Guild Wars 2

@Zaklex,
yeah I thought so the moment I hit post, actually I met quite a few people that filled their retirement time with GW… but I am glad you agree with me that the demographics of MMO gaming are in the 25+ and up categories and not the <18jr …

There is no error there, I am merely comparing the too in regards to what they share and where they differ, in regards to equal features. I could also bring up WoW, Archeage, Conan, Saga of Ryzom, Eve Online, Mortal Combat, if I would actually have more insight into these games to a point where any comparison would lead to a definite conclusion. And naming these games or comparing them wouldn’t lead to a storm of rant posts. Comparing GW1 and GW2 makes complete sense as they are both within the expected knowledge and reference frame of most the people I try to converse with…

I have also clearly stated multiple times that I do not expect nor ever expected GW2 to be or become GW1v2. Yet I feel that having played both, and both share the same company, name, lore and world, I am well within my rights to give my opinion on what I like and/or disliked about either, either on their own or compared to each other.

@Silvermember, I am sorry I had a university study and have my mind geared like a research paper, also years of internet forum posting have made me realize I need to be as precise and comprehensive as possible. If only to prevent people from misunderstanding me, or pulling my words out of context and by doing so putting words in my mouth…

I will agree with you at numerous skills were useless at some point in GW1, slightly depending on whether you played PvP 4v4 f/e compared to a PvE map with tank & AoE-spank (or some other format). But having bad choices, or circumstantial choices offer a certain challenge… as opposed to only good choices…

Do I think GW2 should be this way? No, some things in GW2 to me are actually an improvement over GW1, the weapons f/e; yet it would be nice if skills #2 and #4 could come with 2 alternative skills to add some flavour and distinction to your own usage of said weapon.

The amount of utility skills, well I would love to see more, but at the same time I acknowledge that maybe the amount should still be restricted. There are ways to do this, this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Need-more-than-1-Specialization-to-make-sense/page/2#post4759773 for example … more choice, more distinction, more combination to try, yet still limited to a comprehensive set…

On Builds
I fully understand what you say, but the question is: ‘is it fun, challenging and comprehensive’. Well obviously that is a subjective question, but still I think one might be able to say something in general about it, also in regards to optimization and specialization…

What is an MMO game about (apart from the journey), to me it’s learning new skills and abilities, growing as a character in that respect, or even as a way to express oneself. It’s not about numbers on armour, or in +1/-1 UI tabs.

What is challenging, to come up with a combination of skills that works, and/or gives the best rotation/functionality/combination. Not about figuring out the best stats to go with it and hit the corresponding +1 on a UI tab.

What is comprehensive, the tangible things, the icons that represent a certain skill which when pushed correspond with a clear execution of what said skill, by it’s name, is expected to do. Not crunching numbers in hidden formula’s that may or may not increase the intended purpose of said skill.

Yes , I know that is how GW2 is build, but should it ? … so ok you drag in the old, well GW1 had meta builds. Sure, but for every profession there were multiple solutions to deal with the majority of problems, and added to it were builds that were needed to deal with specific problems (in which case something things didn’t quite work out as intended, this in relation to profession exclusions in certain cases).

In GW1 I had one main build, Spitefull Spirit on a Necro/Ranger with a pet spider. That build I made due to my ‘wants’ and likes, from the first time I went to all the necro skills I wanted ‘Mark of Pain’ and I spend a long time to figure out how to trigger it myself in a way that felt like it belonged to ‘me’ and my build. This was the UW pet spider, later on the Sin-Summon was added to the build, and consequently nerved by giving that skill a different damage type. But anyways, that build happened to align with a certain meta build, yet I have seen numerous iterations of said build, not one the same as mine. Sure, due to the lack of armour choices we all might have looked the same, but as far as build and skill execution went a lot of us sure weren’t the same.

And there were numerous times when I would just sit under a tree and try to figure out some new combination, with 300 skills to choose from, surely there must have been fun things that might not have been tried by many others.

Ok so GW1 also had balance passes and FotM builds, yes true, but they hardly ever had a complete impact on a profession, unless something completely overpowered was nerved for a good reason. But general balance passes usually changed 1 to 3 skills in a way that left most of the build in tact. And even in those specific cases it took some time to figure out the best combos there after, and due to the simplicity of the stat system, it was very easy to adapt.

Compare that last thing to GW2, if a dagger/dagger power build gets nerved due to structured PvP troubles; everybody in the PvE world will have to get a fully new set of armour, trinkets and weapons. In GW1 you maybe slotted another ruin, bought a new lvl20 weapon in the trading cities and off you went. Well tbh. if you main-ed a profession it was more likely you already had a set of weapons for every profession stat-line, because you would need it in places where a different build was needed…

Should GW2 become GW1v2, no I do not think it has to, but what it has now surely isn’t fun to me, and for as far as builds go, hardly satisfies my needs to experiment and express myself…

@Rin
On loot
Sorry to drag this back in, but GW1 didn’t have huge piles of loot, and even when a gold dropped (highest tier drop) it wasn’t always useful or truly valuable. Yet it would still offer an ok value in silver. If you were lucky it had max upgrades in it that could be salvaged (or sold along the weapon, but for the upgrade). And when you cleared a group of foes, there was maybe 1 to 3 bags of loot for you, mostly with some silver, sometimes materials or a weapon. Not everything gave you a bag filled with stuff you wanted.

It was actually the fact that there was so little stuff valuable in GW1, that made for the opportunity to have valuable drops and rewards. Then take for instance the Halloween and Wintersday rewards, a mini and/or a hat, and tons and tons of consumables, that were valuable because they contributed to titles, but were also valued for the role they played in events and parties. Sure the low droprate also had it’s counter effect, getting something you wanted (as a drop) felt like a farming nightmare, then again due to that they were also the reason why people wanted them…

There is a difference of being happy you got a drop, and super excited when it turns out to be a great drop. As opposed to feeling disappointed you didn’t get a drop, or that it’s another bunch of vendor trash. (disregarding that indeed vendor trash does help you along, but I hope you get my gist).

@FrizzFeston
as Rin pointed out a bit above here a lot of these things have already been discussed in the past, and I gave my pov on these topics more than once already. And seeing a lot of people can’t make it past the first post, or are deterred by the length, could you imagine how long the post would be if I offered (repeated) solutions to these problems. In a sense I offered my pov in this reply: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Why-i-quit-and-can-HoT-bring-me-back/first#post4759688 … as far as playing less, well I tried that, but these things haven’t changed, and I find myself running into the same frustrations every time, if logging on isn’t fun (and in some sense that narly pop-up with ‘log in reward’, pretty much reminds me every time), then why even do so… but who knows, maybe HoT will be all I longed for, and it might give me a renewed sense of fun, making me look past several things that I would have done differently myself, but aren’t that important in regards to the big picture… I am well aware that no game will ever be perfect for everybody …

@Calamity
You pretty much nailed it, except for one thing, my main reason to check other games is to check them out and compare them with what I have now. As said earlier I pretty much solely play(ed) GW, so I have no idea what to expect from other games. And I will not know until I try them, I have my gripes with GW2 and given numerous suggestions on what these things could be like instead. Now seeing I do not find myself having fun in GW2, I think I should venture out into the world and see how other companies deal with these same things. Maybe they do better in the area’s that I want, maybe they do not, like I said, I rather not settle for anything other than the best, but I may have to settle for the level of what ‘the best’ is … But who knows, maybe HoT will deal with my main concerns and it might draw me back in…

@Anduriell
I know, yet I stuck around for GW1 for all those years, found things to do that I liked. If the combination with RTS is the solution remains to be seen, but I do agree that an integration of RTS, combined with an extensive Seasonal/Weather system (aka. have the game change every 1.5 months for 2 seasonal circles in 1 earth year). Will likely be the future of MMO’s to come. At least, it has been on my mind for years now… And it would be an interesting thing to see how human efforts intermingle with RTS systems…

@Gnat
While the previous post was also meant for you, I would like to comment on one thing you bring up. “You also offered no suggestions as to how to make improvements to the systems that you so apparently don’t care for.” … actually I did in the post that I also linked to FrizzFeston, but as an active forum goer, and mostly interested in product development, I posted suggestions on almost all the points I mentioned, from entire ways to make the game more dynamic, to very specific profession design, trait setups, you name it I pretty much said something about it when it was of my interest … actually the 2nd or 3rd thing I posted after this thread was a suggestion on how to make specializations work…

@Gregor Lightbringer
Well it’s not really old wounds, it’s more of a build up of frustrations about systems or solutions, in regards to GW2 specifically that are simply not great, or do the exact opposite (to me) of what they are apparently intended to do. Either new ones or once that have been there since the start. Yes some of it has to do with things that I think were done great in GW1 and mediocre in GW2 ‘at best’.

And yes I do see that it was intended for a slightly different crowd, but I think they made mistakes in that regard. Most vivid gamers with money to spend are in the 25-35y of age. And from what I gather from young kids in my surroundings, all they want is to be taken serious by grownups, be treated as a full individual and not treated like a kid. All their youth they will want to be a grown up, for various reasons, and all their grownup years they will long for the care free years of their youth. Somewhere in the middle is a serious game that takes gamer’s efforts and time spend serious, yet offer amusing and challenging content for everybody to enjoy…

Tnx to those that responded with understanding and argumented responses as to why they do or do not agree with the points I bring up. While part of me wants to ignore the less constructive replies, I also think that if I give some context as to why I formulated this thread as I did might create some understanding (at least I hope).

GW has been my gaming live for the past 7+ years, while I game with a more casual approach I’ve been a hardcore GW player for all this time. But besides playing, I have also been an active community member for numerous years, I’ve been part of organizing after parties for the Halloween and Wintersday Art Contests, organized the founding party of GuildMag and contributed to various of the first editions. Been a volunteer for numerous other player organized events. And seeing my interest in gaming and product development (due to university study topics) I have contributed to a large number of feedback and suggestion threads over the years. I have met various Dev’s personally at GamesCon in Germany …

And the above is not to boast about all I have done, look at me be important… it is to explain that I have had a huge investment in this game, and that deciding to quit is not something that was as easy for me as just installing another game. I also felt that due to the years I been involved with GW (and the fun I had), I owed ANet an explanation as to the why. And yes that did come with frustration, disappointment and emotion, hopefully a bit more understandable from my pov now. I am passionate and honest (aka I have my heart on my tongue), some might see this as being offensive and disrespectful, but from my point that was not the intention of this thread.

