Guild Wars 2

I think we’ll start seeing some new content once they finish ironing out most of the bugs in the game. I know that’s more of a priority for them right now. There are still plenty of things to do. The best advice is don’t rush through it. Take time to actually watch the Vistas.

Arsenal.2601:

Keep in my this game has a major built in advantage: scaling. New content can be built covering levels 2 on up which players even with maxed out characters can explore and enjoy. That’s no small innovation there, even if it is not “end game” as defined by other games.

Further: I’ve gotten three games worth of enjoyment for the 60 or 70 dollars I’ve paid. That’s fantastic. I don’t need to justify a monthly subscription fee which doesn’t even exist. For me … I put in a certain amount of money, got more than that money’s worth back. Simple consumer math, the rest is white noise.

Scaling has its good and bad points. Right now, scaling is not balanced – cost (in time, travel, etc.) is not really worth the reward – I’m doing the same work because I’m scaled down, but not getting the same relative rewards (xp, gold doesn’t scale well or at all). For example, If I’m a lvl 80 scaled to a lvl 5 and given 40c for a heart reward, I should only pay the 10-12 copper to travel around the map not 1-3s. I should either be getting 3+ silver as a reward or the travel costs should be scaled down. Anet has the right idea…it just needs to be tweaked.

The Risk vs Reward in dungeons is also an issue – dying repeatedly in a dungeon (because, it is just part of the game…) should not reward me with 5 tokens, a couple of trash blues that vendor for a few silver, and a few copper off a boss kill. When you need 1300-2000 tokens for a skin set, doing the same dungeon (sure different paths, same dungeon) 80-100 times or more with little reward while you’re actually doing the dungeon seems…just off. Unless you REALLY REALLY want that skin set, most people will just not bother.

Now you could argue a game like WoW is the same when it comes to dungeons…trash blues off of bosses and a few silver. But the risk is extremely low, each dungeon rewards the same currency, and I would not have to even remotely run a dungeon 80-100 times to get a set of gear – because the same currency also can be obtained from a variety of other sources. Different game, not unique dungeon sets, yadda yadda but I know someone is going to go there so I will just do it now.

The potential for GW2 to be great is there… it’s going to take some time and heavy tweaks in certain cases.