Guild Wars 2

[Morfiend]

I can see why you're hesitant, since it's so expensive resubbing and all. 

It is if you only have Prophecies. 

I have been wanted to get in to GW many times, but thats all I have, and from that, I could just never get in to it enough to justify buying mote expansions.

[DLRiley]

Unless you hate the concept of a single player rpg... you can

A. delete your crap toon for a new toon and start from the beginning, removing the jetlag from years of not caring.
B. ask f13 members who still play guild wars to play with you, you can do option A. together and have a blast watching Prince Leroy die 5 hour into the game.

[Koyasha]

Every time I consider playing GW1 again, I remember that I can't jump, go 'meh', and figure I might as well just keep playing something else and see what happens when GW2 comes along.

[Sjofn]

The not jumping bugs me a little less than the OH GOD IT'S A ONE INCH DROP, COMPLETELY IMPASSIBLE thing. But only a little.

[Ratman_tf]

If you're stalling due to Prophecies, play a different campaign.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Prophecies is an order of magnitude slower, perhaps bordering on two, than Factions or Nightfall.

I know. I eventually got Nightfall, but Prophecies just killed my enthusiasm deader than a doornail.

[Phred]

People may in fact enjoy tanking, in the sense that they enjoy having 50 mobs beat on them with total futility like they are superman or the hulk.


Almost no one actually enjoys HEALING. They might enjoy the the guaranteed group spots, or how needed they are across the game, but the actual healing mechanics... the number of people that would enjoy just healing and would heal their quest mobs to death are very very small.

Personally I found the healing in EQ1 quite enjoyable. Even raid healing wasn't the bore others claimed and I could certainly tell when someone was attempting to bot. I tried healing in WoW but it was way too twitchy and fast for my taste.

[Phred]

. What's appealing is that it requires working together. There doesn't seem to be any reason that someone couldn't make a game system that required cooperation and intra-party synergy of abilities, but was not the trinity. But so far, I can't think of a game that has.

You could say that the fellowship maneuvers in LoTRO are similar to this, badly implemented but they do tend to involve the whole party. It woulidn't be hard to make the mechanism aoe and work for anyone in range instead of just in your party too. Wouldn't expect that kind of innovation out of turbine though. After working hard to make every quest in the first book's epic arc soloable, they repeated their mistake with moria and made bottleneck quest chains and mandatory group quests everywhere. Those guys just don't learn.

[Sky]

The great thing about mmo threads is they eventually get to the end game grindy bits and remind me why I hate mmo without ever having to go back and play mmo.

[Numtini]

You could say that the fellowship maneuvers in LoTRO are similar to this, badly implemented but they do tend to involve the whole party. It woulidn't be hard to make the mechanism aoe and work for anyone in range instead of just in your party too. Wouldn't expect that kind of innovation out of turbine though. After working hard to make every quest in the first book's epic arc soloable, they repeated their mistake with moria and made bottleneck quest chains and mandatory group quests everywhere. Those guys just don't learn.

Actually attack chains work really well as a way to make groups more powerful than individuals, require working together, and not force you into strict roles. I think something like that would work out really well.

As to LOTRO, I think Moria was out before they got around to making all the epic quests soloable. I still wonder why they go to all the work to make them soloable and won't budge on a global LFG channel or a LFG system that actually works.

[Tmon]

What I've never got is how poorly most games implement LFG, especially given how important grouping is in most MMOs.  The pattern seems to be ship with a really crappy/no LFG system and then introduce a revamped/new (possibly useful) system a year later that no one uses because they have become conditioned to use the work around (trade channel, spamming ooc, etc) that players developed after launch.  The devs then use the lack of use of the system to justify ignoring the problem for the foreseeable future.

[Sky]

The popular excuse now is pointing to people whining about wow's dungeon finder destroying the community of the game.

[Numtini]

Before the LFD system, which I think has ruined the game, WoW was as close to perfect as I could imagine. It had a useable dungeon finder and a global chat that you joined IFF you were in the dungeon finder. EQ2s tiered every-ten-levels chat system also worked wonderfully and other than the 0-10 channel was largely spam free.

