Guild Wars 2

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

1.) Vertical Progression stifles alts.
I don’t log into my alts after putting in all the work on ascended. They don’t feel like heroes anymore and I don’t want to leave all that work on the select screen. This has caused me to not buy gem store items for them. They have been abandoned.

2.) No wardrobe. 30 gold skin on ascended gear is not getting transmuted over or a
splitter bought for every piece anytime you’d like to try a different look. As more people have expensive gear and skins. The skins game dies.

3.) Elementalist. Anytime you are moving traits between tiers at this stage of a game, you failed. Class has no stability and as much as I’d like to play it, I can’t gear it due to the constant change. I have all 8 at 80 and main a guardian, I just feel bad for people who do main an ele.

4.) Tequatl. With this fight and ascended gear, Anet did a 180 away from people that can’t play more than a couple hours. The organization required for both is a deterrent to many people.

5.) Dynamic events. One of the major pillars of the game has no reward in terms of time spent vs gold/items earned. This is why champ trains are popular. You want to reach your goal efficiently. How much gold can you make an hour? How long does an event take? Give that ratio of gold for events.

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

Because the guy who spent a week flipping to make enough gold to buy one or just bought gold (from anet or 3rd party) gets it while the guy actually playing the game will take months if not nearly a year to get one.

1. Fixed timers and spawn locations.
2. Event contribution based primarily on DPS.
3. Condition mechanic.
4. RNG
5. Broken scaling that allows faceroll zerging to trivialize content. This together with number one results in the current champ farm trains that renders dynamic events throughout the entire map useless and not worth doing.

1. The Living Story is hamstrung by the Personal Story.
It could be so much better with the freedom to actually change the “Living World”.

2. WvW & PvE should never have been directly linked.
PvP balance never works in PvE and vice versa.

3. Every mob should always drop some vendor trash when killed.
Dry streaks are demoralizing.

4. The AI only has two states, terminator walk, and run away.
The AI is also slightly psychic and can turn on a dime.

5.Fixed weapon skills.
Variety is the spice of life.

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

So what is the logic behind account bound ascended weapons if crafted? Why are those not tradeable?

And yes I know, the logic behind that is to force players to grind for BiS items ond not just buy them.

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

Because then the Legendary doesn’t reflect a player’s skill or achievement, just the ability to get their wallet out. And from the number of incompetents waving Legendaries around, it seems the wallet solution does happen.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

So what is the logic behind account bound ascended weapons if crafted? Why are those not tradeable?

And yes I know, the logic behind that is to force players to grind for BiS items ond not just buy them.

The player actually has to participate in enough Dragonite yielding events (open world raid) to earn 500 Dragonite. Also roughly speaking enough Explorable dungeons (25 to be precise) to earn 500 Empyreals.

As much as any idiot can use the dragon timer and just show up, it takes a modicum of skill to stay alive enough to actually hit the boss. This will improve the minimum level of skill for an Ascended weapon compared to bought Legendaries.

More importantly, we don’t risk where EQ 2 got before the big crafting change. Crafting was so difficult that only a handful of people could make the top tier items, and as a result that handful of crafters became extremely wealthy at the expense of the rest of the population. This is not an outcome (more directly, a mistake) I’d like to see repeated in any game I’m a customer of, ever again.

bewhatever.2390:

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

Because then the Legendary doesn’t reflect a player’s skill or achievement, just the ability to get their wallet out. And from the number of incompetents waving Legendaries around, it seems the wallet solution does happen.

The same could be said about commanders.

Careful, it’s a can-opener to a rather large can of worms.

1-5: Broken class mechanics. Largely for engineers.

Honorable mentions: Lack of wardrobe/easily reusable skins, the broken TP, the removal of culling in pve, and the strict adherence to the 2-week cycling content.

1. Diminishing returns.
2. Terrible elite skill choices.
3. Medium armor models.
4. Grind, oh lord the mat grind, it’s like having hiccups for 1000 years.
5. Lack of chest key drops.

