Guild Wars 2

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT – BEWARE (there’s a tl;dr at the bottom)

So after reaching level 80 and finishing most of the dungeons on explorable mode at least once, what is there to do?

Many people say keep doing dungeons or dynamic events to farm tokens/karma to get weapon/armor skins, but what really is the point of that? The cool looking gear does nothing except make my pixels look cool. I can find cool looking pixels on google without spending hours grinding out currencies. Granted dungeons are fun the first few times, but even in explorable mode there are no real mechanics so the fights get extraordinarily tedious very quickly.

Most MMO’s have what are commonly called Raids at endgame, which are similar to GW2 dungeons except that they usually require 10-20 players and contain boss creatures with true mechanics that make them challenging and fun. The downside to these raids is that often times you must grind lesser raids or dungeons to get better gear to keep you alive in the high end raids.

Arena Net says they have done away with this need to grind, but that’s misleading. Instead of eliminating the need to grind, ANet simply eliminated the raids altogether. This means that unless you plan to stick only to PvP, once you hit level 80 there is very little to do. You can of course do dungeons to get better looking gear, but that’s exactly the same thing you do in other MMO’s with one exception: There is nothing to do with that gear once you get it. This essentially means that ANet kept the boring grind aspect of MMOs, but got rid of the real reward for grinding (yes cool weapons are cool, but I want all that hard work grinding to actually mean something other than a cool picture on my screen).

Now before all the nay-sayers start flaming me about how no one cares about elitists and better gear and blah-blah-blah, let me stop you by saying I agree. I don’t care about getting better gear so I can make bigger numbers appear on screen. What I care about is challenging myself against challenging boss mechanics and the feeling of triumph when my team finally overcomes that challenge. I had hoped that Dungeons in GW2 could fill that niche for the more hardcore PvE’ers out there, but unfortunately even in explorable mode most dungeons are a joke. The only real mechanic prevalent in dungeons is the most basic mechanic available to PvE: stay out of fire. Dodge-rolling when a red circle appears is not a true mechanic, and does not lend itself to fun gameplay.

Dynamic Events are pretty to watch and sometimes have an interesting backstory, but to call them anything other than zergfests would be an outright joke. I was very much looking forward to the famous Shatterer event at 50, but it turned out to be nothing more than “attack this leg in front of me…oh look the dragon flew up so I should avoid those red circles…oh look the dragon landed again, back to attacking this leg in front of me…oh look the dragon died, yay…”. Dynamic Events are in no way any sort of replacement for raids, and I don’t think they were ever meant to be.

The PvP of this game is fun, even if the single battle mode of sPvP gets old after a while, but for a game with 80 levels and so many Dynamic Events I would think that PvE should have more to offer than just grinding out useless gear.

Maybe this is why GW2 has no monthly subscription? It’s a shame because I am absolutely in love with the way combat works here; actually being able to dodge attacks and needing to semi-aim your own attacks is infinitely better than the random chance to dodge or block attacks that most MMO’s have. I like the weapon-based skills and being able to swap weapons/attunements/kits on the fly and I would absolutely die for a standard MMO raid with GW2 combat. As it stands now however I need to raid on a different MMO with combat that feels slow an clunky while I try to eek out a little bit of fun from blowing away the easy dungeons of GW2…

TL;DR
So my question is thus: What is there to do at level 80 for someone interested in PvE? Dungeons and DE’s are nothing more than an easy grind for useless gear, crafting can be a bit interesting but ultimately is the same grind for useless gear, and exploring the world is fun for a while but becomes repetitive quickly (if I wanted to enjoy beautiful landscapes I would play Skyrim).

So you think raiding two nights a week just to get a differeny skin with a little bit higher stat is better than fighting dungeons to collect tokens to get new skin?

The only difference between wow’s raid and tw2s exp mode is that one lock you out for a week just to give you a chance to get a gear, and one gives you tokens.

What do you do in wow or other mmos after they lock you out of the raid for the reat of the week?

And for some reason, people seems to really miss the raid system even tho they dont even want to play those anymore.

Same thing with any other game after you’ve gotten through the story bits. 100% completion, play multiplayer (PvP), replay (alt), or just stop playing and move on.

What’s the problem?

::edit::
I was slow and other beat me to it
::/edit::

You do realize that “most games” that you are referencing, the whole point is to get UNIQUE ARMOUR and/or WEAPONS. Sure it has the best stats, but it’s still a grind to get armour and/or weapons. In this regards GW2 is the same as every single MMO out there for end game.

This is why I encouraged people not to rush to 80, instead enjoy the travel of getting there, because in the end, it’s all grind no matter what game, especially from a PVE aspect.

As for things to do, it’s kind of pointless to explain because it is all grind towards SOMETHING. However I would suggest going for 100% achievements, minus the pvp ones. And of course leveling alts to 80, but it’s all grind for something no matter what game you’re in.

carson yuen.6739:

So you think raiding two nights a week just to get a differeny skin with a little bit higher stat is better than fighting dungeons to collect tokens to get new skin?

