The Reason I Play

So many complaints, so much stress. Why keep playing the game? This "z-game" has better raids....this "y-game" has better role play...this "f-game has the best pvp".

So with all the apparently better choices why should I continue wasting my time and money with any Anet game? Huh?

BUT!...then i was completing dailies in Metrica Province and I heard the old pre-searing ambient music start playing. Soon afterwards I found myself engaging in some rather colorful conversation with some fellow GW2ers and then I realized...

The ability to engage the player is unmatched in this game. Also the lovely throwbacks to the originals literally makes me smile.

Please do not try to become another game...stay Guild Wars

I've fooouuund a reason for meTo change who I used to beA reason to start over neewwwAnd the reason is you...

@Schewe.1673 said:I've fooouuund a reason for meTo change who I used to beA reason to start over neewwwAnd the reason is you...

I'm sorry that I hurt youIt's something I must live with everydayAnd all the pain I put you throughI wish that I could take it all awayAnd be the one who catches all your tearsThat's why I need you to hear

Just give me a reason, just a little bit's enoughJust a second we're not broken just bent, and we can learn to love againIt's in the stars, it's been written in the scars on our heartsWe're not broken just bent, and we can learn to love again...

@Schewe.1673 said:I've fooouuund a reason for meTo change who I used to beA reason to start over neewwwAnd the reason is you...

@Rawr.9467 said:

@Schewe.1673 said:I've fooouuund a reason for meTo change who I used to beA reason to start over neewwwAnd the reason is you...

I truly hate you both.I didn't need that song stuck in my head for the next few days.

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

I truly hate you both.I didn't need that song stuck in my head for the next few days.

HoobaSTANK <3

So many complaints, so much stress. Why keep playing the game?

I'm addicted.

I don't have the nostalgia problem, GW1 wasn't really a MMO, and i was looking for a MMO when i tried it out, so it didn't stick (i own it now, and play it now and then for the story and Hall of Monument rewards).I play GW2 for 2 reasons, mainly:1) It's already bought and paid... Honestly that's one of the main reasons, i already own it, bought the Ultimate edition and everything, so now might as well enjoy it. As far as spending more money on it. That remains to be seen if it'll happen.

2) The second reason is more important, and is also probably outdated. But i already quit GW2 once, in 2013 during LS1, got fed up with having to keep pace with the story, and lack of apparent direction for it. The game wasn't being fun anymore, so i stopped. In the mean time i tried other MMORPGs and didn't really find a better alternative, so when they announced that LS2 would be different, and added the account wardrobe and dyes (which were a gripe i had with the game since launch) i got back into the game, and never really left, although there's an ebb and flow to how much time i spend in gw2, i've been playing it since.Now that was in 2013-2014. So nowadays there's a few new MMORPGs that might be a better alternative to GW2, so who knows?

This last week Arena Net kind of exhausted the good will i had towards it, and have shown some signs of just not caring anymore, so, unlike a month ago, the possibility of not playing GW2 any more is not off the table.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

So many complaints, so much stress. Why keep playing the game?

I can quit anytime I like.

After Tequatl of course.And WurmAnd I'll just finish this collection off first.....and these 6 more as well....

kitten

I do love the game and I don't have so many things to complain about. Of course, there are things I dislike and/or would like different, but not so many, and none of those are as far as being a bother that could make me stop. If one has an impact on my playing, I find a way to cope with, and I keep going. I have never lost the fun at playing GW2 since origin (to get in rage at failing something is also part of this fun...), and I trust it will stay like that for another good while. :)

Generally, no game can be perfect and at the top of it, it is impossible to please everybody. The good thing is that nobody is forced to it. From there, that's with each of us to decide if we get enough fun at it the way it is, or not. If answer is yes, that's fine and let's keep enjoying. If answer is no, then it is maybe time to swap to another game.

@Dyfinz.2348 said:So many complaints, so much stress. Why keep playing the game? This "z-game" has better raids....this "y-game" has better role play...this "f-game has the best pvp".

