What's GW2 like nowadays?

[barackopala]

It's still boring to watch. You only see a blob vs an organized guild.

2minutes of swiftness+reta+25might+fury+perma stealth (if you use smoke-fields which seem to be rather unpopular atm)
vs a blob that puts out water fields when people try to stack might...

There's a reason why organised teams kill the lord with few people while the main group is "blocking" the entrance.

Play any massive pvp game, it will be boring to watch ALL the time, played competitive ragnarok online for 2-3 years, it was boring just seeing blobs fighting each other, same happens with FPS games with high player caps like BF3-Planetside and up to a certain point quake arena games, it's so much going around that you end up getting confused and bored.

[draykorinee]

"Smaller group wipes larger group" happens all the time in WvW, not sure why he'd freak out about it. Unless he's just bad and never managed it before.

Yeah my guild has some neat little groups that go off and piss off larger groups, I am never a part of them because I suck, also I play with a controller...

[Kazgrel]

Culling fix is coming soon to open world, we had a recent live test http://i.imgur.com/v1GaMZ6.jpg

WTB this ASAP. This is the one detail about GW2 that still irks me...standing around in LA or being out at a large event and seeing people pop in and out due to culling. Here's hoping it makes it through testing without any major hitches.

[Beefsquatch]

Most of the things that are added were poorly implemented. Living Story sucks, big time. Extremely boring..I think the new one is supposed to be good but I'm not sure.

World bosses: where do I even start. Spam fest, no strategy, shitty shitty loot. The rewards are so bad, they aren't even worth it.
Dungeons: Again, extremely horrid rewards. 3 hours in a dungeon, all you get is shitty blues and greens. All you really do dungeons for are the tokens for the gear. So once you have your set, there really is no point in doing them anymore since they are not fun, they do not reward you at all with exclusive loot to sell/use. And you may end up wasting more gold in there than you make.
PvP: After all this time there is still only ONE freaking pvp mode. They can add a million maps but that won't be jack shit until they add more modes.
Events: After some time, they get pretty repetitive and tedious to do.
WvW: Pretty much goes from one zerg fest to another. Of course, the organized guilds will probably do well. But most "big" battles are just zergs. Follow the big group around, and pew pew. I don't find it enjoyable. Think AV in WoW.
Jumping puzzles: This is really the only thing, in my opinion, that are really worth doing. Not only are they fun and challenging but some of the rewards can be nice at times.

The story telling in this game is shit, very corny. It's something many agree on. The best story telling/character development probably happens on levels 1-20. After that, all down him. Even those that are in love with the game and still play. This game lacks some serious challenging and rewarding content. I only log on for special events these days. Nothing really significant has changed since launch. This is all coming from someone who couldn't put the game down until hitting 80. It's one of those games that, the journey is the most amazing thing you'll ever experience but the destination is..pretty bland.

But of course, this is just my opinion. The game is sub free, so check it out form your own opinion on how you think the game is and come back and let us know. This game is still young, and has soooooo much potential. It can become a beast of a game if they do some hefty changes. I'll be waiting, and hoping, for those changes to come.

Edit: Forgot to mention the anti social aspect to the game. Someone in a Rift thread said it better than I could, so I'll just quote his post.

"In GW2, the way classes are done, along with other systems in that game, basically let you never have to group up with someone, or have any sort of team work. The game is almost like two trains side by side on two parallel tracks: you never have a need to party up, even the dungeons aren't mandatory as Best-In-Slot items are easily found outside them. It's a very antisocial MMO, because it puts players together, but never gives you a reason to actually work with them, other than the token "throwing this banner down on my Warrior."

[draykorinee]

"In GW2, the way classes are done, along with other systems in that game, basically let you never have to group up with someone, or have any sort of team work. The game is almost like two trains side by side on two parallel tracks: you never have a need to party up, even the dungeons aren't mandatory as Best-In-Slot items are easily found outside them. It's a very antisocial MMO, because it puts players together, but never gives you a reason to actually work with them, other than the token "throwing this banner down on my Warrior."

Always said it, to me its an anonymous mmo, as in I am anonymous in the world to pretty much everyone, no one really cares that Im there and I dont care that they are there.

Yes, storytelling is horrendously corny, the worst is asuri.

Ofc still a decent game for the money, just never going to sit right with me as a mmo.