And maybe some of you are right, and even I find it quite possible that this is not my final absence. But if one logs on nearly every day for numerous years, and then all of a sudden no longer does, wouldn’t you want to know the reasons. Or at least know that this person is ok in the physical IRL world, and in part simply concluded that instead of feeling frustrated about various parts of the game, it might be a good idea to look around the gaming world to see if there are other games I would enjoy more…

Well anyway, I will respond to various arguments in the next post, hopefully this post gives some more ‘backdrop’ for those that think I am just some random gamer that felt the need to vent his ‘I quit frustration’. You might still see it this way, but at least I given you the reasons as to why it is not, for me …

Tnx for all your replies, I would like to remind everybody that I posed this as an argumented question. I did watch the presentation, but I haven’t followed any interviews. This may well be the case for many people visiting this forum to learn more about HoT, and the state of the main game might well be one of their concerns.

We as gamers have seen numerous expansions and/or campaigns having major (negative) impact on the main game, so all your argumented responses to this possible problem will hopefully reassure them that this expansion has more to offer than the jungle and will add to the main game as well…

@Pandaman, seeing these things are decided upon not by one random Anet Employee I did not snipe, but i will admit that by that sentence my frustration/disappointment of these thing was reaching emotional levels… but also, i wouldn’t know how else to formulate that part…

That is why I ended my feedback the way I did, i have already ventured into some other MMO’s and some show clear lack in certain area’s. It may well be that GW2 is ‘the best’ MMO out there in regards to what i want in an MMO, this would mean i would not have to settle for less than ‘the best’ but i would have to settle for what ‘the best’ entices.

@myself, addition…

- They could even make it so that at first you choose a main specialisation, that could alter the way your profession skill works. And a 2nd specialisation that only unlocks the associated skills.

- This would actually make the skill system more a hybrid between GW1 and GW2, because in GW1 you were limited in the groups of skills you were able to choose from by the skill points you slotted in the associated stats.

Aka. f/e the ranger would gain a trapper specialisation, a beast master specialisation, a spirit specialization, a signet specialisation, and a druid specialisation. Each ranger could combine these with Great Sword, Long bow, Short bow, Staff, Sword, Axe, and an ‘off hand’ specialisation.

Ok, this last bit (off hands) sort of makes this a bit awkward, so perhaps 3 specializations are in order for the weapons, as you can only wield a max of 2 anyways. But grouping them into one (so Axe, Dagger, Torch, Warhorn offhand skills) might still be a good idea.

hey I’m making this up as I go

@Spica … Perhaps they should make everything come as a specialization.

1. Supply all weapons with a base functionality, aka. all weapons behave the same to all professions, for as long as a player is not specialized in them. Leveling up a character unlocks a slot on a weapon, using a weapon unlocks the skill as you use it.

2. Spending a certain amount of skill points (say 5) unlocks the ‘specialisation’ for said weapon. You can now choose to slot either a general skill, or a profession skill in a certain slot. These can be unlocked at any point a player has 5 skill points, or at a certain level a player gets a choice to unlock 1 of these, but can say only ever unlock 2 (and a reset of these points is very easy)

3. Each profession comes with a ‘base heal’ and a set of 5 general basic skills. Unlocking these cost 1 skill point they are available right away, and the player can slot them as they unlocks the utility slots. Next to this the player also has 5 racial skills. For a total of 2 heals and 10 general skills.

4. Again, at certain inter falls a player gets to unlock (and can only unlock 2, with an easy way to change) or pay 10 skill points, to unlock a specialization. These consist of 1 heal, 5 utility, 1 elite skills. These are added to the unlock pool for skills, and have an associated unlock cost to them, heal 1, utility 3, elite 25 (and the elite can only be bought at lvl30).

5. Each profession has a certain base amount of traits, these could well be a set of general ones that each profession has (2 adept, 2 expert, 0 master) that go with the set of general utility skills. Once a specialisation is added a set of traits is added to the player’s collection (2 adept, 2 expert, 1 master), both for weapons and for utility specialisations.

If you limit choices to 2 specialisations for weapons, and 2 for utility … you would end up with.

10 General weapon skills (on 2 weapons) (and all other weapons on base skills)
10 Specialised weapon skills (on 2 weapons)
4 Healing skills (1 general, 1 racial, 2 specialised)
5 General utility (profession skills)
5 Racial utility (racial skills)
10 Specialised utility (2 specialisations)

Per Stat-line:
10 Adept Traits (2 general, 8 specialized, no racial)
10 Expert Traits (2 general, 8 specialized, no racial)
4 Mastery Traits (1 for each specialization 1 for each weapon, 1 for each utility)

This will give a total of 5 specialisation in regards to utility skills (currently 5 sets of utility, one will become ‘general’ and one new one is added); Also give base access to all weapons to all professions, and 1 specialisation for each weapon a profession can specialize in (these weapons can remain the same as they are now).

All professions stay balanced in a sense that they have access to an equal amount of skills, combo’s between specialisations can be balanced and dealt with on their combinations.

We get a ton of new and interesting choices, with actual diversity between profession specializations as well as actual choices in regards to the traits we choose to go with our builds. With an easy reset option at the profession changer, or simply in the UI, we can try and experiment with all combinations.

Solori.6025:

Arghore.8340:

@Solori, at least read the last, and you will find your answer…

So is that a maybe? :P

More then likely, if i decide that HoT is not for me, i will donate most my stuff to PinkDay in LA 2015. It will give everybody a fair chance of winning it, and it will support a good cause in the process… mark it in your calendar for October … i will be there too.

@Kal Spiro, well if the specialization system would actually involve some valuable choices, and new ways to build and experiment, if the way the chapters are added comes somewhat in the way i described. If WvW changes are more then just a new map. And if the precursor quests and legendary offer valuable content as well as an Axe/Staff i just have to have. If rewards start to become more valuable and less plenty full. If the scaling system is revamped to actually offer a valuable gaming experience in lower level maps. As well as more builds/professions becoming balanced to a point where balance team FotM builds become a thing of the past. Perhaps even a split between PvP and PvE/WvW skill functionality.

Then likely i can live with ignoring the stats, picking just a certain setup (like i did now) and enjoy the game for what it has to offer. I mean, if i put it that way i don’t seem to ask for unreasonable things that would make the game worse … but all these things piled up over time for me and at some point it just snapped, and if i log on i feel this same frustration build up leaving me with a horrible experience. That should not be how to spend my free time…

But just leaving felt wrong to me, as i have enjoyed and supported GW for such a long time, this way at least i can give a well formulated ‘why’ so maybe ANet can understand it, and perhaps see how their ideas turned me away instead of made me log on more…

A Massive Headache.1879:

I repost:

noun
1.
the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work:
Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
2.
Biology. the adaptation of an organism or organ to a special function or environment:
Basic biology suggests the selective pressures leading to convergent evolutionary specialization among desert-dwelling species.
3.
the act of being restricted to some specific, or the act of becoming specialized.
also let’s not forget, we’ll be getting more, just not immediatly. Druid is not a linear movement of rangers, it’s lateral, it’s not better than rangers, it’s not worse, it just covers a different play style. an archer without pet could become a thing; however I kind of doubt that.

I reply:
1. Medial students (aka a profession) often feel the need to specialize into becoming a brain surgeon, a heart surgeon, a digestive specialist, or any other.

2. A stem cell (player) tends to develop into a certain organ (profession) and within those organs various cells are specialized to fulfil very specific specialized functions within that organ.

3. The act of something general (profession) to diverge into something more specific that is either an part of the original or an extension there off…

4. Evolution, evolution is often referred to as the specialization of individuals or groups, that pass on their specialisation onto their offspring and through time might develop into new species. The spark for this theory came from a group of small islands where likely one kind of bird, changed into various different bird species due to specialisation over time.

Sure, we will get more, in 2y ? If you set up a system you either set it up correctly and fairly complete, or you just do not bother. This game drastically needs an improvement to the actual game (aka. that which if you strip everything else away, and put it into another environment, you would be able to call it ‘a game’), adding one profession and one ‘further development’ to the game to me just wouldn’t cut it.
Personal opinion an all, feel free to disagree ^^

@Solori, at least read the last, and you will find your answer…

So what does that mean for HoT, and can it bring me back?

Well that depends a lot on whether or not it is worth the money for me. Sure the Druid sounds appealing, but I already addressed that above. And the new profession does nothing to the feeling of flavour ot month feel the professions already have. It does nothing for the various builds and professions that are completely sup-par due to the FotM approach.

The new WvW map sounds like fun, as well as the changes coming to defending. WvW was actually a main part of my GW2 diet. But if there is no change to stagnant match ups, as well as the ‘coverage wars’, or some sort of ‘fairness’, it will just be another map that comes with the same problems we are already aware off.

Some other features are just fine, but not really a reason to come back … so I will keep halve an eye on the development of this expansion… but something tells me that some things will just not change, and will stay in the frustrating and subpar state they are in now…

Still though, tnx you ANet for years of great fun, moments and friends. I will not be a stranger, just no longer a regular. I am setting off into the world of gaming, venturing onto other worlds and games in hopes of finding something that is just right for me. And who knows, you may well be the best that is out there, and seeing I will not settle for less … I might well have to settle for w/e that is …

feel i have to add this last thought, else it be lingering in my mind, as it has been for a long time…
In GW1 you build a great game, and ‘we’ found very few ways to reward you for it, as it had so little ways to give you our money. In GW2 you build in ways for us to give you our money, but instead of focussing on a great game, you seem to focus on how you can get us to give you as much money as possible
While that may not be true in the way you perceive your efforts, it is though how some of the ways in which you handle the game comes across to me…

-> nicotine levels up, a hot choco (codeine), and a honey-waffle (bloodsugar), will tone down frustrations, lets continue …

- The 180 degree turn on living story content, and the content therein
While the large scale open world content left me stressed, and the speed at which it came left hardly any time to explore the rest of the game in the time available for me to play. The entire 180 degree shift towards instanced content, some of which neigh impossible to complete as a single player (by word of some of my friends), has left me somewhat unimpressed. Couple this with the amount of content available in these chapters, for me mostly completed in one gaming session. After which in general all that is left is farming the content for useless rewards; or, doing it all again for the challenges.

