Guild Wars 2

The grind in this game was supposed to be pointless. You have dynamic events (which no one cares about currently), diminishing returns (which is like DRM at the moment) and, most importantly, and I don’t know how this one went past Arena.NET’s head – no stat gain. So the game should have another focus, I mean, that’s logical, right?

Instead Guild Wars 2 is doing its best to be just another MMO – time-gated content, absurd amounts of grind and generally backtracking on all its innovations. How is it that a game that was supposed to be for the people who aren’t into MMOs turned into exactly the opposite? That’s why I don’t play MMOs, because I value the time I spend playing. Guild Wars 2 did a wonderful job at that during its leveling, because you were rewarded for playing the way you want and it didn’t feel like a chore.

Now? Now you literally have to log in every day so you don’t miss anything on the check list. Dailies and time-gated content are supposed to be the worst-case scenario for these games, when the developers have become so uninspired that they just shove something out the door and call it content. But no, it’s a routine for Guild Wars 2 now.

After I’ve seen it all I want to play what the game focuses on. And, currently, its focus is on keeping you in the game just long enough to open the gem store. Some people out there are just “having fun”, I guess they’re in the exploration stage of their playthrough.

I’d call this game broken. Not because it doesn’t work or because it’s not a fun $60 experience, but because it’s literally head-ramming its design philosophies out the window. Everything that was supposed to be unique about this game is gone. Why should people who don’t like MMOs stay here when, say, Everquest Next releases? You have every single bulletpoint covered – number chasing (achievements), crucial daily events, time-gated content, zero incentive to progress, shallow PvP. So? GW2 is living from its former glory of GOTY 2012, back when it was actually a really good experience.

The saving grace of this game was supposed to be WvW. Yet we’re a year in since release and the rewards still suck, zerging hasn’t been changed aaaaand, you brought the grind even there! Congratulations, you made your game a farm-fest, put restrictions on farmers, made the loot useless and to top it all off, you’re encouraging it with every single patch. Despite the likely possibility this will quoted by someone “having fun” prancing around in his/her town clothes, I hope I explained my point to the rest of you sensible people.

I’m hesitant to start such a thread. Perhaps the community that would have appreciated it is long gone now. Still, it’s incredibly important that people understand it now rather than later.

Sparing the drama, Guild Wars 2 needs serious changes in the coming months. You want an MMO that’s not like World of Warcraft? Great! You want your game to have an actual community in the coming years? Read on.

Praise doesn’t help…

Part of the community enjoys collecting minis, throwing their virtual money in the forge and their real in the gem store. Great, enjoy it! For better or worse, you’re part of a stabile playerbase in Guild Wars 2. Only problem is you think this is a successful longterm model. Casuals believe this is a social experience, akin to Facebook, only within a fantasy setting. Yes, you can drink quaggan potions, dress-up and gamble all you want. That type of game won’t last against the coming MMOs.

and neither does whining.

GW2 players don’t want vertical progression – that much is obvious. That’s a quality of the game – it’s distinctive from World of Warcraft. People have expressed their concern – they don’t want to be required to get certain items in order to get through the new content, they want a skill-based progression with no clear roof. Guild Wars 2 has the potential to be THE MMO that people discontent with WoW can flock to. That’s where it should be headed – not towards a total rework and not towards whatever it is it’s doing right now.

Guild Wars 2 is following trends, not the manifesto

Guild Wars 2 was at lts strongest when it knew how to please everyone. There were things for hardcore players to do! The current community believes it’s impossible to cater to both type of players – that’s a lie because Arena.NET did do that! Now it’s falling into one trap after another – temporary content, RNG, these things don’t build a community. What you create, ultimately, is a shallow experience, a business model for the select few who enjoy it and that’s not what Colin Johanson wanted GW2 to become.

