Guild Wars 2

Just bringing an old topic back to attention. The combat system, while Anet tried to make something revolutionary, away from the trinity, is simply broken.

The main principle of the combat is:
- Everyone can heal/support (role 1)
- Everyone can deal damage (role 2)
- Everyone can tank (role 3)

The problem is… healing & tanking are incredibly undervalued in this game:

• As a healer you’ll do bad because:
  - PvE: you don’t need any healers.
  - PvP (i’m not talking about mechanics, I’m talking about the fighting): if you go healer, you lower the team’s damage and are nothing but a squishy fishy that can’t even fight back. It’s close to impossible to heal your allies because enemies eat through your health faster than you can heal it, aoe heals are limited to 5 persons and a lot of the heals actually miss because of the crazy movement skills in the game. On top of that, the self-heal is usually higher than anything the healer can do.

• As a tank you’ll do even worse because:
  - PvE: you don’t need tanks even less than healers because armour ratings make tiny tiny differences. 3,5k armor compared to 1,8k (lowest possible armor) means about 40% less damage (someone corrected this), while the person with just 2k armour will deal easily 300% more damage through his power/prec, conditions or both.
  - PvP: tanks are, like healers, weakening the team, because they contribute less damage and still take a lot because the armor ratings don’t make a big difference. Also the main defensive abilities are dodging and blocking, which are all abilities that can not be used to defend allies because you can’t do it for allies.

So what it comes down to is: damage dealing. The only role in this game is for dealing the most damage as possible in the shortest time, while trying to take as low damage as possible. Yes I’m aware most people run a hybrid build, but still a hybrid build that focuses on getting a lot of damage as the first stat.

This results in 2 strategies.

• Disabling enemies and dealing loads of direct damage in burst
• Stacking conditions on enemies to spike them down over time

Neither healers (players with ~1,5k healing power), neither tanks (people with 2k+ toughness) can do anything against these damage dealers, because:
- direct damage is reduced, but still deals an incredible amount against a regular tank
- condition damage isn’t even reduced by armour and can only be removed through condition removal, and not through heals

The combat becomes very much a matter of stunlocking and/or kiting, leaving barely any room for individual or team strategy because the main principle is take care of yourself.

Rage.9723:

Someone then pointed out you can just use Ebonhawke for most of the benefits you would get without the 1000 gem cost.

Shhhhh keep it down. It’s a masterplan to remove as much gold as possible from the game.

Hate: grinding aspects, farming, “gold = everything”
Like: lore, races, classes, some great AI

Bagel.4598:

Is this a troll thread?
You paid 600g for the aesthetics, if you wanted to pay for ascended stats, make an ascended weapon.

/thread

Donari.5237:

Sirendor.1394:

Rin.1046:

I would love to have henchmen or followers, and I would love scalable instances, but I do not think they will be easy things to implement.

Guys what about this: every npc you completed a heart for, will be in your debt. You may call upon the npc for dungeons in the zone. Problem is, would only work for instanced, because the npcs still need to be in the world for other players to complete their hearts.

I am amused by the possibilities involved in calling Farmer Eda in to help in CoF. “But but … I only like heat inside a pie baking oven!”

Haha, I didn’t really think it out. Was just trying to offer a workable option involving existing structures. I guess it would be funny at the least.

Cliff.8679:

Sirendor.1394:

Of course in theory it sounds fine to have housing like that, BUT you forget it will kind of go beyond the purpose of housing in the first place. If you want to make housing something succesful, you want it to be part of the world and part of the game. Your house shouldn’t be just another empty building that was built for you without any options for customization. Instead it should be a process that requires you to adventure for materials and build the way you like, wherever you like, and making it open to any random player, so it should be in the open world à la sandbox.

The way GW2 was built, open-world sandbox housing simply cannot work at this point. If they were to do it, it would require making enormous new maps with the sole purpose of player housing, and even then it wouldn’t have enough room for everyone if they want to make it an inclusive system where all players have a home. It would also require a decay system so that players who quit long ago don’t have their houses taking up world space. GW2 wasn’t designed for this kind of housing system from its conception, and this kind of system isn’t feasible unless that’s the case. Open world housing is incredibly cool, but we’re not going to see it in GW2. It needs to be instanced.

