Discussing the Multiplayer Aspect of Guildwars

After months of dealing with pugs, and all things that come with them - Leavers, greifers, general idiocy, and most of all, failure... I finally have a game where I can play alone, in peace, at my own pace, and guess what - I don't fail missions anymore.

You want to take this away from people just because you're sad and lonely? Hell no, deal with it.

I still team if I feel like it but normally its just friends and guild mates.

I don't keep local off if I'm just sitting around and sometimes I'll get into convos with people and end up becoming good friends with them and teaming up later but if my friends aren't on and guild is mostly offline I'm not suck being in a group that I hate just to move on in the game.

The only reason I bought the game in the first place was because of henchmen. If they'd been removed, I'd certainly not have bought the expansions.

Having played various MMORPGs over the last seven years, there are some things that I've found common to all of them: You hunt solo, you hunt with a friend/guildie or you hunt with some random people. We're all familiar with the problems of hunting with random people - too many wanting to be the leader and running off in different directions, the one who disappears halfway because he's decided to go watch football instead, the monk/priest/cleric who can't or won't heal, etc. At least in Guild Wars we don't have the loot theft problem on the list. Getting a decent random group is a miracle in any MMO. Local/General always ends up being turned off because the Ignore box is never big enough to filter out the spammers.

I'm luckier than most in that I have a regular hunting partner. In other games, that still meant having to take our chances with random groups for the bigger quests, usually with frustrating results. The existence of henchmen/heroes largely removes that frustration.

Guild Wars is no different to other MMOs I've played in that I come across a large number of people every day, many of whom are obnoxious but some of whom are pleasant and at least capable of learning to be competent players. The difference is that I seldom have the need to mingle with the obnoxious ones to achieve my objectives.

WoW servers can hold tens of thousands of people at a time so not everyone will know that person right away unless they are in the end game. And GW never has to worry about ninja looters because of the drop system.

The thing that keeps people in line in WoW is the GMs. City of Heroes is the exact same way, but they don't have to worry about loot either because its just like GW's. When bad behavior comes up, they get warned or punished by an authority figure. THERE IS NO AUTHORITY FIGURE IN GUILD WARS.

I don't really understand the problem here. The whole community aspect of Guild Wars is centered around Guilds and Alliances. The PUG community is horrible. It always has been and always will be. Why would you want to force people to have to partake in that. I personally prefer to play with guildies or alliance members if at all possible. If not I will hench it. Usually I play with one or two people and heros now while communicating on vent and using regular chat for humor purposes or to give advice to newbs. Heroes = FTW! PUG = gg.

Read the thread before spouting out your flamebaits.
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I thought about giving human teams the edge over the hero/henchie teams in some way or another. I'm not talking about game advantages but things like a significantly better loot when you're not solo playing everything.
This way the single player horde can still play single player but the cooperative players will have a reason to partyplay things again.

You want a single player game?Buy a game thats made for single player!It beats any MMO if you play alone-.- ( If you choose right but then theres a game for everyone in the mass of games)

to OP (i read only your first post and some more, but not the whole thread): forcing people to play with other people is kind of wrong. but i see your reasoning

the thing that i loved about GW when i first started wer ethe PUGs. yes there were some idiotic groups full of enraged 13 years olds with poor self esteem, but those made me appriciate those awsome PUGs where everyone gets along and breeses through a relatively hard mission. yes i remember the irritation when uninfused mending wammo charged at mursaat and yelled at me (monk) "heal me u n00b monk" but that made the satisfaction from the good groups so much bigger. thanks to these PUGs i met some great people, if not for them i would never end up in my guild and would never meet all those great guildies (we dont recruit from the street). i still team up with pugs every time i feel like it even if its an easy mission/quest

the fact that i didnt HAVE to play with them made it better for times when all i wanted is a skill cap or just to fight my way from 1 town to the other. then i would turn to henchman. the heros are great cuz you can custumise them and even controll, but they did kill the multi player aspect

BUT! now there is 3 campaigns. people are spread over. as axample, last time i wanted to do Unwaking waters on my mesmer at a busy time of the day(US server, around 9 pm) there was nobody in the outpust! if your idea would be implimented and if i would be guildless, my mesmer would still be stuck in there cuz not only its a ghost town (even tho its a primary mission) also a average PUG doesnt want to see a mesmer on the team.

as much as i miss PUGs i wouldnt be happy if i was FORCED to play with real people, mainly cuz the population is so spread out and busy doin the new things rather then the older ones alot of missions are so deserted

I hate to beat the doomsday horse with a stick again but i wonder how long Guild Wars will last as practicly a single-player game.

Maybe i'll have to rephrase it again:
This is not about forcing others to team up, it's about finding a way to encourage the players to finally play coop again. If there is any way.

I'll have to say, as someone else already said, I actually do miss the old Pugs as well. Pug standards have certainly dropped. Because of all the gazillion guilds recruiting people, everybody just goes with guildies.

I'm in a pvp guild with a total of 12 people, of who 2/3rds are only online twice a week, so I can never go with guildies. And it makes me sad there are so little pugs of high quality.

I agree that forcing is bad, but this is worse in my opinion.

I meant hero/hench per player, this is also to shut down hero teams in HA.

Good point, else it will start a flame fest, which is probably will anyway.

You could give better rewards when playing with others:

1. Increased drops.

This is a somewhat valid solution. It does not course more frustration, only more happiness.

2. Monsters has x% less health.

I don't like it, i only mentioned to for sake of doing it,

Actually according to the Chapter 1 "Game of the Year" edition box, one of the listed features right on the box is something like: "Play with your friends or ours. You can join with your friends or play alone with skillful AI henchmen."

