Sometimes I feel the game is designed to not be a MMO

[zealex.9410]

They had largely designed (and still do) the game with the idea of playing alone for large parts of it and every once in a while grouping up for large scale content.

The problem tho is that grouping up for that content doesnt mean u interact with others, as a team u all play alone and do your job. Little sense of teamwork, little sense of community.

In their attempts to get rid the game of all the "tediousness" that they found from gw1 or other mmos they created a largely sp experience in a shared world, which imo is rather sad.

Play alone together is a term that gets brought up alot when talking about gw2 as an mmo for that exact reason.

Its a point of a number of ppl who loved hot (for being a largely mmo first, sp second expansion) and who want gw3 to come out (side tracking). They want a new entry which arenanet can apply what they learned from gw1, gw2 and other mmos and make a truer mmo experience.

[joneirikb.7506]

@"zealex.9410" said:They had largely designed (and still do) the game with the idea of playing alone for large parts of it and every once in a while grouping up for large scale content.

The problem tho is that grouping up for that content doesnt mean u interact with others, as a team u all play alone and do your job. Little sense of teamwork, little sense of community.

In their attempts to get rid the game of all the "tediousness" that they found from gw1 or other mmos they created a largely sp experience in a shared world, which imo is rather sad.

Play alone together is a term that gets brought up alot when talking about gw2 as an mmo for that exact reason.

Its a point of a number of ppl who loved hot (for being a largely mmo first, sp second expansion) and who want gw3 to come out (side tracking). They want a new entry which arenanet can apply what they learned from gw1, gw2 and other mmos and make a truer mmo experience.

"If I must be lonely, I think I'd rather be alone."

Quote from an old Stabbing Westward song that I remember every single time I play an MMO :p

The feeling I get when playing MMO's is largely the same as when taking the train in London, packed full with people, no one looking at you, talking to you, noticing you, care that you're there, as long as you don't make problems/trouble for them.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, having played several MMO's and other MMO'ish games lately, and ending up feeling the same way about all of them. Why is it is so difficult for humans to actually try to interact with each others in a game about interacting and cooperating ? I started playing FF14 just for this reason, to try an MMO with standard trinity/dungeons again, where you had to do dungeons to even progress story (or anything else), and I end up feeling just as sad as the entire communication in a dungeon is "Hi" x4 and "gg thx" x4 at the end, if even that much.

Every time I look back at older MMO's that had this working better, or talk with people that talk about when they liked MMO's, a lot of it falls back on the older MMO games which was set up so that you couldn't do things alone, it was just too hard. You had to work with others to accomplish anything, even just getting across maps.

I can't imagine that would be popularly received nowadays ? The question is, would it increase the social aspect of the game ? If you for all practical effects had to have a party to brave for example Orr ? I mean if we look at HoT, sure people play together more, but it always feels like mostly a commander and a bunch of zerglings just following, only saying things if something goes wrong ? It feels like a step in the right direction, but at the same time not ?

MMO's are weird, and confuse me. Just like humans.

[zealex.9410]

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@"zealex.9410" said:They had largely designed (and still do) the game with the idea of playing alone for large parts of it and every once in a while grouping up for large scale content.

The problem tho is that grouping up for that content doesnt mean u interact with others, as a team u all play alone and do your job. Little sense of teamwork, little sense of community.

In their attempts to get rid the game of all the "tediousness" that they found from gw1 or other mmos they created a largely sp experience in a shared world, which imo is rather sad.

Play alone together is a term that gets brought up alot when talking about gw2 as an mmo for that exact reason.

Its a point of a number of ppl who loved hot (for being a largely mmo first, sp second expansion) and who want gw3 to come out (side tracking). They want a new entry which arenanet can apply what they learned from gw1, gw2 and other mmos and make a truer mmo experience.

"If I must be lonely, I think I'd rather be alone."

Quote from an old Stabbing Westward song that I remember every single time I play an MMO :p

The feeling I get when playing MMO's is largely the same as when taking the train in London, packed full with people, no one looking at you, talking to you, noticing you, care that you're there, as long as you don't make problems/trouble for them.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, having played several MMO's and other MMO'ish games lately, and ending up feeling the same way about all of them. Why is it is so difficult for humans to actually try to interact with each others in a game about interacting and cooperating ? I started playing FF14 just for this reason, to try an MMO with standard trinity/dungeons again, where you had to do dungeons to even progress story (or anything else), and I end up feeling just as sad as the entire communication in a dungeon is "Hi" x4 and "gg thx" x4 at the end, if even that much.

