Guild Wars 2

There are a number of different ways to play an MMO. Consequently there are a number of different factions who expected different things from an MMO. I’ve danced around a lot of these ideas in posts prior to this, but only as I was waking up today did some of these ideas gel. This post is about the disconnect between different groups of players.

I’m an older gamer who cut my teeth on pinball long before computer games or even video games were a thing at all. My introduction to RPGs was through pen and paper, not arcade games. As a result, PvP isn’t infinitely fascinating to me, nor is raiding. Not because I want to take the easy road, or because I don’t want to put effort into something (anyone who knows me can vouch for that), but because my entire approach to gaming is based on trying to recapture pen and paper Rping, rather than playing a video game.

Actually single player games are more suited to my personal taste than MMOs. Because when we got together as a group to RP, with a real life GM, we didn’t play for dice rolls, or trying to the same D&D module over and over. In fact, we didn’t have modules at all. We had a dungeon master who created a world/story that we moved through. It was much more like a single player game, but with friends.

Here we are, now, 40 years later, and I still want to capture that experience, and for a long time, that’s precisely the experience Guild Wars 2 delivered for me. A living, breathing world I could move through, with friends, exploring, hanging out, having a great time.

Never in all my years of Rping did we fight the same battle over and over again until we beat the boss. That simply wasn’t the game. I guess I’ve sort of thought of MMORPGs as a massively multi player RPG, rather than a massive multiplayer war game (PVP), or a massively multiplayer dungeon crawl, because my D&D group wasn’t really about dungeon crawls. Dungeons were never an end in themselves. Dungeons were a way of telling a story that furthered the campaign we were playing. The Fellowship of the Ring didn’t repeatedly try to get through Moria until they made it. They got through Moria as part of the story. This is why I come to MMOs. I want to play through a story with my friends.

As such, it’s less about putting in effort to beat a single boss over and over and more about enjoying a living breathing world, as much as that’s possible in a computer game. That’s what drew me here. That’s why dungeons and fractals were never my focus. Not because I’m lazy. Not because I can’t beat a dungeon or a raid or a fractal, or I’m not good enough to PvP. It’s because my entire approach to the genre comes from what I want out of a game. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.

I played games like Dungeon Master, the old infocom games, Prison (on the amiga). Prince of Persia. I liked puzzle games, and later games like Tombraider, which again, told a story. Which is probably also why I like jumping puzzles so much.

“Go play a single player game” is one of the comments I see a lot of these forums, followed by comments like “you want the rewards without doing any of the work”. The funny thing is, yeah, because I didn’t come from a game with challenging content that gave me better rewards. I came from a game where you progressed through the story, with friends, and got rewards as you played…not played the same dungeon over and over again, which we never did.

Some people might ask why I don’t RP in Guild Wars 2. Because RP in Guild Wars 2 is less like the Rping I did with pen and paper and more like cooperative writing. Rping has evolved into a very different beast, and it doesn’t fulfill me in the way that an RPG would. Games like Skyrim or Dragon Age or The Witcher are far more the type of experience I’m looking for…but with friends. And in none of those games are the best rewards locked away from me. And I’d be pretty annoyed if they were.

I’m sure people who came through mobas or FPS’s are more likely to not worry about dying in PvP. But I hate dying in PvP, because of where I came from. I’m sure people who came to this game from raiding in WoW are more interested in challenging content that they have to bang their head against by memorizing a pattern and moving out of red circles while attacking a boss before the rage timer goes off. . But I don’t think anyone should assume that because some of us want to play the type of game we’ve seen MMOs to be that we’re lazy, or we’re entitled or we want to deny people challenging content. We simply don’t want to be locked out of story and lore and loot because we’ve come here by a different route, and we’re looking for different things from our gaming altogether.

If years ago, a DM came to me and said, you can play in my world, but you can’t the best drops unless you run this one dungeon over and over again until you beat it, I’d have told him I wasn’t interested in playing in his world. This is where the disconnect between me and some other players come from. This is why I’m passionate about how this works in Guild Wars 2.

I’m going to stay away from future debates on raiding, because raiding is like a completely different game than the game I started playing. Dungeons were too for that matter, which is why they were never my focus. But if you want to beat raids, it’s sort of hard to do that without focusing on them and that would ruin the game for me.

Guild Wars 2 was once the game I wanted to play because it filled the need for an online RPG better than any other MMO. And that’s still largely true. Out of all the MMOs on the market, nothing fulfills me like Guild Wars 2. But with the addition of raids and the focus on PvP, something admittedly lacking in the early years of the game, it’s also moved away from my ideal.

