Guild Wars 2

I’ve been gone from the game for many months, but just checked back to see if I could perhaps get into it again. And the reasons I quit playing came rushing back to me within seconds…

1. I picked the Ranger as my main. The Ranger is mind-numbingly simplistic and repetitive to play. IMHO of course.

2. The zones were moderately fun to explore once, but I just can’t bring myself to do them all over on another toon, so my highest alt is stuck at 35. I got no particular urge to level any of my alts further.

3. There is nothing challenging or rewarding to do at max level. I gamed the trade post a couple of days until I could gear up in zerker exotics with expensive gems, and then I found I had pretty much nowhere to go. I could start working towards ascended gear, but what’s the point?

4. Nothing ever seems to change. At least I notice no obvious change since the last time I played 6+ months ago.

I’m not angry at GW2, since I did get some enjoyment out of it at first, and I do feel I got my money’s worth. Especially since I never wasted any additional money in the online store. But it always played like a simplistic single-player game to me, not like an MMO.

Every game has its target demographics I suppose, I just never felt I’m part of GW2’s.

tovadaun.6304:

Again, you misunderstand.
I do not care for PvP. I never have, and never will.
It’s a personal choice.
I don’t duel in games that offer it.
I have no need to be violent towards the fellow next to me for ‘no better reason than they are there’ and refuse to be baited by some jerkwad just so he can gank me.
I don’t play this game as some kind of anon-Vendetta Mask that so many others do.
This Personal Life-Choice is based off of My Spirituality and My Core Fundamental Beliefs of how I myself should interact, respond to others, and co-exist.
My statement was- I Myself do not Chose to be a part of this aspect of the game. [The WHY in all honesty is none of you or any other readers here business, or I’d have posted the WHY] However, that as a Core Portion on the Game, and it’s Population- To remove this aspect of it is ludicrous. Just because I myself do not think it a good investment of my time, does not mean the 1000’s of Players who frequent the Mists don’t.
This was what that singular line was encompassing.
The thought process – Just because I don’t subscribe to your Opinion and View doesn’t therefore make your perfectly logic, rational, and reasonable point Invalid.-

As for the rest of this Thread, I applaud each of the small steps and bounds of faith you’ve acted and enacted to give not only the game, but others that posted here their due validation.

The world is quickly running out of individuals of like nature. It’s going to be a sad, dark future if this is not remedied.

I most definitely respect your choice, and your underlying spiritual convictions. In fact, I used to be very much like you myself – peaceful by nature, and not interested in harming a fly.

But then I made the life decision to ‘dirty my hands’ and get into the thick of the fight, I decided to engage people in combat on their own terms. I think I did this because I wished to interact more deeply with people around me so I could touch their hearts, even though they were not peaceful as I.

This was very hard at first. I practically cried over the harshness and cruelty to the fellow man I witnessed, and then we’re just speaking about playing PvP in WoW, lol!

But I learned to distance myself from my virtual self, not caring about getting my virtual teeth kicked in. And from this neutral position, I learned to fight effectively, first to stay alive, then to actually win. And then I found that I could TRANSMUTE the energies of conflict and fighting into a joyful dance with my opponents!

At this point, I was a terror on the battlefield, and I ground my enemies into dust. More than a few tears must have been shed by my opponents. But my mission was to introduce the concepts of RESPECT and CHIVALRY to the dog-eat-dog world of a virtual battlefield, and the only way to do that, was to be so good at the game I could teach this lesson, without losing the fight in the process.

If someone ran into me and recoiled in fear, I let him retreat, I didn’t kill him for the sake of it. But if he attacked me, I gave him a schooling. If he returned with three friends, I fought them all. If one of them was weak and an easy target, I went easy on him, so they could all dance the dance together. I made a point out of showing them respect through actions and emotes, for instance applauding an ‘enemy’ who did a good job.

But when the dance was over, I killed them all, to hammer home the point I was making – you can be a decent person without necessarily ending up a loser in life. It is my belief people go to “the dark side” because they are afraid they can’t measure up otherwise. The dark side is only “cool” because the villains keep winning! What better way to teach that the light side can win too, than to show it through example?

That’s why I kicked butt. And I had an AWESOME time doing it!

I’m not saying this to try to convert you into a PvPer, I just felt like explaining how I feel about it myself: PvP is an expression of dark energy and fear, but it can be transmuted into light energy and love. Detachment is the key – I think Buddha would have loved it!

Descending into darkness to bring some light there does come with the danger of losing track of why you’re doing it, and “falling” to the dark side yourself, so I don’t think it’s the right path for every light-oriented man or woman. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t feel the calling.

ASaturnus.4980:

Mike.7236:

Others are more skilled with (s)words, and manage to play the game to their advantage. A good example is ASaturnus a few posts up. He speaks in an empathic, sensible voice, and climbs the social ladder with his veiled attack – he invalidates my thread by telling me it is pointless to express my opinion, hinting subliminally that it is immature to do so, while covering up the attack with a fatherly concern for my well-being.

snickers Touché. You are a more intelligent opponent than I thought (not that I thought you dumb). While I actually wanted to make a valid point with my post, we both know that it would be dishonest for me to say that no attack on you at all was intended.
But to my defence, I felt challenged to attack by your opening post. The way you phrased your opinion makes it sound as though a core feature of the game, a feature the developers wanted for their game, that I wanted and that many others wanted, was just a mistake, a sillyness in fact. You berate those that thought having no healers in a game like GW2 was a good idea for being silly. At least, that is the impression I had. Thus, your claim that you’re only counterattack, isn’t entirely true either.

