Guild Wars 2

Im not sure about that. You can raid for days and weeks on end in WoW and not see the gear you want and when it finally shows up, someone else wins the roll and get it instead.

The problem is, in a game focused around endgame content and gear treadmills, if the BiS gear is really easy to get, what are you going to do once you get it? Raid more and see how many sets you can collect?

Also, with Ascended gear, getting the mats itself isn’t the problem, the game chucks asc mats at you like as if they’re free samples. It’s getting 500 craft that’s the problem. But once you get 500 on one toon, your whole account is set.

^but wouldn’t that make Teq instanced content?

Zackie.8923:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Construct a MMO’s core mechanics (artwork, combat etc) from existing MMOs. I’ll start as an example.

1. The quests and storytelling of RuneScape.
2. The combat, the world, the dungeons and progression of GW2
3. The cutscenes of FF14
4. The large scale group content of WoW
5. The character design and gear of Vindictus

1. RuneScape does something which I havn’t seen in any other MMO. Instead of having one storyline the player follows, it has a series of questlines which are separate in nature but intertwining in events, sewn together by an overarching plot which is elegantly and slowly unveiled to the player. It’s just beautifully immersive.

2. Tyria is beautiful, I don’t need to say anything more. The combat has just the right balance between an action MMO and a traditional one to get the best of both worlds.

The dungeons are very well structured, with puzzles and other tasks to break up boss fights and mob trashing. The thing about progress in this game is that it’s mostly well…. progressive. Take Ascended items for example, instead of waiting for a RNG boss drop with a 0.00001 chance, you know how far you’re away to crafting it.

3+4. I don’t think I need to say anything.
5. Despite everything else being done terribly in that game, the gear and characters look awesome. Each endgame armour which came out before Season 2 were unique and intricately designed, down to the very little details like how chains on them moved and how that one armour with a cape’s cape swirled as you ran.

runescape has an epic storyline?

wow, as a former runescape player since the beginning, i only know how to farm guards using prayer till no tomorrow lol.

Did you play any of the quests without skipping all the dialogue?

Although it is true that you need to get up to Ritual of the Majarrat to fully
appreciate the lore, because that quest is a point which every quest line in the entire game focuses together.

Any of the t1 WvW servers. The reason why the game seems dead is because of everyone transferring to high-ranked WvW servers, leaving them stacked to stupid and all the lower servers deserted.

Also, no MMO on earth would possibly allow you to play as much as you want and never repeat a thing.

Gandarel.5091:

A feature that was lose somewhere durning the 2 games. It’s called PvP.

Personally I think PvP has a lot more potential in GW2 than 1, simply because we have a z axis, jumping and the combat has evolved to be more dynamic. Jumping may seem trivial, but it makes fights so much more fluid because logs won’t get in your way.

Also, I think people are forgetting that WvW and sPvP aren’t the only 2 PvP modes. There’s thing like Keg Brawl or Sanctum Sprint which are also PvP mini games.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Nope,. it won’t be the case for Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 already has in less than a year, half the sales that Guild Wars 1 had in it’s entire lifetime and it hasn’t released in China yet.

You didn’t mention the part where 80% of those sales were made in the previous year and the number of sales since then dropped significantly. And will continue to drop, since most of the people that have been interested in this game have likely bought it already. Yes, chinese sales might change that, but so far the chinese market has been very resistant to western style MMO’s, due to many reasons.

One of which is that there’s not enough grind. Chinese culture is about competition and progress.

darkace.8925:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

notice how many times “can we” is mentioned?

they tried?

the problem is the players, not the developers.
the players left the game because there was not enough grind.
the players felt boring because there was not enough grind.

etc.

I firmly believe that the kinds of players who stuck around for carrots, treadmills, and grinds are the exact kinds of players who are going to jump ship the moment the next flashy MMO hits the market. I doubt they were ever in it for the long haul regardless of what changes the developers made. If I’m right and they do leave, that leaves a game designed for players that no longer play. Just as bad, that leaves a portion of jaded players who otherwise would have supported the game long-term with a game they no longer enjoy.

