GW2 community observation as a returning player.

[SuavePuppy.2809]

Yeah I think you got some bad luck there - Can't say I've ran into too many toxic ones as of late. Welcome back!

[Strider Pj.2193]

I think a complicating factor is the https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_Return

 

Which brings people back to Living world seasons maps.  Each day, one of the maps from season 3 and one map from season 4 are included as a daily for other achievements as well.  This, has at times created some conflict on days that the map is NOT in rotation as sometimes, people want to get their bounties, or meta done.

 

Still shouldn’t be a butt about it though.

[Gibson.4036]

43 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's a shame because on the opposite end of the spectrum you have open world commanders that make GW2 a really unique experience.  I was just thinking that yesterday.  It's bauble reward week in Auric Basin, so I joined a squad there for pylon events.  These guys had spotters progressing events and calling out veteran and legendary spawns.  They used markers.  They did all the work so that all the 40-something other players in the squad had to do was follow the commander to fun and loot!

It left me thinking what other game have I ever played where you see anything like that?  In WoW or FFXIV open world is mostly a solo experience.  But look how much effort this guild put into running open world events.  There was no negativity because they made it easy on everyone by doing all the work to let us just follow the leader.  It was really cool and uniquely GW2!

The amount of work and coordination put into leading triple trouble, and whole guilds devoted to porting people through JPs are other examples. This is one of the wonderful things about GW2.

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's a shame because on the opposite end of the spectrum you have open world commanders that make GW2 a really unique experience.  I was just thinking that yesterday.  It's bauble reward week in Auric Basin, so I joined a squad there for pylon events.  These guys had spotters progressing events and calling out veteran and legendary spawns.  They used markers.  They did all the work so that all the 40-something other players in the squad had to do was follow the commander to fun and loot!

It left me thinking what other game have I ever played where you see anything like that?  In WoW or FFXIV open world is mostly a solo experience.  But look how much effort this guild put into running open world events.  There was no negativity because they made it easy on everyone by doing all the work to let us just follow the leader.  It was really cool and uniquely GW2!

I've thought similar things. In my other MMO players often consider it impossible to coordinate something like not doing too much damage on a boss so it has plenty of time to spawn adds so everyone can kill them for an achievement, they'll say it's not possible to coordinate 20+ players in an open-world map. Meanwhile I'm there thinking I've seen GW2 players coordinate 150 people in 3 squads, slowiong down killing 2 of 3 bosses so they all die within a few seconds of each other.

It's one reason I've stuck with this game so long, that's what I thought MMOs would be like when I first heard about them, and it seems to be fairly unique to this game.

[mikansei.5742]

8 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I’ve seen it in dragonfall periodically, not just recently.

Some seem to have developed an optimal way to do the events and get frustrated when others don’t. I’ve seen people criticize commanders because they should be doing events in a specific order, and I’ve seen commanders request people stop doing events other than the group is doing.

As others have said, its not common enough that I’ve encountered it frequently, but it is something I’ve encountered previously and recently.

I understand people’s desire to optimize everything, but I figure that’s what instanced content is for. In open world content I feel free to disregard.

I've noticed this too - something about DF in particular gets some people very tetchy. Prior to Dragon's End DF was the map I most often saw arguments about people doing events the "wrong" way, including:

• Somebody angry at other people doing bridge events, or not calling out bridge events, or calling out bridge events but not soon enough for their liking, or calling out bridge events as a mentor when there were "too many" other mentor tags up.
• Somebody angry at a small handful of people doing a post-Kralk champ "out of order," even though the small group wasn't close to killing it ahead of the zerg at all (it was still at more than 80% health when we got there) and the angry person wasn't the commander of said zerg.
• Somebody angry that whoever had put that map's IP in LFG for people to taxi into had listed it as "fresh meta," but the angry person thought "fresh meta" meant "we're at the final boss" for some reason and was angry that we weren't at Kralk.

I don't know if it's just a few exceptionally salty regulars or trolls or what, but sodium levels in DF are definitely higher than normal.

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, mikansei.5742 said:

I've noticed this too - something about DF in particular gets some people very tetchy. Prior to Dragon's End DF was the map I most often saw arguments about people doing events the "wrong" way, including:

• Somebody angry at other people doing bridge events, or not calling out bridge events, or calling out bridge events but not soon enough for their liking, or calling out bridge events as a mentor when there were "too many" other mentor tags up.
• Somebody angry at a small handful of people doing a post-Kralk champ "out of order," even though the small group wasn't close to killing it ahead of the zerg at all (it was still at more than 80% health when we got there) and the angry person wasn't the commander of said zerg.
• Somebody angry that whoever had put that map's IP in LFG for people to taxi into had listed it as "fresh meta," but the angry person thought "fresh meta" meant "we're at the final boss" for some reason and was angry that we weren't at Kralk.

