Guild Wars 2

cygnus.8913:

Harper.4173:

cygnus.8913:

Harper.4173:

cygnus.8913:

I returned the game recently prior to HoT, after being a day one player.

I decided to level up an alt – a little Asuran Elementalist. I’ve been leveling her up with a mixture of WvW, world PvE and dungeons.

Several times in the past week, I’ve been kicked from groups, before the first boss (sometimes even before I enter the dungeon), because I am not level 80. I’ve even been kicked from my own group (one I formed to get past the ‘80 exp zerker only 4k exp’ groups). Sometimes, I’ll join a group that doesn’t specify 80s only and be kicked for not being 80. In fact I just had a lovely conversation with a most polite soul who insisted that I get my main for Twilight Arbour or gtfo.

Now don’t get me wrong, players are entitled to set their own ‘filters’ on who they want to join their group. I avoid those ‘full 80 zerk’ parties like the plague anyway. But I can only get around this insistence on top level gear to play lower level content by creating my own groups and being very specific that everyone’s welcome and it’s not an 80 only run.

This ‘culture’ of making sub 80 players feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit is not going to endear it to new players. These welcome parties expect players to know everything.

Guild Wars 2 used to be well known for its community. It still has a great community, just not when it comes to dungeon runs. I half expect to see ‘Blue Moa run, 80 zerk 4k AP’ next. FFXIV beats this game hands down for genuinely helpful players. New players who come in after HoT are going to find experiences like these incredibly off-putting. Why has the game become like this?

In a game where the game starts at level 80 – and where most players are already level 80 – the simple fact that you’re not 80 means you don’t fit in.
And if you don’t fit in people will kick you.

The older the game gets the more stale the “gameplay” experience becomes – and the population in the game shifts towards a more “reward-oriented” instead of “gameplay and experience oriented” group.

Why? Because the old content is old – and people who played it for gameplay or experience got bored and moved on – so most people that are left are “reward-oriented” they stuck around because their fun is in the rewards not the content itself.
And for those players a non-80 character is a problem – because it means it will take them longer to get their rewards – which is against their play philosophy.

Well, my Ele hit 80 today (whee!). Not in zerk yet, though.

I agree with your assessment. It could just be that I forgot things were like this – I did take a long break.

FFXIV has down-leveling in its dungeon system and dailies that revolve around them (rewards only motivation). Yet I’ve seen (and been) raid geared characters paired with fresh players who were patient and helpful to a fault, with ‘elitism’ being very uncommon. I guess the difference is that FFXIV gives you no choice who you’re matched with if you want those rewards – when people have no incentive to be more inclusive then you’re right, they generally won’t be. For the benefit of new(er) players, though, the game could use a random matchmaking system with greater rewards for completion. ‘Spose I can’t really blame the players when the game mechanics encourage this sort of thing.

Having said that, I’ll try to make a point in future of taking varied groups to dungeon content so I don’t become exactly what I’m complaining about now that the alt I was leveling is 80. All I ask is full Ascended and 10k AP. Sheesh.

Random matchmaking with different players is something you can’t add retrospectively to a game without causing massive damage and uproar. People don’t like their freedom taken away – especially their freedom to associate with others.

This sort of system works with games that have it from the get-go – you start out with it and if you want to accept it you do and if you don’t you don’t – but adding it halfway through a game’s life cycle is very very bad design.

New players have to adapt – but that’s true for every game – plus matching new and old players together opens a huge door for conflict and abuse on both sides.

Imagine that with the FTP system you can make endless “newbie” accounts to troll others and with random matchmaking there’s nothing they can do about it.

I for one lean towards the other side of the spectrum – I feel people of different playstyles and mindsets should interact with each other very little – and the more filters we have in between the better – avoiding conflict and stress on both sides.

Good points, although perhaps if it wasn’t mandatory, it would be more ideal. I guess though that if the rewards were very good, people might consider it mandatory. So perhaps you’re right. In which case, maybe in time there might be better ways for groups to add criteria for runs, so it’s clearer as to what groups want sometimes – e.g. minimum gear required filters and such.

