New players, beware

[Bladestorm]

gw2 is not what it seems. There is a difference between what gw2 and supporters say it is and what it actually is. There is a lot of misinformation regarding this game and I'm going to cut right through it. gw2 is sorely lacking of in-depth and proper analysis. I speak as a 10-year player since launch. I have seen the ups, downs and shenanigans. New players. Do NOT just accept the kool-aid that a lot of community leaders say you should drink. Remain skeptical. You can think of this as a veteran's warning to new players as well as a review. I should also say that I am blatantly biased against mmos since they're pretty much shallow, overrated gaming experiences and that I've stopped playing them for 2.5 years now.

Design
-------
If you come from an rpg with dedicated roles, skip this game. gw2 is basically an action-rpg hack-and-slash where there are minimal and cosmetic differences between classes. gw2 and its community loves to pretend that it has 'roles', but the combat is not designed for them. Every class has healing, dodging, buffs, debuffs and an evenly split skill bar between weapons and utility skills. In that sense, every class essentially functions the same way and is basically a hack-and-slash killing machine. Which wouldn't be a problem if gw2 came out as an action game, but it decided to pretend that's it's an rpg as well!

Narrative
----------
While the main story and expansions are passable enough, the 'living world' makes up the bulk of the story in this game. And yes...it is bad. The 'living world' functions as basically a modern sitcom with all the cheesy one-liners and Saturday morning cartoon villains (Hello Scarlet!). A story structure like this is basically like fast food. That is, made to order. What is instead advertised as a 'fantasy rpg epic' ends up being like an immersion-breaker, meta-narrative. A bootleg Rick and Morty, which means that the authors play around with the story too much by injecting modern conveniences and pretending how great they are. As I grew and changed over the years since I've played this game, the story simply has not aged well at all.

Gameplay
-----------
(pve)
Like I said, it's a hack-and-slash. Open-world pve, though immersive in its event system, pretty much consists of getting masses of people together to just spam the 1 key until the boss' HP reaches 0. Don't even get me started on the ridiculous boss HP in an obvious attempt to stretch out encounters. Dungeons, fractals, raids. Same thing. Just add a small party plus a corridor.
(pvp/wvw)
spvp. Garbage. Atrocious. Full of cheaters and match manipulators. A rigged matchmaking system and algorithm. Just stay away. spvp is a relic of the past where it tried to compete with MOBAs and failed flat on its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ face. wvw is arguably the best part of gw2 if not for masses of people clustered together in massive balls of death steamrolling anything with lesser numbers with barely no counter to them.

Graphics
---------
It looks good, however you will have trouble if your pc is not as cpu-intensive as the game. Basically: "IT IS NOT YOUR PC'S FAULT, IT IS THE GAME" If you have a good pc and are afraid or in regret that you 'wasted money', don't be. The game functions as if it's coded like spaghetti.

(CONCLUSION)
That's all I pretty much wanted to say. I would say all of this in the forums or on Reddit, but gw2 has plenty of loyalists in those places as with any typical game these days that apologists put on a pedestal. Also, I would probably get my post taken down. So, I say it here on Steam, more or less an independent platform where things can be discussed openly without much concern.

[Joker]

Also worth mentioning that all of GW2's content is relevant.
Not like WoW where you only have expansion content (besides cosmetic/achievement farming old stuff)

As a new player you have a lot more content available for you to play with GW2

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

And the advantage of Guild Wars 2 is that you can just jump in an play whenever you want.

That's the main advantage of GW2, even if you got ascended gear back in 2013, you are still uptodate or very close to it.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

I don't lack content when I played the game.
I recently jumped into the game again like a month ago. Last time I played was just before EoD.

Then you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of content ahead of you, won't speak of it's quality because it's subjective but I hope you have fun.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

No reason you have to play GW2 every day.
No 1 game has to hold your attentions every single day/month/year, so many options out there

True, that's why I played GW2 in the first place, as a break from WoW.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

Repeatable content like fractals/strikes etc will also feel much more fresh and fun after a break

In my case - Not really, the only fun I had in the past few years with the PVE content was teaching newbies how to play or do encounters but even then I faced ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of bugs and geniune lack of care from ANET. The worst offender was when we killed Deimos and the game restarted the encounter instead of counting it as a kill because of which we recieved no loot, after contacting ANET support they said they can do nothing about it and that we should just kill it again. We did kill it but the bad taste remains, especially since they didn't fix the issue after months. Outside of that alot of the encounters either got stale or are hella disappointing imo. I am also hella jaded so take that into consideration.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

Also worth mentioning that all of GW2's content is relevant.
Not like WoW where you only have expansion content (besides cosmetic/achievement farming old stuff)

While still true, they seem to be taking a page from GW2 book in that regard as of recent, especially the Chromie time mechanic, dungeons scaling to your level and timewalking events.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

As a new player you have a lot more content available for you to play with GW2

True, as a new player GW2 is a treat. For veteran players? Not so much imho.