I don't know if it's just a few exceptionally salty regulars or trolls or what, but sodium levels in DF are definitely higher than normal.

I do understand the bridge thing because I had to do that achievement recently. I did it by just roller beetling around, but I know some people do it by scouting bridges for each other, and trying to establish some sort of rotation once they have all been done.

It’s no excuse to rant at people, but it was definitely something ArenaNet didn’t anticipate when they made that achievement.

[Labjax.2465]

Dragonfall has a very particular farming train pattern commanders do that is meant to maximize the amount of keys you can get / events you can complete, so you make the most out of it and have enough keys for all the chests (at the end, after Kralk, and during champ train). So some Dragonfall farm commanders (not all, don't want to generalize too harshly) get very touchy if people are completing events ahead of the train. As to commonality, it's one of the only situations in open world I'm aware of where a commander leading can result in more unpleasantness than otherwise.

I can kind of understand where the frustration comes from, especially if they ask people not to and they still do it, but getting mad at random players isn't really justified.

It's one of those things where the players came up with the optimal way to do it, rather than the designers, so unlike something like Drizzlewood where playing it optimally is cooperative, it becomes this "you're ruining our optimal approach to this" thing if you don't.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Labjax.2465
missing word

[Synwhisper.8045]

5 hours ago, mikansei.5742 said:

I've noticed this too - something about DF in particular gets some people very tetchy. Prior to Dragon's End DF was the map I most often saw arguments about people doing events the "wrong" way, including:

• Somebody angry at other people doing bridge events, or not calling out bridge events, or calling out bridge events but not soon enough for their liking, or calling out bridge events as a mentor when there were "too many" other mentor tags up.
• Somebody angry at a small handful of people doing a post-Kralk champ "out of order," even though the small group wasn't close to killing it ahead of the zerg at all (it was still at more than 80% health when we got there) and the angry person wasn't the commander of said zerg.
• Somebody angry that whoever had put that map's IP in LFG for people to taxi into had listed it as "fresh meta," but the angry person thought "fresh meta" meant "we're at the final boss" for some reason and was angry that we weren't at Kralk.

I don't know if it's just a few exceptionally salty regulars or trolls or what, but sodium levels in DF are definitely higher than normal.

Tbf this has been happening almost exclusively in dragonfall. Might be right about the sodium levels being particularly high there.

[Synwhisper.8045]

2 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Dragonfall has a very particular farming train pattern commanders do that is meant to maximize the amount of keys you can get / events you can complete, so you make the most out of it and have enough keys for all the chests (at the end, after Kralk, and during champ train). So some Dragonfall farm commanders (not all, don't want to generalize too harshly) get very touchy if people are completing events ahead of the train. As to commonality, it's one of the only situations in open world I'm aware of where a commander leading can result in more unpleasantness than otherwise.

I can kind of understand where the frustration comes from, especially if they ask people not to and they still do it, but getting mad at random players isn't really justified.

It's one of those things where the players came up with the optimal way to do it, rather than the designers, so unlike something like Drizzlewood where playing it optimally is cooperative, it becomes this "you're ruining our optimal approach to this" thing if you don't.

I understand that completely but as you said It's not an excuse to get mad at random players. Especially if they aren't doing the meta or pre meta event. 

I'm really not asking for hugs and puppies, even though I  like those things. Just a little respect. 

[Dante.1508]

Elitism, they pay 300gold and think it makes them above other customers, just ignore them and play the content how you like.

[mikansei.5742]

5 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Dragonfall has a very particular farming train pattern commanders do that is meant to maximize the amount of keys you can get / events you can complete, so you make the most out of it and have enough keys for all the chests (at the end, after Kralk, and during champ train). So some Dragonfall farm commanders (not all, don't want to generalize too harshly) get very touchy if people are completing events ahead of the train. As to commonality, it's one of the only situations in open world I'm aware of where a commander leading can result in more unpleasantness than otherwise.

I can kind of understand where the frustration comes from, especially if they ask people not to and they still do it, but getting mad at random players isn't really justified.

