Many of us kind of take a lot of things in GW2 for granted.

[Rogue.8235]

Sheer amount of diverse audio cues/feedback makes it the only playable MMO for me. I know what's going on. The open world is designed with exploration in mind, so I can learn how to navigate and memorize maps at my own pace without any hindrance. The exception is HoT maps, those things are a nightmare if you're blind. Still, I am learning that at my own, very slow but leisurely pace. This sis something most other MMO's don't do as the maps are designed to be rushed through for whatever shiny is at the end of the stick. Shared loot and experience from enemies as well as shared nodes are some of the things I'm referring to that other games don't ahve.

 

Open world events also serve as landmarks for me. There is clear dialogue involved and they are an additional layer to help me get my bearings.

[Obtena.7952]

When people start simply playing the game for its content and what it is instead of adding layers of no-impact garbage like 'no dev communication' as factors to their playing decisions, the game indeed is quite good and lots of high value it offers. I think Anet strayed a bit for a while trying to retain fringe players ... let's hope they get back on track.

 

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

Also your dodge roll protects you completely for the entire duration of the animation.

 

You'd be _amazed_ how many games screw that one up.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"AgentMoore.9453" said:

> The last thread I started to try and praise ArenaNet for its communication increase was ironically shut down the same day by devs claiming it wasn't necessary because they'd already made a blog post about it - a blog post where users cannot start a discussion.

If this is the most recent blog post regarding communication, your point isn't entirely correct. There are two, distinct threads with a lot of dev interaction based on that blog post, but those discussions are in the PvP and WvW forums where the topic was more centered.

 

 

[SoulGuardian.6203]

> @"hanabal lecter.2495" said:

> I think most people just get irritated because there is a lot of wasted potential in gw2, it's a good game but it can easily do better if there was better communication between the players and the devs from the start.

 

Precisely this, right here.

[AgentMoore.9453]

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> your point isn't entirely correct. There are two, distinct threads with a lot of dev interaction based on that blog post, but those discussions are in the PvP and WvW forums where the topic was more centered.

 

Not really. Those threads were for talking about PvP and WvW, not company-wide communication or player reaction. If they were about the same thing, they wouldn't have been in two different subforums, and no such topic existed at all in general.

 

 

[Thornwolf.9721]

No and when I say no, I mean yes they do some things right but they do SOOO much wrong that one outweighs the other. A prime example is from the inception of this game it was NEVER meant to be a main game for anyone. It was designed to be a side game; One where it takes no amount of time if you truly want to acheive anything where other games both single-player and multi-player have long term goals to strive toward to keep the player engage. All we really have is legendary Items which are in their QoL being undermined and made obsolete with build templates.

 

1. The content gap for PvP and WvW is inexcusable considering THAT WAS THE ORIGINAL ENDGAME.

2. The forced raids when the game was never meant to have them to begin with baffles me, to top that off with strikes they are doubling down without realizing people who didn't do raids before Certainly won't do them now.

3. The focus on living world over major patches for glaring issues in the other portions of the games, and the lack of an expansion really doesn't help perception.

4. The lack of focus up until now tells me they were done with Gw2 and were moving on, only to now be forced into focusing on Gw2 once more.

5. The game itself doesn't know what it wants to be, it tries to hard to cover so many different genres and really doesn't master any of them. Classes feel wonky and the meta is stale, this won't change.

6. My previous point about the meta stems from no major changes coming to shake it up, and the fact we probably won't be seeing any more elite specs in this games life-time since I doubt highly they are even being worked on. Without new ways to play our classes we will grow bored just like in living world season 1 -2 which is where I quit for a small amount of time because of burn out and boredom. I only came back due to HoT and have stayed because the content has been decent and the E-specs gives me something to look forward too, outside of the norn focus and the region we are going to I have nothing else to care about.

7. As a player I feel like I have a bunch of goals that are not particularly hard, but require grinding and a lot of the grinding is not fun or engaging so my willpower to do it comes and goes.

8. WvW is in a horrid state right now

9. PvP more so. Even PvE feels sparce right now and it feels like everyone is playing other games waiting for the next content update, It doesn't help that we are in a position where we as a community can't agree on anything.

10. There is TONS of competition coming forward, Camelot unchained is in beta now. Archeage unchained launched and is smashing it as their discord has like 50,000 some odd people in it and growing. We have potentially another WoW expansion coming and both Final fantasy 13 and ESO are pumping out content, We have Ashes of Creation and a ton more MMO-Rpgs coming out between 2020 and 2022 and this will do nothing but dampen and harm Guild wars 2 and A-net. Mainly because their cadence for content releases is so sparce and glaring issues in the game have been left to fester for so long. So its not a matter of if, but of when at the current pace they are going that the well dries up and people move on.

 

 

Don't get it twisted I love this game and this company, but I have to be realistic the way they are doing things now just doesn't cut it anymore and people are tired of waiting and tired of trying to give feedback. We have tried so hard to get them to listen about really just anything and they even let the backdoor sit WIDE open for hacks which have become a huge issue of late. It truly feels like Warhammer online all over again, a great game with good dev's but the time it takes them to pump out content + Fix bugs and issues is just too long. Plus we have two game modes who have had NOTHING added outside of maybe a mount and one beta map for like two years, we need more. Hell guilds are meaningless and serve no purpose anymore outside of just being a colab of people, Its not like it holds any weight anymore so like most things in the game it seems completely pointless to spend the time making and maintaining one. I want this game to succeed but something needs to change, in order for them to survive the coming onslaught from their competition.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Thornwolf.9721" said:

> No and when I say no, I mean yes they do some things right but they do SOOO much wrong that one outweighs the other. A prime example is from the inception of this game it was NEVER meant to be a main game for anyone. It was designed to be a side game; One where it takes no amount of time if you truly want to acheive anything where other games both single-player and multi-player have long term goals to strive toward to keep the player engage. All we really have is legendary Items which are in their QoL being undermined and made obsolete with build templates.

>

>

> Don't get it twisted I love this game and this company, but I have to be realistic the way they are doing things now just doesn't cut it anymore and people are tired of waiting and tired of trying to give feedback. We have tried so hard to get them to listen about really just anything and they even let the backdoor sit WIDE open for hacks which have become a huge issue of late. It truly feels like Warhammer online all over again, a great game with good dev's but the time it takes them to pump out content + Fix bugs and issues is just too long. Plus we have two game modes who have had NOTHING added outside of maybe a mount and one beta map for like two years, we need more. Hell guilds are meaningless and serve no purpose anymore outside of just being a colab of people, Its not like it holds any weight anymore so like most things in the game it seems completely pointless to spend the time making and maintaining one. I want this game to succeed but something needs to change, in order for them to survive the coming onslaught from their competition.

 

Being good at pick up and drop does not mean its designed to a side game...... No game outside of a mobile games intentionally work to be side games. I can see where you're coming from... but you gotta admit that view point is incredibly jaded on older video game paradigms (like mutual exclusion, endless progression, and our own meme of "Purity of Purpose) that ended up being fallacies.

 

You make a lot of good points...... so don't fall into the trap of thinking the solution are the trappings of other games.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"AgentMoore.9453" said:

> > @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > your point isn't entirely correct. There are two, distinct threads with a lot of dev interaction based on that blog post, but those discussions are in the PvP and WvW forums where the topic was more centered.

>

> Not really. Those threads were for talking about PvP and WvW, not company-wide communication or player reaction. If they were about the same thing, they wouldn't have been in two different subforums, and no such topic existed at all in general.

>

>

 

Well, I suppose the blog post could be taken any number of ways. To me, it seemed that it was announcing the changes to the competitive modes' teams while keeping PvE as it was.

[Naxos.2503]

I'm able to recognize when a game is crafted with love, and this is one. That's how I generally sell it to my friends for them to try. It's rare to find a game that is so... whole. There is no part of it that feels out of place, including things that are meant to feel out place, like the Fractals and WvW/PvP, are done seamlessly enough that it doesn't disturb the universe of the game, similarly, there arent nearly as many pop up prompts. Immersion Breaking is minimal, which is rare. The combat is snappy, and meaty, which is equally rare to get right. This is crucially one of the more unique MMos on the market.

 

That said, I believe it's important to point out questionable decisions when they are made, for two reasons : us and them. A lot of us do make our voices heard when the game take a bad turn from our player's viewpoint, but there are also some who understand the long term ramifications of decisions, and point out the consequences to the devs out of truly well intentioned fear for the future of the game and the company who did produce this unique place. Something that people who Create the game understand very well I'm sure, but that people who Manage, do not, or do not care for.

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"hanabal lecter.2495" said:

> I think most people just get irritated because there is a lot of wasted potential in gw2, it's a good game but it can easily do better

 

Definitely with you on the wasted potential part. 7 years in, and I still have my fingers crossed.

There's just so many.. fundamental things at this point that are dragging it down. Weirdo itemization that leads to skewed values in rewards and inconsistent crafting/recipes/acquisition. Stun-locking (and condition spam for WvW) still not addressed. Overtuned enemies with few counters. Loot drops that prey on scarcity for "value". Achievements that are often either mindless activity to pad game time or disrespectful of good design for challenge (fail faster, yo). The obnoxious time-gating of sought-after events...

 

But, I still hold GW2 as an example of top notch QoL and a good balance between free-flowing gameplay without mouse-destroying "combo" systems.

[Thornwolf.9721]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > @"Thornwolf.9721" said:

> > No and when I say no, I mean yes they do some things right but they do SOOO much wrong that one outweighs the other. A prime example is from the inception of this game it was NEVER meant to be a main game for anyone. It was designed to be a side game; One where it takes no amount of time if you truly want to acheive anything where other games both single-player and multi-player have long term goals to strive toward to keep the player engage. All we really have is legendary Items which are in their QoL being undermined and made obsolete with build templates.

> >

> >

> > Don't get it twisted I love this game and this company, but I have to be realistic the way they are doing things now just doesn't cut it anymore and people are tired of waiting and tired of trying to give feedback. We have tried so hard to get them to listen about really just anything and they even let the backdoor sit WIDE open for hacks which have become a huge issue of late. It truly feels like Warhammer online all over again, a great game with good dev's but the time it takes them to pump out content + Fix bugs and issues is just too long. Plus we have two game modes who have had NOTHING added outside of maybe a mount and one beta map for like two years, we need more. Hell guilds are meaningless and serve no purpose anymore outside of just being a colab of people, Its not like it holds any weight anymore so like most things in the game it seems completely pointless to spend the time making and maintaining one. I want this game to succeed but something needs to change, in order for them to survive the coming onslaught from their competition.

>

> Being good at pick up and drop does not mean its designed to a side game...... No game outside of a mobile games intentionally work to be side games. I can see where you're coming from... but you gotta admit that view point is incredibly jaded on older video game paradigms (like mutual exclusion, endless progression, and our own meme of "Purity of Purpose) that ended up being fallacies.

>

> You make a lot of good points...... so don't fall into the trap of thinking the solution are the trappings of other games.

 

I didn't necessarily use the right word, I apologize because I was tired after having worked a double. How I should of explained it is that the basic foundations of guild wars 2 was to NOT be like mmo-rpgs and be something that is more akin to a laid back experience. This has become a problem because it has disjointed and split the player-base which is why we have like 20k difference or whatever it is between hardcore players and casuals in their dps. The game doesn't teach you anything and we have little in the way of understanding mechanics unless you play the game and pay attention (Lets be honest most gamers are lazy, and don't pay attention. It has to be spoon fed to them otherwise they won't acknowledge or pay attention to it.)

