54 replies to this topic

[Remasti]

Craywulf, on 26 November 2012 - 05:25 PM, said:

Asking subjective question is more than likely going get you the same quality of answers. If you really wanna know how SPvP is doing, just log in and found out for yourself.

totally agree

[T J]

Sephirox507, on 26 November 2012 - 05:19 PM, said:

Gw2 Can shine but it needs some time, today is the reddit talk so everyone pop there and try to convince the devs to actually do something.

Nothing drastic/major is going to happen for GW2. Which game has ever, through actions off it's devs, 'been fixed'?

Edited by T J, 26 November 2012 - 05:32 PM.

[Cheddarpuma]

Spell, on 23 November 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

its good only for casual pvpers. hardcore players are lying to themselves that ANet will change things next patch like they did November patch probably nothing will happen.

I wanna clear this up. It's really NOT good for casual players at all. Because there's no ladder system implemented, all the casual players who aren't like, rank 40 yet, jump into a free tourney with some friends and get annihilated by top-rank hardcore teams. Many casuals have quit already because of this. Hell, you can't solo queue or queue with a friend for a tourney without getting matched up against full guild teams or coordinated map pugs. Guild Wars 2 sPvP is dying or possibly dead for the casual player. And unfortunately, that's why PvP is dying in general: casual players are the lifeblood of a healthy MMO. Jacobin has a lot of great points in this video:

[Larsen]

Sephirox507, on 26 November 2012 - 05:23 PM, said:

Is the next mmo to be aniquilated after its first two months. We the MMO Community have change jobs and are now killing games instead of helping them grow. so maybe call it judas?

Players are not killing games. Don't be ridiculous. What's killing games is the fact that developers keep trying to get away with awful discount products, or products that bring nothing new to the table and fail to improve on anything. These are the reasons for WAR, AoC, SW:TOR, Rift etc., and now GW2. All of them have suffered from one or the other, sometimes both. In GW2's case, the quality of the product is rock bottom and this is killing the game. Good games aren't dying, but bad games never get off the ground. For every single game that has ever "died," you can point out the exact reason why it happened, and it's never because players killed it. It's always because it was a bad game. This applies to GW2 as well.

Edited by Larsen, 27 November 2012 - 04:21 AM.

[Lailendil]

Larsen, on 27 November 2012 - 04:20 AM, said:

Players are not killing games. Don't be ridiculous. What's killing games is the fact that developers keep trying to get away with awful discount products, or products that bring nothing new to the table and fail to improve on anything. These are the reasons for WAR, AoC, SW:TOR, Rift etc., and now GW2. All of them have suffered from one or the other, sometimes both. In GW2's case, the quality of the product is rock bottom and this is killing the game. Good games aren't dying, but bad games never get off the ground. For every single game that has ever "died," you can point out the exact reason why it happened, and it's never because players killed it. It's always because it was a bad game. This applies to GW2 as well.

To be diplomatic, let's say there is a soft spot where the community should be supportive and understand things can't happen just by snapping our fingers. On the other hand, Anet shouldn't expect us to keep smiling at them while they are not even using lube...

[Larsen]

People will be understanding when it's warranted. League of Legends didn't start out as the most popular game in the world, but the players knew it had potential and quality. It took time and it took the trust of the playerbase, but ANet and GW2 have not proven that they deserve either. The same goes for any other game; it'll get exactly as much patience and trust from its players as it deserves. There's no such thing as players abandoning a game that deserves better. The fact that they abandon it means it didn't deserve better. People do not abandon good games, and there are far too many crippling problems with GW2 for anyone to be able to expect patience and understanding from players. If you release an awful movie and nobody shows up to watch the sequel, you don't blame the audience for the failure. The gaming industry is the only industry in the world where anyone has the audacity to blame customers for the failures of bad products.

Edited by Larsen, 27 November 2012 - 10:54 AM.

[radamant011]

imo the game is doing just fine. considered it`s still a newborn baby. i think that it still needs some fine tuning, and that it should have been in development for maybe another year. but patches and expansions will address to that i have no doubt.

[Garethh]

Larsen, on 27 November 2012 - 04:20 AM, said:

Players are not killing games. Don't be ridiculous. What's killing games is the fact that developers keep trying to get away with awful discount products, or products that bring nothing new to the table and fail to improve on anything. These are the reasons for WAR, AoC, SW:TOR, Rift etc., and now GW2. All of them have suffered from one or the other, sometimes both. In GW2's case, the quality of the product is rock bottom and this is killing the game. Good games aren't dying, but bad games never get off the ground. For every single game that has ever "died," you can point out the exact reason why it happened, and it's never because players killed it. It's always because it was a bad game. This applies to GW2 as well.

