I adored the original Guild Wars, in part because it allowed me to continue to be an antisocial single-player devotee inside of a quasi-MMO (yay henchmen!). If I pick up GW2, will I be able to stick with this style of play or is it a more "engage with real people or you're screwed" experience?

I'd like to know that aswell. *listens intently*.

You can solo just fine. The events and hearts (which replace regular quests for the most part) are pretty straightforward and you can just walk in, do your thing and then go back to whatever you were doing, no socialization required.

Does not necessarily apply to instances. The first one is around level 30 or so, haven't seen it yet and don't know if there is/will be a dungeon finder.

I played exactly the same in the original guild wars. As most of GW2 isn't instanced, then as you're doing solo stuff there will be other people running around. You don't have to socialise with them at all. The more people at the events, the harder it will be, which might make your soloing path easier/harder.

I can say though, in both Weekend Events, the only people I've talked to are people in the guild, and I've only played with them in WvW. For all of the PvE content, I just run around solo. If there are other people at an event, then it's fine. If there's not, that's also fine.

Soloing some of the later stuff with henchmen in GW1 was nearly impossible unless you were a monk or warrior. Only after they addeded heroes could you solo properly.

If you thought GW1 was solo-friendly (lol), this will blow your mind. GW2 was designed around the fact that every profession can solo their personal story and explore the world on their own. As long as you are doing content that is within your level range, it is extremely easy to do on your own. The larger dynamic events have to be done in groups though (they won't even trigger until a prerequisite number of people are in the area). However, grouping isn't like in GW1. It's just random people zerging a boss or killing an army of centaurs, etc. Everyone just does their own thing and there is no need to support anyone but yourself (these events are usually very easy if there are enough people around).

The only content that you will need to do with a group (GW1 style) are dungeons, but those are optional.

I've been doing just fine by myself. There's also always someone willing to revive you or help you out if you're having trouble with something.

Most of it has been solo-able. There are some events that you'll need other dudes around for you to even have a chance of completing. Such as the invasions, boss events, and pretty much any event which requires you to kill a lot of mobs at once. It kinda blows when I was trying to do these events and nobody was even around.

I really don't know if I'm enjoying GW 2. I played the shit out of GW1, but that had a very different structure than GW 2. And I think that's what's frustrating me. This is my first "MMO", so maybe the feeling of being lost and realization of the fact that I have a lot of grinding to do is common knowledge, except for me.

I've made a few different characters over the course of the BWEs, but I always end up doing the same thing with all them. Hunting for the next Event that I can partake in with a group of people. It's getting a little stale.

I'm really not a huge fan of the personalized stories and have been basically ignoring them. I play these types of games to play with people, not by myself. I love roaming the open world and finding groups of people doing events. And in that regard, I miss the old mission structure of GW 1. I hate finding an Event, then realizing I'm all alone and getting my ass handed to me.

I'm at a point now where I'm just wandering around aimlessly, trying to figure out how to level up so I move on to a new area. I litterally log in, pick a character, open my map, try to find something that I have not done in the level-appropriate area that I'm in, realize there's nothing there, wander around, log out.

@Lukeweizer said:

Snip

I think one of the things they could do is show more of the events on the map, most of them only show when you are in reasonably close proximity. What kind of happens now is that you clear all of the hearts in a zone and run through all of the related content you find, but when you come back to a zone you don't especially know where the action is at.

On the topic though, the game essentially encourages pseudo cooperation - the punishment is removed from helping people you arent really grouped with, but on the flipside everything is pretty zerg-derp.

@Lukeweizer said:

I really don't know if I'm enjoying GW 2. I played the shit out of GW1, but that had a very different structure than GW 2. And I think that's what's frustrating me. This is my first "MMO", so maybe the feeling of being lost and realization of the fact that I have a lot of grinding to do is common knowledge, except for me.

I've made a few different characters over the course of the BWEs, but I always end up doing the same thing with all them. Hunting for the next Event that I can partake in with a group of people. It's getting a little stale.

I'm really not a huge fan of the personalized stories and have been basically ignoring them. I play these types of games to play with people, not by myself. I love roaming the open world and finding groups of people doing events. And in that regard, I miss the old mission structure of GW 1. I hate finding an Event, then realizing I'm all alone and getting my ass handed to me.

I'm at a point now where I'm just wandering around aimlessly, trying to figure out how to level up so I move on to a new area. I litterally log in, pick a character, open my map, try to find something that I have not done in the level-appropriate area that I'm in, realize there's nothing there, wander around, log out.