 

HoT was amazing and probably the best curve in difficulty because it actively challenged you but people hated it, because for years the game had been so easy to burn through and play they never once had to deal with challenges (Unless you had been doing fractals.) PoF set to be more like Core in its difficulty and so nothing of weight was added to base PoF zones because how could they justify rewarding anything? The maps were simple. If you go from one expansion to the next they feel like two totally different games, add core and it feels like three different games. To pair that with PvP and WvW being neglected it feels like the game has never had concise and consistent direction into what it wants to be, what it should be. This paired with lack of communication (Up until recently) Slow content patches, Issues with crashes and even memory dumps and more so the doubling down on the gemstore has pushed a lot of people away.

 

The Game "Feels" like a side game because of the way it was designed, The game could use a realm reborn treatment and have all of the current events that have happened be flushed out in vanilla zones. (Lake dorrics dam exploding and queensdale being flooded, stuff like that.) Bring in better tutorials and bring all the older zones up to snuff, bring in wvw and pvp to be more in line with the rest of the game in both quality and necessity as end-game modes. More cadence for content releases and a stronger basis of communication of intent and what will or could be. (we are well on our way now.)

[starlinvf.1358]

At this point its too late, because they've been in this spiral of accretion for way too long, and theres simply way too much content to try and backport. Before the mass lay offs there was enough hope going forward that course corrections were still possible, and enough staff to clean up future mechanics. But never once was there any assumption that old content could be fixed.....

 

Now that layoffs happened, and the direction shown by class balance teams is not at all promising, I'm now firmly in the camp that a clean slate is realistically our best possible scenario for more long term sustainability. Everything from HOT onward is built on experimentation, but haven't been properly cleaned up. Thats actually a HUGE problem if you look at story content as something new players are expecting to go through in order to get caught up. Something even WoW does it best to help speed up or bypass due to supersession, given its obsession with locking players into an endgame loop.

 

The stuff you're also mentioning about advancing the time line has been shot down/lamented by gamers on 3 different occasions in 3 different games, largely for the same reasons. Most people didn't care about Realm Reborn, because the game prior was just such a mess that restarting with a new timeline wasn't a loss.

 

LS1 and LS2 changed Tyria forever.... and new players got mad because they had no idea whats going on, and all the epic happenings of LS1 are locked off to them forever. Old LA still being part of the personal story exists entirely of necessity, as the system its built on is a black box. In fact, they can't even rectify a lot of Core Tyria's existing events; they can only disable whole sale, or insert new conditional variables, but have to maintain or point to all existing ones to avoid breakage. Grenth's Temple in Cursed Shore is the most dramatic change to an existing event since launch- and really all they did was change the Boss's skill profile (to make it easier to fight), repointed a failure condition in one event to the failure condition of another (to force the NPC to run away), and inserted in a break timer so it wouldn't kick off again immediately.

 

Then theres WoW players still kind of pissed off about Cataclysm, as all previous areas and quests are now references to pre-cataclysm content that no longer exists. New players are confused because they don't know whats being referenced, and older players have no opportunities to revisit it if they wanted to.

 

Rappelz was an old Korean game I used to play that used to do stuff like that a couple times per year, and later moved toward adding everything new as part of new maps and quest lines- since map changes started actively interfering with quest lines used for leveling. Being a Korean game with a crap ton of leveling grinding, you can see why they wanted to stop having to reorganize them every 6 months or so.

 

With FOMO being such a huge part of the current gaming culture, its compounding the already existing problem of how games age and burn out. MMOs have it the worst, since resetting the game back to zero is a non-option. At least single player games are structured in a way that you can fix new play throughs, and its finite format makes it tolerable or even desirable. But another thing to remember is that MMOs never had a precedent for long term content or story plans until WoW started doing rapid expansions in its early life. Up until then, most MMOs just adapted and added as needed, and this whole idea of a 10 year life cycle was not even a thing. No game that pitched a 10 year life cycle (like was popular at the turn of the decade) came even close to the stability that 10 year plan implied. Many were brought to the edge of failure within 1-2 years (with the reasons often being specific to each game), and I haven't even cared enough to see if many of them are even around anymore.

