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[perfectsil]

What's the player count these days? Do we know?

 

[texhnolyze]

What's the player count these days? Do we know?

No idea, but the community is still pretty active from what I've seen.

Some home world (servers) are consistently full. My home world is somewhere in the middle and participating in world vs world would require queuing on peak hours.

 

[Black-Wind]

Imo Guild Wars 2 looks significantly better visually than FF. And to call GW2's combat bland while not taking shots at FF for literally managing to have combat worse than WoW is hilarious.

FF is actually known for literally being a WoW clone. GW2 is just about as far from being WoW as it can possiblly be. And FF's story is only interesting if you're already a fan of FF. It contains nothing of interest for most MMO players who don't care about story. If I wanted a game with good story, I'd play a single-player game.

I hate GW2 but if any game has "me-too" WoW design then it's FFXIV.

I'm not saying FF isn't Me Too.

I'm saying it works off being pretty to the fans of the FF art style AND it works off the FF brand's lore, which is long reaching and iconic with tons of fans. It's combat is just as boring as it can be IMO but on the plus side you do have the role system to fall back on so team play can be more than just "lets all DPS this thing in a zerg gang bang!". Having some kinda system for team play is what I play Multi Player games for ... GW2 just felt like a single player game with random people also in it.

So yeah, between the two I'm much more likely to come back to FF. But that's not saying much as the problems I have with ff made me leave long ago.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Because it's not fun to play?

I know that's an incredibly simplistic criticism, but at least at launch (and I'm sure it's changed some), I just wasn't having fun with it at all.

The average combat never felt good and took about 2 or 3 times as long as other MMOs, and I never got more than a few chances at dungeons, but they felt pretty awful and super chaotic.

I liked the world, but the level scaling meant the lengthy combat issue followed me everywhere. I never felt stronger, and recent experience with ESO has taught me that it wasn't the level scaling alone to blame, as I feel stronger as I level there.

I liked the idea of the big PvP thing (I forget the name), but found it took so damn long to get anywhere with action, and death came so quickly, that I never got to really do much with it.

The story and characters weren't anything special, and the weird heart system made it feel like I was doing menial tasks even moreso than normal MMO fetch quests.

 

[HowZatOZ]

It in no way shares what made Guild Wars so popular and fun for me and that is why I do not like it. I actually didn't even realise it went true free-to-play which intrigues me.

For me I just didn't enjoy what Guild Wars 2 tried to achieve. With Guild Wars it truly felt like you could craft a character to whatever playstyle you wanted, and with PvP having separate abilities it made character design for the devs interesting and not breaking one side of the game when tweaking the other. Guild Wars 2 lost that completely for me because of its weapon system. Initially when announced it sounded super interesting but as we approached launch it became clear that you were essentially pigeon holing players into specific playstyles because of the limited weaponry.

Removing the trinity was another annoyance of mine. I'm all for having agnostic playstyles and not pushing the need for tanking, healing or DPS but you can still have those archetypes and allow the freedom that ArenaNet strived for. Explicitly removing the trinity and only offering a very low amount of healing (mostly self-healing besides the water spells which were so weak anyway) made for average content to be taken on as zergs, which was never in any way engaging like Guild Wars.

In saying my disappointments for GW2 I still do like some of the stuff they did. The living world was very much living, despite some places just going either moving from neutral story position down or up the story ladder. Removing levels from zones was also amazing, allowed me to actually enjoy all the content the world had to offer and something I wish many other MMOs would take on so they didn't restrict players from experience all of the world that the devs had painstakingly created.

I might give it another try eventually, but when you've got competition like Legion, FFXIV and ESO you really have to step your game up. In that respect I don't think ArenaNet can do that with Guild Wars 2, just because of how much is engrained in the base game mechanics that they would essentially have to rewrite almost all of the game for that to happen. Maybe Guild Wars 3 will fix my issues, but for now Guild Wars 2 has been left in the dust by many because of the large changes going from Guild Wars to Guild Wars 2.

 

[Kalentan]

Because GW2 was garbage in comparison to the first one. I probably had the same hour count in both cases. Guild Wars, especially early on, was so easy to pair up and go into quests with how it was structured. Becoming more of a traditional MMO in the sequel was a huge turn off. Plus it's an ugly looking game that wasn't as fun for me to play.

