Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it's also the wicked stepmother of frustration. Games with forced grouping may encourage some people to play together, but they also enable anti-social play (killstealing, ganking, etc.).
It might not be the first game to encourage friendliness, but it's by far the best design I have ever seen from an MMO as far as removing opportinities to be a jerk to people and making everyone into an ally.
I realised recently that during my time in GW2 I had not get annoyed or pissed off by another player during PVE playtime at all (I didn't try PVP to my shame), which is (sad to say) pretty usual for me in most games. This got me to thinking about whether ArenaNet were actively trying to create a real friendly and fair environment within the game - which is probably a first.
Most if not all MMO's I have played have gameplay mechanics that allow for all sorts of annoyances - from players running in and stealing the freshly popped quest NPC, to the tank having the wrong gear for a dungeon and not telling you, to the level 80 running into town and killing all the quest NPCs, to being ganked by a guy 30 levels higher than you whilst out questing (repeatedly).
However, Guild Wars 2 has things to counter all of these - so they just dont ever happen. They have everyone getting a quest update who helped kill to the NPC, to removing the gear grind and making it skill based, to making everyone in an area the same level. In fact almost every annoyance in most MMO's seem to be countered by Guild Wars.
I can't think of another MMO that seems to do this - but I may be wrong (excluding Hello Kitty Online and Clone Wars - although I'm not so sure about Hello Kitty, it always looked a bit evil).
Sounds like your first MMO was WoW, which was pretty poorly designed, especially in social terms.
"These "is GW2 the first to do this" threads are grasping at straws and really adding to the over-hype nonsense."
certainly colors your post in a certain light, no?
Ok, I'm going to assume you haven't been to the forums recently, but for the past few months there has been an excessive amount of posts claiming features of GW2 are wholly original and groundbreaking (even to someone expounding on how "amazing" the login screen is).
So, yes, my statement can seem colored to the unitiated.
"These "is GW2 the first to do this" threads are grasping at straws and really adding to the over-hype nonsense."
certainly colors your post in a certain light, no?
Ok, I'm going to assume you haven't been to the forums recently, but for the past few months there has been an excessive amount of posts claiming features of GW2 are wholly original and groundbreaking (even to someone expounding on how "amazing" the login screen is).
So, yes, my statement can seem colored to the unitiated.
I remember that Login Screen thread... it was pretty funny!
I agree that there are people attributing things to GW2 that had been done previously in other games (exactly the same way people attributed things to WoW that were copied/enhanced/improved upon in that game) but:
(1) why does that bother you so much?
(2) why can't you acknowledge that no game has combined all the features in the way that GW2 is doing, in many cases due to deliberate design decisions made by Anet?
I totally get why there are people who won't like the game, or "won't get the hype" or will just think it's a decent/ok game.
"These "is GW2 the first to do this" threads are grasping at straws and really adding to the over-hype nonsense."
certainly colors your post in a certain light, no?
Ok, I'm going to assume you haven't been to the forums recently, but for the past few months there has been an excessive amount of posts claiming features of GW2 are wholly original and groundbreaking (even to someone expounding on how "amazing" the login screen is).
So, yes, my statement can seem colored to the unitiated.
To be fair, GW2 is quite revolutionary in how it combines a lot of good ideas into one coherent vision, as well as improving on things that have come before.
I spose it depends on how you look at it. During my time in beta, though I didn't have any issues with other players, I still didn't have much "cooperation" either, meaning, in the starting areas, every single group invite I attempted was declined. People just wanted to run through the stuff it seemed. No granted, I'm sure this changes drastically later in the game, but overall, I didn't find the starting areas that friendly at all. Not hostile, just not friendly per se.
Like I said, I'm sure this is different later on in the game as I didn't get to make it very far due to the beta, so don't kill me.
Just curious, but did you actually take the time to talk to people before you invited them to group?
90% of the group invites I get from people (in any MMO) are blind invites, without a single word spoken to me. No way I will ever accept one. I don't particularly care to share a "social" experience with someone who isn't even social enough to communicate with actual words when requesting to hangout with me, you know?
You really shouldn't need to converse before sending a party invite. If both parties are doing the same DE why would you need to talk?
