Am I playing a MMO game or reading a book?

[Funky.4861]

I'm kinda with the OP on this one.

 

There's so much to do in this game that it can be overwhelming; so many collections, achievements etc. I'm hammering-out Vision at the moment and i'm looking up the wiki for most of the achieves either because the clues are so cryptic or i don't want to waste time. For example; the skyscale rift in dragonfall in the necrotic coast area. Originally i was just going to discover it, but after 15 mins avoiding flesh wurm spit i caved and looked it up; it was in a spot i would not have naturally gone to. Some people like the "Finally, after half an hour of looking all over, there it is!" but for me, if it's too hidden-away/unintuitive it's frustrating. It's the same with the adventures; sure, i can do it myself but if i don't want to waste time failing to get gold by a split second repeatedly, i'd better watch a youtube video to see how other people did it.

 

When it comes to group content like fractals or raids, there's no way i'm going in blind; i think that's disrespectful to the other players' time and energy so i'm happy to look up guides and builds to fit in with a team.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

I played mmos for decades and honestly this is the one I have had to alt tab the most with. I can literally level in other games without ever having to look up something. The time comes for alt tabbing when you are going to raid and need the rundown on bosses mechanics builds, when you want to farm something rare like a mount or a weapon you want to know the location and spawn times. Having to look up basic stuff all the time is a bit much. Its why new players get frustrated there is no organization its all higgly wiggly to them. I dang near quit , and I did for a year and a half because the frustration of having to look up everything. 

I can literally level in this game without having to look something up. If you have to look something up to level, that's pretty much a you issue.

[AgentMoore.9453]

Conveyance of information (mechanics, locations of stuff, etc.) has been a chronic problem in GW2 almost since launch. People have long complained that the new user experience doesn't educate very well and further that the breakbar mechanic is still a mystery to huge swaths of the playerbase. Even knowing generally what to expect in combat, I still occasionally run into enemies who use a telegraph for one thing when the effect is something totally different (a notable example is the enemy in the IBS Braham mission whose breakbar behaves uniquely - didn't see anything in-game that made this clear; had to, you guessed it, seek an outside source to find out what was up with that since it seemed like a bug).

It isn't that guides and outside sources shouldn't exist or that you can't play GuildWars2 without them, but there's a heck of a lot of weak instruction in the game itself that could use cleaning up.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

I played mmos for decades and honestly this is the one I have had to alt tab the most with. I can literally level in other games without ever having to look up something. The time comes for alt tabbing when you are going to raid and need the rundown on bosses mechanics builds, when you want to farm something rare like a mount or a weapon you want to know the location and spawn times. Having to look up basic stuff all the time is a bit much. Its why new players get frustrated there is no organization its all higgly wiggly to them. I dang near quit , and I did for a year and a half because the frustration of having to look up everything. 

I didn't look up basic stuff all the time. I hardly used the wiki at all, and virtually never use walkthroughs.  Let's take the skyscale for example.

 

The skyscale sends you a mail at the end of the story and the story is just following stars and instructions. The mail tells you to go talk to Gorrik. Gorrik tells you what to do and unlocks a bunch of collections.  At this point you have choices.

You can go to find the stuff by flying around while playing the zone and get as many as you can, you can run something like taco which marks them on the map, you can look up a video or look them up in the wiki. They're all valid choices.

 

Most people don't want to go to the effort of finding the eggs, obviously but I found most of them.  And for the most part, followed the in game directions for that quest.  All the way through to getting the skyscale.  Cause I have a lot of free time to play and I like scavenger hunts. Also I wasn't doing it alone I was doing it with my wife and other guildies in a party and on voice. Someone found something they'd call it out.

You can choose not to play that was and there are other options. But people who solo will end up looking more things up.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I think most of us managed to level up way back when without using the Wiki.  In fact, there wasn't that much in the Wiki back then. 

I know I didn't ever look up anything in the Wiki for like a year, or so.  Really, leveling a character to 80 in Core isn't that difficult.  🤷‍♂️

I still have fond memories of doing Arah explorable with the guild. Half of us wasnt quite 80 yet and most didnt have any exotics.

We wiped for a couple of hours before giving up.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Danikat.8537]

Considering all those guides are made by players it clearly is possible to figure all this stuff out without using a guide because the people who created the guides did it. (Even the Wiki is only hosted by Anet, it's written by players which is why it takes a while after updates for new information to appear.)