The only difference between wow’s raid and tw2s exp mode is that one lock you out for a week just to give you a chance to get a gear, and one gives you tokens.

What do you do in wow or other mmos after they lock you out of the raid for the reat of the week?

And for some reason, people seems to really miss the raid system even tho they dont even want to play those anymore.

I have been on the fence about the end-game of GW2 – but you honestly make a really, really valid point…. Grinding tokens for new gear is not any different than grinding raids for new gear….

I am not being sarcastic either, I really hadn’t thought about that…

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear. Dungeons are nowhere near challenging, even in explorable mode.

Someone mentioned before that no matter what you do in an MMO it’s a grind for something, and that’s almost true. Raids are the one thing that need not be a grind. Raids can be fought through entirely for their own purpose of being fun.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

TL;DR
GW2 has not gotten rid of grinding. It has not eliminated the “carrot on a stick”. It has simply eliminated the carrot and done nothing with the stick by removing the one thing that grinding was used for. Other MMOs have a carrot of “grind for cool gear with better stats so you can do amazingly fun raids”. GW2 has a carrot of “grind for cool gear so you can…do nothing with it”.

Wall of Text not necessary. There is nothing left to do, if you don’t care about gear skins. Then again, I have always felt there is nothing left to do at the end of ANY MMO because I am smart enough to see raid tiers for what they are: gear skins that allow you to get more gear skins.

All “end-game” is pointless grind because “end-game” was invented to arbitrarily increase play time so that people keep paying those sub fees. Relish in the freedom that here you can come and go as you please and seek whatever reward you please in whatever manner you please.

There is just as much endgame/grind here as any game, you are just never forced to participate.

Prism.5649:

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

Multiple raids? Yes, but you have to grind out stat gear to get to the next level of raid so you can grind out the next level of stat gear.

Normally there isn’t much of a choice in a raid, or they changed it and offered more raids with different sideways level of progression.

Still in the end you grind and then grind alts.

Prism.5649:

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

No, it’s different in that you don’t have to grind out the gear. The stats the same as any crafted exotic gear.

The dungeons are not there to gives you gear, the dungeons are there for content, so you can just have fun while playing them. I have done so far, except Caudecus manor, that one was very frustrating and boring. The rewards (in the form of loot from enemies, chests, gold AND the tokens) are a bonus for me. There are 33 dungeon quest lines in total, if you have not done all of them, I would suggest getting friends together and just going through them. Feel free to skip Caudecu’s manor though.

But there are other things to do at lvl 80 too:
Explore the world (and I don’t mean just getting 100%, I mean exploring, there are many jumping quests, there are many secret areas, talking to npcs can give you such information to find these places. sPvP obviously (and tournaments, which in my opinion, is the only worthwhile thing to do in sPvP at the moment). WvW (get a small group and cause havoc, zerg vs zerg battles do get boring quickly). Dungeons (as I have stated above), and if you want, you can grind them to get unique armor and weapon skins. Find the world events and do them (the three dragons, and the other huge mobs that spawn in certain zones, like in the south east corner of queens dale). Make a new char if you with, of a different race and different class, so you can try different story quests and maybe explore the starting zones you haven’t done yet. Legendary weapons.

And you can also stop playing the game and come back at any time. There will be new content soon, and it will be free. People do forget this one, or they feel the need to come here and state this to everyone.

Well, honestly you’re right. One game can’t be all things. If you want a super tight action game you might have to play some other ones. (SP though) I think GW2 is great but not everyone will want to play it every day.

I do wish some things had been true. I wish you could be useful anywhere in the world at 80 and not just farm Orr for the auction house. (Feels sadly like Diablo Inferno end game, except it’s kind of fun) I wish the event system would accommodate us and instead of throwing us out of the rest of the world with high travel costs and low karma reward outside of Orr.

But… it’s still an incredible game to me. There’s just so much to do on any character. To be bitter with as much content is the game has is weird to me.

Prism.5649:

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear. Dungeons are nowhere near challenging, even in explorable mode.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

TL;DR
GW2 has not gotten rid of grinding. It has not eliminated the “carrot on a stick”. It has simply eliminated the carrot and done nothing with the stick by removing the one thing that grinding was used for. Other MMOs have a carrot of “grind for cool gear with better stats so you can do amazingly fun raids”. GW2 has a carrot of “grind for cool gear so you can…do nothing with it”.

1. It was challenging and fun whe it first came out, then they would just become a button mashin gear check raid.

The games that has raids are still here, you can still go to those games and play them anytime. Gw2 has a different system of endgame. There may be a larger scale dungeon encounter in he future ( wow released with a 10 men raid and didnt have the 40 men contet until a couple months later), but it is no a good idea to use the raid system as a comparsion.

