Guild Wars 2

I’ve been wondering this for a long time. Decided to get others opinions on it.

Are there other games out there where a subset of players insist on making others play a specific way to the aggressive degree we experience it here in GW2? I’ve played other lesser known games (not WoW) but I’ve never seen it to the degree where people are kicked from groups. Do other games have this that I’m just not familiar with? Perhaps it’s more common than I think? Why do we have this phenomenon?

I would have thought that the lack of trinity, method of loot distribution and non-competitive aspect of PVE would encourage the complete opposite. Boy, is that wrong.

yes there are. To mention a few; Runescape, 9Dragons, Combat Arms, Minecraft PvP servers, Vindictus.

Sounds like you need better people to play this game with.

Yes, much of the pug community – and some others – feel they have some innate right to tell you how to play – but most players do not. The issue is those players are all in established guilds playing alongside people who feel they way they do.

My advice – find a guild that understands how freeform and friendly this game can be – while still being fun.

In other games it’s worse, since in most mmos you can inspect other player’s gear. In other mmos you can also use mods that can read the group’s or player’s dps and stuff (there are mods that can even see what mods other players are using), so in these games if someone is not geared properly and is not dealing the expected amount of dps they can be kicked from the group.

Also in mmos with trinity you end up dealing with entitled players just because they play as a tank for example, since it can take quite a while to get a tank for a pug group sometimes you have to deal with bullkitten from these players and you cant just kick him because its hard to get another one for a dungeon run.

GW2 has elitism but this game is pretty “casual” compared with other mmos :P

I think its more common to get harrassed in dungeons on other mmos than here in gw2, i was playing rift on my free to play account once and decided to pug a dungeon, i started to run around to do the quests but i ended up pulling mobs so i ran back to the group, the tank of the group replied with a “GJ kitten” on group chat after what i’ve done. After that i stopped running ahead of the tank.

All MMO’s I’ve played have had the Min/max elite.

It seems to be worse here due to the concentration of Pugs into a relative few dungeons. In most games the “elites” are off to the next new tier, leaving lower tier dungeons to be completed by a less hard core group.

I doubt the numbers are any worse than other games, you just happen to see it more because of the game structure.

The attitude always trickles down. Certain people see what it takes to do 50 Fractals and insist on the same group makeup to run easier content. Instead of thinking, they just echo what those players do.

Overall, in my 15+ years online gaming, GW2 has one of the best communities I’ve seen outside of DAoC’s Gaheris (which set an unprecedented high water standard).

So, yes, there are players that exhibit far worse behavior in other games, using instanced dungeons to grief, demanding gear check, spec check, (insert anything and everything here to control), etcetera.

It’s been researched and noted that generally speaking, 10% of a gaming population at anytime will be comprised of “griefers”. Blame the innate discrepancies of human development.

GW2 is a casual game compared to most, and the griefing here, comparatively mild.

Yes, it’s annoying. Some of it could be contained with improvements to the group-kick mechanics, which has been the topic of threads in the past.

From what I hear, mobas have particularly bad playbases. GW2 isn’t unique in that respect, but I imagine it’s very far from the worst.

However, allow me to be the first here to give the response typical of these threads: People who have created their own parties with their own requirements are, by no means, forcing you to do anything. It’s one thing if they fail to specify what kind of players they want in their party description. But if you join in spite of clear instruction, it’s completely reasonable for them to remove you from party.

whispers League of Legends.

Oh my what sheltered live some of you must live. Gw2 is very tame compared to majority of well know mmos/online games.

all games that a) are teamgames and b) allow for a certain degree of customization/buildmaking have this.

Casmurro.9046:

In other games it’s worse, since in most mmos you can inspect other player’s gear. In other mmos you can also use mods that can read the group’s or player’s dps and stuff (there are mods that can even see what mods other players are using), so in these games if someone is not geared properly and is not dealing the expected amount of dps they can be kicked from the group.

This is WoW in a nutshell. Worse, there are many bosses in WoW that simply can’t be done by some players, no matter how well-geared or dedicated they are. They simply don’t have the reflexes to do them.

I haven’t been playing GW2 for long (played GW1 extensively, switched to WoW in 2009, and just came back for GW2 a couple of months ago), but I have never encountered a boss in this game that couldn’t be defeated through persistence. I did a fractal for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and we only had one encounter that was anywhere near a full wipe. I think I only died once and had to rally maybe twice. I think that may be part of the reason that players are so much friendlier in this game.

I’m actually surprised to find this topic in the GW2 forums because for the most part Guild Wars player tend to be much friendlier and more helpful than players in other MMOs that I’ve played.

Kibazuka.1390:

all games that a) are teamgames and b) allow for a certain degree of customization/buildmaking have this.

I can assure you this isn’t the case, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the thread.

For example, I played Anarchy Online for 7 years. Despite it’s age, it has THE most complicated gearing system I have ever seen; Almost all the gear is skill required and those skills can be buffed in multiple ways. In addition, the content is still very difficult with raids from single team (6 people) to zones that require upwards 12 teams. to complete. Despite the wide variation and raids and difficulty (It’s actually easy to fail a raid there, even to this day) never once playing that game did someone tell me “Oh, your build isn’t correct” or kick someone for not having the right gear. Gear was a non factor in completion and was a significant portion in your overall stats (at least 50%).

