GW2 has serious design flaws

[Avind De Maros.7306]

Once again I am at a point where the design flaws in GW2 have made playing this game an exercise in aggravation.  I have repeatedly run across situation where the design of the game makes it absolutely impossible for a solo player to advance and when, in those rare moments that a solo player can accomplish something without being led around on the wiki leash or while being forced to follow another player, the game borders on useless in how a player is guided.

My most recent experience with this is the process  of acquiring the sky scale mount.  I tried for two days to advance this achievement without luck.  As with almost every other achievement in this game I made zero progress and was once again forced to open a web browser to search the wiki or You Tube.  The need to seek outside help to advance in this game is consistent to the point where it has become clear that the dev's are determined to disallow progress by individuals.  It seems that there goal is to keep everyone dependent upon doing things exactly the way they are told thus eliminating individual thought processes that are the hallmark of creative thinkers.  You either submit to the leash or you can't advance.

I left GW around five years ago and switched to playing the Elder Scrolls Online.  While there are group events and tasks, a significant portion of the game can be completed without 

1) Being forced into a group

2) Being forced to ask someone else how to accomplish something

3) Being forced to leave the game to do research in a wiki or on You Tube

When playing ESO, it is easy to advance by using a bit of cognitive process.  You can think about the situation and most often come up with a solution that will allow you to complete whatever it is you are attempting.  In Guild Wars, that borders on an impossibility.  I am sure you want a specific example so here is the latest couple I encountered.

1)  I was searching for abandoned sky scale nests.  You can spend weeks on this UNLESS YOU GO TO THE WIKI OR YOU TUBE TO SEE HOW TO COMPLETE THIS.  I diligently allowed myself to be lead on across the map like a dog on a leash in my attempt to find a nest with an abandoned egg.  While this did help to uncover huge portions of the map, the process of going from one nest to another bordered on painful.  This task became a repetitive, mind numbing exercise in frustration as nest after nest simply vanished when I checked them.  Late yesterday evening I arrived at a location where there was no nest present.  I was tired and frustrated so I shut it down for the night.  I returned this morning only to find two more locations where the You Tube leash showed that there should be a nest.  I checked my inventory.  No egg.  I realized that once again, I had reached the point where there was insufficient information in the game for me to continue.  So I went to the next version of the leash and called a friend who had completed this.  She had me open up the achievement where it showed that I already had the egg.  Wow.  It would have really been nice to have some indication show up when I found the egg.  I SAW NO INDICATION THAT THIS HAD HAPPENED.  My friend said that the achievement had changed to 14% where I had it tagged to show on my screen so I did not have to keep opening the achievement window.  So a change in the percentage of completion in text that is so small I have to squint to read it was my only indicator that I had advance the process I was trying to complete.  THANK YOU GW DEV'S!!  HOW CONSIDERATE OF YOU TO PROVIDE ME WITH SUCH A CLEAR INDICATOR THAT I HAD COMPLETED THE TASK I WAS CURRENTLY WORKING ON!  I guess it is asking to much to have something show up on the screen that stated, "Congratulations!  You have found a Sky Scale egg!"  It also seemed that the programmers did not have the foresight to change how the interaction with the nest appeared when the egg was found.  That level of coding must be incredibly difficult because I find it difficult to believe that any programmer worth their weight would believe that having the nest simply vanish regardless of the outcome of your search would make much sense at all.  You don't find the egg, the nest vanishes.  You find the egg, the nest vanishes.  No text shows up on the screen to indicate that you have completed your task.  Instead, you are left to continue searching for nests that now can not be found.  But what does that mean?  If only I had looked at the change in percentage of my progress for that achievement!  How silly of me to miss such a miniscule alteration of my screen!!

2)  The next step is to infuse the egg by traveling around Tyria to find specific items.  I traveled to the first location only to find that the list of items required was no missing from my achievement.  Once again I realized that I was up against ANOTHER FLAW IN THE DESIGN OF GW, I phoned my friend once again.  It took a few minutes, but we eventually discovered that the achievement "Find a new friend" would no longer show what was needed to be done once I completed the first task on the list.  Now that I was on the second task, I had to go back into my achievement panel, type in the title of the second task to open up the list of ingredients and then tag that so it showed up on my screen and allowed me to see the ingredients I needed to collect.  HOW SILLY OF ME TO THINK THAT THIS INFORMATION SHOULD HAVE BEEN VISIBLE WITHOUT HAVING TO ADD IT AS A SEPERATE ACHIEVEMENT.  I should have realized that the first step of the achievement and the second step OF THAT SAME ACHIEVEMENT WOULD BE TREATED AS TWO SEPERATE ACHIEVEMENTS!!!  Are you F-ing kidding me?!?!?  (Here is where the moderators will step in to block this post as they do not want any criticism of the game to show up in their beloved wiki.)  

