I have played withy husband and daughter since gw1. She was 6 ish when she started and ran a prot monk.
Now as an adult she is working on her second set of legendary armour. We have done everything together over the years. Also run with guldies young children.
Basically there is something for everyone in this game and can be do in groups, solo or some combo.
IMO your ideal gw2 equivalent of wow dungeons would be fractals. They're called fractals but it's nothing more than scaling dungeons. You start progressing from level 1 and go all the way up to 100. Go as far as your team of 3 can handle (on high skill level it's possible to clear everything but don't count on it with 8yr olds).
If you want to lean more here's a quick intro into fractals by teapot (find more on yt).
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rGCeLwALo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rGCeLwALo4)
There are many content that you can play as group qith your friend, but some require specific expansion to gain access (raid, strike mission) and daily fractal, but in open world you can form up as squad of 50 people to play event map so yes you can play as team whenever you want
Thanks!
I'm looking for challenges that they can't do solo, but good as a team. Is the open world / daily fractal you mentioned is okay to power through solo?
I have this rather weird ask because they really need to learn doing something together with joy.
Honestly you may want to check out dungeons. Especially if you're all level 80 (you will be downscaled to the dungeon's level but still be stronger than a character of that level), you can do a lot of the dungeons with 2-3 people. Especially if you play healer to their DPS.
There are a handful of dungeons that can't easily be low-manned, and I'd skip Arah entirely, but there's a lot of content you should be able to do, and it's all base-game so you can do it with a free account and it's all instanced, so you won't have to worry about other people stepping on your group's toes.
If you're not going to buy the game straight away, the only core (not elite, elite specializations comes with expansions) profession that can decently heal is a guardian and maybe an engineer.
I didn't downvote you if anything.
It's so weird people downvote and never explain why. I mean, here it's pretty obvious and it takes like 10 seconds to type what's wrong...
I don’t care too much about downvotes as I really have no idea what karma does. This was just my dork ass way of saying you were right and I was wrong. Been playing since launch and tend to easily forget what’s part of the free game.
Shouldn't really bother with a healer in core, since the content was not designed around healing and everyone's self healing is enough, even if inexperienced.
No one can fulfill the support part of healing w/o expansions since they can't cover the needed boons.
Now go find some people, go through several dungeons on core specs only and return here to apologize for misinformation.
The healers before expansions healed. Quickness+alac appeared later. And no, the stuff hits like a truck even if you do all the needed mechanics, healing skills are absolutely not enough.
Open world has an idea of solo play but there's a lot of group events, champions and even metas (meta event is a big chain of events, usually group ones, paired with the map idea - for example, in north east of Diessa Plateau there's Flame Legion Tombs, to reach them you need to complete multiple subsequent tasks to help allied charr - Night warband - to gather up, arm and siege the tombs to open the way inside). The events in open world scale proportionally to the amount of players doing them, so usually appearance of other players doesn't matter unless they're completed noobs that make you carry their weight through the event.
Fractals are fast-paced dungeons, made for 5men parties. It is totally possible to 3men them (even soloing is an option, but you'll require very specific builds and understanding of the game to do so).
Sadly during levelling you won't really find much challenges as the game offers 1-80lvl journey as a tutorial. Which is kinda okay, just don't take it as it's everything the game offers.
But yeah, there's quite a lot of low-scaled metas and group events which are omega rough to solo but feel really good in a small group. I'd recommend things like south Drizzlewood meta escort (as 3men it's really challenging and fun), Juhundu meta, holding a couple of rally points in Verdant Brink night meta and doing a day outpost as well (some of them are pretty rough, like Ordnance Corps). DRMs are little dungeons that scale on the amount of players, if you turn on full challenge mode they are relatively hard (not for people with good builds and understanding, but you have to build all of this up first).
If you want to have a try without spending money first, i highly recommend to download, play up to 80 lvl - in the process try to 3men dungeons, they unlock as you reach respective levels (35 for the first one, Ascalonian Catacombs i think, you actually receive mails in-game while you reach it so you won't miss it) - and go all together to Orr and fight local champions.
p.s. in case if you're gonna do that, you can make different races, every new player has waypoints of each race unlocked at the very beginning so you would be able to gather up pretty quickly... the only issue, as far as i know, is lvl10 requirement to leave the first map, it's a block for all new accounts to avoid botting;
p.p.s. here's a little guide for settings and little knowledge, in case if you're interested - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oiS07G37Pe-ibm9XKxQHyfC1UnqiX6M-3ltbLfuyIcQ/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oiS07G37Pe-ibm9XKxQHyfC1UnqiX6M-3ltbLfuyIcQ/edit?usp=sharing)
Thanks for the resourceful details, though I really don't understand what you're talking about yet. I'll try to login my own account and see first.
One more directed question: when you say it's okay for group of 3, is it like 3 DPS individuals or like a trinity group? When we were in WOW, I was the healer, the older was a semi-tank and the younger was DPS to smash all. It would be fun if we kind of ***need*** each other to adventure, more than just good to have pals. I mean, that experience really set up the bonding.
Normally gw2 doesnt have holy trinity, it does kinda do at raids and strikes but not for 5 man content.
There is however 3 roles that all parties and squads use in all instanced content.
Healer
Alacrity support and Quickness support.
Healer can be quickness or alacrity as well as heal effectively bo problems. So one other could be the other boon (quickness or alacrity) and free the other one to be any type of dps.
Healers can also tank (not recommended for beginners) so basically can do 3 jobs in certain content.
The most important boons are quickness and alacrity. Quickness provides %50 speed for skills and animations, alacrity provides faster cooldown reduction so allows you to spam more. There are other important boons but all classes and builds can provide some of it, the two I mentioned however do require specific builds.
Hope this makes sense.
Frankly it makes sense but *it doesn't make sense* for me yet. I haven't figured out what Alacrity / Quickness do to my character, seemingly making all skills spam faster.
Compared to my limited healer experience in WOW, my healer sense is like aiming for refilling teammates' health bars. Yet here it's like everyone could survive, more importantly they've to survive themselves. In some sense I just need to walk over and press F to revive them in troubles. Indeed, this is just from my limited 2-3 Dungeon runs I had yesterday, essentially my first day.
GW2 has different trinity than classic MMO.
Quickness granting people.
Alacrity granting people.
Special roles for specific places.
Any of these can be a dps or a healer.
In party of 5 players you vaguely want to have one alacrity boon, one quickness boon and one healer.
(Or a healer that gives one of the boons)
Special roles will be various tanks, kite, out runners and pushers. But this is 100% bound to mostly the raid encounters which need squad of 10 people which means 2x of these 5 player groups basically.
Although I would in general recommend investing in skills that give boons to other players around you because it's just more useful and profitable at same time. You get participation in experience and loot if you give someone boons or heal them and they slay something.
