Guild Wars 2

As I first can recall back in 2012, Guild Wars 2 was meant to be a game that could be played by either the casual or the hardcore audience. But lets take a look forward, or in the present shall I say, and you’ll notice that things have changed from their original philosophy for this game.

This is not going to be a “QQ” thread but I would simply like to start a discussiion on how Arenanet’s new content is starting to pigeon hole some of its players. What do I mean by this? Well for starters, this game was never meant to be the grindfest that it is now, but it has become the popular method of horizontal progression in their books. And although that’s not the real problem, but what about those who do not have that much time to really play and grind.

Along with that, we now also have the World Bosses which are put on a set timer and can only be done at these certain times. This now limits the chances of who really gets to see this content or have a chance at their loot. The new change seems structured, but once again, what about those who do not have time or have to work outside of these times?

Another part of the game that seems to be an issue is the LS. The living story content is pretty decent, that is not my problem. In fact, it had got better as it went on even though much of the content involved some type of grinding with it. What the problem is though is the fact that if you aren’t able to be on every time or to stay consistent every 2 weeks then you lose out on playing the main content of this game now.

So who exactly is GW2 for? I thought the whole reason they simplified this game was to cater to the casual/new players but yet still have challenge for your hardcore. It seems like with each change though they limit this game for one audience over the other.

The game is very casual for 90% of the content. If you want the last 10% you have to be hardcore. It also helps if you have a high tolerance for repetition.

Well if I had to make a guess, I’d say now it’s China and their All Mighty Yuan=$.

the game is completely aimed to cater to casuals at its core which is the reason for the current heavy handed forced change of economy – which will again not solve the reward/effort issue. It is impossible with the premises at hand – and these are being “the great casual game”.

The fact that they have nerfed farmers, nerfed hardcore content timing and discouraged organized raids show that GW2 has shifted towards the casual player side.

I’d consider myself very much a casual player and I’ve never felt like I have to grind in this game. I could if I wanted to, but I don’t.

When my first character hit level 80 I had enough karma for a full set of exotics, and I’ve gotten skins from a variety of places (including dungeons) to make it look more interesting. In this case being a casual player probably helps because I don’t feel the need to have a dozen different stat combinations to switch between. I’ve got one set which works for PvE and WvW and that’s all I need.

I’m also working on a legendary. Yes it’s taking me longer than it did for some people, but that’s ok because I’m not in any hurry. I don’t need it, it’s just something I’d like to have. I’m saving gold to buy a precursor (about 1/5 of the way there so far) and using laurels to get T6 mats. Everything else is coming along gradually too.

The World Boss timings are problematic but that’s true for everyone, not specific types of players. Especially the Wurm, Tequatl and Karka, but those aren’t really intended for casual players anyway. (Although I’ve attempted all 3 and succeeded at the Karka Queen, that one is relatively easy.)

TooBz.3065:

The game is very casual for 90% of the content. If you want the last 10% you have to be hardcore. It also helps if you have a high tolerance for repetition.

I agree, this game can be picked up by most as 90% of the casual content is just the surface to this game. The problem however is that the last 10% is what we look at as the endgame. Fractals, temple Runs, farming for legendaries, WvW, world bosses. The problem with this is that not everyone who may be casual can participate in these activities due to obligations outside the game, and the 10% seems to be the beef of what takes place Post 80.

Now I cant critique without giving a possible solution but honestly I don’t know of one, I just would at last like to see them consider their other players who dont have time to take part in the last 10%. Leaving casual players out in the cold for the last 10% is not a good way to approach things.

Edit: And although this is not the topic but I guess what makes someone casual/hardcore?… I think all of our definitions of that are different.

Vol.7601:

The fact that they have nerfed farmers, nerfed hardcore content timing and discouraged organized raids show that GW2 has shifted towards the casual player side.

On the other hand, they definitely made leveling harder with traits at 30 and Obsidian Sanctrum and level 50-80 personal stories to unlock traits. Which is pretty puzzling.

I wouldn’t say adding fractals adding vertical progression and adding a massive grind to get said gear, and then restricting farming with the use of tools like DR, ~ catering to the casual crowd because I’m a casual and we don’t like those things.

In fact most of us liked what we were told this game would be when they talked about it at length before launch to every major and minor interviewer, which was open world focused, permanent DE/metas every month, never have to step into another 5 man instance if we didn’t want to, non-grind horizontal progression game.

So when I see these types of threads I have to laugh at them because it really isn’t the case.

