Guild Wars 2

TBH I find the hole combat mechanics and alt tab targeting game play kitten boring, so I don’t play my thief or any other alt any more so feel free to nerf the thief as much as you like.

It would be nice if the devs changed the game’s core mechanics to actually make it fun and requiring skill. Maybe then, I would actually log back into GW2 to play, but for now I find reading the forums more fun than gameplay.

Great post OP!

I wish GW2 and a lot of other fantasy mmorps would learn from Dark Souls.

I bought GW2 on head start and I was utterly butterly bored with the kitten easy, alt tab 1 2 3 4, skill-less button mashing game play that I stopped playing GW2 after a month.

And then, I stumbled upon the PC release of Dark Souls Prepare to Die edition and OMG! I finally found an RPG (multiplier not MMO) with really hard, uber-tastic skilll based quality game play.

I have not been able to stop playing Dark Souls and this is after months and many hours. Dark Souls game play and general combat is just sooooo much better, soo much harder and sooo much more fun, challenging and rewarding than what’s available in GW2 and other mmorpgs.

I was totally shocked by how good Dark Souls is. And I just happened to stumble upon it. The game had no massive multi-year hype. I totally just stumbled upon it and was totally blown away (it’s one of my all time, all star bestest games evar).

I hope many other online games try to copy it’s game play features. I also wish GW2 armor skins were more like the ones in Dark Souls.

delmarqo.5038:

TR combat was pretty good. It felt like Planetside 1.5, which is kinda why I like PS2 now too. Still surprising that 10 years later, nobody’s made a true MMOFPS (even Huxley was all instances).

CCP might have pulled it off by making DUST a kind of FPS MMO like the old pen and paper Travelers game; but some crazy CCP dev got it into their head that they must only tap the console players. They even made DUST a PS3 exclusive! If only CCP made DUST for PC like planet side 2….(I cry every night because of their crazy decision)

Yes the game is a good buy. Even with no end game and no real replay value, at $60 for one month of game play this is fine as it works out to $2 per day or the cost of a Capuchino.

Some good points OP. I would also add that something about the combat mechanics makes for a bit of a spamy/jerky/random feel. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I guess I was hoping more for a no tab target combat system or more of a vindictus / tera or Darkall type combat.

My take on it is that DE are nice but: 1 GW2 did not invent them, DEs have been used in MMOs for years now. EVE online has incursions, rift has rifts, TR had em, WH had em etc. So nothing new about DE at all.

MMOs can provide content in two main forms: Sandbox and Theme park. Once the MMO has it’s sandbox infrastructure and theme park content made up, then the key question for players is:

Is the game FUN or not.

Do I want to log back in month after a month to play the content?

Do my guild/corp mates want to log back in month after month to have FUN playing the content TOGETHER with me or not?

Do I feel like I am constantly challenged and is that challenge fun or a GRIND?

Does the game provide content that encourages me to make friends and join guilds/corps?

Do my friends in my guild/corp enjoy the challenge of multiplier content enough to set up voice coms, guild forums and stay playing for months on end because the game is FUN?

I have only ever played THREE MMOs where the answer to the above questions was positive:

1. EVE online. Played for many consecutive years. The real giant of MMos.
2. WOW. Playewd for over a year. A fantastic MMO.
3. EQ/EQ2 Played for a year. A great MMO.

No other MMO to date has provided me with enough fun entertainment to keep me playing consecutively for much more than a couple of months.

Diross Asi.8632:

Do any of you craft and wear your own gear and armor as you level up?

I noticed that I increase in character levels faster that I can obtain the materials for gear and armor. I could be doing something wrong or I just may not understand how the game is designed for crafting. I find materials very hard to get if you want to make your own stuff as you increase in levels.

Crafting in this game is a massive grind and boring as watching your washing machine cycle.

You need 10000000000000000000 rare ingredients which drop from mobs. So to level up crafting you will need to kill 10000 cave bats for tier 1 blood then 1000 wamp bats for tier 2 blood followed by 10000 monster bats for tier 3 blood followed by 10000 supper bats for tier 4 blood followed by 10000 mega bats for tier 5 blood followed by 10000 legendary bats for tier 6 blood etc etc etc….. by the time you collect all this you will have already leveled five atls to level 80 and you will not have equipped any one them with self crafted goods past level 20.

Now as a human, female, medium armor thief I only like the female duelist armor and human female tier 3 cultural armors. I do not like any of the crafted armor models. So, even if I make or buy crafted level 80 armor I need to transmute it to look like non crafted armor.

I too am disappoint. Anet please put some work into redoing the hole dungeon experience (hint try to make them as fun as Vindictus or WOW)

OP, the dungeon pve, as it is at this build, is not much fun anyway so your not missing much.

OP you must be joking?

