Guild Wars 2

Sil.4560:

A game which has been out for years is more complete and complex than a game that is just approaching its first anniversary? Imagine that.

As someone who played both games at release, GW1 was miles ahead as it drew near it’s first year anniversary. But that’s beside the point.

I’d say give it a shot, I thoroughly enjoyed my first playthrough of PvE content, and a lot of it is very solo friendly, more so than this game. I personally have trouble jumping back in, mostly because the game feels so different than it did back when I played, and seeing HA deserted is heartbreaking to say the least. As you play, it’s important to remember that the game was designed as a PvP game with PvE drawing elements from it, which is the polar opposite of GW2.

As someone said earlier, someone in love with GW2 would probably not find much worth in GW1.

Give up OP. This game was not meant for us.

Your points are all good ones that I’ve mulled over myself more than once, particularly your comments on camera control and line of sight. This example also highlights the major divide in the community of this game, or at least on the forums.

It’s understandable that many players coming from different games would hear you talking about using your mouse hand to hit skills and instantly think “NOOB.” Hell, anyone doing that in this game is a freaking noob. Might as well just click your skills (lol). In the same sense, it’s understandable why the addition of the line of sight element and aimed skills and spells brings with it a perceived raise in skill cap. After all, there are certainly people that can aim their character more effectively and intelligently while still being able to dexterously hit all their proper hotkeys better than others.

However, while this adds the element of dexterity to the game, it takes away a lot more . Being able to rotate your camera and view the entire battlefield while still attacking / harassing your target was fundamental to any GW1 team fight; it allowed you to effectively be a part of the entire overall battle, allowing you to focus on playing your role in your team. I should add that freeing up your mouse hand a bit to hit skills was something I definitely took for granted. It’s not that it’s impossible to hotkey your skills so your left hand can do it all, but the fact that it was much easier to hit the proper skills allowed you to focus on more important things. Essentially, the main focus of the game wasn’t on the aforementioned hand / finger coordination, but rather on deeper mechanics I don’t want to get into.

Now, I don’t think these things would translate very well into GW2, as the pace is just much to different. But the shift from chess-like strategy to FPS-like strategy, as well as the causes for this shift, should be noted.

Like I said earlier, however, you should just give up here. As you have probably gathered by now, what’s left of this game’s community is more likely to attack your ability to play rather than attempt to understand where you are coming from. And it’d be foolish to think that the developers would do absolutely anything with what you have to say.

While I’m sure mesmer has its share of bugs, I don’t think it’s going to be a very high priority. Many (read: all) professions have bugs and awkward abilities that keep getting overlooked, and they’re doing a lot worse than mesmers currently are.

My only gripe with custom servers is how lame they are. That’s what anet has come up with in 9 months to add to this lackluster pvp scene? No automated tournaments, no new game modes, no sense of progression? Just custom servers? Feels very meh, I personally won’t be participating.

Celtus.8456:

GW1 had “Guild Halls”, earned by winning a worldwide tournament (Heroes’ Ascent), or by purchasing Celestial Sigils supplied by winners of the Heroes’ Ascent tournament.

GW2 has “custom arenas”…how fun.

Basically, this ^^^^^^^^^^^

Hugs.1856:

What about the sheer excitement of competition?

I suggest you (finally) make up your mind on the competitive infrastructure rather than giving out carrots:p

This.

Even with some shinier loot, it’s still going to feel like a grind if there’s no progression. Look to your old game for inspiration already.

Also, I like the idea of daily and monthly tournaments. You know, like you had planned to do way back when.

I run a support guardian, and I have the same problem. While my presence can usually help my team win in a group fight, say on mid point, they’ll usually be too terribad to then come help me retake either home or far point. And there’s no way I could do it myself. Basically, nobody seems to know where to be at the right time in pugs, which is very frustrating when you’re trying to support them.

I have had success with a bunker ranger, going between mid and far as my teammates mindlessly zerg mid point, and it has probably won a game or two at least that we wouldn’t have otherwise. The difference is rangers can actually do some damage.

Bumping for injustice. Explain yourselves, devs.

Do people actually use the right-click to target? That blows my mind. It’s so… senseless.

As for the spectator thing, how are you prioritizing spectators over players? What will the spectators be watching if the players get shafted too many times and leave?

Rerroll.9083:

I’m not invalidating your points. Im only saying the tactics you describe are only useful vs very low skilled players.

And I was curious to find out your rating, because I never happened to see a staff ele in a decent ladder position.

You raise a good point, there are practically no staff eles in any decent teams. In my opinion, while the staff does give great support CC and decent group heals, the game focuses too much on spike damage, which is why support damage is viewed as undesirable. Furthermore, with spike damage as an emphasis, to be a good support, you must focus on support alone to be effective in high level play. That’s why an ele, which provides good support in multiple fields, may fall short in high level play. I’d say this isn’t because staff ele is weak, this is solely because spike damage is out of hand, which is something I’ve brought up in several posts. Were it to be toned down, support / pressure damage would be much more viable, and the eles brand of support would be nothing short of incredible.

^ I doubt that I am rated as I have only been solo queuing. On top of that, I quit playing the game until earlier this month. The rating system is rather subpar on this game anyways, if you’re trying to invalidate my points through this, then good luck having a constructive discussion.

Julius.1094:

Staff ele is underpowered. Almost no one runs it not because none of them know how to play, as you imply, but because it’s underpowered, which does not mean useless. Your whole post most makes a case for what it can do but does not change the fact it does not do enough.

Well, I’ve addressed the points the OP cited as being the reasons staff ele is UP, and I’ve explained why each point is invalid as those particular abilities are being used incorrectly and the overall playstyle he has employed is contradictory to what the staff ele excels at. When played correctly, the staff ele is far from UP.

Ideal solution, +1

What this boils down to, is that you want staff to be able to do everything the other weapon sets can do, and do it at a greater range on top of that. This is simply not how the weapon was designed. Do you really think that you should be able to do tons of damage, while still having access to chill, cripple, a mass stun, the ability to stack godly amounts of might, great AoE heals, etc. etc.? Stop trying to Rambo it up with every weapon and spec you stumble across; the very fact that they all play differently is where diversity comes from.

My advice to you is to get a good handle on the different combo fields and your blast finishers, spec with defense in mind, and stick with a couple of teamates focusing on different cap points. And don’t go chasing that thief that got away for kittens sake.

Disagree.

I main a staff ele in s/tPvP. People that think staff eles are weak are simply using them wrong.

