The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Avellion]

I would not put any hope into Living Story ever being any good, it may have improved somewhat and the devs moving towards 1 update per month instead of 1 update per second week should mean that content isnt as overly rushed out and the devs having more time to think things through (like maybe make the next large scale boss encounter instanced). Temporary content is fine to some extent, but when you focus on it as much as NeoArenaNet did, it becomes a serious problem. But unless the leadership gets heavily restructured, I don't expect things to change.

 

[Stokowski]

stuff

I agree with all of that. Gold isn't a hassle. Time-gated crafting processes on the other hand ... well they can be a little annoying.

And I really do think it's time they admitted to the utter failure of the so-called Living Story, and started producing perma-content that isn't shit. (Yes. I know: I can dream.)

 

[Hoaxmetal]

 

[Night Goat]

I used to be a huge fan of this game, and...

I used to be a huge fan of this game, I played it quite a lot, but two things literally killed GW2 for me: lack of proper expansion content and the living story, because...

Oh look, Zewp already said it. Guess what? Because these two things didn't killed the game FOR ME, they killed it for EVERYONE. Every single GW2 player probably agrees with these points except for a bunch of retarded roleplayers that probably don't care (though I imagine they do).

It's really funny because the only persons that don't seem to know about it are the devs At every possible chance they praise the living story as a godsend design decision that makes GW2 so much better than any other MMO that ever existed. Fuck these guys, such a wasted potential with this bullshit of idea.

If the story was like AWESOME, I guess they'd have a good excuse for it, but no. I'd be honestly very surprised if one single GW2 player likes Scarlet and the path the story took.

Yeah. This.

 

[Angthoron]

I used to be a huge fan of this game, and...

I used to be a huge fan of this game, I played it quite a lot, but two things literally killed GW2 for me: lack of proper expansion content and the living story, because...

Oh look, Zewp already said it. Guess what? Because these two things didn't killed the game FOR ME, they killed it for EVERYONE. Every single GW2 player probably agrees with these points except for a bunch of retarded roleplayers that probably don't care (though I imagine they do).

It's really funny because the only persons that don't seem to know about it are the devs At every possible chance they praise the living story as a godsend design decision that makes GW2 so much better than any other MMO that ever existed. Fuck these guys, such a wasted potential with this bullshit of idea.

If the story was like AWESOME, I guess they'd have a good excuse for it, but no. I'd be honestly very surprised if one single GW2 player likes Scarlet and the path the story took.

Yeah. This.

I actually don't mind the Scarlet story and the Living Story in general. What I don't like is what the 2-week release schedule was doing to it. Clearly, it was a case of "trying to bite off too much" - early stages (spring, summer) were pretty decent, but then came autumn, and past Queen's Jubilee, there was a very obvious slump. Toxic Tower was a huge let-down quality-wise, and its followup was even more so.

The new part, with what looks like a month's worth of time to develop, is quite clearly an improvement - the new events are genuinely popular, and fairly rewarding to those that succeed in them - unlike the said Toxic Tower stuff.


What bothers me greatly, though, is that this is largely temporary stuff, while I'd want permanent additions - mainly dungeons/raids. I want to be able to rerun the Fire & Frost dungeon - and not just the (heavily nerfed) endbosses, but the whole thing, why wasn't it left in, like Aetherblade path in SE? Why aren't there more dungeons? Assets are clearly there, it's just a question of designing the encounters and adding a few new armour sets. So yeah, my big gripe with Living Story is that it seems to be made at the expense of permanent world additions, not the fact that it's about OHOHO SO SMART Scarlet rather than another Elder Dragon.

 

[Avellion]

Having the rare temporary content (like twice per year) is fine, but they went way too far with GW2. Instead of adding lasting content at a decent rate and fixing the flaws of the game they put too much focus into the living story stuff.

Of the stuff they added last year, here is how much of it that is no longer in the game

• Molten Facility
• Aetherblade Refuge
• Bazaar of the Four Winds
• Queen’s Gauntlet
• Queen’s Jubilee
• SAB
• Tower of Nightmares
• Wintersday & Halloween Events
• Not to mention a lot of these events, like the deal with the Karkas
• Probably more stuff I missed

Here is what has been added that is still in that I can think of

• Fractals
• A new map that nobody ever uses
• Some content has been permanently redesigned though like Tequatl and one of the dungeon paths.
• Tacked on grind to various stuff like the new achievement system and raising the crafting level cap to 500.