Yeuup.

And as a sidenote,
They shouldn't have tried to make a whole new PvP setup if they weren't going to dedicated an immense amount of time to making it perfect...
They screwed up far more than just tournies (people's main complaint) in my eyes.  In other games I found the random pug PvP extremely enjoyable and engaging, even if badly instanced, just because the PvP itself was fun... GW2 on the other hand... I played it for a few months and just don't care to look back, besides of course to help random ranger people fall into the 2 specs that work.

Edited by Garethh, 29 November 2012 - 02:03 AM.

[Cruxisinhibitor]

Cheddarpuma, on 26 November 2012 - 09:49 PM, said:

I wanna clear this up. It's really NOT good for casual players at all. Because there's no ladder system implemented, all the casual players who aren't like, rank 40 yet, jump into a free tourney with some friends and get annihilated by top-rank hardcore teams. Many casuals have quit already because of this. Hell, you can't solo queue or queue with a friend for a tourney without getting matched up against full guild teams or coordinated map pugs. Guild Wars 2 sPvP is dying or possibly dead for the casual player. And unfortunately, that's why PvP is dying in general: casual players are the lifeblood of a healthy MMO. Jacobin has a lot of great points in this video:

The reason is solely because PvE and PvP are segmented....if they let people bring PvE gear in PvP, added more maps, changed combat, etc...The game is just not fun. The combat is a homogeneous zergfest. Trait setups are hard to communicate to other players, skill bars dont really matter, everyone does the same thing, no roles, no real depth in point capture especially with no direct healer...the game is trying to be a FPS, but it's not. GW1 had better combat and more opportunity to be an e-sport because people got interested in the depth of the combat. This game is just very streamlined, shallow, and boring.

Edited by Cruxisinhibitor, 28 November 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[Asha2012]

First off, I don't really care about PvP (which I know the OP does) but....

I am still having fun.  I have been playing with a bunch of people from different guilds who are usually on the same time as me (friend's list).  To simplify things (from a chat point of view), we all formed a new guild.  We are on together most every night so the game is becoming social and silly and really fun.

I still wish mid level areas had higher on map populations.  Anet needs to come up with a creative way to lure people away from Orr and such places back to mid and upper mid level areas.

I also wish Guild Wars 2 Wiki had a more comprehensive armor gallery like the first game did.  I'm at the point where I want to shop/work towards armor sets I want. I suppose that will come in time.

Is there a SINGLE place, in-game, you can preview ALL armor sets available?  That would be clutch.

As for PVP, I did not get involved with PvP in GW1 until a few years into the game.  I think the same will likely be said for GW2.  I figure by the time I utterly exhaust pve (100% map completion, lvl 400 in all crafting disciplines, played all races' PS, etc.) I will try some PvP.  That will likely give Anet time to add more pve content which I'm sure they will do faster than I can get to it any way.  But then I am probably a "casual" player becaue I only play three hours a night, every night.

Edited by Asha2012, 28 November 2012 - 07:27 PM.

[Norseman]

Here's an idea. Don't come to forums full of bitter, spoiled people who feel the need to come online to talk about a game they don't even enjoy. Log in and play, that's where you'll find all the people who enjoy the game. Try it out, see if you like it.

There are no monthly fees, what's to lose?

[Asha2012]

Graystone, on 23 November 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

OP, to answer your question. Some new content has just been added, a new PvE zone, an endless dungeon and some SPvP zones. There seems to be a live event one weekend a month, hopefully the next one will be executed a little better, as there was just wayyyy too much lag. The fact that there are people using these forums to convey how crappy this free to play game that they have no obligation to play (like waiting out the rest of their subscription) this far into the game's life is a really good sign.




Correction, they do care. There's only so much they can do at once.

If you eat nothing but apples every day you will get sick of apples, in which case you would blame yourself for getting sick of them, not the apple farmer.

Wisdom has no place in these forums

[Asha2012]

Craywulf, on 26 November 2012 - 05:25 PM, said:

Asking subjective question is more than likely going get you the same quality of answers. If you really wanna know how SPvP is doing, just log in and found out for yourself.

Almost...

If an opinion is expressed intelligently with enough data and objective truth and also with the understanding it is just that, an opinion, you can come away with a better idea of the state of the game than just sitting around wondering.

BUT you are right in that nothing will provide the OP with a better answer than first hand knowledge. Log in dude.

