Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if it’s the right sub forum..
But I was asked by a friend to come back and play GW2 again. So I would like to know if they added new stuff to do, possibly more rewarding as well? Or is it still 2 Blues and 1 Green? (precursor drops were like I don’t know 10^(-7) or so.)

I am not interested in story, but in gameplay changes and hard areas/dungeons, where teamplay is the only way to advance. Was anything like this added or may with the new content coming?

Thanks in advance.

If that’s why you stopped playing gw2 then you shouldn’t get back because that’s how the game is, that’s not an issue waiting for a fix.

As for difficulty, the game was always build for casual. Everything can be done with anything. The difficulty must come from you. Solo dungeon, speed runs, WvW raid, team PvP, etc. If you just take the content and play it normally, you will never get that challenging content because it made so that anyone can complete it in one way or the other.

If you’re a dungeoneer and left because of lack of challenges and boring loot, well the game is the same it was when you left. There was new living story season but nothing close to being worth of 200 gems per episode. There’s an expansion coming but since they’re avoiding using word dungeon every time they’re ask about it the case is lost.

If you measure reward simply by good drops, then you will not enjoy GW2. If you measure reward in terms of gold, then since you’ve last played they’ve made it vastly easier to make gold.

To most people good drops are just to sell for gold anyway. Very rarely are people waiting for a specific drop as an upgrade. Most seek out specific weapons for skins and/or precursors. Everything else is just TP fodder.

I came back 2 months ago, after not playing since release. There’s new stuff to do. Fractals are hard.

Thaddeus.4891:

If that’s why you stopped playing gw2 then you shouldn’t get back because that’s how the game is, that’s not an issue waiting for a fix.

As for difficulty, the game was always build for casual. Everything can be done with anything. The difficulty must come from you. Solo dungeon, speed runs, WvW raid, team PvP, etc. If you just take the content and play it normally, you will never get that challenging content because it made so that anyone can complete it in one way or the other.

I have just seen a thread where people were posting their hours and the amount of pres they got. Pretty entertaining: Many people with 5-10k hours and zero drops, I wonder why they actually drop after all…

Had been doing lots of dungeons before I quit, I can’t say they were speed! runs but most pugs were slow to me.
Solo/duo dungeons seems to have no point to me, but have spend some time with it as well.

Wahaha.7938:

I came back 2 months ago, after not playing since release. There’s new stuff to do. Fractals are hard.

I played lots of fractals and they were pretty easy to me, even though I don’t know what the max frac is right now. But I got pretty annoyed by the new resistances that you needed / everyone wanted you to have. The higher levels didn’t require more teamplay or coordination.

And another question came to my mind. Is the trading post still the only way to get lots of money?
I am not really interested in playing stock exchange to get some money.

If you only look at precursor drops to measure the rewards in this game you’ll be sad. Just like ppl that cry about not getting any precursor drop are sad. That’s a nice thing when it happen, but nobody should expect to drop a precursor, that’s one of the rarest drop in the game.

Yes the trading post is still the best way to make crazy amount of money if you know how to use it.

CCLilly.2139:

The higher levels didn’t require more teamplay or coordination.

Very incorrect. For example, I can tell you FoTM50 Uncategorized fractal requires proper coordination, otherwise a 20min fractal turns into a 80min fractal.

In fact, most of the upper fractals will require coordination on some level beyond zerg tactics. Not that there aren’t areas that have zerg tactics, but a level 1 Grawl fractal compared to a level 40 Grawl fractal will definitely test your team’s coordination.

Accidentally deleted all of what I just wrote.., so a short answer then.

If you only look at precursor drops to measure the rewards in this game you’ll be sad. Just like ppl that cry about not getting any precursor drop are sad. That’s a nice thing when it happen, but nobody should expect to drop a precursor, that’s one of the rarest drop in the game.

Yes the trading post is still the best way to make crazy amount of money if you know how to use it.

Yes, they are the rarest items but they should be able to obtain and it should feel rewarding not by putting 10k rares into the mystic forge. That doesn’t feel exciting nor will you feel any happier about getting one.
What I mean is that the game didn’t feel rewarding for me, most of the time I got 2Blues and a green for chests. That’s just a joke, no one wants those.

Draknar.5748:

Very incorrect. For example, I can tell you FoTM50 Uncategorized fractal requires proper coordination, otherwise a 20min fractal turns into a 80min fractal.

In fact, most of the upper fractals will require coordination on some level beyond zerg tactics. Not that there aren’t areas that have zerg tactics, but a level 1 Grawl fractal compared to a level 40 Grawl fractal will definitely test your team’s coordination.

