Guild Wars 2

Hey dear Devs / Irenio,

I am getting REALLY tired of seeing nothing but your kitten ed nerfs each passing day to my main. One pvp l2p scrub starts crying “op” and you immediately nerfstomp all our useful stuff in a single day?

Do you think that’s the way to treat the crappiest, most broken class of the game?

Even though I disliked the idea of druid at first (didn’t even bother prepurchasing until before HoT came out). While I was playing it, I actually took a liking to it, and thought it had great potential if a few issues would be addressed (mostly the AF generation by other ranger weapons, adding some more synergy with condi builds, pets etc). Because for once, I felt like I actually provided visible, viable support to my groups.

I really, really looked forward to smokescale (F2 smoke field mostly and a decent burst pet), also couldn’t wait to try out the extra dps I could bring to my party along with tough heal for the raids, even in zerker.

And what did we get in return? You pathetically destroyed our elite’s core mechanism at launch, and it’s still pretty darn useless with anything that’s not a staff. You destroyed our best pet (smokescale) in a single day, and now you completely ruined one of our best GM traits. What’s next, you’ll nerf your “healer” spec by 90%? Is that your great logic?

I am getting tired of the kitten community who’d nerf the hell out of us, because we actually got something useful for a change and would have a better place in the “meta”.
(Even though it’s an addition to a broken class….)

So, how about you did some proper testing and stopped listening to those pvp l2p crybabies before COMPLETELY destroying us one-by-one with these meganerfs?

P.S.: No offense intended to you Irenio, as silly as it sounds, I still respect you for you trying to help us, rangers. And I actually believe you’re here to help us.

Thank you for reading, and I apologize for the long text.

Best Regards,

An angry ranger…

+1 man, I too was not fond of the Druid, but I learned to like him and now i am in love with him. finally i get a good build… a build that still is sub par with everyone esle but is fun to play, and its gets shoved to the ground bringing that build from sub par to completely useless.

its frustration at this point…

…Needs to be said. I’m going to go to bat for this topic.

So, per Colin’s statement, a small guild of 3, or 6, or, 9, or 11 real life family, friends, relatives, and co-workers does not constitute a real guild anymore, is that correct Colin? Really!?

Husbands, wives, and kids? Not a real guild? Really!?

I know for a fact, that there are grandparents playing the game with their grand-kids to be able to hang out, if only through their avatars. They are not really considered a guild!? (You should cherish this fact, not quash it!)

Guilds like this are supposed to invite outsiders into their personal guild, so they can grow-up into a real guild now? Hardly! These players don’t deserve to be able to open the guild hall they paid for? They wouldn’t benefit greatly by having a guild hall to hang out in, and incentive to play the game more? And to think…They paid for it with the expansion pack with hard green cash!

Personally, I paid the full $100 for it, to help development costs, and, help get one sooner. And, so did some of my (“guildies?”). And, now, we are being told that because we all work different shifts, and some are busy raising children, and some are temporarily sidelined with internet connection problems, that we can’t open our guild hall. Nor, earn guild credits for doing things we do. Unless, of course, we pay other players (or, recruit from our other guilds) to help open it. Or, invite outsiders, that we don’t know in real life, into all of our small friends and family guilds?

And, to think, it is just an instance on our computers. One that we paid hard cash for mind you!

I find it really quite insulting, to so many of us, that Colin essentially stated that a small guild with “husbands and wives and kids”, or even one with “3 generations of family”, (you read that right, they do exist in game), is “Not even considered a real guild anymore”. The core values of this game have apparently gone right into the toilet. What happened to Eye of the North values, where we all had our own personal halls to share as we pleased?

The dictionary defines a guild as: “an organized group of people who have joined together because they share the same job or interest.” Maybe we do. Maybe just not in the same time slots.

Personally, I feel that my guild can’t really contribute to much of anything anymore. We can’t even +5 camps in WvW anymore, we can’t earn points for anything to contribute to anything anymore, because we suddenly don’t really count as a guild anymore. Because we all have real lives, and we all work, and play, on different schedules. And, we don’t want people that we can’t call on the phone, or hang out with in real life, in our guild.