Now I like a challenge, but I hate tedious repetition. And while I can be enticed to repeat something for a challenge or reward, that tends to be for A. Rewards that are actually valuable to me (aka. dungeon armour), or B. to appeal to my medium urge for completion. Aka. if some of the challenges were to unlock during a play through, the completionist in me would want to get the others too. But seeing I do not complete a challenge on the first play through, there isn’t really anything to complete. And the resistance to the idea to do it all again wins over ‘completing’ something that as of now is an entirely uncompleted state, perfectly uncompleted…

I still have hopes for Tyria and GW2 that you will find a good intermediate between an open world experience for the regular players of GW, combined with meaningful instances and possibly even choice within them. To leave an interesting replay for those that come there after, where the open world content might be used as a cinematic backdrop to give context to the events of the replay. Perhaps HoT will bring this along.

For now I have 4 chapters saved up, to play through, both for giving me some actual content to do when I feel like it, but also to evaluate whether or not I can actually do the content now that most (if not all) the players have moved on to ‘greener pastures’. Perhaps if I ever find the urge to actually play, I might shed some light on this…

- Character Setup, Stats, Traits, Skills;
I have long since abandoned the idea to maximize my character output, no longer care one bit about stats. Traits seem to be a mediocre execution of providing choice, where most of the time it just feels like there is no choice, as certain traits are ever so specific to the skills you slot. And the skills offer no real reason to experiment (leaving out ‘customize’ as I already addressed it) with ‘builds’.

And I can’t but reflect on GW1, a simple yet elegant stat system, with true and actually valuable choices to be made in regards to skills. Sure GW2 isn’t GW1, but in this sense I think the baby has been thrown out with the bathing water, and a sup-par WoW stat system has been implemented for the sake of what? … It is NOT the build or stats that determine your effectiveness, it’s the ups and downs of the ‘balance commission’, that through it’s actions determine the flavour of the month. The build to have… There are no real choices to be made, as certain skills go best with certain traits that go best with certain stats.

And who wants to do optimization math on their free time anyways? Sure optimization is part of gaming, but just look at the amount of stats… to me its a completely overcomplicated mess, that takes away from what truly should matter, the setup and execution of your build…

In end closing, my view on GW2 is such:
1. It is the best looking game out there so far, and I hold the ANet Art, Creature and Environment artists in high regards. Same goes with Armour (although there is never enough), and Weapons (even though I have not found the Axe of my dreams).

2. It has above standard content design, really, there weren’t many events or hearts that felt they were a true double of something already in the game. The context almost always felt right, and while mileage might differ as far as ‘fun’ goes in regards to the various things to be done. They are mostly done very well, and without much buggery.

3. But, the actual game, the thing that if you strip all of GW2 away to it’s bare essentials that you could put into any other environment and call it ‘a game’. Those leave (to me) much to be desired. They are substandard, in some instances even lame (rewards come to mind here, less is more… not more is more). They make the experience tedious. And if you couple that with the most of the time not understandable actions of the balancing committee, I’m just not having fun anymore when I log on…

This thread is meant as feedback for ANet, seeing I have been playing since GW1 beta, and been a vivid GW player, I think I should at least give them some insight as to why I decided to leave. Feel free to leave any kind of respectful comment

So at the end of last year the final straw broke for me, the total mystery of class balance broke the build I was finally starting to come to terms with. And for no apparent reason, that I could see, especially when comparing the build to some of the builds I was up against, and were left mostly untouched. This wasn’t the first time, this had happened, but this time it did add up to all the other things that were coming along, and all the things that frustrated me already about GW2…

So what frustrates me about GW2 besides the class imbalance actions taken :
- The total lack of character progression and skill customization I felt for nearly 1.5y
Now HoT may address this in a way discussed in the CDI’s on this topic, and while some aspects sure sounded like it addresses this issue, I am left with the feeling that it might just not be enough. 1 heal, 4 utility and an elite … I have over 300 skill points, that progression will take approximately 34.6sec, of unlocking the druid.

Another thing is the lack of customization, and I do not mean armour, I mean the choices I have to express myself through the choices that make up my skills. In this sense I my frustration centres mostly around ’Winter’s Bite’ on the Axe. Why? I am a Sylvari coming from the jungle, what sense does ‘Winters Bite’ make. Sure I understand that skill from a ‘Norn Axe wielder’ going for an Ice theme. But it makes ‘me’ shudder that I do not have any choices in regards to a theme that makes sense for the character I want to play.

- The total wrong approach to the ‘scaling system’.
I have tried this several times now, but lvl80 players totally ruin the gaming experience for lower level players. The scaling system was ‘said’ to be in place to give a valuable gaming experience in all area’s to players regardless of level, but it is not … I am not sure where to point the finger, but from my perspective somebody at ANet is putting the needs of their ego (I want to feel powerful) in front of the need of the game. This frustrates me a lot, and GW2/ANet sticking to this conservative attitude is very disappointing to me.

- The HUGE amount of USELESS REWARDS to ridiculous proportions.
To this is added the Farmville log on reward. I will be honest, where I stated that the nerv broke ‘the camels back’, this sure did not help and added to my decision to just ‘log off for now’ … really, the large amount of useless stuff thrown at ‘us’ leaves me to feel offended mostly. As if more and more crap actually entices me to keep logging on. While I did log on for ‘Wintersday’, this only strengthened my resolve to ‘stay out of GW for a while’. Why? In 30min I got a huge pile of boxes, which had a huge amount of useless stuff in it, and even more boxes with even more useless stuff, that had bags with even more useless stuff. I did not feel rewarded, I felt intellectually offended…

Where farming wintersday made actual sense in GW1, and piles and piles of wintersday presents made for a 6months (‘wintersday in july’) of valuable items for giveaways and parties, as well as the content within those boxes (6 or so items) made for the same. Now wintersday felt like a shower of waste…

And when the ‘congratulations you logged on’ was added to this, I started pulling out my hair! Perhaps the lesson here is. People play a game for valuable experiences and useful loot, actually feeling rewarded for their time and effort. GW2 ended in scoffing with my efforts to a point where even ‘logging on’ should apparently be rewarded. Welcome to ‘Guildville 2.0’

I will take a deep breath now and go for a smoke, as the frustration over these things is building up to a point where I may no longer be supplying actual feedback

From all that I gathered from the presentation, everything was linked to: ‘in the jungle’ … so what ‘if anything’ will transfer into the GW2 main world. Even more so, with everybody and their mom being in the jungle, what will remain for the world at large, and new players?

A battered and ruined world, changed without reference, void of players that can give them help or a clue as to what happened? … Will the answer to any question be ’just make sure you get to level 80 fast (in EotM) and get the expansion, because that is where everybody and the true fun is ?

I will have to agree with the OP , if specializations means a person only has a choice to specialize in one added branch, then there is no specialization, it’s just more linear character progression…

For specialization to make any sense in the way the word implies, a player should have a choice for (in my opinion) at least 3 mutually excluding branches that add to the profession in a profound (and perhaps even fundamental) way. This will also ensure (in part) that players can actually become distinct from one another…

Because while a druid is really cool, what is in it for the rangers that prefer to be a true archer (aka, without that annoying pet), then again, what about those that think 1 pet isn’t nearly enough. Or what about those that think the ranger is just fine the way it is, but they would just like to have a bit more choice as to how to customize and theme their ranger (f/e more fire, or more ice, more poison or more plants. (and obviously this goes for all other professions as well.)

Just so everybody is aware, in GW1 there was a map far off the beaten path, deep inside the Maguma jungle (it was/is) the area south/west of where Drytop is. (name currently alludes me).

There wasn’t much in this area, except for a path that led to some ruins and a statue of Balthazar. Similar (and currently also still in GW2) there was a statue to Grenth in the Shiver Peaks. There was also a cave with a statue of Lyssa, currently inaccessible in GW2. There was a Dwayna statue in Ascalon, and I am not sure if I ever saw a Melandru statue around in GW1, BUT! There is a melandru statue in GW2, it’s under water and it’s being Woooooooorshipped.

So seeing there are statues of the gods all scattered around Tyria (besides the ‘6’ in the now swamp). This would lead one to conclude that there might indeed be a temple/statue dedicated to Abaddon somewhere forgotten en deep inside the jungle…

My by far biggest frustration in regards to WvW is how claiming currently works, not only is it conducive to trolling, it is also hindering playing WvW in an enjoyable fashion. And not much has to change to solve this, and still keep the ‘spy to take a tower’ strategy some of us have to endure at times (i think my personal opinion on this matter shouldn’t interfere with other peoples moral standards in a case of war (all is fair in love and war, or say ‘they’ say)).

So first what is frustrating:
1. The inability to claim a supply camp with a small group (say 3 people) with all different guilds. Not being able to claim this camp for a +5 buff severely hinders doing an impromptu havocgroup (for some reason people do not like to just stand around for 2.5min twiddling their thumbs). The same thing applies in regards to doing a guerrilla action during outnumbered periods…

2. The fact that once claimed, one can not ‘un claim’ a structure, and with buffs running out after a certain amount of time, I found that more then often a structure is claimed by a guild, buffs have run out, and there is nobody of said guild around to claim something else. This severely hinders a good defence especially during off hours.

3. Having Spy’s or Noobs claiming structures without putting any buffs on. The noobs obviously don’t know better. But for spies it’s a valid tactic to prevent the defending side from putting any buffs up. Seeing my previous mention of ‘all is fair in love and war’ my suggestion will take the spy action into account as a valid action under circumstances.

