Guild Wars 2

I’m a little curious about what you guys actually do to keep continual interest in the game once you’ve reached level 80 with the character type you prefer to play. I’ve been playing for a few months now and I have to say that initial aw-inspiring feel of what was to be explored after hitting 80 wore off extremely fast, especially being a member of an active guild.

I see a lot of arguments about what the end game should be, and what the future of the game should be, and a lot of complaints about the game being too grindy, or not grindy enough, but I gotta say, there really is not all that much to this game that feels “finished”. The reason I bought the game was because I enjoyed playing GW1 PvE and enjoyed the lore, the lore in this game is almost non existent. Not to mention the content is almost non existent. The personal storyline left so much to be desired, and the few months ive been around for living story, has kept me nothing but confused as to what exactly is the central focus of the lore.

I’ve also noticed a disturbing trend that will probably wind up driving me towards another game in 2014. While I can appreciate the fact that most gear in the exotic level is insanely accessible with very little effort, anything above this requires annoying adventures in crafting and grind for materials, and while the games central focus is to be neutral stat wise with its primary focus on skinning, there is no real variety compared to other games I have played in terms of item variety, which seems to be the reason why every-time I put effort into a dungeon, or a world boss, or something else that supposedly yields great achievement rewards…I wind up getting absolutely nothing for it but junk to salvage or sell.

I’ve also noticed that arena net no longer seems to really care about improving the PvE in the game in the short term, their primary focus seems to be WvW and PvP, which is not something i bought the game for. I’ve participated in several conversations with regards to the direction of the game, and how awful alot of the recent patches have been with respect to not only gem store items, artwork, and storylines but the lack of depth to the game. I thought it was comical when I looked on the ncsoft website today for job openings and saw how many positions for the very things we have been complaining about are now open for new candidates, everything from character artists to VFX artists and economic systems designers. lol

I’m curious as to why everyone is so adamantly against having grinding for gear and more difficult dungeons or bosses that require more then 5 people to complete, or for that matter, more depth to the game, be it content(items), story, or just improvements to the way the world functions. Especially when everything in the game is just so kitten doable, ive pretty much explored all of the features of being lvl 80.

The personal story has Trahearne.
The living story has Scarlet.

Many do not like the plant people. Less than 15% of GW2 players actually have a sylvari, let alone main a sylvari. This should give you an idea.

The plant people dont have much to them other than being surprised by very common things and asking absolutely silly questions. This gets redundant and boring quite fast. Even the sylvari hero Caithe seems like the 5th wheel, we have Rytlock vs Logan pairing, Zojja vs Eir pairing and Caithe is simply the one-copper-glue.

What keeps people playing is RP. Do you like your character but don’t like the story that Trahearne stole from you? Make your own! I once saw a group of people running the dredge fractal with 5 asurans pretending to be Bilbo Baggins and friends, and the dredge were orcs. Sure it is farfetched but they were clearly having fun.

Some people even level up their characters so they can RP in different regions of the game. The game world is beautiful, you have to admit at least that.

tl;dr
The answer to your question is RP.

WvW and Teamspeak

Super Adventure Box. Yes, that’s the only thing that interest me now and it’s not always available.

I’m in the same situation as OP, or rather I was already in that situation since november 2012, from this point on the only things that kept me playing were leveling alts and checking out the living story, now I’m only loging-in once every two weeks to do the new achievements and in hope that there will be good lore but I’m more and more dissapointed in the direction this game is taking.

WvW kept my interest in the game, until I stopped playing. Originally I came for the awesome gw1 lore, but it fell short.

Dunno, spent a lot of money on gems and skins etc for fun. After reaching 80 a few times, unsure what the point is. Exploring is only fun for so long, even worse if your class is slooowww moving. There doesn’t seem to be an expansion anytime soon so may quit in a month or so.

Stuff.

Sorry; I’ll try giving an actual answer: RP, Guns/Military/Combat/Charr, Lore, Fluff (Like the gas mask skin. huOOOH), The hope that one day I’ll make a cartoon about my Charr characters.

There really is no endgame. getting to level 80 is a just a very small part of the game, WvW is probably the best thing to do once you’ve completed/explored everything else.

again, Anet put in levels just so people could feel like they are progressing through something, the world has so many other things to do it’s insane.

And it doesn’t Stop!!!!

Queensdale train is the endgame!

