Fernling306

The Consortium is a thinly veiled reference to NCSOFT, their shareholders, and their enforces at ArenaNet - I have no doubt in my mind that this is a way for the writers to criticise these guys fearing for their jobs!

I'm one of the people still enjoying the game, but I am disappointed with the end product. I think Anets biggest issue is they wanted a wider audience so they made the game with the intention of even the most brain dead being able to play and "be good" at the game. the thing is, the games with a long life are generally the "easy to learn hard to master" but there's really nothing to learn or master here. even if they balance out the combat system it wont make a difference. they removed all the control we had in GW1 over the flow of combat. I have a friend who loves the mesmer class, and stacked nothing but interrupts on his skill bar. and would sit there and troll the hell out of any one who played against him
"oh all most got that 3 second heal cast off... and denied..."
I cringe because he would do it to me a lot, but It's what made GW great, High risk skills with reward. you can control combat by buffing/healing your team, you can debuff, remove buffs hurt and shut down your targets and you HAD to do it systematically. Monks and Mesmers were high priority targets for a reason.

honestly I think the BIGGEST mistake they made with their combat system was removing cast times, and interrupts. sure we have some fears knock downs ect. but it's something most people just do with their skill rotation. I understand the idea of having only a few skills, there was a LOT of trash in gw1, a lot of it (in spite of how many people claim to "love to make builds") was based on the meta builds in the gwpvx. but even with the fewer skills there's a lot of trash in gw2. now with the removal of depth to the combat system it's do damage or GTFO. I think the game would have been great with the same amount of skills gw2 has but the depth of combat gw1 has. being able to interrupt, and slow casting times or slow down physical moves would have added a lot to this game pvp and pve. I think anet missed the point and thought "constantly pressing buttons = entertaining" but the core of gw1 and their fan (old) fan base wasn't just pushing the button. it was knowing the when and the why. and if they want to make this an E-sport, they need to make the combat system more interesting and skill based. not some knee jerk skill rotation. it's good to have simple systems. but in high level play you need to be able to control every aspect of those systems and I think most importantly there NEEDS to be a high Knowledge/skill gap so you know your getting better. There's a reason League of Legends Made it as a E-sport, is because on the surface it's easy to follow the action, but there's a lot of depth to the combat, and some very big skill land marks that make playing as interesting as watching.

what I was expecting when they were advertising the combat system was a sort of martial arts movie where the combat flowed quickly but with elegance and grace, what I ended up getting was the equivalent of 2 ratty kids who don't know how to fight, tumbling and flailing on the ground. we'll see where they go from here though.

Man, I want it released to the public so bad. Community content has a fantastic way of keeping games alive for years.

Lordkrall, on 18 May 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

Read up on why Cantha won't be back for GW 2 it's because of GW 1 Factions, maybe you should look it up?

EDIT: You are wrong bro, enjoy eating crow...

You never provide proof for anything you say, but I am better than that:

https://forum-en.gui...ion-of-humanity

http://www.mmorpg.co...d/377215/page/1

http://www.guildwars...n-guild-wars-2/

borovnica, on 17 May 2013 - 09:20 PM, said:

You are quite correct, especially about Lineage 2. However, others being "more grindy" doesn't dismiss the grindy-ness of GW2.

Why run the same dungeon multiple times? Because you want those skins, the gift, or money (I.e. CoF p1)

Why kill dragons hundreds of times? Because you want a good drop (preferably a precursor)

Why follow the commanders in Cursed Shore to Zerg down PvE content? Because you want karma and other rewards

Why follow commanders in WvW to Zerg down stuff? Because that is the current meta in WvW and quick way to get rewards

Why do guild missions? For commendations

Why do daily tasks? For laurels

These things are not fun, they are repetitive and we only do them because we want that "next thing" in the game. Many are trivialized by zerging

Captain Bulldozer, on 16 May 2013 - 08:19 PM, said:

As I said here:
http://www.guildwars...t/#entry2193199
I think that DEs are a superb replacement for killing trash, but they fail at being a replacement for quests.

Please let me preface this with:

If you are still enjoying GW2 and/or happy with ArenaNet, that's fine and I'm happy for you.

