(Opinion) GW2's Future and its love for repeatable easy content

[MultiShifting.4905]

Now, I've only made a few forum posts, so if this breaks any rules of the forums/needs to be merged with another discussion please let me know, but I'm just going to rant a bit about how I feel about the current state of the game and why I am burnt out/not playing the game anymore, also an idea I had for a cool integration into the game. I'd love other peoples opinions as well in the comments for different perspectives. I just want to make clear that I am not trying to trash-talk the game in no way, I love this game. I want this to become a discussion of peoples opinions on how they are enjoying the game, and how they process content.

 

1. (My backstory on playing Gw2) Overall, to me GW2 was enjoyable for the 3 or so years I've been playing on and off. I bought the game at release but didn't play for real until about 6 months before HoT release. I've gone through the story, made a few legendaries, HoT and 1st gen. Map completion, had cleared raids many times, maxed out fractals, etc. I've done what most people have done already. Not to say I've hated the game at all, I loved every second playing. Although, after playing other MMO's for a bit, I've come to realize that the game is mostly doing obscure achievements and repeating content that people have been doing for years. Raids every week reset and you can be done in a couple hours (if that) with all wings with a decent group. Fractal dailies are very lackluster and if you aren't on CM it's very easy. I've come to that wall in the game of just doing random tasks that are time consuming and are not something that I look forward doing. Like going back into the story and doing achievements for... ascended accessories? Achievement points? I'm not the person to care much about achievements or 100% a game, so I'm not into that, but ascended stuff in this game comes too easy to people. Being maxed gear isn't a concept in this game since its very minimal in any form of content. Raids maybe if you have wrong stats or not having ascended weps but other then that, gear doesn't matter. So that's another thing checked off the list to do. The only thing that I do to play this game now is to come back and play the new patches of story, explore the map a bit, and log off for another 3 months. All the content is very stale and for some reason I was having more fun with the metas in HoT maps then the events or bounties in the new areas. It gave a sense of teamwork or working towards a bigger goal. Not steamrolling events even when you are afk. Coming back to the game for a couple days every 3 months sometimes gives me hope on this game implementing something that takes time to complete and actually gives a challenge. I know this game is catered to a more "casual" player base, and that's been a debate for years, but at this point I can't play more than those 5 hours after every quarterly patch. I have done everything to make this game pretty enjoyable. I joined a guild way back when I first started playing and I love them dearly, they have made this game so memorable and a lot of nights of screaming and laughing has a great place in my heart. But at this point the content has made me not play anymore.

 

2. (Which brings me to my next point, the new path the game is going towards.) We all heard that the LS4 will go straight to LS5, which on paper is completely fine, IF they give content to fill in the gaps. Giving just a new map, maybe a new fractal and a new story is all that we are going to get, I can get through most of that content in 2 days. The only difference I saw in this episode then the others was the cutscenes, which seem to be very meh? The story is a whole other topic that just recently got on my nerves with its very predictable story. It is the only thing bringing me back to the game after months, and to see it not really go anywhere in the newest episode was really disappointing. Wing 6 was beat in the first day of release which made me not even attempt because if its really able to be beaten first day, then it's just the same as the other wings. I'd like someone if they have any input on this because I didn't attempt wing 6 if they thought it was challenging or worth the wait.

 

3. (What I think the game should be doing/going) Now I'm no dev, and I think that the people at Anet really do love the game and work very hard to please the audience. This is just my idea of what I would think to be the best possible thing to do in this current state of the game. First off, if we are going to be taking LS4 into LS5, that expansion after LS5 should be the best expansion we have ever played. My idea of this expansion should be set up by LS5 with the introduction of Steve or Bubbles (the underwater dragon), and the area should heavily be dominated by water. An area like the unending ocean would be perfect, with some land areas like Scavenger's Causeway. Get rid of waypoints, get rid of mount use in this area. Implement Ships/Ship combat. Now you might be thinking, "This guy has just played too much Black Desert!", and you are completely correct. They did something that gave people things to do, in a very unique way. Sure, that game is grindy as it gets, but if its implemented correctly, I think it would be fantastic for both the hardcore and casual fanbase. Building your own boat(collection), then sailing on it across MASSIVE maps to get to your objective, new fluid ship combat. Something like what Pirates Online did. Next idea building off of this is a new raid/world boss, completely on ship/underwater. Black Desert came out with a world boss called Vell, and it took about 20 minutes to just sail to it, then about 30 minutes to kill it. It had about 10-20 ships at a time fighting this boss, which I would hope to believe if this was implemented in Gw2 could have a 40 man raid. Or it could be like 5 ships and 5 people on each ship, kind of Sea of Thieves style and major communication is needed. Now, I know it can destroy peoples computers, which it does mine, especially at Teq. Maybe more optimization could be increased but who knows. I would love for this boss to not be able to be beaten for weeks because of its difficulty or if we had gear on ships, if it had a gear limit, so that each day we can get closer to beating it. To me when bosses are just implemented and they are killed in the first day, it just goes into the trash with the others now because once it's first killed, now its killed only for dailies and to get a full clear, and doesn't seem to be new content anymore.

 

If you have made it, congrats on reading awful writing for this long, sorry haha. I would love to hear everybody's opinion on this and others ideas as well.

 

 

 

 

PS: Engi med kit change was the best thing to happen to this game thank you goodnight

[Okami Amaterasu.9237]

I love reading long story posts anyway, so don't worry about it too much. :)

 

I agree that the on-a-timer meta-events in HoT are a lot more enjoyable than on-the-fly bounties in PoF. However, I do like that some metas in PoF, namely the Maw of Torment and Junundu Rising happen about every 30 minutes or so instead of 2 hours. Sure they don't get completed as often because they're more frequent, but that's better to me than waiting so, so long for another Dragon's Stand map to appear not completely full of players and still be beatable. The other thing is that they're not as easily, noticeably rewardable and/or satisfying in terms of loot. Beating the Serpent's Ire meta in Vabbi is so satisfying just because it's difficult to complete, but the rewards or lackthereof don't make it as popular as HoT sadly. Point is, I'm glad they're still adding meta-events and big bosses instead of switching only to bounties which you usually need a commander tag and train of players for, especially the Legendary ones. Hope to see more meta-events With obvious rewards. ^^

 

(side note: I'm so tired of Istan for acquiring Volatile Magic, but that's why I stick to Sandswept Isles, Kourna, and Jahai Bluffs now; I'm so grateful for those metas. ^^)

 

Totally agree: Smaller bursts of content is a lot better over LW seasons because Expansions is where the massive content surges come in and gain traction with people outside of GW2. Keeping the attention of people who are already playing over the current LW season with more frequent, but smaller patches gives that better feeling of a constant "living world" that the devs put so much effort into. They've said before that it's easier for them to release it all at once on one day, but I just don't know if that'll keep people playing for weeks on end in the future. Still, every patch is a nice surprise no matter how small they may be. ^^

 

There should be more water maps in the game, yes, but there needs to be some more work on adding all the skills from the classes with underwater counterparts first. I'd love the idea of a near-total water flooded WvW map where there's underwater keeps and forts and such. It'd be a kitten of a challenge, but that'd add to the WvW population for quite some time! In terms of the story though, I'd personally love to go further North into the Woodland Cascades and Northern Shiverpeaks. Honestly I don't mind if we even go to the far East past Elona and Ascalon, where the Ogres come from supposedly. It's a totally unexplored area as far as I know - basically half the Tyrian continent is completely unknown to us and that leaves a lot of possibilities. I guess I'd be okay with a Cantha expansion too, but honestly I'd like more Original stuff from GW2 moving forward instead of working from the foundations of GW1 again and again. Ah well, I'm sure I'll enjoy it nonetheless like every part of the game, hm? ^^

 

Other ideas? Hrm. . . well how about more interesting solo villains like Scarlet and Joko in the future? That's not to say I didn't enjoy Zhaitan, Mordremoth, Balthazar, and now Kralkatorrik, it's just the more you put a villain front and center and personalize them against the player character (aka Joko taunting and mocking us, Balthazar brushing us aside and actually killing us, Scarlet. . . (um, well I didn't get to play Season 1, so. . .?)), then that's what'll make them stand out and stay memorable for a long time.

 

Also, bring back Season 1!

 

Alright I'm done now too. Take care and kitten! <3

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"Okami Amaterasu.9237" Thanks for your quick comment!! I never thought of a underwater WvW map. That would indeed need to have better underwater skills for sure to have the same feelings on classes as well as being balanced. Same thing with the underwater PvP map that was in the game ages ago.