Everything in the game feels neglected (somehow), on the WvW side there are too many exploits, flaws and not enough variety, not to mention the zerg based nature of it (other massive scale PvP games did not have it this bad). the sPvP still only has one game mode, and a really boring one at that, it has a tremendous lack of variety, and it lacks the pick up and play you would expect from a casual game all while lacking the depth and competition would expect from a hardcore game (who exactly are they targeting for this PvP mode?) the PvE still has no real endgame and due to ArenaNet's fear of roles and awful execution, the PvE revolves around 3 Warriors, 1 guardian and 1 mesmer, all self supporting (a character who specializes in damage will provide equally potent buffs and debuffs just as well as someone who specializes in support) and all in full berzerker gear.

Which brings me on to the awful combat itself. Buffs and debuffs are extremely simplistic +x damage, +x% damage taken (x=1 per stack), there is very little in terms of resource management, since barely any moves have any negative impacts the combat frequently devolves into using whatever is not on cooldown, skills are lacking in both variety and interesting synergy (they skills and balance team were incredibly shy and played it too safe), weak counterplay with the lack of being able to use the enemy's own attacks against them and dodge being the solution to every attack in the game.

Arenanet put their priorities in the wrong place, and that killed the game for me.

 

[Rahdulan]

Yeah, except good 80% of GW1 skills were useless because A) they were shared by the enemy as well as player professions, and B) game adhered to strict FotM meta if you ever intended to do anything, especially in PvP. There's way too much nostalgia running about for the first game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

game adhered to strict FotM meta if you ever intended to do anything

Bullshit.

I bet you played 24/7 on a lacklustre pvxwiki cripshot build or whatever the fuck kind of fotm sway and thought you were running with the pros.

 

[Zewp]

I would say the main issue I have with the game in its current state is that I'm playing the same content I've played through the last year, and the content that is available is not interesting or varied enough to warrant me actually caring about it. The living story simply cannot compensate for the fact that people are getting bored of the available content.

It's weird that the only people who don't seem to realise how badly this game needs an expansion seems to be the developers themselves.

 

[Angthoron]

I would say the main issue I have with the game in its current state is that I'm playing the same content I've played through the last year, and the content that is available is not interesting or varied enough to warrant me actually caring about it. The living story simply cannot compensate for the fact that people are getting bored of the available content.

It's weird that the only people who don't seem to realise how badly this game needs an expansion seems to be the developers themselves.

I'd not be too surprised if they're actually working on it in secret - the lack of major world zone additions and the heralded end to Scarlet story smells strongly of it leading up to an expansion. Something I sort of wonder, though, is where it'll be expanding to - but I guess once they reveal what dragon it is that Scarlet is after, it'll be pretty clear.

Going to stay out of the GW1 meta talk here, since 1) Didn't play it enough, and 2) from some examples, it sounds like some skills could easily be consolidated into "take XX unavoidable damage", while at the same time removing the trollface from the skillset. Of course, that removes the flair of it, but eh. Spellsteals sound much more interesting. At any rate, it's a case of apples vs oranges. Oranges could be a bit more like apples, sure, but they're not, so I'll take them as they are. The combat system itself isn't too bad, the problem is that eventually you run out of things to do with it. An expansion and a slow-down in Living Story updates (with more permanent world/dungeon additions) would fix this. More thought-out encounters in the outside world also help. Marionette is entertaining, Wurm is decent. Tower wasn't. The butthurt at failures is an amazing source of lulz.

 

[Average Manatee]

They say this kind of game is truly great when you have fun even when you're not playing, just looking at skills and classes, planning and discussing stuff. And man was GW1 great fun even by just sitting on your guild hall and planning new strategies with your guild. I remember we got to use even the weirdest stuff like Aneurysm and it worked. You underestimate how dynamic GW1 was.

This is true. Theory crafting in GW1 is more interesting than actually playing GW2.

