Guild Wars 2

Hi,
So like many, I have/am placing too much value on reward, grinding for mats, etc. For those of you that just play to play and have fun, what do YOU do? I just completed Hidden Garden, very fun. Wish there were more(Ive been in the dwarven one once). But other than map completion, what nooks and crannies have you discovered that are worth discovering? What intrinsic value are you finding in the game?

I cannot stress this enough – find others that enjoy the same types of things that you do and play with them

There are a lot of areas which are fun to explore IMO. In terms of officially designated activities there’s the jumping puzzles and vistas, but also a lot of areas which I just like climbing or exploring.

If you’ve played GW1 Lions Arch (especially underwater) and Plains of Ashford have a lot of nostalgia areas. Or you can try to get onto the mountain above Mabon Market in Caledon Forest (hint: Start from Titan’s Staircase). You could climb the vents at the north end of Driftglass Springs or pretty much any cliff/mountain in the Shiverpeaks for an epic view.

I also highly recommend speaking to the NPCs and listening to them speak to each other, especially before, during and after an event. You’ll get a lot of lore and background information and sometimes funny dialogue too.

It all depends I have explored and found a few weird places that were just placed in the game (They have nothing to do with map completion but it’s cool to find them!). I’m also a player that likes all parts of the game so depending on my mood i’ll either explore, dungeon, WvW, PvP with friends, etc.

Trust me though, once you find some people to play with, it’s sooooooo much fun!

Regarding finding people to play with: Unfortunately, anyone that Ive found to play with has quit. The people that still play are online far too infrequently.

Yes, im a product of WoW being conditioned for years to expect reward, and good reward for my time and effort spent. I do enjoy jumping puzzles. Awsome views, and they are fun. Then you get to the chest, youre reminded of the fact that you are to be rewarded, and suddenly my mind shifts without me knowing to a stance that “Hey, I need to get something for my troubles”. I open the chest and its junk.

So I was just logged in for about 2 hours. I completed Hidden Garden, did a heart or two in maelstrom(thought I had it map completed). Then the Shaman popped up, did him with a small group. Yah, ,it was fun. And the two “funnest” parts were hidden garden and the shaman, but the chests from both had junk.

So while I definately like to play just to have fun, when I AM rewarded, its crap and it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth from what was otherwise a fun experience.

Hard to shake this mentality/view of the game(other any game)…where you constantly need to strive towards something and acquire it. Hard! Cant just play to have fun anymore.

If I am unable to do that here, I might leave eventually(again). If my mind is stuck in a item/stat geargrind type of game, I will go to games that do it better. Guild Wars 2 has a very watered down version of it. I am against gear grind and item progression in THIS game, I prefer cosmetic progression. I am not against a gear grind in general, but GW2 does item progression in a very poor way. Which is why I am TRYING to just enjoy the game.

cesmode.4257:

Regarding finding people to play with: Unfortunately, anyone that Ive found to play with has quit. The people that still play are online far too infrequently.

Yes, im a product of WoW being conditioned for years to expect reward, and good reward for my time and effort spent. I do enjoy jumping puzzles. Awsome views, and they are fun. Then you get to the chest, youre reminded of the fact that you are to be rewarded, and suddenly my mind shifts without me knowing to a stance that “Hey, I need to get something for my troubles”. I open the chest and its junk.

So I was just logged in for about 2 hours. I completed Hidden Garden, did a heart or two in maelstrom(thought I had it map completed). Then the Shaman popped up, did him with a small group. Yah, ,it was fun. And the two “funnest” parts were hidden garden and the shaman, but the chests from both had junk.

So while I definately like to play just to have fun, when I AM rewarded, its crap and it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth from what was otherwise a fun experience.

Hard to shake this mentality/view of the game(other any game)…where you constantly need to strive towards something and acquire it. Hard! Cant just play to have fun anymore.

If I am unable to do that here, I might leave eventually(again). If my mind is stuck in a item/stat geargrind type of game, I will go to games that do it better. Guild Wars 2 has a very watered down version of it. I am against gear grind and item progression in THIS game, I prefer cosmetic progression. I am not against a gear grind in general, but GW2 does item progression in a very poor way. Which is why I am TRYING to just enjoy the game.