GW2 is an ugly looking game?

Jesus I know opinions and all but at least they have to be somewhat grounded.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Eh I disagree on the trinity being a requirement. It's just that people are so "engaged" in it. With that said I see GW2 more as a roaming beat-em up than an actual RPG, so there's that.

Honestly I'd take GW2's combat over say, ESO. Seriously go play the two simultaneously. And I like ESO.

With that said how come opinions here are being based on the early run of the game?

 

[rockyt]

I didn't like the fact that their was really nothing special about the characters. I say this as in not really specialize tank, healer, special. It seems like everyone can do the same thing. That's what it felt like to me when I played it. The strategy was gone and with that so was the fun. Well that was how I felt when I bought the game at launch and played it for roughly a month.

 

[Laieon]

I played the game at launch, hit max level, then felt like their wasn't really anything else I wanted to do. It felt really floaty and the combat wasn't all that enjoyable, so I just went back to WoW. I prefer carrots on a stick over the "do what you want" gameplay of GW2, admittedly.

It was fun to level through the gorgeous environments though.


I was also enjoying the story until it became less about my character and more about the green leaf guy.

 

[Clearos]

I've put over 700 hours into GW2 and I think it is an amazing game. I enjoyed the raids and I had a blast with pvp.

I don't think it was as popular is as others have stated that it is not guild wars. After reading this thread I imagined guild wars 1 with better graphics, engine and the whole works and realized I would of loved to have that game.

Not as big as a factor but what I've also seen is that players have become obsessed with metabattle builds and won't welcome others who don't follow it skill for skill.

 

[Boss Doggie]

I didn't like the fact that their was really nothing special about the characters. I say this as in not really specialize tank, healer, special. It seems like everyone can do the same thing. That's what it felt like to me when I played it. The strategy was gone and with that so was the fun. Well that was how I felt when I bought the game at launch and played it for roughly a month.

PvE is like that though, it's when you go to higher level content where builds matter.

 

[Nemesis121]

I
I was also enjoying the story until it became less about my character and more about the green leaf guy.

Story in GW2 sucks, it starts off nice, it was character/race base story, but once you reach level 28-30 the story is basically the same shit for all races, a few differences here and there....GW1 story and lore is on another level, but i still rather play GW2 over 1 any fucking day of the week...

 

[Kalentan]

I was also enjoying the story until it became less about my character and more about the green leaf guy.

That hasn't been the case since launch. More so once Season 2 of the Living Story hit and they freely had your character talking without the need of the old cutscene system. Which has held true with every update since.

Honestly Season 3 of the Living Story has been the best the story has been. With lots of stuff happening, even stuff one might think would have been left for an expansion. Plus a new zone for each update. Been's awesome.

 

[Zeroth]

As a combat action junkie GW2 sticking to 'targetted' combat felt clunky and there's not much in the way of commitment or tactics from second to second. I effectively felt like this was PvE to me:


Aka "if it's not on cooldown, press it!"

It'll certainly be no Bayonetta or DMC, but the idea that "If it's not on cooldown, use it" seems a tad silly about GW2's combat because more challenging content will punish you for not doing the proper actions at the appropriate time.

 

[Lemondish]

I've played since launch, and I'm wondering what game people are talking about regarding the combat because it is nothing like they described lol

 

[Kalentan]

It'll certainly be no Bayonetta or DMC, but the idea that "If it's not on cooldown, use it" seems a tad silly about GW2's combat because more challenging content will punish you for not doing the proper actions at the appropriate time.

Basically. Though based on this thread, none of them ever got to the challenge content.

I've played since launch, and I'm wondering what game people are talking about regarding the combat because it is nothing like they described lol

Same. Best non-instanced (Vindictus, etc) MMO combat on the market. Just feels super smooth and responsive.

 

[Zeroth]

Basically. Though based on this thread, none of them ever got to the challenge content.



Same. Best non-instanced (Vindictus, etc) MMO combat on the market. Just feels super smooth and responsive.

I can see that people may feel combat is just "DPS things down" if they are playing strictly from a open world PVE sense. To be fair, older content used to be like this, but to say the game nowadays is like that doesn't come true. I feel like most of GAF wouldn't go to a point where they may change their opinion, but ultimately GW2 is not a game for everyone anyway.