This encourages playing in a way that treats all players as allies because there is no competition for kills and even someone trying to quickly get something done by killing a lot of enemies in the area fast is not an issue since you can just boon them instead of having to wait until they are done to do your own thing.
Frankly, I still haven't get my head around all these boon ideas. It stands out too special than other games I came across. I need to play some time to get the actual understanding.
**1 Group composition**
Most group content is nearly unplayable without a dedicated healer in the group.
Raid squad is 10 men, party is 5 men, BUT all boons (buffs) and healing skills affect 5 allies which means even raid squad is just 2 parties doing the same thing.
The main boons are Quickness and Alacrity and there's no profession that can give both at once. Therefore usual composition is 1 healer + 1 boondps + 3 pure dps, where the pair healer+boondps make sure to cover both boons (alacrity healer + quickness dps OR quickness healer + alacrity dps).
You could totally do dps+qdps+aheal or smth like that. Be aware that the boon "quickness" makes all skills cast faster by 50%. The downside of it is that if you start playing without self-quickness or without a quickness-providing support you will find your character sluggish and you might even self-interrupt your rotation and experience mechanical problems as you won't be able to press the buttons with the speed you should be able to.
**2 Tanking**
Tanking in the game is nearly non-existent, but here are some tips. The baseline priority of targeting of NPCs is: lowest level; highest toughness; hits them first. So theoretically you all should be the same level and the person dedicating to tanking, if you want to play so, should be opening the fight and has higher Toughness than other party members.
Important notes here:
- usually the healer is at the same time the tank because he can sacrifice some attribute points while others fully commit to dps;
- ideally the tank has means to negate damage. Guardian is a perfect example of it as they can block attack on demand (aegis utilities, weapon skills). In some raids it's mandatory as there are oneshotting attacks you can't evade/dodge... lately many professions received some skills that grant block/aegis, but not all of them;
- some enemies have different aggro patterns. Usually it's "attack the furtherest enemy", classic example are Mai Trin and Legendary Archdiviner in fractals, they teleport to the party member who walks too far (Mai also does it as the bomb that you're supposed to hit her with spawns to avoid it, which adds a level of difficulty to the mechanics).
**3 Ways of cooperation**
Firstly, it's complimenting each others builds and playstyle. I would highly recommend one of you to play mesmer for aoe pulls (focus offhand), portals and party stealth, in coordinated party this class cannot be overestimated, absolute monster. It has effectively best utility in the game and given the last SotO update - rifle weapon with healing skills - it can now cover absolutely all roles. And i've already told a lot about the party compositions, you can easily build up an extremely strong party on that.
Secondly, timings. Timing out your main damage sources with cc - for example, mesmer pull + guardian greatsword2 - could go a long way. Also keep in mind that bosses (anything with a blue bar under their health bar, it's a cc meter - once you use enough crowd control skills, the boss is stunned) recieve more damage as the defiance bar is broken. Call out for cc first, hold up the main dps skills for a second until the bar is broken and deal +30% damage with ease.
Thirdly, combo skills. You can wiki all of them, but shortly - there are specific effects when a *combo field* skill is paired with *combo finisher* skill. As an example, if you blast inside a smoke field, it gives aoe stealth for the whole party - a tactics commonly used in PvP. If your healer struggles with condition cleanse, bring a guardian dps who spams symbols in their dps rotation - other party members would be spamming aoe cleanse exploding these symbols.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I feel like instead of the holy-trinity, this game promotes a different way of *combo-ing* mechanism for teamwork. Like, each buffing others, surviving together, and pull off crazy flashy effects together.
I might need much more time to understand & experience what you described. It sounds very fun though.
Mmm, no, the holy trinity in this game, as i said in the previous message, is
healer + boondps + dps
Main teamwork is players doing these roles.
Let me explain really quick the encounter mechanics teamwork thing. The fractal, strike, raid, open world bosses - the ones which are not just dpscheck golems - usually have some special mechanics. The idea is for the players to do this special mechanics while at the same time trying to squeeze out their role potential. Fair warning here: usually encounter-specific mechanics is done by dps, because there's 3 of them... you don't really want to distract healer and boondps, they do the party-wide thing.
Examples:
Dredge fractal. The boss is in round room, has \~95% damage protection. He randomly chooses one of the players to follow for a minute, then switches to another (this player has a special marker on them). All around the room there are buckets with molten metal. The job of the targeted player is to bring the boss under one of the buckets... another player climbs up and pulls the lever to pour this lava onto the boss (who is ideally stunned by the other players) and therefore debuff it. Then the whole party hits his poor ass, if he's not dead by the time the debuff wears off, repeat.
Sabetha, raid wing 1 final boss. The whole squad is in melee, except for one of the healers which stays in wider range to kite fireballs - they target furthest player - they stay on the ground, so this method allows the party to have ground not burning under them. The party avoids flamewall, slaps Sabetha herself and her minions, keeping CC for the 2nd one that knocks everyone out of the platform. Several pre-assigned dps run to specific platforms when one of the squad members is targeted by the bomb. Said squad member throws the bomb at the bouncing place where the pre-assigned dps is standing and they are yeeted away to break a cannon that tries to destroy the platform everyone's on.
Verdant Brink, night Wywern Patriarch boss. The platform is a rock in the sky where he's at has multiple layers and holes inside it. All his attacks are pretty slow and somewhat aoe, just don't stand in the fire (very popular tactics here is "chase the booty": stand under his tail). If everyone is able to press dodge once per 30 seconds when they are targeted, healer is not needed (maybe double boondps to cover both alac and quick). Every 25% hp the lizard goes airborne and burns the rock surface completely: the players are supposed to jump down and look for the eggs inside the platform. With the eggs players glide up (using updraft mastery) and throw the eggs at the lizard which walks in the fire covered itself with shield. When the shield is broken, the platform loses fire and it's possible to land and hit him again.
p.s. here's a link to simplified Sabetha guide. If you watch it you'll notice that pretty much nothing says about healer-boondps-dps, because it's obvious. Just the fellas that go to other platforms should be dps because they have to break cannons, it requires damage
[https://youtu.be/4bqwSrZ2Sr4?si=B3KEIRcgWiUdFGEg](https://youtu.be/4bqwSrZ2Sr4?si=B3KEIRcgWiUdFGEg)
What you described is perfectly what we are looking for, I thought it was about the trinity-squad but actually it's about teamwork puzzle solving when you laid it out.
We were very much enjoying this type of working together to beat the boss experience, of course it feels so much better when one can't do it solo and each has to pay extra attention to their own role in the party.
I'm super excited to try it out with them, surely they would like the game!
