Guild Wars 2

@OP
You are definitely correct but it is how it is now. LotR, Rift, Tera, ToR, Warhammer, AoC, Aion, WoW expansions, and GW2 are all easily solo able to level to max. Some people blame a LFG system which ruins communities when in fact that 0 to do with it. It is the fact everything is solo able to hit max level. But that isn’t the full reason why communities are bad or you don’t have friends on your list.

Other reasons I feel are:
1) Lots of stand offish people
2) Fanbois who can’t take criticism on their game
3) People want to play solo and not here for the mmo purpose.

But just because you don’t make friends while leveling, the community in general should still feel like a good community which in GW2 it doesn’t. Tera’s is even worse. Games like SWG, LotR and even ToR had/have great communities. ToR since it is the newest, has really shown good communities can still exist. Sure there are those kids who still think it is barrens chat or are just a**es, but so many friendly people there. Every LFR in ToR i did has been in groups where everyone has been fun to play with and jokes around etc.

OP has some good points. Dynamic events don’t force you to party with others and allows you to jump in with randoms any time an event is up. The entire leveling process can be done solo, and quickly at that. The lack of instanced raiding allows you to experience endgame without joining a guild, getting a spot on their raid team, and running on their schedule. In short, grouping and community lacks official structure imposed by game design, and leaves the choice to join a guild, add friends, and party up entirely up to the player.

This is a gray issue. It’s both positive and negative. Personally though, I’m glad I have the choice to do these things. While the game design doesn’t force me to party up or have a stacked friends list, it gives me plenty of opportunity to do so (and encourages it imo).

If you want to build relationships and friendships, jump in and make it happen. Look for a guild (answer one of the recruitment shouts in LA or WvW), and don’t just join one, join a few.

Next time you’re running a dynamic event and see a Guardian in some awesome-looking heavy armor and wrecking shop, say hi, friend him/her, and say ’let’s go look for some more events’ or ‘next time Jormag is up, give me a shout, I’ll do the same’.

If you’re running WvW and you narrowly win a 1v1 only to be downed by the guy’s buddy, and some random from your sever runs up wrecks, the enemy, and revives you, say ‘thanks, want to party up?’. Go kill some dolys together, cap a supply camp. Hell shout that you’re going to go try to take a camp and ask for help, see who shows up, party up with them, and add to friends list if it’s fun and goes well.

In short, take the initiative. There’s plenty of community out there, the game just doesn’t require it or force it down your throat via game design.

Sure, you can solo this game. But, if you want to make friends you need:

1) To be outgoing and friendly yourself…willing to talk to people.
2) To join a friendly guild and get to know people that way
3) To play with RL friends in game

If you aren’t feeling the love, are you doing anything to encourage others to play/talk/like you?

GW2 has a great community. At least on TC. But it still goes both ways. Are you as friendly as you want others to be to you?

People should just do what they enjoy and not try force others to do things their way, the great thing about GW2 is that you can socialize as much or as little as you like with no negative effect on your game.

Shinzan.2908:

People should just do what they enjoy and not try force others to do things their way, the great thing about GW2 is that you can socialize as much or as little as you like with no negative effect on your game.

Indeed.

Forced grouping is not a good thing.

Jestunhi.7429:

Shinzan.2908:

People should just do what they enjoy and not try force others to do things their way, the great thing about GW2 is that you can socialize as much or as little as you like with no negative effect on your game.

Indeed.

Forced grouping is not a good thing.

While I personally like forced grouping, I think it’s not good for business as most that play MMO’s these days don’t like it. But I think what some of us are advocating isn’t as simple as just forced grouping, which really is a brute force way of increasing sociality.

IMO if they put in some more strategy into the DE’s, where instead of having to form groups the people in the zone would have to communicate in zone chat and do some coordination. I think that might be a start, same for the dungeons.

Really it’s the lack of teamwork that’s required and lack of difficulty with events that’s part of the problem, along with competition in terms of tagging.

If you didn’t have to fight over loot and the events were hard enough that you really needed to work with people, and even your server in general to push event chains the community aspect would definately be a lot better.

There’s no server community feeling because GW2 is basically a solo game. Sure you see other players in DE but you never talk to them. What would you talk about anyway? They might as well be NPCs spamming their AOE there would be no difference.

Leto.5642:

There’s no server community feeling because GW2 is basically a solo game. Sure you see other players in DE but you never talk to them. What would you talk about anyway? They might as well be NPCs spamming their AOE there would be no difference.

You could talk about anything. Chat a bit, ask if they want to go look for more DEs. Group up maybe. Talk about using combo skills people in the group have to take down mobs quicker. Ask about each others builds if you’re playing the same class. Float the idea of doing a dungeon or some WvW together once you’re grouped. Put on town clothes, go to LA, and have a drunken dance part at the Mystic Forge. Really the options are only as limited as what you can come up with.

This game gives you every opportunity to group up and be social. It feels like a large part of the community just chooses not to do this of their own accord and only does so if the game design forces them to.

