Guild Wars 2

My beefs with GW2 are many, but nit picky in most cases I’ll admit.

Unless you already have a level 80 that has run a few dungeons and don’t mind blowing wads of cash on transmutation stones, low level characters are going to be wearing the same looking garbage for at least 30-40 levels. They could have done with armor what they did with weapons and have had regional themed armors drop instead of the generic looking $#!%, but they didn’t. Most of the aesthetics of the game are locked behind dungeons (so I won’t even be spending gems on transmutation stones until after some effort in something I don’t enjoy anyway…)

This game’s group play is horrendous. I mean, at first I thought the idea of killing the Trinity was a good idea, but then it just turns into a “spam the hell out of it” exercise. Of course, maybe if anything lasted for longer than 2 seconds I could actually combo things together.

Controls themselves feel kitten. This game wants to be an action combat MMO but feels too timid to leave its tab-targetting roots. If they would just put in a little game play option to “always mouselook” so that I don’t have to hold the right mouse button down all the kitten time I could rebind my first skill and second skills to left click and right click respectively and the game would be 1271% more enjoyable for it. I haven’t ONCE needed to left click on anything in game since everything else works just fine. And no, I won’t download and install a mod – this is something Arena.net should do.

Of course, this doesn’t change that the enemies still act like standard fare tab-targetting mooks. But then, TERA and Wildstar’s enemies weren’t exactly raising the bar either. Control scheme takes precedence to enemy interactivity, though I’d still like to see enemies feel like they’re meant for action combat.

Another thing. Moving around and fighting feels like skating on glass. Attacks lack that certain crunch, the impact, like my character is actually hitting something. Instead I see that sword swing and my character might as well be striking air – with yet another generic, steel sword.

There’s also the issue of particle overload. No other game I’ve played seems to lose the enemy behind all of the particles.

The regional flavor weapons need to drop far more often. My Charr is running around in his lands, most of the sword drops better be of the region’s Charr theme, all rusted and put together piecemeal with scraps with serrated edges, not generic, unmemorable steel broadswords.

Still no body sliders, among other things. Selecting templates is a concept from 1999. Please upgrade character customization already.

And oh yeah, I’d REALLY like to skip the tutorial quest newly created characters go through already. It’s a real PITA.

I imagined dynamic events would actually change things in the world. Like failing an event meant the battle lines between forces would actually move. Instead, they’re just public events that happen at intervals and really, nothing happens either way.

The concept of the Living Story feels more like their masochistic attempt to keep to the idea of the world ever changing that they made dynamic events sound like would do.

Finally, WHY LEVELING!? Like… just why? If you’re going to revolutionize anything about MMO’s, get rid of the concept of leveling. It has been and always will be “get to max, THEN play the game” because everyone knows nothing is worth really spending time doing until this stupid little number is no longer growing.

I’m trying to justify purchasing HoT, but I’ve recently seen more design decisions, however minor, that suggest to me that the future only holds more pants-on-head stupidly disappointing decisions that should have been easy, reminding me that it’s best to let someone lead development on an MMO then fire them before they can f*** it up somehow. Every. F***ing. Game.

Just recently came back and kind of enjoying myself, but in the end, I’m just following hearts, doing inconsequential events that don’t really change anything about the world, and watching as my character replaces their $#!%%& looking hatchet and chainmail with the same $#!%%& looking hatchet and chainmail. You know, I’d pay a sub if it meant I could dress up my character any way I wanted without having to invest in stones. That alone would make the experience more enjoyable. I’d rather eat stones to unlock equipment appearances without actually having to obtain said equipment.

Goodness, I hope Everquest Next is everything the developers claim they are making it out to be. It’s [formerly SOE] though… so I’m not holding my breath.

EDIT: Aaaaaand I just found the game does have “action camera.” Only it has to be toggled via setting a keybind. This has to be the least intuitive way of discovering this function, but at least the game play has improved 1271%.

