Guild Wars 2

In no particular order:
(my opinion)

• Guild Halls
• 8 person party
• Various farms other than 2-3 dungeons and credit card
• Lore
• Expansions
• Underworld
• Fissure of Woe
• First person camera
• Capes
• Elite skins earned instead of bought with credit card
• Green weapons
• Alliance battles
• The Guild Wars 1 Anet krew back when they had a passion for Tyria
• Halloween
• Build diversity
• Templates
• Izzy’s balancing (never thought I’d say this)
• Hall of Heroes
• Non-rectangle zones
• Non-casual driven content
• Cantha
• Elona
• Crystal Desert
• Fire Islands
• Mursaat
• Ethnic musical scores
• Drok’s runs
• Port Sledge (was our hangout)
• The other two Anet founders (I don’t like Mike)
• Lore
• Did I say lore?
• Assassins
• Mesmers
• Glint killing us because of our horrible dance grooves
• Abaddon joining in with our sweet, sweet dance moves (we took lessons somewhere in between)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Alternatively, I hope fighting Mordremoth will be more akin to Turai’s Story in GW1’s Bonus Mission Pack – you’re part of a small unit going straight for the head while the main army distracts the enemy.

My thoughts exactly. The final showdown between Turai and Popo Joker was some of Anet’s finest work to date.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordremoth’s being hinted at literally being rooted to the ground so I wouldn’t expect a large aerial battle with him.

Hang on… Not so fast…. This is our Anet we’re talking about here afterall.

I will admit I may have been a tad bombastic.

You made some very valid points Mad Queen. I will concede GW1 was far from perfect, especially in Prophecies. My whole take on GW1 is this:

Prophecies was a hodge podge of stories and ideas.
Factions was the beginning of those ideas being refined.
Nightfall was a culmination of blood, sweat, and tears that deliverd. Big time.
Eye of The North was a final polish of things with some new ideas sprinkled around.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve been conditioned by Anet to have high standards by now. I step back and look at GW2, I’m left wondering “What?” and “Why?”. I understand there’s an evolutionary path things take (greatness just doesn’t happen). But I just don’t see that now. They didn’t learn from the past. At. All.

The beginning was buggy to the point progress was halted.
Character creation choices ultimately proved pointless.
Joining an order ultimately proved pointless.
Trahearne was awful. Kormir2.0 all over again.
The ending was awful.
Go beat the ending of Nightfall then come back and beat the ending of GW2. If you do not get the urge to stand up and flip your desk over and storm out of the room, call your doctor immediately – something might be wrong with you.

How Anet’s storytelling makes me feel.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Gabe.6810:

what is it about thieves that make people want to whine?

The stealth abuse in WvW.
I believe now with ranger and engi revealed skills on 6 secs duration, things are much much better. But without those, stealth is a total joke in this game. Tbh I think there should be more classes with revealed skills, but it’s a good start.

Thieves should get skills with no cast time or obvious tell that shut down:
*Warrior’s Defense line for 6s
*Guardian’s Valor line for 6s
*Mesmer’s Inspiration line for 6s
*Necromancer’s Soul Reaping line for 6s
*Ranger’s Wilderness Survival line for 6s
*Engineer’s Inventions line for 6s
*Elementalist’s Water Magic line for 6s

What’s that? No? Too absurd you say?

From what I’ve seen from others in my circle, myself including, Living Story is a failure.
It failed to provide excitement. It failed to create immersion. It failed to deliver meaningful lore. Each chapter of Guild Wars 1 made me excited with anticipation. The day before release I’d have an eye twitch. After release, friends and I would spend 8-12-16-20 hours playing , running around in the new chapter with BIG STUPID GRINS on our faces.
“Did you see that!?”
“You guys read this?!”
“Hey guys, you think eventually this is going to happen?”
“Have you gotten to that part yet? Oh, duuuuude, just wait!”

Living World is just a “quest-esk” like thing that annoyingly gets added to the clusterf**k that is our upper right corner. We know it will take us a couple hours to a day maximum to complete. We know we MAY or MAYNOT get a new zone. We know we will get an window with new achievement points. And that’s it. There’s none of the enthusiasm I listed above. It’s all:
“Hey bud, what ya doing?”
“Hi! Doing the new living story.”
“Ah, wanna come WvW with us?”
“Sure, give me a couple minutes.”