Staff eles provide excellent support to a team. The support comes from excellent heals, excellent CC, and good aoe damage support. On top of that, we have access to many shared boons / auras through the use of blast finishers and combo fields. When you’re running with a team (by this, I mean you have one or two other people with you), you’re a great asset.

What you shouldn’t expect to do is consistently 1v1 particular professions and builds. You’re simply not meant to if you’re using a staff. Furthermore, staying at maximum range is not you’re biggest priority (unless you’re running a GC build, but I don’t see why you should be). With all the CC and heals, you’re fairly tanky if built correctly, so if you’re opponents are choosing to go after you rather than you’re teamates, you can actually do a good job at surviving while still supporting your team, who will hopefully finish the job for you. If the focus has shifted off of you, you should still be in the fray, stacking might with your fire 2 and using either earth 2, earth dodge roll (with evasive arcana) and arcane blast. Note that 2/3s of these require you to be in the middle of everything. With 12+ stacks of might (shared with your teamates, mind you), even the tankiest of builds won’t hit like wet noodles.

Some comments on you’re changes:

Earth 2 / Fire 2 : Yes, they are easy to walk out of. Quickly in fact. Which is fine, considering that you hopefully placed them on a cap point. Which is what you should always be doing with your AoEs. Furthermore, these two sync up greatly for a might blast finisher. While I can understand the 3/4 seconds before Fire 2 even ticks may be frustrating, it’s not too terrible considering its purpose.

Earth 4: I must disagree with this one as well. Yes, running through it once provides a meager 2 seconds of cripple. Nothing to write home about. But if you place it on a point of interest, and hell, even kite back and forth on it, you’ll see your opponents moving back and forth across it too. This is why it stays on the ground for a decent amount of time. I actually love how this skill works right now.

Fire 1: OK as is, though I do think it hits quite enough at times, considering it’s your main auto-attack for damage. Still, it’s great spammable AoE damage. Being farther away should make it easier to dodge, lots of abilities are like that. As I stated above, being at maximum range will prevent you from working at peak efficiency anyways.

Fire 4: Eh, I can’t say I have a problem with the ability. On one hand, with arcane blast off CD, I can use them both for a quick 3 stacks of might. If I really need to escape, I can use this, switch to air, and use 3. I really don’t see a need to change this ability; it’s not exactly meant to be used as an escape; it’s more for the quick fire field.

Water 1 : I agree, I dislike this ability. I never use it because, like you said, it’s impossible to get meaningful heals out of it. +1 to this’n.

Water 5: While it would make it very convenient, I think this could potentially make it borderline OP. This ability is great for your team battling on a capture point, hell, the radius is even larger than the point itself. This is not meant to be a heal on the fly, that you use when you’re running away or even being focused. It’s situational. And in the right situation, it’s amazing (especially with the trait that removes conditions when you apply regeneration to allies).

Air 1: Not necessary; it’s fine how it is. To me, it sounds like you just want to be able to do more single target damage.

Air 3: This ability does miss a lot, but I find that when it does miss, I used it at the wrong time. Say, if a target was fleeing, strafing, dodging, or simply too far away. As is, this ability is great in the right situation, such as interrupting a res, a powerful move on an ally, giving yourself breathing room if an enemy is up in your grill. It shouldn’t be something you just mindless press of cooldown, or when you happen to be in air attunement.

Air 5: Why? This move is amazing as is. Throw one of these bad boys down in the middle of a capture point, and you’re entire team has an instant advantage.

Impressive, I’ll even hold my breath.

You guys are going to hate me, but after not playing tPvP for months, I played 4 games yesterday, 3 of which I won, and received the guantlets on my second chest. I didn’t even know / care about them.

If only they weren’t medium…

/uselsspost

ExaFlare.1390:

- New rewards or recipes. And not just armors or weapons.
- Ability to use ALL SKILLS midair.
- Save/Load options for builds, like Guild Wars 1.
- Weekly updates for minor bugs/exploits and balance.
- A bank/AH in the Mists, and not just pvp lockers. (why 3 pvp lockers btw?)
- A new game mode? Not a deathmatch, something like King of the Hill would be better, and multiple exit to avoid spawn camping.
- Fix bugs in already existing maps, like invisible walls/obstacles.
- Please. For the love of god. Remove the confirmation for recyling pvp weapons/armors.
- There are too many adds in this game. Pets, clones, phantasm, rock dog, elem etc… The AI is playing for you way too much, there is no skill in this.
- We can still shadow step/blink on top of the wall on Foefire, allowing people to kill the lord without destroying the door. This is a huge exploit.
-Remove RightClick targeting. Turning the camera should NOT make us lose our target.
-A better daily/monthly. Give us something useful, and more objectives.
-GvG.

This guy knows what’s up. Read this ANet, for the love of god.

I don’t know why so many are pushing for 1v1 arenas so hard; there are much more pressing issues at hand. Besides, certain classes are always going to excel at 1v1, it’s almost as if they were designed to do so (hint hint). Aside from that, any other professions trying their hand in it will be using terrible builds not suitable for anything else. I’m not totally against such an arena eventually being implemented (hell, why not) but really, that’s in your top 3? I’m on the right forums, right?

I had no idea about this until I read this thread. Until now, I just though I was doing something wrong and kind of blowing it off. Now I see it all the kitten time, interrupting my heals constantly.

Libertine Lush.1320:

3) A Heart of the Mists worthy of being our lobby area:

The 5 racial capitals and Lion’s Arch, for the most part, are breathtakingly beautiful. In stark contrast, the Heart of the Mists, in my opinion, is dull, uninspired, uneventful looking. It possesses neither the attractiveness nor the scale befitting a staging area in one of the core parts of the game, the part that aspires to be an eSport no less. I don’t get that wide-eyed awe in the Mists as when I’m in the 6 main cities, panning the camera to ogle at everything.
So I think it’s unfortunate that for sPVPers, the Mists is our “main city”—what some of us will be seeing most of our GW2 lives whenever we’re not in a match. Meanwhile PVEers and WvWers get to take in the sights of the Black Citadel, Divinity’s Reach, Lion’s Arch as they wait on WvW ques, attend to Trading Post matters, form dungeon parties, etc.
A Heart of the Mists as a zone in all of the 6 main cities would be especially nice, as now it feels like we’re in a hermetically sealed, sparsely populated hinterland, separate from the rest of the game.

YES. I’ve always had in the back of my mind that the Mists were just bland, boring, and generally un-epic. HA in GW1 was a giant cavern with enormous doors, which you “entered” with your team to fight and hopefully make your way to the coveted Hall of Heroes. THAT had an epic feel. In the mists, I imply feel like I’m simply queueing up for some FPS minigame action (which, now that I think of it, could be what they were going for).

