Guild Wars 2

GW2 the product was great. The problem for me is that GW2 the ongoing service does not seem to be going anywhere I want to go. That may change with LS S2. We shall see.

At this time, when season 1 ended and season 2 hasnt started you cant rely ask such a question…and you cant ask for a simple YES or NO answer

i think you should ask this question after they released the feature pack updates and see how that works.

then we should wait for the first new season 2 gameplay content and see if it has more impact on the world than the previous living story.

No. The game doesn’t even seem to have a direction.

Yeah, there’s really no value in say yes and no and not explaining. It’s very possible that my reasoning might be highly faulty…
In fact I’m not even sure how to answer, since the direction GW2 seems to be going in is fairly multifaceted, and boiling it down to yes and no seems a waste.

YES
They’re doing their own thing (with the LS). They’re sticking too the idea, but admits that there are many things they want to improve for LS s2.

Even though I think there are many places where they could go a bit more traditional and use ideas from other games – and even if LS ended up being the very reason they “lose”, I have to give them respect for trying something new.
If they didn’t stick to these ideas, it wouldn’t be GW2 anymore. And I personally have more faith in the game now, than what I had 3-4 months ago.

Only AN knows the “right” way for GW2. Who am I to question it.

NO. It’s not.

trait change- yes

crit damage- YES (i drink the tears of all the QQing zerkers saying this is the worst change ever)

rune/sigils – yes

pvp reward: no

new PvP map with a TDM game mode: Yes

so i mostly think that gw2 is headed in the right direction

what things they should do also imo
-rework for world bosses again, timers as fail conditions suck: use the twisted marrionette as a good example for a boss with fair fail conditons… for example the shadow behemoth can be a “defend the ring” event, where spawns more adds to try to capture the ring, if he captures it he wins (probably should be more then 1 ring to force zerg to split up)
-actually let us know about dungeon fixes, kinda annoyed with all of it being stealth patched
-more build viability
-aggro rework (its confusing specially in mosh pits: main mechanic for it is whoever is closest but if every1 is meleeing then its hard to determine)
-conditions rework, nerf effectiveness in pvp but buff em in pve

No. Not really.

The game has been out for a year and a half and yet the only thing that I fee; I can do tonight that I couldn’t do at launch is Edge of the Mists and Southsun Cove really. Thats disappointing and doesn’t seem like the game is heading in a good direction.

Probably not, go figure.

Can’t really give an informed response until April 15th, at the moment – No.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

No.

Things won’t change until ArenaNet comes out of the bubble and views the game as a person looking at it from the outside in does.

They don’t solve issues, they solve the symptoms of the issues. Case in point with the critical damage. It seems like mistakes and missteps are hard coded into the game and that’s unfortunate. It looks like stubbornness or arrogance and their lack of transparency only makes it worse. Guild Wars 2 had/has lots of potential but what good is that if there isn’t a sense of urgency to do better?

There are so many clear bad decisions that have got majority negative reactions which go ignored or not talked about, then they point at metrics with a blind eye to the fact that the game was B2P.

Why is there no polling system on this site the devs use? Why don’t they send polls to their player base and ask how we feel about certain issues and get real metrics?

Regardless, I hope these new feature updates push things in the right direction but for every good idea they, muck it up with a few silly ones.

Thomas Kaira.7863:

No.

Core issues are not being addressed with the next feature-patch (though some good stuff is being added) and numerous bad design choices have been made. These are the following major issues with the game as of now that have not been addressed:

1. Conditions are useless in PvE and overpowered in PvP.
2. Toughness/Vitality stats matter little in PvE due to overused 1-shot mechanics.
3. Defiant renders control specs worthless.
4. Rampant class imbalance based on game mode.
5. Serious lack of build diversity due to low count of skills (and even less useful ones) and restrictively expensive gear re-specs.
6. DPS build supremacy in PvE due to inviability of other builds.

And these are the following design decisions:

1. Emphasis on temporary content is resulting in a MORE static world than if otherwise due to the fact the content is temporary and has little overall effect on the game.
2. Emphasis on large-scale (zerg-style) combat events and not enough actual group content has resulted in an extremely low overall skill level for this game.
3. Emphasis on high-population events results in people being unable to participate with their community due to the Overflow system.
4. Emphasis on high-population events coupled with guesting is causing major problems for smaller servers trying to enjoy this content.

