User:Gem/Thoughts

= Guild Wars campaigns = In this section I will present my thoughts about the three Guild Wars campaings and the Eye of the north expansion.

Prophecies
This is where it all started, and I think we can all agree that it was a great success. We are all playing Guild Wars now because the game had lots of new well thought out ideas which were neatly carried out.

Low level content
If 'low level content' means everything for characters under level 20, then this includes most of the game world for the first campaign. Players will most likely reach level 20 in the desert, which only leaves the Southern Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire islands for level 20 characters. This design worked very well with the first game as people could take their time to level up and enjoy the game with a small list of skills and attributes against low level enemies.

But let's disregard that and only concentrate on the tutorial area of the game, the pre-Searing Ascalon. When you first enter the game you find your character standing in the middle of a small green area. When you look around, you'll notice a guy with a green marker on top of his head. When you talk to him, you receive your first quest, which begins to guide you forward. The quests that you encounter teach you a few basic things about the game, but seriously, the pre-Searing acts as a very poor tutorial. For me personally GW was my first MMO, and the concept of instances in a game world was new to me. In the beginning I didn't even realise that when I leave an outpost I can't bump into other people. I also didn't realise that when I visit an outpost I can always map travel to it later on. These things should have been explained in the very beginning. Everything else I could figure out myself as I have enough gaming experience with different kinds of games, but someone who hasn't played much will most likely have problems if starting with Prophecies.

In addition to the tutorial like purpose of the pre-Searing it also acts as a very nice introduction to the game world and the important NPCs. There are lots of nice quests and happy-happy-joy-joy landscapes which one can explore for many hours when new to the game. One could say that the pre-Searing is one of the most well done areas in the game, since there are many guilds dedicated to spending all their time with their pre-Searing characters. How many games tempt you to stay in the tutorial?

Professions
Basic fantasy genre stuff mostly. Even if it's old, don't trash it if it works. The ones that are generic to RPGs, warrior, ranger, elementalist and monk (a nice change to not have a priest as the healer class) were the easy choices. Pretty much the 'must'. I liked the introduction of the bit unusual ones, necromancer and mesmer.


 * Warriors are the basic 'tank or deal some damage' stuff. Nothing special. The main variety presented is the choice of weapons (sword, axe or hammer). Warriors could have been made more interesting and varied, but atleast they didn't make the bane of all RPGs, the paladin (although someone might claim that W/Mo is equally bad).
 * The role of the ranger or rogue class varies between games. I like the GW version which can act as a marksman or beast master. No sneaking around without others seeing you or stuff like that. It's a shame that the beast master side of rangers wasn't originally done as well as it could have been and therefor beast mastering never became too popular. Pet/barrage teams don't count. They've tried to fix this with new skills and other changes, but beast masters will probably never get to be 'in'.
 * Elementalists were implemented with the basic fire/earth/water system. This is one of the easy choices that shouldn't have been done, atleast not like this. The basic 'fire = damage, earth = protection, water = slow down' doesn't work too well with a game in which it is best to concentrate on one of the three due to the attribute system. This mistake has been partially nicely covered up later with new skills, monsters and areas where other stuff than the basic fire nuker have proven to be useful.
 * Monks are, oddly enough, not a melee fighter class like in most games, but the basic 'priest' class. I like the idea of the heal/protect/smite division, but the smite line was very poorly done. No one wants a smiter in the team. This hasn't been fixed in later campaigns either which is a shame since the idea has potential. Another problem is that there really isn't a good option for a monk in the party and even the addition of ritualists or paragons couldn't change this.
 * Even though we've seen necromancers before in a few games, they are a pretty one sided class in most games. GW finally succeeded with this class. Minion masters are basic stuff, but necros also have very viable choices in curses and blood magic which concentrates on life stealing. Even though I mostly play my ranger, this is the class that I think GW was most successfull with when comparing to any other game and the other classes in GW. It has three very different and fitting main roles with lots of smaller sub roles like batteries and orders necros.
 * Mesmers are an interesting, unique class addition. This is also why mesmers have a hard time finding their way into groups. People are so used to the basic classes and team combinations made with those basic classes that people don't bother to find out what this new class is capable of. I myself found my mesmer friend very very helpful, but never got others to realise how much easier your life is with one in the party.

No monthly fees
Who would like paying extra? No one. It can't be argued that players love to have the ability to play with no extra fees. In the good old days people went to buy a game, played it for some time, then bought a new game. They could return to the old games when ever they wanted with no additional fees and no extra inconviniency. With MMOs this has changed. People are now tied to one game, paying it's monthly fee to be able to play. If one wants to take a break and then return it is very troublesome to play with the fees, especially if you would only like to play a day or two now and then.

