I should qualify myself a bit when I say this. I'm not exactly a new player, in as much as I'm a noob player. I've owned GW2 since release and I've returned to dabble every year or so and at every major expansion, but until this year with the release of EoD I've had a hard time staying engaged because a lot of mechanics went unexplained for me.
Example: Combos... As far as I know this was never tutorialised, you'd have to somehow "get it" or read about it on the wiki. Or Defiance bars. I had no idea what a CC ability was, or even what that meant. I digress, but I was a noob.
With EoD I returned and found that the new content and UX improvements improved my experience hugely. There's more tutorialisation of higher level mechanics. There's also heaps of great content on YouTube made by the community, helping new players to understand the mechanics/stats/builds in great depth which has been really helpful.
After a concerted effort, I'm finally "getting it" and by and large I'm finding the game, the story and a lot of the modes really fun. For the most part random strangers in the open world are really helpful, sometimes even really generous and kind!
However...
The LFG group system for strikes (at least, haven't tried many other modes yet), suffers what I'd characterise as "late-stage community syndrome". What is this exactly? It's the new player experience of stepping into a game with 9 years of developed meta, acronyms and shorthand, and "the way to play" is so well trodden by the extremely experienced community, that it becomes sadly, a bit hostile. (League of Legends is a sad and striking example of this).
I get it, most people are here to grind out their dailies/weeklies and get on with life. And there's a lot of unsung heroes in the community that really do reach out or try hard to be helpful or answer questions. But unfortunately there's equally the smarmy, sarcastic or outright mean types that want you to know the game, or get the hell out.
I can't help but feel that if I was a less interested player I would've been pushed out some time ago.
A suggestion for how this could be improved, is tags could be built into the LFG tool in some way, so that the group names could become less of a series of three letters acronyms. Perhaps those common abbreviations/acronyms could be tags for the LFG listing with hover-over tooltips to give explanations to players who don't know it yet. I know its basic to most of the high level players, but this is one of the barriers that really throws noobs like me. And walking in unwittingly, not knowing "the rules" yet and being treated like I'm being a jerk kinda just ruins my day.
I just want to remind the people that might be more on the impatient side, that it's a good thing that noobs are joining because it's a sign that you're in a growing community. And that's a very good sign for the long term health of your favourite game.
I half expect to get flamed now. But thanks for reading. If you have any resources that you think might help me onboard, I appreciate it.