This is a very relevant topic today – with raids coming and Legendary Armor introduced with them everyone will want in – but only a few will be able to succeed.
Filters would go a long way in helping avoid many of the coming conflicts between “meta” and “non-meta” players.

Filters are often said to be evil – but for as long as humanity has existed we’ve tried to find ways through which to identify ourselves as part of a group and find others that are similar in nature and thought in order to associate.
Filters could help alleviate a lot of the issues we see people post around every day.

You can’t get kicked form the “meta zerk” party if you can’t see it or join it in the first place.
You can’t annoy the non-level 80 run that is doing the dungeon for the first time if you can’t see it or join it – right?

Harper.4173:

cygnus.8913:

Harper.4173:

Purple Miku.7032:

I do catch your drift and just to make it clear I wasn’t posting with the intent of singling you out at all, but I read about 90% of the posts on the thread so far (or at the very least, skimmed through them) and there’s quite a lot of people under the impression of how this community is supposedly awful.

It’s certainly not perfect and there are obviously a lot of problems that need to be addressed, but people on here really need to understand that elitism is something that will always exist in the world of gaming and like any MMO, there is a large spectrum of good, bad, nice, mean, stupid, and intelligent players.

In that regard, it can be very similar to real life and as such the best way to handle a situation is often times the same way— ignore and avoid those that cause you trouble to the best of your ability.

With no offense to anyone the things you’re talking about Miku are part of human psychology – it’s called hedonic adaptation.

The better off you are the more sensitive you become to issues that would be considered inconsequential in other circumstances.
You see this in games and in real life – you might think people who “have it all” live peaceful stress-free lives but that’s not actually true – simply their sensitivity to stuff that stresses them increases and their general level of stress tends to stay at about the same level.

So while some people are really worried and uncomfortable about not having anything to eat or a place to live others express similar levels of worry and lack of comfort regarding matters such as pronouns or what clothes to wear and so on.

First world problems? I dunno whether I’d apply what you’re talking about to raising a topic like this (I have a degree in Psych). If we apply this principle to every suggestion or debate on these forums, there wouldn’t be many of them. Should we not discuss these things because there are worse things going on in the world? Are we being over-sensitive in our cushy lives? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know.

We should discuss them – what I’m saying is simply that human beings adapt.
They adapt to good and bad conditions – which is an intrinsic trait that allows us to survive incredibly harsh conditions.
If humans couldn’t adapt like this past generations that were forced to live in very difficult, hostile and deadly conditions would have simply “given up” – but they didn’t – they just took things as “the norm” and pushed on.
The reverse is observable today – many things that would appear as wonders straight out of a utopia for people just a few dozens (not to go as far as hundreds) of years ago are considered “baseline” and not even given much thought. We consider them a given and thus still find room in our lives for the so called “first world problems”.

I do believe that yes – ultimately we’re being over-sensitive – we see it in many aspects of our society – humans have once again adapted and take a huge number of things for granted. The risk there is as far as I’m concerned immense.

But that’s simply a different discussion all together. I would simply like to add that gamers 10 years ago didn’t push as much to be “included” – and if people didn’t like their play style these gamers were much more open to changing and adapting – in contrast today’s gamers seem entitled( I make this claim with no intent of aiming any of it at you – you seem to be a very moderate person).

When I wanted to do The Fissure of Woe in GW1 and couldn’t find groups I tried to join a FOWSC ( speed clear for FOW) – and when I was booted for having the wrong build I didn’t flood the forums ( as many players do today) with cries of “elitists are ruining my life” – I simply looked up the FOWSC meta, got the right build – watched a youtube video on it and then went with a group. And it worked. I got FOWSC done.

Why is it that people don’t do this anymore?

Good post.

