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[swnny]

As a highly competitive sPvP player from GW1 and now - GW2, I completely understand most of your frustration around the gamemodes. Be it HotJoin, where everyone are just mindlessly running around or solo/team queue with poorly team setups. Same goes for the fact that we've being playing only Conquest on the same 4-5 maps for the past 2 years. It sure gets boring.
Some find WvW to be only a zergfest leaded by a guy with blue icon over his head. Others don't like the mediocre living story updates. ect ect

But I'm yet to see someone pointing out, that unlike ANY other MMO(for the western market) in the past 5-7 years, GW2 is still going strong after 2 years since the pre-purchase phase. And the game was just now released in China and really successful at that.
Star Wars The Old Republic, TERA, RIFT, The Sacred World(it is B2P now) as recent examples, all failed with their sub based model, bleeded out on players and within a year or so adopted some sort of a F2P model (and in the case of SWTOR - a really bad F2P model).
Judging from my experience in the beta, the reactions here on GAF and the subreddit, it's a safe bet to "predict" the newly released Elder Scrolls Online is just following the same beaten path to failure.
Playing through Wildstar open beta now, and I can't really see how it would be any different.

Guild Wars 2 isn't the perfect game, and will never be. It have its design flows, annoyances and bullshits. But it have a strong and healthy community, which is essential for a MMO and Anet is providing great support, a support that is nowhere to be seen for GW2's competitors.

P.S. In terms of the huge hype train that GW2 had before it's release, the next "big thing" on the MMORPG market will be EverQuest Next.

 

[m_shortpants]

Guild Wars 2 isn't the perfect game, and will never be. It have its design flows, annoyances and bullshits. But it have a strong and healthy community, which is essential for a MMO and Anet is providing great support, a support that is nowhere to be seen for GW2's competitors.

P.S. In terms of the huge hype train that GW2 had before it's release, the next "big thing" on the MMORPG market will be EverQuest Next.

I definitely got way more than $60 worth of content, so I was happy. Would've been nice if it could've held my interest as long as WoW did, but maybe my preferences have just changed. Dunno. I'm downloading the Wildstar open beta right now though, so I guess I'll find out.

 

[Cels]

GW2 is a pretty solid game. I went through about one year when it was the only game I played. Definitely worth a try, it's a good MMO. If you are a busy person like me and can only play once in a while there's really not much commitment since it's B2P and you can check it out at your own pace.

My main beefs with the game is the ascended gear grind that is diametrically opposed to GW1 - and by gear I mean stats, not looks. It takes a very long time while to get best in slot everything, although the apologists will say that it's not better by much (unless you are doing it for the extra agony resist from infusion slots), but that's not the point. I would have much preferred (and it would have remained true to their philosophy) if - e.g. the way legendary weapons were treated before Ascended weapons were introduced to the game - same power, special looks.

That is not to say that this is something "wrong" with GW2 - most MMOs build themselves around a gear grind, and I know that some people enjoy this kind of activity. The problem for me is that GW2 held itself out to be different, with a design manifesto stating "Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward." I had expected things to be the same as in GW1 - that once I had the best max-level armor I would be done trying to improve my character's equipment, and from there it would be horizontal progression (getting different stats for different builds, or unlocking different looks...never having to replace my equipment wholesale if I wanted to keep up with the Joneses).

They also reverted one of the best decisions they made in PvP, which really stood out among the many bad decisions they made in PvP. If you played GW1, you would know that everything in PvP had to be unlocked - it wasn't really an arduous process, if you knew what you were doing you could have UaX fairly quickly. Anet made a smart decision to have everything unlocked from the getgo for PvP in GW2 but for some reason decided to backtrack on that. Now you have to unlock particular gear stat allocations, skills, and traits, if you want to use them in PvP. Progression!

As for the article, I disagree with most of it:

The world doesn't feel small to me. I have to ask if the author has 100% world completion if she feels this way. It certainly felt big to me, especially going to less-populated areas. Even though I have 100% world completion, there are definitely still areas of the game that I haven't explored too much. If the complaint is that the world feels empty (which it seems to be since she says upscaling would be a solution to this) then she should say that instead.

The game doesn't need henchies or heroes. The combat wouldn't really allow for it, and part of the reason having henchies and heroes in GW1 was so great was the skill system of GW1, which isn't present in GW2.

