like what?
dungeons = grind
pvp = not my thing/my PC is not up to WvWvW standardswhat’s left: run from poi to vista to waypoint, solo some small events, hope to run into a group.
Why is there no massively multiplayer PvE in this mmorpg?
No massively multiplayer PvE?
The whole game save for Hearts is designed to be played in groups!
Yes, much of the content is designed for groups. But more often than not there are not enough people around to form a group.
you get massive zergs
Sometimes yes, but more often not. Just check the mid level zones. Heck, even Malchor’s Leap and Straits of Devastation have such low population that most waypoints and temples are almost permanently occupied. And that’s on a high population server.
It’s nothing special (and therefor is not awesome) if a corporation does what it can reasonably be expected to do.
My god people.. they added one tier of gear as a one-time gameplay improvement, why the kitten is everyone acting like this is the apocolypse?
Just wait until the number grinders have obtained their ascended gear. Then what? Game over, or another “one-time gameplay improvement”?
Also note that the kind of gameplay that was improved is not the kind of gameplay that Anet had announced for GW2.
like what?
dungeons = grind
pvp = not my thing/my PC is not up to WvWvW standards
what’s left: run from poi to vista to waypoint, solo some small events, hope to run into a group.
Why is there no massively multiplayer PvE in this mmorpg?
What i don’t get is why Anet wants people to play for the gear instead of playing for the fun of the gameplay.
Don’t tell me that repeating x ad nauseam just for some reward is fun gameplay; the fun should be in “x”, not in getting the reward.
I guess the litmus test for how much fun “x” is, is “would you do x if you would not get a reward for completing it”?
I agree that of the story quests some are a lot harder than others. Some story quests are to easy. Many story quests are either a walk in the park or near impossible.
Pitting a ~lvl20 player against a group of 8 on-level bandits? What’s up with that? Only way to deal with that is ugly hit-and-run, go down and rally a few times, not particularly heroic.
GW2 is simply a really, really badly designed mmo.
GW2 is an many ways designed a lot better than other mmo’s.
But i spite of that players essentially get to choose between mostly soloing openworld pve, spending a lot of time trying to find a party for a dungeon, or do www/pvp.
To me playing solo is not a preference, it’s practically inevitable due to the design of the game (though most other mmorpgs are even worse in that respect).
Generally there often just aren’t many or even any players in the vicinity that are doing the same content that you are doing. Checking for that via local chat or map chat is a lot of hassle.
It can become a problem in high level areas where there’s more content that can not be soloed.
But for the most part much of the content can be soloed, and i agree it’s more fun to play in a team, but the game design is such that it’s usually easier to just go and play, even if that means playing solo in an massively multiplayer game.
Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress.
People used to play fps games (without stats progression, with relatively simple gameplay and relativly little content) many hours a day for years on end.
So it does not work only for RTS games, it works for other games as well. It also works very well for all offline games games such as socker, football, chess etc.
It’s only a certain type of player that cannot be kept without a way for them to progress their stats, without gaining an advantage, a reverse handicap relative to players who have not invested as much time in the game.
It is a relatively new development that (some) players want to become more powerful by receiving stats upgrades for having invested a lot of time in a game, instead of being content with progressing their own personal skill in playing the game and thus getting higher up on the ranking list.
The kind of progression that’s found in most RPGs these days is not even inherent to the genre. It all started with pen-and-paper RPGs where leveling up and obtaining better gear was far and few between.
RPG being a game in which you take a role, and your decisions impact the story.
Interesting how many different ideas there are about what “Role” in RPG means.
To many players their “role” is about assuming an in-game character and play-acting accordingly.
To me it is about the role that you have in combat: ie offense, defense, support, healer, melee, mage etc. Even without the Trinity different players can and do take on different roles in combat.
MMOs have fundamental defining criteria:
- Hosted, online
- Persistent world
- Large number of concurrent users (thousands or more)
I disagree with the third criteria.
By your definition GW1 is an MMO in spite of the fact that most players play solo (teamed with AI such as henchmen and/or heroes) in seperate instances.
According to Anet GW1 is not an MMO, but it does have (or had) a large number of concurrent users.
There should not only be a large number of concurrent users, those users should also (easily and readily be able to) simultaneously play the same content in some sort of group/team/party/zerg format (obviously not necessarily all thousands in the same group…)
(edited by helladoom.4317)
Gwen equipped with the elite skill “Panic”.
Sorry, wrong game.
A month ago this game was attractive to casual players which play max 2 hours a day.Now its more attractive to people who love the gear grind which usually play their games for 10 hours a day.
