(edited by SamTheGuardian.2938)
I think he’s a bit too kind, but overall this is not a very positive review from an exceptionally bright programmer with years of industry experience.
http://psychochild.org/?p=1172
You can already invite people into your personal story to do it with friends if you choose but they don’t really encourage this.
They may well tie the personal quest to group content in the future. The quest to kill Zhaitan for instance is in a dungeon which you do with other players and is repeatable and while the others aren’t necessary they are plot related. I don’t really see much of a difference between the dungeons and the missions of GW1 aside from maybe difficulty.
Tho they would probably need to make a version scaled for single player as well if they did this otherwise you will be getting stuck if others aren’t also doing the mission since you can’t make up for it with hero’s and henchman in GW2.
Perhaps they should make it that payers who are being buffed or healed by you tag enemies for you to incentives co-op and actually paying attention to your teammates a bit more (unless they already do this and I just haven’t noticed). I don’t know that there is much A-net can do about a lack of true co-op in since its mostly and issue with the players though less Zergs would help.
There a few design issues that hinder team play that probably where not encountered during their internal testing during development. During beta players where so thrilled just to be able to get in there wasn’t a lot of criticism surfacing. Also I think a lot of people assumed the zerg issue during beta was something that would be worked out.
Team strategy can not be achieved in a zerg, there’s just too much going on to get a grip on it even if you are in a five man team. So any content that can be zerg rushed is going to be the button masher-friendly beast that it is. No it’s not fun. Although it’s not grind you could make an argument that it’s wore in a way.
People begin to strategize play when they are in small to mid-sized teams. They need to be able to see clearly and fill a dedicated role in the team (although the dedicated role does not need to be tied to profession and could change half way through the content). It’s a shame the only content with teams > 5 occurs in PvP.
Personal Story chapters are non-repeatable (that’s one big problem with them, I have several of mine I’d love to redo). There is no reason we shouldn’t be able to go back and replay chapters in our personal story. I don’t respect this design decision at all. Don’t give the reward at the end, but allow the content to be played through.
The new fractal dungeon shards are designed to be 15-20 minutes each. They are repeatable. We need more content like this in the open world.
Dynamic events can be retooled slightly so that level 80 players that are teamed up can enter an instance of the event. The instance can have a cap on the number of players allowed in and overflows could exist so that enough instances exist for everyone). This would be a major under taking for the programmers, but could solve the no-team strategy in open world problem we’re seeing.
Lastly, they need to get rid of the kitten way point cost. This is a horrible money sink that is hindering players from grouping and helping others. It becomes a tax on those who want to way point over to help others. It was a horrible design decision. I suspect they won’t change it because it’s deeply rooted in their philosophy on driving customers to the cash shop in some way (although the direct connection I struggle to find, there is no other explanation for what they would implement this )
…
I actually felt sorry for the poor dragon, just hugging his huge pillar and staring at those cannons. The only thing that was missing was work in progress in the upper right corner of the screen.
ROFLMO. Yes! I remember thinking something similar. Why does he deserve to die? What an epic failure in terms of story delivery through gameplay. But they did fool the critics into giving them a high rating didn’t they? That should go down in text books for how to market an MMORPG.
The rest of the story was also awful and the characters were just… Meh. Hell, even Little Thom, Alesia or Dunham were more memorable than all of the characters of Guild Wars 2 put together.
I’m not even going to start talking about the zerging, button-mashing, bugs or not sticking to their manifesto. It just reminds me of all those The game will be out when it’s ready! and Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1… which, in turn, remind me of how great this game could’ve been and of all the broken promises.
In comparison to Guild Wars, this game really is garbage. And it makes me really sad to say that, considering how much fun I’ve had playing the original game.
Yep. It all just feels like a half-baked beta. Your first 40-60 hours of game play you will probably not notice this, but as you get deeper in you realize why they were hiding the second half of the game. So bad it’s almost… Had they had another six to nine months on it perhaps it would have been a much stronger game. Of course the problem ArenaNet faced was competition. Tera beat them to market as far as having an action MMORPG (with Patrick Wyatt, former cofounder of ANet at the helm that had to be tough). Although Tera does some things right that GW2 doesn’t unfortunately Tera is a grind-fest. New games are in the pipeline though. Blizzard’s new MMORPG and of course Elder Scrolls on-line. I suppose they had their reasons for rushing to market.
The bottom line is GW1 was a thinking mans on-line game. I don’t care if you want to classify it as an MMORPG or not, the bottom line is it was a mind stimulating game. The skill system became difficult for them to manage, we all get that. Meta builds rose up. Natural selection takes its course, but those builds came from the community. I always wondered if the game designers secretly held grudges on the community players outsmarting them with certain build combinations.
It’s as if ArenaNet choose to make a Guild Wars meets God of War kind of hybrid thing. It would have worked had they had more time perhaps… Incredibly weak story combined with bugs destroy what if polished could have been the greatest game ever made. Some of the things I’ve said in other threads may sound very harsh, the reality they strung us along for years and did not deliver what they promised.
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Solo friendly design = anti-social design
I may not properly group in open world but I find myself running around in small groups working together all the time. Finding a team where everyone is on the same page and using strategy is a problem in all online games though the way guild wars 2 has done this seems to have made it worse since everyone tends to focus on DPS but then at least I don’t have to wait 2 hours for a healer to show up. This is where being in a guild helps. You can still tell who is being good or not by how they play.
I must say I really miss the Cooperative Missions that drove the GW1 story line. I understand these games are very different. I even like the concept of Personal Story. How hard would it have been to sprinkle cooperative events into the world. Although we’re not all happy with the re-visioning or end-game, I think most agree the new Fractal Dungeon shards are a lot of fun. Sprinkled between all Personal Story chapters should have been Cooperative Missions in GW2. Repeatable content designed for five man teams. Not as difficult as dungeons, but repeatable and lasting 15-30 minutes. If the game had this it would fix the issue of not having enough team-oriented content. People would flock to these too.
Personal Story chapters are done alone for the most part (as designed) dynamic events and hearts and done out of group. Outside of group you really aren’t paying much attention to the other players (in a zerg you can’t). It’s really a lone-gun type of game with little to no focus on team play except in dungeons. The problem there is it’s an MMORPG….
I’ve already expressed how I feel about dungeons.
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Maybe it’s time to let go Sam. I mean this in the best way possible. The game fell short in some/many aspects, depends on your preferences, and most of it can’t be changed, it’s a take it or leave it. No point in list them over and over. The manifesto-amended, maybe a little hope this week, but that’s it. Wait for the closure, refund if you can, move on.
Any suggestions? I have high hopes for Elder Scrolls on-line, but it’s got some time before release.
OP, i think you have a problem.
….
or are you getting paid by anets competitors ???
To answer your question- No. I am not being paid by anyone. I Just had very high hopes for this game that didn’t materialize. Not hearing any real good arguments to my points. Eventually I will move on. Perhaps today is the day to do that.
People express disappointment in a variety of ways. My post here have been a bit redundant in part due to disbelief at the degree of their failure to deliver what was promised.
Regarding people seeing some of my past post is insane, etc.. Bear in mind ArenaNet is in the Pacific Northwest. If you’ve ever lived there you know it’s the land where protest can actually make a difference. Where people tend to burn objects for symbolism. It’s just a language I expect them to understand.
OP, i think you have a problem.
….
or are you getting paid by anets competitors ???
To answer your question- No. I am not being paid by anyone. I Just had very high hopes for this game that didn’t materialize. Not hearing any real good arguments to my points. Eventually I will move on. Perhaps today is the day to do that.
People express disappointment in a variety of ways. My post here have been a bit redundant in part of disbelief at the degree of their failure to deliver what was promised.
Also, I’m bearing in mind ArenaNet is in the Pacific Northwest. If you’ve ever lived there you know it’s the land where protest actually make a difference.
1) I found the story writing to be very uneven. Some parts were quite good; I enjoyed the Claw Island missions, and some of the longer stories that happened later in the progression. The death of Forgal Kernson was a pivotal moment, one I enjoyed tremendously.
Did you find yourself really caring when Zhitan died? Did you even care a little bit? I did not. Trying to look through my characters eyes and find some reason to really care there wasn’t any. Sure some bad things happened in the world but there was no build up.
2) Didn’t bother me as much as it did you. That said, some of the stories could have used additional touches. When you help the Grawl and they promise to help versus the dragon, you never see them later.
For me it was like reading a very, very bad set of fantasy short stories that are loosely connected in that my character stars in them.
3) Got me there, there have been plenty of bugs, but there are plenty in every game. I remember a different fantasy game that I came back to for a 2 week free trail a year later, and my character was still stuck with a bugged mission that hindered progress. ANet has been squashing bugs, a lot.
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Let’s be honest, a certain amount of bugs can be expected…. Entire zones were bugged two weeks post launch. The game shipped unfinished. Moving forward. The launch was big and they had some problems. I have a hard time forgiving entire zones being blocked, but it’s in the distant past now. The Lost Shores release is in the not so distant past. Instead of having hundreds of events, with The Lost Shores that had a very small set and unfortunately they couldn’t even get that right. Their quality control is subpar even by MMORPG standards.
4) I also find this disturbing.
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I find it an act of desperation. People have been leaving in droves, they have the data they know this. I would welcome data to disprove. One only has to run through empty zones to know.
5) PvP always has imbalance, sometime for years. GW1 did a better job of fixing things than most, but it took time.
You are being way too kind. Only three professions are of any value at all to sPvP. They didn’t even try. If they did try then they decided to accept, sweep under the rug and move forward. sPvP is light years away from being an esport at this point.
6) I find the most enjoyable DE’s to be the ones I complete with the bare minimum of people needed to get it done. Following the zerg is not a fun experience for me.
I agree. There is absolutely an optimal team size at which these events are a lot of fun. There is a range 4-6 players for most events. How many events have I been able to enjoy with an optimal number of players? Perhaps a handful. As with my best moments in dungeons I see those times as glimpses as to what the designers intended the entire experience to be like. Sadly they added no play mechanic for zerg control. Instancing for some events is one path I can think of.
7) I don’t know about you, but I can determine if someone is good to have in a dungeon party by their play. I don’t need them to have a distinct role to see that they are doing what their class allows in a way that contributes. As to solo-play… the days of MMO’s that force teaming in the open world are done. GW2 is no different in that regard, However, the most fun I’ve had in open world has been with a small group, taking on everything and anything that we could.
No. It’s very difficult. You can judge someones contribution in dungeons only based on your expectation of how they would play their profession. Since each profession provides the player with an array of choices for play style (e.g. Guardian support or Guardian DPS) this just creates invalid judgements and often unwarranted arguments when people are paying attention. The call the game a disaster might not be an understatement.
Of course it got 90% composite review from metacritic. Critics tend to give nice reviews when treated nicely by the game publisher. The reality is the content the critics were given access to and the environment in which they were playing it in did warrant those high rating at the time. Things change. They did not get a chance to get to the content >55. They did not see how thrown together the second half of the game was or could have anticipated the negative changes in the months following launch.
Here are my issues with GW2 and why I will not recommend the game to friends.
- Story (quality of writing)- The game has incredibly rich lore that creates incredible potential. Unfortunately that potential is lost on a series of half-baked to downright embarrassing script. As someone who greatly enjoyed the story elements of all previous GW games I can say with confidence the story lines I’ve experienced in GW2 have been horrible. Garbage is an appropriate word. In GW1 we had the searing event. It was traumatic. I was expecting the grove to be destroyed or some real darkness to be felt in the world leading up to the end. If you are proud of what you created in terms of story you are delusional. Bad writing. Bad delivery. Incoherent. Of no worth whatsoever to the player at the end. Garbage.
- Lack of monolithic path- The story just creates fragmentation not coherence and does not aid in the feeling of a living world as it appears was intended. The battle of Fort Trinity came close to striking some emotions but ultimately it feel short. The final battle with Zhitan was boring, repetitive and when he died I felt nothing. It was the end of one of the many small story archs it wasn’t epic. Considering the hype and expectations generated from it, I would go so far as to call the end of the game a catastrophic failure in game design. Easily the worst ending of any of the GW games, perhaps one of the worst endings of any game.
- Bugs- You delivered your product half-baked. Even for your new content (e.g. Lost Shores this past weekend) players were dealing with some pretty nasty bugs. It’s seems your game engine’s foundation is cracked and you are unable to fix it. You do realize your quality being kitten is kind of a big deal right or are you all still running around the office giving each other high fives for delivering the “best MMORPG ever”? Delusion and Pretension can be very strong indeed.
- Manifesto amended- You guys had a very clear vision that you spoke about with such confidence. The recent revisions to end-game approach completely change the long term game for everyone. It’s clear you are now uncertain about your own manifesto. How is it invalid for a player to view this as anything other than admittance of your own failure?
- Unbalanced play prevails- Go try to play a few rounds in sPvP and you’ll see three months post release a few professions still dominate the meta game. You do realize without balance between your professions your game is just a glorified button masher. I don’t understand how this can not be viewed as critical important, yet it is not high priority.
- Dynamic events = follow the zerg and wait for reward. The only strategy needed here is to make sure and not miss the chest at the end and to try and find your character in mob. While in the zerg you can do whatever you want. Want to just run around in circles? Ok. No one will notice. You need to hit something so you can get some contribution calculated in, but what you contribute doesn’t matter.
- Solo friendly design = anti-social design- In GW2 most players will be stripped of identity. No one groups in the open world because you have no incentives. In dungeons your characters fills no specific role he or she might be identified and respected for. Team strategy is illusive when it does rear its head the player gets a glimpse of all GW2 could have been and it is a very sad moment indeed…. The only real identity to be had in the game can be bought for 100g (WvW Commander status). This is so sad.
Those are the problems with your game. Your previous GW series lacked most of these issues making them very strong for long term play. There is enough wrong here to make it so the game is short lived.
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Just curious as to where every1 is?
Azeroth. The gear grind is much better there.
Playing a female panda monk name Babygotback myself. If you gotta grind might as well play the cadillac of grind games. It was never about the money giving GW2 a shot it was that I liked their mission statement. With that gone there’s really not much to make me prefer GW2 over WoW. GW2 as a WoW clone makes it a second rate game.
^ This. Going against their manifesto shows a lack of internal coherence. It shows desperation and more over a lack of integrity. The manifesto and mission statements made regarding specific aspects of the game (especially end-game) were a promise.
Hatred is an appropriate emotion for many in this case.
The “something is missing” feeling is flaw in the anti-grouping, solo-friendly design of the game. The lack of dedicated roles leads to an identify crisis that leads down a single path. Eventually you realize there is no opportunity in this game to rise up and be recognized for your skills as a good healer, a good range player or a good tank. In spite of what some are saying about this combination always being dull, in many games playing your role correctly in strategic team play scenarios is an amazing rush…. Beyond that it gives you identity in the game and is a core mechanic of what makes an MMORPG successful for the long run. GW2 does not offer this. This is why GW2 is dyeing and will collapse faster than even the harshest critic would have anticipated.
Nope, that’s not it. You aren’t going to fix alienating a bunch of your player base by changing a core concept to make your game more like other MMOs by changing another core concept to make your game more like other MMOs.
The ability to play solo is all those of us who can’t grind for ascended gear have left.
You don’t need to take away the ability to solo play to create more strategic team scenarios where dedicated roles (within the team, not by profession) are required.
Just curious as to where every1 is? Cursed shore used to have a lot of people farming (not counting the bots). Now i see very few people there. I know alot of people are probably checking out Southsun Cove and Fractals but I still expected to see quite a few people in cursed shore farming money and karma.
My question is is there a new area people are farming for money? Are fractals/dungeons or something else more lucrative for making money than cursed shore is now? Thanks in advance:D
Once again ArenaNet delivered something half-baked. The community jumped in hoping the new area would offer something more but it did not…. The problem is deep rooted in GW2’s anti-team up design. Players continue to swarm new content hoping to rekindle some of the wonder but that “something is missing” feeling just won’t subside.
The “something is missing” feeling is flaw in the anti-grouping, solo-friendly design of the game. The lack of dedicated roles leads to an identify crisis that leads down a single path. Eventually you realize there is no opportunity in this game to rise up and be recognized for your skills as a good healer, a good range player or a good tank. In spite of what some are saying about this combination always being dull, in many games playing your role correctly in strategic team play scenarios is an amazing rush…. Beyond that it gives you identity in the game and is a core mechanic of what makes an MMORPG successful for the long run. GW2 does not offer this. This is why GW2 is dyeing and will collapse faster than even the harshest critic would have anticipated.
GW2 has interesting paths to identity but they are all PvP related. The new gear treadmill insures it will evolve into a WvW focused game with PvE components just serving that end game.
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After all the chaos, bugs, lag, etc I gave up doing any of the scheduled events. I decided I would give the new zone a shot this morning and spent an hour with a group of about 8 people running thru the area. Although I give the artists great credit for making it look great, we killed 4 veterans and 2 champions and we received ZERO drops. In fact, the only thing I’ve gotten in the new zone were a few scales off of the lizards and some passion fruit. I’ve really enjoyed GW2 but this new event/zone is an abortion. It really makes me not want to play anymore which is really sad. Hopefully something is done or I fear the attitude of the player base will really suffer.
Don’t forget the awesome Fractal Dungeon that is complete counter to the original stated vision of the company. Fractal Dungeon sends a strong statement that they will make whatever changes needed to try and stop the loss of player interest. The problem is they are “fixing” the wrong thing.
The anti-grind part of the manifesto they got right… The no-holy-trinity part they got wrong. They correct the wrong aspect IMO.
More people play WvW than PvP…
Way more.
That’s because sPvP is still largely unfinished. No spectator mode = no esport = most people are holding off.
1. Challenge: Once this weekend event is over, Give the community a report on how many players across all servers participated. I would like peak number of concurrent paid accounts. Total number of paid accounts playing this weekend and total number of trial accounts playing this weekend. No doubt this data is something you will have and be using internally to make some decisions. If these numbers are strong why wouldn’t you report this?. The only reason to not meet this challenge is if the numbers are as bad as we suspect they are. Show some integrity and be transparent with your community.
2. Question: I think we deserve a more detailed explanation of why you’ve chosen to go against your own stated philosophy on end-game. Many of us consider the end-game discussion (video is available) prior to launch being an amendment to the manifesto. We feel like you have gone against the manifesto in order to “fix” a fundamental flaw in your design. many of us feel there would have been a much better way to fix it, but we aren’t the designers… We do however feel we deserve a more detailed explanation on why? Are the numbers really that bad? Are you down what 50, 60, 70% load capacity since launch? Your integrity is being challenged.
3. Question: Where is Eric Flannum and Ree Soesbee? These two ANet employees were very visible prior to launch. For better or worse, they became part of the collective face of ArenaNet. It seems all other employees who played a roll in promoting the game have shown up from time to time in videos, post-release interviews or in the occasional forum posting. Not these two. Also AreanNet posted a want ad for a Game Architect and Lead Developer for GW2 in early October. The description seemed to match the duties Flannum was in charge of. Considering Flannum leaving ANet would be similar to Jobs leaving Apple I think this is worth some sort of response. Can you confirm that both of these employees are still with ArenaNet filling the same positions they were previously?
These three items are a call for transparency. They are reasonable request. If you infract and delete this post it will appear other places on the web with a note regarding your action to avoid transparency. I’m not asking for much. We continue to play your game and spend in the gem store.
You can check the logs on my account at my number of hours and USD spent on gems. I’ve supported your game as many have please show us the respect of being transparent and honest.
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How can they regain your trust, or is it even possible?
If you’ve ever been part of a team working hard on something for many years you can see how easy it is to get blinders on and to be biased when considering the overall perception of your product…. I’ve used this analogy before but I think it’s perhaps the best one. They are like a high profile five star restaurant that opened its doors to incredible hype. Some of the items on the menu did meet or exceed expectations, but about half the menu is just horrible. Often being returned to the kitchen repeatedly because they just couldn’t seem to do them right.
