Guild Wars 2

Ever since the game has gone free to play, I was able to recruit about a hundred players into my guild. However, only 30 are active and the rest had already quit within the 10-20 levels of the game, as they have already been inactive for a week. Several of my friends had also started to play, so I decided to ask them what they thought about the game, and I asked the people who are still active.

The biggest thing I heard from them was that the game was boring for the starter areas, as well as much of the open world they had played so far. This was mainly due to the fact that there wasn’t much challenge or excitement behind anything, you just killed things or picked up stuff and handed it to NPCs.

However, they didn’t have the same response after I ran a few dungeons with them, and I think this shows that open world PvE is very dull. Many of them had gotten used to NPCs dying to autoattacks, and in dungeons they charged in and learned the hard way.

Another thing, the game does not provide a good tutorial, and I think there should be an optional advanced combat tutorial explaining stats, boons, conditions, blocks, etc etc. The ‘trickle’ of information through levels does not provide players enough information about what they could be doing later, and many ignore it BECAUSE it’s just very tempting to just grab the reward and accept it. I had to explain many different mechanics and features to newer players, and while I didn’t mind it, I realized that many more players would not have someone else guide them through the game. An example I would like to use is guilds. I had to mail every single new member to explain representing a guild, and what representing does. Many of them did not know you had to represent to use guild chat, many more did not know you can be in more than one guild.

The final thing is that players participate in events with other players, but after they complete the events, they will probably never see each other again. This leads to an overall lack of community development. The game’s design encourages players to follow events to get rewards and experience, and to continue to explore. This leaves new players without a solid ground to return to. This leaves the player with no one else to play with, and even though you are technically playing with all of these other players, more often than not, many of them will not talk to each other. The only instances where new players actually communicate are dungeons, if they aren’t being kicked because they aren’t 80/Zerkers. sPvP has some slight communication, but many new players wander into sPvP matches and get stomped on anyways.

I haven’t seen any new players in WvW though

The only exception to the final point, however, is if they have friends/family/whatever to play with. The final point could also describe most of the game anyways, but whatever, this is what I had gathered from my guild/friends, along with some of my personal ideas. I also don’t mean the starter areas in particular, but the lower level areas in general.

I’m not saying I have a solution to anything, I just wanted to point these out and see what other people think as far as opinions go.

Well, that f2p accounts quit very soon is kind of normal.

Anet used enough resources on the starter areas during the last 3 years.

Now it’s time anet focus more on their expansion, on returning veterans and in endgame content. If a f2p acc likes the game and upgrades it, fine thats the reason for it.
If f2p accs stop playing, who cares^^ Think about f2p accs more as test-/demoaccs for everyone who might even not like the game. Veterans are the people that like the game how it is, so no need to change it to something worse only for some f2p.

The open world PvE is way too easy. You get no adrenaline rush nor any feeling of accomplishment. This is what makes the areas boring, you get sleepy running around with nothing to fear. Some thrilling combat now and then could spice things a lil.
Have a friend who bough HoT and played to lvl36. He told me GW2 has lots of good things but it’s so easy its boring. Hope Anet makes enemies harder and please not by adding some more to HP pool, that just make it more dull. I’d rather gave em more dps and update the AI.

Prefect.3681:

The open world PvE is way too easy. You get no adrenaline rush nor any feeling of accomplishment. This is what makes the areas boring, you get sleepy running around with nothing to fear. Some thrilling combat now and then could spice things a lil.
Have a friend who bough HoT and played to lvl36. He told me GW2 has lots of good things but it’s so easy its boring. Hope Anet makes enemies harder and please not by adding some more to HP pool, that just make it more dull. I’d rather gave em more dps and update the AI.

Spot on.

I don’t mind that there is a lot of easy content for people, but I would love some challenges every now and then as well. Going into any mode other than OE-PvE is a shock for many, since you just don’t learn to survive in OW-PvE, at all. (“fond” memories of myself going into WvW first time…).