Guild Wars 2

Having been reminded by another thread: The costume/appearance tabs from LotRO and Rift, and the associated features (wardrobes, cosmetic costumes, etc.) I love GW2’s dye system (other than the character bound dyes) but the rest of the cosmetic options in this game are really weak.

From LOTRO:
Cosmetic system. I had several outfits I could switch to at any moment, really miss it.
Challenging dungeons with interesting mechanics
and most of all… My Lore-Master with its billion skills, a true jack of all trades that was best in nothing but could do truly anything, most versatile class I’ve ever played and I liked my role in raids so much, it wasn’t part of the trinity, still it was useful in so many ways. I rolled an ele looking for something similar but it’s not even nearly as awesome.

Chiara.9827:

From LOTRO:
Cosmetic system. I had several outfits I could switch to at any moment, really miss it.
Challenging dungeons with interesting mechanics
and most of all… My Lore-Master with its billion skills, a true jack of all trades that was best in nothing but could do truly anything, most versatile class I’ve ever played and I liked my role in raids so much, it wasn’t part of the trinity, still it was useful in so many ways. I rolled an ele looking for something similar but it’s not even nearly as awesome.

I had a lore master. It was a lot of fun!

I guess the feature I miss the most is being able to costumize my UI, even if it was through AddOns.

Look at the UI I had in WoW. That is my UI!
Even though I had to use an AddOn to make it it still made the game much more appealing to me.

LFG/dungeon finder tool

a customizable UI

social emotes (instruments, hugs, more dances!)

dye-ing weapons and additional armor

ability to wear one set of armor/clothing and use the stats from another

- Customizable UI
- Working combat logs & 3rd party parser
- Spells/abilities having different tiers: Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Adept, Master
- Collection quests
- Raids
- Global chat
- Housing
- Feign Death
- Contested mobs/resourses etc
- Mounts
- crafting deaths

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

I miss grit. Though Guild Wars 2 is a fun game…there’s nothing gritty about it. Cities are too clean. Characters are too clean cut. No one curses. No one looks awful. I know it sounds weird, but it’s more immersive for me to be in a game that is darker and feels real. See some garbage on the streets. See some ugly people, on ocassion. Guild Wars 2 is a bit too sanitized for my taste.

Very nice aesthetic observation. I was wondering what it was that put me off to many of the urban areas in this game. Having spent a great deal of my life in cities and having minored in medieval and renaissance studies, the “cities” in this game have all the cosmetic appeal of the city in Curious George. Great for a younger audience, not so great for compelling lore.

Even in Guild Wars 1…remember how Kaineng Center felt, when you were running through Budek Byway or Wajuun Bazaar. That felt more “real” to me.

SWG (pre-NGE) wasn’t a perfect game by any means, but player cities were cool. Not sure if there’s enough space in GW2 for it though.

The one feature I miss from other MMOs I have played is a group finder for dungeons.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

I miss grit. Though Guild Wars 2 is a fun game…there’s nothing gritty about it. Cities are too clean. Characters are too clean cut. No one curses. No one looks awful. I know it sounds weird, but it’s more immersive for me to be in a game that is darker and feels real. See some garbage on the streets. See some ugly people, on ocassion. Guild Wars 2 is a bit too sanitized for my taste.

Very nice aesthetic observation. I was wondering what it was that put me off to many of the urban areas in this game. Having spent a great deal of my life in cities and having minored in medieval and renaissance studies, the “cities” in this game have all the cosmetic appeal of the city in Curious George. Great for a younger audience, not so great for compelling lore.

One person’s escapism? MMO’s are escapism…not reality. There are plenty of dark games out there. I rather like the ambience here. Its light hearted with a definite tongue in cheek satyrical approach to the lore and storylines. The skritt crack me up.

There is enough ugliness in the real world. And plenty of current and upcoming games that will cater that playstyle.

Not to derail the thread however….I miss player housing and I miss my horse. Although, I think GW2’s instances are not really large enough for a mount.

