Guild Wars vs GW2

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

The action aspect of gw2 is what makes its far superior than the original. I dont know what i would do without my jumps or evades.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Daniel.5428 said:First game was far more balanced, had far better plot and the game modes were well designed. For example PVP.

You never played an Elementalist then

roll eyes

Ele was far better in GW than in GW2, only in hard mode pve their damage was lackluster, still they could take other roles.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Daniel.5428" said:First game was far more balanced, had far better plot and the game modes were well designed. For example PVP.

You never played an Elementalist then

roll eyes

Ele was far better in GW than in GW2, only in hard mode pve their damage was lackluster, still they could take other roles.

So the Ele was lackluster where it counted in GW... and useful where you could simply afk and let the heroes finish the content. Nice. The only other role for an Elementalist was a crappy bonder for those low-man hard mode areas. Not very useful in 8-man areas at all.

Paragons to this day have only one useful build, and it's PVE exclusive, tells a lot about the "balance" of the first game. I wouldn't call the balance of the first game "good" in any way, the balance of GW2, especially lately, has been at its best. But I guess it depends on how invested someone is in both games, to see how balance works.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Daniel.5428" said:First game was far more balanced, had far better plot and the game modes were well designed. For example PVP.

You never played an Elementalist then

roll eyes

Ele was far better in GW than in GW2, only in hard mode pve their damage was lackluster, still they could take other roles.

So the Ele was lackluster where it counted in GW... and useful where you could simply afk and let the heroes finish the content. Nice. The only other role for an Elementalist was a crappy bonder for those low-man hard mode areas. Not very useful in 8-man areas at all.

Paragons to this day have only one useful build, and it's PVE exclusive, tells a lot about the "balance" of the first game. I wouldn't call the balance of the first game "good" in any way, the balance of GW2, especially lately, has been at its best. But I guess it depends on how invested someone is in both games, to see how balance works.

In a game where the focus was pvp, pve hard mode is what matters?!You could finish all content letting heroes doing the job.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Not very useful in 8-man areas at all.DoA, FoW, UW - all used eles.

The problem was not the balance, the problem was that hard mode rendered anything other than armor ignoring damage useless.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:DoA, FoW, UW - all used eles.

last time I visited DoA there were only two comps used by overal comunity, standard one for unfortunate ones were 4x DWG, imbagon, healing monk, protection monk and very specific mesmer build altho I don't remember the name of it.....

and other one was like 7mesmers+imba of 8 mesmers? hugeload of mesmers anyway.

not sure how for you but I don't see any ele in there.(and don't make me start a rant on GW1's Warrior.....)

the problem was that hard mode rendered anything other than armor ignoring damage useless.

which is part of game balance....

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:DoA, FoW, UW - all used eles.

last time I visited DoA there were only two comps used by overal comunity, standard one for unfortunate ones were 4x DWG, imbagon, healing monk, protection monk and very specific mesmer build altho I don't remember the name of it.....

and other one was like 7mesmers+imba of 8 mesmers? hugeload of mesmers anyway.

not sure how for you but I don't see any ele in there.(and don't make me start a rant on GW1's Warrior.....)

the problem was that hard mode rendered anything other than armor ignoring damage useless.

which is part of game balance....

2 shadow form tanks, 4 mesmers, UA monk and ele bonder.

No, is part of a bad implemented mode, all it took was for ANet to make HM reduce armor ignoring dmg the same way armor reduced overall damage, or something along those lines, to open up space for other builds to rise.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:You could finish all content letting heroes doing the job.You are right, my bad. 3 pve-only skills + Assassin's Promise on your main character (Assassin, or secondary Assassin) and you could breeze through everything with 7 heroes. 2 Mesmers, 2 Ritualists and 3 Necromancers. If I'm not mistaken that was the "you can beat anything" setup.

No, is part of a bad implemented mode, all it took was for ANet to make HM reduce armor ignoring dmg the same way armor reduced overall damage, or something along those lines, to open up space for other builds to rise.

