Guild Wars 2

I know the game has it’s problems elsewhere. Content, Grind, Economy etc…

For me the best part about GW1 was the diversity of builds that you could achieve with your character. I remember the first time 55HP monk was discovered. It opened up a whole lot of farming options for your monk that you never had available before. Underworld was brilliant fun farming ectos alone. The best part, When the devs discovered the farming the didn’t just outright nerf the build, they added monsters to make it harder, but not impossible.

I also enjoyed the skill hunting aspect. Exploring the world looking for Random bosses to steal the Elite Skill. Not only was this good Solo fun but it almost made you re-enter story missions to capture the Skill you missed. If this was implemented in GW2 it might help alot of lower level characters get a Story group.

The biggest benefit to the GW1 skill system was PvP. It made PvP dynamic. When touch Rangers were first introduced it was a nightmare and it forced you to find ways to deal with such builds.

I feel GW2 moved away from GW1 in the wrong direction. The skill caps and proffession changes in GW1 were what made the game great.

Agree/Disagree?

i loved assassins way more in guildwars1 then i do in 2 , mainly because in 1 they WERENT stealth reliant. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_assassin_skills

also liked the idea of the attack chains: lead-offhand-dual

i want to see every skill back into guildwars2 and let people create their own unique builds with skills THEY like , not the skills and traits Anet likes.

The problem with having a lots of skills for each class is that people only use the same skills all the time.
Yes, you were able to “found builds” but once a good build go public, it became the only build used for 90% of the players.
And PvP dynamic? I always fought players with the same builds over and over.
So you may be one of the few who actually tried something new every day but lets be honest; a few players doing this is worth all the time needed to design, balance and fix of lots of skills?

I actually like Guild Wars 2 better when it comes to skill selection. It feels for the most part that every skill in the game has a use one way or another. In classic, it was common to have several skills that simply did not make sense to even try to use.

My only complaints is the trait system giving a specific stat each tier, it kind of forces you to go one path.

“Yes, you were able to “found builds” but once a good build go public, it became the only build used for 90% of the players.”

oh so tell me , how many eles are running d/d s/d OWAIT how many thieves are running p/d or d/d OWAIT, its just all so lame and boring. i want my assassin/elementalist(gale+signet) with staff back or my touchnecro.

i want people to make unique builds , there arent enough skills and weaponsets around to do that so all builds are 75% similar to eachother when it comes to traits and utilitys, people want to play what they like, but what they like isnt always best but it should be all equal

ahhh,, the sweetness of creating builds. I miss that concept, it was the best thing ever. I think that was the biggest reason why gw1 was so good. in gw2, you have no choice, i use the same build from 1 to 80. So boring. In gw1 i changed my build everyday, try new things, it was so much fun. Even for speedclears you had tons of different builds for a single role, but yeah for pugs you mostly had the same build because it was easyer for the team to know what to do. Still, core pug builds did change here and there.

I think the GW system of skills and builds is far, far superior to the GW2 system.

Builds for PvP, PvE, dungeons, farming, AB, JQ, FA, anything!
Individual builds, team builds, hero builds….so many fun possibilities.

I really feel cubbyholed in GW2.

The only thing that links Gw1 and Gw2 is the story. They are two completely different games, and Anet clearly shows it. The PvP system of Gw1 is not only unique, but the best imo. But that’s another story of another book.

I also had fun with gw1 builds, SO many to play, they were infinite and all good. You just had to think a little and you’d make your own playstyle.

But that’s gw1 and we are at gw2.

@tehsmooth: You cant compare 2 same classes on 2 different games. Dont expect the same of one as on the other.

You can thank 55 monks, SF assassins, 600 monks, SS necros, Sliver Armor eles, and the like.

I can understand asking for more weapon skills, but you won’t be getting anything like GW1. If you think balance is bad now…imagine if you had 50 skills per class?

I’m also sure that the very next thing you’d ask for if they expanded skills is dual classing…

So no, I don’t want all the skills from GW1. What I do what are tougher individual enemies. Difficulty in the open world seems to be based on having 4+ mobs. What I’d like is improved enemy AI (running out of AoE, dodging, CC) so that each encounter requires that you actually think.

IMO, PvE skills in GW2 are not the problem…the enemies you fight just don’t really require that you adapt your build or skill usage to them.

kryo.3586:

Agree/Disagree?

You are wrong. It’s a matter of wearing rose-colored glasses.

The skill system killed GW1. It’s the reason ArenaNet couldn’t release Chapter 4: Utopia, and instead had to reset everything and make a new game.

ArenaNet’s mistake was making more skills than they could balance. Instead of thinking ahead, they decided to listen to players, who more often than not lack long term planning, and thus implented more and more skills because “more is always better, right?”.

