Guild Wars 2

I love taking screenshots. And I like challenging myself and see if I can time just the right shot when casting skills…. but sadly there’s something that I’ve been noticing as of late: a lack of emotion.

Some of the skills that our characters use such as the Tempest shouts and the first Skill of a Greatsword for Mesmer reveal our characters’ facial expression on the matter. We see them struggling to fight, and it ends up making them feel real. But it’s rather unsettling when most of these animations make our characters have a poker face constantly. It breaks immersion altogether, and it feels off. It doesn’t help that some of the animations that actually reveal emotion have issues to when it comes to eyes. Norn and sylvari will constantly have their eyes rolled to the back of their heads for no good reason.

This lack of polish and attention is really unsettling. I can provide examples if needed.

Hello, everyone.

A while ago I made a trailer to work up as hype for the end of Season 3. I tried to see if I could get into that whole “community showcase”, but it didn’t happen. After that I wasn’t sure if posting it here was a good idea since all of my previous projects had been completely ignored, but eventually, I decided it’d be worth a try. After all, I did work really hard on this.

It’s a trailer that technically covers everything about the game’s story:
- Personal Story:
- Season 1;
- Season 2;
- Heart of Thorns;
- Season 3;

In general they were left rather vague to avoid spoiling new players to an extent. And there’s no need to worry about copyrighted music since all of the tracks used are from the game itself.

I would love to know your thoughts on it. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhszP1r4Iww

Hesacon.8735:

They’re available for gems if you feel like changing skins at a faster rate than you gain charges. You can exchange gold for gems.

I stated that I cannot purchase Charges for the following two reasons:
- Gold is being used to update most of my character’s gear and builds.
- Gold is being saved in order for me to purchase the Deluxe Upgrade for the expansion.

And to answer the user above yours, I do not have any free slots at the moment, and cannot afford to delete any.

For some people, transmutation charges aren’t a huge deal, but for someone who has 23 characters and most cities on said characters complete, I’m running out of ways to gain said charges.

The PvP Reward Track feels slow, and I’ve burned myself out with the latest season. The same applies to map completion. I’ve completed so many maps up to this point where I’d rather just do something else. I would have to buy my share of charges, but I’m currently working around on updating each of my character’s builds while saving up for the “Path of Fire Deluxe Upgrade”.

Is there any other way? I’ve been stuck with less than five charges for a few weeks now and it’s starting to become a nightmare.

The writing sucks. Period.

We went from a sylvari-centered story to a sudden human-centered plot.

In the past few days, I’ve been completing Malchor’s Leap and doing some node runs there. I usually leave the characters camping there for easy access, but recently I started facing an issue. Whenever I try to login on a character that is located on this map or use a waypoint my game gets stuck on a Loading Screen or kicks me back to the previous map and even the character screen.

I tried several things, but nothing is working. Now half of my characters are stuck and I can’t retrieve them.

And there’s more!

Gif: http://imgur.com/PeAMaQ2
Video: https://youtu.be/74jtGU3-BgU
Album: http://imgur.com/a/I57yI

All of these showcase the horrors…

Marius.9864:

RandomWolf.3986:

ArenaNet already has issues implementing new armors, balancing the already existing classes and writing a coherent story. Can you imagine creating a completely new story arch, tie it with the existing content…. add new body sliders and adapt armors and create brand-new animations and emotes? Also, new actors. There’s already a ton of issues with the current ones due to the strike that’s been going on for a while now. Are you out of your mind? Most of the original developers have left the company or are focusing on different aspects of the game.

It’s really obvious that a new race isn’t going to be a thing.

Regardless of being “obvious”, players keep asking for new playable races, Arenanet can capitalize on this, as for the hurdles on the way, the problems are solvable, how can you possibly know if it’s worth or not introducing a new race? there are plenty of people that will try a new thing (that being a race).

All these issues you list makes it sound like the arenanet dev team area bunch of incompetent people that need special care while doing their work, sure there have been some questionable decisions in the past to say the least, but you make it sound like the introduction of a new race is an insurmountable task, I’ve played my share of mmos, and I don’t know 1 that didn’t introduce a new race, so why shouldn’t Gw2 have a new playable race?

Have another wants that are actually possible:
- People have been asking for the return of the old human females idles since their removal in 2014.
- People have been asking for the return of Season 1 since its debut in 2013.
- People have been asking for the datamined content, weapons and bundles that are yet to be implemented.
- People have been asking for the return of old flashes/effects that went through a nerf. Only a miniotiry of said effects have returned.
- People have been asking for a way to visit the old Lion’s Arch since its destruction. You can do so via the Personal Story, but it’s heavily limited.
- Unique HoT skins that were available during the BETA were “lost” and cannot be retrieved.
- Halloween and Wintersday events have been cut shorter for unknown reasons, making them less replayable.
- SAB returned years after being unreachable for uknown reasons.
- …

Some other issues:
- Each new patch creates a series of new issues that are unrelated to the changes at hand.
- As previously mentioned, people who worked with the game before are no longer in the company, which makes things harder since the engine being used is a ehavily modified version of Guild Wars 1’s engine.
- Ree Soesbee is no longer part of the team.
- GW2 has suffered its worst income in years.ignoring its initial concept of “variety”.
- …

ArenaNet already has issues implementing new armors, balancing the already existing classes and writing a coherent story. Can you imagine creating a completely new story arch, tie it with the existing content…. add new body sliders and adapt armors and create brand-new animations and emotes? Also, new actors. There’s already a ton of issues with the current ones due to the strike that’s been going on for a while now. Most of the original developers have left the company or are focusing on different aspects of the game.

