Long Missions and uninterupted time

While most of us I think hate being in a group where a player goes AFK, in some ways this problem is fostered by missions that are too long in this game. But Unless one is fortunate enough to have lots of uninterupted time to do the longer missions, what can you do? The kids need something. The dog threatens to pee on the rug if he doesn't go out NOW. You can turn off the phone and make sure you have visited the bathroom before a mission, but most casual players, which this game is clearly trying to attract, have to play in smaller chunks of time.

Yes, the casual player can use henchies. But many people in this forum say that the GW experience is far better and less boring if you have a guild and play with real people. So that doesn't make sense, requiring casual players to play with henchies. Not if you want them to stick around and buy expansions.

Also, the longer missions encourage people to roar through the task without talking or looking around or exploring or using strategy.

So here is my suggestion: why not divide longer missions into chunks, kind of like the mission plus bonus separation? A HUGE mission could be in three parts and you could get 700 XP per part instead of 2000 XP at the end of a long, long ordeal. And you should be able to teleport to whichever part of the mission your group needs to complete.

I guess I am just trying to find ways to make the game friendlier to the casual gamer A-Net says they want to attract.

--Nokomis

I like this idea, last night i was up till 3am trying to get to Galrath, only to get completely owned by leavers and then by monsters.

Villainy is a bitch. I've put it on the back burner until I hit lvl20 and can find some decent people to do it with....I've tried it 4 times...all 4 times have turned into my team getting slaughtered and me desperately sprinting for the next portal to res them. It's a tough quest

Not that bad at level 20 (Galrath). I respecced to Fire and got a group from ToA with a monk and a warrior or two. The main thing is upon reaching his area not to aggro too many things as minions + ele spells = death for most PvE groups. Just be balanced. A mesmer and a necro are great, and two eles are a must. Rangers are good too for ressing and whatnot. Rebirth is fun and needed here. Dying at his area is fine, it's a 5 minute run back, and most things are dead along the way.

Villainy is long and it is hard but all you need to do is to be careful. Once you get to the Temple of ages, you are more than capable of doing it. I did this mission with henchmen only with my Mo/R when he was level 16 (a long time ago) and I did it again yesterday with my Wa/Mo level 16. I have captured the screen and I can post it in case anyone wants to see it but it's no big accomplishment really.

Personally I think that the Ring of Fire and Hell's Precipice missions are the hardest thing there is (not counting UW and Fissure).

There was this Ranger who annoyed the hell out of the rest of the party I was in during Hell's Precipice because it was taking too long and it really does take long to finish that mission because there is no way to destroy the portals guarded by wraiths if you just rush into all those enemies.

I've done the quest before when it was worth only 500xp with my Ranger when he was lvl 16 with a bunch of other lvl 16's.

Lol, very true! And i agree with this. This is why i believe this game is very anti-casual gamer [both PvP and PvE]. The instanced-zone structure of the game is actually partially to blame for this. Ideally you should not have such waypoints AT ALL. I also blame the mission system for the complete breakdown of social interaction. The current system is basically screaming "RUSH RUSH, DO NOT TALK, NO ONE GOT TIME FOR YOU AND NEITHER DO YOU" ...


In fact this is the first online game i played where i felt i need to improve my one-handed typing skills so i can chat and still do a mission [because you can't stop and chat properly so you can keep up with the group]


Anyway my suggestions [other than implementing more waypoints]:

1. Not placing these types of missions on the main storyline. As casual gamer i should ble to pick and choose when and if i want to do them, it should not hinder my progress as directly as now. Make me run to the next city with lots of outposts inbetween to stop-over, make me talk to NPCs with dialogue options, make me interact with the environment AT MY OWN TIME.


2. I rather do it with a -60% death penalty than doing it again.

3. As for those long Quests itself, which requires me to go past 3 areas [which itself can take ages] only to have to disconnect and repeat it all again. More waypoints please, or at least some form of not forcing me to repeat the EXACT same thing again.


I could swear some advertising/interview of GW used the terms "Quick BURSTS of play, no GRIND , INSTANT travel ....why do i feel im usually doing the exact opposite most of the time?

The longest mission including the bonus that I've ever done was an hour and a half. I have two kids and totally understand that sometimes it's difficult but I don't want it broken up into smaller chunks than an hour and a half.

Most missions are about 20-30 minutes with the bonus.

