Guild Wars 2

Playing more and more, with patches, added content, added gear, etc, etc… This game is so good I could practically live inside of it! It is fun and there are far too many things! Even if people keep complaining too much and enjoying too little… This game is GREAT!

What strikes me is how much effort people make not to have fun! The lengths people will go to, just to make sure they prevent themselves of enjoying something is beyond me!

Bottom line… This game is amazing and I play it more and more!

I am definitely less excited about logging in, because I simply dread the thought of having to grind more gear. I spent IRL money at the gem store to convert to gold to purchase my jewels on the promise that I would never have to do it again. 3 months later that I find that I was induced to spend my money by ANET money on false pretenses.

I feel like I was robbed, and it simply does not make me want to log in. I’m typing this post from the office on my day off, because I decided to go to work rather than logging in. Yes, I’m on the forums, but only because I wanted to voice my frustration. Not because I hate this game, but because the opposite.

But to answer the OP’s question, I’ll still be in game, but nowhere near the amount that I usually am. Once I get this feeling about a game, it usually results in a death spiral, and before long it is uninstalled.

The bottom line is that I was spoiled by a game called Shadowbane that had full-open world no restrictions asset destruction pvp, with easy leveling, and no gear treadmill. I’ve been chasing the horizon ever since to find another game that can match it.

I was hoping that GW2 would be a nice happy medium for an aging MMOer that just doesn’t have the time anymore to grind.

Starting to look like that was a pipe dream.

Such a bummer because I REALLY was in love with this game.

I used to play an average of 4 hours a day, now I log on every few days for just a couple of minutes before becoming bored and logging off. This began happening around when the Halloween event was over, actually, because I had already gotten 100% World Completion and all that.

With Lost Shores announced, I logged on, and was obviously disappointed…now I play even less due to Fractals and the downhill journey the game is embarking on. So frustrating.

I played Guild Wars 1 for 5 years and always felt like there was something to do – it never felt like a grind, it was mostly interesting and fresh. And even then, the rare moments when it didn’t feel fresh, it was still enjoyable. Guild Wars 2 lacks this timelessness which is why I’ve slowed down. I don’t see the game going anywhere great, especially after this latest patch that essentially twisted their manifesto.

Not feeling it anymore.

I slowed my playing about 4 months ago, after I hit cap, got all my exotics and ran some dungeons and was just underwhelmed. I liked the dodge system, hated the character design limitations. I watch GW 2 mostly to hear whisper of a someday more complex character design system akin to GW 1. Till then I’ve been doing more TSW to be honest because I find its closer to how I expected GW 2 to turn out (was hoping GW 2 was a less buggy, but similar design concept, minus the setting)

Fobik.5908:

I have to disagree with alot of these posts simply because you people have never played other mmos other then gws1. let me tell you i played and still play wow for 8 years and since wows release in 2004 its hard for other mmos to get noticed or attract gamers i mean you either get one niche of players who like pvp,raids or regular pve. Also if you want true gear grind go play wow and come back and tell me whats worse gws2 or wow’s furthermore most mmos now a days have to compete with blizzard’s success and im happy to see anet try to do that with rng gear. i mean sure its not for everyones taste and if you dont like go back to playing gws1 or cyrptic studios new mmo coming out neverwinter. i hate when others disown a game just because there trying to compete in this world of gaming wow has molded with there whole concept of end game gear most mmo’s don’t live long because wow crushes them or people are disappointed with how it turned out. I love gws2 because its a different take on the genre and i love its a new take on the whole gear grind without competing with others of your class in a 25 man raid for a single piece of loot ive been there in wow when it was 40 man raids as a mage. I would also like to point out anet has plans to revamp and rebalance the dungeons to make them more fun and to drop more tokens in the future. so just hang in there remember good things come to those who are patient=) also if you dont like gws2 go play console games instead =)

You are just trolling now. I never played GW1 but have played several other mmos. Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, and now GW2. I always had something to do in these games and I loved dungeon crawling. I think the biggest disappointment to me here are the dungeons, and if they fixed these I would be more likely to play more again.

Playing less and less most days, and when I do play, it’s just soloing alts. That’s okay, I really have other stuff I need to be doing and other things that I need to spend money on.

Wish they’d done things in a way that would have made me likely to come back for expansions, though.

im getting close to 1000 hours played and im still having a blast, 95% of that time is from WvW

My view on this is a simple one, I do still play althoug not as much as I have been playing, i have several reasons for this that have compunded together to prevent me logging in.

1, i fell out with my old guild as i felt the work and time that I was putting in was not being appreciated. ( i dont work for praise but appreciation is different and politeness goes a long way). After i left i changed server and joined a new guild.

2, I was very dissapointed with the lag that we had on the event. i felt a little like a guinea pig tbh and I cant help but wonder if they dident do enough server load tests during open beta. Also I think they couldent have had enough time to implement a fix for this so the event went ahead and was poor, really really poor.. I would prefer a re-run of it instance based for groups of 10 players maybe.

