Guild Wars 2

I’ve played gw1 then gw2 and it’s been good. Hell it’s been great. I’ve done and loved everything. Recently somethings happened with me and this game however, I started to become frustrated with the game or rather what has happened to the game from one simple realization. The initial design concept of gw2 has been thrown out the window. Whether or not you believed it did or didn’t work, it was what the game was initially built on and slowly has been removed. It wasn’t with HoT that this happened (although this was a big jump), but rather with additions it was slowly pulled out. I listened to the gw2 manifesto again and all of it has been destroyed with one unchangeable thing, the art.

“We don’t want our player’s to grind to have to do fun stuff.”
Anyone that’s done HoT knows this isn’t true at all. While I’m not opposed to the grind, HoT is one hell of a grind. I probably did Dragon’s Stand two dozen times just to get a mastery to progress the story. There’s also the issue of ascended gear being needed for raids, as the dev’s had also said. Something that either costs a ton or takes a long time to create. This is in itself contradicting this philosophy. The grind isn’t new however, as legendaries have shown us, and this wasn’t unexpected so let’s proceed.

“We want the combat to be fun and engaging”
While this varies from person to person, if you’ve recently played pvp or wvw or raids even, this one speaks for it self. Spending an hour wailing on a brick wall for an hour in the hopes it dies, while it does nothing to you is the current state of all of these. In pvp no one dies because that’s the meta, wvw same issue. Pve will always have this issue because once one person solves the problem, it doesn’t take long till everyone does. This could be solved by creating a complicated AI that changes randomly to situations with a plethora of solutions, like say a boss that gets more aggressive while your in combat but resets the anger when it cant see you, so stealth could finally be used in pve. Just spit balling.

“We don’t want a quest where it’s just text saying what’s going on, we want you to see and experience it”
Okay, I know it’s not formally in the game, but all collections in HoT are just this exact thing. I don’t mind this because the precourser system was terrible before this, but again it’s another small aggravation and another direct contradiction to the initial design. That’s it for the video, but I remembered a lot more of what was said that has cause larger issues.

“you’ll never make an item that is a throwaway item”
Bloodstone bricks, enough said.

“we’re not going to turn around now and say we changed our minds and will be selling experience potions and scrolls”
While what was being referred to was the gem store, these exact things have been added to the game. Masteries kinda undid this, but also xp boosts can be bought in the gem store.

This old thing
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1078544-GW2-official-Blogpost-about-the-Holy-Trinity-must-read (couldn’t find the original quote)
I’m sure you all remember anet saying there wouldn’t be a holy trinity in gw2 but if you’ve done a raid, then you know all to well that the trinity is back and strong. Certain classes are favoured far more than others for each roll, so as time goes on this is just going to get worse.

Special mention- leagues
These have been done so poorly, it’s mind blowing. Here are some basic issues, ignoring the obvious balance problem.
1. Lose of pip(s) when you have someone on your team dc, regardless of win or loss.
2. Win mutiple pips when you bring someone of lower rank with you.
3. Win a pip when you lose to a superior team.
4. No surrender option.
5. Doesn’t show tiers and parties at the start of the match.

“Legendary armor will be a reward in raids”
I know this is premature, but we have yet to even see it. This is one I know they’ll add but I’m just salty. I just want to know what it looks like, I probably won’t even get it. I’d like to know what’s going on with this. I thought we were getting this with spirit vale.

The design of the game that made me and so many others love the game seems to be gone. I understand that a game requires a lot to survive the 3-4 years it has gone on, but by going against the core idea of the game is not the way. GW1 survived the time it did through the simple method of a growing world. I bought all the expansions, I regretted nothing. The new maps helped a million in gw2, but there have been far fewer released in the past years than in gw1. I know graphics is an issue with new game development time and HoT was gorgeous but there wasn’t much in it. They also made changes to things in the games lore, which is just confusing to me, like glint’s origin.

A lot of this changes can be rectified without getting rid of the good things brought by the new content. Many players have posted amazing solutions, and other issues, in the forums too. Sadly there has been a widespread silence from the devs, especially in regards to the pvp section of the game, which they should be reminded that they are sinking a lot of money into. With all of what has happened and what hasn’t, I’m left with a single question for the developers: What Happened? Do you not care about the state of your game? It’s in shambles right now, and I don’t want it to be this way.

It seems to be an MMO law that, given sufficient time, every MMO becomes like every other MMO, regardless of what it set out to be. This is why I generally dread expansions, rather than cheer for them.

[I’d say that HoT is one of the best expansions I’ve bought because it did the usual ‘introduce a bunch of MMO-homogenous stuff that I don’t like’ but at least didn’t trash most of the core game into the bargain as many do… I guess it’ll be the next expansion that does that….]

Reality happened, now they just need to make more content and remove downed state from pvp

Yeah, its just time to move on, once you’ve realized all this. Lots of better things to play out there.

Me personally, the business model that ANet has for GW2 just didn’t have any value for me. Once you make a realization like that, you realize you can find better things to spend your time and money on.

It seemed very odd to me that GW2 was doing so well until they felt the need to do a total 180 on the target audience for their newly developed content.

Whether or not you agree with the mentality of raids, leagues, and their validity of there presence and the direction they are taking the game. It is undeniable that it is effecting alot of sub-communities and players will to continue to be invested in the game very negatively.

I think Anet is trying to do much at once to satisfy to many audiences at once and is really appeasing nobody.

Arena Net backtracked on almost everything said.

It can not be justified, some might try but it is plain to see that over they years they broke their word.

AsurasRCute.4136:

It seems to be an MMO law that, given sufficient time, every MMO becomes like every other MMO, regardless of what it set out to be. This is why I generally dread expansions, rather than cheer for them.

[I’d say that HoT is one of the best expansions I’ve bought because it did the usual ‘introduce a bunch of MMO-homogenous stuff that I don’t like’ but at least didn’t trash most of the core game into the bargain as many do… I guess it’ll be the next expansion that does that….]

This is exactly what I fear given the trend. I loved HoT (balance aside) but it hints at a terrifying trend, that they’ll just change the game to make a small amount more

Hooglese.4860:

While I’m not opposed to the grind, HoT is one hell of a grind. I probably did Dragon’s Stand two dozen times just to get a mastery to progress the story.

For comparison, I had most masteries (leyline gliding and the 3rd tier of everything else) unlocked by playing normally and before I even got to Dragon’s Stand, which was about 10 days after launch. I however did all gold medal adventures -1 and legitimately explored each zone, earning most achievements without even looking at what was available.