Does everyone deserve content for them. Sure they do. Does everyone deserve exclusive rewards just for their content that no one else can get because they’re looking for a different in game experience? That one I’m not so sure about.

Either way, I’m going to be posting less here, because raiders aren’t wrong for wanting focus on raids, PvPers aren’t wrong for wanting focus on PvP and people like me, we’re not wrong for not wanting to be driven into game modes that do not interest us just to get specific rewards.

Edit: typo

The main reason we chose the Lost Precipice guild hall as a guild is to glide. Most of us love gliding. Even before the event to take it, we were able to enter it and practice using updrafts to get around…training for the mission to take it.

The problem is, once you capture the hall, the updrafts no longer stay on. They have to be triggered. This is problematical, because it takes away our reason for choosing this guild hall in the first place.

Anet, please leave the updraft on. Or give us as a guild the option to leave them on.

I’ll respond as I did on reddit:

If I never saw another game again with the trinity, it would be too soon. Just imagine how much fun Lord of the Rings would have been if all foes only attacked Boromir, while Gandalf stayed back and healed him and the hobbits, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli all dealt damage in relative safety.
You may believe, truly believe, that the trinity makes for a good game. But it’s contrived to the point where it removes everything that makes role-playing games great.

Many of us wouldn’t play WoW for free. I might not even play WoW if they paid me.

Now more than Ever, Anet Needs to talk to Us.

Okay I get that there are people who hang on their every word like it’s holy writ and call them liars if they change something. I get that. But this has gone on long enough.
Almost all the issues that are coming up, again and again, are coming up due to lack of proper communication on Anet’s part. This is one storm Anet isn’t going to be able to sit out. It’s only going to get worse.

Anet needs to set aside some time to let us know what’s going on. Even if they can’t give us a specific time table. They have to stop obfuscating, and be direct, honest and more transparent.

This silent treatment has gone on for way too long. It’s turning what was a nice community into a mob…and you really can’t blame anyone for that.

It’s the slience that’s causing it. In the absence of information, people’s minds will generally fill in the worst.

So come on Anet. Talk to us. We’re willing to listen.

Trinity might be one of the worst things to happen to this genre. I couldn’t get into most MMOs because of the trinity.

Pretty much anyone who’s not me. lol

Something that’s a cross between public relations and customer service. Someone who can help to mollify irate fans, or at least assure them their concerns have been listened to.

Not someone that works at Anet now that needs to take time out of their busy schedule. Not moderators. Not a developer.

If people’s complaints are being heard, Anet needs to say so…not just once in a while. They need to keep saying so. Otherwise, people will simply feel disenfranchised.

If they did that, people in Guild Wars 1 would rebel. Not just because we want exclusive rewards all to ourselves, but because we put many long months in to get a lot of those skins. Anet said they would be exclusive, compensating us for losing literally five, six years of accumulation. All the best armor and weapons, gone. All our money. Gone. We all had to start over, in a game we never really asked for.

It’s not really that much of a perk to be honest.

It will certainly be a lot of fun for the six people who are still playing afterwards.

I think I may have seen this thread or one just like it somewhere before.

Anet hasn’t said they’ll never come out with another profession. They haven’t said they won’t come out with another playable race. They haven’t even ruled out having an expansion.

They’re STILL giving you living story. They are working on larger projects in the background, and have not yet decided how to deliver it.

This content isn’t being provided instead of an expansion. It’s just being provided.

What this game lacks is traditional end game. It lacks of trail of dungeons leading to raids, which is end game in most MMOs. That is clearly missing from Guild Wars 2.

But since I never liked that end game to begin with and never really participated in it (okay I participated a bit when guildies twisted my arm in other games), I find this end game to be more my style.

But no one is going to tell you what your end game should be. For many, end game is simple as achievement hunting. For others end game becomes trying to get their dungeon master title, or a legendary. There are people who have the dungeon master title and then switch their end game to speed runs and trying to get the fastest speed on a dungeon clear they can. There are others who’s end game is finding new stuff in the world. I’m always finding new stuff.

You make your own end game in Guild Wars 2. Those who are looking for a specific end game provided by Anet are more likely to be disappointed than those who aren’t.

The problem is, you don’t want closure, but I do. I want to see where the story goes and how it ends. Some people are like you and some people are like me.

The difference between us is that you can choose not to do the content and not see the end of the story. If they stop with the story, however, I can’t see the end of the story.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Vayne.8563:

haviz.1340:

Vayne.8563:

See, I don’t need a final boss…which is my point. I could care less about a final boss. It’s what makes it more of a game and less of a world to me. That’s why I like zones like Hirathi and Straits of Devastation better than other zones. Because it’s less about a big boss and more about an ongoing war.

