Guild Wars 2

That leads into the greatest problem of them all: there is nothing to work towards as a community. You could make a Legendary, but in the end only one person gets to wear it after all the work put into it. The rewards in game are so personal, so individually minded, that there are none that benefit the group. Of course, as you may have noticed at this point I have been focusing on the PvE side of the house and there is good reason for this: In WvW and SPvP these team sensations are there because there is a greater goal with tangible immediate results that everyone shares in. In PvE killing a dungeon boss doesn’t measure to this in any way since it’s the same as killing a mob in the real world. It’s the same “throw one-self at boss until it’s dead” design. Rarely do you see a phase shift or anything more complex than “don’t get smacked in the face by this one special”.

Having dynamic, evolved fights alone allows a guild a challenge to overcome. It’s a dance everyone must learn together. Don’t kill adds in the center during this phase otherwise they drop a massive AOE where we need to move during the boss phase. Hey, when the area around him is blank but there is a giant symbol on the ground outside of that move in close and go back out when it reverses. There, so far, are not bold, multi-tiered fights that guilds take pride in mastering.

Outside of the dungeons there in nothing either. People suggest guild halls, but not just for the sake of fluff. It’s something that they and their guilds come together to build, to decorate, to personalize. It’s not a one person gets to wear the ribbon like a Legendary is. Of course I bring up Guild Halls as an example but that is exactly what guilds need. Items, achievements, in game assets that build indentity: things that can only be accomplished by the greater guild community that no one person can do alone and everyone can share in. Things that took time, effort, gold, and dedication. Everything in game that currently requires those named items to craft or create can be achieved by a single person and no one gets to share in the journey outside of grinding the mats. The reward goes to one person and one person alone.

In the end, the game already has some great tools in place, but I fear in its efforts to be bold and new it has forsaken a few of the things that bring communities together, keeps them alive and thriving, and setting goals long into the games future even after all the content has been exhausted or seen. As the old saying goes: it’s not the destination but the journey. And thus far everything has been built to compliment a solo trek into the wilderness that has chance encounters. No fellowships here.

What I suggest is simple. Better tools for making groups to allow more people to see the content and achieve. A greater sense of reward for being in a group and the sensation that you are contributing to the greater good even if the physical rewards are not yours, and give guilds and the community more things they can work towards together and share together.

If these things can be done the game can only benefit. As to how they are done, of course, is up to all of you at ArenaNet. Keep up the hard work, and I can’t wait to see what you have planned for the future.

-Kythas Wraithborne

This is also where the trinity had a strength – you recognized people who were good at their roles once things kicked off. You would chat, compliment, and ask advice if you had an alt you were building along the same lines as they stood. On the opposite end, of course, was the chagrin and malice felt when someone utterly failed at their role and is why the Trinity is far from perfect. So far, however, in Guild Wars 2 everyone blends together. Engineer A is like Engineer B. Having a LFG tool such as the one described attaches your name to the class and your competency. When isolated to a server you start to recognize people, remember how they performed, how they acted. Everyone starts to get to know each other.

A LFG tool, however, is not all. It works in tandem with another force: the experience encountered once in a group. As faulty as rolling for loot can be, as tedious as grinding out a dungeon waiting for the random number generator to favor your drop is, those two things did do something odd: they gave everyone a single slot machine in which there was a chance for anyone to get a payout. All it asked was that you pulled the lever as a group.

Understand I am in no way advocating, suggesting, or asking for these things in Guild Wars 2. All I am trying to say is they provided a shared community rush (when scoundrels and villains were not hijacking the system in their favor) that the current design in Guild Wars 2 does not provide. You see, when you run a dungeon or raid in a game like The Secret World, Rift, or any other MMO that still uses rolls and RNG loot tables the entire team was invested not just in themselves and their rewards. Sure, that was the larger priority for most, but you were there for everyone. Each kill, each boss, and each encounter provided the gamblers high with loot: never knowing if your drop was going to appear and if so if you were going to win it. But, there is an innate satisfaction in seeing a buddy, or a guildie, or even a pug who has become one within your constant group win what they needed. Even if you lost you were all benefiting, and you knew it.

The issues with the system, in the end, is eventually it does become a grind and repeats itself as you and the group try to get everyone everything they need. It’s a completionist thing and seldom do we feel the full sense of accomplishment until that is achieved. Yet, as it stands, Guild Wars 2 does not offer a similar sensation. Everyone gets their tokens and eventually their gear so one could argue that is the replacement, yet there is no sense of being there when your friend wins that sword he so needed at the expense of your helm not dropping, or the feeling of frustration oddly mixed with a tinge of happiness when your guildie wins the shoulders over you. To know and see everyone got something out of it. By running to a vendor to trade in tokens it feels impersonal and although you ran the dungeon together the final rewards doesn’t feel like it was earned through a shared journey.

