Guild Wars 2

Consoles… Casuals… Corporate control… We’ve heard it all before.

This is not that thread.

I’ve played a lot of games over the years, certainly not as many as some people because I tend to stick with one game and play the kitten out of it, but I probably do fall into the category of gamer that non-gamers think of when they hear the words “hardcore gamer”. I’ve pulled more than one 48hr non-stop session (though I think my longest GW2 session was around 22 hours). In other words, I enjoy playing the games I like and I have at least a fair idea of whether or not I will like a game before I get it.

I also know what I don’t like about games. I hate good labyrinths, for example. I can appreciate them, but I don’t enjoy doing them. I’m also not a fan of some kinds of puzzles. One thing I really hate is dark places, not because I am afraid of the dark or anything but because if I wanted to look at a black screen I’d turn my monitor off (and to deal with the hatred of this sort of thing, I often end up just turning the gamma up which completely defeats the purpose). The worst time I ever had in a game was in a NWN2 server which involved a blackout labyrith, a series of “pick a door” puzzles, that sent you back to the beginning when you got them wrong, and having to deal with overpowered spawns the entire time.

Thankfully, someone came up to the solution to this problem a couple of decades ago. Call them what you like, game guides, walkthroughs or strategy guides, they have been an invaluable resource for gamers for years. There are extensive websites dedicated to walkthoughs of every kind of game you can think of, most of which go into exhaustive detail about every little thing the dev’s have spent the time and effort to put into their games.

But not Guild Wars 2.

I have never, ever, come across a game with so few pages dedicated to it. That’s not to say that information isn’t out there because it is – on YouTube. And I’m not just talking about walkthroughs either. A couple of weeks ago I thought I’d look up some armour skins and found a bunch of videos but only two pages, neither of which had any kind of comparison. Tonight I ran into a puzzle while playing my Necro which I wasn’t able to solve on my Ranger. Since the puzzle is apparently unavailable once you complete the associated Heart, I wanted to get it right and see what the end result was, so I turned to Google… and found nothing. The only reference to anything related to this puzzle is a nearby NPC, that suggests seeing if you can get the nearby Asuran Console working, and that was an orphan link on the official wiki.

GW2 isn’t the first game where I have noticed players using YouTube for a lot of things. Anyone that played Diablo 3 could probably tell you about the dozens of one-post wonders hawking their YouTube channels on forums for the stupidest of things. But what’s going on with GW2 goes a step further. For every page where someone has gone to the effort of actually typing something, there are at least a dozen for D3. I doubt anyone could say, with a straight face, that D3 has more content than GW2.

I know you can get money from YouTube for views, but I think this goes beyond that. I’ve seen the term “dumbed down”, usually coupled with one or more of the above-mentioned “C” words, a lot in gaming over the last few years. But my experience so far in GW2 forces me to turn that phrase around and say that it’s the players that are being dumbed down. I think that the same thing that drives people to write TL;DR and complain, or apologise, about “wall of text” for anything longer than one paragraph (I saw a sentence statement that included a TL;DR quite recently, possibly on this forum) is the same thing that’s pushing people towards using YouTube instead of actually typing something out. Is it the rise of texting that is somehow preventing people from being able to read or write more than a couple of hundred characters at a time? Is it Honey Boo Boo, the Kardashians and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Is it any wonder that game developers are, supposedly, dumbing down their games when the players can’t be bothered to, or simply aren’t capable of, reading or writing more than a couple of sentences at a time?

I want to encourage people, who actually bother to read this, to contribute to the community by improving wiki’s and writing guides for websites. I also want to remind you that you are doing your fellow players a dis-service by posting “YouTube Guides” – they go to look at your video for 90 second video, then quickly find themselves looking at videos of kittens, puppies and ferrets, rapidly followed by THAT part of YouTube and end up not playing the game because they have been looking at transsexual aliens being chased by kittens while singing Gangnam Style.

You need to learn how to Google better. I have never NOT been able to find any info I was looking for, and the only videos I watch are for jumping puzzles.

