Questions about difficulty and player culture.

[Hobo Elf]

Heya. I took the game last evening for a quick ride for the first time and while there were many little things I enjoyed (I'll list those last in case there are other new players reading) some things left me with questions better left for the experts.

First of all I think I got to level 5 which is nothing in an MMO, but I found the game's combat to be too effortless to the point where it was difficult to maintain focus. Will the game get challenging at some point? I'm not asking if it becomes harder after 15-20h or when you hit the level cap and do end game content; I want to know if it'll have a challenge in the leveling phase since that's typically the time I enjoy the most in a MMO. But I can't get into it if it's so easy that I don't really need to think about using my skills tactically.

Second question is I was looking at guild recruitments and many of the ones I saw seemed quite demanding. One guild even required that you have to be able to provide your own gameplay footage in video format for criticism. I've nothing against people who want to curate their own experience; they are free to demand a CV to join a guild if they want, but I hope there are guilds that do end game content in a more relaxed environment as well.

Otherwise I'm still on the fence with the game but found some things it did quite well. The one thing that hit me the hardest was how combat seemed like a hybrid between tab-targeting and action combat. It felt like some of best MMO combat I have played in my 20+ years of playing this genre. I don't mean mechanically as i'm still too early on to see how skills interact with each other, but just the feel of it.
Music, art direction and the stylish presentation of the game overall were very cool. If anyone else is out there and hasn't tried the game but is curious, I recommend you give it a go. It has an uncanny feel of familiar but also new that I found to be refreshing.

[Musky Demon]

- Until level 80 the game is a cake-walk. You are playing 2012 content with balance of 2023. But starting from the very first expansion, difficulty raises drastically, to the point where even story missions may cause you some problems. Every single update and content since is focused for the level 80. And since there is no typical gear-progression, only your hands & gameknowledge will make the difference. This especially true for group content aka Raids \ Strikes and why every Raid wing is still relevant to this day..

Also, Elite-specs will make your game experience a lot more dynamic ( also since core classes are not relevant anywhere outside of arena-pvp )

- You should jump into Guild Wars Discord community server. There are a lot more activity, including guild-recruting. Game allows you to be a part of up to 5 guilds \ communities at a time. No need to limit yourself ^^

[Q]

LOL someone is asking players to provide gameplay footage to "judge" if you are worthy of such guild? let me tell ya this, run away from that kind of ... guilds like immediatly, someone was pulling your leg and noticed ur a new player, i mean its so absurd to ask players for such thing.

Plenty of guilds dont require anything but just being respectful and have fun, avoid the guilds that want you to represent 100% 24/7 or forced participation in random activities, there's a reason why guilds have such requirements but personally its not "newbie friendly"

The game will get more challenging at lvl 80 and specially in the expansions, you'll have to pay attention to survive.

[mysaga]

1)
Difficulty during leveling stays on "easy mode". But if you enjoy the leveling phase for the open world exploration and queyting, rest assured that unlike in other MMORPGs this is part of the endgame content, especially since you will switch to horizontal progression (stay at level 80 and also no endless itemlevel grind) for the expansion content.
Thete are exception though, even in the base game: You may encounter "group event", and as a beginner you should take this label seriously and not solo them.

2) There should be guilds matching your intentions. Can you let us know which region (NA / EU) you are playing on?

[tatiana]

Answering your questions in turn:

- You need to take into account that the levelling system in GW2 is quite unusual. So much so, that many experienced players advise treating the Entirety of base game content like a tutorial. Once you reach level 80, you can start levelling Masteries, which require getting, and then spending mastery points in various ways. You can find some points in the world ("mastery insights"), but you will also be required to battle some world bosses, or complete time-consuming achievements.
Masteries give you new abilities and various QoL improvements. I believe the mastery system requires expansion purchases, although I 'm not sure about the small number of base game ones. Every expansion has several mastery tracks. Masteries are account-wide, so you only need to level them once.
Once you reach level 80, your skill bar changes to a Mastery skill track, with an additional 450 levels! So, depending on how you look at it, you could say levelling your character takes a ridiculously short time, or that it takes literally years! Advancing in a Mastery skill track doesn't make you any more powerful, but it shows people how much time you've spent playing :)

- Expansion content, or at least Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire content, is Considerably harder than the base game. You will need a good knowledge of the class you are playing, pick relics, traits and specialisations that suit your playstyle and your two weapons/weapon combinations of choice. Elite specialisations (trait lines), of which there is one per class in each of the first 3 expansions (none in the latest Secrets of the Obscure one) are highly recommended but not essential to complete the content. They are more powerful, but also more advanced than the "core" specs (trait lines).

