Why does ArenaNet want to change its players' lifestyle?

it is wrong to assume that a pixel represented person has xyz personality.

someone who prefers to h/h might be, off the top of my head:
1) a good players that knows how to control and use the h/h to its full potential
2) wants things done fastly so they can go out?
3) i am lol a chatter box in real life and i like h/h
4) i don't chat in the game cos i have real life friends that i go out and interact with.

Don't think this is what he wants to hear, it would be more of:

* Skills that require judgment to use effectively (dshot, frenzy, reversal & co, some skill chains ...)
* PvE only skills.
* Weapon and armor swaps.
* Consumables that target self (cupcakes for example)
* Ability to res without res skills equipped (scroll)
* Title effects (also ability to run different tile effects on selected party members)
* Blessing bonuses, Hunt bonuses.
* Bag inventory (it is neat if friend can carry that one gold item you dont have space for for you)
* Splitting costs of entering elite areas
* Being able to split and do stuff in parallel.
* Having someone to cover party leadership in critical moment when you lag or even get DC.

etc...

That's more than three!

In that case, I'd like to add another bullet:

• Cyndr

She's a major PITA to manage with H+H and even the worst PUGs have a definite advantage over H+H in that encounter. Also, bundles in general. If you're a physical you don't want to carry a bundle but in some cases it's mandatory that somebody does it, and the herohench aren't going to bother.

I agree with that. Attempting to prove x] (let's see how bad I fail, 6:45 in the morning; EDIT: Yes, it took me half an hour to write that post. I rewrite a lot.)

I play H/H unless I'm either group farming, in elite areas, with my guild/friends or utterly bored. But my guild knows that I'm a very social person... I'm on Vent whenever I'm on a game, given I'm home alone a lot because my husband as more classes than I do or meets up with friends after his, while I generally see them at lunch break, my classes finishing either at 11:30AM or 4PM.

I'm generally not made for solo play. I play MMOs 'cause I can play with many people at the same time. So in theory I'd always be in PUGs.

In theory.

In practice, the quality of PUGs I get, no matter how the EFF I filter my group, there's always, always a moron who'll mess it up at a point we have to start all over with a different group. The amount of idiots, whiners, leavers, leechers, ignorant ******* in this game is IMO impressive. How is it my fault when I get a bad spawn in VS farming as a perma, or how this boss didn't spawn? Seems to be. After all, as the party leader, I'm in control of the spawns! (Yeah, that was sarcasm). Sadly, that makes up for about 90% of my PUGs in pretty much any area (I'd say bar VS farming, but even there... I get crap when it's not a good spawn, IT'S NOT MY ******* FAULT, read up how the game works). Want proofs? PM me for a list of people you can PM in-game and on this forums to have stories on how bad my PUGs are no matter what I do to get them.

In this, yes, I highly prefer H/H. They won't whine after a wipe 'cause the AI didn't use prot spirit. Oh I might swear at them, but that won't make me leave the group in blind rage or put the group to a stall by arguing with everyone in the team. Same for heroes: they won't call me a noob 'cause I have to AFK to get the laundry. They won't start insulting me 'cause I run with this weapon set instead of another.

I'd rather be less effective and enjoying the game than going mad at PUGs and being "social". I get my social from Vent, guild chat, PMs and the IMs I have running while on GW.

Rare items do not motivate people to play as a group. They motivate people to do chestrunning, solofarm bosses and do other things. When was the last time you made a group with the goal of finding a rare item? Those lootdrops are not given to groups, they are the result of some serious solo play. Your chances of finding loot in a group are not better than when you are alone, as a result rare items are hunted alone and do not contribute to the social gameplay.

The reward chests might count, but people will only take just as many people they need to implement the raid as fast as possible. Socializing is not the result. People will be forced into a cookie cutter. The goal is not to enrich the game, but to play it as safe and boring as humanly possible. As soon as people think the group won't make it, the will leave because they think being with the group is just not worth it. That thought has to be stopped from happening.