So then, officially Guild Wars is a singleplayer game for those who want it to be, based on what it says on the retail box.

Hand of Ruin raises an excellent point: forcing good players to play with bad ones or making Henchmen bad again or taking away Heroes or Henchmen functionality is no "solution" to the problem listed in the original post. That's just taking one problem and swapping it out for what would be an even worse and bigger problem. The needs of those who desire to play in PUGs above all else are not greater than the needs of the majority of players who want the option to play without having to endure PUG torture.

Hero teams in HA are fine. Anyone who loses to them has received a very well-deserved and rightful loss.

^^ANet cant do that, its up to us. We, as players, need people who have good attitudes, can work well with others, and dont have "elitist" attitudes. I was partied with a monk one time while helping a friend in desert, and the guy I was helping and the monk didnt get along, so monk says "No healing for you". He also went on about how "screwed up" our skills were, saying things like "Warriors with necro skills?", saying our builds sucked, ect. Naturally we failed mission. Now, I have only that against him, hes good at his job(healing, 55ing, ect), damn fine @ monking, but only if you play by his rules. We need people who dont have their ideas of what is/isnt a good playstyle set in stone.
Cant we all just get along?

I would like to see:

1. Make it so entering a new area, whether by map travel, going through the portal, or completing a mission, causes all henchmen AND heroes to be kicked. If you are in a human party you stay together, but if you are playing by yourself, upon entering an area, you appear by yourself. I think this because it annoys me every time I enter a full district of 50 players, all with an 8 above their head. There isn't even a chance to form a party. And your heroes stay in your party even after you log out, or when you click "Leave". I'm sick of having to kick them one at a time.

2. Make max. number of heroes in a party per player 1 or 2.

3. Add an improved system for making a group. It needs to be integrated into the game with its own window. A list of people LFG, what profession, maybe what build and what they want a group for. A list of groups, who is in it, and what they still need. I hate people who just say "lf monk". You can tell it's group of randomly invited players without any thought, and now want a monk to keep them alive, and they don't even say what quest/area they want the monk for. Or worse, they don't even say anything, and just randomly invite you.

Hey, you remember henchmen? You could complete both games with them. People would usually group with people, but if none were around, you could use henchmen. So that is not a good reason for creating the hero system. I don't care what people say, before heroes people played together, after they don't. Therefore, heroes killed teamplay.

In my opinion (as i also stated in the first post) the heroes aren't the problem but merely a tool. The main problem is that there is an imbalance between the two sides "Human Interaction" and "AI Interaction".

If you're going full AI Interaction, you get the same loot as you would otherwise but you also tremendously increase your chances on completing the mission on the fly. They don't bitch, they don't ragequit, they run exactly the build you like them to.
I can understand the whole Singleplayer Problem, i really can - i've played it this way myself but only recently came to realize the real problem here. There just is no reason to chose other players. Yes they might be great people but in the end they might also be total jerks that think the Internet is some wasteland and they have to act as the tough guy.

We can't change humans really, as long as they can take the internet as an excuse to act moronic. There is no changing in that. We could change the hero system and limit those to a number, but that would force some players into a playing style which is not what they're after (though i also ask myself, why play it online when you refuse to play with humans?).

I think one step into the right direction would really be a proper party system but i somehow think it's too late for that allready. So (repeating myself ;D) we need some way to promote cooperative play. There should be one or several arguments why it is worth taking humans over AI unlike it is now (no penalties, only benefits).

the ONLY way and i mean only way to repair the community is to change the people in it.

unless Anet uses blunt force to make people party together (causing vast resentment) it will not happen until enough people spread by word of mouth that it worth the chance of trying a pug as the people are nicer.

if you use the added value carrot of better loot by grouping with people you generate resentment and still have a large number of players saying that no matter how big the *bribe* to join a group it is not worth it.

the only real problem is that the PUG pool of players available is a cesspool that has been visited one too many times by people that wanted to group and got burned once too often.

the community is the problem and heroes have given people a CHOICE as to who they group with.

if the community were not a bunch (with exceptions) of elitest/immature/jerks out to spoil the mission the heroes/henchmen would only be used to fill an empty slot on the group.

that people take 3 heroes anf fill in with 4 henchies says a lot about the community

Well, in factions the missions seemed designed to make it nearly impossible to hench. They used items that had to be carried (henchies can't do that), required teams to split (henchies couldn't do that then), bosses requiring interruption and focus firing, (henchies could interrupt, but they usually sucked at picking the right target), and missions where you simply had to go really fast, which henchies sucked at. In the end, henchies could get you through a mission if you were ready for a long, hard, ordeal, but humans were the only reliable way to get the master's reward and to properly use all your resources.

I laugh at this thread, because in the end it all comes down to us! I have no problems making PuG groups, and having fun in the game.

Whenever I do anything in the game, let it be a quest, mission, heck just running around, I ask a guildie AND the local chat if anyone would like to join me.

Usually I'll get someone to come along, and turns out that person is very nice, and at the end of the day I've made a friend(s) in the game, that I wouldn't have known had I not talked to them in local chat in the first place!

I know alot of areas don't have many people in them, but just at least trying to group with stubborn people shows them that you need help, and perhaps they do as well. Its not a matter of how many people there are in a district, there are always people wanting to do what you are, all you have to do is find them.

90% of all of my friends list, is of people I randomly met or found doing this.

So, just a suggestion but.....

If we all started making groups in the game and avoiding using heros as much, GURU could change it, GURU could start the spark that led to a fire. We alone as a community, could get this entire problem straightened out! Before you know it, you can't go into an outpost with seeing someone forming a group for a quest in your log.

We can do it, its nobodies fault but our own, if you want it to be a multiplayer game, MAKE IT.