Guild Wars 2

There is a way around this, but it involves development time and assets I suspect ArenaNet aren’t willing to spend.
The idea would be to make individual helmet models with the underlying hair model models integrated.
I don’t know off the top of my head, but let’s say there are 30 different hairstyles for human females.
To make sure each hairstyle was accommodated without clipping would mean 30 models for one helmet.

This would increase a couple of things dramatically:
Modelling time. As a rough estimate, let’s say there are 30 hairstyles per gender, per race. That’s 60 models per race, with 5 races bringing that to 300 models per headpiece. Effectively, you’ll have increased time spent making art assets for headpieces alone by 30000%.
Asset count would also go up quite a lot more too. Essentially, where the engine is currently having to track 1 model per headpiece, the database would increase in size 300 fold using the rough estimate above. This requires a lot more storage and processor power per server.

Of course, there may be a more elegant way around this by precisely defining culling areas on headpiece models during creation, but not being privy to the way the engine or the ArenaNet modelling process operate, I can’t in all honesty say how easy or difficult this would be to implement. It’s more a question for the developers and artists.

Nage.1520:

There’s already a user-definable key to do a 180. It’s called “About Face” you an access it from the Options/Control Options section of the Options menu.

Ah, cool. I figured some of mine may have already made it into the game, but I haven’t played since November and don’t intend to again any time soon, so had no way of knowing.

You forgot duels and mounts.

I KID!

Excellent list, and I can tell you’re approaching it from a developer’s point of view.
May I suggest the addition of a crosshair/reticle for your suggested freelook toggle?
Third-party mods that risk tagging the user as a hacker are already doing this, so it would be wise to accommodate this in-game.

Some other random spitballs:

A user-definable key for a 180° turn.

A toggle to show or hide the titles of other players.

When walking, a character should not be able to step off of ledges (like Minecraft’s crouch behaviour). With that in mind, make it so that players can choose between the behaviour of the walk button, so it can be hold or toggle.

Tearaway chat tabs to allow for multiple floating chat windows all showing different channels.

New paper-doll inventory slots for minipets and food. Minipets placed in these slots should automatically show in-world without the need to double-click them in the inventory, and food stacks placed in these slots should be automatically consumed until the stack runs out.

Oh, and my current favourite. Completely scalable and moveable UI elements like in GW1. While I can understand the desire of the developers to have the user interface constrained by them so it appears “tidy”, a player should be able to tailor the UI to completely suit their needs.
If that means obscuring their viewport into the world with health bars, buffs, debuffs, inventory windows, maps and quest trackers in seemingly random positions and sizes, so be it. It should be the user’s choice, not the developer’s. It is, after all, a user interface.

Dang, one more:
Sort out the scaling of text when switching to compact UI mode!
This is particularly noticeable when opening the BLTC window, where text looks like it is defaulting to badly scaled bitmap fonts instead of smoothly scaling Truetype/Opentype typefaces.

People saying that players are buying these things outright with real cash make my mind boggle.
I’ve just done a quick calculation using the current exchange rates, and to buy the Juggernaut directly from the trading company converting gems to gold would cost ~$617.
If people really are doing that, one, they’re just bloody stupid and two, I can understand how ArenaNet think they can get away with exploiting the stupidity of their punters by implementing more and more gem shop frippery.

Extra personal story phases are too expensive and difficult for them to develop, and don’t fit neatly into the two-week release cycle, so they’ll never happen.

Khisanth.2948:

It’s just another currency. No more reason to remove it than gold, karma, laurel, badges, dungeon tokens, …

Not really; ArenaNet currently use the carrot of achievement points as a cheap alternative to hard work.
Instead of having to develop deep, meaningful, lasting content, they create several easily developed scenarios then make players repeat them ad infinitum by dangling lots of achievement rewards in front of them.
This way they can make content that players of any other non-MMO would play once for maybe a quarter of an hour and stretch it to consume hours, all in order to get more achievement points.
And sure, you can say this kind of content is optional. But as every single newly released activity has achievement points associated with it, players who opt out of such cynically designed content end up not playing at all because there’s nothing FOR them to play.

I’ve been saying this for ages now, but ALL gear needs the Legendary “Change Stats” feature. The crafting materials used to make an item should purely control appearance of the final item.

