Guild Wars 2

Seeing as how we are not allowed to criticize this game, nor does ANet seem to want to improve it, I will be uninstalling it now.

It was a waste of my time and money.

I loved GW1, and this game is a mockery of it.

Do you wanna know why ArenaNet cares about botting so much?
Cause gold farmers undercut their bottom line. Because they want to be the ones to sell gold to you in the form of GEMS

It’s about their revenue, not your entertainment.

And no, for ArenaNet, these two things are not necessarily linked.
All the built in gold sinks in this game a whole host of other poor design choices are what is going to make this another ghost MMO by year end.

Yes, the 3rd Arah boss is overpowered and not in a fun way.

As for firing people… Trust me bud, there’s a long list of people behind this game that should never work in the industry again.

They took an extremely well conceived and executed game in GW1, made a few improvements, and then basically messed up all the rest.

@arcqe
That was a very intelligent and insightful response.
I’m sure your mother was glad she had you.

Regarding the Norn:

Yes, they’re nomadic, they don’t organize into traditional armies.
Guess who else is nomadic and doesn’t organize traditional armies?
Huns
Goths
Mongols
etc.
Norn require the same food and water humans have in abundance in Kryta. Realistically, they would be continuously raiding into Eastern Kryta as there are few resources in the mountains.

But more than just being battle-loving nomads, they also continuously seek out stronger opponents, like… oh… that hyper militaristic race with their capital just to the East, the Charr.

The Asura and Sylvari situation is indeed a little harder to predict. What is for sure is that Sylvari need food, water and space, like everyone else. And even if they arrive in alien lands with good intent, the already starving natives may not see it that way.

I can see why the writers setup the world the way they did, it’s more convenient in gameplay terms so that the player can choose any of 5 races and not be obligated to slaughter players of the opposing races.

Kuruptz.4782:

I am enjoying the dungeons ALOT though not everyone has the brain

go back to mindless wow spamming 1button heal for 50minutes til someone gets a stroke

Apologies, we don’t “has the brain”. Only you “has the brain”.
We will go back to playing pandas now and leave you and all your “has the brain” friends here.

I know, you can dodge, you can Endure Pain etc etc, we need no proof of you 1337 skills, we’ll.. ah… take you word for it OK?

But a rifle still does more damage over the entire course of the fight since you will be firing non-stop and not likely to get killed, so no need for others to come rez you and in turn get themselves killed.

Is it just me or is anyone else suspecting there is some type of hidden connection between the Asura and the Mursaat?

I can’t take credit for this but:

Rata Sum => muRSaat

And then there was that mysterious krewe in the presumably abandoned Mursaat city.

And lastly there are the obvious parallels between the two races. Both highly advanced magical races that are aloof and controlling in their dealings with other races.

Reminds me of the disputed connection between the Pale Tree and the Elder Dragons.

This is by design guys.

The MMO revenue model is moving away from fixed subscription costs to the “gemstore” model. This way they can make as much money from you as you are willing to spend.

I don’t really have a problem with this. It’s just how shareholders think. I do have a problem when it severely discourages teamplay and cooperation as it does now.

Eventually it will just lead to people not logging in anymore.

Yeah, no waypoint cost, what a novel idea…

Almost like a certain game I remember playing long long ago… what was it called again? Had this cute little girl, no armor repair and an awesome skills set system… Just can’t remember the name… hummmm…

Difficult, time spent, bugs etc.

Suffering through all these would be OK if and only if we are compensated fairly for them.

Currently we are not.

Dungeon tokens are useless if you don’t intend to get the armor. And most of the Dungeon armors are pretty meh at best.

We need Rares from chests, or just more cash.

Completing something like Arah should really guarantee the player a Tier 6 (exotic) level crafting component (Superior Sigil or multiple Globs of Ecto) drop, or at least a high chance for one.

Sorry, my second “OP” was for “overpowered”, confusing. My apologies.

Point remains. The risks of going into melee range too great to justify the benefits for all classes, except, maybe, maybe, Guardians. And that is only because their ranged offense is miserable, so they have no other choice, other than pulling out a scepter and going support.

