Guild Wars 2

Re-posted from GW2Guru.

Over the past month or so, I’ve spent a lot of time playing Sanctum Sprint, making an effort on my own part to see how fast I can finish the race. In that time, I’ve witnessed a lot of something that I’ve seen happen in the other activities – people don’t stick around. Over the course of one match, the room might fill up to have ten or more people participating. Once the match finishes though, everybody evacuates, save for perhaps a couple people. This is clearly from people coming in just to get their daily requirement. If people do stay at the end of a match, I typically won’t see them play more than three or four matches in a row.

This leads me to believe that many people don’t see value in playing activities (referring for now only to those within the daily rotation). When people see value in something, they invest into it, either with their time or their money. There’s no way to invest money into activities, so if people think playing an activity is worthwhile, they’ll spend their time playing it. It would seem then that the only value that most people can find in playing activities is to get the easy participation award for their dailies, because again, they come in for one match, it ends and gives them their daily, and then they leave. If there were no daily requirement for doing activities, such as during previous achievement systems where doing things in Keg Brawl would only sometimes show up, then very few people would end up playing them at all. Any regulars to Keg Brawl back in the day would have noticed this as well.

It’s not to say that activities have no value to people outside of their daily achievement, but perhaps they don’t have enough value. If time is the only means to invest into activities, then there must be other things which are a better use of their time. Or, perhaps some people have so little time to spare that they feel compelled to do other things that are more time-sensitive, such as anything time-gated. In the first place, what makes activities such a poor use of people’s time? Is the demand for coin and karma so great that the paltry participation rewards aren’t good enough? Are the games just not fun somehow? Is the problem not with the activities being un-fun or worthless, but instead with heavy pressure being placed on doing other things in the game over some span of time?

I’d like to hear what people here think of activities and why they themselves or others don’t spend more time with them. Specifics on each activity are okay, but I’m really looking for an answer on the general scope. I could give my own spiel on why I think Sanctum Sprint isn’t drawing in a bigger or better crowd, but that’s a topic for another time.

Well… Sanctum Sprint would be more fun if it had a track rotation. At the moment, it’s like Mario Kart, but with only 1 stage. It’d get old, and that’s why they leave.

My only reason is they have yet to release an activity that I want to do more than regular content. I do enjoy Sanctum Sprint, but not more than say leveling, or key-farming. Most of the others I don’t understand enough to really enjoy, or they are too PvP-focused.

Also, it is too repetitive to do more than once or twice in a row, for many of them.

I actually love Sanctum Sprint (and loathe Southsun Survival and tolerate Keg Brawl and Crab Toss). However, I can’t chat with my guild mates while doing it because I’m too busy zipping around grabbing crystals and making my jumps and using my skillups on other racers before I get zapped and lose them. Even when I get to the end I can’t chat much because I have to move or get booted out. So my patience wears thin (same reason I can’t deal with fishing in WoW, LotRO, or TESO — can’t chat if you have to be ready to click that bobber at the random moment it bobs). It’s not like I have to be bantering 24/7 but the activities go on long enough that I will miss comments, lose out on RP or dungeon offers, etc.

Shayne Hawke.9160:

Re-posted from GW2Guru.

…snip

I’d like to hear what people here think of activities and why they themselves or others don’t spend more time with them. Specifics on each activity are okay, but I’m really looking for an answer on the general scope. I could give my own spiel on why I think Sanctum Sprint isn’t drawing in a bigger or better crowd, but that’s a topic for another time.

Simply: They are not fun.

No one in my guild, including me, enjoys them. Period.

If it was the only option for a daily, I would skip it. Rewards do not matter. I don’t do jump puzzles either. Nor SAB. I don’t believe any of that style of play belongs in an MMO. (Although I do not advocate for their removal because I know there are customers here that do enjoy it.)

I play MMO’s because I like MMO’s (not saying GW2 is an MMO). I enjoy MMO playstyle and have for 14+ years. (I played FPS before then in my 40’s.)

I don’t like Nintendo gameplay

And won’t do it. Period.

I did Sanctum Sprint to death during the Bazaar when it came out to get all the AP so having to spend any extra time in there goes against my idea of fun.

I only do it for the daily and that’s that.

Same with Crab Toss. They STILL haven’t fixed the fact that Mango pies work in there among other bugs like dual crabs spawning.

Southsun Survival, still haven’t fixed the spawn bug where you can move before you get immobilized and sometimes you get immobilized after the game starts so gg you.

So between the bugs and the oh my god I’m so bored of these activities that’s why I don’t like them.

I like Sanctum Sprint. When it was first released I played it quite a bit. Likewise when it was first added to the activity rotation.

At this point though… nah. I play one or two games and I’m done.

I still like it, don’t get me wrong. But the “novelty” has worn off at this point, and typically when I’m playing GW2 I want to actually play GW2. I want to fight things, explore zones, do quests. Sprint is fun as a little change of pace now and again, but I don’t want to do it for extended periods. I don’t log into GW2 to race, if I’m in the mood to race I’ll play Mario Kart or something. If I’m playing GW2 I want to play GW2 with the occasional activity as a change of pace, not a main focus. Do a couple games, enjoy them, then back to GW2.

I do enjoy Sprint a bit more when I have actual competition, but 99% of the time I don’t. I played it so much early on that I’ve gotten very good at it, so I just breeze through and leave everyone in the dust typically. So I’m essentially “time trialing” at this point, and time trials in racing games have never really held my attention very well.

The same basic principal can be applied to the other activities, except I don’t really like the other activities. I loathe Survival because it tends to be either “die in the first 20 seconds or stand around doing nothing for a few minutes”, and Crab Toss is just kind of meh. I’ve never actually done Keg Brawl, I never play the game on weekends and I never got around to it before it was put on rotation.

I don’t really see a problem with people not spending tons of time with activities. Nothing wrong with little mini-games to play once in a while but not focus exclusively on.

Because they’re dumb.

Sanctum Sprint was a nice diversion for while, and Crab Toss was quite a bit of fun but in general I find these mini-games are far too awkward and clunky to play to get much enjoyment out of. I suspect most other players feel the same way.

If you’re interested in racing, there are good racing games out there.
If you’re interested in survival, there are good survival games out there.
If you’re interested in sports, there are good sports games out there.

I don’t buy Madden with the expectation of playing Frogger.
I don’t buy MMOs with the expectation of playing Mini-games.