Guild Wars 2

1. No unlocks for limited acquisition untradable items such as achievement skins or gemstore town clothes. Unlocks are always better. No exceptions.
2. “Gacha” tactics with no sure-purchase alternatives (e.g., lion chests). Paying for a little box that may or may not have what you ant to buy got banned in Japan even for digital products for a reason. It’s really effective because it exploits a fault with the Reward system in the human brain. It makes people spend more than they can, push them into behaviors to fuel that, and even makes them feel like they enjoy it. Such RNG things should only exist if there’s also a way to get directly the item.
3. Inconsistencies. Things like scripted events doing things one way, and others doing the same things in completely different ways. Skins with the same appearance and different names all over the place. All fractal drops have a completely different and inconsistent naming format. Way to many PvP skins do not share their name with the PvE counterpart. Environmental weapons giving some skills and acting one way in one map, and others with the same name an appearance doing something completely different in another place for no reason whatsoever (like they being related to an event that needs them to act different).
Without having some sort of ‘consistency policy’ that kind of thing makes the game feel like a jumble of many different unrelated things patched together like a clown’s jacket (nobody liked you, Sixth Doctor’s jacket!! Nobody!! /fistshake).
4. Excessive money-making schemes get fixed too late, and the rest of the players get punished when they add sinks for all that extra money not everyone got because not everyone exploited those money-making schemes. That effectively rewards exploiting any money making scheme as soon as it’s found, as only those who did exploit them can afford those figures.
5. Living story. Looks to me that they are trying to emulate those days with text-based online RPGs in which a bunch of game masters made events for their friends…
…but GW2 has a lot of players, and one of the key sale points of GW2 is that there’s no fees, so one can play at their own pace. This is not possible if the content is going to go away in a little time. And in the grand scheme of things, a month is REALLY little time.
Content like Tequatl’s and the aetherpath, that stay with their achievements and all, are great steps towards avoiding all the bad things that come wit the living story, but there’s still no way to replay all the previous parts, and looks like if there was, it’ll be some recap cinematic, and that won’t do. Players should be able to replay instances with all the dialog lines.

1. Lack of the Holy Trinity. The tactics we use now is ‘KILL EM ALL BEFORE THEY KILL US !!’. I would like to see Soft Trinity.

2. Weapons and Weapon Skills. 5 skills over and over and over. In some classes, same weapons don’t function the same. For example, Warrior, Guardian and Hunter, Greatsword is mobility. But Mesmer’s GS has no mobility.

3. No cross-classing skills like in GW1. That was the BEST part of it !!!

4. WvWvW is too zerg-focused. 40ppl zerg is unstoppable, unless, well, by bigger or better zerg. WvWvW should be like battlefield. Pincer attack, flank, cut their supplies, attack them on 2-3 fronts, holding key positions. Not saying it’s not happening, but now it’s one zerg train doing them all one at a time, instead of small groups doing all at the same time.

5. Combat. Too much/spamming of conditions. Conditions and Boons should ONLY come from Combo Fields.

Mian.1945:

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.

1. Yes, rally is important in pvp because there are no viable support roles. Rally also makes dying in large fights inconsequential often.
2. If by “tightly control skill design” you mean “skills are pretty boring” then I agree.
3. Potions did not exist in GW1.

Sanduskel.1850:

Perma stealth ruined the thief class

No just horrible players refusing to improve themselves and the developers actually listening to their complaints.

ON TOPIC:

1.) Legendaries: Being subjected to “carrot-on-a-stick” tactics has never been a pet peeve of mine… until I played this game. To put it very nicely, Legendaries have been overhyped. The purpose of the legendary is to turn players into spectacles even though they are not that great at playing the game (and it feels more offensive the worse the player is). There is nothing special about them except for their obnoxious particle effects and the slight bit of convenience (stat changing) while OOC. The items that are used to craft them waste space in the already limited bank players have. Not only that, the player must get multiple full stacks of expensive items (which take alot of grinding) just to make one “gift”. Let’s not forget the over-the-top effects. The rainbow sparkle explosions make it hard for the weapons to look good on armor. But what completely ruined them was that they were not account bound. You can buy them for $600-$700 using the gem exchange. You don’t even have to play GW2 to get them lol.

2.) Testing: It was already confirmed they don’t do very much testing. And when they do test their updates, its either only on paper or only for 15 minutes to make sure its working. In fact, thieves are a living testament to that. Up until around 2 months ago, there wasn’t a single dev who actually PLAYED a thief. Instead of experiencing the capabilities of one of their professions, they listened to white knights like the one I quoted. Now thieves are the worst profession in the game because they provide nothing beyond ganks and finishers. Oh wait, nevermind. They provide easy kills. My bad. :P

3.) Profession Balancing: I am under the firm belief that the developers are as biased as a majority of the playerbase when it comes to professions other than the ones they main. Regardless if this is true or not, it’s wrong and thieves are useless because of it. If the developers accept bias into their profession decisions, then EVERY profession must have an equally biased say. One developer maining one profession each, every profession developer discusses with players who main their profession to improve those professions. Then the developers gather around and discuss balancing buffs between each of the other professions. That’s how it should be done.

4.) Gem Store/RNG/Money Sinks: Most profitable PvP ever. Why play GW2 when you can just flip the market? Let’s not forget, the gem exchange allows you to convert gems you bought with real money into gold to spend on top tier gear which provides cosmetic and literal power. You can buy just power in GW2. Then the gem store has RNG boxes where you have a chance at maybe getting a piece of an item used to buy a weapon skin. I have reason to suspect that RNG doesn’t stop with drop rate but with player’s toons and characters aswell. If you account gets the right number that day and the toon your on has busted through the second layer, all the player has to do is place 4-20 rares in the mystic forge to get a precursor. They don’t even have to play for very long. Even Magic Find is known to have a negative effect on drop rate.