These are just two examples of the very poor design of this game.  While I love the concept of this game, I keep running into the same type of difficulties.  The developers and designers of this gaming platform are either incompetent or out of touch with the needs of the players.  So I am going back to ESO where I can enjoy some online gaming time without the frustration of being unable to advance my in game progress without having to consult the wiki or phone a friend or look it up on You Tube.  It seems to me, that Guild Wars 2 is a game designed to stifle the thought process of it's players.  You either do it the way you are told by the sources listed above, or, in the immortal words of Gandalf the Grey, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

[Axelteas.7192]

I felt the same, Anet claims this is a casual friendly game, yet you need a flying mount to achieve most things so you're in the bottleneck of the forced grind.

[Randulf.7614]

Do you feel better now?

[EphemeralWallaby.7643]

I rate this flounce thread an 8/10.  A rant better organized than most.

Good luck, OP, I'm glad you could find enjoyment in a different game better suited to your needs.

~EpWa

[Krajtin.8956]

Hello, I'm World of Warcraft and I need to install 300 plugins to have a "better in-game experience"

OP, I play with a friend to do these types of achievements and I only look at the wiki or Youtube when we're 1-2 hours into trying to find the last item. Then we complain about why the games are getting easier...

Edited March 23 by Krajtin.8956

[illuminati.8453]

I completely agree with your frustrations regarding certain design decisions made by Anet. It's undeniable that some mechanics can feel downright cumbersome or even buggy at times. The inconsistency in quality is definitely noticeable.

Regarding forced grouping, I understand how it can be tedious. However, I've also found that it's led me to forge some unexpected friendships within the game. In a way, Anet's emphasis on multiplayer aspects distinguishes it from other MMOs, for better or worse.

[Farohna.6247]

27 minutes ago, Krajtin.8956 said:

Hello, I'm World of Warcraft and I need to install 300 plugins to have a "better in-game experience"

OP, I play with a friend to do these types of achievements and I only look at the wiki or Youtube when we're 1-2 hours into trying to find the last item. Then we complain about why the games are getting easier...

No joke, had a lot of add ons back when I played WoW, sheesh.  I agree that GW2 is less intuitive in what to do, and I know that is appealing to some players, but it's not that horrible to use wiki (from in game!  see, they know you'll have questions) or a YouTube video.  

I agree OP that it's arguably not a great design to have to use an extra resource.  I find very little where you are "forced" to play with others...it's an MMORPG, kind of part of the game.  

You sound like someone who hops on because a friend told them oh it's easier now (i.e. to get skyscale), then finds out they still have to do the footwork, and then stomps off for another five years.  ESO is a better fit for you, and that's great, and I truly hope it causes you less frustration and a happier use of time. 

 

[costepj.5120]

You know all those entries in the wiki were made by players just like you? They weren't given any inside knowledge; they just figured it out for themselves and shared their findings so that lazier people like me can get some hints when we're stuck.

[Vavume.8065]

I agree with the OP, the dependence on the wiki to get anything done is ridiculous, and is terrible design. There is no sense of achievement.

[Randulf.7614]

The bigger flaw is how much hand holding the game does nowadays. Games were better in my opinion when you had to figure things out. Players these days have it far, far too easy

 

*waves walking stick around

[Ashen.2907]

I wonder how the people who made the youtube video guides and the wiki articles managed to get it done? Perhaps they engaged in independant thought for themselves?

[Avind De Maros.7306]

25 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I wonder how the people who made the youtube video guides and the wiki articles managed to get it done? Perhaps they engaged in independant thought for themselves?

They learned it from others and then posted their own videos on YT.  When ANet releases new content, they post info on the wiki.  In essence, 99.9% of all GW players follow the leader and do little to no independent thinking.

[Danikat.8537]

MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Game. Of course they expect you to do things as a group. Yes there's a lot that can be done solo as well, but the game is and always will be designed to be played with other people, because that's the point.

That includes working out how to find things and how to complete objectives. You can muddle through it yourself, but it will go much faster if you pool your knowledge with other people. If you don't like using player-created resources like the Wiki you could do it more directly - for example find other players who are also looking for skyscale nests and ask them to share any locations they've found, or group up and spread out through the maps to search them more quickly.

[Avind De Maros.7306]

58 minutes ago, costepj.5120 said:

You know all those entries in the wiki were made by players just like you? They weren't given any inside knowledge; they just figured it out for themselves and shared their findings so that lazier people like me can get some hints when we're stuck.

