Guild Wars 2

A lot of this has probably been said, but maybe there’s some value in repeated points:

1. Not enough reward for time spent. Anything fun about the event is muffled by the realization of how much time I’d have to invest to walk away with fun goodies. Maybe I like candy, but I’d hate myself eating it all day.

2. The gap in time between events puts players on the game’s schedule and not their own schedule. There is a lot of “waiting in line” for the amount of playtime spent. Events that can be jumped into at any time work much better in my opinion.

3. Disconnecting removes all hope of any reward. I don’t personally have this issue, but I remember times when I did and I can imagine the frustrations. Even something as simple as individuals monsters dropping loot would fix this.

4. No exp or karma rewards, which is especially odd given our new players. And sometimes the fun thing about events is having a novel way to level up or try a new character. That’s not possible here, and I’m failing to understand why they’re absent.

5. Because there’s no exp reward, it’s almost impossible to tell when one has successfully tagged into one of the events. There doesn’t feel like there’s enough monsters per player either.

6. Cooperation doesn’t feel as rewarded as individual selfishness. The zergs are scattered and waypointing everywhere, and it’s easy to get separated from friends in the mess. My favorite part of events is the feeling of armies of players banding together, even if it’s as a zerg, and that feeling’s not in this one.

Also cries at the devs not wanting to play with us. What event do you want to play with us? Make those events, not these events.

Oh my god I need a tome specialized guardian yesterday.

More seriously, I only ever used Tome of Courage for Light of Deliverance, so I can’t say I hate the idea. But I’ll miss Judgment. So flashy. Even if flashy was all it had going for it.

“Now that I have Thing, how dare you ever give new players the same opportunity to get Thing.”

Don’t lose your sense of personal value over other people getting to enjoy the stuff you did, c’mon man.

Leveling in this game feels like an extended tutorial and a way to gradually introduce new players to skills, traits, and dungeons. But there would be other ways to do that. (If you still “leveled up” for skill points, for example.)

In my opinion they mainly exist because we’re trained to think leveling in MMOs is supposed to exist, kind of like MP systems persisting in a lot of MMOs/RPGs despite the fact that resource management isn’t even that fun most of the time.

It wouldn’t alter much about the game to remove them, except for needing to find a new way to introduce players to new dungeons gradually, and finding a new way to gate traits/skills in a way that doesn’t overwhelm new players. (GW2 could stand to re-redo it’s whole idea of how traits work, but that’s another post.)

It was working normally the past couple of nights for me, but today my daily did not reset.

Adding to Shriketalon’s new points, I agree, the Pact has to go. But not only for the reasons stated.

One of my issues with the personal story is I play it often with a friend. We can’t both be the Commander. Not everyone in Tyria can be the Commander. Players want to be recognized for being the Commander, and who can blame them? They went through an entire storyline being the Commander.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to treat the player of an MMO like they hold a unique position. Not because the player character shouldn’t be important. Far from it. The lack of involvement is one of the problems. But because the player characters, plural, should be important, and I should be able to have an adventure with my friends without choosing who is the important position holder today. It’s not that we mind trading the spotlight around. We’re friends, yo. We share all the things. But it’s immersion breaking to be sharing that particular thing.

What would have worked for me is the PC being a member of the Pact, and we could all work with the idea that all the PCs are Pact members who do various Important Jobs. That ship has sailed. It might be a disappointment to destroy the Pact, but I feel it’s a bandage that has to be ripped off to focus on other aspects of the story.

Also all that other stuff that was said about power and conflict.

Ohoni.6057:

The player character needs to be more of a part of cutscenes. This doesn’t need to involve a lot of voice work, Link manages just fine.

This trope used to be The Thing in RPGs while the main character remained critical to the plot. It’s definitely doable. Bolderlands 2 player characters is another example of someone as important to the plot as the supporting cast, but unable to say anything (and, as a bonus, may be anywhere from 1-4 people).

Thanks for asking for feedback and being receptive to ideas. I appreciate that the developers are interested in their players’ thoughts like this. My personal big three priority wishes:

1. Best foot forward. Don’t hold good ideas in the back pocket to reveal as twists. Take all the cool stuff you’re excited about and throw that out first. The personal storyline ended in fighting a giant undead lich dragon. The LS doesn’t need to shuffle its feet with less threatening enemies. That’s a step backward. There’s no reason to stall for build up. Throw out the most exciting, fun things first, and even better ideas will follow the best ideas.

In other words, if we start the next LS and begin it by fighting bandits I am… well, going to fight bandits, I guess. But I won’t enjoy it.

2. Less focus on dialogue and storytelling through NPCs, and more focus on storytelling through gameplay. This is what characterizes mute protagonists and allows players to project on them. (I prefer the mute protagonist, as I believe the alternatives would require a level of work and compromise that would make us lose more than we gain.)

A cheap way to achieve more PC involvement would be significantly cutting down on NPC allies and friends as major characters. When I meet an antagonist or rival, my PC’s role in that relationship is clear and the possibility for gameplay interactions are greater. When allied NPCs exist to have more conflict with that antagonist than the PC, involvement is lost and PCs begin to question their narrative necessity. There is also not a lot we can do with allies other than talk to them, which presents the writing problems of PC characterization and the increasing number of personal story variables.

I like NPC allies, and I like talking to them, but everything in moderation. Including moderation.

3. Permanent content. When I went to Arah’s story dungeon and realized haha oops, I don’t know the full story behind Destiny’s Edge, I got to go back and do the other dungeons to grok their jam. When I met Kasmeer and Marjory and wondered who these ladies were or what was even happening, I did not have the same luxury. This is an odd philosophy for a game that’s otherwise so casual friendly.

Big, one time events are exciting, but holidays exist for that flavor of content. Story content needs to be permanent and not something gained from outside sources.

ETA: Bonus point: Dragons.
The logo is a dragon.
I want all of the dragons.

THIS IS A GOOD POST.
Sorry, I got excited and caps’d.

Adding to 14: The LS assumes your character both is and isn’t there, so if you show up at the tail end, everyone acts like they know you despite you not being a part of previous events. It’s awkward, especially for an MMO that’s otherwise so casual friendly. Who are these people? What’s happening?

Removing the player character from the story doesn’t change the story at all. That’s how forgotten they are. And that’s just not good Video Game Writing.

I don’t want the LS to be written like a TV show, I want the LS to be written like a Dungeon and Dragons campaign where the focus is cool stuff I do. The linearity might have to be forced because it’s a coded MMO, but good DMs can hide that from their players.

But I only complain because I’m invested and I want to enjoy things more than I already do.

DarksunG.9537:

I find Rangers pets to be boring, unresponsive, little/no functionality, impersonal & nothing new or interesting. I love the idea of a class based on a real pet, but they need to be more customizable (visually), they need to work WITH my ranger, they need to be reliable (in terms of how they follow, act & react)& they need to be different than other games. They should stand out. They currently are a lesser version of wow pets.

I approve of this whole suggestion, but highlighting this. Mechanics are very important, but the emotional aspect of the pet simply isn’t there right now either, and I think that’s important to a pet class. Ideally, rangers shouldn’t just think their pets are useful, but have enough of an illusion to personify them and make them part of their character.

If I recall, in beta there used to be a fair amount of confusion about how to keep pets alive even more than now before people learned to switch pets. The instinctive reaction was to choose one pet and make that the ranger’s best friend forever companion. Which isn’t surprising, given the character creation questions and how necromancers are perceived as the minion army profession.

I don’t have any hard numbers, but bringing a ranger’s focus back to one pet in combat might make some of these suggestions more reasonable to work with, such as giving a lot more pet customization. It might be easier to balance and account for rangers having one pet than two. Having two doesn’t even help all that much when they fall prey to large group play. The second will typically fall shortly after and you’re on cooldown anyway.

If rangers are to be a pet class, I do think the ranger needs to be able to interact with their pet a lot more than they currently do. Either in preparation (customizing skills and having some influence on stats), in control, or both.

In its extremes, a pet class in this game would use the pet as a primary weapon with all weapon skills commanding the pet in some way. I think we’ve all passed that point of it being a reasonable option though.

(Sorry if something like this has been outlined previously. This thread has certainly gotten large and I’ve only been able to scan it.)

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Make F2 change the skill bar from weapon skills to pet skills.

Goal of Proposal
To give ranger pets the control necessary to make them feel like a unique and powerful part of the profession.

The main control we have over our pets is activating a special ability with F2. Other professions have pet utilities that play similarly (a single special ability), though lack Return to Me and cannot have 100% pet uptime. This means what sets ranger pets apart, interactively, is more aesthetic choices, permanence, and feeble attempts to get pets to run out of red circles.

GW2 also lacks the trinity, which most pet class AI depends on. It’s straightforward to take aggro, spam heals/buffs, or spam attacks. In GW2, none of these are effective strategies, and spamming attacks seems all pets are currently capable of doing.

They need to be more than all of this, and this is the least intrusive solution I’ve been able to come up with.

Proposal Functionality
Giving players direct control of pet skills means pets can be more than attack spam. This could be taken further, with one kind of F key opening utility skills (stay, go here, guard, etc) and another opening the direct attack skills. This also allows pet skills to be expanded into things that are not merely attack based.

Some AI is still necessary to prevent extreme micro management. If pets could learn to dodge that would be pretty great, with declining to dodge during counterattack or block commands.

Associated Risks
The possible loss of weapon swap for balance, in the same way that elementalists and engineers lose weapon swapping for their attunements and kits.

Micro management goes way up. Dancing between pet and ranger stances may be too complicated or frustrating. It’s definitely going to be a turn off to those looking for a more woodsman archer archetype.

Pet skills would need to be expanded. Pets may lose some individuality for the sake of simplicity and balance.

Possible alternatives or additions for control: the ability to directly switch to pet control (which would temporarily subject the ranger to the questionable AI, but has interesting downed potential), making weapon skills 2-5 focused on pet commands (far more extensive of a change, with several potential consequences), or only ever allowing the pet to attack alongside the ranger, sacrificing basic control in order to expand the F1-F4 skills.

I want to dual wield swords.
Although I’d want it more if any profession changed auto attack animations to utilize their off hand weapon.

Otherwise I wouldn’t be opposed to punching things.

Land spear is a must for the game in general.

I’m pretty okay with these hooven overlords myself.

Maybe it’s time to stock up on stag potions, though.