Guild Wars 2

Not sure why I’m even posting this, probably just to get some of this out of my head.

I’ve owned GW2 since launch and over the years played it on and off, mostly off. I never managed to get properly invested into the game, never enthused by any of the game modes or left with a memorable or even good impression of the game. This is unlike many others I’ve played over the years across many genres, but mostly FPS, RTS, RPG with some dabbling in MMORPGs and MOBAs. Just trying to explain why I have no interest in buying the expansion I guess.

It’s difficult to review a game the scale of an MMO, particular one like GW2, but whatever I never really enjoyed any of the game modes. That probably comes down to how I am a simple person who plays games for “fun” and moment to moment enjoyment rather than any long term quest or goal. (Maybe I shouldn’t play MMO’s then!?) These are fundamental design problems I just can’t play around, impossible to fix, and quite frankly I’m possible missing something(s) vital to the game, so don’t worry and don’t feel the need to read!

sPVP I had the longest and most irritating history with. It could be good if it wasn’t so irritating, messy and obtuse. I’m level 37, I think that’s low but high enough for a certain amount of playtime on this.

I do not enjoy looking up meta-builds, spending 30 minutes building or tweaking a build, playing every class to figure out what their skills and trait do and look like, or instantly dying and going “what even happened there, and how did someone crit for half my HP”. With flashy effects it’s impossible to know what’s going on. With the hundreds of skill and traits every class has it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen next or why on earth you just died horribly again, and again…oh and again.

Fundamentally there’s no learning curve, no introduction, no important tips like “did you know necromancers can transfer conditions to you” etc. It would be better called Unstructured PvP because I’d imagine sPvP would have classes with clearly defined and locked builds. Distinct character models which immediately say “This is what I can do, beware!”. Character stances which say which build is being used. Suddenly the limitless spread is confined and channeled into easily edible chunks. Plus time-to-kill should probably be rather more evenly distributed across nukey builds and tanky ones…

Oh but you lost your customization, cosmetics, free form nature, pro-esports feeling I suspect most of the playerbase enjoys… why am I even writing this again?

World vs World:
So much empty space with nothing in it. So slow too, I can run for hours and never see another soul. Frankly you’re either in a horde playing “follow the leader” or you can accomplish nothing very, very slowly. Either way your ability to effect things is pretty low, and unless you’re a class with some decent long range skills why are you even playing this? Same PvP issues as sPvP except hidden because messier, forced ranged options because walls and more players. When you die there’s a huge walk back to the fighting so the action is sporadic, intermittent, slow and after a wipe people tend to just leave making things even emptier and more futile.

Needs changes which make the fighting more continuous and death less penalizing. Forward spawns would do a lot to help with that to keep people on the front lines where they can actually play instead of wandering around capturing empty / barely defended objectives.

Open world:
I leveled a character to 80, crafting to the original cap of 400 and made myself a set of exotic weapons and armour… and then didn’t really see much to do except throwing things into the mystic forge. I (briefly) considered trying to craft ascended armour but realised it needed something like 30,000 pieces of silk, laughed and decided not.

I never figured out what most of the currencies are useful for: karma for items while leveling? Spirit shards for something involving the mystic forge for recipes I don’t know? I suspect most of the economies complexity is supposed to involve exchange rates between the many types but I really have no interest in that. Nor wiking all the recipes from the mystic forge. Why even have a crafting system when it boils down to throwing things into the mystic forge? Why do you have a crafting system which saves a huge amount of materials and money if you save up and crafting everything at once, rather than sporadically as you go along and need new kit? Why do ascended recipes need 3-4 crafting stages per item? It becomes impossible to work out what you need very quickly without resorting to excel and spreadsheets!

Economically I have never had much use for the Auction House. I don’t enjoy making excel spreadsheets enough to work out if buying components is actually economically sensible and never had enough money to just spend without caring. Any items get salvaged anyway to what’s even the point? Maybe I’m supposed to look up what each item salavages for, look up selling price for every one and work out if it’s economically or not?

World exploration was an ok game, kinda fun to explore and just mess around but there’s only so much I can appreciate level design, and spending half an hour looking in the wrong direction for the entry to a jumping puzzle stops being funny very quickly.

In conclusion: I don’t get GW2. I am probably thick but hey it just doesn’t work for me who wants every moment of a game to fun without some vague pay-off in the distant future, or spreadsheets for everything.

Jumping puzzles were the best bit of GW2 to me. The rest is a bit of a weird and seemingly not well thought out addon to what could have been a cool platformer. Thanks for reading and sorry for how random and unstructured that was (if anyone actually read that lol).

Naw I think you hit the nail on the head. SO much of GW2 needs to be researched or looked up.

I mean seriously, imagine being a new player and trying to enjoy the game without using the /wiki command or looking up guides on youtube or metabattle…

It’s biggest flaw is its unintuitiveness. It took me quite awhile to realize how great gw2 was because I had to learn so much and it took so long. (I came back, quit, came back, etc for like the first 1-2 years before I realized how good it was at heart)

And yea, unless you run with an organized WvW group with coms it sucks.

And I know what the combo system does now, but when I was new blasting fields and such was such a foreign concept, even having people explain it to me I didn’t understand.

Mightybird.6034:

Naw I think you hit the nail on the head. SO much of GW2 needs to be researched or looked up.

I mean seriously, imagine being a new player and trying to enjoy the game without using the /wiki command or looking up guides on youtube or metabattle…

It’s biggest flaw is its unintuitiveness. It took me quite awhile to realize how great gw2 was because I had to learn so much and it took so long. (I came back, quit, came back, etc for like the first 1-2 years before I realized how good it was at heart)

And yea, unless you run with an organized WvW group with coms it sucks.

And I know what the combo system does now, but when I was new blasting fields and such was such a foreign concept, even having people explain it to me I didn’t understand.

with mmo’s… it’s almost a given you’ll need meta knowledge, that’s why it’s so great the game includes that /wiki command.

Xbon.9086:

Mightybird.6034:

Naw I think you hit the nail on the head. SO much of GW2 needs to be researched or looked up.

I mean seriously, imagine being a new player and trying to enjoy the game without using the /wiki command or looking up guides on youtube or metabattle…

It’s biggest flaw is its unintuitiveness. It took me quite awhile to realize how great gw2 was because I had to learn so much and it took so long. (I came back, quit, came back, etc for like the first 1-2 years before I realized how good it was at heart)

And yea, unless you run with an organized WvW group with coms it sucks.

And I know what the combo system does now, but when I was new blasting fields and such was such a foreign concept, even having people explain it to me I didn’t understand.

with mmo’s… it’s almost a given you’ll need meta knowledge, that’s why it’s so great the game includes that /wiki command.

Although, it would be even better if the wiki was readable inside the game, so you could look something up without switching out of the game and coming back to find that you’d been killed by some critter that wasn’t there when you parked.

You have indeed hit the nail on the head, and the answer is that maybe gw2 just isn’t for you. It’s for people who like long-term quests and spreadsheets (which, admittedly, I am one). That’s no criticism of you. You’re perfectly entitled to enjoy games in your own way and if this one isn’t making you happy you shouldn’t feel guilty about it or apologise. It’s like a relationship where you’re just not compatible enough with your partner. Eventually, you need to stop trying to force yourselves to be together and move on. Or stay. It’s all good.

You arent wrong about the steep learning curve in pvp. And its surprising nothing has been done about it, I mean matchmaking is supposedly a lot better now so you will only fight new players at low ranks, but still, with the effort that went into the NPE for the pve side of the game (which was never difficult to begin with), youd think some effort would go into making pvp more new player friendly.

Of course youre going to get people coming in here and saying “omgz why people complaining learning pvp takes effort” and “just read every page on the wiki and pvp 4 hours a day for 6 months and youll learn it eventually its ez!” and so on, and theyre not wrong, that is the way to learn it, and it should take a lot of time. But again, its surprising all the effort went into the NPE for pve and almost nothing happened for pvp

….Are we really going here again ?