1. Ascended gear. Now with added grind because i heard you liked grind. Made even worse by…
2. Gear-bound stats. Want to experiment with a different set of stats? Get a brand new set of gear. With exotics, it was already vault-space-breaking to play with multiple sets. With ascended gear, it’s now grind-tastic too. Same goes with the runes. New set of runes? Lose the old ones or go for a new set… Why couldn’t the gear keep track of all the runes ever added to it and allow to pick from any of them? As is, you just don’t bother…
3. Very poor wardrobe options. Which is a pity because the dye system is great. No wardrobe to store ‘unlocked’ skins for reuse, and shoddy state of town clothes.
4. Stats rewards in a pvp mode (wvw) slowly ensuring new players start at an even bigger disadvantage. In the long term, that’s just making sure the new players wonder “why bother?” and leave to do something else.

1) Lack of world PvP. How cool wouldn’t it be with dynamic PvP events popping up in the world and mingling with the PvE action? I still hold out hopes for an expansion exploring this missed opportunity. Do something with the factions you’ve got. That massive event you ended beta with was some of the coolest kitten ever and I’d love to see more like it.

2) No dimishing returns on crowd control effects. Probably the biggest issue in actuality but I’m really keen on world PvP so yeah.

3) Unimaginative zone designs. The Mists is the biggest culprit here. You have a magical landscape you can change however you desire it and you make it rolling green hills and castles? Boooring.

4) Wardrobe system. There isn’t one. Why is that? Please let me change my pants without having to pay gems for it. It’s embarrassing.

5) Levels. I don’t think they serve any real purpose other than to lead you by the nose. I certainly wouldn’t miss them.

1)Plethora of Currency- Too many currency-
Karma,Guild commendation,8 different dungeon currency, Laurel,Fractal Relic,Pristine Fractal Relic,Badge of Honour,Glory,Glob of ectos,Gold,Gems,Blacklion tickets,various historic events using different ingredients as currency.

2)Living Story- Temporary Content every 2 weeks.
Should be made into personal story and permanent instead so that people can play at their own pace and not miss anything if they can’t play in 2 weeks due to real life commitments.

3)Balancing 8 different profession- OverPowered and UnderPowered professions
1 year on and balancing is still far from perfect.Hope they find the right mix of strength and weakness in each class to make all 8 viable for all aspects of the game.

4)Balancing Dynamic and world events-Overplayed and Underplayed events
Certain maps like Queensdale and Frostgorge is packed with people because of champ farming train of events. Othermaps,usually mid lvl maps are nearly deserted. More life can be injected to these maps to bring players to each map.If reward is the main luring factor,then do so accordingly.

5)WVW and SPVP- More modes of large/small scale pvp are needed.
WVW has not changed much in more than 15 months, SPVP has the same conquest mode. More variety is needed since PVP is pretty much endgame content.

1-Down state in PVP
2-No more BLC keys drop in the world
3-Most end game rewards are cosmetic rewards. Added no new armor set since the game’s release and only release cash shop armor skins only
3-Gold to gem ratio skyrocketing, making you either spend real life money or grind for hours for things you want to buy
4-Death of Cursed Shore by making bad decisions, like nerfing drops, longer reset timers, champions that drop no loot and no rewards, laughable rewards for completing level 80 events etc.
5-No expansion in view

I got just one that gets me a tad upset. Not being able to see party chat after you leave (or get kicked) from one.

1. Condition Damage
2. Weapon Design
3. Pets
4. Unique attacks of classes
5. scaling of not power things (healing power, vitality, …)

1. Downed state.
2. Tag for loot/rewards. On the surface this seems good… Everyone wins! But look closer and you find the reason for massive zerg play being the best way to do anything.
3. Keep/Tower design in WvW. Defenders don’t have the advantage, try to fight from the walls and you’re a sitting duck. Only option is #4.
4. Overpowered seige weapons. We’d rather fight with our normal skills than sit on an arrowcart.
5. Small zones. Leads to zerg play in WvW. In PvE everything is just too close. Too many waypoints makes it even worse, leaves no sense of danger/adventure.

TheGuy.3568:

I got just one that gets me a tad upset. Not being able to see party chat after you leave (or get kicked) from one.

Add to this guild chat disappearing when you switch toons. I hate that when guildies ping a wp then I switch toons only to have them have to ping it again. Map and say chat don’t disappear so why does guild?

scerevisiae.1972:

My list:

• Downed state in PVP zones. Adds nothing to the game but detracts a lot. It’s annoying, disrupts the flow of combat, introduces imbalance and farcical rally situations.
• Fixed weapon skills. Far too restrictive for me, pigeonholes weapons into roles & can causes whole weapons to be ruined because of just 1 bad skill.
• No resource system. Has caused GW2 combat to be all about spamming skills/dodges.
• Removal of skill capturing (signet of capture). One of the best & debatably most game-defining features of the first game, I cannot fathom the logic of why it was elided from GW2.
• Addition of ascended gear after release. Massive PR blunder. Pushed the game into a grind corner it has yet to escape from.

