Yes to all of it.
Get rid of waypoints, introduce mounts.
Mounts are way cooler than waypoints. Waypoints suck.
One of the things that was promised in the Manifesto was that those of us who enjoy the exploration style of gameplay would have plenty to do.
I feel like this aspect of the game, more than any other (including combat, which I have issues with, but is still pretty good – and loot, which is extremely boring) was the biggest let down.
I just don’t feel like Tyria was really built to be explored. It’s too “on-rails” if you know what I mean.
Yes, there are a couple easter eggs here and there – I’m not saying there aren’t.
What I’m saying is that the world, over all, is too small, and there just aren’t enough hidden corners in it.
The heart/renown system is a detriment to exploration – it encourages old school fetch/kill quest style, which they specifically said they were trying to avoid in the Manifesto.
The map completion aspect ends up feeling more like Farmville – nothing in it is particularly hard to do – PoI’s, Vistas, Skill Pts. – all of these things simply require you to walk to a point on a (rectangular) map where they are clearly marked (most of the time) and do some trivial, non-challenging thing, like click a button (on Vistas) or simply walk there (PoI’s).
Add to that the waypoint system which makes instantly teleporting around the entire world one click away.
The whole thing actually appears to be anti-exploration.
Am I crazy, or do other people see it too?
I guess Anet actually just wanted to create an e-sport, which is fine, but they told us they were going to make a massive, open world, that would cater to explorers/immersion players as well – and I don’t feel like they did, and I feel like they haven’t put any additional development into this aspect of the game since launch.
Essentially, I think they’ve ignored exploration based play, because their real aim was e-sports.
This strikes me as being counter productive, for while e-sports are certainly interesting, and I even like to participate in some WvWvW from time to time – the majority of MMO players are PvE/exploration based players. That is, exploration is why most of us come to play MMO’s to begin with. The ‘other’ players are actually a very small minority.
Anet would make more money if they added more exploration to the game.
The entirety of the open world is so easy to explore, that it amounts to little more than tourism.
That’s bad PvE.
The dungeons aren’t much better.
Encounter design is weak.
The PvE world is not a truly open world. The invisible fences and doorways are immersion breaking.
Also, the rectangular shape of the zones is immersion breaking.
Exploration is linear and unsatisfying.
Exploration amounts to walking around grabbing PoI’s and Vistas – hearts if you really want map completion, I guess. And skill pts. because, well those are useful.
There’s no deep, meaningful exploration aspect to this game, so PvE is an afterthought.
4)Majority of loot comes from chests and the token/gold at the end because anet don’t want players to farm dungeons over and over. they even nerfed the dungeon event chest to once per day.
I would rather a much longer dungeon (one that could literally take a week to complete) than a shorter one with smaller rewards.
You can’t “farm” a dungeon if it takes you six days just to get to the end (because it’s THAT big).
Also, they really ought to look into using procedural generation for some kind of infinite dungeon – like maybe a new fractal, produced by procedural generation.
I understand why ‘Zerkers do what they do, and I’m fine with it – but I think Anet needs to redesign the game so that it doesn’t reward a single playstyle (or gear set) more so than others.
The problem is in the fundamental game design – not the players.
PvE is an afterthought in GW2.
1) Linear.
Dungeons are a linear path from one room (cavern, encounter area, etc.) to the next. It basically goes, a) Skip boring non-sensical cutscene, b) run into next room and DPS down all enemies, c) open chest and auto-loot it, d) repeat in next room.
On top of that, there are very few of these ‘rooms’ per dungeon, I think Citadel of Flame is like 6 or so encounters, then it’s down. It’s literally a series of combat encounters (not counting the final encounter, which is just running back and forth and throwing rocks).
Where are the multiple paths? The miles deep catacombs and hard to explore dungeons with dead ends, with sections that are literally off the beaten path and have nothing to do with whatever linear objectives we’re told to perform?
Ancient castles with multiple levels (both above and below ground)?
In short, where’s the exploration aspect? All you do is run from one room to the next gunning down enemies. Yes, sometimes there’s some wonky mechanic you have to perform in that room to complete it – but that’s it.
It’s pure farming.