 

The problem, as several people in this thread have alluded to, is that takes longer and a lot of people don't want to spend the time required to learn themselves. I understand making that choice, sometimes I don't either. For example when I was doing the skyscale collections I found a couple of eggs on my own, realised I didn't enjoy the process of looking for them and used the Wiki to narrow down the search area (without looking at exactly where each one is) for the rest. But it's important to recognise it is a choice and if you're able to find a guide written by a player that means someone else did figure it out without being told and so it is possible to do so. If it's impossible for anyone to work out there will not be a guide because no one will know how to write it.

It's also not unique to GW2, or even MMOs. It's hard to find a game that doesn't have at least one walk-through video and a written guide. Many have wikis these days. Here's one for a relatively obscure Wii game called Lost in Shadow: https://www.ign.com/wikis/lost-in-shadow

The important thing is to remember that it's your choice whether you look at those guides or not. If you find they make the game less enjoyable and you want to figure things out for yourself instead then you can. In that case it's also important to remember that it's almost impossible to mess up to the point where you can't put it right, the worst you'll do is waste some time, so it's ok to learn by experimenting and using trial and error instead of feeling like you need to figure out what to do and what will happen as a result before you start.

For example I levelled several crafts to 500 without using a guide. I wasted a lot of materials along the way, especially early on, I remember turning all my jute and rawhide into Runes of Life because it was giving me XP and I thought they'd be valuable or useful because in GW1 +20 health was a lot. But all that meant is I had to wait until I'd gathered more to keep going. I think I now understand the crafting system better than some people who followed guides, some of whom insist there is absolutely no logic or predictability to any crafting even though they must have followed the standard system of 2 items parts + inscription/insignia with the prefix you want dozens of times.

 

4 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

I think the OP has a point. I have found very little is intuitive in the game. Everything is pretty much a hidden easter egg. Playing this game after 2 years I have never felt so lost. All games i have played give you a idea or tutorial on things, they have paths and journals that explain the zones, that just dont happen here. As a matter of fact i sometimes find something and tell it in guild and even the 9 year vets didnt know about it. I just happened to stumble on it. You cannot get by without wiki in this game, you will be stumbling around for hours trying to get something done, and thats not really how other games do it.

I dont want to spend half my game time alt tabbed looking up stuff, i think thats a valid point. And to tell people that ask a question to wiki it is not very community oriented. If someone ask something in map i know i will tell them. Many new players dont know what the heck you mean when you say that, it comes off as trollish to them. I know i have been there, just started the game level 8 or 9 asked a question was told wiki it. Im like wth does that mean? Do people forget new players come to this game. 

I think directing someone to the Wiki is sometimes the only way to provide a helpful answer. In-game chat isn't great for long explainations, especially map chat where it will almost certainly be interspaced with other people talking about completely different things, making it even harder to follow.

Sometimes a player asks a seemingly simple question which actually has a very long or complicated answer. For example someone the other day asked how many stat combinations there are and what they do. Even excluding PvP ones and limiting it to the 3 and 4 stat combinations used at level 80 there's 39 of them. It would take a very long time to type all that info out, and it would probably be quite overwhelming to get it all as a disjointed text dump list. Instead I told them there's a lot and to look up 'prefix' on the wiki to get a searchable table of all of them, with links to related articles if they need more info on anything.

 

4 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

Unfortunately unlike FF or WoW this games playerbase dont even know about the forum or dont even bother. its also part of the reason things stay broken because this game dont have the masses beating down the door to demand a fix. They dont have the reports when the  💩 hits the fan so little gets taken care of. They dont have a community that binds together outside of the game here. I made tons of ingame friends though forums because they were busy and had a lot of players socializing in them. I have not seen one social thread a meet and greet get to know your neighbors from the game. Its very strange to me that FF and even wow have these forum communities that actually play together, but here its like social interaction is taboo. 

That's an odd thing to say in response to a topic on the forum you're claiming no one uses.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Considering all those guides are made by players it clearly is possible to figure all this stuff out without using a guide because the people who created the guides did it.

With the exception of jumping puzzles. 

No human can possibly have made the first guide to them.

I'm not saying it was aliens but... aliens.

[Naxos.2503]

As others pointed out as well, it's blatantly untrue to say that players dont help each other ingame. I cant count how many times I see a mentor tag staying put near the starting waypoint in Queensdale and Wayfarer Foothills and patiently answering all questions in /say or /map. I often see many guilds advertise their willingness to teach and help new players. And oh so many questions have been in answered in Map chat on any meta map. Saying the opposite sounds disingenious. Unless the people actively saying so have map chat and general chat muted

[Obtena.7952]

9 hours ago, Danjorus.2671 said:

Bad at open world? people tell you to read a guide,watch a video,

Bad at raid?people tell you to read a guide,watch a video, join a discord and train,play for 100+ hours before you are able to play with them

Bad at dungeons and fractals?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video,join a discord and train or people just leave the group after saying you suck.

