Looking Forward At GW2

I'm a long time Guild Wars player, as far back as the original beta. Since the game has come out I've played my fair share of other MMO-style games. For the most part, GW stacks up really quite well, and I'd like to touch on where I feel the game has done well, and not so well, if only to add my feedback to the pot for the developers of GW2.


-Pros-

• Graphically, I absolutely adore Guild Wars. It's the perfect mix of realism and stylization, and I especially adore the glossy post-process effect that really gives the world something of a dream-like look. To put it comparatively: WoW and WAR are too cartoony, Vanguard and a handful others just look lame as they're trying to look TOO real. GW strikes a perfect balance between the two and I hope this feature stays. (Props on the Shiverpeaks, especially. What an awesome area)
  
• Performance-wise GW is excellent. I've gone through three computers since GW initially launched, and even with my old PoS Compaq the game ran near flawlessly with little/no slowdown. You hit on some magic formula to make the game look great and still run well. Absolute thumbs up here.
  
• Missions. One of the highlights of the game for sure. The scripted mission system really make you feel like you're in the middle of something so grand. The big battles, exposure to story elements, cutscenes, sense of urgency and the general vibe is top notch.
  
• UI. Minimalistic and awesome. I love the default placement of the buttons, the very centered/symmetrical look of the overall screen, and how it's customizable with moving frames around without some 3rd party addon. You're presented simply with the information you need to see and nothing more. More screen real estate devoted to seeing what's on screen was an excellent decision.
  
• PvP. I'll be honest I'm much more of an explorer/mission runner than a PvPer, but I've still done my fair share. Generally, everything felt rather balanced and you guys really seem on the ball with tweaking abilities that are out of line. Map design is generally really strong as well.
  
• Abilities. I love the overall skill/attribute system. It creates a great system of trade-offs. Do you want to focus on 2 attributes? Or spread your points out a little wider and maybe go for 4? The skill limit, while initially fairly annoying, in the end makes for more interesting gameplay as it really puts the choice of how you want to play in your hands by allowing you to make your own build. Classes, likewise, are rather unique and you're presented with many interesting combinations.
  
• Combat. GW is first and foremost a game about combat. I love how there are waves and waves of enemies to fight. When you run out you can simply re-run the mission, reset the explorable area, etc. While the game certainly has a story, and an economy, and all other things that make up a good online RPG, GW is first and foremost an action-RPG style of game. I like that and hope it stays.
  

-Cons-

• Gear. Unfortunately the gear system in GW is really quite boring. Items feel more like cosmetic extras than statistically interesting boosts to your character's combat potential. Maybe have an item that reduces the refresh timer of Empathy by 5 seconds, or another that reduces the energy cost of Vampiric Gaze by 3, etc. Just add many more mods to the items. As it is the system is just really, really dull. I do have to give props in one area: the fact that you didn't include attributes in the traditional sense: str, dex, int, wix, charisma, etc. These are throwaway stats that really aren't as interesting either. Items that effect how you play, rather than simply offer a blanket boost to all/most of your abilities, are much more fun.
  
• Responsiveness/control/lag. This is probably my biggest gripe with the game. Overall control response is much poorer compared to other games. Maybe this is a weakness of a non-subscription fee game where servers unfortunately can't be as quick as one might like. Or maybe it's a limitation with the current engine. Either way, I'm compelled to list this one as it particularly gets on my nerves.

Overall definitely more pros than cons. These are, of course, only my opinions so you might disagree. Either way, I hope they help a little bit.

I agree with you on all the points. Guild Wars is a game filled with so much - scenery, storyline, customization, combat, etc.

One thing about combat - I love how you just have to click on an enemy and your character will auto attack it. Other games like WOW require you to stay focused 100%, because if the enemy moves you have to do the same, and for multitaskers like me, that's a no no. Guild Wars auto attacks and turns in the right directions, and even follows the enemy instead of spamming an error saying you're too far away.

Scenery, absolutely stunning. Even the gloomiest places that could be ugly look fantastic (Realm of Torment for example). Things look real but not enough to take away from the fact that it's a game.

I love the customization abilities, but I think it should be a little wider - not all characters should have the same builds, like muscular and uber skinny. Hopefully Guild Wars 2 will change that.

I personally have no problem with the armor. I see your point about each set having some sort of special boost, but I believe that's why runes were added. That way you could have the armor you like the looks of the best modded to your desires. What if the armor that would be beneficial to you in battle was ugly to you? Would you still want to pay for it? Depends on who you are. So personally I prefer the rune system but I do understand what you're saying.

That pretty much sums up things for me.

