Guild Wars 2

+1 to you and it is a very well made video.
Not only does it lists out most of the gripes we have, you have even gone the extra mile to provide solutions to some of them.

Certainly hope ANET watches and studies this video closely.
For me, my number 1 gripe is the Zhaitan fight.
It is so anti-climactic, so stupid that i wanna rage.

Your version of the Zhaitan fight just feels that much more epic.
My only guess is that they probably ran out of funding when designing this fight.
OH i do hope that it can be remade one day.

Such a stupid fight, so not worthy of Zhaitan.

Snowmoon.1758:

+1 to you and it is a very well made video.
Not only does it lists out most of the gripes we have, you have even gone the extra mile to provide solutions to some of them.

Certainly hope ANET watches and studies this video closely.
For me, my number 1 gripe is the Zhaitan fight.
It is so anti-climactic, so stupid that i wanna rage.

Your version of the Zhaitan fight just feels that much more epic.
My only guess is that they probably ran out of funding when designing this fight.
OH i do hope that it can be remade one day.

Such a stupid fight, so not worthy of Zhaitan.

I had low expectations for Zhaitan, But I never expected it to be THAT bad. As I said in the video it feels like they started making the fight then stopped halfway.
Glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for taking the time to comment here.

Yea…The zhaitan battle was….I can not even describe it. I had more fun in beta killing snakes-which are now missing btw…Or at least I have not seen one since beta(I miss the snakes to. They were fun to shock cause they would twitch and flick and do all sorts of crazy things when electricuted). Anyway yea…Zhaitan was a failure. Seriosly his luitentents were harder…Also I was prayign traherne would die-Cuase…idk, I hate him. He gets all the credit, and he just sits there with a magic sword. We have to actually work hard with weapons not forged from a magic tree.

Kaaboose.3897:

…the Top 10 things that I believe are hindering GW2 from becoming the number 1 MMO…

Other than your list has nothing to do with anything that would appear on my list, my biggest complaint about your video and thread is that it seems to be predicated on the notion that the changes should be made to make the game more successful monetarily speaking than a particular cash cow of which we are all aware.

That cash cow was not a success because of concepts akin to those you present in your video, it was a success in spite of those issues and player demands (everyone I know personally that ever played that game was NOT a mmoholic, they were just regular people trying out a new fangled thingy on the internet that their friends or neighbors told them about…) Bottom line, you aren’t going to get Guild Wars 2 to beat (that game) on gaming merits. You would have to employ hundreds of thousands of people to try to get the word-of-mouth thing going…

In my estimation, most everything that is not fun about Guild Wars 2 was taken almost directly from the “typical MMO” handbook. I don’t really find inventory management fun, it’s just something I do to avoid headaches later. You could get rid of crafting, get rid of chest item drops alltogether, allow everything and its look to be purchased with gold, gems, or some other unit – and I would be happier for it. My favorite part of your video was when the lady voice was talking about needing “risk vs. reward” for the more difficult boss battles, while the male voice was proclaiming that the more difficult battles would be the most fun.

There’s your reward for the risk. More fun is all you are really going to get out of game.

LFG:
I absolutely agree with the need for a better in game lfg tool.

Level Scaling:
I’m amazed this did not come up, but then again the original group appears to be Elites at a glance, and may not agree with me at on this point.

Still I know I am not alone in being frustrated at being nerfed down to the supposed level of the content then finding myself outnumbered, and outgunned by each of the individual mobs I confront. Like the Moles invading the Shiver Peaks just now. They raise the difficulty of the Zone considerably, but our stats as players are not raised accordingly, in their area of influence. So my ‘Overpoweringly Powerful Toon’ is easily one-shoted by the Invaders.

Personnally I will never agree with the scaling in the first place, but as it is such an important part of the game it will never go away, I accept that, but it could be much better balanced.

Raithe.8174:

Kaaboose.3897:

…the Top 10 things that I believe are hindering GW2 from becoming the number 1 MMO…

Other than your list has nothing to do with anything that would appear on my list, my biggest complaint about your video and thread is that it seems to be predicated on the notion that the changes should be made to make the game more successful monetarily speaking than a particular cash cow of which we are all aware.

That cash cow was not a success because of concepts akin to those you present in your video, it was a success IN SPITE OF those issues and player demands (everyone I know personally that ever played that game was NOT a mmoholic, they were just regular people trying out a new fangled thingy on the internet that their friends or neighbors told them about…) Bottom line, you aren’t going to get Guild Wars 2 to beat (that game) on gaming merits. You would have to employ hundreds of thousands of people to try to get the word-of-mouth thing going…

In my estimation, most everything that is not fun about Guild Wars 2 was taken almost directly from the “typical MMO” handbook. I don’t really find inventory management fun, it’s just something I do to avoid headaches later. You could get rid of crafting, get rid of chest item drops alltogether, allow everything and its look to be purchased with gold, gems, or some other unit – and I would be happier for it. My favorite part of your video was when the lady voice was talking about needing “risk vs. reward” for the more difficult boss battles, while the male voice was proclaiming that the more difficult battles would be the most fun.

There’s your reward for the risk. More fun is all you are really going to get out of game.

I hate the notion that games need to make money, as I’m all about playing them for fun, but the hard fact is they need to make money to be a success, leading to more games, or in the case of MMO’s, more content.

If for GW2 to become a monitary success it has to sacrifice what it’s been aiming to create I’d rather see it fail. But if a balance can be found, where the game can keep it’s ideals and goals while making money then that is what it should be doing.
While I agree GW2 had some stellar advertising (Before the game launched anyway) and while that did help raise awearness you can’t ignore the fact that it was something new, going in a differnt direction to the competition, and offering an action based combat system rather then a mindless grind ( I swung a sword!) that enticed a good amount of players to their game.

If the problems in the video were addressed more people would enjoy the game, praise it, and invite their freinds and family to play it. As it stands I do recomend GW2 to friends but I follow it with “But….” explaining it’s shortcomings.
I quite often challenge myself to solo group events out in sparkfly fen or Orr and many palces like that, just because, well I feel like a challenge. But I’d much rather being enjoying a challenge amoung other players, and seeing as GW2 is an MMO I don’t think I’m being unresonable in expecting that.
However, when the game offers rewards (lets use legendaries as an example) that require massive amounts of grinding players are going to grind in the most efficent way possible. They are not going to go out and try something different when doing so will pull them further away from their goal. It’s the way the system in place has conditioned them to think. Now, if tackling a harder challenge ment the POSSIBILITY of better rewards it would encourage players to work together to achive this. If this challenge was stimulating and entertaining then players would be more likley to consider it as an alternative to the mindless grind, even with the possibility of failure.
If you offer players gold and rewards for standing around spamming 1 and porting from boss to boss they will come to expect it (if they don’t already thanks to cow clickers) and it’s never good in the long run to condition players this way.
Anet said that wanted fun and enguaging action based combat, yet their rewards and boss AI encourage the exact opposite.
I still play GW2 daily (henche why there aren’t more videos on my channel) and I still find enjoyment in it but there’s always that voice in the back of my head saying “Just imagine how much better this could be”
Lastly, I’m curious not one of these points made your personal top 10 complaits. I’d be very interested to hear what thoese are.

Kaaboose.3897:

Well I STILL find the ability to rebind all functions within a PC important. The " An option to disable right click targeting" thread has been open for 7 months now.

Absolutely agree with that, but whether that warrants a #1 spot is another point entirely.

I still stand by my belief that compared to the competition, WoW was amazing in terms of polish in the first 6 months. And while there were problems they were overshadowed by the quality of the game overall and the enjoyment to be found within.

Let’s agree to disagree.

No offence taken, This isn’t the youtube comments section after all! It seems we’ll have to agree to disagree on Number 1 as I’m still conviced it deserves it’s spot. Cheers for the replies!

