Will I enjoy Guild Wars 2?

I played a bit back when it was released and I own the game without either expansions but never got into it. I haven't really been able to get into an MMORPG since Wrath of the Lich King, and FF11. I find the combat of MMOPG's is often boring, the content very tedious, redundant and easy. I'm looking for something that will provide a challenge in the longer run, with a fun world, enjoyable classes and combat, and a decent story. I tried ESO and immediately hated it coming from Skyrim.

I've kind of given up on finding a good MMORPG with a balance between hardcore and casual as most are just hyper casual now and coming from UO, early WoW, EQ and FF11 where the games were pretty brutally unforgiving, punishing you when you died with loot loss, corpse runs, having to get resurrected and / or xp loss. Not regenerating instantly to full health after a battle, which required you to be a bit more strategic fight to fight and collision detection where you can't run through other players and monsters like you were in ethereal form. Those games no longer exist and I know that's not what Guild Wars 2 is about; not that I'd be keen to go back to all those relentless features but it would be nice to find a balance that feels somewhat more immersive. In the meantime I'm looking for something to have fun with and seeing as I already own the game. I also own FF14 but the subscription fee is a turn off.

There is no harm in giving it a shot.

Challenging content is focused in raids and high level fractals. Most of the rest of the game is very easy.

I doubt general PvE would interest you. Maybe you should try solo roaming in WvW.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:Maybe you should try solo roaming in WvW.

This is something that I do a lot of. It can offer some real challenge. Unfortunately it is becoming harder to find opposing solo or small group roamers to tackle. 1v3 is a challenge, 1v25 is a quick trip to the armor repair station.

But, when you find them, the real fights (not the steamrolls) can be glorious.

Might also try out some of the many survival games that are popping up?

I'll give it a go; I do like how fluid the game is in terms of it keeps you moving forward and not running back n forth. I detested the fetch quests of MMORPG's which was one turn off. In terms of tackling the pve content for the first time what are the more "fun" classes to play?

@Soulmancer.4715 said:I'll give it a go; I do like how fluid the game is in terms of it keeps you moving forward and not running back n forth. I detested the fetch quests of MMORPG's which was one turn off. In terms of tackling the pve content for the first time what are the more "fun" classes to play?

In term of fun, Elementalist and Engineer are problably the better ones for the multiple different skills they posses (Elementalists have 20 weapons skills instead of 10 because of the attunements, and Engineers have multiple kits that override your weapon skills) which means there is a lot to try on. They aren't exactly the most effective, but you don't really need to run the latest meta build to be sucessful on the general PvE content in this game. I personally find all professions in the game interesting except for Revenant, although I don't like certain Elite Specializations like Daredevil, Druid, Firebrand and Mirage.

@Soulmancer.4715 said:I'll give it a go; I do like how fluid the game is in terms of it keeps you moving forward and not running back n forth. I detested the fetch quests of MMORPG's which was one turn off. In terms of tackling the pve content for the first time what are the more "fun" classes to play?

That is such a hard thing to answer since "fun" is so subjective. Best bet is trying out different classes and see what grabs you.

I think my Thief is the most fun because it's weaponskills doesn't have cooldowns (they costs Initiative points), and so many of its skills grants it great mobility and evasion during combat. If I want to go easy-mode however I go with my Warrior who can both take and deal quite a bit of damage.

I was leaning towards Necromancer because I like the thought of the eventual Great Sword elite specialization. Always been a fine of the whole "Death/Shadow knight" idea

from ur description, answer is no.gw2 is easy. what i enjoy is the journey, not the destination - some chinese proverbi find that if other ppl are as good/decent as me, the content becomes exponentially easier. its only challenging if 1 or 2 people are always dying.

I believe you should try it! Guild Wars 2 has the best story in my opinion, it is almost perfect! It will take some time until you finish all maps + hot + pof. After that, i don't know, if it will be enjoyable for you. It becomes very casual after ( of course you can do many stuff in the game but it feels it is for nothing), if you aim for legendaries the progress seems so slow, it's like a job! As for the difficulty well, mobs can one shot you in hot, also you cann't yolo raids, until you get used to it.