Yes people are lazy. I mean a generation that lacks patience to read Dostoyevsky, Jung and Marx is a wasted generation.

Okay, your title seems misleading from your point, at least I think. Maybe you could just try to figure the puzzle out yourself if you want to complete it so badly.

Is it Honey Boo Boo, the Kardashians and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?

We are the NOW generation!

Your attention span on any game has outlived Kim Kardashian’s marriages. So, go figure.

This has nothing to do with me wanting to solve a particular puzzle, that puzzle was just the latest thing to highlight the lack of written content available for this game.

Websites and game blogs are dead. Youtube is the new game blog.

I have run into the same issue. It isn’t that the information isn’t out there if you look hard enough it is that there is way too much of it on YouTube. I just want to READ what you have to say. I can skip the parts I don’t care about, re-read the important things, even prinit if off if it merits putting in my pile ’o notes.

Last weekend I was looking for something (won’t say what so as not to call out the person who did the video) but for the first 7 minutes and 38 seconds, he went over what NOT to do before ever getting to his point, the one and only reason I had queued up the video. And it wasn’t even 7 minutes of different things not to do, it was the SAME thing! I don’t care how many different ways you say the grass is green, the grass is still green.

I have to say, all of this YouTube content is wasted on me as well. I do searches excluding YouTube.

My free time is far too precious to waste on 15min videos with bad music and info I could read in 20 seconds.

I want to encourage people, who actually bother to read this, to contribute to the community by improving wiki’s and writing guides for websites

I agree with this sentiment, and I want to look in to contributing more to the GW2 Wiki.

I have one concern though. I haven’t been able to find a centralized and constructive forum for discussing theorycraft and talking about the metagame in any depth. I used to read EJ in World of Warcraft; City of Heroes had some very robust theorycraft/mechanics forums; I’m a casual fighting game player ankittenep up with UltraChen TV and SRK Forums.

And in GW1, of course, we had PvX Wiki.

I feel like deeper discussions on theory, mechanics and strategy haven’t really emerged yet. Or if they have, I’ve missed the boat. Can anyone point me in the right direction, or are we still waiting on this one to emerge organically?

Leon Trotsky.3674:

Yes people are lazy. I mean a generation that lacks patience to read Dostoyevsky, Jung and Marx is a wasted generation.

They also has to be read in the original language

You should definitely do the EB jumping puzzle… or the LA one. I enjoyed both quite a bit.

Corew.8932:

Leon Trotsky.3674:

Yes people are lazy. I mean a generation that lacks patience to read Dostoyevsky, Jung and Marx is a wasted generation.

They also has to be read in the original language

As a Russian raised in Germany, I find it easy

Don’t ask me to read French originals though.

pandemos.3497:

You should definitely do the EB jumping puzzle… or the LA one. I enjoyed both quite a bit.

I’ve done both, without turning up the gamma. What you enjoyed I found incredibly frustrating and annoying, but I still did them the way they were intended.

Alright, granted this isn’t a be-all-end-all guide.. but someone thought very similarly to you, OP, and made a blog to explain jumping puzzles and map completion (hard to find POI’s) just in text… So, if you’re interested, I’ve found this useful from time to time.

http://gw2simple.blogspot.com/

The game has been out for a little over a month now, and you sound like you are expecting to see thousands of walkthroughs listed all over Google already.

It takes people time to make those. YouTube videos are as simple as clicking a record button, and then posting it.

Mala.3861:

I have run into the same issue. It isn’t that the information isn’t out there if you look hard enough it is that there is way too much of it on YouTube. I just want to READ what you have to say. I can skip the parts I don’t care about, re-read the important things, even prinit if off if it merits putting in my pile ’o notes.

Last weekend I was looking for something (won’t say what so as not to call out the person who did the video) but for the first 7 minutes and 38 seconds, he went over what NOT to do before ever getting to his point, the one and only reason I had queued up the video. And it wasn’t even 7 minutes of different things not to do, it was the SAME thing! I don’t care how many different ways you say the grass is green, the grass is still green.

