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Guild Wars 2 | Playing For The Long Game | MMORPG
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Guild Wars 2 | Playing For The Long Game | MMORPG
It can be slow going in Heart of Thorns, but you'll get there eventually, as Jason optimistically points out this week.
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For me, one of the highlights has been working on unlocking my class elite specialization weapon- The Bo staff, which is an awesome looking gold themed staff for the Daredevil requires quite a bit of work. But what a interesting set of goals it throws at you. Among the things you have to do is unlock stealth gliding, purchase a weapon after beating the final boss in the 4th map, collect various items, buy things from vendors using Crystalline Ore, complete a map 100% and more.
I'm 10/14 now and it's been really really fantastic. After this I am going to work on the weapon for Reaper and Druid.
These are examples of solo-enabled content that asks you to do a wide array of different forms of gameplay and content. This journey is not even 1/10 of that of a legendary weapon journey, but I feel it's more realistic for most gamers and I feel it invokes a lesser feeling of grind and more a feeling of seeking different and varied objectives.
I would love to see aquirsation methods like this- Collection type achievement gathering hunts for other things. It would be fun to go on a 50-100 hour journey towards Ascended Armor in this manner instead of crafting it like we currently do (or doing fractals).
As for Mastery, I want to see a smoother curve. If we look at the way we gain Rank in WvW it gives us a really steady pace of rank upgrades. I think ArenaNet should think of new Masteries- Gliding in the old world, double jump, discount with various npcs, access to other forms of nodes in your home instance, and so on.
Also, I think the UI needs improvement. I noticed some new players had forgotten to rank-up their mastery. When you get a new mastery level you have to pick a new one- or all your mastery xp goes to waste. I think some people didn't knew that.
Difficulty wise; Heart of Thorns is much more difficult than Silverwaste and any other open world content. I think it starts out really difficult. I was running around on empty maps as the megaserver didnt put me with many people, and that made it hard to get stuff done. IGN seemed to have a similar experience in their review. It took me... I want to say a good 5-10 hours before I had unlocked gliding, upward drift and mushroom jumping (the 3 essential mastery unlocks), and then it started to click. thankfully:)
HoT is such a stark contrast to the old world. In the old world the game doesn't ask much of you. In HoT its almost like dark souls. When I ran with my berserker for the first time, even regular mobs would take me down. We're used to soloing champions in the main game, so it was such a massive difference when a group of pocket raptors would near instantly kill you.
To everyone that's having fun, congratulations.
It was fine going to each area, doing the quests/tasks and the area's goals. Its the only thing one really has to do.
Trying to do a dungeon, go to dungeon entrance, click the group forming stone, join a group, immediatly get removed, join another get removed and on and on and on, no reason given.
So alas i have never got to do a dungeon in that game. Fractals, dont know about these but sounds like its also group based so you can forget these too. This just leaves PvP (i dont do this side of games) and quests/story/area tasks and world raid boss's.
Once you have done all this, theres not really any point continueing. I am in a guild but it was quiet and not many spoke or did much anyways. I know one can join upto 5 guilds but why? they have stipulations that you must represent their guild at all times else you risk getting removed.
So lvl 80 (achieved), quests and tasks in each area zone (achieved) not much else to warrant a pricetag for HoT for what 2 new area zones (is it). Thanks but hmmm i will pass due to boredom and no community spirit to keep people there.
I played GW2 (in the free mode version). However i find it difficult to bring myself to purchase Heart of Thorns expansion due to the games dullness.
It was fine going to each area, doing the quests/tasks and the area's goals. Its the only thing one really has to do.
Trying to do a dungeon, go to dungeon entrance, click the group forming stone, join a group, immediatly get removed, join another get removed and on and on and on, no reason given.
So alas i have never got to do a dungeon in that game. Fractals, dont know about these but sounds like its also group based so you can forget these too. This just leaves PvP (i dont do this side of games) and quests/story/area tasks and world raid boss's.
Once you have done all this, theres not really any point continueing. I am in a guild but it was quiet and not many spoke or did much anyways. I know one can join upto 5 guilds but why? they have stipulations that you must represent their guild at all times else you risk getting removed.
So lvl 80 (achieved), quests and tasks in each area zone (achieved) not much else to warrant a pricetag for HoT for what 2 new area zones (is it). Thanks but hmmm i will pass due to boredom and no community spirit to keep people there.
It sounds like the reason why your not liking it, is because of the community, rather then game mechanics. You might have been kicked from the dungeon group because of your lvl. The first dungeon is lvl 30 to do the story. The exploreble version is 35+, but most groups want lvl 80 people to insure a quick run through.
Just create your own group, and advertise. As for your guild, just join an active guild. If your not sure what to do next, just press H and go to the achievements tab. Theres a shit ton to do. HOT will give you even more options and things to do. The elite specs will change the way you would normally play your class. There are actually 4 new maps. All 4 are huge maps with fights happening everywhere.
There are raids, with more coming soon. The entire living story series to play through, the mastery system to master, and lots more. Like with any MMO or game for that matter, you gotta have goals for yourself. Instead of playing the game and having everything handed and explained to you, do legit research if your unsure. Or join an active guild with team speak and ask them questions. If you don't wanna do anything i just said, then I guess GW2 or mmo's are just not for you man. But there are alot of nice single player games you could try out and play.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
To be honest i stopped playing GW2 about 2 weeks after HoT release, between some decisions for the devs (ripping guild bonuses and stucking them in the guild halls, nerfing gold gain across the board, etc), the notion of grinding for almost anything related to HoT, WvW maps basically empty, i just stoped finding reasons to login. Will i ever return to it? possibly but it will take time.
To everyone that's having fun, congratulations.
wvw maps are really active again atm