Oh, something different every week. Some living story, until I got the meta if it’s not quite my thing. I currently enjoy doing fractals. Some dailies, a JP here and there, trying out new builds, goofing around and helping out in my guild. Killing stuff (sometimes, I just want to kill stuff). Playing dress-up with my alts. Leveling alts.
World completion, when I didn’t have it – that was very nice. Discovering new things, doing mini-dungeons. I always find something to do, and when I don’t, I do/play something else for a while – read a new book, binge-watch a new TV series…

Roleplay. That’s what keeps me in any game, being part of an ongoing, evolving story using the game world as a set and inspiration. Collaborative storytelling, improv, friendships in and out of character. I’d never have lasted seven years in WoW if I weren’t part of a quality RP guild.

It helps that GW2 offers beautiful landscapes, fluid animations, dynamic combat, and fun fluff as DietPepsi notes. Lots of grist for the RP mill. I enjoy the heck out of PvE with my guildies, too, be it dungeons or fractals or world bosses.

So … people. My fellow players. THEY keep me going as I am on my 9th 80, working steadily on my 10th.

I actually stopped playing in Feb due to just… boredom. I looked at SW:TOR and folks said the personal stories in that were awesome do I did, and it was fun for a few months/maxed chars. Then I tried Panda-land in WoW to sorta catch up from where I left off years ago. Ended up in about the same spot I was when I quit the last time, so I came back to GW2. Been back since… august? and I’m pretty satisfied (or at least sated) to have a game I can play without feeling like if I don’t log in, I’m wasting money.

To answer your question: I’ve actually found things to do in game that I enjoy and a good group of guildies that I enjoy doing them with. Things I did upon my return:

- Picked a “main character” – At first, I went through my previously maxed characters and maxed a few others until I settled on a main that I really wanted to focus on. This ended up being my Mesmer. I started mixing and matching armors to find “my” look, rather than just the shiniest. I see people layering shiny upon shiny these days, but sometimes the best thing to improve your look is to hide some of your armor and use cheaper, thematic weapons that fit. Make your light armor look medium or heavy. See how far you can take things with the tools you’re given.

- Started doing dailies for laurels for ascended trinks. Spent the 100 for the endless mystery cat tonic (SO worth it) and then started picking out trinks to grow into. I’ll eventually craft ascended weps and armor, but this makes for a good long term goal.

- Started working on a legendary. Thinking I’m saving the pre for close to the end as the new legendaries may come out before I"m able to get all my T6 together and… lets face it, playing a “darker” character there’s really only Twilight, Predator and Incinerator and as a Mes who doesn’t prefer GS, this vexes me. Anet may have new legendaries use the same mats as the old, and so long as I don’t tie myself down to one, I can change my mind later.

- LS achieves. Mixes things up, if I’m interested in the content. Krait tower is pretty cool. Storywise, I’d love to be able to quality control test some of the content before they send it out, but as long as they keep putting a “skip to the end” button, its not that bad.

- Guild stuffs. I run with CTH on Maguuma and really enjoy doing things with them. A good GL and good group of folks (with various mixes of priorities) can make a game that much more fun to log in and play. We do Guild missions from time to time, WvW, dungeon runs.. just normal stuff. Most folks are happy to help, make good conversation and all that makes the game much more enjoyable, less of a grind. …and they put up with my noob kitten , so that helps.

Overall, these are just my reasons for playing and things I find fun. They might not last forever, but for now, they’ll do. The way I play fits my RL and I space things out with RL goals, so the game stays… just a game.

I’ve been doing fractals to work on my legendary, but after I’m finished I plan on achievement hunting. I was going through the list of achievements available and there is a ton of stuff I haven’t gotten into yet, playing since the first time we were able to set foot in Tyria.

I started feeling burnt out recently but I realized it’s because I chose to run dungeons/fractals all day, do my daily, and log off. I would imagine that a lot of people who are jaded may be in the same boat as me.

Another part of the problem may be that ArenaNet keeps adding great items to the gem store without adding great items to the game itself. Players see a lot of things they may want but getting them is more unrealistic than just playing the game.

Between that, massive game mode balance discrepancies, and content that herds players through, I get unmotivated quickly. But after I get the last thing I want (legendary) I’ll be taking my time and trying to enjoy all of the game.

Not sure if this helps. Good luck finding what you enjoy.

I’m working for Sunrise.. which would be my 2nd legendary. I often ask myself what’s the point though. :/ Basically I do love the world and combat.. so I want to be in Tyria.. but I’m starting to struggle, especially as my guild becomes more and more dead.

I play for fun and finally made my legendary bolt just a month ago.

Now, I’m no legendary collector but I’ve got my eyes on sunrise and meteorologicus.

Also I love playing my alts

WvW – Though my guild isn’t active…
TP flipping – It’s funny, I don’t have much gold (90g), but am able to generate without doing much xD.
Trying different champ train farms – though boring at times.

The first point (WvW) i actually used to do it for fun, till guild went inactive.
The last two points, all in hopes of one day building a legendary (faint hope).