Solutions:
A. Remove the claim rights on all supply camps! If a guild is leading the assault they are usually the ones to claim for the +5. Other people will likely not claim, and if they do, and they have a +5 buff running nobody cares that it’s not the leading guild that puts it there, the +5 matters here not the flag.

In regards to towers and keeps, if they are all governed by the same ‘system’ then I obviously do not mind if it changes for these structures as well. But seeing I mostly run into the camp system my priority is there, and i could imagine that guilds may prefer claim rights on the bigger things (though in general i do not think they even care, they care about which buffs are running, not who put them there).

B. It should be possible to claim a structure that is already claimed by another guild. BUT! only if there are no buffs running. I wondered if more buffs should take president over less buffs, but I find it more important that a currently active guild on the server can take over the structure from a guild that isn’t on the server anymore, than who can put up the most buffs.

C. The solution in B. gives an option for spies too. Currently they will have to claim a structure when there is no buff on it. What I encountered was the server taking a structure without any buffs on it, claimed though (and unable to un claim obviously), flipping it, to then have a spy on stand-by just after we ‘re-took’ it. Obviously there wasn’t a buff running and we couldn’t claim it, as soon as the timer on the claimer ran out they were all back and took it again.

While I obviously didn’t like it (nor some other (or same) spy depleting our supply with some upgrades prior to taking it the first time). I think this is just part of war in WvW. Now if a spy overtakes a claim on a structure without any buffs, that is a viable strategy. But if they have no claim running, one could obviously overwrite that claim (if they have a claim it would at least help the disadvantaged server). That is why I would like to suggest C to being Righteous Claim a 5min timer put on a structure after one claims it.

This gives said person 5min to put up a buff, or gives a spy a 5min window to have their server attack. And any troll or noob only disadvantages the entire server for these 5min.

adD. It would be very nice if the claimer could actually display the guild that currently owns the structure. While I’m trying hard to recognize the guilds based upon their ‘colors’, having a name displayed when one talks to the claimer could help with this, as well as the guild making a name for themselves. It would also help a lot as one could ask ‘is there anyone from ’this’ guild around’, instead of asking ‘is there anyone around with ’these colours’ around’.

- Have events contribute under certain circumstances
This would likely work best along side a ‘relative scoring system’ as some of the features needed for it would be relative outnumbered status across all maps ( but obviously it could work without relative scoring as well ). But some suggestions might also be viable for just ‘map-outnumbered’.

If a server is truly outnumbered, and not solely on one map, events could appear (or change: current pve like events might apply) that are relatively easy to complete, that could contribute to the scoring of the outnumbered side. Completion of these events from the over-populated side would obviously not contribute to their score. f/e: The kill the bee swarm event for green side in EB could contribute X points to the outnumbered server.

But, more could be done to help out the outnumbered side, f/e:
A. More NPC help, if one is outnumbered for a certain time period, say 10min, a build site appears in the citadel (or somewhere else), named ‘Reinforcement Portal’. Building said portal could add NPC groups to the map, marching between all owned structures. It could increase the amount of guards by say 1 extra.

To counter balance this somewhat, it could need an upkeep of say 50 supplies per 5 minutes. If a server (or map) becomes balanced again (outnumbered disappears) all the NPCs and/or extra guards would disappear, and the structure would slowly degrade over a period of say 15min. If the server/map goes into outnumbered again within that time period the degrade stops and guards and NPCs appear again.

B. Perhaps an outnumbered server/map could have the NPCs on their side contribute to their defence. This would be the Skritt and the Centaur, like the NPCs in EB. Maybe the defending side could have certain events to win them over (and make it much harder to flip them to neutral), or perhaps build them a statue, bring them an item that spawns somewhere in the centre/south.

Maybe after joining the outnumbered side’s cause, they could be upgraded, in level and in numbers.

Perhaps even, if you upgrade them fully, they could spawn tribute events, where they take a certain route to a certain location, and completion of said NPC quest would award points towards the outnumbered server. This would help the outnumbered server out, but also provide targets for the opposing side to hit, giving them other stuff to do then flipping structures.

c. Stimulate ‘Guerrilla style’ warfare for the outnumbered side with a WvW-wide advertised event (only to the outnumbered side) and a reward added to it. These events would cycle every 20min or so. And some are more to keep your enemy occupied so they don’t take your stuff! f/e:

c1. a random currently not owned supply camp is designated for capture, if you capture it you get X points added to your score.

c2. a random not owned southern tower is designated for capture, if you capture it you gain X points added, and/or 2 large NPC forces spawn and are set (in strength) to take both southern camps that supply said tower.

c3. Bloodlust on an opposing side is designated for capture, if you capture it you gain points to your score, and/or a build site appears (say 40supplies, 40silver), which then adds krait to that borderlands, they are hostile to all and occupy all the bloodlust locations with 3 lvl85 veteran krait. Periodically they will send out a krait patrol towards a supply camp and flip them to neutral. Only a wipe out of all krait and a timed destruction of the structure removes the event.

c4. A non owned NPC race somewhere is designated for ‘capture’, if you succeed this race joins your cause, and can’t be flipped to neutral for a certain period of time. Their strength is increased and their activity too.

c5. Even harsher if you are entirely outmanned (this would need a threshold), maybe an NPC could spawn near towers (and/or hills/bay) that allow you to ‘bribe’ the guards. Say 1g. all guards (but those in the lords room) become hostile to all for 15min, and it puts white swords on this structure for the time. They would obviously wreck all siege in range. Even better, 5g revolt! All guards rush to the lords room and start trying to kill the lord, if they succeed the structure flips to neutral (all buffs remain) and all guards & Lord set to ‘hostile to all’.

c6. etc… and so on… more guerrilla style targets with rewards here…

thank you for your time reading all these suggestions, so much more can be done that tops ‘set a period to score’ that all avenues should be pursued. All details obvious f/e.

- Taking structures to give point
Currently I think only holding a structure for the tick gives points, why not also award the actual taking of a structure to award points (it would obviously be some what of a counter balance an upgrade on structures to increase their ppt contribution). Some addition to this could be the amount of points gained relative to the tier of said structure. Wood = 10pt, Stone = 20pt , fortified = 25pt.

While at first it would seem in favour of the overpopulated server or better covered server, that is only the case for the initial capture. If the defending server isn’t strong enough to recapture it leaves the other side to a choice, upgrade for the extra ppt (in which case the defending side will regain those points later on), or keep it wood which gives the defending side an easier capture later on, or during the coverage imbalance (in which case re-flipping back and forth will keep scores tied).

- Defending structures against a considerable force to give points
We can likely all agree that the running out of a tap shouldn’t give any points, but what about orange swords. The game knows how big the zerg is that is attacking, maybe a certain amount (orange swords f/e) could spawn a different ‘defending event’ that does award actual points if it runs out. While a defending side may not be able to hold off that big coverage zerg indefinitely, holding it for the ‘defensive points’ could counter balance points gained for taking a structure.

- Change how claiming works
this will be a separate thread later on, but it does pertain to this topic, hence a small tldr here
Seeing you can not un claim a structure, and buffs run out. Players during off hours are confronted with being unable to claim and buff structures they own, because the guild that currently claimed it, is no longer around. Severely hindering their options on defence. Also, not being able to claim camps due to the ‘rights’ system severely slows down small groups in their efforts, as it isn’t uncommon that only one person in a 3 person (different guilds) group has a +5 buff running, meaning their efforts are halted for 2.5min … seeing guerrilla warfare is all about timing, it favours the big groups which are likely led by a big guild, that easily reaches the claim threshold and isn’t hindered.
For the full suggestion see: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Change-Claiming-Please/first#content

- Increase Guard Levels + Outnumbered buff
One of the plus sides of having a large group (be it due to population or coverage) is that you have more people to do several things. One of the main things to do is cut off supplies. Currently, due to guard ‘cough’ intelligence as well as guard level, is taking those camps by one person. Even a fully upgraded camp can be taken by a few players, this is both due to their AI but also due to their level upgraded (82) remaining as such while the player power has gone up… I were to suggest to rebalance this upgrade, and make guards lvl84 instead, a slight ‘anti bunch up’ increase in their AI could further their resilience against taking a camp with a minimal force.

The outnumbered buff could further help along here, and do the following, increase guard levels to 85, and add 1 extra guards to all structures, and add 2 instead if the ‘order extra guards buff’ is build. Combatting the ease of capture of structures, related to the amount of people that need to commit to it, means that high population/coverage servers have a harder/longer time, meaning more time for the opposing side to respond, plus, it would leave them with less time to take more.

continued on next post

foregoing reading 7 pages due to time constraints, a pointer and a brainstorm to help WvW along…

First a pointer : I would like to point out that a great number of different (smaller) additions might well be better to solve this issue than adoption a single solution and big change to the scoring. Most noticeably because of having more dials to turn will give more options to tweak the entire system, then just having one… I would even argue that implementing the smaller suggestions first and keeping tabs on their contributions, to then keep a big change like scoring periods as a later additional option is better than going with the big thing first and hoping for a home run…

Possible dials
- Relative PPT as per my previous suggestion, the ‘relativeness’ of this part of the scoring system can be dialled in…

- Kills, Stomps & Bloodlust ; some servers are better fighters than others, the amount of people certainly makes a difference at some point. Having all of them count with Anet being able to analyse them and tweak their value, offers another dial. f/e:
Kill: 5pt
Kill + BL: 10pt
Stomp: 5pt
Stomp + BL: 10pt
Consecutive tiers in BL add another +5 per kill or stomp
(numbers obviously just possible examples, evaluation should determine best values )

- Dynamic Events based upon fights
Apparently the game recognizes group sizes upon attacking a target. Thus it also knows what is attacked. When the game signals roughly equal groups to clash, within certain boundaries (f/e more then 5 but less then double), it could spawn an event in said area ( ?!? unsure if the game platform can spawn an event in a random area? ) . These events could be a number of things, f/e: double points for kills or stomps, it could spawn an area to hold and determine a winner of the fight, extra point for the amount of kills in a certain time in the fighting area, etc… Which event spawns (if any) might also be based upon the sizes of groups clashing, possibly it could even be a different event for each side.

