Guild Wars 2

Guild wars 2 when it first came out was about the adventure. there were no grind walls, no boundaries holding you back, no time gates, or anything. you were free to do whatever you wanted in the game…literally.

You could get to max level doing whatever you wanted, without being forced to do anything else, black smiting, dungeons, pvp, wvw, or even just wandering around, exploring the world. You set your own goals, and objectives, with nothing to hold you back.

now kittens is different. this game reminds me so much of WoW now. i came to this game because it was different, because it wasn’t about grinding, or any other BS, it was about having fun. you could play the game any way you chose, and it would still be fun, but they’ve kinda screwed it up now since launch.

pvp for instance. every class is overloaded, and the only way to compete is to run what is strong at the time, not to run what you have the most fun with, and have sharpened your skills at. I get that there will always be a meta, but the way they’ve changed the game, everything meta is usually a huge exploit of something cheesy. tanky-condi classes, insane sustain- high damage, you name it. there is very little room for creative builds anymore, without the “NEED TO HAVE” condi cleanse, and even if you manage to make it work, most classes are just not fun to fight against anyway, because of their overloaded natures. so you gotta stick close to the meta to even survive.

perma-dodge thieves with that unclear counter play, condi mesmer with like 12 clones exploding on you at one time, and still somehow being able to be invulnerable, WHILE each clone does 1-2k dmg and applies 12 stacks over every condition on you, warrior mace classes who can 1 shot pretty much anyone with insane condi cleans cause they BOMB you with like 12 conditions, killing you in 1 hit unless you spec into some serious condi cleanse, rangers basically kiting you to death, then stealthing and healing to full, and giving you a thumbs up like lets start over, engineers with insane tank, and still insane damage, and sustain. all these classes have very little visible counter play. With an honest build, you cant afford 1 mistake, or you are dead. even if the classes are beatable, they are frustrating to play against hands down. Back when gw2 was first out, every class had very visible counter play, and it was more skill based than it is now, BY FAR. builds didn’t carry like they do now.

PVE is hands down, too kitten grindy. no joke…i cant stand to level a new character, because i’m stuck with like 2 abilities for like half the game…its infuriatingly boring in comparison to back when GW2 had stuck to their guns about being different, and not your average MMO grind fest. Why on earth they changed this to be so slow, and time consuming ill never know, but i’m guessing it was because of all the WoW cry outs who said GW2 was boring, and complained aobut everything, dungeons, pvp, wvw, all of it…it wasn’t boring, they are just so used to having someone hold thier hands through every part of every game. now its just filler, so you FEEL like you have something to do, and you don’t. pve leveling has never been this bad, getting hero points to do your story, waiting for entire days to craft ascended matts, it will take you an entire month to get a full set of ascended gear now because of time gates…and the dungeon finder…lol….so much for a social community. you don’t get people together anymore, you just pop in with them, and leave. no new friends to be made.

this game isn’t about exploration anymore. its about fractals, grinding, and cheesy builds. wvw is the only game mode that hasn’t lost its spirit yet…

for condi atleast…lol canthey not ALL do insane dmg, and stack like crazy

(stacks) bleed- dmg over time

confusion – ONLY when you use a skill, with perhaps a SET amount of dmg?

(stacks) torment – when you move take dmg

poison – simply reduce healing 10% per stack, stacking to 10 times?

something logical :/ instead of every condition does stupid amounts of damage and can easily be stacked 10 stacks of each, with one blow. honestly who thinks its balanced that some people can spam one button, and kill everyone , while others have to work for their keep?

give warriors CC conditions instead of insane dmg condi? just leave the burns ig if you stil lwant to keep it idk something.

Balance this game please. make it fun

THere’s an argument to be had pve was far, far more grindy at launch. We had no champ loot, we had no map rewards, no magic find, no abundance of rares and exotics to get ectos from.

I remember going for legendary just after Lost Shores and it was so much worse than it is now.

That said, yes there is some bad grind in places, but I do think it is less so than it was.

As for levelling – you can still do it anyway you choose. Nothing has changed here whatsoever. Sure I don’t like the changed levelling system either, but how you you actually level hasn’t been in any way downgraded.

As for being less about exploration, a lot of that is because any MMO game loses that after a while. I thoroughly enjoy the game, but it’s lost its sense of wonder and exploration – and that’s just down to excessive play on my part.

This game doesn’t really have a grind to it unless you are going for legendary gear. But those are just cosmetic outside of the scaling issue with dungeons, so there’s 0 need for a legendary. Even ascended armor is pretty kitten easy to come by now. I still don’t understand where this grind is that I see players complain about.

Hmm, I can still level a character doing pretty much anything I want.

PvP has always been affected by who had the more powerful build. Perhaps post HoT meta has taken the OP’s preferred build from one of the top spots? I can understand it being frustrating to (perhaps) have been one of the OP few farming others and now to be the farmed.

