What's your stand on GW1? You think Anet's doing a good job?

I just ran across this guys wiki while looking over some textmods and wow I gotta hand it to him, he pretty much summed up everything perfectly, as I lol'd my way to the bottom I couldn't help but feel the same exact way. Btw this is not to bash on Anet, this is just my opinion on why GW1 isn't what it used to be.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:Shard/Flaws

Do you think Anet could do better? Can they be justified by saying they are working on GW2 and don't have the staff for GW1? Should they have been more prepared to keep more of the team (or hire more people) to stay with GW1?

I love Anet, but they have done a terrible job making a perfect game merely boring and almost unplayable. Sure I still play, once a week.. alone.. because all my friends quit.

I am usually the one backing Anet up but this time I ain't gonna lie to myself, it's just sad.

If you think this doesn't belong here can it be moved to offtopic instead of deleted? Thanks.

To be blunt... no. The updates since NF have been horrible(7 heroes was the exception) and NF itself is a terrible expansion. It appears as if the people behind the games design and updates don't even play the game they try to balance and that is, to put it cleanly, just awful. How can you balance a game without playing it? You can't and in the end you have GW1 in it's current state. Whats the main reason this game is so terrible atm? Money. NCsoft/Arena Net does not want to spend any money either because they just don't care and want to pocket it or they are sinking it all into their life preserver that is GW2. No matter which reason it is this amount of neglect to GW1 and it's players will inevitably hurt NCsoft as a company.

Big thumbs up to Anet, keep up the good work! Not being sarcastic one bit. The game is free to play after buying a CD key, how can anyone complain? It's not what it used to be six years ago, I agree. However, if it was nobody would be playing, the reason I never kept playing WoW (excluding RL friends quitting and monthly payments) was because you need to group for so much and I don't have time to LFG my whole way through a game sometimes I want to log in then remain positive I'm going to get done what I had in my mind to get done.

Wow, one skill is to blame for this? And it's not even an elite, but Rend Enchantments. Come on... backfire the Necromancer, end of story, also has a two second cast time so not like you can't interrupt it.

I agree with this. EoTN took NF's reputation idea and went nuts.

I think they were slow to recognize player's attention.

I disagree, how do we know what he what skills were used or bars were ran? I also heard there was a team of people playing his account, but nobody knows for sure or ever will and it's very irrelevant anyway because it is only text. The PvP title caps are a bit high, agree there.

Wow... easier said than done, Blizzard has a tough time holding player's attention and there game's achievements never end, literally.

Nobody said anybody had to max a title, in fact, the reputation titles are easy to achieve a medium rank in with little effort. Speed clears are the only case where people specifically ask for a high reputation rank, thus not affecting game play much.

Bottom line is I believe this player expects too much out of an old game and I have played a plethora of MMOs, shooters, arena-based combat games, RTS, etc. I can tell you I'm glad the majority of quests and missions aren't kill 10 boars, gigantic boards, or mystical boars.

Bottom line is ANet has been doing a terrible job. All you have to do is look at this years updates to figure that out. Is it too much to expect balance?

If they had done nothing from the end of GWWC to now, it would have been a better game; if they had done nothing for the past 5 years, it would be a better game than if they tried to support it.

Which is like, the #1 most wanted thing in an mmo I might add?

Content, more skills, pvp, all pointless if they're not balanced.

Is this thread intended to be a referendum on Shard's rant, or on the state and history of GW in general?

Rend was 1s at the time of writing. It was also metagame-defining in terms of power, even if it probably wasn't, as Mitch described, the most broken skill in GW history.

Eye of The North is the straw that broke the camel's back for most players. Not so much in PvE besides playing through it, I admit I grew bored of that quicker than any other campaign, but it's only a 4-5 hour journey. The three Dervish meta was kind of sad and somewhat of a joke. There so many modifiers that I can see why it is hard to balance, but too buff any profession in PvP beyond normal means doesn't solve any issues at hand.

I responded to the rant because it was mentioned in the thread. Yes, most of that article was from awhile ago probably could have left more of it out. Wasn't aware of the rend changes, should have figured it is still used often. I think rend should have been a 50% failure with less than 4 from the start in that case.

In general, I'm asking the community what they think about the poor state of the game and if Anet can be justified by "we just don't have enough available resources".

Sad but true. Anything after factions was just bleh.
Proph was the best though
And I really do like Eotn aside from the obvious

What's funny is Shard speaks of grind etc. like it's so horrible in Guild Wars.
I don't think a guy like him would last 2 days in WoW lol. That game is grind 24/7.