2. Saying there is nothing to do other tha gear grind will not help anything. Jnstead, you can make suggestion on how to make exp mode better, such as more advance boss/minions ai, a more noticable tell on their big attack, etc etc.

In the mean time, there is always wvw, the most unique pvp experience since daoc and shadowbane.

ref.8196:

Prism.5649:

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

No, it’s different in that you don’t have to grind out the gear. The stats the same as any crafted exotic gear.

The dungeons are not there to gives you gear, the dungeons are there for content, so you can just have fun while playing them. I have done so far, except Caudecus manor, that one was very frustrating and boring. The rewards (in the form of loot from enemies, chests, gold AND the tokens) are a bonus for me. There are 33 dungeon quest lines in total, if you have not done all of them, I would suggest getting friends together and just going through them. Feel free to skip Caudecu’s manor though.

But there are other things to do at lvl 80 too:
Explore the world (and I don’t mean just getting 100%, I mean exploring, there are many jumping quests, there are many secret areas, talking to npcs can give you such information to find these places. sPvP obviously (and tournaments, which in my opinion, is the only worthwhile thing to do in sPvP at the moment). WvW (get a small group and cause havoc, zerg vs zerg battles do not last long. Dungeons (as I have stated above), and if you want, you can grind them to get unique armor and weapon skins. Find the world events and do them (the three dragons, and the other huge mobs that spawn in certain zones, like in the south east corner of queens dale). Make a new char if you with, of a different race and different class, so you can try different story quests and maybe explore the starting zones you haven’t done yet. Legendary weapons.

And you can also stop playing the game and come back at any time. There will be new content soon, and it will be free. People do forget this one, or they feel the need to come here and state this to everyone.

If you’re not going to spend the time to read what I wrote then please don’t waste your time and mine by responding with things that I have already outlined.

As I specifically said, dungeons are indeed fun the first time through, but after that they are quite simply a joke. The bosses present no real threat to any cohesive team and the rewards have no practical application once you have your endgame gear (which is pointless to get because there is nothing to do with it).

Exploring the world is what Skyrim is for (because lord knows its good for nothing other than pretty scenery). However I will grant you that the jumping puzzles were fun. Yet again though, once you have done them they become boring.

As I stated, World Events are a nice idea, but in practice they are nothing more than giant zergs with no real challenge.

sPvP and WvW are fun, but sPvP gets old after a while until new game modes are released. WvW is really the only aspect of this game that has any sort of replay value.

And as I said I still play another MMO for raiding, but after the combat system of GW2 other MMOs feel slow and awkward.

Edit:
To the poster who said that WvW is the most unique PvP experience in a long time, I laugh at that. WvW is very fun and as I said is the only aspect of GW2 that has any sort of replay value. Nevertheless, it really is nothing more than a suped up version of WoW’s Wintergrasp/Tol Barad or Rift’s Conquest. It is without a doubt a copy off those two games, albeit it is a much better version of them.

People obviously didn’t read past the initial “gear carrot” part.

His point was : there is no fun/challenging content at end game. Regardless if said content is rewarding or not.

It’s ok if content is actually fun, but not rewarding.

It’s ok if content isn’t fun, but is rewarding.

It’s not ok if content isn’t fun, and isn’t rewarding.

Ideally, content should be fun AND rewarding.

I was expecting the game to be more fun when seeing fights like Tequatl pre-release and seeing all the objectives there needed to beat the boss, and everyone having to work together. Kill bone walls so turrets can fire, kite the suicide bomber mobs, defend the turrets/turret repair krewe, etc, etc.

Same goes for dungeons, and even regular Dynamic Events, there are simply too many one-dimensional Dynamic Events where the only objective is “AoE spam down waves of pinatas we throw at you for loot”. Dynamic Events should be more challenging, have more anti-zerg scaling (more aoe abilities/defenses, more veteran/champ mobs thrown in), as well as have more objectives.

Again, if the content isn’t as fun, and doesn’t feel rewarding, I don’t see how it can compete with other MMO’s (cough, such as WoW, yes I know I said it) that have said content that is Challenging and Fun (boss fights), and of course feels rewarding.

Anyway, it’s up to Anet, we’ll just have to see what they do and how it pans out lol.

I find all PvE “endgame” content to be the same in every MMO, as others have pointed out, because it’s all just repetitive until more content is created. To me, once you “know” any dungeon, it ceases to be interesting. The only “endgame” that’s of any value (because people are more interesting to play against than AI) is PvP.

I’m sure Anet will introduce more “fun” dungeon content as time goes on, but that’s part of the usual MMO process of evolution. The game is new, and despite what people (no doubt developers included!) might wish, it’s simply not possible for a new game to come out with the same amount of content as a game that’s been out for 8 years.

Fortunately, since you’re not paying a subscription, you don’t have to look for reasons to justify continuing to play. If just tootling around in the world isn’t enough to hold you, then wait for the next content update. It’s costless to drop the game and pick it up again whenever you get a hankering for it.

Prism.5649:

ref.8196:

Prism.5649:

To all the people above me who obviously did not read my wall of text:

I do not raid in other MMO’s to get cool looking gear. I raid in other MMO’s because the raid itself is fun and challenging. I could care less about my gear; once I find a decent looking set I tend to use appearance slots/transmutation zones to keep that set anyway.

GW2 is exactly the same as other MMO’s in that you have to grind out gear. The only difference is that GW2 gets rid of the only fun reason for having that gear.

And yes raids have lockouts, which I’ll be the first to admit is very annoying. However there are multiple raids (even Rift, which is not that old and is my favorite standard MMO, has 6+ raids). Thats a raid for every night so I fail to see how lockouts are that big of a deal.

No, it’s different in that you don’t have to grind out the gear. The stats the same as any crafted exotic gear.

The dungeons are not there to gives you gear, the dungeons are there for content, so you can just have fun while playing them. I have done so far, except Caudecus manor, that one was very frustrating and boring. The rewards (in the form of loot from enemies, chests, gold AND the tokens) are a bonus for me. There are 33 dungeon quest lines in total, if you have not done all of them, I would suggest getting friends together and just going through them. Feel free to skip Caudecu’s manor though.

But there are other things to do at lvl 80 too:
Explore the world (and I don’t mean just getting 100%, I mean exploring, there are many jumping quests, there are many secret areas, talking to npcs can give you such information to find these places. sPvP obviously (and tournaments, which in my opinion, is the only worthwhile thing to do in sPvP at the moment). WvW (get a small group and cause havoc, zerg vs zerg battles do not last long. Dungeons (as I have stated above), and if you want, you can grind them to get unique armor and weapon skins. Find the world events and do them (the three dragons, and the other huge mobs that spawn in certain zones, like in the south east corner of queens dale). Make a new char if you with, of a different race and different class, so you can try different story quests and maybe explore the starting zones you haven’t done yet. Legendary weapons.

And you can also stop playing the game and come back at any time. There will be new content soon, and it will be free. People do forget this one, or they feel the need to come here and state this to everyone.

If you’re not going to spend the time to read what I wrote then please don’t waste your time and mine by responding with things that I have already outlined.

As I specifically said, dungeons are indeed fun the first time through, but after that they are quite simply a joke. The bosses present no real threat to any cohesive team and the rewards have no practical application once you have your endgame gear (which is pointless to get because there is nothing to do with it).

Exploring the world is what Skyrim is for (because lord knows its good for nothing other than pretty scenery). However I will grant you that the jumping puzzles were fun. Yet again though, once you have done them they become boring.

As I stated, World Events are a nice idea, but in practice they are nothing more than giant zergs with no real challenge.

sPvP and WvW are fun, but sPvP gets old after a while until new game modes are released. WvW is really the only aspect of this game that has any sort of replay value.

And as I said I still play another MMO for raiding, but after the combat system of GW2 other MMOs feel slow and awkward.

No, because the world in skyrim is dull and boring compared to GW2 (and much smaller too). So I completely disagree there, if you don’t like to explore then fine.

Well we just disagree with everything so I can’t really add any more. I do not find the dungeons a joke after repeating them, and personally I do not care about rewards. The fact that the rewards are only there for aesthetic value is a good thing. It’s nice that it’s still guild wars, not gear wars.

Replying to your edit “It is without a doubt a copy off those two games, albeit it is a much better version of them.”

No, actually it is a copy of DAOC. And a pretty successful one, at least compared to WAR.

Knote.2904:

People obviously don’t read past the initial “gear carrot”.

His point is there is no fun/challenging content at end game. Regardless if said content is rewarding or not.

It’s ok if content is actually fun, but not rewarding.

It’s ok if content isn’t fun, but is rewarding.

It’s not ok if content isn’t fun, and isn’t rewarding.

Ideally, content should be fun AND rewarding.

It’s nice to see someone who understands, and nice job putting that thought into a super simple format. This is exactly my thought; I don’t much care about the rewards from dungeons/raids: My reward is doing the raid itself. Dungeons in GW2 are not challenging in the least, and thus are not fun, and thus are not rewarding. They present an opportunity to grind gear but do not present any reason for getting that gear.

op if you find the content not hard i think you will ned a little for new content. i read a interview from a developer of gw2 that said that when they released the dungeons for testing, the teams that were involved after alot of runs and understanding the mechanics said that they were quite easy, but for gw2 developers they prefered to not buff them because since it was the release of the game players were new to the game so it was simpler to understand the mechanics.
so i think you can expect harder content in time to come, just be patient, a mmo is for years, not weeks

carson yuen.6739:

So you think raiding two nights a week just to get a differeny skin with a little bit higher stat is better than fighting dungeons to collect tokens to get new skin?

The only difference between wow’s raid and tw2s exp mode is that one lock you out for a week just to give you a chance to get a gear, and one gives you tokens.