Every time I look back at older MMO's that had this working better, or talk with people that talk about when they liked MMO's, a lot of it falls back on the older MMO games which was set up so that you couldn't do things alone, it was just too hard. You had to work with others to accomplish anything, even just getting across maps.

I can't imagine that would be popularly received nowadays ? The question is, would it increase the social aspect of the game ? If you for all practical effects had to have a party to brave for example Orr ? I mean if we look at HoT, sure people play together more, but it always feels like mostly a commander and a bunch of zerglings just following, only saying things if something goes wrong ? It feels like a step in the right direction, but at the same time not ?

MMO's are weird, and confuse me. Just like humans.

Basically, few ppl will interact unless they have to, everyone will take the path of least resistance.

And for all the anti mmo shit gw2 has at least it doesnt have automatic mm for group content, thank god.

[Zaklex.6308]

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Not true...don't speak for everyone, speak only for yourself otherwise your comment might be taken with a grain of salt. I for one did not mind doing all of those Hearts for Wayfarer's Henge.

As for replacing Hearts with story driven quests...no, absolutely not, GW2 is specifically designed not to be like Runescape and other MMO's, that is why you don't find quest hubs and other things you "normally" find in those other MMO's...remember, it's the MMO for those that hate MMO's, the Anti-MMO MMO if you will.

[Abelisk.5148]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Not true...don't speak for everyone, speak only for yourself otherwise your comment might be taken with a grain of salt. I for one did not mind doing all of those Hearts for Wayfarer's Henge.

As for replacing Hearts with story driven quests...no, absolutely not, GW2 is specifically designed not to be like Runescape and other MMO's, that is why you don't find quest hubs and other things you "normally" find in those other MMO's...remember, it's the MMO for those that hate MMO's, the Anti-MMO MMO if you will.

Pretty sure that was referring to dynamic events, where the world of Tyria is "ever-changing". The Renown Hearts were the answer to players who wanted traditional quests but on a much lower scale-except that I personally feel the hearts weren't executed in the best way.

Even check the wiki. "Renown Hearts are reminiscent of traditional quests."

[zealex.9410]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Not true...don't speak for everyone, speak only for yourself otherwise your comment might be taken with a grain of salt. I for one did not mind doing all of those Hearts for Wayfarer's Henge.

As for replacing Hearts with story driven quests...no, absolutely not, GW2 is specifically designed not to be like Runescape and other MMO's, that is why you don't find quest hubs and other things you "normally" find in those other MMO's...remember, it's the MMO for those that hate MMO's, the Anti-MMO MMO if you will.

Yet the added quest like current event and ppl universally loved them. They took it too far in some regards trying to distance gw2 from te norm.

[mauried.5608]

Maybe one day , someone will make a MMO that doesnt involve killing monsters over and over.

[Blocki.4931]

This isn't some new insight or anything. I've been saying this for years, ever since I started playing 6 years ago basically. That's what I love about this game. I'm not huge on social aspects in games. I played a ton of League of Legends and CoD back then, both not really games you ever chat in besides trashtalking. I don't see any appeal in ever adding anybody to my friendslist because chances are they're never going to become a regular unless I force it.

Game is 100% soloable, which is why it is annoying WHEN you have to group up for fractals or raids.

[Khisanth.2948]

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:I understand what you are saying, but I would like to point out it is not so strict as pointed out.1: Doing hearts. There are hearts where it is not beneficial to do them with others, while other hearts are more beneficial. an example are the two hearts in queensdale next to eachother.a: Help Diah tend her farm . Having two players can really speed things up. 1 clicks the wurmmound and hits the wurm, the other player hits the same wurm and then the other player clicks the wurmmound and both hit the wurm again.

or just F all the corn :)

2: Dynamic events. The difference between gold, silver and bronze rewards are very low, compared to the amount of work required. Bronze get 25% less XP and karma, while the amount of work can be as low as 5% compared to the goldreward.The main issue again is how some events have been designed. This is mostly the case in the core game. Let's take a look at one of them.Collect grub remains for Ine. This event requires you to give grub remains to Ine. You get gold reward when you give 10 remains and bronze for atleast 1. when you do this event alone, you need 10 remains for completion, but when there are more people this scales up the amount of people. There are however only about 15 grubs, so with more people, it gets really hard to reach gold reward, and event progression is slowed down cause you need to wait for respawn of the grubs.