I'd pay if they reverted everything up to Factions. Skills, monsters, economy, PvE and PvP. I'd give up Heroes to be able to enjoy PvP again.

That wiki page is just a big rant. He talks about how the game is so boring that he logs off and stares at a wall, but then he is writing some big article about it.

He says he is strongly against shadow steps. I was like lolwut?

He also says that you can be banned for what you say in guild chat or whispers, and that ANet deducted points of his titles.....

ravings of a luney no jokes. Saddens me to see how many people are like "Made me cry with tears of joy. *sniff*" sucking on his nuts.

Pay attention to the points being made and not cry about it on a forum.
Are you saying you're doing any different right now?

Not in to support an argument, but to complain is a dime a dozen, to complement is $1 a person. I think everyone in this thread is doing something better than staring at a wall. Spanish in high school made me that bored, but I can't think of many other besides killing the boars. I believe many players could do better when it comes to skill balance, in fact I think PvP balance should be left to the people who know every mechanic inside and out.

And this is exactly what ANet did not do.

In the PvP aspects, no.

When they had GvG real tournaments back in factions, they never advertised or made it public, making GW unknown to the public

Then when nightfall came out, they gave up on trying to seriously balance PvP entirely.

Now what you have is them realizing hey we better not make this game look completely terrible, so now they are scrambling with PvP updates to make them look like they care, so people would want to buy GW2.

They did a fine job, just some errors that are now still used to do "elite" areas.
But the game itself was awesomness, I still play it after almost 2 years and I have not had another game that could keep me interested for so long.

I always wondered how Guild Wars would turn out if no additional professions were added. I guess many would say more boring, it wouldn't be as difficult to balance as it is now.

Better. That's all I can say :/

With all the skills in the game already the last thing they should have done was add more classes.

After Factions it was perfect. We had Mesmers, who were anti-casters and interrupters, Necromancers with powerful Curses, Minions and armor-ignoring damage, Elementalists for elemental damage and minor support, healing and protecting Monks, bow-type Rangers for... ranged damage and durable Warriors who could still deal nice damage. They added Ritualists, a second support profession with a new interesting mechanic, and Assassins, fragile but extremely strong 1vs1 bursters.

Then they decided we need Dervishes, who every attack deal splash damage to 2 other people, have CC, damage, survivability and are basically warriors 1.5, and Paragons, who were Rangers without interrupts, but with more damage, more survivability, more party support.

I think the game would be in a better and more interesting state if they released a very small amount of new skills for existing professions with factions, NF and EotN.

For their first game they are doing fine. Nobody is perfect, and despite their flaws, I continue to come back and play frequently. In the past 6 years I have taken many breaks from Guild Wars but continue to find myself coming back, obviously they are doing something right.

Interesting read.

The guy is a bit angry but there are some good points in there.

I agree Anet had a great game when they released prophecies and they seem to have gradually been doing everything they could to make it a worse game ever since.
I will not complain a lack of updates as long as it is free to play, if we do not pay for it we cannot expect someone to work on the game. I do expect them to quickly correct any bugs/game imbalances they introduce however and it would be far better if they did not introduce them.

The worst decision Anet has made has been to link the HoM to GW2 and make the game easier and easier in a flawed attempt to move people over to GW2. They have lost all their integrity and we would have bought GW2 anyhow.

It is quite possible that they intentionally destroying GW so they do not have to bother with it when GW2 comes out.
I agree, but 7 heroes was a mistake too, most content can be done with 3 anyhow and if you need more take hench or make some friends ^^
Totally agree. I expect the test crewe were supposed to be the game-playing balance help, but it seems they all like to have something they can exploit.
That’s a good point, it did seem that the additional professions never really fit into the game in terms of balance. I do not think they will be making that mistake with GW2.

prophecies was exceptional (with a few error being their first game et.al)....factions--came out too fast, tried to do too much...and this continued thru nf....eye??? total failure! it was halfarsed, rushed and gimmicky....and those were its GOOD points.

They tried to do too much with their new chapters. They should have taken more time (a year at least) between (yeah factions did take a year--but it needed another 6 months as well). If factions had come out 2 years after prophecies and nf a year after that they would have had the time to work things thru (and not even needed eye--)...

As time went on the relations between the staff and the consumers got strained, no one bothered to try and fix it....the only cm would was pro-active left (and yeah, she had her faults as well)...leaving us with distant cm's, and not much else.

I get that xmas puppy the following xmas feeling (you bought a puppy for xmas--the next xmas--now its a dog and no one wants to feed it, walk it...it winds up at the shelter or has run away)....

and since the same people are creating gw2--I doubt things will be much changed with a new game.

Yes, ANet is doing a good job. The game is still here after six years, there are some new players coming in, fair number of old players still around. The game works, there are no killer bugs lurking around.

Write most of the player unrest off to limitations of the genre when the game was originally designed and changes in gamer expectations over the years.

Playing Big Daddy at the moment, wow is it fun! Not ... sadly; to the majority of their players. They are seeing a significant drop in their player base. And yet the recent changes there are huge, dramatic; far beyond the capabilities of any smaller studio.

Most, not all. Some player unrest is justified. At ANet we love to innovate I think is the quote. Boy do they ever. Still have not played Polymock. Try this even though you didn't ask for it.

GW2 is the only possible answer. New generation MMO for everyone else as well but it looks like ANet will get there first.

Overall give ANet B or B-plus cumulative average. In the MMO school of hard knocks, doing good. Don't think anyone deserves an A, and of all the rest I have played C or lower.

Ok so I read the link and the comments therein.

Much of what it says is true but also has been generally known for some time.
The intention from anet was to release an expansion every six months and after nf they realised this was cloud cuckoo land in plain speak impossible to achieve.
At this point gw2 was born, they decided to remake the game since several major errors had been made and a more or less complete change needed.
In any case you can only go on releasing expansions to a game for so long before the game engine becomes so outdated you need to rewrite everything.

There are too many skills and yes many of the hybrid classes can outshine the originals in the range of abilities if not in power.

The primary skill track of the character should be the defining thing about that class.
A skill track without any points in it should be all but useless, this would mean that secondary class skills would be way lower in power than primaries.
Still allowing crossover and versatility but little of the main power.

Skills that need no points at all to function should be carefully considered before adding to the game this is again something that was allowed in right from the start and is a little difficult to alter now.

Anet have done an excellent job of maintaining interest in the game.

They have done a terrible job of fixing all the problems with the game and I believe this was impossible from the outset no matter how many resources were thrown at it.
There are and were fundamental problems with this game that became worse as time went on and players found these flaws and exploited them.

5 years of playtesting has lead to the current state where basically we can break it faster than any team can fix it.
Pve is self balancing as players are free to exploit or enjoy depending on how they choose to play.
pvp cannot work this way and so needed the most attention, I cannot comment too much I don't pvp any more.

7 heroes were not a mistake. Heroes themselves were the mistake. 7 Heroes are a band-aid for a life threatening wound to the game that won't ever heal.

I played this game longer then any other game ever. So yeah, that should tell you something about it's entertainment value. If this was an arcade game, i would have spent millions in quarters on it. It doesn't have a lot of bugs either.

The only problem i ultimately have with it is that some professions are way more valuable then others. And the spoiled rotten player base, maybe.

before i start, there's a note: "i only do PvE"

nothing new (nothing BIG) came for a long time, except for 7 hero team
7 heroes wont work long if the majority of the game's community has left
whenever i get online, i see barely anyone left

i'm talking about big things they should do like expansions, and no excuses about how busy they are with GW2, as they have 2 different teams working on GW and GW2

i play perfect world, a free MMO (at least the basics are free), and they expand the game several times as i've heard, just like anet did, but they dont quit

most of my friends left the game, and the few who are left, are busy all time
its simply cuz they find GW boring, 1 even came back for a bit and left again...
sry anet, but if nothing happens soon, i'll be gone forever (unless i like to chat with someone ingame, which happened already)

ahum, this is what i have to say about it, no personal offense here, dont take me wrong

Balance is still a huge issue in PvE and PvP.

PvP is in a state of disarray and decay.

PvE is still plagued with the burden that is the speed clear meta.

Dervs wrecked the game.

Shadow Form despite being knowingly broken and abused by ANet continues to systematically rape each and every area deemed profitable.

They have forgone their old philosophy of selling in game advantages.

Pivotal issues are being ignored in favor of updating the game with profitable microtransactions and GW Beyond content.

And more....

I'd say no. ANet has not done their job well.

Not even skill updates to keep things fresh, and it's still way too grindy. Anet seem to be spending all their resources on weird gimmicky stuff (costumes,random PvP update out of the blue) than promised content,we haven't heard anything about WoC. The only reason people still play GW is for HoM.

Overall it's just stale.

