Guild Wars 2

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Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
So, yeah, for anyone who followed GW1, Arenanet still has no idea how to balance their great ideas. There are a bunch of quality of life things I sorely miss in any other MMO, like the way the game supports cooperation on any level and how you can be part of more guilds at once. The crafting system is also surprisingly robust and deep with heaps of almost forgotten recipes waiting to be discovered. The character wardrobe for easy customization, the dye system... Exploration and jumping puzzles are also really good ideas that don't rely on you hitting something with a stick and we need more of that.

Part of me thinks we would end up with much better game if they released it only as PvE RPG and added PvP a year later, because right now they started with all those systems in place, only to let them wither and die shortly after. It also feels like they never balance for "fun". We can bitch about Blizzard nerfing classes and making others OP until cows come home, but Arenanet just nerfs shit that wasn't fitting their model of balance with no regard for fun. I'm actually surprised they are doing anything with PvP, after like 6 months of nothing after relase, I assumed they just quietly killed the whole idea focusing instead on making shiny new armors for gems.

I think great example is that they remained completely silent on the future of the game past LS 2 until the announcement. Yes, revealing any details would give away a lot of story they packed into the story updates, however complete radio silence on how are they planning to expand the game ended up frustrating a decent part of the community. Many people were joking that they were going to announce LS3 instead of an expansion and there was nothing to dispute that. If they did announce anything but an expansion, we would probably witness the first livestreamed nerd revolution.
 
Mist

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,207
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Sinzar_sl said:
For $10 I figured this was worth a purchase if it's as fun as people say while leveling. Sad to hear it doesn't have an end-game, but if I get a few weeks of fun out of it, it's money well spent.
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It has an endgame. Crafting all your ascended shit definitely requires doing a lot of endgame content. What it doesn't have is a scaling endgame like new, better loot every couple months like WoW does.
 
Needless

Needless

Toe Sucker
<Silver Donator>
9,402
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Itzena_sl said:
GW2 endgame is Pretty Princess Dressup.
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Fashion Wars is best wars.
My guardian whom i still need to go back and finish leveling has the worst chest graphic ever in terms of protection, but the best graphic fo' showin off dem big ol' tay tayz
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,222
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Zaphid_sl said:
So, yeah, for anyone who followed GW1, Arenanet still has no idea how to balance their great ideas.
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Well imo it wasn't as much of an issue in GW1, at least PvE wise, because of Heroes and mutliclassing and shit. You had access to virtually everything, so even though there were some definitively better builds than others, it was ok because you could be all these builds, and still add your own flair to it. GW2 with its limited skills per classes and well, classes, makes it a lot harder because if you're not playing the right class, you're way fucked. Example, Necro being fucked in PvE for basically the entire duration of the game. At no point I think Necros were any good for PvE for any reason. Meanwhiles Elems and Warriors have been the top PvE classes since forever and this hasn't changed. Only on some of the other classes it has switched a bit from shitty to good depending on buffs/knowledge(like Engineer was considered bad for a long time and became "good" recently when people crunched numbers on vuln grenades or some shit).

PvP wise, I think it's in a way less of an issue because you don't actually lvl your char, you can play whatever's strong and it's a lot more about player skill and good composition, at least for sPvP. WvW isn't really meant to be balanced and whoever has most people/better strategy wins, regardless of classes. Still PvP balance is nowhere near close to good, and shit like Ultimates are terrible for this type of game I think, because of how frequent fighting is versus the cooldowns. 2mins cd work well in dota/lol because of the long death timers/travel time and the side stuff like clearing the jungle/pushing lanes and stuff that lets you make good use of these long cooldowns when they're down. But in GW2 in an arena it takes like 15secs to go back into a fight, which means you basically can't push people off a point until you kinda fuck around for nothing for a while and get all the ultis back. It's stupid as fuck. Also why I'm very not looking forward to Blizzard's FPS/TF2/Dota thing, ultimates are shit.
 
Caliane

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,347
11,644
Hey folks,
Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we're able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we'll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.
In doing so: we're going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We'll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.
Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic - it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.
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in regards to my trait complaint...
 
Barab

Barab

Silver Knight of the Realm
446
35
logged in yesterday being out of gw2 for at least 9 months having more fun in two hours of wvw pvp then I had in in total in Archeage pvp.
 
