I'm starting to not like big group content

[DarkK.7368]

I love PvP because even if it's 5vs5, it's pure reactive, no leader, no boonball, pure skill and fun team coordination according to what's happening, even if small-scale 2vs2 or 3vs3 fights. And you can decap for duels.

For WvW, I'm just tired of being in the famous boonball, following the leader and blindly throwing stuff to enemies to see what ball has the biggest d... boons. When you pretty much go alone and you get into 3vs3 fights and so, it's like PvP scenario so nice.

And for PvE... I did lot of fractals. Maybe it's because it was with random people without a "leader", but it had no mindless-stacking. Everyone doing what they could, helping others as they could, doing mechanics. Sometimes someone say "stay near me for heals" but you can ignore. But then I did some raid with a guild and voice chat and... meh. Returning to WvW boonballs. 10 person stacked with the leader, spam skills, stay close for heals, don't think, just follow some mechanics and orders. It's nice to do mechanics, but I don't find it nice when I feel like I'm a gear of the 10-person-ball machine. I'm no longer a player, a character, cooperating to do stuff. I'm just a tool. And for open world PvE, for big bosses is worse because you have 20-30 persons spamming and you see nothing. For small bosses where 2-3 persons gather, or even when I solo, then it's lots of fun.

Anyone else thinks like this or can elaborate?

[Nash.2681]

I can relate to it when it comes to boon blobb WvW Zergs and open world metas, where individual contribution usually is meaningless. For the rest, I can not.

[DarkK.7368]

Just now, Nash.2681 said:

I can relate to it when it comes to boon blobb WvW Zergs and open world metas, where individual contribution usually is meaningless. For the rest, I can not.

Can you elaborate on your raid experiences? Is what happened to me recently and I felt that. Even if there my contribution is good, I feel like a tool following orders. A tool doing rotations on some enemy and not really interacting with my teammates other than "close to the ball".

[Nash.2681]

1 hour ago, DarkK.7368 said:

Can you elaborate on your raid experiences? Is what happened to me recently and I felt that. Even if there my contribution is good, I feel like a tool following orders. A tool doing rotations on some enemy and not really interacting with my teammates other than "close to the ball".

Well, what can I say? I accepted how this games mechanics work (importance of boons, staying in boon range, etc.) so that doesn't really bother me in general. The difference to me when doing instanced content (be it dungeons, fractals, strikes or raids) is, that I actively decide to join a team and contribute as best as I can to the goal we have in common. That's what appeals to me and makes the difference. It might also help that I happily do special roles whenever needed (e. g. tank, canons on sabetha, tower portals, HK, etc.), so I have pretty direct feedback if I did my job and helped my team, or if I kittened up.

[Tinker.6924]

So why not make a roaming group of 3-5 and ambush others then?  That's something commonly done.  Or go duel other players on the island north of South Camp on Blue and Green BL?

[Ashen.2907]

7 hours ago, Nash.2681 said:

I can relate to it when it comes to boon blobb WvW Zergs and open world metas, where individual contribution usually is meaningless. For the rest, I can not.

Pretty much this. 

 

[Tiamat.8254]

you know, there are other games besides GW2. If you don't like it try one of them out perhaps?

[Zebulous.2934]

So Op likes uncoordinated group efforts.  Three to five solo individuals who happen to attack the same targets.  A group of solo roaming builds traveling together because it is easier.  Op does not want a specified role and does not want to take orders, at least that is what I infer.

[Echostorm.9143]

I get it.  I came up in EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot and while GW has made a lot of improvements I still think it sucks we have to stack up for everything and that boon uptime is measured in milliseconds instead of minutes.  In DAOC you could stand anywhere in a fight within a really big range and you could be healed and buffs were mostly on till you died with a few that lasted half an hour or so, it was liberating compared to GW where it is a constant concern about boon uptime and long rotations across dozens of keys.  It just feels like a chore sometimes.

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Tiamat.8254 said:

you know, there are other games besides GW2. If you don't like it try one of them out perhaps?

Should everyone who dislikes an aspect of the game that they otherwise enjoy leave? Not sure that the game would survive if only people who love every aspect remained. The low population in PvP is a pretty solid indication of that.

[Obnoxa.6702]

On 7/18/2024 at 3:59 PM, Echostorm.9143 said:

I get it.  I came up in EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot and while GW has made a lot of improvements I still think it sucks we have to stack up for everything and that boon uptime is measured in milliseconds instead of minutes.  In DAOC you could stand anywhere in a fight within a really big range and you could be healed and buffs were mostly on till you died with a few that lasted half an hour or so, it was liberating compared to GW where it is a constant concern about boon uptime and long rotations across dozens of keys.  It just feels like a chore sometimes.

This 100% ^^^

Edited July 20 by Obnoxa.6702
Love that the quoted post has 2 confused reacts and mine has three... XD

[Zebulous.2934]

2 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Should everyone who dislikes an aspect of the game that they otherwise enjoy leave? 

Recently whenever someone complains about a major aspect of the game one or two people will suggest that the complainant look at other games to get what they want. 

It is just that the phrasing of some of these suggestions seems to imply that the dissatisfied player is some sort of traitor.

 

[Kozumi.5816]

This game has the worst instanced group PvE content in the genre.

edit: added instanced. The OW is great.

Edited July 20 by Kozumi.5816

[Royal Grand Majesty.9852]

For WvW my only suggestion would be to try and get into a guild or alliance whom focus solely on clouding.