So you can understand for me to go from that, to here and read all this ‘play this way’ stuff, astounds me.

Obtena.7952:

For example, I played Anarchy Online for 7 years. Despite it’s age, it has THE most complicated gearing system I have ever seen; Almost all the gear is skill required and those skills can be buffed in multiple ways. In addition, the content is still very difficult with raids from single team (6 people) to zones that require upwards 12 teams. to complete. Despite the wide variation and raids and difficulty (It’s actually easy to fail a raid there, even to this day) never once playing that game did someone tell me “Oh, your build isn’t correct” or kick someone for not having the right gear. Gear was a non factor in completion and was a significant portion in your overall stats (at least 50%).

How long ago was this? WoW pretty much ruined the MMO community by allowing addons that report gear levels as well as DPS levels. Suddenly players weren’t content to gradually muddle through end game content with diverse players utilizing diverse skillsets. Now they could grade players on skill and gear in order to maximize the efficiency with which they farmed gear. Many MMO players no longer treat games like games. To them it’s a job that must be performed as efficiently as possible so that they can get to their goal of having the best gear in the game as quickly as possible. Players who fail to conform to that mentality are obstacles who are slowing their progress towards that gear to which they feel they are entitled.

Some of this has spilled into all MMOs, but I still contend that GW2 suffers less from this because there is no DPS addon and no way to inspect gear (that I’m aware of). Unfortunately this still happens (sometimes) in GW2, but that’s just how the kids these days are ™.

Bernie.8674:

Many MMO players no longer treat games like games. To them it’s a job that must be performed as efficiently as possible so that they can get to their goal of having the best gear in the game as quickly as possible. Players who fail to conform to that mentality are obstacles who are slowing their progress towards that gear to which they feel they are entitled.

Some of this has spilled into all MMOs, but I still contend that GW2 suffers less from this because there is no DPS addon and no way to inspect gear (that I’m aware of). Unfortunately this still happens (sometimes) in GW2, but that’s just how the kids these days are ™.

The well-practiced subpopulation will use gear ping (shift-click on gear to show it in chat, checking for all ’zerk gear) and, of all the stupid things, Achievement Point thresholds to exclude players in a PuG.

I think that’s about the most venom you get from GW2, the omnipresent trolls aside.

FF14 has a terrible dungeon community, from my experience. Don’t you dare be a first-timer to a farm dungeon and want to see the story. (Or if you do, roll tank for it…) Those kittenholes pretty much ruined my end-game experience. :\

I can’t really vouch for PvP community here, but WvW is so blobtastic that all you need to do is follow the group or be a decent scout.

Best advice is to guild up. Check map chat, there’s almost always adverts or put a hook out in the looking for guild/players section of the forums. If that’s not quite your thing, just be very careful with PuGs, read their requirements, or make your own and advertise the kind of run you’re doing (casual, full clear, story, etc).

Obtena.7952:

I’ve been wondering this for a long time. Decided to get others opinions on it.

Translation: when I post this gibberish in the dungeon subforum I get mocked so I’ll try again here. Hopefully a different group of people will give me the self-justification I feel I deserve.

Are there other games out there where a subset of players insist on making others play a specific way to the aggressive degree we experience it here in GW2?

Any game with gear progression / instanced content will have this. GW2 is one of the most pug friendly MMOs ever. The community in GW2 is pug friendly. Provided you can read the LFG description or write your own you will be able to find a group of whatever standard you desire.

I’ve played other lesser known games (not WoW) but I’ve never seen it to the degree where people are kicked from groups. Do other games have this that I’m just not familiar with? Perhaps it’s more common than I think? Why do we have this phenomenon?

Why do people kick? Because some people don’t read LFG. Some people have bad attitudes. Some people simply play so poorly that they bring the group down. A very small percent are kicked over trifling reasons and a shame that truly is, but it isn’t worth the ink spilt over it.

I would have thought that the lack of trinity, method of loot distribution and non-competitive aspect of PVE would encourage the complete opposite. Boy, is that wrong.

Let me help you understand. Money and time are interchangeable. If you have a lot of money, you can trade it for free time. If you have a ton of free time you can trade it for money. Everyone values their free time in some way. If my job asked me to work overtime on Saturday for some reason, I would expect additional compensation, because I value my free time on Saturday far more than my standard billing rate. Some people who work a minimum wage job or who have endless free time probably value their free time significantly less than I, or others. There are no doubt people who value their free time greater than I do.

So what’s the point? the point is, free time is a precious commodity and few people value it so little that they want to spend it with griefers, whether intentionally or not. Few want to spend it having frustrating, hair pulling experiences with people who clearly don’t give a single care about the grief and frustration their laziness or “creativity” makes. In the end, people don’t want their time wasted.

If you are bad (die serveral times for no reason, have a bad build that clearly lack DPS or have no kitten idea what you are doing) or you afk in the middle of the a donjon, well yes, i’m gonna kick you.

