Sometimes I feel the game is designed to not be a MMO

I've been playing this game since 2012, and I still feel that sometimes things are better if you're all alone than playing with more ppl

For example, if you're doing a heart quest. More ppl, more time you'll take to do it, sometimes kills fill up the heart, when the area gets fairly populated sometimes you dont have the time to hit the mob and get credit. Mobs also don't spawn fast enough so you have a lot of ppl waiting to hit when they spawn, with the mounts it's gotten even worse because they one shot most mobs and nobody else hits.

Same happens with events, you dont hit enough stuff or collect or whatever you dont get the gold prize.

The bosses/champ scaling are also a problem. While killing some champions alone seem to be pretty hard, which is good, when you have more than 6,7 ppl the boss becomes way too ez, you dont even have to properly dps, just auto attack.

I'm leveling a character right now, I think I should take notes of those things and make a thread with more detailed info of when having more ppl around its worse than playing alone, which is not desirable to a MMO

Doing map completion with two people is much slower than doing it solo.

@SexyMofo.8923 said:Doing map completion with two people is much slower than doing it solo.

Which adds to the issue the OP is talking about.

But why is everyone in this game obsessed with speed?Pretty much event Ive ever been in the aim seems to be to get the event over as quickly as possible so everyone runs around killing every monster in sight asap.Mounts have made this play style even worse as everyone can race around the maps really quickly so that everything thats killable hits the dust asap.When did you last see players walking anywhere in this game.

It’s a diablo within another realm .... tuned to have more players involved in the gameplay, diablo pvp was also also great right?????????But rather tam envolve s with armor stats and sets anet putted into elite specs design.

I understand what you are saying, but I would like to point out it is not so strict as pointed out.1: Doing hearts. There are hearts where it is not beneficial to do them with others, while other hearts are more beneficial. an example are the two hearts in queensdale next to eachother.a: Help Diah tend her farm . Having two players can really speed things up. 1 clicks the wurmmound and hits the wurm, the other player hits the same wurm and then the other player clicks the wurmmound and both hit the wurm again.b: Help Fisher Travis maintain the river Two players slow down stuff a lot. most objectives can only be done by one player at a time after which you need to wait for respawn.

You need to keep in mind that the game was never designed with hearts. During the later stages of development, the feedback was that dynamic events where great, but also random. There are plenty, but to have a feeling to wander around and have random encounters, you need some reason to be somewhere longer and have something to do there. They where added last minute and so the chosen mechanics where not always thought through very well. Asking for a re-evaluation would be a good one. However, it would require developpertime. The incentive to replay content is pretty low with all the level boosts and scrolls and stuff, so I doubt it will be interesting. Maybe if it is part of a bigger project to change the core game as a whole, with more incentive to play this once more for the existing player base.

2: Dynamic events. The difference between gold, silver and bronze rewards are very low, compared to the amount of work required. Bronze get 25% less XP and karma, while the amount of work can be as low as 5% compared to the goldreward.The main issue again is how some events have been designed. This is mostly the case in the core game. Let's take a look at one of them.Collect grub remains for Ine. This event requires you to give grub remains to Ine. You get gold reward when you give 10 remains and bronze for atleast 1. when you do this event alone, you need 10 remains for completion, but when there are more people this scales up the amount of people. There are however only about 15 grubs, so with more people, it gets really hard to reach gold reward, and event progression is slowed down cause you need to wait for respawn of the grubs.Again, the solution would be to re-evaluate all the events in the core game, but it requires more incentive for players to re-play the core game to make it worth the effort by developpers. A few solutions for the issue in the grub event.a: show progression to your participation medal. If you can see you have gold, reward once the event finishes, people will more likely leave and let others do it.b: add an alternative way to have respans. One way good be, to let the remains of the cave troll stick around and have the grubs crawl out of those remains, this way scaling can be adjusted to the amount of players, just like the amount of remains needed scales up.

The bottom line however is that re-evaluation of all hearts and events in the core game (and perhaps the xpacks and LW-maps) is needed. This requires a lot of development time. Is it worth it? only if there is some extra incentive to replay that content for existing players so the whole player base can enjoy this.

@"mauried.5608" said:But why is everyone in this game obsessed with speed?Pretty much event Ive ever been in the aim seems to be to get the event over as quickly as possible so everyone runs around killing every monster in sight asap.Mounts have made this play style even worse as everyone can race around the maps really quickly so that everything thats killable hits the dust asap.When did you last see players walking anywhere in this game.

