EoD and DE meta is the moment GW2 turned from a solo RPG to a true MMO, and it must be defended.

[Erise.5614]

10 hours ago, volca.7234 said:

It appears you not been keeping up with the MMO scene but WoW for years has been solo-fied into a solo rpg, and sadly it was for exploitative reasons, Because lonely solo players are easier  to get into game addiction i.e pay subs more, and make better whales than social butterflies that enjoy MMOs without feeling the need to spend much and can easily relocate to another game since their social bond are stronger than their bond with their avatars.

This is factually wrong.

Social players are far more invested, have far higher spending rates and have far higher retention. This is why MMOs try to get you into guilds and other organizations. To build friendships within the game that builds up the social obligation to keep playing. Moving an entire social circle to another game is an extremely difficult thing. Someone won't like it as much, it won't run on certain computers, skill differences will be all over the place again.
 

Solo players are a far more fickle audience. They will drop your game much more quickly. They will spend less per game (e.g. why care what you look like when you're alone all the time?). There is a hardcore core that you mention here. But it's not an exceptionally large amount. There aren't significantly more solo whales than social whales. 
 

The reason MMOs focus on solo players is because social players enjoy it too sometimes. While solo players don't consider playing otherwise at all. It increases the possible population size. 

Case and point. WoW classic released and they currently have, across all NA and EU servers something around 100k players. Despite having over 4.5 million subscribers. Almost no one is playing classic. Because being forced into such extreme out of game organization isn't the enjoyable part for most people. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Zok.4956]

11 hours ago, volca.7234 said:

2-The real description of players unable to clear this meta is not "casual" its "solo-player"
(...)
start your own guild or join someone's and i grantee you a higher win rate.
(...)
Now go and make your guild, join one, meet new people, have fun, party

Making a guild and the "social drama" and the commitment to the guild that is often part of a guild in a video game is not fun for everyone.  Some people have much more fun to party and to meet new people in real life.

A core design philosophy of the open world in GW2 was/is to play "ad-hoc" cooperative together with other players to succeed in events, help each other etc. without having to be commited in a guild. That's what attracted a lot of  players that came from other games to GW2 and that was one of the things that made GW2 different (and successful) in the past.

If Anet wants to change that (if this is even true) and wants to push all players into big guilds: Fine. They can. Its their game. But they should not repeat the same mistake they made during the HoT phase, when they tried to push players in some direction and as a result a lot of players/customers just left the game at that time.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Zok.4956

[Gibson.4036]

I play with my kids. I rez people. Chat with people in hubs and out in the open world. I port people on my Mesmer. I get ported by mesmers. I join squads to do HPs and bounties and metas and WvW. I duo queue PVP and interact with teammates and the opposition

But apparently if I don’t do the scheduled group play of guilds I’ve been playing solo this whole time.

[Erise.5614]

35 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I play with my kids. I rez people. Chat with people in hubs and out in the open world. I port people on my Mesmer. I get ported by mesmers. I join squads to do HPs and bounties and metas and WvW. I duo queue PVP and interact with teammates and the opposition

But apparently if I don’t do the scheduled group play of guilds I’ve been playing solo this whole time.

Just so there isn't any misunderstanding here.

Solo play, in this context, doesn't mean total isolation. It means not having to explicitly group up, organize out of game. Not having to communicate with anyone else. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Zok.4956]

9 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

That's like telling people who enjoy rockclimbing, in the absence of mountains, to just throw on all their gear, get down in a small ditch beside a road and then crawl out

If you want to climb rocks, just go where the rocks are and climb there. There are already places in GW2 for that. But don't throw rocks in areas that typically had no rocks before (and where others had fun doing other things, that they can't anymore with rocks) just because you think that your fun is more important than the fun of others.

[Gibson.4036]

Sure, if we want to create custom definitions of “solo” and “social”.

But when one gets to redefine words, discussion becomes meaningless.

[Erise.5614]

11 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Sure, if we want to create custom definitions of “solo” and “social”.

But when one gets to redefine words, discussion becomes meaningless.

Only considering the most extreme forms of isolation solo is a strawman and in bad faith.

The thing I mentioned simply means that you can play it without communicating with other people. Not to play in a space completely devoid of other people entirely. 

