Guild Wars 2

New Announcement:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.

Sadly, I do not care. It is not necessary and nobody asked for it. Nobody asked for progression between the two because the stats of the Legendary and the Exotic were the same. The difference was only cosmetic.

Frankly, in Guild Wars the items never even needed “tiers”. That is where the entire thing starts getting wierd. That entre idea in itself was alien to the francishe, and now the new update implied why they were implemented in the first place. That is the problem.

The stat increase is wrong.

LordByron.8369:

I don t really accept they could fool themself into thinking we are overreacting…
I ’d rather think they simply don t care and have a plan…..

The update is coming out on Friday. Maybe they are revising it now.

LordByron.8369:

Maybe they simply want to lower servers costs with an easy cut in population….or who knows….

That’s easy. Just say that there will never be any mounts, ever.

Creslin.1758:

Mr International.3715:

while i don’t want a gear treadmill or anything getting out of hand, its just not possible to do it through content alone. It takes way longer to make it than it takes for you to play through it

Then add a desireable goal that is NOT statistically superior gear.

This is not impossible, and honestly, it’s not that hard to think of things that people want other than statistically superior gear. Here are a few:

1. Ability to respec.
2. Ability to swap stats out of combat on one piece of gear.
3. Ability to swap skins on one piece of gear.
4. Guild halls.
5. Gear specific elite skills…like maybe a really rare piece of armor has an elite skill that you can use that is on-par or weaker than the typical class elites.

• More elite skills
• More skills in general
• Equipable weapon skills instead of fix weapons skills (if you equip a sword it allows you to put 3 skills to the first 3 slots from your collection of sword skills;or something similar)
• Side-quests (instanced just like the personal storyline)
• Actually creative Achievements (nobody cares about half of them and the rest doesn’t even have titles)
• More PvP gameplay modes (maybe more WvW maps)

And countless other things.
Just talking about these things would already hype people up.

Crackbone.5710:

It’s the almighty Dollar, Euro, etc.

They won’t be getting enough over the long term with only horizontal progression. It’s crystal clear.

Wake up folks. It’s a business. Business or lack-thereof likely dictated this change.

The problem with that is that Guild Wars made far less money, and if anyone wants to argue “server costs” I would like to remind everyone that ArenaNet was the team that attacked that lie the most out of everyone back then.

There is no such thing as a server cost. It is so low that it appears only as a footnote on NCsoft’s yearly.

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/9108/nccost.jpg

In other words, if what they are getting is not enough at this early stage , then I guess we were being lied to throughout seven years and they actually hated developing Guild Wars for an above-normal wage instead of an “I own a smaller country” wage, and now they want not only the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but the leprachun too.

In which case all love is lost.

But I still don’t think that it’s just that. I mean I still see them as a good dev group. They have history of success. I would be sad if it’s just about that and not just a disagreement in developement or somebody’s bad influence or something like that.

I do believe that Guild Wars 2 made a relatively good ammount of money at start, and if people are leaving… well… this is not the good way to get them back.

showatt.9413:

Except how will we know it’s the worst possible ’direction"?

What? Maybe because it killed every game so far? There is literally no MMO like that (except for WoW) that is fun in any way, shape, or form (okay, maybe EVE). That is exactly why you all are here; because you got bored of it all.

That framework is just a bug trap. A light that shines like a “shortcut to profit” and attracts all the talentless hacks, only to zap them to death on the electric fence.

The popular things are usually not popular because of a single visible thing that you can copy. They are popular because they are fully harmonized wholes in themselves, products which have every part of them fit together in the most balanced manner. You cannot just lift parts of it and expect the same results. That is how businessman think, but businessmen more-often-than-not have absolutely no concept of the product that they are trying to sell (and usually, the higher we go in the hierarchy, the more that applies).

• The only reason why Guild Wars remained active for so many years was because the amount of content was always larger than what you could complete in a reasonable amount of time before ArenaNet released new content in the form of expansions or random add-ons.

That was the trick, nothing more.

You did not need this mechanic gear progression.

