Guild Wars 2

Hello ANet and fellow Players:

I am writing this because I am finding more an more people like myself that are tired of the zerg mentality adopted for Guild Wars 2 content releases.

I understand the game is called “Guild Wars”, frankly though the Guild content though is quite lacking in order to show a sense of membership. Guild Halls for example where guild members can gather privately. Custom armor and Weapons is another. Being able to craft up to lvl 500 in armors and weapons, you would think that the interface would allow crafters to customize the looks of the armor including color schemes to let the Player’s create some cool looking armor and weapons instead of relying on company artists (which have not really created anything WOW.)

Though about my title of this post. A good number of current and former Players are getting tired of the Zerg content published for Guild Wars 2. This would be content that can only be accomplished with a LARGE group of people co-ordinating the event to get a few measly rewards and/or titles. This may not be the case on every server, I don’t know that, but some servers have very low numbers and this need for 50-100 people never happen on low server times when some of us play because of time zone or real life jobs.

When the game was approaching release, the developers kept telling us that the game can be completed with or without a group of people allowing those that like to play solo a chance to get all the way through the game. All except of course the last part of the personal story where you have to group with 4 people for Zaitan. Then the game was released and slowly but surely as content was added, it became more about running around with a large group of unknowns in order to kill some boss(s) with an exorbitant amount of health and some massive damage skills that you could never learn, no matter how many times you faced it and conquered it.

Barring any jumping puzzles, there have been VERY little content where we are permitted to be a HERO on our own again. Where is the self satisfaction of being able to accomplish anything on your own? Personal instances where you either ran through solo or with NPC’s and completed something without the aid of 10’s or 100 other people. Where is the content where I feel like a hero instead of a soldier? Where I feel I accomplished something because I made a difference. That does not exist now because you have people in zerg content that either stand by and hit something a few times or die rather quickly and wait for the remaining zerg to accomplish what they could not on their own. Perhaps in the current zerg content, you should force waypointing if dead for 2 minutes and change the reward and experience gained to more reflect the amount of active skill useage during the event / battle.

I think ANet should focus more upon solo and small group content soon, or they will be losing a lot more regular players like me who are getting tired of not being able to feel like a HERO because events / battles are not soloable.

So very tired of Zerging as well. I miss the more restrained content. I don’t mind adventuring with people who just happen to be there, in fact I find that tends to be the most fun usually. But the massive planning required for over a hundred people is so tiring. Tower of Nightmares even you just had to wait for the next big group to come through because it was basically impossible solo. (cue people coming in talling everyone who couldn’t solo Tower of Nightmares n00bs). Also, that’s another problem of the Zerging, it’s causing a large rift amongst “hardcore” players, “casual” players, and people who are not here for the combat but story or exploration. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people complain or want to have their own instance because “THEY DON”T KNOW WHEN TO DODGE, CAN WE JUST GET RIG OF THEM?"

Another problem is the leveled content, everything is level 80… which when soloing is the exact opposite of fun most of the time in zerg heavy maps.

I for one am tired of zerging because it’s just not fun. My skills don’t matter in a zerg. Who cares who used what when… just press 1 and wait for it to die. And my pc can’t handle massive zergs anyway so my experience of content has ended up in becoming many low rendered players hammering with their weapons in pajamas.

I can’t stand zerging, but in all fairness anet has released a load of content that was not intended to be zerged, but instead of playing to beat the content what did everyone do? Stacked on a commander, because “kitten the content, if we upscale these events we get more loots”. Yawn.
I wouldn’t be surprised if anet had been watching the way we played over the past year and just went, “kitten it, they’re going to zerg it anyway why bother”

The thing is that when ArenaNet makes world events hard, people complain that their efforts get ruined by “noobs who barge in and don’t know how to dodge”, and when ArenaNet makes their world easier, the same people go “OMG when will the zerg stop!?!!”

There is no easy solution to “break the zerg.” What it would take is content where people would naturally split and do different things based on their preference, but this isn’t going to happen as long as the only viable role is DPS. As a tank player in other MMOs I would LOOOOVE to pick a more defense- and support-oriented role on my warrior in GW2 when I PvE, but I’m just not helping when I do.

I asked it before and I’ll ask it again: can we at least get an explanation on why the DPS/control/support thing never happened and if we can expect to ever get that? Tell me if I’m wrong but I don’t remember reading anything about that, and I honestly believe that this game could totally be the king of MMO if it did its hardcore group PvE right.

I agree and disagree on the necessity of a trinity. My meaning is there will always be a need for roles to be filled, Having everyone just being a jack of all trades class makes for confusion and often failure in most casual groups. At the same time though those roles being forced onto certain classes such as in WoW limits the variety a group can have.

In my opinion having those roles in the game but allowing them to be filled by any class if spec’d properly would make for some interesting and fun groups. Yllowing casual players to play any role they want and hardcore players to search and maximize on which classes fit which roles in a given instance.

