Guild Wars 2

Tiffany.8576:

It’s amusing. The other month people were up in arms because Mike O’Brien insinuated that very few people played the WvW game mode exclusively. Now when you ask where all the WvW players are, you’ll be told “they’re in PvE.” Guess he was right afterall.

Well… given that you wrote that after the expansion only recently released, it’s 1) not wrong for WvW players to try out the other content they paid $50+ for, 2) a new and non-WvW-player-friendly map as the borderland map, and 3) limited-time collectibles (Halloween) to collect in PvE. It also depends on the server you’re on. I wonder if the high-pop servers still have large WvW battles; Ehmry Bay is pretty quiet now, even though it was a mid-range server. But as per other comments (in pretty much every WvW thread), the WvW map update may have actually killed the game mode.

Seera.5916:

The thing is, this is an MMO. To expect all content the game develops as rewards to be developed for players who refuse to play with others is not being realistic.

That being said, they should have grandfathered in everything a guild had earned prior to HoT launching. Not just certain things like the bank. And covert like things to like. So if they had X banner that did Y, they should get the new Z banner that does Y since X banner went away.

It’s still a realistic expectation for people to want to be able to play with small guilds (5-15 players). Small guilds are often cosy and fun atmospheres, as opposed to larger guilds where (while it can be fun and relaxed) it’s often more about organization and rank and even responsibilities. I like both elements, and I personally enjoy that they are both part of the Guild Wars experience. It’s just cruel if Anet is just telling little guilds that they’re going to have to swap to full-time organized farming just to get some basic upgrades (especially things they had already build up) and clapping big guilds on the back and saying “well done, son/daughter/creature”.

ZachAttack.3957:

Swift.1930:

ZachAttack.3957:

And neither does an MMO imply that everything should be able to be completed solo/co-op. Fractals/dungeons/raids force you to play with other people, and you hardly see anyone complaining about them.

Uh… I’ve seen quite a lot of people who are annoyed at dungeons/fractals because they get kicked out by groups that only want players experienced at the specific run. It’s possible that they don’t complain much these days because they’ve simply given up on that content.

And it’s funny that you mentioned raids, because there have been nonstop complaints about how raids were only for “elite” players and how most people wouldn’t be able to play them because “only guilds and specific builds will be accepted”. I’ve yet to hear how that’s turned out, but there were definitely enough complaints about it.

I don’t know man… That’s weird, the stuff you mentioned about fractals. I’ve been in about 200 fractal runs since HoT (1-50 mind you, mainly on the 21-50 end) and I’ve only gotten kicked once (bunch of idiots who turned a casual comment into hell), and I’ve only had people check my AR once as well. Other than that, they seem fine.

Keep in mind that I was only referring to people not complaining about having to group for that content- not individual complaints about certain aspects of the three.

Hmm, okay, fair enough. I mistyped when I included fractals, as I’ve only touched those once or twice ever – I’ve mainly gone dungeoneering. You won’t catch that many complaints about grouping for those anymore, as the chief complaint now is that dungeons simply aren’t worth it now.

Obtena.7952:

Harper.4173:

Obtena.7952:

Maybe you don’t want a sub par FPS experience in an MMO but it’s not about what you want. I’ve never played an MMO that was about ‘what I want’. Anet wanted a collection of activities for unlock; if the requirement for those activities were based on ‘what everyone wants’, there would be no collection that would fulfill it.

But you can build something based on what the majority of your player demographic wants.
Why would you assume your player base that’s currently playing an MMO with MMO mechanics would want to stop playing that and enjoy your sub-par FPS or Race simulator experience?
Why not make the adventures use the mechanics that are linked to the game type your players are actually playing?

I don’t know and I won’t venture a guess. What I do know is that Anet has made a broad set of activities that appeal to a wide range of players in an attempt to make some parts of unlocking this interesting to most of the players. What I don’t understand is how some activities out of the many are such a barrier that people would refuse the whole unlocking process outright.

Pretty simple:
1) Because until now, mini-games similar to this have been kept to lore-friendly places (like on Charr training grounds or in Krytan towns that aren’t in the middle of warzones).
2) Because they’ve been casual options rather than being attached to the acquisition of core hero points – mastery points. (One exception to this was the skill point in Bloodtide Coast, where you had to accurately shoot a charged-range cannon and hit three targets.)
3) HoT is a jungle-infestation-style battleground. This means that sometimes the mini-game vendors sometimes go into hiding (locked status), but are happy to open their shooting galleries up as soon as dawn arrives again. In the middle of a jungle that practically seethes with hostile plants and creatures.

