Both my friend and I got level 18 items as the reward.
Fairly useless. Should I make a ticket?
It is filled with Aatxe?
Doing a 200k backstab on a bunny
I was about to reinstall GW2, but then this thread reminded me (yet again) why I stopped playing: The dull “all over the place” combat system.
Also, I haven’t played in a very long time, yet every time I visit this forum, a thread such as this can be found no futher away than page 2. It’s a new thread every time, but it’s always about this. So this is clearly something people are completely heartbroken about, and wish their voices would be heard by ANet.
It won’t though…
(edited by Zii The Mad.2563)
Their gamble on e-sports influenced the game design in a major negative way.
The mindset was: Make PvP easier to balance by having fewer skills.
This influences PvE in a major way. Once I had all the skill unlocks, and realized that I had very little freedom in playstyle – I quit.
Obviously I’m a GW1 veteran, and lack of freedom in playstyle was too much to bear.
Sooo much player creativity in GW1, so little in GW2…
Build-variety…
If GW2 had that, I’d actually play it.
I wish you couldn’t kill these elder dragons. It’s such a cheesy hollywood-esque solution. It kills all tension of “There are dangerous forces looming out there, that can actually kill me”.
Would be cool if these dragons landed occasionally, wrecking actual havoc instead of just flying around being noisy.
Maybe its too much to ask of an MMO.
TheDaiBish, I miss the complexity from GW1. I loved how you could adapt to anything. Maybe ANet secretly despised how players could solo content and do UW in 15 min; and “BY GOLLY WE’LL MAKE A GAME WHERE THAT ISN’T POSSIBLE!! THAT’LL SHOW EM!!”.
Honestly I think ANet was struggling with the direction they wanted the game, and I have a feeling they went through many many iterations. Then launch day started showing on the horizon, and they had to settle on something.
GW2 will never be an eSport, just accept that ANet and bring back more skills. I don’t care if it is PvE only skills. Give us the chance to be the bad*sses we were in GW1.
Its all silly. GW2 videos helps keep focus on GW2, which helps the game by supplying new buyers.
It’s always a shame when one aspect of the game (pvp) handicaps another (pve).
They should have just separated the two completely with each aspect having unique skills, designed to enhanced the experience for that aspect.
That’s why I would like to see them add 5 or so skills to all weapon sets and have us chose which ones we want to use, like utilities. I don’t care how hard it is to balance, just disable it in sPvP. Fun>balance for me in pve atleast.
This might bring me back to GW2. Compared to GW1 where I had ultimate freedom in building my skillbar, to GW2, which almost completely locks my skillbar; the ability to customize is something I greatly missed in GW2. I couldn’t keep playing something that hampered my creativity and individuality.
More skills and more customizable skillbars would bring me back, personally.
This post really struck a chord with me, because I sympathize powerfully.
Zii, are you open to considering some unsolicited advice? If so, here it is:
…
Thanks for the advice friend. Truth be told, I don’t really play GW2 anymore. I know its a fantasy that the game will become more like GW1; I know it wont happen. They took the direction they did, and now they gotta stick with it.
I’m tired of MMORPG’s in all honesty. They can never seem to break the mold enough to feel like a new and fresh experience.
LOL, some of you are so dramatical.
What do you want? To hit 80 and have nothing to do? You want to eat the carrot on the stick as soon as you roll your toon?! People like to feel like their character continues to grow past level cap, it’s called end game.
If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.
I’m not being “dramatical” (sic), I’m asking for suggestions on new games that would fit my tastes better. I expected Guild Wars 2 to fit this paradigm since it was sold as a successor to Guild Wars. They said that they were defying the standard MMO formula.
What I don’t understand is WHY GW2 went this path. With no subscription, the incentive of the developer to include grind is gone.
I like the ability to reach a maximum statistic power, and then meet harder and harder challenges…not through increased statistic power, but by smarter builds and more skillful gameplay.
Grind has the following negatives:
-A wider range of character power means a narrower range of content that is applicable to your character. You are pushed down a linear path instead of having a wide world open to you.
-Discourages experimenting with different builds that will require different gear
-Discourages rolling alts to play different professions. You are effectively locked into developing one character, unless you have huge amounts of free time.
-Makes it difficult to get friends to join you, since it will take a long time for them to attain the same level of power that you have
-Punishes you for taking a break from the game, because you will fall behind
-Feels more like work than actual fun.
Being the heartbroken GW1 player that I am, I feel like a stalker, stalking a old girlfriend (doesn’t feel good). What I mean by that is that I keep coming to these forums, hoping for some official statement that announces that the game is now more like Guild Wars, and less like any other MMO out there.