All i would ask for is a graphics buff while still maintaining the real but not to real style. Better balance in terms of attributes (Beast mastery, Spawning power). And better balance in terms of insignias - Pretty much everyone uses survivors, with some exeptions in the case of PvE'ers who sometimes go for radiants or warriors who use knights, along with a few other exeptions. I really would like to have to think before i buy some insignias rather than just buying survivor straight away.



Edit: And a Z-axis, for jumping, and the ability to climb over rocks or something. (as long as spamming jump didnt affect the damage you take, otherwise we would end up like those bunny hoping FPS's)
A detailed first person view would also be great, an 'Over the shoulder' style view would also be great.

Thats another good thing GW has, the insignia system, it means you can put the stats on the armour you like the look of, rather than having the armour you like the stats from looking terrible, or the reverse.

I'm pretty sure that ANet said on the forums that they will change the gear system, so that there will be no more "profession-linked gear", although I'm not sure whether they were talking about armor too...

I hope that GW2 is going to be more customizable, character wise. You don't want to look like every other <insert your profession name here> in the game, yet the only things that really matter when you are in an outpost is your cape, your height, and your hair. And sometimes not even your hair, since a couple of professions have pretty obscuring headgear.
For every profession, there is a few good-looking armor sets which almost everybody of the profession has, and it's not that prestigous to wear a set of 75k armor when you know that half a million other player have the same set.

In regards to gear: As is I find the current gear system pretty good. Just wish there was more to run besides putting everything else as Survivor. As interesting as it would to have gear that was just a blanket effect to your character, having very specific effects might lead to some nasty business. The more you have to keep in mind, the less balanced the game becomes, and that becomes the other point I wanted to discuss.

Balance: There are way too many skills in GW now. While it's still pretty decent compared to the rest of the market, by GW's own standards (i.e. compared to its past) it's quite a mess.

Lag etc.: This one's a bit tough, but overall I've found GW to run pretty good the whole time I've played it. There have been moments where it's ran poor, but that's more due to our crumby internet and my roommate downloading a torrent. But even then it runs pretty slick.

Well, I suppose the current gear system works well simply as a way to upgrade your character as reward for completing content, but from the perspective of players who like to think a little more about what gear they want, etc, it's really not much fun.

If you could effectively tweak the energy costs, refresh timers, duration, etc of specific abilities it would truly allow for some fun customization to go with your build. For an ability you don't use much, you could get a pair of gloves that increases its effect (especially good if it's more of a clutch ability). For an ability that you wish you could use a little more often you could get a chestpiece to reduce the refresh timer. Or for something you use pretty often you could lower the energy cost. Etc.

Maybe a system like this would be better suited to runes, but just in general the system needs livened up. Runes, the gear itself, etc.

I actually agree here. There are a few too many abilities and I'm sure that makes the game even more difficult to balance.

You cant be more wrong.

Gear is exactly the reason why GW has such better balance (not perfect, but still) compared to WoW. The more options you add, the worse it gets to balance things out.
That said, there is the metagame. With a certain build will come certain gear standards like *wont work without having .... gear* which still makes gear dull. In case you havent noticed: in WoW everybody uses the same gear unless they havent gotten it yet. In GW everybody uses the gear they find the best looking (or just some basic max AL if they dont care on looks).
Ever heard of the WoW's stat issues being 'wrong', up to the point where classes dont use their own armor because they play it differently from the dev's intention? Exactly, thats an issue popping up daily on WoW.

If they do change their idea on gear, it will lead to pvp balance going from -Pros- to -Cons- as balancing will become a nightmare. Certain fotm/op builds will always exist, but removing the viable gear part is what allows GW to have some of the most balanced PvP there is. Ever seen a WoW 5 man team with only hunters? or only warriors? or only casters? or balanced with 2 melee 2 caster 1 ranged? And not just that, but also all just as viable at the same time in pvp? Tought as much.


As far as movement goes: who cares? There is auto-targetting. You'd be an idiot to focus efforts on controls when all you need to do is click once to always keep attacking/moving with the target. It has nothing to do with the engine or the servers; its purely related to being useless in a game like this where tactics play a larger role then constantly jumping in circles hoping the opponent wont be able to attack.




Seriously.. if you ever played GW or WoW or any other form of MMO's you should've known that these "Cons" is the very essense as to why PvP in GW is rated one of the best MMO's arround.

I'm not suggesting the gear system work like WoW at all (spellpower, strength, hit, etc). That would fall into the "same old same ole" mold I was preaching against in the OP. What I speak of is much more similar to Diablo II, where an item would give a mod to a specific skill.