Just look at this: the vanilla Tengu NPCs haven’t been updated. They look like they’re made of plastic; but the ones in HoT are much, much better. Yet no one at ArenaNet took their time to properly update the others that are spread across Tyria.

It’s really obvious that a new race isn’t going to be a thing.

Last year I got a sylvari Druid and worked on sorting out her gear, but then left the game shortly after she was ready. When I came back I forgot everything regarding her hear and possible traits and so on. The mix of stats is too odd, and I tested her against several champions and modes and she failed at them. Her damage is weak and her defense and healing don’t make up for it. She also can’t keep her pets alive.

This is my third ranger character. One of them focus on damage while the other focus on conditions. I was hoping to turn this character into some kind of support character. I was hoping to achieve something that would give some power and healing benefits, but still didn’t manage to. I tried searching and even gave metabattle a look, and I wasn’t pleased.

I seriously don’t know what to do now. The weapons she’s meant to use is a Staff and a Sword/Warhorn.

Bearhugger.4326:

The main campaign is not very good, although depending on the race you picked you will have a good time in the first 20-25. Norn and sylvari have extra boring starter quests where as charr and asuras have very enjoyable ones. Humans are sort of in the middle.

But in all cases, the fact that they tried to have branching missions meant that they had to split their efforts in many missions instead of focusing on a single mission, and make it great. This is by far my biggest issue with the main campaign. Missions rarely last more than 10 minutes because they had to make soooo many missions. The LS seasons fix that by culling the unnecessary branching.

It’s when you’re doing the LW seasons that it get really good, but you have to do main story first. In essence, this game has the same problem as FFXIV: story starts out boring and gets very, very good later, you just have to tough the boring part. At least GW2 let you skip the main campaign once you hit level 80 (I think) but on the flip side you have to buy it with gems.

Regarding tje sylvari and asura; that’s subjective. ArenaNet paid the sylvari extra attention and some of their instances are actually quite interesting and smart. The same goes for the asura. While some of their instances can be quite fun, the “Infinity Ball” is probably the worst Racial Instance of the entire game.

Two of the MMOs I played in the past were free-to-play and had this marriage/soulmate system. The teams behind these games weren’t as big or as dedicated, yet they still did it. One of those games is called Metin2. You would have a quest to retrieve a ring, and then you would have to save up for a wedding dress. Once the two characters are ready, you can throw a party and invite people to join. Everyone gets to dance and the couple selected the types of music to play in the background. It was amazing.

In-game swimwear is a thing. There are multiple versions available for each race, including sylvari. It’s been around since 2013 and sadly it was never given to the players. I doubt we will ever see them again.

I was in-game and bored. I decided to explore the Grove after a few Personal Story runs and found my way to the non-instanced version of the Pale Tree’s chamber. At first, I was surprised by the fact that it had NPCs. In reality, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Some other secluded zones have some NPCs as well.

But three of these NPCs have dialogue! And each dialogue changes depending on your character’s race. Obviously, the big emphasis was put on the sylvari. If you play as a sylvari and reach them, they will behave as if you know them. As if something happened between you and them. There’s this whole talk about some kind of… mission that our character went through. Something about the Court and the Blessings.

This is probably asking for too much. But would it be possible for any sort of Staff member to provide any insight regarding this? It’s not like it’s much of a spoiler. Is this scrapped content? What was its original concept?

You can see some of the dialogue outcomes here:
http://i.imgur.com/n0I6orh.png
http://i.imgur.com/Evyyw0e.png

I don’t get how you people aren’t noticing the smirk? It’s quite obvious and noticeable! I tried it on all of my human females and got the same results. Compare it yourself here:
http://i.imgur.com/RdjO3Fw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DNveXlV.jpg

I’ve been playing this game since summer of 2015. I was really into it at first, but my interest slowly decreased until I fully stopped playing it for five months. Then I came back and… really, what’s the point?

This game finds a way to punish players every chance it gets. I’ve been giving competitive modes a shot, and it’s just… beyond broken. I’m not a fan of the meta. I strongly believe people have the right to play how they want and be original to come up with their own sort builds while corresponding to a role. That’s what I tried. And I got punished for it. Whether it’s PvP or WvW, none of my 22 characters is able to do anything. A lot of players in WvW hold a major advantage most. How in the world did this mode once attracted low-level characters? I feel useless in group fights and I can’t solo against any type of class unless the other player is utterly inexperienced. The same goes for PvE as well.

Let’s not forget about how grindy this game is. How disappointing its latest content has been. The story was one of the main reasons why I stuck around, but ever since HoT came out it’s been just getting worse where I’m literally cringing at the thought of it.

It also doesn’t help that I feel quite lonely in-game. I’ve been trying to find new people to play with and joined several types of guilds. People aren’t just interested in me whatsoever. I don’t consider myself to be a saint or an kitten; I try to be friendly and even help new players. What I get are people who end up using me for some of their own goals, including new players. I give them my support, tips and ask and they just end up ignoring me once I ceased to be useful to them. The community is not what it once was. It’s bad. The people are just cruel and moronic. I was even stalked and harassed by a player. I got proof of its actions and reported it several times. I even sent tickets to ANet and nothing happened. The player is still out there, making new accounts to reach me again and again.

All I want is to have fun, but this game feels like a frustrating chore where nothing feels rewarding whatsoever.