Back on topic though.

1. Build diversity / viable team support specs.
Note: support is not limited to healing / boon-botting. I’d like to see many traits and weapon skills / utilities reworked with a team-based atmosphere in mind.

1.5. Reduction of spike damage
Sort of goes with the first, but I think that the ability of a single player to instagib with a simply cheese combo hurts the game more than helps it, and really has no place in a teambased MMORPG.

2. A combined lobby across all servers.
There absolutely MUST be a larger pool to form teams with, otherwise hotjoin will continue to reign supreme. I’d much rather see this than a LFG tool, by the way.

3. Obligatory: new gamemodes.

4. Increase rewards for winning.
One reason hotjoin is a mess is that running around in a zerg will likely earn more rank / glory points, regardless of a win or loss.

Speaking of rank…

5. An actual meaningful rank system.
Again, I’m going to cite GW1 HoH where rank was given exponentially if you continued to win and progress through the maps. Good players earned much more rank points that bad ones in the same time frame, acquired higher rank, and received larger kittens. Obviously, an exact system like this isn’t going to work for this game; the gamemode / tourney system / everything is too different. But anything is better than what we have now, where time spent playing is king.

OGDeadHead.8326:

I second what google wrote – please clarify what you actually mean. My first impression from reading your post is that you want ranger damage nerfed to the ground, since that’s what will happen if you remove pets autoattack damage, but I may have misunderstood your ideas totally?

As for RusShiro’s comment – LOL! Another utterly unbalanced suggestion. There are so many comments like these floating around these days, makes you wonder what type of players actually play this game nowadays…

L33t heartseeker thiefs and cloneway mesmers of course.

Paradoxine.8192:

Diage.6451:

I can tell you why GW1 players spend decent time here. We all spent 3-6 years playing a monumental pvp game to have it die by its predecessors and having no game to replace it with.

Instead we get some copy and paste of other pvp gamemodes from other games I could play if i were interested in that game mode.. But I am not. So alas, I am here.

This is the saddest thing. I keep seeing this devs talking about LoL and Dota and I just find myself in a state of disbelief. They seriously don’t seem to understand that GW1 PvP was and is above and beyond them. Take inspiration from your EARLIER GAMES maybe? To abandon everything because of ESPORTS!!!!111ELEVEN is kittened, even more so when you consider that GW1 could have become an esport.

I think the people in sPvP are just incompetent at this point.

How hard is it to realise that for one thing, the amount of evades, immunes, teleports, condi spam needs to be decreased?

How hard is it to communicate properly with your players?

How hard is it to reply to threads other than some bullkitten “Yeah this is really constructive, I don’t actually have to have a dialogue this way”.

Haphazardly made skills, traits, classes, everything really. They could fix this all in one month if they put their mind to it. We’re not talking about programming entirely new modules and systems here. We’re talking about changing values and skill types. Problem is they don’t seem to know what to do themselves. I’d rather have some skills that bug out 1/100th of the time but are balanced then have skills that are both unbalanced and buggy. We’re nowhere near esport level right now so I think balance and design should take priority at this point.

The SOTG just makes it worse. It becomes really apparent there just how far from reality these guys are. What we need is a no bullkitten sit down discussion where the hosts flat out tell ANET the problems of the game. Then we need the developers to actually defend themselves and tell us what they are actually doing to fix things.

+1000

milo.6942:

actually from that video it’s clear to me they’ll never do it. there will be lfg system. would be better to have both because seeing people online and moving around is much better than just seeing lfg messages.

I agree, I would much rather see the mists combined than use some lfg tool. I can see it now though: ANet will implement a lfg for dungeons, and just copy/paste it on over to PvP. I suppose it’s an improvement on the current system, but combining the mists would be a much better solution.

Excellent, so it’s on a list… I suppose that’s the best we’re going to get for now.

It’s been said before and I’ll say it again. Even at prime time on my server (Anvil Rock), the mists feel desolate. What’s worse, however, is how difficult it is to find a team to play with. Personally, I’m trying to get back into the tPvP action after leaving the game for a few months; I haven’t been able to find a team whatsoever. I can only imagine what it must be like for new players just starting to try out the PvP scene.

In GW1, particularly HoH, the lobby wasn’t server specific and it was filled to the brim. There were several “districts” one could switch to at will, in case the main one was full. Finding a group there, even when you knew nobody, was a breeze.

I think this is essential if tPvP is going to make the comback everyone wants it to. It goes without saying that solo queue is a joke. If you want to see people gravitate out of the zergest that is hotjoin and start trying to organize teams for actual competitive play, creating a larger pool of active players is the only way you’ll see this start to happen.

Plus I’m kitten tired of trying to find people to play with, and hotjoin is getting terribly, terribly old.

+1, I would love to see weakness be more meaningful. Everything is much too offense oriented in this game; defensive conditions are a great idea.

Dug this up to further illustrate why I dislike long cooldown elites (and many other skills in this game, long CDs are everywhere):

Aza.2105:

I’ve seen players mention on several occasions that gw2 is a very fast paced game. I agree with this to a extent. Unlike gw1 which were the max cooldown to skills were 60secs. Gw2 gives us the traditional mmorpg approach with “powerful skills and long cooldowns”.

Because of this, gw1 gameplay actually feels more fluid, since there isn’t a long interval between rotating skill cooldowns. To make matters worse, many of the skills with the longest cooldowns tend to be the least powerful.

In the future, I hope the devs get rid of the long cooldown approach and build upon the original formula. Were skills were on short cds and elites weren’t super powerful skills but skills that you formed your build around.

Diage.6451:

I think a pretty cool formula (assuming there was team-centric play already) would be to look at your weapon choice as a sort of elite of old. The choice that you built your build around. Make utility options overall better and make them a greater part of your build. They should be more dynamic and situational imo. So that way you can look at it as if your choice in an “elite” aka weapon would decide your over all play style while the other choices helped to motivate that play style. Overall, I think it isn’t about the extra utilities being stronger, but more dynamic.

And in a team-centric sort of play, I found the prospect of a 1-time (or 2-time) use ultimate to be rather interesting.

EDIT: Added- BTW, I think the traits sort of “force” builds too much, they ought to be more open ended. It’s almost as if Anet has already chosen which builds are good and which are bad.

