GW2 is good. What prevents it from being great?

[Dante.1508]

Its simple..

Its loot systems.Its over use of cash shop.Its currency systems.Its grind.Its lack of updates.Its forced Raids and Fractals to get items.Its over costed living stories..Its inane meta train focus.Its horrible balanceIts poor pvp centric game modesIts content being way to frustrating for the standard customer.Its customers on the forums..

They are some of the main issues this game never progressed compared to other mmorpgs. Yes Guildwars 2 is free to try.. And its a cheaper alternative but look what you get for that.. And honestly its not really cheaper over time.

[JTGuevara.9018]

pvp

/end...this....thread

[Xar.6279]

Gw2 needs more focus on pvp. As it was in the past.

[Dante.1508]

What makes this game good? Its fun in very short bursts but as mmorpgs go i'm not sure i'd consider it good?

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"Dante.1508" said:Its simple..

Its loot systems.Its over use of cash shop.Its currency systems.Its grind.Its lack of updates.Its forced Raids and Fractals to get items.Its over costed living stories..Its inane meta train focus.Its horrible balanceIts poor pvp centric game modesIts content being way to frustrating for the standard customer.Its customers on the forums..

They are some of the main issues this game never progressed compared to other mmorpgs. Yes Guildwars 2 is free to try.. And its a cheaper alternative but look what you get for that.. And honestly its not really cheaper over time.

As someone who's played this game a pretty good bit going all the way back to launch, this list is pretty damn accurate. I think they've over-focused on the LW concept and under-focused on pretty much everything else, so you have poorly designed systems and balance issues that have sat static for years while, on top of that, very few new features come in.

I'd also like to emphasize "its content being way too frustrating for the standard customer" <- I think this is a bigger deal than people realize. The story instances, for example, are often so punishing they aren't fun. Even as an experienced gamer who does not suck at this game, I throw my hands with "WTF" quite often when fighting story bosses. Most people I know that started playing the game at launch and left shortly after were put off by what a sloppy mess dungeon encounters were. Of course that was before all the power creep we have now making them kind of a breeze.

[Dante.1508]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Dante.1508" said:Its simple..

Its loot systems.Its over use of cash shop.Its currency systems.Its grind.Its lack of updates.Its forced Raids and Fractals to get items.Its over costed living stories..Its inane meta train focus.Its horrible balanceIts poor pvp centric game modesIts content being way to frustrating for the standard customer.Its customers on the forums..

They are some of the main issues this game never progressed compared to other mmorpgs. Yes Guildwars 2 is free to try.. And its a cheaper alternative but look what you get for that.. And honestly its not really cheaper over time.

As someone who's played this game a pretty good bit going all the way back to launch, this list is pretty kitten accurate. I think they've over-focused on the LW concept and under-focused on pretty much everything else, so you have poorly designed systems and balance issues that have sat static for years while, on top of that, very few new features come in.

I'd also like to emphasize "its content being way too frustrating for the standard customer" <- I think this is a bigger deal than people realize. The story instances, for example, are often so punishing they aren't fun. Even as an experienced gamer who does not suck at this game, I throw my hands with "kitten" quite often when fighting story bosses.

On and off i've played since launch myself, the games fun on the surface but the above is why this game never took off like "others" did.

And yes the bar has become insane.. mostly conditions on enemies have made the game into a die rinse repeat fiasco.

[Assassin X.8573]

At first I wanted to say the devs. But it's not the devs from keeping it great. It is the management and the monetization focus instead of content focus.

[Jimbru.6014]

GW2 is good, what keeps it from being great?

Too many people complaining about the stuff they're given for free.

No, I'm not kidding. The kind of game most of you in this thread are describing already exists, and is not GW2. So go to those games and leave the majority of us who enjoy the casual environment of GW2 alone already.

On a particular note, people complaining about the gem store in this game need to go spend a few months or years in the Perfect World games -- Neverwinter, STO et al. You haven't seen anything yet.