5.) Business Model (or lack thereof): You kitten players off by manipulating content so that the only decent farming could be obtained by participating in Living Story. You kitten players off by removing newly opened areas after the living story progresses. You kitten players off by saying one thing and then doing the complete opposite. And finally, you kitten players off with misinformation. It is clear Arenanet does not have any direction set for this game. It is clear testing isn’t a priority. Exactly wtf are you trying to accomplish anet? This game is not what you hyped about.

1. Scarlet.
2. Scarlet is behind everything.

1. Scarlett did it
2. Fractals since the patch
3. Non-exclusive T3 cultural armor
4. Fractured
5. Exponential Agony Resistance acquisition

Wait what??? All those in this patch? There must be something wrong with it, isn’kitten

Mian.1945:

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.

By “resource system” i mean an energy/mana-like resource, rather than just using simple cooldowns.

Disagree about rallying, rallying ruins PVP.

scerevisiae.1972:

Disagree about rallying, rallying ruins PVP.

It absolutely does not ruin PvP, but it would certainly be improved without it. Downed state is fine IMO, you just shouldn’t be allowed to rally. You should be forced to have a teammate revive you or revive on your own.

The reason I say it doesn’t ruin PvP is because I play PvP every day and have a blast doing it. It would be quite the claim to say it ruined PvP, when really all it does is make things slightly more annoying.

1) Lack of roles for other classes
2) Armor does not scale at higher difficulty levels, making everything about damage
3) Invulnerability, should never have been reintroduced to Guild Wars. It is a flawed game mechanic.
4) The gemstore. Disliked how it started to dominate GW1. Hate it even more now.
5) Conditions, degen, boons, and control skills… all horribly unbalanced and broken.

My list in no particular order.

1. Weapon SkillSet Choice – There just needs to be more options. Some weapons have one skill that just sucks and since we only have access to about 15 skills that can be a huge annoyance.

2. Zoned Maps and Waypoints – Absolutely ruins the exploration for me. I don’t feel like the world is connected. The waypoints only makes the matter worse. With that said I have stopped using them as much but I fear it is to late because I just recently realized this was a reason I wasn’t becoming as immersed and it is hard to see the game through the eyes of a newcomer once again. I remember vividly the first time I came across IronForge in that other game. It was an epic adventure to find a trainer to teach me to use swords. The first time I entered LA I just kind of arrived via waypoint with no objective in mind.

3. No trinity or structured approach to group content – I don’t care that they got rid of the traditional system but the system they put in just does not work. I have never been in a group and our composition actually mattered. And the sad part is anet thinks that what they did was successful (view GW2 Oath Video). No, all you did was make group content mostly boring.

4. Storytelling – Just weak. There is no sense of urgency or impending doom. Incredibly jealous of GW1 players who had rich stories that truly mattered.

5. Reward system is screwed – With them getting rid of gear treadmill they need to find a way to drive players to play. Scream that fun is the reward all you want but its not just fun that drives me to play MMOs. It is some bizarre mix of fun, challenge and reward. Everyplayer has a different internal ratio and anet has yet to find one that appeals to most players.

With that said anet has done quite a few things that worked out well. I just hope they sort the other junk out.

Fungalfoot.7213:

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.

3)! Dude I always thought the scenery was boring too. But since it is so praised I thought I was just missing something or that I had no idea what a good zone should look like. Glad to see I am not alone in thinking this.

Here we go, my humble opinion:

• Lack of skill/weapon choices. Weapon skills should be slotted just like your skill point skills. All weapons should be available to every class.

• Lack of build choice and class diversity. The game feels like most classes are the same minus the color of your hot buttons and a few flavor abilities

• Emphasis on long term grind. This is a big one for me. Some grind is fine, and to be expected with the genre, but this game goes above and beyond most of even the worst MMO grinds.

• Reward structure. The game needs to feel more rewarding for the time you invest in it. Right now there feels like a major disconnect in game for time vs reward.

• Roleless combat. I know most won’t agree with this it seems, but the lack of any purpose to your class extends beyond just traits and weapon skills. It extends to the core combat system of the game itself. Basically, the game relies far too heavily on flat damage, to the point where any other build is ineffective minus specialty situations.

• Wardrobe system. The Transmutation stone system is a complete nightmare wrought with bugs and loopholes. It should of been a tab labeled “Wardrobe” on the character pane from the beginning.

• Living Story. Ugh. At least now we know that waiting a few extra weeks for a real content update is important.

EDIT: Sorry that’s six. Oh well.

1-lack of side quests/story content after lvl 80
2-lack of proper main story narrative
3-lack of guild managing tools
4-badly done living story content for the major part
5-bad rewards like tonics and mini somethings that no one cares

I have 6…

1. CONDITION DAMAGE CAP!!! Is this one the largest problems with PvE as it now stands.
2. Gem store, especially the gem to gold conversion.
3. Legendaries/precursors in the TP. Both should be account bound on acquire, especially legendaries. It’s just plain stupid you can sell legendary weapons, but ascended are account bound as soon as you get them.
4. Anything soulbound, especially cosmetic items such as dyes. Dyes, especially should be account bound.
5. WAY too many currencies. Currently we’re at what, 16?
6. WAY WAY too much grind for T6 mats.

1. No cross-region play — cutting me off from a large portion of the world, especially those friends that I made in GW1 is horrid. That we COULD guest together in beta, and up until the time that guesting was implemented made it that much harder to swallow.

2. No guild alliances — there were well established alliances in GW1 that were given absolutely no accommodation in GW2.

3. Poor Trading Post mechanics — the trading post itself is an extraordinary concept, and it works incredibly well except where it doesn’t work at all. The lack of sorting by armor type is a big deal, having things like the boxes of armor that don’t have the armor type on them (medium or light), having hidden charges that can actually take the profit of a listing down below the merchant value… The TP definitely needs work.

4. Forced solo instances in an MMO — with scaling available there should never be times when I CAN’T play with my friends/family. I am happy that there are places that people who prefer to play solo can do so — the whole majority of the world is this way. Forced solo isn’t good.

