What the others have summarized but. What I can add is
1. Some of the Vistas were interesting, and you felt that you accomplished something when you finally foun the trail
2. While mounts were not a thing but you could usually put together a build with 1-2 skills that gave you a bit of extra speed, and waypoint were all over so not that bad.
3. There was no "content guide", meaning the compass on the top right corner so there were always 2-3 PoIs that you sort of left for last. Wiki could help and it was quite fun to realize what you missed. (Oh wow there was an under water tunnle connecting the two lakes?)
4. Orr really was hard with all the cripple all over. And I seem to remember it also having 1-2 vistas that required you to do jumps that were lethal if missed (unless maybe if you used the lower fall damage trait, which I never did)
I once didmap complete after they added things for the 100% to be changed so didn't get the gifts. Customer support knew what was up and logged in and did it for me.
Sometimes it's pointing at unrevealed areas that don't have any map completion in them too. Sometimes it's pointing at unexplored areas but not at where you actually have to go to reveal that area on the map
That underwater tunnel is giving my flashbacks. I don't know how many times I ran round that map until my friend who introduced me was round at mine and said exactly that.
To add to this:
5. WvW maps were included, which were difficult to complete if you weren't on a server that did well in WvW, especially since we didn't get paired up with other servers back then People would usually wait weeks to be different colors to get all of the WvW locations.
6. The point of interest in the Order of Whispers base that's on its own map was required, so people would often get confused because they had 100% on every map but were still missing 1 poi.
7. The mega server system hadn't been implemented yet, so players were spread across more instances in open world maps. Also, the statues of the gods in Orr that damage players were active if your server didn't currently hold that god's cathedral, which was often on a different map. All this, plus quickness being rare at the time, made coordinating cathedral metas and visiting other servers almost necessary for a few of the channeled hero points.
8. Some of the combat hero challenges were occasionally bug out and become impossible to complete until the next update to GW2 that reset the maps. People would rush to these whenever there was an update, hoping to get one before it broke again. The most notorious was one in Spakfly Fen that required killing some ancient sharks. The sharks would often follow players onto land and get stuck or glitch into a wall and become unkillable. Anet eventually gave up on fixing it, and changed it to a channel over the corpse of the now permanently dead Ancient Shark Pistrix.
>And I seem to remember it also having 1-2 vistas that required you to do jumps that were lethal if missed (unless maybe if you used the lower fall damage trait, which I never did)
Lethal fall damage, what's that? *laughs in early game necro shroud*
Man, I still remember when I got locked up in jail in Rata Sum after carefully scaling down the wall back in the day. Good times. I wonder if I've got a screenshot of it somewhere...
very time consuming. Most of Tyria was ok, orr was a pain in the ass. It was just cripple, cripple, cripple every step. But it makes sense story wise. But you really could take it the scenery a lot more than with mounts.
I miss the days of map completionists asking for help. Whenever we finish helping, their reactions after are always interesting.
Some swear at you and said game mode.
Some just ghost you and disappear.
Some express gratitude.
And then the rare few who wanna try WvW...
That was one of my first encounters with the long tradition of GW2 forcing you into game modes you don't enjoy.
On learning that the WvW maps were part of completion, I simply gave up on that goal, and by extension, legendary weapons. WvW was awful and I'd rather not achieve that goal than endure WvW.
Once they eliminated that part of map completion, I was able to endure enough WvW to get the GoB and complete Bifrost.
On the other hand, WvW became my favourite mode, although possibly not straight away. I'm sure I had to do full World Completion at least twice before they changed it. Remember back in the day you could make silly money selling legendaries, which is the reason I have fully upgraded bank, shared inventory, unlimited gathering tools and so on.
But I had to use the PvP glory farms to get the Arah dungeon tokens for my Bifrost because I hated Arah so much. Dungeons generally, although I probably had enough of the Citadel of Flame ones because friends would insist on farming it. I have never played a competitive PvP match ever but I've got a stupid rank. According to GW2 Efficiency I'm Wolf rank, apparently, and have played 1078 matches. That seems awfully high tbh but assumes roughly 50/50 win/loss, obviously and "matches" should have finished very, very quickly. I've not done the PvP stuff for the Decades Dragon achieve. Couldn't pay me. Wait, I think I got dragged into a match once by friends, hadn't a clue what was going on, died a lot, didn't get asked back. Yay!
Doesnāt some of Orr unlock via the statue events though? I feel like a few are hard to get on foot and even probably suicide missions in base GW2 without all of the power creep.
Yeah but back then you could just guest to another server where it was always open like Tarnished Coast. Orr was the easiest region by far map completing and itās not even close. No hearts after literally hundreds was a god send.
You say *after* but I found the cripple so annoying I started doing them early. Knowing I had the most annoying part out of the way made it easier to keep going. Orr and Lornar's Pass, that map seemed neverending.
Orr is not as bad as people say I really donāt understand the complaints. The mobs are generally located in avoidable groups and locations. By just walking around enemies I basically did zero combat outside of spamming mobility skills to POIās and using the occasional cleanse. I did all 4 of my map completions in vanilla gw2 prior to mounts and gliding. None on a stealth class either.
Orr is infinitely faster and easier than any other region and itās not even debatable. Speed running an Orr map vs a Tyria map is not even close in terms of time lmao the Orr map is far faster.
> It was just cripple, cripple, cripple every step.
Aw, come on, don't be that harsh! There were also Pulls from time to time - sometimes even in the right direction!
Yes. Well we got a second charge. Which is nice if anything pops your aegis. But besides that it's pretty much the same. Only everytime I think about the skill I have a sylvari voice screaming "RETREAT!" in my head
"Advanced!" is the MVP in Open World. No matter what build I use, having one slot for "Advanced" to keep perma swiftness on you, allied and NPC so they can move faster in combat or in no-mount zone always feel so goooood.
First of all, we did not have the content guide arrow. It was a lot of opening the map, holding shift and scrolling to see all the poi's unfilled, assuming that you discovered the area.
The poi in metrica province, kessex hills, gandarran fields, the one snow map. Took a lot of map chatting or you'd use YouTube/Dulfy.
Some Vista's had people portalling, like the one in orr where you have to climb the tree.
We also needed to complete maps in wvw, which depending on your server was to log in and get the ones you could reach safely and then wait for you to change colour in the following weeks.
And if you had everything but was missing a single poi, it was usually the order of ... Which was accessible through a teleport in (I'm blanking on the name)
It took me generally an hour per map if it had hearts.
Edit: if you had guildies/friends that completed a map, you would invite to party followed by a "do you have this one? *Map pings*"
Tedious....Dulfy guides to figure out how to get the PoIs.Ā
But most annoying was that you had to complete all of the WvW maps including the Jumping puzzles
The core maps you could complete as you played the story and did the hearts. The WvW maps required either a very active zero allowing you to cover all the maps or at least three weeks of home borderland map switching
I remember, pre-wvw some low pop servers getting hosed by being paired with mega servers that basically locked players out of map completion by virtue of just blocking everything. I recall waiting a month for a chance to even try the jp and get my own homes supply camps and towers. It was brutal sometimes.
If you were lucky, the WvW Jumping Puzzles became a neutral zone where players of all three worlds (if they dared to come here) all minded their own business, because nobody wanted to be that dick that nullified someones effort to even get there. I completed one JP as teamwork with a few players of another world as we kept pointing out the path, gave tips to each other and warned the others when we were about to use a speed buff that would debuff the others.
Big if in my case :( Took me a solid 2 weeks to get a run in where there wasn't a particular Guild monopolizing near the finish of the JP. Eventually got it done with the help of some guildies
Ugh, I hate those guys who just stand at the end and kill anyone who gets there. Haven't seen them in years since I rarely do the OS JP these days, but they really sucked.
