On Player Interaction: The Main Achilies Heel of GW2

[Arnox.5128]

Alright. I've read through everyone's replies on this thread and most replies against seem to boil down to a few ideas.

 

1. Better player interaction tools aren't needed.

 

No, they're not needed. Just like you don't NEED to buy a Big Mac. Just like you don't NEED to be able to customize your forum profile. But they're very nice to have and add to the experience. Honestly, I'm surprised that you guys are arguing against what should be no-brainer features to add that don't affect you in any way if you don't want to use them. This reminds me a lot of the times before PoF when some people requested mounts and there was a big argument every time it was suggested. And then PoF came out and showed that, hey, mounts could actually be super cool and fun if done properly.

 

My point here is to not shut down ideas just because they haven't been done before in GW2. Talk about WHY something wouldn't be a good idea instead of automatically saying, "Oh, it's not needed," because that's not an argument.

 

2. I don't like dueling/deathrolling/etc.!

 

OK, it doesn't have to be those things. It doesn't even have to be a competitive player interaction tool in nature. Again, just more tools to manage guilds would be nice. There's many MANY things that ANet can add. Now, with that said, I personally actually would like to see dueling and don't understand the complaints against it, but whatever. I'm not here to defend dueling or deathrolling specifically, but I am here to advocate for more tools that facilitate player interaction and/or make it easier.

 

3. Guild Wars 2 aims for the casual crowd, so it should be casual.

 

First of all, what does "casual" even mean? Someone who doesn't want to put in a lot of effort? Alright, fine, but how would more and better player interaction tools make the game "less causal"? Also, maybe a lot of people in GW2 don't wanna put the effort in simply because don't feel the rewards are enough, or they feel the activity itself is not engaging enough. If someone doesn't wanna grind for a map currency, does that make them casual or is that map currency grind simply boring and unengaging in the first place?

 

4. I don't want to be forced to interact with people!

 

Very little, if anything, would change with how content could be tackled if more player interaction tools were added. But I do have to ask. Why are you complaining about interacting with people/new people... In an MMO? Again, that's what this genre is about. Also, you wouldn't have met the friends you want to restrict yourself to if you never met anyone new in the first place.

Edited May 31, 2021 by Arnox.5128

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

So, what are these tools that are needed?  Or, 'would be nice'?

It certainly isn't PvP in Open World.  There have been some QoL requests for mass mailings for Guilds...ok.  What else?  What, specifically, are your suggestions for 'tools'? 

 

If it is too vague, the Devs won't have any idea what might be wanted by the players. 

[voltaicbore.8012]

3 hours ago, Arnox.5128 said:

4. I don't want to be forced to interact with people!

 

Very little, if anything, would change with how content could be tackled if more player interaction tools were added. But I do have to ask. Why are you complaining about interacting with people/new people... In an MMO? Again, that's what this genre is about. Also, you wouldn't have met the friends you want to restrict yourself to if you never met anyone new in the first place.

 

Others have responded to the first 3 points already in various forms, so I'll just toss you my 2 cents on this last one.

 

For me, MMOs are essentially replacements for the old single-player JRPG experience that I can't get as readily anymore. In particular, I was always big on the Final Fantasy franchise (ironically I never touched FFXIV and likely never will). Those games featured pretty large explorable worlds, and while there was always a definite and clear endpoint when it comes to the story, trying to 100% the games outside of that was always a long-lasting and fun challenge for me. I feel like MMOs have picked up the torch on most of the things that made me stick with single-player JRPGs for so long, and the player-interaction part was never really a selling point for me.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm an extrovert and have no social anxiety, and I grew up during a time when gaming with friends meant actually sitting in the same room, cackling at the same split screen as we trolled each other in Mario Kart, Goldeneye, and the original Smash Bros (and later in college, Halo). Halo in particular was interesting in that I was able to play co-op with friends in PvE missions for a console game, and I think that was one of the first widely-selling console games where you could do it over the internet. I'm not inherently against cooperative play, and I'm not allergic to interaction.

 

I just think it's short-sighted to assume that interactivity is the be-all-end-all selling point for MMOs. Yes, a focus on interactivity is arguably what makes this genre unique, but there are plenty of other reasons to like MMOs. I happen to like the open world design and baked-in "go off on your own adventure to 100% these achievements" thing that MMOs excel at.

