Guild Wars 2

We want to play together and in a correct way

I am posting not only in my name but in name of my guild members.
We are sad to see our long time mmo’s friends leaving to other games with good reasons and from time to time we bring them back to play together only to see others leaving again.
What makes even sadder is, they like this game and more than that they like and want to play with us, but sometimes we can’t give them reason to keep playing with us and we agree why they choose to leave.

History of us
We are a guild with over 9 years mixed with casual and hardcore players that the most important of everything is to play together.
We have been playing almost every MMO some longer than other but as long as we had fun we stayed and had fun.
Even with a mixture of casual and hardcore we was able to clear most contents in every game we played, we trade the easy and faster way for harder challenges but with our friends and people we enjoy to play with.
In Guild Wars everybody done all content, some didn’t achieved all PVP titles.
In WoW we cleared content from Vanilla to Cataclysm including a 25mans Lich King in HM.
In Rift we did 90% of the raid bosses …
We did this slowly with HUGE challenges but without putting any friends in the bench, we teached, helped and had the patient enough to play together, and if we had to gear them better we did, LOOT have been always only a bonus never a reason to play.

Guild Wars 2
In did the best game we played in all aspects of the game.
Puzzles are incredible, Dungeons well design, WvWvW so mutch fun and even SPVP is fair and fun, but….. People are leaving, why?Are they not good enough? Is the game not good enough?
We all think the reasons bellow are things that most people agree , we are not presenting the solutions(we will in another post), but ANET must do something about it.

Dungeons and Fractals(lvl20+)
Too frustrating and difficult to do it in the right way.
We don’t want to go straight to the last boss because other bosses and “trash” are too hard or undoable.
Kill bosses using exploits because they are not possible to do otherwise, or having a party in top of a boss is not a tactic.
Using certain classes to make it easy to do (using exploits) thiefs or mesmers are the most commons, we understand that a balance of classes is important but having the need of ONE class to kill a boss?
We also don’t want to do speed clears, we respect who want to, but we want to be able to kill everything.
We also want to be able to do them with at least 1 casual player to show them the instance and have fun with us.
I can’t believe that ANET Agree with any of this but in the end that what most people do.

Guild Missions
This is supposed to be for all guilds not for 100 hundred active members’ guilds.
Once again you penalized small guilds that usually have stronger communities, and gave a bonus to BIG guilds.
We understand that being a small guild things will be harder we will die more we will take longer to achiev what other can achiev in one day and we are ok with that, but we can’t agree that because of that we will not be able to do them at all.
You want guild to make alliances? But the Allies will not earn anything?
We will have to play with people that don’t play like we want? (HAVE TO)?
Aren’t people supposed to have fun? Why we have to do things in 15mins??
You really think that is fun to have 15 players tracking all the bosses before activating the guild mission?? Is not a lot fun to have one hour and go and track them and die and go again????

We still believe in ANET and we can still bring all of our friends back , but please ANET stop giving bonus to the players that don’t play this game as it is supposed to be played and give penalty’s to the ones that only want to have fun and play the game.
You could easily had 10times more players of all types playing this game, but you keep sending people away, and you forget that 90% of them don’t even bother to make a post, they just quit.
To the people that keep telling in game or in the forums to leave the game if they don’t agree, keep in mind the more players ANET will have playing and spending money in this game , more content will be available, more servers, more bugs fixed and in the end the game will be even better and better.
We also think that what we wrote before will not harm the game in any way to any kind of players, casual or hardcore.

Sorry for the long post and for some English mistakes.
Thank you for reading and please give a constructive feedback.
Paulo Almeida

There are some major concerns pointed out in this post. English grammar aside, ANET should really listen to what community has to say. There are many veteran players in the game, people that have played many other mmorpgs, and they know what can kill a game.

Good post Almeida! Many people try to ‘work’ a game and forget to have fun which should be the core of any game.

dunno, i did fractal 28 yesterday with pugs, i had 0 agony resist, and we made it thru without any wipe, and cleaned all the mobs.

i only died at the maw (because of agony, gated content, bad design decision).

so, for the OP, its a l2 kitten ue.

guild missions; dunno, im in a big guild but they only get done by hardcore players anyway. they need it 2 times a week and thats it i think.
so if your not online at the right moment, forget it.

Almeida.7562:

Aren’t people supposed to have fun? Why we have to do things in 15mins?
You really think that is fun to have 15 players tracking all the bosses before activating the guild mission? Is not a lot fun to have one hour and go and track them and die and go again?

you have to do “things” in 15 minutes because that’s part of the challenge, and challenging content for guild is what the missions are all about.

I’ve certainly had a lot of fun with the guild bounties so far, even the ones we failed.

This was brought up at the Q&A last Friday in Seattle. ANet’s reply was basically “We know we’ve kitten off the community, and are working on finding a solution that will small guilds be able to participate in the guild missions, for their own guild.”

Avatar.1923:

dunno, i did fractal 28 yesterday with pugs, i had 0 agony resist, and we made it thru without any wipe, and cleaned all the mobs.

i only died at the maw (because of agony, gated content, bad design decision).

so, for the OP, its a l2 kitten ue.

I can assume that you may have done at level 25+ in particular at level 30 the following ones:

Swampland Fractal – the Mossman and your PUG didnt told you to stay bellow the bridge to kill the Mossman?
The Azura Fractal and your party didnt told you to run and avoid the harpies becasue it is undoable?
Cliffside Fractal In the part where you need to break the seals in two diferent parts, to keep one alive in one side for they not respwan?
Dont we usualy all go there with toughtness no matter what your style play is?

Well in PUGs i did it , otherwise i would kicked from the party in one second, did it once, and i thought it SAD SAD SAD, and i rather do a level 20 with guild members and play it as it suposed.

To be fair, the fractals in overall with the exception of a few parts are balanced enought, but i would like to see the “exceptions” balanced and exploits fixed to make it more enjoyable.
Still about Fractals since doing them at level 10 , 20 or 30 or even 1 we can take ANY player regarding the level or experience the player have, that dont happen at all in the dungeons.(We did level 4 with two lvl 35 that never been there and went really well :P)

And imagine a party of casual players doing AC at level 35 with green/blues , you realy think they will not get very frustated and not able to complete it (without tricks or exploits)? (the requirement is 35 or 30 for story)
The dungeongs are only for hard core players?

PS: You got realy lucky in the pug, imagine you got 4 more players with 0 AR :P

Brendar.3548:

This was brought up at the Q&A last Friday in Seattle. ANet’s reply was basically “We know we’ve kitten off the community, and are working on finding a solution that will small guilds be able to participate in the guild missions, for their own guild.”

Is there a transcript anywhere online?
I’d be interested in reading a summary.

They’re looking for a solution eh…how about this.

lvl 1 missions cost very little
lvl 2 costs a little more, and are harder
lvl 3 costs the most, and is very hard

Don’t know why this was so hard for Anet to see….50,000+ just to unlock a SINGLE type of mission is ridiculous.

Seriously, as soon as they announced how the missions were going to work I saw the flaw in their plan. How they did not figure this out from the beginning is absolutely mystifying.

I’m pretty sure there are other people who play like you play. I don’t understand the fractal part. You guys can do it with yourselves. I know of some people who absolutely refuse to PUG and do it only with guildies and its no problem for them. I guess the only bothersome thing is the guild missions, but even then you guys should be able to do at least tier 2 with no problem. Or if not, at the very least tier 1. It’s gonna be slower, but that shouldn’t deter you guys from having fun.

Most of the stuff about fractals you said were untrue

RoRo.8270:

Most of the stuff about fractals you said were untrue

If they’re anything like dungeons, what he said is exactly right.

I don’t really have a problem with the 20+ fractals honestly. They are challenging and I really like it. The only ones that really need to be nerfed to hell are the control room with the dredge, Flame shaman adds somewhat, and the kitten elemental on snowblind. Collosus isn’t that bad although the loot kind of sucks for the effort and it takes forever.

