Just got this and holy shit, it's already better than any MMO I've played after a few hours played
>world is huge and beautiful
>lore is pretty cool
>combat is actually fun, action packed and engaging
>can make qt plant elf waifus (had a thing for them ever since Starbound)
>leveling is actually fun as you get dynamic events and get xp for exploring, doesn't even feel like I'm grinding
>it's actually worthwhile to do completionist run because low lvl content still scales to you while keeping high lvl zones inaccessible (frick you ESO)
>looking from wiki, there's branching questline stories with thousands of hours of content
>no shitty subscription that forces me to play every waking moment, otherwise I feel like I'm wasting money
I'm still a low lvl noob so I haven't touched on any PvP or Dungeons/Raids but I'm already having a blast
Why isn't it more popular?
You're experiencing a honeymoon phase. Guild Wars 2 is at its best between levels 1 and 79.
>Why isn't it more popular?
The game drops off really hard at 80. Dungeons without a holy trinity don't really work. If everyone is dps and self healing then everyone has to dodge and use CC to survive a single fight. The end result is a chaotic mess with mobs bouncing between players because managing aggro is limited.
From there, only real way to progress is to sink time or money into the market.
This is one of those MMOs where you're expected to sit back and have a good time, which is why min maxers hate it. You're expected to watch cutscenes and appreciate the details and lore. So in that regards it's more like a museum of what an MMO could be than a game.
like the other anon said: the lategame is absolute trash. you basically can't accomplish anything without no-lifing for a month straight because of moronic timegates (ex. you need 30 ingots for a legendary item but you're only allowed to craft 1 per day -_-). the raids are kind of shit and the only rewards you can expect are skins. it's fun as you do 1-80 and go through the expansions for the first time, but after that youre gonna see exactly why everybody trashes it on here
>You're expected to watch cutscenes and appreciate the details and lore
i find this really funny because gw2 has one of the worst stories ive ever experienced
>i find this really funny because gw2 has one of the worst stories ive ever experienced
It varies. Char story is cool. Human and plant stories bland. Then Azura's is basically a nerd convention. Nord was solid enough to stand on its own. Just thinking about it makes me want to reroll Nord.
the vanilla core story is generic as shit and the stories that come after (exception of most of PoF) just get worse and worse. Icebrood Saga was actual nonsense that they slapped together. they literally forgot primordius for half of it and then killed him and jormag after spending all the prior episodes talking about how killing them wasnt an option cause the universe would get ripped apart
While the so called honeymoon phase is real, you have to be moronic if you think all fractals/raids/strike missions are trash. Especially when you get to them for the first time and when you look at challenge modes. Dungeons are bad however, they were made back when the devs had too many conflicting ideas what they wanted to do with the game and barely knowing how to implement those. Now they know it, but their ideas are not something good for you either
>you basically can't accomplish anything without no-lifing for a month straight because of moronic timegates
this is also stupid, but whatever, legendary gear is only for convenience and absolute endgame goal anyway
fractals and strike missions ARE trash. sure, doing them a couple of times is fine, but you have to grind the frick out of them to make any sort of noticeable progress. it's the same shit over and over, literally hundreds of times, for crumbs. it's the worst endgame in an mmo ive ever seen
>strike missions ARE trash
no, some of the cms are good, some of them are really good
also I don't know what you mean by progress, there is barely any in gw2, you play for the sake of playing not to get gear with bigger numbers
yeah that's bullshit. why would anybody want to just play the same thing over and over? "progression" isn't just about getting bigger numbers, it's about changing your game experience. there's a lot of decent progression throughout gw2: hero points, masteries, experience, to name a few. those things contribute to changing how you play and experience the game-- AKA progression). a game with no progression better be fricking STELLAR cause otherwise it's just going to get boring after a dozen or so gameplay loops, whatever those may be, and gw2 is not even close to good enough to justify this.
to be more specific: gw2 has decent progression as you do 1-80 and go through the expansions for the first time. after that it's nonexistent and that's when the game becomes complete ass. "playing for the sake of playing" is fricking stupid when the game gives you absolutely nothing to make you feel like youve earned anything by playing it
As in the reply-chain, I was speaking in the context of instanced PvE content.
