Guild Wars 2

The zone questing system is great, no different than the older mmos where you don’t have to talk to an NPC to get XP/quest – you just kill.

Deposit To Collectible – awesomeness.

Skins-r-us, excellent stuff.

Minis.

World events.

Guild Wars 2 need new technology. We need to be inside the game. Have you seen anime like .hack, hack//sign, Log Horizon and Sword Art Online? that’s the future for online gaming. Though there will probably be another 30 years or so until we get close to that.

OnT: ArenaNet have spoken of some good features and updates coming 2014. I’m looking forward to those. Other than that i wish they put in more content into all the zones. New event chains, new hearts and changed landscapes. I know they did this with the living story until kessex hills.

ProxyDamage.9826:

4 – Combat

One of the things I’ve always hated the most about traditional MMOs was the combat. It was boring, uninteresting, un-involving… Even the best of the best had the old feeling of sitting around trading kittenslaps seeing who was wearing the heaviest gloves to begin with. And it’s such an important part of the genre! It’s what you do for most of your gaming time (excluding sitting around idly in towns chatting)! Whenever someone mentions a new MMO to me, that’s always my first question: How’s the combat? Usually bad.

Sorry man but combat inst all that much different from other mmos.
Also like in every mmo, when it comes to pve it is dps the s.. out of it as fast as possible, noob rez system, dodge certain atacks but thats about it. Its still 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 key pressing and the combat for me is so boring that..well when i do world events i tag mob and go afk.

Pvp in this game is a complete mess too, just like in every game, its down to spam conditions, spam cc, spam invis, spam 1, pet zoo stacking and so on.

Try out my game in sig and u get the point of what real active combat means actually. Any party from gw that would want to burst down a boss will get wiped in matter of seconds.

Add to this:

10. No competing for nodes! There is nothing more maddening in other MMOs than fighting through 15 mobs for a rare node, only to have someone else ninja the node for you.

11. Travel that doesn’t involve horrendously expensive mounts or having to walk through a zone to get to the next. I remember those days of EQ1 with the epic runs across territory just to get to the area you wanted to be in…and I don’t remember them fondly.

12. Things to do – Yes, people complain about not having anything to do, but seriously, there’s really a lot. Some of it may not be to one’s particular liking, but if you look hard enough, there’s always something going on.

13. The world – like the game or not, the world is absolutely one of the most beautiful and detailed worlds I have ever seen in a game. There are mountains, snow, jungles, day-glow plants, forests, plains, cities, ruins, graveyards, water, and giant coral structures. The details in everything are so fine as well. Your footprints in sand fade as if they’re washed away by the water, you raise dust when walking on the paths, you have shadows, and there are minuscule bugs, birds, and other “ambients.” Grasses move in the breeze, and even your hair moves when you do. Even after running over the same ground for over a year, I still have to stop and just look at stuff from time to time.

14. Finally, there are the people who play. Yes, there are kittens, but in general, the people I have met have been wonderful.

So, yes, there is a LOT of things they got right. Thank you for reminding me, Proxy.

I will say that the quest system and the Public Event system have strength’s and weaknesses in their own right.
- One thing I absolutely love about GW2 is being able to group up with friends and stuff can just happen that we might participate in while just messing around the open world.
- The bad thing about it is that my friends don’t play because the Quest system is better at storytelling than the DE’s, and being RP’ers… well, it didn’t last long, unfortunately.
Basically, the DE’s are the same escort, assault/defend, fetch and you name it kind of content in each zone. They don’t lead you along the path and into the world, but rather you have to find some sort of reason why your character would move away from the place he/she’s currently in… there’s no incentive to do so, it would seem.

I like the Dynamic Event system. My first experience was villagers in Queensdale going “Ugh, I feel sick” and me going “That doesn’t sound right..?” and checking out what this was about, eventually leading me to solve the problem through the clues as to where the problem was (The Water supply Tower in Queensdale, yes indeed).
- It was awesome, yeah. GW2 works great there, if you’re taking your time, but most people use waypoints to travel quicker and they don’t bother with the DE’s.
- Mostly it is “wander aimlessly around” kind of gameplay, which is a huge issue to me (and actually, I’ve been waiting the whole of 2013 for Dynamic Events to be improved or there being added more of them) I’m hoping 2014 will bring some welcome changes into the game. I’m looking forward to the coming year.

