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

[PACOX]

The way they nickel and dime you is the main reason why I hope WoW never drops the sub.

Its so incredibly stupid that to understand anything whats going on in HoT or PoF, you need to buy S2 and S3.

The seasons are a lot cheaper than WoW... You're talking about the same amount of content that Blizzard time gates and charges you $15/month whenever you want to play it very Anet that offers it free first then asks a one time price of < $10 for the ENTIRE season if you miss the free period. On top of that you can buy the content with in-game gold for a pretty low price vs a WoW token that is most players can't afford.

[Makorus]

You prefer to pay $15 every month for the same content instead of $15 once?

It's not just the Living World, really.

Everythings monetized.

You have to spend money to transmog stuff, or make another character to get map completion. You have to spend money to get more than the pitiful amount of bank slots you have now, which they made account-wide just so the effects of a bank alt are diminished. This and bag slots are even scummier by the vast amount of stuff they have which should be able to be deposited into the wallet/storage but doesn't for whatever reason, taking up even more space.

WoW players complain about store mount but GW2 doesn't even have any free skins other than the default ones. You gotta spend a tenner.

Limiting build slots and then shutting down any addons which offer build templates just to sell more? Lootboxes? Paid Gathering Nodes in your home instance? 350 Gems to change your hair style, but the lowest quantity of gems you can get is 800.

[Rogalicus]

You have to spend money to transmog stuff, or make another character to get map completion.

Notice how many sources of transmutation charges are tied to gems. I have few hundred by doing absolutely nothiing for it. If all you need is gift of exploration, you can delete your character right after getting it.

You have to spend money to get more than the pitiful amount of bank slots you have now, which they made account-wide just so the effects of a bank alt are diminished.

I'm pretty sure bank is tied to account to make sharing items between characters easier. In WoW you still have to manually track everything across 12 banks and send stuff in mail.

This and bag slots are even scummier by the vast amount of stuff they have which should be able to be deposited into the wallet/storage but doesn't for whatever reason, taking up even more space.

If they wanted to clutter your inventory more, they wouldn't:
1) remove runes and sigils from salvage results
2) rework all the loot in the game to drop as unid
3) let you drop materials into special storage from any point in the world with one click
4) move keys to wallet

WoW players complain about store mount but GW2 doesn't even have any free skins other than the default ones. You gotta spend a tenner.

Well, first of all, there is non-gemstore skin for warclaw. I'm not using this as defense, just a small nitpick.
WoW players don't know shit about monetization, that's not surprising. You can look at FFXIV selling four-seater mount for $36 and getting praise for it, despite having box price and sub. Compared to that, absolutely optional skins with no special features in a game without sub is fine.

Limiting build slots and then shutting down any addons which offer build templates just to sell more?

I'm not going to defend this, they've dropped the ball really hard with templates.

Lootboxes?

With bad luck protection and you can get keys in game.

Paid Gathering Nodes in your home instance?

It takes several years to recoup the gold-to-gem cost though. Also can be gathered by entering another person's home instance.

350 Gems to change your hair style, but the lowest quantity of gems you can get is 800.

You are free to buy permanent contract on TP and use it all the time.

[Svifnymr]

It's not just the Living World, really.

Everythings monetized.

You have to spend money to transmog stuff, or make another character to get map completion. You have to spend money to get more than the pitiful amount of bank slots you have now, which they made account-wide just so the effects of a bank alt are diminished. This and bag slots are even scummier by the vast amount of stuff they have which should be able to be deposited into the wallet/storage but doesn't for whatever reason, taking up even more space.

WoW players complain about store mount but GW2 doesn't even have any free skins other than the default ones. You gotta spend a tenner.

Limiting build slots and then shutting down any addons which offer build templates just to sell more? Lootboxes? Paid Gathering Nodes in your home instance? 350 Gems to change your hair style, but the lowest quantity of gems you can get is 800.

It IS a Buy2Play format, so yeah more is monetized than a subscription. If you took $10 a month and bought gems, you'd probably run out of stuff you want to buy pretty quickly.

But, of course, there's the easy path (well "easy" being relative) that you can convert gold to gems, so you can just grind gold until you have that extra bank slot you want. I've never gotten one, so I don't think it's needed, but opinions vary. I've converted gold to gems for most of my purchases over the years.