Uriel.6310:

TooBz.3065:

The game is very casual for 90% of the content. If you want the last 10% you have to be hardcore. It also helps if you have a high tolerance for repetition.

I agree, this game can be picked up by most as 90% of the casual content is just the surface to this game. The problem however is that the last 10% is what we look at as the endgame. Fractals, temple Runs, farming for legendaries, WvW, world bosses. The problem with this is that not everyone who may be casual can participate in these activities due to obligations outside the game, and the 10% seems to be the beef of what takes place Post 80.

Now I cant critique without giving a possible solution but honestly I don’t know of one, I just would at last like to see them consider their other players who dont have time to take part in the last 10%. Leaving casual players out in the cold for the last 10% is not a good way to approach things.

Edit: And although this is not the topic but I guess what makes someone casual/hardcore?… I think all of our definitions of that are different.

Isn’t that the case with all games though?

Single player games typically get harder as they go along, and apparently the vast majority of people who play them will never finish them. With MMOs they always seem to have some type of harder “end game” content that not everyone will be able to do.

I know loads of people who play/played WoW and never did raids because they couldn’t commit the time it required or weren’t interested in that type of content. They were missing out on part of the game but didn’t mind because they still had all the other stuff to do.

It was the same in GW1. I never did any of the elite end-game areas like UW or FoW because I couldn’t find a non-speed clear group and had no interest in learning to speed clear it. I never finished all the Hard Mode missions either. But I still enjoyed the game.

That’s one of the major differences between casual and hardcore players – casual players usually don’t expect to be able to do 100% of everything, and definitely don’t expect to do it quickly or easily. They just want to play what they find fun.

I really think the question players should be asking is, “Is this game for ME?”

If it is, great. If it isn’t, stop playing and find something that IS for you.

Uriel.6310:

TooBz.3065:

The game is very casual for 90% of the content. If you want the last 10% you have to be hardcore. It also helps if you have a high tolerance for repetition.

I agree, this game can be picked up by most as 90% of the casual content is just the surface to this game. The problem however is that the last 10% is what we look at as the endgame. Fractals, temple Runs, farming for legendaries, WvW, world bosses. The problem with this is that not everyone who may be casual can participate in these activities due to obligations outside the game, and the 10% seems to be the beef of what takes place Post 80.

Now I cant critique without giving a possible solution but honestly I don’t know of one, I just would at last like to see them consider their other players who dont have time to take part in the last 10%. Leaving casual players out in the cold for the last 10% is not a good way to approach things.

Edit: And although this is not the topic but I guess what makes someone casual/hardcore?… I think all of our definitions of that are different.

The things you mention do not really exclude casuals (let´s stick with the generalization for a moment for the sake of simplification, there are really good casual players) and exactly that is the problem of GW2´s game design.

Anet wants to cater to casuals, that was made quite clear in every marketing they did. So they cannot have casuals feel “left behind”. But how do you do that? You cannot artificially raise the player skill of those people. So the only way is to hinder non-casual and good players. Anet does this with an immensely punishing reward system, time-gating and things like that.

If you consider the effort, skill and time needed for the harder content and check the rewards, they are very, very meagre compared to things like “champ training”. And let´s face it, “hardcore players” (again, a simplification) like a challenge, but humans look for reasonable rewards for their efforts also. Doing fractals for, if you are unlucky, two hours and getting things you´d get from farming easy champions in a quarter of the time is unappealing.

So many, many people flock to those mindless tasks. And “casuals” and bad players have no incentive to improve, why would they? So things get out of hand, economy is flooded with easily attainable wealth, whole sections of the game are ignored because there is no incentive to run them. Then heavy handed measures follow that hit all players, casual and hardcore alike.

Anets superegalitarian casual paradise is really turning into a nightmare (like all similar attempts have turned out in RL or in games). The moment they accept that you just cannot have a good game design if it punishes skill and commitment and rewards bad playing GW2 will massively improve to the benefit of casual and hardcore players alike.

This is one thing ive asked myself recently and honestly Anet seems to cater to casuals a lot more. I mean, one big reason is because the people who come to the forums to complain about being forced or something being hard are only the ones heard, so Anet perhaps thinks they are the majority of the community.

The reality the people who consistently speak on the forums and get heard, the posts that get heard, the ones that usually are raging at anet, are not representative of the community whatsoever.

In my opinion, there are a lot of people in this game, a lot, who would enjoy hardcore content. Raid like content, something challenging. Then there are kittens who want everything handed to them. It makes me sad because im one of the players id consider hardcore and this game is beginning to alienate me with its lack of hardcore content. The appearance of teq restored my hopes because it was a difficult piece of content that brought a whole new level to the game.

