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Reasons why GW1 vets might feel hard done by
Scarfe
Member Posts: 281
This is my first post and no doubt I will be accused of trolling or some such nonsense, but I intend to explain my general dissapointment with GW2, briefly: -
1 Hype
I stumbled upon GW1 and loved it. The hype for GW2, (in no small way exacerbated by press releases that were bordering upon pure BS) was insane. Nothing can live up to that level of hype. GW2 certainly did not.
2 Map
I could not jump in GW1, I could not fall off cliffs, yet somehow I had a greater sense of freedom. GW2 is a horrible pile of shoe boxes, you explore each corner then move on to the next. I really dislike the horrible tetris design.
3 Story
What is there to say here? Voice acting is terrible. The story is dreadful, I mean really bad. There are several storylines, but I would rather play through GW1 50 times than experience them all.
4 Freedom
The beauty of GW1 was the ability to set up a build from scratch, pick from a huge variety of useful abilities on a limited toolbar. In pvp you never quite knew what you would be fighting. Why oh why did they do away with this. I simply cannot understand it. Need I say more?
5 Fake twitch
If moves are announced three weeks in advance it is not twitch.
6 That's it
It feels like an experiment in doing away with quest hubs and the trinity, that went badly wrong, yet they had to justify it.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
Comments
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
especially 6
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
/agree
Although, you forgot "Endgame".
I did forget Fury, I hit cap in my first few hours of GW1 yet was compelled to keep playing for many more weeks/ months/ years. I struggled to hit cap in GW2.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
1 Hype
Who cares?
2 Map
GW2's maps offer much more freedom than GW1's. They're bigger, too. Both games have some wonderful map designs and GW1's EotN surely wins when it comes to freedom in dungeons, but other than that, I don't know what you're talking about.
3 Story
GW1's story was awful. It got better in NF and EotN, but really, both games are nothing special story wise.
4 Freedom
This I agree with. It was done for balancing reasons. However, when you think about it, GW1 didnt have that many skills back when it was just Prophecies.
5 Fake twitch
It's the same as GW1, really. GW1 had more interrupts, but GW2 has its active dodge. Neither game is that twitchy when you know how to play.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
I still play GW1 a lot actually. More than GW2. So i agree with point 4.
GW1 was amazing in terms of skill. Any true GW fan would tell you how much they miss capturing the elite skills. it was an amazing game and still is. Also i agree that voice acting is autrocious and story is very cliche and childish.
However there are some good things about GW2 like open world dynamic events which can be done without grouping up. Something every MMO should use.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
I really REALLY disagree with what you are trying to say here. GW1 is structured in the same shoebox style as GW2.. the only difference is that in GW2 you can explore all the inside of the shoebox, in GW1 you can't.
i was a huge "fan-boy" before it was released as GW1 offered unlimited content in terms of pvp, and we expected at least as much in gw2 with better dynamics. We really trusted in Anet, but after release we saw the reality. PvP in this game is a like minigame. No build diversity, no ladder/matchmaking, no halls, no gvg, lame balance choices, only one type of pvp (seriously, even freshmen developing a no-budget indie pve centric shitty game considers applying more than one game modes for pvp. duh!), only 3 maps for tourneys(lol...). I cannot believe how they degraded after such a brilliant game like gw1. I dont give a damn about the pve. I want to be able to have 123573568935673456 different viable builds just like in gw1.
(by pvp here i am only interested in the balanced spvp. wvwvw is just like a different form of pve for me)
well GW1 wasn't perfect, but what I would give for rolling hills and plains to explore, rather than that fake rectangle.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
GW1 was a magnificent lore to explore in GW2, but unfortunately they didnt brought it to GW2. The rest stuff its a evolution on a genre that must move forward to these new ''ideas''.
I don´t like constant nerfs to drops, or those DR on instances, or the 100's DE's full of bugs, Who likes them? But in the end..
DE's are far better than the freaking awful quest hubs, period.
The gameplay should be a standard for games to come (or better gameplay), trinity sucks (who cares about it), and PvP will be better as game gets aged.
Some people talk about how simple its this game in skills/traits/status, i needed 1 month to get a really nice build with all of those aspects, to play average in WxWxW , with my necro. Some people goes to WxWxW with the same exact build as they go to dungeons, then they come to forums to bark about how bad its PvP in GW2, How many times i get people on PvP with no clue about the fight? 100's.
If i miss some features from GW1 ? yes i miss, but GW2 needs more time to refine a better experience.
Couldnt agree more, i miss builds.
Also, "tetris map" - right on spot.
I dunno.. all I see is linear paths inside a rectangle in GW1.. in GW2 I see no linear paths inside a rectangle. Obviously a full open world, if possible, would have been better for both games.
I still think GW1 is a much better game though.
