Curse

Wtf Its A Monk · May 03, 2007, 11:52 AM // 11:52

you picked probably the worst mission to base your ideas around. Unwaking Waters has been dead and empty for a long time now and I personally rarely see people there. I myself was able to finish the mission with heroes and henchies and then moved onto the next one where....surprise surprise i was able to get a pug group.

as for the guild....I myself am in a guild with about 12members that all knew each other from other games. We all have pretty much every town unlocked on at least one of our characters and we get through everything ok....all in all i am glad we are a small guild....but a small guild in alliance with other small guilds would be perfect

the_jos · May 03, 2007, 11:53 AM // 11:53

I think there are several reasons why missions like Unawakening are abandoned.

Reason one: Factions and general GW:
First of all, it's a mission with two sides, meaning people have taken one side and played that storyline. That means the number of players is about half of all-sided missions.
Second, there has been a move from player from Proph and Factions to NF.
Third, drops are better in NF.
Fourth, the mission is near the end of Factions, many have given up because the rest of the missions before this one are also quite abandoned.

Reason two: heroes:
Now, there are people that use Heroes/Hench.
Main reason: they don't run 'stupid' builds, don't quit, don't complain.
Second, if you don't have time to finish mission, you can always quit without no-one complaining.

Reason three: Shift of focus.
I have not been in Factions for quite some time, because I was working on GMC of Tyria on two characters.
We, as a guild, moved to more PvP for a while and now shifted to Hard Mode.
Meaning we won't be that much in Factions, except for HM missions and Vanquishing. This takes time.
The only missions I sometime help with outside my guild are Prophecies' missions. I enjoy those the most.

Finally, my own experience:
I enjoyed PuGs in Factions.
But, many don't have the experience needed to finish the mission fast.
You will not find experienced players in PuGs that often (I have 4 protectors -pre heroes- , so I think I know the missions). Most move on with the game, finish and do something else.
When I would do it again, I'd take a part guild team and fill with PuG.
If we can't find people quite fast (like 10-15 minutes), take heroes/hench.

I think creating an alliance with guilds that have the same goals as your guild helps a lot.
Ask alliance leader to tell a lot about the alliance and the people in the various guilds.
Our guild recently joined the 'The Mirror Of Reason [SNOW]' alliance because I noticed they have the same goals as we have, only they are US and we are Europe. They are recruiting on Guru, so are we, I just asked their recruiter to look at our recruitment post and if they had room in the alliance for our guild.

Perhaps you should post a 'looking for alliance' post here on guru with details what you are looking for and see if you can team up with some other guilds.

Nekretaal · May 03, 2007, 12:04 PM // 12:04

I dont think focusing on guilds is the answer. Nobody has a large enough guild to support casual play after Hard mode came. Guilds are capped at 100 members, alliances are capped at 1000 members, friendslists are capped at much less than that.

Throw in the fact that people have lives and arent playing guild wars 100% of the time, and maybe a third of the alliance is online at the same time.

Also, its worth adding, polling my alliance, it seems that their is a fairly large group who either (1) only want to do hard mode, or (2) hard mode has zero appeal to them... which just adds to schism of a Guild wars which is already split between a pvE game with three campaigns, and a good pvp minigame.

Then figure that Hard mode adds almost 200 missions and vanquisher areas. Nobody had done any of these areas, and they are all non-linear sandbox so the population of guild wars is spread thin over all of the areas, which take 15-30 minutes (factions and nightfall missions), 40-50 minutes (prophecies missions), or 100-160 minutes (vanquishing most areas) and a good amount of the guild and whole population of guild wars is out of commisssion for a good amount of time.

Say what you will about bad pugs, but most hard mode pugs I find to be of good quality. If you get even one other player, your team is 100% better because you dont have to use henchmen who ball up and get owned against stuff like holy wrath.

