The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Drakortha]

Is this shit any good yet?

god no
it has combat worse than ESO

Bullshit. ESO combat is unforgivably bad. It tries to mimic Skyrim combat all the while having all the hallmarks of a bad MMO combat system. At least in GW2 combat you can dodge enemy attack and the combat in general feels fluid (for an MMO)

ESO copied GW2 by tacking on dodging in their combat, but it's shit by comparison in it's implementation. Unlike ESO, Guild Wars 2 looks nice graphically with nice colors and exploration can be fun. You can't say the same for ESO which looks drab and boring because it borrows the ugly color palette from Skyrim.

 

[Bara]

It's been a while since I touched GW2 but even if the combat is better that doesn't help much when there isn't much to do with it in the long run.

At least with ESO even through the clunky combat I've enjoyed a fair amount of the quests when exploring the zones with GW2 it's just log in for the new story quests run through them in a day and then come back a few months later again.

The fact they never added more dungeons and shuttered raids down doesn't help. They have fractals for all their new 5 man additions but they got real samey real fast and doesn't feel as good as a proper dungeon with a singular theme rather than bashing multiple mini-dungeons together.

Now they replaced raids with strikes I'm told which instead of exploring a big dungeon area and killing bosses you just zone in to one boss fight and kill them.

There is small scale and large scale pvp to do with the combat system sure but for the large scale pvp that game mode got crippled by lack up content updates or just bad updates outright. Unsure on the current state of small scale pvp.

 

[Talby]

Fixed.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Didn’t Guild Wars 2 get a load of ‘Best MMO ever’, ‘Sets the standard for online games’ when it came out? It’s amazing how it completely disappeared over the past few years. Must not have been as great as the gaming sites thought.

 

[Lhynn]

Game was made via checklist. Nobody ever thought if what they were making was fun, it just sounded fun.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Didn’t Guild Wars 2 get a load of ‘Best MMO ever’, ‘Sets the standard for online games’ when it came out? It’s amazing how it completely disappeared over the past few years. Must not have been as great as the gaming sites thought.

It's still TOP5 MMO, popularity wise. I think it's just the general state of the genre nowadays, p. much no excitement and they rarely make the news.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

because it's famous and free, that's why it's top5.
also because, other than ultima online and neocron beta, when was the last time a mmo has actually been good and brought something new to the table? guild wars. 2005.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

Game was made via checklist. Nobody ever thought if what they were making was fun, it just sounded fun.

It didn't even sound fun. It was obvious before it came out that it would be a Gw1 dumbed down beyond recognition. All positive reviews were bought.

 

[Lhynn]

Game was made via checklist. Nobody ever thought if what they were making was fun, it just sounded fun.

It didn't even sound fun. It was obvious before it came out that it would be a Gw1 dumbed down beyond recognition. All positive reviews were bought.

But its not Gw1, its not even close in any way.

 

[Drakortha]

Hate the game or love it, this is cool.

 

[Maxie]

Hate the game or love it, this is cool.

we've had the same thing in gw1, only not this soulless

 

[ADL]

I hope Guild Wars 3, if there is one, is a mixture of GW1&2. They really need to do some major technical improvements if the new Cantha expansion is gonna hold up in TYOOL 2021. The game needs multithreading support and to move on from DX9 as soon as possible.

 

[Drakortha]

Maybe I'm just naive because I never really got into another MMO before GW2. I played GW1 very briefly back in the day with one of my brothers but he quit playing shortly afterwards. Regretfully I stopped playing as well. Feels bad because I wanted to play it, I just didn't want to do it solo at the time.

+1 Point to GW2 for not needing a NCSoft launcher or similar bullshit to access the game. It's straightforward. It gets a lot of support and is updated often with QoL improvements. And the population is also great. Very rarely do I have trouble finding other players to beat a boss in the open world or do instanced content and the community itself is very helpful and hardly toxic at all. If you get downed during a tough event almost always the other players in the area will go out of their way to revive you. It's good to see that's still the norm.