You don't need to be in a party I believe so why send the invite? Maybe to actually be sociable?
From my experience it's mostly the solo players that don't accept invites.
lol Most people don't accept blind invites. When you send a blind invite you aren't trying to be social, you're trying to avoid being social. Just accept the invite no introductions etc? lol I'll continue to pass like most do.
I don't think GW2 is the first to encourage a friendly atmosphere. Other MMOs have tried this but they tried in the wrong direction. Take for example the group finder. In many MMOs there's a feature which is called group finder or something similar. It's meant to stick people of different classes around same level together to do a dungeon or some type of PvE content. This takes the pressure off the player to stand and spam chat looking for various members of the group.
Kill stealing was a very neat idea I found when I started playing MMOs, but eventually my reaction times dropped and it was very annoying to sit and "camp" a specific quest monster for over 30 minutes hoping to finish my level 5 quest.
Another was when I was grinding and someone would tag my monsters, so I would not get full exp. Sometimes the guy was just griefing me. Again GW2 fixes this, so no longer will I have to rage my head off trying to get the guy to stop trolling.
Boss pulling was very annoying to me... a high level player/guild would tag a big world boss and argo it back all the way to a city and get all the players killed... very annoying to me when I go afk for a couple minutes.
Exp loss on death was so damn annoying, it basically discouraged exploring in games until you were the proper level which I found annoying.
I found GW2 does all these above things right so I think they have succeeded in creating a friendly atmosphere, but I hardly think they were first to try it.
I spose it depends on how you look at it. During my time in beta, though I didn't have any issues with other players, I still didn't have much "cooperation" either, meaning, in the starting areas, every single group invite I attempted was declined. People just wanted to run through the stuff it seemed. No granted, I'm sure this changes drastically later in the game, but overall, I didn't find the starting areas that friendly at all. Not hostile, just not friendly per se.
Like I said, I'm sure this is different later on in the game as I didn't get to make it very far due to the beta, so don't kill me.
Just curious, but did you actually take the time to talk to people before you invited them to group?
90% of the group invites I get from people (in any MMO) are blind invites, without a single word spoken to me. No way I will ever accept one. I don't particularly care to share a "social" experience with someone who isn't even social enough to communicate with actual words when requesting to hangout with me, you know?
You really shouldn't need to converse before sending a party invite. If both parties are doing the same DE why would you need to talk?
You don't need to be in a party I believe so why send the invite? Maybe to actually be sociable?
From my experience it's mostly the solo players that don't accept invites.
lol Most people don't accept blind invites. When you send a blind invite you aren't trying to be social, you're trying to avoid being social. Just accept the invite no introductions etc? lol I'll continue to pass like most do.
I found something similar to this, and I think its because people were trying to "soak" in as much as they can before the beta event/stress test ended. I had loads of fun when I was beating on a champion and this random guy just came and helped me. Not 1 word was said to each other, but we defeated the boss, drove out centaur and secured a camp for the human.
One of the more annoying things I found was that no-one answered me. I was doing a DE underwater where you need good group coordination and I was basically spamming the chat "Do this, carry this over here" and of the 3 people that were with me, none of them said 1 thing and wasn't even listening to what I was saying. Needless to say, we failed that event hard. Sometimes it felt like people wasn't even watching chat.
ALL MMOs want to create a friendly environment for their player base. Unfortunately, you will always find a few asshats.
nuff said
Of course, that's just human nature.
Can you explain exactly how you plan to be an asshat in GW2 though? You can't gank me, steal my kills, hog my quest mobs, steal my mining route or any of the other standard asshat moves.
(And to adress your first point: I think many MMOs give little to no consideration to friendly environments, most of them are too busy trying to re-skin a tired old formula quickly to make more money (gotta get done by that deadline and start on the next one). They don't care in the slightest about your happyness, just your wallet. ANet seems to realize that a happy player is more likely to open that wallet, and this marks a giant shift in game company thinking which hopefully catches on in the industry.)
I spose it depends on how you look at it. During my time in beta, though I didn't have any issues with other players, I still didn't have much "cooperation" either, meaning, in the starting areas, every single group invite I attempted was declined. People just wanted to run through the stuff it seemed. No granted, I'm sure this changes drastically later in the game, but overall, I didn't find the starting areas that friendly at all. Not hostile, just not friendly per se.
