Guild Wars 2

I had a discussion with my girlfriend over the last LS update. We couldn’t play at launch day but we did so yesterday. Idk if its because the past couple of releases were a zergy mess and its becoming too much to us but, what really happened to party play? A tight 5-man organized group where everybody matters? I miss this…the only organized party play is dungeons, which we’ve done thousand of times, and fractals, which we’ve done few hundred times already too.

I miss being important within my group. Those timers you guys put everywhere just force everyone to bring their berserker class, like seriously. And that 6 minute achievement adds even more to that. Its very hypocritical nerfing the berserker when your latest events require berserkers. But thats another topic anyway

And lately regardless of story I feel like just another pawn on the board, not the hero with 7k+ achievement points. And no making events forcing servers to organize will never work, some servers are really bad, and you can’t fix this.

Why don’t you add more LS dungeons? Like the aetherpath in TA. You can even add the map extension through a dungeon! We and many others want to feel heroic, that’s why we play games. I don’t want to zerg an event with 100 others, spamming my #1 attack because any condition would be reflected back at me, or projectiles . But okay its a MMO, going around with an army of players is acceptable, but it shouldn’t be the only content you guys put out

We’re getting more and more frustrated. All that we can do to have fun is to repeat content we’ve already done hundreds of times. You have to agree with me that eventually it gets boring.

We love Guild Wars 2. The lore, the mechanics, the gameplay, the graphics … but after doing the same over and over for a little over an year now we are starting to get frustrated.

Please add some party content, where I can play with my friends, not with strangers. I don’t consider people in my server friends. Most of them are silly trolls anyway. I want dungeons, with new mechanics, not just steamrolling or skipping countless numbers of mobs.

Not to mention that this year some big hitter MMOs will be released in couple of months, which aligns with your living story break. Gw2 doesn’t have fresh content to stop possible player leak. We believe in Gw2, but please consider adding some party play content. Asking 100 strangers to organize is not fun. My server has never gotten the great wurm, nor its being organized because people gave up and simply choose to guest on this event. Same goes for Tequatl. That’s content which regardless of our playskill (i think we’re very good players), we will never experience, unless we guest to other server. If you think this is an “okay” mechanic (guesting for world bosses), you’re just being silly :/

TL;DR – Please add more party content, enough with the zerging.

P.S: Playing the event last night, my PC with OCed i5-2500k and R9 290X OCed managed to pull 8 fps in the knights fight. You can see why I and thousands of others despise the massive events.

If you plan on adding more zergy events, at least publish a PC configuration that can push at least 40 fps on fights like this one. Because honestly, as a tech-savvy user, I can’t imagine what kind of PC I will need to run this game properly. Dual CPU PC? Before the R9 290X I was using CrossfireX build, it was bad.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

If I could vote this up ten times i would. People didn’t want casuals playing this game, and have gone out of their way to ensure it, then wonder why they only get updates to the parts of the game that causals still play.

Here’s a hint – 99% of players are casuals, and Anet is a game company that needs money. Unfortunately they can’t make that money off of a minority.

I actually saw a topic in general discussion asking for gear check functionality on LFG.

I hope ArenaNet doesn’t gate content behind a dungeon. Dungeons are ok, but I’d rather not have to PUG to get to a new zone, or whatever.

But we’re daily in Arah, doing 2-3 paths a day each day. Then some Ascalonian Catacombs, and CoF, the 3 CoE paths even more when we make a good group with good players.

Also Lion’s Arch is getting 10k players only because everyone wants to check out the last update. When aetherpath was in the LS many many people tried to do it. As I said, zergy content is okay in MMO, but there have to be balance. We need more lupicus-like bosses. Something to feel good for yourself if you manage to solo it.

