Are you enjoying the endgame?

[Shadylol]

Hopefully they switch to 2-week battles soon, with people putting up waypoints everywhere. Or else Arena Net finds a way to lessen how much running you have to do (maybe boost out-of-combat speed?)

I refuse to touch WvW until they switch to the longer battles, but I'd personally rather avoid the zergs and find some small skirmishes to participate in at smaller objectives.

I agree

As it is now, it's pretty pointless to break off from the main group, because if you move out with a group of 5-10 people, and end up running into an enemy group of 30+ people, that's a no-win situation. Most people aren't dumb, so basically everyone just ends up in one or two massive groups running around in circles, and the combat is mostly a clusterfuck

WvWvW is one thing I'm willing to give NCSoft some extra time on, though. It's not a common feature, so as a cost of innovation, there's naturally going to be some stuff they have to work out over time

[Robot-Nixon]

Source please?

I remember them stating that it will take hard work to get the nice skins, never nothing about grinding. That was against their "philosophy".

And hard work does not = mind numbing grind.

Btw, your sig is fucking awesome lol.

Hard work is what I should have used, so bad choice of words on my part. As for their philosophy I've only been able to find stuff that points more towards "no forced grind" rather than no grind whatsoever, which is true as the dungeon gear/T3 cultural gear isn't absolutely necessary and the karma greens from Orr can be earned in ~3 level 80 DEs for one piece with gold participation. I can't speak for the 42k karma exotics as I haven't taken much of a look at them (only have 1 piece and I've been farming for gold so I haven't been caring much about my gear).

[Awe]

I agree

As it is now, it's pretty pointless to break off from the main group, because if you move out with a group of 5-10 people, and end up running into an enemy group of 30+ people, that's a no-win situation. Most people aren't dumb, so basically everyone just ends up in one or two massive groups running around in circles, and the combat is mostly a clusterfuck

WvWvW is one thing I'm willing to give NCSoft some extra time on, though. It's not a common feature, so as a cost of innovation, there's naturally going to be some stuff they have to work out over time

This is a different kind of PvP but one that does have its own merits. Yes it is zergy, it will work like that. The metagame is moved from solo or small engagements (common to battlegrounds in WoW and similar, which you also have in GW2 btw in sPvP) to overall strategic planning. As an individual you are just a pawn and everything depends from people who will lead that zerg of pawns into battle. This requires some sort of leadership and people who will be followed by others. But it works and I have seen examples in my current weekly match. Good planning can bring results. You will not steamroll everything but you will gain a map advantage if your squad commanders know what the hell they are doing. I know a similar type of PvP from EvE Online where warring power blocks deploy fleets with hundreds of players. And all that those players do is mechanically following orders of a fleet commander. Some people hate this kind of PvP and call it blobfests. But some people still see some merits in it. It is where sense of unity and cooperation overshadows personal skill or gear epeen.

As for long corpse runs and repair costs. Honestly, I die very rarely. Perhaps once every 30 minutes while I am active in WvWvW, sometimes even less when we are on the steamroll rampage. You just need to always be aware of your surroundings and position yourself so that you always have a way to retreat. I also very often open a map to try and anticipate when and from where an enemy zerg may come from. If you feel vulnerable just GTFO. Honestly I very often see enemy players going down in a very stupid way. Like the entire enemy zerg is charging at them and they just stand there trying to shoot or start to run when they are already swarmed. Honestly, if such people will complain that they die often then all I can say is "learn to play WvWvW", sorry for that. I may agree however that perhaps WvWvW might be a bit harder for melee. I dont play a melee atm so I dont know. But then again, every profession in GW2 has access to ranged options.

[Ap0calypse]

If they don't fix diminishing returns then its a no. sPvP is fine. In my opinion, WvW should not have repair costs for fighting other players. Mobs yes, players no. Other than that WvW is fine as is. PvE needs serious work.

[Deleted]

Hopefully they switch to 2-week battles soon, with people putting up waypoints everywhere. Or else Arena Net finds a way to lessen how much running you have to do (maybe boost out-of-combat speed?)

Unless I've been misinformed (which I very well might be), they'll have 1-week battles as a betwixt before moving on to 2-week sessions.

[Granyala]

It's unfortunate that so many players in all mmos today are so focused on racing to max level asap. They miss a lot of the game. With GW2 especially it's the journey...not the destination.

There is nothing to miss. I don't need to stand ad every spot for 5 minutes and take in the scenery. I can do that very well while walking to my destination. I pretty much race to max level, because I hate the leveling process and want to get it over with. It's a useless "fill the bar 80 times lol" thing that, especially in a game like GW2, is totally unnecessary. Once I'm 80 then I can take it slow. Though to be honest, with the almost nonexistent story in GW2 there really isn't much to miss. A heart NPC usually has 2 sentences to say to you, which mostly just explain what you have to do and don't really tell a story. Yeah NPC I get it: Centaurs - bad. Svanir-bad. Nightmare Court - bad. Undead - SUPERBAD.

The story in GW2 is as dull as they come. "Woo dragons awoke, aah the entire world is filled with mad dragon worshipping cultists omg omg". (Kinda reminds me of WoW Cataclysm, that story was equally bland).

Lets see how I leveled: I went into a zone, did all the hearts, did almost every event that presented itself, gathered, tried to level the crafting skill as close to my level as I could, collected all the vistas (some are quite nice) and PoIs, teleporter nodes and moved on to the next zone. Rinse repeat woo I'm 80. Please do tell, how is that "rushing to 80" in any way?

[Ravenblade]

There is nothing to miss. I don't need to stand ad every spot for 5 minutes and take in the scenery. I can do that very well while walking to my destination. I pretty much race to max level, because I hate the leveling process and want to get it over with. It's a useless "fill the bar 80 times lol" thing that, especially in a game like GW2, is totally unnecessary. Once I'm 80 then I can take it slow. Though to be honest, with the almost nonexistent story in GW2 there really isn't much to miss. A heart NPC usually has 2 sentences to say to you, which mostly just explain what you have to do and don't really tell a story. Yeah NPC I get it: Centaurs - bad. Svanir-bad. Nightmare Court - bad. Undead - SUPERBAD.

The story in GW2 is as dull as they come. "Woo dragons awoke, aah the entire world is filled with mad dragon worshipping cultists omg omg". (Kinda reminds me of WoW Cataclysm, that story was equally bland).

That does sound a tad that you do not like the RPG aspect in a MMORPG besides in GW2 the levelling does not end at maximum level you still earn XP and skillpts. in addition there are many side quests and tiny things and hints in dialogues giving directions to a location often overlooked. I am also sometimes surprised how often people quit right after the first step of a quest chain except for the popular ones.

Lets see how I leveled: I went into a zone, did all the hearts, did almost every event that presented itself, gathered, tried to level the crafting skill as close to my level as I could, collected all the vistas (some are quite nice) and PoIs, teleporter nodes and moved on to the next zone. Rinse repeat woo I'm 80. Please do tell, how is that "rushing to 80" in any way?

Well, with a bias against levelling as a whole you are not going to find any approach pleasing. The best it will do is probably not moaning too much about it.

[Lannden]

I agree with this quite a lot.

The concepts of the dungeons is pretty neat, some are fun. But for us [my guild] the dungeons are pretty low on the game's feature list. A lot of them are boring or sorta gimmicky/random. The fact we still encounter massive bugs and disconnects only makes the dungeons less desirable.

All during the betas, the game performed flawlessly. First couple of weeks- massive bugs with entering/leaving, grouping, bugged encounters, unending DEs, invisible walls, mobs firing through floors/walls, etc. We couldn't reliably get all 5 players in the guild groups zoned into the same dungeon.

The problems still persist too. We spent about 30 mins waiting for a friend to zone into CM the other day. Having to break party several times, re-zone and so on.

Couple of nights ago we tried CoE. I DC'd midway. Reconnect... I am in a new dungeon and can not rejoin my party. Not okay as we near almost a month of the game.

Most of my guild mates [myself included] are dedicated progression raiders going as far back as Scars of Velious. Many GW1 vets that broke content like DOA/UW and Urgoz too. We get like 3 "Ehhh. I'll run it." replies to dungeon calls if we are lucky.

As it stands now, dungeons are seen as mostly a poor return for time invested, dull and sloppily designed by a lot of our guildies. Whom I would say are very much skewed toward the hardcore/nolife raid & dungeon gridner stereotypes.

There isn't a lot of incentive to do dungeons in my POV unless I really desired those armor sets. Which I personally do not [too ugly for me]. The karma sets look nicer.