Like I said, I'm sure this is different later on in the game as I didn't get to make it very far due to the beta, so don't kill me.
Just curious, but did you actually take the time to talk to people before you invited them to group?
90% of the group invites I get from people (in any MMO) are blind invites, without a single word spoken to me. No way I will ever accept one. I don't particularly care to share a "social" experience with someone who isn't even social enough to communicate with actual words when requesting to hangout with me, you know?
You really shouldn't need to converse before sending a party invite. If both parties are doing the same DE why would you need to talk?
You don't need to be in a party I believe so why send the invite? Maybe to actually be sociable?
From my experience it's mostly the solo players that don't accept invites.
lol Most people don't accept blind invites. When you send a blind invite you aren't trying to be social, you're trying to avoid being social. Just accept the invite no introductions etc? lol I'll continue to pass like most do.
How is it anti-social to want to group up?
If anything, GW2 is being more anti-social than most other MMO games being released as you don't need to be sociable to group up. Actually, you don't need to group up for the DE's.
(2) why can't you acknowledge that no game has combined all the features in the way that GW2 is doing, in many cases due to deliberate design decisions made by Anet?
I totally get why there are people who won't like the game, or "won't get the hype" or will just think it's a decent/ok game.
It is a really well-designed game though.
(1) As much as I despise too much sugar in my coffee, overabundance of false praise is irritating (especially when it drowns out every other thread in the recent threads list). Typically on these boards, these type of sugary posts precede the same volume of hate posts following the game's release. (Take, for instance TOR....a game I enjoyed yet everyone and their brother/sister is posting nothing but hate. In fact, you post something positive and your thread will be trolled). After being a member of this site since 2005, I've grown sick of this pattern.
(2) I don't acknowledge because I don't agree. Plain and simple.
I've only played in the BWE. I have no idea how the game will play out in the long run... Further, I don't find the elements it has introduced in combination to be that different from its MMO predecessors.
But overall, I don't want anyone telling me how I should feel or think about the game (much like your last statement is doing).
One of the more annoying things I found was that no-one answered me. I was doing a DE underwater where you need good group coordination and I was basically spamming the chat "Do this, carry this over here" and of the 3 people that were with me, none of them said 1 thing and wasn't even listening to what I was saying. Needless to say, we failed that event hard. Sometimes it felt like people wasn't even watching chat.
Many people weren't watching chat because they were learning to just move around and dodge and use skills, it was beta, give it a couple weeks till more of the average gamers get more comfortable with the controls. Also, it might take a couple seconds longer, but typing "please" before "do this" can have a pretty huge impact. The chat window is easy to minimize as well, I notice a lot of videos on youtube have players running without chat expanded, which may have something to do with it.
The server I was on was quite chatty, but I rolled on a fairly low pop server without an awesome name or huge WvW alliance, so maybe a higher "casual" population.
If anything, GW2 is being more anti-social than most other MMO games being released as you don't need to be sociable to group up. Actually, you don't need to group up for the DE's.
Your understanding of grouping comes from MMOs, that's totally understandable.
What you are missing is that in GW2 you are auto-grouped with everyone around you. Instead of having to actually be in a party with everyone to help them or get credit, that all just happens by proximity. It's not that you don't need to group up, it's that you are grouped up, this concept is so foreign to the MMO mindset burned in by the last decade of clones that it's going to take many people a long time to see it for what it is (if they ever do).
Clicking "join party" killing the same mobs and never chatting is no better than GW2's system, it's just another hoop to jump through for mechanical purposes. Having your icon on the left side of my screen doesn't make us friends, or mean that we will actually talk to each other.
Instead of looking for a party to chat with, look at everyone you see as party members. Use /say instead of /party and you can chat with them all! Magic!
ALL MMOs want to create a friendly environment for their player base. Unfortunately, you will always find a few asshats.
nuff said
Of course, that's just human nature.
Can you explain exactly how you plan to be an asshat in GW2 though? You can't gank me, steal my kills, hog my quest mobs, steal my mining route or any of the other standard asshat moves.
