What GW2 lacks and how we can make it better

Hello, first of all I am a loyal GW2 player with 4.5 years on his back. In all this time I've been a part of most of the game content and I decided to write this as an advice for the problems I have seen. Here we go:

Dungeons:

• Not many things to be said here. Dungeons are still a good way of income and most of the time you will find people willing to take part. I don't know how they can be improved more, they are pretty fine as they are and the community is good because there are a lot of newcommers.
• What I would change? Seeing that different recipes need different gifts and that some dungeons are more popular than other, I would create a single currency for all the dungeons. As a compensation to this, I would eliminate all dugeon reward tracks. Idk but is pretty strange to get dungeon tokens in pvp.

Fractals:

• actually enjoyable, the fractal devs really need a pay rise. High scale CM community can be toxic sometimes but you can easly enjoy the full fun and rewards of fractals without doing CMs
• I would leave them just as they are

Raids:

• i would probably get a lot of hate but I am used to it because the raiding community is pretty toxic.
• first of all, Anet should stop locking legendaries behind raids. Raid already got an animated set of armor and tons of other rewards like high ascended drops, currency that can buy you infusions and ascended gear, exotic drops and raider crates. Locking Coalescence behind a raid was a very bad decision. Aurora was very well made, being locked behind LS3 maps. It rejuvenated the old maps and made them replyable.
• like pvp, raids suffer from bad class balancing a lot. The balance is lacking.
• I am against an easy mode, an easy mode won't solve anything. They are easy already but community makes them hard by following numbers.
• Elimination of KP or making them limited (1 drop per boss kill). Who is more experience, someone who killed a boss 3 times and has 3 KPs or someone who killed him 2 times and has 4-5 KPs? I think limiting them to 1 drop / boss kill is easier to implement and will solve some RNG problems.
• Start muting people when they are reported for bad language. Yesterday, in a training group i joined for fun, one dude was calling a newcommer a baboon and was suggesting him to shoot himself. I reported him but I doubt language reports mean anything in GW2.

Pvp:

• balance, balance, balance.

WvW:

• no suggestion now, I am currious to see how Alliance system will work out. Was not part of WvW community for too long anyway

Open world PVE:

• maps need replayability. Most of the expansions map are left empty and abandoned. On Desolation there is that achi Portal Spiker where you need 25 metas or something. Nobody is doing metas anymore on that map. Either make the metas replayable by making them needed or make easier achi that can be done even months after the map was introduced.

Game over-all:

• we need so numbers on current active player count. We need to know at what stage the game is.
• serious investigation team. Don't let reports pass by, especialy the ones for verbal abuse. This game's community is toxic than it never was before, we need some laws. If you mute someone's chat for some hours he will not be able to speak during pvp, he won't be able to link KPs for raid and so on. They will think twice before being super-toxic again.
• Make the BL chests better or back as they were. I used to buy 25 keys every month, with paid gems, as my support but i stopped because the actual chests are very useless. You get 1 statue and 2 random items that are mostly bad. Make the chests with 3 slots like it used to be or reduce the price of keys. Buying keys now is the worst trade deal ever. Is a robbing. Back when keyfarm was a thing, the chests were far better than now.

I don't believe making a single dungeon currency is going to solve the problem of some dungeons and paths being more popular than others. AC is popular because it's easy and it's the first dungeon you come across. CoF is popular because it's easy and you get berserker stats. Since all paths give you pretty much the same reward, the more difficult and/or longer paths are being ignored. I think the only thing that could make these paths played more often is increasing their rewards and bringing the rewards/time ratio in line with the other paths.

Honestly fractals feel bland and generic. They're supposed to be an asura crew's research project and yet you learn next to nothing about the places you visit. And then the fractals are too short to learn anything about the NPCs you encounter.

