A player could actually farm mats to get a legendary. Drop rates were not that bad. WvWvW was entertaining with the power crystals as big targets.
Agreed.
Then anet began nerfing drop rates - supposedly due to bots. Bots are gone now, drop rates are still nerfed.
Not a problem. You can still farm or buy of AH.
Then anet changed the dragon encounters so you can't get a precursor drop anymore.
LOLWUT!?
Then anet pretty much broke every promise they made in their manifesto. Now we have power creep thanks to ascended.
Yep. Anet said the screwed up (or ran out of time, depending on your amount of goodwill towards ANet) on release where they only had easy-to-get (i.e. hours) exotics and long-term-project (weeks to months) legendaries. Ascended got dropped in as an intermediate goal with better stats by a few %. New expansion is not adding levels or new gear tier.
WvWvW got badly broken - hacks they could not fix eliminated the power crystals. Now its just a mindless zerg fest.
Sadly, that was the state a few months ago, and I haven't read anything to make me believe it's changed yet. Expansion will drop in a new WvW borderland map. We'll see if the devs figured out a way to break the zergs.
Only way to get a precursor now, short of buying one, is tossing high value items into the mystic toilet and praying. Thats going to cost you a lot of grind.
... and in the expansion, you can do a scavenger hunt to get a precursor of your choice.
The world boss dyanmics, where you need 100+ coordinated players in a pick up group - fail. Most often end in failure.
People wanted more than tank-and-spank world bosses. Now they be all like "dis 2 haard, mek it stahp, pox!!1, wher iis my precusror?!?!111"
Living story - totally MEH
Your opinion. I liked the story, if not the pacing.
Anet making a real effort to push everyone to the cash store to buy skins.
I rarely play the game anymore - got my legendary before all the drastic nerfs - refused to sign up for gear grind with ascended. No way would I buy their expansion - it will be more of the same.
"sign up"? It's B2P. If you own the game you can play it.
Compare Gw2 to *any other MMO*. Look at the amount others have added tiers and tiers of gear for 3 years (or well, almost 3 years). ANet has added only one gear tier which is not a *requirement*. I can still whoop your ass perfectly in ascended gear leaving you 0 chance at victory just because i know how to play the game. This is not WoW or the gazillion other MMOs where you just slam the keyboard and win. You actually need awareness and skill.
Btw. I don't mean to offend you or anything but I "crafted" my 2 ascended sets "passively"
What that means is ... I didn't really grind, I just condensed the tons of silk and leathers and minerals I was getting out of salvage/drops Eventually I had everything i needed for an armor set.
Though I agree .. I did grind for my weapon. The whole one day of it
But hey! This is powercreep game! Gear > all !!!!!!!11elevenone!
A player could actually farm mats to get a legendary. Drop rates were not that bad. WvWvW was entertaining with the power crystals as big targets.
Then anet began nerfing drop rates - supposedly due to bots. Bots are gone now, drop rates are still nerfed.
Then anet changed the dragon encounters so you can't get a precursor drop anymore.
Then anet pretty much broke every promise they made in their manifesto. Now we have power creep thanks to ascended.
WvWvW got badly broken - hacks they could not fix eliminated the power crystals. Now its just a mindless zerg fest.
Only way to get a precursor now, short of buying one, is tossing high value items into the mystic toilet and praying. Thats going to cost you a lot of grind.
The world boss dyanmics, where you need 100+ coordinated players in a pick up group - fail. Most often end in failure.
Living story - totally MEH
Anet making a real effort to push everyone to the cash store to buy skins.
I rarely play the game anymore - got my legendary before all the drastic nerfs - refused to sign up for gear grind with ascended. No way would I buy their expansion - it will be more of the same.
I agree with almost everything you said.... Now I am playing Elite Dangerous and haven't looked back. So I would say currently Elite is the best BTP game out there right now. I used to think GW2 was.... but they nerfed the hell out of everything and started showing some GREED, which sucked the life out of the game for me.