(And to adress your first point: I think many MMOs give little to no consideration to friendly environments, most of them are too busy trying to re-skin a tired old formula quickly to make more money (gotta get done by that deadline and start on the next one). They don't care in the slightest about your happyness, just your wallet. ANet seems to realize that a happy player is more likely to open that wallet, and this marks a giant shift in game company thinking which hopefully catches on in the industry.)
Humans always find a way to be even more obnoxious than they previously have achieved. We humans are good at that (and no I am NOT proud of that at all). Players will figure out how to piss off other Players in GW2, it's only a matter of time.
Just enjoy for now the friendly environment ingame until they do. I bet it's a refreshing change of pace.
I commend Anet for attempting to make the ingame experience of a MMO more enjoyable. Well Done.
(2) why can't you acknowledge that no game has combined all the features in the way that GW2 is doing, in many cases due to deliberate design decisions made by Anet?
I totally get why there are people who won't like the game, or "won't get the hype" or will just think it's a decent/ok game.
It is a really well-designed game though.
(1) As much as I despise too much sugar in my coffee, overabundance of false praise is irritating (especially when it drowns out every other thread in the recent threads list). Typically on these boards, these type of sugary posts precede the same volume of hate posts following the game's release. (Take, for instance TOR....a game I enjoyed yet everyone and their brother/sister is posting nothing but hate. In fact, you post something positive and your thread will be trolled). After being a member of this site since 2005, I've grown sick of this pattern.
(2) I don't acknowledge because I don't agree. Plain and simple.
I've only played in the BWE. I have no idea how the game will play out in the long run... Further, I don't find the elements it has introduced in combination to be that different from its MMO predecessors.
But overall, I don't want anyone telling me how I should feel or think about the game (much like your last statement is doing).
(1) I respect your opinion. TOR has gotten both too much hype and hate on these forums to be sure.
(2) At least on this topic a somewhat objective discussion is possible. Lists of features and design elements can be presented along with games that did or did not included them in a certain way. Design intent and impact on gameplay can be discussed and debated.
I am in no way telling you to like or dislike GW2. But if you state that it is a poorly-designed game I will ask for examples and debate them with you.
As they say, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
I hope you find something that improves your outlook on gaming.
I am in no way telling you to like or dislike GW2. But if you state that it is a poorly-designed game I will ask for examples and debate them with you.
As they say, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
I hope you find something that improves your outlook on gaming.
Improve my outlook on gaming? I'm sorry, but you need to learn to appreciate other people have opinions (and posting you do is not the same as actually doing it).
I didn't say GW2 is poorly designed. Where do you get this stuff from?
This is a prime example of me disagreeing with an incredible statement about GW2 and one of the "fans" belittling me or trying to discount my opinion because of it.
Wow, this is annoying! Since when did having an opinion = poor outlook on gaming?
If anything, GW2 is being more anti-social than most other MMO games being released as you don't need to be sociable to group up. Actually, you don't need to group up for the DE's.
Your understanding of grouping comes from MMOs, that's totally understandable.
What you are missing is that in GW2 you are auto-grouped with everyone around you. Instead of having to actually be in a party with everyone to help them or get credit, that all just happens by proximity. It's not that you don't need to group up, it's that you are grouped up, this concept is so foreign to the MMO mindset burned in by the last decade of clones that it's going to take many people a long time to see it for what it is (if they ever do).
Clicking "join party" killing the same mobs and never chatting is no better than GW2's system, it's just another hoop to jump through for mechanical purposes. Having your icon on the left side of my screen doesn't make us friends, or mean that we will actually talk to each other.
Instead of looking for a party to chat with, look at everyone you see as party members. Use /say instead of /party and you can chat with them all! Magic!
It really doesn't change the fact that in most other MMO's you have to actually be sociable to do group content. And in some cases that does lead to friendship.
In GW2 they have taken that away. You do not have to be sociable to do DE's. Is that a good or bad thing, taking away the 'little' sociable aspect to grouping entirely? Will GW2 spawn players that find it unusual in newer games to actually be sociable to form groups for certain content?
I realised recently that during my time in GW2 I had not get annoyed or pissed off by another player during PVE playtime at all (I didn't try PVP to my shame), which is (sad to say) pretty usual for me in most games. This got me to thinking about whether ArenaNet were actively trying to create a real friendly and fair environment within the game - which is probably a first.
Most if not all MMO's I have played have gameplay mechanics that allow for all sorts of annoyances - from players running in and stealing the freshly popped quest NPC, to the tank having the wrong gear for a dungeon and not telling you, to the level 80 running into town and killing all the quest NPCs, to being ganked by a guy 30 levels higher than you whilst out questing (repeatedly).
However, Guild Wars 2 has things to counter all of these - so they just dont ever happen. They have everyone getting a quest update who helped kill to the NPC, to removing the gear grind and making it skill based, to making everyone in an area the same level. In fact almost every annoyance in most MMO's seem to be countered by Guild Wars.
I can't think of another MMO that seems to do this - but I may be wrong (excluding Hello Kitty Online and Clone Wars - although I'm not so sure about Hello Kitty, it always looked a bit evil).
It's sad that this wonderful feeling isn't affecting these forums as well, they need the "Guild Wars 2 effect". Unfortunately we have so many haters/troll lately that cannot coexist with us
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
I am in no way telling you to like or dislike GW2. But if you state that it is a poorly-designed game I will ask for examples and debate them with you.
As they say, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
I hope you find something that improves your outlook on gaming.
Improve my outlook on gaming? I'm sorry, but you need to learn to appreciate other people have opinions (and posting you do is not the same as actually doing it).
I didn't say GW2 is poorly designed. Where do you get this stuff from?
This is a prime example of me disagreeing with an incredible statement about GW2 and one of the "fans" belittling me or trying to discount my opinion because of it.
Wow, this is annoying! Since when did having an opinion = poor outlook on gaming?
You come across as quite worked up or bitter about something.
If I've mis-interpreted your outlook I'm truly sorry.
You feel I'm "belittling" you over something?
My "last statement" in a previous post was "GW2 is a well-designed game" and you ripped me for it. I can only respond to what you actually write and not whatever thoughts or feelings you have in your head.
It really doesn't change the fact that in most other MMO's you have to actually be sociable to do group content. And in some cases that does lead to friendship.
In GW2 they have taken that away. You do not have to be sociable to do DE's. Is that a good or bad thing, taking away the 'little' sociable aspect to grouping entirely? Will GW2 spawn players that find it unusual in newer games to actually be sociable to form groups for certain content?
We will have to wait and see.
Yes, you are not FORCED to be sociable.
You can choose to be however. Honestly, making friends in a game isn't that hard. It just takes some typing. Now, granted, it would be more awesome with some sort of intelligent voice chat interface (that overcame the obvious problems), but still, you can type and make friends with people you are running around with.
TBH, I think it's just an extension of what they were already doing in GW1.
GW1 is basically fully instanced CORPG, No kill stealing because each person/group had their own version of the world.
GW1 had loot assigned to players with no need/greed function. Could openly trade items if not customized, but kill a creature and an item would have your name on it so no one else in your group could pick it up unless you dropped it on the ground.
These two things transplanted into a similar version of themselves for a persistent world. Seems like this encourages team play amongst the player base rather than individual competiveness between each involved party.
Are they the first to do things to encourage fairness and a friendly atmosphere? No. Is it something that they have had a reputation for thus far? I'd say yes.
Comments
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it's also the wicked stepmother of frustration. Games with forced grouping may encourage some people to play together, but they also enable anti-social play (killstealing, ganking, etc.).
It might not be the first game to encourage friendliness, but it's by far the best design I have ever seen from an MMO as far as removing opportinities to be a jerk to people and making everyone into an ally.
Sounds like your first MMO was WoW, which was pretty poorly designed, especially in social terms.
So, no. It wasn't the first.
Ok, I'm going to assume you haven't been to the forums recently, but for the past few months there has been an excessive amount of posts claiming features of GW2 are wholly original and groundbreaking (even to someone expounding on how "amazing" the login screen is).
So, yes, my statement can seem colored to the unitiated.
ITs the same people that played wow,gw1 and so on....
Dont expect miracles.
I remember that Login Screen thread... it was pretty funny!