Dungeons do kind of suck, (I'm saying this as someone who has the Dungeon Master title/500x Fractal Frequenter) and but it doesn't have anything to do with the lack of holy trinity - it is mainly because the game heavily incentivizes doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible. If you are skilled enough (using the word "skilled" loosely, it doesn't take much skill at all) then you can build full damage while not suffering for it because every character has the ability to dodge, heal themselves, and revive. You are invulnerable while dodging, so if you use your dodges properly you shouldn't die even if you are a paper tiger. And, should you get hit, every character can revive other characters in combat after a short channel, so you'll be back on your feet quickly. Additionally, important survival tools like projectile reflection and blocking are more effective on high-damage, low defense characters than on more tanky geared characters (because an attack blocked/reflected on a low-defense character prevents more damage than if that same attack landed on a high-defense character).

Gear/Lockbox - I already explained my aversion to the ascended gear situation above, which, oddly enough, she doesn't mention. It's surprising that her example of grind is the dungeon token grind (one of the most pain-free grinds in all of GW2, and perhaps in all of MMOs). I dislike the RNG of getting weapon tickets too, no argument here. I am sure the reason Anet implemented the weapon tickets this way is to mask the true average cost of obtaining a ticket. Sure, it would be nice to actually be able to just buy a weapon ticket straight up without RNG but there would be sticker shock if you look at the actual drop rates. One thing I dislike is how they have added many gem store armor sets, but they've added only ONE full armor set obtainable by just playing the game, and it happens to be the grindfest that is ascended armor. Everything else is either armor pieces that don't form full sets or gemstore armor.

Economic problems - I agree that the trading post interface is shitty and needs improvement. As for the economy being bad, If a player really wants to make money to reach some goal (typically ascended gear/legendary weapon) it's a matter of learning how to use your time wisely and saving money. Just what exactly is Anet supposed to do about inflation when 1) you get gold for doing just about anything (which is a good thing) and 2) there are already so many gold sinks in the game?

Housing - housing would be cool but if I had to think of criticisms of the game, "lacks housing" is not something that comes to mind. I never played the game and thought "what this game really needs is housing, that would really fill a gap".

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Totally missed the complete lack of meaningful player interaction in the bullet points. Other players may as well have been AI controlled NPCs.

 

[A Black Falcon]

I think the problem for a large part of the community is that sPvP and WvW are MAJOR steps back from GvG and Tomb of Primeval Kings(Heroe's Ascent). The combat mechanics in GW2 don't lend themselves to those styles of gameplay, but I personally feel like ANet should have designed the game to continue the legacy of the most highly lauded area of GW1 first(the amazing PvP), and then build a great game with that foundation. It would probably have made grouping for endgame feel a lot better too, with slightly more emphasis on roles.

Yeah, this is one of the many things they messed up when they decided to make GW2 a traditional MMO and not a sequel to Guild Wars.

I prefer GW1 over GW2. The builds had a lot more creativity and depth in them. Now it is pick a weapon and that is your build. The ability of having 2 classes at a time was very interesting and so far my favorite way of having builds in a game so far.

Tying skills to weapons was a mistake in Phantasy Star when they did that in PS Universe and PS Portable, and it's a mistake here too -- as you say, it limits strategy far too much! In GW1, builds actually took thought. They removed most of that in GW2 as a part of their MMO-ification effort. One more major reason why I like GW1 far more.

GW2 is an excellent single player game, and an atrocious MMO.

Following the standard MMORPG model there!

Is it more of a single player MMO than GW2? I'm not gonna lie, I kind of dig that type of game.

Well... yes and no. Yes, in that there aren't other people running around anywhere outside of town, the world and all missions are all instanced and only towns are open to other users (and even those are broken into many servers, depending on population). No, in that GW1 actually encourages grouping -- you will virtually always either be with a full team of henchies and heroes, or, if you can find them, a team of human allies. Naturally in recent years finding human groups in GW1 is much harder than it was in its early years, but there are still SOME players, so it's still probably possible. And that's very good, because GW1 is a GREAT group game! The game is great as a single-player game with heroes and henchmen, but it's just as good or better as a co-op game with other people.

GW2, like most MMOs, as far as I saw abandons that in favor of a world where lots of people are around, but you'll rarely have much to do with any of them unless you're in a guild together or something. WoW is like this as well, and other MMOs I think (based on my limited playtime with the genre), but GW1 isn't at all, and it's one of the things I loved about the game. Sure you don't see other people running around, but when or if you actually do find a group in GW1 these days, it matters! And the early years of GW1, before they added Heroes... they really were the best time, as far as grouping with other people for the single-player (PvE) portion of the game. Seriously, after playing through all of the GW1 PvE campaigns in co-op with other people, GW2's effectively single player only "personal story" was a definite disappointment. Of course now finding groups for those GW1 missions would be tough, but still, it's great if you can find the people.

And of course, GW1's versus multiplayer is exceptional as well, some of the best around.