 

So back to GW2..... we're faced with a problem of new content struggling to find a proper foot hold, and much of the old content now being an active detriment to the new player experience. Veteran players took a solid beating over the years with how HOT changed a lot of the game's underlying approach to game play and content, but we only had to deal with it in small chunks. New players are getting whip lash at every content block, because they're all built on different paradigms. Many of which had to be rectified later on in a different content block, or through a succeeding paradigm. Mounts and Gliding also have had a major impact in how we handle old content, and we've unofficially made it the defacto "Catch up" mechanic for the game.

 

The glut of old content is starting to become dead weight. But we can't cull it, because players have an unhealthy obsession with content that drives their view of game value, as much as it corrupts it. Just looking at the whole net result of unique skin rewards and AP being tied to collections, made even more intense with the Legendary trinket collections. Plus at 7 years in, NOW would be the time to start laying the ground work for a new game if that 10 year life span is to be held to. Taking everything learned over all this time, and creating a better framework to do all the things this game and this engine struggled with.

[Thornwolf.9721]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> At this point its too late, because they've been in this spiral of accretion for way too long, and theres simply way too much content to try and backport. Before the mass lay offs there was enough hope going forward that course corrections were still possible, and enough staff to clean up future mechanics. But never once was there any assumption that old content could be fixed.....

>

> Now that layoffs happened, and the direction shown by class balance teams is not at all promising, I'm now firmly in the camp that a clean slate is realistically our best possible scenario for more long term sustainability. Everything from HOT onward is built on experimentation, but haven't been properly cleaned up. Thats actually a HUGE problem if you look at story content as something new players are expecting to go through in order to get caught up. Something even WoW does it best to help speed up or bypass due to supersession, given its obsession with locking players into an endgame loop.

>

> The stuff you're also mentioning about advancing the time line has been shot down/lamented by gamers on 3 different occasions in 3 different games, largely for the same reasons. Most people didn't care about Realm Reborn, because the game prior was just such a mess that restarting with a new timeline wasn't a loss.

>

> LS1 and LS2 changed Tyria forever.... and new players got mad because they had no idea whats going on, and all the epic happenings of LS1 are locked off to them forever. Old LA still being part of the personal story exists entirely of necessity, as the system its built on is a black box. In fact, they can't even rectify a lot of Core Tyria's existing events; they can only disable whole sale, or insert new conditional variables, but have to maintain or point to all existing ones to avoid breakage. Grenth's Temple in Cursed Shore is the most dramatic change to an existing event since launch- and really all they did was change the Boss's skill profile (to make it easier to fight), repointed a failure condition in one event to the failure condition of another (to force the NPC to run away), and inserted in a break timer so it wouldn't kick off again immediately.

>

> Then theres WoW players still kind of pissed off about Cataclysm, as all previous areas and quests are now references to pre-cataclysm content that no longer exists. New players are confused because they don't know whats being referenced, and older players have no opportunities to revisit it if they wanted to.

>

> Rappelz was an old Korean game I used to play that used to do stuff like that a couple times per year, and later moved toward adding everything new as part of new maps and quest lines- since map changes started actively interfering with quest lines used for leveling. Being a Korean game with a kitten ton of leveling grinding, you can see why they wanted to stop having to reorganize them every 6 months or so.

