Guild Wars 2

Hi ! This topic is just to share/discuss my and your worries about how game is now.

I play Gw 2 since the very beggining and I am disappointed. When HoT trailer came out I jumped the hype train, but I wouldn’t purchase it now. Why? Because the game itself feels like beta. And more bugs pop with every patch across all types of content.
Ogre Wars has a high chance of getting bugged yet the solution is “look for a fresh map and start again”. Countless events (even connected with achievements) are bugged since the rise of the dragons, yet no one seems to care about it: “no worries! here, buy this new mini at 40% discount and forget about it!”

- Almost every instance has some character or mechanic that can hang and block the progress and the solution is the same, “start again”.

- Events lost because a player disconnecting is removed from the list of participants (for example, getting disconnected at the end of SW events, be it even for 20 seconds, takes the reward chest away from you, even if did take part in it, fought a champ and returned in time to catch the other 2 dying). A support character, that helps with buffs and rezzing downed players during Teq will get bronze – even more so if he relies on conditions – whereas a hulk-style player will certainly get the gold.

- And by the way, why having 1000001 sigils and runes if for the most part all you need is Zerk gear?! just remove everything else and make your statement clear!

-And speaking about statements. Guild Wars Manifesto swings a sword again. You seem to be doing everything you promised not to do, dear devs. From the grinding shoved in every aspect of the game (which can of course be bypassed if players just buy gems and convert them into gold to safely purchase every possible rare skin or item off the TP) to the care for the game’s balance and smooth play.
Smooth play is something that will remain back in the much better designed and maintained older relative of GW2. Between “No Path to Target” at the end of a bridge when trying to use a shadowstep skill to “Target Too Close” for melee range and enemies protected from ranged attacks by thick layers of thin air, NOTHING works as promised (and probably intended). But what solutions we get to this?! More gemstore content.

- And balance?! There’s hardly any to be found. Both in PvE and PvP. Ranger’s have weaker bow skills than thieves and warriors, for example – and that is supposed to be their main weapon (and no, having a high damage spammable skill on longbow isn’t compensating anything). The ratio between survivability and burst is far from being balanced across all classes. The way to mitigate damage and conditions is again unjust, enforcing trait builds limitations on some classes. Some years ago, Anet was testing the community’s builds in both pvp and pve and paying a lot of attention to ensuring fair play and enjoyable experience for everyone.

- By the way! Any chance that conditions would ever have ANY logic?! ‘cause any more unlogical “fixes” like adding conditions to turrets and stealing life force from gate and you’ll give them wheels so they can run away if feared. What i miss now in Gw 2 is a logic and clean game as Gw 1 was. Comparing for example fight with Lupicus vs Fendi, it just doesnt feel challenging, but wrong and bugged. Even camera doesn’t allow you to see much if melee’ing this boss.

- We know since Gw 1 Anet isn’t happy about speed clears or any other fast ways of clearing the dungeons in less players than designed. But then again, if you look at Arah and the legions of elite mobs added there (to make it more authentic maybe?) who in the right mind would find that instance enjoyable to walk through slow and steady? And for what reward? Blue and green gear?

And one last thing.

Did it occur to anyone that the ability to jump teams in PvP can lead to massive abuses and and further on to grievance?! Sure, play for the fun, not for the rewards, but what fun when people leave the losing and wait for a hot spot to join in the winning one.

Not to mention that the <insert class> winner can be yet another joy killer for people going there only to find they’re up against 5 engineers team or 5 mesmers and so on.

So then, will we ever get skills that work? mechanics that both have logic and functionality? Clean instances? Unbugged meta events? Balanced professions in pvp? More worth in 90% of the traits?! More functional and functioning diversity in pve? (’cause really, kicking players out of the team or refusing their joining for the sole reason of being rangers – talking about the current situation in CoF – is just not okay) Or maybe devising new gem store items takes just too much time for any of the old wounds to find a soothing touch?

Could you perhaps provide a tl;dr version preferably with bullet points? I find that trying to put ones points in a nice concise fashion tends to limit the disjointed, rambling that usually comes with posting angry.

White space is your friend when you post.

