Guild Wars 2

What kinds of things do you miss from GW, that you would like to see in GW 2?

A guild-mate and I were discussing some of the things we missed from Guild Wars 1, and if implemented into GW 2 would improve or make the game more fun. A lot of these things build guild cohesion and player cooperation.

• Guild halls. Many of us used our halls for events, skirmishes and just as a plain convenience. Building a guild hall got a lot of players invested in build their hall.

• Boss weapon drops. Remember when groups would form up to hit particular dungeons or bosses to get unique weapons from their cold lifeless body? There’s no such thing as a froggy or Voltaic Spear run because none of the bosses drop unique weapons. My first boss green weapon drop was a Yakslapper, culled from the body of Wroth Yakslapper, and it was always a prized possession. Dang, we had a lot of fun hitting some of those dungeons and bosses over and over again.

• Weekend Events. It might be too early for weekend events but if you were working on goals these events got a lot of players involved in certain aspects of the game. Players in our guild and a lot of the player base would group up for these events and there was always A LOT of activity.

A lot that’s missing for us is the group aspect from GW1. GW 2 is starting to seem too much like a solo RPG game. Players don’t seem to have a lot of reason to play with other players other then dungeons, and dungeons are not exactly a funfest, nor do they give great rewards. These are just a few of the things we hope to see in GW 2 at some point.

I liked the boss drops too. Heck you would be lucky if a champion drops anything now.

However, I do believe they added boss drops a little bit later when they added surrows furnace. I could be wrong.

Easy to get BIS gear, easy as in a few coin could get you the best Stats..and fairly early in the game, Then you went with the game. Yes the Look was plain and drab but the stats were set…I actually quit the game and deinstalled due to this, if I wanted gear grind RNG praying would stick to WoW.

GW2 seems nothing but a lie and waste of the years I spent waiting on it and the fact they made me a liar to my friends when I told them best things about guild wars based on their manifesto.

Some of the things I miss…

Hunting down bosses for their Elite Skills and/or green items.
Heroes and Henchies.
Secondary Professions.
Petless Rangers.
Heroes and Henchies.
Ritualist profession.
GW wasn’t so <there’s not enough kittens in the world> stingy with loot.
Mesmer profession.
Yeah, the guild halls. How did that not make it into GW2?
Cantha – I have begun to suspect we will never see it in GW2.
Elona.
Getting more range from being on high ground.
Map traveling FREE to towns or outposts you’d been to previously.
Cantha.
Cantha, Cantha, Cantha.
And Cantha.

GvG and weekend events.

i didnt play a lot of GW1, but those were the things i remember the best

Alana.3268:

I liked the boss drops too. Heck you would be lucky if a champion drops anything now.

However, I do believe they added boss drops a little bit later when they added surrows furnace. I could be wrong.

Aw, come on. Most champions at least give you one useless blue weapon or armor piece. Makes it worth the 5 minutes it took to take em down, eh?

/Agreed with the posters who think the drops are much stingier in GW 2.

Another improvement would be better all-around armor and different types of armor skins. I got full sets of Zheds and Tahlkoras armors and the both look exactly the same! The stats were different but I didn’t know they looked exactly the same when I got them. Seems odd that so many pieces of armor look the exactly alike. Armors are a big deal.

This isn’t meant to be a gripefest thread, since I believe GW 2 is better then 1 in most respects, but these are just things we would like to see in GW 2 that made gw 1 so fun and better in some respects.

1.- More (a lot) more skills.
2.- Heroes (I love the huge conten that they bring: customization, builds etc).
3.- GvG (please!!)
4.- UW and FoW

first person view

I also miss guild halls and boss weapon drops

Elites. That’s mainly what I want from gw1, the whole elite thing from gw1 was fantastic. (Having elite carrying veterans in wvw would be nice too, not just in the pve world)

Anet could add it to the scavenger hunt mechanic wink, nudge

I still have hope that elites will end up becoming more integral to a build.

Also having my last 5 skills being totally flexible if I wanted 5 utilities with no heal or elite, that’d be fun (maybe a terrible idea, but interesting :P)

Layka.7465:

1.- More (a lot) more skills.
2.- Heroes (I love the huge conten that they bring: customization, builds etc).
3.- GvG (please!!)
4.- UW and FoW

I can’t figure out if I miss a lot of skills. People would come up with a few templates anyway and then everybody would use those same skills. Kind of seems like what’s the point of the others if they aren’t used at all.

Sorry if my english is not very good

Alana.3268:

I can’t figure out if I miss a lot of skills. People would come up with a few templates anyway and then everybody would use those same skills. Kind of seems like what’s the point of the others if they aren’t used at all.

