Guild Wars 2

I found the story far too disjointed to be happy with Season 3. It feels like we’re missing entire chunks of the story that set up the Balthazar twist, as well as Lazarus as the season’s final enemy. I love the Mursaat, but the way Lazarus was handled feels like a total waste to me. Season 1 developed Scarlet as a villain who needed to be stopped at all costs. Season 2 did the same for Mordremoth. Season 3 didn’t convince me that I should care.

Regarding the zone for this last episode, the timed updrafts against the waterfall is one of the worst minigames in this entire game. The unchained spider just sits up there because nobody can be kitten d to fly up to fight it.

Thumbs up, though, for a jumping puzzle that is challenging but doesn’t require playing beside Dulfy’s video walk-through to figure out where to go from one jump to the next.

To me GW2’s greatest strengths are the visual and physical world design and the appearance and tone of the game’s cultures and races. It won’t happen at the pace anybody wants, but I would like to see ANet play to these strengths by adding zones and eventually playable races. Just looking at the map of Tyria, there is a huge amount of space yet to cover before we even get into a discussion about Cantha and Elona.

I think Guild Wars laid out a model for max-level play that I am surprised ANet has not tried harder to recapture. The assembling of “prestige” armor set skins and earning special weapon skins tied to some kind of factional “rep” and materials acquisition, where those both might be gained in several different ways that accommodate different types of play, would be something I’d be interested in. Mawdrey is a step in the right direction as far as giving players attainable things to do that involve goal-oriented play.

Understandably there’s a huge focus on getting players to buy things from the gem store, but there needs to be cool things in the game to work toward that are also attainable for people who play maybe a couple hours a night in ways where they’re not going to make 500g a month. If players are happy and see themselves playing months into the future, they are more likely to spend money in the gem store.

Restore and expand the Hall of Monuments and begin integrating the achievement system into a HoM that we can "decorate’ with our GW2 accomplishments.

If we do get even just a couple of new zones a year I’d like to see “open world dungeons” that play kind of like the Orr temple event chains and boss fights that involve the busyness/complexity of the Tequatl and Triple Trouble fights (although I think the difficulty should be carefully controlled … they should be challenging but not something that won’t be done unless one of a handful of guilds is on your map).

I know they’re scared to death of the response to gated content, but plenty of content is gated while leveling. It’s not like the concept is completely foreign to GW2 players. Introduce permanent zones with interesting DEs and exclusive loot that are gated by some sort of rep or equippable item that requires some work to attain. This is not progression insofar as making players more powerful necessarily, but it offers a “Do A so that you can do B” type of progression mechanism. Just as a very lose example of how this might work: to enter the volcano zone in the Fire Islands, you need to acquire an infusion that protects you from constant damage from the deadly heat. Acquiring the infusion might involve several possible avenues that accommodate different styles of play, from crafting to running dungeons to grinding mobs.

Yes, whether a trait or a utility slot, I almost always use a passive run speed boost in open world play when I can. In cases where I’m in a small enough group that I might need to get more out of that slot during a given encounter, I will change it.

• Visual and physical aspects of zone design. I’m not sure another game has been made with terrain that uses 3D space like GW2. The life in zones is also far better than average. Patrols, NPCs working/training, NPCs conversing with each other … GW2 is more alive than most games in this respect.
• Diversity, appearance (including the animations), and tone of the game’s races/cultures.
• Multiple leveling “paths” as one explores the world. Like with WoW, there are multiple starting zones and zones at given level ranges that allow the player to experience different parts of the world on separate playthroughs, thereby greatly improving replayability.
• While I think the dynamic event system underdelivered in a lot of respects, what it does do successfully is make zones different from one visit to the next as long as you aren’t in the habit of camping out all day in them.
• Stationary world bosses are pretty bleh IMO; nevertheless, Claw of Jormag and revamped Tequatl fights have a suitably epic tone for world bosses. Giant lasers and flak cannons should be required to take down dragons.
• Attractive gear. So many games have hideous armor and weapons. GW2 has its fair share, but there are a lot of really quality pieces too. People have made some incredibly awesome looking characters with the gear available.
• Wardrobe and dye system. It took awhile for them to get this what I consider to be “right,” but it’s one of the better appearance management systems available in any game. My one wish here is that I had gotten more value out of my pre-80 transmute stones before the conversion, so that I could enjoy putting armor on low level characters without wasting now precious transmutation charges.
• Class diversity. I’m not as big a fan of the combat mechanics as others, but the classes do feel different once you’ve unlocked their capabilities.
• Non-competitive open world PvE play. PvE play between people on the same faction (which applies to GW2 where everyone is on the same side) should not be a case of one player benefiting at the expense of others. GW2 helped do away with resource node and kill-stealing, encouraging less selfish play. It’s good that these things have found their way into other games.
• Inventory and materials management. The collections tab is a great way to organize useful things picked up in the game world. Selling junk items, the ability to condense items with the click of a button, having bags that are meant for gear or mats or to make stuff unavailable in vendor tabs … these are all good QoL features.
• Guild “points” that can be spent on useful upgrades, activities, buffs, and so on.
• Cooking. While there are issues with the usefulness of crafted items and the availability of materials, the mechanics of the crafting system in general are actually decent.

