Choose Your Path - Guild Wars 2 Columns

SBFord · July 2018

Choose Your Path - Guild Wars 2 Columns

As a person who works a job with varying shifts and typically long hours, I love how I can just jump into Guild Wars 2 and not worry about playing catch up. Anyways, enough talk about that. I wanted to discuss a couple of things this time around. Let’s start out with a pretty big concept: Progression.

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Phaedruslives · July 2018

Interestingly, I feel almost exactly the opposite. I find that progression begins to feel like a phantom of real rpg. An MMO-Simulacra. All of your goals don't add up to a drop in the bucket regarding your characters actual statistical performance, at least once you've gotten all of your cookie-cutter, same as every other (class) items. There are a lot of areas where it deserves praise. Exploration and world-building being the biggest I can think of.. but dang, the progression? It's a hateful shade that mocks your effort and doles out cringeworthy and effeminate aesthetic rewards.

rage0us · July 2018

I played for a few years after the beta and made it to what was then the end game I guess (Their really wasn't one), left for Wildstar and then FFXIV, now I've been back a month and really enjoying finishing up HOT and looking forward to POF. The end game in Gw2 is exactly what you just described. None of that ends when you hit 80. I spent a week just running meta events in Silverwastes to unlock some skins, crafting items, and finish a backpiece I was making before I left. Gw2 isn't perfect and those who are used to grinding dungeons may have some assimilating to do, but there is so much to do that you can progress in any way you want on any given day. I would say though that one area of progression that seems to be constant for everyone is acquiring Gold. Either for buying things you want from other players or for turning into gems for cool skins and stuff. But again you can even make Gold any way you want to. I was really hoping more MMOs would take a cue from Gw2 but no one really has succeeded with their formula like they did yet.

rage0us · July 2018

Phaedruslives said:

Interestingly, I feel almost exactly the opposite. I find that progression begins to feel like a phantom of real rpg. An MMO-Simulacra. All of your goals don't add up to a drop in the bucket regarding your characters actual statistical performance, at least once you've gotten all of your cookie-cutter, same as every other (class) items. There are a lot of areas where it deserves praise. Exploration and world-building being the biggest I can think of.. but dang, the progression? It's a hateful shade that mocks your effort and doles out cringeworthy and effeminate aesthetic rewards.

You're correct in some ways. It is about the aesthetics in a lot of ways. If you're not motivated by just doing content, then aesthetics is the only way to get motivated really. There are no end game stats to chase other than ascended gear. It's a complete mind shift that isn't for everyone. That's part of the reason I went to FFXIV for like 3 years. I got lost in all the new content in Gw2 and was craving a stat grind again. But then I got tired of chasing that carrot again and came back to gw2.

ScottJeslis · July 2018

I love the game but have to take time off to review other games and such.

makevali · July 2018

Guild Wars 2 is getting worse because it's getting grindy such as legendary weapons and armour and they are more focused on monetizing the game than creating new content such as new classes or races. First we got gliders now we got mounts woopyty doo hoo. where's promise of being different from other mmos? and every other month they flip all the specializations so there's never a balance . To make GW2 great again (quote trump) they should create new classes, weapons, races and update the visuals to make the game look more modern. If not, wait until Ashes of Creation comes along and takes half the population.

Bananable · July 2018

"Choose Your Path - Guild Wars 2"
I didnt purchased the PoF and quit the game...I like this path.

Scot · July 2018

rage0us said:

Phaedruslives said:

Interestingly, I feel almost exactly the opposite. I find that progression begins to feel like a phantom of real rpg. An MMO-Simulacra. All of your goals don't add up to a drop in the bucket regarding your characters actual statistical performance, at least once you've gotten all of your cookie-cutter, same as every other (class) items. There are a lot of areas where it deserves praise. Exploration and world-building being the biggest I can think of.. but dang, the progression? It's a hateful shade that mocks your effort and doles out cringeworthy and effeminate aesthetic rewards.

You're correct in some ways. It is about the aesthetics in a lot of ways. If you're not motivated by just doing content, then aesthetics is the only way to get motivated really. There are no end game stats to chase other than ascended gear. It's a complete mind shift that isn't for everyone. That's part of the reason I went to FFXIV for like 3 years. I got lost in all the new content in Gw2 and was craving a stat grind again. But then I got tired of chasing that carrot again and came back to gw2.

Welcome to the boards! GW2 or FFXIV new posters are always welcome here.

Shinami · July 2018

Guild Wars didn't have an endgame upon release outside of running Arah and grinding in Orr. Then HoT came out and it focused on creating an endgame. PoF added to that and it was important since Nexon pulled out their shares from NCSOFT in 2015. Anet needed a recovery for all the monetization that happened during those three years.