5. Time-gated content that requires daily game play for the sake of crafting mats, meta achievements, etc. I know this doesn’t affect everyone, but it’s a huge deal for ME.

1. No GvG. WvW is a zerg fest, and sPvP is limited to small groups. I would love to foster some guild pride with being able to say “Look! My guild is better than your guild!”

2. Armor stats that are unchangeable – I do miss this aspect of GW1. A level 20 Obsidian light armor piece had exactly the same stats as a level 20 vendor item. The weapons were where you get your bonuses, and you could change them with adding components and upgrades. Being locked into a certain set of attributes without being able to switch (via tabs or something) locks you into one play style. If armor and weapons are going to have attributes, why ot let us add “buttons of echanting” or “epaulets of strength” and change the base attributes for a fee?

3. Risk vs Reward issues – Why should I do the “hard” content if I can get exactly the same rewards for doing low-level content with my 80?

4. Making PvE content require WvW to complete and vice versa – PvP and PvE should be relatively separate. Exclusive WvWers shouldn’t have to go to PvE to level, and PvE’ers shouldn’t have to go to WvW to complete PvE achievements. (just examples)

5. No alliances – If I have a group of 5, and you have a group of 5, and we’re trying to coordinate a Teq run, why can’t we “join up” in an alliance of 2 or 3 groups to be able to actually help one another? This is just an example, but there could be any number of instances where an alliance of 3 or 4 groups would make sense.

Design Mistakes? I’m using Anets Manifesto as my reference to where they have moved away from their goals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLA56CD39CEB59FFFC

These points are from chronological order as presented in video:

Reached their Declaration:
1. Dynamic Events – Relatively fun, but very repetitive
2. No Monthly Fees
3. Stylized graphics, the game is beautiful (environment) not the armors
4. The music is amazing (not mentioned in the video)
5. Ree – “We don’t want to create the same MMO”, for the most part I think they have done a nice job. But…. go to #6 below

Missed the mark:
1. Fully branching personalized story quest line – Branching to a certain extent. I almost think of this as a reverse tree. Start at the leaves but they all stem back to the main story.
2. Fighting system gets stale.
3. From Colin “…the rest of the game is a boring grind to get to the fun stuff. I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, hey hey I swung a sword again. We just don’t want players to grind in GW2” – This quote always makes me laugh. They have added more and more grinding to the game, reducing drop rates, time gating, etc.
4. Making the player feel like a hero. Ree – “The boss doesn’t care that I’m there, it respawns 10 minutes later” I’m not sure if it was how they cut the video, so I don’t want to take it completely out of context, but this doesn’t seem very hero like.
5. “Quest up and kill 10 centaurs. We don’t think that is Ok” – Colin. While the quest isn’t kill x of y, there are progression bars that increase based on killing said monsters, in turn, kill 10 centaurs to progress the bar. They reserved the kill x of y for their achievements.
6. Ree – “GW2 is your world, its your story, you affect things around you in a very permanent way”. The story is my personal story up to a point, then it is the same as everyone else. Personal disappointment No fishing, you are correct that you don’t want to be the same MMO as everyone else, and most MMO’s have fishing, so I guess they succeeded.
7. The absolute abysmal testing on some of the releases. I know you can’t test everything and the users will find bugs/glitches, but there have been some obvious issues that should have been address prior to release
8. Zaitan fight…. give me a break.

• Tyria looks nothing like Tyria I get that there was supposed to be destruction & it’s 250 years later(which is hardly a long enough time for this kind of erosion), but it’s like this was an excuse to make the game world look absolutely nothing like the previous game world. They made sure to obliterate every importantly place we remember from GW1. This makes absolutely no sense since it’s Guild Wars 2. fans want to see the old places updated not a a crater with a solitary statue from the previous game smashed in a corner.
• Retcons & the new Lore direction this is like an extension of what they did with the game world. The modernized speech, the marginalization of past events & characters, the over-focus on Sylvari, awful & obviously personal-agenda-driven character designs, the sci-fi-ization of the universe (the Eternal Alchemy is the only truth now & everything can be reasoned & explained. Because of this the world loses it’s magic & mysterious quality & it is replaces with ambiguous characters in an attempt to be “realistic”). Again, it’s like they are showing disdain for the previous direction of GW & use the “it’s evolving” excuse for this.
• Archaic Cosmetic System Armor & weapon skins should be unlockable/collectable & separate from stats. MMOs should use DCUO cosmetic systems. Anything else out of date. This is especially bizarre for a game that is supposed to be revolutionizing it’s features.
• Not Enough Non-Combat Game Features Activities just don’t cut it. A big reason is that they are instanced & therefore not really part of the game world. GW2 is a very non-social MMO. it needs things like Housing, Mounts, world-building interaction, guildhalls, more emotes.. etc… The world needs more meaningful interaction than just combat.

Necromancers – Master of dealing conditions, manipulating conditions and converting boons.

Great idea for a class – but oops, conditions are capped so are useless in PvE (there goes half the necro skills and one weapon), oops 95% of PvE mobs don’t have boons (necros have at least 3 skills dedicated to converting boons to conditions).

A full half of Necromancer skills are useless in PvE.

The design of the actual game doesn’t fit with the design of the class.

1. the excessive need to balance everything in pvp without looking at the consequences in wvw & pve
2. the design of conditions in comparison to direct damage and boons
3. the idea of account-based time gates
4. The lack of diversity of looks in an armor class
5. ascended gear

Tim.6450:

1. the excessive need to balance everything in pvp without looking at the consequences in wvw & pve

Pvp is anything but balanced. It’s more like trying to balance completely separate games simultaneously—nothing will be good.

IMO, the biggest design mistake was made in GW2 when getting a BiS item became more tedious and challenging than using the item.

