Guild Wars 2

First, let me say that I’ve spent too many hours in GW2. I enjoy it overall (I’ve even bought some more gems to help support the devs a bit more), but as we approach the new expansion, I’m finding it very hard to get excited for the new expansion.

First, as someone who plays for a month or two, then takes a break, then comes back…etc, I have noticed that very little seems to be “fixed” between those times. In dungeons, the “meta” is still to bug out, exploit, and overall abuse the system. It’s been the same since day 1. A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up. I tried my best to help them, to no avail. I was rezing the entire time. This is how long after release, and Anet still has a system where their players still can’t beat the first boss? This right here, dampens my spirits for HoT. They simply can’t design a dungeon that isn’t exploitable and it’s ruined the “dungeon” portion for me.

Second, the “meta” builds. I totally understand them. As a game that was touted as getting rid of the “trinity”, all I can see is that they ended up removing 2 of the 3 pillars in that trinity. It’s all about DPS. If you aren’t 100% dps, your doing it wrong. To make matters worse, this meta has made classes like necromancer almost useless by design and yet there has been no effort put into making a necro relevant outside of WvW zergs.

Third, “trains”. The massive events being on a giant timer means all you do is chase one world boss to the next world boss to the next one to the next one…. However, it doesn’t even end there, looking at SW, SW sets up the expansion in my mind as a giant grind. All you do in SW is chase one event to the next. Nothing really feels “important” either. I defend X camp, repair the wall, kill the next wave, repair wall…for what? To grind some more?

Third.5, World boss designs; So, they’ve made “some” progress on this since release (Teq), but overall, the bosses are all basically a giant walltrap that doesn’t “do” anything. Shatterer is the prime example. Since release, Shatterer has been a giant wall trap that Anet didn’t even have the decency to put on a wall. The strategy has always been “stand to his right” and, like any flame trap you’d find in a dungeon, Shatterer can’t do anything to anyone standing to his right. These giant, massive, visually impressive world bosses really don’t do anything, they don’t threaten anyone. Pick a world boss though, and that’s all they are, a wall trap that you have to try to die to…

Fourth, “stack here”. Stacking, nothing breaks immersion more than “stack here” tactics. WvW is “stack on commander” dungeons are “stack on the wall”.

These issues really, to me, paint a picture of what I can expect from HoT. Overall, I’ve enjoyed GW2, but I honestly don’t see any real appeal in the HoT news that makes me think that it won’t suffer from the same issues. The new specializations sound interesting, the new class sounds cool, but the core content of the game hasn’t really shown any sign of improvement. I don’t see, based on their history, why ANet would suddenly be able to make dungeons that didn’t rely on cheesing the systems or world bosses that didn’t turn into wallmounts or zones that didn’t turn into giant event grinds or create a game that makes more than one specific build/trait setup viable for endgame.

Badwolf.9725:

Third, “trains”. The massive events being on a giant timer means all you do is chase one world boss to the next world boss to the next one to the next one…. However, it doesn’t even end there, looking at SW, SW sets up the expansion in my mind as a giant grind. All you do in SW is chase one event to the next. Nothing really feels “important” either. I defend X camp, repair the wall, kill the next wave, repair wall…for what? To grind some more?

It sounds like the HoT areas are going to basically follow this same design from SW. So, if you don’t like that sort of thing, HoT might not be too enjoyable for you. I’m figuring on multiple zones with all rewards tied to an event cycle leading up to some “major” end event. Rinse and repeat.

That’s what I’m afraid of. GW2 tried to pass itself off as a game that was challenging all the “mmo” fundamentals, it’s why they tried to get rid of the trinity, and it sounds great. However, the reality is that GW2, to me at least, suffers from the most extreme versions of some of the worst fundamentals in MMO’s. Grind Wars 2; Heart of Thorns doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.

If I had to make a wish list for GW2, I think getting rid of the trains would be #1. For a “living” story, it sure as hell feels dead to me. The last time I played, Divinity’s Reach had an event going on that was just a giant train for grinding out useless kitten, and now that I’ve come back, SW is almost the same exact thing, just on a larger map.

sadly, you’ve just summed up why I left GW2 long time ago and played only new living world as I was interested in the story direction… I’ve returned on the expansion announce, but as the hype slowly fades out and new information aren’t coming fast enough, I’m again realizing all the problems which made me leave…

Badwolf.9725:

First, as someone who plays for a month or two, then takes a break, then comes back…etc, I have noticed that very little seems to be “fixed” between those times. In dungeons, the “meta” is still to bug out, exploit, and overall abuse the system. It’s been the same since day 1. A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up. I tried my best to help them, to no avail. I was rezing the entire time. This is how long after release, and Anet still has a system where their players still can’t beat the first boss? This right here, dampens my spirits for HoT. They simply can’t design a dungeon that isn’t exploitable and it’s ruined the “dungeon” portion for me.

This. My jimmies get so rustled when people demand the party stack and claim that you don’t know how to play if you can’t stack/skip. My vote would be to only give the extra 20 tokens from killing the mobs groups normally skip and a surprise AOE right where players usually stack.

They said there will be some major ai changes for mobs in HoT so that gives us a ray of hope to solve the zerk meta and stacking in dungeons problems. Because they mostly come from poor mob ai.

Trais already got partially fixed with Silverwastes – events happen at same time in many bases and no base is better then others when it comes to rewards. Point is that people gotta split up and many groups have to take on different tasks at same time.
Pretty much more of that coming in HoT.

I do however have to agree with world bosses doing the statue role instead of actively chasing down players and tearing kitten up all around them. I mentioned this before in a separate threat and will mention it here – dragons in this game seem narcoleptic. Where’s that rampaging beast chasing down it’s prey, where the only safe spot on the map during a fight is to get off the map?

Badwolf.9725:

That’s what I’m afraid of. GW2 tried to pass itself off as a game that was challenging all the “mmo” fundamentals, it’s why they tried to get rid of the trinity, and it sounds great. However, the reality is that GW2, to me at least, suffers from the most extreme versions of some of the worst fundamentals in MMO’s. Grind Wars 2; Heart of Thorns doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.

You are exactly right, unfortunatelly. All that talk about being a “revolution” and etc turned to be a lie. ArenaNet is catering to the exact same demographic of any other MMORPG – the grind people who don’t really care about the quality of the content, as long as they can grind it for a shiny reward.

The expansion will very likely be just like the Silverwastes – a bunch of copy & paste events that people repeat ad nausem just to get some reskin of an already existing item.

All the promise the game had in the beginning, all the things they could have done with the dynamic event system – all of those have been thrown in the trash.