[Joker]

@Clawfinger

Thanks for your replies.
Always niceto see a person who is a bit more balanced in their critique and not just here to bash on every single aspect of the game, no matter what (not mentioning any names)

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Joker:

@Clawfinger

Thanks for your replies.
Always niceto see a person who is a bit more balanced in their critique and not just here to bash on every single aspect of the game, no matter what (not mentioning any names)

Hey thanks, I appreciate having a decent discussion with u. My view of the game is a bit skewed due to having played it for so long but I try to be as objective as much as I can be and see both sides of the argument.

[Q]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Clawfinger:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Smol Hobbit:

yeah like 5 years i suck at math anyways but we ignoring the context... you have to pay every month, you fail and your acc is kidnapped till ransom is paid i mean... subscription.
if i had 1000 right now id buy bunch of power tools lol i wouldn't invest that in a game hell no, or get a nice modular psu that will last more than 5 years kk you get the point.

Then $15 bucks (on sale) for gw2 hot & pof it's such a sweet deal thats a month worth of wow or other sub based mmo i mean jezz do ppl actually arguing this? i wouldn't think twice i mean get a month of wow, everquest, final fantasy etc or gw2 base game, unlocked, two expansions etc no sub ever. *insert fry meme, take my money"

There's the advantage of not having to wait 2-3 years for half baked dungeon when paying a sub, in case of GW2 most of the pve content for the last few years (starting with IBS) has been hella disappointing. Also Blizzard actively fixes bugs while arenanet is sitting on a pile of really annoying bugs and borderline broken features.

Well IBS was Ok'ish not great not terrible.. IMO for me it was good (drizzlewood is a nice map with a decent meta) but champions ouch... thx covid!! anyways Blizzard has to take care of his fav son and that's good. Other mmos ive played have multiple bugs but you learn to live with that and i mean Lineage II, Everquest 2, Lotro, New World and i won't say anything about ESO but hmm well skyrim and fallout 4 are known for having so many nice bugs, glitches and well... stuff that hasn't been fixed for years.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Smol Hobbit:

Well IBS was Ok'ish not great not terrible.. IMO for me it was good (drizzlewood is a nice map with a decent meta) but champions ouch... thx covid!! anyways Blizzard has to take care of his fav son and that's good. Other mmos ive played have multiple bugs but you learn to live with that and i mean Lineage II, Everquest 2, Lotro, New World and i won't say anything about ESO but hmm well skyrim and fallout 4 are known for having so many nice bugs, glitches and well... stuff that hasn't been fixed for years.

Don't bring up single player games into the mix. They are no longer supported by the developers. I also can't speak about other mmos outside of WoW and FF14.

If it was just normal bugs that only are mildly annoying I wouldn't even bother mentioning them but you've got plethora of borderline broken affixes in fractals, some encounters have bugs that can mess you up (the one i always go for - Qadim 7 carpet disappearing visually but it's still there for 2-3 seconds which can lead to situations where you walk into it and get almost one shot because due to spaghetti code, it's still there.) and certain hearts/events not working, sometimes forcing you to wait for a map reset to complete something.

[Q]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Clawfinger:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Smol Hobbit:

...

Don't bring up single player games into the mix. They are no longer supported by the developers. I also can't speak about other mmos outside of WoW and FF14.

If it was just normal bugs that only are mildly annoying I wouldn't even bother mentioning them but you've got plethora of borderline broken affixes in fractals, some encounters have bugs that can mess you up (the one i always go for - Qadim 7 carpet disappearing visually but it's still there for 2-3 seconds which can lead to situations where you walk into it and get almost one shot because due to spaghetti code, it's still there.) and certain hearts/events not working, sometimes forcing you to wait for a map reset to complete something.

