Guild Wars 2

Squads

In its current state I am not really sure what a squad is useful for. When joining a squad the option still appears to “join” it, yet in theory you have already joined. Be prepared to receive no indication that you actually joined the squad.

Its purpose in WvW is overshadowed by Team chat. The idea of a squad was a larger group than a party, but a subset of all the world players on the map. This is a great niche, however it has been neglected as far as usefulness and implementation.

From my experience with the current state of WvW a squad does not seem to really do anything to benefit the world. Players just follow the big blue commander icon on the map, forming a large mob. It is the small parties of guild members or friends who do the skirmishing. While this is nice, one would imagine this primarily being the role of a squad. With that it would be nice to see the role of a squad expanded.

Give players an indication that they are in a squad, maybe a small GUI indicating at least how many players are currently in the squad. If at all possible show squad members on the map. This gives it an edge over using Team chat, while retaining the benefits of a party, which is exactly where a squad should fall.

3. Living Story

If you really do read the forums then you already know this. Why am I still fighting Zhaitan’s minions? Why is Orr still swarming with undead even though I have cleansed it? Why did my personal story just end at Zhaitans destruction, leaving me and everyone else in a time bubble?

I love the concept of a living story, but I am not really seeing the story part of it just yet. Scarlet? No. A “Tower of Nightmares” doesn’t really evolve the world much considering what I listed above. It is such a huge plot hole that you really almost need to backtrack to fill it in.

We killed one dragon, and the others are what? Fell back asleep? Where is Jormag or Primordius? what about the other 4-5 dragons? Tequatl doesn’t count.

Make living stories that are really part of the story. You dismissed expansion packs for this idea, start taking it seriously. Super Adventure Box is not a progression of the guild wars story.

4. Personal Story

This one strikes a cord with me. According to my personal story I killed Zhaitan and that is it. Everything in the past year must not have happened according to the accounts of my character.

Lets be serious here. You are sacrificing a lot of potential when it comes to the personal story. Why hasn’t every living story update progressed my character? If that is an unrealistic goal, then why not release a monthly update to our personal stories. Still a no? Why not address the suggestion in #3 and then that will give you an opportunity to develop our personal stories.

The whole voiced conversations were a big draw for a lot of us. Outside of our personal stories we don’t see any of that. The game is slowly becoming a grind for everything from dungeon tokens and now fractals. Our personal story is supposed to give meaning to it all. Instead we are left now with an empty husk, a long on, kill a few mobs, log off kind of game.

5. Inflation

Granted, a legendary weapon takes a lot of gold to make, but the slow rise of inflation is startling. I have watched the exchange rate between gold and gems go from 3g for 800 gems (Launch) to now costing over 60g for 800 gems. At this rate by next year, it will cost over 100g for $10 worth of gems. I am not even talking about the Gem -> Gold exchange rate here in which by that time I am sure you would be lucky to make 75g.

As you increase the gold awards you also drastically effect the Gem -> Gold and Gold -> Gem market substantially. Your philosophy of trading Time -> Gems and Gems -> Time is skewed. The time it would take me to farm 60g today is worth a whole lot more than $10.

Stop increasing gold awards. Keep the rate of monetary awards to what they are currently or at least scale it back slightly. If you want a legendary and do not want to spend a year crafting it, then trade your money for time and sell Gems for Gold as it was originally intended.

That is about it for what I have. If you have anything else, feel free to add it, but there are the issues that I think are solvable in the near future.

The book of love is long and boring… you get the idea.

Compiled below are a series of changes that I think are needed in the game. Most are from GW1 and are missed in GW2. Now before I hear “this is not guild wars 1” these suggestions have nothing that breaks GW2 or makes it GW1, these are mostly functional and will make the experience of GW2 better in my opinion.

If you agree or disagree with these suggestions, a simple ye or nay for each one will suffice. If you want to elaborate on them by all means. I am posting this as a one off for discussion so I will detail my suggestions as well as I can.

1. Town Clothing:

What is the point? I mean in all honesty, I never see anyone wearing their town clothes in town nor do I have any interest in spending gems on new town clothes in the gem store if I have to manually toggle then on or off.

Why not bring back the feature in GW1 that allowed a player to specify when their helmet or cape was on or off (town/pvp/pve), except it would toggle to town clothes when a player enters town if they so choose. Why not even extend this into a fully flushed feature where similarly to GW2 a player can toggle their helmet, backpack, and shoulders in the same fashion?

The cost benefit is pretty simple here. You already have the conditional logic in place in GW1, why not port it over to GW2 in a living story patch? The benefit: the market for town clothing in the gem store and the satisfaction that a feature you included isn’t just sitting collecting dust and actually serves a purpose.

2. PvP Skills

Listen, I’ll be frank. You claimed this game is unique, its something new, and you know what? I think this game offers some of the most unique and mindful features I have seen, but lets face it, I think we are all tired of the roller coaster ride that is nerfing/buffing classes. We dealt with that in WoW, we dealt with that in Rift, and practically every other MMORPG out there. The last thing we want this game to turn into is some unbalanced mangy mess when it comes to player classes. We are already suffering this with condition damage.