Here's a long form explanation of what kinds of solo players exist and context for why they might. Notice how it doesn't focus on absolute avoidance of anything remotely resembling human beings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2l2ZxNhCSg

Edit: Even Habbo Hotel. An exclusively social game without any game mechanics, had solo players. There was literally nothing for them to do besides hang out in spaces with other people. They just didn't talk with them nor did they stick with any specific group. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Zok.4956]

10 hours ago, volca.7234 said:

Yes we have only 1 open world boss, and 2 private instances for +11 players pve content, is it too much to ask for more?

No it isn't to much to ask for. Haven't you read the countless suggestions to make a 50 player instance from the existing DE fight? A 50 player instance is not so different from what a lot of organized squads are doing now: Cheesing the multiserver with map hopping to go in an empty, nearly exclusive, map instance. Anet could even reuse the same map.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, volca.7234 said:

We literally didn't have voice com

we did this thing called "typing in chat" i know lots of solo player have chatphobia but when we wanna say something we press enter and then type it, marvelous thing an in game chat is.

 

its not difficult, organize, also why want turtle this bad? its a bad beetle and even worse skimmer, and since you got no knack for organizing or playing socially you wont get much out of its second seat.

 

kitten shame, this game been under the thumb of an already wow pre-conditioned soloists for years its a simple fact that for every social mmo player there is 10 silent solo players trying to do their best impressionof a farm bot

 

"Forced socialized mode" its an MMO, you should play with other people yes, if you want to play solo there are much better RPGs than gw2, heard pathfinder:kingmaker is good

 

These roleplayers got their kill, the fact that +30 people even for you doesn't signify "social event" is kinda sad, you don't have to complete it, you don't see me raging in forum demanding they make raid wings easy so i get to see them for myself...

"It's not difficult"  For the average player it is. 

" It's not worth it anyway"  Thats your opinion. 

The turtle was one of the big selling points of EoD. 

Telling the majority of the playerbase

"Lmao gid gud scrub" is maybe not the best idea in a game that's heavily targets Casual players that just want to chill. 

 

 

[Gibson.4036]

Except players play all the time with communication and coordination without doing the scheduled group play of guilds.

Narrowly defining “social” to a thin slice of social play diminishes the wide variety of ways that people play socially. It’s disingenuous to say that the spontaneous, organic player interaction is “solo”.

[Erise.5614]

9 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Except players play all the time with communication and coordination without doing the scheduled group play of guilds.

Narrowly defining “social” to a thin slice of social play diminishes the wide variety of ways that people play socially. It’s disingenuous to say that the spontaneous, organic player interaction is “solo”.

Again. The focus isn't on what they do in game but how they themselves play. Which is why I wanted to clarify that.

Because it feels like most of the shouting at each other is just a misunderstanding.
I consider myself primarily a solo player. A loner. And will use that term like it is used by game developers and social media data scientists.

I agree. Going by your definition of total isolation there are probably quite few if any solo players in GW2.

But going by the "not having to communicate with anyone" definition there ought to be huge amounts. 

Edit: Actually, think of it more like forums or reddit. There's posters, commenters and lurkers. Lurkers (people who never comment or submit posts) still enjoy reading. They don't wanna be alone. But they also don't want to talk to anyone. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Asum.4960]

9 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

If you want to climb rocks, just go where the rocks are and climb there. There are already places in GW2 for that. But don't throw rocks in areas that typically had no rocks before (and where others had fun doing other things, that they can't anymore with rocks) just because you think that your fun is more important than the fun of others.

Right, you are fine banishing me to less than 1% of instanced away GW2 content, telling me where I'm allowed to have fun, but if  one event in the OW among thousands in GW2 doesn't cater to you, you can't have fun anymore in the >99% of the game that remains. 

 

That you don't see how hypocritical it is to tell me that I think my fun is more important than that of others for happening to enjoy this content, is astonishing (especially since I even suggest in my post that I would have rather had this version as an instanced away at will option, with an easier OW presence). 

 

The sheer entitlement in this community is insane.

[Omega.6801]

It never was a solo game.

[Burial.1958]

Nah when RNG is the manner for a true MMO i go play something different. 

[Lance Coolee.9480]

53 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I play with my kids. I rez people. Chat with people in hubs and out in the open world. I port people on my Mesmer. I get ported by mesmers. I join squads to do HPs and bounties and metas and WvW. I duo queue PVP and interact with teammates and the opposition

But apparently if I don’t do the scheduled group play of guilds I’ve been playing solo this whole time.

100% this.

There are all sorts of ways to enjoy the game, and various ways of being social about it!