[kildorn]

The only logical point to LFD having issues with community cohesion is when it went cross server/battlegroup. As a core tool, it does it's job perfectly: takes the mess of X Y and Z roles looking for a group, and puts them into one. It even obeys ignore lists so if there's some prick you really dislike, it will never group you with them.

A server constrained LFD system won't damage server community at all, beyond the side effect of getting people out of trade chat and starving the trolls who like to live there because everyone is in it looking for groups.

[Koyasha]

I don't know, I have to say I did prefer it when the LFG channel was global with the tool, and you had to actually form your own groups to a certain degree.  It wasn't as easy as 'queue up and get in a group eventually' but you actually had some control over your group.  While you could still do that even if there was a server constrained LFD tool like now, the pool of available players would be small because most people would just queue up automatically.

I also like there being a global chat channel.  Not sure what GW's history with global chat is, but I hope they have at least one channel that's global and you can be in anywhere, anytime.  I never liked WoW's apparent insistence on prohibiting any sort of global chat.

[kildorn]

I always leave global and zone chats instantly in every MMO. Seriously, they all suck. My kingdom for the first company that puts Chuck Norris in the profanity filter.

[Tarami]

Personally I think LFD with its auto-party function is the most evil and dehumanizing thing ever put into a game. By that I don't mean ambigiously, French Fries-evil, just traditionally, 1984-evil.

[Numtini]

At least on the server I was on at the time, Earthen Ring Alliance, the LFG channel was great. I used the auto-lfg tool to get into it and would see people looking. I knew a bunch of the guilds by rep, so I had some clue. Pretty much the same experience I had with the EQ2 70-79 etc. channel. It wasn't as fast as the LFD tool, but it wasn't bad either -- usually had a group by the time I finished my dailies -- and when I got a group I usually had fun instead of grinding my teeth.

GW from memory, you formed groups by putting a tag up and people would join you. Not unlike the personal shops thing in Korean grinders. It was a complete failure.

[Lantyssa]

You show in the Group tab of the group/heroes/henchman page ('P').  I don't know how it was originally, but the existing one allows notes, shows party size, and whether normal or hard mode.

[Kageru]

The WoW dungeon finder is terrible and the future. I'd be pretty certain it is based on their investigation of how long people are willing to wait from "press button" to "in dungeon" and finding there's a lot of people expecting it to be near instant or at least as fast as a online game lobby service.

[Vinadil]

You can bet LFD leads to more money, or it won't stick around... which means it is not the developers "fault" if it gets implemented because more people like it than don't.  In a strange way that tool may actually lead to MORE community in games by showing people more value for joining a guild and getting to know people that they can group with on a regular basis.

[ezrast]

Yes, MMOs haven't incentivized being in a good guild enough before now. 

[Vinadil]

I see the attempt at sarcasm... but the data says that your statement is very true.  Most people are still not connected to a "good" guild, if "good" is defined as one that can access and beat all of the content in the game.  Sure those people who can do so are at an "advantage" (this term used loosely since most of these games are PvP by choice), but if the incentives were truly good enough then more people would do it.  The fact is most people say it takes too much time or requires them to be around too many idiots... so the incentives just don't measure up to the cost.  Granted this LFD seems to be more of a negative consequence rather than a positive incentive, but it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

[ezrast]

Er, your argument is that devs need to make more rewards gated away from solo and small group players, so that people with time constraints or small social guilds will just have to buck up and join a big raid guild if they want the good stuff? Because if you're not in a progression guild, you're not having fun the right way?

I don't want to think you're saying that but I can't figure out how else to interpret it.

[Lantyssa]

It's Norn Week!

They come from the land of the ice and snow—the norn! A valiant race of shape-changing barbarians, the norn are one of the five playable races in Guild Wars 2. This week we’re going to get within axe-throwing distance of the norn on the ArenaNet Blog with posts full of lore, art, screenshots, audio clips, fiction, and more. On Thursday, Feb 24th, we’ll be updating the GuildWars2.com norn page with a brand new video featuring the Shiverpeaks, the norn hunting grounds.

This makes me happy in my yurt.  Lots of pretty Norn fluff to be released this week.  Not too much of sustenance in todays, just telling us what we'll be seeing for the week.  There is one new screenshot at the end.