But other people do and you should acknowledge it. Does Anet want to lose those people or will it give them a proverbial carrot?

I for one like some of the temple events but only under one condition – at most five participating players. Wish they would just swap temple priests with arah priests, that would mean more fun for zergs and for dungeons crawlers!

That’s an interesting comment…that I should acknowledge it. I’ve lost count of how many times that I’ve said that the game I want and my point of view probably doesn’t represent the majority.

However, I do believe that most people thinking dungeon runners and raiders and people who want end game are a huge majority…and that I don’t think is the case.

It is my belief there are more people who solo these games and want unstructured solo content, than there are people who want challenging group content. I can’t prove it, but it’s what I believe.

There’s no real evidence for either side at the moment, but WoW is the single most successful MMO in existence and pretty much every MMO that comes out apart from GW2 has raids. So there must be a substantial demand for them.

Yes I know most WoW players don’t raid, but it’s an iconic feature of the game.

Also, wouldn’t having a MMO based mostly in solo content defeat the purpose of it being a MMO? The 2 Ms ate what makes ESO different from Skyrim.

Okay so WoW has raids and WoW is successful. Baseball stadiums have hot dogs, but hot dogs aren’t why people go to the ball park. The fact is, before you can get to raids in WoW you have to do a whole lot of other stuff and people who do that often don’t go any further.

But there’s another bit of information here that can also mislead. How popular WoW is is completely irrelevant to traditional end game. First, WoW came out at a time when there was almost no competition. They were piggybacking off the mad success of an RTS with the same name. The company had a ton of money to advertise their product that didn’t come from that product.

So it’s popularity is partly based on timing, and partly based on the deepness of its pockets as well as what actually is in the game.

I think it’s a mistake to look at WoW as a winning game combination based on any single factor of it. If I had to guess, I’d say timing was the biggest factor of WoW’s success. Certainly the MMO field when it came out wasn’t rife with competition and there were absolutely no free MMOs.

The isn’t isn’t ranged weapons. The issue is survivability.

In most games, melee weapons do more damage, because in most games, melee is more dangerous. In this game with dodges and invulnerability and blocks, people are in less danger meleeing, particularly with the other advantages you’ve listed. I mean if you go down and four people are rezzing you, you’re up in a second.

So the logic that works in other games, melee doing more damage, doesn’t really work in this game.

Sometimes I think the solution is to make ranged and melee do the same kinds of damage, but I still don’t think that would stop people from stacking.

What Anet really needs is some kind of anti-stacking solution.

Unless the risk of melee is sufficiently greater ranged weapons should be brought up to melee damage, or melee damage should be reduced to ranged damage.

Another opinion of mine that I assume won’t be universally popular. lol

Do you know why the system you’re talking about wouldn’t work here, OP? Because the games you played didn’t have timed dynamic events. Just imagine trying to get to a dragon event, knowing it would be over by the time you got there. The entire game is about playing with your friends.

So if my guild was on one side of the map doing something cool, and I couldn’t get to them to do something cool with them, I miss out. I play games to have fun. Standing there running toward something you won’t get to in time isn’t fun for me.

In days when the entire world was a vast open expanse of creatures to kill with relatively few quests in between (which is how MMOs were back in those days) not having waypoints made sense.

And the most obvious answer is, those who want to not use waypoints, don’t have to use them. It’s like fast travel in Skyrim. I don’t use it…but it’s there if I want to.

If you take waypoints out, those who like them are cut off from an option. If you leave way points in, those who want to walk still can.

I second this. If you must have vertical progression in the game, keep it optional.

The game is meant to be played how you want to play the game. That’s how it was meant to be played.

In ANY MMO, there are more and less efficient ways to play. That’s why everyone in every profession basically ends up with the same build.

Here, however, it’s a bit different. Because I don’t go full DPS and yes it takes me longer to clear content and I don’t care. Furthermore, I play with other people who don’t care. Ergo, I can play with any weapons I feel like playing…any armor.

We clear content. We get through everything. And we’re not farmers making runs again and again and again for profit, so efficiency doesn’t trump fun.

The moment you let efficiency trump fun, you’re no longer “playing”.

Me and two guildies did the Sparkfly achievements without using Dulfy at all. It took us all of two hours.

Be glad you guys didn’t play RPGs back in the day. You’d have run screaming off into the night.