I suppose the big question is not why GW2 is not as popular as it could be, but what is the point the mainstream MMO gamer will feel uncomfortable with it. To some, not being GW1 is the limit. To others, the lack of a trinity is it. Deep down GW2's biggest problem (and virtue) is that it's quite different from the other games in its genre, and that comes with good and bad things.

 

[Kalentan]

I can see that people may feel combat is just "DPS things down" if they are playing strictly from a open world PVE sense. To be fair, older content used to be like this, but to say the game nowadays is like that doesn't come true. I feel like most of GAF wouldn't go to a point where they may change their opinion, but ultimately GW2 is not a game for everyone anyway.

I suppose the big question is not why GW2 is not as popular as it could be, but what is the point the mainstream MMO gamer will feel uncomfortable with it. To some, not being GW1 is the limit. To others, the lack of a trinity is it. Deep down GW2's biggest problem (and virtue) is that it's quite different from the other games in its genre, and that comes with good and bad things.

But I feel like the "not as popular as it could be" isn't really the fault of the game. After all it's in the Top 4 most played MMOs, next to FFXIV, WoW, and ESO.

So it is still really popular. Just not on GAF. Which considering how some big franchises aren't popular on GAF, isn't all that surprising that the community here is down on it.

 

[Aim_Ed]

Shout out to one of the greatest gaming communities you'll ever find but GW2 might be the most braindead video game in existence. I've done all the content and clocked thousands of hours. There's essentially one build you'll use on each class, as opposed to GW1 where you'll find dozens of viable builds. This mostly has to do with the limited number of skills you'll find and the fact that you can't choose a secondary profession. Outside of aesthetics, there's zero personalization of your character. The "hit your abilities as soon as they come off cool down" argument is completely legitimate, it's obvious they sacrificed too much trying to get rid of the holy trinity.

Personally my favourite video game lore, ArenaNet used to be my favourite studio until they imploded. Love everything about Guild Wars outside of Guild Wars 2.

Spoiler

I guess I like the puzzles though.

 

[Kalentan]

Shout out to one of the greatest gaming communities you'll ever find but GW2 might be the most braindead video game in existence. I've done all the content and clocked thousands of hours. There's essentially one build you'll use on each class, as opposed to GW1 where you'll find dozens of viable builds. This mostly has to do with the limited number of skills you'll find and the fact that you can't choose a secondary profession. Outside of aesthetics, there's zero personalization of your character. The "hit your abilities as soon as they come off cool down" argument is completely legitimate, it's obvious they sacrificed too much trying to get rid of the holy trinity.

Personally my favourite video game lore, ArenaNet used to be my favourite studio until they imploded. Love everything about Guild Wars outside of Guild Wars 2.

Spoiler

I guess I like the puzzles though.

This post says so much while at the same time not really saying anything at all.

 

[Aim_Ed]

This post says so much while at the same time not really saying anything at all.

I'm non partisan.

 

[KAP151]

I got to lvl 30 and that was even a stretch. Boring combat. Horrible, horrible item and crafting management, the fact that evert class could heal and almost zero affinity to my character/lore.

That and the fact that i died maybe twice. There was literally zero challenge.

 

[DanielJr82]

I would love to play GW2 on my Xbox.

 

[Goldrush]

All these talks about no trinity and button mashing and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Despite knowing the relatively complicated rotation for the my main engineer, I still get my ass handed back to me often. Raids and higher fractals are also a bit scary because classes are pigeonholed into specific roles. I figure the fact that I kind of suck in the game means that there must be some skills and mechanics involved.

 

[Boss Doggie]

I honestly never got the combat complaint in GW2. Why are people so concerned with cooldowns?

I'd rather have GW2's combat than say, the "pseudo turnbased" shit you see in WoW.

All these talks about no trinity and button mashing and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Despite knowing the relatively complicated rotation for the my main engineer, I still get my ass handed back to me often. Raids and higher fractals are also a bit scary because classes are pigeonholed into specific roles. I figure the fact that I kind of suck in the game means that there must be some skills and mechanics involved.

people are assuming the early map content is the same for the rest

hell, HoT maps can be a bitch to people who just mash their way

 

[Nemesis121]

I got to lvl 30 and that was even a stretch. Boring combat. Horrible, horrible item and crafting management, the fact that evert class could heal and almost zero affinity to my character/lore.