I didn't read the linked article, because it doesn't mirror my experiences with the game and it is not fair. This article is basically a rant, but no evaluation of GW as a defining project.

GW is unique in the market and still alive with sales going for the 8 mio mark. ANet made many mistakes with the sheer number of skills and the standalone-nature of each additional campaign. Hence the lack of a lasting balance and real endgame content. However and this is personal, I see a lot of improvements made to the game and from what I can tell, a continued support.

It is very difficult to create a perfect balance in this game, because at best, you want to promote every possible playstyle. These playstyles should be supported by profession design. Due to the similarity in game mechanics between some of them, one can easily replace others. Also, some effects like EPressure or shutdown may cause the game to break. Therefore as a skill designer it is not that easy to find a niche for every profession.

I remember ANet saying they've made a lot of mistakes with GW, some of them being irreversible. That's the main reason for devloping GW2, starting from scratch again and tbh I don't blame them. GW has reached its limits, but this is also a good thing. If the Live Time is able to establish a niche for professions like the Dervish or the Mesmer and continues to release content for both the pvp and pve crowds, then this project is not only a financial success.

No future addon or chapter will nuke the balance again, but few professions need to be adjusted while retaining their strengths. So yes, ANet did a good job with GW and I am optimistic that degrading builds like tripple melee will be balanced eventually.

It's quite obvious WoC will start around the Dragon Festival. Jade Wind Orbs will make a comeback.

I think nostalgia is playing a big part in the problems everyone has with the game. I see a lot of people talking about how they'd love to go back to Factions. I may be wrong, but I remember first joining when it was only Prophecies and I'd love to go back then. However, I had no idea of the problems back then as all I was interested in was my new character and exploring the new world.

I will say, however, that GW is certainly only surviving as well as it is due to GW2; personally I'm only still playing because I want a decent predecessor to my new character.

I don't really have an opinion on whether or not Anet are doing a good job, I just play the game when I want to.

I read it, nodded my head in agreement, pondered at some, and eventually thought, "still better than any other MMORPG I played".

What people fail to understand is that when you have an MMO, balance is about as rare as snow in Hawaii.

This is one player, ranting about the game. Yet, how many people enjoy the game? A LOT.

Although I do agree that it's a bit fishy how Anet claims they want to kill grinding and have titles that are just ridiculous, I don't see how they could go past it. They had to appeal to all gamers. People loved the reputation, so they expanded it, and made it useful.

As far as balance goes, it is near impossible. Take simple games, like RuneScape, when there is basically 3 classes. Haven't played the game in about 3 years, but as far as PvP combat goes, there is a triangle. Mages kill warriors. Warriors Kill rangers. Rangers kill mages. In a game like Guild Wars, you have a decagon instead of a triangle, and ends up looking like the star of david. Assassins kill casters. casters kill melee. Melee kills assassins/rangers. Rangers kill casters. Problem is, Anet then decided to make every class able to solo. Assassins can kill everything. Mesmers can kill everything. Warriors can kill everything. And so on. They screwed up their decagon.

Anyways, to sum up my opinion on his thoughts...


1 - Attributes. Still very useful. Some don't need attributes, but generally every skill has a reward and a consequence or risk. Be it energy, cooldown, or casting time. I generally use skills that require attributes. I don't really see much of a problem with attributes.

2 - Time Constraints. Games that require any grind take time. Might as well complain about grinding. As far as them working on their games, I see them putting lots of effort in them. I've played since release, and every campaign (minus EOTN) looks like they've put effort and time into it. Games being played by a handful are different than being played by a world-full. Every MMO is never the same as when it was released. Look at WoW. Look at RuneScape even. Is he seriously complaining about NF and Factions taking too long? I got guardian of cantha in about 3 hours. The primary quests weren't that long either. Polished games are meant to take time. Nightfall and Factions were fairly polished. They had bugs, they had inbalance, but they added entertainment to the game. Much worth it.

3 - Community Relations. I've never come across seeing someone banned for saying "butt". Never have, likely never will. As far as customer service, Anet has been the best. They've been better than Blizzard, been better than Jagex. The only thing I hate that Anet is doing is keeping players in the dark with GW2. We've seen gameplay and all those goodies, but the "When it's ready" is going to make people go insane. Already has for some people. But Anet cares about its community. My guess is this guy got banned and is ranting? Saying they don't care about their community is a flat out lie, and when I got to that point in the article, I stopped taking the guy seriously to be honest.

4 -Game Balance - read above.

