Guild Wars 2

Northlander.4619:

dimgl.4786:

I’m not sure you understand what forums are for or why it’s important to question design choices that deviate from developer promises.

Don’t act snobby. It certainly won’t endear you to anyone. I’ve been around gaming communities to know that what you ask is not going to happen. You are asking something that would require massive redesign. Basically entirely new game. Not to mention it would go against design principles of GW2.

I agree on some points you mention in this summary such as making more interesting dungeons and enemies. Others not so much.

Also people have this strange idea that if someone leaves the game temporarily they won’t be back. GW2 is not a subscription model game so you can come and go whenever you want.

What they need to do is to focus on providing polished content and not disasters like the lost shores. Most of the complains are centered around buggy, unrewarding, exclusive, and boring content. Not in the game mechanics itself.

I agree with the last section of your post. However, the flaws I have pointed out are a blatant deviation from the manifesto. Regardless, I do agree the game needs more polished content and not bug fests. Fortunately, those are just growing pains that are part of every MMOs infancy.

The other flaws however have more permanent consequences… Only time will tell who is right and who is wrong.

Northlander.4619:

I read the original post(s) and got a chuckle out of it. Basically the OP is saying everything they did with GW2 is wrong. What exactly are you expecting them to do? Spend next five years redesigning the game from scratch?

You are basically asking a new MMO. That being said. I do enjoy GW2 as it is. It has its flaws but a lot of things OP listed are good things in my books. Still, you can’t please everyone and I bet GW2 attracted a lot more folks initially than GW ever did. It will have its dedicated fans. I think people need to accept that no game is ever going to appeal for everyone.

Edit: Also very important thing to note is that Guild Wars 2 is not Guild Wars. They are different games.

I’m not sure you understand what forums are for or why it’s important to question design choices that deviate from developer promises.

There are many things in my post that can be worked on gradually and eventually made to perfection.

• It is definitely possible for ArenaNet to change the metagame and make it more reliant on skill builds and less on dodging.
• It is definitely possible for ArenaNet to change loot tables and restructure the way loot works in the game.
• It is definitely possible for ArenaNet to revisit their dungeons and create interesting game mechanics that challenge players.
• It is definitely possible for ArenaNet to completely remove levels and switch to a more traditional horizontal scale system.

Would it be easy? No. Would it take a long time and resources? Yes. Is it better for the game in general? I’d like to say yes, but apparently many players seem to think otherwise. When ArenaNet takes some time off, doesn’t release content every month and decides to work on specific areas of the game, we will see how players react.

I’m willing to bet many will leave.

Creslin.1758:

dimgl.4786:

You have all proven my point stated in the OP.

Many posters in this thread have made it clear: dodge out of attacks, take less hits and DPS and you will successfully clear all of the content in the game.

Many have stated that Guild Wars is an inferior game. Why? Is it because you can’t jump, or because everything is instanced? Or maybe it’s because the level cap is 20. To typical modern MMO players, anything deviating from the norm “sucks”. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. One of the biggest reasons Guild Wars 2 has been so successful is because of Guild Wars, which is the tenth most successful PC game of all time.

Just by the responses to this thread I can see how hard ArenaNet sold out. “My necro has 21k life, my character can crit for 2k… blah blah blah.” If you think dodging out of combat and switching agro between players is skill, then you must have been playing some really uninteresting and dull games before Guild Wars 2.

This whole teamwork thing you guys describe in dungeons is an illusion. With five players who have common sense, a good trigger finger and good gear, a team can overcome anything. Sounds like an attack, dodge, revive and repeat snorefest to me.

Yeah, and all you have to do to beat Contra is jump, shoot, run, and not get hit. Must be a super easy game that requires no skill . Your argument about GW2’s combat being “inferior” is completely bunk.

As to teamwork in dungeons being an illusion…ummm…have you ever actually played a GW2 dungeon???? There are many dungeon bosses that absolutely REQUIRE teamwork and coordination to beat. Some examples:

The Lovers from Ascalon Catacombs — You basically HAVE to have one or two people constantly CC one with a boulder and keep the two apart while the others DPS the one that is still up.

The Graveling attack with the traps in Ascalon Catacombs — One guy has to stand at the bottom and be “bait” for the gravelings, while the rest of the party triggers the traps on them.

Just about anything in the Fractals — Pulling the big ice elemental to the lava pots and having one player concentrate on triggering the pots. Having one player stay on a pressure plate while the others go to the next plate in Dredge. Having a few players concentrate on powering and keeping the fan running in the Old Tom fight. Having players stick together and rez each other in the dolphin portion of underwater.

So yeah, I’m sorry…dungeons in GW2 require way, way, WAY more teamwork than most other MMORPGs I’ve played. In other MMORPGs, it is typically one dude tanks, one heals, the others kill…and that’s it. Sure, it’s teamwork, but once you know your role you don’t even have to talk with the team at all to make things happen.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that other than AC and CoF, not many dungeons have interesting mechanics. I’m sorry, but CoE is such a poorly designed dungeon and that goes for TA, CM and SE* as well.

Eveningstar.6940:

@OP,

This is a pretty comprehensive and analytical list; I can’t comment on everything you’ve said, but your criticism of level mechanics and combat mechanics seem convincing.

I wish you’d expanded a little on your Jack of All Trades point, though, because there’s something interesting happening here that no one seems to ever talk about:

The disparity between cooldown length and utility. In short, it works like this:

Skills that grant you boons have prohibitively long cooldowns and short durations. Long cooldowns discourages you from being sloppy with your Utility skills, which is fine, except your Utility skills rarely make a tangible and visible difference in the course of a battle. The result is an ability you only get to use very rarely, which doesn’t actually accomplish much anyway.

