Guild Wars 2

Ouroboros.5076:

We need guild-based competitive play !

We need guild-based cooperative play even more!

Zeldain.5710:

And GW1 didn’t do just fine. It was a small niche game… if you’re ready to admit that’s what GW2 is, I’m ok with that.

If ‘no raids and no major gear grind’ is niche, then I have no problem with that. Everyone knew GW2 was not going to be that kind of game. That’s why many of us BOUGHT the game.

Honestly what I take from the Op’s post is this…

“Unless the game design psychological manipulates us into doing things, we won’t do them and therefore we all played solo saw no meaning in playing the game for fun and quit.”

If GW2 has taught me anything it’s that players who’ve been in a skinner’s box all their gaming career cannot handle being out of it.

While I understand the need for guilds is lacking, a gear grind is not GW2.
You can come and go as you want in GW2 no sub, no stress.

I’ll agree that there isn’t much for guild oriented content at the moment.

Gear grinds really are pointless as I see it, but maybe I was just not typical MMO.
There is no gear grind in Poker, or chess; football, basketball, rugby, swimming, dominoes or tekken, you generally do these things because of a love of the activity or the camaraderie they may or may not involve. I think GW2 wanted to be a wholesome activity such as the above, at least in theory, and a gear grind does not create that it’s the opposite.

Sylv.5324:

Zeldain.5710:

And GW1 didn’t do just fine. It was a small niche game… if you’re ready to admit that’s what GW2 is, I’m ok with that.

If ‘no raids and no major gear grind’ is niche, then I have no problem with that. Everyone knew GW2 was not going to be that kind of game. That’s why many of us BOUGHT the game.

But what we didn’t expect was absolutely no guild-driven team play or progression. What we didn’t expect was another solo MMO that throws out everything that is great about team-based progressive gameplay.

@wOOOOt.6407
1. While I don’t think that anyone can disagree that GW2 needs more group content and more incentives to play in parties, i disagree with how you discard dungeons in your last paragraph there, you also contradict your previous statement by doing so, like: “we need more group content, yes – there are dungeons, but who cares and needs them anyway?” It’s clear that gear progression is essential to you, and as long, as there are none in any given group activity, all of those activities will be not good enough for you. You guys hopping from one game to another, do you even understand yourselves, what is it you looking for? Because atm it sounds like you came into Japanese restaurant and started to complain that they don’t serve hamburgers there.

2. WvW could use some SERIOUS work and tuning for sure, i only want to point out that being in one guild with a commander doesn’t automatically mean that you, and your whole guild, should follow him on a battlefield 24/7. A lot can be accomplished in WvW by a party of 5 good players, even more can be accomplished by a bigger group of skilled players (Red Guard from Blacktide comes to mind), use your imagination and brain, be creative. But you’re absolutely right when you say that there’s no carrot in WvW. But hey, AN already stated that they’re working on it.

wOOOOt.6407:

The point is, that if an MMO does not have Challenge + carrot + progress, then the experienced mmo gamers will soon grow bored and leave.

True. But challenge, basically, have nothing to do with having gear treadmill in a game (or not having, for that matter), and gear for cosmetics serves as carrot for many players just as well, as gear for stats, and progress can be horizontal, not necessary only vertical.

It looks like you’re looking for a REPLACEMENT for WoW, and GW2 is an ALTERNATIVE, not a replacement.

Good luck in other games.

Ouroboros.5076:

To all the people who agree with 1&3, please understand that the only problem here is that Guild Wars is not for you. There are other games on the market (in fact, there are tons of them) that think this is the way forward, not this game. These two points are not in this game by design, as in GW1.

2 is clearly a problem though. The guilds in this game are basically a friend list sharing buffs and a common storage. We need guild-based competitive play !

You are so wrong. This game was marketed as a game that brought people together to play, so the OP’s 1st argument is totally correct. While Orr does require people to work together, there should be more in game that absolutely requires people to coordinate and work together in order to truly make this an immersive MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game.

As for the OP’s 3rd point, he is wrong about the gear treadmill, but he isn’t incorrect about the need for endgame progression. There is a huge lack of progression in this game’s post 80 content. If you don’t want a legendary, what good is karma to you? If you don’t want a legendary, what good are the tons of skill points you gain? I’ve leveled to 80 about 150x now, and other than using them to build temporary buffed siege for WvW – they’re no good to me.

Anet has dropped the ball on creating creative post 80 content and paths of progression. If anything, it’s Anet THEMSELVES who want this game to be more like WoW with their introduction of Ascended gear.

The fact that you need to be required to play together instead of opting to play together is probably why you are not doing well in this game.

Zeldain.5710:

But what we didn’t expect was absolutely no guild-driven team play or progression. What we didn’t expect was another solo MMO that throws out everything that is great about team-based progressive gameplay.

