Guild Wars 2

Ok so first a little story that happened yesterday and I’ve seen it multiple times already.
We are doing the meta event in Silverwastes and for some reason the bottom lane fails, then the middle one fails at the same boss and ofc someone rages in chat “omfg we lost cause no one was killing the ads and we all got pushed!”, which he was right.
At that time, another player, followed quickly by others, said smth like “why didn’t you explain us what to do! oh you’re so pro! this is a bad community!”, and things degenerated from there.
I tried to explain them that the fights are on a short timer and there’s so much stuff going on that you can’t actually explain in chat what to do in the middle of the encounter.
Which leads me to my gripe with this: why can’t players take 5 minutes to read the wiki or ask other players before an event starts about the tactics involved? Did this game turn that casual and brainless that everyone is expecting to be carried for free loot?

I suppose one could counter with:

Why didnt people take a couple of minutes to explain what was about to happen before the encounter began ?

Kind of goes both ways. If you want or expect people to be informed while playing olen world content with you it seems like common sense to contribute to informing them.

Some people catch the twist of the fight easily and some don’t. But i cannot talk for the guys you encountered because after my first attempt i was pretty confident with the mechanics of this fight… pretty simple i would say no need for a wiki.

Sounds like a case of entitled children expecting it to be spoon fed to them when it suits.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Sounds like a case of entitled children expecting it to be spoon fed to them when it suits.

Sadly this is more common than common sense. I don’t what’s with this aversion to doing a little research before an event, but it’s also common.

Sites like Dulfy are a godsend, but useless if the players don’t partake. Yet, all that said, I’m still trying to tell players to stop standing in the big red circles.

And yet . . . they don’t. They die. And then they beg for a rez . . . with a waypoint within sight.

Draw your own conclusions.

Ashen.2907:

I suppose one could counter with:

Why didnt people take a couple of minutes to explain what was about to happen before the encounter began ?

Kind of goes both ways. If you want or expect people to be informed while playing olen world content with you it seems like common sense to contribute to informing them.

Well usually people do, like they say “build the honeycomb” or “kill pustules”, but if you do 10+ events every day you get bored of spamming the same stuff over and over again. You expect people to know what to do.
But that’s not the issues of this topic, it’s about the players complaining “you should’ve told us what to do!” instead of looking it up for themselves beforehand.

I typically did, when I ran through Silverwastes, the same. Gave the needed tips in map and repeated them when the event happened in my lane in /say . . . and yet. . . .

I’ll admit VaLee has a point. After all this time, I’m kind of surprised everyone doesn’t the know the mechanics by now.

VaLee.5102:

Ashen.2907:

I suppose one could counter with:

Why didnt people take a couple of minutes to explain what was about to happen before the encounter began ?

Kind of goes both ways. If you want or expect people to be informed while playing olen world con

tent with you it seems like common sense to contribute to informing them.

Well usually people do, like they say “build the honeycomb” or “kill pustules”, but if you do 10+ events every day you get bored of spamming the same stuff over and over again. You expect people to know what to do.
But that’s not the issues of this topic, it’s about the players complaining “you should’ve told us what to do!” instead of looking it up for themselves beforehand.

I would agree with you if you hadnt stated in the OP that the argument started with people complaining about other people not doing what was desired of them. If someone complains, “why didnt you do X,” a perfectly reasonable response is, “why didnt you say that you wanted me to do X?”

If you want someone to do something then it might be a good idea to tell them so.

That said, killing the adds seems pretty obvious to me. Really sounds more like your map just didnt have enough damage IMO.

And finally, I dont think that wiki, or any outside site, should be necessary for event completion/success.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I typically did, when I ran through Silverwastes, the same. Gave the needed tips in map and repeated them when the event happened in my lane in /say . . . and yet. . . .

I’ll admit VaLee has a point. After all this time, I’m kind of surprised everyone doesn’t the know the mechanics by now.

People thought the same with Marionette. It’s really just a case of many people wanting to take part in the event but don’t play often, or don’t spend much time in the Silverwastes. Or came back from a break. I first did Vinewrath this week since I’d been away from the game for a while.