And I didn’t say houses should only be open to us with no chances of customization. We should be able to invite friends into our house, and the entire point of bringing up personal housing was as a horizontal progression system: this means customizing.

I have a whole writeup on how personal housing like this would work.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410915

Hi Cliff

I read the post, but despite it being a good idea and probably more realistic than open world (in terms of possibility), it doesn’t really light a spark of anticipation in me. I fear if ArenaNet invests in this kind of ‘progression’ it would be only for a small percentage of players, not involving a lot of actual gameplay and creating only a small amount of content itself, making it a wasted effort for taking a lot of resources developing it.
I’m going to stick to my statement: ArenaNet needs players to create their own entertainment, by offering them a large set of tools (I’ll humbly refer to Everquest Next: Landmark).

Cliff.8679:

Palador.2170:

If you want to do this right, I think you’ll need to make a new zone to base it all in. You could even make the introduction of the new zone a part of the living story. Start with it opening up as a bunch of workers move in to start to clear and build in the area. As we deal with the threats and problems of the zone, they start to build. Eventually, we have a new city that was made to be a social central hub for the game, much the same way that Lion’s Arch is the practical hub for the game.

I discussed this with someone else a bit earlier, but I’m not so sure this is the right approach. From an in-character perspective, there’s very little reason our characters should all just be living in some new multicultural city that springs up far away from our home nations. I think it makes a lot more sense to start with the assumption that our characters live in their respective nations. If housing is going to be instanced anyway, they could even allow us to warp there at any time, similar to the Heart of the Mists. That way it doesn’t require them to redo the existing cities to accommodate the new housing system. This also means that it opens up a lot more possibilities for different styles/settings for our houses, because they won’t necessarily be tied to the look of the surrounding area in the open world. An Asura player could have a floating lab that requires a teleporter to reach the front door, or even a fun, mini jumping puzzle. Or, if they prefer, they could have an underground lab with a cave entrance. Both very different, very cool options that are made a no-brainer as far as implementation goes if it works like Heart of the Mists.

Of course in theory it sounds fine to have housing like that, BUT you forget it will kind of go beyond the purpose of housing in the first place. If you want to make housing something succesful, you want it to be part of the world and part of the game. Your house shouldn’t be just another empty building that was built for you without any options for customization. Instead it should be a process that requires you to adventure for materials and build the way you like, wherever you like, and making it open to any random player, so it should be in the open world à la sandbox.

Aeolus.3615:

SonicTHI.3217:

Because ANET abandoned the development of GW1 to make a better game based on the same principles – no grind for stats, cosmetic endgame, good and engaging pvp.

Instead why dont the people that want vertical progression and all that go back to WoW?

They abandoned the game, still better than gw2!

GW2 worse mmo ever!

So far for reasonable discussions.
That is a rather radical, subjective, and largely false statement.

Jahroots.6791:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No thank you. Limiting rewards helps to curb inflation. If you want to get more rewards, do different content.

Our rewards and virtual income are severely restricted to preserve the stability of something that we never really needed in the first place. We should be self sufficient, adventuring and exploring to get what we need, not grinding and scraping for coin to straight up buy everything.

Completely correct. The game relies on:
- Farm gold
- Use gold for everything

Everything in this game is about gold. It takes away the adventure. They probably should have made everything accountbound except armour and weapons (yes materials should have been accountbound, for players to gather them themselves and either sell them to an npc or use them to craft things).

On a side note, the latter course would have needed:
- Unique and engaging ways to get materials (right now it’s a mindless farm to get mats)
- A more fun experience in crafting.

lordkrall.7241:

Mada.5319:

Oh really now? What is this vertical progression you speak of?