PvP does also not reward grouping, on the contrary, PvP is the most punishing of all modes. We know how much players hate to wipe on a mission, yet the structure of PvP is such that at least 50% of player have to fail for the game mode to work or give out rewards. We are talking small rewards here such as one fame. Before anybody gets any reward worth mentioning he has to eliminate 90%+ of competitors, that's 90% of people leaving empty handed after the experience. Not a motivator by any modern definition.

The game is not encouraging social gameplay. Most of the time when people do things alone they are happy because nobody else is messing with their scheme. For GW to turn into a more social game all those H/H people would need to think "man, this would be so much more better if other people were with me". But since people are only regarded as a risk factor grouping is at an all new low. Players are also good enough so that they do not fail when playing alone. But as soon as players are driven to success and efficiency they will eliminate any disturbance; hence solofarming, H/H, cry for 7 Heroes.

During Factions people were waiting for real players before entering a mission. The incentive was the risk of failure, nothing else. With that risk removed by Heroes, it seems players require new incentives to group.

Your post was worth it, just for that!

I'm by no means an elite player. But, I was quite addicted to GW because it was fun!

If you want to summarize the whole seven hero argument, then it can simply be stated that it's all because ArenaNet, quite frankly, screwed up.

From the get-go, Guild Wars was supposed to be a team-based game, and that alone is already a design flaw. Originally the designers thought that it would be a great way to bring people together and play with random strangers for fun. What they didn't realize is that the community in general would have bad apples that want to grief others or be poor team players. In addition, because ANet didn't want people standing around town spamming "LFG", so they provided henchmen (and later heroes).

This was a huge mistake because A.I. controlled teammates never complain, never get tired, have no lag, follow your instructions, and typically perform in very predictable ways. Since the missions, dungeons, and quests take a large amount of time compared to other RPG games (and you can't save your progress), people didn't want to risk failure and so the easiest is to remove the random variable out of it: human players. Pretty soon everybody began running H/H teams because it was faster and often more reliable than any random human team. This has now snowballed and this is how the push for seven hero teams came about. I think that if all the henchmen in every chapter ran with decent skill bars and reasonable attribute settings (at least to the quality level of the ones in Eye of the North), then the seven hero argument would have disappeared already.

I don't think that it has anything to do with being anti-social. I myself know some GW players in real life--and by that I mean that I've actually visited their homes and talked to them outside of Teamspeak/Ventrilo. I also have a real job and I do other things besides play video games all day.

I am not surprised at all that Guild Wars 2 is going toward a single player focused experience because ANet figured out that 99% of all the other MMOs are doing this, and they need to follow or get run over. After watching many people play MMORPGs, I can assure you that most people solo their content except for high-level content where the risk/reward is much higher, justifying the need to team up with others for a common goal. Unlike GW, XP and loot have a lot of meaning in most other games, so there's a point to doing the harder quests.

I know some anti-social people, my husband, for one, and a couple of IRL friends. They just don't like to team up with people unless they know them. In all honesty it doesn't bother me. After all, ANet had H/H for a reason IMO... if you don't wanna team up with other people, there's NPCs you can use. They're not great, but they sometimes perform better than you average player. Bad or good, it's up to you to judge.

That's EXACTLY why I run with them and why I PREFER them to a typical PUG. They don't act all idiotic when you say "brb grabbing my food" or overaggro. I don't like overaggroing myself but if I mess up, they won't leave my team. And if they mess up, I won't leave either. They don't have attitudes when it comes to build changes; heroes just shut up and henchies have preset builds. Actually they don't have any "attitude" per say, they're NPCs...

If the community in general wasn't this... childish, I wouldn't mind PUGging for dungeons and whatnot. If I PUG nowadays, it's either partially with friends, short VS runs where I can leave if the team doesn't suit me, or Guru organized PUGs.

If I'm bored or in need of a good laugh, or just don't care to win/lose/finish, I will PUG. I get amused by horrible FoW PUGs who get killed in the first mob. I still play normally (give my best) but sometimes they're just plain horrible. I won't grief 'cause I hate grievers already, but if I'm in the right mood these same griefers will entertain me for a couple hours - and will entertain my guildies for a while too.

