Guild Wars 2

I am not knocking this game, i’m just having a lot of trouble getting into it. I mean, its been ok fun to play, but there aren’t many days when i’m like “man i really want to play Gw2”

I think my biggest problem is the skill system as far as i understands it. My highest level character is 16 and yet it appears i have every main skill i am ever going to have, outside of a few skills with massive cooldowns and over all non game changing effects.

I guess i dont really feel much motivation to play and level up if i dont get many new skills to mess around with.

Even in one of the other games i palyed, where skills were few, they at least got bigger and more powerful the more you used them (the size of an aoe was a bit over double when cast by someone who just got one, when compared to someone who mastered the skill.)

Idk why i’m finding it so hard to like this game, when i like nearly all mmos.

Help?

There is no way you have every skill at level 16. All those skills on the right hand side, you will change them according to each encounter.
Also, what class are you playing?

Then there’s traits, that you don’t get full access to til lv80. They make or break a build.

Maybe you’ll want to play ele or engie, they have more weapon skills to handle than other classes.

Mesmer and thief have a very unique playstyle as well.
_
This game isn’t about getting more powerful as you level, but more skilled. There’s a little gear progression but nothing game changing…the point is to have as little as possible necessary grind.
(basically no grind for needed gear..lots of grind for looks….if that bothers you then this isn’t the game for you. )

But also, if you don’t feel like you’re getting stronger, go to take your level 16 into a level30 area, then go there again when you’re level30.

Mindset. You’re playing for the next thing you can get rather than to just enjoy what’s on the screen right in front of you.

You have to play GW2 like it’s not an MMO at all. Play it like it’s a console game. Pick it up, have fun, when you get bored play something else for a while, then come back when you feel like.

If you need to have that Next Thing, GW2 likely isn’t your game. But that’s okay. Go find the game that scratches that itch, and then log into GW2 every now and then and play it because it’s a fun game to play.

Not sure if trolling but

1. Skill 1-5 are only half of your skill bars. Lv 16 you only have 11 skill points naturally from leveling, I don’t think you get all the utilities/elite skills yet.
2. One other word: Traits

Traits are just as important as skills. In this game we don’t have a skill tree. Think of skills as “cards” you can use in a deck in a trading card game, where Traits are actually more representation of progress.

And kitten there are two group of people in the forum demanding two different opposing view points regarding earning traits:

Group A: “OMFGWHYUKANET take a way all the trait now making us unlocking all of them and not able to get trait points til lv 30?”

Group B: “OMG why traits were so easy to get. WE DEMAND harder way to obtain traits?”

I’m not even going into the argument behind each side, it’s ridiculous.

If you like almost every MMO, you should know that there is more beyond lvl 16 and that the start of a new character can be the most boring because its lacking skill choice.
Try to get to lvl 80 with a character you like to play. In that progres you earn enough skillpoints to choose the utility skills you want to use, not all have a huge cooldown.
Besides utility skills you also got traits wich you can tweek to your liking. At lvl 16 you haven’t unlucked a lot of traits, so there is not a lot of room to play.

Get to level 80 and learn the profession and after that look back on what you wrote.

Traits change the function of some skills. For instance, there is one that changes the size of the AoE radius of some skills for Necromancers. Lots of changes like that come from traits you obtain as you level up.

Not sure which profession you chose, but (in case you were unaware) different weapons give different skills, as well. Some professions have access to quite a few weapons.

I’m not sure how to help someone get ‘excited’ about playing a game, if they have sort of lost interest as soon as you seem to have.

Good luck, though…and welcome to Tyria!

Mesmer is my main i suppose. I do have an ele i play when my boyfriend is on, but that isn’t too often.

I guess what bums me out is the fact that every single one of my weapon skills are unlocked already. I understand i don’t have all my slot skills, only all my weapon skills, but it just has such a feel of throwing the exact same 3 or so skills at mobs till they die, while occasionally using one of my slot skills, which have rather large cool downs.

One thing i honestly like about most mmos are diverse skills at my disposal, i just don’t get that feeling here. Again, i realize i’m only 16, but even watching high level play videos it appears lvl 80s just primarily spam the exact same weapon skills that have the exact same visuals that they do for me.

I know traits are a thing, and i think they were actually unlocked sooner when i started playing(summer of last year), but even then they seemed to mostly be “dot spells do x% more damage for each dot on them” , changing the damage but nothing really all that interesting.

Maybe this just isn’t the game for me XD I like being rewarded for leveling up by pretty, shiny spells. I just don’t feel like i have any clear cut goal to work towards…except cooking, ive been having fun with that, lol.

You could always try Guild Wars (One), then. It has lots and lots of skills to choose from.

