Jump to content
  • Sign Up

WP - Guild Wars 2's Biggest Problems (As I See Them)


otto.5684

Recommended Posts

Wooden Potatoes have a really interesting video regarding biggest problems in GW2, which has some interesting points. I wanted to open a discussion on the forums regarding some of these points. Good way to open dialogue and provide feedback to devs.

To summarize points by WP:

  1. Lack of meaningful character progression. This covers gear progression, achievements and mastaries.
  2. Cosmetics, not enough of.
  3. Difficulty.
  4. LW. Achievement. Expanding on maps.
  5. Gem store.
  6. Co-operative game play.
  7. PvP.
  8. Fear for the game direction.

I would recommend watching the video.

I will focus mostly on PvE, as the video did. It also is the back bone of the game.One of the main things I liked about GW2 is the gearing system. Relatively easy to get into. And ever lasting. I detest games with increased leveling systems and ever changing gear and power creep. This is an advantage that GW2. Unfortunately, this is where also Anet kinda been falling behind lately, and in my opinion, is the major issue the game has been facing in last few years; lack of diversity.Devs added mastaries to create a horizontal progression, with HoT. Conceptually, I think this is a great idea. Gliding is surely one of the best features introduced to the game. The remaining HoT mastaries have the issue of being too localized. An issue that the devs made again with Ice Brood. Dunno why, since it was a heavily criticized area. At least in HoT the mastaries were purposeful. To me, they feel more like when a LW episode is released, someone at Anet checked a box that there is a new mastery, even though it has no game play value.Additionally, we could use more gear options. There is no condi dps gear with concentration. How about a new stat or two. We could have a gear that speed up actions, similar to alacrity in SWTOR if anyone played that game, less the CD reduction, which could be another possibility. These could alter the game play experience in various ways. Or any other stats ideas to change the game play around and add more options.I understand why there is no new elites, but why are there no attempts to add options in open world PvE? How about opening elites weapons to core (open world PvE only), or cross class, since the weapons, skills and animations already exist (again, open world only). Balanced or not? Who cares, if it is locked to open world PvE.

Do not have much to say about cosmetics, except we need more. Much much more. I rarely buy anything from the gem store. And I do have both in game resources and real world money to do so. But I do not do either. I already have most of the cosmetics that matter (to me at least), and not much is added.

Difficulty is a complicated topic, especially for someone with my in game experience. I run circles around most players in sPvP. The poor NPCs do not stand a chance. The issue though, GW2 plays more like an action RPG, and requires fast reflexes. I think best design is to make content hard and yet accessible. This never worked well for GW2. Content is relatively easy. When devs try to make it hard, they tend to do it very poorly. I think devs tried to make the new map somewhat harder. Will see how this pans out.

LW and story content. It is a hit and miss. Some maps/story are good, others are not, however, we are surely on a downward slope since PoF release. It seems Anet has been taking a corrective action with the new maps. But, they are lacking... not sure what exactly. "Immersion?" They do not draw me in the way older content does.

I kinda covered gem store. Lack of co-operative play, not sure what the issue specifcally is, GW2 never felt like a social game for me, like other MMOs. PvP.... so many issues. Quick run in sPvP issue (IMO):1. Lack of build diversity.2. Occasional major fallout in balance.3. Slow response from devs.I do not WvW.

As for Anet handling negativity lately, this is mean and aggressive, but honest. Anet marketing team is incompetent. Not getting so much into detail, a combo of poor communication, vagueness, building hype and failing to deliver and inability to garner player interest.

I want to add one more factor here, fatigue. I think this hits LW the most. See, the content may wear a different skin, but for the most part, I have seen it before. This has been my impression of LWS4 and 5 so far. I played this before. This is an issue all old games have to deal with. Anet is doing close to nothing on this front. How is Bjora Marches different, game play wise, than most LWS4 or LWS3? There was  a major change in game play between core and HoT. Then HoT and LWS3. Ever since, it has been mostly the same. I dunno what could change here, but nothing have.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for PvE difficulty, the reason this happens is because ArenaNet doesn't seem to know any balancing strategy other than "eat hot chip and die", meaning every encounter is either of no concern to you, or you die in one hit on almost every attack even on tanky builds.