Better move on. The game has countless bugs, especially the kind of bugs connected to your character and his or hers animations. They won’t be adressed.

Oh no… another issue related to the human females. What a surprise!

Anyways, since I joined the game I noticed something off on human females. Whenever they walk, they’re smiling. And it’s not subtle, it’s quite expressive. This is a thing that no other race does. Every single race and gender will walk naturally with their neutral facial expression; except for Human Females of course.

If ANet is so serious about their immersion to the point of removing animations, why haven’t they fixed this issue? I mean, we’re in the middle of a battlefield… or something sad happened and our character is smiling!

It’s really annoying to be honest.

Let’s also not forget the human males have some kind of missing frame when the jumping animation ends and the running one starts. I’m surprised not a lot of people notice this when it’s clearly noticeable.

Compare it for yourself down below:

Even though the racial storylines were completely pointless in the long run, the norn was already pointless from start. One of the missions have you make some “tough” and “moral” decisions regarding an item. You get to defend that item, but shortly after obtaining it random enemies pop inside Hoelbrak and destroy it fearlessly.

Also add to the fact that the snowy maps were a bore, the voice-acting mediocre and all of that. They did try to explore the Spirits of the Wild and visions stuff, but it was pretty weak.

The human storyline is as cliché as it gets, but I find it much more enjoyable than a Norn’s. At least the sylvari and asura’s ones tried to explore a bit more of their culture.

Also Hoelbrak is pretty forgetabble. I get it that it’s supposed to be a big city for big people, but there’s still a lack of wandering NPCs and everything is just too large and empty. Makes it even worse during the refugee crisis during LW1…

logan.5846:

Yeah, Norn are just stereotypical vikings. Humans have their gods and royal politics, Charr have legions and warbands, Sylvari have the pale tree and wild hunts, Asura have golems and sci-fi wackiness, the Norn are just kinda there.

Just because it’s basedo n something many of us is familair with it doesn’t mean it’s technically a bad thing on its own. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was based on the whole norse mithylogy and it came out pretty good. There’s many examples like this. It’s just bad and rushed storytelling. The norn were better in Guild Wars 1 even.

Isn’t this a touchy subject.

It’s no news that the voice-acting in GW2 is a… mixed bag. The Guild Wars franchise never had breathtaking voice-acting. How can we forget those incredible lines from Guild Wars 1? And some from GW2.

Nonetheless, the cast in Guild Wars 2 is quite impressive. Jennifer Hale, Steve Blum, Nolan North, Troy Baker, Tara Strong, John DiMaggio, Catherine Taber, Courtenay Taylor, Kari Wahlgren, etc…

But it’s time to face the fact that some of these actors were given poor direction. Jennifer Hale is one of my favorite actresses. She voiced one of my favorite characters, Commander Shepard. But sadly, voicing so many iconic characters mixed out with a poor direction has made her change Queen Jennah’s tone quite often throughout the years. The Queen first had her voice way, but now she’s sounding more and more like Cinderella. Fun fact, Hale did voice Cinderella several times. The female sylvari PC has its share issues: weird accent, pitched voice, offputting lines… Obviously she shines when she’s supposed to be angry. Her shouts are good. I can’t deny the shouts.

Another example, Claudia Christian. Claudia voiced some nord characters in Skyrim. She did a great job capturing that stern and strong female character, but her work here as the female norn… is sometimes quite baffling. “Might makes me right!”… what is this even supposed to be mean? Sometimes she groans as if she was in a porno and some of her line delivery sometimes feels incredibly off.

Deputy Mira is probably one of the worst voice actors in the entire game. Her lack of emotion and variety has made her the laughing stock amongst many players. “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see… By Kormir, it burns!”… or ""Commander Talon. Hold on. You’ll be alright." She sounds like she should be working some bad tv commercial or share the news about the weather.

Eir’s voice actress, Jocelyn Blue… is not a bad character… but she has done a really poor job in some instances of Eir. Every other character she voiced like some of the White Mantle people are really, really bad…

It just feels like humans, asura and sylvari were the ones who ended up receiving best actors; especially the sylvari. The following PC lines are just… bad:
“I feel six feet tall!”,
“Give me some space!” … no comments.
“Uaaaaahh!” … GG female charr PC.
“Eat my dust!”
“Like fine wine I keep getting better.”
“I feel…Strong!”
“Urge to kill raising!”
“New land… New land!”
“Might makes me right.”… the hell.
“I am greatness getting greater.” … the hell x2.
“This rose has thorns and here they are!” … I hear this constantly to the point it gets sickening.
" I could outrun a Centaur!"

Gotta love “More violets I say, less violence!” to oblivion.

As a plus, take these wonderful examples:
(“Price Rurik!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgx1yVWgV5I
(“Madness!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3meKrcjQpYk
(“Driven out!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZDPxDNW7zk
""Let the sunlight shine through you, face me in another form".
(Let us not forget Trahearne!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaZOuzf2q-E

What’s your opinion? Your favorite and least favorite actors/lines?

The whole mystery of Season 1 and 2 was the best. I even believe that the dialogue was much better. Because out the character was a mute… the NPCs had to be a lot more active and interactive. I can’t stand how dumbed down our characters have become. They have been far through a lot to be the way they are.

There are too many pauses, too many “hmms” and “uhhhs”…. too many uncertainties and mistakes. Yes, our characters are mortals, have feelings and everyone makes mistakes. But they should’ve toughened up after everything they’ve been through. Seeing a charr and an asura behaving like this is mind-blowing.

