Guild Wars 2

Yes even with some new content and fairly significant changes to the game I’m pretty disillusioned with GW2 at the moment. I’ve played GW2 since beta but I’m not bored for the same reasons as I became bored with other games (MMOs). It’s worse than that – I’ve become disillusioned, and I know I’m not alone going off comments in /map and the guilds I am a member of. There are a few reasons:

1) Basically GW has devolving into little more than farming.

I am on one of the most populated servers and we can barely get 12 people to do world events (dragons) anymore. If it’s not champion farming it is live event farming. I know world events are not as efficient and the returns are not as good as farming is NOT FUN. The farm for legendary mats was excruciating but that was entirely optional, and it was for the highest level item in the game, so was also understandable to a point (still not worth it IMHO). Correct me if I am wrong but I recall farming/grinding being one of the most attractive selling points about GW2 before its release. I know due to commercial decisions a number of concepts were ‘betrayed’ but up until recently farming has not been a major annoyance (-lets face it CoF P1 was discretionary too and the game was never going to allow you to get rich quick or without ALOT of work or a lucky drop).

2) Poor event design

Ignoring bugs, with the current events, they are directly related to the farming problem. I have the remainder of today to try and repel two more invasions to get the 25 APs for that achievement but I know its not going to happen – I have been trying for about 5 days and I have only been involved in 1 successful invasion repulsion; I don’t consider myself hardcore as I have a fulltime job but I’m no casual either – I play everyday for at least 5 hours. But the majority of people just want to farm, so even if you have a good number of people who want to do the event, you can’t because the farmers hold you back. Given an invasion lasts 45mins, of my 5 hours, that’s a fair chunk of time lost if it results in a fail, which it almost always does.
(I suspect the last event was just to all-but force ppl to buy extra bag/bank slots)

The events themselves have been oriented towards farming and zergs – the pavilion, the invasions.

Speaking of the Pavilion, while the gauntlet was a solo affair, it was yet another exercise in frustration with most fights barely offering a challenge but a handful being largely gimmick, and class, dependant. It seems obvious to me that certain classes had much better chances, especially factoring in gambits. I made the unfortunate mistake of not completing the entire gauntlet early so by the time I came back to it, it had been ‘fixed’ – certain multiple gambit fights I found impossible as, for example, the behaviour of Sure-Shot was different to what was in the guides and when I did manage to close in, with frailty, you would receive a 21K kick. As a result I’ve got a couple of hundred of unused entry tickets…yeah I’m going to really subject myself to that…no thanks.

In fact the golden rule of this game seems to be exploit/take advantage early until its ‘fixed’, which means either rewards are nerfed or the content is made harder often to the point it becomes unenjoyable.

3) Grinding

I thought achievement point rewards were a great idea however the limited time to complete events means that unless you don’t have a job, life, whatever, you are all-but compelled to concentrate on this content in order to get the substantial achievement points on offer. Chasing achieves, not in my own time, is simply not fun and dictates how I have to play to the game which is probably the biggest turn off. I have give up doing certain things, some of which I enjoy, in order to complete events/achieves of limited duration…because frankly, that’s what other people are doing and I cant do some content alone.

I want to keep playing GW2, I enjoyed it, but not anymore, and with the ascended gear-treadmill grind about to start I am exhausted at the thought of arming my level 80 characters. It is painful to invest in more than one character in GW2 yet more grind is being injected into the game.

4) Class balance
Still ppffftt

A few other points of annoyance:
*Communication and information is underwhelming. You have to do a lot of research just to find out what the heck is going on with the game. I don’t use reddit and I wont so if I don’t here it in chat in LA or a guildee mentions it, I don’t know about it.

*Guild Challenges – do they scale???

*Legendaries should be unlocked per account just like skins from achievement tiers or at least made account bound.

Note: No where in this post do I say I am quitting the game outright or encourage others to quit. If other players share these concerns, please vote up, comment or lobby the developers to redress the situation.

Draven.7210:

Invest in as many characters as you want. But know that most games, including GW2, they are not designed with people playing multiple alts in mind. And they shouldn’t be. It would be unfair to say the least to the majority that are dedicated to progressing and improving one character

What doesn’t sit well with people is that this is the exact opposite of what they marketed gw2 as, and a huge step back from gw1. Character customization is extremely restricted by limited skillbars due to weapons, limited trait building optiona, condition builds not working in pve etc.; and if you want to play an alt, you have to do the same repetitive grind over and over again until you are ready to play the content you originally wanted to play.