Touché, right back at you…

The very act of expressing my personal gripes with the game as if they were UNIVERSAL TRUTH, is of course an opening attack in itself, and a claim of high ground for the fight. Such an opening move literally begs for a strong response.

ASaturnus.4980:

But then, as I said, apart from my more-transparent-than-I-thought attack, I did want to make a valid point and it still stands. Whether or not making your suggestion was immature, someone as intelligent as you knows that your chances of getting what you suggested are very slim. I have no desire to attack you any further. I know that you read and understood my post, that’s anything anyone can hope for on the internet.

I agree, you made a valid point, and I absolutely agree with you about it. My original suggestions were sort of valid in some parallel Universe out there, but I understand that they are not directly applicable in GW2. The problem is, I’m slightly off-center of the target group for this game – it was not really designed for my tastes.

This doesn’t mean everything I said was irrelevant, but it does mean someone more in tune with what GW2 is about will be better equipped to suggest improvements. That’s why I have repeatedly given full support to Devildoc’s suggestions; he is someone who understands GW2’s personality, and who can see ways to improve it that are not about turning it into something it was never meant to be. His suggestions are better than mine.

It was nice talking to you! I enjoy a good sparring, and I enjoy meeting people who are detached enough from their Ego to understand themselves and others from a more neutral perspective. It’s a pretty rare treat.

tovadaun.6304:

I don’t get it. I don’t get the point of PvP, truthfully.

An interesting subject.

I believe online games are ALL about expressing the ‘social animal’ part of yourself, whether you play them cooperatively or competitively. Some prefer the coop part where people work together towards a common goal, some prefer the part where they fight others for their own goal. But both groups are basically there for the same thing: to achieve a feeling of raising their social status.

We do the same things IRL, but we tend to be very careful there, because we only have ONE real life, and if we fail there, consequences are severe.

Not so online! You can go all out, and still risk very little!

This doesn’t only apply to online games, it applies to all forms of human interaction online. Web forums are PvP zones too, in case you haven’t noticed. We fight with words ere, and attempt to come off looking as the winner!

Some people try to play the forum game cooperatively, attempting to help others achieve their goals, and try to achieve the common goal of greater understanding together.

But most are simply attempting to raise their own social status by attacking the others.

Some do it clumsily and only come off looking immature, like Tom Gore in this thread. His first post in this thread was actually deleted by moderators. Suffice to say, he failed to gain much social status by his attacks on me, because he is not a very skilled word warrior.

Others are more skilled with (s)words, and manage to play the game to their advantage. A good example is ASaturnus a few posts up. He speaks in an empathic, sensible voice, and climbs the social ladder with his veiled attack – he invalidates my thread by telling me it is pointless to express my opinion, hinting subliminally that it is immature to do so, while covering up the attack with a fatherly concern for my well-being.

That’s a skilled word warrior in action!

I don’t complain about it, I just point out what is really going on in a discussion such as this: people are fighting for social status. I’m no different myself, and neither are you. It’s just that you are a cooperative player, while Tom Gore is a bad competitive player, and ASaturnus is a good one.

I myself prefers a hybrid play style – I play cooperatively and competitively at the same time. I seek to hold a discussion and reach understanding on something (a common goal), and I often try to helpother people achieve their own goals. But I also fight people, my favorite weapon is IGNORE, a powerful counter-attack that leaves the attacker dangling in the air and renders his attacks useless. Another favorite counter-attack of mine is ENLIGHTEN, where I basically pull down an attacker persona and reveal his true motivations. My most powerful counter-attack, is to play both IGNORE and ENLIGHTEN at the same time, I do this by revealing someone without speaking to them directly, turning to a third party instead.

Just as I did with ASaturnus above!

I actually did this mostly to exemplify what I’m saying to you, not because I really felt he needed to be attacked. But my act of saying so to you is at the same time a follow-up IGNORE attack on ASaturnus, since it is equivalent of saying I don’t see him as a threat!

You see how this game is played?

To tie this to the discussion I’m attempting to hold here (mostly by myself though), consider the kind of personality I just showed here, I am someone who likes to support others and work together, but who is also a fierce warrior. I am, in gaming archetype terms, an aggressive support healer.

And as I said, I don’t feel I can fully express myself through my little GW2 Avatar. The game does not give me the tools I need to play the way I want. Some people keep telling me I’m wrong, and I could just do this or that, but as Devildoc has pointed out, things like healing scaling don’t really support such a play style.

I am also basically a reactive player, as you can see from the fact that my word attacks are counter-attacks. It is the same when I give support, I prefer to do so after the fact. This play style meshes poorly with support in GW2, since it is based around being proactive, not reactive.

And that’s where ASaturnus scores a direct hit: this game is simply not for me. I guess the thing I have to learn here, is that while I’m a skilled fighter who rises to the top with ease in most games, there are some games I’m poorly equipped for. It’s a humbling lesson.

tovadaun.6304:

yes, there are flaws. Every game will have them. Every thing will have them.

A wise observation!

I wonder though, have people actually suggested PvP should be removed from WvW, or did you just make that up?

My faith in humanity hinges on your answer.

tovadaun.6304:

@OP
You write a post stating that you want a ‘dedicated’ healing class – yet you yourself don’t choose to play one. Why would you force this on the player base as a whole, if it isn’t even what you would play? I don’t understand the lack of logic.

I stated I want more diverse gaming archetypes. I stated I don’t like to play the thief archetype either, but that I respect that it belongs in a game in spite of my personal preferences against it. It’s the same thing with the healer archetype, even though I only like to play it in mixed form, not as a dedicated healer.

Many people have noted that there ARE possibilities to play more support or healing-oriented builds in GW2, and that is correct. But (and that’s a big but), such builds are not needed, and not very competitive. When the best choice is to be a DPS, well guess what players will be?

A well-known truism in game design theory is, if the players aren’t playing the game as intended, then the game is poorly designed. Because the players are RATIONAL, and if the game does not incite proper behavior, then they will not act the right way.

“The right way” in this context might be translated to “making full use of the complexity and potential of the game mechanics”. After all, the devs put these complexities in there, so it could hardly be their intention that everyone ignore them, and just DPS zerg instead, right?

But it is not the players’ fault if they don’t play support styles in GW2, it is the game system that fails to reward such play styles sufficiently, and that rewords DPS zerging instead.

Even Devildoc, who disagrees with much I said, stated this:

“When I say there’s flaws to the game, I’m not meaning the weapon/skill system, I’m just talking about the meta of all dps that is caused by weak heal scaling, low base survivability, and the fact that everything is intended to be dodged”

You see, by REBALANCING the game, the “all DPS meta” Devildoc speaks of, could be made to go away!

If that happened, then I could L2P an Elementalist or a Guardian in the kind of team support role that I prefer to play. But as it is, this is not a viable style to play in. It would always be better for me to just drop the idea of support, and go all-out DPS instead.

I did not ask for dedicated healers staring at health bars, I asked for a few more viable play styles, hopefully including one I’d enjoy personally.

The fun thing is, I’m standing in the doorway here, ready to leave the building. I’m done with this game. But when Devildoc made his suggestion of a skill pool for weapons, my interest was piqued, and I thought if that was the case, I’d be severely tempted to play some more. And if the balance was adjusted so that support styles became viable, then WHAM! GW2 would be my game again!

I really hope the devs do something like this.

Devildoc.6721:

I personally love the weapon based skill system and weapon swapping, only thing I’d change about it is make each weapon have a pool of available skills and allow you to select 2-4 skills (autoattack stays the same) from that pool of say 12 skills. This would also allow you to map your weapon skills in your desired order. I agree with this gripe and have friends who literally quit the game when Guardian greatsword keybindings were swapped on them, ruining their muscle memory for the skills.

While I don’t exactly share your enthusiasm for only having few abilities available at a time, I do think your suggestion is an excellent one, and would improve the game experience A LOT for someone like me!

Select weapon(s), then pick your 4 skills from the pool of skills the weapon(s) have. A simple and elegant improvement that works well, while staying entirely within the boundaries of what GW2 is! This would restore the sense of having a measure of control over your setup that I feel is sorely missing.

Perhaps we could all agree to sign this request, and someone could forward that request to the devs? Make a new thread about it, if you don’t like this one!

Justdeifyme.9387:

Thats the problem. You played WoW for too long to actually enjoy the game as it is.

That may actually be a fair assessment…

What I’ve learned from making this thread, and considering the responses, is that GW2 is, just as you stated, all about dodging! And as Devildoc stated, this has the natural consequence of turning everyone into a fragile DPS that relies on nothing but dodging to survive.

That’s how the game is, and while I do love the dodge roll mechanics, I’m not sure the positives outweigh the negatives for me in the end. If having a GW2-style dodge means that you can’t have varied gaming archetypes, and that gameplay necessarily devolves into a glass cannon zerg, then I’d rather sacrifice the dodge!

And that is of course just my personal preference, steeped by my WoW background.

As I said earlier, my initial impressions of GW2 were very good, I posted a 10/10 review online. The game felt like a whiff of fresh air, and the dodge mechanics was a big part of my enchantment, it gave the game a fast action based feel I loved.

But after a while, the lack of DEPTH to the game play started to bother me. The kind of depth that stems from having completely different roles, and lots of constantly available abilities to choose from, not to mention the complexity of having to manage your setup yourself.

I miss those things, and the coolness of dodging does not make up for it.

Justdeifyme.9387:

If you would need so much time taking care of your Action Bar environment you wouldn’t find the time to take care of the actual environment and you would end up in tons of AoE’s and get hit by everything because you aren’t dodging, and the game is all about dodging and positioning. Setting up difficult Skill Bars would take speed out of the fight as it does in the other MMO’s. You just stand there and hammer your skills down “strategically”.

Absolutely not!

I haven’t played WoW for three years, but back when I did, I was a decent PvPer, with Discipline Priest as my favorite class. And I can tell you this – if you attempt to “just stand there and hammer your skills down strategically”, then you will be standing and reconsidering your play style at the graveyard most of the time!

A PvPer in WoW needs to be constantly on the move and aware of his surroundings, and he needs to have FAST access to all of his many skills, and know how to use them situationally. If he hasn’t internalized his keybindings, and tries to find the right ability with the mouse, he’s simply screwed. PvP in WoW is NOTHING like how you describe it, it is action-packed and takes a high level of skill!

It does not have the dodge mechanics of GW2 though. That’s about the only thing you got right.

I know I promised to go away, but since I’m still thinking about these things, I might as well think out loud here…

I’ve read all your comments, and while some are pretty defensive, I must say some people like Redbear and folly dragon are most amicable. And some make good points too. I especially enjoyed Devildoc’s input. His point that damage avoidance makes everything other than straight up DPS moot hits close to the core of WHY I feel my preferred play style (aggressive support healer) is not viable in GW2. Several have pointed out that there are classes that could do the job, and that is true. But as Devildoc said, no-one should do the job, because it’s practically always better to just be a glass cannon who survives by his dodge and expects everyone else to do the same!

