Guild Wars 2

There’s absolutely no community to them whatsoever when I feel like there could be. Not even worth acknowledging in forums because no one would post on them. In a game that expressly advertised being able to always play with your friends as one of the pillars of game play that drove a lot of features like down leveling and the continued way point system as well as horizontal progression in general, I think it’s one of the only parts of the game that you can’t guarantee play with a party of your friends.

Tons of people are going to skip over this thread cause they don’t care. That’s fine, it’s understandable given the current circumstances of the game and what’s going on. I don’t need it explained to me, I just think it kind of sucks and is a farcry from what ArenaNet wanted out of them pre-launch.

You can count on one hand the number of people who will go out and do these activities because they genuinely enjoy them, not because they’re part of a daily or offer some sort of character progression. If you’re one of those, more power to you. I know I love Keg Brawl. Which is why it sucks that I can now only play that once a week per the rotation.

I’m still playing the game, living out my altaholic dreams @ 12 character slots (my second Guardian @ level 26 has ~85g worth of cosmetic stuff on her because yay me) waiting for my WvW guild to start playing again, but it’s the sort of thing that makes me depressed that I didn’t get to see, for example, Circus Charricus that was gonna be, from the description of the NPC, GW2’s version of twisted metal using the cars in the Black Citadel. And that there would be leaderboards, and automated tournaments, and a mini e-sports community based on just that because it’d probably be pretty freaking cool to watch.

Just wondering if anyone felt similar.

Example of ArenaNet’s goals for Activities and their social impact on the game pre-launch

I made a similar thread to this some months ago and it was also largely ignored.

The potential for so many of the in-game activities has sadly been overlooked or not given enough thought.

An organised league or cup of 8 player teams in Keg brawl who have had the opportunity to practice tactics and skills together would be equally as skillful as PvP and would be a great community activity.

Moa racing could have been so much more engaging (Think Chocabo, Think FF7)

Belchers Bluff is a great game but I think I have seen one game being played since the end of the event (10G a Set – I wonder why) How difficult or time consuming would it be to set up a league or competition on each server?

Sadly though, even though I love the living world idea and the regular content updates, the clear trend that is developing is that the vast majority of the player base seems quite happy to be herded from one event to the next every fortnight, get their achievements, forget about it and move on and the prospect of any of the current activities being updated is quite slim.

Another issue I have which I’ll just add to this thread is that the activity rotation has had damaging impact on a lot of the things that I think make mini games fun.

With the exception of maybe Southsun Survival, which I never really liked, mini games offer a competitive form of entertainment not unlike SPvP, and given the right attention, the ones available now could make compelling e-sport for a niche community.

What they are now is excuses for a daily achievement. The overwhelming majority of players in every single mini game currently only play one game. And there’s a noticeable contingent of players who afk the whole game as well. I get no satisfaction out of being randomly assigned 9 other players who have no interest or investment in playing the activity well, who’re only there for the daily participation.

Almost the entire point of a race, for example, is pure competition. The goal is to win. I do not believe there is enough intermediate player agency to make up for the fact that I can smoke every single person off the line and have full minutes in front of the next guy by the time I hit the finish line, 90% of the time… it’s just not fun at that point. I’m just running a course.

It doesn’t mean that I’m particularly good, it’s just that constantly cycling in or unpracticed players without any way for players to be challenged turns off a lot of the people who would otherwise play more and get better because the enjoy the activity. Instead, in an effort to increase the overall population of people who play at least once a day, the game is actively pushing away hardcore fans that would make a community website or lfg tool or something solid to rally around, to build from.

I think for activities to be successful, they should not be purely casual in the manner they are. I will wager that the majority of people who enter activities do not enjoy them anymore than they do running around chopping down wood or rezzing NPC’s at the port in Kessex Hills. No offense intended, at best they’ll consider it neat but in no means compelling or we wouldn’t have seen such abysmal participation pre-rotation.

