Guild Wars 2

Please do not add mounts for the love of God.

Wouldn’t it make sense to show only the armor your character can use in the vendors? Just sayin’, it would avoid a lot of people purchasing the wrong armor by mistake

What is the proper color rarity for Legendary items? Is it red or purple? What distinguishes a red item from a purple item?

I noticed the weapon’s text is Purple and not Red. Is this a change that needs to be reflected on the Wiki? I’m about to change it to Purple. Have all PvP items been changed to Purple as well?

Ticee.2451:

I really liked the GW1 and the skill system, and would like that in GW2 or something somewhat similar at least.. But not only that, a lot of skills in GW2 largely seem useless outside high end competitive pvp. I mean most crowd control skills or any skills in general are in the range of being up for 1,5 sec and then having a cooldown of 45 sec.. Way way too long cooldown, and way too low effect time, it renders the vast majority of skills pretty pointless in casual pve for instance.
In GW1 the skills in general lasted so much longer and really made a difference. On top of that putting points into traits would extend the duration of skills drastically, as in from 4 sec to 18 sec. Of course you couldn’t do that to all your skills though.

So basically GW2 just feels so restrictive and superficial, you really don’t have any major choices to make, neither in choice of skills or traits. It’s all a matter of tweaking the finer details that’ll make a difference in a tournament battle, but otherwise won’t really make any noticeable difference.

I really tire of the weapon preset skills as well.. The idea of weapon specific skills is fine, but give people a bunch of different skills they can choose from themselves, as they like.

This is my biggest complaint. The reason the skills were built this way is due to the fact that all players now need to play all roles: healer, tank and dps.

morphemass.2850:

I miss this and mercs/heroes. These were core gameplay elements of GW1 and created incredible complexity (obviously very hard for game designers to balance though, and technically challenging to create good AI).

While aesthetically GW2 is far superior to GW1, I think that under-the-skin GW1 was/s the superior game.

I agree. I think the system that Guild Wars 1 was based on was obviously a superior game. All creatures had skills that can be countered and used by players. All players had skills that needed to be earned by questing or by capturing from bosses. Attribute points made the skill system easy to understand and made your character more powerful as you gained levels. How I miss Guild Wars. I’d gladly play it nonstop if more content were made for it and more people were playing it.

Rukia.4802:

And that’s why this is World of Guildwarscraft and not actually GW2.

LMAO

I honestly miss Guild Wars… I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is a true successor to it. It’s honestly disappointing.

arctorius.3025:

I too find myself wanting more to do. In WoWs endgame I know that everything I’m doing is leading up to endgame raiding because that’s what I always did. In this game I have no idea what I’m doing. Although I’m finding my perspective is changing the more time I spend in game.

I haven’t run out of things to do per se. After getting to 80 I maxed out my disciplines (chef/ws) then I dropped chef, picked up Armorsmith and maxed that out. Now I’m working on making my exotic gear. At first this meant farming Orr until I realized that some of the mid level mats go for a descent price so I’ve moved to doing zone completion and selling what I gather on the TP. Then I use that money to buy mats for my exotics.

I think something a lot of people aren’t realizing is it’s not efficient to farm for a specific mat. Your best bet is to run around doing other things like zone completion, following event chains, and playing a little game I call follow the nodes. Selling the gathered materials then allows you to buy what you need on the TP.

Are you aware WoW’s endgame only flourished almost a year after its release? Vanilla WoW literally had one fifteen man raid. It wasn’t until the Molten Core patch that they released 40 mans, and even then it was the only endgame content until future patches.

Rook: what’s your point? That is a suggestion that the development team can take into consideration when they are releasing new patches.

Game is still one month old… I haven’t been complaining. I’m having a great time with the game.