This leads to a situation where you’re basically stuck auto-attacking, dropping a few additional attacks on the side, dodging out of telegraphed attacks and running out of red circles.

Cooldowns are supposed to render resource systems (mana, rage, energy, whatever) obsolete, but instead they slow down the pace of combat, transforming what ought to be (according to ANet) a “visceral” experience into auto-attack, running out of fire, dodging, and occasionally popping a Shout every 40 seconds.

This exactly what I mean by the “jack of all trades” comment. Permission to include your analysis on my OP?

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

dimgl.4786:

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

I did ask a yes or no question… so I guess I deserved that.

Maybe Kyosji could have elaborated a bit haha. I mean, you did write a pretty long post that deserves more than a “No.”

Yea this has also happens to me, although when I first start doing a certain activity (like event farming in Cursed Shores or when I first started FotM) I will get quite a few rares and some exotics. After awhile, however, I’ll just end up getting blues. Really disappointing. I feel like RNG laughs at me, a lot.

Sounds like diminishing returns to me. We don’t have any solid data on this as far as I know, but it’s really disappointing. I play often, and for long periods (regularly 6+ hours an evening after work most days) so I’m starting to wonder if my crappy loot is just serious diminishing returns from playing too much. It really sucks if I’m being punished for playing too much.

I’m saying that I never have gotten as good of loot as when I first started doing the activity. Even if I wait a few days and go back to that activity.

Yeah, that seems to be about what I’m seeing. I really am starting to wonder if the diminishing returns aren’t ever fully going away (or take WAY too long to return to normal)… so the more you play the less loot you can expect to see.

Well in theory that would make sense. Also, have they ever fully explained magic find?

They need to remove magic find from this game completely. This isn’t Diablo. Magic find also runs face first into the diminishing return wall, making it obsolete.

So I should sell my MF gear? Because it’s taking up like 15 of my 30 bank slots, or however small the bank slots are.

Don’t do anything without ArenaNet directly addressing the problem. You don’t want to throw Magic Find gear away and then see that they changed the functionality of it or improved it in some way.

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

Deadly Spirit Guy.4769:

Svenn.5209:

I did ask a yes or no question… so I guess I deserved that.

Maybe Kyosji could have elaborated a bit haha. I mean, you did write a pretty long post that deserves more than a “No.”

Yea this has also happens to me, although when I first start doing a certain activity (like event farming in Cursed Shores or when I first started FotM) I will get quite a few rares and some exotics. After awhile, however, I’ll just end up getting blues. Really disappointing. I feel like RNG laughs at me, a lot.

Sounds like diminishing returns to me. We don’t have any solid data on this as far as I know, but it’s really disappointing. I play often, and for long periods (regularly 6+ hours an evening after work most days) so I’m starting to wonder if my crappy loot is just serious diminishing returns from playing too much. It really sucks if I’m being punished for playing too much.

I’m saying that I never have gotten as good of loot as when I first started doing the activity. Even if I wait a few days and go back to that activity.

Yeah, that seems to be about what I’m seeing. I really am starting to wonder if the diminishing returns aren’t ever fully going away (or take WAY too long to return to normal)… so the more you play the less loot you can expect to see.

Well in theory that would make sense. Also, have they ever fully explained magic find?

They need to remove magic find from this game completely. This isn’t Diablo. Magic find also runs face first into the diminishing return wall, making it obsolete.

postmanmanman.4026:

Just posting to say thank you so much for this thread. Ever since release I’ve felt a niggling, implacable discontent with the game and I’ve never been able to explain why. I still played a lot — I’ve poured something like 70 or 80 hours into the game, and you know what? It was a lot of fun.

But the entire time, I just kept feeling like “something is really, inherently, fundamentally wrong with this game”. And the TC’s post perfectly articulates all the issues. I don’t deny that some of his points are a matter of opinion. But suffice to say I feel they’ll gradually become the popular opinion over the coming months.

The worst part is, I don’t think these are issues that will ever (or even could) be solved by patches or expansions. ArenaNet has incorporated numerous flaws into the game’s core design, and if you took the flaws out — well, there just wouldn’t even be a game left.

This is what worries me the most. Sure, this game in its current state is great for the majority of players coming from other MMOs… but I get the feeling it will never be the game for me.

And for many loyal fans of ArenaNet who come from Guild Wars, it will never be the game for them. And when Blizzard releases Titan and Bethesda releases Elder Scrolls Online releases and Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter is finished, Guild Wars will start to be just another MMO that was.

Trinnitty.8256:

dimgl.4786:

showatt.9413:

dimgl.4786:

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

.

I heard you still get a bit of vertical gear progression in gw1. Now keep in mind that when I talk about gear progression I’m talking about the ability to get better gear starting at lvl 1.

A true game without vertical gear progression – as I have stated – would be one where you are given the best gear at lvl 1 and everything you do later are for skins/money.

Can you confirm this seeing as you have played it?

Sure. Guild Wars does have vertical progression from level 1-20. When Guild Wars was first released, this vertical progression was pretty harsh due to the disparity between levels. However, there is no vertical progression at end game. Once you became level 20, the playing field evened out and the armor you had from 1-20 became useless.

This was quickly fixed in future campaigns by introducing tutorial zones. Players would level from 1-20 very quickly and the vertical progression was barely felt.

Just to add to this. Gear in gw1 was not level bound. You could get a run to a main town like Droknars or kaineng and buy max gear and wear it at low level. Which is what most everyone did especially faction campaigne. There you bought your gear from npc with cheap materials and got a basic max stat gear. There wasn’t crafting or trading post to buy it from.

