Guild Wars 2

It’s not as if I expect everyone in this game to be polite but the changes which I noticed during this last year … well I’d say it’s just pathetic.
It’s as if some people play this game as if it would make them better in real life. Their reactions are not just childish but worse than everything I have ever noticed in any game I have ever played.

- You get insulted being new to a class on a STORY run which wasn’t advertised as some kind of expert-session
- During social events like the snowball match if your team lies 100 points behind everyone just group-quits
a.s.o.

I’m just interested what you think about this :/ It really worries me to tell you the truth. A community like this can ruin the whole game.

Some or everyone?

I know what you’re saying… I took a break and recently came back and it’s bothering me too.

I play pretty casually, and I am very aware I’m not the best, and I’m probably not giving myself the most sensible builds… I also pick pretty stupid battles because I like to see if I could do it and maybe plan better fight strategies… and sometimes I don’t realize it’s an obvious loss until after I throw the first punch ha! But I feel like I’m on maps with children sometimes. I try not to let it get to me, but kitten if it doesn’t make me actually prefer try to solo as much as possible. I’d rather die alone than be ridiculed or abandoned.

Honestly many of us warned them this would happen. It’s just like some classes are still not played entirely on some servers because they’ll be denied access to groups even story groups over and over again due to class imbalance in PVE.

Hopefully it’ll be one of the things that their CDI horizontal progression will address when the changes come down because we’ll have a bit bigger playerbase to deal with as casuals will have returned to the game once again.

I have a really good experience with other players in the game. But that’s not the case of all my friend. Your experience will probably came from a mix of luck and your own attitude.

It’s really sad playing dungeons with the “pros”. The fact that you just stack up in a corner and pull mobs is absolutely lame annoying and a waste of good fun.

Also join as a hammer warrior who just completed five dungeons with other free spirited souls only to have your non-optimized warrior kicked for not using a great sword.

Bah, whatever. I choose fun.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It’s the course of the empire, except for games. I’ve seen it happen many times now:

First, everyone gets the game and everyone is happy for awhile.
Then, eventually the shine wears off and a lot of people leave for other things.
The more hostile players remain, usually because they are more obsessed, and they begin driving off everyone else with their nonsense.
The game doesn’t function that well anymore, because the friendlier elements are driven off, and people new to the game don’t like the hostilities, and various events and economies depend on a certain population size.
Eventually the game dies off, and the hostile players move on to the next thing to ruin.

Repeat for infinity.

Wow, that’s possibly the most depressing gaming post I’ve ever read :/

The bandage to a stab wound is join a guild. You might find some like-minded players.

Of course I just left the game because there’s nothing to really keep me. It is IMPOSSIBLE to fail in this game, regardless of what the wiki build users think.

I need a game that keeps me challenged and something to keep me tethered. Bad community, bad game mechanics, this game doesn’t deserve the same name of Guild Wars. It should have been called Tyria Online or something else generic. Because that’s exactly what this game is. Generic.

Hmmm, joining a guild doesn’t mean insta-good. I’m in a great guild, but there was one time where someone was asking for people to run a dungeon. I offered to go but stated I hadn’t done it before. I got no response or invite.

I find that dungeons are the one area I’m really scared to go. All the bad instances I’ve heard of, and having a few bad times with PUGs, has made me stick to the ONE dungeon I know, even though I’d like to try new ones. I don’t want to waste my time though and/or get kicked. I don’t really know what to do :-\

Other than dungeons and one instance where someone called me an idiot for actually participating in an event in Timberline Falls, I’ve had no troubles with other players. In general I’ve found others to be easy to get along with and usually very helpful. I also try to be helpful and polite to everyone I interact with. Even with the one insulting person, I just ignored them and kept on with the event. I have called out for help in map chat many times and almost always get the help I need (i.e. jumping puzzle help, help with skill point, etc).

TL;DR: I think there are way more good people here than bad.

Dungeon-wise, I’ve noticed a larger amount of players joining with Y, Z, W or U Builds when I put up an LFG Description for X Build. Before it wasn’t so bad, but nowadays I usually have to kick a fair amount of players before I find the ones that actually read my LFG Description and showed up with X Build. Of course, it doesn’t really help that some of the above mentioned players join in with no other purpose then to spew malicious bile about different playstyles. Unneccessary and utterly childish, I’d say.

