Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone.

As the title states, I’m new to gw2.
I am playing a Tempest Elementalist wielding a staff and I’m Asura. I have played for 268 hours over the past 21 days and died 393 times.
I am currently at 74 agony resistance with 6 Ascended items (Shoulders, Gloves, Staff, Amulet, Ring, Ring). I have killed all raid bosses, except Matthias and Xera (no ley line gliding).

I played WoW for a decade, peaking at world#37 in PVE and a single gladiator title, as a warlock. I quit WoW years ago after finishing heroic Siege of Orgrimmar (25) in MOP. I haven’t bought the subsequent expansion(s) and don’t intend to.
I have also tried, very briefly, Elder Scrolls Online, Wild Star, AION and SWTOR.

I will try to put my thoughts into categories, as I have attempted to cover most aspects of the game in my relatively short time spent playing it.

Leveling 1-80:
It took me a bit over 2 days to level from 1 to 80. I liked how quick it was and how the time spent per level was approximately constant. I leveled to about 35 using karma hearts (“quests”) and from 35-80 using world events.
“Weakness makes me sick”, anyone?
The leveling process was entertaining and challenging enough to keep me entertained. Mostly because as an elementalist I could pull 5 mobs at a time and AOE them down, if I used my abilities correctly. I liked that. Unlocking all 5 abilities at early levels really made the game a lot more fun. I never felt like I lacked the necessary tools to level efficiently (unlike in WoW, where the best leveling tools were unlocked at max level).

Personal Story (Original):
I suppose the personal story is fun and games, if you like leveling inefficiently, getting insignificant rewards and roleplay. I like none of the 3, so I skipped every cutscene after level 40 and rushed through it as fast as I could, just for the sake of having it completed. I regret doing it. It was boring, grindy and ultimately entirely unnecessary.
That is my opinion and I appreciate the fact that others may like it.

Dungeons:
The dungeons are pretty complicated, if you’re used to linear WoW-type dungeons where you kill stuff, move further, kill more stuff and eventually collect loot. You rarely had to talk to npcs or click hidden objects (puzzles). That’s refreshing, although, at this late stage of the game veteran players will rush through the content like it’s nothing (in spite of the virtually nonexisting gear scaling curve, more about that later). That makes it pretty difficult for a new player to pick up on what’s actually going on and how it’s supposed to be done, because it’s generally already finished before you’ve even found the area where the action is (was) happening. However, the dungeons are great fun and once you understand enough to keep up, it’s amazing. I really like most of the mechanics and only wish there was more incentive to actively do dungeons.

Fractals:
Like dungeons, fractals can be hard to catch on to. They’re fun and mechanically challenging, but they are full of objectives and tiny puzzles that new players need some attempts to understand and navigate. Once that was accomplished, fractals quickly became my favourite objective of the game. What bothers me is that most of my friends are too casual to keep up with me and my one other hardcore friend, so we are a 2 man team most of the time, pugging the other 3.
I have nothing against pugs, but with no way of telling if they’re pulling their weight or only mastering their “1” DPS rotation, I feel punished and at a huge disadvantage for only having 1 real mate.
Both in fractals and in dungeons I often feel like we are the only two people interrupting, healing, tanking and dealing damage. Sadly, with no way of telling, this only leads to more frustration which doubtlessly will eventually cause me to quit the game for good. I know a lot of players are scared of damagemeters. If they were casual wow players, I can understand that, as casuals would have been destroyed in LFR instances by veteran hardcore players. That is the consequence of the too steep gear progression of WoW. That is not the case in GW2 (10% statincrease from Exotic to Ascended, 0% statincrease from Ascended to Legendary), so even if you are in full Exotic gear and competing against a player in full Ascended gear, the damage difference should be pretty small.
I like to understand things and I like to improve. Without a tool to measure my own performance and compare it to that of my peers’, I lose interest due to the ever increasing frustration I feel at not knowing what’s actually going on.

World Bosses and Events:
I can understand the argument that “dynamic world events and world bosses” on a very exact timer (GW2timer.com for more info) feels awkward, it also allows for them to be completed frequently, efficiently and smoothly, which I really like. I am often on the world boss train, going from A to Z killing bosses as soon as they spawn.

Raids:
The raids in GW2 are excellent. The bosses are diverse and very entertaining to learn and defeat. I fear that GW2 suffers from the same issue that Wild Star had though, which is that the gear progression does not really smoothen raiding at all. The very slight increase of stats do not allow for quicker and easier fights, which I imagine makes raiding every week excessively grindy with little to no reward (assuming you’re fully geared, which I reckon everybody is at this point). Complacency was a killer at end-game raiding in WoW, even with our heavily inflated stats. I can’t begin to imagine how horribly a raidcontent-dry-patch in GW2 would look, farming the same bosses in the same equipment for months. Maybe nobody does that, I don’t know. I can understand why nobody would.
That said, the instances are amazing, although it has the same issue as fractals and dungeons, with the individual player having no real knowledge of his/her performance relative to that of his/her comrades. Unless everybody has a (probably) illegal 3rd party damage meter that is hooked up to a server to share the data across the group to accumulate a full damage meter depicting the entire raid (or atleast everybody who went through the steps of installing the 3rd party program and hooking up to the server).

World vs World:
I haven’t done much of it, because it appears largely unrewarding and it’s not my endgame. It’s also a frustrating and confusing zergfest of following around the commander tag and avoiding fullscale combat at all costs. Whenever I got into a 1v1 or similar small scale skirmish, a thief would pop out of invissiblity oneshot me and then bow-dash to africa before I could even blink. I’m in full berserker gear and I SINCERELY HOPE that’s the reason I’m getting instakilled with no chance of defending myself.