2) Mob encounters.
We need enemies that do really interesting stuff. Like spiders that climb walls. Enemies that know when to retreat and hide (and regroup). Ambushes and chases. Being cut off by cave ins and blockades.
Enemies that can dodge, or form shield walls. You know, basic combat behaviors, that require tactical thinking to beat them (instead of just DPS button mashing).
3) Choices.
The dungeon should physically change based on things you do. For example, causing a cave in that blocks an exit, or opening up a flood gate, making certain passages swimming only. Or closing and barring doors so enemies can’t get in/out. Or whatever. Just stuff that actually changes the layout or configuration of the dungeon in small, subtle ways.
Choices should make large groups (tribes) of enemies behave differently in the dungeon. For example, let’s say you cause a rockslide and wipe out a dozen Skritt – maybe the rest of the Skritt in the dungeon will be afraid of you, and retreat on sight. Or something else. But the idea being that exactly how they behave changes depending on choices you make.
4) Loot.
Although this applies to the game in general, it’s especially bad in dungeons. Never any exotics drop. A handful of tokens that forces you to grind for a long time to get any dungeon based skins (in the year+ I’ve played, I’ve bought precisely one piece of dungeon based gear – a medium Citadel glove).
And nothing really interesting, either. Not like loot in Diablo 3, for example, No legendary items that have unique proc effects. Unique armors that provide auras or passive benefits that cannot be had on any other set.
Hell, even alpha GW2 had Ghastly armor sets that were supposed to glow at night, and give a dmg bonus. What happened to that idea? There should be tons of stuff like that.
5) Solo-ability.
I understand that dungeons should be “hard”, but I also think it’s a huge let down that I cannot do a dungeon unless I can find other people, or have a very narrow pre-set method of soloing (that requires an exact build and armor set).
Yes, I’ve watched the solo videos of people running dungeons, and they’re boring.
Mostly, I think that dungeons should scale, both in difficulty and in rewards – make solo dungeons less rewarding, but give enemies less health, so the average player at least has a chance of winning a fight against a few elites and surviving to heal up before the next fight.
Soloing a dungeon is about the ability to freely explore – I put dungeons off for a long time because they seemed to be exclusively group events, which I don’t do often (since then, I have done some, just to get tokens – but I prefer to solo). But, the main reason for doing this is that many of us just want to be tomb raiders – that is, we want to explore dungeons (and come away with some good loot for our troubles), but we’re not token farmers. We don’t want to speed clear dungeons just to farm tokens.
We actually want explorable content, that we can tackle at our own tempo – I personally enjoy dungeons that take multiple days to complete – I want to log out/camp at key points in the dungeon, picking up my explorations the next day.
I want to reach the 99th floor of the dungeon – after weeks of descent.
In a nutshell, I want dungeons I can explore – not just farm.
Please. Give us exploration players something to do.
Exploration was something that was promised in the Manifesto, and I have to say, that of all the promises Anet reneged on, this was the most disappointing.
‘Zerker being the only viable build is not ’play how you want’.
The encounters are designed so poorly, as to actually discourage build diversity.
Change the encounters. Change dungeon design.
Why do people act like Anet can only deliver either/or.
They should be releasing tons of new content for every aspect of the game.
But, I think that Anet always wanted a PvP game anyway.
GW1 is mostly a PvP game.
The PvE aspect of GW2 is tacked on to a PvP game, and is second-rate.
They will not focus on it because they never really wanted a PvE game to begin with – what they wanted was to figure out a way to grab the lions share of the PvE market/player base, but make an actual PvP game while doing so.
In essence, they want your money, but they don’t want to give you a proper PvE game.
I did use Raven for a long time when it also had lacerating slash, for the bleeds, but it seems as if it was recently changed to Blind instead – so now I just run with the Hawk (for Bleed) and Owl (for Chill).
I’ve been having a lot of fun with this build.
I use skills like Hunter’s Call, Call Owl, and Crippling Talon, and pets (birds – bleeding and chill) at range instead of a bow, to soften targets.
When/if they close to melee, then I’ve got the power of main hand sword and Viper’s Nest. Lots of poison and bleed, so I took Poison Master to increase dmg, and Strider’s Defense to cut down on ranged attacks against me.
