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[Nemesis121]

also the stat archetypes for armors and weapons in GW2 is(or atleast were) actually awful.

It was supposed to allow for different builds but some of the archetypes were just straight up better than most of the other archetypes.

basically it was Berzerker's x for PvE and Soldier's for that WvWvW mode - rest was for the most part ignored.

I've heard it's better now than it was then but my god you had to vendor/salvage so much of the loot you got since it was so bad

This was a major problem in GW2, the community is fucking brain dead and will remain brain dead forever, Anet doesn't help either now they forcing the game from Zerker to Condi in PvE, and WvW is moving to Condi too, the problem with end game community is, how fast can we finish? what is the best way? once these 2 conditions are met by the brain dead community, you either run the meta or get kicked..

 

[Complistic]

People freak out when they hear there's no Trinity and instantly assume the combat is unorganized.

 

[NormalFish]

I do have to say this annoys me. For every one weapon set released with the game proper (of which some are incredible gold sinks), you'll see 6 or 7 released to the gem store/loot chests. People will say it's no different because you can buy them off of the game's trading post anyway, at that point im the guy in that one comic going "...I guess!"

Yup. Farming silverwastes for 30 hours to afford a skin that I otherwise have to gamble with real money for is ludicrous. People regularly say the gemstore is a good way to avoid sub fees, but it seems pretty terrible to me.

This was a major problem in GW2, the community is fucking brain dead and will remain brain dead forever, Anet doesn't help either now they forcing the game from Zerker to Condi in PvE, and WvW is moving to Condi too, the problem with end game community is, how fast can we finish? what is the best way? once these 2 conditions are met by the brain dead community, you either run the meta or get kicked..

All MMOs work this way. As do many not-MMOs. If ANet want people to use a variety of gear, they need to make it worth it. Most armor sets are pointless. Toughness being tide to aggro means most characters in PvE avoid any set with toughness. Ferocity being more impactful than precision for most classes means precision primary is usually not very good, etc. This is on ANet.

Oh, and all vanilla condi sets are pretty much dead content with Vipers in the game. Condi duration outweighs everything for condi builds.

 

[Lumination]

There are lots of reasons the game just isn't fun. But there's one common thread through most of the game's problems.

You know those huge boss fights with 100+ people fighting it? On paper, that's fuckin' awesome. In practice, you're just 1/100 mashing your cooldowns when they come up. There's no strategy, no rhyme or reason, you're just another DoT in a wide sea of other fancy particle effects. The big bosses felt like this. WvW felt like this. PvP to an extent, just felt like chaotic flailing. I'd like to end the Holy Trinity as much as the next person, but their implementation was not good. I'm not even going to get into the lack of skill variety with the small pool + skills bound to weapon classes.

To be fair, I stopped pretty early in. The last big thing to have happened was the removal of gold find armor upgrades.

 

[ScatheZombie]

Another thing about the Trinity. Nearly everyone gets it wrong. Modern day combat design is based around a 'trinity' of tanking, healing and damage dealing. But that's not actually the traditional trinity. That's just what its become when game designers realized people like seeing big numbers pop up on their screen.

The actual Trinity in the traditional sense (and the one that actually works the best) is tanking, healing and support. Support covers the basics of buffing the party, debuffing the enemy, crowd control, and contributing additional damage mitigation, healing, and damaging dealing.

There, largely, is no pure damage dealing class in a pure trinity. Everyone deals damage - that just comes with the nature of every other type of ability. What makes combat encounters interesting isn't mastery of a DPS rotation or getting the biggest e-peen numbers; it's the balance of damage mitigation (via healing and tanking) and control of the encounter mechanically (crowd control, buffing, debuffing).

GW2 had the right idea about the modern day trinity needing to go, but failed to realize the primary factor of poor trinity gameplay - damage dealing - was the issue and not the pure tank/pure healer aspect. So they ended up (at least before Hearts of Thorn) creating a situation in which everyone is the one thing games should be curbing - damage dealers that just happen to have some trinity-based abilities on the side - instead of focusing the three pillars and having the traditional trinity gameplay that most modern gamers probably won't even recognize unless they also play tabletop RPGs.

 

[Horp]

People freak out when they hear there's no Trinity and instantly assume the combat is unorganized.