I like efficiency. But I will NOT sacrifice idiocy and childishness for it.

Fair call but to me this is where Anet stuffed up.

Offering an MMO game with offline or soloable game play styles where the H/H benefits and positives greatly outweigh any motivation to even attempt a PuG.

The effect of this is hugely detrimental to any social aspect of the MMO as a whole.As a result GW now has become Dungeon Siege with an MSN plugin.

Imo PuG's are crap due to the very mechanics and power of the H/H alternatives.The two aspects are directly related.

In saying I play other games to regularly interact with others in actual game play outside my friends, guild and high-end.GW just isn't designed that way anymore which is unfortunate as we have all seen that the problem only aggravates itself.

People should keep in mind that not wanting to play with somebody does not mean the same thing as being anti-social. While I'm sure there are plenty of players who play alone because they're anti-social, anti-social is just one of the reasons a player may play alone. There are plenty of players who are social but decide not to play with others for reasons such as...

1) Just want to get something done efficiently. Sometimes partying up with somebody means sacrificing your chances of getting something done efficiently.
2) Just want to do something short fast. Sometimes, it takes longer to find a party than to complete whatever it is you need to do.
3) Don't want to put up with immature players. Not wanting to deal with flaming trolls =/= anti social.
4) Just want some alone time. It's only natural for people to want to spend some time alone at times. Again, just wanting some time alone at times =/= anti-social.
5) Tired of trying to find a group. Unless you're doing a primary mission or an elite area, you won't have an easy time trying to find a group. With hundreds (thousands?) of quests and players spread out through so many areas, good luck trying to find a group for Althea's Ashes.

I'm sorry but I'm not going to cripple myself with horrible groups to finish an area. I'm simply not gonna do it. I can stand bad bars with players who are nice to team up with, who listen even though the more or less know what they're doing. What I can't stand is the childish ones who don't wanna learn and think they know everything in this game. I get them every group, amongst other types. You can't work with people who don't even wanna work (with anyone), and you sure as hell can't force them.

H/H are IMO not meant to be as powerful as humans... but judging from the quality of the general player, yes, H/H are def. better than them. I find it sad in a way, because it DOES mean that people are gonna H/H rather than being around immature folks and bad players, but if we didn't have them, I really wonder what would be the state of this game...

One of the problems is that there's no driving force in PvE to develop a player beyond a certain points. Usually games use a difficulty curve to continually make the player play better, but almost always this curve ends long before the upper levels of ability. As a result, everyone has finished PvE but most players are still really terrible, compensated even further by overpowered mechanics and skills.

All this means the players who do develop further due to whatever reason are less inclined to group with the unwashed masses, especially with conveniently consistent and obedient AI available.

Logically, one option would be to make the game ball-crushingly hard to force players to be skilled, but at this point of the game, it would just alienate most of the playerbase - those playing PvE now are generally more concerned with loot and titles than getting better, and in such a case it's even less likely that the better players would want to group.

ANet should have buffed THK and Fire missions in 2005!

Oh, and those PvE consumables/skills should have never existed. Yes, they give players more options: the options to succeed while being a) terrible or b) really terrible. I jest, but there's a grain of truth there.

Does not work.

Presented case: DOA.
It was hard, allright, really crushingly, and huge shock for most of playersbase.

It did not do much to improve players gameplay. What it made people do was to come up with one gimick after another and to finally turn to good old tankway which works everywhere.

I don't see a game being "soloable to the cap level" as a big selling point, frankly. Can't you do that in most MMOs?

The bigger question (I have about GW2) is what percentage of the content is accessible to the solo player? Grouping is fun occasionally, but I hate it when it becomes a bottleneck or a barrier to content, as is so often the case for the instanced content of so many MMOs.

In regards to the OP, I actually think ANet has done a *much* better job than most any other online game I've tried of making the content accessible to the widest array of playstyles. It's but one (of many) reasons GW remains one of my favorite games. Because of that, I think (*crosses fingers*) that GW2 will be equally accessible.