Of course, I could join a guild. But after being a member in 10-15 PvE/PvX/Dungeon guilds that either have been “dead”, have had a large amount of apathic players, or failed to deliver their promises I don’t feel particulary tempted to go for another round of that.

Well, grind if one of the reasons IMO.
I used to play dungeons for fun. With ascended I need a lot of mats and money so I prefer to do CoF p1 in 10 mins than 30 mins. Which is makes me sad.
Sometimes I have feeling I will never grind all the items I want. Then I play for fun for a while but this forces me to make a break from play finally knowing that playing for fun will not make you closer to your goal. Skins didn’t create this feel of necessity as ascended so I consider this as one of the evils.
The whole game population now is separated into different groups.
1. Ppl who grind and want to maximize profit. They will not tolerate if you decrease their time/profit ratio.
2. Ppl who play for fun. Mostly no way you can keep up with grinders. This forces you to be more and more casual and finally leave.
3. Probably somebody who can do both things. Not sure how.

It’s expected when you don’t flesh out the game with new content after 1.5 years.

The world boss update just made them tedious, 5-10min AA fights for Maw/Shatt/Golem now

The new Path focused to much on Trash pulls and takes to long, personally any dungeon design that takes longer than 20mins is flawed.

There’s to many new items coming into the game that are limited and unobtainable after a certain point. I’m sitting on a bunch of skins from these events that are inflating and are worth about 45g now.

The inflation is insane now, how is a new player suppose to function now a days, its nearly impossible for them. How exactly can you attract new people if the game is focused to heavily on gold instead of skill.

B2P and F2P games will never have a good community. With that being said, your guild gives any game a chance to having a good community, because PUG communities tend to be a bunch of barking dogs, F2P game or not.

A lot of this has to do with no new content in 1.5 years added as well, so a lot of people are expecting everyone to know what to do at this point. Communities generally get tighter knitted as time goes on, but I have noticed the opposite for this game, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the end

Aeonblade.8709:

B2P and F2P games will never have a good community. With that being said, your guild gives any game a chance to having a good community, because PUG communities tend to be a bunch of barking dogs, F2P game or not.

A lot of this has to do with no new content in 1.5 years added as well, so a lot of people are expecting everyone to know what to do at this point. Communities generally get tighter knitted as time goes on, but I have noticed the opposite for this game, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the end

Honestly, P2P games are not any better. And yes, the PuG community is going to catch the bad apples, especially the ones whose behavior is bad enough a guild won’t put up with it.

WRay.2391:

Well, grind if one of the reasons IMO.
I used to play dungeons for fun. With ascended I need a lot of mats and money so I prefer to do CoF p1 in 10 mins than 30 mins. Which is makes me sad.
Sometimes I have feeling I will never grind all the items I want. Then I play for fun for a while but this forces me to make a break from play finally knowing that playing for fun will not make you closer to your goal. Skins didn’t create this feel of necessity as ascended so I consider this as one of the evils.
The whole game population now is separated into different groups.
1. Ppl who grind and want to maximize profit. They will not tolerate if you decrease their time/profit ratio.
2. Ppl who play for fun. Mostly no way you can keep up with grinders. This forces you to be more and more casual and finally leave.
3. Probably somebody who can do both things. Not sure how.

This is 100% true. Those three categories are what is wrong with the game in my opinion. I find myself becoming less tolerant of other players who are new to the game (and have to remind myself to remember I was new once too) because I need to run x amount of dungeons in x amount of time in order to make enough gold to buy x grindy item Anet has introduced. I rarely give myself time to have fun anymore doing things like wvw and pvp because they really aren’t equal in terms of money. So instead I find myself mindlessly running the same 8 dungeon paths everynight just to make gold. And I hate it so much that I want the best possible group that can finish it as fast as possible.

This, in my opinion is what is going to kill this game. I don’t remember grinding this much in GW1, and although I did run cathedral of fire repetitively on my monk in GW1 I actually found it challenging to do solo and it gave me satisfaction to do it. Dungeons in this game are the same fight and boring stack and spam OP skills repetitively. I usually talk to friends on the phone when I run dungeons, and tend not to even pay much attention anymore.