It is a fools errand to attempt to enjoy these mini games in the long run unless you really like beating on the weak, because it’s abundantly clear that the average skill level drops immensely when funneling tons of uninterested players through randomly matched games. There weren’t a lot of people who played Keg Brawl pre-rotation, sure, but there was enough for a game. For a GUILD, even. And the average skill level was far higher. I firmly believe this has transcended opinion, though it is still anecdotal. But now I can’t even play Keg Brawl for more than 4 games before I’m bored to tears trying to slow down and let other people enjoy the game. Otherwise, my team wins 100% of the time.

I am one of the folks that only log on to these games to get a daily achievement. I do not like any of the games and pts are the only reason I am there. There are good suggestions here but since they give points I will continue to play. I think that the best way for improvement is to get rid of achievements for them; then only those that like them will play them.

Scar Rufo.7935:

I am one of the folks that only log on to these games to get a daily achievement. I do not like any of the games and pts are the only reason I am there. There are good suggestions here but since they give points I will continue to play. I think that the best way for improvement is to get rid of achievements for them; then only those that like them will play them.

And those that don’t know about them at all (which is still lots of people) will never try them.

Serelisk.6573:

Another issue I have which I’ll just add to this thread is that the activity rotation has had damaging impact on a lot of the things that I think make mini games fun.

With the exception of maybe Southsun Survival, which I never really liked, mini games offer a competitive form of entertainment not unlike SPvP, and given the right attention, the ones available now could make compelling e-sport for a niche community.

What they are now is excuses for a daily achievement. The overwhelming majority of players in every single mini game currently only play one game. And there’s a noticeable contingent of players who afk the whole game as well. I get no satisfaction out of being randomly assigned 9 other players who have no interest or investment in playing the activity well, who’re only there for the daily participation.

Almost the entire point of a race, for example, is pure competition. The goal is to win. I do not believe there is enough intermediate player agency to make up for the fact that I can smoke every single person off the line and have full minutes in front of the next guy by the time I hit the finish line, 90% of the time… it’s just not fun at that point. I’m just running a course.

It doesn’t mean that I’m particularly good, it’s just that constantly cycling in or unpracticed players without any way for players to be challenged turns off a lot of the people who would otherwise play more and get better because the enjoy the activity. Instead, in an effort to increase the overall population of people who play at least once a day, the game is actively pushing away hardcore fans that would make a community website or lfg tool or something solid to rally around, to build from.

I think for activities to be successful, they should not be purely casual in the manner they are. I will wager that the majority of people who enter activities do not enjoy them anymore than they do running around chopping down wood or rezzing NPC’s at the port in Kessex Hills. No offense intended, at best they’ll consider it neat but in no means compelling or we wouldn’t have seen such abysmal participation pre-rotation.

It is a fools errand to attempt to enjoy these mini games in the long run unless you really like beating on the weak, because it’s abundantly clear that the average skill level drops immensely when funneling tons of uninterested players through randomly matched games. There weren’t a lot of people who played Keg Brawl pre-rotation, sure, but there was enough for a game. For a GUILD, even. And the average skill level was far higher. I firmly believe this has transcended opinion, though it is still anecdotal. But now I can’t even play Keg Brawl for more than 4 games before I’m bored to tears trying to slow down and let other people enjoy the game. Otherwise, my team wins 100% of the time.

The only content that was negatively affected by the rotation is Keg Brawl, since all the others were meant to be temporary in the first place and wouldn’t be in the game at all right now, if there was a rotation.

Some people are learning to enjoy these activities just because they are now on the activities list. I had never played Keg Brawl before it was part of dailies. I had only played Crab Toss once, because that was all that was needed for the meta achievement. As I play them more regularly, I am learning about the different activities, slowly getting better, and enjoying them more each time. There are almost always positives and negatives to any implementation of content. =)

@Vayne, I feel like you didn’t read what I wrote, or simply chose not to acknowledge it.

