So here's a bit of back story. I been playing it since head start (Aug. 25 2012) and have seen some amazing stuff and down right questionable stuff come the game. I was part of the Gamebreaker fan guild (there was no Gamebreaker Nation at the time) when it launched to have ppl to party and play w/ and have a general fun time. But as months pass, our active numbers fell because of school, work, other games and that when one of the members from the guild (Hi Kip) invited me into another guild in Divined Armament. As the fan guild kept loosing members, ARMA was steady and was active so after a long time, I stayed w/ these guys till this day. Somehow in the mist of all that I became one of the Guild Leaders.
I won't go into things about PvP and WvW because they actually doing what I want them to do for the players soon and also I'm not doing those other most of the time so I'm not the person for it. If you want to know about PvP and WvW changes, the link is below.
PvP Rewards Roadmap
WvW Account Wide XP
So my overview of GW2 is alot so to speak so let's get to it.
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| This is still one of my best and most beautiful SS to this day Elementalist and a Quaggan in a personal story. |
LIVING STORY
The game in my opinion is still in good state but how the living story is being proceeded and handled by the community and writers are already in a chaotic state. Right now the main villain so to speak in Scarlet. Is Scarlet the worst character on not is another thing but the general story arc is in dire need of help but it goes way before scarlet among other things.
First problem is that there's hardly any story that players can get attached to. Putting Short Story about these characters of Scarlet, Kiel, Evon Knashblade, Edward the Bloody Prince, etc on the GW2 site is NOT the only way to go. These need to be put in-game for the masses to read the lore. It's good lore you putting out but it's wasted because most will not go out of game to the site to read it. Also I would want to see just a bit more of a general direction regarding the story. Granted there's many ways to tell a tale but the writers need to make it work.
Second Problem is that it's temporary. Now personally I'm fine about it being temporary but to a point. Every 2 weeks there's a new meta for the living story but not everyone can be on for it as life calls. they end up missing it and it's forever gone, Now what can fix them experiencing the story is a NPC somewhere say your home instances and u can talk to them to take part of the story like your own continuation of the personal story.
Third problem is the rewards of said temporary content and the general reward Lets start w/ the RNG part of it. There's one issue when you toss in RNG (random number generator) into the loot. Case and point the concision of the Flame and Frost living story. The boss had a chance to drop the jetpack, players including myself farmed the hell out of it just to have it. RNG screw over many and will never get that chance again. They appeared to since learned from this a bit by making the main reward the prize for completing the achievements but that item like a few others can't be get anymore when the living story event is gone. Second part is the rewards for completing the meta achievements can be good or bad depending on the person but one time use armor or back piece skin doesn't work at all. A wardrobe like system (I'll get into that later) will fix it but things like the backpieces and some of the armor forcing you to pick light, medium, or heavy and vanishing forever is not friendly to the player base.
ASCENDED GEAR AND LEGENDARIES
When they introduced ascended stats (first for rings) w/ The Lost Shores patch came there was mixed emotions. Power Creep? Vertical Gear Progression? Adding tiny more stats for the new dungeon in Fractals w/ Agony Resist? Alot of things was speculated and since then we gotten a complete set now. Why was there a need for ascended gear you wonder? Well two reasons.
Exotic armor was like candy, very easily to gain w/ very little work so this was a fix to why ascended weapons and armor are time gated and not salable in the trading post. It's meant to be earned not given. If it was like exotic right now then it would have quickly been wash up gear w/ only a tiny bit of more stat numbers. I totally get when the alt-o-holics as it's not not friendly for what you do but it's not going to changed for the foreseeable future. The content can actually be done in greens and in some areas, completely naked (in armor and rings/accessories). No really it's no problem to do content like that unless it Fractals and WvW.
Fractals and World vs World are the other reason. All ascended comes w/ a socket to put agony resist (Fractals) and Guard Protection (WvW and just pure stats/weapon damage) in them to survive and be more productive.
Overall this is not much right now because it's one very minor stat increase and a new tier. If another tier is put in to soon say one every year then we have a prime case for it becoming vertical progress and I will start to think it's becoming like any other MMOs in the market. Just so you know, legendary have ascended stats but can have access to any 3 stats they want at any time before combat.
Legendary Weapons (and in the future armor,rings, etc.) I have one single problem with. Why was it move from not salable to now be put in the trading post? I'll come out and say it. This was one of my major problems as legendaries are no longer exclusive to players that worked their butt off to get everything that requires to make it. It was an honor to walk around with a legendary weapon then found out w/o telling us in a patch note (I'll get to that later) or even saying something to the players to see how they fell on it.
Looking at it both ways it gives players w/ tons of gold to bypass the making progress to just buy it from another player in the trading post. Unfortunately gold farmer sites are in on the action too so it does water it down even if nobody buys from them.
I don't know what they can do for legendaries to truly make them special since it's on the trading post now so we'll see what plans are in store for this.
QUALITY OF LIFE AND GENERAL FIXES
This is what is needed in 2014 and there's no excuses anymore. For over a Year guild leaders are severely limited and some even questionable. Dungeon parties are ruined by one game breaking "thing", a system for armor/weapons and dyes. All that and a touch more.
Guild Portion--
Message of the Day - Pretty Simple, Just make it so when you long in, the MOTD is right on your and their screen and the guild officers can broadcast the guild MOTD to everyone when it's changed or a reminder.
"Hi.. Due to inactivity of over a month, we have remove you from Divine Armament.Building Queue - Sure most Guild are just hording Influences and Merits at this point so let's use that shale we. Make a Build Queue upgrade slot that's permanent and one that's temporary of say a week. Also a system to have certain guild buffs auto activate and re-queue would be great.
If you do come back and want to be back in the guild, all you need to do is go to divinearmament.enjin.com - and apply there or if you already have an account there, just post on the "The Roster MIA / Away From Game Thread". Ty"
More Guild Missions / Tiers - It's been already stated that there will be no instance/dungeons more then five players so let's do this instead. Guild Challenge is something that benefit from having a limited successful completion per week and is always rewarding. It can be put at a Tier 3 (as there's no tiers for G. Challenge currently) as some really fell like tier 1 in Branded For Termination and a tier 2 like Save Our Supplies. Again it's just like the other challenge that it's in a set location in the open world but what's different is that there layers to the fight like what you did for Tequatl except more guild friendly and reward bonus of 3 Rares, at lease 1g because it's tier 3, 3 Guild Commendations, and a Chance of two of the 3 rares becoming exotic, ascended stuff, or even a exclusive armor or weapon. There's tons of stuff that cam make it crazy and awesome like encasing the guild in a dome while others watch them fight it. Also if you add more missions of all types and add tiers to them (except Trek) that would keep things more fresh.
That the general guild stuff I would like to see now for the rest is below.
Everything Else Portion --
PvE Wardrobe - Do it do it do it! Many of us didn't buy these gem store armor/w weapons only to see another armor set I want to mix and match but lose the looks of old armor we still like or love. There's many Good suggestion on the forums that you can still keep your cash flow but you can also just copy the DCUO way of doing this.
Account Bound Dyes - You gonna put Limited time RNG dyes in the gem store and expect us to use those on a character that we want to also use on others. Sorry but make it account bound first.
Trading Post - This need a serious update ASAP. This is honestly one of if not the worst UI for an "auction house" I personally ever had to deal with. I could list all the problems but that would take to long.
Option to turn off Confirm Button - Tired of confirming guild upgrades, buying multiple of stuff from vendor, etc. Would be a big boon to in a small way.
Send Mail Compression - Thanks Gold Farmers but this still sucks overall. Just find a reasonable work around like make it so that u can send unlimited mail to guildmates and friends list.
Dungeon Ownership - This deserves it's own section but this is one of the most broken things about the game. The party is at the mercy of the person who enter the dungeon first so if he/she leave or d/c, the party WILL GET BOOTED and all their progress lost. This alone should be fix before ANY new dungeons and honestly should of been fixed when the new Fractals update came. Actually no, should of fix w/ in the first four months of this game launched.
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| This is how the font looks like on small UI |
First Person View - This was in beta. Why was their any reason to removed it mid beta.
Begone Overflow (on world bosses) - The Tequatl Rising update taught us this. This is now a huge flaw and something needs to be changed before you even touch the other two dragons. Waiting to get on the main server just to have a best chance to kill a updated and interesting dragon fight is not fun. But neither is getting there after people is leaving for the day and it fails dues to lack of players.
Charr and Asuran Armor - This is the single bane in all of charr. Overall the armor they wear sucks because on clipping and the removal of their horns. Same goes for asuran and their Ears Clipping threw headgear. For Charr, this is likely why their the lowest amount of players playing one. Fix the issues and even reworked the armor to make sense to a charr and tons pf players will be happy.