I agree that there are people attributing things to GW2 that had been done previously in other games (exactly the same way people attributed things to WoW that were copied/enhanced/improved upon in that game) but:
(1) why does that bother you so much?
(2) why can't you acknowledge that no game has combined all the features in the way that GW2 is doing, in many cases due to deliberate design decisions made by Anet?
I totally get why there are people who won't like the game, or "won't get the hype" or will just think it's a decent/ok game.
It is a really well-designed game though.
To be fair, GW2 is quite revolutionary in how it combines a lot of good ideas into one coherent vision, as well as improving on things that have come before.
ALL MMOs want to create a friendly environment for their player base. Unfortunately, you will always find a few asshats.
nuff said
lol Most people don't accept blind invites. When you send a blind invite you aren't trying to be social, you're trying to avoid being social. Just accept the invite no introductions etc? lol I'll continue to pass like most do.
I don't think GW2 is the first to encourage a friendly atmosphere. Other MMOs have tried this but they tried in the wrong direction. Take for example the group finder. In many MMOs there's a feature which is called group finder or something similar. It's meant to stick people of different classes around same level together to do a dungeon or some type of PvE content. This takes the pressure off the player to stand and spam chat looking for various members of the group.
Kill stealing was a very neat idea I found when I started playing MMOs, but eventually my reaction times dropped and it was very annoying to sit and "camp" a specific quest monster for over 30 minutes hoping to finish my level 5 quest.
Another was when I was grinding and someone would tag my monsters, so I would not get full exp. Sometimes the guy was just griefing me. Again GW2 fixes this, so no longer will I have to rage my head off trying to get the guy to stop trolling.
Boss pulling was very annoying to me... a high level player/guild would tag a big world boss and argo it back all the way to a city and get all the players killed... very annoying to me when I go afk for a couple minutes.
Exp loss on death was so damn annoying, it basically discouraged exploring in games until you were the proper level which I found annoying.
I found GW2 does all these above things right so I think they have succeeded in creating a friendly atmosphere, but I hardly think they were first to try it.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
I found something similar to this, and I think its because people were trying to "soak" in as much as they can before the beta event/stress test ended. I had loads of fun when I was beating on a champion and this random guy just came and helped me. Not 1 word was said to each other, but we defeated the boss, drove out centaur and secured a camp for the human.
One of the more annoying things I found was that no-one answered me. I was doing a DE underwater where you need good group coordination and I was basically spamming the chat "Do this, carry this over here" and of the 3 people that were with me, none of them said 1 thing and wasn't even listening to what I was saying. Needless to say, we failed that event hard. Sometimes it felt like people wasn't even watching chat.
Of course, that's just human nature.
Can you explain exactly how you plan to be an asshat in GW2 though? You can't gank me, steal my kills, hog my quest mobs, steal my mining route or any of the other standard asshat moves.
(And to adress your first point: I think many MMOs give little to no consideration to friendly environments, most of them are too busy trying to re-skin a tired old formula quickly to make more money (gotta get done by that deadline and start on the next one). They don't care in the slightest about your happyness, just your wallet. ANet seems to realize that a happy player is more likely to open that wallet, and this marks a giant shift in game company thinking which hopefully catches on in the industry.)
How is it anti-social to want to group up?
If anything, GW2 is being more anti-social than most other MMO games being released as you don't need to be sociable to group up. Actually, you don't need to group up for the DE's.
(1) As much as I despise too much sugar in my coffee, overabundance of false praise is irritating (especially when it drowns out every other thread in the recent threads list). Typically on these boards, these type of sugary posts precede the same volume of hate posts following the game's release. (Take, for instance TOR....a game I enjoyed yet everyone and their brother/sister is posting nothing but hate. In fact, you post something positive and your thread will be trolled). After being a member of this site since 2005, I've grown sick of this pattern.
(2) I don't acknowledge because I don't agree. Plain and simple.
I've only played in the BWE. I have no idea how the game will play out in the long run... Further, I don't find the elements it has introduced in combination to be that different from its MMO predecessors.
But overall, I don't want anyone telling me how I should feel or think about the game (much like your last statement is doing).
