Guild Wars 2

To say I was excited for Guild Wars 2 is an understatement. A game that sought to end the holy trinity, get rid of gear grinds, and grinds in general, a strategic combat system heavily based on dodging, and the most polished world on the mmo market? I was totally sold.

I’ve been on hiatus from GW2, because it just hasn’t been fun for me since reaching 80. I’m glad there is no gear grind, but there doesn’t feel like is much of a point to play after you hit 80. There is cosmetic gear to earn from running dungeons, most of which isn’t cool looking to me, and then there is incredibly hard to craft legendary’s which look cool, but with nothing else to work on in between these 2 goals, I don’t feel motivated.

I don’t want a gear treadmill, but I need to feel invested in my character, I need ways to make them unique to me. I’ve never felt attached to my characters in Guild Wars 2, despite how great looking the game is.

I just feel like there isn’t anything pulling me in to continue playing. Am I wrong here? Or am I just supposed to enjoy pvping for almost no reason right now, running dungeons for gear that doesn’t look cool to me, and grinding endlessly for legendary’s, most of which I’m also not impressed with for the effort they require. I guess I could level alts, but what is the point if I don’t want to do anything with them at 80?

I don’t know, maybe its almost the game for me, but not quite. As much as I can’t stand WoW anymore, I always felt invested in my characters, because there were so many things I could do to make my character stand out (aside from showing off my gear treadmill progress)

There’s really nothing to say.

If you don’t want to, you don’t want to.

You have to ask yourself what you want from this game, and to set a goal. I actually played the game from release for a month and stopped because I thought leveling was very boring. I still hate leveling and only have 1 alt. A few months later I came back to Wintersday and really enjoyed the nice touches they put in the game so I went around enjoying the details. I also have people to play with, so that does make things better. I do care about how my characters look and tinkering with the many possibilities keeps me playing. Plus I just like collecting loot even if most of it sucks.

The good point about this game is that without a subscription fee, you can arbitrarily come and leave whenever you want. Might be a good idea to take advantage of this, as doing anything for too long can burn you out.

When I first played GW2 around launch date, I really couldn’t get into it and left it alone for 3 months.

Picked it up again, found a great guild and enjoy playing daily now.

With a bit of help from experienced players explaining the basics, I was able to build a half decent character, explore the world and eventually join my guild in the chaos that is WvW.

Something just occurred to me that I hadn’t really thought about before. This whole “invested in my character” thing; what’s that about? I mean, I get wanting them to look cool or have a cool title or something, but I wonder if that phrase might be mis-applied? Maybe it would be more accurate to say “I want to be invested in the game”?

My first major MMO was Star Wars Galaxies, and I was there for about 5 years. My next one was WoW, and I was there for maybe 2. Now GW2.

In SWG, I was majorly invested in the game. You only got one character per account (which made sense considering the depth and breadth of the game), but I never felt ‘attached’ to my character. I was attached to the game. I interfaced with the game via a particular avatar (I got a second account shortly after getting going because there was so much to do that I needed a second), but it was the GAME I was invested in.

In WoW, I got all kinds of characters, but the game was kinda shallow. The multiple characters allowed me to experience more of the game, one shallow slice at a time for each character. But after the first few characters, it got monotonous. But more importantly, there wasn’t much reason to become invested in the game. The only thing holding me there that long was reaching level cap’s (and the attached gear grind), trying the different healing roles (mostly PvP), improving my skill as a healer, and seeing the different zones.

In GW2 there are several different story lines, but they become more and more homogenized the higher level you get. Then there are the overpriced and punitive RNG quest for shiny skins. There is WvW, which has become more and more stale with each passing week (thanks to zergs allowed by AOE caps and no challenging NPC’s). sPVP is about to get a cool boost, but that’s not something a majority of players enjoy doing. So all we have left is the exploration, which is pretty great. But it is a finite thing. Once you’ve seen a zone, it’s not really exciting to see it again. Or again. Or again. Holiday and special events are great and a lot of fun, but they are temporary, and in between we’re back to the same old thing.

There isn’t really any need to ‘invest’ in GW2. So, what would make me invest in the game? Player housing. A real crafting system (see SWG, DaoC, Eve… but especially SWG). A more dynamic resource system. A better market interface and limits on economic activity based on character profession investment (no expiration of item listings? Really? No limits of the number of transactions per day/week/month per account?). The ability to set up and run a personal 24/7 vendor as a way to sell goods. A serious limit on how many recipe’s you can learn at each tier per character. Lose the ability to retain profession skill’s for any that you drop.

Basically, a game where being a merchant is possible. A game where I want to spend time away from swinging a sword. Bah. Rant over I guess. I want SWG back. I guess I will have to settle for dreaming that ANet will stop punishing players with horrible RNG, the mystic toilet, and stupidly monotonous and incredibly expensive process to get the cool skins.

Toxophile.6215:

Basically, a game where being a merchant is possible. A game where I want to spend time away from swinging a sword. Bah. Rant over I guess. I want SWG back. I guess I will have to settle for dreaming that ANet will stop punishing players with horrible RNG, the mystic toilet, and stupidly monotonous and incredibly expensive process to get the cool skins.

Well, if the Elder Scrolls Online MMO lives up to its hype, you can…

Hold on.

I just realized what I wrote. Never mind.