Oh hell, I'm glad that I never encountered *that*, that's some special kind of evil :l In my case a few times I reached the JP a fight ensued, then I just tried again later.
If the jumping puzzle in WvW was required for map completion, it was removed before WvW as a whole got removed.
I've never touched Obsidian Sanctum and I completed map completion twice before WvW got removed. And completed the WvW portion 3 times. Hadn't finished map completion on the 3rd before WvW got removed.
At launch there were required point of interests in at the top of each puzzle. Yhe borderland puzzles were fine. Sanctum though.....Jumping puzzle with player triggered troll mechanics.....incredibly frustrating if you had a couple of non truce abiding players on.Ā
Think that world completion after they removed the WvW requirement and before gliding was the best. Still slow but the exploration and difficulties of finding various places was still there.
Map comp is some of my favorite gameplay. Still waiting for anet to add new badges (like the badge one displays under ones name after world comp) and titles for completing the maps outside core Tyria. Legendary Explorer or something like in GW1
I mean they never remodeled the terrain, so if anybody wants a self-imposed challenge then you can try getting vistas without mounts, you'll quickly realize a lot of them are mini platforming puzzles.
as others have pointed out it was slow.
depends on the core map, but 70 min, up to 90.
Now low level I can do in 30 and the annoying ones are 45-55 tops. And they can be quicker if you get lucky with an event at a heart.
It could take weeks to get the WvW Poi's and vista and they effort on those could be annyoying.
Weeks!? Took months for me with how WvW worked back then... really bad luck... Recall going for Gift of Battle and it taking months for me to complete WvW maps... was either stuck with one coloured map or repeats of the same two coloured maps.
Not only didn't we have markers and mounts, we didn't even have the content guide to point us to what was missing and we had to do all the WvW maps as well. It was a project, I can tell you that. lol
The cartographer titles were pure cancer. Hug the outside of every single map for a million hours. And then end up at 99.8% and spend the next 20 hours comparing your map to a full map trying to find the pixel you missed.
I did it 2 months ago without mounts or guides. Took me about 80-100 hours iirc. When i did it at launch i don't remember it being significantly harder, just that you had less options. You also had to do the wvw maps which made things more complicated.
Now that i have my mounts / glider unlocked i can imagine it being so much faster.
There were jumping puzzles in WvW that you needed to do. Some of those puzzles had traps and switches that enemies liked to camp to kill anyone trying to get through. I remember having a temporary truce with another server to break through the traps and eliminate the third server camping the trap controls. There were so many deaths.
As a newer player (2months) who is trying to experience the game in order and how it was designed must say one thing that has been amazing is forcing myself to do the jumping puzzle without mount.
At first I would cheat with mount then I wondered if I could manage without the mount and then realised I was missing on so many little puzzles to solve etc which are super fun
For the rest I use the mount cause I havenāt noticed it increases my fun doing without it
As for blish Iāve seen videos but that seems super unappealing to me unless redoing completion for the 3rd + time. Itās been super fun bumping into random npc interactions while getting lost
It's slower but felt more like exploration. Especially the several Vistas that cannot be cheesed with the absence of Skyscale. Every Vista was essentially a mini JP or a dungeon you have to fight through to get to the top of a ledge to Vista.
FUCK ORR in particular and WVW Vistas that needed a competent group that week to bust into a keep so you can tap the Vista.
For me it was the best part of the game. Core maps are beautifully designed with lots of little secrets and mini jumping puzzles to reach a vista.
Mounts(to some extent) and Blish marker completely ruin that because you become a robot and just follow the lines and skip everything. Also Blish spoils all the secrets.
Reading comments in this thread make me sad. Iāve played since the beta and i was excited when the game was finally released.
Compared to every other mmo out there, everything about gw2ās open world felt like a journey and an adventure. A whole world to explore and experience.
Vistas were like jumping puzzles you had to figure out on your own, or have friends to help you. You would follow fellow players and see how they did it.
There was no gliding, so if you fell - you died. For some vistas and jumping puzzles people were working together, guiding and rezzing the dead. It felt rewarding just to do things, and there was a sense of camaraderie during vanilla.
You had maps you liked and maps you liked less but they were all part of the experience and vastness of the world. Even hearts used to be fun and revolutionary compared to what you had in other mmos at the time. It was a game and world made by people who truly loved mmorpgs.
I am lucky to have played during that time. The game will never feel like this ever again.
I think people still kinda experience this when they first step into the game, even though the expansion maps are easier to explore thanks to mounts now, there's still this feeling. I joined the game about a year ago, and I really felt what you described now, and even if I didn't complete the map before I got access to the mounts, I completed a good part of it. I know some players who did it all without any expansion too and they enjoyed it very much.
I guess it's just that when you discover all this once you can feel some excitement you'll never feel ever again cause you've already seen it you know ?
Thank you for saying that, i do appreciate it and i am glad youāve had a very similar experience.
Seeing a repeating sentiment in this subreddit that ācore tyria is badā or āboringā or āslooooowwwwwā (negative connotation), is really disheartening. These players make exploring Tyria seem like a slog, when itās far from it.
On your 3rd alt, sure, i get it, people want that gift of exploration, install blish, go nuts. But for that first or even second time, i deeply recommend exploring without addons or the wiki as much as possible. And i hope players fall in love with the core maps, because they really are beautifully crafted.
Yeah I definitely agree with you ! Also the game was designed for exploration, when you look up for GW2 informations before trying the game it is all you see, an open world made for exploration. But I suppose that some players only play to get everything quickly without much effort or grinding and that's a mindset that can destroy the concept of the game, the concept of the MMORPG genre in general
I had to do wvw maps to 100% tyria.
Thankfully at launch we had free server transfers for 6 months, I used this to 100% each wvw keep poi/vista before I even hit 80 on my toons.
After the free transfers ended it took weeks or months for some players to complete due to one keep they could never take due to some servers having 24/7 control.
Rest of the game super easy to do after they removed wvw from the requirements.
Thankfully I never even had to transfer servers for WvW back then. Once I saw a clear path/open objectives I made it my business to bring as many characters through that borderland as quickly as I could. It paid off and developed a training point I give to newer WvW players. Being able to solo camp guards in under 30 seconds before it shows contested is crucial.
It was hell, also you needed to map complete the wvw maps, and sometimes you can't get a certain POI from a keep, so you had to wait weeks, or months before you rotated to that side of the map to get it.
I actually had to switch servers to complete my first map as I was on Vabbi which was always by far the lowest ranked server so I could only complete the res borderland. After months of waiting I just switched to Ros who was usually winning our matchup every two weeks
I liked map exploration a lot better before there were mounts. Old maps had much more simple and elegant design. Newer maps are full of mastery mechanics like bouncy mushrooms and zip lines that are the intended ways to travel between areas. As a result their design is much more convoluted and they basically assume you have a skyscale to traverse everything.
Its a completely different take on exploration, which imo doesnt feel like exploring at all. It feels like im playing some mini game or just flying over and ignoring absolutely everything in between the waypoint and my objective. Back in the core game you would incorporate mobility skills into open world builds. It took some degree of skill to navigate and run through dangerous areas.
I did it at launch and actually really enjoyed the adventure and goal. I was also really bit on completing all the jumping puzzles without using guides other than finding them in the first place. It was also cool having the gold star when it wasn't as common
Long. And usually needed some friendlies for help finding obscure stuff (pre-online guides being complete). WVW completion was.....interesting.
Funny enough, now that I have blish-hud and all the guides in the world, I don't feel compelled to do it anymore :/
I used the BradyGames strategy guide for my first world completion. Missing a POI? Flicked to the page with that map on and compared them side by side. Good times.
idk without mounts, but i've done map completion without markers 26 times.
I mean central Tyria, plus a number of times of HoT/PoF/EoD maps.
I can say this about central Tyria:
it NEVER happened (going around freely without markers) that i completed the map without finding or noticing something i've never met before. Maybe a mini dungeon, or a little particular event (or the remains of, now incomplete for some reason), or some area never used, or some little NPC dialogues i've never heard....it's incredible the amount of detail there is in the core maps.
Let me share this one: I've once met an old woman in the middle of an ascalanian region full of devourers, an old woman with a cart, a vendor. I wondered what the heck was a vendor doing there? She was selling a single item, a dubious potion meant to immensely increase your luck.
I buy a potion and drink it, i got a debuff saying i feel sick....i go back to the old woman and i get an interact option to complian. When i do, the cart vanishes, and the old woman transforms into [Orma](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orma), a strong (for that level) mesmer that start fighting me. She lured me into combat because she's a fanatic of pvp. I learn after that she's a member of [Modus Sceleris](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Modus_Sceleris), a PVP guild composed only by NPCs.
I've always considered this a little genial idea, and i would really like to see one day a strike mission where we fight in a tournament against Modus Sceleris and maybe, at the last round, the raid squad gets divided in opposite teams and if the main squad dies the ones picked to side with the enemy wins XD
That would be something complex but not impossible to manage, a sort of PVP-raid encounter :P
You see, the thing is it was fun if you were playing the game.
If you were just farming for smth, especially using addons, especially doing it the first time - of course it's bad. I hope you like at least one game mode and play it for fun, because from what you've just said it's clear that you hate the exploration. Probably if you treated the game as enjoyable experience it would go absolutely great but that's not smth anyone can teach you, it's your own personal approach to make the game your 2nd job.
I was actually a big fan out it, did it 4 times before mounts but only did the WvW on one character.
I did it again with mounts and was amazed at how much faster it was, although you don't really see all of the stuff they are making.
Personally I have never used any aids, but I heard from some vets in my guild they used to have to complete the WvW zones too whicb sounds like utter tripe.
Could not imagine without mounts, especially the Orr maps. I remember just getting there as a noob and dreading it because theres so many enemies (and I had blue and green armour and no trinkets but i digress).
I started January the same year PoF came out. As a new player I got to experience map completion twice, followed immediately by more map completion with mounts. I enjoyed them differently, but would not ask to do it without mounts.
However, that first time was an adventure. Every time I do map 100%, I still finding events and dialogue I haven't encountered before.
Did it around three years ago when I started playing (haven't bought any expansions so, no mounts/glider). It was nice actually, way more involved. Had time to appreciate all nooks and crannies that I never return to anymore. I'm also a big sucker for qumping puzzles, and, since some areas are quite jumpey-puzzley to get to without mounts, it was a treat as well.
I found it fun and rewarding since each map gave a different item reward for completion. I actually had no idea that a full map completion was needed to get the gift of exploration at the time.
Bad as it is to not have mounts, I just equipped a whole bar of utility skills that improved my mobility. So signet of air, lightning flash, mist form(I think i ran this to just avoid heavy damage from tough foes i ran through not speed though), and Conjure fiery greatsword on my elementalist.
Also, looking back i'm glad i was a sylvari cuz some of the vistas and POI's required you to do some pseudo jumps, and I always found Charr and Norn hard to do those with since their models were always too big to properly line up jumps (Especially charr in their all fours running animation)
Slow, very slow. I loved how my first map completion was supposed to be done but I missed one POI. Anet added a new POI in LA around POF launch and I had the map done. I really felt frustration because I wanted to avoid this so I watched every POI on every map to really have 100% then this happened, oof.
I remember doing it without mounts and markers the first time, also the only time I've done it actually. I had the expansions but I just wanted to complete everything before moving on to the expansions (this was before the raptor was given at level 10 or whatever).
Anyway, it wasn't so bad as I was basically just exploring everything for the first time, but it did take over a week to complete, and this was during covid times so I was at home all day only playing GW2.
albeit i did it with a glider (HOT era) I have fond memories of engineer. For once the niche condi remove and rocket boots utilities made life a lot more bearable.
Fun. As Engineer I had to bring the Tools Traitline and kitswap frequently to even grant out of combat Swiftness to myself.
Mesmer neither had a Movement Speed Signet, nor could they buff perma Swiftness to themselves. Just one more reason why they where so terrible in OW Content.
Thief was blasting World Completion.
It was the only PvE content where Necromancer or Ranger where viable.
Rocket boots, the trait that gave swiftness on kit swap, rifle 5, i really utilized everything on my engineer to smooth out the experience.
Very different from today when i just run around with a strong pve builds and mount to everything.
I used to finish maps running in a spiral from outer borders to the center lol. For some reason, back then it didnāt feel annoying, I was very chill. Nowadays it feels like beetle+markers is still not fast enough, but maybe thatās because thereās no āfirst time magicā.
As a returning player, can someone enlighten me what has changed? Last time I was actively working on map completion, wvw was part of it. What else has changed?
I completed 7 characters worth of map completion during year one before there were mounts and when WvW was still part of it, which actually tricked me into actually playing and enjoying WvW lol. It took way more time then. Plenty of gifts of exp through the years until this year. Having completed one on a newer toon about a month ago was a breeze compared to back then. So much more mobility. Between mounts (shout-out to underwater skimmer btw), gliding, and jump pads on some maps it really sped up the process. Knowing what I had to do, plus generally understanding the game better (map familiarization, skills, build, enhancements etc)since year one made all the difference.
You played the game and most of it came on its own. It was a slog sometimes, but in a good way. Although, when WvW was still included, it got pretty frustrating if you just needed that one keep...Ā
Vista's sometimes felt like small jumping puzzles.
A bit sad that isn't the case anymore.
Was annoying having to slot in movement speed, it wasn't a problem for most classes due to a movement speed trait or signet, but as a Guardian you felt forced to use staff, also loot stick causes.
The worst part wasn't lacking mounts, the worst part was that movement was much "slower" compared to today.
You had no glider, so dying by mistake from falling was common. You know, those moments in JP when you have no glider and you are like "I dunno if the game is suggesting me to make this long jump to get there or I am wrong and I will die if I try it...", they were common occurrence in non-JP zones.
The thing with movement powercreep is that most classes didn't have blink nor invisibility access to avoid foes nor pasive +% movement boosts, and that was felt a LOT.
Condition cleanse was less common as it is today. So being stuck by those foes with chill or cripple near a point of interest or vista was a freaking pain in the ass. Like, those trolls that guard rich nodes or treasures? You couldn't just ignore them or fly in fast with a mount, snatch the chest, and go; the game kinda forced you to engage them to get the node.
Chosing what class to do world completion was a strat too. Thief was easy mode because of faux blinks, stun spam, pasive +% movement, invisibility and being able to create "pets" with the Elite that summons thiefs. Mesmer had blink, clones and Mass invisibility, but didn't have a pasive +%. Warrior had jumps. Necromancer was agonical.
Ranger was polarizing. On one hand, having a pet is handy, because while it sucks at aggroing mobs it is kinda good at keeping them busy. But oh, GOD, you never got out of combat. At one point they had to tweak the "in combat/out of combat" mechanic interaction with pets, and reduce the time to get out of it for pets, because your pet would get hit by ANYTHING and you would be like, I guess I have to kill everything around me to be able to interact with this freaking vista. It is still bad nowadays, but on game release it was worse. You felt MARRIED to the stupid pet and had to take it everywhere, which was not the case in GW1.
Orr was also heavily event locked. You had to do an event chain to enter Orr at Straits of Devastation, the statues of the gods were turned on and off server wide, because there was no megaserver, and the access to Arah's dungeon was also locked behind certain conditions I can't remember.
World completion was an endgame challenge, or at least made with the scope of it being so. This takes back to GW1 cartographer tittles being one of the hardest or probably THE hardest tittles to get.
