Will Southsun end in a Group Dungeon?

Will Southsun end in a Group Dungeon?

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Posted by: ForAce.1943

ForAce.1943

I can’t read this. Guys please. This is MMO, as i said earlier! For God sake! This game should push people to cooperate, not to separate between single/multi players! When AN will bring this feature of ‘easymode’, many ppl will never join party, coz they can do this alone. Find party isnt hard in this game.

Ok, about dungeon. Can somebody tell me what is that place? I don’t remember it! Looks like on the walls are karka eggs. Maybe this is screen of new dungeon.

Attachments:

http://www.gw2info.pl – All informations about Guild Wars 2 in one place. In polish.

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Posted by: LameFox.6349

LameFox.6349

When AN will bring this feature of ‘easymode’, many ppl will never join party, coz they can do this alone.

Hence it should only be useful for story completion. Then it can just serve to filter out the people who would have been dead weight anyway.

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Posted by: PseudoNewb.5468

PseudoNewb.5468

If there was a group generator I would try it. Put your name in the hat and the computer puts 5 players together to do it. Fine, no looking for a group, just go, win or fail so be it.

They should just throw in a single-person ‘easymode’ you can do for the story arc, but will only have a chance of receiving the loot from the one time.

Why don’t they combine these ideas. Instead of a single player mode, they should make a randoms mode, that blunts the need for coordination in ways… I dunno. (maybe remove the waypoint restrictions for team combat. Alter aggro AI and damage distribution so that you don’t need to worry so much about aggro control. Hell make randoms mode a 6 person mode so that there is a chance that one more guy can pick up the slack). Cut the rewards probabilities of drops for being easier. (But it really isn’t easier, since you are playing with randoms and lack proper coordination).

Then make a matchmaking system (might as well make it cross server too, in case of low population and to make it harder to game the system) to populate this mode of the dungeon. This should also be the only way to gain access to this easier mode.

The drop penalty should be good enough to discourage coordinated players from trying to game the system into putting them together in the randoms mode. (maybe like 1/5th so each random completion combined rewards of all 5 players only generates as much rare+ rewards as a single person would get in the regular mode.) If you are coordinated enough to trick the system, you might as well be playing regular mode.

I don’t think the complaint about partying is really about wanting to play solo, but about how much one may not want to go to the chat to look for a party. With a matchmaking system, you don’t have to do that. You just get an option to just tell the game, I’ll just play with a completely random party. And the players will know that they won’t play very well, but they will also know that the dungeon will be balanced accordingly.

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Posted by: LameFox.6349

LameFox.6349

^Every group I’ve done MF (and any other dungeon) with has been ‘random’. They don’t need an easier mode for that, I just think you’d still get people who refused to do it if they had to actually be in a group rather than just a bunch of people milling around the same event.

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Posted by: Milennin.4825

Milennin.4825

I hope there’ll be a dungeon.

Just who the hell do you think I am!?

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Posted by: Strejda Tom.6108

Strejda Tom.6108

Elbegast.. as usual. I see only about 3 people whining all the time about grouping up and Elbegast is one of them.)
I love the Molten Facility and I hope you will add another dungeon soon, it was epic even in full pug parties.

Strejda Tom, the last unicorn.
Always remember one thing – your opinion is your opinion not fact.

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Posted by: Pifil.5193

Pifil.5193

All I can say is that I am glad that the non-dungeon people seem to be a distinct minority. If you want a game that you play by yourself, then by definition an MMO is not for you. Play a single-player game like the Witcher or something. I hope they have a dungeon in this storyline and all of the others….the more the merrier.

What makes you think they’re a distinct minority? I don’t know what gave you that idea. Wishful thinking I suspect. Only ArenaNet will know if they’re a minority or the majority as they’re the ones who have the figures (or at least I hope they have).

If most of the people who completed the previous part of the Living Story completed the Dungeon then that’s fine but if most of the people who completed the rest of the Living Story didn’t complete the dungeon and most of the people who completed the dungeon didn’t complete the rest of the Living Story then they would do well to ensure that any future dungeons are not required to “finish” the story or if they are required that they scale or at least offer soloable story and a five man dungeon modes. Then everyone would be happy.