That may be, but it means Anet has lost a significant part of their target audience. What they are left with is a player base that prefers a style of rpg that Anet did not set out to cater to: grind and gated content.
So there could 5 times less players but the servers look equally full.
In actual fact there are less players -and- the servers are less full.
I am curious why you think an online game should have easy access to fun while real life shouldn’t.
By “access to fun” do you mean “access to high end gear”?
To me the little piles of bits and bytes that make up virtual possessions is not where the fun is. To me the fun should be in the gameplay.
Besides, IRL there are a lot of people who do work hard but don’t have much “fun” because their employer pays poorly in spite of the fact that it’s important to them that those jobs get done.
From the perspective of looking for group, this is frustrating.
Anet knows that. It’s why they made GW1 different than other online rpgs, and it’s why they set out to make GW2 even more different. But apparently the lure of cookiecutter mmorpg’s is to great to resist.
Seriously, between those two statements, it helped me to remind why I dislike PR managers so much. But guess what? Ignoring it will not make it go away.
Ignoring it will make many of us go away, though. Mission accomplished.
Indeed. Especially since they already got out money.
Seems to me there’s a rather large market for games that don’t just offer trinkets to keep people playing, but instead offer massively multiplayer PvE. Just don’t try and mix the two.
baited and switched
I had not played several weeks before the event last weekend. The new zone gave me about an hour of fun. I tried Fractals which confirmed the impression about GW2 dungeons i got from doing Arah story mode: no reason to try again.
I noticed Anet has pretty much solved the bot problem, and maybe fixed a few bugged events. Personal story quests still have severe issues with difficulty balance.
I played a few times since, doing zone completion, which increasingly feels like i’m playing just for the numbers even though there’s the occasional fun of group DE’s. Poi’s and vistas is ok as filler content but it won’t hold me over. World completion is a no-go due to PvP requirements, dailies are “meh”.
So yeah, my hate for GW2 is starting to win out from my love for the game.
judgung by that snipit of dialogue, they gave the people what they want.
They gave some people what they want. Even if “some” is a substantial amount (which it probably is), it’s starting to become obvious that one game can not cater to both of those vastly different types of players: one that will do almost anything to get the carrot on the end of the stick (WoW-style) and derives a sense of accomplishment from having higher stat gear, and then repeat that process, – and another type of player that doesn’t care so much about the carrot but just wants to have fun playing together with other people, and for whom the gear is a means to an end and the fun is the accomplishment.
You’d expect anything more or anything less from current generation of players?
I know i don’t.
I’d expect something different from a game company that set out (and has partially succeeded) to eliminate game features that prevent people from teaming up.
Do you remember when the game is started and the areas had a lot of player? I want it back!
Posted by: helladoom.4317
Yes, i do have fond memories of those first few days/weeks playing GW2.
Even if no players would have left the game, just spreading them out over many zones inevitably reduces the average number of players per zone.
If the player population of a zone drops below a certain point, depopulation becomes self-perpetuating especially in high level zones where soloing is hardly an option. Event chains in those zones become stuck until server reset, making those zones even less attractive.
Possibly worst of all it that even if there are enough players in a zone to form a small group, that’s likely not to happen because the players that are there do not know there are other players in the zone. And no, map chat is not the solution, it’s at best a crutch.
Apparently there is a critical population density below which the Massively Multiplayer aspect of open world PvE falls apart.
possible solutions:
- as mentioned, ‘underflow’
- automatic cross-zone event advertising/announcement
- show locations of players on the zone map
This applies to (non-dungeon) PvE only:
Do you actually prefer not to play together with other people, or is your playing solo a solution to the lack of people to team up with (either in party or mini zerg)?
To put it in terms of what you think Anet should change: should this massively multiplayer game be turned into a solo game as happened with GW1, or should it be changed to make it much easier to find a group – ie by indicating the locations of other players on the zone map?
Other: I enjoy PvE the most and have a lot of time to play.
But i don’t love Fractals of the Mist (the one dungeon i tried aside from doing Arah story).
I generally hate GW2 dungeons, being put off by Arah story mode.
I find DE’s much more fun, main problem there is that it’s often hard to find a group.
The problem is only evident when running around solo, if there was a better party search system maybe people would explore/node run with pugs in a more casual sense.
Agreed; there are times when i -want- to solo and that’s not a problem, the worst i have to do is move out of the area if there a group there.