I came to GW2 from the same games you did (UO, EQ, and WoW). And I can tell you that I had a lot of fun here for the first 6 months. But then I hit a wall, where I had all the best stats and qol items I could possibly get. And the game just died for me, because there was nothing left to work for.

I'm honestly at the point where I'm looking for something else now. And I'd say that, if you could enjoy this game for its own sake, then maybe you wouldn't have my problem. But I see no point in making any effort unless I'm gonna get some meaningful reward for it. And I don't consider weapon and armor skins to be meaningful rewards at all.

Tl;dr... It's WAY too easy to max out in this game. Then you have nothing left to work for except stupid, cosmetic items. If you're a rewards-driven person, this will drive you bonkers, and make you wanna quit.

@Fallesafe.5932 said:I came to GW2 from the same games you did (UO, EQ, and WoW). And I can tell you that I had a lot of fun here for the first 6 months. But then I hit a wall, where I had all the best stats and qol items I could possibly get. And the game just died for me, because there was nothing left to work for.

I'm honestly at the point where I'm looking for something else now. And I'd say that, if you could enjoy this game for its own sake, then maybe you wouldn't have my problem. But I see no point in making any effort unless I'm gonna get some meaningful reward for it. And I don't consider weapon and armor skins to be meaningful rewards at all.

Tl;dr... It's WAY too easy to max out in this game. Then you have nothing left to work for. If you're a rewards-driven person, this will drive you bonkers, and make you wanna quit.

A completely reasonable response. As much as I find motivation other than in gear advancement, Fallesafe does make a solid point about a type of play/player. If you are someone who wants to have an open ended pursuit of ever better gear or more power then GW2 may not be for you.

I tend to see my character's progression, in terms of effectiveness, as a function of my own growth as a player. I am, today, a better player than I was a year ago. I hope to be better still next year.

To Fallesafe, might I suggest the possibility that you may not have maxed out in this game yet. You may have the highest tier of gear, and have unlocked all of the elite specs, but are you truly playing your character to its fullest potential? For me progression doesn't really even start until after I have BiS gear and all of my build options available to me.

That's unfortunate... I probably won't waste my time then. It's a shame almost all MMORPG's have gone the direction of cake walk easy. It started on the opposite end of the spectrum of painfully hard and punishing, then I found we reach a decent balance, and then they just kept becoming easier and easier to appeal to the lowest skilled gamers. Everyone I set foot into for the last 6+ years is pretty much a joke for difficulty until end game raids, yet I lose interest far before I even get there because I feel as though I'm just pulling the lever at a slot machine with no sense of accomplishment. We live in an age of extremes were they make games like Dark Souls, and Darkest Dungeon, and then mmorpgs with 0 difficulty aside from a few raid bosses; always neutered by the follow up expansion pack. It would be great to have something in the medium or a unique server with a specific rule set akin to UO's Siege Perilous. I feel as though WoW killed the entire genre. Guild Wars 2 did enough great things to differentiate and break away from the norm yet still apparently only caters to hyper casuals that need instant gratification and reward without putting the smallest effort. I like to actually use my brain and some degree of tactics n strategy in games and enjoy the journey. I feel MMORPG's have become a treadmill set to the easiest setting until the "end game" regardless of what niche they try to fill. It's a waste of content when 95% of the content is made painfully trivial.

I don't care about the endless pursuit of gear and power; I just want a journey that's going to be enjoyable and challenge me from time to time; not a theme park entirely dedicated to newbs.

@Soulmancer.4715 said:That's unfortunate... I probably won't waste my time then.

By making a forum post it means you bought the game so you can check it yourself. As for how easy it is, both of the expansions have interesting encounters and foes to fight that require brain usage. There is also high end fractals (dungeons) and Raids. There are some challenging/interesting achievements in the game for players who want the extra challenge to find and complete. Also the game becomes really easy as the number of players is increasing, unfortunately few encounters are made for huge groups.