It’s a lot of fun to hit targets hard at range, and not be wielding a bow.
The only thing I could wish for is a bird/hawk/falcon based elite skill. I’m using Mist Wolf for lack of a more appealing choice, but it’s really just there as filler.
It took me awhile to realize that almost everything I wanted out of the Thief actually exists – in the Ranger.
Particularly the Sword/Warhorn + Sword/Dagger build. It’s evasive, applies plenty of conditions (bleeding and poison mostly), and hits hard. Also more survivable.
I stopped hating the Thief when it dawned on me that “Thief” in my mind = Ranger.
Anet just has a weird way of designing things.
The only thing the Ranger doesn’t have is (in my mind) is Stealth. That’s the big difference. If Ranger had Stealth, they would be the perfect Thief.
Mostly I’m just frustrated because the Manifesto promised a lot – so I spent a couple hundred dollars on this game, played for just over a year.
And in the end, I realize that aside from some neat art, the game actually kinda sucks.
I’m not saying any other MMO is any better – most are much worse.
But that doesn’t change my opinion about GW2 either.
Want legendary armor NAO
The combat – promised to be action-based and exciting – is monotonous and stale.
Enemies have very little intelligence or variety. DPS builds are linear and simplistic.
Content is on-the-rails, linear, and repetitive. Zones are designed strangely, not as an open world, but as static instances – whoever thought to make all zones rectangular was smoking something……
Dungeons are terrible – they are short, linear pathways with a handful of too-much-health enemies in the way for some really boring rewards (oh yawn, another yellow to sell on the trading house and a couple useless tokens to grind).
Aside from their broken dungeons and tepid living story, the only thing GW2 has going for it was fractals – and those aren’t being expanded.
This has to be one of the most boring MMO’s I’ve ever played.
It’s kinda pretty though, I’ll give it that.
Anet screwed up and squeezed diversity out of the game.
That’s what people want – diversity of build.
I don’t know that they’ll bother to change this, since no one actually shows up to work at Anet.
The problem with the meta is it’s boring.
If the game must completely revolve around DPS, then how about shaking things up by introducing diversity into DPS?
Some games have things like Fire Damage, Cold Damage, Lightning Damage, Arcane Damage, Nature Damage, etc.
There’s DoT, and AoE (both ranged and PBAOE).
Anet could have gone that route – a pure DPS game, with many different kinds of damage, that work off different resists and different side effects (conditions).
Instead, we got a one size fits all system.
And this leads to monotony.
Many people simply want a less monotonous game. Because that leads to tactical thinking. It leads to having to make choices during combat.
Combat grows stale in GW2 because of this.
Will they ever do anything about it?
I highly doubt it.
The one thing I was hoping for in S2 that could get me back into this game was new zones.
Dry Top isn’t enough – it’s not eve a full size zone.
They need to open up 2-3 more immediately – game just doesn’t have enough content.
I don’t know about WoW – but the OP is right that this game needs a serious content update.
I’m basically playing because there isn’t much else to do at the moment – until Star Citizen comes out.
There’s too much farming in this game.
Star Citizen is looking really, really good right now.
Actually logged in to play my Necro a little last night.
It was difficult just to stay in the game.
I mean…..it just isn’t fun anymore. Each time I log out, more and more time passes between log ins.
Game is dying.
The problem is that everything Anet does – trying to herd people into the gem store – actually will have the opposite effect, as it pushes people away from the game itself.
The only salve they can apply is to actually create more – and better – game content that draws people back to the game to play.
No players means no gem shop customers.
I was, in the beginning, a happy gem store shopper. I actually like buying cosmetic stuff – especially for a game that has no sub, and gives me access to all the content for free (after box purchase).
I bought 3 additional character slots, an extra bank slot, 3 unlimited mining tools (Dream Axe, Bone Pick, and Jack in the Box), and my gf bought a flying broom.
I would buy more clothing, except there just aren’t that many choices. I expected dozens, if not hundreds, of outfits to choose from.
They should also create mini events that promote showing off these clothes, like costume balls and the like.