 

Also I'm glad that you brought up villains in this game. All of them, except for maybe Zhaitan for me, were kind of brushed aside in the story after they got their reign-of-terror moment. Joko was especially sad because he was becoming one of my favorite villains and an actual conceptual character, then it all just vanished like that. For example the Mordremoth fight where people have complained that the fight was very underwhelming due to his small size. Things like that take you out of immersion in the story and ruin the overall experience. I also did not play season 1 and would love to have it back, but, I think that is very unlikely.

 

[Teratus.2859]

I never played black desert nor wanted to tbh.. but i'm not really feeling the Gw2 ship combat thing.

 

I've my own theories and ideas of where the story is going and it does involve the sea dragon and a certain highly requested continent south of elona which contains the perfect location for us to fight and kill it.. has Jade in the name if you wanted a hint :P

I could go into detail on what I think is coming but if I'm right it would probably spoil a lot for those who don't want to know and happen to read this..

I have no idea how to make one of those spoiler drop box things either so i'm trying not to post too much about it on the forums just in case I turn out to be right.

 

I'm certainly interested in the concept of underwater maps or mostly underwater maps and i've been itching to see that huge leviathan world boss event that was teased in the manifesto trailer but eventually cut from the game. :(

(Picture here if you want a reminder of it.) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Sea_monster.jpg

But I feel the devs would get a lot of backlash if they added one in anytime soon without first really fleshing out the underwater combat system.. more skills, weapons etc and also adding in an underwater mount which imo would be essential for getting around in any ocean map where the Y axis is far more important than the X axis is..

If the map goes down as far or further than it goes outward.. we're going to need something to help us dive down there or the forums will be flooded with angry people complaining about the wasted time swimming up and down lol

Just imagine a map the size of Verdant Brink and think how long it would take a player to swim from highest point in the sky at the top right corner of that map.. to the lowest point in the bottom left corner.. then take away their 25% movement speed and throw tons of mobs in the way with things like cripple, pulls and slow.

It would be infuriating to navigate such a thing without a mount to speed up the process and negate some of that CC and combat speed lock.

 

I think the problem you're really highlighting is that Gw2 does tend to cater to a more.. set your own goals kind of playstyle and for some players when you no longer have a goal in the game you feel like you've pretty much run out of things to do and no longer feel like playing for a while..

I've been there many times myself so I can totally relate.

I'm in the process of an active play period mostly thanks to some old friends who've returned to the game in recent months some new friends who are first time players and a new character and build that I am just loving the hell out of right now.

At some point I will hit that Gw2 fatigue again and go back to logging in purely for dailies or not at all for a few weeks but considering this game doesn't force a subfee on you (God bless you for that Anet) I'm literally not wasting anything nor missing out on anything by taking those breaks.

You could say that Anet encourages plays to take a break once in a while so when they do finally come back they feel refreshed and fall in love with the game all over again.

 

I definitely agree with your point about the next expansion though and I too feel like this next one really is going to be a make or break deal for Gw2.

People were disappointed with parts of HoT.. and same again for parts of PoF.

If the 3rd expansion once again leaves people dissatisfied due to not enough new maps, story being too short or lackluster, maps not having enough replayable content, not enough rewards or things to actively persue, masteries not living upto expectations or usefulness..

If it just fails to be that giant expansion style content drop that I think most long time Gw2 players are craving.. specially after making us wait for 2 living world seasons instead of just 1 which we've kinda grown accustomed too over the last 4 years.

I think it's very likely that we could see a reasonable number of people loose faith that Anet is capable of bringing that large traditional MMO expansion experience to Gw2.

And for some people I do think that could be enough to make them go looking for another MMO to replace Gw2 as their main.

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"Teratus.2859" Black Desert is one of those aquired taste kind of games. Hit or miss for most people. I used it as an example because it gave a bunch of people in Black Desert a way of income through sea monster hunting, a sense of adventure/exploring mass ocean, and had unique skills and gear you can give to your boat. To me it would balance out the hardcore and the casual player base perfectly, where everyone is happy with it. Plus they can sell the shit out of ship gem store items just like mounts I'm sure.

