Guild Wars 2

Another post by Vasham.

It’s always the same names repeating things like “GW2 pve is bad” – it’s not.

It’s actually great fun and demands more from each member of the group than terribad tank and spank trinity fights.

It’s actually better than raiding heroic DS because it’s more fun than raiding heroic DS. And funnily enough, anyone who farmed heroic DS knows what I mean.

Trinity gameplay on a heroic raiding level forces Simon Says mechanics which get incredibly boring and inflexible over time.

I do think some things can be improved on. Some fights have great mechanics, others lack proper mechanics altogether, and some are zerg fights which are confusing and inelegant. I agree with that.

But GW2 PVE does not need the old, tired and boring trinity system.

That’s like saying we should all go back to the Ultima Online gameplay of 1 attack ability with mouse left click. It’s in the past with boring old mechanics of other types, let it go.

Maugetarr.6823:

xiv.7136:

I play a thief.

The risk/reward of stealth is out of whack. Too many ways to get into stealth if you miss a burst window.

The simplest solutions would be to:

a) increase revealed debuff from all stealth sources to 10 seconds, and compensate with better utilities for the group – more combo fields (adding them to things like blinding powder) and focusing on the way steal buffs allies.

b) redesign CnD to something that does not give stealth

The whole mechanic of burst/stealth/burst/stealth endlessly is not good for the overall meta, it gets dull at best and with culling it becomes very broken.

If people can’t restealth, it would push people father into a front end burst rather than a sustainable combat situation like S/D which relies on restealth for daze control.

They need to compensate of course, but restealthing over and over is the problem.

Stealth should be a powerful mechanic (and it is) but it should not allow for mistakes like it does now; its use should be sparing and meaningful, not spammy.

Think about it like this: what if guardian/warrior could block for 5 seconds every 8 seconds. It would promote skill-less and safe spamming – that is the way stealth is used now, and it severely lowers the skill floor of the class.

I play a thief.

The risk/reward of stealth is out of whack. Too many ways to get into stealth if you miss a burst window.

The simplest solutions would be to:

a) increase revealed debuff from all stealth sources to 10 seconds, and compensate with better utilities for the group – more combo fields (adding them to things like blinding powder) and focusing on the way steal buffs allies.

b) redesign CnD to something that does not give stealth

The whole mechanic of burst/stealth/burst/stealth endlessly is not good for the overall meta, it gets dull at best and with culling it becomes very broken.

Class Name: Risen Knight

Type: Heavy armor pet class

Weapons: Sword (MH), Mace (MH), Greatsword (MH) Shield (OH) Focus (OH) Torch (OH)

- Pure melee class
- Has 2 undead skeleton minions at his side at all times but that are not like ranger pets; they cannot gain aggro on mobs and they cannot be targetted by players; in order to deal damage, the minion attacks decide LOS based on the Risen Knight himself

Mechanic:

- F1: Undead minion #1, passive attack health regeneration for Risen Knight, active Stun target 2 secs, 30s cd
- F2 Undead minion #2, passive attack removes 1 condition per 10 seconds, active Poison target, 30s cd
- F3 Swaps places with an undead minion, breaks stun
- F4 Both minions become rooted and emit a 900 radius field plague and pestilence: combo field dark and smoke that causes blind and confusion, 60s cd

Class Name: Chanter

Class Type: Light Armor healer/buffer/ranged dps

Weapons of choice: Longbow, shortbow, scepter, dagger (used as throwing knives), focus, shield, staff

General gist/ miscellaneous:

F1: Battle chant – might, fury, swiftness aoe 10s, 30s cd, combo field fire
F2: Rejuvenating chant – regeneration 10s, 30s cd, combo field light
F3: Harmonic chant – protection 10s, retaliation 10s, 30s cd, combo field ethereal

Inspiration mechanic: bar fills up (like warrior adrenaline) while the Chanter deals damage, etc

At level 1, chant F1 becomes usable
At level 2, chant F2 becomes usable
At level 3, chant F3 becomes usable

Each use of a chant drops inspiration bar by 1/3rd, at full inspiration all chants are usable at the same time, etc

Utilities are usual signets, glyphs, etc but also instrument summons which manipulate boons/conditions and musical fields which cause confusion and daze.