Great minds think alike. However I firmly believe the GW2 launch was the most polished of all MMOs I’ve played, especially compared to my experiences with WoW. In my mind, polish, while a minor issue, is barely worthy of spot #10.

I agree with all of the issues listed except with number 1.

I’ve been playing this game casualy since release, (/age = 219hours) and I can only remember two bugs which where both nongamebreaking:
My elementalist got stuck in the channelinganimation of the autoattack until i casted another spell.
The running animation would not display.

That’s it.
I didn’t expect it to be that polished on release. I expect it to be mechanicaly working, so i guess i got lucky none of my favored traits weren’t working, but I think in a year or even only half a year things will get realy enjoyable with the amount of content&other updates they’ve been pumping out lately.

Disdroid.6109:

I agree with all of the issues listed except with number 1.

I’ve been playing this game casualy since release, (/age = 219hours) and I can only remember two bugs which where both nongamebreaking:
My elementalist got stuck in the channelinganimation of the autoattack until i casted another spell.
The running animation would not display.

That’s it.
I didn’t expect it to be that polished on release. I expect it to be mechanicaly working, so i guess i got lucky none of my favored traits weren’t working, but I think in a year or even only half a year things will get realy enjoyable with the amount of content&other updates they’ve been pumping out lately.

Another reason I put polish so high up the list is because a lot of the game (epsesially the later parts of the PS) seem unfinished or badly rushed. It’s the only reason I can come up with that the zaitan fight was a bad as it was. I can’t see anyone playing that and feeling it was fine the way it was.
The testing that was done in the earlier zones during BETA really shows, there is plenty of polish and the areas feel like they’ve had a significant amount of work put into them.
The further into the game you go the more apparent it is that the later areas didn’t get the same level of love and attention. Seeing that Anet wanted a differnt type of ‘endgame’ then it’s competetion I feel this was a really bad move. There is a video responcse to this one now of another players experiances with the game and why he stopped playing that highlights this quite well, I recomend watching it becuase he highly agrees with you guys that the game felt polished and finsihed but couldn’t exeactly put his finger on why he lost interst in it.

Yes. Yes. Ungodly amounts of yes.

Kaaboose.3897:

Kaimick.5109:

Wall Of Text

Kaimick, the problem with MF is that is ONLY benifits the player running it. You can say how player skill is more important than gear, and I certinly agree with you on this, but a skiled player running normal gear IS (statisiticly) going to benifit his team more then a skilled player in regular gear.
And comparing MF to non-zerker gear is not a good comaparison. A player running Apocracerys might be doing less dmg, but they’ll be offering more healing.
Same could be said for a player running soildeirs. Less dmg, but capable of taking more hits. (Which if he died, might be hits directed at you)
However a player running MF is offering nothing else to his group in place of the stats lost.
I stand my stance that players running MF are being selfish by putting their needs above the group.

The problem with this style of thinking is the inherent elitism involved. You are breaking things down to a statistical level claiming someone is slowing the group down because they could be better statistically.

However this is not an argument you can pick and choose on. If it is true of magic find gear, so too is it true of any other gear or class combo’s that would be “sub-optimal”. So my healing engie would be a no go. As would my tanky ranger. Heck ranger itself would likely completely lose thanks to pet issues.

End of the day when you try to draw your own personal line in the sand to avoid that you leave all the logic you had behind. You are left with only your personal preference. That is equal to anyone else’s personal preference. This is a non-elitist game where the vast majority of the people here just like running the content for fun. You need to face the facts you are in the minority on this one and that it is just an opinion.

Kaaboose.3897:

uknortherner.2670:

Zeanix.8624:

i smell a fanboy it’s a fact that blizzard makes high quality games, why do you think 9mio players play an 8 years old game ?

Fanboy=strawman.

No, it’s your opinion that Blizzard makes high quality games. I disagree. I think their games are woefully grindy generic cash cows capitalising on the games that came before them, like Everquest and MUDs.

I have to agree that on the whole blizzard does make good quality games. The d3 fiasco was a kitten mess but it’s not like it’s the norm for them like, let’s say, the simcity BS from EA.
And Unfortunattly WoW is a very polished product. It does have 10 years on GW2 so keep that in mind, but it doesn’t mean it’s something GW2 shouldn’t strive to achive as well.

Ask a Vanilla Warrior how polished of a game it is after he rebuilds his character from scratch for the 50th time lol. WOW has it’s failings as well. It had it’s failings on launch, and has continued to have failings.

Was it popular? Yes. Was it really a much greater production quality than the games around it? No. I played around and I played MMORPG’s before WOW as well. Mechanically WOW seems like a solid game because it forces you into a very specific and simple structure.

The mechanics and gameplay are actually more simple than the games around it. Though you had to know your builds because lets face it, unlike alot of other games alot of builds were worthless in dungeons. Even the good builds were worthless without good gear.

By comparison the combat in City of Hero’s, Dark Age of Camelot, and EverQuest II were more robust and complex. Final Fantasy Online and City of Hero’s also had hands down deeper team mechanics. In fact in Final Fantasy Online teams were required past a certain level and learning skill chains was a big thing. Star Wars Galaxies was a world unto itself.

Blizzard made a masterful Diablo I and II. A decent Warcraft I and II and a great Warcraft III. They made the beautifully designed Starcraft. While the Warcraft and Starcraft design and lore were stolen from the Warhammer universe their gameplay was well honed and balance + execution brilliant.

WOW simply does not fall into that category. Really, truly, it was average. An average that became very successful just like pet rocks once did. It was built on old stable architecture that ran on very old systems and was built around rehashing a minimum of content. So yes, with their piles of cash they were able to polish it. Then as soon as they got money look what happened….everything past Burning Crusade, which is largely viewed by the original WOW populace as where the game started going wrong.

You love your game, I get that. We all have our games we love. Please stop bringing your biased opinions into the fray as logical arguments however. Whether you realize it or not you cater heavily towards your beloved game, and you shouldn’t.

Ralathar.7236:

Kaaboose.3897:

Kaimick, the problem with MF is that is ONLY benifits the player running it. You can say how player skill is more important than gear, and I certinly agree with you on this, but a skiled player running normal gear IS (statisiticly) going to benifit his team more then a skilled player in regular gear.
And comparing MF to non-zerker gear is not a good comaparison. A player running Apocracerys might be doing less dmg, but they’ll be offering more healing.
The same could be said for a player running soildeirs. Less dmg, but capable of taking more hits. (Which if he died, might be hits directed at you)
However a player running MF is offering nothing else to his group in place of the stats lost.
I stand my stance that players running MF are being selfish by putting their needs above the group.

The problem with this style of thinking is the inherent elitism involved. You are breaking things down to a statistical level claiming someone is slowing the group down because they could be better statistically.

However this is not an argument you can pick and choose on. If it is true of magic find gear, so too is it true of any other gear or class combo’s that would be “sub-optimal”. So my healing engie would be a no go. As would my tanky ranger. Heck ranger itself would likely completely lose thanks to pet issues.

End of the day when you try to draw your own personal line in the sand to avoid that you leave all the logic you had behind. You are left with only your personal preference. That is equal to anyone else’s personal preference. This is a non-elitist game where the vast majority of the people here just like running the content for fun. You need to face the facts you are in the minority on this one and that it is just an opinion.

MF is not the same as other stats as it offers NOTHING to the group. You choose healing, you’re offering the group extra healing, or yourself, which can still be seen as saoking more dmg. I hear this “It’s their choice as to how they play” defence constantly but everyone of you ignores the glaringly obvious flaw with this argument:
You could play a healer spec in regualr or MF gear. You could play a tank spec in regualr or MF gear. You could play a DPS in regular or MF gear. Doesn’t matter what type of character you are playing it will be statisicly better in egular gear over MF gear.
I’ll state this AGAIN: MF gear offers NOTHING to team play. Not a kitten thing. Players only bring it to benifit themselves and that’s exactly the type of play I thought GW2 was trying to avoid.
I’ll also say this again: If MF was a group wide buff then I would have NO problem with it as it would be offering something to the rest of the group.