I keep being disappointed though. It’s clear to me that I’m not the intended audience for GW2, and its that fact that makes me heartbroken.
But I digress.
A game that reminds of the old Guild Wars? Hmm, tough, cause GW1 was pretty unique. I’ve heard that The Secret World has a deep build system similar to GW1, but I haven’t tried it myself. I know there is a 5 day trial though (or something). I’m considering trying it though, but I’d rather not get sucked into something that has a monthly sub.
So without going into the collectible card game genre, I can’t really make any recommendations.
I love Extra Credits, and it should be mandatory for every game designer out there to watch every single episode they’ve put out.
Most of it feels like the devs went lazy when making em in fear of not being able to balance them around the trinity-less game style.
I think this hits the nail on the head.
I don’t even know how I would balance the combat in this game, so I’m glad I’m not tasked with it. Apparently ANet doesn’t know either. Feel they dug themselves into a corner with the combat system.
I hate the trait tree. It static and uninspired. And the guy who came up with it must have been in marketing, and must have uttered the lines:
“SO! We need to hijack players from all the popular MMO’s, lets do a trait tree; all other MMO’s have that right? People are familiar with it right? So they will feel right at home!!”
A static trait tree is not something I’d expect to find in a Guild Wars game, considering what we had in GW1.
“As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
“You’re meeting new people whom you will then see again. You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you. The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”
“We do not want to build the same MMO everyone else is building, and in Guild Wars 2, it’s your world. It’s your story. You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”
“Cause and effect: A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”
These quotes are from the Manifesto trailer. The stuff in bold makes puzzled creases in my forehead appear…
It was pretty much just hot air, wasn’t it? Pretty much none of the above stuff is actually like that in-game.
(edited by Zii The Mad.2563)
This game has maybe 2-4 viable builds per class.
You want templates for that?
I bought it because I thought it was Guild Wars 2, not “another MMO with Guild Wars lore”.
Learned my lesson I suppose.
Finding a secret place is one of the best feelings for me in this game.
I agree with you wholeheartedly GreenZap. They removed everything that made GW1 a deep game and replaced it with, well.. nothing.
I’m not gonna repeat myself as my feelings about GW2 from a GW1 player’s perspective can be read here (locked).
I got 300 hours worth. That is enough for 110€.
You found a “Work In Progress” area. Congrats.
Disclaimer: This post is gonna sound negative, and for that I apologize. Guild Wars 2 is a good MMO and one of the most feature rich MMOs I have ever seen at launch. Events are a nice touch, and the world feels more alive than any other MMO I’ve seen.
I’ve been staring at this reply window for some time now, trying to figure out exactly why I’m not really enjoying GW2 anymore and figuring out what exactly to write… It’s not easy for me to accept that this is not the sequel I was hoping for.
Why did I play GW1 for 1500+ hours? Because I liked the gameplay! I didn’t play it for the promise of better looking armor. I played it because of the challenge. If I wanted to complete the Nightfall campaign 2 people and a hench, I could, and we did. Was it easy? Nope, but it was fun because of the challenge. No other game could deliver that!
Initially I was very excited when I heard about the combat system in GW2. “A combat system based around dodging and timing your attacks? Count me in!”. In reality it’s not what I hoped for. It sounds good on paper, and heck it was fun enough for a while, but it lacks depth. I feel pigeonholed into the same role over and over. My thief was pretty much designed for direct damage, bleeding and blinding, and thats pretty much it. I can’t escape that constraint.
In GW1 the player gets to be creative. In GW2 the class designer gets to be creative.
“But in GW1 everyone used the same ‘flavor of the month’ anyway”. Yeah but isn’t that happening here? Aren’t people using the same small collection of builds anyway (and it’s physically impossible for many unique builds to exist in GW2).
I haven’t been to Orr yet, and at this point I’m starting to doubt it will ever happen, because I’m simply bored with the combat system. I think the amount of zerging in the game is a symptom of a combat system that just isn’t very well designed.
I’ll end my rambling whining post with 2 quotes:
Colin Johanson: “I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.”
To me, GW2 is pretty much also played this way, you just add “and then I dodged!” to the end of the quote.
Mike O’Brien: “Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 …”
… except a deep combat system, that gave endless replayability and flexibility to last for years, which was the one thing I truly loved about GW1.
Forgive me readers… I know that was a negative read, but I felt I needed to say it.
TLDR; Combat system lacks depth to keep me entertained anymore. Game doesn’t feel like a true sequel to GW1; it feels more like another MMO with Guild Wars lore.