Lets not forget that the “vanilla” game was all about balance. You had 5-man dungeons/objectives, you also had world bosses/orr temples. If we consider the living story as expansions regardless of what the haters feel about LS, its just tipping the scales. We get tons of zergy content, and so far what … 1 fractal and 1 Aether path which is quite long and challenging (which is not necessarily a bad thing). And that is why I made this thread. I want to play with my friends in an organized group. I don’t care if we are finishing CoF p1 in 10 or 50 minutes. I don’t want a timer to pressure me. I want to be able to go to the freaking bathroom once the event start, or if someone wants to smoke to be able to sit for 3-4 minutes without being pressured. THAT makes Gw2 awesome for me for over an year now, and I believe many others

@Inculpatus cedo – You have a guild, I’m sure they can help out if its one-time thing. Besides storymode dungeons are never hard. I’m hoping on the explorable paths after that anyway

Also PUGs are not all that terrible. For instance, if you go to a fractals stage over 15-20 the players are guaranteed to know what they’re doing because getting there is skill-gated.

What happened to party play?

5 party group play has been abandoned sometime ago in favour of zerg/guild/massive 100+ player group content.

Didn’t you get the memo?

I know that I personally abandoned dungeons because 5warzerkstack is not for me, that’s why I switched to group-based (as in, more than 5) a long time ago. There’s just no point in joining “party play” anymore with how toxic and biased it has become.

You say “even more when we make a good group with good players.” But… honestly, what does that even mean these days?

Think about it.

find a good guild to run with! thats best way to keep the tight knit feel your looking for.

just my 2 cents

Anet lost me on dungeon’s when they released the mad king’s dungeon.. and then took it away..best designed dungeon out there imo.
Short, fun good reward, no hassle to find a group.. based in LA.. no BS about unlocking or getting certain prequisites etc..

@Ravenmoon…I’m afraid my Guild wouldn’t be helpful. The main reason I don’t PUG is the stories one hears about people who ‘know’ how to run a dungeon. Not for me, thanks.

Regardless of my reasons, I don’t think gating zones/maps/content behind a dungeon is a good idea. Some people don’t care for small-group play. I’ve nothing against adding dungeons, just against using them as gates.

Dungeons should never be used as gates. But small based party play does exist in guilds. You just have to find the right guilds.

zerging isnt really better for business

you have players acting similar in the way as a frog sits in water that slowly boils. Overtime your players start to sour slowly but surely about the game design. They aren’t maintaining their current players and they aren’t exactly drawing new players in this way.

ZERG, zerg everything. ANets mantra is:

ZERG!

This update:

We heard you like zergs, so we put a zerg into your zerg (3 bosses and than hologram).

Hail the ZERG, all day every day. It is hard to find an update without the ZERG actually.

whats funny is that the loot isnt even the same as the invasion zerging or the pav zerging we did earlier in the year that essentially wrecked the economy and inflated gem prices.

As I said, zergs are not necessarily a bad thing, but there has to be balance to be truly great. And I hear you about having a good guild, but I have better, I actually have friends to run 5-man content and we are a nice team but we keep doing the same things over and over and over, times and times again.

And if the game client’s performance allowed my gaming rig to dish out more than 8-20 fps (as it normally does in Gw2) I doubt I would have that sour feeling. The fact that I have to rotate my camera away from the action in order to get a fluid screen and keep my HP in track in real-time. I can’t enjoy the game world this way. All those artists work goes to a waste for me.

In the end, I Pre-Ordered Gw2 to fight dragons with my friends, not with strangers. And don’t get me wrong, I really like Gw2, I just wish we would get balanced content.

Actually to tell you a story, the first time me and my gf played was in overflow, for 20 minutes we got only 1 of the knights to 50% hp, and he instantly healed up.

Who thought that a mob with few millions of HP and no distinct mechanic whatsoever would be fun O.O

I suppose that is why I prefer dungeons because the mobs are not ridiculously boosted. Gw2 used to have event scaling, what happened with that in the last story update. Why the mobs are so powerful even with ~10 people around it. Purely mathematical it will take a lot more than 10 mintues for 10 guys to gut 1 knight, unless they are abusing elementalist’s conjured weapons with blinking.

Personally, I think getting a huge group like is really fun. I loved getting to the Scarlet hologram fight with everybody. It was a big rush for me. I was actually afraid going up on the teleporter would require a tiny team.

For me, these huge fights are awesome. I love zerging, especially when it’s for a real goal. Temple runs are just about my favorite thing to do. It’s a new thing for me and I’m kinda done playing the single hero. It’s just old news and boring to me.

