Solo, Groups. Casual, Hardcore. Can Anet cater to the best of both worlds?

Anets recent trend is fairly straight down the line. They are catering more toward the casual player than the hardcore player. It turn, its actually good marketing see how most of the players who buy video games as of now are casual players. But i regress, because unlike most people who play GW, i am a Hardcore player. Its easy for me to spend countless hours a day playing this game. GW has basicaly been transformed over the past 2 years to cater more for casual. Economy is purposely being wrecked, rare skin items are no longer rare, reskinned weapons and armor for players with only one campaign, ect... I am not saying this is a bad thing for GW, i am just saying for a person like me it kinda destroys what i loved about GW.

Dont get me wrong, we still have the elite missions that require a good skilled group and time to play. As well as torment weapons, which at this time still hold some value. But i would say 98% of the rest of the game is leaning toward more casual. GW now may never be what it once was, but what about GW2? Can Anet cater to both Casual and Hardcore players? I think it can be done.


I dont think GW would be where it is now without solo play. It was designed for the solo aspect from the start as well as the group aspect. I have played through most of the game solo yes. But i do enjoy spending the time with other skilled players and guildies alike in elite missions or just goofing off. But why cater to one side more than the other? This is a MMO. You can play how you want to play a game and noone can take that away from you. But the design is to actually bring a massive amount of people online to share experiences and to be social. I believe that there should be some seperation between playing by yourself with H/H and playing with a group. I dont believe that this game should be 100% H/Hable. Playing with H/H and Playing with a group are two different kind of skills to be learned. Two different playing types. They should net two different rewards. People who just want to play a game solo and who are anti-social should not be catered to in a community game. The economy is some what community, guilds are community, pvp is community. You want to play a single player game - there are other games out there that might hold your interest better. IMO.

In realitive terms, i think all aspects can be apreciated and catered to. It is very hard to have your cake and eat it to. There will always be casual people wanting the rare skins/armor and not playing for it. There will always be casual wanting to play elite missions but not wanting to spend over 20 minutes at a time to play them or dont want to learn the online aspect of the game and join a group or guildies to do it. The idea of saying that you will never get this item because you cant play for x amount of hours or you cant get this item because you cant solo it, is rather offensive to alot of casual players.

GW rewards skill>time. I believe that skill=time. The more you do anything in life the better you get at it. So why cant the Hardcore players have nice skins, armor and different quests than casual? Because its not fair? I believe they can still seperate and cater to both sides of all the categories and make the majority groups happy. Not everyone will be happy, but please dont cater to one side more than the other in your next projects.

I would like to hear other peoples thoughts to see if all groups can co-exist. This may be a very sensitive subject so i am prepared for alot of different thoughts.

I believe that a game that can't be played entirely solo (and enjoyed that way) isn't a game worth buying. One's entertainment can be bolstered by other people (I love playing this game with friends when I can), but it should never be dependent on them.

As to hardcore/casual, I've sunk 900 hours into this game. To me that's an almost unprecedented time commitment to a single game, and I've yet to remotely feel like I'm running out of fun things to do. I'm not sure where the line between casual and hardcore is, frankly, but for me at least that aspect of the game is fine.

Déjà Vu
Status Effect. For 10 seconds you get the feeling that we have done this thread before. When Déjà Vu ends, you lose 1 unit of sanity.

GW was never intended to be soloed if you mean on your own it was meant to be played as team game as in the word coop and competive.It just so happens it can be soloed well not quests or missions atleast most of them.

I am more concerned what will happen when GW 2 comes out and most are playing over there and would like some help on a mission or something.I would really like to see all missions eventually turn into big quests like EoTN has.

I don't know why people keep repeating that, as it's completely untrue. For the umpteenth time, from the original GW box:

If instead the box had said "multiplayer only, soloing is restricted to specific game areas and will be otherwise supported only at the sufferance of the game designers" I would have put down the box and bought something else. I'm not alone in that.

Yes it does mean well back in release it did as it is a CCORPG meaning cooperative competive online game yes meaning pve>pvp>pve.It was suppose to be team game back in beta as we were told this.