Another thing that this game does that has begun to alienate me is endgame. What are we really trying to do in PVE? In wvw and spvp its obvious because those endgames self-sustain with player skill level constantly rising. In PVE, for gw2, there is this horizontal idea of aesthetic progression. So its about skins, but the main way you obtain skins in this game is just buy them, and thats pathetic. I would enjoy this game a lot more if most of the skins were obtainable through tasks. Complete this difficult dungeon or this difficult dynamic event to unlock this vendor. Too little of that in this game. A lot of it is just okay well go buy the skin on the trading post. Thats why PVE endgame is a joke.

MMO’s are first, last and always massive time sinks. The business model, whether it’s sub or store, makes that inevitable. The other factor that makes that inevitable is the demands by some MMO players to be entertained for years while playing many hours per day. Thus, it’s inevitable that MMO’s will provide at least some reasons for those who are “dedicated” (read addicted, if you prefer) to the game to feel that their time commitment means something.

Also, the “massively” in the MMO initials means that no developer can ensure that everything in an MMO is for everyone. The best they can do is to throw as many “differing” things to do as possible into the game and hope that makes the game “sticky” to as many customers as possible. To that end, while you see posts complaining that GW2 has nothing for the hardcore, you simultaneously see posts that ANet has “turned away from their casual fan-base.”

SkylightMoon.1980:

Complete this difficult dungeon or this difficult dynamic event to unlock this vendor. Too little of that in this game. A lot of it is just okay well go buy the skin on the trading post. Thats why PVE endgame is a joke.

That’s exactly how dungeon armor works….do dungeon, get tokens, get armor, unlocks the armor. You can’t buy dungeon armor for money, only tokens. PvP is also a way to unlock dungeon skins, and I find that to be a great feature. Can’t buy Ascended skins either, have to create it or get it as a drop.

There are also a bunch of skins that are exclusive to the Personal Story. Can’t buy those either. There are/were also exclusive PvP skins (not sure if they were removed or not), that cannot be purchased.

It sounds like you don’t really play GW2 too much if you thought all skins are purchasable.

Draknar.5748:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Complete this difficult dungeon or this difficult dynamic event to unlock this vendor. Too little of that in this game. A lot of it is just okay well go buy the skin on the trading post. Thats why PVE endgame is a joke.

That’s exactly how dungeon armor works….do dungeon, get tokens, get armor, unlocks the armor. You can’t buy dungeon armor for money, only tokens. PvP is also a way to unlock dungeon skins, and I find that to be a great feature. Can’t buy Ascended skins either, have to create it or get it as a drop.

There are also a bunch of skins that are exclusive to the Personal Story. Can’t buy those either. There are/were also exclusive PvP skins (not sure if they were removed or not), that cannot be purchased.

It sounds like you don’t really play GW2 too much if you thought all skins are purchasable.

Well duh, there are dungeon skins, but compared to how many armor and weapon skins have been released in the gemstore over the history of the game, things look pretty imbalanced. There are so many sick weapon sets added through the bltc which you can buy at a vendor or buy with a lot of gold. They need to take a break and start putting in weapon skins that you earn, through tasks, and please no these petty achievements. The same goes for all the armor skins they’e added. More gemstorey-ness.

Anet needs to balance this out, its nice that they can make money off the gemstore but its pretty bad when after almost 2 years of the games release we haven’t had a single full armor set we can earn besides ascended gear which is craftable and a few armor skins from living story.

I think they should go forward with the dynamic event merchants, those are cool and work well. Make it so dynamic events have multiple levels to them. You can’t really fail the DE but you can definitely do much better, kind of how the escape from LA event worked, and how they reward you at the worm(but not as badly). Perhaps there are 5 level of completion for a DE, and after completing each link in the chain for this DE that has a set time window, a new merchant will spawn whenver the event is fully done or failed.

If you made it to the 3rd link in the chain of the DE when the time ran out, a merchant will spawn and give you access to some items. Perhaps more vanity items that are fun to use in dungeons/openworld like the frost gun or experimental rifle. But also say a weapon skin that is much less detailed than the one you’d get at the 5th chain. However these chains should be very difficult, i.e., completing the final and 5th link in the chain would be like killing the worm or something slightly more difficult.