Yes there are a few event’s that can bug, I’ve luckily only encountered 3 in the whole time I’ve played. Guild Wars has never been all that great at rewards. Apart from end campaign greens in GW1. Some of them where awesome.

Well, all programs (of any significance at all) have bugs! Take that from a software developer that’s been in the business for 50 years now.

Saying that, I find this game to have no more bugs (actually less) than others I’ve played. These are complex programs with complex interactions…there will be bugs.

Reminds me of a plaque I once saw on a colleagues wall in his office. It went something like this:

“There’s no such thing as a bug free program. Just programs where the bugs haven’t been found yet.”

Lots of truth to that.

I agree with OP but I don’t have any infractions left to elaborate about scandalous state of the game

A tl;dr version would have to look probably along the lines of:

• broken pvp system with wide open doors to system abuse
• forever broken events and instances that (and this is the major issue) the devs seem to have been content to solve the way she said (try new map)
• illogical conditions system (poisoned turrets and blind sand?!)
• a sea of useless traits and gear
• broken professions mechanics
• really unappealing rewards for running buggy instances (why do them anyway if it’s faster and less frustrating to just pvp for the dungeon skins)
• with all the above, the feeling that there’s too much focus on gemstore’s shinies replenishment
  @ Bob, no one said there are bug free games. But gw1 was not this buggy. And when you add modifications to the game to ‘balance’ it and drop a hoard of bugs with them which you cba to fix, that’s not quite okay. Perfection is an ideal, but what we’re seeing here (at least some gw1 players who’re still around) is rather depressing… Not compared with other franchises, but with Anet’s own prequel.

Edit: Out of the 6 months I’ve been playing this game, 2 of them were spent with broken mechanics, introduced along with the new shadowstepping system. When you can’t use your skill because the game doesn’t consider a bridge “valid path” even if there are no obstacles. When you can’t steal (on thief) from a foe because you have a “Target too close” and when the targets’ hitboxes get buried randomly below ground level, one would think devs will notice such kitten s and attempt to fix them before making turrets roll out in fear. Then we have a stability skill improvement that makes hardly any sense given the massive cc spam from SW’s mobs, for example.
I can’t not compare the two games bearing the same name. And in this comparison, gw2 fails on all aspects minus the graphics.

bob.5680:

Well, all programs (of any significance at all) have bugs! Take that from a software developer that’s been in the business for 50 years now.

Saying that, I find this game to have no more bugs (actually less) than others I’ve played. These are complex programs with complex interactions…there will be bugs.

Reminds me of a plaque I once saw on a colleagues wall in his office. It went something like this:

“There’s no such thing as a bug free program. Just programs where the bugs haven’t been found yet.”

Lots of truth to that.

Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate just how complex game systems are. In their heads all they see is the end product – how it looks, plays, etc. And then scream, “but just change this thing!!”. And with bugs they say, “Just change this to this” or “just do this to fix it” as though it’s a simple change. Even small changes can be complex – and numerous other issues can then arise.

I often see comments along the lines of, " Just copy this thing over here" or " just swap this for this" etc, as though 10 minutes in Photoshop could fix things or something. I think some people don’t understand how games are made.

So then, Mash, from your point of view the fact that the march 16 patch made the game a lot less enjoyable is perfectly fine.
*A valid path to target, for me, would be anything I can walk or jump to. Examples of these things being 2 sides of a canyon connected by a bridge (like the bridge at the very beginning of the Arah Explorable). Jumping could be done either over rugged terrain or over boulders and other objects aligned as “stairs”. The fact that the game doesn’t consider them valid paths is not my problem in the slightest. Basically there’s a very high chance that the underlying topography has any added cosmetic features, shadowstepping skills won’t work.

• The ‘Steall skill can’t find a path to target not even when it is 1 pixel away (in case you’re not playing thief, that skill is also a source of hitpoints, boons and stealth).
• ‘Stability’ skill has been balanced so that now if you’re caught between 4 teragriffs while defending (even level 2) forts in SW you’re toast. Not to mention the way it is applied on certain skills (like every 3 seconds over an 8 second channeled one)
• Same patch added yet another lovely behavior on some mobs, resetting their hp and position after a knockback (most husks in both SW and DT behave like this) and as I’ve noticed recently, that’s not the only mechanic that does it.
• I also understand that Arah’s big bad wolf also received an unintended behavior – talking about Necrid Blast (extremely briefly ranged telegraphed skill). But it is still running back into the wall when vs melees and the terrain around Belka is still littered with invisible obstacles (arguably making it the worst enemy in the fight, not the boss’es unreflectable electric projectile).