I’d suggest go back to your ele.

each class also has more than one weapon, you sure you have all skills for all weapons unlocked? including underwater?

more importantly, this game is about making your own goals.
Admittedly I found this game very hard to get into, as I had no feeling of “where do I go now”, kind of thing.
But this game is very much about “in the moment”, and enjoying that moment, and less about “getting stronger”/unlocking stuff.

Goals can include winning in pvp, completing maps, having a set of gear you think looks good. Having some cool dyes, fight all the world bosses…etc

you’re very early in the game… and with the new system lv2-30 is truly slow… so I’d give it a bit more time.
However if it’s really not something you’re enjoying, that’s ok. Nobody likes every game out there

The thing is, skill/trait use in GW2 can be versatile, but you have to go through all the levels before you can actually pick what you like. Not all traits are like “dot spells do x% more damage for each dot on them”.

The trait system has changed since the april patch. Yes before that you had more traits, you started gaining them from lvl 11 untill you hit lvl 80. Now you get 15 trait points in total across how many levels and when you gain them, i don’t know. I haven’t leveled a character in ages.

Besides all of the above, as i said earlier, you should level it to lvl 80 and ofcourse keep leveling untill you got all the skills, then look back if the trait/skill system is versatile enough for you.

If what you’re looking for is character progression, you should focus on your traits, not your skills. Your weapon skills are just your basic attacks, there’s absolutely no progression in them.
Your utility skills are far more important, but you’ll soon find that there are only a few useful ones for each situation.
Your traits, however, really help with your progression and can also enhance your utility and weapon skills.

I think the problem is that you’re associating GW2 too much with other games you play. You need to look at it in a different way if you want to enjoy it.

oh dear…. this thread will be deleted very soon

nolij.4327:

Xerion.8014:

Oh and if you like the more oldschool skill system, check out ArcheAge, lots of skills to choose from across 120 possible classes, its still in Alpha, but going closed Beta soon and its F2P (shameless ArcheAge promotion)

oh dear…. this thread will be deleted very soon

Naaaaah it won’t

I’m from russia and we already have ArcheAge OBT :-)
Can you make logical deductions why I’m still writing here?
It's not all that awesome at all. Do I need to explain further the problems with 120 classes and F2P(B2W) systems?

I’m not here to discuss ArcheAge, but the combat/leveling/skill system is more oldschool, as what the OP described he/she liked. And besides that having the oppertunity to choose from 120 class combos is something that helps with being versatile in choice.

I’ve been using same Greatsword skills on my guard since the first open beta in 2012 April.
Repetitive and boring. No roam for experimentation.

Nick.6972:

I’ve been using same Greatsword skills on my guard since the first open beta in 2012 April.
Repetitive and boring. No room for experimentation.

And I’m using all weapons on my thief and all weapons on my Guardian in different circumstances. Of course there’s no room, you chose it yourself.

In Guild Wars 2, you get better by playing better, not by getting more powerful skills. A lot of this game is about technique. Doing things better. Using the right skills and traits at the right time. Dodging at the right time. Reflecting at the right time. Individual skills are less important.

I played Rift and had tons of skills, but most of them were pretty useless. Just various on what I had with different cooldowns. It was the illusion of choice. There were skills that were just most efficient and those were the five you used.

And even then I had them macroed so I only hit two or three keys.

When you get to harder content, you’ll have to kite, strafe, and dodge your way to victory.

Off topic, Arche Age was exciting to me until Trion bought it.

tl;dr

Get to level 80, see how versatile your profession of choice is in trait/utility skills.

Off topic @ Vayne.8563 Trion is only the publisher for as far as i know. They have nothign to do with the game development itself.

Don’t expect any kind of meaningful Trait experimentation until you are dozens of hours in as a level 80 and have unlocked some. Yes it’s that bad.

Many Traits buff based on which types of Skills are equipped, so in that aspect Skills are much more important (and luckily you can unlock some quickly by capping SP – don’t waste SP on Traits)

Evalia.7103:

Nick.6972:

I’ve been using same Greatsword skills on my guard since the first open beta in 2012 April.
Repetitive and boring. No room for experimentation.

And I’m using all weapons on my thief and all weapons on my Guardian in different circumstances. Of course there’s no room, you chose it yourself.

I don’t know about Thief, but Guardian PvE weapon selection is really limited and you can’t argue with that. Shield is garbage, torch is only useful for the condition clearing but conditions are rarely an issue, hammer sees use only for the 2# skill, mace is laughable, staff is bad unless you are in a zerg…

Basically the only effective PvE Guadian weapons are greatsword, greatsword, greatsword and scepter/sword + focus (but only rarely).

So no, it’s definitely not him limitating his choices, but the game making most of them significantly worse.