Agemnon.4608:

I don’t know much about GW1 or the lore apart from the story quests and stuff I read (such as [spoiler=dwarves] being extinct [/spoiler]) from time to time. I will say this, and these suggestions typically aren’t popular, but hear me out…

Aliens. That’s right, I said it, aliens. I know people can’t suspend their disbelief over how OP the aliens would be compared to a Renaissance equivalent technological level planet, and the Asura are alien enough with their tech and physical features, but there’s just something satisfying about fighting futuristic alien tech bot 9000 with a sword and winning. The game is cool enough without them, but maybe instead of them being a deal you could find a hidden quest or secret dungeon having to do with a small out of the way alien settlement on Tyria where you have to help them.

The Mursaat and the Seers are the aliens of Tyria. No one knows anything about them, or how they came to be, or how they even arrived on Tyria. The Isles of Janthir are known the be the homeland of the Mursaat but no one has ever visited it and come back alive due to the Mursaat’s Spectral Agony, a powerful aura that destroys anything around them. The lore to Guild Wars is literally crazy deep, I hope they utilize it to their advantage.

Game is one month old.

This is an amazing post. Happy anniversary and thank you for sharing your experiences.

Dungeons are fun with teams that know what they are doing. With bad teams, the dungeons tend to become a tedious task… However I do agree that the story mode for the dungeons need to be more unique and provide better experiences. I think people are tired of seeing the same mobs that do the same actions.

fony.5102:

might as well suggest they add loot tables(good ones) to Champion Giants. i like helping out lowbies, but getting white items, lvl 14 items or nothing really sucks.

I agree as well. Champion and veteran mobs should drop better loot. They need to really distinguish loot.

Lumines.3916:

I’d be more than happy to move around the world, I take part in WvW all the time when my guildies are on and it’s really fun while gain a button of Karma. However, I hate WvW when it means following the zerg solo, it’s just not an enjoyable activity when you’re on your own.

This means I go back to PvE to get some karma going. If they actually made event rewards scale to your character’s level and not just your scaled level, that would be plenty incentive to spread out all over the world.

However that is a) currently not the case and b) Orr has the most dense web of events out of any zones right now.

I get that the DR has its merits, but with this patch I can’t but feel they took a step backwards rather than forwards in fine tuning it.

That’s because there is not enough content at the moment. Once ArenaNet begins releasing a lot more level 80 content, it will be a lot better for players. They will have more things to do and won’t complain as much about DR. And WvW will only continue to improve as time goes on.

Agemnon.4608:

Rarity not mattering… so does this mean that blues should be as powerful as exotics? I’d be happy with that

Agemnon: this is how it worked in Guild Wars 1. The rarity was:

Blue, purple, gold and green.

What you got in the end was a very elegant system where the rarity only meant the skins were rarer, and all of the stats remained the same. This is where ArenaNet failed to deliver and it enfuriates me that it would deviate me from this. It’s now biting them in the kitten because now players are mad that they can’t grind fast enough to achieve better stats.

Lumines.3916:

Not only what you said is true, but it’s plain for the eye to see that the DR system in place is simply TOO harsh that it’s affecting people not trying to farm karma, but trying to progress in a chain.

I got hit with DR just trying to cleanse the Cathedral of Silence because the event failed and had to do it again.

And this is what ArenaNet needs to work on. And it is what they will work on. But people need to be patient.

Rizzy, thanks for your input.

I’m actually really looking forward to Guild Halls and improvements to the combat system. The potential is really limitless. I hope ArenaNet takes criticism well (and doesn’t hate me for bashing on the story)

I’m not sure how that qualifies as whining… Suggesting that the combat font be clearer and provide more information sounds like a valid point to me.

I honestly think it’s the writing, and not the voice actors. A voice actor is only as good as his/her direction and writing.

Can we please be able to disable combat music? It is so annoying and repetitive… The only times when this is acceptable is during meta events. Please implement this! I want to listen to beautiful Guild Wars tunes while I’m bashing mobs!

You guys seriously worry way too much. They will be releasing free updates with more content and zones to explore, like the Sorrow’s Furnace patch in Guild Wars.