What pvp desperately needs is a game mode thats not 5v5 point-dominationWithout any variety or new modes spvp will die

Honestly IMO, there's only two absolutely integral but sadly far-reaching underlying issues:

• The engine is horrendous, or at least it appears that way. Technical issues, bad optimization, weird face/hair lightning, drowning everyone in non-dynamically-hidden spell effects... in a game which relies so much on "pretty" as its key endgame concept, it's weird that the engine seems only suited to oldschool gear grind MMO gameplay with simplistic graphics, not what ANet is actually building with it.
• Class balance and more importantly design needs significant reworks, all the way back to the drawing board. I'd re-consider entire concepts of the underlying design, such as traits (as a whole) or even the very presence of item stats. There is too much customizability for the sake of it, with no meaningful effect on character gameplay. Honestly, and I hate to say this: Heroes of the Storm offers 8 choices of 2-4 talents, and yet offers more character customization than GW2 does with it's traits, items, sigils, runes, weapons, skills and everything. It's that bad. Choices which just exist to pad out are pointless and in fact negative. Reduce, optimize, merge, compact. Plus, the dev team clearly doesn't have the resources to balance that many options, as evident by all but 2-3 builds per class being far suboptimal. Less choices, balanced choices, meaningful choices. From there, re-build all the classes from the ground up around that new customization system.

@Carighan.6758 said:

• Class balance and more importantly design needs significant reworks, all the way back to the drawing board. I'd re-consider entire concepts of the underlying design, such as traits (as a whole) or even the very presence of item stats. There is too much customizability for the sake of it, with no meaningful effect on character gameplay. Honestly, and I hate to say this: Heroes of the Storm offers 8 choices of 2-4 talents, and yet offers more character customization than GW2 does with it's traits, items, sigils, runes, weapons, skills and everything. It's that bad. Choices which just exist to pad out are pointless and in fact negative. Reduce, optimize, merge, compact. Plus, the dev team clearly doesn't have the resources to balance that many options, as evident by all but 2-3 builds per class being far suboptimal. Less choices, balanced choices, meaningful choices. From there, re-build all the classes from the ground up around that new customization system.

This is true. Same problem for elite specs. Most of them are made to look cool on that class even if some of them are totally useless or not used anymore. There are classes with specs that can handle any game mode and specs made only for competitive pvp with no huge impact in pve.

The problem with making a single dungeon currency is that people will choose the easiest one and do that one and ignore the rest. So it will become more difficult to find groups for certain dungeons. I also never liked the lack of accessibility on some of them where you first have to fight your way through some event or wade through a bunch of risen before even getting to the entrance. Now I've been away for a while so I'm not sure if they changed anything for that but that was my experience.

You really should be able to create a group and be able to taxi to the dungeon no matter where you are. However, that doesn't solve the other issue...why would you go there at all? Personally, the only thing that could motivate me, is the cosmetic rewards there. Unfortunately, I don't like most of them. This was a big issue in vanilla where there were just very few armor sets that actually looked good top to bottom. It's still an issue in the game in general but there are definitely a few more armor sets that look good enough to be excited about.

Also the outfits there are only a handful that I really like, simply because there's always something that ruins it. Mainly crotch or butt flaps or weird stuff sticking out and also racial issues where for example female Norn characters that look like they're twice as fat, because of robes, skirts and coats just being so huge around the waist and buttocks in particular...but, also around the front. I mean I could go on but there are just a lot of issues with some of the character models and armor design that is too intricate or just weird design. I am reminded of the winter monarch outfit which is great except that huge flap on the front. It sticks out a like a sore thumb.

It's odd that in a game that is so focused on cosmetics (fashion wars some call it) that the cosmetics are just not that great in my view at least. I also have it now with the Elegy armor. There is this flap on the side and it's not very aesthetically pleasing and when you upgrade the armor to Requiem it still is there, even in the heavy armor version and it looks odd. And therefore I gave up on the whole thing after getting the pants.

Anyways, just to indicate that the dungeon reward issues is a greater issue in the game in my opinion. Currently once you get the one or two armor sets and weapons that are actually cool looking from the dungeons, there is no reason to go back there again. The boss fights are not really that exciting anyways and there are many other places where you can get better rewards. In fact some of the dungeons are quite tedious like Arah.

So the dungeons themselves can be fun to some, but since this is a game that thrives on making gold and/or crafting, that just makes it less interesting as content. I mean, I don't mind doing some of them from time to time just for fun indeed, but beyond that I have no reason to go back there.

@"Daniel.5428" said:

• we need so numbers on current active player count. We need to know at what stage the game is.

Good luck getting these numbers, it's not like there is an easy way to get "active player count" on this game anyway. The only numbers we have is on the revenue reports and they show that the game at a rather good stage currently.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Daniel.5428" said:

• we need so numbers on current active player count. We need to know at what stage the game is.

it's the only thing that really matters in the grand scheme of things

About the BL chests, I do like getting the statue, since collecting those gives me a reliable way of getting some of the items I genuinely want, but is at a very very low chance. The other guaranteed item (the one that changes) varies how I like it. Sometimes its kinda alright, other times its really "meh".For the other 2 items... sure they are not often the thing you wanted... but that rng for you... also what I want and what you want might just be different.

So all in all I am happy with how the chest is now. Removing the statues would be terribly awful in my opinion.

@"Zeefa.3915" said:About the BL chests, I do like getting the statue, since collecting those gives me a reliable way of getting some of the items I genuinely want, but is at a very very low chance. The other guaranteed item (the one that changes) varies how I like it. Sometimes its kinda alright, other times its really "meh".For the other 2 items... sure they are not often the thing you wanted... but that rng for you... also what I want and what you want might just be different.

So all in all I am happy with how the chest is now. Removing the statues would be terribly awful in my opinion.

Yes, the statue thing was a nice improvement, no doubt. But, for example, the bags are not that useful. I think 1 statue + 3 random items, with the current drop rates, would be better. Per 25 keys, I usually get 8-9 wardrobe unlocks, 2 skins and the rest are basic things like tp to friend, ress orb, some scraps etc.

You guys keep saying raiding community is toxic, ever thought you get back what you sling at others?

@"Linken.6345" said:You guys keep saying raiding community is toxic, ever thought you get back what you sling at others?

But it is. I am not talking here about static groups who raid together. I meant the lfg community. If I would be a new player and I would see all that "link 10 of this, 5 of this and 250 of this" I would just uninstall the game. Anyway, this is devs fault for not creating a serious raid progressing system. It really feels like I am playing a 2005 free-to-play mmo where you had to shot 10 things to prove you killed something.

@Amaranthe.3578 said:What pvp desperately needs is a game mode thats not 5v5 point-dominationWithout any variety or new modes spvp will die

New maps/modes wouldn't help pvp in the long term.

@"Linken.6345" said:You guys keep saying raiding community is toxic, ever thought you get back what you sling at others?

This assumes anyone who acknowledges this fact has been a victim. I have not been one, meanwhile I see it happen to others. it's normal for any "end game" content for any game.

@Yamazuki.6073 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:What pvp desperately needs is a game mode thats not 5v5 point-dominationWithout any variety or new modes spvp will die

@"Linken.6345" said:You guys keep saying raiding community is toxic, ever thought you get back what you sling at others?

Huh? its the only thing that can help spvp in the long term.Long-term players are dropping because they are bored to death of the same game mode over and over without any real variey.

PvP is long forgotten in GW2. Some people are curious about WvW but they get disappointed really fast of it as well. The truth is there are far better MMOs if you look for pvp.

I do wonder why locking coalescence is bad but Aurora isn't.

@yann.1946 said:I do wonder why locking coalescence is bad but Aurora isn't.

Because only a small percentage do rides while almost all players do open-world contet and did events on LS3 map? And because raid already got legendary armor (6 legendary pieces). Well, let's see Coalescense passed. But locking 1 more accesory behind raids would be rly bad. I thinkother legy trinkets should be locked behind fractals, pvp&W3 and, the last one, to be locked behind something special, like a collection that makes you re-fight your old enemies (story bosses like mordremoth, zhaitan, balthazar etc.)

@Daniel.5428 said:

@yann.1946 said:I do wonder why locking coalescence is bad but Aurora isn't.

I agree that they should add different trinkets to different things.

But the locking thing is not that different. On efficiency the amount of people who went for the first collection of Aurora is less then 10% while the ring is 3.25%.

I wonder how people would think of Aurora if mesmer portals weren't a thing

@"Daniel.5428" said:PvP is long forgotten in GW2. Some people are curious about WvW but they get disappointed really fast of it as well. The truth is there are far better MMOs if you look for pvp.

That's why I think supporting WvW should still be a thing. The game mode - unlike sPvP - has a few key upsides as far as design work goes:

• It shares it's target for balance and class design with the most popular way to consule GW2, that is, open world PvE. Both support and in fact encourage massive zergs of players, and classes could be tailor-made for that, in fact! It worked for DAoC, no reason that given some dev willingness to break a few things it couldn't work here as well.
• Serves as GW2's elevator pitch far better than "living story" (wtf does that even mean?) or sPvP (which just about every other MMO does better, including WoW at this point, they caught up and overtook GW2 again :expressionless: ).
• Doesn't have much competition.
• Is easy to expand later because maps can be rotated but the overall structure has to stay rather static, giving a rigid outline for any new map.
• Even then, can continously support a rich supply of fancy good for the gem store, like fancy custom-skinned siege engines, dazzling decorations for keeps/towers, etc. There's potential here.