Yeah I know how you feel in terms of loot. You don’t necessarily have to try and remove your progression mentality. We all have it in one form or another. It just becomes a problem for GW2 since it’s not farm or loot friendly at all. There are some games that handle gear progression well, and for people that enjoy progression, that’s for them.

I personally don’t have a set goal in GW2. I just log on and do something that I feel like doing, and that’s probably why I don’t feel the loot problems as much, but that’s just me xD.

I hope you can find something to enjoy in game though in the end! Good luck

cesmode.4257:

What intrinsic value are you finding in the game?

I just tend to do whatever is near me at the moment and see where it gets me.
I have one level 80 character who can go anywhere so if I farm chances are I use him.
The others I tend to experiment with because I’m not used to their classes.
Just today I had my thief run by a Champ Ettin, use stealth and some skills to distract him, grab a skill point, then ran like heck out of there.

It gave me the little jolt of excitement because I knew he would womp me in a fight.

Usually my biggest source of interesting and random events come from randomly accepting a party request with some stranger. Sometimes the experience gets dulled when they ask “is my armor good?” to which I just answer “just play and we’ll find out!”

Then there’s the random acts of_kindness I do with food trays, random mailing of powerups appropriate for the map, and the upgrading of things in wvw just because they need it.

At this point I’m either playing through the eyes of another person, or randomly drifting around feeling good because I can do anything. So either I’m Doctor Who or Simon from TTGL.

Going through zones with “Map completion” turned off in map settings. I love the feeling of finding a cool place by myself and not just because it was a PoI, a vista or a skill point. I also do whatever event I pass by in the process and immerse myself in the story of the zone by reading all NPC text available. Soloing champions or doing jumping puzzles is also really fun!

map completion and doing random pug dungeon group. Trying out alt and see how they perform in dungeon.

Dungeon group get really frustrating though. If you get in a good group it is a breeze. In a bad group you spend 1 hour and couldn’t even complete it, because group is just bad.

I guess GW2 was not designed to fit my end game play style. What I enjoy the most about this game is all the variety of build/gear combos I can experiment with. Unfortunately, to acquire runes and sigils and sometimes mats I have to rely on the TP where prices on some of those are through the roof. In a way my playstyle is more expensive than creating a stupid legendary since I have no way of recovering those runes without destroying the armor to try something different or no way to try new runes without losing the old ones. In order to support my gaming vices I need to make to most amount of cash in the least amount of time so I am all about rewards. I used to run shelt/pen/plinx, nerfed. I used to run fractals, nerfed. Snow trolls, nerfed, Grubs, nerfed, Lyssa (although I didn’t agree with stopping the event from being completed) nerfed. All I have left is CoF1 which is even more mind numbing than any of the above. I guess I shall just have to stop exploring all the intricacies that Anet provided us with character creation and stick to 1 build and follow the sheep from meta to meta and be content with the crumbs that drop.

I have 9 characters. I switch between them at random as the mood strikes me. I do most everything in the game. I haven’t done explorable dungeons much since November, but I am hoping my new guild will get to them sooner or later.

No matter what zone I’m in, I find things to do. I try to complete Group events solo. I wander and always seem to find something new.

As far as rewards go, I’ve had to adjust my expectations. In other MMO’s, killing bosses in dungeons and raids is the means to acquire new/better gear. GW2 gear is not acquired that way. It can be crafted, earned with accumulated badges, gained from drops from random max level mobs or gotten randomly from chests. I either buy or craft most of mine, though I’ve gotten a few exotic drops I’m saving for alts.

Since buying is a primary means for me, the crap loot is no longer crap, it’s more grist for the gold mill. A chest dropping three blues, a green and a green crest may be crap loot, but it’s also 5-6 silver. Insignificant in the moment, but it adds up over time.

