Guild Wars 2

I quit playing GW2, with no ill feelings, in March. I simply stopped having fun, and if I’m not having fun, I’m not playing a game. As a long-time MMO veteran, I found GW2’s “endgame” model to be disheartening. Legendaries are neat, but there isn’t enough variety among them to be interesting to me, really. (“Yay, I’m player #23859262 with Eternity…”) So I got stuck running Fractals over and over… and over… and I got bored. I understand lots of folks think WvW is awesome, but I’m not one of them.

I’m here today because, a quarter-year later, I’m wondering what it’s like to have a level 80 on GW2.

The whole temporary content thing is really strange to me. I can understand that GW2 doesn’t want a gear treadmill. That’s awesome. Problem being, to me, their replacement seemed to be “Play some cheap minigames in this month’s content, get some tokens, and MAYBE we’ll give you a weapon/armor skin.”

I don’t want that. Where’s the actual playing of the game at a high level? I’m talking about fighting enemies that are interesting, bosses that require skill and coordination, and new content (not just re-playing old content)? I know there was a dungeon at the end of Flame and Frost, but my understanding was that you had to go back and do the other sillier F&F stuff to get access to it. Sorry to tell you this, that makes the content seem rather inaccessible to me.

So how are you guys liking this temporary-content model? If you’re still playing, why are you still playing? Without starting a gear treadmill or increasing the level cap, what could a true endgame look like in GW2?

I am loving the Living Story content, and the Festival is really fun. Sorry to hear you are missing out!

I prefer dungeon running as my end-game, and if they actually gave good loot I’d feel an actual reason to log on and do some every day. Sorry to burst some bubbles, but the temporary babby content is really disappointing. Presently I’m only still playing because I have nothing better to play. As soon as that changes, ciao baby.

I love their temporary content model. I’m having great fun without running out of things to do. Normally my high level days include running meta events, dungeons, fractals, playing the special event games and leveling alts.
If you want to see what’s in every temporary event just sign in and check it, after all there’s no subscription fee.
Though from what you’ve said I would say that GW2 will probably never be for you, because you seek true gear progression and level cap increases. Though maybe when an expansion comes out you’ll have enough content to enjoy the game again for a short while.

Some of the Living Story stuff is…oh who am I kidding it’s pretty bad. Flame and Frost was ok. Southsun was miserable. So far Dragon Bash has been buggy, but ok. Not too enthused about having farm 100k candy as it’s just another grind unless you buy them, but the wings are cool enough to warrant it I guess.

Flame and Frost dungeon was really the only part of any of the LS stuff I have enjoyed.

Most of the LS content is able to be finished in a few hours, then it’s back to WvW for me again. If you don’t like WvW I would still say give the game another shot, but don’t expect it to be much different from March.

This game just isn’t made for people who do a lot of PvE content. Read content, not exploration again on a third character or smacking pinatas.

Flame and frost was a little slow, but that was ok for me. It allowed me to get everything done across 2 accounts without feeling rushed.

Southsun was a bit more hectic, definitely faster paced, and freaking awesome fun (to me). Running with half a dozen random people from event to event and just chatting, meeting new people was fun. Got lots of pretty shinies from all my kills, made some new friends to put on my friends list, and got a couple back pieces for other characters. Win win for me. (Wish I’d had more time for some crab toss though)

Right now, LOVING dragon bash. Oh happy day, I get to play dragon ball again! Of course running around kicking the snot out of the holograms is a blast too. Was in a group with 4 or 5 other people running around G.Fields last night, and got some good laughs, and some good loot. Fun times!