Guilds are great! So are pugs, random social encounters, playing with your kids and family, etc.

Open world content, or other players for that matter, trying to force one specific social design is 1. Bad for all, and 2. Just outright narrow minded, elitist, and I'll be honest - being a borderline j*rk about it.

[Gibson.4036]

34 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Again. The focus isn't on what they do in game but how they themselves play. Which is why I wanted to clarify that.

Because it feels like most of the shouting at each other is just a misunderstanding.
I consider myself primarily a solo player. A loner. And will use that term like it is used by game developers and social media data scientists.

I agree. Going by your definition of total isolation there are probably quite few if any solo players in GW2.

But going by the "not having to communicate with anyone" definition there ought to be huge amounts. 

Edit: Actually, think of it more like forums or reddit. There's posters, commenters and lurkers. Lurkers (people who never comment or submit posts) still enjoy reading. They don't wanna be alone. But they also don't want to talk to anyone. 

Yeah, we're probably not going to find consensus. I see that from your point of view, you see me defining "solo" very narrowly to "extreme isolation". From my point of view, you're defining "social" very narrowly as only people who have to coordinate builds and prepare ahead of time.

Yes, there are people who jump onto squads in WvW or the open world and never interact with the rest of the players. They just ride the squad, so to speak, to do the content, then bail when they are done. We can definitely call those "solo" players, so I'm not advocating for only "extreme isolation" as fitting the word "solo".

But I wouldn't count people who actively coordinate via chat in PvP as "solo", even though they are thrown together buy the game's matchmaking system. I wouldn't count my son and I, who play together in a party the entire time we're in game together, talk over where we're going and what we're doing as "solo". I wouldn't define players who group together to do bounties and remind each other about the mechanics and discuss which bounty to do next, or mesmers who park at jumping puzzles and port dozens of people as "solo". These are all players actively involved in community, just not on the "get a group together on a schedule and coordinate builds" level.

One of the things I think is at the core of the "shouting" right now is there are so many false dichotomies people buy into. Look at the title of the OP. It's completely black and white thinking. GW2 was a solo RPG up until a week and half ago, when it suddenly, for the first time, became a "true MMO".

Funny how, over its lifetime, this "solo RPG" was actually known for having one of the kindest, most helpful communities among MMOs. But when it became a "true MMO", people are remarking on how it suddenly changed to be as fractious as the rest.

 

[Lance Coolee.9480]

41 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Right, you are fine banishing me to less than 1% of instanced away GW2 content, telling me where I'm allowed to have fun, but if  one event in the OW among thousands in GW2 doesn't cater to you, you can't have fun anymore in the >99% of the game that remains. 

 

That you don't see how hypocritical it is to tell me that I think my fun is more important than that of others for happening to enjoy this content, is astonishing (especially since I even suggest in my post that I would have rather had this version as an instanced away at will option, with an easier OW presence). 

 

The sheer entitlement in this community is insane.

These metaphors are getting seriously tangled up.

Dropping difficult content in the open world DE meta is like dropping expert level mountaineering right in the middle of the sightseers trails - some will buckle in and get through it, if not just to get to the other side, others will abandon the hike and rightfully argue this isn't the hike that was advertised.

I agree with you more than you may think that this game should have more challenging content.

However, the largest argument here is that the DE meta isn't the right venue for it, for numerous reasons - it breaks all the necessary conditions for difficult MMO content to be enjoyable and successful, like the ability to selectively opt in, to directly control group composition, and to be able to fail/recover/repeat quickly.

[Erise.5614]

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Yes, there are people who jump onto squads in WvW or the open world and never interact with the rest of the players. They just ride the squad, so to speak, to do the content, then bail when they are done. We can definitely call those "solo" players, so I'm not advocating for only "extreme isolation" as fitting the word "solo".

See? This is exactly what I'm saying.

Yes, they are solo players by "my" definition.

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

But I wouldn't count people who actively coordinate via chat in PvP as "solo", even though they are thrown together buy the game's matchmaking system.

Agreed.

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I wouldn't define players who group together to do bounties and remind each other about the mechanics and discuss which bounty to do next, or mesmers who park at jumping puzzles and port dozens of people as "solo".

And this is where it gets beautiful. No. They are not. BUT, solo players can tag along. The game is deliberately built to make it very easy for solo players to tag along. Where it needs one social player who can herd a dozen solo players and none of them need to say a word or get out of their comfort zone. Which also brings me to this example of yours:

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I wouldn't count my son and I, who play together in a party the entire time we're in game together, talk over where we're going and what we're doing as "solo".

