Guild Wars 2

I can’t help but think that many people posting about how shallow GW2 is and how amazing GW1 was, are either:

A. Playing one of the classes of GW2 that are easy (and are likely made to be so)
and/or
B. Played GW1 with either crappy builds, or are just plain wearing nostalgia goggles.

I played GW1 from release. I was in the various beta weekends, and I got a lot out of that game. But really, it was never that difficult. Many classes had -very- little variability in their builds even when you took into account their secondary. Warriors, Rangers, Necromancers, Monks etc… were all very easy to play. And the dungeons were too (heck, many may remember how many people built their character around making auto attack do everything… and how stupidly effective it was. If my warrior didnt have something that upped my swing speed, I was hurting myself a lot). The only difficulty that ever came of the dungeons in GW1 was getting a healer, and not accidentally pulling to many mobs. Not a thing more. This didn’t really change much when hard modes became a thing, aside from making it so you couldn’t just roll your face around the keyboard: had to hyper focus and, at least in my experience, use less, but hyper effective, skills.

Now, speaking on the classes of GW2: I will freely admit some of them are fairly simple in use. Notably, Warrior, Guardian, and to some extent Necromancer and Ranger. But the others, especially Elementalist and Engineer, really shine in the hands of a competent player in comparison to bad one. This is true for PvP and PvE both.

It’s also rather hypocritical to say you’re forced into one build in GW2 while in the same breath praising GW1: where over powered super builds were the name of the game from DAY ONE. Calling GW2 shallow based on hyper focused trait, sigil, and rune usage is the exact same as calling GW1 shallow based on the various fotm builds that plagued GW1 throughout it’s entire life (and really only got worse with time).

To be fair, yes, GW1 did of course have more variability in it’s builds, but it also had severely more skill overlap between classes and even -in- classes to the point where looking at the skills of GW1 is rather misleading when compared to GW2. Go ahead and take a look, see how many skills are pointless. How many pretty much do the exact same as another skill. How many were rather passive in use (ignite arrows for instance).

Does the game need more traits? Yes. More utilities? Of course. No game should ever stop improving and giving options (and the devs said this will be a focus of the game from now on). But to call the game shallow based on making it shallow, while also comparing it to another game that was just as shallow, if not more so, is hypocritical and foolish. I played a Warrior through most of my time in GW1. I cleared the games PvE content, and the most I ever needed in my build aside from a chain of weapon skills that I always mindlessly used in succession, was a tactics skill that was needed for one specific use, depending on the dungeon. Warrior in GW2, despite being no doubt the simplest of classes, is far more involved than my GW1 Warrior was. Same could be said comparing my old Ranger to my new ranger, or even my old assassin to my new thief.

Give GW1 another play if you feel the need. If you have friends, invite them along. Get rid of your PvE only abilities, and try your hand at the games PvE. I imagine it’s going to come out a lot easier than you remember.

That said the ease of GW2 comes from the same source as GW1: damage mitigation.

GW1, you had a healer. Things pretty much died left and right and there was no danger. GW2, you figure out how to dodge a bosses or a mobs moves, and you’re set. It’s an MMO, it’s a video game: there is little choice here on making the game more compelling. They give the mobs more passive, unavoidable stuff like in say, EQ or WoW, and you’ll need a healer because you simply can’t last. You give them more instant kills or harder hitting things, and those with poor latency can’t play, and at times it’ll just come down to luck.

What do people truly expect to make GW2 more difficult? I hear many saying its shallow, its easy, but seldom are there any suggestions on fixing this percieved issue other than suggestions which typically wouldn’t fix this percieved issue, but rather move it: for example a common request if for a return to healers and/or tanks. All thats doing is shifting responsibility from the players to a handful of individual players which in the long run would likely make things even easier.

Can anyone even imagine a truly hard action game? The only ones that ever come to mind are those with dodge or block systems, that, when mastered make things easy. Sound familiar?

I wouldn’t say shallow, just a bit simplistic.

Tamaki Revolution.3548:

I wouldn’t say shallow, just a bit simplistic.

To an extent, yes. I would say it can be simple at times. But many go on and on about how it lacks -any- depth, which is just false. Same people also tend to say that GW1 had this huge amount of depth, when in reality it just had a mountain of skills that tended to only be useful when a-net decided to buff them and were rather mindless in their application.

That and this sort of genre is pretty much based around simplicity. What action game isn’t rather simple? Even the exalted on high Dark Souls is easy to the point where soloing it without leveling up and going about naked is rather possible for many players once you understand what you need to be doing.

Oh, I agree with you. I also just laugh at a lot of the threads :P I mainly just want more options, skill wise. I find myself auto attacking just a bit too much.