It does however one big downside:

• Currently, -2 developers are assigned to work on it. Or that's what it feels like. Which is still 3 more than it were for the past 6 years though.

I've been around here for 6 years now and I agree with BunjiKugashira.9754 about fractals and Carighan.6758 about WvW. Those two things will help this game going forward.

Spvp needs too much i think. the only reason i ever play in there anymore is because they tied crafting legendary weapons to it and WvW.

Any game with more then a few classes is going to have balance issues. the only way to get true balance is to take out the human element and run identical A.I.s (change how they play every day) in a death match type setting for 24 hours over 7 days. there is too much variance in human skill to accurately balance classes.

@Daniel.5428 said:

@"Zeefa.3915" said:About the BL chests, I do like getting the statue, since collecting those gives me a reliable way of getting some of the items I genuinely want, but is at a very very low chance. The other guaranteed item (the one that changes) varies how I like it. Sometimes its kinda alright, other times its really "meh".For the other 2 items... sure they are not often the thing you wanted... but that rng for you... also what I want and what you want might just be different.

So all in all I am happy with how the chest is now. Removing the statues would be terribly awful in my opinion.

I've heard this discussion before, and the claim made was that back when we had the 3 drop BL chests, one item was guaranteed to be a booster item, which, to me at least, is a pretty 'meh' drop. So the rotating guaranteed drop offers more variety and potentially more value. Plus we get the statues. Plus, if you get an uncommon drop (or higher, since I've never gotten higher) it's an ADDITIONAL drop to the 4 things you already get.

I think this is an interface issue coloring people's perspective. If the old chest had a guaranteed drop that was an RNG booster box (which is technically what you were getting whether the UI informed you or not), then the current BL chest would look like more of an upgrade, and not like they took something away from it.

@BunjiKugashira.9754 said:Honestly fractals feel bland and generic. They're supposed to be an asura crew's research project and yet you learn next to nothing about the places you visit. And then the fractals are too short to learn anything about the NPCs you encounter.

I would disagree on that, well some fractals are short and offer little to no story or w/e but others do offer insites into places, the sunspear one could be an example or the chaos -> nightmare -> mistlock

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:

@BunjiKugashira.9754 said:Honestly fractals feel bland and generic. They're supposed to be an asura crew's research project and yet you learn next to nothing about the places you visit. And then the fractals are too short to learn anything about the NPCs you encounter.

@Kodokuna Akuma.9570 said:

@BunjiKugashira.9754 said:Honestly fractals feel bland and generic. They're supposed to be an asura crew's research project and yet you learn next to nothing about the places you visit. And then the fractals are too short to learn anything about the NPCs you encounter.

I agree that the chaos -> nightmare -> mistlock fractals have a nice little story-chain explaining a bit more about what the fractals are and who else is interested in them. However especially for older fractals there are so many possibilities to explore Tyria's rich lore and history, and they're all wasted.

Urban Battleground:Who was Dulfy?Which city are you fighting in?What influence did this battle have on the human-charr war?When did this battle take place?

Aquatic Ruins:Who built these structures in the first place?Why are they now flooded? Or were they always flooded?Why do we have to kill the big Jellyfish?

Deepstone:How did the dwarves live?What was their society like?What purpose did this place serve before it was abadoned?

Even the fractals that were taken straight from LS1 dungeons are completely taken out of context and tell new players who missed LS1 next to nothing about what happened. It feels like we only have these fractals in order to have these fractals.

1 vs 1 pvp arena. Nothing PvE at all, no bases to cap or bosses to kill. Pure pvp and no interface to change builds. Come as you are.A couple of solo fractals or dungeons.Personal shop.Cantha. I would like JQ and FA back please.please.Affordable guild halls for smaller guilds even a room so they can get bonuses/ scribe/ decorate too. Maybe a proper Guild house and not a bigger hall?Hire a hero. Like heros in GW but you pay for them, so you can do group stuff if you main a ranger, say.A notepad to store waypoints, stuff to get, builds and general other gaming nonsense.Foes can be seen as blobs on the mini map.Foes can be seen on all WvW maps. No hiding.Storage pets or bags on mounts.A new world boss.Day/night timer so you know what time in game it is.