Alts, roleplaying, writing fictions, travelling all over the world to take screenshots, the activities, some of the LS, talking to every single named npc I find, composing/translating tunes for my flute -next I’m going to learn New Krytan ^^.

I do map completion, roleplay, dailies/monthlies, organized guild events, jumping puzzles, alt leveling, open world events, and occasionally living story stuff. It works out well, since I don’t want to be in game at all times.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

The personal story has Trahearne.
The living story has Scarlet.

Many do not like the plant people. Less than 15% of GW2 players actually have a sylvari, let alone main a sylvari. This should give you an idea.

Those are some pretty fake statistics you’ve conjured up out of nowhere.

My wife plays this game. She isn’t a gamer by any sane definition. As long as she wants to play, I’m in. Of course, the moment she says she is done with the game permenantly, there is no reason for me to keep playing and moving on to something else… especially since (my favorite class) the Ranger’s pet isn’t getting fixed now or maybe ever… although I really do like the people in my guild. They’re good people and mostly entertaining.

How do I keep interested? By doing the following:

Following each new 2 Week Update, I:

1. Log in first two days, finish all the achievements
2. Buy up all the limited time stuff I can find
3. Sell stuff I bought 6 months ago
4. Go play a different game for the next 12 days until a new 2 Week Update starts
5. ???
6. Profit

That’s how I keep interested in GW2. I play as little as possible, so that the tiny amount of interesting stuff they add stays interesting to me.

Outings with my guild. That’s it. The rest is just grind.

Guhracie.3419:

I do map completion, roleplay, dailies/monthlies, organized guild events, jumping puzzles, alt leveling, open world events, and occasionally living story stuff. It works out well, since I don’t want to be in game at all times.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

The personal story has Trahearne.
The living story has Scarlet.

Many do not like the plant people. Less than 15% of GW2 players actually have a sylvari, let alone main a sylvari. This should give you an idea.

Those are some pretty fake statistics you’ve conjured up out of nowhere.

Perhaps they are a bit outdated, but it is very close

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/14111-character-statistics-pie-charts/page__st__30
When the game started, 15% of players from a sample size said they would play sylvari.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/POLL-Race-Gender-Profession-demographics
This was made about 9 months ago, and the result for sylvari is about 20%. That is to say multiple players from that sample have multiple sylvari counted(so counted more than once) if you check the thread. The number of players who actually own at least 1 sylvari character would be clearly less than or equal to it, so approximately 15%-20%.

If you have more up to date statistics, please conjure them out of somewhere for us to see.

I started to lose interest in playing right after ascended weapons were introduced. Even though I don’t care for the character, Scarlet’s Invasion was the last LS update I enjoyed.

Since then I’ve just been keeping myself busy with my neglected alts. Recently I’ve come to realise how much fun Ele is, and I absolutely hated that class at first. Farming a few dungeon paths now and again as well, and ever so often I wind up in a PUG with good folks and we have some laughs along the way. But I’m definitely in agreement with the OP, far too much junk

Unfortunately, I can’t do most of the things I’d like to. Storage issues make it impractical to have more than one set of gear per character, and that bums me out a little. I’d probably have three sets each per character to match whatever environment I’m in at the moment (yeah, I’m OCD like that…lol). And ascended crafting…..sigh.

Jahroots.6791:

I started to lose interest in playing right after ascended weapons were introduced. Even though I don’t care for the character, Scarlet’s Invasion was the last LS update I enjoyed.

Since then I’ve just been keeping myself busy with my neglected alts. Recently I’ve come to realise how much fun Ele is, and I absolutely hated that class at first. Farming a few dungeon paths now and again as well, and ever so often I wind up in a PUG with good folks and we have some laughs along the way. But I’m definitely in agreement with the OP, far too much junk

Unfortunately, I can’t do most of the things I’d like to. Storage issues make it impractical to have more than one set of gear per character, and that bums me out a little. I’d probably have three sets each per character to match whatever environment I’m in at the moment (yeah, I’m OCD like that…lol). And ascended crafting…..sigh.

I used to have 7 cosmetic outfits on Lotro :-] [the max allowed for character]. . An outfit for Moria, one for Lothlorien, one for the tundra in Forochel…. Matching my mounts and all that. [http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5480/10959795936_2aec8c0f59_o.png] My kinship even had its own uniform! I ended up filling 300~ wardrobe/storage slots with gear lol. It surely kept me extremely busy. XD I really wish they revamped our cosmetic system.

Wait what, you really think wvw and spvp get more attention than pve?