Since we are discussing now some certain features I can as well give my comment.^^

I personally don’t think it’s to clean or somehow lifeless. If you look in Lions Arch those buildings from old wrecked ships or in some divinities reach back yards, where you have pigs and chicken running around, grass growing and so on. I don’t think that the overall impression is to “clean” to be credible. Rata Sum on the other hand, well what do you expect from a city full of little “robots” and geniuses. ^^

I would also have to say that I miss the trinity. I thought I wouldn’t, but I do. Right now GW2 dungeons feel very chaotic and loose. When I play for support I don’t really feel like I am supporting all that much, but I feel like I am doing less damage; without any way of being entirely sure. This means I also miss addons. I have no idea whether my trading off damage for support is meaningful. Am I bringing enough support to off-set the damage loss or is it as bland and meaningless as it feels? I’m not feeling cohesion in my groups and that’s really turned me off to the game. Sure high-end Fractal groups might have a better sense of role identity and teamwork, but running dungeons with an eclectic assortment of players, even other Guildies, feels “loose”. When I say “loose”, I mean that it appears to not matter much what role I play or even what build/stats I use as long I do SOMETHING. Not much in the game seems to really matter now that I think about it….

Sepreh.5924:

Torvic.8256:

Conversely, something I’d hoped that GW1 (and now GW2, for that matter) would use from WoW is the onscreen real-life clock in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. That way, I wouldn’t need to constantly look away from the screen to see what time it is in real life.

You can change the server time clock in the lower right hand corner on the minimap to be real-life time. Changed my life

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I just implemented it (it was previously set to off)… how did I ever miss that the option was available?

Interestingly, “Local Time” and “Server Time” seem to be the same for me. Are the GW2 servers on the U.S. West Coast?

Raf.1078:

One person’s escapism? MMO’s are escapism…not reality. There are plenty of dark games out there. I rather like the ambience here. Its light hearted with a definite tongue in cheek satyrical approach to the lore and storylines. The skritt crack me up.

There is enough ugliness in the real world. And plenty of current and upcoming games that will cater that playstyle.

Since I don’t want to derail this thread, I’ve made a new thread on the topic:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Grit-and-Realism-Your-Opinion/

Simple Quality of Life features…many of them. If I had to narrow it down to one:

-Ability to swap between gearsets\builds

Difficult PvE content.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Difficult PvE content.

Curious, which MMO has/had difficult content?

I’ll be honest, some of the places in Neverwinter are a pain…some of the bosses make you pull your head out, and there are many times when questing that you aggro a bit too many mobs and you probably will go down..happens a lot in fact.

None it’s better than F2P so enjoying it now :-)

I miss…

Real character customization. There is no reason town clothes had to be designed in such a way to not allow them to be used in combat.

Worthwhile itmes in the cash shop. There’s room for lockboxes and genuine items.

An easy way to find groups for group content.

No pressure to finish all the new content RIGHT NOW before it gets pulled out from under me.

Faith in the development team.

What I miss from other MMOs I’ve played:

Guild Wars
Customizable Skill Bars
Vanquishing (never thought I’d say that)
Regional Chests/Keys
Heroes and Henchmen
Cantha
Elona
Cloaks/Capes

Final Fantasy XI
Player Housing
Fishing
Gardening
Bards
Actual demand for player-crafted weapons and armor

World of Warcraft (only played to level 20)
The ability to sit in chairs
Reasons to visit taverns

cesmode.4257:

Curious, which MMO has/had difficult content?

Final Fantasy XI. Pre-nerfing of CoP content if you had access to Sea, you kitten well earned it.

Edit: Added cloaks/capes.

Guild Wars 2 is a fun game, but there’s a few small things I’d love to see to really push it into AMAZING territory for me:

Dueling
BGs (sPvP ain’t the same)
Rare mobs/notorious monsters (can drop rare items and/or collectible pets/mounts)
Separate costume menu/using costumes and GEM BOUGHT items in combat (this is a big one for me!)
Dual-spec
Customizable UI
Housing
Fishing
Permanent Content

I love new content as much as anyone but I really love the extra “features” when it comes to MMOs. It makes it stand out for me. If Arena Net was to add a few things from this list I’d be kitten happy. Lol.

DAoC – My favorite

Cloaks/Capes – This should be standard. It’s like buying a new car from a dealership and not getting AC. Who does that in this day and age?

Meaningful PvP/WvW/RvR – Relics. Realm abilities. Pretty self explanatory.

