Guild Wars 2

OK, the truth is I sometimes feel good, sometimes not so good about GW2. I’ve been reading the opinions on both sides and sympathise with a lot from both the ‘haters’ and the ‘fanboys’. But let me be clear about where I think the real negativity comes from:

It’s not that nothing about GW2 is enjoyable or worthwhile. It’s that it’s so easy to imagine massive potential improvements.

By that, I mean this kind of thing:

1) The crafting system. Just look at all the work that’s gone into it, all the potential for something deep and arresting. Look at what they were aiming at with the recipes. It’s easy to see how this could have worked out.

How it could have been
You pick a crafting profession. You spend ages testing different combinations, making odd, junky weapons, learning what things work well together, gradually getting better. Eventually, you know how to produce a variety of weapons with high stats and special effects. Players come to you to buy these weapons because they need them for specific instances, eg. a dungeon has fast critters in it, and you’ve created a bow that sacrifices power for a mean slow-down ability. You make lots of money selling this bow, which only you and other people who’ve picked that profession can create, and which took creativity and hard work to make.

How it is
You work out the ‘system’ with recipes after about a minute: two parts of a weapon plus one inscription. The rest is a grind. Everything you produce along the way is worthless, to be immediately sold to a vendor. No one wants it. The different effects are negligible. It’s all just to get to the stage of crafting your legendary.

2) Combat.

How it could have been
You have an array of weapons, spells and abilities. Different enemies require different tactics. Some you figure out quickly; others take a while. Bosses require you to specifically combine your abilities with someone else’s for particular special effects. By observing an enemy camp before attacking, you can plan a strategy to take them all out, but charging in recklessly will get you killed. Powerful weapons mean you can take out some enemies in a single, satisfying hit but only if you put the work in to position yourself, wear them down and create an opening.

How it is
You have an array of weapons, spells and abilities, but the effects they produce are short-lived, with little impact and make no discernible difference to the outcome of a battle. If enemies are difficult, it’s purely because (1) they have obscene amounts of health and wear your down, (2) they have moves that kill you in one hit, or (3) ten of their friends spawn out of nowhere right next to you, destroying all of the gameplay potential of planning a strategy or approach. Yes, you can have an elementalist lay down a firewall and a ranger fire arrows through it, but to what end? Fire, lightning, metal – all it ever does is chip away at a floating health bar or cause a five-second ‘condition’ whose effects you barely notice.

I could go on … but instead, I’ll just make this point: I don’t believe much of what we might have asked for would have required more work, just different work. I would have happily accepted a slightly smaller world, a smaller number of effects, abilities, cut scenes, heart quests – even less professions and crafts – in exchange for added depth and potential in the systems we do have.

Same could be said for pvp: it has potential, but it lacks diversity for example.

Also the game is a great social game, in terms of letting players work together.
But at the same time it often neglects solo players are having a hard time accomplashing much if truly no one else is around.
Any MMO should cater to solo play as well, this one does that rather limited, even when leveling.

The goal of avoiding grinding for gear, has led to the total emphasis on rare cosmetic rewards in everything (instances, pvp, events, crafting). These very skins end up being the biggest grind many have seen since EQ days (to generalise just a wee bit).

I can follow your point.
It’s not that the game is bad, it’s actually pretty good oin many aspects. But it does have a lot of unused potential, as well as a lot of missed opportunities.

There is the slim chance further expansions will better that, but the playerbase isn’t always patient.
Many avid defenders of the game should realise it’s in their own interest if the game keeps it’s large playerbase.

Crafting system is indeed awesome.
At first glance.
Then you find out it´s a huge chore to try craft your gear on level and it´s much easier (& maybe even cheaper) to just buy green and upward gear from the AH.
For the brief moments you fly by your gear´s level bracket.

Just giving us a “reforge feature” for soulbound gear, maybe for half the mats or less, would´ve gone a long way towards making crafting actually usable.

I actually don’t feel that I have a negative attitude in general towards GW2. I was a huge GW1 fan, and, although it may not seem like it, I love GW2. The only reason why I am so hard on GW2 is because I enjoy the game so much, so I talk about what I don’t like so the game can become that much better. Problems won’t be solved by praise.

For example: I absolutely hate CoD, not only as a game but also for everything it stands for in gaming. But I don’t waste my time carefully critiquing because I don’t care about it and it isn’t worth my time.

Tai Kratos.3247:

I actually don’t feel that I have a negative attitude in general towards GW2. I was a huge GW1 fan, and, although it may not seem like it, I love GW2. The only reason why I am so hard on GW2 is because I enjoy the game so much, so I talk about what I don’t like so the game can become that much better. Problems won’t be solved by praise.