On second thought, let’s not go to Tyria, Tis a silly shallow place.

i find it more annoying than shallow.

i understand having the traits set up the way they do trying to force diversity into builds. but that only really works when the options you have are interesting and more importantly viable to a good selection of play styles, therefor making it more about choosing which good traits to take and which good traits to sacrifice.

however the traits we actually have, led to a thinking style more along the lines of “how many useful traits can i get while avoiding too many of the useless ones and not sacrificing too many useful stats”.

which ofc makes build design more an act of frustration than fun.

xydrassial.6953:

i find it more annoying than shallow.

i understand having the traits set up the way they do trying to force diversity into builds. but that only really works when the options you have are interesting and more importantly viable to a good selection of play styles, therefor making it more about choosing which good traits to take and which good traits to sacrifice.

however the traits we actually have, led to a thinking style more along the lines of “how many useful traits can i get while avoiding too many of the useless ones and not sacrificing too many useful stats”.

which ofc makes build design more an act of frustration than fun.

Minor traits annoy me more than anything. I can’t tell you number of times the “Stealth at 25% health” (or w/e it is) trait has gotten my thief killed in WvW :P

i was kind of hoping they were going to go with a system where you could choose a weapon that would have a selection of skills to choose from (much like the utility and heal slots) and then the trait system would allow us to augment the skills we chose allowing some really interesting build design. the current trait system just has a few too many % increase talents. the really interesting ones are the ones that change the way we can use a weapon. like the engi flamethrower trait that makes it very tanky.

For most classes there are only so many ways to skin a cat with 10+5 skills (or effectively less in active use).

There is also a lack of resources to manage besides dodge. There is also not much in terms of CC and CC breaking abilities compared to some of the older games like EQ, WoW and others that actually demanded you use close to 20-30 unique skills per fight in structured PvP.

If you take the most complex class in WoW, the druid, you cannot map it to anything in GW2; a class with that kind of stance, resource and cooldown management simply does not exist in GW2.

People would often disparage the hunter class in WoW due to its ease of simplicity for rotations, but even hunters had far more skills in active use in PvP than even a competent Engineer/Elementalist in GW2… and sadly the most trivial PvE one-button rotations are the norm in GW2.

I honestly think that the simplistic combat in GW2 due to the severe skill restrictions was intentional for the sake of developer balancing ease. In fact, the entire latency based system (the server check for each of your actions) reeks of e-sports.

TLDR: Complexity found in other games traded off for ease of balancing for competitive PvP.

What makes the game shallow to me is the atmosphere it breathes (or rather doesn’t) and the ridiculously childish storyline and voice acting.

The second thing is that instead of adding actual content, GW2 has brought out only party events and living story crap that comes and goes: nothing substantial however and it’s the lack of substance that makes the game feel superficial or shallow.

The combat system has been discussed much. The thing about that is, that even though has some complexity and even some depth, it’s all negated by the simple fact that 90% of PvE can be done with dodge and auto attack.

Add to that the amount of restrictions that are actually built into the combat system as far as your skill bar choices and trait system are concerned and the lack of transparency and it all becomes a bit whatever.

I also played GW1 but I am also done playing. I had hoped GW2 would replace it by “taking all the things I love about GW1 and have them put in a persistent world” as they said, but that wasn’t the case.

GW1 was far from perfect, but it had tons more atmosphere, much better design for gear (making collecting them fun) and the combat system had a lot of freedom in it. Sure there were cookie cutter builds but you could do most content without them and experiment with skills. Now you could argue that this can be done in GW2 as well and to a point I agree…but there is no need in GW2 because you can kill mobs no matter what. And my experience in GW1 was that skill choices mattered a lot more. I’d say the combat system in GW1 was also simplistic but it was more tactical because skill choices mattered more. If you changed one or two skills in your build it could dramatically change the outcome. In GW2, for most content, it doesn’t matter at all.

That’s the difference for me.

I will say though that I would’ve liked GW2 a lot better if max level was 50 (the last 30 levels feel completely pointless) and if I had more freedom in my skill bar.

I’ve been leveling a new guardian for the fun of it. I am level 60 and bored with leveling. So I thought I’d make a thief….Level 4 and already bored. Why? Because the leveling is the most repetitious I’ve ever seen in any game. Events and hearts are all the same no matter where you are and since you go to areas of different races to get xp, rolling another race doesn’t help much cause you’ve done those areas before.

I mean, what’s the difference if you have to defend a village against centaurs or undead or nightmare court? Exactly, it’s the same thing, just a different looking enemy.

