Guild Wars 2

Considering NPE was created to reduce confusion for new players, I am curious what other players actually found confusing when they were new.

As for me i remember:

- Underwater utilities ( didn’t know I could equip them)
- The crafting system (especially discoveries)
- Cumulative damage

Moving.

Seriously. I was used to games that allowed click-to-move (GW1 and Dragon Age: Origins were my main PC RPGs at the time) so I’d never gotten into the habit of using WASD and found it very awkward at first. Even now I rarely use it. I prefer to push both mouse buttons, or use the arrow keys.

But I also found crafting confusing at first. I wasted a lot of materials making the same useless recipes over and over because I didn’t understand the system properly.

I also didn’t understand at first that the Personal Story doesn’t use dynamic events. I’d read so much about how things in this game progress with or without you, and if someone says they need your help now they mean now that I rushed through a lot of stuff early on because I was worried about it all going wrong if I didn’t.

I’ve heard though that the number one thing that confused new players was picking up a bundle and not knowing what happened to their skills or how to get them back. I can’t remember who told me that but apparently that’s why they removed bundles from the low level hearts.

I still find gw2 craft the worst crafting of all mmo’s ive played.

Aeolus.3615:

I sold my1st black dye in pre siering to a merchant.

I think everyone did that. Although mine was a white dye. If it had been black I’d have wasted it on my starter armor.

For me it was salvaging and the trading post, at first i sold everything i got to a vendor rather then breaking low level stuff i dont need into mats rather then using the salvage kits. Also certain things like turrets…i never played an mmo before (far enough, if i actually did play an mmo that had something like this) where i could operate a turret, mortar or stuff like this. Also kits where a new thing to me…what was extremely “weird” the first 10 minutes after i unlocked my flamethrower (started out as engineer). I thought id get a…dunno a skill like the ele does with dagger 2 on fire attument… basically just a flame jet that goes on cooldown like a normal skill in an mmo would do. Nope.. got a whole darn flamethrower and i was amazed AND weirded out at the same time cause i thought id never get my rifle back. Heh.. good times… but other then that i quickly got the idea of how the game works. Well.. dodging maybe, but that was more an issue with not beeing familiar with the timing rather then the mechanic itself.

Everything! I had never played an MMO, and hardly played any other video games. I have to say I was hardly interested in playing the game until I started reading the forums and finding out all the good stuff. For a long time I just wandered around not knowing about tiers of gear, or how levels worked, or how sigils worked, or most importantly, how the TP worked. I was sooooo poor for soooo long. No idea of builds or traits or anything.

Thank goodness for the “Players Helping Players” subforum. It literally saved my gaming life. I would have never continued to play had I not found the sticky about all the stuff you NEED to know. And ya, you do need to know it to get the most out of the game.

I also have to say, that if it were just up to the ingame “systems” and (non-existant) “help” put in by ANet I would have quit. No question. This game is not newbie friendly. At all. The NPE is not even CLOSE to being helpful. All it does it gate stuff that is actually easy to figure out.

Crafting, and also crafting.

zombyturtle.5980:

Considering NPE was created to reduce confusion for new players, I am curious what other players actually found confusing when they were new.

As for me i remember:

- Underwater utilities ( didn’t know I could equip them)
- The crafting system (especially discoveries)
- Cumulative damage

Upon reading the title, I was thinking… hmm… well nothing that I can remember that wasn’t answered pretty quickly from using the wiki… but underwater utilities. For some reason I just had this block in my head and I assumed “ohh you just don’t have utilities under water, ok, whatever” so never even dawned on me to click on the thing much less look it up on wiki to learn all about it.

I’m still pretty noobish (been playing about 2 months or so) and am still confused by ALL the different currencies.

I’m still completely confused by the “rules” (and I use that term VERY loosely) about what you can sell, and what you can salvage, and what you can’t.

I think you can sell anything that isn’t Account Bound, right?