I hate rushing and try to take my time. I'm not criticizing your post but I think this is one of the more casual friendly games around.

My main is a monk and so has an advantage over most but I've done them with my mesmer and elementalist as well without a big problem.

Err, hour and a half, without any form of "status-update" on location/progress with the penalty of repeating the entire hour-and-a-half over again on a single mistake does not sound like you're a casual gamer to me :P That is pretty hardcore, not even Prince of Persia:Warrior Within got such far spaced out saving points.

True, assuming you are not exploring, not experimenting with the environment, not talking to anyone, not experimenting with your stats/skills/armor/weapons and basically just running a direct route to the ending..... ....i'm sorry if that is not anti-casual,anti-mmorpg and anti-social i don't know what is :P

the fact that there is no ingame voice implementation really really aggrevates me....why would you NOT put voice in this game.

So many people have skewed perceptions of time.

There are very few missions in this game that are completable in 20 minutes. Even if you skip the bonus, and know exactly where to go.

I did Ruins of Surmia last night with a friend who recently picked up the game, and with two level 10 characters and 2 henchmen, it took us at least 45 minutes to do the whole thing (and I knew where to go, what to do, and I didn't 'waste' time with idle chit-chat as we were on vent). I'd say the bonus took at least 10 minutes alone, just because the Charr you have to follow to the flame keepers move so damn slow.

And once you get to the Fire Islands, I don't think any of those missions are completable, with bonus, in under an hour.

Just to add to the time effect. I'm not against a few crazy bitches of quests/missions which can take hours to complete. Everye game have them, and i expect no less from GW as well, for the sake of keeping challenge in the game. In GW though this tends to be NORM rather than the exception.

Alas, I agree, I get home from work around 5pm most days. It's not like I can sit down and play GW straight up. I have to eat, do a few other essentials around the house, i.e. watering plants, emails, forums, talking and making plans with RL friends, just pretty standard stuff. When it comes down to it, I end up having maybe 1-2hr of GW time, and sometimes I can't start missions because they would take to long. There are weekends, but I am busy doing RL stuff then too.

Shorter missions or waypoints are a good idea...but... that would require Anet to make city like points in the game, where everyone would gather. As much as I would like these waypoints, I think we can only hope for shorter missions or waypoints in upcoming expansions.

on the more way points i agree... even if it's not to meet up with people or what not.. if you could warp there with your party.. like the zone areas....... that would be nice... this also goes along with my.. "my sense of direction sucks and my map isn't labled that well(little portals between zones aren't)... too many dead ends" rant.....
some missions take so long to travel through all three zones to get there and have to do it again... when the err=7 fiasco was goin on a few months back i was STUCK at borlis pass and frost gate for i don't know how long.. i did every other quest i could and soon had nothing left i could complete in the time i had before my connection crapped out again.....
generaly i'm agreeing with the sway of this thread

Who's paying for the bandwidth and additional servers required?

I suspect that's the biggest issue. I'm almost certain they'd have had to go with a monthly payment scheme if they had implemented voice comms in-game.

there really isn't much of a tax on bandwidth for voice...expecially since you'd only be able to use it while you were partying. the massive amounts of people that sit in town for hours on end wouldn't be using voice.

I'm not the kind to argue so I'll just say again that I like it the way it is and hope they don't change it and then leave this thread alone.

I don't want groups that do a 10 minute stretch and then have to look for new players. I did three missions last night in two hours, I wasn't rushing through them at all.

I don't rush through the missions, I send invites out carefully to people that answer that they won't rush. There's no arrow pointing the way and I don't use guides for missions.

If some players don't have an hour of time then it's them that's rushing things not me.

I hope they don't ruin missions by chunking it up into 10 minute bites. I want at least a minimal amount of immersion and making everything set up with checkpoints seems like a poor idea to me.

agreed...I don't have alot of time to play this game...but I'd rather lose an hour of sleep and immerse myself in a mission than do an hour long mission in 6 10 minute chunks...

Define casual - it means different things to different people and I have never seen a description of a casual gamer to fit me, but then some people call me hard core, even thou I only get to play at night.

The missions/quests, are fine IMO as they stand. Yes it is annoying when people go afk, but thats something that I expect in any game, real life what a bitch ehhh.. disturbing my game time LOL

The fastest quest I completed was out of Serinity I think it was, took like 5 minutes, if that. The longest, would be the Last mission, which took about 1-1/2 hours last night. I have gone exploring before and that took a couple of hours I think it was, and we came back because our inventory was full.