With the next-gen consoles, several AAA MMOs, and an inevitable WoW expansion all around the corner, we’ll see soon enough whether I’m right or wrong. For ArenaNet’s sake, they’d better hope I’m wrong.

I don’t know about that. A lot of players play MMOs to achieve something and show off, it’s often those players that play MMOs like single player games, ie just for fun, that move on after they’ve gobe through everythibg in the game. The grinders tend to hang around because they’ve done so much work they don’t want to start as a newbie again.

It’s the very reason why games like RuneScape are popular, because you can work your kitten off to achieve something and feel über about it.

Often the case of things, you intend to do something, but it doesn’t work out. A MMO needs income, if the cash doesn’t come in or there’s not enough people playing, you HP back to the drawing board.

Amadan.9451:

mabinogi with the graphic and the combat system of neverwinter

Although I actually hated the graphics in Maninogi, it had probably the most innovative character and gear progression I’ve ever seen. Pretty much perfect horizontal progression defined.

iniside.4736:

1. Energy system.
2. Lower cool downs on abilities.
Thse two go hand in hand. current system is quite boring. cool downs are far to long, and you essentialy only managing cooldowns. Sometimes I feel like I’m playin turn based game instead of action one. Shorter cooldowns would pump more action into game, while managing energy would increase micromanagment you need while using abilities.
3. Item design (mechanics wise). – Current item design is just awfull. Flat stat increases, + 9827 to awsomnes, Fascinating. Even my dog would come up with better ideas. Some runes are more intresting, but most of them fallow the same pattern, flat stat increases.
Where are the itemas that were constructed like this:
While your hp is below 50% you gain 20%.
While you are hexed, you gain +2 energey regeneration.
Etc. You got the point.
Instead of enchancing old item system, they just throwed it away and replaced it with dumb stat progression…

There are plenty of runes/sigils with actual effects, it’s just that people don’t use most of them because they prefer straight up stat increases.

^ not a game but if you ever watched Fate/Zero, that’s basically what I would imagine TSW in a fantasy setting to be like.

I would live Terraria to be an actual MMO, as in, you can’t just basically copy-paste worlds and ‘spawn’ items.

Nothing is absolute until you define it in context.

^theres a difference between being a tank and being immortal.

And also, the devs will always set things up to make them seem epic. If you saw trailers, just remember Tequatl Rising’s trailer that made him seem like he’s running around through the fight. If you saw gameplay, my above post about pre-patch Tequatl.

Zoltreez.6435:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Zoltreez.6435:

GW2 Atmosphere + Rift Talenting system + everything else from Wildstar

Wildstar isn’t out yet, thus does really exist as we don’t really know everything about it.

did you watched all the dev speak whats in the game ? the combat break out gameplay ? the housing that have a porpose not just cosmetic ? the different type of PvP activities ? most of the mmos don’t offer anything else then raids or BGs.

GW2 only has WvW spvp and Instances I don’t count living story as content that you can do whenever you want. WoW has BGs Arenas aaaaand raids nothing else also.

Devs can say all they want, it doesn’t mean that’s what the game’s actually going to be like. The devs of this game showed us how pre-patch Tequatl had a million different features but it turned out to be just a 1-spam until they revamped him.

I don’t see this being different with Wildstar, especially when they showed that level 20 dragon boss’s mechanics and the tank was just literally staying still and soaking up all the damage from everything.

xephire.8324:

Talenna.4052:

For GW2 to be perfect for me, I would like to have:

The player housing from SWG (with the pack up system of LotRO should players be inactive)
Emotes and animations from MxO (loved being able to sit on bar stools)
Quick hairstyle change from Fallen Earth
Wardrobe system from LotRO
Synchronised instrument playing from SWG
Dances from just about any other game!

Yes, I love fluff!

That’ll be like a dress up game.And a kid like atmosphere in gw2 T^T.

Quaggan backpacks would like a word with you.

As long as Elins with their widely visible panties from Tera doesn’t make it into this list, I’m fine with anything.