“PVP”?:
I did my PVP dailies a few times by joining the organised win-trading games in the PVP lobby. As handy as that may be, it seems to be the perfect place for botting software. I’ve never tried real PVP or arena.

Appearance, Dyes and “Fashion Wars”:
Since this is apparently the real end game of Guild Wars 2, it seems odd that there are full awesomely looking sets available from the gem store. Once you learn to recognise all the €10 suits it’s easy to separate the real farmers/pros from the casual scrubs, ofcourse, but to a new player that’s not so straight forward with the huge number of dyes available.

Guild Events:
Easily the most frustrating and exclussive content available in guild wars 2. I’ve managed to get through them once, but currently Ascended Accessories seems like the absolutely last piece of equipment I will obtain. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be so exclussive, rare and frustrating, or if that’s a consequence of them having been available for so long, at all gear levels.

GW2 in general (TL;DR):
Mechanically the game is amazing. Combo fields, dodge rolls, boss mechanics, events, currency types and event-gated vendors etc. The game feels responsive and very fluent and in spite of raidwipe-causing and map-removing client crashes, it’s a pleasent experience.
What is driving me away is the absense of a way to measure my output and compare it to that of my group members. I often feel like I am the only person healing, damaging, tanking and interrupting all at once. With no damage meter telling me I’m either right or wrong, I only end up feeling more and more frustrated with every dungeon, raid or fractal I do. I’m a humble elitist, but I’ve already won the fashion war with my demi-god appearance, without knowing my worth in terms of HPS, DPS and interrupts, I am nothing. I would legit use an illegal damage meter and risk getting the ban, if I could find one.
I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion of Guild Wars 2, so far.
I’ll see you when multilooting or at Tequatl.
– That Filth

Interesting perspective.
You will hit the end of what you find enjoyable soon I think though. You leveled 1-80 in two days, I found that about 20 hours is the leveling time plus or minus an hour so 10 hours per day of focus is a lot. Not that there are not several who do this it is just that mostly people like to take time to do things.

Meters are something that does not help, raid is clear great, raid is not clear you believe you are doing your job, find another raid group. Not difficult. You have holdover issues from WoW does not mean that is the only way of doing things.

It’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear. But the individual player does not matter that much in gw2. There is no trinity like in WoW in terms of healing or damage. For raids, most people use guideline for a group composition (see metabattle.com), but there’s no solid composition that is directly mandatory. That’s why they don’t have any damage meter like you were suggesting.

Its a dated and toxic mechanism, but for those that must have it, there is a program i believe that acts as a damage meter (i believe people still use this kind of thing with GW2 raids. To Op though, you need to get out of the mindset of competitive contribution, that’s not what GW2 is about, you don’t need to worry about what other people are doing – the beauty of this game is that you have extreme flexibility to adjust your skills and behaviors to compensate for any perceived weakness you see.

As for gear progression to make things easier as you repeat dungeons, thats a WOW thing again, the reward in GW2 is different, its all about learning to adapt your playing behaviours and skills sets – this is where the experience pays dividends.

I agree with you. I also wish gw2 had a way to tell everyone in the party, squad, or open world event how they did at the end of completing something, and then shared that info for all to see. Lots of MMO’s do it. To me it just adds a bit of competitiveness to do your best while these different events are happening.

However, this idea has been brought up many times before. And most people don’t want it. They believe some players will abuse it, and use it as a way to justify kicking someone out of a group or point fingers at someone for holding the group back. On flip side, it’ll only encourage players to do better, or point out that a specific player is doing a great job and maybe even carrying the group.

its a fact unfortunately that some people will abuse it, and we can see historically in other games that the few have a disproportional effect on the many.

I do however like the reporting you get a the end of spvp , its more goal orientated (e.g I like to balance healing and condition removal with some kills) and its at the end when people are a little more reflective.

Was this a veiled attempt at yet another “damage meter plz” thread?

OP is new to GW2 so to be fair it is not – and he comes from WOW which explains a lot.

Serophous.9085:

Was this a veiled attempt at yet another “damage meter plz” thread?

Yes.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Its a dated and toxic mechanism, but for those that must have it, there is a program i believe that acts as a damage meter (i believe people still use this kind of thing with GW2 raids. To Op though, you need to get out of the mindset of competitive contribution, that’s not what GW2 is about, you don’t need to worry about what other people are doing – the beauty of this game is that you have extreme flexibility to adjust your skills and behaviors to compensate for any perceived weakness you see.

As for gear progression to make things easier as you repeat dungeons, thats a WOW thing again, the reward in GW2 is different, its all about learning to adapt your playing behaviours and skills sets – this is where the experience pays dividends.

I understand. But this also invites and rewards the “doesn’t matter what I do, the others will carry me and they won’t even know that I’m not doing anything lmfao” mentality. It’s a plague in all MMORPGs.. all games even…, but most games take steps to ensure that those who actively try to better themselves and perform to the best of their abilities claim rewards fitting their level of play.
Frankly, I think it’s sad that such an amazing game is completely without a competitive element in PVE. Imagine how popular GW2 could be if it had a worldoflogs.com equivalent.
I can’t fault anyone for thinking damage meters/healing meters as being a toxic mechanism. In some cases it is. I’ve experienced hundreds of wipes due to metertunnelvision, but it can also be an invaluable tool for increasing your personal and your group’s performance.

