Ordinarily I wouldn’t post anything remotely like this on a forum, but since GW2 isn’t a subscription game, there isn’t an exit survey. Due to the Ascended gear announcement, I’m getting the impression that there are some assumptions on why players are quitting. In my case, these assumptions are entirely wrong.
The reasons why I no longer play:
I am a collector. Lots of people are, really, and there are different types. I’m not an achievement collector, or minipet collector; I just like to collect weapons, armor, and clothing. That’s my endgame.
Guild Wars 2 does not support this style of collecting. There are not enough slots available, even with a fully upgraded bank, to support even just one armor-weight of options, let alone all three plus town clothing and weapons. Anything usable at high levels is soulbound, not account – so even if it were possible to store a full set of each weight, it would not be feasible to acquire all options for all of my characters.
Cash shop games do not respect that sort of collector, nor do the audiences of these games. When a game tells me I need to pay more for what I find fun than someone else, I might make an unhappy post, or just go find another game. When the community’s response to this is to tell me what I do and don’t “need” to have fun in a game, I leave. Just because I don’t need to set foot in WvW to enjoy the game doesn’t mean you don’t, and it especially doesn’t mean you should have to pay every time you do so. Do me the same courtesy.
The Halloween event cemented this further, to the point where I couldn’t play without being reminded that what I want would never be possible, and that’s when I stopped logging in.
Another major issue for me, though lesser, is that the skills grow stale. There aren’t enough options for chosen skills, the weapon skills get boring fast (even though I carry every usable weapon set on every one of my characters to alleviate this), and swapping traits (the place a lot of that customizability seems to have escaped to) doesn’t feel fun.
I love the no-gear-grind aspect of the game, with cosmetics being the only thing that takes a long time to acquire. I love active dodge, and the general feel of the combat mechanics. I love dynamic events, though I wish the problem of a few high damage AoE players keeping anyone else from tagging anything ever could be solved. I love the heart quests – though some of them could go a bit faster or offer more options, others should take longer, and some felt repetitive. I even enjoy the jumping puzzles, though I’m terrible at them.
The world is beautiful, and the NPC conversations are amazingly fun. The personal story is amazing (especially for Asura, Charr, and Sylvari), the faction stories are incredibly fun, and the only real problem I have with the story after that is that Trahearne is kind of boring; I’m pretty sure it’s intentional, it’s an interesting character choice and makes him better able to take a back seat to the player’s choices and deeds, but after all the fun and amazing NPCs before him it feels like a downgrade. There need to be more lively NPCs involved from that point in the story on to keep it exciting.
Overall, Guild Wars 2 would be a perfect MMO for me, if only it supported collecting. It has most of my top things, but not that, and it IS something I “need” to enjoy a game.
Obviously I don’t assume any changes will be made based on this feedback, but I think it’s important to say that I didn’t leave because I hit 80 and couldn’t find anything to do, and that the direction of Ascended gear is the one that will keep me away forever.