They could also have this type of system for people who want to do solo cotent, so when they soloed a dungeon and completed it in some very quick time, they are rewarded with a weapon skin that lets other players know “kitten this guy is good”

IndigoSundown.5419:

MMO’s are first, last and always massive time sinks. The business model, whether it’s sub or store, makes that inevitable. The other factor that makes that inevitable is the demands by some MMO players to be entertained for years while playing many hours per day. Thus, it’s inevitable that MMO’s will provide at least some reasons for those who are “dedicated” (read addicted, if you prefer) to the game to feel that their time commitment means something.

I see this argument made a lot, but I’m not sure the underlying assumption is accurate. The number of people playing on average more than two hours a day long term has to be fairly small compared to the number of people who barely manage to do enough dailies to complete the monthly and follow the Living Story events. The vast majority of the world has a job, friends, family, housework, etc. to do as well, and gaming can’t really be anything more than an alternative to nighttime television for them. The assumption is that MMOs aren’t for those people, but of the eight adults over 40 that play games I know of, all but one are only interested in the MMO format (PvE only), mostly because they want to stay in one game long term, they like having other players around for the feeling of not being alone, they like the big open worlds, and they like the focus away from FPS-style “twitch gaming”. That segment seems to be growing constantly as kids that grew up gaming become adults and have kids and families of their own, but still want to game.

I suspect there are plenty of people who have more money than time and are willing to hand over their credit cards if you make them feel like they are the kings of your world for the low investment of two hours a day of moderately skilled effort and a couple bucks. I think the real problem is that the most dedicated players also seem to drive the community. Without them, would we have any internet buzz, guild leaders, websites dedicated to analyzing and explaining aspects of the game, dragon timers, etc? The real danger may be creating a casual paradise that the casuals never find or figure out. After all, we aren’t exactly out there game hopping, checking out every new release, writing blog posts and reviews about them, theory crafting, posting build suggestions, etc.

“Casual” and “hardcore” are stupid terms that don’t mean anything anymore. GW2 used to be a game for skilled people without much spare time. Now it’s a game for unskilled people with lots of spare time. That’s the big shift and TBH I don’t like it.

dekou.6012:

“Casual” and “hardcore” are stupid terms that don’t mean anything anymore. GW2 used to be a game for skilled people without much spare time. Now it’s a game for unskilled people with lots of spare time. That’s the big shift and TBH I don’t like it.

Well the game was advertised as a non-grindy game where everyone would have the same gear level and content was open for everyone, without raids or raid timers.

Didn’t work out. ANet adapted to:

A game that is grindy where only the people with tons of time have the best gear and giant raids on fixed timers.

Looks like every other MMO to me now. So this game is for everyone who loves classic style MMOs like WoW or similar.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

dekou.6012:

“Casual” and “hardcore” are stupid terms that don’t mean anything anymore. GW2 used to be a game for skilled people without much spare time. Now it’s a game for unskilled people with lots of spare time. That’s the big shift and TBH I don’t like it.

Well the game was advertised as a non-grindy game where everyone would have the same gear level and content was open for everyone, without raids or raid timers.

Didn’t work out. ANet adapted to:

A game that is grindy where only the people with tons of time have the best gear and giant raids on fixed timers.

Looks like every other MMO to me now. So this game is for everyone who loves classic style MMOs like WoW or similar.

1. The majority of them ‘raids’ were in the game at the beginning, and were on timers. There was no ‘adapting to’ in this respect.
2. That same content is still open to everyone (even more so if you’re in a guild).
3. I dislike WoW, but I enjoy GW2, so you’re partly wrong in your estimates.

For a game that wanted to be awesome for people who do not like MMOs, it has pretty much become something that is similar to every other MMO. And I for one thought, the other MMOs might adapt to be more like GW2 at start.

But in fact, GW2 adapted to be more like every other MMO out there. Vertical progression, grind for best gear, raids with high difficulty (not managable for casuals or random groups).

So as a result:

If you do like MMOs, you might enjoy GW2. But people that do not enjoy playing MMOs seem no longer be the target group of ANet.

Before we start for on the game’s targets. I would like to ask for the definition of casual and hardcore.

To me, hardcore players are individuals who takes gaming as a part of their life and will attempt to master the game in every ways. That’s right, WvW-only players are not hardcore, they might be hardcore in the way they try to master WvW but they are not mastering the game if they only focusing in WvW.

Casual is people who have limited gaming time and also limited interest in gaming. Casual players often chose linear gameplay as they do not have the commitment for non-linear gameplay.

As for what is linear and non-linear, I will leave it to you to google.