Gloves of Lasting Empathy: Increases the duration of your Empathy ability by 3 seconds.

Etc.

The issue is that this wouldn't actually mean more variety, if mod x made skill z better (more dmg, faster recharge) then everyone would run that when they had skill z especially if said skill was an elite or a major skill in a skill bar.

Eg in gw1 as it is if there was a rune to make your elite recharge 10% faster I doubt many people wouldn't use it.

You do realize the largest issue on WoW's equipment is exactly the skill changes? If the game would indeed be balanced with a +3 sec on empathy, then they would've altered the skill to that.


F.ex. A GW skill is balanced on 5 sec duration, 30 sec recharge.. and thats final.


A WoW skill is balanced on 5 sec duration, 30sec recharge as well... tough trough gear it becomes 6 sec duration and talents make the recharge 15 sec; it suddenly became OP.

Now they re-balance it to 6sec duration and the 15sec recharge -> people are now forced into specific gear/talents or the skill becomes to weak to bother using.

Just like resilience, it changes the balance on all skills that are duration based or crit based, meaning the devs need to balance the skill on resilience (OP when target has none) or without (weak/useless when target has resilience).


The more you limit gear options, the better the game's balance will be. Face it: WoW: 10 classes, few skills, huge team, monthly fee, lots of armor options. GW: 90 classes, loads of skills, small team, no fee, few armor options.

Result: WoW is disastrous in terms of balance since it was released, GW is one of the best balanced games.

Ask yourself, if the small team with a lot more classes/skills can do something a lot better then a huge team with few classes/skills something must be off right? It indeed is, but there's just 1 variable left: armor options. There's your answer, its the options on WoW that have f'ed it up.

Remove the options (such as no skill changes trough gear) and you instantly get a much better balance. Oh wait a second, that brings them to the same level as guild wars. Interesting development eh?

As people have stated before, PvP is not balanced. I wouldn't go as far as the problem is because of to many skills but rather that there has been to many nerfs compared to buffs. Teams, IMO, could have much more diverse builds if...
1. There was a massive skill update that would allow different kinds of team builds to be played and be effective. Instead of everyone running Hexways or Spike builds because it's that month's 'meta'.
2. Observer mode was removed, So ppl couldnt copy team builds.

/end rant =/

All games have that issue on metagame. The difference with GW is that under metagame X, Y still has a good chance of winning unless Y comes across their counterbuild Z. That already means 3 viable builds. If you take f.ex. WoW, under metagame X the others shouldnt bother pvp because they dont have a shot at winning anyway.
There will always be favorites, thats why skill balance happens. Things is tough on GW not just the meta has a chance of winning.

And seriously, compared to all other MMO's GW is one of the best balanced games, if not the most balanced of all. Go try them and be shocked with how crappy they are.


As far as the 2nd goes, ppl always copy team builds regardless on wether or not you can watch the fight. People will record their fight for youtube or such, post it for bragging rights and what not. Not to mention everybody you face can just watch your skill use and write them down.

Yep.
The system has issues - 15^50 and +5 energy and many sub par alternatives are really indeed a bit limited, they could think about that and maybe make 20% while enchanted weapons or something like that. But this is all fiddling around within the system, the system itself is fine.

The level cap and item power cap (max damage weapons) were selling points of GW. Once. At least to me. This totally got lost over time. They added faction and rep grind, repetition in disguise just like in any other MMO out there.


Just read the early GW2 infos:
"High if not unlimited level cap"
"More meaningful drops in PvE"

It all indicates a shift to the the power/item grind of the standard DIKU MUD.


I am really afraid. No info about GW2 for ages by now. In the end they might release a GW flavored WoW clone with micro-transactions payment scheme. This would be my personal /facepalm moment...

i sure hope so. This is the biggest and possibly only thing I would change about GW

There is no such thing as too many skills in a game like GW. More skills = more food for the brain. There are plenty of games out there that don't use the MTG model and if you want the perfect balance you should look into Starcraft and prolly Starcraft2.

Plenty of skills and only 8 to bring is a trade mark of GW. You shouldn't look at the rest of the market as there is no game out there like GW.

QFT and I hope Anet doesn't forget that.

I've knocked off some dust and I'm back to GW after a long hiatus.
Right off the bat though this thread got a chuckle out of me -
No one is right or wrong here ladies and gents, just gamer hopes for GW2.

There's also a big PvE/PvP camp, and a bit too much of 'never the two shall meet' here. I've played EQ blue and teamserver, WoW PvE and PvP server, WAR Open and Core server - not patting myself on the back, but just painting the picture that I enjoy both, depending on how well done.