Yes, Keg Brawl was the only activity that had blatant negative side effects because it has been the only activity to have been in a permanent state prior to the rotation. That’s not necessarily what I was getting at, though it is still relevant.

The atmosphere of the activities were fine for the temporary content because everyone and everything was new, and there was a lot of being ermagerd amazed at what was going on and how much fun there is which led to inflated numbers being randomly thrown against one another, i.e. no competition for those who put in the effort. But now they’re being artificially kept in that state instead of evolving or becoming more competitive.

There’s no reason whatsoever, I feel, to invest in playing these activities because the amount of players who’re actively coming back to this content is diluted heavily by the players that enjoy them casually or are only there for the daily achievement. There’s no community of players who are enjoying these things enough to come together and put effort into seeing the full potential of what’s available inside the activities. There are no, if not, very few players who are actively min maxing the Sanctum Sprint courses and pitting their times against one another. There’s no current leader boards for the mega champion of all time crab tossing king. The only element to activities, currently, is the casual players who come and play a couple games before leaving.

*Note, I only mean casual players as it relates to activities, and mostly referring to those who play them without a competitive focus.

This is not a fault with the players at all, it is a fault with the system. It turns away players from seeking a competitive experience in a game they enjoy, which is pretty lame. Therefore, I feel like the potential for each activity (bar Southsun Survival because its competitive potential is undermined by its duality in game play) is lost, which is ultimately a bad thing for me because there’s an entire untapped part of these activities that ArenaNet, for one reason for another, refuses to allow.

If I could make an analogy to another part of the game, the greater World vs. World community can be explained in large part by the interactions of two intersecting groups of people. There are hardcore guilds & players, and there are casual guilds and players. (I think we can all agree that a healthy WvW systems relies on neither of those groups of people being completely removed from the game play)

The hardcore players arguably have the most direct impact on the game play. They drive the meta, develop new strategies, and provide the infrastructure (most, if not, all successful commanders in top tiers come from the hardcore guilds or are hardcore players of WvW). These are fundamental to unlocking the potential of WvW combat and by extension, more fun. (See: Hammer Train, Dirty Portal, Churn Spike)

The casual atmosphere is not just the players, but the ability for new players to continuously get involved and contribute, potentially becoming hardcore players or commanders themselves. It’s the large PvX guilds who do bi-weekly WvW nights, or the small group of friends who go in together occasionally. These are fundamental to the health of WvW.

Right now, activities and the system they’re in heavily inhibits the former when I feel like they don’t have to.

I did read your whole post (and based on your response, I now remember why I stopped responding to your posts in the first place).

You basically have one, maybe two positive responses to this topic in days. Maybe the minigames aren’t as popular as people thought they would be…that would probably include Keg Brawl.

My feeling is that mini-games kinda get forced down your throat, wether you like them or not. I happen to generally not like them, because I did not pick GW2 as my MMO to play mini games. If I wanted mini games, I’d spend my time on facebook.

Being forced to play them with randoms doesn’t make the issue any better – they might be fun if you could pick who to play them with.

Massively asked this question and Anatoli posted how if they had 1 month and took over the development of the game (and if it only took 1 month to put these things in with an unlimited amount of support mind you) they’d put in non-combat activities complete with rewards cosmetics housing items etc.

Here’s the article here

Needless to say I posted a request for this just after launch and it was ignored, that’s how old the request was.

I don’t like the rotation the way it is implemented. I haven’t played a minigame since they did this, which makes me sad.

To give incentive to play specific minigames, why not giving increased rewards for winning to a specific game on a certain day. E.g. Monday you’ll get better rewards for playing Southsun Survival while you still can play any other minigame.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I don’t like the rotation the way it is implemented. I haven’t played a minigame since they did this, which makes me sad.

To give incentive to play specific minigames, why not giving increased rewards for winning to a specific game on a certain day. E.g. Monday you’ll get better rewards for playing Southsun Survival while you still can play any other minigame.