Ask a Vanilla Warrior how polished of a game it is after he rebuilds his character from scratch for the 50th time lol. WOW has it’s failings as well. It had it’s failings on launch, and has continued to have failings.

Was it popular? Yes. Was it really a much greater production quality than the games around it? No. I played around and I played MMORPG’s before WOW as well. Mechanically WOW seems like a solid game because it forces you into a very specific and simple structure.

SNIP

Blizzard made a masterful Diablo I and II. A decent Warcraft I and II and a great Warcraft III. They made the beautifully designed Starcraft. While the Warcraft and Starcraft design and lore were stolen from the Warhammer universe their gameplay was well honed and balance + execution brilliant.

WOW simply does not fall into that category. Really, truly, it was average. An average that became very successful just like pet rocks once did. It was built on old stable architecture that ran on very old systems and was built around rehashing a minimum of content. So yes, with their piles of cash they were able to polish it. Then as soon as they got money look what happened….everything past Burning Crusade, which is largely viewed by the original WOW populace as where the game started going wrong.

You love your game, I get that. We all have our games we love. Please stop bringing your biased opinions into the fray as logical arguments however. Whether you realize it or not you cater heavily towards your beloved game, and you shouldn’t.

I’d hardly call WoW my beloved game. I don’t even play it anymore. Comparing it to pet rocks gave me the biggest laugh I’d had in a while. I’d love to see pet rocks hold somones interest for 6+ years. I also don’t get why you’re so set on claiming WoW is not a quality product. If I specificed BC-WOW would that make you feel better?

1. Make all AOE spell/skills hit everything in its area, guards wall stops everything for 5sec (don’t count Guards sword hit and simulate there it should be limit like now) that will make Zerging less appealing.

Just dropping in to say that OP is brilliant. I think Anet knows most of the things, but what stood out was that your suggestions to fix it was quite well thought out as well as opposed to many many posts ranting on the same subjects GJ

Kaaboose.3897:

MF is not the same as other stats as it offers NOTHING to the group. You choose healing, you’re offering the group extra healing, or yourself, which can still be seen as saoking more dmg. I hear this “It’s their choice as to how they play” defence constantly but everyone of you ignores the glaringly obvious flaw with this argument:
You could play a healer spec in regualr or MF gear. You could play a tank spec in regualr or MF gear. You could play a DPS in regular or MF gear. Doesn’t matter what type of character you are playing it will be statisicly better in egular gear over MF gear.
I’ll state this AGAIN: MF gear offers NOTHING to team play. Not a kitten thing. Players only bring it to benifit themselves and that’s exactly the type of play I thought GW2 was trying to avoid.
I’ll also say this again: If MF was a group wide buff then I would have NO problem with it as it would be offering something to the rest of the group.

But the problem isn’t that it brings nothing. The problem you have is that the character wearing it brings less to the table by wearing it. If the gear merely had extra MF on it in addition to other stats you’d have no issue with it. Thus it is precisely equivalent to any other choice a player could make that brings less to the table than the optimum. Say, healing where damage would be more useful, less than the proper DPS spec, etc.

I’d hardly call WoW my beloved game. I don’t even play it anymore. Comparing it to pet rocks gave me the biggest laugh I’d had in a while. I’d love to see pet rocks hold somones interest for 6+ years. I also don’t get why you’re so set on claiming WoW is not a quality product. If I specificed BC-WOW would that make you feel better?

I call it your beloved game because you quite obviously hold it on a pedestal. It’s plain from the way you speak of it. It’s exactly the same way I once spoke of Dark Age of Camelot.

1st off the game did not hold that many people for that long. It replaced alot of the original players with new players and gold farmers. Alot of the original players were scared off and tip toed back in with every new expansion only to leave burnt once more. Alot of players didn’t even join until Burning Crusade or later.

2nd it is a polished product that was easily polished because it was built off of old tech. This it the design equivalent of a “layup”. Quite simply WOW wasn’t pushing any boundaries technologically so it’s far easier for them to “polish” what the previous generation of games already polished. I mean for crying out loud the graphics engine was based off of the graphics engine of Warcraft III. At that time WC III was already a 3 year old game with admittedly only modest graphics. All of it’s competition endeavored to raise the graphical bar, and successfully did so, but with new engines comes new bugs.

3rd if all the people who played WOW first had started on another MMORPG first they would not have thought it was so great. It was a really plague for the 1st 5 years of the game for WOW players to tell every other MMORPG that “they did it first”. Ya know, like the world map without load screens that was raved about that had already been done. WOW did it first syndrome got really really really bad and really the game didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done on a gameplay level.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/726876-Some-things-you-didn-t-know-about-WoW

That list has tons of cool things you didn’t know in WoW, many things I remember very fondly because they were rough edges, and that’s what makes a game fun (imho). Perfection is boring. However a lot of those show a remarkable lack of polish, with several being game breaking.

The most notorious one for me was the gathering bug, leaving you stuck kneeling, forcing you to log out. A log out meant repeating the 3000 people queue. That game breaking and very common bug was in the game for almost a year.

Oh and the unlinked flight paths, absurd graveyard locations, messy talent trees, 1 required key drop for 15 people … that’s what “no polish” looks like.

Compared to that, GW2 is pristine. And that’s entirely why I don’t agree with a #1 spot for “polish”.

I’m really sorry I’m hammering this, but in hindsight everything’s better. WoW was a disastrous mess, although a mess I loved playing against.
The video pointed to WoW as an example, while clearly it was anything but. Having a bad example removes validity from your argument because as it stand, GW2 is already leaps and bounds beyond WoW in it’s 3rd year. And that’s the problem I have with OP inflating the polish problem and using WoW as an example. Doesn’t click.

marnick.4305:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/726876-Some-things-you-didn-t-know-about-WoW

That list has tons of cool things you didn’t know in WoW, many things I remember very fondly because they were rough edges, and that’s what makes a game fun (imho). Perfection is boring. However a lot of those show a remarkable lack of polish, with several being game breaking.

The most notorious one for me was the gathering bug, leaving you stuck kneeling, forcing you to log out. A log out meant repeating the 3000 people queue. That game breaking and very common bug was in the game for almost a year.

Oh and the unlinked flight paths, absurd graveyard locations, messy talent trees, 1 required key drop for 15 people … that’s what “no polish” looks like.

Compared to that, GW2 is pristine. And that’s entirely why I don’t agree with a #1 spot for “polish”.

I’m really sorry I’m hammering this, but in hindsight everything’s better. WoW was a disastrous mess, although a mess I loved playing against.
The video pointed to WoW as an example, while clearly it was anything but. Having a bad example removes validity from your argument because as it stand, GW2 is already leaps and bounds beyond WoW in it’s 3rd year. And that’s the problem I have with OP inflating the polish problem and using WoW as an example. Doesn’t click.