Probably the best approach is the pvp approach: grind to find pugs and add good players from sucessful groups to your firendlist, because finding players is impossible due to lack of enough players to support 200 new areas (with over one hundred 2 hour+ areas).

ayame ftw · May 03, 2007, 12:15 PM // 12:15

Like said before, why people play solo:
1. missions are to easy
2. pugs are 8 out of 10 bad players with crazy skill bars
3. there are to many mission and not enough players to fill the outposts
4. over time more people left the game then people that joined the game
5. 15% more or less only does pvp and never plays pve
6. the majority of players gets online between 18:00 – 22:00, rest of the day is more or less deserted
7. Hero’s are better then your average pug
8. lately people only come online to see if there is GvG planed that day, in the meanwhile they do other games

If there was no such thing as GvG / Ha u could have soled GW as a singe player game…

SuperDave · May 03, 2007, 12:16 PM // 12:16

I kinda share the same feeling as the OP. I haven't played factions or NF much since the HM release (trying to get my main character through Prophecies first).

My experience (especially of Factions) before the HM release is that of a single player MMORPG. The only areas that "might" be "busy" are Cavalon and House Zu Helzer. I usually play on the European server (eng distr). Strangely whenever I'm doing some of the end-game factions missions like Unwaking Waters I usually go to the german distr. As that's the only semi-active distr.

Note: "busy" and "semi-active" means there's more than 5ppl in that distr.

Weekends are a different story, but even then, PUG-a-phobia has become a bit of an epidemic. Alot of players are playing through the game with a group of henchies or heroes. I personally enjoy the randomness of a PUG, and would choose to play with real people above an AI team anyday. Because people are unpredictable. They might agro way more then we can handle, and yes, the challenge then is to get out of the poop. But it's that randomness that makes playing with real ppl fun. (for me anyway). And sadly, that element of the game is dying imo.

Think about it: How many ppl would go for the random uncertainty of trying to beat the game with a PUG, opposed to playing through the game with AI teammates, using the basic "Lure, Tank, Nuke, Next target" teqnique of finishing the game?

*Gets out banners*...Let's march brothers

SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG!!

ayame ftw · May 03, 2007, 12:23 PM // 12:23

Anet wont be adding hero's to GW2... wanne bet.

Bubba · May 03, 2007, 12:36 PM // 12:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeeron

Here are a few links that might help:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvE_guilds
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvP_guilds
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Categ...ing_PvX_guilds

- Xeeron

Thanks, but I'm not looking for a big guild myself as I'm happy where I am

I was talking more about ingame features to browse through available guilds with their description for new players to quickly find a good group.

SotiCoto · May 03, 2007, 12:42 PM // 12:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laenavesse

Unwaking Waters is ALWAYS empty o_o;; I had to solo it with my monk with heroes and henchies and that was really...interesting to say the least >_> ...

...My sin had to solo the Ring of Fire with heroes and henches too x_x;;

Were they SO bad to do with AI?

Mission and Bonus on Ring of Fire can be done with a full AI team quite easily once you get the hang of it... even a full AI team of spellcasters suffering the wrath of the Ether Seal's energy draining.
I've done it both front door and back door on different occasions just to see how I'd fare (well technically I was doing the back door to cap a skill, and figured I might as well go the rest of the way for mapping purposes).

Unwaking Waters I can beat with my heroes and henchies, and I couldn't even attack Kuunavang myself (Assassin). For that matter I didn't bother fighting the Afflicted much in the mission either. My heroes could take care of all of them quite easily.

This might sound a bit rich coming from me... but if you want to know some of my more efficient Hero builds.... I could tell you... ^_^

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperDave

SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG, SAVE THE PUG!!

Kill the PuG! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!

sweat man · May 03, 2007, 01:05 PM // 13:05

personaly. i like npc's, i rareley pve and when i do its for a sole reason, ie for amour or a mission, non of this afk crap in towns. however i very much see where having a party is good, i realy enjoy chatting to folk during a mission and it can make a boring mission enjoyable, i dont enjoy factions, i started a new account with a necro and played through almost all of it with a single pug that me and him sticked togther for the duration of the day getting through all the missions. it was great, he knew what he was doing and he had obviusly done it before. the thing is that for it to work there has to be a combination of both, and no1 will ever agree. unfortunitly

VinnyRidira · May 03, 2007, 01:51 PM // 13:51

I enjoy playing on Teamspeak with 2 close friends and when they are not online I do occasionally help out guild members. My guild is very small and we do have some allied guilds as well. A lot of the time I have no friends or guild members to play with so I like the fact that I can play with heroes and henchmen. I have favourite henchmen type and often use very similar heroes for all my characters. I think that not having Teamspeak makes the playing harder. I will do PuG's occassionally and I really try to keep them as impersonal as possible, although I have made friends in groups before. There are some missions that need to be done with peeps and so I have pugged them. It would be nice to be able to have all you characters and heroes available for a party but I can see that that would be a little bit out of character with the game at present.

