Guild Wars 2

The powergamers and semi-casuals have been vocal about their concerns, but the voices of the casual players are still under-represented in the forums. These players would rather play the game than express their thoughts here, but their opinions are still important. I’ve taken on their perspective of the game through my own gaming experience and through conversations with other casual players. I’m not pretending to speak for all, or even most casual players, just a few who don’t read or visit the forums much. Here is how a portion of us feel about:

DUNGEONS

Completing dungeons in a PUG full of casuals is tough. My last group collected a total of 4 rares for a collective 10 hours of dungeoneering. Yes, dungeons aren’t about loot, but that is precisely why we took half an hour form a group -nobody wanted to run it. Hardcore players either have their tokens or already have dedicated speed-farming groups, while many casuals don’t find dungeons to be rewarding enough for the effort. Couple this with a low-population server, dwindling player base, newer exciting dungeons, and the greater need to farm for gold, older dungeons won’t see much action.

In addition to the lack of incentives to enter a dungeon, something must be said about the difficulty of dungeons in Explorable Mode for casual players. PUGS don’t focus fire, rotate disables, or coordinate combos. PUGS just play, and these dungeons are too hard for casual PUGS to enjoy. Telling casuals to not do dungeons until they “L2P” is unconstructive and damages the community. It is exclusionary, and we get the kind of dungeon participation that we have now: power groups that blaze through everything and PUGS that barely make it and won’t try it again.

DUNGEON SUGGESTIONS

Since everything is scaled in the game anyway, from loot to monsters, I would suggest a CASUAL/SCALABLE MODE, that scales the difficulty of monsters to be proportional to the group’s equipment score or specific dungeon completions. Obviously, the rewards would be much less than Explorable mode, but this would make for a much more enjoyable casual playing experience, all without lessening the challenge and rewards the hardcore players in the normal dungeons. Furthermore, the lack of dungeoneers can be solved by increasing the incentives for doing dungeons through better chest and completion rewards. There are already daily achievements, so how about a weekly dungeon achievement that is not tied to the monthly or daily achievement?

CRAFTING MATERIAL PRICES

The high prices of crafting materials hurt casual players the most. They don’t have stacks of resources that can hedge against price hikes or inflation. They played casually and have not acquired the materials needed to craft their items yet. They don’t earn gold easily either. Many of them will take weeks just to get the orichalcum alone, especially if they don’t search for maps of spawn points online. I’m not saying that we make things easier necessarily, but purchasing these crafting materials off the trading post is no longer an option for these players, especially if they haven’t already leveled their crafting up. As a semi-casual or hardcore player, money is relatively easy to acquire because of farming and trading post transactions. Casuals don’t farm and they don’t play the TP. But before you start saying that they’re stupid for not doing so, or that they should, or that it’s easy, let’s remind everyone of ArenaNet’s original vision of making the game fun without requiring massive amounts of farming. Now, let’s see if that still holds true.

After I respecced for farming runs, dressed in full exotics and sporting 70% magic find, I went to Frostgorge Sound to farm some snow trolls, ice drakes, and grawl. I did several runs over several days, separated by other activity to diminish the effect of diminishing returns. It was exceptionally boring, but that was beside the point. In each half-hour, after two-hundred dead grawl each time, I averaged 3 rare drops, 12 Intricate Totems, and 2 Elaborate totems per run. Let’s compare that to the average casual who can’t engage 6 grawl at once, doesn’t have any magic find, doesn’t have a decent build, and doesn’t have exotic equipment? What do think his haul is going to be? Comparing your 10g per hour playing the TP or 2G per hour farming Shelter’s Gate is an unfair comparison because you’ve already got the capital and the gear. How many hours will it take a casual player to farm the T5’s and T6’s required to level to 400 and craft his first exotics? The casuals are being forced to farm to be competitive. On top of this, farming gear is pretty expensive and they probably aren’t too excited to be buying gear to participate in an activity they despise doing in the first place. Imagine paying for the privilege of cleaning someone’s toilet. That’s what farming feels like for casuals. It stinks and they’re not buying it.

Some will say that the casuals don’t deserve to have good equipment if they’re not willing to work for it. I’d agree, except that ANET promised them a relatively grind-free experience, and high crafting materials prices inadvertently force players to farm. Others will dismiss the plight of the economic plight of the casuals altogether by suggesting they can sell their found materials on the trading post. This ignores the fact that most casuals will likely keep their crafting materials and not will sell them. They don’t have income other than from events and occasional loot from kills. They don’t already have a stack of 250 powerful bloods, and they haven’t experienced enough of the game to decide on a “final build”. So they’re going to save their crafting materials. A hardcore player might have 2-3 sets of equipment to fit every occasion, but a casual will most likely end their game with just one set, and they’ll have to think about what to make. These prices make it more difficult for these casual players to reach their “optimum” state, thus affecting performance in say… Dungeon PUGs.