I haven’t even set foot in fractals, but from what I hear, that’s pretty much how you must play them.

Having said that, what I’ve been thinking since I wrote this, is that the lack of viability for different archetypes I wrote about initially is only half of the problem that pushes me away from this game. And it might even be the least important half!

My main gripe with the game is not intellectual disagreement with its structure, it is emotional frustration that comes from an inability to “bond” with it. And this frustration is centered around that little action bar at the bottom of the screen. The truth is I have an almost irrational HATE for my action bar in GW2!

I’ve never experienced anything similar in any other game, so I started thinking why that may be. And it suddenly struck me why a “WoW-style” setup where players manage a bunch of action bars themselves is superior to the single weapon-managed bar of GW2. It is not just superior in my personal opinion, it is OBJECTIVELY superior in a way I’d volunteer to prove in a lab (given sufficient funding)!

I’ll explain why.

In a game like WoW (or SW:TOR, LotR, etc.) you set up your stuff yourself, the way you want it. You have your main attack spells here, your situational spells there, your dots sit with the buffs over there, and your potions and consumables are back in that corner. All of it has a devious key-binding setup you created for yourself.

Setting up such a playing environment and learning to manage it in combat takes time and effort. But the end result is a setup that is yours, and yours alone! Your buddy may come over and admire your setup, and how well you handle it, but he can’t sit down and play it, not even if he’s familiar with the class, because it’s all wrong to him – his own setup is completely different, tailor-made for him, by him. And then you can sit down and discuss the pros and cons of your setups, perhaps you’ll find that he did a clever thing with his key-bindings that gives you an idea on how you can improve yours.

All of this adds up to … (drum roll) … EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT IN THE GAME!

And that is what I’d volunteer to prove in a controlled experiment: that the ability to control your work space improves your emotional investment in your work, all else being equal.

As I said, I actually HATE the lack of control I have over how my playing environment looks in GW2. Take the Ranger’s shortbow for example. The ability “Poison Arrows” fires 5 spread shots. You need to stand right in your foe’s face to hit with all 5. This goes against the grain of what a Ranger is attempting to accomplish, which is … well… RANGE!

I don’t mind having an ability that goes against the grain of the class, but I want it over with my situational abilities, not hard-wired to numeric button 2!

And I especially want to be the one to make the decision, TYVM.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Mike.7236:

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

There is certainly nothing inventive about it, but if you’re going to reinvent the wheel, please make sure you don’t end up with a square one. That’s essentially what Arenanet did here, they created a new combat system that is worse than what a cheap WoW-clone would have been.

You probably wouldn’t have liked GW1 then.

You only had 8 slots there for 100’s of skills.

As for the combat, it seems like it isn’t for you. That doesn’t make it flawed for the reasons you say it is. That’s just your preference.

Just my preference, and my two sons’ preferences, and the preference of the 17 random folks I cited, and the preference of who knows how many more people…

In my original post, I explained what the real issue is here – lack of choice in gaming archetypes. Some of you are happy, because your preferred play style is supported. But there are other play styles that are not, and a lot of people who prefer those play styles get frustrated with the game and leave.

This may not be an issue to you, but it might be to Arenanet.

Oh well, I think I’ve spent enough time on this, I’ll end by thanking everyone for reading. Have fun in your game, I don’t wish to take that away from you, I just want you to get a more diverse player base to have fun with!

I won’t be visiting this thread again, and I won’t be playing much GW2 in the future either. Sure, I own a game account, and sometimes I might feel like logging in for an hour or two, but I won’t give a kitten about it, and that means no gem store purchases, and no more revenue to Arenanet from me.

@Tom Gore: You keep telling me, and others who aren’t impressed with the combat system, to PLEASE GO AWAY.

Fair enough, that’s of course just what I’ll do, since I’m not having enough fun in GW2 to bother logging in much anymore!

I’ve been playing another game more recently, Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is actually quite bad in many respects, I could write a book about how poorly executed it is…

But it does beat GW2 in one key area – it has a decent, bog-standard MMO combat system that doesn’t constantly annoy the crap out of me. It gives me player-managed action bars with sufficient slots to fit everything. Like every other MMO out there I can remember.

There is certainly nothing inventive about it, but if you’re going to reinvent the wheel, please make sure you don’t end up with a square one. That’s essentially what Arenanet did here, they created a new combat system that is worse than what a cheap WoW-clone would have been.

P.S Before I take the hint and GO AWAY FOREVER, I’ll point out I didn’t bother to come here to argue with fanboys like you, I did it on the off chance that the developers actually read this forum. Not likely, but you never know. You see, while you think I should just GO AWAY, that is not a good business strategy. Arenanet seems interested in growing their player base to earn more money, even if it means going to Asia to do so. If the numbers aren’t what they’d like to see, I’m sure trying to make the game more appealing to more players would be an option too, as much as you don’t want that to happen.

@Tom Gore: I do understand that GW2 has its fans, people who think its unique take on combat is awesome!

But those fans are perhaps not as common as you think. I just cited 17 random people who feel the same way I do about the combat system. This complaint is repeated over and over, and those who do give GW2 a 10/10 score don’t usually say anything specific positive about the combat system either – it appears most who love this game do it for various other reasons.

I’ve been around a while, and I have three adult sons, two of them have played GW2 too. Note my use of past tense there, neither of them keeps playing anymore! Reason? They find the combat system limited and frustrating!

It’s lucky for Arenanet that a small part of the gaming population has no problem with their combat system, and that an even smaller part actually like it. But the game is definitely suffering from it. The rave reviews were from when it was fresh, but how many people stick around for the long haul? I myself posted a 10/10 review at metacritic during my initial honeymoon with this game, and now I’m utterly fed up with my tiny limited action bar!