Emadd.8452:

PVE is hands down, too kitten grindy. no joke…i cant stand to level a new character, because i’m stuck with like 2 abilities for like half the game…

Overall, you actually obtain your abilities faster than you did originally. Although they shifted unlocks by ~10 levels, they also made leveling from 1-15 take an hour instead of ~10. It used to take ~30 kills to fully unlock a weapon. Now it takes ~30 minutes to unlock every weapon.

its grindy for cosmetics but it’s always been grindy for cosmetics. You had to get the full amount of t6 mats needed for a Legendary and no daily gold and no log in rewards to help out and you had to completely map WvW, which was difficult if you were on a low tier server. gold was scarcer and rewards were smaller. There wasn’t any account bound magic find to boost your drop rate. My big way to get a bit of gold was to hit the meta bosses but the meta bosses back then were often not done, no megaservers. I would arrive at the mark golem and no one would be there but me.

Im sorry but im going to have to bash you for this. GW2 did NOT fall from any glory! It was a highly hyped MMORPG that failed to deliver during its first years because end-game was poorly platformed. You want to know the only thing you could do in end-game?? Repetitive, poorly managed PVP and constant dungeon runs. NOW is when this game has risen to glory and will continue to rise. This game offers horizontal progression. Meaning, you want to do nothing except get to level 80 and frolic around the world aimlessly with no goals whatsoever??? GO FOR IT! No one is forcing you to do anything, nor reach any goals or objectives. Now as for the people who want to play the game and progress, that option is there. This isnt a single player game with no end game, “oh i beat the finakl boss, the game is done, ill log in once a year to reminisce”. Its a game that progresses and adds content, if not, then whats the point of even hiring a staff?

OP, I think you got it mixed up. This game is not about no-grinding, it is about grinding for the things you want to grind, and if you don’t care for them, you don’t need to grind for them.

I am a 38-year-old dad, with a busy job. I managed 9 lvl 80 chars, each with elite spec, 5 of these char are fully-ascended, with 1 legendary about to get the 2nd, and tier-3 gold in pvp, regularly maining around 4 different classes in both pvp and pve, and I have never set foot in fractal, or raid, only did a few dungeons when it was relevant. I play 1 to 2 hours per night at most. Most of the time I just login do a couple of pvp match and done. This is more like a stress relief from work for me. I don’t feel my experience is a grind at all.

Take level an alt, if you login regularly you will have enough tomb of experience, all you have to do click it 80 times, then it become the question of gearing it up, and getting the elite spet. This is fun imo, since I get to try different built use different abilities. If you want to get everything right away, then sure it feels like a grind, however, you don’t need to get everything, your char is no more or less effective than others with moderate effort.

Figuring out what you really want and have time for, and pace yourself.

I gotta agree, after a few years of playing I got nothing left that I want to do. Core pve stuff is way too boring anymore. New HoT maps are laggy, zerg fest and if you don’t grind masterys, it is a pain to navigate. WvW used to be fun but with that mastery system, I lost my place that was in wvw. Never got into too hard core pvp but the more it goes, the less i want to do it. I can’t even bother to log in to get daily rewards. Maybe one day they will actually get it right and I may come back for it, but for now I would rather play any other game.

Ashen.2907:

Hmm, I can still level a character doing pretty much anything I want.

PvP has always been affected by who had the more powerful build. Perhaps post HoT meta has taken the OP’s preferred build from one of the top spots? I can understand it being frustrating to (perhaps) have been one of the OP few farming others and now to be the farmed.

I think he is saying that you HAVE to have a HoT build to even compete in pvp and when you use it you have to use it a certain way to actually help the team. How many use ele for anything other than healbot? That is just one example.

Emadd.8452:

Back when gw2 was first out, every class had very visible counter play, and it was more skill based than it is now, BY FAR. builds didn’t carry like they do now.

flashbacks to d/d ele and turrent engi

All in serious though, pvp only felt skillful at launch because we thought bulls’ rush + 100b was a legitimate threat.

I think you’re looking back with rose-tinted glasses. Everything is better when it’s fresh and exciting. Especially exploration, which is only fun the first few times around.

Emadd.8452:

….
wvw is the only game mode that hasn’t lost its spirit yet…

Should try posting that in WvW forums… You’ll see what kind of spirit is there.

I wasn’t around prior to HoT, but as I understand it GW2 suffered from an extreme lack of endgame content. From what I’ve heard a lot has been introduced since that time to address that, but not all of it is every player’s idea of a good time. Given that, I can’t see how you’re worse off for having more options, even if those options aren’t all to your personal tastes.

It’s irrelevant though, as you don’t seem to care much for PvE anyway. The majority of your ranting revolves around PvP. Maybe you could use any old build in PvP when the game first started. I wouldn’t know. But I’ve played enough PvP in other games to know that “meta” builds are inevitable.

Perhaps if you played early enough in the life cycle of the game, the reason you had some measure of success was that the player base didn’t have years of experience to draw upon, including all the resources provided to us by players who have spent years analyzing and creating the builds that rise to the top? Well, now they do. So get used to stiffer competition.

Add some condi cleanse to your build and get over yourself.

Emadd.8452:

pvp for instance. every class is overloaded, and the only way to compete is to run what is strong at the time, not to run what you have the most fun with, and have sharpened your skills at. I get that there will always be a meta, but the way they’ve changed the game, everything meta is usually a huge exploit of something cheesy.