Curiously, although it certainly wouldn’t encourage players to play them, the mini-games should require that we pay many of the vendors. Poor guys have businesses to maintain on the battlefront. Can’t be easy to pay for all the damages and pay heroes to run your courses as well.

mcwurth.2081:

GreyWolf.8670:

mcwurth.2081:

call of duty is also an MMO, MMOFPS

If you consider 64 massive, sure.

how many servers are there? in the hundreds. say 200.
200×64?
no clue how many servers there are but it gets more and more with each server. same for guild wars or did you think there is 7 million people online at the same time?

Except that one of the features of an MMO is a persistent instance that people can enter/leave at any time and then return to at any time. CoD? Nope. All instances last as long as a match and then dissolve. Planetside 2? That’s an MMOFPS.

Another thing to hope for in the WvW revamp that’s supposed to be coming up soon. A really big map with lots of camps/outposts that is not designed for long (if any) siege. Persistent PvP. Maybe on a swamp map. Hey, sounds a lot like Hossin for Planetside 2… awesome!

Runiir.6425:

Swift.1930:

Runiir.6425:

ZachAttack.3957:

Runiir.6425:

Valentinus.3412:

I’m genuinely getting more and more baffled by the complaints on this forum.

You can’t expect content to be balanced around 2-3 person guilds. That doesn’t even qualify as a full party!

The game type should clue you in… Massivley-Multiplayer-Online.

If you can’t stand the rest of the community to thebpointbyou have hamstring your enjoyment of the game… Well, that’s your issue and not Anets.

And for the love of Dhuum. Does ever single tiny tangential complaint need a new thread?! This forum is already hard enough to navigate without “I’m quitting HOT because X” thread number 9000.

You should all start an anti hot support group guild, then you will have plenty of people to get a guild hall.

/rant

I’m only here to point out a huge flaw you and SO MANY OTHERS have when they say MMO.
Yes it does mean massively multiplayer online. That is, however, the only part of the definition you got correct…the words, missed the meaning by a mile.
MMO was tagged originally for games (and still is by the industry) for any game in which you can log in and play on the same server as other players in a persistant world. That is it, MMO does not and has never meant you had to be in a group. This is a farce that people on forums have used as a reason to dismiss a style of gameplay they don’t like, or don’t think should be rewarded even a fraction as well as other styles.

This is also a mindset that is a hold-over from EQ style early MMOs…that you needed a group to do anything, including just wandering around high level zones. Antiquated thinking that essentially says “I don’t care that you have a life and limited time, find a group or GTFO” needs to be disposed of.

And neither does an MMO imply that everything should be able to be completed solo/co-op. Fractals/dungeons/raids force you to play with other people, and you hardly see anyone complaining about them.

Now I’m not here to bash on the OP and say that it should never happen, as I would like to see small guilds and large guilds be catered to. But ANet is in a difficult spot, to come up with a system that large guilds can’t abuse.

The best way has already been given but the large guilds balk at it; make it scale with the number of people in the guild. I mean large guilds shouldn’t have any problems with it considering the many many things people belonging to them say to smaller guilds now. Shouldn’t bother a large guild one bit that they have to fork in extra stuff because they have members that aren’t logging in all that often. Shouldn’t bother them one bit that they are working harder to get upgrades smaller guilds are getting for less. As only the total is less, each member is still forking out the same amount per head.

Worried about a guild shedding most of it’s members, upgrading, then inviting everyone back? Easy. Your guild number is based on what it was a month ago, every member you add increases the number…but each person you kick only causes the number to go down if it stays that low for a month (31 days). This means the large guilds, to exploit it, would have to pare down their membership for 31 consecutive days before the price of things drops, then keep everyone out for another set of months when you add in the time gating and build times and the constant checking…a large guild would have to hope their members would be ok with not being a part of the guild for 6+ months before everything could be built. Hand over mats to those in the guild trusting they will be re-invited after the 6+ months needed to fully upgrade everything. That is a long time to trust people on their word. If the large guild caves and invites people then the cost goes up immediately.

This alone prevents exploits as the path to exploit it requires so much trust, and so much time, people won’t be willing to do it. Think about how many people you know willing to sit on the outside of a guild doing things, handing over hundreds and thousands of gold/mats without being able to benefit from it at all?
And remember, it won’t matter if they just don’t rep you, their name on your roster counts against you weather they wear your tag or not.

It does require the cost of things to be so variable that each individual person causes them to grow or shrink regardless of how many people are in a guild. In this way there is no “free” slots where adding a person makes no changes.

Ouch, for a couple of reasons.

You do know there’s a giant exploit for that, right? A big guild can just create an entirely new guild, fully upgrade it with assistance from old members, and then transfer everyone to it.

Also, like others have said, scaling in that way is a really bad design/development choice. Not only does it make no sense logically (why would an impartial NPC sell something for 600 gold to one player and 2 gold to another, or why would a tavern take 90 planks for someone and 9,000,000 for someone else), but it would cause giant divides between established guilds of different sizes. Drama happens in systems where everything is fair – as soon as you make something unfair, drama becomes worse. The community would become a forest fire.

