Why New Players STRUGGLE Sticking With Guild Wars 2

Like top comment said,they fail to find goals.everything good about gw2 is also everything bad.gw2 is like second life and majority need clear goals. second reason is wiki requirement for everything.

im new-2 weeks, i came from WoW. yes, it is not free to play. I am lvl 80 now and I need to buy the upgrades to get more stuff. Yes, its more of a trial. But, I am hooked. im leaving wow for gw2 and am waiting to buy the expansions as soon as i can. probably Santa brings it. YES, lack of directions. it's not as hard as eve online to learn, but its not as easy as WoW was to learn. YES, the UI is not intuitive.

I haven't played in quite a while and some buddies just got back into it so I decided to download it and give it another go.
I log into my 80s and I have 6-7 bag slots and my inventory is entirely full of little knickknacks lol I have mail from 11 years ago keeping me from getting new messages and I have no space to hold anything else.
I check the bank and it is only ~30 slots and full of other knickknacks. Useable items etc. I dunno what is worth keeping. Too much to go through and not enough storage were the main reason I left again. I can't justify spending ~75 bucks to catch up on all the expansions(not counting stories etc) and then more importantly spend hours going through all the gizmos and whatnots I collected. I just keep logging in thinking I'll buy the expansions, seeing my bags 100% full and logging back out.

My main problem as a new player is the lack of communication with players. I lost count of how many times i asked for help or tried to chat with someone only to be completely ignored. Even now that i'm in a guild, players barely talk with each other.

Same Here. I Play but i dont know what im playing. Gear,Talents,Rotation,dont know nothing. I did not uninstal yet but im Close. Game ist great but....

To me it's clearly.. One point that makes GW2 special.. That you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. At any time. And get things for everything. It's the most "MMO" MMO to me. It feels free, there are people everywhere, you can get things everywhere, you are free.

But you are maybe.. Too free. You have to find your own aim. If you are used to quests, you only see the hearts. And they don't really tell a story, they feel pretty underwhelming. It can be hard to see the special things of the game.. The depth of the story. And the story IS deep.. Although the first campaign and personal story is.. Rather weak.
And at some time people have to find their next aim. And then the next one. This can be a bit hard. But as I said.. Is a speciality of GW2. But you have to get into it. And there is so much of possibilities it can be very overwhelming. And when you try some content it partly is even more overwhelming.
And uuh. I say.. Another thing is.. The player base is too experienced. If you experience the game as a new player you only see people rushing through things. You never seem to see people just enjoying, don't know what they are doing.. You don't get to know new people that are experiencing.. Most people use the game as kind of work already. I played the game since 2016 with breaks and I didn't meet a single person that I got to know better. You know, you can say about WoW (classic as much as retail) whatever you want, but there I found a lot of people. I never found a way for that in GW2. Sure you can actively join a guild and be forced into teamspeak or discord or something. But I don't want to talk to people. I want to write. People are very nice in GW2, a very friendly community. But when it comes to get to know people it's hard and the game doesn't help you at all. So new people also have no people that hold them in the game. No friends for all the experience there could be. GW2 has a very strong fan community. But they are all experienced. And all fastly bound together.

Oh and one last thing. In the beginning the games throws abilities at you in just a few minutes. You get no time to get to know the depth of your abilities and then everyone is just spamming and spamming isn't fun, if you don't know what you are even doing. The learning curve of GW2 is immensely steep in the beginning.

They left because of horrible game optimisation and Anet didnt bother to update the graphics or game engine. People got bored because their game mode didn't get updates.

My reason to potentially stop is that there are no oceanic/asian servers so my piing is always fucked.

It shows a lot of stuff early on for new players that you can’t use and isn’t relevant. And the free account is definitely a trial. Cripple ware is another term.

The lack of a queue system like ffxiv makes it extremely intimidating to get into strikes, fractals, etc.

its a trash game that uses grind to force you to spend more money than the almost $200 you spend to get the game and its expansions for functionality. "you can play however you want" is a lie. if you don't play the meta, then you won't be able to go do things like raids, strikes, or pvp/wvw. playing meta requires regularly spending more money to keep your spec and gear up to meta. legendary equipment requires over a year of collections, grinding, resources, and likely close to $100 real money for what amounts to a cosmetic. getting to 80 is easy, after that unless you have 8+ hours a day and $50/month to keep up you are just going to end up hating life and wasting all your time and resources chasing..... cosmetics.

