Guild Wars 2

I have been playing since beta, and I love the game. I currently have an 80 Guardian, 60 thief, 50 Engineer, Mesmer and Necro in the 30’s. I cut my teeth in MMO’s with EQ1 and then picked up EQ2 for a while. I am continually impressed with the advances that came out of WoW and trying to break the mold that led to GW2.

I enjoyed grouping in EQ, and loved playing with my friends and making new ones. That is the only thing I feel the older games had better, that people played together. It is great that you CAN solo, but that led to most people solo’ing, and not grouping. I am not talking about dungeons, I mean when out experiencing the world that GW2 built for us. I know people can work on the same heart or event, but that consists of people fighting the same monsters near each other, but no talking, no coordination. Zergs are just larger versions of this.

I am in a great guild and don’t have much trouble getting into dungeons or events, what I would like is for making friends in a pick up group (pug) by facing challenges together.

Am I missing something? Are there groups forming to do all the hearts of a zone and events and making friends, and I am just not in the loop? I have previously made suggestions that players in groups 3-5 get scaling magic find or something to reward players for grouping, receiving very little response.

The only time I regularly see groups forming in world pve is in orr events. It’s much easier to get tags on lots of mobs in a group than when everyone is solo.

Otherwise I almost automatically decline random party invites.

I have been in those groups, they are not what I am talking about, you don’t have time to talk to anyone when doing those, and the groups fall apart once the event is over. I guess karma/event farming where a group stays together roaming from event to event is the closest thing I am thinking of.

Just my opinion but there should be no incentives for grouping.

Most people play solo because they prefer to play solo. If you’re looking for players to level with try the Operation Union thread.

When I used to do the dragon hunts, people would always want to group up because it supposedly gave better drops from the chest. I don’t know how much validity this statement has.
But there really is no incentive to being in a group, except for hanging with friends in the same zone, just helping each other out.

While leveling I solo’ed though all the PvE content. At that time, just after game launch, there were many players doing the same, so almost every map event had a zerg.

If there was a difficult poi or skill point you needed, just wait a few minutes and a couple of players would come by and you do it together. There was never a need to party.

These days, it is far different. You are lucky to find 5 players on a low or mid level map. So, I think parting-up is more necessary now to complete PvE content, particularly for the squishier classes.

This is really the one thing I find disappointing about GW2, I’m more used to MUDs where most players are frequently chatting and building relationships and discussing ideas, to say that this is guildwars there is very little focus on the guild and building community or relationships with other players.

Even in WOW / ROM / similar chat among guildees is far more prevalent than here. In my active and good guild 50+ players online at any time theres rarely more than 2-3 players who ever use guild chat.
I therefore dont feel I know more than a small handful of other players in the game, and none of them well enough to go to for advice or to bounce ideas off.

If you want random people to join up with you I’d say the most important thing is to speak to them first.

I often get random requests to join a party when I’m doing PVE, especially in lower level areas, and I always ignore them. I have no idea who this person is or what they’re actually asking. Do they want my help? Do they want me to just follow them around doing the same events? Do they want to follow me? Are they expecting me to run them through something or other? Do they just want to be in a party while we both do separate things?

On the other hand if people start a conversation in map chat I’ll often reply and that has lead to forming a party for certain things. Or just going and doing the same things in the same place(s) without bothering with a party.

Thraxas.6354:

This is really the one thing I find disappointing about GW2, I’m more used to MUDs where most players are frequently chatting and building relationships and discussing ideas, to say that this is guildwars there is very little focus on the guild and building community or relationships with other players.

Even in WOW / ROM / similar chat among guildees is far more prevalent than here. In my active and good guild 50+ players online at any time theres rarely more than 2-3 players who ever use guild chat.
I therefore dont feel I know more than a small handful of other players in the game, and none of them well enough to go to for advice or to bounce ideas off.

I would say this is an issue with your guild (regardless of how good it is in other respects) rather than the game. I’m in a guild that normally has about 20 people online at peak times and there’s almost always a conversation going on in guild chat. Which is in addition to whatever might be going on over Vent (I don’t have Vent but I know the guild uses it.)

Personally I really like the way guilds are handled in this game (aside from a lack of GvG). Guilds aren’t given specific functions, or activities to do together so it’s entirely up to the players to decide what they want to do.

I’m in the same boat as the original post.

Finding people to do PvE stuff can be a pain. People only want to group for dungeons , not because it’s fun but because they want to farm rewards. Grouping with random people to do a dungeon is usually a bad move as they’re just there for their farming and have no interest in teamwork.

Dungeons are a drudgery unless you have a maxed-out character and/or a very good leader.

Several areas in PvE are impossible without a group. Some real game design issues there.

This is primarily a competitive game with the PvE cheaply tacked on.

One tip people may have missed: Open Contacts, right click on your name and you can set your status to blue- Looking For Group, which puts a blue pair of binoculars next to your avatar tat other players can see.

I just think this game needs a better player search tool. We dont need something automatic like WoW had. But I really liked the tool City of Heroes had.

Ask. Click your “say” option on your chat board and talk to the people around you. You might be surprised.