What do you do in wow or other mmos after they lock you out of the raid for the reat of the week?

And for some reason, people seems to really miss the raid system even tho they dont even want to play those anymore.

^ this.

You seem to think there are no mechanics to the fights. Just avoid red circles and dodge. Well, what are raids? They are—avoid red circles and run.

There isn’t anything different. You repeat content to get higher stats in other MMOs.

Here, you get a look. Many like it. Many don’t. If the cosmetic options don’t appeal to you, and there is no content you want to do, you really are done with the game then. Once you tire of it, leave. Come back when it has a content patch or Xpac that appeals to you. We don’t need to play all the time.

The raiders only log on for the raid and to farm consumables. All games exhaust content for players at some point. If you are done, you are done.

Prism.5649:

Knote.2904:

People obviously don’t read past the initial “gear carrot”.

His point is there is no fun/challenging content at end game. Regardless if said content is rewarding or not.

It’s ok if content is actually fun, but not rewarding.

It’s ok if content isn’t fun, but is rewarding.

It’s not ok if content isn’t fun, and isn’t rewarding.

Ideally, content should be fun AND rewarding.

It’s nice to see someone who understands, and nice job putting that thought into a super simple format. This is exactly my thought; I don’t much care about the rewards from dungeons/raids: My reward is doing the raid itself. Dungeons in GW2 are not challenging in the least, and thus are not fun, and thus are not rewarding. They present an opportunity to grind gear but do not present any reason for getting that gear.

All of this is true. And all of this will apply to people differently.

Some will find it fun. Others will not. The rewards are only as valuable as the player decides. If you are done, you are done.

Your feedback would be better spent on the Suggestion forum. This way, Anet can keep the game as appealing as possible, if a trend develops with too many feeling “done”.

As someone on reddit pointed out: Why do people still play Elder Scroll games over and over? Because it’s fun and entertaining. No new gear, no new stats — just a huge game with lots of side-quests and stuff to do. Heck, there isn’t that much difference from one game to the next, but people still can’t get enough.

It’s a lot like GW2, but for some reason there’s no “end game” and nothing to do in a huge MMO, but there’s no end to what you can do in Skyrim or Oblivion. It’s a strange thing that I don’t understand.

Anudieb.2450:

op if you find the content not hard i think you will ned a little for new content. i read a interview from a developer of gw2 that said that when they released the dungeons for testing, the teams that were involved after alot of runs and understanding the mechanics said that they were quite easy, but for gw2 developers they prefered to not buff them because since it was the release of the game players were new to the game so it was simpler to understand the mechanics.
so i think you can expect harder content in time to come, just be patient, a mmo is for years, not weeks

If what you say is true then you have given me hope, and I thank you for that. It is very true that MMO’s are long term games, and that is why I have not yet given up on GW2. I very much hope that new challenging content (with real mechanics) will be released at some point in the future.

As to Hsinimod, you clearly have never participated in a real raid. I feel like I have already made enough walls of text so instead of explaining some fight mechanics to you I instead encourage you to go look up some videos of Rift Hammerknell encounters. You will very shortly find that running out of red circles is the absolute most basic mechanic and is by no means the only mechanic.

As to your comment about repeating content to get higher stats, read what I wrote instead of wasting my time and yours.

Raiders absolutely exhaust content eventually, but not always before new content is released. Yet another perfect example is Rift. Rift has four 20-man raids: Greenscale’s Blight, River of Souls, Hammerknell, and Infernal Dawn. When Infernal Dawn was released most guilds were not even three quarters of the way through Hammerknell. Some game companies can release content faster than players can finish it, meaning no down time of “farming” raids waiting for the next content to be released.

Next time read before posting please.

Make or become more active in a guild and create events and challenges for other players.

I’ll summarize:

Nothing.

We want to feel like we change the world and we don’t.

Thus, it feels broken, and it is.

Good talk.

Even if they added raids, nobody would do them more than once because there is no gear with better stats as a reward.

Hotdogs.8934:

Even if they added raids, nobody would do them because there is no gear with better stats as a reward. If they made it super hard, people would just complain.

Stats mean nothing when you look at it. Impact does.

In other games you want gear for the look/power it conveys. But only because that makes you feel powerful/different.

I believe the reality is that we want to make a difference in the game/real world somehow. And this game, and all others, fails in that regard.

My $.02.

You want to change the world, but there are also millions of others who do. Only few exceptional people will make any significant impact to the world, or else whatever they do will just be diluted by each other.

A game where you can make a difference in the world is EVE online.

There’s plenty to do. Make a new class with a different race and try playing that.

He does have a point.

We need some real challenging pve dungeons, like a raid.
That could use many people and lotsa coordination even if the reward was just skin or a cool cinematic.