That and the fact that i died maybe twice. There was literally zero challenge.

Level 30 hahahaha, i played from day 1 and my first death didn't come until level 67 on my main character, the game tries not to overwhelm the player in the beginning, once you get closer to max level the zone to the south will rekt you, you can easily become overwhelm by the undead army in Straits of Devastation...

 

[Conkerkid11]

I got to lvl 30 and that was even a stretch. Boring combat. Horrible, horrible item and crafting management, the fact that evert class could heal and almost zero affinity to my character/lore.

That and the fact that i died maybe twice. There was literally zero challenge.

"Literally zero challenge"
"I got to lvl 30"

Do you play MMOs?

 

[Fishious]

Shout out to one of the greatest gaming communities you'll ever find but GW2 might be the most braindead video game in existence. I've done all the content and clocked thousands of hours. There's essentially one build you'll use on each class, as opposed to GW1 where you'll find dozens of viable builds. This mostly has to do with the limited number of skills you'll find and the fact that you can't choose a secondary profession. Outside of aesthetics, there's zero personalization of your character. The "hit your abilities as soon as they come off cool down" argument is completely legitimate, it's obvious they sacrificed too much trying to get rid of the holy trinity.

Personally my favourite video game lore, ArenaNet used to be my favourite studio until they imploded. Love everything about Guild Wars outside of Guild Wars 2.

Spoiler

I guess I like the puzzles though.

I've currently got 3 builds I use on my ranger depending on what content I'm running. Meta viable builds. Also everybody loves the guy who blows all his CC before the boss's breakbar appears, overlaps useful combo fields, uses their projectile reflects on the wrong phase, etc. /s

My point being there are optimal times to use certain skills and sometimes using the wrong skill at the wrong time can be actively detrimental. I'm not going to defend early game open world stuff because it's pretty faceroll unless you're actively trying to solo certain difficult events. However within the realm of MMOs I can't remember the last one I played where the early hours weren't braindead, especially the open world. It's a shame this is the case, but unfortunately nobody in the space is really offering challenge from the get go, probably for fear of alienating players.

Also I pretty much ran a single ranger build for most of my time in GW1

 

[Boss Doggie]

Yeah seriously, don't use early maps for referencing GW2 combat.

I mean if the game was so easy, we wouldn't have people complaining about "USE CC DAMNIT" on shit like Vinetooth, or shit like pushing bombs in Tarir.

 

[5il3nc3r]

So in terms of playerbase it's WoW, FF14, ESO and then GW2?

 

[Conkerkid11]

So in terms of playerbase it's WoW, FF14, ESO and then GW2?

I really doubt ESO has a larger population than GW2.

Also, BDO is in there somewhere.

 

[HowZatOZ]

With that said how come opinions here are being based on the early run of the game?

Because that's where a majority of those who left have encountered the game? I'm not sure why that would be a problem (I don't believe you are stating it is one though) as we have to create an opinion from something and first impressions are acceptable forms of opinion. That isn't to say first impressions can and will obviously change, I have no doubt the game has shifted dramatically since I last played (destruction of Lion place or whatever its called) but for MMOs especially you have to sink in a lot of time to get a good opinion of what the game can offer, and for most that time was at the beginning.

"Literally zero challenge"
"I got to lvl 30"

Do you play MMOs?

This comment always strikes me as elitist. Why can you not form an opinion on the content you've experienced thus far? Its just like someone saying "no the game gets good after 100 hours just keep playing!" The person you quoted said they struggled to get to even 30 so clearly they didn't click with the game, and thus this thread does incite that discussion so not sure why the comment can be tossed aside because "do you play MMOs?"

 

[Nemesis121]

So in terms of playerbase it's WoW, FF14, ESO and then GW2?

As of 2015 GW2 was at 5million sold, this was before the expansion, i don't know what the numbers are today..

 

[Grudy]

So in terms of playerbase it's WoW, FF14, ESO and then GW2?