You can Deposit crafting materials. Except Foxfire Clusters, which are crafting materials, but don’t have a place to go.

You can salvage nearly everything, except the things you can’t. Sometimes I can’t salvage stuff which is Soulbound. Sometimes I can.

I still get really disappointed when I get a better piece of armour and find that I can’t sell or salvage my old gear (usually in an attempt to get my Rune back), and I have to just destroy it because that character will never use it again and I can’t do anything else with it…

Basically, it’s the exceptions that confuse me :P

Learning how to move in combat. (Played Guild Wars 1 where I fought in one spot in PvE. Skills could not be used while moving there).

I watched videos of the game before the betas and came back and told my guildies, “you run around like this while fighting!” (Runs in a circle while they stood and watched and tried to figure it out).

Now when I go back to Guild Wars 1, it’s hard to fight because the first thing I do is start to strafe, which breaks my skill animations.

Astral Projections.7320:

Learning how to move in combat. (Played Guild Wars 1 where I fought in one spot in PvE. Skills could not be used while moving there).

I watched videos of the game before the betas and came back and told my guildies, “you run around like this while fighting!” (Runs in a circle while they stood and watched and tried to figure it out).

Now when I go back to Guild Wars 1, it’s hard to fight because the first thing I do is start to strafe, which breaks my skill animations.

I do the same thing when I play gw1 now, I’ve actually stopped playing my elementalist and ranger because they are so static, I much prefer my ritualist and warrior nowadays. I absolutely love moving in combat, so much fun!

And about the thread- I found combo fields and aoe buffs the most confusing in GW2, combo fields took forever for the community to understand them.

The different salvage kits. Okay, I get that the rarer ones have a higher success chance of recovering your upgrades, but I don’t get what chance of rare materials does. Maybe getting ancient wood and orichalcum? Sure doesn’t feel like a 15% chance though, salvaging my whole inventory gets me 1-3 of them.

Like should I be using my mystic forge kit for blues and greens? Or saving it’s charges.

Servanin.5021:

The different salvage kits. Okay, I get that the rarer ones have a higher success chance of recovering your upgrades, but I don’t get what chance of rare materials does. Maybe getting ancient wood and orichalcum? Sure doesn’t feel like a 15% chance though, salvaging my whole inventory gets me 1-3 of them.

Like should I be using my mystic forge kit for blues and greens? Or saving it’s charges.

I have yet to figure out the salvage kits and what they mean by rarer materials because I’ve used masters and basic and I get what I would consider rarer mats from both. If there are more with masters I’m not sure it’s enough to cover the cost difference.

PVP and WVW are pretty poorly explained in game. When your transported to the PVP lobby or a part of WVW, you’ve got little context of what to do., and especially, how to play well.

Downed state threw me for a loop at first. Granted I had done absolutely no research into game play. I like jumping in and trying to figure things out. My first character was a warrior. I got downed and just started hitting keys. I was amazed because my warrior jumped up and I started running away as I was outnumbered. I thought I had gotten away but suddenly fell over dead, defeated. Ahh, vengeance. What a funny trick. Haha..

Got a precursor as a drop and sold it to a merchant because I did not know what a precursor was or what a legendary was, nor was I interested in making one… (this just makes my head hurt remembering it)
I did not know how the TP worked, did not understand the crafting and salvaging aspect, could not understand why I could not buy an ID kit(like in GW).
Could not for the life of me figure out how to equip underwater utility skills(standing on land).
Been playing since the beta weekends, only found out about 6 months ago about auto deposit material to bank tab and the compact bags option… doh…
The last two toons I made were ele and engi… I submitted a claim/bug report for both because I just could not understand why I was not getting my second weapon set to activate…
Very early on, I had no coin(before the accounts cash was consolidated)… zero amount… I died and I just could not understand why I could not waypoint…

I didn’t find this confusing, but a lot of people did (and some still do even now).