All that said, I don’t see anything wrong with adding more party play for people that like it. I just really hope they don’t get rid of these huge fights altogether. I think they’re really fun.

Ravenmoon.5318:

I had a discussion with my girlfriend over the last LS update. We couldn’t play at launch day but we did so yesterday. Idk if its because the past couple of releases were a zergy mess and its becoming too much to us but, what really happened to party play? A tight 5-man organized group where everybody matters? I miss this…the only organized party play is dungeons, which we’ve done thousand of times, and fractals, which we’ve done few hundred times already too.

I miss being important within my group. Those timers you guys put everywhere just force everyone to bring their berserker class, like seriously. And that 6 minute achievement adds even more to that. Its very hypocritical nerfing the berserker when your latest events require berserkers. But thats another topic anyway

And lately regardless of story I feel like just another pawn on the board, not the hero with 7k+ achievement points. And no making events forcing servers to organize will never work, some servers are really bad, and you can’t fix this.

Why don’t you add more LS dungeons? Like the aetherpath in TA. You can even add the map extension through a dungeon! We and many others want to feel heroic, that’s why we play games. I don’t want to zerg an event with 100 others, spamming my #1 attack because any condition would be reflected back at me, or projectiles . But okay its a MMO, going around with an army of players is acceptable, but it shouldn’t be the only content you guys put out

We’re getting more and more frustrated. All that we can do to have fun is to repeat content we’ve already done hundreds of times. You have to agree with me that eventually it gets boring.

We love Guild Wars 2. The lore, the mechanics, the gameplay, the graphics … but after doing the same over and over for a little over an year now we are starting to get frustrated.

Please add some party content, where I can play with my friends, not with strangers. I don’t consider people in my server friends. Most of them are silly trolls anyway. I want dungeons, with new mechanics, not just steamrolling or skipping countless numbers of mobs.

Not to mention that this year some big hitter MMOs will be released in couple of months, which aligns with your living story break. Gw2 doesn’t have fresh content to stop possible player leak. We believe in Gw2, but please consider adding some party play content. Asking 100 strangers to organize is not fun. My server has never gotten the great wurm, nor its being organized because people gave up and simply choose to guest on this event. Same goes for Tequatl. That’s content which regardless of our playskill (i think we’re very good players), we will never experience, unless we guest to other server. If you think this is an “okay” mechanic (guesting for world bosses), you’re just being silly :/

TL;DR – Please add more party content, enough with the zerging.

P.S: Playing the event last night, my PC with OCed i5-2500k and R9 290X OCed managed to pull 8 fps in the knights fight. You can see why I and thousands of others despise the massive events.

If you plan on adding more zergy events, at least publish a PC configuration that can push at least 40 fps on fights like this one. Because honestly, as a tech-savvy user, I can’t imagine what kind of PC I will need to run this game properly. Dual CPU PC? Before the R9 290X I was using CrossfireX build, it was bad.

You could always try a tight-knit roaming group in WvW. A good 5 man group can take 10 out easily, and it’s pretty fun, if you enjoy PvE. Or you can practice just you and your girlfriend Duoing dungeons. That’s always fun.

FPS got much better once I switched my screen resolution to the lowest possible, try it out. 1024×768, hello 2005! >_<

Like you, I wish the event was instanced. But then a lot of people would complain that they need to find a group, so it’s difficult to make everyone happy. I wish there was a middle ground.

An alternative would be to limit the maximum amount of people allowed in these temporary maps. A maximum of 30 players at the Battle for Lion’s Arch map would let you…

• have 2 parties of 5 at each champion if you choose to take them out all at the same time.
• zerg champions one by one, in which case you’d have 30 players per champion.
• choose to join a party and coordinate your efforts.
• not join a party at all.

[ 30 or so people fighting champs, but maximum 60 in map to account for other events ]

I also wish we had numbered overflows and we could switch between them. Then the players could say “odd overflows are zerg, even overflows are small teams”. And if you want to go with your guild/squad, you could say “we’re meeting in overflow 12”.