Personally, I did the Molten Facility dungeon once with a guild group for the story and I felt no need to repeat it, I would have preferred if it was an optional extra or (preferably) if there was a soloable mode. And I play with others all the time, in open world PVE, in WvW, I just don’t enjoy the five man dungeon model that much.

(edited by Pifil.5193)

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Posted by: Pirlipat.2479

Pirlipat.2479

I don’t mind if there is a dungeon which is a side-activity which is not connected to a story-chain. But if there is a story I think it shouldn’t be related to the dungeon-content.

I finally did this Molten-Facility but I did NOT enjoy it. People were very friendly but I again recognised that I do not that much enjoy dungeon-content. I also recognised that I personally don’t find it a good way to tell stories. There were cutscenes? Where? I was very busy surviving and not loosing my group. I could NOT enjoy the story itself. (If there was one)

For me it was like mindlessly slaughtering my way through the dungeon, way to busy not to get down all the time and clearly with no time to appreciate whatever was in there storywise. I rather felt like I was in that dredge-machine all the time – stressed.

(edited by Pirlipat.2479)

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Posted by: koopatroopa.5360

koopatroopa.5360

The F&F Dungeon was fun and unique. When it disappears in a week, it’ll leave us wanting more. That said, I’m am eager to return to Southsun for new content, whatever form it will take.

It left me wanting less. I can’t even bear to log in right now because I can’t finish my personal and F&F story due to the dungeons. They just sit there, on the top-right of my screen, mocking me. It’s destroyed all of my motivation to play.

Really? I don’t understand that. The dungeon isn’t extremely difficult if you’re well geared, (a prerequisite that is prettymuch assumed when you’re dealing with new endgame content) finding players isn’t particularly difficult (try your guild, friends list, lion’s arch map chat, or third party looking for group website), and the dungeon doesn’t take very long at all. You’ve still got a week to do it, too. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that it’s outright fun and features one of the coolest boss battles we’ve ever seen in guild wars 2.

Why are you unable to complete this content?

I had enough of 5 man dungeons in WoW. I came here to get away from that model. I played GW1 for years and never had to group to complete anything. Until the end of my personal and F&F storylines, I could solo the entire storylines. Now, my PERSONAL story will forever go uncompleted as well as the F&F storyline.

I don’t join guilds. I have no one on my friends list. I don’t beg and grovel others to carry me through content.

Don’t get me wrong; I like seeing other players in the game world. I like stopping in and helping them out, if I happen to pass by. I DO NOT like depending on them, begging them, hassling them, so that I may complete MY storylines.

If I wanted to party to run my dungeons, I would still be playing WoW.

Begging for a group? Hassling? What the frick?

Grouping is so easy and takes no effort at all. You don’t even need to talk to finish the place.

Perhaps its difficult for you because of your attitude? You don’t sound like an enjoyable person to be around to be honest.

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Posted by: Pirlipat.2479

Pirlipat.2479

Perhaps its difficult for you because of your attitude? You don’t sound like an enjoyable person to be around to be honest.

And so are you.^^ (Just mirroring your position.) I don’t know him. How can I judge? And even if he is not an enjoyable person. What are we doing now? Should he not be allowed to play this game anymore? Would you want to have him in your group? No? Well this is countering your argument. All he wants is to be left alone and still beeing able to finish his story. He is not forcing his way someone has to be on others. He is not asking others to change their personality.

There are people out there who find it NOT easy to group with others they don’t know, to finish a task they don’t know, while they like to have a loose way to get in contact with others in a slow way. If you don’t like me for that reason, fine.

(edited by Pirlipat.2479)

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Posted by: Azzer.8137

Azzer.8137

Hopefully it will end with another dungeon, being a guild (in this case group/adventurers) to take down a big bad boss makes sense, arenanet have always made it so people would play together while single players could play most of the game also, which is what they have done here and in GW1.

Those few people that dislike group content can see it all on youtube quite easily.

That said i personally don’t think there will be a dungeon this time around but my hope is that there will come one so people will be more often in Southsun Cove, it’s a beautiful area.