You also forget there is still tons of content that can be created, such as:

Fissure of Woe
The Underworld
Tomb of the Primeval Kings
Guild halls
Heroes Ascent (Hall of Heroes)
Domain of Anguish

And this is not including zones that have already been announced, such as:
Perdition Rock (Ring of Fire)
Maguuma Wastes
Crystal Desert
Isles of Janthir
Blood Legion Homelands
Far Shiverpeaks
Woodland Cascades
Magus Falls
Scavenger’s Causeway

And more to come… we still have all of Elona and Cantha to consider.

They will undoubtedly introduce high-level zones that will be hard to trek.

No mounts, please. There is no reason why ArenaNet should implement mounts.

Miscellaneous

• Bring back chests so we can look forward to rare drops from mobs, like keys

• Introduce an option to remove combat music (but not meta event music)

• Change the ugly floating combat text font and remove italics. Make it obvious what is happening: add colors like in Guild Wars

• Implement target of target

• Add borders around items in inventory so we can see their quality

• Develop Black Lion Trading Company as a native feature, so we can preview armor

• Remove the Home Instance completely

• Introduce Guild Halls

• Create content all over the world: make your game, truly end game

• Explain how creatures agro and how we can control a creature

• Many more things I cannot list

I know all of these suggestions present big challenges, but I think that at this stage it is possible. Don’t be afraid to take risks and change things that have already been implemented. Previous MMO games have became giants because of their risks. Guild Wars was no exception. Guild Wars 2 has the potential to be one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time.

I have many more suggestions but of course, I’m just an average joe. That said, even with all of its flaws, I absolutely love Guild Wars 2 and I look forward to its future! Thank you for all of your hard work!

Simplify your game design

As a developer I believe simpler is better. Make it obvious to your customers what your product does. There are many aspects of Guild Wars which, although vast and elegantly designed, seem over complicated (except for crafting, which IMO has been implemented beautifully).

For example, it is hard for a player to pinpoint their flaws because there is no simple representation of what is happening on your screen. Although it is there, it is not understandable. Players want to understand why mobs can one hit them, or why certain conditions take so much life. Players want to know what they can do to be more viable or hit harder. Although the means are there, the simplicity is not.

Putting your item quality system into perspective, players have blue, green, yellow, orange, and red items to keep into consideration. What was wrong with blue, purple, gold and green? Just by eliminating a tier of quality, it all becomes much clearer: blues are extremely common, purples are rarer and are good items, gold items are extremely rare and powerful, and green items are legendary items. This system brings joy to players because items mean more.

Currently, there are eleven conditions in your game: this is simply too much. Take for instance chilled and crippled , conditions that apply the same effect (both reduce movement speed). Why not instead create “slowed”, and give skill recharge reduction to another condition, to make it more apparent what it does?

The more you simplify your game, the easier it is to develop and amplify Guild Wars 2’s scope.

Story needs to have a purpose

I am terribly sorry for whomever I will offend with this next point.

I adore the world of Tyria, realized by your talented and unmatched art team. The lore to Tyria is so rich; it gets me excited thinking about the future. Please, then, explain to me why the writing is so abysmal? (only story, not world writing)

Why did you split the story line into so many branches? This increases the chances of a forgettable story and hollow characters. There are so many characters in Guild Wars that all had distinct personalities: Vizier Khilbron, Confessor Dorian, Prince Rurik, Jalis Ironhammer, Glint.

None of the characters in Guild Wars 2 are nearly as memorable. Eir is so hollow that it enfuriates me. Zojja is annoying, there is nothing enigmatic about Caithe and Logan is a complete whiner. How could this have been allowed? What happened to the themes of family and honor? Of war and fear? What happened to ever present doom and enigma that clouds the uncertain future of Tyria?

Because of this design, the cinematics also suffered: an art backdrop was introduced to help streamline the process of creating a heavy story. This was by far the biggest disappointment. So many possibilities for improvement were thrown away when it was decided to use an art backdrop instead of the environment.

The solution: stick to one story from now on, and make it darn good. I don’t care about fifty stories. I rather watch the same great movie fifty times than watch fifty bad ones.

Hello ArenaNet. I’m sure your community managers are very busy, but I hope someone at ArenaNet takes a few minutes to read my post. I have followed Guild Wars since 2004 and I love everything about the game. From someone who only wishes the best for your company and its future, here are my suggestions.

