Guild Wars 2

@ OP
I enjoyed reading your post, it was nicely written and a nice point. However, I can’t help but get the feeling that you would be equally happy to play if the changes in the patch hadn’t been introduced.
As such, your post is still good, but comes at a really bad time, since you will most likely fall into the “I love the patch and disagree with the concerns” group of people, in the fact that you support the people who make the changes. If you like Anet and want them to continue working thats all good, but right now (and likely for some time to come) “yay sayers” and “nay sayers” are the dominant species, and you can’t place yourself in the middle (one group or both will eat you up).
As a response to your thread though;
I’m happy that you are happy.
I’m unhappy that I’m unhappy, and I’m slightly unhappy that you aren’t unhappy along with me.

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

I been replaying my GW1 characters and been thinking won’t this be great if you combine the awesome game play of GW1 with the pretty graphic of GW2?

Sure it will be the Wow beater that everyone is looking for.

Plus the development cost can’t be that great since there is so many similarity between GW1 and GW2.

There is also already a huge player base and who has played both GW1 and GW2 don’t missed the original.

A copper for your thoughts.

I would soooo love this!
Gw2 was failed to deliver, for me atleast and alot of other people too i suspect. In fact, call the game you suggest guildwars2, and rename the current gw2 to something akin to “Dragon struggles; a guild wars story”. Much more befitting.
There are too many awesome things about gw1 that “didn’t translate” into gw2.

Right… so I’m getting incresingly dissapointet at Anet.
When I played the game the first few hours I thought it was quite abit away from what I imagined would sprout from the creators of my top game Gw1. But I thought, “they’ll see eventually, and fix things up”. I see now that they probably won’t.
Sad thing is that this game could have been the monster that pulled millions of players in because of its novel approach, but instead it seems it will be the bunny that tries to immitate the behemoth game “which shall not be mentionend”.
Crossroads:
Here’s what I wanted from Gw2: lvl 1-20 in starterzone, no more lvls, top tier gear. The rest of the game opened up for further character progression via skills (and player skill), gear adjustments, incresingly diffucult AI, differing gamemodes and challanges, missions, continuously deepening mechanics (reintroduce elemental/physical dmg/resistance etc.), engaging rpg elements and so forth. Possibilities are neerly endless, if you care to think only slightly “out of the box”.

Here’s what I’m getting from Gw2 development: Vertical progression through the game, eg lvl1-80. Fine, I’ll play along, perhaps there’s some sence in this in the end. Sadly though; Ooops! people are 80 now. Didn’t see that one comming… We don’t have the time/ingenuety/hindsight/foresight to create greatness, sooo what did all the other mmorpgs do?
You didn’t quite deliver the game promised in the first place, and that’s ok, few do. But by the gods, DO stick with what you wanted to create in the first place, and Do Not go down that overly used road. (Lineage 3 anyone?)

And please!? “Here’s a new challenge for the players, and here’s the gear to make it easier”… What future is there in that kind of development? Think new/updated content/development, and take gear and grind out of the equation, and you might just stike gold.
Aside from that I find many valid points in the nay-sayers posts, and have yet to see a yay-sayer which I could relate to (but I am of course absurdly biased ).
The makeshift bandaid press-release thing form yesterday sadly only prooved my concerns.
Sum up: Take the alternative road Anet, the one you are treading won’t bring neither you nor I any happiness.

Ok, brief summary of horizontal vs. vertical in the Gw franchise from my perspective.
Gw1: Max lvl and gear reached quickly. Further character development was in the form of an increasing amount of available skills, more attribute points to spend on different lines further increasing your possiblities in builds, secondary proffessions to be explored and so forth. All this to be able to overcome incresingly difficult content. At some point you were “maxed” out on the above(if that was even possible) but the content still got harder, so you had to think and be creative with all the tools at your disposal.
Gw2: All basic skills unlocked within an hour or so of charater creatiion, rest is utility, some oddities that mildly increses possibilities in your playstyle. Now you need to lvl up to 80, while constantly collecting gear. Now you are 80, congrats, get the final gear, and perhaps the last few utlities/elites. Min/max abit with traits.
And here comes the dilemma. Should we smack on new challenges along with a gear treadmill to to overcome them, and when they are done with that content, we do it again? Or should we learn from the prequel?
No brainer in my humble oppinion.
Give power to the players, and precent them with challenges to overcome. Dont give challenges to the players, and present powergear to overcome them. There is more than enough vertical progression in the game as it is atm.
Really…. “New content is super hard, but once you have collected this and this, its not so hard anymore.” Where’s the propect in that?

From my point of view, this is an expression of the dev teams failure to bring creativity to the players.
Gw1 also had super hard dungeons with different conditions and “out of the box” challenges. To overcome this players had to think creatively in their skill choices and party composition. Gw2 does apparently not have this level of depth. Introducing a new layer of difficulty, and then posing a gear treadmill to overcome it seems quite an uncreative development process in general.
Give us the tools in the basic design of the game to overcome new and hard challenges, don’t simply pose gear upgrades as the solution. . Give the players tools in the basic design of the game to be creative and reintroduce ingenuity!
And to me atleast, it seems quite clear that it might just be a few items at present, but will evolve on itself unless its halted asap. Once introduced, there’s no telling how much worse it will get, especially since it seems they are trying to fix a problem that will only be postponed by this. Collected all the ascended gear, and now those super hard dungeons are easier than before…. what now then?
Horizontal progression works, Gw1 shows that imo. Look back and I think you’ll see that giving the players increasingly difficult challenges and a game design that encourages skillful playing and tampering within the system is the recipe for success.
big sigh and shake of head Wrong direction!