You guys are painting yourself into corners. You don’t want MMO gameplay, but you want to play MMOs. You don’t want difficult, time-consuming tasks and complain about not being invested in your characters. No kidding. If you don’t work for anything, and it’s all easy, and everyone’s a hero, suddenly no-one is and you don’t get the sense of satisfaction and achievement that comes with doing something difficult.

What the OP is describing is the inevitable result of the design. Congratulations on feeling it, but understand you don’t get one without the other. You can’t have both easy and rewarding. Take your pick, it’s one or the other.

Toxophile.6215:

… dreaming that ANet will stop punishing players with horrible RNG, the mystic toilet, and stupidly monotonous and incredibly expensive process to get the cool skins.

You’re punishing yourself if you obsess over getting “stuff” (and virtual “stuff” that will never actually exist, at that!) as though having Twilight and burning armor and an Ascended Amulet and a cool title will somehow make the game more meaningful.

It’s the journey that matters, and imagine the other side, where you do X, then Y, then Z and you’re guaranteed to have everything you want from the game. Players will discover the fastest route to X, a way to skip Y altogether, and a secret way to accomplish Z without any effort and all of a sudden everyone has everything and nothing means anything because everyone is the same.

The “punishment” exists because it’s human nature, and if they hand you everything in the game on a silver platter you’ll taste a little of this, a little of that, and get bored and complain that it’s all too easy, there’s no challenge to anything… in short, there is no correct way to handle this process, the devs have to decide whether money = rewards, time = rewards, skill = rewards, etc. They chose a little of everything, and so some aspects reward patience and persistence while others offer shortcuts.

tolkien.6317:

What the OP is describing is the inevitable result of the design. Congratulations on feeling it, but understand you don’t get one without the other. You can’t have both easy and rewarding. Take your pick, it’s one or the other.

Oh, but young people today have been taught that you can have both! Everyone wins, just for showing up. Johnny saved his allowance to buy ice cream, Billy feels bad so he gets some too, even though he spent his allowance yesterday. And so they learn that hard work and sacrifice mean nothing when you can whine your way to success.

It took me awhile to get into the game, but once I started picking up the correct way of playing the game it has been an amazing gaming experience thus far.

Getting invested in the characters in this game is harder than on some others. For one thing, there’s a fair bit less hand-holding here…the personal story is massively disjointed, and you’re always doing series of unrelated things instead of following one story line.

My advice to you, OP, if you do want to play the game is to play it as a character. Walk through the world as if you were there. Turn off your map markers on the map screen (which is an option) and just wander around trying to find stuff, instead of working off a checklist.

And most of all, join a guild of like-minded players. It is the single most important thing you can do. Playing a game in a world like this is lonely. The right guild can make the difference between night and day.

I agree with OP! I played GW for 5 years and F5 on Gw2 news since announced, and what a let down..
Its not that he core game is bad, on the contrary: It has an amazing world, cool creatures and some neat details around the world.

1. But the personal story is bullkitten. You cant complete it in one go, you need to do all sorts of things to be able to do the next step on the other side of the world, and then you cant do the dungeons alone with the npc`s, so you need to bring in total strangers into YOUR “personal story”.. And then you forget what the hell you even were doing in it by the time you get to the next part. Lol!?! Then you realise your not even the hero of YOUR story. And the story isnt that great anyways (well, i completed some 10 parts of it before i couldnt be bothered anymore).

2. The world is big and you feel alone. But with other people/friends onboard it is just more people running around like drunks, with no aim and teamplay. Pointless!
If in each zone there was something special to do, then ok cool, you can do it together. Running around aimlessly isnt my idea of fun.

3. You got the dungeons, but you instead of making it a cool place were your fightning-skills counts.. it is a place of “trick and treat”. Doing some small annoying meaningless detail wrong and you start all over again.. lol? NOT my idea of fun! It is a place for the nerds, not the fighters. “Riddle me this batman-dungeons”^^

4. You got the WwW: Zergs and commanders that didnt deserve it by conquering the title: they bought it!! And for sure most of them have no clue at all. Besides, running around like a brainless swarm after a blue dot isnt my cup of tea, sorry. (What will they do in one year from now when everyone has a blue dot commander tag?^^)

5. sPvp: somewhat fun, then you meet thief or mesmer and your dead. No sense of balance, and the “balance” happening is the work of kitten off stubborn 5 year olds that really dont care if you have fun or not, sorry to say.
The proffesions isnt really working either, and to be honest.. none of them are really truly Fun. Even with all skills, weapons and armors unlocked they all seem to be like the starting character in other games BEFORE you get the good items and skills.. they are clumsy, slow and awkward. Skills with cooldown like a month and a half, and when you finally can kittening use it it kittening fails on your kitten !!!!

6. The guilds are too loose and the idea that you can be in many guilds and dedicated to none is insane. The worst idea EVER! No dedication and no teambuilding, and no GVG!?!?! Jeez.. Were is the capes??^^

7. The ubermonsters.. the “Dragons”.. are booooooring! Stand in a crowd and fire your skills, one dodge a minute, then more dmg then get loot. Then go back to what you really were doing.. LOL!!!!?!?? It is sad really..

Overall the game is big and looks nice but nothing really catches on. Nothing really means anything in this game.. Some small glimps of entertainment, then gone. I wish it wasnt true..!

I play ranger, and the descrition says it is the master with the bow. REALLY? Then how come warriors and thieves got cooler skills then us???? Pathetic!

tolunart.2095:

Calsifer.6079:

Why do people keep insisting on posting these diary threads about how they can’t enjoy GW2? If you don’t enjoy it, stop posting on the forums about it and move on to another game.