- I tried the Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn beta, and cutscenes/instanced areas and quests blended together nicely without loading screens, so that the single player experience of the MMO felt polished, the story and scenery was immersive, and all the while there were Public Events as well (Dynamic Events, really) making it a very nice MMO experience (Note: It doesn’t really add anything new, but uses good, tried and true concepts of the MMO genre along with a more Final Fantasy design of world and interfaces to make it a nice solid MMO experience, which fans of the Final Fantasy series might enjoy – and thus while being frustrated and having a love/hate relationship with GW2, I’m appreciative of ANet’s effort in experimenting with their game and the concepts, but as said, they need to improve the core aspects of their game, such as Dynamic Events and such – the Living World isn’t everything in PvE, and while not being much of a PvP’er, new PvP modes should be added in the coming year, or I’m hoping for it at least)

Dark Catalyst.1028:

In the other MMO I play, the quests advance the story and there is a unique story in every zone. Here, it’s a random mishmash of events and NPCs which don’t make any cohesive sense. You’re just doing little chores for the handful of people scattered throughout the area.

In the other MMO you play, there are also quests that are little more than chores. I don’t even need to know what MMO you play, since there’s probably quests like that in every MMO ever.

In GW2, there are also event chains that tell a story, as well as an overarching story for the area (Scouts?).

Of course, if you’re only going to pick and choose to support your argument, it would seem that way.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Hearts are just really grindy quests in disguise, and many DE’s are just escort quests. There is really nothing new here, except for a shockingly bad, bare bones story.

I’d actually say, mechanically, Hearts are better than traditional quests, since they offer a variety of ways to complete it (some of the requirements speed the bar up faster).

Not to mention from an immersion point of view, DE’s are better than traditional quests for the ‘kill x’ quests.

Omg on point 9 I really had a truly negative flashback to reverse crafting in that Star game you mentioned -shudder!

In my opinion this is still the best MMO on the field. They have a long way to go to keep up with the unending demands of their players, however. But I feel they listen and truly care. Correcting MF gear brought me back into this game and I am having a blast since rejoining! It is very encouraging to see the devs working to correct fundamental game flaws.

The game is very pretty.

1. Continuous updates
Not that it’s been a smooth ride but they are making huge strides.

2. Combat
Mobile, distinct and pretty fun.

3. Transparency and humility
Anet is a rather transparent company relatively speaking. Also I think that when they screw up they admit it and take responsibility.

5. Quality of life improvements.
Currency wallet probably lost them money but they still implemented it. Much respect.

That’s about it. This game is still in its infancy and needs a lot of work. I do have faith anet is up for the job though.

A few simple things I notice pretty quickly when I play any other traditional MMOs after GW2:

1. I’m disgusted by the Trinity and my experience is totally ruined when I have to wait for than 20-30mins to get a Dungeon group, especially when it’s part of my personal storyline and I can’t continue till it’s done. This has become a major thing to me now. (actually it’s always annoyed me even before GW2) For Example: Sitting in my first Que in… a more recent MMO… for 3+ hours because no one plays healer and being unable to continue my story was a completely crushing moment to my interest to the point that I almost quit on the spot.

2. The Map usually kitten es me off. GW2’s map is so much better than everything.

3. Having to travel for decades by walking or mount instead of just WPing. Why do people ask for mounts? >.> It just wastes time.

4. Poor movement, combat and idle animations annoy me. GW2 does a great job with all of these things and with linking the moving while attacking animation, and even while jumping.

5. Invisible walls suck and jumping often sucks in other MMOs and no Jumping Puzzles. :O

6. Too Quiet. GW2 is pretty chattery in groups, map, guild and so on. It’s system also works very fast and easy and any game that doesn’t have a mail function accessible straight from the UI just sucks for that. ;o

7. Being sent all over the place by NPCs starts to get on my nerves fast. “Go kill 3 of these then talk to me again and go gather me 6 of these, come back and then kill 8 of these other things and return. Then travel halfway around the world to go be this dude’s errant boy/slave next. Then save him from these 5 enemies that keep crapping in his garden- don’t forget to bring some of their bodyparts as proof that you killed exactly 5 of them, even though there’s 900 more of them but this somehow helps save his garden and move you to the next useless errand.”