For example: I absolutely hate CoD, not only as a game but also for everything it stands for in gaming. But I don’t waste my time carefully critiquing because I don’t care about it and it isn’t worth my time.

I find that a very respectable point of view, just adding this here so you wouldn’t think I’m all for negative feedback alone.

Tai Kratos”

The only reason why I am so hard on GW2 is because I enjoy the game so much, so I talk about what I don’t like so the game can become that much better. Problems won’t be solved by praise.

That’s exactly where I’m coming from. I’m keeping a GW2 ‘diary’ on my blog where I faithfully report about many of the things in the game that are excellent and appreciable, what is worthy of awe and respect.

But there are plenty of criticisms that, when levelled appropriately, could hopefully help the devs both dramatically improve aspects of this game and take big strides with any future games they make, and they’ve got more chance of being chewed over if we post them here than on our own blogs.

For the same reasons all other MMOs have a crowd of negative people in their forums.

I dont think anyone would buy the bow and an interesting crafting system becomes a grind in any game, the only way they artificially hamper it is to make the components rare ie put them in a raid or something like that..its always the same though..put x and y and special z into a pot and stir..there is nothing fantastic about it. Weapons outside of damage have no effects at all right now, so it seems to me you are talking about less of crafting and more weapon design.

Your combat system sounds too much like any generic MMO to me. I dont want there to be only one way to kill a boss, I always thought that was stupid. Id rather they give me a skill-swap and the chance to open up more weapon switches..that would be great diversity. Now what would be interesting, is a mechanic where certain combinations of traits opened up new skills or changed old ones. Like..maxing your crit and power line gives you a new powerful skill, maxing crit and traps gives your traps new conditions etc..

I dont want there to be only one way to kill a boss, I always thought that was stupid.

It would be. But that’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting a system where certain strategies work better than others. What we have now is a world where almost everything against any creature works just as well as anything else. There are very few occasions when you need to alter your tactics in any way whatsoever. The bad guys might as well all have the same model – they differ visually, but not in many other ways.

its always the same though..put x and y and special z into a pot and stir..there is nothing fantastic about it.

Maybe I just have a feverish imagination, but I can imagine a system which allows a huge variety of outcome without being more complex to build/approach. For one thing, you could have a system where certain combinations of materials improve certain stats of a weapon while weakening it in other areas – specialist bows that consistently weaken/cripple but deal little damage, or armour that has added protection but breaks more easily, or armour that deals damage to all melee attackers (via an electric shock) at the cost of protection.

Now what would be interesting, is a mechanic where certain combinations of traits opened up new skills or changed old ones. Like..maxing your crit and power line gives you a new powerful skill, maxing crit and traps gives your traps new conditions etc..

Yes. Well, there you go. That’s exactly what I mean – it’s very easy to look at GW2 and imagine far more interesting systems than the one we have. It’s a shame, but there it is.

Kinda agree with the crafting system…it’s just a money dump until you can craft exos etc…but hey…it’s only two months…there’s still a lot of time to improve it…but still it’s made so that everyone can craft their own stuff easilly…the matter about special effects etc is fixed by the runes etc…you just have to choose them…your main complain is after all “too easy for me and i can’t make loads of money out of it” …but it’s impossibile to make money thinking you’re just “few” crafter…since the TP is worldwide…
About the combat…your whole sentence is…idk..can’t see the point around it…your main problem is that the boss will kill you because they have too much life or can oneshot you ?.. that the effects skills produce are short timed ? i can perma blind someone with my bombs for 5 sec , confuse him and burn him…all of this while placing healing areas around during all the fight, give regen and spam healing bombs , when i’m fighting a boss generally i’m the one tanking it while keeping all the melee fighters around me alive ( ppl nagging about how melee are mistreated in this game) …while i do all of this i combo with other ranged with my bombs etc giving perma burn to the boss and more…those one-shot skill you mentioned are so that one can’t just mindlessly tank a boss…i need to dodge them too properly ( generally they’re always easy predictable area skills) …that’s why they put dodges, aegis and blocks in the game….never seen a boss that spawn ten adds unless you’re with a big group…but until all ppl will just keep thinking “wiiii…imma glass cannonz! so fun ! me strong ! me explode at first hit !” dying from 10 adds will be all you get…glass cannon is a viable option but the hardest to play in the game…
About pvp…it’s just as you said…still under development…pvp in gw1 at start was good like this one…but lacked variety…and, as time passed, now it’s full of different types of pvp.
We just need patience, and suggest new ideas in the “Suggestion” thread they put; since from beta Anet always listened a lot to his community, trying to find a viable way to put togheter a game that a lot of ppl wanted…
I’m not an hardcore fan etc …i criticize too the game sometimes…but i always remember that it’s still young and have to grow…so from time to time i give my lil tips to Anet hoping they notice them

the problem with gw2 isn’t the game itself so much, aside from maybe the bugs like broken events and poor content to level flow tuning, or too great a focus on platforming…

the problem is that the game was heavily oversold by devs, then fans. and on many points that the game was sold on, the reality is a polar opposite of what was advertised- just google “arenanet blog golden rule” or “guild wars 2 manfiesto” for an obvious blog and video example.