Are people so intrinsically lazy now, that playing and learning are thown out the window entirely ?

I started this game at head start, back when the wiki was pretty much a baron wasteland outside of some minor lore. People had to learn as they played…not be giving a silver platter of knowledge.

If actually playing the game is a problem, then the problem isn’t the game it’s the user.

You’ve nailed it, Lankhmar.

I think the first thing about Guild Wars 2 that really murders the fun of playing is how little time it takes to fight an enemy. They are just a animated rigged object and health bar. Most of them don’t move and all of them are an annoyance.

Skills are vastly lacking, appear to be entirely arbitrary in the utility, and only work because the enemies have been so lousy.

You aren’t alone with your feelings. When I joined this game I joined with some 30 other people. By the end of the first week just a dozen of us were left. By the end of the month only five of us were doggedly trying to find that experience that would keep us all playing.

I’d have to say the first place this game went wrong was removing every pretense of a “camp”. How do you get to know people in a game? You spend time with them? Where do you do that? Sitting around some Bantum Spectre, killing some Elites in Hearthglen, and fretting over having enough mana.
This game never lets you breathe. You do this. Then you do that. If you stand still it logs you out.

You really can’t build up those friendships you have had in any other game here. It’s just not going to let you.

Everything above makes me very bitter about the game and nothing about it has improved in that respect. It’s only really winning quality is that it has gone on without changing much. I still remember the first time I made it to Cursed Shore. I was level 16. I’d been level 1 when I started heading there. I’d tagged waypoints along the way to level up because I absolutely hate the leveling experience in any game, but this one realllllly worked at making it dead content. If it wasn’t for that gorgeous tree right by the cliff as you zone into Cursed Shore for the first time… I’d honestly have quit right then and there.

It’s the Jumping Puzzles that kept me playing the first few months. Finding them, seeing the incredible potential of the game. Note that Jumping Puzzles are as close as you can get in this game to an experience of moving around without bumping into some worthless creating biting you constantly till you slap it so hard it dies. It’s like the game wants to log you out and when you’re playing it wants you to stop.

It’s just a hectic experience. Nothing about this game lets you breathe.

I finally discovered I could enjoy it more if I only play every few weeks. If I play it constantly I quickly, I mean within hours, realize there is nothing here and quit again.

Last year was a little different. I got in my head I’d get every single Aetherized Weapon and related Legendaries. I already had one so that made it easier. This was before megaservers. My intention was to go roleplay with this stuff. It worked for a little while and gave me something to do. I 100% the map with 7 of 8 classes, finished the legendaries, and lucked out meeting some people who were more interested in clearing a dungeon than beating it: so I made Ascended Gear. I had enough silk after that. We went on to do Fractals and everything was going pretty great.

Then, for no good reason, they destroyed the Thief (my main) and kicked my Warrior pretty hard away from any utility from its rifle because Adrenalin now simply doesn’t last long enough to use it on a moving target.

With my two favorite classes – and only classes with ascended at the time – wiped out I… began to loath this game. At present I’m in a sort of vacuum with it. I think a couple of the developers ought to be fired. They respect us so little when it comes to time we put into this game. I’m skeptical this year isn’t all just the result of Wildstar failing to market. Are we really seeing communication from the devs finally or is this just a show for a year while they recover their losses from Wildstar before NCSoft puts this game on the shelf to make another? I don’t know, but it worries me any time I start investing serious time into the game.

That year when they had us change our passwords something happened and I got locked out of my account. My real hate for some of the stuff Anet does began then because Anet has no phone line. Guess what happens if your password gets screwed up? You can’t submit a ticket to let them know. I finally had to call one of their technical service numbers FOR THE COMPANY, not an actual tech line for us, report that they had a problem and then spent a week getting shuffled around to tech support that way.

My experience with Anet has generally not been good. They really haven’t demonstrated one ounce of concern for us until suddenly, the outrage at them blew up last year, but they’ve milked us constantly with the gem store. And now they’re probably aiming to do more since dungeon gold is going away. Is this really to fix inflation or are they just finding another way to navigate us back to the gem store?