This was intentional to allow for active defenses to be effective, but the problem is it doesn't actually put pressure on players. Challenging group fights can be reduced entirely to, either hit your V key at the right time, or time a block, or use Blind, etc. And that seems more skill-based on paper, but in reality the 100% success rates of the active defenses in this game means that it becomes almost braindead.

One hit KO? Dodge, evade, block, Blind!Lost all your health? Hit your heal skill, and have it all back again.Mistimed and got downed? Get right back up.Couldn't get up? Waypoint, easy peasy.

People have always argued that active defenses equals skill, but in reality, it usually translates into "click to win". When you take the RPG out of it, you also take the overarching strategy out of it, and make every encounter purely tactical. But I don't expect anyone to understand this, because of the trend of action games in the last decade, people can't distinguish between strategy and tactics.

You do have some strategy in raids, T4 Fractals, and in WvW, but that's it. Even PvP is mostly tactical combat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  1. Lack of meaningful character progression. This covers gear progression, achievements and mastaries.
  2. Cosmetics, not enough of.
  3. Difficulty.
  4. LW. Achievement. Expanding on maps.
  5. Gem store.
  6. Co-operative game play.
  7. PvP.
  8. Fear for the game direction.

Haven't the freedom to watch the video but going by his complaints in the past;

  1. If meaningful is another way to say, "I don't need this to play" I agree. But that stuff, like the skyscale, griffon, fashion wars, achievements are there for the skritts in the player base. But if meaningful is a complaint about how pointless the raven masteries currently are... Well, I've adopted a wait and see attitude towards them but they do seem like Bloodstone Fen all over again.
  2. I agree.
  3. The number of players I rez in Core daily suggests "too easy" is mostly a problem for the hardcore / best geared/ most experienced players. Since Anet has placed their eggs in the casuals basket (churn makes money) the only thing they can do for the more serious players is try to add a difficulty option for the instances.
  4. No idea on what the commentary on it is but they do need to do more with current maps.
  5. All convenience and cosmetic. The way it should be. That includes template slots, though they did shit the bed on implementing that one.
  6. Dungeons? They should be rolled into the personal story like Arah was. Raids? Shouldn't have been added in the first place. Bonus rewards for grouping up? Great idea. Adding a way to stop leeches? Make it so.
  7. The best thing for everyone would be to separate it from the PvE side of the game. Balance to one fucks up the balance of the other. No one is happy.
  8. Ehn. Vote with your login.

ETA- There are far too many way points

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Linken.6345" said:And here I was thinking this was a post about how wp=waypoints was the big evil problem.

About the alacrity like in swtor, you do know that revenant renegade spec and mesmer chronomancer got a boon called alacrity that do exactly that right?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Alacrity

I am aware. I am angling more for the cast speed. Like a mini quickness. Same concept as more power increases your damage, more what ever the stat would be called would increase you action speed.

And these were quick suggestions. Not well thought of concepts. Point is we need new stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the only thing I agree with him on is the lack of communication from ANet and the layoffs killing the game. Most of his other points really only apply to a small number of both active players and potential players. His incorrectness stems from looking at the game from the high-end down. But, this game is a game for normal people to play, not min-maxers or extreme gamers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Long story short, he makes good points. Especially about fearing for the direction of the game. I'm not sure how I would feel right now if I were a "content creator" playing a game that feels like it's been abandoned.