The other classes will all opt for ranged. Even warrior. And TBH, Rifle’s single target damage is around 80% DPS compared to dual axes anyway.

It’s just very hard to imagine these races sitting around Lion’s Arch in peace and relative harmony.

I mean, look at the real world, we’re all human and still we can’t stop warring back and forth for rather contrieved reasons.

MMOs have shown what lengths people will go for pure vanity.
As if we didn’t need enough examples from real life with luxury brands.

No, the issue with Legendaries is that the grind required to get them is exceedingly boring.

Spiteful Spirit, Spirit Weapon, Tainted Flesh, Illusionary Weaponry, Chillblains, IWAY etc etc
I don’t remember much about GW1, but I still have these skill memorized cause they spawned some brilliant builds, really works of genius.

In GW2 it’s a non-starter. Feels almost like a 3rd person shooter.

The OP is spot on. Melee is useless in most Dungeon fights.

OP enemy melee, and overwhelming PBAoE make it suicidal.

To this day, I just don’t understand why they didn’t just go with the same skill system they used in GW1.

It’s a proven system. Basically, it’s the system from Magic the Gathering. Huge bank of possible skills, but only 8 to choose. And then there was the Elite slot as a limiter that actually make it more intriguing.

And thus GW1 had the same replayability that Magic does because there’s always a “build” to experiment with. That was the core endgame for most people.

People say there’s no Endgame in GW2, this is one of the primary reasons why.

We need that system back, or at least the ability to swap out weapon skills. This game will not survive the year otherwise; people will just go back to playing pandas.

You have to either AoE them or just not fight them.

There’s no Must Fight enounter with wolves.

Agree on your point though, the summon reinforcements chain is ridiculous.

“Working in a team” =/= “Teamwork”

Teamwork implies mutual support.

There is very little of that in GW2

@Robert Hrouda:
Hey Rob, I work at a major financial software/service provider, the big one. So I know what you mean when you say that programming hours come at a premium and you need to give good RoI based justification for any development you wish done.

But, there is always more than one way to skin a cat. The LFG issue is a matter of liquidity. And there are 2 ways to improve liquidity:
1. A more organized exchange system (like a Trading Post)
2. More interested parties

Right now, it’s super hard to find a group for Dungeons, especially story mode, because even on high pop servers, there are just not that many people wanting to do them anymore.

Dungeons have been labelled as a high risk, low reward option in people’s minds.
Watering them down is sure to generate some angry gamers at the hardcore end of the spectrum. But I doubt you will be unpopular if you just boosted the rewards. 1.5G should be a minimum for the average Arah run considering how much time and effort it takes.

And this is something that can be done in less than a day, as it is just a matter of changing a few multipliers.

No really… Putting aside the obvious and glaring similaries to Mass Effect’s universe of alien races bound together in relative peace fighting for the same cause etc etc, am I the only one who finds the lack of open warfare between the main races of the game to be unrealistic?

This is particularly hard to believe given the hyper-militaristic culture of Charr, Norn and Humans to a lesser extent.
Then you have the Asura who have this neo-Nazi ideology of racial superiority.
And finally the Sylvari who just spawn without end, go everywhere and never die, so their population is effectively exploding, consuming the already meagre resources of Tyria.

History has shown us that when pressed by global forces like famine and plague, civilizations turn on themselves.

In this age of the Elder Dragons rampaging the continent and obviously making life economically more difficult for all, it just does not many any sense that the races would all be so welcoming of each other.

And the whole “oh but there’s a common enemy in the Dragons” arguement doesn’t hold water either. Divinity’s Reach is much farther from Zhaitan than the Sylvari and Asura. In the real world, Humans would actually relish that their potential enemies are being chewed up by some other power. Especially the Sylvari since Zhaitan doesn’t become stronger by killing them. They would see Zhaitan as a “Sylvari Problem” and Jormag as a “Norn problem”, Kalk for the Charr especially, humans would be unlikely to have much sympathy. If Kalk could be allied with, Humans would probably go for it.

We all know about the Mists to LA then capital city thing.

It’s an exploit, it’s stupid, and developers should either close it, or just make travel to capital cities free to save us the load times.