You will not read this. But the main reason why I left this game was I couldn't keep up with my friends. The events was very taxing on my friendships. They are fast learners and this game requires a lot of knowledge about essentially every aspect of the game. I couldn't stay alive long enough to level up by the time I was done with level 80 my friends was so far ahead of me that I quit the discord. They contacted me via email asking why. I just responded I am not going to be "last" in everything. A game is there to be enjoyed not to feel bad all the time. There is really no point for any person to even try playing this type of game. The progression is targeted at people willing to spend real world money on things like flying turtles that allow them to taxi friends around to get to rewards faster. That is pay to win. Yes you can get your own taxi turtle but by the time you get one you really don't need it. I loved Eve online and played it for many years and had to stop. I find guild wars more complicated then eve. Nice thing about eve is you can naturally progress build friendships and enjoy the game. Guild wars 2 I regret touching the game.

I've tried the game several times now. The leveling is rough and once you do get to max level the gearing and build crafting is just not intuitive at all to me and just doesn't click.

What I liked most from GW2 is the open world. I enjoyed exploring the map and getting lost.

Unfortunately, it was ruined with HoT. The zones were extremely hard to navigate, which normally I wouldn't mind, but the enemies too strong and almost always are in a group.

Unlocking waypoints and hero/mastery points became frustrating to do alone and now you have to wait for a train instead. Problem is, a lot of them have Skyscales and I couldn't keep up with my Raptor and Glider.

They took my mount and want me to buy an expansion to get it back, look I want to level, I put money in games that are worthy, but I don't like the hey here a mount for 2 levels now buy the game if you don't want to walk everywhere. Give me my free 1st mount back and I'll keep playing. who knows maybe I'll drop $100 when a get to lvl 80 with a mount!!!

My issue as a returning player.
I originally started GW2 and bought some expansions, immediately used my 2 lvl 80 boosts and quit the game as I was underpowered, inexperienced and had no sense of direction.

Two weeks ago, I started playing again. I deleted all my low level characters and crrated new ones, allowing me to find a feel for what I want to play as. Suprisingly, I ended up with a warrior which I took from 15 to 36 yesterday, purely by just following the story. It's dual wielding 1h axes and a 2h sword.

I checked your guides as well as others for leveling specific guides which cover from the base up, and not lvl 80 / endgame guides. I found a nice guild on EU and this is where I found myself settled and playing now.

It's interesting that every point you bring up is something I find in favour of GW2 over other MMOs. Speaking as someone going through the new player experience right now, I don't really see the 10 years of content as something to "catch up" on since progression is horizontal - instead of giving me a higher ladder to climb, I see it more as an ever-expanding room of toys to play with at my discretion. No other MMO I've played feels that way, it makes being a new player so damn fun because I can really pick what I want to do and chip away at my own goals over time.

the dead game mentality came from the veterans that saw the massive downfall of players after hearts of thorns expansion was released. new players will think the game is thriving when its been in a steady decline for years. also, remember that time you tried to troll me and ended up getting body slammed in chat by me?

People quit because its an extremely boring game. Combat is shallow and pvp is trash. Aesthetics are dull, maps are either annoying or bland. You can keep projecting reasons why new players are too stupid to like the game but the truth is that it's just boring

For a fighting game player, even 100 active players is A LOT.

The reason I probably wont be returning to gw2 for awhile is because of the predatory marketing of the game. Ik they need to make $ but jesus, the cash store is really invasive. Buying a game (100$) with expansions, + new expansion (+50$), and yet still they want you to buy bank slots, bag slots, etc.

How much does a guy have to spend to unlock all the needless "necessities" that are required to make up for the shortcomings built into the game by design?

Theres no reason they need to make the bank slots paywalled lol.


And YES ik you can pay for them with gold earned in game, but i can do math and ik the value of my time.

30g/hour = avg grind in expansion zones

Gem to gold conversion rate = trash

10 irl dollars = 800 gems

Which equals roughly 8-10 hours of farming.

At 30g/hour thats essentially 1$ an hour to farm in this game.

My biggest issue was that I was lost in the lore. I had no idea what happened, happens or who the main characters are or were. Like if I came in the middle of a DnD session

Althought they are vastly diffrernt in alot of aspect i find alot of similarities of ffxiv in guild wars 2

What I don't like about GW2 is all the flashyness that take a hit to the eye, and the story centered on one-dimensional threats like forces of nature or demons.

I quit playing because I could never fully understand the combat

Pve good pvp stupid and you die 1 sec if you tank

I stopped playing mainly because I wanted to get into raiding, but I always got anxious since I didn't want to mess up, since raiding is hardcore in GW2. The think that kept me playing for a while was the story, and a few strike missions. I did fractals every once in a while but I also got anxious in those. So when I finished the expansion stories, I was just logging in everyday to do some daily strike missions and at some point just stopped logging in. Haven't checked out SotO yet, but I'll probably wait on that.

