Guild Wars 2

At level 1, you have no idea where to go. An experienced player knows to complete hearts and events, but which hearts and which events? If you don’t know the map, finding hearts is harder than it should be.

I hate the open “just explore” the map because it lacks structure. I want to be told where to go. Without such a guide, I feel like every move I make is a mistake. I doubt my every choice by thinking “should I be moving in this direction? Is there a better choice?”. New players I introduce to Guild Wars 2 feel the same way, and prefer a “Just follow the experienced player” approach to the game.

This continues to in level 80 play. I’ve been playing the game for years yet I have no ascended equipment. I have thousands of crafting materials overflowing my materialstorage and bank slots and inventory. But the game offers no direction for me to take. I need to watch a youtube video or google “how to make ascended equipment” outside of the game.

Every move I have ever taken in Guild Wars 2 has felt like a wrong move. From level 1 I feel that I am playing inefficiently, that my time is being wasted by choosing suboptimal paths. I feel like I’m missing crucial knowledge that only veterans possess. My years of playing Guild Wars 2 have taught me that my feeling was correct – I have been missing knowledge. I have been taking suboptimal paths. I have been playing inefficiently.

-Crafting the time-gated ascended components is very worthwhile. However, they are not listed on the “daily achievements”.

-Some PvP and WvW tracks are more valuable than others.

-You should be opening champion bags on level 40-50 characters for higher value.

It is not right to hide this information behind community-made youtube videos or behind google or behind the wiki. Too many new players will miss out.

I want a quest that teaches you to craft an ascended equipment. For example, you open up your hero panel and a tooltip pops up: “You don’t have an ascended Weapon yet. Ascended weapons are more powerful than exotic, but are difficult to acquire! Would you like the start the quest?”. And perhaps this quest can be easy, for example, getting an ascended amulet is as easy as going to the laurel merchant (vital information I didn’t know until recently, despite playing the game for years).

I don’t think offering information in the Wiki (or other sources) is ‘hiding’ it. Every Guild Wars 2 site page has links to the Wiki, the Knowledge Base, Support, the Forums; not to mention the playerbase in-game are usually quite helpful.

It would seem if a player wanted more information about playing, there are plenty of sources, as well as the tutorial tips at every level-up.

Sometimes, one just has to be pro-active. Having freedom in-game is a perk for many.

Good luck.

I consider withholding information in-game and offering it only on the wiki to be “hiding information behind the wiki”. If it isn’t an overt path to it when you want it in-game, then it is being hidden from casual players, giving entrenched veterans an advantage.

Since you’ve been playing for years, thus making you a ‘Vet’, perhaps you missed the new Tutorial. New players would not miss this experience.

Perhaps, creating a new character and leveling it up naturally would be of benefit to you.

Good luck.

I forgot to mention what I mean by “structure”.
An example is all the level 80 zones. Silverwastes, for example, tells you exactly what needs to be done. Defend the four forts. Defend the breach. Kill vinewrath. It even puts big red arrows on the map to tell you exactly where vinewrath is. This is a structured experience and it blows all of the explorable 1-79 zones out of the water in terms of fun.

There exists no structure in any other avenue in Guild Wars 2 outside of the HoT zones and the other similar level80 zones, and for this reason myself and every other person I bring to the game finds it lacking.

See this is precisely the reason I come to this game and not other games. If I wanted to be led around by the nose, I’d play a game with walls of text and arrows leading me to stars on the map. Because that’s much more exciting.

Sometimes the fun in a game is figuring out what to do. I’m guessing you’ve never played any of the old Ultima games. lol

Sorry to hear you find it lacking. It would seem, though, that tens of thousands, if not more, find it, at the very least, adequate. Even preferable to being led around. It’s a core principle of the game, this freedom to do as one desires.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Sorry to hear you find it lacking. It would seem, though, that tens of thousands, if not more, find it, at the very least, adequate. Even preferable to being led around. It’s a core principle of the game, this freedom to do as one desires.

I desire to be at the same level as high-end raiders. I imagine everyone wants to. However, without putting lots of effort outside the game to learn how to have the same equipment they do, it is impossible. All I am asking for is an in-game path. Do you disagree that new players should have a guide to creating ascended equipment?

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

At level 1, you have no idea where to go. An experienced player knows to complete hearts and events, but which hearts and which events? If you don’t know the map, finding hearts is harder than it should be.

I hate the open “just explore” the map because it lacks structure. I want to be told where to go. Without such a guide, I feel like every move I make is a mistake. I doubt my every choice by thinking “should I be moving in this direction? Is there a better choice?”. New players I introduce to Guild Wars 2 feel the same way, and prefer a “Just follow the experienced player” approach to the game.

This continues to in level 80 play. I’ve been playing the game for years yet I have no ascended equipment. I have thousands of crafting materials overflowing my materialstorage and bank slots and inventory. But the game offers no direction for me to take. I need to watch a youtube video or google “how to make ascended equipment” outside of the game.

Every move I have ever taken in Guild Wars 2 has felt like a wrong move. From level 1 I feel that I am playing inefficiently, that my time is being wasted by choosing suboptimal paths. I feel like I’m missing crucial knowledge that only veterans possess. My years of playing Guild Wars 2 have taught me that my feeling was correct – I have been missing knowledge. I have been taking suboptimal paths. I have been playing inefficiently.

-Crafting the time-gated ascended components is very worthwhile. However, they are not listed on the “daily achievements”.

-Some PvP and WvW tracks are more valuable than others.

-You should be opening champion bags on level 40-50 characters for higher value.

It is not right to hide this information behind community-made youtube videos or behind google or behind the wiki. Too many new players will miss out.

I want a quest that teaches you to craft an ascended equipment. For example, you open up your hero panel and a tooltip pops up: “You don’t have an ascended Weapon yet. Ascended weapons are more powerful than exotic, but are difficult to acquire! Would you like the start the quest?”. And perhaps this quest can be easy, for example, getting an ascended amulet is as easy as going to the laurel merchant (vital information I didn’t know until recently, despite playing the game for years).

I think you should go play other games because you are asking way too much hand holding.

Personally for any MMO I would always expect to play it whilst using external resources like wiki, YouTube etc, to further my knowledge of it. Just the nature of MMOs, the fact content/mechanics etc are always changing, and the depth of content involved, it wouldn’t be practical to keep updating tutorials/guides for things in game.

But a lot of what you mention is addressed already anyway. Things like finding hearts or not knowing where to go, npc scouts show you large areas of the map, the hearts, and tell you about what those hearts are likely to involve. And following personal story also guides you if you want a structure as it will take you across maps/to new ones. Though I’m not sure you have against an open just explore approach, as a big part of MMOs/RPGs are generally about having an open world to be free to explore.

For ascended equipment crafting, aside from some mats being time gated (which they tell you they are), it’s no different from normal crafting. Buy a recipe, check it in the crafting menu/station, it says what it needs, then you craft it. And why would time gated mats be listed on daily achievements? They aren’t achievements.

It sounds a bit like you don’t really check npcs & vendors much from the last part as well, you’re saying for years you didn’t know ascended amulets were available at laurel merchants, did you not once in years of playing ever speak to a laurel merchant to see what they sold?

I’ll agree a lot of things can be learnt/explained more in depth via external sources (or asking other other players in map chat etc), which is the way for all MMOs anyway, but most of what you mention is covered by just talking to npcs you encounter.

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Sorry to hear you find it lacking. It would seem, though, that tens of thousands, if not more, find it, at the very least, adequate. Even preferable to being led around. It’s a core principle of the game, this freedom to do as one desires.

I desire to be at the same level as high-end raiders. I imagine everyone wants to. However, without putting lots of effort outside the game to learn how to have the same equipment they do, it is impossible. All I am asking for is an in-game path. Do you disagree that new players should have a guide to creating ascended equipment?

The history of this sort of thing goes back a long way, all the way back to Guild Wars 1. In part of the Guild Wars Beyond story arc, there was a chapter called Heats of The North. In this chapter, Anet put something in that was virtually impossible to find by looking in the game. It would have taken months at least for most people. And when people complained about it, Anet said they wanted the community to come together and figure out stuff together….it’s a conscious decision they made.

They did something similar with a character called Nicolas the Traveler. Someone would find him every week (he moved around randomly) and post his location in the wiki.

Now you may not like this style of game, but it is in fact, a deliberate choice by Anet based on what they what to accomplish.

I’m not always so fond of it myself, but I’ve certainly grown more used to it.

I enjoy this game better with the liberal use of half a dozen websites.

The game is an MMO, as in Massively Multiplayer Online game. You should be getting info by participating in the “multiplayer” aspect of the game.

Instead of going “outside of the game” for crafting info, you can just ask a guildie who has done it.

YouTube videos are not made by machines or evil corporations, they are made by other players just like you and me. If you choose not to interact with them, you are denying yourself part of the experience.

Bolded responses…

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

At level 1, you have no idea where to go. An experienced player knows to complete hearts and events, but which hearts and which events? If you don’t know the map, finding hearts is harder than it should be.

It generally helps if the players takes some responsibility to educate themselves a bit before they play any game. There are video guides for beginners.. Wikis to answer common questions…

There is a ton of “free form” structure to the game for beginners… There are tons of events occurring on open world maps. Hearts are easily found just by going through the map. Events and quests are very easy to understand and accomplish. Personal story holds your hand through it all…

I hate the open “just explore” the map because it lacks structure. I want to be told where to go. Without such a guide, I feel like every move I make is a mistake. I doubt my every choice by thinking “should I be moving in this direction? Is there a better choice?”. New players I introduce to Guild Wars 2 feel the same way, and prefer a “Just follow the experienced player” approach to the game.

You personally need a ton of extra guidance to play… that’s not a flaw with anet or gw2.