Absent in guild chat is
“OMG!”
“This is awesome!”
“Get your butt here! Who needs a party?”
“We just went through, but we’ll wait for you here.”
“Meet up with Odyssey, he’s getting ready to start it on a different character.”
“WvW? Why would I want to WvW!? Come join us!”

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

Leah Hoyer.9382:

• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

I love you already! lol

Welcome!

What’s not working (in my opinion):
-The plots are kind of hamfisted. Or to be more specific:
-The characters feel limp wristed. Like they are phoning it in. The voice acting has been terrible, but recently it has been getting much better.
-I don’t like how the Living(dead) World story comes across feeling like a murder investigation. Noire-esk. (Marjory). If you are living in a world that is in imminent danger from gigantic powerful supernatural beings that can’t be rationalized or negotiated with, the focus should be on archaeology, science, and fact finding. Knowledge! Instead we get the same old, same old. Races don’t want to work together, we talk to them into working together, unity, friendship, and carebear love overcomes evil. Yay! Very generic, very unimaginative, very old.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t comment on graphics very often because I don’t have an eye for graphics. I did do some alpha testing for a 3D rendering company and I know a bit about it, but I definitely don’t have the experience I’d need to offer an opinion that might hold some weight.

No, go ahead, share your thoughts, please. It didn’t stop you before with shop owner, educator, editor, moderator…

Add Program QA Associate to the list?

Again:
I have nothing against you voicing your opinions. What I do have a problem with is you clearly and intentionally wording your opinions and experiences as fact, and then going around jumping on others for doing the exact same thing.

It’s tiresome seeing your name plastered everywhere with the same theme of belittling, marginalizing, and contradictory double talk post after post after post.

Sorry if I come off …sharp. It’s not a personal attack. But hey, you can certainly go ahead and report my post again if you’d like. Afterall, I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy everyone hopes to avoid when they click on a thread.

ipan.4356:

…The downside to what you are doing is that you contribute to the feeling that people are not being listened to, that their issues are being dimunized, and you come off as belittling people who have problems with the way the game is being developed.

For example:

• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as a ‘shop owner’.
• In a different thread he bestowed his knowledge as an ‘educator’.
• In this thread he is bestowing knowledge as an ‘editor’.
  I can’t wait to hear which career he picks next to inform the unwashed masses.
• Scrolling further down it looks like he went with… ‘moderator’.

ipan.4356:

I’m curious, how do you believe these posts of yours actually aid Anet/GW2 in any way? I don’t believe they do, or at least not as much as you think.

Delusional? If the Anet crew needs/wants to feel good about their work, they can look into the eyes of their spouses and children knowing they are providing food on the table and a warm roof over their heads. Or a stranger that lurks their forums 8 hours a day.

Yeah, I’m going with delusional.

Vayne.8563:

15% of people post on forums. I know this from other forums I’ve moderated. This doesn’t mean 15% read forums. 15% post of them.

Stop dressing your opinions up as concrete fact when you swat at others for doing the exact same thing.

Vayne.8563:

But I still get thank yous from people every single week.

Congratulations?
So is this what drives you to do what you do? 8 hours a day. Every day.

Vayne.8563:

So, a person puts down a complaint, and it’s followed by another complaint and it’s followed by another.

If I were a person just reading, I’d see all complaints and no one actually saying, you know I like this, or this particular complaint is stating things that aren’t quite true, or this is really exaagerated.
That’s 80, maybe 85% of the lurkers, some of whom may not know better. They may, they may not. I don’t know because they don’t talk.

Where do you expect people to lodge their complaints? The Better Business Bureau?

Ultimately, all of this just looks and feels like one big ego stroke.

The “taking a break for better loots” technique was present in GW1 for me as well. So it doesn’t take a giant leap of the imagination to assume they copy pasted large chunks of their old system into their new system.

Furyan.9578:

“You’re a genius! I’m a genius! We are all geniuses!”.

If everyone’s a genius, nobody’s a genius.

I agree with you Red. I think a lot of other people do too.

I would even venture as far to say it’s not so much if the problem exists, or the solution being good. I’d wager most people are concerned with the reason these solutions are here to address the problem in the first place.

You can’t give people freedom and then take it away. History proves this time after time.