Never done 50 fotm, but at the highest level I played ( don’t know what that was, 40?) you may have wiped here and there but it wasn’t because we needed more teamplay/coordination, more likely because of the lack of timing some skills or bad timing because someone accidentally engaged a new group.
The poor use of skills of the foes (mostly auto attacks) and not being able to interact with other people directly is what I would blame for the poor teamplay I noticed while playing. You can’t heal/shield/boon/remove others directly.
The difference between good and bad groups were that the good ones had 25 might & other boons up all the time.

And where do you need teamplay to kill the grawl boss? Basically you could do it alone. It would take a much longer time though. Of course with a good group you can kill him pretty fast compared to a not so well organized one, but apart from that?

Draknar.5748:

CCLilly.2139:

The higher levels didn’t require more teamplay or coordination.

Very incorrect. For example, I can tell you FoTM50 Uncategorized fractal requires proper coordination, otherwise a 20min fractal turns into a 80min fractal.

In fact, most of the upper fractals will require coordination on some level beyond zerg tactics. Not that there aren’t areas that have zerg tactics, but a level 1 Grawl fractal compared to a level 40 Grawl fractal will definitely test your team’s coordination.

It all depends on group comp as well. Granted a team doing 40 will have a somewhat optimal group but having an optimal set up in the higher tiers speeds things up immensely. Ive done runs at 50 that have taken 30 minutes and runs at lvl6 that have taken 2 hours. It all depends on the people you have, if they know what to do and what not.

CCLilly.2139:

Accidentally deleted all of what I just wrote.., so a short answer then.

If you only look at precursor drops to measure the rewards in this game you’ll be sad. Just like ppl that cry about not getting any precursor drop are sad. That’s a nice thing when it happen, but nobody should expect to drop a precursor, that’s one of the rarest drop in the game.

Yes the trading post is still the best way to make crazy amount of money if you know how to use it.

Yes, they are the rarest items but they should be able to obtain and it should feel rewarding not by putting 10k rares into the mystic forge. That doesn’t feel exciting nor will you feel any happier about getting one.
What I mean is that the game didn’t feel rewarding for me, most of the time I got 2Blues and a green for chests. That’s just a joke, no one wants those.

Draknar.5748:

Very incorrect. For example, I can tell you FoTM50 Uncategorized fractal requires proper coordination, otherwise a 20min fractal turns into a 80min fractal.

In fact, most of the upper fractals will require coordination on some level beyond zerg tactics. Not that there aren’t areas that have zerg tactics, but a level 1 Grawl fractal compared to a level 40 Grawl fractal will definitely test your team’s coordination.

Never done 50 fotm, but at the highest level I played ( don’t know what that was, 40?) you may have wiped here and there but it wasn’t because we needed more teamplay/coordination, more likely because of the lack of timing some skills or bad timing because someone accidentally engaged a new group.
The poor use of skills of the foes (mostly auto attacks) and not being able to interact with other people directly is what I would blame for the poor teamplay I noticed while playing. You can’t heal/shield/boon/remove others directly.
The difference between good and bad groups were that the good ones had 25 might & other boons up all the time.

And where do you need teamplay to kill the grawl boss? Basically you could do it alone. It would take a much longer time though. Of course with a good group you can kill him pretty fast compared to a not so well organized one, but apart from that?

Grawl boss? Really? Grawl boss (final fight) 40+ is brutal when the elementals spawn and you have an uncoordinated team. People wipe there constantly because of poor positioning and poor use of reflects. Like no joke, try it some time with a team of people that don’t know what they are doing.

The boss itself isn’t difficult, it’s the sheer number of elementals that spawn when he throws his shields up where people tend to fail. You need to get that shield off the boss before he gets to a hostage (since he heals if he reaches one) all while trying to mitigate like 20 elementals doing a bunch of ranged damage and cripples. People fail often on this fight at high levels.

At low levels the elementals don’t do much damage and you can sort of just take the damage while working on boss. Not so much at high levels.

Coming back to the main topic. Nothing has changed? After 2,5 years, really? (yes there is fotm)

What are you guys doing then? I mean I love grinding. It’s fun for me to farm for ‘that’ item or be tested by hard/challenging areas. But I did all of that or failed it.

It would make me sad to say no to the friend that asked me.

Draknar.5748:

Grawl boss? Really? Grawl boss (final fight) 40+ is brutal when the elementals spawn and you have an uncoordinated team. People wipe there constantly because of poor positioning and poor use of reflects. Like no joke, try it some time with a team of people that don’t know what they are doing.