Thus, gw2 is casual. Anet might be lost some way when they tried to push out the contents, it isn’t easy to change and maintain certain things. Anet seems to lack experience in mmorpg when comes putting on new contents while ensuring the integrity of the game.

this game is for the extremes, extreme casual and extreme hardcore. Its for players that float around between games and really don’t give a crap about anything in game and have no goals – extremely casual. And its for those that have the time to spend over 50 hours a week. It is not for your average player though. Just my own opinion.

I would support more armors being available through gameplay rather than gemstore. In fact, almost every armor they’ve released through gem store should be through gameplay, because god some of them are hideous, who would even waste the money.

I’ve walked by characters before and had to stop and double take and just look at their armor/weapon setup, not because anything was exclusive or hard to get, but because the mixing, matching, coloring and character creation was done so well that it just looked awesome.

SkyShroud.2865:

To me…..

Exactly. To you.
Your definition does not match mine, thus the question, as it was asked, cannot be properly answered as you will never get people to agree on a unified definition of the terms.

To answer it without relying on definitions – GW2 is attempting to be everything to everyone. Jack of all trades, but master of none. The game is for everyone and anyone. There doesnt seem to be any real attempt to define the game for one group of people, and seems that while other MMO’s focus more on one specific area and master it, GW2 wants to be an MMO that has bits of everything in decent proportions.

Vol.7601:

The fact that they have nerfed farmers, nerfed hardcore content timing and discouraged organized raids show that GW2 has shifted towards the casual player side.

Well I like to do dungeons often. I level my alts in dungeons and have found it’s a good way to get multi-level materials for my crafting needs as well as the experience needed to get the toon up.

This now cannot be done because not only are the chests daily/weekly, but the drops in dungeons seem to have been ‘unofficially’ nerfed too! I mention daily/weekly because even after a daily reset, my toon has still not seen a dungeon boss chest or been rewarded for the “daily” gold bonus.

I also mention the terrible drops because I have a reasonable Magic find bonus and was getting rares every run, which in turn gave me a little silver and sometimes ectoplasms. After the patch however I have not had any rares from dungeons! In fact, it’s blues all the way with the very occasional green!

I find myself logging on to the game now with nothing to do. I do not want to do world exploration, because I find it extremely frustrating to have to fight every single mob between me and the next waypoint while limping around at half speed because I’m in combat! I want to do dungeons etc, something that is now ruined.

chemiclord.3978:

I really think the question players should be asking is, “Is this game for ME?”

If it is, great. If it isn’t, stop playing and find something that IS for you.

Great question and it is seemingly the same question I have asked myself many times these past few months as I hold on to hope for GW2.

However, with an establish love for this game and the company as a whole, because I love Anet’s creativity, leaving to find a different game doesn’t seems to be an answer that I would like to look at. As everyone has stated before, when this game was first advertised it was known to be something that would be DIFFERENT. It would not only take what works in MMO’s now but it would take these things and change those aspects and even add on a twist.

There is a reason I do not play WoW or any vertical progression game now because I just do not have the time to grind out the time in order to be good for other parts of those games. Luckily though, with the bringing of Guild Wars 2 this should not be a problem, or so I thought.

The problem probably started with the “non casual” players (Ill use this term instead of hardcore) speeding through content to hit lvl 80 only to find out there isnt anything at the end. In fact, the game is made for you to enjoy at lvl 1 as if you were 80. So they had to come up with something to keep these players coming back. And now we have the situation that we are in now.

As far as casual and non casual goes, this game is probably less casual than you think. Yea, its quite easy to do majority of the content in this game but if you want to see the real extent of what GW2 has to offer at the end, you better have some time, and I do mean a lot of time, on your hands to do so.

DavidH.7380:

IndigoSundown.5419:

MMO’s are first, last and always massive time sinks. The business model, whether it’s sub or store, makes that inevitable. The other factor that makes that inevitable is the demands by some MMO players to be entertained for years while playing many hours per day. Thus, it’s inevitable that MMO’s will provide at least some reasons for those who are “dedicated” (read addicted, if you prefer) to the game to feel that their time commitment means something.

I see this argument made a lot, but I’m not sure the underlying assumption is accurate. The number of people playing on average more than two hours a day long term has to be fairly small compared to the number of people who barely manage to do enough dailies to complete the monthly and follow the Living Story events. The vast majority of the world has a job, friends, family, housework, etc. to do as well, and gaming can’t really be anything more than an alternative to nighttime television for them. The assumption is that MMOs aren’t for those people, but of the eight adults over 40 that play games I know of, all but one are only interested in the MMO format (PvE only), mostly because they want to stay in one game long term, they like having other players around for the feeling of not being alone, they like the big open worlds, and they like the focus away from FPS-style “twitch gaming”. That segment seems to be growing constantly as kids that grew up gaming become adults and have kids and families of their own, but still want to game.