Bad at WvW?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video. join a discord and train.

Bad at pvp? people tell you to read a guide, watch a video, join a discord and train.

Does getting killed over and over and over again without understanding why despite reading the entire UI that you have feels good? if not, read a guide

 

Remember when arenanet posted a link to snowcrows and a lot of people on twitter bashed them or how mightyteapot say most resources are outside of the game?

Is there a need to read a guide every time a new player wants to play the game? Can't he or she learn through in game tutorial or in game guides?

 

You know, i actually just want to play the game like fortnite, LoL,new world,WoW,FFXIV,dota 2 instead of having to join discords and searching all over for an updated guide for a game where there isn't enough content on social media platforms.

I will never understand this complaint ... at what point did reading the manual or some other guide become so unreasonable for learning to do anything, including playing a game?

[ASP.8093]

6 hours ago, Tiviana.2650 said:

Good luck with that. GW2 may be an MMO but most people dont want to be bothered.

Join a big active PvE guild and you'll find tons of people willing to answer questions or mentor you in guild chat. They'll also constantly remind you about groups/events you can join.

[Dami.5046]

you have  /wiki why isn't that enough? 

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

With the exception of jumping puzzles. 

No human can possibly have made the first guide to them.

Well, the guide for Chalice of Tears, for example, was, in fact, not made by a single human. The "solution" was found out only by cooperative effort of many, many players.

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

11 hours ago, Danjorus.2671 said:

You know, i actually just want to play the game like fortnite, LoL,new world,WoW,FFXIV,dota 2

GW2 gets slammed as being only for casuals, yet it has a complexity and depth that dwarfs those other games.  

[Maikimaik.1974]

11 hours ago, Danjorus.2671 said:

Bad at open world? people tell you to read a guide,watch a video,

Bad at raid?people tell you to read a guide,watch a video, join a discord and train,play for 100+ hours before you are able to play with them

Bad at dungeons and fractals?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video,join a discord and train or people just leave the group after saying you suck.

Bad at WvW?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video. join a discord and train.

Bad at pvp? people tell you to read a guide, watch a video, join a discord and train.

Does getting killed over and over and over again without understanding why despite reading the entire UI that you have feels good? if not, read a guide

 

I mean yeah?

I'm not sure what the alternative would be. 

[ASP.8093]

3 minutes ago, Maikimaik.1974 said:

I mean yeah?

I'm not sure what the alternative would be. 

Yeah, I feel like there's a bit of confirmation bias going on there.

Like, whenever I'm just good at something and it's easy for me, I don't think twice about just playing through the game with zero external resources. And when I'm confused or stuck, I look at an external resource. It's easy to turn that into "the game isn't teaching me anything!" but when you stand back a bit you realize you usually already knew 95% of what the external resource said and just needed to see that little extra bit explained in a different way.

[Klowdy.3126]

11 hours ago, Danjorus.2671 said:

Bad at open world? people tell you to read a guide,watch a video,

Bad at raid?people tell you to read a guide,watch a video, join a discord and train,play for 100+ hours before you are able to play with them

Bad at dungeons and fractals?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video,join a discord and train or people just leave the group after saying you suck.

Bad at WvW?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video. join a discord and train.

Bad at pvp? people tell you to read a guide, watch a video, join a discord and train.

Does getting killed over and over and over again without understanding why despite reading the entire UI that you have feels good? if not, read a guide

 

Remember when arenanet posted a link to snowcrows and a lot of people on twitter bashed them or how mightyteapot say most resources are outside of the game?

Is there a need to read a guide every time a new player wants to play the game? Can't he or she learn through in game tutorial or in game guides?

 

You know, i actually just want to play the game like fortnite, LoL,new world,WoW,FFXIV,dota 2 instead of having to join discords and searching all over for an updated guide for a game where there isn't enough content on social media platforms.

I get what you're saying. I like to learn through playing as well. I join the groups I am able, try my best, and ignore any toxic speak when I do get when I inevitably mess something up on my first few runs. I always like to preface if I'm new, and will happily leave if I'm forced to read guides first. But I'll always listen to advice given. Just something you have to deal with in MMOs, which is why I'm mostly a solo player.

[kharmin.7683]

I don't understand the point or complaint.  There is nothing that says players must read the wiki or must help other players regardless of what they ask or when it is asked.  If someone wants to play GW2 without using the wiki or other external sources then they can simply do just that.

[MarkoGold.7126]

11 hours ago, Danjorus.2671 said:

Bad at open world? people tell you to read a guide,watch a video,

Bad at raid?people tell you to read a guide,watch a video, join a discord and train,play for 100+ hours before you are able to play with them

Bad at dungeons and fractals?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video,join a discord and train or people just leave the group after saying you suck.