Well from your data, OP, you have played on average more than 12 hours per day over the last month.
While you caught up rapidly everything done in the last 3 and half years, I fear you’ll hit the bored wall quite fast if you play that much with the standards you’d like to achieve (constant attraction to new challenging content). Mind you, you beat all the raid bosses while many daily players (3 to 4 hours) still struggle with half of the available encounters.
If you don’t want to run in circle in the game, I think a playtime of 12 hours per day is too much. You will rapidly get angry at the lack of things to do. It is relative sure (I don’t feel it to be fair, but in two day you play more than I do in the week) but many people left because of it. The problem with not playing constantly though is that you will have issues to create connection with others and be part of a hardcore guild, something that you already feel an issue for you.
I am no fortune teller, but I just want to make you aware that you may feel the game empty soon, but please if it happens look back at that post to remember that there was a time when you felt the game was kindda good

Oh and by the way, personal DPS meter exist (Jaxnx should not be bannable) but you will never see what others are doing. Play with people you know and compare after fights.

Ranael.6423:

I am no fortune teller, but I just want to make you aware that you may feel the game empty soon, but please if it happens look back at that post to remember that there was a time when you felt the game was kindda good

Oh and by the way, personal DPS meter exist (Jaxnx should not be bannable) but you will never see what others are doing. Play with people you know and compare after fights.

Only seeing yourself on the DPS meter is the issue I have. Without some form of frame of reference, it’s just a number.
I think I wrote it somewhere up there, but I only have one friend to play with and we do share our data somewhat.

The game already feels empty to me. I am not really onboard with the PVP thing, been there done that. I’ve already won the fashion war, I’m a fabulous Asura. The only game I’ve got left is some form of competitive PVE and that doesn’t exist. The bored wall has already hit me, and that’s fine, I didn’t expect this game to last all the way through my summer holidays. That’s fine! Completely fine.
What I’m trying to say is that this game is absolutely fantastic and it deserves an element of competitive PVE. I’m sure the hardcore guilds already have this, internally, with their grey area 3rd party programs, but the rest of the community is left in the dirt.

I totally get that people have bad childhood memories of being bullied out of LFR in WOW because of their blue gear and 0.1% dps, but that would never be the case with the way gear scales in GW2. And ultimately, there’s more to the game than just DPS. It’s a game of survival, teamplay and overcoming a variety of obstacles.

I really hope there will never be a DPS meter. I find it kinda sad that you need this tool to make a game interesting. It’s probably a hangover from WoW, I too use to play WoW, and stopped after Cat, it just got board of it. Way too much grinding. And I always hatted the DPS meters and the hostility it would bring to the person with the lowers DPS, even if it was only a few points out from the rest of the group. Like the time someone raged at me for not doing enough DPS when I was the tank!

There are alot of things to do in GW2, you seem to have done alot in a very small amount of time. Would not surprise me if you burn out.

Filth.1479:

…….
Guild Events:
Easily the most frustrating and exclussive content available in guild wars 2………….

my fav part

Guild Wars 2: Review – Guild Events, Easily the most frustrating and exclussive content available in guild wars 2

They can put that on the back of the xpac box in quotes

Rather hard to believe someone who started 3 weeks ago can accomplish that much without being an alt account. Would explain why what amounts to a scrub managed to get into raids that are probably beyond their masteries.

So, yea, it’s a verbose “give me dps meter” thread that can be merged with all the others already made. Then we can promptly forget about it.

Dragon.8762:

I agree with you. I also wish gw2 had a way to tell everyone in the party, squad, or open world event how they did at the end of completing something, and then shared that info for all to see. Lots of MMO’s do it. To me it just adds a bit of competitiveness to do your best while these different events are happening.

However, this idea has been brought up many times before. And most people don’t want it. They believe some players will abuse it, and use it as a way to justify kicking someone out of a group or point fingers at someone for holding the group back. On flip side, it’ll only encourage players to do better, or point out that a specific player is doing a great job and maybe even carrying the group.

So who is doing better? The one that did the most damage and at the top of the list or the one who had lower damage but also rezzed 20 people so they could continue appling damage during the fight.

Filth.1479:

Frankly, I think it’s sad that such an amazing game is completely without a competitive element in PVE. Imagine how popular GW2 could be if it had a worldoflogs.com equivalent. .

No mob tagging – everyone who gets enough hits on an enemy gets XP and possibly loot, whether a boss or trash mob.

No loot rolls – everyone gets their own loot, no running through the same content for a dozen attempts just to see the uberweapon you were hoping for go to someone else.

No competition for gathering/harvesting – every player can mine the same ore node, etc. you don’t have issues where you fight your way to a node just to see someone rush by you and take it while you’re in combat.

Level scaling – max-level players can’t run through beginner zones one-shotting everything before lowbies get a chance to participate.

GW2 is pro-cooperation and anti-competition in PvE. If you want to compete with other players go to WvW or PvP instead. Even “fashion wars” is subjective, I don’t care how many Legendary weapons you can flash. It’s great that those of us who don’t measure our own enjoyment against others’ performance have a game to play. Almost every other MMO has what you’re looking for, GW2 doesn’t need it.

That’s a pretty well though review. i’m not agreeing with everything, but your points are all valid.