In the beginning I was worried that this would mean the end of GW and the company soon due to not being able to pay for the development and continuous updating, but in the end it turned out great. We've received two new campaigns and one expanion, and now we are getting GW2. I don't know if others could pull this off, but atleast ANet did and I'm happy about it.

Factions
The first additional campaign. We all waited for this, but it was a huge put down for many. I personally didn't like the campaign very much, but it had a few small good things. It also taught the company a lot.

Low level content
Factions introduced a nice tutorial which new charaters may go through when starting the game in Cantha. The tutorial teaches all of the basic stuff that you'll need to know when playing the game... except the two things that are the hardest for players new to the MMO genre: instanced worlds and map travelling. If those two would have been explained in the tutorial it would have been perfect.

[continue here...]

Professions
When the first new class, the assassin, was revealed everyone went 'omg, this is the new Diablo II and the other new class will be druid! burn them all!' I would have been happy if we'd gotten druids but no, we got the ritualists. Something new, but what the game really needed one year after the original release was one more familiar class that people could relate to, not two awkward and new ones, even if they were the coolest classes in the whole world. These two just didn't do it for many of the players.


 * Assassins are a very one sided profession. Almost everything they can do is based on daggers and dagger attacks, although shadow stepping was a cool idea that added some character to the class. The assassin run animations sucks and the skill color them is disgusting, which are the two main reasons I've never played one. (I've now started an assassin female to get a very nice looking armor set in Eye of the North. I'll update my thoughts on them later on.)
 * Ritualists are a cool class and brought some very cool new game mechanics and tactics with them. Most ritualists concentrate on spirits which is definitely the ritualist main thing. Weapon spells have some very nice ideas and give the possibility to very fun alternative tactics for many tasks. The intended phenomenon of ritualists replacing monks didn't happen, but I think that's good. Even though the class is cool it never got me rollin' since my play style is more aggressive than spirit spamming and other defensive stuff. I think I'll need to really try playing my ritualist seriously some time.

Nightfall
The second new campaign was a huge success. With it's awesome new game mechanics (heroes ftw), good storyline and unified game world this campaign really turned me on for the game again after the disappointment with Factions. The development team had found their style again.

Professions
With the new professions in this campaing the team wanted to do something new, something that we had never seen before, but something that would still fit the fantasy genre and the game world. The new professions, dervish and paragon, are very well suited to the campaign with their basic idea and they also suit the game very well with their roles.


 * Dervish is definitely one of my top three professions with ranger and necromancer. With their cool outfits and scythes they are a nice and different choice as a melee class to warriors. They don't fit the tank role, but they are excellent melee damage dealers. I like the combination of spell casting and melee, which is a very unique thing in the game world (ok, paladins are an exception, but they are just lame). I think that dervishes could be a bit more varied. Adding one main role more to them would have been nice, but I'm ok with what we got.
 * Paragons are the party support class that the game has been missing, but I don't think that their role fits the game very well. I think that introducing this class as a party support was a mistake and caused more problems than good things. They could have built the class to concentrate more on spear attacks and something else. The party wide shouts and the chants caused major unbalances and aren't fun to play with or against. Putting all this aside, paragons look cool. A more varied armor selection would do a lot of good to them.

Eye of the North
The first true expansion and probably the last full product for the first Guild Wars game. With EotN the development team really took what was good in the previous campaigns and built on top of that. The result was amazing! The expansion has some minor flaws and still has lots of small bugs and stuff that should be finished off properly, but all in all it's marvelous.

Low level content
As Eye of the North isn't a full campaign but an expansion it didn't have low level content at all. This is great for all of the old players as the team had more time to focus on the high level content. No low level content should even be necessary since we already have 3 campaigns in which a new player can start to play.

Professions
The expansion didn't introduce any new professions which is definitely a good thing. We already have too many and forcing another profession or two into the game would have ruined everything.

Armor
All armor sets are reskins of armor from the other campaigns. Reskinning old armor was a disappointment to most players and especially as so many reskins were done on very old and crappy models from the Prophecies campaign. I've only found a few sets that I like even a little and only two that I like more than a little, one for ritualist females, one for assassin females. Actually, the assassin set was so nice that I rolled my first ever assasin character just to get that set. Also, the small amount of sets available was a huge disappointment when taken into account that the sets required minimal work from the graphics team. The armor sets are definitely the weakest link of Eye of the North.