I actually feel the same way about the weapon system; it’s another one of GW2’s interesting new ideas (note: before I get flamed, I know other games have done this sort of thing before). However, I don’t like what they’ve changed the actually elite skill system into. I’ve never liked the idea of having one super move to pop; I think it actually takes away from meaninful strategy. In this regard, I much preferred GW1’s system. However, there are much more pressing issues at hand, so really I won’t complain (much) about this.

Oh, and yes x10 to utilities being more dynamic. That’s really what I was trying to get at here.

As for the trait system, I don’t really mind that ANet seemed to have different roles in mind to spec for (this would make balancing a lot easier and whatnot), but there are many builds with poor synergy as a result, as well as a lot of traits that would go very well together, but are unavailable because they’re too high in different areas. Furthermore, certain specs that ANet seemed to have designed are just flat out better than others, which is yet another reason we see a lot of the same things on the battlefield.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Agree, but progression and “the-better-you-play-the-better-your-reward-is”-Mentality are or should be the priorities for every PvP. When the game is amazing it helps for sure. (In the case of GW2 that’s for sure not the problem, because it is pretty solid)

At the beginning ppl played it and got entertained for achieving things. But after the champion-title, which could be done easily in a week and could be farmed also in solo-join, ppl got bored of farming rank-points for a rank that can be done faster by playing hotjoin. PPl started to not feel rewarded enough for playing competitive. Many players asked what the point is of playing something competitive when playing casual will reward you more. Then QP’s came and there was a little effort of playing in paid-tournaments. Sadly, A-Net kittened it up again. Now as we have CA’s atleast we can do it on our own. But besides some ppl watching you on twitch, there’s nothing more about it.

You won’t hear me disagreeing with any of your points (save for the fact that I don’t believe GW2 is as solid as you may). For starters, it’s ridiculous that, on average, I earn more glory/rank points playing 8v8 hotjoin, which is easily the worst mode possible. Of course, once you realize how pointless rank and glory points are, gravitating towards the better game modes isn’t a big deal at all. And then you’re left with the glaring truth: there really are no worthwhile rewards in the game.

I do think that it’s necessary for ANet to implement better rewards as a solid base of motivation. Personally, I loved the kitten out of HoH titles and emotes from GW1, and those rewards (coupled with the best gameplay freaking ever made) fueled a competitive scene with fame, celebrities, and all that good stuff.

garethh.3518:

Not really.
Quality is better than quantity.

If the utilities (and weapons) laid out at least had a few extremely well made ones that promoted high skill capped, team centric play, GW2 would be fine…
Choosing from a dozen mediocre to play specs isn’t even comparable to 2-3 well made ones.
The only way more viable utilities could be a good thing… is if Anet unintentionally tweaked a few to be made very well, so you could cherry pick those quality skills instead of being stuck with numerous ones that aren’t.

Each class doesn’t need more than 2-3 viable specs, ending in a game with 20~ to choose from (sure more would be nice, but nice sits on the backburner compared to other issues GW2 has)

The problem is that, with only a few really well made ones, everyone is going to be using the same utilities! I’m by no means saying it would ideal to have a mess of lackluster ones, of which only a couple are worthwhile, I’m saying that there should be a bunch of really worthwhile ones that do very different things. Hopefully, if implemented right (which, I’ll admit, is a stretch for this game), this would bring at least some meaningful diversity. Personally, I think if each profession had more than 2-3 viable specs, a lot of the issues we find in GW2 could potentially be one step closer to being fixed. We may just differ in opinion on this matter, however.

Actually, I do suppose if each profession had 3 viable specs that effectively did different things (say, damage, support, and shutdown), that WOULD be more than sufficient at this point in time, and you’re completely correct in saying adding more is a luxury that belongs in the backseat. However, if we actually want to see each of the classes with these different specs, adding and/or improving utilities is one solid way to do it.

@Theplayboy

+1. good read. I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer lack of skills to choose from. I could actually live with weapon skills remaining as they are if we actually had a more meaningful selection of utilities. As it stands, every profession is really stuck with only a handful of utilities that are even viable in PvP, certain skills are simply a must for any build, and in the end, what you can actually do is quite limited as a result.

Unfortunately, this is but one aspect of the bigger problem.

alcopaul.2156:

Muramasma.1570:

the game simply must be a sublime experience. This is the first step towards what you, as well as everyone else here, wants. I would advise you stop trying to skip this step, because it will only bring failure.

It was sublime on our part (my part at least) because we used one build to build different build setups. It’s not all IWAY versus IWAY match, mind you, especially in GvG. We are the only IWAY on upper top 50s. (Highest rank that the guild got on GvG was rank 8. I just read in this old thread in our forums. Good thing that we documented our GoTW correspondences)

http://yourmathteacher.myfreeforum.org/ftopic300-0-asc-15.php

No no no, you missed my point entirely. I’m not talking about GW1 here at all, let alone [MATH]. I’ve already told you I had nothing against your guild back in the day (mostly because I never had any trouble facing IWAY whatsoever), nor did I even reference it in my post. I can understand you’re quick to jump to your guns, but drop it for once and focus on the discussion at hand.

I simply wish to show you that you’re 100% correct in that efame is the greatest sought reward from competitive PvP; something you’ve been yammering on about for god knows how long, and something that I’ll be the first to agree with you on. However, the point I was making is that the desire for efame is something that comes naturally with in an amazing game; and countless PvPers have found GW2 to be rather lackluster. This is why many of us wish to see a focus on making gameplay the best it can be, rather than focusing on the things that are much better left for AFTER this is done.

Wow. I remember reading this when it was originally posted and agreeing with it wholeheartedly. It’s unfortunate that 8 months later, reading this incites the same response, as little (read: nothing) has changed.

GankSinatra.2653:

Does anyone even know what alcopaul is talking about anymore

I’m sorry, but I got a really good laugh out of this (also, GankSinatra is the best forum name I’ve seen in forever).

Actually, I do understand where he’s coming from. The efame from HoH and GvG was glorious, and easily one of my big reasons for participating. I knew all the big names, got excited when I saw them running around, and definitely wanted that for myself. Hell, when I earned my tiger, I was whipping that thing out more often than (unfortunately, despite this hilarious setup, I couldn’t think of a good joke to insert here).

Still, as I’ve told you in various threads, alcopaul (which leads me to believe you refuse to actually listen to opposing viewpoints), the desire for fame is innate in an amazing, competitive game. Now, let’s emphasize the amazing part. Although you may not agree, in order to create a highly competitive atmosphere where efame is the highest sought award (and yes, this is as it should be), the game simply must be a sublime experience. This is the first step towards what you, as well as everyone else here, wants. I would advise you stop trying to skip this step, because it will only bring failure.

