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

[-XEN-]

Well, for me it was burnout. Been playing since launch, and really enjoy GW2, but needed the short break.

[emotivex]

I always come back for a taste, enjoy it for a few weeks, then get a bit burnt out by it. In WoW I feel like everything I do has a purpose. I don't feel that from GW2.

A couple of other reasons:

Ping - I can't compete properly in sPVP with 280-300 ping from Aus. It could be because I suck compared to many who have pvped for ages. But I still feel like I'm at a disadvantage with the ping. I would LOVE to try this games combat in pvp with a good ping...

Inventory and currency bloat. So much shit you get that you have no idea what to do with. It is a very confusing game for a new/casual player.

And my final reason is the 'floaty' feeling of movement. I find movement on mounts a joy in PoF, the mounts feel weighty which is good. It's a pity the characters don't feel the same. When you run around it honestly feels like you're just floating through the map and I feel a little disconnected from the world. Can't explain it any better than that...

[KainneAbsolute]

I didnt have a guild i played alone Gw2

[Trifle]

Ping - I can't compete properly in sPVP with 280-300 ping from Aus. It could be because I suck compared to many who have pvped for ages. But I still feel like I'm at a disadvantage with the ping. I would LOVE to try this games combat in pvp with a good ping...

I don't know if they ever changed it, but back in vanilla GW2 they did rather strict movement checking server side, and with my NZ ping I'd get a lot of rubber banding when jumping around (jumping puzzles, some event in a multi-level city etc). I could run up to the edge of a platform and jump, then the game would say "nope you didn't jump, you're back on the platform" and then I'd see myself warp back and then fall off. Worst experience ever.

[Deleted]

For the past 4-5 months I'm trying to lower the amount of time i spent in wow and start playing more and more gw2. The problem is...I have friends in wow. And they dont seem to care about gw2 no matter how much ive tried. So,a typical day would be,me,solo in gw2 and 3-4 other people asking me to log in wow to do staff.
First of all the feeling of playing solo is bad. Second I feel like I will let them down if I dont play with them (Im the tank usually of our group in wow).

[Usagi Senshi]

I always come back for a taste, enjoy it for a few weeks, then get a bit burnt out by it. In WoW I feel like everything I do has a purpose. I don't feel that from GW2.

A couple of other reasons:

Ping - I can't compete properly in sPVP with 280-300 ping from Aus. It could be because I suck compared to many who have pvped for ages. But I still feel like I'm at a disadvantage with the ping. I would LOVE to try this games combat in pvp with a good ping...

Inventory and currency bloat. So much shit you get that you have no idea what to do with. It is a very confusing game for a new/casual player.

And my final reason is the 'floaty' feeling of movement. I find movement on mounts a joy in PoF, the mounts feel weighty which is good. It's a pity the characters don't feel the same. When you run around it honestly feels like you're just floating through the map and I feel a little disconnected from the world. Can't explain it any better than that...

Same, came back, got the $80 option, did the story, got the mounts, threw $200 more at the shop for costumes/keys, and then just logging in for the LS4 bits. The game could use an engine/graphical upgrade as well because it currently runs like shit on both of my systems and character models are starting to show their age (the non-animated hair is also pretty shitty for most of the options).

Not having an LFR/LFD mode for the raids and early fractals is also annoying. I wish I had taken that money and threw it at Blade and Soul instead tbh.

[Boricha]

I put some 200+ hours into GW2 the first month of its release. I really enjoyed the leveling, but didn't like the lack of progression at endgame and had a terrible experience doing the dungeons. I did the personal story and got a gear set that I liked the look of, then just spammed pvp for a while. The pvp didn't hold up for me in the long-term and I ended up being pulled back to WoW. I've looked into the game a few times since then and logged in two or three times, but I don't feel a strong desire to play.

[Stacko]

I had purchased Path of Fire, but ended up cancelling it. I've played on and off since launch, but the whole "Fashion Wars" end game just really has turned me off. I've never enjoyed PvP, and the only class I really enjoy is Guardian.

No idea if I'll be playing again any time soon, but we'll see.

[skycaptain]

People who got full Ascended since 2012 don't have power progression anymore. it's a joke. worse, Legendaries have the same stats as ascended. Why even bother then? legendary weapons are basically just skins. The game is fun but that's it. No character progression whatsoever kills it for me.

Also it has the worst mechanic i've ever seen in a videogame: Agony. It's a dull and completely boring mechanic which has no regard to your skill has a player and punishes you just because you haven't put hours grinding idiotic agony resistances. As a game designer, I was baffled with this mechanic.

[PACOX]

People who got full Ascended since 2012 don't have power progression anymore. it's a joke. worse, Legendaries have the same stats as ascended. Why even bother then? legendary weapons are basically just skins. The game is fun but that's it. No character progression whatsoever kills it for me.

Also it has the worst mechanic i've ever seen in a videogame: Agony. It's a dull and completely boring mechanic which has no regard to your skill has a player and punishes you just because you haven't put hours grinding idiotic agony resistances. As a game designer, I was baffled with this mechanic.

Skins are 70% of the game. Ask people what they are doing at endgame and its either competitive modes (PVP/WvW), instances (Raids/Fractals), or open world PVE (Achieves and Skins).

As for agony, AR ultimately is both a gear check and protection against fractal mechanics. Besides hard AR checks, AR is there to save you when you're standing in bad shit or didn't dodge something, which usually ends up in getting hit with agony.