Would be nice to actually do fun parts of this game again :-/

We’ve noticed a real change in player’s behaviour over the past little while. Profanity doesn’t bother us much but there has been a noticeable increase in disgustingly racist, homophobic and sexist comments, as well as generally abusive behaviour.

I’ve quit playing a few times because of comments in chat promoting violence against women, kitten , etc. My husband once asked them politely to cool it and in return was called an f***ing c*** (misogynistic slur referencing a female body part). Seriously, I wonder what kind of morons there are out there that think joking about kitten women and smacking women around is appropriate. It is highly offensive and absolutely disgusting.

I’m not going to turn off map chat because I have the right to know if certain events are happening, etc. I should not lose that because some people are jerks. I keep adding to my block list but that does nothing about the problem when more and more idiots join in.

I really think there needs to be a formal stern warning here, the log in screen, wherever making it clear that this behaviour as well as the abusive behaviour the OP described is completely unacceptable and will result in a perma-ban if repeated.

Way back at the dawn of online gaming (yes I was there) there was very little of that type of abuse going around. It was a new genre for everyone and people treated people with respect, after all they had lives outside of the game.

Sadly today is not the case. More people spend more time in the game then they spend outside of it “socializing”. They do not know any other way as they no longer experience that type of socialization in real life. In the game they can be bigger,badder and better then they could ever hope to be in the real world and they will take great pains to let everyone know that they are bigger, badder and better. Their way is the only way to play the game and everyone else is just a stupid “noob”.

Over the years the anonymity of online gaming has strangely given these people an identity that they do not have outside of the game, any game and they are afraid of losing that identity.

Find a guild that does the things you like to do and join, get on their voice server and ignore the in game chat. Some of the best time in any game I spent was playing and talking directly to the people I play with. Find a guild that uses TS3 or Ventrilo avoid guilds that use Skype there usually kids anyway. People can be rude in most online games but if you get in a more mature guild they don’t tolerate bad behavior and will kick the rude ones even if it’s in game guild chat.

Kim.4152:

We’ve noticed a real change in player’s behaviour over the past little while. Profanity doesn’t bother us much but there has been a noticeable increase in disgustingly racist, homophobic and sexist comments, as well as generally abusive behaviour.

I’ve quit playing a few times because of comments in chat promoting violence against women, kitten , etc. My husband once asked them politely to cool it and in return was called an f***ing c*** (misogynistic slur referencing a female body part). Seriously, I wonder what kind of morons there are out there that think joking about kitten women and smacking women around is appropriate. It is highly offensive and absolutely disgusting.

I’m not going to turn off map chat because I have the right to know if certain events are happening, etc. I should not lose that because some people are jerks. I keep adding to my block list but that does nothing about the problem when more and more idiots join in.

I really think there needs to be a formal stern warning here, the log in screen, wherever making it clear that this behaviour as well as the abusive behaviour the OP described is completely unacceptable and will result in a perma-ban if repeated.

This is the modern gaming culture, and it is only going to get worse. There are organized groups in various games, including GW2 who’s primary goal is to make others quit, and they will go to any length necessary to get their way, even if it means losing some of their members to banning. These groups are also your primary source of the misogynistic, homophobic, and racial commentary, as well as the jokes about kitten women. Because that is the type of people they are.

Ren.5842:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It’s the course of the empire, except for games. I’ve seen it happen many times now:

First, everyone gets the game and everyone is happy for awhile.
Then, eventually the shine wears off and a lot of people leave for other things.
The more hostile players remain, usually because they are more obsessed, and they begin driving off everyone else with their nonsense.
The game doesn’t function that well anymore, because the friendlier elements are driven off, and people new to the game don’t like the hostilities, and various events and economies depend on a certain population size.
Eventually the game dies off, and the hostile players move on to the next thing to ruin.

Repeat for infinity.

Wow, that’s possibly the most depressing gaming post I’ve ever read :/

The most depressing and most true…

Grinding is the culprit here. People are being “serious business” in LFGs because they need to grind for those ascendeds and legendaries. If we didn’t need to grind, we could just slack off and have fun.

Unfortunately, the long time players who have done everything have nothing better to do than grind for legendary and ascended gear, and the best way to do so is in dungeons and fractals, and those require LFG unless you have a good guild or friend list that’s always on to help you.