 

I also agree that any underwater map needs a mount to go with it, but, I would hope the map would be extensive and massive so the mount doesn't make it feel tiny or even regular size, which could be counter-intuitive.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"MultiShifting.4905" said:

> @"Okami Amaterasu.9237" Thanks for your quick comment!! I never thought of a underwater WvW map. That would indeed need to have better underwater skills for sure to have the same feelings on classes as well as being balanced. Same thing with the underwater PvP map that was in the game ages ago.

>

> Also I'm glad that you brought up villains in this game. All of them, except for maybe Zhaitan for me, were kind of brushed aside in the story after they got their reign-of-terror moment. Joko was especially sad because he was becoming one of my favorite villains and an actual conceptual character, then it all just vanished like that. For example the Mordremoth fight where people have complained that the fight was very underwhelming due to his small size. Things like that take you out of immersion in the story and ruin the overall experience. I also did not play season 1 and would love to have it back, but, I think that is very unlikely.

>

 

Don't really get the comment about the mordremoth fight. The only people who complain about it to my knowledge are people who never did dragon stand. Most people do story once or at most a few times. But Dragon Stand as an event, I've done far more than that, and Mordremoth was huge. Surely it makes more sense to have a huge dragon in an open world event with a hundred players than in your personal story with five guys. The battle in Dragon Stand and the one in your personal story happen at the same time.

[starlinvf.1358]

I wanna point out that the Devs don't particularly favor ad infinitum repeatable content, but a large majority of the player responds positively to it, despite simultaneously complaining about on-going additions of "bland farms". This is important, because it relates to another trend in Players thats been evolving ever since the concept of Character persistence has been a part of online gaming. Players like to see numbers go up, and wealth be amassed.... but its inherently a finite system trying to be pushed to infinite growth.

 

On the 1:1, this is obviously where the grind and farms from come from. But this is actually a knock on effect of another issue of how players now view "content" as a concept. Years ago, content used to be "played" and could be played as it was enjoyable. Today, "Content" is now defined as things to be consumed.... gear, unlocks, story missions, achievements, and the ever nebulous "something to work toward/goals". And once these things are obtained/accomplished, they're immediately devalued in the mind of the player, and the next object of obsession takes it place. This creates a burn rate that the grind tries to aggressively counter act, and has (ironically) become the aspect most widely recognized as being the make or break to the perceived value of content. But as players become increasingly impatient, the content injections had to become more frequent, and forced to last longer, as theres an upper limit to how fast content (and any supporting systems/mechanics) can be produced by any given Dev team. This has only become further exacerbated as more and more players put single focus into a given title, an increased tendency to binge play, and demand more attachment/value of their time investment. And since most MMO don't have natural break points (newer ones going as even as far as being by design), players can very easily burn out on the "gamer's high" with nothing to actively bring them down on a positive note.

 

While this doesn't directly address anything in the OP, it does work to explain the game's evolution and ever shifting focus. Most of these problems were on founded on the fact that the real end game was supposed to be WvW, and the PvE aspects of the game were there to provide distractions and breaks during off hours and between tournament seasons. But since PvP and WvW fell through, and the game attracted an unexpectedly massive Casual-PvE player base, Anet had to migrate and adapt the game's design, monotization strategy and economy to better service them. And thats really disappointing, because WvW as concept is one of the better frameworks for long term interest (due to its natural volatility); but so many players are so deathly afraid of any PvP interaction, thats its become impossible to not draw psychological and social parallels of modern culture. And again, with greater demand for games that can become a singular focus for players, each game is forced to become "the everything, but better" to stay relevant and profitable. Its forcing shorter turn around times for content releases, which impacts the quality substantially.

 

 

Now on the subject of raids, I actually take offense to the idea that any raid encounter is a failure just because it was beaten on the first day. When the game is built on a mechanically finite system, you basically have 2 major limitations in how an encounter can be made. The first is common systems, which in our case is the usual DPS gating. The second is level specific mechanics. In practice, both of these run in substitution to each other; so a lot of designers will force players to switch off between them in order to break their momentum. If you allow both to be used at the same time, any aspect that progresses the fight automatically becomes a compounded effect that has to be counteracted by the addition of yet another element that runs against it. Thats partly why most bosses have invul and burn phases, because our combat system allows for insane DPS ramping if the players aren't interrupted.

 

Which brings me to my point...... difficulty in raids are almost always artificial and arbitrary, because players have a talent for subverting any natural system to gain an advantage. To make a raid thats difficulty to beat by players who dedicate all their attention to it, you literally have to break all of your game's own rules, to destroy the learned advantage in the natural mechanics. But this is only a temporary measure, because players will eventually learn the new system, and exploit it until they succeed.

 

The only solution to this is to NOT make a static solution to encounter, and randomize major aspects of it to shift the focus on reaction and rapid reorganization, and prevent the ability for rout memorization (which is where most raid optimizations are coming from) to overtake the high ends. But hardcore raiders don't like that, because most of their effort is invested in the optimization process. So the only option left for a "difficult raid" is to cheese the crap out of it, so the players are incapable of getting a footing. That even includes DPS metrics, to keep the HP pool larger then what players could realistically beat before the rage/wipe timer kicks in. The Rage timer itself was created with that purpose in mind... otherwise players could just slow DPS their way to victory.

 

Most people would think going bigger would solve that problem, but its actually the opposite. The whole point of moving to a 10 man raid was to allow more wiggle room in party comp for dedicated supports. But since Chrono effectively breaks that whole concept, a 5 man raid would actually be something that could be made harder. But in doing so, it makes party comps even more dependent on role compression; and few classes can effectively do that right now.

 

 

Now if anything, I blame the 3 extremes of players for making everything too disjointed for everyone. Ultra casuals who can't handle a minimum of challenge, the Hardcore raiders who give no flips about anything else, and the Pro PvP players who, like Raiders, are the litmus test for class balance, yet have every incentive to steer feed back toward easily exploitable builds, and the dismantling of things that would oppose them. While some divergence is good, we're heading in a direction where too much divergence exists, and a situation where skill splitting will become the solution to the problem it invented.

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"Vayne.8563" I fully understand that the Dragon Stand fight was very fun and what I was looking for in a boss fight. Although I was talking about LS fights and how lackluster they are. I wish the DS meta fight was the story's ending, if I was alone and with the pact fully running down the lane I chose, it would be magic! But we got the other fight, which people did complain about his wonky model and how it's underwhelming for an Elder Dragon fight. After the HoT living story, you get left with that, not the glorious, "WE GOT EM". I get they want to save the massive fights for open world, but it would be more impactful to most people if it was left as a one and done fight, not to fight the Mouth over and over again, which kind of devalues it the more you run DS. I've also run DS plenty of times for Shooshadoo. They are so easy in the living world that it seems we have no consequences at all and it really takes you out of the story. People have been mentioning to Anet about a CM of story missions, which I'm not really a fan of that.

Edit: (spelling)

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"starlinvf.1358" I was really excited to see the changes to WvW released back in February if I'm not mistaken about the date. It really hyped me up on getting back into WvW, but I haven't heard anything of it so we'll just have to wait.

 

On the raids issue, it's not making the game harder per say, just enough where even hardcore players are given a challenge. When Wing 6 gets beaten in the first hours, the hardcore raiders go back into farm mode and strive for more content after a month or so. It's the repeatable easy content I was talking about. If you get a decent group, it's smooth sailing. We need content that even with a good group they can have trouble, not blow through it. I used to never beat Matthias/Sloth, but once I knew the mechanics, and were paired with people that also knew them, the content becomes stale. It's just like diminishing marginal utility in economics, once you clear first, the next one won't feel so sweet.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @"MultiShifting.4905" said:

> On the raids issue, it's not making the game harder per say, just enough where even hardcore players are given a challenge. When Wing 6 gets beaten in the first hours, the hardcore raiders go back into farm mode and strive for more content after a month or so. It's the repeatable easy content I was talking about. If you get a decent group, it's smooth sailing. We need content that even with a good group they can have trouble, not blow through it. I used to never beat Matthias/Sloth, but once I knew the mechanics, and were paired with people that also knew them, the content becomes stale. It's just like diminishing marginal utility in economics, once you clear first, the next one won't feel so sweet.

 

There's a big flaw in scripted content. The content has to be numerically doable. If it isn't, the best players will say that the content is over-tuned. That leaves execution as the success/failure variable. Once the script is learned, goodbye challenge.

 

That's always going to be the case in GW2, heck in any MMO. Even if the developer makes content which has zero tolerance for anything other than split-second implementation of the necessary tactics, the best players will get it, then it's on farm for rewards. The best that can happen for them is that it takes a bit longer to get the sequence down. Once someone figures it out -- and with a large player-base, that won't take that long -- the secret is out. Again, goodbye challenge.

 

Even PvP challenge can be lessened through repetition. It's just that you don't know the opposing player's "script" until you see the profession, weapon choice, and/or the fight begins. There is certainly more room for uncertainty in PvP, due to varying skill levels in opponents. Meanwhile, the uncertainty in any PvE encounter is gone once success is repeatable.

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"IndigoSundown.5419" Well said.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"MultiShifting.4905" said:

> @"Vayne.8563" I fully understand that the Dragon Stand fight was very fun and what I was looking for in a boss fight. Although I was talking about LS fights and how lackluster they are. I wish the DS meta fight was the story's ending, if I was alone and with the pact fully running down the lane I chose, it would be magic! But we got the other fight, which people did complain about his wonky model and how it's underwhelming for an Elder Dragon fight. After the HoT living story, you get left with that, not the glorious, "WE GOT EM". I get they want to save the massive fights for open world, but it would be more impactful to most people if it was left as a one and done fight, not to fight the Mouth over and over again, which kind of devalues it the more you run DS. I've also run DS plenty of times for Shooshadoo. They are so easy in the living world that it seems we have no consequences at all and it really takes you out of the story. People have been mentioning to Anet about a CM of story missions, which I'm not really a fan of that.

> Edit: (spelling)

 

I'd avoid talking about most people, because none of us know what most people would like. I know I'd prefer a meta event to instanced story content. I can't say what most people would be in favor of.

[acelara orion.4210]

the game is dead as soon as ASHES OF CREATION comes in the play__we all know that, sorry but truth. How can i be sure? alpha tester here and been playing gw 2 for 2 years now. people are hungry for new mmo. just see how people jump into bless though deep down inside people knew it would be bad. Now if ashes of creation doesnt mess up big time that would be the next themepark mmo__ You would say im saying this because i hate the game but no__last 2 years played minimum 4 hours daily done with raids and fractals so yes i love the game but its stale right now. I dont enjoy living story update as much as others do but im into in regular contents. Sorry

[mauried.5608]

Ive never even heard of Ashes of Creation so why that will have an affect on GW2 is beyond me .

Im a casual player and I play for maybe 2 hours a week so I dont get burned out with GW2 content, and Ive been playing since the game was released and still havnt done a lot of it .

If you play any MMO every day you will get burned out by it .

 

[Randulf.7614]

> @"mauried.5608" said:

> Ive never even heard of Ashes of Creation so why that will have an affect on GW2 is beyond me .

> Im a casual player and I play for maybe 2 hours a week so I dont get burned out with GW2 content, and Ive been playing since the game was released and still havnt done a lot of it .

> If you play any MMO every day you will get burned out by it .

>

 

It wont have any noticeable effect on it. Just like ESO and Black Desert didn't kill Gw2 like so many "experts" predicted and they are much bigger than this Ashes game.

 

I don't understand a lot of these comments about blitzing through an episode fully in day or two. I've got plenty still to do in the new map. If you string together an entire season and put it out as one content dump, would it really last any longer than an expansion? No it wouldn't. And what sort of content that doesn't require either even greater grinding or content so challenging it puts players off, can they add to an mmo that needs to appeal to thousands of different play styles and points of view?

 

I don't agree with a lot of the direction this game goes in, but it is not being superceded by any upcoming mmo. It is not doing anything in pve that is causing a detrimental impact to the game - quite the opposite on the basis of some evidence. I don't think the next expansion is make or break. I think PoF was make or break and for any faults it might have had on the replay front, it was extremely well received and helped grow and stabilise the game.

 

As for Bubbles, well yes I;d like more underwater stuff, ships and so forth, but I'm not seeing it on the horizon.