And that’s why the game feels shallow. Some people call this game a themepark MMO. I think that makes sense, but once you’ve been in the same ride 20 times, it really gets boring. Sadly you have to do that same ride 100 times to get to level 80 and without the back up of a convincing atmosphere and a great story behind it, not to mention a crappy reward system, it just feels like senseless repetition.

All games have repetition, but it’s that feeling of senselessness that makes it just shallow, superficial. And in GW1 we did have a better story and atmosphere and even though the combat system was simplistic as well, it was just simply more interesting because of the freedom of choices and your choices instantly mattered..you could tell the difference in combat clearly and you really did need different things for different areas.

I think that is the big difference in GW1 and GW2…In GW1 I felt that choices I made actually mattered, in GW2 I don’t feel that at all and that’s why it feels so shallow.

Oh and just an example: In GW2 you can make choice in the story line and you might argue that therefore choices do matter, but they don’t. The main story is still the same and whichever choice you make still gets you from A to B, so again you have choices but for the overall picture they don’t matter as the effect is, well, superficial.

Gehenna.3625:

post.

I agree with every word. If only SPvP were tied into leveling, or JP.. or something other than the mindless grinding disguised as a heart.

People need to stop thinking about things like gear and builds and start thinking about combat in terms of the fights themselves. The stats are normalized so every profession will each benefit from certain stats like power, vitality, and toughness. Traditionally, you would have stats that benefited certain classes/professions but not others. Such stats included intelligence, defense, and agility. Certain builds in this game would no doubt benefit more from specific stats. This was all done to take the focus away from builds/gear and move it towards player interaction.

I’m sorry but this post is complete BS GW1 at times was to easy, and hell that happens with having so much build diversity but they did patch it and fix it and get people to create new builds to farm, i honestly can’t believe you’re trying to tell me and the rest of the community that there was no challenge in GW1.

Gehenna.3625:

What makes the game shallow to me is the atmosphere it breathes (or rather doesn’t) and the ridiculously childish storyline and voice acting.

The second thing is that instead of adding actual content, GW2 has brought out only party events and living story crap that comes and goes: nothing substantial however and it’s the lack of substance that makes the game feel superficial or shallow.

The combat system has been discussed much. The thing about that is, that even though has some complexity and even some depth, it’s all negated by the simple fact that 90% of PvE can be done with dodge and auto attack.

Add to that the amount of restrictions that are actually built into the combat system as far as your skill bar choices and trait system are concerned and the lack of transparency and it all becomes a bit whatever.

I also played GW1 but I am also done playing. I had hoped GW2 would replace it by “taking all the things I love about GW1 and have them put in a persistent world” as they said, but that wasn’t the case.

GW1 was far from perfect, but it had tons more atmosphere, much better design for gear (making collecting them fun) and the combat system had a lot of freedom in it. Sure there were cookie cutter builds but you could do most content without them and experiment with skills. Now you could argue that this can be done in GW2 as well and to a point I agree…but there is no need in GW2 because you can kill mobs no matter what. And my experience in GW1 was that skill choices mattered a lot more. I’d say the combat system in GW1 was also simplistic but it was more tactical because skill choices mattered more. If you changed one or two skills in your build it could dramatically change the outcome. In GW2, for most content, it doesn’t matter at all.

That’s the difference for me.

I will say though that I would’ve liked GW2 a lot better if max level was 50 (the last 30 levels feel completely pointless) and if I had more freedom in my skill bar.

I’ve been leveling a new guardian for the fun of it. I am level 60 and bored with leveling. So I thought I’d make a thief….Level 4 and already bored. Why? Because the leveling is the most repetitious I’ve ever seen in any game. Events and hearts are all the same no matter where you are and since you go to areas of different races to get xp, rolling another race doesn’t help much cause you’ve done those areas before.

I mean, what’s the difference if you have to defend a village against centaurs or undead or nightmare court? Exactly, it’s the same thing, just a different looking enemy.

And that’s why the game feels shallow. Some people call this game a themepark MMO. I think that makes sense, but once you’ve been in the same ride 20 times, it really gets boring. Sadly you have to do that same ride 100 times to get to level 80 and without the back up of a convincing atmosphere and a great story behind it, not to mention a crappy reward system, it just feels like senseless repetition.

All games have repetition, but it’s that feeling of senselessness that makes it just shallow, superficial. And in GW1 we did have a better story and atmosphere and even though the combat system was simplistic as well, it was just simply more interesting because of the freedom of choices and your choices instantly mattered..you could tell the difference in combat clearly and you really did need different things for different areas.

I think that is the big difference in GW1 and GW2…In GW1 I felt that choices I made actually mattered, in GW2 I don’t feel that at all and that’s why it feels so shallow.