It's one of those things where the players came up with the optimal way to do it, rather than the designers, so unlike something like Drizzlewood where playing it optimally is cooperative, it becomes this "you're ruining our optimal approach to this" thing if you don't.

I have seen DF commanders (nicely!) ask people to not complete events ahead of the group for that reason, and they also usually ask people not to unload full raid DPS rotations on the squishy "kill 10 random mobs and a vet" events so that everyone in the group can tag it. I haven't seen any comms get particularly salty about non-squad people not following those squad rules, though I can certainly see how it could happen. All the disproportionately angry people I've come across in DF were specifically not the map's commander... cause I remember double checking the comm's name against the angry person's name and thinking "this isn't even your squad tho??" lol.

[Mungrul.9358]

This is such a shame, as it sounds like you just got really unlucky (and I am somewhat alarmed to see Dragon's End style elitism spreading to other maps now!)

 

I usually find that outside of Dragon's End, those commanders popping tags, especially for metas, are incredibly helpful and communicative.

 

I myself have a tag, but am a bit crap when it comes to commanding. I'm usually too busy playing to type out directions!

People even have to remind me to advertise the group most of the time!

But I will drop food and benches and I will go out of my way to res people.

So I usually pop my tag when there's no-one else able or willing to, knowing that I'm little more than an icon to follow 😄

 

Compared to some of the comms I have played with in open world, I'm a bit crap, but I will NEVER cuss someone out (again, too busy playing to type 😄)

 

Comms from guilds like PINK or FAST never cease to astound me with their generosity and expertise, as well as adept use of map markers and announcements.

[Triptaminas.4789]

Im returning player too, and a neet, so in last 6-9 months i collected multiple legenderies, aquired skyscale, completed path of fire, thorns, end of dragons quest lines, got every single dye, and did all kind of grind.

 

Saying all this to express amount of time i spend in game, and im not sure if guys complaining here, is playing same game as i do:

 

Only issue i ever had with commanders was that they moved way too fast, i struggled to keep up, missed a lot of content, so obviously that frustrated me at the time. 

Yet now people struggling to keep up with me.

 

Gw lads is probably friendliest bunch i ever seen in mmo, i got help and explanations every time i asked, and never, ever, i seen behavior described in this thread, have more than enough content for proper sampling. 

 

Maybe u guys in NA and its different, or maybe u experienced fat tail event in terms of really bad map drops, or maybe u just complaining in forums and not even playing a game....

 

 

With all honesty only toxic thing, in social context, was second day after launch of first legendary skin:

to complete collection objective u need to fail in one of meta events , guys was deliberately trolling by trying to get us all faill in collection, (fail via succeeding the event, devs have twisted sense of humor here) dozens of people was begging them to stop, responses was just "lol".

Was most negative experience in this game, i felt robbed of my time, spend hours waiting.

 

I can, and would like to complain about lot of things, yet community is not one of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LSD.4673]

14 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I've thought similar things. In my other MMO players often consider it impossible to coordinate something like not doing too much damage on a boss so it has plenty of time to spawn adds so everyone can kill them for an achievement, they'll say it's not possible to coordinate 20+ players in an open-world map. Meanwhile I'm there thinking I've seen GW2 players coordinate 150 people in 3 squads, slowiong down killing 2 of 3 bosses so they all die within a few seconds of each other.

The real explanation for that is that it's ~10% of the squad doing ~90% of the damage -- and those ~10% are the ones listening to the com. 

It's best witnessed with Tarir, where you'll see the majority of the squad hammering away while 5-6 people make sure the other lanes are in sync. Then when they join the fray, the bar melts.

 

It's such a flashy game with such a mindless approach to open world PvE that a large portion of the playerbase aren't really paying attention. If you've ever joined a non-voice WvW squad, every little skirmish will have a handful of players caught out of position when the commander tells people to move. And that's an infinitely more structured game mode. Even with a voice giving in-ear instructions, it's still such a common occurrence.

[Triptaminas.4789]

3 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

The real explanation for that is that it's ~10% of the squad doing ~90% of the damage -- and those ~10% are the ones listening to the com. 

It's best witnessed with Tarir, where you'll see the majority of the squad hammering away while 5-6 people make sure the other lanes are in sync. Then when they join the fray, the bar melts.

 

It's such a flashy game with such a mindless approach to open world PvE that a large portion of the playerbase aren't really paying attention. If you've ever joined a non-voice WvW squad, every little skirmish will have a handful of players caught out of position when the commander tells people to move. And that's an infinitely more structured game mode. Even with a voice giving in-ear instructions, it's still such a common occurrence.