[Xeviant]

My opinion:  It's not perfect, but it's still more enjoyable than anything else out there.

[Skolops]

As in all games, things are a little different server to server, but from my own experience on my server and judging from reading these forums, the official forums, and reddit, the status seems to be as follows:

On the plus side:

- There are a fair number of players farming in the highest levels zones
- There are a good number of players running WvW
- There are a good number of players farming dungeons

On the negative side:

- Low and mid level zones are lacking in population on most servers, even extremely barren on some, making it boring to play low level characters
- There are fewer players farming the highest level zones than there used to be and most of the events in them are not done very often  and frequently fail from lack of participants
- Its difficult to find a group for running story mode dungeons, so if you have not done a dungeon before its hard to get into it
- sPvP is dropping in popularity rapidly and already has somewhat longer que times than would be expected for regional servers

Ultimately, I haven't really played recently because of these factors.  I like the game and enjoyed playing it quite considerably, but unfortunately its design causes it to not be fun to play without a decent number of players around, and lately there have not been.  Even if there are still a lot of people playing - and there are, no doubt - they are spread out enough that wherever I am the game just *feels* dead, and that makes a huge difference because of the way it was designed around large population content.  

To a degree, being a part of an active guild can mitigate this.  However, not everyone is able to find that guild that really clicks with them, and moreover I know many people are in the situation of having a formerly active guild which has gradually become less and less so.

Ultimately, I think a few things bit ANet in the foot with this game, things which honestly I think were foreseeable:

- Every MMO has a dropoff in low and mid level zone populations after the first month or so.  Normally this is OK if the low level stuff is designed to be done solo, or if most of it is with a few optional group-based quests (like TOR's Heroics).  Because of GW2's "The entire game is the endgame" design, these lower and mid level zones come across feeling as though an enormous amount of the content is not completable  even if there are plenty of soloable heart quests.

- On a related note, nobody wants to play what *feels* like a dead game.  In games like TOR or WoW, the emptiness of a zone is almost masked because most of the content is designed to be done solo. On the other hand, in GW2 the emptiness is almost emphasize because of how many group events are constantly sitting there on your map incomplete.

- The no-sub model has its advantages, but perhaps the one advantage that fans of the game cite in almost every conversation is actually its greatest disadvantage: "there's no sub so you can play whenever you want."  Even if you think using the psychology of it to make money is shady, the reality that people paying a subscription feel like they need to play frequently to get their money's worth, and so they do.  Without a subscription, its easy for players to log in much more infrequently.  This leads to somewhat of a domino effect as once a few stop logging in daily or a few times a week, those who do log in see an emptier game which leads them to be less interested per the points I mentioned above.  This just spirals from there to the point where fewer people are playing.  I know that several of my friends who were quite excited about the game at launch do not play any more, but they keep telling me that its ok because, with no sub, they can log in anytime.  I am sure we all know people who use the same reasoning.

- Similarly, without any kind of vertical gear progression to keep people interested, they do not feel the need to log in as frequently and keep up to date.  This is another design choice for which so many have praised the game, but in the end I think the net result is undeniably a lack of consistent play leading to the problems cited above.  Honestly, its really not something that should be surprising.  Months before the game was launched I  predicted, and I am certainly not the only one, that it would be extremely popular for a few weeks or months but that the real question would be whether it was able to retain people without any kind of "carrot on a stick" to keep them playing each day.  It seems that in the end that lack of a carrot has hurt the game badly.

[Seetherrr]

Skolops, on 28 November 2012 - 07:32 PM, said:

Wall of Text

You realize this thread is in the PvP section? 90%+ of your post is RE: PvE issues.  But then again I guess that's perhaps the best way to show the state of SPvP which is one which seems forgotten by the Dev team.

The current state of SPvP is like Terri Schiavo before the feeding tube was removed.

[FBRin]

Well, to be fair, the OP was a rather broad question. And his post gets the point of spvp inactivity across rather well also. Anet has basically become blizzard now, starting the gear treadmill and focusing solely on pve while throwing some scraps to the pvp community every now and then. This is how you keep a player population though so good for them I guess.

[Choops_Aesinox]

Graystone, on 23 November 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

The problem with your analysis of my analogy is that we don't live on an island with only one farmer that grows only apples. I spent all day yesterday doing jumping puzzles and I don't even have half of them completed. The day before that I gave SPvP a try and it was fun. Before that I was spamming dungeons for a neat set of skins. For the month straight prior to that I was grinding gold and badges of honor from the jumping puzzles, I only stopped because I was getting tired of farming for my legendary. Occasionally doing WvW in between all of this, more so just recently.