• After 7 years I still had quests in my quest log that I picked up when I started the game. You could never get all the skills in the game as fast as here, and then I haven’t even talked about the Elite Skills. Every profession had its own armors, nor this free-for-all bs; that means that every single one of them had its own set of goals that you could not have reached with the others. Making an alt in Guild Wars 1 made sense.

Here what do you do? Stop at lvl 7 because by that point you have unlocked all your weapons skills and looked through all the utility skills in the skills section – or in other words, because by that time you have seen mostly everything that is different?

Maybe people wouldn’t be raging about lack of content if this game would have been the same in that sense! Not the exact same, just the general idea being the same. Gamers cannot make games, just like readers cannot write books either. They can only work with what they know. Of course they want the vertical bs because that is all that they know. Half the people here never played Guild Wars, the vertical bs is all that they know. They do not know better. The developers are the creative people, that is why they are called the developers. They can invent new things. It is their job to invent new things, and ANet already did that once.

Getting it?

When you just take what people want literally, you stop being a developer. If it would only depend on the consumer, all we would have is endless repetition (and maybe that is why we have so much repetition today) but Guild Wars proved that horizontal progression is a viable model, so we can say that the developers did know better.

So to be short, what is this kitten here?

It’s like as if the Communist Party would suddenly switch to being a Capitalist Party just because those have more followers.

You don’t just do that. You discredit yourself if you do.

• And maybe I was a bit harsh there, but I don’t think a perfect post exists. I tried my best.

showatt.9413:

I really don’t see what’s so wrong about dev hyping up their game. I mean it’s not like Anet pulled a Peter Molyneux on us and created a gear that’s grossly overpowered to the previous tier.

It integrated a kind of a community that was outside of the francishe so far, and whose needs are directly opposing the policy of the game and what we were used to and what we liked.

There isn’t a single Guild Wars player who throughout the 7 years of the game wanted vertical progression in an way, shape, or form.

The people who want this thing are the very people whose reinforcements this francise tried to stop by being different and making the difference popular.

Any move backwards, no matter how small, shows the highest ammount of wrong that we canever get in the developement: that this prime directive was thrown out in favor of more cash.

It doesn’t even matter how subtle they want to go with it (they did say that this is just the beginning). The problem is that at this point we should be already heading even farther away from this type of gameplay.

People aren’t raging because of the size of this step.
They do because it is the worst possible direction.

We should be already full-speed into the opposite direction. That was what Guild Wars was about!

JCWolf.1674:

Do we really need another condition and then another Boon (infusions) to counter this condition to make the game more intresting for us?

That is not new. Spectral Agony was a skill used by the Mursaat in Guild Wars. You needed to infuse your armor to survive it.

But infusion there was a mere text, sayng that the armor is “infused”. It didn’t do anything. It just passively protected you from Spectral Agony.

loaded.1938:

forum users are about 5% of gw2 community and the other 95% are probably looking forward to the new patch as i am just saying

Every Lion’s Arch in every server is raging about this thing.

This is a lame argument either way when the game itself acts like a big forum.

aocypher.9172:

Arcos Cinya.8251:

Edewen.8304:

Jemmi.6058:

Also, to the community, I believe most of you should wait to see what happens before expressing your rage/intent to quit and/or other negative hyperbole.

The problem with this logic is that if players “wait and see” it will be too late because once players have their hands on and invest in the new armor set, the backlash would be that much worse if it was nerfed to the level it SHOULD be. This thread, while it may contain a lot of unnecessary i quit posts, it simply the community voicing loudly their opinions about a press release that was quite clear in its wording. The following is quoted from that press release. Clearly, people who bought into this game for its “No Gear Treadmill” mantra are going to be upset. We feel lied to. False advertisement is a problem and while people may have had a blast up until now, many will refuse to hop on the treadmill. Such is my American right. No more treadmills.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/guild-wars-2s-lost-shores-content-primer/

“The patch will introduce ascended items. Ascended armors are “slightly more powerful than exotics” and can, in some cases, hold slots for infusions. Infusions will allow you to increase your character’s power."