Bad at WvW?people tell you to read a guide, watch a video. join a discord and train.

Bad at pvp? people tell you to read a guide, watch a video, join a discord and train.

Does getting killed over and over and over again without understanding why despite reading the entire UI that you have feels good? if not, read a guide

 

Remember when arenanet posted a link to snowcrows and a lot of people on twitter bashed them or how mightyteapot say most resources are outside of the game?

Is there a need to read a guide every time a new player wants to play the game? Can't he or she learn through in game tutorial or in game guides?

 

You know, i actually just want to play the game like fortnite, LoL,new world,WoW,FFXIV,dota 2 instead of having to join discords and searching all over for an updated guide for a game where there isn't enough content on social media platforms.

Go read a guide. 

[misterman.1530]

10 hours ago, Zephire.8049 said:

Guides change as the game changes. Anet can't hardcode something in because it will be as relevant after a major change as getting a paper MMO guidebook.

Some things can and should be made clearer in-game (breakbars come to mind)

Imagine a new user who encounters a mob that has a unique breakbar mechanic. Or cannot be CCd for...er...reasons(?) 

So they learn about breakbars (by reading a guide, or watching a video, or joining a Discord, or training...or just by trial-and-error). They have breakbars down pat. Then they run across a mob with a specific requirement to break their bar. Like a special attack - something you need to pick up and throw, rather than weapon or utility skills. 

Or even better - in Auric Basin, the Corpse Takers - they literally do not react to fear, knockback, or stun and can't be immobilized using vines. Then they get confused, wonder why the breakbar isn't working as it should, why their skills aren't doing what they should - and again, either through trial-and-error, reading a guide, watching a video, etc - or asking in game chat - they have to learn about a new mechanic that's sort of like the old mechanic, but different for...again...reasons. At no point does the game UI warn you with a popup (which, granted, would be annoying as all hell). In the case of Corpse Takers there is precious little info about them in the official wiki, nor are there any videos. So, trial-and-error, or map chat, it is. 

[Astralporing.1957]

55 minutes ago, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

GW2 gets slammed as being only for casuals, yet it has a complexity and depth that dwarfs those other games.  

Yes, and that's part of the problem, and one of the issues that make this game less popular than it could be. GW2 could use a lot more of being consistent at aiming at a specific group of players.

I mean, it is a game that is primarily played by casuals, with most of the content aimed at casuals, with some game ideas (like lack of gear progression) that casuals are definitely going to like, but with core game systems that heavily favour harcore players to the degree that is often not seen even in heavily hardcore-targetted titles. It's just a very, very bad combination to have.

[misterman.1530]

2 hours ago, Dami.5046 said:

you have  /wiki why isn't that enough? 

Look at the Wiki entry for Corpse Takers. Most of the information is missing and what is there is considered "stub entries". 

[Dami.5046]

11 minutes ago, misterman.1530 said:

Look at the Wiki entry for Corpse Takers. Most of the information is missing and what is there is considered "stub entries". 

Not really an entry that will break your game progression is it? 😆

 

[Maikimaik.1974]

22 minutes ago, misterman.1530 said:

Look at the Wiki entry for Corpse Takers. Most of the information is missing and what is there is considered "stub entries". 

I figured out how to do that event simply by trying. I didn't have to look anything up.

[ASP.8093]

47 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes, and that's part of the problem, and one of the issues that make this game less popular than it could be. GW2 could use a lot more of being consistent at aiming at a specific group of players.

I mean, it is a game that is primarily played by casuals, with most of the content aimed at casuals, with some game ideas (like lack of gear progression) that casuals are definitely going to like, but with core game systems that heavily favour harcore players to the degree that is often not seen even in heavily hardcore-targetted titles. It's just a very, very bad combination to have.

The only contradiction here comes from poor definitions.

For some reason, a bunch of MMO players have convinced themselves that the main measure of a player's ability to handle complexity or difficulty is their willingness to slog through oppressive time commitments. (Possibly it's copium after hundreds of hours spent doing easy repetitive tasks to make XP bars go up.)

A game that respects both your time and your ability isn't a design failure, it's literally one of the highest goals to aspire to. That's how the majority of great games across all genres are designed. GW2 should strive to be more like that, not less.

Edited October 4, 2021 by ASP.8093

[Maikimaik.1974]

49 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

but with core game systems that heavily favour harcore players to the degree that is often not seen even in heavily hardcore-targetted titles. It's just a very, very bad combination to have.

What would be an example of such a hardcore system?