Fair enough, btw i just realized bethesda is ESO publisher not the developer and yes eg: fallout 4 has bugs since launch being fixed by mods or with no fix at all to this date but then capcom release patches for resident evil games every now and then ohh well that's off-topic.
Some old metas like ogre wars glitch and can't start unless there's another instance available or reset. Game breaking bugs should be addressed asap... imagine doing Drizzlewood meta to the end then claw of jormag may or may not spawn that would be a disaster and absolutely gamebreaking. There's a escale imo of how devastating bugs can be, if the event doesn't happen cuz bugs well it is bad but it's even worse if you are midway of finishing it and then it fails cuz a random bug.
Similar to ogre wars bug, in bjora sometimes Jhavi won't do the escort and remain in the camp and without her there's no drakkar, it's been a while since last time i saw that bug but i hope it has been fixed.


I wonder if there's a list of known, verified bugs by multiple players kinda like something you would see in a wiki list.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Smol Hobbit:

Fair enough, btw i just realized bethesda is ESO publisher not the developer and yes eg: fallout 4 has bugs since launch being fixed by mods or with no fix at all to this date but then capcom release patches for resident evil games every now and then ohh well that's off-topic.
Some old metas like ogre wars glitch and can't start unless there's another instance available or reset. Game breaking bugs should be addressed asap... imagine doing Drizzlewood meta to the end then claw of jormag may or may not spawn that would be a disaster and absolutely gamebreaking. There's a escale imo of how devastating bugs can be, if the event doesn't happen cuz bugs well it is bad but it's even worse if you are midway of finishing it and then it fails cuz a random bug.
Similar to ogre wars bug, in bjora sometimes Jhavi won't do the escort and remain in the camp and without her there's no drakkar, it's been a while since last time i saw that bug but i hope it has been fixed.

I wonder if there's a list of known, verified bugs by multiple players kinda like something you would see in a wiki list.

Funny you've mentioned drizzlewood. In drizzlewood if you try to do Flight of the Eagle Spirit adventure, there's decent chance the spirit suddenly disappears making the adventure impossible to complete by anyone until the map is restarted. This bug has been in the game for almost 3 years now. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/80275-flight-of-the-eagle-spirit-blocking-story-progress/#comment-1744514

GW2 wiki usually has a list of bugs on the pages of respective abilities, zones etc. though it's rarely complete.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Silent_Surf_Fractal
On each respective ability of the boss you can see a bug mentioned. It's usually in subsections, in trivia or seperate section for bugs/anomalies.

You can also find lists of bugs made by players on reddit that are still up-to-date even if they are years old because arenanet very rarely fixes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/138vq0c/with_the_new_fractal_coming_up_mistlock/ here's one for fractal affixes.

[Doragor]

Gameplay is great.
Gear progression is my favorite in any MMO.
Events are good and theres a pretty nice scale to the amount of players on every map, even if some maps are dead.
The few raids are pretty fun, only think Dhuum and both Quaddins need a rework, memorizing all that instakill crap makes me angry.
Graphics are passable, performance is garbage (IIRC game can only barely support multithreading and just recently upgraded to dx11).
Story is horrible and only gets worse with every expansion.

I'd go on a rant about nobody caring about the "main characters" but it would be like urinating on an ocean of piss, so TL DR
Just kill Braham already; Taimi and Gorik are cringe; Rox is practically dead and I really can't care about Marjory and Kasmeer when they barely show up; Rytlock, Crecia and Canach are fine though.

Spoiler for EoD
As for EoD, THE expansion aimed at fixing story and getting rid of LW : Yao is lame, Mai Trin is kill; Marjory keeps complaining; Kasmer is a cameo; stop trying to make me like Gorrik it's not working; Taimi is going to die, except she isn't; Rama is ok.

[Bladestorm]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Frost:

Right. That's why 3 or more people got banned just for posting in this thread alone.

Believe what you will. I did not report anyone. You do know there are others in this discussion.

You made this thread. Something tells me that time isn't an issue.

You think I live on the Steam forums...well, that is not the case. Some of us have jobs or other non-game related things to do sometimes.

It's not an idea or argument though is it? You posted a bunch of opinions and played them off as objective fact.

Not an argument, you say? Here, let me show you the premise (gw2 is not great), arguments (lack of good game design, over-praised, badly managed). Don't equate dismissal of an argument with its validity.

You're basically saying that everyone should listen to you and only you, and disregard what everyone else that actually still plays this game says. Of course people are going to go against you on this. What did you think was going to happen?