There were instances solely dedicated to character development in Season 1. The best thing about that season was that it didn’t take itself too seriously. Everything made sense in the end, and ANet poured as much effort as they ever did. There was a lot of content even outside the game such as advertisements, contests, videos, promotions, and talks. Season 3 is trying to be gritty, and serious… without realizing that it’s doing worse. Too many moments don’t add up and now I can’t stand Taimi. I just want her to die, honestly. She has the answer to everything, and even when she’s wrong, she’s right.

Let’s not forget that th dialogue in LW1 and LW2 while “funnier”, it was also maturish when it came to mature subjects. There was even curse words.. Now it seems like it’s trying its best to be kid-friendly.

Let’s not all forget that Demmi scene… Terrible dialogue, terrible pacing and flawed logic behind the characters themselves. They’re also ruining Cannach.

Astralporing.1957:

RandomWolf.3986:

But seriously, are we ever going to see this back in the game? We’ve had some altered versions that worked out as Fractals, but they’re not… the same thing.

And that’s the reason why you won’t ever see LS1 in the game. Because, in order to be able to put it back, Anet would need to alter it first at least as much as they did with those fractals (And, in many cases, much more).

It will never be the same thing, because LS1 was too heavily dependent on it being placed in Open World. You will never be able to get anything close to those numbers again (that was only possible due to LS1 being a time-limited event), and thus, to have anything that you could actually play, the content would have to be heavily redone. And for many parts it would make them only a pale shadow of the original content.

I already accepted that.

Well, I’ve finally accepted that I won’t ever seen this content live. I did myself a favor and watched everything I could about it online. At least there’s that. Frankly, I’ve already given up on ANet. Honestly, LW1 was the only thing sparking my interest for a long time. I’m not even looking forward the next content. The game hasn’t been able to show me an interesting story and content since LW2…

Randulf.7614:

RandomWolf.3986:

LW1 had its share of dungeons and standalone instances. Couldn’t they bring back the dungeons at least? Have some NPC fill in the holes before the party gets inside. It can’t be that hard… at least it would be something.

I mean, they kept one of them in Caledon… Why?

Aside from Twilight Arbor Path 4. the other dungeons and their main bosses are replicated via fractals

- Molten + Molten Boss
- Aetherblade + Mai Trinn
- Nightmare Tower (altered and scaled down, with story removed)
- Thaumonova (which was always a fractal anyway)

There were other instances (not dungeons) including either Scarlet boss fight, one of which was solo, one of which was large zerg and could conceivably we reworked for a smaller group and be quite a fun boss fractal and also the fight versus Canach.

Only parts of them are in the Fractals. They’re not complete. The Nightmare one wasn’t even available in LW1.

But honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing LW1’s best moments back on the Fractals, but somehow I doubt we’ll see anything like that soon…

LW1 had its share of dungeons and standalone instances. Couldn’t they bring back the dungeons at least? Have some NPC fill in the holes before the party gets inside. It can’t be that hard… at least it would be something.

I mean, they kept one of them in Caledon… Why?

From your posts and dev reports, I can see that the chances of any of us ever seeing Season 1 again are slim to none. I even recently watched that detailed 3-hour video that explores the entire season. It’s really such a shame to see such inspiring and awesome thing to just be left forgotten…

Just another thing to add to the list, I guess. I’m really, really sad that I never managed to get into this game sooner. What ANet did was probably one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in a video-game.

A friend of mine back at 2015 suggested me to try out Guild Wars 2 because it had just turned free. I had a different game on my radar at the time, so I did some browsing and came across my share of Living World trailers and even some interviews with Tara Strong. The game looked promising, so I downloaded it and started playing. I am a slow player, so for a few months, I thought that Living World Season 2 was related to this. After some proper research, I discovered that I was wrong.

I can’t help but say that I’m disappointed. This might be an unpopular opinion nowadays, but I can’t be the only one who really wants to see this content back in the game? I understand it would be no easy task due to its massive event range and the need for group content, but dumbing down some of its difficulty or even turn it into some kind of Dungeon would most likely help it. The season itself already has its big share of instances. And we all know that the old Lion’s Arch is still accessible.

Hell, I even like Scarlet. There was always this whole shroud of mystery surrounding her. Never managed to properly face her off and her character was greatly improved in Season 2. Her damage was also noticeably and it was thanks to her actions that we got an expansion. I’m also a big fan of her voice actress, Tara Strong.

But seriously, are we ever going to see this back in the game? We’ve had some altered versions that worked out as Fractals, but they’re not… the same thing. Yes, a lot of players got to play it back in the time, but how many of these players are still around? How many of them still vividly remember these events? How many players have been left out of such experience?

Season 1 had 25 episodes. It’s probably one of the biggest story contents that the game had to offer and it appeared to be more gritty and mature than everything else the game has shown to us. Heart of Thorns started out dark and intense, but it slowly lost its main focus along the way. Personal Story and Season 2 simply appear to be more… kid-friendly with its weird dialogue and constant comic relief. This season also had a lot of mysteries surrounding some of its events, and it seemed like it was fun to explore them even outside the game.