Signed.

I hope to see some more details that clear things up, till then i will hold on with my supportive monthly gem pruchase.

After ~7 years of Guild Wars it would be sad to say goodbye to arena.

/signed

Until I get more clarification, I too will be withholding gem purchases.

/signed

There is a line that should not be crossed.

smug.3895:

A premise in this game was that there would be no vertical progression, only horizontal, so why go back on that word? Why destroy the trust of so many consumers? Sure, some people may welcome this change. But if Arenanet’s promises mean nothing, what else do you think they would do in the future? For instance, how would you feel if they decided to put subscriptions, “buy to win” options in the gem market, and make legendaries obsolete?

The problem is that ANet was kind of bathing in the fame of being a correct, creative team that made a game that lasted for 7 years without becoming a cash cow. But the new players only know that because they were being told. We, old GW fans experienced it as the game was evolving, and the very implication that such a gear treadmill idea have ever been even just taken into consideration at all already compromises that image.

This is nothing like usual ANet behavior.
It is awfully similar to what dev teams do after being taken over by giants like EA. Trickery and betrayal for money in every corner.

People were kinda already having problems with the game, and now, after numerous threads about how GW2 should take steps closer to GW1, ANet just takes a step even farther away.

So the question is given: Exactly who are these people who were requesting this change, and why do them matter? First and foremost, this francishe had a policy. I haven’t ever seen Coca Cola change their logo in the last 100 years. If somebody doesn’t like that, he can go drink something else; Coca Cola will still have costumers.

The same thing applies here. Let’s have a little backbone and keep this a Guild Wars game. I do not even know why this needs to be posted at all. The very idea of GW1 and GW2 was to beat the general MMO rules. If somebody is bored because of that, he can go play something else.

Let’s not let the tail wag the dog.

Xyne.9104:

Come on ANET PRteam, clean this mess up quick.

The longer it stays, the more harm it does.

I love this game, and I am very concerned with how this is turning out.

The PR team has little to no power over the internet community.
Actually, the harder they’ll try to lie, the more aggressive will people get.

I’m not even in the mood to phrase this in a dramatic manner how I usually do.

It is time people. We have to start a petition.

Rokar.3175:

With real boss fights not an "I just killed a queen spider never died and now i was owned instantly by a graveling that does a knock down 4 times and i can not do anything to counter.

Ah, oh yes. I know that one. Ascalon Catacombs. I think that’s just unbalance. It just needs some finetuning. But yes the dungeons don’t appear to be fully finished on paper at all. I just hope that they will take the sturdyness of the enemies back a little bit and replace it with smart mechanics, just better AI. I remember the AI was always under developement in Guild Wars. They were updating it and everything.

I hope the current system is just a placeholder until we get there that something meaningful can happen inside those dungeons and it can acually feel like a teamwork job, not just just an effect orgy spiced with unavoidable respawns.

CihandaR.2395:

The turth is that in every game a tank, healer and dpc class is a must.

And Guild Wars kinda already solved the issue of any class being forced to do one thing.

I mean at the end of the game what were we doing?

• Discord Necroes (Necro/Ritualist), who had ifinite energy from dieing minions, dealt true damage, and were healing the party (no monks at all).
• Healing elementalist in the team with Mist Form.
• Critical strike Assassins with scyhes.
• True cross-class combos, like Ritualist (Splinter Weapon) + Ranger (Barrage).

You were capable of doing anything with anything. More than here.

RaGe.9834:

chronus.1326:

Latinkuro.9420:

Skill capturing NO thx. it may fit gw1 style but not gw2, for simple reason it was a prohibitive system, it made my life hell until I could get specific skills that made it so much easier to do a certain task.

It did increase the longevity of the game, along with the profession-specific armors. You couldn’t simply “max out” a character that easily. A feeling of progression was always there, and the Elite Skill Tomes fixed the unavailability issue later.

In Guild Wars 2 you get to have literally all your skills long before you hit 80, and even after that, you still end up with over 150 skill points by the time you hit 80.