8. Having to keybind 5 hotbars of skill hotkeys… just.. ugh. ;/ Even though I wish GW2 had as many skills as the 1st, I still prefer things like this over a kajillion skills at once~ ones that you don’t really ever swap out and just do the same thing forever.

9. Worth the money? P2P games often aren’t, and F2P games are usually such awful quality. So far GW2 has been worth the money I spent regardless of it’s flaws.

10. Not enough interesting things to do beyond grinding to max lvl. If all I’m doing is killing things over and over it gets pretty bland. Map completion and achievements does a good job at fixing that.

11. No bundles or interactive environment to mess around with? Nuuuuu

12. Having to roll against others for loot…. hate, hate, hate, hate >;(

~meow.

Also, almost forgot… any game without dyes and a reskinning or cosmetic slot system makes me unbearably sad. :<

About the DE’s.. I agree that most of them seem like the usual escort/gather/kill for some random reason nobody really cares about, but as someone already said there are some DE chains that are interesting and/or well thought out.. For example I remember the pirate base in Timberland Falls, with quaggan who wants to become a pirate captain.. Or just to the south of pirate stronghold there’s an event chain with dangerous dwarven artifacts. Allot of mini dungeons/hidden areas have interesting events as well.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

In the other MMO I play, the quests advance the story and there is a unique story in every zone. Here, it’s a random mishmash of events and NPCs which don’t make any cohesive sense. You’re just doing little chores for the handful of people scattered throughout the area.

I agree. it has been argued since launch that Renown Events are in fact ‘gather’, ‘kill’, ‘protect’ quests, but without fixed numbers, but instead a bar to be filled and no need to go to a guy to ask for a quest.

Problem is, none of these hearts actually means something for your character’s progression. Sure you get to buy certain ‘karma’ items that are useless in every way.
Apart from that… nothing.

It’s one of the things this game did wrong, and the principal reason why all the zones are empty, save for queensdale farm & frostgorge farm.

ProxyDamage.9826:

~

About 2 and 3. Thats something on my list that is NOT good. The events are nice but are not coming close to be able to give what traditional quest CAN give you. I say can because I am not talking about the kill x wolfs quests. They send you all over the world giving you a real story and sense of completion, what you don’t have with events because they keep repeating. Not saying that events are bad, they are nice as an addition to quest, but not as a substitute.

What they also do if giving you a bound with the NPC’s. You get to know the NPC’s learn why there are doing what they are doing. You learn stuff about there personal live and you can get a nice unique reward from them. Something I am totally missing in GW2 because there are no quest. So now there are many NPCs running around and yes they are talking but I really have no bound with them whatsoever.

So I have to disagree on 2 and 3 where the problem in both cases is the fact that there are no traditional quest in the game.

1 Yes I agree however your sentence makes it seem like it’s the team-play you like (what is not so good in GW2) while you mean they are not in your way like in other MMO’s. That true.

4 I do like the moment system and also that part of the combat. Thats the fast paced you are talking about. I also don’t like to have a heavy focus on the armor but am not sure that thats completely gone in GW2. I do not like the fact that there are no real roles. If it’s the holy trinity or any other system but in GW2 any role seems to be missing. While in a team you still basically all have the same role mainly watching out for yourself limited team-play and then it becomes brainless button-smashing very fast. In many cases I while I am ‘fihgting’ in GW2 meanwhile I am watching a video or reading a site because it’s so easy that it’s possible and it’s a little boring. If the combat would be more interested I would not only be required to put all my attention to it but also be we to much engaged in the fight to care about anything else.

5 Partly agree. Lest start by saying that I 100% dislike the the living story and the bi weekly updates but thats because it’s all a grind for achievements, rewards and gold. If it would not be temporary, so no temporary achievement, rewards or other content but everything would stay one of the main problems with the living story would be gone. You say Anet knows that but they clearly don’t see it as a problem. Else they could have easely stopped with all the temporary stuff.
However even if everything would be permanent, one of the problems is that the whole idea from a business standpoint around the living story is gem-store sales. GW2 has become one of the many games that generates money with micro-transactions. The living story is meant to keep people busy and buying gems, thats also the main reason why it’s temporary. Good excuse to put temporary items in the gem-store and so on. So while the idea of continuously getting new content by itself is not a bad thing you have to see the bigger picture. With a focus on expansions there would be less bad game-desicions that we see now resulted from a gem-store focus. Keeping that in mind then no I do not like the many patches.