I agree with this, I hate Youtube for guides. If you want to make a short video highlighting boss fights with narration on how to do it, I might watch that. Or if it’s a PvP video or something fun like that I’ll take a look. But when I want real info on the game I’d much rather read it on a website. I don’t have the patience to sit through a long Youtube video with a lot of information I don’t care about. I know exactly the piece of information I’m looking for an in a written format I can skim through it a lot easier, finding the information I need and skipping the rest, bookmarking it for future reference. Less Youtube please people.

When you google, you can type in -youtube to exclude youtube searches, which is what I usually do.

For example,

vista north of mistfire vale -youtube

Also, I agree with the OP. Videos generally take longer to tell you the solution to a problem that can often be explained with a sentence or two, possibly with an image. It’s also harder to search videos (they have to have descriptive and accurate titles/tags). The link that Callidus posted is done in the “you probably only need a couple sentences and a map” spirit, which I like a lot more.

I prefer written guides with screenshots at appropriate places (like, start this jumping puzzle here picture). I do not like youtube guides because they usually ramble on about nonsense I do not care about and it is harder to find the exact point you want since youtube guides don’t have chapters to skip to (which would be the equivalent of skipping to a heading in a written guide).

I’m really not a fan of video guides. I like a big old chunk of heavy wordage.

I’m not concerned about people using shorthand ways to communicate, it’s probably a natural inclination of any socially inclined species to cut to the chase, especially when it’s to apply a solution to a problem. As long as our schools are covering the inevitable gaps that modern life and communication creates, that’s cool. I do worry about the possibility of shrinking attention spans though. More and more people I meet on the internet seem positively aspergian in their reluctance to absorb anything heavier than a meme these days.

But yeah, I’m old school.

please make written guides with ss! Sometimes, I prefer those more than the vid mainly coz they at least leave a bit of a surprise (or discovery or what have you) to the player.

YouTube is for those who can’t break into television

One benefit would be that they are universal – usually no words are needed. Contrary to popular belief not everyone is in command of the english language. (Edit: By this I mean that the game is played in several countries, hey, I watched a french video for some vista and it helped – not that I speak much french.)

I am somewhat shocked that apparently everyone who watches a youtube video ends up not playing anymore but instead watching all sorts of other stuff. Perhaps those easily distracted people will follow any type of link regardless, so I would not matter.

Thanks to everyone who puts the video’s out there, I for one appreciate it and I’m not concerned with the format.

I agree with the part about tldr and maintaining the wiki.

At the end of the day you are talking about fan created content and to me it comes across as a bit ungrateful complaining – after a bit over a month, that no one has designed a huge website already.

Rouven.7409:

At the end of the day you are talking about fan created content and to me it comes across as a bit ungrateful complaining – after a bit over a month, that no one has designed a huge website already.

Well honestly for most major MMO releases lately, even smaller ones like TERA and TSW, there are dedicated fansites with lots of good info before the game even is out, so expecting there to be fan created content for a game as big as GW2 is not at all unreasonable.

My only real problem with youtube is that, being a little hard of hearing, nobody enunciates worth crap!! I mean if you are gonna release a video or video series..script! It’s super easy to look up the pronunciations of words this day in age so there’s no excuse. It’s like youtube is the new reality tv of the internet and people literally just make videos to hear themselves…albeit very poorly spoken most of the time. (In no way am i slamming non primary english speaking persons either. in many ways they often times speak clearer just with a heavy accent).

Leiloni.7951:

Well honestly for most major MMO releases lately, even smaller ones like TERA and TSW, there are dedicated fansites with lots of good info before the game even is out, so expecting there to be fan created content for a game as big as GW2 is not at all unreasonable.

Perhaps the format simply suits the purpose. The only thing I can compare it to are the datacrons in SWTOR, quite honestly, some of those picture-by-picture guides where cumbersome to use.

Maybe I don’t understand this correctly, but I only need guides for the vista’s and jumping puzzles. Maps to complete the zones (location of POI’s if you missed one etc) are out there and databases and guides for crafting as well.