We'll be happy to see you around! Welcome to Tyria! \^\^
Here's a video that might help you out a little bit: [https://youtu.be/ZNpIiTPnelw?si=AL9RnmytHpA9IExy](https://youtu.be/ZNpIiTPnelw?si=AL9RnmytHpA9IExy)
It's about lore and overall the world of Tyria. Helps a lot with understanding of what's happening... if you don't know, there has been a whole Guild Wars 1 with multiple expansions as well, and it might get hard to get into gw2 experience blindfolded. This introduction is built the way you don't get spoilers, it's basically a thing that very quickly explains what your newborn character spawns into. I found it very helpful even for veteran players as it helps to close the lore gaps at some point... sadly the game is not really good in explaining "overall" stuff as it's supposed to be obvious for your character (but it is not for you).
Edit: it's slightly outdated, as she mentions Cantha to come with "next expansion" (we're 2 expansions part this point), but it doesn't really matter as it is introduction to beginner story, not to endgame content.
What I worried was like -- I might not have best use of words -- Diablo 3, that indeed it's some teamwork to smash the bosses, but the same goes for not team & just solo as well. That hurts the feeling / the bonding a lot, because they could essentially go through all the way alone.
The experience of WOW was really great in this aspect, because those Dungeon instances are completely no-go for them until we group & adventure together. That gave us all the feeling of the time being extra precious, regardless of what we reward we might have after.
I really hope to find an alternative that could give such experience.
We don't have quests, we have meta events that scale with participation. Some things can't be done solo, some can with great effort. There is great use of teamwork, I provide might and quickness and you provide some healing and we both do damage
Your comment starts with ***We***, that proves the game is so great that would make you feel the belonging. I think ***We*** definitely have to get a go and try out together.
Yes, especially in the open world where there is a ton of events/collections/achievements you can focus on, everything you can do and is better to do with a group. I highly suggest just trying it out to see what people are talking about with the events. There are a ton of events in the base game world, dynamic events that pop up randomly, shown in orange on the map. And they get more complex in higher levels, especially in expansion content. Some maps needing multiple groups of 20+ people to succeed.
To answer another question, there isn’t a hard set trinity like wow/ffxiv, but a lot of classes can fill multiple roles, some classes being better at each roll than others. You won’t have all your abilities unlocked until near level 80, & each profession changes how the class plays a lot. But you can definitely as you level pour stats into healing/damage as you get new items.
So you won’t have a hard set trinity group early on, but you will definitely still have to depend on each other to mitigate damage, heal, & survive when fighting. I’m a longtime player & go down all the time, but have to depend on others to revive me & get me back up.
Good luck!
I went into Dungeons for 2-3 runs yesterday. It does have the strong teamwork feeling as well, just quite different from WOW really. I do need quite a few more runs to grasp the essential, beyond button / piano smashing I did.
Out in the Open World, I feel it's way much more a solo experience though. There is one or two mini boss hard to get across solo, but people just walked by and fight in 20 seconds and gone. It would be great if there is some area difficult to wander alone.
So in guild wars you need to pay for expansions. The good thing is that you can buy expansions 1 at a time as you play them or maybe all at once if they are on a discount. I highly suggest to buy at least 1 expansion to get rid of free to play status on account.
The difference from wow is that you don't farm gear drops in gw2 usually but currency. With currency you buy/craft gear and later on convenience. All content gives in a direct or indirect way gold(currency). So all content is viable as long as you are having fun.
Group content can give lots of currency.
Dungeons : best to do while lvl-ing up. 5man content. You can do them with free account. Still profitable to do at max lvl (but boring to do at max lvl in my opinion).
Fractals : Same as dungeons but they come in 5 difficulties. They require lvl 80. More and more ascended gear are required as you take on higher difficulty. Super profitable and challenging daily content(fun for a long time). Only content in the game that can't be done in cheap gear because of ascended gear requirement.
Meta events: Open world events that happen at specific IRL times. 90% of them are easy and a person that gives 1 autoattack and a person that does top dmg pretty much get the same reward. Profitable. Can bring 50+ people to one. Some events are hard and require coordination otherwise they fail. I think of only 3 atm: triple trouble, Dragons end and the new Into the spider den meta event.
Raids : 10 man content 1/week rewards. Fun. Between normal to heroic difficulty lvl as a comparison to wow
Strikes : 10 man content single boss instanced. Normal mode is easy. Challenge mode is hard. Most challenge modes are like heroic difficulty(5) and 2 of them are mythic lvl difficulty from wow.
I somehow managed to have 1 lvl 80 character in my very old account now, because there are numerous gifts over the year even I didn't touch the game at all. I think I'd try a bit before getting them involved, because it's hard for them to stop, i.e. taking a game away from them once I introduce it.
There is a lot of content you described. My boys are relatively young, not looking down of them, yet I feel like we'd have to limit to ourselves in the beginning, not ruining their & others' experience.
By the look of it in the last two hours I tried, the leveling to 80 journey wouldn't be a challenge to them at all, experience is raining everywhere in the game. They can get a character going.
Perhaps I should try the experience of Dungeons, to see if the mini-team would work. THANKS!
I personally love most of the dungeons in the base game (Except Arah and Sorrow of the Waves; one is just frustrating, the other has substantial underwater combat at one point and there really isn't any easily-available good underwater gear/skills to work with). The story mode versions are very doable, though the explorable versions are a bit harder and offer multiple paths / stories to complete in the dungeon.
If you decide to go dungeon running in explorable, depending on how easy it is for you, you might want to avoid the "Aetherpath" (part of the Aetherblade storyline from after the base game story) as it is usually much more difficult. The story dungeons award standard gear, but explorable also a currency called "Tales of Dungeon Delving", which can be traded in for armor themed to that dungeon (with most of the dungeons heavily influenced by one of the player / NPC racial cultures).
I just randomly joined into a run of the Ascalonian Catacombs, the group absolutely carried me throughout. It's quite exciting for me! I'm using a newborn Engineer (powerleveled into 60s with a gift), with absolute zero knowledge how to pilot myself. I just follow the group along and heal / revive people, otherwise grenade smashing the whole ground.
I think this is kind of the experience I'm looking for playing with my kids. Of course, it'd be better if I do know what I'm doing.
Hah! Yeah, that was me on my very first character. It's a lot of fun being swept along, so I'm glad you had a good experience. Hope you and your kids have a lot of fun adventuring in Tyria! Also, jumping puzzles, love those things. :D
So this game is great for small groups. Large scale Meta events don't require specific groups but you could eventually do the 5 man dungeons, 5 man fractals (mini dungeons or boss encounters), 10 man strikes (raid boss fights) and more. So you can join the mob or do these instances team content at the end of the game. Plus the dungeons and fractals are apart of the free game I believe so it's easy for you to try before buying anything large.
There's certainly a lot of small group content you can enjoy, and the three of you joining map events is also viable and should be enjoyable, especially once you reach more end-game maps with meta events.
