Best and Worst Decisions Anet has made?

[Yakez.7561]

Well despite my love of GW2... the worst decision was to abandon GW1 development.

• Most of the issues of GW1 could have been addressed with revamps, more loose release schedule and engine updates

Bad decisions of GW2

• Season 1 LW
• WvW skill lag is possible
• Server linking destroying most of server communities in chase of gem sales by Anet
• EotM
• Conquest (even in 2012 I was already tired of point capping games)
• Stronghold (Oh boy, this MOBA bandwagon failed so hard)
• Revenant mech hammered with Anet balance struggle
• Lackluster chat system with basic features of 1997 and no Cyrillic support
• Whole inventory system
• Most of crafting experience

Good decisions?

• Wardrobe
• Shared slots
• Salvage-o-Matic
• Last WvW updates
• Ship when its ready and open release plan

[Erasculio.2914]

For the sake of brevity, I'll post 3 of each:

Worst Decisions

• Tying stats to items. It's a logistic nightmare to change builds. Sure, we can change skills and traits easily, but such freedom is meaningless if we can't change our attributes as well. And changing the attributes requires switching a lot of gear, as well as calculating which gear is better to change and which to keep, plus the attribute point distribution in each piece of equipment, then how to get those pieces, as well as removing them from the bank to inventory and back again. It would be infinitely easier if we could simply assign attribute points freely, in any way we wanted. If ArenaNet really wished to tie attributes to items, they could take a page from Destiny and say that equipping each piece gives extra attribute points, with exotic pieces (for example) giving more points than masterwork pieces.

• Removing enchantments and hexes. The original Guild Wars that many skills with unique effects - sure, there was some overlap here and there, but enchantments and hexes added a lot of new mechanics to the game. In GW2, it feels like all skills are very similar to each other - they mostly deal with the same few conditions and boons and do some damage. This lack of variety makes even the new skills have a "been there, done that" feeling.

• Making the "biconics" the main focus of the storyline for years. In almost all individual steps of the storyline for the last years, we have had the participation of at least one of the "biconics" (who now are calling themselves Dragon's Watch). It's way to long to be dealing with the same characters over and over, especially considering how shallow and one note most of them are (the really smart asura, the dumb and headstrong norn, and so on).

Best Decisions

• Gliding. It works increbily well, with a smoothness that is as much surprising as it is appreciated. It could have been something incredibly clunky (like using the aspects' skills in Dry Top, for example), or with a lot of artificial limitations, or something that wouldn't work in the original GW2 territory... And instead it's simply great. I'm sure this took a lot of work, but the result is amazing.

• Giving the Player Characters more agency, which was mostly accomplished by giving them a lot of dialogue, beginning with HoT. This is a breakthrough in the Guild Wars game (all the way back in Guild Wars: Factions, it already felt that our characters were just the side actors blindly following a NPC, who was the real hero and the real leader in the story). Must have been very expensive, but that's what the story needed to make a huge leap in quality.

• Getting Lena Chappelle to do the new soundtrack. As much as Jeremy Soule's music is still missed, she's doing a great work. Many of her new tracks are incredible and continue to play in my head long after I have stopped playing the game.

[sephiroth.4217]

I like to spend money on my hobbies. Anet made 2 choices that stopped me putting more money into this game.

• Guild hall changes. I actually spent hundreds of dollars on building my guild hall and converting gold to Influence before they wiped my 8 man guild clean off the map with HoT guild halls.
• Elite specs. I have 27 characters and was trying to get to roughly 50 character slots but I vouched not to buy another character slot until every one of those level 80's had unlocked their elite specs. I have unlocked 7 out of 27 since HoT release. Mostly a PvP player.

[Daedolon.4583]

Best: General gameBest Guild HallsBest: Living world

Worst: Classes balancing in PvP & WvWWORST: Wrecked a large part of the point of the Engineer classes usefulness over time.Worst: Creating New classes in Gw1 Nightfall then didn't use them in Gw2 but still using there class skills in its new classes.& now going back in P O F and these classes no longer exist. :angry:

Worst: some voice acting of people sounds like they are reading out loud from a first run through of the scriptWorst: home instance never gets any new dialogue the farther into the story you get.

[Jana.6831]

@Aeolus.3615 said:i think im already done with the GW series, so no PoF for me..(5years wating this game to get decent, while its getting dumber and dumber)To much emphasys on gimmicks/rotations to help the bad players, while they dont need understanding on what htye are doing(even i have won matches while tappig randomly, since build was extremelly easy for damage output w/o team needed), low team effort gameplay etc...To much flashy skills spamThe balance is awfull due its pve game, and pvp is just there cause well ... a mmo needs pvp.They murdered pvp on their own game long time ago.... cause its a pve class design system and balance cant touch it... (<-big failure here)Its a bad game with good graphics... I have losted faith and respect for this company workers...

I'm cosigning this, although for me it's wvw.

On a sidenote: Removing the thumbs down was a good thing, even if some think it isn't. It's too often that people just downvote everything from people they don't like and the forums become hostile. I'm surprised they did it (that fast).

[Stand The Wall.6987]

best is wvwworst is no gvg

[Aryan Arlande.6184]

Best : End competition in PvE

Worst : Re-invent competition in PvE

The last was leading to a heavy loss of playerbase, including me. (2 Acc, 15 Char)

[Ara.4569]

Best

PvP available right away: no need to go to 80, no need to farm gear, everything is available from the get go.

Worst

Having their design team handle balance instead of hiring a REAL balance team.