1 Wrong, encourages not dying in big fights. Rallying is an important part of PVP.
2 I see what you mean but current system allows ANet to more tightly control skill design
3 No, potion spam anyone? Remember grind farming for potion mats in other games just so you could PVP or Raid for a few hours.
4 Agree, I liked skill capture, but really, doesn’t fit current skill model so I manage
5 Agree, bad call

You guys casually mention all sorts of features where you don’t appreciate much of the cleverness behind their design. Many of the things people want to remove are cornerstones of a larger concept.

casual players

max size norns

ppl whining about ascended (you only need it for high lvl fractal)

warriors being loved in pve

spvp / tpvp not being separate from the game forcing class imbalance and underperformance in pve aspect (which has the most content and most player base)

1 Ascended gear – exposed devs as cynical deceivers
2 Tying Ascended gear to crafting and making it character bound and un tradeable which means for BIS gear you HAVE to craft. WHY
3 Creation of massive grind – for Ascended gear
4 Enabling Ascended gear to be used in Wvw – disable this and who cares if you have ascended in PvE. In PvP of any kind it is counter the GW principles.
5 Most importantly – abandonment of GW principles of one time purchase for level playing field fun. Greed took over at A Net office – the entire ethos is now – how can we get people to buy gems with real money. Hence you have armour sets for sale that you have to repeatedly transmute. Exotic gear now made obsolete. Need i go on………..

coglin.1867:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Legendaries – why on earth can you sell them on the trading post?

Why shouldn’t you ?

You put the time and effort into it, why shouldn’t you be able to sell it for a gold injection into your account as a monetary value of the time and effort spent?

Has nothing at all to do with not wanting you to make money, it has everything to do with those who farm or buy gold getting something that is supposed to be an accomplishment for no effort.

The minute legendaries went up on the TP, I stopped being impressed by them, as a prestige item (their original intention) they are now completely worthless.

1: Underutilized Combat Systems
You have in place systems where you can have valuable support, control, and damage roles for every class in the game… only the numbers are off. Damage numbers scale too high, defensive, buff, and healing numbers scale too low, some effects have godlike power while others and laughable.

Take a look at aegis versus blind in a boss fight. One is easy mode, and the other is 10% effective. Why? Because of application frequency? Maybe the skills should be designed in a more uniform manner then Take a look at might versus… well everything.

Underutilized skill combo system. This was where you could have made the game really tactical and interesting, creating an intricate combat system that wasn’t specifically class or role reliant. In stead combos are largely ancillary and unimportant short lived effects and everything boilds down to “burst fire or water or don’t bother”

Pure cooldown reliance creates a system in which in stead of a single healer playing healthbar whack-a-mole you have an entire team of players playing skill bar whack-a-mole. I honestly cringe every time I play anything that’s not a thief. I feel like I can’t do anything but watch timers.

Not enough skills / Rigid predefined builds. The idea of traits and gear is well thought out, but they fall flat when faced with the too-rigid weapon skill system. There are exactly as many builds as there are weapon types for each profession, with only a few exceptions. When all builds are defined as “Greatsword X” or “Staff Y” or “Dagger Z” because it’s the only defining trait that separates it from it’s class peers… man… IDK.

2: Microtransactions: You’re overdoing it.
Having a gold>gems conversion is not an excuse to put 70% of all new rewards in the gem store. MMOs are about earning rewards, and only a select few rewards can actually be earned. The rest, we buy. Unlike many people, I don’t have a problem with the transmutation system. I think it’s a fair system and a good way to add value to the gem store. If you simply added more equipment to the actual game, it would translate to more sales of transmute stones because people would have more things to transmute

3: Homogenous loot
Loot just ain’t fun. In GW1 every region, zone, and boss had interesting, specific loot that created a reason to go there. This piggybacked on the skill capturing system to create an expansive world that felt valuable as a whole. Even with the new skins added in the champion bags, there is very little in the way of “cool loot” in GW2 as chances are, no matter where you are when you pick it up, you’ve seen that exact item, or one that’s visually identical a lot already, even if you’ve never been anywhere nearby. Armor as a whole has ONE rare-ish drop skin, and weapons are largely a pool of any mob in the game, or any champion box in the game. This is bad, and makes exploring a lot less fun.