all of this is absolute bullshit and just plain lies
ive played gw2 for 3 years, fully leveled several characters and gone through the expansions each time. i feel like i have a pretty good understanding of what the game has to offer. both of those posts are accurate
not the anon you replied to but:
except that raids are not shit, you shouldn't even bother with dungeons other than just a handful of runs to get a couple runes(I do admit DUNGEONS are trash) and you aren't too sensible if you agree with "no-lifing for a month straight because of timegates" statement, especially with the ignot for legendary example
nah dude, you have to play so much wvw and grind other shit for legendaries that it's unreal, the ingot timegates are just the cherry on top that force you to spend a month even if you somehow get lucky and get all the other resources you need quickly
strike missions and fractals are also trash. literally just repeating the same formulaic maps 100+ times
legendaries are mostly just convenience of easily switching builds, but they also fail slightly at it with the shitty interface they made for them
honestly, they are just a long term goal, you can easily get by with ascended gear(legendary weapons are a scam, they are ugly as frick and you'll be drowning in asc weapons anyway) and you are fool if you make yourself suffer over them and go MAXIMUM GRIND UHHH I MUST GET IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
again, they are not the end goal, they are just something you can work towards while playing and doing other things
I could easily get a full set of legendary armor just by playing PvP casually. sure it took a few months, but I also went through the story, zones, unlocked all sorts of stuff, got all mounts, masteries etc in the meantime
>strike missions and fractals are also trash
so now it has been said that raids, fractals, strikes and dungeons are all trash
ok. you could've said this first so I could've discarded your opinion at the start
I bet you are a wvw enjoyer simpleton
I'd also rather look at boring same gear human models than the travesty of cosmetics some people put on their characters
>repeating the same mission 100 times is totally good gameplay, guys! i swear!
cope. enjoy your trash game
>wvw enjoyer simpleton
As opposed to running the same handful of raids, fractals, strikes, and dungeons that can be carried by 2 people and the entire group auto attacking? If you're playing GW2 for any of that instanced 5-10 man content you're better off just playing FF14
Daily reminder, it has been 993 days and 19 hours since the last fractal release, 1455 days since the last raid wing, and 188 days and 18 hours since the last new strike mission. All of which can be just about first try cleared btw lol. We don't even know when the next strike/fractal will be released other than "next expansion" which might not even be this year, WvW is the only thing unique to GW2 worth playing it for. (And its not even that unique to begin with, just handles it better than the other big MMO's)
Breaking out of the map with the broken portal gun greatly extended my fun times.
I've gone 1-80 3 times now and always end up quitting and starting over.
I should try to at least get 100% map completion
I have 18 level 80s. I can assure you that this game is trash. The modern lore is finding a jade vibrator in one of the characters apartments. Very deep.
I had my fun near launch and until heart of thorns. For me wvw was the main focus. But the pvp competitiveness died for my t2 server and theres no way im paying to transfer as rankings hop around.
Without a real guild, everything feels samey now, and I have moved on. I hope you enjoy though
I quit before HoT came out. Game was in a dire state then.
POF, LS4 and IBS really steered things around though.
Disagree, LS3 - HoT - LS4 were the golden era of GW2 (also maybe launch). IBS was a disaster the story and 3 maps were pretty good, but the rest of it was total disaster.
Played since launch, have about 8000 hours on my account (4000-5000 in WvW alone) both the posts are pretty accurate, if a bit dated.
Game launched with no holy trinity but then they decided to haphazardly add a trinity system in later, tanking doesn't exist in half the encounters, or is role compressed and done by the healer.
In GW2 everyone is some flavor of DPS typically: Quickness DPS who provides squad quick, Alacrity DPS who provides squad alacrity, or normal DPS. The healers can also be DPS healers, but more commonly they get role compressed so the healers are often also doing alacrity, quick, or some other boon. However this system is extremely moronic because of this game's utter reliance on boons and extremely poor balance. Without boons (depending on build) you do 1/4 to 1/6 as much damage, this means if you can do a perfect rotation on a boss, and not even hit 75% of your benchmark because your Quick DPS fricks up his rotation or gets CC'd resulting in boon downtime on entire squad.
Not that your DPS matters because every boss in the game can be comfortably cleared by hitting 50% of your benchmark before you even have to worry about enrage. Most boss encounters you don't have to learn a single thing to beat because the mechanics can be juggled by about 3 players carrying the entire team (typically the healer lmao), sometimes less.
GW2 has no status symbol items. Every item in the game can be bought (legally) with a swipe of a credit card and the ones that can't be bought with a swipe of your credit card look worse then the cash shop skins anyway. 25-33% of all skins are on cash shop, and 99% of glider/mount skins are cash shop only.
GW2's main strength is the open world and meta world bosses. Those are cool. WvW's also great.
the leveling and exploration was fantastic. the combat is alright, albeit spammy. story is complete ass. cash shop is aids. still a solid game, but not an mmo that i would regularly come back to.
I take comfort in knowing that the majority of Arena.net employees who ruined the first year of the game have either been fired or left.
During the game's launch a bug made it to live that compromised the cash shop by allowing players to buy rep weapons for low cost. Basically they forgot a zero in their price. Players bought the weapons en masse, combined them, and sold the results on the marketplace. Then Arena.net used a script that banned all players involved, including the innocent ones who were just completing their reputation sets or buying what they thought were good deals from other players.