Please stop using buzzwords for raids and GvG. You knew you would not get the former ever and the latter at launch. You knew what you were buying, so I don’t understand why you’re upset now.

wOOOOt.6407:

Text

I could have wrote it myself.
My Guild experianced the exact same thing, we went from 100 to now 2 players (dont think their playing anymore either)

People quickly realized theres no challange in the game and theres no rewards for doing anything, after you get your exotic set the game is dead.
After cleaing all dungeons and every path pretty much on the first try, it was quite clear this game is only made for casual players.

Another point i could add that made many of us leave was becouse of lack of class roles. Even though Anet went out with “everyone can do everything” they cant.

You cant tank, theres no tankskills, no taunts. That made a couple of my guildies quit, they wanted to tank but couldnt, and they hate the chaotic way to fight in GW2, and so do i.

Holy Trinity is so much better for big fights, raids etc. You can organize much better and its 100 times as strategic. GW2 is basicly about 3 things, run around like an idiot, dodge, and spam dps.

There is no Guilds in Guildwars. The Op got it right.

Besides the wvw zergfest there is no other place where you can actually group several guild members and have some fun.

The name of the guilds can be around for months, but if you check their members you will notice several changes every week/month, thats what happening. Why?

I can give the example of my guild, there are alot of people playing less, regrouping @ TS3 just to play together @ Planetside 2, cause that game offers basic mechanics towards group activities. Thats what Guildwars2 lacks atm.

Its been said all over, Gw2 is atm a solo game.

I can do whatever i want ingame? Yeap i can, and i can do it alone, imo i shouldnt, but thats my opinion.

taKeshyy.6014:

Its been said all over, Gw2 is atm a solo game.

I can do whatever i want ingame? Yeap i can, and i can do it alone, imo i shouldnt, but thats my opinion.

I look forward to seeing your level 60 fractal solo run videos.

Totally agree with guilds being more involved.

Yeah, its all about the Fractals in this game, sorry i really did a huge mistake with that statement.

1) It is a solo game… if you want to play solo. Yet I have much more fun playing with guildies, and I think it is nice to not be too much forced to play groups for the people who don’t want to.
But you are right that having a bit more diversified / challenging group content would be a good thing.

2) Same thing as 1. I mostly agree, but it seem to me you need to be forced to play as group to do it, otherwise you play solo. Why is that? (Sure there is some lack of challenge for hardcore players… but that does not prevent you playing in group and having fun)

3) They very certainly should NOT put a WoW gear evolution. That was like the main point of GW2, so very bad idea.
But the thing is… if they remove this *(which is a good thing) they need to replace it by something else to compenstate, to keep the very end game interesting. They tried, with gear skins, legendaries etc… but it seems it is not quite enough to satisfy hardcore players

Selo.1250:

wOOOOt.6407:

Text

I could have wrote it myself.
My Guild experianced the exact same thing, we went from 100 to now 2 players (dont think their playing anymore either)

People quickly realized theres no challange in the game and theres no rewards for doing anything, after you get your exotic set the game is dead.
After cleaing all dungeons and every path pretty much on the first try, it was quite clear this game is only made for casual players.

Another point i could add that made many of us leave was becouse of lack of class roles. Even though Anet went out with “everyone can do everything” they cant.

You cant tank, theres no tankskills, no taunts. That made a couple of my guildies quit, they wanted to tank but couldnt, and they hate the chaotic way to fight in GW2, and so do i.

Holy Trinity is so much better for big fights, raids etc. You can organize much better and its 100 times as strategic. GW2 is basicly about 3 things, run around like an idiot, dodge, and spam dps.

Information about this game was widely available for a long time way before release so how did you and your guild mates get into this game without knowing it had no trinity?

I am a solo player, I enjoy the social aspect of guilds to chat and do dungeon runs in other games. The mindset I ran into here has been confusing. People (guild officers) have told me in chat that a dungeon is too hard to do as a pug, but then even with several wanting to do said dungeon you wind up doing it as a pug (and finding it is not so hard to do). It seems that without clear cut roles and guild roles people run around in circles crying there is nothing to do. That there is too much to do is a problem and it is not cut into manageable bits for a lot of people is a serious problem. ANet can’t create a community it will form by itself over years (not months) and hopefully won’t be a vicious and snobby one.

Zeldain.5710:

Kirinter.8091:

i’m glad almost everything can be solo’d in guild wars currently as its a pain to find a group without a LFG tool, especially if i’m not doing the flavor of the month dungeon and wish to do something obscure.

That’s what guilds are for.

Everyone – especially the developers – is hell-bent on facilitating solo players in mutli-player content. This is to the detriment of the genre and has to stop.

False that is NOT what guilds are for. Guilds are meant to be a group of people with a common philosophy to gather not to run obscure dungeons with. I really tire of this mentality that people like you keep trying to foster, that you have to find a guild in order to do content in a game. That’s really bad game design if it falls to that terrible logic.

OP I have a small guild of 6 members (we’re all just friends) who have very busy life styles. We’ve tried other MMOs that created artificial groupings based on game mechanics and it didn’t really work out for us because we couldn’t go too far or someone would always be left behind, or our healer/tank wasn’t around so our DPS was just milling around etc. It became so frustrating to have to create sets of characters to play with each other that we would eventually just stop all together.