I think the mentality of the average zerg warrior is as such:

1. It’s easier to follow the leader: I don’t have to take on the mantle of being in-charge because it’s too time-consuming to co-ordinate and also because I’m afraid if I lead and my tactics fail, I’m at fault.

2. You’re less likely to die: When an angry boss (or mob) has waves of potential victims to pick from, it’s less likely to target me. So, the more the merrier.

3. Zerging is fun: Running around slaughtering Aetherblades is all fine and dandy, but when a whole bunch of people are banding together, slinging spells and swinging swords, now that’s a party!

Zerging in of itself is a legitimate tactic. But when repeated ad nauseum, you get the posts above.

Because history has proven that the river is likely to flow the smoothest course, it’s up to ANet to come up with innovative boss mechanics to (forcefully) break up the mob of people and endure the brunt of complaints from the majority of the average-zerg-warrior.

So tired of Zergs Fests too, it’s boring, so boring that i just leave my room, take some coffee just to be awake, and when it’s too much i just put something and AFK for hours playing another game or doing other stuff, i’m sure i’m not the only guy that did that, i’m sorry Anet but the particles and lights effects are just too much.
Anyway after Tuesday they said they’re gonna take a break, so as I, other games came out recently such as Dark Souls 2 and Titanfall, and i’m not sure if i’m ever going to return to GW2 again after that, so it’s the right time to explore other worlds.

Expansion time please.

Need I say more?

Jeff.4680:

Expansion time please.

Need I say more?

What makes you think an expansion would stop the Zerg content production? ANet has said that they enjoy this kind of content…it’s also cheap to produce. Pretty sure that is what we are going to see again and again for the next year.

MokahTGS.7850:

Jeff.4680:

Expansion time please.

Need I say more?

…it’s also cheap to produce.

Clearly. Considering the quality of story/content so far.

Zerging happens because people want the path of least resistance. Gw2 had the bright idea of removing mob tagging and reward everyone participating in a fight. Conceptually its a great idea, players suddenly become friends rather then competitors but that also means now players are free to group up and overwhelm content and grouping up becomes the path of least resistance. If i fight against a champion with 2 other people, I need to be attentive, buff, regen, res, dodge… all that becomes critical if you want to win the fight. Join a group of 100 players and that 1 champion becomes 5 and all I have to do is autoattack and soon those 5 will be dead. 5 times the reward for less effort.

People claim to hate zergs but yet they keep joining them because it seems reward trumps enjoyment and I dont think there is anything anet can do to avoid that. (short of re-introducing mob tagging which I hope they didnt do)

Except for this LS finale like ShibVicious most of the releases were designed with an anti-zerg mentality. Zerg and you will fail the content. This last release was zerg centric because well story pretty much demanded it! Its an assault and an assault is about numbers and strength after all. But other releases were not. Just look at zone chat, what would you see people saying in zone chat? Group up at red like you see now? nope people would urge others to split up cause that was the way to success not group into a zerg.

Simply speaking Zerg is not something Anet advocate, its what people do because this game unlike others lets them and for some wierd reason people seem to need to be forced to avoid something they claim to hate!

I agree, the never ending zerg content is what has been driving me out of this game. Anet has blown it as far as I am concerned, they took a game called Guild Wars and turned it into server wars. The only guild content has been the one update that gave us guild puzzles, bounties,…, before and after that it has been nothing. The revamping of the world bosses was the perfect opportunity to make some good guild content (by making them instanced). Keep the old model in the world and do a 2.0 version that is instanced and designed for guilds/organized groups. If everything in this game is being designed around the whole server is doing it, then why even put a guild interface in the game.

The lack of trinity (even their own trinity is broken) has also hurt things and promoted the whole zerker mentality of speed runs through broken dungeons. They seemed to have wanted to be different without thinking it through. Dont like the old trinity system and want to make a new one (dps, support, control) then plan out how you can make each one viable. Instead we have a control system that just slows mobs down, a support sytem that is only about buffing players enough to dps down the boss quicker, and a dps system that only promotes having cat like reflexes and going zerker. What I would have done is make control actually control stuff and have boss fights have other mechanics than just spam 2-3 different AoEs. Make stuff like traps actually lock mobs down for a certain length of time (like 10-30 sec not the 2-3 it is now), making it so you need to cc an add while you finish off the boss. Also allow tank spec to mean more and actually have a chance to survive some hits by bosses, while holding agro better.

I can understand the zerging type content, and would like a break from it myself. On one hand it has created some really interesting content, like the marionette. I praise Anet for that event by requiring an almost full map to complete it, and also individual skill from players as well. I’d like more solo type content though, or small group, for a time at least.

As for your comments on being the HERO, I agree and disagree. I like being the person who acts like a hero from time to time, but I’m used to, and I think many other people are used to, taking it too far. Too often in games we as players are the heroes of EVERYTHING. I find it kind of sickening to be the hero of every single incident that happens in the game, and I love playing it from the perspective of a realistic character, that won’t always be present during some things, or won’t always take the credit for every challenge completed. It gives NPCs some character when they are not all bowing before you, and instead have shown some competence themselves.