Guild Wars 2

Useful advice for a returning player like me as well. Thanks!

It’s not dead at all.

I also was here at the very beginning, and have come and gone intermittently since then, as I expected to do.

There are people everywhere, it is still very lively and active. In part that is due to the megaserver change which was made some time ago (controversial, as always), but if your concern is a dead world/game, that isn’t the case in GW2 currently.

CHIPS.6018:

The problem is you guys never saw how GREAT GW2 could have been. Many of us GW1 players did. We saw a vision of it. But it never came to pass. That’s why it is so sad for some of us.

Thing is, they were going for a much more casual game with this one than GW1. GW1 was not a very casual game at all — it was a high skill cap game. That’s fine, there should be high skill cap games. The disconnect comes from the fact that they changed that up with GW2 and created a modest skill cap casual game (it’s very clearly the most casual-friendly, low skill cap MMO that’s ever been made). That was bound to rankle the high skill cap fans of GW1. It was like a search for a different audience. I do think this was somewhat clear before the game was released, however — it’s still understandable that the hardcore, high skill cap GW1 players would be disappointed.

WildStar is the new high skill cap MMO, really.

Wetpaw.3487:

The game is just not made for players like us

True. It’s a design philosophy issue.

Myself, I like this game for my casual moods, EVE for my sandbox moods and (currently at least) WildStar for my more focused moods. I don’t expect GW2 to be a sandbox or to be focused/core, any more than I expect EVE to be a themepark, or WildStar to be casual. Let the games be what they are, I think, and spend your time in the ones you like — it’s not like there aren’t a crap ton of MMOs available.

Mitch.4781:

After spending a good 6 to 8 hours downloading the wildstar beta….I have to say…I am somewhat disappointed. The premise is very cool, but the reality is somewhat clunky.

2 issues stood out for me immidiately.. My Fps was pretty terrible in the starting zone..like 17fps..if I was lucky…and yet the graphics while colourful and entertaining don’t seem that graphically intensive. Certainly Graphics wise..GW2 is MUCH more sophisticated. Wildstar to me feels like a more polished wow.

Much more importantly though..the combat..seems very very clunky sadly You can dodge…but unless I am mistaken, you can only dodge forward or back..not left to right like GW2…ANd I don’t know if it was the class I picked..but the whole cone thing for targeting….did not feel intuitive at all.

The quests seem a mix of good and bad… While its cool you can call in for your rewards rather than running back to the npc..The quests themselves were merely glossed over kill these and fetch that quests..so nothing new there.

The customisation initially feels very expansive..but delve deeper and its actually quite limited….for example..I picked the zombie sort of looking class..and was while I could adhust my eyebrows and my eye sockets etc..I couldn’t adjust the direction of my mouth…which mean’t the entire face still looking VERY similar to the default choice.

I’m disappointed to be honest.and it actually proved to me how SLICK GW2 is..I just wish the devs would give us more permanent and top tier conetent

I think GW2 is much, much better aesthetically than WildStar is. It isn’t just a style issue, but an art quality issue. GW2, being a game focused on aesthetics at all levels (including in terms of gameplay design) definitely excels aesthetically in terms of the art, the detail, the animations, the score and so on. No question it’s head and shoulders above WildStar in that area.

The controls are better with addons, as I noted above. Yes it’s very different from any targeting system, with the freeform AOE for every skill in a telegraph area. You can dodge sideways (called dashing) by double clicking the appropriate keys (you can also rebind what keys do it). I do think it isn’t for everyone, however — it’s different from how MMOs generally do combat (similar in some ways to how TSW did things, but that was also different and not played by too many people), and is probably either something that you like or don’t like.

The FPS issues are unfortunate. I haven’t had any of them, but probably I am just lucky.

I am one of the odd people who actually likes both games, because at some points I feel like a more relaxed experience, which is what GW2 is to me, while at others I feel like a more intense one which requires constant concentration, which is what WildStar is to me. But I think they’re both great games.

Phadde.7362:

Well spoken. I’m just (desperately) attempting to keep the thread on topic and prevent it from being locked.

A general discussion between Wildstar and Gw2 is a good idea!
But this is not the topic of this thread. If anyone wish to have a topic where you compare the two games in a much broader sense, then start one!

Well I doubt it would result in a thread locking, since WildStar is made by Carbine, which is owned by NC Soft just like Anet is. They’re sister studios within NC Soft — both are wholly-owned subsidiaries of NC Soft. So they’re not competitors from NC’s perspective.

Behellagh.1468:

Started that beta today. I’m finding it, after nearly 1 1/2 in GW2, overly complex. I’m getting lost to easily in the Tutorial and why do I first have to enter the game before I customize the keyboard. And I haven’t found mouse sensitivity anywhere. Trying to mouse look causes me to spin the camera around 5 times, which helps getting me lost.