In my opinion, grouping just to coordinate a kill and having a conversation purely about the game objective with no personality isn’t much of a ‘social’ interaction anyway. I realize this probably isn’t what you’re advocating, but it happens a lot with forced grouping mechanics, and to me it’s a negative.

I do feel this lack of community too. I recently joined a big guild and did some WvW with them and for a while I was getting that feeling. But I don’t really like WvW or PVP generally so that won’t take me very far. What I would really like is some group goals in PVE. Taking a fort and getting the guild logo up in WvW is awesome for a group goal but there’s nothing like that in PVE. My only idea is that they bring in guild halls and it requires group effort to build and improve it. Imagine a corridor lined with empty alcoves which you can fill with trophies gained from guild runs of dungeons and DEs. You see this would be a group reward for a group activity. At the moment all the PVE rewards are individual such as skins.

SLOThief.5317:

In my opinion, grouping just to coordinate a kill and having a conversation purely about the game objective with no personality isn’t much of a ‘social’ interaction anyway. I realize this probably isn’t what you’re advocating, but it happens a lot with forced grouping mechanics, and to me it’s a negative.

Interesting outlook. I’m not sure why I would play a video game which was based on a band of adventurers getting together and killing a boss which they couldn’t defeat alone but then not want to strategize or talk about the game. Most people who play MMO’s don’t open up about their personal lives, not at least just with casual groups. That takes a lot of interaction, the guys I raid with for example are very social with each other about their personal lives.

I would think most players would want to get away from their personal lives. I think this is one of the distinctions that is not being made here. Personally I’m not advocating chit chat or personal live reveals, but more of exactly what you don’t like, strategizing about the game itself.

Rick.1378:

I would think most players would want to get away from their personal lives. I think this is one of the distinctions that is not being made here. Personally I’m not advocating chit chat or personal live reveals, but more of exactly what you don’t like, strategizing about the game itself.

I wasn’t saying that no strategy or game talk would happen, or even that it should. In fact I advocated some game chatter about builds and combo skills! I think that’s the obvious thing to chat about. I’m also not saying you’d immediately delve into your abiding for love obscure Battlestar Galactica trivia or your recent bout with a nasty spastic colon.

Of course you’re going to talk about the game, but the chatter doesn’t need to be about what you’re doing right then. Maybe you talk about what’s going on in WvW and a big siege that just happened, or you talk about trying to gather those last few legendary mats. Maybe you branch into talking about other games (Any SC2 players here?), or you talk about how funny you think Arrested Development is and how glad you are it’s coming back (like me).

The talk doesn’t need to be overly personal, but it doesn’t need to be dry and totally concerned with what’s happening in that moment in the game either. Of course talk over strats and how you want to approach an encounter, by all means. I just think the social experience extends beyond that, and that GW2 is giving me even more opportunity for that type of interaction than MMOs I’ve played in the past.

Let’s not even getting into RPG gaming as an escapist activity or I’ll need to get into some “live reveals” =P.

SLOThief.5317:

Rick.1378:

I would think most players would want to get away from their personal lives. I think this is one of the distinctions that is not being made here. Personally I’m not advocating chit chat or personal live reveals, but more of exactly what you don’t like, strategizing about the game itself.

I wasn’t saying that no strategy or game talk would happen, or even that it should. In fact I advocated some game chatter about builds and combo skills! I think that’s the obvious thing to chat about. I’m also not saying you’d immediately delve into your abiding love obscure Battlestar Galactica trivia or your recent bout with a nasty spastic colon.

Of course you’re going to talk about the game, but the chatter doesn’t need to be about what you’re doing right then. Maybe you talk about what’s going on in WvW and a big siege that just happened, or you talk about trying to gather those last few legendary mats. Maybe you do branch into talking about other games (Any SC2 players here?), or you talk about how funny you think Arrested Development is and how glad you are it’s coming back (like me).

The talk doesn’t need to be overly personal, but it doesn’t need to be dry and totally concerned with what happening in that moment in the game either. Of course talk over strats and how you want to approach an encounter, by all means. I just think the social experience extends beyond that, and that GW2 is giving me even more opportunity for that type of interaction than MMOs I’ve played in the past.

Let’s not even getting into RPG gaming as an escapist activity or I’ll need to get into some “live reveals” =P.

Lol, no I agree with you. Part of the problem besides the rise of the “casual MMO” is also the rise of dungeon “speed runs”. Players today want everyone to be perfectly geared and to kitten and get through the dungeon as fast as possible, that’s also a reason why being social has dropped off in pretty much all MMO’s. I feel that the introduction of grinding for tokens is what brought along this very sad state of affairs, but even before that there was this mentality of DPS > everything else including strategy, if you could beat any encounter with pure DPS then why bother with strategy. A lot of these things have been trending way before GW2, it just seems that GW2 took them to the next level.

