Guild Wars 2

At the release of HoT I was very, very happy. It brought me back to a game that I had left on the shelf for a while. After a month or two the shiny newness wore off, but the game was still good.
Fastforward to the point I’m at now. PvP is rapidly going downhill from both the matchmaking end and the builds end. PvE is becoming more and more locked behind grindwalls-masteries, fractals, raids. It’s starting to hit the point where you have to grind to grind. WvW is well, WvW-for every day you get good fights, there’s a week you spend completely outpopped and getting wiped every time you try to do more than take a camp.
I understand raids were added to satisfy the challenge-hungry portion of the playerbase… but I feel like the main reason was because other game had them. GW2 was never a game about raiding, and the push towards it has taken away from the great open-world feel that drew me in when I began.
PvP is suffering from… something. Whether it’s the logical conclusion of combining skills, a tiny dev team hampered by management, or just the wrong people in charge, it’s suffering.
WvW has made some good changes lately, with reward tracks providing more reliable rewards, and map changes to flow better (although arid BL’s are honestly too big), but nothing to really solve the frustration when your team is the underpop and you can’t do anything.

I came back today to play with friends. But what were we doing? Achievement hunting for rewards so that we could outfit our raid characters. Now, I have to admit the achievements were not bad (Living story S2e8), but when I went to play the rest of the game, I just ended up hating the game and myself more and more. I miss actually having fun playing Guild Wars. Please, put some fun back in the game instead of endless numbers games.

Please, put some fun back in the game instead of endless numbers games.

Now describe how to put fun back in the game in a way that replayable, and something that’s fun for a substantial number of people.

Edit: all you said was “I don’t like.” That’s not constructive or useful to the devs. What they want to hear is, “I suggest that the game have this for this reason”. They have no idea what you consider fun that would be good to put in the game and have sufficient replayability to be worth their time and money to work on.

I don’t know. I find the new zone quite fun actually. To each his own I guess.

You didn’t specify what you find fun. Everyone goes through phases with many games. Take a break for a coul weeks? It’s worked for me on multiple occasions.

Arvizal.8436:

You didn’t specify what you find fun. Everyone goes through phases with many games. Take a break for a coul weeks? It’s worked for me on multiple occasions.

The thing is, this is me on coming BACK after several weeks off.

If you’re not interested in doing raids why are you doing them? Or collecting gear for them?

One of the nice things about GW2 is you don’t have to play a game mode you don’t want to. I’ve not even entered the raid yet and I’ve not encountered anything else I’m prevented from doing because of that.

(I will at some point have to do it to get the mini pets, but that’s a goal I’ve set for myself, not something the game is forcing me to do.)

Admittedly I’ve also not played the new storyline yet, so it’s possible I’ve missed something there – but I’m sure a lot more people would be complaining if you had to raid to play the new open-world PvE aspects.

Danikat.8537:

If you’re not interested in doing raids why are you doing them? Or collecting gear for them?

One of the nice things about GW2 is you don’t have to play a game mode you don’t want to. I’ve not even entered the raid yet and I’ve not encountered anything else I’m prevented from doing because of that.

(I will at some point have to do it to get the mini pets, but that’s a goal I’ve set for myself, not something the game is forcing me to do.)

Admittedly I’ve also not played the new storyline yet, so it’s possible I’ve missed something there – but I’m sure a lot more people would be complaining if you had to raid to play the new open-world PvE aspects.

You don’t have to play a game mode you don’t want to… except for all the item collections, and the relative profit levels, and the fact that if you want to play in a community everyone does them…
But raids themselves are honestly the least of my concerns. The gear lockout to get in to raids is more of an issue.

Put it this way. My current overarching project is HOPE. Why? Because my PvE main is an engineer and has been since they were my one and only character. Pistol playstyle has always been something I’ve enjoyed, and ha been my weapon of choice, at least for mainhand, for a long time, and it’s now more viable than ever. So legendary pistol seems a logical step, given the tendency of ANet to create meta’s with new statsets. I absolutely loathe the sound of Quip, and the look is… average, at best. Which leaves me chasing HOPE. I’d love to just play what I want to. But that’s not possible. I need to grind mastery points doing minigames that I hate and sequential achievements that make me feel like a trained seal because they’ve locked some of the requirements of HOPE behind achieving maximum mastery in all four map-related trees. (By the way, Dragon’s stand is a great example of how Mastery points should be given out, in my opinion).