So members of the Warlords have been playing together for some 3 years now, and WE consider ourselves casual gamers, but since we been playing together for about 3 years, does that make us Hard Core...???

naa - we casual gamers that play hard core

I dont think that is the intention honestly. The "mission" would probably still be overarching, as in getting to waypoint x do not give you 1000xp, it just gives you [and your group] an opportunity to do various things [even change group if need be], but essentially you will attempt to continue straight on. Only reason why the group would scatter after a short run would because they don't get along or they have to take the dog... and there is your KICK function right there AND the "no quitters" problem that seems to be widespread would also be a non-issue, you can just pick up a new party member at the waypoint.

I can think of alot of ways to keep a group together :

==> GROUP XP, GROUP MORALE ......the more you kill together the higher it gets ....

Not to mention that it could be implemented client-to-client without the server being involved at all like so:

1. Installing guildwars installs a modified TS client and server software (modified to work with GW specifically).
2. In the GW options, players specify if they want to use voice-chat.
3. In the GW options, players specify if they are willing to host a server on their computer when they are grouping.
3. When a party forms, GW looks through the list of players (starting with the leader) for a player with appropriate bandwidth and who has given permission to act as a voice server (ie broadband).
4. GW starts up the TS server with a private random-password-protected channel.
5. GW automagically communicates the channel info to all other party members as they leave/join the party and automagically switches players into the party channel (players can elect not to join the chat if they are chatting in their guild chat for example).

If no one in the party is a suitable candidate for a server, then the party does not get to voice-chat.

Voila - integrated automatic in-game voice-chatting with your PUG without using any precious ANet bandwidth -- and, I might add, with minimal ANet programming effort as the actual voice-chat implementation is just TS.

Of course, they'd have to work out a deal to use teamspeak like this, but since they already have some sort of agreement to be able to ship the stuff in the CE, this is not far-fetched.

Just think, when you click on someone, it could put a little * or a tiny voice-chat graphic by their name so when you are forming a party, you can easily pick out players that are voice-enabled.

That would be awesome!

Have you ever played DAoC, EQ, L2 or WoW? Those are time sinks. Guild Wars is so casual as to practically be a non-issue; but again, this is coming from someone who once spent 12 hours a day on raids - that's a "single mission" in your parlance.

Henchmen are a life saver Nokomis; first of all the initial player base was extremely good but because this is a casual game, many aren't online 24/7 or able to stick around hours at a time. Henchmen fill the gap.
Secondly, the player-base now has devolved into gimpering drooling morons that play only to satisfy their immediate primal urges and nothing else.
Again, henchmen are a lifesaver - I would rather team up with Gwen than the other 95% of the player-base.

It has nothing to do with mission length. it is a good indicator of poor sportsmanship, and a disregard for working with a party as opposed to simply getting what you want at everyone else's expense.
Again, henchmen are lifesavers in these situations.

Otherwise, I think your idea is a fine one!

Talesin

Not to mention they could easily just make voice a peer-to-peer thing, just linked to the game. Like how HL/CS had roger wilco built in, etc.

You can't "cheat" with voice, so there's no need to have it on a centralised server.

EDIT: whups, someone already posted the same sort of comment. Er, ditto.

I'd just prefer if getting DC wouldn't mean Game Over. It's such PitA if one person drops from party and you have to restart entire mission(because he was one person who didn't do mission yet )

I will simply say I agree with this idea. (save points or shorter mission points)

I do not claim to know whether it is "good" for the game or not. But since my cable connection started acting funny a week ago (and I've still got another week before the tech will make it out here, stupid Comcast), I've really been wishing for some way to either have shorter mission save points, or have the ability to rejoin the group at a save point if I drop.

I do still want the occasional 60-90 minute mission, but they should always be the exceptions.

(FYI, the problem on my cable is Comcast's, but try telling them that...)

The Prince of Persia games have the save points were typically 30-45 minutes apart. Still a lot of time if you have to repeat it, but it's a good time that you can guarantuee to do in an uninterrupted session. The missions (and quests) in Guild Wars typically take 1-2 hours (if you do them for the first time), and that's simply too long to attempt in a typically 1 hour session that "casual" gamers have available after a work day.