I am happy to spend money on stuff like that.
But, and here’s what actually keeps me from doing so: there’s no new game to come back and play.
The biggest issue is the lack of content, and without new content to keep me logging in, neither do I want to spend money.
And, since I’ve learned to recognize this death spiral from dozens of failed MMO’s over the years, I’m also not confident in Anet keeping this game up for very long – they are showing all the signs of a decaying MMO.
I watched Rift go through the same thing until they finally hit F2P – all the fanboys said it couldn’t happen, and then it did. I don’t know if it’s doing any better, but the point is so many people think that doesn’t happen, but it seems to happen to every MMO, except WoW – and even WoW’s not doing that great.
Wildstar will go through the same thing eventually – it looks kinda interesting, but not worth a sub. I’ve heard it described as, ‘The best MMO of the last generation of old school MMO’s’.
Archeage did look pretty interesting, I’m glad to hear positive early reports about it. I might check it out.
Honestly though, the only thing that has piqued my interest at all is Star Citizen – it even has some very limited, early Oculus Rift support.
And that’s it – this is the sunset for games like GW2. It made a little progress – great art work, a couple interesting combat mechanics, shake up of the trinity.
But in the end, it’s just kind meh.
And, the worst part is that Anet shows every indication that they will continue to completely ignore what’s wrong with it.
They are in the denial bubble right now, and it’s going to cost them their game.
GW2 might survive with a tiny fanbase – it might not disappear, most MMO’s don’t completely fall off the face of the planet, at least not for a few years.
But it’s shrinking.
And soon we have Archeage, Star Citizen, and the Oculus Rift.
GW2 is so last decade, that it won’t stand up to these new games. It’s old hat already.
Mostly due to lazy design, and attempting to milk as much as they can out of little content, instead of just doing what everyone wants and making more content for people to play.
Why can’t we play Tengu or Kodan characters yet? Why don’t we have more classes? Why don’t we have more weapons/skills for old classes?
Where are the half a dozen new dungeons? Why aren’t old dungeons revised to be more fun?
The LS is ok, but it’s not enough.
Not nearly enough, and that’s why I haven’t even logged in today, even though I thought about it once or twice – I found talking to people about new and upcoming games actually more fun than even playing a game I already have.
What is Anet going to do about this? I know there are a ton of people who feel the same, but my guess is that they’ll continue sweeping all the real problems under the rug, while pretending to address things the community doesn’t even care about.
How about a couple more skill facts, Anet? We sure could use some more of those.
Another gripe I have about dungeons:
You know how you beat dungeons in GW2?
With awesome combat prowess, team coordination, and skill? Nope.
Sheer audacity and persistence? Nope.
Godlike ninja skills? Nope.
Get 5 people together so you can zergfest/spam your skills all over the hardest (read: massive healthpool) Champ/Legend/Elite bosses.
A couple days ago I just started running Citadel of Fire P1 over and over to farm tokens, because I happen to really like the medium armor set from this dungeon, and all it is is running in there and spamming all your attacks over and over.
I can’t solo it on any character, because of 1-shot attacks and too little DPS to kill anything quickly enough.
But, get four other people and we just steam roll the whole thing.
Rinse repeat.
This is terrible dungeon design.
Again, laziness.
Why not create dungeons that are 20x larger, design them so that there is no set goal to ‘completing’ them (what I mean is, maybe an entire wing of the dungeon has certain rewards based on killing particular enemies in those locations, or even finding out how to access really hidden places, while other wings of the dungeon have completely different rewards, independent of any other part of the dungeon – multiple layers/levels to dungeons, etc.)
It’s like each dungeon is a one trick pony.
Here, kill this Legendary boss monster, which is almost impossible on your own, but a piece of cake if you team up with 4 random people you’ll never see again, and then collect some tokens and useless rares you can sell on the auction house for 30 silver.
Rinse/repeat.
Again, totally lazy design.
Talent customization is also terrible, probably because it’s so completely linear and streamlined.
I mean, we don’t unlock any new skills through talents, it’s all just static stat modifiers (occasionally, one will trigger a skill you already have – like Caltrops, for example – or even give you the skill of another class or a random boon – but none of it truly unlocks any ‘new’ skills).