P.S. Diage, once again, you’ve said it far better than I in your last post. Kudos to you. Go read that kitten, alcopaul (and you too, ANet, for the love of kitten!)

Draygo.9473:

May I ask you Muramasma.1570 what guild/guilds you were apart of during prophecies/factions?

The only one I could imagine still being remembered was [renO]. I didn’t run with them for the majority of my time in the game, but I did enjoy silver trimming while the best guilds that GW1 ever saw were at large.

I actually preferred HA to GvG though, and I spent most of my time in guilds centered around it. I’m at a loss for recalling any with lasting notority, however. I also really, really liked GvG that wasn’t terribly high ranked (maybe around the ~300-500 level) because you could get away with trying a lot of crazy things.

@Motoko

I find myself missing GW1’s methods for matchmaking more and more. I mean, HA’s system was legendary! It was brilliant! It’s very nature created e-celebrities (I mean, everyone knew who was consistently holding the halls). Add that to the incredible guild ladder that was far ahead of its time, and it’s flabbergasting that GW2’s matchmaking is so… meh.

@Follidus

I do actually agree with a few things you’ve posted, even if you’re overall viewpoint opposes mine.

I think this game does have great potential for the cooperative team play I and others are asking for, but I don’t think ANet has given enough to make it possible. You think that it may evolve as time goes on, which is something I’d very much like to believe, but I really don’t think we’re going to see it. As I’ve been repeatedly saying, group support roles are much too weak compared to DPS or bunker roles (depending on the profession). I like what you’ve said about warriors and necromancers, and I’d love to see a group oriented meta utilizing professions that excel in such environments, I just don’t think the means for it are viable enough. It would be too * difficult,* to the point of impracticality. Which is essentially what needs fixed. I think that’s where we mostly differ in opinion. ANet needs to do some tweaking and we could have solid gameplay with the mechanics already in place!

Also, the condition removal thing was admittedly kind of rash. I play a guardian myself (though I’m not a fan of bunkering), and the condition removal is nothing short of epic. It would be nice if the UI for my teammates’ healthbars wasn’t so terrible, so I could actively see and remove conditions more precisely, but I digress.

I’m going to go ahead and say that you make a very nice point with that last bit – to the point that it’s something I’ll definitely consider when time allows it. A lot of us just feel a bit discouraged as our voice has been completely ignored, even back when we were diligently playing. On the other hand though, I’m not going to be instantly uber and beat everyone I play just because I think the game play is shallow; now you’re the one being hasty. You should read Diage’s post on this page, he spells out the reason for this better than I want to try to right now.

It sounds like you have a pretty good grasp at what this game could be, and I’m willing to wager you have a deeper understanding of the current state of “high end” tPvP. You’re opinion is informed and even persuasive, I’m more than willing to admit. On the same note, I’d urge you to consider the suggestions in this thread (and others), and not pass them off as mere game bashing. Most of us aren’t just reminiscing in a past game we’ve enjoyed, we’re trying to improve certain areas we’ve found to be lacking based on past our experiences.

Shananigans.8412:

If you don’t enjoy the game, don’t play it! Simple!

The competitive scene is developing, the game will get more complex as the meta and the teams find new ways to improve themselves. There is already a bunch of ways teams support each other through peels, heals, stability, c/c , cleaving areas to zone, coordinating blinds, stealth, interrupts, manual rez, skill rez, portal plays and more. While someone can’t stand back and heal your team repeatedly, the ability to selectively heal your team-mates is available and can make the difference in fights. The game is getting better and it will get more exciting as the difference in team skill closes. We saw a tournament last week with multiple 2-0 games in the finals and semi-finals. This week we say 2 last second plays that decided games and a really really close series with TP and TCG.

I don’t play anymore. But Guild Wars is a title that I’ll forever hold dear, and I’ve a right to offer criticisms and suggestions from my perspective. The typical “don’t like it, gtfo” mentality is poison.

As for the rest of you post, I am well aware of the majority of tactics and mechanics you’ve listed, and I’ve even utilized (or at least attempted to) a good bit of them with team play in mind. I’ve developed my opinion that GW2 PvP lacks depth with these kind of things in mind. A lot of it is because I think these sorts of mechanics (at least some of those you’ve mentioned, that is) play too small of a role, but I won’t ramble about that again.

I doubt we’ll see things get much more complex with the current state of the game. A new game mode may add some complexity, but it’s map based and really doesn’t solve as much as one would hope.

Kolly.9872:

I seriously hope A-Net will take a look at this topic and plan some future changes on this matter

garethh.3518:

Dunno if its too much work for the GW2 guys though or something.
>.<

This is the part that has me the most baffled. I’ve never participated in a game where major issues like this don’t even receive so much as a “we see your opinion” from the devs. Seriously, I’m sure they’re nice guys and all, but why oh why has a very large and vocal part of the population been ignored since launch?

sad face

@Dahkeus

Right??? Ranger’s spirits, warrior’s banners, ele’s water attunement, guardian’s freaking everything – the list goes on. The tools are right there. Aside from SOME of these creating options for self-preservation (basically, aside from bunker builds), these means of team support are laughably weak and not even worth considering. Instead, self-heals rain supreme, and team play suffers.

@cuge

You’re probably right in that they’re afraid to “mess it up more.” But what this game needs is something big like this. It would definitely spark the interest of the vast population that has left for these very reasons.

Also, I really don’t think boxing is a good comparison to what we are talking about in the slightest. Boxing is a wildly popular spectator sport for many, many reasons, and the majority of these reasons have nothing to do with GW2 PvP. It’s not even a team sport for kitten sake.

edit: I feel the need to elaborate a little. Boxing, and in the same sense MMA and the like, appeal to a lot of things that an audience will pick up on without knowledge of the sport. For instance, the primal instinct of fighting is an inherent part of every human being, it’s natural that a sport based on (skillfully) beating the tar out of someone is going to appeal to an extremely wide audience.

@Follidus

I feel like I’m repeating myself over and over again (it would help if you’d read more of the thread).

There is coordination within the team particularly in the context of the conquest game mode. Teams that can control the field well (specifically, the points/minor objectives) are the most successful in high end tPvP. There is skill involved in this, and not every team can do it. There certainly were players / teams better than I in this aspect.

Furthermore, I’ll be the first to admit that a team full of players running around, using their rotation off cooldown will be less successful than a team coordinated to cap points. Hell, I would even say a team running around spamming their skills would likely lose to a coordinated team in a death match (though you probably wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference between the two teams).

