How would you review Guild Wars 2?

[Noa.7490]

Veteran player here, and not just about Guild Wars 2. My first PC game was King's Quest in 1984 and I have played a plethora of other games since then. On with the show now.

 

1. Engine. It's a Chevette engine trying to power a Corvette because it's basically a souped-up version of the original Guild Wars engine. It uses way too much CPU and really should unload some on the GPU but completely refuses. Too much stuff goes through the main thread and this unfortunately causes bottlenecks. Frame rates can take a dive faster than Scrooge McDuck in his pool of coins during metas events like Tequatl or Claw of Jormag, and players often suffer game crashes of d/c. Despite running a good machine and running the 64 bit client, I do experience low FPS and random d/c during big metas. That's not a good thing. I seem to recall an Nvidia employee who said that they once offered their assistance to Arena Net with their engine but were flatly turned down.

 

2. Story. Sorry but the storyline in GW2 is discombobulated and riddled with inconsistencies. If I was the head honcho of a game company, the designers would be required to play other games that excel in storytelling before typing the first letter of their own story: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Mass Effect 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Last of Us, and the masterclass itself: The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. The latter pushed the enveloppe because instead of putting you on a rail and letting the game making decisions for you it forces you into making muddy choices that aren't always good nor bad (the Baron and the Crones, for example). This isn't about the setting but how to tell a gripping story that moves you. Unfortunately GW2 doesn't grip me in any way. The decisions the Commander makes aren't my own and I have no choice but to choo-choo along. Although it's too late to go back and repair some of the kiddie level stories it would be nice to see a more mature tone to the future ones.

 

3. Art. The game's art, like any other game, tries to immerse you in its world. The team has made great efforts to craft a believable fantasy world but it's sort of smudged by the two following points (4 and 5);

 

4. Armor design. I know GW2 is supposed to be a fantasy world but when I run along and see a tuxedo-wearing Charr sporting neon-green mohawk and a princess wand, or an female human elementalist with an armor straight out of a Victoria's Secret catalog, sorry. Some armor designs are good but many other are just plain ugly. Gw2, by it's setting, wants you to play in a GoT-like world but on the other hand gives you the "armors" that often look like bad, overdone convention cosplay. Also, the tons of armor clippings are horrible and unacceptable, I'm sure you're well aware of it. I would expect these nuisances from a minor gaming company but not from Anet. Oh and one more thing about armors, especially heavy female ones: armors chest plates don't have boobies. I know you want/need to cater to some adolescent hormone-fueled fantasies but please. Have [a look here for inspiration](https://imgur.com/gallery/SXqji "a look here for inspiration").

 

6. Sound. We may, and could, say a lot of things about George Lucas but he got one thing perfectly right: sound makes half of a movie. Granted, a game isn't a movie, but it's a very closely related media. Ambient sounds, for the most part, are bland, weak, and do not effectively complement the environments we play in. This is one aspect that should help immerse us, but doesn't. Same goes of other kinds of sounds, like battle. When hitting opponents with my sword (or greatsword) why does it sound like I'm hitting empty garbage cans? You like leveling using tomes? Great! But because of the annoying flashes and even more annoying "whooosh" sound it's quite painful.

 

7. Maps. Generally well done but unfortunately as soon as you step into HoT of PoF, every square inch harbors something that wants to kill you. It's very annoying and sometimes you just want to stop and check out the scenery but can't. Oh sure, kill the beasties but they'll respawn soon. Also, the skyboxes are horribly bland. Those flat 2D textures rolling about to "simulate" clouds? Yeah, it was great in Duke Nukem 3D but it's 2018 now and you can get rid of them. Juice up your skyboxes a bit. Don't know how to make great skies? You can check other games such as Skyrim, Witcher 3, and Rage, just to name these few. Also, the day/night cycle? Not convincing at all. Midnight should look like midnight and yet it looks like 7pm.

 

8. Community. It's a helpful community but like any community you can run into some serious sour grapes every now and then. Also, it's really annoying when you want info about massive login errors or some other kind of important info and you need to go to Reddit to have dev input instead of here, on the Official Forum. Seriously, go to the GW2 Reddit page and notice how many threads have dev response in there.

 

9. Music. The option to let us use custom music in-game is a great idea but I fear that this commodity is in dire need of some dusting. It does not always works properly and, perhaps, after the dusting, it could use an overhaul and divide music by area. It kinds of break the immersion when you're wandering Orr and then hear, for some reason, the joyful music you normally hear in a city. Music should be divided to better reflect their respective areas.