Many people weren't watching chat because they were learning to just move around and dodge and use skills, it was beta, give it a couple weeks till more of the average gamers get more comfortable with the controls. Also, it might take a couple seconds longer, but typing "please" before "do this" can have a pretty huge impact. The chat window is easy to minimize as well, I notice a lot of videos on youtube have players running without chat expanded, which may have something to do with it.
The server I was on was quite chatty, but I rolled on a fairly low pop server without an awesome name or huge WvW alliance, so maybe a higher "casual" population.
Your understanding of grouping comes from MMOs, that's totally understandable.
What you are missing is that in GW2 you are auto-grouped with everyone around you. Instead of having to actually be in a party with everyone to help them or get credit, that all just happens by proximity. It's not that you don't need to group up, it's that you are grouped up, this concept is so foreign to the MMO mindset burned in by the last decade of clones that it's going to take many people a long time to see it for what it is (if they ever do).
Clicking "join party" killing the same mobs and never chatting is no better than GW2's system, it's just another hoop to jump through for mechanical purposes. Having your icon on the left side of my screen doesn't make us friends, or mean that we will actually talk to each other.
Instead of looking for a party to chat with, look at everyone you see as party members. Use /say instead of /party and you can chat with them all! Magic!
Humans always find a way to be even more obnoxious than they previously have achieved. We humans are good at that (and no I am NOT proud of that at all). Players will figure out how to piss off other Players in GW2, it's only a matter of time.
Just enjoy for now the friendly environment ingame until they do. I bet it's a refreshing change of pace.
I commend Anet for attempting to make the ingame experience of a MMO more enjoyable. Well Done.
(1) I respect your opinion. TOR has gotten both too much hype and hate on these forums to be sure.
(2) At least on this topic a somewhat objective discussion is possible. Lists of features and design elements can be presented along with games that did or did not included them in a certain way. Design intent and impact on gameplay can be discussed and debated.
I am in no way telling you to like or dislike GW2. But if you state that it is a poorly-designed game I will ask for examples and debate them with you.
As they say, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
I hope you find something that improves your outlook on gaming.
Improve my outlook on gaming? I'm sorry, but you need to learn to appreciate other people have opinions (and posting you do is not the same as actually doing it).
I didn't say GW2 is poorly designed. Where do you get this stuff from?
This is a prime example of me disagreeing with an incredible statement about GW2 and one of the "fans" belittling me or trying to discount my opinion because of it.
Wow, this is annoying! Since when did having an opinion = poor outlook on gaming?
It really doesn't change the fact that in most other MMO's you have to actually be sociable to do group content. And in some cases that does lead to friendship.
In GW2 they have taken that away. You do not have to be sociable to do DE's. Is that a good or bad thing, taking away the 'little' sociable aspect to grouping entirely? Will GW2 spawn players that find it unusual in newer games to actually be sociable to form groups for certain content?
We will have to wait and see.
It's sad that this wonderful feeling isn't affecting these forums as well, they need the "Guild Wars 2 effect". Unfortunately we have so many haters/troll lately that cannot coexist with us
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
You come across as quite worked up or bitter about something.
If I've mis-interpreted your outlook I'm truly sorry.
You feel I'm "belittling" you over something?
My "last statement" in a previous post was "GW2 is a well-designed game" and you ripped me for it. I can only respond to what you actually write and not whatever thoughts or feelings you have in your head.
Yes, you are not FORCED to be sociable.
You can choose to be however. Honestly, making friends in a game isn't that hard. It just takes some typing. Now, granted, it would be more awesome with some sort of intelligent voice chat interface (that overcame the obvious problems), but still, you can type and make friends with people you are running around with.
TBH, I think it's just an extension of what they were already doing in GW1.
GW1 is basically fully instanced CORPG, No kill stealing because each person/group had their own version of the world.
GW1 had loot assigned to players with no need/greed function. Could openly trade items if not customized, but kill a creature and an item would have your name on it so no one else in your group could pick it up unless you dropped it on the ground.
These two things transplanted into a similar version of themselves for a persistent world. Seems like this encourages team play amongst the player base rather than individual competiveness between each involved party.
Are they the first to do things to encourage fairness and a friendly atmosphere? No. Is it something that they have had a reputation for thus far? I'd say yes.