I can see both sides of this. I see why 80s want to bring 80s in the best gear, and I see why sub 80s want to be included. Well, when I say included, I mean the ratio of 80 groups to non 80 groups very evidently favours 80 groups, which evidently makes sense given how old the game is now.

But the thing is that when I started the game, there was no meta. My toon got an e-mail saying ‘hey, come to this dungeon’, I went with other newbies and we did the best we could. The idea of being 80 and having some of the best gear in the game to do AC P1 would have been hilarious to me – like ‘seriously?’ Now if you roll a new toon, you find the older players sorta pulled the ladder up behind them. Do I understand why? Sure, because it’s less efficient and players have less tolerance for ‘carrying’ people because the game doesn’t encourage or reward it. My experience has been though (avoiding the obvious 80 meta groups playing my alt) that a lot of these groups aren’t being specific about who or what they want, so you jump in and you get jettisoned out. It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but my argument is that it’s a bad experience for a new player if it happens frequently enough. We were all new and noobish once upon a time.

Raids might help with this a bit, by shifting the meta conversation to a space where it’s more appropriate.

Technically you could have a meta for everything, but realistically people just don’t have the bandwidth. So most meta conversation takes place in a very specific area of a game, where the time invested in conversation feels like it’s giving the most return. I think I’ve seen a game have a Meta for more than a single PvE activity, like, once.

I’m actually kind of interested to see what happens to player dungeon behaviors once the meta microscope refocuses on Raids and there isn’t quite that same social pressure obsessive refrain of “everybody’s” expectations. I’ve seen this sort of voluntary segregation between newbies and metaffectionados work wonders when Raids and Dungeons are introduced at the same time, or even up to a year later.

But three years?
I wonder what the statute of limitations is on that kind of baiting technique.

cygnus.8913:

I can see both sides of this. I see why 80s want to bring 80s in the best gear, and I see why sub 80s want to be included. Well, when I say included, I mean the ratio of 80 groups to non 80 groups very evidently favours 80 groups, which evidently makes sense given how old the game is now.

Exactly this – I would say there are more active 80s in the game than there are active non-80s. The active non-80s should be looking to become 80s and thus be a part of the “big group” so they can be included.

The idea of being 80 and having some of the best gear in the game to do AC P1 would have been hilarious to me – like ‘seriously?’ Now if you roll a new toon, you find the older players sorta pulled the ladder up behind them.

This also is largely in fact that Anet gave dungeons better rewards. And thus people came in to farm those rewards.
I don’t know if you were around before the reward revamp to dungeons ( giving any path a 1+ gold reward) but before then there was no “toxic dungeon community” – people didn’t run dungeons – and that was just the way it was. CoF P1 was farmed – the rest ignored unless you needed the tokens or achievements.

With the new rewards – came new incentive to play – and thus the farmers took over – and for good reason. At introduction the rewards were very good.

My experience has been though (avoiding the obvious 80 meta groups playing my alt) that a lot of these groups aren’t being specific about who or what they want, so you jump in and you get jettisoned out.

True – because these people playing a lot like they do expect things to be a certain way – nor do they care that one person gets kicked.
They expect that people should “know by now” how dungeons are done – because the majority does them a certain way.
And just like in most real life cases – majorities don’t care about minorities.

It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but my argument is that it’s a bad experience for a new player if it happens frequently enough. We were all new and noobish once upon a time.

Absolutely – it must be a pretty terrible experience to join and get kicked ( possibly insulted) and never know why.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Raids might help with this a bit, by shifting the meta conversation to a space where it’s more appropriate.

Technically you could have a meta for everything, but realistically people just don’t have the bandwidth. So most meta conversation takes place in a very specific area of a game, where the time invested in conversation feels like it’s giving the most return. I think I’ve seen a game have a Meta for more than a single PvE activity, like, once.

I’m actually kind of interested to see what happens to player dungeon behaviors once the meta microscope refocuses on Raids and there isn’t quite that same social pressure obsessive refrain of “everybody’s” expectations. I’ve seen this sort of voluntary segregation between newbies and metaffectionados work wonders when Raids and Dungeons are introduced at the same time, or even up to a year later.

