Guild Wars 2

Some days ago I went back to try the game after a long time, today I’ve uninstalled it and I would like to give you feedback regarding the reasons for why, in the hope that you (developers) read it and think about it, maybe something useful can come out of it.

First of all, I start by saying that I love MOBA games. In those kind of games a single individual can have a great impact on the game (if is a skilled player) and the ability to have that kind of impact in a game is what made it fun and push us to give our best and to improve, so to be able to become the one “that saved the day”.
In Guild Wars 2, nothing is done to discourage the Zerg mentality during WvW, which in my opinion is an extremely negative thing, because you just end up being one of the hundred players spamming skill and you don’t actually feel like you’re having any kind of impact on the outcome of the fights, you just follow the zerg train and shut down your brain. I don’t find this to be challenging therefore not fun.
Even worse, this “zerg mentality” propagete into pve for the way all of it is structured, so you again have this Events with hundred of players and you feels just like a drop of water in a rainstorm, you don’t feel like you actually have any impact or like you are contributing toward the victory of the event, in fact if I where to stop attacking the usual Champion monster, there won’t even be a difference, maybe it would die a millisecond later but still something too small to be noticed. Again, this kill the challenge therefore kill the fun, it becomes a simple exercise of spam where a player can just shut down his brain and press the skill out of cooldown in random order.

So I asked myself : “people has achieved maximum gear strenght and maximum level, so why do they keep playing it? Why I play it? Why people is farming events, dungeons and joining those boring zerg trains? Why?!”

The reason is, as I think you already know, because you put up a very clever, well polished and addictive achievment system.
At this point, many people is not playing anymore to discover the story or new land or to gain new strenght, is only about completing those collection and unlocking skins, to give you that sense of completition and closure that every game should have. If one where to stop, then it would feel like the thousands of hours put into it where going to waste, and this feeling is what drives many players to keep going.

But in my opinion skins and achievment should only serve as secondary goal, as a spice on top of a good dish, and not as the driving force that keep people playing.
If you ask many players “why are you doing what are you doing?” they would probably tell you is “because I need X skin” …is not anymore about the gameplay being fun/challenging or because they want to know how the story evolve, is just because they need that skin.

Now I’ve saw through your strategy (and I’m ashamed a bit since it took me really long) but I warn you that if you keep milking your players trough this strategy, they will sooner or later realize what’s going on and they will lose faith in you as a developer.

I lost my faith with Guild Wars 2. :\

For anyone (and I know it will be 9 out of 10) that want to reply telling me how wrong I am, how fun you find the game and so on, that’s perfectly fine if you enjoy it and you don’t need to tell it to me, I’m aware that everyone here enjoy the game, my message is mostly directed toward the developer, and wathever is your opinion about the game, I’m pretty sure it won’t change mine.

If you ever come back, you might try playing the non-zerg content.

And, just as an FYI, those I play with, and I, don’t chase skins or APs particularly. It’s more about completing content. Not to say loot isn’t fun to get, of course.

Anyway, hope you find a MOBA or some other game that fulfills your desires.

Good luck.

@ OP
yup, can’t really disagree, that pretty much sums it up.

edited because someone snuck a reply in before me

MMOs using mechanics to encourage addictive behavior and consistent play is nothing new.

Though, I’m glad you’ve realized it exists. Such awareness is very important, I think.

Now that you see it, the next choice ahead of you is whether you’ll let seeing this interfere with the legitimate fun you can have. If you can spot it, then you can set it aside and better evaluate a game on the merits of the game play, theme, story, graphics, and whatnot else you care about.

This kind of stuff is going to be in most games you play, MMO or otherwise. You have no control over it being there, but you do have control over how you’ll react and respond… uninstalling is a legitimate response… so is focusing on the stuff you love, despite the existence of the other stuff.

Good luck to you and your future gaming.

~EW

So you choose to play the parts of the game that involve zerg tactics and then complain about the fact that it’s boring?

If you don’t like that style of play that’s fine (I don’t particularly like it either) but there are many other things you could be doing. Such as the various storylines (designed to be played solo, or with a maximum of 4 other players), dungeons, Fractals, raids, sPvP.

Structured PvP and raids might be especially good for you since they require each player to fufill a specific role and the entire thing can fall apart if they don’t do that.