It's very hard to gauge the GW2 player base because the game lumps people from all servers to fill up maps with their megaserver system (even in cities). Queuing in the game is still fast though and most maps in HoT always had multiple instances open when the big events started.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Because that's where a majority of those who left have encountered the game? I'm not sure why that would be a problem (I don't believe you are stating it is one though) as we have to create an opinion from something and first impressions are acceptable forms of opinion. That isn't to say first impressions can and will obviously change, I have no doubt the game has shifted dramatically since I last played (destruction of Lion place or whatever its called) but for MMOs especially you have to sink in a lot of time to get a good opinion of what the game can offer, and for most that time was at the beginning.

the early level maps are more for "easing" the players, it's why they removed stuff like conditions in the early maps even

later maps are more focused on dynamic events with bigger bosses requiring timing

 

[Ivory Samoan]

I played the crap out of it on release....but it lost it's charm pretty quick (although the puzzles n such were cool).

ESO scratches the deeper lore itch (and I prefer the combat) and FFXIV has a better world and mechanics IMO - both kind of support the trinity too (ESO less so, but does to some extent) so there's that.

I really doubt ESO has a larger population than GW2.

Also, BDO is in there somewhere.

I don't know about that - with Morrowind out now (sales were very high by all accounts) and it sitting at 10 million box sales (it's not F2P at all, B2P only) before Morrowind...well, it's likely it is a bigger pop than GW2 based on that.

 

[HowZatOZ]

As of 2015 GW2 was at 5million sold, this was before the expansion, i don't know what the numbers are today..

Technically ESO has over 8 million in sales, who knows the active playerbase though as it is now buy-to-play. With GW2 now being "free-to-play" it could have more, who knows. No one likes to put out stats when it comes to MMOs because it can potentially make your game look "dead" which I can understand. Hell even Blizzard doesn't give out WoW numbers anymore.

 

[Conkerkid11]

This comment always strikes me as elitist. Why can you not form an opinion on the content you've experienced thus far? Its just like someone saying "no the game gets good after 100 hours just keep playing!" The person you quoted said they struggled to get to even 30 so clearly they didn't click with the game, and thus this thread does incite that discussion so not sure why the comment can be tossed aside because "do you play MMOs?"

It's absolutely not elitist to expect someone to play through some of the endgame of an MMO before criticizing the game's difficulty. Games of different genres need to be approached appropriately, and like it or not, an MMO cannot be properly judged based on getting to level 30 when that's nowhere near the level cap.

I accept that he doesn't like the game, but he has no idea whether or not he's actually right in several places he critiqued the game based on how little of it he played.

I also understand that with that same reasoning, I can't criticize FFXIV in many areas. That's why most of my judgement regarding the game that I've expressed is that the intro sucked and did nothing to lure me into the game like most MMO intros do. I have no idea whether or not the endgame's good. I'm judging the game based on the fact that most people I know who like the game largely like it because it's Final Fantasy, and not being a fan of Final Fantasy myself, I prefer to scratch that itch with something I am a fan of with similar gameplay, and that's WoW.

 

[Baron Aloha]

I came back to it about a year ago and its pretty much all I play now. I really liked the expansion. The new maps that came with it and the ones released over the past year as part of the story have been outstanding. They are really fun to explore and look at.

For all of the folks saying they did away with the trinity... this is no longer true.

You absolutely need a tank and a healer for raids. You can play a tank (usually chronomancer but I've seen other classes used too). You can play a healer (druid is hybrid dps/burst healer, elementalist can be built as a pure sustained healer, with some burst healing but druid is better burst healing... but with ele you rarely need burst heals).

If they implemented official controller ui / support, I'd actually go back in a heart beat.

Takes like 20 minutes to import the game in Steam and set up a controller there. I play with a PS4 controller. I created the binds myself. I know its not official, but it sure as hell feels like it. It works way better than the old Xpadder setups folks used (not taking anything away from them but Xpadder is known to act weird at times).

 

[5il3nc3r]

I really doubt ESO has a larger population than GW2.

Also, BDO is in there somewhere.

Yeah forgot about BDO. I am surprised by its popularity since Korean MMOs usually does not do well in the west. It's also impressive to see ESO catch-up considering its launch.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Yeah forgot about BDO. I am surprised by its popularity since Korean MMOs usually does not do well in the west. It's also impressive to see ESO catch-up considering its launch.

I blame ESO's popularity largely on the fact that Bethesda keeps stressing they're not working on another Elder Scrolls at the moment, and a lot of people interested in something other than Skyrim are being forced into trying it out.