The Trading Post actually brings some great innovations but it’s also a major setback as well. I feel like many of the systems in Guild Wars 2 are just a double edged sword.

utildai.5319:

Shootsfoot.9276:

What are you playing that you don’t do any damage to a mob at all and just provide 100% support?

I play a guardian and I’m getting plenty of kills in WvW when I play.

Engineer’s have a setup which is ALL heals and no buffs, or damage. They can set up to drop these little heal bags every 15 seconds or so, and do so four times in a row (or close to that…) essentially healing anyone who needs it on a continual basis.

That, is what support is. Support isn’t supposed to be about doing damage. If we can heal and keep the party up, we’ve done our job. We shouldn’t have to hit a mob to get credit for helping the group be successful.

We all know, it isn’t easy to switch rolls while a fight is going on.

The most hilarious part about this is if you spec towards specialized builds, you will get no credit on loot tables and essentially contribute less to the team than you would by playing normally.

the uprising.6317:

Sigh the point of the thread is that loot mechanics are FUNDAMENTALLY flawed, as you all say, if they want ppl to be a jack of all trades, why is only ONE of the trades rewarded? AoE dps.

This shines most brightly when a guardian in WvW, who has very limited ranged options but many group support options, gets diddly squat for his support contributions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-feel-that-Guild-Wars-2-has-some-fundamental-flaws

Don’t worry, if forum censorship does not get you first, the white knights will.

You have all proven my point stated in the OP.

Many posters in this thread have made it clear: dodge out of attacks, take less hits and DPS and you will successfully clear all of the content in the game.

Many have stated that Guild Wars is an inferior game. Why? Is it because you can’t jump, or because everything is instanced? Or maybe it’s because the level cap is 20. To typical modern MMO players, anything deviating from the norm “sucks”. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. One of the biggest reasons Guild Wars 2 has been so successful is because of Guild Wars, which is the tenth most successful PC game of all time.

Just by the responses to this thread I can see how hard ArenaNet sold out. “My necro has 21k life, my character can crit for 2k… blah blah blah.” If you think dodging out of combat and switching agro between players is skill, then you must have been playing some really uninteresting and dull games before Guild Wars 2.

This whole teamwork thing you guys describe in dungeons is an illusion. With five players who have common sense, a good trigger finger and good gear, a team can overcome anything. Sounds like an attack, dodge, revive and repeat snorefest to me.

digiowl.9620:

szar.9054:

xtorma.1283:

I have no idea how programming or debugging or whatever works. I am like a computer infant, but if i had to make a guess based on simply common sense, I would guess that in computer code, one thing leads to another, and one thing can have profound effect on other things. If this is the case, then the less people you have debugging, the more efficient it would be.

nope.

Proper coding is done modularly and in essene can be pulled apart and fixed as many discrete part. though in practice you get limited on how many physical humans you can keep in harmony, 2 being laughably bad and 10-20 pretty nice.

What has happened is Anet has simply put a very very low priority on bug fixin and a very high one on content, presumably because balance isnt going to sell gems as fast as new content.

Given the different behavior in seemingly equivalent skills, i sometimes wonder if the GW2 code is less modular and more copy and paste.

Unless the difference is intentional, that is. But then Anet won’t talk to us and list those that are intentional and those that are bugs.

I’m pretty sure the programming team uses much more complex structures that are more than just “modular” for a game of this scope.

It’s very apparent that literally no one in this thread even has an inkling of how difficult it is to iterate on code where issues do not actually cause exceptions at runtime (or more commonly known as crashes).

Game programming is so complex you can’t even begin to comprehend the amount of work it takes to do anything. If anything, these developers should be congratulated for the hard work they’ve been doing trying to fix bugs.

I find Guild Wars 2 far from the best MMO out there… The game design is so laughably bad. I will admit that they have some great content and level designers and a state of the art art team. Other than that………not much to keep me playing this game.

defy.7021:

if u dont like a game go play somthing else! i am tired of these complaints
i personally love GW2 and thats it

Yes, let’s blindly love this game and accept that it is perfect and there are no problems with it. Great attitude.

To say that GW2 is the greatest MMO is a joke. Maybe the best MMO to play right now, but there have definitely been superior MMOs. I will admit GW2 had a great MMO launch, but by following ArenaNet’s decisions blindly you are telling ArenaNet its okay to go back on their word and lie to the player base

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Crater.1625:

Absolute best case scenario, the update improves the average number of players logged into the game at any given time, as everybody grinds for Ascended equipment. But the game doesn’t make money directly from time played or from how many people are logged on at one time – so what’s the motivation?

In a typical F2P game, the longer someone is online, the more likely they are to buy a cosmetic item from the store. Problem is, they buy them so that the cosmetic item is seen. Town clothes don’t get seen often enough to count. Remove the town clothes from the gem store and what cosmetic items do you have left ?
– Transmutation stones. But we get more than enough of the level 80 stones via PvE
– Random dyes. When you can get specific dyes through the trading post.
– Random Minipets. Which turn off randomly, go to your collectable tab should you deposit them all. I don’t know if you can still trade specific minis or not.
– 1 armor skin. I find them ugly
– Cow finisher. The only thing that might be worth the asking price. But I don’t sPvP, and I just DPS people down in WvW.

They don’t even have the standard appearance changer that everyone else has.

Maybe they simply need to rethink their online store! And town clothes as well.

Waffler.1257:

A lot of people bought Guild Wars 2 expecting it would be similar to Guild Wars. It took about 6 hours to get a char to max lvl in Guild Wars and another 5 hours to get max gear. Ascended gear/endless dungeon grinding is about as far from that concept as you can get.