Until all those get addressed GW2 is in a pretty sorry state, and are largely why I barely ever play anymore.

This.
Not that it matters as ANET doesnt listen to us and hasnt even acknowledged most of these problems.

GW2’s lost its chance. I still play the game occasionally ‘cos of the friends I have made in the game. Tbh, out of 223 initial guildmates that played actively in the first 6 months since the game’s premiere, now there is 12 of us who still play just to spend time together. However, we’re soon heading for ‘The Division’ when it premieres.

I would say yes only if all the content we have gotten was permanent and if we could at least have an expansion pack announced or at least some 20-40 dollar mini DLC or something in the works.
But if we get to the point where Everquest Next is now in full release and we are still getting temporary stuff with no expansions then that’s pretty much the point of no return for this game.

No – Wurm/Tequatl events make for dead zones and is not fun content unless it’s instanced. Even then it requires use of items like FE powder and other gimmicky dynamics. NOT FUN and even when you succeed the zone utterly feels empty and dead.

Lack of WvW changes and broken promises/huge delays (WvW account wide xp, Precursor scavenger hunt, etc). Causes distrust and people leaving for other games.
Also, there are so many new currencies that even with max bags, bank, etc I have no space for anything else.

Lack of balance for classes and the berzerker only mentality is killing any creative thought process. Let’s see if the new patch makes for more interesting class make-ups.

Yes – Quality of life changes, nice new armors, and gemstore items that do make me purchase them. However, the 400 to 500 gem items are overpriced. I also like most of the new fractal introductions and changes. However, dredge needs to go.

No

I have never seen a game ran like this. It’s like completely other people made it then someone else took over.

This topic is a week early. I think people will have a much better idea of the games direction after all the feature patch features are revealed. If this patch is a flop then the game is done, if it is a success then the game is probably headed in the right direction.

No they nerfing zeker so no

As I continue to play this game, it’s still painfully obvious that Anet has no idea what they’re doing a lot of the time, which can be gamebreaking. I know, I know, you want me to prove it. Here are some examples:

1. The implementation of Ascended armor. Anet originally planned for Exotic armor pieces to be the last obtainable armor, and the strongest, but threw away that idea after practically 99% of the playerbase had full exotic sets. Thus, they created Ascended.

2. Secondly, Anet decided that Magic Find on gear was not the best idea, so they changed it so it’s now separate from gear, and is now account bound.

3. They created a game without a trinity, which is fine, but they did it in a way that made berserkers the only viable option for PvE. Anyone who wants to be tanky or anyone that wants to heal can go play a different game.

4. The most recent example is that Anet fails to realize that too much hype leads to disappointment. They just hyped up the April 2014 Feature Pack, and what did they immediately do afterward? The second thing that’s unlocked is the “Critical Damage Changes” which everyone despises with every fiber of their being. Boom, they just lost a bunch of players because of that. That made no sense as a business decision. At all. If I had hyped up a release like that, the release would have nothing but good things in it.

No……………………..

Thomas Kaira.7863:

No.

Core issues are not being addressed with the next feature-patch (though some good stuff is being added) and numerous bad design choices have been made. These are the following major issues with the game as of now that have not been addressed:

1. Conditions are useless in PvE and overpowered in PvP.
2. Toughness/Vitality stats matter little in PvE due to overused 1-shot mechanics.
3. Defiant renders control specs worthless.
4. Rampant class imbalance based on game mode.
5. Serious lack of build diversity due to low count of skills (and even less useful ones) and restrictively expensive gear re-specs.
6. DPS build supremacy in PvE due to inviability of other builds.

And these are the following design decisions:

1. Emphasis on temporary content is resulting in a MORE static world than if otherwise due to the fact the content is temporary and has little overall effect on the game.
2. Emphasis on large-scale (zerg-style) combat events and not enough actual group content has resulted in an extremely low overall skill level for this game.
3. Emphasis on high-population events results in people being unable to participate with their community due to the Overflow system.
4. Emphasis on high-population events coupled with guesting is causing major problems for smaller servers trying to enjoy this content.

Until all those get addressed GW2 is in a pretty sorry state, and are largely why I barely ever play anymore.