But seriously, beyond mastery of the whole conquest thing, you really think this game gets much deeper? Support roles are laughable, and building your team for “good composition” really means having the right amount of bunkers, cannons, and roamers. Real teamplay, particularly in combat, is nonexistent or coincidental (by this I mean, your condition removal may also remove your teamate’s condition, but that’s not why you used it).

And no, I won’t be joining any up-coming tournaments, and why would you expect us to? We’re listing reasons why we find the game isn’t worth playing. Why would any of us feel the drive to master shallow gameplay?

I’m going to go ahead and remind you again to read through a thread before posting.

@Aza

I agree with the particle effect thing, obviously. Though I’m not sure removing the cast bar was the greatest idea, the fact that it’s nigh impossible to pick out many skill animations makes it just pointless.

It seems ANet had a bunch of neat little ideas that, while individually they sounded nice, haphazardly blended together they end up detrimental.

@Motoko

It’s a deal

Hey cuge, we talked about this in another thread, and I’m glad to see you’re so on board. I’m going to repost something very relavent that I wrote in a different thread.

Note: I will be making a lot of comparisons to GW1. Try not to let this sway you, I’m not trying to turn GW2 into GW1.

GW1’s “trinity” worked nothing like the traditional trinity of other games. By design, their system created an intricate level of teamwork beyond the usual tank being tanky, healers healing and DPSers, well, DPSing. This is largely because there were MORE roles than the traditional three, many more in fact, and each profession (for the most part) had a wide range of capabilities to spec for. The role of shutting down support (via interrupts, mana drains, etc.) is a beautiful example.

The problem with GW2 is that, while they did remove the trinity – a move that I don’t think is necessarily bad – they failed to replace it with anything. We are left with professions that support themselves while still being pigeonholed into specific roles of bunker or glass cannon. Essentially, we now have a holy duality with little extra flavor, and limiting support capabilities to self-support has only moved this game away from a competitive teamwork oriented MMO to something that resembles an FPS.

When people on these forums say GW2 takes more individual skill, it is because that is frankly all the majority of builds need to be responsible for. Teamwork in GW2 consists of occasional focus fire, possibly sharing a few boons or condi removals that you’ve cast for yourself, and, due to the single game mode we have, where to properly allocate team members to capture/hold points. Despite what you may think, this creates VERY little depth.

My suggestions would be to buff support roles in ALL classes (I.E. any class may spec for GROUP support that is ACTUALLY beneficial). My ele’s healing rain ticks for, say a few hundred HP at most. His little healing splash skill heals maybe for a 2k burst. This won’t help you’re teamate who is getting instagibbed by a the a their in the slightest. Additionally, mechanics should be added, again, to EACH profession that would allow for a spec for shutting down said support. In my opinion, damage should also be cut across the board in order to force greater team coordination, but this is not as essential.

Support and shut down are just two roles that could be easily added to the game using its current mechanisms, but there are also many other roles that could be added that would greatly improve the quality of teamplay (just look to GW1 for inspiration). While each profession should be able to assume any role – assuming this is properly implemented – each one would also bring its own unique flare to that role, creating vast opportunity for extensive teamcraft.

ANet really wanted to scrap the idea of the holy trinity for one reason: people were tired of every group requiring a certain profession assuming a certain role (LF 2 Monks anyone?) I think they went about fixing this all wrong.

With the way GW2 works now, each profession is running around trying to do the same thing (or one of two things, in this case), and the only difference between them are gimmicks, more or less. A specific profession will either excel as a self-supporting bunker spec or a self-supporting DPS spec. While the different professions go about these two roles in different ways, once you understand how each class works, the lack of variety becomes painfully obvious.

I believe that the anti-trinity mindset has led to the severe lack of roles and the ultimate denigration of true team play. Unfortunately, it seems everyone who hasn’t given up on Guild Wars PvP actually enjoys the FPS style of gaming – I assume because they’ve only experienced sub-par PvP as found in WoW and it’s 7823434 clones.

tl;dr: anti-trinity —> anti-roles —> anti-teamplay —> anti-PvP

On a side note, bickering should go down and constructive discussion should increase. Both sides are responsible.

I’m going to have to strongly disagree with you ahuba.

I’d like to start by saying deathmatch would never work in this game; the lack of team dynamics in combat would just turn it into a DPS who-gets-out-alive kittenfest.

Conquest, however, has brought on many problems of its own.

I’d like to go ahead and correct you – conquest is NOT dynamic, nor is it difficult to comprehend. Rather, it is quite static in that, as soon as you are familiar with how it works, the strategies are ALWAYS the same. Always. You think back-capping and bunkering are horribly complex concepts to grasp?

Fact is, most people HAVE “learned 2 conquest.” Which is likely why we hate it so kitten much. What’s more is that I can actually earn much, much more glory without focusing on conquest objectives (which, I am aware, will hurt my team’s chances of winning). I’m not the only one who knows this.

However, my biggest issue with conquest is that people (like you, I’m going to assume) run around capping all the objectives, thinking to themselves “garsh, I’m such a team player!” While you ARE being a team player, no doubt, the very fact that the conquest game mode has turned back capping and bunkering the pinnacle of team work is the biggest tragedy of them all. Ever noticed how little teamwork is involved in the actual combat of this game? You should. I’m not saying conquest can’t be a worthwhile game mode, but so far, it’s only served to further water this game down.

I’m sorry, I’d given up on this thread, but I just had to throw in another two cents.

Firstly, there is absolutely nobody here arguing against making GW2 a fun to watch game. Seriously, why would anybody be against that? It’s an obvious final step to expanding good competitive play to an audience outside of the playerbase, and yes, bringing in the monies.

Secondly, there is NOBODY in this thread arguing against making this game more accessible to new players. I stopped playing GW1 for a year, and I felt I couldn’t get back into the competitive scene afterwards (though, it was mostly because the expansions brought 342623 new skills). This is a glaring fault in the game, and definitely one of the big reasons GW1’s population dropped off.

But this does NOT mean we have to turn the game into CoD. This does NOT mean we have to dumb the game down to the point where mastery of a profession takes a week at most (yes, I completely agree with Diage on this one – hit the nail right on the head. Actually, his whole post hit so many nails on the head, he probably built a freaking mansion). Sure, some additional game modes on some additional maps will spice things up a bit (at least, for a little while), but I could write a book on why this just a temporary band-aid solution – it will NOT fix the the true reason why PvP feels stale. This problem lies within the terribly static, self-focused combat, which isn’t going to be fixed with more game modes. I’ve laid out, in more than one thread, how this game could drastically improve the depth of its teamplay using the same mechanics it currently functions on. I adamantly DO NOT believe it will overcomplicate the game, or even make it too confusing for uninformed viewers.