I've got a level 80 in GW2 with exotic in every slot. I think I have an ascendant ring thingy - something I bought with Laurels or something.
Never got into the dungeons.
Game really just came down to me grinding through zones for world completion, or farming karma/gold to buy new weapon/armor skins and dyes.
sPvP was fun for a bit, but it felt even more pointless than most fps type matchmaking PvP as there was nothing to gain besides skins/titles.
WvW was always pretty meh. Blob vs. blob, spent most of my time running and/or beating on doors with things.
Had a few great small-scale fights in WvW, but "balance" in PvP in MMOs is always laughable, pretty sure we only won those engagements because we had more Thieves.
Never really felt like GW2 was a good game for explorers... yeah it is beautiful, but you only explore every nook and cranny on the map to find all the Vistas and POIs for map completion.
Too few jumping puzzles that were actually fun instead of just punishing, and way, way too few cool little hidden veteran/champ mob fights with decent rewards.
That, I think, was GW2's biggest problem - nothing really felt rewarding.
Leveling up only rewarded access to more zones - where you did the exact same stuff. It's not like you learned new abilities really, you had 1-5 on every weapon you could use by level 10. The 7-9 skills for every class I played were always pretty "meh" just far too situational and utilitarian vs. actually fun to press.
Buttons need to be fun to press.
The whole traits system was a big fail IMO, just a bunch of passives that yeah changed how some things worked, but never in dramatic enough ways for me to really feel like my build mattered all too much.
That's always the problem though - always was for WoW before they simplified the whole talent system down to a "pick a,b,or c" choice. Players always figured out the mathematically BEST configuration for everything.
To be "unique" was to gimp yourself.
I dunno, it's like GW2 really lacked variety of choice and the impact of that choice. All the content just kind of blends together into one big pointless mass of "blah."
I loved the game and was obsessed with it for a time, it is incredibly well made and very polished and was, for a time, very engaging and fun. But once I got to level 80.... I didn't want to just grind for this or that, I had no interest in the dungeons or finishing the story... no motivation to explore everything - finding the one route to each POI or Vista was more annoying than anything.
I should have known the game wasn't for me for the long term when I just kept rerolling and rerolling characters trying to find something that really just "stuck" with me.
I'm probably a bad case though. Bitter old burnt out Vet. Destiny is still my game because I feel like a) i'm always progressing, always something "meaningful" to gain, and b) it's truly skill based gameplay.
That's what has me very interesting in ESO - it's just a lot of content, meaningful progression at end game, lots of variety and room for experimentation. Hopefully I can get something to really "stick" with me in that game. And it's on console (soon) which is my preferred platform these days. I hear the quests/story are actually pretty good, and I like the 'active' nature of combat with blocks and power attacks etc. and the huge build variety.
Sounds like you can really gimp yourself with a fail build/load out, which IMO is grrreat as it encourages experimentation and critical thought/planning/research etc.
Can't have a single thread talking about what games do what, without it devolving into another "I like game 'X', so everything else sucks" thread.
When it comes to B2P (objectively), GW2 does more than other games atm. It has more features, doesn't require you to spend ANY money in the cash shop if you don't want to, and the ascended 'power-creep' so many people complain about is not only 100% optional (outside of high lvl fractals), it can be done w/ out grinding.
That said, GW2 is obviously not for everyone. Many of the features GW2 offers players don't like, or think they're done better in other games. That's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that GW2 has so many more features for the price of the box. A price which has repeatedly been lowered to ~15-18$ recently. Can we honestly pretend that there are other games that offer as much content for 15$ as GW2? Because I haven't seen them.
- To the OP, Arenanet has been working on improving a lot of aspects of the game. If you follow the info trickling out for the expansion, this is pretty evident. They've acknowledged the weak AI that most of the release enemies (and bosses) have, and that they are working on improving that across the game. The new bosses (Teq, Triple Trouble, Vinewraith) are sort of like test runs for this, and show a variety of different mechanics and scenarios. All of which are fun (imho). They're challenging, but actually very doable (and there are game-wide guilds that you can join if you want to successfully complete these).