The +s of GW we all know, and I /agree with the OP here.
Frankly it's still one of the best game values I've ever had across the chapters and EotN.

I happen to pretty much agree with the cons too, but I have bigger ones.

PvE first: I'm sorry, and I already know to <insert knee jerk reaction here> for the pvp crowd, but no more levels, no new gear that improves your character, makes for very dull drops. If you're not a fan of the new art/like your current armor and weapons, multiply dull factor once again.

Do we need paper dolls with 20+ slots to fill? Maybe not. But get 5 which hardly ever change and yeah, that's a bit of a snooze-o-rama. Way too much over-compensation with collects/collectors, my toons overfloweth

PvE skills generally seemed to be a bit dull or too intense. Still it wasnt a bad move in the absence of the above. Factions, collections, titles were a good move, as well as expanding on them. But replay/playing alts would drag.

Sure a trickle in of new conditions, mods, etc, but all in all, yawnzers, particularly adding up the fact that a bunch of it doesnt display in town and not as well as it would in adventure mode. Big props to the graphics and speed it runs at (generally*) but if you're going to give new 'pieces of flair' people have to be able to display it and wave it around.

Not having these big 3 though at *any* point really surpised me - Auction House, Mail system, Guild Vault. All of them added up to inventory stifling. Top off Spamming trade chat with no item linking. This was one of the keys I moved on to be sure - I couldn't move or get what I'd want without wasting time. I like to play the games, not deal with such an archaic shuffle.

PvP: Lag hurts. I hated Polymock as for whatever reason, I'd get these burst of packet losses I didn't get in other games, so it would just get a bit stupid. One reason I didn't end up with a primary mesmer I suppose. Bring it over to PvP and it's worse. Basically I avoided any heavy interrupt duty even though I did enjoy, and unlock, mesmer skills and had a PvP one for awhile. Other games didnt seem to have this issue, although I have yet to now return seriously to it with a better PC/setup now in hand.

On the +, I enjoyed my forays, I thought matching and even competion was >>>>> anything WoW has, and still has done. Throwing in randoms and teams together, allowing for MUCH better loot on those farming PvP... how smart is it to give experienced vets better gear against newer PVPers? Not very. Warhammer does better but there's still some oddities IMO.

It'll be crucial to maintain this balance, the smartness of PvP GW has. Give us more slots for PvP in GW2 and/or separate from the PvE ones. I didn't play organized PvP until GW really, and it was a lot of fun. Getting it organized and the time involved wasnt always but GvG was delicious. With a lot of variety and modes, big props to where that went.

But server/playability is key. I know one 'patch' round a friend of mine quit GW entirely - the game just utterly crawled in PvE too, they gave up. I'll be giving it another go but that sticks out as the only big '-' -> props for PvP.

Well there's my 2 cents and take it for what it's worth - an opinion.
We all have hopes for the game, that's why we're chatting here.
I hope they can expand the PvE while even growing their strong PvP, e.g.
Maybe battlefield fights can happen out in the world, rather than the queue

I'd like to add one thing to the cons:

The Trading system in gw = silly joke.

Seriously, with all the love I have for gw I simply wont play gw2 if it didnt have an auction house. I would probably sell my gw account if gw2 wont have an AH. I play a game to enjoy it so if I find an item that is worth selling then I'd rather put it for sale on the AH system and continue playing the game rather than staying hours trying to find a buyer for my stuff.

I wouldn't go so far as say I wouldn't buy the game, but I will say if GW2 does not have an Auction House, I will have to question the intelligence of the very smart people at ArenaNet.

It would also raise all sorts of doubts if any of the other issues in Guild Wars would be addressed. It will be viewed as either proof ArenaNet listens or proof they ignore everyone, depending on the decision.

Balance is the key. The original campaign before they released Factions / Nightfall / EOTN. They could have added so many things so many. But they focused on creating a new campaign. But now with heroes, new elites, and PVE skills the balance is harder and harder to keep. But in spite of all this just think of new items became available like

-5 energy Plus 10% hex duration items

Gauntlets of power 10% more damage dealt while wielding a melee weapon. While wearing gauntlets of power all damage received is increased by 10%

Boots of speed you have 10% faster movement hex durations casted on you are increased by 10%

Gravity of boots you can not be knocked down but you move 10% slower and when you are hit with a knock down skill you stay standing but you are interrupted.

Bracers of energy you receive + 3 pips of energy spells you cast while wearing the bracers you cast spells 10% slower and cost 5 more energy.

On and on