This post basically sums up my biggest problem. No one in my guild wants to do dungeons, most of them being raiders from many games. They say they are boring and not worth the time investment. Yes the bosses can kill you and you die a lot, but its not because they have interesting and challenging mechanics, but because they hit hard and have a lot of HP. Yes there are a few that are really fun and interesting but I guess not enough to make it worth it for my guild.

When I actually get a guild group about half the time we cannot agree on which dungeon to run. Bob wants the weapon from here but Sue wants the armor set from there, and Larry wants to do this dungeon because it is faster. This usually results in arguing for an hour and disbanding because no one agrees and or wants to run more than one.

I tried pugging them but many groups want ranged only. I don't like playing ranged not to mention Guardian has the most boring ranged options in the game. I would try to explain to them that I had done almost every dungeon in the game without being 100% ranged but just got written off. I even joined a guild that did dungeons often but found out they wanted ranged and grudgingly took melee if they could not find a 5th member.

So for PvE I was left with running DE's and 100%ing my map. Both are very repetitive. The DE's are basically all the same to me and became grindy around level 40 for me. Orr might be different but its just 1 big zerg and I don't care enough about karma gear to join, what is to me, a mindless grind. Some people love it and that's great for them, but its not for me.

I don't care about MMORPG PVP, I never have and probably never will. I have tried both WvW and spvp and just was bored. If I want MMOPVP I will play Planetside 2, if I don't need the MMO part there are so many other games and genres that are more fun and a lot more balanced. For people who like MMORPG PvP it seems perfect though.

So no, I'm not having fun with endgame. I kind of had a feeling it would be this way and had many post on this forum about this topic. I'm kind of sad since I just want a fun, challenging, and rewarding (not in the gear way) group PvE content. I was really hopping this game would be it and maybe after some tweaking it will be, but for now its not. I really hope a game will come out with this, I'm tired of the WoW model and couldn't return if I wanted to, (most of my friends no longer play WoW and I no longer trust blizz as a company) its time for PvE endgame to evolve. I have no idea if this mythical MMO will ever appear or what the, for lack of a better word, endgame will look like but I'm holding my breath for now. Maybe I will check out FFXIV REBORN, I have heard good things about it and I loved FFXI.

On the not "endgame" side though, I am having A LOT of fun playing low levels with my girlfriend. This is the first MMO she has had interest in and plays very casually. Its a lot of fun popping on with her and just playing around once or twice a week. I don't think the game is bad, hell it is great and worth the $60. It is just not what I'm looking for in a main MMO, and that is okay.

[Shadylol]

There is nothing to miss. I don't need to stand ad every spot for 5 minutes and take in the scenery. I can do that very well while walking to my destination. I pretty much race to max level, because I hate the leveling process and want to get it over with. It's a useless "fill the bar 80 times lol" thing that, especially in a game like GW2, is totally unnecessary. Once I'm 80 then I can take it slow. Though to be honest, with the almost nonexistent story in GW2 there really isn't much to miss. A heart NPC usually has 2 sentences to say to you, which mostly just explain what you have to do and don't really tell a story. Yeah NPC I get it: Centaurs - bad. Svanir-bad. Nightmare Court - bad. Undead - SUPERBAD.

The story in GW2 is as dull as they come. "Woo dragons awoke, aah the entire world is filled with mad dragon worshipping cultists omg omg". (Kinda reminds me of WoW Cataclysm, that story was equally bland).

Lets see how I leveled: I went into a zone, did all the hearts, did almost every event that presented itself, gathered, tried to level the crafting skill as close to my level as I could, collected all the vistas (some are quite nice) and PoIs, teleporter nodes and moved on to the next zone. Rinse repeat woo I'm 80. Please do tell, how is that "rushing to 80" in any way?

I agree with you 100%. Leveling has always been "fill the bar XYZ times lol" to me as well, and you're absolutely right about the state of Guild Wars 2's story as well

I leveled up almost the same way as you, except I bounced between two zones at a time sometimes, and I didn't bother with crafting for very long. This wasn't done in a hurry at all, not even a "fast pace", I took it at a medium pace, and it only took 69 hours to go from 1-80. But now apparently, everyone who's level 80 "rushed", and "skipped" and "missed everything"

Fans of SWTOR said the exact same thing, and it was infuriating, though at least with that game, there were arguments to be made for taking a little longer to level up because of the story. In Guild Wars 2, there's nothing to see along the way that would slow you down. Nothing

To me, it seems like just another case of the players blaming other players, instead of holding the developer responsible. "Hey, I think this game lacks endgame content" "NO U RUSHED 2 80"

[Deleted]

Definitely the crux of the issue. How many people find endgame in ANY game fun anymore?

A lot of people for sure, else there would not be the millions of people still playing games such as WoW, Aion, EQ/EQ2 and so on, those games all have a wide variety of end game things to do, many carrots to chase, always some way you can improve yourself, competative ladders for both pve and pvp. In GW2 there just is hardly any reason to keep doing stuff at max level since it just does not matter, my character will be the same as the next guy who pretty much just recently dinged. You never feel your character really grow any more powerful, in any way, not even the graphics on your spells become more flashy and such, just the armor look more or less.

[Ravenblade]

Maybe the endgame PVE part is not right there yet. Consider this a new approach really. No new idea or approach is ever perfect from the get-go even adopted and established paradigms can be flawed by implementation first because every idea, old or new, works out differently in every game's context. I'd probably be unhappy if all I did was PVE only but I am not so my endgame is broader and less stringent.

Some people do rush though but others seem to really skip things in the meaning of not really caring for or getting distracted by the details because all they want to be is being maximum level while not caring for PVP. I think maybe if GW2 had a PVE equivalent to sPVP it would offer some unique way of enjoying things more. I am not talking about yet another horde adaptation, or tower defense adaptation but some sort of strategical conquest of areas - like a RTS just from a FPS perspective or some dungeon crawler adaptation.

[Owlcaholic]

Yes it's always a good time to catch up on old achievements

[Elexo]

So far I've not yet been bored of the game.
I really love it, the difficulty of the game is just right for me with dungeons being a bit hard and solo content a tad easy (as long as you don't get too many mobs)
But the endgame..

The endgame grinds are just too big, I don't even want to get started.
60 times the same explorable? No thanks!
1000 wvwvw badges when you get like 6 per hour? Not for me.
Cultural gear costing ~100 gold in total despite the economy at 80 being really slow? Nah..

It really needs middle rewards like WoW has done.
You get quick honor gear, than low rating conquest gear and then high rating conquest gear.
Or you get dungeon gear, then heroic dungeon gear, then raiding gear and then heroic raiding gear.
In the end you spend the same ammount of time but at least you get a bite off the carrot every now and then.
3 smaller tasks are way easier to do than 1 big one, even if the 3 small ones will take more time and effort in the end.

Instead I'm just enjoying the world and making alts.
I'm having a ton of fun every time I log in but I just can't begin the grind of endgame gear.

[Shadylol]

So far I've not yet been bored of the game.
I really love it, the difficulty of the game is just right for me with dungeons being a bit hard and solo content a tad easy (as long as you don't get too many mobs)
But the endgame..

The endgame grinds are just too big, I don't even want to get started.
60 times the same explorable? No thanks!
1000 wvwvw badges when you get like 6 per hour? Not for me.
Cultural gear costing ~100 gold in total despite the economy at 80 being really slow? Nah..

It really needs middle rewards like WoW has done.
You get quick honor gear, than low rating conquest gear and then high rating conquest gear.
Or you get dungeon gear, then heroic dungeon gear, then raiding gear and then heroic raiding gear.
In the end you spend the same ammount of time but at least you get a bite off the carrot every now and then.
3 smaller tasks are way easier to do than 1 big one, even if the 3 small ones will take more time and effort in the end.

Instead I'm just enjoying the world and making alts.
I'm having a ton of fun every time I log in but I just can't begin the grind of endgame gear.

I expected this would be the case in Guild Wars 2. The last time I played a game published by NC Soft (Aion), it was extremely grindy

[Shiny212]

what endgame

[Shadylol]

what endgame

Pretty much the standard response, unfortunately

[Granyala]

That does sound a tad that you do not like the RPG aspect in a MMORPG besides in GW2 the levelling does not end at maximum level you still earn XP and skillpts. in addition there are many side quests and tiny things and hints in dialogues giving directions to a location often overlooked. I am also sometimes surprised how often people quit right after the first step of a quest chain except for the popular ones.

No i don't like leveling. It's a useless timesink. In GW2 it is REALLY useless b/c the game scales you down anyway. If I run into a lowbie zone and get scaled to level 5 I ask myself "WTF why did I have to level in the first place?!"

As far as skill points go: The're useless. I already have unlocked every ability there is. (I know you need them for the legendary, but I won't bother with that grind).

To me, it seems like just another case of the players blaming other players, instead of holding the developer responsible. "Hey, I think this game lacks endgame content" "NO U RUSHED 2 80"

Well fanboys need a bit longer to wake up. Most peeps only realize an issue if it affects themselves. It was the same with the orange mod item system in ToR. It was a great system that just ended at max level. For the first few weeks every complainer got ridiculed in the forums for being a rush boy. But as the masses hit level cap the shitstorm ensued because they realized that the "rush boys" were dead right.

Observing AION and ToR with heavy forum activity on my part, I'm amazed how many problems the hardcore rush crowd sees and correctly puts into context.

The endgame grinds are just too big, I don't even want to get started.

Well BiS Gear should take effort. However I don't like the ectoplasm thing one bit. Basically I should just grind events for gold, gold goes into the TP so I can buy these things, b/c recycling yellow orange loot for a CHANCE at a plasm is royally stupid if I can insta sell it for 50 silver and buy two plasms guaranteed.

Waypoints are WAAAAY to expensive considering the fact that there is no other means of fast travel. 3+ Silver for a teleport and an event in Orr gives me what 1.5 Silver? That's 4 FOUR events I have to do just to break even for TRAVELING to the zone and back IF I don't die during the events. Hearts are a nice gold income, but there are none in Orr, and the low level ones don't give enough gold.

So yeah: I won't even bother with the exotic gear unless GW2 comes up with a fun activity to get gold. I'm not a (Movie-Americans would insert a certain "F word" now) Bot that likes to grind for hours for a few silver.

[SirRobin]

Pretty much the standard response, unfortunately

Hehe...

Again, launch less than a month behind it and not using a revenue model that "needs" to keep its players grinding. GW2 is different. For some, like me, refreshingly so and for some... not. A different strokes for different folks sort of thing I guess.

[Ravenblade]

No i don't like leveling. It's a useless timesink. In GW2 it is REALLY useless b/c the game scales you down anyway. If I run into a lowbie zone and get scaled to level 5 I ask myself "WTF why did I have to level in the first place?!"

As far as skill points go: The're useless. I already have unlocked every ability there is. (I know you need them for the legendary, but I won't bother with that grind).

But which MMORPG has no levels? I think the first thing you have to come to terms with in RPGs is that there will be character levels. They usually serve at least as progression indicator while also giving a sense of accomplishment. In GW2 levels are primarily stages of unlocking. That is a different approach which is definitely a good step in the right direction with the context of MMORPGs. Not perfectly done but well enough to give them praise for trying it.

The downscaling is a bit misunderstood because when you level up you gain more skills and more powerful gear and traits (with multiple stats on it) and the downscaling takes that into account so a 6 (↓80) is still more powerful than a vanilla level 6.

The skill points are also used for crafting materials aside from the one needed for Legendaries and siege master's guide in WvWvW. Sure it could need a little bit more depth but it is a heading into the right direction.

Well fanboys need a bit longer to wake up. Most peeps only realize an issue if it affects themselves. It was the same with the orange mod item system in ToR. It was a great system that just ended at max level. For the first few weeks every complainer got ridiculed in the forums for being a rush boy. But as the masses hit level cap the shitstorm ensued because they realized that the "rush boys" were dead right.

I think "fanboy" is a pretty hostile term aimed into baiting people and feeling antagonized.

[Vice80]

Hard to say. I love the game, but I'm not 100% hooked like I was with WoW in it's better years or with swtor at it's start. Well ok I was hooked, but now I just play, make money, having fun in wvw and thinking about different things like how to make my favorite weapon work in any circumstances or how to get laughable unserious fucktons of money needed for legendary without spending every day for next 3 years grinding OR wasting rl money. GW2 is a new game and it needs time. Needs new content. My bet is they gonna let all those who's stupid enough to buy MoP have thier fun, because anet are smart, they know what they doing, they know they can't compete with WoW yet. So they just gonna let those who still plays wow to have their fun before (most likely) pushing some big cool content like a month or 2 after MoP is released and ppl realise that it's even worse than cata. So I'm just making as much money as I can without getting sick of the game, having a little fun in wvw and wait.