And the beautiful part of this is that after you achieved it, it was just the beginning! You had an entire campaign to conquer. Back when there were no optimal builds, clearing a campaign took quite a while.

Yeah… I’m not going to lie this is a weird turn of events. I did not see this coming at all. I was actually very surprised that their “huge surprise” for November was a content update that violates all of the rules in their manifesto…

flash.8432:

i was about to ask a similar question.
from what i can gather it seems they have introduced some items that are slightly different to the ones in game at launch?
i don’t see how this can generate such hatred lol.
i came here from tsw and i played gw1 briefly and im loving gw2 atm.
im gonna treat this game like a single player game with some online bits and already i have had my monies worth.
so its all good imo.

There are many players who love Guild Wars 2, and that’s okay. Guild Wars 2 is not a bad game.

However, many hardcore vets and players who come from other games are pretty let down by Guild Wars 2. These are usually the biggest fans and those who go on to buy collectables, posters, extra gems, extra items for their character, etc. It is generally a bad idea to alienate this playerbase.

Southern Lord.7254:

I don’t understand all of the anger towards Anet at the minute.

This is an MMORPG. RPG games, since the dawn of time, have been about stats and vertical progression.

Anet has, from what I understand, introduced 1 end game tier dungeon, and items needed to progress in this dungeon, and everyone is acting like this is the death of the game.

Am I missing something? Surely you can choose not to do this dungeon? It is specifically aimed at those who want to grind, which is what the other 50% of the fanbase has been moaning about since launch.

This is meant to appease them, not alienate you. Why is this such a bad thing? I honestly don’t understand…

While I agree to a certain extent, RPGs are not defined by stat progression. RPG stands for role-playing game. No where in a rule book does say that an RPG needs to be designed with vertical scales, or even numbers for that matter.

showatt.9413:

dimgl.4786:

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

.

I heard you still get a bit of vertical gear progression in gw1. Now keep in mind that when I talk about gear progression I’m talking about the ability to get better gear starting at lvl 1.

A true game without vertical gear progression – as I have stated – would be one where you are given the best gear at lvl 1 and everything you do later are for skins/money.

Can you confirm this seeing as you have played it?

Sure. Guild Wars does have vertical progression from level 1-20. When Guild Wars was first released, this vertical progression was pretty harsh due to the disparity between levels. However, there is no vertical progression at end game. Once you became level 20, the playing field evened out and the armor you had from 1-20 became useless.

This was quickly fixed in future campaigns by introducing tutorial zones. Players would level from 1-20 very quickly and the vertical progression was barely felt.

I agree with many posters regarding the subjective nature of a few bullet points. I haven’t tried the dungeons post-patch, however, I doubt the game mechanics have changed much. I find them generally uninteresting and I wish ArenaNet could’ve come up with something more creative. I feel that CoF and AC are pretty much as creative as it gets in terms of dungeon mechanics.

I also have to say I’m pretty biased when it comes to underwater combat. I’ve hated it in almost every game.

However I still stand very firmly on my point that this game has been a vertical scale game from the start with some horizontal scale elements. I also stand firmly on the argument that combat should not be centered on dodge and it requires more depth to keep gameplay interesting.

Sure, for those coming World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 is refreshing. But for those coming from Guild Wars it’s a huge let down. In fact, it’s odd how muddy my builds feel and how my character generally doesn’t play any different no matter how much I change my builds.

At this point, it’s very hard to believe they can change anything about the game without upsetting a large portion of the playerbase.

Lysserd.4618:

I saw someone else on the forums saying that ANet tried to do horizontal and vertical progression at the same time, and that’s what killed them. I agree with that. I think they pursued the vertical progression style because WoW has the mega-numbers and money is awesome. But they kept horizontal style for their fans. The end result is just a mess. If they’d stuck with one method it probably would have been a better and more stable piece of content that would have would up with more active players by now.

lothefallen.7081:

I agree with everything said, but i feel the most important part is where you described the disconnect and flaws created beween GW1 and GW2 combat and skill systems. The game is not better for most of what they innovated, it’s actually worse than the first.

The entire system is a huge mess. There are exotic items that give you seven stats. Then there are exotic items that give you four.

All in all, ArenaNet tried to do something they weren’t accustomed to doing and failed. If they would’ve followed their traditional GW model and introduced WoW players to the beauty of Guild Wars, they would’ve made much more money and scored a much more dedicated fanbase.

In fact, many players left Guild Wars because of the level cap and the heavy instancing. If Guild Wars 2 was Guild Wars with similar concepts and a persistent world, it would be in much better shape than it is now.

Granted, the sound, art direction and programming in Guild Wars 2 is top notch. But the story and the game design are abysmal.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are so many other problems with the game, including:

• Multi-guild system discourages players to stay loyal to one guild. The argument “just stay in one guild” is invalid. Guilds were originally used in Guild Wars to fuel PvP, or most notably, Hall of Heroes (GvG). Guilds are now nothing more than glorified chat channels.
• Weapon skills are not customizable. No matter how much you switch your weapons, combat will eventually become stale.
• Crafting is both tedious and expensive. It is designed as a money sink to keep an economy bustling. To make matters worse, you need to craft useless items to create useful ones.
• Dungeons are poorly designed and are not fun. High level fights are generally uninteresting and involve dodging and reviving players.
• Underwater combat sucks.
• World events have no real consequences and there is no real incentive to complete them. There is no challenge in them and they eventually become stale.
• No guild halls.
• There is only one mode of SPvP.
• WvW is great in theory but is plagued by culling issues and server imbalances.

