Guild Wars 2

Should I come back? If I do… where to begin?

I’m considering returning to Guild Wars 2. At the behest of a friend, I’m thinking I just might start playing again, which shouldn’t be a difficult decision considering there isn’t any monthly subscription.

But the same question comes into my mind that I had when I left. “What can I do in Guild Wars 2?”

When I stopped playing, it didn’t seem like there was anything to do but A) Grind crafting professions Grind Orr C) Grind dungeons. And on top of that, it felt like there wasn’t a great deal of direction at level 80, like I was just supposed to know where to go, what to do, how to do it.

So I’ve been poking about and reading this or that on the game lately, and I see we’ve now got Ascended armour – all of which is crafted? And the crafting cap was raised as well? I think I widdled away what little gold I had just getting 3 crafts to ~250-300 before, so that doesn’t exactly appeal to me as a returning player. Making money has never been a skill of mine in MMOs.

Anyway, I hate to come across as one of those people saying “Give me ONE good reason to play this game”, because that seriously is not my intent, but… kind of, yeah. I’d like to play again, but I’m at a loss for what to do in the game. Too many aspects felt inaccessible to me once I hit 80, be it crafting or dungeons or just rushing around with a zerg completing events (okay, zerging isn’t inaccessible, it was just unenjoyable)

tl;dr GW2 want, what do?

Endgame in GW2 is about doing what you feel like doing. Here are a few of the things you can do:

-Explore the world- even at 100% world completion, I still find things I’ve never seen before. There’s a ton of detail in every map, so if you like exploring and discovering things, GW2’s a great game for it.
-Craft a legendary or Ascended stuff. Both, I will stress, are optional. Legendaries are cosmetic (get them only if you like the skin), Ascended has an almost unnoticeable boost and 99.9% of the game can be done without it (the exception is high-level Fractals, which has no special reward and is more of a prestige/personal challenge thing).
-Go high in Fractals or master every dungeon. This is a LOT more fun with a guild or static group (to the point that I prefer four- or even three-manning things with friends than five-manning with PUGs).
-Solo dungeons. (Not kidding- it’s very doable and a lot of fun.)
-Dip into WvW and sPvP. Both are very addicting in groups.
-Follow the Living Story. There’s always something new, and recent updates have been more permanent in scope.
-Level other classes and master them.

And most importantly:
-Socialize. GW2 is a social game. Join a good guild- it makes all the difference. You get people to chat and group and skinny dip with and all sorts of shenanigans you otherwise wouldn’t have encountered alone. If you don’t want a guild, then build up a good social base of friends who you do things with daily.

Also. regarding group PvE in GW2, it makes a lot of sense when you understand control/support/damage and positioning. I recommend reading this guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Combat-System-101-Guide/first

If you want an example of how the system works, a few days ago, my best friend and I did a dual elementalist clear of the Infinitrarium. It has hordes of enemies that can lock you down with stun, high damage, or conditions. In a full group of five, they aren’t too bad, but we had to be creative with just the two of us (and we were both playing the class with the lowest raw defense, to boot).

When we were attacked by waves of enemies, ten at a time, I would lay down a field that stunned any enemies that walked into it. He would take this opportunity to AoE all of them while they were bunched up, and when my field wore down, he’d put down his own field to stun them. If he got hurt too badly, he would retreat while I threw down ice fields and rock walls to keep enemies from chasing him, and then toss water fields on top of him, which he would use blast or leap finishers in to heal himself. Both of us were specced to give defensive boons to others upon attunement, so if it looked like either of us were about to get into a sticky situation, we would attune for group protection or stability. We also coordinated to stack AoEs on top of each other to make kill zones and kited groups of enemies into them. We nuked the enemy without either of us dying. IMO, GW2’s system is a lot more fun and allows more creativity than the traditional tank/healer/DPS trinity, though it’s harder to understand at first.

I can’t tell you what to do, but I was incredibly bored at 80. Ascended gear is a massive grind and very expensive…and that’s after you level your crafting to 500 which is a trial in itself. Combat is incredibly shallow, consisting of mostly zergplay and auto attacking. In dungeons you get to skip all the trash mobs and mindlessly mash your buttons on cool down on boss fights while dodging once in a while.

The temporary content is mostly poor storytelling latched onto an AP grindfest. I stopped bothering with it a long time ago because I didn’t like that feeling of log on now or miss out forever.

Basically this is supposed to be a horizontal progression game but it doesn’t have the content to support that kind of play. Gemshop items don’t count.

I run dungeons, do jumping puzzles, participate the guild missions, wvw, the do some of the living story. It’s all fun because (and only because) I do it with friends.

What would you find fun to do, Orangekun?

These days, for me it’s more about the friends I’ve made than the actual game that keeps me playing. I’m not really interested in the living story but if you are into that sort of thing, that’s one other reason… If you like a challenge, try to see how far you can get in fractals… For other people, wvw is endgame.

Hard to say really. I have no interest in crafting, and the time I’ve spent in wvw amounted to zergs which I didn’t enjoy or nothing going on whatsoever because there aren’t many players participating at the time.

Fractals are moderately of interest, though I think I’d rather do the other dungeons (hooray for cosmetic gear). That said, the idea of running the exact same dungeon a ridiculous number of times to amass enough tokens to buy anything isn’t appealing and what experiences I’ve had with partied pve has been extremely chaotic and nonsensical. Personally, I attribute that to GW2’s lack of the holy trinity, or mostly that and to a lesser extent the gimmicky feel of the dodge roll.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t for everyone, might not be for you, especially if you’d rather play in a holy trinity system. Have you tried pvp?

When I logged on today I didn’t notice any notification for the living story, etc. Curious how to, y’know, do that stuff? Over the last few months I’ve logged on occasionally, but it looks like to actually get anything out of the living story you’ll have to be a very active player. By that I don’t mean putting countless hours into the game necessarily, but rather just playing on a daily basis.

I guess a big part of my discouragement from doing anything at 80 is that every time I take a step away from GW2, I come back a month later to everything being different and no clue where to begin again.

P.S. Soloing dungeons sounds like a neat time, but I know they’re certainly not designed with the intention of soloing, and your level scales down (loosely related, it always bothered me that you’re forced to level sync in the open world). Out of curiousity, which dungeons would you say are “soloable”? I mostly play a Guardian, by the way, and that’s my only level 80.

The living story stuff is a mixed bag. No one is going to like everything, because they try to make stuff for everyone.

Usually you get an in game mail from an NPC about what’s going on, but there are a couple of different ways to find out about living world content.

The easiest way is to open your achievement panel, and look at the living world achievements, because they’ll usually give you a clue as to what is going on. At least you know what you have to do.

For example, currently, there are two Living World events going on at one time….the Wintersday Celebration ( most of which can be accessed through Lion’s Arch), and the Kessex Hills/Tower story arc, which is in its final phase.

I really like the Kessex Hill arc because it made permanent changes to the game. I took an alt in there and found heart events that didn’t exist before. NPCs are saying different things. It’s pretty cool.

And the new events are cool as well, though some of them will be hard for people at level.