Interesting but also slightly strange discussion going on in here.

- First of all, there’s only like 5 people in the thread.

- Second of all, you guys are discussing the depth of combat in PVE.

- Third of all, you’re proceeding on the assumption that combo’ing is something that’s always been there. It hasn’t. Even more action-y MMOs like Tera don’t have combo’ing.

- Fourth, and strangest of all, you’re talking about other MMOs and their ability bloat, without once mentioning macro’ing and razer nagas – guilty consciences perhaps?

The evolution of GW2 combat is two-fold:

- Combos: yes, they could use a bit more indicators of combo successes and make combos a bit stronger. But you do realise, combos are insanely strong. And I’m not talking about aoe weakness or burning. I’m talking about ethereal and dark fields for example. Check on how powerful the effects from those are, it’s pretty insane.

- Elimination of fluff abilities: Yes, you have 10 weapon abilities and 5 utilities. Maybe some class-specific stuff on top. That is actually a lot and here’s why:

Let’s take the example of WoW. More buttons right? But most of them are useless buttons. DPS rotations are just different moves that deal damage (or heal), based on procs and cooldowns.

So do you mortal strike, whirlwind, overpower, slam or heroic strike? You could watch for procs on overpower, slam between those and MS/WW (pre-cata) cooldowns, and HS on high rage. That’s complex right?

Wrong.

You could just do what everyone does and macro the whole thing. You can even macro the stance dance to gain the extra 5% dps.

More rotation buttons = more naga usage. That’s about it.

Hunters for years could reduce their entire heroic raid rotation to one macro button – or rather 2 macros in-game combined with one button macro on a macro mouse.

It made bad players feel like pros because they managed to google macros for their class and buy a macro mouse – and use that in PVE against scripted encounters based on the repetition of a pre-set dance

Bringing it down to 10 weapon abilities (let’s say 8 since 2 of those will be different autoattacks) but where each of those is important timing and effect wise is a move forward – and you can’t macro any of that.

I see it all the time, bad players assume that fewer abilities means less buttons to press. But they never mention that they weren’t pressing all those buttons, they were macro’ing half of them and reducing the number of actual total keybinds to around 15. This is true of most MMOs in the last 8 years, apart from TSW which had a total of 7 pressable button abilities, no utilities.

Personally I would like to see a DPS meter because I just like having solid numbers. And a combo meter of some sort to show combos activated, which could be part of a spectator mode for sPVP.

But the depth of combat is very high in GW2 when you realise it has no fluff at all, no one can use macros because there is no “rotation” – and when you apply that combat system to PVP.

That’s where the gameplay of GW2 really shines, when you realise there’s others out there who are doing the “oh-so-simple” combo’ing and timing of abilities better than you and your team – and that’s why they win.

You don’t need combo’ing to the max in PVE because PVE is easy. Because let’s face it, PVE in any game is easy, as long as people show up, know how to play and learn the dance. And that applies to any heroic raid from vanilla to DS.

PVP and skilled play in groups is what the system is designed for.

What happened?

Well that’s another one after Time, Gamespot, Massively, etc…

Grats to GW2 and Arenanet… again xD

I get extras sometimes, it’s just random

totally worth doing the daily though, it’s quick and useful

Draknar.5748:

Thief in WvW for sure. Man I hate them so much lol

Everyone hates thieves in WvW.

Hell, I play a thief and I hate thieves in WvW.

I think it’s because they can always escape, feels like a trolling class that either downs you and stomps, or gets away laughing.

Get to 80, get cash, do dungeons, do events, do World v World, etc – work towards full exotic gear.

Once you have that, really, you’re all set stats-wise.

You can go for legendary and it’s a huge grind for something that everyone will know you have, so ego-fulfilling, but it won’t give you an advantage over someone who didn’t have the time to grind a legendary.

Although you can go for ascended items if you really, really really want to have a few extra stats and do hardcore PVE — it’s only a couple of slots and overall it definitely will not make you overpowered compared to someone in full exotics. But it is still there, with difficulty to match in fractals level 20+ for those who want that.