You can thank Facebook and Twitter. We’re raising an entire generation of children who can’t decide what’s for dinner without tweeting about it. And asking for votes.

This isn’t a diary. I posted why I’m not playing the game, and asking if I’m missing the point, is there something there I don’t know about.

Also, I’m not asking for votes, I can decide for myself what I’ll do with my time and what I will eat for dinner.. I’m not sure what is to blame for the entire generation of trolls who have nothing better to do than bash people who don’t agree with them, that is truly a mystery.

tolunart.2095:

tolkien.6317:

What the OP is describing is the inevitable result of the design. Congratulations on feeling it, but understand you don’t get one without the other. You can’t have both easy and rewarding. Take your pick, it’s one or the other.

Oh, but young people today have been taught that you can have both! Everyone wins, just for showing up. Johnny saved his allowance to buy ice cream, Billy feels bad so he gets some too, even though he spent his allowance yesterday. And so they learn that hard work and sacrifice mean nothing when you can whine your way to success.

I’m not saying I want easy legendary’s. I’m saying there is nothing in between the super easy content (dungeons, karma farming, meaningless pvp) and the only difficult grind in the game which is legendary’s. I’m not motivated to get the easy gear, I put together a rare set, and it was fine for whatever I needed to do and the dungeon gear just doesn’t look very cool on my Norn Thief (my opinion). Karma earns you 1 set of lame looking gear, crafting seems to serve no purpose. Building a legendary is so far removed from the rest of the game design, If I had other things that felt worth working on while I was progressing towards a legendary, I’d probably do it, but there isn’t.

So, I’m left with a themepark game, but everyone is telling me to play it like a sandbox.. I don’t get it, there isn’t enough sand for me to build anything and their aren’t enough rides either.

jaqviolet.2749:

So, I’m left with a themepark game, but everyone is telling me to play it like a sandbox.. I don’t get it, there isn’t enough sand for me to build anything and their aren’t enough rides either.

Yeah I completely understand your point. I wasn’t having a go at you, just pointing out that the casual design inevitably results in this conundrum. I think what you want is a different game, and fair enough.

tolkien.6317:

jaqviolet.2749:

So, I’m left with a themepark game, but everyone is telling me to play it like a sandbox.. I don’t get it, there isn’t enough sand for me to build anything and their aren’t enough rides either.

Yeah I completely understand your point. I wasn’t having a go at you, just pointing out that the casual design inevitably results in this conundrum. I think what you want is a different game, and fair enough.

Very true, there are just so many elements I like about Guild Wars, but there just isn’t enough there to keep it going for me I guess. It’s frustrating though, they get a lot right, but just fall short for me I guess.

tolunart.2095:

Calsifer.6079:

Why do people keep insisting on posting these diary threads about how they can’t enjoy GW2? If you don’t enjoy it, stop posting on the forums about it and move on to another game.

You can thank Facebook and Twitter. We’re raising an entire generation of children who can’t decide what’s for dinner without tweeting about it. And asking for votes.

Or after finally deciding what is for dinner, taking a picture of it and posting it.

MMOs are so different, I guess, than what they used to be. They are now, less about the experience, and more about what kind of addiction you have. I think most MMO companies realize there is money to be made in people’s mindless addiction to being better, having more, and the small chance that this item might drop or be given through MF, etc.. It’s a gambling mindset that people just did not have when MMOs first came out, back when, MMOs were played to be MMOs. MMOs are not social anymore. They are a mindless grindfest of “who can get this first or who has the most money or time or whatever”. I’m sad at the fact that I didn’t get into MMOs before they became this way. I do like a grind, don’t get me wrong. I LIKE that things of any value take some form of work/time/money..but it’s not as fun when people want “this type of class, only” “This type of player, only” “No laughing during dungeon runs because I’m in a rush and want the best bang for my buck”. It’s ludicrous.

Guild Wars the first is still there, go have fun.

falyero.3078:

Calsifer.6079:

Why do people keep insisting on posting these diary threads about how they can’t enjoy GW2? If you don’t enjoy it, stop posting on the forums about it and move on to another game.

Becouse a lot ppl played gw1 for many years, w8ing gw2…..buying the collector edition , playing the beta….to understand that anet manifesto is just marketing…..that the game is boring and ther’s no challange…..an empty box, a very very big empty box and spending the $$ to buy the game give me the right to say so in the forum.
The game is boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GW1 was realllllly better!!!!!!!!

MMOs are as social as you make them. I don’t know about you, but I have a great time with my guild…almost every day.

3k hours of GW1 here.

Avathor.1849:

1. But the personal story is bullkitten.

The story of Prophecies wasn’t that great (they even added the last quests months after launch lol), it only began to be cool with Factions … 1 year later.

Avathor.1849:

2. The world is big and you feel alone.

GW1 was worse on all levels.

Avathor.1849:

3. You got the dungeons, but you instead of making it a cool place were your fightning-skills counts.. it is a place of “trick and treat”.

GW1 had 2 dungeons at launch, got a third 7 months later. The first two dungeons were farmed solo by “tricks and treat” builds.

Avathor.1849:

4. You got the WwW

GW1 had no WvW…

Avathor.1849:

5. sPvp: somewhat fun, then you meet thief or mesmer and your dead.

These are not the top classes atm, so what’s the point ?

