Guild Wars 2

Give up OP. This game was not meant for us.

Your points are all good ones that I’ve mulled over myself more than once, particularly your comments on camera control and line of sight. This example also highlights the major divide in the community of this game, or at least on the forums.

It’s understandable that many players coming from different games would hear you talking about using your mouse hand to hit skills and instantly think “NOOB.” Hell, anyone doing that in this game is a freaking noob. Might as well just click your skills (lol). In the same sense, it’s understandable why the addition of the line of sight element and aimed skills and spells brings with it a perceived raise in skill cap. After all, there are certainly people that can aim their character more effectively and intelligently while still being able to dexterously hit all their proper hotkeys better than others.

However, while this adds the element of dexterity to the game, it takes away a lot more . Being able to rotate your camera and view the entire battlefield while still attacking / harassing your target was fundamental to any GW1 team fight; it allowed you to effectively be a part of the entire overall battle, allowing you to focus on playing your role in your team. I should add that freeing up your mouse hand a bit to hit skills was something I definitely took for granted. It’s not that it’s impossible to hotkey your skills so your left hand can do it all, but the fact that it was much easier to hit the proper skills allowed you to focus on more important things. Essentially, the main focus of the game wasn’t on the aforementioned hand / finger coordination, but rather on deeper mechanics I don’t want to get into.

Now, I don’t think these things would translate very well into GW2, as the pace is just much to different. But the shift from chess-like strategy to FPS-like strategy, as well as the causes for this shift, should be noted.

Like I said earlier, however, you should just give up here. As you have probably gathered by now, what’s left of this game’s community is more likely to attack your ability to play rather than attempt to understand where you are coming from. And it’d be foolish to think that the developers would do absolutely anything with what you have to say.

Muramasma [+1]

Rare and insightful post =)

Muramasma.1570:

Now, I don’t think these things would translate very well into GW2, as the pace is just much to different. But the shift from chess-like strategy to FPS-like strategy, as well as the causes for this shift, should be noted.

I don’t expect GW2 to change much at all in the game mechanic department. My post was just an outline of things I find wrong with the PvP gameplay. The list is actually about ten fold what I managed to type but you have to be careful about writing an essay on a gaming forum. I expect GW2 will always be a messy and frenetic PvP experience with fairly shallow team play, but that probably won’t serve it well in the long run.

Like I said earlier, however, you should just give up here. As you have probably gathered by now, what’s left of this game’s community is more likely to attack your ability to play rather than attempt to understand where you are coming from. And it’d be foolish to think that the developers would do absolutely anything with what you have to say.

Athletes always claim they don’t read or listen to sports media and that probably holds true during specific times(personal crisis, injury, important play-off series) but every once in a while they give out a little bit of information that implies they actually do pay attention from time to time. I figure video game developers are about the same. They probably don’t bother reading through many forum posts because well, you can’t please everyone.. but I bet they do read forum posts on occasion. Artists want people to like their work(developers are artists, imho), not gaff at it while they sit in blissful ignorance because they don’t want to be subjected to criticism. Whether this post has been read? hard to say, but that won’t deter me.

As for players who make knee-jerk responses, there’s an old addage about listening to criticism. Never take it too seriously because it’s probably a half-truth but then never take praise too seriously either because the same holds true. So I wager I’m a fairly decent player, sometimes above average, but then some of the players responding here are probably less than average at managing a problem I outlined. They probably think they’re better than they are or that it’s just some clever and challenging mechanic they need to grapple.. instead of just, a bad design choice.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The rage is more about the fact that A-Net promised us they take the good things from GW1 and implement them into GW2, which is in no way true. The second point is to sell a game as an AAA-PvP-Game and then we get an alpha-state game without observe-mode, leaderboard and any infrastructure. Then A-Net with its allrdy slow developement creates things like tickets, paid tournaments and QP’s, which failed completely.
That leaves us 6 months in a PvP-Game without any progression at all. For me A-Net don’t know what they have to actually do, even when the Forum spams them with thousands of good suggestions. This is not a structured concept rather than a chaotic Business-Plan.

well, then you and anet disagree on what the “good parts” of gw1 are.