Conclusion

I waited for Guild Wars 2 for over four, maybe five years. I followed ArenaNet through every single step of development. Their transparency with the playerbase gave me confidence that this was going to be the game for me. When I first got my hands on it, it was surreal. Playing through Guild Wars 2 at first was a toxic experience: I couldn’t stop playing it. Frankly, the leveling from 1-80 was fantastic.

But the more I played through the game… the more I noticed its flaws. As I’ve been posting on the forums regarding Guild Wars 2’s game design flaws and I have received nothing but backlash and flaming. Surely, there was nothing wrong with the game. So I stopped posting. Now that my predictions are coming to pass just three months after release, I think players are finally starting to realize there are game breaking problems that go against ArenaNet’s manifesto.

The simple solution to this is: don’t play Guild Wars 2. If you don’t like how ArenaNet has lied to you, then quit and do not support them. This is the simplest way of showing ArenaNet and NCSoft that what they did is wrong: bait-and-switch only works for a few quick bucks but does not contribute to long term revenue.

I really do hope they fix all of these flaws, or at least attempt to address some of them. To me, it seems like ArenaNet simply tackled a project that was much too big for them to handle. Apart from the visuals, there is not much that makes me want to log on to the game. Maybe once players see big changes in the game design, they will log onto the game as it was meant to be: to cater to everyone, not just the casuals, not just the hardcore players, but the gamers. That is what made Guild Wars so beautiful, it was a game that anyone can play.

Game design flaws affect everything

Incredibly, ArenaNet determined that these game designs were better than their traditional ones and moved towards more complex designs that “better fit the game”. Or as I like to say, “please the typical MMO player.” Here are some problems with the deviations by ArenaNet:

Statistics are a mess

In Guild Wars, all armor was classified into armor brackets and each armor set had the same armor rating. Except for the headpiece, every piece of armor was purely cosmetic and had no extra statistical value. Armor could then be improved through through runes and insignias. This allowed players to purchase the armor of their choice and then modify it. It also gave players a reason to have multiple armor sets.

In Guild Wars 2, this simple system is scrapped. Gear now has permanent statistics and there is no way to modify a set. Worse, different gear sets have different statistics. This would be okay with a traditional holy trinity, but in this game it makes no sense. This means players need to transmute hard earned gear to get the skin they want with the right stats. And if that’s not bad enough, runes barely affect builds.

To make matters worse, there is armor disparity between rarities. And they introduced magic find as a gear statistic. This means players now get to sacrifice usefulness for a chance of finding rarer items. This leads to my next point:

Loot/rarities have no purpose

Somebody at ArenaNet thought that using six different rarities will encourage players to farm for loot. In reality, most players simply farm for exotics because they are not only the best looking gear in the game but also the best performing.

Currently, there are six rarities: blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and purple.

This means that almost all blue and green items will sold and converted into gold and provide no real benefit to the player. After all, you can always just go to a karma vendor and get a marginally better item with better rarity. Why not just stick to blue, green and yellow and equal stats? The answer is: vertical scaling.

Yes, that’s right. Vertical scaling has been in Guild Wars 2 since launch. The big backlash that ArenaNet has received recently is poorly timed and simply too late. Exotic gear has always had better stats than rare gear (albeit marginal). All item rarities have different statistics and each perform differently.

ArenaNet must have thought that the general fanbase would be okay with this and decided to sneak in “Ascended” gear, some weird sort of tribute to the original Guild Wars. The irony is that this violates every rule in the manifesto and goes against the very nature of Guild Wars: in order to remain competitive, you will need infusions to progress through their future dungeons. All because the game is not based on skillsets.

Vertical scaling has always been there. Throughout my entire playthrough I was always thinking: “yes, I have a yellow item! Now my character will be stronger!” Or kitten this is just a blue item. Time to vendor it”.

Edit: for clarity.

Combat is critically flawed

Guild Wars’ gameplay was defined by skillsets. Players would travel around Tyria and unlock skills to overcome enemies that used skills of their own, making fights very interesting and challenging.

This meant that players depended on skills to clear content, not on gear statistics. If players did not have the right skillset they seldom succeeded in clearing the content.

There were a few problems with this system. First, many areas could not be cleared without certain skillsets (GLF Monk 7/8 and we go). Secondly, being able to use two professions created a balancing nightmare. Thirdly, the metagame evolved in a way that players would find optimal builds and parties would not consider you if you did not have them.

Guild Wars 2 fights all of these problems, but introduces many more. While removing the “holy trinity” does add more player dependence, its execution in-game is vastly different to their original promise.

Here are several flaws of the current system:

• Jack of all trades, master of none – Classes have one definite purpose: DPS. If you do not DPS, you will not clear content. This also means there is essentially one way to play each class. If you deviate from this and specialize towards a certain role, you lose utility.
• Builds are built around dodging. – Dodging is a skill that gives you temporary invulnerability while moving in one direction for a short period of time. This would be fine, if combat wasn’t developed around it. This design devalues skills and favors reflexes and positional awareness. While many FPS and ARPG players welcome the change, this makes combat trivial: once you can dodge effectively, you can survive in combat.
• Enemies do not have clear abilities. – Almost all enemies in the game function similarly because they use monster skills. It is a challenge for developers to design unique mechanics for each type of enemy so it makes sense why they would go this route. However, this is the reason why dungeon mechanics are extremely uninteresting: the only quick way to make content challenging is to increase DPS and HP.
• Many skills and traits are useless/not properly defined… – Guild Wars 2 will never have a metagame because many skills and traits do not have clear purpose. This is seen in the necromancer, where some skills or traits simply do not work. This is also seen during boss battles where crowd control is negated by “Defiant” and many existing utility skills become useless because their effectiveness is not powerful enough.
• …and others are ruined by cooldown/utility disparity. – Many skills that grant useful boons have long cooldowns and short durations to render resource systems obsolete. This, however, creates an effect where skills rarely affect the course of a battle and instead promote weapon skill spam. This leads to a situation where players seldom cast utility skills and are basically stuck auto-attacking, spamming cooldowns and dodging out of red circles. Hardly a measure of skill here. (thanks Eveningstar!)

