Xariann.5071

I am writing this mostly as a review(ish) for other people who are considering coming back or want to get into GW2. I played this at launch and a lot has changed. I played many other MMOs, WOW has been the one I played the most, but I also played for a good amount of time SWTOR, ESO, Aion, Final Fantasy XIV, Lost Ark, Star Trek Online, New World, Wildstar, TERA, Warframe. I played some games more recently than others. So I am coming at this with the perspective of someone who has interacted with different approaches to similar things. Do I Like the Game? Absolutely, I like the combat, the story, most of the voice acting, the visuals (although some areas are looking a bit old after so many years), the amount of stuff to do. Lack of FOMO from evergreen content means the game respects your time, although there are drawback to horizontal progression which I will get to later. It suffers a bit from "it gets better later". Having said that, while you can buy a boost to skip the story in core Tyria and reach max level, I still enjoyed what I did in core Tyria, and the game gives you plenty of reasons to revisit all the zones, both old and new. I like how class spells look, and Guild Wars 2 has a lot of unique mechanics you don't see on other games. Their take on class fantasies is also very interesting and each class has a strong identity. Moment to Moment Gameplay and Open World I honestly struggle to think of an open world experience that is as engaging as Guild Wars 2's. One moment you are finding vistas, the next you are caught into an event, then you are gathering something, whether it be a piece of wood or a Hero Point. There is a lot to do. The combat feels dynamic and I shunned it in the past for feeling too floaty. I still think that compared to WOW or New World, it still is a bit floaty. But I got used to it and I find it rather engaging. I like the hybrid target/action system, which is better than just tab targeting, like what you find in SWTOR and WOW. I also think it's better implemented than the hybrid system you get in ESO, but I heard there were a few combat updates since I last played it. When you compare it to the late Wildstar or New World however, I probably lean towards these two more. Well, Wildstar is gone, but if you played it, at least you have a reference. I like a certain amount of telegraphing so I liked TERA a bit less, that's more because I tunnel vision a bit, and TERA was less forgiving of that. I'm terms of accessibility, I find GW 2 combat much easier to get into than say Black Desert Online. In fact I tried getting back into BDO after they recently added cinematic story and my brain just melts with the combos. That's why I suck at Street Fighter (although I played it since I was a kid so it remains a favourite) and I play it with the more accessible controls. But GW2 combat also takes time to actually master but I feel my brain can actually get to that stage eventually. I also appreciate that I am not having to learn the piano like I would in FF XIV, which remains a tab target game that tries to add complexity through rotation and complicated dances which often you have to execute in a specific order (it depends on the encounter). I am thinking that FFXIV players are probably going to wind up with very good memory in their older age. I am more of a reactive player that likes to act in the moment. Story I am a long term Mass Effect fan, so story-driven content, when done well, is right up my alley. I like games like SWTOR and ESO. When Warframe came out with story, I went and played it. Final Fantasy XIV has incredible story but... I just can't get into some of its aesthetics, and humour wise, I prefer seeing Taimi leave a botched recording on the floor somewhere in Heart of Thorns, than... Seeing flying pigs appear out of nowhere as content filler when big baddy is devouring an entire world. I just don't get along with some of the fantasy and the humour there. There is also a lot of... Waffling in FFXIV, lots of walls of text you click through, I just lose interest eventually because of the presentation and wind up just watching cut scenes. Also the fact that the story is unskippable makes it impossible for me to keep up with friends because I never manage to stick to that game. The problem is that without the story you can't do the current content. The Core Tyria story was ok, but, compared to the BDO one, it was much better, at least from the perspective of how it is presented. I mean, I didn't get to see the BDO one much because it put me off within a few cutscenes. You wake up, you follow this blonde girl who orders you around and you to what she tells you why? And the way the cut scenes are edited is not polished. I respect the change in direction for BDO, but for me it needs a bit more work. I like that you get origin stories in GW2, you don't really get that in ESO that much and obviously the base game in SWTOR was all about the origin story. So GW2 loses in the base game compared to SWTOR, but in general the story telling of this game just gets better and better each expansion, while SWTOR has varying degrees of quality throughout the expansions. I enjoyed the ESO story but I have not played it as extensively as SWTOR. I don't remember it as much. Progression So the expression "horizontal progression" gets thrown around a lot. Level wise, you hit 80, and you can't get further. Everything released will stay at 80. Gear you get in one expansion doesn't necessarily go out of date later. But you do still get masteries to work towards which don't give you player power in the sense of raw DPS power (if you set aside unlocking specs), but it gives you player power in the sense of open world utility Generally, a TON of character progression, including specs, is tied behind open world, and you won't be able to do PvE instances content effectively if you don't engage with the open world (or PvP). The way this progression is crafted into the open world however, is done much better than in any other MMO I can think of. The open world feels like part of the endgame, it's lively, it's not just a temporary zone where you do dailies and log out until the next expansion comes up — which makes entire questing areas obsolete. Systems that have been introduced in certain expansions remain as they are, so if you want to unlock certain mounts, you will have to go through a certain amount of open world content to get them and level them and you can only do that in Path of Fire. Once you hit 80 you can do anything in any order if you don't care about story. However, if you do want to follow the story in the exact order it was released, you will not access things that will make the open world easier until quite late. For some this is fine. I keep wishing I had SOME more QoL from later expansions without having to see spoilers, but not so much that it makes the open world completely trivial. Obviously once you have done the story with your first character this conundrum disappears, but until then, there is mountains of content. That's a good thing, mind you. Arena Net has made a couple of changes, you get the Raptor at level 10 now, but you can't upgrade it until you level up your Mastery in Path of Fire. The way you get the Skyscale will be simplified in August. But the bulk of the mounts still reside with Path of Fire. This means that if you want them as a fresh 80, you have to skip ahead with the story and get potential spoilers. I am not used to vertical maps, and I will be in the minority, but I find the HOT open world is frustrating. I am sure there will be people who love it, and I think doing it when it came out would feel very different from doing it now. That was your end game at the time, it made sense to work towards unlocking your gliding, your mushrooms etc. But I am not the biggest fun of jumping puzzles, and I feel HOT without mounts is a huge jumping puzzle, and I don't enjoy it. I wound up skipping the story to go straight to PoF for the mounts and will go back after. As part of a horizontal progression system where other expansions give you better tools, HOT feels left behind and that's the main downside of the horizontal progression system for me. However the MAJOR upside of the horizontal progression, is feeling like 90% of what you do is as relevant today as it was yesterday. Again, probably in the minority here, I'd rather have just a couple a mounts because swapping all the time is annoying. A ground mount and a flying mount. The Masteries add skills to those two mounts so you don't have to keep swapping between raptor, springer, skimmer, etc. It just feels clunky. I figure that once I get a flying mount the swapping will be lessened. I have a love and hate relationship with unlocks in general in this game. You don't get access to all your specialisations in PvE. You have to unlock them with expansions and that's fine but... You then have to go around and grab hero points to actually use them (or do a load of WvW PvP). I have just paid for it, can I just have the spec? Or can you make Hero Point collections account wide? So you do it once, then you have those points banked for your next level 80 character? Masteries are account wide, so it's not like you need the experience for them once you hit 80. Core Tyria completion would be nice account wide but I am not sure how you'd hit 80 without it, I guess if you get a lot of Tomes of Knowledge or you craft a lot you could. Or maybe they could do a modified version of what SWTOR did, which is make the main story XP enough to get you to max. But unlike SWTOR, do it only for alts. The problem is that then core Tyria will slowly become obsolete, I guess. You'll still have world bosses and dailies. I don't know. Like I said... I have a love and hate relationship with unlocks in this game. They give you lots to do but they also feel a bit frustrating. Instanced Content I can't really speak to this as I have not done it, but what puts me off it mostly is the lack of Trinity. But you have to bring boons. So you still have to care about group composition. From my understanding the tanks are the ones that are basically not needed now, whereas healers are still used, but mostly you want high DPS that also buffs. I would like the Trinity to come into play, I don't think it would impact build diversity more than having to spec for specific boons. PvP I have not done much of it.

Just posting this for no other reason than sharing the fun. I bought this game, I believe, when it first came out. I played it for a bit (apparently longer than I remember, as I am going through the main game's story and the chapters were all familiar up to around the level 60 ones). I was a bit saddened to see that Dungeons weren't that popular although Fractals sounded good. But I moved on before I tried the Fractals. I logged back in a few times, bought new expansions to stay current, but I never stuck around. However, as I adulted a bit more and health issues ensued, I found I was less able to keep up with the gear treadmills of other games. In fact Dragonflight came out, I maxed out all the reps, I almost maxed out my crafting, I got the rating I wanted in my M+, and when Season 2 came out... I was just done. It was SO MUCH work, it required SO MUCH effort, and I just couldn't do it again. Everything I did had been reset, and I'd had to regrind my mythic rating again etc. I decided to retry Guild Wars 2. The lens through which I look at games, I think, has changed dramatically. I always knew this game respected your time, but... I didn't realise just how much FOMO was taking a toll on me, until it went away - because of my health issues, it was doing so a bit more than on a "normal" person. Now that I put my competitiveness aside, I am playing GW2 now and I am really enjoying it. I am liking the combat even more than before, I think I just got a bit tired of some other combat systems. And respecting your time does not mean there is nothing to do. There is actually a lot to sink my teeth into. And there is still group PvE content I can do when I wish to (which has been my focus for a long time). I find the classes in this game are rather interesting, too. Always have. I was just a little bit worried by Arena Net saying they are changing the cadence of the releases, thinking, "So now here I am taking this game seriously, and now there will be more updates than I keep up with". Don't get me wrong, I think frequent updates are generally a good thing. I was just worrying about the "trying to stay up to date" part given my circumstances. But it sounds like they are actually planning a catch up system for people so they don't get FOMOed in. So that part doesn't seem to have changed, and it appears we might be getting the best of both worlds - frequent updates while not getting cornered into doing everything right now. It was interesting to see Preach Gaming's series about GW2, given that we have similar gaming experiences, as he painted a picture in my language... so to speak. I don't follow him regularly, but his series on this was pretty enlightening. I find that games are getting more and more "screamy", trying to extort you into gameplay every day, even when you are not feeling like it (but if you don't you fall behind). I am however logging into GW 2 because I enjoy it, and of my own choice. And that's gone away for a lot of games I think. I am glad to have it back.

I guess I have not been a "new MMO Player" for many years (even though I consider myself a newbie in GW2 and I wouldn't know how to setup my characters in fractals). So something like a yellow outline is rather obvious to me, even if nobody explains it. MMOs also don't live in a vacuum, there are guides and videos, and plenty of people who create content for this game as they really like it. But as I said before, there are people who like to play it blind and that's I guess 100% understandable. If you did that though, you probably wouldn't use a boost. As to the marketing practice of a boost - I don't know. They are giving you a free boost with an expansion. It's not really bad practice. I think maybe you can get one from the shop too? In which case that's different... but in a game where you are not skipping content it's really just a personal choice. Do you want spend time or money? That's a different discussion though, it's not really relevant to this.

This makes sense actually. I did play the game at launch even though I think I maybe stopped at around 60ish (I am not sure, but I am on the level 60 story with my boosted character and I vaguely remember it). So I had an idea. I also watched a lot of videos about specialisations and how they play, so I came informed, as well as having played many other games before this. I suppose for a totally new player, or for someone who doesn't want to use third party tools (which is 100% a legit way to play) it would be confusing. Sometimes I forget how much info that is on the internet influences how I play.

I find no difference in challenge in the leveling experience and it is my understanding it's rather difficult to get into a dungeon, as nobody plays them. Unless this has changed recently.

I got a boost after buying End of Dragons. I have looked at forum threads and watched videos of people telling others to not use the boosts otherwise you'll skip the base content. Maybe I am playing my boosted character wrong, but I don't understand why that is the case. I got up to level 36 on my Mesmer, then decided that I wanted to boost my character to 80, as, really, I want to play Virtuoso. I keep hearing about masteries and how they send you back to the core world for map completion anyway, so I figured, why not just do all this map completion at 80, so the exp goes towards my masteries directly? The core story has not been reset for me, and I am very much not overwhelmed by the new skills and passives – it's just like picking your skill tree in other MMOs, and if all else fails, I can look at a guide, try to understand synergies and make changes as I get familiar with the spec. Anyway the spec I want to play, i.e. Virtuoso, still needs to be grinded so it's not like I am being thrown in the deep end of that specialisation without the opportunity to learn it. I will say that completing the core story does give me mastery XP although it seems a bit slow. Maybe once I venture in the Heart of Thorns that XP will be quicker. Anyway, I haven't skipped any content, and the open world difficulty in the core game seems similar to what it was at 36, with the gear the game gives with the boost. It was faceroll then, and it is faceroll now. But now all my progression goes towards Masteries. So why wouldn't one use boosts? If you have to do the map completions anyway, what does it matter what level you are?