The Veteran / Youtuber challenge

[Sevetamryn.2974]

Hello,

 

Veteran, YouTube comnten creator, pleas don't take this as an offense, I'm relatively new, on my second character story play. And from this, i have still good memories from my 1st experience to my second character play now. Believe me, this already is a huge difference in how I see the gameplay and how I approach challenges. And that's something we all, too fast, forget over time.

Why this challenge - because i see too often "You can easily get this by doing XYZ", "Just get a full set of ABC gear plus runes and sigil" etc. - And i know, this is usually not said in a offensive way - like the usual "just get good" - However, we all, everywhere in life, adapt to the level of experience we have and take this a the "normal" ... 

 

The challenge:

• Make a new account! No, not a new character with access to you bank, gold, masteries, mounts etc.!
• No gold or gear transfer from your main.
• No gold / gear from your guild, friends, viewers etc. 
• no hard guild carry, stay solo - as a new player most likely does.
• if possibel, stay incognito in relation to your main in game - especially when using LFG
• Gemstore allowed to a limit of 25 bucks a month (excluding main game / expansions / living world)
• lvl 80 upgrade ticket may be used as new player usually has access to it with a lot of game / expansion bundles
• try to sty honest to the challenge when doing things in game in the meaning of "Is this to far fetched that a new play would do this?"

 

Get gear ready for raid or high level fractal - to your actual definition what a player should have, to participate in this kind of content. And if possible, share you experiences in this challenge.

 

You have the advantage to know much more about the game, economy, mechanics etc. That's OK. Nobody can take this away from you. And just to remember you, don't forget, you have to press F to loot fallen enemies 😉 ... this and a lot of comfort, you are familiar with for years, will be gone. You may not even believe what a different the not already found masteries will make.

 

[Ashen.2907]

You can do this with an existing account just by choosing to not use existing account resources such as gold, mounts, etc.

Assuming no guild is a poor idea because anyone who chooses to not join a newbie friendly guild in a new (to them) MMO is choosing to self nerf. This is the equivalent of having a, "must play with only your left hand," condition for your challenge.

Ascended gear is much easier to come by now than when originally introduced.

Raids and high tier fractals are not intended for new players so the challenge is kind of irrelevant.

 

All of that said, a guild I was in did something similar. Prizes were offered. A big deal was made of the challenge. Daily advertisement and tracking of the participants. It was a lot of fun. 

Edited April 26, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Sevetamryn.2974]

17 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

You can do this with an existing account just by choosing to not use existing account resources such as gold, mounts, etc.

Assuming no guild is a poor idea because anyone who chooses to not join a newbie friendly guild in a new (to them) MMO is choosing to self nerf. This is the equivalent of having a, "must play with only your left hand," condition for your challenge.

Ascended gear is much easier to come by now than when originally introduced.

Raids and high tier fractals are not intended for new players so the challenge is kind of irrelevant.

All of that said, a guild I was in did something similar. Prizes were offered. A big deal was made of the challenge. Daily advertisement and tracking of the participants. It was a lot of fun. 

 

I wrote "No hard guild carry" ... i think you may get the sense of this ... i did no say "No Guild". And to my experience, hard carry, is usually NOT war newbie friendly guilds do. They help, they give understanding, the sometimes also help with limited amounts of material or crafting. 

And no, not a new character on an existing account! The available masteries alone make a huge difference - you can't glide from beginning, you can't mushroom jump, you can't auto loot, you don't have access to several important vendors etc.

And yes, i believe that nearly nobody would have the discipline to respect all this when doing this on a new character on an existing account.

"Ascended gear is much easier to come by now than when originally introduced."

Well, the accept the challenge,  gear up to ascended gear and share your experience!

Edited April 26, 2022 by Sevetamryn.2974
formating

[Ashen.2907]

8 minutes ago, Sevetamryn.2974 said:

 

I wrote "No hard guild carry" ... i think you may get the sense of this ... i did no say "No Guild". And to my experience, hard carry, is usually NOT war newbie friendly guilds do. They help, they give understanding, the sometimes also help with limited amounts of material or crafting. 