Have you ever played The Secret World? Whether you like it or not the game has a functional, clean, simple LFG tool. You pick what difficulty of dungeon you are looking for, then from the next drop down menu you pick an exclusive dungeon or all. In that menu it displays a number next to the dungeon names to indicate how many people are signed up to run it. After making a selection the window below brings up a list of player names and their chosen role (seeing as The Secret World is still a trinity game).

This system works in two ways. If you don’t mind forming a group you have a list of names right there you can whisper and invite to join you. It’s personal, it’s intimate. Maybe that scares people nowadays, but having to talk to people and break the ice before forming a group supports community moreso than a random lottery queue. The second way the system works is you can sign your name up, sit back, run around doing whatever you do, and wait for someone to spam you an invite (if they are so inclined), or to send you a whisper asking if you would like to go.

Pair this tool with a proper LFG channel that helps bolster the system. If there are not enough people in the display wanting to run your dungeon you just jump into the dedicated channel and ask there. A LFG channel, even if you balk at the concept of a true tool being put in game, is needed. It’s standard in almost all MMOs nowadays, and the reasoning behind abandoning it is absurd. The claims that it segregates the community are rubbish. Sure, Map chat won’t be as “alive”, but the traders can better trade when they don’t have to compete with people trying to get a fractuals run put together. When your chat is a constant moving wall of text things get lost. That is not a benefit to anyone in your community when there is a single channel everyone must use.

It doesn’t need to be complex, or involve queues, or multiple servers: a functional LFG tool brings people together, gets them into the content they want to see, and interacting with other players rather than staring at their avatars while spamming a chat channel. Yes, PUGS can be quiet on occasion, but they can lead to friendships, guild recruits, and – as I’ve had happen many a time recently in The Secret World – all night dungeon runs because the group works well together (and parts by adding everyone to their respective friends list – the MMO equivalent of trading phone numbers).

While there are those who will argue that the community goals stated by ArenaNet were focused on bringing the fan-sites, player-generated tools, and other user designed items into the fold that doesn’t excuse a missing feature inside of the game itself. I am talking about a proper LFG tool. Currently our options in game are to put an icon over our heads and head to Lion’s Arch where we spam not a dedicated LFG channel but the general map channel. This channel also houses your basic conversations, trade, and guild recruitment. Needless to say, and as many of you are quite aware: it becomes crowded and unorganized fast.

I understand there is a user created website and I must applaud the group of people who put that together. When there is a demand there will be someone who provides the supply, and members of the community have done just that. But, let us be frank, if only for a moment. How many people, other than the dedicated Guild Wars 2 players, know of this website? Sure, visibility is key, yet if the game boasts the population I think it does, and if the volume of requests in Map chat are an indication, a slim percentage of the population is aware this exists and while it is useful it cannot carry all the weight alone.

ArenaNet needs to implement a proper LFG tool. Of course there will be wails and moans as to how these destroy communities or ruin the player base, but if done right they are a boon. Not a bane. While I agree that cross-server queuing is the least desirable, seeing as you just sign up and go about your merry way, eventually run the dungeon with your PUG, and never see those people again unless coincidence favors you do, people forget that something as simple as a sign up sheet – something akin to a bulletin board – not only does the trick, but actually raises population visibility by allowing names to be seen and advertised. Think towards the LFG website: is that not essentially what it does? Would it hurt to build it into the game?

There is nothing more essential to an MMORPG than the community behind it. Base design, the world, combat, the mechanics: all mean nothing if there isn’t a group of people willing to share and come together within these virtual worlds. ArenaNet has done many things to better reinforce the idea of community through their design by eliminating mob tagging, need or greed roll systems for loot, level downscaling and upscaling, phased gathering nodes, and by removing the classic trinity from their game.

These things are great, but they alone cannot build, foster, and generate a community. There must be things to do, places to see, and incentives to do so. While the rewards are scattered all over Tyria to find the question must be raised: do they favor the individual player to such an extent that they harm communities and community building?

Yes, I know: the “greater” community is alive and very well. But I am not speaking of the entire game population or a full server. There are fan websites and guides and tooltips aplenty. I am talking about the more nebulous, smaller pieces that are critical components within the complete framework. Guilds, five man groups, PUGS: the close knit interactions that you face daily in game on a personal level.

Let me preface the rest of what I have to say with this in order to save you all time and to better display where I am heading: this suggestive article revolves around how critical a proper LFG tool is (I know there is a website, but that is a poor substitute when such features have proven to harm games if lacking at launch); how the current reward system in game, while far less frustrating than the old roll systems of other games, does also in turn remove a sense of camaraderie the game would benefit from; and as to how there is nothing at all for a guild to work towards. I’ll be diving into each with finer detail below, but that about sums up what I am here to talk about.

Patch completed, but the game won’t load after character selection. Only an issue for my toon in The Heart of the Mists.

Continue to get a connection error.