To make GW2 great again they need to:

1) They need to tweak traits and add new skills to allow new builds. While Guild Wars 1 allowed for exploration of builds, Guild Wars 2 pushes players into specific builds. Even worse is monthly running a balance patch that breaks all the builds in the game and forces players into playing the current flavor of the month. I shouldn't have to raise one character per class and fear the destruction and waste of my time in builds each time a new patch comes out.

2) They need to clear up Guild Wars as a title. Guild Wars makes people believe that the game is about Guilds. Its not. Guild Wars is a reference to a historical period in the GW lore. The first trailer of the original game opened up with "When I was a little girl, my father took part in the Guild Wars..." so the name is a real deception of what it conveys vs what it truly means.

3) They really need to fix the guild system in that game. When I played the game, a player was capable of joining five guilds at the same time, thus allowing players to take advantage of what each guild had to offer. Truth is that most guilds are social networks and its hard to do anything in the game as a guild with people representing one of five guilds all the time. In other games I don't have to send whispers to members telling the guild missions are ready to go....

....but this game it was always a competition for keeping a person unless of course you let them take advantage of you and your guild resources. This was one reason I moved on from this game. What it takes 50 - 100 people in this game to have 10 - 20 people representing so that 5 - 10 of them can do something together I took care of easily in other games with just 12 members to the guilds I founded as a max.

4) They need to make the world useful again. Sorry but having players in the Start and End Areas are nice, but the areas between level 30 and 65 being Empty most of the time is just god awful.

Balticthunder · July 2018

rage0us said:

Phaedruslives said:

Interestingly, I feel almost exactly the opposite. I find that progression begins to feel like a phantom of real rpg. An MMO-Simulacra. All of your goals don't add up to a drop in the bucket regarding your characters actual statistical performance, at least once you've gotten all of your cookie-cutter, same as every other (class) items. There are a lot of areas where it deserves praise. Exploration and world-building being the biggest I can think of.. but dang, the progression? It's a hateful shade that mocks your effort and doles out cringeworthy and effeminate aesthetic rewards.

You're correct in some ways. It is about the aesthetics in a lot of ways. If you're not motivated by just doing content, then aesthetics is the only way to get motivated really. There are no end game stats to chase other than ascended gear. It's a complete mind shift that isn't for everyone. That's part of the reason I went to FFXIV for like 3 years. I got lost in all the new content in Gw2 and was craving a stat grind again. But then I got tired of chasing that carrot again and came back to gw2.

And by aesthetics nowadays people mean skimpy armor, big boobs and wings;-)

Aeander · July 2018

I like the direction the game was going. It has a great content cadence, has difficult optional content for those that want it, and continually adds new explorable content for everyone else.

There are of course significant improvements that can be made:

- Refine certain animations and armor sets to reduce rampant clipping issues.

- Remove or rework dungeons. The state of dungeons has been embarassing for years and the game encourages new players to play them, giving them a significantly worse impression of the game.

- Continue to fix underwater combat. Make more skills useable underwater. Reduce mob density in key areas. Fix the rampant issues with enemies getting stuck in walls and floors. Give us an underwater mount (ie: shark, squid, dolphin) for faster underwater travel.

- Tune down visual noise by reducing key particle effects. Give players the option to eliminate the particle effects of other players' legendary weapons.

Lastly,

- Give us Cantha!

RemyVorender · July 2018

GW2 has many things going for it. Progression, however, is just an illusion.

Aeander · July 2018

RemyVorender said:

GW2 has many things going for it. Progression, however, is just an illusion.

Perhaps that isn't the huge issue people make it out to be. At this point, the only real progression difference between Guild Wars 2 and other MMOs is that they have made the choice to not raise the level cap and invalidate all progression earned with every expansion. Meaning that Guild Wars 2 has progression, but it has stayed flat at its existing peak. Think of that what you will, but I think it shows admirable respect for the player.

I for one like things the way they are. The game has a breadth of enjoyable and optionally challenging content. I enjoy the aesthetic rewards. I'm not so shallow a player as to only enjoy a game when my stats are arbitrarily rising by a few points.

Tyr216 · July 2018

Good luck getting anywhere in terms of end game without being able to craft. It's pretty much required if you want to be competitive.

Octagon7711 · July 2018

I've enjoyed the game off and on since launch and continue to play it more then any other MMO as of late. Love the dynamic events and how easy it is to travel and explore. Lots of different ways to level and even scrolls that drop that allow players to skip through some levels if they've done them eight or nine times before.

So easy to just bring up the game and play for five mins. or five hours, it's up to the player. With so much stuff to do it's easy to pick and choose.

Wizardry · July 2018

I am very interested in the term progression so i read this article.
First up is the term,to me it means adding to your player,sort of like learning new skills in real life,perhaps owning cars or houses etc etc.That is what RPG should be,role playing a plausible life within a world,no matter it is a sci fi world or a Fantasy world.