The expansion will probably be bought by many players – there are many grinders out there. Will it be successful enough, though? I wonder. I expect it will be low quality content, so time will tell if the grinder playerbase is really enough to make a successful game.

Badwolf.9725:

A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up.

I’m calling BS.

The dungeon issue is not specific to GW2. Or MMORPGs. Or RPGs. Seriously, watch a tabletop game. Players do everything they can to safely win even if it involves abusing the rules. No game designer can break that mentality.

HOWEVER, if you want a more challenging, non-stacking dungeon experience, play in the Fractals. There’s really only a few fights that you can stack on to cheese it…and those fights are….horribly designed for GW2. (the non-boss Aether fractal)

Explorable modes are played for a quick burst of dungeon running. The challenge of a dungeon comes from setting up and preparing rather than the fights. A good group can kill the bosses in a matter of seconds.

The only way to remove stacking is to make boon-sharing and blast fields have a longer range and range damage being closer to melee damage. HOWEVER, this creates a problem that other MMOs have. It’s pointless to be melee then.

Your problems with the game boil down to player mentality. No matter what changes that’s how people are going to play. Finding the easiest solution to get the most rewards

Op is spot on and why I have been thinking of other games. I was super excited about hot but now I’ll problem just skip it and leave the game. I purchased the infinite coin for SaB over a year and half ago for what??? They stopped listening to us things are broken classes are a mess… Ugh I try to give them the benefit of the doubt but i am just about fed up.

Get over yourselves. If you’re not happy with GW2, stop pretending you ever will be and just move on. Forcing yourself to find entertainment in something you don’t want to do is a waste of precious leisure time, which I gather most of you have yet to learn the true value of.

I don’t know why mmorpg players have a difficult time realizing what other humans and gamers have known for years. You can stop liking an mmo, it isn’t that big of a deal. You can get bored of it, find a new one that suits your interest and guess what? It is a perfectly normal and logical human behavior.

Over time your interest diverge from the game, welcome to life. If you are not hyped then you are not, nobody says you have to be. People are gonna react the way they feel and live goes on.

I loved Pokemon and now I don’t, my interest simply changed. You won’t see me on a Pokemon forum wishing for the game to make me interested in it, you have to be interested in it and if you are not, that’s fine.

Badwolf.9725:

That’s what I’m afraid of. GW2 tried to pass itself off as a game that was challenging all the “mmo” fundamentals, it’s why they tried to get rid of the trinity, and it sounds great. However, the reality is that GW2, to me at least, suffers from the most extreme versions of some of the worst fundamentals in MMO’s. Grind Wars 2; Heart of Thorns doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.

If I had to make a wish list for GW2, I think getting rid of the trains would be #1. For a “living” story, it sure as hell feels dead to me. The last time I played, Divinity’s Reach had an event going on that was just a giant train for grinding out useless kitten, and now that I’ve come back, SW is almost the same exact thing, just on a larger map.

That’s what some of us have noticed yes. What’s not got be excited for HoT personally is there’s not much data on the new changes coming to PVE combat in particular diversity of builds sure you CAN have other builds but it really does you no good if you’re seen as a pariah by the community when doing anything meaningful does it.

The other thing is rewards. Sure they are going in a good direction with improving map completion rewards but we’ve really not seen numbers have we, like will you just get 20 of that Tier 6 material that’s impossible to farm from the 1 time map completion or will it be significant? And why after all this time despite countless hours of evidence of teleporter bots being in this game, is DR left in the system? It’s not stopped a single bot since the first day it was implemented, not one, they still freely pop from node ot node.

The other issue not listed by the OP in his exploit paragraph is the class imbalance. Even with the changes, there are still classes (cough warrior cough) that are used to run 5 man dungeons solo and sell slots to people in the lfg. It’s STILL happening despite claims that they were doing something about it. There shouldn’t be any class so powerful that it can run 5 mans by itself at all yet they are still worried about classes like Engineer. It amazes me because someone over there actually things that two handed swords should do more damage than bullets, bombs, mines, flame throwers, and chemical warfare like the entire violent history of the human race is irrelevent when it comes to class design and balance suddenly in PVE.

It’s almost easier to put up with the problems of the trinity, grinding levels, or playing a dungeon lobby game as the only option for progression with some of the problems this game faces sometimes.

So really it depends on several factors and many of them for me will be to see if they are going to make good on the changes to the old conventions they were using which caused these problems in the first place, how they handle these changes will make or break the deal for me honestly.

Badwolf.9725:

snip

good post!

gw2 has some decent elements like the overall “smoothness” to combat and shared nodes to name a couple, but you are right in saying that the “core content hasn’t really shown signs of improvement”. The decision makers have clearly shown that are only interested in doing the absolute minimum (or nothing) to make core improvements and are attempting to stretch out very little content with “reward” track grinds to keep players logging in. I get that they are attempting to extend the life of the game and keep players from gobbling up the content in a week, but if they were to make some core improvements to professions (more build flexibility, more build viability, actual roles outside of dps with a 3 second gimmick ability…) and fix combat mechanics (permastealth/stealth, condition “carpet bombing”, high burst and damage output compared to hp…) that would go a long-long way.

I used to play city of heroes on 2 accounts and had around 20+ characters. Here I have 1 lvl 80 and the second is a lvl 24 “out of boredom” character. 90% of the reason why I logged in to coh was because of the amazing “profession” variety, role diversity, build flexibility and superior core combat mechanics. Here, though, it’s pick a different version of dps in pve and wvw so you can stack and press 1 with a couple of dodge rolls and a self heal tossed in the mix. In spvp it’s pick a different dps version that must include things like counter stealth abilities, best self condition removal, improved movement sources… out on an already limited profession build palate in order to attempt to survive to make any kind of difference. I’m not saying that coh did not have its own set of problems, but it (and many other games out before and now) was vastly superior in core “profession” designs, core combat mechanics and strategy departments.

Unfortunately for us, this developer mentality and development philosophy will not really change too much because the devs will continue down their path of least coding resistance, low resource cost and the “create and forget” design implementation. To be fair, Colin did mention that hot will “laying the groundwork for the future” or something like it, but I foresee that any meaningful core changes will be few and far between and secondary to ls development, gem store ls tie-in sales and outside “esports” costs.

Have to agree with most said here sadly.

Badwolf.9725:

First, as someone who plays for a month or two, then takes a break, then comes back…etc, I have noticed that very little seems to be “fixed” between those times. In dungeons, the “meta” is still to bug out, exploit, and overall abuse the system. It’s been the same since day 1. A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up. I tried my best to help them, to no avail. I was rezing the entire time. This is how long after release, and Anet still has a system where their players still can’t beat the first boss? This right here, dampens my spirits for HoT. They simply can’t design a dungeon that isn’t exploitable and it’s ruined the “dungeon” portion for me.