• In GW2, the gem store is about 75% cosmetic and 25% convenient gadgets; there is nothing in the gem store you actually NEED. The PW games hide stuff you NEED in loot boxes, P2W meta gear type stuff, with only a 1 in 100 NON-cumulative chance of getting what you want from any particular box.
• In GW2, you do your three dailies in whatever mode you prefer and clean out your home instance, and that's your daily stuff done in under an hour and you're on to having fun. The PW games effectively demand that you spend hours every day grinding currency on as many characters as you can manage. They're literally a second job that you are paying to do.

Now don't get me wrong: GW2 has flaws. Plenty of flaws. Some serious technical flaws even, like auto-target selecting every mob in the zone EXCEPT the one standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. But GW2 is still a far better game than 90% of the other options out there. Some of you need to go spend more time in other games so you can understand what a BAD game really is before you come here complaining in threads like this.

Good kitten day.

[Substance E.4852]

GW2 is good. What prevents it from being great?

The same thing that makes it good

ArenaNet

[Thornwolf.9721]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:GW2 is good, what keeps it from being great?

Too many people complaining about the stuff they're given for free.

No, I'm not kidding. The kind of game most of you in this thread are describing already exists, and is not GW2. So go to those games and leave the majority of us who enjoy the casual environment of GW2 alone already.

On a particular note, people complaining about the gem store in this game need to go spend a few months or years in the Perfect World games -- Neverwinter, STO et al. You haven't seen anything yet.

• In GW2, the gem store is about 75% cosmetic and 25% convenient gadgets; there is nothing in the gem store you actually NEED. The PW games hide stuff you NEED in loot boxes, P2W meta gear type stuff, with only a 1 in 100 NON-cumulative chance of getting what you want from any particular box.
• In GW2, you do your three dailies in whatever mode you prefer and clean out your home instance, and that's your daily stuff done in under an hour and you're on to having fun. The PW games effectively demand that you spend hours every day grinding currency on as many characters as you can manage. They're literally a second job that you are paying to do.

Now don't get me wrong: GW2 has flaws. Plenty of flaws. Some serious technical flaws even, like auto-target selecting every mob in the zone EXCEPT the one standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. But GW2 is still a far better game than 90% of the other options out there. Some of you need to go spend more time in other games so you can understand what a BAD game really is before you come here complaining in threads like this.

Good kitten day.

So as someone who has played every mmo-rpg outside of final fantasy and maybe some of the more "Chibi" or Wee-a-boo games I can say that you're fundamentally partially right and partially wrong. You're correct that people complain A LOT MORE here than anywhere else but lets perhaps turn the table on that, why are they complaining? The gemstore has become part of the fire when it comes to the ire of customers because content is lacking lets be real, the WvW fix (Alliances) has been teased for two years which the BLATANTLY lied about and have turned around and said, once swiss is done we will work on it. (They had said prior it had been worked on.)

Im some what of the customer A-net loves to hate, I praise them when they do good and I scold them when they do bad. So far they have given us no hope for the future of the game once so ever, they have doubled down on raids even trying to make "Strikes" the "Tutor" to raiding to enforce this idea that raiding will ever be the end game (It won't.) They made tons of promises going all the way back to launch and many of them have never been fulfilled, less of them are allowed to be talked about if you don't want to be banned or worse yet flamed for daring the bring it up. (Abaddon fractal anyone? They did say it would come at a later date down the line, that date STILL has never happened.) Balance is in tatters, we have nothing new outside of more story on the horizon and its debatable if it will be good or bad and worse yet they still haven't given the norn love. We are so limited on cosmetics (Character customization unless on a human pc) that its laughable, and while we are at it I want to throw this in here as a "lmfao" moment. The "Casual" nature of guild wars 2? This game is NOT casual friendly in the least, not if you're really playing it to get anywhere or see ALL the content and not if you want to be viable and not hold people back.