There are a host of negatives I could get into too, but these are things that stand out to me as things GW2 does well and should be acknowledged for. Fundamentally the game does enough right to be one of the best MMORPGs available, even if one’s individual tastes lead one to prefer things that are done better in other games.

As far as whether the game is dying, the answer is no. GW2 will still have an active population for the next several years. That doesn’t mean that ANet doesn’t have a perception problem on their hands. The game has often struggled at giving max-level players meaningful things to do, and the practice of changing things that “nobody” asked to be changed and not addressing things that “lots” of people have asked to be addressed has created sourness that does have a cancerous effect both in-game and out.

Whether or not it’s the right system for GW2, I think there’s been a serious overreaction insofar as millions upon millions of players have leveled characters in games with significant ability and perk gating for years. It has proven success bringing inexperienced gamers into a game, which is what it’s goal appears to be here.

But I have tried it in GW2 and for me:

(1) Taking combat abilities out of my hands by moving them to later levels has made playing at lower levels less fun.

(2) I already strongly disliked the trait system changes from earlier. The game had a poor effort-reward balance during leveling when it was released, and it’s not been improved. The consensus has always seemed to be that leveling becomes a slog after 30, and their solution, rather than come up with things for players to be excited about, has been to move leveling rewards to higher levels, thereby making the lower levels less satisfying.

(3) Low-level XP gain really is lightning fast, but it adds to the feeling that I’m being treated like an idiot. I kept being reminded of WildStar’s “kitten yeah! You’re awesome!” when I leveled up.

(4) The dumbing down of low-level content is sad. I liked carrying things, pouring buckets of water on crops and fires, whipping cattle, and cleaning up scraps and tools. Active participation in the happenings of the world is more fulfilling and immersive than what the changes offer.

(5) With respect to 3 and 4 above, I want to feel like I’m playing with self-motivated gamers with sophisticated gaming tastes who know what they’re doing, and these make me feel like I’m playing with the iphone crowd.

(6) The compass is ridiculous. Not only does it sometimes give you bad guidance, but a big selling point for GW2, offered (I guarantee) by many of the players who now support this compass nonsense, is that the game lacked aspects of linear hand-holding of other games. It’s a visual distraction that I don’t need anyway, so at least let me turn it off.

The leveling changes, while not catastrophic, have, for me, made the game worse. One can get used to it and learn to live with it, but if you’re having less fun, the changes were bad for you. You can then weigh how the positive changes in the patch compare to it. In my case, since leveling alts is a major part of the way I play the game and playing the TP, collecting minis, and running with a guild are not, this patch has been a minor setback after the positives of the wardrobe and account-wide dyes introduced earlier in the year. It has moved the game away from the way I like to play it.

On a more general level, GW2’s differences from major commercial MMOs were IMO part of its appeal. If I want to level characters like they do in WoW, FFXIV:ARR, or SWTOR I play those games, where they honestly do it better by virtue of the leveling experience being designed around it.

No.

If you’re a player who really will stop buying gems because of the changes that were introduced in this patch, then you weren’t going to be buying them much longer anyway. You would have found some other justification for stopping soon after.

There are two ways to bring in more money: you get your current customers to buy more, or you get more customers. In this case the customers who are buying less will be more than made up for by the new customers that can finally get into the game because it’s more accessible. Don’t think like an MMO or even an RPG player. Think like a Game of Thrones fan whose exposure to gaming is mostly on the iPhone

I think it’s fine to lament that a game (or the industry) is moving away from the things that appeal to you, but the reason it’s moving away from those things is because you no longer represent the audience that will generate the most income.

ANet can’t allow you to disable them. The 35-year-old kiddies paid good coin to be one of the cool kids, and knowing that not everyone can see how cool they are would be infringing on their “right” to enjoy the feeling.

The commander tag is a good idea whose implementation wasn’t thought out over the long term (something that can probably be said about a lot of the game’s features), and now it’s too late. Allowing us to disable them after people have paid their 100g (and eventually 300g) to show off their tag would be a headache ANet surely doesn’t want to deal with, although I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Welcome to Skittle Wars.

