Guild Wars 2

My guess goes towards the Tengu for the next race. Would fit very well with the old lore and a possible Cantha addition.

If anyone in their right mind would consider dungeons fun in their current state I believe they have a serious grinding addiction on their hands. As for dynamic events and tasks, they are fun the first time around, but gets repetitive fast, especially with the low amount of skills. I tried rolling a second character but I’m simply no longer having fun, while my first character was a lot of fun from lv1 to lv80. I didn’t have this problem with GW1 at all, I completed that campaign over 8 times each and I’m still having fun with that. A bit of a disappointment when a lot of us are GW1 veterans.

SpectacularYak.6518:

WoW was and is a great game. Thank god its still running. If I want some WoW, there it is. I don’t need to turn GW2 into WoW, or WoW into GW2. I can have both, and play both, and enjoy both.

Because my brain has evolved enough that I can enjoy more than one thing. Shocking, I know.

There was no reason to turn GW into WoW.
Yet they tried their best to do so.
We loved Guild Wars for it being Guild Wars.

But will it stand the test of time? Anet choosing for instant gratification combat rather than strategy based combat is in my opinion not the best way to prolong the lifespan of your game.

I wanted a Guild Wars 1 successor that kept the spirit of the game alive.

Red Falcon.8257:

GW1 sold 7 millions copies and went strong for 7 years.
GW2 is an upgrade of GW1, not a GW1-killer.

I wouldn’t really say GW2 is an upgrade to GW1, they are totally different games. The presentation, gameplay, story scale, setting and audience Anet is aiming at are all totally different. Only thing that it has in common with GW1 is the name, races and some place names. They will be able to do fine next to eachother, since a lot of GW1 veterans expected more of the GW1 formula only to be disappointed to see a WoW flavoured GW instead of the successor they imagined. It’s a matter of taste.

The only thing which reminds me of that game is the awful state dungeons are in now, but here the junk mobs take even longer than in D3. I hope they will ever make it more of a skill based experience than a grind based experience.

You are the best and fought dragons. ~ GW2 story

nlgray.5846:

Azzras.8041:

I’m still amazed that some people thrive on being punished.

What you may call punishment; some call it risk versus reward. Risk versus reward requires problem solving and makes use of experience, unlike being punished.

Want to travel from A to B to save you time (convenience) = Risk versus reward

Want to group with some low level friends (the scaling system was designed for this, right?) but I have to pay large fee = Punishment

Going into the Underworld for 1000 gold is a risk.
Teleporting to a place you need to go to help a friend shouldn’t be a risk.

Hey how about trying to achieve all the mission objectives with the bonuses? Oh wait…

But how about doing those missions in hard mode? Oh…

But we can always do fun Deep or Urgoz expeditions with 12 guildies? Nevermind…

Maybe we should do Underworld or Fissure of Woe? Many fun subquests and good rewards, but wait…

Hold on a sec, just checking out my shiny guild hall.

Ok back, I know it! We should form a group and make up our own strategies. Then we should enter organised PvP and join HA tournaments, leading our group through many objective based modes and fight other guilds in very tactical GvG battles. Yeah…

Oh well, lets play a dungeon and hack away for 2 minutes on a trash mob every two steps we take. Maybe after 50 repetitions of that process we get some shiny suit of armor. Sounds like a ton of fun.

Redundant game design to me, I would like to hear a valid reason from an ArenaNet employee why they have this. In GW1 they were strongly against this, but now suddenly they are adding redundant stuff like WP costs and repair costs, quite coincidentally with the cash gem shop which seem to be the only possible reason things like these exist.

Armor designs are nowhere as beautiful as they were in GW1 unfortunately. Sorry ArenaNet, but adding flames or particles to armor sets does not make up for the loss in sheer style.

Dungeons are simply not fun because they are 15 minute experience spread over an hour by adding an artificially high health pool to all the monsters.

Grashopa.8176:

Deith.7596:

Putting something in game only for purpouse of “use in case of emergency” is called a bad design, nothing more.

ummm…? The waypoints are for normal use, but not for constant use, also you need to use them wisely. You shouldnt be takeing a waypoint from metrica to ascalon, instead you should be going to the nearest city and useing the gates to get closer to your destination, you can probably save around 80% of your munnies anytime you travel a long distance this way.

If you cant figure out how to use the waypoints when appropriate then this game isnt for you, and you shouldnt be blameing the games designers, perhaps you should try nickjr.com my toddler has a blast on there…

And exactly how do waypoint costs add value to the game? Right, nothing. They knew that with GW1 and they also know that with GW2, plain bad game design. Except in GW2 there is an incentive for ArenaNet to add goldsinks, so people like OP are steered into the gem store when they run out of money.

“They also ignore the uniqueness of personal story and how rolling a new character in GW2 can be a valid replacement for endgame because of it’s unique new experiences.”

Haha, don’t let me laugh. The ‘unique’ personal story is just an excuse for a really cheesy and lame story. The choices you make trigger one or two special quests, then it all funnels towards the main quest which is laughable at best. If you played the original Guild Wars you know how disgraceful this ‘unique personal story’ is and how good it could have been if the writers had been doing their job.

It’s pretty fair that they are questioning end-game content. In my opinion the explorables are perfect. Dynamic events are really fun, lots of things to do. But exactly that parts which the 90+ reviews skip are the parts that are designed really poorly. Dungeons are designed like Korean grinding MMO’s with every mob having way too much health in comparison to their threat or abilities. PvP is a massive step down from GW1, turning a strategical rpg game into an everyday hack & slasher. Zerging once or twice is fun, but it’s not made to last. Whether things are made to last is what those reviews focussed on, fair enough to me.

I played GW2 for thousands of hours, gold cape rank, high rank PvP player, completed all the PvE ( except for the grind titles ). I for one was extremely excited for GW2, until I played the beta. From worse to worse, ArenaNet sadly catered more towards the regular MMO crowd than GW1’s fanbase. Turning a unique game into a generic mmo is a revolution of it’s own I guess.

Here is what is wrong and right with the end-game:

- Guild Wars 1 gave PvE players a fun, unique and compelling story with many hand-crafted missions. The end-game areas were not grindy, but very large, challenging and rich in content. Constantly coming up with new strategies for hard areas such as DoA and UW were what kept me playing. The game is fun because the game is well designed. It must offer the player the room to use their creativity and their mind to find solutions to challanges. To offer this environment you need both a large selection in skills and possibilities ( like second profession ) and a large, varied environment with plenty of content.

- Guild Wars 1 gave PvP players many modes ranging from casual PvP, tournament PvP, huge alliance battles, guild wars, etc. No matter what mode you played, personal skill and team composition was always most important. Battles were clearly defined and strategical, no second chances. PvP needs to be a match of skill, designed like a sport. It shouldn’t be focussed solely around attrition and there should be plenty of room to make your own strategy. Guild Wars 1 proved to be exactly that, creativity is fun and rewarding!

- Guild Wars 2 gave PvE players a mediocre, generic story. Not really sure what the writers were thinking, especially with your ‘hero’ constantly shouting that he or she is the best. Emberassing to say the least. Story is short and not really memorable, dungeons are half the size of regular instanced but packed with tanky trash mobs. Designed as if it were a generic Korean MMO. Mobs do not need a million health to be challenging, what instances need is to be well designed. Adding extra filler is no excuse for imcompetence. Allowing corpse running does not make a dungeon fun. Bosses with billions of health who just auto-attack and use one skill does not make a dungeon fun.