But, we do see each other in real life regularly, and can discuss how we probably won’t have a guild hall any time soon, if ever. Nor, can we do anything in game that benefits our guild anymore, because we can’t seem to get 5 of us together at the same time. And, it instantly makes them want to play less, not play more.

Yet somehow our small guild that “Isn’t really considered a guild anymore”, previously, had all kinds of things earned, which have now been mostly taken away. So, to combat abusers of the system, you would quash the true Guild Wars players that have often been with you since the beginning of GW1? Seems more like “Anti-Guild Wars” to me. Yo, computer nerds, you’re now required to join the football team, and cheer-leading squads! Be a part of the new big corporate guild conglomeration! Join the guild union! Show up for guild meetings, or get kicked. 100% rep. guild now taking applications, fill out an application, and we’ll consider you for our big guild, but only if you run approved builds, and can play at least 80% of the time in your designated time slots, and only if you are a profession we need! Shape up and play right!

….Or, you don’t really count as a real guild anymore. No thank you.

We’ll get our guild hall open, one way or another, someday. But, IMHO, it’s not the way it ever was, nor, is it the way it should be now. It’s essentially brings new meaning to being “guild kicked”. And, it’s not exactly fun, nor rewarding, listening to everyone else in game talking about their wonderful new guild halls. While so many of us don’t really even have a chance to open our own, on our own. Feels pretty lousy to a lot of us. Especially due to the $50 to $100 that the rest of us spent towards developing “their” shiny new guild halls.

…Had to be said.

@SkyShroud: Let’s see this way.

Which incentive new players will have to create a new guild with all those “obstacles” to level up a guild? You can’t get anything to give your guildies buffs like it happened before HoT. Which incentive new players will have to play the game and achive “the dream” to have their personal achivements in game with all those lockouts the new guild system imposes?

I was already part of a guild in other MMOs. I HATED IT and since then I PLAY SOLO. When I started to play Guild Wars 2 and it gave me the mobility to play solo, have my guild for my self and my friends – at this moment my guild sits on me and my girlfriend: i expected some friends to follow me, but none of them came to play GW2 – (instead of having to earn / make random people trust on me like it goes on all others MMOs) and it was taken from me with no previous annoucement (note: AT NO TIME ANet INFORMED THAT THOSE GUILD MODIFICATIONS WOULD MAKE THE GUILD STUFF HARD FOR SOLO PLAYERS / SMALL GUIDS A LOCKOUT – they made it clear all the time that those modifications were to give the small guilds the chance for them to earn their respect amont Tyria. We knew the changes: the removal of some features, the addons. We never had any details on how it would affect the guild leveling this extremely until HoT was up).

Those lockouts, impediments, removes the joyfull players like me (and players with small guilds) in keep playing the game – something we paid for (on my case) TWICE. Those lockouts remove the expectations of new players to achive something bigger, when all those impediments are set suddenly, from one day to another.

Want to set that sort of changes? OK, but do it on stages, with detailed information on how they will change the gameplay and which consquences it would bring.

I can give an example to games that follow this “course of action”. Aion is dead now for the simple reason they made lots of abrupt changes in a short time with no detailded information on it. Players disliked those changes. Players left the game. Game is dead. Right now, only the old players which are there from the begin remain playing Aion, but barely active.

I really dont wanna this to be the future of GW2.

The game new features are rigths for everyeone (at least everyone who paid for the the expac to have access to them).

Everyone has rights to get buffs from guild banners, everyone has rights to chose what they wanna do and how they wanna do – lets remember the game GAVE US THIS CHOICE ONCE BEFORE HoT (and ANet is removing it suddenly) – instead of being forced to do whatever we dont want to and lose the joyfull in playing the game.

I don’t care to what other people say or think. This is my opinion.

