This game has a serious accessibility problem.

[MisterMagician.8614]

I think the game's community being so "insulated" means that absurd time sinks like legendaries are not only offered as "content" by the community but are accepted as normal things to have.  In a more populous mmo, such things would be seen as novelties only a few people have and something that no one really needs.  Since there is just about zero new blood in this game (and consistent content droughts mean people stocked up legendaries just to have something to do) it seems that every regular has these just laying around now.

"Oh, just use the legendary wardrobe and all your alts are instantly geared in any affix you want!" is something I have heard far too often in discussions with new and returning players, even in guides for casual "open world" builds.  As a player who is considering a return, I can't tell you how repulsive it is to hear "getting exotic gear in this 'open world build' affix can take serious time, so just spend the weeks to grind the ascended instead!" and then someone chiming in with "just spend 2-3 months to get the legendary instead, as it's faster than getting a full set of ascended for multiple characters."

This game may be "casual friendly" for people who have played 10+ years straight, but there's a reason people bolt out the door faster than they can come in.  Even the "uber casual" hizen builds can take a while to get (if you don't want to spend real money for overpriced exotics) since he abuses celestial and other rare affixes to augment boons.  Sure, the game becomes easy enough that anyone can play it once you have an entire bank full of legendaries and ascended in every affix, but no actual person looking for these builds will be in those situations.

Why do people want "open world builds?"  Because the overworld content is actually quite hard for a new player.  Frustratingly so.

Sure. it's not hard for YOU because you have everything already, but it's not for someone just starting out.  There is a reason anet gives full celestial with boosts now, as it would take weeks of endgame grinding to get it.  If you take offense to that, saying it takes "weeks" to get these non-named affixes, you are not doing the math properly.  YOU can get them easy because you are 540 mastery level, have multiple legendaries, all story complete, all teleport scrolls, gold flying out the ears, all reward tracks maxed out, all mounts unlocked, friends in game, and years upon years of game knowledge.  Get rid of your friends and game knowledge, boost a fresh character and see how long it would take you to get the stuff to make the overworld "fun" instead of a crushing slog.

For example, I have the skyscale.  It takes me less than a second to summon it.  I can trivialize gathering grinds that can get me gear in any affix I want with it.  Therefore, its "easy" to get around and so new players should just suck it up and summon their skyscale too.  I also have enough of a memory to remember that it took me 26 straight days of grinding 5-6 hours over 8 characters to get and would have been longer (and cost real-life money) if I didn't have the gold and everything unlocked before I started.  This was only after leveling up and gearing those 8 max level characters, reading dozens of guides (because less than nothing is explained in game), completing weeks' worth of story and side quests, and farming over a hundred mastery points just to get quality of life stuff.

Tell that a new player might be able to finally enjoy playing the game after MONTHS of suffering, and that they basically have to do everything the hard way a dozen times over before they can do things in a way that isn't soul-crushing, and they leave.  Tell them that they have to go through hardcore, miserable grinds just so they can go through more lighthearted grinds, which only then rewards the ability to just sit back and casually play the game (which means just more grinding but slower), and they might punch you before leaving.

Edited December 3, 2023 by MisterMagician.8614

[Cyndercat.7615]

Sorry but none of these complains make sense to me. This is one of the easiest mmos in existence to gear in and its also easier than ever to get gear. Ascended has multiple sources and exotics are 20 silver on TP.

Like you said you get a full celestial exotic set for reaching level 80 which is good enough to play through all open world content. You will never need a perfectly optimized build with exactly the correct stats for open world. If you lose 5 stacks of might due to lacking 1 celestial piece its not going to make any difference.

Skyscale has also been make much easier to get and can be done in a week even for a totally new account. 

If people find the open world a crushing slog then maybe its not for them since open world content is 90% of the game. I cannot understand how anyone could find core tyria too challenging. There are childrens games more difficult than that. 

[MisterMagician.8614]

5 minutes ago, Cyndercat.7615 said:

Sorry but none of these complains make sense to me. This is one of the easiest mmos in existence to gear in and its also easier than ever to get gear. Ascended has multiple sources and exotics are 20 silver on TP.

Like you said you get a full celestial exotic set for reaching level 80 which is good enough to play through all open world content. You will never need a perfectly optimized build with exactly the correct stats for open world. If you lose 5 stacks of might due to lacking 1 celestial piece its not going to make any difference.

Skyscale has also been make much easier to get and can be done in a week even for a totally new account. 

If people find the open world a crushing slog then maybe its not for them since open world content is 90% of the game. I cannot understand how anyone could find core tyria too challenging. There are childrens games more difficult than that. 

