Guild Wars 2

I played Guild Wars 2 at launch and found there was a lack of endgame content to play around with. I’ve started seeing videos and advertising for the new expansion that’s coming to the game and it’s peaked my interest a little bit.

That said, I am wondering if anybody can break down the current state of endgame for this game? What PvE content is there to do at endgame and are there dungeons/raids or other instanced content to do with groups of friends?

I don’t have a lot of interest in PvP but always found the storyline/gameplay elements pretty fun so PvE is my main focus and I’m wondering if there is enough content to keep me hooked or if it’s just exploring/questing as far as PvE goes?

Sadaharu.9745:

What PvE content is there to do at endgame and are there dungeons/raids or other instanced content to do with groups of friends?

No raids.

No instanced group content for more than 5 people. Most of the instanced group content for 5 people are the dungeons that you saw at release.

PvE endgame? To grind a couple new maps. You get really “amazing” rewards, though, like a armor set that is a reskin of another set and that you cannot dye.

So are you saying there is still no endgame PvE content then? Just grind quests/explore to finish off maps and get rewards? Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, do people just play this game for PvP then and that’s all?

I am assuming that this question is coming from your experiences playing other MMOs as it is not applicable to GW2 in the traditional sense of MMO design. The simple answer to your question is ALL!!! content is endgame content.

Thanks to the game’s design and scaling features, you can engage in basically any pve/pvp content at endgame whether it is continuing to work on your personal story, dungeons, fractals, wvw, pvp, map completion, excreta.

It is entirely up to the individual player to decision on what content they enjoy the most and to pursuit it at his or her leisure.

As you get to learn GW2 better, you will understand why this question is completely irrelevant.

Silvatar.5379:

I am assuming that this question is coming from your experiences play other MMOs as it is not applicable to GW2 in the traditional sense of MMO design. The simple answer to your question is ALL!!! content is endgame content.

Thanks to the game’s design and scaling features, you can engage in basically any pve/pvp content at endgame whether it is continuing to work on your personal story, dungeons, fractals, wvw, pvp, map completion, excreta.

It is entirely up to the individual player to decision on what content they enjoy the most and to pursuit it at his or her leisure.

As you get to learn GW2 better, you will understand why this question is completely irrelevant.

While I get what you’re saying, it would really help if you can give me examples of some PvE content players do regularly at max level. Essentially I want to know if there are cool monsters that are actually challenging to fight or if it’s all just questing/exploring zones and doing everything one time?

This is a horizontal game. Once you reach “endgame”, the goal is PvP, WvW or cosmetic customization.

This is opposed to the vertical games where “endgame” consists of arbitrary roadblocks that are overcome with ever increasing stats from gear.

Sadaharu.9745:

So are you saying there is still no endgame PvE content then? Just grind quests/explore to finish off maps and get rewards? Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, do people just play this game for PvP then and that’s all?

No, no. People follow this timer so they go fight against an open world boss with dozens of other players, spamming auto-attack and hoping that they do enough damage (during the 5 seconds it takes for the boss to die) to register that they were part of the event, so they can get a reward.

That – what we call “zerging” open world bosses, which most of the time is a matter of spamming auto attack – is the main endgame here.

Maybe I need to rephrase my question, zerging down bosses in 5 seconds doesn’t sound entertaining to me.

What is there to do for PvE Endgame that is actually challenging?

I had taken a break from the game for various reasons. Tried other MMOs and enjoyed them less. I’ve recently found a group of people I thoroughly enjoy (and am discovering others!) and it makes GW2 very enjoyable.

I suggest that you find people you enjoy. Once you’ve done that, it won’t matter what you’re doing … dungeons, fractals, open world, sPvP, WvW, or just chatting it up in LA.

To put it very bluntly, GW2 does not have a WoW style end game. It is not about repeatedly running a dungeon or a raid to achieve your next piece of gear so you can move to the next one and repeat the process.

The game does have several dungeons, and a tiered dungeon like content called Fractals of the Mists, which some people run repeatedly because that’s what they like but (imo) this was never intended as “end game” as others typically view it.

We do have large scale open world bosses, which a lot of people do as their end game. As Test pointed out, there’s a handy timer if you want to chase that train.

Others do pvp or wvw as their end game. Both of which have new things coming in the expansion.

Yet others just like exploring maps or leveling more characters.

Others still find their enjoyment in flipping the trading post all day.

Whatever floats your boat.

In short, the “entire game is end game.”