The problem is that casuals will rarely PUG, if ever. The elitist zerker crowd has effectively scared off all of the casuals. Cool, awesome for the zerker speed runners I guess, but in the end, 5-man content will take a back-seat to everything else because the majority of players, who are 100% casual, will not do that content. I mean think about a casual player who might be unguilded. Some new 5man dungeon comes out. They check LFG, join a group: a) if they aren’t 80 they will be kicked and b) if they aren’t wearing zerker, they will be kicked. Now this doesn’t just apply to the unguilded, but also to small-medium guilds that don’t have regular dungeon runs. That is a large % of the player base.

Like someone else said, Anet will focus updates and create content for things the majority of players want to do. Namely large scale zerg content that you can jump in, get a bunch of loot and EXP, and then move on.

For starters non-80s can participate with impunity. Have you tried joining a group for a dungeon, even AC which is a level 30-35 dungeon, when you aren’t 80? You’re pretty much kicked out of the group immediately.

In zerg content, nobody cares what everyone is wearing or what level they are because there are so many people = everyone happy.

Peetee.9406:

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it.

No, the TA aetherpath is not rewarding, and full of terribly designed mechanics which lead to frustration.

Rewards in TA aetherpath? Mediocre.

Mechanics? Frustrating and based on some luck.

I do not enjoy trying to lead poorly scripted AI around to certain points in order to progress. Watching it stop and start, and move in strange zig zags and circles instead of TOWARDS you like you would expect it to. Games from the 90’s had AI that was more responsive than what you have to deal with in TA aetherpath/GW2.

That is why TA aetherpath is a failure.

As for your comments about ‘pushing people away’ and ‘dungeons are dead’, I call baloney, for so many obvious reasons.

Draknar.5748:

In zerg content, nobody cares what everyone is wearing or what level they are because there are so many people = everyone happy.

People do care, it’s just that there’s 5000 people around that it’s impossible to see what’s going on, or to pick out the up levels. It’s too much effort so people don’t bother. And that’s what’s happened to guild wars, zerg, 1 mash, don’t need to care about thinking or strategy or tactics or even gearing and buffing properly, just 1 mash and zerg.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

I don’t want to play a game where the vast majority of new content consists of PvE zerg fights and Gem Store updates.

Hannelore.8153:

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

If I could vote this up ten times i would. People didn’t want casuals playing this game, and have gone out of their way to ensure it, then wonder why they only get updates to the parts of the game that causals still play.

Here’s a hint – 99% of players are casuals, and Anet is a game company that needs money. Unfortunately they can’t make that money off of a minority.

I actually saw a topic in general discussion asking for gear check functionality on LFG.

Yep we warned them. Tho there’s still a problem. As a filthy casual, I can attest to not being interested in poorly balanced PVE combat. Casuals love being as unique as possible, we love diversity, and we love PVE combat that doesn’t require minmaxing burst zerker damage, we like using our brains, trapping opponents combat that isn’t defensive but that can be very subtle. When I first started playing I took delight in throwing down turrets on my engineer, dropping some mines, and aggroing a mob or group of mobs to blow them to kingdom come when they stepped over the trap I had laid for them. I was able to actually do similar things on my Ranger as well. I remember actually being able to CC multiple mobs or champions. Those were the days when skills actually mattered.

When you remove this type of combat from the PVE experience, it becomes boring exceedingly so, because everyone eventually does what they are doing now, choosing cookie cutter builds, using only certain skills because they are effective and haven’t been nerfed, and that’s assuming they are still playing.

They can add content all they want but until they fix these basic problems, like PVE combat balance, they won’t be getting many of their casuals back. PVE balance is essential (for example for engineers) starting with the restoration of all of the other kit refinements that were removed and the damage reduction we suffered in PVE it won’t solve the underlying problems they created when trying to “balance” PVP without taking into consideration the impact it would have on PVE.

Rewards are also a big factor for casuals and when you don’t have a good reward system (like using things like DR or way too much RNG even for crafting) you scare casuals away and the only casual crowd left is RPers.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

Well said sir/ma’am-except for that last paragraph…don’t agree with that 100%.