Of course, some people just don’t pay attention.

@Ashen
That is nonsense. Who’s gonna spend 10 minutes every event to copy/paste all the tactics from wiki for everyone? People usually tell the basics, like “build the honeycomb” or “protect the carries”, you can’t expect someone to write in chat in the middle of the fight the story of their lives regarding tactics.
And sometimes they even fail to read, I once said “no aoe” and “dont kill ads” at red, 3 sec later an ele pops an ice bow and spams #4 on ads while 2 others were spamming staff #1 and a warrior was spinning around with his blades like in a circus.

Ashen.2907:

And finally, I dont think that wiki, or any outside site, should be necessary for event completion/success.

It’s not necessary. But it does help. Therein lies the difference between increasing your success or just rolling the dice.

VaLee.5102:

@Ashen
you can’t expect someone to write in chat in the middle of the fight the story of their lives regarding tactics..

I dont expect such. Made no such claim.

It is not nonsense to tell someone what you want if you expect them to give it to you.

Players ignoring advice from more knowledgeable players is something else entirely.

VaLee.5102:

And sometimes they even fail to read, I once said “no aoe” and “dont kill ads” at red, 3 sec later an ele pops an ice bow and spams #4 on ads while 2 others were spamming staff #1 and a warrior was spinning around with his blades like in a circus.

Well, if you’re going to give incorrect advice, you’ve got to be prepared for people not to follow it.

Ouch.

Let me make an analogy. You go in a dugeon that you did a thousand times before. At one boss ,4 of you stack on a point while the 5th doesn’t, and because of him you all wipe instead of getting an easy kill. Who’s fault was it?

Olvendred.3027:

VaLee.5102:

And sometimes they even fail to read, I once said “no aoe” and “dont kill ads” at red, 3 sec later an ele pops an ice bow and spams #4 on ads while 2 others were spamming staff #1 and a warrior was spinning around with his blades like in a circus.

Well, if you’re going to give incorrect advice, you’ve got to be prepared for people not to follow it.

What incorrect advice? If you kill the ads near the boss they will heal it.

The ‘no AoE’ around red and ’don’t kill ads’, also at red, is a myth. . . .

You can and should kill the adds, just not around the boss is all. The bubbles specifically. Have someone draw them, and it, away from the boss. It’s part of the reason it was so easy to kill the red boss, back in the day, but recently it seems so hard.

Incorrect advice.

You do a meteor shower on boss and I’ll guarantee you will kill some ads and a bubble eventually. The ads keep spawning and they change the target constantly, no matter how good you are at kiting them away from the boss, if the ads zerg changes their target right in your meteor shower, it will not end good.
And that’s just one AoE, imagine everyone spamming them.
It’s not the AoEs themselves that are forbidden, it’s the risk associated with them in a pug.

There’s 2 kinds of adds around Copper:

• The small ones are best to kite away, but even if they die near boss the healing is really inconsequential so they don’t matter too much either way.
• The poison bubbles absolutely have to be killed, and as far away from boss as possible, since they will heal for about 2% of his Health.

If these 2 simple things are done, it really doesn’t matter if people do AoE – it’s probably even helpful since AoE damage tends to be quite massive.

VaLee.5102:

Olvendred.3027:

VaLee.5102:

And sometimes they even fail to read, I once said “no aoe” and “dont kill ads” at red, 3 sec later an ele pops an ice bow and spams #4 on ads while 2 others were spamming staff #1 and a warrior was spinning around with his blades like in a circus.

Well, if you’re going to give incorrect advice, you’ve got to be prepared for people not to follow it.

What incorrect advice? If you kill the ads near the boss they will heal it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/The-Breach-Copper-Husk/

This post explains the mechanics pretty well (and saves me having to type it all out ).

Basically, people not using their AoE skills hurts the DPS too much, compared to the tiny (from offshoots) or inevitable (from bubbles (unless you focus them down first)) healing from mobs dying.