In a simple matter of definition of the game, when you allow a single player to make a guild, HE IS THE GUILD HIMSELF and so he has the rights to enjoy all the contents, to use all the guild system has to offer. The dictionary definition of a guild does not apply here, a game that allows you to make one and / or allows you to rise it alone. A guild here can be ONE, TWO, 200 members. It does not matter. They all are guilds (of different sizes). They all have the same rights – buffs, earn / give guild experience, being able to complete guild missions, being able to have their guild hall, being able to leanr the scribber craft, are a few i can enumerate.

Before HoT, we could rise a guild alone. Did it take time, yeah it did, but it was possible. Now this possibility was simply taken from us and as eviltwink said:

Writing in caps for those who can’t seem to get the point, here it is:
THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS CONTENT, ITS JUST REMOVED FOR >3 PERSON GUILDS…..

In other words: if one player is required to create a guild (and can rise that alone), one player should be enough to do guild missions and some basic feautores should really be less expensive / unlocked out. (this is my personal opinion again).

Artificially restricting a content by a number of players makes no sense. It simply excludes guilds that could achieve some guild missions by being only two, yet cannot because they’re not three.

Stating that guild missions should not be performed with less than three people is the same as stating that dungeon instances should not be run by less than five people. As a matter of fact, you can run many instances solo or duo, and get a different kind of fun than when you run them in a group of five.

Guild missions should not be tailored to be soloable. If some are, then let the happy solo’ers / duo’ers do them. If some aren’t, then too bad for them. It’s the same as dungeon instances.

Also, I don’t get why some people want to remove interesting content from players not belonging to a large enough guild. Unless they consider that belonging to a guild is more a pain than a joy, and that the content restriction is somehow a reward of their commitment?

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

eviltwink.3914:

SkyShroud.2865 …. seriously?

No kidding. Now he is telling us what we supposedly think.

I give up tbh. Some people just don’t get it. I can easily pay people to get a guild hall, but I can’t keep paying people to do a weekly event with me every week just to get what I used to get solo / duo the previous 3 years. and since launch in GW1.

Why fight for breaking smaller guilds when it don’t affect you the slightest? Its just being a kitten cause it dont affect you… Hope they nerf something you care about so i can troll you back…

I guess some people here seems to lack basic reading skills..

We are not complaining that we can’t get a guild hall, we complain about the fact that PRE-HOT we were able to get banners, guild catas, buffs etc. After we bought hot, everything we used to have was tied into the guild hall, scribe functionality. Which makes it inaccessible to us, even though we have already used it for 3 years.

Its not about making new content available, its about not taking away OLD content.

Writing in caps for those who can’t seem to get the point, here it is:
THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS CONTENT, ITS JUST REMOVED FOR >3 PERSON GUILDS…..

Supplying a new code to a banned account will not unban it. You have to get it unlocked by CS before applying a new code. You will have to continue with CS and let them know you already added a new code to the account.

Okay, so… Husband and I with the help of several friends claimed our guild hall last night.

I LOVE it, seriously, totally, and 100% honestly.

However… and I know a lot of posts were made about this before, during and after the launch of the expansion… the crap concerning the favor.

While I truly understand this, I have a few objections here.

When influence was in full swing, Anet you let us small, pitiful guilds by pass that by allowing us to increase our influence by way of buying drink.

Now that that is gone, and my husband and I did extensive research on this, there is no way to increase our Favor unless we do guild mission. Okay, I dig that, but our guild is a 2-person establishment and would be seemingly impossible for us to go on guild mission with just the two of us.

It is just the two of us, we WANT it this way, this guild of our is just meant for my husband and I. Now we have a guild hall… that is OUR little place for just us… Yet now we can’t build anything as we lack the favor, yet we cannot increase our favor, no matter how long that may take us to do… because we cannot go on guild missions or treks or bounties and succeed with just two people.

Husband and I would keep buying gems out the wazoo if we could buy our favor… and we would be one of your top gem patron, Anet… if that option was available, but it’s not and now my husband and I after all the work we did to get Gilded Hallows, now have to see in age old ruin… that will remain an age old ruin cause we can’t dress it up.