Copestetic.5174:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Not sure if this counts but a proper fight with Abbadon because that fight in GW1 was more anticlimactic than Zhaitan.

/dance will fix that.

He cheated and 1-hitted me, the sore loser.

Zoltreez.6435:

GW2 Atmosphere + Rift Talenting system + everything else from Wildstar

Wildstar isn’t out yet, thus does really exist as we don’t really know everything about it.

Yargesh.4965:

This is the best one for me so far. Perfection is an illusion.

Perfection is an opinion.

Construct a MMO’s core mechanics (artwork, combat etc) from existing MMOs. I’ll start as an example.

1. The quests and storytelling of RuneScape.
2. The combat, the world, the dungeons and progression of GW2
3. The cutscenes of FF14
4. The large scale group content of WoW
5. The character design and gear of Vindictus

1. RuneScape does something which I havn’t seen in any other MMO. Instead of having one storyline the player follows, it has a series of questlines which are separate in nature but intertwining in events, sewn together by an overarching plot which is elegantly and slowly unveiled to the player. It’s just beautifully immersive.

2. Tyria is beautiful, I don’t need to say anything more. The combat has just the right balance between an action MMO and a traditional one to get the best of both worlds.

The dungeons are very well structured, with puzzles and other tasks to break up boss fights and mob trashing. The thing about progress in this game is that it’s mostly well…. progressive. Take Ascended items for example, instead of waiting for a RNG boss drop with a 0.00001 chance, you know how far you’re away to crafting it.

3+4. I don’t think I need to say anything.
5. Despite everything else being done terribly in that game, the gear and characters look awesome. Each endgame armour which came out before Season 2 were unique and intricately designed, down to the very little details like how chains on them moved and how that one armour with a cape’s cape swirled as you ran.

Not sure if this counts but a proper fight with Abbadon because that fight in GW1 was more anticlimactic than Zhaitan.

Sirendor.1394:

Lol. I’d rather do cof p1 for a month than farm ascended seriously.

I don’t think I’ve ever grinded Ascended stuff and currently my banks overflown with them to the extent I needed to stack them on alts. The game chucks ascended mats at you for doing anything other than afk at LA or sPvP.

What I do find frustrating however, is the crafting requirement. It’s a uphill climb to 500 DIYing on your own, it should cap at 420 or something.

haviz.1340:

Evans.6347:

I’m sorry but I find such comment distasteful.
Nobody is at any point forcing you to stand there and press 1. That is your own choice.

Yes, you can do it, while being carried by others in a group. But hey, maybe you could make the whole “ordeal” a little more interesting for yourself and others by using you whole spectrum of skills.

Bah, why am I arguing this anyway. I you want to complain about your self imposed boredom, go on ahead. That’s what a forum is for after all.

I find those events distasteful. You are in a zerg of 100 players wearing cleric’s, shaman’s or any other bad gear. Using more skills doesn’t make it more interesting because you’re basically attacking a dummy.

And I’m actually doing more damage than other zerglings by spamming 1. Not to mention that guardian with a sword or warrior with an axe actually deals the most damage by using only autoattacks.

You see, this is the problem. People rant about world events being spamming 1 and akitteng, then release a world event which requires co-ordination and strategy like Tequatl, and everyone calls for a nerf.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

I was going to say how WvW was going to become hell with this +Trinkets+Weapons+Bloodlust but then I remembered WvW is the disowned child of Guildwars2.

I don’t quite get why does everyone complain this stuff ruins WvW’s balance when the game mode was never and will never be balanced in the first place. Just the difference in numbers screws the balance, when your squad of 10 gets ambushed by a 50-man enemy army, no Ascended items or bloodlust is going to save you.

Love the shoulders and gloves, but rest of the heavy looks meh.

MikaHR.1978:

Adine.2184:

Ellisande.5218:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The view on the forums is likely to be skewed towards a “no don’t bother” answer.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a reason why the boards are leaning in that direction.

Its because the majority of the people who like it are playing it so yes i agree there is a reason .

Yah, same exact line that was repeated while AAA MMOs couldnt keep enough players to sustain P2P model, went F2P and layed off half of their staff.