The boss itself isn’t difficult, it’s the sheer number of elementals that spawn when he throws his shields up where people tend to fail. You need to get that shield off the boss before he gets to a hostage (since he heals if he reaches one) all while trying to mitigate like 20 elementals doing a bunch of ranged damage and cripples. People fail often on this fight at high levels.

At low levels the elementals don’t do much damage and you can sort of just take the damage while working on boss. Not so much at high levels.

It is hard if you have group that doesn’t know what to do, but how did they get to that fractal lvl, I wonder. And that is one example, one where coordination is needed for apropiate times. But what about the rest? Is there coordination needed as well?
What is with the other bosses/fractals? There have been a few new ones I think. What is outside of fotm?
This seems to get more interesting.

Travis the Terrible.4739:

It all depends on group comp as well. Granted a team doing 40 will have a somewhat optimal group but having an optimal set up in the higher tiers speeds things up immensely. Ive done runs at 50 that have taken 30 minutes and runs at lvl6 that have taken 2 hours. It all depends on the people you have, if they know what to do and what not.

Basically what were my impressions, that I remember.

CCLilly.2139:

Coming back to the main topic. Nothing has changed? After 2,5 years, really? (yes there is fotm)

What are you guys doing then? I mean I love grinding. It’s fun for me to farm for ‘that’ item or be tested by hard/challenging areas. But I did all of that or failed it.

It would make me sad to say no to the friend that asked me.

Well, I mean, it’s an MMO. So you still level characters, do dungeons, do PvP, etc.

They’ve added new PvP maps, a new PvP game type, huge new WvW map, new WvW mastery system, obviously fractals as has been discussed, new story (Living Story Season 2), new dungeon (aetherblade), new maps, new events, new enemies, etc, created the wardrobe system (to varying criticisms), overhauled the UI, etc.

I mean. If you’re looking for something like “Oh they totally changed how you level!” or “They’ve made the game open PvP now!” then you will be disappointed.

It’s still GW2 but with more stuff, like any MMO in the history of MMOs.

The expansion coming out is adding a new area, new weapons, new class, gliding ability, guild halls, new WvW game type/map, etc.

So there you go. Use this information how you see fit.

CCLilly.2139:

Coming back to the main topic. Nothing has changed? After 2,5 years, really? (yes there is fotm)

What are you guys doing then? I mean I love grinding. It’s fun for me to farm for ‘that’ item or be tested by hard/challenging areas. But I did all of that or failed it.

It would make me sad to say no to the friend that asked me.

Well we got 42 content upgrades. Some were super great (SAB, the first Halloween, etc), the majority was nice and some were lacking/boring. The majority were temporary, other improved existing content, some added some stuff like a new dungeon and the hardest world boss.

Don’t know for everybody but i’m doing solo dungeon, speed run, WvW raids, team PvP matches, and I just completed my 6th legendary.

Draknar.5748:

I mean. If you’re looking for something like “Oh they totally changed how you level!” or “They’ve made the game open PvP now!” then you will be disappointed.

I was never hoping for something new like that. Maybe for a complete change of gameplay to be more difficult through more variations (never expect that to happen, but hopes die last)

Draknar.5748:

It’s still GW2 but with more stuff, like any MMO in the history of MMOs.

I had to laugh and be sad about it at the same time while reading this.
Yes, it’s pretty epic for a MMO, it has its flaws, but every game has.
It reminded me on how much it is not like GW. But that is another topic.

Draknar.5748:

The expansion coming out is adding a new area, new weapons, new class, gliding ability, guild halls, new WvW game type/map, etc.

So there you go. Use this information how you see fit.

That seems to be nice stuff is coming. Thanks for the answers so far and the info.

Thaddeus.4891:

Well we got 42 content upgrades. Some were super great (SAB, the first Halloween, etc), the majority was nice and some were lacking/boring. The majority were temporary, other improved existing content, some added some stuff like a new dungeon and the hardest world boss.

Don’t know for everybody but i’m doing solo dungeon, speed run, WvW raids, team PvP matches, and I just completed my 6th legendary.

I loved SAB. The first time I had really fun to play, no to-do-list that I had to finish, no grinding for an ascending item and the work was done perfectly, small hidden areas, funny foes… And it was the first challenging part I encountered throughout my GW2 time. Everyone I know loved to do those, lots of fun moments there..

So basically the same as 1,5years back.
I am gonna check out what the new expansion will be about.