I haven’t seen the numbers, but I do know that zones are more or less deserted on my server now. This is in itself a problem, because the mobs conquer territory unless players keep taking it back, and it’s not fun questing in a zone where every waypoint is offline…

@Aenia, the mechanics is what that turns people off this game! I am not alone in thinking so. Here’s a few reviews from metacritic:

“skills based on the weapon of choice really doesn’t work at all. It limits your choices and forces you to stick with skills you don’t enjoy using and/or don’t fit in with your playstyle.”

“Abilities are not enjoyable, and you’re far more limited than you think. One ability is just an autoattack, elite skills are next to useless, so you’re practically limited to eight abilities (with one being a mere generic heal). … no complexity equates to no enjoyability or actual ‘gameplay’.”

“the skills system is awful, basically when you get a weapon you level it up and only 5 skills are available, thats it.”

“click the button which is not on cooldown, combat is dumbed down”

“The combat overall I will say is fairly good but with the limited skills it does get boring after some time.”

“By abandoning the staple roles of RPGs in favor of some sort of a weapon-based skill system and self-healing, the game pushes itself way backward in that department.”

“no reason to bother with tactics just mash everything you have and maybe some combos will happen … you have 30-40 skills to unlock, out of which a whopping 5 (yes, FIVE) are available for use at any time … if you want situational skill A you can’t just use it anytime unless you unequip the always useful skill B beforehand.”

“since they dont use the classic tank-healer-dps system, group combat becomes confusing”

“No trainers, no weapon learning, no nothing. Around level 30 you will unlock all you skill slots and spell you will use for the rest of the game experience. You will only have 5 weapon spells and 6 buffs/cooldowns. That is it. i personally could not bare with using the same 5 or so spells over and over till lvl 80. The combat is just not fun. The weapon skills and spells are so limited. I feel brain dead right now.”

“Every class has basically the same set of skills with slight differences (for example, damage, heal, escape, CC, etc). At first the classes look different but really the differences are quite small as everyone can do a little bit of everything and you can see how similar a 99% of the skills are.”

“all classes are basically “jack of all trades” class … this lack of feature makes every class basically a boredom due to the fact that you’ll never feel unique: you’re one of the crowd … I saw just how limited it was, since you’ll just be spamming 5 skills in total, plus 5 more that can be set by yourself later on…it is just not enough to keep the game fresh"

“There are no strategies anymore, just annoying-kitten mindless spamming of 2 or 3 skills. the skill system and combat system is dead. Gone are the days when you could hunt down specific skills stretched across the world of Tyria to collect. Now, your skills are linked with your weapon. Which you then only have 5 per weapon, and are very limited in their diversity. Honestly, every weapon and skill feel almost identical per class. "

“this game is just a common button smasher, every character is the same but with a different paint coat. No “trinity” means that there is no strategy and everyone is a DPS class. Everyone looks the same, feels the same"

“Classes feel weird, too few skills to choose from and don’t feel solid whatsoever”

" The classes don’t even feel different from one another, and its entire no-trinity system has made it a dps fest with no skill involved."

“I felt just as useless at level 80 as I did at 30 because you’re limited to the number of skills that fit in your tiny action bar. … Combat is extremely limited. You’re given a set number of action bar slots for each class and are restricted to it. This pigeon holes you into the same skills, the same rotations and the same strategies for combat. Even swapping weapons seems pointless because your other set of weapons probably doesn’t match the playing style you chose.”

“in their pursuit for a perfect MMO formula, ArenaNet forgot to add one critical element to this otherwise perfect equation – fun. No argument for PvP balance can overrule the fact that restricting your class to only a handful of skillsets (as opposed to hundreds in GW1) was an absolutely horrible design choice that doomed the entire experience from the start.”

Two things are mentioned over and over by people who quit GW2 – the frustrating limitations in the core combat mechanics, and the tendency for everything to become a mindless zerg with no discernible roles for players (which boils down to the limitations of the combat system as well).

Most people do love many aspects of GW2, but stop playing anyway because of this.

The one greatest flaw with GW2, is that it doesn’t support a sufficient number of different play styles, or gaming archetypes. This condemns the game to being a niche game with a much smaller market than it would have otherwise. People are different, and if you only support the tastes of a certain minority, then the rest find little reason to play.

Take myself as an example. In every game I ever played before GW2, my main was a healer archetype. I always played this healer in a very aggressive way, and my play style was centered on giving flexible support to team players – damage, control, and a little healing, in that order.

I prefer to play that way, because that’s the kind of person I am; this archetype appeals to me the most.

Unfortunately, such a class does not exist in GW2. Someone who didn’t like the healer archetype decided that it didn’t belong in the game. Which is of course a case of not seeing the bigger picture. There are gaming archetypes I don’t like too, I’d for instance never play the thief archetype – I find it boring to play, and mostly annoying to face. If I were to design a game with only my own personal satisfaction in mind, the thief would go bye-bye in a heartbeat!

But the thing is, I wouldn’t design a game to only suit ME, because that would not make for a very good game! It is a good thing to have those pesky thieves around (even though I personally hate them), because having a full compliment of gaming archetypes gives the game variety and the fights dynamism.

And different gaming archetypes are supposed to be different, not shoehorned into the same shape, as is the case with GW2. Here every class is much more similar than they are different, because the overarching design idea of having abilities tied to weapons forced it.