Forum viewers, do not bash me for my views please.

Alliances

As of right now, the guild system is flawed. You lose a sense of belonging by having the ability to join many guilds. Being able to quickly switch between guilds creates the notion that it doesn’t matter who is in your guild or who you represent.

Instead, an Alliance system should be implemented (a la Guild Wars). Guild representation would be restricted to alliance scope, so that you can only represent guilds if they are your allies. This creates a much bigger sense of belonging and brings exciting development opportunies when creating future PvP features.

Rethink your skill/trait system

I love the idea and concept behind your skill system, but the implementation feels flawed. As a Guardian, I feel like some skills aren’t viable enough to ever be used, even in situations they make sense in.

For example, why should I ever use “Hold the Line!”? It grants protection to my allies for only four seconds, mitigates -33% of incoming spike damage… and the cooldown is 35 seconds. On the flipside, “Ray of Judgment” applies a blind to foes and heals allies… Why not apply a longer blind and remove the heals? Because of this, many skills feel flawed. They are either too viable or too impotent.

This is a big mistake. Although you are working towards the goal of requiring multiple roles at once, this restricts players into one play-style and doesn’t allow build diversity to grow, which is what made Guild Wars so beautiful. We should be able to be potent healers, DPSers, and tankers if we chose to, but be unable to survive by only playing one role. This allows theorycrafting to improve, players to evolve, and build diversity to flourish.

This means your skills need to mean more and do more. Simpler is better. I need to know exactly what my character can do when I take out my mace. I need to know that my Healing Breeze will matter. I need to know that speccing into a certain trait will improve certain things. This will allow myself, and other players, to see weapons, skills and traits logically rather than abstractively. We will no longer see weapons for the skills they possess, but instead see weapons for the properties they represent.

Again guys, I really think the right idea is to implement a system where your awards get better as you progress further in the dungeon… So you have a big incentive to actually do the whole thing…

ref.8196:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

1) You mentioned that “They also act as a deterrent to prolong the life of the game” which might be the most wrong statement in the history of statements. It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

Complaining isn’t a bad thing in itself. How else would a developer know about our feelings on the game unless everyone only ever had positive things to say? Nothing can be fixed if nobody ever complains.

These dungeons aren’t challenging, they are hard. They are hard because the only element in them that isn’t easy is that every enemy and their grandmothers have a lot of hp and can 1-hit kill you. I never feel like a proper strategy will help because the only strategy for any of these fights is to throw everything I have at them and try and not get hit too much.

On another note: I don’t appreciate having content in a game that I might not be able to complete due to straight up skill. If this was the real life and I hadn’t paid for this game, I’d just say “Oh well… guess I’m just not good enough to do that” but as I have paid for this product, it is a giant slap in the face when the developer says “l2p nub”. There is no content in this game that can prepare you for their absurd dungeon runs and even the first dungeon you do is stupid hard with no learning aspect except beating your head against the enemies until they die.

If you are getting 1 hit killed by bosses in dungeons, you are doing it wrong. Which means it is challenging, not hard, as the rest of us don’t die in 1 hit.

This is what I’m saying. Basically, people are just doing it wrong and they need to learn how to play instead of QQing. Explorable dungeons aren’t the only thing available to do in the game. Not even by a stretch. You can still 100% all the maps, PvP, WvWvW, complete meta events, so on and so forth. It’s not required to do explorable dungeons.

iSECKS.6738:

What’s really annoying is the fact that I highly doubt any of us will actually be reimbursed for the lost tokens/time/exp/money. But instead will just be granted with a patch that will supposedly ‘fix’ everything and that all is going to be well from now on.

Look I know how much pressure is placed upon Anet at this point in time, but I would rather they actually take their time with patches and actually TEST their new ideas/content for themselves, instead of using us as guinea pigs and just dropping the nerf hammer on pretty much everything.