Same line that was said when WoW lost 5 million players.

Carry on.

Depends on which MMO. You actually make more money in a F2P model than a P2P, but initially going P2P is a good way to take back some of the money you invested to make the game from the initial rush of new players, so a lot of MMOs start with a P2P them go F2P.

You need less people to keep developing content for a game than to make a game, so of course you get a lot of layoffs.

Lucyfer.9517:

Taiver.4395:

1) Have I considered checking group composition, do we have a good setup of classes etc or are we all full berserker, all dying, and wondering why?
2)Are we all using food buffs and ALSO weapon buffs AKA sharpening stones or weapon coatings etc etc from weaponcrafting skills or buy off TP
3) Have we strategized and thought about the fight in depth or am I doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results?
4) Is this content for me? – If you cant do it and it makes you SO mad, angry or whatever that you need to rage, maybe just ignore it and carry on doing what you were doing, after all there will be something new in 2 weeks which might be more acceptable.

5)If all the devs do lately is releaseing hard annoying content that is not for me should i keep playing and supporting this game?

Well, if WoW stopped making raids…..

But the reward isn’t just the gold though. You also get a chance at those new weapon skins and whatever that’s inside Aether chests.

Ellisande.5218:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The view on the forums is likely to be skewed towards a “no don’t bother” answer.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a reason why the boards are leaning in that direction.

I think you’ll find that the forums of every AAA MMO is slanted towards negativity. Humans as a whole like to complain more than compliment and people certainly dont go out of their way to post compliments on forums.

^thats because the moment people see that it’s an overflow, the mentality is ’we’re screwed, time to die and AFK for the daily.’

Which isn’t wrong though, if you get overflowed, the chances are that you’ll screw up because it’s hard to spontaneously organise 80 people.

Yep. Like you said, WoW’s forums are a moshpit of complaints but look at that, everyone still plays it.

But just as you are expressing your opinion of the game right now, they can express their’s.

As for balance, GW2 probably is the most balanced game I’ve seen in terms of MMOs and MOBAs, but it sure isn’t perfectly balanced.

knives.6345:

MikaHR.1978:

knives.6345:

Laura MacIntyre.1860:

Okay background as quickly as possible lol.

Played guild wars obsessively for 4 years straight, was amazing at it and loved it. Them a friend swayed me toward wow. Found it a bit more versatile and it was fun to try something new, so that eventually won me over.

When guild wars 2 came out I was SO excited, but I only played for about 2 weeks before quitting. It was nothing like the old game is known and loved, and I was already built up in wow.

So now I’d like to start guild wars 2 again, but I’m debating whether it’s even worth it. Is there even a large community anymore? I’m on gate of madness at the moment and I feel so lonely even though it’s a high population server. Is there end game content that makes it worth starting the game?

It’s hard to get the motivation to start, because I have no clue what I’m doing and I don’t know ANYONE who plays anymore.

I was frustrated because I got so good at this game and invested so much time, and then they just rip it away and throw us into a new game that we have to learn all over again….

Anyone have any advice?

No one can answer that but you. It’s a free game (well, set aside the $60) – you may want to try and see it personally.

PS:

Feeling lonely on GoM? Don’t ever ever try going to BP. BP makes GW2 feel like Skyrim.

But but but…Vayne said theres horde of people, everywhere, anytime, pushing all maps into overflow at all times!

Maybe on where he is or in his timezone. lol

But mine? Good as dead on weekdays.

Depends on your server. All the t1 servers are stacked like stupid because of WvW.

Zeph.5927:

Vayne.8563:

Sirendor.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Nice opinion piece…which is pretty much just that. A very long opinion piece, but you blow it at the end.

You say this could be avoided,. but you don’t really know that. It’s pure conjecture. I’m not sure you’d said anything here that hasn’t been said in countless threads.

Guys, don’t listen to what he says. He posts on any post that has criticisms on the way Anet handled their game (criticisms with a good foundation!) and he always defends Anet, not even looking at the arguments the criticizers give. Sad.

