Guild Wars 2

For the headstarters it’s been about three weeks since launch and this seems like as good a milestone as any to start giving feedback on your experience or how you feel things are shaping up now that we’ve got a solid degree of play time under our belts. The purpose of this thread is going to be about your experience and how you feel about the game more than suggestions, per se. That being said, when I give my feedback I’ll most likely include what I see as a solution to a problem on the basis that the difference between criticism and constructive criticism is not going, “This is bad” but rather, “This isn’t working, this is why and this is what I think you could do to improve it.” With that out of the way, let’s give some feedback. Be warned, it’s going to be a long post.

Hearts and Dynamic Events

I enjoy these quite a lot. They’re probably one of the stronger aspects of Guild Wars 2. By an large, they’re done well enough that there’s very little to critique here. Hearts do have a problem where they feel a little bit samey after a while. Especially if you’re solely taking the route of killing mobs for heart affection but with the alternate methods available for completing hearts if you keep choosing the same method of completion every single time the responsibility for feeling bored lies more on the shoulders of the person choosing to do than on the developers. Some of the heart events can also be quite tedious, especially the ones that involve either a transformation form or a replacement weapon. We’ve all had that moment in a game where you need to use a specific weapon to kill an enemy or transform into something and it’s just completely lackluster in comparison to what you could be doing otherwise. It’s not to say that these mechanics are bad in themselves, they just require tight balance to be fun and often it isn’t there.

Another tedium issue found with hearts is hearts that take far too long to complete. Fort Salma in Kessex Hills is a perfect example of this. It goes by in a flash if you have centaurs sieging the settlement and you have centaurs to kill and buildings to repair. If you don’t have that, your way to complete the heart is to put out a finite amount of fires, scrabble around for badges on a finite number of Seraph and pick up a finite amount of unexploded ordnance that will promptly explode and dump you on your butt. The focus on the finite nature of these items is that it means that often you need to sit around waiting for Unexploded Shell #361 to repop so you can get blown up by it again and gain a sliver of heart affection. Very grindy, not much fun.

Dynamic events are magnificent, especially dynamic event chains. There’s just something neat about trooping around with an NPC over half the map while you help set up something pretty cool. The greatest strength of dynamic events is the way they scale to the players present so that whether you’re alone or in a group you can participate and enjoy the content. It’s a mechanic that’s implemented so well that I am completely baffled by the next point of feedback. Namely:

Group Events

The strength of dynamic events is how reactive and enabling they are. Group events are the exact opposite. The issue with group events is that more often than not you cannot complete them alone. And for a feature titled “Group Event” kinda the point, I know. The problem though, is that it’s not entirely common to have other people in the exact same place that you are at the exact same time. Group event bosses have a habit of just sitting around, doing nothing for hours at a time because while countless players have streamed past the boss, they’ve streamed past it one at a time over the course of hours. As an anecdotal example, I was in Ashford and ran into the Flame Shaman. I tried to take him down by myself, failed and fled before I died. I then continued adventuring through Ashford, logged off, made food, did chores, logged back on, continued playing and then received a gold participation reward for the Flame Shaman event. Four hours after I fled out of that cave, enough people were in the right place at the right time to take the boss down. By itself this isn’t great but I wouldn’t classify it as terribly bad. There’s nothing too bad about a boss not dying like clockwork. What is a problem is that they’re often placed such that they get in the way of a player trying to do things. Group event bosses with large patrols have a way of sneaking up on players, or more irritating, group event bosses placed on top of points of interest or skill points so that they bar map completion until they’re gone. This aspect of boss placement shifts the group event boss not dying for four hours from “not great, not bad” into “needs to be looked at and addressed.”