However, I am still 100% of the opinion that making the game an amazing spectator experience must not overshadow the need to actually make a good game. Despite what some may think, the majority of people don’t play video games (OR SPORTS, kitten!) with eternal fame, monies, and wominz in mind. I’ve played basketball my entire life, I’m even quite good at it, and I would be lying to you if I said I’ve never dreamed of being one of the best (for obvious reasons). But that’s not why I play. It’s a great game. I love everything about it. Hell, I hardly even watch the kitten sport. When I’m spectating, I’m mostly watching for things to improve my game (shockingly enough, that’s why I loved watching GW1 PvP too – to see how the pros were playing different roles). Still, it’s because of this that, when a professional player does make an incredible move, I get freaking pumped because an amazing play in an amazing game equals amazing respect.

The thing you don’t understand is that the most essential spectators for ANYTHING, be it sport or video game, are the playerbase. This is the foundation to BUILD ON and eventually make an incredible experience to watch and inspire for all. But do you really think the NBA would be paying its players millions to "put a ball through a hoop* (god I kind of hate you for that one, sorry) if the game of basketball wasn’t so kitten good? It’s exciting to watch because it’s good, kitten.

That’s why I don’t like this approach you guys (and most likely ANet) are taking. I don’t think you’re going to find the wild success THAT WE ALL WANT without first improving gameplay.

Woops, I think that was more than 2 cents.

Aza.2105:

I’ve seen players mention on several occasions that gw2 is a very fast paced game. I agree with this to a extent. Unlike gw1 which were the max cooldown to skills were 60secs. Gw2 gives us the traditional mmorpg approach with “powerful skills and long cooldowns”.

Because of this, gw1 gameplay actually feels more fluid, since there isn’t a long interval between rotating skill cooldowns. To make matters worse, many of the skills with the longest cooldowns tend to be the least powerful.

In the future, I hope the devs get rid of the long cooldown approach and build upon the original formula. Were skills were on short cds and elites weren’t super powerful skills but skills that you formed your build around.

Also +1ing this.

I’ve heard suggestions around these forums to make elite skills in this game MORE powerful, to the point where popping an elite skill could be a game changer. I couldn’t think of a worst move away from meaningful gameplay. The people that haven’t left this game demonstrate why they haven’t left with every new post – they don’t actually KNOW what quality PvP plays like.

But seriously, the elite skill system was mint in GW1. The elite skill being a slightly more powerful skill that laid the foundation of the rest of the build was genius. It was versatile. It was unique. It made AWESOME gameplay.

alcopaul.2156:

In this day and age, you gotta please the spectators. Most athletes do it for the spectators. IDK what goes into the minds of Lebron and Kobe when they play basketball. I’m thinking that they must be bored because its only passing a ball in a circular ring. That must be boring? right? but no. They get paid because of the sponsorship which is because there are billions of people watching them buying their merchandise and idolizing and trying to imitate them. Money, fame, respect in exchange of putting a ball inside a circular ring. What do the athletes have to do? Promote the game. Speak well of the league. Do they complain about the boringness of shooting kitten for almost one year and almost do it everyday? you don’t see that. (People here don’t know how to sugarcoat or force swallow just to make the scene good and grow it.)

Wow. Just wow. You’ve obviously never played a sport before, or at least played one you actually liked. While fame is obviously a great motive for reaching the NBA, you really actually truly believe what you’re typing?

Furthermore, you expect the discontented PvP community to just force swallow all these terrible changes (or terrible lack of changes) and ANet’s horrible, out of touch priorities IN A GAME??? This is a kitten video game, and one without a monthly fee to boot. I’ve no obligation to force myself to play a game that not only has failed to deliver the solid content that so many expected, especially when the devs have shown absolutely no sign of our opinions being heard.

You should probably note that I’m not at all against making this game exciting/viewable for spectators. NOBODY in this thread is. At all.

What we ARE concerned with is the fact that GW2’s PvP lacks depth. What’s more, it lacks the amazingly unique and strategically satisfying experience of its predecessor, although this is more forgiveable. Many of us were actually expecting more than just a copy paste of GW1 mechanics; we were excited for the new things ANet was bringing to the table. The problem is, practically ALL of these changes have done nothing but water down all that was so incredible about their previous. I refuse to believe you actually think that simply making a terribly lackluster game more exciting to watch is preferable over making a terribly lackluster game more exciting to play. Who gives a kitten if someone’s good at World of Charrcraft: Modern Warfare 2???

I’m actually pretty convinced that you’re an elaborate troll now, so I’m wrapping this up even though I have a lot more to say. (Most) sports are wildly popular because they are exciting to play. Yes, they are exciting to watch as well, but you don’t think that that doesnt have everything to do with the experience of playing it?

No, forget it, I’m done.

@Varonth

This is what I think is where GW2’s biggest fault lies. This is why we have some Call of Duty / WoW hybrid going on. I think it’s by far the biggest step they’ve taken from GW1, and it’s also why the GW1 vets have all left it. I’ve ranted enough in this thread why it’s been done and what they can do to fix it. It’ll likely fall on deaf ears anyhow.

@alcopaul

Oh boy.

So you’re telling me you don’t even PLAY tPvP in this game? And you’re basing the PvP experience of BOTH games off of SPECTATING???

Jesus man.

You’re going to sit there and tell me it’s more important for ANet to make a game that’s easier for spectators to watch than it is for them to make a game that is actually awesome to play.

Really?

You should work for them, they would absolutely LOVE to have you.

P.S. Of course I’ve heard of spectator mode, I have a feeling I started playing GW at least at the same time as you, if not sooner. Furthermore, I stopped playing before all of the skill imbalance / build imbalance issues happened, which I’ve gathered from other GW1 vets were the main factors that destroyed the game. I would implore you to compare GW2’s PvP to GW1’s PvP before this happened, say, within the first few chapters.

It strikes me as odd that literally ALL the naysayers will try to trash GW1 for its late, botched PvP rather than it’s early AMAZING PvP, yet they’re so quick to tell us that GW2 is still a new game, so we can’t compare it to GW1 which has had 8 years of development.

I can’t even comprehend these forums sometimes.

@Aza

Your comparison is beautiful and it made me very sad.