I lose the sensation of having done something for the first time when I use a video guide. Text descriptions still leave a few surprises, but pictures are the most I’d like to see when I get stuck in a difficult spot. But I’m also part of the generation prior to the one that dominates MMOs, and I grew up on game magazines and the like. I didn’t grow up in an in-your-face world where people boasted about everything they did in private in order to get you to compete in your leisure time. It was like that around peers, alot of times, but I had more avenues to hang out in places where strangers weren’t.

Leon Trotsky.3674:

Yes people are lazy. I mean a generation that lacks patience to read Dostoyevsky, Jung and Marx is a wasted generation.

The generations that came before these ‘wasted generations’ read Dostoyevsky, Jung and Marx and still completely failed to understand them. They were missing all context of personal experience, but they talked about the subjects as if they knew it all. Communicated misinterpretation is the reason why barely anyone reads them today. One the one hand, you have people who tell you not to read Jung because he was crazy and mystical. On the other hand, they tell you not to read Marx, because his vision is so simple you don’t need to hear it from him and you can let other people implement it for you. I personally have not read Dostoyevsky, because foreign translations I have access to (like Sun Tzu) are butchered. Every single word in an original text matters, and translators sometimes change them intentionally.

And I don’t mean insult to any members of ‘wasted generations’ by calling them that. When those who came before you put society on the wrong path in many ways; everyone knew your efforts were going to be wasted seeking and finding a way back to a better place. It’s worse to be openly derided as a “lost generation”, because in the eyes of other people, “lost” refers to loser. And yet a “waster” is still a potential above that (in the present). I actually consider most of the young ‘lost’ for having to adapt to the beginnings of an internet age; but I mean lost in an expectable way (as true pioneers frequently don’t reap the most benefit).

The information available on the internet makes it the most amazing tool on the planet in the hands of the most world-savvy (those who are educated, street smart, and wise). However, it’s been harmful in that it has raised an expectation that everyone has been provided with easy access to correct information. Most of what I observe is a total sea of bad advice, and people need to equip themselves better before they wade in it. Not that spoon-feeding is a favor to someone either, in helping them reach their adult potentials.

Editted for reply quote when formatting option became available.

You might be interested in looking at the Guild Mag website, where they produce a huge list of GW2 links each week, in their “This Week in Guild Wars 2” column.

Many of their links are to written guides, articles and blog posts, and they separate those from their links to podcasts and videos.

I have found some great fansites by browsing through each week’s collections of links.

http://www.guildmag.com/category/community

My impression of the YouTube gamer guides is that the authors prefer it as a means to show off their “skill” and to hear themselves talk.

*
Since the puzzle is apparently unavailable once you complete the associated Heart, I wanted to get it right and see what the end result was, so I turned to Google… and found nothing. The only reference to anything related to this puzzle is a nearby NPC, that suggests seeing if you can get the nearby Asuran Console working, and that was an orphan link on the official wiki.
*

BUt, but…I wanna know about this puzzle What zone, what heart!!

I agree with OP 100%. I first really noticed this trend in TSW (ugh), where written guides are few and far between, but YouTube videos, complete with horrid music and droning, uninteresting “authors” were abundant.

I would have to guess it’s one or more of a few things… the author doesn’t write well, feels authoritative when recording one of these videos, or is just doing it because for some inexplicable reason, that’s what people do now. I don’t know.

To me it’s as baffling as the fact that there are people who attribute superstar-status to someone who just sits around playing video games all day and streams it to them.

I’m not that old, but it’s sure as hell making me feel that way.

I would have to guess it’s one or more of a few things… the author doesn’t write well, feels authoritative when recording one of these videos, or is just doing it because for some inexplicable reason, that’s what people do now. I don’t know.

Audience is part of it. I love to write, but it’s a lot harder to secure an audience for written media than visual media. Youtube is a massive community to which anyone can upload their work, and which everyone browses. Getting your written guides out there is a lot harder, and requires either partnership with an existing website or your own blog.