This continues to in level 80 play. I’ve been playing the game for years yet I have no ascended equipment. I have thousands of crafting materials overflowing my materialstorage and bank slots and inventory. But the game offers no direction for me to take. I need to watch a youtube video or google “how to make ascended equipment” outside of the game.

Did you really sit there for “years” wondering how to make ascended armor?

Every move I have ever taken in Guild Wars 2 has felt like a wrong move. From level 1 I feel that I am playing inefficiently, that my time is being wasted by choosing suboptimal paths. I feel like I’m missing crucial knowledge that only veterans possess. My years of playing Guild Wars 2 have taught me that my feeling was correct – I have been missing knowledge. I have been taking suboptimal paths. I have been playing inefficiently.

Use the wiki… ask questions on the forums and in-game.. watch vids… There is only so much hand holding the devs can provide for us players

-Crafting the time-gated ascended components is very worthwhile. However, they are not listed on the “daily achievements”.

Why does crafting ascended have to be part of “daily achievements”?

-Some PvP and WvW tracks are more valuable than others.

Reward tracks are all very similar in terms of items, and the devs didn’t compare each track according to coin value. Themed skins are the point of most tracks, not “how much gold is the track worth?”

-You should be opening champion bags on level 40-50 characters for higher value.

The game is not all about gold… and who cares… Do you want an npc guide that tells players they need to open bags between lvl 40-50?

It is not right to hide this information behind community-made youtube videos or behind google or behind the wiki. Too many new players will miss out.

Use the wiki… ask questions on the forums and in-game.. watch vids… These is only so much hand holding the devs can provide for us players

I want a quest that teaches you to craft an ascended equipment. For example, you open up your hero panel and a tooltip pops up: “You don’t have an ascended Weapon yet. Ascended weapons are more powerful than exotic, but are difficult to acquire! Would you like the start the quest?”. And perhaps this quest can be easy, for example, getting an ascended amulet is as easy as going to the laurel merchant (vital information I didn’t know until recently, despite playing the game for years).

Or you can do your part and be more responsible for educating yourself about the game using the various resources available.

When I first started playing the game I had similar thoughts of “am I doing this right?” “am I supposed to be doing something else” and such for questing and exploring. I think the main thing new players should be encouraged to do is find a helpful guild right away, which maybe could be something they add to the story line or whatever (unless there is something and I didn’t notice because I don’t care about the story). A helpful experienced guild that is willing to teach is really essential for certain things imo like wvw and pvp so that new players get a taste of what the game has to offer asap. Also from personal experience, I didn’t even click on the wvw or pvp icon much when I was new because it seemed so confusing and I thought I would just mess things up for my teammates by not knowing what to do (still have never done real pvp for that reason, only have done the old dailies).

Anyway, finding a helpful teaching guild is the best thing for new players.

Honestly GW2 is not THAT unstructured :p nonetheless….He is just like how I used to be. I used to NEED structure and hand holding in games otherwise I would quickly lose interest or think myself to death, thinking everything I do was the wrong move. But then I played Black Desert Online…..Yeah, if you think this game lacks structure, it doesn’t hold a candle to BDO.

As GW2 is a very simple sandbox mmo designed to appeal to as many people as possible, BDO is an extraordinarily complex sandbox mmo designed to appeal to a smaller niche. So yeah….That game was literally 25 times more confusing and frustrating, at least at first.

Out of frustration I began to wonder WHY I needed structure in games, what was the core reason. And the conclusion I personally came to was that I have been conditioned to “follow the quest arrow” over a decade of playing awful, easy, and braindead mmos/rpgs. Just think about it, games hold your hand and tell you exactly what to do so much nowadays it’s not even funny, its like developers assume you are actually 4 years old and they make the game basically play itself.

Ever since I made this revelation last year, I made it my goal to get good at navigating and enjoying unstructured/sandbox games. I have been actively trying to de-condition myself from following quest arrows like a drone, depending on the game to tell me exactly how I should play, and gain some freewill/authority back. I wanted to learn how to function and think for myself in an open world game for once.

After over a year of retraining myself, I have been having more fun than ever before in games that lack structure. Even though I still overall enjoy (and probably still prefer) GOOD games with structure. I have a new found appreciation for unstructured/sandbox games like Gw2, Bdo, and Warframe. However, I see hand-holdy games in a totally different light. I don’t think I can go back to themepark mmos like Tera, or modern console RPGs like Mass Effect/FFXIII, because Jesus Christ do these games drag you by the collar.

One of my best friends bought the original Guild wars game. Then, another friend bought him a Droks run and gave him the Plat to get armor. Left to his own devices, he then grabbed a bunch of henchmen and at level 4 or so wandered out into the Shiverpeaks which was at the time one of the hardest areas in the game for max level (20) characters.

ANet, since GW first released, has been fond of making their games and seeing what people do with them. The more info put into the game as to the best ways to do things, the more they would limit player inquisitiveness and ingenuity. To me, fostering ingenuity makes for a far better game than everything being on rails.