The combat is still one of the best. ESO's combat has a lot of potential, but it's not as intricate as it needs to be (imho). There aren't a ton of combos, most of the complexity comes in the customization (which is actually quite good). ESO's RvR is currently better (imo), but is less populated, and has the same base-trading issues as GW2. Which is a shame, because it has better keep structures, and better anti-zerg mechanics. Maybe the new borderlands anet is working on will improve that for GW2, but we'll have to wait and see.
- Whatever game you prefer, the reason GW2 is on the top of the B2P list is simply it's the best value you will get for the money. There just aren't any other games that will let you play as feature packed a game, for as low a price.
I wouldn't say either is better than the other, they have different offerings for different moods, making both good choices to load up, I don't really care about anything else... They're both good games.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
So much... just nope!
Agreed.
Not a problem. You can still farm or buy of AH.
LOLWUT!?
Yep. Anet said the screwed up (or ran out of time, depending on your amount of goodwill towards ANet) on release where they only had easy-to-get (i.e. hours) exotics and long-term-project (weeks to months) legendaries. Ascended got dropped in as an intermediate goal with better stats by a few %. New expansion is not adding levels or new gear tier.
Sadly, that was the state a few months ago, and I haven't read anything to make me believe it's changed yet. Expansion will drop in a new WvW borderland map. We'll see if the devs figured out a way to break the zergs.
... and in the expansion, you can do a scavenger hunt to get a precursor of your choice.
People wanted more than tank-and-spank world bosses. Now they be all like "dis 2 haard, mek it stahp, pox!!1, wher iis my precusror?!?!111"
Your opinion. I liked the story, if not the pacing.
"sign up"? It's B2P. If you own the game you can play it.
Ascended power creep?
Compare Gw2 to *any other MMO*. Look at the amount others have added tiers and tiers of gear for 3 years (or well, almost 3 years). ANet has added only one gear tier which is not a *requirement*. I can still whoop your ass perfectly in ascended gear leaving you 0 chance at victory just because i know how to play the game. This is not WoW or the gazillion other MMOs where you just slam the keyboard and win. You actually need awareness and skill.
Btw. I don't mean to offend you or anything but I "crafted" my 2 ascended sets "passively"
What that means is ... I didn't really grind, I just condensed the tons of silk and leathers and minerals I was getting out of salvage/drops
Eventually I had everything i needed for an armor set.
Though I agree .. I did grind for my weapon. The whole one day of it
But hey! This is powercreep game! Gear > all !!!!!!!11elevenone!
From all the B2P singleplayer MMOs, I like TSW the best
.
I agree with almost everything you said.... Now I am playing Elite Dangerous and haven't looked back. So I would say currently Elite is the best BTP game out there right now. I used to think GW2 was.... but they nerfed the hell out of everything and started showing some GREED, which sucked the life out of the game for me.
http://medias.luna-atra.fr/gw2/char_tool/CT_imageGenerator.php?pseudo=Centurion Mikal&lang=EN&code=&code=TSwtLDUsLSw2LC0sMjksOSwyMiwyMywyNCwtLDEwMiwzNiw4MSw4NCw4OQ==
I've got a level 80 in GW2 with exotic in every slot. I think I have an ascendant ring thingy - something I bought with Laurels or something.
Never got into the dungeons.
Game really just came down to me grinding through zones for world completion, or farming karma/gold to buy new weapon/armor skins and dyes.
sPvP was fun for a bit, but it felt even more pointless than most fps type matchmaking PvP as there was nothing to gain besides skins/titles.
WvW was always pretty meh. Blob vs. blob, spent most of my time running and/or beating on doors with things.
Had a few great small-scale fights in WvW, but "balance" in PvP in MMOs is always laughable, pretty sure we only won those engagements because we had more Thieves.
Never really felt like GW2 was a good game for explorers... yeah it is beautiful, but you only explore every nook and cranny on the map to find all the Vistas and POIs for map completion.