I haven't read enough or seen enough about the game to convince me that it's similar enough to the mainline Elder Scrolls games to be enjoyable to me. Same reason I refuse to get back into SWTOR regardless of how good the story's supposed to be. The gameplay is horrible, and it's nothing like KOTOR.

 

[AaronMT86]

I never got the same enjoyment out of Guild Wars 2 as I did in Guild Wars.

 

[Kalentan]

It's absolutely not elitist to expect someone to play through some of the endgame of an MMO before criticizing the game's difficulty. Games of different genres need to be approached appropriately, and like it or not, an MMO cannot be properly judged based on getting to level 30 when that's nowhere near the level cap.

I accept that he doesn't like the game, but he has no idea whether or not he's actually right in several places he critiqued the game based on how little of it he played.

I also understand that with that same reasoning, I can't criticize FFXIV in many areas. That's why most of my judgement regarding the game that I've expressed is that the intro sucked and did nothing to lure me into the game like most MMO intros do. I have no idea whether or not the endgame's good. I'm judging the game based on the fact that most people I know who like the game largely like it because it's Final Fantasy, and not being a fan of Final Fantasy myself, I prefer to scratch that itch with something I am a fan of with similar gameplay, and that's WoW.

Agreed.

Hell, I'd argue most MMOs don't get hard until max level.

 

[Laiza]

How is animation rooting related to "commitment"?

Rooting is an aftersight for a design where they were incapable of making seamless animations in play between ranged and melee. Aka, the gameplay between a melee being able to catch up to a foe that was running away.

To me, rooting is a sign of bad animation and bad gameplay. It's something I really hated in Blade and Souls skills, though it was far from all skills.

I'm sorry, but this really incites a "WTF AM I READING?" reaction from me.

Every single decent character action game will have movement lock built into each animation. Some moves will have more movement than others - that's part of your consideration when you're figuring out which moves to use. Every single bloody game with decent combat will do this because you can't divorce the movement of your legs from the rest of your body, you NEED to use your legs to reinforce your movement in order to put the full weight of your body into attacks. Every game that fails to account for this ends up feeling floaty and gamey in the absolute worst ways.

It might feel nicer to you to play a video game that way, but it is NOT better game design. Not by a long shot.

Makes me wonder if you ever played a Souls game, and if so, how far you managed to get. Must have been utterly infuriating to you.

 

[BleedOrange]

I like healing, and GW2 doesn't let me be a healer.

Yup, removing the Trinity purposefully was a terrible mistake.

 

[Kalentan]

I'm sorry, but this really incites a "WTF AM I READING?" reaction from me.

Every single decent character action game will have movement lock built into each animation. Some moves will have more movement than others - that's part of your consideration when you're figuring out which moves to use. Every single bloody game with decent combat will do this because you can't divorce the movement of your legs from the rest of your body, you NEED to use your legs to reinforce your movement in order to put the full weight of your body into attacks. Every game that fails to account for this ends up feeling floaty and gamey in the absolute worst ways.

It might feel nicer to you to play a video game that way, but it is NOT better game design. Not by a long shot.

Makes me wonder if you ever played a Souls game, and if so, how far you managed to get. Must have been utterly infuriating to you.

To be fair to him, the movement locking in Tera feels like it works against the game. For an action game it's feels far stiffer than it should.

 

[Laiza]

It's absolutely not elitist to expect someone to play through some of the endgame of an MMO before criticizing the game's difficulty. Games of different genres need to be approached appropriately, and like it or not, an MMO cannot be properly judged based on getting to level 30 when that's nowhere near the level cap.

I accept that he doesn't like the game, but he has no idea whether or not he's actually right in several places he critiqued the game based on how little of it he played.

I also understand that with that same reasoning, I can't criticize FFXIV in many areas. That's why most of my judgement regarding the game that I've expressed is that the intro sucked and did nothing to lure me into the game like most MMO intros do. I have no idea whether or not the endgame's good. I'm judging the game based on the fact that most people I know who like the game largely like it because it's Final Fantasy, and not being a fan of Final Fantasy myself, I prefer to scratch that itch with something I am a fan of with similar gameplay, and that's WoW.

This is a silly track to take.

I knew within an hour whether or not I'd like Blade & Soul's combat (spoiler: I did). The feel of the combat becomes readily apparent from the get-go, and the depth of the mechanics are self-evident just from looking at the tooltips of your skills.