The collect scrap material event in the Noble's event chain in VB it just as bad or even worst considering the mobs involved. The Shatterer pre-event used to have the same problem.

Many events in the game scale poorly. Mob damage scaling should be horizontal rather than the current vertical scaling. Vertical scaling doesn't even make any sense. It just causes mobs to start randomly one-shotting people.

[Zaklex.6308]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Not true...don't speak for everyone, speak only for yourself otherwise your comment might be taken with a grain of salt. I for one did not mind doing all of those Hearts for Wayfarer's Henge.

As for replacing Hearts with story driven quests...no, absolutely not, GW2 is specifically designed not to be like Runescape and other MMO's, that is why you don't find quest hubs and other things you "normally" find in those other MMO's...remember, it's the MMO for those that hate MMO's, the Anti-MMO MMO if you will.

Yet the added quest like current event and ppl universally loved them. They took it too far in some regards trying to distance gw2 from te norm.

But current events aren't like normal quests and I like the current events as well, even when I don't complete them(like all those ones between the Inquest and Priory), at least not imo...I compare the quests in ESO to hearts in GW2 and I prefer the hearts myself, yes, even the repeatable ones, because they serve a purpose. Now whether you think that purpose is to add in mindless "grind" or just additional content is up to each individual to decide, I find that I usually complete the repeatable hearts without actually repeating them. It's all a personal preference anyways, discussions like this could go on for days and days and not get anywhere, everyone should really start agreeing to disagree, at least on some point or other.

[Eudaimonia.8695]

@Khalisto.5780 said:I've been playing this game since 2012, and I still feel that sometimes things are better if you're all alone than playing with more ppl

This is not unique to GW2. Pretty much every MMO nowadays is designed this way. Playing alone is encouraged, grouping up is optional.

Same happens with events, you dont hit enough stuff or collect or whatever you dont get the gold prize.

The bosses/champ scaling are also a problem. While killing some champions alone seem to be pretty hard, which is good, when you have more than 6,7 ppl the boss becomes way too ez, you dont even have to properly dps, just auto attack.

These are legitimate issues. The base game open world content has suffered a lot with the power creep. Events that took minutes to complete are now over in seconds. The past few weeks I was wandering through the core game and I was shocked how quickly certain world bosses die (Like temple bosses or karka queen). Granted, the open world was always pretty easy in this game but now mobs and bosses die so fast it's unreal.

A rebalance of the scaling would be nice but I don't expect it to happen. Reworking old stuff doesn't bring in any money. :/

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:this is something that was showcased by WP (oddly enough) regarding just how trivial GW2 as a game is on the whole. When he did his run of the core game with just a ranger and letting the pet kill things without him using a single skill it showed off how much of the game is on cruise control. This means that the open world content like hearts and events aren't going to pose enough of a challenge for most players, and that has been true more or less since launch and certainly since 6 months into the game's life. So many of the game's mechanics are trivial and only serve as a kind of busy work facade that plays at being an MMO/game but really have no inherent value. Crafting weapons and armor and trinkets? Nope. Its only a vehicle to busy your time until you can get to the higher level to craft high tier armor. Unless you force yourself to only wear and use the items you craft, its a pointless system. Not that your gear even matters in core game content anyway and then you can usually get better gear through loot tracks post level 80 and you have an entire leveling experience that is a joke.

I love the world of Tyria and the lore they've crafted. I like the NPCs they've made over the years with a few marked exceptions, and overall I think they are headed in the right direction with content (albeit the Deus Ex Machina stuff needs to stop), but as an MMORPG, specifically in the early leveling stages, its all a facade and one of the biggest strikes against the game IMO.

Its far too easy to train through core Tyria and its only further trivialized with the 23984735947832 leveling tomes many of us have and the mounts that can make those original maps feel even smaller. And yes, it does also negatively impact the experience for new players, which Anet can't afford to lose right out of the gate due to a bad experience.