- Add. upgrades to camps, towers & keeps that increase points or PPT
a. Camp upgrade: Every yak that makes it to their end destination adds 1 point.
b. Tower upgrade: Every defensive event completed adds 10 points to your score; this upgrade adds 10points to your PPT.
c. Keep upgrade: Kills around this keep add 2 points to your score; this upgrade adds 20points to your PPT.

- Add upgrades to Sentries
this would be a general side suggestion as well, but it can be accompanied by points
Upgrade go both ways, so there is a defensive and an offensive upgrade tree, the game decides which one tree to offer based upon ownership of the nearby supply camp, any upgrades would ‘flip side’ if the ownership of said camp changes.
a. lvl1 – 10supply, 1 silver – pos. This sentry gives a speed buff whenever a yak passes; neg. this sentry builds a log barrier to halt any yaks passing (and it kills it off)
b. lvl2 – 20 supply, 2 silver – Double the amount of Guards here. (both sides)
c. lvl3 – 30 supply 3 silver – pos. Raise the Guards level; neg. any yak killed by this sentry adds 5 points to your score.

- Players to Drop Supplies in supply stack
If a player is at their max supply, and the supply stack is not full, the [F]-key changes to ‘Drop supplies in this stack’, which would add the player carried supplies to the stack in the camp/tower/keep.

While this seems like a negligible change, and could also be used by attacking big zergs (though the amount of supply is limited by the map amount, and build times are still in effect), this would mostly help the defensive side as upgrades are defensive… And I have noticed that if you are outnumbered, the people around concentrate on defending and keeping supply going, so their defence is aided by the upgrades, being able to run supplies yourself could aid the under populated side.

continued on next post

tldr: Use a ‘relative’ value for PPT of camp/towers/keeps on enemy territory based upon the % of the current active players on each server, compared to each other.

So this is how that could work:
1. The points for each camp/tower/keep gets increased by x100.
2. At any given time the server tracks the amount of players of each server logged into WvW (this means ALL players of your server, in ALL areas, so an outnumbered buff on one map does not trigger this imbalance saveguard, given you have enough players elsewhere).
3. The server calculates: Server Home / Server Attack * 100% (with a max of 100%, a minimum could also be set)
4. When awarding PPT on the tick, the server uses that % to determine the value of a camp/tower/keep based upon the amount of players on both servers.
‘5’ ‘Home’ = each servers’ corner in EB; each ‘corner’ on opposing BL’s (tower & side camp); Rest of camps/towers/keeps on own server BL.
it might be interesting to put Bay/Hills on home BL belong to ‘home’ of the opposing forces
‘6’ SMC belongs to no one, and always rewards 100%;

add While a bit more complicated to program, this could also be used to set scoring for largely outnumbered servers to >100% or set a base scoring of roughly equal to 75% while outnumbered gives >75upto100% scoring.

ps. Now that scores for points are x100, there is more then enough room to make camps/towers/keep increase in PPT value with consecutive upgrades.

This would make holding your own stuff worth 100% all the time; Holding Enemy Stuff on the tick would reward roughly 100% if the amount of players on each side is equal (or if you are outnumbered). Yet! If you yourself outnumber your opponent, the value of stuff you take on your opposing side is worth considerably less! YET! Taking stuff is still worth it, because now at least your opponent doesn’t get 100% …

Linked to upgrades, this also means that making something paper rewards almost nothing if you outnumber opponent, and upgrading is worth it to squeeze out more points. Would also possibly make it worth holding stuff on the weak 3rd side, while two other servers still have a high attendance.

Personally I think this would entirely change strategy on WvW, it will not reward Coverage imbalance, yet, it does reward a highly defensive strategy if largely outnumbered. The incentive to cap stuff is still there, but now in ‘point denial’ for your opponents, and recapping your stuff is also worth it (you will likely receive more PPT to recap a flipped keep when highly outnumbered, than a attacking force will gain in PPT for holding it, which is the incentive to holding it).

This will keep the options to really take a lead during off hours of your opponents to a minimum, and upgrading opponents stuff is worth it to squeeze out more PPT, and also making it harder for your opponent to recap. I will not deem it to revolutionize WvW, but it seems the most straight forward way to make a slightly more balanced WvW match that relies less heavily on coverage.

taken from this thread I posted some weeks ago:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Combatting-Coverage-relative-scoring/first#post4328942

likely some if not all of this feedback has already been mentioned, but 24 pages is so long to check and +1 that I will just formulate my concerns instead, I hope you will understand…

In regards to the latest suggestion by the Dev. as a single person guild player in WvW I would like to ask where I will fit in, in a WvW governed by ‘Alliances’. And on that note, where and how will new players fit in that are in a Role Playing or PvE guild, and like to remain in that guild and represent it, but do WvW on times when they are alone or just feel like doing so… And there are likely a lot of these players around… Currently we just join our world server, and contribute, in a separate alliance WvW only the hardcore WvW guilds will likely want to form an alliance, and this will create an entirely different imbalance entirely. They will likely also force players to join their guild and put a 100% rep. requirement along side it, I been asked to join several times, and so far I haven’t met a guild that doesn’t have that as a rule (the more hardcore, the more silly the rules get).

So an alliance system will bunch up the most hardcore WvW guilds in a single world server (as per Dev suggestion), and the problem is back where it started, only now it is even worse!

glad I took the time to see what the dev’s have posted in this thread, the post below doesn’t belong here but in the scoring thread Though I do think that a different scoring system might well be able to solve a big part of the unfairness that population and coverage currently bring to WvW that is why I will leave the post in tact :

Though I do encourage the discussion on the topic, because when imbalance turns into a predominant feeling of being ‘unfair’ it zaps all the fun out of it. I do not think limiting the amount of people per map is the way to go about this…

There are way more elaborate ways to ‘balance’ the scoring system to make it feel more fair. For example, using relative scoring based upon the population present.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Combatting-Coverage-relative-scoring/first#post4328942

Seeing this ‘unfair’ topic seems to come back every 2 forum pages I do hope ANet will do something to make WvW more fair… anything done will likely not fix the problem entirely, and perfect balance is a system where all servers end in a tie (aka. there needs to be imbalance somewhere to tip the scales), but doing nothing isn’t an option either, because it ruins the fun, and with that the format, and as such it either chases people away towards higher ranking servers, or even worse, to another game…

Fred Fargone.3127:

Then again, SMC is a juicy target your team will (attempt to) visit frequently. To get a POI in a tower, well, while you can solo a gate, it’s easier if you have 1-2 guildies with you.

As for PvE, I doubt too many people would be able to just create a new character and go cap the POIs before doing anything else. So why should they be able to do that in WvW? I dare say the average player takes weeks or even months before being able to venture to the areas where the last POIs in PvE are.

1. You realy do not play WvW right?

2. Do you even play GW? You can obviously just make a character and run everywhere to get the PoI’s and Vistas. There is not one thing that would prevent you from doing so, except for foes around, which may make it hard, but not impossible

Fred Fargone.3127:

While not everyone is not going to fall in love with WvW, the point is to ensure you give it a honest try before you declare you don’t like it. Not to mention that ultimately, if you don’t want to complete the requirements for a PvX title, you should probably find some content you do enjoy doing instead and complete the titles associated with that.

As for one person versus a zerg, I know there are a good many fairly inactive servers. They don’t usually get matched against the most active servers, tbh, unless they’re terribly unlucky, they’re mostly matched against equally inactive servers.

Besides, it’s not like your team has to capture anything for you to get that POI. All that is required is for someone to take down those doors for you. Doesn’t have to be you, doesn’t have to be your team. The less you rely on teamwork tho, the more cunning you need to accomplish your goal.

1. Unless you have a quote from an Dev. on the placement of PoI and Vista’s, that is just your assumption or opinion. And 100% map completion is needed to create Legendary weapons, it’s not just about a tittle.

2. You really do not even play WvW right? Did you get a 100% completion yourself?

3. Cunning doesn’t get you through a door or wall, especially not on your own. Even on a low population server keeping track of what happens is a way to keep your PPT up. Response times are all that matters, and if you are a PvE player you will have no points for Rams or Any other Seige, you might know how to make superior siege, but that is doubt full, nor would you be able to carry enough supplies, even with a claim you will have to run 3x up and down to run 40supplies, kill all the guards (likely 2x if not more), then bring down the door without any structural weakening, you would be putting swords on the structure, which would bring a response force to check up soon enough, even if its just 2 people you are screwed.

0. Aka. there is no way to do this on your own, even with a small team it will be hard, unless these people play WvW more often and know what to do. As I said earlier, the only way to get this is using reset nights and colour changes week after week to get your own sides. And hope SMC gets taken by your side when you are actually around. Now if this is your first ‘experience’ with WvW, how big are the chances you will actually return there to ‘try it out’ to see if it’s fun content.

The PoI and Vista’s should be in WvW to show new and PvE players around, offer a sense of danger and thrill to complete said content (because these players will run into fights getting them all). It should offer the least amount of frustration (to the level of a hard Vista) so that players aren’t discouraged to come back for the actual content. At least from my point of view.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Well, the point really is to make you play the content. So putting the POIs at doors kinda defeats the purpose, just as it would if all the POIs in PvE would’ve been placed conveniently in the middle of LA.

Besides, you don’t need all that many people to cap a tower, even less to breach the gate. Just take a guildie or two and go get them POI.

There is hardly a PoI or a Vista where you ‘have to’ complete or participate in any form or content in the PvE world. As long as you are a good sneak/run through player you can get to a PoI, sure Vista’s generally need a bit of jumping, but besides some creature standing around there is generally hardly any fighting involved.

And as far as ‘ease of capture’ of locations needed for map completions, I take it you haven’t been in WvW much. While you can technically use a couple of weeks for colours to change and get our colour’s side, taking SMC isn’t something you can just ‘do’ with a couple of friends.