4: There ain’t no siege in siege warfare
In WvW, the map is minicule to the point of stupidity, and structures are so flimsy they may as well be made of the same crappy plywood that makes up more of Kaineng City. Five people can flip a tower in less than five minutes, a camp in less than one. A dedicated force can do the same to a keep in ten. This isn’t siege warefare, it’s an instant gratification roving mess. There is no incentive to defend because nothing is defensible in the first place, and there isn’t enough map to care about territorial limits. You just run from wherever you are to whatever objective you feel like in mere minutes, ignoring enemy strongholds and sentries along the way. Then you flip it and leave to do another one.

5: Loose ends and meaningless decisions
See: The entire living story, the personal story, the backstory, the story from the first game, and the scripts for a good number of events

1. Ascended rings
2. Ascended backpacks
3. Ascended amulets
4. Ascended earrings
5. Ascended weapons

Not sure which one I’ll have to drop once ascended armors are released though.

1. Above anything else… I hate the 25 cap of conditional damage stacks.
2. Ascended items, for the same reasons hundreds of posts have told before.
3. Almost any intermediate armor skin. So ugly all of them. I cry when I have to level up my thief or ranger.
4. Not being able to put notes on your personal map
5. Defiant on bosses. Hell, why can’t we use a big portion of our skills on the bosses? Work on their IA to dodge some of the attacks but don’t make them completely useless and turn every PVE party into a DPS fest.

I actually think the downed state is bad anywhere, not just in PvP. A system that, in certain situations, makes it better to leave enemies alive then kill them shouldn’t exist in my opinion. An example of such a situation, in PvE, is when you fight 4 enemies, kill one fast and get a second to low health; if at that point you have low health it’s better to change target to either of the other enemies so the low health enemy dies quickly once you get downed.

Some other things I consider mistakes:
Stealth: It’s completely unbalanceable. In WvW thieves can enter almost any fight (including 1 v a few) without a decent chance of losing (if the thief escapes I consider it more of a draw since he/she’s free to try again after a short while).

The restrictions in choosing skills: In my opinion there are only 3 real skill slots.

Increase movement speed signets: In order not to feel like I’m moving far too slow I have to use 1 of my 3 skill slots for a speed boost signet on half the classes, on the other half I have to find some other way to boost my speed. In my opinion it would be better to give a far larger out of combat speed boost and let things like swiftness only apply in combat.

Conditions: The current way conditions work is horrible, with only a few players using conditions their effectiveness goes down a lot. The condition cap should be personal if existing at all (considering epidemic there could be reasons for a skill cap to exist, just not in the way it is now).

Also I think the personal story and most of the living story is rather bad but I’m not sure that counts a design, the latest bit of the living story could be fine IF, and only if, Scarlet is a pawn of something/someone else.

1. Vertical progression. This is what people are referring to when they say Ascended gear. Tiers of gear really have nothing to do with this problem per se. The problem is scaling the game vertically as opposed to horizontally.

2. Two week DLC value proposition. This one comprises so many problems from QA issues to the lack of addressing many core game issues, to coherently telling a story.

3. Living story. What we have is an episodic TV model. What we need is an expansion, but delivered over time. The content (and achievements, items, etc.) should be permanent, and the story deeper and more progressive. The model should be around an evolving, living world.

4. Reward. There is far too much RNG and far less reward simply for playing the game. This is characteristic of B2P games where the player is largely made responsible for rewarding themselves. However, we’ve been conditioned to rewarding games through the sub model.

5. The lack of meaningful combat roles. It doesn’t need to be the trinity, but humans, in groups, generally organize around roles. The roots are in human needs and behavior. You violate human needs and behavior at your peril.

1. Content redundancy.
2. WvW design in general, map, castles, towers, siege.
3. Damage VS Defense (Balance) – class/skill design.
4. On PVE cant atack mobs from lower or high ground, this system leads to some problems in WvW also(the invunerability spots).
5. Teq changes, the design of the event looks it was designed by a child, also there should be more dragons even lesser ones apearing once in a while in all tyria, once again poor content related to gw2 history and books.

bewhatever.2390:

Because then the Legendary doesn’t reflect a player’s skill or achievement, just the ability to get their wallet out. And from the number of incompetents waving Legendaries around, it seems the wallet solution does happen.