When SW started, Copper was usually the first to die, because people were AoE-ing indiscriminately and all running around down the bottom instead of hanging out on the ledge.

VaLee.5102:

It’s not the AoEs themselves that are forbidden, it’s the risk associated with them in a pug.

That’s not what you said. You said ‘No AoEs’, and then cited examples of other players doing them.

You asked your question and got your answer. Now let’s return to the topic at hand.

Might be true, but everytime someone used AoE at red we failed miserable with boss at 50%+ HP, and when everyone was using single target condition skills we finished him off with 1-2mins left to spare. That’s my experience.
You need to take in calculations the fact that most of the guides are for smart organized groups, not random pugs.

Not to point out the irony of this entire thread now, given your original and then recent posts, but please read the link Olvendred provided.

I read that thread, my reply was intended to him.

In order to prevent derailing of this thread, I suggest you and others take that discussion to the thread Olvendred has linked, or better, just read the posts there as it has been discussed to death over there already.

On topic: the best you can do is type out some advice for the event in your notebook or some text processor, then copy it when you need it to map chat. Do this when the timer starts, for people who do not know it yet are capable and interested to read your explanation. Of course, try to make sure your advice is correct before doing this, and be prepared to get some hate from people who disagree if there is no consensus on the best approach (or a lot of misinformation).

VaLee.5102:

Did this game turn that casual and brainless that everyone is expecting to be carried for free loot?

yes

I think people need to think about what common sense means. In a world of shared experience, we all think of things differently.

If you’re a computer gamer, it might be second nature to you to look at sites to see what’s going on, but not everyone comes from the same background or understands that’s necessary. Sometimes what one person calls common sense is only common sense because of the experiences they’ve had in the past.

There are things I grew up knowing as common sense in NYC that would not be common sense where I live now. There are things everyone in Australia knows as common sense that I had to learn when I moved here. To me, the experience was different.

My own experience with computer games from years ago was that there wasn’t anything you could do but figure stuff out for yourself. That became my common sense. Part of playing games to me was figuring out what to do. That’s how we all played games before hint books came out. Before there was a web to look stuff up. We banged our heads against games, got stuck sometimes for days or weeks at a time, until we figured things out.

From my point of view, common sense is part of playing a game is figuring out how to play it. If someone has to tell me how to play it, then I didn’t beat the game, they did. That’s my common sense.

Where is the common sense in believing that in order to play a game you have to go to a sight and have someone tell you what to do, instead of figuring it out for yourself?

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Sounds like a case of entitled children expecting it to be spoon fed to them when it suits.

Sadly this is more common than common sense. I don’t what’s with this aversion to doing a little research before an event, but it’s also common.

Sites like Dulfy are a godsend, but useless if the players don’t partake. Yet, all that said, I’m still trying to tell players to stop standing in the big red circles.

Most player just play the game very casual .. only 5% of the players read the forums
and only 1% actually post in the forums for example.

So why do you expect more people to read the wiki or Dulfy ?

If you ask about the numbers .. they were posted by our german CM a while ago.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Sadly this is more common than common sense. I don’t what’s with this aversion to doing a little research before an event, but it’s also common.

Sites like Dulfy are a godsend, but useless if the players don’t partake.

I never read guides for content that’s new to me. Because what’s the fun in that? First people to do it got to experience it for themselves, so I think that new people can expect the same kind of experience too.

Also every single time you’re preparing a map for Tequatl you ask “does everyone know the fight?”, if you get a single no you explain it. Trough out the fight you keep on encouraging the turrets and reminding people to waypoint. You say “good job” every time when people successfully get to the battery stage and then complete it. I thought that it was just common knowledge for PVE commanders to both be nice and polite and make sure that people know stuff. And yes, you do it EVERY SINGLE TIME. OR is your cap just for looking pretty?

VaLee.5102:

Let me make an analogy. You go in a dugeon that you did a thousand times before. At one boss ,4 of you stack on a point while the 5th doesn’t, and because of him you all wipe instead of getting an easy kill. Who’s fault was it?