There’s been an awful lot of talk about how this game has changed…much of it negative. And I can see where people are coming from. A lot of the changes in the game has made it less fun and more grind. While the grind is optional…it’s only borderline optional. That is to say, there’s pressure to get achievements, pressure to get certain gear. If some of that pressure is self-inflicted by players, well, it’s still pressure.

But there have also been some changes for the better, too. A lot of people don’t like guild missions, but having done the guild puzzles now…I think that’s brilliant content.

So many advances to the game have been made… not just stuff like Fractals or the AC revamp, but also stuff like marketplace preview, the account wallet, the ability to target something even if you’re not in a group, the end of culling, zone wide invasions, the mini game rotation, the living story. Indeed, this game is hardly recognizable as the game that originally drew many of us here.

Whether you like the changes or not is an individual decision. Naturally if you don’t like them, you have a right to complain about them. But I’ve never played any MMO that hasn’t changed drastically and I’ve never played any MMO where people didn’t cry the sky was falling every time a change was made. This is normal for the MMO genre.

Games change and evolve all the time. You have a choice when they do to leave or stay, to complain or accept. Those are your choices.

This game has changed a whole lot since its release. Whether those changes have been a mistake or not is largely a matter of opinion.

The over-riding question is why has so much changed? What has caused these changes to occur. Some people say greed. Some people say that Anet is catering to a small but vocal minority. Others claim that Anet is trying to satisfy everyone. Others say Anet is trying to appease the content locusts, or the gear grinders.

Without knowing their reasons for change, I don’t see how we can judge the change. And, for the most part, Anet isn’t sharing their reasons.

I think it would be nice of patch notes would include not just changes, but notes behind the rational for changes.

I think this might help diffuse some of reactions people have to them.

ESKan.6782:

The consensus on the Elementalist forums is that Arenanet deliberately wants them to be outclassed by everything.

Rangers and engies would like a word with you.

Your last P.P.S. is ruins your entire post and you should remove it. Just because someone is a fan boy or in fact someone disagrees with you doesn’t make their arguments fallacious. By dismissing their arguments before they can even make them, you’re weakening your own argument.

Why should ANYONE take you seriously if you go ahead and pretty much say anyone who’s a fan boy and disagrees with me is presenting a fallacious argument.

If your arguments are strong enough to stand on their own you shouldn’t need that line.

Guild Wars 2 dailies are the gentlest dailies I’ve ever seen in an MMO. You only need to do 5 of the 9. Most of them you’ll get doing whatever you normally do.

If they were any easier, you might as well just get them for logging in.

I like to think of myself as a hard-core casual.

I’m not particularly looking for challenge in an MMO, I’m looking for fun. I just want to sort of roam around and enjoy myself. I don’t mind occasional challenges, but I’m not always up for them.

I do a lot of everything. I bounce around a lot. I’m not too focused on just getting a legendary or just getting dungeon master, or just finishing my personal story. I’ll get there. When I feel like doing something, I do it.

I’m also a big fan of helping other people. Particularly but not limited to people in my guild. Anyone needs help with a dungeon or WvW or just finding a vista, I’m there.

I guess you could say I’m a social player, who enjoys the world for what it is, without putting too much pressure on the game to entertain me, because over the years I’ve learned to entertain myself.

Guild Wars 2, so far, is the only MMO that actually fits my play style.

I’m guessing we’re stuck with these RNG boxes. If that is the case, I’d like to see the odds of getting a rare weapon skin voucher. It’s not good enough to say you have a “rare” chance. What is rare? Rare as hen’s teeth? Rare like a steak?

If you insist on these RNG boxes, let’s be transparent about it. Let people know what their odds are, so at least they can make an intelligent decision about whether or not they wish to participate.

Saulius.8430:

i get only 1-79 transmutation stones from dailies on 80lvl toons for months now. can someone confirm that you can really get 80lvl transmutation crystals from dailies?

You used to be able to, but you’d only get one, and rarely at that.

It seems to me that you’re more likely to enjoy Guild Wars 2 if you focus more on the world itself and less on the mechanics of the game.

Those who seem to be able to lose themselves in the world, to get distracted by things, to play for the enjoyment of the game instead of phat lootz are more likely to enjoy this game than hard-core, goal oriented players who need constant challenge.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and in almost every thread that says there’s no balance in PvE or that X profession is disadvantaged, someone else in the thread is saying they play that profession just fine and never had a problem not even in finding dungeon groups.

In other threads, people complain about the game not being alt friendly but some people seem to not think that at all. What’s the difference?

Some people are more about numbers and BIS gear and some people are about having a good time and just enjoying the world. Of course there are more than just these two types and different people will be closer to one side of the spectrum or the other, but I really do believe what we’re seeing there is a clash of cultures.

