Guild Wars 2

Alright, so this post is about what is “fun” to me. Some of you may share my views, some of you may not. Either way, feel free to comment and debate them.

What’s fun? To me, games should be about striving to give the player fun experiences. Fun should exist as the paramount feature when designing, balancing, and updating a game.

Here are the things that make a game fun for me and, in turn, what I think Anet has done well/not so well in this area. Keep in mind, I really only play games like this for PvP; thus, all of my points will be PvP related.

1 – Engaging combat: I think Anet has done an amazing job here. I love the weapon system and the way combat feels. It just feels very fluid. I do believe some of the core features are still missing (and hopefully just not completely omitted). Things like enemy health bars, target of target and less particle effects (often in the middle of combat the song “blinded by the light” is playing in my head) are all that are missing to make this the most fun combat experience yet.
2 – Balance – I want to win because of skill, not because of my OP procs or skill-less moves. This is the toughest thing for most games to get right. Many games at this age had major balance issues and many games still do. I liked the way Rift handled this: their souls were very complex but the devs seem to quickly adjust balance on blatantly OP classes. Sometimes that causes them to be UP for a moment or whatever, but I like that approach because it allows players to see things are being done and if you’re OP one time and UP the next, in theory you know the next one will be right in the middle, making you CP(correctly powered? I refrained from using Perfectly Powered because of the acronym). I find GW is really missing on this. Not so much the balance per se, but more their response to it. It’s all quiet on the Western front and patches are rolled out at a snail’s pace. Now, I know people will say “but that’s the best way to balance, because you do it right the first time”. So, how is that block bug and thief insta-gib nerf working after the “done the right the first time” patch?

3- Choices: I want to have vast choice. I want to be able to play a spec that’s fun and it works. I want to be able to play a multitude of different game modes. I want to look completely different from other player, etc.: I think GW excels in some areas and falls flat on its face in others. I think the game mode suppression in this game is mind blowing. I hear them say they are balancing 1 mode for E-sport reasons and I think that is detrimental to fun. People don’t play FPS for death match only, don’t play MMOs for conquest only. Heck even games like SC have community games that are a blast. In this game, it’s conquest or go home. GW does well with the opportunity to play other builds; however, I think it still has a long way to go to be complete. I want to play an axe Necro in Spvp because it feels the best to me, but no build I’ve found makes that possible, or should I say viable.

4- Playing with friends: I think playing with friends is extremely important. Due to reasons 1-3, my friends have abandoned me and now I’m the only one left. When they did play, I wished it was easier for us to jump into a game and play. SPvP was extremely difficult to accomplish this and Pugging tournies is an act of masochism. When my friends and I did play together, it was fun; however, the time it took getting us all on the same team in SPvP or having to wait 5 min(back then) between rounds just to get touched inappropriately in Tpvp, was not fun.

5- Meeting new friends – Say what you want about dungeon finders, cross-server battlegrounds, and public questing, but I hate them. I loathe them. I detest them. I like the convenience of it, but it removes the need to actually meet people. The community ends up devolving into a bunch of single player people jumping in and out of instances/maps. This game in theory should be great for this; however, The Mist is really the only place to find friends and that place is getting to be a ghost town on most servers. I think at least opening Mist chat to all servers would be a way to alleviate it somewhat; that way, if I find team to join, I can PvP with them, regardless of server. I’m sure some of you will say “Well, it’s your job to meet new people” Well, I’ve tried to no avail. I even posted on here getting people to try to introduce themselves by talking about their character classes/names, but nobody ever does that stuff. It shouldn’t be the DEVs job to get people to meet each other, but unfortunately that’s the way society often works. Why do you think those singles-only-event companies make so much money? You have 2 people of the opposite sex desperately trying to meet someone new and still can’t manage to get out there and do it; so, companies like that become the bridge. MMO’s should have more features to encourage people to form alliances, not less.

A great chance to build a solid PvP community was ripe for the picking during launch with WvW. You had a perfect opportunity to build communities and comradery with this “us against the world” feature, but to do so you had to make the “world” feel like your own. But, it did not happen at all because of free server transfers available every second if people wanted to. By the time they added 24 hours it was too late, by the time they added 7 days it was way too late.