Oh and just an example: In GW2 you can make choice in the story line and you might argue that therefore choices do matter, but they don’t. The main story is still the same and whichever choice you make still gets you from A to B, so again you have choices but for the overall picture they don’t matter as the effect is, well, superficial.

Well said.

It’s simplistic because they wanted the game to be more accessible, more beginner friendly, more casual – easy to pick up and play.

The combat (monster fights) itself doesn’t require much too – most encounters in open world are easy, most normal mobs are killable with auto attack.

Yes, GW1 was not a perect game, however, it was more complex than GW2.

Was gw1 aimed at facebook gamers? because GW2 certainly is.

Namica.2951:

B. Played GW1 with either crappy builds, or are just plain wearing nostalgia goggles.

A lot of people complaining about GW2 combat are wearing nostalgia googgles and just want a copy of their previous MMO (WoW, GW1, or whatever).

I think one of the main losses in GW2 from GW1 is the focus on team play. This actually gave one more layer of strategy to the older game, as we had more variety in a single encounter – we were not fighting a single enemy, as often is the case in GW2, but rather a group of enemies, often (since Nightfall) with different skills and different abilities. Fights could also be bigger, since they were balanced for 8 players instead of for a single player (or at most 5 players). We also had some interesting mechanics in fights – those Charrs casting Meteor Shower in the Charr Homelands? The perfect targets for an interrupt. There isn’t anything really worth interrupting in GW2.

xydrassial.6953:

i was kind of hoping they were going to go with a system where you could choose a weapon that would have a selection of skills to choose from (much like the utility and heal slots) and then the trait system would allow us to augment the skills we chose allowing some really interesting build design. the current trait system just has a few too many % increase talents. the really interesting ones are the ones that change the way we can use a weapon. like the engi flamethrower trait that makes it very tanky.

Agreed, the game could use more variety in it’s traits, and the devs have said they’re working on this (and from what I’ve seen so far, a-net has been fairly honest concerning the things they say).

Though I do believe that there is only so much you can do with each particular class. Add to many traits like the Engi flamethrower one and the game simply becomes to bloated. Need to remember that traits are passive, add to many that do to much and people will feel completly forced into using certain ones.

crestpiemangler.7631:

For most classes there are only so many ways to skin a cat with 10+5 skills (or effectively less in active use).

There is also a lack of resources to manage besides dodge. There is also not much in terms of CC and CC breaking abilities compared to some of the older games like EQ, WoW and others that actually demanded you use close to 20-30 unique skills per fight in structured PvP.

If you take the most complex class in WoW, the druid, you cannot map it to anything in GW2; a class with that kind of stance, resource and cooldown management simply does not exist in GW2.

People would often disparage the hunter class in WoW due to its ease of simplicity for rotations, but even hunters had far more skills in active use in PvP than even a competent Engineer/Elementalist in GW2… and sadly the most trivial PvE one-button rotations are the norm in GW2.

As far as EQ goes, only a small handful of classes had any real meaningful CC, and that was their entire job. Many other classes, most of them, had little to nothing in the way of CC. Combat itself was also rather slow paced and simple: relying far more on getting a large group of people with proper gear than anything else. If you’re going to tot around a game for the sake of it’s complexity, EQ is not that game.

As a player coming from WoW, I can safely say that the amount of CC in the game has been hurting it for years now, and the huge button bloat has done nothing much more than lead to an environment when you have abunch of button that are just there for space filler that don’t really do much. This is especially true for Druid and Hunter, oddly enough, who have a great deal of abilities that could all just be bound to one button if not for GCD, and can definitely be bound into a cast sequence because they’re just so danged use and forget.

The second thing is that instead of adding actual content, GW2 has brought out only party events and living story crap that comes and goes: nothing substantial however and it’s the lack of substance that makes the game feel superficial or shallow.

Hunzo.4509:

I’m sorry but this post is complete BS GW1 at times was to easy, and hell that happens with having so much build diversity but they did patch it and fix it and get people to create new builds to farm, i honestly can’t believe you’re trying to tell me and the rest of the community that there was no challenge in GW1.

I am telling you this. GW1 was not hard. The occasional hard mode (added 2 years after release) maybe. But the games various dungeons and story mode missions? Not in the least unless you were using less than optimal builds (which were easy to put together).

If you were using less than optimal builds, then guess what? It was like doing GW2 dungeons with less than optimal builds: can be quite difficult.

Namica.2951:

If you were using less than optimal builds, then guess what? It was like doing GW2 dungeons with less than optimal builds: can be quite difficult.

