Guild Wars 2

I anticipated HoT like mad. I counted the days until its release and I was so thrilled when it launched. I played trough the pve on my GS warrior and it’s hasn’t really been an enjoyable experience for me, and I’m not sure how anyone else can enjoy this.

The only driving point I’ve had in this game so far is the story. I got as far as the last zone (Dragon’s Reach, I think?) and just couldn’t be bothered to finish it. Because the way I look at it is…once I’m done, then what? Do I go back and do it on my alts? Do I go for map completion (which is a -pain- because of the way the maps are laid out)? Do I just run around and do events? None of this sounds fun. Not anymore.

What the hell can I do to make this expansion enjoyable? My friends are upset that I don’t want to play with them, and I feel like I’ve wasted 50 dollars. I just want to like this game again…

It’s a video game. What the hell are you expecting? Infinite possibilities of occurrences through an eternity?

#lol

Collections are very cool

Do a second play through and change your choice at the beginning…remember, there are 2 different options for the start of the story, and that is supposed to change the rest of it…somehow, or, play it as a Sylvari. Use your imagination, what ever it takes to make it seem fun to you.

I have a few friends going through the same thing. The very first day of the expansion I didn’t even realize it was the 23rd. I logged in late, prodded around at how to get started, then got blocked out by crashed on cutscenes.
Some Guildies got through and we bypassed the personal story since it was broken. We then did Verdant Brink for awhile. I think the most fun we had was simply wandering. It was the first time our Guild reallllly had to group in order to do things; we all found this incredibly uplifting. We come from older styles of games by in large so the general slap-and-pass always-running style of Guild Wars 2 has been disappointing. We basically run the maps, do all the little 100%ing bits, and then start saying, “Well, where the heck is this ‘game’?” The implication being we really ought to be able to slow down somewhere and take a break at a camp. Why? That’s what’s iconic.

Guild Wars 2 throws out a lot of what’s great about it because we just zip by everything. There’s no real pause to take anything in. This is a real problem I think a lot of older players and newer players eventually encounter with the game. It cannot be enjoyed right off. The game really cannot be enjoyed from the beginning.

I think this is very much what you are running into at the moment. The New Player Experience is a good summary of this. It demonstrates that the devs deeply misunderstand that Guild Wars 2 is best played top down. This is the typically problem of MMOs, but exacerbated some in Guild Wars 2 because the Devs haven’t processed this at all.

Think about this? If you want to enjoy the game what’s more fun: playing how you want to play or struggling to unlock the skills for your character so you can get on with doing that?
To start Guild Wars 2 you have to unlock your weapon skills, which also means unlocking their ability keys now with the New player Experience. Then you have to go all over the place for 80 levels just so you can go all over the place. If the last sentence didn’t make sense just stop and think about it a moment. You have to be level 80 to go to every zone. Otherwise you’re trapped in just whatever zones are available to you at the level you’re at. That may have been how MMOs have always been… but it is also how MMOs have always been. People are generally sick of it. People want to play the game. It doesn’t feel like play when you’re forced out of the game into ‘the newbie zone’ or whatever isn’t max because it usually ends up being a meaningless time sink. There’s no gains in the whole period that is leveling. It just means a player has to constantly struggle to keep up with those who are already done with that. And until a player is done with that there’s no way for them to do anything else or they have immediately been relegated to the MMO community’s equivalent of Third World: access to insufficient armor, weapons, skills, etc.

This all means that a player, any player, of any MMO for all time immediately wants to max everything out as fast as possible or they really may never get to have any of it. That’s why Aetherblade skins are so expensive, one of the reasons people will forever throw a fit about the SAB still not being back, and why we threw a fit about Halloween content from Season I not being back until this year. It’s also why everyone would still like those cute plastic glasses from Season 1 and Tribal Armor back. When it’s gone it’s gone and you’re forever dis-allowed access to content that really you paid for.

So… Guild Wars 2 is another top-down game. If you aren’t level 80 you aren’t playing the game yet… You’re still trying to make it to a place where you can start saving and playing rather than spending real-life time to get through junk content. And it is junk content because it just bars you from doing anything.

Heart of Thorns is not much different in this sense. For at least 72 hours it’s probably pretty certain you won’t be able to use either Frog abilities, much of Gliding abilities, nor Exalted abilities.
That fact really puts another steep ladder in front of players who, for a few moments are like, “Oh YES! Finally, content!” And then get blocked every which way from it. Most of this could be alleviated by having reliable fixed locations for Experience gain, but there really isn’t any. Apparently this is somewhat worse for us on European servers than the US servers as we seem to have a lower population of people pushing through content.

