The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[MadMaxHellfire]

Can it get any worse? Oh yes it can. Now Treefag is declared the hero of this game and I am only his trusty sidekick.

it's clearly a homage to one of the besterestest plot in the universe: oblivion.

 

[Bliblablubb]

it's clearly a homage to one of the besterestest plot in the universe: oblivion.

At least in Lolblivion you knew: "the guy is voiced by Sean Bean, he won't surive long enough to steal my spotlight".

No such luck with emo Treefag.

 

[Rahdulan]

Keep playing.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I'm very surprised how this hasn't made its way to consoles, considering that it seems to be designed from the ground up for them... And the immense success elder Scrolls Online is having in both the Xbox and PS4.

 

[Lhynn]

Im surprised about how boring this shit is. getting from 1 to cap has been the most banal and uneventful experience of my gaming lyfe. That people play this crap speaks poorly of the human race as a whole.

 

[Stokowski]

I hit max level while crafting. So that was certainly ... um ... aah ... something ... that happened.

 

[Rahdulan]

I hit max level while crafting. So that was certainly ... um ... aah ... something ... that happened.

I always liked that everything you did contributed to your leveling in GW2, but it's not like you're really grinding levels in the first place so yeah, experience from every corner can actually creep up on you. Although these days they're apparently handing out instant +1 level items for regular logins so that's even less of an issue. Sometimes I yearn for the olden days of MMORPGs when leveling took months to get anywhere, but then my rational side slaps me saying "what are you fucking crazy, you're not a teenager anymore with all the free time in the world!".

 

[J1M]

GW2 is probably the biggest case ever of the player community of an online game having one vision for how a game should be and the devs having another so abysmally different it's almost like they want to develop the game into a whole different genre.

Not quite accurate. The problem is that too many people were devoted to the dev's vision and they just shouted down anyone else who had good ideas for the game. Have you ever tried posting constructive criticism on the GW2 reddit? Downvote central because Anet knows best and fuck you for thinking otherwise. Their official forums are not much better. Self-admitted retired no-life fuckers like Vayne literally spending their entire day telling people why they are wrong and GW2 is perfect.

At some point the GW2 fanbase even believed that the game should never get expansions and shat on anyone who said how desperately the game needed it. Kept claiming the Living Story was good enough. And then they had to launch Megaserver merging because on most servers the middle-tier maps were completely devoid of life because the content could not keep anyone's attention once they got through a map once.

Those are the people who stayed and shaped GW2 community to become this. Originally a fuckton of people disliked what they were doing with the game and demanded a more GW1 approach, to no success at all. Those simply left the game at some point. Then the Anet apologists/cocksuckers took complete charge of all places and AFAIK all GW2 related spaces, forums and wikis became this super toxic environment for GW1 fans. After that, all the new GW2 players were pretty much people disconnected from the first game, most never played it, and they enjoy the second game the way it is. tl;dr, Anet succesfully detached GW2 from the first one entirely, which is ironic considering at the beginning they even linked both games with the hall of monuments shit.

That, in fact, proves how Anet never had a clue of what they were doing with this game. They went from showing some slight bit of respect to GW1 to distancing themselves as much as possible, to trying to push the game into fucking e-sports, to turning it into living story shitfest, to pretend they were hearing the fans and releasing a meaningless expansion that added patch-sized content to the game. Oh, and they charged full game price for it because fuck you if you bought vanilla before, you are shit just like all the old GW1 fans.

Never played GW2. Remember the hype they tried to generate for the game's design philosophy. Would be quite interested in further accounts of which design elements turned out well, which did not, and the resulting decisions that left them in the current situation.

 

[Average Manatee]

Never played GW2. Remember the hype they tried to generate for the game's design philosophy. Would be quite interested in further accounts of which design elements turned out well, which did not, and the resulting decisions that left them in the current situation.

We have about 161 pages of documented evidence.

 

[J1M]

Never played GW2. Remember the hype they tried to generate for the game's design philosophy. Would be quite interested in further accounts of which design elements turned out well, which did not, and the resulting decisions that left them in the current situation.

