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Is gw2 really a great community?


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Honestly, one of the things that's kept me playing this game is the community. I started playing back in February of 2016, and one of the things I immediately noticed right off the bat was how friendly and willing-to-help people were. Players have gone out of their way many times to help me out (I've returned the favor), and it's a drastic difference to what I see with most other games. I've tried WoW out numerous times and have found that GW2 is in general just a far friendlier community. I've always appreciated Anet for designing the game to support this type of cooperative behavior, as I've never really been that competitive of a person and would rather spend my time enjoying playing a game with people rather than dreading it.

One of the most recent indications of how welcoming the community is was when the whole Bless Online fiasco occurred which sent a flood of new players to GW2. There were mentors all over the place in Queensdale helping people learn about the game, and reddit was full of topics containing helpful information. It was really awesome to watch and participate in.

Yes, there are occasionally a few people who try to ruin the fun for others, but it's very rare and people are often quick to shut them down.

I don't dabble in PvP/WvW much (not my preferred playstyle), but in PvE for sure the community is pretty great compared to other games.

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I wouldn't call it great, but it's certainly above average.

Compared to the toxic cesspit in places like WOW, it's night and day, but that's a low bar to clear to be honest. GW2 still has a lot of elitism and jerks, but if you stay out of PVP and Raids you never need to deal with them.

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I would say GW2 community is definitely better.

For one, there's a lot less toxicity in forums. Some forums are just pure trash. All I see is "zomg, your opinion is different from me, I'm gonna call you all sorts of names and throw a tantrum that makes me look like a lunatic raised by aggressive monkeys!" I don't see nearly as big a problem here. Of course, I don't know if mods are actively getting rid of these toxic posts.

In game, I see a lot of players trying to help strangers, even more so than in other games. I created a post a few weeks ago about not being happy with constant forced fights every time I dismount in PoF. Strangers were trying to send me gold and gears to help me gear up so that the forced fights are less of a drag. I don't think I ever experienced anything like that in other games. I always consider myself a nice and helpful player. There are so many players in this game that make me feel that I'm not as helpful as I thought and I need to be more helpful.

Yes, there are always toxic players, wherever you go. But it seems much less severe in this game.

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Fantastic community imo. However, mounts, for example have allowed for more thoughtless behavior. I am still surprised the engine allows for stuff like training a mob of pocket raptors on to someone else. Popular gathering spots can get pretty frustrating. The game has plenty of features designed to alleviate the annoyance other players can bring, but its fallen down a bit from its beginnings.

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@SkyShroud.2865 said:I always see people say how great the community is but personally, to me is just so-so?

It's a matter of relativity. Relative to most games, GW2 is full of nice people.Arena is FAR to over-protective and censors everything we say on the forums so if you judge the community by what is posted here you'll think we are all a boring bunch of kittens.

Get off these forums, go to a guild wars forum without storm-trooper thought-police censoring every post and you'll see a much more human side of the player base.

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This community and SWL's are the two best communities I've had the pleasure of encountering. Sure, there are a few not-so-pleasant people in-game, but for the most part the PvE community is very helpful and welcoming. It's also the only game whose map chat conversations I remember for good reasons <3

@Algreg.3629 said:

@Moonyeti.3296 said:I feel like it does have a good proportion of friendly helpful people, but I don't think that has anything to do with the inherent nature of people that play this game versus others. The game mechanics were designed to encourage this behavior. You are rarely competing with other players, even indirectly in PvE like you are in many other games of this type. No competing over resource nodes, no exclusive tagging of mobs to 'steal kills', etc. If the mechanics changed to have more competition over these things I am pretty sure you would start to see toxicity levels higher, less helpful people, all that. I don't really think there is anything magical about the player base, I think it is all down to game design.

isn't that pretty standard now in game design... or for quite a few years rather?

Yes and no. Kill sharing's pretty standard now, but this is the only game I've come across that has resource node sharing. In most cases here, you even have quest objective sharing. I've seen shared quest nodes a few times in ESO and one or two in SWTOR, but that's about it. Most games compensate by having the node on a short respawn timer.

