Guild Wars 2

That’s the sign of a poorly designed event.

A well-designed event should cater to the people who play for fun, the people who play for a challenge, and the people who play for loot. It sounds like this one isn’t properly designed for distributing loot, so it’s running into problems.

The solution is to adjust the event so that it provides adequate rewards in all stages, so that people don’t want to lose that territory to the centaurs or what-have-you.

Please don’t get me wrong, I love this game and I want to keep loving it and keep playing it. But I’m starting to feel like a jilted lover, here, and I can’t be the only one. There’s no trust in this relationship any more. I can’t count on the devs to say “we’re working on it” and to actually see positive results to that effect. I can’t count on each new patch to provide exciting new content that isn’t horrendously bugged, forcing multiple server restarts and re-patching. I just can’t trust this game, its devs, or the company that owns it any more. And that kills me because I love the game and I would much rather continue to enjoy and play it for years to come. But I don’t know if I can convince myself to stick around in this situation.

So I want to ask people, and I want you to be honest with yourselves as you answer: Do you feel that you can trust every word the developers say? Or do you approach their announcements as I do with quite a bit of caution and skepticism these days?

And I want to ask the devs an honest question, too: Do you feel that I’m being unreasonable, here? Or do you maybe see where I’m coming from? Because, really, I want this to work. I do. But you’ve got to give me reason to trust you again.

(….now I’m even sounding like a jilted lover….)

Disclaimer: What follows is entirely my opinion. So please, mods, do not bother changing the title. Everyone here knows that I’m only giving my own opinion. No one is going to be “confused”.

Now then….

I was asked recently by an avid defender of this game’s new policies a very simple question: what exactly in this new patch made me so angry? Naturally, I had a nice big list of things prepared and I could have riddled them all off, but as I thought about it some more, I realized that my problem with this patch, and indeed with most of the patches, all really boil down to one thing, one core flaw that defines all of the problems I’ve experienced with this game….trust.

Namely, the fact that I can no longer trust that the developers of GW2 have our best interests at heart. And as a loyal fan of the franchise since GW1, that actually hurts an awful lot to admit, because up until recently, ArenaNet was probably one of the only developers out there that I felt I could trust completely.

But I’ve felt this way ever since the game’s beta, when I saw major issues plaguing the game and the devs completely ignoring those reports, pushing forward with a release of a game that we all knew wasn’t ready yet. And it’s only gotten worse from there. You’ve no doubt seen a thousand rants about November, and other such things, so I’ll try to spare you as much of that as possible. Really, it’s not specific events for me….it’s the general trend of it all. GW2 is still a great game, one that I spend much of my free time playing. But my play habits have changed considerably, and not (in my opinion) for the better.

This game no longer feels like a game that “takes everything I love about GW1”, nor a game that encourages me to “play the way I want to”.

I’ll try to explain my stance, using more recent updates as examples.

1) A lot of people have praised the new dailies as “easier to complete”, but not only is this grossly untrue in many cases, it’s missing the point to begin with. The original dailies were the best model not because they were “easy” or “hard”, but because they were built entirely around the mantra of “play the way you want to”. Kills, kill variety, gathering, events. Things you could do nearly anywhere in the game. You could do them on your Lvl 1 or your Lvl 80, in any map zone you wanted. That provided a massive amount of variety that the new options are utterly devoid of. Kills in specific regions? Dungeon runs? Keg Brawl? These aren’t options that let you “play the way you want to”, they’re options that imply that maybe you’re not playing the game the way the devs want you to.

2) One of my favorite features of GW1 was the concept of horizontal progression. I had come from a lot of MMOs that focused around getting the biggest numbers, then chasing the next set of big numbers, and eventually that grind became too much for me, leading to me falling behind and quitting. GW2, I fear, is on its way towards that same fate. The devs have admitted that they like vertical progression and will continue with it moving forward….which, for someone like me who was disillusioned with other MMOs, that’s a deathblow to the game that “takes everything I love about GW2”, because it’s not taking one of my favorite elements from GW1: the fact that I never felt obligated to gear grind. I could leave, come back, and still be a competitor. Skill always felt more important than stats. Whether you consider Ascended to be a grind or not is personal preference, but the fact remains that it won’t be the end of their progression plans. They’ve said as much. And that bothers me, knowing that I could leave now, come back in two years, and be significantly behind other players in terms of performance, even if I was the better player.