What is much more important, and what people keep forgetting is:

It’s MUCH more important to get the right mix of stats for your build and role, than it is to get ascended gear with slightly more stats, but they could be the wrong ones.

Really with just full exotics that are appropriately statted for your build and playstyle, you can do anything, beat anyone, and are 100% viable.

How about a new group:

The “ex-hardcore”:

People who were hardcore, but who are now older and have become more casual, but still think of games with a hardcore mindset and years of previous experience.

I’m surprised you have elementalist so far down the list considering it’s probably the strongest. Guardians are great for group support. Backstab thieves are only good for small scale ganking, in large battles you might want a shortbow thief for blast finishers, but that’s about it. Mesmers for ethereal fields and portals.

tonyl.5063:

…

GW2 is a good game, but it’s far from the best MMORPG out there. It’s just too much of a step back into the past. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table except for looking pretty.

Feel free to not believe me.

GW2 has an incredible gameplay system.

Try playing another MMO after playing GW2, honestly, every other MMO plays like garbage after playing GW2.

I bought and tried MOP, but it was just so bad, so clunky – so old. Also, the rat race recipe is just so transparent and we’ve all been there done that, and arena and PVP class balance is worse than ever, the see-saw with warriors for example is reminescent of early cata. Overall the game is just old and ugly, just showing its age. Its time is past.

I played a lot of Secret World: great setting and fresh ideas, loved the conspiracy/occult modern day angles, the “lore” is far better than GW2 – but gameplay wasn’t great once you worked out the wheel and broke the game with overpowered weapon/ability/passive combos, you realised gameplay was stiff and unskilled, and PVP was terrible

SWTOR well, we all know what a disaster that was. Nice stories, but basically it was KOTOR, all the MMO stuff was very poorly done.

Tera had interesting gameplay ideas, all destroyed by a combination of korean ultra-RNG grind for gear you actually needed to get to be viable, and the whole immobile while channeling abilities, which made for very stiff gameplay. Some classes had dodge, but it just didn’t work properly like in GW2, and overall the metagame made for very poor PVP.

etc etc

GW2 gameplay wise is the best MMO out there.

For lore? Definitely not. My favourite MMO for lore and setting is Secret World. For raiding, it’s gonna be WoW or Rift, but really who cares any more, we’ve all done raiding to death. For everything else, GW2.

tonyl.5063:

Or people who might, you know, actually enjoy the game… There’s more to an MMORPG than the gear you get from the raid, and being as strong as possible… To a lot of people, it’s about the journey getting there, and the people you play with. It’s about working together to finally kill that last raid boss before the new raid is released. A lot of you bash the game, but I’m not sure you were ever really part of the game

I’m fairly sure I’ve done more in WoW than you have. Very high world-ranked raiding guild since vanilla, multi-season glad, legendaries, etc… a few years ago, it was a great game and ahead of other games, but now in 2012 it’s a tired, ugly and dull rat race for kids who can’t move on.

GW2 kittens all over it. Join a guild, make new friends, and enjoy the best MMO out there. I actually used the word kittens (rather than any expletive) because I know that’s what the filter will turn it into

While it is true that a small fraction of the total playerbase of a game comes to forums (it’s usually max 5%), there are threads on this forum (usually complaints about something) that stretch well beyond 100,000 views.

Take that to mean whatever you want it to.

tonyl.5063:

xiv.7136:

And another game of the year award for GW2 xD

But really, it beat out really good games like ME3 (shame about that ending), XCOM, Dishonoured (too easy) and TWD, all of which were among the highlights of the year (Torchlight 2 should be in that list also) – so very good result there

I’m also glad all the over-hyped trash this year like Diablo3, Halo4, CODblops2, WoW MOP, and AC3 got denied.

Richly deserved win GW2, congrats to Anet once again

Means nothing. Let’s wait to see what the people say.

And before you call WoW overhyped trash, to keep 10 million people playing an 8 year old game, they’re obviously doing something right… Just saying. But Diablo 3, yeah, very overhyped. It was entertaining the first time through, but then lame.