I can’t really give you a reason to play. I can’t see any benefit for you personally in quitting just the same. You’ve already paid or the game. I guess take it as a perspective in what to avoid in the future with game purchases. For me, this is going to be the last MMO I’ll put money in. They’re not what they used to be. The companies have figured out how to advertise to a large enough population to get their profits from the original sales, then marginalize and maintain a certain group of that original sales for continuous income.

We’d seen the advertisements for the Dragon Lieutenants, we’d heard we’d be able to group with our friends across all continents.

Lankhmar.8752:

…or why on earth you just died horribly again, and again…oh and again.

There’s a combat log, both an on-going one in the chat box and one that you can access when you die.

Lankhmar.8752:

> Fundamentally there’s no learning curve
> no important tips like “did you know necromancers can transfer conditions to you” etc.

Aren’t these sort of contradictory?

Learning and getting to know what each class can do and what they’re likely to bring into the fight is a learning curve.

Lankhmar.8752:

Why even have a crafting system when it boils down to throwing things into the mystic forge?

1. Ascended weapons and armour, some sigils and runes and consumables (food, potions, sharpening stones etc) uses the crafting system.
2. A lot – if not all – of the MF recipies also use the crafting system to make the components.
3. Crafting has some unique weapon and armour skins of its own (Godskull, for example).

Mightybird.6034:

Naw I think you hit the nail on the head. SO much of GW2 needs to be researched or looked up.

I mean seriously, imagine being a new player and trying to enjoy the game without using the /wiki command or looking up guides on youtube or metabattle…

Well, being someone who originally started MMOs with EQ1, I think a MMO would be kinda boring if this out-of-game community building didn’t exist. It’d just lack a fundamental component of what makes it a social game.

I like talking to others about GW2, constantly learning about things I didn’t know yet or nowadays, in turn giving others advice. That’s awesome. Getting to know players because you helped them out randomly, later meeting them IRL (yes this happens, and not as rarely as I thought it would :P ).

If I flat out wanted a “good game” (on a game design level), I would however not play a MMORPG. Many of the good aspects of the genre rely upon the game being imperfect to create a sense of wonder, scale and most importantly, community.
And without the community and social aspects, MMOs lose their primary leg they’re standing on and just become action RPGs with a friendlist, essentially a diablo-clone with a different camera. Or in the case of sPvP, an inferior Smite-clone.

I think you’re playing the wrong genre, OP, not just the wrong game. I’ve yet to play an MMO where we didn’t have to discuss huge amounts of things out of the game. For some people that IS the game. Theory crafting. Guild Wars 1 was called Build Wars for a reason. And people debated it endlessly. What was good, what was better.

Of course there are also casual guilds that don’t run the meta, don’t care about the meta and just bang around and have a good time. If you didn’t join one of them and you’re just trying to play an MMO as a solo single player game, the loss is probably yours.

Because once you get in which a group of people who run dungeons for fun, you can have fun running dungeons.

Not to mention instead of looking stuff up, most guilds have mentors that help you through stuff, so you don’t have to look it up.

Most of the stuff you’re complaining about though are selling points. Find another genre or play the game with people who enjoy what you enjoy and profit, that’s my advice.

GW2 is built around its combat system which have a lot of depth in it. It is not something you can just pick up to do a quick match. ANet does very little to teach the combat to new players. Even if they want to, they simply cannot do it because there are too many combinations. Even skills rotation change if you run a different build. On top of that is the active defense and damage mitigation mechanic which require you to read the animation of your opponents to react accordingly. Not to mention how to trigger combo all by yourselves, the learning curve is very steep but rewarding.

If you don’t like the aspect of taking time to learn a class and how to get the last juice out of it, GW2 is probably not for you.

These sort of games are meant to entertain us for thousands of hours over several years so they have to be complex and there has to be lots of different stuff to learn about.

