  Might, fury and banners= + 30 – 35 % dmg,
  Dungeon sets= + 33.1% dmg
  Allowing a 5 man ascneded team to do the same dmg as 13.5-15 (and likely more) rare geared characters with no real experience, rare armor and no stacks….
  - Fractals
  Fractals suffered the same fate as dungeons in scaling, and being nerfed from 3-4 random fractals to a set of 3 chosen fractals seemed nice, but was a mistake in retrospect. The value of the mastery line is evident making F2P’s locked out of lvl 50 + in most cases.
  - PvE WORLD:
  The game has seem the same power creep as in instanced content since launch, where exotic clad characters reigned supreme, only to be surpassed by better builds, gear levels and more powerfull combo’s.
  - World bosses
  still get regular attention but due to these events only spawning on fixed timers some events are difficult to acces if you have less then 3,5 hours of playing time a day .
• Story Lines
  - Personal story
  The personal story is still fairly well balanced as most ppl do not have acces to lvl 80 ascended gear… it remains a valid part of the GW2 experience, on epreat however I’ve used, like other with me, the infamous lvl 80 tomed character with the full unlocked builds and in some cases full Exotic and even Ascneded gear, with runes and so on. obviously this will affect gameplay a bit, but it still remains nice.
  - Living World/Story S1 has mostly vanished into memory except for some event’s like molten dungeon, aetherblade path, aetherblade retreat, Not so secret-JP and zephyrite sanctum….which no-longer seem in the minds of developers even though most of the content could be replayed, return of the toxic tower, the marionette and other big events would add to the living world and allow people to experience the legacy of scarlet, of course the battle of Lion’s Arch is a passed station, but the zephyrites should have been able to rebuild a vessel by now, and the toxic alliance and the molten alliance could retry. added holomatrice of the late Scarlet could tell the tale of her plans and the reason of her plans.
  - Living story season 2 Even though it’s quite nicely balances it is still locked behind a paywall denying people to experience the story line of Gw2, and thereafter lose the connection with the stoy and the world as a whole. The fact this is no penend for everyone is a srange decision.
  - Living Story season 3 started out interesting, but became a faster and faster run into thinning content with a seemingly untested end….

• HoT
  Heart of Thorns is a nice expansion overall, but the killing blow to instanced content other then the weekly gated RAIDS whcih is mostly a seen and passed station for the “elite playerbase”, obvious in the nerf of dungeons Destroying it for the mjority of the playerbase and the unintended destruction of fractals (well any level up to 50 is faceroll) was a hit to a significant group in the playerbase.
  The focus on only event maps caused thinning of the remaining playerbase and the notorious instability of the client in the long instances of the META events cause headaches for players, and likely developers alike.
  It has not been the huge succes it could have been.
  The neccesity for the attendance at the start of the map reset and the consequent 60-90 minutes of 1 long continous attack seems to have similarites with the attack on balthazars temple, but the old balthazar’s temple attack feels more fluent, quicker and feels more dynamic, even though it runs through 2 maps.
  Masteries and Specialisations are a nice touch but builds have become even more OP due to the specialisations, and were the final nail in the coffin of instanced content (Fractals and Dungeons).

I have some idea’s what could be done:

1. Rescaling of dungeons to “exotics”, an fractals (more difficult) YES! Make it worthwhile content again. maybe add a hard mode for the second group. Double (basic) or triple (hard) the token rewards and up gold to 1 gold/path, 1.5 gold/path for arah
2. Rescaling of raids (both a extreme mode for 1337, ascneded and legendary only, Meta speedclearbuild players with 100k AP (more difficult) and a basic elevel a little bit nerfed (for “exotic” players) allowing older raids to be worthwhile content for the WHOLE community instead of a small group of ppl. both giving acces to the rewards, only double for the hard mode.
3. Return of old events on a 2 week swap (maybe interupted by special events like wintersday, halloween and new year.) with added holomatrices of scarlet to tell the LS 1
4. Opening LS 2 to all paying players so they have a continuity and undestand the events before HoT and S3.
5. Stop focussing on E-sports and get back to earth and develop the MMORPG you are hosting. E-sports shouldn’t be a focus, if the game allows for it it will create it’s own fanbase automatically.
6. Rework WvW and listen to your playerbase. it is no PvE world PvE events have no place there, it should be 100% player controlled
7. You could even try to add EOTM map, ice map and desert map in WvW as borders… you have 3 maps…. use it. and have one of the 4 maps being the EoTM maps randomly.

This should restructure the game to a more accesible story line, and creating a interesting group of instanced content being dungeons/fractals and raids instead of what it is now being bad fractals and no dungeons and a really really bored raid core.