That change happened long after GW1 stopped receiving updates, check this out: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20120105Hard Mode was added with Nightfall in October 27, 2006 and they changed Hard Mode armor to include more build variety with the January 5th, 2012 update, 5 years and 2 months later. Talk about "fast" balance!

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:2 shadow form tanks, 4 mesmers, UA monk and ele bonder.

I haven't seem this one going on, must be either someting outdated by the time I've got into DoA, or something new kids brought in after I have left the area... (due to being tired of being pigeonholed into rit wannabe just because I took bestest looking coolest class when picking a main...)

No, is part of a bad implemented mode, all it took was for ANet to make HM reduce armor ignoring dmg the same way armor reduced overall damage, or something along those lines, to open up space for other builds to rise.

it is still part of overal game balance. and the "all it took" you speak of is balancing change on the mode. (and as maddoctor above mentioned very speedy balancing change as well)

[aspirine.6852]

Not a fair question, GW1 was my favorite game ever. So of course it was better.

[Sojourner.4621]

@Daniel.5428 said:First game was far more balanced, had far better plot and the game modes were well designed. For example PVP.

Balance in GW1 was a nightmare (which is why they didn't do the same skill system in GW2 in the first place) that frequently a SINGLE skill could be changed and break every single build, and the plot was literally terrible. The protagonist in Prophecies spent the entire time bumbling from one bad situation to the next, making things worse and frequently siding with the bad guys, EXACTLY LIKE GW2's ENTIRE PLOT. Factions had a decent plot line, actually, but no better than the latest LS season, and Nightfall went back to the old formula. Remember Nightfall occurred in the first place because the protagonist helped Kormir unlock some hidden away runes, and because the protagonist had ALREADY paved the way through the events of Prophecies and Factions (Opening up a gate to the realm of torment and unleashing the titans for example). Basically GW2 is retreading the same steps, but at the time when people were playing the game it was universally considered a super generic hero's journey. Only the LORE is good, the story itself is bad.

The PvP was 100% better, though.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:You could finish all content letting heroes doing the job.You are right, my bad. 3 pve-only skills + Assassin's Promise on your main character (Assassin, or secondary Assassin) and you could breeze through everything with 7 heroes. 2 Mesmers, 2 Ritualists and 3 Necromancers. If I'm not mistaken that was the "you can beat anything" setup.

No, is part of a bad implemented mode, all it took was for ANet to make HM reduce armor ignoring dmg the same way armor reduced overall damage, or something along those lines, to open up space for other builds to rise.

That change happened long after GW1 stopped receiving updates, check this out:

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20120105

Hard Mode was added with Nightfall in October 27, 2006 and they changed Hard Mode armor to include more build variety with the January 5th, 2012 update, 5 years and 2 months later. Talk about "fast" balance!

That update did just a tiny tiny bit to help out.Eles still do rougly half the damage that the tooltip says in HM.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:2 shadow form tanks, 4 mesmers, UA monk and ele bonder.

I haven't seem this one going on, must be either someting outdated by the time I've got into DoA, or something new kids brought in after I have left the area... (due to being tired of being pigeonholed into rit wannabe just because I took bestest looking coolest class when picking a main...)

If PvX is up to date it's what is still used nowadays.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:That update did just a tiny tiny bit to help out.Eles still do rougly half the damage that the tooltip says in HM.

Well that update was the BEST update towards the goal of damage diversity. Before that update, armor ignoring/ life stealing was all that was used in HM. That was the update that changed how hard mode armor scaling worked and allowed builds dealing direct damage to, finally, be useful in the game. Had to wait 5+ years to be more useful PVE, better late than never right?

Which brings me to my original post about how bad balance was in GW, regardless of what those with their rose tinted glasses say around here.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:If PvX is up to date it's what is still used nowadays.

so, something new kids brought in after I've left ;)(before someone gets offended I was a kid at that time too....)