Obviously, the OP prefers a lot more more structure. For me, though, I had absolutely no trouble figuring out what to do in GW2. In fact, I could have done with less structure, particularly after the NPE was put in to try to make the game more accessible to those who had never played an MMO.

Excelsior.

When I started FF14, there was the super long, un-skippable cutscene with random stuff I don’t care much about. A guy in a coach and drunk Moogles and such. After like 15 minutes (which feel like an eternity), I could move. But no, no other players visible, I could not even leave the place. I’ve been hold hostage until I clicked all the buttons the tutorial wanted me to lick. “Left mouse button does this and that. Click it. NAO or else you get stuck”.

In GW2 I was so pleased I could go on my adventure myself. Messing with my guy. Being in the Asura tutorial mission with other newbies, new to mechanics like dodging and actual combat, we were all bouncing all over the place and it was so much fun. Then I just did what I am still doing 2 years later: I wander into unknown areas and do whatever I please. THIS is how an adventure is supposed to play like.

The structure is there, but it takes you to actually see it. I did not use the Wiki and I am still using my freestyle build. I am also playing 100% solo, no-one to ask, no-one that judges me. And I LOVE that. The game is NOT pointing me toward a dungeon and gate it (and blocks me when Duty Finder is broken, hello FF14!), no, I can decide whether I go participate in that even, or helping cleaning cows, or chopping Trees for those Charr, or watch the Inquest roast Skritt.

Not sure why people want streamline games nowadays, with games that feel more like a compilation of quicktime events until you are seeing the credits.

I will agree that the game does tend to depend a lot on the wiki.

Crafting in particular is just horrendous, and the absurdity of making more money out of lv50 character rather than your max levels shows how crazy (maybe broken) the economy is.

So when the criticism is that the game depends too much on the wiki, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

But, the freedom to do whatever you want from level 1 to 80 and beyond is precisely what sets this game aparts from other MMOs. If you just want to be told what to do all the time, then I’m afraid this maybe isn’t the game for you.

And even then, there’s an arrow now pointing you towards exactly what to do.

Finding hearts is hard? Just open the map and they have icons! There are also icons for NPCs that will tell you where the hearts are if you have not explored the local area.

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

I forgot to mention what I mean by “structure”.
An example is all the level 80 zones. Silverwastes, for example, tells you exactly what needs to be done. Defend the four forts. Defend the breach. Kill vinewrath. It even puts big red arrows on the map to tell you exactly where vinewrath is. This is a structured experience and it blows all of the explorable 1-79 zones out of the water in terms of fun.

For you, maybe. For others it might not be as true however.

There’s a reason why sandbox games are very popular, you know.

A game should never tell you how to play it “efficiently”, because the only efficiency that matters is about getting the most fun out from your time and money, which completely difers from one player to another.
If someone’s looking for gold/cost related efficiency, there’s a whole community and communityy made material out there for that.

Interesting how people differ. My first MMO was World of Warcraft, back in the vanilla days, and I couldn’t have cared less about “efficiency” or playing “correctly”. There was a big seamless world to explore, how bloody awesome and magical was that! My main was a druid tank back when “everyone knew” that hybrid classes were fit only to heal. I didn’t give a toss, I loved her and played with people who also didn’t obsess about doing what the “pros” said, and probably became a better tank than I otherwise might have been because I learned how to do it with a “bad” class. I ran, swam and jumped off the beaten path and was delighted when I was rewarded with a stunning view or little hidden places. I enjoyed the thrill of sneaking into areas that I wasn’t remotely ready for, just to find some new herbs for my alchemy. And when a dragon who’d smelled my hairy underlevelled butt from miles away ran me down and one-shot me, I wasn’t even mad because dragons are cool, and maybe I’d come back one day for revenge.

I don’t get the same discovery-enjoyment out of GW2 because I don’t enjoy it as much overall, but the solution to that isn’t for the game to babysit every step I take, it’s for me to decide whether I like it enough to keep playing.

Honestly, the zones in this game do not leave you high and dry, and there is no way to “do them wrong”. You have the scouts, you have the overview of how many vistas/hearts/etc. are in the zone and how many of them you have not found yet.

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Sorry to hear you find it lacking. It would seem, though, that tens of thousands, if not more, find it, at the very least, adequate. Even preferable to being led around. It’s a core principle of the game, this freedom to do as one desires.

I desire to be at the same level as high-end raiders. I imagine everyone wants to. However, without putting lots of effort outside the game to learn how to have the same equipment they do, it is impossible. All I am asking for is an in-game path. Do you disagree that new players should have a guide to creating ascended equipment?

Name me one MMO that doesn’t require a little research outside of the game itself in order to get up to speed on becoming raid-ready.

If you don’t want to google such information, ask other players. This is an MMO after all, not a single-player game. There’s plenty of other people walking around in the same game as you and many of them are very helpful.

One point I’ve not seen addressed yet is that part of the reason the game doesn’t give you a set order to do hearts and events is that you can’t really get it wrong. And since there’s no wrong answer there isn’t one right answer for them to give you either.