It’s just +5 to this and +5 to that, and when you drop below 50% blah blah blah blah apply condition blah blah blah blah gain boon.
I mean, at the end of the day, what really matters are the skills you actually see on screen, how they make your character move (and positioning) and their timing (fast attacks/slow attacks, tells, etc.) and all that.
Not whether I get +5% crit when I wield swords, or whether Regeneration is applied whenever I get a bleed on me, or whatever.
I mean, you can’t even feel those things – they’re just these little blinking status thingies above your hotbar – their purely statistical, mathematical abstractions that have almost no connection to the kinetic feel of the game.
So talents are completely intellectual – it largely boils down to doing some math and figuring out which ones will benefit your particular skill set mathematically. Aside from this, they do almost nothing.
And that makes it terribly boring. As a comparative example, in D3 every skill rune fundamentally changes how every skill functions, often giving you a completely new skill.
In most MMO’s the skill tree even unlocks skills that aren’t available anywhere else.
And then there’s gear.
Gear I believe suffers as a side effect of the boring talent system. Gear is just as boring as talents in this game, and for exactly the same reason – but I believe this is an extension of the problems the talent system has.
Gear – especially at higher levels – should provide unique and interesting effects.
Legendary equipment – which should be available for every gear slot in the game – should have proc effects or other mechanics that give their users an advantage, not just a static damage or stat boost. They should actually do cool stuff. That would be interesting.
It’s hard to think of any game where the gear and loot is as boring as it is in GW2.
Gear is merely functional in this game. It’s not awe inspiring or mysterious. It isn’t even flashy.
And lots of the skins aren’t even cool looking – they’re extremely dorky. Like the Apothecary medium armors. Terrible. Or the Zenith skins. Awful. I mean, who designed that crap?
Once you’ve played through the theme park once or twice – seen a couple dungeons, played through most of the world’s zones (up to Orr/Frostgorge), maybe done a couple Fractals (which were my favorite part of the game btw, but I think they should have poured way more time and effort into developing them further), and seen most of the side games, like Super Adventure Box (which there should also be a lot more of – we were promised all kinds of side games from the beginning) then there’s just nothing left that’s appealing.
I don’t care to grind for Ascended, and the rest of the gear is just a gold grind for nothing more than a different skin and a slight stat boost.
Gear sucks in GW2 – and I think this alone is killing it. Without awesome gear to fight for, people aren’t motivated.
It’s just too boring.
As time goes by, I find myself playing less and less.
It’s just not jaw dropping, and I feel like it was overhyped. Too much promised in the manifesto, not enough delivered.
I just got my 7th toon to 80 the other day, and I’m working on getting all of them into exotics.
I also bought in to Star Citizen two days ago, and while that game has a ways to go – I find myself spending more time on their forums learning about it than I want to log into GW2.
My biggest gripe is with how little there is for exploration. I’m primarily an immersion/exploration player, and while I dabble a little in other things like PvP just for fun, most of all I want explore the game world.
GW2 was promised to be a great game for explorers, but I found this was not really true.
Some of it was – it is certainly very beautiful. The art style is one of the best I’ve ever seen in an MMO.
But Tyria feels tiny. I also really hate the zones – I’d prefer a truly open world with no zone walls/invisible walls. And the whole rectangular zone thing was extremely off putting. It just screams lazy design principles, and does a massive disservice to exploration.
Downleveling is a drag – there’s lots of places, like a champion spider queen somewhere near the Saltflood waypoint in Sparkfly, for example, that I cannot come back to at a higher level – no matter how high a level I get, I can never kill that spider unless I bring a bunch of other people, and I am often just exploring solo.
There’s also just not enough hidden content for explorers to find. I think there ought to be vast – hundreds of square miles worth – of underground structures and complexes hidden all over the world. Massive dungeon complexes underneath Divinity’s Reach, for example.
It just feels like the ‘Open World MMO’ aspect was tacked on to a PvP game, but I hear the PvP aspect isn’t that great either.
