rukia

Maybe one day someone will develop a worthy successor.
(And just to make one thing clear: this doesn't mean that GW2 is bad, it just means that I would like to see a game that actually fully uses GW1's mechanics)

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.

Juanele, on 04 May 2013 - 07:29 PM, said:

Grind is not a state of mind. I am well qualified to point this out.

Grind is the consequence of your in-game goals taking a big part in your enjoyment of the game, and those goals are actually long-term goals that you want to coax to happen in the shortest time frame possible. The difficult of the goal is what sets the time frame required, and that difficulty is 100% determined by developers, not by nature or chance.

Now, presently I have concluded most short-term goals I could have. All alts are at 80, the map is fully explores, got more achievements that I would care for, at a bare minimum of exotic gear across my characters.

The grind kicks in when I want to customize my characters to my liking. This is mostly a long-term goal you see, but a feature that I've enjoyed and taken for granted during my six years career in GW1. Which now I see it being taken from me.

First comes the armor. I want my crew to look stunningly. That is the "easiest" of the bunch. For five characters, it would take me about 106~ dungeon runs in the appropriate dungeons, more or less. To my woe, one of the armors I wanted was from Arah, so that kinda settled me back for at least two months, as that place was tough as nails. The rest eventually followed.

Now for weapons. Since Legendaries are out of the question, for obvious reasons, I looked at my options. Dungeon weapons are good looking, but I wanted to focus on my armor, but after I got the armor, doing a dungeon felt like a chore.

I picked a Corrupted axe for my Necromancer, a Destroyer staff for my Elementalist, Foefire's Power to my Guardian, Arachnophobia to my Ranger and that glowing mesmer sword for my Mesmer. A pretty modest roster of weapons if you ask me. Pity they are insane to gather, and the alternatives are pretty meek. But what is in common with all these weapons? They are all crafted, and their material requirements are ludicrous. 30 Lodestones for the Axe, another 30 for the staff, 100 for the Bow, 100 for the Hammer, and 250 globs of Ectoplasm for the sword.

Noticed a pattern here? Most craftable cosmetics have insane drop requirements, that cannot be possibly acquired via normal gameplay. At least I don't consider doing dungeon ad nausea or farming Orr events "normal" gameplay.

After four months of wailing endlessly at the game, doing dungeons regularly and experiencing the game normally, I was nowhere near my goals. I accrued a small wealth but that was it. This to me, was heart wrenching.

And now, they keep throwing at me this exciting opportunities in the cash shop. I practically burned what little I had trying to get one of the new Fused Weapon skins. No such luck, and now I'm poor.

This game became a grind to me when the goals itself presented to me, are so overturned and so needlessly complicated, that I have no other choice but to anguish over the things I want, but not being able to pursue them in a suitable pace.

And that's why I'm cutting ties with this game for the time being. At least WoW makes a good job with making me cosmetic appeasing, and a better still with it's rewards.

MazingerZ, on 01 May 2013 - 05:24 PM, said:

With PvE content far superior to GW2's in every way; and PvP that's actually more dynamic than GW2's.

If you're going to even touch that god-forsaken subject (comparing the two games), you should at least avoid going full-strawman with WoW.

What's important is that it's a skinner box that isn't masked by anything.
While it feels odd to say, when you're designing games that have a rank-up system, you're definitely working a skinner box into the game to keep people interested - and then you actively try to hide the fact that the player is getting conditioned to keep pecking away at the button, because, at some point, they'll probably get a treat.

You're actively trying to hide that that's what's going on to the player; because when it's too obvious to forget, we get a problem like GW2 - where every item is too rare, the market makes it hard to run around and play the gameplay part of the game and make decent profit, and you're obviously getting told when to log in and buy gems when ANet releases "limited-time only!!! Buy now!!!" exclusives in the gem-store.

When the skinner's box is an intricate dungeon where 1 in 3 times you'll actually get something neat out of it, it becomes less of a skinner box and more a skinner playground.

Basically. GW2's skinner box isn't even masked by an interesting loot system like in D2 and PoE.

I think ANet took their own stance on grind and cosmetics too literally with legendaries. The entire system is a blatant grind, without even the slightest bit of context.

Xunlai Agent, on 25 April 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

" I believe they should allow users to switch the stats on the legendary weapons to whatever they currently need when outside of combat."

Yeah this has been talked about before. I find it odd that such a significant part of PvE 'endgame' has a weak, if any, connection to lore. The idea of a diverse set of legendary weapons would have been a great opportunity to delve into the lore that probably won't ever make the cut for the personal story and living world but I guess mindless grind is easier to implement.

