Greetings, GW2 support forum. I want to start this with a disclaimer: None of this is meant to personally harm or attack any of you. If you get bent out of shape enough to verbally attack me over anything you see in this thread, you’re a depressed individual. Stop yourselves from typing up your insults, and watch this video to feel better. I appreciate it.
Alright, so a few nights ago I ran into an issue that is explained in-depth here. Long story short: It was late, I was exhausted, I bought the wrong dungeon item. I was dumbfounded that there wasn’t a refund system in the game more than a year after launch. I contacted support. They told me they couldn’t refund my item. Hours of my life were wasted all because of a simple misclick.
This leads me to my first point: WE NEED A REFUND SYSTEM FOR VENDOR ITEMS. World of Warcraft has both a confirmation screen, AND a refund period, and it works GREAT. (Just as a warning: I’m likely going to cite World of Warcraft quite a lot in this thread, as it has the best QoL out of any MMO I’ve played thus far). Hours of our lives should NOT have the potential to be completely wasted because of a simple misclick. What’s even worse is that the “confirmation” screen in GW2 doesn’t let you preview the stats, so you’ll look, see the item, figure it’s what you want, and then click “buy,” realizing afterward that you bought the wrong item and just wasted 330 dungeon currency on a piece of armor that isn’t stat-equivalent with the other pieces you’ve already bought. Sucks to be you; now you need to go spend hours more in CoF farming up a piece you should already have. I understand, all of you players, that it comforts you to be playing an MMO that’s way different from WoW, but flat-out refusing to support a VERY USEFUL feature just so the game feels more different is completely ridiculous. WoW does a LOT of things right, and ANet should be taking inspiration from said things. The game is different from WoW enough in its core gameplay state. We can afford to improve more in the direction that WoW is going in terms of QoL while still maintaining our comfort of difference.
Now, I want to talk about being locked into mains. Things such as the gemstore having soulbound items and a lack of account-wide dyes effectively punishes us when leveling alts. Pretty much everything in World of Warcraft is account-wide now; mounts, pets, titles, achievements, etc. Leveling alts in World of Warcraft feels rewarding, and most of all FUN. There are no drawbacks to starting a new character in WoW; no “price” to pay for wanting to try a new class. Why should we be locked into one character in GW2?
Finally, we need a fix for the dungeon exploits and various small problems within the dungeons. Dying as the entire group runs ahead of all the mobs to reset aggro by jumping up on a rock is NOT enjoyable in any way. These exploits need to be prioritized and fixed as soon as possible. The dungeons just feel broken as they are. Another notable problem is the fact that the entire group gets ported out of the dungeon when the leader leaves at the end. This just minutes ago screwed three other people and I out of 20 currency, which is absolutely ridiculous. This needs a fix as well.
So, there you have it. We need a refund system, various QoL fixes such as making dyes account-wide and fixing the fact that we’re PUNISHED for wanting to level an alt, and fixes to the dungeons. And before you say that dyes are important to the market: No. There are dozens upon dozens of MUCH more efficient ways to make money. With that being said, I’ve gone a full year without seeing an Abyss, Black or White dye drop. They’d still be rather pricy. Hell, they’d probably be even MORE expensive considering the fact that they’d be account-wide now.
These are rather annoying problems that really hamper the experience. Guild Wars 2 is a next-generation MMO. While it’s gone forward gameplay-wise in that regard, it’s gone backwards in terms of QoL. This needs to be changed, especially seeing as it’s been more than a year since launch. If these quirks aren’t polished soon, GW2 will likely go down in active player count when WoW’s next expansion comes out because of how much higher its quality of life is. I REALLY don’t want that to happen, because I love Guild Wars 2 and believe that it has much better gameplay elements than WoW. GW2 just feels so broken in its current state and playing it is rather stressful at times.
Thanks for listening, and thank you for applying these changes in advance, ANet. I look forward to the updates.