(note, just because ele have found it's way into DoA after some time does not revoke my opinion that GW1 balancing was not even remotely close to "way superior than GW2" - it was still huge mess of hundreds of fun to play builds that were borderline useless everywhere it'd matter, thousands of builds that didn't even make sense and many classes didn't have even one good build per content type, and a handfull of builds that were "meta")

[maddoctor.2738]

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:If PvX is up to date it's what is still used nowadays.(note, just because ele have found it's way into DoA after some time does not revoke my opinion that GW1 balancing was not even remotely close to "way superior than GW2" - it was still huge mess of hundreds of fun to play builds that were borderline useless everywhere it'd matter, thousands of builds that didn't even make sense and many classes didn't have even one good build per content type, and a handfull of builds that were "meta")

Trenchway is really old build.https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Build:Team_-_DoA_TrenchwayFun part about that "Elementalist" build is it uses only 2 Elementalist skills but that was the thing about Guild Wars with double professions.But yeah Guild Wars balance was horrid, which I guess was a reason why they went with weapon-locked skills in GW2.

Btw as of Path of Fire, Guild Wars 2 has a lot more skills than the total of Guild Wars 1, this will get worse with every expansion.

[Dainank.1308]

Isn't it a little biased to make a poll like this on the Guild Wars 2 forums? You should maybe also make this poll in the GW2 subreddit and the GW subreddit and the GW forums! Then you could add up ALL the results and that might be a bit interesting :) Sadly GW2 is a lot more mainstream than GW thus, it will probably still be GW2 favoured simply because more people have played GW2 than GW.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Trenchway is really old build.

speaks volumes on how much time it has been since I last peeked into DoA ;)(really back then mainstayd of DoA was 4xDwG, UA Monk, that other monk, imbagon, and gimmicky mesmer, with "new fresh thing" being heckload of mesmers speedrunning the thing)

Fun part about that "Elementalist" build is it uses only 2 Elementalist skills but that was the thing about Guild Wars with double professions.

Welcome to my life as warrior trying to get some tormented weapons for their awesomeness ;) whole build constructed around secondary rit, with a couple skills atteched that were only assisting in minor way, and if memory serves most of them were EotN rep skills....

Btw as of Path of Fire, Guild Wars 2 has a lot more skills than the total of Guild Wars 1, this will get worse with every expansion.

does it? daaaaaaaaamn one would think it'd take little bit more for that to happen.

but at least it's not like you can mix all of them with each other together so at least one thing goign to ease the workday of balancing team :)

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Lord Trejgon.2809" said:(really back then mainstayd of DoA was 4xDwG, UA Monk, that other monk, imbagon, and gimmicky mesmer, with "new fresh thing" being heckload of mesmers speedrunning the thing)

Yeah DwG was nerfed hard at some time that I can't remember so it was removed from meta, together with the entire Ritualist profession (only used for SoS in some farming builds)

but at least it's not like you can mix all of them with each other together so at least one thing goign to ease the workday of balancing team :)

And ease the players too because in GW you had to buy all 3 campaigns + Eye of the North in order to have a working build because they used skills from all over the place. At least in GW2 if you play Holosmith, Path of Fire is more than enough, if you play Reaper, all you need is Heart of Thorns, and so on.

Guild Wars and balance aren't words to be used in the same sentence lol

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Warobaz.9543" said:I just wanted to talk about a weird but cool feature in GW1 : you could add more music in game. The OSTs were available through the composer's own online store (directsong), and there was a way to implement them, as well as bonus tracks in game. you could even start from there and add your own choice of mp3s. That was a fun feature, albeit a bit messy. ^^

Yes and now that directsong is offline (good riddance) you can't access your own PURCHASED music. Wasted money on a terrible service.