Elruid · May 03, 2007, 02:31 PM // 14:31

WoW: A Completely Solo Online RPG?

You can solo 1-70. Totally.
But LIKE GW, there is stuff you need a party for. That is raiding and doing instances of your own level.
In GW that is GvG, TA, HA and some harder "elite" PvE areas.
I did not include RA since like WoW's PvP, you can try solo and be even succesful, depending on the other soloers there.

aubee · May 03, 2007, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

Unwaking Waters I can beat with my heroes and henchies, and I couldn't even attack Kuunavang myself (Assassin). For that matter I didn't bother fighting the Afflicted much in the mission either. My heroes could take care of all of them quite easily.

Yeah, I've done UW 5-6 times (always from the Kurzick side) with heroes and henchies on several different toons (Necro, Ele, Ranger, Rit, Sin) with no trouble at all. The only times I've ever really had any trouble with it were the few other times helping others when I had real players on my team and/or on the other team.

Some tips (of which most are already aware) would be to take ranged damage dealers almost exclusively and pack plenty of interrupts. Erys Vasburg is a good henchie to take in my experience. If you are having trouble with the afflicted take a MM. Don't get in a hurry and let the afflicted come to you at the doorways and you should easily get masters. And if you are playing a sin and want to get in on the early action against Kuunavang, go secondary ranger and use the critical barrage build.

SuperDave · May 03, 2007, 09:27 PM // 21:27

With regards to PvE and Prophecies....*this is based on my experience today 03 May at 23:00 (11pm) GMT+1.. I only need a handfull of mission in HM to get my Guardian of Tyria title. I don't intend doing it with an AI party.. Sadly, there aren't any people in these mission outposts. I need all the Maguuma Jungle missions, and the last 2 on the Ring of Fire island. The Ring of Fire is filled with Normal mode PUG's and the Maguuma Jungle is really empty. It seems that the Mursaat did a really good job of whiping that place out. My GW experience the last few days went as follows... "Look for PUGs, can't find any===>minimize GW, open Firefox, open GW forums, read forums and play Freecell while forum pages load" What's happening!?

unmatchedfury · May 03, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

The "team experiance" needs to stay in Hardmode, Elite Missions and PvP. I dont want to HAVE to Team up to get every small thing done. PArt of why i hate GW PvE is because I HAVE to grab 7 stupid AI dumb***es and go do w/e. My rit isn't Pwning. Hes no cause of massive destruction. Hes just sitting there, Putting up a few spirits, healing a bit. Its STUPID. I want to see some F***ing destruction. Monsters die when i press buttons. Team PLAy is fun , but not 100% of the time. And i count dragging 7 computer players as team play so please dont anyone say that "but you dont have to do team play, play with henchies"

And i am aware of solo farming and i do plenty of it. The only reason i even PvE at all is to solo farm.

I'm sayings its plain not fun to get pwned in .0001 seconds by monsters and not be able to d oanythign to them. IN Diablo 2 crappy geared players would get pwned in .0001 seconds as well but at least they could hit back.

SO please. SUper social PvErs aside most peopel don't enjoy the fealing of being weak and surviving only because your exploiting AI and Being super invinci protted by 2 monks.

MrSlayer · May 03, 2007, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glountz

Guild wars is solo wars only because you make it so.
PuGs never were the social aspect in GW as you generally didn't continue any relation with the PuGmates you encountered.
Join a wider guild.
If you're in a small guild, take all your people with you and join a greater guild.
Join a greater alliance.
There are several guild/alliance recruting forums already, just browse them.
A second solution is to meet real-life friends on GW. As you see them in life regularly, you can organize GW games.
Also, don't hesitate to always TS/Messenger/SKype your guildmates. By always I mean: go on TS as soon as you're online, and advise your guildmates to do the same, even if you're actually not playing. Voice contact allows people to organize quickly games, and to keep social contact.