As someone who is still working on earning their first Legendary, the above is my biggest issue. Because you can buy Legendaries, they really have lost the Legendary feel. When I get mine, most people will assume I didn’t work for it and bought it. That doesn’t keep me from working towards it because I like the skin and the idea of switching stats on the fly, but boy it is a slap in the face for hard work when no one will even look twice at it. In the beginning you would see one and think “wow awesome”, now you see one and you think “jeez I wonder what that guy paid for that”.

Biggest mistake ever making them trade-able.

Downed state I love in PvE and yes also in WvW. I don’t like it in PvP due to rallies. If they made it so that you wouldn’t rally from killing someone in PvP but rather had to rez yourself or have a teammate rez you, then Downed State would be completely acceptable. Most people dislike DS in PvP specifically because someone you are about to kill would rally because some enemy player behind you fighting a completely separate fight would win his fight. It’s just a bit backwards. Remove the rally off kill in PvP and DS would be perfect.

1. Ascended gear – my refusal to increase crafting from 400-500 and my refusal to make ascended gear in any way is my own little rebellion. Sadly, I have kept all my ascended materials, but only because they are worthless anyway.

2. RNG – I guess I’m in the unlucky account category, because I have never, EVER seen a good drop. I can have 230% MF and get garbage; same garbage I got with 0% MF. Mystic forge is a joke. I gave up on anything good coming from LS, since I usually just get barbs as drops there. Thank you so much ANet for making my gaming experience seem pointless and frustrating.

3. Ascended gear allowed in WvW – personally, I suck at PvP, so I’m sure to get kittened by anyone regardless of gear. I still feel this is completely wrong.

4. LS zergfests – boring. Just… boring; oh and unrewarding, as mentioned above. I’d rather go do the FGS champ train…. or floss my teeth.

5. TP richie riches – I’m an accountant. I don’t want to be an accountant/trade guru in my spare time to get anything good. Again, boring. Oh, ok, while I’m at it, the ridiculous, incredibly annoying, frustration-inducing restriction on how many things you can post on the TP. I don’t flip, but I do sell stuff on there. I have no idea why anyone at ANet thought restricting your sells to a few before ERROR WARNING OH MY GOD YOU POSTED TOO MUCH CORRUPT SYSTEM WARNING WARNING was a good idea for any reason at all other than to kitten off all real players.

There are more, but I’ll keep it to the 5. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get that off my chest.

First: Congratulation Kimyrielle for your great text. Best stuff I read in this forum ever. I agree!

My five points are:

1. Living Story – A MMO world should be expanded with meaningful lasting content. The name is irritating too, because there is no living and very few story in this updates. Most times the relation of either updates can only be seen by the devs. Worst MMO update system I ever encountered.
2. Shop centric development – There is a reason, why high quality MMOs used to have a fee. Nearly every update of this game has stuff nobody needs to play the game, but is advertized as hell or hidden by the RNG curtain. The worst thing about this is not, that ArenaNet tries to earn their money, the worst thing about is, that you feel, they sacrifice quality for ‘gem-ity’ in every patch.
3. Change of development team What? I explain. As I installed Guild Wars 2, I loved the game with passion. Nearly everything was as expected and it was good to see, feel and play. But nearly everything patched in after release feels so totally different, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the original developers have been long gone. Are you still the same? I doubt it considering the patches since release.
4. Events for Quests Really I like the event system, but I also miss quests dearly. Quest that get you out and traveling half Kryta or Ascalon, visiting this and that to get your story and/or reward. The events don’t connect you to the world like epic quests in other games did manage. Events feel static, feel usable to get some points. That you don’t get interesting rewards for them makes them even less interesting. Quests had some spirit, I dearly miss.
5. GRIND and ZERG-a-holic No grind in guild wars 2? Well some stuff feels less grindy than in other games, right. But the game ist still full of it and the achievement mania every two weeks adds to it. It is grindy by intent of the dev team, so never say no grind again, it would be a massive lie. Zerg by intent has been done as well. Every new content is zerged to death with the exception of Tequatl, which is but one event out of xxxx events in the game. This game is collecting the players in very few places, gives them zerg and grind stuff and the rest of this beautiful world grows less and less visited. It is a shame and it is handmade by the devs.

Nice thread.

In any order:

• A lack of diversity in challenging PvE combat. (It tends to come down to dodge this, damage that. But we’re slowly seeing improvements)

• Ascended gear. (For many many reasons, build lock-in being the main one)

• On-going grindy progression. Be it fractals, Wxp or gear: If I take a longer break I’m no longer capable of playing at the top level.

• The difficulty of recognizing tells. Be it through effects-clutter or quick, hard to catch, skill-animations.

• Not enough staff. For all the succes this game has, I think an increase in staff size is appropriate.

1. End game lack of content. I’m sure they could devote a really extensive “living world”-esque patch to Orr so it actually has variety in its events.

2. No new areas. I would love to explore the ring of fire or the desert gate at fields of ruin. No plans for those though and expansions have been discarded too.

3. Terrible balancing. As an Elementalist main it’s painful to see patch after patch addressed at the wrong aspects, which in return ends up indirectly nerfing specs that were fine before.

4. SPVP and its lack of features. 6? Maps that are all about captures. We could have so much more…

5. Downed state. Getting instagibbed is frustrating but there could be a fix for that. Make it so if your HP goes to 0 within 3 seconds you get a 2 seconds window where you can attempt to heal before you completely die. Simple, right?

Honorable mention: Personal story. Those cutscenes are lame and fail to showcase any emotion whatsoever (maybe I’m asking too much).

I’m perfectly fine with everything else. I like grindy mmos, I like ascended stuff.

-turtle paced profession development that mostly revolves around trait numbers.

-gimmicky and unbalanced profession designs. limited build variety and too much emphasis on gear for customization.

-gimmicky and limited weapon designs forced into only 5 slots. weapon abilities feel cheap and unfinished.

-having too many things packed into too few buttons on the combat interface causing controls to be clunky. I find myself watching and playing the ui, managing overused swap and cooldown timers, keeping my eyes out for red circles and not the rest of what is happening on the screen.

-the tremendous amount of time and resources invested on gear progression that far outweighs any core profession development currently.

Swagger.1459:

-gimmicky and unbalanced profession designs. limited build variety and too much emphasis on gear for customization.

Ignoring your other points, this one struck me as complete BS. You think Elementalist is gimmicky? Or Engineer? Or Mesmer? How are those gimmicky, because they are different from what any other MMO has tried? All three of those that I listed are unique and offer many different play styles through weapon/trait changes. A staff Ele versus a D/D for example, fire vs. air, I mean seriously, It’s almost like you already hate the game and want to use sweeping generalizations about a core aspect of the game to express your dissatisfaction, regardless of how absurd. If I didn’t think you would lie about it, I’d ask if you’ve even played an Elementalist or Mesmer or Engi or heck even a Necro.

Granted Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Thief, maybe even Necro, I could see as somewhat uninspired on face level, but the other three? In all my years of MMO-ing those three classes stand out as unique and patently un-gimmicky.

Unbalanced, well that’s a different issue and I partly agree, but boy did that gimmicky comment get to me. What isn’t gimmicky by your definition?

scerevisiae.1972:

• Removal of skill capturing (signet of capture). One of the best & debatably most game-defining features of the first game, I cannot fathom the logic of why it was elided from GW2.

I agree with you that removing this was a mistake, they stated some time before the game’s release in a dev interview why they did it.

To make skill capture viable you have to have LOTS of skills. Apparently the large number of skills was a balancing nightmare and major resource drag and they stated to avoid those problems again they would not have the number and variety of skills in GW2 that they did in GW1. I wish I could find the article for you but it was a really long time ago.

I also think that most of the mistakes in the game are implementation problems rather than mistakes. Getting rid of the holy trinity was not necessarily a mistake. Putting NOTHING back in to replace the holy trinity was. For instance, if ALL fights required the group coordination of Tequatl it would be ok. You don’t need class roles if the fights have roles built into them. Unfortunately that is the only fight where this has been properly done.

I think one of their biggest design mistakes was not allowing players to wear cosmetic armor in combat. It basically made this type of equipment worthless and hurt their own sales while reducing character customization.

So I saw this and decided, what the heck! I love GW2, but here’s mine.

1. Emphasis on new story arcs vs. old lore.
– This is a big letdown in my opinion. They keep introducing new living story stuff, and have pushed all of the old lore to the back burner. There are so many areas I’d love to see any one of… those being, Northern Shiverpeaks, Crystal Desert, Deldrimor Front, Ring of Fire, Cantha and Elona…. even the continuation of Orr would be nice. This game needs to open up the world.

2. No customizable home instance.
- In a game where 99% of character advancement is cosmetic and 99% of the content is solo-friendly, you really need other things to do. A home instance that was upgradable with trophies that could be earned through gameplay would fill that gap and provide another way to connect with the world.

3. PvP having no rewards carry over into PvE

- I find PvP moderately fun in most games I play. But when your progress there does little to advance your character and rewards aren’t represented in the PvE world, there’s little motivation to do it other than the desire to improve at a class, or boredom. A home instance would also be a great place to display accomplishments and trophies from PvP.

4. Zergs are too powerful in WvW

- kinda speaks for itself. WvW matches are won and lost based entirely on who’s zerg is the biggest and stays online the longest. It was fun as hell from time to time, specifically when tactics played a part, but mindlessly running with the zerg and/or getting yelled at by hardcore WvW’ers to stick on a commander’s icon gets old after a year.

5. Developer’s lack of direction

- It seems apparent to me, that through various comments made by the devs, there is no real direction in the game. I feel like they are trying to be unique and groundbreaking, while simultaneously not take risks and sell their product to the largest possible audience. Unfortunately it is impossible to accomplish both of these at the same time, and it feels like no forward progress is being made.

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

4. Zergs are too powerful in WvW

- kinda speaks for itself. WvW matches are won and lost based entirely on who’s zerg is the biggest and stays online the longest. It was fun as hell from time to time, specifically when tactics played a part, but mindlessly running with the zerg and/or getting yelled at by hardcore WvW’ers to stick on a commander’s icon gets old after a year.

Normally I would agree with you, in fact, I still agree with you, but I don’t know if it’s Fort Aspenwood just being awesome or what but lately in WvWvW even when our small zerg (20-25) comes up to a much larger zerg (40-50) we still end up on top somehow. Granted number count is based solely on my eyeballs but I swear we’ll be entering a fight and I’m like “oh great, we’re about to get rolled over” and the next thing I know they are retreating and we are standing there over their corpses wondering how the heck we just fought them off. Maybe our server name strikes fear or something. The other possibility is that I think they have 40-50 but they really don’t. It’s hard to get a good count when there is just a sea of red.

bluejay.6739:

I agree with you that removing this was a mistake, they stated some time before the game’s release in a dev interview why they did it.

To make skill capture viable you have to have LOTS of skills. Apparently the large number of skills was a balancing nightmare and major resource drag and they stated to avoid those problems again they would not have the number and variety of skills in GW2 that they did in GW1. I wish I could find the article for you but it was a really long time ago.

A shame the game is nowhere near balanced as it stands :o Totally not worth it.

bluejay.6739:

I also think that most of the mistakes in the game are implementation problems rather than mistakes. Getting rid of the holy trinity was not necessarily a mistake. Putting NOTHING back in to replace the holy trinity was. For instance, if ALL fights required the group coordination of Tequatl it would be ok. You don’t need class roles if the fights have roles built into them. Unfortunately that is the only fight where this has been properly done.

I think one of their biggest design mistakes was not allowing players to wear cosmetic armor in combat. It basically made this type of equipment worthless and hurt their own sales while reducing character customization.

The two biggest mistakes in the game is the spam powered gameplay (skills and evades) and the builds made from the stats on your gear.

Draknar.5748:

Swagger.1459:

-gimmicky and unbalanced profession designs. limited build variety and too much emphasis on gear for customization.

Ignoring your other points, this one struck me as complete BS. You think Elementalist is gimmicky? Or Engineer? Or Mesmer? How are those gimmicky, because they are different from what any other MMO has tried? All three of those that I listed are unique and offer many different play styles through weapon/trait changes. A staff Ele versus a D/D for example, fire vs. air, I mean seriously, It’s almost like you already hate the game and want to use sweeping generalizations about a core aspect of the game to express your dissatisfaction, regardless of how absurd. If I didn’t think you would lie about it, I’d ask if you’ve even played an Elementalist or Mesmer or Engi or heck even a Necro.