And then you have to start getting the word out on your own.

It’s amazing how much more eager we are to contribute something useful and creative when we know people want it.

This complaint is easy to explain.

Time.

You can make a video that shows some solution or map point or whatnot in 5 to 10 minutes. Just fire up the game, hit record, and off you go.

Writing (and I should point out that once upon a time, I wrote strategy guides for computer games magazines) takes a lot longer.

For example, I wrote the strategy guide for Age of Kings for Computer Games Magazine (and I’m seriously dating myself with that admission). It took me about two days to complete the entire campaign. It then took me another week of playing through a second time while writing the article to put together the walk through and tips pieces I did for the game. (I also got to write to review of that game which was the only time I ever got to write three articles on the same game). Then I waited a day to forget as much of what I wrote as possible followed by a day (a really for real full day) proof-reading, editing, etc to both improve the quality of my guide as well as get under whatever word count I had for the magazine (because if you go over your word count in a print magazine the editor has no choice but to hack it into unreadable garbage in order to make it fit within the available space).

Now, if I’d been doing videos, I’d just have recorded my first playthrough. Maybe spend a day editing and adding some voice over (yes, I’d add it after-the-fact since I truly hate people all the extraneous garbage that works its way into the voice over part when people try to narrate in real time). Whole thing done in 4 days.

Plus, you don’t have to worry about written grammar so bonus!

Anyone who doesn’t want to use them: don’t.

Anyone who does: do.

Anyone that wants to dictate whether other players should be allowed to have a guide to refer to: Grow up.

:edit:

With tablets and smartphones video guides are easy to use and don’t require alt tabbing or multiple computers.

The thing is though, if you don’t want to use video guides, it’s hard, since they’ve gradually been replacing information you once could have found in a written guide. Therefore, are you, then, dictating what guides people should use?

I’m going to start using some free time to contribute to the wiki. I’ve 100% completed several areas in the game that have little or not information on them in the Wiki.

If the people using video guides are forcing writers to not write guides, then it’s wrong.

But that’s not the case.

They’re certainly not forcing writers to cease writing guides directly, but they’re inadvertently doing so. Due to the influx of video guides available, the question is begged as to whether or not it is worth it to continue writing guides with all the oversaturation in video guides. Thus, they are slowly eliminating written guides through forced apathy, and pandering to this generation which requires something flashing and moving in front of their face to “learn” something.

Perhaps it’s guide writers who you should be speaking to?

Give them a pep talk, tell them there are people who still care about written guides.

The simple fact is, if not enough people want them then they are less likely to create them. You may dislike that, but it’s not anybody’s fault.

People are not wrong for preferring a video over lines of text. Nor are you wrong for preferring text. But the two are not mutually exclusive.

The only “customers” that videos steal away from written guides are the people who were making do with written and now have something which they prefer.

OP, I appreciate your point and I read the whole thing. I agree that it is quite frustrating to be faced with sorting through 100 hours of useless video for the one scrap of information I need vs. a text search which is 1000x faster and easier.

The thing that kills me about the YouTube phenomenon is that watching videos takes FOREVER. Everyone I’ve ever watched is terrible at making video guides: they spend 95% of their time wasting time. (I am still wishing for the “fast forward” button on YouTube – something to play videos at 2x/5x/10x speed but keep the sound going.) I do not buy the argument that it’s some kind of ADD, “NOW” generation thing because YouTube is an extremely inefficient method of distributing or gathering information. I can’t tell you how many 3-5 minute “guides” can be summed up in less than a paragraph of written text that takes 10 seconds to read. Occasionally YouTube is better for certain types of information: watching someone complete a jumping puzzle can be more effective than reading about it, for example. But otherwise it’s a huge waste of time.