We have about 161 pages of documented evidence.

Was inviting someone who is sore enough about it to write a summary.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

none turned well, all the others did not.
gw2 hasn't a single redeeming value. not a single one. it's exactly like each and every other one random korean mmorpg.

 

[Veelq]

Never played GW2. Remember the hype they tried to generate for the game's design philosophy. Would be quite interested in further accounts of which design elements turned out well, which did not, and the resulting decisions that left them in the current situation.

We have about 161 pages of documented evidence.

Was inviting someone who is sore enough about it to write a summary.

I've played GW2 long time ago so my point of view is based on what i remember and why i quit.

GW2 character system is worse than GW1 - less option ( despite devs saying otherwise ) - they had good idea with "your weapon has some of your abilities and the rest is from your class" but they failed with binding weapons to classes ( for example as a rogue you can play with a short bow / dual daggers / sword and dagger and those are the only options and noone else can use those weapons )

Leveling was done kinda better than most themeparks - you have more freedom in what you can do to lvl up, but its still zone restricted and mostly combat oriented with quests.

Living world was meh from the start - linear story hamfisted into the mmo with an idea that it can change the world doesnt work for me.

Pvp was done in 2 ways - arena pvp and mass pvp zone called World vs World. Arena is prolly the best feature they did, the whole e-sport thing was connected to it ( and they wanted to focus on it for sure ).
World vs World ( 3 sided pvp between 3 different servers ) was fun for a moment but pointless in the long run ( all you got from it is some meaningless stat boosts or ability boosts and position on the ladder at the end of the month i think ) - that was the feature i was the most sad about.

My quit reason was mostly the WvW failure and maxing out my character w/o anything interesting to do ( there was no raids, no content for groups that some people call "end game" in other mmos ). They focus only on story and arena pvp to push the esports agenda even more ( balancing and stuff was done for arena from what i know, and imo you cannot have good open world pvp with balance done for arena and vice versa - arena was something like 5v5 and mass pvp is always unbalanced ).

Feel free to add or correct me with more current info.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Never played GW2. Remember the hype they tried to generate for the game's design philosophy. Would be quite interested in further accounts of which design elements turned out well, which did not, and the resulting decisions that left them in the current situation.

We have about 161 pages of documented evidence.

Was inviting someone who is sore enough about it to write a summary.

I've played GW2 long time ago so my point of view is based on what i remember and why i quit.

GW2 character system is worse than GW1 - less option ( despite devs saying otherwise ) - they had good idea with "your weapon has some of your abilities and the rest is from your class" but they failed with binding weapons to classes ( for example as a rogue you can play with a short bow / dual daggers / sword and dagger and those are the only options and noone else can use those weapons )

Leveling was done kinda better than most themeparks - you have more freedom in what you can do to lvl up, but its still zone restricted and mostly combat oriented with quests.

Living world was meh from the start - linear story hamfisted into the mmo with an idea that it can change the world doesnt work for me.

Pvp was done in 2 ways - arena pvp and mass pvp zone called World vs World. Arena is prolly the best feature they did, the whole e-sport thing was connected to it ( and they wanted to focus on it for sure ).
World vs World ( 3 sided pvp between 3 different servers ) was fun for a moment but pointless in the long run ( all you got from it is some meaningless stat boosts or ability boosts and position on the ladder at the end of the month i think ) - that was the feature i was the most sad about.

My quit reason was mostly the WvW failure and maxing out my character w/o anything interesting to do ( there was no raids, no content for groups that some people call "end game" in other mmos ). They focus only on story and arena pvp to push the esports agenda even more ( balancing and stuff was done for arena from what i know, and imo you cannot have good open world pvp with balance done for arena and vice versa - arena was something like 5v5 and mass pvp is always unbalanced ).

Feel free to add or correct me with more current info.

I fully agree with the bolded.

