Guild Wars 2

My guild came to GW2 with the promise of a new direction for MMOs. While we loved leveling and PVP in the game, we felt lost after we all reached max level. We did some WvW and started on new toons, but ultimately, without things to do as a guild that challenged us, we eventually started playing other games again (Rift, SWTOR and WoW) to find that guild-based challenge.

We were so excited to hear that GW2 would finally have the guild-based endgame we’re looking for. Only to find out that it’s behind a rather large paywall and required large numbers to complete.

This is fine for large guilds that have been around since launch that can afford that. But what about us looking for a good reason to return to the game? We’d have to either give up our identity and join another guild and do challenges under their tag, defeating the purpose of our guild in the first place or we’d have to recruit like crazy and farm a lot of content that we’re not really interested in farming just to do progression as a guild together.

It’s very, very prohibitive to guilds in our situation. It’s just not worth the time/effort to come back. It caters to the large established guilds not ones that want to return and rebuilt as a result of this launch.

LoreChief.8391:

“many of us who enjoy that type of gameplay would make GW2 their main MMO and fully support this game monetarily if there was coordinated instance dungeons with large group sizes”.

So… you want to take a lot of people, to do coordinated events, most likely both challenging and rewarding. HMMM… where could we find in game, something just like that? I’d ask my guild but most of them are in WvW right now, doing.. I don’t know.. dancing competitions or something, I’m sure.

On a more serious note, games like WoW and Rift have entire teams dedicated to creating raids over multiple months, and even then a lot of them turn into outdated flops (regardless of the tiered itemization). The teams we have for ANet are dedicated to doing so much more than creating whats essentially a dungeon for 25+ players. If you wanted that, then they might as well just take something like AC, increase the boss health by 500%, and allow you to take 25 people in (good luck coordinating that with our lack of official LFG system!)

“I don’t feel like the message is being received.” You didn’t get your personalized letter of receipt sent in decorative envelope directly to your personal mailing address? You know, the one with the gold (A) stamp made of filigree wax sealing? I’m sure if you start another post and make that you first comment, they’ll get right on that.

You’re asking for something that’s completely unrelated to the game. They never said “we promise large scale raids like all the other games have, or even with our special ANet sauce on them!”. Asking for that is no different than asking for first-person-shooting interfaces for ranged classes & slot machines. That’s just not part of this games big, or little picture.

“…would make GW2 their main MMO and fully support this game monetarily…” – You have to at least accept that at this point, with so many people playing the game, and it’s growing population, that ANet has captured their target audience, right? That does not include dungeon-crawling raiders, mind you. They are not out to take another games demographic, and cater it to them just to get their money. They’ll lose out on so much more, with the population we have, of players that don’t want to spend 7+ hours yelling at each other over vent/mumble to stand out of fire. The second ANet says “we’re going to have raiding!” is the same second that most of the game population says “this is where dev time is going now? Guess I’m out.” Not that it matters, because they aren’t here to constantly entice subscription fees with tiny little dribbles of patch notes that say “oh we finally increased the damage on that one rogue skill by a .05 coefficient”.

THIS. IS. NOT. THAT. GAME.

“Don’t allow your fears of other game design to sway you. Guild Wars 2 rewrote the book on every aspect of an MMO, we trust that raiding wouldn’t be much different.” – Yes, GW2 rewrote raiding too, rewrote it right out of the story, because it doesn’t belong in this game.

Sincerely,
-A Sincerely Sarcastic Kitten

Honestly, no need to be like that. We’re trying to offer up intelligent conversation on the topic. If you have valid points to bring up, please do so without the sarcasm and snark.

That being said, if raiding wont ever happen in this game, we’ll gladly stay with other games that do provide it. However, that can’t be a good attitude to take with the game. “If you don’t like it, go away” is exactly the type of attitude that GW2 is trying to avoid.

If the content isn’t required to get the best items in game, and it doesn’t interfere with your gameplay in any way, why the hate?

As for WvW, that’s good for your guild. My guild (and many other guilds) aren’t PVP guilds and prefer to do PVE. So instanced large group dungeons that provide nothing special outside of what you get in 5 man content is what we want.

It’s not much, but people just hate on the idea just because we call it a “raid”

(Reposted from my locked thread)

Let me begin by saying I love this game. Really, really love it. It’s almost everything I could ask for in an MMO and would love to keep playing it, and likely will from time to time.

I know this will likely get lots of GW and GW2 purists angry and yelling at me about how I’m missing the point or that my opinion is wrong, etc etc. So, you can be assured that those posts that do not offer any kind of intelligent discussion will be promptly ignored.

