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