I could continue ranting about many issues that I’ve come across over a very short period of time that I’ve been playing this game. And how these issues are neglected while favorizing a well supplied gem store and more (most certainly buggy as hell) content for people to pay for.
It’s like some would sell you a car without one of the wheels and its service shop would give it new paint and free decals, while taking another piece from it (be it just a screw, a seat, a window or – like with the shadowstepping issue – a part of the engine) each time you get it there to have it fix.

After sifting through various mmo’s I returned to GW especially for the story. I was stunned with disappointment though. A potentially great epic was, from my point of view, butchered with rigid acting (if any – both in terms of animating the actors and giving them voice, making them look more noobish than a kindergarten theater assembly) and anticlimatic points (both “The Source of Orr” and “Victory or Death” left me with a bitter taste). Oh and it might be worth mentioning the random disappearence of a whole chapter. I admit that LWS2 washed away some of the shame (The end of it looking a LOT more epic and intense than the half-afk’able counterpart of the original, and with some extremely well made cutscenes and lively conversations).

Some players said they don’t care about story, plot holes and other similar aspects of the game or how the lore fits in with the content provided. That all that really matters is makin’ gold and buying skins off TP/Gemstore.
Back in GW1 one had a motivation to revisit pretty much every dungeon in the game, the rare drops from each being GW2’s equivalent of a legendary, hm? (the DSR, Mini Dhuum, the BDS, etc). Here?!

And the worst part is the general attitude of “who cares about consistency?! give us more gemstore stuff!”, coupled with the neverdying in-game question of “how can I make gold fast here?” – seeing how everything can be bought off TP, including legendary weapons.
What we usually do in real life we end up doing here too, working jobs we hate (grinding or struggling through bugs littered dungeon), to make money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need only to impress people we don’t like (seeing how aggresive or rude an attitude some players have, I’d say that even “hate” would fit in the phrase above)…

Omocha.4931:

I can’t not compare the two games bearing the same name. And in this comparison, gw2 fails on all aspects minus the graphics.

We have GW 1, pretty old and one of best online game i have ever played, clean, logic, without need to make bazilion items to shop because looking on quality and how well made are skins there i gladly bought one to support, challenging instances, interesting story, no trade post and more reasons to run instances if we talk about drops.

When i bought GW 2 i belived it’s gonna be even better. But at today’s point seeing 2 years old bugs non fixed, invisible objects at boss fights, broken mechanics, and non ending jokes about how we can make a sand bleed or steal life force from non living objects or escaping turrets i stopped my hype train about HoT pretty fast. And i know what most of u will think now. – "Go play GW 1 then " And ye, that’s true if GW 2 will become just a game with pile of dust with a gems on a top to make it look better.

If things will follow this track this game will become next non endless farm of gold for more skins/minis/legendaries/black lion smth, pretty much like Aion. It is really good game but feels ignored now at basic problems. Making it look better wont make it work better.

And yeah, Gw 2 feels now like made by diffrent company.

Omocha.4931:

• illogical conditions system (poisoned turrets and blind sand?!)

Would you rather condition-based weapons be rendered completely useless against a considerable number of enemies, because that’s by far the worse option.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Omocha.4931:

• illogical conditions system (poisoned turrets and blind sand?!)

Would you rather condition-based weapons be rendered completely useless against a considerable number of enemies, because that’s by far the worse option.

Much better solution would be making some enemies invulnerable to some effects (you know, I don’t believe that STONE elemental can bleed) while being more vulnerable to others (e.g. plants and structures should take double dps from burning). This is logical and it was already implemented in GW1. This is why there are people feeling that anet lacks the effort and looks for the fastest and cheapest way to achieve revenue.

segman.3560:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Omocha.4931:

• illogical conditions system (poisoned turrets and blind sand?!)

Would you rather condition-based weapons be rendered completely useless against a considerable number of enemies, because that’s by far the worse option.