The pseudo-SJW “crusade” as seen in GW2 won’t likely go away, so if that’s a deal breaker, you would do well playing something else.

(I personally don’t believe in such a term-as pejoratively used by many people anyway.)

What’s really bad for the game is that because of how LS1 was done, lots of playable content was lost, never to be seen again, but dynamic, changing events like that have been wiped out as well, so the old is gone, and there’s nothing new like it to keep the experience going.

HoT definitely isn’t what I was expecting.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I expected GW1 with major mmo bling. Ingame VOIP option. A guild interface and bank controls far more advanced than what we got. Configurable UI. Particle sliders. Actual dynamic events rather than infinitely repeatable events. QoL features that are in games released 10+ years ago. I expected the Manifesto to be an actual “thing”.

I didn’t expect the content would be increasingly driven by NES nostalgia. I didn’t expect the story writing to be driven by emulating TV programs, terrible common tropes and social justice warriors.. I did expect the Lore of GW to be respected. I didn’t expect the personal story would be so glaringly bad. I really did not expect the super server merge and loss of all server community. I did not foresee “zerging” would be the preferred play. It’s always been an insult, to me.

I play here when I am taking breaks from GW or EQ2. I will not buy HoT. I do not like platforming, mario or LoZ, so, no point. I wont commit to anymore purchases until they quit floundering around and decide what they want to be.

Haven’t uninstalled cause I love my Norn and the environment is so pretty, when not blocked by a 600 lb winged, glowing GokuCharr or a blinding wall of particle effects. Waiting for a better MMO with better standards of immersion and an actual design destination. Wings.. really. Et Tu, GW2?

I am so with you on every aspect.
I remember there was also this thing about Elementalists being stronger on certain plains of the earth such as when standing in water, they gained a buff while creating fire fonts and standing on it they gained buffs for that- I was excited about that
along with being a Norn – I fell in love with Jora and was really hoping that our spirit animals were more personal and meaningful like how it was expressed in Gw1:Eotn- but another let down. I love my Norn too, but I’ll always feel like a big human with no special qualities other than the fact I based her to to look like Julia Voth
Side note, hair had better motion such as it would fall over your shoulder and move more dynamically – but due to tearing and stretching that was removed.

I wanted an epic journey that would reward me with knowledge of lore and with lots of legendary loot!(by that I dont neccessarily mean legendaries, just items that reminded me of my journey so to speak.) I wanted (and recieved) grand vistas and explorable zones to make me feel like I was a part of the world. I wanted player race and class diversity that would be valid everywhere I went (got that too). I wanted real time combat that was intelligent and reactive. I wanted a continuing saga so that I would never have to repeat and grind the same things over and over again. I wanted a place to call home, for me and my guild (1 out of 2 aint bad, ill take it…) I wanted epic PVE battles that took hundreds of players to storm castles, wizards towers and deep caves. last but not least, Achievements! I wanted lots and lots of these (I am currently disatisfied with the amount we have, and want alot more.) I love having goals to achieve and watch progress on(I hate RNG, its a developement gimmick to artificially create content that doesnt exist, and to waste players time to boost the company’s ratings…)

THAT…. is what I was wanting.

Star Ace.5207:

The pseudo-SJW “crusade” as seen in GW2 won’t likely go away, so if that’s a deal breaker, you would do well playing something else.

Considering I was infracted for simply stating my personal view of traditional marriage, it is clear you need to be careful what opinions you state ingame and in the forum. If you aren’t instep with the game’s political and social agenda, be very quiet if you decide to play this game. This can be clearly seen by the changes in the playerbase over the last year.