6 – Progression: There should be some sense of accomplishment. In PvE it usually revolves around leveling and gear acquisition. Most games have that approach to PvP as well. This game goes away from that model and in turn gives itself the burden of creating a fun, unique way of progression. Does aesthetics accomplish that? Not to me. I think a ranking system, better titles, and other things have to be there for progression. When you play a game for a couple of hours you want to walk away feeling like you’ve accomplished something; otherwise, you may walk away with the realization that you just spent multiple hours playing a video game while the vast Earth exists for your exploration. A good game makes you forget about that silly Earth.

Overall, this is getting a bit longer than I expected, so I’ll end it here and leave the rest up to discussion. Keep in mind: these are only MY opinions. Some of you will be greatly offended by my ideas and others will find them right on. Either way, it’s important to me. Now, the last few items that are listed are really missing in this game, but due to the strength – and potential strength – of number 1, I am still here. Any game can have the best 2-6 out there, but if #1(combat) stinks, they are in a lot of trouble. This game has some of the best combat I’ve played and so I have high hopes that the other seemingly minor items will fall in line. I believe that once balance and more game modes and more ways to have fun are implemented (crosses fingers), my friends will come back. Or at least, I pray. And if they don’t, hopefully I will meet new people and enjoy a fun game with them. Until then, Felivear the Lone Wolf, OUT!

This is a really well written post, i wish mine communicated my frustrations this gracefully.

Otherwise, you may walk away with the realization that you just spent multiple hours playing a video game when the vast Earth exists for your exploration. A good game makes you forget about that silly Earth.

:)

It’s ok. Five minutes with a paper or looking at any part of pop culture will remind you that Earth is a terrible place full of nitwits not worthy of your attention anyways.

Edit: and now editing works again. So I added this to main posts.

Braxxus.2904:

Otherwise, you may walk away with the realization that you just spent multiple hours playing a video game when the vast Earth exists for your exploration. A good game makes you forget about that silly Earth.

:)

It’s ok. Five minutes with a paper or looking at any part of pop culture will remind you that Earth is a terrible place full of nitwits not worthy of your attention anyways.

I know, that’s why these video games are so important. They provide a great temporary relief from this crazy place.

You might play the game for fun, but not everyone does, just sayin. I happen to play it to pick up chicks and im sure theres a sizable chunk of people playing it for e-fame (commentators ring a bell)

Playing a game for fun you say? I can get behind that.

1) Yes the combat is amazing. I’ve found that the PvE side of this game to be AMAZING simply because the fast-paced, high-action combat translates so well across game modes. But I have to disagree with you for wanting enemy health bars, as I believe it promotes build diversity (imagine if everyone could see that you only had 12k HP? or 27k?)

2) This for me is a huge deal, as an unbalanced game can become tedious due to everyone flocking to a handful of builds. Currently, I believe that the game is in a good place balance-wise, and with a few tweaks it could be fantastic.
Quick aside: if anything is unbalanced in this game currently, it’s Thieves. Not their damage, because most professions can build glass to get similar results, but how stealth and de-targeting gives the profession too much escape potential. In a teamfight it’s a lot to ask players to keep track of where a specific player is at all times when your target is constantly being dropped. As a result, Thieves tend to be ignored in teamfights.
That’s just a quick thought on balance, and I’m not trying to turn this into a hate on Thieves thread.

3) The most important part of a game to me. Variety is the spice of life, and the more variety there is the more likely each individual will be able to find a build to suit their playstyle. I think that we could see a huge boost in this area if the Devs improve many of the underwhelming traits that each class has.

4) Always important in an MMO, and the implementation of rentable servers should hopefully improve this area of the game significantly. At the moment, I can see where both sides are coming from and it’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances for some people (although tPvP really isn’t that bad, just enjoy the fight and don’t let losses discourage you).

6) The long-awaited ranking system should hopefully give players something to work towards (I know I’ll be enjoying the game much more once this feature gets added) as well as allow players to play against similarly skilled opponents, which in turn will reduce the intimidating nature of tPvP to new players.

One last thing: at least 6v6 hotjoin. I understand players leaving/entering could be a problem with 5v5 in the current system, but 8v8 is not balanced (#2) and if I wanted to zerg I’d go play WvW.

I like gw2 pvp and together with some friends in TS i seriously enjoy every second of it.

I couldnt care less about people whining about anything