my guild has a joke in mumble, every time we come across a major bug, we say “when it’s ready”

anotehr joke we have is when doing the story quests with trahearne, is to talk about how anet was all like “we don’t think it’s right that you aren’t enough of the hero in other games” >mfw the player ISN"T the main character/hero in the “personal” story.

i should know better after aion, but a small part of me wanted to believe anet wasn’t typical ncsoft, even though i knew that anet founders were in charge of ncwest for the whole aion thing in 2009 and 10. so i deluded myself slightly.

still having fun with what the game is, and still spending way too much money on it. but part of me wants the game that was advertised over and over and over and over again for years on end.

ofc we have a saying in my country. when something appears too be good to be true, it’s usually is.

Focksbot.6798:

Maybe I just have a feverish imagination, but I can imagine a system which allows a huge variety of outcome without being more complex to build/approach. For one thing, you could have a system where certain combinations of materials improve certain stats of a weapon while weakening it in other areas – specialist bows that consistently weaken/cripple but deal little damage, or armour that has added protection but breaks more easily, or armour that deals damage to all melee attackers (via an electric shock) at the cost of protection.

Two things really…

Firstly, In a game that seeks to have a static gear cap for balance amongst other things. I do not see the “variable materials/variable stats” approach being any more meaningful than what we have already. What we do need are more kinds of insignia to make the stat variations that are available but not yet craftable. If anything you’d just needlessly complicate the insignia system already in place for the sake of complexity.
No thanks.

Secondly, Runes provide these extra benefits already and this is a system that allows a vast array of customisation as an addition to crafting items. Which it would not do, if forcibly made part of the crafting system. Since you would then be forced to remake an entire item just to change the overall effect. Completely undermining the concept of runes, which was designed to allow you that freedom.
No thanks.

Both these ideas have been used before. The first most prominently in my mind from the playstation game: Vagrant Story. And the second is actually already within GW2, just in a different form.

Secondly, Runes provide these extra benefits already and this is a system that allows a vast array of customisation as an addition to crafting items.

Am I missing something then? I’ve got up to level 80 in the game and the Rune business doesn’t seem to affect anything yet. Surely, I could have a tiny bit of extra power versus a tiny bit of extra healing, but it changes the way I successfully complete a battle not one iota.

What I’d ask for from a combination of the combat and the crafting is very simple: I see an enemy. What kind of enemy it is determines how I approach the fight. If it’s a new enemy, I first have to figure out what strategy works best. If I go in with the wrong one, I either lose or am severely damaged. If I go in with the right one and time my attacks successfully, and dodge when I need to, I can win almost flawlessly.

Instead, the way it works is this: I see an enemy. The only thing that matters is if it’s a veteran or champion. Other than that, it could be a black, unlabelled blot on the screen because how I go about defeating it will be exactly the same every time.

And yes, I do try different weapon combinations and abilities. I regularly swap them. I try discovering combos. I try different styles of opening shot. I swap runes and reroll my trait tree. It makes no difference. Nothing is any more effective than anything else in 99% of the encounters.

Focksbot.6798:

1) The crafting system. Just look at all the work that’s gone into it, all the potential for something deep and arresting. Look at what they were aiming at with the recipes. It’s easy to see how this could have worked out.

How it could have been
You pick a crafting profession. You spend ages testing different combinations, making odd, junky weapons, learning what things work well together, gradually getting better. Eventually, you know how to produce a variety of weapons with high stats and special effects. Players come to you to buy these weapons because they need them for specific instances, eg. a dungeon has fast critters in it, and you’ve created a bow that sacrifices power for a mean slow-down ability. You make lots of money selling this bow, which only you and other people who’ve picked that profession can create, and which took creativity and hard work to make.

I for one am very grateful it isn’t like this.

Not negative.
GW had some many great features that I miss them here.

Elite skills. In GW you had to chease down the elites and capture their skill from them.
Guild vs Guild battles.
Battle for the favor of the gods AND the dungeon it opened.
The skill system. Lots of great builds/group builds.