Reward is crucial

This is not equivalent to stat upgrades. Why do people seem to think so? Every successful title rewards players in some way – be it a meaningful story ending, a powerful item, a new armor set and so on. What’s Guild Wars 2’s alternative? One person slaves for weeks grinding gold for whatever goal he has in his mind. The other tosses 4 rares in a gambling pit and gets an item worth 500 gold. This is simply offensive. So I’m rewarded for not playing the game but playing with my luck? That’s absurd, it’s pointless! Who, other than the person who drew the winning number, enjoys it?

The best rewards should be the hardest to earn

Grinding for the most awesome looking skins is lazy development. Period. Something like the Scavenged Hunt may do little to increase player count, but it will do all the good in the world for veterans and that will pay off in the future. Raids might be met with the typical “oh WoW clone” statement but they will return players in the game. These mechanics already exist in other games, only they are associated with gear grinding. I applaud your effort to make an MMO without vertical progression. But you can’t make a lasting MMO without rewards, it simply doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for any developer.

Invest in the future, not in the Living Story

The worst business policy is the short-sighted one. The Living Story is a testimony to that – it keeps the profit high with RNG boxes while alienating the people who have been playing since release. All the work of designers is getting removed because some salesman figured Guild Wars 2 needs to cash in now? That’s development wasted on the future of the game! How do you want to evolve a game that has its new content erased every month?! Add Guild Halls, not next year, now! Make lasting improvements to Guild Wars 2 and players will see that Arena.NET is committed to supporting it! Without transparency you’re leaving people with the most logical suggestion- that the revenue from your game is supporting the development of Wildstar.

Hardcore content = longevity

You can pretend the WoW community is oblivious to what “having fun” means. You can deny the facts of Guild Wars 2 losing its playerbase all you want. Bottom line is, MMO players know the legacy of the genre. Games without hard content don’t last, because there’s nothing keeping players invested for a long time. GW2 may be drawing new people in with the Living Story, but the ones who would have stayed for all the expansions left before the first one. You can’t treat casuals and hardcore players the same way – the former group is here for fun and should be happy with the things that don’t require commitment. The latter are putting more time into mastering the game -they should have something to show it with and it’s not legendaries, achievement points or bloody weapon tickets!

And then it all went downhill. As if I’d missed something critical, everyone started to do what I most loathe in games – exploits. Not botting, hacking, or whatever – massive moments of “well, just another MMO….”. People stacking at the feet of a dragon, people shouting for Warriors in map chat, people pulling the boss into one corner, doing the same exact thing in every Fractal because of dumb AI (I’m not blaming the developer, these things happen in every game, but they’re usually addressed quicker) In short, it broke the immersion that I was playing something truly unique. In a moment’s notice, it was all about the grind, the whole thing had become a job, as any other MMO tends to do. What’re these people even farming? Skins? And, naturally, I became pulled by that notion, because when everyone you’ve ever played with is suddenly doing these farm events, you’ll join in if only for the sake of company. What’re you gonna do, explore Tyria alone? Roleplay? When the mass mentality is to grind, you feel left behind, even if there’s nothing to grind in actuality.

The world had lost its charm. I wanted to head back and take this game as I took Skyrim, but I couldn’t. Instead I started teleporting and waiting for dragon events only to double click the 1 key and do something else. I did daily achievements consistently for god-knows what reason. All of it felt hollow, void of enjoyment. Is this what Guild Wars 2 had become? The game I loved and praised as a true step forward for developers, had fallen back to where every corporate sellout wants his game to be – a constant method of income.

I now understand why all the content we’ve been seeing is temporary. It’s not a gift from A.net, it’s not the passionate work of designers who couldn’t care less about money – no, the sad truth is, it’s just an attempt to get people back in the game before the stuff expires. None of it is for the sake of lore or immersion, don’t let them bullkitten you – it’s the cold reality of a game that, like many, has turned rotten because of the desire of both developers and publishers to cash in on a product, rather than provide an experience worthy of remembrance.

