Guild Wars 2

You all bring up some good points too, let me try to summarize the main points I was trying to get across as perhaps the length of the post made it more difficult to understand. My main problem with this game is that, while fun, playing for fun sake’s is only good for so long. When you get burnt out on it, without meaningful rewards, there’s no reason to come back. Unfortunately, this happens too soon for my liking, it only took me a year before I felt like I’ve done everything to the fullest, and everything that is new is just more of the same without any new rewards. I’d like to come back to GW2, but because of this I feel there’s no reason to. I’ve already done all the fun content to the point where it isn’t very fun anymore. The lack of player interaction while doing these things (not counting dungeons and guild events) also makes it less fun. I go through entire sessions of WvW and world bosses without seeing a single player say a single thing all the time. There’s no need for player communication because everyone has the same role, it feels like a MOBA game, or a single player rpg. And the lack of character customization makes it even less fun. Each class has 1 or 2 builds that are viable despite having tons of options. So many useless ways to make your character. Being forced into 1 or 2 particular builds rather than having my own unique build takes away from the satisfaction I get from playing the game ESPECIALLY when everyone has the same role. I’m not trying to say GW2 NEEDS the holy trinity, but because it doesn’t, it needs a lot more viable build customization than it has.

Perhaps the people who feel the same way I do have already left and are not here to express their agreement. But I have a feeling that many of you will eventually feel the same way I do. It’s fun when you first start playing, but when you get to max level, it only goes down hill from there.

Or perhaps in the end, maybe my mistake is asking Guild Wars 2 to be more of a hardcore mmorpg when it was designed to be a casual mmorpg? As I read on, it seems most of you here are casual mmorpg players. Maybe my problem with GW2 is the fact that its a casual mmorpg, but I want a hardcore mmorpg? I was never sure if GW2 was meant to SPECIFICALLY be a casual mmorpg rather than a hardcore mmorpg, I always thought it was supposed to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers.

