Guild Wars 2

If you want to play solo, stick to games like Fallout or Skyrim.

This is an MMO, it’s meant to be multi-player.

I really have no problem with people playing an MMO just for the solo content, but I still don’t understand what solo content you guys want but haven’t received. Help me to understand this for real please, because as far as I can see you’re getting more solo content than any other MMO I’m familiar with and I’m familiar with MANY. They’re adding adventures kitten – the mother of all repeatable solo content. You’ve got the Living Story, which is legitimately a solo narrative experience unlike what’s offered in almost any other MMO. It just seems like you guys are complaining that you aren’t getting enough solo content but your reasoning isn’t “here’s what we wanted but didn’t get”, but rather “here’s what they added for social play, now I’ll conveniently ignore all of the content that is solo to make it look like I’m being slighted”.

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

I really have no problem with people playing an MMO just for the solo content, but I still don’t understand what solo content you guys want but haven’t received. Help me to understand this for real please, because as far as I can see you’re getting more solo content than any other MMO I’m familiar with and I’m familiar with MANY. They’re adding adventures kitten – the mother of all repeatable solo content. You’ve got the Living Story, which is legitimately a solo narrative experience unlike what’s offered in almost any other MMO. It just seems like you guys are complaining that you aren’t getting enough solo content but your reasoning isn’t “here’s what we wanted but didn’t get”, but rather “here’s what they added for social play, now I’ll conveniently ignore all of the content that is solo to make it look like I’m being slighted”.

I’m pretty content with where it’s at right now, myself. The only thing that’s creeping up on me in annoyance is the thought that, to my understanding, I basically won’t be able to do guild anything anymore on my own. I didn’t do a lot as it is (mostly just collected influence and got a few upgrades) but it’s sounding like even that will be out of reach for me now. (I know I know, here comes the parade of people saying that guilds are for groups.)

I’m just being honest.

Labjax.2465:

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

I really have no problem with people playing an MMO just for the solo content, but I still don’t understand what solo content you guys want but haven’t received. Help me to understand this for real please, because as far as I can see you’re getting more solo content than any other MMO I’m familiar with and I’m familiar with MANY. They’re adding adventures kitten – the mother of all repeatable solo content. You’ve got the Living Story, which is legitimately a solo narrative experience unlike what’s offered in almost any other MMO. It just seems like you guys are complaining that you aren’t getting enough solo content but your reasoning isn’t “here’s what we wanted but didn’t get”, but rather “here’s what they added for social play, now I’ll conveniently ignore all of the content that is solo to make it look like I’m being slighted”.

I’m pretty content with where it’s at right now, myself. The only thing that’s creeping up on me in annoyance is the thought that, to my understanding, I basically won’t be able to do guild anything anymore on my own. I didn’t do a lot as it is (mostly just collected influence and got a few upgrades) but it’s sounding like even that will be out of reach for me now. (I know I know, here comes the parade of people saying that guilds are for groups.)

I’m just being honest.

Totally understand. I have no interest in joining a guild that can do guild content, BUT I very much enjoyed being able to occasionally participate in that content anyway because a guild happened to be doing it while I was in the vicinity. Now that’s out of the question. If you’re not part of that guild, or have a specific invite to the event, you do not get to participate, at all.

Demented Yak.6105:

How do you even play solo?

What do you do once you’ve completed the map and the story?

PvP and WvW.

Solo q and solo roam

I get that you do not like to interact with other player in game. What I do not get is why you think Anet should spend more time to develop another content for single player, like yourself, in their mmo game product. You chose to purchase their product, they did not advertise this game as a single player game. If I am a single player, I would be happy that this game provides more than what they advertise.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Ghost Bear.5280:

xadine.7069:

I agree, BUT GW1 was NOT an MMO…

Yes it was. It was non traditional, but definitely a Massively Multiplayer Online game.

No, Guild Wars was an Online game with Minor Multiplayer capability and Massively Multiplayer Graphically Intense Chat Rooms.

Arenanet specifically marketed GW1 as a Competitive/Cooperative Online RPG. They were very explicit in early marketing about using the term “CORPG” and that they were not building an MMO, and didn’t want GW1 to be an MMO.

