Guild Wars 2

First of all I will say that I am not talking about myself in this comment but I try to put myself in the shoes of a player who has played GW2 for about 1 month at the release, got an lvl 80 with exotics on, run a few dungeons and then left but now he/she comes back after and +1 year.
What is the experience he/she will get? What is the difference compared to what he/she has seen 1 year ago?

The player will see
- the gem store is full of things to buy but the gem price has sky-rocketed
- there are the same heart quests and events around the world
- the majority of zones are not as populated as they were at start
- except Kessex Hills, every other zone looks the same or has changed so little that it is in-noticeable
- the items sold in the trading post are the same, except a few new skins too unaffordable to bother about them
- the number of dungeons is the same only there is some new type of dungeon called fractal giving some new ascended gear making his/her old exotic gear obsolete
- he/she might accidentally find there is a LFG tool that has no party requests in it no matter how much the refresh button is pressed
- also, accidentally he/she might find there is a new high level zone called Southsun cove with very few players in it and very hard to solo with no incentive to go there other then pure exploration.

How long do you guys think, this player will play the game on his/her comeback?

maybe as long as I did haha a week maybe 2

See, this is where people need to do a bit more research. The reason why the looking for group tool never has anything in it, is because groups are formed very quickly. If you don’t believe it, try it yourself.

It’s game wide, not server wide (or at least region wide) and there’s no need to wait for a healer and tank.

Most times, when I post in the LFG tool (which isn’t that often), I have a party in under two minutes.

And of course, there’s new content every two weeks. If you don’t like that content, obviously you won’t be happy, but I’m really happy with the new Tequatl, the new path of TA, and I really enjoy the tower, too.

I do get that some people don’t like what’s on offer, but that doesn’t mean others don’t.

Vayne.8563:

See, this is where people need to do a bit more research. The reason why the looking for group tool never has anything in it, is because groups are formed very quickly. If you don’t believe it, try it yourself.

It’s game wide, not server wide (or at least region wide) and there’s no need to wait for a healer and tank.

Most times, when I post in the LFG tool (which isn’t that often), I have a party in under two minutes.

And of course, there’s new content every two weeks. If you don’t like that content, obviously you won’t be happy, but I’m really happy with the new Tequatl, the new path of TA, and I really enjoy the tower, too.

I do get that some people don’t like what’s on offer, but that doesn’t mean others don’t.

I was talking about a player who remembers the game is his /her computer and clicks the play button and not about internet researchers. Usually people click play and if they see things have changed they will probably.possibly do some research but not before

well I’ve played gw1(right b4 factions release) and gw2 since beta and I have to say gw1 was A LOT BETTER we got EXPANSIONS for a completely new content experience rather fast which is better than piggy backing content that’s been there since day 1. yea gw1 same concept every time but new weapon skins new armors new scenery and I still to this day never get tired of gw1 it self I get tired of being alone. I honestly probably would not post on forums or even complain if I had cantha to just wander around the forest/jade sea or revisit my starting point Shing Jea Island even tho my main was probably my dervish : P which I cant say if I miss it more in gw2 or cantha…… that’s a really tough choice for me if I had to pick

Right. But that’s the point. So a player who doesn’t try to make a group would never know. What should Anet do? Make it harder to make parties so it takes longer? If anyone takes the slight imitative to post a group, they’ll figure out exactly why there’s never any groups listed.

The thing is, if the only way a game is different is new territory, then you’d be right.

But I know people who’ve come back and they have all sorts of questions about luck essences, about ranks in WvW, about ascended weapons.

A lot of people don’t like these things, but this is what people who come back ask about.

The people that need the new zones the most aren’t people who have been gone for six months.

comming back after months it’s been 4 for me I want to see new content and I mean genuine new content new race new lands etc not piggy backed maps or bosses/enemies

edit: fully ascended trinkets with 2 legendaries so I am not worried about gear I want new things to see particularly new culturally inspired armors based on the land it comes from tired of seeing the same ol crap

Ronah.2869:

- he/she might accidentally find there is a LFG tool that has no party requests in it no matter how much the refresh button is pressed

What you even talking about? It’s pretty lively, at least dungeon and FotM sections.