Not good enough. ArenaNet need to remove achievement points completely. They’re just a poor substitute for actual meaningful gameplay.

I think it’s less the cost (although it IS restrictive for less affluent players), and more the limited and restricted amount of places you can go to refund trait points

Oh, and tear-off chat panes.

KarateKid.5648:

danbuter.2314:

I would also really like this. Every other mmo lets you move stuff around, but not this one.

Just copy the UI of this game’s predecessor – it would be fantastic.

Yeah, one of the first things I tried to do when playing Beta was unlock the interface and I was confused when I couldn’t.

The way it should work, that would make it easy and convenient:
All account bound items would reside in a pane of the Hero window, much like Achievement Rewards, and you’d be able to make a copy for free whenever you wanted one.

The way it will work on release:
You’ll have to log on to the character with the desired item, drop it in the bank, log on with the character you want to transfer it to, then grab it out of the bank. Tedious busy work.

The way ArenaNet would implement my idea:
They’d find some way of charging you for every time you created a copy from the Hero window.

Too late for that, they’ve already gone full-batcrap.

They’ll implement this and make you buy “Consumption Charges” from the gem store for every use.

BearJada.3295:

While I am devoutly hoping that this issue is all a mis-communication and not as horrible as it sounds, I do wonder how you’re so convinced that refunds are a thing that will happen. I’m not trying to give you a hard time, I’m honestly curious why you think they will?

They gave refunds to people who bought multiple infinite harvesting tools.

Remember, map completion is finite, unless you constantly create and delete characters.

Blaeys.3102:

At current exchange rates, it takes about 14 gold for enough gems to buy 5 transmutation stones. One transmutation stone = 3 charges.

So, basically 15 transmutations (2 full outfits and several weapons) would cost you 14 gold today (if you didnt want to buy gems with real money). That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Acceptable to you now maybe, but here’s a fun experiment for you:
Hop along to the GW2Spidy Gem Exchange Rate History Graph and set the “zoom” to “All”.

Notice something?
Yup, that’s right.
While 100 gems has always cost $1.25 to buy, they have consistently gone up in gold value.
100 gems on release will have cost you ~27 silver.
A year after release, 100 gems could be bought for ~3 gold and 20 silver.
Fast forward to today and 100 gems will cost you ~9 gold and 16 silver.

What this highlights to me is that the economy has been very sneakily designed so that over time it will become more efficient for ANY player of the game to drop real world money on gems rather than earn the gold to buy them in game.
Not too long from now, maybe within the year at the rate the conversion is rising, $1.25 will buy you one piece of tier 3 cultural armour. Eventually that $1.25 will buy the whole set.
And it’s so gradual, they’re obviously hoping that this will be the case and that the future Guild Wars 2 player will be more willing to spend real-world cash than earn the gold in game.

Blade Syphon.4325:

GW2 is quickly becoming less of a Free to Play game with a single purchase price where everything can be unlocked in game, to a game where everything is locked behind a pay-wall in the Gemstore.

Here’s another little gem that ArenaNet are happy for their customers to forget:
Guild Wars 2 is NOT free-to-play. You pay for the initial game. On release, it was a substantial amount compared to other games.
The reason they don’t correct people?
Because if their customers believe it’s free-to-play, they’re more likely to accept free-to-play monetisation tactics.

Another interesting and disturbing article I read recently centred on research that revealed adding just one layer of abstraction between real world currency and in-game items results in most players not understanding the monetary value of items they buy in game.
In layman’s terms?
Gems are there to disguise the cost of items you buy in the gem store so you’re more likely to spend more money.
Dollars mean something to punters.
Gems don’t.

The article also highlighted that this tactic is more successful when implemented against younger consumers.

In other words, it was explicitly detailing how developers should exploit the naiveté of younger consumers.

mtpelion.4562:

Unrelated question, just because I’m curious: Are they are real F2P, or a “second class citizens can kind of play for free like SWTOR”?

Real free-to-play. I’m a little hazy on it as I haven’t played for a while, but they release hefty content-based updates as paid-for “DLC”. The core game is completely free.

Still not seeing where I said a little monetisation is acceptable I see?
Figures; Internet debaters can only argue in binary and have no ability to understand nuance.

mtpelion.4562:

Well, DCUO can get away with that because they also charge you for monthly access and thus they are making their money on subscriptions.