 

[80Maxwell08]

If I might talk about the original for a bit I remember when the Guild Wars Beyond quests came out trying to branch the first game to the second game. The ones set in the Prophecies world were relatively fine from my perspective. Granted they weren't even close to anything special but were relatively harmless overall. Then the ones for Factions came.

Dear god those were easily the worst quests in the game and if there were worse then I don't ever want to know. The storyline was completely retarded with your PC suddenly talking about how others shouldn't murder hundreds after you have directly caused the genocide of at least 3 species and killed thousands. Then after you beat it the second antagonist talks about all the good he's going to do for the empire (I wonder if it was addressed why the emperor didn't have his own kid for an heir) when the player should know he's directly responsible for forcibly re-inducting half the country back into his own empire then going right back to genocide and the game just wants you to be cool with it. Not even mentioning the horrendous quest design which was ridiculously hard even for GW standards. That questline alone was the reason I stopped caring about both playing GW and getting GW2. Pity since I got to 34 of those memorial points.

So to anyone whose played both is the GW2 story on the same level as the Factions Guild Wars Beyond quests?
EDIT: Forgot to put this in before but I still find it funny that after Winds of Change they decided to scrap the rest of the Guild Wars Beyond quests and just told people there weren't going to be anymore quests.

 

[Night Goat]

So to anyone whose played both is the GW2 story on the same level as the Factions Guild Wars Beyond quests?

I didn't play the Winds of Change quests, but the story in GW2 is definitely not good. You don't commit genocide or anything, it's just really generic. A bunch of dragons are trying to kill everyone for no reason, and you have to go kill one of them; that's really all there is to it.

 

[Average Manatee]

GW2's story is horribly generic for the first half where you are in your racial lands. Basically take the race's trope and spend 20-30 hours doing the same fetch quests and kill 20 x with a minor makeover. For the second half you get introduced to the "main" characters, and from that point on you are basically 2nd-tier sidekicks to them while they do all the awesome stuff. It's really horrible to play, the dryad guy leader is one of the biggest Mary Sues I've seen and you are his bitch for about 40 levels straight.

GW1 was the opposite. The reoccurring NPC characters felt like fellow adventurers and actually had personalities. It's sad to think that Mhenlo & gang are all dead and these are his replacements. And even while generic at least you get the feeling you are advancing in an Living Story (ironically, one of the biggest failures of GW2) rather than simply killing infinitely respawning enemies.

And yes, that Winds of Change stuff was stupid. It WAS released just a year before GW2 (and actually finished even later), so at that point Arenanet had probably already gone full retard. Everything before that in GW1 is either much better or at the least not nearly as unbearably dumb. So few of the original GW1 devs worked on GW2 that you can see why it's basically another game in just about every way, and why the additional GW1 content meshed worse and worse as time went on.

 

[Stokowski]

Warning! Warning! Warning: near consensus in a Codex thread.

Quickly, someone disagree violently or the universe will implode.

 

[Kane]

They say this kind of game is truly great when you have fun even when you're not playing, just looking at skills and classes, planning and discussing stuff. And man was GW1 great fun even by just sitting on your guild hall and planning new strategies with your guild. I remember we got to use even the weirdest stuff like Aneurysm and it worked. You underestimate how dynamic GW1 was.

The game had a _metagame_. Today's MMOs are just generic pieces of garbage and the last game that tried to make a difference, Darkfall Online, failed in greektacular fashion. PS2 is our last hope.

 

[Kane]

If I might talk about the original for a bit I remember when the Guild Wars Beyond quests came out trying to branch the first game to the second game. The ones set in the Prophecies world were relatively fine from my perspective. Granted they weren't even close to anything special but were relatively harmless overall. Then the ones for Factions came.

Dear god those were easily the worst quests in the game and if there were worse then I don't ever want to know. The storyline was completely retarded with your PC suddenly talking about how others shouldn't murder hundreds after you have directly caused the genocide of at least 3 species and killed thousands. Then after you beat it the second antagonist talks about all the good he's going to do for the empire (I wonder if it was addressed why the emperor didn't have his own kid for an heir) when the player should know he's directly responsible for forcibly re-inducting half the country back into his own empire then going right back to genocide and the game just wants you to be cool with it. Not even mentioning the horrendous quest design which was ridiculously hard even for GW standards. That questline alone was the reason I stopped caring about both playing GW and getting GW2. Pity since I got to 34 of those memorial points.