CRAFTING MATERIAL SUGGESTIONS

I suggest that we increase drop rates for crafting materials. Yes, crafting mats will be worth much less with increased supply, but more supply leads to greater access. It doesn’t hurt anybody to double drop rates because legendaries will still be hard to obtain even if Earth Elementals drop 2 Lodestones per hour of farming, but casuals will be way better off because of this change. (If it’s such a big deal among current legendary holders, then refund some materials through the mystic forge. Old legendary = New legendary + materials.) Besides, if precursors are going to be easier to obtain, then demand for legendary component materials will increase, which will decrease supply, which will further increase prices. Supply issues are not good for anybody in the long run.

ONE-TIME EVENTS

Personally, I hate the idea of these one-time events because I really like this game and would like to participate in all the events, but I can’t. Many players have commitments that prevent them from logging in. I know many people, hardcore and casual alike, would like to enjoy all the content that Guild Wars 2 has to offer. But these one-time events, due to their time restrictions, are highly exclusionary.

ONE-TIME EVENT SUGGESTIONS

Allow players to enter a portal into an instance, available once every 2 hours for a day, that will allow them to relive the one-time event on their own schedule. If there aren’t enough players, combine them with players from other servers. I also don’t want to be able to walk up to a vendor and just ask for the reward. I want to experience the full content with the rest Guild Wars 2 community.

GHOST TOWNS IN SUB-80 AREAS

Speaking of communities, the game had a vibrant population that has since tapered off and dwindled a bit. This is especially noticeable on low-population servers, when looking for a dungeon party, and in sub-80 areas. There really is no incentive for level 80’s to enter a sub-80 area. Something must be done because casuals who have lagged behind in leveling their characters are finding it harder to complete many events solo. Some events are very tough to solo even while downscaled with full exotics and ample playing experience, so what do we expect of a casual with only greens and blues? Will he be able to defend a circle by himself? Slay a champion alone? How about guarding two spawn points simultaneously? That said, we need more players in the sub-80 areas. It’s good for the community, otherwise it will be harder to level ALTS, and especially difficult for newer players to enjoy the game. Many casual players I know have not even finished leveling their first character, which is very difficult when adventuring alone. I mean, how much fun would it be if you were level 1, entered Queensdale, and nobody was nearby to help you defeat the centaurs or kill the rogue bull? How long would you stick around in a desolate wasteland? My first character breathed MMO, my alt’s experience reeks of single player.

SUGGESTIONS FOR INCENTIVIZING SUB-80 EXPLORATION

There are not enough low level Dynamic Events for people to run to and from, so more event chains would incentivize players to stick with each other for longer periods of time. This develops a sense of community and camaraderie among players –albeit anonymously. Meanwhile, implementing a larger event notification radius helps players, particularly in sparsely populated areas. In fact, event notifications and timers could spawn on the world map for adjacent areas. This should be coupled with increased event rewards for participants and a decrease in low-level area waypoint traveling fees. Make it worth our while to join a low level event while I’m doing my world exploration or harvesting. Sometimes, I find myself not compelled to help at an event because killing a nearby pack of monsters or gathering some nodes is more profitable than running toward an event for a meager reward.

Why not incentivize 80’s to return to sub-80 areas by giving them loot drops that are equivalent to Orr or Frostgorge Sound? Make this an option in the options menu. If a level 80 player wants to farm for tiny scales in a level 10 area, he may. But he may also select to farm T5 and T6 scales from the same monsters, albeit with a lower drop rate –he does kill them faster while downscaled compared to a level 80 drake, after all. This mode also downlevels characters to level -1 instead of level +1, for the added challenge of course.

Allow players to reset their world completion to 0%, while introducing new points of interest and vistas to those areas. Make certain boss monsters on each map a mandatory objective to achieve map completion. Make the reward for a second world completion worthy of the 40-hour investment.

Raise the event completion rewards of doing lower level events to be higher than doing level 80 events, from experience to karma to silver. Spread out the resource nodes for various high level crafting materials to be available for harvest (only by level 80’s) in low level areas. Change the chests to give out only level 80 equipment when opened by a level 80 character. Place level 80 storyline instances in low level areas. Allow players to see where other players are on the map so that they can cluster together. Start scavenger hunts in low level areas. Just give high level players a reason to leave Orr and help repopulate low level areas.

IN CLOSING

I really like this game, and would like to continue playing it for a long time. While I am not a casual player, I can see that Guild Wars 2 is becoming less and less welcoming for them. ANET, please don’t let this continue.

Well , in theory from what was said at the game launch (before this new patch which actually puts everything into question actually.) , dungeons were meant to be the hardcore PvE experience , they are not easy to casuals cause they were not meant to be done easily by casuals without any understanding of how they work or group play.

Still , Anet is adding an entire new dungeon that comes with an entire new system for the hardcore , i think modding the old dungeons to fit a more casual approach might not be so bad now.

I think the dungeon difficulty is fine. It’s rarely impossible for pug groups even with minimal communication, except Arah. ANet has already started putting level 80 loot in 55+ areas.

Everything else I agree with.

Nice of you to gather information from other posts and put them here OP. Very well done.