Upkeep Costs

Namely: repairs and waypoints. Repair costs feel slightly too high. It’s not high enough that I’d make a serious fuss about them, but they can get quite expensive. Especially if you’re doing dangerous content. High level waypoint costs are exorbitant. Just, ridiculously so. Waypoints do not straddle that thin line between cost and usefulness. I try as hard as I can to avoid using waypoints on my level 80 as they are too expensive to be worthwhile. As an example, I had a guildee mention that the Shatterer had gone up and that we should come and play. The waypoint cost there from where I was, was just under five silver. The low level blue items I got from the boss chest did not cover travel expenses, let alone the expense to get back to where I was originally. In a game built around the concept of co-operation and playing with your friends and guildees, waypoint costs act as an impediment to doing so. There are times when it feels like there are so many goldsinks in this economy that it’s more goldsink than economy. Personally, I would flat-out halve high level waypoint costs and call it reasonable, but at this point any reduction in waypoint costs would be welcome.

Dungeons

Right now, the hardest part of any dungeon for me is finding a group to run it. Even in a guild that is sitting at full capacity, it can be difficult to find a group to run dungeons. The recent changes made by Anet in regards to dungeons exacerbate this problem rather than alleviate it. Here’s the biggest problem: To do explorable dungeons you need to do story mode dungeons, to do story mode dungeons you need to get five people together who meet the requirements and, if it’s a pug, hope like hell that they don’t bail in the middle of getting their butt kicked multiple times.

But can’t the people who have already done story mode help new people get through dungeons with their experience and thus increase the pool of people capable of doing explorable dungeons? They could, but they won’t because there’s no end reward for doing so. Not even a second hat with the exact same skin as every other dungeon that is novel the first time and then completely irrelevant afterwards. They have learned nothing from the far superior hat simulator, Team Fortress 2. The ideal situation would be to not only give players an end reward for re-doing story missions but to give them a bonus reward if they have first timers in their group. This would act as an incentive and increase the pool of players willing to do story dungeons which would then flow on to an increased pool of players available for explorable dungeons. Anet have taken the exact opposite course of action and diminished what meagre rewards existed for players re-doing story missions because people were speed running Caudecus’s Manor Story. The problem wasn’t how high the rewards for CM Story was, the problem was that the most difficult fight in CM Story is the one the player has with controlling their camera angle. Yet instead of addressing the core problem of dungeon difficulty, Anet reduced replayed story mode rewards across the board and exacerbated an existing problem.

The importance of this problem can be overstated because the final point in a player’s personal story is the level 80 dungeon. It was supremely frustrating trying to find a group to do that dungeon with. On one side you had the people who had already done it and had no desire to do it again, and I can’t blame them. The dungeon is long, is somewhat dangerous and has no real rewards to balance both the upkeep from repairs and the investment of time when they could be doing something else more enjoyable and profitable. Then on the other side of the aisle you had all the people who didn’t meet the requirements for the dungeon. Either their level wasn’t high enough or they hadn’t progressed far enough through their personal story for them to want to do it. You have to somehow find enough players from the slim pool of people who are both ready for the dungeon and who haven’t done it yet. And then, once you have them, you hope the dungeon is open or that the group events you need to do to open it are both, A) running at the given moment you want to do the dungeon and B) not bugged. This is a problem right now, short term, but look beyond that to the long term and ask yourself, what happens two years down the road when a new player gets to the end of their personal story and needs to do the dungeon? Who do they group with? What incentive does anyone have to come back and do that dungeon with them? Anet seriously need to work not on creating and entrenching a system of two distinct pools of players with regards to story and explorable mode dungeons but on conflating the two to encourage player co-operation and alleviate systematic bottlenecks.

Underwater Combat

Guild Wars 2 does some of the best underwater combat I’ve seen in an MMO. The environments are beautiful, I enjoy it, it blows its competitor’s systems out of the water and it still feels incomplete and tacked on. It’s good, but it could be much better. One of the defining aspects of GW2 underwater combat is that it focuses on what you can’t do rather than what you can. There are a host of utility skills that you cannot use underwater. There is exactly one utility skill that you can only use underwater or has increased/different functionality underwater. That skill is Whirlpool, and that is because until a few patches ago Elementalists didn’t have an elite skill that they could use underwater. Players can’t even craft their own replacement rebreathers as they level. Nor can they buy them from the generic armour vendors basically everywhere. You have to find specific karma vendors who sell them and buy them there. Underwater combat in GW2 is head and shoulders above what you’ll find anywhere else, but as a standalone system it has a solid foundation that requires more work.