Sure, we've had some quality of life improvements with the ui recently, and an upcoming balance patch, but aside from that it feels like it's only intention at this point is to be some quick story progression every few months, with festivals being added into make the game to spread out the story injections more. It feels like the same type of content we got last season, but it's now been drastically reduced. They clearly have another project going, which is fine, but it feels like the majority of resources and focus have been shifted yet again entirely to that project. If it fails like the others, what happens to the studio this time? I don't think it will just be layoffs. Not to mention reddit seemingly has a new post once a month about another developer leaving, which, yes, is normal and generally meant to inspire a particular impression of the game's direction, but still doesn't look promising.

One point he didn't mention though is Systems abandonment.

At this point, dungeons and guild systems have been abandoned. Guild missions could be updated to include current content, with more rewards added. Dungeons could have more cosmetic rewards added as incentive, even if they don't touch the way the dungeons are actually played.

Fractals and raids - both seemingly scrapped in favor of strike missions - which also seem to replace the bounty system that we had last season and during pof. If they consider strike missions as expansion level content, we're getting raids which were brought with Heart of Thorns, and bounties which were brought with Pof - but in a lesser form with 1-3 bosses. So, is it really expansion level if it's just a minimized and more resource friendly version of previous expansion features?

We have Guild Halls and things like Sun's Refuge, which get completely abandoned outside of Guild Halls getting maybe 1 or 2 purchasable decorations with new maps or festivals. And with new maps they just sell the decoration outright (which I support), but probably because of the amount of effort it takes adding a craftable decoration to the mess that is the scribe system that they abandoned and decided it wasn't worth investing in to redo.

We have masteries, like gliding skills or kodan's torch? - Obviously kodan's torch was a bit unnecessary to begin with and I'm not entirely sure it was a mastery, but it was still a system that they spent a lot of time developing only for it to fade away. Turrets in Kourna - something else that probably took quite a bit of time coding and testing - not that fun to begin with and scrapped anyway.

It feels like they design so many of these systems and spend so much time or resources developing them with no long-term thought in mind. They alter them occasionally and add them back in, like they did with phasing in Sun's Refuge and Guild halls to an extent, or bounties and raid/fractal bosses to Strike missions. But it ultimately feels like they're just creating more work for themselves, and often for very little payoff which leads to them being scrapped all together. I know they're a lot of work, and the people behind them are probably incredibly passionate about them so I know it's disappointing when they aren't well-received. But some of these systems/additions I look at as a player and just think, "Why did they bother?"

I guess that really boils down to other issues with their implementation though - such as with these new masteries being a pain to accumulate and not being THAT noticeable to gameplay. Or the turrets in Kourna being irrelevant outside of achievement points I guess? Or Sun's Refuge having little point outside of achievements and very short-term story integration. They may be cool, but they're just not relevant long-term or impactful in more than one specific part of one specific game-mode.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To that note I would like to say that it is possible to go TOO FAR with systems. WoW at this point is just the systems-driven machine that pumps out the same generic content repeatedly because they have systems in place that make the game feel like a grind-infested conveyor belt.

And that's kind of what it feels like this game is becoming. A conveyor belt of festivals and story with a few random balance patches or q.o.l. improvements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"cptaylor.2670" said:To that note I would like to say that it is possible to go TOO FAR with systems. WoW at this point is just the systems-driven machine that pumps out the same generic content repeatedly because they have systems in place that make the game feel like a grind-infested conveyor belt.

And that's kind of what it feels like this game is becoming. A conveyor belt of festivals and story with a few random balance patches or q.o.l. improvements.

I dunno about WoW, but the game lately feels... repetitive. Everything is a derivative of something else in the game. It was not always the case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"otto.5684" said:I think devs tried to make the new map somewhat harder. Will see how this pans out.

Wait what? Which new map is "somewhat harder", ever since the Isnooze Saga started, the maps have been a cakewalk comparable in difficulty to core tyria maps, and those are used for leveling! Unless you are talking about the upcoming map, but that won't be a new map, it's an expansion of Bjora Marches. I think what you meant to say is "I think devs tried to make the new map considerably easier"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"cptaylor.2670" said:It feels like they design so many of these systems and spend so much time or resources developing them with no long-term thought in mind.