I don’t think either side is wrong. I don’t think min/maxers or people who want BIS gear are wrong for wanting to play that way. I don’t think people who want play and enjoy themselves and have a good time without worrying about BIS gear or what other professions do are playing the game wrong either.

However, I do think the problems most people are having are a matter of perspective based on how they play the game.

Guild Wars 2 is what it is. Some people really like that (which apparently you can’t do unless you’re a fan boy/girl). Some people are dissatisfied and that’s personally okay.

But I maintain the reason for this dissatisfaction is often a player’s approach to the game.

As a person who is more relaxed and just enjoys being distracted by how beautiful or cool the world is, I don’t share many of the problems others do. However, my game wouldn’t be negatively affected if Anet were to better balance professions in any form of the game. My enjoyment of the game wouldn’t be negatively affected if Anet added a group finder into the game. My game wouldn’t be negatively affected if Anet added more challenging content into the game. My game wouldn’t be negatively affected if Anet added more solo content into the game.

The problem seems to be, that’s a lot of stuff that needs happening and people believe it should have been done already…and it hasn’t.

I’ll continue to speak up when I perceive people going overboard with criticism, but I think that the criticism is necessary. I just think it can be phrased constructively.

We should probably remember that though we all have our different play styles, others play games differently than we do. I’m going to try to remember this more moving forward as well.

So if I go home every night and watch TV, I’m a hard core TV person?

Casual has less to do with hours played and more to do with how you play the game. Plenty of people in my guild play all the time, but play casually. They don’t take it too seriously. That’s really what casual means. They dont’ have goals. They bum around. They chat. They don’t get anything done and they don’t really care…because they’re casual.

I don’t think hours played has anything to do with it.

If the dungeon is as interesting as the rest of Flame and Frost, I’m not sure it makes a difference. lol

Some guy did it in his spare time, part of his hobby. Are you really going to tell Anet employees they have to work on the game in their downtime?

You lost 90% of this forum with the words we need gear progression. That’s all I’ll say on the subject. Good luck, mate. The kittenstorm approaches.

Actually, I wouldn’t even want to play a game with elves. I can’t stand them. And I’m not alone.

In fact, mmorpg.com has a column called “No Elves Allowed” about all the things that are traditionally in MMOs that the writer just can’t stand to see any more of. Ever hear the term “played out”?

Fantasy is a very very broad catagory. It’s long past time it’s expanded beyond elves and dwarves. I’m so glad they’re not in this game (and that Anet killed off the dwarven race in Guild Wars 1).

It was so OP. There’s nothing that should take down a boss in ten seconds. It’s bad for the game, not good.

It’s one of the reasons four berserker warriors and one berserker mesmer are the CoF team of choice to run the dungeon. And it excludes so many people who don’t play those professions. It’s borderline exploit.

So yeah, a few people make something so powerful it makes content meaningless and it’s up to the company to fix it.

One of my guildies fell off a cliff in Snowden Drifts, almost died, ended up near an ice elemental. He had like a sliver of health left and he takes off running, and the ice elemental takes off in pursuit.

He’s on mumble with me, and he’s yelling, this thing isn’t leashing!

Took him quite a while to realize he was running from his own summoned elemental! lol

The fact is that the ONLY place in the world you need that gear for is the place you need to farm to get it. This is completely different from gating in other games.

As an example, I can see ALL the fractal content without any of that gear. I can’t see later levels of the same content, but that’s completely irrelevant, since if I want to, I can get that gear.

So for those who aren’t grinders, I checked out the fractals, not only did every fractal but got every achievement except the swamp one, and I’m done. And I don’t have a single piece of ascended gear.

The content isn’t gated. People’s minds are gated.

Because GW 1 was very well balanced. It was so easy to balance all those skills. What you might not be realizing is that GW 1 was a nightmare for some people, because of the number of skills. People didn’t know how to make builds. A lot of people tried the game, failed heavily and went on to different games. Anet doesn’t want that to happen again.

Now people are forced to take a self-heal. They’re forced to have at least some skills that work together. Sure it doesn’t suit you, personally. Doesn’t particularly suit me either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not better from a design point of view, or better for the game.

The combination of the number of skills in Guild Wars 1 and the second profession mechanic made the game virtually impossible to balance. It screwed with PvP and PVe became so easy it was meaningless, down to the point where you could use a Rit to solo farm ectos in the underworld.

I too miss the skill selection from Guild Wars 1, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for not having it in Guild Wars 2.