That applied to GW1 as well to many games where you need to group in order to achieve something.

Blaeys.3102:

Sounds like you need better people to play this game with.

Yes, much of the pug community – and some others – feel they have some innate right to tell you how to play – but most players do not. The issue is those players are all in established guilds playing alongside people who feel they way they do.

My advice – find a guild that understands how freeform and friendly this game can be – while still being fun.

To be honest it is a lot less in this game. Why? Because this game is so easy you can stand in a corner with your friends and faceroll most of the pve content with almost any build. A while back a guild group had a conversation about dps and dungeons and we decided to just play whatever we wanted. I ran banner regen condi war and I don’t think anyone else was running a “ideal” dungeon build. I never had to dodge in any of the dungeons we did. Stuff died almost as fast as with ideal builds and I could literally roll my face on the keyboard and win.

That isn’t to say every group of builds can do what we did. We still had solid gear for our choices and our weapons synergized with our build. For instance I would expect condition guardians to fail quite badly in any content, but if you don’t mind working with your group and have an unorthodox build that doesn’t mean it can’t work.

That being said I wouldn’t run that with a pug unless I wanted to troll them. When people see things they consider bad and if it, in their minds, correlates to failure or other poor runs that is why you get kicked. The best way to avoid this is to learn the dungeon with a meta build. Once you have been led through a couple times and know it, make your own parties and do what you want. If you are confident and can explain a rational strategy to new players and play your build well then that is all you need to accomplish the dungeon. If your group stacks up in a corner and you run 1500 yards away and shoot arrows while your bear attacks and then the group wipes, guess what they will remember…

I have run my condi war build before in pug that didn’t mind and many lulz were had as I face rolled my way through the dungeon with 300+ group hps and a nearly unkillable warrior with 900+ hps.

Obtena.7952:

I can assure you this isn’t the case, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the thread.

For example, I played Anarchy Online for 7 years. Despite it’s age, it has THE most complicated gearing system I have ever seen; Almost all the gear is skill required and those skills can be buffed in multiple ways. In addition, the content is still very difficult with raids from single team (6 people) to zones that require upwards 12 teams. to complete. Despite the wide variation and raids and difficulty (It’s actually easy to fail a raid there, even to this day) never once playing that game did someone tell me “Oh, your build isn’t correct” or kick someone for not having the right gear. Gear was a non factor in completion and was a significant portion in your overall stats (at least 50%).

So you can understand for me to go from that, to here and read all this ‘play this way’ stuff, astounds me.

Different experiences. Certain proffesions could be kicked if they had wrong weapons, docs and enfos mostly. On the other hand, a decreasing population ment you didnt had a lot to choose from, so you kinda had to work with what you got. Beeing a part of a working guild was more important than in gw2.
After the inspect came, some ppl wouldnt team you if you had it off. Lots of ppl demanded you turned the social gear off, to see what armor you got, preferably alien armor, if they didnt inspect.
The twinking aspect of Anarchy online was really great. What the best twinkers was able to do was mind-boggeling. I have seen ppl use “get my twink” in gw2..

Yes other games do it and this one ONLY does it in a very limited scope (Dungeons / Fractals, etc.). If you are here to try and stir up some sympathy for Dungeon runners being mean to you, not gonna happen.

hazenvirus.8154:

To be honest it is a lot less in this game. Why? Because this game is so easy you can stand in a corner with your friends and faceroll most of the pve content with almost any build. A while back a guild group had a conversation about dps and dungeons and we decided to just play whatever we wanted. I ran banner regen condi war and I don’t think anyone else was running a “ideal” dungeon build.

I agree.

hazenvirus.8154:

I have run my condi war build before in pug that didn’t mind and many lulz were had as I face rolled my way through the dungeon with 300+ group hps and a nearly unkillable warrior with 900+ hps.

I personally feel that’s as it should be. MMOs should be fun and full of lulz. There shouldn’t be one and only one “correct” way to play. The thing I loved about GW1 was that the wide variety of skills allowed for many viable play styles, many of which strayed from the traditional “DPS/heal/soak as much/as often as you can” approach. I haven’t played enough GW2 to determine whether that’s the case in this game, but from what you’re saying it still is, and in my opinion that’s great.

Any game where you have team mates, you have any degree of control over your team mates, and where the performance of your team mates impacts your own experience in the game has this.

Different people want different things out of the game, and value things differently. Some players have low value for their time, and others value it highly. Some players have no goals other than an immersive experience, and others have different goals. Some players really want to complete things as they think were intended. Others don’t care. The list goes on.

