Guild Wars 2

I am throwing this question out there because I am curious if others are like me.

Do you find yourself not grouping with anyone and just doing all content (excluding Dungeons and fractals) may it be roaming with a zerg or random ppl around never joining a group?

I find myself not interested in grouping and when I get invited my first reaction is to see if it’s a guildie else just decline….

This game is fun and great but I don’t necessarily feel it encourages me for group play.. Which is kind of odd because it’s a zerg heavy type game. I run very little dungeons nowadays and I do run fractals on occasion. I tend to do this in wvwvw as well.

Do others have the same experience?

I find grouping for content unnecessary as well. I get buffs from fields since they don’t prioritize who laid them and who blasted in it.

If I am not mistaken it does prioritize combo fields first to the group.

But I never actually care..

My main is a warrior and I like to stack might with combo… to top it off.

" An area of effect skill may only affect a maximum of 5 targets, determined by proximity: Only the 5 closest enemies to the centerpoint of the area of effect will be affected. Similiarly, when affecting allies, closest party members are affected first, followed by closest non-party member allies. "

Off the wiki..

I don’t care one way or the other really. I enjoy the huge group zergings and I’ll grab a group for those if someone invites me, or I’ll even start one especially for temples.

I don’t do dungeons or fractals though. If I had enough friends that played, I’d probably do those things, and I definitely don’t do pugs. The general community for those things is really crappy. In my experience, those players aren’t playing for fun.

So I like the big groups since it’s easy to ignore idiots and still do the content. Small groups, not so much. Maybe I just haven’t had good luck with small groups, but it’s pretty much the same in all MMOs.

Grouping makes tagging easier. It is also good for if you get disconnected you have an “anchor” to get back to the same instance you were in whether that is home or a particular overflow.

That’s about all there is for benefits.

Speaking as a new player but with a lot of experience of WoW, it seems to me that one of the strengths of GW2 is that shows up what an essentially artificial game mechanic “the party” is. In GW2, if I see someone fighting some enemy, I go over and help. We both benefit. In WoW, in the same circumstance, I get nothing because the enemy is “tagged”, unless the two of us are formally joined in “a party”. What’s the logic in that? It’s totally artificial and meaningless, and, as GW2 shows, the game works better without it.

Abaxial.4168:

Speaking as a new player but with a lot of experience of WoW, it seems to me that one of the strengths of GW2 is that shows up what an essentially artificial game mechanic “the party” is. In GW2, if I see someone fighting some enemy, I go over and help. We both benefit. In WoW, in the same circumstance, I get nothing because the enemy is “tagged”, unless the two of us are formally joined in “a party”. What’s the logic in that? It’s totally artificial and meaningless, and, as GW2 shows, the game works better without it.

Agreed.

I see these complains about a lack of group play every so often and I feel like people are confusing two things which are actually quite different.

I’m very rarely in a party with anyone else, because unless you’re doing a dungeon or trying to join a map, or something else which requires the party tools then there’s little point in that.

But I’m playing with other people all the time. I’ll see an event start up and go to join in, or call it out in /map and work with the other people who are there to get it done. I’ll be part way through a mini-dungeon and struggling to solve a puzzle and some random will show up and we’ll do it together. Or at the other extreme there’s big things like the wurm and the current LA events where dozens of people work together (in theory) to get it done.

In situations like that the fact that the party system doesn’t give any benefits is actually a strength, because instead of needing to find 4 other people before you start and doing the whole thing together you can do it with whoever is around whenever they show up. Whether that’s 2 or 9 or 50 of you. You can all join in and work together, whilst also being free to come and go as you want and need to.