- Over the years, as more MMOs came to the market, GW2 became the preferred choice of the "casual"/time-poor gaming crowd. So at least half the players I see around nowadays are not in a guild at all (no 3 letter acronym in parentheses next to the name). Dynamic events, including World Bosses, can be participated in by anyone within the area marked with an orange circle. So no need for even a formal group, never mind a guild! Which means you can take your time choosing one that suits you.

- While you are levelling up to 80, the combat will be easy. So pay attention to other features instead. Decide whether you like the following: Dynamic events; weapon swapping; level scaling; Personal Story and lore in general (personal story is from level 10, once every 10 levels, continues in expansions but the base game one is self-contained); traits and specialisations; skill point challenges; vistas; dungeons; fractals. During the initial levelling process, these features are more helpful than combat for deciding whether GW2 is the game for you.

Hope this helps!

[Teratus]

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

First of all I think I got to level 5 which is nothing in an MMO, but I found the game's combat to be too effortless to the point where it was difficult to maintain focus. Will the game get challenging at some point? I'm not asking if it becomes harder after 15-20h or when you hit the level cap and do end game content; I want to know if it'll have a challenge in the leveling phase since that's typically the time I enjoy the most in a MMO. But I can't get into it if it's so easy that I don't really need to think about using my skills tactically.

Yes it will, the game gets a pretty big difficulty spike around the first expansion and then falls off a little with further expansions but maintains some level of difficult group content, some of it in the open world but much of it instanced, Raids and Strike Missions mostly.

The problem comes largely from the core world content being power creeped a lot and not being rebalanced for all the power upgrades players have gotten over time.
Not that the core world content was ever really that hard in the first place.

A few of us long time players have been asking for a long time that the core world gets some much needed upgrades and while it has gotten some nice improvements over the years (like world boss upgrades) it's never gotten the big kind of balance update that we've been hoping for sadly.

Second question is I was looking at guild recruitments and many of the ones I saw seemed quite demanding. One guild even required that you have to be able to provide your own gameplay footage in video format for criticism. I've nothing against people who want to curate their own experience; they are free to demand a CV to join a guild if they want, but I hope there are guilds that do end game content in a more relaxed environment as well.

There are plenty of guilds out there that have little to no requirements what so ever.
Most only having some kind of rule that you'll be kicked if you're inactive for X amount of months or something which is pretty normal.

Guilds that are super strict with requirements are usually looking for very specific types of players so if you don't feel like you fit those requirements it's best to look for another guild.

Gw2 is ultimately a MMO for the casual player so most of the game does cater to those kinds of players, which makes the game very easy to get into tbh for a much wider audience of players.
This is one of the reasons Gw2 has such a friendly community as well.

Otherwise I'm still on the fence with the game but found some things it did quite well. The one thing that hit me the hardest was how combat seemed like a hybrid between tab-targeting and action combat. It felt like some of best MMO combat I have played in my 20+ years of playing this genre. I don't mean mechanically as i'm still too early on to see how skills interact with each other, but just the feel of it.
Music, art direction and the stylish presentation of the game overall were very cool. If anyone else is out there and hasn't tried the game but is curious, I recommend you give it a go. It has an uncanny feel of familiar but also new that I found to be refreshing.

Gw2 is definitely up there with the best of the best when it comes to combat imo.
Even now with the game being a decade old it's still better than a lot of other MMO's out there, hell even many open world sandbox games too.
Same can be said for Gw2's Mount System as well, easily the best in the MMO industry if you ask me.

[Hobo Elf]

Thank you all for the comprehensive answers. I look forward to seeing what the game has to offer as I get further into it.

[Nibbie]

The first 5-10 levels or so are specifically made to be super easy, I want to say they literally reduced the enemies stats even lower than they should be for those early levels. The difficulty should be more normal after that, though as mentioned it generally won't be too hard until you either get to 80 content, or do dungeons, which start unlocking at level 30 (though unless you have a premade group, those would have to be done with 80s who know what they are doing, and thus would probably be pretty easy).

[Çhïmë®øñ]

Oh i have some little extra advice for a fun to play wise thing whilest leveling. Search for "action camera" in the keybind section and try it out. It is really fun to play with. Especially since you can hold down the left mouse button and smash away on some classes. Otherwise nothing to add then, yes the Power Creep is real.

But i always enjoyed leveling new characters even if it was the 3rd of the same class.