This is wrong on so many levels that i will not even explain what is wrong with this part.

Badwolf.9725:

Second, the “meta” builds. I totally understand them. As a game that was touted as getting rid of the “trinity”, all I can see is that they ended up removing 2 of the 3 pillars in that trinity. It’s all about DPS. If you aren’t 100% dps, your doing it wrong. To make matters worse, this meta has made classes like necromancer almost useless by design and yet there has been no effort put into making a necro relevant outside of WvW zergs.

First, if you are 100% dps you are doing it wrong. Second, whole point of combat system in every game ever made is to kill your target and because of that you need to deal damage. More damage = target dies faster. Third, lack of trinity made all builds in gw2 viable. Necro is a good class in pvp, wvw and pve.

Badwolf.9725:

Third, “trains”. The massive events being on a giant timer means all you do is chase one world boss to the next world boss to the next one to the next one…. However, it doesn’t even end there, looking at SW, SW sets up the expansion in my mind as a giant grind. All you do in SW is chase one event to the next. Nothing really feels “important” either. I defend X camp, repair the wall, kill the next wave, repair wall…for what? To grind some more?

World bosses have set spawn timer because devs decided to make megaserver. Not that bad of feature actually. Everyone can just look online for a spawn time and go and kill boss they want without wasting time on waiting for spawn window.
SW is a baaaad map. It was made for people that want to grind nonstop (i would say majority of playerbase since anet uses “metrics” to see what players want) so yeah you fix walls and kill waves to fix more walls and kill move waves. New maps probably follow same design which is horrible but yeah majority wants grind.

Badwolf.9725:

Third.5, World boss designs; So, they’ve made “some” progress on this since release (Teq), but overall, the bosses are all basically a giant walltrap that doesn’t “do” anything. Shatterer is the prime example. Since release, Shatterer has been a giant wall trap that Anet didn’t even have the decency to put on a wall. The strategy has always been “stand to his right” and, like any flame trap you’d find in a dungeon, Shatterer can’t do anything to anyone standing to his right. These giant, massive, visually impressive world bosses really don’t do anything, they don’t threaten anyone. Pick a world boss though, and that’s all they are, a wall trap that you have to try to die to…

100% agree with this. Some world bosses need complete rework and i think devs learned what was wrong with old bosses and new ones will be designed better.
But i doubt that they will rework bosses like Shatterer because it was confirmed by the devs that developing new content >reworking old content.

Badwolf.9725:

Fourth, “stack here”. Stacking, nothing breaks immersion more than “stack here” tactics. WvW is “stack on commander” dungeons are “stack on the wall”.

Stacking on commander in wvw is perfectly normal and will change only when boon sharing radius will be increased to 1200+ range. And stacking on wall in dungeons is useless (unless you need to los some trash mobs) so that’s l2p problem.

1) Exploit Dungeon meta: I’ve never played a dungeon where the meta was not to take the easiest and cheesiest way to win. Whether it was “stand here in this spot” where boss mechanics were less or non-existent and range the boss. Bosses that you either just kite or kiss depending on if melee or ranged is their more dangerous mechanic. The ever popular tank and spank where you have the tank pull the boss to a certain spot that optimizes damage and safe spots for ranged characters to stand outside of all boss cleave/pbaoe spamming their meta rotations. Developers face the issue that they have to give a boss mechanics that allow you survive a fight and defeat the boss – random rampages means that boss fights would be a matter of RNG (luck) rather than skill. Predictable mechanics means once you learn it, the challenge is gone. I’ve fought Kholer multiple ways – just fighting in the middle killing adds as they pop up. Pulling him away from his platform to avoid adds and then just fighting him. Triggering Troll and have them fight each other and finishing them off when they’re low. And, of course, stacking at the edge pillar and killing him before his first windup. Stacking is favored in GW2 due to the combo mechanic being so small and downed state. The only way to bring a player out of downed state (outside of singular super long cooldown skills) is to be standing on them, so if you’re already standing on each other you can get each other up. It would take major buffing of combo range and adding ranged healing of downed players to limit the stacking mechanic. While I would like to see that happen, it doesn’t bother me – whether people stand in their own safe(ish) spots or together, the goal is the same in every MMO. I actually think the biggest problem of stacking is your second point.

2) Your point of instead of no trinity, it’s just the DPS pillar. This is mostly true, for the simple fact that it’s true in every MMO. The Trinity system has always been minimum number of tanks and healers you can get away with and maximum number of DPS players. Here those specific roles is more dictated by gear – you want to go as glassy as possible while still being able to survive, and fully glass would be the goal. This is not to say that individual DPS is the be-all-end-all as this game still has roles. Parties still want support and control along with DPS… Protection, Might and fury for players and controls and vulns on the bosses are pretty important. Necro’s problem in PvE is they don’t fill one of those three roles very well. They don’t bring party buffs of their own, nor do they have solid blast access to aid in other players combo fields for buffs. Their combo fields don’t help in party buffs. Their main control mechanic, fear, is not conducive to stacking and burning bosses as it makes it run away. They don’t have strong scaling modifiers, which is the key to top DPS in parties. Warrior is a good example where they are not top DPS, but the support role they play makes them still a good add. The defiance change coming up in HoT will help Necros a bit as their access to blinds and fears that will translate into a straight stun (or whatever the boss’ break mechanic is) making them fit more strongly in the control role. If their GS gives them blast finisher access and their specialization gives them some stronger scaling, I’d say Necro would be in a much better position for dungeon run parties.

Yay for post character limits!

3) Trains. SW did look to address this with simultaneous events, though I comes the question of your “for what?” Events add to starting breach. Saving forts gives you access to NPC that you need to unlock achievements for gear and convenience. Breach means that forts won’t be poisoned so you can safely roam the map. Final fight gives rewards to use for money and chances at ascended gear. Be it level, stat, or item grind – after you’ve done the story aspect once, what is there left that the game itself can give you? And if it’s the story aspect being too light is the issue, they’ve already said HoT is going to carry the story will carry more strongly into open world. The fact is, though, the writing will always be finite – and if they put too much in open world you face the issue of people waiting around on the same cutscene or the same bit of dialogue for the 100th time… which is why they try and keep it instanced.

World boss trains would be limited by not having timers staggered, but I ask why is that important? World bosses are specifically meant to be mass events… either there are enough people to multi-train them all, or the less desired bosses would be simply skipped if there is not enough time to do them all.