I suspect there are plenty of people who have more money than time and are willing to hand over their credit cards if you make them feel like they are the kings of your world for the low investment of two hours a day of moderately skilled effort and a couple bucks. I think the real problem is that the most dedicated players also seem to drive the community. Without them, would we have any internet buzz, guild leaders, websites dedicated to analyzing and explaining aspects of the game, dragon timers, etc? The real danger may be creating a casual paradise that the casuals never find or figure out. After all, we aren’t exactly out there game hopping, checking out every new release, writing blog posts and reviews about them, theory crafting, posting build suggestions, etc.

Yes, the MMO player-base does seem to be aging. That probably does mean a lot of them no longer have the same amount of time. However, developer effort to retain the hardcore (i.e., spend lots of time hardcore, not elite hardcore) is rarely wasted if it keeps them around longer — after all, some of what is put in as time sinks for hardcore will also appeal to those with less time. Ascended crafting is a perfect example of this. Both demographics can do it, it just takes the casual longer.

There are people that the game marketing people like to call “whales”

These “whales” are the ones who throw down a ton of money on the games, way more than the average user. Maybe even something like $600 for just gimmicky skins. I know some people who have thrown $2k on this game.

In a micro transaction world, those are the type of people they are really after.

“Casual” and “Hardcore” are words that most people throw out there, but don’t necessarily mean much. There really isn’t much of a strong definition to them. Closest I’ve seen is casual has less time and hardcore has more time. In any case, a person’s skill level does not reflect how much time they’ve spent ingame.

I think the devs are trying to look at a different audience than they have in the past. During the Marionette LS, there was a post by Josh Foreman that indicated as much. He expressed a desire to raise the average skill level of the playerbase. If they’re still trying to push and prod the playerbase into getting better, I think they’re doing more harm than good. Stuff like the boss schedules and costs for guild world events is not reassuring.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/madness/Well-I-defended-these-new-events-at-first/page/5#post3559127

Josh Foreman

Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

Looking back, I should have just said no to this. I feel like questions like this led to the assault knight debacle. Something that’s challenging but not interesting. The new Shadow Behemoth fight is similar. It’s harder I suppose, but it’s not interesting. It’s not enjoyable to fight. I wonder who those fights were intended for: the actual people who enjoyed the open world boss fights, who anet thought that group was, or someone else entirely?

I said it a while back:

Everyone and no-one.

You try to please everyone you will end up pleasing no-one.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

dekou.6012:

“Casual” and “hardcore” are stupid terms that don’t mean anything anymore. GW2 used to be a game for skilled people without much spare time. Now it’s a game for unskilled people with lots of spare time. That’s the big shift and TBH I don’t like it.

Well the game was advertised as a non-grindy game where everyone would have the same gear level and content was open for everyone, without raids or raid timers.

Didn’t work out. ANet adapted to:

A game that is grindy where only the people with tons of time have the best gear and giant raids on fixed timers.

Looks like every other MMO to me now. So this game is for everyone who loves classic style MMOs like WoW or similar.

WoW lets you do raid bosses at any time provided you have the people, so GW2 is in fact worse in this regard since they changed the boss spawn timers.

SkyShroud.2865:

Before we start for on the game’s targets. I would like to ask for the definition of casual and hardcore.

To me, hardcore players are individuals who takes gaming as a part of their life and will attempt to master the game in every ways. That’s right, WvW-only players are not hardcore, they might be hardcore in the way they try to master WvW but they are not mastering the game if they only focusing in WvW.

Casual is people who have limited gaming time and also limited interest in gaming. Casual players often chose linear gameplay as they do not have the commitment for non-linear gameplay.

As for what is linear and non-linear, I will leave it to you to google.

Thus, gw2 is casual. Anet might be lost some way when they tried to push out the contents, it isn’t easy to change and maintain certain things. Anet seems to lack experience in mmorpg when comes putting on new contents while ensuring the integrity of the game.

You ever play GW1? You got to level 20, and bam, you’re done. You could get that a third of the way through 2 campaigns. Everything else is learning to play better, which is exactly your definition of hardcore players. That’s what GW1 was. GW2, if it was still purely ANet in charge would be far more like that, but NCSoft got their hands into it more and more and now we have gold being nerfed so you are drug to the gem store time and again.

if all this stupid updates keep happening this game will very soon die out
insted of actualy fixing in game errors and bugs they desided to put there greedy hands into fixing stuff that actualy worked great befor and made them into worthless crap

It is for me it seems.

