Is Guild Wars 2 ahead of it's time?

[Chemistral.7318]

Hello everyone, first I'd like to state that I adore this game. It changed how I look at MMO's as a whole. Years ago I 1st heard about this game when a friend referred me to Angry Joe's review of the game back in 2012 ( [https://youtu.be/Ax-_06Acj8Y](https://youtu.be/Ax-_06Acj8Y "https://youtu.be/Ax-_06Acj8Y") ) I recently stumbled across this video again on my Youtube feed and watched it. Previously I had been trying out other MMO's (I honestly had forgotten about GW2 for a couple years due to being enamored with the rising MOBA genre and just about stopped playing MMO's altogether until this past year) and most of them were fun the 1st time around. But once I leveled a class the fun wore off. Long gone was the feeling of discovery and wonder at what new skills I would unlock next only to be replaced by the urgency to stay ahead of the curve, and just focus on getting the newest/best gear available. It was common for me to feel a sense of dread logging in those games just to do the dailies, denying that I wasn't finding any reason to keep playing.

 

And then I watched that video.

 

Soon memories of playing Guild Wars 2 came flooding back, and not once did I remember this game feeling like a chore. Sadly I didn't remember my old account info from launch but I didn't care, I wanted to play this game again. I've been playing again now for nearly 2 weeks and not a single moment has been unpleasant. Unlike other MMO's I rediscovered the sense of freedom this game offers. Not just in build diversity (which alone is worth it!), but also letting you play how you want to play. I could go from going through the story to just picking a direction and wandering around and get rewarded for either or. Not mentioning any names but the last MMO I played, everything was locked behind the main story quests. I frequently couldn't play with my friends because I was so far behind in those quests (personally I'm not a huge fan of story MMO's [inb4 'Why did I play it then?' The reason was that is what my friends were playing] I'm more a fan of the MMO community and exploration)

 

Honestly I don't need to tell you all why this game is so good, just like me you're playing it as well. My question then is why is this game so...overlooked? Personally I feel that it does so many things right and has the potential to change the MMO genre as a whole, yet it hasn't seemed to have done that in the 6 years since the games release. I don't think it's the Developer's fault but instead perhaps MMO players in general? Traditional style tab-targeting MMO's will always hold a spot in my heart as they're what introduced me to my favorite genre of games, but when something comes along that challenges the norm and succeeds, perhaps a reason it's not more commonly named due to it not being a 'traditional MMO' and that's what the players seem to want?

 

Personally, whenever I hear people talk about MMO's usually Guild Wars 2 is often tacked on at the end if was even mentioned at all. Despite my best attempts to have others try the game, mentioning it's unique features, the free to play aspect, etc. More often then not I get the answer of: "I don't have time to invest in an MMO" (which I can understand and relate to, but on a side note however this game breaks away from the 'you must play everyday to remain viable' mentality that other MMO's give.)

 

In conclusion, how does something so ground-breaking among other games in it's genre not receive more attention?

 

[Tolmos.8395]

Genres don’t like change. Some JRPGs went through a pretty drastic change a few years back, moving towards more real time combat, and you would think the developers had personally run over the puppies of every fan they had.

 

Maybe it is ahead of its time. Maybe not. What it was, though, is different. And despite their protestations to the contrary, many players really don’t actually want that much difference within their favorite genre, even if the changes are positive.

[Raizel.8175]

The bitter truth is that GW2 isn't really a milestone for innovation inside the MMORPG-genre anymore. While other games copy some of the good and previously innovative ideas like up-/downscaling, so in turn GW2 copies outdated concepts of the genre in general. You won't see that until you get into GW2s real endgame-content though which are - PvE-wise - fractals and raids. They are pretty much your standardized instanced PvE-Content and suffer from the same problems nearly every MMORPG suffers from like glaring balancing-problems, no real diversity, overpowered and far too omnipotent classes like Chrono or Druid, unneccesary and unfounded elitism (which probably is the main-reason why raids are that unpopular), etc. pp. Problem is that GW2 suffers even more from those problems like other MMORPGs since GW2 inherently didn't feature holy-trinity-gameplay, which was then implemented with Heart of Thorns. It just feels like the developers have no idea how to design trinity-gameplay properly (no real aggro-mechanics; too omnipotent support).

 

TL;DR: This game really - sadly - isn't that innovative anymore. Just my 2 cents though.