It’s as if they panic so much at the sign of any new exploit/bug that the entire office gets into an uproar and quickly codes together something that will ‘save’ their game.
The game doesn’t need saving, thankfully not yet at least, but at this rate I am afraid it might. The reason why so many people are posting on the forums and are showing so much concern is that they are frustrated that a game that has so much potential keeps taking a turn for the worse.

Take your time, and trust in your community, most are willing to wait for quality updates and will show appreciation for it. (Don’t hold me to that lol)
Quality over quantity for patches gentlemen, quality over quantity.

I think this is only because it’s the first month of the game’s release… I’m sure the updates will become far less common over time.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

1) You mentioned that “They also act as a deterrent to prolong the life of the game” which might be the most wrong statement in the history of statements. It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

Complaining isn’t a bad thing in itself. How else would a developer know about our feelings on the game unless everyone only ever had positive things to say? Nothing can be fixed if nobody ever complains.

These dungeons aren’t challenging, they are hard. They are hard because the only element in them that isn’t easy is that every enemy and their grandmothers have a lot of hp and can 1-hit kill you. I never feel like a proper strategy will help because the only strategy for any of these fights is to throw everything I have at them and try and not get hit too much.

On another note: I don’t appreciate having content in a game that I might not be able to complete due to straight up skill. If this was the real life and I hadn’t paid for this game, I’d just say “Oh well… guess I’m just not good enough to do that” but as I have paid for this product, it is a giant slap in the face when the developer says “l2p nub”. There is no content in this game that can prepare you for their absurd dungeon runs and even the first dungeon you do is stupid hard with no learning aspect except beating your head against the enemies until they die.

This, I can agree with. ArenaNet should implement a way of showing players how to think to beat dungeons in the game. However, this does prolong the life of the game due to the fact that the dungeon won’t be mastered quickly by everyone…

What I think they should do is create a system where the dungeon awards more tokens as you progress further in the dungeon. Why wouldn’t they just do that?

frOst.2198:

Overall score: bad

Discussion and response to actions taken:

1) Dungeon tokens are now rewarded at the end of an explorable chain.
So what about all the work that goes into reaching the end? What happens if someone has to leave, or your group falls apart? You get nothing? Did you even think of things like this? I have to believe no thought at all goes into these design decisions.
—-

2) Dungeons reward 20 tokens for completion and now reward an additional 40 tokens for the first time they are completed each day.
This should be in addition to what you receive in chests.
—-

3) Dungeon tokens should be account bound. This will allow players to have a single character farm tokens for their other characters.
Doesn’t affect me. Good for some people though, im sure. Now, once you have your gear, you can run with friends and not be wasting time.
—-

4) This week, we’re updating the system to not impact clearing different chains of the same dungeon. We’ll continue to evaluate this system in coming weeks.
Great that youre working out bugs..but they shouldn’t be there to begin with. TEST YOUR PATCHES, and not on US.
—-

You are simply not addressing the actual problem.

Dungeon design is poor on every account except, imo, the minigame portions (diffuse bombs).

Boss fights have no hint of strategy. If you DID build a strategy, you did so by simply picking one moveset shared between a group and built an entire 10-15 minute boss fight around it. This is a horrible way of doing it because it severely limits customization and forces players into a playstyle they don’t want.

Stick to telegraphed attacks, red circles on the ground, and terrain. Stick to condition removal, kiting, and LOS. That is what your combat system promotes. I don’t know what the heck youre doing now, but it doesn’t work.

Regarding rewards. As I said above, the fact that you aren’t giving us any until completion is flat out absurd, especially with the artificially inflated HP pools of most mobs and the amount of time it now requires to beat these dungeons.

You need to provide rewards throughout the dungeon

1) All dungeon mobs have % chance to drop a token
2) Bosses/Chest have a % chance to drop an actual dungeon item

There, suddenly everyone doesn’t mind killing what theyre supposed to.

Dude, this all sounds like a personal issue and a bunch of whining to me. There’s no fun in knowing exactly what to do every time you go encounter a top-tier dungeon the first few times. All of these dungeons have gone through internal testing. It’s not like they’re releasing all of this content that is impossible to do, like you state.

