High Learning Curve for the Game

[Nemesis.8576]

This game seems to have a too high of a learning curve. I quit two times in the past due to this problem. Of course, I'd already spent the money on the game and there is no subscription fee, so I guess it was just my loss. The only reason I started playing again was that there are now many YouTube videos explaining how the game works. After I realized what was happening in the game, I started enjoying it. It's a fun game, at least until you get to the expansions. There are still a few issues that are really frustrating. For example, it's very hard to find entrances from one area to the next in a lot of cases. How about marking them on the map? I like exploring the map, but making these passages hard to find is not fun. Although, I enjoy the level scaling, because I can revisit the lower level areas and still have fun, I have to wonder why there are levels. You might as well remove them. They don't seem to serve a purpose. The tooltip from the buttons is nice, but it does get in the way when you're in combat. I know you can hit the number keys, but I'm not likely to do that. I prefer using my mouse. The mini-map is almost useless. I only find it helpful for locating resources. It's virtually impossible to use it for navigation. Combat mechanics are not immediately obvious. I can places in the game where a quest attempts to teach combat mechanics, but it took me a bit to figure out that was the intention. You almost need a combat boot camp. It's far from obvious that skills need to be used in a certain order be effective, in fact, I didn't figure out how important it was until trying the expansions. I'd really like to see shorter or no cool downs on combat abilities to make the combat more dynamic. There are many times when abilities miss, get blocked, or when I accidentally fire one off out of range. I really don't want my standard strategy to have to be run away to wait for cool downs. It's not fun. It's especially annoying when fighting very over powered NPCs. I'm not entirely sure what to say about world bosses. I like that a large group is trying to take them down, that part is fun, but I have no idea when I get a hit on them. They're so big, I can't even tell if I'm standing close enough. Looting is a bit awkward too. It feels like I can't seem to stand in the right place to loot sometimes. Also, interacting with other objects also is difficult. If I get too close, I can't interact with the mouse, and I have to go to the keyboard. It seem clunky. There are lots of things that are great though. I really enjoy the graphics. The environment in central Tyria looks very nice. The armor looks very nice. The weapons mostly look great, although, some of them are of ridiculous size, although, not as bad as in other MMOs. I love the armor dying ability. The combat, once you get if figured out makes the encounters more fun, in most cases. The heart tasks are a nice way to implement quests, although, it was confusing at first. The access to the auction site if very nice, although I wish I could sort by both level and price. I'd like to see the same kind of access to the bank. Many things in the game reward cooperation, and that's great. Having resources spawn for everyone is great so that there's no one camping spawn sites. Leveling may be a bit too fast. I was at level 80 before completing half the content, but then again, the levels seem to be mostly irrelevant.

[Donari.5237]

I'm not sure if you are looking for answers or not, but I'll try to help you with some of your sub-points.

Map Entrances: once you've played a bit you learn where they are. Also you can look at the map and see a larger road pointing to the edge of the map; most of the time there is a portal there. This doesn't mean a small arrow pointing off map in those locations (preferably optionally toggled on) wouldn't help.

Levels: I think they played around with the idea of removing levels back in initial development. They definitely removed traditional quests. But all the feedback from testers told them players didn't know what to do without these things, so levels and heart-hubs got put in. A decade later, players might be more flexible, but the level system is baked into GW2 now.

Tooltips: Many people will tell you that mouse-clicking hotkeys is bad. I won't tell you that, because whatever is the easiest way to control the game for you is how you should play. But it definitely slows down responses compared to a quick key tap. That being said, there have been a lot of requests over the years for an option to disable hotkey tooltips, so who knows, they might do that some day.

MiniMap: I'm surprised you find it useless. It shows all the surrounding terrain just as you'd see on the main map. You can set it to rotate with your facing, or to remain static north at the top, whichever works for you. Also you can zoom it in and out. I like to keep it set zoomed out to the point where node icons are visible and distinct but not huge.

Combat Mechanics: You are probably right that these aren't taught as well as they could be. I've played since beta so my learning curve began at level one when you had to use weapons to unlock their skills, and I don't really know what the current issues are with new players. Also, I played many MMOs before GW2, and thus was well accustomed to the conventions of how things work, including rotations and synergies of abilities. All I had to do to adapt was get a mouse with side buttons to control movement so I could keep moving while hitting my hotkeys, and read the skill tooltips to see what they did. Probably there could be a full tutorial to explain GW2's combat mechanics.

World Bosses: If you zoom your camera out (there are specific controls to set it exactly to your liking) you will see your damage numbers on the boss and know you hit. For range, there is an option to have a red bar show up at the bottom of your skill if you are out of range. Also you can set ground targets to lock at max range and/or go red if you are out of range. Eventually you get a gut feeling on distance.

Looting: Again, I won't tell you to just use the F key. I don't know the origin of your dislike for the keyboard, though it is at least half of the game control system. But mouse-clicking the F popup on the screen is going to be difficult at times, as you've noticed. One thing you can do is unlock the Mastery system and work up your core Tyria masteries until you finish the commander line. Final tier of that gives you autoloot; as long as you have inventory space, things will just drop into your bags. Another possibility is to get a mouse or pad with a ton of buttons on it. Map the keyboard keys to the mouse buttons, train your muscle memory to learn which buttons do what, and you can use the keyboard only for chatting if you so desire.

Auction Sorting: You can in fact sort by level and price. Click on the cog on the left side, input your desired level range. Then in the search results, click the price header at the upper right. One click takes it to low > high, a second one puts high prices at the top.

Bank: While you can't necessarily access it everywhere, you can access it more than at the bank npc's in cities. Any crafting station has a bank tab. There are also banker expresses, both consumable and permanent, that open a bank window anywhere for you. For a price, of course, gems for the consumables (which also drop in bl chests so over time you can accrue them without paying gems, if you farm keys), gold for the permanent ones which drop very rarely in bl chests and players then put on the trading post for a lot of gold. If you do get one, consider putting it in a shared inventory slot so all your alts can use it whenever.

Hope at least some of that is useful to you :)

[Tridentuk.1625]

I'm completely the opposite to you, I love high learning curves. Easy games bore me pretty quickly, and I tend to play 1 game for years and years which means that it HAS to have a long learning curve to keep me interested for that long.

My previous games were Starcraft 2 and Dota, both of which require high APM and awareness so I'm very happy that I found GW2 to have comparable complexity. The cherry on top being the varied content which means that I can switch to something else if I'm not in the mood anymore.

I do agree about the leveling system, it should be elongated, as should everything else in the game. Some of the really high tier stuff should take years to master/obtain, and ascended stuff should take 3x as long. I've been playing just over a month and already have 1/3 of my ascended gear complete (albeit with lockdown I've had more time to play).

As for button pressing and mechanical skill, well in Dota it takes about 2000 hours played to not really be a nub, and 3000+ is required to start getting into the higher tiers (and that's meaning if you're talented), GW2 has those skill ceilings in terms of what it is as a game, and some players are insanely skilled, but to me coming from that game to this, this one definitely caters more for casuals.For example, as a completely new player I can step into WvW and have a pretty good time, but in my previous games if they were unrestricted by MMR it would be completely broken for new players because the skill variance is so much higher between a new player and even an average one.

My point being that people have different perspectives, what's really great is that we can all have different perspectives and GW2 caters to the majority of them which I think is a pretty great achievement.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@Donari.5237 said:I'm not sure if you are looking for answers or not, but I'll try to help you with some of your sub-points.

Map Entrances: once you've played a bit you learn where they are. Also you can look at the map and see a larger road pointing to the edge of the map; most of the time there is a portal there. This doesn't mean a small arrow pointing off map in those locations (preferably optionally toggled on) wouldn't help.

Levels: I think they played around with the idea of removing levels back in initial development. They definitely removed traditional quests. But all the feedback from testers told them players didn't know what to do without these things, so levels and heart-hubs got put in. A decade later, players might be more flexible, but the level system is baked into GW2 now.

Tooltips: Many people will tell you that mouse-clicking hotkeys is bad. I won't tell you that, because whatever is the easiest way to control the game for you is how you should play. But it definitely slows down responses compared to a quick key tap. That being said, there have been a lot of requests over the years for an option to disable hotkey tooltips, so who knows, they might do that some day.

MiniMap: I'm surprised you find it useless. It shows all the surrounding terrain just as you'd see on the main map. You can set it to rotate with your facing, or to remain static north at the top, whichever works for you. Also you can zoom it in and out. I like to keep it set zoomed out to the point where node icons are visible and distinct but not huge.

Combat Mechanics: You are probably right that these aren't taught as well as they could be. I've played since beta so my learning curve began at level one when you had to use weapons to unlock their skills, and I don't really know what the current issues are with new players. Also, I played many MMOs before GW2, and thus was well accustomed to the conventions of how things work, including rotations and synergies of abilities. All I had to do to adapt was get a mouse with side buttons to control movement so I could keep moving while hitting my hotkeys, and read the skill tooltips to see what they did. Probably there could be a full tutorial to explain GW2's combat mechanics.

World Bosses: If you zoom your camera out (there are specific controls to set it exactly to your liking) you will see your damage numbers on the boss and know you hit. For range, there is an option to have a red bar show up at the bottom of your skill if you are out of range. Also you can set ground targets to lock at max range and/or go red if you are out of range. Eventually you get a gut feeling on distance.

Looting: Again, I won't tell you to just use the F key. I don't know the origin of your dislike for the keyboard, though it is at least half of the game control system. But mouse-clicking the F popup on the screen is going to be difficult at times, as you've noticed. One thing you can do is unlock the Mastery system and work up your core Tyria masteries until you finish the commander line. Final tier of that gives you autoloot; as long as you have inventory space, things will just drop into your bags. Another possibility is to get a mouse or pad with a ton of buttons on it. Map the keyboard keys to the mouse buttons, train your muscle memory to learn which buttons do what, and you can use the keyboard only for chatting if you so desire.

Auction Sorting: You can in fact sort by level and price. Click on the cog on the left side, input your desired level range. Then in the search results, click the price header at the upper right. One click takes it to low > high, a second one puts high prices at the top.

Bank: While you can't necessarily access it everywhere, you can access it more than at the bank npc's in cities. Any crafting station has a bank tab. There are also banker expresses, both consumable and permanent, that open a bank window anywhere for you. For a price, of course, gems for the consumables (which also drop in bl chests so over time you can accrue them without paying gems, if you farm keys), gold for the permanent ones which drop very rarely in bl chests and players then put on the trading post for a lot of gold. If you do get one, consider putting it in a shared inventory slot so all your alts can use it whenever.

Hope at least some of that is useful to you :)

A player can acquire Bank Express, Trading Post Express, and other consumables through the Daily Log-in Rewards, as well.

The Wiki (link above, or accessible in-game by typing /Wiki in chat) is a great resource for all things Guild Wars 2.

Welcome to Tyria.

[Faline.8795]

I am going to agree with the OP, even though he finds paragraphs to also be a high learning curve. lol /hug

Professions still confuse me. Having to guess what mats to use... I shouldn't have to refer to an outside source to avoid frustration.

SO MANY BUILDS! And if you pick the wrong build, forget getting into a group.

Way too many stats. Could use some trimming.

But of course I realize I am speaking for myself. There are a lot of people who like that stuff. I think it can end up chasing some away.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

What has mats to do with Professions? All Professions can gather any mats, purchase any mats, sell any mats.Perhaps, you are referring to Crafting Disciplines? Not sure.

[Faline.8795]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:What has mats to do with Professions? All Professions can gather any mats, purchase any mats, sell any mats.Perhaps, you are referring to Crafting Disciplines? Not sure.

Yeah, crafting.

[Farohna.6247]

I found coming to the game a few years ago to be a very easy and accessible experience, very low learning curve. While they do need to improve some explanations on skills, combos, and what certain items or mats are useful for (less ambiguous clues would be nice lol), most are not difficult.

Perhaps playing previous PC MMOs helped in many regards, but it's a very casual player experience. Practice, practice, practice, ask questions, and unfortunately sometimes wiki. It's not like you can ruin anything by clicking a button on something and finding out what it does ;)

[Cyninja.2954]

@Faline.8795 said:I am going to agree with the OP, even though he finds paragraphs to also be a high learning curve. lol /hug

Professions still confuse me. Having to guess what mats to use... I shouldn't have to refer to an outside source to avoid frustration.

SO MANY BUILDS! And if you pick the wrong build, forget getting into a group.

Way too many stats. Could use some trimming.

But of course I realize I am speaking for myself. There are a lot of people who like that stuff. I think it can end up chasing some away.

For crafting, you can use gw2crafts.net if you do not want to experiment and craft as was intended by the developers. The original idea was to try things out and level crafting that way and the discovery system was intentionally designed that way for people to experiment. If you do not want to experiment, use a guide.

For groups and builds, there are youtube guides, websites, guilds, other players, etc. who can all help. Most can be found via using google others via asking in game. You CAN figure things out on your own if you are so inclined, obviously others have managed to do so in the past. You do have many resources to turn towards though, most of them easily found.

As to requiring specific gear, if you are this new and inexperienced, there is literally no group you could or should join which would require anything. Fractals on tier 1 come to mind, where you can go in naked if need be and succeed. The easier strike missions or the dragon response missions in normal mode too require very little in proper builds or gear to succeed.

I get that this game can be difficult for players who do not want to invest a lot of time into discovering things. What I can not accept is players not being able to use basic searches in say google or other search engines to help themselves. It's 2021, the internet is not new to any of us.

[Sindrela.1846]

just came back and was surprised by the hero panel, but after playing poe, no skill tree will ever be complicated again lol