Guild Wars 2

Will start reading the rest of the post now however,

But, guildwars 1 was by far closer than any other rpg has come to a fantastic and fundamentally outstanding pvp game.

This was enough said.

Just read the majority of it good read, I’ve been trying to explain this teamplay thing for a while now. It’s like the creators of things don’t notice what it is they did to make something great. Then when they make something else, they forgot what made it stand out to those players. However the players will never forget what it is that made them like it so much or why they stuck around for so long.

I did a video on what I think gvg should be like in this game, and reducing the damage is one of the key things for this format ONLY and will open up the teamplay we want to work properly (you can’t have this type of insane damage inside that format it would be like four hitting with a sword build in gw1, it just can’t be happening, especially without a solid healer). The combat needs to last not just be a power war 15 second battle.

Without reducing the damage the best example I can give would be like 4 coordinated eles in random arenas without a monk on the other team, or 4 coordinated old sp sins.

Wouldn’t last long, a power war, and spike spike spike, game over.

This damage reduction on all classes would be required for arenas too, however when it comes to that fire map, where you respawn, we could have the full power in that certain arena.

Gvg should also be puggable in unrated mode (say something similar to how ha worked when it says team x vs team y).

If you are wondering what the hell does damage have to do with teamplay, the less damage that there is the more coordination required to kill, the more combos needed, etc, if someones going to one hit someone theres not much coordination involved there. The better the matches are than just powered down the other team in 5 seconds (which can still happen but not every single matchup).

Similar to guidlwars1 gvg, but a territorial/kill based system that shows whose really winning the matchup.
http://www.twitch.tv/sublimistri/b/331437419

Just want to add this gem (Regarding the warrior):

Krilce.7864:

TBH, I doubt they’ll do anything to make warriors viable. There are so many fundamental design flaws in this game that they do not know how to fix it, If they haven’t done anything in 9 months, even though a warrior was subpar pretty much since release, and that JP said that they’ll be focusing on bug fixing this patch(I’m not even sure of why aren’t they making balance changes along with bug fixing concurrently), there goes another month of hell for warriors.

We are very weak against conditions, and if traited for their removal, we lose too much of pretty much everything. With traited condition removal, we cannot fill the role of spiker, which is already done better by a thief, we wouldn’t be able to bunker because of lack of access to defensive boons, the worst healing in game, and whatnot. If we go for team utility, we are again doing everything worse than other professions, so we are pretty much pigeonholed in damage specs. Hell, we can’t even spec for condi, because we don’t have access to enough conditions to cover damaging ones, so, there you go.

Our gap closers in our only viable spec are greatly affected by cripples and chills, which no other profession has problem with, because of good condition removal even when they aren’t built specifically for it. We are very easily kited, very poor in 1v1 against most professions, and quite bad in team fights too, due to lack of survivability, where we have to rely on 30 sec cd shield block, where a lot of attacks can’t even be blocked, our very limited amount of dodging, unless we are using warhorn, where you lose even that block and mega short range interrupt/burst starter.

We are the only profession, well, maybe along with necro, that needs to be babysitted, where ANet’s design philosophy was to make evey profession self reliable, by making everyone having their own heals, which for a warrior, as I’ve already said, are the worst heals in game.

Now, why are there so many problems with a warrior? First of, many of the problems aren’t really “our problems”, but rather combat/game design problems that we are greatly affected by.

First of all, there are too many evades, teleports, immunities, particle effects, AoE and condi spam. Since all of our important skills are easily telepgraphed, thus easy to dodge, which is perfectly fine, it’s insanely hard to land them on anyone that has been playing this game for a longer period of time. If they don’t have anymore dodges left, they can use short cd teleports, pretty much spammable evades, immunity, spammable blind, so they can shut us down without many problems. Meanwhile, we have no evades(well, except from ww, which is easily our greatest skill), no instant teleports, either for gap closing or running away, so we have to use our easily telepgraphed physical gap closers, which are affected by chills and cripples, though I’m repeating myself here, where ALL of the conditions are spammable, require zero brain to use in most cases. Tell me when you’ve seen someone applying poison at the moment of his opponent’s healing. No one. Or when someone uses weakness to lower his opponent energy regeneration, so he can burst/let others burst the opponent more easily, and so on. However, conditions that are affecting physical movement, aren’t lowering range of teleports, so teleports are so much batter than physical gap closers, where warrior can only rely on later, since they do not have teleports. Not to mention poor pathfinding…

