What went wrong with GW2 and why I am worried for this series (longtime fan)

I have almost 200 hours logged into this game and I still don't have a legendary and I've spend well over 15 million coins. But as the name implies, they are Legendary which in any game, means incredibly rare, as they should be. Otherwise, why keep raking in coins if you get them all in a quick and timely fashion? You should go play WoW during the first 5 years and see how many people had a legendary item. So I have no problem with this. Though what I don't like is 5 versions of the same bloody cosmetic item, 3 for tattoos. I think having a Gem subclass was too much, and pretty disappointing for the last tier of cosmetic. I would have loved a fiery / energy / neon type of the last tier personally. (Not counting Infinity items as I hate that mode and far too time consuming to bother with)

As for the chaotic game play, I'm 50/50 on this one. There is a lot of strategy to be found in the game for using your classes to the best of their ability and countering enemy classes, and at times one area can just become one exploding kill zone. But that's because the game lots coordination / organizing between the teams. Their is no ranked play or people joining in as groups like you find in Hero Shooters so naturally there is no really team structure, just all for themselves or swarm as a hoard, now if they moved the game towards that the game itself would become no longer be accessible to your average / casual player as pickup / random groups against a formed group of players will get steam rolled in minutes if not seconds.

And it's near impossible to make a game balanced all around the board without resorting to everyone starting off in the same boat with the same gun. Someone will always find something and make an oversight in the game OP, or those special players that think outside the box and turn something believed useless into a game changing or breaking power.

This whole "I bought the game and therefore i am entitled to have all characters unlocked" doesn't make any sense. The Legendaries are not a necessity. They are not required to achieve anything or add anything. They don't make you a good player. They are just a bonus. Just think about it as something that will be unlocked over time.

The pricing is also something that is reasonable. We just have to look at other games and how they release additional maps, characters, clothing, weapons; with the price tag attached. 60 or even 70 i spent on GW2 are maybe too much if you only want to spent 10 hours with it. But for the amount of playtime so many have, it's completely worth it. The only problem i see there is the shady Preorder Bonus that can also be received by buying the Deluxe Edition. But again, every publisher does that.

The whole package that is GW2 offers enough to deserve a recommendation. The only major issues it had was the first broken Content Update that managed to crash the game across all platforms after installation and forced many players, myself included, to wait for a fix. Accompanied by a bug that forced so many players to play the intro over and over. Which just shows that Popcaps major issue is QA. And the huge balance issues inside the game just demonstrate that once more.

In the end it isn't the cosmetics, Legendaries or the crashes that made me stop playing, but the sheer lack of balance. Running statistics and throwing in your own opinions as developer isn't enough when you have a competitive multiplayer game were humans show their lowest traits to succeed in a low risk high reward fashion.

Not to forget that teamplay isn't rewarded enough, despite being a team based game. And all of that could have been avoided if the developers would have tested it properly.

And that is what worries me. As the GW franchise seems to become more and more casual friendly. With lots of colorful chaos, disregarding strategy altogether. Easy to access but no way to master it. 

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@agentevil1013 wrote:

I agree with everybody's comments except for the Legendary characters. They are unique and not meant to be easy to get. I finally got my disco chomper last night. But I'm pretty close to maxing out on the plants stickers when buying $35K booster packs (I'm done with zombie side).

I was in a game last night when one of teammates was talking on the mic and he said that the unicorn chomper is going to be offered in a DLC. I don't know if he was just talking *, but if any of that is true, it would be absolutely BS on POPCAN's part in doing so. I didn't work my butt off in GW1 to achieve 313 so that others can just purchase it for $5. Again, I think he's talking like he knows it all.

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@agentevil1013 wrote:

I agree with everybody's comments except for the Legendary characters. They are unique and not meant to be easy to get. I finally got my disco chomper last night. But I'm pretty close to maxing out on the plants stickers when buying $35K booster packs (I'm done with zombie side).

I was in a game last night when one of teammates was talking on the mic and he said that the unicorn chomper is going to be offered in a DLC. I don't know if he was just talking *, but if any of that is true, it would be absolutely BS on POPCAN's part in doing so. I didn't work my butt off in GW1 to achieve 313 so that others can just purchase it for $5. Again, I think he's talking like he knows it all.

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"Easy to get" Not to be rude, but you idiots that keep saying that are getting on my nerves. There is no skill based way to get the legendary characters. You didn't earn any legendary piece you got. You were just lucky it popped up in the package you opened. No game should be locking me out of specific characters so there's some false sense of longevity in the game. If I maxed out all my Super Brain characters, why shouldn't I be rewarded with his legendary hat and character pieces? Is that not possible? Or do I have to play game after game after game after game, opening 15k packages just hoping I get one toxic brainz piece. I want to play with someone new, but nope, we gotta have "super rare characters" that nobody can ever use because there are 70 million gemmed customization pieces you need to grind through just to slightly increase your chances of getting a legendary character piece. 