You can bring up all the flaws in WoW’s release you can find but the simple fact is that it was LESS flawed then all of it’s competition at the time. It had flaws, yes, Some bad ones, but they were overshadowed by the the games design and the fact that the competition had much worse on offer.
There were VERY few incomplete and bugged quests, and for the competition this was the norm. The game ran well on a variety of systems, and was playable on even the most terrible of connections (Back when WoW was released the best connection this country had to offer to your average joe was 56k Dial-up!)
There are some many people in this thread and others stating “You can’t compare GW2 to WoW beacuse it’s a new game! WoW has had years to get it right!” when all you are trying to do is compare it to the competition.
Then when you try and compare how WoW was on release (I did state ON RELEASE in that video) we get people saying “You can’t say WoW was a polished product on release it was far less polished then it is now!”
What I see is players going out of their way to pick flaws in WoW to defend GW2. I’ll state this once again:
“I find GW2 a superior product to WoW in spite of it’s flaws”
I bring up GW2’s lack of polish and optimization becuase compared to it’s competition it is sub par. It’s just the world GW2 was released in. If GW2 had been released back when WoW first was (Theoreticly! Obviously with system requirements relevant to the time) then there’s no way I’d have made an arguement like this.
I’m not syaing I expected GW2 to be perfect on release but I’m certinlly not going to say it’s fine as it is.
This was “The Top 10 Things GW2 Needs To Improve” not “The Top 10 Things GW2 Should Have Done Before Release” and as it stands Polish And Optimization need improvement as compared to the competition they are lacking.
When WoW was released compared to it’s competition it was NOT lacking. That is why it was used as an example. We did follow up this example with a non-mmo (The Witcher for thoese of you that havn’t watched) as well since it’s a much better example. If you guys can think of a better MMO example then WoW then please feel free to suggest it.

Kaaboose.3897:

You can bring up all the flaws in WoW’s release you can find but the simple fact is that it was LESS flawed then all of it’s competition at the time. It had flaws, yes, Some bad ones, but they were overshadowed by the the games design and the fact that the competition had much worse on offer.
There were VERY few incomplete and bugged quests, and for the competition this was the norm. The game ran well on a variety of systems, and was playable on even the most terrible of connections (Back when WoW was released the best connection this country had to offer to your average joe was 56k Dial-up!)
There are some many people in this thread and others stating “You can’t compare GW2 to WoW beacuse it’s a new game! WoW has had years to get it right!” when all you are trying to do is compare it to the competition.
Then when you try and compare how WoW was on release (I did state ON RELEASE in that video) we get people saying “You can’t say WoW was a polished product on release it was far less polished then it is now!”
What I see is players going out of their way to pick flaws in WoW to defend GW2. I’ll state this once again:
“I find GW2 a superior product to WoW in spite of it’s flaws”
I bring up GW2’s lack of polish and optimization becuase compared to it’s competition it is sub par. It’s just the world GW2 was released in. If GW2 had been released back when WoW first was (Theoreticly! Obviously with system requirements relevant to the time) then there’s no way I’d have made an arguement like this.
I’m not syaing I expected GW2 to be perfect on release but I’m certinlly not going to say it’s fine as it is.
This was “The Top 10 Things GW2 Needs To Improve” not “The Top 10 Things GW2 Should Have Done Before Release” and as it stands Polish And Optimization need improvement as compared to the competition they are lacking.
When WoW was released compared to it’s competition it was NOT lacking. That is why it was used as an example. We did follow up this example with a non-mmo (The Witcher for thoese of you that havn’t watched) as well since it’s a much better example. If you guys can think of a better MMO example then WoW then please feel free to suggest it.

By your own words the two games are not comparable, you can only compare to the competition being released at the time. Thus you yourself should have never even brought up WOW in regards to polish. It’s not a proper comparison even by your own logic.

I played Rift, I played SWTOR, I played WAR, I played STO, I played AOC, I played LOTRO, I played FFXIV.

You’ve already admitted Guild Wars 2 is a better polished game than WOW was at release. Guild Wars 2 is also hands down more polished than it’s competition at release. I can attest to that personally. This is the first game in a long time where I felt like I was playing a 2nd year MMORPG while it was still in beta. Every single one of the games I listed had far worse issues than this game.

I am sorry, but you are quite simply wrong. You have good points in your video, but you do the entire video an injustice by stubbornly and wrongly sticking to a single salient point out of sheer pride and bias. Let the rest of your vid stand on it’s own merits, it’s quite capable of it. Concede that polish is actually not an issue. Stop destroying the credibility of the rest of your stuff with stubbornness.

bad vid so i thumbed down.

I support the views in this video. There are issues across the board with GW2 from bad UI design to bosses. Stop worrying about the living world content and fix what you have. It’s like hanging Christmas lights on a house that’s got holes in the roof, walls and floor.

Ralathar.7236:

By your own words the two games are not comparable, you can only compare to the competition being released at the time. Thus you yourself should have never even brought up WOW in regards to polish. It’s not a proper comparison even by your own logic.

Competition at the time. WoW may have been released years ago but it’s still the competition. Just the way Everquest was WoW’s competition when it was released. Seems like solid comparison to me.

Ralathar.7236:

I played Rift, I played SWTOR, I played WAR, I played STO, I played AOC, I played LOTRO, I played FFXIV.

You’ve already admitted Guild Wars 2 is a better polished game than WOW was at release. Guild Wars 2 is also hands down more polished than it’s competition at release. I can attest to that personally. This is the first game in a long time where I felt like I was playing a 2nd year MMORPG while it was still in beta. Every single one of the games I listed had far worse issues than this game.

I’m glad to hear GW2 is doing much better in terms of inital realese then most other attempts though Runiir disagrees with you on the SWTOR launch.

Runiir.6425:

WoW has the worst launch in MMO history, I was an in house tester for the various stages of development…the game’s launch was atrocious. TOR however had the cleanest and smoothest launch for any MMO to date…that game went into decline due to the linear progression however.

Ralathar.7236:

I am sorry, but you are quite simply wrong. You have good points in your video, but you do the entire video an injustice by stubbornly and wrongly sticking to a single salient point out of sheer pride and bias. Let the rest of your vid stand on it’s own merits, it’s quite capable of it. Concede that polish is actually not an issue. Stop destroying the credibility of the rest of your stuff with stubbornness.

Sorry I’m repeating myself but it’s a list of things GW2 has to IMPROVE. I’m not saying you need to fix one of these problems before moving to anohter (especially when a lot of them are linked) but polish and optimization is something I believe Anet should be working on in every patch. To their credit they HAVE been so far, to a degree, But it’s at number 1 because there’s still a lot more to be done.
It’s also number 1 because if you build new content on a buggy and unpolished engine the problems will get harder and harder to fix. Grackleflint here sums up why it’s Number 1 with this awesome analogy.

Grackleflint.4956:

I support the views in this video. There are issues across the board with GW2 from bad UI design to bosses. Stop worrying about the living world content and fix what you have. It’s like hanging Christmas lights on a house that’s got holes in the roof, walls and floor.

Show us on the doll where the mean WoW touched you. I swear, it seems like “wow-hate” is a communicable disease amongst gamers.

Kaaboose.3897:

Number 7: Personal Story – 8:22

Your video annoyed me at this point. To explain why, imagine you were watching a critque of the Star Wars trilogy and the critic said “We learn in the first movie Han Solo is a smuggler involved in organized crime, but his criminal past never comes back to haunt him again. That makes no sense!” Would you take the critic seriously?

From the loss of Claw Island to the end, the story is populated with NPCs from personal stories from levels 1-47. They are everywhere. It is rare to find an NPC from level 48 on who did not show up in some personal storyline earlier. You even complain about them not being in Fort Trinity at the end..? In fact, it is difficult to find anyone from your personal story who is NOT in Fort Trinity at the end.

Of course, you acknowledged what you were saying was not true, but dismissed it saying they did not acknowledge knowing you. Did you click on them, walk up to them and press “F” to talk? Because I did. Every time so far they have acknowledged our past.

Grackleflint.4956:

I support the views in this video. There are issues across the board with GW2 from bad UI design to bosses. Stop worrying about the living world content and fix what you have. It’s like hanging Christmas lights on a house that’s got holes in the roof, walls and floor.

Totally this!

I played wow for a grand total of 2 hours and I agree 100% with kaaboose.
The game from a technical standpoint is unbelievably non optimized. Even after 7 months I still read about people who’s modern pcs are overheating.
The living story was bad for the majority of people John….sorry man but it is. If I could decapitate thrahearne, I would without a nanosecond of doubt.
I think that gw2 can be much more than it is now IF they start to polish the content they have had since release.