6 Yes they did make some progress there. Partly fixing what they did wrong before.

7 Also a good think but you are now cheering about something they fix.. so they did wrong the first time. It should have been like that from the beginning.

8 Also nice but again a fix.

9 I don’t think that rng for drops is bad, I even miss it for many thinks in GW2. Now you grind for gold and then buy items what is really boring and makes the game gold-driven. But I don’t see where the grind is gone. You can get stuff with crafting, yeah first grind for gold or the crafting materials, then grind your way up to level 400 / 500 and then you can make your item. Or you grind your way to dungeons to get the tokens or you grind for gold to buy it. Still a grind but a more boring grind the the normal rng imho.

I like the instacompletion of quests (no need to travel back to NPC) and the cooking crafting mechanics are addicting. Some of the cultural armor is really awesome too. And I like dungeontokens (no stupid rolling on gear).

Doggie.3184:

Also, almost forgot… any game without dyes and a reskinning or cosmetic slot system makes me unbearably sad. :<

So you’de be even more sadder because GW2 locks every chance of reskinning your gear behind the gemstore.

The core game is great, don’t think there’s many people that disagree with that.

Now those living story updates.....

Peetee.9406:

The core game is great, don’t think there’s many people that disagree with that.

Now those living story updates…..

On paper, yes.
Lots of good ideas, concept… Game could’ve been great.
But then they release the game way too early, when it was far from ready, and from then on they tried to keep up fixing bugs, balancing issues and attempting to make the game they promised.
But people started leaving… And then it came Lost Shores, gear grind, full focus on gem store and all the rest.
Now what we have is your average free to play MMO.

Valanga.5942:

Now what we have is your average free to play MMO.

While I agree with parts of your post (I’m not one who is going to pretend that GW2 has fulfilled it’s original manifesto much at all)… that particular statement is grossly unfair.

There are no superior numbers or additional content hidden behind a paywall, which is a staple of F2P games. You’re also not limited to how much you can play unless you toss out money.

I’d say it’s more fair to say that GW2 has drifted more to the traditional MMO experience, which is rather disappointing itself.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

In the other MMO I play, the quests advance the story and there is a unique story in every zone. Here, it’s a random mishmash of events and NPCs which don’t make any cohesive sense. You’re just doing little chores for the handful of people scattered throughout the area.

What’s the overarching theme of Queensdale, after you become the “Hero of Shaemoor” in the first 5 minutes of play? Choo-choo-champ train?

Hearts are just really grindy quests in disguise, and many DE’s are just escort quests. There is really nothing new here, except for a shockingly bad, bare bones story.

I agree with this post. You pretty much have no idea why you have to kill “x” enemy. I have played guild wars 1 so I had a better idea than the average player.

Dynamic events and hearts are just quests where you don’t have to go up to the quest giver is true. Dynamic events get stale really fast for example I finished saving a village then 20 seconds later the event occurred again this happens over and over.

Jumping Puzzles!

Valanga.5942:

Doggie.3184:

Also, almost forgot… any game without dyes and a reskinning or cosmetic slot system makes me unbearably sad. :<

So you’de be even more sadder because GW2 locks every chance of reskinning your gear behind the gemstore.

A gem store that allows in-game gold. Still have 20 something fine trannies left I bought long time ago with gold.

I agree with some of your points but three I do not are..

Combat is fast but tied to weapons which takes choices away from the player, some weapon skills are rarely used and you have to choose between a utility to help you keep up in pve/travel/wvw etc or something else. The fact is that you’re pretty much forced to have swiftness in game or movement speed runes/traits. If the game is about skins etc and not gear than why is skills attached to gear? Also why is everything basically zerkers or gtfo?

Team? You mean guilds? I like my guild but 90% of the time when in most zones I need to turn off map chat, others in zone have a bad habit of just being in the way, finishing quests even tho you just got there to turn in stuff for the event or they’re just kittens. Try joining a dungeon as a lowbie and get kicked or deal with people who don’t want to do anything but stack spam or hide in a corner. This community is pretty bad but it’s f2p, get banned? Buy the game for 10 bucks when on sale again.

The world doesn’t feel like it’s growing or evolving, nothing I do in my personal quest changes anything around me outside of it. LS is just an AP/loot grab. If there was no AP or loot, nobody would do the LS except for a few people looking to explore it. It’s also flawed because you cannot get the items that are now taken out of game, how is this expansion like when i cannot play the freakin previous parts? I cannot gain any of the neato temp items and all because I wasn’t a player until a while ago. That’s terrible design.

