Guild Wars 2

A buddy and I have been playing GW2 since launch. We left the game a few months back because we couldn’t find any real purpose or anything to do.

We were excited about this new content. We came back, we even bought makeover kits and updated our characters to start anew. We start the story, we’re into it, it seems fun, and then all of the sudden we hit the end of the content after 2 playing sessions!

I don’t get it. I think it’s silly to do that same piece of story over and over to get achievements that have no real reward, so what are you supposed to be doing in Dry Top? Is that it?

Maybe I just don’t get this game. I want to like it so bad and I love the characters and graphics but I think it’s lame to do the same things over and over again for no reason. Does anyone have any advice? Is that all there is to this expansion? What do you guys do when you play?

This was the first episode of the new LS, afaik they plan on releasing one episode every 2 weeks, so you’ll have new content a week from now.

This is not an expansion, it’s free.
That’s where it differs I think.

Likewise to Season 1, Season 2 of the living story will be delivered (more or less) on 2-week updates of content for free, as long as you log in during those 2 weeks. As such, each update will be, metaphorically, a small piece of a puzzle which will over time create a completed puzzle.

If you want an expansion sized amount of content, I recommend you log-in for 30 seconds when each update arrives, store up all of the updates, and then play through it all when the last update of Season 2 ships. That should give you a plethora of content reasonable to that of a regular MMO expansion – and for free.

Remember when they advertised Canach’s Lair as a dungeon? This time we get a new (mini-me) map.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Remember when they advertised Canach’s Lair as a dungeon? This time we get a new (mini-me) map.

Yeah, most MMOs have dungeons bigger than this open world map…

Well, if you want, you can wait another week to get the next update, and than you can be disappointed every two weeks by the little content you get.

That is just how the LS is designed to be.

Fuin.8361:

This is not an expansion, it’s free.
That’s where it differs I think.

That is no excuse.

I think the living story is a great idea but it has been introduced and implemented so poorly and has really destroyed Guild Wars 2 for me since release. I pretty much completely ignore it and play WvW.

I would happily pay £30-£40 for a DECENT expansion.
-1 -2 maybe even 3 new races
-New classes
-New areas
-New skills
-New Traits

I understand how difficult it would be. Having to balance classes around again, making current skins fit and apply to the new races, making new animations etc. But if they put half as much time into that as they did into living story, we would already have it. And I honestly believe Guild Wars 2 would be millions of times better than it is now.

First of all, welcome back.

motherbox.5493:

Maybe I just don’t get this game. I want to like it so bad and I love the characters and graphics but I think it’s lame to do the same things over and over again for no reason. Does anyone have any advice?

My advice would be to objectively evaluate what keeps you playing any game that you enjoy. List the qualities you like in MMOs and for each, also list WHY you like that quality (this is very important, and this skill can be useful in anything).

If Guild Wars 2 offers things which will keep you having fun, then stay, or keep coming back periodically and trying the new things (it doesn’t cost anything anyway).

Most games (MMOs) incentivize players with ever increasing stats. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep if you are under the illusion that higher stats = better game. This results in more of a feeling of obligation than fun. If you’re looking for a game that “makes” you play, look elsewhere. I’ve never seen an MMO that puts out even a total of one hour per week of fresh content. Usually new skills/weapons/classes are either useless or totally overpowered for months after an expansion.

It’s ok to play for a couple hours every couple weeks. The idea that a single game should somehow define your existence is leftover from subscription games and f2p/p2w grinders, and GW2 is trying to discard those old notions in favor of a more open ended gaming experience.

What to do in Dry Top? Kill stuff, do events, search for treasure, RP as desert bandits, try to organize maps to hit t3/t4 status. Pretty much the same stuff as the rest of the game. It’s ok if you don’t find that fun, fun is different to different people, but that’s what the game is.

Thanks for the responses. Thrashbarg, what did you mean “search for treasure”, and “try to organize maps to hit t3/t4 status” – what does that mean?

motherbox.5493:

Thanks for the responses. Thrashbarg, what did you mean “search for treasure”, and “try to organize maps to hit t3/t4 status” – what does that mean?

While I’m not Thrash, I would assume that the “search for treasure” refers to the treasure boxes that show up when the sandstorm starts.

The “try to organize maps to hit t3/t4 status” is referring to completing events while the sandstorm has resided. The more events (and other objectives I’m sure, but unaware of) that are completed the higher the Tier status gets. Opening up new tiers opens up additional things to buy on the Tier vendors in these zones, until the next sandstorm which resets it when it finishes, I believe.

Fuin.8361:

This is not an expansion, it’s free.
That’s where it differs I think.

I’ll happily pay for content that keeps me busy. I beat the LS in about forty minutes to an hour, and I don’t plan on replaying for achievements. That’s two weeks between logins. If they want to do LS they need to be able to release content in a timely enough manner to keep me logging on. The original Guild Wars released a campaign every year, adding two new classes, around 350 new skills and multiple new zones. One year of living story and we don’t have nearly that.

Morsus.5106:

Fuin.8361:

This is not an expansion, it’s free.
That’s where it differs I think.

I’ll happily pay for content that keeps me busy. I beat the LS in about forty minutes to an hour, and I don’t plan on replaying for achievements. That’s two weeks between logins. If they want to do LS they need to be able to release content in a timely enough manner to keep me logging on. The original Guild Wars released a campaign every year, adding two new classes, around 350 new skills and multiple new zones. One year of living story and we don’t have nearly that.

There’s a big difference between Guild wars 2 and the original. I played the original since a month after release and Guild Wars 2 since head start.

In Guild Wars it was easier to implement new classes. They used basically the same model for creating the new animations as we only played as a human. In Guild Wars 2 there are five races to do then. Then two more for each race because of gender. The counter argument is that with small variety of skills compared to guild wars, it should be easy. But each one has a variety of weapons with their own unique animations so adding that up with 10 models, 2 for each race, it can be quite daunting with all that. So maybe they are in the process of (a) new class(es). They just want it to be right when it hits and wait for the right time. Why would a new class suddenly hit when we haven’t advanced anywhere in game so far? Maybe later in LS2 we’ll get a surprise. Then it can be implemented more smoothly then a new class suddenly popping up. They are trying their best to stay in lore it seems. And like I said before, after the LS1 season and the bickering here, they don’t want to rush or release content too early now in fear of bugs and a community back lash.

The LS has added 2 maps (one small and the other uninviting), one WvW map, and one dungeon with the temp. holiday stuff and other changes. Even though it’s not impressive, it shows they have more behind the scenes going on then we know. Somewhere a dev said they can do a map in about 6 months. So looking at the WvW map and it’s size and mechanics, I think I can safely say that new frontiers will be added in LS2 but in chunks that make sense and build their story up. There’s more to the dry top map then the world map shows. But you gotta glitch out the map and there’s some mysterious characters and random npcs and stuff outside where we are suppose to be in Dry Top.

And to address the skills Guild Wars had added, unfortunately we will not see mass amounts of skills in Guild Wars 2 due to the devs objective of having a simple balance of classes. Understandable due to the imbalance in Guild Wars with all the skills. But it is sad, one reason I loved Guild Wars.

All I can really say is just play when you want and catch the updates. Guild Wars 2 is nice in the aspect it’s all been free and you can hop back whenever. Even nicer there’s no power creep or anything you have to grind towards to complete the game. The grind is there if you choose so. So don’t stress much over not liking Guild Wars 2 much or being online everyday. You can hop back in whenever.

IMO the replayable achievements are just a way to artificially make the LS longer. And even with that, people in my guild were done in 2 days. It is too short. Period.

If the problem is they don’t have enough people to work on more stuff, then by all means make a freaking paid expansion already and hire more people.

