GW2 has 0 inventive ways of unlocking anything at endgame?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You want to spend weeks earning a purple dragon?  You can do that!  Earn yourself the Skyscale  - in-game - and dye it purple!

Edited January 4, 2022 by Inculpatus cedo.9234
typo

[Shiyo.3578]

On 1/1/2022 at 6:57 PM, raffaa.7135 said:

1) GW2 has no vertical progression, rather horizontal, meaning you grind more for cosmetics, mounts, achievements, ,...

2) GW2 has 99% of these unlockables (excluding achievements) in the gem shop

3) The only way of progressing (horizontally) is by farming gold by any repetitive activity

4) There is no real value behind grinding difficult achievements for mount skin unlocks / pet unlocks / ...

Yeah, this is the issue with the game since HoT.

They also doubled down on it by making all new unique cosmetics(Capes, gliders, mount skins besides the ONE wvw skin) cash shop ONLY.

It's really bad for the game.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

There are plenty of game where player complain that it is P2W, that the game forces people to spend money to enhance their character (on top of the fashion). There are plenty of people wishing that the cash shop is only about cosmetics and not about P2W stuff. And then you have some players here in GW2 complaining that few skins are only available in the cash shop.  Some people should try some other MMORPG just to understand how different GW2 is compared to other MMO. The game isnt perfect but at least it isnt trying to steal your wallet during each log in or each update. The game isnt restricting some weapons/mount behind a paywall, the game is not restricting some important item behind a paywall. 

[Rasimir.6239]

10 hours ago, Anyandrell.6238 said:

I don't play more than an average of 6 hours a week. I was still able to get some ascended and legendaries, without "grinding", just having fun and participating in stuff.

Fun fact: I dropped my first precursor after about 6 or 7 years in game. It happened to be one of the very rare days that the trading post was down for several hours, so for the fun of it, I checked out what materials I had in storage and what it would take to turn that precursor into a legendary weapon. Half an hour later I had my full legendary in hand, because I had accumulated so many resources over the years that I could craft it on the fly, without any grinding, farming, or any other type of preparation.

[Swiftblade.7920]

I came to GW2 from WoW, because to me WoW is no longer a fun, absurd story stressful endgame content, etc. I am also a person who likes to have a lot of characters, WoW is not a suitable game for me, because we should really focused onto one character and it's not really me.

Subscribe per month make you must play for a day at least 1-2 hr, and what games give your rewards just for playing it a few hours with vertical progression?

For earlier patch Shadowlands, so many people invite me to join their group to do Dungeon and Raid.

Next patch, at least 2-3 people wants me to join the group.

Patch after patch, and i am ended up alone because my gear dated although my character so many 😂

Dude it's stressful you know, so I decided to stop playing WoW at 9.2, due to above reasons.

So I started to playing GW2.. I am casual player anyway, so maybe I am just doing Meta Events or Leggy World Boss, for equipment we could buy it and not to much difference with the leggy based on stat. I already have 5 human with max level, because I am bored, I delete 2, to create Norn and Sylvari hahaha

Horizontal Progression make your game fun, Vertical Progression indeed make the game more challenging.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by Swiftblade.7920

[DeanBB.4268]

33 minutes ago, Swiftblade.7920 said:

So I started to playing GW2.. I am casual player anyway, so maybe I am just doing Meta Events or Leggy World Boss, for equipment we could buy it and not to much difference with the leggy based on stat. I already have 5 human with max level, because I am bored, I delete 2, to create Norn and Sylvari hahaha

I'm glad you've found a new home in GW2.

I recommend that you buy character slots rather than delete characters, though, if possible. Birthday presents are awarded based on character birthdays, and there are a lot of nice things given away through the birthdays.

[Sugar Min.5834]

" 2) GW2 has 99% of these unlockables (excluding achievements) in the gem shop "

I stopped reading when I came to point number 2. Bleh! Another meme topic.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Mil.3562

[Kozumi.5816]

Game is extremely unrewarding to play and why I've constantly taken breaks from it. Anet designs this game for the IDC/IDK's.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 1/1/2022 at 9:22 PM, Vilin.8056 said:

Sadly, this is exactly what a casual MMO means.

Locking certain rewards behind a certain skill level only draws more complaints for a crowd who would never intend for skill based progression.

Therefore grind and money shop became the preferable route by the majority.

This game is not a good casual game at all. A casual could pick the wrong weapon, gear and traits then end up doing 1/100th the damage of someone who is playing optimally. They then join your DE map and contribute 0, or scale up all your events all over the world while contributing zero and being frustrated from constantly dying and unable to solo. This doesn't even get into the fact there's dodging and the games UI is outdated and doesn't display information cleanly, or properly at all.

That's the opposite of a casual MMO.

A good casual MMO is FF14, where you literally can't make a wrong decision when it comes to your characters build/gear and only mistakes with rotations.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[ASP.8093]

On 1/1/2022 at 6:57 PM, raffaa.7135 said:

- Is all of the horizontal progression summarized as, farm gold -> buy gems -> unlock skins in lootboxes

The short answer is: no.

There are lots of pretty gem store skins, but the people most committed to Fashion Wars also pursue a lot of stuff you can only get in-game via specific activities and achievements.

E.g. my most recent character look includes:

2x Runic armor pieces — earned in strike missions (or by paying a boatload of gold+karma if you really really hate strike missions for some reason)

1x Carapace armor — story reward

1x Bladed armor — map currency / map meta reward

1x Magitech armor — gemstore skin

Warmaster's Pack — story replay achievements

Wolfheart shield — gemstore skin

Gold Fractal sword — only available by doing Fractals

I guess you could skip all the actual *stuff* and just get a million gold and then try to gamble for Wardrobe Unlocks and then hope those unlock some or all of those pieces but… why would you? Nobody does that. People find the achievement or currency that they need and go out and get the thing.

 

Now step away from cosmetics for a sec and let's think about all the small aspects of progression that do exist in the game past level 80…

* Unlocking your elite specs on each character

* Masteries (this includes the whole mount system, a number of other mobility features, and bonus PvE abilities/rewards)

* Ascended/Legendary gear for your characters

* Infusions for your Ascended/Legendary gear (the overwhelming majority of solidly-endgame players aren't running around with +5 stat infusions in every slot right now)

* Crafting capability

* Building up your guild hall or home instance

* WvW rank abilities (basically a second non-PvE Mastery system)

* Fractal God powerups

* Achievement and title hunting (okay, these ones are also basically "cosmetics")

* PvP rank and unique top-tier PvP bling

Some of these involve a gold investment but you're not gonna get there by just doing a pile of repetitive farming activities. And they do represent long-term goals with tangible impact, just not tuned so high that people will refuse to play with you if you haven't done it all already.

[Ashen.2907]

2 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

This game is not a good casual game at all. A casual could pick the wrong weapon, gear and traits then end up doing 1/100th the damage of someone who is playing optimally. They then join your DE map and contribute 0, or scale up all your events all over the world while contributing zero and being frustrated from constantly dying and unable to solo. This doesn't even get into the fact there's dodging and the games UI is outdated and doesn't display information cleanly, or properly at all.

That's the opposite of a casual MMO.

A good casual MMO is FF14, where you literally can't make a wrong decision when it comes to your characters build/gear and only mistakes with rotations.

Casual is not a synonym for moron or lazy. A casual can read trait lines and make reasonable decisions too. Their decisions might not be optimal, but they can work just fine for the vast majority of the game's content. Sure there will be content intended for more hardcore players, but it is pretty well labeled as such and represents a small portion of the game.

All of that said, the game's abundance of visual noise conflicts with the requirement to dodge the nastier attacks thrown around by some mobs and bosses and the UI leaves a lot to be desired (at least lock the individual boon and condition icons in one place so they can be monitored at a glance).

[Aridon.8362]

On 1/1/2022 at 6:57 PM, raffaa.7135 said:

- Is all of the horizontal progression summarized as, farm gold -> buy gems -> unlock skins in lootboxes

 

No, at least not in the context of guild wars 2. You're not supposed to "farm gold", you're supposed to cooperate with other players to get gold. While your reward won't be a boost to make your character more op than another person's can be, the game's skins are technically through non-techincal means, vertical progression.

 

Also as you play the game, you will have to unlock mastery points to make your character more OP. Some mastery points are by definition a lot harder to get than you'd originally think. IE the raiding challenge modes (CM) each are designed to challenge you to a greater extent in raiding and so on. Just recently there was a new Junkyard Strike CM that comes with a title and it is quite possibly the hardest achievement to obtain as far as strikes are concerned.

 

Now why are mastery points/achievement points important? Because they give you account bonuses, in particular 455 mastery points (at the time of writing this) means you have a full set of mastery points unlocked. Comparatively this also means you have a boosted amount of exp you get. Every exp bar you complete after level 80 gives you spirit shards.

 

Wealthy players will want to make use of those spirit shards, but conversely you can convert them yourself into things you want for more profit. But starting off the more spirit shards you have, essentially the more gold you have.

 

I'm not entirely sure if all of this is starting to click in your head, but spirit shards (and the other account bound currencies in your wallet), not gold, dictates the progression of the game, because you can only get spirit shards by playing the game. There is no other way around it.  But those spirit shards in your wallet right now, is worth a lot of money to players, you just have to find someone who you can build a relationship with in order to cash them out.

 

This is where guilds come in, typically some guilds will have a number of rich players who can make use of said spirit shards you have. In exchange for your spirit shards they will give you a sum of gold. Then the dynamics of how both WvW and PvE tie together will sink in as most likely they will ask you for things that require both modes of gameplay.

 

If you want to find out more, consider joining a WvW guild, typically they will get you started. But there's a lot of complexity as far as how progression in this game actually works, because you as a player have to progress in the social aspect, as well as how you play the game. And obviously, you get rewarded out of it.

 

I can only imagine the number of people who don't socialize, and don't work with their guilds, and mindlessly farm thousands of gold while the creators of the game didn't have that in mind.

Here, I'll give you an example, If I am low on spirit shards, I go onto meta trains that give the highest exp, or I will do instanced content that gives exp/spirit shards as a reward in some form. If I need Karma, I will join content that gives a lot of karma in return. If I need a gift of battle, I will join a WvW zerg. Then I find a player that needs all the things I listed in some form and cooperate with them to trade gold outside of the Trading Post in some form. That gold then becomes my capital to make whatever legendary item I need, and the process repeats. The shinies you get as a part of all of this, then becomes the reward and the progression.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Aridon.8362

[disco.9302]

On 1/1/2022 at 11:57 PM, raffaa.7135 said:

2) GW2 has 99% of these unlockables (excluding achievements) in the gem shop

this is where you went wrong.

There are far more unlockable skins available through playing the game than in the gem store. If you're referring to mount/glider skins specifically, make that clear.

Horizontal progression simply means that you can acquire the highest stat gear relatively easily and after this, your gameplay is less about acquiring higher grade gear and more about unlocking skins, new items etc. The emphasis is on getting more stuff rather than better stuff to make your old gear obsolete ( legendries aside).

[sewenewes.4176]

On 1/1/2022 at 11:57 PM, raffaa.7135 said:

- Is all of the horizontal progression summarized as, farm gold -> buy gems -> unlock skins in lootboxes

 

Yes. How you go about it and what you target is entirely up to you however.

Lets look at raw stats. Using GW2 efficiency we can check the gold price of unlocking everything, gem store content included. Unlocking all armour skins costs nearly 90 000 gold. This one is actually quite rewarding if you like earning your shinies because there are a lot more armour skins obtainable purely through in-game content than through the gem store.

Unlocking every weapons skin on the other hand costs a little short of 300 000 gold and that's because a lot of them come from the various black lion collections which are, no matter how people might argue about how you can buy them through the trading post, gem store content as you can only obtain them from black lion chests either as a direct drop or bought with black lion tickets dropped from the same boxes. There are very few ways to obtain a guaranteed black lion key (map completion is not guaranteed but merely a 33% chance) and aside from the weekly level ten living story key reward all require you to level up a character and go through multiple story missions with them which is a not an insignificant time investment. You can't obtain the black lion weapon skins from within the game so if nobody opened the gamble boxes there wouldn't be any on the trading post thus it is gemstore content. Getting every backpack would cost you about 55 000 gold.

As you have already noticed mount skins, glider skins, skiff skins, fishing rod skins, and outfits are strictly gem store content with only one or two exceptions for each category. Obtaining every mount skin for example would mean forking over about 47 000 gold or 136 000 gems.

Now lets look at obtaining that gold. The fast farming community website lists Echowald Wilds as the current top farm with a 41 gold 22 silver and 87 copper yield per hour, provided that the farm is optimized to the maximum. That amount, at the current conversion rate, nets you 138 gems at the exchange which equals 1.47 British pounds or 1.83 US dollars or 1.73 euros. If you convert 138 gems into coins you get 28 gold 9 silver and 68 coppers. Remember, this is using a gold / hour number that is the absolute best case scenario and the average player farming gold doesn't earn nearly as much. This means that gold farming is terribly inefficient in most first and second world countries compared to converting real life currency to gems even if you then further convert those gems to gold. By far the best way to obtain most cosmetic rewards (and aside from ascended equipment and convenience items like infinite tools or inventory expansion there really isn't anything to obtain besides cosmetics) will always be working an actual job and buying gems.