Edit: for clarity, grammatical errors and additions.

Been playing a lot of DotA2 and will probably just go on to develop games.

Logun.2349:

Cirroq.2531:

Hi,

I’ve played MMOs since the days of Ultima Online and have seen many games rise and fade. What has stood out so far about GW2 is the hostility towards the “gear treadmill” and the “elitist” players that exists in virtually every other MMO out there.

The question I have is this: why do people care whether someone else in the game has better gear than they do when the game scales levels automatically? Are they jealous? Are they just “haters”? Do these people really want everyone to have exactly the same stats on gear so they don’t feel inadequate in some way?

From what I’ve seen in the original dungeons and now in the fractals is that it does not take an incredible amount of skill to finish them, especially if you are on voice chat to coordinate. The hardest thing to deal with is someone getting disconnected then being banned from rejoining the instance by the game. Maybe this is anet’s unintentional “hard mode”.

Is this game really designed for the lowest common denominator of players skill wise, time wise and patience wise? If so, who is that player? Are they people that sit in LA all day trolling/gossiping? Are they people who farm Orr to grind for a legendary? Are they people what never leave WvW?

Some clarification would be much appreciated!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0Zn81sY7pqI

The most hilarious part is he just described Guild Wars 1! Lmao maybe they should have removed solo instancing from explorable zones in Guild Wars 1 and added player scaling and it would’ve been much more fun than Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 is such a humongous deviation from Guild Wars that it really makes me wonder who is calling the shots over at ArenaNet… I know they target different audiences but it’s hard to call Guild Wars 2 a Guild Wars game.

GW1 vet here. GW2 is nothing I wanted. Haven’t logged in since I beat the Mad King clocktower.

Gehenna.3625:

GW1 wanted to give people an alternative to the MMOs they were already playing. Then, as they said, to their own surprise people started playing it as an MMO, literally putting thousands of hours into it.

So, then they realised that their world with 2D maps without crafting and such were limitations that weren’t easily overcome. Add to that the issue of expansions adding more and more territory and there was the idea of GW2. A new game that would build on the good things of the original, while adding things that were missing in the original.

By itself, this sounded great and I, as many, were excited to look forward to that promise.

So some years later GW2 comes out and it barely ressembles the original. It’s not GW2 in the sense of a sequel. But it was a new game with much excitement and even the most hardcore GW1 fan could take a step away from GW1 and just judge GW2 for the game it is.

But even doing that, I have to admit, that this weekend marks the end of my enjoyment of the GW universe. Aside from what GW1 was or wasn’t, GW2 simply isn’t a game I enjoy anymore and that’s a personal decision.

See, it doesn’t matter if GW1 was a full MMO or not. It was a game many people enjoyed and when you don’t end up enjoying GW2 as much as you did the original, the comparisons will happen. Why? Because it also has the name Guild Wars on the box and it is the same company making it with the same philosophy. At least, that’s what they said.

So, what can I say? It didn’t work out for me. Doesn’t mean it’s terrible for everybody. We all have to make our own choice in that. But don’t think it’s odd that people make comparisons, because even though the games are different it was meant to cater to similar groups of people: people who play MMOs.

Exactly this. +1. I agree entirely. This simply is not the game for me. I didn’t want Guild Wars 1 1/2, but if this game had the same core values that Guild Wars had I’d probably still be playing it. They definitely lost their GW fanbase with this game.

This is nothing new. I saw this coming from a mile away. If ArenaNet would’ve focused on making the meta game more about skills rather than gear we wouldn’t have this problem. If all gear was equal in stats we wouldn’t have this problem. Biggest ArenaNet slap to the face for all of their fans that came from GW1.

Ditton.3149:

dimgl.4786:

Ditton.3149:

lothefallen.7081:

There’s so much content that a lot of it is marginalized….

Here’s what i mean. In GW1, unique bosses had elite skills, special drops, areas had quest chains that people knew about, that were easily accessed. People knew where to go for what rewards. There were reasons to re-visit other areas because the game wasn’t just about gear grind. It was about capping skills, vanquishing, titles, etc…

GW2 seems to be ONLY about grinding for gear because the combat is shallow and nobody really cares about areas they’ve already been to. It’s a skinner box. The game is not inherently fun or designed for longevity, it’s designed for people to grind for cosmetics and buy from the cash shop.

There are no unique rewards or skills to cap in GW2…or other things to spread populations. The live updates just trivialize the game because they put everyone on the same hamster wheel rather than immerse you or deepen the gameplay experience. This event just seems like gimmicky filler. There’s no reason to go fight the champion of Balthazar in Orr to get 71 copper and a blue when i can kill a Veteran Karka and get the same loot. This is what i’m talking about.

GW1 was designed very tightly. Now, if Champion of Balthazar dropped a special skin or had an elite skill to capture for warriors or humans because he is the human God of war…people would find longevity in this old content. Fact is…the game systems are trivialized. How many “Commune with generic object” skillpoints before ArenaNet realizes it’s quality over quantity? We dont want more, we want better. We want tighter systems design. We want deep, synergistic, team-oriented combat, we want unique rewards, different engaging things to do with interesting mechanics like skill capping…think on these concepts. Think back on GW1 and why you even had the money to build this game. The players want more GW in their GW2 and less trashy filler patches indicative of a failing MMO like TERA or SWTOR.