 

 >East! stop! Wait for north.

 

~He typed into chatbox, and realized that they never stops, so he flew/tp to other lanes to melt the bar.~ 

 

I swear its like 2/3 of runs there

 

[Gibson.4036]

16 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

 

 

It's such a flashy game with such a mindless approach to open world PvE that a large portion of the playerbase aren't really paying attention. If you've ever joined a non-voice WvW squad, every little skirmish will have a handful of players caught out of position when the commander tells people to move. And that's an infinitely more structured game mode. Even with a voice giving in-ear instructions, it's still such a common occurrence.

Funniest example I see is during HoT HP trains. No matter how much the commander explains people need poison mastery before taking the next portal, the train ends up with a dozen dead players in the poison cave.

There’s definitely a mindless lemming effect that happens.

1 hour ago, Ugma.8104 said:

Im returning player too, and a neet, so in last 6-9 months i collected multiple legenderies, aquired skyscale, completed path of fire, thorns, end of dragons quest lines, got every single dye, and did all kind of grind.

 

Saying all this to express amount of time i spend in game, and im not sure if guys complaining here, is playing same game as i do:

 

Only issue i ever had with commanders was that they moved way too fast, i struggled to keep up, missed a lot of content, so obviously that frustrated me at the time. 

Yet now people struggling to keep up with me.

 

Gw lads is probably friendliest bunch i ever seen in mmo, i got help and explanations every time i asked, and never, ever, i seen behavior described in this thread, have more than enough content for proper sampling. 

 

Maybe u guys in NA and its different, or maybe u experienced fat tail event in terms of really bad map drops, or maybe u just complaining in forums and not even playing a game....

 

 

With all honesty only toxic thing, in social context, was second day after launch of first legendary skin:

to complete collection objective u need to fail in one of meta events , guys was deliberately trolling by trying to get us all faill in collection, (fail via succeeding the event, devs have twisted sense of humor here) dozens of people was begging them to stop, responses was just "lol".

Was most negative experience in this game, i felt robbed of my time, spend hours waiting.

 

I can, and would like to complain about lot of things, yet community is not one of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been playing since the betas, and agree that GW2 has the friendliest in-game community I’ve ever encountered in an MMO.

Where there are friction areas, it can usually be traced to game design choices with unintended consequences (DE meta, bridge achievement, event-fail achievements).

Rarely it’s players who have optimized a farm they don’t want disrupted.

On the whole, though, I find even the PvP players here far more gracious than in other games.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Synwhisper.8045]

1 hour ago, Ugma.8104 said:

To be fair just because you haven't experienced something doesn't mean it isn't happening. This all happened, multiple times within a 48 hour time period from multiple commanders. 

So there is a massive disconnect between the reality that I'm experiencing and what you are saying.  

Also "Maybe u guys in NA and its different, or maybe u experienced fat tail event in terms of really bad map drops, or maybe u just complaining in forums and not even playing a game...."

Why would anyone do this... why would anyone who isn't playing the game bother making an account on the forum just to address this issue? That truly makes no sense to me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Ugma.8104 said:

Im returning player too, and a neet, so in last 6-9 months i collected multiple legenderies, aquired skyscale, completed path of fire, thorns, end of dragons quest lines, got every single dye, and did all kind of grind.

 

Saying all this to express amount of time i spend in game, and im not sure if guys complaining here, is playing same game as i do:

 

Only issue i ever had with commanders was that they moved way too fast, i struggled to keep up, missed a lot of content, so obviously that frustrated me at the time. 

Yet now people struggling to keep up with me.

 

Gw lads is probably friendliest bunch i ever seen in mmo, i got help and explanations every time i asked, and never, ever, i seen behavior described in this thread, have more than enough content for proper sampling. 

 

Maybe u guys in NA and its different, or maybe u experienced fat tail event in terms of really bad map drops, or maybe u just complaining in forums and not even playing a game....

 

 

With all honesty only toxic thing, in social context, was second day after launch of first legendary skin:

to complete collection objective u need to fail in one of meta events , guys was deliberately trolling by trying to get us all faill in collection, (fail via succeeding the event, devs have twisted sense of humor here) dozens of people was begging them to stop, responses was just "lol".

Was most negative experience in this game, i felt robbed of my time, spend hours waiting.