I don’t know who it’s for but it’s definitely not for me anymore(over ever for that matter)
Terrible stories, with terrible mechanics, all dressed up in a pay to dress your Barbie scheme.

I’m embarrassed to have played this game, and embarrassed for them that this is their sequel to the original.

After looking at my stable of characters (alt-aholic) and seeing what it would cost to equip them with decent runes just to try a build, I shrugged and logged out, and don’t see much of a cause to come back.

Anet can talk about swapping traits round on the fly all they like, but the sheer cost of having a good time exploring my options for various playstyles and uses across all my characters just makes it not a viable option (multiple armour sets is obviously a more sane choice than swapping runes back and forth, but it is still a HUGE investment for something I may not enjoy and may only play for an evening – I would just like to try by playing, is that not the point?).

And I am disinclined to be fodder for speculators – my leisure time is for my entertainment, not their edification.

It’s not what I consider fun and it’s not what I suppose Anet intended when they revamped the trait system.

I’m sure some will say the x6 sets are not necessary – but I’d quite like to find out for myself, and paying 1/10th of my gold to equip just one of my stable with a full set of six of what is probably the most viable and useful runes? Not happening, no way and NOT fun.

Valksy.9327:

After looking at my stable of characters (alt-aholic) and seeing what it would cost to equip them with decent runes just to try a build, I shrugged and logged out, and don’t see much of a cause to come back.

Anet can talk about swapping traits round on the fly all they like, but the sheer cost of having a good time exploring my options for various playstyles and uses across all my characters just makes it not a viable option (multiple armour sets is obviously a more sane choice than swapping runes back and forth, but it is still a HUGE investment for something I may not enjoy and may only play for an evening – I would just like to try by playing, is that not the point?).

And I am disinclined to be fodder for speculators – my leisure time is for my entertainment, not their edification.

It’s not what I consider fun and it’s not what I suppose Anet intended when they revamped the trait system.

I’m sure some will say the x6 sets are not necessary – but I’d quite like to find out for myself, and paying 1/10th of my gold to equip just one of my stable with a full set of six of what is probably the most viable and useful runes? Not happening, no way and NOT fun.

I most certainly can relate to this. Once being a HS student who had nothing but time on his hands to play GW1 and other time consuming games, just is not the same case for me as I am a senior in college now. There have been arguments though saying that this is just something that casuals have to suck up and face. And even though this may be a problem that only a few people are going through as far as time constraints, Anet does not seem to notice that there are indeed some people that are being affect by this.

However, im more interested in knowing if they know of these issues. I have been on the forums countless of times during the LS content and I can not count how many threads of people complaining about the content going too fast or someone not having time, due to outside obligations, to play.

Then as we take a look at today, we see even more huge constraints put on fun factors that are suppose to be enjoyed by everyone (whether your casual or not). So my thing is, those who really benefit are just those who have more time, and as time goes on, I too am realizing that this game is becoming less (or more rather) of what I am able to keep up with.

It is without a doubt made for casuals. If you look at any MMO that has a focus on hardcore end-game content, they release new raids, dungeons, or instances basically EVERY single new big patch. GW2’s patches are more focused on gem-store items, temporary content that doesn’t take long to do, and aesthetics/cosmetics of your armor and weapons, which is why I think a lot of traditional MMO players said GW2 has no end game, and quit shortly afterward.

Fenrina.2954:

During the Marionette LS, there was a post by Josh Foreman that indicated as much. He expressed a desire to raise the average skill level of the playerbase. If they’re still trying to push and prod the playerbase into getting better, I think they’re doing more harm than good. Stuff like the boss schedules and costs for guild world events is not reassuring.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/madness/Well-I-defended-these-new-events-at-first/page/5#post3559127

Josh Foreman

Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

Looking back, I should have just said no to this. I feel like questions like this led to the assault knight debacle. Something that’s challenging but not interesting. The new Shadow Behemoth fight is similar. It’s harder I suppose, but it’s not interesting. It’s not enjoyable to fight. I wonder who those fights were intended for: the actual people who enjoyed the open world boss fights, who anet thought that group was, or someone else entirely?

Or even better, does the average player even want to raise their skill? Or perhaps put another way, does the average player consider trying to improve their skill to be “fun”?

SkylightMoon.1980:

This is one thing ive asked myself recently and honestly Anet seems to cater to casuals a lot more. I mean, one big reason is because the people who come to the forums to complain about being forced or something being hard are only the ones heard, so Anet perhaps thinks they are the majority of the community.