This is easy to answer and the core of the issue comes from the way they monetize living world episodes. The Kodan Torch or the Kourna turrets were first used in Bitterfrost and Kourna respectively, if they were used in other maps, they'd feel out of place. Sun's Refugee is tied to Jahai Bluffs, allowing access to it in future episodes would create problems with those that do not have Jahai Bluffs unlocked. Take the latest Raven mastery, you need to unlock it for the story itself, if you just got it outside of it, it would feel out of place. Overall, with the way they sell the episodes and require you to be online to unlock, they limit their creativity and ability to re-use their systems, systems that probably take quite a bit of work/effort to develop.

Then they make Heart of Thorns free with the purchase of Path of Fire, while still not addressing the episode problem. IF everyone had access to every episode, without any need to unlock it, they could re-use all the mastery abilities and make a more cohesive gameplay experience. Require you to go to Bitterfrost to unlock Kodan's Torch, so you can use it in a future episode. And not the lame introduction of old masteries in Dragonfall, but integrated to the story. But they can't due to how badly the game is structured.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hard yet accessible content in regards to pvp altho a good dream is just that, a dream.

Its far more efficient and easier 5o simply ceeate diff bits of content that each cater to diff groups than trying to please everyone with subpar results.

In the case of raids imo, we need 2 difficulty modes, 1 easy mdoe fpr everyone to play and bw able to experience and 1 much much harder for those that want a challenge and something memorable. Trying to get ppl to try smth they might not like simply wont work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like most things WP says, he is half correct on a lot of things.

One thing that is absolutely right on the money is the difficulty and dev focus on living world. Tons of developer time is being spent on a game mode that is largely far too easy for any experienced player to enjoy. I am in the boat of seasoned players who just don't bother with living world because of how disgustingly easy it is if you understand your class. It's not fun when I can just walk through hordes of enemies and they just instantly seem to die without putting up any fight whatsoever.

However, the problem is a MMORPG kind of does need at least one mode that is easy in order to let the casuals have their casual play-pen. It's easy for us "good" players to take a massive dump on casuals and call them bad and create massive sweeping discussions on how casuals are ruining everything by being "bad". But the truth IMO is not the casuals but the excessive casual-pandering. Anet needs to split their time more evenly for the game modes that veterans play. sPvP, WvW, Fractals, Raids. Those four things are our endgame content and perhaps all that really needs to be done here is Anet should divert 50% of the resources they currently have dumped into LW and distribute those resources to more "hardcore" content. More game devs need to accept the fact that casual pandering is short term gain for long term loss ( BOLDED FOR F***ING EMPHASIS ), due to the fact that todays casual player is often tomorrows hardcore player. So if all you do is casual pander what happens to your game is those casuals grow up, become better players, and get bored due to lack of challenge since dev resources were short sightedly over-allocated into casual content. The result is people just flat out leave/uninstall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"cptaylor.2670" said:Long story short, he makes good points. Especially about fearing for the direction of the game. I'm not sure how I would feel right now if I were a "content creator" playing a game that feels like it's been abandoned.

Sure, we've had some quality of life improvements with the ui recently, and an upcoming balance patch, but aside from that it feels like it's only intention at this point is to be some quick story progression every few months, with festivals being added into make the game to spread out the story injections more. It feels like the same type of content we got last season, but it's now been drastically reduced. They clearly have another project going, which is fine, but it feels like the majority of resources and focus have been shifted yet again entirely to that project. If it fails like the others, what happens to the studio this time? I don't think it will just be layoffs. Not to mention reddit seemingly has a new post once a month about another developer leaving, which, yes, is normal and generally meant to inspire a particular impression of the game's direction, but still doesn't look promising.