The dredge control room is a lot easier with a thief to shadow refuge the panel since the adds are just so ridiculously nasty in that room with the close quarters. It wasn’t bad with spy kits but now it is just plain anoying. That is the only part of that instance I don’t really like though. Flame shaman also isn’t that bad but can be fustratng on higher levels without excelent communication and tactics but I like the challenge.

Concerning cost to unlock the types of missions I do agree with the statements on that. My guild is pretty decent size and it is still taking a lot to unlock the different ones. I can see the cost being unobtainable for smaller guilds personally and it is bad to exclude them from the mix just because of the influence barrier. The level 5 and 6 of that tier already cost a bit to research and on top of that you need 50k more just to unlock the mission is kind of insane. If you haven’t already researched 5 and 6 you are looking at roughly 100k influence just to unlock bounties which are required for the other mission types.

Good post Almeida.7562. Very good points and exactly the kinds of problems my guild had before thay all left.

Was unfair to not reply to all that contributed in this post and in a constructive way, agreeing or not.
After all it is possible to have a Topic and try to make this game better and better, helping ANET.
We are making a huge post with our humble opinions how ANET can make this game better and bring more players.
But as usual we discuss it in our guild forums before we post here.

penatbater.4710

I’m pretty sure there are other people who play like you play.

Yes there are, i have them in the guild and slowly we are found some more

It’s going to be slower, but that shouldn’t deter you guys from having fun.

We will try and try and try, but still not fair to small guilds.

I don’t understand the fractal part.

Try to Kill the harpies (level 20+), and getting knocking back all the time without even seeing the red circles is…
And like I wrote, fractals aren’t the big issue I just would like to see the bugs and exploits fixed and some parts more balanced.

No Walking.6349
For us at least the waiting for the 50.000 isn’t an issue we are patient enough to wait.
Is having 15 guys searching for the 15 bosses, (too boring and not fun at all) and after 15mins to kill them with 10 guys that can be.

RoRo.8270
They are true, sadly, but they are true, most people do those exactly like I wrote.

Syphen.1980
Fractals are where we are having more fun, but some parts are…
And another trick…" lot easier with a thief to shadow refuge"
The party let 2 players die on top of the pressure plates, and one thief go hide an open the door?
No need to answer, but this is the kind of “challenge” i don’t like

Thank you all for the feedback and like I wrote before in the fractals at least we have the chance to go level 1 or 30 depending on the party and they can be easily “fixed”, in dungeons we don’t have that choice .

Dungeons could use some better tuning.
Fractals … I don’t really see much problem with it. For higher scales you either do them because you want the challenge or you don’t and do them at a lower scale.

For Guild Missions they really shouldn’t have gated every other mission type on the bounty missions. Tier 1 of each type should have been unlockable with just Influence.

rizzo.1079:

Seriously, as soon as they announced how the missions were going to work I saw the flaw in their plan. How they did not figure this out from the beginning is absolutely mystifying.

ArenaNet likes to iterate.

They like putting out a solid framework, then build out from there. We’ll see most of the rough edges of the game polished in due time. This is an MMO after all.

Mackdose.6504:

rizzo.1079:

Seriously, as soon as they announced how the missions were going to work I saw the flaw in their plan. How they did not figure this out from the beginning is absolutely mystifying.

ArenaNet likes to iterate.

They like putting out a solid framework, then build out from there. We’ll see most of the rough edges of the game polished in due time. This is an MMO after all.

The framework for guild missions isn’t really that solid though. A far better idea would be to have a completely separate tree to work on for guild missions that could be built on and polished as time went on and wouldn’t hardlock people out of content.

rizzo.1079:

Mackdose.6504:

rizzo.1079:

Seriously, as soon as they announced how the missions were going to work I saw the flaw in their plan. How they did not figure this out from the beginning is absolutely mystifying.

ArenaNet likes to iterate.

They like putting out a solid framework, then build out from there. We’ll see most of the rough edges of the game polished in due time. This is an MMO after all.

The framework for guild missions isn’t really that solid though. A far better idea would be to have a completely separate tree to work on for guild missions that could be built on and polished as time went on and wouldn’t hardlock people out of content.