The absolute worst thing that could happen is you wander into an area that’s above your level and die. But unless you’ve literally never seen a game with levels before, never encountered that concept at all, it will be obvious why you died. And there’s no real consequences for dying, except you might have to pay a bit of copper to use a waypoint (remember WPs are cheaper on low level characters).

And that death on it’s own is a valuable experience – you’ve (hopefully) learned to pay attention to the level of your enemy so you don’t get caught out, which can lead into paying attention to the other info the game gives you about them – what rank they are, what buffs they have, what the text description below their health bar says…

You’re over-thinking it, and by refusing to do anything you’ve not been explicitly told to do for fear of doing it wrong you’re missing opportunities to discover what the game is telling you. And to discover that it’s ok to explore and experiment and even to think for yourself.

IndigoSundown.5419:

One of my best friends bought the original Guild wars game. Then, another friend bought him a Droks run and gave him the Plat to get armor. Left to his own devices, he then grabbed a bunch of henchmen and at level 4 or so wandered out into the Shiverpeaks which was at the time one of the hardest areas in the game for max level (20) characters.

ANet, since GW first released, has been fond of making their games and seeing what people do with them. The more info put into the game as to the best ways to do things, the more they would limit player inquisitiveness and ingenuity. To me, that makes for a far better game than one in which everything is on rails.

Obviously, the OP prefers a lot more more structure. For me, though, I had absolutely no trouble figuring out what to do in GW2. In fact, I could have done with less structure, particularly after the NPE was put in to try to make the game more accessible to those who had never played an MMO.

You know, that sounds a lot like me when I was playing Guild Wars in 2005. I had no idea what I was doing, just one map after the next, one mission after the next.

I bought Elite Noble for my mesmer because it looked great on her/ Never bothered to put sigils or runes on her or her weapons, because I had no clue about them really. And I somehow beat Prophecies like this…just using henchmen. I never grouped with anyone.

EDIT: Actually, I did group up in one mission, where you have to kill the leaders within a minute of killing the underlings?

What the OP is describing is exactly the type of game Anet set out to make. So in that sense they accomplished their goal.

Well at least people can agree on something in the forums, sans the OP.

There was a guy on the forums a while back who was furious because the game didn’t spell out exactly what to do each step of the way. I watched a video he made and he was literally standing at the spawn point in the tutorial ranting and raving about how he wasn’t being told what to do next and refusing to do anything at all without specific instructions telling him what to do.

It was amazing.

I was thinking, Dude! There’s green text. There’s a green star above an NPC a few feet from you. There’s NPC dialogue . There’s even other players appearing then running off. You can follow them and do what they do.

That ingame information wasn’t good enough. He wanted specific, detailed, step by step instructions on what exactly he should be doing and where he should go. And he wanted these instructions in game only.

Obviously the OP isn’t like this, but he wants to be led around more than the game offers. The game wants you to explore and find stuff. It wants you to reach out to guildies and ask. It wants you to get help from others and to offer to help others, either in game or out of game through putting info in sites like wiki. What it does not want is to hold your hand and walk you through the game and give you step by step instructions on what to do next for the most efficient use of your time.

Because where’s the fun in that?

There are certain aspects of the game that could do a lot better at explaining things. Like hearts giving food recipes, it just tells you name of the food no stats no nothing you have to wiki it. Then the food that says thing like +70 vitality and heals you per second or whatever doesn’t say how much healing per second you get.

I do think hearts need to be visible on the map with the level on them.

Hidden achievements that no one knows about by dulfy

There’s more but that just came to my mind now.

Its called EXPLORATION op……..

90% of the people started playing this game because of the freedom they have….

there is enough of Handholding super linear boring mmos out there you can go and play them instead its more your style it seems…

Did anet break the content guide? It used to be on by default for everyone.

MMOStein.3872:

Honestly GW2 is not THAT unstructured :p nonetheless….He is just like how I used to be. I used to NEED structure and hand holding in games otherwise I would quickly lose interest or think myself to death, thinking everything I do was the wrong move. But then I played Black Desert Online…..Yeah, if you think this game lacks structure, it doesn’t hold a candle to BDO.

As GW2 is a very simple sandbox mmo designed to appeal to as many people as possible, BDO is an extraordinarily complex sandbox mmo designed to appeal to a smaller niche. So yeah….That game was literally 25 times more confusing and frustrating, at least at first.

Out of frustration I began to wonder WHY I needed structure in games, what was the core reason. And the conclusion I personally came to was that I have been conditioned to “follow the quest arrow” over a decade of playing awful, easy, and braindead mmos/rpgs. Just think about it, games hold your hand and tell you exactly what to do so much nowadays it’s not even funny, its like developers assume you are actually 4 years old and they make the game basically play itself.

Ever since I made this revelation last year, I made it my goal to get good at navigating and enjoying unstructured/sandbox games. I have been actively trying to de-condition myself from following quest arrows like a drone, depending on the game to tell me exactly how I should play, and gain some freewill/authority back. I wanted to learn how to function and think for myself in an open world game for once.