^^ This 100%

Before the april blog I would say NO, it was only going downhill with all the temporary content and (in my opinion) bad story/villan. It pretty much made me quit the game thanks to the lack of balancing, fixes to long term issues and removal of content. (The fire and frost update has been my favorite by far and after they removed it I quit the game)

But now I’ve come back thanks to the april update promising changes and thanks to some of the balance changes to the classes during my downtime. So now it’s a YES, maybe a small ’’yes’’ becuase they could still screw up with this since we don’t know all the details yet, but the info released so far has atleast sparked my intrest in the game again.

Yes
15chars…………..

Fortunately, yes. GW2 is heading a good way… very, very slowly up a steep hill covered in grease. They’re progressing… slowly… but one wrong move and they fall bak down again.

On one hand: epic world bosses, new maps, QoL updates, ascended gear (which was good in the long-run), updated reward systems, interesting living world events, awesome new composers (BETTER than Jeremy Soule!), a return to Dragons, new trait system, etc…

On the other hand: Some of the rewards make no freakinng sense (only 3g for Arah P4!?), STILL using temporary content Living World to replace the Personal Story, questionable balance decisions (ferocity, new ranger traits, etc…), and too much temporary cash shop items. Also, the sheer fact Black Lion Chests exist. I know ANET wants to make some money, but I question the ethics of exploiting fans with gambling addictions. I mean, I know every other company, including Valve does it too, but I still feel somewhat betrayed by ANET with the addition of cash shop lotto boxes. But perhaps THE worst of all: Clipping issues on Sylvari and Charr.

Overall, there’s potential, and it does seem like things are heading in the right direction. But one wrong move, and it messes everything up.

Probably.

I’m a little tea-pot short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, hear me shout, “I need 15 characters to post a message on the GW2 forums.”

YES

It is interesting to read MMO threads like this. From a study perspective I have never seen an MMO please forum posters. Most positive players spend too much time playing.

Main reason for YES is the shear number of things the game gives you from the start.

• Lots of gear choices.
• Story through each zone played out through events, not a quest hub
• Dungeon stories that add to the zone content you just played
• Dungeon re-use with the paths
• Random dungeon generator thing with fractals
• Combat system not tied to the trinity
• Action combat system
• Instanced gathering nodes
• Send mail from anywhere
• Choice of salvage for mats or sell for coin of items
• Consumable content at good prices
• PVP
• WVW
• Guild ranking
• Guild earned specials
• Guild stores
• Multiple ways to earn gear not just PVP or instance content
• Tons of incentive just to play daily with various things to do.

Here are my NO reasons
Its not all rosy as with most SERVICE based games, you are never done adding content. If everything could ship on day one then why have a service. And since NO design is final until the players play it and provide feedback it will evolve; no amount of UR can help here. The real question is, do you trust the devs to listen and improve? The answer to that will weight your yes/no probably more then anything else once the shine of a new game wears off.

• Not enough instance based content. Need more then dungeons and frankly the living world needs instances for those of us who really don’t like to zerg swarm a map or worse feel sucky with just a 5 person team with nothing we can do as a small team together.
• Living world needs a fractal version or a dungeon version. Most servers it seems but blackgate even do the living world after the first few days, everyone gives up past that because they got all they needed from the event or enough people are not playing to not do it. This makes those of us not playing “standard” hours or “i live with my mom” hours to actually participate.
• More traits and build options. Yes with the 15 patch you are addressing some of this but really to go from GW1 (the master of "let me try this build out a bit, oh crap its now 2am) game to what you have with GW2 is painful.
• Let me pay for DLC instance based content
• Living world. I want a living world, something that expands or leaves a mark, but one that I can come back to. The money and time spent on the living world events was huge, I missed most of them. What do I do as an active player that wants to go back and see what I missed. is there anything? I don’t understand the whole “raid” a whole server approach, has anyone seen what large mobs of people do. Take the money/time here and invest it in: a new PVP map/mode, a new instance in a zone you can come back to, a new world boss that takes I little less more like 4 groups of 5 to take down, or how about a guild boss.
• Open up weapons for each class
• I don’t want the trinity but for god sake can you please let someone who WANTS to play as a tank/healer do that. These one shot mechanics are cheap and lazy. and you can add taunt without creating the “trinity”. The big mother with a giant sword in front of you should be the target, so stop attacking that little guy with the needles who happens to be the same distance away.Your goal is valiant but from a play mechanic it is frustrating.
• You removed magic find from gear because that was the right thing to do when most players stacked it for its value. Can I point you to the runes with “+% movement speed”. Give us mounts or more consistent movement boosts.
• Provide build mechanics in gear. Allow changeable slots for gear that augment skill lines (power, precision, vitality, etc) not stats. Heck I wouldn’t mind if they augmented special skills but it would provide variant builds with what you have now.