This is something that was bothering me during my last map completition. Though i think its not a game issue but community/player problem.

I remember during the first years (2-3) as i have leveled many characters and did map completition with them - ppl literally played together even whithout beeing in a party. My friends, guildes etc did this... so did I. I mean... we didnt try to one-hit everything that moves - hit it and let the other player around - who was obviously working on the same heart - hit it as well. I remember rezzing only half of the dead npcs to let the other ppl get credit too.. Well.. live and let live ...this kind of stuff.

Now.. my youngest char (3rd guardian, leveled with scrolls, which got his hero points for the elite specialisations bought with Testimony of Heroics and geared full ascended from the first hour of its existence) had more trouble doing map completition due to the problems you guys mentioned abovet than i ever had before with any of my other 12 chars who got map completition as well. I had moments when these I-one-hit-everything-that-moves-guys really annoyed me to the point that i thought "ok buddy, if one of us two is gonna one-hit these mobs, then its not gonna be you (low-lvl).I think thats how they are used to play from their older games (kill-steal etc) and thats why they act the way they act.

when i see that stuff is dying fast, i stop doing my rotation and autohit enemies.

Openworld GW2 always was a game where you play not directly with other players and more beside other players.

@mauried.5608 said:But why is everyone in this game obsessed with speed?Pretty much event Ive ever been in the aim seems to be to get the event over as quickly as possible so everyone runs around killing every monster in sight asap.Mounts have made this play style even worse as everyone can race around the maps really quickly so that everything thats killable hits the dust asap.When did you last see players walking anywhere in this game.

Well, I was once obsessed with speed, which is not the case right now, as I have about 1k levels in tomes.

This issue came back to mind cuz im doing a video series I call Vanilla leveling, which means I'm leveling without using mounts (unfortunately I can't disable the glider).

But back to speed problem, while I agree most ppl want to race throught the game it's still an issue ppl have to compete to hit a mob or don't make any progress on the hearts at all.

About the events I'm literally asking for them to be slower when I talk about better scaling or at least harder and more exciting

You should definitely skip the hearts when doing map completion with others. There's only so much to go around.

@Genuinetheo.6591 said:You should definitely skip the hearts when doing map completion with others. There's only so much to go around.

The events still scale poorly plus there're ppl leveling and skip hearts it's not an option for them

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Genuinetheo.6591 said:You should definitely skip the hearts when doing map completion with others. There's only so much to go around.

If these people are level 30+, you can start doing dungeons with them in your free time. They will get close to a level a path, if not more from, say, an experience booster. Not to mention, if they are level 30, they could easily skip quite a few hearts unless you're taking them into level 40+ maps

As i said... its not only a scale/ design what-ever problem.. its also a player issue. You can one-hit everything but you can choose not to do so (even on max level with max stats)... And a lot of ppl - not knowing about shared loot and xp or simply knowing and not carrying for others - try to instant kill everything. I have the feeling that its not that they fear to get less, but they want you to not get anything (neither xp nor loot or credit).

this is something that was showcased by WP (oddly enough) regarding just how trivial GW2 as a game is on the whole. When he did his run of the core game with just a ranger and letting the pet kill things without him using a single skill it showed off how much of the game is on cruise control. This means that the open world content like hearts and events aren't going to pose enough of a challenge for most players, and that has been true more or less since launch and certainly since 6 months into the game's life. So many of the game's mechanics are trivial and only serve as a kind of busy work facade that plays at being an MMO/game but really have no inherent value. Crafting weapons and armor and trinkets? Nope. Its only a vehicle to busy your time until you can get to the higher level to craft high tier armor. Unless you force yourself to only wear and use the items you craft, its a pointless system. Not that your gear even matters in core game content anyway and then you can usually get better gear through loot tracks post level 80 and you have an entire leveling experience that is a joke.

I love the world of Tyria and the lore they've crafted. I like the NPCs they've made over the years with a few marked exceptions, and overall I think they are headed in the right direction with content (albeit the Deus Ex Machina stuff needs to stop), but as an MMORPG, specifically in the early leveling stages, its all a facade and one of the biggest strikes against the game IMO.

Its far too easy to train through core Tyria and its only further trivialized with the 23984735947832 leveling tomes many of us have and the mounts that can make those original maps feel even smaller. And yes, it does also negatively impact the experience for new players, which Anet can't afford to lose right out of the gate due to a bad experience.