The old skill system was infinitely superior in terms of functionality because (along with other things) it substituted level progression after lvl20. You never felt like that you had a 100% complete character.

Much agreed I think the biggest issue I’ve had with moving over to gw2 was the level progression I’m not gonna lie I hate high level caps, they force you to not spend money for most of the game and then drag hours out of you just trying to max gear, i personally agreed and loved the gw1 philosophy of low level cap, cheap max armor and then grinding for appearance the more of a bamf you were the more you looked like a bamf.

That was my main idea too when I heard that the game will have 80 levels. Especially after that for a while – if I recall – the idea was “no levels at all”.

Guild Wars was revolutionary with the double-profession system, the max 8 skill slots build game, the 20 levels where the game practically started at 20, the single player story told in cooperative missions, the maximum armor and weapon value, the untradeable and only-craftable soulbound armor (Which makes sense because it was crafted with your body proportions. Duh!), the small and understandable numbers (500 hp? kittenage?) and later the hero system which basically destroyed the only bad thing about the Holy Trinity.

So what do we have here out of that? Generic “Look mommy I just dealt 1,000,000,000 damage!” numbers, uncertain and unprofessional skill descriptions, tradable armor for everyone, fix skill bars, and a heavily lucky-drop based income, resulting in general poverty from repairing and waypoint costs while rich people are already running around with legendaries thanks to the gem shop (effectively transforming the item into a negative status symbol), and so on and on.

I don’t know how to phrase this in a non-offensive manner… because the entire thing feels offensive to me…. It’s like the franchise was sacrificed to revolutionize a genre that should have been executed, not revolutionized, because it was always the coffee/cigarette/drug of gaming, designed to addict and rip off people, not entertain them. And Guild Wars was an awesome game, a very elaborate game, a game full of love, and they just reused the fame of it for this thing.

Sure some parts of the game is done well, I think the story is up to GW quality and some of the funny dialogues too and the concept arts too. But those are just the artistic parts, the art and the writing. It’s two different parts of the team. How the game actually plays… I am not satisfied in the least.

They should go back to the roots and realize that they did a lot of things right in the first game, and just because they failed at making a “PvP only game” and the game just kind ended up being good, that doesn’t mean that they cannot take credit for it and build on the things that they did right. It should be part of their “vision” if they ever had any at all, because that’s where it all started. It started with Guild Wars.

So that’s it.

Right now it feels a little bit like the transition between Fallout II and Fallout 3. It took the devs a failed game to realize what was wrong and make New Vegas feel like Fallout again. But here we cannot have that luxury because it’s an mmorpg.

The feeling of legendariness goes away when you realize that ammount of time and effort that you have to put into it is not the same for everyone.

uknortherner.2670:

Six people is hardly a “large portion” when there are millions playing.

The entire Suggestions section is full of threads about the same complaints.

Latinkuro.9420:

Skill capturing NO thx. it may fit gw1 style but not gw2, for simple reason it was a prohibitive system, it made my life hell until I could get specific skills that made it so much easier to do a certain task.

It did increase the longevity of the game, along with the profession-specific armors. You couldn’t simply “max out” a character that easily. A feeling of progression was always there, and the Elite Skill Tomes fixed the unavailability issue later.

In Guild Wars 2 you get to have literally all your skills long before you hit 80, and even after that, you still end up with over 150 skill points by the time you hit 80.

The old skill system was infinitely superior in terms of functionality because (along with other things) it substituted level progression after lvl20. You never felt like that you had a 100% complete character.

To be honest, wouldn’t best idea be to simply make every race start with their basic cultural armor?

Nobody is buying the first tier anyways. It would set apart the races at start, giving it a good special feeling. The sylvari looks wierd, starting in a chainmail.

These races could buy these armors at their armor crafters, and the generic (and quite bland) starting armors could be removed entirely. Let’s increase the differences a bit.

I have been constantly asking for this since the game came out.

This is a good idea. You can’t do anything with the tokens that you do not want to use.

The last thing we need is old Guild Wars emotes (that should have been in the game from the start) in a cash shop format.