If a group under the Arah dungeon was listed “P2 take time and kill EVERYTHING”, these players are imposing what they want just as much as a “P2 FAST experiened zerker melee lupi” group is. If a player joins that first group, and sticks with it all the way up till Belka, and then trash skips to the Abomination and starts to solo it, is it wrong for them to be kicked? No. If a player in full Nomad’s gear who doesn’t know anything about the path and only has and uses ranged weapons joins that second group, is it wrong for them to be kicked? No. Everyone in this game has their expectation, or an acceptable range of expectations, for what they’d like to play with. The range of some people is narrower than others, but it still exists. There just isn’t much way to determine if someone fits within the category of people you want to play with or not. You can’t tell if they’ve ever (legitimately) run the path before, or how many times they’ve run it. You can’t tell what gear they’re using. You sure can’t tell if they know how to use the dodge key until you’re in the dungeon. You probably can’t tell if their traits are very “creative” or if they’re optimal/close to optimal. Et cetera.

There are no useful metrics to show skill, experience, or mindset of the player. Of course people are going to get kicked for not fitting with the expectations of the rest of the group.

The loot system isn’t a reason why this shouldn’t happen. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You effectively get the exact same rewards for completion, no matter how long you take. If you complete a level 49 fractal set in 3 hours, you’re getting the same rewards as the team that completed it in 50 minutes. Some people might really enjoy the slow run, taking time to savor the experience and struggle through the encounters, and finally getting a reward at the end. Others might really enjoy pushing their limits in terms of maximizing effectiveness, as well as value their time, and want to complete things in more or less the shortest time possible, as they get the same rewards no matter how long they take. Most players have some range they’re comfortable with, between these extremes. They don’t want to be too slow, because they do value their time, and don’t enjoy struggling too much through content when that struggle is needless. They don’t want to be too fast, because that requires a degree of performance and coordination (and their participation at that high level) that they may not feel they’re capable of, or be comfortable with, or even enjoy.

The abolition of the trinity isn’t a reason this shouldn’t happen. Everyone still contributes to the team, having one or more players that aren’t contributing in the way you’d like them to, really does drag everyone else in the team down. Whether that be the guy who is skipping ahead and soloing content because you’re killing random skippable trash way back there, or the guy who is camping greatsword on a Mesmer and not really doing any of the things Mesmers can do to contribute to the team in a meaningful way (like say, reflects, or focus-pulls to group mobs up).

The fact there’s no explicit in-game competition in PvE isn’t a reason this shouldn’t happen. Some people like to compete with themselves, always trying to improve their performance (and the best way to do this is with a group of people who share the same mindset). Some people even like to have their teams compete against other teams (see things like speed clear records, pve tournaments, etc.).

This is always going to happen. It happens in every game that fits the criteria in the first paragraph.

Obtena.7952:

I’ve been wondering this for a long time. Decided to get others opinions on it.

Are there other games out there where a subset of players insist on making others play a specific way to the aggressive degree we experience it here in GW2? I’ve played other lesser known games (not WoW) but I’ve never seen it to the degree where people are kicked from groups. Do other games have this that I’m just not familiar with? Perhaps it’s more common than I think? Why do we have this phenomenon?

I would have thought that the lack of trinity, method of loot distribution and non-competitive aspect of PVE would encourage the complete opposite. Boy, is that wrong.

I played DCUO before this and we had the same thing. Some scenarios as examples.

I ran in a guild who did speed runs of things and we were considered one of the top on our server. I ran a battle healer celestial healer (basically a healer set to do a lot of damage as well) because it worked. Now I was on the villain side primarily and when I went to the hero side to play with some friends over there people were demanding I change my setup or leave groups. I’d successfully run the raid on villain side, swap and not half an hour later be told what I was doing was wrong…

Not only that but the hero side PUG community was notoriously strict. Want to run Sorcery, Earth or Electric DPS? Nope, not happening because their DPS wasn’t up to par, still easily good enough to get the job done, but it was not accepted because people because it was not “the best”.

Also entire group composition was critiqued. My guild usually ran 1 healer, 1 tank, 2 trolls, and 4 DPS. The Hero side PUG community would ONLY run 1 healer 1 tank 3 trolls and 3 DPS, which was a much tougher composition to actually utilize correctly, and most pugs did horribly with it, but they kept on plugging away because the popular youtube leagues did this so they had to follow.

So no it’s not unique. I don’t blame the people who did utilize things correctly or supplied the information. They were jsut min/maxing and sharing their findings trying to promote quality play. But when you have the brainless mass that is a PUG community take hold of that information they don’t really understand it for what it is and it starts to be a detriment to the game. The issue is the brainless mass that can’t think for itself.

When these people see a video of a DnT/rT/SC/whoever running through a dungeon in a couple minutes and making it look easy they just go “ok that’s the way to do it right” not really understanding the finer points of what’s happening.

And in the end all people naturally look for the path of least resistance, that’s all that’s happening here. People want to get things done fast and easy, they read/see something about higher end gameplay and just roll with it and it becomes a requirement.

I mean why would I want to spend 15 minutes on a SEp1 when it usually takes me ~5mins running it with my buddies most days? Though personally I expect the worst in PUGs so it’s not really an issue but yeah… I don’t think its’ wrong to not want to spend 3X as long on a path because some people want to play how they want regardless of what is best for the team as a whole.

So, getting kicked from a group equals to aggression?
No, as with everything, when you join a group you’ve signed a tacit agreement to abide by the requirements stated in the LFG ad. If you fail to meet the expectations, you might or might not get kicked, depending on the group’s tolerance.