Am I being unreasonable? Cause if I am, I apologize.

Neilos, solo players / small guilds ALSO have the rights to enjoy Guild Halls. It’s part of the game, not part of a “large guild” only.

We assume that even a solo player IS A GUILD (of himself), once this solo player can make a guild for his own. Remember: there is no retrictions to create any guilds.

That is the point.

The main point is: we play a game for fun. We should not be enforced to do what we dont want to get / have access to anything.

When ANet set tons of lockouts for small guids / solo players on this matter, they are removing the enjoyment and fun those group of players have.

The game is for fun, not a job. Once a PVEr player are enforced to PvP or WvW to get something from the game, it’s turns out to that person a " job" (an obligation of HAVE TO). The same goes when a PvPr (in a opposite analogy) is enforced to do PvE.

Where is the fun and enjoyment the game had offered to all players before HoT when they enforce players to do something or lock them up with some insane lockouts.

Solo players / small guilds ALSO have the rights to enjoy Guild Halls. It’s part of the game, not part of a “large guild” only.

I remind perfectly that Anet mentioned that the Guild Halls would be something to give even small guilds some respect around the ingame world. Where is the respect to the small guilds when they can’ t get it?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Can I ask to all you solo/duo ‘guildposers’ why you even want a guild to begin with?

1) To ward off guild invites (still have that at least)
2) Guild Weapons/Armour skins (still have the commendation-locked weapons I’ve never gotten. :-/)
3) Extra storage (thankfully I had already unlocked the lowest tier of this at least)
4) Access to and ability to decorate the new maps*.

*Before you say, “You want player housing,” yes; I do. However the existing maps don’t make sense for that and I expect something smaller in scale will be offered for that (if anything ever is), yet I still want access to play around on these particular maps.

I’m in a three-person guild. It’s the wife, brother-in-law and me. To tell you the truth, I could care less about not being able to have a guild hall. What upsets me, is that there are things that my little guild could do a few days ago, that we can no longer do today without a hall. So we’ve just paid for an expansion which effectively removed guild-based abilities we’d had for YEARS. I’m fine with creating a bunch of cool new stuff for guilds who have the numbers to earn a hall… but taking away the old stuff from everyone else, stuff we’ve enjoyed for a long time now and gating that behind achieving a guild hall, just sucks.

If a player can handle upgrading a guild all by himself, then there is no reason to take that away from him… I don’t care if it is a glorified party, they could manage it before and now they can’t, the expansion has essentially wasted all their time and effort. They already said it right, it should be “recommended” for 3 players, not a forced requirement.

I also politely request the removal of the “required number of players” to earn favor and claim a guild hall. Please do not make the content easier, but let us try.
To all the haters… Why do you care how other people enjoy playing this game? Word definitions have little meaning in a fantasy game with magic and dragons….

Quick question, why are Superior Torment sigils so much more expensive than Superior Fire? Superior Fire sigils seem to do more damage and have a larger effect circle.

To do this you’re going to need to: 1) record, 2) edit, 3) post.

The two popular options for recording (or at least they were) are bandicam and fraps.

Fraps provides better quality video but Bandicam offers real time video compression which can be very useful if you have limited disk space (recordings may take 2GB/min uncompressed)

They cost ~ $39 each but have free versions available.

Bandicam is the better free version, you can record up to 10 minutes with a small watermark added (here’s an example). Fraps’s free version is terrible, limiting you to 30 seconds of recording.

For video editing you might want to just start with Windows Movie Maker (assuming you use Windows Vista+). For Windows 8 you’ll need to download it from Microsoft it’s in their free Essentials suite.

Uploading your video to youtube is pretty easy. If you have a google account, you should see an “Upload” button on youtube.com when you’re signed in.

For editing and uploading you’ll probably want to research some guides online.

I could care less about someone else potentially getting a few more laurels than me.

I could care less about compensation.

I hate the fact that I waste my valuable time in game performing tasks that are simply wiped off a day later. Then to be told ‘oh well’.

