Captain Bulldozer

Captain Bulldozer, on 20 May 2013 - 11:40 PM, said:

I agree with the first half, not so much the second, but that's largely a concern about professional qualifications.

Anyway, on the first, it's because there definitely a jadedness about people who are not completely white-knighting the game.  ArenaNet has not made good on a lot of its promises and the worst thing a marketing team can do is mismanage its customers' expectations.

ME3 is a good example of that.  You spend five years building up players' expectations (and they're already a group with healthy imaginations to begin with, telling them that all their choices will affect the final part of the trilogy... and then you deliver three endings that could be synched together on Youtube... you're going to have a bad time.

ArenaNet's had to walk back on their stance with the gear treadmill.  They are not delivering equal or greater content than a subscription MMO.  Customizing your character with options that are available can cost an arm and a leg in real dollars, unless you farm heavily for the gold in-game (at which point you're supporting the supply side of their virtual economy).  The 'zerker meta, the sPvP issues, the WvWvW issues.

In the cases when a PR rep or developer actually gets excited about the game, that jadedness shows.  You know they will not say anything negative about the game, even though at the forefront of your brain, you know there are plenty of things to criticize about it.  They will not even acknowledge it.  You know that is their job, and since they have not made good on a lot of what was published or said, anything they say is run through that filter, knowing they are very purposefully biased.  It fails at breeding trust, and if you do not breed trust, you certainly can't breed hype.  A FSM help them if they sound disintereste, as someone commented about the State of the Game video that came out just prior to F&F's finale.

Now with WP, he shows enthusiasm   He plays the game.  He clearly likes it, but he's also going to get a little head nod because he is giving a pragmatic review.  You  may not agree with him on all points, but you can see he's not trying to polish a turd.  You think its not a perfect game, he thinks its not a perfect game.  You may not agree on all points, but the overlap is enough give him a level of validation.  It's the same thing with Ghostcrawler in WoW.  I'm not  fan, but even he criticizes their own decisions in retrospect. He knows that he already has the faithful won over.  He just has to win over one part of the dissenters, and acknowledging some issues with the game is going to land a hit with some portion of the disgruntled.

And there are plenty of players who would probably return to the fold if ArenaNet stood up, said "My bad.  I know it's bad, I'm going to fix it and here's how."  But they know that while the common man would be ingratiated by such an admittance, from a business and shareholder perspective, it's like you don't know your crap.

Captain Bulldozer, on 21 May 2013 - 12:18 AM, said:

I can agree with this. I bought a couple of the picks for my guys because the animation amused me and for the convenience factor (I don't play nearly enough to make the cost/benefit really work out in a money sense).

I don't really gamble in real life except on those 600 million dollar jackpots and even then only a couple bucks. Spending real money on a chance at a skin in a game or whatever for one of my guys is just dumb to me.  I'd be much more likely to buy a few skins for 400-800 gems.  As it is I won't spend a penny on box with a 1% chance at some 1 use item.  Hell, I won't even spend in game gold on that B.S.

Hopefully others share this view, because if Anet see the results they want it probably won't change.  No skin off my back I guess, I want to support them through the gemstore but only if there's something there I actually want.  Just save me money if they go the rng route.

Oh yeah, and farming karka endlessly for a small chance at a box with a small chance at an item?  no thanks

borovnica, on 20 May 2013 - 06:54 PM, said:

And I agree that is part of the bigger problematic trend that I see in GW2. They are stingy with their rewards.  

You only get good rewards, once in a blue moon, during really special events.  In usual cases, you can kill a veteran and get junk crap or nothing at all.  I suspect that trend may be because they want more people to buy gems and convert them to gold and to buy gems with real money as the gem price goes up.

The reward-motivation factor is just not there for most content.

Captain Bulldozer, on 20 May 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

According to my cousin in Wisconsin, beef and cheese never exist as separate entities.

Captain Bulldozer, on 19 May 2013 - 01:24 AM, said:

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this just feels like an opportunity that ArenaNet missed out on. People will never get to see those "Guild has won a battle in the Hall of Heroes" again. That feeling was just spectacular; feeling like the community was constantly involved at some point and that people are getting recognition for their deeds.

I share Red's opinion. The devs are unbelievably ineffectual when it comes to locating and addressing core issues, not to mention the bugs that players have reported since launch. The future of the game looks dim if these devs don't change their approach. But in spite of that, I don't think that the game can't be fixed (which is why I complain a lot).

The problems that plague GW2 originate from the the very fundamental decisions ANet has made with their game, but the company's approach to fixing these problems is, to quote Red, "polishing an apple with a rotten core." They've gotta replace the apple rather than polish it, and of course that's no small task at the stage the game is in. I think think it can be done though.

Though a good deal into Beta FFall just recently overhauled their entire progressions system (for the better, imo) because they saw that their old model wasn't engaging players (or something along those lines. Can't remember). I don't mean simply moving skills around and tweaking numbers. They turned the entire thing on its head, overhauling or replacing old skills and mechanics, and they also created a loot system that works in tandem their with character progression model. That's the sort of change that GW2 needs right now.

Trei, on 18 May 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

no, and yes. haha. I'm not 100% masterful of that game, there are plenty of people who are.
First I want to reply specifically to the end of your post, these critical posts are  coming from people who have played and enjoyed a previous game played and enjoyed/hated this game, and in the opinion of that person, these criticisms are formed. it's not a "fair" "unfair" situation, If I play some thing, and find it bland or boring, you can't tell me I wasn't being fair because you don't agree. a lot of people were walking in with a positive attitude and high expectations for gw2 not this "oh god I'm going to hate this bull crap" attitude so I think the opinions formed are more than fair.

I'm pretty sure you've not played a lot(or any) of guild wars 1 because you'd notice a immediate difference in depth of combat and the flow of combat. pick any class walk in to Random arenas and mash buttons you're going to die, you put together a build full of trash skills, no elite. you die. you don't pick the right target to kill your team will lose. some one dies in a fight, if you can get off a hard res, you may still have a chance.

go play gw2. if you go in and mash buttons you can do decent in a scrap melee, come with a crap build? as long as you keep moving and grab key points you can still win. picking targets doesn't even matter (as much) in gw2. you can't even see what class each profession is, all you see is cloth, heavy, medium... until they use a skill, and even then they are all just doing damage there aren't any meaningful buffs to watch out for to make a target any more of a threat over the other. in a full team melee, even the pro's say usually first team to have some one downed is the one who loses the fight. and in that situation usually the rest of the full team battles end that way.

the "all you do is mash buttons" is a over exaggeration, but in probably 99% of the skills you use, are knee jerk moves. used just because the cool down was up. yeah some skills have very specific uses or are better used at a certain time/situation but it's not enough to make the game play interesting. like the roots you talked about, you don't target the ele because of xxx or the thief because of yyy. you root who ever your team targets, which is usually the most exposed person. and you root them because your cool down is up. and the second your cool down goes up you'll root them again with out a second thought because they are kiting or running and need to cut that crap out and die already. the exact same thing goes for knockdown/interrupts except there are specific things you NEED to look for with those, like stopping a finisher on a teammate or interrupting a channeling tome guardian. if you're fighting some one with no channeling skills or no worry of a some one immediately being downed you pop your knockdown interrupt as it comes off cool down. no questions asked, no thought involved.

I agree some noob friendliness is good. GW1 pvp wasn't noob friendly but the pve was pretty forgiving. things get easier the more you discover your class, good skill combinations pop up. and there was a LOT more to discover. having over 1000 skills to play with because of class and cross class combinations. the choices for gw2 really aren't there. honestly you could probably go from lvl 1-80 with out popping a single utility or elite skill. my girl friend just hit 51 and I still have to come behind her and put in her attributes she's not added for 5+ levels or pick skills on her skill bar and she does just fine when we play together. her bar is actually full of signets because she doesn't really think to use any other skills besides 1-6 and those are used as said before, because the cool down was up. and It feels easier to play with her, even though she is clearly unskilled I don't feel like I'm carrying all the weight and she does fine when I'm not playing with her. on top of that, at lvl 51 (no alts) she's sitting on about 13g right now, I remember I had about 4g at that level my first run through. I kind of felt like being knowledgeable and knowing where to go/what to do, screwed me over because she clearly made more money than me (and I didn't spend a dime until lvl 80)

((my opinion))
yeah there is always room for improvement, but that improvement needs to come from the devs side not the player side, we've done pretty much all we can with the skills they provided for us, but the combat depth just isn't there. they are trying to treat it like a fast paced fps game. (I say that because they try and compare it to FPS in early interviews) but it's not a fps, being knee jerky and and chasing people around a map isn't fun in a RPG environment. I can appreciate  the fast pace, but they need the combat depth skills need to do more than damage + X, League of legends does this well. ultimately the goal is to get inside the other persons base, but the encounters are crazy to watch and it takes a real amount of skill and understanding of the game to play at high levels. and that's some thing a lot of people agree gw2 doesn't have. the fact that it's yet to be an e-sport even though they announced that's what they were pushing for that before launch further proves the majority share this same opinion.