[Valeron]

just never going to sit right with me as a mmo.

maybe not a bad thing, mmos are terrible games

[rhandric]

"In GW2, the way classes are done, along with other systems in that game, basically let you never have to group up with someone, or have any sort of team work. The game is almost like two trains side by side on two parallel tracks: you never have a need to party up, even the dungeons aren't mandatory as Best-In-Slot items are easily found outside them. It's a very antisocial MMO, because it puts players together, but never gives you a reason to actually work with them, other than the token "throwing this banner down on my Warrior."

Hmmm...and in other games, seeing other players is (or was) a penalty, not a benefit.

On the flip side, if you run into another player in GW2, everything you do is beneficial to all parties, and as such decreases the likelihood of other players being dicks. Hell, in the last few days I was working on some jumping puzzles to get kites, and a bunch of people worked together to complete them, even though they had nothing to gain from doing so.

[Valeron]

well people need to be hit the face with a sludge hammer with teamwork in mmos. And about the social part? Yeah, all mmos nowadays are exactly the same in that regard. I play a gambit of mmos and the most "social" part of them is inane talk on the global channels.

[Fencers]

You guys are kinda reading that snippet posted out-of-context. Just so you know.

[MonsieuRoberts]

I came back to this thread with a friend on vent and read every post aloud, and we both decided that there's no point in jumping back in.

There's just...not enough there. If the PvE content blows and the goals/rewards are just "for fun", why bother? What's the point of even running dungeons if there isn't sincerely good gear there? And farming them for tokens to buy gear, like I said in the original post, no thanks.

The leveling experience was sooooooooo gooooooooood, but if the activities that a lvl 80 can participate in that don't involve PvP are just mediocre, be it simple world bosses, "pointless" dungeons and bad bonus story/questing content, I don't see a point in jumping in yet, which is unfortunate.

We both laughed when I got to Widow Maker's comment on jumping puzzles being the only positive thing he mentioned.

Am I missing the perspective of people who are genuinely enjoying the game, or is this thread fairly realistic?

[Lazuli]

It's amazing, we've got so much end-game and pvp content now.

jk

[Meledelion]

There's just...not enough there. If the PvE content blows and the goals/rewards are just "for fun", why bother?

What's the point of even running dungeons if there isn't sincerely good gear there? And farming them for tokens to buy gear, like I said in the original post, no thanks.

I collect coins/stamps/model trains just for fun, I'd better give up on those hobbies since they don't really "help" me in a meaningful way.

I practice soccer/tennis/gymnastics/mma just for fun, I'd better give up on those hobbies since they don't really "help" me in a meaningful way (I don't care about being in/out of shape).

I simply don't see why doing something cause you enjoy it is so unheard of. Do you really need to get a new more shiny helmet everytime you score a touchdown for it to mean anything?

What Widow Maker says about dungeons isn't true. There is no excuse to being longer in a dungeon than 40m now(that's the "hardest" dungeon btw). If you farm CoF p1 you get 8+g/h which is pretty good. You get similar numbers for farming CoE (all paths)/TA and a bit less if you step into HotW/SE "farms".

The main issue of dungeons is that they're simply not hard enough (IMO but most people tend to disagree), I'd say the rewards fit the difficulty (although it's not balanced the way you'd expect) in a general sense.

You formed your opinion (in the past) without properly exploring the possibilities. If I read your post right you didn't even hit lvl 80 and decided that "end-game content wasn't enough", that's like going to a restaurant getting an appetizer and then saying "guys let's get out of here, the steak doesn't seem to taste nice".

It's worth giving it another go at least so you actually get the taste of the steak, if it's horrible throw it away but maybe you find some terrific sauce that makes it all worth it.

[Deleted]

Actually, I'm surprised. Gw just became much more rewarding than before with the achievement system. Yet it's still not enough? For me it feels like there's way too much to do.
I suppose for some people who left there's no 'goal' in there they find worthy. Gladly I have a ton I want. Whatever appeals you.

[zed zebes]

If forum people designed the MMO they claim the world is lacking it would end up like the videogame version of The Homer car.

I'd kind of feel like expanding upon that now that I've read more of the posts here.

It's very dangerous to take to heart what is said on MMO forums. I've been told that the same small handful of people contribute most of the negative posts on the official forum for the game. (The GW2 forum) It's just a concentrated group of hate. If I could describe MMO forums, it would be as that: concentrated and mutual hatefucking (sorry for language). Even then, the other sections of the forum only represent a small percentage of a game's player base. A great majority of WoW players never step foot in a forum, be it official or one like MMOC.

And you can sort of see why that is.

This is a WoW forum in general and many of us have experience with that game. We also have experience with that community, which consists of the nice folks you found in your guild of decent people and then the multitude of loud, disturbing slop that your guild is actively hiding from. The history of MMO design could be rightfully accused of as an unhealthy lifestyle. The demands and rewards can get out of hand. The games often require so much time involvement that they absorb the individual completely, removing them from other activities and other games. This shrinks perspective and people with such a small perspective won't really see much beyond their own initial reactions. These reactions tend to be pretty binary themselves, but since MMOs are social games, the constant feedback for these reactions help form each person's social behaviors.

This is probably where things get really unhealthy in regards to MMOs.

In life, you meet friends due to the happenstance of locality. You make acquaintance with someone because of their nearness to you. Their being near you is the product of many previous events, their birth place, their schooling, their work or whatever. If some of those events change then you may never find yourself near them, and though you are still people who get along, you don't make friends because you don't meet. Even online, if you make a friend through some chat room or website, it is the locality of that social site that allows you to interact. From then on, it's just a matter of getting along. You owe nothing to the other person, so there's no demand for you to be their friend. You're just friends because you get along.

In MMOs, relationships have been built upon dependencies for a long time. You join a guild to raid. You are dependent upon the others to do this. You make friends with someone because they're a good tank. You are dependent upon their tanking to do dungeons. You don't open a party invite to hang out with friends in real life, but you must do so within a MMO. Initially, this was a good process despite its differences from normal friendship establishment, for it was based around the idea of help. Others are dependant upon you for help, so you do whatever you do for them out of the goodness of helping. You inform them, you guide them and you tank for them. Unfortunately, relationships based upon dependencies often lead towards the concept of owing something. Whenever you think you are owed something by others, you start to take advantage of that position of power. Over time, the help aspect surrendered in power to the "you owe me" aspect.

So it's been highly interesting to watch the MMO populace struggle with a game that removes those dependencies. Some of them really don't understand how to make relationships in game without it being a forced product of game mechanics. Sometimes, they try to force those mechanics onto the game when they don't really belong.

Take for example the 'optimum' dungeon setup of full berserkers and warriors + mesmer. It's really an odd concept to me, because I understand that it revolves around completing one of the easiest dungeons in game. It's not required to beat the dungeon. You can beat the dungeon with many different setups. I beat many of the dungeons and exp paths in game with my guild. We never worried about team set up. It was a mix of folk and classes. We'd have to switch setups to bring certain skills for certain encounters, but no single class was necessary. So when I take a peak at dungeons months later and find that the community has decided upon such an 'optimum' setup so they can shave some minutes off a dungeon run that's easy peasy anyways, I kind of roll my eyes. It's those old dependencies trying to manifest themselves again for no real reason other than the fact these people may have grown up on MMOs and really, truly don't know how to socialize in a normal and healthy way.

Honestly, my worst dungeon experiences have come from gw2lfg runs with supposed pros. You know what the pros do now? They skip as much content as they can and use every exploit they know. They then expect the others to do the same and to automatically know these exploits. At first, I die because my group has ran off to hop on some edge of terrain and then catwalk around a group of mobs that is now solely focused on me, the one person actually playing the dungeon. You can say "no skipping, no exploits", but you won't get groups then. Sometimes I find their "stack and use terrain exploit" strategy doesn't even work any better than straight up fighting the boss/mob. I was going through some of these dungeons faster with my guild when we were actually doing the content. However, gw2lfg is somewhat standard, and as such, you have to learn how to skip through dungeons and exploit in order to work with a group. As this becomes the standard way of doing things, it makes sense that the player-base thinks the dungeons suck and aren't challenging. When you're actively avoiding experiencing them while still trying to get their rewards, that's exactly the viewpoint you will up with.

And it's sad because the game really does need more challenging encoutners and boss fights with cool mechanics, layers and generally more varied feel other than being meat sponges. However, the players will actively work against these things at the same time they cry out for them. When AC got revamped with new boss mechanics, ghost eater stopped being a popular dungeon run. Now that it took thought or time, people stopped doing it. And the boss mechanics added? Run a group for it and find how the people figured out ways to avoid the actual mechanics and return to their standard of stack and spam.