Edit: Now that I read the whole post…

I play because I enjoy the game – the ability to go anywhere and everywhere that I please, even at level 80. I can go back to Queensdale and do some of the events I like there, maybe help out a lower level player. Or I can go run through Malchor’s Leap just for the heck of it. It makes no difference. I’m not one shotting my foes, veterans and champs require thought (for me). I’m not into just facerolling through the content. To me, the world is still a living, breathing beautiful place. I haven’t rushed though to kill Zaihtan (even after 10 months). I haven’t fully explored the world on any specific character. I’m still enjoying building my numerous alts so that I can experience each class and its differences. I still occasionally jump into WvW or the hot join pvp and get my butt flattened (generally while eating popcorn and giggling like a maniac). Hell I’m still having fun popping into LA at random and baiting the trolls when I need a laugh. I haven’t even completed one crafting profession yet. I’ve just been lolligagging along at my own pace, and at this rate….the expansion will be out before I even kill Zaihtan. -chuckle- But that’s just me.

As for the F&F dungeon….the only thing you ‘had’ to complete for it where the 2 unique story instances for Braham and Rox, which where actually fun and interesting. At least to me. And those were ‘new’ content, not something else you had done before. Everything else was optional.

Honestly, truly dynamic enemies that require teamwork and thought are mostly wvw and pvp for me.

I like the Living Story, but its not a huge focus for me. What I enjoy most is changing up my routine, doing different things, and playing with friends. Usually I set goals for myself and work towards those slowly. No grind, no farm, no play for reward only. I like video games, and I treat GW2 like I would any other game – as a game to play for fun.

The living story is appealing to a completely different crowd than raids and high level PvE content like dungeons. It doesn’t surprise me that hard-core dungeon runners don’t enjoy it much. Of course, there are many people who don’t particularly like doing dungeons.

There are SOOOOOO many games where dungeons and raids are end games. I’m glad there’s one game out there for someone like me.

There just is not enough high level content for a veteran MMO player. Bad players and super casuals will love it, but there will be a void for anyone who has played MMO’s for years. Playing 2 hours a day on average I exhausted this game for me in about 3weeks-1month, and have been hitting WvW since.

Raids and dungeons are not how you fill that void. But temporary content that takes a few hours or days to complete isn’t the answer for that void either.

I’ve played MMOs for years, sorry to say. Maybe some of the people who have played MMOs for years aren’t looking for the hard core experience ANY MORE because they see it as empty. It’s not impossible.

A lot of people I know in my guild used to raid and never want to put that kind of time and energy into a game again. But that doesn’t make them less experienced, or even super casual. Maybe burned out on the genre though.

I tried doing the high end dungeons and raiding in WoW. In fact I super charged through my leveling to get a specific race/class combo into position to get the armor so that I could because ‘raiding is where the actions at.’ I’m sorry, brainlessly running a dungeon until I’m so mind-numbingly bored that I could do it in my sleep while drugged was not my idea of fun. Doing it a few thousand times to get a SINGLE piece of gear, just so I could move to the next one to repeat the process to get another SINGLE piece of gear…just to have it go obsolete and have to repeat the process for the next tier. Oh dear gods, I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it. That is not ‘playing’ a game. That is ‘working’ for no pay.

Just my opinion though. I’m seriously glad that I don’t have to do this stuff in GW2.

hating it, honestly.

Pawstruck.9708:

The whole temporary content thing is really strange to me. I can understand that GW2 doesn’t want a gear treadmill. That’s awesome. Problem being, to me, their replacement seemed to be “Play some cheap minigames in this month’s content, get some tokens, and MAYBE we’ll give you a weapon/armor skin.”

I don’t want that. Where’s the actual playing of the game at a high level? I’m talking about fighting enemies that are interesting, bosses that require skill and coordination, and new content (not just re-playing old content)? I know there was a dungeon at the end of Flame and Frost, but my understanding was that you had to go back and do the other sillier F&F stuff to get access to it. Sorry to tell you this, that makes the content seem rather inaccessible to me.

Mixed bag imo. Some of them have been fun (SAB, DragonBash) some have not (Flame & Frost). But that’s all personal opinion. What is a fact is they have largely been, as you said, minigames with a chance of getting a snazzy new skin. And that’s my only complaint.