A good WvW match keeps it interesting but with so few I have lost almost all interest in the game. I still play when I do because there are no other games out that interest me right now. I have no goals in the game anymore. I don’t do dungeons so I don’t care about a legendary. I already explored the world. The living story like 95% of the game world feels dead. I was close to a skin I wanted in the ap chest so for 4 weeks which was equal to 4 days of my playtime I had a goal.

I start another couple of alts and go again.

• My/Our guild kept me interested.
• Finding new players, like minded ones who loves how the game for what it is: an interactive art.
• Living Story made me want to wait what’s next, I know that it’s a hit or miss, but still something to look forward to
• I only have humar characters (5 of them), my long term goal is get all races. My next is Asura, followed by Norn, then probably Charr then Sylvarri
• I may have to do the preliminary Story Quests for these other races, but not planning to complete them since it’s the same for all anyway but that keeps me going
• I still trust Anet will do good things for the game

As for my advice to you, if you get tired of the game, and you feel no fun in this, then move on. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m gonna do once I got tired of the game.

Honestly, at this point, not much. Between the price for mats being ridiculously high and the karma nerf, a legendary doesn’t seem worth the time, especially the one I’m working on, Rodgort.

Ascended weapons are the same thing on a smaller scale.

Without BiS gear to skin, leveling alts becomes kind of meaningless, since I may as well skin low-level gear as skin second-tier level 80 gear.

Personally… I keep interest by not burning myself out on the content. It helps that I really only have maybe a couple hours a day to tool around. Yes, if you intentionally seek to grind out [x] as soon as you possibly can, it’s GOING to get tiring… and that’s true for any game on the market.

Roleplay and WvW, but mostly roleplay. It never gets old, unless you run out of imagination or of people to roleplay with, I guess.
Also, I sometimes go to Divinity’s Reach just to chat with the nice people that are on the map chat. There are some people that are there every night.
Having friends that play with you also help. I am very lucky because my best friend plays with me since the headstart, almost every day.

I log a few hours of WvW every week. I also talk on the lore forums.

I said this many times. New dungeons cannot keep the players playing. Players like me do it once and that’s it. To keep players playing we need constant world events, each lasting 1 or 2 weeks.

WvW, and tedious lion key farming for black lion ticket scraps (because let’s face it, the golden ticket is like 1 in a million chance, so don’t even bother hoping for one).

Oh and it seems everyday I’m constantly saving up all my gold for current AND future gem store skins. It kills me, it literally does. They’re so expensive, but they’re skins I must have :-( cough for example Grenth Hood that costs just over 41 gold cough

Kiayin.3427:

I used to have 7 cosmetic outfits on Lotro :-] [the max allowed for character]. . An outfit for Moria, one for Lothlorien, one for the tundra in Forochel…. Matching my mounts and all that. [http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5480/10959795936_2aec8c0f59_o.png] My kinship even had its own uniform! I ended up filling 300~ wardrobe/storage slots with gear lol. It surely kept me extremely busy. XD I really wish they revamped our cosmetic system.

Nice! Yeah, LotRo had an amazing cosmetic system. I remember grinding reputation points with the Lossoth in Forochel to buy that sweet fur-lined cloak. Good times, good times…

We’ve already got 3 tabs for gear, I’m also hoping GW2 gives us some more robust cosmetic options. I’d be happy if they even gave us one additional slot for combat gear. That’d keep me busy for a while.

I wouldn’t say mine is interest. I only keep playing cause my friend does, whenever she’s not playing you can be sure I’ll be on any other game that isn’t GW2.

The game is a total grind and with the ascended armor update on the way I’m going to feel much less inclined to play. I mainly play 2 characters, my guard and warrior, grinding 60g to craft 1 ascended weapon is extremely boring and it’s a very long process.

Living Stories don’t excite me one bit, they are all the same just with a different skin and are plain boring. Especially since they’re temporary which make me care less and less.

The recent fractal update hardly justifies more permanent content. Sorry to say but ANet have blinded themselves with “Living Stories” aka temporary content and making money.

When GW1 was released in 2005 it didn’t offer much but that quickly changed cause in 1 year time we got the Grenth’s footprint update and Factions the first expansion pack, 6 Months after Factions, Nightfall came out.

I could go on forever why the lack of interest in GW2. The game isn’t any better than one of those F2P games.

I play the game with my wife, slowly grinding out the gold,T6 mats, and clovers necessary for a Legendary. All the while hoping for a magical pre-cursor drop as I fight my way through PvE, WvW, dungeons, the QDale champ train and every so often, a Fractal. Aside from all of that I play the LS, knocking out the meta and stacking points so I can get my next skin.

WvW mostly. Sometimes dungeons with friends. Also got invited for edge of the mists so that will keep us busy.