They were also very explicit in early GW2 interviews and marketing that one of the main reasons they made GW2 was because they now felt they wanted to make an MMO, and the entire concept was not compatible with the GW1 systems as they were.

GW2 owes a lot of its systemic differences, better or worse, to the fact that they intended to build it as a different type of game than GW1. They thought they could “fix” the MMO genre in a lot of ways. Some of those ways worked, some did not. Some are still being iterated and experimented on.

They learned lot in the last three years about where limits have to be placed, where accessibility conflicts with fun, how players do and no not like to experience their vision of an ever-evolving world story, and most importantly that the number of players who want reasons to make and play with friends are far higher when you market the game as a game you play with friends, and a game that makes it easier to make friends through its cooperative nature than any other MMO on the market.

I play MMO as solo player even if I always hear that MMO are for multi-players. I still find the progression, open world and general gameplay more attractive than one person RPG.
In HoT we still have 3 new zones and quite some exploration to do. We also have the new revenant profession to level. Maybe I’ll try some fractals since the first levels will be easier.
But yes, once all of this is done, I will probably move to another game. $50 for a good 3 or 4 months worth of play is still a very good bargain.

Cyninja.2954:

I’m not sure this is correct. Many parts about the story and its length have not been unveiled.

Also just because certain types of content draw a lot of attention does not mean they are the dominant part of the expansion. The main focus of HoT will be:

- the 4 new HoT maps. Expect most of the new pve activities and achievements to be rooted here
- the change of the reward system in the old world to encourage more maps to get played besides silver wastes and dry top. Maps where you can run around solo and complete events (old events but still)
- full new set of living story with Season 3 comming out at a later point
- new mastery system to progress on

I’d wait and see how thigns pan out. The buzz currently about raiding is only due to its link to legendary armor crafting. If that aspect wasn’t unique to raiding (and no one says it will remain that way) people would care way less.

I’m interested in this, what do you mean by this? if you do events in any map you get silverwaste/drytop style rewards now, or?

edit: oh wait, this is the map bonus rewards; how do these work, can you run out of them if you do too many events in one area?

Solo contents help pass the time when you don’t find a group for the specific multiplayer content you’re looking for, or simply when you have tight schedule and you can’t stay logged for too long (so making a party would be pointless because you’ll leave midway).

That said, they’ve talked about contents that will be specifically solo, with leaderboard to compare, at the end, your performance with others (it’s not the living story).
It’s called the Adventures.

Adventures

• Repeatable, on-demand PvE challenges for max level players, closely tied to the new mastery system
• Players can compete with each other through leaderboards for each adventure
• Examples of an adventure could be killing enough vines with a flamethrower within a limited amount of time

On the paper, it doesn’t look that enticing (especially the third point) but maybe that’s just the tip of it.
Also, the Adventure Box was designed as a solo adventure. It would be great to have it back.

Imagine somewhere in Mist there is an island occupied by Champions from all over Tyria where you can solo them all to earn a title Champion Slayer. Does it sound cool?

It’s no secret that ANet’s vision for GW2 has been about large-scale content involving a lot of players. This was stated in the very first announcement that they were abandoning the GW model to make Gw2. That said, much of the core game represents a solo player’s ideal. One can level from 2-80 alone, never really needing anyone else. In some ways, GW2 core was/is more solo-friendly than most MMO’s.

Whether the HoT experience will be similar remains to be seen. On the face of it, both Dry Top and Silverwastes represent maps which require players to work together, whether they want to or not. If one is in a map where players are scarce, or not working on the map goals, the gameplay is unrewarding in both a fulfillment and a virtual rewards sense. Will HoT maps be like DT/SW? I am not sure, though I suspect they will.

What’s also indisputable is that playing solo does not lead to the best virtual rewards. If you’re uninterested in large-scale herds rampaging along at world bosses, the segregated large herds in SW//DT, WvW PvD or EotM, don’t expect anything much in thew way of rewards, for all that soloing a group event in a mid-level zone is actually more difficult. Map rewards may address this to a greater or a lesser extent.