PvP doesn't become stale when you do other things to break up the monotony. I will agree that WvW and SPvP does leave a little to be desired, but to say that they don't care about it just isn't true. They have said that they have new content in the works for PvP, it's just not coming NOW which is what most of the people complaining about it want.

There you have it, if you think PvP is broken, go PvE. That'll fix your PvP enjoyment.

[Mouse1981]

Avoid GW2 in a wide circle. It's just THAT bad.

[Xsorus]

I'm actually laughing that some of you are talking about ESO..

I'm looking forward to ESO, because I think it'll be awesome..However i've seen people on this forum rip WvW players telling them it's not Real PvP (Daoc would beg to differ) and ESO is pretty much DAOC2, No Instance people is in ESO..It's setup exactly like DAOC, it will have zergs, You'll have to avoid them if you want to have Group vs Group Fights...

ESO will not be an Esport...It will have a crap ton of PvP, but an E sport it will not be.

[JaxSilven]

Skolops, on 28 November 2012 - 07:32 PM, said:

As in all games, things are a little different server to server, but from my own experience on my server and judging from reading these forums, the official forums, and reddit, the status seems to be as follows:

On the plus side:

- There are a fair number of players farming in the highest levels zones
- There are a good number of players running WvW
- There are a good number of players farming dungeons

On the negative side:

- Low and mid level zones are lacking in population on most servers, even extremely barren on some, making it boring to play low level characters
- There are fewer players farming the highest level zones than there used to be and most of the events in them are not done very often  and frequently fail from lack of participants
- Its difficult to find a group for running story mode dungeons, so if you have not done a dungeon before its hard to get into it
- sPvP is dropping in popularity rapidly and already has somewhat longer que times than would be expected for regional servers

Ultimately, I haven't really played recently because of these factors.  I like the game and enjoyed playing it quite considerably, but unfortunately its design causes it to not be fun to play without a decent number of players around, and lately there have not been.  Even if there are still a lot of people playing - and there are, no doubt - they are spread out enough that wherever I am the game just *feels* dead, and that makes a huge difference because of the way it was designed around large population content.  

To a degree, being a part of an active guild can mitigate this.  However, not everyone is able to find that guild that really clicks with them, and moreover I know many people are in the situation of having a formerly active guild which has gradually become less and less so.

Ultimately, I think a few things bit ANet in the foot with this game, things which honestly I think were foreseeable:

- Every MMO has a dropoff in low and mid level zone populations after the first month or so.  Normally this is OK if the low level stuff is designed to be done solo, or if most of it is with a few optional group-based quests (like TOR's Heroics).  Because of GW2's "The entire game is the endgame" design, these lower and mid level zones come across feeling as though an enormous amount of the content is not completable  even if there are plenty of soloable heart quests.

- On a related note, nobody wants to play what *feels* like a dead game.  In games like TOR or WoW, the emptiness of a zone is almost masked because most of the content is designed to be done solo. On the other hand, in GW2 the emptiness is almost emphasize because of how many group events are constantly sitting there on your map incomplete.

- The no-sub model has its advantages, but perhaps the one advantage that fans of the game cite in almost every conversation is actually its greatest disadvantage: "there's no sub so you can play whenever you want."  Even if you think using the psychology of it to make money is shady, the reality that people paying a subscription feel like they need to play frequently to get their money's worth, and so they do.  Without a subscription, its easy for players to log in much more infrequently.  This leads to somewhat of a domino effect as once a few stop logging in daily or a few times a week, those who do log in see an emptier game which leads them to be less interested per the points I mentioned above.  This just spirals from there to the point where fewer people are playing.  I know that several of my friends who were quite excited about the game at launch do not play any more, but they keep telling me that its ok because, with no sub, they can log in anytime.  I am sure we all know people who use the same reasoning.

- Similarly, without any kind of vertical gear progression to keep people interested, they do not feel the need to log in as frequently and keep up to date.  This is another design choice for which so many have praised the game, but in the end I think the net result is undeniably a lack of consistent play leading to the problems cited above.  Honestly, its really not something that should be surprising.  Months before the game was launched I  predicted, and I am certainly not the only one, that it would be extremely popular for a few weeks or months but that the real question would be whether it was able to retain people without any kind of "carrot on a stick" to keep them playing each day.  It seems that in the end that lack of a carrot has hurt the game badly.