Faction points.
Sunspear points.
Lightbringer points.
(Two of which were actually REQUIRED to even get past certain parts of the MAIN STORYLINE, and the third more or less required to do a certain dungeon or even certain parts of the world, including later missions.)

Ebon Vanguard points.
Deldrimor points.
Norn points.
Asura points.

I would say that was a rather massive amount of grind and vertical progression there, especially since all of those gave skills and most (all but Factions and Sunspear) gave very real and quite powerful passive effects when equipped.

Lol. Those were faaar from a grind. Sunspear required 1k points if I remember correctly and you could easily get 50 points from one single quest (not to mention extra points from killing hostile mobs), and each quest was unique and not repetitive but rather fun in my experience. Lightbringer points were gathered through simply following your story, I didn’t even farm for any of it.

All the other titles were pretty much not needed. You could get them by grinding sure, but they werent needed for anything, just for players who wanted to show: I completed x, y, z.

Your point is invalid.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’ve thought about another aspect of making a zone more interesting.

While I was running around in a zone while being downscaled I thought: now is it exciting to kill that mob over there? Can I get something useful for me (lv.80) out of it? The answer was no. I don’t have the feeling. So what can we do to adress this?

Another “problem” is that RNG feels just bad for most of the players. Some even hate it. How can we make RNG our friend?

What if…

• Each mob-family (Centaurs, Ascalonian ghosts,…) from a zone has a chance to drop something very cool looking. Centaurs could drop a chestpiece which is only a belt which may be the only way to have a bare-chested character.
• There is mob-family specific luck (can be salvaged from mob-specific drops) which increases the droprate of that one specific item above. (Of course there can be whole armorsets, so it’s open for further development)
• Normal mobs would have a really low droprate BUT the droprate can be increased up to a certain point:
• Mobs who have gained bonus-xp by being alive for a while will drop these mob-specific drops regularly. By farming those mobs (you have to move in order to farm them) you can collect mob-specific luck and increase the droprate of mob-specific rewards.

Your progression of mob-specific droprates could be included on trading cards.

To go even further and make it more interesting:

• The unique drop from a mob isn’t the item itself but a treasure map to the location on the map. http://i.imgur.com/udIGku6.jpg
• It may only be a part of that treasure map and you have to have all 4 parts to complete the treasure map
• Now you can compare the treasure map with your world map and find the location this way, or you have to explore the zone until you find the location by accident…
• If you arrive at the location a new event spawns. Most of the time it would be a veteran who needs to be defeated in order to get the mob-specific drop guaranteed.
• The hook: at 10% the veteran tries something shady. He might run away and you have to chase him down to not lose him (he despawns after 1min running), he might spawn a whole group of mobs to take you down. You don’t know what happens. It’s random and dangerous.

I think it’s this idea of an adventure awaiting, that would make me kill that random mob over there. The idea that only mobs who have gained bonus-xp can increase the chance of success would make me hunting down those mobs – but only if I could see the progress via an mob-specific UI.

I think probably the most important thing about this idea would be to make any drop here non-tradeable. Keep the trading post out of this if you want players to explore the world.

Very nice idea Marcus. To add to the idea, what about making mobs harder to challenge higher level players?

I know they can scale events up based on the number of players playing along, what about they make mobs harder based on the level of players they fight and on a random “alive time calculator”… what about adding this:

“Mobs can learn skills, can learn moves such as dodge and they can learn traits!!!”

They could even spawn extra hard monsters with a full skill bar of “10” (elite included), which could really challenge a player.

Mobs could level up (and gain traits by it) by downing players and they get a downed state as well, making it less faceroll for a player to come out as the winner (I never lost against a mob for a year I’m guessing). They could also level up through alive time: every hour of not getting killed gives them a level up. When a mob reaches level 40 it becomes a “Veteran”. When a mob reaches level 80, it becomes a champion and it does not simply stay at it’s location anymore, but goes straight for the nearest capital city (accompanied by other champions, veterans and lower levels from it’s mob-family), where players have to defeat the champions… or see their cities perish.

