Guild Wars 2

I tried the tower for the first time today. Instantly ended up in a group event WITH NO OTHER PLAYERS ANYWHERE NEAR … got wasted. Then the group event went away so I tried again. Got wasted by too many mobs including veterans and elites. Then two other players showed up … we still got wasted. Grrrrr … not fun at all. Bottom line is that Anet again created content that is impossible to play without a group of at least 5+ players. So when you’re alone or with just a handful of players … tough luck. Last year the Halloween content was fun for EVERYONE. This year you were out of luck when you tried the MK’s Labyrinth with just a handful of players or less. Etc etc. I used to love this game (played all the way from closed beta), but the fact that mobs\area’s\whatever do not scale at all or at least not well is totally ruining the game for me.

The tower is group-content however, so of course it is going to be scale around groups.

Not all areas are supposed to be doable solo without thinking.

But the Tower is not really ‘advertised’ as being group content (until you read the small print\between the lines). And even so … that means that Living World content is restricted to (larger) groups only, including the solo(able) story instance at the end. I am not against group content, and I do not expect to solo champions etc. but I would like the game to scale according to the amount of (near) players. The design manifesto had (amongst others) the following phrase: “With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you.”. I’m saying that, at least for me, that last sentence is one of the things I love about GW2 but find lacking in the last few content updates where groups have almost become a must have instead of an option.

The trash mobs don’t scale, you can probably manage the 1st and 2nd levels alone if you are a capable player. By the 3rd stage you either need a group of people or hope there’s no events blocking your progress, (In my case there was, so I just guested to a different server) and stealth through most of it.

If it’s supposed to be group content the issue is that THERE’S NO REASON for people to return to much of what’s in the tower once they’re done. I did a few dailies here and there but it was more about hanging at the entrance killing mobs or recycling one event over and over.

I did have one toon I left at the top of the tower for awhile so I didn’t have to trek through the tower again but I’ve since found better things to do with that toon.

I hope this event and Tequatl’s after event numbers convince ArenaNet to abandon this style of design and focus on content that everybody can enjoy.

There are too many other quality games coming out soon that are going to be doing Guild Wars 2’s manifesto better than ArenaNet is currently.