[Zedek.8932]

What I gathered from a wide range of different opinions coming from so many different people with yet again different tastes, playstyles, expectations and attitude is:

 

* **GW2 is well-known for being a good game.**

When I hear people talk about other MMORPGs, like FF14, the chance of a loud "Eww" or "Blargh!" are much higher than mentioning GuildWars2. Maybe because the game offers a wide range of everything: Lots of species instead of the generic human lolita from JRPGs or cat people with designer glasses or the super ugly, tryhard wanna-be Tolkien stuff from the Warcraft universe.

 

* **GW2 is also known for having no gear threadmill**

And here is where the big seperation of players begins: I have to admit, after 3 years of GW2 (coming from FF14), I miss a very little bit that I am forced to upgrade my stuff. I mean, the right in your face lockout of FF14 with item levels and such garbage is a bad side-effect, but I liked how the set of next clothes would increase my Lalafell Blackmage's damage a lot. Here I deal always the same damage. That is the foundation for a low-frustration gameplay, because dedicated people can still improve by getting better gear, but either I go full farm/raid/whatnot, or get nothing. FF14 had a nice way in the middle.

 

People want an endless gear progression. Other people want to proceed sideways. You can't have both, and ArenaNet went with a comparibly unpopular design decision.

The problem: When you have better gear, the next enemy is also getting stronger. So having better gear is like fighting inflation: Pointless, stick on a carrot garbage.

 

* **GW2 has beautiful species (often called "races" which is wrong) with a rich lore behind them**

Check other games. They are lackluster and nothing behind. Reading about the Asura got me a hardcore Asuracist and basically made me stick to this game and probably future releases of the franchise. It's necessary to have such things and not just go for either cleavage lolitas or humans only. Also, no Genderlock.

 

* **Especially in FF14 forums: GW2 is known for having good music, SFX and voiced dialogues**

There are people that will ALWAYS complain about voice acting. But man, my Asura is voiced by Patrick Bach, the dubber of Sean Astin. Having Samweis Gamgee's voice from LOTR acting for my Asura - wow! What else do I want. When I dodge as Thief, you have that bassy sound effect that I like, when I move with my Noble Count outfit I hear the little gold chains rattle with every step and when I fire my pistols , the bullet casings dropping to the ground sound different on stone or wood. If you heard the FF14's sound for example - no voice acting, one "pain" sound every 30 minute ("Oh." "Ah!".) but then, every arrow a female cat person shoots, she yells "Ahhhh!! Ohhh!!!!"?? Huh?

 

* **Fair pricing and good update cycle**

Let's be honest: The amount of high updates is very good for a non-subscription game. On the German website mein-mmo.de, GW2 has been critized for too lackluster updates. Something interesting happened that never was done before: The comment section was full with "Are you for real?", "What a BS" etc. Something like that does not happen on that small webpage. It really left a good impression for sure.

 

* Less cool: Bad performance and often weird designs

Wings that look like straight from Barbie: Fairytopia on a Charr, a lighting that always comes from the right top corner and, for its poor performance GPU and CPU wise, this game does not provide as nearly as nice visuals. While I am not a graphic's fet..ist, my favourite game is Vanilla MS-DOS DooM II in 320x200, this often leads to not-so good impressions. If you look around on many screenshots posted in 2018, you see people with low texture quality, subsampling and Anti Alias off, despite running a full gaming rig. I have a GTX1080 paired with a Ryzen 7 but due to poor performance, I have to play on 2010 visuals to get unstable 40-60fps. What's the point of having super WvW stuff that actually can't be enjoyed because the sound effects cut off and your PC explodes? Other games get both better graphics at lower ressource cost.

 

* Less cool: GW2 did a few mistakes in the past

Still laughing about eSports, still people are mad for failed PvP balance. Those little dents in the actual history of the game left a huge and negative impression. "GW2? That failed esports lolololol!".

 

As you can see, the game is going its own way, and is often considered as a very good underdog. Stoically going its way.

_And that's what I love._ Compare the GW2, the FF14 and the WoW main page. What do you see? GW2 is tasteful. Splatter art menus (also ingame), two colour sheme, just a couple of fonts. This game is for adults, it does not boast about itself. It's almost shy. FF14 looked like a webpage in 1999: 50 million boxes, newsletter here, updates there, gaudy colours,...They recently changed it to look like a friggin wordpress blog, with useless info "FC standings", "Frontline standings", recent activity boxes... Their forum is a super ugly BBoard with minor changes.

 

All these things leave an impression. You either embrace it or walk off. Unlike the other games, in GW2, there is much behind a not-so nice looking facade. In FF14, there is nothing behind a nice-looking facade. But to many superficial people, that's enough not to try it ever again...

 

Excelsior.

 

 

[Randulf.7614]

A lot of games quickly took some of the good aspects of GW2 and incorporated them into their game quick enough that they became standard - shared loot, scaling, dynamic events etc. GW2 has also taken aspects from other games as well, so whilst it does have innovation, it also borrows heavily as well, making it a hybrid. That has been necessary for it's survival - adding in raids for example which seemed unthinkable in the early days. Much of what it copies stand out over the innovations it put forward to the audience.

 

GW1 was different beast and was the real innovator, making the f2p model a standard - even when others were toying with it, GW1 made everyone else stand up and be alert. Similarly when it brought in heroes and henchies, everyone else realised what they could do in the own mmo to capitalise on this.

 

 

[Ultimatepwr.9562]

> @"Raizel.8175" said:

> The bitter truth is that GW2 isn't really a milestone for innovation inside the MMORPG-genre anymore. While other games copy some of the good and previously innovative ideas like up-/downscaling, so in turn GW2 copies outdated concepts of the genre in general. You won't see that until you get into GW2s real endgame-content though which are - PvE-wise - fractals and raids. They are pretty much your standardized instanced PvE-Content and suffer from the same problems nearly every MMORPG suffers from like glaring balancing-problems, no real diversity, overpowered and far too omnipotent classes like Chrono or Druid, unneccesary and unfounded elitism (which probably is the main-reason why raids are that unpopular), etc. pp. Problem is that GW2 suffers even more from those problems like other MMORPGs since GW2 inherently didn't feature holy-trinity-gameplay, which was then implemented with Heart of Thorns. It just feels like the developers have no idea how to design trinity-gameplay properly (no real aggro-mechanics; too omnipotent support).

>

> TL;DR: This game really - sadly - isn't that innovative anymore. Just my 2 cents though.

 

I don't think this game was ever as innovative as people seem to think. Removing the trinity by making the game too easy to need one is not a novel idea. GW2's very different gearing system was designed to make the idea of "play what you want" easier, but it is currently and has always been the worst major modern mmo on the market for changing between different play styles on the fly. The dungeons as they exist were a minor variation of dungeon hubs that existed in wow as far back as The Burning Crusade. Removing quests didn't actually happen, as the personal story instances are just straight quests, and hearts are just a shitty variation on quests. Traits are just talent line, removing them would have been innovative at the time.

 

Ironically, I think this game is far more innovative now then it was close to launch. The mistlock instability/scale-able dungeon system in fractals is the easily most innovative thing that ever came out of the game. fitting the trinity into this game is super hard, and every patch makes it better. I personally thing that this is an example of innovation, with how unique the way the trinity works in it. Focusing on the open world as much as gw2 does is also pretty big, and that imo was the biggest innovation at launch by a mile, and still exists to the day.

[Astralporing.1957]

GW2 tried to be ahead of the time when it launched. That was in 2012. Now it's 2018, and, if anything, the game went _backward_ since launch, not forward.

[ProverbsofHell.2307]

It's good you're enjoying the game, but you've only been playing for 2 weeks - you're still on the honeymoon. Give it several months and then I'd be interested to see you come back here and "respond" to your earlier self.

[Raizel.8175]

> @"Ultimatepwr.9562" said:

> > @"Raizel.8175" said:

> > The bitter truth is that GW2 isn't really a milestone for innovation inside the MMORPG-genre anymore. While other games copy some of the good and previously innovative ideas like up-/downscaling, so in turn GW2 copies outdated concepts of the genre in general. You won't see that until you get into GW2s real endgame-content though which are - PvE-wise - fractals and raids. They are pretty much your standardized instanced PvE-Content and suffer from the same problems nearly every MMORPG suffers from like glaring balancing-problems, no real diversity, overpowered and far too omnipotent classes like Chrono or Druid, unneccesary and unfounded elitism (which probably is the main-reason why raids are that unpopular), etc. pp. Problem is that GW2 suffers even more from those problems like other MMORPGs since GW2 inherently didn't feature holy-trinity-gameplay, which was then implemented with Heart of Thorns. It just feels like the developers have no idea how to design trinity-gameplay properly (no real aggro-mechanics; too omnipotent support).