So with all the apparently better choices why should I continue wasting my time and money with any Anet game? Huh?....................

There is a Fallacy within the gaming community as a whole, which believes the gaming industry is mechanically consistent (and in no way a creative process outside of the art), so when one game does something successfully, ALL other games can perfectly replicate the result. This view point (often made in ignorance) disregards the extremely wide range of disciplines required to make a modern game, and the surprising difficulty in creating a cohesive play experience, much less a great one. This is further complicated by the fact that most of the well known innovations in game play are usually discovered almost completely by accident, then iterated to make it as enjoyable as possible.

As a result.... games that import new mechanics without understanding how they interact, results in the whole play experience being worse then the sum of its parts. Not to get deep into it; but this is why so many AAA games try to copy each other, and still land up being terrible at it. Remember when every Action shooter game suddenly got Stealth mechanics? Or even recently.... Metal Gear, a series underpinned by infiltration as its core mechanic, became an Arena style, Hoard mode, Zombie survival game... with Crafting. It could had easily worked as a concept without the infiltration aspect, or the MGS name..... but Komani figured those are "the popular things right now", so its guaranteed to make a popular game. I feel bad for the developers... because you can tell they tried hard to make it all work together (legitimately so), while also trying to resolve complaints with controls in the previous MGS titles. But it wasn't going to work without some massive epiphany that could tie all of those disparate elements together. Another good example was WoW trying to add Jumping Puzzles....... it didn't go well. The movement system wasn't changed, nor was the level design doing something to make up for its deficiencies, and fell flat as a result.

This brings me to another fallacy that only came about with the popularity of MMOs..... the "Single Game" life style. Partly caused by MMOs trying to exploit a sense of investment, and partly caused by rapid sequels, MMOs offered players an opportunity for long term investment in an era afflicted by the 40 Hour value Myth. Any game without an Elder Scroll's worth of distinct content was scene as a "short game", and not worth the limited disposable income we had during an economic down turn. Unfortunately that myth never completely went away, yet we're now spending 3 to 4 times the amount of money we had in the past for a game thats only good for a few months. We're still kind of stuck with this idea that being able to spend more then 100 hours in a game is good deal, and thus only a few games are worth our attention at any given time.... so we're compelled to sink as much of our play time as possible into a game we can consider "an investment" to maximize vaule.

Back in late 90s/early 2000s, just before the 40 hour myth was in its infancy, there was only a hand full of "must have" titles coming out a year, with a wide array of mid-grade or budget games that may or may not be interesting or worth playing. So there was an expectation of making those games last for a while. But that didn't stop you from playing all the games that interested you that year, as there is only so much content in a game. However, much of that problem was tempered by many games having high replay value, so you can easily flip back and forth as the mood suited yet. But a key difference that didn't exist as much back then, but utterly ingrained in all games now, is the online Communities. Yes Clans existed.... but they mostly warred with each other because of their interaction in a game. Today game communities are practically religions, and they go to war with other communities over the titles rather then actual interactions. How long do you think a game forum goes before some says "this other game is way better then your game, so this game is shit"?. And as weird as it might seem at first.... that is a big contributing factor to every game community wanting their game to have all the "cool stuff" in this other game, so they don't have to lose their time/money investment in the current game their playing. So to even insinuate that "this game, with all my investment in it" is inferior, then that person is undeserving of being here, and should GTFO.

Which is why that back and forth is so stupid on a fundamental level..... I'm not enjoying myself, but I need to validate that through the responses to other people. And when they don't agree, they're obvious just being toxic, and thus the validation is obtained and can now feel justified in my action. But if they do agree, and then try to justify me staying so I can be part of the community, then I get that validation that way, and the cycle renews. Also side note..... I get irked by posts that open with how they used to play this other game, but wasn't happy, and then ask people to pitch the game to them like some kind of marketing focus group. Conversationally its valid, but it sets a very weird tone like the ones cults use to recruit new victims. "sigh, I'm not happy with my life. If only there was this one thing that would welcome me and make me feel like my life isn't worthless".

(looking back, I was steering this post in a different direction... but I got side tracked the more I had to add things for frame of reference. Thats how deep this rabbit hole goes. To properly articulate this one seemingly bizarre symptom, you have to go through the whole medical history to understand how it got there.)

@starlinvf.1358 said:an era afflicted by the 40 Hour value Myth. Any game without an Elder Scroll's worth of distinct content was scene as a "short game", and not worth the limited disposable income we had during an economic down turn.

[Citation needed]. It's not a myth, it's an opinion, and despite having absorbed your argument against it, I believe it's a perfectly valid one.

Only been playing a couple of months. I like the game. I wish i could skip the dialogue of the story line, thats a killer for me. But so far so good. I've been playing alot of mmo's of late and this one to me, beats out the new stuff. I've excepted all of the flaws and rng. ?Its no big deal anymore. All games have them, and i mean all of them. The company will fix them sometime. Im just here to have fun and kill some time. Not to be the best or the quickest at anything. In the end it doesn't matter. just have fun and enjoy the good people you meet and blow off the bad people.

I went back to playing modded Skyrim instead.

@Ellisande.5218 said:I went back to playing modded Skyrim instead.

....and reading/posting on Guild Wars 2 Forums.

I play the game for... dark reasons. Right now I am effectively an invalid. I'm in terrible pain, every day, and I have been for a year now. My entire life came to a halt. Now, for the first part of this I would just sit immobile and watch whatever youtube video I could, but the inactivity was eating away at my soul. So I started playing GW2 again, because so long as I am earning gold I feel like I am accomplishing something. At least, in a small part.

The game's pretty good overall. Though the liberal-ness that runs through every fiber of its being angers me at times, it did solve some problems that run amok in the genre. I sear, I could rant for hours on the "Need, Greed, Pass" system.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

So many complaints, so much stress. Why keep playing the game?

That's.... that's just....That's just evil Gaile....

I've been playing since launch and it is still my main choice of game. The first two reasons are purely mechanical, i can't get used to keyboard moving so that takes out a lot of games where you can't move just by holding the mouse buttons down, secondly I can't stand first person perspective which feels like I'm looking through a tiny slit in a helm and losing all my peripheral vision, I also can't stand feeling like i have to move my whole body to look over my shoulder. Those combined take out a lot of options.

Then you have the problems of games with no down leveling, you level up, you move on to new zones and there is no going back, you end up with a world that is 99% empty and everyone is just crowded into a few zones, or you have to follow the gear grind of dungeons and raids if you want to feel you are doing something worthwhile.

Enough of what I don't like in other games, what do I specifically like with GW2.

I can relax while playing it. When you have had a hard day at work you don't want to play a game that feels like a chore. I can pick a character and then go to a zone and just wander around killing mobs and gathering mats. Normally it will add a few bits to world completion on the character and even low and mid level mats are worth getting, some such as iron and seasoned wood are worth more than the high level stuff.

I can choose where I want to go, if my level 80 just feels like wandering around Queensdale then that isn't a problem, it may be a bit on the easy side but sometimes that's what I want, never does it feel far too overpowered and boring. If I feel like jumping into wvw I can and either join up with a zerg or just roam, as long as i don't mind dying it isn't a problem, and the reward track keeps ticking up slowly.

The world is beautiful and I just want to wander around and look at it. I do find it a bit annoying in the newer zones where there are areas that are cut off by story or masteries and I can't just wander around, or where the mobs come so thick and fast that you can't avoid them to enjoy the scenery.

In the end there is always something to do no matter how I'm feeling, i can find an activity that suits my mood.

Been playing since closely after launch. GW2 is my first MMO and since I'm not playing too many games at once I just stuck with it. I joined a few Guilds, played most of the content there is and keep my account updated when something new comes out.I think it's the community that keeps me in game, and when I come to think about it, the only times I thought about quitting for in-game reasons, it was because of community related things...so yes...it's a social thing. The people in my Guild(s), but also the chatter in the PvP lobby or that one guy/gal that always picks you up when you failed at a JP or got bested by an Elite in the open world.