it is pretty simple what the pvp needs:

more modes

no downed state in instanced pvp

better matchmaking (this is prolly frustrated by the very small userbase right now)

a debuff for all bunker/tank types in instanced pvp. Tanks/bunkers ruin pvp for everyone else. Do they want pvp where most players feel forced to go bunker/tank type builds?

support for addons to customize UI to your hearts delight, add more action bars, hotkey/use ALL abilities without page swapping, give useful feedback to the players, and a huge range of other things that addons can provide. GW2 developers are hard pressed for the time to do this so they should just let the community do it for them.

balancing of the classes for pvp

also needs a hook to be addicting which is generally gear rewards with small power upgrades or flashy appearances or effects. Or for points to be used for pve gearing cuz some peeps may not be fond of the GW2 pve endgame but do want the gear.

This isn’t rocket science. Any assertions that the pvp is OK “as is” are clearly incorrect based on undisputed statistics of participation in GW2 instanced pvp.

What it “needs” is a fundamental change from some stubborn pvp design decisions from the current developer/designers.

They’re prolly also facing hard decisions as to how much time/money they should be putting into the clearly unsuccessful instanced pvp portion of the game. Does it make financial sense to do so?

I hope they do. Only bought this game for pvp and I completely regret my purchase decision. Leaving a very bad taste in my mouth for this developer. They appear stubborn beyond belief in the face of obvious failure.

good post mooty, as well as everyone else that didn’t respond to op with l2keybind

Kugkug.8795:

it is pretty simple what the pvp needs:

more modes

no downed state in instanced pvp

better matchmaking (this is prolly frustrated by the very small userbase right now)

a debuff for all bunker/tank types in instanced pvp. Tanks/bunkers ruin pvp for everyone else. Do they want pvp where most players feel forced to go bunker/tank type builds?

support for addons to customize UI to your hearts delight, add more action bars, hotkey/use ALL abilities without page swapping, give useful feedback to the players, and a huge range of other things that addons can provide. GW2 developers are hard pressed for the time to do this so they should just let the community do it for them.

balancing of the classes for pvp

also needs a hook to be addicting which is generally gear rewards with small power upgrades or flashy appearances or effects. Or for points to be used for pve gearing cuz some peeps may not be fond of the GW2 pve endgame but do want the gear.

This isn’t rocket science. Any assertions that the pvp is OK “as is” are clearly incorrect based on undisputed statistics of participation in GW2 instanced pvp.

What it “needs” is a fundamental change from some stubborn pvp design decisions from the current developer/designers.

They’re prolly also facing hard decisions as to how much time/money they should be putting into the clearly unsuccessful instanced pvp portion of the game. Does it make financial sense to do so?

I hope they do. Only bought this game for pvp and I completely regret my purchase decision. Leaving a very bad taste in my mouth for this developer. They appear stubborn beyond belief in the face of obvious failure.

Correlation does not mean causation. The reasons for why GW2 PvP “failed” are not because of downed states or lack of similarity to GW1 (it probably would have helped the game if it was similar because people like mooty would have loved it, but that’s aside the point).

It’s because of its own slew of problems that were simply ignored for a long while.

Here’s a short list:
Svaniir runes, block bug, the failed tourney system, lack of parity between classes FAR greater than how it is now, broken air runes, load screen bugs, lack of leaderboards (still not fixed, the leaderboards still suck), lack of any incentive to PvP (again still not fixed), necromancers not rallying people, ranger AI being worthless in PvP, Phantasm mesmers hitting through walls for 6k, time warp being OP as all hell, eles dying to fall damage because RTL was a piece of crap, eles not having any downed escape, staff eles with 4 blast finishers on evasive arcana, retal dealing 313824 billion damage, elixir R on a 75s CD with 25% more downed HP than previously, not being able to cleave downed bodys during resses because there was too much downed HP, thieves unloading a full init bar on dancing dagger one shotting 2 people, thieves switching from zerkers to carrion and caltrops so they can solo lord in two seconds, utility and ammy switching in general (soooo many bugs and problems with that), eles being necessary on khylo because staff or ice bow was killing treb in one hit, trebs being able to be pre-aimed and worst of all… THERE BEING A FIVE MINUTE WAIT TIME BETWEEN TOURNEY MATCHES FOR THE GAME TO START!!!!!!