I can answer that!

1) If the 5th player said at the beginning of the dungeon that he/she is new/needs pointers for tactics, then it’s the fault of the 4 other ones
2) If the 5th player did nothing to prevent others from assuming he knows what to do, then it’s his/her fault
3) If the 5th player joined “wrong” group (by wrong I mean things like newbie in a zerker speedrun) then it’s again his/her fault

I’ve commanded Vinewrath dozens of times while I was still doing SW and I’ve always found the time to not only explain my own lane, but the mechanics and tactics of every other lane as well. If I were more lazy I could have just copy-pasted the same thing every time. It literally takes 10 seconds.

Some players prefer to experience the game firsthand before they spend their time reading wiki articles. Others are too lazy to do it altogether (it’s in our nature). I agree that everyone should learn how things in the game work, there’s no excuse for ignorance, but I’m not naive enough to think everyone is willing to do research on their own. A lot of them require a little nudge toward wiki or dulfy pages.

Be the better person and make sure everyone can participate to the best of their ability. Propagate the use of /wiki command, give concise explanations, and urge players to follow their commanders. Anyone can sling around blame after the fact.

The issue for me with the OP in this thread is that I used to play World of Warcraft a lot and even played during early WoD.

I enjoy WoW but eventually I got tired or burnt-out of the endgame that only revolves around Tier grinding and PvP.

The reason I play Guild Wars 2 is for this reason. I’ve had enough of Tier grind to get into the next Tier grind from Normal to Mythic difficulty.

Guild Wars 2 is a game where I don’t want to check up on how Method or Midwinter handles the Siegecrafter Blackfuse Belt, whether you should put a BM or Survival hunter to kill the mines efficently, when to use cooldowns such as Aspect of the Fox or when to use Druid’s Stampeding Roar (when more then one in the group is affected by the Malkorok debuff in Heroic difficulty).

My point is; If I wanted that type of gameplay, and I do want that sometimes, then I login to World of Warcraft and play that. Trying to perfect rotations, reforging correct stats(removed now though) and see how Treckie handles Paladin main tanking in Blackrock Foundry. If I want that I load up World of Warcraft that have perfected raid content in the MMORPG scene.

I understand that it can be frustrating with ppl that don’t know fights, although I’m confused with why you willingly choose to pug and then complain about ppl not knowing what to do.

In every MMORPG to date pugging have always been a gamble and therefor difficult content is almost always only tackled with a guild or a premade group with voice communication.

There are people that find the living story episode difficulty, and there are people that don’t even know how to dodge after level 80. It kind of show the standard of the people who plays this game.

Its quite simple.

If you know the mechanics of a boss you can either take 2 minutes to explain them in map chat before the boss or you dont and you get the right to be smug about it after it fails.

Yes other people could read up on the boss, but they didnt.

You cannot change how people play this game, but you can do whatever is in your power to do to win the event.

If you decide not to, you are as bad as the noobs, because both you and them didnt do what was needed to succeed.

It’s a shame that difficulty in the persistent world setting boils down to whether players have learned an encounter or not. This is especially so when learning the encounter means the difficulty goes away. Well, except for the fact that other players may not know the encounter and the group fails as a whole.

Beldin.5498:

So why do you expect more people to read the wiki or Dulfy ?

I never said I ‘expect’ anyone to do anything. However, I did say if you want to be more successful, it behooves a player to do the research or have a clue as to what they’re doing.

To me, that’s just common sense too.

Well GW2 tactics are quite basic

TACTICS: in sequence:

1 STAY OUT OF THE RED CIRCLES/ AVOID ATTACKS (=stay alive)
2 If you cannot : DODGE
3 If you have a CONDITION which will kill you: REMOVE , if you’re damaged HEAL
4 RES DOWNED people
5 BUFF people
6 DPS
(7? Res PPL who are DEAD)

STRATEGY: best to worst:
1 Know it preferably by personal experience ( else wiki, youtube, dulfy)
2 Follow the commander, Read/Listen & Learn
3 If you do not know, ASK, preferably before you run into a situation & Learn
4 If not possible, do what the majority does. & Learn
5 Ignore everybody and just try
6 AFK and be useless / be dead and not res and rerun…

This concludes “The Comprehensive Guide to Gw2 Tactics and Strategy”

VaLee.5102:

I tried to explain them that the fights are on a short timer and there’s so much stuff going on that you can’t actually explain in chat what to do in the middle of the encounter.