As for the why: I think you are correct in that it is a generational thing. Anet has been spectacular about communicating directly to its playerbase in social media sites, and I think they are doing a great job of hitting a younger market space. Younger people also have more time and energy to make guides. And I think younger people (typically) tend to get their information from YouTube more often than older people. As for why, I would suspect some factors include: ease of uploading information (most smartphones and smartphone apps have a YouTube button now, making it so easy you can do it on accident), ease of access through mobile devices, and the fact that a tiny, tiny fraction of a percentage of people have used YouTube to garner some internet fame and others are trying to replicate that.

I’m guessing it’s similar to how younger people are actually worse at “using computers” than older people, in the same way that I have no idea how my car actually works: I just drive it. For the same reason that you cannot purchase a stick shift except in very specific cars, people use YouTube: it’s easier and faster and they don’t have to think about it. And don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a judgement. It’s just where the world is headed.

“Audience is part of it. I love to write, but it’s a lot harder to secure an audience for written media than visual media. Youtube is a massive community to which anyone can upload their work, and which everyone browses. Getting your written guides out there is a lot harder, and requires either partnership with an existing website or your own blog.”

I agree with this post as well, not just because of the “ease of use” point, but also because of the “feedback” thing. It is much faster and easier to get and give feedback on YouTube than it is with nearly any written form of a guide. I’ve done video game guides before, and other than page hits and personal emails you have no idea if people read it. YouTube lets the entire world call you a kitten (I actually wrote “kitten”) and banter back and forth about it.

However, it’s not just about feedback: the difference is in acknowledgement. I did those video game guides for me: I didn’t care if people read them. But if you post something on YouTube, odds are: you care. You probably care a great deal, and you want that feedback, good or bad.

If I’ve reached the end of my tether, I rather like the videos over the written word as far as guides go. Of course, I have always been a very visually oriented person anyway.

The thing about written guides is that there’s no good places to post them.
You can post them on these forums, and they get buried within hours by countless of other threads. Sure, there could be made a sticky… for 1 thread, what about other people’s guides? They don’t get stickied. You can post them on GameFAQs, and then there’s only 1-2 guides that’ll be the best for their thing. Where else are you going to write your guides? The Wiki? And have all your work replaced the next day by some other dude? Yeah, sounds like a thankful job.

Now I haven’t been doing any Guild Wars 2 guides on Youtube, but I could certainly see why people prefer making videos instead of writing guides. Generally it’s easier to make a video, takes less time, and it’s straight to the point. A viewer can directly see what’s going and can easily skip parts they don’t want to see.
It’s a place where someone who might enjoy making guides, and has a decent place to publish it.

I’ve found the GW2 wiki and guildhead.com both to to be very useful, written resources. Considering the size of the world and its depth, writing up a comprehensive guide to cover everything would be quite a monumental task. I see the videos on youtube as a very useful supplement to the available written resources. For example, the comprehensive guide to the Mesmer profession by Mr Prometheus is outstanding and provides more depth and clarity (in my opinion) than any written article could do. Those videos contain a ton of well written information which is enhanced by actually being able to see what the guy’s talking about.

Then there’s these forums, if you’re stuck trying to find/figure something out, why not just make a posting here?

I have a lot of Gw2 information on my website:

http://www.almarsguides.com/gw2/

But I do agree with the youtube craze, I just started it not too many years ago because it seems like the future of gaming is going into the video format for all information rather than written. Even though I much prefer a written guide over hearing some nerd (even myself) narrate through uhms uhhs and “Hold on I can’t talk with a mob on me”s

I generally find that things like crafting or class guides tend to be written, but activity guides (a GW2 example being jumping puzzles) are more often videos.

And this makes sense. Big guides with a lot of information are often better as text, but walkthroughs of activities are often easier to follow in a video.

It takes much more effort to write a guide.

Any putz can load up fraps and yammer on for an eternity because the sound of their own voice is just that good.

No offense to the actually talented youtubers out there.

I don’t think its GW2, the same trend applies to all the newer games I’ve looked at recently. Our current (youngest) crop of gamers just prefers video for this kind of thing.

I’ve always been more of a reader – its so much faster to skim text for the information I need than it is to wait several minutes for someone to narrate (maybe) useful stuff at speaking speed.