The only people still playing WoW are kids and immature adults whose sad egos are caught in an unhealthy rat race – believe me, I know this in rather gruesome detail.

In the end, GW2 is winning a lot of GOTY awards, and that’s fine, it doesn’t automatically make it the best game ever, it’s just awards that will boost sales and increase visibility. Play the game if you enjoy it, don’t if you don’t.

And another game of the year award for GW2 xD

But really, it beat out really good games like ME3 (shame about that ending), XCOM, Dishonoured (too easy) and TWD, all of which were among the highlights of the year (Torchlight 2 should be in that list also) – so very good result there

I’m also glad all the over-hyped trash this year like Diablo3, Halo4, CODblops2, WoW MOP, and AC3 got denied.

Richly deserved win GW2, congrats to Anet once again

Schwahrheit.4203:

@xiv
This isn’t really a suggestion that they’re going to take. Boons applying every time you attack? Guardian duplicate. I doubt ANET will even look at this idea.

One unique thing that they can do is maybe… buff mobile strikes so that it cleanses slows and immobilize alike. Or you know… make the traits actually better such as the 5/15/25 traits on vitality tree. And shouts needs to stop taking utility slots. Right now there is little use for shouts in tPvP.

I agree that it’s all a bit guardian-like.

Maybe some changes to some of the very weak passives in the tactics tree, 10% revive speed could be changed to gives protection and regeneration… oh wait that’s a guardian thing again.

I guess you see where I’m going with this.

Given the lack of stealth and evades/illusions/auras, the simplest way to give build diversity to warriors would be to have one weapon set built around protection and regeneration.

Perhaps mace #2 and #3 + shield #4 and #5 could, in addition to their current effects, give a few seconds of regeneration and protection.

It would have to be short enough that to play bunker a warrior would have to stay in mace/shield to renew the boons, rather than being able to apply them and switch to GS for offense.

I play a thief (among other classes)

Yes, I guess something should be done.

I feel fearless on my thief because I can always escape. And I can take people down faster than warrior, ele, necro, guardian.

So 50/50:

- I escape, able to return a minute later with full cooldowns

- I kill the person

It doesn’t feel overpowered because I am so squishy. But that doesn’t matter since I never get downed anyway.

It’s all a little too safe and easy

yeah they need to change this back, no reason for it to be blocked, I bet it’s a bug

They did in a few evenings ago, all servers went from full to high/very high at the same time, and the huge whining about not being able to transfer stopped xD

If anything population is pretty damn zergy right now due to the xmas event stuff

Lots of people were complaining that the servers were full so they couldn’t join their friends (or well, to do so you had to wait at 6 in the morning for the full servers to go to very high and quickly transfer)

They lifted the caps so people could transfer, which was quite timely since a few friends just bought the game and needed to transfer over.

Guessing new people buying over Xmas has something to do with it as well

Bruno Sardine.2907:

It’s great that folks like the game…. but it’d be nice to know what Anet did right in your opinion; it’s more informative for devs to know what people are liking/disliking rather than generalized feelings about the game as a whole.

Like:

- The graphics, although Far Cry 3 has much more detail, it doesn’t have the artistic merits that GW2 has, GW2 is like Dishonoured in that sense, very inspired and stylised – overall one of the prettiest games ever made

- The music – the morrowind guy is a genius and his music is just incredible, even the xmas tunes are worth listening to outside the game

- The game meta, skills, animations, the condition/boon system and the combo system, fantastic, deep and quick combat that even now most people simply do not master (gotta love how deceptively simple it is with only 1 hotbar)

- The PVP, it’s just by far the best and most balanced MMO PVP there is, getting very close to a stable and competitive MOBA type metagame

- The overall gameplay and classes: it all just works well and plays fantastically, better than any other group game out there and much more fun than the tired old trinity system that puts all complex tasks on tanks/healers and turns DPSers into sad pixel-hungry fools who think making an on-screen number bigger makes them better somehow.

