Guild Wars 2

Reading this thread makes me want to go back to GW1. One of my favorite parts of GW1 was creating builds. There are so few builds in GW2 that the invention aspect is basically absent. They had to patch GW1 a lot to try to balance it, but even before it was balanced there were enough skills that you could usually invent a build to counter whatever was giving you trouble. I loved that enemies basically had the same abilities as players. I felt I could learn from what the enemies did, and that figuring out how to deal with enemies would help me in PvP (even though I never really got out of the random arena in PvP.)

This game won’t really feel like GW to me until there are enough skills and ways to combine them that average players can invent builds which are reasonably viable and aren’t obviously built-in to the game. The enemies should use that same set of skills (including dodge.)

I love that the combat is more active and positional, but the lack of skills and enemy AI really kills it. Not sure they can actually fix the AI though since this is a real MMO and they must have more server constraints. (Which could be the reason they add super spongey enemies rather than more enemies.)

My rabbit finisher wasn’t showing up.

It might sound strange, but for me the most exciting part in months has been the addition of the downed mechanic for enemies and enemy healers. It makes the game feel more solid when the opponents are playing by generally the same rules I do. I loved in GW1 how most of the enemies used the same skills available to the players, and generally only from two professions. I’d like to see more of that in GW2.

GW2 runs great natively on a Surface Pro. It is a PC and a tablet though, so it is pricier. It is $100 off through 8/30.

Gizmo.8623:

Imagine that mobs that were not killed for at least an hour have a chance to drop some rare parts of something useful (armor, weapon?).

I would love for there to be a mechanic along these lines. Care must be taken though to ensure the mechanic doesn’t spread people out too much. We wouldn’t want players actively avoiding each other.
The simplest (and possibly most fool-proof) way is to reward players more in under or averagely populated areas. That would normalize the population across the open world.

I loved the open world when the game launched and the open world was, for me, the thing which set this game apart. Now most of the open world is super empty. I’d love it if there were a reward structure to encourage people to spread out over the world (like bonus XP on mobs, only more extensive). I’d also like more of an emphasis on XP as the main reward, rather than achievement points or laurels. Another main draw to this game is that you can play how you want to play and still be rewarded. You can still be rewarded with XP, but not the other currencies which are currently being emphasized.
I’d like to see XP be important again, and for new DEs to be added rather than one-time areas (often with their own skill bars which make the character you’ve built the same as everyone else’s.)
My favorite part is exploring the open world and finding new things. I just want there to be new things to find and people around to share it with.

I think zergs are an issue. At least if a couple players on their own could run at the same speed as a zerg (so they could run away), that would help.

Ideally there would be more spread out skirmishes, so the action is spread out over the map (like it is in PvE). It is hard to feel that you are really contributing when you are in a zerg. It is much easier to see your impact in PvE.

I don’t know how to break up the zergs though.

I would love to see either new weapons, or at least new weapon skills (somehow). The weapon skills are what I use most of the time when running out in the living world, I usually only use the utilities when things start going south (which I try to avoid naturally.)

I’ve been watching some casted PvP matches on YouTube now that we have observer mode. One thing I’ve noticed: due to the compression artifacts and the busyness of the minimap background, it is nearly impossible to gather any information from the minimap.

I think it would be great if there were an option to use solid color backgrounds (maybe one shade for walkable areas, another for walls, like StarCraft’s minimap) so it is possible to see where players are.

I, like some others I’ve seen here, liked Belcher’s Bluff before facing Adnul. He just cheats so hard. I wonder if anyone at Anet can consistently beat him.

I really like being able to unlock new skills in the shops. It would be cool if some zones had their own currencies, used to unlock skills useful for the zone.

Also, the music matches the areas you are exploring! The music often seems ill-suited to the area being explored in the main game.

I think allowing dolyaks to follow individuals would open things up to a lot of griefing.

The problem I have is that at level 80 I am highly incentivized to only play in Orr. I really want to see the rest of the world, but to be able to save up for exotic armor etc. I have to stick to Orr. At this point I’ve been reduced to logging in to see if any shrines are contested, if they aren’t I log out.

I know I wasn’t alone when I interpreted “whole game is endgame” to mean that ones you reach 80, the whole world is open and rewarding for you. This is in line with Factions and Nightfall of GW1 (since the bulk of zones were max level zones.) The current system just locks high-level players in place.

I think my favorite solution would be to bump up the rewards for lower zones, but also be more aggressive in the down-leveling to make sure the challenge is there. If that is too risky of a change then maybe a “hard-mode” so you can opt-in to being down-leveled more with appropriate rewards in return?

This is my biggest concern with the game right now.

I’ve been asking for quaggan plushies since before launch!

Bluetooth.1452:

Do later hearts give Karma, or does it remain an event only reward?

I’m pretty sure it is always event-only. I have an 80 and I’ve never NOTICED getting karma for hearts.

I actually think that adding the health bars above friendly heads would mean LESS playing the UI. Currently if you want to see a teammate’s health you have to check the upper-left. There is no way to tell how hurt a friend is just by looking at them, like there is for an enemy.

Also, I’ve wanted this a lot in PvE. I’m often in ad-hoc groups, and I have to mouse-over people to see how hurt they are.

I can’t imagine playing Starcraft without all health bars on. Starcraft doesn’t feel at all like playing the UI.

Yeah, I mentioned this in beta. I’d really like if the auto-attack settings were ‘sticky’. If that would be too tough to implement, it would be great if the weapons with obvious auto-attacks were set as such when switching to them. I can’t imagine how that would be difficult as long as they can store an extra flag with each bundle marking that it should have its first skill be auto-attack.