> >

> > TL;DR: This game really - sadly - isn't that innovative anymore. Just my 2 cents though.

>

> I don't think this game was ever as innovative as people seem to think. Removing the trinity by making the game too easy to need one is not a novel idea. GW2's very different gearing system was designed to make the idea of "play what you want" easier, but it is currently and has always been the worst major modern mmo on the market for changing between different play styles on the fly. The dungeons as they exist were a minor variation of dungeon hubs that existed in wow as far back as The Burning Crusade. Removing quests didn't actually happen, as the personal story instances are just straight quests, and hearts are just a kitten variation on quests. Traits are just talent line, removing them would have been innovative at the time.

>

> Ironically, I think this game is far more innovative now then it was close to launch. The mistlock instability/scale-able dungeon system in fractals is the easily most innovative thing that ever came out of the game. fitting the trinity into this game is super hard, and every patch makes it better. I personally thing that this is an example of innovation, with how unique the way the trinity works in it. Focusing on the open world as much as gw2 does is also pretty big, and that imo was the biggest innovation at launch by a mile, and still exists to the day.

 

I have to agree with @"Astralporing.1957" here that the game went backwards.

 

It was innovative on launch, but copied too much mediocre stuff/conceptions from other games.

 

* You can actually have a MMORPG without the holy trinity while still being difficult. The best example would be Blade & Soul. I'd say that the easier four-man-dungeons of BnS are actually more difficult than many raid-encounters in GW2.

* The gearing-system in GW2 is good. I agree though that changes the way you have to play far too often and truly isn't consistent with its game-design.

* I also agree with builds, quests and dungeons, though you always need such stuff or something alike in MMORPGs. There's a reason why games like Black Desert are rather niche since they don't have your typical PvE-Content.

* I also like the fractal-instabilities, but they're basically just a little part of your layered/tiered instanced PvE-content.

* The implementation of the holy trinity is just really really bad in GW2. The game-design just sucks. You have one mandatory tank, which also is a far too strong supporter and one mandatory healer, which is also a far too strong supporter. Chrono and Druid need to get toned down and other classes have to become viable. ANet just fucked the idea of "specializations" up. Chrono should either be tank or support - not both; Druid should also be either tank or support - not both. No class should be mandatory. Having Chrono and Druid do basically everything is also one of the reasons why Ele/Weaver is far too dominant in GW2.

* OW is good in GW2, yes, but ANet went backward quite a lot with PoF and especially with Istan. There really should be more diversity concerning difficulty in OW-content rather than having your braindead farm-content like Palawadan where you just zerg stuff down with autoattacks. There really ought to be more HoT-like meta events.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

Yes, back-in-the-day, indeed. Today? Not so much. The biggest thing Guild Wars 2 had going for it was its casual pace, and its consistent and polished content releases that were free.

 

And NO expansions.

 

Now, we get copy and paste holiday events and three months between content releases between expansions.

 

That's almost a mirror of what other MMOs do before and after Guild Wars 2. While I get why, but not so much the original demand for it, I still appreciate the more consistent content.

 

At least for me, new content keeps me around. And if I had to guess? Between content drought and population drops, that keeps other players around too.

[Ultimatepwr.9562]

> @"Raizel.8175" said:

 

> * You can actually have a MMORPG without the holy trinity while still being difficult. The best example would be Blade & Soul. I'd say that the easier four-man-dungeons of BnS are actually more difficult than many raid-encounters in GW2.

 

Yeah, but gw2 didn't do this. Innovation is not just about intention. The lack of the trinity at launch was not an innovative thing, it was a poorly designed thing

 

> * The gearing-system in GW2 is good. I agree though that changes the way you have to play far too often and truly isn't consistent with its game-design.

 

No, it is not. In wow, it takes me almost no work to swap to a passable version of another play style on the same class. Gearing it to the level of semi-casual content (easy to pug, most players can do it pretty easily, equivalent to T4's in difficulty) takes almost no time, requires me to press 1 button, and takes up at most 5 slots in a massive inventory. In gw2, the same thing requires a massive amount of time because ascended shit is required for t4s, requires manually swapping each piece, and takes up at least 14 slots in a tiny inventory. And don't even get me started with runes.