Head Gear Makes us Bald - Not cool to put on a headgear and it makes us bald and take away our facial features.
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| Example: I have the Face is on the right but I want the Eyes from the left. |
Trait Templates - I'll give a realistic reason. There's so many Traits and Skills that become not usable underwater or their effect is only on land. Fractal and Honor of the Waves have places that take part underwater among others. You try taking a Wellmancer (Necromancer that uses wells) or Flamethrower Engineer underwater to see their stuff locked out, That is one of many examples I could of put out here.
You Order / Pact Related Mission - In our personal story, when had to join an order (Whispers, Priory, or Vigil) we did missions before all 3 form The Pact. After our personal story ended there was nothing to do w/ any of them. You can tie daily, reward and new skills to it among many options. Then again most of this could be a part of an new living story arc.
Remove Greens and Blues from Reward like Chest - Things like WvW season chest, Meta Living Story chest, those type of chest need no greens and blues and makes the player base uneasy for their just reward.. At lease give us rare(s) and a chunk of coin. Event Chest and any random chest in the open world are fine as is.
A Change to the Event Reward / Medals - Things like Claw of Jormag, The Shatterer, the temples in Orr, those huge events need to have better rewarding for Karma and silver gained. Getting ~2s and 300 karma for doing Claw of Jormag is mediocre. Make it around say 10 to 15s and 2500 karma would be nice. The Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals needs to be revamped or just removed. It serves no purpose as you can come in super late to an event and do one big attack and get instant gold while a different person gets many attacks off and gets bronze or even nothing.
Craft-able Aquabreathers - There's only one that that a lvl 20 heavy armor one. It's ok if it's a recipe we need to seek out like the lvl 20 one mention above but it would be nice to have accurate gear underwater too.
I'm Sure there's more but these are the general fixes I'll like to all see. Also if I keep adding more, I might never stop.
DUNGEONS
Dungeon in general needs a little more love and work. Not every boss should be a HP Sponge but also not be prone to seeing all zerker everything making a dungeon in general a joke and not fun. The recent update to FotM (also now in dungeons) allows it that ALL bosses will have a max of 5 stacks of defiant making Crowd Control alot more useful then seeing a boss w/ 25 stacks. Would like to see encounters be more dynamic, have mobs and bosses be able to dodge and move around and even heal. Classes w/ Stuns and CC can be feel very useful then the meta right now of Condition can also be more use here but they need to figure out a way to let us have more then 25 stacks on a mob w/o killing their servers.
Rewards for dungeons are a hit and miss. Take Ascalonian Catacombs for example, it rewards (4.5 gold) more for all it's path and is shorter to do then a single Arah Path 4 (3 gold) and that is the longest path in all of the dungeons in the game.
But that's Nothing compare to Fractals recent update. In the time to do say a lvl 36 FotM (~1.30 gold), you can do All of AC, Cof 1 and 2, and maybe 1 path for HotW (7.50 gold) and earned alot more gold for your time. This should be a simple change and what I think is a balance reward in gold.
- Lvl 10 FotM - 1.5g
- Lvl 20 FotM - 3g
- Lvl 30 FotM - 4.5g
- Lvl 40 FotM - 6g
- Lvl 50 FotM - 7.5g
Also because this is not said enough, a game breaking issue for dungeons is the Dungeon Owner (whoever enters it first). The party is at the complete mercy of he or she and let's say you doing a the new lvl 33 FotM and on the final boss. the party wipes several times and in rage and frustration (or emergency because that happens too) that person leaves, everyone in that party is removed from the fractal / dungeon and all your hard earned progress is lost. How would that make you feel? Would you want a new dungeon before this is fixed? I'm just shocked this still here since the game launched.
Anyways if you want to see the gold gained for dungeon.. Here You Go!
OPEN WORLD EVENTS AND CHAMPIONS
The Changes in The Queen's Jubilee and Tequatl Rising updates was a major boon to champ and meta events and from it came champion farming in Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound. There's other lesser events and champions that are out in the world that need love and a good bashing to the face. I not taking credit for this but I did add to a very good ideal. The event and champions through the world should have a stacking buff indicating the last time the event was done or the last time they was killed. The longer that buff or whatever is, the greater the reward. If the reward is reasonable then the world will become more alive then in zones that may only see very low amount of people.. This won't stop the Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound farm (not that's a really bad thing) but it gives the world more life.
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| My View of the World First Kill |
THE MAGIC WORD......
With Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest Next, hell even WoW, the games needs to bring in new life as the Living Story can't hold up on it's own for much longer. What I'm talking about is an expansion in 2014. It can't be in 2015 as it will likely be too late to keep or/and grab new players before the new hotness comes. Think of the buzz it will create to announced that magic word. New players be buzzing, you'll gained returning players, marketing, etc. For what I Personally would love to see in an expansion is...
- 2-4 new Medium to Huge Flesh Out Zones
- 2-5 new Dungeons (not in FotM) all w/ unique encounters (Skill based a bonus)
- A New Eternal Battlegrounds Map and 1-3 New Borderlands to go with it
- 1-2 New Races (Kodan and Tengu... Especially Tengu). Any other race is fine too just make armor work on them.
- 30-100 of REWARDING events and Events are more meaningful
- UI improvements
- AI Improvements
- Environment Improvements
- New Weapon types for Classes (Did you have Concept Art of a Warrior holding a 2-H AXE?!)
- Guild Hall. (toss in Guild QoL improvements for the love of cheesecake by then)
- New Story That can change the World (what if, the "bad guy" succeeded)
- More Old zones changes
- Dynamic Weather (it's a push I know)
- ...........
- PROFIT!
Why I left out new Classes you wonder? It's really to each their own but the classes in place pretty much leaves no room for one. I know many ppl want Chronomancers or a 3rd heavy armor class in Monk or bump Engineers to heavy (does make since but so does medium armor) but they need to show us proper balanced for the class we already have in place. Also they could and should add new skills,traits,weapons to existing classes which I believe is coming soon regarding skills and traits.
OTHER STUFF
We gotten a Living Story like content from the beginning to now and it's still gonna come at us. No MMO has ever try to tackle what Arena Net is doing w/ 2 week content patches and I commended them for not letting up. So much have come our way already but it's quickly forgotten about.
I must address this complaint from the players I generally see in the guild, forums, reddit, etc.
Q: You don't want zerg content but play a MMO?!
A: I see where this might be your problem w/ the world but MMO s is not for you. There's plenty of multi-players out there. Beside it's gonna happened regardless because it's the players that make it so.
Q: You don't want content every 2 weeks because it's more then likely bad in your eyes?
A: You want it to be like say WoW and Wait every 3+ months for something new then go play that or take a break. Do something that you enjoy.
Q: I want solo dungeon (as in the five man being made for solo players) content, why everything has to be group based?
A: I see where you coming from but it is an MMO. There's tons of Single player games out there, it's a lost cause trying to make this into a single player.
Q: This content sucks, when will we get real content again.?
A: Play the game to have fun, if you not then take a break. You probably have a backlog of games to play.
Q: Quaggan loves you!
A: OK moving on!
With that said it does comes w/ a huge flaw. You have to be on when it's live depending on the content. Lets take the Tower of Nightmares update for example. After weeks of waiting, we were able to finally go into the tower. Tons of players were there making our way to the top easily while killing champs and getting lots of loot. Days after due to how the living story meta was handled the tower started to died out. It becomes harder and harder to ascend to the top till the place was almost empty when the Fractured update came. It came w/ solo and group content and the tower itself was great but since players finished the meta there's no reason to go back so players doing it now is almost impossible.
Now if their was to be an update like it needs a zerg but say more spread out between the designated zones. Make events around the map(s) and toss in a bit of "fetch and find this" like last year's Halloween for the flaming book of the Mad King Memories. Now it only need to be balanced so that the living story meta is rewarding and have decent amount of people to keep doing it after they did the meta.
Granted this does not have to be every new living story update but more to help it.
As far as patch notes goes, tell us everything (beside major exploits and hidden living story clues) on them, I'm personally tired of these secrets fixes and stuff. I know things can get threw the cracks but sometimes these are huge cracks you expect the players to ignored it. Let us know is all were saying.
CONCLUSION
I think the game is still in a good state as I said earlier. There's things that needed to make it better other wise the player base will be looking elsewhere. What I said above can be a help to make GW2 all that it can be in terms of PvE. The developers have ideals but we have to work w/ them as they learn coming from Guild Wars 1 and bear w/ the team.
This is also the same for the developers as they have to work w/ their player base but they can't take in all suggestion because there's pretty bad ones out there. They started doing their Collaborative Development (CDI) so it's on the right track.
This is my overview of GW2 till this day and what I hope can be put into the game or even taken out of.
It is an amazing game and am glad to have played it but I just though it was time that I put what I though on the table not in a forum but here. I thank you for checking this out!