Crafting in GW2 is not bad but not great I give it a max of 6 out of 10.

GW2 has no end game other than pvp and you don’t need crafted gear for spvp.

GW2 has no end game for pve so you don’t even need crafted high end gear.

You can’t level and craft your gear as you go as the crafting skills levels way toooooo slowwwww compared to character pve leveling and the materials needed require an epic and massive grind of boring repeated game play to get.

Only one game gets 10 out of 10 for crafting and that is EVE online.

Pastor T.5392:

My understanding of what dungeons were going to be like may differ from how ANet actually wants them to be.

My understanding of what dungeons were going to be was that story mode was for pick up groups and explorable mode dungeons were for highly coordinated groups of 5 people (probably with some type of voice communication). This was to fill the “raid” itch for those that love raiding. I love the idea of five man group “raiding” cause I hate organizing 15 – 50 people.

Currently imo explorable dungeons are not this way. I can pick up any 4 level 80 people in Lion’s Arch and run pretty much any explorable dungeon. We my die a lot but given enough time we will win. It doesn’t feel epic and mostly it just feels like every other MMO dungeon run. Fun to do with friends but you don’t get a sense of super accomplishment once you beat it.

So my idea is to make a dungeon mode (lets call it raid mode) that would be different from story or explorable. These would be seperate dungeons with new bosses/mechanics that would be specifically harder for a “raid” encounter.

The first thing these “raid” mode dungeons would have is only one waypoint (the first one). Zerging from the closest way point does not feel epic. It feels like cheating. If I can’t down a boss without dying 20 times then I’ve lost to the boss and don’t deserve to beat it.

The second thing these “raid” mode dungeons need would be a timer and/or perma death. Lets have some real consequences for wiping to a boss. If the dungeon has a timer then you can’t just keep attacking the boss hoping to get lucky at some point and beat it. The timer puts pressure (aka why raids are fun for some of us) on getting things right the first time.

The third thing these “raid” mode dungeons need is once you win you get a piece of loot. How explorable mode dungeons are now is you run it 6 times and win 6 times and get one piece of armor. The formula I would like to see is run it 10 times win 1 time and get one piece of armor. I want the possibility of failure. I want to fail a lot. So when I win it feels legendary and I will talk about it for years with the friends that I completed it with. This is what I enjoy about “raiding”.

I love this game and if it never has anything close to this I will still keep playing it but adding something like this would be SOOOO cool.

Thanks.

I’m not exactly sure what they need to change, but I would like the changes to focus on making the boss fights feel epic and more fun to fight out.

Right now the best boss fights that I have played in a current MMORPG with no holy trinity etc are the Vindictus raid boss fights. Those fights seem to differ in that you seem to be able to have just enough time and have just enough of a clear view to see how the boss moves and attacks and you are thus able to learn how to counter and when to counter. I like that element of game play. It’s just fun. I find the GW2 bosses don’t seem to behave and move like that. They seem to be moving a bit too fast or jerky or the game’s particle effects and AOE system makes it too hard to see exactly what is going on so the fight seems more random and “spamy” and just boring.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Zats.2308:

well the whole thing im not looking to run dungeons everyday for the rest of this game im a main WvWer what i like but getting exotic gear makes it alot more fun so just looking for a server thhat has alot of people doing dungeons for like a week or 2 for me to get my gear

I see, you want something cheap and fast. Forget it, dungeons are not there for a cheap and quick armor. And i hope future patch will make dungeons way harder and longer to accomplish an armor/weapon.

Your post made me laugh. You want an exotic armor.. for … wvw? HAhahahaahaha

You can play with a white armor + white weapons and 0 traits on wvw, and still rule ( i did for days and days, playing like a god leading entire armies when i was lv6, on wvw )

I just hope they make dungeons FUN in the next patch so that people actually want to play through the content rather than skip it.

Jordan.6157:

Hi,

Not sure if it’s just me but I am finding that dungeons don’t feel right. There is something about them that feels off for me. I cannot place my finger on it. My main concern is that I don’t feel that the trinity system arena-net has adopted fits in with their dungeons. It just feels like dungeons are missing something.
Just wondering other people’s opinions on this.

Thank you.

No, it’s not just you.

Almost everyone I know who plays GW2 agrees that the dungeons are bad and just not fun.

Like you, I also find it hard to put my figure on exactly why I don’t even bother to run them any more.

All I can suggest is that you should try the f2p (i.e. it cost nothing to get and nothing to play) game Vindictus which is 100% dungeon based with no open world content and play past the level 10 raid dungeon and see how you like it.