GW2 has been the game for us. The past 2 days we managed to 5 man group it around for a bit and had a blast. We were experiencing the world but having fun with each other. Kind of like going to a bar or playing a table top game. The game doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the group is enjoying themselves with each other. Now if your guild of 150+ people couldn’t manage to enjoy themselves when they play together then I believe that it stems from something else and not GW2.

I will agree though that there is little to do with Guilds other than manage them and level them up for the convenience of the members. I don’t really like that GW2 allows multiple guild joining but at the same time kinda do. I my first paragraph we could have benefited from that in other MMOs where forced grouping was mandatory but in GW2 it’s not necessary so it doesn’t fit to the game model. Still it would be nice if they brought back Guild vs Guild battles or something that Guilds could do together like an instance that scales to the number of people joined in. But remember that guilds are not meant to be built just to do content together anything that is built for a guild needs to also be built for a solo player, as sometimes people just don’t like to group up.

In the end I think it’s more than just GW2 that caused the decline in your guild. Perhaps they are tired of MMOs or perhaps your guild is too large that people can’t enjoy themselves with each other. You may want to consider those as well before trying to solely lay blame on a game for the lack of dynamics in your own group.

taKeshyy.6014:

There is no Guilds in Guildwars. The Op got it right.

Besides the wvw zergfest there is no other place where you can actually group several guild members and have some fun.

The name of the guilds can be around for months, but if you check their members you will notice several changes every week/month, thats what happening. Why?

I can give the example of my guild, there are alot of people playing less, regrouping @ TS3 just to play together @ Planetside 2, cause that game offers basic mechanics towards group activities. Thats what Guildwars2 lacks atm.

Its been said all over, Gw2 is atm a solo game.

I can do whatever i want ingame? Yeap i can, and i can do it alone, imo i shouldnt, but thats my opinion.

If GW2 is a solo game then every single MMO on the market is a solo game seeing as how you can level to max solo with out ever grouping with anyone. That includes Planet Side 2. And the GUILD in GUILD WARS has to do with the lore.

GW2 loosing players day by day, its a fact. There is nothing to do in this game right now. Im doing dungeons almost everyday but thats not fun anymore. Moreover, gw2 dungeons are so easy. There is no challenge in whole game. Orr is dead, same kitten every day, bots everywhere. No reward in wvw, just pointless running with zerg. I thought i will finish my legendary but hell no. All I need is precursor- spark. 500g< at TP..srsly? And kitten rng drop chance..im not gonna waste all my gold into that stupid mystic forge..its like flushing them into the toilet. I thought they will release some major update in january but i was also wrong. I lost my hope.. And im not saying about million bugs

Scourge.4317:

Information about this game was widely available for a long time way before release so how did you and your guild mates get into this game without knowing it had no trinity?

We knew that, but doesnt “beeing able to do all” mean that you should be able to do all? Didnt think it would be that bad without holy trinity either.

Class discriptions are really wonky aswell, elementalists doesnt have a viable ranged dps weapon for pvp for example.

Zeldain.5710:

Peetee.9406:

If I was forced to have a group/guild in order to progress I would quit and find another game.

The only reason Everquest succeeded with this mindset is because it was the only choice on the market, Final Fantasy XIV tried to force players to group and it died one of the quickest deaths in MMO history.

We cannot have this attitude going forward.

MMOs offer a very unique proposition in the way that they foster cooperative or competitive gameplay with progression intertwined. There is no other genre that offers it, and the core differentiator is the group content that makes it all possible.

We cannot any longer try to facilitate solo players into this content designed for groups. It’s making the overall experience for everyone anemic and any unique advantages about the genre are evaporating.

The NFL doesn’t field teams of volunteers. The Rolling Stones are not compromised of walk-on musicians. They are well practiced and consistent teams. The same must be said for MMO group content unless we want to see the genre wither away.

Can you explain why you are comparing a professional, paid atheletics/mucsian to liesure? Please understand that your analogy makes it that you want this to become some sort of pro gaming section that then becomes so niche that it dies as people who are even willing to do so are so few that it would die faster than its current development. People who play games are already busy in life with jobs, their families, school and are not trying to be MLG PRO they are looking instead for an escape to enjoy themselves away from those pressures. That is why developers are designing to solo/casual players because they are a larger group then any hardcore players.

While I can appreciate more challenging content it doesn’t have to revolve around a group in order to facilitate that.

When something is played as a solo game.Everything is optional and you have almost 0 need to interact with other people that is not a MMORPG.(MassiveMultiplayerOnllineRolePlayingGame)

While i was leveling i had none interest to play with other people.
When i became 80 the only party with other people that i did was fordungeons and nowhere else.
GW2 brings people together in WvW but what is the point to make a party there when i can just zerg it?
I can make a group with other people in the open world but why to do it when i can do alone everything:killing mosters,do events,farm materrials,do jumping puzzles.
Even the 1st eight dungeon don’t need big cooperation.