Most MMOs have a constant breadcrumb trailing leading you from place to place as you level. You’re told exactly where to go and what to do at every stage of your journey.

Guild Wars 2 really doesn’t have that. You’re expected to sort of run around and find stuff all on your own. This is where a lot of people get confused.

They’re expecting to run to a star and go from star to star. I’ve lost track of how many people before the NPE would type that they must be doing something wrong because they personal story outleveled them.

Or the number of people who simply didn’t know what they were supposed to do at all, like walk out and explore was so foreign to them.

The bank and collections system (as it was called when I started playing). It’s not a design flaw, but a mental block on my part. What, you can put up to 250 of every item listed into there? That seemed like cheating to me as I had never been in a game that allowed that much storage. I think I was about 1000 hours in before I discovered I could put materials in there without having to go there physically. It never occurred to me that this might be an option.

Everything. The tutorial was beyond terrible when I started. I learned just about everything through experimentation.

Astral Projections.7320:

Servanin.5021:

The different salvage kits. Okay, I get that the rarer ones have a higher success chance of recovering your upgrades, but I don’t get what chance of rare materials does. Maybe getting ancient wood and orichalcum? Sure doesn’t feel like a 15% chance though, salvaging my whole inventory gets me 1-3 of them.

Like should I be using my mystic forge kit for blues and greens? Or saving it’s charges.

I have yet to figure out the salvage kits and what they mean by rarer materials because I’ve used masters and basic and I get what I would consider rarer mats from both. If there are more with masters I’m not sure it’s enough to cover the cost difference.

The salvage kit stuff is a bit weird. There are items that have a chance of producing t3 or t4 materials. Say on a basic kit the chance of getting t4 is 30%. If you use a kit that says it has a 20% higher chance of salvaging a higher tier material, then the chances go to 36%. I can’t say for sure that this is exactly how the numbers are calculated, but it’s close enough to give an idea of the sort of difference these kits make (not a lot). The one advantage of the higher level kits is that in certain circumstances they produce more of that material.

I really should do some research by salvaging lots of the same item so I can be more specific.

I’d have to say the top of my list when I was new was combo fields.

Crafting, WvW, Orr temples and their mechanics, inventory management (I didn’t know you could deposit all the materials

zombyturtle, you do not make yourself different by calling new player Noob. I am a little new but i will not answer your thread until you remove that word. Suggestion; no new player like to be call noob; think next before using that word. Noob is a bad word for us new player because it push us away and make us feel worthless and make us feel shame for being new.

You do not know how many time i log out when i first start because of some other player calling me noob. They call me less now but sometime i am scared to play because if i make mistake or learn slow; they are ready to call me that word. Again, be careful for using that word especially if you want out attention.

Example; you do not ask people who do have little sufficient or with no sufficient to live; question and opinion by calling them poor and worthless people.

In return; they will look at you like other who look at them down and treat them bad.

DarkSyze.8627:

zombyturtle, you do not make yourself different by calling new player Noob. I am a little new but i will not answer your thread until you remove that word. Suggestion; no new player like to be call noob; think next before using that word.

Example; you do not ask people who do not have little question and for oppinion by calling them poor

The term isn’t offensive as in this context is implicit the understanding that we were all noobs once.

The term isn’t offensive at all, no matter what context. It’s not 2005 anymore.

/shrug

Neural.1824:

I’d have to say the top of my list when I was new was combo fields.

Kraljevo.2801:

Crafting, WvW, Orr temples and their mechanics, inventory management (I didn’t know you could deposit all the materials

Ha,ha, ha… noobs!

(Makes sticky note to remind self to research combo field mechanics and Orr temples.)

Why the Zhaitan fight was so awful (random sound effects, no music/music too quiet, lots of time standing around doing nothing, literally mashing 2 to win when it seemed like something more should have been happening, it just seemed like one big glitch/unfinished mess).