I have alt Ele, power leveled to 80 before the Trait patch, used skill scrolls and unlocked all utilities, elite and weapon skills playing WvW in less than a hour.
I want to play Staff, but I personally find most of the skills boring, so what are my options to make running staff more enjoyable? None.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You could always try Guild Wars (One), then. It has lots and lots of skills to choose from.

Basically this.

Or Path of Exile. Almost as diverse as Guild Wars was and it’s completely free.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people. It’s more cut to casual gamers hopping in and out here and then, like with fps shooters like Counter Strike or CoD. Most of the skills are even the exact same skill, with a slight damage difference, accross multiple classes. There isn’t really much diversity in functions. The Ele is the biggest lie since GW2 doesn’t have elemental damage like fire, water, lightning, or earth, like GW did. No native damage resistance or weakness of enemies to it either. No damage immunities and condition immunities either, save for bosses. In GW you couldn’t bleed or poision elementals, or blind creatures that were already blind. It was closer to a simplified d&d system in terms of complexity. Water elementals took double fire damage. I think the only thing that transferred to GW2 was the Destroyer’s immunity to burning.

These things were common back then. And yet nothing was completely immune to damage like the stupid WvW bosses. Maybe Shiro.

Guild Wars also had that “skills get more powerful as you allocate more points into their attributes” thing. It might be the game you are looking for.

It was the game we were all looking for when GW2 was coming out.

Nick.6972:

I have alt Ele, power leveled to 80 before the Trait patch, used skill scrolls and unlocked all utilities, elite and weapon skills playing WvW in less than a hour.
I want to play Staff, but I personally find most of the skills boring, so what are my options to make running staff more enjoyable? None.

Why do you want to play staff if you find it boring?

What exactly do you find boring?

And lastly maybe this isn’t the game for you?

there are a ton of aspects to the gw2 skill system.

First of all you got the weapons.
They are easy to unlock but each weapon is better at a different role. I dont know lets take Necro for example.. Staff is great for ranged group encounters and support while dagger + dagger is great for single target damage at melee range. First things first you need to choose the weapon combination that you enjoy most that matches the role you want to focus on. Those skills are then complimented by the utility skills. Sure they may have a longer cool down then weapon skills but they also have a bigger effect as well as they enhance your role. For example if you want to play your necro primarily as a support role then utility skills like spectral wall, well of darkness, well of power, plague signet etc.. can make a big difference. Same applies if you want to focus on Crowd control or DPS.

Anyhow all of these skills are then further enhanced through traits. They can like you want increase the area of effect of your skills or reduce cool downs on skills of certain weapons or type, trigger a skill for free even if its not equipped when certain conditions are met etc…

The whole build is then further enhanced based on your armor stats + runes you have equipped with that armor. Can make heals more powerful, conditions last longer, even apply certain conditions in certain circumstances.

if you just want a lot of skills to play with then be aware that some professions get access to more skills then others. Like the Elementalist where their weapon gives them 20 skills rather then 5. Some utilities / elite skills also provide additional weapons you can use like the engineer kits for example. Also keep in mind none of these are static between one encounter and the next you can change weapons / skills making you more effective at the task at hand if you want or to get more variation if that’s your thing.

Xerion.8014:

If you like almost every MMO, you should know that there is more beyond lvl 16 and that the start of a new character can be the most boring because its lacking skill choice.
Try to get to lvl 80 with a character you like to play. In that progres you earn enough skillpoints to choose the utility skills you want to use, not all have a huge cooldown.
Besides utility skills you also got traits wich you can tweek to your liking. At lvl 16 you haven’t unlucked a lot of traits, so there is not a lot of room to play.

Get to level 80 and learn the profession and after that look back on what you wrote.

I must admit that instead of going through the leveling process to unlock core skills and something along those lines feels incredibly awesome to me. In WoW Wrath of the Lich King I once wanted to try elemental shaman and I had to reach level 75 in order to unlock Lava Burst, elemental core spell. All of this just to learn that their PvE rotation was: apply DoT → Lava Burst → Lightning Bolt x4 → apply same DoT → Lava Burst → …
---
To OP:
Read what I’ve just listed above. Also, you’ve got lots of utilities and traits to mess with when you reach the required level. With the system we currently have in game, you can create every single profession (read ‘class’), level it up a bit and try their skills in order to decide which one suits your play-style.
If you won’t like how any profession plays, then, unfortunately, the game wouldn’t be enjoyable.
P.S. Try Engineer and experiment with it. You can have 1 or 2 main weapons with 5 skills + 4 kits (read ‘utilities’) which replace your 1 up to 5 skills (e.g. Flamethrower . That way, you can forge your own way to play as Engineer or follow someone’s build.

chronus.1326:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people.