The best thing about this season is that ArenaNet took risks. They put their all into it, trying new ways to surprise their players and implementing new mechanics and maps. Who can disagree that the Marionette and the battle in Lion’s Arch weren’t amazing? There is only a small recap at the start of Season 2, but it’s honestly not enough. Some players play the game for its story, and this season was crucial to the plot. Many of its events and locations are no longer present in the game as well…

It would also be a great chance to put the back the old human female idles that the Staff has been promising to bring back since their removal in 2014. I only with someone from ANet would just give us some kind of answer regarding this topic; some kind of news… instead of “we’re slowly working on it”. I would rather have the next pushed back a year to have this content back. It would also benefit the team behind the expansion because it would give them proper time to properly balance things out and polish the final result.

I guess that this is all a fantasy that won’t ever come true?

Yes, this is a serious question. There will be a tl;dr at the end.

When I started out this game nearly two years ago I decided to focus on a Thief character because it looked cool. I always revealed some issues with the class from start, but other players kept saying that it would get better once I reached Level 80. More issues raised up but people and I always found a way to just keep going on with excuses. So I continued playing, finished the story… and just got a liking out of the character. I did so much with this character in particular and completed all maps and all kinds of story instances possible that I just couldn’t let go of her.

And for the past six months, I’ve been working on the Legendary dagger, the Incinerator. It even made me take a 5-month break, so it’s been almost a year since I started working on it. It felt like a chore and like it was never going to end… I even made myself do a few borrowings from some in-game friends to keep things at a steady rhythm.

But just a few days ago I finally managed to forge the weapon… and it didn’t feel rewarding at all. I wasn’t really happy about it. The sound effects sometimes glitch out, the footsteps are inconsistent and the error in the flame’s animation and clipping is becoming more and more noticeable.

That really isn’t the really big issue here. My Daredevil is honestly the only character that mainly uses daggers. I have one or two other characters that do use a dagger as some kind of off-hand weapon, but they’re not played as much and they do not fully rely on said weapon. And now that I finally got my focus away from this “Legendary Journey” I decided to take a few things more seriously and tried dwelling into PvP and WvW and even other types of intense PvE mostly by myself. It seems like I have been denying all this time that I’m not exactly a good player to when it comes to a thief. I die, a lot. Doesn’t matter what kind of objective, build and items my character wears, she will constantly fail. I can’t even solo Story instances without constantly getting my butt kicked.

And I’m leaning on the idea of just dropping the character altogether or even delete her to make room for a new one. It’s just incredibly frustrating. I have spent so many hours and years dedicating time to a character that I absolutely hate now. This is why I’m asking if it’s possible to state the dagger back into its original state and even remove the skin altogether from my account’s wardrobe. I want nothing to do with it anymore and I would rather sell it on the TP to pay off some debts and give the money some other use.

I just think that I did an incredibly foolish decision.

Tl;dr: I spent nearly two years working on a character and then six months on a legendary only to find out that none of these was exactly what I was hoping for all this time.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I would advise taking another break from gw2. If you’re not enjoying the game, it really doesn’t matter how much you have invested in it. Who knows you might find something else and never come back to this game. You are either going to miss the game or you are not.

If I miss it’ll be out of “nostalgia”, from the good moments. That’ll make come back and realise it was all a farse and make me leave once more.

I have tried other games as well, but they also end up lacking after I’m through with their story modes. Can’t really try anything new because my computer can’t handle it. Nor my wallet.

Most people in this game have some kind of mental issues to the point where they feel the need to all look alike and show off. I call them normies. They make me cringe so hard that sometimes I force myself with to play the game with the models quality on low. Sadly this does not affect the weapons, so it’s still somewhat flashy.

I started playing Guild Wars 2 back in Summer of 2015 and I got completely hooked. A month after I started I didn’t hesitate into pre-ordering the expansion and played non-stop for over a year, taking a break around December of last year. And I decided to come back around early this month.

But honestly… I can’t help but feel that everything I do in this game is utterly pointless. I’m still playing the game even though I take little to no joy from it.

- My main focus has always been the PvE but after completing the whole map and doing the Story so many times I grew tired of it. Explorings maps feel like a chore and I can’t enjoy the writing anymore after taking a good look at its flaws. Dungeons feel repetitive and bothersome. I can’t try anything new in the Fractals because my gear doesn’t allow it. And I can’t bring myself to farm. All I do are some of the regular daillies and the ones from the new maps, check some nodes throughout the maps and then just stand around.

- I tried to switch my focus to PvP and WvW. I already mixed the three modes. I have 21 characters, each character resembles a different role and carries a different set of weapons. I try to be original with my builds, going for an idea instead of being unriginal and cliché and copy-paste one from the internet. But it doesn’t matter how hard I try, I’m always incompetent with them everywhere. I can’t stand my ground against a player or a group… I can’t even solo regular things on PvE. It’s worse that I made a Thief my main character, my least favourite class.

- I used to love designing new looks and experimenting with dyes. Sadly, I always ran out of charges… and when I try to get some of them I end up bored and just give up. I also don’t get why so many people look alike. Why so many people go for that “snowflake” and “flashy” look while ANet has provided a vast number of options and outfits for us to mix. Having all of these particles and immersion-breaking characters and weapons covering up my screen isn’t something I enjoy looking at most of the time.

- I feel lonely. When I first joined I managed to gather a group of friends. We spent a lot of time together, building up a friendship as we chat and played together for almost every single day. We even used other apps in order to keep in touch. There was someone in particular that I spent most of my time with. We even roleplayed together and developed stories, worked for the same goals and did a lot of events and all of those sorts. All of that came to an end when this person followed that typical “elitist” route and decided to focus on the grind and high-tier things like Fractals and Raids, using me as a pawn and eventually leaving me behind once I was no longer useful. I haven’t been able to really get people to just play with me… I just end up doing things on my own or with a random and mute LFG party. Not even one soul bothered to contact me while I was on that 5-month hiatus..

- The grind. I remember when this game was advertised as casual-friendly. Now I’m familiar with its mechanics, I know that this game is extremely grindy Everything requires some sort of grinding: achievements, skins, goals, story, exploration, gold… My “Legendary Journey” opened my eyes to it. I’ve been working on my Legendary for six months now, and 4 of those months were really stressful and was one of the main factors as to why I ended up leaving before. I just managed to craft my precursor recently and it didn’t feel rewarding at all. I don’t think I’ll manage to get the last two gifts and finish it.

- ANet itself. I have seen many things come and go. Many fixes and major new flaws raising to the surface. I still feel like there’s a huge lakc of msicommunication between the developers and the community itself. I can’t really get into much detail here, but this company has disappointed me.

I don’t know why I’m writing this or why I still login. I think it’s because I’ve spent so many hours(like 3k) and money into this thing that I want to force myself into enjoying it…

Maybe some Staff moderator will probably delete this thread like other ones I’ve posted in the past few months. It wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe they should so that I can nail this coffin once and for all.

And sorry for some possible grammar errors.

TexZero.7910:

Sartharina.3542:

10 minute cinematics are too long to be of value.

and suddenly dropping a deus ex machina on you had what value ?

When we are talking about writing the value is in the build up. Something the story has greatly been lacking.

They could learn a few things from SWTOR.

zealex.9410:

Cutscenes better than ever so far.
Va improved from before but nothing mindblowing, deff an up in quality.

Racial: the story can use alot more emphasis on racial aspecs but that might take from the overall quallity so idk.

Season 2 was good imho (it captured the idea of the events effecting the entire tyria the best )
Season 3 is supperior in terms of quality because cutsenes better vo (pc voice acting)
it can use alot less deus ex taimi imho tho. The episodic nature ad how each episode is its own thing makes it feel abit disconected and like the story isnt going anywhere specific atm so im w8ing on ep 6 to see. Each epsode on its own is good tho. It also feels rather disconected from the actual world.

Characters: Marjory is acting how i would expect her to act given the current events that have taken place .
Same with braham even tho alot of ppl will disagree and say a norm doesnt act like that there the arguement that braham isnt a normal norm and he didnt experience a normal life or events so far so acting differently makes perfect sense (although i hope he can grow from this stage and show us how true norms act).
Taimi can go drink bleach (kidding but man the ex machina and her writing some times drive me mad)
Cannach is a legend.
The first rev charr (forgot his name) is mia so yeah…
Hot in comparison to ps is a huge up. The story has a tone on it you feel like you are in a hurry to do what you gotta do but plotholes and some thing that were missing on the final product bring it a bit lower for me. Still leagues better than ps and far more memorable moments in the hot storyline (including the final fight). There are tho alot of things that should ahve been in ther and their absence hurts the overall story. Things like the revenant and ofc the elite specs which there no explanation as to how any of these came to be.

Could you please erase your post and write it again? It’s getting in the way of ther other ones and they were needed to be in order.

Others:

Some may not agree with me while others will. This is all that I can think up at the moment. I would be able to deliver a better analysis if I was willing to replay the whole game. Unfortunately, I do not have the spare time to do so. If you have anything else to add, please do not hesitate to do as I look forward to hear from you.

[Continuation.]

Season 3:

I don’t really have much of strong opinion for Season 3. I’m not enjoying it as much. It can’t be easy to build up to a new expansion while trying to make it up for the failures of the previous one. The trailers are done in a way to generate excitement. Despondently, each map ends up falling into the same kind of concept and idea.

It feels like it was just another attempt to bring out something new without thinking things through. Players were excited to see old Guild Wars 1 plot details returning, but what was the point of all of this if they ended up being overcooked? I’ll honestly never forgive the Deus Ex Machinima move that performed during the end of Episode 5. That was just a clear sign of lazy writing.

Also, can’t forget that all story contents weren’t well implemented and, like everything else in the game, never properly iterated. Basically, there are several separate storylines on several separate timelines occurring in the same universe, and the resulting in mess, especially when it comes to visuals. Wandering around the new Lion’s Arch while you’ll technically in the old adds to some confusion when new players are experiencing the game. Can’t also forget that the current timeline is 1328 but most of the world still acts and behaves as if it’s 1325.

Cutscenes:

Another issue that I have with the story is that ArenaNet can’t seem to make up their mind when it comes to the cutscenes. So far we’ve had a lot of types.

1. Original Cutscenes. It was back when characters were located in front of a painted background that would represent the current environment. Characters apply basic emotion, but it still accomplishes to deliver how they would act and feel regarding to what’s happening. If it wasn’t done so poorly when it comes to direction it might’ve worked out perfectly.
2. Text. This was a thing for the majority of Season 1 and Season 2. Our characters would move on with the plot through text without ever speaking.
3. In-game cutscenes. There was a share of these in the base game, but it was mostly a thing during the first two seasons. These cutscenes were created by developers who used custom animations and facial expressions for those specific scenes. They relied on the current graphical setup of the player and it’s honestly my favorite type of cutscene. Sadly, ArenaNet wasn’t capable of properly placing our characters into this setting.
4. In-game dialogue. This is now the norm. Our characters will speak as we play. It’s probably the cheapest way that ArenaNet has found in their way into moving with the plot. Characters won’t do any complex animations and a basic lip-sync method was placed. Players are free to move around as they wish while characters interact with one another.
5. Pre-rendered cutscenes. This start happening during Heart of Thorns. They are cutscenes that were previously rendered by ArenaNet and are shown in a smaller resolution. Even though they are indeed a good process, sadly we will never be able to ever see our characters.

The Voice Acting:

Guild Wars 2 has a list of insanely good actors. I’ve seen most of the cast in a variety of games and I’m familiar with their work. But it appears that some actors received a rather poor direction when it came to recording a few scenes.

I’m aware that the gaming voice acting company is going through a strike due to some issues with publishers and even developers, but this wasn’t an issue a few years ago. You can easily find numerous threads complaining about some of the actors.

Another major issue is the lack of racial diversity. It seems like later in the game out character will apparently share the same kind of mentality regardless of their species, gender and class.

I know that some instances do have some changes, such as Eir’s speech, but that’s just a small example. Again, in the end of Episode 5 of this current season, humans and charr react exactly the same way to a deity that one is rather more familiar than the other. I understand that our characters have developed in the course of nearly four years’ story-wise, but this is just unreasonable.

[Continuation.]

Season 1:

Living World Season 1 is the longest season that ArenaNet has delivered so far. Sadly I was unable to properly experience it. I had had to use the Fractals, Wiki and YouTube as means to witness it. I’ve also spoken to some people and did a fair bit of research and read some articles that ANet wrote down in their website time to time.

I’m not going to condemn this season. The biggest flaw was the fact that they actually thought that creating “live content” for a MMORPG was a good idea to begin with.

ArenaNet took a lot of risks. They wanted to push their limits and try to deliver their best in short periods of time. Season 1 is still the best when it comes to battles, events and even characters.

Sadly they didn’t manage to properly introduce the new villain. Scarlet had potential, and it was better developed in the following season. She caused a lot of damage but it was poorly explained. It didn’t help much that she nearly became a Mary Sue stereaotype perfect at almost everything with an endless amount of resources.

he destruction of Lion’s Arch was a really bold move nonetheless. Too bad it’s now locked away from players… probably forever.

Season 2:

The second Season is probably my favourite one.

The story is more coherent and surprising. It didn’t explode as the first one, but at least there was placed a bigger focus when it came to growth of the bigger picture. ArenaNet knew what they wanted and where things were heading to.

Trying to help each of the races in some of their issues and exploring Caithe’s past memories were entertaining. Even though the huge plot-twist was foreseen by many, it was still well-delivered. They managed to turn two grinding maps into exploreable and reasonable ones, if only for a while. If it wasn’t for S2 I wouldn’t have even bothered with the Silverwastes.

Yes, I realise that the pacing in this Season is probably the slowest one of all episodes so far, but I believe that it’s worthwhile. Taking things a bit slower while focusing on the character’s relationships and dispositions while still supplying important plot details and fresh alternatives to gameplay is what made me realize that this is probably the best out everything ArenaNet has given to us players so far. The small Easter Eggs, the overall feeling and the nice little touches in detail were substantial.

Heart of Thorns:

Oh boy. I’m not going to beat the horse any further, so I’ll be quick with this one. Heart of Thorns was a disappointment.

The original idea for this expansion was promising but it got scrapped. The expansion itself caused a lot of controversy even before it was released. Most of the promises weren’t delivered and the writing was dreadful.

A key plothole surfaced thanks to this expansion: the Revenant class. There’s barely to little no explanation as to where they came from and how they managed to spread out the way they did. The lack of a special cinematic or clarification when a new character is created ends up breaking immersion and purpose. The roleplaying community itself refuses to even accept their existence.

Everything felt rushed from start to end. Characters died and it felt anticlimactic and unnecessary. It didn’t help that both the performance and the whole scheme of the maps were bad. Many players felt lost, overwhelmed and underpowered in the new maps. The story was, again, rushed. Obviously ArenaNet tried to deliver it as soon as possible to live it up to the hype that Season 2 had started. It’s really a shame. HoT was another piece of content with a lot of potential that was eventually torn apart.

I’ll just start out and say that the writing in Guild Wars 2 isn’t perfect. What the first game and the novels built were ultimately misguided in this title. However, it’s not as terrible as some people believe it to be, but it honestly requires some fixing.

So today I come here to the forums in order to hear everyone’s opinions on what is the best and worst story contents in the game. I’m going to provide my own breakdown on the matter and I would appreciate if you could take your time to read it with an open mind. I’ll divide this thread into several subjects to properly organise them.

Due to the Forum’s limitations, I’ll have to update this regularly for the next few hours. I’d apreciatte if you guys could stop posting until the thread is properly finished. I’ll add a warning once it is fully completed.

There will be Spoilers, obviously.

Story issues:
- Racial
- Base Game/Personal Story
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Heart of Thorns
- Season 3

Other issues:
- Cutscenes
- Voice Acting

Racial:

Racial Storyline, or Act I, had a lot of potential. It could’ve shown us how the races behaved in the world of Tyria and show us their differences. Instead, we got some rather poor and very simplistic storylines that are completely ignored in the later run.

From Level 10 to Level 30 we find our characters voyaging into adventures that hold barely any meaning and that are wrapped up quite quickly. They don’t manage to explain the world around them properly and are easily forgettable. We also spend so many hours developing relationships with several factions and characters only to never seem or hear from them again accordingly.