Granted Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Thief, maybe even Necro, I could see as somewhat uninspired on face level, but the other three? In all my years of MMO-ing those three classes stand out as unique and patently un-gimmicky.

Unbalanced, well that’s a different issue and I partly agree, but boy did that gimmicky comment get to me. What isn’t gimmicky by your definition?

In addition to gimmicky, unbalanced and limited, I forgot to add in shallow and poorly designed.

You don’t have to like it, but there is a difference between unique and gimmicky for me. My post was designed to talk about things in general terms, and the work gimmicky happens to most accurately describe what I think. You may not agree with me using the word gimmicky and call it bs, but there is nothing I can do to change that. If I think something is gimmicky, then I will call it gimmicky.

There are a few worse games, but profession, weapons, combat and combat controls are gimmicky, unbalanced, limited, shallow and poorly designed. In my book, the main redeeming quality (aside from pretty pixels) to professions and combat are the ability to move while attacking. If you were to take that away, this would have been another completely gimmicky garbage bin game for me.

1. Engine that`s not appropriate for an MMO. I expected a huge open world, but I got little closed off rooms. Breaks immersion immensly. You can always tell where the room ends by the map – no exploration enjoyment at all. A bit better than SWTOR (which is terrible in this part) but long ways away from WoW which came out in 2004, kitten it!
2. Living Story – after a 6 month hiatus there`s almost no new content at all that would make me play the game again. Expansion pack would be a much better, less rushed solution imo.
3. No reason to return to quest areas – the world is completely empty. Can`t do any of the group content with alts and it makes you feel like playing an average SP RPG.
4. Pretty monotomous loot. One of the main reasons I play MMOs is loot, specifically how it looks. Untill some level 30 my ranger looked all the same with basically different color variations of the same chest peace.
5. Skill build and weapon choices become set in stone too fast with no further options to change gameplay. It might be fine for a 30 hour SP RPG but in MMOs you are supposed to spend hundreds of hours. Basically not enough weapon skill variety and no options for further progress in this part of the game resulting in gameplay becoming a boring routine in PvE (because AI is nonexistent). Works at least decently in PvP. Still some variety would go a long way.

Ascended gear
Lack of variety in sPvP game types
Legendaries being sellable
DR
Reliance on RNG

In order of gravity (IMO),

1. Allowing download of data which enables the existence of TP monitoring websites and allowing flippers to thrive as they do,
2. Zergs,
3. The design flaw which enabled the ‘Ember’ and ‘Dolyak’ champ farms (i.e. failing events is rewarding),
4. Ascended gear + any tier above Ascended gear

I can’t really think of a No. 5. Even No. 4 is a stretch to me as long as Ascended is the final tier. Pretty happy with the game otherwise.

1. The game engine not being up to its task…definitely numero uno.
2. The barely disguised contempt shown by the devs to the player community about bugs, balance and suggestions…especially through stonewalling on gamebraking issues.
3. Bugs and their lack of attention with some still present from launch.
4. The inequity of the treatment for the professions with a strong tilt towards those most commonly played (by the devs?)….a catch 22 that one.
5. The poor communication of what the devs actually want/expect from the different professions (other than the broad meta advertising brochures that they push out that are not supported by ingame mechanics/gameplay)
6. The apparent lack of direction/cohesion/consistency for profession development (necro I am looking at you in particular).

Other than that, basically the best game in its genre in my mind….just a pity they detract so heavily from what it should be with just a little more attention to the player base’s real needs.

1. Terrible targeting system
2. Terrible camera system
3. Unbalanced classes in PVE
4. Defiant/Unshakable
5. Insta-kills all over the place

stof.9341:

1. Ascended rings
2. Ascended backpacks
3. Ascended amulets
4. Ascended earrings
5. Ascended weapons

Not sure which one I’ll have to drop once ascended armors are released though.

I’d drop rings.

Rings can be gotten through fractals, laurels or laurels plus badges and are thus more accessible to various playstyles. Backpacks can be gained only through fractals. Amulets only via laurels or laurels + badges. The secondary means to get earrings (laurels plus ectos, which costs too much) and weapons (drops, multi-tiered RNG) push players toward the primary means.

Scarlet 5 times.

1. Putting cultural armor in Gem store!

I loved this topic, this show exactly why I stopped to play.

The devs will come here and say: “They don’t know what they want, We know what they want” and fly away.