So to anyone whose played both is the GW2 story on the same level as the Factions Guild Wars Beyond quests?
EDIT: Forgot to put this in before but I still find it funny that after Winds of Change they decided to scrap the rest of the Guild Wars Beyond quests and just told people there weren't going to be anymore quests.

It's even worse, but then again I did never play much of the game after I completed Prophecies and humped others in our Guild Hall instead. Man, these days were truly rock & roll.
Too bad a.net bled all the important people after prophecies. But we will remember:

 

[Angthoron]

My rage comes from the fact that I like many things about this game and overall I had a pretty good time with it. That's why I care, I want more than anyone else to see this game turning around, burying all the shit they came up with to destroy their own fucking game and, above all, releasing good fucking content. Permanent content. Tons of maps, professions, five times the amount of skills we have now with interesting combinations to use. Guild halls. A proper endgame. More and better dungeons. Its own version of GvG and HA. Dynamic ways for the guild conflicts to be felt on the game, like a better version of the Luxon-Kurzick battle from GW:Factions. Better boss designs that aren't about hundreds of people on an overflow spamming stuff (oh and if you landed on a shit overflow, sucks to be you, I hope you don't mind wasting the next hour or so just to see the "quest failed!" badge at the end). More great landscapes to explore, places that feel isolated and truly dangerous and not a fucking little town at every 50 meters with a heart quest to complete. More jumping puzzles and explorer achievements that are actually GOOD and feel like a little adventure like the best ones available at the moment, not the trial and error shit.

Sound like way too much stuff to do for the game to be on the so called "right tracks" but it actually isn't. Anet has the people and the resources, they aren't doing all of this because they're wasting EVERYTHING they have on the living story and temporary content. Just see the interviews, the guys proudly saying how they now have FOUR living world teams working on the game. Imagine if these four teams were working on the stuff I mentioned above, it'd be perfectly achievable

Yeah, no arguing here. I was expecting those things to take place when I was getting into the game, that the systems and content would be added. What I didn't expect is that they'd become so busy with the Living Story stuff to forget adding all that. It's seriously jarring, despite me not quite hating the LW stuff - it's pretty clear that the team can be capable of such additions when their direction is right. I'd not want the game to end up at the same spot as LotRO during Mines of Moria - a game that had so much promise yet derailed so hard that there was no way to fix it anymore.

I guess we'll have to content ourselves with killing that giant legendary monster alongside 5000 randoms while praying for the Overflow Faeries that yours manage to beat it, which is completely out of your reach to influence given the nature of GW2's big zergs.

And yet fixing this could've been so easy. Revamp dungeon generation system (dungeon persists until LAST person leaves, not when the initiator goddamn crashes), instance the harder encounters and voila - something new for "hardcore" players to do. Sure, that leaves out the puggers out of 100% of the content, but IIRC the design philosophy originally was "we make something for every player group to enjoy, not one massive slab of content that can be interesting to no-one", so what the hell, give something to the non-casual PvEers already. FoM alone doesn't quite cut it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Beyond Prophecies was alright because it re-introduced the KKK aka White Mantle and the Mursaat, who are the most kick-ass antagonist in all parts of Guild Wars.

Beyond Factions, though... well, I liked Courier Falken's big trouble in little Kaineng sidestreet punchout Beyond Factions had an alright theme with Cantha getting overtaken by the nazis, but the quests were definitely ridiculous. It was especially bad that they essentially took the most bloody annoying enemies in GW history (The Afflicted), supercharged them and put you against them in overwhelming odds. I've cruised through ALL stuff in Guild Wars, including full vanquish and hard mode quests, as well as stuff like FoW/UW/Urgoz/DoA with a bro and a set of 6 heroes, and while we got through Beyond Factions in normal without much trouble, trying to get through it in hard mode was hell. Two special highlights include Minister Cho's Estate (FOUR DUDES VS HORDES OF SUPERCHARGED AFFLICTED) and the quest Finding Jinnai, which has no rez shrine, and puts you against an OVERWHELMING FLOODING HORDE of hard mode canthan space marines. We eventually ragequit at Finding Jinnai because it was simply goddamned impossible.