Agree with many of the posters here, and only played as long as I did because of the memory of GW1. I loved the lore and story of GW1 which they then proceeded to rip apart in the personal and living stories. I want the developers and writers of GW1 back. I’m tired of simplistic and juvenile storytelling. The dialogue in particular is cringeworthy. What they did to ectos, tormented and zodiac weapon acquisition shows that they really don’t understand the original lore or don’t care. I remember playing through Guild Wars Beyond- both War in Kryta and Winds of Change which was supposed to tie in GW1 with GW2 and thought that this would be great since the lore would be respected and advanced in the sequel. I was so wrong. Now that I started playing TESO a few months ago it was so refreshing to play through and hear some very good storytelling and lore and actually be interested in what happens in the quest.

I miss the builds and complexity of combat in the original, how each role was important. If they were going to replace the trinity, I don’t understand why they thought making everything DPS was a good idea. They made everything sooo easy. Don’t remember how many times I wiped in DoA and UW before getting it right. And when a group wiped, we had to start over from the beginning. GW1 combat wasn’t perfect and there were meta builds that most people used but I prefer it to the current simplistic system.

And finally, this has so much truth…

Firelysm.4967:

And what i miss the most. And it’s sad and true, I miss GW1 developers, that did put in a lot more community contact, i miss the days when they came on forum and in game, and chat with us for hours, i miss days when our feedback did matter a lot more then today. If i think about all the CDI that we wrote and none of this was ever checked, is sad deep in my soul to see how every single company changes over the years, it truly makes me sad. I see the effort that they make, but if you don’t talk with us, it hurts a lot.

I want(ed) it to be the great game I know Arena-Net could make, and so far I am pleased.

GW2 at release was a game that facinated me. It wasn’t perfect however it was a great foundation for amazing things to come and I had faith in Anet to be delivering in the future.

The development of GW2 was on the other hand something that did disappoint me. Sure, the game did change quite alot since releaes and alot of things were added, however, overall, I do believe that Anet could have done much better. When I looked at the bease game, I believed that Anet was capable of creating much better content on top of their base game. However, we kinda ended up in a cycle of constant system-changes in which GW2 starting to lose its’ identity and it seemed like Anet didn’t really know which direction they should take to.

Three years afterwards, Anet releases HoT with the promise, that enough is enough and they won’t be changing systems anymore. Now it was time for Anet to build on the world of Tyria and focus on content. It is great to hear that, however, when I think about it, I feel a bit dsiappointed that 3 years went by (we did get alot of content during these years but I feel like the game could have developed more if it wasn’t for Anet feeling lost at times and changing systems constantly to satisfy complaining players) and it is only now that Anet have laid the foundation that that they are going to build on. I just think that alot of times was wasted in which GW2 didn’t know its’ own identity. It is 100% great that it seems Anet have more clear plans now, however, all MMORPGs have a lifespan and 3 years is a long time that we could have used in a better way.

I wanted it to be like Eye of the North: Great hard level content which can be done solo because of parties of heroes.

Guildwars 2 at release actually had (almost)everything I wanted. It had a huge game world. There was and still is hundreds of different things to do spread across hundreds of hours. Even after finishing the main story(which for the most part was great!), I would stumble onto a new zone that had its own things to do. There was a lot of different game play options, and I can still get mileage out of my Ranger.

What I didn’t like was the way Anet handled the lore and story after the game ended. Pretty much everything after the original game seems like it was shoehorned in in one way or another (and the interpretations by the resident armchair lore masters in the lore forums that shoehorn even more things together because a complete story wasn’t told doesn’t really help either). Instead of making even a single attempt to advance any of the story-lines created during the original game, Anet instead created an entirely new storyline and shoved everything in there to make it all seem connected like a bad conspiracy theory that turned out to be true. The Question would be proud of you Anet.

You somehow managed to make Nightmare Court work with Krait work with Inquest work with Dredge work with Flame Legion work with a Retcon Prodigy that mary sued the ever loving crap out of Tyria, turning what could have been a great story that added onto the dozens of already great stories set in the Guildwars universe into bad serialized writing for a canceled Syfy drama for being too wishy washy to ever be considered a serious attempt at fictional story telling.

Hopefully, now that Heart of Thorns is over, Anet can tie up any loose ends with their precious leafy elves…I mean Sylvari, and actually get back to telling an interesting story that involves more than just them.