 

> * I also agree with builds, quests and dungeons, though you always need such stuff or something alike in MMORPGs. There's a reason why games like Black Desert are rather niche since they don't have your typical PvE-Content.

 

I don't disagree, but people call what gw2 did here a huge amount of innovation, when it is not

 

> * I also like the fractal-instabilities, but they're basically just a little part of your layered/tiered instanced PvE-content.

 

Innovation is not just doing completely different things. Taking an established formula and changing it slightly to fit your game better or to do something cool is innovation.

 

 

 

 

 

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Raizel.8175" said:

> * The implementation of the holy trinity is just really really bad in GW2.

 

How does that statement even make sense given there IS no holy trinity in GW2?

 

[Ultimatepwr.9562]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

>

> How does that statement even make sense given there IS no holy trinity in GW2?

>

 

There is one. Tanks and healers are things now. Its just not a hardcoded thing.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Ultimatepwr.9562" said:

> > @"Menadena.7482" said:

> >

> > How does that statement even make sense given there IS no holy trinity in GW2?

> >

>

> There is one. Tanks and healers are things now. Its just not a hardcoded thing.

 

Where? The creation screen just lists 9 professions (then you have the elites).

 

Of course you have always been able to create a build that was optimized for part of the trinity. Although your optimizations may go poof at the next balance patch.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

How human minds work is interesting. The experience of "fun" is most often triggered by experiencing things that are new and challenging. However, our brains _associate_ the trappings of an experience with the experience itself.

 

This is, I believe, why it's so hard for an MMO to break away from the formula established in earlier games within the genre. At some point, people play their first video game. Since it's new, chances are that as long as it is reasonably well done, they enjoy it.

 

At some point the game gets stale (i.e., it's no longer either new or challenging). So, people move on. However, our brains are looking for the trappings we associated with that first fun game. So, we look for those trappings in a "new" experience. The thing is, the closer the new game is to the old game, the sooner we get bored with it _because it stops being new to us sooner._ Anyone who has experienced something like this ...

 

> @"Chemistral.7318" said:

> ... Previously I had been trying out other MMO's (I honestly had forgotten about GW2 for a couple years due to being enamored with the rising MOBA genre and just about stopped playing MMO's altogether until this past year) and most of them were fun the 1st time around. But once I leveled a class the fun wore off. Long gone was the feeling of discovery and wonder ...

 

and found that with each successive "copy" of an earlier MMO, that moment when it stops being "new" comes sooner is feeling this way because of the conflation of "fun" with the packaging.

 

I also believe this is why GW2 is no longer ahead of its time. Not only have other games taken things that people say they like from GW2, GW2 itself has moved closer to other games in the genre by incorporating some of the trappings people come to expect.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

> @"IndigoSundown.5419" said:

> How human minds work is interesting. The experience of "fun" is most often triggered by experiencing things that are new and challenging. However, our brains _associate_ the trappings of an experience with the experience itself.

>

> This is, I believe, why it's so hard for an MMO to break away from the formula established in earlier games within the genre. At some point, people play their first video game. Since it's new, chances are that as long as it is reasonably well done, they enjoy it.

>

> At some point the game gets stale (i.e., it's no longer either new or challenging). So, people move on. However, our brains are looking for the trappings we associated with that first fun game. So, we look for those trappings in a "new" experience. The thing is, the closer the new game is to the old game, the sooner we get bored with it _because it stops being new to us sooner._ Anyone who has experienced something like this ...

>

> > @"Chemistral.7318" said:

> > ... Previously I had been trying out other MMO's (I honestly had forgotten about GW2 for a couple years due to being enamored with the rising MOBA genre and just about stopped playing MMO's altogether until this past year) and most of them were fun the 1st time around. But once I leveled a class the fun wore off. Long gone was the feeling of discovery and wonder ...

>

> and found that with each successive "copy" of an earlier MMO, that moment when it stops being "new" comes sooner is feeling this way because of the conflation of "fun" with the packaging.

>

> I also believe this is why GW2 is no longer ahead of its time. Not only have other games taken things that people say they like from GW2, GW2 itself has moved closer to other games in the genre by incorporating some of the trappings people come to expect.

 

Well said and completely agree.

[KeoLegend.5132]

another thread with sad ppl crying all over.

