Hello everyone, My Name is Guardian. I played GW2 religiously in vanilla many years ago I have almost 1,000 hours logged just in vanilla and Iv just returned to find all this new glorious content that has come out over the years. To my dismay I found it very unappealing to do what I find the most fun in MMO's which is raid content and ill get to the reasons why in a alittle bit but first I would like to talk about my journey up to this point after my return about a month ago. So I seen recently that GW2 was going to release a new expansion in Cantha. Factions being my absolute favorite aesthetic of any game of all time I am very excited for this also I hear that GW2 will now be releasing on steam very shortly, and many of my friends hope to try out the game when it comes to the steam marketplace. So I hop back into the game and wow there is alot of new content. This is where I run into my first issue with the current state of GW2, not the players but the state of how complicated it is to get Ascended gear for new and returning players, even with tons of resources and guides out there I found it very convoluted and off putting figuring out how to obtain ascended armor, and if I wasn't such a massive fan of the Guild Wars franchise I would have probably played through the new expansion content HoT and PoF and called it a day, because its just way to messy figuring out everything needed to get the elusive ascended gear. and I feel like this is our first road block. When new players will come through steam I want there to be a second wave of Guild Wars fans I want the game to take off again but I feel this path to getting ascended gear will need to be made far more clear for this to happen, as Ascended gear is basically required to do Raid content and Raid content is what many people play MMOs for.However I digress, after learning all the intricacies and asking too many questions 2 and 1/2 weeks later I was fully ascended and ready to raid. Along my path every sub community I met, the hardcore fractal runners the hardcore PvE Meta grinders and everyone in-between was so friendly and I had some great times and met some great people who helped me stumble along.Now I'm there I'm ready to raid Iv watched every boss fight and I have practiced my rotations and my build and gear is perfect. So i go looking for my first Raid and I see every raid even training raids have this annotation.. kp, I'm like what is kp? I tried to get into several Raid "Training" groups and all asked for kp. so I asked in the Map chat and I was told by a friendly passer by that Kp stands for Kill Proof and most Raid groups want it even new player raid groups. So I asked well how is anyone supposed to get kp if you cant get into a raid without kp that makes no sense. He and a few others told me "Fake it till you make it" They actively encourage to study the bosses then just fake item chat codes to act like I have kp to get into groups.In all the MMOs I have played from Dark age of Camelot to mythic WoW raiding I have never herd of such an Elitist exclusive community based system that is so off putting and punishing to new players. This system will absolutely not be sustainable for a prolonged future, Casual players Raider or not are the heart of the game. We need Casuals to keep the game alive, We need a system over haul in my opinion that removes kp tokens from the game entirely and I propose to have a Gear score esc system similar to the Agony Resistance in fractals because that is also hardcore end game content at T4 and I don't see anywhere near the level of elitism there so maybe in Raids a similar system can work as well.So Between the convoluted path to a full Ascenened set of gear and the Elitiest end game community I don't believe the current climate is suitable for a prolonged future we may get a scourge of new players from steam and the new expansion but I guarantee as my friends where all new and returning players will be turned off of the game For these reasons. Proposed solutions Have a Agony Resistance esc. system that locks raid wings based on resistance levelsHave a INGAME clear and concise path to Ascended gear with detailsPossible some kind of true group finder system that automatically detects Gear score and will show you what wings you can queue for similar to WoWs.Remove all kp tokensAdd an inspect future to other players so if people want to form there own groups they still can do that and do gear checks.In Conclusion, I'm just a casual player I only have about 1,150 hours or so now and I know most of the player base now has far more than me. But this is just why I felt turned off from the game as a returning player and why my friends who where watching my journey on stream where turned off ,obviously this is just my opinion. Have a good day everyone! I hope to see you in Tyria
I completely understand Elitist communities will always exist, and Anet has removed kp in the past from cm fractals to try and curb Elitist. I think they should for sure consider something similar shortly after the steam release. Because I'm sure there will be a mass influx of new players who want to see what GW2 endgame has to offer, and I believe everyone deserves a chance to see it and shouldn't be gatekept by arbitration set by the Elite community that's BS.