The main thing I think they do wrong is making folks pay for past living story stuff. I can see maybe the newest set, but even then I think it should be included in the Expansion cost.

[PACOX]

It IS a Buy2Play format, so yeah more is monetized than a subscription. If you took $10 a month and bought gems, you'd probably run out of stuff you want to buy pretty quickly.

But, of course, there's the easy path (well "easy" being relative) that you can convert gold to gems, so you can just grind gold until you have that extra bank slot you want. I've never gotten one, so I don't think it's needed, but opinions vary. I've converted gold to gems for most of my purchases over the years.

The main thing I think they do wrong is making folks pay for past living story stuff. I can see maybe the newest set, but even then I think it should be included in the Expansion cost.

$10 or 100-200 gold to unlock an entire season (or free when it's fresh) is a whole lot cheaper than having to pay $15/mth every time you want to play content.

[loras]

Greetings champions, good to see you, as always.

This is a question for those who do not play Guild Wars 2 - either people that have already played it, or those who didn't try the game yet and lack something to try it.

What's preventing you from coming back or playing this game?

It has not caught my attention.
I've not seen or heard anything about it that makes me go "hey, i should check this out".

[Svifnymr]

Fortunately the gameplay itself is mostly pretty fun. So when I find something that's enjoyable I do get into it. But the times when that happens are pretty few and far between.

That's sort of my issue with GW2, I love the gameplay and running around doing random stuff. The story though, is just infrequent and current set is not engaging. The mass battles quickly turn tedious in the story events as every enemy just focuses on my mesmer and the NPC's just stand there watching.

I've got enough currency of various sorts, what I need is Achievement points, but of course I long ago maxed out on the earn as you play ones (daily, salvage, whatever), so it's all just grinds and stuff I don't feel like doing.

[Scorned]

You can't customize the UI layout or the choice of keys for your weapons' abilities. At least you couldn't last I checked, is that still the case? If so, that's a complete dealbreaker.

[Cæli]

I've heard they made some part of the world no longer explorable (some main city or something). I'm 90% confident it's true, and if it is, I really don't want to fall into that trap and have anything to do with this game

[Baine]

I cannot remember if I ever answered this question. I play WoW because it is an habit, I guess. I am not much a RPG guy. I played Skyrim and Fallout 4 and I think that's it in the last 10 years. So I am not interested about WoW competition because I am not interested to play another MMORPG. At heart, I am a fan of sandbox/simulation/strategy games. My top played games on Steam at the moment are Cities Skylines, Medieval Engineers and Franchise Hockey Manager.

[Lagmonster]

Honestly its just how bad the game is performance wise in cities and large groups.

[NihilSustinet]

I feel like there isnt much in terms of vertical character progression in GW2. i have full ascended gear, and last time i checked, other than a ridiculous legendary weapon grind, theres nothing better than that.

[Yudai]

Microtransactions that are so prominant, i've heard you can turn off other peoples microtransactions but I havent played in years so i'm not sure myself.

Leveling up felt too fast. Before launch I thought it was good that the leveling curve normalised after a certain point but looking back I cant help but feel disappointed about it.

This probably doesnt affect most people but I felt there were too many containers that drop from enemies, or achievement containers etc. According to the gw2wiki there are 2,759 containers/boxes in the game.. it's like the developers feel they need to wrap everything in another box.. and when that box drops a stupid green trident.... yeah.

[nitowa]

I've been playing GW2 on and off over the past years but it never managed to keep me hooked for more than a week or two.
The reasons are numerous, but here's a few:

- It still runs terribly. I don't think I've ever seen a game that made such little effort in adressing its performance shortcomings as GW2. Almost a decade and like 6 processor generations later people still wonder if their new PC will be able to run it well and the answer remains the same: no. The fact that the DX12 fanmade patch was able to fix some of these problems is strong evidence that the issues are solvable but the developers just don't care to do so.

- The PVE metagame is very unintuitive for me. Stacking my squishy glass cannon elementalist in melee range of bosses will just never feel right. This has kept me out of raids and fractals ever since despite being a fairly hardcore raider in WoW. It was just something that I always felt like it should be my cup of tea, but ultimately wasn't.