I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but this is completely 100% untrue. Creative people can play games for different reasons. My wife is an artist and loves this game because of the look and feel. She’s creative. There are so many ways to be creative without having creative “builds”.

I’d say a good portion of the people in my guild consider themselves creative people. There are writers, artists, song-writers, poets, actors.

There are plenty of creative people playing this game. It’s better than a lot of MMOs for creative people because it isn’t a linear as most of them.

HoneyPunch.3108:

Mesmer is my main i suppose. I do have an ele i play when my boyfriend is on, but that isn’t too often.

When I started with GW2 I had the exact same impression like you. It took about 30 min to unlock all weapon skills. I was a bit disappointed, but also had discovered only about 3% of the world

But the encounters will get harder and the key to survive is the right timing of skills and dodging ofc. I mostly do the exploring part in Open PvE, dynamic events, heart quests. The gameplay experience is quite different to other mmos, because the open world has tons of things to discover and I do not necessarily mean the obvious things like pois and vistas, but npc dialogues, consequences after events, event-chains. One has to take time though and not try to rush through the zones, because in other mmos it’s like this: go to a quest giver, accept the quest, go back to the quest giver, complete and eventually accept the next quest. In GW2 it’s very different: quest givers are all part of the events, they walk to event areas, the event happens with or without players (and fails or succeeds) they walk back to their homes and then eventually walk to another event area. It takes some time, but it makes the world more dynamic than any other quest based mmo I know of. And this is only one part of GW2 (but imho the strongest one, its usp), there’s WvW, PvP, Dungeons and Open World Raids too.

Eg. I have completed the Queensdale map with various toons before but just recently with my latest alt I discovered an event that got no event circle on the map. A boy wanted to talk to me, so I talked to him. After the conversation we both went to a “secret” cave where the children meet and play together. There they started a quiz where I had to answer a few questions related to Guild Wars lore. They laughed at me because of my bad answers but this event was great. There was no reward in terms of loot, but the impression of the living world was just awesome. I wished there was a ton more of things like that.

To get a deeper impression of the possibilities for your toon, an overview about possible utility skill and trait combinations, take a look at http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Many traits change the way your weapon and utility skills work, reduce their cds, increase their range, add condition damage, some of them make your toon itself stronger or more durable or getting boons under certain circumstances and so on.

Vayne.8563:

chronus.1326:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people.

I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but this is completely 100% untrue. Creative people can play games for different reasons. My wife is an artist and loves this game because of the look and feel. She’s creative. There are so many ways to be creative without having creative “builds”.

I’d say a good portion of the people in my guild consider themselves creative people. There are writers, artists, song-writers, poets, actors.

There are plenty of creative people playing this game. It’s better than a lot of MMOs for creative people because it isn’t a linear as most of them.

I’ll rephrase my statement.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t for people who like to express their creativity this way. I’m an artist too and I sit in for an X-men movie too because I like how it looks and there is nothing creative that I do during it.

as mesmer, your traits are really important and can totally alter your playstyle.

they have a dueling one that gives you a clone whenever you dodge
they have illusion cooldown ones that can give you a lot more versatility
they have traits that cause your illusions to put debuff when they die including exploding
they have traits that make mantras give 3 charges instead of two
heal everytime you finish charging a mantra
trait that makes it so you count as an illusion for the purposes of shattering
traits that make you do damage when successfully interupt

suffice to say traits matter a lot.
as for weapon skills, you really need to unlock them all, and use most of them.

that said, i understand how, visually its not as exciting since your moves and powers will appear to be the same forever. there are a few small visual effects on traits, but thats about all.

Anet should look to creating enhanced weapon skill variations and graphics that you can work towards or unlock through play, however, pretty sure they will never do that.

It is kind of nice to unlock some super cool looking moves as you get higher level.

chronus.1326:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You could always try Guild Wars (One), then. It has lots and lots of skills to choose from.

Basically this.

Or Path of Exile. Almost as diverse as Guild Wars was and it’s completely free.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people. It’s more cut to casual gamers hopping in and out here and then, like with fps shooters like Counter Strike or CoD. Most of the skills are even the exact same skill, with a slight damage difference, accross multiple classes. There isn’t really much diversity in functions. The Ele is the biggest lie since GW2 doesn’t have elemental damage like fire, water, lightning, or earth, like GW did. No native damage resistance or weakness of enemies to it either. No damage immunities and condition immunities either, save for bosses. In GW you couldn’t bleed or poision elementals, or blind creatures that were already blind. It was closer to a simplified d&d system in terms of complexity. Water elementals took double fire damage. I think the only thing that transferred to GW2 was the Destroyer’s immunity to burning.