Nope.

Not only we had power creep through the chapters (Searing Flame was basically required to do any group content after the release of Nightfall), but we had incredibly broken professions that took years to be somewhat fixed (example). And that’s when they were fixed – often, ArenaNet’s solution to “fix” those professions was to give them a few overpowered skills and keep the professions themselves completely broken (Assassins with Shadow Form, Ritualists with Signet of Spirits, Paragons with ""There’s Nothing to Fear!").

The reason for this was simple: the game had simply too many skills. In each new chapter, ArenaNet added too many skills, more than they could balance. This destroyed GW1’s PvP, going from the great times seen imediatelly after the release of Factions, in which the great Koreans guilds shone, to the mediocre PvP saw at the time GW:EN was released.

The easiest way to approach balance was to keep a lot of skills underpowered, so at least they were out of the way. As a result, among the 1000+ skills available, only a few were useful. PvE was dumbed down so much that in common play anyone could achieve anything with nearly any build, giving the illusion that there were many available options, while those who played in Hard Mode demanded the same builds to be used all the time.

Not to mention the incredibly long time it took ArenaNet to fix things that were obviously imbalanced – again Shadow Form, also Ursan Form, and so on.

Skills in GW1 were a mess. They were more than ArenaNet could handle. And considering how imbalanced the currently available skills in GW2 are right now, I’m amazed that someone could think that adding even more (imbalanced) skills would make it any better.

Erasculio makes an excellent point – Yes I’d like more skills, but the number on GW1 did make balancing impossible. If you think the calls for nerfs on classes here are bad, it was nothing at all compared to the nerf rage on GW1, but it was just too hard for them to keep up with

Skills and FA kept me playing for five n a half years, so yes i would like the 1000+ skills but this won’t happen and i’m 99.9% certain because of that reason i won’t last much over a year in this game.

Yes i would love Gw1 skills (especially Skill caps)

Randulf.7614:

Erasculio makes an excellent point – Yes I’d like more skills, but the number on GW1 did make balancing impossible. If you think the calls for nerfs on classes here are bad, it was nothing at all compared to the nerf rage on GW1, but it was just too hard for them to keep up with

well theoretically, if they decided to take it on, which they won’t, this would be the time for ANet to learn from their “mistakes” and do it right with balance engineered into it from the beginning.

but those who complain that everyone was using fotm builds so therefore there was no build freedom…. they’re probably people who never did their own experimentation, or who stuck with a horrible guild because of I don’t know why. I always felt I had complete freedom unless the instance called for a specific skill, or if I voluntarily joined a team with a delicate team build, where I had a specific role to play.

Meret.5943:

well theoretically, if they decided to take it on, which they won’t, this would be the time for ANet to learn from their “mistakes” and do it right with balance engineered into it from the beginning

Said “from the beginning” would require the current GW2 skills to be balanced. They aren’t. Ergo…

Meret.5943:

but those who complain that everyone was using fotm builds so therefore there was no build freedom…. they’re probably people who never did their own experimentation, or who stuck with a horrible guild because of I don’t know why

Playing with people who were willing to accept someone with a subpar build didn’t change the fact that those were subpar builds. “Unique snowflakes” were always easily stomped by the flavor of the month. Which was mostly due to a lack of balance, which was due to having too many skills.

Erasculio.2914:

“Unique snowflakes” were always easily stomped by the flavor of the month.

False. First, not everyone vanquished with sabway or whatever. You could play however you wanted in pve if you weren’t afraid to try.

Also, you could bring your fotm build anywhere you want in pvp … but if someone happened to have the counter build to it, you’re worthless. A hybrid build could save your life, save the match, or be good at nothing whatsoever, depending on what team you’re facing and what team you have.

Granted most of my pvp experience was in RA, FA and AB. Sometimes I had to brave ridicule at my crazy build, and sometimes I saved the day. /shrug

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, oh and did I say it already? Yes.

I have 80 skill points… and nothing to use them on…

Yes,

Or at least a few more to choose from and not the limited amount we are dictated in using now !

Contemporary games have made a move towards simplicity. This is probably both for accessibility and ease of managing balance. The trade-off is loss of character customization and a more boring combat. Is it worth it? I think the gamer has paid too high a price for the design goals. I think that the trend and methods of simplification could moderated a bit and games would be more engaging for it. I’m not sure if simply adding skills like GW1 is the complete answer but I’m certainly open to it as a possibility.

Seems like we are slightly split with more leaning towards the GW1 skills style.

I think a nice compromise would be to add Skill capture Elites from bosses atleast. Make them very difficult to get or with a long cooldown. Skills like rez entire party. Deal 30k instant AoE damage. Game changer skills.