There's a history here. It goes a little something like this:

The lowest common denominator can get really low. In Beta, the overworld was much harder than it is now. So hard that people complained, actually. GW2 was designed from the ground up centered around PVP, and the overworld enemies were meant to mimic this difficulty. But, there were a lot of complaints that the game was too hard. Specifically that melee was too hard. A champion with any amount of upscaling could down a full PVT hero in a single hit. The end game was supposed to start at level 30 with dungeons, and so it was built to be like that. The game was nerfed in order to quell these complaints.

But... these complaints remained. Throughout the game's early years, complaints about difficulty remained ever present, no matter how easy Anet made the game. There were complaints about parts of the game being too difficult where I could literally walk up and auto attack things to death while making no attempt to defend myself.. A lot of the buildcrafting was made so simple as to be nearly automatic, and enemies were made so easy as to be impossible to lose. The tutorial period went from 1-30 to all non-expansion overworld content. This is done under the assumption that, if given a lot of loitering time, new players will eventually figure out the game's mechanics.

The sad part is that we may never see a change to this. I can only speculate here, but if there's probably numbers out there showing that it is better for the game to be too easy than too hard.

[Vayne.8563]

Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

In addition to this, players can buff each other for events, scale up events to add more rewards...hearts were a last minute addition to this game, made to keep people in areas where dynamic events occured, mostly because people from other MMOs couldn't play the game without markers on their map. Hearts aren't the core of this game. They're a side show. A late addition. They didn't appear in the first two betas, nor are they in end game zones, including all three Orr zones. Hearts didn't appear in Dry Top or Silverwastes or Southsun from Season 1 and 2 of the living story. Nor did they appear in HoT at all. Using hearts as an example, makes me feel like people still think hearts were meant to be prime content.

They were readded in season 3 in a repeatable format only because some casual players who like to solo wanted more to do solo. They were never intended to be anything more than throwaway content that's easy for solo players to do.

But you can still complete zones just as fast or faster with a coordinated group that knows what they're doing. HPS will be faster as well, and if one if you happens to be a mesmer, it can save you an awful lot of time, going somewhere, jumping down, getting a POI and porting both of you back up. The events will scale too, giving you more kills, more things to tag, thus faster progress to the heart.

If you're going around focusing on hearts and that's what you think this game is about, you're drawing conclusions I don't feel are warranted.

[Khalisto.5780]

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

[kharmin.7683]

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

Or maybe people could join a guild?

[Khalisto.5780]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

Or maybe people could join a guild?

That doesnt mean you'll always find someone willing to do what you doing at the moment

yo let's hp train in HoT maps

no thx too busy fashion waring in LA

[Vayne.8563]

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

Well that's the whole point of what the OP was saying. MMOs are not faster with random groups doing random things. MMOs are faster with groups who coordinate doing things together. There is absolutely NOTHING to stop you from partying with someone and typing in party chat, and there's nothing stopping you from getting on discord and talking to someone while you play.

MMOs should reward coordinated efforts. If you're not coordinating you can STILL go faster, if you understand the mechanics. There are many times I'm doing a heart and run into people who do what I described without even discussing it. I don't talk to people to break bars with them. I don't talk to people to combo with them. And I don't have to talk to people doing a heart that understand the mechanics of the heart. Nor do I have to communicate with other players to scale up a dynamic event. Seems to me that everything I said remains true, even if you're not coordinating.

Obviously people who know less or don't get it will clear zones slower, which is exactly as it should be. This complaint is just complaining for the sake of complaining.

[Vayne.8563]

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Khalisto.5780 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Two coordinated people can finish many hearts faster than one person alone. Take hearts where you have a cage to open that releases an animal. One person opens the cage, animal released, both get hits,. both get credit. Then the other person can open the same cage again and repeat. This works in everything from the pull up wurms in Queensdale and Caledon, all the way up to the hyena Cages in POF. But more than that, events spawn and often fill in hearts as well. And those events spawn more enemies with more players. Thus the entire premise of the OP is wrong.

I generally complete zones faster when playing with my wife than I do alone. It's a matter of coordinating, which is what all MMOs should be about.

Sure, everybody plays coordinated with random ppl in the map

Or maybe people could join a guild?

That doesnt mean you'll always find someone willing to do what you doing at the moment

yo let's hp train in HoT maps

no thx too busy fashion waring in LA

Since you can do probably 90% of the HoT maps with 2-3 people you don't need a whole guild. I run people through hero point runs in my guild all the time, just two of us, usually to unlock elite specs. It doesn't require a whole train or a guild. It requires a couple of friends.