What ever happen to playing a game you know, for the fun of it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIZWzCzWXg&feature=related

At lvl 80 we have the following options for PvE, OP:
- 8 dungeons with 3 paths each.
- many different raid-like DEs in Orr.
- raiding world bosses.
- crafting.
- going back to experience content (I went in Harati today with some lowbie friends, tons of fun)

I feel there is enough PvE content for a launch, especially considering we have a lot of free content incoming.

When you think of other MMOs where people are farming the exact same raid over and over for months, GW2 gives a lot more variety.
You aren’t doing the same thing over and over.

The only issue is that waypoint costs impair the ability to quickly swap between different activities.
I’d like to see gold sink moved away from teleporting because it really goes against the core formula of GW2.

Go have fun OP

you can do what im doing start a guild with some friends. or my option 2 im saving up 255gold then quitting lol

Prism.5649:

TL;DR
So my question is thus: What is there to do at level 80 for someone interested in PvE? Dungeons and DE’s are nothing more than an easy grind for useless gear, crafting can be a bit interesting but ultimately is the same grind for useless gear, and exploring the world is fun for a while but becomes repetitive quickly (if I wanted to enjoy beautiful landscapes I would play Skyrim).

If I understood you, you are not caring about the rewards, but only the dungeon/raid itself and the amount of fun that it gives.

Have you tried every explorable paths in dungeons? It is a easy grind, if you always choose the easiest path. If you want to enjoy difficult challenges and new content, tryout the other paths, they are actually hard.

Exemple: TA explorable, Path 2 Foward/foward was a big pain in the * the first time I did it with my unorganized group of friends. I’m pretty sure that the other dungeons have difficult paths, but i have not tried them yet. One of the concerns is it might be difficult to find people willing to choose the other paths, unless you play with some friends.

"

You want to change the world, but there are also millions of others who do. Only few exceptional people will make any significant impact to the world, or else whatever they do will just be diluted by each other.

A game where you can make a difference in the world is EVE online."

I think WE want to, not just me. And "significant’ isn’t the point. Change is. If I could do something that caused an event to be named after me and I knew that someday, a few other people might find that challenge with my name on it… well, that would be better than the current system where I am literally just another number.

I doubt many have thought it through to this level, but I would guess that the chance to make a “permanent” difference, no matter how small it actually turned out to be, would be a huge incentive for many people.

And I’ve never played Eve, but I’ll check it out.

Mujen.5287:

What ever happen to playing a game you know, for the fun of it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIZWzCzWXg&feature=related

What ever happened to actually reading threads before posting in them?

Lol nm that’s just silly. =p

You just have to find something that doesn’t feel like a grind. Maybe join a guild and help other people with their leveling/story quests. Hunt for achievements and titles – that one always works for me since there’s a ton of them and if one starts to feel like a grind, i just do a different one. Try keg brawl. Try cooking, cook stuff for your guild mates. Cooking involves a lot of running around, visiting different areas and i bet you didn’t discover all the recipes.

I get a kick out of people saying that crafting is end game content and DE’s constitute raiding. Just makes me /facepalm and laugh every time.

Raiding is organized play. It requires skilled people working together in a complicated fight. It is not 10-20-30-40-50 or however many people zerging a boss with no mechanics to worry about spamming 1-5 till it’s dead. GW2 lacks any sort of guild PvE activities. It doesn’t even have GvG in PvP (which, why not? GW1 did). The dungeon explore modes aren’t fun, they have terrible rewards and you can’t do them as a guild. Roaming the world endlessly hoping to trigger a world boss chain as a guild would be an awful waste of time and not fun. So, not counting crafting (LOL) or DE’s, what’s there to do with your guild? Nothing.

Prism.5649:

To the poster who said that WvW is the most unique PvP experience in a long time, I laugh at that. WvW is very fun and as I said is the only aspect of GW2 that has any sort of replay value. Nevertheless, it really is nothing more than a suped up version of WoW’s Wintergrasp/Tol Barad or Rift’s Conquest. It is without a doubt a copy off those two games, albeit it is a much better version of them.

For me, you have lost all your credibility in this whole thread by simply stating this. We all know WoW’s pvp features have always been considered a joke (apart from vanilla open world battles). Comparing or even using WoW’s PvP in the same paragraph as GW 2’s WvW is an insult to this game and you have clearly showed us that you’re not a PvPer. At least one that doesn’t like a fair fight. If anything, GW 2 is a copy of Warhammer’s or Daoc’s way of doing things. Not that gear based garbage.

Oxe.6142:

I get a kick out of people saying that crafting is end game content and DE’s constitute raiding. Just makes me /facepalm and laugh every time.

Raiding is organized play. It requires skilled people working together in a complicated fight. It is not 10-20-30-40-50 or however many people zerging a boss with no mechanics to worry about spamming 1-5 till it’s dead. GW2 lacks any sort of guild PvE activities. It doesn’t even have GvG in PvP (which, why not? GW1 did). The dungeon explore modes aren’t fun, they have terrible rewards and you can’t do them as a guild. Roaming the world endlessly hoping to trigger a world boss chain as a guild would be an awful waste of time and not fun. So, not counting crafting (LOL) or DE’s, what’s there to do with your guild? Nothing.

Really I dont think theres enough class abilites to ever warrant difficult boss mechanics.

Whats a GS warrior going to do with difficult mechanics? Spam 100blades?

Whats a shortbow Ranger going to do? Spam immune snares and auto attack while he runs in circles?

The only abilities nearly every class has are auto attacks and snares, with some debuffs thrown in, which are usually on way too long of a CD to ever work as an actual use against a mechanic.

The abilities of the classes really only warrant zerging, because unfortunately theres not even depth at abilities to warrant real strategy.

Oh 5 people have dots on them, let me debuff- oh wait i cant, all i can do is autoattack. This guys getting focused, let me heal- oh wait i cant.

The trinity allows you to make difficult and challenging encounters. Without it, in reality all you will ever have is zerging, because you dont have the abilities or the synergy to warrant anything else.

now for real dude, this is just a game. it has an end like everything else. why do you desperately want an end game? you rally want to play one single game for years? you hit lvl 80, you unlock map 100%. after that you can do same thing with a different character and add some pvp. but that’s it. just move on. next game, please…

@ Jonnyguitar – The abilities and their uses are every bit as intricate and useful as in other games. Explore dungeons are ridiculously difficult and require using those abilities intelligently and effectively. Not to mention PvP. If you think that can’t be extended into meaningful organized large group PvE gameplay you’re dead wrong.

For the record, I read your wall of text.

Life, games—this game, are what you make it. That said, what would you like to be able to do after hitting L80?

The game has been out for less than a month, I’m confident there will be much more to come in the way of added features and content—but that won’t solve your immediate issue.

Personally, I am interested in exploring the entire world 100%, and maxing out (most) of the achievements. Largely because the world is beautiful, and because spending the necessary time to do this opens up a social aspect to GW2;

In real life, what’s to do after you get your job, money, house, car, wife and kids?—Eat food, travel and spend time with friends talking about… job, money, house, car, wife and kids.

Cheers!

I agree with your Prism

Dungeons in Gw2 and Raids are completly different things.
AS you said, GW2 has just removed the raiding and kept the boring gearing up part with Dungeons, except, once you get it, theres nothing to use it for then prancing around in your new dress. Its just very meaningless, which you kinda felt while you were leveling up aswell. “why should i hit 80? theres nothing waiting for me there anyways”

1. Dungeons are short, you make 10+ runs every day, it gets very tedious. Your only 5 players in a group.
2. Raids takes 1 and often more then 1 days to complete, you do it as a guild or “raid” 12+ players. The raids are longer, has more variation, and feels like much more of an achievement.
3. Important to me but not to everyone, beating the encounters in raids before everyone else on your server, is an achievemtn on its own and gives your guild good rep and boosts the morale of the guild.
4. The rewards in raids are usually better then other stuff you can find in the game.

I actually think they could have raids and gear with stats for PvE and a seperate set for WvW without stats as they did with sPvP.
Maybe then the game will last a bit longer. As it is now i already see less and less people logg in, theres not even a overflow in most zones on my server which is the most populated one. There just arent anything to do then crafting, getting 100% map, spvp and wvw.

Unfortunally it will be very hard to add any raids in GW2, becouse there no tanking, healing, dps trinity. Everyone would just run around all over the place kiting the bosses.

“… So my question is thus: What is there to do at level 80 for someone interested in PvE? Dungeons and DE’s are nothing more than an easy grind for useless gear, crafting can be a bit interesting but ultimately is the same grind for useless gear, and exploring the world is fun for a while but becomes repetitive quickly (if I wanted to enjoy beautiful landscapes I would play Skyrim).”

Read your entire post, but I’m only quoting the TL;DR part for summary. I think what people miss about raids are the intense team strategy. When you think team strategy, you think Healer/Range/DPS (trinity). The approach ArenaNet took with GW2 is to make each class strong and independent and not force a specific roll in team play. The result in my experience is very mild team strategy. You have the cross-profession combos which are cool, but I don’t see players working hard to pull these things off. Perhaps down the road they will, but for now it seems the game doesn’t really force team strategy at the same intensity level as other MMOs. (the exception would be sPvP Torunaments, but until a ranking system is in place that’s a difficult place to find fun unless you want to quit your job and commit to a hardcore team)The expectation of the player is that as they progress the strategic element shifts from important to critical. You get that from WoW raids and I think that’s really what players are looking for.

I would imagine that type of content is coming.

For now, the answer is dungeons explore mode (and no, they are not all easy. story mode is) and WvW.

Honestly what did you expect? They never advertised raids, why did you expect raids? Have you played any MMOs other than WoW? Raiding isn’t the only form of “endgame” possible and other MMOs have succeded without it (see FFXI, EvE). Did you even play the original GW? As it stands right now GW2 has better content and “endgame” than the original has now after it’s 3 campaigns and EotN expansion. I really hope this is just another poor attempt at “trolling”.

tl;dr “Hit level 80…what’s left to do but hit the raid treadmill?”