- Guild Wars 2 gave PvP players a slap in the face. Not only is the actual Guild Wars missing ( seriously? ) but any form of tournament is missing aswell. WvW while fun, is in the end one giant zergfest. sPvP is just another excuse for casualizing the PvP scene into a place of forgiveness and equalization. Strategical depth is completely missing from PvP, what was once one of the most tactical MMO games has now turned into a generic hack & slasher. Zerg modes may gratify, but they are not made to last. Modes where you constantly respawn are not made to last. A real competitive PvP mode with high risk and skill requirements is missing. Creativity and mind-combat is barely possible due to highly restricted skill bar. All the hundreds of hexes, enchantments, shouts, zeals, boons, wells and auras were turned into a few generic ‘boons’ and ‘conditions’, pretty much kills half of the complexity and fun towards making up your Guild’s very own strategy.

Well I am for one pretty worried, as they are now removing topics with legitimate critique or player concerns that they do not like.

RainbowVomit.2509:

Fox.1054:

If I were you I wouldn’t worry about those 500 tokens you need for your legendary. Hope you realize it costs pretty close to 2 million karma and about 500 gold aswell. Hehe.

It costs 132 gold if you don’t buy anything but the required materials and it costs 525,000 karma.

Please do some research before speaking -_-

If you’re going to correct me, take the liberty to do it right.

100 Icy Lodestones alone cost 100g. For every gift, you have to buy a recipe. The recipes cost 10g each, over 50g in recipes. This is the minimum you need in gold, but I very much doubt you are going to accumulate at the very least 250+80 globs of ectoplasm, 250 vails of powerful blood, 250 vicious fangs, 500 orichalcum ore, etc, and a 80g exotic weapon without pitching in a little bit of money.

I see now that they changed the clovers, so it’s not going to be two million karma but still a ton for a single weapon. Mystic Clovers are based on random chance, at the very best chance you will get 77 clovers out of 80 globs of ectoplasm and 80 obsidian shards. The chance that this happens is miniscule. You’ll most likely spend up anywere from 150 to 200 globs of ectoplasm and obsidian shards.

At the very least you are looking at 250 + 80 shards at 2100 karma each. In the perfect situation you are spending 693.000 karma. Chances are more likely that you’ll end up spending more than a million karma, of which all you must have accumulated on a single character.

If I were you I wouldn’t worry about those 500 tokens you need for your legendary. Hope you realize it costs pretty close to 2 million karma and about 500 gold aswell. Hehe.

Perhaps they should reduce blindness duration to a quarter of the original time, so you need to time it well for it to be effective. It would no longer be bound to a factor of luck, which really kittens some classes who may use it a lot like the mesmer.

Dungeons in GW2 are designed with casual players in mind. You do not need nearly as much coördination, team composition or strategizing as GW1 ever needed. It’s just that casual players do not enjoy staring at health bars for hours on end. In the end they are pleasing no one but the grind players, whom are pleased with pretty much anything aslong as they get ‘virtual prestige’ in the process.

Seriously I do not believe ANYONE likes staring at health bars for hours. The dungeons in GW2 were rushed and flawed in design, that can be easily seen. They are an afterthought or alpha product ( would make sense with the huge differences between every dungeon, consistency is hard to find ) that got shipped with an otherwise pretty good game.

GW2 dungeons aren’t fun unless you are either pleasing a grinding addiction or enjoy staring at endless health bars. They offer zero mental challange or feature to keep you occupied while you endlessly kite the same generic mob time after time. If they made dungeons basically a loading bar that gave you loot every time it reached the end people would still enjoy it solely for the addiction value.

What was a genuinely fun challange was UW, FoW, DoA, Deep and Urgoz in GW1. They forced you to strategize. They were fluid, fast, deadly and didn’t offer second chances. It made the dungeon exciting and fun. ArenaNet had perfected the formula, all they had to add was some random factors. Instead they ruined instances altogether.

A dungeon filled with tanky trash that takes 2 minutes each to dispose and then ending it with an auto-attacking boss that has one basic skill is NOT fun, it’s just a mindless grind.