But three years?
I wonder what the statute of limitations is on that kind of baiting technique.

Unfortunately this won’t change – the dungeon meta won’t go away because Raids are in the game now. Why?

1. Raids and dungeons serve different purposes for meta players – raids are for legendary armor and dungeons are for gold. So one does not substitute the other.

2.Raids are weekly gated for rewards – which means the average meta player will spend roughly one day per week raiding and getting his weekly reward and the other 6 days doing dungeons for the gold – as always.

3.Raid meta has nothing to do with dungeon meta – because the encounters are very different – even if more diverse groups are needed in raids they will not be needed ( and as a consequence not be wanted) in dungeons.

Every week the same kittening topics…

1-80 is a small part of your experience in this MMO. Just get over it, it really isn’t that harsh.

After the big trait mix-up, characters under lvl 80 just do not have access to the same level of traits as they did before the change. So these days, yes, a sub-80 character in dungeons will generally be looked down upon. Just one of those things.

I don’t mind if 1-2 are sub 80, really. Some people are just idiots. In the end it comes down if the player is experienced or not. Yes, I had groups with couple of sub 80 with horrible results, failing bosses several times. I understand some people want to prevent this.

Harper.4173:

cygnus.8913:

I can see both sides of this. I see why 80s want to bring 80s in the best gear, and I see why sub 80s want to be included. Well, when I say included, I mean the ratio of 80 groups to non 80 groups very evidently favours 80 groups, which evidently makes sense given how old the game is now.

Exactly this – I would say there are more active 80s in the game than there are active non-80s. The active non-80s should be looking to become 80s and thus be a part of the “big group” so they can be included.

The idea of being 80 and having some of the best gear in the game to do AC P1 would have been hilarious to me – like ‘seriously?’ Now if you roll a new toon, you find the older players sorta pulled the ladder up behind them.

This also is largely in fact that Anet gave dungeons better rewards. And thus people came in to farm those rewards.
I don’t know if you were around before the reward revamp to dungeons ( giving any path a 1+ gold reward) but before then there was no “toxic dungeon community” – people didn’t run dungeons – and that was just the way it was. CoF P1 was farmed – the rest ignored unless you needed the tokens or achievements.

With the new rewards – came new incentive to play – and thus the farmers took over – and for good reason. At introduction the rewards were very good.

My experience has been though (avoiding the obvious 80 meta groups playing my alt) that a lot of these groups aren’t being specific about who or what they want, so you jump in and you get jettisoned out.

True – because these people playing a lot like they do expect things to be a certain way – nor do they care that one person gets kicked.
They expect that people should “know by now” how dungeons are done – because the majority does them a certain way.
And just like in most real life cases – majorities don’t care about minorities.

It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but my argument is that it’s a bad experience for a new player if it happens frequently enough. We were all new and noobish once upon a time.

Absolutely – it must be a pretty terrible experience to join and get kicked ( possibly insulted) and never know why.

I don’t think I was around when the rewards got revamped. I played intensively at launch, took a break, and come back from time to time. I’ve been playing FFXIV for about the past six months – had a blast, but kinda ran out of content. I’m also an altoholic – I have problems deciding on a class to ‘main’ at any one time, so I have 80s now in everything but thief and warrior. I came back to the game a couple of weeks ago and only really noticed what I wrote my OP about since then, but it could be that I wasn’t paying much attention back then. I actually remember getting more shinies when the game launched, and my luck is awful for drops – 26 globs of globby goop from a S2 story chest today, among other junk items for the forge. Remember when Black Lion Chest keys dropped on a not impossibly rare basis? Those were the days…

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the meta turns out in the expac. It’s been really good to discuss this with yourself and the other posters. You’re probably right that not much can be done about it, which is a bit of a shame. I am going to console myself by gambling on the TP in dreams of becoming impossibly rich…Silverwastes farming is sucking the marrow right outta me.

