Guild Wars 2

Why do people play an MMO if they want to play alone? I was in the Plains of Ashford, a really populated zone, and I’ve seen the NPC, that starts the Decimus Stone event, standing around for a while. I see 2 people nearby, so I decide to start it.

It’s going good, in a minute we’ve got 5-6 players and we’re doing just great. We completed the event, but I noticed there was a little more area to go, which has a splendid chest and a veteran mob. So I shout “Stop! Why don’t we go a bit further? We can finish this and get some decent loot. We already have the people here.” and not a single person stays…

So I tried to go forward a bit, and see if anybody will change their mind and catch up with me, I get into the room with the Veteran and fight him to half his health before dying. And I didn’t die slow. No one came back, and no new players showed up either…

I don’t understand these people. They had the time for a dynamic event, and sticking it through to the end, but no drive or want to play an extra 3 minutes and get something extra done?

Sorry for the rant, but if I’m already seeing this kind of antisocial behavior happening in the first area of the game, it’s a bit discouraging. It’s a Saturday night! Why don’t people want to see content they might’ve missed either? Is everyone just playing WvW and complaining about things there, or repeatedly grinding dungeons and nothing else? Do they need an achievement as an incentive for every little thing?

Because taking 8 minutes to kill a boss that gives a couple greens is not worth it to players that want xp and karma.

I know. It sucks.

I would have stayed just for the fun of it. That said, the developers have stated that the loot drops in open world are horrendously low and they are working to fix that.

did they talk at all? the botters are starting to use names more and more now instead of just random strings of letters. but im catching them by the dozen. they appear like people unless you stick with them long enough to see their pattern.

its pretty

judeobscure.9280:

did they talk at all? the botters are starting to use names more and more now instead of just random strings of letters. but im catching them by the dozen. they appear like people unless you stick with them long enough to see their pattern.

its pretty

Nah. They didn’t talk. They either didn’t care, or maybe they were botters. But it’s not uncommon, I guess, for some people playing together, to chat on Skype and ignore everyone. Had that happen a few times, on my Priest, in PUGs back on WoW pre-BC.

They knew it wasn’t worth it, that’s why they left. Splendid chest, veteran mob, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get something interesting. It’s a mistake in my opinion, the reward should be proportional to the time/effort needed.

thiis message repeats

Its not worth the time when there is a very high chance that nothing unique will come from them. If the chest or even the mob dropped something that looked cool or was even different stats than other things that drop in the zone it would be worth it.

They play because they are addicted to “play” but not to enjoy the act of playing, they play cause in their brains, a very similar process that happens on most alcoholics and drugadcits happens. They just need to “play”. And they come here thinking this new drug will be better than their previus… Shame is it, this game is no drug, is not made for addicts to the midless act of play for the sake of play. Is for people who is capable of enjoy the game, no matter if they play 10 hours a day or 10 hours a week.

They play for an excuse to be in front of the monitor, just that.

Drosser.2317:

Sorry for the rant, but if I’m already seeing this kind of antisocial behavior happening in the first area of the game, it’s a bit discouraging. It’s a Saturday night! Why don’t people want to see content they might’ve missed either?

The only thing that I think is a bit anti-social is not saying anything in response to you. Not unforgivably anti-social but a response would have been nice. Beyond that, you’re just guessing. You don’t know they haven’t seen the content before. Even if they hadn’t, maybe there’s just something else they wanted to do more. That’s fair.

There are many reasons to play an MMO solo, including, but not limited to:

To play in a dynamic, ever evolving world. PvP. Potentially unlimited content. “I’m better than you”. To play with IRL friends. Challenge (ie, soloing group content). Playing the market. Making gold just to feel rich / be richer than others. To help others. To harm others.

1. The lack of rewards for the need of people to group up.
2. GW2 promotes the feel of a single-player rpg instead of a real mmo. If you read other threads, you know what I mean.

