GW2: A Community Spoiled by Solo? Help me understand.

[navystylz.9745]

ANet need give better tools for grouping. Groups are a mess of visual lights blasting all over your screen, unable to see what is going on. I detest not being able to see the bad I'm supposed to stay out of. I detest not readily seeing a shift in attack zones without pulling attention from fight to hunt them down. It's bad enough things that aren't telegraphed that mess you up without all the other headache tossed in there.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> 25 players to kill the Mushroom Queen? I think HoT's reputation for difficulty is getting a little overblown at this point! This is clearly small group content. She only has about 750k health. For reference, PoF bounty champions have twice this much or more plus healing and other damage mitigation abilities on the same 10 minute timer and none of them require 25 players either!

 

Mmmm. The math on that'd put it at around 150 seconds, or 2.5 minutes, of "low, having to deal with mechanics" damage output on any of the characters I most play to kill the mushroom queen. Now, in fairness, at least one mushroom HP is super annoying if you are not ranged and, ideally, equipped with some sort of distraction, because the mechanics are a pain solo, but just a second player is enough to make that practical for me.

 

(Damage output put at 5k there, but it doesn't get much worse even if you drop it to 2k - 6.25 minutes to kill it.)

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:

> > @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> > 25 players to kill the Mushroom Queen? I think HoT's reputation for difficulty is getting a little overblown at this point! This is clearly small group content. She only has about 750k health. For reference, PoF bounty champions have twice this much or more plus healing and other damage mitigation abilities on the same 10 minute timer and none of them require 25 players either!

>

> Mmmm. The math on that'd put it at around 150 seconds, or 2.5 minutes, of "low, having to deal with mechanics" damage output on any of the characters I most play to kill the mushroom queen. Now, in fairness, at least one mushroom HP is super annoying if you are not ranged and, ideally, equipped with some sort of distraction, because the mechanics are a pain solo, but just a second player is enough to make that practical for me.

>

> (Damage output put at 5k there, but it doesn't get much worse even if you drop it to 2k - 6.25 minutes to kill it.)

 

Pretty spot on. I have a video of celestial W/E/T tempest (very tanky, low damage healer) doing this boss solo up on my channel and it hit on that 6 minute time. Also have one of full glass (viper) mirage using mostly staff in about half the time, as you say running ranged and distraction.

 

Of course you don't need to solo and the overriding point is that this is in no way zerg content. And that's the toughest challenge by a large margin. The rest have lower health and are Nowhere near as dangerous.

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @"navystylz.9745" said:

> ANet need give better tools for grouping. Groups are a mess of visual lights blasting all over your screen, unable to see what is going on. I detest not being able to see the bad I'm supposed to stay out of. I detest not readily seeing a shift in attack zones without pulling attention from fight to hunt them down. It's bad enough things that aren't telegraphed that mess you up without all the other headache tossed in there.

 

It's not ideal, but turning off post processing effects in your graphics settings should make it a great deal easier to see these things.

[Solori.6025]

I haven't spoiled anyone!!?

 

 

 

Edit: for those that do not understand the joke. I own the character name Solo

[castlemanic.3198]

I'll throw in my two cents to this topic.

 

I'm a mostly solo player because life has made sure that having a consistent gaming schedule impossible. I enjoy things the most when I can play at my own speed. GW2 looked absolutely fascinating when I first learned about it during it's development and continues to this day to be one of my favourite games, despite not being super into group play. I enjoy GW2 for what it does. I enjoy the world, I enjoy the combat and the unique classes, I enjoy the storyline and I enjoy how GW2 has made attempts to buck traditional MMO trends. Mounts make a recent addition to the game, and I used to be one of the players who _heavily_ sided against mounts, because for the core game (and to a certain extent, Heart of Thorns), traditional mmo mounts made no sense. But GW2 innovated on the mount front and now, each mount has a unique movement ability, and mounts can be used to throw the initial punch as you initiate a fight. It's a really fun experience, it's super fun how different these mounts are to other mmo mounts, and there are a ton of different systems that also make playing GW2 a great game. The focus on the casual player experience really helps to keep me playing, and not only have I bought both expansions, I've also bought quite a bit of gems because I love the game and what it's offering. It's an experience, one I enjoy and will continue to enjoy, because the story is interesting, the gameplay is fun, and occasionally I can get my friends to join me so we can have fun. I have made attempts at joining a guild or two, but it's mostly fallen flat because life happens. So I stick with my solo bubble, enjoy what I can, and occasionally join forces with an individual or several to explore or take down a legendary creature or two. The game doesn't force me to do group content, and the story focuses on the player as the main protagonist, which helps define the solo experience too.

 

I also love that the game will get free updates that I can take part in and enjoy and don't have to necessarily pay for. This game is well worth both the price of both expansions and the real world money I put into buying gems, and basically is designed to my gaming needs almost entirely. I think my only complaint for something not being soloable is the open world content for Heart of Thorns, the expansion dedicated to creating difficult content and the community did not react well to that. I think that it was made unnecessarily difficult and shifted too much from it's original design focus, and the devs seemed to have respected the community feedback and have reduced the difficulty of future releases. They have increased the difficulty of content since then, but I at least find this increased difficulty reasonable, as opposed to what occurred in Heart of Thorns (which is still a disaster for the solo experience).

 

Overall, the game design from it's inception has been tailored towards a more casual, solo-oriented audience with optional group content for those who wish to delve into that, and when the devs forced more group coordination through increased difficulty, it lead to community backlash. The devs have since kept that in mind, and continue to orient gameplay to mostly solo-friendly with group optional content available at various difficulties, raids being the utmost difficult content. I think it has a good balance for me personally, but as I'm sure you've seen, not everyone agrees with the style that GW2 has.

[Catchyfx.5768]

I personaly play solo(dungeons,low fractals, but i open Q everytime for Ppl to JOIN. I love playing in groups but sometimes you get newbies or terrible players (don't know the game, dont know class they play And dont know mechanics And still Are full of leeroyy Jenkins blood.