Balance issues

Repop rates in generally feel too fast. There have been countless time where I’ve encountered a cluster of mobs and by the time I’ve finished killing the last one, they’ve started to respawn again. This is especially pronounced in Orr. I had one encounter in Orr where I killed a mob, had it repop right on top of me, killed it again, started walking away and got hit in the back by the mob I had just re-killed. Although, to be honest, many problems are especially pronounced in Orr. Everything from mob density, repop rates, damage output and mob speed don’t feel right. To avoid going into huge detail about Orr, I’ll leave you with two images, which I’m assured are worth two thousand words, and then move on.

Welcome to Orr!
Learn to love your AoE snare. You’ll miss it dearly when it’s gone.

The issue isn’t solely with Orr though, I’ve had personal story instances where I was the recommended level for the story and then got the absolute tar beaten out of me. My favourite was a level 11 Norn story quest that had 6-8 ice imps spawning around the NPCs talking and then having attacks that chilled you and AoE attacks that hit for over 300 damage a pop, or as you like to call it at level 11: A quarter of your health with life runes. It was so lopsided and unexpected that it moved from frustrating into hilariously bizarre. There are many personal story and dungeon event that just feel like they were never play tested. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they were. Which just makes the feeling that they weren’t so much worse. I have no doubt that these will be tweaked and balanced as time goes on but they’re frustrating when you run into them.

Crafting

By and large, crafting is working well. I like the discovery system, the experience gains from crafting and that crafted equipment is actually worth wearing. The only real issue I have with crafting is that you never seem to have enough drop mats to keep your crafting skill on par with your level without going out of your way to grind. The scarcity was noticeable originally but it’s especially pronounced now that cooking mats drop from loot bags. I have mountains of chocolate and butter that I don’t have any use for yet in place of mats I did. I appreciate that the changes were made to add a diversity and, honestly, flat out roadblock to the ease of leveling cooking, but that change has further weakened an area that could have done with strengthening.

PvP

World v World could desperately use a tutorial area. WvW has massive queues because many, many people in it at any given time. The problem is that many of them aren’t very good. And I don’t mean that in a snobby, nose in the air kind of way, but more that I suspect that they don’t really get what they’re meant to be doing or make basic mistakes that they ought not to. Mistakes like a failure to recognise that boiling oil is hot and that maybe you shouldn’t stand beneath it. Or that fortification gates are strong and that the liberal application of siege weaponry would be useful. Or that perhaps your five man group is not quite strong enough to capture Stonemist. I don’t think that a tutorial area would solve all of these problems but it would help alleviate some of them by helping to give players a greater understanding of how WvW works.

WvW also has other issues that really shouldn’t be there but end up causing queue problems. Issues like people farming drop mats off the high level mobs in WvW. Those mobs don’t really add much of anything to the gameplay in WvW apart from occasionally being a nuisance, most players just run past them. But the way they attract farmers mean that people who would like to pvp often get stuck in long queues. My favourite moment in regards to this was having a guildee relate the story of being yelled at by farmers for not doing an adequate job of protecting them from enemy players. Because apparently protecting mat farmers in WvW is a crucial gameplay element.

I don’t have much to say about spvp mostly because I haven’t tried spvp yet. It looks interesting and I want to try it but I also don’t want to be that guy on a team of 5 who has absolutely no idea what’s going on. Have you ever seen a dog give you a look that basically communicates, “I’m confused and I love you?” That’s pretty much how I feel about spvp. I miss the old Zaishen areas where I could putter around to learn map and gameplay knowledge without being a drag on a team who just want to play. Short of something like a GW2 version of the Zaishen Challenge being implemented I’ll likely end up watching Youtube videos of spvp matches to try and figure out what I’m meant to be doing.