The only 2 places which are group friendly and are not for pugs/zergs/casuals maybe are Arah,FotM 50+.
Why do i have to even stay in a guild when we don’t do things together?For it’s upgreads only?

moiraine.2753:

When something is played as a solo game.Everything is optional and you have almost 0 need to interact with other people that is not a MMORPG.(MassiveMultiplayerOnllineRolePlayingGame)

While i was leveling i had none interest to play with other people.
When i became 80 the only party with other people that i did was fordungeons and nowhere else.
GW2 brings people together in WvW but what is the point to make a party there when i can just zerg it?
I can make a group with other people in the open world but why to do it when i can do alone everything:killing mosters,do events,farm materrials,do jumping puzzles.
Even the 1st eight dungeon don’t need big cooperation.

The only 2 places which are group friendly and are not for pugs/zergs/casuals maybe are Arah,FotM 50+.
Why do i have to even stay in a guild when we don’t do things together?For it’s upgreads only?

Just imagine this, you play an open world event with other players that attack the same enemy and aim for the same goal. I don’t know, sounds terribly like playing as a group.

Ah I forgot, you have to invite someone to create an imaginary bond to be allowed to play as group together…

Experience with my guild so far in GW2 is the exact opposite of the OP’s. Our guild came over from GW1 with three players, and we’ve recruited up to 138 members now. Our guild is active, we have lively chat, and members visit our forums regularly. We have dungeon groups forming nightly and fractals happen almost as regularly. I’ve gone out looking for other guilds that share our basic culture but focus on different activities, and I point my players to those guilds for things like sPvP and I encourage members to participate with multiple guilds. Yesterday we had 51 members log in and had 3 fractal groups and 1 dungeon group running concurrently. We do stuff together.

But, I still agree with the OP on a few points. We don’t need gear grind to have group content, but we do need some group content. It would be very nice to have ways to play with more than 5 players at a time and keep them together and organized. I’d love to have some 8 – 15 person instances. I’d like activities like Keg Brawl to be guild friendly. Wintersday was good fun, but it gave us very few added chances to play as a guild — the lack of rewards for replaying the Tixx dungeons was a bad decision for guilds. Halloween was better because both the labyrinth and the Mad King dungeon was great for guild play.

I sometimes run what I call “Occupy Tyria” events where our guild just runs through a zone with no real goals in mind; we kill champions, do dynamic events, jump off cliffs — just play together. We can play in the open world for only a very little while before the teams fragment into different directions. It would be helpful if guild members showed up as gold dots on the map the way party members show up blue. It would help us play together in open world.

There are a few ways that A-Net could make things better for guilds without making things worse for solo players, and without creating grind. That’s what I’d like to see done. I want them to consider guilds while they’re creating new content and new events and really ask the team if what they are creating is guild/group friendly both in play and in reward.

But wait…

…dynamic events scale…

…making them all potential group content…

meaning the whole game is group content… as long as a group chooses to play it as a group…

…woah.

I’ll be fair and say the scaling needs work, I coulda told you that in BWE1… Infact, I do believe I did… It’s certainly improving gradually but thousands of events with 1-100 player variables is a lot to balance.

I’ll never understand why people want others to be FORCED to join a guild or else they say “guilds are pointless”. You can do almost everything solo and you don’t NEED a guild, but why on earth does this fact devalue guilds? Guilds are a collective of like-minded people who have a good time with each other and like to work together. You might argue that there’s no content made for guilds that like challenge and nothing in particular for a guild to achieve, which is partially true, but if your guildies leave just because “there’s no need for a guild” then you are better off without them.

P.s. just read what moraine posted and electing his post to an example. Sir, if you only group with people if you are forced to, then my guess is that you are not a very social player, making MMOs not a good choice for you. Developers shouldn’t shove grouping down people’s throat.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Just imagine this, you play an open world event with other players that attack the same enemy and aim for the same goal. I don’t know, sounds terribly like playing as a group.

Ah I forgot, you have to invite someone to create an imaginary bond to be allowed to play as group together…

Yuu mean the open events where noone gives a crap aboutwhat anyone else is doing and just spams dps?

a lot of people need to feel that they are getting stronger, or at least getting “somewhere”.
my friend for exemple doesnt care about the look, he will just whatever armor piece gives the best stat, and hunt for the next armor piece that have better stats.
after getting all exotics, he quit.

imo anet need to add a grind for something.

Avatar.1923:

a lot of people need to feel that they are getting stronger, or at least getting “somewhere”.
my friend for exemple doesnt care about the look, he will just whatever armor piece gives the best stat, and hunt for the next armor piece that have better stats.
after getting all exotics, he quit.

imo anet need to add a grind for something.

They wont, and i think many that left knew that, they just thought ANet would have something else prepared for us, but they didnt.
No wonder they didnt let us test endgame in beta, there are none.

Martrim.1078:

This game is certainly lacking something.

3 weeks ago i made my legendary, i was playing 6 to 8 hours a day, now i only log on 1 time a week becouse there is nothing to do besides grinding.