I don’t mind temporary content. It’s fun & keeps things fresh. But I was hoping for more temporary GW2 content, not minigames (SAB, DragonBall, CrabToss). And while they can be fun for a time, it’s not more GW2 in the sense that it’s not more of what we’re doing when there isn’t an event. The recent event in SSC was pretty fun, because it had players doing DEs. But the dungeon was lame and gimmicky, not a strategic real dungeon like we had in F&F finale. And the DragonBash event is fun, with things like holos to farm in the open world, but we’re also encouraged to bet on Moa racing (spectator sport, dice roll) and play Dragon Ball (mini game). It adds flavor, levity, and some great visuals. But it’s just a shame that even the non-holiday events have this gimmicky aspect to them too.

I find myself getting the achievements and the back items, and then moving on.

The living story makes me feel patronized, like I’m playing dora the explorer. Or those browser games on facebook.

Only two goods things’ve come out of it for me – making me dig up the old Monkey Island for nostalgia’s sake, and a cheap alternative to omnomberry ghosts.

I’m having a blast clicking on 100 things to get a speed buff for 10s each time and clicking on 150 of a different thing for fun. I’m also enjoying getting even less fractal skins at 48 since Canach came in and robbed Mr Maw’s splendid chest.

i got bored with pve very quickly as it seems the world is not living and breathing.its more a loop with no variety.
but wvw is my love. every day seems like challenge if you are not on a tier 1 server.we do have queues on reset, but we are outnumbered many times, which is where the fun for my guild and me starts. the more challenging , the better!if we run into a group that is outnumbering us and we manage to stand up to them, it is fun even if we sometimes get steamrolled.

Thank you for the insight, everyone.

I think the person who seems most like me in this thread is Seras; although it looks like you’ve stuck with it, and I’m giving it a break.

I certainly don’t mind mini-games or non-combat-content, but it seems like GW2 might be focusing on that to the exclusion of the real meat and potatoes of RPG’s. I didn’t go through 80 levels of questing and learn 30+ different skills/spells so I could kick a Dragonball. :/

For me, an MMO’s main content needs to work within its own system. I want newer and more challenging events. That doesn’t have to always mean bosses — although raid bosses are awesome — it can mean exploring trap-laden dungeons, scripted events, and other stuff. I do not want a gear treadmill. However, some form of character progress is tkittenence of an MMO. Appearance items and skins only go so far for me.

Maybe I do belong on WoW or RIFT. I dunno. I’ll check back in a month or two, maybe.

keeps it interesting. But then again I play max 2 hours a day if I can even manage to find the time to log on, currently I’m almost halfway through that dragon bash meta-achievement. It’s been fun so far

Pawstruck.9708:

Thank you for the insight, everyone.

I think the person who seems most like me in this thread is Seras; although it looks like you’ve stuck with it, and I’m giving it a break.

I certainly don’t mind mini-games or non-combat-content, but it seems like GW2 might be focusing on that to the exclusion of the real meat and potatoes of RPG’s. I didn’t go through 80 levels of questing and learn 30+ different skills/spells so I could kick a Dragonball. :/

For me, an MMO’s main content needs to work within its own system. I want newer and more challenging events. That doesn’t have to always mean bosses — although raid bosses are awesome — it can mean exploring trap-laden dungeons, scripted events, and other stuff. I do not want a gear treadmill. However, some form of character progress is tkittenence of an MMO. Appearance items and skins only go so far for me.

Maybe I do belong on WoW or RIFT. I dunno. I’ll check back in a month or two, maybe.

Rift is off the chart right now. Good luck getting in. I had a queue for almost 6 hours yesterday. It also had almost 4k viewers on twitchtv earlier. Way too many flocking there right now.

Pawstruck.9708:

I quit playing GW2, with no ill feelings, in March. I simply stopped having fun, and if I’m not having fun, I’m not playing a game. As a long-time MMO veteran, I found GW2’s “endgame” model to be disheartening. Legendaries are neat, but there isn’t enough variety among them to be interesting to me, really. (“Yay, I’m player #23859262 with Eternity…”) So I got stuck running Fractals over and over… and over… and I got bored. I understand lots of folks think WvW is awesome, but I’m not one of them.

