Guild Wars 2

I love GW2 so far.

The combat is great, the gameplay is great.

I just feel like… idk, I go through a “hub” so to speak, and I don’t feel like I’ve progressed as far as I should have.

If I do the main story, I can do like, 3-4 quests before the quest has outleveled me and I have to go do general world questing.

When I’m doing general world questing, I feel like… I feel like I’m being forced to grind “EXP profitable” events. And I feel like I’m being forced to explore -everything- and fill in every heart. And even when I do that, I feel like I have to do multiple zones of this to get anywhere.

And even then it just feels like it’s slow going.

I want to keep enjoying the game, so I’m just wondering, what am I missing? What things that maybe I should be doing, am I not? Or what features or content did I not realize where available that I should go check out?

Pick up gathering tools and gather whenever you run across nodes, that will give you additional XP. Using that material for crafting will boost your xp even more. Rez people and NPCs whenever you can. Use buff food (bought from NPCs or the trading post for a few copper) that gives an XP boost.

Events are the central mechanic of PvE, and they work on their own time. Don’t try to approach them in the mindset of “must level most efficiently”, that’s only going to frustrate you. Pay attention to what actually happens in events, usually those are stories all by themselves, with several subsequent steps and sometimes really funny writing. Oftentimes their story progresses the plot you encountered in your personal story, and the maps themselves tend to have overarching storylines as well. Doing a bit of WvW can also net you a considerable amount of XP.

You mentioned you feel forced to do stuff to “get anywhere”. Consider that it isn’t worth getting there if you don’t have fun along the way, and since this game is supposed to entertain you for a long time, the fastest way to the “end” is probably not the best one for you to get your moneys worth.

I’ll venture a guess that you’re playing solo. Playing solo is fine sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, but in the long run playing with people is far more enjoyable. Having a laugh while doing the heart, or having someone around who can rez you if you get overrun or happen to fall off a cliff — generally speaking it’s more fun to play with someone instead of alone.

I don’t really care for renown hearts, so mostly I don’t do them. I do talk to the NPCs around the heart and see if I can start a dynamic event and a lot of times playing in the dynamic event will fill the heart just as a side-effect. WvW is great fun and gives good exp and karma, so you can level there as easily as you would doing renown hearts — if the rewards were good I might never leave

Also, have you tried a different profession? If you’re not having fun just playing the game you might not have the profession that you would most enjoy. I started with an engineer and a lot of the game play was very slow, but when I switched to mesmer my enjoyment went way up. Suddenly, everything was fun.

But really, first and foremost, try playing some open world leveling type content with a party instead of solo.