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Revisiting games that are 2 or more years old.
Battlerock
Member CommonPosts: 1,393
Have you done it lately? What did you experience? Did you notice an improved more playable version of a game you had once given up on? What game was it, when did you last play it and when did you first play it? What was wrong when you quit, and what made you stay if you stayed when you came back? If you left again why did it still fail to grab your attention?
Comments
Recently came back to Guild Wars 2 after two years.
The story content is significantly better and the new content they have sprinkled throughout feels better; however story is now gated to "episodes" and if you want to unlock older episode 2 (you can't unlock episode 1) content you have to pay gems.
Weapons that were underperforming got improved and even some weapons that were already strong in my opinion got improved as well. GW2 was always kind of bad at balancing. Some weapons still just obviously aren't up to snuff. In particular as a Ranger (I won't go into details):
Longbow went from one of the weakest weapons to probably the most overpowered weapon in the game right now.
Greatsword went from a strong weapon to an even stronger weapon.
Axe MH, Shortbow, and Sword are terrible. Sword MH used to be okay, but it didn't receive any significant changes so it's now far weaker than other options.
Offhands are still good, in particular Axe got significant effect buffs and more damage making it deal very good burst damage with strong debuffs; however with terrible single handed MH weapons it's really not worth taking over GS/Longbow.
Utilities and Traits got changed as well. Traits actually make a bit more sense balancing wise, and give a lot of builds (as long as you use a GS/Longbow combination) as stuff that wasn't viable before is now viable. Strong utilities such as Signets were made even stronger. Spirits got a significant buff. Some strong traits were moved deeper into trees (no more quickening zephyr on pet swap for a small amount of points), and bad ones have extra effects to them now that make them more viable.
Loot was significantly improved. No matter what you do, you get a lot of loot now. So dungeons aren't necessarily the best way to get money anymore and you have options, even WvW. That's nice. I like other minor changes they did as well to the loot system, like making magic find account bound and not gear based.
Some world bosses were improved, but aside from the new Tequatl the Sunless, they are still just loot pinatas. I hope they make dynamic events more like Tequatl, with actual things to watch out for and pay attention to and a good chance at failure.
Still lacks end game PvE content as a guild. They have guild stuff now, but it's not going to appease end game raiders from other games.
WvW now has progression system. I'm not sure how I feel about it. WvW felt pretty dead, with the exception being reset nights and maybe some primetime weekends. Most PvPers seem to want to avoid PvP altogether and focus on getting loot from captures similar to how Warhammer Online was back in the days with "musical keeps" and trading back and forth. Usually only could find one map on the main PvP servers with a commander in it, and the commander constantly switched maps which was a hassle since I didn't want to get on TS. Used to be you could find all maps full of Commanders (at least in Tier 1).
They added Ascended gear to the game. It gives a fairly small stat upgrade, but it adds up over time. Also introduced Celestial Gear, which for most specs seems to be the best gear so IMO it hurt the game a bit. You need a lot of gold (less than a Legendary Weapon for full Ascended, but still a significant amount) so it's quite grindy to get.
Nearly everything was improved from the UI and everything is much more streamlined now and convenient. Little things like skins for transmutes and minis not taking up space, significant daily changes, and so forth adds up. It definitely feels much improved when it comes to little things.
I mostly returned for the expansion. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep playing significantly, though I want to at least get Ascended Armor and possibly a Legendary Longbow (I have the Greatsword already) before the expansion hits. I don't think the expansion is necessarily going to vastly improve a lot of the weaknesses GW2 (poor PvE content for one), but the game is still fun enough to play casually here and there, especially since there is no other good MMO coming out anytime soon.
I play older games quite a bit of the time. Dunno, I just find that modern games are (to use a broad brush) too linear, too simple, too handhold-y for my taste, your mileage may vary.
What do I enjoy?
As an MMO, I spend most of my time in TSW actually; played it in beta, walked away distracted by something else at the time, and came back last year and absolutely LOVE it. The storytelling is compelling, with powerful writing, great stories, and cutscenes that I not only don't click through (like every other game) I actually pull them up on Youtube to watch again, and to show others.
Otherwise, honestly I've enjoyed going back and playing on a Vanilla WoW private server. I paid my handsome piles of money to WoW from month 2 up to and including Cataclysm - what's that, the original game plus 3 Xpacs ($240) plus $12/mo for 2 accounts for 7 years (around $2200?) = $2400+ ? I don't feel I'm "stealing" anything from Blizzard, thanks, and it seems that they don't really care much about vanilla servers (unless and until they see them as a possible revenue stream, lol). Mostly, I enjoy seeing teh chat-cries of anguish about how agonizingly hard it is. Ha ha ha.
Other games: Crusader Kings 2 - no better strategy game out there. Civ4 - better than civ5 by a long shot, with ample mods out there. WW2OL - unforgiving skill based massive PVP, full stop. Minecraft, of course.
Games I'd play a ton of if they got a revamp: Imperialism 2; Disciples II, Ground Control 2, Planescape Torment, Darklands, WoW
WoW has become easier and more streamlined. They have simplified both the classes and leveling. There are no longer any mobs in the outside world areas that will give you much of a challenge. If you enjoy the solo experience it can be difficult to enjoy as it is so easy and you are lead from place to place as soon as you enter the game. There are also a lot of random battles going on all over the place. Something that I personally don't like.
Everquest has a really awkward interface when you enter the game. You have to drag Windows around all over the place to get everything in place. Most new players would likely give up pretty quickly as it's a bit overwhelming if you haven't played the game before. The quest interface takes a while to get used to. Most of this was fairly easy for me as I've played the game before. The original interface was actually a lot cleaner even though it blocked 70% of the screen. The game is still much more risky to level in then WoW. Even with a merc healer or tank you can still easily die to a train or adds if you don't have someone to buff you up. Even with the addition of quests it still isn't a game that holds your hands. There are many zones you can potentially go to and you still have to figure out where to buy your spells. There are also tons of different spells and only 8 spell slots to choose from. That means you have to be careful about your selection of spells. There is really no way to know where to go right off the bat. The tutorial once in a while pops up a message saying you can go to this place or that place, but the zones are not arranged in a certain order that would be conducive in terms of going from one zone to the next and finding an area appropriate for your level. It takes some measure of exploration to find the Planes of Knowledge and figure out you can get to other zones from there. It's a lot easier then it used to be though because of PoK. The AAs in the game obviously add a lot in terms of having to think about what you want to invest in at what level. The weapon and enchantment system is kind of confusing as well. Sometimes you get random drops for equipment appropriate to your level, but it's not guaranteed. It's not like WoW where you will always have and upgrade form a quest. There are quests scattered around, but they don't always have something for your class and they often don't provide a lot of experience for completing them. The downtime is still a fair amount without someone to buff you when leveling. You still have to med if you are a caster. Melees don't have to much down time with a cleric merc, but it can take a while to kill things as a melee with the equipment you are provided at the start of the game. If you have a high level to twink your character I'd imagine it would be a lot faster.