Much better solution would be making some enemies invulnerable to some effects (you know, I don’t believe that STONE elemental can bleed) while being more vulnerable to others (e.g. plants and structures should take double dps from burning). This is logical and it was already implemented in GW1. This is why there are people feeling that anet lacks the effort and looks for the fastest and cheapest way to achieve revenue.

Yea people use condition build too much in PvE allready! Let’s make it even more useless! Really good idéa mate.

I rather have illogical stuff than broken mechanics. And … talking about illogical stuff in a fantasy game…? O_o

Poisoning turrets and blinding the sand is illogical but as a human falling from a really high distance and barely getting injured is logical? Having Charr/Asura/Plants talk like humans even though it’s impossible without actual tongue and teeth like human ones, and as well as the whole system. Breathing underwater with that tiny thing that gets oxygen from where?

I’m sure illogical stuff is something you shouldn’t worry about.

Most of my friends I’ve made in GW1 from all over Europe jumped into GW2 the moment it hit the shelves. I’ve been talking with them before trying it out on my own and they were all rounding it down to the same conclussion: “We tried it and eventually decided to sacrifice looks for functionality”.
All of them have had thousands of hours of GW1 and stacked some hundred hours of GW2 also. None of them budged when I tried to suggest them to give it another go with the new LWS2 improvements: “Did they fix the conditions system that they promised to fix 2 years ago?”; “Ogre Wars still bugging?”; “Still weekly updates of gemstore with no gameplay improvements?”; “Still grinding for gear they promised not to introduce (talking about ascended here)?” “Still broken events reward system?!” “Then no, thanks, I’d rather do UWSC or DoASC or other things that are less broken”.

@ Hyper Cutter: The current conditions system is brainless: “Put all conditions!!!!” Torment, Confusion, Bleeding, Burning, Poison, Cripple, Blind – they all work, most of them do massive damage, yet most classes have “remove 1 condition” utilities with 20+ sec cooldown. All conditions affect basically everything, from rocks to pile of bones, to doors and lately turrets. Fire elementals aren’t more vulnerable to water here, ‘cause they’re already vulnerable to everything.
I’d make fire elementals heal from fire damage, undead gain stability from fear, earth elementals requiring vulnerability or weakness to take some types of condition damage, and certainly I wouldn’t have turrets get poisoned (since this is the latest addition to the logicless conditions system).
I’d make precursors have a higher chance to drop(not by much) from daily bonus reward chests – depending on the mob’s type (for example Chaos Gun from inquest themed dungeons and world bosses). And make the legendaries account bound.

I’d maybe add scaling to dungeons instead of numbers requirements, since even if the intentions were nice, the HUGE difference in damage output between classes make some of them (like rangers) undesired in a group. And I would certainly try to replicate and then fix bugs that I’ve forgot about or introduced (Lupicus?). Between us, I could also say that the changes were an intended feature and get away with “murder”.

I’d also remove the option to switch sides in a pvp match or go spectator. The moment one would abandon his/her team mates a temporary ban would be placed upon the person, denying access to that particular type of pvp (pretty much like in gw1, hm?). And I would certainly consider adjusting skills and traits to match the realities of pvp. (Anet was really good at balancing the skills for the competitive areas of gw1 too).

Lastly, the old game’s store wasn’t rich, but people were always purchasing something. And that not only because the quality of the items there were vastly superior (the lich costume looks better there than here), but also to show their support for a great team who was constantly trying to provide the best gaming experience for everyone.

As for the shop, rather than tossing decent to ridiculous skins and items in it every other week I’d maybe consider adding items that are used now but were only available during before, for the new people to actually get a taste at what they’ve been missing out on (e.g. give some portal stone to instances of LWS1 or other content no longer available).

With such a vast world no one expects to actually have everything working perfect. But it’s kinda BAD when you attach an achievement to some events that need fresh maps or new game builds to have a chance of functioning and then, probably a permanent guardian there to make sure this or that npc doesn’t get killed bugging the stuff again. If a game mechanic (like shadowstepping) is in direct conflict with the game environment, remove the conflicting element (in this case, I’m guessing it’s calculating the path on the raw soil, or on props, but never on a mix of the above), or accept the kitten and allow for tp skills (reducing range or something, but not breaking pretty much every weapon set).

