Burch84

ArenaNet really need to take every single aspect of the game and improve upon it as much they can, one by one. The game itself feels far from polished and there is just so much that they could expand upon. They claim to have over a hundred staff in the new team. I don't know much about the coding that goes into developing an MMO, but from what I can tell, there must be only a small fraction of that hundred staff ever working on the game at a time. They promised so much before the game came out and it's fallen increadibly short of even the lowest expectations. I thought ArenaNet were supposed to be different...

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.

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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.

Heart Collector, on 05 March 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

I see what you mean. My favourite parts of the story are the lower level race specific bits, as they feel more personal.

I feel like they tried to tack on a resemblance to the GW1 story to keep the people who like the lore interested, while making it stand-alone so people who didn't play GW1 wouldn't be left out. To me, it seems like they should have picked one of these options and stuck to it, rather than creating a poor mix of the two.

Lordkrall, on 16 March 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

I'll help you out:

1. Guild Wars 2 is our opportunity to question everything - This isn't so much a lie as a reason why nobody should be upset when we, the customers, question everything as well.

2. Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world - Besides the world of Tyria, there is absolutely nothing in this game that is like GW1 in any way shape or form.

3. We just don't want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. - Almost everything in Guild Wars 2 is a grind. Leveling is a massive grind, dungeon tokens are are a grind, badges of honor are a grind, ascended gear is a grind, legendaries are a grind, dailies are a grind, monthlies are a grind, karma is a grind. What in this game isn't a grind?

4. As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. - Two word. Screw Traeherne.

5. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. - http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/


I seriously don't believe anyone is that blind as to not see any contradictions between the manifesto and the actual game.

you are not leaving home, your family nor ur girlfriend... u are taking a break from a game man... do it.

Come back when u like, if you will ever like, and that's it lol.

IT'S A GAME

for you to write such a very long post, you probably bored with gw2, so imo you should quit, there are lots of games out there. dont torture your self

After enjoying, supporting an being a GW1 fan for around 6 years... Yes, I'm quite disappointed.
I'm still waiting for the next expansion though, maybe it will radically change things. Maybe.

I felt the same as you OP.

When I first felt this way I tried...

Map completion - Completed all the PvE parts but don't like PvP so that ended there.

Jump puzzles - Some are fun, some are pull your hair out infuriating (have something to punch nearby if you try them).

Level alt's and try other professions - I bought character slots shortly before the infamous Nov. 15th patch.  This ultimately killed any desire to play for me.  My drops plummeted so badly that I can't even level up the alt's I bought slots for effectively.  Unrewarding game.

Hopefuly your account isn't one of the cursed ones that get pitiful drops.

GL.

Reikou, on 03 January 2013 - 11:35 AM, said:

I'm sorry? You just took quote of the reason why these people SHOULD get banned. (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits).

Do you think that making hundreds of gold in matter of minutes is not bug or..?

Yea I think you're done man. You beat the game.... its over, move on. I don't understand why people assume mmo's will keep you entertained for eternity because they don't.

blindude, on 14 November 2012 - 06:33 PM, said:

Who cares about progress when Anet is now adding a system to erase all of your gear progress every 3-6 months? Anet destroyed any meaningful progress in favor of carrot on a stick, hamster wheel, illusionary progress of gear treadmill.

I voted "depends" on if I will play.  Explanation:  "Playing" has 2 modes.  One is to get what I can out of the game via what I have already paid for.  The other is to actually pay money toward the game again.  I think the devs if they try to decipher the survey result needs to know this detail as they project future revenue.

My play mode will be the first one for now.
Reason: Like many players who bought exotic gear a mere one week ago, I was in shock over how my new gear has gone down a tier.  It means I will no longer buy gems to trade for gold to buy gear made by crafters.  Until gem store comes out with emote animations such as salute, hug, bye, etc, I'm no longer going to contribute toward GW2 revenue.  I play this game to have fun with people.  Instead it seems to be a gear oriented game now instead of people oriented.

To me the beauty of capitalism is we all each vote for what we enjoy with our dollar. Good luck to ANet.

I'm at 3 lv80 characters in full exotic gear, i'm at over 3,5k achievement points including Dungeon Master, Pet Collector and Golden (with tremendous aid from guildies, but still) - and i still find the game fun enough to upbring my fourth character. I really enjoy the GW2 dungeons, i mean - i find them enjoyable to play them just for fun, even if i don't need tokens. I often join groups just to help guildies get their stuff done if i have enough time.
And i yet have to properly get into PvP.

It's fine that someone isn't enjoying the game anymore after having done X. It's really okay - we're different, and stuff. But don't assume everyone's like that.
But for one, i know i will enjoy getting the Ascended stuff for all my toons and figuring out how to beat Fractals, with or without infusions. I know it will take time and won't be done overnight, but hey - i'm not rushing anywhere, it's not like i'm paying any subscription fee and i have to play 24/7 to get my money's worth, right?

Sieghildr, on 13 November 2012 - 06:59 PM, said:

Yup. Really annoying after purchasing a full exotic set recently. I wonder how long after I get the Ascended stuff they'll add a new tier above it. I give it 2 months.

fatality39, on 13 November 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

GW1 lasted for years with only 3 expansions. They must have been doing something right.