Please don’t be put off by the title. I’m not making this thread to bash the game or say any other game is better. I’m making this thread to see if anyone else agrees with the problems I have with this game: meaning the philosophy behind its structure. If my points are valid then I hope the devs will see this and choose a new course for GW2 in future expansions to encourage players to return and keep playing. I love GW2 I truly do. I played this game since beta. But I found myself lacking interest in it for a long time now after playing almost non-stop for about 2 years. This game was hella fun for the first year I played, but by the second year I started noticing things that made me less and less interested and invested in this game until I found myself playing off and on by the third year, and then eventually loosing all interest in this game and lacking motivation to return despite the new expansion and the new content.
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Again, I’m not trying to bash GW2, I’m not trying to say its a “Bad” game, but rather, lacking greatness. Overall I’d give it a B rating. It’s not the “special” mmorpg I thought it would be, and I’ll try to explain why its not the special mmorpg the developers thought it would be either. And I’m making this post because I believe GW2 has a ton of potential, and it can be the great MMROPG it ought to be. The main problem behind the design philosophy of GW2 is it disallows its mechanics to be taking to its fullest advantage. There’s A LOT of untapped potential in GW2 that will make it a much MUCH better game, but the philosophy of the developers is keeping that potential from being used.
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The goal of GW2 was to be different, to eliminate the need for grinding, to change up the way you progressed, how you interacted with other players, and to take things where no other mmorpg wanted to go at the time. But some of these things were not actually very different at all in the end, and many of these things, which initially sounded like great revolutionary ideas, have actually hurt the game more than helped in the end in my opinion. Maybe some of you here will agree ESPECIALLY if you’ve gotten to what is considered as “end game” and have been there for a while. One of the biggest problem with the philosophy behind the design of GW2 is that, while it is different and refreshing, it only is until you start seeing the repetitiveness of heart quests and world events you experience during map completion. This is when you realize that, as far as pve goes, you’re essentially still doing the exact same things as you would do in any other mmo. The only thing that’s different is the way you accept and turn in quests. And the only thing that has been changed as far as the holy trinity goes is who has the responsibility for tanking, healing and dps. Instead of one person per role, GW2 has all roles for each person. This, combined with the fact that there are only 1 to 2 viable builds per class despite the excess of options, in my opinion, has actually degraded combat into something more akin to a single player action rpg, or a MOBA game, or for WvW, a Dynasty Warriors game where victory feels even less satisfying, and has eliminated all sense of teamwork, which has eliminated the need for communication/player interaction during combat. All the while, probably the biggest problem this game has is the content-to-reward ratio HEAVILY lacking causing end game to quickly feel like the “end” of the road, which in turn leads to a lack in motivation to actually experience any more of the content the game has to offer. I will try to explain each of these points in great detail.
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This game is a hell of amount of fun while leveling up and getting new gear. But that fun quickly disappears once you reach max level and get full exotic equipment and skins you like. One of the biggest problems I found with this game is that, while there is tons of fun end game content, there’s really not much reason to do any of it. I’ve completed the main story,done a few dungeons and fractals, and got full ascended gear (which honestly is NOT worth the massive time/money investment since its not much better than easily obtained exotics, nor do they look much better either) but that’s all I’ve done as far as pve goes. I tried starting the extra end game story missions but I can’t get into it because there’s really no reason for me to do them. Nor is there any reason for me to do the hundreds of dynamic events/world bosses available to me at end game. I have not bought the expansion, nor do I feel the need to. Nor do I feel the need to do the new raids since the only rewards I can possible get aren’t any better than what I already have. Not worth my $30 if you ask me. I feel that Anet has officially missed the mark when it comes to motivating players to return and continue playing GW2. This is why I stopped playing and have no intentions on returning as long as the game continues to be like this. Which makes me a little sad inside, I still love this game but I feel I have no reason to come back. It’s a bitter sweet feeling caused by a fundamentally flawed design philosophy, the philosophy that our rewards should mostly be cosmetic than anything else.
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Here is the next huge problem I have with the design philosophy behind GW2: The developers thought it would be a good idea to remove the holy trinity, and this seemed like a great idea at first. But now I can see that this change has actually hurt the game more than helped. Most of you here should have noticed this by now also, if you’ve been at end game for awhile, that everyone basically has the same role. Show up, attack, and survive. This pretty much eliminates the need for communication/player interaction, and the fact that tons of players all doing the same even do so in complete silence is a testament to that. Every time I do a world boss/dynamic event, or even WvW, I RARELY ever see anyone talking, and I’m rarely talking with anyone because there’s no need to. There’s no need for coordination because there’s no set roles. Just show up, follow the leader, and hope you have enough man power to succeed. That’s all dynamic events and WvW amounts to. All these other players might as well be npcs because there’s no interaction going on! This makes GW2 game feel like a single player game even though there are tons of players running around me. If you ask me, that’s problematic design right there. MMORPGS are fun because of player interaction, that’s what separates them from single player rpgs. GW2 has absolutely no need for it, and consequently, GW2 is heavily lacking in this department.