@SexyMofo.8923 said:Doing map completion with two people is much slower than doing it solo.

Probably my single biggest gripe about the game. Doing map completion with my wife, who plays a fraction of the amount of time I do, is a struggle because even if we attack the same group of mobs, if I kill them before she has had a chance to tag them, she gets no heart progress.

Some hearts are just abysmal to complete even when you're alone. Most if not all the Quaggan/underwater ones and a couple in Lake Doric come to mind.

Having to slow down due to other people around and enemies becoming easier is simply natural. It's far worse in other MMOs where tagging is everything and enemies don't scale. Map completion is faster in a group that works together, whereas in other MMOs, it's faster for groups that split up. It's only slower when you're having to carry the group, which GW2 doesn't support, compared to other MMOs allowing 1 person to do the work for everyone.

I've noticed this with HP trains. It's WAY faster to just collect them yourself, yet almost everyone will delay even trying until they can join a train, which then moves from HP to HP far slower than I can do it on my own. One time with a new toon I started with a train, got sick of waiting for them, and went ahead to finish all the HPs I needed while they were still EIGHT locations behind me.I mention this for two reasons:
1 - so people know there's no need to join a train2 - to point out that it seems clear most people prefer to do the content in a groupI mean, even when it's not beneficial, people just seem to LIKE grouping up to do the stuff. So, while I'd agree GW2 is 'friendly' to solo play, it allows for the social experience a lot of players want.

Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Some random ranting:

I find the game works best in range 2-5 players.

I can do 90+% of the OW Tyria solo, not a problem, including most champions. But a lot of those becomes more endurance than challenge, and even just having one other player will at least give you +50% more damage to speed things up to more tolerable levels.

I find the general "difficulty" (or lack of such) in OW-Tyria to fit perfectly for an instanced system with a party up to 5. There are some exceptions, mostly a few large group-events, especially the reworked mega bosses like Tripple Wurm, Tequatl etc. Obviously later stuff like HoT breaks this much more consistently.

Looking back at this, it feels a good bit like GW1, which was designed completely around instanced maps, where you could add bots or other players up to 4or8 (depending on). So they where probably still thinking things in terms of GW1 experience when they worked on that.

Then again, I'm the sort that gets annoyed and runs the heck away if there are ever more than 5 players in the same area. Because it honestly becomes too easy, too dumbed down, that I get bored/fall asleep. So I end up playing solo quite a bit.

The design is a bit wonky, because they where trying quite a few different things from normal MMO's at the time. I think it suffered from adding the Renown Hearts late in development, the Action-Combat certainly makes it very difficult to adjust for difficulty.

Had the game had no Renown Hearts and instead replaced them with Events (or just let them trigger an event to do to fill it) then I think the game would have worked much better towards making it more natural to play together, especially since Events can scale to more players (though they often doesn't scale very well).

The overall difficulty of OW-Tyria is so low that there is little reason to group up most of the time. An increase in some difficulty might enforce more cooperation in the game, but I expect this would be strongly resented at this point in the games life.

The Action Combat ironically rewards playing alone, so you spend time learning the class/build/combat better, having only yourself to rely on. Naturally not everyone will do this, and I've seen all too many people that prefers to stick to the huge groups, and keeps struggling with things outside of groups. The difference in skill in this game is huge.

@joneirikb.7506 said:I find the game works best in range 2-5 players.Then again, I'm the sort that gets annoyed and runs the heck away if there are ever more than 5 players in the same area. Because it honestly becomes too easy, too dumbed down, that I get bored/fall asleep. So I end up playing solo quite a bit.My impression, exactly. The best fights I've ever had in this game were when doing events while undermanned like this, or running fractals/dungeons. The worst ones - everything involving zergs, that's just total random chaotic skill-spam fest with close to zero gameplay; it's either so easy to point it becomes totally bland and boring, or extremely hard because you just can't understand what's going on anymore and what some boss monsters is doing, and where is the target at all, due to dozens of people doing random things and spam skills around, blinding you with this torrent of flashy effects.

@joneirikb.7506 said:Had the game had no Renown Hearts and instead replaced them with Events (or just let them trigger an event to do to fill it) then I think the game would have worked much better towards making it more natural to play together, especially since Events can scale to more players (though they often doesn't scale very well).Totally agree. But apparently there are quite a few people around who are not satisfied with doing chores only IRL, and protect their rights to do those in game as well quite ferociously :)