Too few jumping puzzles that were actually fun instead of just punishing, and way, way too few cool little hidden veteran/champ mob fights with decent rewards.
That, I think, was GW2's biggest problem - nothing really felt rewarding.
Leveling up only rewarded access to more zones - where you did the exact same stuff. It's not like you learned new abilities really, you had 1-5 on every weapon you could use by level 10. The 7-9 skills for every class I played were always pretty "meh" just far too situational and utilitarian vs. actually fun to press.
Buttons need to be fun to press.
The whole traits system was a big fail IMO, just a bunch of passives that yeah changed how some things worked, but never in dramatic enough ways for me to really feel like my build mattered all too much.
That's always the problem though - always was for WoW before they simplified the whole talent system down to a "pick a,b,or c" choice. Players always figured out the mathematically BEST configuration for everything.
To be "unique" was to gimp yourself.
I dunno, it's like GW2 really lacked variety of choice and the impact of that choice. All the content just kind of blends together into one big pointless mass of "blah."
I loved the game and was obsessed with it for a time, it is incredibly well made and very polished and was, for a time, very engaging and fun. But once I got to level 80.... I didn't want to just grind for this or that, I had no interest in the dungeons or finishing the story... no motivation to explore everything - finding the one route to each POI or Vista was more annoying than anything.
I should have known the game wasn't for me for the long term when I just kept rerolling and rerolling characters trying to find something that really just "stuck" with me.
I'm probably a bad case though. Bitter old burnt out Vet. Destiny is still my game because I feel like a) i'm always progressing, always something "meaningful" to gain, and b) it's truly skill based gameplay.
That's what has me very interesting in ESO - it's just a lot of content, meaningful progression at end game, lots of variety and room for experimentation. Hopefully I can get something to really "stick" with me in that game. And it's on console (soon) which is my preferred platform these days. I hear the quests/story are actually pretty good, and I like the 'active' nature of combat with blocks and power attacks etc. and the huge build variety.
Sounds like you can really gimp yourself with a fail build/load out, which IMO is grrreat as it encourages experimentation and critical thought/planning/research etc.
Can't have a single thread talking about what games do what, without it devolving into another "I like game 'X', so everything else sucks" thread.
When it comes to B2P (objectively), GW2 does more than other games atm. It has more features, doesn't require you to spend ANY money in the cash shop if you don't want to, and the ascended 'power-creep' so many people complain about is not only 100% optional (outside of high lvl fractals), it can be done w/ out grinding.
That said, GW2 is obviously not for everyone. Many of the features GW2 offers players don't like, or think they're done better in other games. That's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that GW2 has so many more features for the price of the box. A price which has repeatedly been lowered to ~15-18$ recently. Can we honestly pretend that there are other games that offer as much content for 15$ as GW2? Because I haven't seen them.
- To the OP, Arenanet has been working on improving a lot of aspects of the game. If you follow the info trickling out for the expansion, this is pretty evident. They've acknowledged the weak AI that most of the release enemies (and bosses) have, and that they are working on improving that across the game. The new bosses (Teq, Triple Trouble, Vinewraith) are sort of like test runs for this, and show a variety of different mechanics and scenarios. All of which are fun (imho). They're challenging, but actually very doable (and there are game-wide guilds that you can join if you want to successfully complete these).
The combat is still one of the best. ESO's combat has a lot of potential, but it's not as intricate as it needs to be (imho). There aren't a ton of combos, most of the complexity comes in the customization (which is actually quite good). ESO's RvR is currently better (imo), but is less populated, and has the same base-trading issues as GW2. Which is a shame, because it has better keep structures, and better anti-zerg mechanics. Maybe the new borderlands anet is working on will improve that for GW2, but we'll have to wait and see.
- Whatever game you prefer, the reason GW2 is on the top of the B2P list is simply it's the best value you will get for the money. There just aren't any other games that will let you play as feature packed a game, for as low a price.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Or maybe I should make what I posted in green in the original post a darker green so you will actually read the questions I had about GW2.
There Is Always Hope!