Other than that you’re spot on. Tho I hate how the game pretty much forces you to craft to kingdom come to get certain things, mystic forge is fine but i shouldn’t need to get 500 crafting for an item for looks.

chemiclord.3978:

There are no superior numbers or additional content hidden behind a paywall, which is a staple of F2P games. You’re also not limited to how much you can play unless you toss out money.

Luckily it’s no more (not always at least), the time when F2P meant Cash Store or go home… Games like RIFT and Dragon Prophet (although with an engine almost unoptimized as GW2’s) are fully enjoyable without spending a dime, no less than GW2

If you’re comparing GW2 on par with RIFT… hey, I’m cool with that. I kinda liked RIFT (unfortunately none of the crowd I used to hang with did).

You forgot to add the trust thing from the manifesto.. NO MONTHLY FEES!

GW2 has some of the most solid presentation I’ve ever seen in an MMO, and one of the best I’ve seen for games as a whole. The graphics is top-notch, the animations are incredible, combat is satisfying and fun to play, and the personal story is loaded with promise. And yeah, no monthly fee is a big plus, though I’d argue that they try to “make up” for it…

Regarding “heart quests”: The only thing considered ‘revolutionary’ about them is that you don’t have to talk to the quest giver – at all – to complete the quest. Can’t say that this is a trend I want RPGs to go down, since I should want to care about the quest.

Earning credit for the quest before you’ve started it isn’t new either, just new for MMOs.

chemiclord.3978:

If you’re comparing GW2 on par with RIFT… hey, I’m cool with that. I kinda liked RIFT (unfortunately none of the crowd I used to hang with did).

Actually, if GW2 has half the content RIFT had at launch, ANet would probably never went full panic, and “gifting” us the awesome ascendant grindfest.

No monthly fees and can do 95% of the content with only exotics, seems good to me If you get bored, come back in a few months to check it out and if not, im not really losing anything

Scoobaniec.9561:

ProxyDamage.9826:

4 – Combat

One of the things I’ve always hated the most about traditional MMOs was the combat. It was boring, uninteresting, un-involving… Even the best of the best had the old feeling of sitting around trading kittenslaps seeing who was wearing the heaviest gloves to begin with. And it’s such an important part of the genre! It’s what you do for most of your gaming time (excluding sitting around idly in towns chatting)! Whenever someone mentions a new MMO to me, that’s always my first question: How’s the combat? Usually bad.

Sorry man but combat inst all that much different from other mmos.
Also like in every mmo, when it comes to pve it is dps the s.. out of it as fast as possible, noob rez system, dodge certain atacks but thats about it. Its still 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 key pressing and the combat for me is so boring that..well when i do world events i tag mob and go afk.

Pvp in this game is a complete mess too, just like in every game, its down to spam conditions, spam cc, spam invis, spam 1, pet zoo stacking and so on.

Try out my game in sig and u get the point of what real active combat means actually. Any party from gw that would want to burst down a boss will get wiped in matter of seconds.

Vindictus and MH combat are different from Gw2 combat, and frankly I prefer the latter.

Try High-level Fractals, Organized tPvP or WvW roaming against Vabbi or other roaming servers and then let’s see your “skill”

@proxy
Anet does a lot of things really well, but no one gets it right the first time. There’s always room for improvement. So, tell me why you think Ascendeds having higher stats than exotics is literally the worst that’s happened to this game. You don’t have to spend the time to get one. To me, it makes sense that ascended items have higher stats than exotics. Ascended just sounds better and higher up than exotic gear.
I’m not trying to argue here, but just explain why you think its bad that ascended items have higher stats than exotics.

Arthos Ravron.3796:

Scoobaniec.9561:

ProxyDamage.9826:

4 – Combat

One of the things I’ve always hated the most about traditional MMOs was the combat. It was boring, uninteresting, un-involving… Even the best of the best had the old feeling of sitting around trading kittenslaps seeing who was wearing the heaviest gloves to begin with. And it’s such an important part of the genre! It’s what you do for most of your gaming time (excluding sitting around idly in towns chatting)! Whenever someone mentions a new MMO to me, that’s always my first question: How’s the combat? Usually bad.