Not trying to be a smart kitten but the game seems to be doing you a favor now. You seem to be looking for a total alternate reality, this is just a game.

Avatar.1923:

a lot of people need to feel that they are getting stronger, or at least getting “somewhere”.

You bank account is vertical and can be ever expanding, never bad having cold hard coin.

basically, only WoW and EvE succeeded at endgame.

its not easy to design a good endgame.
what can there be ?

gw2 you grind for look.
its allright.
if i was anet i would really gamble on making the wvwvw experience as good as possible. with guild halls, guild vs guilds, duels, and some kind of icon showing how badkitten you are in wvw. sonthat when ou see a player you re like “omg he rocks”.
as it is now its; “omg he farmed a lot or paid to win”.
that mentality isnt long term.

in the end anyway, its a computer game.. maybe ita meant to be played only for a while (even if that “a while” can easily be 500h like gw2!)

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tolmos.8395:

In all of my life, I have not disagreed with a post more than I do with the OP of this thread. The OP’s entire post can be summed into 4 words: “This is not WoW”. And somehow he goes on to make this sound like it is a bad thing.

No, it’s not WoW. It is solo friendly. BiS endgame gear used to be easy to get, but now you’ve gotten your wish and there’s a gear treadmill so enjoy that… And finally more Guild based stuff is on the way.

But I really don’t get it. You have how many other gear grinders out there? Why in the world do you people keep coming to the successor of the wildly successful Guild Wars 1 and keep trying to demand it do everything WoW did and nothing GW1 did? It boggles my mind.

3. We are missing engame challenges, raids AND the grind for better loot.
Yes yes, I/we know. GW2 is a mmo where endgame gear stats are capped for all, and easy to get to. Its all about finding better looking gear, and stand out in the crowd..
- That is just fine, if Arenanet want GW2 to loose players all the time from boredom.

Guild Wars 1 did just fine without that. More than just fine.

The simple answer?
Because they don’t want GW2. Even if they do not realise it, they want another WoW, just in a different setting as they want to re-experience their “first love”. So they try to change this new relationship in what was once their love.
Like in real relationships this will not end well, because either you accept the new partner the way he/she is, or you will live a lie.

Get over it, get over it.

What Kaiyan said! The ones who leave are the ones who wanted a WoW in the first place. My guild fractured a little when the lootchasers left. The rest of us are still here, enjoying the game. I have map completion and a legendary, and I’m still discovering cool little NPC dialogues and secret caves and whatnot in the GW2 world.

OP I hope you find another MMO to sink your teeth into. I don’t want GW2 to become a “true” MMO. Please, just, no!

It’s not particularly shocking to read this. MMOs have pretty much always been a grind for gear, and now that it isn’t, players don’t know what to do with themselves. Suddenly you have to play with other people because you want to, not because you have to. Suddenly you have to play a game because you want to spend time in it, not because you have to spend time reaching a long term goal. Basically, you are looking for something that isn’t there. If you really wanted to play the game, you would find a reason to do so. Instead of looking for reasons the game can force you to play.

You know, some people play the same single player game a thousand times, not because they have goals to reach, but because they love to play the game. Maybe this is a chance to ask yourself why you really play games in the first place? Do you really enjoy it, or are you just looking for a way to waste time? It’s worth thinking about.

I don’t mind that i don’t have to grind for my gear.Actually i’m pretty happy with gear which is purely cosmetic.What bothers me is the lack of things to do as a group.Yes i can do events,WvW or jumping puzzles by inviting people in a party but why to do it when i can do it solo?

There are very few places where you actually NEED to coordinate with people.

I wouldnt normally post on a thread like this. Im one of those people that has had a ton of fun so far in GW2 but so many people on the forum use the phrase “Well if you dont like the core values of GW2, go play another game”.

Quotes like this kill games. Its all well and good ANET sticking by a lot (not all!) of their policies but only until such a point where they have a problem with player numbers. Then it becomes an exercise in how to draw players back into the game, doing ANYTHING that is necessary. That includes going against core values! I dont doubt that everyone involved has a soft spot for what GW2 is and im sure they have plans based on this fact, but first and foremost this is a business and their job is keeping customers happy until such a point where that customer makes a further purchase.

Saying “If you want gear progression(ex), go play another game” is fine if there’s already enough players enjoying the current content. At this point im not saying there’s an issue with numbers but I can speak from my own experience- two guilds joined, 60+ members and im the only one still playing. This is echoed all over the forums. Surely this isnt ‘normal’ for an MMO as big as GW2?

FYI I agree that a lot of changes need to be made to boss fights and general PvE combat, FORCING people to work as a team. The solo aspect, while good for those who prefer not to play with others, has watered the game down. It is now too casual and in my opinion that is why many have left. There is very little challenge outside of Arah and a couple of the Fractals.

Thereon.3495:

I can speak from my own experience- two guilds joined, 60+ members and im the only one still playing. This is echoed all over the forums. Surely this isnt ‘normal’ for an MMO as big as GW2?