- - - Updated - - -

I had purchased Path of Fire, but ended up cancelling it. I've played on and off since launch, but the whole "Fashion Wars" end game just really has turned me off. I've never enjoyed PvP, and the only class I really enjoy is Guardian.

No idea if I'll be playing again any time soon, but we'll see.

If you've played GW1 Nightfall, PoF is at least worth it for the story.

[Beazy]

I played it for a couple of hours when the living story came out a week or so ago.

PoF was a great addition to the game. Mounts and the terrain design are insanely awesome in PoF.

But without vertical progression, I can only stomach this game in small bursts. Im not a big fan of RPGs that dont allow you to progress your hero.

This game desperately needs the trinity and vertical progression.

[Lotus Victoria]

No character progression whatsoever kills it for me.

Fortunately, with the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you can have new habilities via the mastery system. It may not have gear progression, but it has character progression - I'd even argue that it has more ---character--- progression than any other MMO in the market. You should check it out, as masteries are pretty cool (if a bit grindy).

[Lotus Victoria]

HoT masteries are a damn clownshow, though. They're not "character progression", they're "Hey, we designed the map to be impossible to traverse, but here are some new abilities that you can grind for to finally be able to do so!"

That's one way of looking at it. As I've said in my previous post, HoT masteries are a bit grindy. LS3 and PoF fixed the issue with the grinding, so that's one less thing to worry about. LS3 also offers great masteries for you to work torwards (I love the vine thing and the glider skills, wish I still had them in PoF and other maps though), and I still prefer them over gear progression.

[Neudgae]

Friends, only have 2 others(for a total of 3) they can't decide and class and one doesn't play enough, we wanna push fractals but you can only get so far with 3

[Deleted]

HoT masteries are a damn clownshow, though. They're not "character progression", they're "Hey, we designed the map to be impossible to traverse, but here are some new abilities that you can grind for to finally be able to do so!"

They are as much character progression as any other.
In the end, character progression is merely a gate - in WoW, the gate is gear level, in HoT it is mastery. The gate leads to new content. That's it.
Gating is a must concept for any MMO that want to have any longevity. It gives the player incentive to keep playing so that he can get to the "higher" content, and it is a good overall tool to give players a purpose in the game, other than self-appointed pseudo-goals that are not a driver for the majority of the playerbase, me included.
The major problem if GW2 in general is that gating is not used nearly as much as needed to make the game addictive. Masteries were a good addition to the game, however they nearly abandoned them in PoF. The other problem with masteries was that most of them were not very usable in the end.

And no, i don't think GW2 need gear progression at all. It is obsolete concept. What it needs is more attractive endgame goals, more horizontal gating, more consistent and prolonged story (also gated), more variety in living story maps.
For instance, in PoF they shouldnt have handed you all the mounts, but rather made you sweat a little bit to get them, as they did with the griffin. That kind of stuff.

[Aliven]

I have only base game purchased. Dont have money for expansions.

[ryanmahaffe]

Well I died once when the expansion came out and I logged off and haven't logged back in.

[Eleccybubb]

It's not interesting or fun "progression" at all. It was nothing more than, "Oh, you're walking along and oops, here's a wall. Please leave and grind 15 mastery points so you can climb the wall."

It was literally the more frustrating form of "progression" they could have come up with, and likely why they didn't double down on it in PoF. Instead of gliding and such being a bonus that you worked toward, it just ended up feeling like you were mitigating a penalty placed upon you by the shitty maps.

Not only that, but it broke up the flow of the main questline as well. Ridiculous that you'd finish one leg and then the next objective is literally, "Grind this mastery point".

Have to echo this. Masteries are not fun. It's not a fun form of progression either imo. It's just tedious and boring.

There's nothing fun about throwing hundreds of thousands of xp down for something such as mushroom jumping.

Part of the reason I haven't bought PoF. Because of Masteries.

[Lotus Victoria]

It's not interesting or fun "progression" at all. It was nothing more than, "Oh, you're walking along and oops, here's a wall. Please leave and grind 15 mastery points so you can climb the wall."

It was literally the more frustrating form of "progression" they could have come up with, and likely why they didn't double down on it in PoF. Instead of gliding and such being a bonus that you worked toward, it just ended up feeling like you were mitigating a penalty placed upon you by the shitty maps.

Not only that, but it broke up the flow of the main questline as well. Ridiculous that you'd finish one leg and then the next objective is literally, "Grind this mastery point".

While I agree that blocking story progression behind mastery points isn't fun, I also like to say in this subforums that with PoF, masteries have been mastered - They're way less grindy and they're way more interesting - Living Story masteries were already a lot better, and I LOVE them! For me, it's one of the better systems in the market, so in the end it all comes down to preferences.

[Svifnymr]

I played it for a couple of hours when the living story came out a week or so ago.

PoF was a great addition to the game. Mounts and the terrain design are insanely awesome in PoF.

But without vertical progression, I can only stomach this game in small bursts. Im not a big fan of RPGs that dont allow you to progress your hero.

This game desperately needs the trinity and vertical progression.

Adding progression would kill the game, really. Heck, adding raids certainly didn't seem to bring back all the "I'm leaving because no raids".

You play the game because you want to play the game and enjoy gameplay. Like pvp, it's there, no reason to only do it if you get some arbitrarily reset gear nudge.