Ascended Gear acquisition through time gating and crafting by utilizing 50 or 100 times more material for approximately 5% benefit in upgrades puts a lot of focus on making an item. After it is made, journey pretty much ends. Hard part is over. And, really nothing new happens. It stays all the same.

fact is, if one failed miserably as a D/D elementalist w/ exotics, that person will definitely fail in the same fashion with ascended weaponry. The person spent more time with log cutting axe or picks to make the weapon than on using the weapon to add value to the playing abilities. IMO,

GW2 stood a huge chance over other MMOs in creating a better gameplay experience for the players who know what to do with a tool without having to worry about how to acquire it thru hours of grinding and collecting mats or by buying gems to convert into gold. But, unfortunately, it totally missed the boat.

The one and only design flaw or maybe you can call it an approach:

Not working on an expansion
Also not only do we not have an expansion after playing this game for over a year but we have barely gotten any new areas.

List of permanent areas added:
Southsun…1 area added gg…

One can argue that the Zephry Sanctum was another area but that was so small in size and that was temporary.

We should have atleast ventured into the West of Magguma jungle or north of the shiverpeaks, fire island, the crystal desert.
Where is the Temple of Ages?
No UW, No Fow….
Also no idea if we will ever get Cantha/Elona…so many ways to expand but we ended up re-doing an existing Kessex hills area….

While i am a bit disappointed with the lack of expansion or expanding world, I am still very much in love with this game and have enjoyed every minute since beta. Amazing content, an amazing experience! Keep it up devs!

I recently read the Dev notes about Restrospective 2013 on Dulfy’s website and I enjoy it very much. I feel that that ArenaNet is still true to their core design philosophy which make GW2 the only MMO compatible to my own style. So before I start my list (a very very small one), I would share my experience as a short-sighted player who fails to see the sophistication of the GW2 universe.

*Living story: it doesn’t take much skills to get the meta rewards and it gets bored repeating every two weeks. But when I started to care less about the living story achievement tree and just wandered around lvl-ing adds, I found bits of easter eggs here and there which show the influence of the living story. The immersion feels really good. So I’m all patient to see how the last chapter of living story unfolds.

*Zerging: I says this one is purely subjective. ArenaNet did not suggest or invent ‘zerging’. I’ve been to Queensdale Champs train and it bored me to death. I can’t get it longer than an hour. But there are people who doesn’t mind a bit grinding as long as they have adds level up to 80 quickly and efficiently. A friend of mine is a new player and he likes this train too. So why do we judge them for doing what they want?
In WvW, I play CC ele and I cannot roam or do well in a small tight-knit group. I used to be in a 30-man WvW active guild and we moved together as a spearhead for large objectives. We got called a zerg a lot and it’s just sad because that is an excuse clueless people made for not getting the WvW meta. As far as I know, the new map “Edge of the Mist” is much more roaming friendly and zerg unfriendly. So yeah, there you have no blame on ArenaNet.

*Vertical progression: pretty little impact on my current play style. If I get defeated by another player, it’s because he’s much more skillful than I am, or probably because of a new meta hotness. In WvW, no impact at all! In a massive fight, I’m more concerned about my position because I’m more likely to be swarmed up in a lot of CC and AoE, not a slight increase in damage. The only thing that makes it worth having ascended gears is elite dungeons, like in that super hard and high level 50+ fractals where we want to pack a punch in dps so every extra point of dmg output would count. But then, if players are dedicated enough to pursue enjoyment in elite dungeons, they would not mind investing in ascended gears.

*Dungeon design: it sets me off sometimes, for its trickey, but practice makes perfect and helps me understand more about the profession I’m playing. Like recently, Scepter/Focus Ele surges to become the new meta. I have so much fun exploring the play styles which I never know of. It’s the end game for me.

That said, here are my small lists of design short-comings:
[*]Trait and Skill Templates: it is useful and should be implemented.

[*]Re-playable Living Story cut scenes: every RPG has it. An idea of a historian was suggested before. I can’t wait to see it become available.

[*]Scavenging hunt for Legendary precursors: The hunt should have been out way before the acquisition method via MF or monster drops. Every precursors has its own interesting story. If the hunt somehow relates to the original stories of the precursors, it is great. Please just do not make precursors ascended-level and have us craft it.

[*]Reward events for gem store: it should have been done much earlier and more publicly. But anyways, I want to ask for more exciting events

[*]Instance ownership: I know ArenaNet is aware of much grief involved with this one.

1. Trying to keep people in game with vertical progress – Namely, Ascended gear as we have it. Gradual, easily achieved vertical progression would have been fine, as would the hard gear plateau many of us expected. This grindy implementation of VP is against the spirit of the game as originally presented.

2. Lack of replacement for trinity – I love the idea of abolishing tank/healer/dps. But there needs to be something to replace it, so the game still feels cooperative among the players. What happened to control and support? They needed to be strong enough and encounters needed to be designed to require them so that everything didn’t become dps (with some passive support).

3. Too much fast travel – Waypoints are too close together. Things like champ trains are enabled by this. Two or three waypoints per zone and land mounts with a significant speed boost would have put a lot more players out in the world.

4. Not enough support for DEs – The DE concept was exciting, but seems to have been largely abandoned. The original vision was that more and more DEs would get added to zones and that you would have a different experience going back through them. Apparently we didn’t ooh and ahh enough when a few were added shortly after launch, so ArenaNet threw their hands up in the air and gave us fractals and “living” story instead.

5. Not enough support for cosmetics – If cosmetics were supposed to be the endgame carrot instead of stat progression, we needed the infrastructure for it. We need to be able to store and swap out skins easily so it makes sense to keep collecting them.