I know good things come in time and this has possibly been posted about but i havnt seen anything about it yet. Anyway when it comes to legendary weapons its not an easy road to travel obtaining one atleast for myself anyway but what my issue/let down is, is that there is only one legendary weapon of each weapon type. I mean really? the only Legendary that has more then one is greatsword and they all look pretty much the same with maybe alittle colour veriation? Theres no choice for people wanting to stand out if  they do manage to somehow obtain a precursor (which is a joke/insane luck) and get all the rediculous requirments. I know it may sound unreasonable to some but why not have a range of say legendary weapon types, each with there own background story etc. Like a mighty hammer from the far shiver peaks, another that was once weilded by a great dwarven hero or king. Is it really too much to ask to add some meaning to legendarys to atleast make the obseen requirments alittle easier to stomach?

Any views are welcome and appreciated but please dont turn this into a troll fest thanks.

With the removal of the "trinity", PvP will just not be anywhere near as tactical  as it was in the first game.

GW2's concept of PvP was great; jump-in, jump-out arenas. That would be fantastic if this were just one type of game-mode - like the Random Arenas of GW2.

But the removal of GvG was simply the worst idea Anet made and even if it somehow gets put back into the game GW2's combat just doesn't seem to work in that context. No tactics, just a zerg.

In GW1 were there was a frontline, midline and backline and where everyone had a role to play, and if someone on your team went down it was a huge deal, was just amazing.

ANet completey dropped the ball on PvP, which is weird because they made the best PvP experience I've ever had (better than any MOBA too) so I presumed they would know what they're doing.

Hell, even the varied gamemodes in HA were great (even you remove the crazy egomaniacs that used to reside there, SLASHRANKSLASHRANK). 3 teams facing off against each other? Hell yea.

So in conclusion, if you're hoping that GW2 will be anywhere close to the awesomness that GW1 PvP was, you're going to be waiting a loooooooong time (i.e. never gona happen).

If they would only release GvG/HA mode for GW1 as a f2p project to gain the interest of real PvP players, that would be amazing.

Craywulf, on 10 April 2013 - 08:38 PM, said:

I didn't realize that game modes like relic runs, king of the hill and deathmatch are specific to GW1.

Similarly, I don't think that balance is such an unreasonable request.

I love how you say you want to have an intelligent conversation and then you can't help yourself but say that we need to stop comparing everything to GW1. Guess, what, GW1's PvP was factually, wholly and undeniably WAY BETTER than the garbage they gave us in this game. I guess you just don't like anyone to compare this piece of garbage to something good because it's not fair to the piece of garbage to have to live up to unrealistic expectations given how bad it utterly sucks.

Good day sir.

Personally, progression is probably the only thing I am not that fond of in this game (and even more of it might make me quit - I nearly did so in November), and I don't really see a particular need for it. Games don't have progression because gamers ACTUALLY want it, games have it because progression is cheap. You need to balance comparatively little for it, no area needs to be designed, and so on. It's just a dial.

Let's say that Arenanet finally sticks to their original plans and has no progression anymore. What happens?
Gear gets cheaper.

The question here is: Why is this a problem? Why should that gear always retain the value or even grow in value? This argument you make isn't logical and doesn't follow - if gear has less value, then other things grow in value instead. Like it always happens in games without gear progression.

Additional tiers aren't inevitable - they're just the laziest way to appease the lowest common denominator. If they actually do it, it'd show they really didn't have much in the idea department.

Personally, I'd prefer progression in form of being able to discover more by the world actually changing large scale frequently. That, by the way, fuels progression-less games.

Dasryn, on 11 April 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

Little did they know, a large portion of the playerbase bought the game in hopes of it not turning into WoW.

Dasryn, on 11 April 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

The only hilarious bit is the fact that many people told other people here that this wasn't it.  That it was pretty much the djinn that had to be stuffed back into the box in November before everyone got invested and got their gear.  Now people have invested a ton of time, resources and energy into Ascended and once that hits a wall, ArenaNet is either going to release another tier of gear (a tried and true method, much like releasing the same damn IP every year when you need PROFITS) or pull something original (actually improving the aspects of their game that suck) and completely untested to maintain player interest.

But a lot of people were on board with it.  "What is ArenaNet supposed to do?" etc, etc.

One thing is for certain.  The instant they start doing that sfuff with more tiers, the more its going to become a WoW clone with shittier encounters.  At that point, you should just play WoW.  Trinity be damned, at least your talents work most of the time, you have a decent in-game LFG tool, you can get the items with less stress and time involved.

I played this game because I didn't want the pressure of keeping up with upgrades.  I can already see how lacking in Ascended hurts me in WvWvW.  sPvP is DOA and people are petitioning that Spirit Watch be turned out of tourney rotation because it sucks so bad.  But all ArenaNet does is consolidate the "feedback."

This game is like SWTOR.  It's pretty horribly managed and developed and only had a deent buy-in to build a playerbase because it wasn't original IP.  If this game had been... Defiance... and laucnhed as GW2 did, it would have bled players inside of three months.