If you want proof of this just head over to the dungeons sub forum-there’s been a couple of posts by people wanting to play together with others who aren’t interested in cookie cutter builds+stackfest+exploit…and you should see the vile reactions from the ‘elite’ (hurrah…you pressed a button on a keyboard so you’re awesome, I guess). Add to that more than a few people are easily influenced and have no backbone and they’ll simply follow the ‘cool’ thing in an attempt to not stand out and you’ll have more and more people adopting this elitist mentality leading to a very toxic environment. Or perhaps a more direct route would be to press ‘Y’ in game-you’ll see very few dungeon posts and nearly all the time you’ll see ‘zerker only or kick’ ‘exp only’ ‘<insert high dmg class> only’ ‘no noobs allowed’ ‘5k AP only’ ‘80s only….for a lvl 35 dugneon -__-)and similar garbage. Now I have zerkers, I’m fairly experienced in most dungeons, it so happens that the classes I like can do high damage (ele, guardian, mes, thief) and I have 6k AP, but I’ll NEVER join any of these groups (although I like dungeons in mmorpgs). So as the poster I quoted rightfully observed fewer and fewer people participate in the ‘party play’.

Now compare all that garbage you have to sift through to the open world content-yes it tends to be zergy, but the recent patches actually had some enjoyable mechanics that you engaged in WITHOUT having to deal with kids with self-esteem issues….much. The knights into Scarlet events are the most fun I’ve had with this game in over a year-back in the earlier days when this obnoxious elitist mentality didn’t infest the game.

I really do hope they add public dungeons (well, more and more pronounced) similar to ESO (one of the few saving graces for that game imo, but I digress) so I can still get something akin to a dungeon experience, but other than that fractals is probably their best bet to ‘simply’ add new dungeons with new mechanics and not force it on people.

So to your question-what happened to party play? Well…the parties killed the fun of playing-that’s the simple answer. Unfortunately now that this mentality has taken root it will never leave so…yeah….we’ll shed a tear for the days when people weren’t kittens and everyone just wanted to have fun.

It’s likely they’re taking a look at the current situation regarding dungeons, but in the meantime it makes sense to push out content more people can/will participate in-especially if the whole point of said content is to keep players participating.

To reply multiple posts at once without having ridiculously large wall of text, I’ll just say that yes, me and my girlfriend have been and we are duo-ing dungeons, especially in Arah (seriously this dungeon is awesome, if only they would fix the obnoxious jumping puzzles that some people love to abuse and earn gold out of it) and yes it is fun but we’ve done it, many many times.

I also agree that the only issue aetherpath is having is that the rewards are not really up to par with the difficulty of the dungeon. The guy above overestimated it a bit, I don’t agree to that extend, the AI is manageable but yeah its a lengthy dungeon that doesn’t even measure will in gold rewards as Arah does on a speed-ish run.

I also don’t like the term filthy casual. I consider myself a casual and I’m certain that I can give hard time to the “elite” of this game without breaking a sweat. I also dungeon with all kind of people … first timers, low levels, non-zerkers … you name it, I’ve probably played with such people. Its not about the end its about the journey for me. If you happen to be cool person then I don’t care if I finished Arah p2 in 40 or in 400 minutes. I usually play Gw2 when I have more than 1 hour of free time anyway. So yeah there’s definitely good guys in this game still. As I have given an example above, I’m really surprised by the people that run fractals. At highest levels people are really great and not kitteny (most of the times).

I see @Imbune is really frustrated at what has become of some of the party players. I feel you mate, I also had a vendetta against path sellers, which was a kittened practice but oh well, I figured one man can’t change kitten around. IMO it comes down to making a “friendship” and run around with those people, train together, have fun…that is what we’re playing games in the first place for anyway.

As I see this thread growing and so far most people agreeing with me in a way, I feel as if we’re addressing an issue here, and it could lead to a nice friendly discussion, why not CDI even in the future?

Thanks for your input so far!

Let me just say that just because there are a few casuals still here doesn’t negate the overall problems in the game nor does it automatically make false that there are essential issues that has driven away roughly the bulk of the casual crowd. This company’s game appealed to the casual crowd prelaunch which accounted for a very large bulk of their initial sales, why shouldn’t a more casual design be in the works. I agree about the CDI thing, I’m hoping that Chris’s statement at the end of the first CDI thread about what’s upcoming is accurate because that would restore the experience for me to closer to what the pre-launch interview promised.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

Another problem with dungeons and party-based content in general is the fact that Anet has done a poor job in scaling such content for sizes smaller than 5 people, as well as promoting an “exact number of friends required” rationale to content.