 

And no, not a new character on an existing account! The available masteries alone make a huge difference - you can't glide from beginning, you can't mushroom jump, you can't auto loot, you don't have access to several important vendors etc.

And yes, i believe that nearly nobody would have the discipline to respect all this when doing this on a new character on an existing account.

 

"Ascended gear is much easier to come by now than when originally introduced."

 

Well, the accept the challenge,  gear up to ascended gear and share your experience!

You said, "stay solo," not just, "no hard guild carry."

Not gliding is easy. I didnt like its addition to the game and still dont. Same for mounts, mushrooms, etc. There are no important vendors linked to masteries that I use even on my existing characters.

My old guild had a mix of people doing a challenge very similar to this. The rewards were very slanted towards those willing to do it on a new account. I personally donated 500g to the reward pool. We had a couple dozen participants.

Finally, something that you may (or perhaps not) be overlooking is the fact that most veterans in the game have already done this challenge...at a time when it was more difficult and time consuming to do so.

[Sevetamryn.2974]

3 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Finally, something that you may (or perhaps not) be overlooking is the fact that most veterans in the game have already done this challenge...at a time when it was more difficult and time consuming to do so.

 

No, I'm not overlooking this. Please read (especially the content surrounding my "challenge rule") again.

But why i wrote this is, and what is my experience from personal conversation, the forum, youtubers about Gw2 etc. - and if you read again, i mentioned this - , we all (me included) to easily forget how it was as a new player, beginner, student etc. we set our actual level a the normal.  And yes, not only in games. The word "Easy" highly depends on the position of the person using it.

Let's formulate my words different: Try this "challenge" , as long as it is fun for you, and then think again when you (i don't accuse you, Ashen, personally doing this) say to a new player something like "Its easy to do xyz to get item A" or "Just get a set of full featured gear Y" ... I had this situation in a conversation when someone said something in this direction and i had to reply "If i had the gear / funds to do this, i would not have the problem i talk about" ... And he/she replied ... "Well, yeah, sorry, i forgot about this ... you can't do this with your gear"

[Danikat.8537]

I'm not a youtuber, but I have done this, although I didn't get as far as making ascended equipment because I don't need it for anything my alt accounts will do. My most recent total restart was in February 2020 when the tutorial achievements were added. I made a free account and levelled a character to try out the new achievements on a brand new account. Since then I've levelled other characters on both that free account and my paid core account (so without the play-for-free restrictions but also without any masteries or other expansion features) and levelled characters on my main account without tomes, equipment from my other characters or mounts and gliding.

I honestly don't notice much difference between the three versions. The fact that dyes are locked until level 6 on a new account surprised me (that seems weird considering they're available in the character creator) and as you mentioned anyone who doesn't have the Pact Leader mastery trained will have to manually loot everything. Also being unable to use map chat and sell most items on the TP on a free account frustrates me. But those are the biggest differences I've noticed. I know that not having the XP, gold and magic find bonuses my main account gets from achievement rewards will make a difference, but I don't notice it when I'm playing.

Of course I don't play like I did when I was new, but I think for me that's mainly going through things more quickly - not spending as much time trying to talk to every NPC and climb the scenery. For example I've always used drops instead of buying/crafting equipment  at low levels because I've always found it to be good enough. (Oddly the one exception is the 'white gear only' variation of the permadeath challenge, where you aren't allowed to use anything above white quality, even on a new account I don't get enough white drops so I end up buying stuff from the armour and weapon merchants every 10-20 levels.)
 

16 minutes ago, Sevetamryn.2974 said:

Get gear ready for raid or high level fractal - to your actual definition what a player should have, to participate in this kind of content. And if possible, share you experiences in this challenge.

 

I think there's a big disconnect between the rest of your post and this. Why would a new player who hasn't yet learned the basics and is playing solo worry about getting gear for raids or high level Fractals?

Especially high level Fractals because then my answer would be to do low level Fractals first. You'll get equipment you need as drops, and currency to buy more of it, as you're working your way up and also get to see the Fractals, learn the basic mechanics and meet other Fractal players.