If you don't, if you "prefer" to stay in a tiny guild with few people, don't whine about the lack of players online.

GW is a "solo" game for all the people too lazy to socialize in game.

I believe I said No Flaming? This is a discussion, not an accusation fest. Everyone else is doing fine. Get the hell out of my thread.

Anyways back on topic. I can see the same main points being raised over and over, and I'll just drop em in here, with my thoughts on each.

Speed
Yes I agree here. Heroes and henchmen are very quick, as they don't need to go fiddle with their gonads every 35 seconds. Infact whether or not henchmen even HAVE gonads would make an interesting discussion. Anyways...it can be great fun to whizz through mission after mission, and I think most of us remember the thread in the screenshots zone of missions being completed as early as 12 minutes before the 20:00 Masters Cutoff point with heroes. But remember, two or three people with heroes can be a great too. Maybe not PUG people with no heroes and who will, as was mentioned, draw penises on the map.

Quote:

Hey wait what's wrong with that?!? My brother draws penises on the radar, he's the master of the radar dick.

Reliability
I agree with this point too. It is nice to know you can fall back on some good solid muscle with well-ordered skill bars and very calculating brains, but there are problems with heroes, as with alot of the AI. One example; kiting. Its very dam hard to kite with heroes without flagging them to your current location. Try running three steps behind Koss to transfer the 2 angry Stone Summit warriors, and he decides to break off his attack and follow you too.

Whilst they can be unreliable, players can be worse. Once again, I think we all know the type. "Sorry lol friend just asked me how many times I had sex with my gf last night and I said 10". And he is typing this whilst being thumped away on by an angry Tundra Giant, and he has no protection up, nor is he attacking.

Additional note: Heroes also make dam GOOD meatshields!

Finally...Being there when nobody else is
I think we've all had one of those "Well Koss buddy...it's just me, you and a really really bad hair cut" moments whilst looking for a team. And frankly, heroes can be AWESOME for coming to your aid when nobody else will. Just 2 button-pressed will give you a loyal person who won't go "wtf no hu mayd u partee leadur? I dun wunt 2 go tht wai" when you order them to rush 2 mobs of enemy and tank.

Green flags ftw.

But...
The major downside to heroes? Its lonely. As I said in the topic title, it brings you back to this idea of being solo. By choice, I often even find myself ignoring the 4-5 party invites I recieve in a PACKED FULL mission area, in favor of going in with my good ol' heroes.

But you can't exactly ask Melonni what she's been doing today, or ask Olias how his office-job-day was, and how his wedding plans are going. Its a lonely business, even if it's fast.

Operations · May 04, 2007, 02:44 AM // 02:44

Save the PUG, save the world?

Diaden · May 04, 2007, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Well, i wouldn't blame too much of it on Heroes. I remember early on in GW's life, porting into Droknar's and seeing 60+ available districts on an average day. But people move on, play other things, and before I knew it, the number of districts was reduced to about six less than a year later...Factions wasn't even out yet and it was near impossible to find any kind of PuG forming in the late-game. You could stand in the final mission area for hours and see maybe 3 or 4 new people port-in. It wasn't that players were just running the mission with guild groups or henchway, there just weren't any players doing the mission, period.

The math argument is the best and most logical explanation..you take a decreasing player base (sure, it spikes when the new campaigns hit, but it nose dives pretty fast) and spread that over an increasing game space and what you have is...empty districts. Heroes, if anything, have been a boon, filling in for the many players who just don't play anymore or who don't happen to be in a particular outpost at a particular time.