If you had time to write that in chat, you could just have taken the time to simply explain the encounter.

There are a few minutes of waiting before the encounter starts. That would be enough time to explain the few basic mechanics of the three lanes and bosses. It is not that complicated. I have done it myself several times.

Greetings.

VaLee.5102:

Let me make an analogy. You go in a dugeon that you did a thousand times before. At one boss ,4 of you stack on a point while the 5th doesn’t, and because of him you all wipe instead of getting an easy kill. Who’s fault was it?

Its all the 5 players fault.

At least one person (of the 4 that knows the dungeon) should have asked “does everyone knows the mechanics?”
And the one that does not now the dungeon should have asked “I am new here, can somebody please explain?”

That is common sense at least in the dungeons/inis/raids I was in.

Greetings.

I couldn’t resist poking my head in here.

I don’t think players should necessarily have to go to third party websites and study the mechanics of an encounter, and I do think knowledgable players should be prepared to inform players that are newer/less experienced.

But I also think that the onus of education should be on those that lack the knowledge, rather than those that posses it— I think I said it to someone earlier today, but just like a newbie can’t be expected to know the mechanics, a “veteran player” can’t be expected to know what you don’t know.

For example, everytime I farm Silverwastes, when I see that the Breach is coming up, I yell out in map chat, “It’s time to start thinking about getting ready for the Breach. Head to the fort that has the boss you want/need, or that you’re familiar with. If you don’t know what to do, be sure to ask your fellow fort defenders for help.” (added emphasis for rhetorical purposes).

Similarly, during the three minute “Ready Up” period we get between the Breach and Vinewrath I again say in map chat, “Let’s make sure we’re spread out evenly throughout the lanes. If you’re not familiar with the mechanics of your lane’s boss ask your fellow lane defenders for help before we get started.” (again, rhetorical emphasis).

Finally, when I see that our lane has/is about to open, I give a brief overview of what our lane is about to be facing: “Okay guys, keeping reflects on the Mangler whenever it’s spinning is key, but don’t forget that we also have to kill pustules asap too. Finally, when the boss runs away, follow it, then stand in the white cone that appears behind it.” (Obviously I’m talking Mid Lane here. Also, the emphasis in this one isn’t rhetorical. I really do emphasize those words, usually by surrounding them with asterisks.)
I do all this every time.

1) Given the short amount of time and the intensity of fighting, I feel like that sort of breakdown is more than fair: if you have a reflect, you now know you’re going to have to use it, if you see an object called a “Pustule” you know you need to kill it, and if you see everyone suddenly start running to one spot in the room you know you should probably follow them. You may not know why you’re doing those things, but you know they’re things that need to do be done.

2) You’ll also note that I tend to direct players to ask each other, but there’s nothing stopping someone who’s new whispering me and saying “I’m here, but I don’t know what to do.” Have had it happen. Even party up with them sometimes so we can stick together.

Everyone has a 1) a heads up before the events begin, 2) an awareness that this is a good time to explain and/or ask for an explanation, and 3) there are specific mechanics coming that everyone is going to be expected to be at least a little prepared for.
I think that’s more than fair.