Some love the process of getting involved in every detail of their toon, to eek out that last 1% of performance. They spend lots of time on the various fan sites, forums and wikis. And that is is fine.

Others love the journey of discovery and rarely seek “outside” information. And that is also fine.

In between these two extremes are the majority of us who just dive in, bumble and fumble our way though the lower level stuff and only really seek help when we are stumped by a mission/challenge or when we feel we must have missed out on something important. At those lower levels you really can get away with just equipping the weapon with the biggestest numberz and mashing the attack keys like a zombie. Later on, you’ll start paying more attention to the skills and numbers and how they interact. And probably learn to dodge. If you had to understand all that stuff at level 1, many folks would not make it to level 2 and it’s Game Over.

But it sounds like the OP just doesn’t enjoy the game any longer and never really enjoyed it that much anyway. I can think of a very easy solution to that.

• I (briefly) considered trying to craft ascended armour but realised it needed something like 30,000 pieces of silk, laughed and decided not.*

Then you’ll continue manufacturing materials until your lost gold is recouped eventually. At least that’s helping me stay motivated. You only need to make an ascended armor set once. Once a full set of heavy, medium, and light armor are yours, they’re yours forever.

As for exploration I really liked it in Metrica Province that area’s the best designed in the game and since my first character was an Asura gave me high hopes for the rest. It was okay but still didn’t match up.

I think the first thing about Guild Wars 2 that really murders the fun of playing is how little time it takes to fight an enemy. They are just a animated rigged object and health bar. Most of them don’t move and all of them are an annoyance.

Sometimes they take too long to kill. I have mostly ascended weapons and armor (berserker too with some zealot’s) and a mordrem thrasher that’s “defenseless from behind” I’ll need to do a full rotation on six times. Yes I did hit it from behind since I activated daze on a sword thief not blind. Six dazes with six full “1” skill rotations is too long for something allegedly “defenseless from behind”.

Eirdyne.9843:

You really can’t build up those friendships you have had in any other game here. It’s just not going to let you.

I enjoyed the OP’s post, and also the fact for once, a perfectly polite discussion is taking place without any name-calling or sneering. Short answer to Lankhmar is the obvious one – wrong game for you, and possibly the wrong genre. Though, having said that, there are plenty of more or less lone wolves playing MMOs. I’m sort-of one them myself; I spend most of my time running around on my own.

Having said that, every time I’ve taken the Bartle test (if you don’t know it, look it up! ), I come out ESAK or SEAK. I like the social side. Which is why I felt moved to pick up Eirdyne’s point. There’s quite a few things about GW2 I either don’t like, or leave me unimpressed, although I’m not going to critique anything.

However, what I’ve said from Day One (literally) is that the way GW2 is designed means that it’s a co-operative game, not a social one. Because there’s no mob-tagging, you’re rewarded for randomly thumping a mob to help someone out. But you never have to talk to anyone, and there’s nothing to encourage you to group up, bar dungeons (and even there many paths are supposed to be soloable). Add to which the social tools, although improved since the start, are still substandard.

Just my two penn’orth!

there is some decent truths that you brings up. moving on the subject on not doing meta builds. i understand that you don’t wanna do what others have already done.

but you can do fun weird builds in this game that other games normally wouldn’t allow you to do due to balance issues. which i encourage all new players to do at least one meta build even if they don’t like it. just so they can understand how skills and traits have synergies with everything else

only 2 reasons atm why i still play Gw2 is to do trashy potentially fun builds and playing with the small circle of friends that i have in Gw2

Plenty of merit to what people are saying here. Yes, a lot of it is inherit in the MMO genre and you can’t get rid of it all.

But on the flip side there isn’t even a brief tutorial for say, the pvp map skyhammer… when I first tried PvP it put me in skyhammer. I was like WHAT THE ACTUAL F*****? Needless to say I hated PvP for awhile and it was only my stubborn nature that led me to try it again and end up liking it.

There’s no question they could make more features more intuitive, especially in PvP and the more complex mechanics such as blasting fields, have a brief, even optional tutorial.

So basically, “I want a game that plays for me”.