Hm, all right, as i start writing this post, my intention is not to take a side in this discussion at the moment, but rather to show the situation from a different point of view. So please follow me as i take a step back, and look at this last page along with the bigger picture.

First of all:
Fixing bugs should be a high priority duty for every active game developer who is making an online game. There is no real argument here. Bugs ruin the gameplay, the feeling, and the PR of any game and online service. Of course other things can have this effect too, but by definition bugs are allways unintented, while other aspecs of the game can simply be a matter of taste and preferences. So i think the right way to put it actually is not to put bugs on the top of a list, because it should be a list of its own.

Second point: becoming the no.1 MMORPG.
This is where things will get long in my explanation so please bear with me.
Once again, lets get something clear: “beating WoW to the throne” will definitely not happen by making a game thats every bit better than WoW, and turning all its players to GW2. This is obviously quite impossible. WoW didnt beat other MMORPGs this way either. I know that nobody brought this up in their arguments, but this had to be made clear in order to continue.
What happened in my opinion that caused WoWs succes, among many other things, was a generation change in the mmorpg genre. I will be a bit lazy here, and put every mmorpg before WoW to generation 1, even tho thats not totaly accurate, and say that WoW became the first game of generation 2, and became so important, that it pretty much defined the whole generation. Everyone of us have noticed how there are at least 20-30 “wow clones” out there, so i’m not going to go into that now.

When WoW came out, there were more polished games out there, for example i think both Lineage 2 and RO was better at this front, but i might be wrong. For my point, it doesnt really matter. You see WoW didnt become no.1 because it was better in any aspect than its competition to strictly say it, but because it brought some new concepts to the mainstream mmorgp world (concepts, mind you, not features). For example, the idea of being able to reach max lvl within a week starting from scratch was completly new. Up to that mmorpgs were allways trying to avoind having a reachable lvl cap because they were afraid that people would lose their interest. They all had either so high limits that in cases literally only years of grinding would get you to the cap, or they had some kind of reset system, either wiping the server periodicaly or giving the player the option for a New Game+ to start over with bonuses.

So, in my opinion, concepts are the defining points of generation. With that in mind lets take a look back to GW3 and its aims, once again, as i see it, since i’m not a member of ANet, so obviously i dont have inside informations.

GW2 is trying to be among the first games of generation 3, and you can see many others are rushing out to be in this group too. Learning from the mistakes of generation 2 they are not trying to target WoW players anymore, but rather bring in certain innovations taken from other popular games.
Why do you think GW2 has only 5 weapon skills and 5 slot skills? I’m quite sure all of you played games where you had more skill bars than 5, not to mention skills.. And why do you think the system was created with microtransactions built in, as the primary money source of ANet over time? Because those are among the defining concepts of new games. And this is where i admit that i’m an LoL player as well, but as you see, i can quickly clear myself off against the argument of bias:
Did you hear about some of the new upcoming mmorpgs? Like D&D online and Elder Scrolls online? As far as their trailers and informations went so far, they both want to be Free to play with microtransactions and both are planning to have an “action based combat” with few actual active skills, and since unlike D&D, Elder Scrolls can go even that far, they dont want to have “classes for tank, dps and heal” either. Sounds familiar, right?

So for those who wonder what this wall of text has to do with this topic:

Kaaboose brought up an interesting list of things he thinks should be changed/fixed to help GW2, and nearly everyone here missed the point that most likely these are not the features that ANet are planning to use to beat other current games. I also think that most of the arguments in this last page become manageable if you look at them from my point of view: if you take this list a bit more lightly, as discussion for the sake of discussion, it still remains important, but maybe the chance of finding an actual agreement on some aspects might be easier.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Kaaboose.3897:

Number 7: Personal Story – 8:22

Your video annoyed me at this point. To explain why, imagine you were watching a critque of the Star Wars trilogy and the critic said “We learn in the first movie Han Solo is a smuggler involved in organized crime, but his criminal past never comes back to haunt him again. That makes no sense!” Would you take the critic seriously?

From the loss of Claw Island to the end, the story is populated with NPCs from personal stories from levels 1-47. They are everywhere. It is rare to find an NPC from level 48 on who did not show up in some personal storyline earlier. You even complain about them not being in Fort Trinity at the end..? In fact, it is difficult to find anyone from your personal story who is NOT in Fort Trinity at the end.

Of course, you acknowledged what you were saying was not true, but dismissed it saying they did not acknowledge knowing you. Did you click on them, walk up to them and press “F” to talk? Because I did. Every time so far they have acknowledged our past.

I did click on several and all they mentioed was recent happings as in maybe 1/2 missions ago, despite me having met them in my PS story area. Maybe my path just failed to register what I had done? I know Texx choose to help Priory first while in the asuran captial and the mission after zoja calimed she’d helped vigil. Might have been an oversight. I’m playing through a sylvari now and I’m making sure to make every choice involving tegween and co. (Mirror to attarach eye, vigil-ish path after meeting in orr etc.) to see if they make any mention to me knowing them from back at the pale tree.
Good analogy up top too. Excet that han’s crimal past was chasing him throught the entire trilogy up until the end of jabas palace and boba fett.

Zanador.5810:

snip! I did read it but I can’t quote it as well! Too long!
Kaaboose brought up an interesting list of things he thinks should be changed/fixed to help GW2, and nearly everyone here missed the point that most likely these are not the features that ANet are planning to use to beat other current games. I also think that most of the arguments in this last page become manageable if you look at them from my point of view: if you take this list a bit more lightly, as discussion for the sake of discussion, it still remains important, but maybe the chance of finding an actual agreement on some aspects might be easier.

I may have mis-inturpeted this but I also feel that fixing these things, especially the Personal Story, Realms and Events are things that would set anet apart from Last gen and help it find it’s palce in this Gen.
It’s why they’re high on the list, however I’m also a firm belive on building on a solid foundation – not quicksand – and that’s why user freindlynes and Polish/Optimization are listed higher.
The whole reason I made the video was of the hopes that most of the community would agree with me, help it get noticed, and then MAYBE Anet would see it and give the things I brought up a thought when compared to their long time goals.

Kaaboose.3897:

Zanador.5810:

snip! I did read it but I can’t quote it as well! Too long!
Kaaboose brought up an interesting list of things he thinks should be changed/fixed to help GW2, and nearly everyone here missed the point that most likely these are not the features that ANet are planning to use to beat other current games. I also think that most of the arguments in this last page become manageable if you look at them from my point of view: if you take this list a bit more lightly, as discussion for the sake of discussion, it still remains important, but maybe the chance of finding an actual agreement on some aspects might be easier.

I may have mis-inturpeted this but I also feel that fixing these things, especially the Personal Story, Realms and Events are things that would set anet apart from Last gen and help it find it’s palce in this Gen.
It’s why they’re high on the list, however I’m also a firm belive on building on a solid foundation – not quicksand – and that’s why user freindlynes and Polish/Optimization are listed higher.
The whole reason I made the video was of the hopes that most of the community would agree with me, help it get noticed, and then MAYBE Anet would see it and give the things I brought up a thought when compared to their long time goals.

The community won’t agree if you put lesser important points on #1 while important things aren’t even on the list. And those people will especially not agree if you’re too stubborn to admit you were completely in the wrong with #1, as has been pointed out not only by me but several others.

I would suggest remaking the video and taking the suggestions in this thread into consideration, if you’re really concerned about voicing the opinion of the community. If you’re in the ivory WoW tower though, feel free to ignore this entire thread.

Competition at the time. WoW may have been released years ago but it’s still the competition. Just the way Everquest was WoW’s competition when it was released. Seems like solid comparison to me.

So now you ARE directly comparing it with a 10 year old game in regards to polish. This is of course not a fair comparison and is very biased. You also seem to have forgotten the large amount of bugs that were introduced in the newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria.