Just to point out, you are using outdated labels in referencing gamers. Gamers play games, farmers farm them, most of the time because of outdated game mechanics. There is no inbetween or any distiction to seperate them. Gamers quit games because they dislike farming and thus the games slowly die, like the GW2 population is currently doing, that or the chat channels are being incredibly quiet and polite in ORR.

The use of the forced labels like hardcore and casual simply make people look foolish and support no arguments in any capacity, just an fyi. Farmers are afraid right now because alot of gamers do not like the current farming mechanics in GW2, but then the devs know this by now and are panicking.

Games built around farmers never last long.

Personally I’ve always played with both groups and never felt elitist toward the casual players in guild, how else are people meant to improve? With that said I agree with most of what you’ve written, however for me the crux of running dungeons, apart from the fact that the rewards are pityful, is that they are in my mind the most boring and uninteresting dungeons I’ve ever played.

Graill.8596:

Nice of you to gather information from other posts and put them here OP. Very well done.

Just to point out, you are using outdated labels in referencing gamers. Gamers play games, farmers farm them, most of the time because of outdated game mechanics. There is no inbetween or any distiction to seperate them. Gamers quit games because they dislike farming and thus the games slowly die, like the GW2 population is currently doing, that or the chat channels are being incredibly quiet and polite in ORR.

The use of the forced labels like hardcore and casual simply make people look foolish and support no arguments in any capacity, just an fyi. Farmers are afraid right now because alot of gamers do not like the current farming mechanics in GW2, but then the devs know this by now and are panicking.

Games built around farmers never last long.

Can you point any MMORPG built for casuals that lasted long? (that cause well , dividing into gamers and farmers just sounded silly … far too silly. Both are players , and if im going to give a tittle of gamer to a kind of player , i would rather give it to the farmer much than giving it to your “gamer”)

I would not say Anet is afraid really , at least from the looks of it this new dungeon will take grind to a whole new level. It is something made specifically to consume a great deal of time from the player. (Again a silly thing is to consider “farmers” care about what your “gamers” in any way they could get afraid , all “farmers” think of “gamers” is that they are a bunch of people who does not want to work the get anything)

That said , i do think Anet should give casuals things to do while they play the game that would not make them feel left out just because they cant grind for great amounts of time. The grind should be look related , or so said Anet.

I will add my 2 copper:

On dungeons: In DDO, every dungeon has a level that can be selected from Casual to Expert. The party chooses the level they want and the dungeon and rewards are scaled accordingly. As far as I can tell, the majority of the players are happy with this system and the only squabbling is about balance for a given setting at a given dungeon.

On OTEs: I missed the Halloween event; I was in Hawaii. I will miss this event because I have read this forum and others where people complain about the lag and visual spam caused by every single player trying to rush to a single location.

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They should scale dungeouns to the number of people in the party and call it a day.
Minimum of 2 people required to run.

Failign that, turn all silvers to veterans, cut boss health and damage output in half, and call it a casual instance with half the tokens. So yeah it is easier but it takes twice as long to get the equipment. That is also equally fair. Do note that changing them to vets will also lower the loot drop (silvers have higher loot chances if you haven’t noticed and they drop more money).

As consider myself a casual player. (an altaolic but casual)

I find no issues with the game except the the new ascending gear which I feel was not needed.

The true majority; as was stated elsewhere; do not come to the forums, are content with the game as it is and so feel no need to come to the forums.

Having been one of these silent majority for over a decade when I heard of this game and how it was designed I was determined to no longer be silent.

I feel that truly being one of the majority. I can speak for the majority more then someone speaking for us that says they are really not one of us.

All games have faults. The true majority is truly happy with the game and play it without complaint.

If you noticed the ascending armor thread is the largest in a long time. That is where a lot of the majority went to in these forums.

Usually we are quite, but I from experience have learned the hard way that is not the thing to do.

Too many times those saying they are the “majority” are in reality just the majority of those that are vocal. In reality they are the minority.

please do not say you are speaking for me and those like me if you are not truly in the majority

No one person can claim to be in the majority, really. Even you.

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robinsiebler.3801:

No one person can claim to be in the majority, really. Even you.

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Well i think one person can claim that , but i dont think anyone on the forums can do that.

Which is funny really , the moment you step on the forums , you leave the majority before you can post about being part of it.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

robinsiebler.3801:

No one person can claim to be in the majority, really. Even you.

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Well i think one person can claim that , but i dont think anyone on the forums can do that.

Which is funny really , the moment you step on the forums , you leave the majority before you can post about being part of it.

Well said and true, which is why I worded my response the way I did

I’m not a casual player, but I generally agree with you.

Thrognar.4186:

ONE-TIME EVENT SUGGESTIONS

Allow players to enter a portal into an instance, available once every 2 hours for a day, that will allow them to relive the one-time event on their own schedule. If there aren’t enough players, combine them with players from other servers. I also don’t want to be able to walk up to a vendor and just ask for the reward. I want to experience the full content with the rest Guild Wars 2 community.

This! So. Much. This! It would help with the issue that some players just miss the one-time event. I imagine that if the number of players per instance is limited that it also recudes lag in one-time battles.