The funniest thing is GW1 had none of these problems. They just had no understanding of how they made their game good.

edit: the predecessor to GW2 (although had dropoff of low level missions) it wasn't dropped off enough that you couldn't find a group in more than 5 minutes until 6 or so years into the game.

Edited by JaxSilven, 29 November 2012 - 05:04 PM.

[Silent The Legend]

Just my two cents, but the PvP in this game makes me think they created GW1's awesome PvP by accident...

[Xsorus]

JaxSilven, on 29 November 2012 - 05:02 PM, said:

The funniest thing is GW1 had none of these problems. They just had no understanding of how they made their game good.

edit: the predecessor to GW2 (although had dropoff of low level missions) it wasn't dropped off enough that you couldn't find a group in more than 5 minutes until 6 or so years into the game.

A lot of games run into the problem of making most of their content for example 1-79....

It would of been smarter to condense the number of levels, and Made more End Game Zones.

ESO for example is going to have 3 factions with 1-50 leveling area's, however the largest area in the game is the PvP area, which is Double the Size of all 3 Factions 1-50's are combined.

Quote

- On a related note, nobody wants to play what *feels* like a dead game.  In games like TOR or WoW, the emptiness of a zone is almost masked because most of the content is designed to be done solo. On the other hand, in GW2 the emptiness is almost emphasize because of how many group events are constantly sitting there on your map incomplete.

Not completely true, GW2 is more a solo game then ToR was at the beginning, Because SWTOR rewards you for grouping while GW2 does not... the fastest way to level in SWTOR still is grouping up and heading Elite Area's on each world... You will level faster by a large amount, So much that you can pretty much just do the main story quest on each planet, and then do the Elite Quests with a group and you can skip every other quest on the map....

Each time you complete one of the Elite Area's, you get XP that everyone else gets for completing the quest..So 4 people, means you basically finish the quest 4 times over...

SWTOR is the only game i've played in a very long time, that actually rewards you for group, Like i've not seen an MMO, since maybe EQ or DAOC that made grouping the better option.

Edited by Xsorus, 29 November 2012 - 11:01 PM.

[Skolops]

Xsorus, on 29 November 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

A lot of games run into the problem of making most of their content for example 1-79....

It would of been smarter to condense the number of levels, and Made more End Game Zones.

ESO for example is going to have 3 factions with 1-50 leveling area's, however the largest area in the game is the PvP area, which is Double the Size of all 3 Factions 1-50's are combined.



Not completely true, GW2 is more a solo game then ToR was at the beginning, Because SWTOR rewards you for grouping while GW2 does not... the fastest way to level in SWTOR still is grouping up and heading Elite Area's on each world... You will level faster by a large amount, So much that you can pretty much just do the main story quest on each planet, and then do the Elite Quests with a group and you can skip every other quest on the map....

Each time you complete one of the Elite Area's, you get XP that everyone else gets for completing the quest..So 4 people, means you basically finish the quest 4 times over...

SWTOR is the only game i've played in a very long time, that actually rewards you for group, Like i've not seen an MMO, since maybe EQ or DAOC that made grouping the better option.

Whether TOR rewards grouping with XP or other bonuses beyond what one would normally receive, the group quests are very much optional.  In contrast, the dynamic events in GW2 are intended to be a large amount of the gameplay experience.  Wherever you are, there is always a dynamic event popping up around the corner, and when there is nobody in the zone to do them its very, very noticeable and just calls attention to the fact that there isn't anyone doing them.  In TOR, the heroic quests are presented as optional, and so if there isn't anyone to do them you tend to just shrug it off and keep on going about the plethora of solo quests that you have.  

What you're arguing is that in TOR grouping is has a greater efficiency gain for leveling than does GW2.  Now, I don't think this is correct because of how much more quickly you can plow through mobs with a group.  However, it is in any case a different issue from how much of the game is enjoyable with lower populations or how noticeable lower populations are in GW2 versus a game with a different design.

[JaxSilven]

Xsorus, on 29 November 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

A lot of games run into the problem of making most of their content for example 1-79....

It would of been smarter to condense the number of levels, and Made more End Game Zones.

ESO for example is going to have 3 factions with 1-50 leveling area's, however the largest area in the game is the PvP area, which is Double the Size of all 3 Factions 1-50's are combined.

Which is why in GW1 they made most of the tutorials 1-19 and 90% of the game lv20. But there were still people in every section in the game! And the ability to play by yourself if there are no other people or you don't want to play with other people (but there were enough people always until the very last year).
So yes what you are suggesting was already implemented in the first game very well. I get frustrated at this fact because they've already done it and they totally regressed on their sequel.