Did you forget that these dungeons are designed to be “facemeltingly” hard? They also act as a deterrent to prolong the life of the game. These aren’t dungeons that you can just pick up any PUG group and finish in thirty minutes. It’s posts like these that contributed to the dumbing down of World of Warcraft post-WotLK, where suddenly they cater to everyone and the hardcore players are left like “okay… this is too easy”.

A very clear example of this is Domain of Anguish in Guild Wars. Domain of Anguish is so freaking hard only a percentage of everyone who played Guild Wars have been able to complete the entire thing. It’s there for those people who have finished the leveling experience and now want an additional challenge. It’s there so people can learn how to play the game at a more advanced level.

The same thing happens in Guild Wars 2. Sure, things are not perfect, but these dungeons are designed to make you think about solutions to your problems. I keep encountering players that just run into mobs and have no idea about positioning, build composition, weapon and utility selection, and consets (consumables), players that run into boss fights and get mad because “there is no way to beat it” or “they don’t know what to do”. That is the point. You need to learn how to beat the boss. Not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.

If there’s anything I have to complain about, it’s the learning curve. The rest of the game needs to scale up and become progressively harder, to train players gradually to get ready for explorable mode, which is technically the hardest content in the game.

I don’t know if my post will ever get seen by anyone in ArenaNet, but this is my honest opinion.

A lot of valid points have been mentioned in the previous posts, but I really think what the story is missing is cohesiveness and depth. I think it was a huge misstep to introduce the personal story as a branching storyline where your choices act as branches. I also think it was a misstep to introduce the cutscene system as it ruins immersion and takes out the opportunity to use the environment or bodily expressions. This is a flawed system for several reasons:

• Players do not receive a consistent story – In branching storylines, it is easier for players to gather different opinions due to the fact their experiences are so different. One story arc may be very cleverly designed while another story arc may lack the emotional depth a satisfying story needs. This can cause problems when trying to pinpoint problems in the plot and delivery. It also causes confusion when other players use word of mouth to spread the word about the story.

• One, strong, epic storyline is better than five mediocre ones The story needs depth. IMO, the story in its current state does not make you feel like a hero. I feel like that elements that made the first Guild Wars story so memorable are missing. Because of the depth and scope of the story, events like when you carry the Eye of Janthir to Maguuma, only to discover the White Mantle is murdering the Chosen stay imprinted in the viewer’s mind. Or the trials of the Crystal Desert. Or the moment you take back Thunderhead Keep from the Mursaat and you set sail to Perdition Rock. These moments stand out because of the way they were designed: it contains depth. You missed the opportunity to create these types of memorable experiences for newcomers to the series by creating these convoluted storylines. The only memorable experience I will take from the personal story is following Trahearne into the vision of the Pale Tree to see your future in Orr. I hope your team takes this as a learning experience and vastly improves the story. I really wish I liked it :\.

• Longer development time due to design choices Although most ends were tied well in the personal story, there is room for error. This causes development time to become much larger than normal and can introduce future errors. It also creates a mess when dealing with future extensions to a story. Also, introducing a cutscene system where characters are placed to a backdrop abruptly cuts the actions and there are many missed opportunities

Other complaints are things like elements of the story are very childish and do not seem to cater to an older audience. For example, Destiny’s Edge sounds like a bunch of a whiners and they all act childish. I don’t understand how the writing for this game could’ve let this happen?

Thank you for the quick response, you may close or merge this thread

I’m not sure if this is happening to everyone, but it’s happening to my friend and I.

Whenever we use the dye remover on any piece of our armor, the game crashes to desktop. Every… time. Is anyone experiencing this?

I would love an option to just turn the combat music off, except for in big boss battles. Maybe an option that says:

Combat Music – on/off
Boss/meta event music – on/off

It is so frustrating to fight a big pack of mobs every five minutes and have the same music play over and over. I HATED the idea of combat music from Guild Wars 1. This is something that I would really, really like implemented into the game that would increase my immersion. I don’t mind listening to the beautiful soundtrack while I’m fighting monsters. Very reminiscent of Guild Wars 1 actually.