Look, I love games and I realize you can’t make these huge projects with constant original content, you need grind, you need repeatable events. I’m not asking for dragons spawning in Lion’s Arch, I’m not asking for a new area – all I ask from you, Arena.net, is that you at least consider the promise you made to all those people who followed you back in August, and how far you’ve strayed from it. None of your living story additions, except for the Molten Legion Facility, made me in any way excited- the story was dry, the setting dull, it was as if a PR specialist had designed these levels. You made this incredible world and you turned your back on it. Your reluctance to fix CoF Grinding, mind-numbingly boring world events (except Grenth, which no one does now, I wonder why) is turning more and more players away. Why did you pigeon-hole us into these mindless zerg fests? The only part of the game that still holds a candle to the original fun I had in Guild Wars 2 is WvW, and that flame dwindles.

I wouldn’t have written this much had I not cared about your game, had I not wanted it to be the bold successor to World of Warcraft. I’m not just someone who wants to complain for the sake of complaining – I want the developers to see that they have a shot at creating a game people will talk about for years to come. Guild Wars 2, as it stands, is one of the best bang-for-your-buck games out there. You’ll get triple the content you’ve paid for, most times over. This is not about your money. It’s about the fleeing opportunity to be playing the best MMO out there, when all the developers have to do is put a little of that passion they had when first making the game.

EDIT: I’ve added a huge comment with possible positive improvements to the game, as well as some measured criticism. It’s on the beginning of page 6: let me know what you think!

EDIT: I renamed this thread to better serve the purpose of what we’re trying to achieve. There are several long posts further down the comment section that explain the issues with Guild Wars 2 and offer various suggestions for fixing them. Feel free to contribute!

I want to enjoy Guild Wars 2 again, the way I enjoyed it when it was released.

This sentence will be the main topic of discussion here and as you see, I’m keeping a calm tone – this will not be a bashing of the game nor a childish outrage. This is merely the opinion of someone who’s already devoted almost 2000 hours to Guild Wars 2 and who, genuinely, feels crushed by what the game’s become.

What convinced me to play Guild Wars 2? I was not a die-hard fan of the original, in fact, I only played Nightfall. So that point aside, I take this franchise as any newcomer would – I became drawn to the idea of a fresh MMO that didn’t have that gray stamp on it that said “this is your job now”. I loved the manifesto, the deep lore presented, the charming world – and it’s all there! GW2 has one of the most engaging, sprawling and beautiful worlds I’ve seen in any game – for that alone, it deserves recognition. It could, at any point, have fallen into the stale, seen-it-a-thousand-times Eastern look of MMOs. But it didn’t. The A.net team have done what very few developers could – they broke new grounds in one of the riskiest genres to undertake.

In the beginning my enjoyment of the game was infinite – I hadn’t felt this strongly attached to a game universe since Fallout 3 and Skyrim. I would co-op with several low-level buddies and we’d go escort a caravan through Queensdale. Then, several more people would join, the quest would move on to a large group defense, finally culminating in a boss fight. No one cared that the loot was abysmal, no one wanted to “farm” events, people wanted to move on, see the world, explore, chat. In the beginning I had no idea there were town portals, so I wandered from The Grove in an attempt to reach Divinity’s Reach because it seemed so mysterious and enthralling on the world map.

Then, as I hit level 80, I purposely ignored the calls of my friends to abandon the game, that there was nothing to do, that it was all a pointless grind. I started going after 100% World Completion, I explored PvP even though I rarely do PvP in any game. World vs World felt daunting at first but, ultimately, learning how it all tied together was extremely rewarding. Despite my horrible framerate I started clearing camps, providing supply, just to be part of a greater effort.

This is where many people would find the game shallow but I was still mesmerized by all the opportunities. I farmed my full Arah set, I made 5 alts in addition to my main Sylvari Ele and I decked most of them out in Exotic Gear, my Ele and Thief in ascended even. To me, the Fractals were an amazing addition. I didn’t care about the pink item grind – none of them were arbitrary as most people claimed when they complained that A.net was turning the game into a grindfest. I refused to believe they could ruin such a magical concept.