Most of our traits are boring, or plain bad. I know other professions have those kinds of problems too, but you see, 9 months after release, our class specific trait, brawn, is still horrible, so warriors are underpowered in that field two. 3% burst damage increase for 30 pints in a tree, which is pretty much build defining, is really, really horrible, and I’m sorry to say this, but I really have to question intelligence of people that came up with that. I agree that 30% burst damage increase was way too powerful, but for god’s sake, couldn’t you completely revamp this kittenty trait for 9 months? Come on…

What does this game need? Less instant skills, less evade, less teleports, reduced density and intensity of particle effects, reduced aoe and condi spam, and condis, and skills in general more situational, reduced number of npcs, because, I swear it, half of the time I can’t see myself in a teamfight, and imagine a viewer of a tourney, or a shoutcaster which doesn’t know what the hell is currently happening, better telegraphed skills, just like warrior’s, or even an introduction of cast bars, because of all the kitten happening on your screen.

ANet had a winning formula. I can’t for the life of me understand why they tried to re-invent the wheel.

GankSinatra.2653:

Does anyone even know what alcopaul is talking about anymore

He’s butchering a few legitimate sciences in an attempt to claim his perspective of his motives as factually those of an entire population…
>.<

Does anyone even know what alcopaul is talking about anymore

I thought of a great idea just now. All on my own… wouldn’t it be a great idea to have Profession specific finishers? It unlocks once you’ve achieved your Profession specific champion title. So like a Mesmer specific finisher once you’ve unlocked Champion Illusionist…

Or even take it a step further and have a Ransacker specific finisher as well.

What are your views?

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Teamplay instead of this solo independent fights.. even in teams
2. GvG come on.. this game is named guild wars .. and not dragonparty 2
3. After Teamplay, the good old random arena & team arena but that can wait =)

Where is it? I do believe there is a “Guild” in the name of the game, not sure..

any thread asking for gvg gets my support, even if it’s the 100th one.

This thread is too good to be burried under a ton of random QQ about duels and whatnot.

It is without doubt one of the most spot-on threads in regards to GW vs GW2 comparison I have read so far; it explains in a very clear and argumentative manner as to why GW2 will never be a true team game, and why most players who were drawn by the innovative pvp design that is GWpvp will never be able to enjoy GW2pvp to the extent they enjoyed the pvp of GW – or they won’t enjoy it at all.
As a player who still plays GW I can honestly say that the pvping there just FEELS a whole lot better, despite all the imbalances present, than GW2 pvp does. Mind that I am not claiming that different game modes (ranging from many many broken builds in TA to the boredom fest that is HoH relic running) were perfect; I admit I raged a lot over lame builds and complained a fair deal too over general lack of proper balance, but it all pales in comparison to GW2, where I cannot even bring myself to bother anymore (minus random posts ridiculing players who believe GW2 is actually a pvp game, or to point out other GW-GW2 related issues).

Would love to see a dev comment in this gem of a thread.

Long but fantastic read. As an avid GW1 player and suffering from severe nostalgia and sense of lost potential I completely agree with everything that has been posted.

I would really love if the GW team responded to some of these issues.

@Cog Although, as has been stated, GW1 required amazing teamwork, you could always stand out. Throughout the game’s life there were celebrities in the GW world, people known for their outstanding style, their skills or their tactics. It is true that GvG required teams to act symbiotically in order to win, but you could also excel and most certainly be noticed by many.

@Cogbyrn:

In cases of GW1 players I know (myself included) it’s just we don’t find it fun.