Some posters remark that players who want to solo should not play MMO’s. Unfortunately for them, that’s not the way of things in the industry. Both Rift and Wildstar discovered to their detriment that solo players left their games in droves, to the point that TW introduced content for solo and very small group play and CS talked about it.

Whether HoT will offer more to solo players than a few small maps, and maybe adventures, remains to be seen. If it doesn’t, Anet risks losing that demographic. Can they afford to? None of us can say. Sure, they’ve still got core, but solo players can get burnt on the same-old same-old as well as anyone else.

I guess we’ll find out down the road. Cheers.

Zach.2618:

Solid Gold.9310:

johnsheldon.4592:

I have been playing guild wars since the first game came off the line. The one thing I always love about the game was the ability to play solo. The problem I have with what anet has been doing lately is that they seem to have forgotten that some people do not have any interest in dungeons or raids or pvp. that’s seems to be all they are concentrating on in heart of thorns. I mean us solo players paid the same price for our game and we don’t seem to be getting the same game experience for our money. If I’m wrong please anet tell me where I’m wrong.

Yup I play solo as well, have done from the start.

I also feel we, as solo players will be excluded from some of the new content.

There are of course the typical " tough you play solo, it’s a multiplayer game, make friends" yada yada yada.

Maybe I should start a “solo” players guild.

But if you start a ‘solo’ players guild it wouldn’t be very solo anymore lol unless ofc your guild doesn’t do anything besides act as a name rosterXD

Well I started a (Solo) Guild, I seem to be the only member just now, but hey ho early day’s yet. (There’s no pressure to do guild stuff or even talk to each other).

Anyway the reason I play mainly solo…………

I have mainly played multiplayer games (I could make a long list, mainly MMO’s, and FPS games) since the start of dial up (For those of you that remember that), I like having players around that are not just NPC’S, real players are unpredictable there’s no telling what they might do.

Playing solo doesn’t mean I haven’t got any friends, or that I don’t sometimes create a party, join a party or ask for help with something.

I have been in a couple of guilds (I get plenty of invites), but they turned out to be pretty meh ! So I just ignore them now.

Yeah of course I like (Some) single player games, Fallout 3 I bought when it first came out, just started playing it to get hyped up for Fallout 4, or things like Skyrim and the like.

Single player games are OK, for a couple of hours at a time, then it’s back to GW2 at the moment.

Whatever you choose to do, and the way you choose to play, just have fun.

Look out for my Guild tag (Solo).

I’m also a “solo” PVE player. I’m new to GW2 but I’m already developing the same pattern of play that I enjoyed so much in other games, including GW1 all those years ago.

I put “solo” in quotes because I still interact with other players but not usually on a formal “join the party, do the thing” basis. I love the casual cooperation that these type of games bring. Most of the time I’m focussing on my own targets, wandering around chasing map completion or something but if I happen across an event I join in. If I find a dead player I’ll rez them (actually I rez NPCs too because.. XP), if someone is fighting a hero challenge I’ll help them, even if I’ve already completed that challenge, and I’ve had others help me in the same way. One day I was struggling to find a way up to a Vista and a passing player hopped up to a ledge and said “jump here”. I was pleased to be able to do the same for another player at a different Vista a few days later.

This morning I was seeking a 4th event for the daily and I stumbled across a location with the highest concentration of players I have yet seen (maybe 50 people?). They were all just standing around, waiting. Then… Fire Elemental! Brief fight, big chast, job done.

I’ve never really enjoyed dungeons and raids, especially the uber level ones, so I mostly don’t need to get involved in those “proper” parties. I have done it in other games, but it just doesn’t satisfy me. So for me the pleasure is in that casual mostly-solo-but-with-a-bit-of-informal-interaction vibe (the personal story instances actually feel a bit lonely!)

When I have done everything I think I can reasonably do with one toon, I’ll do it all again on another. Then I’ll probably come to the forum and complain that I have nothing to do!

As for HoT, we should wait and see how it shapes up before being too upset about solo-able content. I’m looking forawrd to gliding….

Doug Whisper.2465:

Imagine somewhere in Mist there is an island occupied by Champions from all over Tyria where you can solo them all to earn a title Champion Slayer. Does it sound cool?

champion slayer…. is earned by 1000 slain pvp foes in ranked matches.