[Deadric.1427]

**• Gameplay modes: general PvE, PvP and additional modes such as WvW and mini-games.**

PVE is a lot of fun. I feel it’s to easy for the most part but the world is huge so there is so many things to do.

PVP is complete trash at this point.

 

**• World: the writing, story progression, expansions and DLC, voice-acting, exploration, jumping puzzles, the maps, NPCs, AI, main cities and hubs, graphics and aesthetics, character customization, etc...**

Writing and stories are solid.

DLCs IMO are overpriced for the little content they provide. Guild Wars version of DLC was essentially two and a half new games. These fail in comparison.

Character customization is meh. We need more armor choices and less suits. On top of that (And this is probably my biggest grip with the game) there is absolutely ZERO build diversity. None. Guild Wars had its “best” builds for sure. At the same time there were about 50 different variations of these “best builds” that also worked. I cant stand the lack of builds in this game.

 

**• Mechanics: abilities and smoothness of the game, animation, classes, and specializations, etc.**

Good for the most part. In regards to “smoothness” I’m going to pick on the games engine and say the FPS is this game is horrid.

 

**• Community: share your thoughts about the good and bad of the community; the possible experiences you might have gone through.**

Never had any issues with any community members and they’ve always been quick to answer any questions I’ve ever had. A+ from me!

 

**• Premium Currency: elaborate if the cash shop and its premium currency(gems) are intrusive or not; the usefulness of said paid items and how it impacts the game.**

I normally hate item shops but I feel GW2 is microtransaction done right. I don’t think its intrusive at all but at times its incredibly helpful.

 

**• And other points that you might feel like it.**

It’s a solid game but to me it takes to many steps backwards from stuff that was already incorporated and working in the original GWs. Things like build diversity, heroes, armor options, and capes!!!!!!! may be small things to a lot of people but to me its those small things that made the game what it was to me and its also what I miss any time I try and get back into this game.

 

SWTOR I never played.

[juhani.5361]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"juhani.5361" said:

> > **Giant Bummer** I can't believe I forgot this, but the scummiest dev action I've seen in a long time goes to Bioware and its stealth move of all NA servers to the East Coast. They wrote off the West Coast and APAC players without even giving them the dignity of a warning. I'm guessing the lauded server merges were a cover for the real plan, which was the migration. Eight hundred billion thumbs down. You don't write off entire global regions. Jerks.

>

> GW2 made the same move recently ...

 

I'd heard about the Amazon migration, but figured Anet had communicated _something_. After checking, yep, you're right. The move wasn't announced, and a lot of the Aussie/SE Asia ping issues are the same. TTTHHHBBBT :p The migration happened probably around the time I was going halfsies with SWL, waiting for updates on Season 2. I haven't noticed much of an issue, but I'm on the west coast and have always had at least an 80 mms ping to the Texas servers. That's gone to between 100-110.

 

I'll say this, though: so far as I can tell Anet never lied about its server locations. I could swear that Bioware initially represented Satele Shan as the west coast server. Going back to the original United Forces announcement, though, "West Coast" isn't mentioned anywhere. So, either my memory is faulty or Bioware engaged in another of its retro-edits that they love to do on their patch notes. Trying to recall anything Bioware-related makes you question your reality ;)

 

I think I hold Anet to a looser standard simply because of their B2P business model vs. renting out access a la SWTOR. If you're pumping money in monthly to be able to access the game, you should be able to and receive an automatic refund if you can't anymore. Or an apology credit of some sort for degraded service.

[Kovu.7560]

7.8/10, game has too much water.

 

~ Kovu

[Ashen.2907]

I would rate GW2 ( on a scale of 1 to 10)

 

A ) Game-Play: 8

B ) Visuals: 6 (this would be a 9 if I could see foes through all of the visual noise).

C ) Content: 7 (this would be an 8 if platformer-esque elements such as jumping mushrooms and the like were not present. It would be a 9 if the open world were more challenging and the platformer-esque elements were not present).

D ) Rewards: 3 (this is the only game I've ever played where processing rewards can result in a net loss).

[CharterforGw.3149]

You should expect not everyone's replies to be reasonable to begin with in all fairness, it's still an anonymus place on the GW2 forums, like most of the internet

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"Noa.7490" said:

> 6. Sound. We may, and could, say a lot of things about George Lucas but he got one thing perfectly right: sound makes half of a movie. Granted, a game isn't a movie, but it's a very closely related media.

 

I wanted to touch on this specific point as it relates to GW2's combat. Not in the ambient sounds that come from the player, but the fact that most enemies convey so little through sound. With so much visual clutter, it's really important to use multiple channels of perception, and GW2 just.. doesn't.