You can use true custom playlists in GW2. Basically you make your own playlist with certain names (check link below), for example MainMenu, put it in the correct folder Users[Your Name]\Documents\Guild Wars 2\Music (if Music doesn't exist, create it) and you are done, whatever tracks you put on those playlists they will play when you play the game.More details: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Customized_soundtrack

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:And ease the players too because in GW you had to buy all 3 campaigns + Eye of the North in order to have a working build because they used skills from all over the place. At least in GW2 if you play Holosmith, Path of Fire is more than enough, if you play Reaper, all you need is Heart of Thorns, and so on.

Guild Wars and balance aren't words to be used in the same sentence lol

As long as you include Guild Wars 2 in that, I agree.

GW balance issues -- as discussed by ANet when they were touting GW2 - were due to the plethora of skills out there, coupled with the secondary profession. This allowed for combinations of skills that there was no way for ANet to test them all. Thus, players frequently found unexpected synergies when balance passes introduced changes to skills.

GW2 balance issues -- and there are quite a few -- arise from different character build decisions. One -- the most common -- is the way stats and damage work. Compared to GW, the numbers which underpin character builds are huge. This, plus the multiplicative nature of combat result calculation, leads to situations where even relatively minor changes can lead to egregious differences. A second is the nature of boons, which serve as force multipliers for builds. Again, these play into the large numbers inherent in GW2 stats to produce results that are often completely out of balance with other options.

The third major issue is power creep, fueled by ANet's apparent design decision to "sell" the latest XPac by loading power creep into its Elite Specs. To say that some meta builds in GW required players to own all campaigns/expansions is correct. However, while there are a couple of HoT builds still meta in GW2, there are precious few core builds left that are relevant, and some HoT builds have been supplanted by PoF ones. This creates similar pressure to GW in terms of owning everything -- unless you are a one-character player happy to play Chrono or Druid. Even with those, there is no guarantee that balance changes or new specs with a hypothetical XPac three will supplant HoT or PoF specs.

[Warobaz.9543]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Warobaz.9543" said:I just wanted to talk about a weird but cool feature in GW1 : you could add more music in game. The OSTs were available through the composer's own online store (directsong), and there was a way to implement them, as well as bonus tracks in game. you could even start from there and add your own choice of mp3s. That was a fun feature, albeit a bit messy. ^^

Yes and now that directsong is offline (good riddance) you can't access your own PURCHASED music. Wasted money on a terrible service.

You can use true custom playlists in GW2. Basically you make your own playlist with certain names (check link below), for example MainMenu, put it in the correct folder Users[Your Name]\Documents\Guild Wars 2\Music (if Music doesn't exist, create it) and you are done, whatever tracks you put on those playlists they will play when you play the game.More details:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Customized_soundtrack

Yep, that was a crappy move. I'm not sure you can buy any special packs anywhere now. Only the vanilla OST is available.Since no one can buy them now, and I have every pack available as DRM free MP3 (got everything legitimately, lucky fool i am), would it be a bannable offense to share them here ?

[maddoctor.2738]

@Warobaz.9543 said:Yep, that was a crappy move. I'm not sure you can buy any special packs anywhere now. Only the vanilla OST is available.Since no one can buy them now, and I have every pack available as DRM free MP3 (got everything legitimately, lucky fool i am), would it be a bannable offense to share them here ?

I honestly don't know if you can post them or not, maybe ask support about it. It would be nice if Arenanet released those tracks on their soundcloud for everyone to listen to.

[LucianDK.8615]

The gw1 world was just far more expansive and had much better storylines.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:As long as you include Guild Wars 2 in that, I agree.

let's just agree that AN has trouble with balancing work :D

This creates similar pressure to GW in terms of owning everything -- unless you are a one-character player happy to play Chrono or Druid. Even with those, there is no guarantee that balance changes or new specs with a hypothetical XPac three will supplant HoT or PoF specs.

last time I checked, herald, druid, chrono are first two things that comes in mind of HoTspecs that PoF "failed" to "supplant"*, after that you have major difference in buildcraft between scrapper and holo (I see both being taken, but each to widely different tasks, ironically for scrapper, nowadays he's also used for considerably different roles than he used to before holo became a thing)