- The story is a complete mystery to me. I've never been a big fan of strong characterdriven storytelling in MMOs. In my opinion the correct way to do it is "I am a nobody doing something" rather than "I am a somebody doing nothing". Being fairly far removed from the storytelling made the required story quests feel very strange as they would just keep throwing story characters at me that I was supposed to care about, but I usually had no idea who they were.

- It's simply not deserving of the Guild Wars name. This is probably a pretty controversial point, but ever since GW2 came out I've been deeply DEEPLY disappointed by how they've decided to honor the GW1 heritage. Making a game full of cookie cutter builds with some very minor gear choice options as successor to one of the most diverse RPGs I've ever played is in all honesty a great shame.

[Lex Icon]

I feel like there isnt much in terms of vertical character progression in GW2. i have full ascended gear, and last time i checked, other than a ridiculous legendary weapon grind, theres nothing better than that.

to me that's the best part of the game. fuck that ilvl grind nonsense WoW made popular!

[NihilSustinet]

to me that's the best part of the game. fuck that ilvl grind nonsense WoW made popular!

i just feel like theres nothing to do thats worth doing. i guess im just motivated by advancement too much. if i dont feel like my characters is getting stronger, i get bored quickly. same reason why as much as i love the game, i bounce off of warframe every time i go back to it.

[Edge-]

You can't customize the UI layout or the choice of keys for your weapons' abilities. At least you couldn't last I checked, is that still the case? If so, that's a complete dealbreaker.

UI, no (it's minimalist). But you can fully rebind every ability (weapon, support skills, any class-specific mechanics) to whatever the heck you want.

I've heard they made some part of the world no longer explorable (some main city or something). I'm 90% confident it's true, and if it is, I really don't want to fall into that trap and have anything to do with this game

Old Lion's Arch is gone for story reasons (happened in Living Story S1, which is sadly not replayable, and apparently the "lost" the old data and can't bring it back). It's functionally no different than the update the Stormwind in WoW. The city is still there, it's just different than its original version.

i just feel like theres nothing to do thats worth doing. i guess im just motivated by advancement too much. if i dont feel like my characters is getting stronger, i get bored quickly. same reason why as much as i love the game, i bounce off of warframe every time i go back to it.

This won't be the game for you then as it focuses on horizontal progression. What's left to do? Farm more gear. Work on achievements for those rewards etc. etc. But it's not for everyone (I usually don't have too much motivation to work on achieves).

[Cæli]

UI, no (it's minimalist). But you can fully rebind every ability (weapon, support skills, any class-specific mechanics) to whatever the heck you want.



Old Lion's Arch is gone for story reasons (happened in Living Story S1, which is sadly not replayable, and apparently the "lost" the old data and can't bring it back). It's functionally no different than the update the Stormwind in WoW. The city is still there, it's just different than its original version.



This won't be the game for you then as it focuses on horizontal progression. What's left to do? Farm more gear. Work on achievements for those rewards etc. etc. But it's not for everyone (I usually don't have too much motivation to work on achieves).

that was the only place I cared about exploring this one : https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/...h_i_feel_like/
such a shame
were the "boats" actual places you could explore or were they just showed for the scenery with no actual interior (also remembering an halloween skin for that place)

[ro9ue]

I tried logging into GW2 twice this past year on a level 80 engineer in a town. Problem is I don't really know where the action is or how to get there. So then I just log out.

[Edge-]

that was the only place I cared about exploring this one : https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/...h_i_feel_like/
such a shame
were the "boats" actual places you could explore or were they just showed for the scenery with no actual interior (also remembering an halloween skin for that place)

The boat buildings? If memory serves, no, they were purely cosmetic. You could get up on most of them (would be super easy now with mounts) and it was fun to explore, but much like most MMO cities few of the static buildings were actually functional.

And it had holiday decorations as all the major cities do when the time rolls around.

- - - Updated - - -

I tried logging into GW2 twice this past year on a level 80 engineer in a town. Problem is I don't really know where the action is or how to get there. So then I just log out.

If you log in you should get prompted to redeem whatever the latest living story episode is and you can start on that. You'll be missing story from earlier episodes, but it'll get you to what is "current" in the game.

And apparently they're giving away LS S2/3 this summer while we wait on the next expansion, so you can pick those all up and play through them.