Kim.4152:

We’ve noticed a real change in player’s behaviour over the past little while. Profanity doesn’t bother us much but there has been a noticeable increase in disgustingly racist, homophobic and sexist comments, as well as generally abusive behaviour.

I’ve quit playing a few times because of comments in chat promoting violence against women, kitten , etc. My husband once asked them politely to cool it and in return was called an f***ing c*** (misogynistic slur referencing a female body part). Seriously, I wonder what kind of morons there are out there that think joking about kitten women and smacking women around is appropriate. It is highly offensive and absolutely disgusting.

I’m not going to turn off map chat because I have the right to know if certain events are happening, etc. I should not lose that because some people are jerks. I keep adding to my block list but that does nothing about the problem when more and more idiots join in.

I really think there needs to be a formal stern warning here, the log in screen, wherever making it clear that this behaviour as well as the abusive behaviour the OP described is completely unacceptable and will result in a perma-ban if repeated.

I’ve run into some people with this problem playing PUG groups in LFG. I’ve fortunately never had this problem on my home server. The solution is to report these abrasive chat people for verbal abuse — there’s an in game tool for it. Block list isn’t necessarily the tool to use.

So far, I have not run into these people,again. Maybe they have been suspended or banned and have learnt their lesson. Just keep reporting and hope that Anet knows how to enforce Public Decency so that their game is not ruined.

Kim.4152:

We’ve noticed a real change in player’s behaviour over the past little while. Profanity doesn’t bother us much but there has been a noticeable increase in disgustingly racist, homophobic and sexist comments, as well as generally abusive behaviour.

Do you report them? Because I know of players who have been suspended for abuse in chat.

Some advice: Enjoy it.

In PvP just remind them it’s all a game, their impotent rage provides better entertainment than the actual jokes in the game.

In PvE: Make sure you’re the one opening the instance, never post on LFG in LA, always be already inside. This way they cannot kick you without losing progress and time, whether they decide to do that or continue with you and complain constantly – their tears are either how delicious.

It just can’t be helped.
Not everyone is born with the Love and Friendship superpower.

I suggest Anet changes the way their profanity filter works. It´d be much easier if they´d change every word, that is getting hit by the filter, to something nice or ridiculous, like sweetheart for example. And then make that filter permanently active.
God i would love to see those abusive people screaming even more, because they can´t abuse properly anymore lol

^ As long as we can turn off the profanity filter (because it would make RP awfully hard to do), I’d totally support that.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The more hostile players remain, usually because they are more obsessed, and they begin driving off everyone else with their nonsense.
The game doesn’t function that well anymore, because the friendlier elements are driven off, and people new to the game don’t like the hostilities, and various events and economies depend on a certain population size.
Eventually the game dies off, and the hostile players move on to the next thing to ruin.

Repeat for infinity.

Working as intended imo. Why should bad games stay on the market, after all?

What annoys me the most are the people who think their high achievement points work as a license for being kittens.

Not to mention the annoying “ZERK ONLY NO NOOB KIK HUE 23423K AP OR KICK NOOB NO” in literally EVERY dungeon

Go play Final Fantasy XIV to max level and do a few dungeon runs. It will steel you towards any kind of behavior you could ever experience in any game. The community there took acting like crappy human beings to a whole new level. Some of the nicest players there make our worst players look like saints. =D

Get used to folks acting like that. They are usually people who don’t have much else going for them, so they take out that aggression on other people. Usually when someone acts that way, I just pity them; no matter how bad my life gets, it can’t be as bad as what theirs is now. :-\

Swimfan.8014:

It’s not as if I expect everyone in this game to be polite but the changes which I noticed during this last year … well I’d say it’s just pathetic.
It’s as if some people play this game as if it would make them better in real life. Their reactions are not just childish but worse than everything I have ever noticed in any game I have ever played.

- You get insulted being new to a class on a STORY run which wasn’t advertised as some kind of expert-session
- During social events like the snowball match if your team lies 100 points behind everyone just group-quits
a.s.o.

I’m just interested what you think about this :/ It really worries me to tell you the truth. A community like this can ruin the whole game.

This is not actually uncommon behavior it seems. I’ve seen it (and worse) in other games I have played. Including WoW and GW1. Still, I understand what you’re getting at.