Nope. We are heading towards bots and scipted fights..

Araziel.7201:

No

I have never seen a game ran like this. It’s like completely other people made it then someone else took over.

I honestly think that’s exactly what happened. It’s not simply that many of the promises made for this game were never fulfilled … it’s that most of the changes/additions that have been made run totally counter to the original stated intent. The forums over the past year are full of examples of this … both from players when they complain and devs when they post. It’s like the creators of the game were replaced by interns and accountants.

yes.

15 asuras

No

Honestly I am only playing this game because dice failed with bf4 and wildstar isn’t out yet. Anet continues to make stupid choices ignore solid ideas implement dumb ones and generally f things up. I only wvw so to me this ferocity patch hitting during the season is a really bad idea. It will become whichever server can change their gear out to the new meta the fastest and adapt will perform the best. While I am not opposed to change I don’t think it should be there while we are in leagues especially since it is to fix a crapy pve system not pvp/wvw related.

This game just happens to be better than the other mmos I have to pick from

Yes!

I wouldnt have played this game if it wasnt good, or heading in the right direction!

Keep up the good work A-net!

I’m still enjoying it, so YES.

YES

They need to stop going back and forth with concepts and focus on their main ideas. A feature patch every now and then to refresh the game mechanics, improving them. Better LS2 with great quality and new exploreable zones in Tyria. Expansion with Cantha.

That’s it, that’s all it needs to bring back it’s via release glory.

Was it heading a good way? No.
Is it now heading a good way? Seems like.

There are errors not to be made, hopefully they’ll jump over the gaps!

Guild Wars 2 could have bright future if it was a niche game (like GW1), which it isn’t. So no. Or at least I doubt it.

YES

Thomas Kaira.7863:

No.

Core issues are not being addressed with the next feature-patch (though some good stuff is being added) and numerous bad design choices have been made. These are the following major issues with the game as of now that have not been addressed:

1. Conditions are useless in PvE and overpowered in PvP.
2. Toughness/Vitality stats matter little in PvE due to overused 1-shot mechanics.
3. Defiant renders control specs worthless.
4. Rampant class imbalance based on game mode.
5. Serious lack of build diversity due to low count of skills (and even less useful ones) and restrictively expensive gear re-specs.
6. DPS build supremacy in PvE due to inviability of other builds.

And these are the following design decisions:

1. Emphasis on temporary content is resulting in a MORE static world than if otherwise due to the fact the content is temporary and has little overall effect on the game.
2. Emphasis on large-scale (zerg-style) combat events and not enough actual group content has resulted in an extremely low overall skill level for this game.
3. Emphasis on high-population events results in people being unable to participate with their community due to the Overflow system.
4. Emphasis on high-population events coupled with guesting is causing major problems for smaller servers trying to enjoy this content.

Until all those get addressed GW2 is in a pretty sorry state, and are largely why I barely ever play anymore.

^^ Golf clap. THIS. <- THIS

Yes and no. I am too lazy to explain why. Take it with a bunch of salt….

Kreslin.6832:

Guild Wars 2 could have bright future if it was a niche game (like GW1), which it isn’t. So no. Or at least I doubt it.

It is more successful than GW1 commercially. Opinions from fans are always mixed, what the industry measures is commercial success media-wise and numbers which GW2 both lead in over almost all othr titles in the western industry

The game released successfully, literally with a bang, even if the devs don’t use the foundation they have bulding upon it, the game is gonna be successful for a while thanks to its suerpior release.

GW2 still have all potentional to do so, it is about what Anet and Ncosft wants, not what they can, cause they can probably offer amazing content if they actually worked towards that but the question is if that is the most profitable method.

I’m leaning more towards yes, since they are taking baby steps of improvement as they go along. I’m thinking that the 4 month development cycle throws people off through. They may get our positive/negative feedback on the patch now, but it takes them, and us to see, 4 months to make the improvements on the matter.

I’m just wishing they would add more time killers to the game. We go through the LS quickly, and we are left with nothing else to do until the next patch hits.

Didn’t wanna respond to threads like this anymore but since it doesn’t get locked I may as well also put my YES in here!

And since so few can follow OP’s only a YES or NO asnwer I will too comment why I say YES.