V Man.8512:

After the big trait mix-up, characters under lvl 80 just do not have access to the same level of traits as they did before the change. So these days, yes, a sub-80 character in dungeons will generally be looked down upon. Just one of those things.

Specializations actually made this a LOT better.

Those circumstances aren’t all that unusual for a game with Raids, Harper.

But I get what you’re after.
Your pessimism may end up being entirely warranted, but I’m less interested in hypothesis and more anticipating the experiment in vivo.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Those circumstances aren’t all that unusual for a game with Raids, Harper.

But I get what you’re after.
Your pessimism may end up being entirely warranted, but I’m less interested in hypothesis and more anticipating the experiment in vivo.

Yeah – we’ll see how it goes.

People tends to be horrible in term of behaviour when it comes to dungeons (they are however, much cooler in fractals and won’t kick you for nothing), especially Arah, the level of sodium is so strong in this one, that even if you did the paths over 1000 times, you’ll get kick for just one mistake (it can be either a wipe, random aggro, your AP, or the skills/traits you use), and one thing I actually noted: a good portion of them are Thieves…

Is it just me or do other people just don’t give 2 kittens who joins their dungeon/fractal party?

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Is it just me or do other people just don’t give 2 kittens who joins their dungeon/fractal party?

I don’t. I actually enjoy newbies in Arah, extra challenge.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Is it just me or do other people just don’t give 2 kittens who joins their dungeon/fractal party?

It’s gotten way better, age had democratized the content and many people pug with a core+whatever these days.

short version:
anet doesnt care about dungeons.

i discussed this issue before, when i had more recently come back from ffxiv, and saw how much better they structured their instance systems.

basically ffxiv is superior mostly because they have an lfg like system with filters AS WELL as a, automatic pug system, which is more rewarding for working with newbies.

anet has not willing to improve dungeons or even fractal culture for sometime.

Looking at the new fractal update, it strongly suggests that they wont be adding new levels any time soon.

anet generally starts new concepts and abandons old concepts.

so yeah dungeons are, and will continue to be the wild west. The only hope you have of your issue being mitigated, is if they do some new content and decide to invent a better system for it, which they can shoe horn into dungeons.

They actually said they will improve fractals and make more instances like Living Story Season 2 (I thought some of these were great, like the Shadow of the Dragon fights).

Amineo.8951:

They actually said they will improve fractals and make more instances like Living Story Season 2 (I thought some of these were great, like the Shadow of the Dragon fights).

the way they are “improving” fractals, is with stat tweaks, and reorganizing content. They basically are wrapping it up and putting a bow on it.

the new system they have put in place is a lot less elegantly scalable, which suggests adding to fractals was not part of its design specifications.

every fractal is numbered now, from 1-100.
fractal dailies will use these numbers
fractals dailies teirs are also by the numbers.

so if they made new fractals, they would either have to put them at 100+ effectively locking them from most players, and fairly daunting for new players.

or they have to renumber and reorginize dailies every time they add a fractal.

neither sounds like something they would want to design into place.

Now anet changes their mind all the time, and if fractals becomes super popular they may support it more, but as of right now, doesnt seem like a priority.

so far the only thing it seems like gw2 consistently focuses on is story, and shop of course.
the last new fractals was about 2 years ago now.

communication (which includes a guild for several reasons) makes all the difference. i’m still playing with the people i started gw1 about 10 years ago. everybody knows each other and even new, clueless members won’t be as annoying to pull through content since you can give them advice through voicechat (f.e. you tell them when to dodge at kohler or which utilities like reflect they have to pick and when to activate them and so on). this way people learn fast and will soon be valuable party members which won’t cripple your gold-per-hour rate when farming dungeons.