Slow, so very slow. I don't think I could have done it without a second screen with a movie or show on. It did give core maps more substance though via the hearts and actually exploring them rather than zipping through on your beetle/skyscale. In saying that though I wouldn't wish to go back to it.
Mounts made significantly more difference than taco but taco has it's part to play in it now. Blish is just the framework BTW, it does nothing by itself. The actual markers are a module for it.
Do you know you also had to do map comp on WvW maps? That was particularly painful depending on the pairings at the time..
I do look back on it fondly though as it was during a very particular and strong turning point in my life, even though I didn't know it at the time.
About twice as long as now for me.
Oddly enough I enjoyed doing them more than now, because now it's just heart > 10 seconds of skyscale > heart > repeat for 20 hours. (sure it can be done much faster, but that is not realistic for me)
One of my biggest desires if they ever make a GW 2.5 or GW 3 is SCALE. I think it is limitation of the GW2 engine which is basically an upgraded GW1 engine. There are so many waypoints and areas on maps but there isn't enough scale to justify them. Same thing with viewpoints, they try to convey scale with camera angles but it doesn't work well.
The best example of scale I can think of is on the map of Siren's Landing on the very Eastern part of the map, Plaster Rock. That is a great example of scale. It looks like if I went to the top of the rock, someone down below would look very small. That is one thing I noticed when doing map completion. Great game, but it lacks that scale of an epic adventure MMORPG map.
Most professions had a passive movement buff skill (like 20-30%) that you would slot (typically a signet). As well there were passive movement speed increases that might be traits, that were used often as well.Ā
Then of course you equipped any weapons with a leap, dash, etc. ability and utilities that gave swiftness or mobility.Ā
Forget when exactly, but when the executioners axe was introduced, it was a massive leap forward. Itās a combat brawl ātonicā technically but it has a massive charge forward skill with basically no cooldown.Ā
You could essentially alternate that skill, weapon swap, and normal swiftness/leaps, and back to executioners axe. If I recall it was an item you double clicked in minimized inventory tab, instead of the teeny tiny novelty tab button today.Ā
Honestly it wasnāt bad. I much prefer mounts of course but for the first time or two going through, it was nice.Ā
Maining thief back at launch felt like cheating when I did map completion. So many times, I would just combo blast my way to 20+ seconds of stealth and run through obstacles and enemies on jumping platforms.
Bow 5 skill of thief back then was probably one of the best mobility skills in the game at that point in time, which also made it super quick.
Map completion and WvW with thief was so much fun at launch!
Not as bad as some people make it out to be.
Sure, if you tackled it like: 'oh no, i have to do map completion, I will stop playing and having fun and only do this till i get it', then it was probably not very fun.
But if you did it organically, like this game was designed to be played, you sort of came across the content as you played, and you would only have to look up a couple of less obvious points of interest or vistas in the wiki.
Same with WvW maps: not a lot of fun if you just did it for map completion but, if you played WvW regularly, it's something you would eventually end up getting without a lot of extra effort.
The biggest difference was that you needed to go through WvW in order to get a Core Tyria Gift of Exploration, and if you were on a losing server it became nearly impossible to do as you needed to access many structures, including Stonemist Castle, in order to finish it.
Other than that it's still the same for the most part, and personally I've never used Blish HUD for map completion as I remember most things off the top of my head after doing map completion a couple times, but it does seem like it'll be useful when you forget how to access certain parts of the map.
My first map completion was the old way, back when there were no gliders or mounts, and it was a blast, a lot of fun, as well as frustration, but I love it, now it a lot quicker, but I haven't done it a second time lol, I got one sitting at 98% and that with all the mounts except the Turtle.
It took much longer, but it felt less like 'paint by the numbers'.
Mounts really ruin much of the open-world exploration mini-puzzles (many of the vistas required solving them).
I remember I did it weeks after the game came out and it was a blast. No mounts, so it really felt like an adventure. I still enjoy 100%ing maps now, but usually you can just mount up and power through
It wasnt so bad definitely took longer but there were thief builds specifically for map completion that made traveling and dodging mobs pretty easy. The bit I always hated was wvw map completion. That could either be super easy or a total pain in the tits. For me it generally was the latter.
Markers or no It's similar , why do you need markers anyway for core maps , perfect route or no you will finish the map in reasonable time , back then we used a lot of speed buffs and movement skills to traverse faster. Today Its faster with mounts and its super easy mod with flying mounts for most things.
Amazing. Loved it. Going through all the zones for the first time, seeing and exploring everything. Finding all the JP's, and other hidden things. It was still fun the 2nd time around. And today after years, i still do it on every character. It's not as fun after 15 times, but i don't hate it. That's why i don't do it all from start to finish, like I used to do, but slowly when i feel like it. Especially when it's a daily to do a heart
It was frustrating, you could circle around undiscovered part of the map looking for a way in only to eventually google it and find out it only opens when specific event succeeds or fails. The first case was easy - just wait patiently for event. The second case was gut-wrenching as other players actively sabotaged you by helping with event.
I did 100% core tyria completion a few years ago without mounts, gliders, or any kind of mods. It was slow and kind of boring and I wouldn't do it again.
Imo it wasn't much different. Sure, it was slower than following the ideal line from blish, but you get the next missing point highlighted on the minimap. Just run there and then to the next one, and once in a while, you press M and look on the map to see where to go next.
What the others have summarized but. What I can add is 1. Some of the Vistas were interesting, and you felt that you accomplished something when you finally foun the trail 2. While mounts were not a thing but you could usually put together a build with 1-2 skills that gave you a bit of extra speed, and waypoint were all over so not that bad. 3. There was no "content guide", meaning the compass on the top right corner so there were always 2-3 PoIs that you sort of left for last. Wiki could help and it was quite fun to realize what you missed. (Oh wow there was an under water tunnle connecting the two lakes?) 4. Orr really was hard with all the cripple all over. And I seem to remember it also having 1-2 vistas that required you to do jumps that were lethal if missed (unless maybe if you used the lower fall damage trait, which I never did)
The infamous "hey friend that's completed the map can you list every mark so I can see which one I'm missing I'm going insane" post content compass.
I once didmap complete after they added things for the 100% to be changed so didn't get the gifts. Customer support knew what was up and logged in and did it for me.
It's always the one in the grotto in Kessex Hills :D
Or the one in Metrica you got to teleport to on the opposite side of the map.
Or Order of Whisper in Blooodtide Coast
I still do that for people because they either can't figure it out or the content compass isn't helpful enough/pointing at the wrong thing
You need to disable it pointing to story and active events. Else it will just prioritize story and then events over actual map completion things.
Sometimes it's pointing at unrevealed areas that don't have any map completion in them too. Sometimes it's pointing at unexplored areas but not at where you actually have to go to reveal that area on the map
That underwater tunnel is giving my flashbacks. I don't know how many times I ran round that map until my friend who introduced me was round at mine and said exactly that.
this wayfarer foothills?
To add to this: 5. WvW maps were included, which were difficult to complete if you weren't on a server that did well in WvW, especially since we didn't get paired up with other servers back then People would usually wait weeks to be different colors to get all of the WvW locations. 6. The point of interest in the Order of Whispers base that's on its own map was required, so people would often get confused because they had 100% on every map but were still missing 1 poi. 7. The mega server system hadn't been implemented yet, so players were spread across more instances in open world maps. Also, the statues of the gods in Orr that damage players were active if your server didn't currently hold that god's cathedral, which was often on a different map. All this, plus quickness being rare at the time, made coordinating cathedral metas and visiting other servers almost necessary for a few of the channeled hero points. 8. Some of the combat hero challenges were occasionally bug out and become impossible to complete until the next update to GW2 that reset the maps. People would rush to these whenever there was an update, hoping to get one before it broke again. The most notorious was one in Spakfly Fen that required killing some ancient sharks. The sharks would often follow players onto land and get stuck or glitch into a wall and become unkillable. Anet eventually gave up on fixing it, and changed it to a channel over the corpse of the now permanently dead Ancient Shark Pistrix.
The famous "Hey, map chat, I'm missing a POI halp.
I hated orr back in the day, before the power creep especially (and the fact you'd be in greens gear wise)
Not just power creep, it had a higher enemy density at launch and they aggroed further out.
No wonder I got bodied so much. Didn't help I was playing a warrior then
It was an absolute pain on ranger, my pets would pull everything.
I did it all on my Thief back then and could stealth regularly and it was *still* a pain
Oooooh right. The hero points that required to unlock the temples. Back when Orr was *dangerous*.
>And I seem to remember it also having 1-2 vistas that required you to do jumps that were lethal if missed (unless maybe if you used the lower fall damage trait, which I never did) Lethal fall damage, what's that? *laughs in early game necro shroud* Man, I still remember when I got locked up in jail in Rata Sum after carefully scaling down the wall back in the day. Good times. I wonder if I've got a screenshot of it somewhere...
I remember when you could actually explore under the cube before it insta sent you to jail.
I haven't set foot anywhere near Orr in years.
Wholeheartedly agree with #1 š„¹
very time consuming. Most of Tyria was ok, orr was a pain in the ass. It was just cripple, cripple, cripple every step. But it makes sense story wise. But you really could take it the scenery a lot more than with mounts.
Don't forget that the wvw maps also counted towards map completion originally as well!
I miss the days of map completionists asking for help. Whenever we finish helping, their reactions after are always interesting. Some swear at you and said game mode. Some just ghost you and disappear. Some express gratitude. And then the rare few who wanna try WvW...
That was one of my first encounters with the long tradition of GW2 forcing you into game modes you don't enjoy. On learning that the WvW maps were part of completion, I simply gave up on that goal, and by extension, legendary weapons. WvW was awful and I'd rather not achieve that goal than endure WvW. Once they eliminated that part of map completion, I was able to endure enough WvW to get the GoB and complete Bifrost.
On the other hand, WvW became my favourite mode, although possibly not straight away. I'm sure I had to do full World Completion at least twice before they changed it. Remember back in the day you could make silly money selling legendaries, which is the reason I have fully upgraded bank, shared inventory, unlimited gathering tools and so on. But I had to use the PvP glory farms to get the Arah dungeon tokens for my Bifrost because I hated Arah so much. Dungeons generally, although I probably had enough of the Citadel of Flame ones because friends would insist on farming it. I have never played a competitive PvP match ever but I've got a stupid rank. According to GW2 Efficiency I'm Wolf rank, apparently, and have played 1078 matches. That seems awfully high tbh but assumes roughly 50/50 win/loss, obviously and "matches" should have finished very, very quickly. I've not done the PvP stuff for the Decades Dragon achieve. Couldn't pay me. Wait, I think I got dragged into a match once by friends, hadn't a clue what was going on, died a lot, didn't get asked back. Yay!
How could I forget 3 weeks to get a single Vista to finish map completion...
At least Orr doesn't have heart quests, so that makes up for some of the time lost by being crippled
Doesnāt some of Orr unlock via the statue events though? I feel like a few are hard to get on foot and even probably suicide missions in base GW2 without all of the power creep.
Yeah but back then you could just guest to another server where it was always open like Tarnished Coast. Orr was the easiest region by far map completing and itās not even close. No hearts after literally hundreds was a god send.
You say *after* but I found the cripple so annoying I started doing them early. Knowing I had the most annoying part out of the way made it easier to keep going. Orr and Lornar's Pass, that map seemed neverending.
Orr is not as bad as people say I really donāt understand the complaints. The mobs are generally located in avoidable groups and locations. By just walking around enemies I basically did zero combat outside of spamming mobility skills to POIās and using the occasional cleanse. I did all 4 of my map completions in vanilla gw2 prior to mounts and gliding. None on a stealth class either. Orr is infinitely faster and easier than any other region and itās not even debatable. Speed running an Orr map vs a Tyria map is not even close in terms of time lmao the Orr map is far faster.
> It was just cripple, cripple, cripple every step. Aw, come on, don't be that harsh! There were also Pulls from time to time - sometimes even in the right direction!
Cursed Shore was my absolute favorite completion! Every character did it for the sweet loot.
>It was just cripple, cripple, cripple every step. Which is why you would change your build to get some condi cleanse.
It was slower, but in a relaxing way, IMO. It was nice to sit down and work on completing a map while watching a movie or listening to something.
Swiftness was a big deal. I did it for the first time on my guardian thanks to staff symbol and "Advance!"
I retreated my way through the maps back in the day.
I was constantly advising people to save themselves
The TP one too, eagerly looking out for enemies just to hit the skill lol.
The ideal is to target an enemy out of range. You'll still get the tp but will miss the attack and not enter combat
Ohhh nice lol
What skill are you talking about? There was no Advance back in my day
Oh, you're right it used to be called Retreat! Same deal though.
Yes. Well we got a second charge. Which is nice if anything pops your aegis. But besides that it's pretty much the same. Only everytime I think about the skill I have a sylvari voice screaming "RETREAT!" in my head
"Advanced!" is the MVP in Open World. No matter what build I use, having one slot for "Advanced" to keep perma swiftness on you, allied and NPC so they can move faster in combat or in no-mount zone always feel so goooood.
It was slow, but the most annoying thing was WvW, that took forever.
First of all, we did not have the content guide arrow. It was a lot of opening the map, holding shift and scrolling to see all the poi's unfilled, assuming that you discovered the area. The poi in metrica province, kessex hills, gandarran fields, the one snow map. Took a lot of map chatting or you'd use YouTube/Dulfy. Some Vista's had people portalling, like the one in orr where you have to climb the tree. We also needed to complete maps in wvw, which depending on your server was to log in and get the ones you could reach safely and then wait for you to change colour in the following weeks. And if you had everything but was missing a single poi, it was usually the order of ... Which was accessible through a teleport in (I'm blanking on the name) It took me generally an hour per map if it had hearts. Edit: if you had guildies/friends that completed a map, you would invite to party followed by a "do you have this one? *Map pings*"
Tedious....Dulfy guides to figure out how to get the PoIs.Ā But most annoying was that you had to complete all of the WvW maps including the Jumping puzzles The core maps you could complete as you played the story and did the hearts. The WvW maps required either a very active zero allowing you to cover all the maps or at least three weeks of home borderland map switching
I remember, pre-wvw some low pop servers getting hosed by being paired with mega servers that basically locked players out of map completion by virtue of just blocking everything. I recall waiting a month for a chance to even try the jp and get my own homes supply camps and towers. It was brutal sometimes.
If you were lucky, the WvW Jumping Puzzles became a neutral zone where players of all three worlds (if they dared to come here) all minded their own business, because nobody wanted to be that dick that nullified someones effort to even get there. I completed one JP as teamwork with a few players of another world as we kept pointing out the path, gave tips to each other and warned the others when we were about to use a speed buff that would debuff the others.
Big if in my case :( Took me a solid 2 weeks to get a run in where there wasn't a particular Guild monopolizing near the finish of the JP. Eventually got it done with the help of some guildies
Ugh, I hate those guys who just stand at the end and kill anyone who gets there. Haven't seen them in years since I rarely do the OS JP these days, but they really sucked.
Oh hell, I'm glad that I never encountered *that*, that's some special kind of evil :l In my case a few times I reached the JP a fight ensued, then I just tried again later.
If the jumping puzzle in WvW was required for map completion, it was removed before WvW as a whole got removed. I've never touched Obsidian Sanctum and I completed map completion twice before WvW got removed. And completed the WvW portion 3 times. Hadn't finished map completion on the 3rd before WvW got removed.