The most offputing thing about gw2 are MASTERY POINTS plain and simple

Lack of direction,, shallow and messy combat system, too many currencies for anything, grindy as hell, horizontal progression, not a really interactive world, so avant-garde in the class design that kills immersion etc etc.

For all the things the games does great, it also does atrocious at others.

Wrong on EVERY level. Here's why we become disappointed and quit your game. Your community is horrific! Rather the LACK of community. Guilds recruit aggressively recruit with the veiled lie of "you aren't just another number" but that's exactly what you are. Some faceless husk in a clique who basically ignore you if you aren't doing higher top end content. Anyone on the fence about this game, as being one of those new player who quit, save time and steer FAR away from this one.

The biggest problem for new players is that they characters doesnt have any specific role. There are no roles like tanks, healers or dps. On gw2 only dps is possible. Stat like toughness should be deleted because this stat is useless and make confusion on new player mind when he get here from other MMO.

I tried this game for 3 times. it is make me sleepy, i really want to hooked to the game fashion and mount looks really good

i played 70-80 hours and barely know what im doing xD useing level skips and leveling a character myself xD

I need a better keyboard and mouse time to upgrade 😅

As a 1 week new player, I quit the game (again). I really tried to like this game, but I just can’t. Overwhelming features and lack of direction.

I have HoT expansion, and boost my toon because they said the game gets interesting in 80, and i still can’t like this game. Oh well, I’m going back home to FF14

star wars the old republic feems kinda the same with this game, especially with the concept of "paying real money to experience 40% of the game", but SWTOR's story quests is kinda too much and all i want is skip the damn cutscenes

Even the starting zones have more content than wow.i played wow for many years alst bdo and eso i can honestly say gw2 has more content and its more fun than any other mmorpg out there

To be fair, it is actually unfair to attempt to compare GW2's leveling experience with other games' grind to max level. Anet has actually gone to considerable effort to make the leveling experience an interesting and fun part of the journey, and not a "grind" to max level, where people from other games might have the mistaken opinion that max level is where the "fun" finally starts.

Btw, a little bit sad that you didnt mention, that you can buy bag slots with gold too ;p not just real money.
I think I ve got my 1st 10k gems via gold transfers ;p

The two reasons I keep quitting are that I despise having to run through two separate expansions with every character I make, grinding Hero Points + gated systems for near-required progression (you can NOT farm well in either of the first two expac zones without utilizing mounts/the systems from the forest) and the fact that despite loving multiple professions, nothing feels right

As a new player, looking ahead I see the lack of vertical progression in the game giving this game a more apparent expiration date than other MMO's where I'm certain I'll reach the limit of achievable power on the class(es) I care about, and doing the content I care to, then not logging into the game for a few years before catching up again on whatever progress. It's cool that they didn't want vertical progression to be different than WoW, but I really think the game is missing it.

Cuz the edngame goals are meh. After getting the weapons and armor to ascended tier, i had no goal in mind. I am not that much about cosmetics.

This game is very similar to Albion online

Long story short one of the main reasons that players leave is because of the steep learning curve. You cannot button smash your way to victory in GW2.

I just think the world, characters and atmosphere look boring, atleast in the new player areas.
It's a shame because on paper it should be my favourite MMO, but it never really clicked with me.
Which is weird, because I can play very janky games as long as I like the theme (hell, Pathologic 1 is one of my favourite games of all time, I loved D&D online and LOTRO, and those games are far from perfect).

why people leave... It is overwhelming... so much stuff to do, and everything cost too much, while doing stuff in game rewards nothing in gold.

My reasons for not playing is the game just didnt feel very good. The ui was pretty awful. I had literally no attachement to anything that was happening in the game. I did enjoy the combat to an extent though. The world was pretty bad imo.

When you see people flying everywhere and you are just walking...

My cousin got frustrated with the game cause the rewards he got for doing Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon didn't gave him loot that fit his class. He complained that it sucks and compared it to other MMO's where you get usable gear after doing instanced group content. I told him that the reward system in the game are like that and endgame gear are the ones you need to craft. And that I told him that all dungeon content are for the purpose of leveling up rather than for grinding loot. He was level still level 30 at that time.

That was the time I learned and realized that Guild Wars 2's level content isn't really extrinsically rewarding at all. So, players who got used to be rewarded for gears that fit their classes as they level up in other MMOs will find it very difficult to continue playing the game solely because they find that the reward for the effort they have produced isn't sufficient, useful, or is just lacklustre.

Also, one of the reasons why my cousin also left is because he realized halfway that GW2's free to play is just a demo. And for him to get access to the mounts I have, he needed to expend money, which back then he didn't have enough budget to spend. He also realized that even if he pushed through level 80. By not expending money, he'll have a tedious time participating in events. Wasting his effort that he did for leveling up. So yeah... they should've just made GW2 buy to play from the start.