Just to find out that 95% (more or less) of those builds are not viable for PvP. Sure having a build diversity is nice, but the more choices you gives, the more you will found out that most of those choices are not viable, just completely imbalanced or just not strong enough compared to some other builds. I'm pretty sure that most of the top PvPer in GW1 nearly always used the same builds with some small variation here and there. Just take the PvE for exemple, when I was playing on my monk or even my assasin, I've found out early that nearly 3/4 of my skills were just plain useless. Most didn't work out well with each other and some were just a bit crappier that the ones I used. So yeah, having diversity is nice, but you need to make sure every thing is viable, something that was not in GW1. So, I'm glad they didn't do the same thing in GW2, its a lot better for balance purpose.
vanilla wow did this well, I know it has a low polygon count and all that shizzle, and I know that it is now entirely on rails, but back in the day I came outta SW and could cross over to the next areas without some fake mountain/ wall in my way. tbh, I really just want a map like Skyrim to play in.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
That's absolutely correct. However, while I appreciate that the stance is the party line for a reason (of course GW2 is easier to balance than GW1), I don't really accept that excuse after having been burned out by GW2 well in advance of them earning my deep-seated ire with the Ascended Armor fiasco. Did builds in GW1 tend to reduce to a handful of optimals? Sure. By my estimation, GW2 has done the same, the primary difference being that they started with fewer alternatives. If the intention was to reduce the number of gimp/ineffective builds, that was certainly successful, but I feel like it ultimately came at the expense of expression for players who have a strong understanding of the game systems' potentials but nonetheless are willing to sacrifice min-max efficiency for variety in playstyle.
In GW1, my Ritualist could be built a million different ways. Most of them were bad. However, because of my access to a changing sub-class and heroes, I had at least a dozen viable builds for completing content/farming in PVE. If I'd wanted to PVP, I would have had not millions--but at least a handful--of viable options there as well. In GW2, I had a build for my Mesmer. It was optimal for my playstyle. If I wanted to change things up, I could grab another weapon, and change a couple utilities, but I had no real opportunity to make subtle, nuanced changes to the build. I could create additional effects or make myself better or worse at certain things by tampering with traits, but that had only a very small, albeit non-zero, effect on how the character actually played.
Now I can't speak to broad-level viability metrics when it comes to comparing builds in GW1 and GW2, because I simply don't have access to the data. And I'll cheerfully concede that during the game's development, I was one of the ones championing the change in direction, because it really does make sense theoretically, and it looks pretty good on paper. Anecdotally, though, I could spend months on my ritualist and never ever burn out, whereas after only a month and a half on GW2 I felt like my playstyle had gotten stagnant and there was nothing left for me to do to innovate that I hadn't already tried, except roll another alt. That's telling to me, and I think it's symptomatic of the fact that the weapon-ability tie and rigid categorization of other skills is a step backwards.
Like a lot of areas in GW2, I feel like they sacrificed gameplay for accessibility, and in this arena the cost was a lot higher than they thought it would be. To me, improvement could have been achieved by, yes, doing away with redundant abilities, but more importantly, by improving synergy and balance among a large palette of abilities, with the expectation--and this is important--that players will figure out which ability combinations are good, create interesting builds, and discover combinations and levels of synergy that the developers didn't anticipate. Yes, that means future balancing work down the line, but it also allows the players to create their own content, and that increases replayability and longevity, something that GW2 is struggling for right now. Forgive me for speculating, but I suspect that the content-cycle steamroll is already pressing hard on development, and if the game had a systems-level means for players to tinker with it, we would be seeing the balance changes people have been raging about instead of desperate releases of new content every month.
There's nothing that says that abilities if implemented are set in stone. You can code a system to handle refunds if you decide an ability is trash after implementing it, and you can salvage your assets if you plan ahead for that. The art can be reused, the animation can be reused, or, hell, if you've got a competent team, you can actually--!--balance the ability after the fact. That's what they did with GW1, and while it indeed resulted in a patchwork skill list, it also made for a richer meta-game, and to this day I'd take Build Wars over Clones vs. Phantasms.
Peace and safety.
thank you OP for putting my doubts together, as I was not sure what goes wrong with my GW2 gaming.
I'm sure agree with you, but need to add my own disappointment about
1. armor: IMO only few at GW2 looks cool and it nothing to have with tons of skins at GW.
2. cinematic. lol I must admit I loved it at GW! sometime made my party frustrated as looked same stuff for X time. Here in said "personal" story I have max 2 guys dialogue at static window.
3. I'm not much about PvP but even I found Random Arenas fun, at GW2 it seems dull and pointless.
4. I liked Mad King event but Wintersady is like nothing much, never felt anything like that at GW.
5. I keep thinking, it's not cuz we have stacks of 250 at GW we need to keep t at GW2, here with crafting (badly made, tbh)we sure need more mats and space.
and most important: anyone can tell me why I find GW2 mega boring?
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
I am a GW1 vet - played since beta and GW2 is a different game and I accepted that. i mean I was there for the monk protest at THK, I was the person who instigated the all-mesmer runs, after Sorroew's Furnace came out. I am probably also older than y'all (meaning you are more set in your ways) and I don't understand how you can not understand they made a new game. A.net said it was going to be different than GW1.
IT IS NOT GW1 - there will never be another one.
I too find GW2 seriously boring, and I don't even have an 80.......or even a 50.
The problems I see are that the downgrading of level is too severe to allow easy farming of mats(Which drop far too infrequently)
And the crafted gear is too late in levels making farming a very tedious endeavor no matter your level.
Runing speed is atrocious.
Disconnects are too frequent/Lag is too great
I miss the Rock Paper Scissors approach to class balancing. it made PVP much more enjoyable.
I miss the difficulty of GW1
I miss having to hunt down my Elite skills.
I miss being able to travel around waypoints without spending a crapload of money doing so.