I don’t know, do we have stats on this? I was in a guild of 2, now a guild of 3. That is a 33% increase since I started. Maybe getting a huge influx of 40% more, with 2 new players. Games on fire.

“#3” Rewards for time spent. There are none unless you count dungeons and even those are waning big time.

We don’t need forced guild membership, nor do we need every event to be a 5 man what we need is what we were promised prior to launch which was easily and quickly added meta events to the game. This whole “new direction with fractals” mess was not what this game was supposed to be according to every interview prior to launch and they need to return to it otherwise they’ll continue to have an empty world.

As far as rewards go, they definitely need to step that up because people farm events that’s just the nature of mmo’s to take away the rewards for your time is a huge oversight. No one’s going to waste their time doing events that don’t reward anyone. And when I say rewards i mean literally rares and T6 mats every time, not once every 3 months. Occassionally exotics unless they are big events like dragon events or the final boss fight of the personal story in which there should always be exotics everytime! The way the game was at launch was perfect for people. When you implemented DR that’s when the population started to take a dive because that’s when people refused to mess with it anymore. And why should they.

We do need more loot but we didn’t need the ascended armor and we won’t need whatever armor they come out with with higher tier stats in the future (because we know it’s coming cmon this is what happens once the trimmings of the gear treadmill begin to roll) no one can honestly say that if I were to leave the game and come back in a year there wouldn’t be an expansion with higher tier armor gimme a break.

We need less of the one shot monsters, that’s never fun, enemies so powerful they might as well be bosses in the dungeons roaming the open world especially when they either drop nothing at all or a single blue or white weapon of somekind that doesn’t even salvage into T6 mats.

To those who think people want GW2 to be another WoW hate to break it to you but it already is. They do dungeon focus, they have armor that gives better stats that you either have to spend hours grinding for or spend RL money to get the mats for so you can have better protection even while exploring in the open world. They are working on a dungeon finder but everyone is already doing the “waiting on a dungeon run lobby thing” since Nov 16th.

The first month this game was awesome. it had everything within reach of casual player or legit farmer or explorer. Since the second month, it’s gone downhill. I can’t even gear my alts without having to spend some crazy amount of gold in the TP because their economy has gone to hades.

If you want hardcore dungeons join fractals of the mist, doing it with random people takes way too long and stress. Doing it with guildies and skilled people might make it interesting

Galen Grey.4709:

I just dont understand this, why do people need to be forced to play the way they like? is it that hard to choose to play the way you like yourself?

There are opportunities in GW2 for group/guild play, in the form of temple clears. However, the groups/guilds in question will not do this content more than they need to for members to get their exploring done. Why? No shinies. One of ANet’s biggest mistakes in their design for GW2 was the assumption that the player base will repeat content just for fun.

It isn’t just the lack of large group content. It’s the lack of the whole package that early MMO’s developed to their “final” stage in WoW. These players not only want to be able to group, they want the challenge to require it, and the rewards to incentivize them.

Maybe they should have made the temple clears into instanced large group content. Introduce bragging rights mechanics with rewards that help them succeed in such content. Make the drops RNG with a low drop rate. Give the instances lock-outs so they can only be done once per week. Bingo, 5 raids.

Throw in GvG PvP, with a ladder. Then start working on the next iteration.

Dante.1508:

I do not believe we need raids as WoW does it, i believe Guildwars 2 need to look back at Guildwars 1 and how that worked (successfully i might add) and go back to its roots.

Ditch the dungeons and gear treadmills and go back to how GW1 played..loot wasn’t as necessary and the game was really fun from start to finish..

I hated GW1..love GW2…so go figure.

But for everything stated here about whats wrong with GW2, there available outlets (re: other games) to fulfill those needs. GW2 / ANet’s vision works for a lot of other people though. There is no other game quite like it out there right now.

But no single game will ever satisfy the amount of opinions on this forums. So ANet might as well stay with their own vision and let the populace sort itself out as it will.

As its doing…

Just posting to say I agree, and I’m glad you’ve taken the time to post this because I was going to say something similar but you’ve summed it up rather nicely.

To be honest, I really like that most of the game is solo friendly, I hate waiyting on other people and in gw1 I hated having to worry about heroes and henchmen. Having to take into account their ai, and making sure their builds were up to scratch and that their armor was fully runed really irritated me, so I applaud the solo friendly aspect of gw2.

However solo friendly doesn’t have to mean Solo only. In gw1 there was a general sense of lets meet up and do something with your guild, but it’s just not present in gw2. Travel costs are offputting and generally there is no need to meet up with your guild mates when there are other players just running around to help you out.

For end game challenges I think a few things need to be added:
1- Titles that sound cool and require much skill/effort/grinding. In gw1 people wore their titles proudly as a show of what they’d achived in game. Master Cartographer, Elite skill hunter, Font of Wisdon, Treasure hunter, Drunkard…… Vast amounts of respect went to anyone wearing the title Protector of Ascalon because the only way to achieve that title was so time consuming and ridiculous. Seriously, achivements are nice but there should be way more titles to display.