Trinity – While I applaud them for trying something different, this clearly doesn’t work. Some people like to tank and heal, more choices of things to do for people is never a bad thing.

Class Selection – DAoC really spoiled me on this, I had probably 20 alts and 7 50s by the time I quit. Once again, I don’t know where the less = more mentality started creeping into MMO’s, but fair enough from a balancing perspective.

Weapon graphics – It amazes me that I can think of 3 swords in DAoC off the top of my head that look better than pretty much anything in GW2. I don’t think this is a lack of good art so much as a lack of skins in general in this game. I had 4 bank tabs of unique glowy weapons in DAoC, from blue/orange/yellow flames to purple mist to green fog. It was freaking awesome, this game had the best weapons to date.

Better party/group/guild systems – Even this dinosaur had more tools for guilds and parties than GW2 does. GW2 REALLY REALLY needs to rework it’s entire grouping/dungeon etc. system, but I doubt the effort will be expended.

Race Selection – Pretty self explanatory, GW2 has nearly no variety, and Charr are not a good filler to me. The sylvari are pretty cool however.

Good topic, thanks for letting me remember all the things I missed :p

Looks modification costing only modest amounts of in-game currency. I can’t change the hair style or color of my female characters without it costing me gem store currency or around 5g now. 5g isn’t a modest amount of in-game currency for someone just PvEing (that means not speedrunning as a major activity or becoming a TP day trader).

My last MMO was City of Heroes where character customization at any time was considered by many one of it’s best innovative features.

My primary MMO of choice was the original Guild Wars. Things I miss include…

*Heroes
*Ranger spirits that were actually worth using
*The ritualist
*Guild Halls
*A complete lack of half-hearted, annoying, and personally offensive “stealth” just because rogue classes are “supposed” to have it
*The dual-profession system

the hability to buy more than 1 item from NPCs, like a shift+click or something

Housing/Guild Halls

From GW1 – four weapon sets. In GW2, we only have two at most. Though with Elementalist, it’s kinda cheating if you say you have four ‘weapon/element’ sets, haha… I also miss Heroes and Henchmen. With them, you feel like a “guild” even when playing alone. I really think GW2 could do with an AI partnet system similar to Phantasy Star Online 2, where instead of making AI replicas of your friends to use as party members, make AI replicas of your alternate characters would be better, and only have up to two joining at any one time. It could be tweaked so if any real people join your party, any AI partners are dismissed.

From City of Heroes – much much more diverse costume creation. Also the ability to move faster than run speed. And fly! 8-man, 16-man, and 24-man teams, I also miss too. It’s not just ‘guild’ stuff, the teams we had with incarnate task forces, we weren’t even in the same guilds, but we had the ability to mesh together perfectly with no problems. Also chat channels, the ability to make our own, and have them active without having to ‘represent’. Ingame ability to search for people to play with. Why does GW2 not have such a thing yet, and why is there a third party website which is doing what arenanet should have implemented either ingame or out of game if they don’t have the tech to do so? Larger AoE caps too – while City used to have no AoE caps, resulting in the ability for a fire tank to herd an entire map of enemies to one location and burn them all to death, even when nerfed, the AoE caps were sufficient enough to still feel powerful. Why on earth does a “shout” ability only affect five targets? I really think the AoE cap should be bumped up to 10 for certain skills.

Having No Stealth Class
Having No Favoritism of Classes; a.k.a The Golden Child

GW1

Skill system.
Heroes Ascent.
Hexes.
Skill system.
Enchantments.
Cantha.
Skills system.
8 Player parties.
Elite missions.
Skill system.
Elona.
Monks, Ritualists, Paragons, Dervishes.
Good Story.
Skill system.
Guild Halls.
Old Arena Net.
Skill system.
Team play.
Hard content.
Skill system.
No In Game Store.
Skill system.
Skill system.
Skill system.
Skill system.

My two previous main MMOs were The Matrix Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Both of which had freatures that GW2 could use.

MxO
A compelling storyline where RP and live player/developer interaction mattered. The live story GW2 seems to be moving towards does seem a step in the right direction but I will forever miss actually interecting with live versions of important character. Is it realy possible for a modern MMO to do this acceptably well? Sadly no. The costs and demands are a large part of what killed MxO in it’s early days and it never had the population that GW2 does even now. Even in it’s later stages, thoiugh, it was nice to feel that the character you developed both in terms of gear but also, well, character actually meant something to the story writ large.