>

> With FOMO being such a huge part of the current gaming culture, its compounding the already existing problem of how games age and burn out. MMOs have it the worst, since resetting the game back to zero is a non-option. At least single player games are structured in a way that you can fix new play throughs, and its finite format makes it tolerable or even desirable. But another thing to remember is that MMOs never had a precedent for long term content or story plans until WoW started doing rapid expansions in its early life. Up until then, most MMOs just adapted and added as needed, and this whole idea of a 10 year life cycle was not even a thing. No game that pitched a 10 year life cycle (like was popular at the turn of the decade) came even close to the stability that 10 year plan implied. Many were brought to the edge of failure within 1-2 years (with the reasons often being specific to each game), and I haven't even cared enough to see if many of them are even around anymore.

>

> So back to GW2..... we're faced with a problem of new content struggling to find a proper foot hold, and much of the old content now being an active detriment to the new player experience. Veteran players took a solid beating over the years with how HOT changed a lot of the game's underlying approach to game play and content, but we only had to deal with it in small chunks. New players are getting whip lash at every content block, because they're all built on different paradigms. Many of which had to be rectified later on in a different content block, or through a succeeding paradigm. Mounts and Gliding also have had a major impact in how we handle old content, and we've unofficially made it the defacto "Catch up" mechanic for the game.

>

> The glut of old content is starting to become dead weight. But we can't cull it, because players have an unhealthy obsession with content that drives their view of game value, as much as it corrupts it. Just looking at the whole net result of unique skin rewards and AP being tied to collections, made even more intense with the Legendary trinket collections. Plus at 7 years in, NOW would be the time to start laying the ground work for a new game if that 10 year life span is to be held to. Taking everything learned over all this time, and creating a better framework to do all the things this game and this engine struggled with.

 

Guild wars 2 almost made this company go bankrupt and NCsoft expects more from this title, We will not if ever see guild wars 3 with the current climate in which it exists. It is out there and probably was being worked on but it won't be something we see for a good long while yet, that is if A-net even survives the constant tug-o-war going on between the players, the dev's and NCsoft. Hope is and has an expiration date and the new build templates yielding mine, I have little confidence or hope for this game and at this point It saddens me because I Feel like without something ANYTHING that is a major shake up this game is doomed. We have too much coming out in the coming few years, and we have more games going further than This one has with their willingness to change and grow. Clearly the formula isn't working anymore and the playerbase is discontent... this is not a good thing and I don't know how to fix it.

[Obtena.7952]

It's painfully apparent most people take the fact that there isn't a monthly fee for granted.

[c space cowboy.2764]

I've spent more money on this game than any subscription.

 

What have I received?

 

A laggy bug filled game mode that hasn't received any content or fixes for said problems. Oh and empty promises.

 

Now this "quality" of life update...

 

LMFAO

[Obtena.7952]

> @"c space cowboy.2764" said:

> I've spent more money on this game than any subscription.

>

> What have I received?

>

> A laggy bug filled game mode that hasn't received any content or fixes for said problems. Oh and empty promises.

>

> Now this "quality" of life update...

>

> LMFAO

 

That's more than just a little dishonest ... if the game was that bad, you wouldn't have spent as much time or money on it that you are implying.

[C Cspace Cowboy.5903]

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > @"c space cowboy.2764" said:

> > I've spent more money on this game than any subscription.

> >

> > What have I received?

> >

> > A laggy bug filled game mode that hasn't received any content or fixes for said problems. Oh and empty promises.

> >

> > Now this "quality" of life update...

> >

> > LMFAO

>

> That's more than just a little dishonest ... if the game was that bad, you wouldn't have spent as much time or money on it that you are implying.

 

We were promised, several times, fixes, population balance, updates, etc...

 

And time and time again, many of us believed it.

 

Naive is better word then dishonest.

 

Slowly, as all of my friends and guild mates quit the game, I started to understand why.

 

Not naive anymore.

 

400$ to max build/gear templates for one of each class..... LMFAO

 

And here I thought 100$ subscription to FalloutFirst was a joke.