3) The devs have a tendency of giving out no information, or worse, wrong and conflicting information. We’ve been told that the precursor system was actively being worked on, and then Colin comes along to tell us that it’s not even likely to happen until April (at the earliest). Colin comes along and talks about how they’re working on new rewards systems that could yield precursors (getting people’s hopes up that the laurel system would have some manner of obtaining them) and then backtracks on it within days. We’re told that the devs are working on condition damage, and yet not working on it. That culling will be fixed, and then a patch comes out and makes it worse. That AoE will be nerfed across the board, and yet on a case-by-case basis. I don’t feel as though I can trust the developers themselves any more, because they don’t say the same things, and some of the claims they do make are later revealed to be outright false or misleading.

WvW needs adjustment so it doesn’t boil down to “Zerg vs Zerg”.
This is something I’m not actually sure how to tackle, but it really needs to be dealt with. WvW is quite a frustration at times, partially because the classes aren’t properly balanced, and partially because there’s really no way for a player (even a skilled one) to stand a strong chance against a zerg of even the most bone-headed players.

Additional skills/weapons/traits are needed.
Rather self-explanatory. The existing skills aren’t quite balanced, that’s true, but there also aren’t quite enough of them to begin with, and many classes are forced into having only one or two options for their elites. There needs to be more selection and more variety, as we’re seeing too much leaning towards one or two specific build types in each profession rather than having a large variety of good builds to use.

Leaderboards for sPvP and other features.
I don’t do much sPvP honestly, but I’d be more inclined to do so if there was greater depth to it. Right now, a lot of people don’t like PvP in this game because it’s nowhere near the experience that GW1’s PvP was. More variety and more features will help expand this into something better.

Patch notes being more thorough, and staff improving communication.
There’s really no reason not to give full details about what is being changed or fixed in this game. Keeping it secret only gives the detractors more fuel to add to their fires, and indicates less than full transparency with regards to communication.

Remove the nickel-and-dime mentality from the game.
We’re charged for virtually everything. There are gold sinks in the Trading Post, for using waypoints, for changing traits, for repairing armor that was broken due to the cheap shot mechanics of unbalanced dungeons (as I complained about above), and the list goes on. We don’t need this many gold sinks. Don’t nickel-and-dime your players for every little thing, it limits their overall freedom and doesn’t encourage players to go jumping around the world to chill with their friends when it costs them a lot of money to do so.

/fin

6. Add a direct peer-to-peer trading system.
I know you’ve stated in the past that you expect players to use the Trading Post and the mail systems for this, but let’s be honest, they don’t perform the same task. P2P trading is in virtually every other MMO (and even in games like Diablo 2) that I can think of, and with good reason: sometimes you want to trade with one specific person, and you may not trust them. The TP doesn’t allow you to trade with individuals, and the mail system relies entirely on trust between both parties. Yes, it’s possible that people will be scammed with a P2P trading system, but that’s already happening to people who rely on your mail system to do this sort of thing. This feature needs to be added.

7. The achievement system needs work.
Daily achievements are just about spot on, allowing players to experience whatever content they want without feeling chained to anything. Monthly achievements, however, do not perform this task well, often asking players to do things that they hate. Considering we have a multitude of achievements for all of the different stuff in the game to “encourage players to try new things”, I don’t really see why we need monthly achievements to perform that same duty, especially when monthly achievements (like daily ones) have specific rewards attached to them. And speaking of rewards, please make these achievement points have some value! Perhaps the best approach would be to make them function like the HoM from GW1, where certain levels of achievement points unlock special armor and weapon skins that players can use. This adds further diversity in players’ armors and weapons, and gives players a reason to push for more achievement points beyond having a bigger number on their account.

8. The personal story suffers from the same fatal flaw as Nightfall’s storyline: you’re not the hero, you’re just the sidekick.
There’s a reason that there is such massive hate for Trehearne across the internet, and people joke about him and his sword “Saladbowl”. The personal story starts out with you as the focal point of everything, raising you up as the great hero who will take down the dragons….and then after Lvl 50 or so, some skinny plant guy shows up and starts bossing you around. Whether or not you like him as a character, one thing is clear: the personal story doesn’t feel like it’s about you nearly as much after he shows up.