After over a year of retraining myself, I have been having more fun than ever before in games that lack structure. Even though I still overall enjoy (and probably still prefer) GOOD games with structure. I have a new found appreciation for unstructured/sandbox games like Gw2, Bdo, and Warframe. However, I see hand-holdy games in a totally different light. I don’t think I can go back to themepark mmos like Tera, or modern console RPGs like Mass Effect/FFXIII, because Jesus Christ do these games drag you by the collar.

one hundo dude.

i came from rts games, & rpgs like fallout 3, this was my first mmo. i never expected hand holding, because it wasn’t my gaming backround. i’ve always disliked it in other games. i’m very into the research aspect of mmos, & coincidentally adore BDO. OP would loathe it, they would be unable to deal.

yeah, so i think its about your background in gaming. really depends on what you’re used to. to be honest, i bet it’s connected to real life too. i’ve never much liked following rules or orders irl, and cant say i do ingame either. so im betting personality has something to do w it too.

like, so- OP just go & play another game if you dont like this one. whole world does not need to be designed around your preferences, because guess what buster- you’re not alone on this planet earth.

The very things the OP dislikes are some of my favorite aspects.

To each their own.

I also like the fact that it’s mostly unstructured, but I don’t think it leaves a new player hanging without direction. The info in the upper right corner gives hints, guidance, whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t lead you around, but it gives you an idea of what you can do. My twin 10 y/o daughters have been playing free accounts with me (I provide escort duty) and they have had little trouble figuring out what to do or where to go. Sometimes I even get scolded if I try to suggest a direction. Once you hit 10 the personal story also helps move you along as well, though I know not everyone is interested in that aspect.

The game has chosen the value of offering the players a choice of what to do. It’s actually limited, but I think this is good and fits with the “play it your way” value that GW2 shipped with. However, the game no longer is “play it your way” in any principled meta sense so it could certainly be more prescriptive.

I don’t actually see a problem with the choices offered though. When you start you need to pick a starting zone. If you really don’t want to make a decision here pick your racial starting zone—problem solved. Then “uncover” the map. This is an ARPG concept of simply systematically navigating around the zone and, here in GW2, completing the objectives which appear on the map: poi’s, vistas, hearts, etc. When you are 100% go to a usually adjacent zone rinse and repeat. Simple.

As this is essentially what all games require of the player while leveling I can’t work myself up to finding a problem with GW2’s implementation of it.

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

At level 1, you have no idea where to go. An experienced player knows to complete hearts and events, but which hearts and which events? If you don’t know the map, finding hearts is harder than it should be.

Remember all experienced players didn’t start that way. Try telling your friends that there is no wrong path, that there is nothing out of order. If they want to see everything map completion is where it’s at. See somwhere you haven’t been check it out, and when you reveal the area you will get icons of more things to do.

Also the spyglass npcs show you where things are in the area.

This is not a theme park mmo where we run from hub to hub getting quests, also there is no need to rush/grind/min-max because the toughest pve content can be done in exotic gear, comfortably. This also goes for everything in WvW except roaming.

The point of GW2 is playing how you like. Which is why ascended gear is found by crafting, WvW, PvP, fractals, and raids. Anet is saying “do whatever you want, it doesn’t matter.”

I feel like you’re getting a lot of response from players who prefer the game’s more open format (and I myself enjoy it) but I did want to chime in just to say that I’ve struggled very hard to get friends of mine from other games to stick with GW2 precisely due to the issues you’re describing. Many MMO players are used to a more structured quest/gearing/gathering system, and out of the 8-10 or so friends I tried to pull here from my previous MMO, only 1 stuck it out. =/

So I do think you make some valid points. Obviously, there’s a huge community of players who enjoy GW2’s approach to liberating players from such structured play, but from my experience, the game has lost at least several in my own sphere of friends who just don’t like the “figure it out” / explore aspects, and want to be guided more through their gameplay.

I think this game might has more hand-holding and pointing you in the ‘right’ direction as many other mmo’s.

However it’s introduced in a different way. When you start playing your screen is filled with pop-ups explaining a lot of stuff. In a map there is always a person (scout) near the portal that shows you the map and what there is to do. When an event is happening it also shows up in your UI.

So basically more UI.

In many other MMO’s it’s different, you only have quests and quests have quest-levels. That is almost all the guidance you get from a UI perspective. However, doing the quest will also teach you many of the things you are asking about. Usually when you are a high-enough level you get a quest sending you to a new area (while it’s of course your free choice to go there, or go to another area for the same level).

In GW2 you open the map, and notice you’re over the level of a map and go to the next area. Or you see crafting-stations on the UI and then at the crafting-station the UI will give you more information about crafting.

Personally I have always missed quest here, while mainly for other reasons like more story about the world and the NPC (something that interest me more, then the overall story) and a more interesting way to reward players and so on. However I guess quests is also what would solve your problem.