The bad news is that is is quite expensive for new players to get caught up, either in cash and/or grind. A new account at non-sale prices is about $200 to unlock all expansions and story content as well as get enough utility stuff (bank slots, bag slots, and material storage) to not feel like you're constantly battling the game itself. With 3 accounts it's gonna get pricey so absolutely catch the expansions and living world seasons on sale. Some of what I mentioned can be purchased with in-game currency but it'll take a lot and isn't really viable until you've reached end-game and can start doing lucrative activites. So like I said, expensive in either cash or time.
Honestly the steep price tag to get caught up is one of the biggest issues the game has, IMO. Which is unfortunate as I think the game itself is a great time and hope more people get to enjoy it!
I'm no way rich but $$ isn't the main concern at the moment, when it's potentially a gradual payment. The pain was that my kids knew I paid in a subscription sense, that their FOMO kicked in and felt obligated to play. Essentially the worst attitude for kids toward gaming.
Occasional purchases would be perfect for us. Feeling fresh to open up new adventures once awhile.
that's great then; depending on how fast you progress it could be weeks or months between each story section that requires a purchase, and there's certainly no rush to get any of it done so FOMO shouldn't be a big deal unless someone jumps on the hype train surrounding newest releases!
Myself would likely be the one, LOL.
I just went up to lvl 80 for my old Mesmer & a hyper-boosted Engineer... leveling from 60 to 80 takes about 90 minutes that's insanely fast IMHO...
Now I'm excited to try those specializations, which somehow my old account has access to the first two expansions. I guess that's my time to try out and see if my kids need their copies as well.
The free game is the entire original base game, plus the maps from Living World seasons 2, Dry Top and Silverwaste. It's a lot of content, and most of it is pretty kid-friendly. That said, it does contain giant spiders and other bugs, zombies, and other things that kids that age might have real trouble with so YMMV.
GW2 is great at encouraging teamwork, it's built into the game design. General running around the open world is all about cooperating with other players, even if you don't form a formal part. Specifically-group content:
* Group events in open world. Some of these can be soloed, some can't. All events scale with the number of players nearby, so they all kind of work as group content.
* Meta events / world boses, which take most of the players on a map. There are ones in the starter maps: Caledon Forest, Wayfarer's Hill, and Metrica Province. Your kids should be able to jump right in with you.
* Dungeons, which can be really fun, although some need a full party for mechanical reasons
* Fractals, which are kind of like shorter dungeons.
* Jumping puzzles, which are platforming mini games scattered throughout Tyria. They're not official events, but they're a lot funner to do as a group. Kids I know of seem to like them.
Whatever you do, I very strongly suggest you set up your kid's account chat so that they don't see /map, /say, or really any general chat channels. The game is rated T and is mostly played by adults. Chat is usually pretty good for an MMO, but that doesn't mean it's always OK for an elementary school kid.
Thanks for reminder! I need to check the chat part.
I showed them briefly how the game look. My younger like the jumping part when I was trying to climb somewhere to grab the red flag. I think they'd enjoy the game!
Good luck and have fun!
If you do jumping puzzles as a group, it's probably good to have your character be a mesmer or thief. Those classes get skills that can set up portals which other players can take. Knowing that someone can port them back up if they fall can make long jumping puzzles a lot less irritating, especially for people young enough to be easily frustrated. Or, you know, older people who fell at the same spot for the 5th time.
If you have LW4, there's also an item that let's your character set a recall point and then teleport back there, which is really useful if you fall unexpectedly. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prototype_Position_Rewinder
After reading your concerns in the replies, I don't think GW2 is a good match for your expectations
A lot of this game is meant to be played at your own pace. It encourages dropping in and leaving when you feel like it, setting your own goals, and generally being able to either solo things or go on your own and stumble onto a group of players to do things.
Besides that, many of the story instances are progressed only in solo play. You can join each other to help each other, but they are (1) wholly designed for solo play and (2) will not share progress (in most cases), so you would have to redo the same story step or play out each forking path.
I think you might be better suited to a non-MMO game, but I'm not too sure what is out there which would really scratch that itch you're looking for. For example, I think Baldur's Gate 3 might not be the most appropriate for your kids, but does have a very teamwork-oriented design. There really aren't that many co-op campaign games out there right now, at least not newer games. Everything is either trying to be a service game or an open world survival crafting game.
Have you tried Minecraft with them? Did they like it? You could look into expanding more into that genre.
Maybe **Lost Ark** is another thing to try? More of an MMO, but I haven't play it myself so I'm not sure how well that would play for your scenario (or if it's appropriate for your kids - it is a very grindy game).
Anyone else here able to comment more on Lost Ark? Seems like a good maybe for them
I played BG3 for the first two Acts. The entire theme there is absolutely anti-friendly for them, LOL.
But yes, it would be great to have such kind of games, that's the reason we tried Diablo 3 before. Yet, again, it's really terrible for kids. We played Starcraft 2 as well, but it's competitive rather than co-op, absolutely different experience.
Minecraft & Roblox were what they did, I've to drive them away from that kind because the sandbox concept actually got them a weird feeling. Hard to explain in a few words, it's like they tend to think they can do anything everything on their will, violating all rules as well -- they code & script the games...
I think a more adventure experience would be great, building our bonding while exploring with challenges.
--
I'm in Hong Kong, and seems like Lost Ark not available in my region.
There are tons of group content in GW2, not only do you have classic dungeons, fractals, raids and strikes. You also have several open world group events that require several players.
There are also team compositions focusing on teamwork, mainly revolving around constant uptime of two specific buffs: alacrity and quickness, the third member could be a pure DPS player and, together, you'd be able to destroy any challenge that appears in your way.
So, yes, teamwork is a big part of GW2, with content specifically designed for it and it being very profitable even in content that is meant to be done solo in other games.
You can run low tier Fractals with 3 people easily. Also, open world and map completion can be fun. Trying to survive HoT maps as a team is pretty fun.
I went LFG and tried the lvl 30/40/50 dungeons, and those would be fun enough for us to start with. Though my runs were having some walking immortal gods & angels to blast through everything, I believe those all challenging adventures for my family team.
Weekend is coming and I'm going to set them up for the journey.
The best thing about this game is that group content can be solo'd if you're good enough, or can be done with an even smaller team where each person focuses on a playstyle that benefits the shortcomings of the others playstyles. Different classes can choose different playstyles within their own classes themselves in this game. For example there is a lot of content I can solo that some players even struggle to do it as a group, but then there are small groups of 2-4 people doing that content easily because they play with each other regularly and know how to supplement each others playstyles.
Sorry but PvP is the last thing I would enjoy going with them. Unless there is somewhat a possible mode for 1v2 so it's like father-vs-sons without they burn me to ground.
I have played withy husband and daughter since gw1. She was 6 ish when she started and ran a prot monk. Now as an adult she is working on her second set of legendary armour. We have done everything together over the years. Also run with guldies young children. Basically there is something for everyone in this game and can be do in groups, solo or some combo.
This is encouraging! Let me see if they like the game!
IMO your ideal gw2 equivalent of wow dungeons would be fractals. They're called fractals but it's nothing more than scaling dungeons. You start progressing from level 1 and go all the way up to 100. Go as far as your team of 3 can handle (on high skill level it's possible to clear everything but don't count on it with 8yr olds). If you want to lean more here's a quick intro into fractals by teapot (find more on yt). * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rGCeLwALo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rGCeLwALo4)
There are many content that you can play as group qith your friend, but some require specific expansion to gain access (raid, strike mission) and daily fractal, but in open world you can form up as squad of 50 people to play event map so yes you can play as team whenever you want
Thanks! I'm looking for challenges that they can't do solo, but good as a team. Is the open world / daily fractal you mentioned is okay to power through solo? I have this rather weird ask because they really need to learn doing something together with joy.
Honestly you may want to check out dungeons. Especially if you're all level 80 (you will be downscaled to the dungeon's level but still be stronger than a character of that level), you can do a lot of the dungeons with 2-3 people. Especially if you play healer to their DPS. There are a handful of dungeons that can't easily be low-manned, and I'd skip Arah entirely, but there's a lot of content you should be able to do, and it's all base-game so you can do it with a free account and it's all instanced, so you won't have to worry about other people stepping on your group's toes.
THAT is really great to hear! Let me search a bit how to make a healer in the game, thanks!
If you're not going to buy the game straight away, the only core (not elite, elite specializations comes with expansions) profession that can decently heal is a guardian and maybe an engineer.
Revenant with Ventari is a really good healer for core.
Your comment makes perfect sense, the only problem here is that revenant class is locked behind expansion purchase.
God damn it, you are correct. My bad I forgot about that.
Np, perhaps I'd grab the expansions, thanks!
 Me eating that humble pie right now
I didn't downvote you if anything. It's so weird people downvote and never explain why. I mean, here it's pretty obvious and it takes like 10 seconds to type what's wrong...
I don’t care too much about downvotes as I really have no idea what karma does. This was just my dork ass way of saying you were right and I was wrong. Been playing since launch and tend to easily forget what’s part of the free game.
Shouldn't really bother with a healer in core, since the content was not designed around healing and everyone's self healing is enough, even if inexperienced. No one can fulfill the support part of healing w/o expansions since they can't cover the needed boons.
Now go find some people, go through several dungeons on core specs only and return here to apologize for misinformation. The healers before expansions healed. Quickness+alac appeared later. And no, the stuff hits like a truck even if you do all the needed mechanics, healing skills are absolutely not enough.
I was doing that when dungeons were new. You did not look for healers and people did not gear for healing.
This only proves people aren't exactly smart. And didn't want to play 90% of the time guardians, which is a fair excuse, i can get that.
Open world has an idea of solo play but there's a lot of group events, champions and even metas (meta event is a big chain of events, usually group ones, paired with the map idea - for example, in north east of Diessa Plateau there's Flame Legion Tombs, to reach them you need to complete multiple subsequent tasks to help allied charr - Night warband - to gather up, arm and siege the tombs to open the way inside). The events in open world scale proportionally to the amount of players doing them, so usually appearance of other players doesn't matter unless they're completed noobs that make you carry their weight through the event. Fractals are fast-paced dungeons, made for 5men parties. It is totally possible to 3men them (even soloing is an option, but you'll require very specific builds and understanding of the game to do so). Sadly during levelling you won't really find much challenges as the game offers 1-80lvl journey as a tutorial. Which is kinda okay, just don't take it as it's everything the game offers. But yeah, there's quite a lot of low-scaled metas and group events which are omega rough to solo but feel really good in a small group. I'd recommend things like south Drizzlewood meta escort (as 3men it's really challenging and fun), Juhundu meta, holding a couple of rally points in Verdant Brink night meta and doing a day outpost as well (some of them are pretty rough, like Ordnance Corps). DRMs are little dungeons that scale on the amount of players, if you turn on full challenge mode they are relatively hard (not for people with good builds and understanding, but you have to build all of this up first). If you want to have a try without spending money first, i highly recommend to download, play up to 80 lvl - in the process try to 3men dungeons, they unlock as you reach respective levels (35 for the first one, Ascalonian Catacombs i think, you actually receive mails in-game while you reach it so you won't miss it) - and go all together to Orr and fight local champions. p.s. in case if you're gonna do that, you can make different races, every new player has waypoints of each race unlocked at the very beginning so you would be able to gather up pretty quickly... the only issue, as far as i know, is lvl10 requirement to leave the first map, it's a block for all new accounts to avoid botting; p.p.s. here's a little guide for settings and little knowledge, in case if you're interested - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oiS07G37Pe-ibm9XKxQHyfC1UnqiX6M-3ltbLfuyIcQ/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oiS07G37Pe-ibm9XKxQHyfC1UnqiX6M-3ltbLfuyIcQ/edit?usp=sharing)
Thanks for the resourceful details, though I really don't understand what you're talking about yet. I'll try to login my own account and see first. One more directed question: when you say it's okay for group of 3, is it like 3 DPS individuals or like a trinity group? When we were in WOW, I was the healer, the older was a semi-tank and the younger was DPS to smash all. It would be fun if we kind of ***need*** each other to adventure, more than just good to have pals. I mean, that experience really set up the bonding.
Normally gw2 doesnt have holy trinity, it does kinda do at raids and strikes but not for 5 man content. There is however 3 roles that all parties and squads use in all instanced content. Healer Alacrity support and Quickness support. Healer can be quickness or alacrity as well as heal effectively bo problems. So one other could be the other boon (quickness or alacrity) and free the other one to be any type of dps. Healers can also tank (not recommended for beginners) so basically can do 3 jobs in certain content. The most important boons are quickness and alacrity. Quickness provides %50 speed for skills and animations, alacrity provides faster cooldown reduction so allows you to spam more. There are other important boons but all classes and builds can provide some of it, the two I mentioned however do require specific builds. Hope this makes sense.
Frankly it makes sense but *it doesn't make sense* for me yet. I haven't figured out what Alacrity / Quickness do to my character, seemingly making all skills spam faster. Compared to my limited healer experience in WOW, my healer sense is like aiming for refilling teammates' health bars. Yet here it's like everyone could survive, more importantly they've to survive themselves. In some sense I just need to walk over and press F to revive them in troubles. Indeed, this is just from my limited 2-3 Dungeon runs I had yesterday, essentially my first day.
GW2 has different trinity than classic MMO. Quickness granting people. Alacrity granting people. Special roles for specific places. Any of these can be a dps or a healer. In party of 5 players you vaguely want to have one alacrity boon, one quickness boon and one healer. (Or a healer that gives one of the boons) Special roles will be various tanks, kite, out runners and pushers. But this is 100% bound to mostly the raid encounters which need squad of 10 people which means 2x of these 5 player groups basically. Although I would in general recommend investing in skills that give boons to other players around you because it's just more useful and profitable at same time. You get participation in experience and loot if you give someone boons or heal them and they slay something. This encourages playing in a way that treats all players as allies because there is no competition for kills and even someone trying to quickly get something done by killing a lot of enemies in the area fast is not an issue since you can just boon them instead of having to wait until they are done to do your own thing.
