Guild Wars 2

I read a lot of stuff in the forums, but I never actually post. I logged in today just to submit my vote of no confidence.

I remember waiting years and years for this game. From the moment it was announced, I clung on to every bit of news about it, waiting for the day it would be a reality. Then it launched, and for a while, I really liked it. It had enough to keep me going, even though it never felt as good as it could have been. I’ve left and come back over and over, waiting for things to get better. I hated the first living world season. HATED it. I hated the way it was implemented, I hated the story… pretty much everything. I was hopeful things would improve, and overall I feel like season 2 has been an improvement… but it still is disappointing. I want content that feels big, and so far I just haven’t been satisfied by the way they do updates. I would rather just have a big paid expansion if I had to choose between that and what they are doing now, to be honest. New classes, new weapons, new big zones (non-instanced) and maybe some story/solo-gameplay that is actually compelling and immerses me in the lore and culture of the world… unlike the STUPID heart system that doesn’t give me anything at all. Ugh. I have so many friends who have been turned off by those kitten hearts.

This feature pack never seemed like a good idea to me – even though I do think there’s a lot to be fixed. Now that it’s here, I know I’ll be leaving again, only to keep waiting for things to MAYBE improve… some day far away from now. The new leveling experience is absolutely ridiculous. It is not fun at all. And, I have no scrap of hope that anything I will like is coming down the pipeline any time soon. I know that this is just one post in a sea of feedback, and I don’t have any faith that they are actually listening to what people are saying, but there it is. There’s no way to please everyone, but I’m just not sure who they are pleasing anymore.

Thought I would help bring this back again. I’ve ALWAYS wondered why this isn’t already a thing. It isn’t like making them wearable would devalue the harder achievement based titles that still would be more meaningful. It would just give me a bit of a fuzzy feeling inside like, oh, I don’t know, as if my personal story mattered at all. Cuz right now it doesn’t. At all…

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

It be like MassEffect DLC where they can sell every 10 expanded chapters and make profit off it.

It’s always fun to continue the journey of your character from where it’s left off.
Also make cut scenes cinematic like GW1 would be a welcome addition to the overall experience.

Best idea I have heard in ages. I would totally pay for new story chapters. They can add a few cool rewards/ achievements in there to get people to buy them who aren’t just interested in the story, and I’ll get to have some new adventures that make me feel special! +100

While it would add a lot of burden on anet to add this kind of stuff, I really wish we could see some of it. Small voice acting tidbits for npcs and characters based on class would be great. I don’t think a more long-term mission chain would have to have too much content. Give me a class-based mission every 7-10 levels from, say, lvl 1-40 and I would be happy. They wouldn’t have to be race specific (being class specific) and they could even unlock some of our skills or special class features in a meaningful way, including our first elite, or maybe special gear like new class-based helms to replace our starting class helms (a new hood for a thief, for example).

I really wish they would just make a bigger expansion already… but thats a whole separate problem. sigh

At first I didn’t understand all the Trahearne hate. I didn’t mind him, he seemed like he might have some potential to be interesting, and I like sylvari so it was cool he was so central to the story.

After getting my first character to 80, and giving up on the personal story in the process, I now am with the majority on this. He is incredibly boring, boring, BORING. He never seems inspiring, nor does he have any depth. I want to rip that greatsword out of his hands and beat him with it until he goes home and cries. He belongs in a library, not the battlefield, and not in my personal story. I felt no respect for him or reason to follow him, which ruined the entire thing. The end.

I agree with all of those suggestions. Twitter would be great and easy, as would stating it on the release pages. In general I don’t like the tracking clutter on my screen for LS content… its great when I want it, but I wish I could make it go away completely sometimes. An in-game calender would be awesome.

The LS content has been really hit and miss, but overall I think the quality went up over the course of the year, and I expect they will only get better at it. They are still figuring out how it all works, what they can and cannot do, and what people want – and that’s fine with me, as long as they DO make progress.

I don’t personally like a lot of the limited content. My schedule changes a lot, and even if I’m interested in the achievement grinds, if I don’t think I will have the time to do it I just won’t play it at all that month, which I think is the problem. If the LS events were more interesting, I would want to play them just to play them, regardless of getting meta-achievements done. As it is, that has been my only motivation for a lot of it, and I find that to be disappointing. I should want to play because the LS events are fun and because I feel like they matter, even if I cant grind my way to whatever gimmicky reward I can get that release.

I also wish more content was open-world friendly. I love GW2 because I don’t play with groups of friends and I don’t like pugging. World events and mini dungeons are awesome ideas because I can interact with other players in meaningful ways without formally joining and dropping groups any time I want to do something cool. But a lot of the LS content doesn’t work that way, and I REALLY don’t like that. The idea of informal group play is part of what sold the game, and while there have been some really cool LS dynamic event content, it hasn’t felt very meaningful much of the time and is fewer and far between than I would like. But hey, I’m just one person, and maybe I’m just not a good example of their target demographic! If thats the case then I can’t blame anet for it.