That said, I don’t think Anet will every implement it. From day one they have struggled with the absence of traditional quest. First hearts did not exist, but they add that as an extra level of guidance because events where not enough. That is also why you don’t see them in the original higher level areas as they figured that once people played enough, events would be enough, but then they found out that even experience people still ‘need’ them so they added them later in new higher level areas. They added collections as a way to replace the reward-system the events could not provide in and quest would normally do. But it’s clear that overall they don’t dear to add quests, afraid to be too much like a regular MMO I guess.

I LOVE the wiki, and use it frequently. Thank you wiki contributors, you rock!

OP, it sounds like you’re the kind of person who just wants to blindly follow nav points without actually exploring anything (which this game already provides you with to some extent).

The best way to experience this game is simply to explore. Pick a zone that’s within your level range, then wander around. Do hearts that you come across, do events you come across. There are no rules. There are no “right” hearts or events to do first, just do whatever you come across.

There should be no reason to ask “which hearts should I be doing”.

I think people got a little bit too used to the WoW way of playing MMOs where you open up your questlog, mark the quest, blindly follow wherever it tells you to go, kill whatever is highlighted, then return to wherever the arrow is telling you to go, all the while skipping every bit of dialog and text as quickly as possible.

That’s not how GW2 is meant to be played.

It’s more open than that. You can level up doing literally anything in this game. Just take your time and wander around exploring areas and you’ll progress without issue.

Also know that you can /wiki while in game to look up anything you don’t understand.

Confused about Ascended gear? Type /wiki Ascended gear into the chat bar. Easy.

Ever pop in a game cartridge or CD into a console game and just go? Really that’s what most people do. Install and go. Want tips and tricks and shortcuts? That’s what the wiki is for and videos and guilds and Google University.

This “whole spoon feed me” generation is starting to get old. Think outside the box. There are so many resources out there.

I think with Guild Wars 2 you may want to try going out of your comfort zone, for me it is great being able to decide what to do yourself. I never liked hearts and still dislike them in the latest Living Story season. I can definetely understand that some kind of guide (even more so than hearts are in this game) is a type of thing some people want. But the truth is, if you go one way and see mobs are still within your level range then you are not making any mistake at all. You don’t have to 100% each map, it’s optional and only needed for legendary weapons anyway. Just go where you feel like and when you run into dangerous enemies take another route or waypoint out.

As for talking about gearing and ingame explanations for that… honestly Guild Wars 2 is hardly any different from other games. Nearly every MMO I’ve played never told me how to gear, I had to figure stuff out myself or ask others. In some cases you just had to accidentally stumble upon the right vendors. In Guild Wars 2 however you can gear through PvP (rewards from loot), crafting, dungeons (token rewards), random loot (rather rare though) and even heart vendors.

The major benefit with GW2 is actually it’s wiki, not that many other games I’ve played have a first-party hosted wiki that you can even access quickly ingame. People have already explained here how to do such things. Worst case, this game is not for you, but I think if you put at least some effort into it you can get very far.

At the end of the day however you do NOT have to play this game as efficiently as possible. The vast majority doesn’t. The one thing that makes this game shine over other MMO’s is that you can do almost everything in sub-optimal conditions. You don’t need TierXX gear just to be able to do a dungeon or world boss or WvW and so on. This is a game after all, something most MMO’s seem to forget as they shackle their players into daily grinds and shallow ‘follow the marker’ quests.

P.S. Opening champ bags at lower level and providing more value is not something that was originally designed that way. It’s a byproduct of >player< driven research that reached that conclusion.

OP, I understand a bit of how you feel in that you know what you want from a game.
It’s just that many people feel the opposite way you do.

Discovery is one of the things I love about the game. I love figuring things out on my own. I don’t want to be hand held or have a clear path.

It’s wonderful to walk into a new part of any map and have to figure out what it is you have to do there. I do that by talking to NPC’s. When I first started, I would talk to those people with hearts on them. I would interact with those double red triangle flags on the map. POI’s would just pop up as discovered when I got close.

So while I understand how you want to play the game, this really just isn’t that type of game.

Endless Soul.5178:

IndigoSundown.5419:

One of my best friends bought the original Guild wars game. Then, another friend bought him a Droks run and gave him the Plat to get armor. Left to his own devices, he then grabbed a bunch of henchmen and at level 4 or so wandered out into the Shiverpeaks which was at the time one of the hardest areas in the game for max level (20) characters.

ANet, since GW first released, has been fond of making their games and seeing what people do with them. The more info put into the game as to the best ways to do things, the more they would limit player inquisitiveness and ingenuity. To me, that makes for a far better game than one in which everything is on rails.

Obviously, the OP prefers a lot more more structure. For me, though, I had absolutely no trouble figuring out what to do in GW2. In fact, I could have done with less structure, particularly after the NPE was put in to try to make the game more accessible to those who had never played an MMO.

You know, that sounds a lot like me when I was playing Guild Wars in 2005. I had no idea what I was doing, just one map after the next, one mission after the next.