However, i’d like to say something about mesuring yours and others output while fighting. This is maybe because i’m a veteran, i play all the content on all the classes and played a lot of different builds and strategies following the differents meta, but i really don’t need any dpsmeter to know who in the group is an actually good player.
I think that a good player isn’t recognised by dps or healing, but just by using the right ability at the right time. I expect my guardian to take care of the projectiles when it’s needed, my thief to provide blind against tough trash mobs …
Because you can change all your abilities and your traits on the fly, you are supposed to constently re adapt your playstyle to the different encounters, and to your group composition. That’s how i know others are pulling their weight, i just look at what they’re doing.
(This does not apply to some of the raid encounter, where you have a real dps check)

I’m not against dpsmeters, but if you want one, you can check GW2Spec, a legal dpsmeter for you and your party. It can be very handy.

ps: yeah, don’t play full zerker ele in wvw if you go solo or in a small group x)

I actually thing this is a fairly thought out post about how this game appeals to competitive PvE players. It might not be your preferred playstyle, but the points made are decent and should be taken seriously. It’s definitely not a “give DPS meter” post, it’s just pointing out some problems that hardcore/competitive players have with GW2’s structured PvE content.

The main thing that bugs be about dungeons and raids is that you have very limited feedback about what is going on. You get downed and have no idea what just happend (unless it was an obvious boss ability), your group fails do do enough damage but nobody really knows if they actually managed to contribute enough to the group’s dmg or not etc. I don’t think it’s necessarily about who other than yourself failed, but getting feedback on one’s own performance. I can hit my buttons as I think is best, but if it’s really optimal or better/worse than last time is hard to tell. It’s also often desired to find out what goes wrong (at least in friendly and helpful groups), e.g. to help a guildmate do more dmg or interrupts.

I would like to see two things to fix this without introducing the social problems that DPS meters create:
1) A tool to tell me what just killed me (I think this already exists in PvP/WvW).
2) A tool I can activate to tell me how I am doing in terms of dmg, healing, rezzes, interrupts etc. compared to my group as a whole (no numbers of other individual players in the group) and compared to my performance on the last (or last recorded) attempt. This way I can see if I am doing good or not, I can try to better myself and see if the last change I made in my rotation actually had a preferable effect. I can also choose to share the info with my group (and maybe ask for help) if I want to via TS/chat (no ingame option to enable sharing, since it would become mandatory) or keep it to myself since nobody else can see this info about me specifically. I can also just leave it disabled.

I think this would go a long way in helping players working on their own playstyle and performance, as well as figuring out (in a helpful and cooperative manner) why a wipe happend or why something didn’t work.

simplesimon.2084:

Dragon.8762:

I agree with you. I also wish gw2 had a way to tell everyone in the party, squad, or open world event how they did at the end of completing something, and then shared that info for all to see. Lots of MMO’s do it. To me it just adds a bit of competitiveness to do your best while these different events are happening.

However, this idea has been brought up many times before. And most people don’t want it. They believe some players will abuse it, and use it as a way to justify kicking someone out of a group or point fingers at someone for holding the group back. On flip side, it’ll only encourage players to do better, or point out that a specific player is doing a great job and maybe even carrying the group.

So who is doing better? The one that did the most damage and at the top of the list or the one who had lower damage but also rezzed 20 people so they could continue appling damage during the fight.

Not that I support a damage meter for GW2, but the ones in WoW recorded everything – rezzes, cleanses, interrupts, activity time, and so on. So, if you know what’s really going on in a fight, the information on how your raid failed is there in the logs.

Elitists won’t like this game that much. Anet likes to cater to the casual masses. They take away any and all things and any possibilities for people to shine on an individual basis. Everything is pretty much an aoe button smashing fest, be it PvE meta/boss events, PvP, or WvW zerg fest.

Yes yes, good players are still better than the average masses. But OP is right in that it’s hard for you to stand out, and it’s hard to tell how you’re doing compared to others. GW2 is pretty much carried by its awesome game engine and fluid, action combat gameplay. It has the core makings of a great game that should by all means attract all sorts of gamers to its 3 game-modes. But it’s missing some things.

General consensus is that the game is rather unrewarding, you hear this often after people have tried WvW. The sideways character progression can get dull & stale. Also competition drive players & guilds in these games. But there’s a real lack of competition in GW2. There are no stats to read, no player rankings pages to look at, no numbers to crunch, no damage/heal meters outside of sPvP games, no guild firsts or guild bragging rights, etc..

‘Competitive PVE’, the root of most RPG evils lol, i remember when it used to be group Versus the enemy.

Can you imagine if the Lord of the Rings book was ‘competitive PVE’ Frodo would be benched and Gandalf would be spamming lightening AOE at any opportunity ignoring people who needed to be rezzed :P

Filth.1479:

I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Bosses simply have billions of health.

Oh, and some Thief builds can kill characters in PVT gear nearly as quickly. It might take 2-3 hits rather than one. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a Thief, some other professions can do it also.

i don’t want to post a long reply on every single point or lay down my own experience with the game over the last few years but there is a theme that jumps at me from your post which i think i have an at least decent answer to.
while there may not exist any kind of real competitiveness in gw2 i think many of your frustrations could be solved by finding a fitting guild. pugging is generally a somehow frustrating experience in gw2. having a team of people you are used to playing with makes all the difference. since you have 4 guild slots available you can have several teams specialized for any kind of content.
also gw2 might not be fitting you in general as a hardcore player in the long run. here you have the advantage of not having any monthly costs so you can just take a break if things feel stale and check in once content you would like to play is released. much of the content is story driven tho so if you’re not interested in that a lot of content in gw2 might not agree with you.
still, i would suggest you look for a guild that fits your needs and see if changes your experience.

I would like to see a scoreboard at the end of dungeons, fractals, world boss events, etc.

Filth.1479:

Hey everyone.

As the title states, I’m new to gw2.
I am playing a Tempest Elementalist wielding a staff and I’m Asura. I have played for 268 hours over the past 21 days and died 393 times.
I am currently at 74 agony resistance with 6 Ascended items (Shoulders, Gloves, Staff, Amulet, Ring, Ring). I have killed all raid bosses, except Matthias and Xera (no ley line gliding).