WvW trains is something they spoke about repeatedly when reviewing the new WvW maps. Larger maps with more depth and lots of secret and isolated paths will make roaming a lot easier instead of the open ‘just a matter of time until the zerg spots us’ maps we have now. Add in the efforts of trying to give roamers a lot more to do with shrines, more worthwhile sentry takeovers and dolyak escorts, and events (though center event I have a feeling will just be a zerg fest), you’ll have a choice on how you want to play. While Edge of the Mists may not be open world, the map is still too small with too few chokepoints for a roam group to go unnoticed. Add in not enough real purpose for the zergs as there are not many objectives in the map, and you might as well go grabbing those few objectives in a single blob.

HoT will not end trains, but I do see them taking giving options other than trains to heart.

3.5) Static bosses are boring. I agree – Wyvern is obviously an effort in the direction of improvement. Teq is an example of a boss that doesn’t move much, but has interesting mechanics. I think the dev’s are going in the right direction, and expect HoT’s boss fights to be some of the best in the game. The dev’s going back and fixing the old fights is a different concern, and begs the question if redoing old content you’ve already played is better than new content… most would argue it is not.

4) “Stack here” – this goes back to the combo and res mechanics of the game. The stack on the commander, though, is for a good reason – commanders can see player count and supply count that way. Allows for them to know what and how many siege equipments can be built to assault a point or if a camp needs to be raided. That needs to stay. The stack for boss/dungeon fights I discussed earlier.

The OP brought up many valid points, but most those points I see as something that HoT is working on. But while I believe HoT will an improvement, it will not be making GW2 into a new game. If you’re not having fun now, you probably won’t be having fun in HoT.

munki.6402:

I do appreciate that it can be disappointing when something doesn’t meet expectations. But one must learn the difference between subjective and objective reasoning. Misery loves company, but your dissatisfaction indicates nothing more than that you need to move on. I enjoy this game and I will continue to support it. I have plenty of rl and internet buddies who feel the same and we continue to have fun. The moment that it stops being fun is the moment I will stop. Simple. I am very excited for HoT. I will be buying it and I am very confident I will enjoy it alongside said friends. Based on the plethora of negative posts I’ve read at these forums, players are treating this game like a job. This is supposed to be about leisure. It’s a game. Those of us who will continue to support it don’t have the answers for you.

Why are ridiculous, irrelevant posts like this so common? The OP was clear that he enjoys the game overall but wants the game to improve in certain areas. How does that merit a “love it or leave it” ultimatum? Identifying problematic areas now qualifies as “treating this game like a job”? What is the difference between “subjective and objective reasoning”, and what possible relevance does it have in a forum that welcomes and encourages player feedback?

I’ll have to say i share the same concerns about the game, specially the Whole “stacking” mentality. In the beginning we had to sort out tactics to fight the bosses, we’d wipe 10 times and on the 11th we’d find that these utilities plus this and that would allow us to kill a boss.
But then people found out about stacking, found out the weakness in the AI, and exploit them.
Sure the game helps to that with the trinity devolving into dps thing. That’s something everyone has been concerned about, and looking at Revenant having specific roles per Legend it seems that Anet also caught on with that mistake, now we have to see what they do about it for all other classes.

I’m curious and excited about the expansion, first because GW2 is still the BEST MMO i’ve played so far. Hands down.
Second because with all the little things we’ve seen that are being changed, it might be that the game will shift to a new direction in some of those issues. With taunt we can finally get classes that can get aggro easier, and then be main tanks, specializations might expand on specific roles for each class, and that might be worth it.
As i saw it when i read about the “no trinity”, and how i, and a lot of other people, played it at the beggining, was that we COULD build to be a tank, we COULD build to be a healer/support (some better than others) and others could be the dps. And that were fun times. The best dungeon runs where those i did in the first 3 months, when we were still learning and creating strategies based on something other than exploiting the bosses. Basically how its “meant” to be done, instead of how its done faster.

The challenge your friends failed were how we played when most people didn’t even have full exotics, when many of us weren’t even lvl 80, and truly those were the best times for dungeon running in GW2, and i miss that.

If gw2 has taught me anything about Anet; its that they can create a visually appealing world and interesting story. However they seem to be clueless on how to create proper mechanics in both pve and pvp that actually challenge the player and require them to have more than just a proper (or meta in gw2’s case) build. In my opinion it seems like they tried to create a hybrid of tera and wow gameplay and ended up with a disfigured creation that sits closer to wow.

I dont expect HoT to change much to gw2 despite what they claim. And with new mmo’s being released that challenge the traditional aspects of the ones we have today; i see no reason in even purchasing HoT other than for the story or curiosity.

This is all out of my opinion ofc.

I agree with you here.

Most points you say are mostly true,

some things though i noticed are that the core problem doesn’t come from the players, but from the design of things.

What we need (and what most people are thirsty for) are more challenging content, more tequatls, more epic fights that may fail (failing isn’t bad, makes us getting better), risk vs reward, most mmos if you wipe into a dungeon you must start over here you can just go to checkpoint, bosses don’t reset hp, many problematic encounters(Open world bosses).

I just hope Anet will not dissapoint us in the long run, cause they know what people enjoys and want, they learn from the past mistakes.

It’s not that I don’t like GW2, like I said, overall I enjoy it. It’s alright. I just think that these issues that haven’t been fixed for years are really making it hard for me to get excited for the expansion.

You can call BS on my offer of 5g to beat the first dungeon boss without exploiting, but it happened. My party wiped on the FIRST wind-up pull in. The second round, only I and one other player dodged the first wind-up combo.

I totally get doing dungeons in the fastest, safest, and simplest ways, I’ve loved doing dungeons since my first dungeon in MMO’s. The issue, for me at least, is that GW2’s dungeons are nothing BUT exploits. Like I said, my AC group who vastly out leveled, out geared the first dungeon still could not complete the first boss without an exploit. Dungeons have always consisted of jumping over invisible walls, skipping content (can do AC p2/3 at the same time! Now in half the effort!), and cheesing the system. Every other MMO I’ve played (at least for me), has had exploits and bugs that were exploited, however, the critical difference is that those MMO’s rather quickly patched those exploits and made it so that you couldn’t so easily and so obviously exploit the system.

It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that I see no reason why HoT would be anything but “more of the same”. The game has been out for 2(?) years now, dungeons still consist of exploit after exploit (they fix one exploit and then there are another dozen exploits found) etc etc etc. GW2 is a great game, there just doesn’t seem to be any quality control for their content, and I see no reason why HoT would be any different. I want to be excited for the expansion, I enjoy the base game (overall), but I see no real reason why HoT is anything to be excited about. Specializations and a new class sound cool, but, afaik, it’s just going to be more of the same, more akin to a living story that you have to pay for now.

