Anit-social?

[Yozora.9176]

I went to all cities and most of the zones and there is barely any one talks, there maybe ones in a blue moon some one says something in chat but thats it. Is chat dead in this game or its just anti social mmo?

[Danikat.8537]

Outside of towns map chat is normally used to coordinate events, so people tend not to use it for random chatter, although sometimes conversations do start up in between. In towns you're more likely to find people talking, but just like in any situation it needs someone to start a conversation - ask a question or make a comment people can respond to (and no, just saying "hi" doesn't do it, that's the start of a sentence but there needs to be something else as well).

If you want constant background chatter I recommend finding a big social guild to join. Although if you do that I also recommend setting up a chat tab where guild chat is turned off so you can switch to it quickly when you need to see other things.

[Cuks.8241]

Yeah it's probably the least social mmorpg I've played. At least in general open world and hubs. I guess this is a byproduct of very solo friendly gameplay in a lot of content. There is not much need for player interactions from gameplay point of view. Alone in a crowd.

Your best bet are guilds. Guild that specialize in content that requires player coordination like raids or wvw are much more social and theres always some chatter.

[Gendalfs.7521]

I guess all social thing went to discord. LFG, Guilds. Maybe Im wrong, correct me if so.

[Parasite.5389]

the Game feels pretty social to me, spent the last few day chilling in southsun cove having some amazing beach parties

[kharmin.7683]

Seems to always be something going on in Divinity's Reach.  /shrug

[Yozora.9176]

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

[Zera.9435]

There's a thing called prime-time, which is the times when most people are online. That may be a factor.

If you're so worried about chat blowing up, just say something stupid or offensive in chat... anything interesting.

Basically, be more interesting. Don't wait for others.

[Cuks.8241]

40 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Seems to always be something going on in Divinity's Reach.  /shrug

Something going on in gw2 is 2 players writting a few lines and maybe link a newly crafted legendary.

Normal chat in mmorpgs constant chatter 24/7 on several channels to the point that filters and several chats are mandatory otherwise its unreadable.

Its also the fact that gw2 has only /map and /team for wvw. There are no larger channels. And /map is only for your instance. So your range is very limited.

Most chatter in gw2 is in guilds and usually on discords. Game tools for communities and communication are very arhaic and limited.

[roederich.2716]

2 hours ago, Yozora.9176 said:

I went to all cities and most of the zones and there is barely any one talks, there maybe ones in a blue moon some one says something in chat but thats it. Is chat dead in this game or its just anti social mmo?

you are 11 years too late. the time of meet N greet are long gone in here. many old players who switched from gw1 to here are not playing anymore. many due to ages and usually young people who can be considered social leave the game when their university ends.

its a matter of demography. old people who where raised up without computers and smartphones and therefore had a high social skill have gone.

best is find a guild with good community attached. dont expect much from common public gw2 community.

[Danikat.8537]

28 minutes ago, Yozora.9176 said:

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

Where in Divinity's Reach? The best place to find people in that city is between the bank and the Trading Post (at the top of the Dwayna High Road), and the conversations usually happen in /say chat so you need to be nearby to see them. Or some times there's a commander and they use squad chat

But also if you want people to talk it's a good idea to say something yourself, instead of waiting silently for someone else to do it for you.

(There's a conversation in Lion's Arch on EU right now about how many different screens everyone is using and how many is enough, which somehow also includes comments on the best kind of ice cream.)

Edited July 6 by Danikat.8537

[kharmin.7683]

54 minutes ago, Yozora.9176 said:

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

What @Danikat.8537 said.  😉

[ArchonWing.9480]

People are often afk in cities; though usually chat is better when everyone is focused in one area (say Divinity's Reach for festials). Lion's Arch is usually the most chatty, but you generally should try starting a conversation.

I think the biggest problem is players are split across all these hubs and I suppose some more are in VIP lounges. Some kind of unified chat could help.

[kiroho.4738]

1 hour ago, Yozora.9176 said:

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

You waited? So you wrote nothing, asked nothing, had nothing to say?

Do you see the problem? 🙂 

Edited July 6 by kiroho.4738

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Yozora.9176 said:

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

Nobody owes you a conversation starter. Sometimes people talk, other times they don't.

Edited July 6 by Sobx.1758

[RoseofGilead.8907]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Something going on in gw2 is 2 players writting a few lines and maybe link a newly crafted legendary.

Normal chat in mmorpgs constant chatter 24/7 on several channels to the point that filters and several chats are mandatory otherwise its unreadable.

Its also the fact that gw2 has only /map and /team for wvw. There are no larger channels. And /map is only for your instance. So your range is very limited.

Most chatter in gw2 is in guilds and usually on discords. Game tools for communities and communication are very arhaic and limited.

I currently play GW2, WoW (both horde and alliance characters on a high population server), and FFXIV. There is no constant chatter in any of the three, outside of WoW's service chat which is nonstop spamming and only seen in cities.

Edited July 6 by RoseofGilead.8907

[RoseofGilead.8907]

1 hour ago, roederich.2716 said:

its a matter of demography. old people who where raised up without computers and smartphones and therefore had a high social skill have gone.

The way my 16 and 13 year-old kids chat with their friends/teammates on Roblox says otherwise.

[Freya.9075]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Normal chat in mmorpgs constant chatter 24/7 on several channels to the point that filters and several chats are mandatory otherwise its unreadable.