It's kind of the same with raids because my advice for anyone wanting to get into any of them is to start with finding a guild that does raid training, then ask them what equipment you need and how to get it. If they're not able to explain the process clearly enough for you to understand it or link to a guide that's a pretty good sign they're not actually very good at training and you'll probably want to find a guild that can.

(And yes, in both cases I have taken my own advice and found it worked. Although I'm still working my way up to T4 Fractals, mainly to do the legendary backpack collection.)

[mindcircus.1506]

1 hour ago, Sevetamryn.2974 said:

Hello,

 

Veteran, YouTube comnten creator, pleas don't take this as an offense, I'm relatively new, on my second character story play. And from this, i have still good memories from my 1st experience to my second character play now. Believe me, this already is a huge difference in how I see the gameplay and how I approach challenges. And that's something we all, too fast, forget over time.

Why this challenge - because i see too often "You can easily get this by doing XYZ", "Just get a full set of ABC gear plus runes and sigil" etc. - And i know, this is usually not said in a offensive way - like the usual "just get good" - However, we all, everywhere in life, adapt to the level of experience we have and take this a the "normal" ... 

 

The challenge:

• Make a new account! No, not a new character with access to you bank, gold, masteries, mounts etc.!
• No gold or gear transfer from your main.
• No gold / gear from your guild, friends, viewers etc. 
• no hard guild carry, stay solo - as a new player most likely does.
• if possibel, stay incognito in relation to your main in game - especially when using LFG
• Gemstore allowed to a limit of 25 bucks a month (excluding main game / expansions / living world)
• lvl 80 upgrade ticket may be used as new player usually has access to it with a lot of game / expansion bundles
• try to sty honest to the challenge when doing things in game in the meaning of "Is this to far fetched that a new play would do this?"

 

Get gear ready for raid or high level fractal - to your actual definition what a player should have, to participate in this kind of content. And if possible, share you experiences in this challenge.

 

You have the advantage to know much more about the game, economy, mechanics etc. That's OK. Nobody can take this away from you. And just to remember you, don't forget, you have to press F to loot fallen enemies 😉 ... this and a lot of comfort, you are familiar with for years, will be gone. You may not even believe what a different the not already found masteries will make.

 

Will you be paying for the new accounts?

[Khisanth.2948]

The biggest challenge would be finding time to do this while doing everything else.

9 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

as you mentioned anyone who doesn't have the Pact Leader mastery trained will have to manually loot everything.

There is AoE loot and a veteran might be at a slight disadvantage due to habit although that wasn't a big deal when I was leveling my second account.

Less of a problem than when ANet forgets to make some random thing autolootable.

[Dante.1508]

There is no chance they will do that. Its too hardcore for youtubers.

 

I still manually loot everything to this day because i cannot find the masteries to finish the legendary mastery and the pact mastery.

12 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

Will you be paying for the new accounts?

They are free to play.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Dante.1508

[mindcircus.1506]

6 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

They are free to play.

Point 7 references a level 80 boost.

[Dante.1508]

Just now, mindcircus.1506 said:

Point 7 references a level 80 boost.

True but it does say maybe used, not required.

Also i'd follow a youtuber that did this mostly to see how they feel starting from scratch 9 years later.

[mindcircus.1506]

12 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

There is no chance they will do that. Its too hardcore for youtubers.

Wooden Potatoes already did it.

 

[Dante.1508]

1 minute ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

Wooden Potatoes already did it.

 

Nice find but that was in 2016 😯

[mindcircus.1506]

2 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

Nice find but that was in 2016 😯

There is nothing done in these videos that couldn't be done now.
If fact this was done before mounts. Before the buff the celestial stats. Before everyone who boosted was given a set of celestial gear. Before the PoF power creep.
Before a lot of QoL changes to the game that would make the OP's challenge even easier.

But more to the point:
You said no youtuber would do it.
The link proves you wrong.

[Danikat.8537]

36 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is AoE loot and a veteran might be at a slight disadvantage due to habit although that wasn't a big deal when I was leveling my second account.