---

Some of you may recognize me (mainly for my math posts) if you frequent the same forums/sections as I do.

I used to be quick to defend ArenaNet on many points, but recently I can't help but think of the many things that have continued to aggravate me.

Lack of quality control

• Patch days turn into a patch for the patch for the patch for the patch for the patch ... followed the next day by another patch for the patch for the patch.
  
• The big WvW patch broken WvW ... you'd have thought someone would test that patch to see if it broke the thing it was designed for.
  
• There is quite a bit of evidence that their codebase is horrible
  
  • The patch days mentioned above
    
  • Targeted patches breaking their target (as mentioned above)
    
  • Patches one thing breaking other things completely unrelated to the patch ... like Mesmer spear having no working hitbox after a patch a few months ago ... when there were no patches to it
    
  • Illusionary Leap for Mesmer's being broken/"fixed" on an almost per patch basis (undocumented too).
    
  • Inconsistencies in their code such as Thief basilisk venom having an undocumented immobilize on top of the stun which the state of the game highlighted
    
  • Still haven't fixed (or can't) Mesmer clones' not having offhands
    
  • Still haven't fulfilled (or can't) their promise of allowing 2hand weapons to have 2 sigils so they can be on the same footing as weapon sets that use two 1hand weapons.
    
  • How long it has taken them to actually make NPCs invulnerable in WvW
    
  • Still bad AI plaguing several classes ... two of which AI plays a large part of their class mechanics.
    
  • Groups getting bugged because a player leaves the game without leaving their party
    
  • Ranged attacks that are still randomly obstructed when the attacker and target are both on equal ground with nothing but open field between the two of them

Broken/Unfulfilled Promises

• As previously stated, during BWEs, ArenaNet promised the community that they would make it so that 2hand weapons could have 2 sigils so that those weapon sets could have the same number of sigils as weapon sets using two 1hand weapons ... where is this fix?
  
• The WvW patch was promised to change the WvW meta a bit and give players a reason to still care about WvW when the matchup was an overwhelming win/loss.
  
  • There are no new activities in WvW
    
  • The meta is still Zerg v Zerg
    
  • Most servers (if not all) have been fighting the same other two servers for going on two months now
    
    • For me, personally, this means Ehmry Bay stomping both Borliss Pass and Anvil Rock has gotten very old ... a challenge would be nice ... perhaps a chance to actually lose other than "only if we don't show up"
  • Instead we got WvW XP and levels ... which only affect NPCs and siege
    
    • Siege is largely for taking/defending points ... which matter less when the matchup isn't close.
• There will be "no gear grind" ... except we added in ascended gear which has you grinding fractals and/or guild missions unless you want to be very patient with dailies ... and we were told there would eventually be ascended quality for other gear slots in the future ... "can't wait" to see what additional currency they add to get that ... *sigh*.

Appear to be "bad at math"

• If you read any articles by different game companies or blogs of individual developers, you'll often see that they create a sort of "Average Joe" test dummy to test things on as far as pacing, OP, UP, etc.. It is a standard operating procedure to establish a baseline
  
  • Despite this, ArenaNet has been having to devote time now to changing how classes work because they realized that they allowed people to be killed in 1-2s if a glass cannon hits a non-tanky target.
    
    • This has Thieves in a period of flux where they are having to be changed because "burst or die" isn't good gameplay
      
      • Please note that I'm well aware of very good non-glass tanky Thieves builds ... I'm actually a fan of Sword + Dagger
    • Warriors have been harmed further in PvP by some of these changes
  • If you do the math for the various cooldown changes, you'll notice that some of them give you more or less than the 20% described by the trait.
    
  • Notice we are still getting large sweeping changes to various things' damages? Arrow cart has received two 50% changes recently ... they were that far off, eh?
    
  • Remember when Thief's Dancing Dagger hit for 6k to 8k, was ranged, spammable, didn't require stealth, and hit up to 4 targets? Lol.

Failure w/ Implementation of "No Holy Trinity"

• What is bad about having a holy trinity?
  