I played WoW for a decade, peaking at world#37 in PVE and a single gladiator title, as a warlock. I quit WoW years ago after finishing heroic Siege of Orgrimmar (25) in MOP. I haven’t bought the subsequent expansion(s) and don’t intend to.
I have also tried, very briefly, Elder Scrolls Online, Wild Star, AION and SWTOR.

I will try to put my thoughts into categories, as I have attempted to cover most aspects of the game in my relatively short time spent playing it.

Leveling 1-80:
It took me a bit over 2 days to level from 1 to 80. I liked how quick it was and how the time spent per level was approximately constant. I leveled to about 35 using karma hearts (“quests”) and from 35-80 using world events.
“Weakness makes me sick”, anyone?
The leveling process was entertaining and challenging enough to keep me entertained. Mostly because as an elementalist I could pull 5 mobs at a time and AOE them down, if I used my abilities correctly. I liked that. Unlocking all 5 abilities at early levels really made the game a lot more fun. I never felt like I lacked the necessary tools to level efficiently (unlike in WoW, where the best leveling tools were unlocked at max level).

Personal Story (Original):
I suppose the personal story is fun and games, if you like leveling inefficiently, getting insignificant rewards and roleplay. I like none of the 3, so I skipped every cutscene after level 40 and rushed through it as fast as I could, just for the sake of having it completed. I regret doing it. It was boring, grindy and ultimately entirely unnecessary.
That is my opinion and I appreciate the fact that others may like it.

Dungeons:
The dungeons are pretty complicated, if you’re used to linear WoW-type dungeons where you kill stuff, move further, kill more stuff and eventually collect loot. You rarely had to talk to npcs or click hidden objects (puzzles). That’s refreshing, although, at this late stage of the game veteran players will rush through the content like it’s nothing (in spite of the virtually nonexisting gear scaling curve, more about that later). That makes it pretty difficult for a new player to pick up on what’s actually going on and how it’s supposed to be done, because it’s generally already finished before you’ve even found the area where the action is (was) happening. However, the dungeons are great fun and once you understand enough to keep up, it’s amazing. I really like most of the mechanics and only wish there was more incentive to actively do dungeons.

Fractals:
Like dungeons, fractals can be hard to catch on to. They’re fun and mechanically challenging, but they are full of objectives and tiny puzzles that new players need some attempts to understand and navigate. Once that was accomplished, fractals quickly became my favourite objective of the game. What bothers me is that most of my friends are too casual to keep up with me and my one other hardcore friend, so we are a 2 man team most of the time, pugging the other 3.
I have nothing against pugs, but with no way of telling if they’re pulling their weight or only mastering their “1” DPS rotation, I feel punished and at a huge disadvantage for only having 1 real mate.
Both in fractals and in dungeons I often feel like we are the only two people interrupting, healing, tanking and dealing damage. Sadly, with no way of telling, this only leads to more frustration which doubtlessly will eventually cause me to quit the game for good. I know a lot of players are scared of damagemeters. If they were casual wow players, I can understand that, as casuals would have been destroyed in LFR instances by veteran hardcore players. That is the consequence of the too steep gear progression of WoW. That is not the case in GW2 (10% statincrease from Exotic to Ascended, 0% statincrease from Ascended to Legendary), so even if you are in full Exotic gear and competing against a player in full Ascended gear, the damage difference should be pretty small.
I like to understand things and I like to improve. Without a tool to measure my own performance and compare it to that of my peers’, I lose interest due to the ever increasing frustration I feel at not knowing what’s actually going on.

World Bosses and Events:
I can understand the argument that “dynamic world events and world bosses” on a very exact timer (GW2timer.com for more info) feels awkward, it also allows for them to be completed frequently, efficiently and smoothly, which I really like. I am often on the world boss train, going from A to Z killing bosses as soon as they spawn.

Raids:
The raids in GW2 are excellent. The bosses are diverse and very entertaining to learn and defeat. I fear that GW2 suffers from the same issue that Wild Star had though, which is that the gear progression does not really smoothen raiding at all. The very slight increase of stats do not allow for quicker and easier fights, which I imagine makes raiding every week excessively grindy with little to no reward (assuming you’re fully geared, which I reckon everybody is at this point). Complacency was a killer at end-game raiding in WoW, even with our heavily inflated stats. I can’t begin to imagine how horribly a raidcontent-dry-patch in GW2 would look, farming the same bosses in the same equipment for months. Maybe nobody does that, I don’t know. I can understand why nobody would.
That said, the instances are amazing, although it has the same issue as fractals and dungeons, with the individual player having no real knowledge of his/her performance relative to that of his/her comrades. Unless everybody has a (probably) illegal 3rd party damage meter that is hooked up to a server to share the data across the group to accumulate a full damage meter depicting the entire raid (or atleast everybody who went through the steps of installing the 3rd party program and hooking up to the server).

World vs World:
I haven’t done much of it, because it appears largely unrewarding and it’s not my endgame. It’s also a frustrating and confusing zergfest of following around the commander tag and avoiding fullscale combat at all costs. Whenever I got into a 1v1 or similar small scale skirmish, a thief would pop out of invissiblity oneshot me and then bow-dash to africa before I could even blink. I’m in full berserker gear and I SINCERELY HOPE that’s the reason I’m getting instakilled with no chance of defending myself.