Actually, there were some parts of the game that were challenging. When Prophecies was released, Thunderhead Keep was hard; when Nightfall was released and the Domain of Anguish was implemented, it was hard, too. Earning all mission bonuses in Dzagonur Bastion was difficult, too, as it was earning all bonuses on Raisu Palace.

Keep in mind that there has been A LOT of power creep in the game. And ArenaNet just nerfed the difficulty of some areas as well. But there were some things that, originally, were hard.

Gehenna.3625:

What makes the game shallow to me is the atmosphere it breathes (or rather doesn’t) and the ridiculously childish storyline and voice acting.

The second thing is that instead of adding actual content, GW2 has brought out only party events and living story crap that comes and goes: nothing substantial however and it’s the lack of substance that makes the game feel superficial or shallow.

They’ve so far added a few rather large scale events with smaller ones peppered all about. They can’t do a Flame and Frost or a Secret of Southsun constantly. It requires a lot more work than putting in a few minigames and a few quality of life changes. Can you name any other MMO that has updated this frequently? What would you consider “actual content”? Are Fractals not actual content? Guild Missions? The various PvP additions? New armors and weapons aren’t content?

Gehenna.3625:

I’ve been leveling a new guardian for the fun of it. I am level 60 and bored with leveling. So I thought I’d make a thief….Level 4 and already bored. Why? Because the leveling is the most repetitious I’ve ever seen in any game. Events and hearts are all the same no matter where you are and since you go to areas of different races to get xp, rolling another race doesn’t help much cause you’ve done those areas before.

I mean, what’s the difference if you have to defend a village against centaurs or undead or nightmare court? Exactly, it’s the same thing, just a different looking enemy.

And that’s why the game feels shallow. Some people call this game a themepark MMO. I think that makes sense, but once you’ve been in the same ride 20 times, it really gets boring. Sadly you have to do that same ride 100 times to get to level 80 and without the back up of a convincing atmosphere and a great story behind it, not to mention a crappy reward system, it just feels like senseless repetition.

Of course you’re going to get bored doing the same zones multiple times. It’s a video game, it can’t have an infinite amount of content. Did you play through prophecies multiple times without getting bored? Because it was far more streamlined and lacking in variety than the GW2 leveling experience.

Gehenna.3625:

All games have repetition, but it’s that feeling of senselessness that makes it just shallow, superficial. And in GW1 we did have a better story and atmosphere and even though the combat system was simplistic as well, it was just simply more interesting because of the freedom of choices and your choices instantly mattered..you could tell the difference in combat clearly and you really did need different things for different areas.

And you can tell the difference between differing people in GW2 as well. Or are you saying that, for example, a Hammer Warrior is the same as a Long Sword Warrior?

Gehenna.3625:

I think that is the big difference in GW1 and GW2…In GW1 I felt that choices I made actually mattered, in GW2 I don’t feel that at all and that’s why it feels so shallow.

Oh and just an example: In GW2 you can make choice in the story line and you might argue that therefore choices do matter, but they don’t. The main story is still the same and whichever choice you make still gets you from A to B, so again you have choices but for the overall picture they don’t matter as the effect is, well, superficial.

When did the story in GW1 ever change based on player choices?

Erasculio.2914:

Namica.2951:

If you were using less than optimal builds, then guess what? It was like doing GW2 dungeons with less than optimal builds: can be quite difficult.

Actually, there were some parts of the game that were challenging. When Prophecies was released, Thunderhead Keep was hard; when Nightfall was released and the Domain of Anguish was implemented, it was hard, too. Earning all mission bonuses in Dzagonur Bastion was difficult, too, as it was earning all bonuses on Raisu Palace.

Keep in mind that there has been A LOT of power creep in the game. And ArenaNet just nerfed the difficulty of some areas as well. But there were some things that, originally, were hard.

I suppose it’s a matter of opinion. I remember doing Thunderhead keep. I remember destroying it. It was all a matter of each person in the group having at least one strong damage mitigation ability, and focusing targets down. Heck, thata almost what it always came down to: spiking enemies one at a time.

Can’t speak for Nightfall, I took a break when it was released and didnt come back till EotN. But Raisu palace was much the same as thunderhead: dont be stupid, focus down one at a time.

My larger point in all this, is that many people say that GW2 is easy, and that “Well you’re using a optimal spec” is a poor excuse. Well the same applied to GW1: us an optimal spec, everything was easy. If you didn’t, it became far harder. Same happens in GW2. For instance, when was the last time you had a range damage dealer in your group in GW2? I imagine for most it’s been awhile, since they’ll only allow those really effective builds in their groups, and then complain about how easy things are.