No. Not necessarily. But again. That's the beauty of scaling events and open world content in GW2. 

You can do it solo! Being social is optionally possible! And it's not just possible, it also offers a variety of social interaction. Different degrees of it.

You can just say stuff in map chat, you can play with your kids, your partner, your friends, your guild. You can organize a group for a speed run. You can do all of these things! But you can also not do them! Solo is a valid option. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[AviSwoo.8394]

From the Guild Wars 2 mDesign Manifesto (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/)

 

"With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you. I personally spend a big chunk of my time in traditional MMOs soloing, but when I play GW2 I always find myself naturally working with everyone around me to accomplish world objectives, and before long we find ourselves saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of us here; let’s see if we can take down the swamp boss together,” without ever having bothered to form a party.

Of course GW2 has great support for parties, but they just don’t feel as necessary as they do in other MMOs, because your interests are always aligned with all other nearby players anyway. When someone kills a monster, not just that player’s party but everyone who was seriously involved in the fight gets 100% of the XP and loot for the kill. When an event is happening in the world – when the bandits are terrorizing a village – everyone in the area has the same motivation, and when the event ends, everyone gets rewarded."

 

There is nothing wrong with dificulty - open world was nerfed a few times, after the open beta regular mobs became easier and stopped running from AoE as fast, mobs in HoT were nerfed, etc, so that coul be reverted.

Any meta event that require voice, sub groups with specific roles like healing, etc., isn't in the same park as open world, which actually rewards builds that can solo champion and legendary mobs.

No one runs support builds in open world - it is stupid to do so. DE requiring support builds makes it a pseudo-raid. Nothing wrong with that and with the decoupling of the turtle from the event most of the problems with the event are irrelevant.

Edited March 10, 2022 by AviSwoo.8394

[Gibson.4036]

9 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

See? This is exactly what I'm saying.

Yes, they are solo players by "my" definition.

 

Mine as well. I'm glad I clarified that I'm not defining "solo" as "extreme isolation." So our discussion has made progress after all.

9 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

 

And this is where it gets beautiful. No. They are not. BUT, solo players can tag along. The game is deliberately built to make it very easy for solo players to tag along. Where it needs one social player who can herd a dozen solo players and none of them need to say a word or get out of their comfort zone. Which also brings me to this example of yours:

No. Not necessarily. But again. That's the beauty of scaling events and open world content in GW2. 

You can do it solo! Being social is optionally possible! And it's not just possible, it also offers a variety of social interaction. Different degrees of it.

You can just say stuff in map chat, you can play with your kids, your partner, your friends, your guild. You can organize a group for a speed run. You can do all of these things! But you can also not do them! Solo is a valid option. 

Except the OP seems to believe that gw2 was a solo game up until we had a meta that requires a very restricted slice of social play in order to succeed. It wasn't. It has had a mix of solo and social play, with a variety of different levels of social play, for its entire run so far.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Erise.5614]

11 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Except the OP seems to believe that gw2 was a solo game up until we had a meta that requires a very restricted slice of social play in order to succeed. It wasn't. It has had a mix of solo and social play, with a variety of different levels of social play, for its entire run so far.

Oh, yeah, totally! I'm pretty sure OP is looking at old days with rose colored glasses. About how they finally overcame some insane challenge and the entire teamspeak or mumble voice channel cheers and what not. Which, you know. Were extremely exciting moments. But getting there was wasting dozens upon dozens of hours of extreme frustration. OP talks about that when talking about "finally turning into a real MMO".

It's fairly bad faith and I've given my opinion on their reasoning too. Not at all in support.

I'm just also seeing a lot of confusion in general when people talk about solo gameplay in MMOs and wanted to clear that up. 

Edit: Apologies for adding to the confusion! 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614

[AviSwoo.8394]

The game wasn't designed to allow solo players to tag along - it was designed for solo players with small chunks of time.

Solo players were one of the main targets if not the main target of the game.

Certainly it wasn't raiders as raids did not exist.

 

[Zok.4956]

20 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Right, you are fine banishing me to less than 1% of instanced away GW2 content, telling me where I'm allowed to have fun, but if  one event in the OW among thousands in GW2 doesn't cater to you, you can't have fun anymore in the >99% of the game that remains. 