It was a pretty big deal at the time and the worst of it was Arena.net forcing players to apologize for "cheating" even though it was Arena.net's fault for letting the bug go live. You would log in and there would be a message and a check box you could tick to admit your guilt for their mistake.
When that happened I immediately quit the game. I couldn't stand how patronizing it was. Thought they would treat it like a Horde player looting a Westfall chicken instead of an international diamond heist.
https://www.pcgamer.com/3000-guild-wars-2-players-permanently-banned-for-karma-exploit/
I have all classes at 80. Mostly just playing wvw. Lots of fun. One of the best values for the money in mmo
who are you quoting?
My friend was all hyped for it when it first came out and played it for a while before getting bored. Never touched it because my PC was shit at the time but your enthusiasm makes me want to try it. Downloading on steam now.
>Why isn't it more popular?
Honestly, we have had the same incompetent israeli b***h in charge of marketing for a decade now
and nothing but a bullet through the head will make her disappear.
I was shocked beyond belief when there was actually a SECOND twitch drop event as quickly as a year after Steam launch.
quite literally the biggest waste of potential i have ever seen, although ugly housewives and cash shop trannies seem to love it.
>Tfw no Charr wife
>playing troonynet trash
lmao
show me ONE fricking place that isn't teeming like vermin with trannies and poison haired b***hes.
yeah but anet was trannified before it was widespread and it's absolutely pervasive in the game
mad troony
OH FRICK OFF
really? i got bored at level 42
>heard the pvp is good
>pick the midge race
>learn that you can disable races so everyone looks like a human in pvp
>instantly drop the game
why do this?
rendering one human model multiple times is probably easier on the processor than rendering many varying models once, but yeah it's really immersion breaking... a small reason among many for why the game is shit
Because you arent a hitbox you're a point at the center between your feet. It improves framerates for people playing on shitboxes.
>Why isn't it more popular?
Before launch, the devs hyped it up as a WoW killer and made lofty promises (see the GW2 manifesto). The game was then ridiculed at launch for not living up to the promises, and then even more as more promises were walked back over the following two years. Most people wrote it off as another failed WoW killer.
The first two years of content updates were bad. They revolved around bite-sized morsels of content. Limited time events. Working adults could not schedule around those events and missed them, and even if they could attend the server instability was so bad that many people simply didn't see them. Then there was a 9 month long content drought between the end of season 2 and the first expansion.
The first expansion was awesome. It was difficult and felt like real expansion content. Unfortunately, GW2 was not difficult prior to the expansion. You could reach level 80 and beat the story not knowing how your class played or learning to dodge AoEs. The game had conditioned people that they could succeed doing nothing. So they ran into the brick wall that HoT's zones where people were dying to pocket raptors in berserker gear. This caused a lot of b***hing on the forums. Rather than wait for the playerbase to adjust their gear, learn their classes' abilities, and learn the mobs, the devs simply just nerfed HoT's difficulty into the ground. At that point the game was so easy there was no need to ever make friends, and friends are what retains players in an MMO.
The game had a streak of regular content updates from 2016 through 2019, ie season 3 through PoF through season 4. Unfortunately Anet did not care about GW2 and moved devs off of it to work on other projects, which never came to fruition. Anet then experienced a large wave of layoffs at the end of 2019, so most of the experienced devs were gone. This then lead to a noticeable drop in the quality of the game design in the following content.
1/2
2/2
After season 4, Anet announced the Icebrood Saga, in which they promised "expansion level content". This got people excited. Then the actual IBS dropped and it was mediocre. Only a few PvE maps that were not as well designed. No new elite specs. No mounts. No masteries useful outside of IBS maps. No new PvP or WvW content. Then the story was aborted. People invested in the story hated the ending. This was then followed by a long content drought until EoD, which was a mediocre expansion with the least amount of content of any expansion, the worst designed maps, and nothing for PvPers or WvWers.
Speaking of which, Anet neglected the PvP and WvW community after 2015. PvP and WvW is where people go after they beat the story and run out of PvE stuff to do. It is the last thing that retains players, and yet Anet didn't care about maintaining PvP or WvW. So those communities have dwindled. The PvP playerbase is now so small that new players are pitted against veterans, and you see the same names over and over. There is an issue where after gold rank, there is a PvP mafia where PvPers add each other to their friend's list and use that to see when their friend's are in a match before queuing so they don't get matched up against each other, and if they do the one of them throws the game for wintrading. There is also rampant botting and AFKing that goes unpunished.
Given how lackluster the game has become, a lot of people quit after End of Dragons. The EoD patches have been incredibly mediocre, and we learned that expansions from now on would not only have less content (only 2 PvE maps) and features (not even new elite specs) than the already embarrassing EoD expansion, they would also cost more. And people hate the new writers. So a lot of people are quitting now.