That was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, many things were done right in GW2, but the mistakes must be acknowledged too. It wasn’t a mistake to tie abilities to weapons because I personally don’t like the clunky play style of switching out ability sets, it was a mistake because it forces the same clunky play style on everyone and makes the archetypes less distinctive, which lessens the appeal of the game to a lot of people.

I tell you guys this, because you’ll only end up with a little group of happy fans who praise the single play style you offer, and those who don’t find what they seek in the game are more likely to just go away, than to offer constructive feedback.

How could you fix this, without making it into GW3?

It’s going to be tough, because you have kind of painted yourselves into a corner here. As long as you stick to the idea of tying abilities to weapons for everyone, and of having no resources to manage, relying on a combination of a limited number of active abilities and looong cooldowns to throttle player output, your hands are tied. There is just not enough flexibility in the current design for a meaningful improvement.

Thus, the design must change. You must step outside of the boundaries imposed by the current system, allowing the classes to grow in different directions, letting them blossom into different archetypes over time.

A few specific things you should work towards:

1. There should exist a class that can heal and cleanse others.
2. Some classes should be throttled by different kinds of resource management.
3. Some classes should have all abilities available and not need to switch between sets.

Be creative with it, but do improve the variety of play styles offered by the game! I personally only play GW2 very sporadically, because my “Main” in GW2 has about as much emotional appeal to me as a third alt would in any other game. It goes without saying I’m not using the gem shop or buying expansions until that situation improves!

Sentry.3691:

Mike.7236:

I personally don’t like the idea of switching between different modes, which is what you do with the weapon switch. I never got to terms with Druids in WoW for that reason, mode switching isn’t for everyone!

Except, in GW2, it really is for everyone. Every class plays like a Druid, since every class requires you to constantly change “form” if you’re going to get the most out of them.

I don’t like that style of play, and so I don’t change weapons much, no matter what Arenanet thinks about it. Which unfortunately makes the game play even more lacking in complexity than it already is.

It’s actually pretty sad that Arenanet didn’t just pick the standard MMO model with tons of abilities on quick bars that you manage yourself. There are so many things that are awesome about this game, but the thing you do 99 % of the time (killing stuff) is far less interesting than it could have been.

I don’t get it. Instead of adapting to the game mechanics, you are just going to play the game as if it is another game? I hope that you never wander into wvw, because you have to be extremely active with your ranger in order to survive and thrive.

The only people who seem to appreciate the Ranger improvements made in the new patch are those who play wvw. Do you know why? Because it requires the player to react to a lot of rapidly changing combat situations that you will simply never find in pve or even spvp. And stealth is godly.

In wvw, a ranger that sits in the back of the crowd with a single weapon dies very quickly, especially if they don’t know how to dodge.

Yup, instead of adapting to the game mechanics, I play the game as if it was another game. That is because I really don’t like the basic game mechanic in this game. It is flawed. But there are many aspects of the game that makes it a worthwhile experience even so, that’s why I “cheat” and play it as close to the way I want it as I can get.

I realize I’m never going to be considered a good GW2 player for that reason, but do YOU care about being good at something you don’t enjoy?

That’s the rub: I don’t enjoy GW2’s basic game mechanics! And so I don’t optimize my output according to the game rules, I optimize my fun by doing it the way I want (or as close as the game will let me).

Don’t worry though, “bad” players like me don’t stay around for too long, we soon move on to some other game that actually supports our preferred play styles!

I think it’s OK that Rangers have pets, but it’s not OK that they are so dumb. They have trouble hitting moving targets for instance, which makes them WAAY weaker in PvP than in PvE.

If we could control our pets better, and if their AI was less kittened, then I’d love them, as it is they’re basically just a free DOT, except a dot that works poorly in PvP.

Haha, I’m the archetypical bad ranger, except I don’t play that way when I’m out by myself, I just do when I’m in a group!

When I play by myself, I do all the class can manage, I spec and gear for damage, and survive by being active and controlling the situation. And I use cats or spiders depending on mood, never bears.

But when I play in a group, I pull out my longbow and my trusty brown bear, and put up my comfy healing spring at the 1,500 m mark!

Why? Why am I such a bad player in groups, when I actually know how to handle myself out in the world?

I’ll tell you why:

Because a flimsy Ranger with crit gear and direct damage traits doesn’t stand a chance up close to a boss. I’d die like a fly if I stood there, so I stand at 1,500 m and push my ranged damage rotation (2-1-1-1-1… repeat). That way, at least I contribute a little damage. With emphasis on the word “little”, of course, since ranged damage sucks.

In short, if you want me to contribute more to a group, tell Arenanet to make my class suck less. If ranged direct damage wasn’t so extremely underwhelming in this game, I wouldn’t have to go all in with aggressive gear and traits to make it viable, and then I might have some chance to survive up close to a boss, and then I could play better than a monkey in a group setting.

The lack of fun is the Ranger’s Achilles heel…

That’s why the change to the long bow is a move in the right direction – it’s more fun to go to stealth than to stack a debuff you’ll only notice if you crunch the numbers.

But the real problem is the clunky design of the game play – it’s just not a good idea to limit players to 5 main abilities, where most even have long cooldowns. You feel very little interactivity in this game, because there is so little your character can actually DO at any moment!

I personally don’t like the idea of switching between different modes, which is what you do with the weapon switch. I never got to terms with Druids in WoW for that reason, mode switching isn’t for everyone!

Except, in GW2, it really is for everyone. Every class plays like a Druid, since every class requires you to constantly change “form” if you’re going to get the most out of them.

I don’t like that style of play, and so I don’t change weapons much, no matter what Arenanet thinks about it. Which unfortunately makes the game play even more lacking in complexity than it already is.