... which it is, compared to most other mmo:s

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Loved gw1.

Didn't love gw2.

Few reasons.

1. At the end of the day, I love the trinity. I WANT to be a dedicated healer, not this fucking mish mash where you're everything.

2. No world vs world. I remember this old PvP event where it was legit 20 v 20 or something. I loved that shit.

 

[Morokh]

You come as a new player in a five year old game that has received quite a bit of support over the years, of course it looks all shiny and beautiful.

The thing is besides most things that are vastly arguable that have been said by many (combat/trinity) the game overall has a history of being vastly inconsistent when it comes to updates/content/rewards, add that to a quite shaky launch, the launch of the first expansion that was hardly better if not worse and you have a game that still is very healthy and enjoyable but far far from where it could be.
Still after all these years they don't really seem to know and understand what their game is and it still feels like they are experimenting with it, and that comes out more often in a bad way than a good one.

Personally it's still the only MMO'type game I'm able to enjoy these days, but quite frankly there seems to be another expansion on the horizon and I really can't say that I'm looking forward to it.

I'll just say that despite many people being against the very idea of raiding it's actually one of the best things that came out of that first expansion (a tad on the easier side, but still), and their story releases although with a gap of roughly 3 months between them now have become more solid than ever.

 

[Lelou]

i played it for 2 years and still i can't understand how the game can work without the mmorpg trinity.

My memories of all the dungeon is a hell fest of spam of random skill / kiting bosses / strange strategies.

WvWvW was really funny.

I still miss gw1 and my 7 years on it.

 

[NormalFish]

i played it for 2 years and still i can't understand how the game can work without the mmorpg trinity.

My memories of all the dungeon is a hell fest of spam of random skill / kiting bosses / strange strategies.

WvWvW was really funny.

I still miss gw1 and my 7 years on it.

the game works with trinity in raids. outside of raids, it works like, say, monster hunter. you dodge big attacks. what's not to get?

 

[Nere]

I played it up to level 58 when I got bored.

The main problem of mine was the combat, everything was on cooldown so I was just pressing whatever button wasn't on cooldown.

Most of the events/quests were so boring, kill those mobs until the bar is full, click those things until the bar is full etc. I know most mmo quests are like these but there are some interesting ones, GW2 had none.

PvE felt like a zerg even ( I played before the expansion so no raids) it was just 100-200 people zerging down a boss which was on a specific timer, so anti-climatic.

I tried it wanting it to be the next big thing and I ended up going back to WoW after 2 months of playtime.

 

[Pellaidh]

I think support are essentials now in Raids.

Also, not sure what you mean by "the complete removal of things like energy, interrupts (and baiting them), skills that required good foresight and timing, as well as a removal of focus on good use of buffs and debuffs". Most of that is still very important imho, specially in PvP.

Energy basically referred to mana or whatever you want to call it, and managing it correctly was super important in Guild Wars 1, while Guild Wars 2 doesn't have it.

For buffs and debuffs, at least back when I played, I don't remember people building characters completely dedicated to either spreading or removing buffs/debuffs, while that was almost essential in Guild Wars 1. I remember playing a character build that did nothing but debuff opponents that would destroy anyone who's team didn't run debuff removal in a matter of seconds. Likewise, buffs in Guild Wars 1 were incredibly powerful, and you always needed to keep track what enemies have what buffs on them. Looking at Guild Wars 2, it only seems to have 14 Conditions for debuffs (and a lot of them are incredibly similar), while Guild Wars 1 had all of this as far as debuffs are concerned. Guild Wars 1 also had 10 conditions roughly equivalent to the ones in Guild Wars 2, but even here the conditions from the first game are much more powerful in places (GW2 blind only causes the next attack to miss, while GW1 causes all attacks to miss at 90% chance).

I mean, I never played Guild Wars 2 PvP at a high level, so maybe buffs and debuffs matter a ton there. But I never played Guild Wars 1 at a particularly high level either, and even at low level PvP with random groups, failing to take into account buffs or debuffs would easily lose you the game. Take for instance the debuff Shame, which causes the next spell you cast to fail and lose you a ton of your energy. You better not cast any spells while that's on you.