Endgame in pve:
-Silverwastes can be fun for a bit.
-Dungeons exp modes
-Fractals
-Map completions
Otherwise its all about saving up for skins or working towards ascended or legendary.

I am hoping that the expansion adds more endgame harder content to the pve, but I’m kind of doubting it with how most of their time seems to be more focused on wvw and pvp in my opinion.

1. only a couple bosses only last a short while.
2. Fractals, man.
3. You want gear grind? Craft some ascended armor/weapons/etc. Also legendaries are still a thing.
4. Achievement hunt.
5. the new maps are a bit grindy if you don’t care about what’s going on with the story, but it does fit and there’s always something to do in them.

People are being overly pessimistic/negative nancy in this thread, imo.

Sebrent.3625:

I had taken a break from the game for various reasons. Tried other MMOs and enjoyed them less. I’ve recently found a group of people I thoroughly enjoy (and am discovering others!) and it makes GW2 very enjoyable.

I suggest that you find people you enjoy. Once you’ve done that, it won’t matter what you’re doing … dungeons, fractals, open world, sPvP, WvW, or just chatting it up in LA.

I have friends who would play this game with me if there is challenging content but without some challenging content they will not play this game unfortunately. I’m trying to find reasons to convince them to give this a try.

I’m not worried about gearing up or anything like that. What I’m interested in is difficult encounters to work on for a sense of achievement and challenge. It doesn’t have to be raids or dungeons, it just has to be difficult, so is there anything like that in this game?

Max out the crafting professions, Craft ascended armor, Legendary weapon, run dungeons/fractals, WvW/PvP and just enjoy this beautiful game.

If your friends want a challenge, then have them do high level fractals.

They are quite doable, but they can also be challenging. You can’t just mindlessly run through the higher level fractals.

As a bonus, daily fractal chests are a great way to get some ascended gear. That can help you avoid the mats grind for ascended gear … though you’ll also be looting mats while doing the fractals … so bonus :-p

Sadaharu.9745:

Sebrent.3625:

I had taken a break from the game for various reasons. Tried other MMOs and enjoyed them less. I’ve recently found a group of people I thoroughly enjoy (and am discovering others!) and it makes GW2 very enjoyable.

I suggest that you find people you enjoy. Once you’ve done that, it won’t matter what you’re doing … dungeons, fractals, open world, sPvP, WvW, or just chatting it up in LA.

I have friends who would play this game with me if there is challenging content but without some challenging content they will not play this game unfortunately. I’m trying to find reasons to convince them to give this a try.

I’m not worried about gearing up or anything like that. What I’m interested in is difficult encounters to work on for a sense of achievement and challenge. It doesn’t have to be raids or dungeons, it just has to be difficult, so is there anything like that in this game?

Honestly you’re going to get mixed signals on that, as ‘challenging’ varies from player to player. Sometimes quite a bit. It also depends on the type of challenging content you’re after. If you’re looking specifically instanced, Aether path in Twilight Arbor is considering challenging by some though not by others. The same can be said for the Arah dungeon in general. And you have Fractals, those can be a kitten at higher levels.

For open world, many players seem to enjoy the new Silverwastes map, which has a touch of WvW in a PvE setting, and the Mordrem foes can offer some challenge during the sieges.

Sadaharu.9745:

Sebrent.3625:

I had taken a break from the game for various reasons. Tried other MMOs and enjoyed them less. I’ve recently found a group of people I thoroughly enjoy (and am discovering others!) and it makes GW2 very enjoyable.

I suggest that you find people you enjoy. Once you’ve done that, it won’t matter what you’re doing … dungeons, fractals, open world, sPvP, WvW, or just chatting it up in LA.

I have friends who would play this game with me if there is challenging content but without some challenging content they will not play this game unfortunately. I’m trying to find reasons to convince them to give this a try.

I’m not worried about gearing up or anything like that. What I’m interested in is difficult encounters to work on for a sense of achievement and challenge. It doesn’t have to be raids or dungeons, it just has to be difficult, so is there anything like that in this game?

The short answer to your final question is no. The game didn’t really try to push that kind of content at launch and hasn’t made huge strides beyond 1 dungeon to do so. ANd that’s fine, because that isn’t strictly what GW2 is about. The open world/exploring/wvw etc keeps ppl playing.

Having said that, they are recognising a need for challenging content;

- the annual Gauntlet is a skill test of 1 player vs 1 boss in series of harder challenges. But thats a yearly event thing and not in game atm.