Actually I can run around solo and unlock elite specs, just call out the couple of hero points I need help with the skip the handful of really hard ones.

[Cuks.8241]

There are some hearths that can be bottle necked by many people but there are also those that are done faster. So I would say it is 50/50. Or even better with more people because most of the hearths have an event near by that goes into completion and those will scale up with more people and be done faster.It is still way better than any mmorpg out there. Mobs spawn fast, hearth can be done in many different ways, scaling up,... Unlike many mmorpgs where people camped for hours for a certain mob to come and than kill stealing.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@"zealex.9410" said:They had largely designed (and still do) the game with the idea of playing alone for large parts of it and every once in a while grouping up for large scale content.

The problem tho is that grouping up for that content doesnt mean u interact with others, as a team u all play alone and do your job. Little sense of teamwork, little sense of community.

In their attempts to get rid the game of all the "tediousness" that they found from gw1 or other mmos they created a largely sp experience in a shared world, which imo is rather sad.

Play alone together is a term that gets brought up alot when talking about gw2 as an mmo for that exact reason.

Its a point of a number of ppl who loved hot (for being a largely mmo first, sp second expansion) and who want gw3 to come out (side tracking). They want a new entry which arenanet can apply what they learned from gw1, gw2 and other mmos and make a truer mmo experience.

"If I must be lonely, I think I'd rather be alone."

Quote from an old Stabbing Westward song that I remember every single time I play an MMO :p

The feeling I get when playing MMO's is largely the same as when taking the train in London, packed full with people, no one looking at you, talking to you, noticing you, care that you're there, as long as you don't make problems/trouble for them.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, having played several MMO's and other MMO'ish games lately, and ending up feeling the same way about all of them. Why is it is so difficult for humans to actually try to interact with each others in a game about interacting and cooperating ? I started playing FF14 just for this reason, to try an MMO with standard trinity/dungeons again, where you had to do dungeons to even progress story (or anything else), and I end up feeling just as sad as the entire communication in a dungeon is "Hi" x4 and "gg thx" x4 at the end, if even that much.

Every time I look back at older MMO's that had this working better, or talk with people that talk about when they liked MMO's, a lot of it falls back on the older MMO games which was set up so that you couldn't do things alone, it was just too hard. You had to work with others to accomplish anything, even just getting across maps.

I can't imagine that would be popularly received nowadays ? The question is, would it increase the social aspect of the game ? If you for all practical effects had to have a party to brave for example Orr ? I mean if we look at HoT, sure people play together more, but it always feels like mostly a commander and a bunch of zerglings just following, only saying things if something goes wrong ? It feels like a step in the right direction, but at the same time not ?

MMO's are weird, and confuse me. Just like humans.

The reason for what you are describing is pretty simple if you think about it. Older mmos were more social because not as many people played them.

Gaming as a whole is way more mainstream these days and, as with everything, the more the people, the more the kittenbags among them. This applies even more to modern theme-park MMOrpgs that try to appeal to everyone, from the moba crowd to looter game fans. The result was an increased chance of negative interactions, with the average mmo player becoming more anti-social to avoid that. And then the mmo devs had to react to the change, they themselves inadvertently caused, by allowing more solo activities in their theme-parks.

[zealex.9410]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:Can we all agree Renown Hearts shouldn't belong in GW2... i'd much rather replace all the renown hearts in each map with like 2 or 3 story-driven quests that are required for map completion. When I mean quests I mean quests from games like RuneScape. The higher level the map is the more complex the quest becomes. The quest takes you all around the map compared to how isolated heart zones are.

Since they are directly tied to map completion, as it is now, I can't agree. Along with that is the fact that, being "isolated" as they are, they do exactly what you're expecting story driven quests to do, drive you all over the map to find them.

The problem is how disjointed the hearts are. Besides the map lore the hearts are rarely interconnected whereas quests feel like a long string of tasks that take you all around the map, leading to a one big reward at the very end. These rewards can be unique and greatly help the player compared to how useless rewards are for heart vendors (except some Living Story vendors)

While some of the hearts may be "disjointed", a lot of them do tie in directly with the map's story, and, if you're working on collections, some of these vendors are going to be essential. On top of that, map completion does offer a reward when you're done, so it's already doing what you're asking for.