That would be the absolute insult.

Rokar.3175:

Tera GX.8149:

From what I can see, the two main goals of waypoints might be to encourage real travel, and to penalize unprepared travel. You use cost as an excuse for not enjoying the world’s beauty, yet the very goal you state is entirely focused on skipping the world. Since I first picked up the game I loved the world’s art, and I very much love travelling it on foot. I enjoy assessing all the minute details of way the artists placed certain things in certain ways. If I could easily teleport to only where my immediate goals are, there’s a lot of territory I’d spend no time in.

Man Tera you really hit it on the head here… Here is my thoughts on that also. I have a level 80 Ranger 100% map completion. It took me some time to get, Because I did enjoy every ounce of Beauty the game intended me to see. All the stories from the hearts and all the DE I triggered by saving someone ect… ect…

I am re living those moments once again on my Warrior now, and it is again an amazing place to see once more… cept I am in the vigil and a norn now so it is slightly different.

My point here is that I have seen this all on my ranger (which is my main) and when I want to travel I would like to get there and back with as little hassle as possible. If i want to explore the beauty of Tyria… I will do so on my Warrior,Elemental,Thief or Mesmer.

Tera your post was awesome I give you that and please hear me now, I am not wanting the price to go away but rather maybe we can have a bonus reduction for having map completion or level 80 bonus or something but it is quit high in a toll fee.

And again I ask a Dev to come sit with us, take about travel cost with the people of Tyria and open up to your travelers…

Ranger Maulgor

Very good post Rokar!

Although I do not agree with everything you said. That just seems like a better system than the current system, but just like all the rest of the ideas in this thread, just one step closer to the best system. I do not want to compromise! The perfect system would be if we would have no traveling costs! If I would ever want to state an opinion, or fight for something, it would be only that! There is no reason to go lower. That is the thing that gives you a sense of freedom.

It’s the thought that you can do it. The thought that I could travel back and forth between Lion’s Arch and Droknar’s Forge 200 times a day and it wouldn’t cost me a single gold. That is the feeling of freedom! That is the feeling of an “open-world”! It’s when nothing holds you back. It doesn’t matter how low a traveling cost is. The moment you introduce it, no matter how big the world is, it some way, it encases, closes off that world a little bit.

Some people think that copper is not money, but even 2x 50 copper is one silver. It will still be a cost that should not exist and which should never have been implemented. A game like this, which builds up a world, should freely offer that world and only hinder people’s progress or the amount of content available to them based on their level or skill. Even if it does not cripple people entirely, it should not even make people feel like not doing things because of stupid fees. That is the best way to slowly kill people’s interest in a game. It just feels like life. A game should not hinder free movement and people’s ability to meet up at all.

And there should be no compromise there.
Whatever role that it fills can be filled by something else.

Tera GX.8149:

The current system forces you to be smart about travelling. For me to warp from where I am in Orr to, say, Honor of the Waves waypoint, that would cost me 4s 31c. I would not do that in casual circumstances. I would travel to Fort Trinity, gate to Bloodtide Coast, enter Lion’s Arch, gate to Hoelbrak, then it’s a straight shot North through Wayfarer Foothills. The total time it takes to do that is not long, and most enemies along the way would be passive or melee-range thus unable to slow me down with combat speed. And of course it didn’t cost any money to do.

But it’s not smart. I think we are just trying to find loopholes and roundaround ways around an effectively bad system. If your post doesn’t show that people dislike the travel costs, then what does? Think about it.

You know what would be smart.
Not having a cost at all. That’s the end result that we all want to reach by doing these roundaround tricks. I can only see this as a game of “finding the exploit”, and not a way how the game was intentionally designed.

Besides, this is not about exploring slowly, but going somewhere when you have to go somewhere. To help someone, to reach a dungeon waypoint to catch up to your party members. To go to craft, to get your bank, to reach the trading post. These are everyday things that this system makes tedious.

Dnc.9863:

Of course another solution would be to give each map a “major” waypoint to which travel would be free. Other “waypoints would be minor” waypoints and travelling to them would have the regular cost. These major waypoints could easily be the ones that are located near map entrances/exits?