 

To bring it back to your original contention that GW2 could use more interactivity tools, I wouldn't mind them as long as they don't intrude on my otherwise quiet solo experience. My concern is that many suggestions end up being intrusive in some way or another. In particular, there's a strong undercurrent of "we'll get more interactivity if the devs just make things too hard (or mechanically impossible) to solo" - that by definition would intrude on my experience of soloing the vast majority of content at my leisure. Again, this is not about inability to group up, either as a matter of social anxiety or gaming skill. I solo the vast majority of explorable dungeons, a number of fractals, and every single HoT HP. I run arcdps and look at the boon tables to see how my builds are doing. I've run raids, I... I basically can play this game 'properly', if you will. I just like the freedom of being able to choose my challenges, rather than being forced all the time to enlist the help of others.

Edited June 1, 2021 by voltaicbore.8012

[Zephire.8049]

I'm much the same as @voltaicbore.8012 in that I play GW2 because I like the design of such games but fewer and fewer games offer it anymore, and those that do tend to have limited content/stop being developed after a year or two/cost $80+ CAD. Plus with MMOs there's the option to play with friends, which isn't the case in single-player games.

 

I just like being able to play solo if I want and GW2 allows me to do that and I get to control how much (or little) I interact with others because the game is designed so other players around you won't impact your own gameplay with a handful of exceptions. If I want to just chill out with Netflix and map completion, I can do that. If I want to do metas, I can do that. If I want to do fractals or raids, I can do that. Heck, if I want to PvP, I can do that.  There are so many ways to interact with others and everyone gets to choose what they're comfortable with and meet up with like-minded people.

 

And among the reasons why I'm picky is because I am done with all the "trash talk" and harassment and I have quit countless games because to progress you were expected to just put up with it. If you force interaction via group content that can't be solo'd or avoided, you will end up with a minority of people driving away other players not just from that specific content but the game in general.

 

I'm not against GW2 getting more social tools but with IBS's story, they were already pushing forced grouping and that was a terrible thing to be blindsided with, akin to going to school only to end up in a group project with strangers the moment you enter the classroom. Istan also had/has several events where players can negatively impact others and that just results in people yelling at each other.

 

Since you didn't give any concrete examples and how they'd work aside from dueling (a hard no from me and thankfully it's impossible to add to the open world due to the engine), there's no specifics to comment on. I'm just stating that how the current game is works great for me and MMOs aren't just for social butterflies because there are so many reasons why someone may play an MMO.

[Arnox.5128]

2 hours ago, Swagger.1459 said:

You are acting like the player to player interaction tools are in such dire straits that it has caused lower popularity and will shorten the life of the game... Then you bring up dueling as an example, like it’s part of some holy grail player to player interaction tool that the game desperately needs, when in fact most gamers don’t even like or participate in pvp modes. Out of touch, especially when we have a means to duel players in the game, but you want to shove it in pve like it’s some amazing thing for retention, revenue, and game growth. It’s not. You could flush pvp out of this game and it wouldn’t really hurt the bottom line.

 

And since you are concerned with, what you perceive to be, a lack of players to player interaction tools, going to ask some question...

 

Do you run a guild? How many players in your guild? Do you run guild events? Do you run guild events for the the community? Do you run your guild through raids? Help new players through raids? 
 

Do you run commander in wvw with your guild? Host wvw guild nights with your guild? Do you run pugs in wvw? 

 

How about pvp? You organize guild teams and q up and duel others? 
 

You host community give aways? Lead HP trains? You run boss hunt events?

 

You stream GW2? Maybe post on YouTube? You make guides and help new players? You sponsored by GW2 to build up the community and game? 

 

You think this game is in some emergency state due to, again, a perception that the devs haven’t given enough tools to players, but I guarantee that you probably couldn’t check off a bunch of existing player interaction boxes. 
 

Devs aren’t putting pvp in pve either, so come up with some other idea.

 

That's an awful lot of questions/assumptions. What if I said yes to every single one of your points? Would it make my points any more or less valid? Would you listen to me more?

 

But more importantly, why are you so defensive, and why are you focusing so hard on dueling? I want to respond, but at the same time, I feel like some of you just want to argue at this point and not actually have a discussion. You heard one example you didn't like and immediately went on to attack that (and question my personal experience with GW2 too as well) without even attempting to discuss the much broader and more important point I'm trying to address.

 

I could list a fair few things that GW2 could use in terms of player interaction and not just dueling and public RNGs, but I don't think we've even gotten past the point of even acknowledging that the problem is there at all. And if some of us don't think there's a problem in the first place, what is there to discuss?