Just try…

You guys keep focused on the the fact that OP mistakenly assumed EOTM as “legit” WvW, do you disagree still? I did WvW a very long time ago, before they introduced that ranking system. I remember karma trains in WvW proper. I remember zerging like a bloody imbecile, where my personal contribution felt minute in an enormous scale in which I was either an infinitesimal part of a 40 man blob, or part of a roaming group that got plowed over by the enemy 50 man blob. Granted, WvW is not my thing anymore and you’ll probably disagree with my standpoint and that’s ok. You do you and I’ll do myself. I won’t list my grievances against the game mode, but perhaps those of you who are fond of it, should make an effort to reinforce why WvW isn’t working at the moment.
Ultimately, the point is that people are currently not enjoying WvW, or any other game mode for that matter.

Because I love the game so much, as a hardcore PvE’er, I feel compelled to try other game modes when the one I enjoy falls short of meeting my needs. There’s nothing else to turn to.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

• EotM = WvW
  which isn’t true IMHO, EotM = karma train to nowhere, WvW is Weekly Matchups of server vs server vs server in a open PvP mode. WvW is broken. Still, mostly due to inaccesible buffs/rewards from guilds => very bad design choice.
  The players allways tried to help you, now you shouldhelp the players ASAP.
• PvP is unbalanced and the ladder mechanics are unfair
  I have no opinion, The idea ranked PvP could become an E-Sport is plainly rediculous, and has been laughed away by many times many people already and A net has been confronted with these facts over and over to no avail. Balance patches destroyed PvE and PvP and the feel of characters uniqueness has been lost in the changes.
• PvE
  - INSTANCED:
  Dungeons have been destroyed by the idea they were no good content.
  Admittedly they suffer quite some bugs, mostly to do with failing triggers due to skipping, bugging, exploiting and really lightning fast speedruns
  The massive overpowered feeling which many feel, is mostly due to the fact all bosses stayed the same in a game which was developed for rare/exotic gear with any build, but the gam evolved differently, to a game with full ascneded optimized builds with optimized rotations and synergizing groups destroying the balance.
  rare gear is ~ 145 % of basic stats, ascneded 175 % of basic stats , + 20 % difference
  Vulnerability = + 25 % dmg,
  Might, fury and banners= + 30 – 35 % dmg,
  Dungeon sets= + 33.1% dmg
  Allowing a 5 man ascneded team to do the same dmg as 13.5-15 (and likely more) rare geared characters with no real experience, rare armor and no stacks….
  - Fractals
  Fractals suffered the same fate as dungeons in scaling, and being nerfed from 3-4 random fractals to a set of 3 chosen fractals seemed nice, but was a mistake in retrospect. The value of the mastery line is evident making F2P’s locked out of lvl 50 + in most cases.
  - PvE WORLD:
  The game has seem the same power creep as in instanced content since launch, where exotic clad characters reigned supreme, only to be surpassed by better builds, gear levels and more powerfull combo’s.
  - World bosses
  still get regular attention but due to these events only spawning on fixed timers some events are difficult to acces if you have less then 3,5 hours of playing time a day .
• Story Lines
  - Personal story
  The personal story is still fairly well balanced as most ppl do not have acces to lvl 80 ascended gear… it remains a valid part of the GW2 experience, on epreat however I’ve used, like other with me, the infamous lvl 80 tomed character with the full unlocked builds and in some cases full Exotic and even Ascneded gear, with runes and so on. obviously this will affect gameplay a bit, but it still remains nice.
  - Living World/Story S1 has mostly vanished into memory except for some event’s like molten dungeon, aetherblade path, aetherblade retreat, Not so secret-JP and zephyrite sanctum….which no-longer seem in the minds of developers even though most of the content could be replayed, return of the toxic tower, the marionette and other big events would add to the living world and allow people to experience the legacy of scarlet, of course the battle of Lion’s Arch is a passed station, but the zephyrites should have been able to rebuild a vessel by now, and the toxic alliance and the molten alliance could retry. added holomatrice of the late Scarlet could tell the tale of her plans and the reason of her plans.
  - Living story season 2 Even though it’s quite nicely balances it is still locked behind a paywall denying people to experience the story line of Gw2, and thereafter lose the connection with the stoy and the world as a whole. The fact this is no penend for everyone is a srange decision.
  - Living Story season 3 started out interesting, but became a faster and faster run into thinning content with a seemingly untested end….

• HoT
  Heart of Thorns is a nice expansion overall, but the killing blow to instanced content other then the weekly gated RAIDS whcih is mostly a seen and passed station for the “elite playerbase”, obvious in the nerf of dungeons Destroying it for the mjority of the playerbase and the unintended destruction of fractals (well any level up to 50 is faceroll) was a hit to a significant group in the playerbase.
  The focus on only event maps caused thinning of the remaining playerbase and the notorious instability of the client in the long instances of the META events cause headaches for players, and likely developers alike.
  It has not been the huge succes it could have been.
  The neccesity for the attendance at the start of the map reset and the consequent 60-90 minutes of 1 long continous attack seems to have similarites with the attack on balthazars temple, but the old balthazar’s temple attack feels more fluent, quicker and feels more dynamic, even though it runs through 2 maps.
  Masteries and Specialisations are a nice touch but builds have become even more OP due to the specialisations, and were the final nail in the coffin of instanced content (Fractals and Dungeons).