The ‘Lol’ was for ‘nasty spastic colon’ wasn’t it? Yup, knew it. Also /agreed on and token grind and DPS. Exactly the point I wanted to make:

This isn’t an issue just with GW2, to be sure

I also think developer efforts to design looser social interaction into the game were (and are) admirable. The works perfectly for some and rubs other the wrong way (as they seem to crave a more structure social experience based purely on the game and progression).

I do think there’s a widespread tendency to confuse ‘socializing’ with ‘guild progression’ or ‘dungeon running’. You can call it hardcore vs. casual, but I think these terms are overly used and way too loaded with preconceptions and entrenched opinions to boot.

GW2 offers a specific brand of social interaction that some like and others don’t, but I don’t think it warrants the label of being a ‘bad community’ compared to others (I’ve played WoW, SWToR, EVE, and LoTRO).

Each had a very specific community. I sat around a campfire all night RPing in LoTRO. I had my ship destroyed (they didn’t pod me) in EVE by pirates and was promptly invited to their corp after the whole affair because I didn’t ‘roll over like a kitten, and actually put up a fight’. Each game has a unique community, and it frustrates me when people can’t enjoy it for what it is and throw absolute labels on it (rage! community is terrible!).

While you guys sit there staring at a blank chat window I’m on VOIP with my guild.

I assume you people seeking social aspects are in a social guild? Especially since you are not limited to one guild in GW2.

Social aspect of this game isn’t so good, they need to do something to encourage socializing asap

This is hilarious.

You have something called /say, /tell, etc.

Make friends like you do in real life.

A game shouldn’t ‘force’ you into things.

GW2 has PLENTY of things to help you if you want a sense of community. Multiple guild options, 5 mans, etc.

In WoW when Vanilla launched they did a great job of building a sense of
Server community, in the end of the levelling process i had 25-30 friends on
my freinds list.

….. At the end of the GW2 leveling process i still had Zero friends on my friends list. Why is that? Because in GW2 you simply dont need friends or a guild to complete the content, its easy enough to get a group for anything you want to do that is currently ingame.

I have exactly 37 friends on my friend-list in GW2 and on an average, I have around 6-8 active during the time when I play. I have a guild with exactly 1 active member and some friends who are representing other guilds. I PuG regularly and I am quite happy to say that with the exception of only 2 times, I never had any problem with any PuG. I am a level 80 Ele in full exotics and have multiple sets of armors and weapons. I also get invited to participate in WvW time to time by my friends from other guilds. So, I can’t really say that there is a lack of server community feeling because the game is too easy. I’d rather say there is no real strong foundation in this game to make this a guild-based game. I believe, ANET succeeded in making a game that is quite PuG-friendly.

In any online game environment, it’s the friend-list that counts. I do not believe that a hard content makes anyone to seek out friends when someone does not like to mingle out of one’s own volition. It comes by the nature of the player.

“social is as social as you make it”
“it’s your job to try and make friends, not the game’s”

No one is arguing that, but there are environments which are encouraging of teamwork and socialization, and environments which are meant to discourage it.

This is true everywhere, in your house (so many living rooms nowadays do not promote family socialization), at school, at work, even at the public park and library.

Some places in the library are designed so that even if you want to be social, it will be very difficult and awkward (quiet and research areas), and some of the places in the library will encourage socialization even if you tried to avoid it (children’s area, casual magazine area).

The library with the best books can still be worse than a library with “meh” books simply because of the way the environment is setup.

Take for example a public park/garden.

In my home town, the public park had benches facing each other for conversation, circular paths to slow down movement and promote the chances of seeing each other again, it was surrounded by large patches of grass and trees so car traffic sounds didn’t reach and so you’re not distracted by seeing the cars. The street (for cars) went all around it but it was circular, which slowed down car trafic. It made it so it was primarily a people street, not a car street.

Everyone, young or old, if we passed by that area (to go buy bread, go the post office or buy cold medicine for example), we always had incentive to pass through the garden and be social for a bit. You didn’t even think about it, you just did it, the way the downtown was planned just made you do it.

I’ve never seen such a park again, in other places I’ve lived. Sure, these places have parks, but no one seems to use them besides the occasional runner or the pooping dog. A lot of times these places even get “scary”, because no one ever goes there, therefore it becomes a safe place for criminal activities! Ouch!

Why? Benches don’t face each other and are too far apart, when they do face each other there is a path in the middle (simply stupid!), there are no interesting places on foot distance, cars or industries are distracting, there are no circular paths and streets to slow down movement… even if there’s lots of stop signs and interesting shops / coffee shops, they’re not really convinient to going to on foot, and they don’t promote mingling. It becomes a car area, not a people area… the only reason anyone would bother to visit these parks is if they plan around it. But even if they try very hard to be social there, it will be awkward and difficult.

So back on topic…

It’s the same in a game, the environment must promote socializing if it’s one of its goals. This game is pretty much a single player game with online NPCs and I really wonder if Anet intended it to be that way.

I think, as silly as it may sound, having a better /emote menu would actually help in starting conversations. If I’m soloing somewhere, as simple /wave tends to go a long way in terms of getting to know who’s playing near me.