“Champion Outbreak Events” could become “Global” events, warning everyone from a certain race that a hostile army is marching for their capital, albeit Rata Sum, The Grove, Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak or the Black Citadel. Friendly NPC’s living in cities will go into “War-State”, gathering arms and trying to face the enemy hordes… but ‘if’ they will prevail will depend on you!

We can take the mobs in the Nightmare Tower as a precedent.

Well… for one the combat in GW2 is:
- lacking diversity
- too fixed in roles (zerk/condi > everything)
- lacking specific class mechanics: seriously… each class plays the same pretty much: it’s either “spam condi damage” or “spam direct damage” and the skills per class are just a copy with a different animation
- …

Rin.1046:

I would love to have henchmen or followers, and I would love scalable instances, but I do not think they will be easy things to implement.

Guys what about this: every npc you completed a heart for, will be in your debt. You may call upon the npc for dungeons in the zone. Problem is, would only work for instanced, because the npcs still need to be in the world for other players to complete their hearts.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Sirendor.1394:

My idea is to have ‘instanced’ maps as in “City Levels” (basically how the current maps work, with barriers in the form of portals that require you to load the area. Currently Divinity’s Reach is rather vertical. It has huge slopes and different levels. If they simply added new levels, with walkways/portals to the next level, and allow the space DR has, you could build beneath the DR we have right now, or above it. Each ‘Level’ could then function as a sort of open world map, with their own npcs, npc houses, dynamic events, skill point challenges and much more.

It would create a completely new world, built by the players.

EDIT:
Oh and this could be done for any city known at this moment. Rata sum, with floating levels, Black Citadel with underground mines and mechanical structures. Hoelbrak could get spirit fields, dedicated to one ancestral spirit or another. The Grove would be one of the best, as a tree of life, climbing ever higher. Even some of the cities in explorable maps could lead to other city levels, think about Ebonhawke for example.

EBONHAWKE! would be an awesome place! If this was the case, it could get more people hanging out there. At least, that’s what I’d hope it would do.

They could even limit the amount of levels it goes above and below the cities with NPC’s saying they are working on building more space, and then have them resting in a future patch after all the work of adding even more levels! lol

One can only hope. I do think it’s possible, given that they can maybe start with 1 level in upper city, one below surface, per city. That would add probably around 16 maps of a limited size (per server). They should be able to handle that.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Sirendor.1394:

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

That makes me think of apartment buildings, which you don’t really see in Tyria atm. lol

If it used some sort of asura/charr tech to make floating landspace as well, then it would seem like how Wildstar is doing their housing – though that’s instanced.

My idea is to have ‘instanced’ maps as in “City Levels” (basically how the current maps work, with barriers in the form of portals that require you to load the area. Currently Divinity’s Reach is rather vertical. It has huge slopes and different levels. If they simply added new levels, with walkways/portals to the next level, and allow the space DR has, you could build beneath the DR we have right now, or above it. Each ‘Level’ could then function as a sort of open world map, with their own npcs, npc houses, dynamic events, skill point challenges and much more.

It would create a completely new world, built by the players.

EDIT:
Oh and this could be done for any city known at this moment. Rata sum, with floating levels, Black Citadel with underground mines and mechanical structures. Hoelbrak could get spirit fields, dedicated to one ancestral spirit or another. The Grove would be one of the best, as a tree of life, climbing ever higher. Even some of the cities in explorable maps could lead to other city levels, think about Ebonhawke for example.

I like it, but don’t think it very realistic at this point.

Shongaqu.5279:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

I saw a post about player housing being open world. I gotta wonder if eventually space would run out lol.

This is the eternal issue with player housing. If they opened the outer wall of DR as it’s own zone that might open up a good amount of space. I suppose it really depends on how many accounts can be tied to a server before it is considered full. Making 10,000 houses in Tyria would be insane. If servers max out at 70-100,000 like my quick math suggests then as much as I like open world housing I don’t think it is an option. The issue here comes into the cost that Chris mentioned. While similar, open world vs. instanced housing would have to be coded into the game very differently thus making a hybrid of the two much like cost effective. I love the idea/function of open world housing, so I’ll keep championing it, but instanced would probably be a better use of their time in the long run. If anet added new zones with houses in them there could be a fun land rush element to zone launches.