I think Map Completion is a great way to show players all the content there is to find in the game. So I would not be for removing these things from the WvW areas.

Yet! When I did my map completion on my PvE character I noticed that the locations of most noticeably the PoI’s where nothing more than ‘a pain’. Placing them inside towers and keeps makes them incredible hard to complete… it’s not so much the hardship in having to go to WvW and avoid players from other teams, it’s getting to the location and being unable to complete the PoI or Vista due to a door/wall being in your way. And thus having to wait until your team takes said tower/keep.

The PoI’s should have been placed right ‘on’ the doors, Vista’s should have been placed outside of towers/keeps. This would still guide players into WvW, would still provide a hard to complete part of the completion (being able to sneak everywhere), yet, at least make it possible to get these locations without having to rely on your side taking said tower or keep.

I would be very disappointed if Halloween were a mere repeat of 2013 , as I think that events must be the most easily planned, have the longest possible development time available, and for a large part have a set theme, and can re-use a lot of assets already in the game that relate to said theme.

Due to the traditional nature of these kinds of events, there are certain key elements that just have to be in it, most noticeably the Mad King Appearances. Some of the other activities are a set challenge (the tower), or provide a specific form of gaming (dungeon).

This leaves room for changes in very specific area’s:
- A dungeon path addition or change, possibly reflecting story additions
- A PvP map (which could change every year, or one added every year)
- A PvP Holiday format (Which might be a nice way to test new formats, it could change every year, or a new format could be added when created, and offer different formats to choose from every year).

This then leaves two area’s of the game that most players will be confronted with.
- The Story , the way GW2 is advertised and how development is relayed to the players, as well as how the community has responded to development, seem to leave no room for anything but ‘ADDITION’ to the story of Halloween . As putting in reflections upon recent world events (unless they are here to stay indefinitely) will seem out of place the following year. (One could intermingle events, for the experience of the players, but that part of the content might not be suitable for next year, still though, the one time event things could be a key feature of GW2, as long as they do not take up more than say 10-15% of the actual content released – if they can be large scale yearly repeatable events that would be even better, or if they could be scaled down for repetition, or used as footage for cinematic to provide context in the repeatable portion of the content. )

Halloween would also be a nice event to deepen racial lore, as LA is a multi racial city. Obviously Raven would have a few things to say about Halloween to the Norn. The Madking obviously poses some questions to Sylvari. Sure, for Charr and Asura the Halloween event would offer a bit less, but for the Asura the Madking would obviously be part of the Eternal Alchemy. So ok, the Charr might luck out, but that’s only due to a very obvious link not being there, which could be solved by some fantasy … so more then enough angles to add more to Halloween for various years.

- The Farming
Currently the farming is confined to the ‘Madking Maze’ and drops in the world. Obviously adding new drops to lists is an easy way to litter the world with the Halloween Spirit.

The maze though, well apart from a foe addition it hasn’t seen much change, it would be really cool if the floor would collapse in certain area’s, or a wall would cave in and the maze extended. In this regard one could point at the ‘Tower of Madness’ content that (from my p.o.v.) was well received by the community. Additions to the maze do strike me as a fairly easy way to keep content around and still add to it.

- The Rewards
Here again one could say that additions are fairly easy, seeing we have only seen a small selection of Halloween weapons, additions to the list of rewards would be a strait forward addition to the event. Yet I doubt anyone would consider it some form of content, then again it would be a nice and welcome (maybe even an overdue) addition to the reward structure for the content around.

- WvW
I do not think I should let this part of the game out of it. WvW’ers are not particularly fond of PvE additions to their content. But that doesn’t mean that that Events can not travel over to WvW. Some simple changes would obviously be decorations and textures. Other ways to add event content to WvW would be the drops. And one that would also work, is the replacement of current NPCs (friends and foes) by event themed NPCs (f/e Skeletal/Spirit/Undead Yaks, or Skeletal/Spirit/Undead Ogres/Moles/Frogs, Skeletal/Spirit/Undead etc. and more spiders, bats, raven, etc) , as these changes wouldn’t interfere with the natural flow of WvW combat.

Ok now i’m lost, the next drop did add them again :/ was it already fixed?

or was it because i swapped my materials around ? … ok realy weird i’m sure it deleted a fair bit of my materials

Oohw i figured it out! – Everytime i did a ‘drop all’ it filled up my bank to 250, and took from the stacks already in my mule backpacks

During my last (possibly 2) game sessions all the drops of crafting materials have SUBSTRACTED from my total of stacks that i keep on my WvW Only character. I’m guessing i lost 591 fragments this way, i also lost 220 dragonite, and likely 575 blood dust!

Please FIX this and ADD crafting materials instead of substracting them !

And obviously i also didn’t get all the materials i lost !

Seeing technically i already gave these suggestions earlier, I guess I can repeat them here:

levelling & unlocking skills
I rather liked the unlocking of skills by use, but I can also see the ‘wish’ to gate the unlocking of skills in a levelling system. But just giving the players a new skill at each level, working for all weapons (aka. you unlock skill 3 on all weapons when you level, even though you may not even have touched this weapon) doesn’t seem right to me at all … What I do not understand is why both systems were not combined…

lvl1: Skill 1 and slot 2 are open, using skills 1 fills up slot 2 while playing and unlocks the skill.
lvl2: Reward the player with a different weapon, then the starter one. The player can now open up this other weapon.
lvl3: Skill slot 3 opens up, using a weapon unlocks the actual skill
lvl4: Skill slot 4 opens up, using a weapon unlocks the actual skill
lvl w/e: Skill slot 5 opens up, using a weapon unlocks the actual skill

If a player uses one or two weapons, then after lvl w/e, the system is exactly like it was for us old players, a new weapon will have skill one to use, and using that unlocks the other skills. At the same time, new players are slowly gated into the weapon skills by unlocking the slot at a level gate, and unlocking the skill by using the weapon (preserving that feel of ‘when using this weapon I’m getting more proficient’). To me this feels like a ‘best of both worlds’ solution…

Down-scaling
This New Player Experience, is the 2nd or 3rd time you guys made the low level content easier, in order to deal with the changes to the system. Yet, you do not seem to have altered down-scaling at all to compensate for these changes.

I used my lvl80 WvW only Charr Thief to walk/kill from LA to the human starter area for testing – ‘build’ = Soldier Armour with Carrior Trinkets and Undeath Runes (generally use pistol/knife condi).

By now a scaled down lvl80, has 3x the amount of HP any foes have, and these foes deal about 1/5th of the damage the lvl80 does. This resulted in me being able to run from LA to the human starting area, killing everything in sight, with just the ‘unload’ (pistol/pistol #3 skill) and using ‘roll for initiative’ if I agro’ed 3 or more foes. In general it took 1 unload to kill pretty much any foe (except for veterans that took 2,5x), while they took down about 1/15th of my HP, IF they managed to hit me at all.

So in an area where I was scaled down to 1500hp, the foes generally hit me for 100hp (on a telegraphed skill), while I hit them for 500hp, which was all the HP they had.

This ‘scaling’ worked the same way where ever I was. So where I had say 5000hp, foes had 1000hp, I hit them for roughly 1000, while the foes hit me for 200hp.

I will say that I still managed to get downed, to the west of the human starter area, in the field with cows and invading bandits, there is this bandit camp where one can easily agro 10+ bandits, especially after the event in the field ended and foes run back to that location. Restricted to only unload and roll for initiative and one heal, by just standing there, I managed to get hit say 25x to down me.

This just has to change , because ‘one hitting’ foes ruined the experience for the low levels around me, I could unload/kill foes b4 most of these players even got close to these foes.

Vayne, sometimes you may want to think about where your contributions add a different point of view, and where they might be entirely out of place, and in a sense add insult to injury…

GuildWars and ArenaNet were a company that set themselves apart from the industry standard, no matter where in the world it was played… So they sold themselves out and support some front-office turning the game into something it never was… It’s alrite I get it, my ‘girlfriend’ simply has a price, when I met her she didn’t strike me as a gold digger, but we were young and fresh and in love … we grew apart and I get it, but that doesn’t make me less sad about it…

Maybe some more details on how I morally view thing might help, I elaborated in some other thread earlier this week, but here it seems appropriate as well. I use a fairly subjective ‘strike’ system, you can compare it to an emotional scale, both positive and negative actions are put on that scale. Each action may also come with a certain ‘weight’ associated with it. This to me offers a fairly balanced way of viewing things, mistakes aren’t the end of the world, bad things don’t necessarily tip the scale over. As they have to compete with all the positive things, and their ‘weight’ also contributes to their impact on my opinion and stance… And for as long as the balance doesn’t strike all the way into the negative, people have a way to redeem themselves.

This to me feels like a fair way to treat my stance towards people and things, so what am I sad about, for the first time in 7y the scale went deep into the negative. As the things that were a big plus for the GuildWars franchise, and one of the main reasons for me to support the game, have turned to the opposite. Now I know there are many people that couldn’t care less about how the game is handled in China, as long as they themselves are not hit by it… but I for one do care about others, I do not see there being an Asian GW and a NA/EU GW, I just see GuildWars and what it stood for, and how that rated on my scale.

That scale tipped, it tipped big and hard, and it makes me sad to see that it does, for I have been a bid advocate of GuildWars for 7 years, a lot of that was due to their behaviour differing from the industry standard. And if it were an ‘innovative progression’ then I might have been able to stand behind it, but it’s not. It’s a major step back from what kept people engaged in the series for over 7y.

