Guild Wars 2

To be blunt, Guild Wars 2 (especially compared to its predecessor) is one of the easiest games I’ve ever played in my life. Not until I end up doing extremely high level fractals or perhaps sPvP does the game feel challenging to me. I suppose if you want to categorize time consuming grinding and farming as a ‘challenge’ then you could call making legendaries challenging too, but personally I don’t feel they are hard to make.

Anyway, this isn’t something that actually makes me want to stop playing. There are enough things to keep me interested (the world, the lore etc) but there certainly are not enough things to keep me challenged and, as Anet seems to think is important, feel rewarded.

Yes, there are near constant reward chests being thrown at you everytime you log in, but the thing is; rewards don’t mean anything to me if I don’t feel like I’ve done anything spectacular to earn them.

And so with the recent blog post entailing the “fresh start” for new players (which also includes veteran players starting new characters) it has been revealed that Anet has felt it necessary to dumb down the game even further in the early levels. For example, the removal of the downed state for the first few levels. Why? Were they really getting so much feedback from new players saying that the downed state confused them? That is just one example (one I personally don’t care about, honestly). However, a change I am concerned about is this:

“if you pick up a new weapon for the first time after already unlocking multiple weapon skill slots, you’ll automatically learn the skills for that weapon, rather than having to learn each weapon’s skills individually.”

I personally found that learning new skills for weapons as you used them was actually one of the most fun parts of the early game. I even felt that the levelling became more stale after I had unlocked everything by sampling all of the weapons I could use on a particular character. So, was unlocking skills based on how much you’d used a weapon really such a difficult concept for new players to grasp? I doubt it, and I think Anet needs to give their player-base some credit. We are not braindead.

I am glad that Anet is concerned about the new players, but I feel like these new features are a step backwards in the innovation Guild Wars 2 promised to bring to the table. Not only that, but I am left feeling like this game has catered to heavily to them, and not enough to those of us willing to dive head first into the game.

For all I know the next week’s worth of feature announcements could address all of these issues and make this post redundant, but I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling like this at the moment. Like I said, this isn’t something that would cause me to put my elitist hat on and be all “this game is too casual! I’m quitting!”, I just don’t understand the need to strip your game down to its barebone state just so a new player can have an easier time. I don’t think it is necessary.

Thanks for reading.

I suspect the downed state change is something they implemented for the Chinese release, as I would believe that many Chinese players were confused by it initially (not saying anything about their intelligence, I’ve just worked with a lot of Chinese people and I can see this happening), and since it works fine, and they’re already merging a bunch of other changes from the China release, that’s probably what it’s about.

There are enough things to keep me interested (the world, the lore etc) but there certainly are not enough things to keep me challenged and, as Anet seems to think is important, feel rewarded.

I actually dont think the player base like challenge that much. There are entire threads about SAB and SAB isnt exactly the hardest content in the game.

I think what people want are interesting encounters that make people want to keep replaying.

The root problem is that dps roles to favorable due to mob damage sponge design. If anet manage to bring back the cc role without the need to maintain a meta dps build, then I believe people will be happier.

Pretty much because they have to keep up the concept of “play how I want”.

I even made suggestion about updating the Zhaitan Campaing (Stuff that came in the game launch, fractals are not part of this since they were added later as extra dungeon content, and there’s more of the no-campaing centric updates.) designs, since the design is too easy already, which makes builds like "healing support and “CC”, performing worse than a DPS or DPS-support build.

Too bad some are taking it as “forced Trinity, require all three in party to work”, even if I wrote on the original post that “any build works, but having one, two or all will change the results”.

I did write couple of topics out of mental disappointment, that I do admit, but since I’ve calmed down and got over it, I tried to revise the suggestion to follow “play how I want” concept and make the content teach players about the combat system that has been forgotten from the design of that PvE content

FrostSpectre.4198:

Pretty much because they have to keep up the concept of “play how I want”.

I even made suggestion about updating the Zhaitan Campaing (Stuff that came in the game launch, fractals are not part of this since they were added later as extra dungeon content, and there’s more of the no-campaing centric updates.) designs, since the design is too easy already, which makes builds like "healing support and “CC”, performing worse than a DPS or DPS-support build.