For PvE, you can always try and make your own group with new players and attempt it. Doubt those new players would know about boon stacking, however the downside might be that you won't be able to complete the content.

Giant spectacles with an abundance of players co-operating together is one of the strong-points of GW2.

Due to how powerful boons are within GW2, making players multiple orders of magnitude more powerful, makes players who want to perform well to seek out these boons.

The easiest way is to stay within a close proximity of others as there's a higher than not likely chance that you will obtain them.

I doubt GW2 would make a complete overhaul to their boon system to cater to those who dislike "Stacking".

So like what others have mentioned before, it might be a good idea to try out other games for a while.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

3 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

Recently whenever someone complains about a major aspect of the game one or two people will suggest that the complainant look at other games to get what they want. 

It is just that the phrasing of some of these suggestions seems to imply that the dissatisfied player is some sort of traitor.

 

Some people who've posted lately, though, have been the types where it's very much a "Hey, I mean this with no disrespect, but maybe you should consider ESO/WoW/FFXIV/another game genre entirely because you seem extremely unhappy with entire key parts of GW2 that are kind of key to the entire premise of GW2 vs other MMOs." (example: horizontal vs vertical progression, open world freely cooperative vs strictly instanced/group only)

OP's post isn't really one of those, though. 😂

[Zebulous.2934]

Irl the division of labor has benefits.

In ancient times you had to hunt and farm and make tools and build your home and make your clothes and defend yourself from predators or raiders.

It was a lot for one person to do.  These days people specialize and they get to benefit from the work of other specialists.

Sure you can handle each role for yourself.  You can make a group of self-sufficient players.  But they won't hold a candle to a group of specialists.

I am not sure how you could increase the power of solo builds without exponentially increasing the power of every focused support, healer and dps at the same time.

[illuminati.8453]

The biggest thing I hate about large scale combat is skills not activating.  I hit the keys way harder and faster in WvW than normal because nothing fires the first time.

Edited July 19 by illuminati.8453

[Fipmip.7219]

yeah i call it photon soup. at this point, it's here to stay unfortunately.

[keyokku.5412]

open world metas are meant to be large scale group events and it's like a big party with dozens of players, don't take it so seriously, honestly lol and stacking in metas with big sponge bosses at least half the reason is bc a lot of us are in melee range? 

some bosses or bounties even makes u switch range to damage and pushes you out of melee so you can't effectively stack like that but yes half of the reason is we are on the hitbox for melee and there are just many players. obviously boons have to do with it but most people don't care that much about minmaxing in open world bc it's easy enough to complete or even coordinate with a few chats aside from a few specific encounters

in wvw there is still plenty of roaming I'm seeing and doing. I more have issue with the sustain meta. zerging has always been a ball. it comes with the mode just like open world meta.

personally I don't like raids for the strict group environment like being at work lol but I love solo roaming in open world and soloing or small group things that are difficult to solo and roaming in wvw. but not everything is meant to be soloable and that's fine, it's great that there is a range of content?

group events, have fun like throwing a party, solo and small group stuff, have fun doing your best and showing your best skills

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/18/2024 at 10:46 PM, QueenKeriti.5176 said:

example: horizontal vs vertical progression

GW2 does not have horizontal progression. It has zero progression.

[Sobx.1758]

18 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

It has zero progression.

Well, that's obviously false.

[Kozumi.5816]

3 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Well, that's obviously false.

Prove it.

Jade bot: 5 minutes to get some stamina and some buffs.

Ascended gear: still BIS

Show me the mythical horizontal progression this game has, because it doesn't exist, and if it does, it takes 5 minutes to finish.

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Prove it.

Jade bot: 5 minutes to get some stamina and some buffs.

Ascended gear: still BIS

Show me the mythical horizontal progression this game has, because it doesn't exist, and if it does, it takes 5 minutes to finish.

Gear stats, especs, weapons, masteries.

Yes, "ascended gear still BIS". Do you not understand what horizontal progression means? What does your -false again btw- "it takes 5 minutes" have to do with that progression existing? That's right: nothing. You're just going from "it doesn't exist" to "prove it does!" to "maybe it does exist but it doesn't matter, based on my made up lie about it taking 5 minutes!", all in the same post. By the time you wrote "prove it", you already knew you're wrong.

Edited July 20 by Sobx.1758

[Gehenna.3625]

2 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Prove it.

Jade bot: 5 minutes to get some stamina and some buffs.

Ascended gear: still BIS

Show me the mythical horizontal progression this game has, because it doesn't exist, and if it does, it takes 5 minutes to finish.

I'd say Masteries are horizontal progression. It doesn't make your gear better but you do get a lot of extra options to use like mounts.

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 7/18/2024 at 5:30 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

This game has the worst instanced group PvE content in the genre.

edit: added instanced. The OW is great.

I feel like the people throwing confused emojis just haven't played anything else.  The whole "non-trinity-but-still-sorta-trinity" thing GW2 does is strictly worse than trinity.  In standard trinity ranged DPS and healers can be ranged.  In GW2's version we all just stack on the boss.  All of the mechanics they use in encounter design here exist in every other MMO, too.  But since we have no ability to control enemy positionining via tanking and no ability to provide ranged support, the same isn't true in reverse.  Encounter design is far more limited in GW2 than it is in trinity games.  I just don't see how you can have played other MMOs and end up thinking that GW2 has done anything better with regard to instanced PvE content.