More often i do want to group but it usually takes a long while before i run into a group, and regularly find myself having to pass on group content because i haven’t found a group. For that same reason i’ll pass on the entire game (not log in) for a few days. Then at some point my love for GW2 wins out from my hate for the game, but the intervals between playing do get longer.
if the game engine has been changed, then content has been changed, if sound has been changed, then content has been changed, if a minor script or bug fixes or client garbage collection protocol or thread optimization or textures, terrain, weapons, login client or whatever, then content HAS been changed,
I think the game engine is not content, changes to that and changes to quest- or AI scripts would be bug fixes or optimization.
Either way when something has been changed it’s peculiar to call it routine maintenance. Apparently it means Anet does not want to tell us what they have changed.
@helladoom
rubbishroutine maintenance for software would simply imply reseting/restarting the machines,
Doesn’t explain why routine maintenance requires clients do download stuff.
What does “routine maintenance” even mean in relation to software?
Mechanical machines need routine maintenance, ie oil change.
No such maintenance is needed for software.
So probably “routine maintenance” means “bug fixes”, and Anet doesn’t call it bug fixes because that would equate to acknowledging that there is a kitten-load of bugs to fix.
Kiting and dodging seem to be the primary tactics to avoid damage and cc (knockdown etc).
My problem with it is that those are only two of many possible avoidance tactics, but other tactics/skills are close to useless because they have very limited effect – ie block one attack every 30 seconds, or block on average 1 out of 10 attacks (not very impressive for a warrior with shield), on a rather long cool down.
And the primary mechanism of synergy between players/classes seems to be in reviving downed players rather than actual support.
I know where they were trying the “Let all the classes be self sufficient”
If that’s true than why did they include many AOE & ‘nearby allies’ support skills?
Why make it possible to create a build that’s focussed on support and/or CC – and at the same time discourage using such a build by not giving xp for using those skills?
Why does reviving give xp, but not healing, nor things like aoe retribution and -damage mitigation?
“we can already zoom in and out which is the same as a FOV slider”
You’d be correct if so-called zoom would really be zoom. But as others have pointed out it only moves the camera position. Moving it back reveals a little more of the scene, but it does not increase the field of view angle.
If you have read the discussions about FOV on these forums including Anet’s responses, you know Anet to is on the ‘fov is different than camera position’ bandwagon.
Not to mention that we don’t get contribution, no xp for support skills, only for damage.
So yeah, you can sell a couple of million copies on release, and still and up with virtually deserted zones a few months after release, so that in spite of going out of your way to design a game that makes grouping easy (no trinity, no level requirements, no quest requirements), many players still end up having great difficulty to find a group even in zones where grouping is pretty much essential.
I’ve attempted the assault on temple of balthazar/altar of betrayal/cathedral of glorious victory (those are essentially the same, right?) 3 times in a row today, after the southern reinforcements had arrived.
The assault failed every time because pact morale drops to zero before we reach the temple.
It’s not clear what we (group of some 6 to 8 players) are doing wrong. Several waves of risen spawn at several points along the way, we kill them as quickly as possible, and then the mission fails.
(edited by helladoom.4317)
“When I played there weren’t any bots and I don’t know much about how A-net is handling that situation”
At the top of this very forum:
On Botting and What We’re Doing About It
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It
“Lets all be honest no matter what game you play or what company are running it they have the same issues.”
Lets be more honest and realize that not all games have these issues to the same extent, that it does matter how widespread these problems are in a particular game, and that GW2 has a large number of bots.
situation:
I was at Pact Rally Point in Straits of Devastation, there were 5 or 6 other players there, 2 were doing the skill challenge (Vigil Tactician).
I was standing near the scout (explorer Vorb) with a view on the skillpoint challenge.
The game did not show the two players doing that skill point even though it was barely 20 or 30 meters away from me and there were only a few npcs and other players around.
When i got closer to the skill challenge the game did show the two players, and still showed them as i moved back to my previous location while keeping the fight in my view.
But once i turned around and then looked back again at the skill challenge, the game did again not show the two players doing that skill challenge.
The game does not always do this that badly, it seems kind of random.
I have LOD distance at “high”, all other settings at medium or low. Graphics card is a AMD Radeon HD6800 series 1GB.
are you sure? i am certain anet will ban the bots in waves and all.
give them some time perhaps?
How much time do you want to give Anet? 3 months, 6 months, a year?
There comes a point when it is inevitable to conclude that Anet is either incapable or unwilling to remove bots from the game. The same applies to bug fixing.
Eridani.8317 – What do you want to do at 80?
You’re not asking me but i’ll answer:
At 80 i want PvE that’s simmilarly easily accessible as it is at lower levels.
