Guild Wars 2

Hey guys! I was thinking about what this game did right and how it lost flare over time. Just a bit of background, I have almost 4k hours in this game and I’ve been playing since mid 2014. I have experience in most areas of the game, specializing in pvp.

PvE:

I don’t play this one much other than when I needed a legendary from HoT, but back when I started the game it was really fun unlocking weapon skills by using the weapon in the world. Like…. I remember it wasn’t locked behind level progression, I would just use it enough and the skill would unlock itself.

Moreover, I don’t think they made an improvement with the way you acquired new utilities, it really took away a lot of the wow factor for newer players having to go all the way to level 11 ( I think) to unlock a new utility skill.

^^^^Those two changes killed the enjoyment for me when I had just picked up the game.

I also wish Anet had done more with the core dungeons. There was no reason to play them after you had all the titles (besides gold, at which point it was a grind), they were just there. The gold you got from it was minuscule when compared to things like AB or DS after HoT came out. After that they were abandoned except for newer players wanting to experience some of the harder content.

WvW:

I loved this one, I really did. Before HoT came out when there were automatic upgrades I would spend whole nights soloing the bottom half of a BL with my minionmancer and upgrading everything to full ( and going broke in the process). It felt really rewarding to see a tower with 700 supply and think, I did that, all by myself. Now I know that wvw isnt a solo mode but that was one of the things I loved about it, doing something meant for a whole server with just one person.

For those of y’all who have been around a while, do y’all remember the 2015 april fools joke? Where we all ran around with our arms out making airplane noises? Best joke ever haha. It was even better when there were 20+ of us angry airplane wannabes in WvW charging an enemy zerg. That really established a strong sense of community, like you would actually hang out with those people irl and have a good old laugh over it with a cup of coffee. Server linking destroyed that sense of community for me I think. Everyone became unfamiliar, commanders had to regain rep every week, pugs had to decide who to follow, and it was a disaster. I know that it had good intentions, so I can’t get mad at it, but I just wonder how many more of those great memories I would’ve had if it didn’t happen.

I don’t expect the majority of the community to read this one.

PvP:

As someone who spent most of his hours here, I feel a huge letdown from when I first started. I think I had a scepter / pistol + greatsword power mesmer that got wrecked by every 1v1 I came across. That didn’t matter, I was having fun because I had a unique playstyle. Then the June 23rd patch came across and I could just feel the amount of passive play increase because the fun was diminishing rapidly.

Then HoT came out and everything was a mess. Too many graphic effects were present, for one. I mean, look at the WTS videos from

Beijing(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1xGvbYnmbo)

compared to WTS Burbank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6I8J8n3YZg)

Every fight in Beijing was WAY less cluttered than in Burbank, and that made things easier to read and gameplay more rewarding.

The amount of builds with a high reward low risk are ridiculous, mainly in the form of thieves. D/D condi evade spam, Vault spam, are way too easy to play (I have played both of them and have almost 3k games on thief). Also included in the list are DH trapper, Mesmer with a moa on a 72 second cooldown (not counting alacrity), and druid with a pet doing 90% of their damage. It amazes me that these have not been changed and it really disheartens me when I lose to something even though I have to time everything perfectly.

Anyways, I just needed to get this out there even though I know with a 99.99% certainty that a dev won’t read this.

Since this is not a real discussion but more a subjective personal statement, I think this game is great because of the Asura.

Yeah. Excelsior.

Topher.5631:

PvE:

I don’t play this one much other than when I needed a legendary from HoT, but back when I started the game it was really fun unlocking weapon skills by using the weapon in the world. Like…. I remember it wasn’t locked behind level progression, I would just use it enough and the skill would unlock itself.

Moreover, I don’t think they made an improvement with the way you acquired new utilities, it really took away a lot of the wow factor for newer players having to go all the way to level 11 ( I think) to unlock a new utility skill.

^^^^Those two changes killed the enjoyment for me when I had just picked up the game.

These two sentiments are probably the ones I agree with most. There was a more organic feel to the game when it was first released. It felt like I was actually progressing, rather than having a mysterious giant hand (or floating dialog, rather) opening doors for me along the way.

Was it harder? Yeah, sure, but it was INTUITIVE. Once you realized how things worked, it actually made a lot of sense and felt natural. “Of course I learn how to use a weapon by using it!” I told myself. Because it’s obvious.

And it actually made it really fun to try out weapons, too. I remember equipping a sword I found from a drop and jumping into an event (back when Plains of Ashford wasn’t a dead-zone) and learning the new skills as I went. It was actually very exciting and made it feel like my character was actually figuring things out as I went.

The new leveling mechanics have honestly made me greatly dislike leveling up characters now. Forcing my mesmer along was an absolute chore, and very frustrating to hit weird plateaus of power and have things artificially gated because I was “too inexperienced” or whatever to do things I remember figuring out before Level 3 back in the day (because I jumped in a lake and OH KITTEN FISH HAVE TEETH).

TL;DR: I miss the old leveling and skill unlock systems. They felt unique and more in touch with what Guild Wars 2 was all about at the start — a game that was our story and our journey towards greatness, whatever that might be.