(edited by Zii The Mad.2563)
The skill is now useless yes. It confirms my belief that ANet’s pvp balancing team don’t know what the heck they are doing.
Before its main use was to set up a good backstab.
ANet please listen: Our ELITE skill is now a 1,5 stun with casting time.
Can you not hear how ridiculous that is?
(edited by Zii The Mad.2563)
Not many effective pve builds exist for the thief.
As shown here:
http://www.gw2builds.org/browse?search=pve&prof=thief&category=any&type=any&game_version=&sort=updated
Most are very similar.
I feel like ANet have pigeonholed themselves due to the combat system. The idea sounds good on paper: A fluid system that revolves around dodging instead of tanking. But how do you balance such a system? I, personally, have no idea. It’s too chaotic to be subject to normal scrutiny, and as such where do you even start if you want scalable difficulty?
Hmm, not really sure where I’m going with this. I think the concept might be flawed in such a fundamental way, that there is no easy fix at this point. Even though it IS fun at times.
Story telling is still amateurish. Bad pacing, characters talking AT each other, not to, and the occational voice actor that makes you go “are you kidding me?? why is this ridiculously bad voice actor in the game??”.
It’s not engaging. I’m trying to convince myself that I should at least complete the story…
Feels like the game has actually become more buggy after release.
Tybalt
More words to get past the post limit
I mostly just wish there were more weapon skills. I wont be unreasonable and demand that there were thousands of skills in the game. But 3-5 skills per weapon just isn’t cutting it (pun) for me anymore. If each weapon at least had gave access to 10 skills each, which in turn could then be placed on the skillbar, then at least I wouldn’t feel like the gameplay was growing increasingly repetitive.
GW2 needs a difficulty buff.
I really liked the GW1 and the skill system, and would like that in GW2 or something somewhat similar at least.. But not only that, a lot of skills in GW2 largely seem useless outside high end competitive pvp. I mean most crowd control skills or any skills in general are in the range of being up for 1,5 sec and then having a cooldown of 45 sec.. Way way too long cooldown, and way too low effect time, it renders the vast majority of skills pretty pointless in casual pve for instance.
In GW1 the skills in general lasted so much longer and really made a difference. On top of that putting points into traits would extend the duration of skills drastically, as in from 4 sec to 18 sec. Of course you couldn’t do that to all your skills though.So basically GW2 just feels so restrictive and superficial, you really don’t have any major choices to make, neither in choice of skills or traits. It’s all a matter of tweaking the finer details that’ll make a difference in a tournament battle, but otherwise won’t really make any noticeable difference.
I really tire of the weapon preset skills as well.. The idea of weapon specific skills is fine, but give people a bunch of different skills they can choose from themselves, as they like.
I don’t really mind the longer cooldowns. It’s balanced for the current combat system.
I like the idea of a single weapon giving access to more than 3 skills on your skillbar. Like say an axe giving access to 10-20 axe skills, which you could then place 3 of on the skillbar. That would be nice. It would also individualize people more.
It has been mentioned in this thread already, but GW1 had the flexibility of “decide your own difficulty”. I actually cleared most of Nightfall with one other guy, and a single hench. I was a challenge, and it was fun. We picked the challenge by not bringing an entire party.
That option just isn’t here. I’m 80 now and I can’t make the content more difficult by playing in an area with higher level mobs than me.
Sorry man. Just reminded myself too…
Keep travel costs the same.
Make traveling to Lion’s Arch free. Maybe even the other major cities, just so I don’t have to sit through two loading screens if I want to get to Divinity’s Reach or Black Citadel.
Make porting to Fort Trinity free. Alternatively, once you finish your Story, make traveling to Vigil/Priory/Whispers base free. One or the other, not both. I’m Vigil and that port from there to Trinity is essentially useless. I spend more money porting to there for a free port to Orr, than I do just porting straight to Orr, or going to the Grove, etc.
Traveling to Lion’s Arch is “free”. Press H, go to PvP tab, and travel to the heart of the mists (for free). Then take the Lion’s Arch gate.
Too many events are “defeat x waves”, so I wouldn’t mind a bit more variety in the event department.
I’m having a hard time adjusting to the fact that this insanely cool element of the game is gone. I didn’t realize, playing GW1, how much that really meant to me: The fact that I could gather hundreds of skills and dream up amazing (and awful) builds was what kept me going for years, and the game never felt stale because of it.
Now we have traits. But traits just doesn’t cut it. You can only go so far with traits. I will even go so far as to say that traits were a bad idea to begin with. Its too “every other MMO out there”-ish, and it feels like a step backwards compared to GW1. It’s extremely limiting, and we are at the mercy of the trait designer, who had some plan (when making the traits) of what the trait could be used for.