“PVP”?:
I did my PVP dailies a few times by joining the organised win-trading games in the PVP lobby. As handy as that may be, it seems to be the perfect place for botting software. I’ve never tried real PVP or arena.

Appearance, Dyes and “Fashion Wars”:
Since this is apparently the real end game of Guild Wars 2, it seems odd that there are full awesomely looking sets available from the gem store. Once you learn to recognise all the €10 suits it’s easy to separate the real farmers/pros from the casual scrubs, ofcourse, but to a new player that’s not so straight forward with the huge number of dyes available.

Guild Events:
Easily the most frustrating and exclussive content available in guild wars 2. I’ve managed to get through them once, but currently Ascended Accessories seems like the absolutely last piece of equipment I will obtain. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be so exclussive, rare and frustrating, or if that’s a consequence of them having been available for so long, at all gear levels.

GW2 in general (TL;DR):
Mechanically the game is amazing. Combo fields, dodge rolls, boss mechanics, events, currency types and event-gated vendors etc. The game feels responsive and very fluent and in spite of raidwipe-causing and map-removing client crashes, it’s a pleasent experience.
What is driving me away is the absense of a way to measure my output and compare it to that of my group members. I often feel like I am the only person healing, damaging, tanking and interrupting all at once. With no damage meter telling me I’m either right or wrong, I only end up feeling more and more frustrated with every dungeon, raid or fractal I do. I’m a humble elitist, but I’ve already won the fashion war with my demi-god appearance, without knowing my worth in terms of HPS, DPS and interrupts, I am nothing. I would legit use an illegal damage meter and risk getting the ban, if I could find one.
I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion of Guild Wars 2, so far.
I’ll see you when multilooting or at Tequatl.
– That Filth

Did I miss it or did you not do living story season 2 or hot yet?

Ryou.2398:

Did I miss it or did you not do living story season 2 or hot yet?

I’m not going to buy living world season 2. I bought the first episode wrongfully thinking I got the entire thing for 200 gems.
I haven’t completed the HOT story yet. I kinda wanna do it with my friends, but they don’t wanna play GW2 anymore. So RIP. . .

And as I stated somewhere in my post, I’m really not a fan of the first story, nor the second story so far. I mean.. it’s cute and all, but I don’t care about that stuff. I didn’t care about the roleplay in WoW either. I’m all about overcoming obstacles in the form of hard boss encounters, not escorting some npc around to pick up cogwheels while sleepily 111111111ONEONEONEing a pair of mobs down. Which sums up the stories, so far.
But in spite of that, the game is still overall amazing, don’t get me wrong. There has to be content for the casual roleplayer, of course, it’s an MMORPG. No complaints there. It’s just not for me.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Filth.1479:

I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Bosses simply have billions of health.

The thing is.. having pugged a lot of fractals, I really start to notice that sometimes I get these groups where the boss dies in seconds and then other times I get groups where it takes several minuttes. I’m mostly referring to Molten Boss, but it is the same in other fractals. It’s just more noticable on the Molten Boss.

That bothers me a great deal. The fact that the majority of the GW2 playerbase is either oblivious of that fact or chooses to completely ignore it, scares me. How can anybody play a game for years and just accept that their contribution to the group is 0?
If nobody can see that persons nonexisting output, nobody is going to tell him what to do to improve. And we’re just fine with that? As long as he wins the fashion war?
This game is too good to just die off like that.

It sounds like your idea of fun is comparing your performance to others in PvE. If that is the case this probably isn’t the game for you. Aside from the achievement point leaderboards (more a measurement of who started playing before others and spends the most time) there is not likely to ever be a public display of performance when it comes to PvE.

Me I could not care less who does what damage, who heals more and so forth. If I play a dungeon, fractal, world boss and have fun I don’t really care if I did 10X more damage than some other player. It isn’t really important.

If you are really interested in a GW2 measuring contest go play ranked PvP and not the “let win” PvP daily you mentioned in the OP. Ranked PvP is overflowing with players that compare their performance to others and are eager to let people know when they are being carried. There you can see your score as measured among your peers.

Filth.1479:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Filth.1479:

I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Bosses simply have billions of health.

The thing is.. having pugged a lot of fractals, I really start to notice that sometimes I get these groups where the boss dies in seconds and then other times I get groups where it takes several minuttes. I’m mostly referring to Molten Boss, but it is the same in other fractals. It’s just more noticable on the Molten Boss.

That bothers me a great deal. The fact that the majority of the GW2 playerbase is either oblivious of that fact or chooses to completely ignore it, scares me. How can anybody play a game for years and just accept that their contribution to the group is 0?
If nobody can see that persons nonexisting output, nobody is going to tell him what to do to improve. And we’re just fine with that? As long as he wins the fashion war?
This game is too good to just die off like that.

That difference is indeed there. Max damage in GW2 is obtained by a variety of factors. Ideally, Might gets stacked to its limit of 25 stacks, Fury is up constantly, and the Vulnerability cap (25 stacks) is also reached and maintained as much as possible. Meanwhile, well-timed defensive buffs like Aegis and Reflection limit or eliminate DPS downtime due to dodging or being downed. In such a coordinated party, the party’s damage is greater than the sum of what the individual members could put out individually (i.e., if not coordinating).

That doesn’t mean a lot of bosses don’t have high health pools. It means that some group’s damage output is a lot higher. That doesn’t mean that individuals are not contributing in those other groups. It does mean that what’s possible for a group requires specific comps, specific builds and a commitment to apply/maintain those group buffs.