[Obtena.7952]

> @"acelara orion.4210" said:

> the game is dead as soon as ASHES OF CREATION comes in the play__we all know that, sorry but truth. How can i be sure? alpha tester here and been playing gw 2 for 2 years now. people are hungry for new mmo. just see how people jump into bless though deep down inside people knew it would be bad. Now if ashes of creation doesnt mess up big time that would be the next themepark mmo__ You would say im saying this because i hate the game but no__last 2 years played minimum 4 hours daily done with raids and fractals so yes i love the game but its stale right now. I dont enjoy living story update as much as others do but im into in regular contents. Sorry

 

Don't be sorry ... I don't think people share your sentiment; just because you overplayed GW2 doesn't mean it's sunk by the latest flash in the pan MMO. GW2 isn't going anywhere anytime soon if it remains to be the only game that delivers content in its unique way. That's why it's successful. I mean, we have people doing organized META in all HoT maps ... STILL ... and people go because they chance of failure is really low. People still doing world bosses! Seriously, that's a testament to the longevity we can expect in the years to come.

 

Sure, some people will leave and will prefer other new games but most people play this game because of how it works. I can say that if another game came out with a more modern theme that had the same or many of the same mechanics GW2 ... I would pick it up. That's yet to happen and I doubt it will. The MMO scene hasn't seen very many game releases that have the backing and support this game has.

 

To be fair, this game is approaching it's 'mid-life', so it's not hard to narrow down the eventual phase of maintenance that most MMO's get in their end of age. I'm still giving this game at least another expansion and a couple LS episodes before we get close to that in the worst case.

[Torolan.5816]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> While this doesn't directly address anything in the OP, it does work to explain the game's evolution and ever shifting focus. Most of these problems were on founded on the fact that the real end game was supposed to be WvW, and the PvE aspects of the game were there to provide distractions and breaks during off hours and between tournament seasons. But since PvP and WvW fell through, and the game attracted an unexpectedly massive Casual-PvE player base, Anet had to migrate and adapt the game's design, monotization strategy and economy to better service them. And thats really disappointing, because WvW as concept is one of the better frameworks for long term interest (due to its natural volatility); but so many players are so deathly afraid of any PvP interaction, thats its become impossible to not draw psychological and social parallels of modern culture. And again, with greater demand for games that can become a singular focus for players, each game is forced to become "the everything, but better" to stay relevant and profitable. Its forcing shorter turn around times for content releases, which impacts the quality substantially.

> Now on the subject of raids, I actually take offense to the idea that any raid encounter is a failure just because it was beaten on the first day. When the game is built on a mechanically finite system, you basically have 2 major limitations in how an encounter can be made. The first is common systems, which in our case is the usual DPS gating. The second is level specific mechanics. In practice, both of these run in substitution to each other; so a lot of designers will force players to switch off between them in order to break their momentum. If you allow both to be used at the same time, any aspect that progresses the fight automatically becomes a compounded effect that has to be counteracted by the addition of yet another element that runs against it. Thats partly why most bosses have invul and burn phases, because our combat system allows for insane DPS ramping if the players aren't interrupted.

>

> The only solution to this is to NOT make a static solution to encounter, and randomize major aspects of it to shift the focus on reaction and rapid reorganization, and prevent the ability for rout memorization (which is where most raid optimizations are coming from) to overtake the high ends. But hardcore raiders don't like that, because most of their effort is invested in the optimization process. So the only option left for a "difficult raid" is to cheese the crap out of it, so the players are incapable of getting a footing. That even includes DPS metrics, to keep the HP pool larger then what players could realistically beat before the rage/wipe timer kicks in. The Rage timer itself was created with that purpose in mind... otherwise players could just slow DPS their way to victory.

>

> Now if anything, I blame the 3 extremes of players for making everything too disjointed for everyone. Ultra casuals who can't handle a minimum of challenge, the Hardcore raiders who give no flips about anything else, and the Pro PvP players who, like Raiders, are the litmus test for class balance, yet have every incentive to steer feed back toward easily exploitable builds, and the dismantling of things that would oppose them. While some divergence is good, we're heading in a direction where too much divergence exists, and a situation where skill splitting will become the solution to the problem it invented.

 

As much as I would love wvw to be the endgame of GW2, how can it be the endgame if the maps are so quickly filled? Even on a lower level server, waiting queues were rather common in the old days at prime time at least. PvP was always a steaming pile of bad behavior and even more stale than the grindiest farm, so I guess it is very much nostalgia from GW1 that makes this mode at least a little bit desirable.

 

The random raid idea is actually great on paper. On the other hand I see the people who feel forced to do them coming out of the woodworks quickly like with daily AP, and the people that would manage to do raids would drop quickly because preparation is not the same as adaption on the fly.