I’m glad to hear GW2 is doing much better in terms of inital realese then most other attempts though Runiir disagrees with you on the SWTOR launch.

WoW has the worst launch in MMO history, I was an in house tester for the various stages of development…the game’s launch was atrocious. TOR however had the cleanest and smoothest launch for any MMO to date…that game went into decline due to the linear progression however.

I beta tested that game because I was soooooo excited for it. Game failed because it had wonderful story, but meh combat mechanics and lackluster dungeons. Dungeon stories were fun though, just not the content.

It definitely had it’s share of bugs. From broken abilities, to glaring imbalances between the identical classes on both sides (all favoring Sith ironically), to bugged equipment causing terribly visible graphical glitches, to the amusing tiny NPC’s in story dialog. Plenty more.

It was a relatively smooth launch and was not terrible. But it definitely had a large spread of mostly minor issues with a few much bigger issues.

Grackleflint here sums up why it’s Number 1 with this awesome analogy.

Grackleflint.4956:

I support the views in this video. There are issues across the board with GW2 from bad UI design to bosses. Stop worrying about the living world content and fix what you have. It’s like hanging Christmas lights on a house that’s got holes in the roof, walls and floor.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132611/the_art_of_game_polish_developers_.php

That is a fair overview of polish. What Grackleflint describes is either serious hyperbole or not polish at all. A better analogy would be taking a home and renovating it + repainting it before hanging Christmas lights on it. The home itself is quite sound, not a broken down hovel as is described.

Guild Wars 2 as a game is an extremely solid foundation. It performs well and functions well and as you mentioned they are constantly optimizing it careful step by careful step. It’s just not fast enough for you. TOUGH. That’s software development. You have unrealistic expectations on how fast things can get done right.

I have 10+ years of MMORPG experience and I’m actually headed towards that field right now as a career. I’ve been studying each game I play seriously for a long time now as well as just being a player. This is likely the most solid release I have seen or heard of, has incredible class versatility built in and mostly balanced, and has a large amount of room for expansion for the future. There are alot of extremely complex things here done astoundingly well and I’ve been impressed.

There are things I desire still, or still don’t feel are perfect. But realistically speaking the game is already a breathtaking accomplishment. I shall see if they can continue their general excellence from here. Hopefully they do.

It’s difficult to explain alot of the concepts of the solidarity of the game base because they require a certain amount of perspective to appreciate.

For example: The ability to roll so many specs and builds for each class and still be viable in dungeons is one. Unlikely to be fully comprehended by someone obsessed with a party member being “less useful”. One is based around fun and being viable, the other is based off of your own selfish interest and “efficiency”. Most gamers want fun. Only a select amount are looking for selfish efficiency.

Yes your selfish interest, because you are the on telling others how they should build and play in a blanket statement without regard to whether or not they were capable or not. Also, this strong of an opinion on “efficiency” and you expect us to believe it stops at magic find? That’s highly unlikely.

I agree with this video. Personal story is boring once you meet Trahearne, with little to no branching. It would be awesome if different Orders had some unique missions or maybe different role in taking down Zhaitan.

Also, lack of LFG is a bother, since sometimes it’s hard to find party for story dungeons, and I don’t even want to mention party for group events.

I also have to say that world bosses are too easy. I just did Fire Elemental and about 20 of us killed it with no problem. I just had to stand in one place and use my ranged attack, there’s really no challenge. If there are tons of people going after a world boss, give that boss a bit more toughness, some knockbacks, AoE attacks, summon minions (champion[s]). Make those bosses really challenging and make them scale to the number of players.

Ralathar.7236:

So now you ARE directly comparing it with a 10 year old game in regards to polish. This is of course not a fair comparison and is very biased. You also seem to have forgotten the large amount of bugs that were introduced in the newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria.

Bit hard to forget them if I haven’t even experianced them. I stoped playing WoW when GW2 came out, I never got MoP.
If WoW was compared to EQ I don’t see how it’s unresonable to compare GW2 to WoW. I thought I explained that clearly enough in my last post.
Also if ANY product is realsed to stiff competition with design flaws is not going to do well against the competition. Saying it’s okay because it’s a new product isn’t going to cut it for most consumers.

Ralathar.7236:

Guild Wars 2 as a game is an extremely solid foundation. It performs well and functions well and as you mentioned they are constantly optimizing it careful step by careful step. It’s just not fast enough for you. TOUGH. That’s software development. You have unrealistic expectations on how fast things can get done right.

There are things I desire still, or still don’t feel are perfect. But realistically speaking the game is already a breathtaking accomplishment. I shall see if they can continue their general excellence from here. Hopefully they do.

So you agree the game needs polish as well? Why are you so determined to undermine my claim when you agree? When did I state that this must be fixed NOW? Some problems with polish and optimzation have been fixed but there is still more to go. It’s at number one becuase not only is it the most important, as a structure is only as strong as the foundations it’s built apon, but because it is also connected to every one of the previous points (well, maybe not 10.)

Ralathar.7236:

The ability to roll so many specs and builds for each class and still be viable in dungeons is one. Unlikely to be fully comprehended by someone obsessed with a party member being “less useful”. One is based around fun and being viable, the other is based off of your own selfish interest and “efficiency”. Most gamers want fun. Only a select amount are looking for selfish efficiency.

Yes your selfish interest, because you are the on telling others how they should build and play in a blanket statement without regard to whether or not they were capable or not. Also, this strong of an opinion on “efficiency” and you expect us to believe it stops at magic find? That’s highly unlikely.

I love how you guys keep bringing this up and calling me selfish but dodge the glaringly obvious fault with your arguement I’ve pointed out before.
Any build (and I mean ANY) can be made with or without MF gear. I have no problems with people running builds that might be considered unefficent. Different playstyles work well with different builds.
However if somone decides they want to run MF it’s not to suit a certin playstyle, it’s to satisfy their lust for gold.
I’ll state this again since you ignore it every time I post* “MF encourages players to work against other players rather then with them.”* The only reason people wear MF gear is to increase their own wealth. And they’ll justfy doing so with the flawed arguments that have been thrown around in this thread since it went up.
I don’t execpt you to believe this but I’ve never looked up a build for GW2. I’ve made them all myself. I also make builds for guildes based on critera they give me such as favortie weapons, skills, styles of play etc.
I always encourge thinking outside of the box. Heck, I created an 8 ranger pet team in GW1 for HoH that was resposible for the biggest ranger nerf to ever hit that game.
Also why are you so deadset agaist any proposed changes to MF when the proposed soultion isn’t going to hurt you at all? MF being shared as a group stat would result in it becoming an accepted stat in group dynamics.
Or are YOU so selfish that you don’t want to share your prescoius MF with the rest of the group?

marnick.4305:

The community won’t agree if you put lesser important points on #1 while important things aren’t even on the list. And those people will especially not agree if you’re too stubborn to admit you were completely in the wrong with #1, as has been pointed out not only by me but several others.

I would suggest remaking the video and taking the suggestions in this thread into consideration, if you’re really concerned about voicing the opinion of the community. If you’re in the ivory WoW tower though, feel free to ignore this entire thread.

There have been many people both on this thread and others agreeing with the number 1 spot. I honestly feel you are just geting upset becuase I used WoW as the comparison.
I also think you are being a bit hypocritical considering your signature…

Mentalhead.5721:

I also have to say that world bosses are too easy. I just did Fire Elemental and about 20 of us killed it with no problem. I just had to stand in one place and use my ranged attack, there’s really no challenge. If there are tons of people going after a world boss, give that boss a bit more toughness, some knockbacks, AoE attacks, summon minions (champion[s]). Make those bosses really challenging and make them scale to the number of players.