/Rant
Just as a quick, personal tangent, nothing— nothing “grinds my gears” more than when an event fails and then afterwards people start saying “We were new. We didn’t know what to do.”
I get it, putting yourself out there is scary, especially in the public channel of an MMO, where people aren’t always… at their best (or to a group of strangers at the beginning of a dungeon who may or may not yell at/kick you). But come on! If you don’t know what you’re about to be doing, don’t wait til after to say it. When you do that, you’re basically going into the event expecting to be carried. This is just my own, personal opinion, but I genuinely believe that that’s asinine.
/EndRant

TL/DR: There’s no way around it, we as fellow players in the same, shared community, we have to work together.
Players who do know what to do need to be prepared to share that information (either voluntarily or upon request), while players who don’t know what to do need to step up and admit that they don’t know. Two way street guys and gals. Two way street.

My rule of thumb… if you have no idea what you’re doing, stick to the commander like GLUE. Works in PvE and WvW

I stumbled upon my first Vinewrath today. Had no idea about anything to do with the encounter, as I wasn’t expecting it. I simply stuck to the commander and read chat. It’s not hard – though, for some reason, everyone died. I personally ran into a bush and got stuck in it (just like in WvW when you get stuck in siege!) and was killed too. All in all I don’t think the wiki would have helped me, but really it doesn’t seem to hard to follow a commander. That being said, if there is something specific that needs to be done at a specific time, I feel that if there is a commander they should be giving quick guidance and not expect everyone to pull up a wiki. They may not even know what an event is called. Or may not know they can use wiki from the chat window. I think as a commander you have to expect to give instructions regardless of whether you’ve done the event 1 time or 100 times. That’s why you pay the big bucks for the pretty taco.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I think as a commander you have to expect to give instructions regardless of whether you’ve done the event 1 time or 100 times. That’s why you pay the big bucks for the pretty taco.

On this I agree entirely. If you’re tagged up as a Commander it specifically means that you want to lead the Zerg; which also means informing the Zerg.

But the expectations we have of Commanders, and the expectations we have of players as a whole shouldn’t necessarily be the same. I mean, even virtual commanders fighting a virtual war need to tag down and take a break sometimes ;P

Players don’t expect an external research component to their gaming experience.

Including videos in the wiki pages, and having the wiki integrated within the UI ’s http client (trivial undertaking, as this is how the trading post works) , might be a good way to go.

At the same time.. yes, it’s attention span.. or more time spent reading rage threads on the forum instead of using that same time to learn how to do a task correctly.

well i can tell you emphatically that the wiki is inadequate. i read it. it did not prepare me at all for the actual fight. in the end the commander just said “DPS” and don’t res people.

I was corrected on the forum the other day about something similar, this game is meant for complete casuals as in logging on one hour every two days. casuals dont have time to actually learn a fight or mechanics, its too hardcore for them.

GiraffeRampage.6420:

I was corrected on the forum the other day about something similar, this game is meant for complete casuals as in logging on one hour every two days. casuals dont have time to actually learn a fight or mechanics, its too hardcore for them.

Or they don’t expect to have to and no one has told them otherwise. It’s so easy to make snarky comments about people. Teaching them is work.

Am I the only one finding it ironic that certain players expect someone else to do the research to lead them to success?

“Tell us what to do!”

Um . . . so you want us to do the research, learn the mechanics of the fight, and then type all this out before said fight, and during, because those players cannot be bother to learn the correct methods themselves?

. . .

I’m pretty casual too, but that’s downright lazy. Sorry. Even I look to see how best to benefit the raid before specific fights.

Again, bringing this back to topic, that’s just common sense if you want success.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Am I the only one finding it ironic that certain players expect someone else to do the research to lead them to success?

“Tell us what to do!”

Um . . . so you want us to do the research, learn the mechanics of the fight, and then type all this out before said fight, and during, because those players cannot be bother to learn the correct methods themselves?

. . .

I’m pretty casual too, but that’s just lazy. Sorry. Even I look to see how best to benefit the raid before specific fights.

Again, bringing this back to topic, that’s just common sense if you want success.

It’s common sense if you know it’s expected or even if that stuff exists. Not everyone does.

Point. But why wouldn’t a player bring their A-game? Wouldn’t it behoove a player to at least look? Heck, there are videos that show how to do such things, step-by-step, with annotations.

I’m not the greatest player in the world, but even I know to look before I leap.