It’s all part of their “Play the way you want” system, you know the one, where you have two choices, you could login and do only the things they want you to do as evident by their very limited reward system, OR do what some people with the argument of “you don’t HAVE to do those things to enjoy the game” do and just login and stand there staring at the grass each day.

I have already made a thread to suggest that we can create instances of any mini-games available (Sanctum Sprint, Crab Toss, Keg Brawl, Southsun Survival, Dragon Ball, etc.).

An organised play would be much more fun. It was cool during each event with the quantity of people, but now it feels empty and everyone only stick for 1 round (daily). I’d love to organise Sanctum Sprint races with prizes and other activities for my guild, but in its current state, it’s boring.

I don’t mind if the achievements are disabled if we do it organized. I just want to have 16 people in the same race, or 8v8 Keg Brawl, or etc.

We really need this. We need more stuff to do for fun with friends/guildies.

I think a good solution would be to have all the activities available at all times, and still have a rotating daily achievement for a specific one of those.

that way each activity can build it’s own community while still pulling new ppl into trying them out.

Vayne.8563:

I did read your whole post (and based on your response, I now remember why I stopped responding to your posts in the first place).

You basically have one, maybe two positive responses to this topic in days. Maybe the minigames aren’t as popular as people thought they would be…that would probably include Keg Brawl.

I’m past the point where justifying ArenaNets actions is still relevant here, you’re completely right. They might not have enough time, it’s low on the priority list, it’s unpopular, they’re doing other stuff. Whatever. That’s not what this is about.

It’s just stating thoughts about making all the cycling activities more competitive than the current system allows. And it can certainly go without your dismissive, off-topic posts.

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

I don’t mind if the achievements are disabled if we do it organized. I just want to have 16 people in the same race, or 8v8 Keg Brawl, or etc.

lol, maybe then, there’ll be enough players for all the freaking kegs that spawn.

organized mini games could be a huge problem. You can’t do it together with random players, else everyone with a team-partner would have a big advantage over the single players. This means that you would have a completely seperate league for organized teams. This would result in a player fragmentation so less players would be active in each of the leagues.

Because of this I’m against allowing organized teams. It’s difficult enough to find enough players in a match to have fun. Sometimes I play Kegbrawl with 4 other people with players leaving through the match. (I have to admit I haven’t played since they introduced the rotation though… is it better now?)

Right, that’s what they have it the way they do in SPvP (team oriented game play). You can join in any of the public matches and you’re subject to achievements and titles but have little or no ability to pick which team you’re on, which would mean two friends joining into the same match can only guarantee just that.

Keg Brawl, being the only team activity, would have to have some sort of automated tournament or tPvP type league if it was going to go that route at all, but at the least, private instances would actually allow people to host some sort of community events, be it in their guild or on the forums/server.

However, as you pointed out, Keg Brawl would face more problems with player fragmentation, et al. This might explain why ArenaNet doesn’t have any other team activities in the rotation and why Keg brawl got the short end of the stick.

Minigame should have there old special NPCs to join them AND Minigames should be addet to PVP Browser in the mists (the guy for hotjoin matches) with a extra tab for FUN-Games
most pvp players dont even know there are this games or where to find them

the daily rotation should stay in Lionsarch like it is now

Romek.4201:

most pvp players dont even know there are this games or where to find them

the daily rotation should stay in Lionsarch like it is now

I agree that GW2 is quite overwhelming for most players and it’s hard to find everything there is. I was embarrased when I didn’t know where the mini-game npc is although I played the game since release.

I love the new lfg-system, but here’s the same problem as there was with the first lfg-system: it’s hard to make out if you’re a new player. At least Anet thought on multiple ways to open the lfg-tool (when you enter a dungeon, for example).

A suggestion from me: make it possible to open the lfg tool, the minigames, and all the other things in the game via the daily achievement tab: you look at your dailies, click on daily-activity and now the mini-games open up and you’re ready to play. Or open the lfg-tool by clicking on the daily-dungeon achievement.