I'm a very social and friendly person on GW; my perference is to go out with other people. To this end I'm either pestering my guild mates to death to do FOW, UW, quests, missions, dungeons--and for the most part unsuccessfully-- or trying to go with a PUG. And although I love this game, I hate that ArenaNet seems to be forcing the PUG on me.

Guild groups = fantastic

PUG groups = frustrating

The idea of a PUG is great, all these wonderful clued-in people happily skipping along the countryside chatting and having a great time. That is a fluffy bunny reality. What is actually forced on me 80% of the time in a PUG are rude asswipes or clueless idiots. /doh! I guess what I'm getting at in the context of this message and topic, is the times I am forced to go out with heros and henchmen, make them a good choice, not a third choice as a last resort. Let me take 7 heros so at least I'm enjoying the game when I can't hookup with a decent group.

I was out with a very nice player the other day doing some Charr Homeland quests. After she was done, she resigned and left me with her heros, so it was me and six heros. Wow, THAT was fun. Isn't that the point of the game? To have fun? Whether it's pugging, guild mates, soloing, or heading out with H/H all options should be viable and not a last resort.

I think Kusandaa summed it up: I'm sorry but I'm not going to cripple myself with horrible groups to finish an area. I'm simply not gonna do it. I can stand bad bars with players who are nice to team up with, who listen even though the more or less know what they're doing. What I can't stand is the childish ones who don't wanna learn and think they know everything in this game. I get them every group, amongst other types. You can't work with people who don't even wanna work (with anyone), and you sure as hell can't force them.

H/H are IMO not meant to be as powerful as humans... but judging from the quality of the general player, yes, H/H are def. better than them. I find it sad in a way, because it DOES mean that people are gonna H/H rather than being around immature folks and bad players, but if we didn't have them, I really wonder what would be the state of this game...

I probably would have quit by now.

[edited for clarity]I do want to say that I have gone to Guild Wiki and studied all the henchmen skills and know who has what, so I'm pretty good at picking a team, but still, again, if we can't customize our henchmen maybe we can choose between several available builds?

Sorry, I'm starting to ramble.

DoA is barely relevant to the point because it wasn't built on the standard game mechanics. The higher raw stats are pumped the less emphasis there is on player skill - it becomes one dimensional and an application of hard counters (equipped skills against equipped skills).

Zones can be made difficult while adhering to game mechanics and not being one-dimensional, which would require the players' own abilities to be higher. This shouldn't even need debating, and poor design is not an invalidating point.

Furthermore, the consequence you described is exactly what I already mentioned in my post - it would alienate a large part of the playerbase because it would be a shock from the previous standards. It is those previous standards which should have been significantly higher in order to force decent play, creating a learning curve that peaked at a higher point rather than shambling along with a sheer wall at broken areas such as DoA.

what killed the skill curve: running, factions, and nightfall. their starting areas made it extremely easy to get to level 20 and obtain all of your atttribute points. I know, all of the new players will say "omg chapter 1 (or prophecies) is SOOO slow". your right. it is slow. it also makes you learn how to play. they shot themselves in the foot with those two chapters being released like that.

Exactly...that's the whole point.

It's that perspective and consistent attitude by the community that has lead to the majority perception and end result of PuG's being inferior to the H/H option in GW.

The community, as a whole, made PuG's crap.

It's also the core attitude that has lead to the game becoming a solo hack and slash with a chat plugin.

Don't get me wrong...your 100% justified in your attitude and statement but imo it's the design of the game that has lead to this, not actual preference.As to player choice, as I have previously stated GW has become primarily focused on repeating content...a lot....as quickly, easily and efficiently as possible.

As a consequence the majority will always go for the path of least resistance, especially if that path leads to completion of in-game goals faster than the more "social" option.

Bad game design.

Period.

I, as no doubt have others, play games where this is a non-issue.Pug's are relevant, popular and seldom frowned on.They are actually the norm, encouraged and discussed.

The H/H concept has a directly negative effect on the quality of PuG's and the overall sociability of the game.Combined with non-subscription it's a melting pot of rudeness.In saying GW is a very selfish community as well, the most selfish I've encountered in MMO.

All combined.....yeah your average PuG will blow but that's really a reflection on not only the developers but also us....the players and community.