Also, in sPvP, I think it’s great that /map chat is heard across both teams. I’ve met a lot of people this way. Being respectful to people goes a long way as well.

If you’re in a DE and someone saves you with a heal (while you’re standing in the bad, eating a sandwich), thank them for the heals….or tell that Guardian that he/she tanked well (oooh, dirty word I know). Be helpful and be respectful. The issue in this day and age is that most kids are neither. It’s not just the game at fault.

@lorazcyk (didn’t want to quote whole post). Great analogy, (if you’ve seen my posts you know I love analogies) I’m curious what elements in other games you think promote socialization vs. GW2. How specifically does GW2 hinder socialization in your opinion?

lorazcyk.8927:

“social is as social as you make it”
“it’s your job to try and make friends, not the game’s”

No one is arguing that, but there are environments which are encouraging of teamwork and socialization, and environments which are meant to discourage it.

Let me give an example. In SW:TOR I played a Smuggler/IA. If I came to a quest area where I needed to kill NPCs and click objectives and saw other players coming over, I would stealth through some NPCs to put a wall between me and the other players. That way, they could not take the kills or clickies I needed to complete my quests.

In GW2 I go to Skill Points and DEs and actively look around for other players. I often wait for others before starting events so that I have other people to play with. I do this partly because I sometimes need more people to complete it, but usually because events are more fun with more players (until you reach a zerg threshold). There are also usually people in /map broadcasting when events are occurring or about to start. Sure, we are not holding hands and singing Kumbaya, but it’s helping each other out.

Just the other day me and a guardian bumped into each other in a cave network and ended up tackling an elite DE. Then we stuck together for about 8 elite mobs, a vista, a skill point, several mining nodes, and gobs of regular mobs. I never did that in TOR or Rift.

If GW2 wasn’t designed as it was to promote cooperative play, I would never have teamed up with this person.

Cortechs.3265:

Just the other day me and a guardian bumped into each other in a cave network and ended up tackling an elite DE. Then we stuck together for about 8 elite mobs, a vista, a skill point, several mining nodes, and gobs of regular mobs. I never did that in TOR or Rift.

If GW2 wasn’t designed as it was to promote cooperative play, I would never have teamed up with this person.

/slowclap…you get it. I can attest that there are more like you wandering around GW2. The question is how do we get everyone to buy into this mentality, because to me the game clearly already encourages it.

I like the game a lot and expect to play it for a long time with my friends from another MMO, now sadly shutting down, but I do see the OPs point that you can do quite a bit of play here without ever seeing anyone say anything. My longest conversation with a stranger to date was when someone was lying dead at the TP in a city and I asked them how they managed to die there. Even with my friends, its not unusual that while in the same party for ease of chatting we are doing different things in different zones, so we aren’t really “playing” together in a cooperative sense of learning each others powers and so on. We finally got high enough to run a dungeon together, so have made a start on that. Four hours in AC helps that way. . .

Some people enjoy starting conversations, recruiting for guilds and party, and so on but in my experience that is a minority of people, so it would be nice to have something that encourages a social aspect. I don’t think events requiring larger teams are the answer, when you are playing with 10 or 20 other people in my experience you are less likely to learn anything about anyone but the few most vocal, with only a few present you can see who is doing what and make comments.

I agree that server specific forums would help with that, especially after they get guesting going and lock down free server transfers. Those tend to be good places to organize things, like “planning on doing 0-100% map complete in zone X Saturday afternoon, who wants to join me?” Server-wide chat channels can help with that too, as mentioned earlier City of Heros ended up with at least one, sometimes several, per server because they were player created. They tended to have very little spam because they were usually by invite of one of the channel moderators only, so a gold seller (pretty uncommon there, game cash was easy to get) wasn’t going to get an invite. That could be a bit tougher to regulate here, as there is much more incentive for them, I’m not sure what the best solution would be.

City of Heros also had something like the /inspect, but it only showed the equivalent of stat bonuses (i.e. +130% Toughness, etc.) not specifics of what “gear” you had. What got conversations going was that you also could write a custom biography for each character which was visible with this inquiry, maybe 200 words or so. That was nice for giving everyone a chance to be creative, distinguish themselves from the other 20 Human Warriors around, and invest emotionally in particular characters. GW2 has this great “personal story” questionnaire for generating the character, but no way for anyone else to see that backstory, let alone any you make for yourself.

Reducing or eliminating respawns on top of characters might also help get a bit more chatting going, I’ve died at least once typing a message to somebody when I had spawns pop in on top of me. Outside of cities and towns, this is a kind of dangerous game to do much chatting in.

@SloRhief
To be honest I don’t know, I’ve only really played guild wars 1 besides this one. It’s just something that feels awkward but you can’t exactly tell why.

I had been wondering for so long why these towns were so unsocialble, despite having many things to do, yet back home people never “went out to socialize”, but every day felt so social. Then I came across a book on social architecture / social responsible city planning ^^ Maybe there is a book or class like that for game design!