I’m here today because, a quarter-year later, I’m wondering what it’s like to have a level 80 on GW2.

The whole temporary content thing is really strange to me. I can understand that GW2 doesn’t want a gear treadmill. That’s awesome. Problem being, to me, their replacement seemed to be “Play some cheap minigames in this month’s content, get some tokens, and MAYBE we’ll give you a weapon/armor skin.”

I don’t want that. Where’s the actual playing of the game at a high level? I’m talking about fighting enemies that are interesting, bosses that require skill and coordination, and new content (not just re-playing old content)? I know there was a dungeon at the end of Flame and Frost, but my understanding was that you had to go back and do the other sillier F&F stuff to get access to it. Sorry to tell you this, that makes the content seem rather inaccessible to me.

So how are you guys liking this temporary-content model? If you’re still playing, why are you still playing? Without starting a gear treadmill or increasing the level cap, what could a true endgame look like in GW2?

Some of us aren’t too happy about it. We would much rather have fixes, updates to the ui, and permanent DEs and Metas. Save this patch it’s not so bad honestly and I’m not counting this among the replacements for real content because it is a holiday in the game adapted from GW1 so I can understand them adding it. It’s when they do things like Fire and Frost that gets me a little disappointed.

Heck even waiting on a dragon is really bad I don’t have time to wait 3 hours for one to appear. When it’s time to appear it should really only take 10 minutes imo if they are really hungry to eat the Tyrians I mean.

I was looking for the content, but it appears to have ceased to exist now. Not sure what everyone experienced.

I find the entire living story update each month is not even on par with user made content (for free) in some other MMOs.

Makes me think that a large portion of the staff is actually working on another project (expansion, new game, etc.).

MakersMark.8420:

I find the entire living story update each month is not even on par with user made content (for free) in some other MMOs.

Makes me think that a large portion of the staff is actually working on another project (expansion, new game, etc.).

I dunno about that. SAB was pretty awesome.

I do agree with your conclusion, though. I feel like the development speed went wayyyyyy down after release… but then again, monthly content is pretty rare! I’m thankful that when they say monthly, they deliver on their promises.

Araziel.7201:

Pawstruck.9708:

Thank you for the insight, everyone.

I think the person who seems most like me in this thread is Seras; although it looks like you’ve stuck with it, and I’m giving it a break.

I certainly don’t mind mini-games or non-combat-content, but it seems like GW2 might be focusing on that to the exclusion of the real meat and potatoes of RPG’s. I didn’t go through 80 levels of questing and learn 30+ different skills/spells so I could kick a Dragonball. :/

For me, an MMO’s main content needs to work within its own system. I want newer and more challenging events. That doesn’t have to always mean bosses — although raid bosses are awesome — it can mean exploring trap-laden dungeons, scripted events, and other stuff. I do not want a gear treadmill. However, some form of character progress is tkittenence of an MMO. Appearance items and skins only go so far for me.

Maybe I do belong on WoW or RIFT. I dunno. I’ll check back in a month or two, maybe.

Rift is off the chart right now. Good luck getting in. I had a queue for almost 6 hours yesterday. It also had almost 4k viewers on twitchtv earlier. Way too many flocking there right now.

Rift was down to a small number of servers and doesn’t have high server limits, so yeah, queues are normal. They were normal on launch too, and even months after launch. Don’t let it fool you. With their server limits and number of servers, that was bound to happen.

And when people actually get in there and try it, in a month or two they’ll exhaust the content (if they last that long) and then go for another game…because Rift really is the same old same old and not everyone wants that.

It’s not that it’s a bad game, but it’s a game patterned after every other game in the genre, which many people are burned out on.