And the argument of “waypoints are not expensive, you’re just poor” sounds like something Mitt Romney would say.

Wake up guys, it’s a gold sink. They out it there to force you to the gem store to convert gems to cash. Just like repairs, just like half the other features in this game.

I actually watched the video after finishing the personal story in GW2. I missed the story when I was actually playing Prophecies cause I just didn’t bother to read anything, which, in retrospect was a huge mistake.

It’s not a matter of “all fantasy stories are the same anyway”. It’s a matter of story structure. If GW1 and 2 were written into full novels, there’s no question in my mind which would sell better.

The porting thing needs to be fixed, period.

All it does it punish the player for being active. If I want to go help a guildie or do a team Dungeon run, I have to pay 3 silver just to get there.

That’s just not cool.

The current system just goes to further encourage solo play, as if there weren’t enough incentive already.

I sense we have some Republicans in the house.
“Healthcare’s not expensive, you’re just poor”.

No, seriously guys. I really, really, really want this game to do well. I loved the first GW and the open world, Trade Post and Dynamic Event system have been AWESOME additions. Not to mention the “active” combat system with dodges, kiting etc.

I understand that ANet is trying to make a few extra bucks from their gem store by building in these gold sinks and dramatically limiting the cash value of rewards from Dungeons.

But they’ve overdone it, and it’s just too obvious they’re trying to screw us for money. Unlike in real life where we have to live in a system that doesn’t let the little guy succeed, in an MMO, we can just stop playing.

Server pop will keep up till most players have reached Level 80 on their first character. I guesstimate the average level to be around 40-50 at this point, so we’re not too far away.

I hate to say it.

GW1 > GW2

There are some aspects of GW2 that are better. But overall GW1 was a better game.

Thanks cal, that was helpful.

Enjoy playing a ghost server in 3 months.

People don’t miss the Trinity. They miss “teamwork”. You know, the second M in MMO.

GW2 is a single player game with other people who come in randomly.

3 easy, implementable changes that MUST be made to keep this game alive 3 months from now:

I.
More Dungeon Rewards

3 hours, and 10 silver in repairs should be rewarded for 3 hours and 10 silvers in repairs. if not, why should I spend 3 hours and 10 silver?

II.
Lower the Waypoint Cost

Whether it’s free Waypoint to completed zones, or to lower leveled zones, the current system is just a gold sink that limits the freedom and funtime of the player.

III.
Party Finder

They already have the system in place to meet buyer with seller on the Trade Post. Why not put “Looking For Group” with “Looking For More”?
This is going to be a lot more important as servers start to lose population, which I think is already happening.
In fact, if they have this in place, we would be able to implement mutually supporting classes, AKA teamwork -> team building -> team spirit -> living community -> a reason to keep playing.

I don’t understand what high people get from maxing at level 80 as opposed to level 20 or 10 or 5.

Levels are all relative so… the absolute number doesn’t matter.

What DOES matter is level based monster scaling.

Tyria is only so big. Let’s so we have 10 zones. If you have 10 levels, that means at each level you have access to an entire zone, you don’t have to stop in front of a mob just cause it’s level 14 and you’re level 10.

Having a 10 level difference between monsters of the same zone means effectively you have 10 steps that you MUST pass through to complete the level. As in there is only ONE way to run this zone.

Basically, you’re making an open zone into a linear zone.

This also means you have to constantly rearm and rearmor as weapons and armor become underleveled.

Now if you actually want to work together with members of your team, without downleveling them and effectively cutting their reward value, you CAN’T. if they’re just 5 levels ahead, you will have complete different monster scales and goals, and areas where you can and can’t go.

Sorry ANet, but almost every single major design change from GW1 has been a poorly thought out decision, and this is just another one of them.

Alright, since it seems there are a lot of "super 1337’ players here who always have the luxury of playing with a guild and have officially designated Dungeons as a “no PUG zone”…

That’s just reducing the RISK aspect of the Dungeon. OK, so you’ve lowered the RISK to near zero, cause you will not die.

Fine.

But that still does NOT answer the problem of:

Effort > Reward

At least an hour of time (and this is a VERY optimistic assumption), plus the nature of repetition, and trust me, if your team is that good, this is probably not their first time, will not exactly be making the Dungeon run more fun.

