Curse

Burst Cancel · Feb 02, 2007, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Are we seriously going to go over this again?

People don't like to play with each other. Too many conflicting personalities, goals, skill levels, play styles, maturity levels, intelligence levels, etc. You don't see wide-scale problems in a lot of other games because in those games you aren't directly dependant on 7 other people that you may or may not known in order to accomplish anything. When you're forced to play the game in a party, all of the conflicting traits that I mentioned above become serious threats to teamplay and general enjoyment of the game.

Common example: Player A is a consumate powergamer. Her idea of fun is to rock at this game, and if that means she has to memorize game mechanics, skill properties, and play GW like it's a second job, then so be it. Failure is unacceptable, incompetence is a deadly sin. Player B is a casual, for-fun gamer that just doesn't care that Mending might not be the best choice on a warrior. She's having fun taking her time, using wacky builds that may or may not work well. She's not an idiot, but she just uses GW as a way to relax so she doesn't see any point in getting good at it.

Do you think Player A would play well with Player B? Ever? I've exaggerated their qualities somewhat, and these certainly aren't the only two camps, but there are a significant number of players who are closely aligned with one camp or the other, and there's essentially no way to reconcile them. And this is just talking about playstyle and gaming mentality. It only gets more complex once you factor in things like skill level (players of vastly different skill levels often find it hard to play nicely together) and maturity.

I've 'met' a lot of people playing GW, and that's what convinced me that I'd be better off with heroes and all chat channels turned off. Given the responses on the forums, a lot of people feel the same way. Whether something about the game is stifling community is a moot point, because the real issue is with the community itself.

lilnate22 · Feb 02, 2007, 08:05 PM // 20:05

well lets see.. i absolutly ENJOEYED the game back when.. ha was 8v8 and offerd a challenge, i can farm if im bored, and skills were SKILLS
and i know most others liked that stuff too

with those fun things bieng gone... most of the "good" guys left too

just my 2 cents

Guldur · Feb 02, 2007, 08:37 PM // 20:37

I think what killed the comunity is farming.

I remember like a year back, when people would go in fow/uw with a 8 players party.
Now that farming was allowed, you dont need people anymore! You alone can make 8x more profit then playing with others.

The improve of the henchmen AI + heroes just helped giving the final blow. Who here remembers tanker alesia or orion making rain of fire on dead bodies? The henchmen were so stupid it was worth riskin getting a PuG. The last missions were impossible with henchies only.

Nowadays, i rather make my own builds with heroes then getting stupid players who got no sense of logic and play incredibly stupid.

trobinson97 · Feb 02, 2007, 08:47 PM // 20:47

It seems like everyday there is a new thread like this, saying the exact same thing, over and over, repeatedly, redundantly, all the time, frequently, many times, much, oft, often, oftentimes, ofttimes, regularly, ad nauseum, and ad infinitum.

The community never was that great. You're just remembering those first few months that you were new to the game and met other new players to the game. New players today have the same experiences now, that you had then.

byteme! · Feb 02, 2007, 09:18 PM // 21:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by trobinson97

The community never was that great. You're just remembering those first few months that you were new to the game and met other new players to the game. New players today have the same experiences now, that you had then.

QFT! We as a community doomed ourselves from the beginning. It's not the Devs it's us........

Former Ruling · Feb 02, 2007, 09:50 PM // 21:50

I've grown bored of the game (I login like 3 times a week now for a last few weeks), but I don't think its so much their fualt as it is just..getting bored of the content. In PvE I don't feel a real desire to get any titles I don't have, or any "uber leet skins" of weapons I dont have, so theres not much too do. In PvP RA and the lower areans I've never been a fan of, and in GvG I really only loved playing because I liked Mesmers and playing them, but since Nightfall they've been just Spikers so I lost interest in that since I've never been a fan of spiking (thus dont practice it much, thus arent on time alot anyway, so yea..). I'll get on and see what my guild is running and if it pleases me I'll try to get a spot in gvgs for the Mesmer or a necro or something...if not I'll continue doing what I am now.

Which is considering WoW once my economic situation gets alittle better, for the moment I'm just playing around in Runescape to pass the time til then.

Myria · Feb 02, 2007, 10:58 PM // 22:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by byteme!

QFT! We as a community doomed ourselves from the beginning. It's not the Devs it's us........

I have to somewhat beg to differ here. It is 'us', in the sense that no one held a fellblade to our throats and forced the GW 'community' to become a group of collective rodent droppings, but that things would come to this pass was imminently predictable based on design decisions made by the devs.

Just to mention a few of the many obvious ones --

1) Being free-to-play -- While something many of us consider a great feature, it does tend to attract a younger crowd with all of the attendant problems. More importantly, it means that resources are extremely limited. Things that could be done to try and clean up the community some will never be done because the resources to do so are not available.

2) No policing -- To put it kindly, Anet takes a laissez faire (in the extreme) attitude towards player interaction. Other than accidentally appearing to be a 'bot (ironically, it's likely a 'bot that decides if you're a 'bot or not) or saying something that sets Ms. Gray off, there is little or nothing you can do in-game that will be likely to have any negative consequence. Leaching, griefing, scamming, standing in town spewing your racist/sexist/homophobic rants, it's all fair game. In such an environment a sadly large percentage of the population will strive to be the most annoying ulceration on the behind of humanity that they can manage to be. A lack of resources means this almost certainly won't change -- hopefully no one imagines that the lack of in-game reporting is an accident -- and likely the downward spiral to depths of incivility heretofore unexplored (well, save in certain Usenet groups) will continue.

3) Don't need nobody -- The PvE side of GW has always seemed almost embarrassed to be multiplayer. An optimal group size from a loot and experience PoV is... One. For a multiplayer game that's problematic right there. Toss in henchies and... Why am I partying with other players, again? Oh yeah, I'm not. Add heroes to the mix and it's time to start wondering why one needs a net connect to play the game. You don't need other players, not really, many people had done everything in the game with henchies before heroes were introduced. Now with heroes no one actually needs anyone else for anything save a couple of areas very few care about. Sadly, many people need a reason to be nice to others, that they might need them for something helps provide that reason. But in GW you don't need them, you never really have. A multiplayer environment where players don't need each other is not going to be a friendly place.

4) Two games in one -- The idea of a game that encompasses PvP and PvE must sound good on paper, everyone keeps trying it. The problem is that it doesn't work in practice. The two have too many mutually exclusive needs and desires. What pleases one will almost inevitably infuriate the other, and rightly so. The vast majority of players will inevitably favor one form of play over the other, most to near 100%, their mutually exclusive desires inevitably create a schism in the player base that cannot be healed. An open state of warfare between the two sides is predictably the norm, the best you can hope for are occasional period of cold war. A house divided cannot stand, especially not when the division is fundamental to the design.

Decisions made by the devs may not be directly responsible for the current state of the game community, but they have quite predictably helped to lead us here.

ca_aok · Feb 03, 2007, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

A great guild and an amazing group of friends... Oh, and Factions and Nightfall new content

The point was that the game has only been out for less than 2 years... lmao.

Anyway the way I see it, heros have given good players a fast way to do missions, with or without a few guildees to help. The good players equip their heros with decent builds, and blast through everything. They no longer need PuGs.

The bad players have crappy skills unlocked and tend to equip their heros with builds like echo+mending. Then having half their team gimped with noobishness, they conclude that heros suck and go find a PuG. There, their utter lack of skill is noticed less as the other humans pick up the slack. However as more good players stick with friends/heros and more bad players go for PuGs, eventually the PuGs hit the rock bottom of skill level, and nobody wants them anymore. Chat is reduced to guild/alliance, and cities become filled with WTS spam in local chat, since nobody needs local chat anymore.

D1Tremere · Feb 03, 2007, 01:31 AM // 01:31

I started in Factions. When I was low level I had to get in groups to do the missions in order to advance. We were all noobs, and all had only some small idea of how best to do things. It was hard, but it was fun. If someone made a mistake they were sorry, but we didnt make a big deal about it because we all knew it could be us next. I met fun people back then, and had a good time. Now there all gone. Either they join guilds that do little for each other and blend in, or they left. The only people left to talk to in towns are 12 year olds talking about there newly discovered body parts. I miss the old days.

Cjlr · Feb 03, 2007, 01:53 AM // 01:53

Just because you're nostalgic doesn't mean things were ever actually any better.

MegaMouse · Feb 03, 2007, 05:17 AM // 05:17

Dang opened a hornets nest. I concur with the few posters on the towns, go into LA, Ascalon, Kieneg Center, or even Kamadan, and what do we find? Sellers using the chat channel to sell what they farmed. I thought that the trade channel was for that. I am not nostalgic about what GW was like in the first months it was out I would like to see more player interaction and helpfulness not this crap about who is the noob, that only discourages the new players. We realy need to help out the players who either do not know what they did wrong instead of bitching at them for doing a party wipe or scatteringthe monsters. Nothing frustrates me more than seeing someone leave a group because at least one person has just jumped their case about using a skill that scatters the enemies. If we took the time to help these new players out then they would become better players instead of wallflowers that noone wants.

Mega Mouse

Tempy · Feb 03, 2007, 06:01 AM // 06:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by MegaMouse

Dang opened a hornets nest. I concur with the few posters on the towns, go into LA, Ascalon, Kieneg Center, or even Kamadan, and what do we find? Sellers using the chat channel to sell what they farmed. I thought that the trade channel was for that. I am not nostalgic about what GW was like in the first months it was out I would like to see more player interaction and helpfulness not this crap about who is the noob, that only discourages the new players. We realy need to help out the players who either do not know what they did wrong instead of bitching at them for doing a party wipe or scatteringthe monsters. Nothing frustrates me more than seeing someone leave a group because at least one person has just jumped their case about using a skill that scatters the enemies. If we took the time to help these new players out then they would become better players instead of wallflowers that noone wants.

Mega Mouse

*applauds* So true!!!

Sirus Dibley · Feb 03, 2007, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

People don't like to play with each other.

What utter bs. Never make assumptions my little freind. GW is now a single player game - fact. Prophecies and even dare I say Factions had a great community feel but i'm sorry the op is right Heroes have killed GW for many many people.

Just cos you like playing on your own (for whatever reason) don't think everyone is like it.

Another poster said "threads like this seem to appear everyday - well there is a reason for that........

grottoftl · Feb 03, 2007, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirus Dibley

What utter bs. Never make assumptions my little freind. GW is now a single player game - fact. Prophecies and even dare I say Factions had a great community feel but i'm sorry the op is right Heroes have killed GW for many many people.

Just cos you like playing on your own (for whatever reason) don't think everyone is like it.

Another poster said "threads like this seem to appear everyday - well there is a reason for that........

seriously I don't get you people. why are you so annoyed that most players prefer to play on their own and not play with you? it's the players that caused the decline of PuGs not heroes. it's been like this since Prophecies, it just wasn't really noticable back then but it was there. you should really take a look at yourselves rather than blaming it on some AI. another reason you see a lack of PuGs is because everyone is spread out across all 3 chapters and the population is small between all of them, again caused by players.

and you got to stop saying GW is completely a single player game now. quit looking pass PvP it's a major part of GW. everyone is always and still grouping with each other in that part of the game. now going back to the PvE side, I don't know where some of you play or what time but I still see players grouping with each other for missions and such. mostly it's guilds and alliances that play with each other but there is still players pugging together. still I don't see heroes being the caused of this but the reason why you see more players on their own is because a lot of the missions and quests in Nightfall requires heroes for a lot them and Nightfall is way way too easy. if ArenaNet made the next chapter slightly difficult and don't have the hero requirement for missions, you'll probably see a lot more players grouping with each other.

Sirus Dibley · Feb 03, 2007, 02:46 PM // 14:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by grottoftl

if ArenaNet made the next chapter slightly difficult and don't have the hero requirement for missions, you'll probably see a lot more players grouping with each other.

That would be a great idea.

Rodhin Kinning · Feb 03, 2007, 03:59 PM // 15:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirus Dibley

That would be a great idea.

I also agree. I still find people to group with in Chapter 1 when I go back with new Characters. The only heros I use and see others use alot are the Monk Heros.

grottoftl · Feb 03, 2007, 04:39 PM // 16:39

let me rephrase before someone misinterpt it. players still have the option to take heroes into missions whenever they want, just as long as they are not required like in the Nightfall missions where you have one hero required to play that mission.

Pandora's box · Feb 03, 2007, 05:16 PM // 17:16

1. The game is too big.
I started playing online games in 1999. It was a cute little game called Rage of Mages. Everyone could enter a map and everyone knew each other. There was no protection at all so soon some players walked around in hacked gears. No one cared. When a pker entered a map everyone called 'the others' and we had a pk-hunt. Age? There were 12 year old kids and guys older than 50. It was no problem, just fun.

2. Age discrimmination & elitism.
Many players feel they are too good for parties with schoolkids. Reading the forums I also notice lots of answers which basically say this: 'if you want (....) than you don't understand the (our) game' 1000 Opinions and its always the same small group of people who claim they are right.

3. PvE players are not organized
In PvP its common to communicate about builds and talk things over. In PvE its not. Even in guilds you hardly see parties doing PvE missions. Probably because you don't really know each other.

4. The fun parties are those with friends
Friends from real life and those you know for years from other games. How many of you have 5 or more real friends in the game?

5.The Spirit of the age
Today, young people are multitaskers. They perform many things at the same time: Playing a computer game, watching tv, answering a cell-phone call. They are used to do things quickly for a short period of time. They often lack concentration for long online sessions, e.g. for doing hard missions. They loose interest very quickly. They hob from game to game. How many inactive players are there in your guild?

Lonesamurai · Feb 03, 2007, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Quote: