Guild Wars 2

With over two years, I decided to look back and see IN MY OPINION, what were Anet’s top 5 mistakes. Note, there are others that could’ve made this list, but I had to narrow it down.

5. Introduction of Ascended Gear – Leaving beta, everyone though Exotic was the end gear, no need to worry bout anything else. Look, if Ascended was intended from the get go, there should’ve been some mention of it as the game left beta. “We didn’t get everything in the game guys, there may be something beyond exotic”. At least then there would’ve been a heads up. Then, when we finally got armor, i don’t think they thought well ahead on what it would do to cloth prices (mainly), and half to introduce new ways of getting lower tier cloth (bandit chests, gem store, etc). It was just a bad implementation that still needs more tweaks.

4. Lack of new Skills/weapons – When I learned about how fun it was to make OP skills for Caithe, I felt a small boil of rage starting to rise. Its great they made new skills just for her, for her story, but what about my character? Where are his new skills to try and new builds to make? We got what? One new healing skill for a specialized event? I understand balance, but you can only tweak a skill so much. Blizzard learned this with Hearthstone. You can tweak a card so much, before its just better to introduce more cards to create counters. Instead of nerfing or buffing, introduce another skill that may compliment or counter.
And yes, where are our two handed axes? Flails, whips, land spears? Something else to give us a different style of play?

3. Living story gaps/length – For something that gets touted a lot as being a new way to introduce story, it goes on hiatus a lot. I understand that it takes time to make that content, and to make sure everything works. But with a two week schedule, we end of getting a small bite, cliffhanger after cliffhanger, and long waits after so many chapters that interest begins to fade. Either the two week schedule needs to disappear, or more people need to be hired.

2. Trait redesign – Respec on the spot? Nice. Free? Nice. How to acquire? God awful. Once hitting the level to be able to get traits, if you want to get a specific one, have fun waiting as its in a higher level zone. Or in a place you don’t like to play, or across the world where you would have to travel for so long, and hope the random event will happen and not fail. What was there in the beginning should’ve been a base, and new traits to “capture” scattered around. Once you get that second trait point, there really is no point to put it somewhere, as you would have to have been lucky to get the trait you wanted.

1. Anet’s Policy – “We talk about it when its done.” God I hate this policy. I really really hate it. Its backfired so many times already. Colored tags, ascended gear, trait revision, everything can be retraced back to this policy.
Why is it bad? Because when you want to talk about it “when its done”, and the reaction is bad, then you have two choices. Charge forward (choice mostly taken), or go back and tweak a small thing (only so far the commander colors). And in later patches, you have to change and tweak this new thing, then it was never really done, was it?

This policy needs to go. Its what hampers more communication (imo), and has affected the players more negatively than positively. I blame it mostly for no more State of the Games (most of the community takes blame for this loss too), and I blame it for much of the ire that is seen today on the forums. The CDIs are nice, but once they are over, we don’t hear the finally words on whats being done till ‘its done’.

Its just bad to tie down so much information. Unbind the straps at least a little (and I don’t mean give so many vague answers!)

it’s their game, so they are they are entitled to it.

5) Completely agree. Whether or not ascended was good or bad is debatable, the way to introduced it was bad.

4) Not a deal breaker for me, but… They talked about that, but never delivered it except once with the grandmaster trait. Healing skills was a disaster.

3) I don’t mind that at all. I play the game and from time to time an update give me things to do with my friend. Its a free to play game, so not a bid deal for me. I wouldn’t mind more, but i don’t pay for it so I don’t expect that much.

2) NPE was terrible in general. Some nice things, but if it was like that when I started to play the game, I wouldn’t here today.

1) I understand why they have that policy, but true that i would like to know more information. There is some stuff that they talked about a year ago and its still lacking in the game.

You should take off #4 some specs and weapons are ignored due to lack of efficiency, fix the existing instead of piling it up. Get out of your comfort zone and see why no one uses them.

1. WvW. They had a cash cow without any meaningful competition on the market and ran it into the ground. Literally. Its dwindling population speaks for itself. Even if they do something that is of actual meaning now, it is far too little and far too late. They blew it hard.

2. veteran customer retention. They are either unable or unwilling (but I lean towards the incapable) of retaining a high enough percentage of long term vet players for a wide plethora of reasons, many of which have been pointed out to them since beta. And which led to their policy of replacing the lost customers with increasingly dumber playerbase to match the capabilities of A-Net dev teams.

3. A-Nets abysmal standing on hacks, cheats, etc. Lack of CS. The current reporting system doesnt work worth crap. You can report someone for hacking cheating etc and submit a full video recording hundreds if not thousands of times and they do absolutely nothing. Instead, when you finally get frustrated enough and start venting, if it gets back to them via whatever means or these forums, they will ban you and not the hacker. This is especially true in WvW and PvP, much less so in PvE since people care a lot less there.

4. Stale meta. Especially in PvE and WvW. Stale and boring meta. Dungeons are only interesting only the 1st few times when you run them on each of your zerkers, and sometimes, after the 1st few classes / builds, not even that much.

5. Extremely bad loot system that continuously seems to reward either the RNG roulette or bad players putting in minimal or no effort, instead of rewarding decent players who actually put some thought to their play and practice. Goes together with dumbing down the game.

Pretty reasonable list. I definitely agree with (1) and (2).

The issue with the Living Story is that they didn’t actually make it living. Season one, “living” meant “temporary”. Meaning that the world didn’t actually feel like it changed, it just occasionally meandered. The changes that they did make, rather than add to the feel of the game, just kind of moved things a bit. Season 2, “living” means “we hand you some instances or a map now and then”. It’s more permanent but, amazingly, less alive feeling.

I think the big thing for me is the lack of things to do. Since the beginning we’ve had activities put on rotation. Little things like golem chess taken away. SAB turned off for some unknown amount of time (having taken real money from players who wanted to play it). Then things like precursor hunts, new PvP modes etc. have all been sidelined for the Living Story which, as discussed, was largely temporary. This has resulted in a world that, whether or not it actually has less to do than at launch, feels like it has.

I agree with some of your points, but you’re just mistaken on others.

What exactly is wrong with ascended gear? You don’t need it for anything except high level Fractals… you can do anything else with exotic, or even less.

Living Story could be better, but how do you propose they create the content faster? They’re working with everything they’ve got already. Give them some credit. When was the last time you saw anybody do this?

As for the “when it’s done” policy, how can you blame them at all for that, when, even as they’ve tried their best to abide it, there are still people complaining, “YOU PROMISED X” or “WHERE IS Y YOU SAID WE WOULD HAVE IT ALREADY.” Can you seriously blame them for not making any promises? And this policy has little to do with the ire on the forums here. That is easily accounted for by the sheer immaturity and lack of experience of the majority of users, and people not understanding what is feasible and what is not.

That is your opinions… Here are mine.

I can agree with number 5 becouse I was one of them who didn’t like it, but there was a good explenation and I accept it in the end, but I forbid them to do something like that again! :P

The rest of the points I do not agree with. We don’t need more skills to twist our puny brains more, more skills will result in many skills will do more of the same thing and the game will be harder to balance.
I realy like the living story and the way it is presented, but sure each episode could be a little longer and I do not like the 6-ish weeks breaks.
I like the trait redesign, I can’t experience it enough since I played since headstart but I would have liked to unlock my traits by doing specific stuff while exploring the world.
To me it sounds like the veterans are used to have all traits and do not like this change as they already know what they would have liked to trait while a new player do not look for metas and try to build the best build leveling from level 30-80. On the other hand I feel sad for those players who do not find PvE that interesting and want’s to do WvW pretty early… They will get punished. That needs a fix and there are lot of good suggestions about that in other threads that are more constructive.
The Policy, well if I where them I would have done this too as it is easier to handle people who have itchy fingers and impatient kids than people who for almost a year whines about how betrayed they feel that Precursor crafting never happened and other stuff.

OP, I agree with you.

Andred.1087:

I agree with some of your points, but you’re just mistaken on others.

What exactly is wrong with ascended gear? You don’t need it for anything except high level Fractals… you can do anything else with exotic, or even less.

…..

As for the “when it’s done” policy, how can you blame them at all for that, when, even as they’ve tried their best to abide it, there are still people complaining, “YOU PROMISED X” or “WHERE IS Y YOU SAID WE WOULD HAVE IT ALREADY.” Can you seriously blame them for not making any promises? And this policy has little to do with the ire on the forums here. That is easily accounted for by the sheer immaturity and lack of experience of the majority of users, and people not understanding what is feasible and what is not.

1. Why introduce the ascended grind at all? And why gear-gate fractals by forcing agony? If fractals were supposed to be skill based, then why not actually make them get harder mechanics wise, but not gear gate them? After all they’re capable of hard, queens jubilee solo bosses proved that.

2. Other games tend to have PTR. Talking about the trait changes and getting feedback before going trough with it seems like it would have been better than sitting trough 45 pages of unhappy customers.

I agree with the trait FIASCO and ANet’s tight lipped policy. I personally don’t care about the other 3. I don’t do fractals so don’t need ascended (tried to slog through making some for WvW but promptly decided I don’t want to work that much in my GAME). I burn through LS without actually paying attention to the story ‘cause it’s terribad and the fights are gimmicky so I will never play through again. New skills and weapons would be fun, but so would a lot of things. I can live with what I have in that department.

I actually don’t mind the fractal gear grind with agony, because it keeps people from joining a level 30 fractal if they haven’t tried one before. (or should the moment you explain to them that they really can’t do this fractal because they will die instantly *).

*ok not instantly but you get the point.

Otherwise they’d claim they were great PVE players and so skipped straight to level 30, which could provide a lot of frustration for people trying to actually get the fractal accomplished.

The gating forces them to gradually play.

Note: I suppose this also could have been accomplished by not allowing people to join fractals above their personal reward levels but that would limit the player pool and it’s hard enough to find fractal folks as it is.

As a note, I work in the software industry and undestand not commenting on whats in development. The reason is that people will make wild guesses about it, prognosticate doom, hold you responsible if something you said you were looking into doesn’t turn out feasible. On this account I completely sympathize. After one too many uproars most companies will decide that the best way to not supposedly break “promises” is not to allow for the possbility to make them in the first place. As frustrating as that is for someone who desperately wants to know if a future expansion is in the cards….

shion.2084:

I actually don’t mind the fractal gear grind with agony, because it keeps people from joining a level 30 fractal if they haven’t tried one before. (or should the moment you explain to them that they really can’t do this fractal because they will die instantly *).

*ok not instantly but you get the point.

Otherwise they’d claim they were great PVE players and so skipped straight to level 30, which could provide a lot of frustration for people trying to actually get the fractal accomplished.

The gating forces them to gradually play.

Note: I suppose this also could have been accomplished by not allowing people to join fractals above their personal reward levels but that would limit the player pool and it’s hard enough to find fractal folks as it is.

well having in mind that it’s easier to get full ascended without even once putting your foot in the fractals (it’s easier to craft them than to be lucky enough for the right one to drop), I would say that it doesn’t force anything. Besides random gear grind and money wasting that is.

shion.2084:

As a note, I work in the software industry and undestand not commenting on whats in development. The reason is that people will make wild guesses about it, prognosticate doom, hold you responsible if something you said you were looking into doesn’t turn out feasible. On this account I completely sympathize. After one too many uproars most companies will decide that the best way to not supposedly break “promises” is not to allow for the possbility to make them in the first place. As frustrating as that is for someone who desperately wants to know if a future expansion is in the cards….

It’s not the way you should act with an MMO. Player feedback is very important especially when you’re planning a rehaul of the old systems. That’s why most MMOs have PTR servers.

Anyone who doesn’t understand why Ascended Gear was a big deal wasn’t playing when Fractals was announced. The Game sold with the idea of No Gear Grind and that Best In Slot would always be best in slot. You could go on a break for months or years and your gear would be just as good, ready for you to start playing again. Then two months after the game was out they introduced statistically better gear.

This not only led to people being angry about bait and switch tactics, but rampant speculation. You need Ascended gear to deal with Agony in Fractals, maybe they’ll bring agony elsewhere? Maybe in 6 months they’ll introduce another tier on top of Ascended. People were MAD. I know people that I had been playing with since beta, who had preordered the game in April that demanded their money back(and got it). It was a giant issue that caused fundamentally damaging rifts within the community.

People shouldn’t complain too much about the living world story gaps. You’re being a bit unreasonable if you think you can create that much content in a short amount of time. Especially, content designed for hundreds of thousands of players to play simultaneously. There are tons of other MMO’s who’ve tried in the beginning to keep up with new content but give-up soon after because of how insanely difficult it is.

Though, I completely agree about the things about WvW. WvW is where ‘hardcore’ gamer’s gravitate to, they’re the type of players that don’t mind spending cash to enjoy the game. Instead of catering to those types of players, Anet decided to focus on attracting new/‘casual’ players by enhancing NPE, but I can’t blame them for that, there’s a bit of dough from new players purchasing the game. Wish they didn’t destroy the best thing they had for the ‘hardcore’ gamer’s. The moment they did that, I started looking for other games and stopped buying gems. Its unfortunate for me that I can’t find anything that can replace GW2, but I’m waiting for the day I can uninstall GW2 without ever looking back. Until that day comes, I’ll enjoy whatever new content Anet comes up with next, no matter how little it may seem/be.

5. Yeap.. so i was told. I dont personally got a problem with it cause the only place where you actually need ascended is fractals.. to have agony infusion slots. You can easily get rings and trinkets or make the fractal backpiece to ascended to fill this role. But yea.. its quite a little bit of bullkitten to add something they said they wouldnt. (also the armors are ugly looking imo)

4. So it wasnt only me who actually was kittened off as i played caithe and used skills that never gonna be used for anything but that LS capter. Yea.. feel ya man…by now we should have atleast 20 more skills and atleast 1 new weapon by class (2 years..its reasonable imo)

3. Yea… feel ya. The breaks are terrible, specially the wintersday one atm. Again we stand before a closed door with no conclusion to anything that happened before. “seeds of truth” my kitten … “seeds of standing before a closed door” is a better name.

2. Im actually one of the few who got less of an issue with this then the NPE…but yea..does suck. Getting freedom for going crazy with traitpoints anytime but locking out the other thing you need for a build and ya either need to go questing for it or pay…is bullkitten…but atleast you CAN pay for it and cheat out of it…thats something i suppose.

1. Yeap.. your rant bout sums it up OP. I wanna know whats going on in that game. I wanna know what to expect and i wanna have a chance to say i dont want it before it comes (like i would have loved to do with the NPE for example). They just should add a schedule thingy and update it if something changes. Like:

- Issue A : In progress of fixing. Expected fix at patch (whatever)

and if it changes its just like:

-Issue A : In progress of fixing. Postponed because of more pressing issues

and done. Yea lemme dream

1: no changes, maps on wvw, the wvw titles
2: no ranger/pet system rework
3: stealt mechanism
4: they dont talk about things what they plan
5: no new weapons, dual professions

Thaddeus – I separate the npe and traits because they were different patches. The npe has some flaws, but its not as bad as people believe.

Andred – I was talking about how it was implemented, not its function. As well as if you reread, I also blame part of the community as well for throwing such tantrums, and never reading the full article.

Edgar – I didn’t mean in the way of “introduce 50 traits all at once”, do a few a year, that’s fine. I said I understand balance needs.

Look, the cdis were/are a great start for communication. I love Chris for starting them, and other devs joining in at times. But the other reason I like them because they show WHAT they are looking into and perhaps working on. Chris stated and made clear things there are not promises, and both he and those participating made sure that was known.

I want to see that happen in state of the game blogs. Just a " here is what we are looking in to, what may come, but no promises!" Just like the CDIs. If anything, make it a list of potential cdi topics.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Anyone who doesn’t understand why Ascended Gear was a big deal wasn’t playing when Fractals was announced. The Game sold with the idea of No Gear Grind and that Best In Slot would always be best in slot. You could go on a break for months or years and your gear would be just as good, ready for you to start playing again. Then two months after the game was out they introduced statistically better gear.

This not only led to people being angry about bait and switch tactics, but rampant speculation. You need Ascended gear to deal with Agony in Fractals, maybe they’ll bring agony elsewhere? Maybe in 6 months they’ll introduce another tier on top of Ascended. People were MAD. I know people that I had been playing with since beta, who had preordered the game in April that demanded their money back(and got it). It was a giant issue that caused fundamentally damaging rifts within the community.

Yup. I was one of them.

These days I have made a degree of peace with ascended and am trying to make a similar degree of peace with the trait mangle.

My complaints are easily summarized, and I’ve banged on about them often enough for them to be easily findable too.

Just in case someone had difficulty, the things I regard as Anet’s failures are -

#Trait locking. Its fine that they might want to make an adventure out of unlocking some traits, or even most, but all of them? Nobody should arrive at level 80 no matter how they got to level 80 without at least one trait that they’ve chosen to stick in every available trait slot.

As it is, they really threw people making new characters right under a bus with this, as the ways to unlock traits are so scattered and unintuitive that what seems to pass as normal gameplay for most doesn’t yield many at all.

#Veteran player retention. I don’t feel that they care very much about what anyone other than themselves think about much at all. They inflict changes left, right and center that I don’t know anyone anywhere asked for let alone wanted, they don’t fix or change much that the ‘anecdotal everybody’ seems to wish they’d fix or change, and I just don’t see a lot except for a lot of hype evidencing anything contrary.

They’ve got the carney’s patter down for selling the illusion that what we think matters, but patter is relatively cheap. It is infinitely easier to put on a little song and a little dance, blow a little seltzer down our pants and make us feel relevant than to actually let our input be relevant.

Maybe I’m wrong. I suspect I’m not – I feel very staunchly like I’m not.

I wish they’d either poo or get off the pot, in short. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck – I’ma bet its a duck. They keep telling us its a swan, but I don’t think it is.

I still miss prot monks. It’s gotta be my #1 miss for this game.

I know, go home old fogey, nobody wants your old dumb trinity.

I feel like prot monks (Not healing monks) would have been amazing in this game with this combat. Guardian does not compare.

Anyone else see a red tag for this, but no red post? I’m feeling paranoid….and scared…

Probably marked for deletion. Hohoho.

There was a red post on this earlier that showed up on the devtracker. Sadly I didn’t get to actually read it, and it appears to have been removed. Wonder if anyone got a screencap..

My biggest thing with the ’don’t tell’ policy is that they don’t just not tell for release info, if they don’t have anything definite they can say, they don’t say anything. I mean the crickets are deafening. The second problem is they need to have real player feedback. If they are going to do the ’don’t talk until release’ thing, they need a test server, with a decent group of dedicated test players who can try the changes out, then give good, solid feedback. The devs are so enamored of their own ideas, they are NOT neutral test subjects.

Am I missing something? The forums said this thread has a red post…

Anyway:

5. Living Story
4. NPE
3. Traits
2. Not developing dungeons
1. Fractured update

It is not really about what ANet got right or wrong…Its more about how ANet lacks solid decision making, plans or any direction.

When I think about GW2, I see a MMO that has a solid core but still in alpha state with nothing really to look forward to….It seems like the whole company has no management and a lot of changes are forced on to the players based on who knows what. During the last year we received so many changes that nobody had requested and meanwhile we didn’t get a lot of the requested changes or features…all those CDIs were basically a big waste of time.

It is hard to explain, but GW2 is like a lost ship in a black hole with everyone trying to save it but a stubborn pilot who doesn’t listen to anyone and moving towards self destruction.

Keysha.2815:

My biggest thing with the ’don’t tell’ policy is that they don’t just not tell for release info, if they don’t have anything definite they can say, they don’t say anything. I mean the crickets are deafening. The second problem is they need to have real player feedback. If they are going to do the ’don’t talk until release’ thing, they need a test server, with a decent group of dedicated test players who can try the changes out, then give good, solid feedback. The devs are so enamored of their own ideas, they are NOT neutral test subjects.

The problem with the ptr idea is that WAS done before for wvw guilds, and now look at EoTM. While it shouldn’t be discreditted for one bad time, it leaves a bad taste. Hence why even I don’t believe a ptr will help much.

As for other people who may say I got some wrong or didn’t list right ones, I narrowed mine down, and summarized the best I could. Another one would’ve been the loot bug issue that wasn’t responded to about for so long. That would’ve been 6.

Interesting opinion OP. I can see where you’re coming from. The only one I’m not sure about is 3.

I’m not sure that depth and breaks should even be listed together really. They’re different things.

But it’s a pretty fair list of the five things about the game I like the least. I suppose in all fairness there are more things I like than dislike but there are definitely things I dislike.

My own list would look like this.

5. The way the personal story was changed in the NPE.
4. The introduction of Ascended Gear
3. Lack of strong guild features (among them inability to send a message to everyone in the guild)
2. The New Trait System
1. The Communication Policy

Vayne.8563:

Interesting opinion OP. I can see where you’re coming from. The only one I’m not sure about is 3.

I’m not sure that depth and breaks should even be listed together really. They’re different things.

But it’s a pretty fair list of the five things about the game I like the least. I suppose in all fairness there are more things I like than dislike but there are definitely things I dislike.

My own list would look like this.

5. The way the personal story was changed in the NPE.
4. The introduction of Ascended Gear
3. Lack of strong guild features (among them inability to send a message to everyone in the guild)
2. The New Trait System
1. The Communication Policy

Some of the things in my list could broken down into other lists, but I felt at least that because of the pieces working together, it can hurt as a whole, so I based my decisions on that.

As for the red mark, I’m OK with there really not being a post. I would’ve liked to hear whosever thought it was, but I’m satisfied knowing this was read, which is all some of us want.

Serophous.9085:

Vayne.8563:

Interesting opinion OP. I can see where you’re coming from. The only one I’m not sure about is 3.

I’m not sure that depth and breaks should even be listed together really. They’re different things.

But it’s a pretty fair list of the five things about the game I like the least. I suppose in all fairness there are more things I like than dislike but there are definitely things I dislike.

My own list would look like this.

5. The way the personal story was changed in the NPE.
4. The introduction of Ascended Gear
3. Lack of strong guild features (among them inability to send a message to everyone in the guild)
2. The New Trait System
1. The Communication Policy

Some of the things in my list could broken down into other lists, but I felt at least that because of the pieces working together, it can hurt as a whole, so I based my decisions on that.

As for the red mark, I’m OK with there really not being a post. I would’ve liked to hear whosever thought it was, but I’m satisfied knowing this was read, which is all some of us want.

I guess what it meant was, I’d expect more depth with even more longer breaks. That is to say, the shorter the time frame for each chapter, the less depth it would be likely to have. But that’s just my thought on it.

I find it odd that this topic still shows up as in “general discussion”, but if you go to general discussion, it’s invisible…

EDIT: never mind, it sorted itself!

Mirta.5029:

I find it odd that this topic still shows up as in “general discussion”, but if you go to general discussion, it’s invisible…

EDIT: never mind, it sorted itself!

I think it was a bit messed up after the red deleted their post, as its not marked as red anymore either

This is not a list per se, but just my thoughts on some of the issues raised here.

Ascended Gear:

I agree that the WAY they went about introducing it was flawed. However, I can appreciate that the devs grossly underestimated just how fast players would reach Exotic gear, and they needed something to keep the players who enjoy working for BiS gear happy. Ascended gear also now serves a valuable purpose by giving incentive for players to reach r500 in crafting disciplines, as well as providing a massive sink for lower tier mats that would otherwise be totally unwanted. (A very, VERY smart move, in my opinion.)

Yes, it would have been better had Ascended gear been in the game from launch, but ANet at least saw their mistake and moved to fix it.

However, I hope that ANet NEVER introduces a tier higher than Ascended. :P I would seriously consider quitting GW2 if that happened; I will NOT play a game with a gear treadmill.

Trait Acquisition

I actually support the new way that traits are acquired, but I agree that it still needs work. Often the traits are still located in maps beyond the level where you are eligible to start learning the trait, and some traits are locked behind events that have a distressingly high frequency of being bugged and uncompletable. Sometimes, the traits require players to go into game modes they really do not want to do, such as WvW or jumping puzzles.

I would actually rework the system so that it’s more generalised. Instead of events or JP’s giving out specific traits, why not have them give out Basic/Advanced/Master Trait Points instead? You can then spend these Trait points on whichever trait of the appropriate tier catches your fancy. This allows players to go specifically for the trait they’re after while still doing an activity they enjoy. (And if they have no desirable options, there’s always the option of just flat out buying the trait for gold+skill points.)

Removing Existing Content

This is probably the biggest gripe I have with ANet’s direction. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you would want your game to have LESS stuff to do, outside of seasonal content. The Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat should have stayed as permanent new dungeons, accessed via “flashbacks”. The TA Aetherblade path should have been added as a new “elite path”, rather than replacing the old F/Up path.

And the decision to cut out large chunks of the Personal Story during the NPE still makes me angry. Not only am I stuck now and unable to progress with my PS (I don’t want to proceed for fear of being locked out and never being able to see the story steps should they be reinstated down the line), but it also introduces a whole bunch of plot holes. Who the heck are Tonn/Apatia, and why does my character feel sad over the deaths of some NPCs that I never met? Why is this weird winged lady talking to me like we’re good friends when I’ve never seen her before? Why are we talking about the Eyes of Zhaitan and saying that I’ve killed lots of them when this is, in fact, the very first one I’ve killed? Just how did the Pact get hold of this blue orb and why is it so important to our attack on Orr?

There’s just so much crucial lore and backstory to the invasion of Orr that got cut out with the NPE. It would be like watching Fellowship of the Ring and then jumping straight to Return of the King without ever being allowed to watch the Two Towers.

-continued-

-continued-

The Communication Policy

While I can understand why ANet has opted to take the “we’ll share news when it’s just about to go live”, I still feel they should be more open with us. One of my favourite devs at ANet is Josh Foreman, and the reason why I respect him so much is because of his openness and responsiveness back when SAB World 2 was released. He was there to listen when we had legitimate complaints about the way World 2 worked, and he gave his reasons for why they had done things the way they did. Where he could improve our experience (fixing the flowers to eliminate lag deaths, for example), he did. Where he couldn’t, he either told us why he couldn’t, or said it would be something he would look at for the next time SAB came back. We, the players, felt like being part of a conversation, that our concerns and ideas were being heard. (Whereas with most other devs it felt like we were just shouting into a black hole, with no knowledge if our concerns were being looked at or even heard.)

Josh Foreman’s communication model was absolutely praiseworthy and something that ANet should look at adopting wholeheartedly. To be fair, the decision to bring back Gaile as a community liaison is a big step in the right direction, but I feel that she lacks the kind of in-depth expertise that the individual devs to answer all of our questions. (Not a dig at you, Gaile! I <3 you! But I think you’d burn out trying to do this job all by yourself.) I really do feel that the devs should try and spend more time in the specific sub-forums relevant to their area, the way John Smith used to do in the BLTC forum, and Cody and Maclaine did for the Sound/Music forum. That way, we can be sure that our feedback and concerns are being heard by the people who are actually in a position to do something about it.

Now I’m just left wondering what the content of the deleted red post was. Something that violated ANet’s “Loose Lips Sink Ships” communication policy? Or did someone finally go full Tseric?

The top 5 things that Anet got wrong is company arrogance. The disconnect between what players are asking for and what they are receiving is really making GW2 a massive example of how to squander a golden opportunity.

5 is the only one I care about, but it’s such a huge one. ANet doesn’t seem to be taking any feedback on board at all, and from what I’m told they haven’t once reverted a change met with huge negativity.

A game developer that doesn’t listen to or communicate with their customers is not a good thing. I mean they have a position specifically for forum communications and Gaile can’t/won’t even answer 90% of our questions/concerns directly, if at all.

Sagat.3285:

You should take off #4 some specs and weapons are ignored due to lack of efficiency, fix the existing instead of piling it up. Get out of your comfort zone and see why no one uses them.

You’re missing the point. The OP is alluding to greater variety. If not with new weapons than expanding current ones. My warrior has been stuck with the same five sword skills he’s had since creation. A few more would go a long way. If you’re answer is to simply grab a hammer, guess what?! Same five hammer skills since creation. Get the point?

To the OP – great list and explanations as to why. There’s a lot of things that Anet has done right, but the thibgs they have done wrong weigh heavily.

Introduction of Ascended Gear
- I don’t really have much of an opinion on this one. I am too casual of a player to really care for anything beyond exotics. I have only made one ascended backpack, and despite playing since launch I am nowhere near being able to start working on the grind for a legendary.

Lack of New Skills
- I feel that the lack of new skills is an important issue for some players. At the time when those eight new healing skills were released, I became excited about the idea of a larger variety of skills to play with. I began to wonder what other skills would be coming in further updates. I’m now disappointed that nothing else has been introduced since… quite a bit of a let down.

Living Story
- I like the Living Story. I have thoroughly enjoyed both S1 and S2 so far. While the gaps between updates do feel a bit large, I still think that the overall quality of the LS is decent enough to make up for it. Seeing as I am a casual player, I go through the content at a slow pace, so I don’t really mind it all that much.

New Traits System
- This catastrophe. This is pretty much the darkest mark on the game that I can think of. I wholeheartedly detest what they did to the game when they changed the traits system. Turning something that once allowed flexible character building into a tedious grind-fest and unnecessary gold-sink truly left a sour taste in my mouth. Also, because they have said very little about it in the past 8 months despite netting the largest thread on the forums, I’m pretty sure this will be here to stay for a very long time.

ANet’s Communication Policy
- While I can understand they are all hush-hush about their plans to avoid player backlash against “unfulfilled promises”, I feel that the lack of communication is also painting them in a bad color. Unfortunately, it is lose-lose for them either way you look at it. If they could find a nice middle-ground to communicate with us, that would be great. But right now the devs have their mouths taped shut by their policy, and cannot share their interesting ideas with us. The CDI’s are a nice feature, because it engages player discussion with the devs. However, they pick the topic, and nothing else will be allowed mention.