This is not entirely true. The people use the “elite” builds (the strong metagame) in the final stage of the game, during 7 years of Gw1 I saw A LOT of different builds (either for PvE and PvP) . Now, in Gw2 we have the same builds and skills over and over and in fact all people use a similar builds.

Drops from NPC
Level 20
Elite armor venders.
Armor not having attribute stats.
Skills.
Unique Builds.
A story that was a bit more straight forward.
DISTRICTS!!!
Not being forced to take a pet. (Broken A.I. /rage)
RA, TA… JQ, FA, AB
Z Keys… (Only item I loved farming!)
Capes, Guild Halls, GVG…
Mesmers.

I could go on and on… Guild Wars 2 is a new game, it could get better, lol… I just wish they took things from Guild Wars 1 that everyone loved, and put it in Guild Wars 2…

5-10sec rupts, bows not sucking but most importantly build. In gw2 there’s not variety, in gw1 i was still making great builds after 5 years of play time. Their unswappable weapon skills system SUCK!

• Skill Hunting
• Skill Synergy and how Buffs and Debuffs would give additional effects to skills (e.g. Glowing Ice giving energy back if foe had a Water Hex). Made for interesting building. I know we got traits that increase damage based on conditions / states, but that’s a bit passive, tbh.
• Nic and Prof. Yakkington
• Dervish
• Exploration (as in rather than huge chunks of the map being uncovered when you go past a certain line, only a small area around you is)

Things I miss from GW1

Different factions you could get points with that in return unlocked specific faction based skills and attacks. Also unlocking faction based armor and weapons.

Combination of professions (duel Professions), having a warrior with the ability to use a necromancers blood magic was fun.

Capturing elite skills from boss enemies.

A better map system so you know what you have explored.

A lot more weapon/magic skills that allowed us to be creative and not use the usual cookie cutter builds that GW2 has.

Guild V Guild

First person

A camera that worked

Cinematic cutscenes that were done right, that werent trash like these terrible side by side cutscenes.

Guild Halls

Spectator Mode

Rankings for GvG and PVP.

Free map travel

Hard mode – GW2 could do this by having a normal and hard channel for each zone.

Xunlai Chest. In other words easy access to our bank from every safe zone in the game aka access from all small outpost and towns instead of forcing us to pay money to port to a city.

Boss fights had a little more depth due to the healer/tank/dps roles.

Ability to save templates for our skills/trait system. Also adding no cost to changing our skills/traits. This way from any safe zone (city, small outpost etc) (in PVE environment) we can click a template and instantly change our traits around to match the specific scenario. Would be great in GW2 sPVP so we can test new builds with a single click instead of having to change traits and skills all the time.

Heroes and Henchmen
Bosses not having an absurd amount of health (sometimes)

I miss my speed clears.

A group of assassin’s ninjaing around a dungeon or a mixed team in FoWSC or UWSC.

Comparatively speaking a GW2 dungeon walk feels so slow…. I literally find myself nodding off as I can do a lot with my guardian with little concentration.

In GW1 u had to Ebon jump up the line or you would get left behind and possibly taken down by mobs in dungeons.

As a terra in FoWSC or UWSC you had a singular job that if you failed, broke down the entire run. If you wanted to be a more team player that was filled as well where you could play support/utility roles.

There’s just not that level of intensity or concentration required when I walk around GW2.

MISSIONS. Storylines that forced you to play with 7 other people. I can’t stand going through the subpar story of GW2 completely by myself. Sure I know you can party with other people, but it’s just not the same cause it’s almost worthless to do it.

And on that note, even though near the end it kinda killed PUGing, heroes/henchmen. Nothing worse than wanting to do a story-mode dungeon (which, imo, are all way better stories than the personal story, and I really hope they ditch the whole PS thing in the expansion) and not having anyone want to run it with you cause it’s not explorable. Give me a few henchmen so I can enjoy the story!

I miss all the bosses hiding throughout the world who carried elites to capture and dropped unique weapons (greens). They were a huge investment of time for avid collectors, and gave a great sense of plundering adventure.

I also miss secondary professions. The horizontal progression secondary profs opened up made it possible to create PvE content that required hunting down skills to create the right build to handle a specific boss.

I will have to agree with alot of people on that i miss hunting down bosses that had a chance of giving unique loot.

I just finished a 30 min long Karka farming run and noticed A-Net has nerfed the Karka shells drop rate again… I’m so tired of that every drop feels so random.

So all in all i miss certain creatures dropping certain items.

Just for reference here’s a list of things mentioned so far in this thread that weren’t in GW1 at launch (I’m pretty sure none were added in the first 4 months either). You never know, give it 7 years and these things, or a better version, might be in GW2 as well.

(My comments are in italics and in brackets.)

Boss weapon drops.
Weekend Events.
Easy to get BIS gear, easy as in a few coin could get you the best Stats..and fairly early in the game, Then you went with the game. (Depends how you define easy and early in the game. In Prophecies you had to wait until you got to Droknar’s Forge, about 3/4 of the way through the campain to get it.)
Heroes.
Ritualist profession.
Cantha.
Elona.
More (a lot) more skills. (Most professions actually have more skills now than they did when GW1 launched.)
Armor not having attribute stats.
JQ, FA, AB.
Z Keys.
Nic and Prof. Yakkington.
Dervish.
Different factions you could get points with that in return unlocked specific faction based skills and attacks. Also unlocking faction based armor and weapons.
Cinematic cutscenes that were done right, that werent trash like these terrible side by side cutscenes. (See if you can find the original versions of the Proph ones on Youtube sometime.)
Hard mode.
Ability to save templates for our skills/trait system. Also adding no cost to changing our skills/traits. (I forget how exactly they did it but you used to be able to change your attributes outside of towns but were limited in how often/how many times in total you could do it.)
Speed Clears.

If you have the time it’s pretty interesting to look through the game updates archive on the GW Wiki. There’s a lot of things that were added or changed after launch that it’s hard to imagine the game being without now.

BZTaco.9578:

MISSIONS. Storylines that forced you to play with 7 other people. I can’t stand going through the subpar story of GW2 completely by myself. Sure I know you can party with other people, but it’s just not the same cause it’s almost worthless to do it.

Yeah, missions built cohesion and I miss some of that. I really, really miss heroes, although I don’t know how they would work in gw2. Heroes were fun to mess around with.

Probably said before, but these are easily my tops.

1. Skill Hunting: Awesome. Loved hunting for my elite skills and such. Nothing like destroying a boss and “absorbing” his power and using it for yourself.

2. Paragons: I loved Paragons in Nightfall. Ran a great Motivation Paragon that was so much fun. Would love to see this profession brought back.

3. Guild Halls: Always a given. It’s nice to have a place for your guild to congregate and socialize at. Plus it’s great for hosting guild events as well.

4. No Cost to Travel: Traveling was free in GW1. You didn’t have to pay 3-5 silver just to go somewhere. It was all free! No idea why they decided to charge for it now.

5. Cutscenes: Cinematic cutscenes with actual things happening. You walking around and actually doing things. Stuff was going on. Not this face to face chit chat and that’s it. GW1 cutscenes told a story and got you immersed. These new chit chat cutscenes are basically the same as reading quest text, with voice over.

6. Templates: These were a lifesaver. No need to go respec your traits every time you wanted to change your build (yet another unnecessary gold sink). You just saved your build into your templates and loaded it whenever you felt like switching. No cost or anything. Convenience at it’s finest.

7. Costumes: A big thing I miss. In GW1, you could wear costumes over your armor. So that fancy outfit you paid money for, you could show it off whenever. And you had costume vendors so when you purchased an outfit, it was unlocked on your account. So every one of your characters could pick up a copy of it whenever they wanted. You didn’t have to pay for another one. They charge the same price for costumes in GW2 that they did in GW1, but it is a rip off compared to GW1.

There is many other things that would fit in this list, but I’ll tone it down for now. But those are my top ones mainly.

Galie Gray and Froggy

I just remembered.
Another thing I miss is certain quests rewarding new skills.
You could save some skill points by searching for those quests instead of buying the skills.

Vanquishing.

The fact that I enjoyed it surprised me at first. Originally I was just doing it for the title, drops and the points towards other titles and I thought I’d find it extremely frustrating but I actually got really into it and felt a bit dissapointed when I finally got Legendary Vanquisher (and got all the EOTN ones).

And incidentally that’s another one that wasn’t in the game at launch. And one I doubt we’ll get in this game since they’d have to make instanced copies of every single map.

Danikat.8537:

Just for reference here’s a list of things mentioned so far in this thread that weren’t in GW1 at launch (I’m pretty sure none were added in the first 4 months either). You never know, give it 7 years and these things, or a better version, might be in GW2 as well.

First, the OP was not saying “GW2 will never be like GW, I’m quitting!” The OP wanted to know what people missed, so that ANet might consider putting them in. It isn’t a GW2 bash thread.