Little did I know…

Cormac.3871:

DarkSyze.8627:

zombyturtle, you do not make yourself different by calling new player Noob. I am a little new but i will not answer your thread until you remove that word. Suggestion; no new player like to be call noob; think next before using that word.

Example; you do not ask people who do not have little question and for oppinion by calling them poor

The term isn’t offensive as in this context is implicit the understanding that we were all noobs once.

zombyturtle, you do not make yourself different by calling new player Noob. I am a little new but i will not answer your thread until you remove that word. Suggestion; no new player like to be call noob; think next before using that word. Noob is a bad word for us new player because it push us away and make us feel worthless and make us feel shame for being new.
You do not know how many time i log out when i first start because of some other player calling me noob. They call me less now but sometime i am scared to play because if i make mistake or learn slow; they are ready to call me that word. Again, be careful for using that word especially if you want out attention.
Example; you do not ask people who do have little sufficient or with no sufficient to live; question and opinion by calling them poor and worthless people.
In return; they will look at you like other who look at them down and treat them bad.

Combo fields for me too. Took me a while to figure out why those pop ups would appear, and even longer – much longer – to have even the barest understanding of how I could use fields or blasts etc for effects I wanted. I’m sure I still don’t know them all like I should, but I know how to blast the heck out of a fire field.

Aeolus.3615:

I still find gw2 craft the worst crafting of all mmo’s ive played.

The crafting discovery process is quite ambiguous/bad but generally better than most mmorpgs. Least in GW2 you can’t fail a craft and end up farming all the materials again.

DarkSyze.8627:

You do not know how many time i log out when i first start because of some other player calling me noob. They call me less now but sometime i am scared to play because if i make mistake or learn slow; they are ready to call me that word. Again, be careful for using that word especially if you want out attention.
Example; you do not ask people who do have little sufficient or with no sufficient to live; question and opinion by calling them poor and worthless people.
In return; they will look at you like other who look at them down and treat them bad.

I don’t think that I would find a thread with the title “Things you did for fun when you were a poor Uni student” offensive, having been a university student without much money.

Kraljevo.2801:

The term isn’t offensive at all, no matter what context. It’s not 2005 anymore.

/shrug

It is not about being 2005 anymore; it is about how other treat us new player with that word. They blame us new player for mistake and treat us bad with that word. I am little new and i do not call new player that word because they are value and important like me.

That word is for player who are pride and arrogant. Humble player accept you and help you be strong; give suggestion, encourage you and help you be better. Humble player protect new player from other player who want put them down and make them feel shame for be new.

Last; Humbleness make you a better player; not arrogant and pride. Humbleness do not call name or treat new player different because of being new or not learn fast or not be best player but stand by you, give suggestion, train you and encourage you be better player.

That’s all

Crafting. There was the list of items you could make on the left, but it was quite invisible as to what you could do in the discoveries panel (not so much with cooking – just rub up to 4 things together). Ended up with a skrittpile of dowels and not aware how a grey-xp inscription would progress my crafting level.

That and how to handle more advanced enemy tactics. I wasn’t really experienced when Southsun Cove came out, and the breeze riders kept stealing the regeneration from my healing turret (I know the better way to use the turret now).

I also still seem to be dying for no apparent reason, like i’ll be frantically trying to stay alive, strafing around and dodging and still losing health fast with no conditions on me and it doesn’t appear that i’m being hit by anything.

Then I check my combat log and see that Taidha Covington just one-shotted me when I can’t even see her.

But in general, dodging either channeled projectiles or frequent incoming projectiles seems unintuitive to me. Sure there is reflection. That lasts for like 20% of the time.

DavidH.7380:

Ha,ha, ha… noobs!

(Makes sticky note to remind self to research combo field mechanics and Orr temples.)

