Edit: Wall of text!
Well, I’ve been playing this game off and on since release – with a few time outs. I’ve logged I don’t know how many hours into Guildwars 1 – I was in the top tiers of the guild vs guild pvp back then.
I think the general skill/dodge gameplay in Guildwars 2 is unmatched by any other mmo. It is awesome. Good job.
But there are problems:
90% of the living story gameplay content is achievement hunting. Collect x1000 tickets, or aether-whatevers, inventory clog and useless banked trinkets. It’s grinding for a balloon, not gameplay. It’s tiring for casuals because 2 weeks isnt enough, and it’s annoying for hardcores because they realize grind is a lame excuse for content. And then do it anyway.
And up until the middle of this summer, it was empty minigames tied to the same achievement-grind. Thank you for stopping that. I liked the race enough to play it 5 or so times, but that was about it.
I’m growing tired of the game is because I’ve basically “used” up all the content, and the content “drip” via the living story has proved to be, well… the dungeons have been outstanding. But most of those are gone so whatever. But they were awesome. Each and every one of them. Excellent job. The WvW buffs are nice, but its still just a zerg fest. No matter how well I do or play, I accomplish nothing in there. I’ll get to the pvp later.
Over the year I’ve probably amassed upwards of 2500+ tokens in every dungeon except Arah. I have a great guild and we dont do speed-running, we want to complete the fights and the “feel” of the content and regularly do so. I most likely would’ve had 100% zone completion if that PVE content didn’t force me to do WVW pvp content as well. I have almost 5 characters up to level 80, and I have one character of each proffession. But I’m done with the content… I’ve done it over and over and over now. And the living story isnt delivering…
The hard cold truth is that if we interpolate whats been done the game over the past year, 3 years into the future, we will have:
12 dungeons, 8 of them removed or possibly moved into tiny fractal shards
(I’m not counting that you added the fractals since I remember there was an interview saying that it was nearly completed at launch – good choice to delay it and make sure the games launch went well.)
3 new zones
4 removed zones that were just achievement grinds and or excuses for jumping puzzles
4 new actual jumping puzzles
Bigger bosses
Expanded wvw, but it’ll still probably a zero-sum zerg fest.
4 new arenas in the pvp
A mobius strip worth of minigames
More backpacks and trinkets than an expanded bank could hold
No new weapons
No new proffessions
No new crafting jobs
Many new armors, but you can only 90% get of them via money or insane black lion chest RNG drops
A super adventure box as big as the entire game but you’re not allowed in
And probably something involving dailys / laurels.
12 new hairdos per race.
A throng of minis
I know it’s not fair to interpolate in such a manner (your game engine will most likely support new things), but there’s this thing that I just can’t get out of my head: That that’s not even an expansions worth of content. The first expansion of Guild wars 1 doubled the game world size, and it was released in a year, and it brought much more content.
The real PvP is nothing like Guild wars 1 was… it doesnt even feature guild wars. I would cut off my right leg for the standard 4on4 deathmatch from guild wars 1. Instead theres the generic capture the points mmo-stuff. You won’t make it big that way.
If you want to improve PvP drastically, add this:
Right now there is no “true” interaction between two players. I can stun the opponent based on the time of the casting animation, but with no true knowledge about whats being cast it ends up being a non-fun non-rewarding risk. Add caster bars so there is more tactical manouverability, add non-based capture point combat and the PvP side of this game will EXPLODE. Pretty sure you guys have it in the making. If you get it in before x-mas, itll be a huge boon to the community because everyone on their winter vacation will have time to truly try it – full pvp queues, lots of people gaming it.
Sorry for the huge rant. I love this game dearly, It’s clearly one of the best ones out there, and I really want to be a part of it, but my guild is dying. You’re not delivering “real” new zones, and the good stuff you have delivered you removed. You’ve made amazing dungeons, but way too few of them. There are new no classes, proffessions, etc… and I have to go for a while. Maybe I’ll see you guys later. Best of luck in the future
(edited by meeelting.6987)