The key to crafting is diversity. If there are too many crafters making one thing then crafted items are always going to be worth less than the materials used to make them, since all the crafters need to make them anyway to increase their crafting level. A hard problem to solve, but GW2 makes the situation even worse by having equivalents to crafted items drop in the open world and as karma rewards, which greatly exacerbates the problem.

Negative Nancies will be Negative Nancies.

It is just their nature. If everyone who played came to the forums to complain it would be one thing, but forum goers are but a small sampling of the playerbase and the negative Nancies are disproportionately represented. It’s like this on most all game forums.

The comments are good for a chuckle from time to time though, it’s what draws me to the forums.

Focksbot.6798:

Secondly, Runes provide these extra benefits already and this is a system that allows a vast array of customisation as an addition to crafting items.

Am I missing something then? I’ve got up to level 80 in the game and the Rune business doesn’t seem to affect anything yet. Surely, I could have a tiny bit of extra power versus a tiny bit of extra healing, but it changes the way I successfully complete a battle not one iota.

What I’d ask for from a combination of the combat and the crafting is very simple: I see an enemy. What kind of enemy it is determines how I approach the fight. If it’s a new enemy, I first have to figure out what strategy works best. If I go in with the wrong one, I either lose or am severely damaged. If I go in with the right one and time my attacks successfully, and dodge when I need to, I can win almost flawlessly.

Instead, the way it works is this: I see an enemy. The only thing that matters is if it’s a veteran or champion. Other than that, it could be a black, unlabelled blot on the screen because how I go about defeating it will be exactly the same every time.

And yes, I do try different weapon combinations and abilities. I regularly swap them. I try discovering combos. I try different styles of opening shot. I swap runes and reroll my trait tree. It makes no difference. Nothing is any more effective than anything else in 99% of the encounters.

yeah, you are choosing runes based on stats instead of utility. Some runes add abilities to your skills..grenth freezes anyone around you everytime you heal, lyssa makes all your elite skills give you all boons and lose conditions for 10 seconds, others summon creatures, give you life steal, give swiftness, bleed opponents around you..so yeah, ,you are missing something.

No offense, but nothing is more effective than the other, its just different. That is the same in any game…magic and melee are the same in an abstract sense..just ways of depleting life or performing utility, in in their execution that they differ and honestly aesthetically only.

I dont want to perform the hokie pokie to kill a boss..to have to stand in a particular area or make sure they are together but not too long or their rage timer will come. Many of the bosses in this game have phases and mechanics, people can skip them though because of raw power and boons due to having abilities above the level the dungeon or boss was designed for. What they need to do is add more abilities to the bosses if the average level is higher than intended.

roqoco.4053:

The key to crafting is diversity. If there are too many crafters making one thing then crafted items are always going to be worth less than the materials used to make them, since all the crafters need to make them anyway to increase their crafting level. A hard problem to solve, but GW2 makes the situation even worse by having equivalents to crafted items drop in the open world and as karma rewards, which greatly exacerbates the problem.

Nah..the auction house screws that completely. The only way you can artificially limit it is to put it in a hard to find area..like you must kill lupicus to make “X” ingredient for a sword, the issue is any regular component that can be farmed will be manipulated within an inch of its life by the TP vigilantes. Im looking at you vanilla beans.

Echo.7634:

Not negative.
GW had some many great features that I miss them here.

Elite skills. In GW you had to chease down the elites and capture their skill from them.
Guild vs Guild battles.
Battle for the favor of the gods AND the dungeon it opened.
The skill system. Lots of great builds/group builds.

Gw1 did not have all that when it came out. It took quite a while for it to be all sorted out. Though the dual class skill thing was fun.

People are negative because people will be negative about anything. I’m totally serious. It’s in human nature to look at any good thing and find the flaws in it. Internet reviewers make a good buck reviewing treasured works of film and TV from our youth pointing out how stupid it was. Game reviewers are specifically instructed to find something bad about every game they review. The internet in general is a very pessimistic place.
If you like something, enjoy it. Just keep in mind it doesn’t always suit everyone else. And don’t let the negativity get to you.

For me i love the game. But to bring new people into it is not so great. What i mean is that the newbie and low lvl zones are mostly empty now. Its not like it was back when the game was released. It used to be full of people. I just don’t see alot of new players in those area’s. It almost feels as if the game peeked already.