IDK. I’m sure I’m what you would consider a “casual” player. And I’m pretty unhappy with this patch. I play twice a week (Sat. and Sun. mornings) and I don’t even have a Legendary despite having played this game since Beta. I USED to be “hardcore” : in other MMOs I raided, played multiple nights a week, etc., etc., and as such I enjoy difficult content. GW2, up until recently, was amazing for me, as I was able to enjoy most content without grinding for gear, but could find lots of areas in the game where I could challenge myself. If I had 20 minutes to play I could find something fun. If I had four hours to play I could also find things to do. I did the Aetherblade Dungeon many times before it was removed and never beat it, but I loved it just because it was challenging.

But now? Bosses are on a schedule. Most I will never see because I’m not in a big guild and I have a fixed play schedule. World permanence is gone. Town clothes have become tonics. Dailies have been limited and dumbed down. If I’m a casual, who is willing to buy gems for cosmetic items, and I’m unhappy….who IS happy?

1. Dress up enthusiasts
2. Grind enthusiasts
4. ERP
3. A small PvP niche for those who enjoy the combat

Well from most of these comments, I can tell there are some who share some of the same feelings I do, and some who do not (which is perfectly fine). Someone said it best however, Guild Wars 2 tries to cater to everyone’s need instead of just one need the most. This could be a good thing, and a bad thing. As they move left or right they will step on someone’s toes, and so far they have proven to be a company to take risk which at times have managed to pull things off.

However, maybe this just means that the game is evolving more than I am as a player. And honestly, I know they want this to be a “living world” to immerse us into their world, but what is a living world without the people who play it? and what happens when you ignore one part of the community for another? or you just ignore everything and move at your own drum beat?

Too many questions to be answered, but I think I have decided to stop playing for a while and take a break to enjoy other games that fit my needs better. Hopefully GW2 will find a balance and figure out how to cater to both audiences without leaving one part of their community out in the cold. And once that happens, just maybe I can return and enjoy what I hoped GW2 to be since playing GW1.

the game is still very casual for me.

i can play 1 – 2 hours per day and still enjoy guild wars 2.

Zepidel.5349:

1. Dress up enthusiasts
2. Grind enthusiasts
4. ERP
3. A small PvP niche for those who enjoy the combat

5. People who enjoy just playing without worrying about rewards, optimal gold income and the like.

I came online after the update, eager to see the improved customization and test the PvE fixes. What I found was a game even more broken than before and with less customization.

Now content is more restricted, utilizes more grind, costs more and so it’s less fun. The one thing Anet achieved is convincing me to subscribe to WoW again because even with the coming six month content gap, there’s still a lot more to do than here.

Not to mention that I can do all of those things at my leisure, I’m not forced to grind for six hours everyday to be able to afford commodities like bags, gear sets or rune sets and I don’t have to pay more than 13 euros per month to access everything while here 13 euros get me about one outfit that I can’t even use before unlocking it with additional gems.

This would have been a fantastic game if it was built on a subscription model instead of a scam shop.

At this point, the game is for those extremely few people who don’t care about games enough to play them regularly and thus don’t realize that GW2 has very little content but are still willing to spend a boatload of cash when they happen to log in.

There’s a term that’s gaining traction, bit derogatory called “Whales”.

Mostly on f2p cash shop games, those are the people that pay obscene amounts of money in cash shops like what GW2 currently has.

Edit: Just to make sure, the term “whales” are the ones they use to call people that spend an OBSCENE amount of money, we’re talking about more than hundreds consistently.

The current practices of slashing loot across the board and the consistent denial on lousy loot tables or inconsistencies can be easily pointed to that. They want to trap more whales that spend money in their cash shop for either clothes or Gold to buy everything save for a key few things.

Sarius.6983:

There’s a term that’s gaining traction, bit derogatory called “Whales”.

Mostly on f2p cash shop games, those are the people that pay obscene amounts of money in cash shops like what GW2 currently has.

Edit: Just to make sure, the term “whales” are the ones they use to call people that spend an OBSCENE amount of money, we’re talking about more than hundreds consistently.

The current practices of slashing loot across the board and the consistent denial on lousy loot tables or inconsistencies can be easily pointed to that. They want to trap more whales that spend money in their cash shop for either clothes or Gold to buy everything save for a key few things.

Oh I can imagine, I was in a guild where EVERYONE has a legendary. and I would not be surprise if one chucked up some cash to obtain it. GW2 notices this too as to probably why they took what players like to do, which was mix armor, and make a system out of it (wardrobe) which requires something from the gem shop.