As Tree said, time is just as valuable as money, if not more. Some people will be okay to coach you/help you get through things, while some others will not think it’s worth it.

This is not exclusive to GW2 and has happened/will happen in other games.

When it comes to sPvP and WvW, people will not kick you because they can’t. Instead, they may or may not verbally abuse you in an attempt to make you quit, depending on their tolerance as well.

LOL GW2 aggressiveness from players feels like a warm breeze compared to other competitive games.
Play LoL, DOTA, Star Craft 2, any CoD or CS , and pretty much any game with online PvP, if you can’t handle GW2 well you’ll cry like a baby in those games.

Wow… The OP brings up a question about player aggressiveness in the game, and look what they get here…
Needless antagonism, deriding and name calling…

Yay for our oh-so-wonderfuly toxic forum community…

I actually didn’t read any aggressive reply here, some stronger response than others, sure.
Most posts that use “you” I see as example, like “If you suck at the game then sure people will be mean…” I’m not saying that the OP sucks, I’m just showing that if that is the case then such behavior is expected.
Every game with a competitive mode, newbies aren’t very respected specially if you are very “newby” ;D

Bernie.8674:

hazenvirus.8154:

To be honest it is a lot less in this game. Why? Because this game is so easy you can stand in a corner with your friends and faceroll most of the pve content with almost any build. A while back a guild group had a conversation about dps and dungeons and we decided to just play whatever we wanted. I ran banner regen condi war and I don’t think anyone else was running a “ideal” dungeon build.

I agree.

hazenvirus.8154:

I have run my condi war build before in pug that didn’t mind and many lulz were had as I face rolled my way through the dungeon with 300+ group hps and a nearly unkillable warrior with 900+ hps.

I personally feel that’s as it should be. MMOs should be fun and full of lulz. There shouldn’t be one and only one “correct” way to play. The thing I loved about GW1 was that the wide variety of skills allowed for many viable play styles, many of which strayed from the traditional “DPS/heal/soak as much/as often as you can” approach. I haven’t played enough GW2 to determine whether that’s the case in this game, but from what you’re saying it still is, and in my opinion that’s great.

Notice the highlighted bits above. In those cases, the people in the group all agreed on a particular style they wanted to play together. People who join groups that are open to any style of play generally won’t be kicked for running bad builds or bad gear or usually even for playing badly. But people who join groups that explicitly advertize e.g. full zerk, minimum achievement points, ping gear, experienced only, no rangers, no necros, or similar stuff will obviously kick people who join but don’t meet those criteria. As they should, right? If it was a reverse situation where someone formed a play-how-you-want, all builds accepted group and somebody joined in full zerk gear and then started constantly complaining about poor group dps, complaining about the ranger/necro in the party, and calling everyone noobs and complaining about inexperienced play, he would also likely be kicked, right? As he should. He simply joined the group with improper expectations.

The OP’s assumption that kicking players who don’t meet advertised group criteria is a form of aggression is incorrect. People joining such a group when they don’t meet the criteria are obviously the ones who are being “aggressive” since they are simply annoying or interfering with others who are trying to play how they want.

In other games, meta parties are not discriminating on DPS gear v. other types, because if you play DPS you’re going to have DPS gear, tank, tank gear, heals, healing gear. They do discriminate on everything from quality of gear to knowing dungeons to failing to get out of fire to having the only approved spec for your class. I’ve seen comments about others wasting peoples’ time and about being kicked in every MMO I’ve played, from WoW to Rift to ToR to several of the FTP variety.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In other games, meta parties are not discriminating on DPS gear v. other types, because if you play DPS you’re going to have DPS gear, tank, tank gear, heals, healing gear. They do discriminate on everything from quality of gear to knowing dungeons to failing to get out of fire to having the only approved spec for your class. I’ve seen comments about others wasting peoples’ time and about being kicked in every MMO I’ve played, from WoW to Rift to ToR to several of the FTP variety.

While Normally yes, DCUO actually had tanks and healers dropping their respective gear in favor of DPS sets quite often when we were going for the min/max fastest as possible approach.

Part of the attitude problem comes from the massive time difference between a successful dungeon run and a poor one. We are literally comparing ten minutes against a failing run of over an hour. Nobody wants to see their fractal run dissolve after two hours of stress.

The reason for the big time differentials are the high capabilities of high skill players with best builds and best tactics. This is part of the game design, specifically for SPvP, and is generally a good thing for GW2 even though it causes problems for PvE.

goldenwing.8473:

It’s been researched and noted that generally speaking, 10% of a gaming population at anytime will be comprised of “griefers”. Blame the innate discrepancies of human development.

.

That’s a very interesting statistic! I believe that’s about the same percentage of sociopaths in a population, too, and it shows in many other areas. If you look at any YouTube video, there will always be that percentage of dislikes (meaning, minimum.) If it’s a cute cat video, how to mow your lawn, best mascara… It will invariably have about that percentage of mean comments & dislikes.

However, I think we in video games make it too easy for them, & too many people think it’s acceptable behavior.