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Yes I am aware that there are Guild events which do need communication and interaction. This is pretty much the only thing in the game that requires you to talk with other players and work as a team. Even dungeons require some team work, but not much. The problem here AGAIN is the lack of rewards, thus the lack of motivation do to them to begin with. The only meaningful rewards to get from Guild events are ascended accessories which doesn’t take too long to get a full set of ascended accessories (not counting ascended armor and weapons which take FOREVER), nor are they required for anything because they’re not much better than exotics. So once you have them, as far as I have seen, there is absolutely no reason to continue doing dungeons or guild events. And there’s not much need to even get ascended equipment in the first place! Pvp also gives you almost no rewards at all other than some skins which you might or might not like and bragging rights.
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Those are the main problems with PVE. And here’s the problem with PvP. Getting good at pvp doesn’t take much time because every class has 1 or 2 viable builds and you will either suck if you don’t choose one of those builds or be at least decent if you play one of those builds long enough. There’s really no rewards for doing pvp other than titles, some skins which you may or may not like, and bragging rights. The lack of customization between classes makes being “the best” at pvp like being the best at playing poker. You have a limited set of cards and how well you do is determined by how well you play those cards. And let’s not lie, winning due to blind luck rather than skill occurs FAR too often, at least for my liking. And the fact that you’re forced into playing 1 or 2 builds when there’s so many options to choose from really takes away from the satisfaction of winning in pvp as well. It’s very easy to get to the point where you’re playing the class as it should be played and there’s not much room to improve after that. Most players I’ve played against are also on this level, if you play very competitively, getting to the point where the amount of skill needed to win is about the same as an FPS game, or a MOBA game when sheer luck is not involved. This makes the entirety of structured PVP fun, but only for a couple hours before you really start to feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again for no reason other than to kill time. Sure there’s the real life tournaments, but seriously, what are the chances any one person will ever get to participate in one?
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WvW is a little different, but not by much. Its also REALLY fun to play at first, especially if you’re playing directly with a friend, or better yet, a group of friends. But when you’re not, it can still be fun but only for so long. The above mentioned issues also effect WvW. There’s new elements to take advantage of such as siege weapons. But when it comes down to it, all WvW it really amounts to is joining a game, following the tagged commander, and going from objective to objective. I’ve been doing WvW for a very long time, its my favorite thing to do next to structured pvp in GW2. But again this mode of game play lacks rewards. There’s really no reason to do it other than to kill some time. And that’s fine at first, but you quickly start to feel as though you’re doing the same thing over and over for absolutely no reason at all. The castles are all structured the same for example, break the door down, kill the boss, capture the point, move on. That’s only fun for so long. When you get to that point there’s really no reason to continue, and when you stop there’s really no need to go back to doing it if you’re satisfied with how well you are at it. And due to the large numbers involved in WvW I would argue that it takes EVEN LESS skill in WvW than in structured pvp to get things accomplished because the biggest factor in determining who wins is who has the bigger army. This is also where the lack of roles hurts the most. I’ve been in some MASSIVE three-way WvW battles, and it was COMPLETE SILENCE. No one was saying a single word. Everyone was just mindlessly doing their rotation over and over with no objective other than to kill their targets. Because there are no set roles, there is no team work, no coordination, and absolutely no player interaction even though there was seemingly hundreds of players all fighting right before my eyes. I explained how pve dynamic events/world bosses feels very much like a single player rpg, and structure pvp feels like a MOBA game… Well, WvW feels like I’m playing a single player Dynasty Warriors game. It’s almost EXACTLY like playing any random Dynasty Warrior game. Unless you’re directly playing with friends, and that only happens every so often.
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In conclusion, I have to first apologize for this very long post. If you’ve gotten this far then I thank you. I want to know if anyone here feels the same way. If so then I think this is all the more reason for the developers to change their philosophy about how this game needs to be designed in order to encourage players to return and keep playing. The game needs more rewards worth getting. The game needs well-defined class roles which complement each other role. You don’t even have to go back to the holy trinity, you should make it to where each class can perform each specific role due to its build. For example, each class should have 3 different skill trees, 1 offense skill tree, 1 utility skill tree, and 1 support skill tree. Let us choose different skills between these trees so we can either be a jack of all trades, or a pure dps, pure tank, or pure healer. Or instead of the holy trinity it could be something like dps, crowd control, and buffing. I can come up with tons of different unique roles each skill tree can do other than the holy trinity, not sure why this is a problem for developers. This will eliminate the need to find healers or tanks before people can do dungeons because anyone can actively switch to that role on the fly. This will give everyone more things to do, more reasons to continue playing, and the satisfaction of victory due to team work.