Overall I'd say It's surprisingly very healthy for a game that's gotten almost no marketing or mainstream attention since it's release.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

gw2 is one of the worst 'modern' MMOs I've played
I actually can't think of anything positive to say about it

 

[ADL]

gw2 is one of the worst 'modern' MMOs I've played
I actually can't think of anything positive to say about it

Business model is the biggest one for me. Their monetization is extremely fair to the point where I wonder if it's even making enough money to justify running it, blows my mind in comparison to NCSoft's other games. The living world episodes (new content) are entirely free as long as you login every 3-4 months while it's active. Want a specific skin out of a lootbox? Pay a little more gems and you can buy them outright for the most part. Outside of monetization other things worth praising, best mount system ever hands down.

Horizontal progression for gear, all content is viable at endgame due to level scaling.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Horizontal progression for gear, all content is viable at endgame due to level scaling.

these are antifeatures

 

[ADL]

The arguments against level scaling are more valid as an argument against leveling in MMOs entirely than they are about whether or not scaling should exist at this point. There's nothing worse than development resources being spent on entire zones worth of content you'll never step foot in while leveling and then when you try to revisit after leveling up, you're a demi-god one shotting everything. With games like TESO and GW2 at least you can revisit and enjoy it. It might be easy content regardless but at least you're not unstoppable. Being able to step away and skip an expansion or two and return while remaining completely viable gear-wise is great.

Not to mention level scaling makes group play easier instead of having to give your friends a checklist of what it'll take for them to start playing with you.

"Yeah this game's really fun. If you wanna play with me you just gotta follow this guide, don't worry it'll only take you 150 hours and then the game gets really fun I promise. Oh yeah, before I forget make sure you parse at least 800 million DPS or you'll be votekicked from every dungeon group which are the endgame. Also the new expansion comes out in a month and you'll have to do this all over again so you might just wanna wait..."

Power creep kills content, leveling experience included. Not saying it's a perfect system in either game but if you're gonna do a themepark MMO, pissing away content because nerds like to see their numbers go up is stupid and encourages FOMO design.

 

[Average Manatee]

GW1 had the best system with a low level cap and static max equipment to begin with, but a static high level cap with scaling and static max equipment is still good. Definitely better than retarded gear treadmills.

 

[Axioms]

I tried to play GW2 as a big GW1 fan. Trash.

 

[Norfleet]

The arguments against level scaling are more valid as an argument against leveling in MMOs entirely than they are about whether or not scaling should exist at this point. There's nothing worse than development resources being spent on entire zones worth of content you'll never step foot in while leveling and then when you try to revisit after leveling up, you're a demi-god one shotting everything.

The converse being, "What's the point of levelling up if you never actually get better at anything?".

Obviously, there's a balance between the two to be struck, and the usual cause of the imbalance you describe is massive number inflation.

Power creep kills content, leveling experience included. Not saying it's a perfect system in either game but if you're gonna do a themepark MMO, pissing away content because nerds like to see their numbers go up is stupid and encourages FOMO design.

I wouldn't say power creep MUST kill content, but it certainly makes it very likely to do so. As for "the levelling experience", honestly, I find that the levelling experience is only briefly entertaining...once. Once you've gone through it, you realize everything you did that point was wrong and you don't really have a desire to do that again. Once you know you're supposed to be using the purple sword, using the green one is just the gnawing sense of doing it wrong.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

The converse being, "What's the point of levelling up if you never actually get better at anything?".

you go hunting for skins and, more importantly, for skills, not only elite, with which to try new builds and refine those you had already. damn, gw was fun, no wonder you don't understand it u_u

 

[Fedora Master]

gw2 is one of the worst 'modern' MMOs I've played
I actually can't think of anything positive to say about it

Reminder this person unironically played FO76.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

gw2 is one of the worst 'modern' MMOs I've played
I actually can't think of anything positive to say about it

Reminder this person unironically played FO76.

And it's a better game than gw2.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I tried to play GW2 as a big GW1 fan. Trash.

Like I think I've already said in this thread, I've got 2.5K hours clocked in GW1. Pre-ordered GW2 and totalled 5h.

 

[Drakortha]

I have 4.6k hours clocked in GW2.