Guild Wars 2

Separating what is inherently fun from what is fun because it’s rewarding is difficult, especially in MMOs where so much is driven by the desire for rewards.

So what activities in GW2 do you find inherently enjoyable? I.e. you would do them regularly regardless of any associated rewards.

To me that would be:

-WvW, to a certain extent. Zerg clashes especially and the associated mass-slaughter are one of the few highlights of the game.

-The odd dungeon run, especially if it’s challenging and a social experience.

-The occasional PvP match, just to affirm my skill. Currently PvP rewards are virtually useless anyway so they have no real tangible reward attached to them as is.

But other then that, I don’t think I’d do much else. Framing mats, doing events whatever else I do during my play-time is almost always incentivized by some sort of reward.

But what about you? What would you be doing in GW2 if it weren’t for rewards?

I actually enjoy doing events and map completion. I know…I know…it’s weird, but I do. I do events I have no need for the rewards for, if it’s something my character would do. Because I tend to immerse myself in my characters.

In fact, different characters might choose to do different events. Some of my characters don’t have any desire to help someone make a profit, but they’d sure as hell help protect the innocent. Other characters have other priorities.

I like jumping puzzles as well…and dungeons to some degree, particularly fractals. I did my first level 34 fractal today, and had a blast.

That said, it might very well be who I was doing this stuff with, rather than the content itself. In an MMO that’s harder to separate out.

Dungeons, exploring the world. That’s been about it for me, really. There’s a lot to explore and a lot of dungeons to do, but not much reason to go back to them.

Dungeons and wiping blobs in WvW.

Almost everything.
Except the traditional-MMO-borrowed cheesy stuff like dailies and whatnot, also things like living story and temporary content.

I go around and take screenshots of what I think is scenic, and edit/resize it so I can send it to family members as Wallpapers for their computers.

They never know that its from a video game lol.

I enjoy visual costumization.

Being able to quickly swap armour sets, using items to transform myself into other creatures – preferably while in combat, collecting skins, collecting items that give you special effects.

In PvP I like it when I can see how many players you have killed. I have hundreds of screenshots from WoW where I was the top killer at the end of battlegrounds.

Also things I can spawn in the world. Mounts, pets, flags, campfires, finishers, whatever.

That is my kind of carrot.
I remember in WoW my bags, my entire bank and about half of my void storage were full of items like these.

Sadly I don’t have a picture of all the items I had collected before I quit when GWII was released, but here is a picture of I took in 2011.

Open world roaming, either solo or with a friend or two. I try to avoid the zergs unless I particularly want the rewards. I don’t want to pug so, as there are normally only two or three of us on, dungeons are there is we really want a challenge. Taking out a champion solo or completing a JP with out resorting to the wiki also give me a sense of achievement.

Playing Crab toss and pulling random people that don’t even have the crab towards me until it kitten es them off so hard that they start attack me.

I really enjoy speedrunnning CoE and trying to pull the fastest run possible with a random PUG.

And world bosses. As boring as the actual fight with Jormag is, the atmosphere pulls be in every time. Could be Soule’s brilliant music.

Personal Story, to some extent. Mostly because I’m interested in seeing all possible discussions (which I’m still working on). I love to help others with this btw, as I’m still poking at every class mechanic, then will poke at every racial story branch, then (maybe) complete PS on another character or two.

Games that our guild made up (our own form of ‘emergent gameplay’). Karka Rodeo, Quaggan Survivor (our version of the Rush, on a different map), 3D Racing (basically a JP race). Last night we had a ‘Help us with JPs’ event, finally got Dark Reverie done, and was introduced to two puzzles in Maelstrom that I didn’t know about. We actually had a similar, ad-hoc event for Obsidian Sanctum a few months ago, when the Kite got stuck in there. :p

Similar events at a community level, like the Yak Parade that TC holds in a borderlands (finally got to see one, thanks guys). It’s making me consider looking up any of my friends from Uru still in this game, and organizing our own form of the ‘St Pats Parade’ in March (this would be done on a City map though – perhaps Black Citadel).

I still poke at map completion, JP completion, dungeons, etc, and just about anything not LS related atm (though I have done LS metas from time to time). But as my sig implies, I look beyond the game and have fun with the friends I have been playing with here.