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Posted by: Tornix.2180

Tornix.2180

ugh most likely will end with another fungeon like every other update Anet have done. more struggle to find groups to do it, more boring grinding to get the ultimate prize at the end probably a hat. just more crap to do

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Posted by: LameFox.6349

LameFox.6349

ugh most likely will end with another fungeon like every other update Anet have done. more struggle to find groups to do it, more boring grinding to get the ultimate prize at the end probably a hat. just more crap to do

What on earth do you do it for then? Compulsive hat collection?

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Posted by: Zanshin.5379

Zanshin.5379

This is a MMO. Anet’s devs can’t waste time working on soloable content just for a few people.

Join a guild. You won’t have to group with strangers anymore.

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Posted by: hedix.1986

hedix.1986

Forcing people to party to complete a dungeon is just wrong, especially after a long chain of soloable content.

Shouldn’t partying up be an essential part of an MMO?
I mostly play this game for player interaction. Those empty / half-empty mid lvl maps are boring as hell as there is none around to assist in the events etc. Big events and dungeons are where the fun is.
If people don’t want to see other players, well play a normal RPG like Dragon Age, with actual good decent story and solo content.

I don’t mind dungeons as a part of a living / personal story, I’d just like them to stay on longer than 2 nanoseconds like MA so that non-grinder casual players may try it on…

[QQ] – ex RoS, current Piken Square
[DV] – megaboss community

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Posted by: panzer.6034

panzer.6034

ugh most likely will end with another fungeon like every other update Anet have done. more struggle to find groups to do it, more boring grinding to get the ultimate prize at the end probably a hat. just more crap to do

I’m trying to figure out if you’re joking or not

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Posted by: Chaosgyro.6023

Chaosgyro.6023

I have mixed feelings about the last dungeon. On one hand it was incredibly fun, but on the other I know I could only have completed it by being there during the initial day or two. I don’t have a guild, and hate spamming for a pug, so I needed that crush of people standing around looking for a group.

Honestly e best option would be to have a solo option, with greatly reduced rewards, and a group option that has all the goodies. Reward people for playing in groups instead of punishing people for being solo.

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Posted by: Atlas.9704

Atlas.9704

Yeah nothing about the term Massive Multiplayer Online implies being with groups at times.
Except for the first two words “Massive” and “Multiplayer” being together.

Someone needs to learn what the word massive means hint not 5 ppl, doing DE events sums up MMO more than dungeons, leave dungeons were they belong 2004 / wow, gw2 does group events beter though DEs and should be the focus of this game. Think of a chain event of DEs like the temples for the end of flame story instead of another lame dungeon? More ppl see the content = more ppl happy

Someone also needs to learn that more people fighting something means bigger lag.
Karka anyone? Exactly.

Even though it pains me to say it, gamers tend to expect dungeon style stuff because of the indoctrination of WoW and other titles like it. Do I particularly want 5 man dungeons being a requirement for a storyline? Nope.
Will I completely eradicate them from the game? Oh I wish I could, but in order to keep some gamers we have to entertain the possibility they still exist in our GW2.

Elona, Land of the Golden Sun….and undead…and poison. The travel brochure lied okay?!

(edited by Atlas.9704)

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Posted by: Morrigan.2809

Morrigan.2809

I am really glad you guys liked the Molten Facility.
I would have loved it if it was scalable like Barham, Rox instances, or for that matter Tixx’s toy shop.

You see I am one of those you seem to dislike because I cannot complete my personal story or the Molten Facility, because it requires a 5 man team.

Before you start bashing me that this is an MMO, just make a party, easy mode etc like I have read in this thread, let me stop you.

For various reasons my RL does not allow me to spend large chunks of time in a instance without the ability to afk at a moment’s notice, sometimes for an hour at a time.
So I do not group with strangers because it would be extremely unfair to them.

I would love to do the content and I had really high hopes when I could do the Barham and Rox instances solo, sadly only to find out the story I had been following for these months will end without me.

So please Anet- a dungeon would be awesome end to the SouthSun story, just please make it scalable. That way everyone can enjoy the content.

Gunnar’s Hold

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Posted by: mojowalker.3798

mojowalker.3798

I’ve seen threads like this all over the forums, and people are swift to jump on anyone mentioning the desire for the end of a soloable chain to be soloable and not a forced dungeon experience. I’m one of those — I enjoyed the F&F storyline, but have no interest in completing it with it being a dungeon. Same with the personal storyline once I came to know to complete it would involve a dungeon run. I don’t feel like I’m losing out — I liken it to legendaries … never going to spend the time/resources/etc., so I’ve accepted they’re something none of my chars will ever have, and so be it.

However, I did feel it worth pointing out the apparent subjectivity of the MM aspect of GW2, and other games, for that matter. It’s an online world, right? Similar to the cities we all live IRL … now, I don’t need anyone’s assistance to get to work, go to the store, etc. … there are tons of people around, sure, but I don’t need them for anything. I won’t turn a blind eye if someone trips and falls — I’ll be right there to help them up. Someone’s stranded on the side of the road, hazards flashing? No harm in stopping and asking if they need a hand. If I want to group up with a handful of friends and hit the bar, I can. The difference is that I’m not being required to join up with four other people to do anything.

The same applies here, to a certain extent. See someone struggling with a skill point, veteran, etc.? I’ll jump into the fray and help out. DE going on and it’s something that seems like it’d be fun to participate in? I’ll join in on the action. But I’m not being required to form a 5 person party to do any of that — I can just do it.

I personally don’t have a problem with dungeons being party-centric. I’d be happier if they were soloable, sure, but meh, if I never get to do them, I never get to do them. Kind of like the jumping puzzles — I’m an epic failure at those, so I’m not going to spend an hour or two frustrating myself to the point of heaving the keyboard out the window. But I do think that char’s personal stories shouldn’t end in a dungeon, since it is a personal story and everything leading up to it was soloable. As for F & F, I think if everyone had known it ended in a dungeon upfront to begin with, there’d be fewer threads expressing the dislike with being able to solo everything up to the end. Sure, there’d be threads of those expressing their dislike for it ending in a dungeon, but it wouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise, and those who don’t enjoy being required to form up parties wouldn’t participate in the first place.

Yes, it is a massive multiplayer game … but having a massive number of people playing the same game does not equate to being ram-rodded into 5 player groups to complete content. To me, and again, subjectivity here, it just means I’m part of a huge online world … one in which I go about doing what I’m doing, but not needing anyone else to do anything.

“If you can’t beat them, get a bigger stick.”
- Some random quote -
The Walkers and the Whispers, ANVIL ROCK

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Posted by: LameFox.6349

LameFox.6349

For various reasons my RL does not allow me to spend large chunks of time in a instance without the ability to afk at a moment’s notice, sometimes for an hour at a time.
So I do not group with strangers because it would be extremely unfair to them.

We carried loads of people through MF who were occasionally afk/dc’d, low level, or just inept and frequently dead. One lvl 18 guy we left there for the end half of the dungeon after he dc’d (had been crashing a while, we figured he might at least make it back and get to spectate the boss fight from his back on the floor or something). It’s really not a difficult dungeon at all and I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find some groups who just didn’t care about that.

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Posted by: KorbanDallas.7389

KorbanDallas.7389

@Mojowalker:
For your RL comparison, think of dungeons as your actual job, assuming you work in a place that is a team effort – for example, my last job I was part of an assembly line. I was, in fact in that situation, forced to work with 4-5 other people.

As for the general topic, it’s come up a lot, and I’ve expressed my opinions elsewhere, and I’ll do it here again because hey, we all like to hear opinions right? Makes us better people to hear all the different sides of the stories!

I enjoy the concept of dungeons – it’s something that allow the developers to specifically get done what they want without having to worry about taxing players computers or the world instance-limit (such as the Karka event, where many got thrown to overflow and even more ended up crashing mid-event). I like the fact that they can inject their brand of cutscenes more noticeably without me having to fear an enemy spawning there to attack me immediately upon it’s ending (because most dungeons don’t have constantly respawning badguys what with being geared towards specific people). I enjoy that it’s less of a zerg rush (how many people just sit there and auto-pilot the dragon DEs?) and can be much more interesting because of that lack-of-zerg.

I also enjoy the DEs, due to the scale and Musketeers style interaction with other players. I enjoy how the story or events in general can flow and be joined in progress with no extra loading screen or soul searching or delay.