Like people disregarding what I say because I'm "jaded" or "burnt out"? Come on now. And 'listen to me'? No. I said, 'Here are the facts about this game' and 'buyer beware'. That's it. But, I get it. People don't like my tone. The thing is: if I was civil, nobody would care. People can wax poetically about 'objectivity' but they have the strongest biases of all.

[SinisterSlay]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Doragor:

Gameplay is great.
Gear progression is my favorite in any MMO.
Events are good and theres a pretty nice scale to the amount of players on every map, even if some maps are dead.
The few raids are pretty fun, only think Dhuum and both Quaddins need a rework, memorizing all that instakill crap makes me angry.
Graphics are passable, performance is garbage (IIRC game can only barely support multithreading and just recently upgraded to dx11).
Story is horrible and only gets worse with every expansion.

I'd go on a rant about nobody caring about the "main characters" but it would be like urinating on an ocean of piss, so TL DR
Just kill Braham already; Taimi and Gorik are cringe; Rox is practically dead and I really can't care about Marjory and Kasmeer when they barely show up; Rytlock, Crecia and Canach are fine though.

Spoiler for EoD
As for EoD, THE expansion aimed at fixing story and getting rid of LW : Yao is lame, Mai Trin is kill; Marjory keeps complaining; Kasmer is a cameo; stop trying to make me like Gorrik it's not working; Taimi is going to die, except she isn't; Rama is ok.

Aurene was put on a bus, Canach appears to be on it too, maybe communting. Crecia is on the bus too. And it looks like Zoja's bus is coming back.

[Rhapsody]

Oprindeligt skrevet af JTGuevara:

'Here are the facts about this game' and 'buyer beware'.

They are hardly facts though, just your opinion on various things, especially when in any way relating to the game community. I said it earlier that you should have posted a proper store page review and not here if you don't want discussion about your opinions but it probably got lost among other posts. It's not a perfect game, and there's many flaws which have been discussed over the years in more appropriate manner than you tried to, but the way you're trying to put your subjective experience on PvP or event participation or level of engagement in story content as facts erodes the ground from under your comment, revealing just an empty hole underneath.

[amarrminer]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Clawfinger:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Smol Hobbit:

Fair enough, btw i just realized bethesda is ESO publisher not the developer and yes eg: fallout 4 has bugs since launch being fixed by mods or with no fix at all to this date but then capcom release patches for resident evil games every now and then ohh well that's off-topic.
Some old metas like ogre wars glitch and can't start unless there's another instance available or reset. Game breaking bugs should be addressed asap... imagine doing Drizzlewood meta to the end then claw of jormag may or may not spawn that would be a disaster and absolutely gamebreaking. There's a escale imo of how devastating bugs can be, if the event doesn't happen cuz bugs well it is bad but it's even worse if you are midway of finishing it and then it fails cuz a random bug.
Similar to ogre wars bug, in bjora sometimes Jhavi won't do the escort and remain in the camp and without her there's no drakkar, it's been a while since last time i saw that bug but i hope it has been fixed.

I wonder if there's a list of known, verified bugs by multiple players kinda like something you would see in a wiki list.

Funny you've mentioned drizzlewood. In drizzlewood if you try to do Flight of the Eagle Spirit adventure, there's decent chance the spirit suddenly disappears making the adventure impossible to complete by anyone until the map is restarted. This bug has been in the game for almost 3 years now. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/80275-flight-of-the-eagle-spirit-blocking-story-progress/#comment-1744514

GW2 wiki usually has a list of bugs on the pages of respective abilities, zones etc. though it's rarely complete.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Silent_Surf_Fractal
On each respective ability of the boss you can see a bug mentioned. It's usually in subsections, in trivia or seperate section for bugs/anomalies.

You can also find lists of bugs made by players on reddit that are still up-to-date even if they are years old because arenanet very rarely fixes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/138vq0c/with_the_new_fractal_coming_up_mistlock/ here's one for fractal affixes.

yep, this is the buggiest mmo in existance (at least of the well known games)
and anet doesnt seem to care about it all. even in the main story line.
nothing better than spamming buttons for an hour, and being rewarded with
an error message.

[Rhapsody]

Oprindeligt skrevet af amarrminer:

yep, this is the buggiest mmo in existance (at least of the well known games)

"Well known" is also subjective and relative. Perhaps it's been a bad experience for you, subjectively, but I'd suggest trying out more games all the same.