Guild Wars 2

Before I even start this thread, please note that I am only speaking from personal experience. I do not profess to be “the voice of the community” or any of that nonsense.

Recently I’ve been playing GW1 again, mostly to max out my Hall of Monuments, but I noticed something while I was playing; while there are a lot of things I really feel GW2 improves upon, there are a lot of things I miss a great deal. I want to go over some of these things in the hope that maybe my feedback will resonate and maybe the devs will notice.

I miss skill hunts. I REALLY miss skill hunts. I get that GW2 needs some way for maxed out players to feel they’re still making progress, but I don’t feel that a gated dungeon with improved gear is the answer. GW1 got this aspect right, because if I wanted to really feel fully kitted out I had to go all over all the campaigns with my trusty Signet of Capture and my ever-changing secondary profession to find all the best skills. I miss this aspect of the game, it helped make GW1 feel a lot less shallow at endgame.

I miss named enemy encounters. I know it would be hard to do in GW2 because the world isn’t a personal instance, but I miss bosses and their non-randomized drops. This was a great alternative for gear that I feel is really missing in GW2. Maybe take some of those utterly useless world veterans and champions and give them an occasional chance of spawning as named versions with specific drops that everyone who kills them can get. I dunno, but it feels less than epic when I manage to solo a particularly nasty baddie only to get 17 copper.

I miss my heroes. I know there’s no way it would work in this game, but I really do miss my heroes so terribly. That was a great, unique mechanic and GW2 feels a bit shallower without it.

I miss mission chains. This is one of the big ones where I think GW2 is forgetting its roots. In GW1, I had to work for the same NPC several times to get to the most rewarding parts. In GW2, I feel like the heart NPCs and dynamic events lack a sense of permanency and I don’t feel overly connected to what’s going on. Sure, I kill the worms and grab the armor pieces and tickle the bellies of the rabbits, but I do it because a pop-up on my screen tells me to. Then when it tells me I’m done, I leave the area in search of lizards to kill, pumpkins to squash, and cats to herd. It would be really great if I felt more connected to the world rather than feeling like a wandering mercenary willing to work for whoever has the emptiest heart. I dunno, this is an odd one, but something is a bit off with the heart system.

I miss having actual money-making ability. This is something that has really limited my enjoyment of GW2. I know Anet has an actual economist on staff or something, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. In GW1 I feel like items were actually worth something and money wasn’t super-hard to come by. In GW2, I’ve tried everything from farming Orr events (hard to do on a mesmer) to crafting (a money pit) to playing the auction house (which I fail at because I’m no good with Microsoft Excel). Right now my account has about 2g 80s in total, down from a high of about 8g because I picked up an expensive dye on the trading post that I really wanted. Maybe the problem here is me, but I can’t seem to find a niche in GW2 that will allow me to make enough money to function reasonably well.

I miss skill being rewarded over luck. GW1 had hard modes and elite dungeons and all sorts of ways to make your way in the world through skill. GW2 has the Mystic Forge (which I swear hates me) and events that RNG people into rare drops they can sell for riches. I feel like the more I learned about GW1 and the better I played, the more I succeeded. I feel like in GW2 I’d be better off investing in four-leaf clovers and rabbit’s feet if I really wanted to be a success.

Lastly (there’s more but I don’t want to make this more of a wall o’ text than it is), I miss feeling like a hero. In GW1, I took down Shiro and saved all of Cantha from a terrible plague. In Elona… ok, that evil cow Kormir stole my glory, but I made it happen. In GW2, after a certain point in the story I began to feel like a backup singer for Trahearne and the Trahettes, with guest stars Logan and the Destiny’s Edge Chorus. I’m hoping this will change with further story content, but for now… I just feel really disconnected from the story.

Please feel free to entertain this old hipster with your own list.

I really miss skill hunts. The skill challenges are OK, but I think some of them should have had a specific skill in them. Specific hearts should also reward skills. Skill hunting was the end game of GW1 for a long time and was perfection of the horizontal progression system.

Maybe they could do that with some 30 new racial skills per race and distribute them over a new set of hearts and skill challenges. That was the one thing that made EotN a bit like Prophecies again.

I miss skill hunting too, also free decking of skills instead of weapon bound.
Some of the little things.

But in many areas GW2 improved alot, most notably combat. Meaning the ability to cast while moving and dodging. If only the skill system would be from GW1…

It’s odd. Because The Secret World takes heavy influence from Guild Wars 1 on horizontal skill progression. That game feels more like a sequel to GW1 than GW2 is.

In that game, all the skills in the game are available for you to learn via a really big skill wheel. But of course you can only learn so many at one time, so you have to choose.

— Do you learn everything there is to learn for your chosen weapon so you get good at it?
— Or do you branch out to another weapon (you can equip any 2 weapons at any one time) and learn those skills to give yourself more coverage?
— There’s also passive skills scattered all around the wheel that might help you with whatever build you’re trying to make.
— For the fashionistas, the game also have suggested decks you can work towards. Completing them will give you a unique cosmetic costume that reflects the nature of the deck (assassin type deck? get an assassin type costume). Btw, each faction in the game has it’s own set of unique deck costumes as well – even for decks that are similar in function.

For most of that game, it’s about when to learn what skill and in what combination to use them at (the skills work so well together). Even at endgame, you probably still haven’t learned all there is you can learn – and they’re adding new skills to learn pretty regularly (in the form of new weapons).

My army of minions I could basically keep calling in reinforcements when 1-2 of them died quickly enough.

Slyder.9215:

It’s odd. Because The Secret World takes heavy influence from Guild Wars 1 on horizontal skill progression. That game feels more like a sequel to GW1 than GW2 is.

In that game, all the skills in the game are available for you to learn via a really big skill wheel. But of course you can only learn so many at one time, so you have to choose.

— Do you learn everything there is to learn for your chosen weapon so you get good at it?
— Or do you branch out to another weapon (you can equip any 2 weapons at any one time) and learn those skills to give yourself more coverage?
— There’s also passive skills scattered all around the wheel that might help you with whatever build you’re trying to make.
— For the fashionistas, the game also have suggested decks you can work towards. Completing them will give you a unique cosmetic costume that reflects the nature of the deck (assassin type deck? get an assassin type costume). Btw, each faction in the game has it’s own set of unique deck costumes as well – even for decks that are similar in function.

For most of that game, it’s about when to learn what skill and in what combination to use them at (the skills work so well together). Even at endgame, you probably still haven’t learned all there is you can learn – and they’re adding new skills to learn pretty regularly (in the form of new weapons).

I heard that Secret World kinda flopped. How is it nowadays then?
Sounds kinda interesting game overall.

The Secret World has it’s own problems – mainly stemming from how it’s design is heavily lore and story based.

TSW’s story is it’s strongest element by miles – combined with some of the best writing I’ve seen in an MMORPG (heavy kudos to the writing and research staff of that game). The problem there being, that if you finish the story you feel like you’ve run out stuff to do.

A pretty major update just released for it (Issue 4) which, among others, introduced the game’s first raid, the game’s second auxiliary weapon (which means new skills to learn), and changes to that game’s answer to WvW type PvP (Fusang) and Faction Rivalry.

For previous players like me, it’s as good a time as any to go back.

EDIT: it IS a monthly fee game, though. So if you don’t like another one it might not be for you. It also caters to very specific players. If you’re the type of player who doesn’t like actually reading/listening to quests and paying attention to what’s happening around you then stay very far away.

That does seem to be common problem with people nowadays, nothing to do when story is finished or level cap reached.

Anyway thanks for the info, i might check out that game eventually.

Valtameri.2075:

That does seem to be common problem with people nowadays, nothing to do when story is finished or level cap reached.

Anyway thanks for the info, i might check out that game eventually.

The thing with TSW is that the game’s story is so well written and the world so well-developed, that people like me who leave do so with the full intention of coming back eventually.

Thank you Sabo for a great post. I am complete agreement with most, if not all of your points presented.

There is one thing I would like to add to your list:

Enemies do not immediately respawn in GW1. When you entered an instanced area, whatever you killed stayed dead. Eventually, if you were so inclined, you could clear out the whole area as part of progression towards your Exploration title. But titles aside, the fact that my downed enemy stayed dead (and didn’t return unless you zoned in and out again) gave me that sense of temporary achievement.

In GW2, that sense of achievement is slapped back in your face. An example of this occurs very early in the start of GW2 – the Bandithaunt Caverns. Running in, meeting thugs, killing or stealing back supplies as part of your quest objective. Then, you turn around to head home. Not 5 minutes later, the thugs you fought respawn in the exact same spot you killed them. This can start to feel frustrating especially when you’re low on health and suddenly you’re swarmed by a mob which you thought you killed earlier.
It also makes playing solo nearly impossible especially for caster classes; even with my Warrior I struggled through areas that have incredibly insane respawn rates. Not everyone wants to team up with another player or their guildies – some days, maybe I just want to be on my own – but in GW1, this wasn’t really a problem because, you’re right, I could bring my henchmen or my heroes.

This is one of the biggest flaws in GW2 that is a deal-breaker for me. While I am no stranger to dodging like a maniac and picking out a path that contains the least number of wandering mobs if I don’t feel like fighting, it doesn’t change the fact that some of the respawn rates are so ridiculous, even a full party of five can’t handle it.

Events running all day long instead of being a one-time lagfest certain was something GW1 did well.

One of the bigger things for me is the lack of a skill pool, in GW1 we had hundreds of skills to mess around with for each profession, then secondary profs to make it that much more interesting, it let you cater your class to your play style. Frankly it made things interesting just because of stuff you could do with all these different ability’s for example the 55 monk.

Iina.7035:

One of the bigger things for me is the lack of a skill pool, in GW1 we had hundreds of skills to mess around with for each profession, then secondary profs to make it that much more interesting, it let you cater your class to your play style. Frankly it made things interesting just because of stuff you could do with all these different ability’s for example the 55 monk.

Yeah, I didn’t think of that but that’s a good one. It felt like there was more build versatility and a lot of ways to use things to different advantages. I definitely miss building my skill combos.

Iina.7035:

One of the bigger things for me is the lack of a skill pool, in GW1 we had hundreds of skills to mess around with for each profession, then secondary profs to make it that much more interesting, it let you cater your class to your play style. Frankly it made things interesting just because of stuff you could do with all these different ability’s for example the 55 monk.

It doesn’t help that most of the GW2 professions currently have a slew of bugged and broken skills leaving them with very few build options.

I miss:

- gvg
- ha.
- ta/ra.
- Skill system, it wasn’t perfect, but a lot better then GW2’s skill system.
- No repair costs or other, so I am not foreced to pve for some gold or gear.
- Meaningfull titles.
- Guild halls
- Monks/healers! At first I was hopefull removing the holy Trinity, but now I realize it was a mistake. It simply doesn’t work for strategic play, I prefer the more slow and strategic play with healers instead of the zerky play or capture style used in GW2.
To be clear, no overpowered healers like WoW(where on top lvl you can only kill a healer with perfect cc), but healers with decent/usefull healing output and which need support from the team to survive.
- No down mode. I think this was a design mistake from arenanet, they didn’t realize it would be bad for competive play. I Think it only works well in single player games, but not in competive play.
- template equipment manager
- Temple of ages
- Better balanced cash shop.
- Spectator mode. I miss it, but it is probably better to leave it out. Once it was introduced people start copying builds from top guilds and creativity was left out.

Anet was extremely conservative with skills and traits in GW2, to the point of a lot of them being completely useless. I guess its so that someone with a better build couldn’t just stomp over someone else with no chance of fighting back, but it really takes away the excitement of getting new skills.

This shows most in elites. I remember seeing the old aura of the lich, the sacrifice mitigation version not the minion version, and thinking “wow, I want that”.

I look at my guardian’s tomes and think “meh”

Iina.7035:

One of the bigger things for me is the lack of a skill pool, in GW1 we had hundreds of skills to mess around with for each profession, then secondary profs to make it that much more interesting, it let you cater your class to your play style. Frankly it made things interesting just because of stuff you could do with all these different ability’s for example the 55 monk.

The 55 Monk, perma-SF, Ursanway, 3-Hero-easy-mode . . . there are a ton of things which were done with the ability to find skill synergies not anticipated to make the game easier to play. Well, to farm mostly, but “play” in a sense.

You know what I miss from Guild Wars 1? Logging in every major holiday event and having fun. Canthan New Year, with my alliance working to sponsor district(s) from using time during the year to gather ingredients. Wintersday, where the plain silly entered into the game and great fun could be had doing snowball fights.