  • It creates a higher demand for some classes over others for group play (tanks and healers > dps)
    
  • It can create non-interesting fights where you simply /assist tank + autoattack
• What do we have in Guild Wars 2?
  
  • The status of Guardians, Warriors, and Mesmers as "the top 3" ... due to what they can bring compared to others and how it weighs in relative to current content and what it demands
    
  • Several groups asking specifically for "Guardians" or "Heavies"
    
  • Several groups asking people to not play their Ranger, Engineer, Thief, etc. for dungeons
    
  • Ever seen someone say "we have too many Guardians/Warriors/Mesmers" ? Probably not ... but I bet you have for other classes.
    
  • What do we do in most boss fights? Stand at range and auto-attack supplemented by some other skills
    
    • Occasionally do a dodge roll.

E-Sport Quality Combat ... where?

• As has been stated by "the pros", there is too much use of random numbers in combat
  
  • Crit chance
    
  • on-crit sigils
    
  • on-crit traits
    
  • other procs
    
  • skills with random effects
• Imbalances in classes
  
  • Notice that there are a few classes that are used consistently by the top tier tPvP teams.
    
  • Notice that there are a few classes that are close to never used by the top tier tPvP teams.
• Still balancing the classes with how the Arenas work
  
  • Anyone here think that underwater combat has been balanced? My Mesmer and My Ranger are nightmares for people in the water ... I openly admit they are OP there.
    
  • People running the orbs ... just got a recent fix but there are still those with several more advantages than other classes ... and it isn't something that can be fixed with gear/spec changes.

Combat Being Dumbed Down

• Nerf to confusion ... because avoiding the application of confusion, using condition removal, or moving/dodging without attacking for a few seconds were somehow too hard.
  
  • ​Heavy forbid people have to pay attention to the color change of their screen, effect on their character, condition icon on their screen, and damage numbers popping up with a unique effect each time they mindlessly bash their skills and/or auto-attack.
• Nerf to Caltrop duration ... because people weren't smart enough to not stand in the red circle filled with sharp pointy objects that bled them to death the last 20 times?
  
• AOEs limited to 5 people ... caters to the mindless zerging
  
  • Excuse is "technical limitation" even though older MMOs didn't have this "technical limitation" despite working on older hardware.
    
  • We also have siege ignoring this "technical limitation"
    
  • We also have other effects that ignore this "technical limitation"
• Some skills do "way too much" for a player ... like heartseeker. With skilled players it's just an annoying thief they mock as they kill. At the lower skill-levels, it's a player being successful at turning to face, chasing, closing any gaps, and killing just by pressing one button repeatedly
  
• The current meta is largely "boon heavy builds". These builds have near (if not completely) 100% up-time on select boons and thus influence players to use skills "whenever off cooldown" instead of "in reaction to combat" ... this diminishes skilled play
  
• There are builds that fall completely into paper/scissor/rock ... giving us more "build wars"
  
  • I used to not believe this till I started dueling more, I would watch Alice kick the crud out of everyone (including me), then see Alice lose to Bob, who everyone (including me) kicked the crap out of.
    
    • Bob only beat Alice because Bob's build hard counters Alice's so much that Bob would have to be horribad to lose ... and then it'd be close.

Foods, Oils, and Sharpening Stones

• Part of the draw to having no gear grind is that you don't have to farm/grind/etc. (treat a game like a job) in order to have the same total stat points as someone else.
  
• These consumable items remove that since now you need to be able to afford them constantly.
  
  • Slow day in WvW because everyone is bored? You lose some gold standing around with your bonuses
    
  • Want to spend your gold on something else? Well then I hope you farmed sometime recently or played the trading post because your money is tied up in consumables.
• These also allow stats to get to ridiculous amounts ... which enables for the very quick burst fights that ArenaNet says they are trying to scale back
  
• Ranger pets do not scale with the Ranger's stats, so as more Ascended items enter the game, the relative power of pets to players decreases in PvE and WvW. The consumables exacerbate this problem
  
  • This is part of why Ranger pets are seen as being much stronger in sPvP than they are in PvE and WvW.
• There is also the lemongrass poultry. -40% condition duration. Non-removable.
  