The only thing I cared about as far as living story this “season” was a few meta-achievements. None of the story appealed to me, because it was so disjointed and random. Every new part jammed another piece onto an already confusing mess without going deep enough to actually make me care about any individual piece or providing satisfying resolution to each update. A lot of the villains and organizations are just downright cheesy (i.e. Molten Alliance (the name says it all), Aetherblades). I liked some of the quest concepts that were tried out, and I feel like the GW2 team really got their feet wet as far as learning how to develop and roll out the living story content. Now it just needs to be written better and stay a bit more consistent. It is definitely possible to have a more cohesive story and theme while still being friendly to new players and those who have taken a break for a while.

I really have faith in this game. I like it a lot, it’s beautiful, and its fun, but if it is going to survive it needs to rely less on gimmick (achievements, skins, quirky quests that seem more like a developer experiment than a story, skins, holiday evens, and more skins) and more on substance. Even if there is a master plan of interweaving plot webs that on some level makes sense, if players don’t feel engaged and purposeful in the moment, they won’t care. And yeah, a lot of the gem store gimmicks are what is bringing in money, not directly the living story, but you still have to keep players in the game to get them to buy that stuff.

Wanted to second this. I know the topic has come up in the past, and I don’t have high hopes for change, but for the love of Dwayna I want some new audio. 80% of the music feels recycled from GW1 games (Prophecies and EotN specifically, not the cantha/elona stuff), and while I loved it then, after so many years its really get on my nerves. Also, it just isn’t unique enough. There’s a big variety of zones and I would like the music to add more of an atmospheric feel to those areas rather than just a generic game score that is pretty persistent throughout the world.

I hate to compare (really, I do) but music was one of the things that I loved about WoW. Zones have really different music in that game, and it added a lot for me. As it is, the GW2 audio is kind of lulling me to sleep, and I find myself muting the music and playing my own a lot of the time. Custom playlists are great too, but they aren’t functional enough to differentiate zones, and while its a great option, I just think GW2 can do better.

Voice acting is good and passable, but there’s always room for improvement there too. It’s more problematic with VA because diversifying voices means a TON of re-recording, so I get why we may not ever see much change on that front. Still, even 1 more choice for ever race/gender combination would be amazing. I hate rolling humans because every time I make one I flinch the minute I see my character start talking with voice that so obviously doesn’t fit his appearance. Same with the male asura voice, which actually made me quit playing that race.

And yeah, yeah, if wishes were horses…
Like I said, I don’t have much hope for improvement in this area, but I can dream! Just thought I would add another voice to the discussion.

Same here with the Norn starting zone (its the only area I’ve been playing in recently) and yeah, it seems to be random for anyone, anytime. I thought I was crazy! Good to know that it’s been brought to attention – it’s really bothering me!

As someone who has very little time to play, and has taken several breaks from GW2 in the last year due to life getting busy, I have enjoyed a lot of the living story updates. Coming back to some new and exciting event feels pretty compelling. Sometimes I wish I had more time to play them, but honestly, I can get a lot of the experience of it in a couple sessions usually. I don’t every feel like I’m at a disadvantage for missing something.

Regardless of the parts of it I have liked, I do have some problems. I do think they need to focus more on new areas and longer lasting content. Holidays are fun, but they don’t need to be so long and take up so much of the updates. I hate to compare any game, especially this one, to WoW, but one thing I did like about WoW was that content and story was more persistent and progressed nicely through world zones. Adding new areas allows you to section off a part of the game where that story content can keep existing for a longer amount of time before changing it. Ultimately though, that’s where larger expansions or patches would do more justice than micro updates. As a player of GW, I was more than willing to shell out money for an expansion, considering how much content they were and the lack of a sub. Call me pessimistic, but I don’t see how anet can possibly have enough resources and person-hours to work on both, and that is what will kill this game for me.

However, I do know I’m probably not representative of most players. I mainly play solo, and very casually at that. I don’t really play with groups so dungeon content isn’t really for me, and I haven’t done WvW or PvP at all. I like the instanced story parts of events, and mini dungeons and big, chaining world events are my favorite. While I’m a sucker for a cool title or armor skin, I’m really not an achievement hunter either. I don’t want to say what is best for the game based just on what I want from it.

tldr: Living story is cool idea, I like fun and numerous updates, and I don’t feel like I’m at a disadvantage for missing it… BUT, my long term interest rides on larger patches and expansions of more persistent content, and I don’t see how they can possibly do both.

Yes! I sometimes turn my characters’ combat voices OFF because I feel like the expressions simply don’t match my idea of them. This would be an awesome feature.

Wow… thats pretty much it, yeah.