DCUO started as a subscription MMO, but went free-to-play on November the 2nd, 2011.

Mirta.5029:

The gem store in Guild Wars 2 in comparison is completely harmless.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that

I don’t get anything for free, as I haven’t played since November, and every move they make like this drives me further away from ever playing again.

The point is, a little monetisation is acceptable.
Yet ArenaNet are hellbent on finding ways to monetise every last update, and the gullibility of the userbase allows them to get away with this.

I can guarantee I spent more on this game than you ever have before I snapped to my senses and realised how I was being exploited. The relationship between myself and ArenaNet was very similar to that between a junkie and a pusher.

Oh, and the developers? Yeah, they really don’t see the gains that this monetisation strategy earns.
This is all about management and shareholders, hence the high turnover of junior staff.

Look at the things that are being monetised. If you actually got something new out of this, something that consisted of meaningful gameplay, I would argue that would be worth money.
But they’re simply finding ways of monetising existing systems that require as little manpower as possible.

This really isn’t value for money. The fact that once it’s implemented it needs no maintenance should make this at most a one time charge, but instead they’re getting you to pay for every use of something it only took one guy to implement and that will require little to no future development.

Jordo.5913:

i would buy it….way easier than having to buy 50-70g worth of new armor

And you’re the reason the feel they can get away with this execrable behaviour.
No willpower, just a credit card and an internet connection.

Oh yeah, they’ll implement the ability to change stats too. It’ll just cost a rare item that can handily be bought from the gemstore, mark my words.

Look, I have no problem with a developer’s need to make money, but there are better, less exploitative ways of doing it.

Hell, I’d even be happier if they charged for the initial copy of the skin to the wardrobe as long as every subsequent use was free.

Gnat.9405:

Someone please verify that I am understanding the charges correctly:

Once you use a charge for a particular skin, that skin is, well, “charged” and can be used repeatedly without using another charge? The charges only need to be applied once per skin, correct?

Nope. Every time you change the appearance of an item, it will use a charge.

Shifu.4321:

You realize that T crystals are one of the biggest moneymakers for Anet? if they remove it, and make all skins free, they’re basically doing away with a large chunk of their revenue.

Then they would be forced to come up with other ways of making money.

Great, they’ve finally implemented what a lot of people have been pining after for ages, yet they’ve also cynically monetised it.
This system and its equivalents are COMPLETELY FREE in other MMOs such as DCUO.
They almost had me back and playing again with this, but they had to go and screw it up with greed.

Okay, my overall point here is that the act of levelling should include a significant milestone at every level. Assigning a single trait point to a trait line that has no other effect than making a number slightly higher isn’t a significant milestone. The levels between 30 and 80 that aren’t multiples of five solely consist of this kind of unsatisfying progression. It’s busy work that could very easily be consolidated down.
This is emphasised by the fact that once at top level with all trait points available, no trait points are ever assigned on an individual basis but rather assigned in groups of five.

This is why people with multiple characters quite often find the game a drag between 30 and 80. The process has been needlessly extended and levelling rewards needlessly stretched out to simply occupy time.

If ArenaNet reduced the amount of levels as I proposed, they could relatively easily rebalance the maps so that more of the game would be balanced towards top-level play.

The point being, nobody uses that degree of fine-grain control when assigning trait points. To do so is sub-optimal. It’s a false illusion of flexibility, when in reality, only the assignment of five points at a time is EVER used.
As that is the case, there may as well not be the individual points in between.

StinVec.3621:

I’m not sure how you think trait points are only useful in groups of five. In relation to unlocking traits, yes. However, trait points are quite useful singularly as each point spent increases the chosen stats of the area they are placed into.

Name me one build that doesn’t consist of trait assignments divisible by 5.

There’s too much pointless busywork in GW2’s levelling system as it stands, and this just ends up delaying things.
The way they SHOULD have done things?

Okay, let’s start with the utter pointlessness of single trait points to give you a concrete grounding in the theory for my way they could drastically improve the levelling experience while reducing the amount of levels.

Trait points are only useful in fives.

There’s nothing you can do with individual trait points if the total doesn’t amount to a multiple of five.

This means that after 30, you only hit a true milestone every five levels.
Levelling in RPGs should be meaningful, but post-30, 4 in every five offer no sense of progression at all.

I contend that in order to make every level feel meaningful, they consolidate.

Currently, at maximum level there are a total of 70 trait points available. Nobody ever puts less than multiples of five into a traitline. Who has ever found a use for a 14/16/21/19 build?

I propose they reduce that number to 14 and that minor and major traits in traitlines only cost a point each.
Next, reduce the number of levels in the game from a mind numbing 80 to a meaningful 15.
You start at level 1 with no trait points, then gain one every level up until 15.
This means that every level is a milestone, unlocking a new ability for your character instead of adding mindless filler levels in between.

I mean, that’s essentially how it works at the moment, but it’s just disguised with pointless filler levels.

GET RID OF THE POINTLESS FILLER.

In addition to the notes on Ranger not teaching good melee skills, the locked-in animation of the Sword auto-attack doesn’t help here. Unless you time your dodge to coincide with the end of the animation loop, you simply won’t dodge.

My main build on my Ranger before I stopped playing in November was a condition-heavy Sword & Torch one with Shortbow offhand and Lynx / Jaguar pets. It allowed for quick and regular application of many different condition stacks (mostly bleeding, burning and poison). But while it was fun to play, when in melee I didn’t feel completely in control, as I simply couldn’t dodge when I wanted to.

I won’t be coming back until they remove the statistical bonus from Ascended gear outside of Fractals.
This gear should have stats identical to Exotic in WvW & PvE.

The major mechanical problem with Rangers is that if the pet gets hit, both it and the owner slow to combat speed.
I would have thought that balancing this shouldn’t be complicated; simply make the pet and the owner different entities for determining combat state. But it looks like this is beyond ArenaNet’s ability to implement.

To be honest, I’ve always felt that having both critical chance AND critical damage be influenced by build and stats was a poor choice.
When the concept of critical hits was introduced to P&P RPGs, while certain classes or circumstances had higher chances to crit, the results were always the same; a roll on the critical effect table or a straight double-damage hit.
I think ArenaNet would be much better off adopting a similar mechanism, as this current one is obviously incredibly difficult to balance.
Have critical chance be variable, sure, but leave critical damage as a set amount.

I also think certain circumstantial attacks should be changed to be guaranteed critical hits, such as attacks on knocked down or stunned opponents.

And as an aside, I don’t think there’s any reason to have both Daze and Stun in the game.
They should be rolled in to one effect, as currently they’re far too similar in behaviour and end up confusing players, new and old alike!

Alternatively, here’s a 1600×900 crop of the maximum size 1920×1200 version to maintain maximum detail on the characters:

A decent step on the right path, but half-baked without easily switched gear stats.

They’re just trying to think of the best way to monetise them.

Coming soon!
Gift of the Gemstore!
This one-use only item can be yours for the trivial price of 8,000 gems!
This gift is essential to the creation of the amazing new Legendary weapons!

Just what this game needs, another identikit uniform that every last person in the game will have.
Do you not remember how farcical GW1 monks became?
They ALL had the same ridiculous outfit towards the end; Chaos gloves, Obsidian armour dyed black and a bandana. It was laughable and hideous.
Still, I guess it made it easy for people to spot the simple-minded folk easily amused by shiny objects.

The core problem is that for a lot of the content in GW2, it’s only interesting the first time you’ve played it. And due to the way the world and story progress, levelling characters starts out pretty diverse, but narrows down to the same outcome every time.
After playing 3 characters through the story and getting world map completion on at least one, chances are you will have seen 99% of what the game has to offer, and subsequent playthroughs will just be repetition of the same content.

And as other people have mentioned, post level 30, the PvE experience feels like unnecessary padding. You know how your character will play, but you have to grind out 50 more levels with nothing more interesting than a trait point per ding to keep your attention. The game is in desperate need of an editor-in-chief to trim the fat.

I think they would have been better off setting maximum level to 30 then balancing the remainder of the maps around that level. That way, instead of only having one truly top level zone on release, more than two-thirds would have been “end game content”.

