How's the game now?

I left the game right when the HoT came out

Game at that point had many issues

PvE was zerk and stack (i didnt had problems with that), and most world bosses were auto attack spam fest

Leveling was endless karma train in hotm

WvW was basically numbers in Tier 1

PvP balance was kinda abandoned, i remember the hot specs ware so much better and the pvp balances happened roughly each 6 months.

Today a friend asked me to play with him, so i want to know how the game is now, from what he told me game is fine right now. The foruns at least look a lot more positive, by the time most was complaints, about the meta, about class balances, etc.

the game was better when you left. now pvp wvw pretty much doa . no balance or patch's for them . they put a new 100 fract but a lot of people have left the game as well too and never have come back . raids hardly any one does them at all as raids are not worth doing at all with all the elitism and so super pro player groups not letting you join them if you not the right class or so called build . about the only game mode despite its problems is pve. the rest of the game modes your more better off playing league of league of legends or something close to it

@Gabbynot.2654 said:the game was better when you left. now pvp wvw pretty much doa . no balance or patch's for them . they put a new 100 fract but a lot of people have left the game as well too and never have come back . raids hardly any one does them at all as raids are not worth doing at all with all the elitism and so super pro player groups not letting you join them if you not the right class or so called build . about the only game mode despite its problems is pve. the rest of the game modes your more better off playing league of league of legends or something close to it

This.

There is no PvP balance, I think it has gotten worse with each expansion and Elite Spec addition.

PvE has not seen much improvement, all mid end game stuff is still Zerk DSP challenge, now with 3rd party DPS meters to make matters better (They kinda came with raids, and all the elitism attached to it) ,

Raids, are.. well.. about the same as raids in any other MMO, but with kinda crappy class dynamics, again due to trying to put in a game mode into a game that was never designed for it.

I'd say.. Pre-HoT was for the most part a better put together game, While there is More stuff now, (Gliding is awesome!) I'd be hard pressed to say the game overall is better. It's still fun, no doubt so.. hop in and judge for yourself.. you may love the changes!

Different flavors for different people.

It's great

people seem to forget how bad it was pre-HoT. Literally nothing to do beside dry-top, but then again. There have not been a new thing in the game for a few months, so I guess it make sense people are generally bad moody. In other words, if you asked this question around 1 week after something "new" came up, people would be overjoiced and pointing out all the new stuff you can do and how much fun a player like you would have, seeing a god or library for the first time, or using the mounts which are fun with the maps, people literally could not get off the game because of them, or even fighting the dragon and all that stuff + all the HoT stuff. If nothing new came up, its all boring and nothing new etc....you get the drill, people burned out because old game 2012

The best objective opinion ive heard is, if you are a returning player and not burned out, this is the most fun MMORPG out there. You will be burned out by all mmorpgs no matter what, but other mmorpgs will want you to do boring stuff to progress, this game wont unless if you like to run around in PvE with a massive group for hours on end. And besides.....if you are gonna buy expansions, you will honestly have a lot to do, the story is quiet impressively deep and well thought out, even the mounts/glider comes into play quiet a lot and wonderfully in the game.

ok, thank you, I dont have any expansion and after what i heard here i'm not buying them. I left the game because I felt I was having no fun at all, I was just farming gold to buy cosmetics. I remember I left pve completely, and pvp was fun for a while, then HoT came out and the new specs were like super strong, and the game kinda became p2w.

PvP - empty. I read stories of diamonds matched with bronzes.WvW - empty. No queues, even in T1.Dungeons - dead.Living world - it’s ok, but don’t expect anything rewarding.Raids - Anet brought in the Trinity, caters to the 1%.Power creep for PoF specs.

Game is in a great spot for filthy casuals, like me ;-)

Ask the same question in reddit, imo. Official forums aren't the best place to get the widest possible range of responses.

I think the game is in a great spot but I play every single game mode a bit.

@Lunateric.3708 said:Ask the same question in reddit, imo. Official forums aren't the best place to get the widest possible range of responses.

I think the game is in a great spot but I play every single game mode a bit.

Yeah, I know, I used to play DC Universe online, and the loud minority on forums killed literally killed the game.

@Khalisto.5780 said:I left the game right when the HoT came out

Game at that point had many issues

PvE was zerk and stack (i didnt had problems with that), and most world bosses were auto attack spam fest

Pve was expanded a lot. You now actually have condi and power builds for most classes, has been this way ever since HoT.

PoF added another layer of open world maps on top of the ones from Living World Season 3. Besides achievement points, story (which obviously is a lot longer now then when you left), working on legendary items, raids, fractals there is nothing really new besides different ways of farming.

If you don't think you'll enjoy this, pve is not worth coming back. A lot of players enjoy the variety though.

@Khalisto.5780 said:

Leveling was endless karma train in hotm

Leveling was never an issue in GW2, not sure what you mean here.

@Khalisto.5780 said:

WvW was basically numbers in Tier 1

It's wvw, numbers are an integral part of the game mode. Besides some new rewards and new reward mechanics and new masteries and siege as well as new playstyle due to new specialisations, it's still the same old wvw.

@Khalisto.5780 said:

PvP balance was kinda abandoned, i remember the hot specs ware so much better and the pvp balances happened roughly each 6 months.

HoT and PoF specs alternate in spvp as far as usefulness. Some core specs work here and there. Otherwise spvp is mostly dead besides the peopel who farm for the legendary backpiece or armor.

@Khalisto.5780 said:

Today a friend asked me to play with him, so i want to know how the game is now, from what he told me game is fine right now. The foruns at least look a lot more positive, by the time most was complaints, about the meta, about class balances, etc.

The game is what you make of it. If you want to be a negative nancy you'll find enough to complain about.

The best recepie against not having fun in an MMORPG is here the same as in every other one: find a guild and play with friends.

I'd argue that the game is better.

1: PVE is now a mix of zerk builds and viper builds. In high end fractals and raids you even see zealots, minstrel, commanders.2: All classes have received more elite specializations that change how the class is played. Most of them are very fun.3: Fractals are funner than ever. There's even some hard challenge modes that are basically 5 man raids.4: Raids are a thing now, for people who want to push it to the limit. The community hurdle is steep, but if you can find a good group then raids are pretty fun.5:There's a lot of new maps, with interesting things to do in most of them. The HoT maps have global meta events that go off every two hours, and they can be quite fun and rewarding. The PoF maps don't have metas as big, but they are still a generally interesting.6: The new overworld maps can actually be challenging at times. Especially the PoF maps, where enemies roam in packs.7: Stack and zerk isn't as effective as a strategy. Fractals and raids are designed to discourage this tactic.8: Leveling is easy. The Karma train method was a grind, but generally exploring the map still gives good xp. The important thing is that now we have tomes of knowledge, which can instantly give you a level. I have over 200 sitting in my bank right now.9: WvW has new kinds of siege and new types of skills to invest points in to. There's even a new borderlands map. Numbers still play a role, but tactics have advanced beyond gigantic blobs.10: The story is much better now. It was terrible for awhile, but once you get to Living world season 3 it actually gets good.11: Mounts exist, and aren't as terrible as we feared.12: There are a lot of ways to make money aside from Silver Wastes now.13: Many of the newer world bosses can't be beaten by just spamming auto attacks.

Pve is better than even. Pvp Wvw not so much.

First, the forums aren't a great place to ask. You should log on and ask people in game. Some people on the forums don't even play the game and just read patch notes and play arm chair designer.

My suggestion, log on and play. It will be clear after some time if the game is a good spot for you to want to continue.

Remember game health and state are driven by a business model and a consumer perception. Either look at the business model numbers released quarterly or log on and determine if as the consumer you like the product.

See you in game!

@"Khalisto.5780" said:I left the game right when the HoT came out

Game at that point had many issues

PvE was zerk and stack (i didnt had problems with that), and most world bosses were auto attack spam fest

Leveling was endless karma train in hotm

WvW was basically numbers in Tier 1

PvP balance was kinda abandoned, i remember the hot specs ware so much better and the pvp balances happened roughly each 6 months.

Today a friend asked me to play with him, so i want to know how the game is now, from what he told me game is fine right now. The foruns at least look a lot more positive, by the time most was complaints, about the meta, about class balances, etc.

In my opinion, we're in a pretty good place. I think the initial HoT release was a little too "hardcore" for the average player. Between the complex map layouts and the overall difficulty of even minor side-events and personal objectives like HPs, many players found that expansion frustrating. It wasn't until many months after release that they addressed these issues, and by then players were already demanding new content. They eventually got the train back on track with the beginning of LS3 and regular content releases (story episode + a new map every 2-3 months).

This has continued into PoF with the first episode of LS4 (and the new map Domain of Istan) following the PoF expansion. That's a good thing. What is somewhat disappointing is their decision to turn away from what I feel was a successful event structure in HoT in favor of a core Tyria-style structure mostly consisting of random, unrelated events. I can't say whether shared disappointment over this aspect of PoF was responsible, but the new map (DoI) took a step back toward those large-scale events that went missing between HoT and PoF. I expect we'll see more of that moving forward, which has me optimistic about the future LS4 map releases.

As to your specific questions?

PvE zerg and stack? That probably hasn't changed. Almost without exception, open world bosses have very little in the way of phase changes and usually only have a few special abilities that they repeat endlessly. This is probably because making encounters very complex in open world makes them too easy to fail. HoT handled it by splitting the zerg: multiple bosses in different locations. PoF has shied away from that, however.

Leveling is leveling. Do it your way if you don't want to just use an 80 boost. I doubt that's changed much either.

WvW isn't my game. Numbers? Probably. It's hard to beat a large, uncoordinated force with your own large, uncoordinated force unless yours is larger!

PvP balance? Also not my game. I played one season before the end of HoT. It was fun, I barely hung on to platinum rank by the end, and I've been busy with PvE since. At the time, players complained endlessly about balance, but it seemed pretty typical of MMO PvP to me. But what do I know? All I know is it was fun and I was able to perform to about as good a standard as I could have hoped for as a first-timer in PvP. I didn't see anything that had me throwing my keyboard across the room, but as always, YMMV.

All in all, I'm liking GW2 today. There are things I wish they had done differently (like not completely abandoning that fantastic HoT event structure they developed!), but I am pleased with the latest LS4 release even if PoF didn't hit all of the sweet spots for me. BTW, mounts are fantastic! I really can't tell you how much better they are to play with than the standard MMO speed boost skin that mounts are in some other games. It's a stand-out feature in PoF that you really have to try!

They changed the director of the game again. That explains everything.

I like the game. PVE is great to me, I dont PVP or WvW. cant tell you about those. But there is ALOT to do in PVE. Of course the pvpers are whining about balance like in every other mmo that has pvp. So if you pvp its sounds like you wont like it here. Anyway come on back and make up your on mind. thats the best thing to do.

If a post starts like...

How is this thing now?

1. It sucked before.
2. This thing sucked.
3. I remember this other thing that was super-sucky.
4. Suxor McSuckingtonShould I play again?

...then the answer is probably 'No', if the person is really asking a question. If the person is making a statement in the guise of a question, then, 'Okay?'.