GW2 is my first MMO. A friend showed me the game, and I declared that if I can be an awesome catbeast in fun combat – how could I not play this game? It drew me in with it’s individualized stories – letting me make choices about my character and his lore (even if that doesn’t ultimately matter in the long term). I liked the exploration, and the slow burn to learn the mechanics and try new things.

I found an inclusive guild around level 50, and made real life buds who happened to be guildies in my area. The community at large has been non-toxic and generally helpful (and the game mechanics encourage that).

I was driven from the game for a while by the poor design decisions in the LW1 story. The story elements offered boring events that didn’t really shake up the map or gameplay. I was running out of things to do, and I couldn’t get a kitten precursor to drop from the mystic toilet for my legendary (the last thing I needed). Then around Halloween, PvE story content started being gated by a necessity to play PvP minigames (which resulted in PvE players going into the game and refusing to play – nobody was happy). I threw up my hands and stopped playing.

I’m back now and pretty happy with a lot of the changes. The game seems more active and alive with the megaservers. I have goals to work toward again.

Also charr continue to be the most awesome of things.

going by my incomplete memory of the forums history of problems with the game

pve
bot farm trains
not enough end game content
dungeon elitists

wvw
aoe cap
no gvg option
zergs rewarded small teams punished
karma trains burning through doors
zerg and bandwagon servers
guild groups ruining zergs enjoyment
guild groups ruining my gamemode anet dev
ppt vs fights
GWEN or bust
zoomhack, speedhack and glitchers
nightcappers
that funny time mes fall trait did boatloads of damage
stealth and thieves
combo fields overwriting
siege/supply trolls and wp tappers
too much stab and boon spam
not enough stab, tons more boon spam
revs
necros

pvp
everyone op but me
nobody care bout my problems
double class teams
2/3/4 man teams vs full teams in teamq
soloq premades
dhuumfire
celestial and tanky amulets
everyone op but me
hot
matchmaking broke pls fix
dragonhunter traps
match fixing

my personal opinion
pve too easy, why no one like necro qq
wvw aoe cap (I was for it at the time), no gvg
pvp spectator/team stack abuse in hotjoin (never got competitive)

I like how PvE is just a series of complaints. XD

Mid 2014 was this game’s peak for me, no lie. Here’s what I loved about the game back then:

1) FREEDOM – Max level your characters when and how you want. Hearts and exploring, Crafting, Dungeon swapping. Just about everything gave exp.

2) Frequent Armour skin updates – I really, really, really looked forward to the quarterly addition of armour skins. Spent loads of time farming various content for transmutation crystals (remember them?) and gold to convert to gems and buy a new set. Then a bunch more time trying to piece together the perfect mix-and-match look.

3) Dungeons. I never cared about challenge at all, and was happy to just hop into instanced with random strangers with a reasonable expectation of beating it in 20 minutes or less. Met some truly awesome people and spent hours every day I logged in doing the daily dungeon tour. I think of all the changes, I miss dungeon running the most. The new direction for instanced PVE is a little too niche and not ‘meaty’ enough for my tastes.

Having just got back into the game, I totally agree with your thoughts on PvE (and the thoughts in the thread in general). I loved progressing along weapons even though it was done fairly soon, and I loved dungeons and just exploring. Really do wish the emphasis on exploring and wandering around was put back into the game.

I remember right around release a lot of talk from the developers was about how they didn’t really wanna focus on endgame too much, and that GW2 was as much about the journey as the destination. I’m willing to believe that that approach was found to not make much money, and certainly everyone will eventually get 9x characters to max level and then not want to play anymore… but I liked the idea that I’d get a character to 80, do the endgame content for a while, then take a break and level up some other character in brand new zones. I wish that felt like the emphasis in design but it simply doesn’t. I’m lucky now that I get to level up characters with friends who started the game again with me, cause if I didn’t have someone to level with I don’t know that I’d have any reason to play the game (maybe try getting good at PvP).

GW2 is a dead game, what’s the point if Anet dont care about their game?
There is nothing we can do about it when the devs has given up.
I’m done with this kitten game.

What made this game great was the large amount of brand new content in three different game modes, coupled with constant rapid story updates mixed with new festivals, all provided at an eventually unsustainable rate. We had so much stuff to try in beautiful settings that there was something for everyone and most of it worked correctly or was fixed or adjusted.

When there is simply more content than a player can do and be done, players tend to find the content they enjoy and spend most or all of their game time doing that content, whether it be one thing or many. The game however has moved away from “play what you like” to “play it all or be denied”.

I personally believe that this is a big part of what a lot of players are struggling with. It’s not hard to motivate players to try new content. Once they have though, it’s natural to judge what things we like best. Now, it’s much harder to motivate those players to go back and spend the time they can spend on the game doing their second favorite content or least favorite content, or wherever it falls in their “list”.

I don’t expect constant rapid new content. It’s not sustainable. I’d much rather see time spent fixing one thing and adding new smaller content to each Festival as it comes along. Fix one dungeon and gauge the result. Back off on a few of the issues that require moving to a different game mode and see if it increases or reduces movement. I’d also suggest trying to find ways to make content much more difficult to zerg through so that it lasts long enough for players to find others to play it with. Finally, I believe there are a lot of smart players here and a small section of the game that allowed players to actually create a very small map with their own restricted content, that others could try and rate, could generate idea’s that vastly prolong the game and generate considerable income.