Avathor.1849:

6. The guilds are too loose and the idea that you can be in many guilds and dedicated to none is insane. The worst idea EVER! No dedication and no teambuilding, and no GVG!?!?! Jeez.. Were is the capes??^^

Can not compute the post sorry.
Now some form of Guild PvP is needed yes (very particular point wher GW1>GW2), but Guild Missions are already awesome.

Avathor.1849:

7. The ubermonsters.. the “Dragons”.. are booooooring! Stand in a crowd and fire your skills, one dodge a minute, then more dmg then get loot. Then go back to what you really were doing.. LOL!!!!?!?? It is sad really..

Yes. But again, no Übermonsters at all on launch for GW1, and we can not say they were many at all or interesting to fight.

TL;DR : GW1 was worst on launch. On so many levels than a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to cite them all.

falyero.3078:

Yargesh.4965

Guild Wars the first is still there, go have fun.

Very good post!!! really make the difference fun boy!!

Thanks, glad I could help.

The OP is right when he says this game is pretty boring at 80. There isn’t much to keep players occupied, in my opinion. The only things to really do at 80 are achievements, crafting, PVP, and token runs, but all that busy work is for naught since they result in little reward.

What I see as one of the problems is the lack of gear diversity, stat-wise and appearance. There’s no reason to go out and hope for something better to drop. Not only does gear have the same stats, but there’s an insignificant amount of models available and 95% of them are butt fugly. Pretty bad when level 80 items look exactly the same as the item you were sporting at level 2. So not only can’t you wish for something that will function better, but you also won’t get anything that looks any better. Guess appearance doesn’t matter much since you can always xmute items.

I share the OP’s sentiments on the token reward gear; it isn’t impressive. The only thing I found halfway decent was the Arah caster gear for a necro.

They supposedly had an economist devise their gem/gold scam system, but I guess he failed to mention how combining every server into one trading post would completely destroy any economy that could have existed. I thought bags would be a good money maker for tailors until I found that they sold for a few silver more than what the rune of holding cost. The TP UI is also complete crap that makes me want to break my keyboard every time I switch tabs and forced to reset all my filters. It can’t save those settings? Why??!

Toxophile has the right idea with things like player housing and an elaborate crafting system. I loved EQ2’s player housing and obtaining items for interior decorating was a game in itself. Not only could you craft home items, but you could get them from quest rewards, achievements, and just about every holiday would have some as quest and instance rewards. Holidays in GW2 don’t seem to give much incentive. How many people actually got something decent during the holiday? Seemed like the odds were stacked. But you could, however, buy gems to trade for gold to buy the overpriced crap that did drop for others! It’s sickening.

Well, whatever. It is what it is. I’ll spend several weeks playing, take several months break again, and then come back to see what bugs ANet still hasn’t fixed or how much more they nerf my class.

Oh, and by the way, I thought your rant was epic, Avathor. =)

Honestly, they really do need to work on creating more horizontal progression. It sounds like the OP could use more prestigious gear (look-wise) which may actually appeal to his preference and might be somewhere in between Exotic and Legendary amount of effort. Sort of like the really expensive named exotic weapons like Volcanus, but more, because there’s only like 2 of those per weapon. x.x

One big issue, imo, with the whole transmute gear skin thing is that your level 80 items suddenly need a very different and very scarce (unless you go for gems) consumable. I had plans for my toons looks until i discovered that, and could not bring myself to run around in 79’s after having dumped a fair bit of gold on a stats set.

And that is likely why so many sport COF; transmuting is to expensive just for changing the looks, and the gear carries zerker stats.

Toxophile.6215:

There isn’t really any need to ‘invest’ in GW2. So, what would make me invest in the game? Player housing. A real crafting system (see SWG, DaoC, Eve… but especially SWG). A more dynamic resource system. A better market interface and limits on economic activity based on character profession investment (no expiration of item listings? Really? No limits of the number of transactions per day/week/month per account?). The ability to set up and run a personal 24/7 vendor as a way to sell goods. A serious limit on how many recipe’s you can learn at each tier per character. Lose the ability to retain profession skill’s for any that you drop.

Basically, a game where being a merchant is possible. A game where I want to spend time away from swinging a sword. Bah. Rant over I guess. I want SWG back.

This is SWG’s marketing system almost to the letter – and ya know, the player driven economy in that game played a huge roll in knocking together a sense of community. People bought from each other, sold to each other, set prices, competed with each other for customers; it was a huge deal. I’d love to see that and noncombat classes from SWG come back – Dancer, Musician, Image Designer, etc. I would love to see a game bring that back … maybe someone will have the bright idea of making it part of the crafting system.

But that, and the very fluid choices in your class builds (back before the dark times, before the “upgrade”) is really the only thing worth taking away from that game. It did have a strong RPG community, but that’s because there was nothing else to do in the game but grind.

I wonder if we’ll ever see another MMO with the guts to pass those kinds of professions as an alternative to being the Murder Hobos that classic adventurers are. I think, I think if just one good MMO took a chance and offered only one such class at first … I’d be willing to bet you’d see sales rise with the big reveal that X MMO let you play an Entertainer as a real class. Add a few more and you’d expand into a whole other audience.

tolunart.2095:

Toxophile.6215:

… dreaming that ANet will stop punishing players with horrible RNG, the mystic toilet, and stupidly monotonous and incredibly expensive process to get the cool skins.

You’re punishing yourself if you obsess over getting “stuff” (and virtual “stuff” that will never actually exist, at that!) as though having Twilight and burning armor and an Ascended Amulet and a cool title will somehow make the game more meaningful.