One point he didn't mention though is Systems abandonment.

At this point, dungeons and guild systems have been abandoned. Guild missions could be updated to include current content, with more rewards added. Dungeons could have more cosmetic rewards added as incentive, even if they don't touch the way the dungeons are actually played.

Fractals and raids - both seemingly scrapped in favor of strike missions - which also seem to replace the bounty system that we had last season and during pof. If they consider strike missions as expansion level content, we're getting raids which were brought with Heart of Thorns, and bounties which were brought with Pof - but in a lesser form with 1-3 bosses. So, is it really expansion level if it's just a minimized and more resource friendly version of previous expansion features?

We have Guild Halls and things like Sun's Refuge, which get completely abandoned outside of Guild Halls getting maybe 1 or 2 purchasable decorations with new maps or festivals. And with new maps they just sell the decoration outright (which I support), but probably because of the amount of effort it takes adding a craftable decoration to the mess that is the scribe system that they abandoned and decided it wasn't worth investing in to redo.

We have masteries, like gliding skills or kodan's torch? - Obviously kodan's torch was a bit unnecessary to begin with and I'm not entirely sure it was a mastery, but it was still a system that they spent a lot of time developing only for it to fade away. Turrets in Kourna - something else that probably took quite a bit of time coding and testing - not that fun to begin with and scrapped anyway.

It feels like they design so many of these systems and spend so much time or resources developing them with no long-term thought in mind. They alter them occasionally and add them back in, like they did with phasing in Sun's Refuge and Guild halls to an extent, or bounties and raid/fractal bosses to Strike missions. But it ultimately feels like they're just creating more work for themselves, and often for very little payoff which leads to them being scrapped all together. I know they're a lot of work, and the people behind them are probably incredibly passionate about them so I know it's disappointing when they aren't well-received. But some of these systems/additions I look at as a player and just think, "Why did they bother?"

I guess that really boils down to other issues with their implementation though - such as with these new masteries being a pain to accumulate and not being THAT noticeable to gameplay. Or the turrets in Kourna being irrelevant outside of achievement points I guess? Or Sun's Refuge having little point outside of achievements and very short-term story integration. They may be cool, but they're just not relevant long-term or impactful in more than one specific part of one specific game-mode.

I still can't believe that the turret system isn't usable in all season 4 maps at least. That system made me invest! I wanted the turrets so bad and I got it done. I knew it was likely to be for that map only but I was hopeful anyway. That was the last time I ever completed something in this game with any hope of it continuing past the one episode. Now I go in with the much healthier attitude that anything I do in this living story map stays in this living story map.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Hannelore.8153" said:As for PvE difficulty, the reason this happens is because ArenaNet doesn't seem to know any balancing strategy other than "eat hot chip and die", meaning every encounter is either of no concern to you, or you die in one hit on almost every attack even on tanky builds.So much this. The added issue for the more tanky builds is that aggro is built on Toughness rating which gives you more attention than you need.This was intentional to allow for active defenses to be effective, but the problem is it doesn't actually put pressure on players. Challenging group fights can be reduced entirely to, either hit your V key at the right time, or time a block, or use Blind, etc. And that seems more skill-based on paper, but in reality the 100% success rates of the active defenses in this game means that it becomes almost braindead.Agreed 100%One hit KO? Dodge, evade, block, Blind!Lost all your health? Hit your heal skill, and have it all back again.Mistimed and got downed? Get right back up.Couldn't get up? Waypoint, easy peasy.Yup, I remember a boss in one of the dungeons where I could find a spot with my mesmer, put the Great Sword on auto-attack and lean back. I never got hit and my DPS was never interrupted. GG.People have always argued that active defenses equals skill, but in reality, it usually translates into "click to win". When you take the RPG out of it, you also take the overarching strategy out of it, and make every encounter purely tactical. But I don't expect anyone to understand this, because of the trend of action games in the last decade, people can't distinguish between strategy and tactics.Although there is some skill involved in dodging at the right times and the right direction I suppose, these are motor skills you can pick up by repetition and don't require much of your brain cells to accomplish. The strategy is indeed missing and that's what also makes the class and build system unnecessarily convoluted for what is required. The lack of balance between classes, stat sets, weapon choices, specializations, etc. also are a resulting and contributing factor to that.You do have some strategy in raids, T4 Fractals, and in WvW, but that's it. Even PvP is mostly tactical combat.Although I miss the strategy as you so accurately pointed out, I stay away from this content in GW2 because I don't care for the combat, class and skill system in this game. I've looked at raids but from what it looks like it's very much about getting specific classes with specific builds together to get as much uptime of specific buffs as possible. I don't find the idea of just dodging attacks and dps'ing or maintaining buffs very exciting. I get that some people hate the traditional trinity because it's not always easy to get a complete group but the boss fights were infinitely more interesting to me in such games. Also because I was a dedicated raid healer there, GW2 already can't really offer me what I like because a healer here isn't the same thing as it is there. And because of a lack of a companion system you can't really play open world or story as a healer. The game pretty much forces you to be a DPS for most of the game and that also makes it that a lot of things in the character builds are superfluous.