How many people would buy the sequel of a game they were not able to finish or where they had no fun doing the last missions?

Most people play games to have fun, not to be educated or to become a better player. Get it in your head.

If you had a point in that post, it's invalidated by the fact that all games have difficulty curves to some degree.

Going from pre-sear to RoF makes you a better player. THK is harder than pre-sear, and many players had trouble there, and had to refine their play to defeat it. Increasing the scale of difficulty between those points wouldn't make the game impossible to finish or not fun, because you would improve to a greater extent during that time.

PS: Considering GW was built to be a competitive game, and thus one based on skill and player development, I don't think you have any ground to stand on.

But that poor design is what we have. So far "ballanced" challenges (i.e. well recieved Jade Bortherhood teambuild) were easily steamrolled.

You cant really offer much challenge when mobs have 600hp and 60 to 80 al armor - they can be spiked down with relative ease.

We could make dozen of different teambuilds with mobs being player equivalent in stats and numbers and in power and populate area with them, but they will be pathetic (321 kabooom most likely). Only way they might hurt player group would be killing off 1-2 players per encounter and hope that DP will eventually reach 60 on everybody.

(in all seriousness: maybe anet can make "make-a-mob" competition where players create teambuild for monsters and then they would populate some offbeat area with mobs sporting those builds.)

the reason i rarely party up with people is

1. Heros and Henchen > most pve players.

2. Heros can run bars i want them to run without complaint or loss of effectiveness.

3. It only takes 5 mins to make a party of H/H and go hammer anything i need as opposed to the countless hours it would take to get random pugs and groom them to the task at hand.

4. Heros and Henchmen are totally committed to me and my goal, no backstabbing, no bitching, no bathroom breaks, no rage quits, and no trash talking.

5. Heros and Henchmen with their clever but sometimes standard quotes have more personality and interesting things to say then most gw players.

Jades were powerful, but in almost all cases Jades were outnumbered by the players and had incomplete skillbars. It wouldn't throw standard play out if an elite zone group was level 24 with a full skillbar in groups of 8 or 10, and slightly boosted stats (18).

ANet could even tie metagame concepts into it by making certain zones run various styles of build. We've seen this to a small degree in certain zones (SB/Infusers in Fow, many more). There's a lot of possibilities for both balanced and gimmicky team setups mobs could run that would give more variety in combat, as well as promote balanced setups and play that best utilizes the system Guild Wars has in place.

All this ties back into the topic, for those of you just skimming, as if the overall quality of players was increased by a higher-peaking difficulty curve, the quality of PuGs would therefore increase to a degree as well. It's quite possible that the combination of better players and harder areas would keep the ratio of pug quality:zone difficulty the same as it was now, but considering the biggest complaints about PuGs are an ignorance of game mechanics, that at least could be solved somewhat.

It is not invalidated. Because the player will automatically get better at playing the game till he reaches a certain point and therefore needs harder enemies. It just this idiotic idea of yours of forcing them to be better than they themself care/want to be. Most will not do that, they just quit. How many people play the elite areas compared to the total playerbase?

That is the amount of people that share your idea. But myself and many others are not interested in games and/or areas where you have to know all the ins and outs to beat it.

PS: Andrew Patrick thinks differently and has actually said so himself. So could we please leave that BULLSHIT comment behind. I have a very big ground to stand on, it is roughly 500000+ players wide. And ANet included the consumables and the PvE skills. So even ANet realized your idea is suicide. How wide is your ground?

Nope. First, procure that quote. I'd bet that he did not mean that "Everyone gets standard issue win & succes ration"

Seccond, how the hell can you speak for 500000 people on this or anything. For all you can know outposts are ghost town because game was too easy to be fun.

Third, why the hell do you require not having to know all inns and outs of game if you are so set to fully beat it in every possible direction. That borders on "hand me win coupon please, i can't be bothered to play but i still want to win."

This is like saying that everyone needs to be able to win doom 1 on nightmare dificult by default. Up untill late 90's noone sane would expect to be able to even finish finish game. If you werent it was your fault, not game or develore's. It worked and people had fun. Classics like Sinistar etc. were played extensively without anyone having to have guaranteed highscore entry.