All you people that keep saying, "Oh no, it's fine. It's just super rare and it wouldn't be special if everybody had these characters" make no sense. It's a f***ing game I paid for and I played way enough to justify me deserving to be able to play as Toxic Brains or the computer scientist. Electro Brainz is better than Toxic Brainz anyways, so it's not like Toxic Brainz is this super cool and interesting character that needs to be blocked off from the public. And don't get me started on how useless Disco CHomper and Iron Citron is, but I would still like the option to use them, especially if I'm grinding my life away. They messed up. Simple. Crazy how Gw2 is more barebones than the first game at its end. You would think devs would understand people don't like to rely on luck to get things. This is why Bungie has increased and fixed so much with Destiny because the community spoke. But you dummies are so complacent, on your knees acting as if everything is "O.K"

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@Screion wrote:

This whole "I bought the game and therefore i am entitled to have all characters unlocked" doesn't make any sense. The Legendaries are not a necessity. They are not required to achieve anything or add anything. They don't make you a good player. They are just a bonus. Just think about it as something that will be unlocked over time.

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What you and other people don't see to understand is that you can literally not unlock any legendary item if you're not lucky enough. Plus they are going to add more and more drops with each big update. Nothing about being entitled but don't lack characters behind rng. Nobody has ever liked it and the fact you people keep acting as if it's ok is just nasty. Grow a pair. 

@DeiSasori Lol it's nice for you to feel entitled to something simply because you paid for 99.99999999% of the game, but you didn't pay to get a rare character without having to rely on luck...I highly recommend you look into more games with rare drops before complaining about how you feel entitled to something simply because you paid for it or committed a certain amount of time to it...

It's extremely salty and unnecessary for you to call people idiots simply because they have the patience to deal with rare drops. It's not like the legendaries give you advantage in the game in anyway or are preventing you from receiving achievements...

The thing that i am most afraid of is that a common ground of balance will never be reached. I guess that is understandable since you cannot please everyone, but; popcap will most likeley be in a vicious cycle of dettered balance, nerfing/buffing one character and that in turn makes him too weak/strong, forcing them to rebuff/nerf and you can probably see what happens there. To be entireley honest, every character, if played RIGHT, is powerful. With the exception of frost rose. And i know i am playing devil's advocate here but i would say that with enough practice and mastery, you can wield 85% characters with power. 

The thing that i am most afraid of is that a common ground of balance will never be reached. I guess that is understandable since you cannot please everyone, but; popcap will most likeley be in a vicious cycle of dettered balance, nerfing/buffing one character and that in turn makes him too weak/strong, forcing them to rebuff/nerf and you can probably see what happens there. To be entireley honest, every character, if played RIGHT, is powerful. With the exception of frost rose. And i know i am playing devil's advocate here but i would say that with enough practice and mastery, you can wield 85% characters with power. 

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@MoonLiteWolf wrote:

@DeiSasori Lol it's nice for you to feel entitled to something simply because you paid for 99.99999999% of the game, but you didn't pay to get a rare character without having to rely on luck...I highly recommend you look into more games with rare drops before complaining about how you feel entitled to something simply because you paid for it or committed a certain amount of time to it...

It's extremely salty and unnecessary for you to call people idiots simply because they have the patience to deal with rare drops. It's not like the legendaries give you advantage in the game in anyway or are preventing you from receiving achievements...

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Again, the way to get legendary characters is based on nothing but a luck factor. Again, why shouldn't I be able to play as a character because of luck. It's more than rare, it's ridiculously low to the point that some people still have no characters after 200+ hours of playing. But  by all means, keep getting on your knees and taking it.Totally fair to do that to a 60 dollar game where you could literally statistically never get any. But keep on taking it. This stupidity wasn't in the first game and look how bad this game is doing. Stupid design decisions will continue to be stupid. 

Wow.... someone has a high sense of entitlement..... Just because you bought that game doesn't mean you're entitled to everything it possible has to offer. They allowed you to get the Party variants if you invest the time and skill to do so, the other 4 are just purely luck to acquire, and you'll find the same system in a lot of games. People pay for WoW and a monthly subscription yet most people don't even have a legendary item in the game though they have two systems to acquire one. Luck and time / skill put into getting one. And look, they still pay to play it and it still has a huge player base, so obviously the design system for legendaries isn't as flawed as you make it out to be. But lets go back to your idea of, if I payed for the game I should get it. Well you pay to play at a Casino, are you entitled to the jackpot every time.

So frankly, if you don't like the system. Don't play. There a ton of Free to play games out there where you can buy your legendary items, they may do better to satisfy your entitlement issues.