I did post here though:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Kinda-lonely/first#post309854
Others people give some examples too.

Kendu Kuzal.3985:

tom.7468:

got to 97% world completion been trough all dungeons and pvp maps and most random events i feel like its Game over. you have only like 5 sets of weapon skills and you don’t need friends for anything but dungeons and I’m starting to realize that loosing the holy trinity was a horrible idea guild chat is just a chat room everyone just roam around the map without troubles. they are to busy to join you in dungeons most of the time. just my opinion.

Well, you ran through the game and didn’t experience any of the content. Of course the game is gonna feel over when you’ve burned yourself out in two months. Besides that, this game is WvWvW and PvP focused at endgame. Just like it’s predecessor GW1.. Which only had 20 levels! Should have done a little research before coming here and expecting a cookie cutter MMO. LoTRO should fulfill your undying need to consume content faster than the speed of light.

“I have 97% map completion.”
“Well obviously you ran through the game too fast to experience any of the content!”

lol sometimes I wonder if people actually read what they write before they hit the Post button.

Cortechs.3265:

Let me give an example. In SW:TOR I played a Smuggler/IA. If I came to a quest area where I needed to kill NPCs and click objectives and saw other players coming over, I would stealth through some NPCs to put a wall between me and the other players. That way, they could not take the kills or clickies I needed to complete my quests.

In GW2 I go to Skill Points and DEs and actively look around for other players. I often wait for others before starting events so that I have other people to play with. I do this partly because I sometimes need more people to complete it, but usually because events are more fun with more players (until you reach a zerg threshold). There are also usually people in /map broadcasting when events are occurring or about to start. Sure, we are not holding hands and singing Kumbaya, but it’s helping each other out.

Just the other day me and a guardian bumped into each other in a cave network and ended up tackling an elite DE. Then we stuck together for about 8 elite mobs, a vista, a skill point, several mining nodes, and gobs of regular mobs. I never did that in TOR or Rift.

If GW2 wasn’t designed as it was to promote cooperative play, I would never have teamed up with this person.

Good point and I do that too, but to me it doesn’t feel any more social than standing in a line waiting for a bathroom stall to open up :P Simply being around others people is not social to me.

Take the title of this thread : lack of server community feeling.
Right now there is nothing really that makes a difference which server I go, in terms of “togetherness”.

Sure, I go to Gunnar’s hold because it doesn’t have disgusting and rude chat like other servers, but besides that it doesn’t matter where I go. I won’t miss any particular player from Gunnar’s if I go.

In your “wall between players” example, gw2 has no wall, but right now it’s like you’re playing with NPCs instead of other humans.

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that you simply can’t force people who don’t want to be social or make friends in a game to be that way. It’s a personal choice to not want to stick with someone after a DE or dungeon run is over, and there’s not much you can do about it.

Attempting to force people to bond on a more permanent basis is usually not a good idea, and this generation seems to be more about getting things done as quickly as possible, and less about getting to know the people you’re playing with (because talking = things not getting done). I don’t feel that way personally…I’m always open to friendly chat with random people, as long as they are mature and polite.

lorazcyk.8927:

Good point and I do that too, but to me it doesn’t feel any more social than standing in a line waiting for a bathroom stall to open up :P Simply being around others people is not social to me.

However, to me, as an extreme introvert, it is highly social. The game is perfect for my level of social needs, with the option for more if one desires (and I do not.)

Rick, Thanks for replying to my earlier post and explaining your position on this, I think I get what your saying.

In a game where a sizable group of players NEED each other to overcome certain elements of the game this forms a long term commitment and that commitment forms a communal social bond. Because a pact is made and it’s a long term goal it facilitates real lasting friendships in game.

This is a mechanic that works well in WoW endgame for some folks so if your MMO background and experience is coming from this point of view then I have to agree there is not yet a game mechanic that perpetuates this behavior in GW2 (Yet).

I have done the Raid guild thing and gear grind and although I can appreciate the commitment and social bonds this mechanic brings with it, I think in large it just doesn’t work for the greater population. It also brings with it a number of social and game mechanic pit-falls. With the “no sorry your gear isn’t good enough to play with us” syndrome.

The social mechanics in guild wars 2 work in a very different way, In that right from level one players are being conditioned to behave in a very honorable and helpful fashion to their fellow players.

Players are not penalized for hitting a mob that’s already been tagged by another player and because you’re not robbing the player of kills or experience two or more complete strangers can find themselves spontaneously working a zone in harmony.

Players just naturally work together and transition from what some might call the more solo-able content right into taking on a Champion mob or other group only content. It becomes as natural as seeing your friend trying to lift a heavy box into his trunk and without hesitation or saying a word you walk up and give him a hand.

The down state works in the same way, it triggers a parental response in players you might see from an adult helping a child up after skinning a knee.
So there are some very strong social mechanics at work in GW2 that I think will be topics of many game design lecture of the future.

