Guild Wars 2

3/10 for me.

Finally finished my elite spec yesterday, and I don’t feel like having to schlep around to a bunch of random spots on the map enhanced my feeling of reward at all; the most prevalent feeling was “finally I’m done with that kitten.”

Was trying to play the story to get XP for tier 2 glider, and finally got it – took way longer than I’d have liked, but not a bad time. However, during that process any desire I had to explore got killed because I became incredibly frustrated at the amount of places I couldn’t figure out how to get to because I didn’t know how to jump on mushrooms or dig in mud. So, I figured I’d do mushrooms next. Kept going for a little bit, having a decent time again, but now all of a sudden I need yet another mastery just to continue the storyline. Ugh.

Raid – no complaints. Literally the most fun I’ve ever had in the game, and all we did was wipe on the first boss for 3 hours (but we got a little further every time!). I now actually feel some sort of incentive for trying to get ascended gear, although I’m still struggling to find a part of the game that’s fun enough to earn the needed gold and materials. Fractals are generally what I’ve settled on.

Suggestions that would bring it up to 7/8+ IMHO:

1) Drastically reduce elite spec unlock requirements. Old world map clear should’ve meant a day 1 unlock IMO – grinding toward the reward of unlocking a new way to grind just seems silly. I’d have much preferred the elite specs be behind a class quest (or even a longish series of them), with some neat lore in it. How did my engineer learn to be a scrapper? Apparently by looking at glowy balls of energy and fighting a bunch of things using the same methods he has been for ages. Kind of a letdown.

2) Put the “necessary” masteries behind story quests, or relatively trivial amounts of XP. The higher tier masteries in general should rightly take some time and effort to unlock, but several of them do nothing but hinder my enjoyment of the game. Seeing a thing (like the mushrooms or wallow holes) and finding out “oh, I have to go do X to be able to use that” is fine, when X is well-defined (and preferably a fun activity in and of itself). Seeing a thing and finding out “oh, I have to go do a TON of things before I can use that” should be reserved only for very rare and powerful things, IMO.

3) Take the time gate off of ascended gear crafting (or reduce it in some way). With the raid being introduced, I imagine the demand for the time gated parts is higher than ever and the market won’t be affected as heavily.

This is definitely an improvement, but it still doesn’t really seem like a solution. It’s made it so that I have enough of my elite spec to play with, but I still need to unlock so much of it that all the expansion content is more irritating than fun, because everything that isn’t a hero point just feels like a waste of time.

I hope the change also includes a major reduction in the ‘buy-in’ cost of the first talent. I’ve put like 120 points in and I feel like that should have the spec nearly halfway finished at a 250 total cost (frankly I still wish it would be no more expensive than any other spec). I feel like I could handle playing a half-full spec, but right now 120 points doesn’t even feel like it makes scrapper worth trying, which has led to me basically not playing at all.

IMO, the ideal set-up would’ve been to level-gate it at 60-80 (which I think is actually in place?) and then have short or mid-length class questline that goes through some of the lore surrounding the new “elite” specs, at which point they’re no more difficult to unlock than any other spec.

As-is, every choice I have to play the game leads to boredom.

Welp. After about 5 hours of playing I think it’s entirely possible that I’ll have uninstalled the game before ever unlocking my elite spec. I want to like this game so much, and I tend to have some fun when I play with my guild, but since I had to switch back to grenade spec because my gimpy unfinished elite spec wasn’t good enough to actually contribute to claiming our guild hall, I just have 0 interest in logging back in to go try and find more hero points.

Maybe I’ve just outgrown MMOs, but I am sick of games that are designed to make me do a bunch of boring stuff before I can have fun. (I already have to do a bunch of boring stuff before I can have fun, and that’s called my job.)

I bought the expansion because it sounded like it was going to make Engineer fresh and fun to play, and add in a whole new area in which to figure it out. Then, I fire it up, and find out that I can’t play my fresh new main until I’ve already finished the whole new area. Not only does that mean that combat will be boring all through the whole area, but the experience will be marred because I will be moving through the area with the motive of unlocking the thing I want to do, rather than a desire to follow the story or explore the map.

All in all it’s just a major disappointment. I preordered against my better judgement due to hype from guild members, and I’m now wishing I hadn’t. Had I known I would have to grind for the elite spec, I probably wouldn’t have bought in until that got changed.

+1 for the “elite spec is ridiculously expensive” perspective here.

Despite myself I actually managed to get a little excited, thinking that the expansion would breathe some life into the game for me. Instead, I almost immediately lost my will to play again when I found out that I couldn’t actually access the thing I was so excited about. Kind of wanted to try Revenant too, but the thought of leveling another character in addition to having to grind crap for my main’s elite spec is frankly dreadful (since I didn’t have the forethought to log in every day for a few months for tomes).

They should take inspiration from the EVE Online fleet interface, or the WoW raid interface circa WotLK.

When a commander enters WvW, I think all guild members (with the right rank ‘permission’?) who are in or subsequently enter WvW should be automatically added to the squad/platoon/whatever. Of course, kicking and inviting should still be allowed. That one overgroup should be subdivided into smaller groups (preferably with an assigned leader to each). That way, the commander can see all relevant info and actually command effectively.

Needing to ask that the commander be able to see the location of every member of the squad is just silly.