Guild Wars 2

I’m a filthy casual calling all other filthy casuals to tell me what they do to get the most out of this game. I uninstalled it about a year ago because HoT just killed it for me. I was making progress at a snails pace and it was so group focused that i found it hard to quickly jump in and accomplish anything by myself. I also constantly feel like i’m falling behind with the living story. I really deteste the living story and would much rather they released large expansions further apart instead of these “micro-expansions” that add more items i don’t understand and make me constantly feel like i’m behind, but it is what it is so i’ll need to try and get used to it. It’s worse now after quitting for a year. I’ve reinstalled and have no idea what to do with myself.

So what do people who play casually and aren’t aimed at raiding do to get enjoyment out of the game that keeps them playing? I enjoy the character building aspect of the game, and the map completion was fun (the first time). I like that you can build legendaries at your own pace but it looks like such a large and confusing process i wouldn’t even know how to keep track of it or even start it. I was thinking maybe my goal should just be a couple specific things? For example my friend who plays WoW is a mount collector and gold maker and that’s all he does because he’s accepted he’ll never be able to experience every single bit of content in the game. Is anybody similar to this in GW? The fact all the “mounts” and toys appear to be on the cash shop really kills this for me.

I’m rambling, somebody help!

I suspect it differs from one player to another. Personally, I got hooked up by starting a legendary collection. I wasn’t sure I’d finish it, I was just curious how far will I go. I’d say it’s a good long-term goal. It gives you incentives to play different aspects of the game and you can eventually end up liking some of them enough to continue playing afterwards. Assuming you go through the whole process. It is a big project, but don’t let its size intimidate you.

That’s what happened in my case too. I started crafting a legendary out of curiosity and while playing I got to know all the different aspects of the game better. Now I’m completely hooked. I also started to go for achievement points which give you some kind of direction and are really great content in my opinion. There is plenty of cool stuff to do in this game, but sometimes it just does not give you a clear direction and you have to set your goals by yourself.

‘Full character completion’ is a good one. So, 100%map and ascended armor and weapons for each character is one of my personal goals.
Ascended armors and weapons are a good reasonable goal for ‘filthy casuals’, equipping all of your ‘main’ characters with them will give you something to aim for. Legendary journeys are not too complex either, as they track themselves in the achievement panel.

As a casual, I’ve got 1 of each profession, 7/9 have 100%map, other two aren’t far behind, and all but 3 are in full ascended gear. I don’t know when I’ll achieve my goal, but I’m slowly working on it which is good for me.

I try to complete as many achievements as possible, but they’re short term goals unless they’re in WvW or PvP. So it depends entirely on my mood that day. Sometimes I’ll just spend a couple hours in WvW killing dolyaks (I will have the Yakslapper title!), or meta events in HoT to make gold/get Amalgamated Gemstones to finish Nevermore (10th Legendary, I sold 2 that I made and gave 1 to my husband)

Really though, it’s whatever you want to do, as a casual it is slower but not impossible.

Haleydawn.3764:

meta events in HoT to make gold/get Amalgamated Gemstones to finish Nevermore.

Good choice. This was my first legendary and still my favourite. And I agree – with casual play it just takes longer.

Personally, I just play whatever content catches my fancy that day. If I “fall behind” then I can be moderately sure that in a few days/weeks/months I’ll pick up whatever I may have missed out just now. That’s the beauty of this game, you can’t really fall behind, as you can always do the content at a later date. Thanks to megaservers there’s no shortage of people on any map in this game.

I do have goals in this game, but as it’s my free time to enjoy myself, I don’t really care if said goal takes a week or a month longer, the important thing to me is to have fun. As such, I have actually taken up a legendary journey (the one for Nevermore, since I would love to have the skin of the 2nd precursor iteration) about a year ago, but have yet to finish the 2nd level of that one. It took me months to get the first level collection done, since I would only look into it whenever I was looking for inspiration of what to play that day, and more often than not would already get sidetracked on the way to the event or vendor I had made out as my current goal.

Right now I’ve got my eyes on the ascended druidstone backpiece from the new map. I expect to take a couple of months (or probably even many) to get it, since I won’t be in the mood of playing the new map all the time, but who cares? One day, this lovely piece of flowery shrub will be mine, and I’ll have fun all the way there.

So my “casual secret” is to see the gameplay as the reward itself, and only have rough goals to guide your gameplay if you are totally at a loss at what seems fun that day. A variety of different goals also helps to always find something fun to do.

And if all else fails, even some casual map exploration or event training anywhere on Tyria may produce stuff for your material storage that may come in handy at a later time to help towards a goal you have yet to find. Imagine my surprise when I looted my first precursor the other day (after way too many hours having fun in this game), and finding that my material storage held enough stuff to craft the legendary right away. Double luck that it was the only legendary weapon that I really liked, so I now have a fun new toy that’s contributing to me just sending my little asura out into the world to have fun .

Forget legendaries, aim for a full set of ascended. It needs gold and a few time-gated materials but it is not too bad from a grind viewpoint, especially if you are patient.

Apart from that, suffer your way through the HoT maps. You don’t need to get all of the masteries, just a handful will do then get yourself onto the newer LS3 maps. They are much more fun and much more casual friendly.

DoctorDing.5890:

Forget legendaries, aim for a full set of ascended. It needs gold and a few time-gated materials but it is not too bad from a grind viewpoint, especially if you are patient.

I don’t think it’s as good goal, from a casual PoV. The set of ascended only offers stat boost and doesn’t give you any direction. It’s all just grind. Legendary collections sometimes show you events and places you can easily miss and generally tend to lead you through different aspects of the game – map completion, events, fractals, even some WvW. It’s a much better way to get familiar with the game and discover activities you enjoy doing IMO.

DoctorDing.5890:

Forget legendaries, aim for a full set of ascended. It needs gold and a few time-gated materials but it is not too bad from a grind viewpoint, especially if you are patient.

And then when you are done, realize you dont even like the class and begin the process again on another character.

If you love a legendary, especially the 1st generation ones are really not too bad. A good website that can help you track what you need is gw2efficiency.com – their crafting calculator is super useful, especially if you link your account with an API key (it’s a kind of “read-only” set of information about your account, very safe). I made The Dreamer recently and it is super satisfying to see (AND hear – ponies away!) my character using it. That said, they do take a lot of resources; if you play at a pace where the Living Story updates overwhelm you it might take a very long time to build up the wealth for a legendary.

HoT maps are at an age now where they frequently feature “HP trains” of people who want to blow through the HPs as efficiently as possible. Following one through Verdant Brink and one through Auric Basin is nearly enough to unlock your entire elite specialization even if you never did a single HP in vanilla, and will also leave you with all waypoints unlocked, which can really open up the maps and help you get the story done. The story instances themselves are tuned to be easily soloable (aside from the end boss – it does help to have at least one buddy there); it was getting to the green stars in the open world without dying that I struggled with the most early on.

I set a goal and go for that. Toss what gung-hoers consider complete. I have not completed a LS story since the first two and just aim to get to the new zone and randomly explore now. I keep a worksheet tracking my progress for this year’s goal (ascended trinkets for all my characters with at least one ascended weapon for each). Not sure what I will do next year but by then I am sure I will hit on something.

I set myself some pretty lofty goals.
I’ve been playing since launch and just barely last week got my first ascended weapon for completing HoT, and the small quest after it.
I recently started the collection to get dawn, so I’m going for sunrise.
And also a set of ascended armor for my main character as well.
Also I’m, as Wooden Potatos would say, going to ‘Tony Stark my guild hall’, as I have a very inactive set of guildmates to help me with it.

Like I said, Lofty goals.
Probable going to take me the next 5 years to finish it.

One thing that might help: are you aware you don’t need all the items from the Living Story?

GW2 only has 6 tiers of equipment and everything within a tier is equally good. The exotic/ascended equipment from the new maps is identical to the exotic/ascended equipment you can get elsewhere in the game. The only difference is that there’s a wider range of stat combinations to choose from. Some of those can be useful for certain builds, but it’s not directly more powerful so unless you really want that combination of stats there’s no reason to choose them over the existing ones.

On a related note instead of constantly chasing new and better stats the game is set up for players to go after cosmetic goals. Legendaries are an obvious one but more generally getting the perfect look for your character is a common goal and can lead to doing some things you may not have considered otherwise and then find you enjoy. It can be frustrating sometimes when a seemingly simple goal proves unexpected complicated, but it can be fun too.

There’s also other goals which some people enjoy and other people think are insane. For example I collect mini pets. Sounds simple but it really isn’t because they come from absolutely everywhere so involves playing lots of PvP, lots of fractals, raiding, WvW (back when they had tournaments), lots of time in HoT and LS maps, dropping everything else to focus on a festival when it comes around and for the ‘easy’ ones thousands of gold and either even more gold or real money for the gem store ones.

I wouldn’t suggest that if you’re just looking for a goal because it’s a pretty massive one, but there’s quite a few of us who genuinely enjoy it in spite of the insanity. (The only real problem is the limited time, account bound, real-money RNG ones, which are thankfully rare but painfully infuriating when they do come up.)

But the point is you can pick whatever aspects of the game appeal to you and focus on that. There are people who only play WvW or PvP, others who only do map completion and jumping puzzles, or only do the story…and apart from the content itself none of them are missing out on anything.

I found gw2efficiency very good for the last legendary I made. Can see what in storage and what needs to be bought and the current price. Nothing needs to be done that second and you can check back in a week or month or whatever time you want to see how far you have advanced.
As for maps I enjoyed doingall of them solo so I can’t advise you on why they are a chore to do.

By the way I know “filthy casual” is the standard term in some MMOs and most people don’t actually mean it as an insult, but it’s probably better to avoid it here.

GW2 is, by design, a very casual friendly game and a lot of people classify themselves as casual players. It’s not seen as a negative by the community (with rare exceptions of course) or something to be embarrassed about.

Dawdler.8521:

DoctorDing.5890:

Forget legendaries, aim for a full set of ascended. It needs gold and a few time-gated materials but it is not too bad from a grind viewpoint, especially if you are patient.

And then when you are done, realize you dont even like the class and begin the process again on another character.

Good thing Ascended gear is account bound and can be forged for different stats~

My advice to you is to join a filithy casual guild. Because you can be casual and part of a guild. If you’re on a US server, hit me up in game, I can help you get through almost anything. It doesn’t take a zerg. It takes just a little bit of knowledge.

I first started GW2 in beta because a few friends from another MMO were also starting it. Given the progression of the game, I decided early on that I was not going to try to “keep up” because I didn’t like the hectic pace. Luckily Anet redid the Living Story so that we can go back and do it at our own pace. So I do whatever strikes my fancy on the day that I log in. I don’t have any specific thing that keeps me playing besides just enjoying the game.

But if you do enjoy having a particular goal, I saw a post by someone who made his own goal. He collects every single alcohol-related thing / event in the game. Its funny because he said he doesn’t personally even drink lol. I think it’s great when people can come up with their own goal like that.

I’ll have you know that I’m a very clean casual, thank you.

It really just depends on my mood. I’ll level an alt, get some map completion in, or work on gathering materials, or just do some role play with my wonderful guild mates.

Verdis.8472:

I’m a filthy casual calling all other filthy casuals to tell me what they do to get the most out of this game. I uninstalled it about a year ago because HoT just killed it for me. I was making progress at a snails pace and it was so group focused that i found it hard to quickly jump in and accomplish anything by myself. I also constantly feel like i’m falling behind with the living story. I really deteste the living story and would much rather they released large expansions further apart instead of these “micro-expansions” that add more items i don’t understand and make me constantly feel like i’m behind, but it is what it is so i’ll need to try and get used to it. It’s worse now after quitting for a year. I’ve reinstalled and have no idea what to do with myself.

So what do people who play casually and aren’t aimed at raiding do to get enjoyment out of the game that keeps them playing? I enjoy the character building aspect of the game, and the map completion was fun (the first time). I like that you can build legendaries at your own pace but it looks like such a large and confusing process i wouldn’t even know how to keep track of it or even start it. I was thinking maybe my goal should just be a couple specific things? For example my friend who plays WoW is a mount collector and gold maker and that’s all he does because he’s accepted he’ll never be able to experience every single bit of content in the game. Is anybody similar to this in GW? The fact all the “mounts” and toys appear to be on the cash shop really kills this for me.

I’m rambling, somebody help!

Play the game and find activities you like.

My first advice would be to not let the fact that the items you want to collect are primarily on the gem store stop you. Keep in mind that, as long as you aren’t in a huge rush, you can buy pretty much anything there by trading gold for gems. According to GW2Spidy, 30 gold will get you about 100 gems right now, meaning that most skins (gliders, toys, etc) will cost between 120 and 200 gold each. Find a fun way to make gold (which can range from simply doing meta events in a map like Silverwastes to hunting down rare champs and creatures that drop things like t6 blood, alongside dailies/activities) – and you just found a way to play for the things you list in your OP. May not be the fastest way to get them, but it is a goal you can set for yourself.

Second, look for a fun casual guild that enjoys open world content. There are still guilds out there that enjoy things like missions, boss trains, map meta events, etc. A good guild makes the living story episodes a lot more fun as well.

Most importantly, don’t rush the game. Enjoy what you enjoy and dont be afraid to log off and do something else when you want to.

Excelsior!

I think you already contradict yourself a bit or answer your own question already when telling me/us why you left in the first place. I do not really mind the living story or legendary items, crafting etc. Because if you do, you would not be casual anymore. (Maybe I just got it wrong and you were not casual before and now want to be amongzzzt of uzz…..)

I became very paranoid and annoyed* (up to pure disgust*) about the average player in every MMO and just spend my time wandering alone in this game since 2 years now. But by doing this, I basically have a lot to do, paired with the fact that I do not have the wish to log on that often or play long. I get more content stuffed into the game that I can play. So one part would be to pick up ONE goal and work SLOWLY towards it. Seen many people basically rushing like the devil is after them, while watching TV or with Youtube guides on. Just strip all of that. Enjoy the game itself. Stop watering down the experience by forcing too much stuff on you that you will eventually find a chore.

In my very specific situation: 2 years of gameplay and still just 53% world exploration. I wander around, find my way(s) trough everything and shoot what I can kill (and run away of what I can’t…). Had this grind BS in FF14 and 10 years ago in MapleStory. It made people sick. Literally. They were nervous, angry and didn’t sound like they slept enough or left their homes…

So, my very casual opinion is to really go trough everything ArenaNet gives you. Try everything like on a buffet in a hotel. When you like something, get more. When you think it sucks, drop it, may it be as shiny as it might get. I can lead to frustration. Do not read many guides, figuring stuff out yourself. Do not ask for Mesmer portals everytime. You know, this sort of stuff.

(*) I miss some sort of general politeness. People spam silent party invites, are not up for a chat, very often far from educated and then just kick you again for no reason when they got their stuff but you did not yet etc. An overwhelming part of the communites are like this, and I stopped letting me being abused just for some chit chat, even I am longing so much for this. But I think I need to clarify what I mean.

Filthy casual here – with occasional ‘bouts of unhealthy amounts of play. Exotic gear is totally fine for enjoying the game and everything but high tier fractals (though you’ll need to “git gud” and avoid a toxic raid group if you want to join in things there).

Get your home instance nodes from the new maps first, then make a habit of looting your home instance daily. This will basically get you free ascended trinkets from a month of dailies, and they’re stat selectable on purchase. Keep that habit up, and you’ll never want for unbound magic, nor ascended trinkets. The nodes do cost about 50g if memory serves, though, so see ‘dailies’ below.

Most importantly, enjoy the game. A legendary is an obscene investment in gold/mats – I filthy casual’d my way through ad infinitum and it took about 6 months (between the 4 tiers of collections, saving up enough money to pay for things, and having time to run the fractals). I even cheated by getting clovers from my monthly reward and using laurels for a lot of the T6 mats for the end build. It’s totally do-able, but it’s a long term investment (that glider is sexy, though). I found I liked fractals, so it was a logical goal to shoot for. It was loftier than I realized going into it (particularly having to burn an ascended weapon/armor to get things started, oooh that one hurt!). Still, I quite enjoy fractals, and now I can T4 with the best of ‘em. Well, maybe second best. Since getting ad infinitum I don’t do my fractals as much, but they’re the easiest way to have a chance at some free ascended.

Dailies: If you can manage to run your dailies, do those too. I actually started PVPing in unranked daily just because it’s the fastest way to get that 2g reward from dailies, and you can get some nice skins/loot from the reward tracks to boot (80 potions per track, you can get 2-4 potions a day). If you don’t like PVP, or don’t want to grind dailies, then don’t – play what you like!

In the end – find the part of the game you like, and enjoy it. It’s a game, that’s the point of it. If it begins feeling like a job or grindy, make sure you’re actually doing what you want, or are really looking forward to that reward. Feel free to take a pause from things and come back when you get the urge again. Filthy casuals unite!

I pretty much just play whatever I fancy at the time I log in.

Sometimes its just running around with the zerg in Edge of the Mists.
Sometimes its running around with the zerg in Eternal Battlegrounds.
Sometimes its playing a couple of unranked games and shaking my head at human stupidity. Sometimes its just a casual farming run for wood and ore.
Sometimes its doing some story pieces on my assorted characters.
Sometimes its helping a guildie get some hero points.
Sometimes its helping someone else with a story component.
Sometimes its working on an achievement I want.
Sometimes its clearing some maps on my current ‘map completion’ character.
Sometimes its putting some time into the current legendary grind I’m on.
Sometimes its looking for a dye or two that my collection is still missing.
Sometimes its standing in front of the wardrobe for an hour designing an outfit for a new char.

For example – last night, I finished Flashpoint and then I went and did about half of Frostfang’s 3rd collection gathering. And then I had real life stuff to do. shrug

It sort of sounds like you just need people to play with, OP. Either that or you need a break. Not quite sure which.

Since GW2 is open-ended and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to… don’t.

Setting yourself a long term goal like gaining a legendary is good, but don’t let that “job” weigh you down or make you feel obligated to login. Try to give yourself short-term goals or 1-session playing objectives that you’ll enjoy. Say, play one piece of personal story or do any three dailies to net your 2g reward.

This reddit post may help you come up with some ideas, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3nzfkw/psa_what_you_can_do_at_level_80/

Depending on your approach to things you can do quite fine in this game without other people. Not counting spontaneous random groups to do something I rarely intentionally team up with people in GW2. Close to zero if you discount guildies. Then again, I tend to be a loner personality.

Personally it’s sad to see the term filthy casual being used in Guild Wars…that’s more of the Cancerous speak you get from WoW.

As a solo player, I go mostly for the Living Story for at least a few characters. I did my “share” of map-meta events in the first two HoT maps for mastery xp and moved after that through the story, which I cleared on – I think – five characters. I only bothered with DS once and never followed TD remotely to the end. Main reasons for doing some of the easier achievements were only to get the Mastery Points.

Not all of the character cleared, however, every LS episode. Sometimes I repeated Episode 2 on other characters to hear which race and gender sounds well during Dragon Vigil I also barely bother with the achievements, unless they pique my interest. Otherwise, I switch between characters or play something else (for which I don’t “blame” GW2, mind you!).

The Op is saying that the a lot of the good stuff is in the gem store. Yes quite a bit is in there. But unlike similar systems where you HAVE TO use cash you have an option to use in game gold for all the items you want. You can even send gifts to other people if you want.

So my advice is if you want something from the gem store do a combination of both every once in a while spend $10 on gems, and use gold to enhance that by buying gems with that.

I’ve seen a lot of posts cover how to make gold, which is good advice, but since this is specifically about casual play I want to throw in an alternative suggestion: wait.

Pretty much everything in this game will award some coin, or things which can be sold/converted into gold. So unless you’re in a hurry because the thing you want is only available for a limited time or rapidly getting more expensive for some reason you can always just play and let your gold build up rather than feeling like you have to spend all your available time farming.

Although some things which can be classed as farming can also be quite fun, and easy for casual players to drop into. Completing the meta-event chain in Silverwastes for example can be quite profitable (if you sell or salvage and then sell the items you get) and there’s almost always a map running so you can join in whenever and play as much as you have time for (although the better rewards are towards the end). Or do a couple of Fractals which are like quick mini-dungeons. You do need a group, but I’ve never had trouble finding one for the lower levels.

Well, for one, I just play the game.
I log in, do the dailies, then think about what am I going to do today.
Sometimes (most often now) I join up with friends and play.
Some of them need help, so I help them.
I sometimes need help, so they help me.
Right now, I have few goals or needs, but I just enjoy playing the game.
I have made legendary weapons because they are shiny and I wanted to.
But most importantly, I was not forced to.

I have been on a few raids but I certainly don’t live to raid.
I have accepted that I won’t have legendary armor and I am ok with that.
It is not why I play the game.

The living stories, I enjoy and I would not want more time between expansions.
That would kill it for me because I need the bits and pieces of new content every couple of months.
I had a couple of friends pull me kicking and screaming into Fractals. But once I understood fractals and the changes they made were for the good, I embraced it.

OP, of course the game is going to be different and you are going to be in over your head,. This should not be surprising to you. A lot has happened in the past year, so unless you keep up with it, you will be lost.
The fortunate part is that you can pick up the living story at any time and be current.
You don’t have to have the previous living stories to progress, however a lot of information would be lost without doing it.
I disagree that the game is based on the cash shop. I played the game for almost two years before I even used the TP and bought anything. There are a lot of items in-game that I have still yet to discover that have nothing associated with the cash shop.
BTW, welcome back to the game.
I do hope you can get some enjoyment out of it, because that is why I play, I enjoy it.