We were being served with a delicious PvP dish for past few years and were looking forward to new restaurant’s opening. The stuff they serve us now is different, it’s okay, but different and from my experience it tastes much worse than our favourite.

We know they are the same great chefs and that they can cook our fav, but for some reason they decided to throw away the recipe and serve something new. A new customer may be delighted, but for the old ones it just isn’t it for the many different reasons highlighted in this as well as many other topics.

I hope it helps you understand.

Additionally, I think the complaints have nothing to do with the alleged elitism.
I don’t complain because I can’t find my place in GW2 or because my place was taken.
I do it because I don’t like Conquest and I don’t find it fun. I want to like it, but I can’t and since I have problems liking it, I’m not going to play it.

Now, I don’t like Conquest because GvG was so much better and I wanted it to be included here. If Anet wants people like me (and to my best knowledge there are quite a few people who share my standpoint) to play their game, they should think of adding GvG-inspired mode.

But I guess it doesn’t matter since they already have our money…

I agree completely with the OP.

Here are some major issues i’ve found with the disconnect from GW1 to GW2.

- Team composition, tactics, and strategy seem to be marginalized in Guild Wars 2.
- Skill design is lazy and ineffective. Most skills are outclassed or just not viable for any solid building like in GW2, again marginalized systems. Builds don’t seem as solid and they don’t seem to matter individually and integrally to team composition. Very homogeneous.
- Progression systems like Traits seem very short-sighted and half-baked. They don’t really deliver much in the way of solid, tangible means of character building. On top of that, there’s really no way to communicate builds to other players effectively, making strategy and group composition even harder.
-Class roles and lines are blurred, everyone can do anything…not really an engaging experience from a design perspective. Diversity is the spice of life.
- There are obvious problems with player engagement in regards to the static weapon skill bars. Easier to balance, but fun for the player?
- Elite skill options are an absolute joke when considering how they mattered in GW1.
-Lacking basic features like moving the UI or seeing enemy dots on a minimap. You’re not helping immersion, you’re kittening the gameplay.
-The obvious “watering-down” of skill and combat systems to suit casualized content design.

I like this thread, it deserves to be on top. Even if I did not play GW1.

Sol Haer.5187:

GW1 started as a pvp based game and ended in a balancing train wreck, OP did you even play it?

Did you?
Your questions is unneeded, if you got something to say, then do it in more constructive way.

We are all aware what mistakes Anet did, biggest one being letting gw1 to become empty place, not caring about balance and giving us updates we needed.

PvP wasn’t wrong, balance team was, and Anet as whole making some stupid moves (Heroes in HA, etc.).

So if you have something to say, then don’t bash PvP in gw1, or gw1 itself, bash Anet for letting it down. Thank you!

GW2 pvp just feels like random stuff thrown together, with no thought applied to whether quickness, retaliation, and high damaging NPC spam would be making a joke out of the game.

Comparing gw2 pvp to gw1 its like this game is made by some small indie dev team, not arena net, casualized to feel and play more like WoW, while being far less twitchy than what it is trying to be. Not a single part of the game feels engaging enough to be played long term.

I see myself quitting at rank 30 as it will simply require too much grinding from that point, while the gameplay just isnt up to par to make that enjoyable enough. There’s only so many 6x mesmers and guardians, quickness abusing thiefs and warriors per team you can fight before throwing up in boredom and disgust. Doing that straight for 15k glory required per rank for 10 ranks? No thanks.

Good read, I never played GW1 pvp all that much but I can see the differences posted here and agree completely.

Execellent read, and i couldn’t agree more, while the current mechanisums provide good entry game types for players, the game feels like players are thrown into a mixer, and does not provide solid team based play.

Completely agree. 10/10

10/10
have i to put +1 all the posts or is just enought to put +1 at the first post to make this thread important? gg

Nice one, easy enjoyable read and I agree almost 100%.
The skill tree with the double class model, the hidden mechanics within skills/skill-combos, the steep learning curve of some game modes and the implied strategies made GW1 a really complex game, were achieving balance was impossible.