I really just play this game as a casual from time to time and it never lasts because the game is just about grinding the same things over and over no matter where you are and all combat just feels very similar. The challenge is not in whether you can kill enemies but how fast you can kill enemies. There are some exceptions where you need to figure out one trick but also there it's an all or nothing approach cause if you don't learn the trick it takes 2 hours or you can't do it at all and when you do the trick it's back to the same dodge and auto-attack combat. I think that ArenaNet's obsession with HP sponges also doesn't help. It makes your skills feel less significant because they do 0.1% damage each time and others do 0.2% damage unless you do this one build on your class and then it's 1% or 2%. Depending on the enemy that could be an exaggeration but you get my point I think. Sometimes it makes me laugh cause even in regular open world combat with regular mobs I just sit there thinking ok, auto-attack and then sometimes I don't even have to dodge at all and then I see someone else going completely nuts on their keyboards killing the same type of mob 10 times faster and I'm thinking...well he did that fast, but I just cba to do that because they die without much effort anyway and that just seems more effort than it's worth.

And I think for me that's the key problem with GW2 for me. People get blinded with flashy stuff and illusory systems but in the end it's more trouble than it's worth when you really look beyond the flashy stuff. That's why I don't care for it because it's just too easy and not worth investing into. Just like crafting legendaries or even ascended gear. What you put in costs more than you get out of it. Leveling the same. Too many levels for what you get out of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

WPs complaints can be summarized as:1. lack of constant gear progression makes player incentives and goals harder to implement. What most other MMORPGs achieve via repetitive grind, GW2 has to reinvent every single release because hunting that shinny loses its appeal if it's only about gear and you have the best gear available. A sub issue here is that a vast majority of the game does not even require the BiS gear to easily complete.

this leads into:

2. past "progression" used to be via cosmetics and being able to distinguish one from others. This has both dropped in effectiveness due to longevity of the game, many hardcore veterans have a lot of "stuff", and the increased emphasis of the gem store and it's increased sale of cosmetic items which outperform in game skins (and the new shinny is always the most sought after) leaving both short term players and long term players with less desire to acquire items in game.

this leads into:

3. designing content which is accessible to the masses since all players need a constant "fix" or in game task to do. Unlike other games, where say a high end raid can be added and many more casual players will need a lot longer to even access this content, GW2 needs to engage both new and veteran players equally now. This content thus offers only short term goals (see last living world episode which was complete able within 2 days, a week tops for medium dedicated gamers). Thus resources are spent on content which does not "last" long enough for the player base.

this leads into:

4. the problem of content being to "easy" compared to what is possible within the games mechanics. Player A might be struggling against Veteran Y due to personal inefficiencies or lack of game understanding, but if Veteran Y can die within 5 seconds to Player B, because player B is experienced in game mechanics, the content is objectively to easy. This was less an issue in the past, since both types of players were able to complete most content just at different speeds, but has become more and more an issue with content which requires a certain minimum player ability or else result in failure (aka dungeons versus raids).