It’s actually pretty sad that Arenanet didn’t just pick the standard MMO model with tons of abilities on quick bars that you manage yourself. There are so many things that are awesome about this game, but the thing you do 99 % of the time (killing stuff) is far less interesting than it could have been.

Ursan.7846:

Mike.7236:

Perhaps I should. But I have 4500 bags waiting to be unpacked as it is, and more gold than I’ll need until level cap, so I might not make any more buys anytime soon.

You know what they say. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have the burden of proof. We don’t.

I just popped into the game and checked. “Bag of Skritt Shinies” currently has a buy order price of 96 c. Can’t you just pop in and buy 2000 bags at 97 c, and see for yourself? You’ll make 30 % profit or more for the effort too! ;-)

Someone ordered 10000 bags for a few c less. I guarantee you he will get them, probably quite soon. That’s how this market works.

Ursan.7846:

You should post screenshots of your pickup tab. Before you press Take All, not after it.

Perhaps I should. But I have 4500 bags waiting to be unpacked as it is, and more gold than I’ll need until level cap, so I might not make any more buys anytime soon.

Arimahn.3568:

Ursan.7846:

Arimahn.3568:

The TP being the way it is, maybe the few that trickle in are coming from your own server while the huge load that gets dumped out occasionally is the sum of all bags bought from different servers?

This makes no sense. The TP is global, period.

The TP, technically, is a mess and the items that get traded are still attached to characters on different servers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can’t account for the steady stream of bought items from elsewhere on a specific account. So, instead of making a huge list of tiny stacks it wraps them up in larger bundles and only then sends them to the buyer.

That’s also a possible explanation. But it would imply the market is in an inconsistent state (because ther IS no consistent global state), with lots of fudging going on behind the scene to make the numbers seem to work out. If that’s true, then the TP is most definitely a mess technically.

Ursan.7846:

The alternative is easy. Like I mentioned, the player base is huge.

There’s many reasons for why your orders vary that much.

1. You place an order for 60c. Someone places 99 orders at 61 c. Someone sells 100 bags. You receive just one.
2. You place an order for 60c. Someone just happens to sell 100 bags immediately after. You receive 100 bags.
3. Some people don’t farm skritt bags heavily, and sell 1 by 1. But some people do farm them heavily, and some of them dump them en mass.
4. Or, just tons of people sell a few skritt bags at the same time.

Again, congrats on finding a profitable market. Once knowledge gets out however, they tend to not stay profitable. Enjoy it while you can.

You’re basically saying the market is so huge this kitten just happens?

I won’t argue against the idea. Perhaps that’s the plain truth…

If that’s so, then I guess I’ll just have to keep milking this market niche until it dries up, and then go on to find another gold mine.

It’s still a bit sad though. I mean, the fact remains you make very little gold from actually playing the game, and milking the trade post isn’t as much fun. :-(

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You say you’re watching the market of Skritt Bag of Shinies. So before I go on and debunk your conspiracy, allow me to get more details from you.

Where are you getting these numbers of 1750 bags dropping at once? Are you purchasing 2000 of these bags, and seeing it trickle in for pickup?

Please “debunk” it if you can, I’m only interested in learning the truth.

This is what happens, in detail:

I’m putting in buy orders for several thousand bags at a time, for instance 3000 or so. And as I’m busy doing so (I may still be busy putting out more buy orders), the pickup button lights up, I check it, and voíla, there are 750, 125, or 1750 bags for immediate pickup!

I start unpacking the mats within, and while I’m busy doing so, a single bag drops, the three more a minute later. And then suddenly, all my remaining orders are filled. I put out more buy orders and keep unpacking. Soon I have to stop putting out more buy orders, because they are filling faster than i can unpack them. Always in huge loads.

Then I sell the mats. The least profit I’ve ever seen has been 25 %. The highest 90 %.

Ursan.7846:

Mike.7236:

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

How big is your time scale of “same time?” Do you seriously watch the tp all day an see 1000 pop up at once?

Also is it really inconceivable to you that in a game of 3 million players, these things happen sometimes? That maybe 2-3, even 10-20 players dump large amounts of skritt bags?

Occam’s razor.

No, I certainly do not watch the “Skritt Bag of Shinies” market all day. But I do watch it closely for perhaps twenty minutes from time to time, since I’m busy making money on it! My main is at level 61, and I already got about 100 g for my lvl 80 gear…

And when I do keep close track on this market, second by second, I see exactly what I reported to you all: a very slow drip of bags entering the market, interspersed with HUGE loads of bags dumped in the very same second.

So far you have insinuated I’m a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting the trade post software is fudging stuff, which may turn out to be wrong, but you have not provided an alternative explanation worth considering. I’m all ears.

The huge loads of bags outnumber the drip of bags at least 100 to 1. If players are responsible for the huge dumps, then they must have bought them earlier. Which means 99 % of bags are bought and then resold without being opened. Which further means, all my buying competitors in this markets are reselling, and I’m the only one opening them to take out the profit contained within.

Is this a reasonable explanation?

Maylojager.1307:

Imo the op is trying to drive the mentioned product’s price up, since he is stocked on it, so that he could dump his supply after “omg how to manipulate market,plz” auditory from this forum swarms the fore mentioned product with buy offers. Nice try.

Nah, I used to worry when I saw other crowding in to take advantage of this market, now I just put my buy order where I want it, no matter if there are buy orders for 10000 bags above me. It doesn’t seem to matter how many others I’m competing with, my buy order will still be filled soon enough. It’s this strange market behavior that made me wonder about the whole thing.