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

WingLegacy.7159:

Sirendor.1394:

Alright and how many people have Eternity? 0,001%?

That’s the OP’s point cause its hard to make one. So it should be more just an effect.. I say they should make sigil changable as well as part of Eternity feature. ..

Do you really think they should create content for a few extremely rich people and ignore creating content for those who don’t have the gold for legendaries? This game needs better content (away from grind/farm), or it will surely die, I think Anet’s top priority is on that, and they really shouldn’t waste any money/development time on legendaries.

Ethics.4519:

Sirendor.1394:

Alright and how many people have Eternity? 0,001%?

Correct, the company and the playerbase already said the minority doesn’t matter during the fractured patch.

It’s all about the majority. So just do your dailies, farm events & champs, and enjoy the game with the rest of the BHBs.

Sorry, but you put me in the wrong box of players. I hate dailies, I hate farm events and I hate champs even more. On the contrary I’m in favor of adding meaningful content.

Eternity (as all legendaries) is a prestige item, which happens to be available only to … farmers, tp flippers and a very small group of lucky people, because they’re the ones with enough gold for it.

Anyways, I think the last posts are straying off the real topic (though silent chats are a part of it). The problem I think the OP is talking about is;
- No longer are the zones filled with players excited to do this and that
- No longer are guilds from launch still active (I passed on to my 4th guild by now, and I think of myself as a rather loyal person)
- No longer does the world itself seem promising, all it’s secrets are gone and the shine has gone with the wind

Basically: desolate.

Alright and how many people have Eternity? 0,001%?

Well I’m still hoping something will come out of the CDI. Chris and co are really doing a great job in my opinion and I don’t think I ever saw a similar interaction between players and developers. Now it’s up to you ArenaNet

Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

I had quite a worked out idea on the topic of Player Housing and creating more structures in the world as a sort of sandbox content:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/15#post3421456

I came in here expecting to see a thread about coverage wars, because WvW is totally unbalanced and what do I see: carebear wars!

Shakkara.2641:

I think sandbox games are the future, see Everquest Next.

So the question is, how much sandbox stuff (like houses) can GW2 put in before EQN comes out…

I agree wholeheartedly. Can’t wait for sandbox games, or sandbox elements in GW2. They would give the game a sense again for me.

Do devs have stealthbumps too? o-O

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

What we need is something like THIS!

Will probably never happen, but still, Guild Wars 2 needs an expansion like this imo.

OMG. This is AMAZING!

Obsidian.1328:

You’re right, he does have a point in that a successful MMO is an evolutionary process and not a polished dream right out of the box. I was also trying to bait him into a more drawn out argument because that’s not exactly the essence of the argument here is it?

You’re also right in saying that it’s hard to cater to all the different kinds of players at the same time, which has a lot to do with what everyone is talking about here. A key point of the issue is GW2 isn’t catering to the same crowd as GW1. They are catering to the casual masses. That’s fine if that’s what a company wants to do. There’s certainly money to be had in that, especially since the casual crowd is the fastest growing demographic in a decidedly cutthroat market.

What a lot of us take issue with is the contention that ANet gave every indication of making it a game for the GW1 type of player. A game for players who thrived on challenging content, strategic build diversity, meaningful storyline elements, and especially highly competitive, team-oriented PvP. They didn’t exactly do that, did they? If you’re going cater to a different crowd, have the decency to say so instead of pulling the proverbial wool over our eyes.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but I don’t know how to put it another way.

Hello Obsidian, I really didn’t mean to counter your point and I don’t really agree with the way the game is going either, as my posting history probably points out.

Your remark about different public is probably correct, and it would seem the public GW2 focuses most on is the one who:
1) doesn’t like hard challenges
2) isn’t very interested in competitive PvP
3) doesn’t mind repeating content countless times
4) cares for “being the best” more than actually playing the game (which we see in the way legendaries are dealt out, the way ascended are dealt out).