I played GW1 for about 2.5k hours , was a member of a couple top-20 pvp guilds (although not always in the starting 8 for gvg as I didn't have enough time for the hardcore commitment), and I have played about 15h total of GW2. Mostly because the deck building really seems to suck and the game is more about twitch reflexes than organized pvp. To play GW1 for its pve content - apart from social reasons - is pretty silly. To play GW2 at all is pretty silly.

 

[Average Manatee]

I played GW1 for about 2.5k hours , was a member of a couple top-20 pvp guilds (although not always in the starting 8 for gvg as I didn't have enough time for the hardcore commitment), and I have played about 15h total of GW2. Mostly because the deck building really seems to suck and the game is more about twitch reflexes than organized pvp. To play GW1 for its pve content - apart from social reasons - is pretty silly. To play GW2 at all is pretty silly.

GW2 is actually significantly less twitchy than GW1 (twitch actually being more about game knowledge and prediction than real reaction speed).

No interrupts (there's some knockdown and shutdown but its so slow and unwieldy that you can't rely on it to stop anything specific).
No active prots (e.g. throwing SoA/Prot Spirit on someone about to be spiked, or Guardian on someone a warrior is moving towards).
No hard punishment skills (e.g. throwing Diversion on a monk before you spike because you know they'll cast an important prot and you'll be able to destroy them later).
No micro tricks like swapping sets to hide energy/resist a certain element, then back to casting whatever it is you need.
No quarterstepping, the hallmark of good GW1 melee.

Essentially the only "twitch" part is the dodge move but it has huge i-frames and is so easy to use because its basically the only real defensive ability most people carry and therefore gets drilled in everyone's head.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I played GW1 for about 2.5k hours , was a member of a couple top-20 pvp guilds (although not always in the starting 8 for gvg as I didn't have enough time for the hardcore commitment), and I have played about 15h total of GW2. Mostly because the deck building really seems to suck and the game is more about twitch reflexes than organized pvp. To play GW1 for its pve content - apart from social reasons - is pretty silly. To play GW2 at all is pretty silly.

GW2 is actually significantly less twitchy than GW1 (twitch actually being more about game knowledge and prediction than real reaction speed).

No interrupts (there's some knockdown and shutdown but its so slow and unwieldy that you can't rely on it to stop anything specific).
No active prots (e.g. throwing SoA/Prot Spirit on someone about to be spiked, or Guardian on someone a warrior is moving towards).
No hard punishment skills (e.g. throwing Diversion on a monk before you spike because you know they'll cast an important prot and you'll be able to destroy them later).
No micro tricks like swapping sets to hide energy/resist a certain element, then back to casting whatever it is you need.
No quarterstepping, the hallmark of good GW1 melee.

Essentially the only "twitch" part is the dodge move but it has huge i-frames and is so easy to use because its basically the only real defensive ability most people carry and therefore gets drilled in everyone's head.

Well, perhaps I formulated that badly, but whereas playing a trigger build, say a domination mesmer or prot monk or infuser was actually fun, I think the GW2 requires a different playstyle, that for me is considerably more boring, kinda like a streetfighter type (or whatever beat 'em up, I haven't ever played those, so the comparison may be way off) roll-attack-evade cycle. By twitchy I mean constant spamming of skills and rolling away, but my experience is just very shallow, as I said.

The things you listed are elements of good organized team play, that requires a lot of coordination, and what made the game good and fun. Nothing better than beating a bloodspike on their selected home map with a balanced build just because your team has superior players or your tactics are so much better.

But I guess my real gripe is with the way they restricted builds and how the skills were tied to weapons.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, you're talking more about spamming. In GW1 you'd spend plenty of time just autoattacking and waiting to using a skill at the right moment. In GW2 you barely autoattack in between the frenzy of 1-2-3-4-1-2-1-1-2-3-1-4 etc, because skills only have cooldowns and if it lights up in your skill bar you better press it. A monkey could be trained to utilize GW2 skills at an ~80% efficiency level I expect.

 

[Mangoose]

Im surprised about how boring this shit is. getting from 1 to cap has been the most banal and uneventful experience of my gaming lyfe. That people play this crap speaks poorly of the human race as a whole.