I did a little WvWvW and it was ok – as with all large scale PvP in MMO’s, the only problem I have with it is that they still haven’t figured out hot to make it less zergy – but this isn’t a problem that is unique to GW2, it plagues every MMO with PvP, so they kinda get a pass on that. There seems to be a ton of potential in PvP – from the siege weapons (which are really cool) to the destructible forts and bases. But, a lot of this seems to get very little use. Just like in WAR, I’ve noticed that primarily people run around ‘capping’ various objectives to score points, and battles are massive eye sores (graphically, my screen just explodes, and epileptics are sent to the hospital in every major battle) with very little actual tactics involved. Everyone just spams their attacks until one side or the other falls back. The zerg is the least interesting part of PvP, because no one really knows what’s going on, it’s just a spamfest of hitting all your skills and hoping something happens.
Combat is ok in GW2, but again I feel like it was overhyped. I thought it would be more action based, more like an FPS. But we got tab targeting, and substantial CD skills. And ultimately, I don’t like the weapon skill system – it lacks customization. I DO like the fact that we are limited to only 10 skills at any given time, but I wish I could pick and choose exactly which 5 skills were on my weapon bar instead of having to take all the skills associated with a particular weapon. Dual wielding makes this a little better, as you can at least mix and match 3 and 2 of those skills, but 2-hdrs. are worse in this regard, and I’d still rather be able to choose a skill independently for each slot. I don’t care if it’s easier for Anet to balance, or whatever their excuse is, the skill bar grows bland and I want more customization of my loadout.
But, if exploration was more fun, I could even forgive the combat, because at the end of the day it’s not bad – in fact, it’s way better than WoW, and just about every other MMO I’ve played.
If there were more to explore in Tyria I’d probably be hooked – but the draw of exploration quickly dies here.
Also, I found dungeons to be highly disappointing too – primarily because they are extremely linear. Rather than vast complexes with multiple levels and huge areas to explore, they’re really just extended arenas with specific kinds of enemies in them.
Also, I don’t like the forced grouping in dungeons. Again, this comes down to my explorer approach to gaming – I want to delve into dungeons on my own a lot, and I’d like it if dungeons were challenging for solo players, but not next to impossible because of the way mobs are designed, with massive health pools, one shot mechanics, and bad AI’s.
(edited by ipan.4356)
If it is, then I’m going to be mad.
I’d love a Hero system for dungeons.
The only thing it takes to keep me interested in a game is fresh content.
The first LS didn’t quite cut it for me as ‘fresh content’.
New maps, new dungeons, weapons, classes, races. Any and/or all of the above counts.
LS2 is Anet’s ‘last chance’ for me – but only because by the time they get around to the ‘next’ chance after that, there will already be many other games ready to play (not a Wildstar fan). Star Citizen comes to mind first of all.
In any case, all I want to see is new content – and if LS2 begins to really turn this trend around, then great – I’ll stick with the game and even start spending some more money on it.
But Anet has to prove to me first that they’re going to give me my money’s worth (I’ve spent well over the box price already, which means they owe me new content – not just reruns and regurgitated content).
Swashbuckler.
Tons of active parry, riposte, and block skills. A melee character essentially that requires very precise timing and decision making on both offense and defense, that has high burst potential when played correctly.
If you removed the junk, then the next level of drops above that becomes ‘junk’.
Rather than remove it, I’d like the option to prevent it from displaying and prevent me from picking it up on auto loot.
Some people count their pennies – junk loot is there for them. But most games give you the option to make it invisible.
I farm high quantity mats like iron and plat, hard wood and soft wood I’ve got about 75g, so like you I don’t have a ton, but enough to buy a set of Exotic equipment when I need it.
20-25/day is about average for me.
An additional comment about weapon skills:
I often find myself in a situation where I really love one or two skills on a weapon, and find them really useful, but no the rest.
For example, on my Warrior I like Main hand Mace skills 1 and 2, but not 3 as much.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good skill, and I’m pretty sure plenty of people like it – but I don’t.
It just doesn’t fit my playstyle.
I’d love to replace it with a different Mace skill that fulfills some other function that I feel I need more.
Also, this would encourage greater build diversity and planning. Keep things unexpected, because just because someone is using a weapon you recognize, doesn’t mean you know everything about how they’re using it.