It would seem GW2 developers initially had great ideas and really didn’t expect players to burn through content all that fast, but truth be told, it was fun, it was massive and people thought they would make it challenging enough to make it last, just like GW1, by releasing high quality over the course of a few months.

I think most people in my first guild stopped playing around December-January-February, that’s when the first big shockwave of leavers hit. In the period from August to December they should have been able to prepare a new release, possibly just 1 single new map, but they didn’t. They were too late in releasing anything interesting and people gave up. They expected A LOT of this game, because it was being hyped from at least early 2012, and then in a few months, the average player already completed everything there was to the game.

My hypothesis is that Anet felt like they needed to bring in more stuff for casual players who didn’t rush through all the content yet, and tried to keep them playing at all costs, through shallow patches. Once they started down that road, they scared off anyone who was after challenging content, and developed an increasing need to cater to casuals.

Personally, I live for challenges, and it’s certainly not what I expected from Guild Wars 2, when I look back to GW1 being such a rich experience (when we look at other games of that time), with an epic story and a great feel of progression for the player, with a little grind (titles mostly), but something you weren’t forced to do and was really only for really really really hardcore players.

Cornellious.1435:

Posts in the same theme of this one are fairly common on these forums, however they generally get caught up in the specifics. This generally leads to people coming to defend GW2 by attacking each specific detail without really understanding the author’s point of view. With this post I hope to ( by analogy ) describe the deep feeling of dissatisfaction that I, and I think many others, have with the game.

I started playing this game during the open beta weekends, and I was enormously excited about the game. On release myself and about twelve real life friends joined the game. For a couple months everything seemed great. We had a decent list of in game friends, we had a dungeon running guild that was doing well. People were having fun, exploring, and doing new dungeons.

Then people started to leave, over the next couple of months my friends list had dried up, and of the twelve people who started with me only one of them was still around. I don’t believe it was any one thing that drove people out. People would log in, and you would ask them what they wanted to do; they wouldn’t have a clear answer. “We could run a dungeon I guess” they would say halfheartedly, only we had all run the dungeons many times, and had acquired all the gear we really wanted.

As I stated in my opening paragraph, I would like to leave out the specifics and try to get to heart of my feelings with the game. To get to the heart of things I would like to compare GW2 to a local pub.

Imagine you find a nice local pub near you. The beer is strong, delicious, and satisfying; the tables, floor, and bar are a beautiful weathered hardwood. The shelf behind the bar is filled with quality spirits, some you’ve never even heard of, but all taste great. The floor is dusty, and the air is filled with laughter; the place feels like home.

Over time you start noticing a change coming over the bar. Every time you come back the beer is just a little bit weaker, and just a little more expensive. Every time you look at the shelf of spirits, the selection appears less varied, and more generic. There are less people around, and you don’t recognize many of them, but they seem to be happy. Maybe you are just imagining things.

Unfortunately things keep going the same way, you start wondering if there is any beer left in the water you are drinking. The spirits available are all generic name brand, and cheap; all of them are hidden under the bar. The bar food tastes like it came out of a package. You look around and wonder if the people there are drinking the same thing you are. Some of them look satisfied, many of them are staring blankly into their watery half filled mug. Few of them are talking to anyone, the bar itself still looks as good as it always did, but somehow it now feels cold, and uninviting.

Is what we have really what we actually want? Is the direction the game has been going something you would like to see on into the future?

I feel that if the beer was stronger and the spirits more varied, the people who have stayed will continue to stay, they may even be happier than before. The people that have long since left might return. Arenanet, please try to find the soul of the game again, the game is too beautiful to be treated as harshly as it has this past year. It feels like GW2 is in a race, and 10 meters from the finish line it sat down and started building sand castles. Some of the sand castles are pretty impressive, but the finish line is right there and the other racers are catching up. You can build more sand castles later.