As far as open world drops, I find the GW2 open world to be more rewarding than the WoW open world, for instance. In all my 13 months in WoW I could count the blue gear drops on one hand. I made most of my money there by farming nodes. Drops from mobs fought while gathering never got me much there, but here they do. Even butter is selling for over 40 copper per, and I get it by the threes and fours in low level zones.

I know that the attitude adjustment I’m talking about doesn’t mean much if you’re trying to accumulate gold for a precursor or legendary, but it does help me to feel rewarded for playing.

Julie Yann.5379:

I guess GW2 was not designed to fit my end game play style. What I enjoy the most about this game is all the variety of build/gear combos I can experiment with. Unfortunately, to acquire runes and sigils and sometimes mats I have to rely on the TP where prices on some of those are through the roof. In a way my playstyle is more expensive than creating a stupid legendary since I have no way of recovering those runes without destroying the armor to try something different or no way to try new runes without losing the old ones. In order to support my gaming vices I need to make to most amount of cash in the least amount of time so I am all about rewards. I used to run shelt/pen/plinx, nerfed. I used to run fractals, nerfed. Snow trolls, nerfed, Grubs, nerfed, Lyssa (although I didn’t agree with stopping the event from being completed) nerfed. All I have left is CoF1 which is even more mind numbing than any of the above. I guess I shall just have to stop exploring all the intricacies that Anet provided us with character creation and stick to 1 build and follow the sheep from meta to meta and be content with the crumbs that drop.

Funny you should say that. The whole mentality is play the way you want to. If you are a person that loves to farm…well they seem like they are nerfing one farm spot after the other and are sheepherding you to the metas. Why? I dont know.

might be that you have to wait 3+h for the metas to spawn to get the one/day guaranteed rare for that event that your not even guaranteed.

cesmode.4257:

Regarding finding people to play with: Unfortunately, anyone that Ive found to play with has quit. The people that still play are online far too infrequently.

Yes, im a product of WoW being conditioned for years to expect reward, and good reward for my time and effort spent. I do enjoy jumping puzzles. Awsome views, and they are fun. Then you get to the chest, youre reminded of the fact that you are to be rewarded, and suddenly my mind shifts without me knowing to a stance that “Hey, I need to get something for my troubles”. I open the chest and its junk.

I guess that’s what sets me apart from most of the people on the forums. I never played WoW and don’t expect other games to be clones of it. Well, I tried the free account thing for about four hours and 12 levels or so before deciding it wasn’t worth playing and uninstalled, I don’t consider that playing the game since I only saw about 1% of it. It’s just not my cup of tea.

I have played a lot of games over the years, especially the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series games, with and without using cheat codes to make the games less frustrating. One thing that I’ve noticed is that I enjoy the journey more than the destination. That is, I have more fun in the beginning stages of the game, when there are a lot of enemies I can’t defeat and I have to make tough decisions about what gear to buy, than towards the end when I one-shot mooks and carry the Infinity +1 Sword of Awesomeness that you need to kill the big bad.

I have also found that when I use cheat codes to get unlimited gold and the best gear early in the game, I usually get bored with it pretty quickly and move on to another game. So I try to balance the frustration of getting killed/reloading often with the boredom of making the game too easy.

I think a lot of people here are stuck in that “endgame” mode where you already have the Sword of Awesomeness and when you try to play a game that doesn’t hand it to you immediately, you start looking for shortcuts to get there. Myself, I like the fact that I can’t just give myself +20 levels and +1,000,000 gold in this game. If I had everything I wanted there would be no reason to go out into the world and get it.

Go get it. Enjoy the journey, the destination will be upon you soon enough.

cesmode.4257:

Yes, im a product of WoW being conditioned for years to expect reward, and good reward for my time and effort spent. I do enjoy jumping puzzles. Awsome views, and they are fun. Then you get to the chest, youre reminded of the fact that you are to be rewarded, and suddenly my mind shifts without me knowing to a stance that “Hey, I need to get something for my troubles”. I open the chest and its junk.

I got an exotic ring from the easy Jumping Puzzle in LA, my first ever Exotic from a JP, although I’ve done all of them, some more than once, in fact I don’t remember getting a rare from a JP before. Then, I did the Pirate JP in LA, which is considerably longer and obviously harder and got some blues (and a green worthless crest)

There is a serious issue with rewards in this game, doing something effortless and fast shouldn’t reward more than doing something actually difficult. But, I’ve learned to deal with the rewards issue and enjoy what I enjoy most without looking for rewards, if I get rewarded for doing anything then so be it, something extra.

To answer your OP question, I do a huge variety of activities in this game and that’s why I’m not bored even after 2k hours logged:

I play a bit of sPVP with guildies/friends or even solo, trying new builds, playing a new profession etc, never stay in one profession/build all the time it gets boring. Despite what people might say, I find sPVP to be fun, in short bursts.

I play a lot of WvW and I’m fortunate to be on a very active WvW server, lots of good battles and fun there. Having a good commander is essential there, but even without one, I manage to find something fun to do there. I just focus on helping the war effort to the best of my abilities.

I used to run a lot of fractals to get to the higher levels, it was a nice and fun journey to get to level 48 for me, then I started playing less and less because you can’t progress any higher. I’m now leveling a few alts to get them to higher levels to keep it interesting.

I run dungeons that I actually like, my current favorite is Crucible of Eternity. It’s a fun, for me, dungeon that also has some nice rewards.

I go around in the open world searching for events, setting traveling goals. Go from point A to point B. The dailies help a lot here, they give an extra incentive when they are zone specific. Running from LA to Orr, while doing events, gathering materials etc along the way was something I was doing quite often, and for me, it was fun. Now I do the whole trip less often, but I still do it. I’ve conditioned myself not to use Waypoints, at all, traveling on foot and enjoying the journey is important.

Of course I try to do all Dailies each day and do as many achievements as possible, combining them with any of the above. I also do a 100% Exploration, I have 3 already and working on a 4th, combining world exploration with the daily achievements makes both activities all the more interesting/fun. Dailies provide the extra reward, while 100% exploration provides the extra fun/diversity.

Of course Guild Missions and events with my, very active, guild are very high on my priority list.

Stalk RP-ers. Don’t mess with their RP, or don’t interrupt them. Just… sit down and watch o.o

Thank you guys. All makes sense.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
So like many, I have/am placing too much value on reward, grinding for mats, etc. For those of you that just play to play and have fun, what do YOU do? I just completed Hidden Garden, very fun. Wish there were more(Ive been in the dwarven one once). But other than map completion, what nooks and crannies have you discovered that are worth discovering? What intrinsic value are you finding in the game?

Well when i started GW2 i played ~1400 hours before i take a few months break, in those 1400 hours i did 100% world, pvp, wvw, puzzles, crafting, alt rolling, all dungeons both mode and i really had a blast but if you get obsessed with gathering items/loot/what ever….then you will get bored in every game really quick. So what i suggest you should do is log in and then decide what is fun thing to do for that day and do it, and repeat that every time….that is what i do

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
So like many, I have/am placing too much value on reward, grinding for mats, etc. For those of you that just play to play and have fun, what do YOU do? I just completed Hidden Garden, very fun. Wish there were more(Ive been in the dwarven one once). But other than map completion, what nooks and crannies have you discovered that are worth discovering? What intrinsic value are you finding in the game?

All I do is meander about with a friend. We love doing dungeons but it’s whatevs. A mutual friend of ours just started so we spent a good bit of time destroying some starter-zone stuff. Ah, fun times. Especially now that Shadow Behemoth is fixed (we took a break during Spring Semester).

I do have a fondness for the Dynamic Events, even if they technically aren’t actually Dynamic. So much more fun than the non-dungeon stuff I used to play for my MMO fix.

I´m having a blast with WvW skirmishing right now. Or how about sPvP / tPvP? It´s all about finding a group of people you can play with.

I set goals for myself. Like completing a map or zone, earning x amount of gold, earning a WvW rank, hitting achievement points, completing dungeons, etc. I try and change it up, enjoy different parts of the game, and do so with friends. I’ve got no interest in ignoring the game for the sake pof the reward, because the point of the reward is to use for enjoying the.game. This is where many people seem to go wrong in these games.