I played my warrior in GW2 all the way to the level cap, and I played in a bunch of group dungeons too, but you know, that initial feeling of general boredom never really went away. In fact, it just gave way to frustration when I hit the dungeons and realized the game has no fucking mechanics for dealing with group combat, why the fuck is the incoming damage so insanely high, how is anyone supposed to know what to do when the game gives you absolutely no guidance and no strategies for dealing with the shit they're throwing at you?! It was just an absolute failure on every level.

You can't have an open world that's completely unchallenging and unengaging and then make the dungeons utterly impossible for most players to complete without dying left and right. I honestly cannot comprehend how the game was released in the state it was. it was one of the worst experiences of my MMORPG career, and considering I started all the way back when Everquest was a thing, that's saying something! I am genuinely of the impression that the dev team had no fucking clue what they were actually going for, and just flailing around trying to put something together without any real direction. This was in very, VERY stark contrast to my experience in Blade & Soul, where the devs clearly knew what the hell they were doing and how to accomplish their goals and how to make sure players didn't get fucking creamed the first time they stepped into a group dungeon.

At any rate, it doesn't matter to me whether or not you consider my criticisms legitimate. What matters to me is that I expected nothing and I was still let down, and Arenanet has soured my impressions of their output forevermore. Everything they've done to handle the game post-launch did not help matters at all. They felt directionless, their content anemic and utterly missing the point of an MMORPG in the first place. They didn't even stick to their initial manifesto and reneged on it HARD with the expansion. They have no integrity whatsoever. My opinion of that studio, or at least their leadership, is near the bottom of my list of MMO devs and I have a lot of shitty devs in that list.

It's really the lost potential that hits me most. There could have been something really great here, but they fucked it up. They fucked it up bad. They had a good thing going with GW1 and then they managed to fumble so hard they accidentally landed a touchdown for the other team. I can never go back to them now.

 

[neurosisxeno]

Yup, removing the Trinity purposefully was a terrible mistake.

I only played at launch, but there were clearly still roles in place, you just didn't have a specific class/spec that was "Healer" or "Tank". I remember the class I was playing had 2 clear options, one that was obviously a tank spec and the other that was obviously a dps spec. The issue with having this "role-free" game was that you had to balance it around that and you couldn't have a class/spec doing too much damage or having too much self-sustain, and that leads to the game being pretty boring. On top of that, all the group events/dungeons I did were literally predicated on "don't stand in the markers". It was pretty annoying to be honest.

The game was pretty dishonest with a lot of things. It advertised itself as this super dynamic world, but it seemed like certain events were just on timers, and you could basically just camp and wait since they all happened pretty frequently. On top of that, they had this proposed quest system that sounded way better than it actually was. They said they were getting rid of menial tasks--no more "Go kill 10 Rats" quests. What happened instead was you would go to a farm and get a quest that said "Help Farmer Dipshit" and a meter would appear. Well how do you fill the meter? By killing 10 Rats.

I loved the style and exploration of GW2 though, and it's a shame it just wasn't fun when I played it.

 

[Grudy]

This is a silly track to take.

I knew within an hour whether or not I'd like Blade & Soul's combat (spoiler: I did). The feel of the combat becomes readily apparent from the get-go, and the depth of the mechanics are self-evident just from looking at the tooltips of your skills.

I played my warrior in GW2 all the way to the level cap, and I played in a bunch of group dungeons too, but you know, that initial feeling of general boredom never really went away. In fact, it just gave way to frustration when I hit the dungeons and realized the game has no fucking mechanics for dealing with group combat, why the fuck is the incoming damage so insanely high, how is anyone supposed to know what to do when the game gives you absolutely no guidance and no strategies for dealing with the shit they're throwing at you?! It was just an absolute failure on every level.

You can't have an open world that's completely unchallenging and unengaging and then make the dungeons utterly impossible for most players to complete without dying left and right. I honestly cannot comprehend how the game was released in the state it was. it was one of the worst experiences of my MMORPG career, and considering I started all the way back when Everquest was a thing, that's saying something! I am genuinely of the impression that the dev team had no fucking clue what they were actually going for, and just flailing around trying to put something together without any real direction. This was in very, VERY stark contrast to my experience in Blade & Soul, where the devs clearly knew what the hell they were doing and how to accomplish their goals and how to make sure players didn't get fucking creamed the first time they stepped into a group dungeon.

