Thinking about returning to GW2

[Hellissane.3041]

Hi folks, i need your honest opinion about this.

I've played GW2 during its first year and enjoyed it quite a bit at the time. However it had many problems that eventually led me to quit the game and search for something else. Now i look at it again and i see that it has changed a lot since I've left, but i'm a bit hesitant to actually return.

I'll write down the things i enjoyed and the things that turned me away. Please do advice me honestly how those changed, if at all, since I've been away.

The Good

• Daily activities - I really loved the fact that the game has a solid, but balanced, amount of daily things that could be done and be worth while. Back then that was 1-2 hours of daily achievements, jumping puzzles, once per day dungeon awards, etc.
• WvW and enemy invites - WvW was probably my most enjoyable mode of play, roaming around fighting other people mostly in 1v1. What was even more enjoyable was the ability to stop fighting and talk with the enemy players. Back then that was only achievable by inviting them in a party through a command.
• Large array of Jumping puzzles - enjoyable by itself to speedrun, the daily rewards were just a motivation to do them on a daily basis. Especially fun in WvW where often you'd fight with someone on the platforms.
• Guild events - my memory is fuzzy about this one, but at some point guilds could do some kind of weekly(?) events together that yielded unique rewards.
• Legendaries - When nothing else left to do, these always kept one busy.
• Gems - And the gem shop was full with fun things. 100 gems were fairly easily acquired. Everyone had different methods of obtaining gold for gems, but lets say normal resource farm and selling to TP. Buying jems would yield 100 gems per 1-3 hours of farming. I.e. any gem shop item is just 1-2 days of farm.

The Bad

• Complete lack of profession balance - here were always these 1-2 classes that completely couldn't do anything in one of the game play modes(PvE dungeons, structured PvP, WvW) and also 1-2 classes that completely dominated outperformed the others.For the 1 year of my gameplay i remember the ranger to completely absent in higher ranked structured PvP or WvW roam. The few rangers that attempted it were prey to be immediately attacked. Or the elementalist, being the worst for dungeons, as he had quite low damage and many people outright shooed elementalists from their parties.The fact that ANet added insane balance patches that completely shifted the "1-2" meta didn't help, things were going from one extreme to another.In PvP the appearance of "sky" maps also didn't help where people build their characters entirely for the single purpose to push you off the edge. And naturally some professions were better at that than others.
• Very annoying bugs that didn't get fixed at all. My favorite example is channeled skills and stealth/invisbility - you use a channeled skill on someone who goes invisible and the beam/projectiles stick with the target allowing you to keep track of where they go. I'm guilty of exploiting this one a lot, but it still was completely unacceptable bug that stayed from Beta to my last days in GW2. And that's just one of many examples.
• WvW Lag and "Haste" - this was an often occurrence during WvW in the busy hours of the day. When commanders gather dozens of people under them and multiple commanders clash the game would lag very badly, people scatter due to the lag the game would try to compensate the it, causing normal attacks and npc guards to have 2-5 times normal movement and attack rate and you'd literally suicide if you try to attack a npc-guarded camp during a server haste.
• Lack of structured PvP variety and competitiveness - back when i played it was only 1 game mode with variations on the side things that could the main goal. It had more limited cusomization than WvW/PvE - all your gear was 1 amulet with set stats. The lack of rewards didn't help - none of the achievements had rewards iirc. Many people didn't find it fun and it showed. I remember reaching top 100 EU leaderboard without even trying - was just messing around with random groups. I quit it myself not long after.
• Too easy PvE - back then there was only 3 things to do in PvE - world, dungeons and fractals non of which was challenging. People even soloed Dungeons. And i've literally made a all-dungeon(every single in the game) run in a single day. The only "challenging" PvE was to farm legendaries.
• PvE lag - it was rare enough, but very nasty when it happened in the wrong time. If you were in a dungeon, you literally had to quit the run and wait for the lag go away. Which could take minutes or hours.
• Empty servers during the quiet hours - want to do a dungeon in 8 AM? Sorry, no people around to do that.
• Unstable economy - Temporary content completely disallowed the economy to be stable. The even the most common resources jumped up and down in prices 2-6 times with every appearance/disappearance of some temploary content. Not to mention that items of past events were tradable, but unavailable outside of trading and they gained ridiculous prices after a time. Also the meta changes in professions every 3 months didn't help when you have to spend a week to reequip a single of your N characters with new sigils or even a entirely new gear. For me that was the last straw when i quit the game. I waited for Halloween items and waited patiently for Halloween to reappear only to realize the items are not returning and just jumped 4 times in price in TP.

Please do give your opinion. How did those things change and should i consider coming back.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

As you will likely get a range of opinions on the many topics in your OP, you would probably be best served by just jumping in the game and discovering the changes yourself.Or, peruse the 'Releases' pages. (A short recap of changes over the last 7 years.)Many things you mention are long gone; some things, at this time, are worse. Other things are completely different, or vastly improved.

Good luck.