For skills that require foresight and timing, a lot of skills in Guild Wars 1 were designed to be incredibly powerful if used right, but very bad if used wrong. Take the skill "Protective Spirit", for instance, which makes one party member only take at most 10% of his health on any attack. Use this on an ally that is just about to get hit by an incredibly damaging ability, and you've saved his life. Use it on someone that is being attacked by something that does multiple low damaging hits, and it does nothing. Use it too soon, and it'll just get dispelled. Or Distracting Shot, which disables the spell the enemy is casting for the next 20 seconds. Use this on something crucial, and the opponents are in huge trouble. Use it on something unimportant (or miss the interrupt entirely), and you've done nothing. This is also where baiting came into play, because you really didn't want to use important skills if they could be disabled. I don't remember anything like that from my time playing Guild Wars 2 PvP, while Guild Wars 1 was full of skills like these.

Man, this turned out very long, but I just loved the combat in Guild Wars 1, PvP in particular, and it feels weird to me that people say Guild Wars 2 has better combat just because it added a dodge button.

 

[Lumination]

I played it up to level 58 when I got bored.

The main problem of mine was the combat, everything was on cooldown so I was just pressing whatever button wasn't on cooldown.

It got down all the boring aspects of WoW combat (rotating cooldowns like a monkey) without any of the fun. The Holy Trinity is fun because it gives everyone a clear job to do, and it's fulfilling to do your job and gauge your contribution that way.

The problem in GW2 is that no one had a job. You couldn't rely on one person to do any one thing because:
A) Your skill pool is diluted with dps, tanking, mobility, etc. You couldn't spec fully in one direction in a satisfactory way.
B) Your cooldowns for the three skills you COULD use were 10+ seconds so what's even the point?

Everyone does everything, so no one is special, and even when you fell the hp sponge you don't really know how much you contributed.

 

[NormalFish]

Energy basically referred to mana or whatever you want to call it, and managing it correctly was super important in Guild Wars 1, while Guild Wars 2 doesn't have it.

For buffs and debuffs, at least back when I played, I don't remember people building characters completely dedicated to either spreading or removing buffs/debuffs, while that was almost essential in Guild Wars 1. I remember playing a character build that did nothing but debuff opponents that would destroy anyone who's team didn't run debuff removal in a matter of seconds. Likewise, buffs in Guild Wars 1 were incredibly powerful, and you always needed to keep track what enemies have what buffs on them. Looking at Guild Wars 2, it only seems to have 14 Conditions for debuffs (and a lot of them are incredibly similar), while Guild Wars 1 had all of this as far as debuffs are concerned. Guild Wars 1 also had 10 conditions roughly equivalent to the ones in Guild Wars 2, but even here the conditions from the first game are much more powerful in places (GW2 blind only causes the next attack to miss, while GW1 causes all attacks to miss at 90% chance).

I mean, I never played Guild Wars 2 PvP at a high level, so maybe buffs and debuffs matter a ton there. But I never played Guild Wars 1 at a particularly high level either, and even at low level PvP with random groups, failing to take into account buffs or debuffs would easily lose you the game. Take for instance the debuff Shame, which causes the next spell you cast to fail and lose you a ton of your energy. You better not cast any spells while that's on you.

For skills that require foresight and timing, a lot of skills in Guild Wars 1 were designed to be incredibly powerful if used right, but very bad if used wrong. Take the skill "Protective Spirit", for instance, which makes one party member only take at most 10% of his health on any attack. Use this on an ally that is just about to get hit by an incredibly damaging ability, and you've saved his life. Use it on someone that is being attacked by something that does multiple low damaging hits, and it does nothing. Use it too soon, and it'll just get dispelled. Or Distracting Shot, which disables the spell the enemy is casting for the next 20 seconds. Use this on something crucial, and the opponents are in huge trouble. Use it on something unimportant (or miss the interrupt entirely), and you've done nothing. This is also where baiting came into play, because you really didn't want to use important skills if they could be disabled. I don't remember anything like that from my time playing Guild Wars 2 PvP, while Guild Wars 1 was full of skills like these.

Man, this turned out very long, but I just loved the combat in Guild Wars 1, PvP in particular, and it feels weird to me that people say Guild Wars 2 has better combat just because it added a dodge button.