[SlateSloan.3654]

big minus is the loot system. uninteresting and the „aha-effect“ for looting something great out of sudden is mostly not existent. now there are more and more chest items ingame with hardly any chance to actually drop it as a player and these items are so silly expensive on the ingame trading post that it is just demotivating. the game is designed that way so players lose patience and buy gems to make then into gold to buy the desired item in the end. in gw1 we had alot fun doing hardmode map exploration and dungeons just cause we could drop golden items out of chests and enemies all the time and it was fun cause of that cause after a run we compared what we all got with each others and it was worth it.

 

here in gw2 you can make chestruns also, yeah do drytop or silverwastes chestrun you can run forever without dropping any interesting items.

 

rarity of looted items must go. its a dirty business by now.

[Maikimaik.1974]

Just because something is good does not mean that it shouldn't be better.

[Dalec.9853]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Krzysztof.5973" said:

> > So because Bethesda is pulling some (*insert kitten here*) ANet is suddenly incredible company?

>

> Yes. It's called perspective. Seeing how bad other people have it let you know how good you have it.

 

Be happy with your drink of urine, the guy over there paid for a plate of poop. It's not so bad.

 

Just because other situations are bad doesn't automatically make everything else 'having it good', just comparatively *less bad*

 

And GW2 is certainly not 'having it good' right now.

[Hannelore.8153]

> @"Alin.2468" said:

> People are not taking GW2 for granted. The company is still making profits from this game, plus a lot of publicity and positive image. The problem is not the lack of content, because no company can create content as fast as players can consume it. The problem is PvP, because once players reach maximum level and do their daily/weekly content, there is nothing else to do and start thinking about other games.

>

> Normally (as in other games), at maximum level, players go into PvP and create their own tactics and teams, but not in this game, because it promotes SoloQ and laziness by not even struggling for PvP balance and new PvP maps/game-modes/battlegrounds/tactics/profession-build-dynamics.

>

> After 7 years, the game is still called Guild Wars, yet there is no war between guilds, not even battlegrounds for 10v10 or 20v20, only some 7 years old 5v5, that you play alone, with randoms.

 

This, in previous games I'd played the PvP/RvR (especially RvR) content was the end-game, and PvE was just a build up to that and occasional break. But because this game barely has functional systems for these game modes, when people reach the max level, do world completion, get their first legendary weapon, etc, they just go shoot more mobs with a bad AI because there's literally nothing else to do.

 

Some of us took to grinding dailies, dungeons, fractals, raids and the occasional meta event just to make do.. *Mindless grinding is not an end-game, fighting either other players or intelligent AI-driven enemies is an end-game*. You even have people soloing some of the hardest content for five players and that should tell you something about where the design of this game went wrong.

 

If being bored with watching my XP bar go up to the next spirit shard is taking things for granted, well..

[Hannelore.8153]

> @"Thornwolf.9721" said:

> > @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > At this point its too late, because they've been in this spiral of accretion for way too long, and theres simply way too much content to try and backport. Before the mass lay offs there was enough hope going forward that course corrections were still possible, and enough staff to clean up future mechanics. But never once was there any assumption that old content could be fixed.....

> >

> > Now that layoffs happened, and the direction shown by class balance teams is not at all promising, I'm now firmly in the camp that a clean slate is realistically our best possible scenario for more long term sustainability. Everything from HOT onward is built on experimentation, but haven't been properly cleaned up. Thats actually a HUGE problem if you look at story content as something new players are expecting to go through in order to get caught up. Something even WoW does it best to help speed up or bypass due to supersession, given its obsession with locking players into an endgame loop.

> >

> > The stuff you're also mentioning about advancing the time line has been shot down/lamented by gamers on 3 different occasions in 3 different games, largely for the same reasons. Most people didn't care about Realm Reborn, because the game prior was just such a mess that restarting with a new timeline wasn't a loss.

> >

> > LS1 and LS2 changed Tyria forever.... and new players got mad because they had no idea whats going on, and all the epic happenings of LS1 are locked off to them forever. Old LA still being part of the personal story exists entirely of necessity, as the system its built on is a black box. In fact, they can't even rectify a lot of Core Tyria's existing events; they can only disable whole sale, or insert new conditional variables, but have to maintain or point to all existing ones to avoid breakage. Grenth's Temple in Cursed Shore is the most dramatic change to an existing event since launch- and really all they did was change the Boss's skill profile (to make it easier to fight), repointed a failure condition in one event to the failure condition of another (to force the NPC to run away), and inserted in a break timer so it wouldn't kick off again immediately.

> >

> > Then theres WoW players still kind of pissed off about Cataclysm, as all previous areas and quests are now references to pre-cataclysm content that no longer exists. New players are confused because they don't know whats being referenced, and older players have no opportunities to revisit it if they wanted to.

> >

> > Rappelz was an old Korean game I used to play that used to do stuff like that a couple times per year, and later moved toward adding everything new as part of new maps and quest lines- since map changes started actively interfering with quest lines used for leveling. Being a Korean game with a kitten ton of leveling grinding, you can see why they wanted to stop having to reorganize them every 6 months or so.

> >

> > With FOMO being such a huge part of the current gaming culture, its compounding the already existing problem of how games age and burn out. MMOs have it the worst, since resetting the game back to zero is a non-option. At least single player games are structured in a way that you can fix new play throughs, and its finite format makes it tolerable or even desirable. But another thing to remember is that MMOs never had a precedent for long term content or story plans until WoW started doing rapid expansions in its early life. Up until then, most MMOs just adapted and added as needed, and this whole idea of a 10 year life cycle was not even a thing. No game that pitched a 10 year life cycle (like was popular at the turn of the decade) came even close to the stability that 10 year plan implied. Many were brought to the edge of failure within 1-2 years (with the reasons often being specific to each game), and I haven't even cared enough to see if many of them are even around anymore.

> >

> > So back to GW2..... we're faced with a problem of new content struggling to find a proper foot hold, and much of the old content now being an active detriment to the new player experience. Veteran players took a solid beating over the years with how HOT changed a lot of the game's underlying approach to game play and content, but we only had to deal with it in small chunks. New players are getting whip lash at every content block, because they're all built on different paradigms. Many of which had to be rectified later on in a different content block, or through a succeeding paradigm. Mounts and Gliding also have had a major impact in how we handle old content, and we've unofficially made it the defacto "Catch up" mechanic for the game.

> >

> > The glut of old content is starting to become dead weight. But we can't cull it, because players have an unhealthy obsession with content that drives their view of game value, as much as it corrupts it. Just looking at the whole net result of unique skin rewards and AP being tied to collections, made even more intense with the Legendary trinket collections. Plus at 7 years in, NOW would be the time to start laying the ground work for a new game if that 10 year life span is to be held to. Taking everything learned over all this time, and creating a better framework to do all the things this game and this engine struggled with.

>

> Guild wars 2 almost made this company go bankrupt and NCsoft expects more from this title, We will not if ever see guild wars 3 with the current climate in which it exists. It is out there and probably was being worked on but it won't be something we see for a good long while yet, that is if A-net even survives the constant tug-o-war going on between the players, the dev's and NCsoft. Hope is and has an expiration date and the new build templates yielding mine, I have little confidence or hope for this game and at this point It saddens me because I Feel like without something ANYTHING that is a major shake up this game is doomed. We have too much coming out in the coming few years, and we have more games going further than This one has with their willingness to change and grow. Clearly the formula isn't working anymore and the playerbase is discontent... this is not a good thing and I don't know how to fix it.

 

False, its been confirmed that ArenaNet had other projects in development and that's where the funding was going, not GW2.

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

Gw2 is a great pay for entry game. You can literally enjoy everything without paying a single dime. No sub fee no and pay to win is great business model.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

its easy to take gw2 for granted when gw1 did everything better.