You only get full celestial for boosts that come in the expansions (and even that is only recently), the store boosts give nothing.  I don't consider "core tyria" to be endgame either.

[Parasite.5389]

since you've been gone a long timee, you may have missed the introduction of TEID-07, a new vendor in WvW who for an incredibly small amount of  WvW currency(400 badges of honor) and some gold, will sell you Stat-selectable exotic equipment that includes Celestial stats

and before you start to complain that you hate WvW, and don't like fighting Real people, you can earn all that currency avoiding people and simply filpping some objectives.

[MisterMagician.8614]

25 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

since you've been gone a long timee, you may have missed the introduction of TEID-07, a new vendor in WvW who for an incredibly small amount of  WvW currency(400 badges of honor) and some gold, will sell you Stat-selectable exotic equipment that includes Celestial stats

and before you start to complain that you hate WvW, and don't like fighting Real people, you can earn all that currency avoiding people and simply filpping some objectives.

Interesting.  Now why did you go onto every post in my account and give the "confused" reaction?

[Parasite.5389]

1 minute ago, MisterMagician.8614 said:

Interesting.  Now why did you go onto every post in my account and give the "confused" reaction?

I didn't, i reacted as confused on THIS post, because it's mostly exageration; then i checked your profile to see if you're one of those proliffick complainers and left it at that

[MisterMagician.8614]

Just now, Parasite.5389 said:

I didn't, i reacted as confused on THIS post, because it's mostly exageration; then i checked your profile to see if you're one of those proliffick complainers and left it at that

No, someone has marked every post of mine, going back a half decade with the reaction.

But it's interesting that they are making the game easier.

[Parasite.5389]

Just now, MisterMagician.8614 said:

No, someone has marked every post of mine, going back a half decade with the reaction.

But it's interesting that they are making the game easier.

well don't accuse me of that just because i give you some decent advice... Kitten

[MisterMagician.8614]

5 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

well don't accuse me of that just because i give you some decent advice... Kitten

you posted right after it happened.  Is "kitten" some kind of insult?

[Sindust.7059]

2 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

and before you start to complain that you hate WvW, and don't like fighting Real people, you can earn all that currency avoiding people and simply filpping some objectives.

Just because you try to avoid other people, doesn't mean they will try avoiding you. A few weeks ago I went to wvw in the middle of the night when there was barely anyone there, and was just trying to flip farms. At some point there was a guy from another team who waited for me at the most likely objective, and if I went to another one, he went straight to it and attacked me. And when I tried running away, he chased me all the way to the base, and waited just outside of the reach of the guards for me to come out. He cost me a T6 tick as I slid lower before I could finally kill something that extended the timer.

PvP of any kind is kitten in every MMO I ever played, and I played a lot of them. GW2 is no exception.

And OP has a point. Back when I was new (near the end of LWS4), the only useful stat combination that was affordable was berserker. That's good for raids (which I was trying to get into ASAP, so it wasn't so bad in my case), and it forced me to play carefully in open world, but it was anything but easy, and I literally could not afford celestial. And crafting gear is just as expensive as buying it, so that wasn't an option either.

It has gotten easier with the gear over time, but for anyone coming from any other MMO it's still very unintuitive. Good gear doesn't just drop from bosses, or does so exceptionally rarely. And a lot of the gear that does drop, has some esoteric stat combinations that nobody in their right mind would use. The story doesn't reward enough useful gear either because it suffers from the same problem (esoteric stat combinations). The "unidentified" gear is also almost always trash, and does not allow you to fill some of the slots. And at lvl80 the problem gets worse before it gets better, because you go into LWS2 or HoT in the trash gear you had since you can't afford anything better, and you get absolutely destroyed by like 2 ticks of a ground AoE that you needed a bit longer than 1 second to notice.

The new player experience in this game is really not good. ANet should make the story award blue-yellow stat selectable gear, or make most of the rewards celestial, or at the very least berserker. And make such gear at least occasionally drop from event champions, so that people who have not had time to learn the ins and outs of the game can at least use level appropriate green celestial gear instead of 30 levels too low knight's, because the only drops they got for that slot after were magi's and shaman's.

[Sindust.7059]

5 minutes ago, MisterMagician.8614 said:

you posted right after it happened.  Is "kitten" some kind of insult?

It's auto-censorship from the forums. He said some word that is considered bad by ANet.

[Parasite.5389]

Just now, Sindust.7059 said:

It's auto-censorship from the forums. He said some word that is considered bad by ANet.

i actually just typed Kitten, i self censor

[Khlori.6209]

Kitten Christ, new player hits lvl 80, goes to HoT, can get exotics from Verdant Brink alone in no time, chest piece from Wizard's Vault, and they're ready to go.