 

Elitism hurts this game, it hurts any game. Not only because it is actually uncalled for because it is just a game, but it also drives people away who ask simple questions in map chat and bitter veterans redirect them to youtube immediately. Yes of course you can do that. But then please don´t ask yourself why your gaming mode gets emptier and emptier. Don´t get me wrong, I love the flame wars in wvw in map chat. But leave the newbies and serious questioners out of it.

[unbornchikken.5104]

I believe they should focus on PvP in the next update along with the regular content update. PvP is a kind of endgame, and it is very fun in GW2, especially compared to other MMO games. You should give it a try. It ofcouse have its problems though, but not that serious bore maker ones, that you mentioned regards PvE. They should add new game modes. They should revisit ranking system for rewarding personal performance way much more than group performance. And balance would be way much better if they drop the idea of rooting weapon skills.

[MultiShifting.4905]

@"unbornchikken.5104" I’ve hit high gold/low plat most seasons, so I am very familiar with pvp haha. Also gets boring and tilting after a while season after season.

Edit- I think what they need to do is to come out with the WvW update soon or do something to the LS to make it worth while. But I’m also fine with just playing the game every story drop, although the writing to me this season has been mediocre.

[MultiShifting.4905]

And Ashes of Creation will not kill GW2... This game has too much of a loyal fan base and it’s possibly one of the few mmos that supports casual and (semi)hardcore gameplay, excluding ESO. Gw2 is just like WoW and that it’ll always have it’s fans, and after every update/expansion, they’ll be there. Just like my dilemma right now. If the story was utter garbage, I’m still there on every release date.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

> @"acelara orion.4210" said:

> the game is dead as soon as ASHES OF CREATION comes in the play__we all know that, sorry but truth. How can i be sure? alpha tester here and been playing gw 2 for 2 years now.

 

that's cute.

 

[Gehenna.3625]

> @"mauried.5608" said:

> Ive never even heard of Ashes of Creation so why that will have an affect on GW2 is beyond me .

Probably because it's an upcoming fantasy MMO that a lot of other people have heard about. So it could affect GW2 if people move their game time there and don't come back. Whether or not it will have that effect and whether or not that's a lasting effect is another matter however.

 

 

[Zaklex.6308]

GW2 fits into the 10's of millions of players that play mobile games schedules...that is how content is designed and how the game is tilted...but those same casual players that gorge themselves on mobile games can also gorge themselves on GW2 and have no problems with it(they won't get bored), they also tend to spend a lot of money on their games. Games are as fun as you make them out to be, personally, I love the bounties and can do them every single day, because I can repeat them when available, the HoT metas...eh, did em a few times, but I prefer huge open maps(which is why I enjoy open world single player games so much).

[Urud.4925]

I have a quite different point of view about the achievements and the story, but your idea about abandoning the mounts in favor of ships, for the next expansion... I very like it!

I didn't play Black Desert, but I played Uncharted Waters Online, and it was an awesome game (apart from the insane grinding). Since you cannot force players to use gliders if they only bought PoF, it makes sense to don't force players to use mounts if they want to buy only the 3rd expansion. Introducing the ships could compensate the lack of skins for mounts with... skins for our ships. Omg.

 

But I'd leave the ship vs ship to a new map for WvW, as someone said above. In open PvE I don't like the idea to fight other players and eventually lose my boat. They could give us small ships for personal usage/navigation and.. maybe being able to board huge vessels (where ppl have different tasks, cannons/helm, etc) for some meta against giant marine bosses! That would be some new gameplay indeed.

+1

 

EDIT: typos

[Rasimir.6239]

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> > @"mauried.5608" said:

> > Ive never even heard of Ashes of Creation so why that will have an affect on GW2 is beyond me .

> Probably because it's an upcoming fantasy MMO that a lot of other people have heard about. So it could affect GW2 if people move their game time there and don't come back. Whether or not it will have that effect and whether or not that's a lasting effect is another matter however.

>

There's always people moving on to other games, but a subscription MMO with integrated pvp and a ton of game concepts that hint at requiring considerable gametime to get anywhere (aka grind) is about as far from the kind of gameplay people choose GW2 for as you can possibly get. You might as well suggest that Minecraft will kill GW2 because people move their gametime there (which actually is currently the case in my immediate group of in-game friends, but I doubt it's a global phenomenom ;) ).