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GW2 is good. What prevents it from being great?


Aodlop.1907

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• The lack of an open world is a big one for me. All those square areas are immersion breaking.• Bags, that contain bags, that contain more bags, that are full of worthless junk. Loot needs to me meaningful, I'd rather loot nothing than all the garbage I'm currently looting in this game right now.• Every skin displayed in a wardrobe, including those that are not currently owned, as well as ways to get them, like in WoW.• Lack of unique skins locked behind meaningful or interesting content, like world bosses, or very long questlines. I wish there were more of those unique quests like the one to obtain the Gryphon mount, that could reward unique skins for gear, gliders and mounts.Maybe a very hardcore puzzle jump could reward a specific hat skin for example. Or a hidden questline in that area of the world would grant you those gloves that you can't get anywhere else. For example, in WoW, the "Neurosurgeon's Tool" is a unique dagger skin that looks like a cleaver, and you can only unlock this skin by completing a level 35 quest. This kind of thing would give players even more incentive to roam the world and explore.• Lack of PvP content, like 15v15 battlegrounds, a bandit/mercenary system for open world PvP, and duels. These features would only be enabled in new PvP servers of course, to leave PvE players enjoy the game without interference.

That's for me. What about you?

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@"Aodlop.1907" said:• The lack of an open world is a big one for me. All those square areas are immersion breaking.This is by design, the game being just an upgraded version of GW1's engine.• Bags, that contain bags, that contain more bags, that are full of worthless junk. Loot needs to me meaningful, I'd rather loot nothing than all the garbage I'm currently looting in this game right now.The community "asked" for this.• Every skin displayed in a wardrobe, including those that are not currently owned, as well as ways to get them, like in WoW.Although a handful are missing, you can preview every available skin at the bank. Usually I just check out the name of the skin there and wiki the procurement.• Lack of unique skins locked behind meaningful or interesting content, like world bosses, or very long questlines. I wish there were more of those unique quests like the one to obtain the Gryphon mount, that could reward unique skins for gear, gliders and mounts.We have these, like Mawdrey, Caladbolg and the legendary backpieces that come with gliders. Also, the first four (Astralia, Nevermore, HOPE, Chuka & Champawat) Gen 2 Legendaries have unique quests. I agree we could use some more though.Maybe a very hardcore puzzle jump could reward a specific hat skin for example. Or a hidden questline in that area of the world would grant you those gloves that you can't get anywhere else. For example, in WoW, the "Neurosurgeon's Tool" is a unique dagger skin that looks like a cleaver, and you can only unlock this skin by completing a level 35 quest. This kind of thing would give players even more incentive to roam the world and explore.Community doesn't want this. Have you met your co-players? We have all the special snowflakes covered. Also, some renown heart vendors sell unique skins for Karma. Check out your bank wardrobe.• Lack of PvP content, like 15v15 battlegrounds, a bandit/mercenary system for open world PvP, and duels. These features would only be enabled in new PvP servers of course, to leave PvE players enjoy the game without interference.You're not the first person who asked for this.That's for me. What about you?Pretty much the same as your list, only adding WvW specifics. But that's just beating the dead horse.

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@borgs.6103 said:

@"Aodlop.1907" said:• Lack of unique skins locked behind meaningful or interesting content, like world bosses, or very long questlines. I wish there were more of those unique quests like the one to obtain the Gryphon mount, that could reward unique skins for gear, gliders and mounts.We have these, like Mawdrey, Caladbolg and the legendary backpieces that come with gliders. Also, the first four (Astralia, Nevermore, HOPE, Chuka & Champawat) Gen 2 Legendaries have unique quests. I agree we could use some more though.Maybe a very hardcore puzzle jump could reward a specific hat skin for example. Or a hidden questline in that area of the world would grant you those gloves that you can't get anywhere else. For example, in WoW, the "Neurosurgeon's Tool" is a unique dagger skin that looks like a cleaver, and you can only unlock this skin by completing a level 35 quest. This kind of thing would give players even more incentive to roam the world and explore.Community doesn't want this. Have you met your co-players? We have all the special snowflakes covered. Also, some renown heart vendors sell unique skins for Karma.

Sad but true. Look at the way players reacted to the skyscale questline. And that was for a whole mount . . .

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I played both games (GW1 and 2) for years.. I feel like since PoF release it felt less and less rewarding as time passes by for old players. Here are some examples:

1. Daily login rewards: they are always the same, every day and every month, ever since this system was released. I have really nothing special to look for by logging in every day in a row.. (stares at Bags of Luck days). Why not make it special at the end of every month with something people will actually look for? (wardrobe unlock, ascended armor or weapon box.. idk something to look forward after the 28 days that won't be meaningless.

2. Achievements: they surely feel like it's a chore nowadays. I loved doing them before, because some were hard to get, hard to ACHIEVE, in other words. A good portion of the achievements nowadays just ask you to do things repeatedly .. (like repeat meta events 43,987 times, kill 18,273 mobs). These are patience tests.. and after you do all that, you get like.. from 1 to 10 achievement points. Not to mention that achievement points do give you skins that are unique, but most people won't make it to have a full Radiant or Hellfire skin sets.. it takes too much time and they don't accept dyes (major feature of the cosmetic aspect of the game). In other words, why would people do achievements if it's not really rewarding? It's rare to see people on these skins even if they have one full set..

3. Birthday presents: every character gets the same thing.. imagine if all your sibilings got the same gift on their birthdays according to their age? I don't see people excited for their character birthdays like on GW1. For those that didn't play it, you would get a random mini that belonged to that specific birthday collection, some were nice some were just sad, and for old players, they could also get awesome tonics that could be used even in combat. They were always a surprise at least. It just doesn't feel like it's special to receive a character's 1st birthday gift on GW2, and even less exciting when you get to the 7th year (stares at the wardrobe unlock that is only given to the first character that reaches 7 years, all the other characters that reaches this far won't get the unlock).

There are other things that kind of lost their meaning..like:

4. Crafting: people don't really need anything from crafters anymore, anything they need will be either eventually dropped or it won't require crafting jobs (like ascended trinkets). It feels like it's needed only to you craft your firsts ascended armor or weapons. Eventually you get to a point where you won't even remember you leveled up all jobs.

5. Festivals: people see it as grind and bot time. Grind presents on wintersday bell activity or juming puzzles, grind ToT bags on the maze during halloween. The other events are just.. nevermind. No one really bothers with lunar event (log in, get envelopes, open, sell trash, log out) or festival of four winds (time to kill mats that don't sell during the whole year).

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-ingame calendar where special events are shown. Wether from the game itself or created by friends or Guild. (ex: Halloween, Christmas, Guild missions, music band meeting ect)

-more animated emotes (i know there is the /e but it doesn't really cut it.

-more fractals. Fractals are fun. They are enjoyable both from the gameplay and story aspect. It would be awesome to have 100 different fractal stories.

-more epic map wide meta events like in the HoT zones.

-Official GvG Tournaments with the possibility to spectate. (Actually think that GW2GvG Esports is a potentially quite lucrative opportunity. Esports are quite the rage at the moment and only getting more popular)

-more serious conflict with consequences between the characters in the story

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Here's my list of needed improvement. Individually some of them are pretty minor but they all add up:

Hero Panel/UIAdd a summary of each traitline in the hero panelSeparate equipment from wardrobe – give the latter its own tab in the main left-navRename Healing Power and Condition Damage (Spirit and Animus?) and revert profession attributes to flavor namesReorganize Mastery Lines around regions instead of expansionsGive Living World Season 2 & 3 proper titles in the Story Journal, like "Icebrood Saga"Add a section in the story journal for biographies of different NPCs you encounter

General GameplayGive Revenant a profession attributeStart adding profession-specific attributes to gear statsAdd a Hud for companions in story instances & ability for minor AI customizationRemove awkward two-person cutscenes from PSRe-add LW1. Can be done piecemeal through LW instead of one big release.Change the way balance occurs – patches should be more frequent and more macro in scopeLegendary gear is not very immersive or rewarding - should be more than cosmetic but less than power creep. Think horizontal expansion.Rebalance condition damage, shorten durations, and make resistance reduce cond damage by 50% instead of totally negating it.

Going forward – Living World & ExpansionsUse Living World for saga-style open world and story instance additionsUse Expansions for everything else – focus on large bundles with start-to-finish side stories, dungeons, new character options including races, classes, weapons, traits, and skills, masteries, pvp maps, and totally new features such as hero systems.

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Gameplay in GW2 is a little too straight-line, despite being more active. Don't stand in circles, do break bars, DPS past mechanics when possible.

I liked that in GW1, there was that element of identify your enemy's strategy and systematically dismantle it with counters and punishment (not that you had to, of course, but it certainly helped). Control in GW2 is broader and more generic, and thus has to be less accessible. Punishment as a DPS mechanic isn't very tactical or effective in PvE.