Im having a blast with my guild and even pugs in this dungeon.

This is everything that is wrong with the game. The Guild Wars franchise was about being able to go anywhere and do anything at end game. Guild Wars 2 is a humongous deviation from Guild Wars and I will not spend another cent on an ArenaNet product.

Thats a really weak argument. You are taking a line out of a rebuttal to a specific portion of the game. I have fun with my guild, pugs and the community in the entire game, even Orr. I like the dungeons, I like the movement, I like the combat, I like the people. Do I think its perfect? No, not even close. That being said, this isnt constructive, its vitriol over the game being different than what you want it to be.

I’m just tired of giving my opinion when it won’t matter. I’ve played hundreds of hours of GW2 and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to detail the shortcomings of ArenaNet’s game design choices based on my experiences. I believe that the path they are treading will lead to a short life for Guild Wars 2. I, of course, just get repeatedly flamed by other forum members when I state my opinion (go play another game, go make your own MMO) and many of my posts have been censored by mods for no reason.

I’m glad you’re having fun but this update sealed the deal for me. I won’t be playing this game anymore. They gave up on their original and unique game design that made Guild Wars so fun and instead went for this traditional crap. And trust me, I’m not the only one who feels this way. All of my friends have stopped playing and many have even gone as far as to stop others from buying this game.

Ditton.3149:

lothefallen.7081:

There’s so much content that a lot of it is marginalized….

Here’s what i mean. In GW1, unique bosses had elite skills, special drops, areas had quest chains that people knew about, that were easily accessed. People knew where to go for what rewards. There were reasons to re-visit other areas because the game wasn’t just about gear grind. It was about capping skills, vanquishing, titles, etc…

GW2 seems to be ONLY about grinding for gear because the combat is shallow and nobody really cares about areas they’ve already been to. It’s a skinner box. The game is not inherently fun or designed for longevity, it’s designed for people to grind for cosmetics and buy from the cash shop.

There are no unique rewards or skills to cap in GW2…or other things to spread populations. The live updates just trivialize the game because they put everyone on the same hamster wheel rather than immerse you or deepen the gameplay experience. This event just seems like gimmicky filler. There’s no reason to go fight the champion of Balthazar in Orr to get 71 copper and a blue when i can kill a Veteran Karka and get the same loot. This is what i’m talking about.

GW1 was designed very tightly. Now, if Champion of Balthazar dropped a special skin or had an elite skill to capture for warriors or humans because he is the human God of war…people would find longevity in this old content. Fact is…the game systems are trivialized. How many “Commune with generic object” skillpoints before ArenaNet realizes it’s quality over quantity? We dont want more, we want better. We want tighter systems design. We want deep, synergistic, team-oriented combat, we want unique rewards, different engaging things to do with interesting mechanics like skill capping…think on these concepts. Think back on GW1 and why you even had the money to build this game. The players want more GW in their GW2 and less trashy filler patches indicative of a failing MMO like TERA or SWTOR.

Im having a blast with my guild and even pugs in this dungeon.

This is everything that is wrong with the game. The Guild Wars franchise was about being able to go anywhere and do anything at end game. Guild Wars 2 is a humongous deviation from Guild Wars and I will not spend another cent on an ArenaNet product.

Ditton.3149:

lothefallen.7081:

There’s so much content that a lot of it is marginalized….

Here’s what i mean. In GW1, unique bosses had elite skills, special drops, areas had quest chains that people knew about, that were easily accessed. People knew where to go for what rewards. There were reasons to re-visit other areas because the game wasn’t just about gear grind. It was about capping skills, vanquishing, titles, etc…

GW2 seems to be ONLY about grinding for gear because the combat is shallow and nobody really cares about areas they’ve already been to. It’s a skinner box. The game is not inherently fun or designed for longevity, it’s designed for people to grind for cosmetics and buy from the cash shop.

There are no unique rewards or skills to cap in GW2…or other things to spread populations. The live updates just trivialize the game because they put everyone on the same hamster wheel rather than immerse you or deepen the gameplay experience. This event just seems like gimmicky filler. There’s no reason to go fight the champion of Balthazar in Orr to get 71 copper and a blue when i can kill a Veteran Karka and get the same loot. This is what i’m talking about.

GW1 was designed very tightly. Now, if Champion of Balthazar dropped a special skin or had an elite skill to capture for warriors or humans because he is the human God of war…people would find longevity in this old content. Fact is…the game systems are trivialized. How many “Commune with generic object” skillpoints before ArenaNet realizes it’s quality over quantity? We dont want more, we want better. We want tighter systems design. We want deep, synergistic, team-oriented combat, we want unique rewards, different engaging things to do with interesting mechanics like skill capping…think on these concepts. Think back on GW1 and why you even had the money to build this game. The players want more GW in their GW2 and less trashy filler patches indicative of a failing MMO like TERA or SWTOR.

Why do you even play man? Im having a blast with my guild and even pugs in this dungeon. This is not GW and they are not going to cater to GW fans, they’ve proven that. So if you dont like it, Im not sure what to tell you.

Seriously? Guild Wars is what gave ArenaNet the funds to make this game in the first place. Really ignorant comment. As far as what the quoted said, I agree 100%. With the game design from Guild Wars everyone wins.

After the original Guild Wars, this kitten is the opposite of exciting. Hell, its the opposite of Guild Wars. Guild wars 2 should be named Guild Warcraft 2.