LOTRO
The cosmetic system. Each character had tabs (2 to start with and more purchasble in the cash shop) tha you could fill with any sort of worn item (either proper gear or standard clothing). The outfits on these tabs would show instead of your actual gear, if you wanted them to of course. This system also included a wardrobe (also expandable via cash shop) specifcally for storing cosmetic versions of any worn item. This allowed for not only a much more diverse selection of character appearances in game but it also allowed for a more seamless way of having different visible armour sets for different uses. On the developer side, it also quite obviously allowed for much more moneization of features. Beyond the expansions to the outfit tabs and wardrobe space, players were much more inclined to spend in game time and real world money on cosmetic appearances. It was a win win.

Heroes from GW1. And swappable skills from GW1.

I played about 2500 hours total on GW1. 1500 before heroes were introduced, and another 1000 doing the same content over again with heroes just because they were so much fun to gear and set up builds with. Heroes were probably one of the most amazing features I’ve seen added to an MMO, and I’m sad to see it go.

I miss running Fissure of Woe and Tombs with 7 heros, those were my favorite places in gw1.

I miss musical emotes. Dancing is so boring without being able to make your friends “play” music to dance too.
/guitar
/flute
/drum
/violin

1 – Mob drops every kill or there abouts.
2 – Variety in Mob drops including rare collectables or items that can be used in other skills/game content.

3 – Game content that is not 100% combat related or revolved around combat.
4 – Player owned houses and other personal systems that can be customized to reflect your char/personality/playstyle.

5- Minigames both in single/group settings and also semi minigame systems that players can do between themselves anywhere in the world such as dueling, playing a game of cards or something (possibly gained from those rare drops as stated above – think Final Fantasy and some of their collectable game card minigames for example).

6 – Wealth building in other forms besides just cash. That being said say if you wanted to gather 1000’s of a certain crafting material (example ore, wood) you could do so and not be hindered by bank space. 1 game I used to play you could bank an unlimited amount of such items in a single bank storage slot. Players could have say 1 million iron ores if they wanted to and it was not uncommon. :P

7 – Simple currency system, if you have 100 gold pieces it is 100 gold pieces not 100 silver or some other label. Ditto with a million gold pieces that’s what it is not whatever “gold” equivalent it is here. Keeps things more simple for me to place value on items…

8 – Combat music that didn’t annoy the crap out of me so much so that I never turn the game music on now and thus miss out on the rest of the music which is good.

The list goes on but escapes my mind for now :P

- A seamless, open world
- Customizable UI

- Quests.
Yes, quests. The quests that led you through the zone while telling a story about it. I think that having quests through the zone along with all the dynamic events that happens would be an idea. Like for example you find yourself at a camp in the southern Fireheart Rise and you have some quests to help out and prepare yourself for the zone, while those events are happening every now and then as usual. Then you get the option to follow the quest line to the next outpost and so on while the quests are telling you about the zone and that things are getting more and more dire as further north you go. Then at the end of the line, you find yourself at the gates of Citadel of Flame and know that Baelfire is in there and you are needed to kick his butt for burning down the land. And as said, all along the road and such all these dynamic events are happening too to create a more living world.

Also small quests in cities would be interesting and just to give people something to do there. Talk to some NPC and find out he has lost his keys and you can choose to help him. Or help the friendly old lady to do some shopping for her or anything. They don’t even have to have exclamation marks over their heads. You could find out by paying attention and talking to them and they may tell you they need help with something and give you a personal little quest to help them out.

Diva.4706:

I like GW2, and how they tried something different, but for me, the one feature I sometimes miss, (especially for the harder content), is trinity. Some times I wish we just had a true tank + healer option. I played a healer before and it was always my favorite class. Oh how the old school days seem so bright

(Played MMOs for 14 years)

In PvE, definitely the trinity. So much so I’ve stopped doing dungeons in GW2. SWG, pre-CU, for crafting (best crafting system ever), and for RvR, Old Frontiers, of DAoC (was hoping WvW would have the same feel to it and that was the primary draw of GW2 for me).