That's my feeling in general about GW2 -- things tend to be powerful and mostly limited by how much or how often you can use them, rather than being fairly freely accessible and limited by being situationally useful.

That said, since PvE is so solo-focused and you have fewer active skills selections versus GW1, handling it at the build level doesn't seem plausible anyway.

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  1. the lack of anything really "new" I mean E-specs are good and all, they help the game stay fresh but they are not "New" just additions to your class. (Which you can't mix, which sucks.) Classes, races, new armor skins and more diversity among the races we have.
  2. We have all these races for no reason, they litterally add nothing to the game outside of being playable. And even that seems mute as really the majority play humans because the other races aren't unique enough (Outside of maybe asuran and charr) to warrant being played. They need to be spiced up and given some cool nuance, cooler cosmetics and all around a make-over.
  3. Guild halls, guild content and Alliance battles as well all the types of content guild wars 1 had. We have no new dungeons, no new guild stuff, WvW isn't even being touched or worked on.
  4. WvW needs a ton of work, a complete resurgence. (It needs more nuance to it.)
  5. PvP was once the focus, that focus was abandoned and thus the mode as well. PvE open world maps only can hold one so long, once the acheivo's are done and the map completed along with all the cosmetics (That is if you like them) are collected they dwindle in pop.
  6. so few racial armors
  7. alot of the cosmetics are kinda... ugly, especially if you play a male char.
  8. The story ain't dark enough ( I reserve the rite to change that, based on the saga if it turns out the be good. Fingers crossed.)
  9. Underwater content being abandoned (Guild wars 2 made it feel fun and good... Plus I wana go tango with steve in the ocean.)
  10. The classes over- all don't have enough... err uniqueness about them anymore. Which really hurts when you're an alt-aholic who plays other toons to get a different perspective, only to find they all play relatively the same.

Bonus!!! : We need class armor that can be earned, that is a full set like the revenants and the revenant needs a few more weapons baseline and a channeled something or other for Invocation.

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@borgs.6103 said:

@"Aodlop.1907" said:• Bags, that contain bags, that contain more bags, that are full of worthless junk. Loot needs to me meaningful, I'd rather loot nothing than all the garbage I'm currently looting in this game right now.The community "asked" for this.

Not quite correct. The community did ask for less of a hassle regarding one's inventory, but instead of giving the loot system a complete overhaul (rewards are still kitten), they just crammed stuff into more layers of bags. GG.

Back on topic: Better writing (classy dialogue instead of a lowbrow or childish tone, for instance) and going back to selectable story paths (that made for great replayability in this "alt-friendly" game) as well as the return of the Personality system (do something meaningful with it!) would make GW2 great (or at least much better) for me. Also, bring back GW1 PvP.

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IMO, GW2 isn't great because it tries to be lots of things to everyone ... this creates divergent playerbase. If they would focus delivering content on the people that were initially attracted to the game for it's original philosophies, the playerbase would be more aligned and they could nail 'it' EVERY TIME. The better they focus, the more satisfied the players will be.

THEN it would be great. It's probably far to late to realign to that ideal.

Now, sure, that would likely result in a diminished playerbase ... but the business model isn't about how much players it has and how often they play like a sub is. It's about how satisfied the current players are.

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@perilisk.1874 said:Well, it's not like you can watch animations behind the giant wall of particle effects, and they don't put activating skills under the health bar, unlike GW1. How else would you be able to predict attacks?

Just make the bosses of group content bigger, and decrease flashy effects. Effect should not be scaled to boss size.There should not be any gamelike prediction indicator. TERA was good about it as action MMO.ArenaNet creators are doing good job with animation, but too much effects killing their job and our fun.

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The combat is too hard.

I'm serious. I've written about this in the past many times, but the short version is that the counter-intuitive build system and convoluted rotations make this game nigh unapproachable for an outside audience. This isn't just me complaining that I can't do benchmarks; it is a legitimate problem that afflicts this game to its core.

The average PVE player is bad at the game. They don't understand any of the mechanisms or expectations put onto them, so they really will run around the overworld in stuff like Staff Reaper healing builds and Warrior tank builds. Anets solution to this is what holds the game back from being great: make most of the overworld so easy that you don't need to know how anything works. When I say the combat is too hard, I don't mean the enemies are hard. I mean that the biggest obstacle to doing well in the game is the system itself.

