Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow GW2 players,

I needed a place to put some of my thoughts down and maybe start a discussion about the afore-mentioned topic. Since this is the “Guild Wars 2 Discussion” forum, let’s make a proper discussion out of it. Also, this is probably becoming a very long post. You have been warned.

In order to allow a structured discussion, I will try and cut my post into parts.
Feel free to skip down to the Part #’s and read only the ones that you are interested in.

(Warning: In order to limit this post to constructive feedback, please refrain from answering with “Everything is working fine, I don’t know what you are going on about”. My post is not a complaint, it is meant to start a discussion and stir up some interesting thoughts. If you feel like I am actually seeing problems where none exists, tell me why you think so, and not only that you think so. Thank you)

Part 0: Intro
The topic I am about to revive is a couple years old, so bear with me please, but I feel it is something worth talking about again, after such a long time. Also, I intend to start a general discussion about something that bugs me greatly, not a discussion about a single mechanic that should be changed for whatever reason. I do not feel like ArenaNet owes us players anything in that regard, they did a great job on GW2.

Of course I am talking about the general topic of partying with friends and working together as a team.

After several months of abstinence I recently started playing GW2 again with a bunch of friends. There are five of us now, and after creating our characters we met in Shaemoor, just outside of Divinity’s Reach. We had a bit of trouble warping there, since several of my friends had not collected enough money to teleport, but I will regard that as a minor problem. We formed a party and went to do the renown hearts events/quests and this is where the actual discussion starts (long introductions ftw ).

Another warning: We haven’t reached end game content yet and have not done any PvP. I am purely talking about PvE below max level.

Part 1: Quest Progress (The oldest of the party discussions as far as I am aware)
The first thing I noticed, and I am sure everyone knows what I am talking about and has arranged themselves with in one way or another, is that progress isn’t shared among the party. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. If I was just playing alone, I’d love the general idea of being able to just “drop in” to an event someone else is doing, help them do it, and get my own reward for participating. Except in this instance it means that at least one of us always lags behind the rest of the group. Since Content Finder and the way renown hearts quests and quest rewards work discourage working together in this particular instance we end up just standing around waiting for someone to finish the event. We can’t help them, because renown hearts quests are created to be solved alone. We can’t activate stuff to further their progress, nor can we help dps mobs down since they have little health to begin with because they are created to be killed by a single person. And even if the mobs have enough health, it ends up becoming a “Has everyone tagged this mob yet, can I slay it before it kills me please?” so we each hack our individual mobs anyway because it’s easier.

It is a waiting game for the party, and it is a frustrating one. We stand around, doing nothing but spamming abilities and occaisionally kill a mob that wanders to far towards our little flock.

I understand the idea behind not allowing parties to share progress, since it would allow a lot of bad behaviour to happen. For example the creation of AFK Parties, where a small group of players fights through hard dungeons and the rest does nothing but leech experience. Or the forming of payed quest runs, where high level players take money to complete hard quests for low level players.

I am thinking there has to be a solution though.
Could there be progress tied to a specific party? Meaning the party would complete the quest but you would have to do the quest again if you leave the party? Of course that discourages forming parties on the fly, which means it would need some additional form of “Quest Party” which is a little less “drop in, drop out” while still allowing the occaisonal normal party to happen. Also that would mean that you as a player would have to do quests multiple times, with and without the party, which is boring and tedious.

I’m thinking with our collective community might we may be able to come up with a solution, so I am looking forward to everyone’s input

Part 2: Trading
The second thing I ran into is sharing items among our group. We constantly find items that other players in our party might want to use, but we can’t give it to them. We can’t even drop it on the ground.

I know of the mailing system, but sadly it is limited to players who have purchased the game. Since not all of my friends own GW2, there is nothing we can do.

Again, I understand the implications of a local trading system, and of ArenaNet’s attemps to discourage the “buying this item for that item or that amout of gold” chat spams and “trading hubs” where people just stand around trying to sell their items.

But again, knowing that with all your collected loot you could equip at least half of the party somewhat decently for your current level but the game simply says “no” is a frustrating experience.

Maybe some form of “Give Gift to Player”? It is essentially what the mailing system is, except the mailing system allows for that to happen globally.

As before, I am looking forward to ideas and input.

Part 3: Class abilities and roles (PvE, not PvP)
Races and Classes are as diverse as an MMO player could wish for. I feel like most people will find some combination that suits their playstyle. In addition, all classes are able to fill different roles, the borders between roles fade away. Which is great, if you have to team up with random people. You know you will most likely be a viable group regardless of their races/classes.