Cantatus

Cantatus

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,437
79
So,only one specialization per class in this expansion:

Each of the professions will be getting one of these Specializations and this also is a framework that we'll use to grow the professions in the future. This will be the way we add more skills, traits, and abilities to the game moving forward. That's how we're growing our existing professions.
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So... not so much as a "specialization" as everyone gettting the same new weapon (for now). The thing that disappoints me the most about this is it looks like Mesmer's are going to be getting shields. I've been really looking forward to being able to use dual pistols.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,385
277
I'm ok with shield, it's odd and unexpected. Given the way you handle a greatsword in combat, the shield might surprise us. I'm hoping for some nice small buckler skins though, that and a rapier fits the profession. Dual pistols seems more like a thief thing anyway. Only one spec is weak, where's the choice in that. I guess it's ok IF they add at least a second choice relatively quickly.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Pyros_sl said:
Well imo it wasn't as much of an issue in GW1, at least PvE wise, because of Heroes and mutliclassing and shit. You had access to virtually everything, so even though there were some definitively better builds than others, it was ok because you could be all these builds, and still add your own flair to it. GW2 with its limited skills per classes and well, classes, makes it a lot harder because if you're not playing the right class, you're way fucked. Example, Necro being fucked in PvE for basically the entire duration of the game. At no point I think Necros were any good for PvE for any reason. Meanwhiles Elems and Warriors have been the top PvE classes since forever and this hasn't changed. Only on some of the other classes it has switched a bit from shitty to good depending on buffs/knowledge(like Engineer was considered bad for a long time and became "good" recently when people crunched numbers on vuln grenades or some shit).

PvP wise, I think it's in a way less of an issue because you don't actually lvl your char, you can play whatever's strong and it's a lot more about player skill and good composition, at least for sPvP. WvW isn't really meant to be balanced and whoever has most people/better strategy wins, regardless of classes. Still PvP balance is nowhere near close to good, and shit like Ultimates are terrible for this type of game I think, because of how frequent fighting is versus the cooldowns. 2mins cd work well in dota/lol because of the long death timers/travel time and the side stuff like clearing the jungle/pushing lanes and stuff that lets you make good use of these long cooldowns when they're down. But in GW2 in an arena it takes like 15secs to go back into a fight, which means you basically can't push people off a point until you kinda fuck around for nothing for a while and get all the ultis back. It's stupid as fuck. Also why I'm very not looking forward to Blizzard's FPS/TF2/Dota thing, ultimates are shit.
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GW1 had insane customization, you could turn almost any class into anything with right combination of spec/skills and that was only 1/8 of the final party. The only thing you were lacking was your primary class passive, which in some cases was pretty important, like Necro's soul reaping. They came out and said that wasn't a very good system, because everybody could abuse the same few OP things in the game, doubly so with PvE skills in EotN, which I agree with, but I feel like they never even tried to address why people did that - there wasn't a holy trinity and the game never taught you how to group up unless you had a walkthrough for the specific area at hand.

Fast forward to GW2: Every outdoor encounter and WvW supports 1-100 people participating with the rest of the NPCs sometimes joining the fray, so you have to design the system for those and then apply the same system to 5man dungeons. On top of that, all the players have access to the single best ability in the game, which moves you and grants you immunity to almost anything for a seconds or so. So they came up with this system that is rather simple, but also very granular, with universal stacking buffs and debuffs (with a limit) , where all utility spells must have very limited impact, since players are very smart, give a class a buff that stacks with all the others and exists outside your universal buff spectrum ? 4 war+1 mes is born for speedclears ! Guardian bubble/projectile shield has laughable duration, since guilds would love to recreate 300 ingame. I could go on, but I think there's a lot of awesome ideas that developers willingly nerfed or removed, because it would be too much of a hassle to balance, or for casual players to understand.
 
Mist

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
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Zaphid_sl said:
Fast forward to GW2: Every outdoor encounter and WvW supports 1-100 people participating with the rest of the NPCs sometimes joining the fray, so you have to design the system for those and then apply the same system to 5man dungeons. On top of that, all the players have access to the single best ability in the game, which moves you and grants you immunity to almost anything for a seconds or so. So they came up with this system that is rather simple, but also very granular, with universal stacking buffs and debuffs (with a limit) , where all utility spells must have very limited impact, since players are very smart, give a class a buff that stacks with all the others and exists outside your universal buff spectrum ? 4 war+1 mes is born for speedclears ! Guardian bubble/projectile shield has laughable duration, since guilds would love to recreate 300 ingame. I could go on, but I think there's a lot of awesome ideas that developers willingly nerfed or removed, because it would be too much of a hassle to balance, or for casual players to understand.
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I agree. This game is totally afraid of it's own players. Every ability is designed to be weak so that you can't ever do anything overpowered, so you always feel weak outside of very small fights, and when people do figure out to do something that makes them feel powerful, it gets nerfed. The game seriously lacks good healing or protection abilities, so what you end up with is a bunch of people DPSing the shit out of everything because that's the only thing that feels powerful.

That said, universal dodge rolls are great. Some classes and trait builds can dodge a lot more frequently than others, or trigger abilities on dodge, while others are more stationary. 1v1 combat feels epic. Those solo arena PvE battles also felt epic for the same reason. Fighting Liadri and doing all those achievements felt in many ways just as good as many of the WoW hardmodes. They took a system that worked 1v1 or 2v2, scaled it to not break when numbers hit zerg vs zerg, but never made it feel all that good at any points in between.

I personally think the combat system is really good, but totally lacks the powerful utility skills for supporting people in your group that make it feel like an MMO.
 
X

Xenrauk

Trakanon Raider
1,246
914
I was hoping mesmers would get main hand pistol as well, I already juggle focus(pulls) and torch(stealth) on offhand, I really don't care to get another off hand option.
Mesmers are going to end up being the only class with more offhand than main hand weapons. 2h sword staff, 1h sword scepter, offhand sword pistol focus torch shield.

As for the rest, Anet made the mistake of putting all their eggs into the pve living story basket, can't imagine how much more people would be playing if they had kept up development on spvp and wvw sections. Wasting a year revamping the leveling section of their game which was not needed, but anyways a lot of bitching about that for the last year, just glad the expansion has finally been announced.
 
Miele

Miele

Lord Nagafen Raider
916
48
Mist_sl said:
I agree. This game is totally afraid of it's own players. Every ability is designed to be weak so that you can't ever do anything overpowered, so you always feel weak outside of very small fights, and when people do figure out to do something that makes them feel powerful, it gets nerfed. The game seriously lacks good healing or protection abilities, so what you end up with is a bunch of people DPSing the shit out of everything because that's the only thing that feels powerful.

That said, universal dodge rolls are great. Some classes and trait builds can dodge a lot more frequently than others, or trigger abilities on dodge, while others are more stationary. 1v1 combat feels epic. Those solo arena PvE battles also felt epic for the same reason. Fighting Liadri and doing all those achievements felt in many ways just as good as many of the WoW hardmodes. They took a system that worked 1v1 or 2v2, scaled it to not break when numbers hit zerg vs zerg, but never made it feel all that good at any points in between.

I personally think the combat system is really good, but totally lacks the powerful utility skills for supporting people in your group that make it feel like an MMO.
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Skills are not only weak, but they rarely have a large impact on your team: with this I mean you don't really coordinate when to put up might stacks, you do it, period. Aside from reflections and the eventual Aegis/Stability there is little interaction between group members. Most of the times in dungeons you could be there with 4 bots and don't notice the difference. Pet classes (ranger, some necro builds) are half functional, since pets are good for nothing versus any group content, in some cases they just explode right away. It could have been perfect, only if...

I loved the game 1-80 and didn't care too much about the "end game", because it wasn't so interesting for me in the end. I'm still convinced that it's worth the money it costs and provided me with a lot of hours of fun, but as I said, not in the traditional MMO way. Even doing all dungeons, all wings, at least once is a worthwhile experience.
 
D

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
I always thought the combat was fun, world was awesome and I generally had a joy leveling in it via exploration and achievements. I thought the class system was atrocious. There is no real way to interestingly develop your character. Trait system is awful and really really uninspired. Who the fuck thought that shit up?
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,385
277
PVP balancing doesnt allow for too many interesting skills, and they rarely take advantage of the fact that their system allows skills to work differently depending on game mode. Instead, we get +0,5% to dmg vs walls. That totally makes me want to max it out. I hope the masteries are not the same boring +gooder just in PVE, although I'm afraid they might be.
 
Grim1

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,903
6,889
Xenrauk_sl said:
I was hoping mesmers would get main hand pistol as well, I already juggle focus(pulls) and torch(stealth) on offhand, I really don't care to get another off hand option.
Mesmers are going to end up being the only class with more offhand than main hand weapons. 2h sword staff, 1h sword scepter, offhand sword pistol focus torch shield.

As for the rest, Anet made the mistake of putting all their eggs into the pve living story basket, can't imagine how much more people would be playing if they had kept up development on spvp and wvw sections. Wasting a year revamping the leveling section of their game which was not needed, but anyways a lot of bitching about that for the last year, just glad the expansion has finally been announced.
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Most Guild Wars (1 and 2) players prefer PvE and avoid PvP like the plague, PvE is where the money is for them. That sucks for us who like PvP but it is the truth of things. GW2 has PvP because it adds additional value to the game and the owners like it. Besides the game's name requires it. But the main reason GW2 is successful (monetarily) is because they have leagons of PvE players who prefer the game style of GW. They hate the stat / gear grind of games like WoW (I agree with them there).

I would prefer they spend more time and resources making WvW something more than a zerg fest trading keeps, and maybe someday it will happen. We'll see.
 
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