Maybe it’ll be better once I’m on the planet.

But GW2 was incredibly easy to learn the controls And the simplified interface is a blessing.

The controls are poorly designed, in my opinion. It plays much better with a few addons — one which allows you to bind attacks to your main mouse buttons so that you aren’t playing twister with the fingers of your left hand, and another one that allows you to lock mouselook. These, taken together, allow you to use WASD to move, and the mouse to steer and use your main attacks without removing your finger from WASD. Makes the game play much more smoothly. I’m surprised that the default controls are what they are — it makes little sense for the game, given how it plays (at least one thing that ESO got right in terms of the default contols).

Disastro.4086:

knightblaster.7420:

It’s a design that, from the get-go, was certainly destined to alienate the hardcore, high skill cap contingent of the MMO community

I know this conversation is primarily directed at PvE content however this is exactly why sPvP became so stagnant to the point where Anet had to essentially PvE-ize it with pve oriented rewards to get people to have interest it again and it was quite successful in that regard with bringing in more people. The crowd of people they initially tried to target with sPvP/eSports community have no interest in the mindless 1 spamming the other 99.9% the game represents and pvp balancing that is far to influenced by that kind of PvE environment which is why you saw so many top teams/players leave the game. A perfect example of this is the official MLG streams of GW2 Tournaments when during the first part of the NA Tournament you had around 1200-1800 people only viewing. The game simply doesn’t appeal to that crowd despite the time, resources, and money they spend trying to specifically target them.

Yes, it was kind of silly to expect that the PvP would be attractive to the high skill cap/eSports community. That’s virtually impossible to do in a game that is fundamentally oriented towards casual players in every other aspect. These are two different species of gamers — almost from two completely different planets, different worlds. They have nothing at all in common with each other whatsoever.

Phadde.7362:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

GW2 is different than Wildstar, because GW2 is an ultra-casual, “everyone wins” sort of game. Hence, why nothing is instanced and blob play is so rewarded. No one gets their feelings hurt and no ones performance is scrutinized in a blob.

It’s why this community is so against things like duels and damage meters.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not for me.

Implementing some difficult content isn’t really affecting the ordinary casual player(?) no more than high level fractals currently are. Why not add content that provides a good active challenge for the portion of the playerbase that wants it (or longs for it)?

I can’t recall hearing anyone say that adding difficult content would be bad for the game =)

In theory it doesn’t impact the other players, but normally the higher skilled players don’t feel rewarded by this kind of content unless they are given gear/abilities that separate them statistically (not just aesthetically) from other, lower skilled players — they will say “there is no reason to do that, I don’t like just aesthetic rewards, we should have the best gear because we have the most skills” and so on. To a very limited degree this was done with Ascended gear, but it was pretty limited in terms of the impact. And of course it created a storm when they did it (eventually that passed). In theory they could do something like that again, but I think they are reluctant to create another tier of gear beyond Ascended at this point.

So, yes they could create this kind of content and have aesthetic rewards — but I don’t think that aesthetic rewards are generally very satisfying to the kinds of players that you would be trying to reach with that content to begin with.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think one of the biggest draws of WS for me is the add-on community. The ability to completely customize the UI, add different features, change it to fit my playstyle completely. When I log into GW2 I am stuck with whatever they give me… and what they give me isn’t that great.

Additionally I like the challenge and skill associated with WS. GW2 is just catered to another crowd entirely, the ultimate of the casuals. I will probably end up playing both games. GW2 for it’s casual LS and WS for its monthly challenging content updates and veteran dungeons.

Another thing that WS is getting right is PvP. They have MULTIPLE game modes, something that GW2 has been sorely lacking since launch. Additionally they don’t have the stupid hotjoin auto balancing or the constant 4v5 that happens here. Plus WS has GvG which was supposed to be guild wars namesake.

Casuals will probably stay here, people looking for a challenge will probably migrate to WS.

Yes, which I think matches the philosophies of the games. GW2 is a casual game from A to Z, WildStar is a hardcore/skill game from A to Z. Just very different games for different player preferences (and abilities).

Phadde.7362:

But why can’t Gw2 have some content that caters to that other crowd as well? I’m not suggesting that they are to change anything fundamentally, just add content that provides active, on the fly challenges.

It’s something to think about, certainly.

I think there could be room here for challenges and that type of thing that would reward a more high skill cap player. I think the main issue is that typically that kind of challenge, in order for the high skill cap player to find rewarding, has to provide the high skill cap player with gear/ability upgrades that are only available to that skill cap level — i.e., something that provides separation between them and the moderate skill cap players.

That’s where the design philosophy issue comes in, I think. So, you could have some challenging content that would require higher skill cap players to complete it, but unless you had specific rewards that created separation in gear/abilities as a result of that, the players would feel unrewarded and that it “is not worth it to play that content”.