Avatar.1923:

Haette.2701:

Swagger.1459:

i’m a little late to the party but i wanted experience more of the game and hold out until this patch went live to see where things were headed.

gw2 has tons of potential, is a decent f2p game but not worth the cash and time investment currently. hopefully they can create a long term win/win situation sooner than later.

Man, it was definitely worth the monetary investment even at launch. The time investment was perfectly reasonable too.

Now that time investment is looking to be heading FAR out of hand.

yeah…. some people play too much! they have like 600-800h…
i mean…
and then they complain.
maybe the “GAME” is not meant for their style of play..
well, they must account for something because anet broke their promess to give this crowd a new grind…

Yeah I have like 1500h on my first Guild Wars account, and that’s a massive amount of time lol

NGL… this is embarrassing.

It seems ArenaNet can’t handle the stresses of servicing a full blown MMO with their current system. They’re going to need to be doing some revamps very soon…

Joey.3928:

Guild Wars 2 is still very much like Guild Wars as far as gear goes.

You’re kidding right? Almost everything about Guild Wars 2 is different from Guild Wars.

Thanks for your post. I have stated everything you’ve stated in the past… I’m glad people are actually now starting to realize what I saw a few months back.

I hope we get more posts like this so ArenaNet can wake up and give the community what they want.

ASP.8093:

dimgl.4786:

Because once you can’t dodge anymore you need to be able to take hits…?

There are builds that don’t run out of dodges, thanks to good trait choices and synergy between their traits and skills.

You mean thieves and engineers have good dodge synergy? Because as a Guardian or a Warrior… good luck achieving this.

Avatar.1923:

dodging mitigate some dmg, but you cant dodge a knock prone in a red circle of doom.

so, have a plan B

youll need it.

“Need” is the keyword. It’s like they didn’t anticipate it but no matter what build you decide to go with, you can’t go into that red circle. Or you’ll get obliterated.

ASP.8093:

dimgl.4786:

Your traits are supposed to be what changes your playstyle, but apparently traits only give you more statistical bonuses.

Untrue! Most real builds I’ve seen actually get something out of their trait picks. The raw stat boosts are useful, but in many cases aren’t as important — because you can offset them with gear.

dimgl.4786:

Which let’s be honest… the most useful statistical bonuses in Guild Wars 2 are vitality and toughness, because the combat is based on dodging!

This statement is internally incoherent. If combat is based on dodging (i.e. avoiding getting hit altogether), why are Vitality and Toughness the best stats rather than the worst?

Because once you can’t dodge anymore you need to be able to take hits…?

Joey.3928:

Revik.5870:

I love to play a game when I can really get into the playstyle I want. I don’t even mind grinding a bit for gear that supports/enhances how I want to play.

The trouble with GW2 is that there is no gear anywhere in PvE that provides the stats I’m looking for. There’s plenty in PvP. Why was this decision made? It’s stupid. Why rehash the same basic six stat combinations with tons of different looks in crafting, karma vendors, dungeons, and WvW? More stat combos support people trying out new builds and new chars. Why was PvE shafted in this regard?

I don’t even want to spend the time or money getting an exotic set if it’s not something I want to play in.

Can we please get more stat combinations in PvE?

What would be your ideal stat combination?

Doesn’t matter because every stat combination is not available for every piece of end-game armor. /fail

This is because of the horrible design decisions made when creating the underlying statistical system for their combat.

Because “there is no trinity”, ArenaNet thought that it would be better to make armor with slapdashed stats all over it. Armor isn’t even supposed to have stats. Your traits are supposed to be what changes your playstyle, but apparently traits only give you more statistical bonuses. Which let’s be honest… the most useful statistical bonuses in Guild Wars 2 are vitality and toughness, because the combat is based on dodging!

AWESOME SYSTEM! Let’s scatter stats across the board and make runes and gems next to worthless! SWEET!

This is great, pretty much nails it. It disappointments that this game is such a huge departure from Guild Wars 1. Not because I want it to be Guild Wars 1, but because it was just a superior game at the metagame.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I’m wondering how ArenaNet could have gone back on all of their design principles after gaining so much valuable experience from Guild Wars.

I’m still trying to understand how in Guild Wars 2:

• Crafting requires you to create unusable items that become obsolete quickly.
• Combat is centered around dodging and being down rather than your skill build.
• Survivability is more important than build diversity.
• Your elites no longer change your entire build.
• Armor and weapons have irreplaceable stats.
• Armor and weapon upgrades do not change your playstyle.
• There are six rarity tiers, the last three of which have statistical disparity, causing a inefficient and unnecessary gear treadmill.
• There are two currencies that achieve the same goal and are only different in acquisition.
• Unidentified items were removed from the game.
• Waypoints are everywhere and they require money to port.
• Tooltips are poorly defined in comparison to Guild Wars.
• There are no Guild Halls. Instead, we get home instances.
• There is no point to multi-guilds… just give us alliances.
• World bosses don’t drop unique loot and have no interesting mechanics whatsoever.
• Dungeons don’t drop unique loot. Explorable mode routes are illusions of choice designed to make the player feel like there is more content.

The 1-80 experience is fantastic but once I got to the metagame…this game really fell apart for me. I don’t understand at what point ArenaNet lost their way but this game is just starting to feel like every other MMO. Everything about the design in this game makes me mad… They had such a good chance to make the CORPG Guild Wars into an MMORPG experience. This doesn’t feel like Guild Wars. I don’t even know what the new lore is about nor do I care.

/endrant

I find this post to be exactly how I feel towards the game. I would love to be a hardcore player in any game but I simply don’t have the time. This post, 100 times over.