Conclusion

There are probably a few more things I intended to cover but can’t think of at the moment, which is fine as this note is ridiculously long already. To conclude, I’m enjoying Guild Wars 2. There have been bugs and balance issues that have caused me quite a high degree of frustration, but the game is three weeks past its release date, what can you expect? If they’re still here two or three months down the road then I’d make more of a fuss about them, but there’s still a significant honeymood period at the moment where you just trust that it will be addressed and get better. What concerns me more than the bugs are the policy and design decisions we’ve seen lately in regards to things like dungeons. I think that Anet would, at this moment, be best served by going back to the mission statement they released for GW2 prior to its launch and asking themselves if they’re still adhering to the principles they outlined as their goals for the game.

This looked so much smaller in the preview window.

To anyone who read all of that and made it down here: I love you. We can marry and move somewhere the centaurs will never find us.

My main qualm with the game are the dungeons and how they are handled reward wise. Right now I feel it’s not worth the effort. I think they should be looked at. I threw some suggestions around in a few other threads over the past 15 minutes but I’ll put it here too.

I think the chances for rares/exotics at the end of each path should be raised a bit. If a person gets one, most of the time they’ll want to go back and try to get another. If you make them drop at the right percentage this will keep the person doing the dungeon and somewhat happy. Maybe raise it a bit for boss battles as well, though not as much.

The most important thing though, I think, are the tokens you get. Right now I feel that it will become a boring grind to get the armor you want, when it doesn’t have to be. As was witnessed in GW 1.

Instead of just having a stagnant amount of tokens drop each path, make it so they can randomly drop off the normal mobs as well. Silvers having a higher chance to drop them of course, same with golds and then bosses dropping a random number. IE if the boss was supposed to drop 5, now he can drop between 5-12. That random chance will keep people doing the dungeons and it won’t be AS grindy as it is now.

It will also make the dungeons a bit more fun to do, even with the current difficulty. “Yes it’s really difficult but hey each mob has a chance to drop that token!” That’s how it was in UW and FoW, and I’m sure some people got sick of it if they did it every day more than 2-3 times. But 95% of the time I did FoW I enjoyed it and I ran it numerous numerous times in groups and solo.

It will still require effort to get the armor, but it won’t be as painful or boring and that’s always a good thing.

I love you OP. You read my mind and put everything into words ! i truly hope that A.Net will take their time to read your post and think about some of the points you stated ! i couldn’t put them into words in any better way than you did!

absolutely beautiful, OP.

The bit about the story mode resonated most clearly with me. I have several guildies who are finally starting to hit dungeon levels. But they’ve quite literally skipped over the story mode to do runs (only the enter-er needs to have finished it) because there’s no point for us to have done it.

However if they then want to do story mode they’re screwed. I have no reason to do it besides helping guildies, and PuG’s have even less reason to.

Magnificent post op, couldn’t have stated it better myself.

Playing as both a Necromancer and a Ranger I’d like to add that pets in this game is probably the worst I’ve ever experienced in any game.

In relation to the Necromancer. My pets (Especially the elite one) often run of on their own and attack random mobs that I am trying to avoid or sometimes (this is limited to the elite one) just stand idly by and watch as I fight an enemy. Also they don’t always activate their abilities when I command them to.

In relation to the Ranger. There is still the F2 unresponsiveness problem, especially with my Brown Bears “Shake it off” ability. And often when I attempt to get close enough to a node to mine it without agroing enemies standing close to it, my pet will run several steps in front of me and agro the mob anyway.

What I would like to see in relation to some of these issues is more command options for my pet/pets. Like a “stay” option and a “Only attack when I am attacked” option. As for the F2 responsiveness problem I know Anet is working on it and I assume they’re working on the pet AI as well.

Apart from these issues I really do enjoy playing both classes and the game as a whole

my first week in the game was fun,…..till i learned. Learned how lame and lazy this game is. Pre skilled skills for weapon types to avoid having an actual skill tree=lazy.