Pugging is always going to be a mixed bag. You’ll run into players who want to play their favorite character, even though it doesn’t contribute as much (or at all) to max output. You’ll run into speed run wannabes who look up meta builds, but don’t really understand how to get the most out of them. As one might expect, the best way to guarantee a group comp is to find a guild that wants that, too. Failing that, you can advertise (as people do) for “experienced only” or whatever the filter criteria of the month is. Sometimes,as you note, you get a fast group. Sometimes, not.

This is an artifact of GW2 being somewhat different than those other MMO’s. In other games, you can get non-optimal parties, but since people can set gear tier requirements, PvE inefficiency usually boils down more to inferior rotations and positioning. In GW2, you can add gear inefficiency on top of the others, and failure to position and buff optimally leads to a dramatic drop-off in effectiveness.

I am playing a Tempest Elementalist wielding a staff and I’m Asura. I have played for 268 hours over the past 21 days and died 393 times.
I am currently at 74 agony resistance with 6 Ascended items (Shoulders, Gloves, Staff, Amulet, Ring, Ring). I have killed all raid bosses, except Matthias and Xera (no ley line gliding).

You quite literally played (and achieved) more in 21 days than I did in almost 4 years.

I don’t really have much to add to the discussion at hand, I just found it interesting to note how discrepant the time investment and goal focusing can be between players.

Filth.1479:

Once you learn to recognise all the €10 suits it’s easy to separate the real farmers/pros from the casual scrubs, ofcourse

If you’re a “real farmer” or “pro” you’re not allowed to buy an outfit from the Gemstore, even if you like it, lest you be downgraded to “scrub”.

Interesting… interesting… I wish the game told you this in the form of a tutorial box the first time you open up the Gemstore.

Being a ‘casual scrub’, I do hope you find a game that meets your hardcore/farmer/pro needs.

Though, I’m confused with what obtaining an Outfit, either with cash or in-game Gold signifies.

Best of luck.

Morfedel.4165:

So wait let me get this straight, you are completely new to the game, you’ve only played 21 days, and you’ve already got six ascended items and killed all but two raid bosses, and you have 74 Agony resistance.

In 21 days. I’m assuming you had help from some people already in the game because that seems to be extremely unlikely otherwise. Nothing wrong with getting help, I would do the same thing if I joined Eve online, which I’ve considered a couple times, but your advancement and accomplishments seems extraordinarily aggressive considering your very short play time, something I don’t believe anyone could do coming into the game without knowing what they were doing already or knowing people who could help you.

He’s coming in as a veteran high-end WoW raider, so it doesn’t surprise me. He went straight for the hardcore content after blowing through leveling.

[Edit: All this is for the OP, couldn’t be bothered quoting it all]

From reading the intro of your post I could already get a good sense of what kind of a gamer you are and the rest only confirmed it.

So you play 10-12h a day, probably the same in WoW looking at your super awesome impressive achievements. Thing is… what else do you do? And that’s an important point. You try to dedicate your entire life to a video game, of course you will run out of content. This is not a life progression system, its not a place to find accomplishment in your life. All that stuff happens out there, in the super high resolution game, you know, real world. Video games should be more like casual entertainment not something you build your life’s meaning around. So don’t come demanding features that would make YOUR deranged approach to games work in the expense of everyone else. And yes, DPS meters would ruin it for the casual folk who play the game for some casual fun since people like you, who take all this too seriously, would instantly use them to discriminate people who have other stuff to do in their life and are thus “scrubs”.

Speaking of scrubs, you wrote that:
“Once you learn to recognize all the €10 suits it’s easy to separate the real farmers/pros from the casual scrubs…”
You do realize that those “scrubs” are the ones that keep the game’s servers running and staff paid? Not you, not the players who farm mindlessly till the cows come out, no. All you contribute is server stress, elitism and LFG discrimination.

So maybe rethink your life, do some yoga, get a summer job, anything. I’m quite sure this would alleviate most of the problems you currently see. Its not the game, its you.

There’s tons of things to do in this game if you look past the rewards. I mean, go chill around Timberline Falls, its a gorgeous map. Go do the events, learn what these little hubs of activity are doing and how you can help. That kind of stuff.

Anyway, I know this was quite harsh and snarky but I wanted to get my point across. If its too much for you to deal with then just scroll past.

It would be great to see statistics in PVE, similar to what we see in PVP after a game, but for every party/squad member.

I’m up for it. Having this kind of a benchmark makes we want to test my skills and improve.

Our guild does raids on a regular basis, and sometimes we’re baffled on how does a boss fail so miserably, but succeeds gloriously other times. With no way of telling each member’s performance and what to suggest to improve it.

Maybe add a tag to party/squad saying “Tracking Statistics”, which is clearly visible in the LFG. You can toggle the tag only at party creation, not afterwards. If you want to toggle the tag afterwards, you must disband the whole party first, toggle that tag and then post lfg once again.

This way you voluntary join parties that track statistics. If you don’t like being tracked you don’t join these kind of parties.

What do you guys think?

Meehael.8240:

It would be great to see statistics in PVE, similar to what we see in PVP after a game, but for every party/squad member.

I’m up for it. Having this kind of a benchmark makes we want to test my skills and improve.

Our guild does raids on a regular basis, and sometimes we’re baffled on how does a boss fail so miserably, but succeeds gloriously other times. With no way of telling each member’s performance and what to suggest to improve it.

Maybe add a tag to party/squad saying “Tracking Statistics”, which is clearly visible in the LFG. You can toggle the tag only at party creation, not afterwards. If you want to toggle the tag afterwards, you must disband the whole party first, toggle that tag and then post lfg once again.

This way you voluntary join parties that track statistics. If you don’t like being tracked you don’t join these kind of parties.