Badwolf.9725:

I totally get doing dungeons in the fastest, safest, and simplest ways, I’ve loved doing dungeons since my first dungeon in MMO’s. The issue, for me at least, is that GW2’s dungeons are nothing BUT exploits. Like I said, my AC group who vastly out leveled, out geared the first dungeon still could not complete the first boss without an exploit. Dungeons have always consisted of jumping over invisible walls, skipping content (can do AC p2/3 at the same time! Now in half the effort!), and cheesing the system. Every other MMO I’ve played (at least for me), has had exploits and bugs that were exploited, however, the critical difference is that those MMO’s rather quickly patched those exploits and made it so that you couldn’t so easily and so obviously exploit the system.

There has been no word about dungeons or other instanced content in HoT. So I suggest you stop worrying about stuff that most likely won’t see the light of day anyway.

Kholer does all his attacks in the corner as well. It’s one of the few bosses that’s actually easier stacked because as a ranger he moves a lot (annoying to melee) and you can group him and his ads together easier this way. However, this is just taking advantage of the game’s AI, it’s no exploit. Also if your group wiped at kholer they were not these experienced pros you make em out to be.

Dungeons do get fixed (albeit slowly). Outside of AC where you can do all 3 paths at once and the jumping puzzle in arah p3-4 there are no major exploits that are being used. So I suggest you get out of the lamest, low level, time gated dungeon and start doing some others. Considering you seem to be all anti stacking and skipping, try out fractals. If they’re ever introducing new instanced content you can be sure they’ll look at fractals a lot more than at the old dungeons since the design is so much better.

Fade.1743:

Your problems with the game boil down to player mentality. No matter what changes that’s how people are going to play. Finding the easiest solution to get the most rewards

basically this. I wish a-net would try to fight that mentally but economically speaking that probably would kill the game.

People just can’t play for fun so they try to get things done as fast as possible. sadly this involves ignoring all mechanics the game has to offer.

I can’t say I agree on the WvW part (because it actually makes sense to stay close in battle. You can spread buffs better and you can help up downed people much easier). But the trains are the real pain in WvW.

Overall I can just say: Ignore the parts of the game you don’t like and if you don’t like any part of the game then just leave it.

I always have to smile when i see people who “stopped playing months ago” and then daily comment on threads about that game. Seriously. It’s better if you just leave a game you don’t like for certain reasons. Sadly trying to change the game won’t have any success. Save yourself the time and look for a better alternative.

Nanashi.6297:

Sadly trying to change the game won’t have any success. Save yourself the time and look for a better alternative.

Years ago, soon after release, a lot of grinders came to the forum and said, “we don’t have anything to grind for – because legendary weapons are not enough – and we will leave if ArenaNet doesn’t release something for us!”.

And then we got Fractals, which are almost the definition of grind, and ascended gear, which is massively grindy even by ArenaNet’s own definition of the word.

So yep, if you think offering feedback to ArenaNet won’t change the game, you are factually wrong. I wish ArenaNet wouldn’t listen, since then they wouldn’t have made many of the mistakes that plague GW2.

I, too, am concerned. I don’t think I will jump on the HoT bandwagon when it finally releases. I think I will wait a week or 2. Read the comments about it.

I really don’t like the look of the new WvW. Nothing I can point out exactly, but it seems to be one big jumping puzzle…as does Maguuma. Perhaps I am wrong, but the pessimist in me is winning out so far. Been only logging in sporadically, jumping into WvW when I can. Mostly playing standalone games – even went back and am playing Fallout New Vegas. I am just more worried than excited about HoT.

I think this topic is toxic without constructive suggestions. Most are complaining what is bad but never give ideas what could be good. Topics like this hurt the potential morale into everyone walking on ice.

Id say close this post.

The worst thing is, it sometimes feels like ArenaNet themselves don’t know which path to follow.

Before release, they made a huge speech about “starting a revolution” and making a game for “people who don’t like MMOs”… And when they get the first population drop, they fill the game with grind (Fractals and ascended).

They make a huge splash about how they will build a Living World that changes the content already in the game… And when they get a massive backlash after the temporary content introduced in Season 1, they give up on that too.

They claim they would introduce many skills, traits and even professions through the Living World… And poof, that’s gone too. Now we will get a few of those in an expansion.

It looks like ArenaNet doesn’t know which path to follow. Which is a pity, because they already had a successful model in the original Guild Wars. By this time after the release of GW1, they had already released two other full campaigns and one expansion, almost doubling the number of professions and more than doubling the already sizeable number of skills in the original release, not to mention the content updates like Sorrow’s Furnace and the Mission Packs. All that with only a small fraction of the team currently at ArenaNet, and without the massively invasive in-game store they have now.

It’s hard to believe in the expansion when it appears the quality of the product we get has fallen so much.

Test.8734:

It looks like ArenaNet doesn’t know which path to follow. Which is a pity, because they already had a successful model in the original Guild Wars. By this time after the release of GW1, they had already released two other full campaigns and one expansion, almost doubling the number of professions and more than doubling the already sizeable number of skills in the original release, not to mention the content updates like Sorrow’s Furnace and the Mission Packs. All that with only a small fraction of the team currently at ArenaNet, and without the massively invasive in-game store they have now.

It’s hard to believe in the expansion when it appears the quality of the product we get has fallen so much.

I’m surprised about this fact too. Also add translation of GW1 in what we have in GW2:
German
French
Spanish

And little more:
Spanish (with full audio)
Italian (with full audio)
Russian
Polish
Korean (with full audio)
Japanese

Yes most of it was outsourced, but still you get the point. (Russian was complete mess, but some fans helped to improve it to great level)

It is funny how down the road 3 years after “revolution” you get completely broken game.
1. Dungeons – broken
2. Endgame open world – broken
3. No trinity (at least in described and marketed way) – broken
4. PvP – broken (due to lack of separate solo queue and build diversity)
5. EotM – broken (one big karma and lvl train)
6. WvW – little buggy
7. At least first 30 levels of PvE and story is really good ad revolutionary!

But still GW2 have third place in my best MMO list))) other two is GW and EVE.

I’m not crazy about the expansion either, given I think it all could’ve and probably would’ve been free content via LS, but whatever. I’ll still buy it. Yet I’ve not read or seen anything thrilling so far.

It’s all been rather . . . lukewarm.