Other games have active node ruining mechanisms, above and beyond node competition. ESO, a player can refuse to gather junk in treasure chests or take fishing mats from resource nodes and keep the node from respawning elsewhere. I've run across that in SWTOR too, especially with crystal harvesting. A player or bot takes the weapon/armor craftable crystals and leaves the color ones behind. The half-harvested node remains persistent. Editing: said mechanisms aren't deliberately designed to be ruinous, but combined with other design decisions like limited inventory capacity, etc., create incentive for players to be selfish.

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GW1 was the best community for online game I've ever had (eventhough when I was a total noob, someone scammed me 2x). GW2 follow suit with that tradition. People rez other eventhough its way out of their route, answering in detail on Map chat regarding mundane/noob questions, holding off their sleep to make sure that I am safe to be left alone, and much more! are just some of my own experiences from the past 1 month.

I am most likely havent gone into the Elitist area of the community yet though! Area like top end Fractals and Raids. I bet a lot of rotten apples there, but at the same time, you can expect everyone to be similar and nice.

I'd rate the community of GW 1 9.5/10, and GW2 8.5/10

Very nice community compared to WoW that I played briefly, SWKOTOR, and FF14 combined together.

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@Algreg.3629 said:people are people (please nobody start to sing).

I failed.... =)

@"SkyShroud.2865" " said:I always see people say how great the community is but personally, to me is just so-so? I always think people oversell or overhype it.Gw2 is not a puny game with puny population so I always thought it is natural to have "many" helpful people and logically speaking, the proportion (in percentage) of helpful people isn't that much different from any other games.What is your thoughts?

I do believe that GW2 has a great community. I am playing daily at different times of the day. I explore a lot and farm in PvE, while also doing WvW, fractals and raids. My experience is:

  • In PvE during the week, the community is great. It is very rare that a call for help remains ignored. I also very rarely see any troll and the few time one is trying to bother the map chat, he rapidly disappears because ignored or blocked.
  • In PvE over the weekend: It is less good. Some map chats are a bother, especially in Lion Arch. But well, that's just two days to go through.
  • In Fractals: Depends entirely of the party we land in. It can be from very good to very bad. Some players can be really toxic.
  • In WvW: That's different. The level of toxicity increases a little bit compared to PvE, with the same noticeable difference weekdays vs. weekend. However, it remains "acceptable" and real trolls, like in PvE, are mostly ignored, blocked or reported, so that they disappear usually fast enough. As for the "hard" discussions between players not agreeing how to do what, they are normal.
  • In raid: I can not judge globally, because I go in raids only with guildies, and of course, that's only fun and laughing in my case! <3

Regarding PvP, I cannot tell. I was only once there and was so shocked at the toxicity that I never returned there. So, maybe I had bad luck on that day, and it is different on other days? I don't know. :/

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My perception is that there was a real and negative shift in the community around the time the base game went free to play. I don't think the shift was caused by f2p bc there just weren't enough free accounts to make that much of a difference, and I'm not even sure that the difference is real, it may just be my perception. But I'm pretty casual, I don't go in for the content where I would encounter a lot of elitism or anything like that so I can't think of any reason I'd perceive a change if there wasn't one. It may also be that the balance of new to experienced players has shifted to the point that the community as a whole just has less patience for errors of inexperience . . .Possibly related, I also think the player population as a whole is just worse at the game than it used to be, but again that could just be my perception . . .

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on the other hand (just doing dailies at the very moment), whenever you got daily events in low level areas, there is always that one ... person ... who just has to obliterate every group of event enemies with the help of his mount before anyone else can tag. Not because he/she gains anything from it, but because he/she is bloody cool! :) So I guess it is really more the game systems than the actual people, when you can be a kitten in this game, you will find someone happily accepting that role :)

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I never place much stock in any company pushing the "we have the best community" line because, well, that's basically marketing.

Based on personal experience I would say it is a fairly typical online community. It probably has an older player base than some other online communities, which is better in some aspects and worse in others.