[…]

PVE is hands down, too kitten grindy. no joke…i cant stand to level a new character, because i’m stuck with like 2 abilities for like half the game…its infuriatingly boring in comparison to back when GW2 had stuck to their guns about being different, and not your average MMO grind fest.

Taking a look what’s in nthe market youre assertions seems a bit crazy:

• PvP: has normalized stats, you can start to play from level 2 and everyone fights in fair rights. Some classes has more than one viable build (i.e.: medditraper, burn guardian, symbolic; macebow condi warrior, powerzertker withj gsmace, power reaper, corruptionmancer…). On top of that, rewards in PvP are already great and you can fully gear your character in ascended items without touching other game modes.

• PvE is utterly easy. You have buffs to rise a new character from 1 to 80 in literaly 5 minutes, and if instead of tomes you want to level just playing, it takes you no more than a couple of weeks to reach 80. You can fully gear your character in exotics in a couple of weeks more and full ascended trinkets in a coupole of months. Everything gives you xp, and you can obtain gold easily: gather and sell, or do world bosses, or dungeons, fractals and raids; even PvP and WvW will bring you more gold than you spent in foods.

• You don’t have to compete in PvE: all the nodes and ores and stuff are for you; any event you complete or creature you kill gives you rewards without losing them because other player did the killing blow. You can’t be ganked by other playres in PvE. Everything is optional and cooperative and relaxing. Also, due HoT powercreep, most of older content is a faceroll over the keyboard.

• You only have to grind cosmetics, and even then, is easier than in other games.

I hate their progression.
There’s the new player experience which I understand was supposed to be progression of some sort?
There were the trait changes at one point. And they became specializations? I have only opened that window by accident, haven’t wanted to look at it. It’s on, the wait to see if they ever overhaul this into something else in the future again. I don’t trust Anet.
I haven’t seen masteries and never will but what I have read it sounds horrible.

I hate the idea of having to do some specific stuff because something is gated behind it. So I didn’t. I have never liked endgame (high level difficult combat), I was and was always planning to be on a slow and quiet journey of some sort. I have the impression that they started to make their game all about this endgame thing, with its progression.
I deeply hate Anet for their direction.

Traced.3495:

I hate their progression.
There’s the new player experience which I understand was supposed to be progression of some sort?
There were the trait changes at one point. And they became specializations? I have only opened that window by accident, haven’t wanted to look at it. It’s on, the wait to see if they ever overhaul this into something else in the future again. I don’t trust Anet.
I haven’t seen masteries and never will but what I have read it sounds horrible.

I hate the idea of having to do some specific stuff because something is gated behind it. So I didn’t. I have never liked endgame (high level difficult combat), I was and was always planning to be on a slow and quiet journey of some sort. I have the impression that they started to make their game all about this endgame thing, with its progression.
I deeply hate Anet for their direction.

Is this a joke? You haven’t looked at specializations since the trait changes because you don’t trust ANet? You will never see the mastery system because it sounds horrible? You hate ANet for a direction they’ve taken that you apparently haven’t even looked at?

What do you do? Just listen to complaints on the forums all day instead of actually playing the game? I mean, I guess that’s a slow journey. But why would you do this?

Traced.3495:

I hate their progression.
There’s the new player experience which I understand was supposed to be progression of some sort?
There were the trait changes at one point. And they became specializations? I have only opened that window by accident, haven’t wanted to look at it. It’s on, the wait to see if they ever overhaul this into something else in the future again. I don’t trust Anet.
I haven’t seen masteries and never will but what I have read it sounds horrible.

I hate the idea of having to do some specific stuff because something is gated behind it. So I didn’t. I have never liked endgame (high level difficult combat), I was and was always planning to be on a slow and quiet journey of some sort. I have the impression that they started to make their game all about this endgame thing, with its progression.
I deeply hate Anet for their direction.

The progression is fine. You’ve never tried it, you’ve never seen it. Builds are easier to make now than they were at launch. Progression isn’t as hard as you’re making it out to be.

Of course, if you haven’t tried it, why are you here complaining about it? Saying you hate something you haven’t tried accomplishes what, exactly?

Coffietire.2783:

Emadd.8452:

Back when gw2 was first out, every class had very visible counter play, and it was more skill based than it is now, BY FAR. builds didn’t carry like they do now.

flashbacks to d/d ele and turrent engi

All in serious though, pvp only felt skillful at launch because we thought bulls’ rush + 100b was a legitimate threat.

When someone talks about how the game was at release I’m always reminded of this video:

Emadd.8452:

Why on earth they changed this to be so slow, and time consuming ill never know…

It’s because they couldn’t produce content fast enough so they had to slow down everyone down by turning everything into grinding. I saw it all happen, in the space of a few months they turned every system into a grind beginning with the “New player experience” and culminating with the new trait system, mastery system and a LS with maps that are only meant to farm and that contain no instanced dungeons.

It’s also why they rushed HoT out unfinished without any dungeons, 1 single pvp map and stuff like legendary armor still not released 1 year later.

Now you know.

Xillllix.3485:

Now you know.

In other words: it’s because they changed to an expansion model instead of a living world model.