I installed guild wars 2 free version and im lvl 20 mage now and as the story goes i just run around and unlock spawn points and do these heart quest in the areas and eventualy a boss or defend quest that takes place in the given area..i know there are jump puzzle and crafting and what not..but is there no real quest line ?? Do i just keep running around in random places on the map and seach for hearts to these dayli missions ?? Is that realy it ??
Its getting boring and old realy fast here...i can only manage 1 lvl pr day because then i sleep on my keyboard zzzz
How do i lvl fast up ?
what am i missing here ?
Am i playing the game wrong ?
Comments
I did a bit of a basic overview of the game around a year ago; still relevant. The game is designed to not cater to the basic gear grind/quest giver set-up. As a result the experience can be hit or miss in regards to having a "reason" to continue playing.
Aside from the general aspects, the usual pattern is-get to level 80-get exotic armor- do fractals and daily dungeons-get ascended gear-pursue a legendary weapon-WvW (lv 60 for F2P) or pvp on downtime. With the expansions, the added goals are usually getting legendary armor from raids and leveling mastery skills beyond level 80.
Always read map chat for when world/meta events start so you can get lots of experience and see lots of people. The events are the main leveling content and bring players together while you are on the go.
It used to be the case, that players were able to run the story line as they went,but then they "improved" the experience for new players,and gated the story progress with levels,so that the amount of content would not be overwhelming.
Seems that for the demographic Anet was aiming for,using a bundle item to feed a cow was too complicated.(Don't forget the poor Cows)
The result is that for everyone else,the starter experience might be dead boring.
But any way,if you don't like public open world events,and you prefer the boring "do 12352352 quests similar to the ones you've done 14124155 times before in every other game you've played",maybe you should look elsewhere.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
There is a main story line but they changed the way you get access to it, gated behind levels. This stops after the original game because you don't level up anymore after that in a traditional way and you have access to the story and season stories all the way through until you complete them. The hearts are considered quest also just not in a format that every other game already uses.
I prefer to do map completions myself before I do story anyway so it didn't bother me. I am a completionist at heart so that is what I prefer to do, but it is what I enjoy. Hell I still haven't even done the PoF story but have 100% complete zones and maxed out mastery for that xpac other than the griffon.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The game looks great and the world i great but around lvl 20-30 it gets burned out doing hearts and explore quest..the jump puzzle is a great thing to keep the game interesting..i wish there was more to the game than these open world RNG quest rewards.
Ofc there is dungeons...but still..
First off, try out different classes. When I first started playing gw2 during beta I was dead set on making an engineer. But when I played it for the first time, I didn't find it as fun as playing a guardian or thief. So I mained a Guardian for 2 years --> Warrior --> Revenant.
As a free player, if you want to test drive a class, first pick one --> enter pvp lobby. There you'll be given access to all skills and traits. Test your skills out on the training golems or enter into the free for all arena on the map. Once you find a class you think is the most interesting, bring it back to pve and continue.
Next, you wanna feel like you have a purpose, like what you are doing actually leads to something. And luckily that is very much the case for GW2 for a variety of reasons. For me personally, GW2 is a great game for a completionist. Press H and select the achievements tab to see what I'm talking about. If those aren't filled, you obviously haven't done it, thus you have content to do or something to aim for.
As a beginner, it is generally encouraged that you first do map completion. However, the game won't tell you to do this. You are free to think for yourself and decide what you want to do. Map completion however serves many purposes and I could honestly go down a huge list of reasons why. But I will name a few important ones:
- Unlocking waypoints. (GW2 gives players many reasons to return to old maps. Without waypoints, it'll take you much longer to reach places if you don't have a way to fast travel there)
- 100% map completion of every map will give you a legendary item you can use to craft a legendary weapon. Legendary weapons are the best weapons in the game. If you want an additional way to make one, you'll need this map completion item.
- Achievements (Achievements reward you with gold, armor, weapons, gems, titles, and other items. If you have really high achievement points, you'll also be placed on one of the leaderboards for all to see)
If you think the starting areas and a few maps around those starting areas are too easy, than welcome to MMO's! They are all easy. Also, welcome to power creep! When an MMO been out for years of course it will go through changes. Classes now, do way more damage then they ever did before when the game first launched. The expansion areas and living world maps are much harder as they should be. For me, I find soloing or duoing group content to be the most fun in terms of pve or solo speed running. Since GW2 is more skill based than gear based, I feel like I have lots of freedom to over come difficult situations with this combat system over many other MMOs.My advice for you is, explore, talk to people, join a guild, find a class you like, join world vs world, be curious, find a goal and just go for it.
You need to figure out how to get to Lion Arch and work your way from there (It has portals to different races capital city). Each races has capital city and low level zones with lots of hearts. If you ran out of hearts in sylvari starting place for example, then head to asura's zones and so on. You get the gits. And then head back doing your story whenever you are high enough ... level wise.