Less of a problem than when ANet forgets to make some random thing autolootable.

AoE loot does make a big difference (I think that was in the game from the start, but not on by default. I definitely used it for years before HoT), as does the automatic pick-up thing where it all goes into your inventory instead of opening a second window to let you choose what to loot. But you still have to remember to press F periodically to activate it, so it's not quite the same as the automatic looting from the mastery. As I said it's not a big deal but it did catch me out the first few times when I saw sparkling corpses waiting to be looted and had to quickly run around to make sure I got all of them.

And yes on my main account I still run up to world boss chests and things and press F to make sure it was looted, because I don't entirely trust the automatic looting.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Danikat.8537

[mythical.6315]

I geared dragon hunter and condi firebrand within a week on a new account just last year. The trinkets were all ascended while the armor and weapons were exotic. It really wasn’t all that difficult so I don’t understand why this is being made out to be a challenge. 

I didn’t gear it for high level fractals because you have to grind out your fractal level to even access the T4 bracket in the LFG. This takes a considerable amount of time. 

Edited April 26, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Khisanth.2948]

24 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

AoE loot does make a big difference (I think that was in the game from the start, but not on by default. I definitely used it for years before HoT), as does the automatic pick-up thing where it all goes into your inventory instead of opening a second window to let you choose what to loot. But you still have to remember to press F periodically to activate it, so it's not quite the same as the automatic looting from the mastery. As I said it's not a big deal but it did catch me out the first few times when I saw sparkling corpses waiting to be looted and had to quickly run around to make sure I got all of them.

And yes on my main account I still run up to world boss chests and things and press F to make sure it was looted, because I don't entirely trust the automatic looting.

Only the autopickup has been in since launch. AoE loot was a later thing.

[Wolfb.7025]

I mean, I remember exactly how it went for me when I started playing this game. It took me 1 month to get to lv80, I crafted my first full berserk exotic armor and I started doing Fractals T1s the second month thanks to guildies bringing me along. It took me another month and a half to craft my first ascended armorset and reach Fractals T4s, from there I started gaining gold per day due to the high profit of fractals.

I also started playing Engineer, considered one, f not the hardest class to start with in the game.

[DeanBB.4268]

I pretty much do this all the time. I actually play my extra accounts, slowly leveling 4 characters to 80 and gearing them up (saving the last slot for a key runner if I ever have time for it). They get plenty of gold from dailies and selling materials to support this. Now, I'm not decking them out in ascended gear, or even doing crafting on them, but they all have solid exotic gear and builds.

So I'm not entirely sure what the challenge is... 🤷‍♂️

[Danikat.8537]

6 minutes ago, Wolfb.7025 said:

I mean, I remember exactly how it went for me when I started playing this game. It took me 1 month to get to lv80, I crafted my first full berserk exotic armor and I started doing Fractals T1s the second month thanks to guildies bringing me along. It took me another month and a half to craft my first ascended armorset and reach Fractals T4s, from there I started gaining gold per day due to the high profit of fractals.

I also started playing Engineer, considered one, f not the hardest class to start with in the game.

You're a lot more organised than I was.

It took me about 6 months to get to level 80 (although by then I had 5 characters which probably didn't help) and then I set off down to Orr to get exotics from the temples. Then SAB came out so it was all pointless for about a month because I did almost nothing else and your level and gear is irrelevant in SAB.

My first dungeon was actually the Molten Facility. I was nervous about doing it but my guild convinced me to come and said I didn't need any special gear. Then they took me through Arah path 2 and told me if I could do that I could do anything. 😄

They also told me off for not finishing the personal story after getting to level 80, and when I got there they did Arah story mode with me, back when it was a dungeon instead of a solo story instance. That might mean I did explorable mode before story mode, but I can't remember for sure. I can't actually remember when I first did Fractals.

I think joining a friendly guild who aren't strict about requirements is probably one of the best things a new or nervous MMO player can do. There's been so many times in multiple games when I was worrying about getting into a group for something or being able to complete it and my guild just offered to join me or told me when they'd be doing it and to come along without worrying about the requirements. There are times I suspect they carried me, but more often than not it turned out it wasn't as demanding or complicated as I thought and I was basically worrying about nothing.