You want casual? Even WoW these days does better allowing for casual gaming, ESO is a prime example where I spend little to no time doing things and yet Im far along. I don't play it often but I make huge strides when I do and the game is a million times more balanced than this one. It has better story content, better boss encounters and has better overall endgame coverage across all its modes. (It adds whole new classes that can be mixed with external skill lines you can EARN.) So what pray tell do you mean by casual element? I have to devote far more time to guild wars 2 than any other game if I want to get anywhere, and the lack of a trinity and role system makes it tedious at best to complete their tasks day in and day out. THERE IS NOTHING CASUAL ABOUT THIS GAME, merely the illusion that there is a casual nature which the game was sold around in 2012 that no longer is applicable here.

! 1. The game is not rewarding, relying to heavily on RNG (Take the new charr helm for example.)! 2. Partical effects do not make a good game! 3. Raids are painfully basic, and punishing because it goes against the core foundations of the game and the community that foundation has created.! 4. People like you screaming "Just leave" are part of the problem. We complain because LOVE this game and we want it to do good, if we didn't we would just leave and then this game would be even less full than it is. (Populations have been in steady decline.)! 5. The Idea that we can go with nothing new, Is ludicrous at best and this saga will make or break this game. We need E-specs, or something a kin to them to build hype and we need more than a world boss, some maps and some acheivo's to collect. We need more customization for the other races and we need more nuance to the gameplay.! 6. WvW and PvP should not be abandoned and left to rot, considering the combat engine was DESIGNED with competitive play in mind NOT raids. Why else would you add dodging, and fast combat if not to use it where it shines? That my friend is in a PvP or RvR setting not a damage sponge in the middle of a room.! 7. No class should be un-viable or unwanted and we need that to be fixed.! 8. We need the trinity, nuff said.! 9. We need to come together as a community and stop bickering, and start realizing we are on the same side regardless of our own interests.! 10. We need A-net to listen to us.

Im probably gonna get banned from the forums despite this not meaning to be rude, because this is a safe-space and the slightest hint of aggression will be quashed because freedom of speech is something no one respects now a days. But This is the truth and we fight about all of the above like we don't all want the same thing, which is for this game to grow and be better. No one game-mode should be left to rot and be left to feel like we are unwanted, or unloved by the people who created the part of the game and we shouldn't and never should of landed where we are now. Im not trying to come at you specifically, but I will say that this game is not the casual friendly safe haven you think it is. It might be in some areas and it might be if you don't care about doing any of the actual end-game or actually get anywhere beyond just over-world pve content and story. But this game has so many more facets and communities within it than just that and the ignore that and demand they "Just leave" is almost ignorant and downright rude. So yea I might get banned for this but you know what, who cares anymore its not like we are listened too and its not like feedback regardless of whatever it is matters.

Take a step back and maybe realize this isn't only about you? People have tons of reasons to be upset, and one of them and I think the major factor here is the broken promises that constantly continue to be dug into and dug up. Constantly being reminded that this game has so much potential and yet it squanders it for a skits release cadence with content that is geared toward people outside of the MAJORITY who play the full game. If you think the majority of the game are "casuals" or stereotypical casuals then you're wrong. The majority play the whole game and every facet of it, albeit not as much in some areas but they play the whole game and dabble but even someone not as active as say a pure WvW or raider can see the glaring issues facing us down. Which is 100% the reason why so many complaints are surfacing, both here and even on reddit. Its concern for a game we love, not malicious intent.

[XenoSpyro.1780]

@Jimbru.6014 said:So go to those gamesKeep parroting this. I hope you like low playercounts.

[Acheron.4731]

@Assassin X.8573 said:At first I wanted to say the devs. But it's not the devs from keeping it great. It is the management and the monetization focus instead of content focus.

I agree with that. But I just don't think they have the talent they use to. Most contributors to the early game seem to be gone.The game today vs the game 3-4 years ago is just day and night to me.