Finally:

5. the implemented character/account progressions are not sufficient to keep player interest due to lack of "reset ability". Masteries are either completed or not, for many it makes no difference and piling on top just makes them longer to acquire as new player, but keeps them insignificant for experienced players. This is where expansions actually outperform Living World Episodes, since they deliver a new batch of masteries for both player groups which are often unrelated to past game content (aka PoF masteries can be started immediately no matter how far you have progressed in HoT).

TL;DR:GW2 needs a new "carrot" on a stick and overarching goals for both casual and hardcore players.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:More game devs need to accept the fact that
casual pandering is short term gain for long term loss
( BOLDED FOR F***ING EMPHASIS ), due to the fact that todays casual player is often tomorrows hardcore player.Where is your evidence to support such a claim?

Non-existent, since the claim is clearly false. Just recall the disaster called Heart of Thorns.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Gehenna.3625" said:I think that ArenaNet's obsession with HP sponges also doesn't help. It makes your skills feel less significant because they do 0.1% damage each time and others do 0.2% damage unless you do this one build on your class and then it's 1% or 2%.

That is due to them trying to make a boss encounter worth the time for the "10 times more damage" percentage of the players. It's also the main reason I skip the boss fight episode chapters if I can help it. They're tedious as fuck.

After finally watching the video it's obvious what he, and a lot of the complainers, are on about: Anet is focused on casuals and when they do take hardcores into consideration no one is happy with the results. I don't disagree. Be it tedious bosses, or no one in a zerg knowing how to break bar, killing Trahearne due to complaints from a noisy lot with bad taste, to vets being the ones who are doing all of the leeching (Yeah, we can see your rank, son) because they feel it's not worth their effort to help, Anet trying to please players demographics with conflicting desires has made a bit of a mess in its wake.

The easiest way to fix it is to go full in on their casuals focus and do a pass over the entire game for them.

! Hardcores can go play EVE or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there are some big problems with pve:

  • writers have no dev secrets you can try to puzzel out, lore speculation is not possible. Lore speculation is important to keep the pve crowd invested.
  • There are zero interesting lore mysteries left.
  • they dont use books/letters enough to give us intersting lore
  • the game does too little to learn players mechanics of the game. It just sometimes makes the game randomly harder, which is unfair for the casuals.
  • just make a hard mode for veterans. Please dont make the game harder in general. HoT tried that, and that killed of a big part of the casual community. Just keep the "you can play this game with any gear and any build" mentality. I think the current idea of difficult achievements is not good enough, bc they dont make it interesting enough for veterans. And casual gamers also want to be able to get the pve story achievements.
  • the game needs to think about rewards, esp pve ones. Last season had multiple hard to get armor sets, but they had just exotic stats XD. Like how was is more cheaper for me to craft asc gear???
  • The new easier raid-like content is weird. Just make new raids for the raiders. And make a story mode with small rewards in raids for ppl who just want to see the story without dying all the time. (and because the easy raids are played more, Anet can be more comfortable to invest in them, also for the veterans). The strike missions seem like a failure to me.
  • Dont stop investing in festivals, they really help to keep the game alive
  • Maybe update some of the vanilla world bosses. A big part of the community does world-boss runs.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@thepenmonster.3621 said:

@"Gehenna.3625" said:I think that ArenaNet's obsession with HP sponges also doesn't help. It makes your skills feel less significant because they do 0.1% damage each time and others do 0.2% damage unless you do this one build on your class and then it's 1% or 2%.