I bought Elite Noble for my mesmer because it looked great on her/ Never bothered to put sigils or runes on her or her weapons, because I had no clue about them really. And I somehow beat Prophecies like this…just using henchmen. I never grouped with anyone.

EDIT: Actually, I did group up in one mission, where you have to kill the leaders within a minute of killing the underlings?

Ah!! Thirsty River. Good times!!

If you need to be told how to play, where to go and everything all the time then maybe this game is not for you.

Go play a linear game that has a path for you to take, sandbox games and rpgs of this generation seem more focused on offering exploration. The game was never meant to be that, so complaining about that is playing dumb. Just dont play and go find a game more your style like Vindictus or hell Even Tera online. This game is not meant and should not be meant to cater to you, the design can not be changed this late anyhow. And if it Did im sure alot of people would be turned off and would leave, which would just add to the exodus that HoT somewhat experienced.

As a player who also enjoys being led to the most efficient way possible, everything came to me on its own. Of course, I did look up guides on the wiki out of sheer curiosity, usually for the most trivial things.

90% of the things I do in GW2 come from self experience and word of mouth. Guildies sometimes share important info when I ask a question. In your case I strongly recommend joining a guild and asking some questions to know what to do.

You’ll quickly realize what the “best” method is of doing so and so.

Best farming = Silverwastes all around.
Best skilled farming = Level 40 Fractals
What to do with mats = sell the mats that can be sold on the TP that cost a lot, but also sell materials that have hit the limit (250, etc.).
Hearts = all of them in any order, why would you think that matters?

In some cases you learn on your own what’s the most efficient way of doing something. For PvP/WvW my best reward track for gold is Lake Doric since it nets the most Unbound Magic and has a chance of getting ascended mats, Maguuma Lilies, Freshwater Pearls, and T6 materials (Magic-Warped Packets/Bundles).

Just learn as you go, look up things you are iffy on, but most of all try not to stress out and enjoy the detail put into GW2.

Maybe I don’t get it, but why would you play an MMORPG when you want to be told what to do at every point in the game? Isn’t the entire idea behind this genre that you can do whatever you want, and create a path for yourself, instead of being stuck on a rail that brings you from start to end?

I am firmly against people being babied to the point that they need to be told exactly what to do for everything. You’re already at the point where you’re doubting yourself on incredibly miniscule things and complaining on the forums about it.

You seem to want a game where essentially you’re on a set track with occasional pitstops.

This is not that game.

Finding Hearts or as I call em, map quests, are easily found and have set instructions on how to complete them and often they have at least 3 ways of completing them giving you options.

Crafting is easier than other games because when you want to craft something and you’re not sure how to craft the components, clicking them shows how to craft those etc.

This game and GW1 was very much about exploring. Exploring the map via all the map goodies like points of interest, vistas, hero-points/masteries

The game can be quite linear in its start because you have to go through zones for your level, but in which order of race zones is up to you.

I think you just need to find yourself a goal, and set out to achieve it instead of being given one for you. If the latter is more your style, WoW might be a better choice as all quests lead through a chain and progress you through the zones via “linear structure” but so does GW2 but just more free and liberal in that.

Draknar.5748:

I think people got a little bit too used to the WoW way of playing MMOs where you open up your questlog, mark the quest, blindly follow wherever it tells you to go, kill whatever is highlighted, then return to wherever the arrow is telling you to go, all the while skipping every bit of dialog and text as quickly as possible.

That’s not how GW2 is meant to be played.

It’s more open than that. You can level up doing literally anything in this game. Just take your time and wander around exploring areas and you’ll progress without issue.

I do think it is a wrong representation of things. Even in games with quests there is a lot of exploration going on, and you might still wonder off. In fact, if I see how many people play those games vs GW2 there might even be more exploration going on, while that has also to do with map design.

Yes, quests can help you move in a specific way and so help guide in your exploration, but people still can wonder off. They might see a village in the distance and go see what is going on there, there they see quests they pick up and those quests help them to learn about that village. They might do some quests while leave other quest for what they are. Some quest might them to a next area, others don’t. Only some main quests really guides you in a predefined direction, but that also exists in GW2 with the PS / seasons.

When I see how many people play GW2 it is looking on the mini map, running to all the PoI’s and Hearths and if an event pops up they will do that. There is less wondering off because the maps are smaller (that will now change) and you can’t see other maps because they are instanced. So it’s less likely to see a village in the distance (or new area) you want to explore. And even if there is, there likely is some PoI that people then run up to, unlock and move on. Instead of exploring the area and learning about it. In fact usually there is not much to learn about it like how quests learn players about an area and the NPC’s.

The best way to get some of the ‘local lore’ is by doing events and staying for the next event. But not every area has events and not every event triggers another event. So people usually also don’t stick around for an event to pop up or wait after an event to see if a new event pops up.

The way Anet hides JP’s is a great way to get people to explore, but might not be enough incentive overall.

Overall I cannot say quest-based MMO are less wandering around and exploring then GW2 is.