Seera, don’t you think it would be much easier and better if we were able to hot key 2 or 3 skills to one key? These kinds of lay outs are messy and prone to error. Eles have long cool downs, so if you hit the wrong key, you’re kind of screwed.

Valiant, it doesn’t slow you down because when you use a skill, there is a pre-determined amount of time that you set, and if you hit the key again in that amount of time, then you use the next skill. In TERA, mine are set to 0.5 seconds, s it doesn’t slow me down at all.

Here’s what a full key bind would look like if this system were implements (using my keybinds as a left hander)

IJKL – Movement
> – Jump
UO – Target nearest and next
M1 – auto attack
M2 – Skill rotations 1-5
M3 – Elite
N – Atunement changes

Doesn’t this look much better? This can be possible with the combo system from TERA. It would vastly cut down on errors, vastly increase playabilty for most players, everyone could easily and efficiently use the action cam system, AND it would probably make players abandon TERA for GW2. I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be done and every reason why it should.

And just because I was curious, I asked in a very populated Heart of the Mist pvp lobby if ANYONE was able to, as an elementalist, use the action camera system efficiently in pvp. You know what the reply was? Complete silence. Even if some can do it, it doesn’t make the fact that most can’t OK. So for most players, the action cam system is pretty much useless as it is. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I want to say this though, even though some people would have stopped reading long ago it seems, I’m not in any way asking for this to be done right now. I’m perfectly fine using the old camera. But I really love TERA’s battle system and the addition of the action cam made me remember just how awesome GW2 would be if everyone could use it all the time like in TERA. But I think this is something that should be done sometime in the future. If you disagree, then I’m sorry for trying to make the game better.

Trinram, I have played WoW and not had any problems. I think you’re misunderstanding the problem.

Trinram said "IT easy to key bind in this game im using Razer Deathadder "

That’s precisely one of the problems. Why should anyone have to buy an expensive extra mouse JUST to make the game easy to play? The game might as well come with one in that case. And as far as I’m aware, there aren’t any left handed models, so, that leaves many players out of that option.

Healiz said “You can if you really want. Simply rebind the mouse’s right click function. Use AHK for example.”

No one plays like that so that’s not even a real response.

My other point is, for many players, even if you can reach every key without moving your hand, its very difficult to keep track of it all and not constantly hit the wrong key by accident. That’s where the cursor comes in as a handicap for those who can’t manage so many hot keys all at once. With the action cam, you can’t use that anymore. Maybe I was mistaken to say its totally useless because it doesn’t appear possible to me.

Main point is its overly complicated when it doesn’t need to be. So much so that it makes if very inaccessible for many players.

I’m starting to wonder how big your guy’s hands are compared to your keyboard. I have very large hands so it’s pretty difficult to manage many hot keys close to each other as well. There’s too many factors that go into play for me to list them all. But TERA’s combo system can fix all of that.

Hyrule, you use a Naga Razor mouse. or something similar correct? And secondly, no you cannot use ANY button as a hot key. Try using right click as a hot key. Please know what you’re talking about before you make fun of me. The solution is the combo system that TERA uses. If any of you played TERA, you would agree.

I’m pretty sure none of you will agree with yourself if you take the action camera system into pvp. Try it. Even if you manage to make it work, its overly tedious when it doesn’t need to be. TERA doesn’t have this problem because of the combo system. You’re being very selfish if you think just because you can do it then the game doesn’t need to be programmed for other players to be able to do it too. Guild Wars 2 needs the same combo system to make the game much more practical to actually play using the action cam system.

Secondly, no, you cannot use ANY button as a hot key. Try using right click as a hot key. Maybe you guys need to know what you’re talking about before you try to make fun of me.

It’s not easy or effective to do that in pvp, especially when having to also hot key 4 atunements.

Hello everyone. I’ve been playing GW2 since launch back in August of 2012. I mostly play competitively in structured pvp and wvw. I haven’t played any other class very much except for the elementalist because an elementalist is just so much fun! I’ve also played TERA, which many of you know, is the only other MMO (NOT true, I made a mistake about this, sorry) with this action cam system. I’m not a fan of TERA’s playable content, although they have a very good battle system going on.