I’ve found that I do sort of enjoy doing the dungeons in this game; however, I can’t do them with the majority of people I would normally find in the LFG tool. I joined a ‘story’ run and 3 of the other 4 people quit because I was not an 80, but nothing other than ‘Story’ was posted in the description. How was I supposed to know they wanted an all 80 group? I created my own group for a dungeon, with 2 of my guildies. Stated it was casual non-running, non-skipping. Went through four people that apparently could not read plain english. Finally said kitten it, and just 3 manned it. It took forever but we managed. At this point, if we can’t 3-4 man a dungeon, I’ve simply opted not to do them. Which is rather sad, because I would like to do them all at least once.

When it comes to pvp… I pretty much avoid it. There is far too much rage quit in people if they aren’t winning. Sportsmanship and the ability to lose gracefully are no longer taught apparently.

WRay.2391:

Well, grind if one of the reasons IMO.
I used to play dungeons for fun. With ascended I need a lot of mats and money so I prefer to do CoF p1 in 10 mins than 30 mins. Which is makes me sad.
Sometimes I have feeling I will never grind all the items I want. Then I play for fun for a while but this forces me to make a break from play finally knowing that playing for fun will not make you closer to your goal. Skins didn’t create this feel of necessity as ascended so I consider this as one of the evils.
The whole game population now is separated into different groups.
1. Ppl who grind and want to maximize profit. They will not tolerate if you decrease their time/profit ratio.
2. Ppl who play for fun. Mostly no way you can keep up with grinders. This forces you to be more and more casual and finally leave.
3. Probably somebody who can do both things. Not sure how.

Your point 3, I suppose, comprises people who play for fun, but still want to play well. People who take note that a certain build is overly popular for dungeon running and work a few hours to have the armor set/weapons they need (really not hard to get a full set of exotics in this game) that they can use when grouping with people that look for an optimized group. Because, yeah, those people won’t avoid such optimized, fast-grinding groups, since they are able to adapt to their playstyle. Unlike what those in point 2 should do.

This is why I avoid PvP/WvW and now try to only dungeon with my guild. My gaming background is MUDs, where creators and liaisons are online a lot and can take instant action against people. When someone is banned, the creator’s reasoning for banning is broadcast TO EVERYONE as a warning to follow Wheaton’s Law or suffer the consequences. Public shaming is absolutely effective.

There also needs to be a safe space for newbies. In a MUD, new characters usually have access to a special channel when they’re certain low levels. This Newbie Channel is a safe place where they can ask questions about the game, help one another, meet people on their own play level, and not be mocked for it.

I don’t know how to institute something like this in an MMO. The newbie channel might be easy, but who mans it? There are no real community creators or liaisons as MUDs knew them; MMO creators are all in an office working on things to implement into the game, not liaising with the players which the company probably doesn’t see as profitable (so why do it, ugh).

Possible solutions? In a dream world? Have some sort of community karma system. This could potentially be abused depending on how it works, so maybe there would be a lower-weighted group of factors, like tallying up or down votes from the forums, things like tickets submitted against your account, etc. Then there could be a top tier with higher weight with input directly from ANet staff. People of certain tiers could apply to be community morale officers of sorts, doing things like manning the Newbie channel and submitting reports against offensive players. I assume they’d get a background check of posts in the forums, etc. When the report is approved by an upper-level Anet staffer or community officer, then like a MUD, it would broadcast to everyone with the chat-type selected in their chat-box, or maybe everyone locally or in that person’s guild, whatever restrictions you like, that the person has a ban and why. “MOD parts the heavens and a thunderbolt zaps PLAYER. MOD chuckles and says, ‘And that’s why we don’t _(whatever the offense is here)__’.” I would suggest a wall of shame, but permanent things like that tend to be carried around too much like a badge of honor. The community is just so big, it knows it can get away with being a kitten because the panopticon isn’t upon them. There should also be a promotion system for good behavior! Maybe this happens in-guild and then gets nominated upward to the Mod Gods that way? idk idk, just wishing on stars. This is kind of what I’d hoped Commanders would partly be.