Enjoy your Kung-Fu Panda.

There is an easy fix to the whole zerg problem. Go find where the zerg is.. .Play anywhere else! not sure why so many people find it so hard to work around this issue honestly! Obviously every Dynamic event is easy if you do it with 50 other players. Not so if you do it solo / <5 people however.

The fun in this game is just in playing it. The idea never has been to get to 80 for the real game. So, do whatever you like that’s fun. If you can’t find anything you like doing, dunno what to tell you, why were you playing to begin with?

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

Wall of Text not necessary. There is nothing left to do, if you don’t care about gear skins. Then again, I have always felt there is nothing left to do at the end of ANY MMO because I am smart enough to see raid tiers for what they are: gear skins that allow you to get more gear skins.

All “end-game” is pointless grind because “end-game” was invented to arbitrarily increase play time so that people keep paying those sub fees. Relish in the freedom that here you can come and go as you please and seek whatever reward you please in whatever manner you please.

There is just as much endgame/grind here as any game, you are just never forced to participate.

Between betas and my fist character, I’ve killed the content. I feel like I’ve been here, done this already. It basically killed the content for my alts. I felt like this after the fist 2 weeks. then I grinded out an exotic armor set. Now I just fel like I am done.

I just started playing a few days ago. So far I’m really enjoying it. After reading as much as I could about it I’ve decided to approach the whole game differently then other MMOs I’ve played and the one I still play. I came in knowing that in the ‘endgame’ there wasn’t raiding and beyond the few things already mentioned that was it for now. I have another game that I pay for monthly to raid so for me no big deal.

I’m not playing for or even striving to get to the end fast at all. I’m just playing for the journey at this point and have five characters set up and going. I figure at this rate it will be months before any of them hit 80 as I’m playing to accomplish as much as I can along the way. The way I see it is that ‘endgame’ is now. I’m already doing it. I’m finding it unlike my other MMO where the point seems to be to level as quickly as possible to get to the good stuff. Here there is good stuff all the way up. Might as well enjoy it and just play around.

I was so happy when I found out that any character could go to any zone I wanted. The world is huge and there is so much to explore. The amount of leveling content is huge. If I just played one character I would only touch very little of it. Some people will level one and go back. I’ve chosen just to ‘play’ in it as much as I can and have fun and not worry about getting anywhere fast. This game is ideal for this type of playing.

And if I’m not having fun I can leave it for a while and come back with no monthly sub hanging over my head making me think I’m wasting money. It’s great. I can see myself playing it for a very long time along with my other main MMO and the numerous other single player games that come out along the way.

SHM.7628:

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

Wall of Text not necessary. There is nothing left to do, if you don’t care about gear skins. Then again, I have always felt there is nothing left to do at the end of ANY MMO because I am smart enough to see raid tiers for what they are: gear skins that allow you to get more gear skins.

All “end-game” is pointless grind because “end-game” was invented to arbitrarily increase play time so that people keep paying those sub fees. Relish in the freedom that here you can come and go as you please and seek whatever reward you please in whatever manner you please.

There is just as much endgame/grind here as any game, you are just never forced to participate.

Between betas and my fist character, I’ve killed the content. I feel like I’ve been here, done this already. It basically killed the content for my alts. I felt like this after the fist 2 weeks. then I grinded out an exotic armor set. Now I just fel like I am done.

Yeah i hate how most mmo’s seem to have gone the alt route in order to be able to make far less content.

Instead of being able to play 1 class over a period of time, they want you playing 8 instead, and repeating what little content that does exist.

Which if youre someone like me, who only likes playing 1 class and putting significant time into it, really causes alot of problems.

Jonnyguitar.1684:

SHM.7628:

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

Wall of Text not necessary. There is nothing left to do, if you don’t care about gear skins. Then again, I have always felt there is nothing left to do at the end of ANY MMO because I am smart enough to see raid tiers for what they are: gear skins that allow you to get more gear skins.

All “end-game” is pointless grind because “end-game” was invented to arbitrarily increase play time so that people keep paying those sub fees. Relish in the freedom that here you can come and go as you please and seek whatever reward you please in whatever manner you please.

There is just as much endgame/grind here as any game, you are just never forced to participate.

Between betas and my fist character, I’ve killed the content. I feel like I’ve been here, done this already. It basically killed the content for my alts. I felt like this after the fist 2 weeks. then I grinded out an exotic armor set. Now I just fel like I am done.

Yeah i hate how most mmo’s seem to have gone the alt route in order to be able to make far less content.

Instead of being able to play 1 class over a period of time, they want you playing 8 instead, and repeating what little content that does exist.

Which if youre someone like me, who only likes playing 1 class and putting significant time into it, really causes alot of problems.

yeah, I’m couldn’t agree more.