What do you guys think?

No, do you not get what PvE is? ANet wants PvE to be a friendly place where people help each other on the fly, not make it a “I’m not helping you scrub! You can’t even DPS!”

Maybe good in WvW, or guild missions but it really has no place in any game. There is really no real reason for it. The stats we get in PvP are for the purpose of knowing how effective your build is.

In your case, if all you see are parties that track statistics, you would create a party that doesn’t track statistics and advertise it like that. Your party would be filled in a matter of seconds!

BrotherBelial.3094:

No, do you not get what PvE is? ANet wants PvE to be a friendly place where people help each other on the fly, not make it a “I’m not helping you scrub! You can’t even DPS!”

Maybe good in WvW, or guild missions but it really has no place in any game. There is really no real reason for it. The stats we get in PvP are for the purpose of knowing how effective your build is.

If PvE was supposed to be a friendly place where everybody is welcome to come and go as they please with any amount of effort invested into the group’s wellbeing, the raids, dungeons and fractals would not have such punishing mechanics.
Take Slothasor as an example; if one person doesn’t react to the poison cloud debuff, he will cause the entire raid of 10 people to die.
I get what you’re saying and inclussivity is great. It’s particularly great in GW2 (or maybe I was just lucky?). When I was new I often landed in groups that were perfectly content with telling me what to do and where to stand. Being nice and honest about it helps, I guess, but still.
I have only met a single elitist in the game so far. He’s toxic as death itself and worse than any player I ever encountered in WoW! What’s particularly toxic about him and the entire situation is that nobody can refute him, as nobody actually knows any of the players’ throughputs. So we just have to accept his word that everybody except him is trash-tier.

I have enjoyed my time in GW2 and I wouldn’t want to force addons on anyone, but I can’t continue playing blind either. I want to know what’s happening on my screen. Sure, I can see that approximately twice per second I deal 6k damage on a stationary target and from that I can make a vague guesstimate that I have around 12k dps. But what’s the point of the floating combat text when it isn’t used for anything concrete other than displaying how heavily armoured the target is and whether you’re actually hitting or not?

Good luck in your new game, wishing you much success.

If you decide to continue playing the game, or decide to come back, you should really try out gw2spec, which is a legal, pretty well made, dpsmeter for gw2.
However, due to the kind of combat system gw2 have, numbers like dps, healing done or damage received are easily misinterpreted. For example, chronomancer have very low dps, but their damage contribution to the rest of the party is huge thanks to quickness/alacrity. Same goes for warriors. Or in fractals, the best guardian is not the one with the highest dps, but the one who knows best how to time aegis/reflect/stab/condi clear ect.
We have this kind of stats in pvp at the end of the game, but really, if you break 1M damage dealt at the end of the game, it doesn’t mean you contributed a lot to the damage of your team, but most likely that you fought a lot of bunkers or minion mancer necro/mesmer clones.
These statistics brings very little as long as there is no strict enrage timer to the encounter like in raids.

Spoichiche.1290:

If you decide to continue playing the game, or decide to come back, you should really try out gw2spec, which is a legal, pretty well made, dpsmeter for gw2.
However, due to the kind of combat system gw2 have, numbers like dps, healing done or damage received are easily misinterpreted. For example, chronomancer have very low dps, but their damage contribution to the rest of the party is huge thanks to quickness/alacrity. Same goes for warriors. Or in fractals, the best guardian is not the one with the highest dps, but the one who knows best how to time aegis/reflect/stab/condi clear ect.
We have this kind of stats in pvp at the end of the game, but really, if you break 1M damage dealt at the end of the game, it doesn’t mean you contributed a lot to the damage of your team, but most likely that you fought a lot of bunkers or minion mancer necro/mesmer clones.
These statistics brings very little as long as there is no strict enrage timer to the encounter like in raids.

It goes without saying that supportive classes bring more to the table than just dps. That’s a carboncopy of how it was/is in WoW (not that that’s a bad thing, I can’t come up with any way to eliminate that). Tanks do less damage than pure damagedealers. Healers do less damage than pure damagedealers. Condi damagedealers do less damage than pure damagedealers on targets with reasonably low armour. Supportive (reflect, barrier, buff) classes do less damage than pure damagedealers.
That is how it should be, in my opinion.

As far as I’ve been told, Guardians aren’t good in high fractals, so that example in particular is rather mute.

And PVP has it’s own competitive system. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 or 5000 dps in PVP. What matters is that you win, which in theory could be done without touching the enemy. It’s the rest of the game that’s lacking a fundemental part of its player progression.

Filth.1479:

World vs World:
I haven’t done much of it, because it appears largely unrewarding and it’s not my endgame. It’s also a frustrating and confusing zergfest of following around the commander tag and avoiding fullscale combat at all costs. Whenever I got into a 1v1 or similar small scale skirmish, a thief would pop out of invissiblity oneshot me and then bow-dash to africa before I could even blink. I’m in full berserker gear and I SINCERELY HOPE that’s the reason I’m getting instakilled with no chance of defending myself.

That’s not an unreasonable assessment.
There is a lot of avoiding combat, but when the zerg vs zerg happens it is glorious and rewarding. Also, if you’re not on your community’s voice chat (teamspeak or whatever), the experience is massively diminished.
Regarding your 1v1 experience, that is absolutely typical. Thieves or such super-twitchy-pro-apex classes in PvP specs completely obliterate regular WvW players, even if we do tend to run tankier gear than berserker. You had no chance to defend yourself because that’s what Jon Peters, Roy Chronacher and Karl McLain think is fun. Welcome to eSports.