People waited years for the grand opening. Some want to believe what was said to be true and just can’t accept the failure before them.
Meanwhile the staff and owners of the establishment are oblivious. Business has dropped by 40% but during their weekly meetings they find ways to justify it. “Oh this was expected after the grand opening…. Things are tapering off”. They refuse to understand how something being sent back to the kitchen for refire repeatedly IS a huge deal to the customer.
The Lost Shores event has had too many bugs. The content itself not well enough documented and overall felling very half-baked. This Lost Shores feels like the product of a desperate team rushing to release to meet a deadline. It’s kitten.
The new dungeon and gear treadmill additions are their attempt to fix the hemorrhaging. Yes, they will go against their own manifesto to make players keep playing and ONLY THEY know just how many have dropped off since launch. Rumor is it’s enough to strike fear internally (why else would they be giving away 3-trial accounts to every customer to give to friends).
Guys, the game is definitely in trouble.
TL;DR
They can’t win my trust back. They shipped their game too early and the amount of fixes needed in additional to fundamental design flaws are insurmountable. They released the lost shores to great hype and several components of that have been bugged. We’re three months in and they don’t have a grip on things. Their game engine is not stable and they don’t know how to fix it apparently. The the new gear tredmill they’ve gone against their own design manifesto, sacrificing integirty to desperately try to keep players and gain new ones. I called it a month in, the haul has large holes and the ship is way out to sea. She’s going down.
Done. Done. Done. Fork please?
P.S. Considering video recording myself taking a blow torch to the precious Rytlock statue and posting it on the web just for the emotional impact that will have on the staff who worked so hard on it. They need a wake up call to understand how upset some of us are and that we can hold our silent symbolic protest as well.
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How to do GW2 events:
– Spend the majority of your time on google figuring out wtf to do.
– Race around and try to get at least some things done before the event is gone.
– Hope everything isn’t bugged or broken.
– Realize the hard way that the donation systems they set up for these events are really just money sinks to get you to pay more than you normally would for lackluster items.
You’re doing it wrong. Here’s my take. How to do GW2 events:
- Follow the zerg
- Make sure you don’t miss the chest for the mob at the end
I was hoping for something more comparable to the intro of a film or at least something as good as the cut-scene sequence I saw following character creation).
Hahahaha, a gigantic crab jumping over some tower and knocking it down, epic cutscene I’d say!!! Worth my anticipation as much as Zhaitan in Story Mode!
What’s very interesting is that ArenaNet actually thinks they did a good job with this. It is very clear the talent currently working on the game is a bit different than what was designing it initially. Not to mention everything being a QA nightmare for this company.
They released with a number of broken events (yet again) they just simply can’t get it right the first time. As a company they have become and embarrassment and have set the bar at a new low. No way I would encourage any of my friends to play this game and I no longer try to challenging them on playing WoW. WoW may be dated, but it’s play mechanics are proven and simply the best this genre has to offer.
GW2 is like the product of a group of utopian visionaries who made it about 70% there and then just tried to trick the world into thinking they did it.
Sorry the wizard behind the curtain has been revealed. No more parlor tricks. No more love.
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Here’s the thing, DAoC servers are still up. The community looks back in retrospect and says “game is dead” and it is because when you play it you just know. A few years after release some players we’re calling it dead and detailing all its faults. Others would fight back and defend it, calling those who tried to point out its flaws as crying… Same song and dance with every MMORPG.
Yes OP the spiral for GW2 has started. Honestly it started about a month after launch. No parachute has launched in fact we’re gaining velocity. ETA on impact? I give it another three months before what I’m saying now is echoed across the press with titles like “What happened to GW2?”. Will the servers shut down? No. Will it still have a couple hundred thousand players (enough to keep new content flowing), sure!
The point of death for an MMORPG is a subjective thing. Server-shut down is not death. Death happens months, sometimes years before when zones are empty, bots are running rampant and over half the people you were playing with are no longer playing!
Oh course the press will know exactly what happened. They gave exceptionally positive reviews to a product based on a play experience with a very limited part of the game. They graded no just on quality of play but also on how well the game studio had treated them during the beta.
ArenaNet has always believed in their product. I don’t think they were trying to be deceitful, but blinders fit so easily after seven years of development. You begin to believe your own hype, even when the rest of the world sees right through it.
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This game is an enigma with me how I really like things I previously hated in MMO’s (open world questing) and don’t like things in GW2 that I’ve enjoyed in other MMO’s. (dungeon instances)
This is exactly one of my issues. I love the open world questing but trying to find groups to do dungeons is painful. My main is 80 and have no desire to keep trying with pugs to get anything done. I might have done just 2 or 3 dungeons completely, all almost about a month ago. The sad thing is I really like this game! I’ve been waiting for it for such a long time, I’m not even disappointed, just irritated and left feeling confused with special events and dungeons.
Sadly. eventually you realize the open world questing is just repetitive and boring as well (well for the events you can actually do when enough players are around). Either you’re the kind of player who gravitates towards solo play most of the time or the type who really craves the rich complexities and dynamics of strategic team play. If you fall into the later group, GW2 is definitely not your game. If however, you grew up playing God of War and prefer action-combat mixed with light strategy then you’ll probably love GW2… It’s not a “thinking mans MMORPG” as the first one was by any stretch. That’s a real pity.
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The game is designed so every player can assume any role. Some are better than others, but you have no dedicated tank or healer. No one depends on what you provide. As a result there is not way to really measure those in party who aren’t pulling their weight.
After several hundred hours of play I realize this is the weak point of the game. It’s the fault line under the concrete. It’s the cracked foundation that makes the doors never close just right in a house. It’s broken design at it’s core.
When people say “GW2 is a lonely MMORPG” or “Gw2 is missing something in team play” this is what it is. You simply don’t bond with others players in combat like you do in other MMORPGs where you have dedicated roles.
If they don’t fix this I will leave the game over it. I predict the game will eventually die because of it as well.
Pretty sure Eric Flannum (lead designer, kind of head dog if you will) has left Anet. They silently put up a job posting early October for a Lead Architect role.
^ This.
I will also add: ArenaNet’s decision to focus on developing new content is commendable. My problem is with the quality of that content. The lack of excitement around it (for those waiting around when the event started, it was a very short cut scene. I was hoping for something more comparable to the intro of a film or at least something as good as the cut-scene sequence I saw following character creation).
The new content just isn’t well documented. What should I be doing? The new Fractals Dungeon introduces some new play mechanics but leaves the player on their own to figure everything out. It’s not figured out through puzzles, it’s figured out by trial and error that a player must incur due to poor documentation/tutorial content.
Better tutorial cut scenes could have fixed this. Of course ArenaNet was also dealing with a lot of bugs yesterday in the new content. They have a real quality control problem with GW2 that was a non-issue in GW1. I’m very, very disappointed in their quality control in general since launch. What happened to “when it’s ready”.