ANet posts the how to info on wiki when new content is released.  They also have ANet "players" who show others how to accomplish the various quests.  GW2 has little to no independent thought processes required to play the game.  This just develops players who do not think for themselves.  They simply follow the instructions of others.  There is a lot of that going on in the world today.  It is all a part of "Dumbing down the human race".

[starlinvf.1358]

40 minutes ago, Vavume.8065 said:

I agree with the OP, the dependence on the wiki to get anything done is ridiculous, and is terrible design. There is no sense of achievement.

Except a lot of the time you don’t need to. But no one wants to do the in-game research, and would rather rely on community knowledge to do the hard work for them.    

Honestly with how immediate players will look for the answer online, you may as well assume thats what they are doing. 

[Avind De Maros.7306]

Regarding some of the contents about MMO's being games that are designed for group play, this is understood.  The point that you are missing is that there is almost no content in GW that may be accomplished as a solo player.  What I object to is players being forced to play in a group in order to advance.  If you look at some of the larger battles that occur such as the battle to access the Wizards Tower, these fights are won by the minority who have fought this battle numerous times.  The majority of the players have no idea what is going on UNLESS THEY ASK ANOTHER PLAYER OR CONSULT A WIKI OR YOU TUBE CHANNEL.  I have no objection to doing SOME events in a group.  I do object to being required to do MOST events in a group in order to advance.

[Randulf.7614]

1 minute ago, Avind De Maros.7306 said:

Regarding some of the contents about MMO's being games that are designed for group play, this is understood.  The point that you are missing is that there is almost no content in GW that may be accomplished as a solo player.  What I object to is players being forced to play in a group in order to advance.  If you look at some of the larger battles that occur such as the battle to access the Wizards Tower, these fights are won by the minority who have fought this battle numerous times.  The majority of the players have no idea what is going on UNLESS THEY ASK ANOTHER PLAYER OR CONSULT A WIKI OR YOU TUBE CHANNEL.  I have no objection to doing SOME events in a group.  I do object to being required to do MOST events in a group in order to advance.

Right, so what this boils down to is not being the right game for you. This is specifically designed to be a coopertaively driven mmo. They didn't want the solo style of GW1 and designed it this way deliberately. It's not a design flaw, it's a design manifesto. One that has proved extradorinarily successful given the low level nature of the IP.

It's not going to be for everyone and it clearly doesn't work for yourself, but the game from this perspective is working extremely well and does not require a change to be more solo orientated

[Danikat.8537]

9 minutes ago, Avind De Maros.7306 said:

ANet posts the how to info on wiki when new content is released.  They also have ANet "players" who show others how to accomplish the various quests.  GW2 has little to no independent thought processes required to play the game.  This just develops players who do not think for themselves.  They simply follow the instructions of others.  There is a lot of that going on in the world today.  It is all a part of "Dumbing down the human race".

That would be an absurd waste of time and money. If their objective was to make a game which required "no independent thought process" as you claim they could just make a simple game, as many other studios have (there's even games designed for preschool children). Designing a game that's so complicated someone who clearly considers themselves to have above average intelligence is unable to figure out even the basic steps in following a collection achievement without help and then paying their employees to write detailed step-by-step guides and spend hours online pretending to be players who understand it to guide others through would be incredibly expensive and time consuming with absolutely no benefit for the company.

[Dayra.7405]

2 hours ago, Avind De Maros.7306 said:

My most recent experience with this is the process  of acquiring the sky scale mount.  I tried for two days to advance this achievement without luck.  As with almost every other achievement in this game I made zero progress and was once again forced to open a web browser to search the wiki or You Tube.

Yes you can do things faster with wiki, but it's not true, that you cannot progress without. You know that the term Achievement comes from achieving something 😉 

[Avind De Maros.7306]

1 minute ago, Danikat.8537 said:

That would be an absurd waste of time and money. If their objective was to make a game which required "no independent thought process" as you claim they could just make a simple game, as many other studios have (there's even games designed for preschool children). Designing a game that's so complicated someone who clearly considers themselves to have above average intelligence is unable to figure out even the basic steps in following a collection achievement without help and then paying their employees to write detailed step-by-step guides and spend hours online pretending to be players who understand it to guide others through would be incredibly expensive and time consuming with absolutely no benefit for the company.