:)

fighting a mesmer and all the freaking clones. Took me awhile to be able to identify when the idiot mesmer was, and even to this day i still get confused from time to time (when the mez plays possium and just sits there not giving himself away) and annoyed fighting that stupid mechanic.

what confused me the most? Why condition damage is so kitten ed bad

Why did my character die from running down these stairs?

Why guardian group healing were so weak, Until i realized there is only 1 role.

Definitely crafting when it first came out. Pretty much ignored it for the longest because of it. Some of the PvP landscapes and requirements also made me scratch my head too. And yes, definitely the combo field mechanic.

It tooked long time for me to notice that on inventory there’s actually a “deposit all” button which sended all crafting materials to my bank. After that little button my life got sooo much easier when I didn’t have to find bank/crafting station with every 1 hour.

Combo fields and finishers.

Those are the coolest parts of gw2 combat for me. It would be nice if the NPE touched on those somehow.

- Cumulative damage
- Combo fields.
- No trinity (Do not mean it is a bad thing, I love that there is no trinity).
- Block and reflect.

About crafting, I find GW2 crafting easy and fast to learn compaired to other MMO’s.

This is so embarrassing (lol) but traits! And builds! My first character was a thief and I didn’t know how many total traits I would get or how I should set them up so I tried to put an equal amount of trait points into each trait line. Omg I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time 2 years and literally punch myself in the face.

I died all the time 24/7. I remember doing personal story and feeling so defeated that I couldn’t kill or do anything solo! I was constantly needing to call in guildies to help lol. And Orr was a NIGHTMARE. I was permanently stealthing and shadowstepping and like, going way out of my way to avoid fights.

What confused me the most was weapon swapping. My first character was an ele so I never had weapon swap and so I never knew it existed. I leveled all the way to 80 and even started leveling some alts but I would never equip a second weapon set. Traits confused me a bit too so I’d just throw what I had into a trait line haha.

nothing confused me. but combo fields were really something new and interesting I had not seen in any games before. also the really short duration on buffs and conditions seemed rather uncommon compared to other rpg.

Jerus.4350:

zombyturtle.5980:

Considering NPE was created to reduce confusion for new players, I am curious what other players actually found confusing when they were new.

As for me i remember:

- Underwater utilities ( didn’t know I could equip them)
- The crafting system (especially discoveries)
- Cumulative damage

Upon reading the title, I was thinking… hmm… well nothing that I can remember that wasn’t answered pretty quickly from using the wiki… but underwater utilities. For some reason I just had this block in my head and I assumed “ohh you just don’t have utilities under water, ok, whatever” so never even dawned on me to click on the thing much less look it up on wiki to learn all about it.

Same for me. I was lvl 80 and had map completion before i realized that i can equip underwater utilities.

Gathering, tools specifically.
The game dumped in Plains of Ashford, and there were nodes right nearby, but I didn’t have tools. The game told me I needed them, but not where to get them. I’d never clinged to a vendor so hard as when I found the one guy that sold them. Well, the one guy I knew at the time. =P How convenient that every craft vendor has them.

I knew about the discovery system in advance, so that didn’t get me, but it would have if I hadn’t been looking into the game before beta.

Cumulative damage (I thought I was doing more damage with each hit…. not adding it to a total combo)

Charge skills
and other skills that require a key to be held down rather than simply being pushed.

Mashing the one key in downed state even though Bandage is a channeled skill and you only need to push it once.

Wondering how to get to Fort Trinity for the first time for personal story, since the green marker leads you to asura gates that are not accessible (like the one at the vigil keep).

I did not know you could equip underwater utilities and an elite skill.

Putting a rune on your Aqua breather didn’t actually give you the stat bonus on land (contrary to what the hero panel said).

Armor skins purchased from the gemstore had a weight class associated with it. (i bought primeval armor for my ranger)

Most confusing thing i found when i was a NOOB : Finding a thief in 1v1 and thought i was lagging so hard he jumps all over my screen without being seen. Then someone told me about that stealth mechanic of theirs…