3,The forums that i check every day before i log into the game proper are full of negative angry posts. I dont blame you for being angry and negative but theres not much constructive critisism going on right now, its mostly just knee jerk reactions to other peoples views and posts. Not all of thwese posts are correct either, io urge all of you to read the references and material and make your own judgement without any peer pressure. This being the case it kind of puts me on a downer before i start playing.

4, several new titles have been released (single player games). Dishonoured, Assassins creed, sniper V2, Hitman absolution, Need for speed most wanted, medal of honour warfighter, endless space to name but a few and i have been working my way through these new titles and will return to gw2 nice and fresh again after i complete these fully

5, Alot of new movies and tv series are out like walking dead, arrow, game of thrones, skyfall, flight to name a few and i have been watching these and trying to catch up

6, its coming uop to christmas and its a busy time of year for everybody im sure but specially so if you have wee snappers to think about and occupy your time.

7, I have some personal issues that im taking care of at the moment a lawsuit being one of them and this takes alot of my time.

So as you can see although im slightly dissapointed by anets performance during the event I have alot of other interests thatare detracting from my game time. So this is not my main cause of less playtime but certainly is a small factor in the whole…

Im not bothered about the new gear as it is not the start of vertical progression or power creep or whatever the buzz words for it are.. Ive read there statements and watched there videos and its no suprise that humans being humans we can watch the same things and read the same stuff and come out with completley different views.

My view is that i trust what they say when they say its not the start of a gear grind. For me personally i dont beleive they have lied or violkated my trust in them yet. maybe my expectations are now a little lower following this event but that is all. Im happy that ascended have slightly better stats than exotic but worse than legendary and look forward to plkaying again whwen i have more free time.

I play the same amount, but then I never even heard of the manifesto untill it came up here at the forum.

I bought GW2 because the graphics looked nice and while I never played GW1 it always had a good reputation, my son was in the beta and he spoke highly of it.

I’ve enjoyed how they run dynamic events and heart quest and even try some jumping puzzles, though im terrible at them…..

I enjoy exploring the world and dont farm or spend a lot of money or worry about gear or stats or anything like that so if there is a gear grind or not in GW2 dosn’t affect me in the slightest.

I too would love to see some explanation on MF and why it still doesn’t work to this day.

It’s just ridiculous to have a stat and then not have it function at all in the game.

At this point it’s very obvious that two things need adjustment/removal. DR in open world, and MF.

MF should work on everything doesn’t matter if it’s a chest or not, it’s supposed to be a magical way of enhancing what you find so let it be just that. When game devs start messing with the drop rates of items that’s when you know something is wrong. There are hardly any bots in the game so they obviously have a working detection method for those bots and gold farmers so in essence they no longer need to keep DR in the open world and they no longer need to keep MF from functioning properly.

I petition them to fix these items before the next content release because they are gamebreaking.

My logins have dwindled since a month ago due to these two things not being addressed nor fixed in any capacity. You literally can’t progress horizontally if you can’t get the mats you need to craft your own set of armor or jewelry.

The gating, I hate it. Now everyone cannot play with everyone else. You must be Fractal Level XX in order to get a group, you must have this gear or that gear to get a group… it’s really sad. GW2 is like a giant fireball plummeting towards the ocean at warp speed.

I’m playing less because I feel that last changes make max stats gear unreachable for me.

I was trying to raise all my characters to level 80 (I have 8, one for each profession ). I knew it would be too hard (and expensive) to get the best gear stats for every character, but I found it possible.

Now, with the new tier, I feel that farming and grinding is the only way to reach my goal. I feel I’m being punished if I’m not playing Fractals of farming T6 materials.

Also, as a GW1 fan base player, I feel betrayed because the game is going against the original philosophy. So, when I play, I feel like somebody in somewhere is laughing at me.

So… now I’m playing less than before. Although I haven’t still done some things I would like to do (Some puzzles, for instance)

I’m very disappointed with this new gameplay. I have purchased every GW released game (prophecies, factions, nightfall, EoTN, bonus pack missions, GW2). But If ascended aren’t removed, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to purchase the next one, sorry.

P.S.: English is not my native language, I hope to have expressed my feelings properly

I am halting playing until after Monday’s AMA. If the elephant in the room is not addressed I will be saddened but go about my life.

I have been playing less since the release of Lost Shores, but did play that weekend. I had been playing everyday and leveling a number of toons. I have an Ele and Warrior at 80, Guardian at 52, Ranger at 59 and 4 other toons at various early levels. I wanted to level all to 80 and be able to easily obtain max gear and basically play anytime I wanted with any toon I wanted anywhere I wanted. With the advent of Ascended, I don’t feel I can get max gear for 1 toon, let alone all 8.