GW2 was WAY ahead of its time, and is still one of the most remarkable RPGs to date. Moving on

[Raizel.8175]

> @"Ultimatepwr.9562" said:

> > @"Raizel.8175" said:

>

> > * You can actually have a MMORPG without the holy trinity while still being difficult. The best example would be Blade & Soul. I'd say that the easier four-man-dungeons of BnS are actually more difficult than many raid-encounters in GW2.

>

> Yeah, but gw2 didn't do this. Innovation is not just about intention. The lack of the trinity at launch was not an innovative thing, it was a poorly designed thing

>

So implementing the holy trinity and also all its problems is good game design? Since I know that games without trinity are very much possible, that's just nonsense. The game could have simply improved on delivering non-trinity-gameplay instead of going the lazy route of implementing the trinity. That actually would have been innovative.

 

> > * The gearing-system in GW2 is good. I agree though that changes the way you have to play far too often and truly isn't consistent with its game-design.

>

> No, it is not. In wow, it takes me almost no work to swap to a passable version of another play style on the same class. Gearing it to the level of semi-casual content (easy to pug, most players can do it pretty easily, equivalent to T4's in difficulty) takes almost no time, requires me to press 1 button, and takes up at most 5 slots in a massive inventory. In gw2, the same thing requires a massive amount of time because ascended kitten is required for t4s, requires manually swapping each piece, and takes up at least 14 slots in a tiny inventory. And don't even get me started with runes.

 

Ascended stuff is really easy to get in GW2. The only thing I agree with is the lack of ingame-equipment- and build-swap-macros.

>

> > * I also agree with builds, quests and dungeons, though you always need such stuff or something alike in MMORPGs. There's a reason why games like Black Desert are rather niche since they don't have your typical PvE-Content.

>

> I don't disagree, but people call what gw2 did here a huge amount of innovation, when it is not

 

Agreed.

>

> > * I also like the fractal-instabilities, but they're basically just a little part of your layered/tiered instanced PvE-content.

>

> Innovation is not just doing completely different things. Taking an established formula and changing it slightly to fit your game better or to do something cool is innovation.

>

 

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > @"Raizel.8175" said:

> > * The implementation of the holy trinity is just really really bad in GW2.

>

> How does that statement even make sense given there IS no holy trinity in GW2?

>

Go into raids and T4-fractals and you see that this game features a pretty harsh trinity. It doesn't matter if that trinity is bound to certain specializations; the trinity is there. It also carries all the problems of other MMORPGs over to GW2, especially the problem of trivializing content. One particular example would be outhealing so people can ignore mechanics; at least we don't have mass-distortion anymore. Just do fractals with and without healer and you'll see that most fractals are trivially easy if you have a healer.

 

> @"IndigoSundown.5419" said:

> How human minds work is interesting. The experience of "fun" is most often triggered by experiencing things that are new and challenging. However, our brains _associate_ the trappings of an experience with the experience itself.

>

> This is, I believe, why it's so hard for an MMO to break away from the formula established in earlier games within the genre. At some point, people play their first video game. Since it's new, chances are that as long as it is reasonably well done, they enjoy it.

>

> At some point the game gets stale (i.e., it's no longer either new or challenging). So, people move on. However, our brains are looking for the trappings we associated with that first fun game. So, we look for those trappings in a "new" experience. The thing is, the closer the new game is to the old game, the sooner we get bored with it _because it stops being new to us sooner._ Anyone who has experienced something like this ...

>

> > @"Chemistral.7318" said:

> > ... Previously I had been trying out other MMO's (I honestly had forgotten about GW2 for a couple years due to being enamored with the rising MOBA genre and just about stopped playing MMO's altogether until this past year) and most of them were fun the 1st time around. But once I leveled a class the fun wore off. Long gone was the feeling of discovery and wonder ...

>

> and found that with each successive "copy" of an earlier MMO, that moment when it stops being "new" comes sooner is feeling this way because of the conflation of "fun" with the packaging.

>

> I also believe this is why GW2 is no longer ahead of its time. Not only have other games taken things that people say they like from GW2, GW2 itself has moved closer to other games in the genre by incorporating some of the trappings people come to expect.

 

/sign

[ImTasty.2163]

Most definitely ahead of its time. I've been playing the game since 2012 and from then till now I've seen a huge chunk of games incorporating things that gw2 has been doing. Downscaling zones, shared loot, public events have become almost a standard in mmos now.

