GUILD WARS 2 THREAD OF GENERAL GUILD WARRING TWO

[Ryong]

GW2 really, really focuses on convenience. Look at today's update.

Sure, there are several problems with it, like always scaling, terrible economy, the fact that the entire grind of the game is concentrated on making ascended and legendary equipment, the bad parts of the crafting system, the DPS race that is every boss...

But hey, teleports from anywhere, changing your armor dyes whenever without cost, the way quests are handled, the good parts of the crafting system, throwing mats into the bank whenever...

It doesn't feel like it's "easy" or "casual" or "themepark". It felt, right from the start, to focus on making everything the least contrived it could. And now I can't play other MMOs because of it.

[synkr0nized]

There's also the problem I have that whenever I see some of the limitations discussed or issues folks have about the game on the official forums and then someone from ANet responds I get these impressions that the root cause is poor programming decisions.

Like my issue with getting into the wrong Order temporarily - one of the devs in another person's thread on the issue admitted that at quest completion it merely looks for the next quest on the party leader's path and assigns that to anyone who accepts quest completion. In other words, none of the coders took a minute to add an if/else statement to check the Orders of anyone who accepts completion to add the appropriate next step. This is basic stuff.

And now they are giving us the ability to wear town clothes in combat and such via a separate appearance slot, but yet it's an "all or nothing" deal that does not allow for mix-and-matching pieces. In other words, no one bothered to code a separate appearance tab for the character sheet, just slapping a pointer to a town clothes armor set like they did in GW1. Which is confusing to me if players can still dye the individual pieces.

And the three coloured Knights that had to be fought in LA before opening up the fight with Scarlet's holograms -- the hologram fight was triggered for the map five minutes after the first knight was defeated instead of basing it on the last. So if either of the other two took a while to bring down (or if players gathered up and did them in order), players would warp into a fight in progress.

It's been how many months since launch, and various skills still don't work correctly.

On top of it all is the cash-grab schemes, such as transmutation (potentially made worse now? I am not sure yet).

GW1 was "convenient" and terrific, and it didn't feel like it had half of the issues GW2 has. But that's my fault, again, for comparing the sequel to the original or holding any expectation that it would be the same. Most of those folks aren't with ANet anymore, anyway. GW2 is driven by those who gave us EotN, the worst/grindiest part of the GW experience.

[synkr0nized]

ololol

ANet continues their tradition of doing silly things in-game for April Fool's by making everyone a bobblehead.

The players, or at least the official forums community members, continue their tradition of being whiny shitheels and complain about it.

For me, it's a reminder that there is a large amount of players who never were around for GW1 and didn't see this coming.

They also never got to read the balance notes that often came out on 4/1, either, I guess. Their loss.

[Ryong]

The thing is, every single MMO I've played has had stupid problems and no convenience.

-Teleports whenever you want, as long as you've been there.
-Send all your mats to the bank instantly, for no cost.
-Material-specific tabs in the bank, to minimize clutter.
-A dye system that also doesn't cost a thing aside from buying new dyes.
-Changing your build - currently to a given degree, completely but equipment-wise on the next upgrade - whenever you want.

The only real grind problems are the crafting to 500 grind and the amount of things you need for a legendary.

I've played MMOs where you kill things for 9 hours, level up, get a quest to either kill 200 things or deliver 20 things so that you only have to kill things for 9 hours instead of 12.

I've played MMOs where item price was linked to how fast you'd level up and some people did nothing but trade all day to the point where it was commonplace for them to trade things that vastly exceeded the maximum amount of money you could have in the money, a number that'd be impossible to reach for all but the most fanatical of people ( to draw a comparision, imagine if a player in GW2 sold a legendary a day ).

GW2 is flawed, but it is still vastly superior to any MMO I've ever played.

[shiney]

I still maintain the problem with GW2 is the lack of any cohesive drive toward endgame because it seems like endgame is just a vehicle to build legendaries. Admittedly purchasing and playing a game like GW2 while simultaneously not giving one shit about PvP suggests that perhaps I am in the wrong business here, as it seems that "endgame" as devised by ANet is PvP, but nonetheless there is a dearth of entertaining activity at endgame for Rai and myself.

*shrugs* I totes agree on the absolute convenience factor though. I figure they put that in because why not. The reason those aren't available on subscription games is, travel takes a lot of time, as does resource management, and that time still counts against your monthly fee. Putting in convenience factors might allow players to progress rapidly enough that they become bored and the monthly subscription fee is lost. By comparison, now I have every convenience, and yep got bored and moved on due to lack of interest...

[Ryong]

I blame the fact that the living story was shit.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Originally Posted by Ryong

I blame the fact that the living story was shit.

the entire concept is shit. a bandaid fix for a longterm problem: Anet has no longterm direction with this game. None. bupkis. zippo. nada. zilch. A weak attempt at holding onto a player base that has run out of things to do other than play dress up simulator and idle in lion's arch, or whatever the new hangout spot is. It alienates the player base that juggles other games or doesn't have the time to commit to guild wars for any length of time. As well as extremely alienating the would-be returning player base.

[synkr0nized]

Map zones all to be part of a new "Megaserver" system, something that honestly GW2 should have had from the start for PvE. Since the world was already split into sub-zones with transitions in between them and population max sizes, I am glad to see a potentially superior system replace the idea of guesting to play with friends and Overflow.

This will probably fuck up world boss timers/events, though.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Yeahhhh...they're gonna fuck it up something fierce.

[Arcanum]

I dunno, looks pretty not fucked to me.