Although players such as myself can PUG for that last two members in a party, it’s very disruptive that such content requires EXACTLY five members, no more, no less.

What if I have six friends who want to try out a new dungeon? Will one be left out in the dust? Or, as is often the case, what if I only have friends fewer than 5 at that time? Do we have to risk dealing with elitists or foul-mouthed PUGs?

Interestingly, Anet has tried to introduce scaling to such instanced content in past LS (SAB, tower of nightmare chambers/final boss, Scarlet’s Playhouse, Cutthroat Politics, etc.), and they seem more successful than those that do not (Canach’s Lair exp. mode, Aetherpath, etc.).

Unscaled LS instances were largely abandoned after they were completed, with the exception of MF, whose limited-time loot outweighed the inconvenience of partying up with 5 people.

Rewards clearly play a role in the longevity of instanced content, but the problem of having to deal with elitism just because dungeons require a “full” 5 man party has done it’s fair share of damage, otherwise the numerous threads of the past asking for henchmen or heroes would not have existed to begin with.

TLDR
Anet needs to keep improving and introducing instances which scale to party sizes smaller than five, since the “5 man it or leave it” concept largely deters soloers, casuals, and people with only a few close friends from participating at such content.

Realist.5812:

Draknar.5748:

In zerg content, nobody cares what everyone is wearing or what level they are because there are so many people = everyone happy.

People do care, it’s just that there’s 5000 people around that it’s impossible to see what’s going on, or to pick out the up levels. It’s too much effort so people don’t bother. And that’s what’s happened to guild wars, zerg, 1 mash, don’t need to care about thinking or strategy or tactics or even gearing and buffing properly, just 1 mash and zerg.

Which makes it all the more inclusive of everyone. If the GW2 player community as a whole was more accepting of lower level characters and non-cookie cutter DPS builds, we might see a different type of content. But as it stands, small exclusive group content excludes pretty much everyone because there is some phantom rule that if you aren’t 80 and not in full DPS gear that you simply will not be able to contribute to the team and are wasting everyone’s time.

I do guild runs with alts and invite all of our non-80s to attend, and we can complete any dungeon path we like, and yes this includes non-80 Rangers with a potpourri of yellows and greens, so I know that it can be done.

But heaven forbid that same Ranger, who just ran let’s say a TA U/U path successfully tries to join a PUG group for the same path. He’d be kicked out of the group for sure because a) he’s a ranger b) he’s not 80 and c) since he’s not 80 he couldn’t possibly have Exotic/Ascended gear, let alone exclusively zerker.

This is why dungeons are pretty much ghost towns outside of the speed runner/farmers who run them.

lorazcyk.8927:

Like you, I wish the event was instanced. But then a lot of people would complain that they need to find a group, so it’s impossible to make everyone happy. I wish there was a middle ground.

FTFY.

My mom learned this over 20 years ago with only having four kids to contend with.

You don’t think my suggestion would go a long way towards making the vast majority of people happy?

To answer the OP. There is no dungeon team, they have been moved to Living story. There have been 4 new party instances since the start of LS. Molten facility, Aetherblade retreat, TA Aether path and the new thaumanova fractal. The first 2 you can now also play as fractals.

Basically Anet doesn’t care about their dungeon community.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

I’m sorry, what now? 90% of the lfgs don’t list requirements whatsoever. They’re also filled immediately while zerker parties sometimes have to wait 10min+ for a suitable player. Casuals dominate dungeons.

Peetee.9406:

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

The reason TA aetherblade was unsuccessful is because it’s too hard for the average queensdale champtrain runner. Zerg events fair no better though. How many people still did the scarlett invasions after the LS ended? The only reason so many people are there now is because it’s new and temporary.

In the end it might not be such a bad idea to get some new permanent content for people to enjoy, content which is actually thought out and doesn’t just require you to spam 1 in group of 100s of people.

Peetee.9406:

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

Did you miss the new map for WvW?

