[Guild Wars 2] Why are you still playing?

[Valeron]

If you are judging a game based on how many people are around you while leveling, you aren't really going to find any games that are acceptable. I rarely see anyone in low zones on GW2 anymore to be honest. Group events/champions are basically impossible until people happen to swing through or it's one you can kite in circles for 30 minutes.

some of the low level areas are pretty populated. Queensdale certainly is. The mid level areas are sparse though. And that is something that occurs in every single mmorpg that has ever been, even the biggest mmo in the world has that problem. It is an issue that I'm not sure is solvable.

[Kelimbror]

And that is something that occurs in every single mmorpg that has ever been, even the biggest mmo in the world has that problem. It is an issue that I'm not sure is solvable.

Yes, that was one of my points. Judging a game as a 'ghost town' during the leveling process after the game has been out for more than a few months is probably not the best criteria. WoW tried to solve it with CRZ, but that's a nightmare.

Ideally having one mega server for a game would be the best way, but it's technically not feasible right now on as grand a scale as would be needed for something like WoW or GW2.

[Fencers]

I played WoW recently and people started to thin out population wise around Wetlands. Where the free trial lowbies can not go, presumably.

Don't think any MMO has solved the "leveling zone" conundrum totally. Even with down leveling, mentoring and equal reward shares.

Theme park MMO content is designed to expire. Players are not supposed to desire hanging out in the level 42 zones forever. Sandboxes fair only a little better in that a lot of their content is spread out. Though often heavily weighted toward high end content nonetheless.

[Deleted]

The CRZ stuff WoW has fixes it for 1 > 20 and 80 > 85, but 21 > 79 is still pretty barren.

[Lane]

I still say a big part of GW2's problem in terms of dispersing the playerbase into the world is the fact that material drops/bags don't scale in the same way gear does. Once you've gotten map completion for a zone there's really no reason to go back unless there's a boss chest event. Their plan to use dailies to help repopulate the world hasn't been very successful either because almost everyone goes to the starter zones to complete the objectives and most of the starter zones weren't hurting for people in the first place.

[Razael]

I still say a big part of GW2's problem in terms of dispersing the playerbase into the world is the fact that material drops/bags don't scale in the same way gear does. Once you've gotten map completion for a zone there's really no reason to go back unless there's a boss chest event. Their plan to use dailies to help repopulate the world hasn't been very successful either because almost everyone goes to the starter zones to complete the objectives and most of the starter zones weren't hurting for people in the first place.

I must say i kinda agree with this. For some reason i also feel the initial areas have a faster event spawn. I dunno. When i'm in the mid level areas i can literally play hours before a event shows up close to where i am. While on the starter zones i pop a waypoint at random and almost always something is up. This in the case of Dailies that require events or events in certain regions.

[Gray_Matter]

A big fix, IMO, would be to require some of the low level mats in the crafting of higher level goods. This would push up the price of the lower level stuff. Have X of one item type from each tier crafting in the crafting of exotics. Just the basic mats (copper, etc).

[Deleted]

or the recipe to make higher tier mats from the lower ones could be cheaper.

[bklutz]

I have recently gotten back into GW2 and this time it seems to be for a while as i am quitting wow due to the time it requires, whilst GW2 is very casual friendly while also having possibly the most friendly community i have ever seen in a game. Having friends to run dungeons or do jumping puzzles with is great fun as well esecially when you have a member who just cant quite seem to make the jump with everyone else :P

[Deleted]

I have recently gotten back into GW2 and this time it seems to be for a while as i am quitting wow due to the time it requires, whilst GW2 is very casual friendly while also having possibly the most friendly community i have ever seen in a game. Having friends to run dungeons or do jumping puzzles with is great fun as well esecially when you have a member who just cant quite seem to make the jump with everyone else :P

I've honestly been flabbergasted by the level of community in-game so far compared to that in WoW for example. I don't know if it's the gameplay or what that promotes it, all I know it's not such an insultfest and analspam on public chats as the previously mentioned.

[Razael]

I've honestly been flabbergasted by the level of community in-game so far compared to that in WoW for example. I don't know if it's the gameplay or what that promotes it, all I know it's not such an insultfest and analspam on public chats as the previously mentioned.

Agree on this, its a good factor for many people to sticking around.

[Halifax]

I tried really hard to enjoy Guild Wars 2 once I completed the leveling content, and have come back to it many times hoping that my opinion would change, but it hasn't. The leveling content was amazing, and well worth the 60$ price tag on it's own, so I don't regret the purchase at all. Once I hit max level, I ran around for 100% map complete (I think I stopped at 98% because at the time there were a few things that were bugged to impossibility unless you got in a lucky time when it worked and I couldn't be bothered), completed the story quests, and then... nothing.

Then I jumped around in circles in Lions Arch trying to think of something to do. I ran some dungeons, they were uninteresting zerg fests of running around rezzing people and avoiding attacks (which as someone who plays more action games than RPGs was very easy). The lack of a tank/healer system which many people list as a selling point severely limits possible encounter mechanics.

I tried farming events in max level zones. Got bored of being a cog in the machine of 100+ players hacking away at a dragon's foot. The small-team based PvP was ok, but felt like it lacked something that I couldn't put my finger on. WwW was atrocious to me, felt like every fight was just decided by who had more people, and my individual actions were pointless beyond trying to be at the right place at the right time.

To me one of the biggest problems was that the game didn't provide motivation. This is something that a lot of people claim is ok, because "if a game requires motivation to play it, then you probably aren't actually having fun", but I don't think that's true. I am bad at setting my own goals. To me, part of playing a game is that the game sets goals, and completing a goal is fun and fulfilling. Whether it's getting more gear in WoW, or completing the single player story of a console game, or winning more games then the other city's sports team, games need goals, and I didn't feel like GW2 provided me one. I think above all else, this was the biggest problem in the game for me. If you enjoy deciding on your own what to accomplish, then this might not matter. It was a game breaker for me.

TL;DR, leveling content is amazing, I couldn't find fun at max level. Other people's mileage has varied obviously.

[Fencers]

I am bad at setting my own goals. To me, part of playing a game is that the game sets goals, and completing a goal is fun and fulfilling. Whether it's getting more gear in WoW, or completing the single player story of a console game, or winning more games then the other city's sports team, games need goals, and I didn't feel like GW2 provided me one.

This is pretty understandable. The bold part especially I feel is a tripping point for some players.

Because Guild Wars as a series has always been somewhat freewheeling/do what you want.

It's a reason why pure sandbox MMOs don't perform as well in the market as theme park or hybrid MMOs. A lot players like direction in their MMORPG/FPS/ARP/ETC.

And if we look at a lot of the "I play GW2 all the time and tons to do!!" type posts around the game many of them are goals players set for themselves; my legendary! my perfect outfit! all the jps! once i get my 4 alts geared! my hotw set!

Which is fine, working as intended for Guild Wars. Though I do understand your POV here and think it pretty valid for a lot of players. I do wish more people would accurately express this sentiment as you have rather than misplace their desires onto games.

So I guess the point of this post is to say, "I get it, I understand".

[Snow White]

I'm still playing because just when I think I've done everything, I find something else that peaks my interest. I'm still learning things about the combat that I previously overlooked, and I'm giving a chance to things like wvw and spvp that I never would before, and amazingly finding THEM fun as well. This game just has SO much to do and I've only really experienced 2 races so far.

My lovely mesmer:

[Kelimbror]

My lovely mesmer

My ranger has some extra trenchcoats and a job for her so she can stop working the streets.

On a serious note, I just hit 80 finally and it felt good. Though oddly I feel like I have even more things to do than I did before. Doing the daily and getting map completion takes a lot longer than I thought now that the game isn't fresh. There are several chain events that no one is ever around to do, so all of Orr zones are just crammed with debuffs and endless zombies. It's really disappointing, but overall the game is still awesome. I'm guessing I need to get into a larger guild and start guesting on a bigger server so I can actually do some of these.

Additionally, people said karma would be coming out of my ears, but events only give about 300 a pop and sometimes they take a hefty amount of time and dying to solo. Where is all of this margical karma supposed to come from? at 3-400 a pop that's a lot of grinding to get my karma back up. Even with the 4500 a day from the daily..that's pretty meh.

[Voidism]

My lovely mesmer:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UhXPGg6.png[IMG]

Wow, where did you get that staff? Downloading GW2 right now, after a 6 month absence, so... :P

[Snow White]

Wow, where did you get that staff? Downloading GW2 right now, after a 6 month absence, so... :P

It's the legendary staff Bifrost.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Bifrost

[Voidism]

It's the legendary staff Bifrost.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Bifrost

ooooh shiny

[Meledelion]

For me the issue is that my goals have been hindered/capped by anet.

I'm a competitive player at heart. I've got 35days of playtime on MW3 (no money for black ops 2 since I'm poor and miserable) which is 840hours. I go there since gamebattles gave me a challenge and pubstomping is fun to relax.

I've played 5k hours of GW and am r10 or 11 HA player, r6champion, r9glad (ta ftw) and r4 champion? (hero battles)

In wow I got up to 2.3k mmr and a top 200 world guild.


Now in GW2 I'm at r30ish but PvP is horribly broken and thus inactive. In WvW it doesn't matter what you do, just follow the zerg and get massive ranks. And in PvE there isn't a challenge (fotm is hardcapped at 50 for some fckd up reason) and dungeons don't have an additional reason to do them aside from tokens/story (not even titles/achievements) (all 7 of my lvl 80s have at least one set of exotic gear and my most active toons have ascended rings and extra sets). I've done all jp's/world completion/mini dungeons. I've got about 1mil of gold in my bank and nothing to spend it on (legendaries are either fugly or too common or not a weapon I use).

There simply isn't a whole lot more I can do. In GW getting GWAMM was a feat and took a while (first time anyway) so did LDOA. Same for HOM 50/50 was time-consuming but I vastly overstepped their minimum req for 50/50.

In comparison I feel like there's a whole lot more to do in GW than GW2 mainly because PvP isn't a sweetholder in this game at all...

[Lane]

I've got about 1mil of gold in my bank and nothing to spend it on (legendaries are either fugly or too common or not a weapon I use).

OMG, even I could not spend that much. :P That's crazy. I can't even break 300g.