To me, it’s just not worth it anymore and I am disappointed that every update continues to purge the best aspects the franchise originally had going to it, in favor of the same old generic mmo bullkitten.

I agree with everything you’ve said. and I’m a farmer! That’s all I do is go around in any game, gather, kill things for their stuff, and build! That’s all I like to do in game and even I know that this is too much of a grind. It’s sad that.

I’d love for more people to get involved in getting the word out sadly however most posts like yours get deleted for the false claim of not being constructive. (they don’t become constructive by being deleted before anyone can post to them)

The other thing to point out that 75% of the original playerbase is gone, most of which came on here in November and begged Anet not to go down this road with this game when they decided that Ascended is what people wanted or that Exotic wasn’t enough or that dungeons (fractals) should be where they place their focus for new exciting content or any kind of meaningful loot.

I don’t think there’s enough people left honestly to get their attention anymore because most people from headstart are gone, those that are left are watching intently to see where this goes, and we are far and few between because there are some here who just can’t leave well enough alone and stop advocating for the wrongs that are being done here.

At least ascended is the last tier the next few years according to Colin…

I agree with all your points, to a greater or lesser extent.

tigirius.9014:

The other thing to point out that 75% of the original playerbase is gone, most of which came on here in November and begged Anet not to go down this road with this game when they decided that Ascended is what people wanted or that Exotic wasn’t enough or that dungeons (fractals) should be where they place their focus for new exciting content or any kind of meaningful loot.

There is a 87,9% chance that those numbers are 100% pulled out of your derrière.

tigirius.9014:

I agree with everything you’ve said. and I’m a farmer! That’s all I do is go around in any game, gather, kill things for their stuff, and build! That’s all I like to do in game and even I know that this is too much of a grind. It’s sad that.

I’d love for more people to get involved in getting the word out sadly however most posts like yours get deleted for the false claim of not being constructive. (they don’t become constructive by being deleted before anyone can post to them)

The other thing to point out that 75% of the original playerbase is gone, most of which came on here in November and begged Anet not to go down this road with this game when they decided that Ascended is what people wanted or that Exotic wasn’t enough or that dungeons (fractals) should be where they place their focus for new exciting content or any kind of meaningful loot.

I don’t think there’s enough people left honestly to get their attention anymore because most people from headstart are gone, those that are left are watching intently to see where this goes, and we are far and few between because there are some here who just can’t leave well enough alone and stop advocating for the wrongs that are being done here.

Yep they just remove what they don’t like and think posts that are so called rude to them.

Have to concur with the OP. It really is heartbreaking to see the direction the game is going.

To speak to the farming updates and users posting that people do it, so they must enjoy it: I represent the type of player that dislikes farming outright unless it is cleverly disguised behind compelling game play. Circle-zerging does not qualify. But I farmed QP, I farmed Embers and I farmed Scarlet.

Why?

Because I felt like I had to. Achievements encouraged it, the rest of the world was abandoned en masse, market prices were shifting towards a higher average player wealth. With my play options already limited, I might as well just do something I don’t enjoy while everyone else is doing it so I don’t fall behind in more ways than one.

It really sucks the games new direction can make players feel obligated to do activities they don’t enjoy that are contrary to the games core philosophy and design because it is counter productive to do anything else. Dungeons seen a reward revamp, for example, along with the farming updates. Even with the new rewards and if I manged to find a group to continually run dungeon paths that we enjoyed, it would not have been 1/10th as profitable or beneficial from an account wide perspective.

So, if you are of the mind that there is a zerg farming, so everyone must enjoy farming, then you would be incorrect. I am positive that I am not the only player that feels this way.

And as a die-hard GW fan and Anet supporter, the whole zerg mentality, corralling players from zone to zone and constant changes in direction and focus are really putting me off. I am giving Anet the benefit of the doubt here that they can piece everything together and are listening to community concerns with regard to Living Story but if the zerg farm that was passed off as content for the last two updates is the direction they are going to stubbornly cling to, myself and my money are likely to be lured into the next game that I can ever quest in.