Honestly even on wow it wasn’t this bad. in dungeons it did suck when DPS would sign up as tank etc but raid wise, pvp and standard pve it wasn’t an issue, some builds were better than others but some stuff worked well. GW 2 just attracts a whole heap of jerks, the community is more toxic than D3 or any moba game and that tells you something right there.

OP, you might be getting a disproportionate amount of flak since you seem to run a condition damage guardian build. A guardian’s only reliable condi source is burning, which doesn’t stack in intensity and can be overwritten by other players. It lacks access to the truly damaging conditions (poison, bleed stacks), so using a condition damage build as a guardian is a sign that you are a bit confused about your class.

Despite condition damage being suboptimal in PvE, several classes can be very effective with condi builds — necromancers, engineers, etc. Guardian simply isn’t one of them. If you were willing to try out a power or support build in dungeons I think you’d find the GW2 community is more laid back than you think.

e: autocorrect

If you think you can go into a real MMO, where your intentionally being useless will actively cause the team to fail and wipe and be forced to restart the dungeon from scratch, and not end up on the personal kitten list of everyone on the server, you’ve got another thing coming.

Go on and try it though. I’d love to hear how it goes.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you think you can go into a real MMO, where your intentionally being useless will actively cause the team to fail and wipe and be forced to restart the dungeon from scratch, and not end up on the personal kitten list of everyone on the server, you’ve got another thing coming.

Go on and try it though. I’d love to hear how it goes.

When did the OP say they were going to run a useless build?

Obtena.7952:

For example, I played Anarchy Online for 7 years. Despite it’s age, it has THE most complicated gearing system I have ever seen; Almost all the gear is skill required and those skills can be buffed in multiple ways. In addition, the content is still very difficult with raids from single team (6 people) to zones that require upwards 12 teams. to complete. Despite the wide variation and raids and difficulty (It’s actually easy to fail a raid there, even to this day) never once playing that game did someone tell me “Oh, your build isn’t correct” or kick someone for not having the right gear. Gear was a non factor in completion and was a significant portion in your overall stats (at least 50%).

Anarchy Online totally had gear and build discrimination; most of my guildies and myself that game for years and years and people with terrible builds/gear were immediate targets in PVP, or ridiculed in PVE. Granted in AO a person with a bad build would have a hard time doing pretty much anything, so that would force them to get better, leech, or quit. I don’t know what server/faction you were from, we probably ran in different circles, but RK2 could be vicious.

I spent so much time in game, and on the Trader/Enforcer forums debating and doing all sorts of testing and theorycrafting, I do tend to miss that kind of depth in GW2; by comparison GW2 feels like baby’s first MMO. Besides AO, I have played several other MMOs for extended periods of time, including playing WOW competitively, and by comparison the aggression you speak of is incredibly tame.

Back to GW2: from my perspective if I put up an LFM with requirements, I expect the person joining to meet them and if they don’t, I will kick them. If a person is not helping the group complete the content in the smoothest most efficient way they can, why do they deserve to be there instead of someone who will? With this mindset most of the problem obviously comes from people who either don’t read, or feel entitled to join whichever group they want regardless of the LFM and subsequently get kicked. It’s not aggression or elitism, it’s basic respect for the other individuals in the group. Once you click that join party button you are essentially entering into a social contact of sorts with that group, if you then play selfishly to the detriment of the group, you deserve a kick.

TL;DR: RK2 4 Lyfe

It’s usually because they don’t want idiots with crappy builds ruining the run, but most people obsess over it far too much and they’re usually control freaks too.

One of the odd things I hear a lot is that the NA Pug scene has more of this than the EU servers. You could probably put this down to the higher multiculturalism. The sheer number of threads about pug toxicity in NA is quite telling. Replies almost always boil down to “form your own party” or “join a guild that suits your play style”. This isn’t a criticism btw as it’s generally good advice.

Even though, I’m a good enough player to do so, I invariably avoid LFG’s that require
1. AP limit
2. AP limit AND zerker

Fractals tends to be more of a lottery but on the whole, high level fractals have largely run smoothly for me. I don’t do 50 very much mainly because the loot is about the same in 49 and although it’s challenging, reward vs. risk ratio is so low there’s no real point to it

Respect other players and their wishes and they will probably respect yours.

Azrael.4960:

One of the odd things I hear a lot is that the NA Pug scene has more of this than the EU servers. You could probably put this down to the higher multiculturalism. The sheer number of threads about pug toxicity in NA is quite telling. Replies almost always boil down to “form your own party” or “join a guild that suits your play style”. This isn’t a criticism btw as it’s generally good advice.

Even though, I’m a good enough player to do so, I invariably avoid LFG’s that require
1. AP limit
2. AP limit AND zerker

Fractals tends to be more of a lottery but on the whole, high level fractals have largely run smoothly for me. I don’t do 50 very much mainly because the loot is about the same in 49 and although it’s challenging, reward vs. risk ratio is so low there’s no real point to it

Coming from EU to NA I would say EU is far worse. For dungeons & world vs world. My time on NA has been a far more relaxed experience.