Or just bring back the Outpost system.

It would decrease the population strain on the areas too. Every Explorable Area being open-world was already enough to make the game MMO. There wasn’t anything wrong with the outposts.

Hastur.6231:

Traveling is a money sink, money sinks exist to balance the economy.

That’s an illusion. The top items already sell for 300-500 gold. The economy in this game is no different from how it was in Guild Wars 1 and that would be no different without a money sink either. The numbers would be just higher but the proportions would be the same. The economy is always determined by a set group of chosen people who has ten times as much money as others. It doesnt matter what system a team implements to circumvent that. And frankly the fact that it’s always like that never hurt anyone, ever, in any game. It’s an antagonized but in truth non-problematic “problem”.

But even if you want a money sink, the traveling cost is the worst possible place to have that. Increase the repair cost, implement weapon repair cost, or anything, but allow people to move around freely in a sandbox game.

Rokar.3175:

Where has all the fun of guild wars gone?

Exactly!

Where are the old emotes, drum, guitar, violin, rock/paper/scissors, catchbreath, attention, scratch, pout? Holy hell there were so many things in Guild Wars 1. All those emotes were motion-captured; don’t tell me you couldn’t use the same motion-captured animations for Guild Wars 2. You can easily snap the captured animation to any model, there should be no technical difficulties there. It just feels like they disregarded a lot of things or considered them unimportant. And that just makes me worry so much about the future of the game. When a dev team does that, it is the worst possible sign. It means that back then they most likely got all those things right completely accidentally. If including those things was not part of the plan here, then it was a completely accidental success at the first time and the worst of all is that they didn’t even realize it.

The new players who haven’t played Guild Wars… they keep saying that it’s a different game, but “different” is not the correct term. The game is less than its predecessor. It is lacking at places where it shouldn’t. Out of all the places, it shouldn’t be lacking at the minor things that make Guild Wars fun. Hell, even the dance emotes in Guild Wars were more fun. Underestimating the importance of these things will have dire consequences.

And the worst of all is that the team doesn’t seem to be responding to these complaints that much. We have heard a lot of hype and empty bullkitten talk but no actual honest posts, no true human input on this matter. No real talk, from real people. Just very careful, profit-maximalizing kind of beating around the bush.

I miss the times when game development was more about gamers, and devs weren’t bound by their PR department.

Sorry for the off-topic response.

Solid Gold.9310:

But no, it costs us silver to get there and silver to get back.

Yes, it costs 2.5 silver to go to Lion’s Arch to find a HotW party. There are no parties so I take my chance and visit HotW waypoint for 2.5 to see if there are any parties gathering there, but there are none. I go back to where I was for another 2.5 silver.

That’s 7-8 silver spent on literally nothing.

And I can repeat this every time feel like checking if there are any parties doing HotW. I end up spending at least half of what I get for completing the dungeon, if not more. And this is just one direct example.

People are using the “go to PvP then go to Lion’s Arch” shortcut for a reason. I mean that is already a bad sign.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

If you see it being used as a status symbol, simply remind yourself that 100g is a few hours of real world work, gem store, and currency exchange, and that anyone, even a homeless person buying alcohol for underage people, can come up with the real world money to buy it in a very short period of time.

The rate of exchange right now is about 3 gold for 600 gems. That means that getting 100 gold through cash shop needs you to buy 19800 gems, which is approximately 330 euro. That is about the 5.5x of the retail cost the game, twice the cost of the collector’s edition.

I would suggest entirely removing the traveling cost.

• My friend spent 10 silver the other day going to Timberline to get a teleportation gun and travel to my place to help me with a jumping puzzle.
• I don’t feel like traveling around the world when each waypoint at level 80 costs above 1.5 silver. I don’t feel like visiting beautiful places because it feels like a waste of money. It was worth making this game look so nice for this [/sarcasm]
• I don’t feel like going to a place where I can craft.
• I don’t feel like visiting a trading post.
• I don’t feel like visiting a dungeon.
• The cities are empty because nobody feels like wasting their money going there, only if they can do something productive like mapping the area. It makes the game completion-oriented, which directly opposes the sandbox-like gameplay.