Hey guys, don’t listen to what he says, he doesn’t have a clue about me. If you’re going to ignore the negative posts I’ve made, you have no right to call me out for defending what I like about the game.

Oh look, he doesn’t agree with me, so therefore he’s a mindless fan boi.

Not even close.

Lol. But you ARE a mindless fanboi. All of your posts prove it. You disagree with ANYONE who criticizes this game in anyway (even when it’s good, constructive criticism that we need), and defend it to the death, all while trying to make everyone else seem wrong. If that’s not a fanboi, then I don’t know what the hell it is. You really need to stop sucking Anet’s kitten for once and open your eyes to the COUNTLESS flaws, bugs, glitches, and overall bad things that are present in this game. White knighting a game as hardcore as you do actually hurts it more than it helps it. Devs see people praising their terrible game and think “Oh, nothing’s wrong…we don’t need to improve or fix anything. Carry on!”

Seriously dude. Enough with the fanboi orgasms you have all over these forums. It’s extremely pathetic to watch.

Ummm, even if he does argue against all criticisms of the game, what exactly is wrong with that? What, you can’t like a game in this day and age?

Things like Blink needs a 10 sec CD or less. I really don’t understand why a skill that just acts as an extra dodge/catching up to party members needs a whooping 30 seconds CD.

They should just improve pet AIs to allow them to get away from AoEs.

A piece of advice, you should never come on a game’s forums to ask if the game is good. It’s like going into a communist gathering and asking them what do they think about capitalism.

But if you baven’t got to level 80, should could give it a try. For me, I almost quit the game for TSW because it was just so boring, then I got to level 80 and it became rather fun. Half the game’s content doesn’t open up to you until you hit 80.

Sirendor.1394:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Xae Isareth.1364:

You don’t need Ascended gear to do anything in PvE or be competitive in WvW,

This is false. Ascended Armor is coming. In all, the small stat increases that each piece of Ascended gear give add up. If you don’t realize this now you’ll regret later having to grind for Ascended weapons AND Armor at the same time.

Of course, WvW may not survive all this vertical progression anyway, so perhaps you’re in a way correct.

As a matter of fact, constituting this player’s point, full ascended gear gives a 13% stat boost compared to full exotic gear, which is a huge difference, and very very very significant for WvW. Basically it means that if Anet doesn’t do something about this (and the skill lagg and the blobbing), they’ll loose a maior part of the PvP community to other games that have a better competitive system.

In a zerg, that 13% extra stats you got will bare matter.

If you solo roam, which wasn’t what VW was really designed around, it still wouldn’t change things much as the chances are you’ll get outnumbered.

Aside from this, WvW was never designed to be competitively balanced in the first place. Food, WvW rank and just the number of players each side has all distort the balance of the game mode.

The competitively balanced game mode was SPvP, but how we still haven’t got a death match mode or GvG in there is another story.

They never said why it was nerfed but I think it’s for the good for 2 reasons.

1. We simply had way to much karma to the extent that it really became pointless.

2. Karma was supposed to be a reward from DEs, with stuff like dungeons and dailies giving you a bit extra, but instead, it became the other way around where you can get karma fast enough from doing anything else other than DEs that no one bothered with them.

I guess the problem is that pretty much all the music in the game was made by Jeremy Soule, whom I can’t imagine doing anything but classical.

Some metal or even techno will fit the game well in places though, like when Aetherblades turn up.

Lord Kuru.3685:

One of the big flaws in the PvE of this game is that we have all these skills that have practically zero use in PvE.

Mobs rarely give conditions or have boons so we almost never need condi removal or boon stripping skills. Instead, we often get mobs that have special monster skills that provide the same benefits as conditions or boons, but are invulnerable to player skills.

If mobs had some condi and boon removal, that’d make things even more interesting.

Totally agree with skills with 0 use, does not agree with mobs lack condition skills. Just taking a troll in Orr gets your screen loaded with condition boxes and even AC requires stability skills and cleansing.

I don’t see why Ascended stuff kills alts. There’s a reason why you got mains and alts.