If heirlooms and belongings can no longer be obtained, keeping the vendors available for some time after the event is over doesn’t at all seem unreasonable to me. This is not a case of people being able to farm them after the fact and greatly devalue the rewards. And as has been pointed out, with Lion’s Arch still in ruins and the recovery going to take some time, there is nothing immersion-breaking about somebody accepting found heirlooms and belongings.

ANet obviously sees some benefit to promoting divisiveness between those players that are really into them and their game — those play a lot, follow them on social media, inhale all the news that gets released about the game — and those for whom GW2 is just the game they currently enjoy logging in and playing. The entire limited-time-only aspect of nearly everything they did for the last year speaks directly to that. Make the hardcore fans feel special, because that’s where your bread is buttered. Everyone else doesn’t really matter. In fact, you’re more trouble than whatever you’re spending on the game is worth.

ETA: I turned in all of my heirlooms and belongings because I knew they were being removed. I happen to strongly sympathize with those who feel they should have been kept available.

RedStar.4218:

Rym.1469:

Let’s see if we can forsee next chapter…
Delaqua’s sister moving to Brisban, she disapa/get kidnapped in the jungle, we proceed to the jungle.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Even better : Jory will get word that her sister’s team disappeared. We’ll have to help her investigate and we’ll see bodies and probably a scared survivor. That survivor (or a hint) will tell us that some of the guards fled deep in the forest.
Of course, being curious, we’re going to head into unexplored territory (well not really because we already been there in GW1, but this being GW2 it’ll be more than beyond recognition). Finally we’ll catch up with Belinda and we’ll all be happy.

But oh no ! Something is wrong with her ! She’s corrupted ! (maybe they are going to take 4 weeks so we can really see that some things don’t sit right with her to finally “surprise” us with her corruption).

So in a tear-filled fight with tear-filled dialogues (and hiccups, because hey, that’s totally relevant and adds a “nice” touch) we’ll help Jory kill her own sister (like we helped Jora kill Svanir after he had been corrupted).

And so, Jory will swear to get revenge on the dragon and the whole DE 2.0 will follow her. And, because people complained about the lack of the Pact help, we’ll have to assist the Pact in investigating the dragon and finding a way to kill it.

Jeez man! Put spoiler tags on that puppy! You’re giving away 15 months worth of story.

Morrigan.2809:

It is bad enough running around on a Sylvari with all the NPC hate now- can you imagine if I was wearing Scarlet’s hair?

it would be instant pitchfork time

ANet had zero problem making money off of Scarlet’s armor in the gem store, both the Magitech armor, which one only needs to look around the game to see is quite popular, and her more iconic battle armor, which can also be seen around and some people have done some cool things with dye-wise. Her gun is the hottest thing going on the BLT that is not a Legendary or precursor (currently the 60th most expensive item in the entire game).

I’ve played probably over a hundred hours the last two weeks, mostly guesting on Blackgate, and I have not once seen anybody being badgered about using any of her gear (other than that some people don’t like the look of the gun). And if you’ve seen it once or twice, that’s nothing compared to the number of people who are using it.

Reasonable adults are able to separate virtual gear or cosmetics they think look cool from a fictional character that used them. The only unreasonable ones who apparently can’t are those who need to defend the decision not to make a very clearly in-demand hairstyle available.

I’m sure ANet has their reasons, one’s that have hopefully have nothing to do with protecting players’ feelings or the belief that Scarlet’s cultural and historical significance is equivalent to Hitler’s (or even Darth Vader’s). Whatever those reasons are, I’m struggling to find an argument that would show the disappointment is unwarranted.

So …

Scarlet, a villain in a video game, is close enough to Hitler, somebody who killed millions of real people, that reason dictates we not include her hairstyle.

I’m glad ANet and its fans are not at all lacking in perspective.

See, I think the dialogue between characters — when they are not relating story information — is something ANet did extremely well in this game. There are lots of places where you can listen into a conversation and it winds up being pretty funny. One of my favorites is in the Charr starting area, with the cubs learning about devourers. Those are things that make characters feel real and the world come alive that other games just don’t do, either at all, or nearly as well.

So yeah, I happened to find Taimi’s rambling and Braham’s “Uh-huh” bit pretty awesome. It’s the conveying of story and trying to bring the player into it that GW2 is often just horrid at, and has been since Day One with the personal story content. IMO.

It was pretty consistent with the rest of the Living Story.