I do agree however the “The Long term social group Commitment” is a mechanic GW2 should look at exploring but I don’t think we’ll see it manifested in an endgame gear grind.

@azoetia

I’m also and have always been an introvert ^^ You can ask my sister, she never let’s me forget it :-(

Isn’t the main difference between introvert and extrovert that while we may prefer to have less friends and less social outgoings, we want them to be more meaningful than the average friend and social outgoing the extroverted has?

There is a difference between introvert and anti social, I think you meant to say you are anti social.

GW1 worked for introverts and extroverts, regardless if they were social or antisocial players.

I guess right now gw1 is like an anti-social extrovert Facebook profile: thousand friends in the list, yet they might as well not be in the list. 500 people invited to your birthday party, and you don’t know any of those people.

lorazcyk.8927:

Cortechs.3265:

Let me give an example. In SW:TOR I played a Smuggler/IA. If I came to a quest area where I needed to kill NPCs and click objectives and saw other players coming over, I would stealth through some NPCs to put a wall between me and the other players. That way, they could not take the kills or clickies I needed to complete my quests.

In GW2 I go to Skill Points and DEs and actively look around for other players. I often wait for others before starting events so that I have other people to play with. I do this partly because I sometimes need more people to complete it, but usually because events are more fun with more players (until you reach a zerg threshold). There are also usually people in /map broadcasting when events are occurring or about to start. Sure, we are not holding hands and singing Kumbaya, but it’s helping each other out.

Just the other day me and a guardian bumped into each other in a cave network and ended up tackling an elite DE. Then we stuck together for about 8 elite mobs, a vista, a skill point, several mining nodes, and gobs of regular mobs. I never did that in TOR or Rift.

If GW2 wasn’t designed as it was to promote cooperative play, I would never have teamed up with this person.

Good point and I do that too, but to me it doesn’t feel any more social than standing in a line waiting for a bathroom stall to open up :P Simply being around others people is not social to me.

Take the title of this thread : lack of server community feeling.
Right now there is nothing really that makes a difference which server I go, in terms of “togetherness”.

Sure, I go to Gunnar’s hold because it doesn’t have disgusting and rude chat like other servers, but besides that it doesn’t matter where I go. I won’t miss any particular player from Gunnar’s if I go.

In your “wall between players” example, gw2 has no wall, but right now it’s like you’re playing with NPCs instead of other humans.

I’m confused… what exactly do you want?

If playing together isn’t enough then it must be chatting?

But… surely you are not seriously asking for ANet to encourage randomly chatting to people?

Nyaochan.1756:

Attempting to force people to bond on a more permanent basis is usually not a good idea, and this generation seems to be more about getting things done as quickly as possible, and less about getting to know the people you’re playing with (because talking = things not getting done). I don’t feel that way personally…I’m always open to friendly chat with random people, as long as they are mature and polite.

It’s not just a generational thing. Some people just function differently on a basic level than others. There’s a really serious difference between introverts and extroverts. The design of modern MMOs is gradually becoming more and more welcoming to extreme introverts like me, with GW2 being the most so far. It’s a very different MMO in regards to social requirements than in times past. There are people playing these games who didn’t play them at all before, and many of them are not like you and don’t think like you, and cannot even if they want to because they’re simply wired differently. It’s not as simple as getting someone like me to “open up;” it only works on a case by case basis with very specific individuals. A message board with strangers is something I can handle, whereas instant messaging is not. The game chat is more like instant messaging.

I’m certainly not blazing through the game. My main is level 71. But I also don’t want to talk or be buddies. I’m perfectly content just running around with folks wordlessly doing DEs and skill challenges.

I’ve seen a great community on my server so I have no idea what you are talking about.

@ jesthuni

Meaningful time spent together, like any hobbie between two or more players. Because even if I’m playing the game with my best friend, it doesn’t feel like it matters if it’s him, a random stranger, or even an NPC.

A game that offers strategy, combined efforts, makes you high-five each other when you complete a challenge.

Doing newspaper crossword puzzles feels more social/meaningful =-O

Yo. You can’t make a thread titled like that.
You can’t speak for everyone when you say that this game lacks a sense community. I might not think that. Stop putting thoughts in my head.

You need to preface every single thread of this type with the phrase “in my opinion”, because it isn’t obvious to everyone reading that it is an opinion.

@Azoetia:

Hey, I’m not exactly a social butterfly either (I am also an introvert, to the point where I have no friends irl, and I’ll barely even make conversation with my own relatives), however, if someone makes an effort to talk to me in-game, i usually try to make it a point to reply back (though I’m guilty of giving people the silent treatment…).

I dunno, it used to be easier for me to just goof around and do completely random crap with people in games…not so much anymore (won’t go in to detail, but I had a major mental breakdown when I was younger, and it completely clammed me up, as far as being sociable goes…).

I will occasionally do small things like if I see someone dancing I’ll go join them, but…yeah.

lorazcyk.8927:

@azoetia
Isn’t the main difference between introvert and extrovert that while we may prefer to have less friends and less social outgoings, we want them to be more meaningful than the average friend and social outgoing the extroverted has?