I have some idea’s what could be done:

1. Rescaling of dungeons to “exotics”, an fractals (more difficult) YES! Make it worthwhile content again. maybe add a hard mode for the second group. Double (basic) or triple (hard) the token rewards and up gold to 1 gold/path, 1.5 gold/path for arah
2. Rescaling of raids (both a extreme mode for 1337, ascneded and legendary only, Meta speedclearbuild players with 100k AP (more difficult) and a basic elevel a little bit nerfed (for “exotic” players) allowing older raids to be worthwhile content for the WHOLE community instead of a small group of ppl. both giving acces to the rewards, only double for the hard mode.
3. Return of old events on a 2 week swap (maybe interupted by special events like wintersday, halloween and new year.) with added holomatrices of scarlet to tell the LS 1
4. Opening LS 2 to all paying players so they have a continuity and undestand the events before HoT and S3.
5. Stop focussing on E-sports and get back to earth and develop the MMORPG you are hosting. E-sports shouldn’t be a focus, if the game allows for it it will create it’s own fanbase automatically.
6. Rework WvW and listen to your playerbase. it is no PvE world PvE events have no place there, it should be 100% player controlled
7. You could even try to add EOTM map, ice map and desert map in WvW as borders… you have 3 maps…. use it. and have one of the 4 maps being the EoTM maps randomly.

This should restructure the game to a more accesible story line, and creating a interesting group of instanced content being dungeons/fractals and raids instead of what it is now being bad fractals and no dungeons and a really really bored raid core.

Just try…

Amazing, you did an amazing job. Also, if they could help with giving options in crafting Legendary weapons. I am not a big fan base of group playing. If they could maybe introduce a different type of weapon for us that would not require so much interaction.

I still want to restate that I clearly stated, my opinion on WvW isn’t much to agree with but I KNOW FOR A FACT it is a zerg fest, you can’t even argue that. Also again people are forgetting this is coming from a vet player, I’m saying they have nothing for us to do aside from collections or farm legendaries.

So what if its a “zerg fest”? Run in a group if you want, or solo roam. This style of play, RvR or WvW or whatever it may called in other games, has always been like this.

BUBBABEIGE.3580:

I still want to restate that I clearly stated, my opinion on WvW isn’t much to agree with but I KNOW FOR A FACT it is a zerg fest, you can’t even argue that. Also again people are forgetting this is coming from a vet player

Depends on your server. Depends on the time you play. Depends what you are trying to do in WvW. There are solo roamers. There are small groups.

Honestly, you are trying to argue about gamemode you have not even played.

I tried to read your post OP. But when you start off saying you hate something. Then I can see where the whole post is going. All you did was point out what ANet did wrong, not what they did right.

THIS is an example of a well-written post/opinion, with valid points and objective argument.
I can’t talk about PvP or WvW because I don’t do either.

PvE – HoT Maps
I like the “difficulty” the mobs have, but I do agree is quite annoying or frustrating sometimes (For example, I can’t walk past a Sharpshooter with my Ele because it one-shots me with Exterminate… Quite ridiculous, I can’t even go in stealth gliding to avoid it). Dragon’s Stand is extremely boring for me. WAY too slow and the amount of time you have to wander around after MoM is dead is too short.
Other than that I really like HoT Maps. Is like the core Tyria maps but with a Meta every 2 hours.

Dungeons and Fractals
I miss dungeons so badly. They were great content! I don’t really understand why ANet would stop supporting dungeons to focus on Fractals… which are boring because they’re either repetitive or nobody joins because the other levels are “too hard or long” (specially 50+). They could’ve done Hardcore Dungeons with chance for Ascended if they didn’t want to make new 3D models for new Dungeons

Raids
This is the FIRST wing out of three, that’s why is “easy” now. I agree Raid rewards are disappointing but again, is the first wing. I clear it with my Guild in 1 hour. I love Raids honestly!
Also, Ascended is not needed. A group proved with full Exotics that you can clear all three bosses. They even finished Gorse with 1 minute left on the Enrage timer. People need to learn to use their toons well, that’s all.

Balancing is not easy at all, there are a lot of variables that ANet may oversee when they balance stuff that ends up being OP or exploits. Just check any MoBA patch notes and you’ll see how many times they balance heroes/champions (Monthly basis).
Ele might be a glass cannon (which I love) but you get hit by a bunny and you’re dead.

I can tell you from the length of the op and all responses that this thread is being ignored. I didn’t read any of it. Have a nice day.