I don’t know if this is a flaw that the team can actually fix at this point, unfortunately, but it’s a lesson that can be learned for the next storyline. Make sure that the expansion focuses on the player, putting us at center stage as it should be, and doesn’t focus the narrative around somebody else.

9. Guilds need more love.
And this can’t be stated enough. It’s understandable that functions like guild halls and the like aren’t in the game yet, after all it took GW1 a while to get some of this too….but other things are missing that surprised me. For example, the ability to appoint a new guild leader if your current guild leader is absent for an extended period (or banned) should really be automatic, yet I’ve not heard anything about such a feature being there. Also, it’s possible to accidentally remove leadership privileges from yourself in a guild….shouldn’t that sort of thing have a “are you sure you want to do this?” window attached to it to make sure you don’t accidentally demote yourself? And the amount of guild “swag” (armor, weapons, etc) is still pretty lacking as well.

10. Loot tables are still out of whack.
When I kill anything above a normal level mob, I should get rewards. Veteran, Champion, or otherwise. Yet I continue to get more rewards from standard mobs than Veterans or Champions. I don’t know how this continues to be a problem but it needs to be addressed.

NOTE: From here on, I’ll be getting more picky and poking at some of the smaller things that aren’t by any means “game-breaking”, but are still things I feel need to be worked on.

Dyes need to be made account-wide.
The given excuse for why they are not account-wide is, honestly, not good enough. There is no sense of “progression” in expecting players to buy up dyes to this degree, and many of the more bitter players feel as though it’s a move primarily designed to help increase Gem Shop sales. I don’t feel like I’m progressing my character at all when I’m trying to locate any one of the 382 available dyes in this game, I feel like it’s just one more thing I’m expected to grind for. This is a minor thing for me, but it’s also a simple thing that would greatly increase character diversity at low levels if I could roll a new character with rare dyes that newer players won’t have. And that sort of diversity is always a good thing.

3. Dungeon tokens need to be completely revamped to function more like the token systems of GW1.
One of the most memorable quotes of the designers back before the game’s release is that they didn’t want to build a grindy game, and they especially didn’t want us grinding the game’s dungeons at endgame. Yet it’s hard to pretend that this isn’t precisely what we’re expected to do right now. To obtain a full set of Lvl 80 exotic gear from a dungeon requires 1380 tokens. Assuming you maximize your efficiency by only running once a day (for 60 tokens each), that’s 23 runs (and thus 23 days) to obtain a full set. That’s a lot more grinding than I expected to have in this no-grind game, honestly.

When dungeons were originally pitched, the developers stated that we’d run a dungeon to obtain a token that we’d trade in for the gear we wanted. Many of us took that to mean that dungeon tokens would function just like GW1’s token system. In GW1, when you completed the campaign, you’d receive a token which you’d trade in for a unique weapon of some sort (sort of like how GW2’s campaign ends with the Pact weapon token). This system is what should be used for GW2’s dungeons: run the dungeon once, get a token to trade in for a single piece of armor. Instead of running the dungeon 23 times, you’ve now chopped that down to a much healthier six times, severely reducing the amount of grind you’re putting on your players.

4. Legendary items need to be revisited, and made worthy of their name.
My core problem with legendary weapons stems from the fact that right now, they have virtually no lore to them, and their creation boils down to a significant amount of grinding or TP buying/selling. Legendary items are obtained in one of two ways: you either grind out the materials, or you grind out the gold to buy those materials. Neither of these makes these items feel ‘legendary’. They’re, frankly, much too EASY to obtain….they’re just a large grind, and there’s no skill involved in obtaining them. They certainly don’t sound like these ultra-rare symbols of greatness that Isaiah Cartwright spoke of with such reverence.

When I imagine the word ‘legendary’ in the context of a fantasy world, I envision an epic world-spanning quest of skill, wisdom, and cunning. And that’s really what legendary weapons should be: extremely rare symbols of greatness, something that is nigh impossible to attain (yes, I want them HARDER to obtain, not easier) and whose attainment requires a world-spanning journey of epic proportions. Sure, it’s possible to find the legendary Foehammer just sitting in a troll hoard (I’m glaring at Gandalf so hard right now as I say this), but that’s not really what I picture when I think ‘legendary’, and I think most players would agree that making legendary items worthy of their name would significantly help add depth to the beautiful world you’ve created.