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

MMOs are time consumers. That’s their primary feature, and its there by necessity. People play MMOs to kill time. But, psychologically they want a reason to play, i.e. there has to be something that draws them to play. Hence, there has to be something that gives them a reason to play a lot — hence… grinds.

GW2 is a game that is dominated by casual grinds. Almost all of this is optional. Collections? Don’t need them. New skins? Don’t need them. Some additional variant of backpack? Don’t need it. Ascended gear? Only really necessary for higher level fractals, which are optional.

Having read through the rest of comments: I like BadWolf’s OP, and I like Drawing Guy’s answer to it. Many of the other posts are good and I don’t think I can add much to them.

To be successful, and MMO has to appeal to many different types of players. This will necessarily involve mixing type’s of players with very different likes and dislikes. There are people who love boss trains and people who hate them. I think that Anet has done a very good job of evolving to find a mix of play and challenges to meet those differing styles.

There are things that I would like to see fixed (stacking and LOS in dungeons, plus useless pets). Hopefully, we’ll see more of that fixed. But Anet has to balance such fixes off against the unhappiness that it engenders. If stacking were fixed, there would be a resultant kittenstorm of players who would be raging about “the removal of something that worked fine, that they were perfectly happy with, and which allowed them to run dungeons fast for gold — which is the entire reason that they’re running them.”

Yakez.7561:

Test.8734:

It looks like ArenaNet doesn’t know which path to follow. Which is a pity, because they already had a successful model in the original Guild Wars. By this time after the release of GW1, they had already released two other full campaigns and one expansion, almost doubling the number of professions and more than doubling the already sizeable number of skills in the original release, not to mention the content updates like Sorrow’s Furnace and the Mission Packs. All that with only a small fraction of the team currently at ArenaNet, and without the massively invasive in-game store they have now.

It’s hard to believe in the expansion when it appears the quality of the product we get has fallen so much.

I’m surprised about this fact too. Also add translation of GW1 in what we have in GW2:
German
French
Spanish

And little more:
Spanish (with full audio)
Italian (with full audio)
Russian
Polish
Korean (with full audio)
Japanese

Yes most of it was outsourced, but still you get the point. (Russian was complete mess, but some fans helped to improve it to great level)

It is funny how down the road 3 years after “revolution” you get completely broken game.
1. Dungeons – broken
2. Endgame open world – broken
3. No trinity (at least in described and marketed way) – broken
4. PvP – broken (due to lack of separate solo queue and build diversity)
5. EotM – broken (one big karma and lvl train)
6. WvW – little buggy
7. At least first 30 levels of PvE and story is really good ad revolutionary!

But still GW2 have third place in my best MMO list))) other two is GW and EVE.

Why should Arenanet add translation for an audience they are not interested bringing in? Guild wars 1 compared to guild wars 2 is a significantly smaller game in EVERYTHING, it would be foolish to add translation only to cater to a very small insignificant population. Believe it or not games are a zero sum game, dedicating resources to one thing means another one loses.

With that said most of the things you listed seem to fall under “I wish Arenanet crafted the perfect game for me”.
Dungeons: are not broken they might be stale but that can be attributed to Arenanet deciding to move away from dungeons since the payoff isn’t worth it. (I think the expac will not have dungeons, speculation and my wish. I like I said game development is a zero sum game, when you dedicate resources another project loses out).

End game: Not broken guild wars 2 has different goals that what other games have. Subjective thus worthless opinion, also did not have the decency to at least say why.

Trinity: Yep i agree, Guild wars 2 has a big problem with the manner in which control operates in PvE, fortunately some of is being fixed in Hot. However, damage and support seem to work extremely well.

PvP: Yep I agree, removing solo que was stupid and idiotic.

EoTM: Is doing exactly what it needs to do, it removes the people who only care about karma and minimizes it in WvW and I mean seriously as long as EoTM does not have any impact on anything, why should players take it seriously?

The point being it is extremely easy to complain, all it takes is a JR high level of education, coming up with suggestions is harder.

jessiejay.3625:

I think this topic is toxic without constructive suggestions. Most are complaining what is bad but never give ideas what could be good. Topics like this hurt the potential morale into everyone walking on ice.

Id say close this post.

Toxic?
He is stating clear problems and I think thats more than enough. It is (or was) Anets job to fix these things.

silvermember.8941:

Why should Arenanet add translation for an audience they are not interested bringing in? Guild wars 1 compared to guild wars 2 is a significantly smaller game in EVERYTHING, it would be foolish to add translation only to cater to a very small insignificant population. Believe it or not games are a zero sum game, dedicating resources to one thing means another one loses.

With that said most of the things you listed seem to fall under “I wish Arenanet crafted the perfect game for me”.
Dungeons: are not broken they might be stale but that can be attributed to Arenanet deciding to move away from dungeons since the payoff isn’t worth it. (I think the expac will not have dungeons, speculation and my wish. I like I said game development is a zero sum game, when you dedicate resources another project loses out).

End game: Not broken guild wars 2 has different goals that what other games have. Subjective thus worthless opinion, also did not have the decency to at least say why.

Trinity: Yep i agree, Guild wars 2 has a big problem with the manner in which control operates in PvE, fortunately some of is being fixed in Hot. However, damage and support seem to work extremely well.

PvP: Yep I agree, removing solo que was stupid and idiotic.

EoTM: Is doing exactly what it needs to do, it removes the people who only care about karma and minimizes it in WvW and I mean seriously as long as EoTM does not have any impact on anything, why should players take it seriously?

The point being it is extremely easy to complain, all it takes is a JR high level of education, coming up with suggestions is harder.

Wait you say GW was smaller game and it benefited from translation. GW2 is bigger and that’s why it would not benefit from translations?))) It is not so expensive to translate text only, but it brings a big coordination work for a team in future releases.

Ok WoW is big and it has like 11 languages available (English, German, European and Latin American Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Korean.) If you think that translations do not bring money you are wrong, but yeah they do not bring easy money.

GW2 is smaller in PvP. KITTEN 6.5 maps, I’m ready to poke on my keyboard killing Chieftain over and over again. Seriously, I could live without Dry Top or SW, but not having same maps from release! At least they could do Maguuma Wastes themed PvP map.

Good point about EotM, now I like this mode).

The Dungeons was main selling point back then in 2012. And they are ridiculously broken even in 2015. God, this game was so good when I saw AC cinematic first time, it’s like getting your hand on C size boobs for the first time, just awesome… stop where I was…

Suggestions? My first suggestion, fix broken things when they appear.