Normally I’d like to take breaks by doing PvP, something I’ve loved for much of my time in the game. Except PvP this year has been going steadily downhill. Between stacked teams and power creep, it’s hard to find fun in HotM. So perhaps I should take a break in WvW? My experience with WvW is as I said before, spending just about all the time locked behind enemy zergs, being lucky if you can flip a camp before you get overrun.
Perhaps I should find something different to do in PvE? I’ve already mapcompleted on my main, and there’s no map that sticks out as being particularly worth hanging out in. I could spam AB multi-maps all day, but why?

As to raids, I never said I wasn’t interested in them. But with the gear lockout and meta-mania, I’m not in a position to do them. Which brings me back to the point of grinding to potentially have fun later. Guild Wars has always been a “journey” game for me, except right now no matter what path I choose, the journey seems to suck now.

The only thing i really cant stand are the Adventures, what wouldnt be a big deal if they didnt decided to put Mastery Points behind it……

Wow makes content to last weeks, from start to finish- anet makes content to last days, even hours.

So, just craft an Ascended pistol, instead. It’s not very difficult to craft an Ascended weapon. Same stats as HOPE. No content you dislike to wade through.

Good luck.

Chasind.3128:

Wow makes content to last weeks, from start to finish- anet makes content to last days, even hours.

lolwhat. Wait ye, forgot about the infamous selfies patch.

Chasind.3128:

Wow makes content to last weeks, from start to finish- anet makes content to last days, even hours.

I hear ya! What with having to grind out the new lvl cap AND grind new gear that is up to lvl, WoW gives its players weeks of new content! Hell, even months!

Imiona.4752:

The only thing i really cant stand are the Adventures, what wouldnt be a big deal if they didnt decided to put Mastery Points behind it……

With more points added in season 3, adventures are basically optional now, with only 1 point needed from them. Masteries themselves are mostly optional however, so skip the useless ones, like Nuhoch Alchemy, and it’ll be a far more casual experience.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. I find the new zone quite fun actually. To each his own I guess.

For how long, even you have to admit this new map does not have the sustain that maps like SW, AB have, the only reason this map is so busy atm, is people moving threw the story, and grinding out the blood rubies for the ascended gear,

Add to the fact there is an rapidly re-spawning event that gives fairly decent look, once Anet move in with the nerf bat, this zone will die, so I can see why some people do not enjoy the new zone,

The one thing I will say about the new zone is, the Artists did a fantastic job as usual.

It’s too bad. I see a lot of underutilized content in the new update.
Those glider skills would be fun to use throughout the rest of the game.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. I find the new zone quite fun actually. To each his own I guess.

For how long, even you have to admit this new map does not have the sustain that maps like SW, AB have, the only reason this map is so busy atm, is people moving threw the story, and grinding out the blood rubies for the ascended gear,

Add to the fact there is an rapidly re-spawning event that gives fairly decent look, once Anet move in with the nerf bat, this zone will die, so I can see why some people do not enjoy the new zone,

The one thing I will say about the new zone is, the Artists did a fantastic job as usual.

I don’t think this map is going to die anytime soon. If SW is the loot-generator of Tyria, Bloodstone Fen is the experience-generator. This map was designed around getting LOTS of experience really, really fast. From what I can tell, it was introduced as something of a precursor to future masteries. This map will give players a fun, grindable zone that will give them the opportunity to level any future masteries really quickly.

The map itself is a lot of fun and it’s pretty unique, in my opinion. I love it. I understand a lot of players might not share my opinion on that, however. C’est la vie.

To the OP: It truly sounds as though you are talking yourself out of every opportunity to have fun in this game. You sound very defeatist, and I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean that as a point of fact. You say that you can’t enjoy WvW because you’ve had bad experiences with it in the past. You say that you can’t enjoy PvP because you’re having bad experiences with it now. You say that you can’t enjoy raids because, well, you don’t like their challenging nature.

Unfortunately, when you’ve been playing a game long enough you’re eventually going to come to a point where you’ve completed most of the content you really, really love—or at the very least you have played that content to death, to the point that you don’t really, really love it anymore. It sounds like that’s where you’re at. It sounds like you’ve invested a LOT of time into this game, like many of us have, and you have played the areas of the game that you absolutely love to death, like many of us have, and you are looking for something new.

But you don’t want to like the new things that are on offer because they don’t mesh with the way you’ve been playing and enjoying GW2 up to now. You don’t want to like raids, because raids have been proclaimed as being ultra challenging and gated behind ascended gear (the latter of which is, to my knowledge, not true—you could organize a group yourself and enter with exotics or whatever. I haven’t raided yet myself so if I’m incorrect here, my apologies). To me, it sounds as though you are talking yourself out of enjoying the game.

Dive in, man. Try out the new raids with the intent that you will explore them with some friends and have fun. Don’t expect to succeed the first attempt. Don’t expect to succeed the tenth attempt. Have fun with it, expect that you will die a lot, and pretty soon you might find yourself enjoying the raids because hey, you and some friends took on a raid in exotic gear and figured it out and beat that monstrous boss! Wouldn’t that feel rewarding?

Go play WvW with a small roaming group of 2-3 friends, or even just 1 guildie. Run away from fights you are certain to lose, play havoc and be trolls to the opponents simply for the sake of having fun.

Play Unranked PvP and troll the other team by standing on far with a guildmate or simply unbalancing fights to down a player or two and run off. It’s unranked, and there is no league running at the moment, so who cares if you lose? You are less likely to get upset at the losses if your main purpose for playing is to have fun with a friend, or even by yourself. Don’t expect to win. Winning != fun. (Edit: Trolling is a poor word to use here. What I mean is trying unexpected strategies that usually lead to failure but sometimes have hilariously fun results, like stacking three guards outside the enemy spawn. Usually it’s a huge failure, but rarely it is tremendously effective. Always be respectful to your teammates and the opposing players. Don’t talk down to opponents or teammates, it’s rude and no one likes trolls like that.)

The central problem with nearly any and every video game, including GW2, is that eventually, you will come to a point where you have played the game to death. You have done everything there is to do, and the only things left for you to do are things that would take you “out of your comfort zone,” so to speak. You are at that point right now. A lot of us are. But while we’re waiting for the developers to crank out that new content that we’re all foaming at the mouth for (and good content takes time, remember!), it’s up to us to find new ways to have fun in a game that many of us have 2-3000+ hours invested in. Try new things, and while you’re trying these things, try to come up with fresh ideas that either rework old content you’ve previously enjoyed or fresh ideas based on stuff you have fun doing, and give those ideas to the developers in the form of forum posts. The developers can’t get many ideas from posts decrying how “the game isn’t fun anymore.”

I don’t mean any of this as an affront to you, and if I offended you in any way, I apologize. My goal was to simply shed light on the situation that you, and many of us, are currently in. I hope this (ultra long) post helped in some way.

You don’t “need” to do any of that. You choose to aim for something set up to take a really long to make in a shorter time. Play what you enjoy and you surprise yourself with how much you can afford eventually.

STOP TELLING ME I DON’T LIKE RAIDS. Seriously, being told what I’m thinking (when it’s obviously wrong) is getting really irritating. What I don’t like is having to grind for gear to fit a specific metabuild (that will probably change once Anet gets sick of it) to even be considered to PARTICIPATE in a raid. And then probably promptly fail because of something that I didn’t know, but at least that could be entertaining. Whether or not the raids are ACTUALLY gated behind ascended gear, everyone thinks they are. (I’ve seen proof of well-oiled groups pulling off exotic raids, but outside that level of practice and skill they probably are dependent on asc gear).

Unranked PvP is going to be a kittenshow. Just because I’m on the winning side of the kittenshow doesn’t make it any more fun.