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I would rate the community very good for an on-line gameGreat credit for it goes to Anet: wise design choices avoided to helpful, non-selfish people to get punished for being so, hence encouraged them to stick around and being themselves; that allows you to experience:

  • JP portal mesmers
  • Mentors telling in starter maps chat "If you are a new player and have any kind of question, whisper me"
  • Many commanders taking responsibility for failure but no better rewardwhich translates in a very friendly community experience
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@"Pifil.5193" said:I never place much stock in any company pushing the "we have the best community" line because, well, that's basically marketing.

Based on personal experience I would say it is a fairly typical online community. It probably has an older player base than some other online communities, which is better in some aspects and worse in others.

They never pushed in a first place "we have the best community", it's the players themselves that are spreading this line among other communities. And it's a bit different "online" community based on my personal experience given the sheer variety of people playing this game - for different reasons.

Is it devoid of "lfmao-me merciless legend you nab" people, nope. It's the nature of every game having pvp and then some people have epic attitude of classic gamer type that pride themselves of knowing game inside out, which can be suffocating.

At the end it comes down to where you wind up, I found a guild for instance, where people are very friendly and laidback. You definitely have those who are more secluded or quiet but overall, all of them are nice and chill - something to find in other games almost impossible, unless it's pre-made guild of friends and such.

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The community is part of what keeps me coming back. Be it simple things like being ressed or people randomly asking in map chat how everybody is doing or more dedicated deeds like mesmers JP-porting others for hours, mentors spending their free time teaching other players to do meta or world events and doing that day after day after day.

Sure, there are players that just leave you lying on the floor or rush past you while you're fighting mobs at your last shred of health bar, but from my experience, that's more the exception than the rule. You can always ask for advice or even assistance and with minimal patience, you will receive your help.

One of the best things I encountered, was when I was waiting for Warden Jabari to launch, propagating my endeavor in map chat to gather some man-power. After a short wait, somebody approached me and asked me in-character ('Ahai, outlander. Do you happen to travel south, to the Bone Wall?'), whether they might accompany me. Just in that very moment, the Awakened came and took the Foreman's wife, Emara, leading to the actual Warden Jabari event. While we waited for the Foreman to get ready, other players joined, all speaking in-character, asking what was going on and if they could help slay the fiend. Together, we marched towards the Joko Gate and finished the oppressor. After we had fought, we returned to the village and continued to chat for an hour. Where we came from, where we were headed etc. As one of the PCs was clearly Elonian, they told us about some lore of Elona, while asking about Kryta (also referring to GW1 plot).

While I'm mostly playing this game on my own and I'm not really into RP, that encounter was just awesome!So, in my book, that equates to a really great community.

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It's far and away better than other games I've played. In my own experience with GW2, I've found precious little toxicity. More than that, though, I find that hardly a day goes by when I don't see players going out of their way to be helpful. Is it perfect? No, of course not. We're talking about people here and there will always be the good and the bad. But comparatively speaking, the community in this game is fantastic.

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GW2 has the reputation of having a very friendly community for a reason, maybe you haven't noticed yet or you aren't very interested on giving/receiving help to/from others but there are a lot of people who are willing to help other players. All five guilds i'm on have been so welcoming to me. and yeah, there is still rude people, but they are generally a minority that is always overshadowed by the nice majority.

@Algreg.3629 said:people are people (please nobody start to sing).

I automatically heard that on Maynard's voice.

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@DotDotWin.4357 said:

@SkyShroud.2865 said:I always see people say how great the community is but personally, to me is just so-so?

It's a matter of relativity. Relative to most games, GW2 is full of nice people.Arena is FAR to over-protective and censors everything we say on the forums so if you judge the community by what is posted here you'll think we are all a boring bunch of kittens.

Get off these forums, go to a guild wars forum without storm-trooper thought-police censoring every post and you'll see a much more human side of the player base.

Weird, I see uncensored posts all of the time.

I personally dont see it as thought policing to allow people to post opinions, negative as well as positive, so long as they maintain some semblance of civility in the process.

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