Yakez.7561:

GW2 is smaller in PvP. KITTEN 6.5 maps, I’m ready to poke on my keyboard killing Chieftain over and over again. Seriously, I could live without Dry Top or SW, but not having same maps from release! At least they could do Maguuma Wastes themed PvP map.

One problem I see is how each map HAS to have some special side objective. I mean isn’t a different terrain and some other art not enough?
I’m not saying I want the same map in 10 different colors but new maps don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.

jessiejay.3625:

I think this topic is toxic without constructive suggestions. Most are complaining what is bad but never give ideas what could be good. Topics like this hurt the potential morale into everyone walking on ice.

Id say close this post.

I’m not at all trying to be toxic. I think that the game has some, imo, serious issues. I think those issues can be fixed. I also, more importantly, don’t see any of those issues being fixed in HoT so far.

I think it’s healthy to call them out on a lot of these things in the hopes that they can make a better game. As it is, Grind Wars 2 is how I think of the game. Each living story is little more than another grind, SW is a map devoted to a massive grind. I don’t think that the current grinding story model is good. I totally understand that you’ll never completely remove grinding from an MMO, but GW2 is, imo, the very definition of grind.

Instead of a grind, add in compelling content. Event>event>event>thefirstevent>secondevent>thirdevent>firstevent>secondevent>thirdevent>>>>>>>>>> isn’t, imo, a great start for getting any hype surrounding the expansion. Make those events feel important. make them feel epic. Because nothing in SW feels important or epic. I’m a god-kitten undead army, dragon slaying champion, yet all of a sudden I’m escorting a bull 20 feet to a castle then helping pick up rubble? All in the hopes that I can get a RNG dropped shovel and open a lockbox… I slay a dragon and I have to pray for a shovel?

I pointed out that AC is a dungeon that can run multiple paths at once, skipping the majority of the content in doing so. I don’t know why that even has to be said. Their dungeon designs have been fubar since day 1. Most content is trash and skippable, the rest is exploiting a stupid AI (Arah, just walk the guy into a wall so half his AoE gets stuck behind a wall? or my aforementioned Kholer example). SE has you repair a gate to progress, the cogs to repair are guarded by boss…so you run past the boss, pick up the cogs and just run past him… “fix your kitten” is about as constructive as I think I need to be here.

World boss walltraps: Again, I highlighted an issue. Shatterer is a wall trap that isn’t even connected to a wall. But that is every world boss. Teq and Jormag are the same thing, it just isn’t as noticable in how the terrain is around them, Jormag is either on a cliff or on a hill, Teq is on a beach. Both those try to hide their wall trap status, but shatterer is literally just in an open field and he can’t turn to the right. The world bosses stationary status makes them feel much less epic in general and there seems to be no real threat from them. They are confined to their little 2′×2′ box. The rest of the zone couldn’t care less about whether Shadow Behemouth is up or not. Jormag’s presence only affect’s that one specific small area. The rest of the world couldn’t care less if Jormag’s event fails. Make those events matter, make them dynamic.

My original intention was to bring attention to the issues that, imo, plague GW2 and highlight why I, personally, don’t find anything announced from the HoT expansion anything to get excited over. I didn’t mean to be toxic, I, overall, enjoy GW2, but all I see from HoT is more of the same. I get that the wyvern is trying to change the world boss, and that’s great. But, I’m afraid all the wyvern will turn into is just another timer on the boss chest train.

Yeah I agree with most of the points. The problem with Anet though is not that they sometimes fail to bring in good content and updates every 2 – 4 weeks, it’s that they Take it away every 2 weeks.
It feels really boring after some time of constant, standstill updates. I don’t mean to be digging for salt, but it really be a dreary experience waiting for something else to do.

Makes me wonder from time to time what Anet is doing from the gem/game sales at the moment. Surely not using it on HoT because I thought we payed for continuous game content updates on release.
I think Anet handled the whole HoT production and ready-for-release phase badly, while keeping up with the GW2 we have now.
My only request is that – get it together Anet, give us something to do that’s worth our while, and I don’t mean fashion wars or spreading our character’s arms and making our screen as yellow as pee.

Let’s see what this “challenging group content” is. If it has “open world” in the name it I will cry a bit.
Anything that is supposed to be “hard and open world” is either too easy or 1 random player can ruin it.
I’m still up for intanced versions of world bosses/meta events with a difficulty setting.

Wreave.2138:

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

And that’s how it will always be unless people stop settling for less and demand more.

The MMORPG genre is in a very bad situation right now. Remember when everyone and their mother were trying to make a MMORPG? That time is long gone. Most of the big MMORPG releases in the last few years have performed very poorly. TOR was admitedly a failure at launch, FFXIV’s original release was such a failure that they had to rework the entire game, ESO is bleeding players and just went free to play, and so on.

The idea that “MMORPG = grind and if you don’t want grind, don’t bother with MMORPGs” is not helping. There aren’t that many grinders out there to fuel all those games. Instead of catering to those, developers should branch out and make games that are different.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what ArenaNet claimed they were going to do. Going from the original Guild Wars, that originally had VERY little grind, to their speech about “We don’t want players to grind” and the entire “if you don’t like MMOs, you REALLY should check GW2”, ArenaNet’s intention was stated as to being different from every other grind-based MMORPG.

They could have achieved it, too. They were close. But they got scared and, well, the result is what we have today.

silvermember.8941:

it would be foolish to add translation only to cater to a very small insignificant population

So you are saying that everyone in a country in which Spanish is the main language is “a very small insignificant population”.

Wow. I mean, just wow.

Yakez.7561:

silvermember.8941:

Why should Arenanet add translation for an audience they are not interested bringing in? Guild wars 1 compared to guild wars 2 is a significantly smaller game in EVERYTHING, it would be foolish to add translation only to cater to a very small insignificant population. Believe it or not games are a zero sum game, dedicating resources to one thing means another one loses.

With that said most of the things you listed seem to fall under “I wish Arenanet crafted the perfect game for me”.
Dungeons: are not broken they might be stale but that can be attributed to Arenanet deciding to move away from dungeons since the payoff isn’t worth it. (I think the expac will not have dungeons, speculation and my wish. I like I said game development is a zero sum game, when you dedicate resources another project loses out).

End game: Not broken guild wars 2 has different goals that what other games have. Subjective thus worthless opinion, also did not have the decency to at least say why.

Trinity: Yep i agree, Guild wars 2 has a big problem with the manner in which control operates in PvE, fortunately some of is being fixed in Hot. However, damage and support seem to work extremely well.

PvP: Yep I agree, removing solo que was stupid and idiotic.

EoTM: Is doing exactly what it needs to do, it removes the people who only care about karma and minimizes it in WvW and I mean seriously as long as EoTM does not have any impact on anything, why should players take it seriously?