Moreover, you approach GW with typical mindset of mmos where everyone has to be winner because those games are more about escapism than fun.

Guess what happens if you win all the time in game that was not designed to be addictive? Yep, you get bored and leave for another.

PS: Consumables and PvE skills are more likely directly targeted to subgroup of OCD players which play long hours, suck at gw and want to do "hardcore" stuff. Your average player does not have resources to use them nor do they really have reason, or even knowledge that they exist.

The PvE side of GW was originally designed to be a stepping stone for PvP and therefore it wasn't even intended to provide infinitely scalable difficulty.

I can understand Avarre's argument although I don't necessarily agree with it completely. Truly challenging PvE content would require a lot of effort and would cater to a very small minority of the player base, and a minority which will most likely find that challenge on the PvP side anyway. Thus it never was a high priority issue for GW.

DoA wasn't the right approach. Nothing that encourages tank'n spank or specifically crafted gimmicky builds is. ANet came much closer to the solution in some parts of EotN. The last missing components are randomness and evolution. If ANet wants to provide real elite PvE content in GW2 the mobs builds must

• be well balanced and effective
• be random enough that you can't count on bringing a specific counter
• evolve over time

A clever way to implement the third part would be to observe the success of teams in the challenge and insert the most successful real player team builds to the pool of builds from which mob builds are drawn*. That would introduce meta to the PvE side and would guarantee a fresh challenge time after time.

*) this kind of mirror AI is often used, e.g., in flight combat simulators

You mean like FoW and UW, which were actually placed as a progression on the difficulty curve as the first elite areas? Quite a lot.

Then, quite simply, you could have picked a better game. Don't get in the way of game design with your mindset.

I'm pretty sure 'appeal to ANet' is some sort of logical fallacy. They also thought Ursan was a good idea to add to the game.

My lifestyle? Anet will hardly change it, my playstyle, maybe.

True but the overall changes have been overwhelmingly to the negative, many completely unnecessary like Ursan for example which the way is was did not hurt anything except PVE entities and a few whiners that were to lazy to max their Norn title or two cheap to buy EotN. If they could not have it no one could and they basically got their way.

Test Me, I like how you think, and i totally agree with your statement about people do things in different ways. I'm not a social person, but im also not a recluse. But I also am at an age that i don't cherish the thought of having to run with a bunch of smart mouth 13 year olds either. I prefer to do things at my own pace. And my own pace normally IS NOT the same pace as a pug. If in the middle of a mission I want to stop and grab a snack or a cup of coffee, I don't want to have to ASK if its ok if I go AFK for 5 minutes while I do this. I prefer to just stop and take care of what needs to be taken care of. There are times while doing some of the longer dungeons that i get half way through and want to stop and take a break. With a pug, you cant very well do this, but if your alone, or with someone that thinks like you...in my case, my husband, then they don't mind if you say.. i need a break, lets find a safety zone for a few. But even if I have to do EVERYTHING with just H/H I will rather then be forced to go at someone elses pace. Im not saying I never play with other people, Im just saying that I would like a better option to go it alone if I want to or if no one is available to go along.

Exactly! I am a very social person but I like to play at my own pace and take a break once in a while if it's a particularly long quest/mission. I have people/pets to take care of. I'm going to tell my dogs wait, I'm in the middle of a mission? No, they don't care what I'm doing, they want to go out now.

QFT

Probably the single most important conclusion to be drawn from 4 years of GW

You've missed the point, it's about options, having the choice to risk playing with other players

I am something of an old timer, the best time on GW was in Prophecies, before Factions was released and before the Title madness. The heroes introduced in Nightfall made the game interesting again.

i stay with my heroes because with my heroes i know that i will succeed like today in Hells-P i pugged 2 times (because h/h is boring) failed miserably used my heroes which i hesitated to use as they are not geared with runes and so forth. with my heros i just owned that mission i think a lot of ppl like me just dnt want to mess around with the dodgey pugs. they can be a huge waste of time.