But even within WvW there’s roles like scouting (which can be boring admittedly), or manning siege where you are making a very obvious contribution above and beyond what you might do as part of the group.

It’s also possible to simply roam around exploring the world, completing events, talking to NPCs and finding things like jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. But I get them impression from your post that you’re very much driven by specific rewards or goals so I doubt that would appeal to you since you won’t get anything from it except the experience.

Ask yourself this : “why so much effort and time has to be placed to unlock a single skin”?
The answer is simple, if they where to give you super easy to unlock skins, in 1 month everyone would have unlocked everything, had nothing to do left and would be leaving the game.

But then ask yourself this other question: "how come MOBA’s game without anything to unlock and with a single map to play manage to retain milions of player for many many years?! (think of Dota2 or the others)

Again the answer is simple, they point everything on a very strong and deep gameplay, which is the reward in itself.

Therefore, the moment that the devoloper push this far the grind and link it to achievment (collections) which are addictive for many, just to keep players, he is acknowledging himself that he has created a weak gameplay, not strong enough to keep people hooked.

In the light of this, do you think I would like to be playing any of the content by you suggested? :\ (except jumping puzzles, I would like to play those indeed, but alone are not a reason enough to even keep the game installed, one can simply play a full platform/action game instead…)

Guess you’ve never heard of a havoc group in WvW, OP.

Silly to uninstall a game before you’ve learned how to play it.

Some people run with the zerg, others run small havoc groups, and in a havoc group, even player is important.

Vayne.8563:

Guess you’ve never heard of a havoc group in WvW, OP.

Silly to uninstall a game before you’ve learned how to play it.

Some people run with the zerg, others run small havoc groups, and in a havoc group, even player is important.

Is this havoc group earning more reward than the zerg?

Don’t consider your strategy in a vacuum, everything is connected so of course I want a fun and challenging gameplay while at the same time I want to get the rewards and skins everyone else are unlocking. Telling me to choose between the 2 is a clear sign the game have a problem.
This havoc group you talk about should be the resoult of a policy by the developer to discourage the formation of zerg trains. (for example like reward splitted between all the participants, so people would favour the smallest group capable of getting the job done for better rewards)

And again, everything is connected so we have still the zerg events on pve, that why in the first post I said was pointless to try and persuade me, “solving” the zerg with your strategy still won’t fix all the other reason which lead to me uninstalling, which by the way I only mentioned 2 on the first post to not make this too confusing/ caotic.

Marcus Aseth.7420:

Vayne.8563:

Guess you’ve never heard of a havoc group in WvW, OP.

Silly to uninstall a game before you’ve learned how to play it.

Some people run with the zerg, others run small havoc groups, and in a havoc group, even player is important.

Is this havoc group earning more reward than the zerg?

Don’t consider your strategy in a vacuum, everything is connected so of course I want a fun and challenging gameplay while at the same time I want to get the rewards and skins everyone else are unlocking. Telling me to choose between the 2 is a clear sign the game have a problem.
This havoc group you talk about should be the resoult of a policy by the developer to discourage the formation of zerg trains. (for example like reward splitted between all the participants, so people would favour the smallest group capable of getting the job done for better rewards)

And again, everything is connected so we have still the zerg events on pve, that why in the first post I said was pointless to try and persuade me, “solving” the zerg with your strategy still won’t fix all the other reason which lead to me uninstalling, which by the way I only mentioned 2 on the first post to not make this too confusing/ caotic.

You’re not going to stop zerging in games like this, because people do the easiest thing. Even the most rewarding things, if it’s not easy a lot of people won’t do it.

But if you want exactly equal rewards, there’s no point in even talking. There’s plenty of rewards for havoc groups, but you’ll get them mostly through leveling and stuff like that.

However the real reward is the challenge and fun.

You’ll also get rewards from playing fractals which is not zerg content and those rewards are pretty good right now. Dungeons now give pretty decent rewards too.

But you can’t have it every which way. I don’t zerg generally and I have quite a few legendary weapons.

If you only care about the most efficient way to do things, you’ll have to suffer doing them sometimes in ways you don’t want. On the other hand, if you’re interested in the most fun way to do things, that’s certainly an option. It may take you longer to get something but MMOs are all about choice.

I tend to enjoy havoc groups in WvW sometimes, just because there’s more danger in them, so it’s more exciting.