The main difference between introverts and extroverts is that extroverts gain energy from social interaction while introverts are exhausted by it. So yes, we do want our relationships with people to be more meaningful because it’s not worth the energy expenditure to deal with shallow relationships. I simply do not form these sorts of deeper and more meaningful connections with people inside of video games because to me it is an extremely shallow and uninteresting interaction to begin with. That’s fine as a baseline for uncommitted actions in combat and rezzing folks, but it doesn’t extend to conversation.

There is a difference between introvert and anti social, I think you meant to say you are anti social.

Antisocial gets bandied about like it means opposed to forming connections with people but it actually has a specific definition that has no relation to that at all. To quote Wikipedia, antisocial behaviour is “behaviour that lacks consideration for others and may cause damage to the society, whether intentionally or through negligence.” According to the APA, antisocial personality disorder is characterized by “…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” Trolls behave in an antisocial manner (although I wouldn’t say that it necessarily says anything about them in real life.) I’m actually extremely polite and considerate in-game, just distant.

Nyaochan.1756:

@Azoetia:
Hey, I’m not exactly a social butterfly either (I am also an introvert, to the point where I have no friends irl, and I’ll barely even make conversation with my own relatives), however, if someone makes an effort to talk to me in-game, i usually try to make it a point to reply back (though I’m guilty of giving people the silent treatment…).

I’m polite to people. If they talk to me and I’m not oblivious with my character sheet or trading post window open I’ll talk back. But unless it’s really interesting I start looking for a considerate way to excuse myself pretty quickly. I’m not going to fail to thank someone for rezzing me or helping with a fight where I’m getting my butt kicked.

No need to be so literal… think about how it connects to the game aspects :-)

Jestunhi.7429:

This forum is awful.

It’s refusing to display anything after the name of the person I’m quoting. Good work ANet!

That’s not correct quoting code. You need to end quotes with [/quote ] (no spaces).

Dynamite.6584:

Jestunhi.7429:

This forum is awful.

It’s refusing to display anything after the name of the person I’m quoting. Good work ANet!

That’s not correct quoting code. You need to end quotes with [/quote ] (no spaces).

…

That would be the part which was not displayed. It was also missing the quoted post and my reply.

But each time I opened the edit window they were all there.

Azoetia.2183:

It’s not just a generational thing. Some people just function differently on a basic level than others. There’s a really serious difference between introverts and extroverts. The design of modern MMOs is gradually becoming more and more welcoming to extreme introverts like me, with GW2 being the most so far. It’s a very different MMO in regards to social requirements than in times past. There are people playing these games who didn’t play them at all before, and many of them are not like you and don’t think like you, and cannot even if they want to because they’re simply wired differently. It’s not as simple as getting someone like me to “open up;” it only works on a case by case basis with very specific individuals. A message board with strangers is something I can handle, whereas instant messaging is not. The game chat is more like instant messaging.

I’m certainly not blazing through the game. My main is level 71. But I also don’t want to talk or be buddies. I’m perfectly content just running around with folks wordlessly doing DEs and skill challenges.

Excellent points. I too am a pretty extreme introvert, yet I love MMOs and have been playing them since EQ. And as group-oriented as EQ was, I never joined a guild or had many in-game friends. Why? Because as Azoetia says, I’m just not “wired that way”.

The easiest method to get me to open up and become “buddies” is to place me and one other person in encounters together. If we click, then good. That is how it worked in the old days. If I never found a buddy to click with, I would just solo or join PUGs.

However, throw me into a group and I’ll clam up. It’s just the way it works. You can try forcing me to group, like EQ, but in the end it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy group dynamics, I do. I love playing support in groups. I just won’t be the one chatting it up.

I don’t know what server you’re on, OP, but on Borlis Pass people often announce group events in map chat, and help each other find the way. I’ve joined several parties that way and made new friends along the way. I’ve generally found people are pretty cool and a couple of us have hooked up in parties later to play together.

I don’t log on expecting the game to provide me with an online social life: Anet has set up an environment with tons of possibility and it’s up to the individual to decide how they want to socialize in that environment. There’s certainly some in-game incentives to helping each other, such as gaining XP from reviving, group events, etc., but kitten they’re not going to hold our hands and play matchmaker for us.

ETA: I should add, too, that like some of the above posters I’m also a pretty serious introvert, but I enjoy the level of socialization I’ve been experiencing so far. I have one close IRL friend I run around with (in our massive, power-hungry guild of two) but I’m not opposed to chatting with people who say hi just after a group event. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not expecting to develop life-changing, meaningful relationships in this game. I hit my daytime socialization tolerance, and then come home to rewind in GW2, if that makes sense. Low-impact socialization

Also everything that Logun said is A++ awesome.

OP maby you need to talk to people? Cause im not having a problem getting names on my friend list. Also WvW mass zergs arent where you to meet people. Try a small 5 man camp/caravan raiding group.