I like most things about GW2; events are a great idea, the graphics fits perfectly and ANet has truly made a game where people play together because its just better that way.
But I still miss the creativity I could unleash in GW1. I feel I won’t get it back in GW2. I suppose GW2 just wasn’t designed for the deck building enthusiasts of GW1.
How to make a game world void of life:
You make fast-travel free or very cheap.
Bottom line:
Sometimes you run, sometimes you fast-travel.
I liked the story untilTybalt died. Then I stopped caring completely. Thanks ANet for killing the one character who actually HAD character and also an excellent voice actor.
Many many people moaned duing the BWE’s: “The game is too hard, the game is too hard. We will never develop any personal skill, so please make it easier”. Now it is easy, very easy, and we are all left with an empty feeling inside.
Yes – But, I think that mostly applies to general PvE content (and solo play) and they should roll that back to the kind of level they had in BWE1.
OTOH I don’t see how they can make those large zerged boss fights interesting for variable numbers of players . If I’m playing ranged the boss really has to one shot me to take me out of the fight (as some do), otherwise I’m just going to run out of range and heal. Even if it does one shot me I can revive at the nearest way point and run back in half a minute or less.
So how exactly do you make an open world boss fight more interesting/challenging with a zerg of 40 on balance average players attacking it? Individual skill hardly makes a difference at that scale so you can either balance it so that an average collection of players win or they lose.
How do you make fights more interesting for large groups of people? Simple: MORE MECHANICS! ^^
Of the top of my head:
- More boss abilities: Examples: Encage players in ice that slowly suffocates them unless helped out. Isolate players in difficult situations. Dungeons and Dragons online has a lot of interesting mechanics in boss fights, like isolating the player and forcing him to fight his own mirror image. Take notes from other games that have good boss fights.
- Bosses with the retaliation boon: Would force players to actually be awake during fights, instead of DPS’ing and then going afk. Now there is a thought.
- Bosses should have a failure scenario: The boss is trying to achieve something. If the boss achieves it, you fail. Atm. you can’t lose. If every player logged out of the boss fight and came back 1 hour later, the boss would still be there… screaming (mostly talking about the dragons here).
- Different AI: Instead of applying the same chaotic AI to every mob (that switches targets like the wind), how about a specific AI for certain mobs. Like maybe a berserker that sticks to one target when aggroed, is immune to CC and won’t stop until the target is completely dead (or it is). DEAD, not downed.
It’s like not a lot of thought has been put into designing the various events, which is really weird considering how long the game has been in development. DPS’ing away and always winning is not an indication of a great combat system.
Ps. Dying is fun. It makes actually beating the event that much more rewarding when it finally happens.
(edited by Zii The Mad.2563)
This is very true. What happens to games is that there is a 5% crowd which is ridiculously good at games, then there’s the 60% of us which are the usual gamers and the rest are casuals. What you want to do with the game is to balance around the 95% of us which are the normal gamers and the casuals because we are the majority. What happens is the dev’s program it so it’s centred around the top 5% which causes the other 95% to give up on the game.
Over 99.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including the statistic that I just made up right now.
OP: ANet already has a system monitoring the amount of players and “scales” events accordingly. Considering you have apparently not noticed that events scale in difficulty, then I propose that ANet has done a pretty poor job implementing this system (which in my opinion IS poorly implemented).
Your suggestion is fine and all but I think you already have a fantasy about how its suppose to look. But it wont work well within the confines of the current system. Mobs follow a simple waypoint system, and is thus extremely susceptible to AoE attacks, more of them wont make it harder. We need them to spread out and move like say, a big group of zerglings move in Starcraft 2: Move like a group, and less like a train on the railroad tracks.
roqoco: You are correct, and I agree.
MassDelusion: More mob health is not a good solution (which is what we have now).
Is a LAZY design choice. Make the mobs smarter, not tougher.
Let them be able to dodge, make them step out of AoE and make them work together like they did in GW1.
Well I’d get over it. Now you know.
It’s been stated on the wiki since the beginning: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trading_Post#Fees
But yes, some kind of ingame notice would make people feel less behind-hurt.
Yes events should bloody well increase in difficulty when beaten. I’m appalled they don’t already. When victory is trivialized, it doesn’t feel like victory.
Good idea. I endorse this. Would love more of a challenge from the game. Not been logging in much lately.
You just know that events are too easy when topics start to pop up, asking people to fail them.
Thief is kinda repetitive tbh. Wish we had more weapons.
Play guardian, they never die