I’m writting walls of text here because there are sadly walls of problems that people probably ended up ignoring after years of barely any improvements in the fields.

Lastly, there was another good thing about the gw1: its community. While compared to other mmo’s gw2 is still faring well, even this has been depracated compared to its prequel. It may be because of how the game is turning into a shop-driven buggy game? Or is it just us, humans losing common-sense and manners with every passing day?!

Royal, did you play Guild Wars 1? Because Asuras and Charr were speaking there too. But rocks wouldn’t bleed and neither would skeletons. The current condition system is anything but functional or logical. Mesmers were a really strong class there too, and so were necros, but back then, logic and anatomy still mattered.
Here, between the promised-not-to-do-it “Hey! I swung a sword!” (with the huge dose of sarcasm adding it to the skill’s description) to the “someone call a doctor! I think my turret ate so bad shrooms”, nothing does. But it’s kinda obvious that there aren’t many people left who care about the state of the game. Just about the promotions of the gem store.

Omocha.4931:

Royal, did you play Guild Wars 1? Because Asuras and Charr were speaking there too. But rocks wouldn’t bleed and neither would skeletons. The current condition system is anything but functional or logical. Mesmers were a really strong class there too, and so were necros, but back then, logic and anatomy still mattered.
Here, between the promised-not-to-do-it “Hey! I swung a sword!” (with the huge dose of sarcasm adding it to the skill’s description) to the “someone call a doctor! I think my turret ate so bad shrooms”, nothing does. But it’s kinda obvious that there aren’t many people left who care about the state of the game. Just about the promotions of the gem store.

I spent about 6k hours on GW1.

Anyway, I was trying to explain that things don’t have to be logical. That it really doesn’t matter if you can destroy a rock by shooting arrows at it or slay a mighty dragon by constantly shooting at its foot. If you dislike the lack of logic then you shouldn’t be playing a fantasy MMO, you should be playing chess.

Condi builds are as spammable as power builds. If more restrictions were put when fighting mobs you would have to think before spamming skills on cd. This is stupid. However looking at how anet “fixed” turret build on engi I have no doubt we will see nothing good from them in terms of combat and balance.

Do as I did, stop paying for gems. Only with lower income they can start to care about quality of the game. Right now GW2 feels like a fast food with too many fries, so you feel full but it wasnt very delicious.

segman.3560:

Condi builds are as spammable as power builds. If more restrictions were put when fighting mobs you would have to think before spamming skills on cd. This is stupid. However looking at how anet “fixed” turret build on engi I have no doubt we will see nothing good from them in terms of combat and balance.

Do as I did, stop paying for gems. Only with lower income they can start to care about quality of the game. Right now GW2 feels like a fast food with too many fries, so you feel full but it wasnt very delicious.

Let me ask you how tactical it is to play an Engineer placing Turrets that kills for you. Turrets that Condition builds cannot kill, even if they plan their attacks becouse their attacks do not damage the turrets. So please explain to me how my Condition build could beat a Earth golem boss Solo in a story instance when it cant be hurt by my conditions? Please tell me how my ranger who is focused on Shortbow can’t kill a Earth golem becouse he is immune to arrow and Bleeding. Please explain to me how anyone could kill the blobs without an elementalist or some other elemental damage.

And PLEASE understand that this is GW2 and not GW1.

I am main Engineer and I realy love the new fix so that conditions can hurt turrets. It is a game, a fantasy game. Logic isn’t realy 100% in any fantasy game.

I’ve already told you how condi builds could work with structure so go back and read again.

This is GW2, so I expect it to be better than GW1 however after 3 years this game feels like a poor neighbour of great game.

I fully agree with OP and I don’t care about people that don’t agree with us. I stopped paying for gems and I hope more and more disappointed, not paying people will force anet to put more effort to the game.

segman.3560:

I’ve already told you how condi builds could work with structure so go back and read again.

This is GW2, so I expect it to be better than GW1 however after 3 years this game feels like a poor neighbour of great game.

I fully agree with OP and I don’t care about people that don’t agree with us. I stopped paying for gems and I hope more and more disappointed, not paying people will force anet to put more effort to the game.