Sorry man but combat inst all that much different from other mmos.
Also like in every mmo, when it comes to pve it is dps the s.. out of it as fast as possible, noob rez system, dodge certain atacks but thats about it. Its still 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 key pressing and the combat for me is so boring that..well when i do world events i tag mob and go afk.

Pvp in this game is a complete mess too, just like in every game, its down to spam conditions, spam cc, spam invis, spam 1, pet zoo stacking and so on.

Try out my game in sig and u get the point of what real active combat means actually. Any party from gw that would want to burst down a boss will get wiped in matter of seconds.

Vindictus and MH combat are different from Gw2 combat, and frankly I prefer the latter.

Try High-level Fractals, Organized tPvP or WvW roaming against Vabbi or other roaming servers and then let’s see your “skill”

Ty for a good laugh sir. In fact if u dont know me yet – im a dueler. And i own ppl in duels on left and right just like the worms at beginning map in charr lands.

I also had done lv 50 fractals, all about dps dps and moar dps like everything else in this broken pve.

I also been playing on vabbi for a week and against vabbi for 2 weeks. I dindt noticed anyone skilled but ive seen many noobs but hey, try again. Thats said i actually dont playing this game anymore so i dont care.

Veni, vidi, vici. Thats how i can sum my experience about gw2.

Right now i am olny visiting forums from time to time hoping for better times that wont come.

Can TS tell me how many MMOs have you played? It sounds to me that you played only a few MMOs.

Personally, guild exist for many reasons and part of the reasons is social interactions. I like the competitiveness of open-world MMO because it give a sense of importance your guild and your guild mates are. It create opportunities to go beyond the superficial friendships, to real life friendships which is why there exist couples who were just game mates initially.

Yes, we have all played the game. We know of these things that were there from release day, they might even be the reason we still play.

Now tell me, what good decisions have they made since then? Aside from account magic find, frankly, none. And it keeps on going down hill.

There are still a heap of bugs (over a year old) associated with combat. Combat is the core of the game, fixing any bugs associated with it should always be #1 on the to do list. Sadly in GW2 the cash shop is #1.

WvW population is still a mess, despite players putting forth good ideas to help fix it, no work has been done on it.

They ignore the players requests and keep on adding things no one asked for or really wants. Still waiting on weapon dyes, skin lockers for limited time items and guild halls. Rangers are still a joke, and still require a 30 point trait just to be able to use some of their utilities, no other class requires a trait to use any of their utilities. Still have a lack of quality of life changes and UI improvements.

CMstorm.8679:

@proxy
Anet does a lot of things really well, but no one gets it right the first time. There’s always room for improvement. So, tell me why you think Ascendeds having higher stats than exotics is literally the worst that’s happened to this game. You don’t have to spend the time to get one. To me, it makes sense that ascended items have higher stats than exotics. Ascended just sounds better and higher up than exotic gear.
I’m not trying to argue here, but just explain why you think its bad that ascended items have higher stats than exotics.

Since you started playing GW2 after ascended gear was released, this is why.

Because it is a time gated gear treadmill, which was introduced after release, and the game was NOT supposed to have a gear treadmill.

The game was NOT released with ascended gear, and was never meant to introduce a new tier of gear (see manifesto, see players, see gw2 pre release interviews, see gw1), especially one that is so ridiculously long/hard to obtain.

All of this time gated ascended gear makes playing an alternate character undesirable, because they don’t have optimal gear, and if you want to get optimal gear for them, you have to wait a month or more, per gear set, per character, that is RIDICULOUS. It is impossible to gear all your characters out now. Even collecting a second set of gear stats is a chore, yes, a chore.

Combat, skill based? Maybe in SPVP, but in PVE it is DPS and stack.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

The game was NOT released with ascended gear, and was never meant to introduce a new tier of gear (see manifesto, see players, see gw2 pre release interviews, see gw1), especially one that is so ridiculously long/hard to obtain.

Why bring GW1 into this? It’s not remotely the same style of game, and at its inception was intended to be primarily PvP with PvE to just fill time.

And the release without Ascended as a tier meant things are more-or-less balanced so Exotic is all you really need.

All of this time gated ascended gear makes playing an alternate character undesirable, because they don’t have optimal gear, and if you want to get optimal gear for them, you have to wait a month or more, per gear set, per character, that is RIDICULOUS. It is impossible to gear all your characters out now. Even collecting a second set of gear stats is a chore, yes, a chore.

