Guild Wars 2

dimgl.4786:

This is all completely a matter of opinion. Many players feel the need to get to the end because the game has levels. Once you’re 80, you have reached the end and now you want to actually start playing the game. This is mentality fueled by a decade (or more) of gaming.

This is kinda what I’m saying and, yes, it is a matter of opinion. What I’m saying (my OPINION) is MAYBE instead of “Once you’re 80, you have reached the end and now you want to actually start playing the game.” MAAAYBEEE do that from level 1. At least, that’s how I’ve been going at, I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit, and I THINK that might make a difference for SOME players “mentality fueled by a decade (or more) of gaming”.

I’ve hit the wall that many people seem to be hitting, and have started looking elsewhere for other games to occupy my time.

I keep asking myself where is the fun at endgame, where is the progression. It was fun for a while. Once I finished the story and got 100% map completion I just sort of found I’ve lost all interest.

I liked the skill aspect of the game early on, but the more I played the more I saw an imbalance in professions for a game trying to do away with the trinity paradigm. The boon/condition system could use improvement.

The lack of variety in my weapon choices and skills is annoying as well. Too limiting, even with weapon swapping or kit changing or attunement swapping. The forced nature of having to play with switching dynamic feels like a bandaid to make it seem more dynamic than it really is.

I did enjoy WvW for a while, but with only two maps and a zerg vs zerg mentality its pretty boring other than as a karma/gold ride when your matched well. When your being steamrolled by another server or doing the steamrolling, its just not fun.

I’ve hit max level on 3 toons, with a 50 and a 60 filling out my other two slots. I have zero desire to run through all the zones again or complete the stories on all the toons.

Dungeons are just not fun to me. They are neat a couple of times and seeing the different paths, but to me boring and annoying on rerun and the rewards are essentially useless and vendor trash with minimal gold rewards. Grinding them for skins and having to pay money for keys or lvl 80 transmutation stones isn’t something I want to do either. I really see no incentive to run them repeatedly.

The thing that makes them truly unappealing to me, is that in my exotic gear, I don’t have true advantage or feeling of power or accomplishment in PvE anywhere in the game since I am scaled to match that content.

Grinding content repeated for karma and gold isn’t really appealing. The more I went through the zones the more I disliked the design and lack of finish on certain zones.

The game lacks consistent finish on its own style. I mean what sort of drugs were involved in creating some of those zones or cities. Its all fine and good that its a fantasy world, but where is the underlying common sense or even coherence to nature.

Take Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak, and Rata Sum for example, those make sense to me. There is a sense of common sense in their design. Lion’s Arch, Black Citadel, and The Grove lack any common sense beyond drug induced tripping and even in a magical fantasy world, I just think they are bad designs. I could say similar things about lot of the zones, especially Orr.

I guess for me the new car smell is gone, and all I see is mediocre at best. Some of the writing and voice acting and animations just grate on my nerves. Its great that it has a lot of content and activities throughout the zones, but about 1/2 of them I just couldn’t wait to leave.

The other downside for me at endgame is that the things I geek out on involve the main things that I can’t stand, hours upon hours of mindless grinding. The endgame economy curse of most mmo’s is already rearing its head on the trade post, and lower levels or training levels of crafted items are essentially worthless outside of containers and mid level training mats sell for more than endgame mats.

My main 80’s are in exotic gear. I like their builds, sure I’d like different skins for a few things perhaps a legendary skin or two, but the time investment to get them and the frustration of getting them isn’t something I see as worthwhile since there is no change in their performance and its merely a cosmetic change that requires enormous investment and the over abused deus ex machina of the mystic forge.

I don’t see an endgame for me that will keep me playing, I log in and think I don’t want to do that or that or that. After losing the new car smell this developer sees nothing but all the flaws in something expected to have a shelf life of more than a couple of months

GW2 endgame = GW1 endgame.
GW2 is slightly more grindy but not by all that much.

GW1’s level cap is 20.
Arenanet may have shot themselves in the foot by making GW2’s lv cap 80.
Downscaling just doesn’t work as well as everybody being max LV does.

In GW1’s case it meant that you could go pretty much anywhere (aside from the starter areas) and be at just the right level.
Arenanet tried to duplicate that with level scaling in GW2 but nobody wants really low rewards.

With that said I took quite a break after hitting lv80.
I felt bored, but after coming back, trying Dungeons and finding a guild I got hooked again!

For me, it’s still early days. I haven’t seen a lot of what this game has to offer. I have never played WOW so only have an abstract concept of what constitutes a “raid” or “endgame”. I’m a casual gamer (although I feel I’ve put more hours – and intensive ones – into this game than any for a long time).

As GW2 requires an initial financial investment and no subscription fee, it’s easy enough to stop playing when you get bored, without feeling that you wasted your money. I don’t feel anywhere near that point at present, and there is still the prospect of free content updates and further expansions to come in the future.