Hopefully they'll be doing a race a week now.

[Spiff]

Read the first line, heard the big "AaaaaAAAaaaa" in my head, youtubed the song (again).
I'm content  (and feeling kind of old, stumbled on a vid of Page looking ancient now).

Don't think I've seen a screenshot of this that's disappointed me yet (I'm that guy that cares about graphics, sort of, I need to at least be able to discern my own avatar in a crowd).

[Vinadil]

Yes, MMOs haven't incentivized being in a good guild enough before now. 

A more clear answer... No, MMOs haven't incentivized being in a good guild enough before now; as evidenced by the fact that most people do not form the necessary guilds to access these incentives.  I am not really making a value statement about this, though I am a part of the many that stopped playing games like WoW when it became necessary to spend hours a night simply to have a chance to win a single piece of armor that I needed in order to get to the next encounter that I could then spend hours a night working through for another increasingly smaller chance at another piece of shiny.

I think MMOs can make better incentives for encouraging people to get into guilds.  I suppose there are people who play with 5-6 friends in a guild, and that can be fun.  Personally I like our guild to run closer to 40-50 as I find that allows for a much more flexible and casual experience around multiple level ranges... but most MMOs punish that kind of play rather than incentivize it (IE level restrictions for groups, required gear levels for participation in raids, etc.).

But, to the topic of the LFD tool, I was mostly just wondering if it might have the unintended consequence of moving people to look for a guild so that they could have more chemistry with their teammates... revealing that often over-looked benefit of a "good guild".

[Murgos]

Er, your argument is that devs need to make more rewards gated away from solo and small group players, so that people with time constraints or small social guilds will just have to buck up and join a big raid guild if they want the good stuff? Because if you're not in a progression guild, you're not having fun the right way?

I don't want to think you're saying that but I can't figure out how else to interpret it.

Um, yeah, the 'good stuff' should be hard to get, I don't see what's wrong with that.  Or, rather, I'm not interested in a game where any mouth breather can push butan and get bacon because the only person that game is fun for is the mouth breather.

Let me rephrase it this way, "Why should time constrained solo and small group players who have a limited ability to perform get the same rewards as the people who can achieve detailed, complicated goals?"

[Numtini]

But, to the topic of the LFD tool, I was mostly just wondering if it might have the unintended consequence of moving people to look for a guild so that they could have more chemistry with their teammates... revealing that often over-looked benefit of a "good guild".

Probably, but at the same time it makes finding a guild even more difficult because you never group with people more than once.

[ezrast]

"Why should time constrained solo and small group players who have a limited ability to perform get the same rewards as the people who can achieve detailed, complicated goals?"

"Not in a raid guild" and "not a mouth breather" are not mutually exclusive.

A more clear answer... No, MMOs haven't incentivized being in a good guild enough before now; as evidenced by the fact that most people do not form the necessary guilds to access these incentives.  I am not really making a value statement about this

You are, though - you're saying that if players aren't joining large guilds, then there is something wrong the game. My point is just that small group play is a valid playstyle and there's nothing wrong with catering to that style. There's nothing wrong with catering to large guild play, either, but it's not the default "right" choice.

[Sky]

Yeah, screw you Murgos! 

[Typhon]

Let me rephrase it this way, "Why should time constrained solo and small group players who have a limited ability to perform get the same rewards as the people who can achieve detailed, complicated goals?"

I think you've wandered into the wrong thread.  This is Guild Wars 2.

[Murgos]

"Not in a raid guild" and "not a mouth breather" are not mutually exclusive.

If all you have to do is log in to get the phat lewts why should you get the same rewards as people who have to coordinate dozens of individuals in completing a complex multi-stage task?

Heck, why should a complex multi-stage task that can be completed by 3 people be rewarded as highly as a complex, multi-stage tasks that requires to coordinated efforts of 4 people?

[Stormwaltz]

...why should you get the same rewards as people who have to coordinate dozens of individuals in completing a complex multi-stage task?

Because you'll retain more subscribers?

[Lantyssa]

Because my money is just as good as theirs.

[Nevermore]

Because it's just a game and not work?