Serenity.5108:

im going to get a legendary weapon and it will take me probably well over a year.

and i don’t care.

if i want something i will work hard for it as it should be.

the game is only a grind if you make it one. no one is putting a gun to your head telling you to grind for the weapon that you want. there are plenty of other easily obtainable weapons in the game and the only reason many of you guys want this weapon is because its difficult to obtain. if this weapon was simple you guys would not even be after it and also probably complain of the lack of rare weapons.

i apologize for the lack of caps as my left shift is not working and i am not used to the right one yet.

The only issue I have with this is that karma and tokens are account bound. I agree with you that when you play for a longer time you do not have to grind, but you DO have to play all that time on a single character, which to me would get boring fast. That bothers me because I prefer to switch around characters now and then to keep the experience fresh.

The dreadful dungeons already add more than enough of a Korean MMO flavour to Guild Wars 2.

turboether.2643:

It’s a legendary. If you don’t want to put in the effort, you don’t deserve it.

Or they could make it skill based, like gold capes in GW1. All this ‘legendary’ weapon shows is that you have too much time on your hands.

GW1 had really enjoyable and balanced instances, offering a challange while not relying on gimmicks or artificial difficulty. DoA, UW, FoW, Deep, Urgoz, they were all well designed. Even though there were some cookie cutter builds that could finish them, they were all very much possible just by just using your brain. Most importantly they were enjoyable to do and the challange was fun.

Now with GW2 we have the complete opposite. Monotome and unoriginal challanges, artificial difficulty, tanky trash mobs, lots of grind factors, repair costs, corpse running, not so much interesting sub-quests… I could go on for a while. Not to mention that the balance between dungeons themselves are way out of wack. Some dungeons are quick and easy, others a huge >1 hour grind while offering very little content. It makes dungeons feel like an afterthought, just like lv75-80 and lv80 areas of Arah which seem to be released uncomplete and bugged. Seriously, how did it come to this?

ColinJohanson.2394:

“What I would call ‘hard’ was trying to run Domain of Anguish and Mallyx with a balanced setup in the first weeks it was released. Many people called it impossible, but it was a heck lot of fun to do! Why? Because it offered veriety and fluid gameplay, quick and deadly like it should be. Not kiting a mob for 2 minutes and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat.”

I’ll point out ironically, when we first turned on DoA back in Gw1 the posts you’re seeing in this forum from a few folks about difficulty were the exact same comments everyone had about DoA. It was “impossible, mobs were just tuned to do insane damage and have huge HP, there was no tactics to defeat DoA”, etc. I went back and read through the original DoA launch feedback and it was literally identical to the comments folks on the forums are leaving now.

We made the choice back then to stick with the difficulty, and give people time to learn how to play the dungeon better and overcome it. A few months later, people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game and totally reasonable without us changing anything.

We’ll be doing the same with the Gw2 explorable dungeons, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.

We’re actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We’ll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don’t have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We’ll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we’ll be looking at adding more dungeons as well!

All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We’ve seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in Gw1, it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.

If DoA was any indication, a couple months from now, many of you will likely be posting saying most of the dungeons are too easy and you need better challenges

I really appreciate your reply.

However, I think there is a clear difference between DoA and Dungeons in GW2. First of all people are already completing all dungeons without too much of a problem. It’s not the sheer level of difficulty that was put in place, but the problem is how that difficulty takes form.

The problem is that dungeons are not as fun to do as they could be, simply because everything has too much health. In DoA everything had a ton of damage and there were a ton of enemies. In GW2 instead there’s three enemies who take a couple of minutes to take down. It’s simply becoming an obstacle: it feels it’s only that way to lengthen the dungeon rather than make it a fun experience for the player.

It very much gives a feeling of ‘I swung a sword’, something I did not get with any of the dynamic events which were perfectly balanced. What I hoped was to find the average mob to be between the level of a regular lv80 mob and a veteran lv80 mob. I also hoped that the player would actually have a risk involved, that you fail a mission if you all die. But instead there is the option to corpse run. These factors really decrease the fun factor of dungeons, which should be risky, deadly and fluid.

If mob and boss health decreased, mob count increased, mob skill diversity increased, boss skill diversity increased, waypoints removed and tokens made account-based, I believe dungeons would be WAY more fun than they are now. They would also fall more in line with how the rest of the game was designed.

This really needs to be done, at least let us gather tokens on any character we like.

The true difficulty in GW2’s dungeons are personal endurance and sanity.

Seriously ArenaNet, artificial difficulty ( or boredom for that matter ) by increasing mob’s hp is the worst choice possible. Make combat harder by making it more deadly, a mistake should be able to make you lose and corpse running should not be possible. In exchange mobs also shouldn’t have insane health. A bit like GW1’s instances, where you perfected the way it should be done. Why change a winning formula to a generic one?

I have to disagree that it’s not realistic to ask for a really solid story. Just take a look at Guild Wars 1, it not only offered a whole new universe but also probably one of the best stories of any mmo, it was both enjoyable AND believable. It could have very well been an alternative reality. Factions and Nightfall both improved upon this and both offered amazing stories with a lot of backstory behind it. Only with Eye of the North they missed the mark, but that was more of an afterthought than a fully fledged game.

This is why I am quite disappointed with the story in GW2, simply because of the high level they have set with the depth and uniqueness of GW1’s story. I especially loved how your character is traveling with the group ( Cynn, Eve, Mhenlo, Devona, Aidan, etc. ). Destiny’s Edge feels too forced and misses the sheer character and believability that the classic group had.

Especially the lacking believability makes events feel too random and makes it feels like your character is just gravitating towards them, instead of being part of them. Why should I care about some massive end of the world if I do not care about the characters in it? For example GW1’s pre-searing’s beautiful setting made you care about Ascalon and it’s inhibitants. GW2 failed to do this by making everything disjoined in an attempt to make it personal, in the end it felt too forced.

The conversations felt very forced and always proceeded in such a patriotic way of “I am the best!” “we must save the world!”.

Compared to the conversations in GW1 it was really cheesy. Atleast in GW1 characters felt believable and had a purpose. The only part of the story I really liked was the history of Orr, but isn’t this your PERSONAL story? I didn’t really get the feeling that my character had any character at all. I liked the group based story in GW1 much more, everyone wants to be part of a group! Sole heroes are better spent in comic books, hence why the GW2 personal story very much feels like a comic story.

So imagine this:

You are just sitting peacefully in the living room with your wife enjoying a cup of tea. Then this huge towering norn bashes your door, comes into your house, picks up your television and starts walking away with a grin, whispering ‘and I’m not even using my bear form’. Would you even dare to stop this humongous beast? This is why the norn are the best thieves.

I’ve never had this issue, but I agree that there should be a checkbox for convenience. Same for the auction, which can be a bit of a pain to navigate at the moment.

The thing is that dungeons in their current state feel like manual labour. Once ArenaNet makes dungeons fun as they are supposed to be people won’t be bothered by the token cost of gear anymore.

You can easily kill them by having two people of your team constantly throw rocks at both bosses. They can barely even do anything when done properly.

Are we playing the same game? Dungeons are artificially long and grindy, but far from hard. The hardest part of the dungeons is trying to enjoy them, because they have been stretched out far too long for the content they offer and offer far too little intellectually compelling moments.

What I would call ‘hard’ was trying to run Domain of Anguish and Mallyx with a balanced setup in the first weeks it was released. Many people called it impossible, but it was a heck lot of fun to do! Why? Because it offered veriety and fluid gameplay, quick and deadly like it should be. Not kiting a mob for 2 minutes and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat.

The main problem is that they are trying to artificially lengthen the game by stretching 15 minutes of quality content over an hour just by increasing enemies’ health bars. Some people who are used to Korean grinding mmo’s might not have a problem with it, but after showing how it’s done with Guild Wars 1 this is a HUGE step backwards in game design philosophy and entertainment value.

This essentially makes their whole joke about “I swung a sword, I swung it again. Hey! I swung it again” really ironic. I was sitting in awe the first time I played a dungeon in this game, they can’t be serious.

To be worth it dungeons need to be fun and compelling. Right now they feel like a Korean grind mmo and are way too easy. If I wanted to look at an enemies’ health bar for 2 minutes every two steps I would go and play a Korean grind mmo. I want quick and deadly combat, where battles are quickly won or lost and where you need to perfect every of your moves. No teamwork should not an option ( seriously anet, remove the waypoints from dungeons ).

The core problem for all these issues is that dungeons are simply not fun to play due to the overuse of tanky trash mobs a.k.a. virtual loading bars. They are there only to lengthen the dungeons, which would otherwise be short and low in content. Once they have made their health to normal levels they can start making an actual challange and once the dungeons are actually fun to play people wouldn’t mind high token costs for items. After that they can totally remove corpse running, if you are wiped you are wiped.

Dungeons aren’t too hard, they are simply too long for the content they offer. There are way too many trash mobs with tons of health. It makes dungeons a chore to play through.

If it would be up to me enemy health would be reduced to normal levels ( in GW1 it was perfect ). Corpse running would be removed, if you’re all dead you’re out of luck so you would need teamwork to survive; no more waypoints in dungeons. Enemies would get more unique skills that you have to dodge and work around, no longer should 9 out of 10 enemies be auto attacking cookie cutters which are only there to waste your time.

The dungeons do not need to be made easier or harder, they need to be made fun and strategically challenging, requiring teamwork to go through. No holy trinity does not mean teamwork should be dropped altogether. Sure chaining up a few disables is nice, but it simply doesn’t compare to the level of teamwork that could be possible if the dungeons were designed for it. Right now I would classify the dungeons to be too simple and too grindy, this is the complete opposite from what the gameplay should be: challenging, fluid and intellectually compelling.

Let me first say that in Guild Wars 1 ArenaNet absolutely perfected how instances should be done. They were fun, balanced and took a fair time with many different objectives and things to do. Every instance required a different strategy and never really had a point where you would become bored. After experiencing GW2 I find the contrast between GW1’s and GW2’s instances quite disheartening to say at least. The instances in Guild Wars 2 have a huge flaw that totally breaks the fun for many:

Mobs are way, and way too tanky while offering zero strategical challange other than kiting and dodging once or twice.

Dungeons in GW2 are made artificially long by giving every random mob the health equivalent of Abaddon or Mallyx. I’m fine with them doing quite a bit of damage, but their health is absolutely ridiculous, makes dungeons feel like an artificial loading screen. The dungeon champions are even worse makes me temporarily feel like I’m playing an average free Korean mmo. This isn’t like Guild Wars, this is generating artificial gameplay time at the cost of quality.

Think back to those moments at Domain of Anguish or Urgoz’s Warren, which I consider some of the best instances. They were fun and especially DoA required a vast veriety of strategies to succeed because of the area debuffs. That is what I consider a challange, not having to kite and hit every single trash mob for 2 minutes ( which does not require any skill whatshowever ). What made them so enjoyable is that there were a ton of mobs and they did a lot of damage, but they also had a reasonable hp bar. This allowed you to create killing zones and allowed tanks to function properly. I prefer to wait 15 minutes outside of the dungeon gathering people for my ‘holy trinity’ group than to have no trinity and wait 2 minutes at every basic mob in the dungeon itself.

Now build variety is gone and strategy apart from kiting isn’t possible, please atleast make the process of going through the dungeon fun. Things like traps and puzzles are fun, defeating huge waves of enemies are fun, but standing still for 2 minutes on a virtual loading bar waiting for a trash mob to go down is simply NOT fun! This definitely needs to be looked at, it makes the endgame a huge pain to play instead of a challange like it should be.