It’s harder, I think, to please both groups in one game than it seems. WoW has managed to do it, sort of, but only by endlessly tweaking and changing things over the course of time, sometimes lurching the game in a more casual direction, and other times in a more core direction —although overall it has clearly moved to a more casual direction since the vanilla version, and this is something which has alienated a lot of more hardcore type players from WoW. I’m guessing that the more creative game designers these days are trying to go more for one or the other side of the coin, in terms of overall design, rather than trying to emulate WoW’s “something for everyone” approach, which took years to build.

WoW does have very, very snappy responsiveness in its controls and animations … but … it also has tab targeting, auto-facing and the like. So the tightness in WoW’s controls/animations is really a bit fluffy — in the game itself, it’s not that important due to the way that combat actually works. It just “feels tight”. In GW2, the controls feel a bit looser, because the targeting system is based on facing the target, and there is some looseness in there as a result of needing to have some flow with how that works. You can adjust rotation speed in the settings, which goes a long way to making it seem less sluggish in comparison to the snappiness of WoW, but in general, the idea here is to keep moving and face the target, actively dodge things and so on. It’s very responsive in terms of what the actual combat mechanic of this game is.

In terms of what to do, no it isn’t like WoW where you are led around with feeder quests from hub to hub. Hearts are there as an anchor to let you know what the general level is in that particular part of the map. Generally to level in the game, you do everything — hearts, events (the orange things that pop up), storyline, map exploration (POIs, waypoints, vistas), skillpoints, gathering, crafting, etc. Do it all, it all earns you XP. It isn’t like WoW where you just grind a linear series of quests and/or grind LFD while sitting in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. The game here is about exploring the maps, doing everything you can do, and playing all aspects of the game.

Importantly, it isn’t about endgame. There is an endgame, but it isn’t about progression raids. It isn’t a core focus of the game. So, the idea is to actually play through the content of the game, all of it, at your own pace, and then dedicate yourself to whatever “endgame” you want, whether it is completing the maps, or WvWvW or getting better looking gear or what have you. It’s fundamentally a different design from WoW.

Finally, yes WoW has that open world with few load screens. But that comes at a significant cost in terms of graphics. GW2 has mostly an open world with large zones, but does have portals between them and the cities and so on. It’s a compromise, but given the much higher graphical and artistic quality in GW2 as compared with WoW, it seems like a more than acceptable one.

Devata.6589:

This of course has everything to do with there income model. It’s not so much B2P where they make money on the game and expansions but the generate most money with gem-sales. So the question is “how do we get people to buy gems”. Well by putting mini’s in the cash-shop in stead of in the world and by making gold very important and then selling gold for gems. It makes the game feel like a job in stead of a game and gems are they cheap way out of that.

That why I want them to be a true B2P game. No cash-shop. Just sell the game and regular expansions. As long as they generate most income with gem-sales we will not see big changes here. This game being B2P and ArenaNet’s name with GW1 being a true B2P game was one of the main attractions for me exactly to not have these sort of cash-shop focus related stuff.

It’s true that this is the business model for the game. At this stage, however, I don’t see them switching from the gem store model to the expac model as the basis for revenue, because this is how the entire thing was designed. It does mean that drops in the world are impacted — the global TP is the fulcrum of gearing.

Same for me — patch has it not working again.

Samaranth.9513:

The work around worked for the trading post issue, but i still can’t buy gems or use the currency exchange.

Same here — TP works, but store and currency exchange do not.

EDIT: After reloading a few times, now everything is working. Good!

Escadin.9482:

To be more precise: How does a living world affect depth of class mechanics and teamplay? This is where I seek depth and as stated above GW2 doesn’t deliver on that, hence it doesn’t appeal to me as much as I had thought.

That’s always been the tradeoff with the game (returning player here). The design idea is to make things more flexible and dynamic, which comes at the expense of roles (whether trinity or broader) and in-depth teamplay, which tends to emphasize different things. I do think it is truly hard to do both while remaining a reasonably broad-based and casual game, which was the goal with this one. Of course, WoW has done that buy LFX everything and handing people gear at the end of expansions, but on a new expansion release, it isn’t very casual at all generally. GW2 is trying to be different in that way, and there are tradeoffs there.

Gw2 isn’t supposed to be that kind of game where you get progressively better gear. End game is promoted as getting more skins and cosmetic items for your character.

Right.

Some players have had issues with this from the beginning. It’s a design decision that is one of the biggest ones Anet made with the game, but there will be players who do not like it — which is fine. But it’s by design this way, and intended to appeal to a different kind of player who doesn’t particularly like/care for the endgame gear treadmill approach that is common in other games.

Thanks for the update.