@Kineticdamage
I read your post, but thought it was more specific to mechanics that deepen the current system, rather than changing it. I see now though, that there are a few answers also related to my point of view, and I’ll scoop by and add a reply :-)

@BrinkMcThornbody
I hope the post didn’t come off as whiney, cause that wasn’t the point. Personally I fell that anyone who takes the time to write a post about something that they find a problem are to be taken seriously (with the odd exception). We all want a good game afterall, and as such all player experiences and opinions are valid, including yours and mine. But I suppose thats worth post on forum behaviour in itself.
The “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind in that I would acctually prefer Gw1’s system over Gw2’s in Gw2, but I don’t think thats a constructive discussion

Anyways, am I to understand that you would oppose change to the skill system because the community would simply present different complaints? Or have I missed the point?

Heh, and I do so wish I could proove that I am right in suggesting this kind of change, but sadly thats not possible as there are no (to my knowledge) valid surveys regarding this subject. The only proof I can give is my own experience and ideas as to what I would find better.
I think bugs are probably some of the few proovable issues when it comes to games
@stof
I find myself not playing the game like I want to, rather I’m feeling I’m playing the game like someone else intended me to. If that makes any sence. There are usually alot of skills that I would rather use than the ones I’m forced to use. And I like to be creative, which can be hard under precent cicumstances. Was it the Gw2 manifesto that proclaimed that everything was thought and re-thought i terms on the “fun-factor”? I don’t find this system fun tbh, hence I opt it to be fixed

But what about my off hand? no function anymore? Well, my proposal is to give #1 an added effect, depending on your off hand. Example: Guardian using torch in off hand=increased burn damage or duration, or improves virtue of justice. Mesmer using focus= #1 adds 1confusion, or increase confusion dmg or duration. In other words, offhand improves your #1 or your class specific mechanic, giving you an additional layer of building and improving your char. 2-handers might not have this diversity, but can get a slight buff to even things out.

So this is meerly an example of a possible fix to a numbing problem. The reason this is not in the suggestions forum, is that I would like to see a discussion concerning the locked skillsystem as it stands today. The suggestion is meerly to show that there are ample ways to change it to the better for the players.
In my humble opinon, a rehaul of the skillsystem has the propable positive sideeffect of fixing other issues aswell, besides acctually making the game better oh so many ways. PvP is dead boring? Well, won’t this perhaps help quite abit?

Yes, releasing the system isn’t without it’s woes… However, I think I prefer a metagame that fluxuates rather than stalemates. I’d more than happily say “bye bye” to seasonal evens to have a team work on balancing. (And let’s face it, Anet won’t make much cash on events anyways if no one is playing when the seasons hit)

I want this game to succeed. I want to be drawn in, and to think creatively to succeed. In my mind though, the current skill system is a slow but undeniable killer.

Right then. feel free to comment on everything. Not native to the language, so please forgive mistakes on that part. If nothing else, than simply give your view of the locked skill system as it stands today. And if you like it, say why but also, decide if you would oppose change.
Thanks for reading.

(don’t you just hate looking at what you wrote, and knowing that you wanted to say so much more, but just can’t find the words. I do)

Hi!
So here’s my point of view of why GW2 isn’t exactly hitting the spot. These days, alot of posts are referring to bad pvp designs and an increasingly poor game experiences and general boredom with playing the game (pvp and pve both). And mind, the game is only just released.

So here is the bottom line: “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!”. All devs seem to forget this simple rule sometime(s) during their career. Gw1 in many ways had a perfect(ish) skill system from a players point of view. Gw2’s system is very very far from ok. Hence, I feel the rule has been broken. I can’t see the point in hopeing for possible future updates/expasions to fix this, since it lies in the core design of the game and most likely won’t be changed unless it is pointed out as a problem. I hope this post can help rectify this Mind that the system has indeed introduced some good things aswell. 10 skills instead of 8, locked healing skill (nessisary now that the triad is gone), and perhaps even the utility skill vs. weapon skill is a good idea… if not still very restrictive.

Problem: Locking skills into certain weapons is restrictive. End of story. Traits, weaponswap and so on does not fix this issue.
Solution: unlock the skill-bar 2-5 (and 1 to some extent)
Proposal (example):
skillslot 1. Our “autoattack”. Each weapon should have atleast 2 options per weapon in this slot. An example could be mesmer’s scepter:Either winds of chaos or the ether chain. Heck, even the GS attack could fit. And vice versa. Why? It brings diversity and lets you build your char the way you want. This is doable with neerly all “caster” weapons i belive. The “physical” weapons then? well, could do with more diversity aswell, either by adding a new chain or as I’ll discuss later, adding effects to offhands. Some chains/attacks are transferrable, if only needing abit of visual tweaking though.
So skillslot 1 is locked as a viable attack, but still customizable. This is important to ensure that all classes and builds will allways have an ablility to be somewhat effective, regardless of the situation (atleast in pve).

Skillslot 2-5: !Free those skills! Let the inspiration, feeling, group composition, desire, rp-elements, whatever, be your guide. From a players point of view, there is absolutely no -need- to restrict these. From a dev’s point of view, I see the point… control and balance. However, this is where we, as players, can involve ourselves and choose how we want to play. Support? pick support skills (you still have #1, so you can’t be completely useless), glass cannon? forsake all defence and go with dmg skills and so on… Again, the physical weapons (warrior is particularly intricate in this respect) are abit on the low side with alternatives. Obviously if you are weilding a riffle, “stab and bleed” might be abit off However, it is fairly simple to rectify. And really, why can’t a ranger use whirling defence with a GS?
Do the above and behold: Fun is back in the game… builds are back… and the world of Gw2 just got loads more interresting.
Continued in next post