[Arnox.5128]

2 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

So, what are these tools that are needed?  Or, 'would be nice'?

It certainly isn't PvP in Open World.  There have been some QoL requests for mass mailings for Guilds...ok.  What else?  What, specifically, are your suggestions for 'tools'?

 

I would be happy to discuss that, but as I said just above, I don't think we've even acknowledged that the problem is there at all, so it seems somewhat premature to talk about possibilities.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Arnox.5128

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Ok.  Not much for the Devs to work with, then.

 

Good luck. 

[Rasimir.6239]

9 hours ago, Arnox.5128 said:

4. I don't want to be forced to interact with people!

I think you misunderstood a good part of what was said about forced interaction. It's not about not wanting to interact with others. It's about choosing who to interact with.

 

Let's say you want to play a fractal, and the game implements a random group finder to make it "easier" to find a group (aka people you are then forced to interact with to finish said fractal). Now imagine that group the game randomly throws at you contains a 30-something who jumps on the game after work and likes to stop and smell the flowers, a 50+ lady with health issues, that enjoys challenge but due to age and health takes a long time to get mechanics down, a school kid who is fairly new to the game and the game mode and just yolo-s into every fight, and a competitive endgame-raider used to playing in ultra-optimized raid compositions.

 

From personal experience I can tell you that this composition can work, if all involved are interested in interacting with each other and open to the different personalities and preferences involved, but 19 times out of 20, if this party is put together randomly, or worse, because the game forces them together to be able to do the content, many if not all of the players involved will not have a good time, and no force on Earth, nor on Tyria, will turn this interaction into a positive one.

Right now the game allows me to pick and choose who I interact with. You'd be surprised if you looked at my friends list (the mutual friends that is) full of people I constantly interact with, which ranges from my teenage daughters and their school friends on their first mmo, that play GW2 for dress-up and to decorate guild halls, past national and international friends of all ages, occupations, interests, and skill levels, up top end raiders, wvw-ers, and pvp-ers.

 

I'm in no way restricting my interactions to some imaginery circle of like-minded players. I simply choose to not to interact with people that treat others in a way I don't care to deal with in my free time. The people I do interact with are as diverse as any group you could find in this game, but I've chosen to interact with each of these players. I stand by the fact that there are plenty of people around I don't care to interact with, and am glad this game is not forcing them on me (nor me on them), just as much as I'm glad nobody is forcing me to interact with the weird couple living next door (don't ask, I guess every neighbourhood is bound to have one strange party 😉 ).

[Malitias.8453]

7 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

(or mechanically impossible) to solo"

Mechanically impossible to solo? Who suggested that? Where? 🤨

[Zok.4956]

On 5/31/2021 at 8:21 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

Ok, so let's turn our attention back to Guild Wars 2. How can we interact with other players in GW2 besides simple public and private communication? Let's list them. We can,

 

- Form groups and squads (the latter with a commander is incredibly powerful)

- Form permanent groups (guilds)

- Engage in structured PvP

- Engage in structured huge-scale PvP (WvW)

- Buy and sell via a trading post

- Send mail and/or items directly (no trading functionality)

- Play music publicly

- Do the (very scattered around) structured mini-games

- Costume brawl

 

Unless I'm not mistaken here, that's really about it.

 

You missed a very important point on your list: The open world is designed in the way that a player should always be happy to see other players (no "kill/loot-stealing" and such) and in a way that players can interact (help each other, do hearts/events together, etc.) ad hoc with other players without the need of forming a fixed group/squad/commander and such.

 

I still have a lot of fond memories from this kind of interactions (even from the time when I was a new player) and some of those strangers became friends.

 

[Zok.4956]

On 5/31/2021 at 8:21 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

So, let's keep all this in mind when we next ask ourselves, "What does GW2 really need right now?"

 

Thats easy: More content. And then more content. And maybe also more content.

 

Jokes aside. More content (like new story, new maps to explore, but also new fractals, new raids, etc.) is of course very important.

 

But also a much better class/skill balancing is important. For the competitive modes sPvP and WvW of course.

sPvP went downhill fast (and the growing eSports scene died) when class balancing was handled badly.

 

But balancing is also important for PvE so that the gap (i.e. in DPS) between a low/medium skilled player and a very good player is not so extremely big like it is now.

