What's preventing you from coming back to/playing Guild Wars 2?

[agentsi]

Their stat system is extremely difficult to understand at first glance. I honestly think more than anything, that is what pushes people away. Do I need condition damage, do I need power? Why can't I have a balance of both? Why don't my skills explain which one I need? Why is this spec frowned upon? Why do I get declined from every Fractal I apply to? GW2 players are some of the most elitist I've ever seen, but mainly because the disparity between a person w ho has played for 2 months vs a person who has played for 2 years is astronomical. It is not easy to pick up and play well.

I just started playing again, my necro is 80, I've cleared 3 zones to 100% in PoF, and I still do not have a clue if I'm building my character correctly, if my dps is good. I only die occasionally, but I just feel so lost after playing this for months, and still just dont get it. WoW is very easy and straightforward. You can figure out everything with just the in game stuff. I suck at wow, but can pull orange parses fairly often. GW2 just lacks a way for new players to join and learn.

[Lotus Victoria]

But are there new raids every 6 months and 8+ new dungeons every 2 years?

I don't find it a problem, personally, but suggesting it has as much fresh endgame content as WoW is a lil disingenuous.

The endgame of WoW has always been the raiding scene, and that's great, the raids there are very very fun and challenging, while GW2's endgame is focused on the Living World, exploring new areas, completing map metas and etc. Having new dungeons every xpac is also cool, but most of them became invalidated by new patches and gear, making them a bit redundant, which is a shame. GW2 also nerfed its dungeons to the point of most of them becoming abandoned, which is also a big shame.

I find WoW's endgame formula very repetitive, you always gear up for raids to get better gear to raid more, and most people come to GW2 with that in mind - reaching max level and wanting to go to the raiding scene immediatly. There is a lot of content in the open world which is very fun and sometimes even addicting to do. They are different games with different playerbases in mind, but I think that both have great amounts of endgame. It's a matter of opinion if you want to do the endgame content or not!

[Logwyn]

The graphics are....meh.

[Xenyatta]

I like it in short bursts but it's very daunting when you know how far behind you really are. You feel like you can never catch up and it makes me want to log off and go back to playing WoW. There aren't as many vast resources like WoW has for explaining how to play your character when you're 4 years behind, what stats to look out for, how to optimize yourself etc... Leveling is slow and boring when you're totally alone and I feel VERY alone and in a vast mmo like GW2, it's not a good feeling. It doesn't make you feel like you're in a single player game it just makes you feel like a single person in an empty place.

[Witchblade77]

@Witchblade77 im going to assume you dont have a guild hall.

NE Lions Arch is the Guild Initiative building. Inside the building are various npcs for upgrading/leveling/whatever your guild.

- - - Updated - - -
@Witchblade77 im going to assume you dont have a guild hall.

NE Lions Arch is the Guild Initiative building. Inside the building are various npcs for upgrading/leveling/whatever your guild.

Easy Guild trek and bounties and be soloed. You can piggyback off other guilds to get the races done.

yeah, so can easier fractals apparently. by skilled players. average players? not so much. I have tried soloing guild activities. and no, I don't have a guild hall. it needs to be opened up. cannot be done alone or in a tiny group either, as far as i'm aware.

I understand the whole "MMO's should be for groups of people!" idea. I just prefer MMO's that are a little less pushy about it. ironically one of the appeals of GW2 initially, for me was that so much of the content, even ostensibly group content like certain recurring events.. didn't actualy require a formal group. you could just join in at any point and get participation credit. some of that content is still in game. you know, those vanilla zones and all. but the game in general with every expansion seems to move away from that formula and towards more regimented formal group activities. so... not really for me. not anymore. (and it doesn't help that i'm not really a gold making maven and mounts require a LOT more gold then I managed to scrape by and it only adds to all the things that discourage me from coming back)

[Svifnymr]

oh i realize that. it just doesn't feel the same anymore, I guess. there's all that stuff in achievement panel I cannot get to, story I cannot really pursue and difficulty aside i almost ALMOST bought path of fire, becasue holy cow, beautiful - they really outdone themselves with art there. and then a friend of mine who IS playing the game and enjoying it, told me what it takes to get the mounts

I did the story first, and there was one part where I was a mastery point or two short, so had to grab some in the first zone. Otherwise, the story gives you enough XP and Mastery. It's also easy enough for someone to port you to a MP if you need, plenty of folks will. Otherwise gaining mounts is basically a heart vendor. You do have to do them in order though, which delayed my jackal-porting ways for longer than I'd have liked, but not a big deal.
The griffon is different, it's a status-grind thing.

the point is.. unless I'm misunderstanding something? i HAVE to be in a guild group in order to make any progress towards building upgrades. I didn't have to be, before. i could contribute while playing completely, 100% solo.

I have a small guild, I've gotten enough points from the initial conversion and doing treks to unlock a guild hall, but we haven't gotten it yet. I may just hire some folks to open it for me. Other than that, it's mostly just a way for us to keep an open channel for chatting, so I haven't worried about "advancement", so I really don't know what is required once the Hall is unlocked.

- - - Updated - - -

yeah, so can easier fractals apparently. by skilled players. average players? not so much. I have tried soloing guild activities. and no, I don't have a guild hall. it needs to be opened up. cannot be done alone or in a tiny group either, as far as i'm aware.

5 people, really. More than that and stuff starts scaling.

I understand the whole "MMO's should be for groups of people!" idea. I just prefer MMO's that are a little less pushy about it.(Snippity snip)
(and it doesn't help that i'm not really a gold making maven and mounts require a LOT more gold then I managed to scrape by and it only adds to all the things that discourage me from coming back)

I'm a loner too, for the most part. HoT required more pick up groups, PoF only for bounties, which if you're doing collections for weapons, you will need. If you dont' want to group, hard to get around that, but otherwise Groupfinder is great. You open it up, wait for a group, join them, port over to the place, kill the thing, drop group and keep on with what you were doing. If the leader is real helpful, toss him a thanks and maybe a gold for a tip.
Mounts don't require ANY gold, except Griffon. Since it's a heart vendor to get the mount, technically you make gold getting it. Except Griffon.

[Sixnalia]

I semi-struggled to return, after being convinced to try again by a friend. And my friend's friend struggled far more.

There's a lot to learn and understand, catching up in some respects -does- feel like a hassle, and trying the new elite specs that were advertised takes time and effort to grind out before you can properly test them.

One friend has not played at all. He got PoF and Thorns, and suddenly he was missing some crucial stuff as we all traveled. He was missing gliding and mounts. Both were quick to unlock, but then other obstacles got in the way where further masteries were necessary for him to keep up.
Ultimately, we spent a solid day trying to aid them in catching up so they could "move" around much like we did. It burned him out a bit, as he was being bombarded with getting a handle for his class, eager to try the brand new specialization(which was his motivation for going Necromancer), and he just wanted to be able to do current content with us.

I think it is difficult to understand how overwhelming the game can be to new comers or people returning after a long hiatus. It isn't about "Catching up" in gear, but more related to masteries/hero point collecting/story catch up so they don't jump into the new expansion scratching their head at all the name drops and backstory.


For me, the biggest turn off was needing to grind the. . .290? Hero Points for fully getting the new specialization. As the new specs were the most interesting thing to me. It took me about 3-4 hours with a "Train" group a friend got me into, in order to fully unlock Holosmith on my Engineer.
I wanted to test other specs out though, as I have almost every class at 80. And the idea of another 3-4 hour train for each character makes me shudder a little. Just to test the spec out. I might like it or absolutely hate it in PvE, but I wont know until I invest in them.


I feel a better tutorial, one for new players and one for returning players, would help immensely. Especially with them giving out lv 80 tickets for buying expansions. The current tutorial feels -very- basic and not informative enough. Having some available preset builds with descriptions for new players to work towards would be good too, rather than googling what is normally a guide for a "meta pvp build". Instead of a good leveling build(s).

Side note: Did they buff mastery exp acquisition btw? I feel I gain them much faster than I did back when Heart released. It's really nice.

[Gray_Matter]

I actually run a max level guild. The way guilds level now is by completing upgrades. Each upgrade requires x amount of y items(s) to be placed in a guild storage of sort (not tje guild bank). Theres two other currency items needed but their are fairly trival (one is time gated and the other is tied to guild missions with a weekly cap on how much you can earn) Completing these upgrades grant certain perks to the guild and are the only way to advance the level of a guild. Fullfilling the upgrades is a guild wide effort, I personally gave my members inventives for particapting.

I am part of a bigger guild but I also have a separate guild for myself and my two kids. You used to get guild progress for logging in and doing normal world events. That stopped. In fact my small guild progress has halted after the changes. The only way to get anywhere, from what I can see, is 3 man PVP and that's not going to happen. We can't even get a guild hall. IMHO the changes stuffed everything up for small guilds. I don't care if it takes me 100 times longer to get something but there should be a way I can progress without recruiting some strangers to boost my guild. The new system really is broken for a very small guild. Try and start a new guild and see how far you get with 2 people in the guild.

[Witchblade77]

I am part of a bigger guild but I also have a separate guild for myself and my two kids. You used to get guild progress for logging in and doing normal world events. That stopped. In fact my small guild progress has halted after the changes. The only way to get anywhere, from what I can see, is 3 man PVP and that's not going to happen. We can't even get a guild hall. IMHO the changes stuffed everything up for small guilds. I don't care if it takes me 100 times longer to get something but there should be a way I can progress without recruiting some strangers to boost my guild. The new system really is broken for a very small guild. Try and start a new guild and see how far you get with 2 people in the guild.

THIS THIS THIS, SO MUCH THIS. maker help you if your guild was created after conversion happen as what happen with my tiny super casual guild that I'm in with couple of swtor guildies (technically we are all still in that TOR guild, but we don't actualy play anymore).

and yes, I know that I don't have to progress a guild. i don't have to do anything. but that's kinda the point when you remove all the things i don't have to do - what is left? not all that much at all. I log in. look at all the things "i don't have to do" and log out again. and no I'm not willing to pay $30 for the most basic of PoF edition that comes with a level boost I can't even use as I don't have any open character slots - on assurances that its not as hard anymore as the free trial was.

[Gray_Matter]

1. changes to daily meta. I used to be able to just play wherever, doing whatever i felt like and still be able to complete daily meta achievements. now - its a few specific tasks only, with solo pve being extremely limited (I have no interest in fractals or pvp)
2. changes to guild system, specifically contributing to guild leveling. I used to be able to contribute in my own small ways while solo playing. nowadays, its guild activities only, and the smallest number of players required is 3 (for pvp - which I have no interest in)
3. general shift in focus from casual solo player friendly to end game raiding and just general more hardcore, spontaneous zone groups need not apply style of play

A/Net changed 1 and 3 with PoF. It's back to the old style where it's very solo friendly. On 2, I agree with you but it's not a deal breaker for me.

- - - Updated - - -

and no I'm not willing to pay $30 for the most basic of PoF edition that comes with a level boost I can't even use as I don't have any open character slots - on assurances that its not as hard anymore as the free trial was.

I am pretty sure that PoF comes with an extra char slot.

[PACOX]

I know what you mean when i comes to being able to passively gain influence but I honestly prefer favor to influence. Influence gave you 20 points for logging, per day. So (3*20)*7 = 420 assuming you login everyday for a week. Even influence was negible in small guilds.

With the new system you 300 per easy (tier) guild mission. Easy missions can easily be soloed, sometimes I only have 4 people who want to particpate (during Nov and Dec when people are gone). We knock them out in about 30 min, 1200 favor easily per week (bounty, race, trek).

Medium and Hard (tier) races can be finessed, meaning you can pop them while a big guild is running and still get credit for your guild. Thats 900 favor, youre already capped for the week before even considering doing the other missions.

Guild halls, now thats impossible to get without outside help.

All that without having to worry about Merits our building guild missions like you had to do with the old system.

[Gray_Matter]

Too expensive and time-consuming to consider returning. 125g to my name and barely any inventory or bank space. Don't even know where I'd begin, as I quit long before HoT came out. $100 wouldn't even get me out of the ditch, nor would I pay that sort of price to see if I'd even like to return.

Your only cost should be the $50 for PoF and HoT. There is no reason to spend a cent more. The easiest way to get going again is to start doing one of the stories. Either continue the previous one or start directly with HoT or PoF. Probably the latter because it's more solo friendly.

- - - Updated - - -

I loved the vanilla style of GW2.. It was super friendly for someone like me who likes to explore on my own. Doing everything every zone had to offer was super amazing for me. At max level I actually enjoyed farming world bosses, even if it ment checking websites when certain boss will be up.

What I dont like in the previous expansion (well actually by the end of vanilla too), I kind of felt like I was forced to group up in order to farm / grind the contents and that was a big turn off for me. I know what you will be saying, "its an MMO, you arent supposed to play alone". But having that option from vanilla was the biggest thing for me to even play GW2. Much like WOW where you can easily solo yourself up to max level without being in a group (aside from dungeon / bg runs).

Being a WOW player for so many years, raiding and running dungeon isnt the top of my agenda. It was the feeling of explore a new game, a new open world. get to know a new storyline. And thoose are the things I prefer doing solo.

PoF is definitely more solo friendly that HoT.

- - - Updated - - -

I know what you mean when i comes to being able to passively gain influence but I honestly prefer favor to influence. Influence gave you 20 points for logging, per day. So (3*20)*7 = 420 assuming you login everyday for a week. Even influence was negible in small guilds.

With the new system you 300 per easy (tier) guild mission. Easy missions can easily be soloed, sometimes I only have 4 people who want to particpate (during Nov and Dec when people are gone). We knock them out in about 30 min, 1200 favor easily per week (bounty, race, trek).

Medium and Hard (tier) races can be finessed, meaning you can pop them while a big guild is running and still get credit for your guild. Thats 900 favor, youre already capped for the week before even considering doing the other missions.

Guild halls, now thats impossible to get without outside help.

All that without having to worry about Merits our building guild missions like you had to do with the old system.

I will have to look again but the last time I looked I couldn't even start the missions because I didn't have enough online in the guild.

It wasn't just the log in influence. I got influence for doing events as well and could also buy influence with gold and there were some rewards that gave it. Our 3 man guild had quite a few levels, a guild bank and maxed out banners, etc. It hasn't leveled at all since the change. Not one bit.

It would have been trivial for A/Net to give influence as before up to a limit for the small guilds. There is even a way to convert influence to favor.

As I said, I will try again tonight but, IMHO, the changes were a death knell for very small guilds (<= 3).

- - - Updated - - -

Because there's no "reset" in terms of expansion like in WoW, so you are literally 4 years behind everyone else.

It's literally impossible to fall behind in GW2. If I log off today and come back in a year, the only difference between me and the players that keep playing is that they will have done more content and have more cosmetic items. I will be able to to whatever content they are doing in the future with my same character.

[Lollis]

The reasons I stopped playing:

No real endgame
No gear progression other than the fractal items and 'artifact'? weapons
No reason to be part of a guild
Unstable servers on world events
Skills locked to weapon choices which as an Elementalist in particular completely sucked since you were often locked into very specific play styles with half of your abilities being worthless 90% of the time.

When I last played GW2, the only real thing it had going for it at max level was the PvP which simply just wasn't enough for me to stick with it. I stopped playing not long after the Karka event, I have no plans to return.

[PACOX]

@Gray_Matter was it a pvp or wvw mission? Pvp missions require x amount of people and are time consuming, half the wvw missions are bugged. Set your guild mission preferences to PVE in the guild panel.


Yeah I forgot you could buy influence. That was a plus.

[Paula Deen]

No Cantha. No buy.

[Insonia]

I played it in the early days but didn't get attached can't say why I'm installing now but I need to buy the xpac's I think but could you sell me on the idea but I spend like nearly £100

[Lotus Victoria]

The reasons I stopped playing:

No real endgame

I should make a thread about this. I'll probably end up making a thread about this.

[Indigenously Abled]

As a completionist I missed stuff that is now unobtainable. This makes the game unplayable to me. If every single item was somehow still obtainable, I would play.

Pretty well sums up half of my reasoning.

The other half being that the game just wasn't fun for me.

[Ahovv]

This is something that I hear frequently against Guild Wars 2, and I really really don't understand. Guild Wars 2 has as much endgame as many other MMO's nowadays - When it launched, the game lacked endgame, okay, but now we have Raids, Fractals and Masteries, same as WoW, for example. We also have the Living Story, a lot of fun activities, Bounty Hunting, etc etc etc.

I read over the mechanics of the raid which released with Heart of Thorns. They were pretty simple compared to WoW Mythic or Rift: Storm Legion raiding. Additionally it appears there was quite a long gap between raids. The second raid released over a year from the first. WoW had that issue in the past and it killed many guilds. Maintaining a raiding guild to farm the same stale content for 15 months....that's just an unacceptable gap. The latest expansion doesn't even mention a new raid. So, if they're developing it, it certainly wasn't anything worth mentioning.

If there comes a time where they seem dedicated to pushing quality raid content, I'll reconsider.

[Lotus Victoria]

I read over the mechanics of the raid which released with Heart of Thorns. They were pretty simple compared to WoW Mythic or Rift: Storm Legion raiding. Additionally it appears there was quite a long gap between raids. The second raid released over a year from the first. WoW had that issue in the past and it killed many guilds. Maintaining a raiding guild to farm the same stale content for 15 months....that's just an unacceptable gap. The latest expansion doesn't even mention a new raid. So, if they're developing it, it certainly wasn't anything worth mentioning.

If there comes a time where they seem dedicated to pushing quality raid content, I'll reconsider.

I understand your point, and I can't disagree, because it is true, but there is also the fact that GW2 doesn't prioritize the raiding scene, while the PvE endgame of WoW is almost 100% the raiding scene. ANET isn't trying to compete in this aspect with WoW, so that's why development has been kinda slow. But we got another things in the PvE environment, which is cool