- Season 2 brought more challenging mobs for the story and new maps. I don’t think this matches what you are after though. SIlverwastes is more difficult than most zones

- 2 new major bosses – Tequatl (now thorughly licked by the community) and Triple Headed Worm (only doable by highly organised guilds and raid groups – rarely done by most standards in game due to difficulty)

- The expansion WILL bring challenging content in a form we currently have not been told.

If you are looking for traditional endgame challenging content ala TSW/WoW/FF14, then realistically speaking (and this is from someone who thoroughly enjoys this game) it isn’t here…yet

Sadaharu.9745:

While I get what you’re saying, it would really help if you can give me examples of some PvE content players do regularly at max level. Essentially I want to know if there are cool monsters that are actually challenging to fight or if it’s all just questing/exploring zones and doing everything one time?

Well, this is always a horrifically polarizing question, you either have people talking about how much of an awful grind endgame is (typically those people have convinced themselves that there is only one thing in the game worth doing, and they keep doing it over and over again until they hate themselves), and people repeating the classic Anet line of “all content is endgame” and “play your way” and all of that stuff.

Basically, as an example, many people who play the game regularly do dungeons speed runs once a day. With the current attainable level of gear, doing all 3 paths of Ascalon Catacombs (a level 35 dungeon) will net you a very reasonable 4.5 direct gold, along with probably 30-50 silver in loot, as well as 180 dungeon tokens, that can be saved up to buy exotics and skins. People also frequently run Citadel of Flames Path 1 for a decent amount of gold, and some dungeon tokens, as it is also very easy. These are just a couple of examples, with the LFG tool, it’s fairly easy to find people to run/speedrun dungeons with you, which is a sizable part of the PvE endgame in my opinion. There’s also fractals, which is a partially randomized, scaling dungeon that can net you some nice gold, items, and unique skins with a frequency dependent on the difficulty of the run that you’re doing (up to level 50 fractals, which are very unforgiving)

Like someone else said, there are also world bosses that each drop one guaranteed rare weapon (30-50s, with a chance to salvage ectoplasm) with a chance for an exotic, as well as spawning a chest that generally contains decent loot at higher levels. This is relatively horizontal, because world bosses range in level from 15 to 80, so you will end up seeing quite a lot of the game world just by hitting up every one of these bosses as they spawn. Sure, most of them don’t take a whole lot of concentration or thought, but most of them are pretty cool visually, and quite impressive until you’ve killed them about 15-20 times.

Basically, the whole “horizontal endgame” is fairly true to a point. Doing world bosses and farming dungeons, both low and high level nets you nice amounts of gold, skins, and items that can be used to get yourself to the highest tier of gear (forever hopefully) which is ascended. Once you are there, the game really revolves almost completely around getting skins. There are legendary weapons, which are simply very flashy skins, with ascended level, selectable stats. The nice thing about legendary weapons is that they require you to have at least tried out almost every part of the game (map completion, WvW tokens, dungeon tokens, skill points), the not so nice thing is that they also require a TON of grind. It is possible to buy a legendary, but this will generally cost you upwards of 1,000g.

Outside of legendaries, there are quite a few cool skins to collect, and a buttload of achievements to… achieve. Basically however, there is no designated endgame, what you do after level 80 (purely for PvE) pretty much involves going back to the rest of the world and doing everything else that you didn’t do before, or things that you did do, just a bunch of times. there are several zones and encounters that either require level 80, or are simply extremely difficult without high level gear, but in general, once you hit 80, the world is your oyster.

On the subject of grind, I would say that GW2 has “optional grind” in that you basically choose how much you want to grind. It’s very possible to just be a poor, undergeared nomad, and see basically everything that GW2 has to offer. Even the hardest content PvE content, high level fractals, are the exact same as lower level fractals in actual content (enemies, zones). However, if you want any of the really colorful shinies that other players have, i might take a bit of grind.

Sadaharu.9745:

I played Guild Wars 2 at launch and found there was a lack of endgame content to play around with. I’ve started seeing videos and advertising for the new expansion that’s coming to the game and it’s peaked my interest a little bit.

That said, I am wondering if anybody can break down the current state of endgame for this game? What PvE content is there to do at endgame and are there dungeons/raids or other instanced content to do with groups of friends?

I don’t have a lot of interest in PvP but always found the storyline/gameplay elements pretty fun so PvE is my main focus and I’m wondering if there is enough content to keep me hooked or if it’s just exploring/questing as far as PvE goes?