Because 90% of every kitten chest I’ve opened, after a long drawn out epic battle of several vets, a champion, and the respawned vets – because the kitten fight was that long – all I get for my effort is two armour pieces that ISN’T EVEN USABLE FOR MY PROFESSION and a piece of jewelry I could easily get from a mining ore.

What they should do is put chests out in the world:
1. Guarded by a champion.
2. Require a black lion key to unlock and open.
3. Contain a(n) rare/exotic gear, crafting material(s), Coin! , Karma! , XP!
4. 1 week respawn timer in a new random location.

I Also think a part of the “solo” feels stems from the fact that this is a great MMO where you do not have to be in a group…. to do group content.

Professor Farnsworth “Hermes, Incentivise that employee!”
( as seen on Futurama: Benders Game )

Like others said it’s a new generation thing. To many casual gamers out there playing games for 10 seconds on their phone before switching to a new game. I played gw1 for over five years and I plan to play gw2 for at least as long. Just keep playing and make a friends list of the people who are playing for the joy of adventure.

@Drakortha.6974
@Dym Mahk.5768

Precisly. In old mmos it was almost required to group up to do any of the content. Usually it was easy becouse there were already players there waiting doing the same content.
For some reason the community was also better and people actually invited you, often without asking.
In most dungeon areas you could solo, but you benefited much more from grouping up, and you could go further down to farm.

Or take a game like Lotro, it had some really fun group story quests at the start, but then they dumbed it down so every stroy quest could be soloed, completly watering down the “epic feel” of it. It just became something you breezed through to complete the questline.

Nowadays every mmo is extremly casual and solofriendly. I usually tell my friends the same thing as OP, why do you play mmos if you dont want to group up? you can just aswell play Dragon Age, Skyrim or any other single player game.
Its also one of the reasons why i dont like games like DA and Sky, it feels like im running around in an empty mmo world without players to group with.

To me mmos are about socializing and grouping up to beat harder enemies.
Even if the casual playerbase is bigger (im not to sure tbh) its not that playerbase that drives the mmo genre forward, instead its that playerbase that dumbs them down.

I’d group, I do sometimes, but don’t see the point unless I was on TS/Skype with them.

I can’t go on TS/Skype with them because I am 100% bad in social interaction. So there is little point.

This is why I’m a bus driver, not a sales rep

They have been turned into mindless, efficient, event grinding machines. I’m sorry to break it to you, but no one plays games for fun anymore, they just do it to get a ton of in-game money for no reason.

I would’ve stayed because I love chests and doing stuff with people.

why do i play mmos if i dont want to group?

easy

because mmos give me a playstyle/game that is usually not available to normal single players.

tell me what single player rpg can give me the guardian’s playstyle?

i played kingdoms of amalur, while it was nice, ic ould not get to finish to the story because, it just didnt held me.
skyrim? same thing, played it a bit, got a few mods to add soem spicyness and flavor, but didnt even get halfway to the end game.

GW1? played that game straight up for 5 years, and up to 3000 hours
GW2? i am looking at the smae thing, a long time for it.

both games i either play alone, play it with a few friends or play it with guildies (mostly for dungeon content), but otherwise i solo as much as i can.

simply, for me, the mmo mechanics most mmos have are more appealing to me that some of the single player rpgs (gotta love my bubble shield)

I like to play My MMORPGs like a single player RPG with added optional Co-Op, thank you very much. That’s the main reason I loved GW1 and kept playing it for so long. That’s also the reason I didn’t do any elite areas until they added support for a full team of AI heroes to help you.
That’s why I love GW2. Socializing is optional(except for a few things here and there). You chat and group because you want to, not because it gives you X% better magic find.

This may seem offtopic, but I assure you your experience is due to the current state of the genre.

MMO’s nowadays promote solo play over group play to cater to a wider audience, people who do not have time or do not want to invest into a game that requires people to play together, for people who thought it was “nerdy” or “not cool” to play a game for so many hours.