The hard stuff is player made content: getting good, low manning, speedruns & speedclears, gearing 9 professions with meta builds, world firsts in raids (lol), achievement point hunting and things like that. None of it is part of the core gw2 experience. If you want challenge the best bet is to find like minded people and do instanced content efficiently, maybe with a chronomancer or some other "challenging" profession. Open world is too easy.

I suspect from what you say you won’t find what you want in MMOs. You’re probably better off playing either single player games or PvP games. MMOs, for general PvE at least, need to cater to the average player if they want to make enough money to stay in business and the average player is not highly skilled.

@Soulmancer.4715 said:That's unfortunate... I probably won't waste my time then. It's a shame almost all MMORPG's have gone the direction of cake walk easy. It started on the opposite end of the spectrum of painfully hard and punishing, then I found we reach a decent balance, and then they just kept becoming easier and easier to appeal to the lowest skilled gamers. Everyone I set foot into for the last 6+ years is pretty much a joke for difficulty until end game raids, yet I lose interest far before I even get there because I feel as though I'm just pulling the lever at a slot machine with no sense of accomplishment. We live in an age of extremes were they make games like Dark Souls, and Darkest Dungeon, and then mmorpgs with 0 difficulty aside from a few raid bosses; always neutered by the follow up expansion pack. It would be great to have something in the medium or a unique server with a specific rule set akin to UO's Siege Perilous. I feel as though WoW killed the entire genre. Guild Wars 2 did enough great things to differentiate and break away from the norm yet still apparently only caters to hyper casuals that need instant gratification and reward without putting the smallest effort. I like to actually use my brain and some degree of tactics n strategy in games and enjoy the journey. I feel MMORPG's have become a treadmill set to the easiest setting until the "end game" regardless of what niche they try to fill. It's a waste of content when 95% of the content is made painfully trivial.

I don't care about the endless pursuit of gear and power; I just want a journey that's going to be enjoyable and challenge me from time to time; not a theme park entirely dedicated to newbs.

There are a few MMOs in the works that cater to the masochist style of game play you are looking for like the original MMOs. They are still in beta or early alpha at the moment though, so you may have to wait until early next year. There are MMORPGs out there for for people like you though; they are just niche MMOs now.

They way I see it, PVP is ultimative challange because players are way way more smarter and unpredictable than regular MMO AI. If you desire high risk WVW roaming or serious PVP would be the only way to go. I would recommend raids too, but they require gear which you have to play for, which takes time and after you know all the mechanics wouldn't be much of a challange if you have your own team.

At least try WVW and PVP before you drop the game.

@danizmax.4329 said:players are way way more smarter and unpredictable than regular MMO AI.

Sometimes I question this afirmation. The average GW2 player isn't as much as a threat as some of the mobs in HoT maps.

GW2 has one of the most in depth combat systems around, if you enjoy combat systems, you'll enjoy GW2.

Sounds like I should just wait for Pantheon, Ashes or Legends of Aria... I did start playing GW2; the combat is fun, the world looks gorgeous. But if events, personal story, living world, heart quests, and dungeons are a cake walk to max level I can see myself losing interest before I get there.

@Soulmancer.4715 said:I'm looking for something that will provide a challenge in the longer run

Gonna say, nahh on this one, I mean make no mistake, this is a fun game, and I enjoy playing it, but if are looking for real challenge in your content, I hate to say it, but there is a better then good chance you will find this game, even the "top level' stuff, a snore fest.

@Soulmancer.4715 said:Sounds like I should just wait for Pantheon, Ashes or Legends of Aria... I did start playing GW2; the combat is fun, the world looks gorgeous. But if events, personal story, living world, heart quests, and dungeons are a cake walk to max level I can see myself losing interest before I get there.

have you looked into Chronicles of Elrya?

i don't want to promote any games, but i think , what you are looking for is black desert.