The time I have to play is limited and valuable. Do not treat me or my time like it is not important.

I tried to do my monthlies during my holiday to get my mind off all the other changes in the game that are really upsetting me only to get kicked around some more.

Have a little respect for me and my time.

In short Why I don’t play the ranger ?
Because he has a useless pet.

I have lvl 80 ranger alt, that I leveled because I really like the weapons and style of game play it offers. Access to stealth, traps, evasion, and some skills are absolutely fabulous like GS 3 (Swoop), Horn 4 (Hunter’s call), Longbow 5 (Barrage), Lightning reflexes … Those skills might not be meta build, but they are really satisfying to use. And I would really like to play the ranger more. But every time I log into character selection screen I don’t pick ranger and here is why:
It’s true Ranger is packing some really nice tools but there is also this THING that you HAVE TO HAVE (MUST) no way around it … called pet. Stupid, annoying, pesky, nagging, AI from 1992, unresponsive, useless and needless creature you that will follow you no matter what.
I get it, there are players (quite a lot of them) who like to play eternally bounded pet classes, but there are also players (not as much as those spider lovers but still a lot) who would prefer to play this same class only without a pet.
Now I don’t have a problem with pet’s existence (any more) since I am playing games for a long time and in games there is this thing called: we (the developers) have putted sooooooooo much work into this, and that’s why you (the players) will play this if you like it or not, and if don’t like it we will push it down your throat.
So far I have not see a MMO that would have a pet class where the developers would, even on huge request of community, allow non pet builds/traits/perks, yet alone to change a class from pet class to optional pet class.
And the main reason why pets will stay is because there will always be more kitten lovers than players who would prefer the petless play style. And the forum logic is If you don’t like pet style go f yourself and reroll …
Okay pets are here to stay but they for sure can change. No worries my fellow bear huggers I am not taking your teddy bear away from you. I simply wish if you would be so nice and would allow me to play the same class a bit differently, I promise some of the changes you will grow to love as well.

Wish 1
The bare minimum I am asking for is altered Stow pet functionality or something similar. Stow pet ability (as it is now) allows you to hide the pet, but as soon as you jump and take 2 damage from falling your pet is back annoying your screen space. What I would like to have is: if you would shift/alt/ctrl/whatever/right click on stow pet it would toggle into a more pet less style of gameplay. I am going call this mode stow pet purple (icon) and in this mode the pet stays hidden ALL the time, until you call it with F1, then the pet comes and helps in attack and when the combat ends it vanishes without me pressing the stow pet button. The same way the messmer clones work … if not called they don’t come to kitten on your screen while in JP
and as soon as combat ends they know they are no longer wonted.
PS: The most clicked ability with a mouse in gw2 is stow pet.

On behalf of all players who are okay with pet system, as long as It is not kittenting my screen space when I don’t want it. Please give us an option to play without them.
Even the hardest Moa lovers will admit that doing JP without constant pet spawning is useful.

Wish 2
A trait that removes pet and increases player damage. Now here is the logic behind it:
Let’s say pet does 40% of ranger damage and with trait you lose the pet and it’s utilities but gain 20% flat damage increase.
All the top tier rangers would still play with pets because positioning the pet and yourself can give you better spike damage, overall damage is better, you get pet F2 skills …
But a lot of rangers would find this trait interesting because they are not on the same level of micromanaging their pet as the top ones … so this would greatly enhanced their gameplay
Ranger + pet + micromanagment is the most optimal > Ranger + trait – pet less optimal but is much easier > nubs who have pet and don’t micro manage it ( ME atm)
The trait could be balanced not only by damage but also by utility like traited you lose pet but all your stealth is 1 sec longer or when you have 4 condition on you then you are immune to any other condition applied … the ideas are endless
With such way you also solve the problem that rangers have while defending in WvW … your pet is almost useless on top of the wall. Not to mention the pets performance in zerg vs zerg skirmishing

This is the point of view of someone who has ALT ranger that is sitting and collecting dust. And the reasons why I am not playing ranger.
I know there is a big community inside the ranger community that would like to remove pet at lest as an option. But I do think that most rangers agree pets are the more annoying part while playing ranger.