That's the way I look at it too: Each map has it's own story, along with the stories that tie to it directly either through the main game, LSs or the expansions. They each have unique things going on, and a lot of them are directly tied to the main game or expansions as well. How many of the hearts in Orr aren't directly tied to the main plot? From where I'm sitting, they all are, as they deal with minions of the target of the main plot. It gets a bit disconnected once you've finished the main story, but the epilogue to the main story does a lot to cover that too, stating that the minions are still going to have to be cleared out.

I'm not going to lobby against more story, I like stories, but because I like stories, I can see the stories that are told by a majority of the hearts.

Come on, doing the hearts is the worst part about the collections. Everyone hated getting the Wayfarer's Henge because of that.

Not true...don't speak for everyone, speak only for yourself otherwise your comment might be taken with a grain of salt. I for one did not mind doing all of those Hearts for Wayfarer's Henge.

As for replacing Hearts with story driven quests...no, absolutely not, GW2 is specifically designed not to be like Runescape and other MMO's, that is why you don't find quest hubs and other things you "normally" find in those other MMO's...remember, it's the MMO for those that hate MMO's, the Anti-MMO MMO if you will.

Yet the added quest like current event and ppl universally loved them. They took it too far in some regards trying to distance gw2 from te norm.

But current events aren't like normal quests and I like the current events as well, even when I don't complete them(like all those ones between the Inquest and Priory), at least not imo...I compare the quests in ESO to hearts in GW2 and I prefer the hearts myself, yes, even the repeatable ones, because they serve a purpose. Now whether you think that purpose is to add in mindless "grind" or just additional content is up to each individual to decide, I find that I usually complete the repeatable hearts without actually repeating them. It's all a personal preference anyways, discussions like this could go on for days and days and not get anywhere, everyone should really start agreeing to disagree, at least on some point or other.

There are current events that feel alot like quests, bar your average quest ui.

[zealex.9410]

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@"zealex.9410" said:They had largely designed (and still do) the game with the idea of playing alone for large parts of it and every once in a while grouping up for large scale content.

The problem tho is that grouping up for that content doesnt mean u interact with others, as a team u all play alone and do your job. Little sense of teamwork, little sense of community.

In their attempts to get rid the game of all the "tediousness" that they found from gw1 or other mmos they created a largely sp experience in a shared world, which imo is rather sad.

Play alone together is a term that gets brought up alot when talking about gw2 as an mmo for that exact reason.

Its a point of a number of ppl who loved hot (for being a largely mmo first, sp second expansion) and who want gw3 to come out (side tracking). They want a new entry which arenanet can apply what they learned from gw1, gw2 and other mmos and make a truer mmo experience.

"If I must be lonely, I think I'd rather be alone."

Quote from an old Stabbing Westward song that I remember every single time I play an MMO :p

The feeling I get when playing MMO's is largely the same as when taking the train in London, packed full with people, no one looking at you, talking to you, noticing you, care that you're there, as long as you don't make problems/trouble for them.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, having played several MMO's and other MMO'ish games lately, and ending up feeling the same way about all of them. Why is it is so difficult for humans to actually try to interact with each others in a game about interacting and cooperating ? I started playing FF14 just for this reason, to try an MMO with standard trinity/dungeons again, where you had to do dungeons to even progress story (or anything else), and I end up feeling just as sad as the entire communication in a dungeon is "Hi" x4 and "gg thx" x4 at the end, if even that much.

Every time I look back at older MMO's that had this working better, or talk with people that talk about when they liked MMO's, a lot of it falls back on the older MMO games which was set up so that you couldn't do things alone, it was just too hard. You had to work with others to accomplish anything, even just getting across maps.

I can't imagine that would be popularly received nowadays ? The question is, would it increase the social aspect of the game ? If you for all practical effects had to have a party to brave for example Orr ? I mean if we look at HoT, sure people play together more, but it always feels like mostly a commander and a bunch of zerglings just following, only saying things if something goes wrong ? It feels like a step in the right direction, but at the same time not ?

MMO's are weird, and confuse me. Just like humans.

The reason for what you are describing is pretty simple if you think about it. Older mmos were more social because not as many people played them.