But there’s a problem with GW2’s attempt at the action cam system. When it is activated, you immediately lose access to any skills that are not hot keyed. This is more pronounced of a problem on the elementalist, who has 4 additional skills (the atunements) that need to be hot keyed bringing the count up to 14. When you play competitively, like I do, you know that constant attention is required. You can never look down at your keyboard when in the heat of battle to make sure you’re pressing the right keys. Even on a keyboard, it’s impossible to hot key 13 different skills and use them effectively without moving your hand off of your movement keys and losing mobility. Even using toggle keys becomes problematic when you have to constantly keep track of 13 different button combinations and remember which does what.

Hence the problem. This new action cam system cannot even be used in pvp. Maybe it can be with a specially designed mouse like the Naga Razor. But for players who cannot afford one, or those who are left handed like me, cannot even use this new feature. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s pretty obvious Arena Net copied this new system directly from TERA. But the reason why it works in TERA is because of TERA’s combo system. It allows you to hot key multiple skills to the SAME button. After using the initial skill, you have a predetermined amount of seconds to press the button again to activate the next skill. So I ask you ANET… Please create a combo macro system just like in TERA to accommodate the action cam system. Because at this point in time, the action cam system is a worthless addition that does nothing but make the game harder to play.

EDIT: I want to add that if you do this, you’ll probably win over many of Tera’s players as well. It’s just good for business. I really hope to see it in the future.

Hello everyone, so I just logged in today and I’m being asked if I want to set up an SMS security feature for my account. Please correct me if I’m wrong but does this SMS security feature entail that logging in to my GW2 account will be restricted until I put in a code, and this code is sent via text message to my phone? Part of me thinks this sounds like a good idea, but the other part of me wants to say no for the same reasons I don’t have this enabled on any of my other accounts. So, if I enable this SMS feature, I would like to know if I’d experience any of these issues:

First of all, my only phone is a pay-as-you-go cell phone, meaning I pay for a month of service each month instead of having a contract. This is because on some months I cannot afford to have a phone. When I have to go without a phone, some times a new customer will get my phone number if they activate a new phone in my area when my phone is out of service. Because of this, I can never be sure whether or not I will have an active phone next month, nor can I ever be sure that I’ll have the same phone number after having to go without a phone.

So my questions are: If I have this SMS feature enabled, on the months that I have to go without phone service, can I quickly and easily disable the SMS feature so I can actually still play? Or would I have to go through the lengthy process of sending in a ticket and waiting for a response? And if my phone number suddenly changes, would I be able to quickly and easily change the phone number associated with my account? Or would I also have to go through the lengthy process of submitting a ticket and waiting for a response?

I guess another way to ask this is, can I disable this SMS feature even if I don’t currently have phone service on my own? Or would I have to send a ticket to support? And would I be able to change the phone number associated with my account even after my actual phone number as changed on my own? Or would I have to send a ticket to support for that as well?

Please let me know, and thanks for any answers in advance!

Also, if the answer is that I’d have to either make sure SMS is disabled BEFORE my phone service gets shut off, send in a ticket to get it disabled, or if I can’t actually change my associated phone number without sending in a ticket, then please do NOT force this feature upon any of us, not even new customers/accounts. My brother is going to start playing soon and we do not have reliable phone service because we cannot always afford it. And if this feature gets forced upon him, or if it gets forced upon anyone else who can’t always afford a phone, you’re going to make it VERY difficult for people like us to continue playing.

Absolutely right Elrey, which is why in my original email to Arena Net support, I included the suggestion to change that. But I could not include it here because of the 5000 character limit. In Guild wars 1, if a character was close enough for your client to render them, you could target them with key binds. Not so in Guild Wars 2! The game should allow you to target far away players with key binds. Its not easy to click on far away targets which makes it difficult to develop a pre-battle strategy.

Which is my 8th suggestion: As long as a character can be rendered by the client, you should be able to target them with key binds.