From first couple years of eq1:
1) player run economy:
other than vendors for selling trash items, players ran the economy, buying and selling by trading between players. You got ripped off once in a while, but those who ripped you off got blacklisted and no one would trade with them.
2) longer levelling times. It was an achievement to get to level cap(months, and sometimes years for the casual player) not this hit level cap in 2 days thing we see now
3) death meant something—you died and had to retrieve your corpse or you lose your items. death also meant exp loss, you could lose your newly gained level, even.
4) Even friendly NPC’s could kill you. Hitting the “A” key while talking to your class trainer meant you got one shot.
5) KoS status—if you were the wrong race in the wrong city, the guards would attack you. You had grind faction (even though it was time consuming)to get them to be ok with you.
6) No flying, mounts, or instant ports (other than player ports)—you walked or ran everywhere. Certain classes could speed you up (can I get a SOW please?) to run to your destination. Wizard could port you to certain cities, also.
7) Rare mobs that dropped things you needed for quests or items: it was a pain in the butt, but if you wanted to do your epic quest, or get a coveted item (like jboots), you had to do it.
8) Fippy Darkpaw!

From DAOC (pre TOA)
1) player crafted items were as good and sometimes even better than drops. You could customize your gear for the stats you wanted mostly through player crafting. This gear was good for both pve and pvp.
2) Easy access to raid level content—players organized raids on dungeon bosses. My first DAOC raid was a Legion raid. I wasn’t even level cap and no one cared. After successful raids, the designated lootmaster would hold the loot, and lotto it off.
3) Duels—honed your skills and gave you a challenge
4) No communication with enemy players—couldn’t chat with em, or group with em. None of this friendly duel other realm stuff either. “If it’s red its dead!”
5) Guild alliance system
6) realm ranks and titles—you knew who the elite players were because you could see their realm title. They were more powerful than you as well, because of +1 skill point for each realm rank.
7) emain!

I preferred the DAOC system to the eq1. I had a life, so the time required to excel in eq1 was out of the question. But the pre TOA DAOC game was the best time I ever had gaming.

From City of Heroes:

An amazingly complex keybinding system that supported every key being rebound. Macros were the beginning of it, too: you could bind a key to load a new keybind file, changing keybinds on the fly. Alt-binds, ctrl-binds, shift-binds, literally everything you could do in-game through menus or clicks could be rebound to any key. Once you started digging into the keybind system, you could actually begin to program each key individually.

From any other MMO:
- Mounts.
- Duelling. Just because I liked duelling my sister, I never duelled anyone else (because I usually suck at PvP).
- A trade system for when 2 players want to trade something.
Edit: Oh yes and what someone above me said, a seamless open world.

From Luna Online:
- Multiple dance emotes.

From Aika Online:
- A pet that actually interacts with you, helps in battle, develops a personality based on how you treat it, that will grow up and is able to be dressed up with clothes and accessoires. By far the most fun pet system ever.

From Forsaken World:
- Fun instances that are not filled with stuff that wants to kill you, but it has minigames for you to complete instead. Examples are a jumping puzzle, a “simon says” game, and a math mini game.
- A LFG tool where you can click the dungeon you want to run, run off to do whatever you want until it finds a group for you. Then you can immediatly enter the dungeon from anywhere.
- Male characters being able to carry female characters.

Edit: Thought of another.

Aion:
- A housing system which you can decorate with carpets, wall paint, furniture and even own your own garden if you bought a house with a garden. The more expensive houses also had a banker NPC and whatnot.

from wow:
in-game lfg
and
playable dungeons.

LOTRO costume system is great as has been mentioned, outleveling weapons/armour in a incredibly short time is not a fond memory though.
Distant exp gain while in a group/party was a neat feature in Atlantica Online, don’t think it would work or is needed so much in this game though.
Seeing pets change as they gain exp is cool, would not mind seeing something like this.
Do not miss the trinity in any way.
Housing has never impressed me in any game, basically just a place to put stuff. So they create more stuff so you can put it in your house.

darkace.8925:

cesmode.4257:

Curious, which MMO has/had difficult content?

Final Fantasy XI. Pre-nerfing of CoP content if you had access to Sea, you kitten well earned it.

Edit: Added cloaks/capes.