Personal Storyline:

Being someone who’s has over twenty characters in-game, I’ve done all possible outcomes that the game could offer.

The Orders don’t start off that bad. They attempt to show us how each Order works and put a big emphasis on the mentor figures. Sadly it starts to become a bit too obvious as to what’s stored for the Mentor figures.

It seems like the sacrifice was most likely intended for Warmaster Forgal Kernsson but somehow it was decided that all of the three characters should die in what it’s probably one of the worst moments in the whole game. T
- Tybalt sacrifice comes out as a poor excuse of an attempt to make us players feel something for once. Why would Tybalt die? He had just discovered his purpose; that he matters and that all of those years feeling like a third-wheel were no longer important because he now knew he was more than capable of assisting the Order and others. Why would someone throw everything they’ve fought hard for just like that?
- Why would a sylvari wish to see the Mists if it was already possible to do around that time through the portals located in Lion’s Arch? It’s not even what happens to them upon death. She was still a young, curious explorer who had a lot left to learn… and then she just dies.

Then we meet Trahearne. It was obvious from the start that the Story was meant for a Sylvari. The Sylvari are the new race that eventually reveal a huge role in the world of Tyria due to the dragon’s awakening.

Right after our sylvari character awakens we are tasked with a burden that only one other character shares. We are meant to defeat the dragons. We meet Trahearne very early on and we get to see some development in that character; his motives, hopes and past. If you play as the other races, Trahearne is instantly thrown at our faces with no explanation. He starts bickering as a walking wikipedia, spitting out exposition and acting as our best friend for no apparent reason.

Suddenly, Trahearne takes the player away from the spotlight and is rewarded for most of the player’s accomplishments. Even though it is his goal to cleanse Orr, it feels off-putting. Unless you’re a Sylvari and take a deeper look into things you’ll come to understand that Trahearne needs this share of spotlight, and that he soon hands it over when finished.

Now, Orr. Orr is my least favorite moment of the entire game. After completing it by myself several times and even with friends, I can’t help but to feel that it was incredibly rushed. The game tries to take itself too seriously only place some cliché and unfunny jokes that completely destroy the mood of the moment.

We don’t really feel what’s in stake. Something essential is lacking; even the voice-acting shows a huge decline in quality during these last story instances. The silly attempt to make us think that Logan died was completely pointless. The battle against Zhaitan is one of the most underwhelming battles that a game has ever offered to me. Everything feels so rushed. And after some research I’ve discovered that this was indeed the case due to time constraints.

How is the game doing lately?

[Original topic had to be removed in order to properly organise it for a different thread.]

It’s not going to happen’.

Just like countless other promises.

Just get over it and spend your energy elsewhere.

Because what’s better than to sunk thousands of hours into crafting? Surely that’s a great strategy.

It’s their way of forcing players into grind. Not only it is a huge waste of potential and opportunities, it quickly makes the game feel repetitive, monotonous and unrewarding. There’s nothing rewarding about farming the same-old-same-old stuff when you could’ve used those hours to do something else and way more entertaining.

Does this mean that 80% of the game’s population will run around looking exactly the same and then brag about at how ‘unique’ they are? The Weapons were already bad, but this… this is going to achieve new standards.

Caedmon.6798:

Go to “C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2” and remove Local.Dat

I deleted the file that you mentioned and checked the game. Some of the maps managed to run a little better, but others still reveal some struggle. Is this just me… or has Guild Wars 2 been this poorly optimized since launch?

“C:\Program Files\Guild Wars 2\Gw2-64.exe” /repair

Press ok and start up your Gw client and let it repair.Dont touch your pc in the meanwhile,it can hang easily.When its done,remove the commandline again and boot up the game.

Your ingame graphics will be reset aswell now due to removing local.dat which holds that info,so you have to reset those settings to what you used normally.

I tried the repair one. Even tried –repair and it just opens the launcher, nothing else happens.

moonstarmac.4603:

What are your system specs? CPU / RAM / Vid / OS ?

Updated.

Ever since December I’ve been losing interest in the game. I rarely login, but lately I wanted to give it a proper shot. I would login a few times per month just to check on things. I would get on most places an average of 30 to 60 fps depending on where I am. I mean, yeah.. this game’s optimisation was never great…

But today I decided to login. My FPS dropped to 11. Now there’s a constant struggle between 10 and 30, rarely peaking up to 40. This happened out of nowhere. All of my other games are running fine, but it seems Guild Wars 2 is the exception. It doesn’t make any sense. No changes were done to the game since I last logged in. None.

And this is the final nail in the coffin. If the game can’t even run properly then there’s no reason to even bother having it installed. I can’t believe I just wasted one year of my life with this.

These are my specs:
- Acer laptop.
- Intel Core i7-6700HQ 3.5GHz
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M with 4GB of VRAM
- 16GB of RAM.

People who think this game will have mounts need to double-check their IQ…

It’s not really a surprise. Jormag’s Breath’s flame is also a weak flame—meaning that if you carry a torch or another fiery sword, their “light” will overcome the blue one. It also doesn’t kill the enemies with the “fire animations” like the fiery sword.

Move on. This “issue” will never be “fixed” as Anet’s priority is to create more “normies”.

A full-DPS set will give you a hard time. If you like being easily crushed, go with it.

If you are interested in this universe, explore the events that took place during GW1 and read the three amazing novels. Anything related to GW2 should be forgotten as we all know how rushed, cliché and milked the overall story is.

You are carrying false hopes.

This is why you never share accounts.