Its the definition of "solo." The box meant with henchmen (and now heroes). I assume Age meant "solo" as in alone, as in a Party of one member. I dont think GW was ever originally intended for that.

I don't think anyone's talking about playing without a party, I know I'm not. My only concern is being able to play freely with other humans or with AI in every part of the game. It can even be more challenging with AI than with people, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Ohhh. Misread I did.

I've been playing for over 28monts now.

I've played with PUG's, I've played with GUILDIES, I've played with 7 Hench and with 3Heros.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can play with 7 HEROS.

My reasoning is simple. I do not have the patience to sit and wait for a PUG, ping all our skills, try to get people to change thier skill bars or defend my own then venture out and have somebody quit the instant he gets 15%dp.

When I log on if my guildies are there we talk then go do something, no real need at this point to over plan anything. If there not online I like to just pick something dungeon/mission/quest and go do it. If I find a party forming for said Dungeon/Misson/Quest I may join them or I may not. I just like having the option.

I would prefer this post not be turned into another closed discussion about 7 heros.

I was really asking if can Anet cater both to the solo and nonsolo players, and the casual and hardcore players? Any chance of that happening?

Disabling map travel while in a group with other players would prevent someone from rage quitting.

Not really, they can always just log out. Disable that and they can always simply close the game. Disable that and they can simply turn off the computer. There's always a way out.

I'm honestly not trying to be an ass here, but it seems to me 7 heroes is how Anet could cater to solo players without harming fans of grouping. Absent that the game is always going to be favoring groupers, who can access all content in the game, over soloers, who have it much harder in hard mode and can't really play elite areas at all. I'm open to hearing an alternate solution to that that would be more acceptable to the grouper crowd, but for myself I don't see one. I don't see how Anet could be accommodating the multiplayer crowd more than it already is without changing the fundamental dynamics of the game to remove instancing and AI players, which is exactly what GW2 sounds like it's going to do. That'll completely alienate solo players, incidentally, so apparently Anet is of the opinion that both groups really can't be made happy and they should instead cater the game specifically to one. Bummer for me and those like me, I suppose.

As to the hardcore/casual divide, I have to admit that I don't see the problem. Maybe that means I'm a casual player (900 hours over 21 months, does that qualify) because I'm under no threat of getting bored with the game. I certainly am never, ever opposed to new stuff being added to the high end of the game, though, so long as when I finally get there some day I can have access to it. I actually tend to agree with you that skill = time, at least to some degree, and am perfectly comfortable with some things in the game taking seventeen ages (and a great deal of skill) to get to.

The game currently favors people who group so you should be happy.

You have whole areas that you can not play H/H (VERY irritating), I don't mean too hard to complete - that's fine - I mean not even allowed to enter it.
PvE only skills are only equipable by humans, none of your heroes can use them. In some instances this is a VERY large difference. In fact, when people complain about it Anet tells us it is to encourage grouping - giving them an advantage. Both of these put together means that there is a alrge part of the game H/H players can not experience without playing the game in a method they despise. If you to imagine somewhat how that feels think of if there was a dungeon that you had to hench and was the only place that gave the drops needed for the higest end armor and the hench/hero had special skills that you couldn't use - I'm sure you would be quite angry at being locked out of enjoying major sections of the game.

But then grouping vs non-grouping has little to do with casual vs non-casual. How many hardcore players looking for those really rare skins do so through solo-farming (truly solo, for example the 55 monk)? Most of your PUGs nowadays are the casual players because they do not have the skill to hench/hero and aren't good enough to get into a decent guild.

Then there are rare skins that are out of the reach of casual players - FoW, Elemental Sword, Tormented Weapons, and quite a few others. Should there be more such skins? Yes, even for the casual player they are nice - there was nothing like seeing that gold low req elemental sword drop with my name attached to it (and then the let down of it being one of the unusual ones with no inscription - bleh), with nothing out there being rare who cares what drops.