Vayne.8563:

Interesting opinion OP. I can see where you’re coming from. The only one I’m not sure about is 3.

I’m not sure that depth and breaks should even be listed together really. They’re different things.

But it’s a pretty fair list of the five things about the game I like the least. I suppose in all fairness there are more things I like than dislike but there are definitely things I dislike.

My own list would look like this.

5. The way the personal story was changed in the NPE.
4. The introduction of Ascended Gear
3. Lack of strong guild features (among them inability to send a message to everyone in the guild)
2. The New Trait System
1. The Communication Policy

The lack of guild features is befuddling to me. With all their talk of community and social and playing with your friends the guild aspect of GW2 suffered the worst.

I can forgive Ascended armor, traits and even the NPE as these became projects after launch in one form or another. But guilds were abandoned at launch and remain so. A few cheap bounty missions and challenges have little to mend this wound.

shion.2084:

As a note, I work in the software industry and undestand not commenting on whats in development. The reason is that people will make wild guesses about it, prognosticate doom, hold you responsible if something you said you were looking into doesn’t turn out feasible. On this account I completely sympathize. After one too many uproars most companies will decide that the best way to not supposedly break “promises” is not to allow for the possbility to make them in the first place. As frustrating as that is for someone who desperately wants to know if a future expansion is in the cards….

there are MANY much more successful companies (e.g. RIOT) out there that discuss things currently in development and bring the players in so they can see the process and how and why things did not make it in, were altered or postponed. there is not some uber-secret to striking the balance, and actually withholding information, leads to comsumer hysteria as they do not even know what direction things are even going in. ANet just isn’t up to task in that department clearly.

Snorcha.7586:

The top 5 things that Anet got wrong is company arrogance. The disconnect between what players are asking for and what they are receiving is really making GW2 a massive example of how to squander a golden opportunity.

there is so much truth to this it’s saddening. what a waste of potential this current GW2 dev team is displaying and it’s a pity as there are great devs there whose individual work is being marred by the total mehness of the current state of the game for a good number of players old and new alike.

5. Particle Effects – For a game that relies on the ability to see a mob’s telegraph in order to react to it, I have a helluva time seeing anything other than pretty lights. Especially in group of more than five. We were promised a slider to tone it down. What we got is far from enough.

4. Lack of build diversity.

3. Ability to ignore boss mechanics in dungeons via stacking.

2. WvW feels meaningless. It’s just a giant game of musical chairs. DAoC felt much more meaningful with it’s Darkness Falls dungeon, guild alerts when guild keeps were under attack, and relic raids. There has been very little iteration on WvW with the exception of mists which is really a glorified PvE map.

1. Legendaries – I’ve never had an MMO goal take me more than a year. Two years plus and I’m still chasing a precursor. I refuse to play the RNG game in the toilet and it’s hard to save faster than the rate of inflation for the pre. Acquisition of these weapons should take legendary skill with a legendary questline and not be based on legendary RNG and legendary grind or legendary opening of the wallet. And where is the precursor crafting that we were promised?

1. Soulbound Mechanic.
If there is one thing that claims top spot in really bad design it is this, along with Account Bound to a certain extent. The general rule when creating an Item should be: If an Item is Soulbound or Account Bound, there should be a guaranteed way of acquiring it. If an Item is RNG, then it should be sellable on the TP.
See Weapons of the Sunless, Wurmslayer Armor and Mini Gwynefyrdd.

2. Unique Mechanic.
This mechanic serves no purpose other than frustrating players and providing a job for their Customer Support team. “Halp! I bought 2nd same ascended ring and no can equip.”

3. Keeper’s Recipes
Please check the cost of Keeper’s Recipes on TP, or try making full Keeper’s Armor and Weapons right now and tell me it isnt ridiculous. Making some skins(like Ghastly Grinning Shield) available for a limited time is one thing, they are just skins and look good, they do not affect gameplay. Making a stat only available through a LIMITED event on the other hand, that is truly horrible.
You are basically saying some players get an advantage over others because they can have a different set of stats unless other players are ready to shell out a huge amount of gold(worth more than a Legendary). Luckily, Keeper’s stats are pretty bad. Imagine for a second if that was Zerker stats and see the direction Arenanet went with this.

4. Aquabreather
A completely thoughtless mechanic, yet completely forgotten one. The Aquabreather replaces your Headgear while underwater. The true problem comes from they never made an Ascended version of it(Exotic only came recently too and with very limited selection of stats).

5. Stealth
This one is Self-Explanatory. This mechanic is badly designed for a good portion of the game. My ally just stealthed my whole team in PvP on the capture point. We couldnt get Revealed and we could not capture the point. Great, now we can grief our own team…

Going through the OP’s list:

#5: Whether you like ascended gear or not, this was certainly poorly handled. Putting aside questions of how much gear grind is desirable, fears of slippery slopes, and how much of an advantage ascended actually gives outside of agony resistance, ascended equipment also causes other parts of the game to become obsolete. Ascended rings, accessories, and amulets, for instance, make the jeweller profession redundant. Ascended armour and weapons means that dungeon rewards are no longer BiS, and in the days before wardrobes, knowledge that such items were eventually coming became a big disincentive to acquiring such pieces (as in the end you’d need to go to an expensive process involving transmutation stones to get the skin onto an ascended piece. Now you can simply salvage it, which puts the skin into your wardrobe, and it will only cost a charge to move it.)