The point being it is extremely easy to complain, all it takes is a JR high level of education, coming up with suggestions is harder.

Wait you say GW was smaller game and it benefited from translation. GW2 is bigger and that’s why it would not benefit from translations?))) It is not so expensive to translate text only, but it brings a big coordination work for a team in future releases.

Ok WoW is big and it has like 11 languages available (English, German, European and Latin American Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Korean.) If you think that translations do not bring money you are wrong, but yeah they do not bring easy money.

GW2 is smaller in PvP. KITTEN 6.5 maps, I’m ready to poke on my keyboard killing Chieftain over and over again. Seriously, I could live without Dry Top or SW, but not having same maps from release! At least they could do Maguuma Wastes themed PvP map.

Good point about EotM, now I like this mode).

The Dungeons was main selling point back then in 2012. And they are ridiculously broken even in 2015. God, this game was so good when I saw AC cinematic first time, it’s like getting your hand on C size boobs for the first time, just awesome… stop where I was…

Suggestions? My first suggestion, fix broken things when they appear.

Wow generated $ 1 billion last year (guild wars 2 made $115 million) and charges 15 bucks a month to play. So they have a giant $5-15 (assuming different regions) a month incentive to get as many people, guild wars 2 only comes with a 1 time fee of 10 to 40 with no certain way to generate revenue from the player once they buy the game so why waste time translating, which by the way isn’t as cheap as you seem to believe.

I agree with PvP, I never made an argument against it. PvP is suffering because Arenanet messed up its implementation in 2012 which unfortunately kill pvp and now Arena net doesn’t want to dumb resources into a game mode that doesn’t generate income, since making PvP maps is far difficult than PvE maps.

Dungeons were never the main selling point of guild wars 2, DE, removal of the holy trinity and minimal vertical progression were. in the interviews in 2012, they usually talk about having all the fun stuff outside. Dungeons were simply a feature a check mark on the box.

silvermember.8941:

it would be foolish to add translation only to cater to a very small insignificant population

So you are saying that everyone in a country in which Spanish is the main language is “a very small insignificant population”.

Wow. I mean, just wow.[/quote]

You did not misunderstand that is exactly what I am saying. Companies look for ways to generate income, the fact that they don’t bother with certain languages goes to show they believe the pay off is not worth it. Companies for profit exist to make $$ not provide a service because they are nice.

Supporting a language not only means localization which isn’t cheap but providing support services to customers of those languages, also not cheap.

No new living world while expansion is being developed >>>wait it wasn’t already developed? does 4-6 months no living world equal 1 expansion?

munki.6402:

xev.9476:

Why are ridiculous, irrelevant posts like this so common? The OP was clear that he enjoys the game overall but wants the game to improve in certain areas. How does that merit a “love it or leave it” ultimatum? Identifying problematic areas now qualifies as “treating this game like a job”? What is the difference between “subjective and objective reasoning”, and what possible relevance does it have in a forum that welcomes and encourages player feedback?

I never suggested a ‘love it or leave it’ ultimatum. My point was that if the OP is dissatisfied he should move on to something else because it is unlikely that he will see immediate fixes for the ‘problematic areas’. The OP is regurgitating issues and Devs have already expressed that they are attempting to address many of them in HoT. I am satisfied with this game. I enjoy playing it. That is subjective in that it is my personal experience, which the OP obviously does not share. I fail to see why I should have to explain that, but here we are.

I have offered feedback via my expression of being satisfied with things as they are. I accept that the ‘problematic areas’ will be addressed with the release of HoT (as well as any potential patches between now and its release). Is my feedback, or opinion lacking because I’m not acting as a cheering section for the OP?

Actually yes yes you did and posts like yours do more damage than good. people come here to point out these problems not because they don’t like the game not after 3 years sorry to destroy your logic but that’s just not how that works. People continue to point out the flaws in the hopes that they’ll see the post and do something about it.

They have a real chance and funding to make the appropriate “fixes” to the games overall design so that it improves it for everyone and eliminates obvious flaws. That doesn’t come from a place of hating the game. I suppose you’ll tell us next that Woodenpotatoes recent youtube posts about certain flaws means he is dissatisfied with the game and should move on when nothing could be further from the truth because that is what your last post was saying.

Anyways, OP I completely stand behind you I’m interested in seeing where this goes we need more information that’s for sure because we’re definitely NOT getting enough. They had this huge convention in which it was all but televised on a marathon and suddenly everything went silent. There are some things we absolutely need answers on and I for one would like a comprehensive list of essential problems in the games design to be drawn up with responses on what is on it’s way and I’d love to see it in the forums and not somewhere else (cough reddit cough)

OP mentioned trains, metas and a lack of class knowledge (no class training quests or missions or even solo dungeons I suspect he was talking about), for me it’s always been what will the replacement for the anti-farming be when it comes to materials for ascended, what will the new balance be like since the new class is what they claim all classes should be like when it comes to combat style for the future, and what will they be doing about systems like the anti-trinity which has lead to things like the Zerker meta in the first place (now let me be clear about this one, I’m no fan of all DoTs for every class and every player the elephant in the room did that and the scout classes have suffered for it in that game so that’s not the solution).

Fade.1743:

The dungeon issue is not specific to GW2. Or MMORPGs. Or RPGs. Seriously, watch a tabletop game. Players do everything they can to safely win even if it involves abusing the rules. No game designer can break that mentality.

It actually is specific. You’re trying to protect the devs – you fail. Yes, players do everything they can to safely win. Of course.

And devs are responsible for fixing things like that. They don’t fix almost anything – that’s why anyone with some brain is disappointed. End of story.

I’m excited for new specializations. Should bring more interesting combos to PvP, which my my favorite part of this game.

Cuddy.6247:

Badwolf.9725:

A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up.

I’m calling BS.

I 2nd that motion !
he was prob playing with newbs and mistook them for veterans !

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

Windsagio.1340:

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

To give ArenaNet feedback so they can improve the game.

What is there not to get? People are allowed to have an opinion different from yours and to express it, for the good of the game.

Wreave.2138:

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

MMOs are time consumers. That’s their primary feature, and its there by necessity. People play MMOs to kill time. But, psychologically they want a reason to play, i.e. there has to be something that draws them to play. Hence, there has to be something that gives them a reason to play a lot — hence… grinds.

I was going to respond to this, but Test covered it really well above.

Just because MMOs are traditionally about setting up huge time-sinks so people can treat them as a second job doesn’t mean that have to be designed that way. Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

As it is, the status quo is slowly bleeding out.