Yeah, this is all true. Hexes in GW2 would be so nice.

 

[DarthMasta]

Preferred GW1, the game play felt like a weird mix of CCG and MMO, going around the world hunting for the perfect skills to use for run Y or for PVP, or whatever.

GW2 is better in some ways, sure, feels more MMO, but IMO didn't find anything to replace the hunt for the perfect deck of GW1.

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

Because it destroyed a bit of the following it had with the move to the Open World MMO and decided to be a WoW clone.

It's not a bad game, I had lot's of fun with it, but for me, Guild Wars 1 is where the real charm was.

This. I enjoyed it for a while after release, but it was nowhere near as cool as the first.

 

[Auctopus]

I really enjoyed my time wit it and Guild Wars GAF. Had my time though, might pick it up again in the future though.

I just don't think it's a very charismatic MMO, despite having many features WOW has adopted since.

 

[Keasar]

People freak out when they hear there's no Trinity and instantly assume the combat is unorganized.

It is unorganized though?
Since you don't have any healers, you can't have aggro or dedicated tanks etc. Monsters run all over the place and attack whatever. It's all a mess of trying to DPS burn enemies before they burn you.
And lots of dodges.

I had my time of fun with it, but recently I've been playing the hell out of FFXIV and just realized how much I missed that Trinity mechanic. Plus, honestly, as much as I love the world of GW2, FFXIV won me over much harder with a more well told and personal story that just sold me on everything.

 

[Tohsaka]

I leveled to the cap at launch and quit after a month or so, got bored.

 

[NormalFish]

It is unorganized though?
Since you don't have any healers, you can't have aggro or dedicated tanks etc. Monsters run all over the place and attack whatever. It's all a mess of trying to DPS burn enemies before they burn you.
And lots of dodges.

I had my time of fun with it, but recently I've been playing the hell out of FFXIV and just realized how much I missed that Trinity mechanic. Plus, honestly, as much as I love the world of GW2, FFXIV won me over much harder with a more well told and personal story that just sold me on everything.

Except you do have healers and you do have aggro and you do have tanks. This isn't 2014.

 

[Azoor]

I liked the idea of getting rid of the roles triangle,but the substitute was not good, it made everything looks like a clusterfuck.

The world design was cool though.

 

[patchday]

Because it destroyed a bit of the following it had with the move to the Open World MMO and decided to be a WoW clone.

It's not a bad game, I had lot's of fun with it, but for me, Guild Wars 1 is where the real charm was.

Yep! I really miss the dual classes we had in GW1. So quit GW2 right after I hit max level

They killed what was unique about the game.

After GW2 I gave up on MMO-likes completely. Completely sold out (too me)

Preferred GW1, the game play felt like a weird mix of CCG and MMO, going around the world hunting for the perfect skills to use for run Y or for PVP, or whatever.

GW2 is better in some ways, sure, feels more MMO, but IMO didn't find anything to replace the hunt for the perfect deck of GW1.

That was awesome and GW2 destroyed all of that

 

[TheChaos0]

No holy trinity for me. It's not a bad thing per second but it felt like they removed the trinity while the dungeon design didn't reflect it well and it felt like doing a dungeon designed for trinity with all DPS. It was a weird feeling, very chaotic and unsatisfactory. If it wasn't for that I might have played it for longer. WvW was quite fun.

 

[Chessr]

Because the combat sucks big time and the World is boring next to GW1 and FF XIV.
I was really Looking forward to it back then but Nope sry
I loved Running around in GW1 getting cool mesmer skills. Mesmer was bad and boring in GW2

 

[Wanderer5]

I still like it a lot, but I hope the next expansion will have a much better starting point than Heart of Thorns. Things has been greatly improved thankfully, but damn did HoT felt so unsatisfying in many ways for like least half a year or such.

I glad World vs World feels more rewarding too (being the mode I tend to usually do). The mode still has some ways to go, but stuff like the reward tracks and the recently added WvW armor and legendary backpiece for long term stuff to strive for is so nice.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

They busted the launch, the departing from the holy trinity hurt the combat, because it neithe did the necessary move to a more action like battle system.

The PvE story and dungeons was worse that GW. I really think that the change from instanced was for the worst ultimately.

 

[Buckle]

Skritt aren't playable yet.