PvP isn’t shallow, but PvE certainly is. The problem is that so many weapon skills are situational and/or have long cooldowns. We spend a huge amount of time just watching our character autoattack. IMO weapon skills #2/3 on ALL weapons need to have cooldowns dropped a bit and be made to do more damage than autoattack. In this way we at least have some interaction with our skill bars, even in when the situational uses of those skills aren’t needed.

Namica.2951:

They’ve so far added a few rather large scale events with smaller ones peppered all about. They can’t do a Flame and Frost or a Secret of Southsun constantly. It requires a lot more work than putting in a few minigames and a few quality of life changes. Can you name any other MMO that has updated this frequently? What would you consider “actual content”? Are Fractals not actual content? Guild Missions? The various PvP additions? New armors and weapons aren’t content?

Mini games and events yes…that’s what I call snacks, little in betweens. Nice but not solid content. FotM is just a mix between tetris and a dungeon. It’s the ultimate treadmill experience. Doing the same group of fractals in different combinations over and over again? No that goes under stupid and grind in my book. But hey, if you like it, good for you.

New armour skins can be nice (still haven’t seen any really good ones) but it’s not content unless there are new activities to acquire them.

Guild missions I don’t know but from what I understand that content is not for solo players or smaller guilds. So it’s gated content. Not sure if there’s a lot to it.

But guess what? The game still feels like there’s not much to do at level 80 for a good amount of people it seems. So whatever they’re adding, it’s not adding up to much.

Namica.2951:

Of course you’re going to get bored doing the same zones multiple times. It’s a video game, it can’t have an infinite amount of content. Did you play through prophecies multiple times without getting bored? Because it was far more streamlined and lacking in variety than the GW2 leveling experience.

Nothing of course. In other games I gladly leveled multiple characters before getting a sense of boredom. Here I get that sense of boredom around level 40-50 on my first character. That is not very good.

Namica.2951:

And you can tell the difference between differing people in GW2 as well. Or are you saying that, for example, a Hammer Warrior is the same as a Long Sword Warrior?

There is a difference between the two but not one that really matters for most content in GW2. There are exceptions I’m sure but when you level through this game it makes no difference which weapons you use. You’ll get the job done just the same. What is more of an issue to me is the freedom GW1 had in the skill bar that GW2 simply doesn’t have.

Namica.2951:

When did the story in GW1 ever change based on player choices?

Never said it did, but GW2 pretends to, so it sets the expectation. GW1 never set that expectation so it doesn’t matter there. But I’ll tell you one thing that did change the outcome of your actions in GW1 : the choice of your skills and gear.

GW2 is just way too forgiving to the point that it makes everything a bit pointless.

Just one question to OP.
Have you ever got killed in PVE by a mob?
skill no 1 will kill any mob in gw2.
can you do the same in GW1?

Gehenna.3625:

Nothing of course. In other games I gladly leveled multiple characters before getting a sense of boredom. Here I get that sense of boredom around level 40-50 on my first character. That is not very good.

That’s because leveling PvE doesn’t ask you to do much more than autoattacks for nearly all the classes. So yeah obviously it’ll feel repetitive quickly.

Having bosses that you can AFK auto attack through should never have happened. I don’t know what the excuse could even be.

I can see both sides. To call a game shallow that I’ve played for almost a calendar year is kind of crazy, but it is shallow in a certain sense. It’s easier than most MMO’s to learn. You don’t need a group to complete content. Those things I love. The part that is somewhat dissapointing is the childish nature of the plotlines and the cardboard voice acting. I think they did this deliberately, because they want the game to be family friendly, but it does suck to a certain degree for people with a more “adult” preference. The thing is, GW2 is a young game. If you go back and look at the way alot of MMO’s started out, it was the same thing. FFXI was my experience, and in that game if you looked at the first rank 10 missions that were basically the only content for a year, in comparison to Sky Gods, Sea Gods, Dynamis, and all that came after, it was really those later things that made the game great. The first year’s content became what people did when they had free time in between the fun stuff that didn’t even exist at this point in the game’s life yet. Long story short, as MMO’s progress and time passes, they grow to become “deep” games. Anet has made alot of really impressive moves lately… if they continue down this path we’ll see some awesome stuff.

Edit: Also, they did alot of the “foundation” type stuff right. The game is gorgeous and fun to play. Assuming that the depth comes with age, it’s going to be alot of fun for a long time.

Surbrus.6942:

Having bosses that you can AFK auto attack through should never have happened. I don’t know what the excuse could even be.