Endgame content people do regularly:
- dungeons (mostly for gold/tokens)
- fractals (high level fractals for a challenge, though as mentioned this is subjective and once you get good at them, while still fun, less challenging)
- farming (gold for skins for example)
- achievements
- finishing up living story season 2 and all of its achievements will take a while if returning to the game
- guild missions weekly
- WvW
- Spvp

Personal goals people set for them selves:
- aquire a legendary (or multiple)
- aquire ascended armor and weapons
- finish certain achievements
- get a certain look
- collecting minis

What you will NOT find at endgame here:
- hand holding at what to do
- an item “carrot on a stick” which devalues you your equipment forcing you to refarm gear (though getting the first complete set of ascended gear will likely take a while)
- raid content to feed said “carrot on a stick”

Since the game has no subscription and you own an account, feel free to give it a try and play around a little. Though if you felt a “lack of endgame content” then, chances are you’ll feel that way again.

Thank you for the very detailed posts guys, I think the last few posts gave me most of the information I was looking for and I am downloading the game again to see for myself.

I really appreciate you guys sticking with me on this thread and not simply flaming.

Is there an official release date set for the expansion yet or is it still unannounced? I thought the new class looked really cool.

Well I still find it my nice little puppethouse, and still collecting nice dyes and skins…

Only 11 dyes to go… skins well somewhat more

And then back to enjoying dress up some more.

Yes ascended armor is nice as well. Working on 3rd set now. have my 8 mains with full ascneded weapons and trinkets..

Expansion was to expand on character proffesions, it is the real new question atm.

And no date available yet, a lot of guesses: yes, actual date: no.

There are plenty of things to do in game contrary to what others might say (also i don’t get the hate, if you hate so much the game, why play?)

me personally even when i have a full day at disposal (weekends?) i can’t seem to go through everything there is. So what i do? is rotate few activities between them and like this i won’t get bored and i enjoy the game plenty.

1. World Bosses, and no they don’t last 5 seconds, only a few and on the 1-15 lvl maps (dooh) But there are some quite interesting hard and rewarding enough (for Tequatl you get at leas 2 gold and 3 rares for 15-20 minutes…if your overflow succeds)

Also thanks to the Megaserver, all servers are united, and once the max player number on a map is reached, an overflow is created, so you are no longer alone on a low lvl map.
2. Dungeons, for gold/tokens
3. Fractals for fun, challange, rewards
4. SilverWastes for fun(depends on the map…usually find players that i talk with and have fun) Also ChestFarm…not that fun but rewarding…well not fun at all to be honest xD but it does make money
5. Crafting Ascended…not easy not cheap…but challaging
6. Crafting a Legendary…quite a lot of work
7. Get a high number of Achievement Points ( at 5K you get 15g and 400 gems…and a title xD )
8. PvP with friends…if you go in alone you might scream until you start crying, there were a few cases when the match started and someone wrote (this is my first PvP match) you just know that your team is gonna loose. But with friends, maybe via skype…a lot of fun and same with WvWvW (only place where Servers still matter)
9. Leveling alts for different stories/role plays/classes
10. Skins, this game is basicly a big dress up game for adults

and many more, this is what i find amazing about the game, you get quite fast at 80 and once you do…you do anything you want…you don’t have to farm the same content over and over and over until you get the best armor/weapons and then you wait for the new expansion.

Have fun ingame

what endgame?

Oh you must mean the challenging and repeatable content that rewards players based on skill instead of RNG that GW2 has so much of.

End game is get to level 80 then play everything.
There is also only so much content that can be made in a certain amount of time plus bug fixes, tweaks and balance involved after release.

Oh and after game content, theres pvp for your end game.

Endgame = post stuff on the gw2 forums.

Sadaharu.9745:

While I get what you’re saying, it would really help if you can give me examples of some PvE content players do regularly at max level. Essentially I want to know if there are cool monsters that are actually challenging to fight or if it’s all just questing/exploring zones and doing everything one time?

PVE end game:

- dungeons
- all the basic and rare collections
- achievement hunting in general
- getting to fractal level 50
- getting a legendary weapon
- running the meta event in silverwastes for money
- running orr event train for karma
- outgearing yourself in ascended gear.

Dungeons are mostly the same except 1 new path in ta. Fractals are mostly the same except they added a few fractals based of sections of living story. Basically they abandoned instanced content in this game all for zerg training. I gave up on dungeons when one of the Devs left/outted forgot his name. I was hopeful for something similar to doa/uw/urgoz/etc from gw1 but nope. If you’re looking for challenging content I would try out WildStar