Dislike:

- Too much focus on PVE stuff, not enough focus on WvW and sPVP/tPVP changes – PVEers have already had so much stuff designed for them, PVPers deserve their turn(s) with lots of improvements

- The lore: it’s ok for what it is, but compared to games like TSW which has a fantastic and quite clever lore, it’s generic dragons and undead stuff, though most of fantasy is like that in a way and it’s still better than pandaland etc xD

- The lack of raids: minor one this, but I do think they could quite easily add 10-man raids with not much additional work, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone as the rewards would just be the same dungeon tokens but for 10 people

- PVP needs more game modes: xmas event shows that capture the flag mechanics work great in GW2, we could do some of that

- Lack of ladders, rankings, spectator mode etc – we need this stuff!

- No UI/systems for large groups, just seeing health bars and frames is enough, just something to see all the other people around you and get an idea of what’s going on with them

Do more!

Xmas songs, or some well known classical music, mozart or vivaldi for example.

I’m kind of “over” raiding.

It used to be something in the old days of 40/25man raids. But 90% of raiding guilds in WoW are now 10-man. Most games have that sort of raid size now.

No one wants to do 25+ because it’s messy and zergy. Success is more decided by roster management and guild management than by actual skill or fun gameplay.

10-man raids are only 2x a dungeon size of 5. Not a major thing really.

Khemizt.5104:

This thread needs deleting, if you say something bad about the game it gets removed, leaving these threads up is sickening to see hipocracy, you have to take the good with the bad, now remove please just like my countless posts about the clear problems with game you still have yet to address.

It’s weird how much time you spend on here complaining.

You’ll be back to GW2 in no time, you can’t let go xD

Zeldain.5710:

Venirto.4208:

The game had a rough start, that’s it. I think that the worst is already behind us and that the game will get only better and better.

The problem is, MMORPGs only get one chance. There hasn’t been a single one that has “recovered” from a rough start. They tumble down hill and settle into a playerbase size at a fraction of what they expect, and then the devs have to change their content plans accordingly.

I’m quite confident that GW2 is not the success that Anet wanted it to be out of the gate, and are adjusting resource allocation (staff and money) to produce content in line with their actual revenue – not their original design plan.

The insane amount of content for each event they put out contradicts your weird belief.

If anything they are adding resources for GW2, we even know that they are hiring more people for Arenanet.

No other game manages to put out as much as GW2 has in just a couple of months: huge new areas, jumple puzzles, game modes, weird music-thing events, snowball fights, halloween sPVP maps, a new level 80 zone, new fractals dungeon with like 10 different bits, new sPVP map, etc etc etc

It seems their resouces are kind of limitless right now, look at all the stuff they are throwing out there.

I just wish some of it stayed in the game rather than being pulled out again. And instead of such a ridiculously large amount of new content for PVE, I wish they would spend more doing PVP stuff like spectator mode, rankings, ladders etc.

900 games played and still calling guardians clerics.

Halloween for sure, but it does lend itself to cooler stuff

Xmas is just too cheerful to be cool

There is no other game out there that provides so much great stuff to do, and honestly after playing GW2 every other MMO (and most single player games) just look ugly and play like stiff turtles.

It’s a staggeringly beautiful game full of stuff to do, with great PVP.

You could ask for raids, which GW2 does not have, and better lore (like TSW) – but everything else it does head and shoulders above any other MMO.

I actually see a twilight for 1800G

Rhaj.5261:

Does anyone else feel this? The pvp feels completely empty, by that I mean your really only spamming 1-2 skills over and over till your enemy is dead. Ontop of that combat feels so slow paced for many classes. Take Aion for example. The PvP there has that fast paced action to it while gw2 you kinda just wait for your one damg skill to come off CD just to use it again, and then have your enemy heal. I was In a fight today in WvW 2 guardians, the fight lasted for literally 10min then we both gave up cause we have no way of dealing fast damg and keeping dps on each other.

So it just ended up Oh better use number 2 skill again for the 50th time. Oh man look at that he healed again and hes running away, guess ill hit 3 and leap at him, look at that barely any damg done.. k I will pull him in with 5.. dodge..damn..ok 2 is off cd I guess ill use that again and blink to him. Oh! finally hes almost dead, nope he healed yet again.