Love it.

Outside the name and lore you can’t really compare GW1 and GW2. I had heaps of issues when GW2 dropped but they have lessened over time as I realized what vastly different games they are. I was just hungover from 7-8 years of GW1 :P

My only real issues in regards to comparing now is the lack of skill and build variation. I get why that happened but I still miss it and this game gets boring pretty quickly in that regard, even with elite spec. They finally added a decent guild chat system and guild halls so I can cross that off my list finally. Woot!!

The only thing I’m really concerned about moving forward is the gear grind and relevance of a stat based hierarchy starting to sneak into the game. If it becomes too prevalent and relevant to have the top tier gear to play large parts of the game I’ll probably retire, just not my thing and GW1 was fine without it.

Same with class segregation and effectiveness. For a game with less build options this game has some major balancing issues to sort out if all classes are to be equally welcomed to certain content. It’s becoming pretty wammo and monk focused in that regard, not quite the trinity mind you, but certain classes are definitely preferred and favored over others for more and more content which is akin to the same thing for those classes that don’t fit into the cookie cutter. Go away and re-roll.

They need to keep a lid on that imo as not everyone has fully geared out 80’s of every class ready to go, I certainly don’t.

Oh yeah…and the jumpy jumpy jumpy, glitched out graphics, fall, start again soz puzzles.

Can’t friggin stand them.

Still loving the game overall but future trends do concern me, more so as this is really the only MMORPG I have ever invested serious time into outside GW1 and CoH. I’m really hoping it doesn’t morph into a clone of what I detest in other games in the genre.

Cautiously optimistic.

Oh and hit me up OP if your playing some GW1, would love to dust off my Sin and his Sabway crew :P

I wanted a game where the in-game economy and the real world economy were kept separate.

I did not get that game.

a fun, challenging, teamwork oriented game that is equally rewarding for completing difficult challenges

certainly not a game that is constantly being lead by a marketing strategy in which the player base is expected to be a part of the newest update available to said game. if players are happy with the standard content of the game and choose not to participate they will face the daunting prospects of little support or innovations for the portions of the game that they actually enjoy playing up to and nerfing the rewards for said content under the guise of keeping the economy of the game in check. I am not just referring to HOT this goes back to LS Seasons 1&2 the most recent developments have just been the worst part of it.

There have been plenty of players over the years that have politely requested new dungeons and more difficult end game content as opposed to grinding out cheesey boring stories that are tied to gemshop outfits and weapons and eventually over priced expansions.

The gameplay mechanics and skills are great for the most part, apparel customization is top notch, PVE can be really fun under the right conditions, SPvP still needs work but is fun to play, and wvw used to be awesome but i got tired of playing against the same two servers for over a year.

There’s a good game structure under all this marketed BS, mediocre difficulty and poor rewards system we have to deal with.

The title of this post got me thinking about my introduction to this game, which may be a little different from most….

This is my first mmo. I didn’t get the appeal of mmos for a long time. Before I was introduced to this I was a single-player gamer, when I had time to play. At times, I would imagine what my ideal game would be like. I saw myself wandering across strange lands, through snowy peaks and desert plains. I wanted ancient ruins to explore, filled with strange and dangerous traps. There would be other people, doing unpredictably human things, as they do in life. Sometimes I’d work with others, sometimes I’d be alone. There would be exploration, mystery, combat, treasure, puzzles. I had some imagery in my head of what it would all look like. I didn’t specifically expect this game, or any, to fit those expectations.

One day long ago, when I was exploring the Shiverpeaks for the first time, I suddenly stopped and looked around. The sun was shining down on the snow. I was walking alone through a white expanse, with majestic mountains around me and some strange creatures in the distance. I had a strange feeling of deja vu. The similarity to what I imagined was eerie. Later still, I explored ancient trap-filled ruins, met some good people and had other adventures. To my surprise, gw2 gave me what I wanted again and again.