@Ursan:

It’s of course possible this is just a case of people behaving sub-optimally. That’s why I call my theory a theory.

But if ArenaNet isn’t intervening in the markets to stabilize them, then the following conundrum needs explaining:

Most of the time there are few Skritt bags entering the market to fill buy orders. Then suddenly, huge amounts of Skritt bags drop into the market, all at the same time.

A player playing in Skritt territory for some time might accumulate 10 bags, decide he can’t be bothered to open them, and dump them at the trade post, filling a buy order. But under what circumstances might a player conceivably dump thousands of bag at the same time?

Actually, there is no possible way for him to do it in a way that matches the evidence, because thousands of bags can enter the market faster than a player could dump them there (you can only sell max 250 at a time).

No, there are only two possible explanations, as far as I can see:

1. ArenaNet “helps” the market, as in my theory.

2. The trade post is not hosted on a single server, and a bunch of partly inconsistent trade post servers work in parallel, without being aware of what happens on the others. When they get the time to update what has happened on the other servers, big update changes can occur at once.

The second more technical explanation is of course possible, but it would mean the market-as-you-see-it is always in an inconsistent state by design. This would be a dangerous way to implement a market system, perhaps acceptable in a game, but disastrous for a real market system. If that’s the case we’ll probably just have to live with the strange things that happen as a result, since it would take a complete re-implementation to fix it.

P.S.
The reason I believe my theory is correct, is because the demand for Skritt bags is huge (for obvious reasons), and yet the buy orders keep getting filled! It seems the more Skritt bags people want to buy, the more Skritt bags are flooding the market. The end result of more actors piling on to profit is that everyone gets as many bags as they wish for, at a rate that actually depresses the price to ridiculous levels, once no-one around can take any more bags.

When you put out a buy order for say 4000 Skritt bags, you’ll see 1 or 2 bags dripping in every five minutes, and then perhaps 1750 bags drop at once. It seems logical to assume the 1 or 2 bags are bags actually sold by players, while the 1750 bags are bags created by the trading system to fill orders in a market where supply cannot meet demand, as my theory goes. The ratio of fake bags to real bags is 1000 to 1 in that case.

Just imagine what this then does to the market value of the mats contained in those bags!

The message to take home: market intervention is always bad, both in the real world, and in a game economy! Just don’t do it! Let supply and demand balance out itself! Wherever the price ends up is the right price!

Please fix this, ArenaNet. When you do, parasitical market actors like myself will become less wealthy, but everyone will enjoy the game more, me included. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

Many MMO’s have broken markets. The most common case, is where there are simply too few transactions happening. This makes it a waste of time to check if anything is at sale at the marketplace, so people don’t bother. Instead, everyone spams offers and requests in global chat. This is the usual MMO scenario of the stagnant village market.

The GW2 market is not like that, it’s a global market bustling with activity 24/7, but it’s broken nonetheless.

The problem is, all prices are permanently depressed to levels where no in-game economic activity really makes much sense as a source of income.

Out of all MMO’s I’ve played, I can’t remember a single one where I was so hopelessly flat-out broke all the time. Even minor gold sinks like travel costs are a substantial barrier to use in GW2. The GW2 player basically lives off vendor trashing junk drops, and quick travel is a luxury that must be used in moderation.

At least until he or she discovers how to make money at the trade post.

It seems strange that it should be possible to make money trading this depressed market, where practically every item in the game is permanently on offer, often at near vendor trash values. But it is. There are certain safe trades that never fail to churn a handsome profit.

I’m not an expert here, nor need I be, since once you find one such trade, you’re pretty much set…

My trade is to place bulk buy orders for “Bag of Skritt Shinies” (buy price has ranged from 79 to 121 c for me). I then open the bags and post sell orders for the contents (sell price has ranged from 135 to 183 c, averaged over 1000 bags).

That’s it. The trade never fails, so no complicated math is needed, just buy and sell, and make as much money as you can be bothered to open bags. At least while you’re still leveling up, this is vastly more profitable than anything else you can do in the game!

Unfortunately, this makes a lot of in-game activity pointless. Why mine ore (which breaks ever more expensive mining picks and barely breaks even), when you can make a solid profit just by buying Skritt bags?

Now, we all know from basic economic theory that what I just told you can’t be – it is impossible for a free market to have an excessively profitable trade for any length of time. If such a “golden trade” existed, more and more market actors would be attracted to it, undercutting each other to get the action, until the situation stabilizes at a moderately profitable level, just as any other trade.

But persistent golden trades still exist in GW2!

Why is this? I don’t claim to know, but I do have a theory that might be worth consideration. It goes like this:

In my theory, ArenaNet was originally concerned that the market would be unstable, so they put in some “fudge logic” to keep everything running smoothly. Specifically, I theorize that if there is great demand for an item, and the supply generated by players cannot keep up, then the trade system fills some buy orders with items freshly created from thin air. All in an attempt to help, of course.

If this theory is true, then it has a few serious consequences that ArenaNet may not have considered. The market will indeed run more smoothly, but at a cost:

One is that prices will be permanently suppressed, since excess demand cannot raise prices, but excess supply can still lower them. This hurts in-game economic activity across the board, just as we are seeing.

Another is that golden trade opportunities will exist, since excess demand cannot raise prices, so there is no mechanism that restores the balance when more actors pile on to get a cut of the hot action.

In the end, this skews the functioning of the market and destroys the game economy by diverting resources from productive players who are out there mining resources, to non-productive players like myself who are double-clicking tens of thousands of bags like drooling idiots!

This is not a good thing for the game, and it should be fixed.