This is an artwork, with a lot of passion mixed in the paint. I love it and yes, I feel completely the same. I can’t bring myself to log in anymore, because I fear I’ll find something worse each time: less people on the guild roster each time; more people stacked at LA bank each time; more zergs in WvW each time; awkward memories from the time the game still felt like a 2nd home and all my friends were with me.
It’s saddening

Not really, but lets be honest, it’s free to play, no sub. Maybe we should be glad they added anything at all, even if it was living story crap and a gear grind.

Space there are some very easy jumping puzzles out in the world.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Easiest-Jumping-Puzzles

Ahahah, I’ve played on low settings forever cause I appreciate having a portable device > very light laptop and I just don’t have a clue what I should get for gaming anyways ^^.

I would be totally willing to spend leisure hours designing some alternative weapons. If only they would be willing to allow it. I think the future lies in player-development, personally.

On the one hand, it takes a burden off the shoulders of developers and allows them to focus more on mechanics while still bringing about new content without too much work.

And on the other hand it would probably please a lot of players that they got a chance at creating a new weapon/armour piece/… for a game they like.

Vayne.8563:

Obsidian.1328:

Vayne.8563:

Obsidian.1328:

Vayne

Then why not go for some middle ground that still favors customization, just to a lesser degree? Instead they went waaaay the other direction. No one’s doubting the complexity of GW1 and how hard it was to balance, but simply scrapping it in favor of a system that is its polar opposite isn’t exactly innovation. It’s destruction. They almost completely dismantled and rebuilt it.

Why?

Anet has always over-reacted to problems. It’s their modus operadi.

Remember how people said that Prophecies was too long and slow. So they came out with Factions which was too short and fast. They got the balance a bit more right with Nightfall came out.

MMOs aren’t born as they later become…they grow. Anet started with less options and will add more as time goes on. That means that as they add more, they have a better chance of keeping some control. Starting out with 200 skills per profession would have killed it out of the gate.

Get the central game to where you want it, then start adding skills. It’s better for the game in the long term.

…

That’s your answer? Because overreacting is just their thing? You’re being an apologist.

I’m not being an apologist at all, because I’m not saying Anet is right for doing this. I’m saying this is what they do and I’d come to expect it. I’m more resigned to it than excusing it.

But it’s a penduluum thing. They got it wrong with Prophecies (too long and slow for most people), got it wrong with Factions (too fast, not enough content for a full game) and more or less got it right (or at least righter) with Nightfall.

I’m stating what I perceived, and saying that Guild Wars 2 will continue to by altered until there are more builds available and more skills and more ways to make builds.

But it’s never going to be Guild Wars 1 by intentional design.

Vayne has a solid point here. It’s extremely hard to cater to all the different kinds of players at the same time. It’s like trying to climb 3 horses the same time (only good ol’ Chuck is able to do this > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-D1KVIuvjA).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The Lost Witch.7601:

Then again, I don’t like that people are using dragon wing backpacks because they break my immersion. Yet the popularity of the wings suggests that others don’t agree with me on that. So perhaps my opinion is that of a minority.

-snip-snip-

I think Anet’s armor-designers also should take inspiration from many different fantasy-genre sources. Why not start a CDI where people could post their favourite suggestions (images) and discuss these with the designers themselves.

Yes! Make it so, oh Marcus!

HiddenNick.7206:

Is it? I don’t want to make any verdict myself. I’m just honestly asking. Because I think that AN wanted to achieve few things with living world. And I’m wondering if they’ve succeeded.

If the purpose of Living Story was to scare players away, it’s working.

Quick Mouse.7635:

Sirendor.1394:

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

This would never happen.

Probably not, because WvW is broken and Anet likes that it’s broken (because they think it’s alright coverage > win).

Caliburn.1845:

You want to stop hammer trains? Let’s handicap zerging as well, I like killing two birds with one stone.

Two words,

“Player collision”

Do it Anet! Do it!

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Happy New Year All!

Chris

Nuuu Chris you’re supposed to be enjoying your 2 days off

Happy new year. ^^ Don’t worry, be happy!