 

[Setzer]

Removing the "trinity" made combat unfulfilling for me. Just a bunch of people running around and spamming abilities when their cooldowns were up.

This is a big reason I stopped playing. Running dungeons was an unorganized mess because of it. Also the game felt nothing like Guild Wars 1 which I thoroughly enjoyed and spent hundreds of hours playing. I thought they would have improved upon the first game and not make something that was a total departure from it.

 

[Kalentan]

Honestly wish FFXIV had the player zone density GW2 had.

I love both games but FFXIV starts to feel dead outside of cities as you play it more.

I really think GW2 is in a fine position. It's super easy to find people to play with and Season 3 of the Living Story has provided plenty of content to enjoy.

 

[LectureMaster]

I used to be a MMO-only player and spent about 1500 hours in GW2. It is a great game for casual player as the progression is easy and the world exploration is fun.

 

[Slayven]

Only thing I didn't like is when it spammed you with more quests when you are trying to do something.

 

[TheYanger]

I say this as someone that owns GW2 and the Xpoac and plays it still from time to time:

It's not a good primary MMO, but it's a fun diversion from time to time.

That's why it's not more popular. It really lacks in things to do that are worth doing, aside from the new story stuff once in a blue moon and grinding insane amounts of shit to get a pretty weapon.

WvW at launch was a blast but the game didn't really offer enough depth in that department, we were dominating it for fun but there was no actual reward for it and nobody else was trying for that reason.

Group content really stinks too. Not BECAUSE it has no trinity, but because they designed a largely traditional game without a trinity, and then raids came out and half forced a trinity anyway because the combat in this game was always janky when you tried to make actual interesting fights without it.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I put about 400 hours into the vanilla and loved it. The living story stuff pissed me off though. I hated having to pay for stuff just cause I didn't log on. I might rejoin if the new expansion seems good. Wish they went to Cantha instead though.

 

[QuackkAttack]

Just want to echo that GW1 was and seemingly will be my favorite MMO. The deck-building of skills, the instanced campaign and fairly interesting story for an MMO made me love it.

GW2's weapon tied first 5 skills lost me pretty quickly and the last 5 didn't have as many choices as I would've liked. Loot was really bad on top of everything.

So as a fan of GW1, 2 lost me pretty quickly.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Removing the "trinity" made combat unfulfilling for me. Just a bunch of people running around and spamming abilities when their cooldowns were up.

Yup. I was extremely hyped for GW2 pre-release but this and the terrible combat just made sure I never really got hooked on the game. These games just become a clusterfuck without at least some class roles.

I still don't fucking get it, how can you make such a colossal MMO and expect me to enjoy the same 5 skills all that time just because I happen to use a bow. It's incredibly limiting.

I was hooked on WoW for a long time, solely on PvE, just because that game gave you something to work towards. This doesn't happen in GW2, you'll have the exact same boring 5 skills at level 80 that you had at level 15. Baffling.

 

[Ikuu]

It just wasn't any good.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Complete lack of endgame beyond a boring cosmetic grind based largely on RNG. I also recall the only thing I ever really did after I got bored of fractals and gave up on the hope of them ever bringing the Super Adventure Box back was train runs, and then they destroyed those when they changed the way zones worked with the megaservers.

Also, the way they introduced new content and zones as stories or whatever prevented anybody outside the first week or so if that content releasing from ever experiencing it.

Never did get the expansion.

 

[yanipheonu]

Having played it for several years, it was a bunch of good ideas paired with some questionable design decisions.

Plus they were terrible about putting out new content, and when they did, it was with little regard to continuity or progress in previous patches. Felt like they never could really get well organized.

Still, it did (and still does) things no other MMO does. Still love going to World Bosses with the huge swarm of people, or doing the large events on the Event Based Maps. Nothing like it.

 

[TheYanger]

Complete lack of endgame beyond a boring cosmetic grind based largely on RNG. I also recall the only thing I ever really did after I got bored of fractals and gave up on the hope of them ever bring the Super Adventure Box back was train runs, and them they destroyed those when they changed the way zones worked with the megaservers.

Also, the way they introduced new content and zones as stories or whatever prevented anybody outside the first week or so if that content releasing from ever experiencing it.