However, it's nothing new. Raiding was full of every trick you could find to lessen difficulty and cheapen the encounter for your benefit. Nothing about MMO players demand for challenging content and their actual playing of the content makes sense.

Then you realize all these people are needed. There is a standard dependency that even GW2 has and that is the fact that any MMO sucks without people to play it with. Dead servers offer less fun. A dead guild means you'll probably quit the game. No MMO works without a good guild to play it with. Every MMO is dependant upon people being in the game. It's just unfortunate that MMOs have sort of warped these people into empowered/entitled pariahs.

[rhandric]

You guys are kinda reading that snippet posted out-of-context. Just so you know.

Not our fault the context isn't apparent in the quote someone used to try to reinforce their point...

I came back to this thread with a friend on vent and read every post aloud, and we both decided that there's no point in jumping back in.

There's just...not enough there. If the PvE content blows and the goals/rewards are just "for fun", why bother? What's the point of even running dungeons if there isn't sincerely good gear there? And farming them for tokens to buy gear, like I said in the original post, no thanks.

The leveling experience was sooooooooo gooooooooood, but if the activities that a lvl 80 can participate in that don't involve PvP are just mediocre, be it simple world bosses, "pointless" dungeons and bad bonus story/questing content, I don't see a point in jumping in yet, which is unfortunate.

We both laughed when I got to Widow Maker's comment on jumping puzzles being the only positive thing he mentioned.

Am I missing the perspective of people who are genuinely enjoying the game, or is this thread fairly realistic?

If you love the leveling experience, why are you suddenly going to hate the game at 80? The only thing that changes at 80 is that you can do everything, rather than being limited to the content up to your level. Sure, at 80 you're suddenly missing the implicit goal of reaching the level cap, but outside of that, nothing changes. Everything you love about the leveling experience? It's still there.

[Fencers]

Am I missing the perspective of people who are genuinely enjoying the game, or is this thread fairly realistic?

Fairly realistic.

The Guild Wars franchise does not have and never has had a bimodal, stat progression based endgame.

This is simply a case of you not being informed enough about Guild Wars as a series or Guild Wars 2 as a singular game. Many of the selling points of the game were very well publicized and known- no raiding, no endgame, no gear progression, equalized PVP, event & mini game focused, absolute gear cap, heavy emphasis on casual play.

[Abstieg]

Hmmm...and in other games, seeing other players is (or was) a penalty, not a benefit.

On the flip side, if you run into another player in GW2, everything you do is beneficial to all parties, and as such decreases the likelihood of other players being dicks. Hell, in the last few days I was working on some jumping puzzles to get kites, and a bunch of people worked together to complete them, even though they had nothing to gain from doing so.

Agreed, GW2 is the most social interaction encouraging game I've played in a while.

[Karizee]

heavy emphasis on casual play.

What's amusing is how many people play it hardcore. ;-)

There's just...not enough there. If the PvE content blows and the goals/rewards are just "for fun", why bother? What's the point of even running dungeons if there isn't sincerely good gear there? And farming them for tokens to buy gear, like I said in the original post, no thanks.

Am I missing the perspective of people who are genuinely enjoying the game, or is this thread fairly realistic?

If you're talking about a strict gear treadmill type endgame where you basically whale on a big boss in a round room until you get enough gear to beat him so you can move on to the next big boss in a round room until you get enough gear to beat him so you can move on to the next big boss in a round room.....well, you get the idea. No, GW2 does not have that. Thank god, bored to tears with that endgame model.

As far as having a plethora of content and challenge, there is that. The game is more about skill than gear. (although we are getting ascended weapons and armor sometime this year).

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/l...ars-2-in-2013/

But for someone who is only interested in 'traditional' raiding with a gear treadmill, best to look at a different game honestly.

[Fencers]

What's amusing is how many people play it hardcore. ;-)

Well, like one could play checkers hardcore too. But that doesn't mean checkers is created and designed with the same rigor as Chess or something similar.

[draykorinee]

Am I missing the perspective of people who are genuinely enjoying the game, or is this thread fairly realistic?

This thread is entirely realistic, some people are loving the game for some very good reasons, some people hate the game for some very good reasons, and people like myself just see it as mediocre, a time to whittle away a few hours. The most fun I had was with my 2 friends I encouraged to buy the game, they lasted till level 40ish and after one dungeon said no way where they carrying on, which is a shame.