Please note that this is not a topic discussing how thieves are OP, or how elementalists should be more powerful. In fact, I believe Arena Net has done well so far at balancing the classes. This is a game play mechanic vs game play mechanic topic. This topic is mainly about the issues of how the game was programmed that makes it very unfair for certain players. Which is why we need these changes.

And please don’t say “you just suck” because this is untrue. Despite these disadvantages and emphasizing on playing the elementalist, I have often found myself at the top of the player list in structured PVP.

With all that said, I hope that the following problems will be fixed in the near future:

Targeting problems:

These problems are even more problematic when you consider the fact that some skills REQUIRE the correct target in order to be of any use at all. And some skills have long cool downs, so if you use them on the wrong target by accident because of these problems, chances are you’re done for. And also, because of these problems, players are constantly having to look up at who their target is. This distracts them from the fight and makes them very vulnerable.

1. When a player goes invisible, the target lock on them drops. This is fine. But once the invisible character becomes visible again, the target lock does NOT return! This is a HUGE advantage for those who can go invisible and a HUGE disadvantage for those who cannot because now you have to click all over the screen to try to target them again while they’re constantly attacking you.

2. While trying to target nearest players, you have to cycle through pets and summons! This is a HUGE advantage for those who have summons and pets, and a HUGE disadvantage for those who don’t. When I say “summons and pets”, I am NOT including mesmer clones because they’re supposed to be a distraction. But its extremely difficult to not accidentally target pets or summons. And in some cases, you do so without even realizing with until its too late.

3. There is no option to use a custom key bind for deselecting your target! Big problem when trying to flee. You have to constantly press the escape button to deselect the target, but then the game menu pops up! Now you have to exit out of this. And by the time you did, you’re dead.

4. Because left clicking is used to target players AND move the camera, while trying to move the camera, often you accidentally click on a player, now you’ve changed your target accidentally to something you don’t want.

UI problems:

The main problem with the UI and where the razor naga users have a HUGE advantage over non razor naga users, or non users of similar devices, is the ability to place your skills where you need them on your skill bar. For a razor naga user, all they have to do is key bind skills in a certain order of buttons on the side of their mouse. Now they can run, jump, and use their skills without ever having to look at the skill bar. But for non users of such devices, we constantly are having to look down at our skill bar to see which skill we want to use making us extremely vulnerable. Huge advantage for users of such devices, huge disadvantage for others. This is what makes Guild Wars 2, a PAY TO WIN game. Why should players be forced to have a fixed skill bar when every other mmo allows you the flexibility of a dynamic skill bar? You may think that using key binds such as shift+[insert key] solves this problem. That sort of key binding increases your chances of hitting the wrong skills! And worse yet, you would have to change ALL of those key binds every time you switch characters or builds! The way key binds for weapon skills in Guild wars 2 is set up is simply not viable, unreliable, and obsolete. And it makes playing the game very frustrating and unfair.

Changes that should be made:

1. Auto-Retarget visible players who are coming out of invisibility if they were targeted before they went into invisibility, and if the player targeting them had not changed their target while their target is invisible.

2. Option available to never allow key binds to select summons or pets (this should NOT include mesmer clones).

4. Option to toggle a lock target feature via key bind so that the target cannot be changed unless you press the same key bind once more.

5. Option to key bind deselection of your target.

6. Option to disable targeting via clicking and/or Option to allow right clicking for targeting.

7. Option to allow positioning of weapon skills on the skill bar in the skill slots where you want and need them to be. Their positions on the skill bar needs to be saved per character and per weapon combination so that it does not revert on character change or weapon change.

Wow… so I have to pay $60 for a special mouse just to be able to compete. That is so stupid. If the interface wasn’t so horribly programmed, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.

Hello guys. I recently started pvping with my ele and what a nightmare. No I dont suck, I been the top player a few times. Problem is when I have to 1v1 some one. Crappy interface problems aside, I’ve been watching videos of people pvping with an ele and some how they are able to use skills with hot keys, move the character, AND move the camera all at the same time without changing any hotkeys. How the hell do they do this? Do they have 3 hands or what? Any advice appreciated, thanks.