Never did get the expansion.

FWIW super adventure box has come back, was back just a few months ago even iirc.

Having played it for several years, it was a bunch of good ideas paired with some questionable designed decisions.

Plus they were terrible about putting out new content, and when they did, it was with little regard to continuity or progress in previous patches. Felt like they never could really get well organized.

Still, it did (and still does) things no other MMO does. Still love going to World Bosses with the huge swarm of people, or doing the large events on the Event Based Maps. Nothing like it.

I mean, EverQuest did 'swarms' of people on bosses, there's a reason everything is instanced in newer games: zerg swams don't let you actually design fun fights.

 

[Complicated]

I've gotten back into it recently after a long time away. I play solo and just explore helping out the different regions fight off their particular troubles. It's a beautiful world with a lot of variety. Don't really care about trinities or playing a specific role in a group, and this game does enough with the combat to keep that exploration interesting.

 

[MrGerbils]

It’s decent for soloing but the group combat mechanics are basically non existent.

 

[Amirnol]

I mostly enjoyed it but the story and characters were hugely forgettable. I enjoyed exploring the environments and really appreciate how the game encouraged you to go off the beaten path. Great music and mostly great art, but the reason I come back over and over again to a game like FFXIV is mostly because the story and characters are far more interesting. The world of Eorzea is more compelling to me overall as well.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Also, I never, ever felt truly powerful in this game. Not even once.

Everything scales to your level. It's a minor thing but god it weighed heavy on my enjoyment of the game. Every battle just takes way too long.

 

[kiriin]

Anet design the game with a certain set of philosophy that turned off a good portion of players. Some of it such as pve's dps and dodge meta, designing the game to be mostly casual while balancing three different modes and the original story was mediocre. Over time they did addressing a lot of these changes, specifically improving the living story but the core gameplay hasn't changed.

As someone who has over 2,500 hours in the game since beta, a lot has changed since, but they're mainly about QofL and content. They have mostly stuck with their philosophy since the very beginning.

 

[BizzyBum]

I think like many I played at launch but just kinda stopped after a few months. I don't know why, either. The time I played I really enjoyed the game but for whatever reason it didn't hold my interest. And once I take a long break from an MMO it's really hard for me to go back because of all the anxiety I get of missing so much shit so I end up just never playing it again.

 

[elyetis]

It did many things right, but in the end I couldn't get past some of the thing lost from GW1 on the way.

The new skill system allowing little variety, and the lack of healing class being some of the biggest culprit.

 

[TheYanger]

Also, I never, ever felt truly powerful in this game. Not even once.

Everything scales to your level. It's a minor thing but god it weighed heavy on my enjoyment of the game. Every battle just takes way too long.

Even worse - you scale to everything else's level. I think it's been fixed now, but it was really dumb losoing abilities because you went to a lower level zone before, for example. No matter what it's a baffling decision, wow does it the other direction and it feels much better - it sucks to be max level and suddenly hit for 100 damage because you went to a level 20 zone. Feels fucking stupid. Scaling the other way where you always do the same things and feel like you're actually your level is much better.

 

[Soul of the Beast]

Why isn't any good underrated game more popular?

 

[Ravelle]

I adored the first Guild Wars, everything felt unique to what other MMO's did, acquiring skills and mixing them up to create hybrid classes was great.

Guild Wars 2 felt way too much like World of Warcraft with its loot and combat, and I didn't like how how skills were linked to your weapon.

 

[Kiter]

I loved Guild Wars 1. Bought GW2 with Beta access and after 1hour I knew the game
wasn't for me. People that I used to play the original with dropped the game after a couple of months.

Ironically in the end Guild Wars 1 was more unconventional than the
MMO-revolution GW2 was supposed to be. Which is a shame because they already had a great foundation to build upon.
The original gave you freedom to play your character however you liked and even the lines between the "holy-trinity" were completely blurred.
Whereas GW2 locked you into that one class with a couple of weapons which determined half of your skillset.
There were absurd (group-)builds and coming up with a great build was a huge motivation for farming or PvP.

Guild Wars 2 totally botched/ignored the story of the original aswell.
You still can't fight the elder dragons which were build up as the big antagonists in Eye of the North.

Also this is a great video about Guild Wars 1.