It’s the journey that matters, and imagine the other side, where you do X, then Y, then Z and you’re guaranteed to have everything you want from the game. Players will discover the fastest route to X, a way to skip Y altogether, and a secret way to accomplish Z without any effort and all of a sudden everyone has everything and nothing means anything because everyone is the same.

The “punishment” exists because it’s human nature, and if they hand you everything in the game on a silver platter you’ll taste a little of this, a little of that, and get bored and complain that it’s all too easy, there’s no challenge to anything… in short, there is no correct way to handle this process, the devs have to decide whether money = rewards, time = rewards, skill = rewards, etc. They chose a little of everything, and so some aspects reward patience and persistence while others offer shortcuts.

Maybe I should have put an emphasis on the word “stupidly”. I dont mind it being a long process. What I DO mind is forcing us to grind to get materials like T6 stuff that has stupidly low RNG chance and DR. Or forcing us to use a punishing and stupid mystic toilet with it’s RNG. For people who don’t like grinding or farming, they face the distasteful choice of either buying gold from farmers to just buy the skin or settling for a year+ long wait? Why can’t the process to get cool skins be something about the Story? Or about completing complicated achievements? Or anything other than farming or grinding?

People who think they are some kind of special for having a legendary are just idiots. It’s not “hard”. It’s not some special accomplishment. It’s just proof they either buy their gold or they are willing to monotonously grind for hours on end. I’m not willing to grind OR buy gold, so I accept I will never have a legendary. At least with SAB I was able to get a cool skin by doing something with my guild or friends.

Again, I dont mind it being a ‘process’. It should take time, and people who are willing to or able to spend months doing something unhealthy for the game like grinding should not be rewarded for it. Rather, people who are willing to spend months doing something positive for the game, defeating challenges, and improving the game should be rewarded.

Put down the Mountain Dew and drink beer while playing ….. you’ll have a blast

I honestly can’t believe some people expect a huge amount of endgame less than a year after release especially in an MMO. Look at any MMO, including WoW… None of them had what you’re asking for within the first year and a lot of it came from expansions released a few years after release. I really enjoy GW2 for the game, not for having everything handed to me like most MMO’s are based on. At the moment it is like any normal game in the fact that when you “finish” it, you finish it, that’s it, until they add more content. Maybe you shouldn’t rush to lvl 80, and if you didn’t then you still got your moneys worth because there is no subscription fee. I don’t get all the complaining.

Jaall.3420:

I honestly can’t believe some people expect a huge amount of endgame less than a year after release especially in an MMO. Look at any MMO, including WoW… None of them had what you’re asking for within the first year and a lot of it came from expansions released a few years after release. I really enjoy GW2 for the game, not for having everything handed to me like most MMO’s are based on. At the moment it is like any normal game in the fact that when you “finish” it, you finish it, that’s it, until they add more content. Maybe you shouldn’t rush to lvl 80, and if you didn’t then you still got your moneys worth because there is no subscription fee. I don’t get all the complaining.

Did you even play WoW in vanilla? Obviously you didn’t with that kind of beginning statement. Best to not talk about things you clearly know nothing about.

jaqviolet.2749:

To say I was excited for Guild Wars 2 is an understatement. A game that sought to end the holy trinity, get rid of gear grinds, and grinds in general, a strategic combat system heavily based on dodging, and the most polished world on the mmo market? I was totally sold.

I’ve been on hiatus from GW2, because it just hasn’t been fun for me since reaching 80. I’m glad there is no gear grind, but there doesn’t feel like is much of a point to play after you hit 80. There is cosmetic gear to earn from running dungeons, most of which isn’t cool looking to me, and then there is incredibly hard to craft legendary’s which look cool, but with nothing else to work on in between these 2 goals, I don’t feel motivated.

I don’t want a gear treadmill, but I need to feel invested in my character, I need ways to make them unique to me. I’ve never felt attached to my characters in Guild Wars 2, despite how great looking the game is.

I just feel like there isn’t anything pulling me in to continue playing. Am I wrong here? Or am I just supposed to enjoy pvping for almost no reason right now, running dungeons for gear that doesn’t look cool to me, and grinding endlessly for legendary’s, most of which I’m also not impressed with for the effort they require. I guess I could level alts, but what is the point if I don’t want to do anything with them at 80?

I don’t know, maybe its almost the game for me, but not quite. As much as I can’t stand WoW anymore, I always felt invested in my characters, because there were so many things I could do to make my character stand out (aside from showing off my gear treadmill progress)

Completely agree. This happened to my husband while he was playing. He got tired of not having anything to do at the end game. We were both WoW players too and found dungeons completely useless in this game. The only thing there was running it over and over to get currency for a cosmetic piece. in which even that was slowed down (which should have never happened for cosmetics, that was a very bad move) I want to feel rewarded when i run, I should be able to immediately pickup a piece of armor after just 2 runs. It should never been a second job.

I loved WoW because I was also a fisherman, I went around doing my achievements and got the Title salty from completing the things. I thought this game would be like this too but it’s so completely not. No minis to speak of. No alternative little things to do like fishing. Crafting has been made a complete joke and waste of time. Nothing filling the span between hardcore pvp, hardcore pve, or guild events.

It was one of the many reasons I left but the biggest one is their horrible balance problems. Engineering is terrible despite the few who still play it in sPVP/WvW engineering for PVE is not anywhere near what it should be in balance or design. That’s the main reason I left. I’m hanging out to see if they change it in the near future. Here’s to hoping they come to their senses.

If people love WoW so much why don’t you just stick to that rather than complaining here? This game has no sub fees and a lot of people play for that reason. If there was a sub fee then the game would lose a lot of players because it would be just another MMO which would have to follow the same model as WoW because that’s the only way charging that much money is justifiable.

Because we’re only paying for the game and nothing after (not including gem store but that’s completely optional) we get what we pay for. I would say that if you get 100 hours entertainment out of this game then it is well worth what you pay for it. If you didn’t get 100 hours of enjoyment out of this but played it for 100 hours+ then it’s kinda your own fault. Research pays off. And before you all say “but Anet promised this, and Anet promised that”, things change all the time. There is always advertising that glorifies the product because that’s life, that’s how companies make money. That’s all this game really is, a way to make money.

It doesn’t matter what forum you go on, no matter what game there will be complaining, but I don’t understand why. People have a choice in life to play games, you don’t have to if you don’t like it. You wouldn’t join a sports team for a sport you don’t like, so why play a video game you don’t like? I just simply don’t understand the mentality of a lot of people who complain on forums, and not just for GW, for pretty much every MMO out there.

And lastly no I didn’t play WoW from the start, and I know it had more than GW2 does as far as endgame is concerned, however, it was also p2p from the start so was needed and was well funded. The base WoW game was the same price as the base GW game and you had to pay the fee on top of that given them a lot more responsibility to keep the game as full as possible whereas just levelling to 80 in GW2 gives you your moneys worth, and there is still no shortage of things to do at 80. Whether you regard the activities as “fun” or not is merely opinion, and varies from person to person.

WoW at launch had far less content than Guild Wars 1 at launch. And that’s FAR less content. Wow at the 9 month mark had far less content than Guild Wars 2 does now.

But of course, if you have stuff like lock outs, and you have stuff like flight paths and you have stuff like running the same dungeon over and over again for a single piece of gear you need that doesn’t drop….that’s not having more content.

That’s having a formula to keep you playing the old content while you make new ones.

Guild Wars 2 tries to do this with legendaries and such, but it doesn’t work as well.

WoW was more addictive than Guild Wars 2. For my money, Guild Wars 2 is the better game.

tolkien.6317:

You guys are painting yourself into corners. You don’t want MMO gameplay, but you want to play MMOs. You don’t want difficult, time-consuming tasks and complain about not being invested in your characters. No kidding. If you don’t work for anything, and it’s all easy, and everyone’s a hero, suddenly no-one is and you don’t get the sense of satisfaction and achievement that comes with doing something difficult.

What the OP is describing is the inevitable result of the design. Congratulations on feeling it, but understand you don’t get one without the other. You can’t have both easy and rewarding. Take your pick, it’s one or the other.

I would clearly be labeled as a “casual” player and I could not agree more with what tolkien said. Risk v Reward is lacking in this game on the PvE side and is also lacking in a number of games anymore.

For me, and I’ll wager many others, you need to have some sort of vertical progression for character building and content in the PvE scope of the game. That doesn’t mean a gear treadmill with raids. But, it also doesn’t mean no advancement other than through a story. If you get to 80 in this game you are through building your character. Yes their are some skins that can be found and you can work towards ascended and legendary gear to give you a bump up in strength, but after that? Nothing. For some folks that seems to work, for others, myself included, not so much.

OP I hope you can find an area to enjoy. For me it’s WvW and the combat mechanics. If that was not available I wouldn’t be able to play this game and would have left to find something else.

Good luck.

It’s like Rift. There wasn’t much to do and there was virtually no progression until Trion added AA to the game. Then it got a bit better for some people for a while.

That’s what will happen here too. People need to be patient. MMOs have always needed time to mature. Guild Wars 2 is no different.

Vayne.8563:

WoW at launch had far less content than Guild Wars 1 at launch. And that’s FAR less content. Wow at the 9 month mark had far less content than Guild Wars 2 does now.

But of course, if you have stuff like lock outs, and you have stuff like flight paths and you have stuff like running the same dungeon over and over again for a single piece of gear you need that doesn’t drop….that’s not having more content.

That’s having a formula to keep you playing the old content while you make new ones.

Guild Wars 2 tries to do this with legendaries and such, but it doesn’t work as well.

WoW was more addictive than Guild Wars 2. For my money, Guild Wars 2 is the better game.

GW1 had “far” more content at each respective launch? Rofl, please give me whatever it is you’re smoking.

Each of the five level 60 dungeons in WoW were inarguably far longer in terms of bosses to eliminate and quests to complete inside, even over GW2. Crafting also wasn’t a complete joke. In 8 months time, it had two raids. There were already several world bosses at launch – also inarguably harder to defeat than any afk-DE.

The original AV dwarfs the WvW experience. There was far more that players could do in AV than what they can do in WvW. Even before cross-server BG’s, people invariably were throwing themselves at BG que times for hours over what the participation rate is with sPvP. Hmm, could have something to do with content.

Your points are so inherently flawed that I couldn’t help but bite your troll post.

Vayne.8563:

It’s like Rift. There wasn’t much to do and there was virtually no progression until Trion added AA to the game. Then it got a bit better for some people for a while.

That’s what will happen here too. People need to be patient. MMOs have always needed time to mature. Guild Wars 2 is no different.

I actually agree with this and have no problem being patient, when I have been shown or believe that something good is coming. Fortunately, since I haven’t been shown, I’ll be here in WvW and if they do bring some good things to PvE (I’d love an AA system) then I’ll jump in.

evo.8640:

Vayne.8563:

WoW at launch had far less content than Guild Wars 1 at launch. And that’s FAR less content. Wow at the 9 month mark had far less content than Guild Wars 2 does now.

But of course, if you have stuff like lock outs, and you have stuff like flight paths and you have stuff like running the same dungeon over and over again for a single piece of gear you need that doesn’t drop….that’s not having more content.

That’s having a formula to keep you playing the old content while you make new ones.

Guild Wars 2 tries to do this with legendaries and such, but it doesn’t work as well.

WoW was more addictive than Guild Wars 2. For my money, Guild Wars 2 is the better game.

GW1 had “far” more content at each respective launch? Rofl, please give me whatever it is you’re smoking.

Each of the five level 60 dungeons in WoW were inarguably far longer in terms of bosses to eliminate and quests to complete inside, even over GW2. Crafting also wasn’t a complete joke. In 8 months time, it had two raids. There were already several world bosses at launch – also inarguably harder to defeat than any afk-DE.

The original AV dwarfs the WvW experience. There was far more that players could do in AV than what they can do in WvW. Even before cross-server BG’s, people invariably were throwing themselves at BG que times for hours over what the participation rate is with sPvP. Hmm, could have something to do with content.

Your points are so inherently flawed that I couldn’t help but bite your troll post.

You’re equating difficult content with more content and that is unfortunately a fallacy. WoW had no raids at launch. And though it had dungeons, each dungeon only had a single path. It had less quests than Guild Wars 2 has dynamic events, it had no personal story at all (that’s all content too), nothing like WvW at all, and nothing like jumping puzzles, vistas, or anything like that.

The fact is, I played WoW shortly after launch and no matter what race I played it felt pretty much the same.

You may not LIKE the content here, and that’s a different matter, but don’t confuse lack of the content you want to play for lack of content. And lets not forget the monthly content that WoW had nothing like. The stuff that came out for Halloween and Christmas was quite good. You may not like SAB but a lot of people have spent half the month inside it. There was nothing in WoW like the Karka event, misguided as it was.

But you did have a lot of flight paths, I’ll give you that. lol

Why hasn’t this been closed yet? It doesn’t promote a discussion nor it offers constructive critisism.

In before the lock, OP there are many games out there, go find one you like.

maddoctor.2738:

Why hasn’t this been closed yet? It doesn’t promote a discussion nor it offers constructive critisism.

In before the lock, OP there are many games out there, go find one you like.

Actually it does offer constructive criticism, you may not agree with it, but it’s still there.

Vayne.8563:

You’re equating difficult content with more content and that is unfortunately a fallacy. WoW had no raids at launch. And though it had dungeons, each dungeon only had a single path. It had less quests than Guild Wars 2 has dynamic events, it had no personal story at all (that’s all content too), nothing like WvW at all, and nothing like jumping puzzles, vistas, or anything like that.

The fact is, I played WoW shortly after launch and no matter what race I played it felt pretty much the same.

You may not LIKE the content here, and that’s a different matter, but don’t confuse lack of the content you want to play for lack of content. And lets not forget the monthly content that WoW had nothing like. The stuff that came out for Halloween and Christmas was quite good. You may not like SAB but a lot of people have spent half the month inside it. There was nothing in WoW like the Karka event, misguided as it was.

But you did have a lot of flight paths, I’ll give you that. lol

Actually I’m not. Again, BRD, UBRS, LBRS, Scholo, and Strat all had more bosses than the eight dungeons (all paths included) have. And that’s only comparing just the “end-game” dungeons. Forget all the dungeons that weren’t level 60. The amount of bosses available in all the original launch dungeons – barring Dire Maul, was well over triple what GW2 offers in terms of bosses inside all eight dungeons + FoTM.

Actually MC & Onyxia were available upon official release. So you’re way off there. At the eight month & nine days mark, it gained BWL in addition.

You’re also way off with the amount of quests WoW had upon release. The volume of quests 1-60 still greatly outnumbers what GW2 has in terms of Tasks & DE’s combined. By a huge margin. As far as something like the Karka event, again you’re way off. Working on opening the gates of AQ and being there for the opening was really the same thing.

As well, WoW started it’s seasonal events off around the same respective time period that GW2 brought in theirs. Feast of Winter Veil, Darkmoon Faire, Children’s Week, Lunar Festival which were all present at launch during the associated holiday month.

If anyone is confusing lack of content, it’s you. I’m not partial to a game either way, but I will set people straight when they make accusations that simply aren’t true.

I was in your boat for a few months, OP. I was extremely excited for the game when it was first announced hundreds of years ago, but when it Duke Nukem Forever’d on me, I lost all interest. Then a good friend of mine bought me a copy last Christmas and I hit the grind like it was nobody’s business.

I reached 80 and was just stunned by how unbelievably… bored I was. After how fun the journey had been, the level cap was more of the same except it had no goal. Dungeons were okay with the guild I was in, but when my guildies weren’t on I couldn’t do any. WvW was alright (no, I’m kidding – it’s the best part of the game), but following the zerg and getting picked off when I fell behind got old. and the thought of more MMO “competitive” PvP made me do a spittake.

I rolled a couple of alts and quickly lost interest so in mid-January I went off to pursue other interests, coming back to read patch notes for any glimmer of hope. Ten a few days ago I was perusing the class forum on my phone while ignoring my mother-in-law and wife complaining away about everything and in the midst of all the “my class is underpowered” crying I found a video of the premiere cookiecutter spec for my class stomping kids in WvW.

I had foolishly been trying to “play the way I WANT to play” like I was your average selfish-12-year-old-mentality gamer (seriously, my wife’s 4 year old cousin is less of a spoiled brat than most gamers I have the misfortune of coming across these days) and resisted the cookiecutter since years of WoW had taken their toll.

Honestly, if it wasn’t so pointless, I’d kick myself for waiting so long. Even though I’m no where near the gear level of the guy in the video, I’m still having a great time while kicking puppies and contributing to my team in WvW. Within an hour of respeccing, the leader of a dedicated WvW guild was so impressed with me that he shot me an invite and now I’ve got a great team to strategically roll with. To top it all off, the damage and survivability are now allowing me to collect honor badges like crazy so the gear won’t be too far off.

So… I recommend taking a break and then giving in to the “darkside” when you come back. Find yourself a dedicated Guild and run with it.

It doesn’t matter that all the dungeons were level 60 because the dungeons in Guild Wars 2, if you actually run them without exploiting anything, are as challenging as top level dungeons because you’re downscaled. Each dungeon has multiple bosses, but more, the so-called trash mobs (there really aren’t any in Guild Wars 2) are harder than the trash that was in WoW.

Your view of the game is bosses equal content. I can’t help that. Bosses don’t equal content. Bosses equal bosses. Quests are also content. Mini games are also content. Keg brawl is content. The halloween maze and the PvP were content. The christmas PvP and bell game was content. It’s all content.

If all you want are bosses, there’s nothing I can do to help you. Really. Nothing. But since the zones are huge in Guild Wars 2, and there were 25 of them at launch, with 8 dungeons, all with 4 paths except for Orr which has 5….yes, there’s more content on Guild Wars 2. That doesn’t even count the stuff underwater (which WoW had very little to do in).

No, WoW only had more content you liked. And you’re so blinded by that content, you’ll ignore all other content that doesn’t fit into your category of like.

By the way, I like the Guild Wars 2 dungeons far more than I liked the WoW dungeon. And since I don’t like the trinity, it’s all moot for me anyway.

But you’re still equating bosses with content, as if no other content exists.

I still don’t get it, are people really comparing GW2 to WoW?? The 2 are really nothing alike, only in the fact that they are mmo’s… Can someone please enlighten me to how the 2 have any real connection at all? One is b2p and the other is p2p. One has been out for years and years the other has been out for 7-8 months.

Seriously, if you don’t like the game for it’s endgame you must have already got some worth out of it being lvl 80 and considering you only paid £30-50/$40-80 for it, you got your moneys worth. And not to mention this game is going nowhere, so while you have already got your moneys worth, there will always be new monthly content and reasons to come back and play to get even more worth out of it. How can people be so blind and, well just greedy. The developers of this game are not robots, they are human, the same as us so naturally have their limits.

Vayne.8563:

Snip

You’re accusing me for the very thing you’re promoting in your own post. Hypocrite much?

You’re the one who’s focusing on bosses. I’m simply stating a fact that within the dungeons, there were simply far more bosses to kill. On top of having far more dungeons over all. If you really knew anything about the original dungeons, you’d know they were more about pathing than GW2 is, lol. Just to tack on for kicks, they were much larger and there was far more to do in the dungeons. Hint: quests, and most not arbitrary ones in the 60’s.

I’d have to disagree with you if you think that anything within the current pve model of GW2 is hard. Skipping trash or not. That’s entirely subjective. I found them to be very easy and was running around with my title long before people were skipping trash. Also long before trash was removed/nerfed.

I’ll say it again. WoW had basically everything you’re mentioning upon it’s release in some form or another. But because it’s branded with some bright icon or what have you, you immediately come to the conclusion that it’s additional content. lol

Or how about that outdoor pvp GW2 has… oh wait. What about all the super deep crafting GW2 also has… oh wait. I can go on with multiple instances of content that WoW had, that GW2 doesn’t. Since you’re picking minor nuances that exist in both games.

The point is still holding strong despite your flawed definition of what content actually is, you’re very much way off the mark.

You’re not the only one. The game just feels too shallow for my liking.

I want to enjoy the game too and I have problems doing it.

Part of it has to do with being dead tired after work and my days off have all my happy fun chores crammed into what used to be my free time.

The other part is occasionally running into someone who won’t stop trying to tell me Elder Scrolls Online is going to be better. If you believe that, you’ve bought into the hype machine like people did for this game and there is nothing but sorrow for you ahead. I predict a lot of people are going to be posting there about the same things of “didn’t live up to the hype”, but then again I also predicted the world would end in 2012.

As for comparing games to games and other games? Try Nethack. It’s got tons of content and challenge, and it’s free. Or you can get Dwarf Fortress if you’re really a masochist. If you’re more into RPGs, I guess you could put up some cash for Morrowind (skip Oblivion and Skyrim, Morrowind had more content). Or you can finally buckle and buy Minecraft. I am certain some modded server will scratch your need for a good MMO; the game has a decent simplicity which can be modded nicely.

evo.8640:

Or how about that outdoor pvp GW2 has… oh wait. .

WvW

Shootsfoot.9276:

WvW

Since I’ll use Vayne’s logic. WvW = battleground. Not outdoor pvp.