This game has nearly everything. What it does not have is real end-game content for guilds. It has 5 man content and open world content, but it has no raids. And while I appreciate the reasons that AN chose not to include raids, but I think the logic is flawed. They don’t want an end-game grind. No endless treadmill of grinding for gear. However, we already have this. There’s a gear-grind in getting ascended gear in fractals. There’s a gear grind in getting tokens for dungeon sets, etc.

Why couldn’t there be 10, 20 or 25 man dungeons with the same philosophy as the above? Gear doesn’t have to be better, so there’s no other reason other than to get tokens for nice looking gear.

Most guilds I have ever been with prefer the content over the gear. Gear is a way to get to better content in other games. GW2 is unique that it doesn’t have to be that way. All raids would be relevant and content challenging. There could even be a Story Mode and Explorable modes allowing most everyone access to the dungeons, like 5 man content.

ArenaNet seems to be willing to build their game for all types of players but the Raider. While we may not be popular with a lot of the die-hard Guild Wars 2 fans who want to keep the WoW elitists out, but I think with the current setup of dungeons being extended to larger group types, I think that the GW2 fans could see some pretty incredible content.

As it stands right now, there’s nothing aside from a WvW and open world zerging on Orr for guilds to organize to do together, above 5 players. And that’s very sad.
All of this is reasons why many of my friends from other MMOs stopped playing after 80. There’s only so many explorable dungeons with a few friends to do, only so many times you can level characters or do PVP (if you’re not a hard core PVPer) before the post-leveling experience gets stale.

I hope that AN would consider expanding the game to include larger group content in the future. Without the treadmill they see in other end game content, but all the wonderful content I know AN is able to put out.

Guild Wars 2 has nothing for guilds to do outside of WvW. Which is sad, because the guild system in this game has a lot of potential that has just gone to waste. Considering the name, I fully expected being in a top tier guild would mean something in the end. Ends up, if you’re not PVP or just a guild with a mass of warm bodies moving in and out of it, it’s not worth it.

There’s no "gel" that sticks a guild together. No challenge to overcome that creates that lasting bond between yourself and your guildmates. Some of my best friends and business partners I met through raiding in other games. We bonded over the success of our guild in challenging content.

The content alone is one thing this game really lacks outside of zergs or 5 man groups. That content is what brings people together. Without it, the game is missing a critical piece to the MMO puzzle.

To have a successful MMO, you need:

1. Compelling "Leveling" process. This doesn’t have to mean levels, but the process of gaining in strength over time needs to keep players interested. Guild Wars 2 has this.

2. You need to have PVP that offers players a challenge against other players and rewards skill and strategy. Again, Guild Wars 2 has this.

3. You must have fun meta-game events. Things to do in the meantime between content. Keg-Brawl, holiday events, Dynamic Events, etc. Things that allow smaller groups to do on the fly without much effort that offer time-killers outside of normal content. Guild Wars does this well.

4. Challenging content to do with close friends or meet new people. Most games have this in the way of Dungeons. You and 3-4 other players get together to challenge these dungeons and get some kind of reward for doing so. Again, GW2 does this well enough. While I think the reward vs. challenge is off a bit, mostly due to one-shot mechanics, this game does have it and it does offer some hard challenges.

5. Crafting system that keeps people interested. Not much to say on this, but Guild Wars Excels in this area too.

6. Collection and Exploration. Lots of areas to discover and collect item from.

7. Last but not least, content that brings a guild together. A reason for guilds to work together. It’s the reason why many people play an MMO. The social aspect of it, and nothing does this like group content that requires communication, coordination and precise execution with your guild. Sadly, this just doesn’t exist in this game. There’s nothing beyond 5 players in PVE that isn’t solved simply by throwing more bodies at the events. Even if they were designed to be done in a way that required some kind of skill, more bodies just makes it a lol-fest. If you die, you’ll get rezzed. If you see someone die, you rez them. No big.

Seriously though, this game is missing a major element of what makes entire guilds move to a game.

Guilds who challenge content will challenge developers to design better events and better dungeons with more interesting mechanics and mechanics that are challenging, not because they’re going to kill out outright, but because they’re hard to do right. They will challenge the developers to ensure that abilities are tuned and fixed for PVE.

No one challenges the developers more than PVE Raid guilds and PVP guilds. The process of eeking out every drop of performance from your toon demands that abilities are balanced and functional. This benefits everyone.