In addition to my (a) “5 deisgn mistakes”, I’m going to add (b) “solutions” with my 5 design mistakes for the sake of getting somewhere other than stating a problem.

tl;dr I talk about how the PvE, build variety viability, and Personal Story system sucks.
Support is: anything but damage (conditions/boons/effects, control, healing)

1) Ease of PvE and lack of viability of other build types:

a: I feel that PvE is way too easy in general and that the mobs don’t pose any challenge to a half-competent player. I hate to relate things to a completely different (but still very relevant game), but they had it right in the og GW, where mobs traveled in small (and sometimes large) groups with occasional “boss” monsters. This was easier granted the player had allies such as actual human beings or henchmen/heroes. For those who didn’t play the og GW, henchmen/heroes were allies that you could add to your party controlled by AI, except with Heroes (exclusively), you could change their builds entirely and control some of their actions. Zerker builds are currently the best build to run in PvE by a landslide. It’s true that something will always be the best, but the separation between Zerker builds and the runner-up build is too great.

b: mobs travel in groups (with varieties of skill sets), scale defense better so that hits actually hurt (a lot) for squishies, add an ally a player can take with them. Can is important because not everyone might want an AI running around. With the ally, players can build them however they like so that support builds are actually viable (ally will do most of the damage, player will support). If both the player and the ally go zerker, they shouldn’t steamroll everything and be invincible, they should go down quite easily if reckless. The Ally’s skill set availability, armor, stats should improve as the player level progresses (or as Personal Story progresses)… which ties into the next issue.

2) Slow down personal story

a: Right now, Personal Story (PS) moves too fast and doesn’t drive players to do them. Sure it provides a lot of exp as a reward, but after a single PS, players might be lost and won’t know what to do as a level 5, when their next PS is a level 8 recommendation. I’ve had many friends join GW2 and not know how to level appropriately and they find themselves grinding mobs in their beginning zones. I tell them that they have to go to other beginner zones and explore there, or craft but it gets too complicated and grocery list-like. When new players have no idea what to do when they can’t do anything their level, they run around with paper in their faces checking things off.

b: A PS every level and have it guide the player throughout a zone (go from reknown heart to heart). It will give the player a sense of direction and I imagine that if they walk to every PS and complete nearby events, hearts and such, they will be appropriately leveled along the way. This method also leaves the player to run free by choice as well.
In accordance to my first issue’s solution, every level or PS should reward the player with equipment for the player. The degree of the ally’s stats will be directly related to the player’s. For example, if the player has an armor piece of 100 defense, 25 toughness, 15 power and 15 precision, the player will determine (and can change it at any time) the ally’s stats. The player may choose something like 100 defense (defense is a constant), 25 condition damage, 15 power and 15 toughness. The stat combos shouldn’t revolve around pre-existing stat combos for the player. The ally will also gain a set of skills for all roles at once (both a damage-dealing skill and a support-based skill). From the beginning, players can start building their ally to be whatever role they want be it (dmg-dmg, dmg-support, or support-dmg), making it viable for the player to play a support role without progressing at a substantially slower pace.

cont. from previous post:

3) No henchmen, heroes, or summons.

a: PvE is easy so that solo-play PvE is possible. Solo-play can get very lonely for some and may discourage from them playing, but it’s better to have some AI alongside oneself than no AI at all. Utilities and prof. mechanics should stay, but all classes should be able to add more allies to join them. A player soloing in an environment that’s meant for groups would add a possibly higher skill cap in PvE adding a bit of vertical progression in a sense other than better skills/gear. Having a fire imp fight beside you adds a little something else to fighting experiences (but now that damage types are null in GW2, fire imps are less useful than they could be).

b: Add allies (and henchmen/summons)! Like i stated in 2b, it allows more viability of other builds in PvE other than “zerker all damage ping gear or kicked”. Fixes the problem to people not able to complete the Arah dungeon for their PS.

4) Viability of other builds in every game type (WvW, PvP, dungeons, PvE):

a: Relates to my Ally statement, but my main focus in this point is in WvW. I’m still a noob in terms of WvW and meta, but I can speak from experience. Shout Guardians, Hammer Warriors, Staff Eles, Spirit Rangers, Deathshroud and Dagger Storm. Variety still exists, but certain builds shouldn’t be as good as they are in nearly all situations.

b: balance things. It’s a lot easier said than done (or examined), but my thoughts are supposed to be on-topic.

5) Maintenance of incoming players.

a: Tutorial system kinda blows, if there even is one. Beginner zones get too grindy if a player doesn’t know where to go or what to do. New players generally don’t really know what to do, little sense of direction. Sometimes independence is a good thing for players, but those who have an idea of how to play an mmorpg will figure out how to progress quickly. Unlikely, players who are new to the mmorpg scene won’t know how to do anything.

b: Make beginning zones more sustaining so that players can get to level 15 without having to map hop or craft. Don’t increase the amount of exp gained, but increase the amount of activity going on, also, advertise other events in other beginner zones through npcs. If players are shown on their map (through an npc) that there is “this” happening “here”, they will be taught that they can travel to “here” in a few “steps”. For example: Npc walks up to new player, npc yells “help ‘here’ please!” Player is shown “here” and can choose the option to the “steps” to get to “here”. Npc says, “If you go to your home city, walk through this portal blah blah”, there should be a line to follow on the mini-map so the player won’t be entirely lost.

These ideas are very rough, as I thought about them about 30 minutes prior to writing and thought about the latter issues/ideas while writing.

milo.6942:

Tim.6450:

1. the excessive need to balance everything in pvp without looking at the consequences in wvw & pve

Pvp is anything but balanced. It’s more like trying to balance completely separate games simultaneously—nothing will be good.

I did not say that it is balanced (and ever will be) , but they balance a lot for pvp without looking at pve wvw.

In reverse order of importance:

5 – Not having the option to select a voice for your character. They had enough voice actors, could they not have had 4-5 different voice options? All my characters from one race sound exactly the same as one another. If Defiance can have multi voice options, why can’t GW2?

4 – Making Fractals not fun. They feel a grind because they are a grind. Whats more, with long and short Fractals, you can go in and be in for 40-45 mins, or over 2 hours. Not everyone can commit random large lots of time to these things.

3 – Ascended gear. I don’t need to explain this more than it already has. With this one creation, the game has gone from “having many alts is a minor liability” to “You have alts? You moron! Bwah ha ha haaaa”.