Just as an example, Yakkington’s Ring (an Ascended item) is an item with tremendous nostalgic value to GW1 players and countless historical value. It seems a total waste that it can only be obtained by running Fractals nearly a dozen times. Imagine if it had been a legendary item instead, whose quest starts at Yakkington’s gravesite. You visit there, feeling a source of tremendous power, only to find yourself pulled into the Mists. There you encounter Nicholas the Traveler and Professor Yakkington, and you can talk with them. Nicholas, obviously not willing to hang over the ring for nothing, sends you on a quest to explore the world of Tyria and face off against the ghosts of its past in a huge quest that takes you around the world, just like how Nicholas himself would travel around the world asking for all sorts of junk. Simple concepts like that would take the idea of ‘legendary’ items and turn them into something with TONS of lore and sentimental value behind it, challenging players and giving them a reason to feel like this item is something fantastic and special.

5. Add a better system for finding parties.
I’m not sure more needs to be said. The fact that I need to use an off-game website like gw2lfg.com to find a group is honestly a bit appalling. I’m not sure why this feature didn’t make it into the game’s release, but it’s a serious flaw that needs to be properly addressed.

Going to be sampling out of context here, but here’s a post from a dev discussing the upcoming Jan/Feb/March updates.

One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided.

Now I’ve said before that I had a laundry list of things in this game that I find flawed, and I’ve had people ask me for that list in the past. Given that the upcoming updates will focus around “strengthening the core game”, I’d thought I would give my own personal list of things I’d like to see improved in these next few months, and see which aspects people agree/disagree with.

Since this is a large list and people will naturally assume I’m making this post for the sake of attacking the devs, I’m going to preface my list with a disclaimer: I love this game. It’s my favorite game of 2012, and I’ve talked several of my friends into buying it to play with me. It’s a great game. But it’s not a perfect game, and there are a lot of areas I (and likely others) feel that there needs to be improvement in.

Also, I apologize for the entire thing being such a massive block of text, but the forum’s formatting doesn’t allow me to add enough spacing to make it more readable. Sorry!

So, here goes:

1. A complete ground-up restructuring of every pre-November dungeon.
Fractals is perhaps the best example of how to do dungeons properly, but it’s still not 100% there. Fractals provides an engaging experience with dungeons that rotate and feel unique, boss battles in the classic Zelda sense that require teamwork to complete, and a dungeon experience that continues to evolve as the level goes up, but it still needs tweaking here and there (as discussed below). It’s not quite as bad as the other existing dungeons, however, which botch things on virtually every level. Existing dungeons are filled with a lot of “cheap shot”, OHKO mechanics designed to kill you for even the slightest mistake or lack of reflexes. This sort of design needs to be done away with, in favor of rebuilding the dungeons to be more like Fractals. I don’t mind a challenge, as it can spur me to try harder and get better as a player. But OHKOs do not promote such a thing, especially if they’re not always avoidable, and they really don’t make you a better player so much as make you frustrated.

2. Redesign and retool the function of Agony in GW2, and fix the lack of lore behind it.
When GW1 originally released with the Prophecies campaign, players were expected to infuse each individual piece of armor to protect from Spectral Agony. This was very unpopular, so a few months later, infusion was retooled such that you only needed to infuse yourself one time for the entire set of armor. One would think that a lesson was learned, there, but yet here we are in GW2, having to obtain separate pieces of gear and grind the dungeon repeatedly for the materials necessary to infuse each individual item with Agony Resistance. You’ve taken Agony from GW1 and made it even worse than it was back then. Agony needs to be seriously looked at, and the grind for AR significantly reduced.

But perhaps most importantly, we need a reason for Agony to even exist. Back in GW1, Spectral Agony was a power specific to the Mursaat, a race of powerful creatures (who may or may not be dead, it’s not entirely clear and that’s likely on purpose) who helped organize the White Mantle. In GW2, Agony is a condition that shows up in the Fractals because….well, we don’t know, because there has been absolutely no stated reason for Agony’s existence as far as lore is concerned. The devs have only said it’s supposed to resemble the power from GW1, but we’ve not actually been told how it came to be in the Fractals or what its purpose is, beyond the OOC mechanics reason of “making the dungeon harder”. There’s a serious lack of lore here and it could use some filling out.