A friend of mine that I actually met in a PuG in the hey-day of Prophecies told me he doesn't play anymore because you just reach a point in GW where all that's left is farming for vanity items (15k/Fissure armor, pretty weapons, etc).. This is pretty much why I don't do PuGs much anymore, running out of things to do..i'm either farming or messing around with builds, neither of which is very PuG friendly. So, to attempt to answer the OP's question, i think primarily GW becomes a solo ORPG when people run out of things to do and stop playing. You can't fix this entirely - it's the fate of every game- but Anet could do some things to ensure that there'd be more PuGs to fall into:

I've done the missions (across just about every profession), and, you know, they're not really worth doing more than once - most of them are nothing but explorable areas minus the rez shrines. Would it be too much to ask if Anet actually did something to make the Missions stand out? Provide some sort of obective-based mission structure that involved more than grinding from point A to B? Because as it stands now, all missions are are speed-bumps on the road to me pretty-ing up my new toon. The reason i mention this is because if you make missions more than mandatory, if you make them fun, maybe you have more people wanting to do them (more than once, even) and therefore have more PuGs forming. Furthermore, by giving them more complex objectives, you're encouraging a level of teamwork that is very hard to duplicate with henchway, encouraging the formation of PuGs by default.

The same goes for quests..not only do quests also tend to suffer from the same failings as missions, but the rewards for doing them are completely ridiculous. Go out there and slay a bajillion Margonites and i'll give you 10 lightbringer points! Ten whole lightbringer points?! Gee, thanks Mr. Wilson! If you're anything like me, you just avoid them entirely, let alone any thoughts of actually forming a PuG for them. Remember when they patched Villainy of Galrath to give 4,000xp? At the time, that sort of xp reward was unheard of this side of the Rifts and there were suddenly tons of PuGs forming in LA and ToA for it..while i think xp rewards are kinda lame at this point, Villainy is a great example of how just tweaking rewards can increase PuGing.

As it is, I love to PuG..i just can't think of a reason to at this point..

strcpy · May 04, 2007, 06:06 AM // 06:06

I do not think heroes have much to do with it - like some others have said AI players will not group with people, PUG players still want to pug. The only thing heroes hurt is *full* teams of 8 - you can now easily fill a few slots with decent AI. Two human teams got the largest boost.

What is mostly is is that GW is a "mature" product - not mature in that it has x-rated content or older players, but mature in the software life cycle. Note, this isn't my theory, it is a standard one in software engineering.

Effectively software ages, at first there is little out there about it and everyone is learning. Usually lots and lots of focus groups created, lots of people coming together and sharing ideas - effectively lots and lots of PUGS. In human terms this person is in their teens.

At some point the major bugs are worked out, there start to be books or guides written, and the community bonds from before strengthen and the groups pretty much split up. There is a lot of communication within the groups but not between them. At this point what the software "is" is pretty much set. GW hit this stage while prophecies was still out, one of the things factions did that ticked so many off is that they changed part of that core that made GW an adult. In human terms you are looking at college age to a little after.

Now we are in the "mature" stage - the vast majority of people there know what they are doing, are set within their spheres, and do not like change in that sphere or to go outside of it. They now have a small group of friends that everyone knows everyone in it and all others are outsiders - while you can still get into those groups new people have to put up with being on the outside for a long time. Chances are that you are not nearly as social as you were once were. Think of this as a 50 year old (note, this is also why changes such as the soul reaping and loot scaling are so much more hated than early major changes even though they tend to be lesser - your moving something that "Is" - notice the capital letter). To a great extent GW hit this stage during prophecies, fully so not too long after factions release.

Now, GW is in the last stage I listed (there is also the next one where it is dieing and then, of course, death). Most software hangs around in that stage for most of its life if it is successful. Someone above me said something about most players have beaten the games and know how to blaze through it - why use a PUG? That is a symptom of a game in the "mature" stage, unfortunately PUGs are anathema to that idea so are discarded. You will note that even though those of us who blew through factions in about two weeks were able to solo the whole thing (I did - most of us had plenty of unlocks and gold to kit out heroes) there was *still* a huge amount of PUGing and general socialization. That is because, for a short period of time, Nightfall was back into that first "young" stage. It wasn't so much that we were good (in fact, I bet most were not - they just didn't suck), but that how to beat some mission wasn't set in stone and you *better* do it that way or else. Now, because the whole system is so well understood it matures a WHOLE lot faster.

Add in that Unwaking Waters is one of those missions that *forces* you to PUG and you have a widespread dislike. It is like forcing a 50 year old to go party with a bunch of 15 year olds. They are all human and as such they are roughly of the same intelligence - however that 50 year old knows how "things are done" and doesn't thrive on that social interaction. That person may, or may not, be correct - but that is irrelevant because that is the way things are done (and they are usually correct).