I played this game for few years now and barely bothered with legendaries.

Would rant further but then I reminded myself how good average player is.

[Sindust.7059]

1 minute ago, Khlori.6209 said:

new player hits lvl 80, goes to HoT, can get exotics from Verdant Brink

The vendor that he needs to spend multiple days grinding masteries without a flying mount to unlock? In HoT of all places?

[MisterMagician.8614]

8 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

The vendor that he needs to spend multiple days grinding masteries without a flying mount to unlock? In HoT of all places?

Ironically, he is making the point I reiterated for the entire second half of the OP.

[Khlori.6209]

Some people when accomplishing something takes effort.

Just make petition to add Ascended armor set boxes to gem stores, we've got Hero Points already.

[Parasite.5389]

4 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

The vendor that he needs to spend multiple days grinding masteries without a flying mount to unlock? In HoT of all places?

you only need to spend 3 mastery points in the itzel line to access the vendors, even if you also include an extra point spent for Gliding basics thats only 4 points.
Act 1 of HoT has a total of 6 points from acheivements, and verdant brink has 9 insights,
exp cost is a little over 3mil, which given the amount of events, and the ~130k you get from story, should only take a few hours, not a few days

[Parasite.5389]

2 minutes ago, Khlori.6209 said:

Some people when accomplishing something takes effort.

Just make petition to add Ascended armor set boxes to gem stores, we've got Hero Points already.

Armor is already available in the WV

[Sindust.7059]

4 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

you only need to spend 3 mastery points in the itzel line to access the vendors, even if you also include an extra point spent for Gliding basics thats only 4 points.
Act 1 of HoT has a total of 6 points from acheivements, and verdant brink has 9 insights,
exp cost is a little over 3mil, which given the amount of events, and the ~130k you get from story, should only take a few hours, not a few days

I just looked it up... It's still 500 airship parts +1 gold for each slot, so still days of grinding. And that's for yellow gear, and not for all slots.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Sindust.7059

[Ashen.2907]

The game is balanced around rare gear which costs a few silver. 

[Parasite.5389]

Just now, Sindust.7059 said:

I just looked it up... It's still 500 airship parts +1 gold for each slot, so still days of grinding. And that's for yellow gear.

the item box is Rare, the armor is Exotic

[Sindust.7059]

Just now, Parasite.5389 said:

the item box is Rare, the armor is Exotic

Oh, ok, my bad. But then again: why? Isn't that just another way the game obscures gear acquisition?

[MisterMagician.8614]

8 minutes ago, Khlori.6209 said:

Some people when accomplishing something takes effort.

Just make petition to add Ascended armor set boxes to gem stores, we've got Hero Points already.

Better would be to have ascended unlock in the wardrobe, but only for the specific affix of your collected items.

Legendaries would then unlock all affixes for that one slot.

[Lucius.2140]

2 hours ago, MisterMagician.8614 said:

All of this

- The idea of just get the ascended or the legendary are expectations of someone been out of the newbie context. Not all guilds and people are like that and is better to not heard bad advice.

- Theres a normal progression to get into a competitive spot (for strikes and raids nowdays (you can try the first without them)), at release i will say was around 2 months, 1 to get to 80 and  1 more max to get exotic gear, builds and proficence on them (im not counting canging WvW currency).

- Now, an open world only core account will need to get money by weeklies and events to craft/get the exotics. Of course open world bosses can be taken in account, but im not sure if they will know about them. Overall still 1 month to get the exotics.

- Celestial gear was always difficult to get by itself, aside of character boosts. I got main and was painfull but it has the maximum number of stats possible (not necesarily good to be fair).

- The pass to ascended is always painfull, but barely anything really need it, my Raid commander (and he is heavily experienced) doesn't ask for them in the first 4 raid wings.

- Getting ascended  gear with the actual weeklies  (gold), fractals even if you dont haveto other content i will say it will be around 1-2 months max, with the possibility of getting there in 1 week because of having done weeklies and such.

- Skyscale isnt necesary but i will say that it could take you around 1 month to get normal mounts and glider (and finishing both first and second expa). Depending of the hours even getting griphon.

- Overall you can be maxed out gear and build with gryphon in around 1-4 months.

Several MMOs take more time than that.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Lucius.2140

[Parasite.5389]

Just now, Sindust.7059 said:

Oh, ok, my bad. But then again: why? Isn't that just another way the game obscures gear acquisition?

Rare containers have a higher drop rate than exotic ones, as you also have a change to drop them from airship cargo