I feel kind of the same. This is also my first MMO and it feels kind of aimless, especially when you're migrating from GW1. However, I've gotten used to it. Another thing to note is that exploration gives a shit load of EXP. You should also be doing the appropriate level content in all the starting areas (so if you're done all the stuff in the human starting area, you should go to the charr or norn starting areas for more events).

I feel that dungeons will be able to rekindle some of that GW1 feel, but I haven't played any yet so I can't say for sure. At the end of the day, it's a totally different game and takes some getting used to.

If I had to pick what I enjoyed more; my first few levels in GW1 or GW2, I would definitely say I enjoyed the GW1 experience a little more, but I still haven't even scratched the surface of this game so that could very easily change by the end of the game.

With the exception of WvW I have been doing nothing but soloing, and it is perfectly manageable. Sure it might be harder to find things to do by yourself cause you cannot tackle all of the events by yourself but I will offer a little tip. If you cannot find things to do in your area, check out that level zone for the other races. For example, I grew weary of soloing the 15-25 norn area as a norn, so I headed to that level zone for the charr and am having a total blast (a leveling at a pretty nice clip).

@UssjTrunks said:

@Lukeweizer said:

I really don't know if I'm enjoying GW 2. I played the shit out of GW1, but that had a very different structure than GW 2. And I think that's what's frustrating me. This is my first "MMO", so maybe the feeling of being lost and realization of the fact that I have a lot of grinding to do is common knowledge, except for me.

I've made a few different characters over the course of the BWEs, but I always end up doing the same thing with all them. Hunting for the next Event that I can partake in with a group of people. It's getting a little stale.

I'm really not a huge fan of the personalized stories and have been basically ignoring them. I play these types of games to play with people, not by myself. I love roaming the open world and finding groups of people doing events. And in that regard, I miss the old mission structure of GW 1. I hate finding an Event, then realizing I'm all alone and getting my ass handed to me.

I'm at a point now where I'm just wandering around aimlessly, trying to figure out how to level up so I move on to a new area. I litterally log in, pick a character, open my map, try to find something that I have not done in the level-appropriate area that I'm in, realize there's nothing there, wander around, log out.

I feel kind of the same. This is also my first MMO and it feels kind of aimless, especially when you're migrating from GW1. However, I've gotten used to it. Another thing to note is that exploration gives a shit load of EXP. You should also be doing the appropriate level content in all the starting areas (so if you're done all the stuff in the human starting area, you should go to the charr or norn starting areas for more events).

I feel that dungeons will be able to rekindle some of that GW1 feel, but I haven't played any yet so I can't say for sure. At the end of the day, it's a totally different game and takes some getting used to.

If I had to pick what I enjoyed more; my first few levels in GW1 or GW2, I would definitely say I enjoyed the GW1 experience a little more, but I still haven't even scratched the surface of this game so that could very easily change by the end of the game.

I made a character for each race, so I kind of have gone through all the starting areas with 1 character already. So I've been avoiding going to each area with 1 character, like you mentioned. But that is a very good idea. And what you said about it being a totally different game is bang on. And that's what I'm also dealing with. I liked having a hub area where I can meet people at the same level as me and doing the same quest/ mission, and then kinda party up for a while. In GW2, it just feels like it's every man for himself. But when I'm with a crowd of people doing an event, it's so awesome and I totally forget the negatives that I feel. It just doesn't happen as often as I want it to.

Skill plays a huge factor. You can kill large groups, veterans, and even some champions solo - if you know how to move and evade properly, as well as having a good loadout for tackling such things. That said, respawn rates are way too high for solo endeavors to be completely satisfying - it often feels like a neverending fight.
 
Found a cave full of Ettins yesterday night, with fetishes to destroy in there to spawn a veteran mob (and start a kill event). Tough mobs, which can like 5-hit kill my elementalist, and each have a TTK (time to kill) of 20-30 seconds.  I literally was fighting for like 30 minutes straight, including a couple of hasty retreats, often against 4 mobs and more - until I spawned and beat the event.
 
It's definitely not built to be a perfectly enjoyable solo experience, and they should definitely think about reducing TTK a bit and increase respawn timers dramatically - and decrease them dynamically if a group comes around. It's almost impossible to progress into an enemy encampment without mobs respawning quicker than you can kill them, especially when there's Veterans to kill too.
 
That said, it's group-centric balancing and it makes perfect sense (except for the high respawn rates, which are ridiculous). It's not my favorite trait of the game, but it does make sense. Some of the downscaling is way too aggressive though. Like I got downscaled to lvl 7, being lvl 12, and trying to fight my way into a cave with lvl 9 thiefs - that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
 
Guild Wars 2 is close to perfection, except for overall difficulty and respawn rates, and the nitty gritty of downscaling. Hope they'll listen and tweak accordingly.

A perfect example happened just now. I had been soloing nearby hearts and events to get more skill points when I happened upon a farm that was being attacked by bandits. I wasn't able to take them all on myself, mainly because I was distracted by a nearby skill point event, and went over to do that instead. When I went back to the farm, bandits had taken it over. So naturally I tried to kill them. I couldn't. More people showed up. We still couldn't. Then all of a sudden, a cave troll came barrelling towards the farm, through a wall and swiped at a load of bandits. Now the group of us that had gathered to chase out the bandits had to team together to take down this enraged beast. It didn't take too long, but while we were doing it I was just floored by this feeling of community. I can't really describe it, but that feeling of random people doing their own thing all joining together to beat this beast just makes me want to give Anet even more money.

Many of the public events you won't be able to tackle alone, but you'll rarely ever have to. There are always people around and there will never be a need to party up or even talk to people. Indeed, there is almost no chatting at all going on. The game gives you an objective, and everyone just instinctively flocks to it.

It's like soloing in that you will never have to interact with people. It all takes place organically. The only exception would be instanced dungeons, which are designed for 5 people who have to enter it together in a party.

@Seppli said:

Skill plays a huge factor. You can kill large groups, veterans, and even some champions solo - if you know how to move and evade properly, as well as having a good loadout for tackling such things. That said, respawn rates are way too high for solo endeavors to be completely satisfying - it often feels like a neverending fight. Found a cave full of Ettins yesterday night, with fetishes to destroy in there to spawn a veteran mob (and start a kill event). Tough mobs, which can like 5-hit kill my elementalist, and each have a TTK (time to kill) of 20-30 seconds. I literally was fighting for like 30 minutes straight, including a couple of hasty retreats, often against 4 mobs and more - until I spawned and beat the event. It's definitely not built to be a perfectly enjoyable solo experience, and they should definitely think about reducing TTK a bit and increase respawn timers dramatically - and decrease them dynamically if a group comes around. It's almost impossible to progress into an enemy encampment without mobs respawning quicker than you can kill them, especially when there's Veterans to kill too. That said, it's group-centric balancing and it makes perfect sense (except for the high respawn rates, which are ridiculous). It's not my favorite trait of the game, but it does make sense. Some of the downscaling is way too aggressive though. Like I got downscaled to lvl 7, being lvl 12, and trying to fight my way into a cave with lvl 9 thiefs - that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Guild Wars 2 is close to perfection, except for overall difficulty and respawn rates, and the nitty gritty of downscaling. Hope they'll listen and tweak accordingly.

I'll echo all of these sentiments. I'm fine with having events that are verydifficult to complete solo, but running into a fucking brick wall halfway through a zone needs to not happen. Nothing that they can't tweak out before launch, hopefully they get enough feedback telling them to do so.

Most of the difficulty early on comes from not having any skills/traits/gear/weapons. Once you hit level 80 and unlock all that good stuff, you'll be able to steamroll mobs.

@UssjTrunks: I sincerely hope not. Starting out balls hard and getting face-roll easy isn't the sort of difficulty curve I imagine content designers aim for.

These threads make me sad : (

When it comes to soloing GW2, like others I spent large stretches alone just trekking through areas and looking around, doing random dynamic events and heart missions. I, like @Seppli and @Dark_Lord_Spam pointed out, think that for the vast majority of the game, playing with skill enables you to pretty much go anywhere and do anything except for some clearly group-focussed dynamic events.

However.

It's sad to me that when presented with such a fantastic resource like Lincoln Force, our guild, some people choose to actively not have fun (ie, in cases where guys logged in and wandered around aimlessly like @Lukeweizer ) rather than see what could happen if you play with us instead.

I understand the solo mentality to some extent, but I thought it generally rooted in the fact that most people you meet on the internet and in MMOs tend to not want to help, or to go their own direction and leave you alone when you need them, etc. I have to say that from my weekend with this group of chuckleheads, every single one I played with and chatted to were cool guys who I liked playing with and chatting to. Beyond that, in many cases (some of which I was part of , and others I heard chatter about), guys from Lincoln Force met in the world and adventured together, or, for example @Subjugation , @Tarkhein and others like them (ie, the BIGGEST bros, who deserve being called out) totally went to lower level areas with some of our guildies and helped them out.

