Guild Wars 2

We are in a race it’s for people who liked GW2 and they are invested in it and its hard to stop when you are into something.
ANet uses that to force players to play by setting a rat race for us. There are 4 aspects of it.
Yes, I know there are other threads about this. This is to sum things up and by the number of threads maybe ANet will finally see that people have reasons to be disappointed in the way game is going.

If you don’t like what I write it’s not for you so leave and don’t leave any comment like another grind thread or something. It’s for those who still want to feel fun while playing GW2.

1. Content rush
By the time you finish one content you are hit with another.
There is so much in PvE that you don’t have time for WvW or PvP and in there things are changing way too fast.
ANet is still living in the past and remembering people who were saying this game has nothing to offer and that is why now they don’t want to stop releasing content but make a flood of content that you can only experience if you have no live. For people who enjoy playing and experiencing what they make it really in a pain, but is anyone listening all previous posts?
No, they went into a high speed train and no one wants to listen those who are left behind. All make people stop complaining that GW2 is boring and there is nothing to do. So no one wants to listen other opinions, but guess what… There are way more people who I know who quit cause they just don’t have time to play it and it frustrates them.
At start there was a lot of fun, updates didn’t consume all your time but now? You have to have several or more hours each week to do at least meta not to mention all things from updates.
Sure, some have so much time and don’t have lives that they can stay online 80h a week and they feel bored, but why is this game designers only listening only those people?
We get each update with more and more time consuming content but even if the update is on for a month after 2 weeks get another time consuming content.
Great work… Now you can try to finish 2 updates in 2 weeks? Often it looks like pavilion after Invasion update. There were only few people who were doing Gautlet left in there. No one was willing to do any pavilion achievements anymore.

2. Gear rush
You get ascended gear now and that is similar grind like legendary gear and guess what. They already said they will release all legendary gear not only weapons, so think that you will have grind years to make your character in best gear.
They say that’s not important but that’s not true cause there already is great difference between people with all exotic and exotics with ascended items. It can be tested in WvW. There is a lot in there, but for some reason you can’t be scaled up to have the same stats so ascended isn’t only for prestige and some distant goal to work on, it’s to make a difference in force.
This post describes this the best:

13% gets multiplied when those small attacks from a zerg start impacting you.
You can down your target faster allowing you to be more useful to your zerg or get killed 13% faster and be a liability to your zerg. When Ascended Armor gets added to the mix now people have higher toughness and vitality thresholds for you to overcome in your yellows or oranges. If your zerg can’t overcome this threshold you will lose the war of attrition.
Ask any WvW commander if they would rather lead a zerg of 40 people in full exotics against an equally skilled and classed zerg of 40 people in fully optimized Ascended gear.

It’s really poor considering GW1 ideology to have highest stats easy and there was only a matter of skills and player skill when it came to fight between players. That was so much more fun.

3. Killing game variety
I love playing many tactics and styles. I have 8 classes characters on lvl 80. It is just impossible to gear them. Just impossible. No real help from ANet for people who like me love to have many characters. We should all stick to 1 maybe 2 characters and gear those cause you can’t have all, when you go where gear matters: WvW, Dungeons, Fractals etc you can only go as best geared character.
People who like variety will have even more painful grind.
Great way of designing a game.
And al, it would take is to make a system when you pay a lot for unlocking gear type and then you could get gear for all alts.

4. Achievement rush
There is no cap on daily/monthly achievements so using game variety is a waste of time.
There are people who farm achievements and spend hours on that only to be on the leaderboard. With all there is in dailies/monthlies/each too fast coming update people are just in another race.
I can get 5 achievements by having legendary, making few paths in dungeon or just making daily grind that sucks your soul out with saying “please repeat me each day”.
(I will add in here that other repeatable achievements have achievement limits)
So don’t bother in dungeons or anything else, just do your daily and ANet can say that their yearly statistics are so great…
Another flaw that no one want to correct despite forum threads.

In the end despite the assurance that important people in ANet read player thoughts about the game I don’t quite believe that, or just they threat players in forum like great minority and just do what they want looking only on some great looking statistics.
But I hope eventually people will break free from this race and leave game even more.
Please show statistics how many players left the game from whose who bought it next year.

1. Content rush – I really enjoy having new content come out every 2 weeks.

2. Gear rush – You don’t “get ascended gear now”. It’s been out since November last year, and there is no need to have it. And the legendary gear/new weapons will have the same stats as ascended items.

3. Killing game variety – Skill>gear in this game.
I play mostly greens/yellows/oranges and I never have any problems. If you know how to play your profession properly then you don’t need best-in-slot gear.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t do “builds”. I pick the traits and abilities I enjoy.

4. Achievement rush – Achievements are GWII’s equivalent of likes on Facebook. No matter how many you have, it doesn’t make you any better.
The only times where I bother with achievements are when they give rewards that I like – the Watchknight tonic is the only one so far I have liked, except of course the achievement skins, which I actually find quite dull.

The gear rush is a difficult thing. Some people are perfectly fine not having BiS gear, for other people it eats at them. I think it’s best to just acknowledge that Ascended is simultaneously not necessary to complete any current in game content and may be necessary for some people to be happy in the game.

Septemptus.7164:

But I hope eventually people will break free from this race and leave game even more.
Please show statistics how many players left the game from whose who bought it next year.

Just out of curiosity, what would qualify as someone having left the game?

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

1. Content rush – I really enjoy having new content come out every 2 weeks.

2. Gear rush – You don’t “get ascended gear now”. It’s been out since November last year, and there is no need to have it. And the legendary gear/new weapons will have the same stats as ascended items.

3. Killing game variety – Skill>gear in this game.
I play mostly greens/yellows/oranges and I never have any problems. If you know how to play your profession properly then you don’t need best-in-slot gear.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t do “builds”. I pick the traits and abilities I enjoy.

4. Achievement rush – Achievements are GWII’s equivalent of likes on Facebook. No matter how many you have, it doesn’t make you any better.
The only times where I bother with achievements are when they give rewards that I like – the Watchknight tonic is the only one so far I have liked, except of course the achievement skins, which I actually find quite dull.

How many hours per day do you spend in WvW?

I’ve seen many threads in the past talking about this sort of thing, and have always refrained from posting in them in the past – I don’t want to come across as having a whinge. I also have to say, and stress, I’m speaking personally, and I understand that others may not agree – that’s perfectly fine, your viewpoint is as valid as mine I believe.

With that out of the way, this is starting to feel like a second job. Please note, I said feel – as this is my personal feeling as time goes on in the game.

I don’t have all the mathematics and such forth to back up factual analysis here, and in any case, I’m basing this on feelings and impressions, rather than hard data analysis on those aspects where numbers and so on could come into play – please forgive me on that, but to me this is a game to be played for fun, not technical statistical analysis (but if that floats your boat, go for it!)

I originally wanted to play GW2 to get away from the “grind” in other games, and at first, the game was just that way – there was no grind involved. Doubtless, some of that was because the game was new, and unseen, which makes everything fresh. However, it seemed to get “old” quite quickly. In other games, it wasn’t an issue for me to have a half dozen or more characters at maximum level, and that would usually take me about a year, perhaps a little less. In GW2, I have 2, and a raft of others “stalled” along the way – maybe due to a lack of time (see below) in trying to keep up? Or maybe the content is already “been there, done that” (or intensely annoying – see Orr).

Of late, it seems every fortnight there’s a slew of content demanding attention, and because it’s all temporary, it puts “pressure” on to get it done. Part of the problem is that it’s temporary, and the other part of the problem is that it’s temporary – let me explain. The temporary nature puts “pressure” on to complete it, the temporary nature means that levelling the third character through Wayfarer’s Foothills goes through the “same old, same old” – nothing ever seems to change.

You need Laurels, so you go and do dailies and potentially monthlies. You save up Laurels to get stuff, and then hear “Craftable Ascended” is coming. Whilst I realise that the craftable ascended isn’t rings and accessories etc, you look back and wonder why you chased all those Laurels at the end of the day (the feeling I have is that rings etc will become craftable).

You have somewhat large material requirements for ascended and/or legendary (and yes, I do understand they’re completely optional, except to say they do have better stats, and these combined with upcoming ascended armor may not be so optional at the end of the day), so you go and try and farm some T6 materials – except they don’t drop that often, and then you’re dealing with diminishing returns.

I’ll be the first to recognise that this is still a relatively new MMO, and as a result, some level of experimentation will need to happen in regard to game direction, and systems within the game. That said, there seems to be a significant lack of direction at this point, leading players to invest time, effort and materials into pursuing directions that are later nullified by (in some cases) sweeping changes that are announced. To use the example I touch on above (Laurels), we have seen currencies in the game debased (WvW tokens being handed out with achievement chests, Karma is practically useless) to the point where one begins to wonder what the next fortnight of changes will entail, and whether effort put in one direction will “pay off” or come to naught.

The final note to make is in terms of in-game coin… and I realise this is again something subjective, but the feeling I seem to think some (including myself) have is of a permanent state of being poor. For many players, earning coin in the game takes a considerable amount of time and effort – however, it seems to me that across the various MMO’s I’ve played, here, one is “perma-poor”. Of course, currency measurement is all relative to cost, but the one thing that struck me most was the difference in coin a level 1 mob dropped compared to a level 80 – in many other games, the ratio is a much higher multiple from the level 80 vs level 1 than it appears to be in GW2, which has a negative impact on coin earned by most players.

This didn’t start out intending to be this long, I guess these “nagging feelings” have been sitting around for a while waiting for a chance to “sneak out”. I’m not trying to be negative, whiny or bash ANet here – but I know it may come across as such… that’s not the intention. Rather, I’m hoping this has been put at least mostly factually, without emotion, despite the intent being to describe my personal feelings toward the game at this point in time.

Thanks for the opportunity to put this post here, and thanks to anyone who has had a read.

Lurch.9517:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

1. Content rush – I really enjoy having new content come out every 2 weeks.

2. Gear rush – You don’t “get ascended gear now”. It’s been out since November last year, and there is no need to have it. And the legendary gear/new weapons will have the same stats as ascended items.

3. Killing game variety – Skill>gear in this game.
I play mostly greens/yellows/oranges and I never have any problems. If you know how to play your profession properly then you don’t need best-in-slot gear.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t do “builds”. I pick the traits and abilities I enjoy.

4. Achievement rush – Achievements are GWII’s equivalent of likes on Facebook. No matter how many you have, it doesn’t make you any better.
The only times where I bother with achievements are when they give rewards that I like – the Watchknight tonic is the only one so far I have liked, except of course the achievement skins, which I actually find quite dull.

How many hours per day do you spend in WvW?

i would doubt that someone who pays no attention to gear or builds spends much time in WvW. Dying is not fun.

I would like to point out a misconception that many seem to have. I have always discerned between ‘fun’ grind and ‘unfair’ grind. Unfair grind is grind you have to do to remain relevant in the ‘meta’ AND advance in the PvE portion of the game. In other words the content is gated based on the level/quality of your armor. ‘Fun’ grind is grinding to get what you want because YOU have to have it. This is not unfair as this is YOUR way of having fun. If the grind for stuff isn’t fun then you probably shouldn’t let your desires run your gaming so much…admit you won’t have 100% complete in everything and move on to other things in the game…OR just play with your ultimate goal in mind and collect what you need as you play.

Arenanet NEVER said there wouldn’t be ANY grind, just unfair grind. We knew that legendaries, dungeon armor, etc. were going to take time and effort to collect. This was stated early and often.

As long as they do not require grind to play in any PvE or PvP…there isn’t a problem with the game, just the expectations (no matter how false) of the player themselves.

Every game follows what people are saying, both in-game, on forums and other areas. It is their livelihood. They don’t always (read next to never) directly reply to comments since this leads to ‘they lied to us’ even more than ‘they lied to us’ pops up now.
Forced to play? Not for me even a small bit. Things come up in reality, the game is gone. Going out for a night out, the game is gone. Going away for a few days weeks, the game is gone. I ‘missed’ halloween last year and will miss it this year. I missed the vote. Not a huge deal. I do not like the current content, not a deal at all.
I will get 500 in each new craft, I don’t know if I will make one piece of accended.
Others of course will be of a different opinion, the OP makes it sound as if there is no alternative. There absolutely is.

Raine.1394:

Lurch.9517:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

1. Content rush – I really enjoy having new content come out every 2 weeks.

2. Gear rush – You don’t “get ascended gear now”. It’s been out since November last year, and there is no need to have it. And the legendary gear/new weapons will have the same stats as ascended items.

3. Killing game variety – Skill>gear in this game.
I play mostly greens/yellows/oranges and I never have any problems. If you know how to play your profession properly then you don’t need best-in-slot gear.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t do “builds”. I pick the traits and abilities I enjoy.

4. Achievement rush – Achievements are GWII’s equivalent of likes on Facebook. No matter how many you have, it doesn’t make you any better.
The only times where I bother with achievements are when they give rewards that I like – the Watchknight tonic is the only one so far I have liked, except of course the achievement skins, which I actually find quite dull.

How many hours per day do you spend in WvW?

i would doubt that someone who pays no attention to gear or builds spends much time in WvW. Dying is not fun.

Well yes, that was my point.

Impossible to BiS gear 8 characters? Uhm, how is it impossible? Maybe it’s impossible for you to gear 8 characters in the ONE YEAR since the game’s release, but what do you really expect? That is one of the most ludicrous complaints I’ve ever heard on these forums.

Game sucks because I can’t gear all 8 of my characters in the first year of release. Sounds like its working as intended…

Some of the best players I’ve ever seen in this game have a fraction of the AP that I do (I have ~7600). Who gives a rat’s kitten how many achievement points people have, you don’t magically become a better player or get any stronger because of it.

All of your complaints are completely superficial and honestly come off a bit spoiled. I’m curious what your MMO background is after that post. I can only think of a few games that hand out gear as easily as you seem to expect it. One big one really comes to mind.

Hmm. You say they listen to what people ask for, and implement it, and then they don’t listen to what people ask for…and do not implement it.

You say they use metrics to determine what people are doing in-game, instead of listening to (your words) the minority on this forum.

You suggest we should pay to unlock BiS. I am not sure changing to game into Pay-to-win would be favorably received by the minority, the majority, or anyone (except maybe you).

Well, either the devs will read your post and consider your feedback, or…..as you state…they will ignore it, which makes one wonder why you posted here.

Septemptus, I really think this is just a matter of perspective. You’re making the experience out to be onerous and frustrating, so of course that is how it will feel to you. No arguments against your points (and there are deep, controversial flaws in your reasoning on some things) will persuade you because you are viewing the day-to-day experience of playing the game antagonistically. It doesn’t matter what metaphor you use: a race (as you have here), a “job,” a “grind,” “entrapment”- no one will be able to say anything that makes you feel better by countering the lines of your argument, because to you it will sound like, “well, it’s not that much of a race.”

Guild Wars 2 is none of these things. Guild Wars 2 is a game. All that ultimately should matter to you is whether or not you are having fun in the moment-to-moment experience of playing it. If the answer is yes, then things will surely still bother you like they do me, but these flaws won’t resonate enough to really hamper your enjoyment. If the answer is no, which it sounds like it might be starting to be for you, then that’s okay too. You aren’t being financially compelled to continue.

I will say that “it’s hard to stop when you’re into something” sounds a little indicative of a propensity for addiction. If you would feel like you should keep playing no matter what ArenaNet did, that would be a problem. I certainly don’t feel that way.

Hawkian.6580:

Septemptus, I really think this is just a matter of perspective. You’re making the experience out to be onerous and frustrating, so of course that is how it will feel to you. No arguments against your points (and there are deep, controversial flaws in your reasoning on some things) will persuade you because you are viewing the day-to-day experience of playing the game antagonistically. It doesn’t matter what metaphor you use: a race (as you have here), a “job,” a “grind,” “entrapment”- no one will be able to say anything that makes you feel better by countering the lines of your argument, because to you it will sound like, “well, it’s not that much of a race.”

Guild Wars 2 is none of these things. Guild Wars 2 is a game. All that ultimately should matter to you is whether or not you are having fun in the moment-to-moment experience of playing it. If the answer is yes, then things will surely still bother you like they do me, but these flaws won’t resonate enough to really hamper your enjoyment. If the answer is no, which it sounds like it might be starting to be for you, then that’s okay too. You aren’t being financially compelled to continue.

I will say that “it’s hard to stop when you’re into something” sounds a little indicative of a propensity for addiction. If you would feel like you should keep playing no matter what ArenaNet did, that would be a problem. I certainly don’t feel that way.

Very well said. +1

Draknar.5748:

Impossible to BiS gear 8 characters? Uhm, how is it impossible? Maybe it’s impossible for you to gear 8 characters in the ONE YEAR since the game’s release, but what do you really expect? That is one of the most ludicrous complaints I’ve ever heard on these forums.

Game sucks because I can’t gear all 8 of my characters in the first year of release. Sounds like its working as intended…

lol, oh the irony