2- More skins, or more effects. People love effects, and will go to extraordinary lengths to make their characters look exactly the way they want. Skins and effects are much more time consuming for game designers to impliment but when people find skins they like they will really work to obtain it. An visual effects are exciting, legendary weapons should maintain being the masters of special effects but that doesn’t mean that other items in the game shouldn’t have them.

3- Hard Mode. I thought for a while about this this might work. (an instanced area like a dungeon would only seperate the community more) I thought, what if you could reset a map area so all waypoint, vistas, hearts etc are unfound, and you can redo them normally for more map achivement rewards (this doesn’t seem unreasonable since completing a map area takes around the same time as a dungeon section) But what if you could also opt to enter an area in Hard Mode, which you unlock at level 80, and when you enter an area in HM you are effectively 10 levels below your enemy (like you were in gw1) or you have some other kind of major handicap. You would also have an icon next to your name so other players would know you were playing in HM. You would then be able to complete the world in HM as well as normal mode.

4- All dungeons should scale like fractals do. Your fractal level becomes your dungeon level which you can increase by doing any dungeon. Make the dungeon level a displayable title too but with a cool sounding name.

5- Personal story missions should be replayable but obviously any conversation you have in which you have previously made a choice you can only repick that choice. Also personal stories should have a hard mode.

I agree with OP’s 2nd point. The lack of guild functionality is the main reason most of my friends stopped playing.

I disagree with the other points thought. I don’t think gw2 is a solo game – I’ve played most of it alongside friends. And I definitely would not like to see an item treadmill – I’ve had a carrot dangled in front of me in games in the past, and I love that gw2 took that out.

My guild’s experience could not be more different. Nearly a decade ago, we left a very grindy (and I mean 20 hours in a room killing the same 12 mobs to level once the fast way kind of grindy,) for GW1…. We stayed in GW1 for years before people filtered out to WoW / SWTOR or other games, all the while waiting for GW2.

Now, we have GW2, and what do we do?

-We run personal story as a group, often times doing the same story step more than once so different people can choose different options at the end of a step.

-We run dungeons as a group. Most fun I’ve had in a dungeon in a long time came a few nights ago when we realized that the salted caramel apple martinis that our guardian had been knocking back, combined with the generally tilted nature of HotW made for more fun chatter on Vent than we’d had in a few weeks. Not that the rest of us were entirely sober either :P

-We do meta events as a group. We’ve organized days where we spend hours on Orr, doing temple events, spawning banners, getting other people on the map involved and make things happen.

-We level alts as a group. Some people like using dungeons to level characters but are afraid of getting kicked for not being a lvl 80 in exotics. No problems in a guild group, we’ll take a slower run to help eachother out because that’s what guildies are for!

Now, I’m not saying GW2 has all the content we want. I will say this though: We all own Diablo 3, and we all stopped playing when we realized that all that was waiting for us in Inferno was a gear treadmill.

I’m waiting for GvG, it will be nice once it arrives. I’m waiting for custom arenas for some 1v1 or 2v2 guild scrims… those are fun I’m waiting for something like a successor to Urgoz / The Deep that allows for a larger group to play together in instanced content… I don’t need / want 25 man content, but 8-12 man content would be a welcome addition. I would also like to see the return of GW1 style challenge missions with leaderboards…. PvE content that you can get competitive about

Guilds have a lot they can do in this game, and more is on the way. Kick back, enjoy the ride. After all, if you don’t have fun playing the game, what’s the point?

I agree that the guild aspect is puzzling to me. The game is called Guild Wars, yet guilds don’t do anything. I’m still expecting an explanation on what the long term plans for guilds is/was and why guilds just seem to be an empty shell, a glorified chatroom as it were.

Where I do not agree is on point 3. I played WoW for 4.5 years. I’m very well versed in raiding, progression, carrot on sticks, etc. Let me tell you something: it gets old. It gets SO old. I mean honestly, those who played WoW hardcore, tell me straight up, when you finally got your whole set of Tier X gear and were so proud of it, showed it off, people were inspecting you, you high fived your friends because you were so awesome. Tell me how you honestly felt when patch day came and your set you spent months to acquire is now less powerful than greens.

At first I can tell you I was understanding. “This is how the game works, no big deal”, so I continued. Farmed the next raid dungeon for months. Blocking out entire weeks for raid schedules, sacrificed real life enjoyment for virtual enjoyment. You finally get that last piece you want, patch day hits, now its laughable gear. It is almost like fashion, people snicker behind your back that you are still sporting LAST Tier’s gear. See what I did there.

Ok, this time it was a bit frustrating. I spent easily 100+ hours working on a set of gear that you can’t even use anymore. So what was the point of it all? So I can do the next dungeon and get another set of gear to soon need replacing? You betcha! So I hit the farming again!

Raid schedules, time sacrificed, this time for both a dungeon set and an arena set.