From memory, the game didn’t change one bit in any noticeable way since release. Well, except that most maps are completely barren now.

Good job wasting a whole year on temporary content most people will either never see or never see again, devs. What are you doing?

This is it, agree with OP, I play 1month at start, then stop, now i’m back,
and…
I miss some temporary events
and…
the game is still the same
and…
sorry we only need zerkers /kick

well, mayb I’ll stay 1-2 weeks, no more.

Lol this thread brings back memories.

Had a friend pickup GW2, walked into WvW at lvl 2, got 2 shot by a theif, alt+f4d, uninstalled, put the game away and has never played again. Grand total of about 18 minutes of play time.

The things players want to find in the game when they are returning back after 1 year in my opinion are:
- new vast territories to explore with new bunch or heart quests, pois, vistas
- new skills and classes, skill trees or skill advancement
- new playable races
- various UI changes
- personal story advancement

Here is how GW1 evolved so you can compare it to what we have now in GW2

GW Prophesies released on April 28, 2005
after 12 months
GW Factions released on April 28, 2006,
after 6 months
GW Nightfall released on October 27, 2006,
after 10 months
GW Eye of the North released on August 31, 2007

so, over a period of 2 years and 3 months the GW1 has expanded a LOT.
Gw2 is now 1 year and 3 months old. Personally I don’t see the game catch up with GW1 rate of adding content in the 12 months
Sorry, but the LS content will never -ever match the quality of GW1 releases in the same amount of time no matter how many billions of bites the statistics will show us that have been released.

@Ronah.

I’m not sure it has to catch up, considering that Guild Wars 2 had more content at launch the Prophecies and Factions put together. Take quests alone.

According to the Guild Wars wiki there were 205 quest in prophecies. There were also 25 missions. There were two elite areas at launch and a third one added (Sorrow’s Furnace).

Factions is listed at 200 plus quests, plus 13 missions, plus a couple of competitive missions and 2 elite areas. The one place Guild Wars 1 did shine was PvP, but for PvE, there’s no comparison.

Even with Faction, you could play one race, 8 professions and you had two starting areas. A total of 400-500 quests. Now Guild Wars 2 has 300 hearts and 1500 plus dynamic events, plus 8 dungeons (each of which has at least 3 paths), plus Fractals, plus WvW (nothing like that in Guild Wars 1 at all), plus personal story. Each personal story has about 50 missions all up, compared with the total of 38 missions in Guild Wars 1. But there were ONLY 38 missions in Guild Wars 1. If I roll 1 of each race in the five characters lots provided with the game, I get 50 stories, of which at least 10 will be different (it’s more than ten but at least ten) on every single character, or a grand total of 90 personal story quests. Then there are the minigames. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survivor, Crab Toss and Keg Brawl are liked but some people….and yes they’re content. Oh and yes, jumping puzzles too which is content you couldn’t even have in Guild Wars 1, because you couldn’t jump.

Even the tower and the Scarlet invasions are content.

Trying to compare the amount of content in this game to the amount of content in Guild Wars 1 is laughable, except with regards to PvP, obviously.

One last point. When Factions came out we got an entire new expansion. People beat it in 2 days. The entire expansion. Do you remember how many people complained about how small it was and how little content there was compared to Prophcies?

It’s great to love Guild Wars 1 and all. It’s fantastic, but the amount of PvE content here is hands above what we have in Guild Wars 1.

I have a few guild recruits, maybe about 6 to 8 of them I forgot. None seems to have raised the concerns you raise in the OP.

However, these are the things they mostly share:

• They left for different reasons, mostly real life, then never liked the bots and bugs
• They still love the game, if not for real life concerns, they would have played more. One is a carpenter who is thankful this game has no sub, and he can only play when there’s low request for carpentry and that’s during winter time.
• Another one, a military, who came back after his tour, and enjoying all the new stuff he finds.
• Ascended stuff seems to be almost always confusing for them, and some of them don’t have any idea about how to get to SSC
• They found some of their “trash” items to be pricey and some they considered treasures to be cheaper now
• They ask a bunch about wings, and shiney armor aka APoint gear

All of them still play, 3 of them been playing straight for 2mos since they got back. The others play regularly, not everyday, but that’s expected for casuals.

So I think each and everyone of us has their own preference, so people who are content, will love the game. People who are not happy, no matter the reason, will move on.

Vayne.8563:

One last point. When Factions came out we got an entire new expansion. People beat it in 2 days. The entire expansion. Do you remember how many people complained about how small it was and how little content there was compared to Prophcies?

People beat the storyline in 2 days not the whole game which can happen in GW2 too if you have a maxed out character.

Although, the GW2 has more quests then GW1, they are just filler up. Kill 10 “various” rats every 2 weeks is content, of course, but it is not evolving the game. It is just a matter of how to give people easier way to get achievements or a faster way to fill up the achievement points bar

A-Net was a ~20 employee company at the timer of GW1 and the content was way more quality based then the new A-net with ~200+ employees.
if you just compare that, you will realize that they didn’t evolve in quality but only in numbers
I like GW2, I play it often, but if it lasts 10 years will be the lack of competition on the market not for its quality, which is different then why GW1 lasts even now

Poor Vayne. Such a huge task to continually inform people that their own perceptions and opinions are wrong, because he says so.

If a person was unaware of LS, when they logged in, after a year, what they would see is “no change” save Fractals and Southsun. One zone and a multidungeon. Fluff. A few items. No new continents, no new professions, one new heal skill, very few new permanent DE or missions. A lot of fluff they will never have. All of the temp content that came and went during that absence counts for nothing, because it does not exist in the game they logged back into.

And then, since the Original post said nothing re GW1, I guess trotting out GW1 and making the usual comparisons is ok, since a one trick pony has.. one trick.

I’ll just compare Nov 2012 GW2 with now, and tbh, there is not a lot of permanent growth to the game, nor is there any on the horizon. For anyone who leaves and comes back.. only permanent content added shows measurable growth.

I think the “average gamer” who left a year ago.. for whatever reason, will not see enough new content to stay. They left.. and are returning to a game where you have to actually dig to see what has actually changed. The little new content that is permanent is small and has to be found, its not obvious.

Ronah.2869:

Vayne.8563:

One last point. When Factions came out we got an entire new expansion. People beat it in 2 days. The entire expansion. Do you remember how many people complained about how small it was and how little content there was compared to Prophcies?

People beat the storyline in 2 days not the whole game which can happen in GW2 too if you have a maxed out character.

Although, the GW2 has more quests then GW1, they are just filler up. Kill 10 “various” rats every 2 weeks is content, of course, but it is not evolving the game. It is just a matter of how to give people easier way to get achievements or a faster way to fill up the achievement points bar

A-Net was a ~20 employee company at the timer of GW1 and the content was way more quality based then the new A-net with ~200+ employees.
if you just compare that, you will realize that they didn’t evolve in quality but only in numbers
I like GW2, I play it often, but if it lasts 10 years will be the lack of competition on the market not for its quality, which is different then why GW1 lasts even now

Not really the point though. Because if you take a good, honest look at Guild Wars 1, there’s plenty of filler there in the content they did provide. The missions where you had to stand in one place and defend against an endless number of mobs while protecting NPCs like King Jalis or Confessor Dorian? What about accumulating 10,000 points in both Luxon and Kurzick storylines to be able to continue in Factions? There was plenty of filler in Guild Wars 1, and there’s filler in Guild War 2 also.

I mean Guild Wars Prophecies has 205 quests, and none of them were gathering, or killing? There were no kill four skale quests in Guild Wars 1?

I agree there were interesting quest lines and I agree there were good missions, but there was plenty of stuff that was just filler there too.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Poor Vayne. Such a huge task to continually inform people that their own perceptions and opinions are wrong, because he says so.

If a person was unaware of LS, when they logged in, after a year, what they would see is “no change” save Fractals and Southsun. One zone and a multidungeon. Fluff. A few items. No new continents, no new professions, one new heal skill, very few new permanent DE or missions. A lot of fluff they will never have. All of the temp content that came and went during that absence counts for nothing, because it does not exist in the game they logged back into.

And then, since the Original post said nothing re GW1, I guess trotting out GW1 and making the usual comparisons is ok, since a one trick pony has.. one trick.

I’ll just compare Nov 2012 GW2 with now, and tbh, there is not a lot of permanent growth to the game, nor is there any on the horizon. For anyone who leaves and comes back.. only permanent content added shows measurable growth.

I think the “average gamer” who left a year ago.. for whatever reason, will not see enough new content to stay. They left.. and are returning to a game where you have to actually dig to see what has actually changed. The little new content that is permanent is small and has to be found, its not obvious.

I think the average gamer who left a year ago wouldn’t have finished the content in the first place.

People have a habit of using terms like “average gamer”. As far as I know the average gamers isn’t hard core and isn’t a content locust. The average gamer wouldn’t have hit the end of the content in two months in my opinion. And if they came back, they probably wouldn’t remember what they did and it would ALL be new.

And they’d see a tower in Kessex hills that wasn’t there, and new Fractals if they logged in now. If they logged in before that they’d see a new dungeon path in Twilight Arbor. If they logged in before that they might see SAB.

There are people, obviously, who remember everything, have done everything, log in look around a log out. But are those really the “average gamer” as you claim?

I’m not so sure.

“the gem store is full of things to buy but the gem price has sky-rocketed”

Right, gold-gem price si so crazy as hell. And new prices …. 1000gem for logging axe? …more than 85g. I have real life too, and for 85g i need 3-4 weeks. Btw for 85g i can infinitely chop all tree with Ori axe. Thx, i dont need it.

Enzo.2104:

“the gem store is full of things to buy but the gem price has sky-rocketed”

Right, gold-gem price si so crazy as hell. And new prices …. 1000gem for logging axe? …more than 85g. I have real life too, and for 85g i need 3-4 weeks. Btw for 85g i can infinitely chop all tree with Ori axe. Thx, i dont need it.

I think you’re 100% right. You don’t need it. No one needs it. It’s not even a good investment for people who play a lot. It’s something cool to have. It supports the game and you don’t need it.

Some would consider that a selling point.

Enzo.2104:

“the gem store is full of things to buy but the gem price has sky-rocketed”

Right, gold-gem price si so crazy as hell. And new prices …. 1000gem for logging axe? …more than 85g. I have real life too, and for 85g i need 3-4 weeks. Btw for 85g i can infinitely chop all tree with Ori axe. Thx, i dont need it.

The gem store was designed around you buying stuff with real money as opposed to gold in game. Anet doesn’t profit from you spending gold on it.

As for GW1 vs GW2, there’s something which everyone is forgetting: the amount of effort needed to actually create stuff in the game. GW2’s engine is probably a lot more complicated than GW1’s, thus everything needs more time and effort to add in.

But having said that, the game has nowhere near enough permanent content released since launch. The biggest reason is really that most Ls updates got removed.

If they kept all the LS instances as replayable missions with their own rewards, and kept all the areas like the Queen’s Gauntlet and Mad Descent, then we would have more content than an expansion would have. But for whatever reason, Anet decided in their infinite wisdom that it would be a good idea to remove everything.

I wasn’t around to do the Molten Facility in the LS, but after doing it in FotM, I’m just scratching my head at why the heck would you remove a dungeon that’s that well-designed, which a lot of people clearly put blood and sweat into making, from the game? It makes no sense and frankly its insulting to the people who made it.

As for new areas. Would you actually need them? For a start, we got half a map worth of existing areas which serve next to no purpose whatsoever which they could, and should, expand upon. Also, do we really need a new area like Southsun or Gandarren Fields?