*Herald and renegade are runnning on different core assumptions making it virtually impossible for renegade to supplant herald even if it didn't suffer from balancing issues according to many players - it just serves different purpose, similar for druid and soulbeast, chrono and mirage - different tools for different jobs

meanwhile in gw1 you had certain skills locked behind certain campaigns and sometimes for seemingly arbitrary reasons - for example Elite Stance "Melandru's Resilience" - the boss from which you could capture it was present in EotN - but if you tried to capture it without owning prophecies it'd just not show on the list... despite that fact that boss was actually using the ability during the fight.

now imagince if PoF was adding a couple of handy skills or elites to HoTelite specs, that could be unlocked by doing core tyria content, but you'd have to own PoF for a thing to show up on the reward list despite game flashing you beforehand that you can get this thing from here.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:The third major issue is power creep, fueled by ANet's apparent design decision to "sell" the latest XPac by loading power creep into its Elite Specs. To say that some meta builds in GW required players to own all campaigns/expansions is correct. However, while there are a couple of HoT builds still meta in GW2, there are precious few core builds left that are relevant, and some HoT builds have been supplanted by PoF ones. This creates similar pressure to GW in terms of owning everything -- unless you are a one-character player happy to play Chrono or Druid. Even with those, there is no guarantee that balance changes or new specs with a hypothetical XPac three will supplant HoT or PoF specs.

Core builds are now free to play so I can understand why Elite Specs (of either expansion) are meta and not core specs.Let's take a look at meta PVE builds:Elementalist: both Tempest and Weaver now have meta builds, so a player can have either of the expansions to play a meta build as an ElementalistMesmer: both Chronomancer (the king of support) and Mirage have meta buildsNecromancer: Scourge has meta builds for various types of content, Reaper also has meta builds, but it's not as effectiveEngineer: Scrapper isn't very good at the moment (PVE) however both Holosmith AND core engineer have powerful meta builds availableRanger: both Druid and Soulbeast are parts of the metaThief: both Daredevil and Deadeye are parts of the metaGuardian: probably the best designed profession because Dragonhunter, Firebrand AND core Guardian have actually powerful meta buildsRevenant: with the most recent balance patches, both Herald and Renegade have powerful meta buildsWarrior: Core Warrior and Berserker are parts of the meta, Spellbreaker is slightly weaker

So the only exceptions so far are Reaper (hot), Scrapper (hot) and Spellbreaker (pof) that are a bit behind in terms of meta builds but all other specializations have at least one powerful meta build.

edit: Plus, most of the harder content either requires an expansion (Raids), or gives more rewards/is easier to play with expansions (Fractals). Outside the high end content like that, there is nothing preventing someone from using the Core builds just fine, it's the expansion content that requires the elite specs, so when you play that content, you'll also have the elite specs. This "power creep" is a problem in PVP, because PVP is not monetized well and there is no way to separate expansion owners from free players, but has nothing to do in PVE.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I loved GW1 but many good memories are just nostalgia. I also remember that I disliked many aspects. Like the heavily cut/instanced content. The next to zero chracter progression (which also had some good aspects ofc.), the flow of releases after 2007 (non-existent), lack of additional content aside from expansions. The lack of no content aside from fighting. Many forget that there was absolutely nothing to do aside from fighting. There were no traditional professions like in other MMOs, no fishing, no housing, no mining or crafting in a usual manner. There was crafting, but it was just buying/finding mats and putting it together. Also the guild hall system was very rudimentary with just buying features with gold and that's it.

Also there was no progression and not as much polish as in GW2. Many aspects are a lot better in GW2 now (also compared to vanilla GW2).

That said there were a lot of different PvP modes which were fun. I never got why GW2 had such a lack of PvP modes. We still have only - more or less - two PvP modes which is absolutely lacking compared to industry standard.