It is really hard to make content that is thrilling and engaging if you design it for the lowest common denominator. You can't truly explore the mechanics of the game if most players don't know the mechanics. You can't have wondrous but dangerous areas because they would be impossible to traverse for the average player. You have to sequester away all of the difficult parts of the game, for fear that the average player would wander into them, die, and then complain about it. It doesn't help that Anet offers an instant-80 upgrades, which drop unknowning players into expansion content and wishes them the best of luck.

Making rotations easier will raise the skill floor of the game, improve skill globally, make more of the game more accessible to everyone, and also free up design restrictions for the developers.

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From most to least annoying:

  1. No roles in most of PVE.That's the biggest complaint for me. I'm glad they tried something new and all, but... "full dps berserker dungeons" and all people not cooperating but just spamming biggest dps abilities in most cases became old real fast.I'm one of the people who enjoys raids, t4 fractals, role-organised dungeon runs, jumping puzzles and Triple Trouble runs the most. Because it requires some skill and/or tactics to do. And you can play something else than just mind-blinding dps - big numbers do not speak to me.Maybe it's also because I always liked to play characters like healers, tanks, bards, crowd-controlers....

  2. DailiesFeels like im forced to log in every day and do stupid stuff. And not doing them is too big gold loss. I'm fine with them when event's are on, but come on...I prefer things I can do anytime. I prefer to play 10h at once and then not play for 4 days than playing 10 mins every day...

  3. Most of open world is too easy.I don't need super hard, but I'd like to be able to use more than 2-4 AA on most of the in-game monsters...

  4. No fun for (small) guildsGuild hall is expensive and super big - with ~8-10 guild members it feel like there is never anyone there.... Guild activies do not scale to guild size and are hardly if ever updated.

  5. Underwater combat - enough said...Nothing fun works underwater anyway. Happily there is not that much underwater content. At least it's pretty in there...

  6. I have very little to work for.I feel like there are no rewards in game. I liked doing achievement back in the day, but not.... collect 20 of stupid stuff you wouldn't find without a guide for 1 AP. Really?

  7. Story is kinda boring.I'll admit it -> it's better than it used to be! At least Hot and PoF were much better than personal story and LS2. No idea about s1 ... I love the animations and that it's all voice acted though!

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I want features like Player Housing so I can be creative and just make my own fun, especially when I get bored of WvW and PvE.

Would like more Meta Boss fights added to the standard meta train. The meta boss fights been the most underrated feature in this game.

Need better SPvP. I hate Small Scale Pvp in MMOS. IT'S impossible to balance. I want a 20 VS 20 mode and a 30 VS 30 mode.

WvW needs Meta Events and upgraded PvPvE elements to be more fun. Add more Dune Rollers and mobile sieges. Need smaller scale objectives for solo players when server is in dead time. Take some ideas here from Old AV in WoW. Because WvW is far from perfect right now. The Larger Scale Meta events should be used to give players a sense of a Winner/Loser. Right now WvW is like the show Whose Line Is It Anyway, in which we get meaningless points yet there is no winners or losers. Also make Reward Tracks actually better.

Add more Strike Missions. Turn every big LW boss fight into a Strike Mission version of the fights.

Add new Core Weapons to classes. Not just new Elite Specs. Give us new Core Weapons.

Add a chance at Black Lion Key drops to meta events.

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@"leila.7962" said:I played both games (GW1 and 2) for years.. I feel like since PoF release it felt less and less rewarding as time passes by for old players. Here are some examples:

1. Daily login rewards: they are always the same, every day and every month, ever since this system was released. I have really nothing special to look for by logging in every day in a row.. (stares at Bags of Luck days). Why not make it special at the end of every month with something people will actually look for? (wardrobe unlock, ascended armor or weapon box.. idk something to look forward after the 28 days that won't be meaningless.

2. Achievements: they surely feel like it's a chore nowadays. I loved doing them before, because some were hard to get, hard to ACHIEVE, in other words. A good portion of the achievements nowadays just ask you to do things repeatedly .. (like repeat meta events 43,987 times, kill 18,273 mobs). These are patience tests.. and after you do all that, you get like.. from 1 to 10 achievement points. Not to mention that achievement points do give you skins that are unique, but most people won't make it to have a full Radiant or Hellfire skin sets.. it takes too much time and they don't accept dyes (major feature of the cosmetic aspect of the game). In other words, why would people do achievements if it's not really rewarding? It's rare to see people on these skins even if they have one full set..