Once again, to fully upgrade something that is gated by time, something that fi you have everything you need every time the timer is up should put you around the 6 month mark.

So you would be ok if you weren’t in the newly created guild, NOTHING will be done in your current guild. You would be fine with pumping hundreds of mats and gold to people working to build up another guild, getting nothing for it, other than the promise that in 6 months (or more if the time gating is harsher than expected) you will be invited to the completed guild and finally have access to things.

You wouldn’t be able to benefit from a single thing for 6+ months. Your current guild, the supposed large guild that is creating and funding this new offshoot, would be at a total stand still and not be upgrading a single thing. I personally know very few people who would ever be ok with that over such a long period. This isn’t a one month wait, this is 6+ months of never having access to guild upgrades, no proper guild hall, no guild arena access, etc. Think you will be ok with not taking part in a chunk of the expansion? You can’t join another guild, as they will expect you to fork over stuff to help them build as well. Thus you are stuck if you take this route trusting that this new guild won’t have a drama blowout where they break away completely after the large parent guild forked over so much to improve it. 6 months is a long time, seen more than one large guild implode once you split the population like that.

As someone who is in a small guild (without upgrades since the reset), I can still say that I’d rather not ruin the game for big guilds at the same time as ruining very simple game logic. Before HoT launched, big guilds already had an advantage over little guilds in that they could gain favor quicker through events/missions/bounties/playing together/etc. But small guilds could still upgrade at a reasonable and inexpensive rate. What you’re suggesting is pretty much guaranteed to cause huge dramas everywhere (yes, big guilds have the biggest voices), and Anet is not about to choose something that turns their game into a rampage/ghost town.

I’m looking forward to the addition of small and medium guild halls instead.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Swift.1930:

Exactly. And some. It’s quite absurd, not to mention it staggers my loyalty somewhat.

Mine, too. The Fractal reward nerf especially irritated me in this regard. I get that there’s a mastery for it, but come on. The mastery should have improved on the rewards as they were.

It’s like a car dealership “sale.” Where they jack up the price of the car and then put it “on sale” so that in the end, you’re just paying the same price you would have before the sale. Only in reverse.

This is one thing I’ve noticed about HoT: it keeps being advertised as an expansion, but even people who haven’t paid for the content (which for quite a few people also means haven’t endorsed the changes) are being flooded with changes and replacements for content that they were, well… (pardon the pun) content with. They may have endorsed upgrades, but they were enjoying the gameplay they already had.

I bought the expansion myself, and to be honest I’m glad I did; I would have been hit by the changes anyways, but I’d just have been thrown up against tons of walls labeled “HoT content. You shall not pass.”

Healix.5819:

Muusic.2967:

The Meta cannot be successful unless a certain number of players participate and if there’s 15 people farming nodes then that many less players are able to join the map.

Despite popular belief, you do not need a full map to complete meta events. You rarely need more than 3 people to actually meet the minimum requirements of most individual events. Considering I’ve pushed entire chains solo in VB, I’d assume a coordinated group of about 20 players could easily hit T4. The problem however is that doing this is not rewarding at all. The less people you bring, the harder it gets and in comparison to zerging, the less rewards you receive for the time spent.

If you’re going to complain about people not participating, there are far more people doing something else than those logging in for a minute to gather flax. Consider all the AFK people, the raiders, adventures, hero challenges or people simply exploring.

True, and I mostly agree with you, but I can’t see a team of 5-10 taking out all the legendaries in time, or holding all the rally points. Pushing a chain or two is certainly viable, but T4 is unlikely.

But yeah, no removing flax seed farmers. Poor guys work hard to make a living.

Zero Day.2594:

Lacuda.8543:

…

Onto The Next Issue: Dragon’s Stand:
…seriously?

One of the most vital resources to the Guild Hall lies in Dragon’s Stand, during the event…the event that only comes up once with a 2 hour cooldown…the event that usually fails quickly then you’re stuck waiting yet another 2 hours for.
…

WAIT.

You can fail DS?
I need to try and do this.

It does happen, especially with the huge number of empty maps that people end up stranded on when taxis disappear 5-10 mins into the event.

Oh yeah, and there was that time when everyone got to the boss and then the game actually refreshed all their instances when the boss hit 50% (voila, same timer, but the boss had magically vanished and there was no reward or chest). That was a fun one. Happened yesterday.

Honestly I would say I feel somewhat burned out (although that might be the wrong choice of words) because I can’t play it for hours and hours on end and yet the gameplay requires that to unlock just a few simple elements. Work, study, other responsibilities… even when I put in about seven hours per week, I see the XP bar go up by only about 40-50%. Oh, and that was with a celebration booster ticking (and several meta events progressing/finishing).