I think most of the OP issues are that he doesn’t enjoy MMOs in general. Gw2 is a great game but it cant cater to everyone.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lankhmar.8752:

…or why on earth you just died horribly again, and again…oh and again.

There’s a combat log, both an on-going one in the chat box and one that you can access when you die.

A combat log you can access when you die? Aside from just the chat stuff??
I’ve never heard of it, how does one open it?

I never really was into MMOs before GW2, and I always thought I was a bit of a casual player since I’m not one of those who tries to achieve everything and have the bestest and most awesomest kitten. But reading the OP, I almost feel like a hardcore MMO player now.

Seriously, if you don’t enjoy the game, nothing wrong with that; But maybe you just shouldn’t be playing this game or genre then.

Or maybe, you’ll enjoy the game more with a guild that matches your playstyle? That was the solution for me, as I also used to be one of those on and off players that never stayed for long.

I remember having some of the same first impressions of the game as the OP did, that the game was unintuitive mechanically – like what stats should I pick for my gear- how much do they actually give me DPS wise, so I know that a condi build is better for me than a zerker setup? The game could make this more transparent imo.

For dungeons I sort of agree. I’ve always been a dungeon runner in MMOs – GW2 dungeons are fun, but poorly designed. Skipping big parts of the dungeons is related to mob aggro and I agree that’s pretty borked – really, mobs should ‘stick’ with you in a dungeon instead of running back. But it’s been this way for so long that people would complain (a lot) if it ever did change, and it’s not going to be changed at all now that dungeons are being put to one side. (I’m not saying it would be more fun to fight your way through all those mobs, but I don’t think the dungeons were ever intended to be played that way). So yeah, you do get scenarios where people expect you to know when to run and yes, plenty of groups will leave you where you fall and if you’re a new player who doesn’t know when to do that, it’s a very strange experience (and an unpleasant one in your friend’s example). I also agree that dungeons aren’t as cooperative as the rest of the content because their focus is on speed vs reward. A large chunk of the playerbase only run them for their rewards and newbies or lowbies get in their way. Maybe that’s part of the reason ANet aren’t supporting them any more.

Having said that, I am disappointed that there are no new dungeons in HoT. For me, dungeons are such a staple of MMOs that I struggle to imagine an MMO expansion without a single added dungeon.

SPvP I can’t speak to because I don’t do it very much.

Now that I’ve said all that, if you can overlook some of the issues above (or join a good guild/make your own groups and be very specific about the type of person you want/all welcome) then the game can be a lot of fun. It has its own charm and niche.

I play for fun. I learn for fun. I read these forums for fun (Yes, grief is fun sometimes too).

I never felt I need a long term goal to enjoy the game (I do have long term goals, but they aren’t a major part on what I actually do in the game).

I have read the meta and developed a notion of what works and what doesn’t in the game, but that has never forced me to left behind the playstyle I like (I have never used a meta build, and probably never will).

I read the wiki when I want to know details about something, but it has never been a true requirement to play, much less to have fun. My more awesome experiences in the game came from simply trying things, from exploring, from folowing people into amazing places I never suspect could exist, from witnessing or reading great lore within the game, or from hearing great stories from people on the map.

I hate spreadsheets with all my soul. Luckily, I don’t need them to play GW2. I concur the game is not very intuitive… but you really don’t need to study either to play and have fun.

I have friends that play with me and also form part of a guild, yet I have never felt I need people to have fun, and I spend most of my time doing solo.

On the opposite, every time I wanted people around they are there, and whenever I need a place to socialize I can find it. I get fun with other people in the game every day.

Please dont mix “fun” with “win”. GW2 is not a good game if you badly want that “winning” feeling, because “winning” in GW2 can be seen as hard. Having fun, on the other side, is extremely easy.

The game is not even close to perfect, we all have to agree on that. But all the things the OP list as “not enjoyable” are totally subjective.

What I’m trying to say is… sorry OP, I can feel your dissapointment, but sadly, is not the game’s fault.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Xbon.9086:

Mightybird.6034:

Naw I think you hit the nail on the head. SO much of GW2 needs to be researched or looked up.