 

Quite a few mmos are going out of their way to make their games closer to gw2. Hell, WoW is even putting downscaling to all their zones, although it not the same way gw2 has done it.

 

Despite that though there are things gw2 is doing right now that I doubt any MMO will pull off without a complete overall of the game. That thing is the elite spec system bringing new playstyles to their classes. Take for example the ranger. The typical ranger style class in other games are ranged DPS. Here we have that and a strong healing build on top of quite a few melee variants and with more especs to come we are going to see more of this.

 

No gear treadmills is also a great aspect of this game. For most mmos that's the only form of endgame progression they know so they only stick with that. Gw2 proves that you don't need new gear levels with every major update/expansion to keep the player base playing.

[Torolan.5816]

GW2 did and does a lot of good things. It is still a good game, but like most MMOs it fails in areas that are vital for me personally.

Frozen in time: The most terrible offender. My desire to ever complete the personal story and the dungeons sunk to zero with the death of two characters. You have a mixture of icecold and redhot maps which is just sad. Anet also showed that they can do differently but can´t manage the schedule required to do so.

Home invasion: Was hinted, but never accomplished.

Casual means casual: Aside of semantics and opinions, GW2 moved away from its original idea of casual.

WvW is meaningless: You fight for rented space. If my guild disbands tomorrow while it has held together server X for years, nobody can sun in the glory of that feat because you can not prove that your former guild was ever in wvw.

 

So all in all, it is the best game in a sea of mediocre alternatives.

[Ahnog.8795]

I was around when home computers were not. I played the very first mmos and have continued to play them through the years. I'm 61 now and playing GW2 for the last five months. Beyond dispute the gearing in this game is an innovation. Not to lock it behind the hardest content in the game is a breath of fresh air. Not making gear the end all of the game is refreshing.

 

I wasn't here for the three year drought of content. No doubt I would have moved on during it. With the recent influx of story content I'm very happy to play, because story is what holds me in a game. I live for lore and only regret that I didn't play GW 1. The story in this game is good and the quality of PoF story and maps bode well for the future of story content. I would love to see more development of the other races. Humans dominate this game.

 

The combined currencies among toons is innovative. Not to have to shuffle coin between toons is a relief. The common bank is innovative.

 

They have learned that the three roles are essential to the game. Not having them at first was a bad innovation. I give them credit for correcting course.

 

Yes, Guild Wars 2 is innovative. The challenge is to continue innovating. I hope they will. Beyond any doubt in my mind, GW2 is the best game on the market at this point in time.

 

[Ryuk.6840]

> @"Ultimatepwr.9562" said:

> Innovation is not just doing completely different things. Taking an established formula and changing it slightly to fit your game better or to do something cool is innovation.

>

 

Changing something is not called inovation but alteration or slightly upgrade :P

That why ppl moans in various games that MMOs are stagnant atm

 

If there was in the pvp maps , an ''interactive'' mechanic where you simply stay stil , hold a spear and channel to throw it at the 2 fighting each other monsters (godzila vs flying dragon) in the background /behind the mountains .

Or having 2 girls slighty animated (or pvp streamers) bending over to a glass chess and shaking their next pawn

(different ppl can buy different sets/monsters on the gemstore and get mixxed with other ppl sets for some variation) ,

and they can transform a Captured Point into a 1v1 arena (whoever touch the portal first will go in) with Rocks/Flame /Sismic Walls blocking the area for 30 sec and awarding 30 points (50 if you got an afk) .....

...or capture the flag/carring hot potatoes....

is a slighty upgrade of DeathMatch Or Capture the flag, more costly and not an inovation :P

 

 

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

GW2 isn't ahead of it's time so much as it is it's own unique animal, and I like it that way.

[Ultimatepwr.9562]

> @"Ryuk.6840" said:

 

> Changing something is not called inovation but alteration or slightly upgrade :P

> That why ppl moans in various games that MMOs are stagnant atm

 

 

You are incorrect about what innovation is. But lets pretend you are not. If we lived in your world, where innovation is only doing stuff that is completely new, innovation would be fucking terrible and something to avoid 99.9% of the time.

 

 

[Obtena.7952]

Other games will evolve based on the good things from other games. GW2 has many good things that upcoming MMOs should adopt if they are smart. That being said, I am worried about the move away from stand alone MMO's towards browser-based games or consoles. A 'computer' game isn't so well defined like it was 10 years ago.