[Khisanth.2948]

8 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

I pretty much do this all the time. I actually play my extra accounts, slowly leveling 4 characters to 80 and gearing them up (saving the last slot for a key runner if I ever have time for it). They get plenty of gold from dailies and selling materials to support this. Now, I'm not decking them out in ascended gear, or even doing crafting on them, but they all have solid exotic gear and builds.

So I'm not entirely sure what the challenge is... 🤷‍♂️

Well it would be a challenge trying to do it in a rush while also not putting in the time required to do it in a rush.

The common problem/challenge I see is people setting unrealistic expectations. They want the results of someone playing for 12 hours a day while only playing for 2 themselves. Achieving 600% efficiency would certainly be a challenge for anyone ...

16 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

There are times I suspect they carried me, but more often than not it turned out it wasn't as demanding or complicated as I thought and I was basically worrying about nothing.

That is a difficult thing to evaluate if you have a guardian in the party. They almost passively carry the whole party by simply doing what they are supposed to.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i feel like being able to use the lv80 ticket and being able to use “your knowledge” is a bit cheat-y because i can imagine making a core guard and jumping straight into t1 fracs, beelining to hps in HoT and easily get kitted out semi-properly in less than a week (exotic zerk with at least 2 asc zerk rings), which is enough to start doing raids because they dont really require asc gear in the first place

with “knowledge” unlocked, not using the lv80 boost would be a complete waste, so id assume starting from lv1 would be more of a f2p thing, which from experience is a slogfest that isnt worthwhile if you already have or can get a paid account - while most things are still possible, its  unnecessarily slower. on that note, i agree that the biggest hurdle would be finding time to invest in a throwaway “challenge account”, when that could be put into a proper account instead

[Stx.4857]

This challenge you propose isn't really a challenge...   especially since you say 80 boost can be used.  

 

It is extremely easy to get a raid ready power dps setup with very low gold and karma costs.

[Sevetamryn.2974]

At first, not to forget, i enjoy the game a lot, can live with my pace and have much too many hours per day on the clock ... And too many things on the ToDo list for the fun aspect i see there (not the grind for reward). I have the celestial gear from lvl 80 ticket and i'm fine with it for now (i used the ticket for my primary after manually going to 80, just for the gear). And i enjoyed the process of leveling and the story. My new player story at lvl 40, trying to find a group for 1st available dungeon in story mode, would be worth a post on its own ... 😉 

"I think there's a big disconnect between the rest of your post and this. Why would a new player who hasn't yet learned the basics and is playing solo worry about getting gear for raids or high level Fractals?"

Yeah, this post had some reasonable part combined with some provocation, i admit. The point is, and this is a IMHO a common, but not general (veteran / youtuber ) tonality. 

I wrote:

"Why this challenge - because i see too often "You can easily get this by doing XYZ", "Just get a full set of ABC gear plus runes and sigil" etc. - And i know, this is usually not said in a offensive way - like the usual "just get good" - However, we all, everywhere in life, adapt to the level of experience we have and take this a the "normal"."

And yes, it is not uncommon to hear / read things like - "No problem, just do high level fractals" ... "Just get exotic viper with krait / torment runes"

And no, for an relatively new player in GW2, those things are sometimes just not possible (for probably a long time) or at least everything else than EASY to reach. Please keep also in mind, for a new player, finding Information and judging if an advice is appropriate or not are two different things. This game is super complex in so many aspects. Even more for a new player, who is in short time confronted with a 10 year development cycle of features and and currencies. And the game itself does a bad job in explaining itself. In some cases, there may also be an easy and cheap way to get cool gear, the new player does just not know (for now). I got my 1st piece of ascended gear by coincidence from a not this hard achievement in the dessert, just play playing the game for the fun and exploration that is in it.

[Zaraki.5784]

Ok but what do we get for that? A challenge without any reward is a big no for me.