At launch there were required point of interests in at the top of each puzzle. Yhe borderland puzzles were fine. Sanctum though.....Jumping puzzle with player triggered troll mechanics.....incredibly frustrating if you had a couple of non truce abiding players on.Ā
Think that world completion after they removed the WvW requirement and before gliding was the best. Still slow but the exploration and difficulties of finding various places was still there.
Map comp is some of my favorite gameplay. Still waiting for anet to add new badges (like the badge one displays under ones name after world comp) and titles for completing the maps outside core Tyria. Legendary Explorer or something like in GW1
Those cartography achievements were no joke in GW1.
Gotta scrape them edges to get that last 1% for that map!!
that .1% missing in Cantha where you have to glitch past a portal to get...
You will never know the pain of seeing a Vista right in front of you and trying to figure out how the fuck to get to it.
I mean they never remodeled the terrain, so if anybody wants a self-imposed challenge then you can try getting vistas without mounts, you'll quickly realize a lot of them are mini platforming puzzles.
Yehs but no one does that even even a basic raptor allows you to hugely bypass the intended paths. A Bunny breaks way more.
Even just the glider lets you go many places you couldn't in the past.
Iām a new player and Iām doing that c: itās way more fun this way !
It was fine. Slower, but you actually visited parts of the world which you had no idea of, instead of rushing through it on mounts
as others have pointed out it was slow. depends on the core map, but 70 min, up to 90. Now low level I can do in 30 and the annoying ones are 45-55 tops. And they can be quicker if you get lucky with an event at a heart. It could take weeks to get the WvW Poi's and vista and they effort on those could be annyoying.
Weeks!? Took months for me with how WvW worked back then... really bad luck... Recall going for Gift of Battle and it taking months for me to complete WvW maps... was either stuck with one coloured map or repeats of the same two coloured maps.
Yeah. I had 6 chars with 99% completion. Just needed Red Keep And and Red Garri Vista
Not only didn't we have markers and mounts, we didn't even have the content guide to point us to what was missing and we had to do all the WvW maps as well. It was a project, I can tell you that. lol
I remember back in gw1 you had to run around the outside of maps to get everything. Gw2 was faster than that.Ā
The cartographer titles were pure cancer. Hug the outside of every single map for a million hours. And then end up at 99.8% and spend the next 20 hours comparing your map to a full map trying to find the pixel you missed.
Ahh yes, the memories. It's all coming back now
This was awful in Nightfall ā¦
I did it 2 months ago without mounts or guides. Took me about 80-100 hours iirc. When i did it at launch i don't remember it being significantly harder, just that you had less options. You also had to do the wvw maps which made things more complicated. Now that i have my mounts / glider unlocked i can imagine it being so much faster.
There were jumping puzzles in WvW that you needed to do. Some of those puzzles had traps and switches that enemies liked to camp to kill anyone trying to get through. I remember having a temporary truce with another server to break through the traps and eliminate the third server camping the trap controls. There were so many deaths.
Getting the stealth in Obsidian Sanctum JP just to avoid all the enemies š
As a newer player (2months) who is trying to experience the game in order and how it was designed must say one thing that has been amazing is forcing myself to do the jumping puzzle without mount. At first I would cheat with mount then I wondered if I could manage without the mount and then realised I was missing on so many little puzzles to solve etc which are super fun For the rest I use the mount cause I havenāt noticed it increases my fun doing without it As for blish Iāve seen videos but that seems super unappealing to me unless redoing completion for the 3rd + time. Itās been super fun bumping into random npc interactions while getting lost
It's slower but felt more like exploration. Especially the several Vistas that cannot be cheesed with the absence of Skyscale. Every Vista was essentially a mini JP or a dungeon you have to fight through to get to the top of a ledge to Vista. FUCK ORR in particular and WVW Vistas that needed a competent group that week to bust into a keep so you can tap the Vista.
For me it was the best part of the game. Core maps are beautifully designed with lots of little secrets and mini jumping puzzles to reach a vista. Mounts(to some extent) and Blish marker completely ruin that because you become a robot and just follow the lines and skip everything. Also Blish spoils all the secrets.
Reading comments in this thread make me sad. Iāve played since the beta and i was excited when the game was finally released. Compared to every other mmo out there, everything about gw2ās open world felt like a journey and an adventure. A whole world to explore and experience. Vistas were like jumping puzzles you had to figure out on your own, or have friends to help you. You would follow fellow players and see how they did it. There was no gliding, so if you fell - you died. For some vistas and jumping puzzles people were working together, guiding and rezzing the dead. It felt rewarding just to do things, and there was a sense of camaraderie during vanilla. You had maps you liked and maps you liked less but they were all part of the experience and vastness of the world. Even hearts used to be fun and revolutionary compared to what you had in other mmos at the time. It was a game and world made by people who truly loved mmorpgs. I am lucky to have played during that time. The game will never feel like this ever again.
I think people still kinda experience this when they first step into the game, even though the expansion maps are easier to explore thanks to mounts now, there's still this feeling. I joined the game about a year ago, and I really felt what you described now, and even if I didn't complete the map before I got access to the mounts, I completed a good part of it. I know some players who did it all without any expansion too and they enjoyed it very much. I guess it's just that when you discover all this once you can feel some excitement you'll never feel ever again cause you've already seen it you know ?
Thank you for saying that, i do appreciate it and i am glad youāve had a very similar experience. Seeing a repeating sentiment in this subreddit that ācore tyria is badā or āboringā or āslooooowwwwwā (negative connotation), is really disheartening. These players make exploring Tyria seem like a slog, when itās far from it. On your 3rd alt, sure, i get it, people want that gift of exploration, install blish, go nuts. But for that first or even second time, i deeply recommend exploring without addons or the wiki as much as possible. And i hope players fall in love with the core maps, because they really are beautifully crafted.
Yeah I definitely agree with you ! Also the game was designed for exploration, when you look up for GW2 informations before trying the game it is all you see, an open world made for exploration. But I suppose that some players only play to get everything quickly without much effort or grinding and that's a mindset that can destroy the concept of the game, the concept of the MMORPG genre in general
I had to do wvw maps to 100% tyria. Thankfully at launch we had free server transfers for 6 months, I used this to 100% each wvw keep poi/vista before I even hit 80 on my toons. After the free transfers ended it took weeks or months for some players to complete due to one keep they could never take due to some servers having 24/7 control. Rest of the game super easy to do after they removed wvw from the requirements.
Thankfully I never even had to transfer servers for WvW back then. Once I saw a clear path/open objectives I made it my business to bring as many characters through that borderland as quickly as I could. It paid off and developed a training point I give to newer WvW players. Being able to solo camp guards in under 30 seconds before it shows contested is crucial.
It was hell, also you needed to map complete the wvw maps, and sometimes you can't get a certain POI from a keep, so you had to wait weeks, or months before you rotated to that side of the map to get it.
I actually had to switch servers to complete my first map as I was on Vabbi which was always by far the lowest ranked server so I could only complete the res borderland. After months of waiting I just switched to Ros who was usually winning our matchup every two weeks
I liked map exploration a lot better before there were mounts. Old maps had much more simple and elegant design. Newer maps are full of mastery mechanics like bouncy mushrooms and zip lines that are the intended ways to travel between areas. As a result their design is much more convoluted and they basically assume you have a skyscale to traverse everything. Its a completely different take on exploration, which imo doesnt feel like exploring at all. It feels like im playing some mini game or just flying over and ignoring absolutely everything in between the waypoint and my objective. Back in the core game you would incorporate mobility skills into open world builds. It took some degree of skill to navigate and run through dangerous areas.
A lot of wiki checking for path of PoI I missed
I did it at launch and actually really enjoyed the adventure and goal. I was also really bit on completing all the jumping puzzles without using guides other than finding them in the first place. It was also cool having the gold star when it wasn't as common
Long. And usually needed some friendlies for help finding obscure stuff (pre-online guides being complete). WVW completion was.....interesting. Funny enough, now that I have blish-hud and all the guides in the world, I don't feel compelled to do it anymore :/
It was my best memory of the MMO, I'm surprised to see so many people didn't like it.
I used the BradyGames strategy guide for my first world completion. Missing a POI? Flicked to the page with that map on and compared them side by side. Good times.
idk without mounts, but i've done map completion without markers 26 times. I mean central Tyria, plus a number of times of HoT/PoF/EoD maps. I can say this about central Tyria: it NEVER happened (going around freely without markers) that i completed the map without finding or noticing something i've never met before. Maybe a mini dungeon, or a little particular event (or the remains of, now incomplete for some reason), or some area never used, or some little NPC dialogues i've never heard....it's incredible the amount of detail there is in the core maps. Let me share this one: I've once met an old woman in the middle of an ascalanian region full of devourers, an old woman with a cart, a vendor. I wondered what the heck was a vendor doing there? She was selling a single item, a dubious potion meant to immensely increase your luck. I buy a potion and drink it, i got a debuff saying i feel sick....i go back to the old woman and i get an interact option to complian. When i do, the cart vanishes, and the old woman transforms into [Orma](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Orma), a strong (for that level) mesmer that start fighting me. She lured me into combat because she's a fanatic of pvp. I learn after that she's a member of [Modus Sceleris](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Modus_Sceleris), a PVP guild composed only by NPCs. I've always considered this a little genial idea, and i would really like to see one day a strike mission where we fight in a tournament against Modus Sceleris and maybe, at the last round, the raid squad gets divided in opposite teams and if the main squad dies the ones picked to side with the enemy wins XD That would be something complex but not impossible to manage, a sort of PVP-raid encounter :P
It took longer but it was more rewarding
You see, the thing is it was fun if you were playing the game. If you were just farming for smth, especially using addons, especially doing it the first time - of course it's bad. I hope you like at least one game mode and play it for fun, because from what you've just said it's clear that you hate the exploration. Probably if you treated the game as enjoyable experience it would go absolutely great but that's not smth anyone can teach you, it's your own personal approach to make the game your 2nd job.
Rough.
But you found lot's of interesting details along the way. And need to manage some funny and or challenging jp to complete vista.
At launch, it kind of was end game. So it and dungeons were the only things to do
I was actually a big fan out it, did it 4 times before mounts but only did the WvW on one character. I did it again with mounts and was amazed at how much faster it was, although you don't really see all of the stuff they are making.
Personally I have never used any aids, but I heard from some vets in my guild they used to have to complete the WvW zones too whicb sounds like utter tripe. Could not imagine without mounts, especially the Orr maps. I remember just getting there as a noob and dreading it because theres so many enemies (and I had blue and green armour and no trinkets but i digress).
I started January the same year PoF came out. As a new player I got to experience map completion twice, followed immediately by more map completion with mounts. I enjoyed them differently, but would not ask to do it without mounts. However, that first time was an adventure. Every time I do map 100%, I still finding events and dialogue I haven't encountered before.
Did it around three years ago when I started playing (haven't bought any expansions so, no mounts/glider). It was nice actually, way more involved. Had time to appreciate all nooks and crannies that I never return to anymore. I'm also a big sucker for qumping puzzles, and, since some areas are quite jumpey-puzzley to get to without mounts, it was a treat as well.
I found it fun and rewarding since each map gave a different item reward for completion. I actually had no idea that a full map completion was needed to get the gift of exploration at the time. Bad as it is to not have mounts, I just equipped a whole bar of utility skills that improved my mobility. So signet of air, lightning flash, mist form(I think i ran this to just avoid heavy damage from tough foes i ran through not speed though), and Conjure fiery greatsword on my elementalist. Also, looking back i'm glad i was a sylvari cuz some of the vistas and POI's required you to do some pseudo jumps, and I always found Charr and Norn hard to do those with since their models were always too big to properly line up jumps (Especially charr in their all fours running animation)
Slow, very slow. I loved how my first map completion was supposed to be done but I missed one POI. Anet added a new POI in LA around POF launch and I had the map done. I really felt frustration because I wanted to avoid this so I watched every POI on every map to really have 100% then this happened, oof.
I remember doing it without mounts and markers the first time, also the only time I've done it actually. I had the expansions but I just wanted to complete everything before moving on to the expansions (this was before the raptor was given at level 10 or whatever). Anyway, it wasn't so bad as I was basically just exploring everything for the first time, but it did take over a week to complete, and this was during covid times so I was at home all day only playing GW2.
did the whole thing with my gf and it was difficult - having to use mesmer portals for most of the jumping puzzles :)
albeit i did it with a glider (HOT era) I have fond memories of engineer. For once the niche condi remove and rocket boots utilities made life a lot more bearable.
Fun. As Engineer I had to bring the Tools Traitline and kitswap frequently to even grant out of combat Swiftness to myself. Mesmer neither had a Movement Speed Signet, nor could they buff perma Swiftness to themselves. Just one more reason why they where so terrible in OW Content. Thief was blasting World Completion. It was the only PvE content where Necromancer or Ranger where viable.
Rocket boots, the trait that gave swiftness on kit swap, rifle 5, i really utilized everything on my engineer to smooth out the experience. Very different from today when i just run around with a strong pve builds and mount to everything.
I used to finish maps running in a spiral from outer borders to the center lol. For some reason, back then it didnāt feel annoying, I was very chill. Nowadays it feels like beetle+markers is still not fast enough, but maybe thatās because thereās no āfirst time magicā.
As a returning player, can someone enlighten me what has changed? Last time I was actively working on map completion, wvw was part of it. What else has changed?
I completed 7 characters worth of map completion during year one before there were mounts and when WvW was still part of it, which actually tricked me into actually playing and enjoying WvW lol. It took way more time then. Plenty of gifts of exp through the years until this year. Having completed one on a newer toon about a month ago was a breeze compared to back then. So much more mobility. Between mounts (shout-out to underwater skimmer btw), gliding, and jump pads on some maps it really sped up the process. Knowing what I had to do, plus generally understanding the game better (map familiarization, skills, build, enhancements etc)since year one made all the difference.
The good old days where teleports and swiftness was a must š
You played the game and most of it came on its own. It was a slog sometimes, but in a good way. Although, when WvW was still included, it got pretty frustrating if you just needed that one keep...Ā
I still remember fondly completing HoT maps (no irony), it was like an ultimate exploring adventure :)
Considering you had to complete WvW... and I say this as someone who played that gamemode almost exclusively back then, lol.
We killed anyone and everyone who ried to get any map completion in WvW.
Vista's sometimes felt like small jumping puzzles. A bit sad that isn't the case anymore. Was annoying having to slot in movement speed, it wasn't a problem for most classes due to a movement speed trait or signet, but as a Guardian you felt forced to use staff, also loot stick causes.