It’s not so great however, if you are forming a party with friends. Sure, it is nice that you don’t have to dedicate certain tasks as specifically as in other MMO’s, you can just head in and bash some skulls in. But that also means that in most combat situations, everyone ends up doing their own thing. Sure we focus the same mob, but that is where strategy ends. Character classes and races in GW2 are all viable on their own to a certain degree. Individual dodging and blocking is more effective than any dedicated healer. Spreading aggro is more effective than trying to hold it with a tank and soaking up all damage.

Each player of our group is just kinda doing their own thing and it works just fine because there is no real need to rely on each other, apart from focusing the same mob and maybe not stacking fields and conditions randomly.

I will say it again because people will be annoyed by my words: I know what lead to the character race and class design decisions. I know that ArenaNet is trying to break through the MMO-Triangle of Doom: Tank/Healer/DPS. And I also know that they have been successfull, at least in my opinion.

But it still leads to our group not actually using a lot of tactics/strategy to successfully get through hard bits. We just kinda bash away, announce which combo field is active and what conditions we will apply next. Occaisionally someone screams for a resourrection, which we haven’t had any problems with so far.

I have absolutely not idea on how to change that without sliding back into the classic MMo-Triangle, but maybe you guys do?

Part 4: Playing together? (Some form of conclusion)
Guild Wars is a great coop game. It allows for almost flawless drop in, drop out group forming. I am deliberately not using the word “party” here, because you don’t need to form a party for this form of coop. You can play whatever race and class you like, participate in whatever event you fancy. But at the same time there seems to be a huge incentive to promote drop in, drop out jack-of-all trades bash-someones-skull-in-instead-of-strategizing.
Don’t get me wrong, I love GW2 to bits – even if that is hard to see in this post – but this is something that bugs me. All that I see in game are incentives not to play with friends, but instead with random strangers. There is not point in forming a party and doing the same events, you don’t gain any benefits at all. Forming a party with friends even slows you down, because an actual party is only as strong as it’s weakest member. I can’t unload my full potential because I have to wait for some arbitrary event to be completed by my friends before I can continue.

In other words: Why exactly do I need friends in GW2? Any event can be completed by any person, and I can participate without asking. I can’t help other people apart from dps, but again, that can be done by random strangers that I can even party up with on the go. I don’t need to play a certain way to party up with strangers, there is no need for me to do anything specific. There is no need to talk to strangers and no need to coordinate for most – though not all – of the events. I am playing with other people, but I don’t need to know them nor do I need to talk to them.

This is one of the few MMOs that actually made me feel weirdly alone. It’s like throw-away-friends. I’m grouping up for that one event, and then we will go our seperate ways. Yes, being able to do that is awesome but I would like to return to a solid base for a while, some group of people that I need because I chose to.

And for the last time: Looking for input on this. Maybe I got a little too cynical towards the end, but I think I still got my point across. Thank you for reading this far, regardless.

And lastly: Any and all grammatical errors were made on purpose. That is a lie, but I’d rather be rude than ignorant. (Please tell me if you find one though, I will make an attempt to correct them.)

In response to Part 1:

Not sharing quest progression is frustrating to no end, I can run around and complete a map in a fraction of the time when alone compared to when i am trying to help someone else. It’s like we get punished for grouping which is really sad for an MMO that is meant to promote cooperative play. It now makes me see grouping for general leveling and map exploration a nuisance and I prefer to solo.

I’d also like to add that when joining a group for a dungeon it’s all Zerker and skipping mobs which detracts from the whole immersion of the game and all dungeons now just seem like a speed running grind. You also get kicked from a lot of groups if you aren’t in full zerker. If you join a rag tag mob that are all randomly geared parts of the dungeon are ridiculously painful and you end up dying many times.

the gifting another player could be abused by bots, lets say someone run 10-15 bots and 5 of those find a precursor.

They then gift it to a paid account that havent done any botting and are on another network entierly, said botters then sell precursors gain alot of money and can again sell the coin to cheap players.

That is exactly what I was getting at, Xorgith. The game seems to focus on solo players being able to do “group activities” without actually having to group with anyone.

And to Linken: I can see that becoming a thing, sadly. Though I would argue that the mailing system allows for that to happen as well, yet it is still in the game. I kinda just want to be able to mail the player in front of me an item, essentially.

Eagle.4529:

That is exactly what I was getting at, Xorgith. The game seems to focus on solo players being able to do “group activities” without actually having to group with anyone.

And to Linken: I can see that becoming a thing, sadly. Though I would argue that the mailing system allows for that to happen as well, yet it is still in the game. I kinda just want to be able to mail the player in front of me an item, essentially.

Yes but then they have to either buy more accounts most normal players wont do tha, I would guess organised groups that hack credit cards/accounts would for example.

I am afraid there must be restrictions on Play4Free accounts or we would be overrun with Gold-selling spammers and bots just as before. Easily solved by upgrading to paid accounts.