WvW roaming is a good idea for when your server is on par. Which means that I probably should try it since I hear I’m actually on a top server until they change matchups. However, to do roaming, I need to outfit a new toon with new gear. So once again, more grinding to possibly have fun later.

SolarDragon.7063:

GW2 becoming less and less fun

Slowpoke, you just realised it now?….

The game was good for 3 years (after the headstart) which I appreciate but now it is really boring and I dont play it anymore, I dont even log in with my two accounts daily to get the rewards.

But after the expansion released the game got very exciting for like 1 week and after that dead.

It is kinda funny that I had almost 3 yers fun just with the core game but the expansion made me slowly leave the game.

But the forum is still pretty nice to use.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Please, put some fun back in the game instead of endless numbers games.

Now describe how to put fun back in the game in a way that replayable, and something that’s fun for a substantial number of people.

Edit: all you said was “I don’t like.” That’s not constructive or useful to the devs.

I can tell you exactly why people don’t like the game….

Example ????

Here we go…. Masteries are a chance to create something awesome instead repelling anyone with half a brain.

It is far beyond me how killing 100000 pocket raptors makes me learning a frog language.
Make Masteries like mini games….. like making logical connection between
words and gestures… as more you understand as more progress you make
until you get it 100%.

Is it really so difficult ????

Glider the same thing.. make a minigame controlling glider maneuvers…
actuelly learn what updraft really means and how to use it ….. this would entertain people.

But nooooooo……… the usual killing (insert random monster class)
teaches us how to fly………… brilliant.

This is why people hate the game. The devs cut corners wherever they can
instead going the extra mile.

SolarDragon.7063:

The thing is, this is me on coming BACK after several weeks off.

Oh, thats unfortunate… sometimes when I get bored I also get a new character slot and create a themed charcter and try to max them out (stat-wise) fully. For example a female sylvari necro that has a black/green theme with appropriate skins and ascended. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I enjoy it. This way I created a full roster of well-geared toons to kick some kitten

Like I said, not everyone enjoys it, but I do, as an altaholic.

Totally agree with the OP. When the game started we had a ton more options and free will to play however we wanted to, but as time goes on things only change for the worse making it less fun, like pvp which is mostly what I do they’ve changed it in a way to give you less options to push people to play the way they think they should rather than the way they like to play. And the matchmaking is a horrible not-so-funny joke, I won’t even start on that except to say most matches outcomes are predetermined before they even start which is beyond un-fun I don’t even know what to call it.
And yea pve is getting more and more grindy which is why I wont do it. And things are becoming more solo player unfriendly as well like guilds for example… not much you can do with a solo person guild anymore. And the 1 thing I used to enjoy other than pvp , key-farming they nerfed it a bunch of times then just got rid of it .

But yea, long story short…. the game is way less fun now than when it started.

SolarDragon.7063:

STOP TELLING ME I DON’T LIKE RAIDS. Seriously, being told what I’m thinking (when it’s obviously wrong) is getting really irritating. What I don’t like is having to grind for gear to fit a specific metabuild (that will probably change once Anet gets sick of it) to even be considered to PARTICIPATE in a raid. And then probably promptly fail because of something that I didn’t know, but at least that could be entertaining. Whether or not the raids are ACTUALLY gated behind ascended gear, everyone thinks they are. (I’ve seen proof of well-oiled groups pulling off exotic raids, but outside that level of practice and skill they probably are dependent on asc gear).

While I understand the frustration, what would you have ANet do? They designed raids to be accessible to exotic-equipped players. The fact that random people on the internet use meta builds and set an Ascended requirement to join them is not something ANet can readily fix. It’s a people issue. They could:

• Make Asc. easier to get. However, this would defeat its purposes as a long-term goal and a means to make gathering mats more valuable.
• Get rid of Asc. Can you imagine the uproar by everyone that spent that time to make it? It would dwarf all other negative reactions save perhaps the reaction when it was first introduced.
• Make raids even easier. This would defeat the purpose of introducing raids, which was to provide challenging, fixed-group instanced content.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. I find the new zone quite fun actually. To each his own I guess.

For how long, even you have to admit this new map does not have the sustain that maps like SW, AB have, the only reason this map is so busy atm, is people moving threw the story, and grinding out the blood rubies for the ascended gear,

Add to the fact there is an rapidly re-spawning event that gives fairly decent look, once Anet move in with the nerf bat, this zone will die, so I can see why some people do not enjoy the new zone,

The one thing I will say about the new zone is, the Artists did a fantastic job as usual.

Not really the point. I said I find the map fun. I find a lot of maps fun. It adds to the collection of maps that I want to do.

You’re from the school that this map has to be fun for months. I’m from the school that this map has to be fun giving me yet another option when I feel like doing it. It expands the word. It gives me stuff I cant’ do anywhere else, like aerial combat.

The map is fun because I don’t farm it.

I’ve done some raiding back at WoW, played just and only as a pally (chaning gear and specs from time to time that was easier to obtain), it was fun, tho guildmates had a tendency to clench their buttcheeks when something went bad but I can understand that

In GW2 my guild has a requirement to have about 2, 3 alt characters to choose from (also they should be equipped with asc)
I joined a pure roleplaying guild and since raids and ranked were introduced, that aspect kind of fell and I got that vibe that some of my guildies became content hungry elitists that locked themselves in raids or ranked pvp and forgot the main purpose of our community that is roleplaying.
Lots of people left because of some toxic behaviour and walls that were build between us, I get a strange feeling that it is falling apart.
At first I was hyped for raids, but due to the lack of time to play I had a hard time to equip my main character and I won’t have enough motivation to make another alts.
Now I kind of dislike raids and a bit of ranked pvp for being one of the reasons that makes my guild feel rusty and uncomfortable.

For some groups of people it is something that makes them form new friendships, but for some it is a salt in the wound that breaks old habits and acquaintances.

Like what “Just a flesh wound” said, unless you’ve got a suggestion or a question; this post is kinda meaningless. I can understand that you may not like the game anymore and thats fine.

Its apparently really difficult to find someone in this game that doesn’t have a problem doing all content without developing a huge misconception about the inter details of why things are the way that they are. People always get mad at things they don’t fully understand.

Kirschsahne.2081:

It is far beyond me how killing 100000 pocket raptors makes me learning a frog language.
Make Masteries like mini games….. like making logical connection between
words and gestures… as more you understand as more progress you make
until you get it 100%.

Is it really so difficult ????

The idea is sound. Maybe you travel around the world talking to certain Itzel, slowly training yourself to understand their language.

I wonder how long it would take players to start whining that they couldn’t just train up by grinding pocket raptors.

ArenaNet are stuck in the middle of people who want a more immersive experience and people who just want loot, loot, loot and and everything unlocked from the get-go. I wish they’d take a stance more like they did in GW1, where they recognized it was their game, and you played it how they intended.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with having to gain Itzel Poison Mastery to continue with the personal story in HoT, but that requirement seemed to get quickly removed after a tsunami of complaining about “having to grind”. I wonder if the complaints about grinding out Itzel T4 would have been as prevalent if there were more maps to play through before that requirement came into force. Nonetheless, an update comes out removing this requirement from the story step and all of a sudden the game starts to feel more hollow.

It’s encouraging that you require the new LS3 mastery to continue the story. I hope this goes further as the episodes are released. Players scream for further progression, but when that progression is a requirement for the story, it’s seen as an unnecessary grind by 95% of the player base. Similar thing happened with the new profession specializations. Same old players screaming that they want everything unlocked from the start; and for some reason ArenaNet seem to be accommodating it and reinforcing that behavior.

You lost me at being very, very happy with HoT. As one who is not a fan of platformers obscura, I’m not. But yeah, as Central Tyria begins to run out of things to do, the game is getting less and less fun.

GW2 can be played periodically, you can drop it after you become bored, and come back when there’s something going on you might be interested in.

I don’t like the HOT lands and I don’t like this newest Blood Fens. It is because they are vertical maps. I am not now, and never have been, a fan of jumping puzzles, platform games, etc. Obviously, they are popular with a lot of people, but not me. The way that all this is going is telling me that GW2 simply isn’t the game for me, anymore. I play less and less.

Fortunately for me, I am having a lot of fun with ESO right now. When I am gaming these days, I am almost always doing ESO. GW2 is rather rapidly losing interest with me. I haven’t spent a dime on this game ever since HOT came out, and I don’t ever intend to spend anymore money unless things radically change, i.e. be like it used to be.

I am not saying that the game needs to change to what I want. Anet can do whatever they want. I am saying that they are losing me, not that they probably care.

I keep seeing words like jumping puzzle and platforming. I’ve done a lot of that stuff, and the new zones really have very little platforming. If anything, gliding has taken away some of the platforming aspects.

I remember some vistas that were massively hard originally that are much easier, or at least more forgiving now, due to gliding.

Gliding is not platforming and neither are jumping mushrooms. They aim for you. You’re not really doing a jumping puzzle, the mushroom is.

There are already a lot of responses here that probably have covered my viewpoint, but here are my 2 cents.

Playing the same content every day for months/years is going to become less and less fun. The newer content seems to be a victim of the double-edged sword that is hype; people get so excited for it by comparing it to amazing older content only to be disappointed when it doesn’t exactly meet their expectations.

I took a break since Christmas, and even then I was starting to “cool down” my play time. I became disenchanted- things just didn’t seem productive. I was doing things for the sense of completion rather than the enjoyment of the content itself…

I recently came back to enjoy the new LS3 and also found a bunch of old content/achievements from earlier this year… I’ve enjoyed them far more than I would have done if I kept soldiering on and grinding since the new year.

If you aren’t enjoying it as much as you used to, take a break and come back once you have “fresh eyes”.

The only thing that annoys me are MP. I filled out the XP bar, but now I need to go do an achievement or “challenges” to be able to use it. It’s been my gripe since there inception. I really don’t see why they are needed. But then there is alot in this game I find as an unnecessary obstacle to progression.

Remember flame and frost? That’s what I considered fun. That and the initial release of fractals was the most fun I had with the game.

I haven’t bought the expansion, and I don’t pve anymore. Too hard to stat swap gear without grind, and don’t get me started on infusion.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Please, put some fun back in the game instead of endless numbers games.

Now describe how to put fun back in the game in a way that replayable, and something that’s fun for a substantial number of people.

Edit: all you said was “I don’t like.” That’s not constructive or useful to the devs. What they want to hear is, “I suggest that the game have this for this reason”. They have no idea what you consider fun that would be good to put in the game and have sufficient replayability to be worth their time and money to work on.

while u all mostly speaking aboot pve, re: pvp, fun is def not a part of anet’s goals, so its possible that is tru for pve and wvw too. someone said this before

consider this: if fun was a goal of gw2 pvp, we would have:

soloq
tru tdm (that 1 map don’t count an u kno it)
dueling (at least in the hotm)
something (anything) to do while waiting on queue
random arena (gw1 style or similar)
other modes (2v2, 3v3 whatevs)
original hotjoin (8v8 10v10, something like alliance battles in gw1)
… prob forgetting something….

pt is, any or all of those things could add a level of fun for at least some people

rather than seeing any of these things, we see anet push esports and team queue for conquest

therefore, fun is not a part of the current goals/strategy for gw2 pvp

i guess u could say they finally added something to do while waiting on queue by lettings you queue outside of hotm… so progress?

I totally agree with you, this game is going down to the hill! After 3 mouth of break i go back to the game with this patch, and it’s funny to see they didn’t fixed their downgrade of the visuals like: Auras are still bad looking, the trap of dragon hunter have no light anymore, The tempest of air it’s still downgraded… Arena.net shame on you, done with this game i prefer paying 10$ for mouth and playing WoW than this!

I still want to know where things like guild missions fit into the development model for the game.

I worry that certain game elements, that many of us consider core to the GW2 experience, are slipping through holes in the development schedule – in a perpetual limbo as the team works almost exclusively on the content that plays better in a press release (focusing on bringing in new players more than building on the systems they have).

Again, the biggest of these, for me, is guild missions. We haven’t seen a new PVE guild mission in 3+ years.