Here’s the bottom line:

No matter how you run the Dungeon, short of an exploit, you will just not get more of the Dungeon than you spent to get through the Dungeon in terms of time, effort, agony, and repair cost, and maybe even consumables.

Would you like the list of things that were not in GW1 but are now in GW2 cause Anet stole the idea from WOW?

I have it both in PDF and Excel format. You might need Excel 64 bit to open it though due the number of rows.

Lots of people have already stopped playing the game. Lack of an endgame and an extremely long and boring Personal Story means that few people want to reroll or continue after Lvl 80.

Most people have basically taken it as a play to 80 once, there’s my 60 USD worth of fun.

Was this supposed to be a serious thread?

Magic find is just one in a long list of glaringly obvious OMFG what were you guys thinking design fails.

I don’t understand people who are against mounts. The only valid counterargument is that they’re not needed since we have waypoints…

This is true, we have waypoints.

So……………………..?

Why can’t we have both?
It’s like saying, “you already have a mace option, why do you need a sword option?”

Perma death in Dungeons is a no go.

What they need is to halve the repair cost of the dungeon anvils

I’m not entirely sure if the endgame in GW2 is salvageable to be honest.

The core design choices for not having mutually supporting classes and set in stone weapon skills pretty much made the game’s replayability a non-starter.

No customizable weapons skills make it so that your play styles of a given class are quite finite.

Lack of mutually supporting classes means that there’s no “team spirit”. No, “I have your back if you have mine”. And at the end of the day, MMOs are about the “multiplayer” part.

GW2 is a single player game with other people bumming in.

It takes roughly 2 weeks on my schedule for me to level a character to 80.

I don’t have the patience to do it again.

And that’s why I’m so glad I chose right the first time.

The Warrior is the ONLY class in the game that is suitable for all the different combat environments of the game. It’s the real jack of all trades.

It has good melee damage, both single target and PBAoE. It also has good ranged damage so you can do Dungeons and kite bosses who are murderous in melee.
So all the PvE situations are covered.

WvWvW is suicidal if you go melee in zerg vs zerg enagagements, so the rifle covers that well, much better than Engineer rifle, not as good as a Ranger shortbow or Mesmer anything, but still decent.

Good single target damage in both melee and ranged means you can sPvP, no match for a thief or Mesmer, but still viable. Better than a Ranger, Ele or Necro, on par with Guardian.

It just seems all the other classes have some situations where they excel at, and some where they’re totally dead in the water. Warrior is just generally good but not great in all situations.

Completely agree on most points.

The personal story fell flat on its face. AND it was a rip off of the recent Bioware games, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, ESPECIALLY Dragon Age.

Compared to GW1 Prophecies… I can’t even believe they were conceived by the same company. Such a shame.

I really had high hopes for the story.

The 4 GW1 plotlines were all solid, Prophecies being the best and Factions the worst. Hard to say which was better between Nightfall and Eye of the North…

I just watched the WoodenPotatos retelling of the Prophecies story.

I have to say that looking back on it now, it was probably the singularly best, most creative and most well-concieved story in any RPG I have played.

The real downside was that it was told in such a fashion that the player could basically ignore it and still make it through just fine. Which is what I did cause I’m lazy and didn’t read.

GW2 does a much better job in terms of presentation, no doubt. But the story is just not on par with Prophecies, not even close.

The GW2 main story is glaringly similar to the Bioware type stories that you see in Mass Effect and Dragon Age:

1. Obvious, in your face evil threatens world/galaxy
2. Heroes arise, decide to save world
3. Unite all races
4. Fight final climatic battle

You can practically overlay the plot for GW2 over that of Mass Effect and it would be the same structure turn by turn, play by play.

It’s not a BAD story structure per se, it’s just overdone and entirely predictable.

Prophecies was pure drama from start to finish. It was an even tug of way between circumstance, and initiative. You never felt too weak or too strong as the story forward. The story is neither completely driving you, and nor are you completely driving the story.

Even when you are driving the story forward, you’re always suspicious in the back of your mind if you’re actually doing the right thing. First the White Mantle, then Glint, and finally the Vizier.