[Zoltar MacRoth.7146]

This is an interesting question. My take is that it's also a highly subjective one, so I'm going to give you my subjective opinion and I'm only going to give one annoyance of GW2 that keeps it from being great for me:

The lag in Australia is slight and insignificant... except when it comes to mini-games that require fast and accurate responses, like the adventures like in HOT.

The actions in Fungus Among Us or Sanctum Sprint don't trigger as fast as they appear to do in the videos I've seen of others doing the course. You can press a button and, intermittently, sit there for a second or two until it fires. It makes achieving gold very difficult and frustrating because no matter how much time you put in, no matter how much you train your skills the game doesn't respond fast enough.

But I keep trying. And will keep trying until, one day willing, I get those last golds. Then I'll never play the HOT adventures again. Maybe then the game will seem great to me.

[michelada.2947]

Content, anet can add 100 more maps to the game, but with nothing to do on them after a month you can realize that the game lacks a lot of meaningful content, also support por repetitive content like pvp and wvw, just take a look at league of legends, people playing almost the same map for over 10 year.

[Shard.4791]

Money (= content). Vision. QoL.

[SeikeNz.3526]

objectives at end game, of course there's a lot of achiv and things to do, but you have to ask yourself all that for what? since the game can be finished with exotic? so the real end game is WvW but WvW is the worst mode since it lack more objectives and it's boring as hell and im a loving pvp person, then you have raids but to do raids you need to have a guild or a premade party and that kill more the end game, they should add a easier pug for raids

[yusayu.3629]

The game just doesn't know what it wants to be.

Playing Classic WoW atm, GW2 is absolutely not about immersion like WoW classic is (you can't just teleport everywhere, traveling takes time, no loading screens etc.), on the other hand it's not really a sandbox game either - there are too few choices in character development and you can't really build anything. But it's also not a PvP-focused MMO with the horrendous visual clutter and the one shitty PvP gamemode, though it's also not a grinder - there's nothing to really grind for.

It's kind of a mix of everything - it lacks vertical progression for the grinders, doesn't have difficult raids for the raiders, the storynuts will find the story pretty bland and PvP has massive issues for the PvP-fanatics.

Dunno, game just doesn't quite know what it wants to be. But it's probably too late to fix that. Still played it for 6k hours, so it must be doing something right.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

With such an action oriented combat system, not focusing on content that compliments that is a very bad thing. Honestly, living world has taken this game in the complete wrong direction. If the focus was always on skillful and rewarding combat, the game would probably have done a lot better. Instead we have this nonsense of story mission content with special action key gimmicks that actually take away from the combat experience. Mounts and masteries became a huge endgame focus, and do almost nothing to compliment combat. The power crept elite specs and boons trivialize open world content, and make it so what little new instanced content we get is just a spamming mess. Lastly, pvp and wvw were completely abandoned early on, despite having incredible potential. Anet messed a lot of things up early on, and never fixed them.

[Ashantara.8731]

@yusayu.3629 said:It's kind of a mix of everything - it lacks vertical progression for the grinders, doesn't have difficult raids for the raiders, the storynuts will find the story pretty bland and PvP has massive issues for the PvP-fanatics.

Accurate observation.

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:With such an action oriented combat system, not focusing on content that compliments that is a very bad thing. Honestly, living world has taken this game in the complete wrong direction. If the focus was always on skillful and rewarding combat, the game would probably have done a lot better. Instead we have this nonsense of story mission content with special action key gimmicks that actually take away from the combat experience. Mounts and masteries became a huge endgame focus, and do almost nothing to compliment combat. The power crept elite specs and boons trivialize open world content, and make it so what little new instanced content we get is just a spamming mess. Lastly, pvp and wvw were completely abandoned early on, despite having incredible potential. Anet messed a lot of things up early on, and never fixed them.