GW2 got rid of some of those hard to grasp concepts or replaced them with something that is easier to understand.
I’m still not sure how it will play out, we’ll see if whats was gained will compensate for the what was actually lost.

What I see now, is that most people play the game as a collection of “I or self” and do not explore the combos and such. GW2 teamplay now is mostly agreeing upon the split tactics and calling for roamers to help. I rarely see teams that use coordinated attacks with well times chained CC to finish off targets.

Shutdown only goes to the extent of stopping a player from resurrecting their allies. So no pre-burst/spike shutdown of a support class is actually done/needed. This also makes the game much much simpler, and I don’t know if this was a good move. Preparing an attack is just as important as the execution, and in these terms there isn;t much of a requirement in GW2 other than positioning.

Impressive insight!

There is pretty much nothing to be added. As I wrote in Another thread there are things Conquest achieves. It just is colorless and bleak.

The fundamentals were noble, but I think they lost it in the process. It is completely fixable both technically and conceptually. But it would require developers to look back and admit Conquest isn’t perfect. Then they would need to sit down and build a new PvP mode from scratch.

I would also add that in my view the idea of making GW2 an e-sport is long forgone. The Conquest is just unsustainable as an e-sport.

• Maps are too small and simple to provide long-term entertainment for viewers – I don’t know about others – but I can’t imagine myself watching a stream of a few randomly rotating maps in a multiple team tournament. Conquest with its maps doesn’t have League of Legends scale, complexity and possible scenarios.
• The matches are too short. With every match pretty much ending in 15 minutes it just isn’t enough to tell a story and show rivalry. Messy things happen very fast in multiple places with no single point to hold on to. In League of Legends the focus points are usually being carried by junglers in early game, then by whole teams during mid-late game. Conquest just doesn’t work like that in so many ways.

I think Anet needs to realise that to be able to move on.

A man who gets it. As hard as it is to accept the facts you stated, you have to admit they are true in almost every regard.

The only thing though is that you limited your statements to GvG only. Guild Wars 1 had plenty of other game modes in PvP. HA being the best example.

The lines in hoh were often a little more blurred with more defensive team builds resulting in less ability to punish the enemy for over extending but more ability to sustain agressive pressure. This came partially because of builds intending to hold the alter and partially because of the lack of team splitting objectives (bar relic run)

At any rate, i ish agree, but im just down about the whole thing right now.

I feel like we went from legos to linkin logs, because we did. We dumbed it down, and no matter how we try to add back the depth of strategy that i loved… 5th graders might feel challenged being asked to go back and do multiplication flash cards with 3rd graders, they might not be that fast… but theyre bound to miss getting asked a fraction question. I wanted to be challenged in a way that this game will probably never offer.

Its actually a real dissapointment because im hardly a rocked surgeon. Im a janitor who might complete a bacgelore degree in something not too hard some day.  i shouldnt have to feel like im too smart for a videogame community, i really shouldnt.

Diage, that was mostly spot-on and a very enjoyable read at that. I tip my hat to you.

Sadly, many of your points and concerns have been brought up before – and have fallen on deaf ears. I highly doubt the format will see major changes, as much as many of us wish for it to happen.
The approach of maximum popularity through ease of access versus (overly) complex mechanics simply reflects the current state of media development and publishing.

I fear it is exactly as Lailendil stated six months ago. Anet doesn’t have the resources to make big changes to pvp even if they wanted to so all they can do is try to make the best of the current situation, and even that is very little. It’s not like the devs don’t know what we are saying here, they just can’t do anything about it.

Great post!
That just reminded me how great GW1 was!
To me, GW1 was meant to be a PvP game and ended in a more PvE one (with great PvP content).
GW2 just seem to be a PvE “bad” game with very little “PvP” content.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Anet has the human/financial resources to deal with any of those remarks.

Please, God, prove me wrong!