Please re introduce what you had in GW1 where player skills had different versions in PvP. It just makes sense. No more nerfing, no more buffing, no more banning elementalists in tournaments, etc…

GW2 does not have nearly as many skills that GW1 had so this shouldn’t be a billion dollar project.

Assuming their conditionals are referencing one and only one field that you call “serverchoice”, I think this idea is a good one that could easily be implemented. I am not sure I like the idea though of a window poping up saying “You can’t mine this” seems a bit clunky. I’d be interested to see how they handle node instances since they seem to be individual to the player. You mine the node, it depletes, but another player could still mine it. This seems to me like each node has a flag thats assigned to each player. If thats the case, then a similar flag could be implemented based on loyalty, and would work much in the same way with the same efficiency: if your loyalty does not match the server then the node appears depleted.

The guild system in this game is amazing. Influence, guild perks, building, emblems; allowing players to be in multiple guilds at a time, however there is a huge flaw in the current system.

I find it almost impossible to recruit anyone to a newly formed guild, at least on my server (Isle of Janthir). I believe it is due to the fact that people join the few (many?) guilds who now have all the influence perks already built. Why join another guild at that point?

This is a huge flaw because it firstly eliminates any kind of competition between guilds. What really is the deciding factor between two guilds with max perks? The name? The emblem? The community? Assuming its any of the latter then you’ll find yourself using the account guilds system, rarely if at all, to basically pick and choose between guilds with maxed out perks, completely trivializing the system.

Any new guild trying to carve out an existence stands no chance. It was my interpretation that the idea of allowing players to be in multiple guilds would be rewarding for everyone. If all I care about is my main guild then I’ll represent that one while staying in a couple other guilds that suit my fancy. I’ll meet more players, I’ll have more options, and I’ll be helping out two or three guilds in the process. This isn’t the case from my experience. Its more like WoW where people choose one guild and that is it.

I have a couple ideas to maybe make the prospect of joining a new guild more rewarding, but I was kind of hoping to throw this out there and see if others are experiencing the same issue as well as possibly brainstorm a few ideas.

My Ideas:

1) Promote the idea of players being in multiple guilds. Maybe give players who are a member of but not representing a guild a small percentage of active guild bonuses.

2) Provide a guild recruitment system, some kind of interface that allows players seeking guilds to browse recruiting guilds and/or post that their guild is recruiting. (A sub-forum seems a bit primitive nowadays don’t you think?)

3) Give players who join new guilds some sort of incentive. Maybe a buff or something that encourages players to go around and do things that generate influence and get the guild on its feet.

I am sure there is some give and take to all of this, but I think its worth some discussion.

I’ll be brutally honest. If I started playing an mmo, and I did not enjoy the classes. I would go play another mmo.

If GW2 follows the style of GW1, they will release newer classes come time for an expansion pack. As far as a fast paced class as you describe in Ninja Gaiden, I am afraid you are playing the wrong style of game my friend. I can’t think of an MMO to date with a play style like that. I guess that’s what makes Ninja Gaiden such a good game in its category.

People have to realize this is Guild Wars 2 Not World of Warcraft, or Rift, or any other mmo. Half the suggestions I see here are trying to make this game a clone of WoW.

Listen, I know your probably sacrificing time from Mists of Pandaria right now, but realize before you even bought this game, if you did any kind of research whatsoever, if you read or watched any of the blog videos, you would come to realize that this game is TRYING to be completely different, and that there are no tier based items.

You should not be surprised. As someone else mentioned, in GW1 people spend eons grinding for vanity items.

I played WoW for 7 years and half the time I was raiding for VANITY, not for stats. Sure it was nice to have an item that “put be above” other people, but this is not how GW2 works. Legendaries are fine imo. They are legendary BECAUSE they take a long time to build. THATS how it should be!!

I am willing to bet that if this post wasn’t made to claim legendaries need a stat boost then it would have been created complaining about the stat boosts!

How would you feel if you DID NOT have the 2+ months of solid gaming time, and you witnessed kids running around with weapons that not only look way cooler than your own, but make your weapons far in superior based on stats.

How about I put it this way. I need people to run a dungeon with me. I can only have 4 other people mind you. Would I choose you, or someone with a legendary with higher stats than normal exotics? The answer is obvious.

Please do not give legendaries stat boosts.

I agree, maybe some kind of restriction on how many times the name can be changed. Even only allowing it once would be a huge benefit

I recently created a guild with the intent of its name to be representative of the old norse compass known as Vegvisir. I am not sure why, but at the time I accidently mispelled it as “Vagvisir”

I am torn. Weeks of influence grinding to realize that I mispelled it!

Long story short, it would be nice to have a trading post item (for gems of course) that allows for a guild name change. If not for gems, maybe for influence? I don’t think I am nor will I be the last one to either, A: mispell their guild name (doh), or B: wish to change the name at a later date.

I find this feature rather nonexistent in MMOs and I never understood why they would force players to disband guilds or create more guilds just for a different name.

GW2 has the nice ability to be in multiple guilds, but again, losing all that influence and my current members are really what I would like to avoid, enough to spend some gems on.