Guild Wars 2

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

And I think the “select few” are more than you realize.

Amen to this. Players that have the most time, also have the most time to express what they want on the forums. I think there’s a… dare I say it, “massive” percentage of players out there who play like I do, but rarely post. I’ve been playing since the game came out, and I think this is the first time I’ve made time to look at the forums, and it’s only because I’m frustrated.

It’s also worth noting that the ones – like me – who don’t have time to post a lot and devote a huge amount of time to things like grouping? Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s because I have a full-time job, i.e. money to spend on the game… or not.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Well, only a matter of time till the “M in MMO” crowd showed up. Multiplayer does not mean “forced to group”, that went out with Brad McQuaid. There are many viable reasons to play an online multiplayer game, and grouping is only one of them. For myself, I play MMOs because of persistant worlds and other social interactions, when I adventure I prefer to go alone.

People who don’t care for the “round up 4 strangers and have fun” content are not friendless social pariahs, believe it or not. It is a choice of playstyle, not an indication of personality.

GW1 was pretty flexible. You could do group content with 7 people, 4, 3, 2 or Solo, using Heros to fill. One of the best parts of that game, it allowed many choices.

This is “no choice”. I don’t feel this is appropriate for stories that are either supposed to be “personal”, or supposed to be inclusive of most players like a major story line.

The DE events for the Karka event didn’t work out well, but that does not mean the concept should be tossed. Bringing the population together to solve a “living” problem is a great concept. A 5 man dungeon.. meh.. nothing new, nothing special, and nothing interesting.

I agree – I like MMOs because of the persistent world, and because I like the feel of a living world with actual people in it. Adventuring I do solo. I have plenty of RL friends and a fairly busy life – I’m not looking to make friends in-game, and am primarily playing to have fun.

Fun means less annoying periscopes, forced grouping as an end to solo content, and so forth. Parts of the living story I’ve ignored so far, because I don’t have time for boring, grindy content. If I’m going to spend time on it, I have to be able to follow through, and have fun.

I wish the “but it’s multiplayer!” people would, well… can it, frankly. When they say that, they’re trying to use definition to control what an MMO is. There are different tracks to the game, and I respect that: WvW (which I do sometimes dig on the weekends) is a big-group activity. If you like doing dungeons, group up. Most world PVE content is solo-able, and if bits aren’t (the occasional champion or hard event) you can bypass it if there’s no one around, and still finish. To me, that sounds like a mission statement.

Tossing forced grouping into a solo “track” screws a subset of people who basically like to play by themselves. I can usually carve out 30 minutes or so to play at a time, maybe an hour on the weekends. I don’t have time to stand around, begging for a PUG and hoping it doesn’t blow up in my face, so I ignore instances.

I do think there’s room for multiple players and play styles – or there should be – but there are clear lines between those styles, and those need to be respected by the designers. It’s not cool to dangle content in front of me – personal stories, living story – and then end it with something I’m unlikely to do. Haven’t we moved past that sort of thinking?

Yup, it’s definately bugged. I’ve been there multiple times, there’s never anything there but an empty room, and sometimes a few players wondering what the heck is going on and asking each other where the challenge is.