2 – Not allowing us freedom of action in a supposed role-playing game. What if I wanted to side with the Separatists? What if I want to play as an Inquest member? All my moral choices are made FOR me. Where is the freedom? Along with point #5, it feels like each of my characters is just a rubber stamp typical ‘hero’ with no individuality at all.

But the biggest design flaw of all is…

1 – No gelatinous cubes. Or Ooze as playable race. Totally unforgiveable :p

1. The creation of the character of Scarlet.
2. Not keeping FOW or UW in the game.
3. RNG – we should be able to work for what we want. Instead we have to get ‘lucky’.
4. Lack of skills and weapons combinations. GW1 was awesome. GW2 feels like no thought was put into it.
5. NO EXPANSION They show us this massive map, and then only let you go to half of it. We also know of Cantha and Elona and they’re nowhere here. The staff of GW2 has no explorers in it or this would have changed at some point the last fifteen months.

They’re going to ride that Scarlet stupidity till the bitter end.

GuzziHero.2467:

4 – Making Fractals not fun. They feel a grind because they are a grind. Whats more, with long and short Fractals, you can go in and be in for 40-45 mins, or over 2 hours. Not everyone can commit random large lots of time to these things.

This is exactly my problem with fractals. I’ve done them exactly twice because I rarely get 2 straight hours to commit.

GuzziHero.2467:

3 – Ascended gear. I don’t need to explain this more than it already has. With this one creation, the game has gone from “having many alts is a minor liability” to “You have alts? You moron! Bwah ha ha haaaa”.

Through killing bots, diminishing returns, nerfing drops, modifying events to make them unfarmable, changing mob spawns, moving resource nodes around or removing them altogether, etc, ANet tried very hard to kill farming in the late fall of 2012 through to the early winter of 2013. Then they turn around and introduce ascended gear which turns GW2 in to a gear grind/treadmill/farm-fest and encourages incredibly repetitive farming. Champ trains for bloodstone dust, portal from world boss to world boss for dragonite, repeat the same few jumping puzzles every day for empyream (sp??). It’s turned GW2 in to tedious repetition for anyone who decides to pursue ascended gear.

GuzziHero.2467:

1 – No gelatinous cubes. Or Ooze as playable race. Totally unforgiveable :p

BOB!!!!

In no order of importance:

1: Stealth mechanic implementation.
I simply do not like how Stealth is implemented right now. Part of this is how from-stealth attacks do not de-stealth the user if their attacks are blocked/evaded. Another is skills that need to ‘hit’ to spawn a pseudo-pet do not reveal you if they hit. Phantasm skills are an example of this.
Revealed as it stands is weak and largely irrelevant. The ranger skill “Sic ’Em” is a clumsy attempt at a hard counter to something that realistically has no counter.
It stacks. Stealth should simply not stack, or should at least give diminishing returns on it. E.g. first application: 4 seconds; second application: 2 seconds, third application: 1 second; subsequent applications: 0 seconds.

2. Ranger Pets and by extension Rangers.
Lack of any except the utmost rudimentary control over pets is the issue I have. For something that represents a fair chunk of a class’s damage/utility, they need to be far better than they currently are. The Hero control system from GW1 would probably prove to be superb for GW2 pets. As little or as much control as you’d like. Ranger trait lines are cobbled together mess, as far as I’m concerned.

3. Ascended/Fractals.
Grind for gear. All I have to say about that.

4. Conditions in PvE.
Conditions are largely terrible in PvE because of the current cap amounts. In addition, condi builds that do not use power in their gear are at a severe disadvantage when having to destroy things that cannot have conditions placed on them.

5. Lack of any relevant resource management. I think ANET did a great job of resource management in GW1. In GW2 its mostly about just using skills as they come off of cooldown. It just seems very spammy to me. Somewhat related is the general lack of risk/reward attached to skills. If you land them: reward; if you miss them: well, they’ll be off cooldown soon enough.

I’m gonna make my list from 5 to 1, with 1 being worst design.

5. Story, living story progression, npcs

From Zhaitan to Scarlet, I feel like Anet is trying to tell some story to 10 year old kids. Zhaitan is evil, he make undeads, go kill it. Scarlet is evil insane lunatic, she wanna blow things up, go kill it. I guess I’m getting older, but these type of stories and characters just seem too shallow for me. Its not like story has no potential. There are some interesting and curious things like, you know that purple line across ascalon? Well that was aftermath of awakening of Kralkatorrik. This dragon is so powerful that just walking trough this land, he branded it. Or Jormag made some disaster in shiverpeaks, and it seems that each dragon made some huge disaster by awakening. These things are interesting but I stumbled upon them on youtube, and not in game.
Also watching so called heroes like Rytlock and Logan die to pathetic skelks… How can I respect these epic heroes when all they do is die…

4. Guilds

After introducing guild events, there was huge advantage being in big guild. And I personally prefer small group of people, close friends. We joined bigger guild, and this ruined experience for us. We were nowhere near close to upgrade guild to get ascendant gear so we had no choice. Also, guild events were badly designed. The guild I was in had 500 people and basically I was just running after huge zerg on these events. Not to mention for game called Guild Wars 2, there is almost 0 guild content.

3. World events

I feel like this was one of biggest pve mistakes of all times. Just to name few examples:
Tequatl update was horrible. You couldn’t enter easily with your guild, it was zerg fest, not much of tactical individual play… Also I feel like with random timing anet tried so hard to push this world immersion thing, but they didn’t really think about negative side. Some people have real life, and they got work and other duties so if my guildy have 1 hour spare time, and in that hour teq don’t spawn… well you ruining our fun. Also its not fun making 50 people waiting for half hour hoping boss will spawn. Yea guess what? People have better things to do with their life…
Another example pre-events for dungeon entrances, after I did it 2 times, it gets boring. I just wanna enter dungeon and do it. I didn’t come there to follow Razen the Raider do his half hour walk and kill bunch of npcs…

2. Lack of content update

Now we getting to top issues here. After playing gw2 for about year hardcore, you simply run out of juice. Need some freshness, need new content. I would like to see story develop, new dragon, new continent, underwater cities, new classes, new traits, new skills… I see lots of people talk how they cant wait for new mmo etc, its not about new mmo, people simply want new content. If gw2 announced new expansion that have same amount content as gw2, I bet people would choose that over other mmos.