  • Conditions are already largely seen by the community as being "weaker" than direct damage in many parts of the game due to conditions stack caps, abundance of combo fields in WvW, condition removals, not affecting inanimate objects (siege, gates, etc.)
    
  • Now we have a food that lowers your condition duration (and thus damage) by 40% ... and because of the way condition damage works, this rounds up.
• The power of these foods can be see by how the meta changed for some classes when the lifesteal on food was given an internal cooldown on its proc.

ArenaNet's treatment of the community

• ArenaNet is very hush-hush about even their high-level designs for the game.
  
  • They ignore the wonderful things that have come from game companies having very free and open communication with their communities ... both for previous MMOs as well as upcoming ones.
    
  • If you want people to continue to invest in you, you could at least respect them enough to tell them what your ideas are ... even at a high-level.
    
  • Heck having test servers would shoot two birds with one stone as they could convey ideas to the community while getting some free-testing ... it could even help make patch days only need 1 patch ... instead of 5 and a few more the next day.
• If you go to any non-ArenaNet-controlled GW2 forum, you'll inevitably run into a post about someone complaining about the moderation on ArenaNet's forums
  
  • These threads often end up with some people replying that they actually take advantage of it to "troll better" as they try to bait people into saying things or simply click on "look at all posts by Bob" and then report all those posts they think they have even a small chance of nailing "Bob" on.
• Some of us (myself included) have tickets that are over a week old. Seeing as how the last time I had a ticket, it was answered in a matter of hours, measuring the current wait time in weeks is a bit ridiculous.
  
  • What's more aggravating for me personally is that I'm encountering the exact same issue two more times, something their community director, Eric "Dalmarus" Campbell, apologized to me for having happened before ... yet now I'm stuck dealing with it because they have yet to so much as acknowledge receiving it ... even though it is on my list of "My Stuff" at support.guildwars2.com.

Gameplay is boring the heck out of me

• PvE
  
  • Dungeons - we run them for skins (or CoF p1 for money) or badges for a legendary. It gets extremely boring running the same dungeon over and over again.
    
    • The content is quite boring. It's often cripple melee opponents, block/reflect projectiles, assist on the called target. Nothing really new there.
      
    • Most people that do dungeons, because they are so boring, constantly look for ways to circumvent as much content as possible ... and are successful
      
    • We still have dungeon content whose difficulty can be circumvented by hiding in a corner ... even with new content like with the Living Story's Molten Facility and the "machine boss" near the beginning.
  • Legendaries are simply "I have lots of money" or "I did the grind". There isn't anything legendary about them. You ran the same dungeon X number of times to get 500 tokens. You gathered/bought a large number of materials. You jumped/fought in WvW for "badges of jumping". Kudos.
    
  • Fractals are the same few fractals every time. The higher levels don't add anything really meaningful. They just make it more punishing to get hit.
    
  • Guild Missions are made stupidly trivial given a large number of people
    
  • If the first person that entered the dungeon leaves group, etc., the entire group is dropped from the dungeon ... why?! ... this allows some people to be jerks and/or troll people and I don't see the benefit.
• WvW
  
  • Arrow Cart ... 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 (feel free to reverse 2 and 3).
    
  • Ballista ... 1 2 3 11 2 3 11 2 3 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 (feel free to reverse 2 and 3)
    
  • Catapult ... 1, hold, release, wait, repeat
    
  • Trebuchet ... 1, hold, release, wait, repeat
    
  • Zerg vs Zerg ... throw random AOE, tab target, and auto-attack random people in a horde of 30+ as a horde of 30+ do the same to your horde.
    
    • There are some zerg-busting groups, but I've found most of those I know of on my server are bored with the game ... so not nearly on as much any more ... so now there's much less zerg busting.
  • You're not on siege and you're not defending the walls? Good luck to you with some classes as you can't hit people on the wall who can hit you because your character only knows how to aim at genitals (or lower) ... we'll ignore that you can see 3/4 of the enemy's body.
    