 

And of course better tools/systems for handling the population imbalances (zerg size matters often more than skill) in WvW that are a result of 24/7 week long matches (and server stacking).

 

[voltaicbore.8012]

1 hour ago, Malitias.8453 said:

Mechanically impossible to solo? Who suggested that? Where? 🤨

It's implicit in "forced grouping." It usually leads to arbitrary, uninspired design like enrage timers on bosses, or dumb mechanics like CoF p1 or Deepstone where you literally just need 2 or more bodies to stand in different places at the same time to open doors. Of course Deepstone had (don't know if it still has it) a bug where you could solo float your way past all that mess, but that wasn't part of the design. The alternative to forced PvE grouping mechanics is usually "player driven content", which is essentially "let players troll fellow players in a meaningful way."

 

To your credit one of the more specific examples you discussed was just making things hard enough to incentivize grouping up, but most PvE suggestions devolve into either  forced grouping of some kind, or adding the risk of personal loss in player interactions (the whole deathroll/dueling/etc discussion from OP).

 

Ultimately I think @Rasimir.6239 put it best a few pages back: this game was designed for cooperation and minimized non-consensual risk. I think one of the absolute strongest points of GW2 is that no other player can waste your time if you don't let them.

Edited June 1, 2021 by voltaicbore.8012

[Malitias.8453]

@Arnox.5128
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that the things I write here are what everyone or anyone responding to this post wants, I am simply trying to answer the question of how to improve/increase player interaction. This is just my take on analyzing the topic and figuiring that question out.

This topic kind of got stuck in my head.
A lot of multiplayer games have parallel gameplay where you might work towards the same goal at the same time and place, but you don't work WITH the other players.
Let's take a typical dungeon party as an example and focus on mechanical interaction first:
From a mechanical standpoint, there is no interaction between the players that simply slap the enemy. A warrior placing all his banners to buff the group is not interaction (Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another.), because the warrior acts upon the group, but there is no direct mechanical response from the group toward the warrior.
The same thing of course applies to a healer, be it in GW2, WoW or FFXIV. You act on the group, but without an action coming back at you in response (The healer yelling at you to gtfo of the void zone is communication, not mechanical interaction).
An example of player interaction would be the Siren's Reef Fractal, where you toss the bags/chest to each other to avoid spawning the ghosts and getting the objective to its desired location as fast as possible. Not really a suprise, as this is similar to how a very popular teamsport works.
The other players positions directly influence your decision of where and when you throw the bag and the other player has to react to react to where you throw the bag in return and the cycle repeats.
Let's look at another game that, under normal circumstances, does a very good job at player interaction: Vermintide
Unless you are really good at the game, you will usually need at least one other player to reliably shut down a passage from incoming enemies with your melee attacks. Your position and your allies position is constantly of importance to each other as you try to cover each other while evading enemy attacks. You are working together.

Then there's interaction in the form of communication.
Incentives for communication are usually the need for help(giving or receiving), be it in the form of information or fighting alongside each other to defeat an encounter, or a desire to express yourself.
The former requires for example a certain level of danger in order to occur or a puzzle, which you can't seem to figure out.
The need to express yourself arises from extraordinary events. The last man standing being able to barely win the fight, someone having a piece of equipment or set you want to compliment the player on or even frustration about other players or an encounter.
The reason a lot of people remember Classic WoW as a game that was very social is largely due to how often this form of player interaction, communication, was incentivized to get good rewards.

So to your question, what the game needs [to have more player interaction], are more mechanics like the one in Siren's Reef (not necessarily the exact same) and maybe integrate mechanics following these principles to some extent into some skills the player has. Also rewarding content that incentivizes seeking aid and some coordination would help with that. Puzzles that are not that easy to figure out and fights that are hard enough to make you either seek or give aid. I remember asking for help getting to vista as well as offering help to someone who tried to get to one the wrong way. The same applies to finding and overcoming the HPs in HoT the first time I explored that expansion.
In the end it takes a game designer, who understands how player interaction works and wants to add more of it into the game. =P

[Malitias.8453]

58 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

To your credit one of the more specific examples you discussed was just making things hard enough to incentivize grouping up, but most PvE suggestions devolve into either  forced grouping of some kind, or adding the risk of personal loss in player interactions (the whole deathroll/dueling/etc discussion from OP).

So you just preemptively assumed forcing grouping is what was suggested?