I wouldn’t call the goldseller bots in other games constant chatter. Spam is more accurate 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Gop.8713]

3 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

I guess all social thing went to discord. LFG, Guilds. Maybe Im wrong, correct me if so.

I used to make an active effort to keep by gchat alive and this is what ppls told me, most of that goes on in discord these days, or in squad/party chat if ppls are actually up to something ; p

EDIT: But generally I agree with others, there always seems to be plenty going on in la, dr and queensdale at least. Tho as mentioned dr and queensdale may be more limited to /say in their specific chatty areas, at least some of the time. There is often too much chat going on in wvw channels ; p

Edited July 6 by Gop.8713

[Hsanrb.1570]

2 hours ago, Yozora.9176 said:

@kharmin i waited for over 30min in Divinity not a single text chat. 

I see more map chat in Queensdale (or any 1-15 leveling zone) than I do Divinity, you are also likely to see more map chat in the main capital hub of Lion's Arch than one of the racial home cities because every event/story eventually connects to or departs from here. I do think Divinity is currently the primary hub, pending on the new expansion works out, of people looking to request a full home node to get materials from. I see people at all odd hours going "Invite for a city please?"

Though most of the conversation is "What is the best build" and the one true answer is play what is fun... but apparently optimization at 1-15 is really important /s

[Jobber.6348]

14 hours ago, Yozora.9176 said:

I went to all cities and most of the zones and there is barely any one talks, there maybe ones in a blue moon some one says something in chat but thats it. Is chat dead in this game or its just anti social mmo?

Because Town maps/hubs are usually where people go to do some inventory management and go back out to the world. Go to any map with a meta train going on or a world boss. Tons of nonsensical chatting and emote spamming. Lion's Arch is also one of the biggest hangout spots, if you holler there, people might feel interested enough to respond. 

[Cuks.8241]

12 hours ago, RoseofGilead.8907 said:

I currently play GW2, WoW (both horde and alliance characters on a high population server), and FFXIV. There is no constant chatter in any of the three, outside of WoW's service chat which is nonstop spamming and only seen in cities.

Maybe I'm just old and things changed. When I played wow the chats were very active pretty much 24/7. But I've played wow mostly before LFR was introduced (I've played some later but not much) and LFD was just barely there. So lot's of pugging was done through chat. And especially in vanilla wow was an actual open world rpg and much less just instance game.

[Danikat.8537]

Wait, is this thread counting advertising spam as chat, in addition to actual conversations? It's true you're not going to see a lot of "WTB" "WTS" "LFG" etc. messages because there's much more effective ways to do those things, but that also means you don't need to see a bunch of chat messages because you can use the same tools. If you want to buy or sell anything you can use the Trading Post, and if you want a party or squad or you're looking for a guild you can use the LFG menu to find one.

Based on previous comments about waiting in silence for someone else to say something the OP wants to respond to I think it's important to emphasise that anyone can use the LFG menu. There are no requirements for starting a group, you don't need a commander tag or anything else and putting up the advert does not mean you're the group leader or that you're promising you know what to do and can lead. If you want to you can even add a note in the text field to say you're looking for someone else to lead. I think without a commander tag you're limited to 10-person squads instead of 50, but that's still enough for an advert or to taxi people into the map.

Importantly LFG is region-wide. GW2 uses a mega-server system, meaning there's as many copies of each map as needed for the players who want to be there. But that means if you go to a dungeon entrance and say in chat you're looking for a group you'll only reach people in the same copy of the map you're in. Whereas an LFG message can be seen by everyone in your region, even if they're not in the same map. Someone could be in a PoF map doing events for the WvW weekly and they can check groups for all the core game dungeons, pick one to join and only go to the map when they're ready to join.

Although map chat can be used to organise groups when the point is to form one with people already in the map. That happened to me yesterday with Dragon's Stand, I joined a squad through LFG before reset but ended up in a different copy of the map to the commander and theirs was already full. Luckily my copy of the map was also busy so we ended up organising through map chat, including setting up squads for each lane and got the meta done with whoever happened to be there.

One exception is WvW where Team chat is often used to coordinate across the 4 maps, especially calling for more people to join a map when needed because often entire squads will move between maps so it's not practical to use LFG for that. But it's still usually kept for talking about what you're doing rather than random adverts.

Edited July 7 by Danikat.8537

[Luthan.5236]

Game is easy and a lot of stuff is solo-able. (And the content that requires groups has elitist content and more casual stuff but people use lfg tool to form groups - not talking a lot on chat.)

In the maps there can be chat about events and wanting/offering help. Cities ... I guess only LA (and DR and Hoelbraek if there is one of the seasonal festivals) with chat. But usually people should be busy doing other stuff. (Festival events during a festival. And in LA just standing at the bank or crafting station managing their inventories.) The occasional thing where people ask something game-related or someone starts an argument about something political ... can happen sometimes. (In beginner maps there also might be gameplay related questions from newbies.)

Other than that I personally do not really see much use for a chat. I rarely randomyl feel like talking about the weather or music. Actually WvW chat (while defending/scouting or waiting for something to happen) has had more casual chats not related to the combat going on there ... from what I remember. 😄 (Depends on the teams though.  Last time I played was when still server system with linking existed.)

[Panda.1967]

Every time I go to Divinity’s Reach or Lions Arch there is always constant chatter going on… sometimes there’s even multiple conversations going on at once in map chat… chat is much less active everywhere else though…