Have a look at the recent MMO’s that have been released, the most successful ones being the ones where you can do quite a lot with out interacting with a single soul. The essence of MMO’s now has been shattered because of games like WoW, that introduced the concept of solo-friendly content to MMO’s (don’t quote me on this, but WoW is the most popular MMO because of its accessibility). MMO’s have followed this rule, because frankly gaming is a business, and the wider the audience, the more money it makes.

You could play through the whole game with out adding a single person to your friends list, the same goes for WoW and many other popular MMO’s. When the dungeoun finder was introduced, things like MANNERS and SERVER REPUTATION went out the window, same goes for games like GW2, where its not necessary to build up a good reputation to do anything worthy in the game, just you and your guild.

Unfortunately you are a minority, and I am on the same boat as you. I started playing MMO’s to play with others, and I loved to be forced to group up to do content, but MMO’s nowadays have veered off from that mentality, to achieve a wider demographic. It used to be “You must work together to achieve something great” now “You can work together to achieve something great, but you don’t have to”

Its unfortunate, but I think the days of the “true” MMO are gone. Games like Final Fantasy XI are a thing of the past, people don’t want that, people want a quick fix, because its not about the journey anymore, its about the prize and how fast you can get it. Endgame is the whole game, remember?

I do hope there will be MMO’s developed for those who love to explore a world with others, as it was meant, and work hard to achieve almost impossible goals.

I am an embittered MMO gamer, who has loved the genre for many, many years, and GW2 was my last hope. To see such success in such a solo friend MMO makes me quite sad, and I honestly, truly hope that something in the future breaks this pattern.

I’ll just remind everyone that MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game.

Leto.5642:

They knew it wasn’t worth it, It’s a mistake in my opinion, the reward should be proportional to the time effort needed.

All too true. I cannot tell you how many times the champion troll in Frostgorge Sound yielded nothing more than a random blue, and that was with magic find. I’m not one of these entitled gamers that thinks there should be an exotic hiding under every cave spider. Nevertheless, a champion should NEVER yield anything less than green. Taking down a champion is a group effort and the rewards should be proportional to other group efforts in PvE.

Some people are just no good in social situations. I swear I’m from a different planet, personally. Most of my social interaction comes from forums and /map chat. Meeting new people and speaking on a more personal level about things outside of gaming or my other interests? Forget about it.

Then you have to also consider many people only communicate with their clique, which in turn discourages others not in a clique from ever really trying to communicate with strangers, and it just snow balls.

If nothing else, I have just been conditioned not to bother through a variety of unsuccessful attempts and interaction with other people. Even being in a guild doesn’t guarantee one will make friends. The game play is fun, and I’d like to communicate, but it can be a stressful and awkward experience because I’m not a very good real time conversationalist. I know I’m not the only person with socialization issues either.

It isn’t always about playing efficiently, sometimes it’s just uncomfortable to interact with others with anything more than convenience in mind.

It could just be that they had other places they’d rather be? Killing a veteran mob is not exactly something exclusive, or amazingly fun, and the loot alone is not enough of a reason. A lot of it is also impatience. Most people don’t even have any idea of how long some dynamic events are, because they abandon them not even half way trough. My advice would be to join a guild that likes group world exploring.

Hah!
I have never seen anyone in any MMO so quiet and out the way except for GW2. Was GW1 like this? Yeah we’re basically forced to do DE’s together and sometimes not even so only need peeps for a Champ, but that’s it. We do DE’s and not even say “Good job.” I do but no one says nothing at times and go on about our way or just go off to do other stuff.
I think, and I say, I THINK the reason is because of no one has a specific role or that Holy Trinity stuff. It’s really sad, there is like no community in-game. It’s probably just me but that’s my 2 copper.

Speaking about myself, but sometimes I don’t talk to others in the local /say chat because I’m in guild chat, or sometimes party chat, and forget to change to /say.

That said, the game seemed a lot more friendly back during 3 day headstart and immediately afterward.

Still, sometimes all /map chat needs is a little nudge to get people talking, the zones really are more fun when you can chat to others, or even just lurk about and read what they’re saying.