[Hellissane.3041]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:As you will likely get a range of opinions on the many topics in your OP, you would probably be best served by just jumping in the game and discovering the changes yourself.Or, peruse the 'Releases' pages. (A short recap of changes over the last 7 years.)Many things you mention are long gone; some things, at this time, are worse. Other things are completely different, or vastly improved.

Good luck.

Hi there. Could you at least point which things became worse in your opinion?

Yes i'm aware that the opinions will vary. But they are pretty much i can rely on. The majority of my questions can only be answered from first hand experience with the game. I see that the game has Raids, but i can't tell if they are challenging or are just the same clockwork-easy as the dungeons/fractals, that can be done with just any random group. And i definitely don't want to spend 1 month re-gearing characters, as they are 7 years outdated, only to rediscover the same old problems - like progress blocking lag. I can see that the game still has lag, its in the first page, but my question here is more in the terms - is it progression blocking as it used to be?

[Astyrah.4015]

@"Hellissane.3041" said:Please do advice me honestly how those changed, if at all, since I've been away.The Good

• Daily activities - I really loved the fact that the game has a solid, but balanced, amount of daily things that could be done and be worth while. Back then that was 1-2 hours of daily achievements, jumping puzzles, once per day dungeon awards, etc.　dailies are still here　
• Large array of Jumping puzzles - enjoyable by itself to speedrun, the daily rewards were just a motivation to do them on a daily basis. Especially fun in WvW where often you'd fight with someone on the platforms.　depending on when you left, there's a chunk of new jumping puzzles for you to do.　
• Guild events - my memory is fuzzy about this one, but at some point guilds could do some kind of weekly(?) events together that yielded unique rewards.
• Legendaries - When nothing else left to do, these always kept one busy.　still the same for these two　
• Gems - And the gem shop was full with fun things. 100 gems were fairly easily acquired. Everyone had different methods of obtaining gold for gems, but lets say normal resource farm and selling to TP. Buying jems would yield 100 gems per 1-3 hours of farming. I.e. any gem shop item is just 1-2 days of farm.

as of this writing, gold > gems are more expensive now about 38~42 gold for 100 gems depending on time and how the exchange rate was affected by the recent gem sales and gem > gold conversions　

---

　

The Bad

• Complete lack of profession balance - here were always these 1-2 classes that completely couldn't do anything in one of the game play modes(PvE dungeons, structured PvP, WvW) and also 1-2 classes that completely dominated outperformed the others.　there's a viable build for every profession for PvE atleast. with ArcDPS around, you wont be kicked for being a "non-meta build" if you do good and can be kicked for being a "meta build" if you perform very poorly/terribad　For the 1 year of my gameplay i remember the ranger to completely absent in higher ranked structured PvP or WvW roam. The few rangers that attempted it were prey to be immediately attacked. Or the elementalist, being the worst for dungeons, as he had quite low damage and many people outright shooed elementalists from their parties.The fact that ANet added insane balance patches that completely shifted the "1-2" meta didn't help, things were going from one extreme to another.In PvP the appearance of "sky" maps also didn't help where people build their characters entirely for the single purpose to push you off the edge. And naturally some professions were better at that than others.WvW Lag and "Haste" - this was an often occurrence during WvW in the busy hours of the day. When commanders gather dozens of people under them and multiple commanders clash the game would lag very badly, people scatter due to the lag the game would try to compensate the it, causing normal attacks and npc guards to have 2-5 times normal movement and attack rate and you'd literally suicide if you try to attack a npc-guarded camp during a server haste.Lack of structured PvP variety and competitiveness - back when i played it was only 1 game mode with variations on the side things that could the main goal. It had more limited cusomization than WvW/PvE - all your gear was 1 amulet with set stats. The lack of rewards didn't help - none of the achievements had rewards iirc. Many people didn't find it fun and it showed. I remember reaching top 100 EU leaderboard without even trying - was just messing around with random groups. I quit it myself not long after.　no comment about pvp/wvw since i barely touch those.　
• Too easy PvE - back then there was only 3 things to do in PvE - world, dungeons and fractals non of which was challenging. People even soloed Dungeons. And i've literally made a all-dungeon(every single in the game) run in a single day. The only "challenging" PvE was to farm legendaries.　there's raids and strikes now.　
• PvE lag - it was rare enough, but very nasty when it happened in the wrong time. If you were in a dungeon, you literally had to quit the run and wait for the lag go away. Which could take minutes or hours.　still here and much worse on Season 4 and Icebrood zones until they fix it (which they mentioned they're working on it)　
• Empty servers during the quiet hours - want to do a dungeon in 8 AM? Sorry, no people around to do that.
• Unstable economy - Temporary content completely disallowed the economy to be stable. The even the most common resources jumped up and down in prices 2-6 times with every appearance/disappearance of some temploary content. Not to mention that items of past events were tradable, but unavailable outside of trading and they gained ridiculous prices after a time. Also the meta changes in professions every 3 months didn't help when you have to spend a week to reequip a single of your N characters with new sigils or even a entirely new gear. For me that was the last straw when i quit the game. I waited for Halloween items and waited patiently for Halloween to reappear only to realize the items are not returning and just jumped 4 times in price in TP.　megaservers fix these issues. basically your server only matters for WvW now, anywhere else, pvp/pve/openworld only being in NA or EU makes a difference.　