Goodbye. You are right with a lot of that. Beautiful stories don’t last forever, though. If the game becomes stale… switch to something you enjoy. It’s what I did.

Yargesh.4965:

Same whines are back after a short absence.

They’re not whines, they’re feedback. If the feedback keeps coming back, it means it has a foundation, and there IS a problem.

Because GW1 is dead and dated. It was the most brilliant game we had for a long time. Now it’s gone, and GW2 is our only replacement (so far).

Buttercup.5871:

Azure, you are what GW2 needs, but not right now. You need two weeks of no gaming. Come back and do the stuff you enjoy the most first. You can be ultra-competitive if your head is clear enough to see what you want to be competitive in. You have to choose what that is and become the best at it. And then, once you made up your mind, you have to start to ignore the clutter (be it achievement points, skins etc). Try it, it’s worth a shot. I figure you’d be good at PvP, but I’m curious to see what you’ll choose.

I’ve tried becoming “Expert Level” in WvWvW small scale, but in the end… it doesn’t work because WvWvW is broken as hell, though me and my mates were all well above normal levels of PvP skill. The fact that people who decide to get a blob of 30 can just flip everything in 2 minutes is a huge letdown, aswell as the fact that they have:
- superior movement over small scale
- no problems with aoe cap
- downed state and mass-rez
…

Only possibility I see is an expansion (with classes/races included) being purchased through the gem store, but very very unlikely. For one, I’m not really tempted to even try an expansion at this point of the game. Might be I get better content for the same worth if I just decide to roll with a new game.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

More like:

1. SPvP is a huge step down from the acclaimed GvG fights that gave GW1 it’s competitive reputation.

2. The build system is made even more restriction by the stupidly low selection of weapons, utilities, healing skills, and elites available to each profession.

3. Too many resources are being used on the wrong things. Instead of improving the core experience, so much development time and talent has been wasted on a lackluster living story arc.

4. Too much emphasis on twitch reactions as a form of skill and not nearly enough emphasis on intelligent skill choice, skill usage, and team coordination. (PvE)

5. Too much emphasis on zerging. Not enough emphasis on small group roaming. (WvW)

6. Rewards for dynamic events, fractals, and many of the more difficult dungeon paths are pitiful.

7. The balance team does next to nothing.

8. Poor stat nomenclature balance – especially in PvE. Con damage is too worthless in PvE, while being overpowered in pvp formats. Berserker is too valuable in PvE content. Healing power is all around meh – unless you’re an SPvP bunker.

9. Underwater combat still feels like an alpha product.

And…. despite it all…..

10. Too many critics. You have to acknowledge your shortcomings, but it’s easy to get sick of all the whining posts. We need some balance in the force.

Combat:
- Too many AoE abilities, with too little risk for the one dealing them (resulting in stacking and zerging).
- Not enough skill involved: tap a button and it does the job for you (result of having skills instead of aiming, blocking, dodging, sprinting as weapon abilities).
- Lack of friendly fire: nobody would zerg if you would be hitting allies by running in a pack of 20.
- Lack of bodyblocking: you can run through enemies as if they aren’t there, yet you can CC them.

Aeonblade.8709:

They need to release GvG and TDM for the “boom headshot” crowd. Other than that, there is not really a need to muddle up PvP even more when so much is broken in the current sPvP and WvW.

That’s why they should keep WvW for people who like to zerg (It’s hard to believe but there are people who do) and SPvP for people who like to win a match by capturing points and bunkering, and give everyone else good PvP.

@ Akari that’s more or less what I had in mind

Azala Yar.7693:

Sounds quite boring and I used to do something like it myself. It’s especially boring if you do it frequently, this game was supposed to be fun.

I think this is one of the biggest problems with the game: to earn money you need to do boring things. What happened to play the way you like?

Very nice. Hope this helps the developers in doing something.

I have. Played LoL, SMITE and Forge, but they lack lore and result in a completely random killfest, without any goal at all.