Guild Wars 2

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-2/1226812p1.html

Decent read. Quite true most of the things too.

I was a bit wary at first – but it’s a good and very honest article, I can associate with what he’s saying a lot; arenanet should take notes of the message

Personally, I think being able to join multiple guilds is the worst idea I’ve seen and I’ve been playing these games since 1991. (original Never Winter Nights) However, just joining a guild because of some advertisement, like he states he did and then being surprised at inactivity does not surprise me. A few simple questions and research on the guild would easily show you the quality of a guild. He simply didn’t do his homework.

Very bad article, actually. It mostly says, “no one talks to me”. Which effectively means, “no one talks to you because no one wants to talk to you”. MMOs are not made by people constantly having long conversations with people they have never met before – they are made mostly by people playing by themselves, who like to be able to play with their friends and a few strangers once in a while, when they feel like doing so.

The idea that people should be forced to talk to others despite how they do not want to talk to others is basically a request from people who expect to find in an online world the solution to the solitude they feel in real life. It’s not going to work.

Uncharacteristically well-written piece, thanks for the link.

I think it’s less about the guild and more about the game. It’s not that a game needs to force you to talk to strangers. It’s that to build a community, a game should be engineered to encourage relationships. GW isn’t.

So much of the game’s design separates, rather than draws players together. The other players at a D.E. could just as well be NPCs. You really can do almost everything in the game without ever joining a group.

Don’t make relationship with a crafter, cuz all pieces are the same, everyone has the same recipe, and there’s nothing to distinguish (whereas in a couple games, players gain notoriety by being one of a few with a rare recipe, and when players look at their gear, it says “Crafted by mulch.”)

Dungeons were the one place where your reputation mattered, but with Fractals, that’s been rendered rather irrelevant, because we don’t get anything by running with friends of lower FotM level than ourselves. So you’d rather run with strangers of your level than friends who aren’t.

I have a very strong, very large guild. But even there, we’re spread between 4 sister guilds with no way to talk between them. Even there, we have contrived reasons to get together that feels a bit forced, cuz GW2 is really a solo game. GW1 was, too, so it’s no big surprise. We’ll get heroes in the next couple months and seal the lid on the social environment’s coffin.

So he Joins guilds made by random guy spam inviting in town, inviting literally anyone who responds…. then acts surprised when the guild is stupid, lacks cohesion, and most people quit after a week

Duh?

The dungeon finder thing is spot on though. Even if you argue against it saying it will kill the community… at this point the game has no community to kill, everyone is just spamming LA with fractals for hours on end (because they can’t find a group at the proper level.. because no dungeon finder…)

mulch.2586:

You really can do almost everything in the game without ever joining a group.

In other words, you are not forced to join a group (regardless if you want to do it or not) to do most of the content in the game (dungeons do require groups, for the records).

The option to join groups is still there. People usually don’t do it because they don’t want to. Making (more) sections of the game to force players to join groups would effectively be forcing people to do something they do not want to do.

BurnedToast.3781:

So he Joins guilds made by random guy spam inviting in town, inviting literally anyone who responds…. then acts surprised when the guild is stupid, lacks cohesion, and most people quit after a week

Duh?

The dungeon finder thing is spot on though. Even if you argue against it saying it will kill the community… at this point the game has no community to kill, everyone is just spamming LA with fractals for hours on end (because they can’t find a group at the proper level.. because no dungeon finder…)

Actually, instead of find-a-proper-level-group, they could’ve made Fractals so that we can all progress even if we’re not the same fractal level, instead of this one where only the lowest member can advance.

We don’t actually need a dungeon finder, we need a better design for fractal advancement.

1.- yes i agree guilds design is bad, even if heres trully ’’Guilds’’ the design and system itself is awful.
2.- A simple cross server room creator with chat and pool check would be enough (if people really wants that, i could careless iam fine)…a click-sit is awful.

these two are my opinions regarding that article

Was there more than bullet points 1 and 2 and I missed a ‘next’ link?

Assuming that was all there was, sure, I suppose a dungeon finder tool would be nice for people that like to do dungeons (I’m not one of them). Yeah, the multi-guild structure probably leads to some loyalty issues (I don’t ever join guilds unless it’s something small for friends and family to take advantage of some additional mechanics not offered without a guild).

Now, I ‘suppose’ you could make an argument that not forcing people in a party so they can hang out together all afternoon and talk in /p is another culprit, but I think that’s kinda crazy.

It’s just people. People have changed. People have gotten more isolated. Some people just don’t type any more, regardless of the power or /m and /s. They put their headsets on and talk. I do that with friends, but don’t very much enjoy doing that with strangers. I enjoy typing. I type fast and I type well. It’s a lost art. I think a lot of the silence is that people just don’t like typing any more (and please don’t call them ‘lazy’, if they don’t want to type, they don’t want to type. Just like I don’t want to join a guild and go to a dungeon).

Then some of it is a turn off. Sometimes what you do get is just nasty people grief-speaking, because that’s about all you can mechanically grief with in this game (since there is no monster tagging and node stealing and things like that). And some people just like to grief. Often times I’ll ask a simple question in /m and be met with a barrage of rudeness, maybe followed by ‘just kidding’, which doesn’t negate what I just had to read.

I don’t think it’s anything specific about this game. Forcing people to group isn’t going to make them social. I think it’s more about where we’re all at right now in the life cycle of all this. My two cents.

I’ve been in ‘advertise in map chat’ guilds that do work, in GW1. Lets not rule that out.

I think primarily the problem in GW2, is a lack of ‘need’ for guildies. Yes it is indeed more fun doing stuff with people you know but the only time it is ‘needed’ is in dungeons, and some people stay well away from that.

GW2 would do well if it had aspects that required partial grouping, like Hard Mode from GW1, where it is certainly more advantageous to be with even 1 human player, rather than none at all, though doesnt require the full team structure a dungeon does.

As of now though, guilds feel like glorified chat channels.

Explorable mode dungeons are too hard for a LFG tool to work. You’ll get matched with people not prepared for the dungeon and the whole encounter will be a massive pain. This is basically what happened in WoW: Cataclysm where the developers increased the difficulty of the dungeons but still forced players to use the LFG tool to get their valor badge. (And keep in mind that Cataclysm’s heroic dungeons were still A LOT easier then GW2’s explorable dungeons, which are more like “raid” level difficulty.)

Bearhugger.4326:

Explorable mode dungeons are too hard for a LFG tool to work. You’ll get matched with people not prepared for the dungeon and the whole encounter will be a massive pain. This is basically what happened in WoW: Cataclysm where the developers increased the difficulty of the dungeons but still forced players to use the LFG tool to get their valor badge. (And keep in mind that Cataclysm’s heroic dungeons were still A LOT easier then GW2’s explorable dungeons, which are more like “raid” level difficulty.)

It doesn’t need to be an automatic tool like WoW, just a more robust one, like the

www.gw2lfg.com. Anyhow, it’s in the works, so the point is moot.

I think one of the barriers to chatter is the combat mechanic itself. Combat is active and requires busy hands on the keyboard and mouse. There isn’t much time to quick throw in some dialogue in the chat box.

It further emphasizes the need for a 3rd party voice chat system. I’ve never been a big fan of using Vent or similar programs for general play and I’m thinking others may feel the same.

But I will echo the general feeling of loneliness in the game. Even with a guild brought over from GW1 with many long time members, it can be lonely at times. Moreso as you explore alone when people are at different stages of their leveling process or story.