If they did not do this, they would lose a huge number of players who would become frustrated by their inability to advance.  The money the spend on this is probably less than what they would spend to code the game in such a manner that the wiki's would not be required, but would instead by written by players who found a new and interesting method of accomplishing things.  When I first started playing GW, I was amazed at how quickly a fully written wiki would appear when new content was released.  Several times this occurred on THE FIRST DAY THAT NEW CONTENT WAS RELEASED.  I am sorry, but if the wiki was being written by players, there is no way that full explanations would appear so quickly.  It does not require a great deal of intelligence to realize what is going on.  

[Avind De Maros.7306]

6 minutes ago, Dayra.7405 said:

Yes you can do things faster with wiki, but it's not true, that you cannot progress without. You know that the term Achievement comes from achieving something 😉 

If your achievement was based upon reading the cheat notes, which is essentially what a wiki is, then all you have achieved is demonstrating that you can copy someone else's work.

[Astralporing.1957]

55 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I wonder how the people who made the youtube video guides and the wiki articles managed to get it done? Perhaps they engaged in independant thought for themselves?

Most of those were crowdsourced. Simple collections that are easy to solve on your own are indeed done solo, but whenever the puzzle crosses a certain threshold, the solution is usually found out thanks to simple expedience of throwing a kittenton of people at it. And then someone collating the end result in a wiki article/web guide.

At some point you could easily see that process in action on dulfy site whenever a new content patch hit.

Edited March 23 by Astralporing.1957

[Manpag.6421]

10 minutes ago, Avind De Maros.7306 said:

If you look at some of the larger battles that occur such as the battle to access the Wizards Tower, these fights are won by the minority who have fought this battle numerous times.  The majority of the players have no idea what is going on UNLESS THEY ASK ANOTHER PLAYER OR CONSULT A WIKI OR YOU TUBE CHANNEL.

…or they listen to what the NPCs are saying and follow on-screen prompts, many of which are huge visual indicators like arrows and circles on the map. The kind of on-screen information you were saying there wasn’t enough of in your first post.

Some events are more complex than others, but people ignoring things like NPCs shouting “Quickly, get in the shield!” as two large glowing blue domes appear and then wondering why they get downed isn’t getting lost, it’s not paying attention. See also Echovald meta, where the NPC bellows “Get behind something!”, huge white text appears on screen saying “Hide behind a trash pile!”, and white circles with arrows appear behind said trash piles, and people still frequently die to that mechanic. In the Wizard’s Tower meta, every step of that fight is explained by the NPC dialogue, and even if you do get lost in it, that’s okay because GW2 will still reward you for participation even if it was minimal.

5 minutes ago, Avind De Maros.7306 said:

When I first started playing GW, I was amazed at how quickly a fully written wiki would appear when new content was released.  Several times this occurred on THE FIRST DAY THAT NEW CONTENT WAS RELEASED.  I am sorry, but if the wiki was being written by players, there is no way that full explanations would appear so quickly.

Everyone plays games differently. Some players really enjoy contributing to the wiki, to the point that their priority when new content drops is documenting stuff as they go. In short, at least a bare-bones article on day of release is expected when you have a community of thousands of players playing it. Not everything is a big conspiracy.

[Avind De Maros.7306]

1 minute ago, Manpag.6421 said:

Everyone plays games differently. Some players really enjoy contributing to the wiki, to the point that their priority when new content drops is documenting stuff as they go. In short, at least a bare-bones article on day of release is expected when you have a community of thousands of players playing it. Not everything is a big conspiracy.

There is no way that a fully written wiki can be completed by players on the first day that new content is released.  I know that there are those who enjoy contributing to adding to the pool of public knowledge, but this process takes time.  You may believe what you want, but having developed materials like this, I am fully aware that it takes a lot of time to learn all the ins and outs and then write up a coherent guide.  ANet writes this information or pays others to write it after ANet has provided them with the materials that need to be addressed.  Either way, creating content that requires players to learn how to complete it by looking it up stifles independent thought and helps to push the doctrine of "If you want to succeed, do as I say."  This is how you make people dependent upon others while suppressing creative thought processes.   

[neighto.7386]

I'm mainly a solo player and I haven't had many issues that I couldn't work through with a bit of patience or asking for help in local chat.    37.5k AP,  26 legendary weapons made, All legendary trinkets, 4 sets of legendary armor (2 sets of medium cause I liked the new one so I had to make it)  All Mounts unlocked.    Again, barely had any issue doing all of these solo... and I should also add I don't use addons like Blish or whatnot, I play the game vanilla  

Sounds to me like you just expect the game to give you stuff without you putting in any sort of effort.   This isn't a mobile game that a monkey could play.   Something gives me a sneaky suspicion that you just expected this game to be exactly like the one you came from and you're upset because its not the same at all. 

Edited March 23 by neighto.7386
made a typo