Various Problems

I’ve been playing Guild Wars for about a month now on a regular basis. As I uncovered more area on the map I realized that just prophecies alone was a huge and occupying world to explore, and the terrain looks well made for the most part. The monsters look threatening in most areas, which increases the satisfaction you get from bringing them down. The game is well-made and offers a lot of choices for how to play, but there are still some things I think need improved.

The Elementalist spell effects are mainly small and generic. I cant distinguish a difference between flare’s effect and fireball’s. Meteor should actually appear like your calling down a meteor, with a giant meteor chunk in view, and crashing down on the enemies at a average speed that allows you to actually see it. Right now meteor looks like “Summon Dust”. The earth spell “Eruption” I think should involve a volcano emerging from the ground spewing flames into the air. Lightning Spells generally look the same, and I think shouldn’t be categorized as “Air Magic”. The slow effect Water Spells have on enemies should be more visible, like with ice showing on them.

Sadly I could pretty much complain about the majority of spells I’ve seen cast from all classes. Spell effects should have a high priority, it makes the abilities seem more diverse from each other, and seem more threatening.. I heard GW has people from Diablo 2 working on it, and if that’s the case I would have expected the spells to compare to D2's, but they don’t in the least bit.

Pets lack diversity.. Apparently its been decided to make them all have the same stats, besides for a few minor differences. I was told this was done for balance purposes, which may be a good reason for all I know, but its still greatly disappointing.

Very small selection in armor, and Its caused by the idea “customized for only you”, which I think needs to be expunged... You see a very lack of diversity in appearance because of this, I’ve seen hundreds of people wearing the exact same attire as me, and even though I have differences in my face and body, its still very perturbing and makes you feel as if you lack potential. I miss the item system of Diablo 2, where there were numerous = different types of armors that dropped from monsters, and the merchant was only a secondary source to turn to. Of course this couldn’t be implemented into guild wars due to the numerous balance problems connected to buying armor, but theres always Guild Wars 2.

I wish the entire world was OPEN, where you could meet strangers while battling monsters. I know the main complaint made about this system, “people will fight over monster spawn areas”, but this problem can be easily fixed by spreading out the players and by making the spawn areas more abundant.. I just don’t like feeling completely cut off from the world, and it would allow players to be able to find party members without having to spam 10 or more times “LFG”.

Best of luck with the game franchise, and hope these problems/features will be non-existent in Guild Wars 2!

I agree with the poor spell effects in Guild Wars. Having played many other RPG's the majority of the skills lack the roar and feel of what their name entails. However, the other points I garner no support for.

If you own all 3 Guild Wars games, you have not only 10 professions to choose from, but several armor sets (both in regular and elite forms) to select at your fancy. (Providing you have the coin.) Furthermore, Guild Wars Eye of the North has promised a wide array of new armor pieces.

In games like Dungeon Siege II, Gothic 3, and Fable, few armor sets are also apparent, so this isn't new. But hey, if you see lots of people wearing the same exact thing, shouldn't that inspire you to create a unique variation of pieces to wear?

I certainly did that for my Dervish.

And making the game more like WoW would just be too massive to successfully change since it's been out for so long. As for Guild Wars 2, I hope it is instanced like the originals, because I enjoy that style of play.

The animations may be very generic with elementals, but welcome to the world of GWs. Elementals get the rare end of the deal with that kind of thing.

But its not what it looks like, its how you use it. As for meteor shower, It does look like meteors!!

Cant comment!

Lack of armor choice? I have to disagree there.

You have 1k armor, 5k armor, 10k armor and 15k armor.

In terms of elementals...

Prophercies has 4 x normal sets, 4 x 15k elite sets.
Factions has ? x normal sets, 4 x 15k elite sets.
Nightfall as ? x normal sets, 3 x 15k elite sets.

I could be wrong slightly, but check guildwiki.net to be sure.

Not to mention the 15 FOW obsidean armor, you have a very wide selection of armor but it obviously requires you to buy all 3 campaigns. Anet has to make their money somehow.

Em... noooo!

The arguement against completely open areas is that this is GuildWars not WoW! Guildwars uses a unique instancing system that works really well.

Completely open worlds require alot of server attention and bandwidth and would require monthly fees. I played WoW for 2 months and had more connection issues in just 2 months, then I have in 2 years of GWs.

As for fighting for the same boss or waiting for creatures to re-spawn. I obivously experienced that in WoW and its a pain in the backside.

Guildwars also uses henches and heroes which wouldnt make sense in a completely open world. You would see players approaching with the same team as you. How could you have two Dunkuros in one place?

We could use AI in a completely open game, the lag would be immense.

Completley open ended games can be very lonely places. Unless you can find a team to work with, you end up walking around alone, just grinding for hours.

If they make GWs2 into a completely open game like WoW then it will require monthly fees and im not paying for that. I wont buy GW2 if it is!

There is no lack of armor style or armor appearance. As it is in life, many things are popular, many are not. Ahh the 1990s when baseball caps were in and everyone had one.....and they all looked like mine

Ele's get a total of 25 unique sets of armor. Warriors 27. Thats per gender. Thats alotta options :-)

Its not just for elementalist.

The meteors may be "realistically" what you would see if you were to ever see a meteor, which is basicaly dust, but this is a video game and rules are bent to better the enjoyment of the user. So changing Meteors would be done for ascetical reasons rather than "realistic".

Four differences in armor stats.. Thats obviously lacking, and appearances are only one part of it, so different armor apperances doesnt matter that much for armor with the same stats.

They dont need to have "Realms" like in Dungeon Seige 2 or WoW to have an open world. They could just have "districts" for the explorable areas just like for Outposts, and for missions just keep the the way it is now. I doubt that would put so much strain on them that they'll make it pay to play specifically because of it.

The henches could always have randomly generated apperances and names, not like thats too hard.

An open world for a populated RPG like Guild Wars would not make it become a "lonley place", it would do the exact opposite, just think about it..
You could also still look for groups in local chat.

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