I miss Dynamis (a.k.a. Die-namis). When people earned their Relics, that was a big accomplishment (waaaay bigger deal than Legendaries here, sadly). You had to know how to make money to pay for 2 Dynamis runs a week, had to have the leadership to lead a group of 18-64 people through runs (or have a team of leaders that could), and sometimes the dedication to stare the RNG gods in the face even through the wrong Attestation dropped 10 times in a row.

I liked how it was a team effort from having a good puller, having a team of coordinated blms, having a crack team to support the maintank.

I liked how it was a time-attack. You started with 1 hour or 30 minutes for the instance and you had to strategize on how to get to that next time checkpoint.

I’ll be lame and dig way back into my past.
From Maple Story:
Class System – I loved the idea of classes branching off into different paths. The thought that one Warrior was training to be a Dark Knight and another was on his way to becoming a Paladin was great.
Crusader Codex – Bestiaries are always great. They put something in games that has players running around and keeping them playing for hours on end.
Community Recognition – Everybody and their mother knew about Tiger, Fangblade, Korwyn, etc. The fact that Nexon actually publicly noted these players was great.
Cash Shop – The CS in MS was phenomenal in terms of what they had. There were great outfits to cover up your hideous armor, and amazing boosts that had effects that players actually wanted. There were sales going on constantly, and the MTS let players that didn’t want to use real money use Mesos instead.
Party Quests – The PQ system in MS was actually pretty awful in my opinion. However, there were lots of great ideas that made each PQ a little bit different than the last. And there were interesting puzzles and fun quirks to each of them.

As for any other MMO.. the biggest things I miss?
PTR – Come on, ANet. Do it already. You need help and your players want to help you, what’s the problem?
Patch Notes BEFORE Patch Day – Again. Come on, ANet. Do it already.

Diva.4706:

I like GW2, and how they tried something different, but for me, the one feature I sometimes miss, (especially for the harder content), is trinity. Some times I wish we just had a true tank + healer option. I played a healer before and it was always my favorite class. Oh how the old school days seem so bright

(Played MMOs for 14 years)

Healer for me. There are other mmo’s with the combat this one has, and they still manage to give us a more direct and highly valuable healing system that can directly repair the damage of most boss hits quickly. On here it’s like throwing level 1 dropplets of healing potions at everyone and everything is a fixed point AOE that everyone can jump out of when the bosses always (well 99% of the time) throw their DoT AOE right where the healing zone is so it’s useless too. Heck they still haven’t adapted the healing scores to actually improve healing on many of the abilities on my engineer, get a thousand healing bonus on my gear and boons, it only improves healing by 30 points per tick. Because that’s useful right? spssh. It’s no wonder everyone wants a Zerker in dungeons because the other builds are useless.

The only MMO I’ve played before (and quite a while ago at that) is Runescape, and I miss the quests from the game so much.
Some would have you infiltrating a penguin stronghold as a clockwork penguin in order to stop the evil penguin army from taking over the world while others would have you cure a cities plague before having you venture into an incredible dangerous underground passage, bypassing traps and solving devious puzzles in order to make your way into a hostile elven kingdom.
Fighting giant food monsters in an ethereal cookery plane as part of a Recipe for Disaster vs “Kill bandits/trolls/ettins/ghosts.” I know which I’d prefer.

Burnfall.9573:

Having No Stealth Class
Having No Favoritism of Classes; a.k.a The Golden Child

GW1

Right-Clicking to swivel my view NOT also making me lose my current target.

Dastion.3106:

Right-Clicking to swivel my view NOT also making me lose my current target.

I believe there is actually a check box somewhere to turn sticky targeting on in options on GW2. Not 100% though and I’m not in game atm.

In Runes of Magic, you could own “Mannequins” that you could use to decorate your living area. You can dress up these mannequins with any set of armor you own, and by interacting with the mannequin, you swap your armor with it.

Well i started with ultima online and i only miss the open world pvp ,pk all that.

It’s amazing to see how many people NOW, all of a sudden discover to have EVER hated trinity…

Anyway, i’d like to see, maybe not a classici trinity style, but good game mechanics that are not focused on only dps or autoattack a giant useless mob…

Oh, and the chance to actually EARN shiny skins and stuff…