lfg on the other hand is a wasteland. i’m not very friendly towards pugs since to me they are not only just somebody but a potential hindrance of getting done all the dungeons i want in the time i want. half of the people there can’t play and the other half thinks they do but still can’t. i’m slightly exaggerating here but you get the point. people on the lfg are treated like organic bots. they listen to orders and execute them or they kitten off.
i have no responsibility to drag people through content. if they wish they can join the guild and receive proper training from the guildies but i don’t see any reason why i should type even one word more than “sup” when joining and “gg,thx, cya” when leaving in order to complete one or multiple dungeons. i have the right to discriminate against whichever player i want to. if i don’t want to play with a newbie i shouldn’t have to. if i post an lfg that says i look for a fast run and experienced players i don’t want to have a condiwarrior or a healer ele on my team. i expect everybody to know the recent tactics how to fight bosses and what to skip and i expect them to execute it without fail.
anybody that does not fit into that group i would kick without comment if there still would be instance ownership. because that’s not the case i seek for other players with a similar mindset that do not hesitate to kick random players in order to form a proper party. that’s why i seek people playing pure meta because there’s a high chance to find people with that mindset.
i have a limited time to play each day (not even every day, sometimes i can’t for days) and with the goals i have set (basically skins that i want to unlock and use for specifically created outfits) and the necessity for gold they bring with them i have no time to res some condibearbow 10 times during a bossfight. if i want to do an ac fullrun and you can’t dodge kohler 99% of the time (that 1% is reserved for when your house is on fire or you’re having a stroke at this moment) and do not know the most efficient strategies for each encounter i need 2 other players to kick you fast and without a debate.
that’s the reason why i resort to those elitist kittens on lfg and why i’m happy they exist.

Most people who kick you are just bad. As an engi who min maxes my dps and being able to stealth might stack and use a ton of other utilities I don’t mind running with subpar players because I know I can dps carry or utility carry the weaker members and still achieve an above average run. Every class can min max their dps and usefulness that’s why you see it is possible for people to solo or duo dungeons with above average times. People nowadays who ask for wars guard mes exp 80 meta builds and all kinds of elitist req are just bad imo. If you are good you should be able to dps and utility carry at least 2 or even 3 weaker players. Than again not everyone is like that:D many people (like me) don’t really care what builds or what lvl you run^^ as long as you have a good attitude and have fun I’m willing to carry you.

Zach.2618:

Most people who kick you are just bad. As an engi who min maxes my dps and being able to stealth might stack and use a ton of other utilities I don’t mind running with subpar players because I know I can dps carry or utility carry the weaker members and still achieve an above average run. Every class can min max their dps and usefulness that’s why you see it is possible for people to solo or duo dungeons with above average times. People nowadays who ask for wars guard mes exp 80 meta builds and all kinds of elitist req are just bad imo. If you are good you should be able to dps and utility carry at least 2 or even 3 weaker players. Than again not everyone is like that:D many people (like me) don’t really care what builds or what lvl you run^^ as long as you have a good attitude and have fun I’m willing to carry you.

What if i despise the very notion of carrying people. What if I can – but don’t want to.
Don’t go around throwing things like “if you’re good you should carry people so if you don’t carry them and kick them it means you’re bad”.

That’s absurd – there are people out there – people like me – who prefer to not have to carry anyone. I dislike it – even if I can do it.
Even if content was so easy for me I could do it with one mouse click I wouldn’t carry people through it out of principle – I would most likely sell the slots.

That’s why I said MOST people, not ALL people, I understand when some good players want a fast run or when they are too tired. I’m referring to the many lfg pugs I join who make elitist req and when I join and run with them they are not very good themselves. It’s just a personal observation, don’t take it personally, if you think you are one of those who are good than you are not the ones I’m talking about. After all I didn’t make an absolute statement by saying ALL people did I? Or maybe I should go ahead and rephrase myself MANY people IVE seen. I’m sure you have also encountered these kinds of groups I’m referring to. People who req guards because without one they would die or people who req other dps because when you run a dungeon with them they can’t really output that much themselves. Don’t take my personal observation as an attack towards you friend.