No Plan Survives Contact With The Inner Me

Belghast's Damascene conversion to Guild Wars 2 has finally confirmed something I first began to suspect back when both he and I were playing New World and blogging about it: Belghast is the anti-Bhagpuss! I don't mean we're some kind of elemental forces that, should we ever meet, would react so explosively the fabric of space-time would be rent in twain, more like we approach the same games in diametrically opposite ways. It only goes to show how flexible the genre is and also how there's no right or wrong way to play an mmorpg.

Bel's post today is a great example of what I mean. He's been playing GW2 as a convert for just a few weeks and he's already talking about "the What Now problem". Granted, his point is that Guild Wars 2 always seems to have something new to do, but as I read his posts it's clear he's already done more in those few weeks than I managed in years.

Having things to do has rarely been an issue for me when I play. It took six or seven years of playing daily before I really began to run out of steam and then it had nothing to do with there not being anything left I hadn't already done. Even now, as we come up to the game's tenth anniversary, there's far more left in the game that I haven't done than there are things I have.

Let's see. What core game activities have I never done at all, not even once?

• Map Completion.
• Legendary Weapons.
• Legendary Armor.
• Skyscale Mount Collection.

And what have I barely touched in something like 12,000 hours? (8k on one account - haven't checked the others but they have to be at least half that - maybe more...)

• Personal Story on twenty of my twenty-one characters.
  
• Most of the Elite Specialist Weapons collections from Heart of Thorns.
• Most of the Elite Classes from Path of Fire.
• Almost all Fractals.
• More than half of the original Dungeons.
• The overwhelming majority of all collections of any kind.

And many, many more things I can't bring to mind because I've either completely forgotten about them or I never knew they existed in the first place.

Things I have done include

• Finished the personal story on one character, my original ranger. It took me about eight years but I got there in the end. Not that I particularly wanted to.
• Maxed all crafting classes, some of them twice (On different accounts.) even though most of them are next to useless.
• Ranked up over 2000 times in WvW. Currently I'm a Gold Major. That's almost exactly halfway up the ladder in terms of titles although only a quarter of the way in terms of experience required. Mrs Bhagpuss hit the same point sometime around 2015.
• Saved 17,000 gold, enough to buy nearly 60,000 Gems at current exchange rates. 60k Gems would cost over £600.
• Hoarded vast stores of materials across three accounts, enough to double my personal fortune if I sold them on the Trading Post.

And I've had nearly a decade of all-but-free entertainment. That's probably the most important thing.

At this point I could claim I never make plans or set goals in mmorpgs. Sometimes I do like to give that impression. I think it makes me sound cool, which is something only a deeply uncool person would ever think, let alone say out loud. And it's not even true, anyway.

What I really do is make plans all the time and then forget I've made them or lose interest in them before they get going or put them aside after I've started and never pick up from where I left off. I quite like having a plan but unless it's something I can complete in a session or two there's every chance I'll just abandon it in favor of something else long before I get to the end.

Guild Wars 2 is both good and bad in that regard. As Bel says, there's an incredible number of things you could be working on at any one time. You'd need to be pretty determined to tick every last box the game puts in front of you. 

On the other hand, many of the activities presented involve what seems to me to be a positively horrific level of commitment. For me, they can all-too-frequently feel, quite literally, too daunting even to start, let alone finish. 

Take the Skyscale mount, for example. I would quite like to have one of those. They're ugly and annoying but inarguably useful. I have thought about doing the collection a few times but when I read up what's required I lose the virtual will to live. 

Other collections I've not been able to bring myself to do, even though I'd quite like the end result, include Mawdrey, the craftable Ascended back item that also salvages bloodstone dust (Okay, technically Mawdrey II does that part but you get them as a twofer so it's a moot point.) and the WvW Legendary Armor. That one's so long I feel ill just thinking about it.

Sometimes it's not even the time and effort that puts me off. I have most of the necessary items for a few pieces of that Legendary Armor, for example, and almost everything for several Legendary Weapons. I just can't imagine using them if I had them so it seems like a waste to burn the very valuable materials making them.

Mostly, though, it is the time and effort. Even things I've already proved I can do and which I genuinely enjoyed at the time lose a lot of their appeal when I come to do them a second or third time. I had plans to do all the HoT Elite Spec Ascended weapons, for example, and I said on this blog that I was going to make all the variants of the Ascended weapon Caladbolg. 

For years I've also been planning to do the collection for Princess for the third time so I have one on all my accounts. So far I still haven't managed to make myself do it. I did three or four of the HoT weapons before I ran out of enthusiasm, which might be my best effort ever. I still own just the one Caladbolg. 

So, as you can see, it's not plans I lack, it's discipline. When I do finish a project it's usually something I've started on a whim. It's the surge of energy that comes from an ad hoc decision that carries me though. 

That's pretty much how I ended up with map completion on all the End of Dragons maps. I just got fired up with how much fun it was and didn't want to stop. Map completion is per character, though, and I can already tell it's not going to be anything like as much fun the second time so my Elementalist may end up being the only character with all the Cantha maps completely free of fog.

This afternoon, with no forethought whatsoever, I made my Engineer, who I never play, into a Mechanist. I can't even remember how it started but somehow I found myself running round Dragons End, Echovald Forest and New Kaineng City grabbing easy Hero Points to fill out the skill wheel. 

It took me a couple of hours. Now I have a Jade Mech and a whole load of skills I have no idea how to use. 

In the course of doing it, I discovered only my Ele can use zip lines and mana batteries, despite the Mastery for them being account-wide. When I found my Engineer couldn't zip up a tower, I went and looked some stuff up and now I realise there's a whole upgrade path for Jade Bots I never knew existed, including various modules and power cores you can craft, buy or find as drops. I'd just been using the one you get from the story without even realizing it was the basic, minimal version.

The benefits of upgrading look substantial so now I have a plan to get my Ele's Jade Bot fully upgraded and then maybe do the same for any other characters I play regularly. We'll see if it actually happens.

As Bel says, though, GW2 is a bit of a smorgasbord. I'm happy to pick away at whatever looks good just as the fancy takes me. The great thing about the game is that, while there's an awful lot you might want, there's very little you actually need. 

It's nice to have plans but it's a lot nicer knowing you don't have to do anything about them.