This is not a minor issue.
It is an invisible poison, like a cancer that slowly eats away every inch of motivation to play this game.

I loved visiting places in Guild Wars. I loved going to Fisherman’s Haven sometimes and sitting down or having a party with my friends. Guild Wars, in that sense, was a true Massively Multiplayer Online experience (!). Apparently, somebody, somewhere in the development forgot how important these little things are. Guild Wars didn’t ask anything for it and it took you 3 seconds to go there. It was easy and free, which enabled all the fun. It enabled people having fun and making music videos and party videos (by the way, what is up with the abundance of emotes in this game?).

Here I don’t feel like doing mundane things because the waypoint cost bounds me. It makes me feel that I have to farm to be able to experience anything in this game. It makes the game feel like a day in the office.

• Repair costs are more than enough for a money sink.
• Waypoint costs may have sounded good on paper as a money sink, but in action, they are just a bane.

Absolutely agreeing with this.

Also, the Profession-Specific system gave more longevity to Guild Wars 1. Each armor could only be aquired by that specific class, which made each class a new experience and a gave each new alt a new set of goals. The profession-specific armors were thematic, which created ‘atmosphere’. You could tell a necromancer by looking at it. Last time I was doing a jumping puzzle I have mistaken a necro for a elementalist.

Along with the fact that aquiring all skills and elites was so hard that there was a title for it, this was what made people play Guild Wars for so long.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

Dull and repetitive is how balance is achieved. A major goal in design was to make it so that race had no effect on how viable your character was. Making racial skills appealing over class skills would just break that most basic design philosophy.

But they are already more appealing.

Guardian Elites for example are just simply bad. I always end up using my sylvari turret spawning elite because it is more viable in combat while also having a shorter cooldown (150 seconds). Sure you can work Renewed Focus into one or two guardian builds, but the two tomes are terribad situational skills with 4 minute cooldowns.

And I had the same experience with Balthazar’s Hounds on my Mesmer.

Satans Chosen.1024:

I think it’s a little late for the game to revert to GW1 system.

It’s not rocket science. If you equip a sword it unlocks your first three skill slots and allows you to put swords skills there from your collection of sword skills. If you take a shield it unlocks your last two slots and allows you to put shield skills there.

It’s neither undoable nor illogical, and this is not the first time someone suggests this. Mostly all discussions about improving the combat system end up coming up with this solution. It is a hybrid between the current system and the system that we loved.

It’s better for everyone who loved Guild Wars, and it doesn’t affect anyone who is pleased with the current system.

So the other day I deciced that I’m not gonna get the legendary greatswords that everyone is working for, instead I’ll aim to get the legendary pistols because frankly there seem to be no good-looking epic pistols in the game at all. The game is still relatively new so I have only seen pictures of the pistols and they looked kind of like sylvari-designed laser pistols or something.

I didn’t yet know what the effect was but I had high hopes and everything.

And then yesterday someone posted me this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1i0qlR7huU

So now I am standing here in full awe and the only thing that I can think of doing is asking the rightful question:

Are you kitten kidding me?

This is the legendary pistol?

This?

Wow. I don’t know if this is gonna be a suggestion post about including more legendaries that actually look legendary, or a rage post about the irritatingly joke nature of these items and the fact that it feels like they just made the promo video to hype the game but in fact all the legendaries that weren’t in the promo video look underwhelming.

Except for Bolt, which doesn’t look bad, it just sounds bad.

So, wow…

I mean, really… Please reconsider this direction. I thought the rainbow shortbow was funny, but after I have seen the Moot and the Quip I’m not sure what to think anymore. The Eternity stands above all other legendaries is uniqueness. The Jaggernout is nice, but the rifle, the scepter and the underwater legendaries look underwhelming (no special effects), and the longbow is kinda generic too.

Please put more effort into these weapons in the next expansion, that if you aim to add more of these. I hope you do.