- I have played since Pre-release and this game has just gotten better and better.
- More or less every two weeks have something new too look farward to.
- I love the ammount of communications Devs have to their playerbase compared to other game-companies.
- More and more of my friends are starting to enjoy GW2 even those who played it at release but quit after a while is comming back.
- I play a few other MMO’s but GW2 is the one that has me hooked.
- There is so much to do for a player like me, I don’t have to farm the best gear to stand a chance or atleast to feel like a good player at WvW or sPvP wich I have to in the other MMO’s I play.
- Combat is still mobile and flows like a river compared to many other MMO’s.
- The world is beautifull and perfect and exploring it once again with my friends is a blast.
- My guild is fantastic, I wouldn’t leave them.
- I love the world of Guild Wars, the story, the music, the artwork, the sceneries, the races.
- If there is not enough players on my server and I want to be around lot’s of players I can just guest to another server (What other MMO allowes that?).
- The game is FREE and everything so far has been free.
- No stupid vertical progress and expansion packs that gives you the impression ‘I have to grind more levels and armor to keep up’.
- I have a wide area of choices, if there is something I find booring I don’t need to do it (Most of it).

I can agree with many bad things some say about this game but they are very far away from making this game not heading in a good way since as I first said ‘I have played since Pre-release and this game has just gotten better and better.’.

The worst stuff I can think of is:
Condition damage is being useless in big fights with only one enemy and Power/Precision/Crit-Damage builds is and still will be the builds people will go for. Though I don’t care since I like to play the game how I want and not to roflstomp my way through everything and have no fun doing it. Oh and yes the Defiant, I don’t mind it being on bosses but… Why a Defiant stack of 15-30 on bosses!?

Yes … possibly.

This massive feature update will decide it for me, I think. I’m not keen on the changes to traits, but I like what they’re doing with the runes, sigils and the crit damage changes. So far, it’s 50/50. If the rumours about PvE clothes locker and account-bound dyes prove true, that’s another step in the right direction (if they do make skins unlockable and permanently available across accounts and they give me a refund on the extra skins I bought … even better, lol). I liked the last three/four installments of the LS better than before, and if WXP becomes account bound I’ll probably get more into that as well. So yes, overall, my response to the OP is yes.

To be honest, if it wasn’t theoretically the sequel to GUILD WARS™, I wouldn’t bother with this game. But I’m hopeful that a lot of the first season of the “living story” and many of the questionable design choices were mostly beginner’s mistakes that will be made up for in the future. Sooo.. I don’t really think it has been going in the right direction at all, but I’m.. Hopeful about the future. And aside from many of the bad points this game have, it’s pretty fun.

Yes, im still logging in most days and visiting the forums to read about new changes, two thing I certainly wouldn’t do if I wasn’t enjoying the game and didn’t think it had a bright future.

No

Massive grinds, zerg-friendly content, skip-and-hide-in-corner-dungeons, only damage builds supremacy, gemstore direction, fugly unrealistic armor/weapon skins and weak, very weak story = not good but hey they can hide behind the “fastest selling” thing so what do I know.

NO

Balance changes take too long (6 months for fixes in broken classes is a joke) with no dedicated profession balance players (Being the two balance dev’s both play warriors… go figure). There should be one lead PER profession…. NOT TWO BALANCE DEV’S MAINING THE SAME PROFESSION.

Leveling 2nd+ character is just a massive grind. The first character was ok… but that was at release with lots of players around, it’s mostly deserted.

Gear grind is horrible…. Ascended introduction was just… kitten.

WVW promotes massive zergs which results in larger zerg winning a lot of the time.

Moss.5371:

No

Massive grinds, zerg-friendly content, skip-and-hide-in-corner-dungeons, only damage builds supremacy, gemstore direction, fugly unrealistic armor/weapon skins and weak, very weak story = not good but hey they can hide behind the “fastest selling” thing so what do I know.

None complained about any of this via release. People are just getting bored. If you actually disliked all of this and still played the game and actually bother checking the forums now, I have no comment.

Not to mention the fact that we want GW2 to improve on the GW2 concept, not go towards WoW just because some people are bored. I prefer having two games to play than a single WoW-industry with copies all over the place which we already have.

OP
If by ‘heading in a good way’ you mean Anet driving current GW2 players to other games, then yes. This is working very well.

As for Anet’s direction for the game itself, no ….