I could go on if you want… It wasn’t downed state or lack of similarity to gw1, it was the fact that the game SUCKED back then

like you said, it wasnt issues 1 & 2, it was the preponderance of all three hundred.

nakoda.4213:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The rage is more about the fact that A-Net promised us they take the good things from GW1 and implement them into GW2, which is in no way true. The second point is to sell a game as an AAA-PvP-Game and then we get an alpha-state game without observe-mode, leaderboard and any infrastructure. Then A-Net with its allrdy slow developement creates things like tickets, paid tournaments and QP’s, which failed completely.
That leaves us 6 months in a PvP-Game without any progression at all. For me A-Net don’t know what they have to actually do, even when the Forum spams them with thousands of good suggestions. This is not a structured concept rather than a chaotic Business-Plan.

well, then you and anet disagree on what the “good parts” of gw1 are.

Please stop answering my posts, as you clearly are not mastering the English language or you just missunderstand everything ppl saying.
Why I disagree with the good parts of GW1? Where the kitten I wrote this? I actually anaylized what A-Net did for the past 9 months, nothing else.

there’s not point in complaining about the pvp system in a 9+ month old game. the core of it isn’t gonna change. gw2 already has a player base, which is the wow/generic mmo people. that’s also why the camera works the way it does. in most generic mmos u have to rotate camera for los so they threw this in gw2 to make it familiar to those players. you have the button mashing feature in gw2 also to attract console players. Anet, like any other company, wants to maximize profit so they went the safe route of appealing to pve player from any other game.

despite all this, i believe that anet also wanted to have a successful pvp scene. but you can’t have both sadly. no matter how much we all dislike conquest, it’s the only way to have a resemblance of ‘balance’ in this game. once you do a bit of 1v1 u’ll fast come to realize that this game revolves around which class counters which rather than skill (assuming both players are similar in skill). simply put, this game isn’t made for competitive deathmatch scenarios because of the class mechanics and the removal of a dedicated healer.

to conclude, do yourself a favor and play some lol. it’s much more similar to gw1 than gw2 will ever be. it gives u a better pvp experience and u feel good about yourself when winning a match. who the hell wants to watch a counter get to 500 on cap points?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The rage is more about the fact that A-Net promised us they take the good things from GW1 and implement them into GW2, which is in no way true.

nakoda.4213

well, then you and anet disagree on what the “good parts” of gw1 are.

Empathetic Fighter.2065

Please stop answering my posts, as you clearly are not mastering the English language or you just missunderstand everything ppl saying.
Why I disagree with the good parts of GW1? Where the kitten I wrote this? I actually anaylized what A-Net did for the past 9 months, nothing else.

what part of your english am i misunderstanding?

as per your AAA expectations, name one AAA mmo that wasn’t released as a pseudo “beta”. this is an industry trend that is worsening across the board. you cant fling your poop at anet because it is OUR fault for continuing to pay for, play, commit on, and support these companies in continuing these practices.

“you can’t read nak, I’ve been complaining not supporting!”

all you have to do is post and you are supporting this game because complaints are a form of support. “id rather you did this anet” and “this is why you failed anet” are criticsms of their performance, not a lack of support for them. in fact, it demonstrate your willingness to support them.

Laila.1078:

to conclude, do yourself a favor and play some lol. it’s much more similar to gw1 than gw2 will ever be. it gives u a better pvp experience and u feel good about yourself when winning a match. who the hell wants to watch a counter get to 500 on cap points?

Or DotA 2 :p

I’d admit that since I started playing those games, the interest for GW2 PvP dropped a LOT. It just is more enjoyable somehow and I’m not sure why. Maybe mainly because the pacing of DotA 2 is a lot slower yet the team fights are a lot more frantic, brutal even. Or because while it’s hard to get into the game and know what you have to do, it’s still easy to understand what is going on.

Mostly, I’d say what I like the most is that people just DIE in DotA 2. When there’s some 1v1 going on for whatever reason, I see his HP go down, I see my HP go down, we trade skills and I die. And I see how close I was to win, I see maybe what I oculd have done to prevent that.

In GW2 we are dancing around each other, I use my skills, stuff gets blocked, evaded, misses, hits, misses, invul, heals 50% HP bar and we dance and dance. My condition bar fills up and threatens to wrap around to a second line, my target boon bar is in the same situation. There’s no time to even look at those icons cause there are too many of them, they blink in and out of existence so fast.

And so much more like this.

stof.9341:

Laila.1078:

to conclude, do yourself a favor and play some lol. it’s much more similar to gw1 than gw2 will ever be. it gives u a better pvp experience and u feel good about yourself when winning a match. who the hell wants to watch a counter get to 500 on cap points?

Or DotA 2 :p

I’d admit that since I started playing those games, the interest for GW2 PvP dropped a LOT. It just is more enjoyable somehow and I’m not sure why. Maybe mainly because the pacing of DotA 2 is a lot slower yet the team fights are a lot more frantic, brutal even. Or because while it’s hard to get into the game and know what you have to do, it’s still easy to understand what is going on.

Mostly, I’d say what I like the most is that people just DIE in DotA 2. When there’s some 1v1 going on for whatever reason, I see his HP go down, I see my HP go down, we trade skills and I die. And I see how close I was to win, I see maybe what I oculd have done to prevent that.

In GW2 we are dancing around each other, I use my skills, stuff gets blocked, evaded, misses, hits, misses, invul, heals 50% HP bar and we dance and dance. My condition bar fills up and threatens to wrap around to a second line, my target boon bar is in the same situation. There’s no time to even look at those icons cause there are too many of them, they blink in and out of existence so fast.

And so much more like this.

At first I was disappointed at what GW had become, certainly in terms of PvP, I couldn’t care less about PvE. Then, though, I began to look at the big picture. What has happened here is a great example of what not to do as a developer. Basically, over promise and under deliver, particularly, in the face of a prequel which should have aptly prepared them to exceed expectations and deliver a fresh, unique perspective to the genre, rather than one that was different just for the sake of being different and easy.

Examples:

• You removed the energy system for all classes but the thief. Great. What did you replace it with to maintain depth? Additionally, why did you decide to have an energy system for the thief and no other class? If it worked there, why not on other classes?

• You removed cast bars to encourage players to watch animations more carefully. Great. Why though, are many animations the same and worse still, why is there so much screen clutter 9 months down the line if this was a clear goal of yours?

• You trivialised interrupts. Great. What did you replace it with to maintain the depth of combat?

Removing the trinity was their first mistake in my opinion. While GW1 was similar to other MMOs in that it had a trinity system, it was different in that you could not have immortal tanks. In fact, it had a meta that was very much unique to its own style of gameplay, that is, the spike meta, which I believe did wonders for making gameplay reactive. They supposedly wanted to make each player perform multiple roles (which isn’t actually inherently better) and let support pick up the slack, but all we have now are fights where it is everyone for themselves, even in ‘high-level’ play. The best examples of teamplay we have are, as I’ve said many times, mesmer portals, mesmer timewarp, mesmer moa spike, mesmer illusion of life and resurrection from downed state. The state of ‘support’ is basically spam shouts and throw down the occassional water field, which quite obviously does not have a high skill cap. This naturally leads us to bunkers and a DPS race.

I love analysing games like this. I could write for hours on this stuff, It interests me quite a bit so I’ll continue to hang around here even If I stop playing (which may be soon, not threatening anything as I am just one person).

It’ll just be interesting to see where they go from here.

mooty.4560:

I’ve been mulling over this topic for some time now. I definitely loved GW1’s PvP and greatly anticipated GW2 so I could, presumably, see a new and improved version with an influx of new players….

I can’t tell you how much I agree with this post. I was very excited with Gw2s pvp and I had my worries before hand. Many of the worries turned to be true and many friends who I played with left the game over the PvP. Now a days its hard for me to ignore the problems stated in this post. If I PvP I have to force myself to not take it seriously, which is hard because I grew up playing competitive pvp games and it is natural to me. Most of the way the combat is made right now is good for PvE. PvP however, it is not so fit with it. Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe not. Only time will tell.