At any rate, it doesn't matter to me whether or not you consider my criticisms legitimate. What matters to me is that I expected nothing and I was still let down, and Arenanet has soured my impressions of their output forevermore. Everything they've done to handle the game post-launch did not help matters at all. They felt directionless, their content anemic and utterly missing the point of an MMORPG in the first place. They didn't even stick to their initial manifesto and reneged on it HARD with the expansion. They have no integrity whatsoever. My opinion of that studio, or at least their leadership, is near the bottom of my list of MMO devs and I have a lot of shitty devs in that list.

It's really the lost potential that hits me most. There could have been something really great here, but they fucked it up. They fucked it up bad. They had a good thing going with GW1 and then they managed to fumble so hard they accidentally landed a touchdown for the other team. I can never go back to them now.

For what it's worth, you are right about the lack of clarity by the game devs to approaching group combat and helping the players learn the ropes. I remember dying so many times in the dungeons but eventually, a little while after the game settled down, this really was a non-issue. The dungeons were designed with level-80 character having full exotic gear in mind, which is very easy to get (which the game does not restrict you to or lets you know about or anything). It reached a point where I could actively pug all the dungeons in the game with randoms and paying minimal attention to what's actually going on because of how steamroll-y it was. In the end, both scenarios were quite horrible tbh because the rewards were shit when you steamroll and the dungeon design and combat weren't that fun when you're actually challenged at lower levels due to the simplicity of it all. Just horrible.

I do feel bad for people who picked warrior though, it's pretty much the simplest and most boring class in the game with very little skill required to do anything. The saving grace of other classes was how flashy their skills were and the unique mechanics they had like mesmers and engineers and it's all things the warrior lacked imo.

I only played at launch, but there were clearly still roles in place, you just didn't have a specific class/spec that was "Healer" or "Tank". I remember the class I was playing had 2 clear options, one that was obviously a tank spec and the other that was obviously a dps spec. The issue with having this "role-free" game was that you had to balance it around that and you couldn't have a class/spec doing too much damage or having too much self-sustain, and that leads to the game being pretty boring. On top of that, all the group events/dungeons I did were literally predicated on "don't stand in the markers". It was pretty annoying to be honest.

They did have that idea in mind but it completely backfired when everyone just played DPS for 3 years straight. Anything else was unacceptable tbh due to how little challenge the game had in that period. I would honestly vote to kick people from our dungeon group if they didn't have full DPS gear and build (which is what we advertised for in LFG) because clearing everything as quickly as possible for the 1000th time is what mattered.

 

[TheYanger]

I only played at launch, but there were clearly still roles in place, you just didn't have a specific class/spec that was "Healer" or "Tank". I remember the class I was playing had 2 clear options, one that was obviously a tank spec and the other that was obviously a dps spec. The issue with having this "role-free" game was that you had to balance it around that and you couldn't have a class/spec doing too much damage or having too much self-sustain, and that leads to the game being pretty boring. On top of that, all the group events/dungeons I did were literally predicated on "don't stand in the markers". It was pretty annoying to be honest.

The game was pretty dishonest with a lot of things. It advertised itself as this super dynamic world, but it seemed like certain events were just on timers, and you could basically just camp and wait since they all happened pretty frequently. On top of that, they had this proposed quest system that sounded way better than it actually was. They said they were getting rid of menial tasks--no more "Go kill 10 Rats" quests. What happened instead was you would go to a farm and get a quest that said "Help Farmer Dipshit" and a meter would appear. Well how do you fill the meter? By killing 10 Rats.

I loved the style and exploration of GW2 though, and it's a shame it just wasn't fun when I played it.

Tank 'spec' doesn't mean anything when you can't actually hodl aggro, and no class coudl put out enough external healing to actually be a 'healer' at launch. None. I went full + healing gear on my guardian at one point just to see what it was like, literally did like 0 healing still to anyone, totally just a drop in the bucket.

The group combat experience in GW2 was complete trash until raids, and I only say that because I haven't done the raids. They still had to hack in some better healer roles and a way to tank mobs (It's the highest toughenss character or something), because the old way was just complete unfun.