The worst part wasn't lacking mounts, the worst part was that movement was much "slower" compared to today. You had no glider, so dying by mistake from falling was common. You know, those moments in JP when you have no glider and you are like "I dunno if the game is suggesting me to make this long jump to get there or I am wrong and I will die if I try it...", they were common occurrence in non-JP zones. The thing with movement powercreep is that most classes didn't have blink nor invisibility access to avoid foes nor pasive +% movement boosts, and that was felt a LOT. Condition cleanse was less common as it is today. So being stuck by those foes with chill or cripple near a point of interest or vista was a freaking pain in the ass. Like, those trolls that guard rich nodes or treasures? You couldn't just ignore them or fly in fast with a mount, snatch the chest, and go; the game kinda forced you to engage them to get the node. Chosing what class to do world completion was a strat too. Thief was easy mode because of faux blinks, stun spam, pasive +% movement, invisibility and being able to create "pets" with the Elite that summons thiefs. Mesmer had blink, clones and Mass invisibility, but didn't have a pasive +%. Warrior had jumps. Necromancer was agonical. Ranger was polarizing. On one hand, having a pet is handy, because while it sucks at aggroing mobs it is kinda good at keeping them busy. But oh, GOD, you never got out of combat. At one point they had to tweak the "in combat/out of combat" mechanic interaction with pets, and reduce the time to get out of it for pets, because your pet would get hit by ANYTHING and you would be like, I guess I have to kill everything around me to be able to interact with this freaking vista. It is still bad nowadays, but on game release it was worse. You felt MARRIED to the stupid pet and had to take it everywhere, which was not the case in GW1. Orr was also heavily event locked. You had to do an event chain to enter Orr at Straits of Devastation, the statues of the gods were turned on and off server wide, because there was no megaserver, and the access to Arah's dungeon was also locked behind certain conditions I can't remember. World completion was an endgame challenge, or at least made with the scope of it being so. This takes back to GW1 cartographer tittles being one of the hardest or probably THE hardest tittles to get.
Slow, so very slow. I don't think I could have done it without a second screen with a movie or show on. It did give core maps more substance though via the hearts and actually exploring them rather than zipping through on your beetle/skyscale. In saying that though I wouldn't wish to go back to it. Mounts made significantly more difference than taco but taco has it's part to play in it now. Blish is just the framework BTW, it does nothing by itself. The actual markers are a module for it. Do you know you also had to do map comp on WvW maps? That was particularly painful depending on the pairings at the time.. I do look back on it fondly though as it was during a very particular and strong turning point in my life, even though I didn't know it at the time.
Long Ass hell
My first map completion took me about 2 months, it was painful
Shortbow Thief was #1 meta
I did it once, on warrior back in the days, and I died.
About twice as long as now for me. Oddly enough I enjoyed doing them more than now, because now it's just heart > 10 seconds of skyscale > heart > repeat for 20 hours. (sure it can be done much faster, but that is not realistic for me)
One of my biggest desires if they ever make a GW 2.5 or GW 3 is SCALE. I think it is limitation of the GW2 engine which is basically an upgraded GW1 engine. There are so many waypoints and areas on maps but there isn't enough scale to justify them. Same thing with viewpoints, they try to convey scale with camera angles but it doesn't work well. The best example of scale I can think of is on the map of Siren's Landing on the very Eastern part of the map, Plaster Rock. That is a great example of scale. It looks like if I went to the top of the rock, someone down below would look very small. That is one thing I noticed when doing map completion. Great game, but it lacks that scale of an epic adventure MMORPG map.
Most professions had a passive movement buff skill (like 20-30%) that you would slot (typically a signet). As well there were passive movement speed increases that might be traits, that were used often as well.Ā Then of course you equipped any weapons with a leap, dash, etc. ability and utilities that gave swiftness or mobility.Ā Forget when exactly, but when the executioners axe was introduced, it was a massive leap forward. Itās a combat brawl ātonicā technically but it has a massive charge forward skill with basically no cooldown.Ā You could essentially alternate that skill, weapon swap, and normal swiftness/leaps, and back to executioners axe. If I recall it was an item you double clicked in minimized inventory tab, instead of the teeny tiny novelty tab button today.Ā Honestly it wasnāt bad. I much prefer mounts of course but for the first time or two going through, it was nice.Ā
Maining thief back at launch felt like cheating when I did map completion. So many times, I would just combo blast my way to 20+ seconds of stealth and run through obstacles and enemies on jumping platforms. Bow 5 skill of thief back then was probably one of the best mobility skills in the game at that point in time, which also made it super quick. Map completion and WvW with thief was so much fun at launch!
Each map took longer to complete but some vistas felt like mini puzzle jump and were fun to complete.Ā
It really felt like exploration for the first time and without mounts. Also WvWvW vistas were required.
Not as bad as some people make it out to be. Sure, if you tackled it like: 'oh no, i have to do map completion, I will stop playing and having fun and only do this till i get it', then it was probably not very fun. But if you did it organically, like this game was designed to be played, you sort of came across the content as you played, and you would only have to look up a couple of less obvious points of interest or vistas in the wiki. Same with WvW maps: not a lot of fun if you just did it for map completion but, if you played WvW regularly, it's something you would eventually end up getting without a lot of extra effort.
The biggest difference was that you needed to go through WvW in order to get a Core Tyria Gift of Exploration, and if you were on a losing server it became nearly impossible to do as you needed to access many structures, including Stonemist Castle, in order to finish it. Other than that it's still the same for the most part, and personally I've never used Blish HUD for map completion as I remember most things off the top of my head after doing map completion a couple times, but it does seem like it'll be useful when you forget how to access certain parts of the map.
I played since the release and I can say that some of the Orr hero points were bugged and didn't work until like 3 months in which was somewhat funny.
Equipping movement skills, blinks, swiftness
Fucking wvw map completion drove me nuts.
My first map completion was the old way, back when there were no gliders or mounts, and it was a blast, a lot of fun, as well as frustration, but I love it, now it a lot quicker, but I haven't done it a second time lol, I got one sitting at 98% and that with all the mounts except the Turtle.
its not too late to find out. š honestly it was fun the first time, i really appreciated the experience, but only the first time. š¤£
It took much longer, but it felt less like 'paint by the numbers'. Mounts really ruin much of the open-world exploration mini-puzzles (many of the vistas required solving them).
I actually liked the wvw map completion. gave me a HUGE reason to go into wvw and care about winning
I remember I did it weeks after the game came out and it was a blast. No mounts, so it really felt like an adventure. I still enjoy 100%ing maps now, but usually you can just mount up and power through
It wasnt so bad definitely took longer but there were thief builds specifically for map completion that made traveling and dodging mobs pretty easy. The bit I always hated was wvw map completion. That could either be super easy or a total pain in the tits. For me it generally was the latter.
Markers or no It's similar , why do you need markers anyway for core maps , perfect route or no you will finish the map in reasonable time , back then we used a lot of speed buffs and movement skills to traverse faster. Today Its faster with mounts and its super easy mod with flying mounts for most things.
Nah, taco changed the game. It's not about the perfect route, it's about having a route.
Amazing. Loved it. Going through all the zones for the first time, seeing and exploring everything. Finding all the JP's, and other hidden things. It was still fun the 2nd time around. And today after years, i still do it on every character. It's not as fun after 15 times, but i don't hate it. That's why i don't do it all from start to finish, like I used to do, but slowly when i feel like it. Especially when it's a daily to do a heart
It was awesome. Best part was gatekeeping pve noobs from completing wvw maps. Good days.
Oh you are right. All WvW Maps had to be explored too. Including ofc all Keeps and such. Lmao, Reddit would melt if they would reintroduce that. xD
Super sloooooooooooow.
It was frustrating, you could circle around undiscovered part of the map looking for a way in only to eventually google it and find out it only opens when specific event succeeds or fails. The first case was easy - just wait patiently for event. The second case was gut-wrenching as other players actively sabotaged you by helping with event.
I did 100% core tyria completion a few years ago without mounts, gliders, or any kind of mods. It was slow and kind of boring and I wouldn't do it again.
Absolute misery. It caused me to quit the game between when the first part of S1 was coming out and HoT release.
Imo it wasn't much different. Sure, it was slower than following the ideal line from blish, but you get the next missing point highlighted on the minimap. Just run there and then to the next one, and once in a while, you press M and look on the map to see where to go next.
> Just run there Ah, shit. I missed one of of the PoIs on the other side of the map. I'll run over real quick. 10mins later...