During Renown Hearts, there is always something to do whilst waiting for someone else to finish, or your party could just move along at the speed on the fastest member; there is no mandate that one must finish a Task all at once. Gathering Nodes, for example, respawn at least daily.

As far as grouping up, Raids may solve your issue; they require coordination and strategy. In the same vein, since you have 5 members in your ‘group’, you might try some Dungeons. No one there to tell you what gear to wear, no speed-running required if you don’t desire it, you will need to communicate in some fashion to complete the Dungeons until you learn them, I would guess.

Good luck.

To Linken: Yeah, I guess. But I never said it was easy to find a solution.

And to Inculpatus cedo: Thanks for the suggestions. We haven’t done anything even remotely requiring strategy yet, so I’ll definitely check out raids/dungeons.

Regarding the “moving along at the fastest member”: Yeah, you can do that. But you get a lot less experience for renown hearts quests if you don’t finish them, meaning the fastest member will be multiple levels ahead of everyone else. Also, what incentive is there to attempt a renown hearts quest if you don’t get to finish it because someone else is faster? Just stay next to them and wait for the fastest player to finish.

And if you do something else while waiting, again, why play together in the first place?
Thanks for your suggestions though, very much appreciate it.

Eagle.4529:

I know of the mailing system, but sadly it is limited to players who have purchased the game.

There’s nothing “sadly” about that. Riding for free? Enjoy what you get . Want more? Put your money on the table. That’s perfectly acceptable and a very fair way for people to test-drive the game before deciding to buy it.

Each to their own, I guess. When I play with my Guildies/friends, I’ve often already completed the Renown Heart they are working on, or I prefer to delay completing it for various reasons. I’m still in the area of their play, able to help if need be, but I can gather, participate in a DE, explore/examine something I’ve missed previously, work on inventory, check out Achievements, peruse the TP….a myriad of things. We don’t have to do the exact same thing/kill the same mob/walk the same path to play together.

Of course, ymmv. Good luck.

@Todd I’d usually agree, but you are not “test-driving” the game before buying it. I guess that was the original idea, but then they should have restricted the game in some meaningful way instead of creating some weird arbitrary barrier that doesn’t matter except if you want to play cooperatively (basically the meat of the game).

The help page for free accounts states that the only real limitation on free accounts is the mailing system/guild bank (The way to exchange items, probably to prevent item farms/sales where a single player farms a lot of items through multiple free accounts) and the map chat (probably to prevent spam from free accounts). Also, a lot of the gem stuff is limited for free accounts, which I don’t really understand. If you don’t want the money of the free account players, then okay.

But I digress. It’s a free-players limitation and I understand it’s purpose, so there is no point in fighting it. Thanks for your input though, appreciate it

And @Inculpatus cedo, Thanks. I just feel like there is a disconnect between “Let’s make all players cooperate” and “No, wait, you can’t really help other players in the open world until you fight higher level monsters/go raiding”.

Eagle.4529:

@Todd I’d usually agree, but you are not “test-driving” the game before buying it. I guess that was the original idea, but then they should have restricted the game in some meaningful way instead of creating some weird arbitrary barrier that doesn’t matter except if you want to play cooperatively (basically the meat of the game).

The help page for free accounts states that the only real limitation on free accounts is the mailing system/guild bank (The way to exchange items, probably to prevent item farms/sales where a single player farms a lot of items through multiple free accounts) and the map chat (probably to prevent spam from free accounts). Also, a lot of the gem stuff is limited for free accounts, which I don’t really understand. If you don’t want the money of the free account players, then okay.

But I digress. It’s a free-players limitation and I understand it’s purpose, so there is no point in fighting it. Thanks for your input though, appreciate it

And @Inculpatus cedo, Thanks. I just feel like there is a disconnect between “Let’s make all players cooperate” and “No, wait, you can’t really help other players in the open world until you fight higher level monsters/go raiding”.

Ofcourse you can help them stay around and kill monsters with them that will advance their heart and you would still be doing stuff.

I don’t wanna burst anyone’s bubble here but.

There are no quests in GW2.

I guess so, Linken. On early levels you can’t because you three-hit literally everything, but later it gets a lot better. Maybe my opinion about working together for the renown hearts was a little rushed because I was upset that it didn’t change at all in the ~4 years I didn’t play GW2

It’s called “Events”, yeah. But that’s just a euphemism. The only difference in events and traditional quests is that you don’t have to talk to an NPC to start/complete them, which is a nice bonus, but still. Those are quests to me. You get a task at a specific location, you do said task, you get a reward for doing so. The fact that they are optional is irrelevant, since on early levels it is a lot easier to do them instead of farming mobs. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike their “event” system in any way, apart from the fact that some global events give you very little reward early on because too man players do them at the same time, but that is a minor problem since your participation in those is entirely optional as well.