Guild Wars 2

I’ve come back recently after bit of a break and already I’m finding hard to log in. I went from BiS gear to having to craft to get back to where I was before. The worst part is, it’s time gated.

So where does that leave me?

- Having to grind my way into BiS, again, to get back to enjoying the game again. I’m not a vertical progression type of person. Also, I prefer to WvW and with the difference that exists in the stats, Gear > Skill (unfortunately).

- To get this gear, I have to craft. I hate crafting. Aside from hating it, it really does go against the whole “play how you like to play” philosophy that they had. Since crafting, as far as I can tell, is the ONLY way to get it.

- Time gated. This is bad, simply bad. I prefer to play at my own pace. Now you may be thinking “what about people who don’t have much time to play? It allows them to keep up.” I’m one of those people. I work Mon to Fri from 8am to 4pm. I’m taking 4 university courses and I work on one course per day from 6pm to 9pm. Between 4 and 6 is the gym and supper. Fridays from 6 to 9 I’m working on a second language (Japanese). I also have two kids. There are times when I do get some extra free time and these would be a great time to catch up. Nope, the content is time gated and I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to continue. So this time gated crap is bad for people will little time to play as well. I have no problem with people who can play 5 or 6 hours every day to get things done quicker. Although I would probably not have a problem with the time gating if I was doing something I enjoyed doing (WvW) and by doing it, I was working toward the things I wanted (BiS gear).

Anyway, that’s my beef for the day. /rant

Like you, I am not the most huge fan of crafting. I think that GW2 has an interesting crafting system, but I also at times find it disorganized (when a lot of recipes start creeping up).
- I’d like for an overhaul on Dungeons, for one. People exploit because certain paths are extremely time consuming, but unfortunately it means that dungeons are of extremely poor quality in GW2 (and ANet don’t seem to think that they need to polish them).

It would be nice if it was possible to obtain Ascended items through other means than just crafting. If certain people don’t like that kind of content, why should that gear be gated by said content?
- With you there. And it would be enjoyable even on a casual time schedule, because doing enjoyable content is one thing, but that it also works towards an end goal would be even better. It’s the feeling of the character progressing, each time an ascended item is obtained.

On a sidenote: If you have a tight schedule, I’m not sure that an MMO is the kind of game you should play, or at least that you cannot expect to reach the “hardcore” status, if you only have time to play it on a casual level.
- In other words, if the content or the gear that you want is something you can get with little time and effort put into it, the players who have more time will be… well, it would be pointless for them, wouldn’kitten
- MMO’s needs to have content for those with little time, those with more time, those with little skill, and those with a lot of skill.
Players with more time and skill can go for the ultimate challenges in the game, while there should also be presented lesser skill based, more instant joy kind of content for the less skilled and those with little time, all the while being goals for each playerbase to strive for (I found the SAB to be an instant joy, less time consuming experience that I could do casually myself or with friends).

WoW used dungeons and dungeon sets during Classic (or Vanilla) WoW for the more casual players, where the “hardcore”, those with more time and skill went for the raid content and gear.