I’ve seen “hostilities” in other games, but I never experienced it this build-centric.
Mostly I’ve been kicked out of parties to make room for random friends of the trinity-setup in other games.

As for GW2 I found some of the people kicking out of gear-/build-reasons being among the worst players. If they can’t hide behind a zerker-party that kills off mobs faster than they are actively able to die.

I got two builds I’m running with, one is a zerker-build and one is a tank/support-build with full celestial gear. In the first one I can shred through mobs easily.
When I run with the second build in dungeons I often get comments from people who leave because of it.
However, no one complains if the four other zerkers have basically no conditions on them, get might on occasion, mobs being controlled to stay away from non-melee classes and an earth-elemental tanking the boss while I run around in water-attunement to pick the downed ones back up.

I can understand people preferring a specific build like zerker, but people not being open-minded that other builds can be just as effective in a party are simply annoying.

You can clear conditions, give might and control enemies even with berserker gear.

I can understand people preferring a specific build like zerker, but people not being open-minded that other builds can be just as effective in a party are simply annoying.

They’re not “just as effective” though. You don’t do the same amount of DPS as glass cannon, and a lot of support isn’t amplified by gear stats so you don’t even need to be using non-berserker stats. So – your build does less damage but does exactly the same support – how are they then equally as effective?

I think WoW is the most caustic with the damage/heal meters. After each fight “Hey XXX, your DPS is bad, swapping you out for someone else.” Or “WTF YYY your healing sux, l2heal noob”. Heal meters was probably the worst, because as a healer (an awesome healer btw) that’s what you were judged on. The first place person was the guy literally spamming non stop even when nobody really needed healing. Just wanted to boost his numbers, or healing someone else’s target, thus wasting double mana. Paladins were pretty notorious for that when I was playing back in the BC days. Got my big full heal bout to land on my tank, wham ninja healed by a paladin to 98%, I heal the last 200hp… that’s just a plain ole waste of mana.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Sunshine.4680:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you think you can go into a real MMO, where your intentionally being useless will actively cause the team to fail and wipe and be forced to restart the dungeon from scratch, and not end up on the personal kitten list of everyone on the server, you’ve got another thing coming.

Go on and try it though. I’d love to hear how it goes.

When did the OP say they were going to run a useless build?

It’s right there in his signature lol.

Good catch, I actually cited that as one of the things not to run in my earlier post and I didn’t even realize it was the OPs build. OP: If that is what you run then understand why people kick you. It is not because they are taking mindless agression out on you it is because no matter how good you play with that build your primary damage source stacks in duration only and any low damage burn will overwrite it and totally eliminate your dps. This has nothing to do with people being unaccepting, the build you use has so many problems in that the class and game mechanics doesn’t support it well at all.

tekfan.3179:

I’ve seen “hostilities” in other games, but I never experienced it this build-centric.
Mostly I’ve been kicked out of parties to make room for random friends of the trinity-setup in other games.

As for GW2 I found some of the people kicking out of gear-/build-reasons being among the worst players. If they can’t hide behind a zerker-party that kills off mobs faster than they are actively able to die.

I got two builds I’m running with, one is a zerker-build and one is a tank/support-build with full celestial gear. In the first one I can shred through mobs easily.
When I run with the second build in dungeons I often get comments from people who leave because of it.
However, no one complains if the four other zerkers have basically no conditions on them, get might on occasion, mobs being controlled to stay away from non-melee classes and an earth-elemental tanking the boss while I run around in water-attunement to pick the downed ones back up.

I can understand people preferring a specific build like zerker, but people not being open-minded that other builds can be just as effective in a party are simply annoying.

Part of the zerker meta problem is that for most content stacking is so ideal and you can use it all the time. Stacking ensures better healing, damage, survivability. Because you have the extra survivability when stacked you don’t need tanky stats as long as the mob perishes quickly and you can dodge burst attacks.

The problem with other more support oriented builds not being accepted as meta is because of game mechanics and dungeon design. Condition damage is easily accidently overwritten. Stuns have to be very well coordinated to be effective and for pug it isn’t effective enough to be a requirment. AI needs spells that discourage stacking except for brief moments where you can maximize dps on a crippled boss. Anti cc stacks on bosses need to change. CC should cause different effects to bosses that open up weaknesses. Boss damage needs to be more consistent and less bursty. Obviously there has to be a cooldown and maximjm debuff time for CC on bosses, but imagine if you could cause a boss to take more damage from a certain cc effect and disorient the boss for long enough to stack and get a big damage chain off before having to spread out again and continue surviving and poking away at boss hp. Maybe each individual CC debuff effect has a cooldown. So while the bonus damage debuff and disorient is on cooldown, you use something that causes boss damage to be reduced by a flat amount plus missing more attacks. This allows you to survive better until the next burn phase.

TLDR, we need more dynamic AI, boss abilities that are threatening to stacked oponents, revamped CC system, and more periodic damage from bosses.

Obtena.7952:

I’ve been wondering this for a long time. Decided to get others opinions on it.