I miss the sense of accomplishment for doing 80% of the missions alone with H/h because I didn’t want to bother other people with my noobishness. The other 20% I didn’t do alone? Mostly HM missions.

I miss basically managing to take down the Great Destroyer without abusing Pain Inverter or Ursan Blessing. I miss my alliance spending SIX HOURS in Urgoz’s Warren the first time we cleared it because we were too stubborn to quit, then we sat down after and discussed how to clean that up so we could do it in two by the last time we ran it.

I miss green uniques, collecting them. I really wish we could have displayed THOSE in the Hall! They were my trophies of conquest of PvE.

I miss getting into a Jade Quarry match and inspiring a team to turn it around from a 5-0 deficit to a 10-9 win.

I miss motivating a few alliance mates to go kill Rotwing because we all needed that vanquish, and it going much easier than with heroes.

I miss Pyre Fierceshot. I miss Jora. I miss Olias. I miss . . . no, wait, I don’t miss Rurik.

What else don’t I miss?

I don’t miss “Spamadan”, where turning on the trade channel was grounds for never reading anything said to you otherwise, ever.

I don’t miss the complaining about festival hats “looking like crap” every darn year.

I don’t miss the complaining they stopped giving out hats and gave out tokens to claim ones you missed, because there were no new hats.

I don’t miss “Dunes of Despair” HM.

I don’t miss the slightly, just a little bit, buggy Vizunah Square.

I don’t miss knowing that every time I found an item which I thought was kinda cool, someone somewhere was going to be a smartaleck and offer 10g for it because “it’s not Req 9”.

I don’t miss the sinking feeling of thinking “I can afford Obsidian Armor, surely” and checking Ecto prices.

I don’t miss doing Underworld trips and seeing everyone else get a Glob of Ectoplasm and every single freaking drop was a blue Cane for me. (I am dead serious.)

I don’t miss Duncan the Black.

Max stat equipment available in major cities for cheap, with no fear that it’ll ever go out of date.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Max stat equipment available in major cities for cheap, with no fear that it’ll ever go out of date.

Nah, I never liked that gear. It never quite had what I was looking for, be it a nice model, or an Inscription slot, or mods I really wanted . . . plus it cost materials I’d rather save for my armors or to sell to the trader for platinum for the next Glob of Ectoplasm.

Honestly the thing that I miss most is farming.

I know that sounds as though I’m some farm junkie who needs to be constantly making money to feel vindicated or whatever. I assure you that I’m not. I find farming to be boring and a grind. I think that it’s not worth my time.

However, what I do like is the option to farm when I need to. In Guild Wars 1 if I was hurting for cash I knew that I’d be able to head out somewhere and gather up some mats or find some items to sell to others. It was my safety net that let me know that, no matter how bad it got, I’d always at least have something to fall back on that was reliable and could help me out, even if I hated it.

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have that safety net, and it doesn’t feel good. If I fall on hard times, I’m going to be stuck in that rut for at least a week while I crawl out of it. I don’t like that.

Additionally, there were little tricks that accompanied farming that applied to my everyday adventuring. Once such tricks were learned and utilized, it allowed me to become a more self-sufficient player. There aren’t any little tricks in GW2 like there were in GW1.

For example, in GW1 an identification kit cost 100 coins. Each use of the kit was worth 4 coins. I knew that as long as any item I identified would vendor for 5 or more coins, I’d be making a profit and thus would, over an extended period of time, be more effective as a character. In addition, identifying white/trash items would increase their value; if I increased the value of the item by 5 or more, I’d be making raw profit.

Without similar tricks and safety nets in GW2, I simply don’t have money as often as I need to have it. I’m not talking about things such as buying vanity items or extra armor sets. I’m talking about things such as traveling, repairing my armor, and leveling up my crafting skills. I’m talking about keeping my gear up to date while I level, so that I can minimize the amount of time I spend dead or using waypoints.

I miss farming.

Edit: and by extension, I miss finding loot. If I killed a group of 10 foes in GW1, I’d know that I’d get a few coins at the very least. In GW2 I tend to not get loot as often as I need it. That hurts a lot after fighting a tough veteran and finding it has empty pockets.