Regarding weapon locked skills:
There is a happy medium. They need to design each classes skill set so that they are all tied to a particular weapon (sword skills, mace skills, scepter skills, etc.) but within those that are tied to that weapon, you can choose which ones to use and place on your skill bar.
The good part about the current system is the lack of clutter in the UI, reducing the need for manual dexterity (I have my hotbar set up so that 1-5 are 1-5, Heal is E, weapon swap is E, Elite is S-E, and Utility are S1-S3 – so I only use a total of 7 hotkeys to control my entire skill bar), and limiting available skills during combat to 10 at any one time (plus weapons swaps).
This is the GOOD part about it.
The BAD part is that the left hand side is nigh unconfigurable. Instead of linking a few skills to each weapon by class, they should have a list of skills that can only be used if you have that weapon equipped, but which you can put any of them on your weapon bar.
That would be the IDEAL compromise. It would provide for greater customizability, while still limiting the number of skills a player has access to during combat to exactly the same as it is now. Just let us play around with it a bit.
Additionally, traits need to have a greater impact on the skills themselves.
They need to go beyond merely providing some kind of invisible stat bonus, and actually alter the animations and underlying mechanics of the skill (similarly to how D3 runes work).
Regarding balance:
The easiest way to balance a game is to unbalance everything. By making everything OP, nothing is OP.
If you increase the number of available skills in the game by at least triple what they currently are, and make sure that every single class has as small handful of ‘godly’ skills, so that no one class can actually complain that they are UP, then you buy yourself the time to work on all the other skills that don’t work quite as well.
In other words, even if half the skills aren’t quite up to snuff, by drastically increasing the number of skills available, and making quite a few of them over the top, no one really complains about the unused skills, which gives the devs time to work on those unused skills without worrying about gimping anyone.
When it comes to skills, shoot for overkill.
Why can’t we just choose stats any piece of gear? You pick from the pool of all stats 1 major and 2 minor or celestial.
If you still want to require people to have multiple gear sets for multiple stats, make the stat selection permanent.
This is possibly the best solution.
So? Many gear sets already use the same model.
I don’t see what your point is.
I mean, where’s the depth customization if I can’t wear a set of gear that has precisely the stat combo I want?
What if I want Precision/Ferocity/Healing Power gear? Sorry, that’s not available…..why not?
Double the amount of content in the game.
The new trait system would be ok if there were dozens of new traits in every line, and every level of mastery.
As far as I can tell, there is but a single new GM trait in each line to unlock.
With so little choice, this trait system seems like just another “you have to be this tall to ride this ride” prerequisite system.
If there were tons of traits, scattered throughout the world, this wouldn’t seem so bad, would it?
GW2 has the most boring loot in any game I’ve ever played.
The only mystery is why this debacle hasn’t been rescinded already.
The community spoke out against it before it was implemented and Anet refused to listen.
They speak out against it now that it’s implemented and Anet refuses to listen.
I see a pattern here.
GW2 is an incredible piece of art.
As a game I found it to be a total failure.
GW2 has a leg up on quite a few MMO’s for combat, but in my mind, D3 (strictly in terms of combat) flows much nicer. It is more kinetic. It is faster paced. Skills fire off rapidly, and resources recharge quickly.
GW2 feels just a little too much like old style MMO combat – but I think they could easily ramp this up, and make it more actiony, if they tried to.
One thing would be to remove tab targeting completely – maybe replace it with a mouse auto-lock, kinda like in DDO (but more accurate and responsive than in that game). Of course, most skills would have to be rebalanced around a more FPS style of combat – but this would be a good thing.
The gems store should have DOZENS of crazy costumes and skins for armor – instead of the paltry selection that is there now.
The transmog system should allow me to transmute anything I’ve already bought for free, once I’ve bought it (or found it – like the transmog in D3) – perhaps a small fee in in-game silver would be acceptable.
People don’t buy cosmetics because the selection is too small.
I never played GW1, and am still hugely disappointed by GW2 – largely for not living up to the promises of the Manifesto.
The world should be open – instead of gated, and what’s with the weird rectangular design of the map? I want to be able to walk anywhere in the world without going through a loading door.