The problem is the very design of the stat system of the game. When you have to make a boss fight that can be killed by any gear set from an exotic full soldiers (aka, boring) strictly ranged users to a mishmash or masterwork and rare berserk team to a fully optimised full zerk melee exotic team, well your boss design has very little liberties left. Can’t hit too hard or the low gear guys die, even if you forget them, you cannot either kill the full zerk guys and you cannot give them THAT much HP so that the full zerk fight isn’t trivially short or else the PVT ranged group will take 30 minutes to down him.

Some people say they should have fights where Zerk gear is suboptimal. I say it’s other way around : they should design every single fight with zerk gear in mind (and fix condition damage with rampager gear to be on par with zerk I suppose) and ignore the rest, they should make sure every PvE player understands zerk gear is THE PvE gear and the rest is there only for WvW.

Honestly, you’re 100% correct about GW1 players and nostalgia goggles. People who think this game is grindy obviously didn’t pay 1 plat to go to the underworld each time I farm ectos (or as I call them, secondary currency) repeatedly for days and nights on end for a single set of armor (or, as I said before, to have more secondary currency).

Areas and Missions weren’t particularly hard unless you had no idea what you were doing when composing team builds, and even then you’d simply be told to look one up on the PvX Wiki. Once you unlocked 100 Blades and got a friend to ball for you, any instance (which there were a lot of, mind you.) was trivial.

The combat in GW2 is far more engaging and visceral than GW1. Standing still and managing cooldowns in a rotation isn’t skill. Being mobile is far more immersive.

Any instance was trivial? Even the Domain of Anguish for example?

gw2 is shallow because of limited skill pool and an emphasis on stats instead of skill selection. it is a dps race in pve. difficulty is not directly related to shallowness, since a boss can have 3 million hp.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Honestly, you’re 100% correct about GW1 players and nostalgia goggles. People who think this game is grindy obviously didn’t pay 1 plat to go to the underworld each time I farm ectos

That was actually a great gold sink. Grinders used to farm the Underworld alone, over and over and over, so farmers actually paid the 1 platinum fee quite often. Real players, who went to the Underworld in a team to do the quests there, didn’t keep entering the area over and over (so they paid the fee much less often), and they could split the 1 platinum between 8 people.

In other words, it was a gold sink that punished grinders, but didn’t do much to anyone else. Far better than repair fees, or paying to change traits.

stof.9341:

Any instance was trivial? Even the Domain of Anguish for example?

Yes. If you built for the content, you should have experienced no issues.

For the hell of it, I ran my own gimmick build where I echoed Endure Pain, literally making me invincible in PvE. In PvP it was a different matter entirely, but being the anchor in that aspect gave your team mates a chance to build for either DPS or Team Support (monk). Maybe it’s because I ran all of my content with my guild and only rarely used henchmen (and heroes when they came out), but I didn’t find the game incredibly difficult. Even the Survivor title track became trivial with Citadel of Flames’ Hammer item or Kilroy Stoneskin’s dungeon where keybinding your revive key to multiple functions resulted in you being invincible in any situation. Running that on hard mode with experience scrolls meant you only had to run it 27 times to recieve the title.

Even the grind in that game became nothing but build-swapping and repetition.

The game does feel shallow at some aspects. There isn’t much build variation currently (their “variety” patch only made things worse…), and all the spvp & wvw maps are about as plain as they can get. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to make some really curious WvW maps that would still work*, but the deveplovers seem to lack imagination or resources.
The fights itself, especially duels, can be fairly exciting and really fun though. I just wish there were more builds and more customization.

What action game isn’t rather simple?

Arma series, DCS series. Star Citizen certainly will not be once it’s released. I quess those examples are little extreme, but anyhow.

*Hell, take any pve map, add some forts there, and make people fight for them. Do not make another symmetrical, over designed map. That fits for spvp, but not for world pvp.

Namica.2951:

As a player coming from WoW, I can safely say that the amount of CC in the game has been hurting it for years now, and the huge button bloat has done nothing much more than lead to an environment when you have abunch of button that are just there for space filler that don’t really do much. This is especially true for Druid and Hunter, oddly enough, who have a great deal of abilities that could all just be bound to one button if not for GCD, and can definitely be bound into a cast sequence because they’re just so danged use and forget.

That is simply not true.

Take the feral druid:

Shapeshift travelform => 1 key
Shapeshift normal form => heal => 1 key
Shapeshift normal form => root => 1 key
" "=> cyclone => 1 key
Two situational openers for cat => 2 keys
Two situational builders for feral cat => >= 2 keys
Three situational finishers for feral cat => >= 3 keys
Bear form stun => 1 key
Bear form rotations etc. (reduced for argument) => 1 key
Feral situational long cooldowns corresponding to forms => >= 2 keys
Normal situational long cooldowns => >= 1 key

I’ve actually omitted a lot of stuff for the sake of argument including auto-attack. So that’s a very, very, very bare minimum of 16 unique bindings.