Very dusty ranger.

It’s funny the new Living Content is nothing but, farming! Follow the loot, this week it’s this, next week it’s that! I want some new areas to explore, deeper gameplay, better NPC’s, more RPG elements, I want better content, not just more!

I think going forward less content that’s deeper, would be better than farming X of the week, sometimes less is more.

Disclaimer: Not intended as a hate or whine thread. Please review/comment objectively.

Am I alone in sometimes wishing pets could be “turned off” entirely? Seriously, in my opinion the pet should not make/break the profession. In the original Guild Wars it was often rare to even see a ranger with a pet outside of Jade Quarry PvP (even having a pet active took up one or more of your eight skill slots). We were trappers, interrupters, and professional aggro pullers/manipulators. In those things we had legitimate strategic purpose as a class. We had a solid range of diversity that I’d really like to see again.

When I see dev posts here in the ranger forums, most of what I see is “we’re aware pets need adjustments and this is where we’re focusing.” Why? I grieve because I love the profession, it easily being my favorite; and yet I can’t always find a group for dungeons and fractals outside of my guild. To make it worse, this is often for good reason, my pet. They run ahead and draw aggro if not properly watched and maintained. Mine is usually placed on docile the entire time unless on a boss where at least they can soak a few hits for me or someone else. Which comes to the second part, pet survivability. Most of them dying within a few hits in direct enemy agro. Amidst a slew of other noteworthy (mostly AI based) issues. I won’t even touch upon pets in PvP arenas like WvW, because doing so I believe will broaden the scope of the conversation beyond its necessary limits.

Again, I’m not trying to troll or toss another “oh woe is me” post here. I want legit opinions on this. Why is something that should at best be an add-on or perk completely defining the ranger class? Me, I’d be perfectly happy being able to stow the pet away if I so chose (outside of combat only of course, as the option should not be allowed during to prevent any sort of infight stat manipulation). In doing so getting all my own damage output returned to me directly instead of being consolidated between two entities, and maybe having something cool like one extra bar on my endurance for one extra dodge or something.

Thoughts?

5. Classes

Of all MMOs I played, GW2 has the least interesting classes. There is no class I really like. I think this has something to do with the general active combat, skill and build mechanics. While I like the lore and general design of some classes, I don’t really like any of them in game. Compare to for example GW1, where I played every class because I found them all awesome to play. I was the biggest elementalist fan around. Then came GW2, and I didn’t even hit lvl 10 before I got so tired of it that I rerolled to warrior. Which wasn’t any more fun, but at least stronger.

6. culling/rendering issue

This just ruins every large scale battle for me. I’d rather have a 1 FPS slideshow than only see 10% of what’s going on. I’m so sick of wondering in every battle, “is that spot over there empty, or is it filled with enemies that haven’t loaded yet?”. It happens in Orr, it happens in WvW, it happened really bad in the karka event (champions oneshotting you before they are even rendered). It’s a game breaking issue at the core of GW2, and it’s taking them way too long to fix.

7. Minor but obvious MMO features missing

Stuff like an LFG tool, PvP rankings, a stat window at the end of a PvP match, item preview in the trade post, the ability to sort light/medium/heavy armor… all sorts of small convenient features are just missing. Arenanet are gamers, they know the MMO world… they have to know every one of these features. So why are they not in the game?

Conclusion

GW2 may have done a lot of things right, but it did at least as much wrong, and it seems Arenanet didn’t learn from the success of GW1 at all, since all its important features were left out. The Manifesto trailer was hope giving, but everything in there was a lie. I listened to it again while writing this post, and not a single thing they said in there was actually fully true.

Now I understand that Arenanet is working on changes, fixes and other updates on a lot of these issues, but it’s simply too late. The game has been 5 years in development. There is no excuse for taking 5 years and then saying after a month of release “oh we didn’t think of that… but we’re working on it now!!”. So I will leave this game, and if they really do improve I may return somewhere in the future…

I’m thinking about quitting GW2 atm. I wanted to give some last feedback to Arenanet. This is gonna be a big post, respect to anyone who actually bothers to read it if nobody does then well… I at least tried.