I wouldnt say design is too easy, but you are not rewarded for a CC role. You still have to watch for conditions and one shot while stacking. However, the problem is that the game design favors build composition even more than individual skill.

I am a bit happy things are changing with living story. They are making more interesting encounters

Andred.1087:

I suspect the downed state change is something they implemented for the Chinese release, as I would believe that many Chinese players were confused by it initially (not saying anything about their intelligence, I’ve just worked with a lot of Chinese people and I can see this happening), and since it works fine, and they’re already merging a bunch of other changes from the China release, that’s probably what it’s about.

That is understandable. I am aware that the western and eastern MMO design philosophies differ quite drastically in some areas. So in saying that, I don’t see why Anet saw it necessary to bring this feature over from the Chinese version of the game, to a market that (to my knowledge) had no issues with the downed state. I think that a possible solution to this is something that Anet does seem to do often, and is give players the best of both worlds so to speak. A check box in the options menu named something like “Disable tutorial” which meant that non-new players could start new characters without being spoon fed would be really great.

loseridoit.2756:

There are enough things to keep me interested (the world, the lore etc) but there certainly are not enough things to keep me challenged and, as Anet seems to think is important, feel rewarded.

I actually dont think the player base like challenge that much. There are entire threads about SAB and SAB isnt exactly the hardest content in the game.

I think what people want are interesting encounters that make people want to keep replaying.

The root problem is that dps roles to favorable due to mob damage sponge design. If anet manage to bring back the cc role without the need to maintain a meta dps build, then I believe people will be happier.

I’m alright with SAB, it’s not my favourite content in the game, but it is quite fun; and not for the challenge factor. It’s fun to me because its a unique experience and I find it to be entertaining based on that.

As far as build composition goes, I’m personally a huge fan of healing my party. I played a healing monk for about 7 years in GW1 and rarely strayed to anything else because it kept me engaged. I know that a dedicated healer class goes against one of the core design pillars that GW2 has, so I wouldn’t expect to throw in a healer class in a future expansion or something. But perhaps something akin to a disc priest in WoW would be fun, I think (a player that damages as well as heals). We have it to a small extent as a water elementalist but I think it could be pushed a lot further. In the current meta, I don’t see how else a healing class could be viable since everyone just wants maximum DPS at all times.

Why make the game even easier…?

Buy-2-Play MMO. Lots of people completely new to the genre trying it because it’s neither a Free-2-Play-but-now-you-pay trash, nor a “difficult” subscription game.

These people know nothing of MMOs and have to be spoonfed; the least confused they are, the longer they stay and the more are the chances they’ll start buying something from the store later on.

Is it good for selling new copies? Yes, it is.

Is it good for keeping veterans happy enough to stay after several years and buy things from Gemstore? No, it’s not.

Too bad we here on the forums are on the wrong side. I’d be happy if ANet catered to us as well with more earned (!) free trait unlocks and leveling scrolls for alts, but…. alas.

The Human Panadeine.2561:

As far as build composition goes, I’m personally a huge fan of healing my party. I played a healing monk for about 7 years in GW1 and rarely strayed to anything else because it kept me engaged. I know that a dedicated healer class goes against one of the core design pillars that GW2 has, so I wouldn’t expect to throw in a healer class in a future expansion or something. But perhaps something akin to a disc priest in WoW would be fun, I think (a player that damages as well as heals). We have it to a small extent as a water elementalist but I think it could be pushed a lot further. In the current meta, I don’t see how else a healing class could be viable since everyone just wants maximum DPS at all times.

think of this way. The reason why I want a CC role to play a better role in the game is because it practically replaces a healer. Instead of healing your comrade, you CC the mobs that is about to do the death blow. Player are do it in pvp to stop stomps. The issue is that there are too many mobs in the game and the animation + skill spam will make these feats much harder to impossible.

The Human Panadeine.2561:

Yes, there are near constant reward chests being thrown at you everytime you log in, but the thing is; rewards don’t mean anything to me if I don’t feel like I’ve done anything spectacular to earn them.

- It sounds great that you’ve found this out. I have a feeling you can accomplish some goals in your life if you don’t become satisfied wasting your time with video games. These games operate with operant conditioning principle: do this arbitrary goal and then you’ll get rewarded. It’s a honey trap. I don’t understand why you’re asking for it to be better concealed.