Guild Wars 2

Hello ArenaNet devs,

I’ve kept good faith for a long time now…but with every patch, it seems that the class I choose to play (first Guardian…now Mesmer) just gets worse and worse – and it’s getting extremely frustrating to keep playing the game like this. There are SLEWS of bugs related to all our traits and weapons (for all the classes) that make certain builds/weapons completely unviable and silly to choose, yet we keep seeing nerfs left and right in an attempt to balance everything as it is – and it just makes things worse.

I’m well aware that many things need balancing still, especially given your intent to make sPvP an e-sport…but let’s not forget that any regressions as a result of tweaks will inevitably kill the user experience on top of whatever bugs that are out there already.

For example, the latest Lost Shores patch nerfed Mesmers HEAVILY by 1. introducing a major regression that slashed Phantasm DPS by over half, and 2. made illusion summoning fail and go on complete cooldown if Mesmer is blinded. When those two are combined with a *long *standing bug (we’re talking about since Beta) with Signet of Illusions (grants 50% more HP to illusions) being applied to illusions only after a few seconds upon summoning them, the Mesmer class essentially becomes unplayable competitively – especially against thieves.

To top that off, I’m a double sword and staff user (because I like the flexibility of having abilities for both close range melee and long range) – and sword 3’s (Illusionary Leap) summoning time is still bugged and will not be affected by the trait “Blade Training” (reduces sword skill CD by 20%) when combined with the trait “Illusionists Celerity” (reduces CD on illusion summoning skills by 20%).

This results in the Mesmer having 2 close-ranged illusion summons at well over 9 seconds CD each – easily killed and useless – leaving the Mesmer wide open for attacks. I’m also sure I don’t need to beat the dead horse that melee attackers take a lot more damage than ranged attackers – thus it makes more sense for close-ranged illusions able to be summoned faster than when the Mesmer is using a Staff or Greatsword.

The Mesmer has the potential to be a VERY advanced class that takes a great amount of skills to master, but with the slew of bugs surrounding the class, it’s essentially a paper dummy unless Greatsword or Staff is used.

I’ve started a warrior now, and playing with her for 20 levels quickly made me realize how horribly weak and fragile my Mesmer is – at both duels and mobs in PvE and PvP/W3.

Personally, what will keep this game fun for me (after having beaten Zhaitan many times) are the various social and competitive aspects this game will bring – and that’s Dungeons/PvP/W3.

That all said, I really hope more effort and attention will be given to bugs surrounding our skills/traits instead of one-off holiday events. In particular, there are stickied threads all around the class-specific sub-forums detailing all the bugs related to all classes. I think the community would really appreciate more feedback and attention regarding them.

Sincerely,
HLE

As I said in a post on the main forums, I would rather see the quality of the game improved over new content as well. I feel the game has lots of potential, and in my opinion what is holding it back is the bugs and some of the recent design decisions.
If the bugs are not addressed, I may go back to guild wars 1. I will say this again though this game has LOTS of potential for me, but it feels like it is being wasted.

Completely agree with this. Sooooooooooooo many problems in engineering and so few viable builds. just run around with shield and pisol, that’s all we can do atm…sigh…smh

Completely agree!
The OP spells out his issue very well.. and as a player I want the bugs fixed.

I have played several characters in PvE and WvWvW (Mesmer (80), Elementalist (70), Necro (50), Engineer(40), and Ranger(20)). With each character I have hit a wall (or at least bumps) where the skills/abilities do not work at all or do not work as defined in the tool tips.

As a player it is infuriating to be presented options for a character build and then find out they do not work, have not worked since beta, and there is no communication from the development studio that they will ever work…

Ulari

It is very disheartening when you see all the effort and time that is being put into the holiday events (Halloween, Cursed Shores, Wintersday) and each and every class (some more than others!) have a huge list of bugs.

Priorities SHOULD BE:
1. Overall game stability
2. Bug fixes a.s.a.p.
3. New content (events, items, etc)

Well, adhering to a strict order like “first stability/bugs, then new content/balancing” is not always possible. First of all, there are different developers working on different things. And if there was a way to do it that way there would be people asking why their balance problems are not adressed yet or why there is never any new content.
So, in my opinion the order is not really the problem. What did present a problem so far is an apparent lack of communication between balancers and bugfixers. On some occasions I had the impressions that balancers were working under the assumption that everything was working as intended which left supposedly buffed professions unchanged in reality (since the builds that would actually benefit from those buffs were still bug-riddled) or weakened professions that were hardly strong to begin with but might have been (too?) strong without all those bugs. In some cases this leaves players with pretty few possibilities unless they are happy getting carried all the way.

Locce.8405:

Well, adhering to a strict order like “first stability/bugs, then new content/balancing” is not always possible. First of all, there are different developers working on different things..

Though I agree with your post, there is one thing I would like to say. I am aware that there are separate live action teams, and that it makes little sense to move people from one to a another. However it does not mean that there can’t be more focus on a team. In the extreme case that there are two people trying to fix all the bugs in the game, the bugs will likely never get fixed. However if they expanded there bug fixing team to 10 and hired 8 more people the bugs would likely get fixed faster. Granted they would then be having to pay more employees, but if that means a less buggy game, that means more people may decide to buy the game.

I really like gw2 but I feel the bugs are breaking the game, and giving the game a bad name. I feel if it stays this buggy, they will lose a lot more people. The new content is nice, but if I can’t play it do to class bugs what’s the point.

Also I highly agree with what you said about communication between the teams, I think it would be both beneficial to players and GW2 if there was as much communication as possible

Last thing I will say for the Devs and Mods is that I am not trying to rant and complain about the game, nor am I trying to say arena net is doing a sucky job. I want to see this game do well. I however am not a game dev, but as a customer this is my view point. I am just trying to add some positive criticism. =)