That is due to them trying to make a boss encounter worth the time for the "10 times more damage" percentage of the players. It's also the main reason I skip the boss fight episode chapters if I can help it. They're tedious as kitten.

Yeah that's a big part of the reason. They are tedious unless you play one of the five meta builds. Dunno if it's five but you get the point. It's also a reason I never play the story on alts. The difference in DPS between players is incredibly big and too big in fact. I definitely think there should be a reward in DPS output when you are a skilled player who knows what they're doing but the difference shouldn't be that big. It causes themselves issues because of the content they need to create having to take that range into account.

Of course it would require a revamp of the entire class/spec/skill system but I think the game would benefit from it if the DPS difference would be more like a factor 2 or 3 instead of 10. And compared to the simplicity of combat encounters, it's just bizarre to have such a convoluted system for our character builds which favours some gimmicky builds over everything else.

I mean just the combination of choice in class, specializations, stat sets and weapon sets allow for hunderds of builds if not thousands. What's the point of that if 99% of them are crap? We all know that for example berserker is the best stat set for most builds. It's been that way from the start. There are a handful of other ones that are useful depending on the content and build but most of them are useless. So why have them? They are just an illusion of choice. What about weapon sets? I like a staff of on my casters. To me that feels right and looks cool. Then you find out that it may be a bad choice because the skill set sucks. So what? I have to pick a weapon I don't like just so I get the better DPS? That's BS. It's pitting Fashion Wars against Gimmick Builds. Why do that? Why can't you get the feel and look you want AND do good DPS?

In GW1 when you were a caster you used a staff or wand and focus. Then later some gimmick builds came out that used a sword and shield on some casters but the set up was clear and the gimmick builds sacrificed part of their stats for something else. In GW2 you have a wider range of choices...which sounds nice on paper, until you realise that most of these choices are bad for your output. So again, the illusion of choice. And you have this illusion of choice on many levels so in the end when you make the wrong weapon choice and not the optimal combo of specializations and not the ideal stat set, your DPS is down so much it's not even funny anymore. And yeh, there will always be builds that are more effective than others. I'm not against that per definition but the way the system is set up in GW2 it creates huge differences to the point where one player is just eating through mobs and others have to scratch their eyes out from boredom cause it takes so long. It's ok to have a difference to reward skilful play, but not ok to punish players for making choices that shouldn't be there in the first place just so ArenaNet can make it "feel" like you have a lot to choose from.

All you have to do is go to one of the websites and get the meta build for your class and play it that way. But what if that's not the way you enjoy it? So I guess then you get punished for playing the class the way you enjoy it by making the content less enjoyable for you.... It's just weird to me I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Hashberry.4510 said:Pretty amusing watching a few of these hard core players trying to use this silly 10X estimate to justify doing less. Shameless.

  • Get arcdps.
  • Run it for a week and occasionally take a loot at it when surrounded by players in meta events or while playing group content like fractals.
  • Self check own performance occasionally, then cross reference what your class is able to do on a decent rotation and meta build.
  • Realize that the 10x estimate is not an estimate but sad fact.

I love how players who obviously do 0 monitoring or optimizing of performance assume they know what performance in this game looks like.

Unless you've been running arc and occasionally been practicing on the golem, you have 0 idea of where you stand performance wise. If you were running arc or occasionally been doing some golem practice to self improve, you would not make such estimate remarks. Ignorance is bliss my friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:More game devs need to accept the fact that casual pandering is short term gain for long term loss, due to the fact that todays casual player is often tomorrows hardcore player.(emphasis mine)That's actually generally untrue. Casual and hardcore are not about how veteran or experienced of a player you are. It's about a mindset and a playstyle difference. Most casuals remain casuals, even if they gain experience and in effect learn to play better. Most hardcores start as hardcores (even if initially they have a lot to learn). If anything, the change usually happens in the other direction - as players get older, or suffer through burnout, they tend to switch to a more casual, laid-back playstyle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...