Even for other classes like ranger or warrior you just spam one good skill over and over again till they die. Seriously how is this considered real pvp? I tried so hard to like this game, but damn the pvp is seriously lacking and boring. You would think for a game that is heavy on PvP there would be more skills and more depth to the combat.

Edit: I have about 600 hours into the game. Played since beta So don’t tell me how to play my class or say your just a noob. About 450 of those hours where spent pvping

Spending 450 hours and you still don’t understand PVP, proof that time spent is not the same as talent. Also, fighting guardians in WvW? That’s your example, really?

If you’re spamming 2 abilities in tournaments, you will never do well. Timing and good use of all weaponsets/abilities comboing along with your teammates is what PVP is all about.

And compared to any other MMO, it is a lot better and more complex. WoW’s arena is all about CCchain->burst, over and over, very simple to execute and RNG dependent. Aion, TSW, SWTOR, all of those had hilariously unbalanced PVP where class comp or build (or even gear-grinding lol) matters more than anything else.

That’s like saying LoL has bad PVP because you mostly autoattack and have few abilities.

You’re totally missing the point. And I’m betting you have no clue about Tpvp, where the pacing and twitch are in a really good competitive place.

I actually wonder if you might have hit on the solution to all the thief / mesmer problems.

Instead of stealth turning thieves invisible (and making them completely disappear from the game world), it could give them a cloaking/distortion effect like in planetside (like the predator basically) and make them un-targettable for those few seconds.

This means no more culling, since they are still there on screen, and also balances stealth out a bit.

Nice screensaver picture xD

X-fire used to be reliable a few years ago.

It no longer is really. Less and less people use it.

X-fire is more reliable for older games / games with no in-game chat box etc

Voted GW2 because it deserves it

tbh, capture the flag mechanics like this would work in sPVP

It is really fun, and lots of people are playing it

Also, nerf scouts xD

Grats

Yeah the cost of that is pretty insane

In Lions Arch, one of the 3 xmas NPCs

I totally, totally agree

Keep the stuff you add for holiday events in, or make them return periodically like 2 weeks every month, different events at different times so there’s always various mini-games going.

Never seen that done, it’s really quite amazing

It’s like some sort of drug-fuelled dream, thanks for that, I’m a little freaked out now

Look, if it’s about nerf/buff, it would imply that the cryptic message is that arenanet should buff everyone else instead of nerf you

But people who advocate that clearly do not understand the full meta and are only taking the view that they don’t want their own class to be nerfed.

Take a larger view of the whole metagame rather than just your own corner of it.

Khayn.6475:

we want matchmaking asap please

+1

and rankings, leaderboards etc

These are 100% needed

Jax.5261:

I see what you’re doing stop it, nobody wants underwater maps in rotation.
Every single person I’ve talked to has said if underwater maps get into rotation they’re quitting. My entire guild, pretty much my entire friends list, me, etc.

If you listen to your player base once, which probably means you’re just going to go ahead and do whatever the hell you want, DON’T DO IT.

Agreed.

Leave underwater exploration for the PVEers.

No more underwater stuff in sPVP please.

Seraki.2753:

I think he is saying that pushing the game to move things along faster and not making the whole game run smoother is not a good idea.

Forgive me if I got that wrong.

That’s impressive but I really don’t know where you’re getting that from.

All I read in the post is something about one wheel spinning slower than the other wheel, so instead of speeding up the slow wheel, he blame Anet for slowing down the fast wheel.

The whole thing really needs some kind of context

scabies.3246:

baalblade.8465:

“hey look, this wheel spin faster than other wheel”

I know,

instead Arenet fix other broken wheel, no, they break the fast wheel so both can spin slow if not stop spinning.

Do you see my point here?

Very nice mentality for balancing things huh?

I do not understand at all what you are trying to say…

lol me neither

it’s like trying to figure out some kind of riddle

Vasham.2408:

xiv.7136:

Pretty sure that never happened, and it’s just you inventing stuff to make a point.

Unfortunately for you, engis are awesome in PVE and in FOM. And it’s not because of their DPS.

I’m willing to bet you play a Warrior, Theif, or Mesmer.

I’m willing to bet you think only dps matters, in a game with no dps meters.