Guild Wars 2

So from what I understand Guild Wars 2 encourages players to group up and play together. The Group Events and Dungeons are nice, but what about those of us who want to play with our friends in the normal PvE world?

From what I can tell the only benefits to partying together with friends or anyone else for that matter is that we’re able to track each other and a handy party chat, but nothing else.

What would be nice is if things done together would be shared. If we’re working on the same heart/quest why not make the progress shared among party members? A shared exp would be nice too, split it between the party, give a full EXP to those who hit it and a portion of the EXP from a hitter to those who are in the area, not sharing EXP with someone who’s outta sight completely mind you… Something to make partying more worth while.

The group events are great for teamwork, but it doesn’t allow time to talk during and no one ever sticks around or parties up afterwards anyway.

Does no one else feel the Party system could be improved upon? :\

You don’t really supply many suggestions to support your cause, and the one suggestion you have for sharing experience doesn’t sit well with me. I feel like a lot of people would take advantage of that and use people to do the work for them while they lounge and watch their character go to 80. I can imagine a party of five venturing through a zone and having a berserker smash all the enemies and get the quests done quickly for everyone else. Plus, if newer players had their friends fight the bad guys for them, they wouldn’t get used to doing it themselves. Some quests have confusing/tedious tasks, but almost all of them involve some portion of combat, which is ubiquitous in the world and new players will need to fight things eventually anyway. Plus, if two people could easily wipe out a map’s quests with shared experience, it would seem less fair to someone who doesn’t have a friend to play with or wants to explore alone (as I often do myself) who would take twice as long.

I don’t think you’re out of whack, I just don’t agree with that particular suggestion. Things I think could make a party more enticing are increased experience for EVENTS (not quests or enemy kills like you suggested), magic find or karma. That would make people want to group up more often and make more friends! Otherwise, I think the very useful separate chat and location tracker are plenty good enough.