The great GW contradiction

After about Frost Gate or some such arbitrary point, it becomes more and more important to group. The great contradiction here is that the people who you see in town looking for groups are your opponents in this game, not your allies. These are the bastards (said affectionately for emphasis) you will meet in the arenas and fight to the death. So helping them complete a mission seems... wrong. Asking them for help seems even less smart.

This has really lead to one main problem with the game right now: people ditching your group in the middle of a mission. It's a rational behaivor to screw the people you are grouped with in this game. It's not a nice thing to do. It makes the game less enjoyable for 5/6 or 7/8 of the population concerned. But it's rational. It improves your chances in competition against these opponents.

So... we need to group, but benefit from harming the group as soon as we're done with it. This dynamic should really be changed.

My preference of solution would be to have large alliances of guilds. There could be 10 or so alliances, and your alliance would be ranked similar to how guilds are ranked. There would be alliance specific chat, and a toggle to ignore it. Helping your alliance mates would give you a reason to help people in your group, as their future performance would reflect on you. Breaking this vast group of people into smaller groups would also promote some level of community responsability that this game is so sadly lacking.

Barring that, the suggestions to penalize a player for antisocial behaivor would get my vote. Public humiliation of the character could go a long way. Brodacasts in the towns of "Don't group with XXX as he's just shafted a group doing the mission" would go a long way to stopping this behaivor. A note to his parents would help too, but don't know if that can be pulled off.

*jaw drops* nice!

If you'll read the lore, you'll find that the arenas are a place to hone your fighting skills. It's sparring, not fighting to the death, especially since everyone can be brought back to life unharmed after every fight. In the HoH, as punishment for wandering into the sacred afterlife of the ghosts who live there (they fought INCREDIBLY hard to get there, and you just walk right in compared to what they went through, so of course they'd be pissed) take revenge by pitting groups of humans against eachother for the sake of watching them die.

So THERE!

this game has lore????

* jaw drops *

My arguement isn't lore based, nor am I asking them to change the lore. I'm only saying that people are ditching their groups as soon as they complete their own personal objective and are being rewarded for it. If you reward antisocial behaivor in a social game, it's a real downer to most of the population. Hense they got rid of casinos. So obviously they care about issues like this.

I've gotten to where I don't group outside of my guild... period. So the game is becoming quite frustraiting. Adding some dynamic that would reward people for being helpful, or punish people for screwing up what is otherwise a wonderful game, would just make my day.

My post was in response to your first paragraph. What you're describing is not a "contradiction" but instead an "observation" about jerks who leave groups.

I really hate that. The last few missions I've done, one person has quit within the first 3/4 minutes, for no reason, the group was doing fine, they weren't insulted over group chat or anything, one minute they were there, the next gone. No "Sorry, gtg" even. REALLY annoying. I don't mind if RL intrudes, hell, mine does enough, but not saying anything just seems rude.

Heh, just like D2 - the game has plenty of story/lore, but because it's almost entirely skippable most players think the story/lore isn't particularly deep (and to be honest, the storyline/voiceovers are rather poor in spots, but at least there is tons of backstory around should you care to talk with all those NPCs and read all the text.)

Regarding the main topic? I just don't see leaving the group as a terribly effective way of preventing the 'competition' from completing the PVE stuff that's necessary to create viable PVP builds. Good players (the ones you should really be worred about in PVP) already have the skills they need by this point. Bad players (the ones who are stuck in Mission X for 10+ attempts) aren't going to be a threat to you.

I think people just leave parties because of either crashing or having/wanting to leave for a variety of reason (real-world obligations, group not playing very well, etc)

I hate when people leave in the middle of missions too....BUT I've also left in the middle of missions not by choice but because of crashes, power outages and one emergency.

There's really no way to solve this problem except maybe with a way to be able to rejoin a group that you were in a mission with, the way you can in City of Heroes.

quick addition. I play the game for PvE and I think a significant number do. So altruism (helping others gain a task when you've done it already and now have nothing to gain) is in place, or at the very least I've seen a lot of "you scratch my back" quests. I do a quest that you need then you join me on a quest that I need.

That's the whole point... there's no reason to help anyone, other than your own decission that you should. There's actually reason not to help most people. In fact, there's reason to hamper their progress, just so long as it doesn't hamper yours.

This isn't my philosophy, I'm a pretty helpful guy, and a good follower, but it is the design of the game we're playing. It's competative, yet the very people we are competing with are asking for help. Just doesn't make sense to me.

We're talking about a game?

*jaw drops*

Sometimes when people drop like that it's because they get that error 7 which drops them. I know sometimes they leave on purpose too, I'm not saying they don't. If I get disconnected during a mission or quest objective with a party, I would've remembered one person's name of the group and apologized to him/her and tell them to tell the group.

The most anyone will be "hampered" by you leaving their group is an hour or so tops to do the mission again.

I mean, unless you're going to really enjoy that hour you have to PvP before they catch up...

I've never had someone drop without telling us first or whispering after that there was a problem.

It never becomes "more important to group" in this game at any point. I speak from experience, having done every mission/quest in the whole game with only henchmen.

In fact, after you get to the desert, it's vastly preferable to take only henchmen to the usual parade of morons looking for pickup groups at that level of the game.

Of course, it's also a bit boring to be alone with only henchmen, but I highly recommend it for your first trip to the end of the game, if only to save your sanity while you're learning the landscape.

Unfortunately for we intelligent adults, a very significant percentage of the GW player-base is teenage American boys, who are without question the most obnoxious, selfish, un-educated, spoiled-brat little jerks in the history of modern civilization.

The henchmen allow you to avoid this particular demographic if you wish

Hey I'm a 17 year old Asian American boy! No, I'm serious. Anyways, my opinion is that this is still an online RPG, and part of that is grouping with other human players. I try to avoid henchs unless I know I might have to leave a quest before I can finish it so I don't screw a group over. And those players you "ditch" in a mission are still going to advance in the game, of course unless they become hopeless and devastated at losing a fellow group member and suicide. Most missions dont need the max party to accomplish, just a good balance of classes. Plus to do that intentionally is just a waste of your time as well.

As someone who crashes regularly, I have to tell you that quite often people dont 'chose' to leave a mission. They crash. Often they dont remember the exact spelling of the group member names afterwards so they cant send a whisper saying 'I'm sorry, I crashed'.

PLEASE DONT ASSUME THAT EVERYONE WHO 'LEAVES' SIMPLY BAILED OUT OF THE GROUP.

Thank you.

I have a jaw?

*newly discovered jaw drops*

I'll help anyone complete a quest. Makes me feel good to help out.