Again, I too soloed for a while and I enjoy doing so when I'm just not in the mood for group play - but I loved GW2 PvE and never had the poor experiences some here have. If you're in a bad way though, I really hope y'all give someone around these parts a hollar because seriously, they're pretty darn cool and additionally, sometimes the input of another player every now and then can re-energise the experience and provide a clearer direction of where you want to go with it.

For example, today I was wandering around the charr starting area with my lvl22 human (so I was being scaled down to lvl 10), and I hit some ROUGH mofos who had assaulted a waypoint. I beat my head against them for a while, but just couldnt make any headway and the walk back to them was hella long - so I put out a call on mumble for help and the afore mentioned pair showed up and we had a swag of fun while kicking their asses (I think they were giants? not ettins, that's for sure - on the far eastern side of the lvl1-15 area).

ED: @Lukeweizer - were you one of the ones who wanted to be added to the in-game roster after the beta started? Did we add you? I think we got to all of them, but I'm just making sure. I hope we didn't leave you out.

I think the reason I prefer soloing PvE is that I like taking my time and exploring when I first get to a new area. If I'm questing with the guildies, I feel obliged to keep up with them. Although while exploring I met up with another Lincoln Force compadre and we wandered around doing an event for a while. So all in all, I like exploring alone, and I like doing events with other people. Plus, WvW is infinitely better with guildies.

@Maystack: Oh man, you posted it in the other thread - and I would have taken a screenshot of it if shit wasn't so hectic at the time - but that trebuchet on the tower moment was... spectacular.

Anyway, yeah, I agree. I like exploring new things on my own and doing things solo in GW2 is definitely rewarding - and group play can sometimes add some pressure.

The point I'm trying to get across, though, is that if guys are actually not having fun or are running into brick walls out there, I hope they'll give us a buzz.

@selfconfessedcynic: Oh yeah, I definitely agree with that. I'd hate to see guildies struggling with parts of the game and not asking. Like yesterday I was doing the jumping puzzle in WvW, and while I wasn't on mumble, a few quick messages in the guild chat and people were helping out. All a person has to do is ask, and there's bound to be many people ready to help.

In short, soloing is doable most of the time. You might want to be at the higher end of the level range for an area, though, because if you take too much time killing a mob it will start to respawn on you. Yuck.

Also everyone is pretty nice. I spent most of my time "soloing" but often ran into people with similar goals, so we would party up, clear a cave, get our loot, and part ways.

The thing I will say about soloing is everything takes so long. Like the time to kill a single enemy almost triples on your own, compared to with only one other dude. I really liked it when I found other people doing the same Heart Quest as me as, even though I didn't interact with them in any meaningful way, they sped up the process of destroying shit. Otherwise that shit got long.

These threads make me sad : (

When it comes to soloing GW2, like others I spent large stretches alone just trekking through areas and looking around, doing random dynamic events and heart missions. I, like @Seppli and @Dark_Lord_Spam pointed out, think that for the vast majority of the game, playing with skill enables you to pretty much go anywhere and do anything except for some clearly group-focussed dynamic events.

However.

It's sad to me that when presented with such a fantastic resource like Lincoln Force, our guild, some people choose to actively not have fun (ie, in cases where guys logged in and wandered around aimlessly like @Lukeweizer ) rather than see what could happen if you play with us instead.

I understand the solo mentality to some extent, but I thought it generally rooted in the fact that most people you meet on the internet and in MMOs tend to not want to help, or to go their own direction and leave you alone when you need them, etc. I have to say that from my weekend with this group of chuckleheads, every single one I played with and chatted to were cool guys who I liked playing with and chatting to. Beyond that, in many cases (some of which I was part of , and others I heard chatter about), guys from Lincoln Force met in the world and adventured together, or, for example @Subjugation , @Tarkhein and others like them (ie, the BIGGEST bros, who deserve being called out) totally went to lower level areas with some of our guildies and helped them out.

Again, I too soloed for a while and I enjoy doing so when I'm just not in the mood for group play - but I loved GW2 PvE and never had the poor experiences some here have. If you're in a bad way though, I really hope y'all give someone around these parts a hollar because seriously, they're pretty darn cool and additionally, sometimes the input of another player every now and then can re-energise the experience and provide a clearer direction of where you want to go with it.