I remember how many people told me about Neverwinter when it went into “open beta” (but was actually a stealth launch) and of the 15 or 20 people I personally know who tried it, just about all of them don’t talk about it at all any more. It’s not bad as a single player game, but most people don’t want to queue for dungeons and at max level that’s what it basically offers. The PvP is dreadful (or so I’ve heard).

Every new game is popular and every game that goes free to play is popular when it goes free to play. But in the end, Rift doesn’t have the holding power, unless you like that type of game.

I suspect many who want Guild Wars 2 to be their game won’t be staying for any length of time.

MakersMark.8420:

They should have stuck around in neverwinter. User made content is what makes a game like that just like the original single player game. More in-depth and original than the living story has been.

Most user created content is not that good…some of course is. But it’s a dungeon crawl. I’m not sure if you get it but there are people who love dungeons and people who hate dungeons. And most of the stuff designed is also single player which defeats the purpose of it being an MMO.

In fact, I’m not so sure Neverwinter is an MMO at least in the persistent world part of the game. It’s more like a lobby game.

Aeonblade.8709:

There just is not enough high level content for a veteran MMO player. Bad players and super casuals will love it, but there will be a void for anyone who has played MMO’s for years.

Well thank you for throwing an insult there. There are a number of people here that went trough WoW, Runescape, Perfect World, Aion and all that stuff. And GW2 feels like a fresh gush of air.

I’ve noticed on these forums, some posters like to think they are posting on behalf of the masses, I like to speak for myself. I enjoy the temporary content….I actually really like that I have a certain amount of time to get involved with/obtain said content, before it is gone. It really does make that particular event ‘special’ in my mind.

I also really appreciate what ANet are doing with the living world stories….I got a bit lost in Southsun, but then that’s my fault for not taking the time to really read what NPC’s were saying, but I got the general gist of things.

The only thing that I consider a ‘downer’ is during festivals, my favourite (farming) places tend to become rather quiet, for example Southsun is my favourite place now, and I can’t get much done there because people are running around gathering zhaitaffy and smashing pinatas, but I know this is temporary also, and truth be told I have been running around enjoying the Dragon Bash too.

I honestly think there is far more complaining on these forums than is truly warranted….but then I’ve played a few MMO’s and the main forums are usually like this. Thumbs up from me ANet…there are things that need improvement, but really this is a class and quality MMO from my perspective based on how much enjoyment I get from this, and I don’t run out of things to do, and I barely ever touch dungeons.

Last months living story did have a lot of permanent content in it. The parts before last month was leading up to the events in Southsun. But could have left more permanent content.

I hope future living stories come with more permanent content. And expand on normal DE system.

My only major problem with content is with RNG.

Yeah dungeon crawls aren’t for everyone. On the other hand I’ll take dungeon crawl over 1 boss instance or auto-attack fest meta event any day. I understand many people playing GW2 don’t like a challenge, and maybe that’s the point of the game.

MakersMark.8420:

Yeah dungeon crawls aren’t for everyone. On the other hand I’ll take dungeon crawl over 1 boss instance or auto-attack fest meta event any day. I understand many people playing GW2 don’t like a challenge, and maybe that’s the point of the game.

See it’s not really about that. The people that don’t like dungeons, don’t necessarily follow the meta events either. I don’t. Maybe I do a couple of day if I’m not doing anything and someone calls them out. That’s it.

We just hang out in the open world. There really is plenty of challenging content if you happen not to be running with a zerg. In fact, we see people complaining on these forums all the time about respawn rate and how hard certain things are.

If you’re not running with a big group, you can still find plenty of challenging in PvE..you just have to look for it, or know where to find it. There’s still that stupid meta event that most people don’t do in Bloodtide Coast because it’s so hard to figure out how to trigger it. Not every event is the Shatterer.

But you know, different people like different things. Most of the people who like what I like are so scattered it may look like we’re just a couple of guys. We’re really not. People who do what I do are often soloers in MMOs who don’t spend a whole lot of time on forums, because every time they say they solo, people yell at them for playing an MMO.