And for me this is horrible, it’s not that I will remove GW from my system instantly, or stop playing entirely. But it’s enough for me saying, I do not want to actively support this. And while the scale swings due to the latest rapid changes and to me personal revelations, I am not sure if that scale will come back into a ‘positive’ setting. I know things like a ‘moral compass’ and ‘sticking to your convictions’ are a rarity these days, but it’s the thing that keeps me sane and happy with myself even though it’s hard and unforgiving at times… and the implications of this whole ordeal make me sad, because if I have to conclude that the scale remains negative, and ANet/NCSoft doesn’t find a way to redeem themselves, they are striked off …

They will end in to same category as: EA, Blizzard, Apple, Google, Monsanto, and some other I simply forgot about… See, I am not against a company doing good and making a profit, it’s when they turn into power and money hungry entities that have no morals besides more money at the expense of everything else. That prey upon those that can’t see beyond a logo, or a marketing scheme; that have limited knowledge of technology and reproduction costs, and thus have nothing to go on besides hype and social(e-)peen (monkey rock) behaviour.

to quote something that illustrates this:
You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time

So I’m sad and disappointed, to a point where I could cry about the possibility of loosing something I happily contributed to for over 7y.

With the details of the Chinese version of the game and the Royal system, something just snapped. For me it is clear this isn’t the ANet I supported for 7-8years, nor is it the GuildWars game with high ideals that I fell in love with over 7 years ago…

Today I simply feel like my GF broke up after a 7y relationship as I found out she has been cheating on me. We had fun, shared hardship in those 7y, we didn’t always see eye to eye, but we were always able to compromise and find a solution that fit us both. Now though, she is ready to move on, all that we had doesn’t seem important to her anymore. And while I can see that this new guy is just some jerk with more money then me, she seems hopelessly in love with the idea of getting more expensive yet hollow presents. It’s more then clear this jerk will dump her when something he thinks is better comes along, and while I was there to support and pick her up when a setback came along her path, I doubt I will be able to do so ‘as a friend’ in the future. She choose this new route and so she will have to deal with what ever comes along with it…

I never knew a game could do this to me, let alone ‘outside’ of the game. But I feel like crying… :’(

This will come to the NA/EU game as well, as ANet continues to drift from the GuildWars Ideals, that which drove a good deal of players to keep GW1 alive for 7 years. And in doing so alienates their fan base, there won’t be any way to keep the game alive, besides trying to bait more people to pay monthly…

GW1 as far as I know, never had these kinds of systems in Asia, and as far as I know it wasn’t less of success there as it was here… these details somewhat broke something for me, I think I will keep my word as to sticking around till early next year to see improvements in the game. But as far as intellectually supporting this game goes, well I refer to my sig from now on…

While I was rather excited to participate in this CDI, I just can’t justify it anymore, especially not for free; I made a sig, and I’m more then happy to spend my free time and thinking capability on this game, if requirements are met …

Today for me is a really sad day… details on the china release pushed something over the limit, and for me this isn’t GuildWars anymore. No ideals, industry standard behaviour, it’s sad, but I can’t justify to support that…

I need to sleep, tagging this so I can more easily find it tomorrow …

Feel free to just make a list from lvl0 to lvl80, even with new stuff you think should be added. Currently this is the list (taken from the new feature patch):

•Weapon skill 2 (Unlocked at level 2)
•Weapon skill 3 (Unlocked at level 3)
•Profession skill F1 (Unlocked at level 4)
•Rally(downstate) (Unlocked at level 5)
•Off-hand weapon slot (Unlocked at level 7)
•Weapon skill 4 (Unlocked at level 7)
•Underwater Combat (Unlocked at level 8 with underwater weapon skills 1 and 2)
•Personal story (Unlocked at level 10 in chapters every 10 levels)
•Weapon skill 5 (Unlocked at level 10)
•Utility Skill 1 (Unlocked at level 13)
•Underwater skill 3 (Unlocked at level 14)
•Weapon Swap (Unlocked at level 15)
•Down Skill 3 (Unlocked at level 19)
•Profession skill F3 (Unlocked at level 22)
•Underwater skill 5 (Unlocked at level 23
•Utility Skill 2 (Unlocked at level 24)
•Profession skill F4 (Unlocked at level 24)
•Adapt Tier Traits (Unlocked at level 30)
•Elite Skill (Unlocked at level 40)
•Master Traits (Unlocked at level 60)
•Grandmaster Traits (Unlocked at level 80)

The following items are not locked but do not appear on the minimap until the specified level.
•Points of Interest (level 7)
•Gathering Nodes (Level 9) – Nodes may have been removed in areas before this level. No there is no potato famine there is plenty of potato in Metrica Province.
•Vista (level 10)

How would you like to see this instead?

Player Initiative Vertical Progression

Instead of all the flaming, sarcasm, and other forms of criticism or feedback telling ANet what is wrong with the new vertical progression in GW2. Lets focus on how you would like to see Vertical Progression Dealt with. Converting our energy in positive actions may well be more enjoyable, more productive than putting it into negative actions.

It would be interesting to see what you would like to see from lvl0 to lvl80 for as far as gating goes, what sort of systems you would like to see to support vertical progression, to cater to new players, as well as older player alt-ing.

Jinroh.4251:

Why did they think this was a good idea for new and veteran players? Is there a small group of players that they are listening to who give these awful ideas or do they genuinely believe that we’d like this?

They say they have ‘play testers’, which are generally companies that ‘play test’ for you, and give ‘objective’ feedback… well i think it’s time to switch companies!! This one seems to be a -insert game company- Black-Ops program to destroy all other games, by providing kitten-tail feedback & suggestions!!

Or they have hired the wrong people who have no clue about GW history, the kind of players it attracted, and why they played GW1 before and why they recommended GW2 to their friends … i see a fair bit of CoH influence, and the strict gated Leveling system does remind me of that too, maybe the wrong person is in the wrong position somewhere…

While i think i should make a more extensive feedback thread about this, i think i can post some of the tl;dr here:
- GW2 improved on a lot of the features we as players found frustrating in other MMOs, this has been a great selling point (DE’s, more Dynamic Combat, great Art/gfx for low system req. , the Music (though that had always been great), wardrobe, collections, achievements, etc?) … aka. great game-features

- GW2 ‘had’ the goal to provide ‘all content as end-game content’, and delivered a new way LS to extend stuff in the world (whether you liked it or not). Still it suffered from what all games suffer from, they can’t put out content at the pace we consume it. And arguably they took a too narrow focus on the LS, and while it did add cool big one time events, it lacked a way to provide an addition to meaningful permanent content. The scaling system no longer functions as a way to provide ‘all content as end-game content’, and the new levelling system did away with some of this as well.
Aka. experimental game-content with industry standard problems…

- GW2 ‘had’ a great legacy in GW1, for as far as game-play went, tons of skills (to much apparently), tons of build options, all sorts of damage types, 2 profession system, simple build switching, an early ingame level platform, making the game more about the experience and builds, and less about the level grind. Only thing that was slightly gated was the access to skills, which ‘to-me’ was actually one of the great features of GW1, the first thing to do in town -> see the skill trainer for new cool stuff! And the Elite hunting (although frustrating at times), was rewarding in it’s own sense.

GW2 game-play is not GW1 gameplay with dodging and jumping , it is an MMO standard ‘boring’ level gated grind , and due to how the scaling system fails the ‘all the game is end-game’ no longer functions either. Instead we see a shift to the industry standard players should feel powerful in lower level area’s.

I will refrain on the whole balance issue, and build options, etc. and just conclude with GW2 Game-play is boring industry standard game-play and in my views not worthy of the GuildWars name! This game should have been called ‘Tyria’ or something like that, because it simply isn’t guildwars in any way shape or form, as far as game-play is concerned.

And where do we see the most upheaval, and somewhat rightfully so. When it concerns further game-play deviation from the GuildWars ideals. And where it concerns delivering new permanent content .

I mean, if i can figure this out as a long term fan and gamer, without any true background in Game-design, nor getting paid to think about these things, then to what standard should i hold ANet, a company saying ‘We want to build the best game we possibly can’. It is not that they are not getting enough pointers or feedback here…

While i am still somewhat in shock, and not sure if i should join in the frenzy or give constructive critism, and changes i would personally make… i guess i can make a joke about it…

Relshdan.6854:

game starting to feel like its being set up to go F2P…. wink wink.

“We are sorry that the new levelling system was so ill received, to make up for your frustration we will be giving a 50% off on all levelling boosters in the coming weekend”.
.
.
Sorry if that didn’t do it for you either, i thought it was a good joke when i just thought of it… but when reading it over it’s mostly just saddening, guess in that sense it’s still appropriate .

Elrey.5472:

dekou.6012:

I stopped hyping GW2 as a great game a while ago – mostly due to the bugs and not much happening on the updates front – but I always recommended it as a fun game exploration and leveling wise. This patch and the trait revamp killed that, so…

Well, you know, maybe it’s even a marketing movement to move people to Wildstar since they’re losing people really fast as i heard. At this point i could believe any possibility.

That doesn’t work that way though, seeing how the word is about WildStar… and that is in fact the biggest thread to any company, ‘bad word of mouth’ (or type, as a lot takes place on the internet in words these days)… instead people will see NCSoft and remember ‘Tabula, CoH, WildStar, GW2’ and see ‘Game X – published by NCSoft’ and think, yeah let’s not make that mistake again…

So in a sense I do hope that part of the Changes, which make the game more and more a general MMO (i shun from saying WoW-game, as i know we have many former WoW players amongst us who had great fun)), come from the investors side. See you like an investor likely doesn’t take investment advice from a gamer, a gamer shouldn’t take directions from an investor.

Ok, guess I’m ending up on WoW afterall, but don’t fret … WoW wasn’t the successful game because of the levelling or the gear treadmill, WoW was a successful game because it was ‘there’ at the right time, had new features at the time; but most importantly already had 3 (i think it was 3) strategy games under it’s belt, with a fairly rich history and following to build upon. It wasn’t because of the gameplay… it was because it was Warcraft, that it became such a success, in a period where subscriptions where still the norm, though where technology largely made the former reason to have subscriptions void. (aka. server space & bandwidth started to come ‘free with cereals’). And here is where investors make mistakes, they know jack kitten about gaming, and see WoW and dream of the mountains of $$$ that it generated and demand a game to be like WoW. But there won’t ever be a game like WoW, even Destiny will likely not see the return that WoW did.