Lastly the fact that they release new content while some critical things remain broken in the core game is something I have a big problem with. You have a few personal story chapters still bugged even with Lost Shores release.
Remember “When It’s Ready”. I’m pretty certain at this point it will never be ready. At least not before the wave of would be players move on to next new and shinny. It’s already happening and it stated last month.
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The foundation is cracked because of the lack of social interaction. This is a game where you sign-in and don’t really care who you are teamed up with. The positive side of that is no one has to depend on you. Also you don’t have to seek out a healer, tank, etc.. The negatives outweigh the positives however.
What MMORPGs absolutely must provide to be successful long term GW2 fails the worst at. The player having a sense of belonging and being of value to other players. Your lack of dedicated roll makes it so each player is a swiss-army knife able to tackle any given scenario. Their perceived value to the team drops very low and the identify is lost. This is especially true in ad-hoc groups.
Cross server multi-guild membership adds to this problem. Players not only have to work much harder to develop an social identify in GW2 ArenaNet has made it so they can do this across multiple guilds. It’s power of choice. It gives too much choice. People need rules to help them make decisions. Restricting players to guilds and making them commit should have been in day one. I have roughly two dozen friends who play GW2. About 1/4 of those carried over from GW1. I’m in guilds with all of them, but things are spread so thin… When I signed in Lost Shores to play with others the social aspect of the game was a problem for me.
People don’t group in this game because the rules of the game make it so they don’t have to. In dungeons grouping is awkward and boring because again you have no identity. Your only hope here is to have a small group of friends you always play with, but again the problem there is the multi-guild system spreads friends thin. Yes you can do dungeons with people cross guild, but it’s awkward asking people to come play with you when you’re not-representing.
TL;DR
How long can a game last where you can group up, spam weapon skill 1 while throwing up the occasional self-heal and no one in the team can measure your lack of contribution? Go try this experiment yourself. Under all the beautiful environments and interesting combat system is a game that is horribly flawed….. My hope was the Lost Shores would address those flaws, instead it simply layers new content on top of them. This is not sustainable.
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After months of disappointment the Lost Shores is my last bastion of hope for this game. So far very disappointed. I know many people seem ecstatic about Fractals I just don’t really find them that amazing in fact I have found so far at the early stages they can be knocked out pretty easy (hence the love I guess)
With all the false promises (including undelivered features which includes their horrible website compared to other MMORPGs), the broken play mechanics the sever balance problems the unaddressed speed hacks, etc…
I’m considering stating my issues on camera and then destroying my collectors edition on camera and then sharing on youtube.
ArenaNet I think you have failed us. You didn’t deliver what you promised. Your game is still broken. I’m angry. I’m very, very angry. Your encouragement of multi-guild membership followed by your lock-down of transfers (without guesting) has really destroyed my in-game experience.
Why won’t you admit your game is a broken mess? See, then there’s that.
Have lost most of my respect. That’s all.
Welcome to GW2. All of your points are valid. No one wants to address the point that your cost to run the dungeon in armor repairs negate your profits from loot (unless you want to kitten over your team and use Magic Find, I’m not a bad person so I don’t do that). I hear all this love for the new Fractical Dungeon’s and I’m just not buying it.
I played through a few of them, I think they are a neat addition, but I’m not head over heals in love with them. I don’t think the Fractical dungeon is the savior of GW2. I do however believe a lot of praise right now is coming from individuals who have been in love with GW2 for months, have lost some faith it in and are now desperately looking for something to restore that.
Sadly I think I see through the new dungeon and it’s simply not enough. If anything for me it’s just highlighting the fundamental cracks in the games design.
I’m shocked people are so easily amused. I wouldn’t say the new dungeon’s are garbage, but having played through all the existing dungeon’s in the game the fractical’s aren’t that cool. No real team strategy was required for any of them! Again, you can still have a team of five where three people are taking it seriously and trying to strategize and the other two are justing spamming weapon skill 1 and throwing up self heal every now and then and yet the team will clear it. I can not put into words how incredibly horrible that game design is.
My expectation has been ArenaNet would make some changes to that. They have not. It seems people who notice it have just left the game.
I’m done promoting the game to friends. I’m almost done playing it. ArenaNet has the number of players on-line, I would be very curious for them to release those numbers. They know where things stand. They know what has happened to even the best of MMORPG’s 2-3 months post launch (SWTOR). At this stage I actually believe it will happen quicker with GW2.
I don’t judge a games death by when the servers go down (game dies long before that once it gets past a certain level of decline post launch. Once an MMORPG hits a certain point on that down curve it’s absolutely done and there is NOTHING that can save it. Years of work gone. Why do you think the owners of BioWare got so depressed they left the industry?). IMO GW2 is…. I love the game too much to say it. It needs more than what’s being offered in this patch to save it. I think it’s past point-critical on the decline curve.
Shipped too soon. Nuff said.
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Holy kitten this is a good dungeon. Oh my god.
Freed the Giant
Beat back the Dredge
and fought through the Ice BlizzardAll bosses had interesting or even escalating mechanics.
Do Not Run These With Idiots
Yet the game’s design encourages partying up where outside of dungeons? Nowhere would be the answer…. Trying to get a team of people to party up that you know can be difficult. I would argue it’s more difficult in GW2.
Not all of the bosses are that interesting. I would say the three 15-minute shards I’ve run through so far (wait, four there was that dolphin thing) they were all mildly entertaining. There’s a lot going on and very little explanation without a boat load of reading. How difficult are cut scenes to make really? groups (especially ad-hoc groups where you have teens in the mix with no attention span whatsoever) have been a point of frustration for me.
Gear treadmill has arrived for those demanding it. It does work a bit like a casino though since you can easily loose more in armor repair than you walk out with just like other dungeons but more intense because of frequency repairs are allowed.
Loosing more and more faith in this game with each patch.
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Get a bad group and … cost of damaged armor > the value of loot. Interesting dungeon for sure, very sad the development team didn’t put more work into the intro cut sequence to explain the new play mechanics.
Everything that’s surfaced since launch seems rushed and half-baked to me. The lack of a proper introduction sequence to this event or the new dungeon are excellent examples of that.
Jury is still out here on judging the overall event, but I am disappointed in ArenaNet in general for lack of detail-oriented design with post-release content.
I participated in the opening event. Have done a few runs through the fractal dungeon with ad-hoc groups and have given the new sPvP map a try. Here are my thoughts.
1. The opening event was boring. The cut scene wasn’t long enough, it just should have felt like a beginning of something big and it did not. IMO very poorly implemented. Why not have something grand on the scale of our characters intro sequence (the one we all see after character creation), why can’t the event be properly introduced?