/shrug

The personal stories were one of the weaker parts of the vanilla game already. Among the strengths, IMO, were really awesome world design and its attention to visual detail. So naturally it made all the sense in the world to create content that told a story and added nothing to the world. /sarcasm

I’ve heard plenty of complements on the visual design and atmosphere of Lion’s Arch in this final chapter, and I have to agree, it’s great (the events themselves … eh, that’s a different story, but they can unfortunately get away with it when they’re here today, gone tomorrow). I’m hopeful that, at least over the next year, we get some well-designed, permanent zones added to the game that play to ANe’ts strengths. I’m okay with there being an overarching story about an elder dragon that ties what’s going on in the zones together, as it does in Orr, but I don’t need the story completely spoonfed to me in the format used for the PS and LS. That aspect of the game was bad from day one and did not get better after a year and a half, so stop putting so much emphasis on it.

ANet did the right thing by broadening access to the holo fight by making the knights fight easier. But as other have pointed out, their solution — reducing the knights’ health pools — doesn’t actually fix what was broken, which was the scaling system. The Living Story let’s them get away with Scotch tape fixes like this because the content is here today, gone tomorrow … so why bother spending resources addressing the real problem? It’s one of the downfalls players have identified with the way ANet has handled content updates in GW2.

Somebody on my server suggested the other day that players are playing with chat off, and that could potentially be part of the problem. I know with the knight and holo fights this week people have explained the fights, yet there are still people not paying attention to the attunement buff and so on. So people are seeing the champ on the map, showing up to kill it, and aren’t aware that there is an achievement or people trying to get it.

Today’s MMOs are populated by a lot of wallflower type players who like having other players around but aren’t really interested in or are afraid to interact with them. In some respects I can’t blame them. Online gamers can be absolutely brutal. On the other hand it’s like “Why are you playing if you’re not interested in playing with people.” GW2’s approach and mechanics make it an excellent game for these type of players, however.

The “follow the zerg” mentality also reduces or even eliminates the need to learn fight mechanics too. Case in point — and a funny story from the other night — I was guesting on Blackgate main of all places, sitting in LA, and I see a group of maybe four players attacking some Molten Alliance. They’re practically doing no damage. One of the players finally says, “Immune. Immune. Immune. Wait, I think I did a little bit of damage!” and then fifteen seconds later “Man, this **** is bugged. I still can’t do any damage.” These players were apparently completely unaware of the Molten Protector’s shield and the need to kite mobs out of them. And why not? In a group of fifty people they rarely had to worry about those type of things, let alone notice them.

Like a lot of other aspects of the game, ArenaNet endeavors to keep people playing by wasting their time chasing carrots rather than providing fun content that people will want to play because it’s, you know, fun. People should want to be doing content because they’re having a blast, not because “I’ve sunk so much time into this already I might as well keep going until I get this stupid achievement.”

That’s a map of Orr.

IceBlink.4317:

One black lion ticket would have been nice

That would have been my ideal reward (given what I think is fair; obviously asking for Eternity is compensation far outstripping the achievement).

The “for a limited time only” aspect of the Living Story and some of the associated items makes all the difference to me … in a negative way. It’s one of the significant reasons why, despite the investment I’ve made into game in time and money, and a collection of characters I’m as fond of as I ever was my WoW characters, I have sometimes struggled to log in for weeks or even a couple of months at a time.

Regardless of whether the execution was a bit “all over the place” or not, I think small additions to the game that tell a story can be a really great thing. But making me feel obligated to log in during a very specific period to play the specific LS content or lose the opportunity to experience it forever sacrifices one of the huge advantages GW2 had over the market because of its B2P model and an “endgame” not devoted to the raiding treadmill: the ability of players to play on their own time, in their own way, without feeling like they were missing out.

MMO technology is sophisticated enough now that there are ways key parts of the LS content could probably have been made permanently available (that is, until you’ve completed a part of the story and moved on to the next) to allow players to experience the story and world-changing events at their own pace. Some of the possible tools (as separate from end-all-be-all solutions), such as greater instancing, optional use of a shards like the overflows that are gated by one’s place in the story, and even the use of phasing, might not be ideal for everyone, and they would require some creative management of loot/rewards, but for myself, and I think many others it’s better than what we wound up with. I don’t necessarily want to see them just dumping everything into instances and calling it a day, but creative professionals who want the LS to be a major part of the game should be able to come up with equally creative solutions.

I do think the temporary nature of the content also gives off the vibe that ArenaNet is trying to get away with not balancing and fixing things that break (unless it becomes catastrophic) because it will all be gone in a couple of weeks anyway. That’s a negative way to go about game design IMO.