To be honet,i never got much out of this article,at the end says it wouldn';t feel the same if like Wow or FFXIV but to me it is EXACTLY like those games,the very mention of admission to dailies every login is imo .../sigh.
So there lies a question..wtf does dailies have to do with living a plausible life within a world...role playing?
Something not mentioned is another idea that has NOTHING to do with a rpg.Map /area completions,seriously wtf is that idea all about,how does that relate to living in a world and living out a plausible life?
You see systems like that are magical unknown,not seen just rewards handed down from the sky,it is not realistic by any stretch of the imagination.
So the author mentions exploring,crafting,pvp yada yada yeah same thing we do in every mmorpg.

Bottom line is this article did very little to convince me of anything,didn't even really mention anything that sets the game apart.

meonthissite · July 2018

These segments and their titles always make me laugh due to their timing.

I am going my own way away from this game because as seen recently, the devs really don't truly have the best attitude towards the players, and they can tell their people not to say anything and feign an apology but the history remains. It's not a recent thing, it's been going on since beta ended.

So I am going my own way away from this title because of that attitude towards my fellow players.

hyllyh · July 2018

i'm a casual gw2 player and really, i enjoy it a lot!
yesterday was a world pvp session (wow, i spend 3 hours on it) last day was crafting, another day story etc
sometime i check internet, see which world boss pop and i'm in for half an hour,
sometime i just go to discover place and do some completion task
which said, it's good enough for me for a 6 years game and hope to spend more hours on it
and yes, i'm still on the free version of the game and really, i've so many thing to do before going to HoT and PoF (but i find mont a little OP for exploration, puzzle etc)

Celcius · July 2018

I think GW2 is one of the best MMOs and have played it since beta, but...I don't really feel that there is anything left to earn in the game. I have all the stuff I want, I am tricked out in all the legendaries, have all the classes at cap, don't care about achievements or skins anymore and have done all the raid, fractal, and living world world content.

I know I am not a very common breed at this point, but for me, there is nothing left to do. This does not mean I don't like jumping in and doing the new content when it arrives; but I usually just do the story and stop playing cause I don't want anything else. (Skins,ascended,ect) Even in raids I don't really care about what I like to call Bank gear (Ascended items). I think for players like me, I don't consider this my main MMO and can never consider it that way. I want to always feel like I can progression my character in power. I think that is why we don't see these kind of progression systems very often. I will continue to raid the latest raid content weekly and do the living world updates, hop in a couple weeks for an expansion,ect, but I don't see myself doing more then that.

Dinasty · July 2018

Agree with the poster above.

You will NEVER, even with the absolute best in every slot, feel powerful in this game. All the time and effort in the world will net you ZERO towards feeling like you actually progressed.

It is good if you want to spend real money and play dress-up.

makevali · July 2018

First they started GW2 with innovation and we all got excited and now they are just backtracking and adding every feature that tradional MMO's have.

Guizee · July 2018

Just wanna say how Guild Wars 2 balance team is bad at their job and how PvP is boring, uncompetitive, meta driven and tedious.

psychosiz1 · July 2018

I agree and much like the OP time is an issue when its comes to gaming. In spite of this. I have tried a surprising amount of games. Hardly any of them can hold my interest long enough for me to play past leveling half way to max. I basically have two tiers of games. Tier one is games I come back to you once a year and rotate among the others in the tier. Tier two are games I come back to every so often but do still play from time to time. For me GW is a tier one game. Over the years I have played every class and gotten them to max level. I did delete some of them as they weren't really my playstyle and I knew I wouldn't play them. What I like about GW2 for me is they continue to add content somewhat regularly and I find myself wanting to play certain classes in certain situations, ie solo content versus group content.

Lumiere123 · July 2018

Endgame for GW2

- meta events (Repeat 1 hour each)
- Fractals (After you reach top fractal, it become so repeatable and boring)
- Dungeons (Nobody runs them anyway)
- World Bosses (Easy to kill, easy to done, no challenge)

and top noch endgame

- farming legendary weapons
- WvWvW

... I Farm 4 Legendary weapons, done 98% of content... leave game after PoF

Akulas · July 2018

You can set your own goals. Make a legendary from scratch, do achievements, farm gold.

gelraen · July 2018

I’ve been away from the game for a few months now, and was hoping when I saw your post title that they’d added some new progression mechanics.

I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, but I still feel that though GW2 is the best mmo out there, it lacks long term meaningful character progression. Yes, it’s cool to max out your masteries - that lasts a little while - and making legendaries is fun, but without the gear reset that other MMOs have, it all ends soon enough.

I’m not sure what the solution is, without introducing power creep, but for example, I wish there was a group of masterirs which just took an insane amount of time to unlock, perhaps with some real choices involved. I know there’s a segment of people who whine about this type of thing as being too “grindy“, but mmos without at least some sort of character grind to work on will just inevitably lose their appeal.

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Choose Your Path - Guild Wars 2 Columns

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Choose Your Path - Guild Wars 2 Columns

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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey