Guild Wars 2

I bought GW2 last August, but I’ve only really played it for maybe three weeks out of that whole year. I stuck with The Old Republic for longer than that! How alarming. By all accounts, GW2 is a better game in nearly every way, and yet GW2 has yet to really grab me.

On paper, GW2 should be an easy winner for me! The world is beautifully handcrafted, the lore (while not the most engaging) at least has plenty of personality. Character animations are great. There’s a ton of content and environments to explore and battle in.

Yet I get this weird feeling while playing it. For some reason, questing in GW2 feels like grinding dailies in other MMOs. I’m not sure why. But I get that same sense of “ticking the boxes” in GW2 that I get from doing the same batch of dailies for the 20th time in other games.

The profs and races of GW2 never really grabbed me, either. In other MMOs, I felt like my class abilities all played off each other in unique ways. In GW2, I’ve always felt like my current weapon had one or two good skills and the rest just seemed to be way too situational to be of much use. As for the races, I love the personality behind Asura and Charr, but their armor is so shrunk/stretched to fit them that it looks awful. Sylvari are just leafy humans. So in the end I’m left with Humans and Big Humans (Norn). :|

Here are the profs I’ve tried:
Warrior (to 30): This is probably my favorite, mainly because it lets me mix things up. If I want to do the best DPS, I had to pull out my Greatsword, but oftentimes I would intentionally lower my damage just for the chance to play as something else.

Guardian (to 25): I loved being able to heal people, but aside from healing during events, fighting as a Guardian was a major yawn.

Engineer (to 20): This was the first prof I tried because I liked the prof’s theme (bombs, guns!) the best. However, I soon found out that it takes five times the effort to play an Engineer well than it takes to play the other prof. I kept dying to mobs, only to witness another player of a different prof come by and kill it five times faster, and finish with plenty of health. This frustrated me. Are Engineers any more balanced these days?

Ranger (to 15): This was the last profession I tried. I was bored pretty much from the start, half-heartedly flinging arrows at enemies. There just wasn’t any umph.

I’m wondering if I should try another profession, or give warrior or engineer another go.

I look at videos of GW2 and see screenshots of beautiful locations I want to have adventures in, but I just can’t get into the game, and I can’t figure out why. This post is composed of my best guesses.

I don’t know if anyone can do anything for me. I hope so. I just want to know if anyone else had trouble getting into the game. Do I need to play it another way? Have I just not found the profession for me? Maybe GW2 just isn’t for me? ;_;

I just came back yesterday after not playing for about 8 months…and I feel the same way.

None of the professions pull me in, I don’t feel like part of a community even when I was on a large guild who did wvwvw nightly.

I pretty much feel at this point there is no such thing as a fun mmo in the market place. Personally, I want 2004/2005 wow back…but that will never happen.

I got this game back at launch played until just about all my friends quit playing and then i quit. recently in early to mid july i came back in hope of being able to get into it. i played for about twenty or so hours and havent played since. i desperately want to play this game for all the good things it offers.. but like you and whoever else, it’s not “sucking me in”.

now i’v come back about 2-3 weeks later to this very night thinking about forcing myself to play every class. I may go as far as to getting any one of them to lvl 30-40 just to see if im missing a playstyle i like on any of them.

but to be honest i think i enjoyed this game SOOO much more when i had really good friends to play with back at launch. any online game is better with friends and doing it alone can be repetitive without conversations; pointing things out to each other, discussing abilities you find fun or cool or asking the opinion of a skill etc.

i feel that maybe the first thing i should do is find someone i can have a solid game play experience with. someone to team up with regularly and talk with. for me it seems like it could make all the difference in this game.