 

[Rahdulan]

game adhered to strict FotM meta if you ever intended to do anything

Bullshit.

I bet you played 24/7 on a lacklustre pvxwiki cripshot build or whatever the fuck kind of fotm sway and thought you were running with the pros.

I don't dismiss that possibility, but I don't think it was the case with me. My point was that GW1 had its own problems which people selectively choose to forget because GW2 was different so it's easier to pick on instead. Neither game is perfect and both have issues in the skill department. My problem with GW2 is that "we're removing dual-professions to improve skill balance" amounted to jack shit.

 

[BrickManslab]

I really, really don't like playing the sidekick in an MMO so when GW2 shifted into Kormir 2.0 mode I soured on it pretty damn quickly. It didn't help that the personal storyline was dull and a tremendous missed opportunity. Each player has a personal instance and most of the dialogue is text but it'll never be anything but an empty box and straight-line dialogue exchanges and everything turns out meaningless anyway because remember your long-lost sister? Yeah neither do we don't bring it up again you need to tell Treesus how cool and smart he is

I realize it's pretty absurd to bash an MMO for the plot but there it is.

 

[Average Manatee]

Beyond Factions, though... well, I liked Courier Falken's big trouble in little Kaineng sidestreet punchout Beyond Factions had an alright theme with Cantha getting overtaken by the nazis, but the quests were definitely ridiculous. It was especially bad that they essentially took the most bloody annoying enemies in GW history (The Afflicted), supercharged them and put you against them in overwhelming odds. I've cruised through ALL stuff in Guild Wars, including full vanquish and hard mode quests, as well as stuff like FoW/UW/Urgoz/DoA with a bro and a set of 6 heroes, and while we got through Beyond Factions in normal without much trouble, trying to get through it in hard mode was hell. Two special highlights include Minister Cho's Estate (FOUR DUDES VS HORDES OF SUPERCHARGED AFFLICTED) and the quest Finding Jinnai, which has no rez shrine, and puts you against an OVERWHELMING FLOODING HORDE of hard mode canthan space marines. We eventually ragequit at Finding Jinnai because it was simply goddamned impossible.

Git Gud. I rolled through HM with heroes.

But seriously, the one thing I like about the Cantha stuff is that they were upping the difficulty factor and that the new Afflicted were an actual threat. Complaining about Hard Mode is silly when you can play on Normal mode. The horde of whiners every time some half-difficult content was released in GW1 always forced Arenanet to nerf the difficulty to stop people complaining, and it's disgusting. Original Thunderhead keep was awesome, now I alt-tab for 10 mins while camping the king.

What made the afflicted annoying for you? The explosion on death? Because those were actually nerfed in damage for the new afflicted and instead they had new class-based special effects (some didn't even damage you at all).

 

[Berekän]

Fuckin suxons man

 

[Average Manatee]

Fuckin suxons man

Typical Kurdick.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Git Gud. I rolled through HM with heroes.

Finding Jinnai in HM as Ranger + Paragon with a set of heroes was impossible, and believe me when I said we tried everything, including "top rated pve builds", and loads of incredibly crazy theorycrafting that almost worked. But the constantly spawning rapetrain of 92874698 space marines of all classes that refuse to die and keep shadow-stepping to your heroes is just a bit too much.

But seriously, the one thing I like about the Cantha stuff is that they were upping the difficulty factor and that the new Afflicted were an actual threat. Complaining about Hard Mode is silly when you can play on Normal mode. The horde of whiners every time some half-difficult content was released in GW1 always forced Arenanet to nerf the difficulty to stop people complaining, and it's disgusting. Original Thunderhead keep was awesome, now I alt-tab for 10 mins while camping the king.

I'm not whining or complaining about Hard Mode. Also, the original Thunderhead Keep was generally hard only because you didn't have access to heroes, which is actually true for all missions in Prophecies/Factions. ESPECIALLY Factions, which were crazy-difficult at times on release. Good times.

What made the afflicted annoying for you?

EVERYTHANG

I simply hate everything about them, and I always did, even in base Factions. They have annoying skillsets, look like bloated sacks of shit and have those deathsplosions.


Also, this thread is now about silly-looking GW people with an interesting sense of fashion

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