Guild Wars 2

Right now the story feels like it’s written and told like a radio drama, not a video game.

1. Show more, tell less. Guild Wars 2 relies too much on long-winded speeches and too little on compelling game events that keep the player at the center of interesting plot points. Many missions involve no more than a couple minutes of gameplay but are padded out by cutscenes — some people may like this, but I’m here to play a game.

2. Use fewer, more meaningful characters. Focus on a few interesting characters rather than many uninteresting ones. I can’t care about characters that don’t have an interesting hook or feature real character development. If I don’t care about the character, the character shouldn’t exist.

3. Use cutscenes only when they improve the storytelling. Having the camera wildly pan around to show off random things in the environment isn’t interesting or compelling. If you’re going to take control away from the player, it had better be worth it. Most films and many top-tier story-based games feature camerawork that enhances the storytelling instead of distracting from it — take note.

4. Less travel, more gameplay. Too often we’re told to travel across the world for what amounts to a forced cutscene. Choose your locations more carefully to limit the amount of downtime between gameplay segments.

5. Use escort and holdout quests only as a last resort. The overwhelming bulk of Guild Wars 2 story gameplay involves supporting AI as they hold or wander to a location. Focus on story points that promote epic gameplay — waiting around for AI isnt’ epic.

I’d love to see raiding in Guild Wars 2, but only if it’s done right. World of Warcraft raiding is leagues ahead of everything else in that arena, even if it is a ten year old game.

1. Unique roles during encounter.
Encounters need to allow for different responsibilities for some or all of the players in the group. I haven’t seen Guild Wars 2 do much of this, but it’s core to raiding gameplay in all other games.

2. Emphasize mastery.
Too much of group combat in Guild Wars is spammy AOE cleave and offers little or not opportunity for skilled play. Look at games like World of Warcraft or the Dark Souls series for encounters that promote learning mechanics and reward mastery.

3. Rewards need to be exciting.
Currencies and loot bags are never exciting. Raiding isn’t about grinding, it’s about overcoming a massive challenge as a group and being rewarded with powerful loot.

Chris — Does the team plan on redesigning combat to support group PvE content?

Right now the meta is narrow (glass cannon) and everyone just piles up and cleaves everything down making for a pretty one-note experience. Depending on how aggressively tuned the content is, the meta for raiding could even become more narrow than it is now.