Exploration was promised, but I find this seriously lacking. First of all, there aren’t enough easter eggs, really long pathways that lead off into the distance. Everything is linear, and it’s only a matter of having the right stats or the right group or whatever to get there. Everything’s on a path, in other words.
Loot sucks – it’s boring as hell. No innovation at all.
Too little variety in enemies (many reused templates) and beasts, and they aren’t very interesting (AI is lacking).
Remember how Colin was describing DE’s in the Manifesto? About how they don’t want mobs just standing around in a field somewhere, doing nothing, twiddling their thumbs?
Well, every zone you go to, that’s exactly what you find. Yes, there are a smattering of “dynamic” events too, but every field has a bunch of trash mobs standing around like they belong there.
Because, you know, everybody needs something to grind XP on.
Many skills are bland, and the few that aren’t (Death Blossom) are often broken (don’t do enough damage, or don’t offer enough of a movement advantage). There are way too many skills like this.
While I like the addition of having a limited set of skills to choose from (something both GW2 and D3 do) – I think the entire skill bar should be customizable. For example, what if each weapon had 10-15 unique skills available to that weapon/class, that you could choose 5 of to put on your weapon bar (but only choose from those specific skills)? In other words, mesmer Sword would have 10-15 Sword skills that were specific both to the Mesmer and to Sword specifically, but any of those could be put on the skill bar (or I guess, the first three or last two, depending on whether it was main or off…but you get the idea). This would allow much more customization.
What about Traits that significantly alter the way your skills function (I’m looking at D3 here). For example, imagine main hand Mesmer sword GM traits, that change Blurred Frenzy to a Blink instead of distortion, another one that changed it to allow movement while channeling.
How about GM traits for Death Blossom that allow you to ‘aim’ DB in whatever direction you are pushing (instead of auto-aimed at target, or forward in the case of no target), or another that causes you to dodge-roll upon landing?
The possibilities, of course, are nearly endless, and this would provide immense customization for skills, instead of the bland +5% dmg when you hit something from the side min/max YAWN traits we have now.
And make dungeons scale – all the way down to solo if you want. Sometimes, I just don’t feel like mixing it up with random people I don’t know on the internet, and all I wanna do is go dungeon diving on my own to kill some stuff, and maybe earn some cool armor. Scale difficulty and rewards, from solo all the way up to a full group. Again, in D3 I can do a Rift on my own at various difficulties – but they scale with number of players. Soloable, and increased rewards/difficulty for groups. No reason why dungeons can’t be this way.
While you’re at it – make enemies more interesting, by programming in some actually strategic style attacks instead of just increasing their health pools to the point of tedium. Put in more variety. Randomize them, even.
And make loot more fun – put in tons of legendaries (again, D3) with lots of weird, quirky legendary effects. Make them actually do stuff, instead of just being a stat meter.
In short, do all the things you’re not doing.
This is probably the best change in the game, and the only one I am excited about.
Good job, now fix the rest of the game.
I’m somewhat neutral on the new trait unlock system – if you persevere at it long enough, you’ll get it, whatever it is, so it’s not a really big deal.
It also doesn’t add much to the game, so really I’m like, “What for” – that pretty sums up my feelings on the idea of unlocking traits in this manner. It’s kind of pointless, but whatever, if it helps dev’s sleep at night, fine.
What really bothers me is that traits don’t do much except shuffle math around.
What I mean is, that I really loved Diablo 3’s rune system, in that every rune you unlocked fundamentally changed the way in which the skill worked giving you tons of diversity and customization options. I never get tired of trying out new combinations of skills in that game.
In GW2, it doesn’t matter how I trait myself – the skills always function in precisely the same way they did before – no new animations, nothing. The only difference is that I have to do some math to figure out which particular combination of trait points yields the best result.
The trait system in GW2 is nothing more than book keeping, a job for an accountant.
I want a trait system that actually fundamentally changes my gameplay.
I want traits that alter skills significantly.
This is just min/maxing, and it’s boring as kitten.
You know what would be even cooler?
If every major trait changed a skill and it’s animation in a fundamental way – like D3’s skill runes.