It’s normal that it’s not a better game. GW1 was created with passion of few people while GW2 was created with corporation seeking for profit.

However, I still think GW2 is quite a good MMO, most likely even the best one around. GW1 doesn’t really count as a MMO.

Yes the game has it’s flaws, which if you read the reviews from their employees are mostly because of the upper management.
But the game is still really good and it’s fun to play, there is always something to do. Sure my vision of how the game should be is different than Anet’s vision, but I still have to be realistic and say it’s a great game.

Well to be fair there is buggy content like ogre wars, the dredge commissar and the devourer queen among others. I am a developer and I full well understand software bugs. I understand the prioritization of focusing on new development and not being able to get to the small bugs because the company is to cheap to staff properly, I can even understand a small set of people doing those events can be blown off for 2+ years because they are the meaningless sub set of non gem buying customers that don’t pay the bills for the company.

As a software developer what I cannot understand is attaching the known buggy stuff that you blew off and never fixed to new content. Why are they required for achievements when they don’t work, why are the loot drops part of collections when you can’t possibly hope to get the drop because you can’t ever find a map that isn’t broken...

There is different arguments here, and I am on the side of the OP, to much dangling shiny new objects for the new players before they figure it out. This 10$ sale they do just proves they have no attachment to veteran players, and would rather buy new player base, than to fix the stuff there the veterans at one point loved this game for and had high hopes of where it was going.

I don’t agree with any of your points in regards to them making this game broken. Something I literally play hours per week cannot be broken. A particular event on a specific server might be bugged, but idgaf anyways.

I don’t typically post on forums but gw2 has, in my opinion, the worst forum posting fan base out of any mmo I’ve played.

What does it boil down to? Your spoiled, no monthly fee, whiners have no regard for economics, finances, or the manpower differences between a game like gw2 and say…Wow.

They could literally stop adding content for free at anytime. You pay no monthly fee. What do they owe you? What other one time purchase game has given you the hours you’ve spent in gw2? The closest for me is Skyrim. And let me tell you about bugs!

If you are bored with the game, I get it. I’ve been there. Leave and come back and whine about missing content from a particular update. Or don’t. Just leave! Anet has your purchase money and it sounds like your just wasting server space.

Thank you, Anet, for pouring the time and effort you did into this amazing game that I’ve been playing more than any other game for nearly 3 years. You will continue to get my support in whatever minor way I can.

And again a wall of text with no cohesion at all.

Royal, what’s the reason of actually applying 1000 conditions that are supposed to mean something (bleed, poison, burning, blah-blah), when you can have one condition for everything as a game mechanic. and one weapon. and one type of mob. since it doesn’t have to be more, hm? they’re all pixels that don’t really die. Teq’s there each day.
GW1 had that generic degeneration, which pleased both the players and the element of logic. Call it erosion here, or aging. Both affect everything living or not. Let the idea of bleeding stick to creatures which have the potential to do that, and so on.
GW2 kinda started with logic (you can’t kd an earth elemental), but that’s among the very few things that DO have some logic there.
There aren’t many games that really don’t give a flying fart about logic. Not very successfull ones, at least. I couldn’t make innanimate object bleed in any game I’ve played (and I’m a rpg fan). However, I thiiiink P&P RPGs did have rules about damage types and vulnerabilities. And the computer ones did (or do) have those as inspiration. GW2’s system doesn’t and seems to base its system on a “let’s be done fast and make money faster after” idea. So much attention to eye candies, so very little attention to core elements. And this coming from the people that promised a lot and that made even a public statement about what their intentions are in their now-dreaded MMO manifesto.
They should remove the gravity too if the logic behind conditions is of no importance. Why should we be only able to jump 2 stairs at once? Or take damage from falling?! Or even be unable to shoot through obstacles?! And on this note, I think the fact that I can’t shoot my bow at Teq from LA is a bug! All I should need there is a group member in Sparkfly to tell me if I’m pointing my weapon in the right direction, and I should be able to do pull it off right from near the Mystic Toilet. ‘Cause, as you say, it doesn’t have to be logic or to respect any rules. Otherwise, we should be playing chess.