I mean seriously, imagine being a new player and trying to enjoy the game without using the /wiki command or looking up guides on youtube or metabattle…

It’s biggest flaw is its unintuitiveness. It took me quite awhile to realize how great gw2 was because I had to learn so much and it took so long. (I came back, quit, came back, etc for like the first 1-2 years before I realized how good it was at heart)

And yea, unless you run with an organized WvW group with coms it sucks.

And I know what the combo system does now, but when I was new blasting fields and such was such a foreign concept, even having people explain it to me I didn’t understand.

with mmo’s… it’s almost a given you’ll need meta knowledge, that’s why it’s so great the game includes that /wiki command.

Although, it would be even better if the wiki was readable inside the game, so you could look something up without switching out of the game and coming back to find that you’d been killed by some critter that wasn’t there when you parked.

windowless border mode + leave sound high enough to hear for any discrepancies.

You’re complaining about the new player experience? If you were a regular mmorpg fan you’d be complaining about the deplorable lack of endgame content we’ve recieved since the start of living world s2. The most catered group in gw2 would be roleplayers in my opinion, which was some of the most fun I have had in gw2. If you wanna try out the game how it seems to be designed by the devs, I’d try finding a roleplay guild that has the right kind of atmostphere that you want

ScribeTheMad.7614:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lankhmar.8752:

…or why on earth you just died horribly again, and again…oh and again.

There’s a combat log, both an on-going one in the chat box and one that you can access when you die.

A combat log you can access when you die? Aside from just the chat stuff??
I’ve never heard of it, how does one open it?

Well, it’s SPvP only, which is what I was quoting them on. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.

Sanguinem.4932:

You’re complaining about the new player experience? If you were a regular mmorpg fan you’d be complaining about the deplorable lack of endgame content we’ve recieved since the start of living world s2. The most catered group in gw2 would be roleplayers in my opinion, which was some of the most fun I have had in gw2. If you wanna try out the game how it seems to be designed by the devs, I’d try finding a roleplay guild that has the right kind of atmostphere that you want

I say there’s plenty of end game, from collecting skins/dyes, to fractals, ascended weps tiering up your agony res for fractal 50, to spvp… HoT will add even more end game, the difference between gw2 and traditional mmo is that it isn’t a treadmill like WoW where you do the same level 100 content over and over for a chance at a small gear upgrade.

Agemnon.4608:

Sometimes they take too long to kill. I have mostly ascended weapons and armor (berserker too with some zealot’s) and a mordrem thrasher that’s “defenseless from behind” I’ll need to do a full rotation on six times. Yes I did hit it from behind since I activated daze on a sword thief not blind. Six dazes with six full “1” skill rotations is too long for something allegedly “defenseless from behind”.

Pretty sure that is no longer relevant. That is also not what the defenseless from behind means. What it means is that they won’t take any damage except from behind but that was changed months ago. The beetles in dry top(also verdant brink) are similar.

Lankhmar.8752:

This is unlike many others I’ve played over the years across many genres, but mostly FPS, RTS, RPG with some dabbling in MMORPGs and MOBAs. Just trying to explain why I have no interest in buying the expansion I guess.

Playing the wrong genre. Stick to what you admit to have spent most of your time playing over the years, FPS, RTS, and single player RPG. Most of your complaints can be applied to most modern MMORPG’s. This means MMO’s just aren’t for you.