Logun.2349:

Rick, Thanks for replying to my earlier post and explaining your position on this, I think I get what your saying.

In a game where a sizable group of players NEED each other to overcome certain elements of the game this forms a long term commitment and that commitment forms a communal social bond. Because a pact is made and it’s a long term goal it facilitates real lasting friendships in game.

This is a mechanic that works well in WoW endgame for some folks so if your MMO background and experience is coming from this point of view then I have to agree there is not yet a game mechanic that perpetuates this behavior in GW2 (Yet).

I have done the Raid guild thing and gear grind and although I can appreciate the commitment and social bonds this mechanic brings with it, I think in large it just doesn’t work for the greater population. It also brings with it a number of social and game mechanic pit-falls. With the “no sorry your gear isn’t good enough to play with us” syndrome.

The social mechanics in guild wars 2 work in a very different way, In that right from level one players are being conditioned to behave in a very honorable and helpful fashion to their fellow players.

Players are not penalized for hitting a mob that’s already been tagged by another player and because you’re not robbing the player of kills or experience two or more complete strangers can find themselves spontaneously working a zone in harmony.

Players just naturally work together and transition from what some might call the more solo-able content right into taking on a Champion mob or other group only content. It becomes as natural as seeing your friend trying to lift a heavy box into his trunk and without hesitation or saying a word you walk up and give him a hand.

The down state works in the same way, it triggers a parental response in players you might see from an adult helping a child up after skinning a knee.
So there are some very strong social mechanics at work in GW2 that I think will be topics of many game design lecture of the future.

I do agree however the “The Long term social group Commitment” is a mechanic GW2 should look at exploring but I don’t think we’ll see it manifested in an endgame gear grind.

Certainly some great points. I’ve stated it before, what worked for me when I had free time and was able to group and raid doesn’t work for me anymore these days with a family and job. Certainly the answer is not the old style forced grouping, the popularity of “solo” MMO’s has proven that beyond a doubt.

I think the whole public quests thing that MMO’s started to do a year or so ago and GW2 took off with by doing their dynamic events is a good start, but the pitfall that GW2 fell into was making the DE’s too easy from a strategic point of view. Players should be banding together and in zone chat be figuring out a strategy to bring down an event, instead of everyone just silently hitting the event with as much dps as they have, never communicating with their fellow players at all. This is where I’ve always been confused, it’s pretty much a single player game at that point with a lot of “NPCs” around you. I’m not sure if players just never experienced the very cool feeling of taking down something which requires true teamwork between real people, but it is just that, a very cool feeling.

Now if some MMO can capture that feeling of teamwork without the time grind that is currently needed. As much as I like the DE’s, I just don’t think Anet captured that feeling. It’s certainly not a bad thing, I enjoy the game and am leveling my 3rd alt to 80, but for me it’s definitely a single player game all the way. I’m hoping some of that teamwork comes in PVP, I’;m not a big PVP guy, but I’m going to give it a chance mainly to find friends and a sense of being on a team.

Rick.1378:

The game is definitely socially challenging.

Life is socially challenging. There are many people who have no clue how to socialize outside of tight groups. Even in school it is that way (Which has the largest available social environment.). The introduction of PC and Console games has increased this social ineptness. You no longer have to socialize with others to play a game, and once networks became available you could game with a tight group of people. Once you get out into the adult community, socializing outside of a tight group becomes even more difficult. You have more responsibilities and less personal time, and unless your job requires it your social skills do not improve (Outside of improving your pickup ability.). Hells, much of the random socializing within the adult community has sex as it’s focus.

I’m curious, how many of you complaining about GW2’s social aspect, have a large group of friends, with various interest, responsibilities, social outlooks, religious beliefs, economic standings, cultural differences, time zone differences, language differences, etc.? If you don’t, why in all hells would you think it would be easier to socialize with a community with all of these variables, and then add in the variable of having to type every fricken thing you say.

I’m one of the lucky people that don’t have to be running their mouth to feel like their socializing. If I’m helping you out, or you are helping me out, I’m socializing. My observation after years of MMO gaming, and sports, I’m not the only one. If you need to converse with a large group of close friends to feel social, you are going to have to make it happen. Your going to have to work at it, just as you would if this was a real world environment, because in regards to the social aspects of GW2, it is a real world environment, with all of the multinational real world variables attached to it.

try to be outgoing. talk to strangers. do zerg de’s and party up with people. sure you’ll see familiar faces as you karma farm same spot. talk to someone that you meet while you’re exploring.

Yesterday I was invited to a group at Malchor’s Leap. We explored the area to complete it. We did events. We chatted, laughed, and helped each other along the way.

One member of the group was excited to get a great loot drop that would help her and we congratulated her.

After awhile, it was late we parted ways before saying thank you and adding each other’s names to our contact list.

You want community….you have to contribute!

This game is NOT WOW and everyday I am thankful that it isn’t. Too much bullying and elitism on WOW now.