So as a gamer im left to mash keys 1-5 or more if im an engineer.

game looked so much better during beta on youtube lol. Ohwell 60 bucks down the hole. Again i wait for a real online pvp game with realtime combat as this game boasted about but didnt deliver. No your game still has Auto Aim unless the player uses evade skill which has a stupid cooldown….realy? super lame……………………almost as lame as geting 1 shoted from a monster at your own lvl when you have full health.

Dynamic events are magnificent, especially dynamic event chains. There’s just something neat about trooping around with an NPC over half the map while you help set up something pretty cool.

I would agree, but with the dynamic event cap that kicks in on areas dense in dynamic events, I’ve found them tense and frustrating because I’m always scared I’ll hit the dynamic event cap and be forced to sit out for an hour until it subsides.

Great post! Yes, I read all and agree with most of it :-) Still tho, game is amazing anet! Now make it better :-)

Love me some dynamic events, especially dynamic event chains. I love going into a town or area and listening to the dialogue that leads into an event or series of events – I get giddy every time.

I haven’t had the problem you mention with Group Events, there’s usually plenty of players around when I see one of these, but that’s certainly going to be an issue of playing time and server.

Hearts are very nifty as an answer to boring missions, but sometimes they get grindy – you’ll end up running around an area forever looking for X to kill or fix or move and start to wish you could just go somewhere else. Unlike you, though, I love Transform missions, they are always so much more interesting than the others … getting to run around as a wolf, or another race, with these great temporary powers that I wouldn’t have otherwise! Just awesome in a bucket.

Costumes: We need more costumes available through PvE and the Gem Store. I know they want to push them some PvP, but I’m no good at pvp and, I don’t like it – not my thing. I’m fine with being a little penalized for that and having to buy my costumes at the Gem Shop because I don’t want to do the pvp face smash, but there are just too few costumes available that way right now and I want to play dress up, dangit!

Waypoint costs are ridiculous, it’s getting to the point where I’m paying more to TP to an area than the hearts and quests in that area are paying me. If this is a trap to try and get me to team up with other people in the area, it’s not working – I am having no problems finding people to team up with anyway, I don’t need to run through the map to collect stragglers. What it is doing is making it very expensive to jump to an area and help with a group mission or dynamic event when someone pipes up in the map chat asking for help.

Discipline/Crafting – In every MMO thats ever had this system, I just cant be bothered to level up my crafting, I really really cant, its boring its monotonous, I’m guessing theres profit to be made here since people buy onnomnomberry bars and peach tarts. So hay look out crafters. I find this aspect in any game to be the most boring thing to do, Oh look I made an 8slot bag, I made an 8slot bag again! Woo (referring to the famous Collin Johansen I swung a sword line in the manifesto video) grind.

Hearts/Quests – I hope everyone realizes that Heart events are just another name for quests right? Now theres no talking to NPC, Predetermined amount of kill/gather XX of YY or backtracking to get reward and if you’re lucky the heart coincides with a Dynamic Event, I don’t mind doing them, but still not as fun as playing with 5 players and seeing each different play styles, so still grindy.

Dynamic Events – I remember when I was 24 to 27 there was not much content in kessex hills, so everyone started grinding the centaur bridge dynamic event it goes like this. Bridge – Overlord Camp – Champion overlord, repeat. It did not feel dynamic, it felt like a Routine Event another name for a routine just to be the level to do my personal story…. Grind. (Yes I know not all DEs are designed poorly like this but if you start depending on them as a source of leveling thats a grind)

Dragon Champions – Theres even dragon timers that keep track of spawn times for dragons and people do grind them.

Map Exploration – By that I mean finding all the vistas, the pois, the waypoints and so forth, thats grinding to get a star by your name.

PVP – Thats right PVP is a grind as well if you don’t enjoy it and you want that pvp title, You’re going to have to… grind it, WvW especially is worst with the zerging. sPVP is pretty tolerable.

Dungeons – The only thing that was worth doing that didn’t feel like a grind because of the rewards balancing out the risk and the variety of 4 other people playing with you seeing different play styles adding to variety is now being shut down because they dont want you making any profit, so instead of making the Dungeons just harder which would have been fine they slashed the rewards, so now its do it with an organized team you can voice with or risk heavy repair bills.