It’s just not realistic to say “be the change you want to see”, but I’m gonna say it anyways. Call people out for their crap in map chat and teamspeak. Say thank you at the end of a successful group event (the temples in Orr, a dungeon run). Ask before a run if anyone needs to be talked through it so you can plan your stops for typing or whether everyone can get on voice chat. Start your own LFG and say that kind of behavior isn’t tolerated. Find a good guild that holds those ideals as dear as you do.

The grind is tough. People want to maximize play time with profit, and I get that, but more important to me than fake money in a game is the real person on the other end. There’s a large portion of players who can dissociate that, and there needs to be some community-based way for people to shame that behavior. I don’t know what the answer is. I wish there were some ideas from higher up here.

kimeekat.2548:

..comments..

While your intentions are noble, I guarantee you that any sort of “karma” system that involves player interaction for status will be automatically abused/exploited to the fullest extent, putting griefers in control of the very system you want to use to get rid of them.

Tolmos.8395:

Go play Final Fantasy XIV to max level and do a few dungeon runs. It will steel you towards any kind of behavior you could ever experience in any game. The community there took acting like crappy human beings to a whole new level. Some of the nicest players there make our worst players look like saints. =D

Get used to folks acting like that. They are usually people who don’t have much else going for them, so they take out that aggression on other people. Usually when someone acts that way, I just pity them; no matter how bad my life gets, it can’t be as bad as what theirs is now. :-\

This. Before GW2, I played a jrpg. My friends from that game went on to FFXIV:ARR and I decided to move on to GW because jrpg players are some of the whiniest people I have ever met. Your experience is what you make it. The responses here are far and wide, so maybe some of you would benefit from a server transfer and a new group of friends/guild.

Neural.1824:

kimeekat.2548:

..comments..

While your intentions are noble, I guarantee you that any sort of “karma” system that involves player interaction for status will be automatically abused/exploited to the fullest extent, putting griefers in control of the very system you want to use to get rid of them.

I thought I’d covered my awareness of that notion when I wrote: "This could potentially be abused depending on how it works… "

…and attempted to pose a solution with a weighted system, whose biggest weights were endorsements or demerits by GW2 employees themselves, with ultimate approval after a background check system by those mods. Just because a type of system yet to be designed or implemented can be hypothetically gamed doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist as a starting point for ideas. -shrugs- I’m not sure why people who can’t acknowledge a newb’s existence under normal circumstances would grief to get assigned Newbie Channel duty but there are all kinds of crazy out there.

Do you have ideas on how to improve the tone of the community, Neural? :) Share, share, share.

WRay.2391:

This is 100% true. Those three categories are what is wrong with the game in my opinion. I find myself becoming less tolerant of other players who are new to the game (and have to remind myself to remember I was new once too) because I need to run x amount of dungeons in x amount of time in order to make enough gold to buy x grindy item Anet has introduced. I rarely give myself time to have fun anymore doing things like wvw and pvp because they really aren’t equal in terms of money. So instead I find myself mindlessly running the same 8 dungeon paths everynight just to make gold. And I hate it so much that I want the best possible group that can finish it as fast as possible.

Would be nice to actually do fun parts of this game again :-/

I have to ask, why?
It’s not like you need to have every item anet introduces.

On the thread topic.
I haven’t had any trouble with players and have found many that are nice and friendly and helpful.
Maybe it’s the server you’re on? idk.

I also haven’t tried dungeons though.

pretty much its just children acting like …. well……. children!

eg; PVP matches – players join a 8v8 game where Red team is at 45 – 60 points, blue with 1 – 10 points and u start seeing most of them leave the blue team….

WvW – people still jumping/sitting on dead bodies…. or you see players jump around because they avoided a 3v1…

PvE – massive group events – ppl stand at boss/champ spamming “1” and then when they dont dodge and get downed they start talking trash to everyone around

haven’t tried sPvP so cant comment..

the is STILL going on even after 1 year….. so no point getting upset with the childish behavior…. some things u just gotta put up with – like bad drivers on the road!

kimeekat.2548:

Do you have ideas on how to improve the tone of the community, Neural? Share, share, share.

The only workable solution lies within the company itself (in this case Arenanet). They need to decide to clean up their community, and they need to decide to spend money making sure they have the manpower to do so. No player-involved systems will work, as they will all suffer from unwanted individuals gaming the system.