Guild Wars 2

• Ascended gear and the incompetence with which it was implemented. Over 1 year ago there was a dev post that stated the remaining missing stat combinations for ascended trinkets would be released in the following update (E.G. Carrion and a few others). This never happened. Something that should literally take 5 minutes of development time to add has taken over 1 year to implement and has received no further acknowledgement.

• Giving away all of Living Story Season 1’s reward items at the most recent Queen’s Pavillion event. I am glad that players are able to earn these if they weren’t there for the event as I feel all items should be possibly obtainable by all players — this isn’t my problem. My problem is them at the time constantly telling us our ability to get these items was during a limited time only therefore causing me to play when I would have rather been doing other things during a few of the events. Because China.

• Feeling like one large beta test for China. With giving away LS1 events because of the Chinese client, and now with the many recent efforts to align our client with the China client such as the terrible new player experience, it often seems like we were just the beta test before they launched in the market they actually cared about.

• Never wanting to level an alt again. This was one of the last nails in the coffin. With the trait revamp where you must unlock them or buy them, and now with the NPE, I couldn’t see myself having any fun at all leveling an alt. I already felt like the trait system was bland and generic, but now this seals the deal.

• Getting nerfed every patch. My main character that I play is a Thief, and while although I will concede the class was too strong in some areas, it did not justify receiving a nerf literally almost every single patch since the game’s release. It was nerfed to be the only class without a 1200 range attack early on, and countless nerfs later, including nerfs to skills that were clearly never good to begin with, makes the class feel like a husk of it’s former self. Here is a quick, now outdated example for your reference. You’d better believe Last Refuge still exists though.

In closing, I would like to thank all of you that have read this far and I feel much better now that I have summarized on paper all of the frustrations I have had that have made me give up on this once very beloved game. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts or add your own bullet points to the list.

TL;DR: Anet doesn’t want you to have rewarding content. Gem store sucks. Don’t expect new dungeons or Super Adventure Box anytime soon. A balanced economy is more important than your gaming experience. Living Story dictates all design decisions. Leveling an alt is terrible. Contributions in combat feel pointless. We are the China beta. Thieves get nerfed.

After a culmination of many upsetting recent design decisions and updates, I am giving up on the game. I decided to write a bullet point list of many of the most major reasons as to why, partly in hopes that ArenaNet wants the feedback, and partly to write it out as a form of stress relief as I was very attached to this game. I also invite anyone else in this thread to do the same if they so desire.

In no particular order:

• Nerfing the second release of the Queen’s Pavillion so that none of the mobs dropped any loot. I had looked forward to its re-release all year as I had major fun farming the event, only to see that the event had changed and required you to actually pay gold to start it. This, along with the Queensdale nerf and the Frostgorge Sound nerf made it very apparent that ArenaNet would nerf any rewarding aspect of the game, likely so that you would feel more inclined to convert gems to gold.

• Reading the many responses of the resident economist in the Black Lion Trading subforums. While although I appreciate his attempt to communicate with the playerbase, his responses also make it very apparent that the economic design of the game is not going to change anytime soon and the most profitable way to play the game will surely always be to play Wall street Simulator 2014 (AKA the trading post). It is also clear based on his input that ArenaNet’s stance is to maintain what is considered a ‘healthy economy’ even at the expense of player happiness or enjoyment within the game. Quite frankly I could care less about the economy being healthy from an economist’s standpoint if it jeopardizes the amount of fun I can have while playing the game.

• The recent interview in which ArenaNet flat out said that they are not working on any more dungeon content. Dungeons are one of my favorite things to play and they have not been expanded upon past fractals since the game’s release. The interviewees cited the Twilight Arbor Aetherblade path as being a lot of work, which must mean the developers are so lacking on resources that they cannot possibly hope to make any meaningful content. Let’s be real here — this wasn’t even a new dungeon, but rather a single path inside of a pre-existing dungeon with reused character models. If this is ‘heavily taxing’ for the developers, I have no hope of ever seeing a meaningful new dungeon.

• The recent interview in which ArenaNet said they have no plans to update Super Adventure Box in lieu of it not fitting into the Living Story, paired with the terrible decision to withold the already-existing SAB content from the player base. This was quite literally my favorite part of the game.

• Terrible, terrible writing and dialogue that is too lighthearted to ever take seriously. I have heard that this has changed for the better in Season 2, but I could care less about Living Story.

• Speaking of which, Living Story being the only meaningful source of updates. WvW players can just take a hike because their favored gameplay element does not fit into the flawed vision of ‘Living Story’, so don’t expect updates anytime soon.

• Gem store being the only real source of new ‘rewards’. Sure, there is the token backpack thrown out here and there, but the new in-game rewards never hold a candle to what can be bought in the gem store. For a game that is supposedly focused on earning aesthetic rewards, this is a dealbreaker that the coolest new gear is always in the gem store. I’d also be curious to tally up the number of individual armor pieces released for the gem store and compare them to the number of pieces released in the actual game.

• Bland combat while feeling pointless. While although I feel like Guild Wars’ core combat is better than any other mmo I have ever played, it feels totally unrefined in many ways and I never feel meaningful in any encounter because there are no roles. I don’t necessarily want to go back to the ‘holy trinity’, but when I heard there wasn’t one, it made me assume that any class could fulfill any role that you wanted. But this isn’t true — want to be a healer? Nope. Want to be a tank? Nope. Want to be support? Nope. DPS or go home — which means you never make any personal unique contributions to any group scenario, and leads to the constant meta of berserker gear or lose.

• Diminishing returns. Legendary items require thousands of materials — but why would they let you farm them when they could instead try to get you to convert gems to gold?

(Continued)

The last boss in Queen’s Jubilee the greatest game design ever. I’m sure it went down like this:

ANet Dev#1: "I know, let’s make a 1v1 event that…

-Has an invulnerable enemy
-Spawns minions that chase you and instant-kill you if they touch you
-Spawn said minions behind you out of the view of your camera angle
-Require you to kite said minions into spawning pools
-Make the player pick up shards from the death of minions. Make these shards dissapear after time. Make the player have to stop in place to both pickup shard and to throw it so other minions can catch up to them. Make them do this 3 times
-Has a constantly spawning mass-AoE instant kill pool
-Randomly spawn a rift throughout which pulls the player into said instant kill pools
-Make said rift force player to drop shards
-Make said rift “Obstructed” by air so the player can’t kill it temporarily
-Make a special effect that intermittently blurs the player’s screen so they can’t see where they’re running
-When the player wears off the enemy’s invulnerability, make the enemy attack them harder, faster, and spawn larger instant-kill AoE death pools"
-Requires a cost to entry
-Instead of instancing it, requires the player to either wait for other players to finish, or requires them to run all the way back to the entrance if they die at an empty dome

ANet Dev#2: “Hmm…. I don’t know…. how could we make this even more challenging?”

ANet Dev#3: "I know. We like temporary things. And mini-pets. Let’s make this content temporary, forcing the players to complete it within a timeframe. Even better, let’s add a time limit to the battle itself! And then throw in an exclusive mini-pet that players can’t ever possibly get unless they beat it!

ANet Dev#1: GENIUS!

#This thread will be closed and I will be infracted for criticising the game. #2013