For example, today I was wandering around the charr starting area with my lvl22 human (so I was being scaled down to lvl 10), and I hit some ROUGH mofos who had assaulted a waypoint. I beat my head against them for a while, but just couldnt make any headway and the walk back to them was hella long - so I put out a call on mumble for help and the afore mentioned pair showed up and we had a swag of fun while kicking their asses (I think they were giants? not ettins, that's for sure - on the far eastern side of the lvl1-15 area).

ED: @Lukeweizer - were you one of the ones who wanted to be added to the in-game roster after the beta started? Did we add you? I think we got to all of them, but I'm just making sure. I hope we didn't leave you out.

@Lukeweizer: Yeah all you have to do is ask, and there's plenty of people who would be more than welcome to help. :)

I soloed up to 18. While leveling up isn't bad, the instances are killer solo (many of them took forever solo cause i would have to draw one our or try to kill one then wipe and repeat). I played Mesmer so they are much more squishier than most.

The open world stuff was rather easy to solo, almost too easy as a Guardian. I could easily take mobs of 4 and even solo veteran enemies with ease.

Though everything is more fun with friends so I didn't do too much soloing, mostly just gathering materials was my solo activity.

@Lukeweizer: I wasn't lying when I put that in the guild announcement. Never be afraid to reach out to your fellow guild members if you find yourself in a tough spot, regardless of what game mode it is.

@Lukeweizer: Oh yeah, definitely.

I found that once groups of us started forming, they swelled and we ended up having an even bigger ball of a time - so if you see us already in a group somewhere, you're more than welcome to join us or interrupt us if you need any help. But beyond that, as @Maystack and @Dark_Lord_Spam are already underlining for me, there's always some guys who are between events or in a similar lull as you are who don't mind jumping over and pitching in.

I forgot his name (sorry), but there was a case where myself, @Subjugation and @Dourin were checking out the start of the human starting area and we ran into another Lincoln Forcer just pudding around there. I added him to our party and he declined the request, running in a different direction - so I pm'd him asking why. His response was that he was checking out his personal story and didn't want to drag us into it, but my reply was that we were more than happy to experience his personal story with him and help out.

What followed was some cool stuff which I had personally not seen before, and some fun times. We didn't skip cut scenes/leave him behind or troll him, we just let him do his personal story while tagging along and killing dudes along side him (and I'm told that some parts we approached were much harder for dourin and subs when they were originally doing it solo).

The main thing with GW2 - in case you didn't already know - is that enemy drops and event rewards scale with your level even if you're currently being downscaled for an area. So I was getting lvl 22 drops in a lvl 8 area, along with much larger event rewards than I got the first time through. In general, GW2 encourages group play in many, many ways - so what would traditionally be a bother (getting someone who is a higher level to help you out) is actually a perfectly cool way to play which isn't wasting the time of anyone involved. This is just one reason why we always say that we're happy to help out.

Another is the down scaling - even though I was lvl 22, that lvl 10 area with the giants was still pretty darn challenging. Also, even though they had been through the area before, certain elements of that particular event chain were new to Subs and Tarkhein.

So, by asking for help you're not only going to get it, but you're also not wasting anyone's time and perhaps even exposing higher level members to content they haven't seen before.

It's good to hear that you'll be more inclined to hit us up next beta. Also, pop on the mumble if you get a chance - we usually have a couple of guys on there and the chatter is generally quite friendly. (as long as, say, me and @No0b0rAmA aren't on at the same time)

@selfconfessedcynic said:

Also, pop on the mumble if you get a chance - we usually have a couple of guys on there and the chatter is generally quite friendly. (as long as, say, me and @No0b0rAmA aren't on at the same time)

Ah! Your edit beat me to it. Haha. You could also get lucky and get to listen to the soothing tones of Akrid

I think it was Aax Heartrend (not sure what his GB name is) that we were running around with.

Also, don't just count people out as possible help just because their level is higher. Don't forget that the game scales players down to the level of the quest/event, so they'd benefit just as much as you by helping you out, experience-wise.

@Dourin said:

Also, don't just count people out as possible help just because their level is higher. Don't forget that the game scales players down to the level of the quest/event, so they'd benefit just as much as you by helping you out, experience-wise.

A billion times yes. I think when the dust settles on GW2, the thing that I hope more than anything makes it into the next generation of multiplayer worlds is this.

At the moment it looks like GW2 is based on "Solo Plus," in which you can solo just about anything that is solely of interest to you (assorted exploring) but will want some help when doing things are more generally appealing (like clearing out a mineral-rich cave packed full of ettins). After all, everybody get theirs in the end, so there's no incentive to not hook a brother up!