My top three in order: Hearts, Dynamic events, Vistas and WvW .
I think Map completion (exploration) & Personal story deserve decent rewards but would still do them.

World Bosses, Dungeons & Jumping puzzles I want AWESOME guaranteed rewards for completion.

I think my top 3 are these:

1. Watching everyone else. It’s fun to just sit and watch the players and their conversations. Sometimes you get good information on parts of the world you may not be too familiar with. Other times you get fun fluff from the RPers. Other times you can see the same armor on 16 different people and each of them look different.

2. Wandering around the world and seeing the details. Like the kids running around all over the place, or the silly owls that walk instead of flying in Frostgorge. Sometimes I will be on a specific “mission” such as a certain vista or waypoint, and I have to just stop and look at the art.

3. all the things there are to do. I don’t mean that I do all of them, but the fact that they’re there is amazing. Let the naysayers complain all they want, but there is such a variety of things to do that I could NEVER go back to a KTR type quest hub.

All in all, I want to say Thanks, ANet.

sniffles
This thread… it’s beautiful.

Exploring the World and new areas just for the excitement of seeing them.
Doing content for nice rewards (exotics etc) I like my Carrots..
Chatting to my friends
Doing Dungeons and Jump puzzles for the fun of it, not for a challenge, i do like to actually complete them not just hope one day i “might” complete them..

I do not enjoy hard/challenging content (i have real life for that).
I do not enjoy useless Dailies and Monthlies.
I do not enjoy RNG Content
I do not enjoy Time Gated content.

Anything that’s not grinding, farming or consisting of daily chores. I do enjoy dye collecting, long walks on the beach, and carrots, as long as they’re not dangling in front of me.

I enjoy different things on different characters because I do what they would do.
My Mesmer is a secret agent so she likes to get involved in political plots an covert ops

My ranger is a lone wolf who likes challenges.
So I do things like exploring and champ solo’s on her, also things like the gauntlet.

My Engi is a hothead front line fighter- so she will rush to where the action is

For me: I adore map completion and dynamic events- I love just running events form one end of a map to the other- seeing the stories play out, talking to npc’s sticking my head into holes, trying to find my way up to that interesting looking spot.

Just yesterday I saw an small event in Kessex Hills I have never seen before.
Some very few of us also managed to take down Bloodwitch, I thought it was going to be a complete wipe but we did it.
I love running into random people on the map and talking on a really cool battle and then parting ways again.

Probably only a few dungeon paths with a group of people that don’t stuck in place to zerg but actually play the game.

Some dungeon paths, WvW everything but with zerging taken in little doses, map completion & exploration, jumping puzzles, soloing stuff (easy stuff, I’m no Wethospu), SPvP hotjoins to try new builds or tournaments when I have a team. Also Personal Story (early levels), Living Story (not every update), SAB <3

Basically the whole game, but alternating activities.

What I do that I don’t like because of the rewards (and I feel terribly bored all the time when doing):
- Spamming fast dungeons for emp fragments
- Spamming temples/world bosses with timers for dragonite orbs
- Daily runs of Orr gathering to get the insane amounts required to level a profession

1) Exploring.

2) basic combat gameplay wielding BiS gear.

dungeons
fractals
exploring
jumping puzzles
tequatl
helping friends with random stuff
kitten ing around with a bunch of friends

:D

Events, especially if they change the world. I like retaking forts, getting rid of bandits, and so on. That feels more interesting and heroic than farming champions that have no story or context. I wish events mattered more, though.

I also like dungeons, sometimes. A but challenging, lets you develop some skill mastery. Some are better than others, though.

I like exploring sometimes. I like finding little hidden caves and secrets, like that unmarked charr that gives you a town clothing hat.

I like spvp. I like it for similar reasons I liked tf2. Competitive, no vertical progression. If I was anet I would put more attention on spvp and consider making it f2p like tf2. Make hats and skins, make money.

I don’t like leveling, grinding, dailies, rng, farming, people failing events on purpose to get better loot, or loot in general.

Dungeons and Fractals. I keep telling myself it’s for the rewards. Need gold for this and that. Need fractal relic for backpieces, etc. But it happens a few times that some runs were so fun, coz we either goof around alot (run with guildies, i dont pug, for obvious reasons) or try to challenge ourselves with various things just for the fun of it, that sometimes after the runs i totally forgot about the piles of loot in my inventory till the next day.