These things were common back then. And yet nothing was completely immune to damage like the stupid WvW bosses. Maybe Shiro.

Guild Wars also had that “skills get more powerful as you allocate more points into their attributes” thing. It might be the game you are looking for.

It was the game we were all looking for when GW2 was coming out.

gw2 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Vayne.8563:

chronus.1326:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people.

I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but this is completely 100% untrue. Creative people can play games for different reasons. My wife is an artist and loves this game because of the look and feel. She’s creative. There are so many ways to be creative without having creative “builds”.

I’d say a good portion of the people in my guild consider themselves creative people. There are writers, artists, song-writers, poets, actors.

There are plenty of creative people playing this game. It’s better than a lot of MMOs for creative people because it isn’t a linear as most of them.

Pretty sure that by creative he was referring to the gameplay(emergent gameplay?).

oh yeah, and the game probably needs to have some harder contents throughout. It doesnt all need to be hard, but they need to have some things that make you be like, man i need to get better/stronger, as it is, a lot of the depth in GW2 is never seen/felt, because it doesnt seem to matter that much, 1-70 is now even easier to win, and mostly based on having the best gear for your level, and everything will be easy.

the game needs to adapt to skill level of the player better, and keep the player striving to be better.

phys.7689:

gw1 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Doesn’t have anything like that.

There are about 4 type of skills in the game that repeat ad infinitum and make up 70% of all the skills in the game: damage skills, gap closers, retreat skills, and buffs. The rest of the skills, and even some of these are completely useless in their iterations. The additional conditions or boons are often entirely inconsequential, along with combo fields that are not really a skill to pull off in a zerg anyway and add about +10% to a boss fight that is still a tediously long rotation spam except maybe Teq but that is exactly why everyone fails it because the game doesn’t in any way make the player use and excercise his brain cells in any other content whatsoever.

Playstyles are forcefully linked to weapons, meaning you cannot have a favourite playstyle and a favourite weapon at the same time. More broadly speaking, if you do not favor two-handed swords, you might aswell forget the game.

Comes from a long way from Guild Wars were you could have and Assassin run around with a Scythe with a non-dagger crit damage build or a Warrior with a Staff when more energy was needed.

This game is a game of limitations, not a game of possibilities.

The skills system as well as the combat system and about the entire game was based around the terror of having to balance it afterwards. It is a steaming pile of kitten droppings from a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on it after they release it, just add more episodic content (DLC) because an MMO just seem to work that way from the outside when you are an amateur developer or a stupid publisher CEO who juggles around human resources like tarrot cards to get lucky.

This game was afraid of itself, and for no reason because they did a splendid job balancing GW for 7 years.

Lazyness is eating it away from the inside like cancer.

Like the 400gem monocle or the flaming gemshop armor that was so lazy at release that they had to change it due to demand.

Or the Krytan armor and the Primeval Armor and the rest are cash shop items instead of HoM rewards for GW players who farmed out Tormended Weapons to get to 50/50.

chronus.1326:

Vayne.8563:

chronus.1326:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people.

I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but this is completely 100% untrue. Creative people can play games for different reasons. My wife is an artist and loves this game because of the look and feel. She’s creative. There are so many ways to be creative without having creative “builds”.

I’d say a good portion of the people in my guild consider themselves creative people. There are writers, artists, song-writers, poets, actors.

There are plenty of creative people playing this game. It’s better than a lot of MMOs for creative people because it isn’t a linear as most of them.

I’ll rephrase my statement.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t for people who like to express their creativity this way. I’m an artist too and I sit in for an X-men movie too because I like how it looks and there is nothing creative that I do during it.

But you can play this game creatively because I do. Every RPer does for that matter. This game is more suited to creativity because it doesn’t lead you around by the nose, that’s my opinion anyway.

chronus.1326:

phys.7689:

gw1 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Doesn’t have anything like that.

There are 4 type of skills in the game that repeat ad infinitum and make up 70% of all the skills in the game: damage skills, gap closers, retreat skills, and buffs. The rest of the skills, and even some of these are completely useless in their iterations. The additional conditions or boons are often entirely inconsequential, along with combo fields that are not really a skill to pull off in a zerkg anyway, add about +10% to a bods fight that is still tediously long rotations pam ecept maybe Teq but that is exactly why everyone fails it because the game doesn’t in any way make the player use and excercise his brain cells in any other content whatsoever.

Playstyles are forcefully linked to weapons, meaning you cannot have a favourite playstyle and a favourite weapon at the same time. More broadly speaking, if you do not favor two-handed swords, you might aswell forget the game.

Comes from a long way from Guild Wars were you could have and Assassin run around with a Scythe with a non-dagger crit damage build or a Warrior with a Staff when more energy was needed.