5 -Grind/Playability

under play-ability, both are BS. Under grindables, I agree. There is no reason a title like Drunkard, Sweet Tooth, and Party Animal should require people to grind for so much money and force players to actually try to buy the items. SS, Survivor, the reputation, and Lightbringer are all a bunch of crap. Those titles are a pain. Problem is, to get GWAMM, you HAVE to grind these titles. The last 5 titles I need are Norn, Vanguard, and the 3 consumables. Those are going to be... well... horrible.


As far as Anet doing a good job - I've been playing, so I think they have. I know they listen to their community, their changes prove that. But you can't perfectly balance a game. You can't keep everyone happy. The games great, and even if some things are repetitive, what game isn't? It had a great storyline. It has great lore. The only problem is once you've beaten all the campaigns and have done every feature (as I have), the game gets very dull and becomes a grind fest. For Anet to "do a better job", they just need to release GW2.

Not necessarily, many of the people who want to revert to the good old days are reminiscing on the balanced PvP, or the nearly balanced era of that time. Especially before the mATs. People were not glossing over new characters because these people, including myself, were already playing what was conceived as high-end PvP at the time.

Sure, i was a complete idiot in PvE, not even doing the first Prophecies mission until i was level 14. But PvP was my element and it always will be. For me, this was the entertainment factor and what has kept me playing for 6 years. To be competitive on a game which rewards players on their skill and decision making, is true e-sport. Nowadays, matches are literally faceroll.

For example, Anet decided to meta shift the backline from Word of Healing to Healing Burst. What does that do to the new monks? They spam a lower single target heal and get a free party heal on everyone in ear shot. Wow, congrats on build compression but you've also made redbarring mindless.

Life Sheath was a little different, prots will sacrifice energy and potential prots in order to remove conditions. It was a decent gamble.

PvP has been a mess and Anet has known it for a long time. Instead of admitting their theoretical mistakes of abandoning their first ethos (they always said GW1 was a PvP game from the outset and PvE came later in development), they decided to gloss it over with consistent power creep on skills, creating several horrible metas. Granted they have a small team left to maintain the game, but they completely forgot why many players bought the game in the first place.

But having said that, not everyone thinks like me and many PvE whiners have welcomed the PvE/PvP split skills, the PvE only skills and the EZmode build options now available.

This is the reason why new players will never realise how much fun a boon prot was, or how epic aftershock was on a hammer warrior. The game has changed and yet I still play it hoping Anet does something smart again...

its a game...its fun...its fine to me.

Not only do they not care about us players, they dislike us as far as I can tell and think we are too stupid to see what they are doing.

10 million faction orly?

10k drunk minutes no u didnt! (Look at avatar inspired by this title)

Changing the rules as they go along without any compensation to those who fulfilled the older and much harder reqs (LDOA, Drunkard, Survivor (Zaishen)).

Nerfing classes months or years after people spend a lot of time and effort to set up toons to play that way.

Buffing classes to compensate and causing people to have to roll new toons and grind out PVE skills/titles all over again.

Making the vast majority of PVE skills toon based instead of account wide.

Weapon nerfs.

Limited minis.

Big towns where you have to run around to find services and storage suck.

Hacked accounts.

BUT MAINLY BECAUSE THEY RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOING LIED TO US ALL. NOT A GRIND GAME? LMAO! 4 more hours spent getting another recently buffed toon up to par by doing a quest we can't fail over and over again.

GRIND WARS yuck.

Seems like the whaaaaaaaaaambulance has swooped over these forums.

"Big towns where you have to run around to find services and storage suck."

You must be kidding right?

No.
Kaineng.
Then go kam.
Then go embark.
Notice how they fixed it.
Kaineng couldn't even compete with Lions and is still #4 or 5 trading spot even though cantha is heavily farmed.
Stupid waste of space and time.
All my points 100% correct.

No a few people i used to play with as well as myself are wary of buying Guildwars 2 now due to piss poor design decisions and 'balance' updates.

Not only is it bad decision making, its the time scale in which things are addressed. Anet seem to be more then happy to let games issues rot to the point where it has serious problems on other aspects of the game.

When Anet finally get round to addressing these issues its:

Completely ineffective and/or fails in addressing the issue
Makes the issue worse
Makes the playerbase question if Anet even play this game
All the above

Anet, say all the the design/skill limitations/complications speak you want, given the timeframe and the updates you have rolled out doesn't put alot of confidence that the same thing won't happen with Guildwars 2.

Rolling out Guildwars 2 doesn't make you immune from repeating the same bad desisions and what will be the excuse then? Guildwars 3?