Yeah, I feel your pain on some of these game aspects, I’ve been playing on and off since launch too with most of the daily grindy aspects of the game being completely uninteresting to me but I always come back for the new content and the seasonal content. The biggest strength about this game for me is that if you do get sick of it you can just change to something else for a while completely guilt free, and when you come back it’ll feel like greeting an old friend again, sometimes literally with catching up with guildies.
But I do agree that it’s probably just that this game isn’t exactly to your taste. There’s nothing wrong with that like, I now know that MOBAs aren’t to my tastes too (matches taking up to an hour and being mostly decided in the first 15-20 mins, such a focus on having nothing happen for 80% of the time with twitchy bursts of activity making up about 5% and the last 15% being dealing with the terrible examples of humanity that populate those games, item options being so constricting as to completely negate any thought or variety, just a correct way to do things and all other ways are you being a bad player, it being a team game but lacking any camaraderie or actual teamwork, teammates are just there to be blamed, etc. etc.)
I’m buying HoT because it’s new content and I enjoy this game’s new content. I’m looking forward to more jumping puzzles, more exploration, more story, more build variety and more time spent with friends. But that just means it’s the right choice for me.

Gw2 is lazy mans mmo. Its very easy get max level and get full exotic gears. Then ur ready to go wvw. Wvw is not ment to be solo. Find some roaming guild and make 5 player partys and you are ready make some real havok.

I’ve played since the first day. Actually no, we were allowed on before others if we got the collector’s edition. I’m one of them. I have been playing with my sister since the beginning. But I don’t play as often as she does and found myself being ‘dragged’ around the game, so my learning turned into “catch up”. Seems it’s always been this way.

I’m not particularly as skilled as other players, that’s why I’ve avoided joining guilds (the first ones I joined kicked me out because I wasn’t online for the required number of days per week, and I think that’s why the second kicked me as well), and I’ve avoided PvP because who wants to spend all their time dying? Well, Heart of Thorns is my version of PvP because all I do is die. I’m trying to get to the places I need to get to learn the skills I need to learn and I can’t. It was a struggle getting my glider, now I can’t get anything else done.

I feel like I paid $99 to learn that I no longer like Guild Wars and that makes me really sad. I’ve been playing Diablo III a lot and enjoy that game a great deal. GW feels like a struggle to me, all the time. And I want to like it, I paid for the expansion with the anticipation of new things to do. But even when I load into the new area, and it’s nightfall, and the fights start happening, I can’t even stay alive (Necro) long enough to join in. And I’ve changed my armor and weapons multiple times. All I do is die. It’s not a lot of fun.

TexZero.7910:

….Are we really going here again ?

Are people so intrinsically lazy now, that playing and learning are thown out the window entirely ?

I started this game at head start, back when the wiki was pretty much a baron wasteland outside of some minor lore. People had to learn as they played…not be giving a silver platter of knowledge.

If actually playing the game is a problem, then the problem isn’t the game it’s the user.

No the problem is not the user. It is the game. While GW2 tries it’s best to explain things, it still falls short in many areas.

Xbon.9086:

the difference between gw2 and traditional mmo is that it isn’t a treadmill like WoW where you do the same level 100 content over and over for a chance at a small gear upgrade.

Heh, yeah. Instead, you do the same content over and over for a chance at a small skin unlock.

The major difference there is perception. This game’s design isn’t as special and unique as some people are prone to thinking.

Some of the points you criticize are correct (like to much effects) and anet is working on them. But some points are not comprehensible.

Lankhmar.8752:

I do not enjoy looking up meta-builds, spending 30 minutes building or tweaking a build, playing every class to figure out what their skills and trait do and look like, or instantly dying and going “what even happened there, and how did someone crit for half my HP”. With flashy effects it’s impossible to know what’s going on. With the hundreds of skill and traits every class has it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen next or why on earth you just died horribly again, and again…oh and again.

What is the alternative? Everyone uses one class and one build? So you don’t have to spend a little bit of time and effort to learn skills, animations etc. That would be the most boring PvP Experience I can think of.

Lankhmar.8752:

Plus time-to-kill should probably be rather more evenly distributed across nukey builds and tanky ones…

What difference would be between Damage-Dealer and Bunker if they make the same amount of damage and die equally fast?

“Nor wiking all the recipes from the mystic forge.”

I really like this game but this one is a huge negative for me. There’s hundreds (thousands?) of materials with no way to even know what they are used for without wiki-ing it. After wiki-ing the 400th item I forget what the first one was for.

The wiki is just too intrusive on game time and there should really be some type of in-game indication for recipes.