This game is a game of limitations, not a game of possibilities.

The skills system as well as the combat system and about the entire game was based around the terror of having to balance it afterwards. It is a steaming pile of kitten droppings from a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on it after they release it, just add more episodic content (DLC) becausde an MMO just seem to work that way from the outside when you are an amateur developer or a stupid publisher CEO who juggles around human resources to get money.

This game was afraid of itself, and for no reason because they did a splendid job balancing GW for 7 years.

Lazyness is eating this game away from the inside like cancer.

Like the 400gem monocle or the flaming gemshop armor that was so lazy at release that they had to change it due to demand.

If you stop and think about it, a very large portion of games have extremely limited skill systems. This being mostly about combat and power curves, most games you just shoot stuff or jump over things. What good is having a huge power curve and a massive selection of skills if all the baddies get stronger with you, it just adds complication and grind. I may have complaints about the game, but the combat/skill system is pretty well done. This is an action/adventure MMO, meaning you should be enjoying the experiences and not fighting a huge level curve or poorly chosen skills.

chronus.1326:

phys.7689:

gw1 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Doesn’t have anything like that.

There are about 4 type of skills in the game that repeat ad infinitum and make up 70% of all the skills in the game: damage skills, gap closers, retreat skills, and buffs. The rest of the skills, and even some of these are completely useless in their iterations. The additional conditions or boons are often entirely inconsequential, along with combo fields that are not really a skill to pull off in a zerg anyway and add about +10% to a boss fight that is still a tediously long rotation spam except maybe Teq but that is exactly why everyone fails it because the game doesn’t in any way make the player use and excercise his brain cells in any other content whatsoever.

Playstyles are forcefully linked to weapons, meaning you cannot have a favourite playstyle and a favourite weapon at the same time. More broadly speaking, if you do not favor two-handed swords, you might aswell forget the game.

Comes from a long way from Guild Wars were you could have and Assassin run around with a Scythe with a non-dagger crit damage build or a Warrior with a Staff when more energy was needed.

This game is a game of limitations, not a game of possibilities.

The skills system as well as the combat system and about the entire game was based around the terror of having to balance it afterwards. It is a steaming pile of kitten droppings from a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on it after they release it, just add more episodic content (DLC) because an MMO just seem to work that way from the outside when you are an amateur developer or a stupid publisher CEO who juggles around human resources like tarrot cards to get lucky.

This game was afraid of itself, and for no reason because they did a splendid job balancing GW for 7 years.

Lazyness is eating it away from the inside like cancer.

Like the 400gem monocle or the flaming gemshop armor that was so lazy at release that they had to change it due to demand.

Or the Krytan armor and the Primeval Armor and the rest are cash shop items instead of HoM rewards for GW players who farmed out Tormended Weapons to get to 50/50.

im guessing you are just trying to make a point, but there are more than 4 types of skills

damage skill
debuff skills chill, poison, weakness cripple
defensive skills
buff skills
movement skills
heal skills
condition remove skills
stun breakers
control skills
then there are various fields and finishers
resource skills

but if you want to say thats not enough choices there isnt many skills i can think of in GW1 that didnt fall into those categories.

yes, you could be more creative with your skill set in GW1, but lets not pretend that they dont have various skills, that serve different purposes.

Also while the skill selection and deck building was deeper in gw1, the combat itself was not, mostly due to a very simplified positional combat and defense being completely tied to skills.

That said the enemy encounter design is really poor in gw2, so you wont see the use for the vast majority of skills, or deep combat outside of spvp, and some high end fractals

The game is full of grind and mindless zerging that contains trivial content and lackluster boss mechanics.

And this is not even a stretch of the truth. Zergs and HP meatsacks for bosses. Garnished with endless grinding.

Want to get into a game like that?

And fanboi’s incoming in 3,2,1….

cesmode.4257:

The game is full of grind and mindless zerging

Agreed. But just in case one wants a specific thing, only then due to the nearly 100% randomness of drops and the huge amount of needed items/currencies it reveals its heavy grindy and time-consuming grimace.

Wanting something specific indeed is a trap and should be avoided as long as possible to keep the game being enjoyable and not frustrating.
At least this is how I play GW2.

HoneyPunch.3108:

I am not knocking this game, i’m just having a lot of trouble getting into it. I mean, its been ok fun to play, but there aren’t many days when i’m like “man i really want to play Gw2”

…

Idk why i’m finding it so hard to like this game, when i like nearly all mmos.

Help?

I know how you feel.

For me, I’ve determined that it’s the lack of clear goals in the game. When I first heard about the game middle of last year, I thought it had a great concept. No gear treadmill, level scaling (I like level scaling), quite a bit of voice acting, no power creep, active defense combat system? Sign me up! I was tired of grinding for gear only to have them be obsolete when the next patch hits.

However, I never got past level 40-ish.

At first I thought it was my mindset from other MMOs, that as long as I change that mindset, the game will magically become super fun for me. But it hasn’t. I still feel the same as I did after the initial shine wore off; I am running around aimlessly without a clear goal.

Sure, lots of people told me I’m doing it wrong, that I should not treat it like a checklist. “Turn off world completion markers!” they say. “Explore!” they say. I take it slow, but I want to feel like I’m working toward something, whether that be gear or something else. In Skyrim, I explore the whole map, but my goal was to find questlines to complete. There is no “gear” in Skyrim — I was using the same set from level 10 or so to the end, because it was a pretty set. In Diablo 3, as much as it is a gear grind, my goal was to be able to keep advancing in higher difficulties. These two are my most played non-MMOs.

In GW2, I haven’t found anything that is a goal. There is the personal story, but it’s gated behind levels. I can explore, but I don’t enjoy exploring for the sake of exploring. I can do that in real life road trips.

I wanted to like the game, but I think it is not the game for me. In the process, I discovered that I like some sort of hand-holding. Too free-form and I start to feel lost and frustrated at not having a goal to work toward.

I want to get into a guild though, I’ve been playing solo all this time (hur dur, solo in an MMO, u r doin it wrong). Perhaps a good guild is what I need.

Vayne.8563:

In Guild Wars 2, you get better by playing better, not by getting more powerful skills. A lot of this game is about technique. Doing things better. Using the right skills and traits at the right time. Dodging at the right time. Reflecting at the right time. Individual skills are less important.

This is absolutely true.

What I’ve always loved about GW2 is how much the combat rewards your personal skill. Timing is huge and your utility slot skills will always be about taking the right skills with you for the right reasons for an encounter. There’s other elements too, such as combos which are rather significant in all forms of play, plus how very fluid combat is compared to other ‘by the numbers’ MMO’s out there.

I will say though that the leveling experience in GW2 is very inconsistent and definitely one of the weaker points in the game currently. They tried to structure some of the mobs in a couple ways – Like how you get basically no conditions from mobs prior to level 15. More recently they reworked mobs prior to level 30 to compensate for the loss of early traits.

You’ll find that by level 70, most mobs will have substantially more health and do more damage, as well as flood you in conditions. A lot of first timers compare the difficulty of taking down even a single at level mob at 70 to killing an at level veteran level 15 or even 30.

I feel it’s a problem where the game doesn’t give much initiative to explore and learn about your class and game mechanics early and mid way through the leveling process to prepare you for the jump in difficulty at endgame.

I see so many terribly bad fresh 80’s stumbling through Orr complaining about how hard the game is, just trying to get map completion stuff as they experience the dynamic events for the first time.

I highly recommend you leveling up to 80 and playing the end-game content then to see if the game’s for you. It’s unfortunate that a lot of people quit before getting there. Now I don’t blame them because I did the same due to getting bored. After giving the game another chance and hitting 80, the game actually turned out alright (for me at least). The bottom line though is that this game’s not for everyone. Many of the people I knew who came into the game with me were gone after 2-3 months. The game is essentially based on three things: 1) Cosmetic 2) Combat 3) Jumping Puzzles. Most of everything else revolves around these three. If that isn’t enough for you then you may never enjoy the game.

You set small goals. Today I’m going to explore this zone. Conquer that JP. Get that achievement. Along the way you may get drawn into DEs, rez fallen players, gather mats, etc.

The OP brings up a good point that would not have been relevant prior to the new trait system.

After 7-8 months away, I recently came back to GW2 and decided I would reroll my level 20 Elementalist and start a new mage from level 1.

Waiting until level 80 to build out a character is unacceptable; on my prior 80’s I was able to have a build and the anchor traits fairly locked in and on track prior to level 80. Now I face a trait rationing in dribs and drabs based on content as well hard level restrictions for basic tier unlocks.

Nearly all the mini-perks to leveling have been removed, the bulk of which now start at level 30.

This has completely ruined the game for me, the game already suffered from being “dry” and the new trait system has removed the last bit of incentive for as I level up.

Sadly, I have decided to leave GW2 again after just being back to the game for 5 days.

The new content coming out in July can’t take the stink off the gameplay changes ANet has implemented.

Kuldebar.1897:

The OP brings up a good point that would not have been relevant prior to the new trait system.

After 7-8 months away, I recently came back to GW2 and decided I would reroll my level 20 Elementalist and start a new mage from level 1.

Waiting until level 80 to build out a character is unacceptable; on my prior 80’s I was able to have a build and the anchor traits fairly locked in and on track prior to level 80. Now I face a trait rationing in dribs and drabs based on content as well hard level restrictions for basic tier unlocks.

Nearly all the mini-perks to leveling have been removed, the bulk of which now start at level 30.

This has completely ruined the game for me, the game already suffered from being “dry” and the new trait system has removed the last bit of incentive for as I level up.

Sadly, I have decided to leave GW2 again after just being back to the game for 5 days.

The new content coming out in July can’t take the stink off the gameplay changes ANet has implemented.

I agree with this. I’ve been gone for a few months due to computer troubles. I jumped back in yesterday after getting my computer upgraded and convincing a friend to buy it during the half off sale. I have multiple mid-level characters. After I saw what the trait changes did to them, I have no desire to level them anymore. Most of what I enjoyed about the game was that the game itself was fun and I didn’t have to “wait until you hit level 80” for it to get interesting. It wasn’t all about the post game like most other MMO’s. The journey of leveling your character was the draw and it should be fun or you won’t draw new people.

Now the trait system is so weighted toward the high end (even more so than other MMOs) that I feel I should apologize to my friend for convincing him to buy it. Before the trait changes you didn’t have to grind your character to upper levels before it started being fun. In fact, the game didn’t feel like a grind at all. Now that’s all it feels like. Grind. You can unlock all your weapon skills by level 5 then have to wait 25 levels before you get any traits!? And then 6 more!? 5 out of every 6 levels are now useless! And level 60 before teir 2 traits!? That’s awful! When I left the game, my level 33 Warrior had what would now be 4 trait points and already had the Major trait in one of the lines. Now he has ONE point! Something he previously had at level 15. I feel like I got 18 levels stolen from me. And that’s just 1 character. My level 52 Mesmer went from 8 trait points to 4 and 2 Majors to NONE! I’m not sure even the guilt I feel for wasting my friend’s money is enough to make me play any more until/if it gets changed back. I don’t even want to play my 80.

You still don’t have to “wait until you hit 80”, but they did weight the ability to do higher end builds to that end of the scale. Look at it how you want, but I see it as more motivation to advance to 80 not less (tho I can see it would appear to be discouraging to players with mid level characters prior to the change).

HoneyPunch.3108:

Mesmer is my main i suppose. I do have an ele i play when my boyfriend is on, but that isn’t too often.

I guess what bums me out is the fact that every single one of my weapon skills are unlocked already. I understand i don’t have all my slot skills, only all my weapon skills, but it just has such a feel of throwing the exact same 3 or so skills at mobs till they die, while occasionally using one of my slot skills, which have rather large cool downs.

One thing i honestly like about most mmos are diverse skills at my disposal, i just don’t get that feeling here. Again, i realize i’m only 16, but even watching high level play videos it appears lvl 80s just primarily spam the exact same weapon skills that have the exact same visuals that they do for me.

I know traits are a thing, and i think they were actually unlocked sooner when i started playing(summer of last year), but even then they seemed to mostly be “dot spells do x% more damage for each dot on them” , changing the damage but nothing really all that interesting.

Maybe this just isn’t the game for me XD I like being rewarded for leveling up by pretty, shiny spells. I just don’t feel like i have any clear cut goal to work towards…except cooking, ive been having fun with that, lol.

If you don’t feel the diversity of having dozens of weapons skills and then 2 dozen+ more skills on top of the Trait system, which has a lot of passively-active skills on top of stat increases and what not, then you haven’t played enough to unlock this games crazy amount of customizable diversity. Weapon skills are only a significant fraction of each class. Be glad we get to play with everything our weapons give, because it’s what makes early game.

As for the trait system: You didn’t check it out enough, because that’s not how it ever was. Most of the traits were unique, extremely interesting, and allowed for specific builds that could never work without them. Stuff like dropping Caltrops on dodge were common place and gave yet another tactic for you to utilize. Choosing which ones you wanted, and at what cost from stats and other traits, is where the customization and fun really shined.

GW2 had one of the best ability/talent set ups of any MMO ever, though you had to get into the game to look past the superficial confusion that afflicted so many new players. Level 20+ was generally where the game really took off imo.

Admittedly, Anet buggered up the old trait system which started at level 10 if I remember correctly. It was a dumb idea to try to give new players a friendly trait system only to force new players to level to 30 before they even get to play with a single point. It’s a terrible decision imo, one that suggests a lack of leadership / direction in the company. God is it ever boring to level without traits now. Even when you get them you only get 1 every now and then -_-

This isn’t WoW, and Anet doesn’t have to make the same mistakes Blizzard did. It especially doesn’t work for GW2, because at least you got a lot of the exciting abilities/spells of the old talent tree handed to you while you leveled.