Please do give your opinion. How did those things change and should i consider coming back.　give GW2 another try, you wont lose anything by coming back anyway :) if you don't feel like sticking around after returning that's fine too, but now's a good time to catch up with the new expansion coming in about a year from now ~　

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I can't comment on the 'worse' things, as that would be the lag you mentioned, which does not affect my accounts in the least. I never experience it, but others have stated they do.I play a Ranger, always have, and have no issues with content. I don't Raid, or PvP, but I do play WvW and Strikes. It works for me.

Again, your best bet is to jump back into the game, and see how things have changed.

[Astyrah.4015]

@Hellissane.3041 said:Hi folks,

oh and almost forgot, you may want to check out a new website made by another forumer here, @"Morvran.8265" , to help people (new people/returnees) catch up on information after just getting into the game.

link to thread:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/114258/made-a-site-for-bringing-new-and-returning-players-up-to-speed

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

^Ha! I was just about to post a link to the same thread.
(I didn't look at it, but it sounded like it might be helpful.)

[Trise.2865]

Just follow this simple flowchart:

Do you want to play Guild Wars 2?Yes? Play Guild Wars 2.No? Do something else.

[Hellissane.3041]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:I can't comment on the 'worse' things, as that would be the lag you mentioned, which does not affect my accounts in the least. I never experience it, but others have stated they do.I play a Ranger, always have, and have no issues with content. I don't Raid, or PvP, but I do play WvW and Strikes. It works for me.

Again, your best bet is to jump back into the game, and see how things have changed.

Well you "can't comment", but you comment says more than you think it does. The fact that you never experience lag is a point by itself. Regional lag is nothing uncommon with MMOs and its constantly changing/improving. The fact that you play WvW also speaks for the stability of the lag there.

I'll difinitely check the link, thank you both.

I dint consider the thread done, as nobody still commented on structured pvp. But so far PvE/WvW seems promising.

[Hellissane.3041]

@"Trise.2865" said:Just follow this simple flowchart:

Do you want to play Guild Wars 2?Yes? Play Guild Wars 2.No? Do something else.

I want to play GW2, but i definitely don't want to play the "old and broken" GW2. So i'm kinda stuck on being unable to decide - thats why i need your opinion on the points from the original post. :)

[xWiroo.3841]

wait after next xpac launch, the game as it is rn is not worth it

[Astyrah.4015]

@Hellissane.3041 said:

I dint consider the thread done, as nobody still commented on structured pvp. But so far PvE/WvW seems promising.

from the limited information i gather from complaints and posts here made by people who pvp, it seems there's a botting and cheater (ability hacks) issue in pvp recently. now i have no idea how often you'd meet these types but they seem to be confined to pvp only, pve doesn't have them but i do hear wvw has them in very very small numbers but nothing that'd have an impact on wvw.

[Astyrah.4015]

@"Hellissane.3041" said:I want to play GW2, but i definitely don't want to play the "old and broken" GW2. So i'm kinda stuck on being unable to decide - thats why i need your opinion on the points from the original post. :)

to sum it up, especially if you took a peek on to that catchup website, there's been a lot of QoL (quality of life) changes/fixes to GW2 that makes it a much better game to play than what it was during launch. lots of convenience fixes.

[Vavume.8065]

Not sure why you need other people's opinions, just try it for yourself, you will soon know if you like it or not.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Imo the expansions improved the game dramatically. There's also a ton of new content and new ways to play. It's a no brainer for me. Give it a go!

[Randulf.7614]

The game has changed massively since the first year. Sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse., but opinions on those vary a great deal.

Ultimately it is the same gameplay with a huge amount of paid content across 4 seasons and 2 expacs and better production values.

Whilst I’m often critical of the game at this stage at least in terms of story direction and map development, I’ve by and large had 8 years I don’t regret playing.

So yeah I’d say it’s worth it if you fundamentally enjoy the style of play GW2 brings

[Atomos.7593]

I started out playing WvW mostly but then started to enjoy PvE more. There are lots of daily activities to do in PvE now like achievements, crafting and mount unlock collections. In terms of open world, the hardest areas I found were Heart of Thorns expansion maps and Dragonfall. In WvW the action can be very quite in off-peak hours. In my experience, there is quite a bit of lag now in both WvW and PvE, especially in living world season 4 maps.

[Goettel.4389]

One advantage of B2P: you can jump back in any time any try it, again.As a casual open world player, population seems to me to be higher than at any time in the last couple of years. Can't speak for WvW, other PvP or fractals.Have fun.

[Vrath.1754]

@Hellissane.3041 said:

@"Trise.2865" said:Just follow this simple flowchart:

Do you want to play Guild Wars 2?Yes? Play Guild Wars 2.No? Do something else.

I want to play GW2, but i definitely don't want to play the "old and broken" GW2. So i'm kinda stuck on being unable to decide - thats why i need your opinion on the points from the original post. :)

Its free to DL and login and you shouldn't need to regear if you have ascended or even exotic will do for most things. No one can really tell you.

Don't buy the xpac till you make up your mind.