I think the fire ele is really close to where he needs to be. He just needs better scaling for larger groups and some melle deterant. He’s also has an event chain leading up to his spawn which has to be activated by a player, which I think is a much better idea then just starting the event on a timer.
Have a look at this video here, It’s how he USED to be before anet worked on him (and in BETA it was even worse!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN3XryVWbHU

Mentalhead.5721:

I also have to say that world bosses are too easy. I just did Fire Elemental and about 20 of us killed it with no problem. I just had to stand in one place and use my ranged attack, there’s really no challenge. If there are tons of people going after a world boss, give that boss a bit more toughness, some knockbacks, AoE attacks, summon minions (champion[s]). Make those bosses really challenging and make them scale to the number of players.

Fire Elemental used to be one of the toughest boss fights in the game to survive. People complained and they nerfed it. People evidently don’t feel the same way. I personally found it a nice challenge but I’m a bit of a masochist.

Bit hard to forget them if I haven’t even experianced them. I stoped playing WoW when GW2 came out, I never got MoP.

Wait wait wait wait wait. You’re telling me that Guild Wars 2 must be compared against it’s current competitors. You named the competitor of choice. Then you tell me you are not even familiar with the current state of the very game you named?

You really don’t even know what you are arguing. I can’t pursue this point further because there is no point, you have invalidated it and have no ground to stand on.

So you agree the game needs polish as well?

Every game still needs polish, forever. Because there is always room for improvement. Fact is polish is a relative term. You say polished or unpolished relative to the status quo or the competition. The difference in our views is not in the yea or nay of the issue but one of scope and scale.

You put polish as the number 1 biggest and most glaring issue of the game. But relative to it’s competitors it’s actually top tier in that respect. Simple as that.

Ralathar.7236:

The ability to roll so many specs and builds for each class and still be viable in dungeons is one. Unlikely to be fully comprehended by someone obsessed with a party member being “less useful”. One is based around fun and being viable, the other is based off of your own selfish interest and “efficiency”. Most gamers want fun. Only a select amount are looking for selfish efficiency.

Yes your selfish interest, because you are the on telling others how they should build and play in a blanket statement without regard to whether or not they were capable or not. Also, this strong of an opinion on “efficiency” and you expect us to believe it stops at magic find? That’s highly unlikely.

However if somone decides they want to run MF it’s not to suit a certin playstyle, it’s to satisfy their lust for gold.

That’s a play style of it’s own as well. Some people like damage, some like tanking, some like support. They build that way and play that way. Some people as well like farming and economy.

I’ll state this again since you ignore it every time I post* “MF encourages players to work against other players rather then with them.”*

That’s not really true, people use magic find for a variety of reasons. To fund their guilds, buy their real gear, help friends, etc. Maybe that “good player” you just ran a dungeon with got his good gear via magic find gear. In fact it could be argued that people wearing beserker gear are the real selfish one’s as they expect everyone else to pull the weight when they inevitably go down due to no mitigation and no defensive utility skills.

It’s all in perspective isn’t it? When you view something negatively you will ultimately see exactly what you think you will.

I think the fire ele is really close to where he needs to be. He just needs better scaling for larger groups and some melle deterant. He’s also has an event chain leading up to his spawn which has to be activated by a player, which I think is a much better idea then just starting the event on a timer.
Have a look at this video here, It’s how he USED to be before anet worked on him (and in BETA it was even worse!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN3XryVWbHU

Thanks for the video, I actually remembered how frustrating this was in the BETA before the nerf. Hopefully they will optimize it for larger groups someday in the future, along with other bosses.

Ralathar.7236:

Wait wait wait wait wait. You’re telling me that Guild Wars 2 must be compared against it’s current competitors. You named the competitor of choice. Then you tell me you are not even familiar with the current state of the very game you named?

You really don’t even know what you are arguing. I can’t pursue this point further because there is no point, you have invalidated it and have no ground to stand on.

Well, since I’m unquallified, would you be so kind as to list what these bugs are. Let’s get a direct comparision going. This would be an ideal moment for you to bring up some points to back up your claims, not shout “Ha you don’t know what your talking about! case closed!”

Ralathar.7236:

Every game still needs polish, forever. Because there is always room for improvement. Fact is polish is a relative term. You say polished or unpolished relative to the status quo or the competition. The difference in our views is not in the yea or nay of the issue but one of scope and scale.

You put polish as the number 1 biggest and most glaring issue of the game. But relative to it’s competitors it’s actually top tier in that respect. Simple as that.

See above.

Kaaboose.3897:

However if somone decides they want to run MF it’s not to suit a certin playstyle, it’s to satisfy their lust for gold.

Ralathar.7236:

That’s a play style of it’s own as well. Some people like damage, some like tanking, some like support. They build that way and play that way. Some people as well like farming and economy.

Kaaboose.3897:

I’ll state this again since you ignore it every time I post* “MF encourages players to work against other players rather then with them.”*

Ralathar.7236:

That’s not really true, people use magic find for a variety of reasons. To fund their guilds, buy their real gear, help friends, etc.

Oh come on! That’s the excuse of a typical WoW ninja! “I took it because I like money!”
“It doesn’t matter that I stole this item from the rest of the group because the moneys going to my guild not me!”
Greed is NOT a playstyle.
If someone wants to play with the economy they should be on the trading post or out farming, not using others to farm for them.

Ralathar.7236:

Maybe that “good player” you just ran a dungeon with got his good gear via magic find gear. In fact it could be argued that people wearing beserker gear are the real selfish one’s as they expect everyone else to pull the weight when they inevitably go down due to no mitigation and no defensive utility skills.

Maybe he did, in which case I loathe him for it. Also if anyones beinf biased towards gear here it’s the people defending MF by bringing up people who use zerkers. Zerker is a legitamate style of play and I’ve already pointed out that MF gear offers the same defense as Zerks – ZERO.

Ralathar.7236:

It’s all in perspective isn’t it? When you view something negatively you will ultimately see exactly what you think you will.

You’re resposts are proof enough of that. I’m still waiting for a reply on why you’re defending MF gear when the proposed solution will keep it in play without effecting it negativly.

The point of this thread if for ArenaNet to recreate the whole game ^^, and that’s good =p cause at the moment isn’t a good game at all

Cultrix.3172:

The point of this thread if for ArenaNet to recreate the whole game ^^, and that’s good =p cause at the moment isn’t a good game at all

Sorry Cultrix but I think you’ve misinturprated the video (or not watched it.) I in no way want Anet to recreate the whole game.
There’s a lot of amazing stuff in GW2, but there’s also stuff holding it back, and that’s what this video is about: Highlighting that stuff and offering solutions as well as examples as to why these points need to be addressed.

My list of ten (broken into multiple posts as I’m super wordy apparently):

1. LFG tool – I find this seriously game breaking. Having to use an outside website to even attempt for a party is dumb. I would like to see a sortable party tool with 5 categories. With the exception of dungeons and s/tPVP, it should automatically filter based on current map (filter able to be custom set to map or all). 5 catagories:
   – Dungeon
   – Open World
   – WvW
   – sPVP
   – tPVP
   There could also be “Proxy Party” feature where in Open World or WvW if people are set to “Looking For Group” and get within 5000 units of each other, they automatically get invited party. This goes until the party is full.
2. RAID parties – In WvW and Open World, we should have the ability of much larger parties. The higher number you can get, the better – I want to be able to have one big party with my guild where I can see where everyone is on the map instead of having to ask on guild missions. Be able to actually do large groups in WvW instead of following whatever blue Dorito. This also opens the road for Dungeons with much harder content and super bosses.
3. Bosses – It’s been covered multiple times. World bosses right now are just DPS pillars that you just walk up to and smack in the safe spot until it dies. They need to be rampaging terrors that are dynamic. Lupicus from Arah approaches what is a proper boss fight. World bosses should be this magnified. They have legs and wings for a reason – use them.
4. End Game – Most MMOs rely on tons of max level dungeons and max stat gear treadmills to give goals to people once they reach max level. There is clear goals that they can just keep extending with each ‘content’ update. Here there is no true ‘treadmill’ (though ascended gear is starting to create one), so people have to decide on making one for a specific skin. It may be “play how you want”, but the problem of no specific goal is too easily read as ‘no goal’. And if you don’t care about what your character looks like, what is there to care about? I just don’t know if a gear/level treadmill is escapable for character longevity in MMOs.
5. Dungeons – I’m one that actually likes the changes made to AC. Many others need to have their mechanics made more complex and diverse. I’m also a fan of hard content, though I realize people like casual gameplay too, so a “hard mode” with better rewards would be nice too. Bigger concern would be to look at dungeons that are currently economy destroying like CoF due too how fast and easy they are for what they give.

1. World vs World ratings – Currently the point system is not volatile enough creating stagnant matchups and having to stomp the other servers to the ground for weeks to hope to rank up. Being stomped for weeks is also obviously not fun and can change participation dynamics that are hard to recover from. Soft resets per tier to keep ranking gaps small so anyone can change a tier in any given week might be a solution. WvW participation and skill would have a far greater affect as ever week’s fight would matter.
2. Events – ANet has been doing pretty well with their main events. Super Adventure Box was epic. Wintersdaywas good. Etc. However they rarely had any actively ran events – this could be screen shot or art contests for game prizes. This could on a surprise reset one week, all of the dragons decided to claim Stonemist Castle for their own requiring all servers to band together to defeat them before turning on each other. A whole number of things – but basically things that look for active player participation but don’t take weeks of coding so they can be done spontaneously. As it stands, I know I’ll miss nothing if I don’t bother logging in until the next update.
3. Animations vs Skill Timings – At this time the difference between skill timings vs how long they take to actually animate is massive. As the damage is calculated on skill timings, this creates major discrepencies where classes relying on quick single attacks are far weaker than those that rely on channeled or already slow attacks (and thus the timing variance is smaller). Should every class and every weapon have the same DPS potential? No – as there are other considerations of utilities, buffs, survivability, etc to consider… but there are currently weapon combinations in this game nerfed to uselessness because of animations being too slow for their damage/skill use. These should be re-evaluated to fit their true timings or the animations made faster.
4. Player Acquisition – There are many things in this regard. There is getting the word out there: commercials on hulu/TV, internet ads, etc. Then there is rewarding your player base for bringing on new players. This could be a gem reward for referring a player. This could be a ‘luck’ aura on new players encouraging old players to party with new players (a non-selfish way to get your magic find). Creativity is the limit, but relying on them to come on their own without further motivation is not enough.
5. Magic Find – Just get rid of it please. It’s just a selfish stat – and people that argue that their fun is finding items or whatever can just stuff it. You can find the items without using gear that lowers your effectiveness to get. Or if it should exist, create it as a gear upgrade. Some kind of quest series or grind or something to enchant your gear to add magic find without lowering your effectiveness to fit greed.

[EDIT] – Seems that the numbering system starts over, but whatever. :p

Drawing Guy.3701:

My list of ten (broken into multiple posts as I’m super wordy apparently):
SNIP! If you couldn’t even type it in one post I got bugger all chacne of quoting it!

1. LFG tool – All good ideas on what I’d like to see in a LFG system for GW2, so long as they’re optional and not shoved down our throats like right click targetiing.
2. RAID parties – While I don’t agree on dungeons, having parties greater then 5 elsewhere makes sense. My guess is interface woes are holding it back.
3. Bosses – Yep, I don’t want to feel like I’m fighting part of the scenery. You showed you can work around this with the Jade Maw.
4. End Game – Ascended gear kitten a lot of people off because it’s something anet promised would not happen. That endgame stats would all be the same and that they’d be no grinding. To be fair ascended items off little stat increase (I think around 5%) over their exotic counterparts and they are being released a a slow rate so I’m actually not to bothered by this. But having a treadmill like WoW would probably see me leave GW2 all together.
5. Dungeons – Agreed. Have you ever done path 3 in CoF? that’s actually a pretty well designed path with a nice end fight that CAN be compelted rather quickly IF you work as a team. However farms stay away from it because of the “puzzle” at the start that requires more then 3 brains cells worth of co-ordination to complete! Dumb content = dumb players.

6. World vs World ratings – Points 5 and 9 might also help with this.
7. Events – Not sure I like the idea of ‘surprise events’ But I can get behind the rest.
8. Animations vs Skill Timings – Optimization and Polish all over again!
9. Player Acquisition – kitten good idea… also stolen from WoW! but it’s not like WoW doesn’t steal most of it’s ideas from other MMO’s anyway!
10. Magic Find – Nice to see people agreeing with me on this again! A shared stat in parties or a grind to put it into gear both are good ideas though the later presents problems as it would require a lot of work and compensation to players with MF gear already.

Cheers for the post and ideas Drawing Boy, Some good ideas there!

Kaaboose.3897:

Ralathar.7236:

Wait wait wait wait wait. You’re telling me that Guild Wars 2 must be compared against it’s current competitors. You named the competitor of choice. Then you tell me you are not even familiar with the current state of the very game you named?

You really don’t even know what you are arguing. I can’t pursue this point further because there is no point, you have invalidated it and have no ground to stand on.

Well, since I’m unquallified, would you be so kind as to list what these bugs are. Let’s get a direct comparision going. This would be an ideal moment for you to bring up some points to back up your claims, not shout “Ha you don’t know what your talking about! case closed!”

To be fair it’s not my job to make your case for you. When professing something as a fact the burden of proof is on you. Until you fulfill your burden further conversation is pointless as the entire comparison is based on ignorance.

You wanna make your point, YOU find the bug list and YOU do YOUR research instead of popping off without a clue as to the current state of your championed game. It’s our job to make sure you did your job right and find any issues with the things you call fact. That is the nature of making an assertion.

Ralathar.7236:

Kaaboose.3897:

Ralathar.7236:

Wait wait wait wait wait. You’re telling me that Guild Wars 2 must be compared against it’s current competitors. You named the competitor of choice. Then you tell me you are not even familiar with the current state of the very game you named?

You really don’t even know what you are arguing. I can’t pursue this point further because there is no point, you have invalidated it and have no ground to stand on.

Well, since I’m unquallified, would you be so kind as to list what these bugs are. Let’s get a direct comparision going. This would be an ideal moment for you to bring up some points to back up your claims, not shout “Ha you don’t know what your talking about! case closed!”

To be fair it’s not my job to make your case for you. When professing something as a fact the burden of proof is on you. Until you fulfill your burden further conversation is pointless as the entire comparison is based on ignorance.

You wanna make your point, YOU find the bug list and YOU do YOUR research instead of popping off without a clue as to the current state of your championed game. It’s our job to make sure you did your job right and find any issues with the things you call fact. That is the nature of making an assertion.

Well seeing as the bug comparision and polish was refering to release in the first place I don’t see why I should waste my time.
What I will do next time is be a bit more picky with my wording so it cannot be picked to death by every GW2 player you gets upset when somone compares the game to WoW.
Instead of saying look to WoW for as an example I should say “Look at what WoW does right” next time I’ll say “Look at what WoW does/did right” and save myself the time replying to comments like these.

one of the best ideas on this forum +1

+1 across the board – except maybe as far as the order goes =)

#1, #1, #1, and #1! before any more new features or content! Every time I see new content coming with soooo many daily hindrances and unfinished features etc… (if I didn’t have a lot of patience) I would have /ragequit many times over. #3 is right up there too.

SKiN.

Oh and LAG. We ALL hate it.

Why add more lag inducing features until your LAG problems have been ironed out? I don’t get it. It’s not just my connection… my computer… ping or latency issues… it’s server side.

I have never experienced LAG in PvP… add viewing on a already tight situation… what happens… more problems.

shakes head

MORE IS LESS
FIX IS BLISS