Bottom line is there are enough zones for you to hop around to level. When you work on it this way, it will start to gravitate you towards orr zones where your vanilla story line will end.
It's not hard, bottom line is there is nothing special to heart. It's just a modified rebrand of old time npc's quests. So yah ... it actually can get boring. So, there isn't anything weird for you to actually ... "hey, isn't this feels and looks like ..."
I will state the obvious but more to illuminate its point.
Video games are an entertainment instrument that you engage in by choice. It is your responsibility to cease engaging in said activity once it becomes boring.
You dont want to be the guy who says 'in my free time I went out of my way to be bored'
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
if you are playing the game and not liking it......you probably have your answer.
And trust me when I say, "You are doing it wrong" was the fanboy mantra when this game released and a lot of people were saying "WTF?!?!?!"
I just tried it again when I tried to get a friend to start playing, but ended up decided to buy him another game to play with me, because I got on my level 80 and was just dying repeatedly trying to get to many of those Hero Point objectives. HoT feels like if chess was made into an MMORPG.
It's absolutely not fun playing on those maps, so the buck stops there for me. I moved on, and I didn't buy PoFire "just in case" like I did with HoT. If I hadn't just pre-ordered on a whim and waited for reviews, I could have saved myself some money.
I'd play through the base content, cause it's free, and then I'd think long and hard (and watch a lot of YouTube videos, streamers on Twitch, etc. to see if you can even stomach the content in the expansions).
A day or so ago, in another thread, while criticizing everything about ESO, you specifically compared it to GW2 and proceeded to bestow high praise on GW2 talking about how great and dynamic GW2s questing is and how you would highly recommend it to new players. Yet here you are, just a day or so later, talking about GW2s maps being absolute cancer, how absolutely not fun playing through its maps is, and criticizing it to the point of moving on stating that had you not pre-ordered it on a whim and waited for reviews, you could have saved some money.
You, furthermore, end your post by suggesting to the OP to just play through the content simply because 'its free" and to think long and hard while researching expansion videos to see if the OP can "even stomach" the content.
I would not be highlighting the above if your posts were not so astoundingly hypocritical that it simply boggles the mind. It is also deserving mention because you even managed to be quite condescending to a fellow poster while doing so. I would strongly suggest that you exert a bit more integrity in your future posts so as not to waste your peer posters time acknowledging and responding to your posts.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
The heart quests were added late in development because some people got confused since there were no quests in the game, just do the ones that seems fun to you. You can see that less work were put into them then the DEs and the only reason to do them all is to get 100% completion.
The fastest way to level is by playing grouped with a few other players, also, crafting can give you some easy and fast levels.
You go and do stuff, get exp and loot for it, go and do more stuff, get more exp and loot for it.
That's every MMO summed up.
But, yes, exploring maps is a good start, see the world, experience it. If that is not your flavor, do your personal story.
At 35, hit a dungeon.
Maybe do PvP, or hop over to the WvW.
Craft a bit (Yes crafting in GW2 is viable at lower levels and you can make your own gear as you level up.
Once you have opened up enough of the maps, you can do World Bosses, maybe venture into an expansion.
GW2 gives you a story, your Personal Story, but it does not hold your hand for everything to do, you chose where to go, and what you want to do next.
Just a heads up..
Heart of Thorns Expansion, was really a drastic change from the base game, it was built with vertical open world maps, or put another way, imagine a whole Zone in GW2 that is one huge jumping puzzle, filled with very difficult mobs. Now imagine things keep getting more and more complex as you progress though the 4 maps, till Tangled Depth, which is a whole maps of twisting caverns that overlap each other. Couple that with entire sections of the map are locked off unless you completed long drawn out dynamic events, so even if you can get to the map areas, you still can't get in to complete the POI, Heart, or HP. To some that sounds like an awesome game, a true step up in challenge, and testing their platforming and teamwork skills as players, and make no mistake, to those that like that kind of content, HoT maps delivered in aces.
However, because it was so well done, and very direct at who it was designed for, anyone else, or any other kind of player, well, the whole expansion became one massive turn off.
As such, Due to massive disparity of game play between the Core and HoT, a player can both Love and hate GW2 at the same time.
In the case with the poster you quoted, they loved core and hated HoT, which is not at all uncommon, in fact, their old forums were riddled with pretty much hate for the expansion, so much so, they had made several revisions to "tone down" the content.
So keep that in mind when people talk about GW2, the Expansions are very different from Core and from each other.So players can legit love one and hate another, and there would be no counteraction or hypocrisy involved.
IMHO, Path of Fire, was a good between the two, and in reality should have been GW2's first expansion, a more ease into harder tier of PvE environments, I mean, it feels like a huge step down from how difficult HoT is, but it was a solid step up from Core maps, with more platforming features, harder mobs with more challenging attack and defense abilities.
Just wanted to put that out and explain how some people can both love and hate GW2 at the same time.