1. Ascendant (Vertical progression)

Yea this kind of hit the nail for me. Most games start slow on gear. Its all about content, its all about experience. Then suddenly one day slap in the face. Gear that makes u wanna pull your hair out. Grind, grind grind, more grind. Weather its lack of actual content, trying to mask it behind gear progression or some other mysterious reasons it always happen. Ended so many mmos for me. Exotics had it all. You could get it in any way u wanted: crafting, dungeons, wvw tokens, karma, tp, drops. So many different skins, easily accessible (equiped all alts full exotics), great for build experimenting. Ascendant one look, one boring way to get it. Expensive as hell. Worst update ever.

1.Personal story
2.Added ascended, which requires boring hours of grinding
3.Hard to find good looking light and medium armors
4. Dynamic events awesome idea, not so good implementation
5.Personal Story (again)

Will a dev please react to this thread???? I see so many “thumbs up” on lists that make me sick because of the truth they contain. I browse the forums at least four times as often as I log in.
I witness the majority of devs reply to poor ideas and “suck-up – threads”. Even though Anet made a great game (otherwise I would never comment here) the potential is wasted.

I wish that Anet as a company would reply to us desperate players.

DIVA

D I V A.6018:

Even though Anet made a great game (otherwise I would never comment here) the potential is wasted.

DIVA

Thats what im sorry about^^^^

1. Stats tied to gear, stats tied to trait lines.
2. Ascended gear
3. Condition system that forces 25 stack limits
4. The ability to rez fully dead players in WvW greatly handicapping smaller forces.
5. Ranking system of WvW that discourages the two weaker servers from double teaming the strongest one.

• Ranger pets
• Ranger pets
• Ranger pets
• Ranger pets
• Ranger pets

1. Dungeons and Fractals. These are old school and boring. In a truly dynamic world what do we need instance dungeons for?

2. Ascended armor and weapons that really are not that much better than exotic. None of it really does much good in the big battles you still get slapped around by the bosses as if you were naked. Ascended stuff should have been as big a jump from exotic to ascended as rare to exotic.

3. Hair, back items and swords and clothing that do not interact properly. Your hair and backpack have a tendency to intermingle causing bad graphic overlay and distortion even on very highest resolutions. Great swords have a nagging ability to slice your bottom off every time you take a step. Better 3 d layering is needed. Objects trying to vie for the same space causes distortion.

4. Too many currencies and no currency exchange system.

5. Not enough quests. Not enough epic quests. Not enough quest that take you all over the world. The living world should add at least one big quest with every expansion. With a reward worth having.

Draknar.5748:

scerevisiae.1972:

Disagree about rallying, rallying ruins PVP.

It absolutely does not ruin PvP, but it would certainly be improved without it. Downed state is fine IMO, you just shouldn’t be allowed to rally. You should be forced to have a teammate revive you or revive on your own.

The reason I say it doesn’t ruin PvP is because I play PvP every day and have a blast doing it. It would be quite the claim to say it ruined PvP, when really all it does is make things slightly more annoying.

When I said “rallying ruins PVP”, I really meant I think rallying ruins PVP. IMO it goes without saying that all comments reflect the viewpoint of the poster, sorry if you were confused.

I also have to say, reading through this thread there is a really wide range of responses… maybe “top 5” wasn’t enough.

These are in no particular order.

1. The addition of Ascended gear in its fragmented, staggered system. I dislike this more than anything else about it. (Though it not being just a strict side-grade from Exotic, just with Infusion slots, is a close second.)

2. World completion requiring WvW. Some servers are destined to have to do this the hard way, others have it easier. Definitely a roadblock for many servers’ populations.

3. Being able to trade Legendaries on Black Lion. This is, in my mind, one oversight which was not fully comprehended as a potential issue until it was done.

4. Implementation of Champion Bags coming so late in the game. Why these were not thought of earlier and included, I have no clue.

5. Events with non-player input achieve a known default state, usually failure. In some abandoned zones, this becomes an issue for those trying to move around and being unable to just handle it themselves.

The targeting system.

Why is is based on line of sight???

You can’t target an enemy that is RIGHT NEXT TO YOU if you aren’t looking directly at him. (or if he is slightly obstructed by a bush or something)

And…. when you rotate the camera away… WHY DO YOU LOSE TARGET?

In pvp the enemy is NOT always going to be directly in front of you…

Why would you make a game that drops target if your foe travels off the screen???

Images:
1) The ettin directly in front of me is untargetable, since he is hiding behind a sapling like something out of a bad cartoon.
2) + 3) Losing target on foe just by rotating camera.

1 – Reward balancing. Lurches from one bad state to another.
2 – Graphics flare. Ruins many fights for me and other players. Why hasn’t this been fixed.
3 – F key for everything – removes control from the player as wrong things get activated.
4 – One day events in the Karka storyline. Won’t be repeated and for good reason.
5 – Tequatl as an open world event. It needs to be started by guilds with others joining.
6 – No storyline tracker for players to recap stories, mainly living story.
7 – Zaitan in Arah story dungeon. Still needs to be better.

Seven problems there but why stop at five?

1. 80 level cap, extended leveling grind, and more of the world map being low level areas than max level areas.

2. Stats on gear. Stats in generally.

3. Weapon locked skills and tiny variety of skills.

4. Ascended Armor

5. Defiant stacks on bosses.

Basically, almost anything they changed from Guild Wars 1 I think is pretty terrible, with the exception of new graphics and open world exploration. I’ll never understand why they decided to throw out a good formula and replace it with this mediocre one.

