Guild Wars 2

I like to add to the chorus that Cantha was my favorite game from the GW1 series. I loved the setting of a hyper-metropolis (mostly these are in Sci-fi “megacities”). While GW2 feels like a classic man vs nature, tale. The stories told in Cantha seemed to have more of a man vs man/himself, (the evil that is brought about through vengance and division…or something like that).

Tyria is a land that largely belongs to the wild, Mountains, oceans, jungles, and swamps claim the landscape and humanity lives against that wild. This makes for beautiful scenery: forests, mountains, canyons and so on; but also familiar and, in ways, predictable scenery. Tyria is about external threats from without the walls and fortresses of man.

Cantha is the opposite, in Kaineng City was about the wild inside of the domain we claim as our own. This made for a tremendously amazing setting with complex buildings, bizarre architectures, glorious colours. This was a place where humanity is a permanent hum in the air, as if you’re immersed in it. This made for much more creative landscapes and city-scapes as these are reflections of what we have create for ourselves. Cantha was about the enemies that come from within our civilizations and the enemies that we make of ourselves (think of Kurzick vs. Luxon).

I think that Cantha would be a fantastic addition to the GW2 series somewhere down the road (GW2 will need and expansion eventually, hopefully soonish), and I would like to see it feature Cantha!

If there are reservations based of cultural appeal, I’d like to remind that WoW’s recent expansion heavily featured Asian themes, and they seem to be doing just fine so far!

The reason I think I would prefer to have a low level cap is because a high level cap limits me from rolling a whole bunch of avatars and customizing all of them. The changes I suggest could make the full progression of the character much longer and seem more fulfilling at the same time. Instead of just getting a trait point and a few stat bumps per level (which is essentially what the whole 1-80 leveling process is). I’d rather be as powerful as I’m going to get very early, and then spend a my time diversifying and customizing my builds and abilities as I see fit. If I wanted to sink a bunch of time into one particular character, in GW1 I could do so by hunting down skills (or traits I think would work well for this purpose in GW2). But the point was I was at my maximum power very quickly and this made the game more engaging, I could spend my time anywhere I wanted. Instead I feel more than a bit channeled in GW2, forced to spend a great deal of time on a weak character unable to get right into the events, dungeons, gear customizing that I want to. Once this is fine, but I don’t feel like repeating the leveling process twice let alone 8 times (for all the professions). For a game about collectables, having more characters to collect stuff on is better than having fewer.

I really enjoyed playing GW1 and I now also enjoy GW2. In many ways GW2 is superior to GW1, however the character progression in this game seems less satisfying than my character progression in GW1. The leveling changes have made GW2 much more tedious for me than GW1 did. There are a couple key differences between the 2 games that I am talking about.

1. GW1 had a very short leveling process, I could do it in a day if I wanted to. GW2 takes weeks, sometimes months (for me anyways). Yes I’m not the fastest, but, I find grinding to cap level to be a very painstaking process. It simultaneously limits my ability to make a whole bunch of alts (I love making alts, but I don’t want to repeat the same tedious leveling process every time). This is one of my least favorite aspects of WoW and I was not happy it made it into the game. In GW1, character level maxed out, I was as powerful as I was going to be (stat and SkillPoint wise). It was only a matter of customizing my play style, if I wanted more hammer skills or sword skills. It also made the game about collecting armor sets etc. to customize my appearance. Which I could do across all of my characters, sometimes I even made more than one character of a class just to get different looks.

Here’s what I think should be done. Cap the levels lower, say at level 20 (min) or 40 (max), and give us all our trait points. Keep the current skill unlock system with skill points etc. But make traits a treasure hunt like elite skills were in GW1. There are more than enough traits to make this a long process for completionists, and a short enough process for someone who just wants to setup one or two builds. This would also give people reasons to revisit old maps, and to expend skill points on yet something else. Furthermore, this could be used to channel people to content. For example, putting copies of a monster with the “trait” you want to capture at the end of a jumping puzzle or a mini-dungeon. Or an actual dungeon.

2. Solo vs Group story quests. The problem with story quests in GW1 was that they limited you from progressing to the rest of the map. This was not so bad in prophecies, but in factions, it was very frustrating. But GW2 changed that, your story quests now instance you in the world. This is great. However, I do miss having to party up with people in these quests, they were like the dungeons but more interesting because it was the main storyline in the game. In GW2 I would like to see this eventually. I think this could be easily facilitated by having the story quests “recommend” at least 2 or 3 players. Then the story quests could all start in towns or camps (near waypoints), so people on the same story step would be meeting up in a town or outpost to start their quests. I think this would naturally encourage people to group up because it is convenient.

What do you guys think of this idea: I think that it could be implemented somewhat easily (although don’t quote me on that). I think something like making mini-games available from some of the pvp servers. A simple rotation of the existing mini-games would do. This would keep me playing around in the mist even when there’s nothing to do.

I made a suggestion, here’s the link if you want to read it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Make-mini-games-available-from-the-Mists/first#post606934

Good point. I know that I wanted to play the lunatic inquisition with a guildie and had to que and reque to get in to the same match. But I think this could be easily solved by having a similar system to the current hot-join pvp matches. In these matches you can select the server you want to join (making it easy to match up with friends and guildies) or you can just hot-join to a random game.

I Know ANet has some pretty fun mini games up it’s sleeve such as Keg Brawling, recent Halloween mini-games (Lunatic inquisition and Reaper’s rumble) and the Hunger Games event from BWE3. I also remember the festivals in GW1 had an amazing variety of mini-arenas, roller-beetle racing and other creative events. I think it would attract a lot of people if these mini-games were made available from the Isle of the Mist (PvP Isle). This could be done with a mini-games “randoms” arena NPC with a map rotation of all the current mini-games built into GW2.

It’s just a shame that the effort ANet has put into these fun mini-games often go unappreciated because there are not enough people playing them. For example, keg brawling matches have all but disappeared because no one spends time in the Norn city. So instead of scattering mini-games around the world and hoping enough people will visit the area just to play it, why not make access to all mini-games available from one place?

TCS, is hoping to find 2 – 3 regular players for tPvP we currently run PvP matches daily between 8pm – 2am EST. We generally have 3 players and are looking for 2-3 more to be regulars. We do quite decently with just 3 regulars .

We have a vent server, and plan on getting serious about tPvP. So if you are amiable, decently skilled and are looking for a team to get serious with send a message to Grytt Dream on Northern Shiverpeaks or leave a reply to this post!