Raids don’t have to be about the grind. We just want ArenaNet’s version of it. Weapon Skins, tokens, etc are fine.

I’ve said this before, but I don’t feel the message is being received.

Everyone says “If raiding is brought into the game, it’ll force the game into tiered progression and raiders will get the best gear!” etc etc etc. Or that “It’ll be just like it is in other games!”

I can understand these fears. But let’s just get this out there in the opening post; It doesn’t need to be that way.

Guild Wars 2 breaks the common perceptions in many aspects of an MMO. It does things differently than other MMOs in almost every aspect of the game. So, the fear that Raiding would be like it is in other games is a fear people should quickly put to rest. ArenaNet would likely put their own twist on things. Making raiding in GW2 a different animal than it is in WoW, Rift, EQ, etc.

ArenaNet has gone out of it’s way to try to make gear accessible for everyone, from crafters to dungeon crawlers. While Ascended gear is only Fractals at the moment, they’ve said from the launch of Fractals that it would make Ascended gear elsewhere in the game as well. Raiding would likely be no different in terms of rewards than a normal explorable or fractal rewards.

So, many of you who are likely new to this topic on the forums will ask “Why do we need it in the game?”

The answer is: You don’t need it. But many of us who enjoy that type of gameplay would make GW2 their main MMO and fully support this game monetarily if there was coordinated instanced dungeons with large group sizes (aka Raid content).

If raid content is added, will this ruin you game? Presumably No. We trust that ArenaNet would be able to introduce this content without it harming the play style others have grown accustomed to.

Don’t allow your fears of other game design sway you. Guild Wars 2 rewrote the book on every aspect of an MMO, we trust that raiding wouldn’t be much different.

xCrusadentx.2784:

If you’re on the side that views fractals and dungeons as grind, then you should see why raids aren’t popular; we don’t need any more grind then we already have to deal with.

Here’s the thing, the gear from a raid wouldn’t be any different statwise than you would get from a fractal. Hell, it could just be dungeon sets, leaving the “best” gear in fractals.

Honestly, it’s about the challenge and the content, not the grind. Every person I’ve seen in here who hate the idea of raiding in GW2 have quoted “grind” as the main issue. Well, I’m certain we don’t have to have it that way. Content driven dungeons are completely viable for this game.

My guild would make GW2 their main game if we could raid in it. As it stands right now, there’s just nothing to do for a PVE guild to do as a guild. It’s really sad that GW2 is largely incomplete by missing out on this opportunity to be a top-end game that attracts MMO players of all types, encourages a positive change to the genre and builds a community.

Let me begin by saying I love this game. Really, really love it. It’s almost everything I could ask for in an MMO and would love to keep playing it, and likely will from time to time.

I know this will likely get lots of GW and GW2 purists angry and yelling at me about how I’m missing the point or that my opinion is wrong, etc etc. So, you can be assured that those posts that do not offer any kind of intelligent discussion will be promptly ignored.

This game has nearly everything. What it does not have is real end-game content for guilds. It has 5 man content and open world content, but it has no raids. And while I appreciate the reasons that AN chose not to include raids, but I think the logic is flawed. They don’t want an end-game grind. No endless treadmill of grinding for gear. However, we already have this. There’s a gear-grind in getting ascended gear in fractals. There’s a gear grind in getting tokens for dungeon sets, etc.

Why couldn’t there be 10, 20 or 25 man dungeons with the same philosophy as the above? Gear doesn’t have to be better, so there’s no other reason other than to get tokens for nice looking gear.

Most guilds I have ever been with prefer the content over the gear. Gear is a way to get to better content in other games. GW2 is unique that it doesn’t have to be that way. All raids would be relevant and content challenging. There could even be a Story Mode and Explorable modes allowing most everyone access to the dungeons, like 5 man content.

ArenaNet seems to be willing to build their game for all types of players but the Raider. While we may not be popular with a lot of the die-hard Guild Wars 2 fans who want to keep the WoW elitists out, but I think with the current setup of dungeons being extended to larger group types, I think that the GW2 fans could see some pretty incredible content.

As it stands right now, there’s nothing aside from a WvW and open world zerging on Orr for guilds to organize to do together, above 5 players. And that’s very sad.

All of this is reasons why many of my friends from other MMOs stopped playing after 80. There’s only so many explorable dungeons with a few friends to do, only so many times you can level characters or do PVP (if you’re not a hard core PVPer) before the post-leveling experience gets stale.

I hope that AN would consider expanding the game to include larger group content in the future. Without the treadmill they see in other end game content, but all the wonderful content I know AN is able to put out.