3. Birthday presents: every character gets the same thing.. imagine if all your sibilings got the same gift on their birthdays according to their age? I don't see people excited for their character birthdays like on GW1. For those that didn't play it, you would get a random mini that belonged to that specific birthday collection, some were nice some were just sad, and for old players, they could also get awesome tonics that could be used even in combat. They were always a surprise at least. It just doesn't feel like it's special to receive a character's 1st birthday gift on GW2, and even less exciting when you get to the 7th year (stares at the wardrobe unlock that is only given to the first character that reaches 7 years, all the other characters that reaches this far won't get the unlock).

There are other things that kind of lost their meaning..like:

4. Crafting: people don't really need anything from crafters anymore, anything they need will be either eventually dropped or it won't require crafting jobs (like ascended trinkets). It feels like it's needed only to you craft your firsts ascended armor or weapons. Eventually you get to a point where you won't even remember you leveled up all jobs.

5. Festivals: people see it as grind and bot time. Grind presents on wintersday bell activity or juming puzzles, grind ToT bags on the maze during halloween. The other events are just.. nevermind. No one really bothers with lunar event (log in, get envelopes, open, sell trash, log out) or festival of four winds (time to kill mats that don't sell during the whole year).

^^ Totally agree with all of that, and think that perfectly hits the nail on the head. As you nicely describe there is just too much mundaneness, chore-like stuff, expected and more expected things, and lack of any surprise or variation. My example for Daily Login reward could be something like every 7th consecutive login day they could add a "Mystery Box" with a randomised gift of one of either: i) 1 x BLC Key, ii) Metabolic primer, iii) Utility primer, iv) a randomised mini unlock, v) a randomised dye unlock (non-exclusive), vi) Lesser vision crystal, vii) Box of Obsidian shards, viii) novelty item such as tonic etc. - just anything to give a sense of variation from the current predictable, monotonous what we have now.

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It's impossible to make one big vast map, it would be too expensive for arenanet to handle and they would need to invest in a huge amount of servers to handle that many instances generated (not to mention how expensive those large maps are to upkeep). This design works in single-player games because there aren't hundreds of instances of the world like there would be on patch day / the days after, there's just one.

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@perilisk.1874 said:

@arielwind.8921 said:Floor mark combat like FF14.It's like saying 'Hey I'm gonna hit here, dodge' That's ridiculous.

Well, it's not like you can watch animations behind the giant wall of particle effects, and they don't put activating skills under the health bar, unlike GW1. How else would you be able to predict attacks?

It's also something of an industry standard for MMOs these days. In game design terms, it's conveyance.

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The largest thing holding GW2 back is probably the crafting and itemization systems. Which ties into drops/rewards.Most of the GW2 loot experience is "oh, I got another generic loot thing I can salvage for stuff that doesn't sell very well and I don't need for crafting." That's it. The literal 1-in-a-billion chance something meaningful drops, and it sells for 10k gold. There's very little in between.Unfortunately, there is no solution to this without a massive overhaul in gear, attributes, and the very core of the game's item database.

Encounter design is holding things back as well. It's not a matter of "too hard" or "too easy", and by the tank-blasted gods, I'm tired of hearing about it. Because that's not the main issue.The combat, while very fluid, isn't engaging as it could be. Animation/tells aren't really clear, enemies have abilities with little/no counterplay unless you build specifically for it (looking at you especially, Heart of Thorns), and the game often includes severe/annoying punishment for task failure instead of properly amplifying pressure. Add on that attributes/bonuses/buffs humongously multiply damage output (but don't do enough for bunker play), and you have players rushing to destroy things before they ever have to deal with mechanics in the first place.

And then, there's the dreaded Endgame.No, I don't mean raids. At least, not specifically. Nor do I necessarily mean the "I'm 80, now what?" question, though a clearer answer for first-time 80s would go a long way to helping the game.GW2 seems to lack things to do in terms of variety. What I can enumerate is:•Lackluster PvP•Lackluster Walk v Walk•Living World story (hit or miss every few months)•Raids (which you're not allowed into)•Fractals•Open world farming•Convoluted, material-heavy crafting...where's the minigames? Because let's not pretend 100g on Belcher's Bluff and the still-broken NPCs involved are worth it. Daily Activity has to be shoved into "PvE" to bribe folks to play it. It just feels anything beyond "Kill This Thing" just isn't there.

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