I agree that it would be a much better game had it been more like GW1, which was merely combat oriented (yet still managed to deliver better stories at the same time than GW2 has).

@yusayu.3629 said:Dunno, game just doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

This. :+1:

[Operator.2590]

At this point--and it goes for most MMO's these days, not just GW2--the main inhibitor is just the company itself. It's a good game--and could be great, if ArenaNet would get out of its own way.

[Antycypator.9874]

1. Everything that is "common loot", which can be looted from almost every mob, is worthless. Because of economy. Only rare and needful items are worth something. I think there are too much trash items (like literally trash, stones, broken lockpicks). I don't know what's the point of looting bags from other bags, but I think these unidentified gear bags are much better that looting coats and sword. At least I can sell whole stacks of items.

2. Bosses, lack of mechanics, boring fights. Guild Wars 2 has awesome combat system. This is why I still play this game, but some bosses (especialy World Bosses) don't have any potential; no challenging, poor mechanics. World Boss should be something more than just "huge DPS golem that requires X players to kill". There is e.g. Shadow Behemoth — huge shadow thing that looks very dangerous... and in reality all it can do is screaming at people and summon some portals.I like how they created Tequatl, Claw or Jormag and The Shatterer.

3. Abandoned content. Or I should say "not populated anymore" content, like PoF maps. Noone's doing events on map, no matter if it's HoT, PoF or Central Tyria. People are coming to the map only because of meta or daily "complete 4 events in X map". Why? I think it's all about meaningless rewards. PoF metas are popular now, you can get Amalgamated Gemstones from them.

4. Power creep.

[Conncept.7638]

Wow our playerbase is shallow, cosmetics and better loot? Really?

How about:

A Dodge Revamp - Dodge is a shallow and binary "catch-all" mechanic that nullifies and blanches content, limits the design of future content, and makes 2/3rds of the games build and stat system worthless in most content. It should be reworked into a "defense" skillslot similar to the heal skill slot to give build variety and clear strengths and weaknesses to each classes' defensive capabilities, and scale off existing or new defense stats to bring the whole of the stat and build system back into common play.

Upgrades/redesigns of base class mechanics - The base classes fell by the wayside with the introduction of specializations, they have to be updated. I want new elite specs as much as anyone, but at this point asking for more elite specs is akin to asking that more and more floors be built on an old and crumbling foundation.

Base game open world revamp - Scaling needs to be fixed in the base game to make the original idea of "every area is endgame" a reality. AI also needs to be fixed with the same goal in mind, too much of the games AI is just one attack on a cooldown, enemies should be more similar to those we find in the expansions, with clear strenghts and weaknesses and attack patterns players can learn and play around. Nothing would add more life to the game than being able go anywhere and do anything and still feel challenged and heroic.

Probably more to come as I think of them, expect this post to be edited.

[Deadric.1427]

To me its the constant nerfs. Sure some are needed but for the most part I dont think its any secret that most nerfs in this game are done solely to silence the complainers that spend more time in the forums than they do in game. PvE does not need to be perfectly balanced so stop trying (and failing miserably)! PvP I understand but for gods sake leave PvE builds alone for a while. It'd be different if the changes they make made sense but at this point Im convinced the people making the changes have never touched the game in their life.

[Drunkendx.3084]

What prevents it from being great?

Way too much content that screams it was designed by a trolls.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"Aodlop.1907" said:• 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?

For me it's that last one in particular, and what it indicates. GW2 is a good game. Why isn't it a great game? Because it doesn't see enough development support. PvP having only one game mode after all this time apparently because they can't even manage to balance that properly is just one of the more obvious illustrations of the problem. WvW suffers from the same problem and has for years.

Another major sign is the move away from developing expansions. They say that expansion-level features are still on the table, but that announcement was conspicuous in its lack of any indication that any such features are actually in the process of development. Maybe once they finish another story episode they'll think about working on something like that, huh?

It's not enough for me. They need to deliver more than just story episodes.