Everything has its place (and time). I am not banishing you from anything. It just seems, because 99% of the game is something that you do not enjoy, you want to change the 99% of the game (that others enjoy as it is) to your own likings.

GW2 has so much different content types and playstyles. All have their place in the game. Some of these playstyles have opposite goals and can hinder the other playstyles, so they should not be mixed, too much. Or conflict, anger and "toxic" behaviour could be the result of this. Like we see it now in the game and in the forum. q.e.d.

In Dragons End you have the ones that like challenging content and want to beat the boss (because of loot or because it is fun), some want to explore the map and want to see all the little stories and events, some want to fish for achievements, some want to mine dragon jade chunks (its the only map with dragon jade chunk nodes), etc. etc. 

Several players that where fishing in DE were asked to leave the map, some were even bullied because others only wanted players on "their" map who also did the meta. The fishermen did nothing wrong. If Anet wanted them not to fish on this map, Anet should not have made fishing spots and achievements on this map.

If you really want challenging content (I do, sometimes) its only really possible in instanced content where all players in the instance have the same goal and where the content can be carefully designed/balanced around the player count. Open world has simply too much variables to do so. And if you fail in the instance you can just "/gg" and try again immediately to continue in learning the fight. 1-2 hour long pre-events are sooooo boooring if you just want to try again after a wipe to become better in the boss fight with your 50 player squad.

A while ago several players asked for an "easy-mode" in raids. In addition to the existing modes, not replacing them. A lot of raid players where vocal against this. Because it was "their" type of content. What Anet now actually did with DE, was to make a "hard-mode" open world map meta event boss that has replaced a potential "normal-mode" open world meta event boss.

[Asum.4960]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Everything has its place (and time). I am not banishing you from anything. It just seems, because 99% of the game is something that you do not enjoy, you want to change the 99% of the game (that others enjoy as it is) to your own likings.

I don't though. I criticised the over the top reaction to the event, while stating it imo should have been divided into a on demand private map instance for a harder and more rewarding option that's easier to organise, and an easier/less time investment OW meta. 

 

Nor do I not enjoy 99% of the game - I just stated that 99% of the content in the game is a more solo/playing alone together type of content, and 1% is MMO content, of which I'd like to see more of. 

I'm mostly a solo player and I don't want to take any of that more relaxed content away, nor do I want Anet to stop adding any more of it. 

I just find it silly that this community completely loses it marbles the second anything remotely challenging which requires some basic coordination is added, esp. if they can't walk through everything and collect all the rewards without effort week one - like it's a chore they have to complete asap rather than a game they enjoy playing and investing in. 

 

Stop villainizing  everybody who enjoys some challenge in the game, I'm not out to get you or take anything away from you.

[Erise.5614]

17 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

I don't though. I criticised the over the top reaction to the event, while stating it imo should have been divided into a on demand private map instance for a harder and more rewarding option that's easier to organise, and an easier/less time investment OW meta. 

 

Nor do I not enjoy 99% of the game - I just stated that 99% of the content in the game is a more solo/playing alone together type of content, and 1% is MMO content, of which I'd like to see more of. 

I'm mostly a solo player and I don't want to take any of that more relaxed content away, nor do I want Anet to stop adding any more of it. 

I just find it silly that this community completely loses it marbles the second anything remotely challenging which requires some basic coordination is added, esp. if they can't walk through everything and collect all the rewards without effort week one - like it's a chore they have to complete asap rather than a game they enjoy playing and investing in. 

 

Stop villainizing  everybody who enjoys some challenge in the game, I'm not out to get you or take anything away from you.

You really have to differentiate between mechanical challenge and preparation challenge.

I honestly believe most of the frustration comes from the fact that it was balanced around being a small mechanical challenge and a medium preparation challenge. Despite having absolutely no communication that beyond usual preparation was necessary nor giving any opportunity to organize or change once you have entered the map. 

What is frustrating is having to manage 6 times more people than in raids to the same degree as in raids with none of the tools. Meaning the vast, vast majority of people will just fail.

The level of challenge is fine. Just not in this format. Most of the villainizing I've seen was in response to patronizing comments or championing for this kind of format. Possibly even more difficulty. People saying they enjoy this general level of challenge and would like to have it preserved somehow aren't villainized as far as I can tell. At least not by sane people. 

It's mostly the format (it's 1/4th of the new map content after all) and context (presented as story open world) that gets people up in arms.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erise.5614