I do enjoy jumping puzzles as well, i keep doing a few long or chalenging ones (skipping stones, Obsidian scantum etc) just to see if i can do it without making any bad jumps. Finishing is reward itself and i rarely ever care whats in the chest at the end.

World bosses and such events are fun enough to do when they are there, but because they areon only for specific times, and you happen to need something from them (dragonite ore) it annoys me to have to keep tabs on them and wait for them, so much that their fun factor feels a little diminished for me…

I like to throw snowballs at kids just for the fun of it! Shame I can’t pelt their parents as well, now that would be a blast!

What’s fun for me changes like the wind direction at any given moment. My goals change on a whim and while heading towards them I usually count that activity as fun and usually doesn’t include jumping puzzles.

I think I have the most fun and the good kind of frustration in spvp. It’s fun for however long I can stand moving between 3 points and becomes less so when I realize I lost some time doing some other things I wanted to get done in that play period.
If they added more modes I would probably spend an even larger chunk of my game time there.

That being said, I balance my playtime pretty evenly between all this game has to offer. Except for jp’s…I hate them and will stay away from them if I can.

WvW, I’ve specced my character around WvW because I find it the most fun.

Right now nothing. I made two ascended weapons for my main so that’s done. I’m burnt out on all the temp content and stopped chasing after it. Tired of dailies and time gated content so I decided to ignore it all. Then I realized that when I set that aside, there was nothing I really wanted to do.

Now I log on about once a week, realize I don’t miss it and log out again.

Inherently fun (for me, not in any particular order):

Leveling / Map completion – I know. I’m weird.

Dungeons – Story Mode. I just like watching the stories and the interactions.

DE hunting – I will go out of my way if I see a DE pop up on my map. I simply like doing them.

LS – Not the achievement hunting per se, but just checking out what’s new, catching the little story tidbits and trying to piece it all together. Sometimes it’s like playing an extremely vague version of Clue. Makes for some good fan fiction ideas…

New Tequatl – still aint beat him, but having a blast trying

None of these things are generally super rewarding… but I like them none the less.

What i find inherently fun :

- WvW : Zerg vs Zerg, solo roaming, small group roaming, taking and defending forts. I love it, i’d love more/different maps,/sort of objectives
- Doing events, i almost always do the one that involve fighting something.
- Exploring, finding cool remote places (my favorite area is the underground skrytt (spelling) city i think it’s in a norm map.
- Jumping puzzles
- Collecting armors to change the look of my characters. Please make a working “wardrobe” it would add so much fun imo.
- Collecting dyes

What i don’t like :
- hearts : they look like a list of boring stuff to do (most of them).
- living story : not interesting
- personal story : it is bad.
- dailies : it’s more of a chore than anything fun. Thanks god they’re short, i find that i’m starting to play “the way i want to play” once i’m done with them. Bad psychological impact on me.
- Events that involve gathering stuff.
- WvW : karma trains.
- Crafting.

Since most everything is RNG grind I’d say doing permanent achievements, I did most of them. At least I know a set amount of AP are going to be rewarded to me.

They need yet another basic MMO utility though – a way to check peoples achievements and compare them, see which ones just grinded a ton of dailies or actually played the game.

Playing with others is inherently fun. Doing DEs with some randoms in the world, running a dungeon with guildies, etc. It’s an online game, so I am here for some social aspect of gaming. I also like the personal story, and wish it were longer. Each new character I make gets his/her own narrative…and then it breaks into the same thing as my other characters. Keep the individuality alive for the 40+ story.

Don’t like jumping puzzles cuz I’m generally terrible at them. Don’t like WvW (so far) cuz I’m clueless there.

Inherently fun – doing a new(ish) challenging dungeon with a nice group of players which clicks well together.

Overcoming a really challenging boss fight for the first time.

Solo roaming in WvW and actually killing someone (I’m no pvp player at heart). I solo roam a lot but usually I get killed – or I run away, which I have gotten a lot better at.

Fiddling with character customization, testing out armor and dye combinations, and finding a good look which I enjoy seeing for quite a while to come.