Lol I never made it to cap.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I like the game. I've got like 5 or 6 level 80 characters, 3 of them that I leveled using books/crafting/special things. It's more fun when you have a guild and play with friends though, just like any type of online game. I have enjoyed playing by myself though, it's better than a lot of f2p mmo's that I've played, but I do say that it's a bit of a downgrade from GW. I still play GW from time to time too, at least they allowed us keep playing that one, even if the server population is a little low. I kind of wish they made GW2 "skill wars 2" instead of whatever it is now.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I only recently got roped into trying it by Vaarna_Aarne since it's f2p, so I gave it a go until 80. Pretty casual all around, and once you realize that you can basically level entirely by harvesting resources and exploring the zones, even that becomes less of a chore.
The story was pretty meh once it became the treefag show, hamfisted and badly executed. His constant "you'll need my expertise, I will come with you" and then just picking his nose wanted me to kill him myself all the time.
I really liked the events in the game tho, having followup events and all that, a welcome change from other static mmos. Like someone here said they should have ditched the late personal story in favor of more events.
That said, I doubt I will bring the other toon (norn) to 80 as well, I only rolled her to find out what happened when she passed out. The game didn't want me to tho. Every time I entered her instance the game crashed with a lack of floor textures.

Turned out the skillful coders were calling functions from the 3Dvision driver even if you don't use that shit, so I had never installed it. And only in those lvl10 story instances. Yeah...

Overall I liked Neverwinter Online more (before they made it a turd) as a casual f2p mmo, at least there I didn't have to fight centaurs as my main enemy for at least 40 levels...


I give it , good enough to kill your time if there isn't any lawn to mow, not enough to let you forget to eat tho.

 

[Veelq]

 

[Frusciante]

Guild Wars 2 is such a sad story. I really loved GW1, great design and the only ´mmo´ I ever enjoyed playing. Would have been great if they took that concept and took it further.

Wonder why no one tries to build on the concept of that game.

 

[Habbonovio]

Been playing since launch day (also played the first GW since launch day) and I felt scammed when I bought the HoT x-pack cause I thought it was little content for the price and only one dungeon was implemented (and not even at release date if I remember right) so 3 of my guildmates, including me, left the game for some months.

Narrative in this game is atrocious and feels like a bad fanfic of some basement dweller obsessed with sylvaris. Not even one NPC is likeable or memorable, and Trahearne is the worst of them.

The artistic design is one of the strongest points of this game, and I really enjoy the gameplay too, even if it's completely different from the GW I used to love.

Also, small guilds like mine (less than 8 active players) have been excluded cause the guild progression system is a grindy one that requires you to have dozens of dedicated guildmates to advance; and not even a shitty alliance system has been provided almost 5 years since launch.

 

[Night Goat]

I played this for a while after release, tried it again a few months ago to see what was new and the answer is "pretty much nothing". They really went Full Retard with the "living world" shit; I've been playing Final Fantasy 14, and it has so much more content because they add it to the game without removing it a couple weeks later. Meanwhile it's been over four years since GW2's release and there's still fewer than ten dungeons, because they throw their own work in the trash to pressure people into playing it faster.

 

[Excidium II]

I only played this game for like 3 months. After I was satisfied with my barbie fashion I lost any interest to keep grindan.

 

[Average Manatee]

Holy shit, GW2 is almost 5 years old...

And yes, the living world model pretty much ruined the game from the get-go. It's absolutely awful, the single worst decision I have ever seen in the MMO genre. Talk about self sabotage. Not that the rest in GW2 is flawless though. Still, would've been so much better if they followed GW1 and added proper expansions, they didn't even have to be that creative, just follow the first game and add Cantha and Elona for fuck's sake.

It blows my mind how they STILL didn't add them to this day.

Cantha and Elona are still RAYCIST!!!111oneoneone

The Arenanet diversity squad is trying to transition to a 100% minority developer lineup so that they can finally make those areas, but transracial technology has not evolved as expected.