Absolutely… every Guild large or small should of been able to of started off on a level playing field… yes smaller guilds will need to do some extra work if they want to get to the top of the tree, but to even get a foot on the tree is going to take alot of guilds a long long time… gated content like this only serves to turn players/guilds away from the game.
I have played many MMO’sover the last 10 years and have only found 2 that have continually kept me drawn to them the whole time… DDO and GW1.
GW2 would of done the same, I really like how they have built on their solid GW1 model and made this game better… buggy yes but I can forgive a new game for things like that.. but gated content like this jhas simply pushed me and others away and I am now finding less and less motivation to log in and run stuff knowing full well that my small guild of long time MMO friends will not even get close to AoW 5+ unlocks this side of christmas 2013 unless we make it a full time job, which we simply wont do.

Good post Op… well constucted and offering genuine points of discussion which ANET should be taking more seriously.
This hap-hazard approach to the game is simply showing their disconnect from MMO space. Being differnet is fine, but if they don’t even consider what works in other MMO then things like content gating will only serve to leave much egg on face..
But hey ho the “Meet & Greet” must of been fun, so much so that nothing has been posted out about it. As for the the "looking into something for small guilds is just another way of say “whateva, just ignore it, it will all dissapate eventually”.. so I forgive me for not feeling all warm and cuddly about it just yet.

Personally, I think it’s completely ridiculous to expect a “guild” of 4-10 people to be a guild at all.

Instead of complaining about how the game screwed you over, how about you join forces with 2 other small guilds and actually have a guild community. It’s the insular nature of friends and family guilds that keeps them small, meanwhile a lot more fun and resources are at your disposal by going and branching out. Unless they build another system called “Clans” and have “clan” missions, expecting a mechanic targeted at guilds at 15+ players to cater to your clique is not very reasonable.

Disclaimer: The guild in my sig features 6 players, and I’m the only active player.

Mackdose.6504:

Personally, I think it’s completely ridiculous to expect a “guild” of 4-10 people to be a guild at all.

Instead of complaining about how the game screwed you over, how about you join forces with 2 other small guilds and actually have a guild community. It’s the insular nature of friends and family guilds that keeps them small, meanwhile a lot more fun and resources are at your disposal by going and branching out. Unless they build another system called “Clans” and have “clan” missions, expecting a mechanic targeted at guilds at 15+ players to cater to your clique is not very reasonable.

Disclaimer: The guild in my sig features 6 players, and I’m the only active player.

It sounds like you have no interest in what guilds offer, therefore we can’t explain why we don’t just want to combine guilds. But here goes…

1) My guild has pride in our name and our tag.
2) My guild would like to be able to police the type of player who remains in our guild and joining another guild will restrict our ability to do so.
3) My guild might not have enough influence to unlock guild missions now, but we have a huge number of unlocks we’ve been working on for 6 months. It feels a lot like giving up.
4) My guildmembers have heard the horror stories about the drama and discontent in other guilds. We have none of that and prefer to keep it that way.
5) We have yet to find a guild we trust enough and that seems to cater to the same style of play as us.

I have had four different guilds offer to join with us, i.e. take all of my members. And me. While I appreciate those offers, I would rather grow my own guild with the type of player for whom I formed my guild.

I am okay with content that is gated by difficulty and may require more players to complete because WE CAN GET HELP IN THE OPEN WORLD. If my guild is capable of organizing our map-mates to complete content, which I think we are, why shouldn’t we be able to kick off a guild mission?

A better, fairer option would have been to allow cheaper unlocks, but increasing influence per attempt at the mission per week. Let’s say 5-10k to unlock the tier 1 missions with only a L3 or L4 requirement in the tree… and then 100 influence for your first attempt, 200 for your second, 300 for your third, etc.

This way, small guilds can at least run it a couple times and large guilds get quite a few more before the influence costs become ridiculous.

Just one option among many, but the HUGE unlock costs plus cheap per-attempt costs seem really odd coming from ArenaNet. Does anybody else remember when guilds had a 50 player cap? (Or was it 100? Prior to release it was VERY small.)