I’m not blind to its faults, and I’ve discussed some of them in these forums. I’m acutely aware that my perspective is limited, having no experience of other mmo’s to compare this to. But on the question of ‘what did I want gw2 to be?’ – all I can say is, what I personally wanted it to be.. is what it is. There’s enough for me, even in the core game alone. I still haven’t tried everything. Maybe in time I’ll have enough experience to look back on this and answer differently. But at least for now, it’s good enough for me.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I expected GW1 with major mmo bling.

On this part I agree. I was hoping for a telling of the world of Guild Wars 1, some 250 years later.

We are still missing 2/3rds of the core world… so they missed the boat on that one, and big. We’re missing Elona and Kaening. And because of how GW1 was done, as 3 stand alone games – these are core places in the lore.

Instead we got things like the Aetherblades and those sky people that… really… make no sense in the lore. It is quite obvious that the people making Guild Wars 2 have very little connection left to the masterminds that brought us Guild Wars 1. If they are physically the same people – something pretty drastic happened in their creative lives over the past decade.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

and social justice warriors..

Your Klan rally is over there —-—→

Seriously I have to wonder, why do bigots so love to use catchphrases that announce themselves all over the internet in places that are NOT radical right wing political websites or hate groups?

Keep that stupidity out please, this is not a political forum.

Timbersword.9014:

My beefs with GW2 are many, but nit picky in most cases I’ll admit.

Unless you already have a level 80 that has run a few dungeons and don’t mind blowing wads of cash on transmutation stones, low level characters are going to be wearing the same looking garbage for at least 30-40 levels. They could have done with armor what they did with weapons and have had regional themed armors drop instead of the generic looking $#!%, but they didn’t.

Actually they do have themed leveling armor, but most people ignore it. The karma vendors from the low level heart completion – I use some of that gear on my 80s.

And the situation on this point, while I don’t like it either because cosmetics should be something with game coin in my opinion, could be a LOT worse. In FFXIV, you are not allowed to use the transmog system at all until you hit max level…

FFXIV has very limited body sliders, Wildstar has none – so the lack of them here is not all that dated. Its pretty common. Sure I’d like them, but your criticizing it from the wrong angle.

Kichwas.7152:

Seriously I have to wonder, why do bigots so love to use catchphrases that announce themselves all over the internet in places that are NOT radical right wing political websites or hate groups?

big·ot
?bi??t/
noun
a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.

Yeah I know quoting definitions is rather overdone but otherwise I fear you would miss the irony of what you just wrote. I suggest you let go of your hate and anger. It’s palpable.

I wanted it to be GW1 with updated graphics and story line 250 years later, that held true to their design manifesto and the original. Same super high build customization options (mostly thanks to two profession system), lots of varied objective PVP modes (GVG, Hall of Heroes/Heroes Ascent, Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood, Conquest, Capture Flag, Alliance Battle, WvW, etc… not the same modes but at least equal variety), variety of elite zone content, multiple continents to visit, etc. Some of this will come with time, hopefully sooner.

Timbersword.9014:

\
EDIT: Aaaaaand I just found the game does have “action camera.” Only it has to be toggled via setting a keybind. This has to be the least intuitive way of discovering this function, but at least the game play has improved 1271%.

Its alright but its still not as responsive, fluid, and flashy looking as the combat systems in TERA, Blade and Soul, Black Desert, and Vindictus. :/

If a Dev is reading this as I assume one probably is, can this PLEASE act as a call for you to carry out some work on the original gw? If anything the addition of new content, updates (PLEASE look at shadow form….), and/or server support would improve the entire guild wars brand, including guild wars 2. The players who still play and love gw1 and those who are new (some of whom have joined after playing gw2) would love for this to happen. If you released a new campaign, content, etc (not like “guild wars beyond”) but actual content I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Again, nokitten on guild wars 2, its a very different game, I just want a larger gw1 community.

If you agree please let anet know.