  • Throw siege around like candy because you can get it from jumping puzzles that you didn't really do because Mesmers are portaling people in large droves to the end ... they also get more "Tokens of Jumping" from this.
• sPvP
  
  • Sadly, these little one-off matches are where the highest level of skill can be leveraged ... however
    
  • Even the "pros" have been complaining about how it quickly gets boring. There are mechanics in each one, but they are largely ignored in favor of simply capping and controlling the points. Lack of any real variation
    
  • Anyone who sPvP'd a large amount already has collected the large amount of skins available.
    
  • Pick-up matches are, again, mindless zergfests because all they have to do is <tab> - auto-attack because numbers is what really matters in most cases
    
  • It is still far from being esport-worthy ... randomness, imbalances, etc. ... claimed to be esport quality combat and here we are over half a year later. Heroes of Newerth, another Moba amongst a sea of Moba games, was picked up quicker than this.

Lordkrall, on 15 May 2013 - 11:22 AM, said:

P2P in general seems to be slowly dying, so no, I don't think I'd ever truly advocate for it. If I were to be given a CHOICE, however, I'd much rather support the company through honest means than a gambling system in a game where developer diaries discussed at length how RNG is no fun.

I'm sick of the theme of every update being a new lockbox. I wish I could choose to pay more to never see or hear of another lockbox again.

Anyway... random speculation: Is the new villain of the Last Stand at South Sun a sylvari? Maybe the devs have heard us and we finally get to kill Trahearne!

I think I preferred paying a monthly fee to having a game run like a carny ring toss.

FoxBat, on 14 May 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

I think this is key, and taking it into consideration Colin's comparison of the Living Story to a TV show makes slightly more sense (but still inane nonetheless). Instead of pushing out expansions and having periods of high traffic, they want steady traffic, This could be a model that's beneficial to both ANet and the consumer; Free-ish content for the player's and a steady population for ANet.

I think what's keeping players from singing its praises is, in addition to the cash shop, the poorly designed narratives. The story aspect is poorly written and hardly engaging, and the developers try too hard to simulate the "living" aspect through superficial world interactions (fixing fences, gather 150 periscopes). IMO, ANet and their writers (especially their writers) need to take a few pages from TES on how to simulate a living world through immersion, not chores passed off as content. If anything, the writers need to step away from writing for mass appeal; It's a trend that's ruined many AAA series. I'll do mundane and repetitive activities so long as a good narrative is being delivered. Come to think of it, don't people watch shows because those shows can deliver great narratives?

FoxBat, on 14 May 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

Really? REALLY? I find this hard to believe.  Also "exciting" isn't the word I would use.
Anyway they have enough trouble with trying to figure out how to fix the sorry mess of a game they have created than worrying about expansions...

GvG

Lordkrall, on 11 May 2013 - 06:51 PM, said:

Again, your use of ad hominem style arguments to attack posters and not actually address the concern or the meaning of the poster's argument is just flawed logic in response to your eagerness to defend the game.

It is not simply "whining" as you always like to put it when you disagree with someone. Give me one good reason why the living story is more important than fixing parts of the game that, although you may not care to admit it, are either broken or so poorly implemented, that the continued development of the living story (which is pretty disappointing thus far) is a continuous black eye to the customers that bought the game hoping that it would be, I don't know, not in beta when released and still in beta 8 months later.

So, you are right, I don't get to decide, but you also don't seem to understand that simply attacking a poster with the notion that they can skip content, instead of addressing the poster's concerns, either in agreement or disagreement, is not constructive.

If you want to have an argument about a topic, then you should do it. If, instead, you want to harass posters with ad hominem, expect to be called out on it.

davadude, on 11 May 2013 - 07:00 PM, said:

Then say that. Say WHY it is more important than say, making PvP or WvW or PvE or class balance better. Lowering yourself to the use of ad hominem is not productive or intelligent use of your words. It is just being condescending and rude because you decided not to say anything more intelligent or constructive.

Lordkrall, on 11 May 2013 - 06:33 PM, said:

Ad hominem. Regardless of whether the poster needs to do the living story or not has nothing to do with the fact that he may be waiting for ArenaNet to focus on things that are much more important to the game. Simply telling him he doesn't have to do it doesn't address his concern - it is only an effort to belittle him.

davadude, on 11 May 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

See above.

A 1st year birthday present that isn't linked to the gem store.