Eponet.4829:

Zhaitan fight was too confusing for new players. Cannons removed. He is now killed by jumping off the ship and climbing up his body in mid flight so you can stab his heart tail.

Fixed that for you :P

Sokia.3710:

And here I was hoping that we would be in Cantha or the Crystal Desert two years after launch.

I think it’s safe to say nearly everyone did.

God …what are you doing, Anet!?

Furyan.9578:

Redenaz.8631:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

Or maybe they weren’t retaining people because… well, they didn’t like the game that much?

Anet would never panic and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

/sarcasm

I personally don’t think it has much to do with China, if at all.

What I think it has to do with is, like Colin stated, metrics.

They look at their numbers, charts, and graphs, and conclude that X needs to be done to effect Y, I feel they are ignoring the impact it will have on Z because they are so focused on X & Y.

It’s like you have this friend that takes nothing but vitamins because of all the well documented benefits they have. You tell this friend he needs to eat more than just vitamins. The friend insists that you’re wrong and points to study after study, chart after chart. Then when your friend is on his death bed suffering from organ failure, you tell him “I told you so.” and he mentions how he doesn’t suffer from inflammation and was never diagnosed with cancer.

Q: what class got hit the worst ?
A: Loyal customers of ArenaNet.

Well considering that the feature patch slightly improved my gameplay so that I was able to run things on medium-low, but afterwards one of the following patches borked the game to wear I get 8fps in Divinitys reach on ultra low, and an unplayable 5fps on ultra low in WvW, I will be sitting out the season, possibly the year.

Hard to say. All depends on how fast Anet pulls their head out of their @ss.

@ OP. I feel your pain and wish you luck. I am fast approaching the same feeling.

P.S. In the unlikely event you someday return, don’t give away your stuff to anyone on the forums. There’s been an increase in trolls and liars lately.

Link

No, nothings changed.
60 and 50.
48 and 40 with trait.

How does dumbing down & gate locking all skills & functions help new players?
How does making everything mind numbing boring help new players?
How does limiting diversity and freedom help new players?
How does not designing a comprehensive tutorial to explain features hurt players?
When you coddle people, don’t be surprised when you get babies.

No, I mean like putting coveted skins in a gem store.
Or blues and greens from champs. Or Maudrey II.
Or precursor scav hunts.
Or many other numerous endeavours that lacks rewards.
But don’t worry, there is always trade post flipping. Because we all know how fun that is and is the reason we play games. Microsoft Wallstreet Simulator 2015

Yes poor writting. This game has the weakest writing of any game I played. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is what it is.

@Killthehealersffs.8940

Nowhere did I state that they should focus on dungeons. Literally nowhere. Where did you get 1% player population? What region? EU? NA? Asia? All of them? Cite where you got 1%? I already know the answer.
Nice straw man argument. Stop pulling out facts from where the sun don’t shine.

This dumbed-down, gate locked, rewardless, poorly written, bug ladened downward trend Anet seems to be on is not improvement.

Vayne.8563:

A single quote from a single review. But how many reviews are there that don’t say that, that’s my question.

Hardly any.

Almost every single con on every single post has a similar underlying message. Hint- It’s about management and decision making. You would know this if you took the time to read them.

Vayne.8563:

Percentages are far more important than individual opinions.

“- Upper Management is poor: Some directors and design leads pay more attention to graphs and data then what people both in and outside of the studio are saying, and this often ends up with projects either being poorly prioritized, scoped beyond what a team can handle, or just driven in the wrong direction.”

Haha
Oh, the irony…

I’ll just leave this here…

“- Upper Management is poor: Some directors and design leads pay more attention to graphs and data then what people both in and outside of the studio are saying, and this often ends up with projects either being poorly prioritized, scoped beyond what a team can handle, or just driven in the wrong direction.”

Lag/Low FPS is plaguing me. My system isn’t great but after the feature patch I was able to run settings on medium-medium low with 22-27fps. Now with the latest September 10th or 11th patch, everything has reversed and now with everything on lowest I experience 10-15fps, and IF any other players come into view my FPS tanks to an unplayable 3-5fps. This is kittening me off.

Healing people from stealth? Taking out 5 people?

You guys have been trolled.

nexidecimus.5973:

i think Anet is confused. perhaps they should level-gate their access to balance patches until they get more experience.