Gaming as a whole is way more mainstream these days and, as with everything, the more the people, the more the kittenbags among them. This applies even more to modern theme-park MMOrpgs that try to appeal to everyone, from the moba crowd to looter game fans. The result was an increased chance of negative interactions, with the average mmo player becoming more anti-social to avoid that. And then the mmo devs had to react to the change, they themselves inadvertently caused, by allowing more solo activities in their theme-parks.

That could be the case but what is deff te case is the attempt from developers to make thing simpler and easier and as a result human interaction and community forming has suffered.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:this is something that was showcased by WP (oddly enough) regarding just how trivial GW2 as a game is on the whole. When he did his run of the core game with just a ranger and letting the pet kill things without him using a single skill it showed off how much of the game is on cruise control. This means that the open world content like hearts and events aren't going to pose enough of a challenge for most players, and that has been true more or less since launch and certainly since 6 months into the game's life. So many of the game's mechanics are trivial and only serve as a kind of busy work facade that plays at being an MMO/game but really have no inherent value. Crafting weapons and armor and trinkets? Nope. Its only a vehicle to busy your time until you can get to the higher level to craft high tier armor. Unless you force yourself to only wear and use the items you craft, its a pointless system. Not that your gear even matters in core game content anyway and then you can usually get better gear through loot tracks post level 80 and you have an entire leveling experience that is a joke.

I love the world of Tyria and the lore they've crafted. I like the NPCs they've made over the years with a few marked exceptions, and overall I think they are headed in the right direction with content (albeit the Deus Ex Machina stuff needs to stop), but as an MMORPG, specifically in the early leveling stages, its all a facade and one of the biggest strikes against the game IMO.

Its far too easy to train through core Tyria and its only further trivialized with the 23984735947832 leveling tomes many of us have and the mounts that can make those original maps feel even smaller. And yes, it does also negatively impact the experience for new players, which Anet can't afford to lose right out of the gate due to a bad experience.

There's a history here. It goes a little something like this:

The lowest common denominator can get really low. In Beta, the overworld was much harder than it is now. So hard that people complained, actually. GW2 was designed from the ground up centered around PVP, and the overworld enemies were meant to mimic this difficulty. But, there were a lot of complaints that the game was too hard. Specifically that melee was too hard. A champion with any amount of upscaling could down a full PVT hero in a single hit. The end game was supposed to start at level 30 with dungeons, and so it was built to be like that. The game was nerfed in order to quell these complaints.

But... these complaints remained. Throughout the game's early years, complaints about difficulty remained ever present, no matter how easy Anet made the game. There were complaints about parts of the game being too difficult where I could literally walk up and auto attack things to death while making no attempt to defend myself.. A lot of the buildcrafting was made so simple as to be nearly automatic, and enemies were made so easy as to be impossible to lose. The tutorial period went from 1-30 to all non-expansion overworld content. This is done under the assumption that, if given a lot of loitering time, new players will eventually figure out the game's mechanics.

The sad part is that we may never see a change to this. I can only speculate here, but if there's probably numbers out there showing that it is better for the game to be too easy than too hard.

Yep, I was here at beta. Technically been with the franchise from week one of GW1. I remember some of the over tuned/punishing mobs from beta and I was all for tuning them down a bit. Key phrase there is "a bit". Also, this was specifically during the starter zone areas as well. Unfortunately Anet seemed to err on the side of cake walk for PvE content and did so almost immediately. I remember having to intentionally remove armor and try personal story steps that were "above my pay grade" to create a fun challenge for myself, and then they took away the ability for me to even do that. Add to that the fact that brand new players with absolutely no guidance in game end up never learning the basics of good tactics through game play itself and worse, get a level 80 bump and are told to go play in maps they have no business in because those areas ARE punishing, and you have a bad recipe for new players over all. In the end though, the game suffers more from this than not because there is no skill progression (for the player) and when one third of your game is on training wheels for the largest part of it (core tyria) new players tend to develop poor expectations then get frustrated in xpac content. This doesn't make for a healthy player base long term. Unfortunately this means that even the xpac content will eventually get nerfed into the ground difficulty wise and we're right back to where we were with core Tyria.

I'm not looking for some super punishing rage quit level of difficulty for the game, but core Tyria should feel more dangerous as you progress and more should be there to encourage learning proper skills to survive in end game content.