Ditton.3149:

roqoco.4053:

The key to crafting is diversity. If there are too many crafters making one thing then crafted items are always going to be worth less than the materials used to make them, since all the crafters need to make them anyway to increase their crafting level. A hard problem to solve, but GW2 makes the situation even worse by having equivalents to crafted items drop in the open world and as karma rewards, which greatly exacerbates the problem.

Nah..the auction house screws that completely. The only way you can artificially limit it is to put it in a hard to find area..like you must kill lupicus to make “X” ingredient for a sword, the issue is any regular component that can be farmed will be manipulated within an inch of its life by the TP vigilantes. Im looking at you vanilla beans.

Screws what? Think I just stated one of the problems with crafting rather than offered a solution. There are some things other games try such a time limited crafting etc. but whatever way u look at it GW2s crafting is a big backwards step over say WoW/Lotro (except the fact u can craft with material in your bank – thats cool!).

I crafted in both of those games…never found it useful. You grind to get your high level crafting, grind to get the high level recipe..and make items..about it. I think what you are trying to say is that crafting should have recipes that stand above and beyond that which can be found. Aesthetically you already do..godskull, corrupted etc, however because of the internets and the TP it costs more to make those items than its worth, Id rather buy it and save myself the farming.

and Wow crafting at the beginning was nothing special either..it was find blue ingredient, craft blue shoes from pattern, disenchant shoes to get material..move on and repeat with next high level pattern.

Yep, I’ve fallen into the path of least resistance; ignore crafting until max character level, then level crafting and world exploration as end-game, but to each there own.

I never seem to have the mats etc from just playing the game from one point to another to keep crafted gear ‘at level’. And much easier to buy what you want at AH. I’m not fond of farming mats, particularly if there is no other reason to be in an area.

Crafting seems more like a ‘pass-through’ mechanic to final character development @ 80, would rather have the game/crafting items remain valid for all levels, as I’d suggested several years ago at gw2/wiki. Similar to dynamically scaling character, crafted items should have a scaling aspect.

@Ditton – Am not saying that WoW/Lotro have great crafting systems, there were also problems with those mainly involving grind and churning out masses of useless items to level. But, they were most certainly better than GW2s system where you can’t make a single useful item that can’t be obtained more cheaply on the market. But, in LOTRO you can actually make money from crafting – not too easily, but that’s how it should be.

Wolfend.5287:

Similar to dynamically scaling character, crafted items should have a scaling aspect.

Then crafted items would be in even less demand because you’d never need to change your armor – essentially negating crafting almost entirely.

@ Roqoco, You’d change armor as you level crafting and character as is; and as items dynamically scale, you’d have the option to go back to earlier ‘skins’ without using the transmute stone work-around. Transmute stones are simply a band aid for what character levels break.

The thing is..that sort of crafting is here already..you arent going to get better stats with crafting because they want the grin to be aesthetic and you CAN craft items that are aesthetically different you just have to go get the recipes. the issue is nobody cares, they would rather have an aesthetic that is good enough, and does the same job.

Wolfend.5287

:Transmute stones are simply a band aid for what character levels break.

I think the decision to put levels into the game (and so many!) is the root cause of most of the problems in the game. Levelling games need the sort of escalating gear grind endgame WoW has otherwise you just hit a brick wall where there is nothing relevant to do. GW2 sits rather uneasily between GW1 and WoW in design and they now need to decide which way they really want to go.

@ roqoco, yeah I’d made a suggestion a few years back that described how players could endlessly progress’ as in endlessly level, and optionally without levels if you decided to turn off the ui option. Very similar to dynamic scaling currently in gw2, but instead the ui did not create the appearance of down-scaling.

It could be added as an alternate to current ui as levels in gw2 are as arbitrary as the arbitrary numbers that scale all over the place. Levels do nothing more than throttle content, no longer providing a traditional everquest path.

Levels are a very strange illusory convention that seems hard to shed in modern mmos.

Fortunately, WvW does just that, so in a sense level-free progress ‘is’ in the game. And, in my opinion, WvW is by far the best aspect of GW2.

Red Falcon.8257:

For the same reasons all other MMOs have a crowd of negative people in their forums.

Some of it is also customer feedback. Face it many of us are experts in gaming as we’ve been doing it forever and a day. So most can’t help but compare games and critique.

I used to never drink wine, then I started working in the industry. After a while, once you start drinking enough brands and varietals you can’t help but start judging them. This is better then that and the reasons why.

So most of us have played hundreds of games, this is what happens. I like what the person above stated, if I really didn’t like the game, I’d come here once at most and be far far gone. To me it seems reading forums is a skill itself, you need to take all your experience and add that filter to what you read and how it really all applies.

Every new MMO will be badly looked upon due to most MMO’s being failures