Again, you don’t even need to go grind to Ascended gear unless you’re after Agony Resistance for Fractals. Exotic is plenty good enough (and fairly easy to acquire), and even Rare is actually serviceable (and DEFINITELY easier to acquire).

But you know what GW2 is doing right, these days? Not throwing all their eggs into one part of the game (“For the foreseeable future we will only be doing content updates for WvW”).

Combat is far from skill based, i went from clever play into a max damage possible, select target spike burst n kill change target, easy job.
GW2 is press buton to win.

digiowl.9620:

Combat, skill based? Maybe in SPVP, but in PVE it is DPS and stack.

Even in PvP it’s stack > aoe/stun > done. And preferably zerg. It’s a real shame. It lacks all the elements for a competitive game (should have gone for a combat system like Skyrim/assassin’s creed, where you have to actually aim at enemies, couldn’t stack etc.).

Sirendor.1394:

digiowl.9620:

Combat, skill based? Maybe in SPVP, but in PVE it is DPS and stack.

Even in PvP it’s stack > aoe/stun > done. And preferably zerg. It’s a real shame. It lacks all the elements for a competitive game (should have gone for a combat system like Skyrim/assassin’s creed, where you have to actually aim at enemies, couldn’t stack etc.).

GW2 does have a “real” skill based combat, try playing as gnades/bomb engineer.

On-topic:
- Transmutable armors and dyes you can apply on its different portions impressed me.
- No down-time (no need of potions to recover health and mana/energy required to use skills)

Things they did right IMO

• Heart based quest system
• Graphics, Environment, World Design
• Crafting materials harvested on a per person basis
• Gear power curve
• Unique classes with some ideas I haven’t seen before from an MMO
• No downtime. That was a good one the above poster thought of. Food being for stat bonuses only was a good change.

Guild Wars 2 was the first MMO I played that I could move around while casting. I don’t think I can go ever go back.

(I don’t know if GW2 is the first to do it, but just the first I experienced.)

Sorin.4310:

Guild Wars 2 was the first MMO I played that I could move around while casting. I don’t think I can go ever go back.

(I don’t know if GW2 is the first to do it, but just the first I experienced.)

It’s a move most games are making these days. Most abilities in Rift and WoW can be cast on the move now as well, I look for that trend to continue in most future game releases. GW2 definitely did it the best so far though.

I can’t think of anything but when I do I’ll add another reply.

Many people disagree with what you said, but I think most of us can instantly refer to those as “forum complainers” and move on.

GW2 is great. And the one single thing that’s great about it and you didn’t mention it, is that it STILL has room from improvement, given its great potential. And I’m pretty faithful in Anet, on giving us what we’re asking for. (better PvP modes and balance, more rewarding WvW, all the stuff that has been said in the respective forums over and over again, for months now.)

A lot of things have been done right when the game was released. The combat flows well, there’s no competition for items in dungeons, lots of events and people to help thanks to dynamic leveling, and the list goes on

Bringing more content to the game is an excellent point. Even though it seems rushed sometimes, when things are made right, well… I just can’t describe how I enjoy playing the game

And there’s no p2w. Buying gem items won’t make you stronger, or more this, more that. I really like that

There’s still room for improvements, so I hope they hear the players a bit more and make better decisions

I disagree with a few of the specific points here, but agree with the overall sentiment. So rather than thread-crap by refuting what I disagree with, I’ll just focus on what I like personally.

1.) The Art. The people responsible for building this world absolutely knocked it out of the ballpark. Every inch of Tyria that we’re allowed to see is gorgeous.

2.) Leveling options. I can run dungeons. I can do hearts. I can complete maps. I can craft. I can work on my personal story. I can WvW. I can chase events. I can team. I can solo. I can never leave a city, if I feel like it.

I’ve got 16 characters, and every one of them has found their own path up. I doubt I’d have started a 2nd character if the exact same trajectory was expected for all of them.

3.) Good spread of character options. I’ve got enough diversity available that even with two to four of each race and two of each class, each character stands out in terms of playstyle from the others.

4.) They stuck to their position about the Trinity. Right now, Berserkering up is the “one true path”, but the fact that they haven’t caved on that one final promise means there’s still some future hope for an innovative, diverse playing field.