So where does this leave you, the person who likes to earn their rewards through gameplays and difficult achievements?

As I said in the beginning, it depends on how you go about it and what you target. If you're a collector and completionist then you must have a fat wallet at hand and I don't think you'll find much sense of accomplishment here. If you like to just log on and get into the heart of the action right away with all options open to you then this game is perfect for it. If you like earning rewards from difficult content then you have the prestige of legendary equipment from raiding to aim for but achieving the optimal gold farm can actually be challenging as well since farming high level fractals or the newer metas requires you and your whole team to know what you are doing otherwise you will fall behind on the gold / hour ratio. It's not a challenge everyone will enjoy but it's a challenge nonetheless with the reward being your choice of cosmetic or convenience item since you can spend your gold however you like. 

That last point is what a lot of players like, I would say. That the reward system is fairly universal, giving you mostly materials and items that can be salvaged for materials which all translate to money so if you have your heart set on a particular shiny you usually don't have to stick to running one specific encounter or aimlessly grind for years even if the drop chance of that specific thing is one percent as you can just buy it.

If that doesn't appeal to you then you can still find plenty of enjoyment in the combat system, the movement system, the encounters, the story, the environmental design and the fun little distractions like fishing or beetle racing. You will likely find yourself taking some breaks but the beauty of this game is that you don't fall behind when you don't play for a while and don't get penalized if you don't want it to be your main MMO. Enjoy the sights, check out the in-game exclusive rewards that multiple commenters mentioned, the expansions are fantastic, the mounts in particular are an absolute joy to handle, and if farming isn't your thing then take a breather and come back when new content drops.

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, disco.9302 said:

this is where you went wrong.

There are far more unlockable skins available through playing the game than in the gem store. If you're referring to mount/glider skins specifically, make that clear.

Horizontal progression simply means that you can acquire the highest stat gear relatively easily and after this, your gameplay is less about acquiring higher grade gear and more about unlocking skins, new items etc. The emphasis is on getting more stuff rather than better stuff to make your old gear obsolete ( legendries aside).

Even when you've got legendaries it's still worth getting new items for the skins.

I'm not far off finishing Ad Infinitum and while I'm looking forward to clearing out all the other backpacks I've collected (including the 12 spare ones in my bank) I'm still glad I've got all the others and will still get more in future for the skins.

Since the armoury came in I've even started using shortbow skins again. I only have 1 character who really uses shortbow and she's had The Dreamer for years, which I was never willing to reskin. But now the 'original' is in the armoury and if I don't want the 'transmuted' line in the description I can just reset it I don't mind changing it occasionally - like for Halloween when rainbows and unicorns didn't really fit my cat-demon costume. Although that one I got purely for the skin so I don't change it often, but it's nice to have the option.

[Gibson.4036]

I'm currently working on Vision. Along the way I've unlocked armor skins, weapon skins, and minis.

So far, since I started weekly key runs a month or two ago, I've unlocked one skiff and one glider/backpack as well as several random things I've forgotten through random wardrobe unlocks.

This whole idea that 90% of stuff comes from the gem store just isn't true. Maybe it's hard for people to find what they can earn in game? I know I wouldn't have known about the adorable little desert fox if I hadn't started working on Vision.

According to GW2E I have 1,143 different unlocks. Only 19 of them are gem store items. Only 6 of them did I pay for with gems.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Khisanth.2948]

On 1/2/2022 at 11:09 AM, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Hey this is a casual game, math isn't required!

Neither is reading yet here we are!

[Khisanth.2948]

On 1/2/2022 at 3:46 PM, ASP.8093 said:

And the thing I want most but don't have yet? White Mantle Portal Device. If I decide to go for that I'm going to have to play a ton of raids. No amount of Silverwastes or Octovine farming is gonna help me get that thing.

Well actually .... you can get the same functionality by making a pile of Watchwork Portal Devices

[ASP.8093]

11 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Well actually .... you can get the same functionality by making a pile of Watchwork Portal Devices

Doesn't Watchwork Portal have the downside of being canceled by any incoming damage while you're setting it?