In addition to the full sets there are multiple single armor pieces with a new design. These include some very nice looking gauntlets and weird headpieces. They act as nice gold/time sinks, since they require a lot of certain crafting material or collectable item to craft. Adding single armor pieces like these give the players more choices with their characters' looks which is a nice change from the old system where players mostly used a full set instead of mixing and matching armor pieces which rarely worked well together. I hope they'll continue on this path in the future.

PvE-only skills
Even though the first PvE-only skills were released in Nightfall, EotN really brought a lot of them to the game. As I'm a PvE-only player it might surprise you, but I really think that adding many PvE-only skills to the game is bad. For two years we could see that the skill system worked well in both PvE and PvP although the skills were exactly the same. There wasn't even a problem on the PvE side due to skills being balanced by PvP. Then all of the sudden we get loads of PvE-only skills. These skills aren't used in PvP matches, which means that the PvP lot wont be complaining about them being overpowered and PvE players don't tend to complain about skills that they benefit from. Therefor we now have dozens of skills, some of which are too powerful in many PvE tasks, but there's no one to complain about them and asking for changes. Is a res sig with 100% health and energy gain balanced? I don't think so. is the PvE part of the game really so hard that it requires extra help from skills that are a bit more powerful than the skills that the monsters have access to? I don't think so. Yes, monsters have monster-only skills, but that's because the poor guys either need them to be competitive, or because those skills are fun and bring an interesting aspect to them. The PvE skills also have some of this, for eample the Junundu skills and any special skill that you get for one mission or quest. But why make overpowered skills that can be used anywhere and with no story line point whatsoever. I hope that this trend doesn't continue in GW2.

As an addition the PvE skills brought a new time sink to the game. Now players are required to max out multiple time consuming grind titles to gain full benefit from the skills. This fights against the original idea of Guild Wars, your skill is your legend, not the time you spend grinding. I'm very pissed off by this new trend which started before EotN and now really grew into its full glory. As a 'casual hard core player' I feel bad that I don't have the time to grind all these titles, which are required to be able to show how 'tough', 'pro' and 'cool' you are. Titles like vanquisher and explorer have a point and a meaning. They have a point when you can feel 'I did it, I've beat this area of the game'. These titles just have a randomly decided level which you have to gain by repeating the same task over and over again. What's the point? To fill the game with stuff that requires minimal design time and people can spend a year or two while waiting for GW2? There are far better was to do that. People do'nt need to gain actual game mechanical benefits from the titles to keep them interested. Simply offering some cool item possibilities would be enough and wouldn't make players like me feel so bad. If this grind trend stays, there is a possibility that even I, a very dedicated fan and wiki contributor, might think changing the game I am dedicated to. The hard mode update boosted the reputation bonuses for returning books, so no more supergrind titles. Still too much grind, but now it's doable when you're extremely bored.

One-use-only items
Potions, scrolls and similiar one use only items are used in almost every rpg out there. They work well in some games, but they aren't a game mechanic that needs to be present in every game. Guild Wars was doing fine without, and now that these were introduced they don't work well at all. The first time we saw them was in the original Halloween party. We got some funny items with no real in game effects which we could use for some party spirit. In the next event, the Wintersday, the first one use items with a game effect were introduced. The candy canes removed DP, giving an advantage to those PvE players who had them. It wasn't too bad since people werent able to hoard too many during the event. However, we soon learned that every event would be having these items available from now on. And with the introduction of EotN everyone has access to these items all the time. And now they're not simple DP removal items anymore. Now they boost your hp, armor, make you immune to critical hits, boost your speed, etc. And not only you, but the whole party! Sacrifice one skill point and some materials for an item which removes all DP and gives 10 MB for the whole party? Who wouldn't do that now that it's so easy and cheap? What's the point in hard mode when there's no risk in losing by accumulating 60 DP as your party can have multiple items to save you from this fate? Use one item to get your party to 10 MB, then use one to boost your abilities and roll the huge über group of pwnage with no effort. I could buy hundreds of these items right now, and if my girlfriend would do the same we could have nearly a thousand of these items. That's more than enough for every vanquishable area and every hard mode mission in the game. Anyone could beat any area with these items if they even try to make a decent build, even if they don't really have a clue about their profession at all.

Please don't add these items to GW2, and if at all possible, please save GW1 and remove these items now!

= Developer communication with the community = I'm generally verry happy with this. I'm planning on writing a very long thing here, so this is just a reminder for myself:
 * Not happy with http://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?title=User_talk:Gaile_Gray&diff=463311&oldid=463294. I'm still confused.