That list of things were concepts that were developed over the years based upon player feedback. These are things players still want. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Easy to get BIS gear… (Depends how you define easy and early in the game. In Prophecies you had to wait until you got to Droknar’s Forge, about 3/4 of the way through the campain to get it.)

Not exactly true, I usually got max armor when I got to the desert, before doing the ascension missions, from the collectors.

(And I do remember the attribute system. You could change your points, but could only change them again after getting a certain amount of xp. I remember I was told to go smiting for my first UW run, luckily we did enough quests in there so I could refund my points back to heals…)

Guild tools, its silly that these were not simply just ported to GW2.

Things I miss:

- The wide skill selection
- Skills not being tied to weapons
- Profession uniqueness
- The GW 1 Mesmer
- Heroes
- PVP Formats (I really miss Fort Aspenwood and I hope we get something like it at some point)
- Skill graphics/ sound effects
- Crystal Desert, Elona, Cantha (I’m sure we’ll get these eventually)
- Heroes
- Missions
- The Elite Skills (don’t care for this game’s elites)
- Heroes (I would seriously buy gems if I could get heroes)

I just miss the game overall. Yeah I could go back but I waited five + years for this one. I don’t hate GW 2 and I really hope it improves over time and they remedy a lot of the issues.

Meret.5943:

Danikat.8537:

Just for reference here’s a list of things mentioned so far in this thread that weren’t in GW1 at launch (I’m pretty sure none were added in the first 4 months either). You never know, give it 7 years and these things, or a better version, might be in GW2 as well.

First, the OP was not saying “GW2 will never be like GW, I’m quitting!” The OP wanted to know what people missed, so that ANet might consider putting them in. It isn’t a GW2 bash thread.

That list of things were concepts that were developed over the years based upon player feedback. These are things players still want. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Where did I, or the OP, say they were threatening to quit or bashing this game?

As I said in my post I just find it interesting how much GW1 changed over the years and how many of those new features became things players can’t imagine being without. I started just after Factions came out and after I’d been playing for a year or so I came across the update archive and started reading through it, I was really surprised at some of the things they added.

I’m pretty sure the majority of people don’t spend their time reading archives of old updates, so I thought I’d share the revelation.

It’s especially interesting when I compare it to how people talk about most MMOs (I can’t compare it to personal experience because I haven’t played any others since UO 10 or so years ago). To hear people talk most games start off good but very buggy, get fixed and then go downhill with every update/expansion, whereas most people seem to really like the stuff they added to GW1. (Although I remember a fair amount of complaining along the way, especially when they changed skills.)

Edit: But at the same time I’m sure some people will see this as a “ways GW2 is worse than GW1” thread and my post could serve as a reminder that these aren’t fundamental things that were always a part of the game which they then threw away, and that if they added it once they could do it again.

My bad, Danikat, I’ve seen so many posts that claim “GW didn’t stay the same for 7 years so how can we possibly expect any better from GW2” that I got a little irritated and didn’t realize you were actually merely posting as an fyi.

Has to be more than 1 game mode for sPvP.

Everything thats mentioned already but mostly I miss arenanet the most. Arenanet has changed drastically on things they should’ve kept and didn’t change on things they had to change on (for instance account termination support whichis still a total joke) their philosophy Changed from making players happy and providing them a fun game to play into trying to earn as much money as possible out of a b2p game and offering the players a not even close to finished game. It feels like im playing in the alpha stage. And frustrating them every time with their promises which they will undoubtedly break again. Please bring back the old Arenanet, the caring Arenanet. The Arenanet I can be proud of and could brag about to my friends but now I’m just ashamed if I’d do that

what i miss most about gw1 is ability to choose skills instead of 4 bad and 1 auto attack.

Weapon skill choices / customization of builds
Guild v Guild pvp with observe and in game rankings
Guild halls
Weapon drops from dungeons to use/sell
Titles you can scroll mouse n see on players and yourself
Weekend Events

Love gw2 tho

longevity… there i said it.

Here is what I miss from GW1

Skill, build and fighting related :
- The huge skill diversity and number
- Secondary professions
- Skills independant from weapons
- The ability to change attribute points at will for free and to save templates
- Interrupt skills
- Seeing what skill the foes are using
- Elite skill hunting
- Elite skills feeling elite
- Rangers without pets

PVE related :
- Boss drops
- Actual drops from monsters
- Elite zones like FoW or Urgoz
- Bigger groups

UI related :
- Point and clic to move my character
- First person view
- Moving and resizing every piece of the IU at will
- Changing the order of ALL the skills in my bar and still having the number corresponding to their place in the bar
- Not having a “works for everything” key. I hate it when I want to pick up a drop or rez a player and the game opens a chat window or try to rez a stupid NPC

Holiday related:
- Free hats at all the holidays events
- Wintersday gifts that drop nice stuff like candy canes instead of trash
- Halloween event based on fun and not about how many gory/scary stories can the staff think of
- A real epic madking says !