Are there other games out there where a subset of players insist on making others play a specific way to the aggressive degree we experience it here in GW2? I’ve played other lesser known games (not WoW) but I’ve never seen it to the degree where people are kicked from groups. Do other games have this that I’m just not familiar with? Perhaps it’s more common than I think? Why do we have this phenomenon?

I would have thought that the lack of trinity, method of loot distribution and non-competitive aspect of PVE would encourage the complete opposite. Boy, is that wrong.

In most other MMO’s where there are defined roles for each class even with a less than optimal build you’re still going to be close in overall performance. In GW2 since classes and even builds within those classes are no where near balanced there is a huge gap between optimal and suboptimal. The game could easily be better balanced so that the gaps aren’t nearly as big or the content doesn’t favor straight DPS, but it would take ArenaNet the better part of a decade at their current development rate.

On to the question, the answer is yes. You still see people in other games “forcing” others to play a certain way. In trinity MMO’s pretty much any class that can heal is forced to heal, any class that can tank is forced to tank. Often times people aren’t kicked from groups because they aren’t invited in the first place. In WoW vanilla being a dps priest/shaman/druid/paladin in a raid was pretty rare, often times the raid would pay for a respec to get them to heal. ArenaNet decided to eliminate the trinity specifically to avoid this, but didn’t realize that the discrimination would shift from “who can tank or heal” to “Who can do the most dps while supporting the group the most”.

The big issue in my eyes is that the problems in GW2 are easily fixable where the trinity issues in other games are not. It’s hard to get a person to like the tanking or healing roles, but it’s not hard at all to balance the damage/support between classes and builds.

OP came here because it didn’t work out so well in the dungeon forums :P

hazenvirus.8154:

tekfan.3179:

I’ve seen “hostilities” in other games, but I never experienced it this build-centric.
Mostly I’ve been kicked out of parties to make room for random friends of the trinity-setup in other games.

As for GW2 I found some of the people kicking out of gear-/build-reasons being among the worst players. If they can’t hide behind a zerker-party that kills off mobs faster than they are actively able to die.

I got two builds I’m running with, one is a zerker-build and one is a tank/support-build with full celestial gear. In the first one I can shred through mobs easily.
When I run with the second build in dungeons I often get comments from people who leave because of it.
However, no one complains if the four other zerkers have basically no conditions on them, get might on occasion, mobs being controlled to stay away from non-melee classes and an earth-elemental tanking the boss while I run around in water-attunement to pick the downed ones back up.

I can understand people preferring a specific build like zerker, but people not being open-minded that other builds can be just as effective in a party are simply annoying.

Part of the zerker meta problem is that for most content stacking is so ideal and you can use it all the time. Stacking ensures better healing, damage, survivability. Because you have the extra survivability when stacked you don’t need tanky stats as long as the mob perishes quickly and you can dodge burst attacks.

The problem with other more support oriented builds not being accepted as meta is because of game mechanics and dungeon design. Condition damage is easily accidently overwritten. Stuns have to be very well coordinated to be effective and for pug it isn’t effective enough to be a requirment. AI needs spells that discourage stacking except for brief moments where you can maximize dps on a crippled boss. Anti cc stacks on bosses need to change. CC should cause different effects to bosses that open up weaknesses. Boss damage needs to be more consistent and less bursty. Obviously there has to be a cooldown and maximjm debuff time for CC on bosses, but imagine if you could cause a boss to take more damage from a certain cc effect and disorient the boss for long enough to stack and get a big damage chain off before having to spread out again and continue surviving and poking away at boss hp. Maybe each individual CC debuff effect has a cooldown. So while the bonus damage debuff and disorient is on cooldown, you use something that causes boss damage to be reduced by a flat amount plus missing more attacks. This allows you to survive better until the next burn phase.

TLDR, we need more dynamic AI, boss abilities that are threatening to stacked oponents, revamped CC system, and more periodic damage from bosses.

Don’t we have some fights sorta like that?

HOTW p1 last boss, he has a close range hit, a mid range axe throw, a whirl, and a chill field.

You can jump in toss a wall of reflection and melee him in between whirls/chill fields. Then when those go off you have to back out.

More often than not though people just range him as it’s easier, especially with non reflectable range damage (guard staff, mes GS, ele scepter fire/air…)

So I wonder, what could they do that’s more dynamic that wouldn’t just lead to people sitting at range and making the fight boring? Personally I do that HOTW both ways depending on my mood. Sometimes I just wanna get it done and don’t feel like putting the effort in so I will range it with a safe weapon and while it takes a while it’s easy. Other times I’ll start by pulling/punting him into the protection turret and meleeing him as much as I can, with some weapons I can even still melee him through the whirl if I position correctly leaving me just having to watch for the chill field and dodge/block the other attacks.

Wethospu.6437:

Respect other players and their wishes and they will probably respect yours.

Unfortunately, there are opposing values in some cases, so as much as that’s a good ideal, it can’t happen if two people team, one values time, the other values how they look and RPing while killing trash. There simply isn’t a way for someone who values time to respect the wishes of someone wanting to perform Shakespeare prose and vice versa.