I had the same problem as all if you. I started playing in November. I came from WoW and just couldn’t get into it. But once you get to 40 up the game starts to really shine. At 80 this game is just amazing. My advice is to just stick with a char to 50. Find a big active guild. Run with them in WvW. I thought i would hate wvw. I cant tell you how wrong i was. Try out the other races zones. You’ll get the same karma and xp no matter your level. If you start to feel bored, do some of the living story content. New content every 2 weeks makes it feel fresh and exciting. Run a dungeon with your guild. You don’t have to be 80. AC story only requires lvl 30. My advice is to just stick with it. This game is a blast! Its a completely different vibe from WoW which was why i couldn’t get into it and may be what is happening to all of you. But this game is great. If you need help with anything, i wont be on until next weekend but feel free to add me and i can help or just keep company and level

Turn off the boxes. Go to your map screen, click on the eye and turn off map markers. Run around and explore. Dont’ worry about zone completion till later.

Problem solved.

Vayne.8563:

Turn off the boxes. Go to your map screen, click on the eye and turn off map markers. Run around and explore. Dont’ worry about zone completion till later.

Problem solved.

Also don’t do WvW. It may be a fast way to level, but it’s not a very intuitive or even challenging way of playing.

Treadstone.2564:

For some reason, questing in GW2 feels like grinding dailies in other MMOs.

Seconding Vayne’s suggestion. Whenever I explore maps, I choose a random direction and run off without any regards to what hearts I need to fill/what PoIs I need to grab. I go wherever my whimsy takes me.

Just a week ago, I was exploring the northwestern part of Frostgorge Sound underwater. When I surfaced, I saw rows of dark, gleaming, massive peaks of corrupted ice soaring far above. I also realized it was night, starless, a full moon glinting in the sky, and there were countless Icebrood prowling the frozen shore. It was what the world would become if Jormag won.

It was a completely unexpected sight, and one that, quite literally, chilled me.

The profs and races of GW2 never really grabbed me, either.

Have you looked at cultural armor? Charr and Asura have the best in my opinion.

As for class abilities playing off each other, I find that you get a feel for how they work together by doing difficult content. Early on, especially with warrior, guardian, and ranger, fights are really easy. As a guardian, in much open-world content, I could just autoattack normal enemies into submission. However, against harder enemies, I have to plan my attacks and adjust to the situation.

I am soloing a veteran jungle boar in the Straits (one that bleeds me and tears off a third of my health with each hit), with a hammer and sword/shield. These are a few combos I would use:
-I blink in and blind the boar with Sword 2, and hit Sword 3 right in its face for big damage. If it tries to attack again, I use Virtue of Justice (which I traited to blind) to keep it from striking me.
-I use Hammer 5 to put down a barrier the boar cannot cross. While it bangs itself against the ring, I switch and use Sword 3 or simply strafe in and out of range to attack it.
-I notice the boar winding up a charge attack. I immobilize it with Hammer 3 so it cannot move or turn, get behind it, and attack freely. Or I put down Hammer 5 and let it run smack into my barrier. Or I use Hammer 4 to send it flying.
-The boar’s getting too close for comfort. I use either Hammer 4 or Shield 5 to knock it away from me, and follow up with Hammer 3 to keep it locked down or Sword 3 to attack from a distance while it’s stunned. If both control skills are on cooldown and I’m out of endurance, I use Shield 4 to minimize the damage I take while kiting it until my endurance recovers.

I am essentially cycling my skills to keep the enemy under control rather than spamming them all to try to kill it before it kills me.

Here are the profs I’ve tried:

Warrior, guardian, and ranger are the easiest classes to begin the game with. They are extremely forgiving in that you can stand still and take relatively large amounts of damage without having to worry about using your skills actively or dodging/kiting.

Engineer, on the other hand, is one of the harder classes. The class doesn’t shine until later (around 30), when you get more access to kits. It’s also a class that’s built around juggling the enemy with control skills and comboing rather than raw power, which are more advanced concepts that newer players won’t know well.
If it means anything, I saw an engineer win 1v2 against a thief and a warrior in WvW, with plenty of health left and in under 3 minutes. It’s an effective class when played well, stronger in PvP than PvE but can hold its own in both.