DinoToss.4810:

Just curious, Achievements are there for those who want to get them, and I dont see how they “poison” the game. Yet with rewards, what is your opnion on gear in GW2? did you like the model of gear in GW1 or do you prefer having endgame gear scale similar to the say it does in other MMOs? (I.E. not all exotic/Masterwork/Rare gear is the same template with mere skin changes)

The reason I think that about achievements is that every last bit of content ArenaNet releases now is designed around the concept. Instead of prompting the team to design interesting gameplay that stands on its own and genuinely introduces new ideas and radical mechanics, they pump out content that consists of repeating the same thing over and over and “rewarding” players at the end with an achievement and a cosmetic item.
Often with the content they have released, if you were to play it once, it would take all of a couple of hours for every single new activity per living story release. Yet through adding the soft progression of achievements, they artificially extend the amount of time people have to spend logging in and playing.
While yes, technically you don’t have to play new content that relies on achievements, if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be playing the game.

As to your question regarding gear, yes, I much preferred the gear system in GW1. Although even that had its flaws, with certain runes and inscriptions commanding obscenely high prices.
Cosmetics-wise, I’ve found that the best system I’ve ever used in MMOs is that of DCUO, where once you unlock a style, you can use it whenever you want. You end up with hundreds of cosmetic choices per equipment slot, and these can be re-used ad infinitum.

My dream for GW2 would be a gear system where you were able to easily obtain your maximum stat gear upon reaching level 80. You could then unlock different stat combinations and runes / sigils through play which would permanently be added to a drop-down menu on each item, with the end result being an item that possesses all possible stat combinations as Legendary weapons do at the moment.
To unlock them, you could adapt the elite capturing concept from GW1 and require that the player use a Signet of Capture analogue on a boss they’ve defeated that utilised that stat combination in its design.

Additionally, there would be a separate drop down for the cosmetic style of the item that could also be changed whenever the player liked as long as they were out of combat. Whenever you bought a new style, it would permanently unlock a new choice in the menu.

But this is far too player-friendly and harder to monetise, so I suspect we’ll never see it adopted by ArenaNet.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”

People keep referring to GW2 as being a free-to-play game.
Yet it’s not; there is a substantial initial outlay.

ArenaNet don’t jump in to correct people when they call it free-to-play, as this mistaken public perception suits them. If people believe the game is free-to-play, they’re more willing to accept the dubious monetisation tactics utilised by such products.

And ArenaNet use a lot of the most unsavoury free-to-play economic models, ones designed to cloud player judgement and warp their perceptions of value.
One of the most effective ways of doing this is to hide the real-world-value of in-game items by using the transitional “currency” of gems.

So remember, this game isn’t free-to-play, and you shouldn’t allow ArenaNet to use the same exploitative economic models on you.

With that out of the way, a comment on dungeons:
I’ve often thought that the best way to design a dungeon would be to take a leaf from the game Painkiller’s book.
In Painkiller, each area is an arena that is locked off until you’ve killed every last enemy.
You simply cannot skip content.
I’m sure ArenaNet didn’t have skipping in mind when designing dungeons, but it has become the only way to play.

If they did adopt the Painkiller model, I think it would become swiftly apparent to them as designers exactly how much of a slog and timesink most dungeons in GW2 are.
They should be aiming to have a dungeon path take 20 minutes to half an hour. Yet currently, if you were to play many of the dungeons “properly” and kill every last mob, certain paths would take hours.

Of course, there is an interesting way to keep skipping in, and it would mean utilising another form of non-combat gameplay that is currently in the game that still requires skill: Jumping Puzzles.
Make alternate non-combat paths that are jumping puzzles that result in players reaching the same destination as combative teams, but make the jumping puzzles reliant on teamwork. Gates that require team-members to stand on switches to let others through, that kind of thing.

Also, as a GW1 player that has also played other MMOs, when I first played a GW2 dungeon, I was dismayed to see that ArenaNet had adopted the lazy mechanic from other MMOs of making trash mobs in dungeons significantly tougher than their open world counterparts. Over time, I’ve come to realise that it has to be this way as the mob synergy that was so successful in GW1 simply isn’t present at all in GW2.

GW1 didn’t need elite trash mobs in dungeons as the abilities and synergies of groups could be measured to offer players a challenge rather than simply increasing the health and damage of mobs.

ArenaNet need to be brave and prepared to take a deep look at mob AI and synergies so that combat can be satisfying rather than a DPS race.