You don’t need Ascended gear to do anything in PvE or be competitive in WvW, and sPvP has equal gear anyways, so you can play alts just fine. it just gives people more stuff to achieve and takes half the game out if the dead content dustbin.

The only problem is if you must have BiS gear to have fun.

I’m actually quite pleased about this somewhat. The fact that he actually went and risked his job to argue with players about WvW means that guy has quite a bit of passion for the game.

If he didn’t give a kitten about WvW and how it’s turning out This wouldnt’ve happened. Anyone else think this?

^tgats the weird thing. Some mobs do make use of game mechanics. Bandits try to kite you when they shoot and they do evade attacks for example.

The Dredge is probably the best at this in the game. Each ‘class’ has their own role within a group and they do display quite good AI, like knocking you back when you get too near to them.

Why this isn’t the case with the late-game mobs is a mystery to me. When you get into Frostgorge Sound, all the enemies are just completely brainless and just try to overwhelm you with sheer numbers, the same with Orr.

I really enjoy speedrunnning CoE and trying to pull the fastest run possible with a random PUG.

And world bosses. As boring as the actual fight with Jormag is, the atmosphere pulls be in every time. Could be Soule’s brilliant music.

Personally, I like dailies, simply because it makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. I know it sounds very vain but for whatever reason I enjoy seeing things ticked off a box in MMOs. I see your point though, there should be other ways to get laurels (tgere’s achievements but that’s rather slow).

I actually like Ascended stuff overall. The weapons gives you just about enough stats to make you feel stronger using them but not enough to power creep the game or let you stomp over people in WvW. They’re not needed for any content nor you need them to be competitive in WvW (which was never balanced to start with).

Like Vayne said, they were introduced for people who want stuff to meaningfully work towards but not hardcore enough to get Legendaries. Sure, people say progression addicts like me should get put of their game but then Anet would be losing a huge portion of the MMO market consisting of progression addicts.

I quite like they they were implemented. Your argument that it forces you to do some things is valid, but if you flip the coin around, if there’s no incentive to do something in a MMO, no one does it.

For example, I love the Tequatl battle, but with its terrible rewards, I don’t bother with it. It was the same with pretty much all JPs and a ton of world bosses, no one ever turned up to them. It’s the same story with Temples, everything was always constantly contested until the Asc update.

So if you just let people get Ascended stuff doing whatever they want, all that stuff goes back to being dead content and people complain there’s nothing to do on the game because everyone is just grinding the route of least resistance.

To me, the reason I get bored often is because the game lacks immersion.

The graphics are immersive, the music is not amazing, but does the job, and there’s good lore around. But the problem is, storytelling has thus far been pretty abysmal. The PS was pretty good but the LS has thus far been just utterly crud in terms of both telling the story and moving the plot forwards.

Tom Gore.4035:

Or that ANet is desperately trying to wrap completely random ideas together with a poorly written supervillain.

The fact is, if they just read what they’ve done themselves carefully, they can do the “this was our plan all along” thing as long as they want to, without us ever knowing about it.

But rest assured, if they slip, someone will see it and they will be caught red-handed.

The storytelling in MMOs is often quite improvised, and often imperfect.

I mean, if you look at for example, RuneScape’s lore. Despite being probably my favorite lore in a game in 12 years of gaming, its inconsistent in a ton of places, they’ve changed even core elements of it so many times, and a lot of it is literally made up on the spot by devs and writers from things like meet-the-dev sessions.

I don;t think there’s anything wrong with the overflow system, because that’s actually there to avoid you waiting in a massive queue for the event, which is even worse.

All report that undead Quaggan for hax.

There’s a fair amount of slot skills, but just not useful slot skills.

Weapon skills on the other hand, we need a LOT more customization in there. For example, Warrior GS second-to-last skill, the one where you throw your sword and cripple targets.

That’s clearly a PvP-based skill for when you need to chase a runner down. Since nothing apart from Moas run away from you in PvE, thats basically a completely useless skill which we should be able to switch out of.

Sanctum Sprint. I played it for a week straight.

There’s nothing like screwing the guy in front of you over with a well-timed lightning as they go over a large gap.