Since the introduction of this grind, I don’t feel like it is fun anymore. I may be in the middle ground of more than casual but less than hard-core. I consider myself more casual though and very altoholic. I have many friends that feel the same way and have the same proclivities about toons. We don’t see the point of continuing with the grind. We have real jobs that give us enough stress and real-life grind to come in to a game and repeat the same things over and over for little rewards (Unless we WANT those rewards i.e. unique skins or chances for mini drops or similar).

I do play less because I have leveled the character i want to play in wvw. The only way I would play more, is if my guild spent more time in WvW.

I WvW for as long as i can as often as i can.

I love it. The tears about the new gear dont concern me ….. (and i think the tears are also unwarranted and a bit juvenile . . . but that is only my opinion and once again i spend my time WVW and new gear for a specific dungeon is just that to me).

I still play because i have nothing other to do at the moment.
If the next content patch is as bad as the last, adding even more gear treadmill, i will go back to LoL.

I barely check into the game now, went from 6+ hours a night to barely logging in before being upset because I don’t know where the gear grind will end. Why get/make gear to have the thought that it’ll be outdated at anytime. They didn’t even wait for an expansion which actually might have been ok, still some people wouldn’t of liked it but at least it would have been more then 3 months into a game that built themselves around not having to do a treadmill to keep up your stats.

http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

It’s a small sample, but even after this great new grinding dungeon… GW2 had it’s lowest hours in game on xfire in the last month.

You would have thought catering to the grinders would have made the over numbers go up but there’s that part of going against your word and losing a lot of future customers.

it’s simple why I stopped playing so much. I was sold a game I didn’t get.

I am used to it though, no whining, I just thought Anet was different. They aren’t, I don’t mind I don’t have to pay monthly anyway so I log in if I am super super super bored, but now, with most everyone on my server dropping out of wv3 / pvp to do fractals which negates the whole reason I chose to play GW2, which was for the pvp going out to empty borderlands by myself isn’t really “fun”. Before fractals, 4 groups in pvp, after fractals, maybe 1. After seeing the world promised with the class patch and being delivered nothing in real substance I see the writing on the wall already.

/shrug I am sure pve’rs will love it, just not my cup of tea.

Used black friday to purchase Mist of Panderia. uninstalled game, took down my guilds vent server. (I wasn’t going to be in game, wasn’t paying for it.) The patch was in Complete contrast to their manifesto and turned it into RNG hell. You have to run these dungeons to get better gear, if you go into the world, that effort is turned to dust because the game down scales your gear..

At least in WoW if I run something over and over to get better gear, I can then go into the world and my effort isn’t turned completely around. To me, this game makes no sense at all anymore..

I have been playing steadily more since release, and after release I was already playing quite a bit.

I don’t have time to play more than 2-3 hours a day on average, but I do it anyway.

I log in every day to do all my daily achievements, and I also make sure to finish my monthly as soon as possible. The fact that they added more and keep changing them is something that I love.

I love that they are adding new content.

I have farmed, I have run dungeons for tokens, and I have done the FotM a few times, and I don’t feel like I’m grinding at all.

Lastly, the new gear, while difficult to obtain, doesn’t bother me. If they start making it into a “treadmill” by adding new higher gear every few months, then I won’t like it. But if they stop at ascended, I don’t care. It’s cool, it’s fun, and it’s bringing my local groups together in ways that the regular content didn’t before.

I am very satisfied right now.

I’m trying to understand the issue at hand.

-Fractals are fun. Play more of it and you get rewarded, akin to dungeons but with new shiny gear. Don’t like it? Go back to running dungeons for exotics, still takes time and effort. (-minor stat points)

-So why do people have issue with those players that are more dedicated to the game to receive an slight edge (mostly kitten) over the rest? In this case the gear is for PvE and WvW, do you ever hear anyone ask for a gear check?

-It’s just a sense of progression, like leveling to 80, or all the other tiers of gear, its there so you can do something in that aspect of the game. Play it for fun, not let such minimal reasons work up a storm in ya.

-They even have sPvP for complete fairness and play given to any account for free. I mean, is there any large MMO out there that gives you max level all class right off the bat with equal gear to do as you please against others?

I agree completely there needs to be fixes (MF) and other additions besides gear, but game is new and so far all the updates are exciting is has been a blast.

I agree with most of people saying that it’s because of the content and endgame. Even with new content updates, they came with plenty of bugs, and some even frustrating like the karka events.

I finished story, map, my gear, and all dungeons. I don’t like PVP and WvW really. Then, for me it’s all since PVE will start to be repetitive if I continue playing.

Honestly, I dont understand how people can compare 3 (yes 3) items to a geargrind such as WoWs or Rift or any other MMO.

I takes roughly 1-1½h per day to “grind” for it after you hit level 10. Once you have the 2 rings you like there is no more “grinding”. You can even save all the wrong stat rings for alts.

Have logged in a few times since the patch but that is it. Hit 80, got fully geared so I could focus on just doing WVW and now more gear comes out. I also already spent money to transmute to the look I wanted. That proved a waste of resources now as the gear will have to be replaced with a new tier. I was so happy I was done with PVE dungeons and I could focus on WVW and then bam, a new dungeon to grind. Big gulps eh? Whelp, see ya later!

I’m thinking about quitting mainly because of the ascended gear, I’m stilling giving it some time to see how everything plays out, but i fully uninstall. I’ve already stopped my friends from getting the game since the promise was broking of not having a gear treadmill………..so yea Ascended gear might or will be the reason i quit

Koroz.5294:

it’s simple why I stopped playing so much. I was sold a game I didn’t get.

I am used to it though, no whining, I just thought Anet was different. They aren’t, I don’t mind I don’t have to pay monthly anyway so I log in if I am super super super bored, but now, with most everyone on my server dropping out of wv3 / pvp to do fractals which negates the whole reason I chose to play GW2, which was for the pvp going out to empty borderlands by myself isn’t really “fun”. Before fractals, 4 groups in pvp, after fractals, maybe 1. After seeing the world promised with the class patch and being delivered nothing in real substance I see the writing on the wall already.

/shrug I am sure pve’rs will love it, just not my cup of tea.

I’m a pve-er in mmos for 10 years, and I can say quite clearly that I don’t like this one bit.

The gating and gear grind nurtures the worst aspects of MMO elitism, and goes diametrically against the intended inclusive nature of this game.

I have been very vocal about how much I did not agree with the changes pre-patch, to the point of being infracted 10+ times on posts (some very warranted). I decided to give the new content a chance, I didn’t want to be one of those detractors who quit without even playing the new content.

After trying it, I’m even more annoyed. The FoTM level segregation, the empty world, the grind for ascended gear, the welfare precursors, the mess that was the one-time event.

It’s just ridiculous that the people who brought us this amazing game could miss the mark so much on this patch. Hell, maybe I’m wrong and one of the people in the vocal minority – I dunno, I still see a lot of people in Lion’s Arch on my server running happily content in their hamster wheel. Only Arena Net truly knows the positive or negative impact this patch created – the rest of us can just speculate.

All I know is that through 15 years of playing MMOs, I’ve never felt this much anger towards a developer. Hell, I hardly ever even post in forums – but in this case I feel betrayed and angry enough to vent in the hopes someone is listening.

When did I reduce my playing and why? Several factors.

First, is the time commitment and the grind. Trying to get a group up and going fora pug and the tools required there of for dungeon running is absurd and primitive. Sorry, chat spamming is not something I find enjoyable and can take forever. I do not want to go back to running with ai companions like gw1 had, nor do I want a complete wow clone of a dungeon finder, but the system has to be better than it is. I know this is is on the radar but… yeah…

Second I would have to say is the measured responses on the forum. Looking back on the games I have played, I link in my mind the best times in the game with the candor provided by the employees who post on the forum. The original GW was the first few months. In wow it was during WotLK. Currently, League of Legends blows out of the water everybody in this and looks to be rewarded for it. Lack of candor, or an attempt to keep players in a separate camp in the process can be felt as a lack of respect for the player. The players are not the enemy, they are a partner in the development cycle. I am starting to see the same mistakes being made by the gw2 team as I saw during the last few releases of gw1.

Third is the apparent focus on the european market over all others. There is no reason that events have to all be at noon pst on a weekday for launch (which puts it during prime-time for euro time zones). Sorry, no. By neglecting your American and Oceanic players you alienate them further as second class players. Why play this game when other games know how to either rotate or gate events based on time zone and region?

Fourth, pve v. pvp balance. This should be a non-issue. Balance is needed in both. However doing the same actions that led to the alienation of many pve players in the first gw is not going to make many friends for gw2. this is NOT to say that the solution found in gw1 after the major exodus is needed (separating into pvp and pve versions). You can create mechanics that are more impact-full on pve targets than pvp via monster weaknesses and environmental effects.

Fifth, the major focus on the trading post for events. Yes, we know, you need to make money. But if you want to make money over a longer period of time, show us, the players and willing consumers, that you are not just going to try to make the quick buck before people move on. Micro-transactions are awesome. Heck, in LoL I have spent close to $300-400 in a year because I loved the game so much and wanted to support it’s development. And you know what, even though that is about as much as I spent on 4 years of wow, I don’t feel cheated one bit! In gw1, I bought all but one collector’s edition kitten you Factions shipping error) and spent nearly $150 on extra character slots, costumes, and inventory slots mostly after I had moved on to wow. Why? because I believed in your studio for gw2. I believed the product you were trying to make deserved a little bit of investment.

You know how much I have spent extra on gw2? Well besides getting the DDE, nothing. Not one dime in gems have I purchased. The reason is as above, it feels cheap. It feels like a money grab. “Here, buy keys for a CHANCE to get a skin or special treat.” Here, buy these city clothes that you are unable to use in combat." “here buy this armor skin that you can only us the on time and if you f’ it up, oh well.” “Here, buy this dye set that only affects one character on an account and may not even have a color desirable to you.” Until this is addressed, I will not buy anything besides maybe a character slot or bank space and even that may not be purchased with cash.

I could continue to go on but these are my major issues. I hope this is not falling of deaf ears but even if it does, the money i am saving by not buying into your current scam will allow me to afford the next game or interest that catches my eye. Sorry.

[edited for some grammar]

1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?

I do.

2. When did you start playing less?

Last week.

3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent

The introduction of “Ascended” gear and the PR-runaround instead of a straight “Yes” or “No” to the question: Is ascended items the end of “gear progression” in GW2?

1. I still come to the forums but don’t play the game, so I can monitor the ascended situation, and when it is fixed and we have proper feedback from Anet on their plans, I will return to playing. Until then, I refuse to log on out of principle.

2. I started playing less during the Lost Shores event, because the new content didn’t really interest me and it seemed kinda weak, but I was constantly being harassed by my mailbox telling me things were going on that I didn’t care about. So I just decided to not play that weekend, but the more I thought about ascended gear and the original manifesto, the more I realised I wasn’t going to play.

3. After rewatching the manifesto, I realised this isn’t the game they advertised to me, and they caved in to the WoW fanboys who wanted a gear treadmill. Fingers crossed they sort it out, this is Guild Wars 2, not WoW. Grow a pair and stick by your guns, Anet.

gadenp.7586:

Hi fellow forum-ers,

Recently, after FotM came out, I have extremely scaled back my time spend in GW2.

So I would like to ask:
1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

1. Me. Well kinda. I still log into the game daily but at this point over 75% of my time in GW2 is spent in Lion’s Arch chatting with friends (who also mostly log in to get the dailies) and also trying in vain to create a story group for Cathedral of Flame. So I still log in but at this point GW2 serves me mostly as a fancy msn.

2. I was a bit frustrated during the last phase of the Halloween events but the Lost Shores one-time event is what did the most damage.

3. Several things:
a) My favourite guildmates moved on to another game. I’m in 2 more guilds (they still have a few people logging in) but they seem to be doing mostly fractals and I don’t want to trouble them with my disconnect issues not being able to log in afterwards.

b) I’m the kind of player who focuses 99% of his time around one main character and have no interest in alts. I feel like my gameplay with the ranger has been the same since the third week and I find that experimenting with builds other than condition/critical has not been all that fruitful. The card game feeling of playing around with builds is what I most enjoyed in GW1.

c) I was very disappointed by the two opening phases of the Lost Shores (after the lag of the first day I didn’t see the point logging in at day 3) and that greatly shook my expectations for following events. The unacceptable technical issues and bugs demonstrated an incredible lack of foresight on behalf of Arenanet (what on earth made them confident there wouldn’t be incredible lag during the opening event I’ll never know). I also thought the opening event and treasure hunts themselves would have been very tedious and unrewarding even without the bugs and lag. Plus I was pissed off that I sat through the lagfest of the first day and bugfest of the second day and all I got out of it was some karma jugs and a several silver in repair costs and then I found out that people present during the closing event received a 20-slot bag and lvl 80 exotics.

d) I spent over 40g on my exotics and several fine transmutation stones mislead into believing that they were top tier only to find out that there will be a new tier of gear released relatively soon.

e) I find Vindictus’ Resenlian’s Labyrinth better than fractals and I never get disconnected and unable to rejoin the party while doing it. After all it is the exact same concept. Creating a low level fractal group is already an ordeal thanks to the scaling system (it’d be alot better if there were broader scales and you needed complete each 10 times rather than doing (and creating a party for) 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. Plus the rng ascended has rendered other dungeons near obsolete at this point.

I’ve basically stopped playing about 2.5 weeks after launch and hitting level 67. Open world MMO’s were never really my thing since they all seem super repetitive and the combat is shallow, slow, and boring. I played GW1 for like 6 years because it was so different from the typical MMO, it’s mainly instanced, and had a lot of depth in the team based combat. I got GW2 because it promised an open world MMO that is completely different from all the other open world MMO’s out there with no grind and minimal repetitiveness… and also because I had like 42 points in my HoM. But it felt like very time i go to a new region, i’m doing basically the same thing for many of the dynamic events, and the dungeons were horribly boring. The combat is extremely simple compared to GW1 and the “action” elements are a throw back to late 90’s action RPG games. I don’t see how this game even comes close to satisfy action combat junkies or strategy junkies. Have I ever felt a rush playing this game even during large boss fights? no. I was bored. In essence this game is in many ways worse than some of the free MMO’s out there in terms of the “fun factor” heck… I even played Aika online for like 2 months, and i thought that was a terrible game…
I’m already back playing first person shooters, RTS games, and action RPGs. Call of duty series, star craft 2, vindictus, dragon nest… At least those games give you some measure of adrenaline and excitement because with CoD, counterstrike, vindictus, dragon nest, milliseconds count… and star craft you need to pay attention to everything at once… and who cares if those games are repetitive? At least I don’t have to just randomly press 1-0, not even look at the screen and win. In GW2, at best I get to press 1-0 in a certain order, at a certain time, move to a certain spot, and dodge occasionally… boring!

Also i hate the character animations. Unnatural, overly smoothed, floaty, and weird combat animations that make no sense what so ever. It’s about as unnatural as someone shooting a gun upside down with their pinkie in the trigger.

I still come back to the forums to see if a new update would entice me to play again since I don’t feel like I got my 60$’s worth of “fun” yet. Instead I find updates that even more people are complaining about….

gadenp.7586:

So I would like to ask:
1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

I don’t play too much less, but I have become demoralized. I was going to start going for some cool skins for my guardian, and then the patch hit. I made a decision not to hinder my journey to the cool skins I want in exchange for vertical progression gear. However, the player base has seemingly hindered the journey for me, thus the feeling of being demoralized. It’s hard to find groups for other dungeons than FotM now, and my favorite content (the open world meta-events) are hardly run by anyone. I really love fighting epic bosses and solving mini-dungeon puzzles along side my server mates, but now many players just hide away in instances all day while the world goes stale. I thought GW 2 was to be a game that had open world content as its focus, and not instanced content like every other MMO of the WoW variety. Now it seems their direction has shifted to incentivizing instanced dungeons, while the open world dies and their dynamic events go unused.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Honestly, I dont understand how people can compare 3 (yes 3) items to a geargrind such as WoWs or Rift or any other MMO.

I takes roughly 1-1½h per day to “grind” for it after you hit level 10. Once you have the 2 rings you like there is no more “grinding”. You can even save all the wrong stat rings for alts.

Uh-huh. Let’s see how long it takes to get 300 exotic-grade mats at 1 hour per day…

I´m playing less. Reasons are the new tier-set and the way, how the communication is handled. As I grow older, I´m just getting tired and/or upset about the whole pr-thing.

It seems,I should stop playing MMORPGs, because thats the genre where the game-design and -approach can be changed after I invested time and/or money.

Foehn.2489:

I’m trying to understand the issue at hand.

-Fractals are fun. Play more of it and you get rewarded, akin to dungeons but with new shiny gear.

yes, they are fun. I’m not having fun running them however – i’m too busy worrying whether i will get that drop i want this time or not. This completely ruins the entertainment value of this dungeon for me.

Don’t like it? Go back to running dungeons for exotics, still takes time and effort. (-minor stat points)

Why should i put an effort into getting exotics, if they are going to become obsolete soon?

-So why do people have issue with those players that are more dedicated to the game to receive an slight edge (mostly kitten) over the rest?

I have waited for this game since it has been announced. i have supported it’s development and ideas behind it with all my heart. Please, do not try to tell me i’m less dedicated to it than someone that neither bothered to learn nor cared what GW2 was supposed to be about. And i have issue with the situation because i don’t think someone should be offered an edge simply for having more free time than i do. I have specifically picked this game because this wasn’t supposed to happen here.

In this case the gear is for PvE and WvW, do you ever hear anyone ask for a gear check?

You haven’t?

-It’s just a sense of progression, like leveling to 80, or all the other tiers of gear, its there so you can do something in that aspect of the game. Play it for fun, not let such minimal reasons work up a storm in ya.

For me getting to level 80 and max stats gear was a tutorial part of the game. I was able to endure that part, because it was relatively short and i knew that i’ll get to the real game easily. Now i’m being told that i’ll likely never leave that tutorial – and certainly not with my alts. I definitely wouldn’t call that “a sense of progression”. More like “a sense of going nowhere”.

-They even have sPvP for complete fairness and play given to any account for free. I mean, is there any large MMO out there that gives you max level all class right off the bat with equal gear to do as you please against others?

Not sure how it is now, since i’m not interested in PvP anymore, but i do remember that there were several MUDs once which were based on exactly such principle. Of course they were completely free to play, and didn’t have to worry about introducing mechanics that maybe are reducing overall fun, but keep players engaged and spending.

I agree completely there needs to be fixes (MF) and other additions besides gear, but game is new and so far all the updates are exciting is has been a blast.

Yeah, MF should be removed from the game (and drop rates upgraded across the board). And as far as the last part go, about last patch i agree – though i think i would put on it a different (and far less positive) meaning of words “exciting” and “blast”.

1) I only recently started to come to the forums because I’m getting frustrated with how much of a material grind this game has become and wanted to know if others feel the same. Actually played about an hour and a half today…think I’m done for the day due to the grind annoyance…which is a departure from my 5 hour+ a day schedule. Not a fan of pay to win/aquire games. Maybe I would be if I were rich, but I’m not.

2) A few days ago.

3) The leniancy towards cheating, the change in karma farming, the alteration of gear drops and diminishing returns. All of that has pretty much stacked upon my shoulders, not sure how long I can carry the weight.

Foehn.2489:

I’m trying to understand the issue at hand.

-Fractals are fun. Play more of it and you get rewarded, akin to dungeons but with new shiny gear. Don’t like it? Go back to running dungeons for exotics, still takes time and effort. (-minor stat points)

Fractals are fairly fun, the problem is “LF1M FotM lvl 8” “LF1M FotM lvl 15” – so splitting of the playerbase AND they made fractals the default best way to acquire gold and gear while playing the game (even though they still are not very good.) Playing in the open world is a horrible way to make gold or acquire gear now (not that it was so super awesome before, either.)

Notice how few people are out in the world? Blame that on people feeling forced to run fractals for one reason or another. Fractals should be something you run when you feel like it because they are fun, not because it’s the only way to progress your character…

azurrei.5691:

Fractals are fairly fun, the problem is “LF1M FotM lvl 8” “LF1M FotM lvl 15” – so splitting of the playerbase AND they made fractals the default best way to acquire gold and gear while playing the game (even though they still are not very good.) Playing in the open world is a horrible way to make gold or acquire gear now (not that it was so super awesome before, either.)

Notice how few people are out in the world? Blame that on people feeling forced to run fractals for one reason or another. Fractals should be something you run when you feel like it because they are fun, not because it’s the only way to progress your character…

Honestly couldn’t have said it better myself.

I use to enjoy doing dynamics and exploring and seeing the constant combat going on all over. I don’t see it anymore, like Orr for example, mostly Barren now.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Honestly, I dont understand how people can compare 3 (yes 3) items to a geargrind such as WoWs or Rift or any other MMO.

I takes roughly 1-1½h per day to “grind” for it after you hit level 10. Once you have the 2 rings you like there is no more “grinding”. You can even save all the wrong stat rings for alts.

It takes much longer than that, I hate dungeons, this is only the beginning. Get it?

Ps. I don’t think fractals are fun at all.

I have not so many time irl to play the game and the recent decisions about introducing ascended gear completly crushed my motivation to play PvE. I can sacrifice like 8 hours in week to play GW2 so farming fractals for ascended gear is…impossible, so i just stick to PvP. Three items are only the beggining

In general i think, im tired of MMO genere at all, nothing new and fresh on the market, i thought GW2 is different but again we have the same standard in more shiny package and the hype was ridiculous, so that’s probably my fault.

That’s my opinion and u can disagree with it.

gadenp.7586:

1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?

I visit the forums daily, mainly after I finish my round of news websites in the morning after getting to work. I like to see what’s currently going on in the game.

gadenp.7586:

2. When did you start playing less?

• When the Ranger’s Short Bow skill Crossfire was nerfed and covered up with the excuse of “animation fix” while other REAL animation problems remain, primarily the 1-handed sword #1 skill for Rangers.

gadenp.7586:

3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

• See #2.
• The very slow response to bug fixes. Mainly with dungeons.
• The poorly designed way of getting into dungeons with a party.
• No way to ever queue up for WvW as a party. So SOO hard to PvP with friends.
• Last but not least, HORRIBLE PUBLIC RELATIONS! Mainly on the forums. I don’t always need to hear directly from the Devs but at least have some middle person that holds a meeting with the devs 1-2 times a week to relay our concerns back and forth. Devs can focus more on fixing problem while the mediator will reply back to us. But NOOO we’re left in the dark 95% of the time.

I have gone back to GW1, because it seems the game is more about what ANET wants and an profit from than creativing my own experience like I could with GW1.

Interestingly I have been very content to play GW2 and have been happily leveling my alts which has been maintaining my interest.

Me posting here has actually come about due to ‘The Lost Shores’ update and the buggy, glitchy, disconnecting crashing fiasco that it was. This combined with the ascended armour…..

I have to be honest and state I’ve refused to believe that the ascended gear is a grind based treadmill. This despite my guild telling me it is and the fact that I feel ‘obliged’ to participate in fotm which makes me think that it is. I really just can’t shake the fact that ‘THIS IS ARENANET’ a company who I’ve followed for years now since my gw1 days. The guys who turned the MMO genre on it’s head.

Have we really adopted a grind/treadmill philosophy? This makes me want to play less :/

gadenp.7586:

Hi fellow forum-ers,

Recently, after FotM came out, I have extremely scaled back my time spend in GW2.

So I would like to ask:
1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

1. I come to the forums a lot, especially since I found some bugged events. Now I check before doing new things to make sure I won’t find myself stuck for a month like people in the Hatchery quest. It’s also a good place to find out about how to build my elementalist.

2. After the bot-banning system went live and turned out to be a fiasco. Lost even more interest after Lost Shores.

3. There are so many players who get their accounts banned wrongly, and I’m not interested in putting time/money into a game that I could lose for reasons beyond my control. The continuing hacks and the false bans for fraud make me wary of purchasing from the gem store. ANet doesn’t seem to be able to roll out content without messing something up, and the Lost Shores event was the turning point for me in trusting the system.

The poor execution just makes me wary of playing. The game is great, but I feel like Tyria is built on quicksand. The systems under GW2 aren’t stable enough to make my playing fun or worthwhile.

I feel like GW2 was released to early, i feel that investors put a pressure under ArenaNet to release game earlier, thats why we have so many unfinished mechanics (spectator mode and more), so many bugs etc. Some events are unispired same as dungeon mechanics.

I certainly find myself playing less these days, however, the Ascended gear fiasco is really only a small part of the issues I have with the game.

Bugged classes, bugged events, getting constantly jerked around as a ranger, and watching the devs attempt to pass off PR releases and double-speak to an increasingly irate forum of people wanting straight answers are the main things that are really wearing me down as far as GW2 goes. Some days I feel a bit bad that I worked as hard as I did to bring the 40+ people currently in the guild into the game (as most of them had never even heard of GW2 at this time last year).

Do I still log in almost every day? Still play my ranger? Still have fun? Sure, but I know with 100% certainty that if my wife and close friends we not also playing, I’d’ve been long gone more than a month ago. Sadly, recently, there have been a number of things that have reminded me of my WoW days, when, more often than not, we had fun despite the game.

Honestly, though, the biggest factor in my decreased play time is that I’ve having far more fun writing about the game than actually playing it—and that’s really not meant as a knock or cheap shot. I’m just having a blast with the writing (and, at nearly 70,000 words at this point, and only slightly over halfway done, no small time commitment).

Maybe I’m too naive, or too idealistic, but I still hold out hope that, a year from now (if any of us are still playing), I’ll look back and laugh at those first rocky months the same way I do when I think of the first year or so of vanilla WoW.

Foehn.2489:

I’m trying to understand the issue at hand.

-Fractals are fun. Play more of it and you get rewarded, akin to dungeons but with new shiny gear. Don’t like it? Go back to running dungeons for exotics, still takes time and effort. (-minor stat points)

-So why do people have issue with those players that are more dedicated to the game to receive an slight edge (mostly kitten) over the rest? In this case the gear is for PvE and WvW, do you ever hear anyone ask for a gear check?

-It’s just a sense of progression, like leveling to 80, or all the other tiers of gear, its there so you can do something in that aspect of the game. Play it for fun, not let such minimal reasons work up a storm in ya.

-They even have sPvP for complete fairness and play given to any account for free. I mean, is there any large MMO out there that gives you max level all class right off the bat with equal gear to do as you please against others?

I agree completely there needs to be fixes (MF) and other additions besides gear, but game is new and so far all the updates are exciting is has been a blast.

All your points are irrelevant, the game was sold as a non treadmill gear grind game, so regardless of how significant or insignificant the gear grind is does not matter, its still a grind. I don’t really give a kitten if people like my gear or not, I do care that I have to spend countless hours grinding or spend a small fortune to be on par now.

If they had advertised it as a gear progression game and had no progression at all I’m sure everyone who bought it as a progression game would be just fine with that right ?

That is the issue at hand.

World pvp was a no no because it “griefed” other players, however griefing non gear grinders with Ascended gear and harassing them with gear score to do dungeon runs, oh thats perfectly fine right?

There has been a clear paradigm shift, most of the core GW2 buyers and Beta testers don’t give a flip about gear grinding or gear score, we had been reeled in with words like, no gear grind, WvWvW, Structured Esport pvp. All of those systems feel rushed and incomplete, entire specs are not possible and its very one dimensional.

And now we have to suffer the Raider crowd telling us how we were not promised anything and that the game is about Dungeons and PVE now, and apparently it is. What a slap in the face.

Look I don’t know about most of you but I had two priorities with this game, it didn’t offer everything I wanted but I had 2 main reasons for coming here. 1 PVP, I like pvp and theorycrafting, both of which leave much to be desired. 2 Get away from Raiders and gear grinders, yes thats right, not even be in the same game with them and well thats gone to now. I guess I am going to have to start playing more pure sandbox style games, raiders don’t have the patience for those, I HAVE to get away from these GD people.

What GW2 essentially promised us 72 virgins in the gaming world and as soon as they had us buy boxes, replaced them all with Justin Bieber in a ninja patch. Thanks alot.

I used to play GW2 as a way of rewarding myself for finishing my weekly obligations for grad school. I looked forward to last weekend so much that I got some of my projects done early so I could spend extra time playing during the special event. After last weekend, I haven’t really felt like playing. I loved that GW2 was going to be a game I could play despite finishing my Masters and working full-time, but I just don’t feel that way anymore. It’s really unfortunate too because I finally have a month off from school.

Also, it’s not necessarily the grind that is turning me off. It’s that I feel like things are going in a direction that is forcing grind in order to get in on new content. With a dead guild, I’m forced to PUG and I’m afraid I would be kicked for a lack of gear or progression. I’m more than willing to grind for something I want because it’s pretty, but I don’t want to do it because the gear is essential. Sure, I can level some alts, but then what?

Honestly, I’ve been thinking about just going back to GW1. I know I can pick up where I left off, and I’d only need to update my build.