Sorry I haven’t touched on rewards in this post, but I’m of the opinion that rewards and achievements are the core poisons dragging GW2 down.
I often wonder how the game would play without them. I suspect that without the allure of digital fluff to keep them coming back, players would leave in droves.
I think this speaks volumes as to the core quality of the actual gameplay in GW2 and MMOs in general.

To all the people saying it relates to in-game lore:
That may very well be the case, but in the first game, that lore was created to give flavour and context to what was supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the game: PvP (more specifically, the eSport of GvG).
The first game was advertised very much as a PvP game. It just turned out to have a rather good PvE mode too. Over time, the user-base gravitated more towards PvE than PvP and this was reflected in the splitting of PvE and PvP skills as well as the addition of PvE-only skills.

To my mind, this is where ArenaNet started losing track of what they were good at, and the game became too unfocussed.
Areas that had been designed around the concept of training players to recognise PvP concepts lost their meaning once they became easy-mode with over-powered PvE skills.
Players who liked to play a bit of both game types ended up being confused and driven away by the wild differences in skill behaviour between PvE and PvP. It polarised the user-base and there was a very real sense of resentment between the two communities.

Lore is malleable and can be changed at any time by its creator to more accurately reflect their creative vision.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of players are nowhere near as flexible, and if you change too much, you breed resentment.

It saddens me that an overwhelming quantity of Guild Wars 2 players will have no idea who War Machine are and how their exemplary skills helped shape Guild Wars 1 and by proxy, Guild Wars 2.
And as far as I’m aware, there nothing like the Temple of Balthazar in Guild Wars 2, where the names of guilds who have won official tournaments are recorded for history.

That added a sense that Guild Wars was very much the player’s game and a result of their passion, as well as that of the developers.

Guild Wars 2 commemorates nothing that players achieve.

I think the central problem with any kind of gear progression is that it distracts the userbase from what should REALLY matter: gameplay.
You can argue about ascended being fair/unfair all you like, but the real point is, it draws your attention away from the fact that the actual gameplay isn’t evolving at all.
While gear and achievements are what the community obsess over, ArenaNet will continue to deliver them, as they’re easier than providing interesting, challenging gameplay and redesigning broken systems.

I personally think titles were one of the worst things to happen to Guild Wars 1, and they’ve gotten worse in Guild Wars 2.

They promote repeating content you’ve already played over and over and are a cheap device to extend the amount of time you spend playing the game.
They’re easier and cheaper (ridiculously so) for developers to implement than actual content, which is why the majority of new stuff focuses on titles or their modern counterparts, Achievements.

A modern gaming Achievement is rarely a thing to be proud of. Rather, it’s a brand labelling the wearer as someone who has the stamina and lack of imagination required to repeat content to and beyond the point of boredom.

Let me posit something.
The reason people have adopted the zerker mentality is because it’s the most efficient way of playing.
The content is currently not interesting enough to hold a player’s attention based on gameplay alone.
The things that most players are playing for now are achievements and rewards.

Therefore, people aren’t interested in prolonging exposure to content they otherwise don’t enjoy and are looking for the quickest route to the reward.

This won’t change until the gameplay itself and encounter mechanics actually become fun and reactive rather than scripted and tedious.
The gameplay needs to be more rewarding than the items and achievements.

killcannon.2576:

Except, those games use the same progression systems to make you buy more games like them. It’s not just MMO’s, it’s all games.

Seriously?
You’re really going to generalise that much?
That’s akin to saying “Media exists to make you buy more media!”.

There’s a distinction between self-contained monetisation systems such as commercial MMOs, and independent titles.
But of course, this is the Internet. Only sweeping generalisations are true and everything is an argument to be won.

You want innovation and meaningful gameplay, you shouldn’t be playing commercial MMOs.
Judge Banks is right, the modern MMO is nothing more than a callous exercise in separating customers from their cash.
The interesting stuff is happening in games like Dark Souls, DayZ or Rust.

If you’re disillusioned with Guild Wars 2, I can tell you now that you’ll be just as disappointed with Wildstar or The Elder Scrolls Online or Neverwinter or World of Warcraft or Everquest Landmark / Next. They all, to a man, are designed not with the interest of the player at heart. The only interest they cater to is that of share-holders.

Modern MMO “Progression” systems, be they horizontal OR vertical, aren’t designed with fun in mind.
They’re designed as addictive feedback systems.
ArenaNet is the pusher and the players are the junkies.