/Sigh …

But then again maybe my regards for ANet are just to high, for all i see is that they remove themselves more and more from GW1 as far as Gameplay goes. Sure they improved a lot on MMO features we all got frustrated about in other games. But at the same time they replaced all the good things about GW1 and replaced them with the MMO gameplay we GuildWars Players tryed to stay away from…

Where at times i feel sorry for ANet for some of the backlash they get, especially when trying out new things that fall flat somewhere. In this particular case they owe it all to themselves, the further GuildWars gets from GuildWars, the more people will leave, and once those that played for 7-8y left, there will be nobody who will give ANet any credit for things of the past. And all they can do is look in the mirror!

+1 Agree with the OP on all accounts, a first time through would have been nice; but I’m now saving them for a rainy day, or to have a bit of a goal to replay them with friends

I gave you a +1 because I can see your concern, and it’s basically the same in regards to the silence to the ‘EL continue coin’ that people spend $10 on. And seeing this is could well be considered as being ‘basically’ theft or scamming, it is sad to see ANet result to these kinds of practices and not have the balls to acknowledge their customers concerns.

I would also like to mention that I consider this as a ‘strike’ on my ‘companies I want to support’ list, and besides that I haven’t spend a $ on any gem due to the pricing, it does not entice me to actually spend a $ in the future. ANet and GW2 are actually already on multiple strikes for me, and the only reason I continue playing is that they have a high ‘positive credit’ build up, based upon actions in the past.

But there isn’t much room left before the scale tips, to me this has large consequences, because in general I figure out which publisher the game comes from and I strike all of them from my ‘to buy & play’ list. F/e EA and Blizzard are already on that list, no game published by them, no matter how much I would like to, is getting bought and played… and redeeming points when you lost a way to redeem them, is really hard if not impossible. Sure they might not care about me as a 1 person, but I’m a talkative guy, and do not shy from voicing my opinion, positive or negative… and once an idea is born it is very hard to kill it and more then likely it will spread, be that idea positive or negative…

You can fool some people sometime, but you can’t fool all the people all the time

It is sad to see so many people not getting the moral implication of your concern, and I will leave it at that. I for one see where this IS a problem, a BIG one! And while I do not mind a company doing well, and making a profit. It’s when making a profit comes at the expense of everything else, is where things go wrong for me, and I refuse to be the dumb-kitten-tail to fall for those things… As far as I’m concerned you have all the right to give feedback on the reason why you left, as well as to ask ANet for a response.

So what do I like about GW2 gameplay design?

The resurrection this was a non-choice in GW1, or rather, not taking a res could slow or even entirely kitten your effort. The GW2 system is far superior.

The weapons! Using the weapons the way they are makes that 50% of the skill choices have been preselected, making it simpler to make a viable build. Another is the healing skill, making it so that survivability is somewhat guaranteed. To some extend I also like the Elite Choice, for as far as supplying a choice that always works, yet at the same time it makes the choice trivial, so it no longer becomes a really interesting part of your build.

Obviously in this system I do not like how we hardly have any choice left, there are 3 ‘choice’ skills, I say ‘choice’ because due to how the traits are set up you are usually best off to pick 1 category of the 5 provided, and stick with them. And I tend to pick 2 and supplement it with 1 other skill that is just to useful to omit.

This limit to interesting choice is why I suggested adding choice skills to weapons on #2 & #4 as well as adding more skills to the utility slots. This would mean there are 5 slots to pick, which would actually be more than the true choices in GW1, where a build and a res-signet usually reduced actual true choice to about 3 to 4 skills. As well as add more choices…

Now obviously the choices would never become as interesting as those in GW1 but it would be a start to lifting GW2 to a more agreeable game system for wearing the ‘GuildWars’ name…

What we lost though:

A. While I realise that from the 150/200 or so skills per profession in GW1, even with a dual profession system, only a small portion of them were actually used in the most viable builds. But due to the large amount of skills, ‘balance’ changes were almost always interesting as skills faded in or out of the meta.

Also, due to a large amount of builds usually involving 4 to 5 skills (including an elite), there was the option to gear 3 to 4 skills to your individual preference or play style. And where there were specialized builds (all 8 skills were needed), they usually involved an entirely different play style (f/e BiP builds) that were a challenge to learn and offered a nice change of pace, and were only needed in a few specific maps.

The amount of skills and the build options in GW2 are really saddening, objectively speaking there are roughly 4 builds per profession, which are cut apart and mingled together. Due to ‘balance’ choices, only 1 or 2 of them are actually viable, and within these builds there is absolute no freedom to do your own thing.

although I realize that I’m likely fairly biased, as just messing around with builds was something I liked doing on a regular basis; simply trying to find something new or interesting.

B. The reason for dumbing down the skill system was said to be done due to a lack of understanding from players, in regards to the complexity of the game. Same was said for conditions and buffs.

But I would argue that the current system in GW2 is even more complex, yet, the complexity isn’t an interesting one based upon build choices. It is complex due to the large amount stat combo’s and trying to figure out which one would benefit your build the most.

Now look at the conditions, GW1 had 10 of them, GW2 has 12. I will say that the amount of ‘Boons’, which can be compared to ‘enchantments’ in GW1, has received a considerable reduction, from 261 enchantments, down to 9 boon effects. I am sure I do not have to explain how this made the boons less interesting as a play style. The same can be said by removing the 264 Hexes that were in GW1, because ‘yes’ in a sense they can be viewed as ‘conditions’, so the reduction was there, from 274 individual hexes & conditions down to 12 conditions.

Design problem with both of them the human mind can only process about 7 different things at a time; preferably you subcategorise anything that comes above 6 (maybe even 5). So having 12 different conditions is cognitive bad design, it doesn’t make it one bit easier than having 274 different things … It would have been cognitively better to subcategorise in something like: Conditions (5-6) , Effects (5-6), Curses (5-6), Hexes (5-6). Obviously the same can be said by boons, subcategories like Boons (5-6), Enchantments (5-6).

C. While I acknowledge that the large amount of damage types in GW1 may have been confusing (fire, ice, shadow, physical, etc http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_type ); doing away with them entirely made the game increasingly more boring, and to some extend less believable. Burning a Lava creature is one of the most laughable things in GW2 and somewhat of an insult to the RPG genre as a whole…

Here the same cognitive limit applies (as with conditions & boons), limiting this feature to 6 would make it easier to comprehend and process. F/e limiting them to elemental types (fire, ice, earth, water, physical) and resistance to them would have been enough to provide an interesting and believable system. Add to this Defiance and you have a system of 6…

D. Where the system in GW1 consisted of ‘7’ stats, 1 being the profession specific stat, and 6 (2x 3 – 3 for each of 2 professions) typical stats, with corresponding runes. With a corresponding restriction to the min-req. on weapons. Staying within the cognitive limit (or close to it at least).

We now have 16 different stats, where some of them are also a ‘hidden’ combination of 2 of them. Not only runes provide stats, but also the armour, and the weapons, as well as traits. Well I have already pointed out how the GW2 system is more complex in a boring sense, and more confusion than GW1. This is the how and why in my views.

! E ! And the worst part of all this is, the system above is to me what made GW1 the game GW1 was. Because you could place this system in any other plane (aka. on Mars instead of on Tyria), and in a completely different lore setting. With or without PvP, or guilds, with bigger groups or smaller, or w/e. And the game would ‘play’ the same. … so to me we lost a lot of the essence of GW1 in the design of GW2, and this is the main gripe I have with the game… plus, that where GW2 has been dumbed down in various area’s it hasn’t become cognitively easier to understand, and where the complexity at first was in the interesting part of the game (skills) it now is in the uninteresting part (stats).

To me GW1 & GW2 are about as equal as the left and the right Twix, all they (GW1 & 2) share today are a wrapper (name) and a driveway (Anet). /sarcasm

Though, as you can see in this thread, what people liked in GW1 differs by a large margin. Even how they look at ‘how it is manifested in GW2’ differs. F/e taking Danikat’s points, and how view them:

1. GW1 was an expansion driven, non pay-to-win non subscription game. While the non pay to win stayed, GW2 is no longer expansion driven, but it is game-shop driven. And this becomes more and more clear through how the various features in the game are set up.

2. GW1 had no gear treadmill, there was a clear max in fairly easy to obtain maximum ‘armour, weapons, runes’ (the hardest to obtain was probably the superior rune of HP). GW2 on the other hand, has a gear treadmill build in, even though the stat increases (from exotic to ascended/legendary) are so minimal they might as well be considered negligible, the stat increase between rare and exotic is not. While one could argue that all exotic armour can be crafted, the prices for these items in-game or on the TP are so major that were there no crafting, it could almost be seen as a ‘pay-to-win’ kind of management of the economy. Also, the addition of Ascended weapons, is exactly what a gear treadmill is, adding new higher stat weapons as a way to extend gameplay beyond it’s natural life.

3. Build Changing… this is the one that I would oppose most as being in GW2, actually, the whole system seems to very much be favouring locking people into a certain build, mainly through armour & runes. And while this wouldn’t be such a problem if the game was balanced properly, and the reward system rewarded all kinds of contributions to the fight (support & CC); but fact of the matter is the game is not! This means that if you play the game as you want, is not playing the game optimally, and the way the economy is managed and thus the prices for armour & runes are, once you make ‘a wrong’ choice, you are screwed until you manage to grind enough gold (which may well be around 150G) just to change your build.

Compare that to GW1 where you could just goto a rune-seller and buy a different rune for 200silver or so (foregoing a few that cost more, mainly the HP rune at 20g or so), and change your build around entirely, if you didn’t have all sorts of runes drop on you already.

And sure, in GW2, you can swap your weapon and skills, you can even re-pick your traits easily. But that is only around 30% of your build and effectiveness, the rest comes from weapons/armour/runes. And they dictate how effective your ‘build’ will be, and with their prices, GW2 isn’t at all as flexible as GW1.

4. The art style and technology for the art were a major improvement to GW, as well as full 3 axis gameplay.

What we lost in the next contribution…

Nobody agrees, disagrees, wants to share their ‘expectations’ … /ponder /surprised

Well, nice to see ‘Collecting Achievements’ isn’t on any of our lists … means there is even more to make the world more interesting ^^