However, those issues I put aside… pretty big for a franchise built on skill over time spent. I’m only brushing past them because others have already discussed them.

#4: Definitely. The weapon and utility lists on release always struck me as being at a “the professions are playable at this level, let’s release rather than holding the game back as we develop more!” rather than being an intended finishing point. Some distinct gaps can especially be seen on professions with smaller numbers of weapon choices – for instance, mesmers have a wide range of offhands, but phantasm-based builds are somewhat handicapped in making use of these offhands by being forced to choose between a melee weapon and a weapon that produces clones as part of the automatic attack chain for mainhand weapons. Similarly, while the thousands of skills from GW1 is not desirable (and is somewhat replaced by the trait system) the current twenty utility skills per profession and three elites feels quite restrictive, particularly underwater where a lot of these choices are not usable.

#3: The Living Story does feel like it’s improved in the last year, and frankly, I’d rather see longer gaps with better quality content than having it parceled out in fortnightly dribs and drabs. However, E7 did leave a bad taste in the mouth. Cliffhangers are a useful literary device, but an episode should resolve something rather than dragging out last episode’s cliffhanger. While I don’t know what’s behind the door, IMO it probably would have been better done to let us plant a memory seed outside the door, learn what it showed about Caithe’s motivations, and then being left to decide what to do with that information… possibly even as the door remains securely closed in the present.

On the topic of the story… I agree with the people who say they shouldn’t have messed with it in the way they did. I’m quite glad that I got past those points on all my characters before it happened… and while I understand that they weren’t happy with how parts of it worked, they really should have waited until they could fix it properly before acting, rather than outright removing some parts and reorganising others so it’s possible to face the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan as your first Eye.

(5000chars)

(resumed)

#2: A bigger reason to be glad I got all my characters to 80 long since. To me, the changed trait system is a big disincentive to even consider leveling up another character: I dread the idea of having to trait up a character through the new system.

I see what they were trying to do – I quite enjoyed elite hunting in Guild Wars 1. However, they’ve largely missed the point. Elite hunting in GW1 was often something you could do to progress a character when you had a few minutes to kill on your own – gather a party (henchmen would often do in the days before heroes), hunt a boss, murderise it, cap your skill, and you’ve accomplished something on your own terms and without relying on anyone else. At worst, you might have to go through a mission to access the target boss.

Linking traits to large events, however, misses this mark entirely. I could go into Talus Chute on my own to hunt down a boss any time I chose, and the worst that could happen is that the boss didn’t spawn and I’d have to reset the instance. If I want to get the Temple of Lyssa trait, on the other hand, I have to camp the temple so I’m there when the event refreshes, and hope that there are enough other people there to complete the event.

Or, you know, fork out 3g. But I’m not rich enough for the 60g or so I’m told it takes to unlock all of the traits on a fresh character to be a trivial expense.

#1: I can see where they’re coming from, I really can…

But it’s a ‘kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t’ situation. Discuss your plans, and yes, people will call you out when you fall through on them. Keep quiet about everything, though, and people are going to get the impression that you HAVE no plans and that all that can be expected in the future is more of the same… and let’s face it, LS improvements notwithstanding, a future based on that assumption is looking pretty drab. There has to be a happy medium somewhere that gives people reason to be excited for the possibilities of the future, but which makes it clear that not everything that gets spoken about will necessarily come to pass.

Consider, for instance, the original Ascended fiasco, which is where ArenaNet first got called up for breaking their word. We’re told that this was something that was planned before release – if it had been mentioned early on that “it won’t be in the initial early release, but we’re planning to have a PvE mode that does cater for people who like vertical gear grind, and there’ll be a special gear tier associated with that – however, the advantages granted by that tier will be pretty minimal except when measured against a mechanic that only exists within that mode” there would probably have been a lot less backlash when the Fractals update dropped.

What’s the point of being so obsessive over negatives? How does this thread makes things better for anyone. It’s not like there have been myriad threads about any of these items.

DarcShriek.5829:

What’s the point of being so obsessive over negatives? How does this thread makes things better for anyone. It’s not like there have been myriad threads about any of these items.

Without feedback (positive and negative), how else would the devs know what players like and dislike?

Sure, the same threads pop up day-to-day, but if that didn’t happen we would have fewer discussions about hot topics. And while ANet rarely responds, we post our feedback in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it changes something for the better.

Mordalus.8146:

Acquisition of these weapons should take legendary skill with a legendary questline and not be based on legendary RNG and legendary grind or legendary opening of the wallet. And where is the precursor crafting that we were promised?

Very well said for all your points. I’m guilty as charged of the wallet. Upon realizing my chances of getting a precursor were slim next to none (while conducting regular world boss tours among other runs) I was faced with a choice: convert gems into gold or spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding and hoping. There was nothing legendary about the aquisition of my legendary.