You have a point that Anet mostly caters to casuals as that’s their biggest income. Not only are they the biggest group, hardcore players also have no problem with making gold ingame. But you make it sound as if it’s the fault of the average (not even hardcore) player that they only make mindless zergy content, just because they can actually play the game.

I broke my mouse +1’ing you repeatedly, hoping they’d all magically count.

All of this zerk elitists scaring away casuals is balogna. I have never not once seen someone kicked for not being in zerk or even asked if they were outside of friendly conversation. The only groups you could ever expect to see it from were the ones that advertise specifically for zerks, and they are perfectly avoidable while still doing the very same dungeons.

As for metrics, I’m sure anet is smart enough to realize that just because someone isn’t playing something doesn’t mean that they don’t want to play that type of content, there are plenty of meaningful reasons why someone would not be playing in a dungeon such as difficulty, quality of rewards, lack of variety, time required, or just being caught up in daily/LS chores. Those are far more likely culprits in “scaring away casuals” btw.

risa.1382:

I broke my mouse +1’ing you repeatedly, hoping they’d all magically count.

All of this zerk elitists scaring away casuals is balogna. I have never not once seen someone kicked for not being in zerk or even asked if they were outside of friendly conversation. The only groups you could ever expect to see it from were the ones that advertise specifically for zerks, and they are perfectly avoidable while still doing the very same dungeons.

As for metrics, I’m sure anet is smart enough to realize that just because someone isn’t playing something doesn’t mean that they don’t want to play that type of content, there are plenty of meaningful reasons why someone would not be playing in a dungeon such as difficulty, quality of rewards, lack of variety, time required, or just being caught up in daily/LS chores. Those are far more likely culprits in “scaring away casuals” btw.

If you’ve been looking on the forums recently, the casual player has been getting increasingly aggressive towards the elite dungeoneers and the meta, this thread is a good example of this. So even if the dungeon elite aren’t actually kicking and berating the casuals, a sizable chunk of the casuals think that they are, and that at the end of the day has about the same end result.

To give some perspective, your average casual soloist will go about the game doing whatever they feel like at the time, which is usually overworld PvE. They may want to do group content like dungeons, but they aren’t used to social interaction online in a lot of cases. They’re very self reliant and develop a sense of pride in their own
Self-fashion build and play style. If they decide to finally work up the courage to PuG a dungeon, they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Dual.8953:

they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Again, just had a look at the LFG tool. COF p1 I see 10 party requests come and go and 2 of them were zerker. The idea there are only zerker parties in LFG is ridiculous. The vast majority of it are casual to average players that don’t care about gear or speed.

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Again, just had a look at the LFG tool. COF p1 I see 10 party requests come and go and 2 of them were zerker. The idea there are only zerker parties in LFG is ridiculous. The vast majority of it are casual to average players that don’t care about gear or speed.

Maybe true, but it’s not everyone’s perception. This idea that Zerkers have taken over dungeons and kicked everyone else out will remain until either the devs destroy the PvE meta to the point that it really doesn’t matter what you run, or they release a metric in game showing everyone who plays that Meta dungeon runs are the minority.

Personally, I’d be happy if they added a hard mode where the enemies were more then huge damage sinks.

Dual.8953:

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Again, just had a look at the LFG tool. COF p1 I see 10 party requests come and go and 2 of them were zerker. The idea there are only zerker parties in LFG is ridiculous. The vast majority of it are casual to average players that don’t care about gear or speed.

Maybe true, but it’s not everyone’s perception. This idea that Zerkers have taken over dungeons and kicked everyone else out will remain until either the devs destroy the PvE meta to the point that it really doesn’t matter what you run, or they release a metric in game showing everyone who plays that Meta dungeon runs are the minority.

Personally, I’d be happy if they added a hard mode where the enemies were more then huge damage sinks.

Those people haven’t tried pugging. I did it since the start and I had all kinds of gear. Never ever had any problems for over a year. LFG now looks exactly the same as when it came out as well.

Also, have you ever played other MMOs? There’s always a meta, a best gear/build. Now if it got changed up it could be different from zerker, which I assume will happen at some point, but then another gear will be best and the “elitists” will want only that. Then I guess all casuals will start hating that gear set.