Edit: Just being in a group, forced or not, does not mean you have players interacting with each other.
I can't count the fractals I've run where noone even said "hi" to each other and we simply stomped through it without every interacting with one another.

The examples given are just the most prominent features games have which involve some kind of interaction. I think OP has stated often enough that these are just examples, not the golden standard.
Incentivizing solutions instead of forcing them IMO is always the better way, because it always means there has to be another solution. Figuring out your own solution is what makes games appealing to me and why I especially enjoy games with build diversity.

 

58 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Ultimately I think @Rasimir.6239 put it best a few pages back: this game was designed for cooperation

The cooperation part is very much what is being questioned in this thread. The lack of interaction between players working towards the same goal is what gives a lot of people the feeling of "playing alone together".
Questioning if this aspect of the game needs improvement is only reasonable, especially in a game that is designed for cooperation.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Malitias.8453

[Zok.4956]

12 hours ago, Arnox.5128 said:

My point here is to not shut down ideas just because they haven't been done before in GW2. Talk about WHY something wouldn't be a good idea instead of automatically saying, "Oh, it's not needed," because that's not an argument.

WHY (arguments please, not your personal preferences) do you think the  biggest problem of GW2 is missing tools for player interaction and WHAT exactely are your ideas for better player interaction tools that would fit within the ideas and principles of GW2?

 

Your example of a dueling/deathrolling from WoW is not a good example because it is against the separation of cooperative and competitive modes in GW2 (a core idea) and it also lacks explanation and arguments WHY this would be healthy for GW2.

 

[SavantKnightJames.1904]

Am I the only one who'd like ways to interact with other players in a non out of character way? Like, emotes to hug, hit, or push, etc? Thats what I'd like to see in terms of player interaction.

 

I guess in a more broad terms, I'd agree that GW2 has plenty of ways to interact with players already, on a large scale, but with someone who prefers to do stuff solo, or with select individual friends, I feel like it is certainly lacking something with individual player to player interaction.

 

Like, we have LFG, we have guilds, and we already have stuff to interact and do stuff with systems that already exist. But on a one on one level, I'd like to see more. A trading system, outside sending stuff through mail and the trading post, would certainly be a wonderful addition, because mail and the Trading Post have their places, but there's nothing for actively giving someone something without going through the mail system even though they're right in front of you. Obviously this can be implemented with various feature that make it not annoying, i.e. auto-decline trade requests, etc.

[voltaicbore.8012]

17 minutes ago, Malitias.8453 said:

The cooperation part is very much what is being questioned in this thread. The lack of interaction between players working towards the same goal is what gives a lot of people the feeling of "playing alone together".
Questioning if this aspect of the game needs improvement is only reasonable, especially in a game that is designed for cooperation.

No, it really wasn't questioned or seriously examined in this thread until you made your excellent post above.

 

Most suggestions tend focus on the most superficial form of interaction, which is to just force players to group up. As you note, 

45 minutes ago, Malitias.8453 said:

In the end it takes a game designer, who understands how player interaction works and wants to add more of it into the game. =P

I 100% agree with this. Note that I didn't include Siren's Reef (or a number of other things, like the Flame Legion tombs minidungeon) as bad forced grouping design. I didn't bother to elaborate on it then, but you did a good job of covering the possible distinctions between acting on a group vs acting with a group. I think it takes significantly more care and design work to make spontaneous (like the vista example you gave, or maybe the spamming of jackal barrier at the toxic bacon HP in AB) interaction or intentional (like Siren's Reef) interaction... as opposed to just putting in a dps check or "stand here and here at the same time" mechanic. That's very likely why we see much more of the latter in MMOs, and even in GW2 in a number of places.

[Rasimir.6239]

27 minutes ago, Malitias.8453 said:

The cooperation part is very much what is being questioned in this thread. The lack of interaction between players working towards the same goal is what gives a lot of people the feeling of "playing alone together".
Questioning if this aspect of the game needs improvement is only reasonable, especially in a game that is designed for cooperation.

But nobody is forcing you to "play alone together", that's as much your choice as it is my choice to interact with the players I encounter.

 

Why do you need tools to interact with others? I can see how the guild interface could be improved, but that's the only idea I've seen so far that made sense to me. Maybe I'm too old for this, but I honestly can't think of any tools that would make cooperation and interaction with my fellow players, both known and unkown, in any way easier than it is right now (where I can simply talk to people via chat, and find people via lfg).