Whoever created Tybalt's character needs a promotion. He is easily the best part of an otherwise mediocre storyline. I don't hate it, but compared to GW1, it doesn't shine. The searing alone was better than anything found in GW2. Although, granted, presearing was my favourite part of all of GW.

The last day dawns on the Kingdom of Ascalon. It arrives with no fanfare, no tolling of alarms. Those who will remember, will speak fondly of the warm morning breeze. People carry on with their daily lives, unaware that in a short while… everything they have ever known will come to an end.

Captain Bulldozer, on 17 May 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

This. This a million times.

I was so supportive of ArenaNet as developers and all I wanted was to see them succeed with the Guild Wars franchise. I thought Guild Wars 2 would be the game to trump all MMOs, simply because the design of Guild Wars is genius. It is such a beautiful game in so many ways, to the point that if it was only made a little more accessible to other players they would have had a titan of a game.

Guild Wars 2 is not what I wanted at all. In fact, I feel kind of... played for a fool. It's almost the same feeling I got when I played Diablo III. I do not recommend Guild Wars 2 to anyone at all. In fact, I even mention to my friends how much they should avoid Guild Wars 2. All of my friends have stopped playing it. ArenaNet has lost a customer in me and it's going to take a lot for them to get me back...

If only they would have stuck with the original formula and created a persistent world around it... they could have changed MMOs forever.

I do like GuildWars2. But GuildWars2 is not the successor of the original. GuildWars2 retains very little if anything from Guild Wars.

GW2 was supposed to be a "purified" version of GW with some more traditional MMO aspects.

In my mind they overdid it.  A somewhat overly complicated skill system was replaced with an overly rigid and ultimately boring skill system. The skill based mechanics that often made certain areas seem very hard until you figured out how to counter them have been replaced with such a lack of mechanics that most bosses are just damage sponges. Having to specialize your build too often was replaced with specialization becoming non existent. All of the sort of semi unintended but ultimatly fun aspects such as solo farming, point to point running serves, power leveling, were removed.

Now I do like GW2, the game engine itself is quite good, the underlying base game is quite good. But after the original game the delivered content of this game just feels to conservative. Things are dumbed down too much.

I’m somewhere in between the OP & Cevilo. I’ve grown to not dislike GW2. It has its merits. And I’ll most likely play it a while longer. Not likely there will be a new full campaign for GW1. But it’s not at all the same game. This is Guild Wars in name only. GW1 was a great game. Sure it had its flaws, but overall it was fun. The replay ability of GW1 was a great staying force. I played it from the betas for 6 years solid. Although, the last year was a bit mind numbing. I’d done all 3 campaigns & GW:EN with all 10 classes. So I took a year off to see what all the hype of WOW was. If we remember, most of the whining in the GW1 forums was how GW1 wasn’t WOW. Thought I’d take a look at it while waiting for GW2. Got bored and was glad to see GW2 on the horizon. Unfortunately it looks like Anet gave the whiners what they wanted, ‘WOW light’. IMHO, the replay ability just isn’t there. Each zone is pretty much like the previous one, only a slightly higher level. Pretty much like WOW. I find GW2 a bit pointless once you’ve gotten to the end. It’s mostly a grind fest or zerg fest. The mission structure of GW1 although somewhat linear, presented different challenges that required group planning to a degree. And I really miss my group   At this point I’d be happy with ‘Alesia the stupid’ as a companion! GW1 had a certain something to it that made you want to play it over and over again. There was some grind to GW1, but at least it was more profitable and thus, less monotonous. Unfortunately GW1 is just a wasteland now. With nothing new to retain the interest, there’s not much point in going back.

A big thanks to Anet for GW1, you had it right and many of us had great times and lots of fun!

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.

I for the record do not agree with absolutely every point made above and am mostly okay with a good deal of the game.  But I don't wish to quibble with them here there's other threads where I've made my peace or someone else said the same thing I thought already so I won't derail this with a point by point.  But some of these are just out of place - no trinity was the whole concept, we all knew that going in.  The fact it didn't work out quite like they thought it would is another set of issues.

However that's a very thorough (if not exhaustive) criticism Arenanet needs to see.  Even if I don't always agree 100% with some of these complaints, the underlying frustrations with nearly all of them I do sympathize with (honeslty I think some of these would go away on their own if others were solved).

And part of it is they do need to re-examine their conceptual roadmap, so to speak.

Content will be limited and seem meh.

It will involve repeating content many times.

Rewards will be little.

Good stuff will be in the gem store maybe with some gambling or limited time only stuff.

Gem prices will stay high.

Repeat next month.