Overall experience?
Getting 1 to 80? not so grindy

Being 80….. really cant do much with the exorbitant prices of way pointing and repairing armour especially after just completing your exotic set.

Read all of that and well done OP you got across all the points really accurately, like 100%. If only game developers were like you, then games would be so much better.

Where to start? There are so many things I love, but also want improved upon. Let’s see:

Dynamic Events
I’m in love with Orr, haven’t been there long, but man, it feels like you have so much to do. It’s happened more than once where I stood at one spot and had three or more DEs happening all around me.
Here’s my gripe, the low level zones don’t feel close to this. I don’t think it should reach that level of hecticness, but it definitely could do with more. I especially love the way how events feel entwined in Orr, one effecting another, or two crossing paths. Sadly, it just feels like the low level zones sorely lack this.

Upkeep costs
I’m fine with repair costs. It should feel like a hit to your pockets, because it’s something you should avoid, but still not too harsh that it cripples you. And it feels just right at present.

Waypoint costs, on the other hand, make no sense. It feels like your being punished for using this system. A few days ago I went to help out a friend struggling with his new character. It cost me about 3s to get there, and the same to get back, and a lot more by following him around. Since I got bad drops it hurt me by doing so. How does that make sense? Wasn’t it supposed to be a feature, to go help out low level friends and still enjoy a challenging experience? He pays a few copper to travel, while you pay a few silver. The events and drops covers his expenses, but doesn’t come close to yours. Right now it doesn’t feel worth it to quickly help out where it’s needed.

I mean, at level 80, costs of a wayploint when you’re standing right next to it is 1s39c… It makes me wonder how these things scale in distance, cause it seems so wrong. Let’s use an example:
When I’m at Vigil Keep, travel cost to Dwayna’s waypoint at Divinity’s Reach will cost 2s13c, which is one zone over, while traveling to Pursuit Pass at Cursed Shore costs 3s36c… on the other end of the map. How does that make sense?

I seriously think the distancing needs another look at. And I also think the costs shouldn’t scale with your level, but rather be determined by the level of the zone.

Dungeons
Dungeons are great, a lot of fun. I just find rerunning them are a lot more tedious warranted. This can be solved I think. Maybe dungeons should have more random events inside of them. I also think that there can maybe be some randomization between bosses. What would be great about this is that groups will need to be a bit more flexible before the fights.
What I would also like is if some bosses received another look at, mechanic wise. Too many of the fights feel a bit too “tank” and spank, where you ignore the mechanic of the fight and just fight to get it done. Especially in story mode. I’d like it if bosses are less huge damage with huge health pools, and more tricky mechanics that requires the players to focus on them and what’s happening.

Underwater Combat
At times the underwater combat feels a bit too hard, especially the events. I think it’s just the fact that enemies aren’t attacking you on a flat plane, while having enemies all around adds an extra layer of challenge. It’s especially easy to draw unwanted adds, but all in all the underwater combat feels great, definitely the best I’ve ever seen.
I just avoid the events though :P

Those are my only thoughts. Some will agree, some wont. That’s just the way it is.

Congrats OP for making this a thread for constructive criticism instead of the whiny topics that infest this forum (and thanks for that ^^)

Rizzy.8293:

Discipline/Crafting – In every MMO thats ever had this system, I just cant be bothered to level up my crafting, I really really cant, its boring its monotonous, I’m guessing theres profit to be made here since people buy onnomnomberry bars and peach tarts. So hay look out crafters. I find this aspect in any game to be the most boring thing to do, Oh look I made an 8slot bag, I made an 8slot bag again! Woo (referring to the famous Collin Johansen I swung a sword line in the manifesto video) grind.

Maybe you should try crafting in this game (sounds to me like you did not try), as they do try to break that grind of crafting the same item over and over again. The best way to get your craft up is by discovering new recipes in the discovery panel. It might still not be your cup of tea, but so far the crafting is quite different from what I have seen in other MMOs. Atleast it sounded like you gave feedback on something you did not try out yourself.