@KarlaGrey

Mmmm warm fuzzies

Seriously though, I did enjoy GW1 aesthetics quiet a lot personally (felt a lot more epic to me) but this is, of course, subjective. I must say, I do enjoy pretty much all aspects of Asura armor and environment

The jumping thing really illustrates the point that nobody actually has any clue what they’re talking about. Arguing for the sake of arguing? Fanboying for the sake of fanboying? Who knows.

Valkyriez.6578:

There’s plenty of people out there that tried GW1 and didnt like it, quite likely more then than the people that did.

We are all entitled to an opinion, mine is that GW1 was terrible and felt as clunky as they come. Yours is different, funny how both are valid.

I think you’re in the wrong thread. We’re not discussing the animations, aesthetics, or graphics of GW1. We’re also not talking about how you found it to be “clunky.” We’re discussing the core mechanisms that created such a massive PvP fanbase, and the failure of ANet bring any of these mechanics to GW2. The sequel. As in the game based off of the first one. Which received critical acclaim for this particular aspect.

It’s not like we are pushing to have point to click implemented, or jumping taken out, or the nice shiny graphics to be taken away.

Why are you here???

Valkyriez.6578:

Sorry lads. Can’t agree. Gw1 was atrocious. Point and click, No jumping and had a high learning curve that unless u played from the start it was almost impossible to make any sense of the game without outside website information.

It also looked extremely weird watching your characters move. The skill system was interesting, and the game modes were fun but that’s about it.

GW2 seriously lacks systems and infrastructure, but outside of that it is light years ahead of GW1. It certainly is far from perfect and quite different but here’s a red hot tip you can take to the bank, Arena Net knows some of you will dislike this game.

That’s why they didn’t shutdown GW1. Feel free to go back and play that.

Whilst your on your way there, take your whinging with you.

One of the things we GW1 vets looked forward to was a more modern Guild Wars, with all the nice bells and whistles that GW2 did actually bring. I’m sort of at a loss at why you think that just because GW2 is graphically ahead of GW1 (and oh goody, we can jump now), that makes it a superior game. Furthermore, citing the point and click mechanic just demonstrates your lack of experience with the game.

The only thing worthwhile you have brought up is the steep learning curve. I stopped playing GW1 shortly before Nightfall, and a year or so later when I thought I might want to return, I realized it would be too difficult. There would be hundreds of new skills, builds, and strategies I would need to familiarize myself with at that point. That’s why I, and many others, viewed GW2 as a fresh start and a solution to this problem.

You’ve really given no reasons as to why GW2 is “lightyears ahead,” you’ve simply revealed your own uninformed biases.

Also, there is nothing more pointless, counterproductive, and immature as a post that says “stop wining, go back to X.” Seriously. I shouldn’t have to tell you why.

@cuge

Exactly my point. It’s clear that ANet isn’t going to drastically change core mechanics of the game, but these tools are already in the freakin’ game! Just needs balanced out in more than a couple areas, as you have demonstrated. Adding dedicated support roles also opens a wealth of possibilities for new roles that could be implemented and ultimately improve teamplay, which is a core aspect this game lacks.

@Rezz

Obviously, PvP has been hurting from lack of dev attention since launch (and hell, probably since before launch). I also agree with everything you’ve said with regards to custom arenas and the lack of game-driven tournaments. I really don’t believe the diminishing PvP community can be very effective at picking up this slack, especially at this point, though I’m certainly not against other people trying.

It would be nice to see a booming PvP community, but core mechanics have driven away most serious PvPers, which in turn has crushed any hope for dev support, which insures that these core mechanisms will remain unattended to, which in turn keeps serious PvPers from playing, which in turn keeps devs from doing anything, which in turn… well you probably get the idea by now.

In the end, Laili is probably (read: definitely) right.

Bumping this thread for the sake of knowledge. Good read garethh, I agree with a good amount of what you’ve said.

I find it funny that the people against the trinity cite terrible PvP games as their argument against it (seriously, WoW? Come on guys.)

Why not look to a game that implemented a trinity quit well?

GW1’s “trinity” worked nothing like the traditional trinity of other games, though others have done enough to paint a picture of it. By design, the system created an intricate level of teamwork beyond the usual tank being tanky, healers healing and DPSers, well, DPSing. This is largely because there were MORE roles than just these three, many more in fact, and each profession (for the most part) had a wide range of capabilities to spec for.

The problem with GW2 is that, while they did remove the trinity – a move that I don’t think is necessarily bad – they failed to replace it with anything. We are left with professions that support themselves while still being pigeonholed into specific roles of bunker or glass cannon. Essentially, we now have a holy duality with little extra flavor, and limiting support capabilities to self-support has only moved this game away from a competitive teamwork oriented MMO to something that resembles an FPS.

When people on these forums say GW2 takes more individual skill, it is because that is frankly all the majority of builds need to be responsible for. Teamwork in GW2 consists of occasional focus fire, possibly sharing a few boons or condi removals that you’ve cast for yourself, and, due to the single game mode we have, where to properly allocate team members to capture/hold points. Despite what you may think, this creates VERY little depth.

My suggestions would be to buff support roles in ALL classes (I.E. any class may spec for GROUP support that is ACTUALLY beneficial). Additionally, mechanics should be added, again, to EACH profession that would allow for a spec for shutting down said support. In my opinion, damage should also be cut across the board in order to force greater team coordination, but this is not as essential.

Support and shut down are just two roles that could be easily added to the game using its current mechanisms, but there are also many other roles that could be added that would greatly improve the quality of teamplay (just look to GW1 for inspiration). While each profession should be able to assume any role – assuming this is properly implemented – each one would also bring its own unique flare to that role, creating vast opportunity for extensive teamcraft.

ANet really wanted to scrap the idea of the holy trinity for one reason: people were tired of every group requiring a certain profession assuming a certain role (LF 2 Monks anyone?) I think they went about fixing this all wrong.

With the way GW2 works now, each profession is running around trying to do the same thing (or one of two things, in this case), and the only difference between them are gimmicks, more or less. A specific profession will either excel as a self-supporting bunker spec or a self-supporting DPS spec. While the different professions go about these two roles in different ways, once you understand how each class works, the lack of variety becomes painfully obvious.

I believe that the anti-trinity mindset has led to the severe lack of roles and the ultimate denigration of true team play. Unfortunately, it seems everyone who hasn’t given up on Guild Wars PvP actually enjoys the FPS style of gaming – I assume because they’ve only experienced sub-par PvP as found WoW and it’s 7823434 clones.

tl;dr: anti-trinity —> anti-roles —> anti-teamplay --> anti-PvP

Also, lol @ all the talk of eSport on these forums. It makes my brain hurt.