2. Fractal dungeon has promise, but the game’s you-never-have-to-team-up design continues to hurt even in dungeons where you actually do have to team up. Guildies are in other instances of LA, it’s easier to grab an ad-hoc group than work to team up with people you know. So I went ad-hoc and of course got a mixed bag. Team strategy is non-existant in this game so it is what it is. I ended up loosing about 16 silver on armor repairs. selling loot for about 10 silver so netting a loss of 6 silver in exchange for fractal tokens (whatever they are called, I can’t remember). IMO the dungeon should have had a much better cut-scene sequence introducing it and explaining all the details about its mechanics. Nothing released today can be called detail-oriented.
3. The new sPvP map is cool. I like the design. What I don’t like is that it continues to be part of the game dominated by Mesmers and Guardians. My level 80 main with 400+ hours of play is a Guardian and I still think it’s horrible that the balance on sPvP is still stuck here. I enjoyed trying out the new map and continue to hold hope for what sPvP will evolve into.
Coming out of a Halloween event that reminded me of how fun the game could be I have to say I am at this point just feeling more and more detached and disenchanted with GW2. It’s very easy for me to pin-point the problem with this game (for me). It is the same reason some call it a lonely MMO, it’s because it doesn’t require team play. Ever really. You work with people around you naturally and you don’t hate them because fighting them for anything, but since each profession is built for solo play you don’t need anyone else either. Having to depend on others creates a bond that is critical to the MMORPG experience. GW2 boast it’s no holy trinity as a major innovative feature, but unfortunately the flip side of that coin the hallow, soul less feel the game has. In dungeon where you do need others, it just feels awkward and no one wants to take the time to really coordinate. The game is kind of built so you don’t have to… what I shame.
I’ll sign in for tomorrows festivities by the end perhaps I’ll be singing a different toon, but so far I would say this event has been somewhat of a let down, perhaps more so the game itself is starting to feel like a big let down.
How many friends did I invite to try out the game? Zero, because I’m kind of ashamed of it still. My suggestion to ArenaNet: you need to reevaluate the fundamentals flaws in your design. Adding something between Exotics and Legendaries was a response to community demand. Great. These sort of things don’t fix the real problems of why people are leaving. They are leaving because your game just isn’t all that much fun after it’s done. Strategic team play is what forms bounds. Jim is a good healer he has my back! Mark is a great tank, etc… This isn’t a WoW vs GW2 argument it’s multi-player game design psychology. ArenaNet has a economist on board, perhaps they should hire a sociologist as well. I’ll make it simple. People are leaving in droves because there is no real bounds being formed with others making them what to sign back in. It’s a great game in so many ways, but this one little thing is actually a very, very big deal. You form bonds when you pull of strategic play in very desperate scenarios (like soldiers in trenches). In the game world when you don’t need people you really don’t care much about them.
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Oh there is plenty they aren’t telling us and for good reason…. If you go back through all the interviews conducted and find features mentioned in those interview I would estimate about 25-30% of those things were left out of the product that launched end of August. Of the features they did ship at release several were broken.
It’s very easy to qualify in retrospect that the game shipped too soon.
Moving past that (because it’s no good to horde up negative feelings about it) the on-going issue is that you have this level of expectation from the community that these things would be showing up sooner than later.
Going a bit OT:
Games that are still selling well don’t do free invite a friend weekends. This is a business strategy to help drive product sells. Keep in mind ArenaNet’s business model is around micro-transactions combined with new account sells. They do need people to continue playing the game and buying gems with cash to keep the ship moving forward. I take this move on their part as an indicator that sales are not where they would like them to be. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but those who could care about gw2 knew about it long before it was released thanks to the outstanding work of ArenaNet’s marketing department (not being sarcastic, they did an amazing job). Many players at this point feel burned by a combination of false promises (e.g. features that did not ship), poor response to exploits, critical bugs that took fixes to patch and play mechanics that were simply poorly designed (see sPvP discussion on how badly the professions are really balanced when it comes to competitive play).
If you had a group of people building a game without a concrete plan, using say a iterative process where things changes all the time this is exactly the kind of mess of a product you would ship. It’s sad because the game is beautiful, it does play like nothing else, but it’s also very broken in many ways.
I have over four hundred hours in this game. I love it, but I stand by everything I’ve said here. If they want to infract me for it nothing I can do, the ship that is GW2 has large holes in it’s hull and she’s sinking very, very slowly…. My fingers are crossed that this large November patch is going to finally get the game to where it should have been at launch. I also very much hope time hasn’t run it for the public opinion vote.
To OP: It’s quite apparent at this point they talking about a lot of features during development that they simply did not have the time to wrap up and get the game to market in a reasonable time frame. ArenaNet’s perspective seems to be that since MMORPGs continue to evolve long after launch this is acceptable practice.
My perspective is that they struggled to get even the core game features finished by launch. Most dynamic events were broken in the level 50-80 zones the first week of release. To say they shipped very aggressively is an understatement, they shipped the game in a great big mess. To their credit, they have fixed most of the critical problems although I do have a real problem with a company removing features to deal with hacks instead of properly patching the security hole allowing the hack (e.g. they removed orbs from WvW to deal with hacking, instead of actually dealing with the hackable code).
The GW2 website pales in comparison to what NCSoft’s last major western release (AION) offered in its first week. Mobile app is not coming anytime soon. Mobile API is not coming anytime soon. When devs are pressed with these questions in interviews they retreat and say things like we have a few bugs to work out that are priority which is of course true, but telling the public your game is in flames doesn’t buy you a whole lot.
Funny, just 2 days after the Halloween event the servers showed only 2 or 3 full on the US side then suddenly they explode with at least 1/2 of them showing full almost 24 hours a day.
I think Anet changed the full tag on alot of the servers to reduce the transfers. Look at the full servers, they are the servers that have been in demand for wvw, now they are alomst always full, can transfer to a full server, so if you really want to transfer then you have to transfer to the mostly lower tier servers.
Please see my reply to OP. This would indicate would I have stated. They are scaling so the definition of “Full” today is not what it was during the Halloween event or at launch. Only ArenaNet has the numbers…
Why are there topics demanding server mergers, demanding a shorter transfer limitation, and saying “this game is dying” and “people are leaving”?
From what I see…the game is growing, significantly. There’s a lot of players I see every day, and the game is just getting started. I’m expecting to see more growth come the Nov 15th patch and post-Christmas.
What would grandma rather get little Jimmy for Christmas: a $15-a-month 7-yr old game plus all expansions costing nearly $120, or a subscription free GW2 for $60 one-time box cost? That’s an easy choice for them to make.
My server and guild has been growing. Sure, there are those people that rushed content and left after the first month (even my guild had a few), but they’re replaced by casuals, new players, and long-term players.