All I can say is ArenaNet is lucky TESO and Wildstar were failures.

Zanshin.5379:

IMO the replayable achievements are just a way to artificially make the LS longer. And even with that, people in my guild were done in 2 days. It is too short. Period.

All challenge based achievements, in anything, are just a way to artificially make the content last longer. I don’t understand why people make this distinction. Fair enough if you feel the content released in this patch was too short, but this particular factoid isn’t new, but the status quo.

Learn to WvW

The difference between this game and any other MMO ever made is that this game gives you lackluster content that dilutes a great base game while charging for almost everything on the gem store that should instead be things we get in the game world (outfits, armour sets, etc). If you try and complain about it you get blasted with people who say “It’s free!” and defend anet to the death instead of asking for actual content and not run around and press F on “clues” in a desert (props to the environment team though, it is a nice looking zone. Distinct and fun to explore).

The reason why this game gives very disappointing events is because that is how it was designed, it was not a very bright idea on their part, giving bits and pieces of a full story over several months instead of releasing several months worth of story in one expansion as everyone else does.
Anet could easily release full expansions for free if they simply did not release their LS until it was finished all the way through as they dont release more content than any other mmo, in fact it seems they release a lot less.

dragonfairy.1064:

instead of releasing several months worth of story in one expansion as everyone else does.

Players would OCD and complete it in a week, two tops. Then complain there’s
nothing new.

DeWolfe.2174:

dragonfairy.1064:

instead of releasing several months worth of story in one expansion as everyone else does.

Players would OCD and complete it in a week, two tops. Then complain there’s
nothing new.

And then we’d have a 6-12 month wait for the next lot of content to come out.

What do you expect?

Not much can be done with MMO contents since almost all releases can be done within 1 week if you don’t bother to repeat those contents.

EVen FF14ARR suffers from this issue despite how meaty their content up every 2.5 months appears it still only last 1 week and anything beyond 1 week is content you repeat over and over again for dailies or weeklies.

1 new area per 2 weeks is fine with me since it not like this new story Arc will involve kill all the Elder Dragons :p

DeWolfe.2174:

Players would OCD and complete it in a week, two tops. Then complain there’s
nothing new.

This doesn’t matter AT ALL. The best reason for release large updates instead of bits and pieces over a long period of time, is that everyone has a different pace at which they like to finish things. Some people rush through everything and then go back to their favorite parts and repeat it, while other people enjoying taking their time and make sure they see everything the first pass through. The way Anet does the Living Story release completely screws everyone in the first group and it will probably push those people away from the game(including me). Releasing all the content with a paid expansion gives them the chance to hold onto both group of players(of course the ones who won’t pay for the expansion will leave, but who cares they probably aren’t spending money on gems atm anyway).

Someone will probably come here and tell me that I could just wait till the end of the Living Story and play through the who thing all at once. Of course I could do that, but honestly I’d rather just move to a new game because I feel like I’m getting the middle finger from Anet because I don’t conform as a “casual” player like the ones who take forever to do even the barest amount of content.

The updates for GW2 is a joke compare to other recent MMOs. For examples FFIV ARR (Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn) every major patch release 3-4 months and most people can’t even complete all the contents that are release for each major patch because there are tons of stuff to do! Did I mention everything is perm? Now lets take all of GW2 updates 3-4 months put together, they don’t even add up to 1/5 of every major patch of FFIV ARR. This is no excuse if it free to play or subs. A lot of people are paying $30-50 every month in the gem store to get the new stuff thats way more than a sub if u ask me.

The developers don’t want you to come back from a four month break and play through a large chunk of satisfying new content. They want you to come back every two weeks and get a taste of new content.

Unlike Colin suggested in the marketing for GW2 before launch, ArenaNet has similair incentives to subscription MMOs to maintain population numbers over prolonged periods of time. They are designing the game in a way which promotes that kind of gameplay.