I personally main an elementalist, which is the class with the lowest health pool and the lowest armor, and I regularly solo champions and clumps of veterans that shred other players into little itty bits in seconds. It’s a very fast-paced class, and the least forgiving early on. You have to make use of all of your skills (and eles have a ton of them) to hold the enemy at bay, and you have to have a good feel for kiting and dodging. It’s a challenging class with a steep learning curve, but very rewarding. I get twitchy when I play other classes because I’m missing the rush ele gives me.

Overall, I think your problem is mainly one of inexperience and not finding a best-fit class. There’s this odd zone where certain classes are forgiving to learn, but boring and don’t give a feel for the complexity of combat, yet other classes can be almost too complex at first and difficult to pick up, especially if you develop bad habits from the easier classes.

My schedule is erratic at the moment and I get logged off at random thanks to where I’m staying, but if you’re on a NA server, I can group with you later today and run around with you. GW2 is a lot more enjoyable with people to enjoy it with. Have you looked into finding a guild?

Well, it may feel like each weapon omly has a few good skills, but thats just because theyre really deep and theres room for a lot of improving! Believe me or not, but ive played my mesmer for almost 2000 hours since launch, and there are still things to learn and try out!

Engineer is balanced, but alot of their strength comes from their kits and stuff. With things like warrior and guardian you can pretty muh tank everything and never die, while almost all other professions have lower armor and die quicker. This may seem like a bad thing, but its not! They have low passive defense, but also get otherthings to compensate! Mesmer has clones, stealth, invulnerability, evasion and teleporting. Elementalist has burst healing for example.

These low defense professions may be harder to start out with, but trust me when i say: it only means its more rewarding once you learn how to use it.

As for healing, it is very usefull in parties, dungeons for example. Mesmer, guardian, ele and engineer are all very good healers, they do it in different ways though. Other professions can also heal in some way.. Except thief, but they have other support like stealth :/.

Mesmers are the jack of all trades, master of few. The beauty is that every skill and aeapon has a purpose, and you can simply swap some utilities, weapoks and traits to have the optimal build for the right situation, no retraiting required!
You can reflect projectiles, which not only damages the enemy, but also protects your team! You can heal them, you can apply allt of boone (dodge twice as often, do more damage etc) and you can do damage.

Try getting in a friendly guild! Just ask around in map chat and you should get a response. Im in a guild full of helpfull people, you can do dungeons and stuff wih them, explore or even just chat about the weather! If youre interested, feel free to forum PM me(or if you want to talk about anything else).

Oh, you should try a sylvari female, theyre just totally awesome. Always smiling and a super cute accent and stuf

My suggestion is to pick a goal for your character. That’s what a lot of people end up missing.

Other MMOs and games explicitly point out to you Do this thing→ you should have this now → once you do, go do this.

That direction might be tedious or totally up to random drops in repeated content. But the goal is specifically there and you have a fair idea of what to do next.

Adversely, ArenaNet drops the leash. You finish your story and the world is open for you to do what you want to do and accomplish what you want to accomplish. This can easily leave people lacking motivation and attachment to their characters.

When I made my guardian I wanted her to have very specific armor, with very specific weapons, one particular title and she was going to play a certain way. Everything I did led towards creating that character. Now I use her to lead temple runs in Orr because that’s what she was made for. When im done doing that I jump on my Thief and create a squad to lead players through new event content, because thats what she was made for.

Try crafting a character as opposed to rolling one and just following it along. It can be immensely satisfying.

You need someone to play with, chat with, converse with. Of course, some plays better alone, buy you have tried it already. Being in a large guild doesn’t make your experience better if you don’t interact with them.

You can also explore and do stuff that you find along the way, if you it interesting complete it, if not, just go look further. Talk to NPCs and listen to their conversations. Go look for areas you haven’t seen yet.

For example, I am just exploring the game again, and if I run into Emissary DE, I join and help others. I found that I got more enjoyment helping others than doing stuff for myself. I like chatting with members, new and old, and I invite them to our comfy guild. I started the guild with 3 people, and it is now close to 300 (though it has 70 active in a day). We’re mostly casual players and just chat when we like to, or do stuff together, or just let the players do what they like with no pressure.