Vindictus has no holy trinity, no class can heal, and no class has much support. Roll a standard sword and board class called a “Fiona” and just try it. I found the dungeon’s, especially the raid dungeons, in that game (level 10 and up raids) a lot of fun and I played them 100x of times over and over just because they are fun encounters. I can’t put my figure on exactly why I found those dungeons to be so much fun I just did. If you end up liking the Vindictus dungeons, then you might be better at explaining what elements in that game make their dungeons better than the GW2 ones and help the GW2 devs to improve their dungeons.

Stevoli.8795:

WasAGuest.4973:

To me, “End Game” is the period of time after one has finished the core game, or core goals.
For an “End Game” to have value or replay, there still has to be progression.
Progression, however, does NOT mean a gear treadmill nor does it mean faction grinding. Progression is simply the forward movement or acquiring of items/wealth/score for the purpose of “fun”.

But progression in other MMOs is just gear checks, you aren’t actually getting any better, it’s an illusion to make you keep grinding. IE. you can’t get in the next dungeon until you have the full set of X gear from the previous dungeon.

Not to mention it’s a played out mechanic to keep you playing when subscription fees are involved.

Some next gen MMO’s actualy require constant player skill checks not gear checks. These MMO’s have boss mobs that can one or two shot you. The challenge is one of learning the complex boss moves and skills and learning how and when to action your combat and defensive skills during the right boss openings and at what distance and position you need to be in at all times. The Japanese term for this combat skill is “Seme”

Avatar.1923:

endgame are overrated.

there is no endgame in Dota or Nhl 13.

if the game can really “show” the players that “skills” matter, then they dont need what you call an endgame.
problem is, gw2 doesnt do a great job at making you feel like your “playing skill” improve.

I agree the GW2’s combat system is too jerky and too spamy which does not give players a good feel for their opponent’s actions or boss mob actions. Partical effects are also too much. The result is combat that is jerky, skill spammy and zergy in feel. GW2 combat does not flow well and combat lacks a general feel of weight behind each strike. Because of these short comings it’s hard for a player’s skill to make much of a difference.

End game comes in about 1 week for hard core gamer and about 1 month for casual players. End game is all about finding fun things to do when one or more of your characters are maxed level.

So far I see end game is only WvWvW and SPVP. My level 80 is board with dungeons and map PVE and don’t even mention crafting…I am not interested enough in game play combat mechanics to level atls over level 20.

So far for all the medium armor sets to level 80 I only like two sets in the whole game:

1 is the duelist level 70 to 79 ish exotic TP bought world drop armor.

2 is the human female T3 cultural medium armor that costs like 100g a set.

So so far I will only wear 80 exotic armor transmuted to look like duelist.

I wish this game had more armor sets like vindictus, blade and soul and tera, but sadly it does not.

Dungeons in this game are not well designed and the problem also includes GW2’s general combat mechanics.

It’s not bad to be one or two shoted by a boss mob. It’s stupid to be one shoted by adds.

The real problem is the combat mechanics are too fast and jerky and suffer from with too many partical effects. This results in players not being able to clearly read and thus memorize boss mob movements. Because you cant see and memorize boss mob movements players can’t use their own skills to time the weapon and utility skills and dodges well. The result is players getting easily one shoted while wondering what the @@@@ just killed me? This makes for game play that lacks and feel of weight or appreciable challenge.

Crafting is poorly implemented in GW2.

ATM there is no point in players crafting.

However, if you just like going through the motions of crafting using the existing poor design mechanics then feel free to do so.

Crafting is not well designed in this game atm it is NOT WORTH touching.

The Devs did not do a good job with crafting in GW2. It’s only 50% thought through.

Example: I am a typical medium to hard core player. I crafted some items to level 30 which was fun, BUT by the time I was crafting level 25 gear I was character level 60 lol!!!! and thus found no use for my crafted items so I stopped crafting.

I was able to get better quest and world drop armor and weapons and buy cheep finished items from the TP. There was NO point for me to craft. Because there was no point in crafting I did not participate in that game play which is a symptom of bad game design full stop.

GW2 suffers from other bad design issues including the terrible dungeon design and messy, too fast combat actions that result in characters just randomly running round in circles spamming skills or groups blindly zerging as you can’t even see what mobs are doing as their motions are too fast and jerky.

I agree with the OP I just don’t find the GW2 dungeons FUN.

It’s not about how hard they are, or how easy, or that they cost gold to run or that the rewards are not what I expect.

The main problem I find is that they just are not fun to play.

Let me give you an example of a fun dungeon instance: In the game Vindictus you have a mid level dungeon where you fight a boss mob called Irukul. That fight is awesome fun.

I think I played that instance about 60 to 100 times because it was great fun. My heart pounded, my hands were sweaty, and I chuckled and cried as I fought the boss. The action was just plain fun, fun, fun (even though I died about 20 times in a row the first time I played that dungeon instance).

It’s the heart pounding, adrenaline junky action and fun that is missing from the GW2 dungeons.