1. sPvP

sPvP has been one big disappointment to me. 5 years of development and all they could come up with is 4 capture point maps? Without even ranking, guild versus guild, spectator mode, or a stat panel at the end of a match? GW1 had the best PvP I ever saw, and the only game I had hope for getting close to that was GW2. That hope got smashed in the first 2 days of release. I did continue to play it for weeks, because friends were playing it, and with them it was at least some fun. (They all quit the game though). But in the end, I hate the 5 man capture point matches. I hate the downed state for sPvP too. It’s required in PvE, but has no place in competitive PvP.

2. WvW

WvW started out as a promising feature. Siege weapons and supply mechanics are pretty cool. 3 faction battles are great, and in that regard they did something right that many games before GW2 did wrong. (I was getting tired of the number imbalance in 2 faction battles, elyos/asmodian, guardian/defiant, sith/jedi etc) However, they made two fundamental flaws in WvW imo. The first is that nothing really matters. No matter what you achieve, even if it’s taking the huge Stonemist Castle in the middle of the Eternal Battlegrounds, 5 minutes later your zerg will be gone and an enemy zerg will arrive and take it back. This makes everything feel like you haven’t really achieved anything. In Aion (just an example), if you took a fortress your side would be happy. The fortress would only be up for taking again a day later. You took the fortress for at least one day, not 5 minutes. Also, every fortress was used to gain access to an instance or a zone, and finally, taking a fortress gave you medals which were needed for gear with PvP defense. Because of these 3 things, people felt like they achieved something, taking a fortress was a big thing. Now in GW2 none of this will ever be implemented, but they could at least add more rewards for defending, so defense actually happens and fortresses aren’t flipped back 5 minutes after they’re taken. Which leads me to the second fundamental flaw: WvW has no significant reward anywhere. Taking even the biggest keep won’t get you anything more than a dynamic event reward, which you could get in 2 mins outside WvW.

3. PvE

PvE is getting boring to me. Regular dungeons are either easy, then people want to run them, or hard and/or long, and then nobody wants to do them. This is simply because the harder paths have no extra reward, and people will always choose the easiest way to their reward. Dungeons also give nothing I personally want and/or need, so I have no reason to play them. General PvE is nearly pointless at the level cap. You are forced to play in Cursed Shore, because every other zone in the game has less good rewards. Arenanet made a huge world, but failed at placing interesting content in that huge world, so GW2 ended up like every other MMO where everyone 90% of the PvE people play instances and the other 10% play in a single max lvl zone. This really disappointed me. Why every game developer seems to think that instances are the only way for end game MMO content, I’ll never understand. This leaves one aspect of PvE undiscussed: fractals. Ignoring the fact that it’s again an instance, I think they set a step in the right direction with fractal mechanics and difficulty. However, yesterday I asked myself: would you keep playing GW2 just for fractals? The answer came quickly to me: absolutely not. RNG and bad luck made me quit a few other MMOs. GW2 didn’t learn from this and made the most important drop currently available (ascended ring) an RNG dependent drop from a single boss in fractals. This alone is enough reason for a lot of people not to bother with them, and I’ve already seen some frustrated players in game who couldn’t progress further because they didn’t get their drop yet.

All these problems would still be fine, if the overall gameplay would be very fun and interesting. To me, it couldn’t have been further from that. Main issues:

4. Builds

With GW2, Arenanet chose to give players a small skillbar, like GW1 rather than other MMOs, but then they removed the customizability that GW1 had. This results in boring, always-the-same builds, and boring gameplay. When I play GW2 I am 90% of the time using skill 1. I’m pretty sure I could do any content in the game by using only skill 1, heal and dodge. How Arenanet thought that was good game design, I will never understand. I found GW1’s skill system the best, but I would still prefer a generic 100 button MMO skill system over GW2’s .