SO, unfortunately… Just like old world, the fun doesn’t really get to start until you’ve got about 30 Mastery Points in waiting all the time and you’ve unlocked a few Tiers of Mastery Point abilities. Again, it’s all very top-down if you’re looking for immediate fun.

What I’ve personally found works best is make at least one really ultra-tanky healer type character (guardian or warrior) and just tag along with one other person for a few days. Do some hero points and grind down some Mastery Levels so you can unlock the essential mobility skills: Glider Abilities, Itzel Poison Lore and Mushrooms, Exalted Assistance, and other frogs Wallows. Then, at least, you can move around the maps with some great mobility.

This won’t entirely improve things, but it will let you break out of the fishbowl experience that is anything MMO so you can start playing what content you want to when you want to, rather than the dictation of the developer design.

What my Guildies and I did day one was:
A) Get rid of Personal Story:
- Either get past it through doing it, or if you have the cutscene but, use Teleport to a Friend to get into Verdant Brink so you can at least play the expansion.

B) Get Gliding with Updraft unlocked
- This radically alters the experience of everything to do with HoT in positive way and really is all that is needed for a very large majority of the content.

C) Get Mushroom hopping
- It’s Itzel ability I or II and will mostly free up the rest of the maps so you can move around a bit more liberally. I’m really understating this intentionally. The more you encounter mushrooms the more utilities you find for them. They just have to be complimented by Glider II or it really doesn’t pay out.

D) Exalted I
- I find everything to do with the Exalted pretty useless. Not really because the Exalted abilities are useless, but just because their whole existence takes up a huge chunk of a map for an event that mostly isn’t fun and really doesn’t benefit you in the least. Ignore these unless you’re really wanting something from there.

E) Think of Guild Wars 2 as a Puzzle Game. It really is. This isn’t an MMO where you can jump in and do you’re thing. If you haven’t unlocked the abilities and levels that let you get at the content you want, you really can’t have much fun in Guild Wars 2. This is a fact I’ve learned over and over again when inviting girl friends in to join the game. Their husbands might play a little longer or even get hooked on and off, but the steep grind just to get access to the ‘game’ portion of the content mostly kills the joy of playing by level 30 (because after that there’s nothing going on in Guild Wars 2 you haven’t done at least once).

Heart of Thorns is no different on this account. You’re going to have to figure out what you enjoy about it that keeps you coming back and then get those things that get you there. If that sounds confusing let me explain.

I found myself today buying an Aetherized Warhorn because I can’t stand most of them and I’m a bit obsessed with Steampunk. This combined with getting Welding Torch for my Warrior’s meta completed an aesthetic look I’ve been working on for my characters for nigh on two years. I’m maxing out my Fractals Masteries and Gliding Masteries because I enjoy exploring, site seeing, and grouping with friends far more than I do being the great exalted person who has completed it all.
This has worked out really well for me because it means I’ve skipped a huge chunk of all of the HoT content. It meant when I killed the Mouth of Mordramoth or whatever it is in Dragon’s Stand I have no idea what relevance this is to the story nor do I care. This means I have a huge chunk of story content to look forward to, hundreds of hours of hero points and masteries to go find, and random other things like POI and Vistas to do that I haven’t even tried to look for. I have basically no idea about events in Maguuma, and I may not get around to them for a few months.

So, for the moment, my strategy has been to utterly avoid as much of the BS that has been forced on us by just getting it out of the way through some really die-hard grinding when I have the time to log in like that. This way I’m playing the game I want to have and not getting fixated on anything in particular.

Korago.7509:

I anticipated HoT like mad. I counted the days until its release and I was so thrilled when it launched. I played trough the pve on my GS warrior and it’s hasn’t really been an enjoyable experience for me, and I’m not sure how anyone else can enjoy this.

The only driving point I’ve had in this game so far is the story. I got as far as the last zone (Dragon’s Reach, I think?) and just couldn’t be bothered to finish it. Because the way I look at it is…once I’m done, then what? Do I go back and do it on my alts? Do I go for map completion (which is a -pain- because of the way the maps are laid out)? Do I just run around and do events? None of this sounds fun. Not anymore.

What the hell can I do to make this expansion enjoyable? My friends are upset that I don’t want to play with them, and I feel like I’ve wasted 50 dollars. I just want to like this game again…

Aside from doing the content again on alts, once you’ve finished your maps, completed your masteries (assuming you want to do that), I guess you could focus on pvp (if you do that) or wvw (if it recovers). Not sure what else there is to do. I’ve heard so many stories about how frustrating precursor crafting is and the collections are, that I’m not sure I can recommend that if you’re looking for stress-free gaming.

DavyMcB.1603:

It’s a video game. What the hell are you expecting? Infinite possibilities of occurrences through an eternity?

#lol

Sandbox MMO says hi.

Maguuma would have been the perfect map for more emergent game play too… shame.