1. Stealth
2. Stealth
3. Stealth
4. Stealth
5. Stealth

Stealth did not advance anything or bring anything positive to the sequel. Not only is it it horrible to play against (for most people) but more importantly it makes it extremely more difficult to balance stealth classes, either becoming too weak or too strong, which sucks for EVERYONE. Mesmers and assassins were doable in gw1, they could have been here too without that mechanic.

1. Skin: Appearance and attributes should be separated, I spent tons of money for transmutation, especially after the release of ascended gears.
2. Ascended Gears: Love the weapon design, but they should really be a skin allowing players to choose color and should not have greater attributes than exotics. The ascended armor is a complete failure (ugly like hell from my perspective). I transmuted them as soon as I got the full six pieces, and now I rarely go to GW2 after “ascended” all my gear. See how Bolt of Damask difficult to craft? At the beginning it was fine, because the material is cheap (7 coppers) and now it is hitting around 2 silvers. It requires ridiculously large amount of materials (300 silk scrap for a single bolt of damask). And for mid materials, like linen scraps, we can hardly acquiring them because nobody plays in mid-level area.
3. Legendary weapons: You can get it by paying golds. To acquire the precursor you have no choice but to dump tons of rare weapons into the mystic toilet. I don’t like the appearance either, just making you shining with ugly rainbows. Rainbows everywhere.
4. Nobody plays in mid-level areas: Those areas are useless but to leveling. Everybody is farming dungeon, farming fractals, farming world bosses, way-point, farming, way-point, farming champions (newbie areas and 80s areas). The award given by completing world events is pitiful (only 1 silver or something + karma + experience). Other people are just taking queue for WwW and afk in Lion’s Arch, making the whole city lagging like hell. The world is vast and beautiful and I like it, but since I got my map completion I rarely come back to these areas because there is nothing else to do. This is a waste.
5. Living-Story: Rarely new maps and skills get released (Southsun Cove + Labyrinthian Cliffs + healing skills are good by the way) Every living-story is dedicated for fanatics hunting achievement points. Everything is farming. I love the epic world view of GW1 and I would like to see it more through living-story (gods, other dragons, etc). The original contents of GW2 is good and epic but several living-story are just ridiculous: some kitten air bandits, Scarlet, festival events (most of living stories are festivals) just not epic enough.

Anet please do something. My friends are leaving GW2 and I don’t want to be the next because I am so tired.

1. The naming. People have made a point about this name of this game not being accurate. For all intents and purposes, I believe the name should be changed to “Guild Wars Too.” When players think of most MMOs, they’ll now think of “Guild Wars Too.” Grind? Treadmills? Guild Wars Too!

2. Particles. ANet have designed the game’s particles to be more gratuitous and rewarding than the loot, so much so that players will eventually go blind.

3. The combat. Guild Wars 2 was a milestone in MMOs because its active combat system. Instant canceling and the lack of rooting added infinite depth and counterplay into the genre, but it they don’t take it far enough! They didn’t take it to the next level of movement: Warping. You can see ANet experiementing with warping with thieves, the most balanced and fun profession to fight, and traces of it can be seen in WvW (on crowded nights). With warping the player doesn’t need to worry about dodging attacks, they can skillfully warp away. PvP is also much more fun and suspenseful when players can not tell where their opponent will appear. It’s almost as suspenseful as letting server determine if and when the players’ will occur at random.

4. The story. Simply put, there’s not enough Scarlet. Players like to complain about Scarlet, but only because she lacks character depth, which means she isn’t responsible for enough of the plot. Not only should she be responsible for the molten alliance she should have a hand in the revival of the dragons, rise and downfall of the titans, the basic elements, the mists, the creation of the universe, everything. It may also add depth to the player character if Scarlet turns out to be their mother, father, uncle, aunt, and child all at the same time (preferably). Anything is possible for a is self-empowered female Sylvari.

5. The lack of features for the game’s most promising mode, by which I mean champion trains (no cares about PvP). There needs to be in-game UI notification for champion spawns, a “train” chat, train specific skill balancing (classes are horribly imbalanced at the moment), train queue and train observer mode. To cover the development costs, ANet can easily monetize trains by including train autopilot and train-specific finishers and costumes.

1. Ascended gear.
2. Living Story updates.
3. Useless thougness in PvE.

No mistakes. Game perfect. Absolute pinnacle of game design. Cannot be matched.w

Seriously though;

1. Overall design of boss fights. This game works well when there are a lot of units on the field. It breaks down when there are less units on the field. A lot of bossfights are you versus one dude. Defiant is an aspect of this failing.
2. Absolute PvE/PvP split. Don’t get me wrong, I think that mostly PvE/PvP split is good, but the game should have launched with more things that cross over. Like leveling up.
3. Facial customisation. I have the prettiest norn face but I have so much eyeshadow it’s ridiculous. I’m a murderhobo not a glam rock star what am I doing with this much makeup on
4. I think crafting kinda sucks. I mean we have the discovery window but it doesn’t really mean much, it’s just a fancy way of learning new patterns, and the discovery window is completely ignored when it comes to new pattern releases.
5. No underwear dying/customisation.

INCREDIBLY VAGUE BECAUSE I CAN’T ACTUALLY THINK OF ANYTHING.COM

1. Story mode dungeons – the way they tell the tale of destiny’s edge is next to useless. They’re often not done in order anyway. And they’re not rewarding enough to get many people to do them, except sometimes now on story mode dungeon daily days.

2. The Personal story – the big flaw in the personal story is the ten level increments it must be told in. This prevents any long term cohesive thread running through the whole story. The story becomes slave to the game design and, as a result, it suffers seriously.

3. SPvP – having only a single competitive mode was a big mistake

4. Build diversity – not nearly enough of this

5. DPS has far too much affect on the outcome of every fight. Control and healing should mean SOMETHING, though I’d never play a game again with the trinity. There just needs to be a way to add to the diversity of the game while keeping the trinity out.