 

I can, and would like to complain about lot of things, yet community is not one of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Synwhisper.8045]

21 hours ago, SuavePuppy.2809 said:

Yeah I think you got some bad luck there - Can't say I've ran into too many toxic ones as of late. Welcome back!

thanks 🙂

[Triptaminas.4789]

14 minutes ago, Synwhisper.8045 said:

 

 

Weird formating, at first i thought u double quoted me, instead of replying..

Either way..

 

To answer for:

>why people would do that?

 

People do this nowdays, complain about lack of sensitivity, rudeness or pretend to be offended, why they do it? I dont know, but its an discourse in social media, and i have some small exposure to it And i have some small exposure to it  .

 

People writing 20 tweet threads about someone being rude to them, or lying in 20 tweet threads about someone being rude to them, either of those makes no sense to me, but people do this all the time, and demoralize devs/companies/projects with their larp or hypersensitivity.

 

[Synwhisper.8045]

Just now, Ugma.8104 said:

Weird formating, at first i thought u double quoted me, instead of replying..

Either way..

 

To answer for:

>why people would do that?

 

People do this nowdays, complain about lack of sensitivity, rudeness or pretend to be offended, why they do it? I dont know, but its an discourse in social media, and i have some small exposure to it And i have some small exposure to it  .

 

People writing 20 tweet threads about someone being rude to them, or lying in 20 tweet threads about someone being rude to them, either of those makes no sense to me, but people do this all the time, and demoralize devs/companies/projects with their larp or hypersensitivity.

 

Sorry new to forums so I'm still getting used to formatting. I'm not sure what happened there.

Also I'm sorry but that link you provided tells me absolutely nothing and doesn't reinforce your point at all. 

And this phenomenon you are describing sounds truly bizarre.  I don't know why anyone would do that but that's not what i'm doing here. 

 

[Luthan.5236]

I have never really seen this - maybe in Dragon's End cause the boss fight is balanced to have almots all players in the map playing it. But in other maps it usually only gets funny when a 2nd commander tags up and the 1st one claims to be the only one allowed to use his tag.

But for players doing other stuff: No ...

... especially in Dragonfall it is not uncommon to have people doing other stuff. Since the meta is not that hard there unless the map is completely empty.

I have even been fishing in Dragon's End (!) - until almost the last boss was up during meta. And nobody complained. (Luckily I got that one fish during that time of the Canthan day/night cytle that I needed to be able to just make it to the last boss where most people are required.)

Edited July 4, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Artemis.8034]

3 hours ago, Ugma.8104 said:

Only issue i ever had with commanders was that they moved way too fast, i struggled to keep up, missed a lot of content, so obviously that frustrated me at the time. 

Thats been my issue too, I cant keep up so I miss the kills I need a lot

[Silent.6137]

4 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

It's such a flashy game with such a mindless approach to open world PvE that a large portion of the playerbase aren't really paying attention. If you've ever joined a non-voice WvW squad, every little skirmish will have a handful of players caught out of position when the commander tells people to move. And that's an infinitely more structured game mode. Even with a voice giving in-ear instructions, it's still such a common occurrence.

In an ideal situation, everyone who join a squad will listen to the commander. But that'll never ever happen. A good portion will join an LFG squad without reading the squad message and will ignore or turn off all chats. Also, if there's a tag, some will join with no idea what the tag is for. Even the squad announcements that are splashed onto the middle of your screen, many will just ignore them. However, there are always enough people paying attention to ensure the squad is somewhat coordinated. The rest will just follow the crowd and/or tag mindlessly.

If you join a squad, at least pay some attention to what is asked. Otherwise, tag along with the zergs if you want but there's no reason to be in the squad.

-----

As for commanders or other people on the map being rude because you're doing your own thing when you're not in the squad, ask them kindly to find another map so you can farm in peace (unless you hopped onto the LFG squad so can be on the same map ---then it'll be you who's being inconsiderate). You have as much right as them to be on that map. If they refuse to find a new map and continue to be rude, link them the GW2 support page so they can take their complains there.

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

this ins't about not folowing him, but about solo some events, so the "key meta train" seems it as trolling.

[ArchonWing.9480]

So, you have to come to the realization that a "commander" is just someone that owns a tag. Putting a tag on does not confer some kind of special power. So not everyone that tags up will be a decent player or person.

Heck, one could tag themselves and be like "Why don't you follow me?", but such a squabble would be pointless.

In any case respect needs to be earned. The act of merely making a squad does not command respect, nor any obligation for you to do, well anything.

I mean, I really did wish that you could change instances easily, but you can't actually do that without inconvenience, so , no. I am not leaving the map.