Applying the same analysis to a Necro in GW2:

Staff => 4xdamage + 1 fear reduces to 2 disjoint logical key mappings if there were macroing, since a decent necro will either apply all in a short time frame, or just 5 to chain fear with DS.

Main+off => using a dagger (the more favorable weapon, or one would be omitted due to it being part of the rotation) 4 disjoint keys

DS => 3 essentially disjoint keys

I generally use sigil of the locust due to how terribly slow everything in this game is, but for sake of argument, assuming a very structured group in PvP, let’s just add all 4+1 elite skill and dodge: 6 disjoint keys

15 vs. 16 might not seem like a big difference, but another aspect of this game is the relatively long cooldowns associated with the utility, elite and healing skills (along with off -hand weapon).

While you might have to use those utility skills in specific situations, if you take an interval where nothing but skills with <= 30 second cooldowns are available, you’re short at least another 7 keys, while with feral you’re merely down 3 keys.

Not to mention that the base damage rotation for the feral druid is a bare minimum of 4+ keys ignoring auto-attack, requires positioning behind the target etc., so while you’re juggling a slightly greater number of cooldowns and the corresponding resource management to use them (although this arguably corresponds to dodge and healing skill management in GW2) you have a lot more to execute.

In the former analysis I also very conveniently ignored some of the teleport skills, pet CC skills and other skills that are used rarely, but still come up in competitive play (e.g. innervate) along with macros that one would have that are situational corresponding to particular sequences thereof.

So even from a macro point of view, WoW in PvP with reduced bindings is still substantially more complex.

GW had fewer variables that went into build choices (weapon, stat points — including head piece with the “right” rune, and skills) than GW2 (gear, trait points, trait choices, weapon choices, skill choices). Weapons in GW were not as central to a build as they are in GW2. While choice of weapon in GW might meant choosing from a variety of skills usable with that weapon, choice of weapon in GW2 limits the left half of the skill bar, and can dictate where one spends trait points, trait choices and gear choices. Dagger necros don’t build for condition damage, for example.

Since depth is a function of having meaningful choices in build design, the more viable options that exist, the deeper the system. Take Necromancer.

In GW2, Necromancers can be: powermancers; conditionmancers; hybrid condition/spike; or survival life syphoners. Minion masters are going to choose one of the above, as are support necros. Why? Weapon choices. Scepter plus dagger is a condition combination. Dagger or ax plus focus is a power combo. Staff is kind of in-between, with the auto attack being power-based but marks doing primarily condition damage. Death shroud is more of a power-based option because of Life Blast.

In GW, Necros could choose between Curses, Blood or Death Magic, with multiple options within those specializations. Within Blood: you could be a blood necro with a melee weapon and skill choices that augment that; be a life transfering ranged blood mage; use Blood is Power to augment team members energy; use Orders spells to buff team damage; or max soul reaping for energy gain and with a second profession choose healing spells. Some other Blood skills were less generally useful, but powerful in some circumstances (Spoil Victor plus Shiro).

The choice to put skills on weapons in GW2 limits build choices. Choice of weapon means that many of the options available with regard to gear, trait points and trait choices become sub-optimal to the point of being useless. Whether that makes the game’s build options shallow or not is largely going to be a matter of individual opinion. However, consider this. Once weapon choice has been made in GW2, what is the opportunity cost of spending trait points, making trait choices, and choosing gear that do not complement that weapon?

Maybe try some other games op to see how shallow/tedious GW2 is..

Its not nostalgia, Gw1 just had better mechanics, was it flawed, yes but show me a game that isn’t.. but it was a thousand times better than Guildwars 2.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Since depth is a function of having meaningful choices in build design, the more viable options that exist, the deeper the system. Take Necromancer.

In GW2, Necromancers can be: powermancers; conditionmancers; hybrid condition/spike; or survival life syphoners. Minion masters are going to choose one of the above, as are support necros. Why? Weapon choices. Scepter plus dagger is a condition combination. Dagger or ax plus focus is a power combo. Staff is kind of in-between, with the auto attack being power-based but marks doing primarily condition damage. Death shroud is more of a power-based option because of Life Blast.

I agree with you except this. In GW2 (at least PvE), all that matters is dodging and raw damage. With damage types and class roles out the window, the only real “choice” when it comes to making characters is whether you want green clouds or purple butterflies to follow your attacks.

On the topic of AI: It’s basically nonexistent. As a PG RPG fanatic for the last 20 years or so, I find it so disheartening that “dodge after windup” is the best Anet can do.