I know that they have kind of tried to do the right thing by bringing back some of the desirable collectible items, but making them obtainable via a lottery box really adds insult to injury here. Making a more reliable way (even if it requires substantial effort) to acquire a limited number of Black Lion Claim tickets per account would have made a difference to me.

As it is, the Living Story experience has actually made me more resentful of the game and ArenaNet. I don’t want to feel that way about this game, because there are plenty of things that do make me want to keep playing. Happy players spend money in the cash shop; it can really be that simple. I know for sure, I would have spent more had I not felt like ArenaNet was working against me having fun … that neat armor skin, those toys, minis, dyes, etc. don’t mean a whole heck of lot to me if I’m disinclined to log in.

I would have given up nearly all of my in-game acquisitions over the first eight months for a fused weapon ticket during F&F. From now until the game ended my Charr warrior would have been wielding a fused greatsword because it would have gone perfectly with the look I’m trying to create for him. Fortunately, there are a couple similar weapons that will do, but I find them just a bit off. I opened all 78 BL chests I had saved up and while getting several makeover kits and good dyes, it was still a letdown.

I’m not a big fan of the sclerite weapon skins, so I didn’t bother trying to farm or purchase any chests, but I feel you guys.

Of course, I do very much believe that having exceptionally rare items in games is important in reminding players that they are very truly sharing the game world with other players in the “That’s the guy with the Warglaives of Azzinoth!” sense, but at least a persistent 1 in a million drop could happen to me some day.

So it’s the time sensitivity of the skins that I have an issue with rather than the loot rate. I would rather them make the skin tickets much rarer but make them a permanent addition via the Black Lion chests rather than do what they’ve done with the fused and sclerite skin tickets. If people are going to keep forking over real cash until they get the skin they want, that’s their problem, not mine, but if they did it that way, at least some day I might loot a key and open a chest and find my ticket … and that makes a world of difference to me personally.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this for the last couple of days and I’m disappointed that the window for completing these achievements is closing without them being fixed.

Stuck on 42/100 and 216/300 and would have had the achievement for holding the crab last several times over if it had been working. Fortunately I won when it was working and did get that achievement, but alas …

Ekriel.9601:

you cannot afford to let things get this buggy when your players are already on a time limit..

Of course they can. Maybe you and I can’t afford it in terms of investing our time in something that didn’t provide the compensation that seemed to be offered, but they certainly can. The content will be gone and with it the obligation to properly maintain it. That’s the great thing about temporary content from a developer’s perspective. The amount of time games have to spend in the oven, so to speak, is not trivial, and temporary content allows them to mostly skip that step. A lot of people would rather eat cookie dough than fresh baked chocolate chip cookies anyway.

In today’s MMO world where players chew up content and then move on, it’s arguably considerably more efficient to do it this way. How many people are going to stop playing because they couldn’t get their title or achievements? 1? 2? 10? Whatever number it is it’s not significant. Over the long haul, a trend of buggy temporary content can certainly be a contributing factor in a more significant number of players leaving the game, but it’s not going to cause it outright.

The concept was fine. I don’t find Canach particularly interesting, but having the settlers and Consortium at odds while the wildlife was becoming overwhelming worked I guess. I liked the Karka Queen fight. Boss fights that make players actually have to “play” are always good.

But overall the execution was poor, unfortunately. Within each phase of the story it’s the same few events over and over. People throw fits about daily’s in other games, but here you have an event carousel that’s effectively just “10 minutelies” that you didn’t have to pick up from a quest giver.

The lag situation has been bad. It’s understandable when it’s peak time and you have an event that spawns 200 mobs, but I was getting lag-kicked at 3 am and nobody around to keep the settlements clear.

You have a single-player dungeon that after the first couple of days couldn’t even be reached by many players without a group most hours of the day because of ill-placed mobs that were never properly relocated.

The achievement bugs are ridiculous, not leastwise because they didn’t just turn up in the final hours of the event. It feels like half the point of the living story material is to give the players some new things to work toward, and instead it apparently becomes about enjoying a laggy minigame that has you slowed and/or steamrolled half the match “for the fun of it.”

I realize that the people who should have been responsible for fixing the mess are probably working on yet-to-be-released content, but part of running a major MMO is maintaining your game. From the standpoint that I personally am not paying for the content I shouldn’t care, but it’s still disappointing that a company would take advantage of the many fans that will lap up any old rubbish so long as they have something new to play around with. I’d like to think ANet holds themselves to a higher standard.

I do still appreciate that we’re getting new content. F&F and Southsun have kept me logging in, which is crucial to the game’s business model … people aren’t spending money if they’re not playing. It just feels to me like ANet is content to be able to say they have such and such going on rather than investing the resources to do it the way that is consistent with other parts of the game.