Last but not least armors for female warrior that allows you to look like a female instead of a keg. Please.

-Skill and build diversity.
-Optimal gear for different builds is easily acquirable, even with runes of superior health. In GW2, you need a new set of exotic equipment to use a different build, and it’s going to get worse with ascended gear.
-Zaishen quests and Hard Mode GREATLY expanding the end game variety.
-Endgame bosses that require indivudally crafted builds rather than just having everyone stack survivability gear and chip away at its health.

Unfortunately I don’t see much that Anet can do to bring back these features as it conflicts with the design direction taken by GW2. What I do hope Anet does is expand the possibilities for emergent gameplay in WvW with the February updates, because it’s the only thing keeping me playing.

Tombs, man that was fun.

Districts
Guild Halls
Guild Capes
Capturing Skills from bosses
Missions
Quests
Hard Mode
Ritualists
Cantha
Dervishes
Elona
Alliance System
Being able to see the last time someone logged on in the guild
More Emotes
Rearranging Skills
Having a HUGE variety of skills
Being able to customize EVERYTHING on the UI
Festival Hat Makers/ Costume Makers
Auto Following party members or NPCs
Enemies stop being targeted after they die
The screen going funky when drunk
Titles
Free map travel
Free attribute retraining
Secondary Proffessions

Skill caps
100+skills per class
Petless ranger
Dual classes
Amazing Stories
Weapons that were all the same stats
Armor Variation
Weapon Variations
World felt much bigger and grander
Guild capes
Guild halls
No loot restrictions
Casual game play
The six gods meant something
Awesome events that were free
teamwork and henchmen
Bosses felt like Bosses..
No Required Dungeons, they were just fun..
Targeting worked.

Terras.

I know they are a big reason the game stopped being played originally intended, and also one of the biggest reasons balance was a nightmare. But it’s honestly some of the most fun I’ve ever had in any game.

There are so many thing that I miss, I still consider gw1 as best MMO i have ever played and now when i’m comparing pvp aspects of gw1 and the sequel I just want to sit somewhere in the dark and cry. Gw1 was so… it was… so… you know like… I’m not saying gw2 is a bad game, but gw1 was… it was so… :sob:

The easy to attain BiS gear (and the stat plateau it entailed) and the knowledge that the level cap would never increase.

Those two made the game such a unique and amazing experience to me… one that will be difficult to attain in any other game. It was a step from the mold that all these other cookie cutter MMOs follow (including GW2): chasing bigger numbers for the sake of having them. It single handedly managed to prove wrong all the nay-sayers who swear up and down that the only way to keep people playing an MMO is to have a gear grind.

It’s hard to believe that same company produced this game. 0_o

Not to say GW2 is a bad game in its own right- it is one of the better gear grinders out there. Just not my cup of tea. I’ll have to wait for the sequel to Guild Wars 1 to come out

Tolmos.8395:

It’s hard to believe that same company produced this game. 0_o

Not to say GW2 is a bad game in its own right- it is one of the better gear grinders out there. Just not my cup of tea. I’ll have to wait for the sequel to Guild Wars 1 to come out

Yeah not sure why this game is called guildwars 2. There isn’t even any GvG right now and the PvP content is terrible. They should have called it Tyria Online instead or World of Tyria…. at least that would be an honest name.

Danikat.8537:

If you have the time it’s pretty interesting to look through the game updates archive on the GW Wiki. There’s a lot of things that were added or changed after launch that it’s hard to imagine the game being without now.

It’s worth highlighting this point. Many things people would like may very well be implemented down the track.

I miss heroes/henchmen/mercs, guild halls, doing vanquishing, solo running dugeons (Frostmaw HM was always fun!), I miss xyz-Way builds, I miss Jora & Gwen as my War heroes, GW1 Necro’s & Monks, but mostly I MISS MY RITUALIST!

I miss building my own skill bar, and I miss heal/prot monks & ritualists, because I miss FA…

The option to simply click “reconnect” when losing connection, and that little dot in the corner to show you your ping, are also things that I miss

I miss FoW the most. I really loved the mad realm, because it captured the feeling of the realms of the gods.

Also elite capping. That was the core of the game for me, the real end game wasn’t perfect gear but rather versatility.