GW2 is already incredibly forgiving when it comes to gear and builds, allowing everyone to play everything. I don’t get what more you can ask for.

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Again, just had a look at the LFG tool. COF p1 I see 10 party requests come and go and 2 of them were zerker. The idea there are only zerker parties in LFG is ridiculous. The vast majority of it are casual to average players that don’t care about gear or speed.

Maybe true, but it’s not everyone’s perception. This idea that Zerkers have taken over dungeons and kicked everyone else out will remain until either the devs destroy the PvE meta to the point that it really doesn’t matter what you run, or they release a metric in game showing everyone who plays that Meta dungeon runs are the minority.

Personally, I’d be happy if they added a hard mode where the enemies were more then huge damage sinks.

Those people haven’t tried pugging. I did it since the start and I had all kinds of gear. Never ever had any problems for over a year. LFG now looks exactly the same as when it came out as well.

Also, have you ever played other MMOs? There’s always a meta, a best gear/build. Now if it got changed up it could be different from zerker, which I assume will happen at some point, but then another gear will be best and the “elitists” will want only that. Then I guess all casuals will start hating that gear set.

GW2 is already incredibly forgiving when it comes to gear and builds, allowing everyone to play everything. I don’t get what more you can ask for.

That meta actually doesn’t exist in games with a wider diversity in builds. There are those who try to keep that meta alive in games with a much better system of personalization however in those games upon closer inspection you can pretty much choose anything you want to do and still remain min/maxed while enjoying skills that are more to your playstyle. I agree many games aren’t diverse enough to do that with but let’s not discount those are are diverse enough. Also, let’s not forget the nerfs, completely unnecessary trait changes in PVE, and lack of certain weapon types in this title that add to the problem.

Zerg content takes no skill, so its easy for them to make.

tigirius.9014:

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

cranos.5913:

Dual.8953:

they load up the LFG and see it full of “ZerkWarr” party requests. Pretty much nothing but them. This is usually enough to make them shy away, for fear of being mocked and judged for their “inferior” build. That’s at least my experience as an MMO green horn. I’d probably still be like that if hadn’t met a nice guild recruiter.

Again, just had a look at the LFG tool. COF p1 I see 10 party requests come and go and 2 of them were zerker. The idea there are only zerker parties in LFG is ridiculous. The vast majority of it are casual to average players that don’t care about gear or speed.

Maybe true, but it’s not everyone’s perception. This idea that Zerkers have taken over dungeons and kicked everyone else out will remain until either the devs destroy the PvE meta to the point that it really doesn’t matter what you run, or they release a metric in game showing everyone who plays that Meta dungeon runs are the minority.

Personally, I’d be happy if they added a hard mode where the enemies were more then huge damage sinks.

Those people haven’t tried pugging. I did it since the start and I had all kinds of gear. Never ever had any problems for over a year. LFG now looks exactly the same as when it came out as well.

Also, have you ever played other MMOs? There’s always a meta, a best gear/build. Now if it got changed up it could be different from zerker, which I assume will happen at some point, but then another gear will be best and the “elitists” will want only that. Then I guess all casuals will start hating that gear set.

GW2 is already incredibly forgiving when it comes to gear and builds, allowing everyone to play everything. I don’t get what more you can ask for.

That meta actually doesn’t exist in games with a wider diversity in builds. There are those who try to keep that meta alive in games with a much better system of personalization however in those games upon closer inspection you can pretty much choose anything you want to do and still remain min/maxed while enjoying skills that are more to your playstyle. I agree many games aren’t diverse enough to do that with but let’s not discount those are are diverse enough. Also, let’s not forget the nerfs, completely unnecessary trait changes in PVE, and lack of certain weapon types in this title that add to the problem.

Well kinda, that’s usually not based on gear type though. Tank/healer/DPS usually have the one stat combo they need. Some of them even have a DPS meter to make sure you have the right gear/rotation/etc. If not => kick. When raids come into play it’s even more elitist…

As for “anything you want to do” and staying min/maxed, that’s just not true.

I can agree with you about lack of variety in traits/skills/weapons and that’s definitely something this game lacks, but again, that won’t get rid of the gear requirement as damage is the only thing that counts in GW2.