Anet is trying to do what they intended to do in the first place - create an MMO where one can play solo if you wish (as opposed to us that play an online solo game where you can multiplay when you wish). The first case that they are pushing will always degenerate into the latter - if you give people the option to solo all parts of the many will do so. The only way to stop the second class of people is to remove the ability to solo those areas, I don't see them doing that except in the elite areas - even in GW2.

I'm not too terribly worried about it, I expect something fairly similar to what we have now. If they want to keep it casual friendly and designed such that one can solo areas when they need too (which they stated they do) then those of us that want too can do every area that way. At worst we may get another Vizunah Sqaure or two out there but they seemed to have learned how much most of the players hate that type of mission. Not to mention that the same thing will occur all over again - when 70%+ of your player base wants solo content they are forced into going there (for example the introduction of heroes), it will happen there also.

I dunno, but I certainly hope you're right. I love this game, even if I do find my inability to access certain bits of it except on the rare occasion I can schedule an elite run with friends infuriating. I'd certainly LIKE to enjoy GW2 as well.

WTF...you mean the opposite. The reputation title tracks (Luxon/Kurzick/Norn/Asura/Vanguard/Dwarf) are basically ridiculous to max as a casual player. They also announced that GW2 will have unlimited/200 or so level cap...

Skill > time was the motto.

Skill is not = time.

That explains why people with FoW that didn't ebay/buy gold online have bad skillbars.

Farming is an example of a time consuming brainless/skill-less activity.

There are diminishing returns of playing the game. Once you reach a certain level of knowledge...you cannot improve that much more.

Racthoh is the biggest noob I've ever seen. Seriously, who does that guy think he is?

the problem with PuGs is there is also bias..like the ASSASSIN >_> A person could play the sin well but the chance of them getting into a PuG is a lot harder than pretty much everything else. For the record, I've only been kicked out once and that was because of a MONK who said "ewww an assassin?!" at the Gate of Pain. Right, the Gate of Pain >_> It took that long (prophecies, factions, most of nightfall) before I was actually not allowed into a group, but I do remember in the early stages that it would take a while for a group to let me in and even then it was under skepticism. (BTW, the group that took me in loved me cos I had Temple Strike and could therefore take out one of the dryders while a ranger with BHA took out another)

But usually I had spend most of my playing time with heroes or my boyfriend and his heroes because either a) it was taking too long to find a group b) the groups were unbalanced c) got into a decent group but tanked after 3 tries. I mastered Nahpui Quarter with just henchmen (no heroes, this is pre-nightfall and factions was still relatively new) on my sin o_O And in a PuG it couldn't be done until I made them let me lead.

As I also do a lot of things by myself (due to boyfriend being busy, people not online, strange hours that I come on like when I'm supposed to be sleeping like now >_>) it would be nice to have the 7 hero option. I've done all the areas I could in hard mode (missions and vanquishing) that I could with my sin and heroes and henchmen, but now I'm at a standstill unless I have one other person with heroes. And usually that's with my boyfriend because everyone else has now disappeared due to real life and game changes. It's annoying to go through an area to have 95% of it complete only to come up against the last boss group that requires more than just the henchmen skill set and they all wipe before my heroes and i do. And I don't even want to think about a PuG vanquish. mission maybe, but not a vanquish as those take a very long time and the chance of them having to go are higher.

Or if they could make the henchmen a little bit more customizable. It's fun having Mhenlo and the others in my party, but they just don't really cut it for hard mode. Maybe for different professions it would be easier, but for me as an assassin, it's just working out well >_>

And whether or not a person joins a PuG or not is completely up to their mentality and how they want to play it. You shouldn't be forced to be with a PuG, especially if you just don't want to play with other people except those you know.

Currently GW does cater to both I think (I consider myself inbetween) it just can be improved..as everything can always be improved o_o I may not want to play by myself, but I'm currently forced into it. And since I'm at a standstill my interest is waning.

I want my titles, dammit!

QFT.

I'm 7 months behind you though. Guildies & heroes ftw and bring on 7 heroes.