This.
Wins.
The.
Internets.

Wow. I’m going to F1 that and throw it down in my sig!

Cam Ron.4170:

I’ll likely be using this trait on my P/D dire build…

Huh??

Kind of surprised they nerfed s/d set instead of acro, which imo is pretty OP

I hate to single you out like this but I’m super baffled by what I’m reading. Apologies if it seems like an attack. It’s not.

Acrobatics isn’t OP. It just isn’t. It is widely considered weak. What is considered OP is evade spamming, which involves the Acrobatics tree. You are confusing the two.

There’s no getting around it. Assassin’s Equilibrium, as currently, is junk. Along with a bunch of other traits.

I don’t know if this is exactly on topic, but I’ll share an experience of mine. I have the worst luck with loot in this game. I’m talking 99.9% of the time it’s utter garbage, while everyone else in my party/guild gets epic swag. Even back in GW1 this was the case. My guildies and I had a running joke that Anet hates me and put my name on a ‘black’ list.

Anyways, I had crap loot all the way up to 115% magic find. I’m talking like 1 exotic a month, if that. Then when I got to 116% to my sheer amazement, I was getting 3-7 exotics a week.

I think Anet’s drop table isn’t based so much on exact percentages, but more of a tier system. For me, the proofs in the pudding.

From my experience, if you want better loot, there are two things you can do.

1. Find/get yourself to that next Magic Find tier
2. Take a month or two break from the game.

Zord.6130:

I was thinking that with good positioning it would be possible to backstab 2 people at once. (only after patch we will if that will be possible).

I read this and my knee-jerk reaction was NO! But then I thought about it and the more I thought the more I liked this idea. I don’t see a down side, if two foes are the clustered together then they deserve it. Plus a two handed stab animation would be cool. Then it got me thinking of all the incredibly neat ways and things Anet could do to give us thieves more diversity. /wrists

I can’t agree with this. Your problem is you have 7 characters. There is no need for so many. It is your choice to have that many, furthermore it’s your choice to outfit them all with exotics. Ya know, I was an altoholic too in GW1 and I was perpetually poor. I’ve since made it a golden rule for myself to keep characters to a maximum of two or three.

This ‘update’ if you can call it that, is going to blow up in Anet’s face.

Or to quote another blunder, “This won’t end well.”

Grok Krog.9581:

I agree, not only should they be available do to the wardrobe system and being able to unlock skins, but also because my new character is in desperate need of Stalwart (the medium PvP armor) shoulders

Me too!!!!

Do it already, Anet!

Doooo iiiiiiiiiit.

/signed
123456789four

Hopes:

• P/P mobility buff
• Revert SB 3 animation
• Nerf offhand Pistol 5
• Rework offhand Pistol 4
• Assassin’s Equilibrium trait: While revealed, mirror disabling effects back to source, 15s icd
• Last Refuge trait: Drop Black Powder when you are downed
• Invigorating Precision trait: +15% healing on critical or +10% on hit
• Initial Strike trait: Stolen abilities do +10% damage, grant 1 initiative
• Power Shots trait: includes +500 SB range, Harpoon 1 might on critical
• Instinctual Response trait: Remove Feathers, replace with Quickness
• Shadow Protector trait: Remove Regeneration, replace with Protection, can stack
• Slowed Pulse trait: include poison
• Corrosive Traps trait: include +15% damage
• Master Trapper trait: include 3 stacks of confusion for 8s
• Fix Scorpion Wire bug, give us the function of the elite version
• Fix shadow stepping & terrain bug
• Fix Mug & Hidden Thief bug
• Give us underwater skills

Fears:

Business as usual from Anet.

Breakdown of the video:

Uh, why are you narrating? Don’t you think if people want to know the storyline they will, eh, go play the storyline?

lLobo.7960:

Right next to the spot where the bridge grows there is a second planting spot. If you look on the wall in front of it, you can see that there is a green smoosh on the top, just like the one from the other bridge. I belive there will be a second bridge there on the next episodes.

You can also use the seeds in combat, to make an AoE root effect, like the rager elite.

I agree. If you look closely, across the canyon there is a path leading towards more wreckage and a campfire. It then curves up to the top of the mesa, or down to a cavern. I am 99.9% convinced the entrance to chapter 3 is right there next to the current vine bridge.