Note that i’m not asking for easy PvE, in fact i think many of the events are to easy with a large group, imo scaling of events needs tweaking.
But i do not want be forced to move around a zone on foot because most waypoints are contested, while in addition i’m being at best slowed down (at worst killed) by large numbers of mobs – when my objective is to find ongoing events and join the local zerg-for-the-occasion.
I do not want to spend much time soloing while looking for the fun parts of the game.
The ingame group finder – or what has to pass for that – is in practice not effective.
Nor do i want to be forced to use map chat; that’s hopelessly primitive, equivalent to me having to call friends on the phone to ask them to join a server for a FPS game such as Quake – which back in those days was never an issue (and still isn’t) because one could/can find multiple populated servers any hour of the day or night.
It should not be so that in a massively multiplayer game it is often harder to find multplayer action than it is in just about any (not massively) multiplayer FPS or tactical shooter.
“Personally I don’t mind at all if the player who sends the mobs my way is running for his/her life but just running for no reason other than to complete map, get to a node or whatever is annoying.”
The game gives more reward for completing a zone, for crafting or selling mats, than for killing a few mobs. It seems the mobs (outside of events, hearts etc) are there just to slow people down a bit.
On top of all this; no one wants or needs to go back to them. Ever.
That’s not true, in part because under-level zones give more or less on-level xp and have a chance of dropping on-level loot.
If you should I feel bad about spending real money on gems then Anet should feel bad for designing the game the way they did.
Were people suprise that many GW2 players are complaining about PVE Endgame?
Posted by: helladoom.4317
Show me where Anet said people who don’t like PvP should better not buy GW2.
“Isn’t the player responsible for their own purchasing errors?”
Isn’t GUI design a major factor in how easily the user makes errors, and aren’t the devs responsible for the GUI design?
Were people suprise that many GW2 players are complaining about PVE Endgame?
Posted by: helladoom.4317
“Developers can’t make contents go on forever.”
If that’s true at all it’s true only for RPGs.
People play fps/tactical shooters (essentially a form of PvP) on the same maps for years on end, apparently because the gameplay is interesting enough.
“You don’t level one way and then play another way at the level cap.”
Except that during leveling up, grouping is virtually a non-issue; you just run into groups of people all the time because it’s easy to get around in the zones. Also much of the content is soloable.
In Orr otoh you don’t get very far without a group -and- you don’t just run into groups all the time because those zones are hard to get around in. GW2’s PvE difficulty curve goes up rather steeply near max level (and i don’t even mean dungeons).
Regardless of whether the people who complain about endgame and other issues are seeing it wrong, they still leave the game, and it’s a fairly large number of people who do that.
I think Straits of Devastation is a good example of what this results in: most of the time most waypoints are contested, and Pact reinforcement/expedition events can be found downed in the same spot for several days in a row – and that’s in a weekend, when one would expect enough players to be logged in.
Just imagine how many people would not have left a month after release if the game would not have the large number of bugs, gameplay issues and various annoyances (ie fov, camera angle) that it has.
(edited by helladoom.4317)
Not to mention that the fact that drops disappear after a timeout is incentive for anti-social behavior: switching attention mid-fight from the fight to looting , temporarily ignoring players that are down or otherwise in trouble.
I switched to windowed mode a few weeks ago because it allows for wider horizontal fov.
I just tested it again: when i reduce vertical size of the window, vertical fov is reduced slightly and horizontal fov becomes significantly wider. That’s relative to 1920*1080.
Scaling the window to ~4*3 ratio, vertical fov increases, and horizontal fov is reduced a lot (again relative to 1920*1080).
Indeed it looks like fov does not stick to a certain minimum value, and on wide screens vertical fov is easily ~10 degrees less than what Anet says the fov is.
Aside from looking up walls in WvW, i prefer wider horizontal fov because it helps more with situational awareness.
It true in general for large events especially in high level areas, especially in Orr where traveling on foot is at best risky and tedious.
Often there is no way to see if there are people at an event even if it is nearby (ie Altar of Lies). You can ask but if there are people doing the event they are probably to busy to notice map chat and/or to busy to answer.
You know you’re doing something wrong when you have more bots than people playing your game.
For the record: i have no more patience wrt bots.
I’ve actually seen a thief do that. Not 100 mobs but a heck of a lot more than my ranger could handle.
You can do the same with an Ele, Ranger and Warrior,
I’m pretty sure soloing 100 mobs – not 100 rabbits but lvl 80 risen – is extraordinary and not intended by Anet. Who needs groups when you can do that.
Other than that, i bow to your mmo-superiority, so spare me please.