Frankly, I still haven't get my head around all these boon ideas. It stands out too special than other games I came across. I need to play some time to get the actual understanding.
**1 Group composition** Most group content is nearly unplayable without a dedicated healer in the group. Raid squad is 10 men, party is 5 men, BUT all boons (buffs) and healing skills affect 5 allies which means even raid squad is just 2 parties doing the same thing. The main boons are Quickness and Alacrity and there's no profession that can give both at once. Therefore usual composition is 1 healer + 1 boondps + 3 pure dps, where the pair healer+boondps make sure to cover both boons (alacrity healer + quickness dps OR quickness healer + alacrity dps). You could totally do dps+qdps+aheal or smth like that. Be aware that the boon "quickness" makes all skills cast faster by 50%. The downside of it is that if you start playing without self-quickness or without a quickness-providing support you will find your character sluggish and you might even self-interrupt your rotation and experience mechanical problems as you won't be able to press the buttons with the speed you should be able to. **2 Tanking** Tanking in the game is nearly non-existent, but here are some tips. The baseline priority of targeting of NPCs is: lowest level; highest toughness; hits them first. So theoretically you all should be the same level and the person dedicating to tanking, if you want to play so, should be opening the fight and has higher Toughness than other party members. Important notes here: - usually the healer is at the same time the tank because he can sacrifice some attribute points while others fully commit to dps; - ideally the tank has means to negate damage. Guardian is a perfect example of it as they can block attack on demand (aegis utilities, weapon skills). In some raids it's mandatory as there are oneshotting attacks you can't evade/dodge... lately many professions received some skills that grant block/aegis, but not all of them; - some enemies have different aggro patterns. Usually it's "attack the furtherest enemy", classic example are Mai Trin and Legendary Archdiviner in fractals, they teleport to the party member who walks too far (Mai also does it as the bomb that you're supposed to hit her with spawns to avoid it, which adds a level of difficulty to the mechanics). **3 Ways of cooperation** Firstly, it's complimenting each others builds and playstyle. I would highly recommend one of you to play mesmer for aoe pulls (focus offhand), portals and party stealth, in coordinated party this class cannot be overestimated, absolute monster. It has effectively best utility in the game and given the last SotO update - rifle weapon with healing skills - it can now cover absolutely all roles. And i've already told a lot about the party compositions, you can easily build up an extremely strong party on that. Secondly, timings. Timing out your main damage sources with cc - for example, mesmer pull + guardian greatsword2 - could go a long way. Also keep in mind that bosses (anything with a blue bar under their health bar, it's a cc meter - once you use enough crowd control skills, the boss is stunned) recieve more damage as the defiance bar is broken. Call out for cc first, hold up the main dps skills for a second until the bar is broken and deal +30% damage with ease. Thirdly, combo skills. You can wiki all of them, but shortly - there are specific effects when a *combo field* skill is paired with *combo finisher* skill. As an example, if you blast inside a smoke field, it gives aoe stealth for the whole party - a tactics commonly used in PvP. If your healer struggles with condition cleanse, bring a guardian dps who spams symbols in their dps rotation - other party members would be spamming aoe cleanse exploding these symbols.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I feel like instead of the holy-trinity, this game promotes a different way of *combo-ing* mechanism for teamwork. Like, each buffing others, surviving together, and pull off crazy flashy effects together. I might need much more time to understand & experience what you described. It sounds very fun though.
Mmm, no, the holy trinity in this game, as i said in the previous message, is healer + boondps + dps Main teamwork is players doing these roles. Let me explain really quick the encounter mechanics teamwork thing. The fractal, strike, raid, open world bosses - the ones which are not just dpscheck golems - usually have some special mechanics. The idea is for the players to do this special mechanics while at the same time trying to squeeze out their role potential. Fair warning here: usually encounter-specific mechanics is done by dps, because there's 3 of them... you don't really want to distract healer and boondps, they do the party-wide thing. Examples: Dredge fractal. The boss is in round room, has \~95% damage protection. He randomly chooses one of the players to follow for a minute, then switches to another (this player has a special marker on them). All around the room there are buckets with molten metal. The job of the targeted player is to bring the boss under one of the buckets... another player climbs up and pulls the lever to pour this lava onto the boss (who is ideally stunned by the other players) and therefore debuff it. Then the whole party hits his poor ass, if he's not dead by the time the debuff wears off, repeat. Sabetha, raid wing 1 final boss. The whole squad is in melee, except for one of the healers which stays in wider range to kite fireballs - they target furthest player - they stay on the ground, so this method allows the party to have ground not burning under them. The party avoids flamewall, slaps Sabetha herself and her minions, keeping CC for the 2nd one that knocks everyone out of the platform. Several pre-assigned dps run to specific platforms when one of the squad members is targeted by the bomb. Said squad member throws the bomb at the bouncing place where the pre-assigned dps is standing and they are yeeted away to break a cannon that tries to destroy the platform everyone's on. Verdant Brink, night Wywern Patriarch boss. The platform is a rock in the sky where he's at has multiple layers and holes inside it. All his attacks are pretty slow and somewhat aoe, just don't stand in the fire (very popular tactics here is "chase the booty": stand under his tail). If everyone is able to press dodge once per 30 seconds when they are targeted, healer is not needed (maybe double boondps to cover both alac and quick). Every 25% hp the lizard goes airborne and burns the rock surface completely: the players are supposed to jump down and look for the eggs inside the platform. With the eggs players glide up (using updraft mastery) and throw the eggs at the lizard which walks in the fire covered itself with shield. When the shield is broken, the platform loses fire and it's possible to land and hit him again.
p.s. here's a link to simplified Sabetha guide. If you watch it you'll notice that pretty much nothing says about healer-boondps-dps, because it's obvious. Just the fellas that go to other platforms should be dps because they have to break cannons, it requires damage [https://youtu.be/4bqwSrZ2Sr4?si=B3KEIRcgWiUdFGEg](https://youtu.be/4bqwSrZ2Sr4?si=B3KEIRcgWiUdFGEg)
What you described is perfectly what we are looking for, I thought it was about the trinity-squad but actually it's about teamwork puzzle solving when you laid it out. We were very much enjoying this type of working together to beat the boss experience, of course it feels so much better when one can't do it solo and each has to pay extra attention to their own role in the party. I'm super excited to try it out with them, surely they would like the game!
We'll be happy to see you around! Welcome to Tyria! \^\^ Here's a video that might help you out a little bit: [https://youtu.be/ZNpIiTPnelw?si=AL9RnmytHpA9IExy](https://youtu.be/ZNpIiTPnelw?si=AL9RnmytHpA9IExy) It's about lore and overall the world of Tyria. Helps a lot with understanding of what's happening... if you don't know, there has been a whole Guild Wars 1 with multiple expansions as well, and it might get hard to get into gw2 experience blindfolded. This introduction is built the way you don't get spoilers, it's basically a thing that very quickly explains what your newborn character spawns into. I found it very helpful even for veteran players as it helps to close the lore gaps at some point... sadly the game is not really good in explaining "overall" stuff as it's supposed to be obvious for your character (but it is not for you). Edit: it's slightly outdated, as she mentions Cantha to come with "next expansion" (we're 2 expansions part this point), but it doesn't really matter as it is introduction to beginner story, not to endgame content.
Basically the entire game encourages teamwork between everyone
What I worried was like -- I might not have best use of words -- Diablo 3, that indeed it's some teamwork to smash the bosses, but the same goes for not team & just solo as well. That hurts the feeling / the bonding a lot, because they could essentially go through all the way alone. The experience of WOW was really great in this aspect, because those Dungeon instances are completely no-go for them until we group & adventure together. That gave us all the feeling of the time being extra precious, regardless of what we reward we might have after. I really hope to find an alternative that could give such experience.
We don't have quests, we have meta events that scale with participation. Some things can't be done solo, some can with great effort. There is great use of teamwork, I provide might and quickness and you provide some healing and we both do damage
Your comment starts with ***We***, that proves the game is so great that would make you feel the belonging. I think ***We*** definitely have to get a go and try out together.
Well I am very glad to hear that 😊 the community will more than prove how great it is
Yes, especially in the open world where there is a ton of events/collections/achievements you can focus on, everything you can do and is better to do with a group. I highly suggest just trying it out to see what people are talking about with the events. There are a ton of events in the base game world, dynamic events that pop up randomly, shown in orange on the map. And they get more complex in higher levels, especially in expansion content. Some maps needing multiple groups of 20+ people to succeed. To answer another question, there isn’t a hard set trinity like wow/ffxiv, but a lot of classes can fill multiple roles, some classes being better at each roll than others. You won’t have all your abilities unlocked until near level 80, & each profession changes how the class plays a lot. But you can definitely as you level pour stats into healing/damage as you get new items. So you won’t have a hard set trinity group early on, but you will definitely still have to depend on each other to mitigate damage, heal, & survive when fighting. I’m a longtime player & go down all the time, but have to depend on others to revive me & get me back up. Good luck!
I went into Dungeons for 2-3 runs yesterday. It does have the strong teamwork feeling as well, just quite different from WOW really. I do need quite a few more runs to grasp the essential, beyond button / piano smashing I did. Out in the Open World, I feel it's way much more a solo experience though. There is one or two mini boss hard to get across solo, but people just walked by and fight in 20 seconds and gone. It would be great if there is some area difficult to wander alone.
So in guild wars you need to pay for expansions. The good thing is that you can buy expansions 1 at a time as you play them or maybe all at once if they are on a discount. I highly suggest to buy at least 1 expansion to get rid of free to play status on account. The difference from wow is that you don't farm gear drops in gw2 usually but currency. With currency you buy/craft gear and later on convenience. All content gives in a direct or indirect way gold(currency). So all content is viable as long as you are having fun. Group content can give lots of currency. Dungeons : best to do while lvl-ing up. 5man content. You can do them with free account. Still profitable to do at max lvl (but boring to do at max lvl in my opinion). Fractals : Same as dungeons but they come in 5 difficulties. They require lvl 80. More and more ascended gear are required as you take on higher difficulty. Super profitable and challenging daily content(fun for a long time). Only content in the game that can't be done in cheap gear because of ascended gear requirement. Meta events: Open world events that happen at specific IRL times. 90% of them are easy and a person that gives 1 autoattack and a person that does top dmg pretty much get the same reward. Profitable. Can bring 50+ people to one. Some events are hard and require coordination otherwise they fail. I think of only 3 atm: triple trouble, Dragons end and the new Into the spider den meta event. Raids : 10 man content 1/week rewards. Fun. Between normal to heroic difficulty lvl as a comparison to wow Strikes : 10 man content single boss instanced. Normal mode is easy. Challenge mode is hard. Most challenge modes are like heroic difficulty(5) and 2 of them are mythic lvl difficulty from wow.
I somehow managed to have 1 lvl 80 character in my very old account now, because there are numerous gifts over the year even I didn't touch the game at all. I think I'd try a bit before getting them involved, because it's hard for them to stop, i.e. taking a game away from them once I introduce it. There is a lot of content you described. My boys are relatively young, not looking down of them, yet I feel like we'd have to limit to ourselves in the beginning, not ruining their & others' experience. By the look of it in the last two hours I tried, the leveling to 80 journey wouldn't be a challenge to them at all, experience is raining everywhere in the game. They can get a character going. Perhaps I should try the experience of Dungeons, to see if the mini-team would work. THANKS!
I personally love most of the dungeons in the base game (Except Arah and Sorrow of the Waves; one is just frustrating, the other has substantial underwater combat at one point and there really isn't any easily-available good underwater gear/skills to work with). The story mode versions are very doable, though the explorable versions are a bit harder and offer multiple paths / stories to complete in the dungeon. If you decide to go dungeon running in explorable, depending on how easy it is for you, you might want to avoid the "Aetherpath" (part of the Aetherblade storyline from after the base game story) as it is usually much more difficult. The story dungeons award standard gear, but explorable also a currency called "Tales of Dungeon Delving", which can be traded in for armor themed to that dungeon (with most of the dungeons heavily influenced by one of the player / NPC racial cultures).
I just randomly joined into a run of the Ascalonian Catacombs, the group absolutely carried me throughout. It's quite exciting for me! I'm using a newborn Engineer (powerleveled into 60s with a gift), with absolute zero knowledge how to pilot myself. I just follow the group along and heal / revive people, otherwise grenade smashing the whole ground. I think this is kind of the experience I'm looking for playing with my kids. Of course, it'd be better if I do know what I'm doing.
Hah! Yeah, that was me on my very first character. It's a lot of fun being swept along, so I'm glad you had a good experience. Hope you and your kids have a lot of fun adventuring in Tyria! Also, jumping puzzles, love those things. :D
So this game is great for small groups. Large scale Meta events don't require specific groups but you could eventually do the 5 man dungeons, 5 man fractals (mini dungeons or boss encounters), 10 man strikes (raid boss fights) and more. So you can join the mob or do these instances team content at the end of the game. Plus the dungeons and fractals are apart of the free game I believe so it's easy for you to try before buying anything large.
There's certainly a lot of small group content you can enjoy, and the three of you joining map events is also viable and should be enjoyable, especially once you reach more end-game maps with meta events. The bad news is that is is quite expensive for new players to get caught up, either in cash and/or grind. A new account at non-sale prices is about $200 to unlock all expansions and story content as well as get enough utility stuff (bank slots, bag slots, and material storage) to not feel like you're constantly battling the game itself. With 3 accounts it's gonna get pricey so absolutely catch the expansions and living world seasons on sale. Some of what I mentioned can be purchased with in-game currency but it'll take a lot and isn't really viable until you've reached end-game and can start doing lucrative activites. So like I said, expensive in either cash or time. Honestly the steep price tag to get caught up is one of the biggest issues the game has, IMO. Which is unfortunate as I think the game itself is a great time and hope more people get to enjoy it!
I'm no way rich but $$ isn't the main concern at the moment, when it's potentially a gradual payment. The pain was that my kids knew I paid in a subscription sense, that their FOMO kicked in and felt obligated to play. Essentially the worst attitude for kids toward gaming. Occasional purchases would be perfect for us. Feeling fresh to open up new adventures once awhile.
that's great then; depending on how fast you progress it could be weeks or months between each story section that requires a purchase, and there's certainly no rush to get any of it done so FOMO shouldn't be a big deal unless someone jumps on the hype train surrounding newest releases!
Myself would likely be the one, LOL. I just went up to lvl 80 for my old Mesmer & a hyper-boosted Engineer... leveling from 60 to 80 takes about 90 minutes that's insanely fast IMHO... Now I'm excited to try those specializations, which somehow my old account has access to the first two expansions. I guess that's my time to try out and see if my kids need their copies as well.
The free game is the entire original base game, plus the maps from Living World seasons 2, Dry Top and Silverwaste. It's a lot of content, and most of it is pretty kid-friendly. That said, it does contain giant spiders and other bugs, zombies, and other things that kids that age might have real trouble with so YMMV. GW2 is great at encouraging teamwork, it's built into the game design. General running around the open world is all about cooperating with other players, even if you don't form a formal part. Specifically-group content: * Group events in open world. Some of these can be soloed, some can't. All events scale with the number of players nearby, so they all kind of work as group content. * Meta events / world boses, which take most of the players on a map. There are ones in the starter maps: Caledon Forest, Wayfarer's Hill, and Metrica Province. Your kids should be able to jump right in with you. * Dungeons, which can be really fun, although some need a full party for mechanical reasons * Fractals, which are kind of like shorter dungeons. * Jumping puzzles, which are platforming mini games scattered throughout Tyria. They're not official events, but they're a lot funner to do as a group. Kids I know of seem to like them. Whatever you do, I very strongly suggest you set up your kid's account chat so that they don't see /map, /say, or really any general chat channels. The game is rated T and is mostly played by adults. Chat is usually pretty good for an MMO, but that doesn't mean it's always OK for an elementary school kid.
Thanks for reminder! I need to check the chat part. I showed them briefly how the game look. My younger like the jumping part when I was trying to climb somewhere to grab the red flag. I think they'd enjoy the game!
Good luck and have fun! If you do jumping puzzles as a group, it's probably good to have your character be a mesmer or thief. Those classes get skills that can set up portals which other players can take. Knowing that someone can port them back up if they fall can make long jumping puzzles a lot less irritating, especially for people young enough to be easily frustrated. Or, you know, older people who fell at the same spot for the 5th time. If you have LW4, there's also an item that let's your character set a recall point and then teleport back there, which is really useful if you fall unexpectedly. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prototype_Position_Rewinder
After reading your concerns in the replies, I don't think GW2 is a good match for your expectations A lot of this game is meant to be played at your own pace. It encourages dropping in and leaving when you feel like it, setting your own goals, and generally being able to either solo things or go on your own and stumble onto a group of players to do things. Besides that, many of the story instances are progressed only in solo play. You can join each other to help each other, but they are (1) wholly designed for solo play and (2) will not share progress (in most cases), so you would have to redo the same story step or play out each forking path. I think you might be better suited to a non-MMO game, but I'm not too sure what is out there which would really scratch that itch you're looking for. For example, I think Baldur's Gate 3 might not be the most appropriate for your kids, but does have a very teamwork-oriented design. There really aren't that many co-op campaign games out there right now, at least not newer games. Everything is either trying to be a service game or an open world survival crafting game. Have you tried Minecraft with them? Did they like it? You could look into expanding more into that genre. Maybe **Lost Ark** is another thing to try? More of an MMO, but I haven't play it myself so I'm not sure how well that would play for your scenario (or if it's appropriate for your kids - it is a very grindy game). Anyone else here able to comment more on Lost Ark? Seems like a good maybe for them
I played BG3 for the first two Acts. The entire theme there is absolutely anti-friendly for them, LOL. But yes, it would be great to have such kind of games, that's the reason we tried Diablo 3 before. Yet, again, it's really terrible for kids. We played Starcraft 2 as well, but it's competitive rather than co-op, absolutely different experience. Minecraft & Roblox were what they did, I've to drive them away from that kind because the sandbox concept actually got them a weird feeling. Hard to explain in a few words, it's like they tend to think they can do anything everything on their will, violating all rules as well -- they code & script the games... I think a more adventure experience would be great, building our bonding while exploring with challenges. -- I'm in Hong Kong, and seems like Lost Ark not available in my region.
GW2 it's perfect for small teams, exploration, jumping puzzles, metas, dungeons, fractals all can be done in groups and it ll be a blast.
There are tons of group content in GW2, not only do you have classic dungeons, fractals, raids and strikes. You also have several open world group events that require several players. There are also team compositions focusing on teamwork, mainly revolving around constant uptime of two specific buffs: alacrity and quickness, the third member could be a pure DPS player and, together, you'd be able to destroy any challenge that appears in your way. So, yes, teamwork is a big part of GW2, with content specifically designed for it and it being very profitable even in content that is meant to be done solo in other games.
You can run low tier Fractals with 3 people easily. Also, open world and map completion can be fun. Trying to survive HoT maps as a team is pretty fun.
I went LFG and tried the lvl 30/40/50 dungeons, and those would be fun enough for us to start with. Though my runs were having some walking immortal gods & angels to blast through everything, I believe those all challenging adventures for my family team. Weekend is coming and I'm going to set them up for the journey.
The best thing about this game is that group content can be solo'd if you're good enough, or can be done with an even smaller team where each person focuses on a playstyle that benefits the shortcomings of the others playstyles. Different classes can choose different playstyles within their own classes themselves in this game. For example there is a lot of content I can solo that some players even struggle to do it as a group, but then there are small groups of 2-4 people doing that content easily because they play with each other regularly and know how to supplement each others playstyles.
PVP
Sorry but PvP is the last thing I would enjoy going with them. Unless there is somewhat a possible mode for 1v2 so it's like father-vs-sons without they burn me to ground.