I think this game needs more servers added. Not only should it add more servers, but it should do a commercial around Thanksgiving to get more public awareness. Do it! Please and thank you!
Keep in mind Full is just a label ArenaNet could have changed the caps needed to trigger the “High” and “Full” labels to give the appearance that the game is doing well. Their entire overflow process is a bit of a mystery. They may have made some parameter to changes to how many players can be in a zone before they are directed to overflow.
Keep in mind ArenaNet must pay for server up time. They have revealed in interviews they have their own internal Cloud architecture, which likely means they are counting the compute cost of every server instance that’s running and dynamically scaling based on historical data of usage.
They know from their logs how many players are playing on a given Saturday morning and probably adjust how much load a server can handle based on that. To run the backend in an optimal way and not spend a fortune on compute power this would be necessary. Although it sounds complex, the tools not only exist to do this it’s not uncommon practice with other less demanding applications.
There are certainly not near the number of players on the servers today that we had in the weeks following launch. Yes, many lower level zones are very underpopulated. Not entirely empty, but empty enough to break core play mechanics (e.g. dynamic events) and generally destroy the play experience. This is destroying the game very quickly.
Leveling an alt and going through empty zones has been a bit of an emotional experience because of the night and day difference in how this felt the weeks following launch. It went from being perhaps the best gaming experience I’ve ever had to being at times quite frustrating. What was a great game is now a very frustrating broken game. ArenaNet fault in this area is on assumptions made on several populations. Are zones too big? Lack of a low-population counterpart to overflow (underflow) and overall poor scaling design for dynamic events. While in general the events seem to scale great for 3-9 players or whatever, when you have only one many can not be completed.
These things are all fixable, but MMORPG communities have short attention spans and too many options to really hang out. Yes, GW2 was built by a team of amazing artist and I think the community has expressed it’s admiration for their hard work, but there is no brand loyalty with these sort of games. Either get it working or we could care less if you cloned Van Gogh and had him do the artwork. This attitude is just and common sense. For company to assume their product somehow deserves a fan base with a higher degree of tolerance for bugs out of respect for the artist involved in making the product, well there’s a word for that: Pretentious
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Looking forward to the new dungeon… Sadly, what this game really needs is smaller team-play scenarios. I would love to sign in and do dungeons all the time, the problem is the 2-3 hour commitment most of them take in explore mode.
We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.
Elaborate please. Is Friday afternoon really a popular time on the GW2 servers?
OP I share your experience. Perhaps there are high volume servers where this is not happening. I have experienced this in the last three weeks on the following servers: Emhry Bay, Yaks Bend and Tarnished Coast. The problem started out being an issue predominately effecting the mid level zones (45-70) but now the population has become more concentrated.
Playing in what should be peak hours on a weekend I encountered perhaps ten other players the 1-25 maps for Asura/Slyvari starter zones. Of those ten it was the same pattern, mostly lone guns out there soloing content with the occasional pair (couples perhaps). When I say empty zone this is pretty much what I’m talking about. Play in off peak hours on say Sunday morning or Weekday morning and on US servers and you’ll find zones completely empty.
The good news is for many dynamic events you don’t need more than two players to finish them. It can be challenging with two or three, but it can be done they scale down to that number. Sadly, this past weekend I found it very difficult to find 2-3 players who wanted to participate. I feel gulity going to Guild chat and asking for help as the games design makes it so they have to shell out for waypoint travel to help me and their payoff likely won’t even allow them to break even.
If you only have a handful in a zone, well they are very large zones and everyone is off doing their on thing.
Due to the design of dynamic events I can not stress how horrible this is for the game. It has the potential to destroy the game actually as it creates a very different experience to that we were all having the first few weeks after launch.
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My first character was a guardian whom I have leveled till 80. I got bored of her and then leveled an Ele.
While a Guardian is effective at facerolling content and groups, I assure you that the ele is no slouch either… the problem – more movement and more buttons. While I can simply Hulk Smash stuff with my Hammer/GS with my guardian, I have to stance dance/ combo field stuff with my ele.
Does it take longer on Ele? Maybe only SLIGHTLY. Do I die more? no way. Was it tougher to get used to? definitely yes.
Maybe you should post your spec / skills you are using so we can see what the problem is.
Doing Dagger/Dagger or Staff if I’m playing in a group. I’d say post level 20 I’ve gotten the hang of it. The real problem is easy enough to identify. The most powerful Ele skills are AoE. If I’m in an area where there are a lot of mobs the AoE creates aggros the mob and I end up getting taken out quickly. If you’re an ele and you do end up mobbed you have light armor so you need an exit strategy. Swiftness boons from Air attunement aren’t going to save you.
To qualify when I say I die more. In a three hour session in the open world doing events with my Guardian past level 30 I would rarely go down. Perhaps once per three-four hour gaming session, even about half that time I would recover from down state. It was a very rare occurrence. On ele I’m going down perhaps 3-4 times per session. I’m not dieing all the time, it’s just mildly annoying how much more often I go down. On ele I do manage to recover from down state slightly more often. If I’m on my way out I usually manage to pop something heavy.
The problem only occurs in zones where I don’t have at least one other to help me work the mobs. To be fair the game was designed to be a MMORPG so I don’t think it’s all intended to be soloable. Aren’t heavy armored professions always the go-to choice for people who want to play mostly alone?
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Played on Guardian 1-80, finished all ps / events / hearts / dungeons. Loved the way my character played though out. Elementalist does feel eh, much weaker. It’s not just the light armor being an issue. I know how to kite, but IMO for a light armor, ranged caster the DPS should be much higher.
The end result for players is that an Ele is a much more expensive profession to play. I find myself doing two signifigant money sinks. 1.) armor repair cost are higher 2.) instead of buying a new armor set every 10 levels (worked nicely on my Guardian) I’m doing it every 5 on ele.
The end result, this is a break-even profession to level. Don’t expect to have any extra coin to craft, etc without grind.
On Emhry, running around the lower level zones for Asuran and Sylvari and you’ll see perhaps 3-4 people playing near you doing hearts. In human (still by far the most popular race) starting zone you see a reasonably good number.
The island in question is already on the overhead map. It’s below Lions Arch in the Sea of Sorrows. You can try to swim there but you’ll be blocked… A portal will be opened in Lions Arch once it’s available.
As for the “why”. I don’t think this is in response to balancing issues, etc… ArenaNet has said from day one that they plan to make the world dynamic… Colin Johansen strongly hinted last week in his interview that their plan is to provide new content every month. So after the Wintersday Holiday events in December we can expect some new content in January as well.
Having signifigant content updates only months after release is simply doing it right. Other MMO vendors seem to launch thinking their launch content will hold firm for a good six months or so and that never works. I think ArenaNet understands the importance of this. Another very promising comment by Johansen
We want the community to look back and be able to say “they gave us an entire expansion worth of content for free”
Balancing, bug fixing is separate from new content. I doubt they will change Orr that much. not until a major expansion hits.
My first post about it was a compliant. I quickly labeled it a micro-transaction focused revenue stream, but my opinion quickly changed with phase 2…. Hats off to the team behind it, In retrospect I would give it a perfect 10. By far the best Holiday event experience I’ve had in an MMO. They exceeded all expectations and I was happy with every aspect of it. I also thought it was great the very final event paid respect to GW1. This homage took up a small amount of time, but was perfectly executed with the beginning being the destruction of the statue.
Before all was said and done I was very happy to spend some real money on gems to obtain a costume. The costume was worth it and the money goes to make more of this sort of thing possible in the future.
Thinking back on how much work must have been put into this effort draws a bit of an emotional response because I’m thinking about how much hate has been flowing through these forms and I’ve written my share of unfavorable things.
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For those saying it’s like this in every MMO. If you had a large group running a zerg they would win, etc… Perhaps that is true the difference a holy trinity brings is that it gives you a defined purpose in team play. Those other MMOs are designed to require small group play in many (perhaps most higher level) open world situations.
The end result of that is bad in that you are often waiting for a group, the very positive side of that is that when you’re in a group you know your role and the team knows the roll/purpose you serve. The team needs you, you need the team and you obviously picked your profession/class based on what roll you wanted to play.
The holy trinity design is pro-strategic team play. This is why it’s very difficult to find a good replacement for that system. What ArenaNet has done is make so all professions can be configured a few different ways. Guardian, Necro, Ele are better at support than some, Guardian and Warrior better at DPS than some, etc… But since the roles aren’t defined it’s up to the teams to put forth effort to really work out what each person is going to be doing. People simply aren’t doing that.
So while in other MMOs with holy trinity it would be technically possible to create a zerg rush to deal with bosses, doing that is frowned upon. People don’t play these type of games to button mash. Unfortunately what the majority are doing dictates a lot of the play experience for others. If you go into a zone and most of the population is un-groupd zerg rushing an event (to be very honest this is happening at every event in this game when you have a large number of players).
When you end up in a situation where you have a smaller number of players trying to tackle and event then real strategic team play does happen int he open world, but that is rarely the case. The population is concentrated in certain zones often creating scenarios where either your choice is either become part of the zerg or call on people in your guild/friends list to help you knock an event out because there are not enough on your map to help with it.
A hardmode for the open world that implements some kind of optional instancing would solve the zerg rush problem by giving the small group a choice to keep the experience to themselves. That’s one approach to fixing this I’m sure there are others
The bottom line is without it the open world game play becomes very stale and frankly very lonely compared to other MMOs. If I really wanted a single player experience I would be playing another game. Don’t say the first GW was like this, because the first GW1 had a very different system. The ability to repeat cooperative missions and bring a team made GW1 a lot of team-strategy focused and frankly a lot more fun.
My suggestion to fix this is to create a hard mode for the game that allows small parties to enter instanced areas in the open world. I’ll leave it up to them how to implement, but I think something a long those lines would solve it. It’s certainly a solvable problem.
Pick any MMO on the market. Some of them are horrible grind-fest, others have horrible story, no game is perfect, but here’s something that works and has been proven to work: the holy trinity. Stay with me, this is not another one of those post.
ArenaNet has verbally attacked the holy trinity system in their manifesto video and in interviews. They believe they have a better solution. Perhaps they do, but most people complaining about lack of small group strategic play are really upset because dungeons are the only place where the game was really designed for this.
In all other parts of the game there isn’t much a good zerg rush can’t knock out. In most MMOs (even the bad grindy ones) a party that’s grouped up will be fighting hard and working together playing their team role. The whole group will feel the impact if they arent pulling their weight.
The ability to configure many professions for support instead of having a dedicated healer vastly complicates the party-up system. People don’t talk about it, they bring whatever build playstyle they want and most people keep their mouth shut to keep from looking like a poor sport. What’s worse however is that the non-dungeon content has been designed to be easy enough for just about any party configuration to hit with DPS and win.
It’s the strategic team play struggles that create the long term fun. Players should not have to commit to a 2-3 hour dungeon run in order to get this experience. In GW2 that is currently the only place it lives.
This the biggest weakness of the game.
Mystic Claymore ftw
All they have to do is increase the drop rate and then let everyone know they are increasing the drop rate.
A little history on why this happens
I’m not surprised by what has happend. With competitive PvP the goal is always to find a way to win within the confines of the rules. Having fun is a side-effect and defined a bit differently for winning sPvP teams, it’s not the goal it’s a product of achiving the goal. sPvP offers the most intense play experience in the game, it’s also where the core mechanics and balance is put to the test.
If you’re on an sPvP team who’s actively practicing and doing pay tournaments everything you do should be for the goal of helping your team win. The win is the rush of blood to the head, it’s all the fun you’re looking for. It’s pass or fail.
With that in mind it becomes the responsibility of the team leaders to find the very best team builds and insist on them. Thus begins the never-ending cycle of nerfs and buffs that will come from ArenaNet to help balance things.
The fact that we are seeing such few meta sPvP/tPvP team builds says what a lousy job that has been done so far to really make these professions play well against one another. It’s very, very clear their focus with balance for launch was to get the PvE side tight, to make sure an Ele has a good of a chance as a Guardian of handling PvE world situations…. Now when they balance for sPvP and rest assured, that’s coming. Things can not stay the way they are now for long they stand to break the PvE experience. ArenaNet knows how this works. They went down this same path with GW1 and they ended up finally having some skills behave differently in PvP than PvE.
They seemed to believe with GW2 by reducing the number of skills available and by removing dedicated healers they could avoid doing this. I think the fact that the community has created these handful of meta team builds so quickly just shows how wrong ArenaNet was with their assumptions.
They should have learned from GW1 and introduced the sPvP side of the game as having unique versions of some skills from the start. The wisest thing they can do now is quickly go back to that model and begin the long line of nerfs to come to take the game from the fun, button mashing fireworks show experience that it is in PvE and having real balanced play mechanics for each profession so that sPvP can be taken seriously.
They were very lucky that when reviewing the game most critics avoided talking about their failure in this area. To be fair they did deliver an amazing and unique PvE experience but hopefully we’ll see sPvP become what it should be very soon and hopefully all aspects of the play including WvW and PvE will reap the benefits.
While there are certainly some benefits to being there early I continue to avoid sPvP. In my opinion it continues to be a waste of time because it’s simply not finished yet. Yes I do count the balance problems into the mix when I use the word unfinished. No game will ever have perfect balance, but this one has a very long way to go to get into the ballpark of being worth it IMO. Every profession should be usable in sPvP not three out of eight.
(edited by SamTheGuardian.2938)