Guild Wars 2

Dusty Moon.4382:

iphaded.7308:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

GW2 is not over simplified. GW1 just had too many skills that were useless and/or situational. The player meta was very simple in GW1 – player plays his build – has 1 or 2 healers/protectors – an MM – a fire ele or 2. The others were heros and that is all you needed. Gw1 was simple to the extreme in PvE.

Cool story bro, now illustrate to us how GW2 isn’t simplified in the least, not compared to just GW1 but to many other MMOs out there. I like how you focused on one particular aspect of GW1 to make your case while ignoring others such as PvP. Okay then, so let’s compare the PVE, in GW2 you have even simpler choices to make… just run berserker gear regardless of the skills you choose and button mash to win.

I think people also forgot one aspect of GW1 that made the game more interesting: you start off with decent skills but as you progress you find better versions of increasingly more powerful abilities. This did have the consequence of making many skills obselete and I don’t particularly think this was good game design as the focus on having useful skills isn’t really there… but at least the illusion of variety was.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

Here’s one solution: at least provide some options for the weapon skills – provide us with maybe 3 options for each weapon skill slot or at the very least 3 versions of the weapon skillbar 1-5.

For example: using any weapon you may change the skills (individually, or the bar) to gear more towards condition damage, power, or even buffs/debuffs/cc. This will take more balancing but it will definitely add more variety to the combat and would be worth it in my opinion. This would at least let you have 10 skills you could change rather than just 5.

Weapons being tied down to specific skills was one of the most disappointing aspects of the game for me and in my opinion is one of the things that severely limits build diversity. Imagine when you see a class using a specific weapon in PVP, you immediately know what you can expect to see for at least 1/2 of their skills. The element of surprise for unique builds is hardly there. I feel that rather than resolve the issues of balancing the diversity of skills in GW1, Anet opted for the opposite and albeit lazy solution of just limiting options entirely.