[Malitias.8453]

 

19 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

No, it really wasn't questioned or seriously examined in this thread

Hmm... looking back through the posts you seem to be right.
I focused my attention very heavily on this part:

On 5/31/2021 at 8:21 AM, Arnox.5128 said:

There is one thing that all MMOs have in common, and this is also what they live and die on. How much and how deeply that MMO allows you to interact with others.

It's what was stuck in my head last night.

[Blude.6812]

Such a long post to get a simple answer which is NO

[Zephire.8049]

5 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

It's implicit in "forced grouping." It usually leads to arbitrary, uninspired design like enrage timers on bosses, or dumb mechanics like CoF p1 or Deepstone where you literally just need 2 or more bodies to stand in different places at the same time to open doors. Of course Deepstone had (don't know if it still has it) a bug where you could solo float your way past all that mess, but that wasn't part of the design. The alternative to forced PvE grouping mechanics is usually "player driven content", which is essentially "let players troll fellow players in a meaningful way."

There was also the gate in Pre-Searing Ascalon in GW1. You could only head outside the wall if another player joined you meaning solo players couldn't complete some quests and couldn't do the achievement for getting to level 20 in PSA. The result was standing in town asking mostly brand new players to join you and do this specific thing so you could do this other thing.

 

It was awkward and intimidating and I think I only went past the wall a few times because the game forced you to talk to strangers in a town and forced you to group up with them and maybe they really would drop group after you got through but they may also stay even when they said they wouldn't. Maybe some people have fond memories of that but I definitely don't.

 

Forced interactions are bad.

 

Also GW2 is rated T and and putting in situations where a teen as young as 13 has to play with a strange adult is skeevy. At least open world metas are big enough it doesn't matter and people can leave or hide chat if they want. Group content takes that away as an option and "encourages" communication by punishing groups that don't communicate and don't already know how everything is done.

[Holy Shadow.1672]

On 5/31/2021 at 10:04 PM, Swagger.1459 said:

Yes, quite beautiful! 
 

You are more than welcome to go through my entire post history if you seek additional ideas and wisdom! 
 

Enjoy, and have a great one! 

Dodged and dissolved mate.

[Arnox.5128]

I might make a separate topic that outlines all the ideas I can come up with for better player interaction. This topic is pretty much for discussing if those additions and changes are actually good.

 

13 hours ago, Zephire.8049 said:

Also GW2 is rated T and and putting in situations where a teen as young as 13 has to play with a strange adult is skeevy. At least open world metas are big enough it doesn't matter and people can leave or hide chat if they want. Group content takes that away as an option and "encourages" communication by punishing groups that don't communicate and don't already know how everything is done.

 

Online interactions are not rated.

[CaffeeCup.5742]

The issue, for me, is that as a solo/loner PvE player there's the community I'm exposed to is never constant. 

 

In the other MMOs I've played, there is spontaneous open-world interactions (drama) happening because it's the same people on the server every time, randomly creating combinations of tension and also positive communal experiences,  other players becoming recognizable in their way of interaction, such as community leaders, helpers, trolls, etc..  and even as a loner/solo, sideline observer, I begin to feel a part of the unique sort of server culture that unfolds, so then I start to feel attached to the community more, even as a mere spectator.

 

The closest I feel to this in GW2 is whenever I hop on Bjora Marches for some farming relaxation, and a specific guild's events train is about to start.  They constantly do LWS4 and IBS events and their commander is very sociable and talkative, and the people that join have been fairly consistent, and I always join just for the small social experience (and, secretly, to see them again).  

 

Being a member of a guild isn't the same, for me, because my playstyle is very loose and loner-like, and having to become 'an active member' is just not how I play.  However, I genuinely do see great value in terms of sense of attachment, having that consistency and recognizability in the community I play in.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, CaffeeCup.5742 said:

The issue, for me, is that as a solo/loner PvE player there's the community I'm exposed to is never constant. 

 

In the other MMOs I've played, there is spontaneous open-world interactions (drama) happening because it's the same people on the server every time, randomly creating combinations of tension and also positive communal experiences,  other players becoming recognizable in their way of interaction, such as community leaders, helpers, trolls, etc..  and even as a loner/solo, sideline observer, I begin to feel a part of the unique sort of server culture that unfolds, so then I start to feel attached to the community more, even as a mere spectator.

It was like that in the beginning, when PvE community was divided by servers. Multiserver introduction destroyed that, however.