I really wish I paid more attention to the story in GW1 because I think it would have made if my most enjoyable and memorable RPG experience, even more so than Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, or ANY of the Bioware games.

The lack of mutually supporting classes was probably the poorest design decision in this game. Only other contestant for that title is the decision set the weapon skills in stone.

I don’t know who designed the core mechanics of this game, and what terrible thing happened to the person who designed it for GW1, but Anet has put themselves beyond the point of no return.

This game is going to start losing players REALLY fast.

Currently, there is neither material motivation or ease of play for even starting a Dungeon.

Let’s work through the usual Dungeon experience for the average player:

1. Queues about 20-30 min to get a full team together for the run
2. Slogs through the Dungeon, gets wiped a few times, anvil, anvil, anvil, down by 6+ silver on repairs, 2 hours in… MAYBE finishes assuming no one has dropped and they’re not doing a Dungeon that is bugged or has an impossible boss (Arah).
3. Completion, about… 10+ blues, 2-4 greens, maybe 1 yellow if they’re lucky. Some tokens too… but the Dungeon armor has low appeal for most players since most of the sets are pretty ugly.

Done, and most players never go back, no motivation, no reward.
I think the main reason why there are still people doing them in substantial number is that there’s pretty much no other viable alternatives on the PvE side.

Dungeons are as classic as RPGs can get. What makes a repeatable, “enjoyable” dungeon is the proper balance of 3 factors:

1. Effort: how much time and mental agony is spent to accomplish the dungeon by the AVERAGE player

2. Risk: the possibility of death, and the costs that come with it

3. Reward: both guaranteed (tokens) and chance based (chest rewards)

Right now the problem that Dungeons in GW2 suffers heavily from is a imbalance where:

Effort > Reward

Risk > Reward

Effort + Risk >>> Reward

Many, if not most players come out of a dungeon with LESS money they when they entered it. Cost of repairs is not recuperated by the chest rewards. This simply cannot stand, it’s just bad, full stop.

A Dungeon takes usually 2 hours to complete for most players, PUGs etc. This amount of time just wandering world, not deliberately farming per se as a level 80 player is easily 50 silver. In a Dungeon it can be -10 or more. And this is ASSUMING you finish. If one player drops (which happens a lot in PUGs), all your efforts and silvers on repairs are for naught.

And this is not even factoring the EFFORT, which is the 2 hours of your life doing something quite repetitive. And with the bugs and poorly designed areas of Dungeons, the frustration is also quite severe.

If the player does not wish to get the Dungeon specific armor, the tokens are quite useless. And there are many nice Dungeons with TERRIBLE looking armors (Arah, Twilight Arbor, Crucible of Eternity, Sorrows, basically most of them).

From a purely logical perspective, there is NO practical reason for any standard MMO player who is motivated mainly by reward for his time and effort and frustrations to op to do a Dungeon.

How to fix this?

1. Anvil repairs should be either free or come at a 1/2 price
2. Better chest rewards, at least ONE Rare should be guaranteed per chest, and significant chance for an Exotic at the last chest
3. Some kind of feature to automatically “downgrade” enemy strength when players LEAVE a dungeon early.

Dungeons are hard.

Some dungeons are heavily bugged.

But this is OK… IF, and only IF…

They give GOOD rewards.

But they don’t. Now that you have to finish a dungeon to get the tokens, the only real reward from Dungeons are the loot from the boss fight chests.

And those do NOT give you enough stuff to cover your repair bills most of the time.

Most players actually LOSE money from dungeons.
Now, I know what some of you will say: “but with my super 1337 skillz I never die and I make tons of loot and tokens, and if you can’t then you should go back to playing pandas”.

I’m not even going to waste time with people who are going to post such responses. Clearly they’re not people who are particularly 1337 in their real lives.

This goes back to the whole theme of “there is no endgame in GW2”
This is true, and the broken Dungeon system is a large part of it.
There is endgame CONTENT, but no endgame reason to play, which is the core nature of the endgame, giving the player a reason to keep playing after level cap.

A-Net needs to make some fundamental changes soon, or it will see its massive big boom start fizzle out in less than 2 months.