Get both, feeling good, omg expansion comes again, haha you’re still wearing THAT gear? What a loser! (Pretty sure those were the mumblings as I walked by in my Season 4 arena set)

Finally it hit me. What the heck are you doing! You’ve wasted literally weeks of your life (Yes literally weeks, in hours accumulated) to get gear that I’ve either DE’d, or is in a bank collecting virtual dust. No more. I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I used to love that carrot on a stick, but there’re only so many times I can get that carrot, taste it is rotten and then have my master (Blizzard) plop a fresh carrot in front of me and tell me, THIS is the real carrot, that other one was just a warm-up carrot. Once you get this carrot you will be satisfied. Nope, that carrot was plastic and now there’s a NEW carrot, one supposedly chocolate filled.

So no. I do not want gear progression like that. All of those hard-core raiders from WoW will burn out like they all do, and THEN they will realize how great GW2 is.

To OP, your guild is obviously still in the vertical progression focused stage. Your members will tire of that too. This is why so many ex-WoW players are wandering aimlessly looking for another game to give them what they want, but also to not be the same as what they used to want, but not too different either because that would be scary and not what they want.

My solution: Make it take FOREVER to get a full ascended set. Or if they release Legendary armor, make it take FOREVER. Not RNG type of forever where things can be purchased for gold if you have enough of it. But something that would require an actual time investment in the game.

When you see someone wearing it and you know they a) have been playing a long time and put a serious amount of effort in and b) are a bad-kitten.

Right now unfortunately Legendary weapons are for sale on the TP. That was a poor choice. I mean, there’s no REAL reason not to make it sellable on TP, but it loses pretty much all of it’s prestige value.

I really enjoy GW2 moreso than GW1. I agree that it is more of a solo game in that you don’t “have” to group to achieve success. However, this is a different type of MMO, and that you do what you want to do as an individual or as a guild. The carrot on a stick or grind for better gear MMOs require you to do basically, the same thing over and over: Get a team together – go raid – or dungeon until you farm what you need.

I believe GW2 is more social, in that there are more things you can do as a group together…whether it is 5 or 50. You can Map clear an area as a guild, I’ve seen entire guilds run from jumping puzzle to jumping puzzle in an area. I’ve seen guilds racing to gathering nodes and even playing hide and seek in an area. A guild can be as silly or as serious as you make it.

I’ve seen quite a few guilds “lose members” because the guild is adept at a specific type of MMO. Unfortunately for them, GW2 is not typical and therefore guild leaders (if they enjoy GW2) will need to adapt if they wish to succeed.

The game is improving on many aspects. By this time next year a good majority of things could be fixed.

I agree with what people have said. I dont understand the complaints for raids. Gear grinding is absurd to me. At first I loved it. The sense of a "carrot’ was great, until 3 months later in wow they released another dungeon and it all started again. Im not sure why people need an endless grind.

Also guilds are EXTREMELY useful. My guild has a very active leader that is constantly getting things going. We are always organized in wvwvw and do constant pve runs as well, including guild wide temple runs every week.

basically; give the “grinders” something to be happy with; fractals

and the other players have the rest.
guild organizing for wvwvw and tpvp is kind of cool.
then you can buy some upgrades for guilds etc.

the more you invest and socialize with your guild the more youll find things to do.

but for players like me, 15h/week max, give us our standard gear grind because really we dont have time to invest in a guild so much, or time to do sheduled events etc…

we just want to explore and kitten some kitten beasts along with other human controlled heroes with slight chatting here and there.

talking for myself here..

Zeldain.5710:

Tolmos.8395:

In all of my life, I have not disagreed with a post more than I do with the OP of this thread. The OP’s entire post can be summed into 4 words: “This is not WoW”. And somehow he goes on to make this sound like it is a bad thing.

No, it’s not WoW. It is solo friendly. BiS endgame gear used to be easy to get, but now you’ve gotten your wish and there’s a gear treadmill so enjoy that… And finally more Guild based stuff is on the way.

But I really don’t get it. You have how many other gear grinders out there? Why in the world do you people keep coming to the successor of the wildly successful Guild Wars 1 and keep trying to demand it do everything WoW did and nothing GW1 did? It boggles my mind.

3. We are missing engame challenges, raids AND the grind for better loot.
Yes yes, I/we know. GW2 is a mmo where endgame gear stats are capped for all, and easy to get to. Its all about finding better looking gear, and stand out in the crowd..
- That is just fine, if Arenanet want GW2 to loose players all the time from boredom.

Guild Wars 1 did just fine without that. More than just fine.

No… it amounts to “this is not an MMO.”

And GW1 didn’t do just fine. It was a small niche game… if you’re ready to admit that’s what GW2 is, I’m ok with that.

A) Just because a game does not resemble World of Warcraft, with its raids and gear grinds, it does not make it “not an MMO”. I know that can be hard to grasp if WoW was your first, but it’s true. There were other games out there with exceptional variety that were nothing like the Warcraft monster

B) If you consider 6.5 MILLION copies of Guild Wars 1 to be a small niche game, I can’t imagine what you consider to be a massive game.