What I would rather see, however, is that the cap of people for dungeons increase (so I could fit more of my Guild Members in there at once when they are on, instead of having to break off into little sub groups of 5 and 2 or 3 and 3), and then the dungeons implement a better scaling then we see in DEs. That’s the most important part – it scales correctly. I do feel that most dungeons should still require at least 2 people (for mechanical reasons – if you have a CoF moment where you need someone to control a point while another person goes to open a door, I feel it would lose some of the tension with an immortal NPC doing it), and I fully understand that the extremist solo players would still find this game-breaking, but finding one extra person wouldn’t be nearly as hard or time consuming as a 5 man party (as current) and with proper scaling of content it wouldn’t be so difficult that they would have much complaints on it not being possible.

For the argument of it being an MMO – its a stupid argument on both sides. Yes, there are tons of players, and no it isn’t a requirement of to force them to play together. On the other hand, the title is Guild Wars, and it would be silly to think that you would never need at one point or another to be in a guild that had other people. The entire personal story is just one big build up about how the races and people have to combine forces to fight the evil dragon superpower, and I can understand why people hate the idea of doing a dungeon (or aren’t able to for outside-reasons), but I’m sure you would also hate it if you’re final story quest was a zerg tank-n-spank that was boring. Could they have made it an instanced quest, where there was just tons and tons of NPCs in there to give it that feeling of massivity? Probably, but they didn’t. Doesn’t mean they aren’t going to keep experimenting and trying new things.

One final note: the AI hero’s in the original guild wars was a late addition through an expansion – they were not always there. The henchmen used to also be near useless, and could not be taken everywhere. Trying to use them as a basis in reference to gw2 (where mechanics are much more complex) is just as annoying an argument as all the people telling you that “Its an MMO!”

}——————————-{
http://avsla-gw2.blogspot.com/

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Posted by: Foddzy.6291

Foddzy.6291

The problem with required grouping is that it is not easy for everyone to find a group. The cool kids just group up with their guildies and friends but not everybody has that luxury. I stood around for nearly an hour trying to get a group for the F&F dungeon with no luck, it just isn’t worth it.

The real issue here is that GW2 needs some way to make grouping easier for people that are not in the in crowd.

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Posted by: Pixelpumpkin.4608

Pixelpumpkin.4608

The problem with required grouping is that it is not easy for everyone to find a group. The cool kids just group up with their guildies and friends but not everybody has that luxury. I stood around for nearly an hour trying to get a group for the F&F dungeon with no luck, it just isn’t worth it.

The real issue here is that GW2 needs some way to make grouping easier for people that are not in the in crowd.

I create PUGs all the time – newbies welcome, all classes welcome, underlevelled and undergeared characters welcome.

When I have people in my group who haven’t done the dungeon yet, I try to make sure that the group sticks together and gives them the time to experience it in full (not run ahead, etc.). Some runs take longer this way, and some are still fairly quick.

It shouldn’t take an hour to get a group together :\

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Posted by: Paponzi.1637

Paponzi.1637

Did you complete every single dungeon alone in GW1?

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Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

And NOTHING about the term ‘MMO’ implies that you are expected to form a party to complete content.

Except the word “multiplayer” and the fact that every MMO in existence has some form of high-end group content in PvE. Every. Single. One.

The problem with required grouping is that it is not easy for everyone to find a group. The cool kids just group up with their guildies and friends but not everybody has that luxury. I stood around for nearly an hour trying to get a group for the F&F dungeon with no luck, it just isn’t worth it.

The real issue here is that GW2 needs some way to make grouping easier for people that are not in the in crowd.

I create PUGs all the time – newbies welcome, all classes welcome, underlevelled and undergeared characters welcome.

When I have people in my group who haven’t done the dungeon yet, I try to make sure that the group sticks together and gives them the time to experience it in full (not run ahead, etc.). Some runs take longer this way, and some are still fairly quick.

It shouldn’t take an hour to get a group together :\

@Foddyz: You’re welcome to join [Lore]. We try to do a dungeon run every weekend with only guildies and friends.

However, if we cannot fill the group that way, we pick folks up. We tend to prefer the non-rushers and don’t mind if folks don’t have full exotic gear or even rares or what-have-you.

Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)

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Posted by: Mara.6782

Mara.6782

Dungeon full of Karkas :d

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Posted by: LameFox.6349

LameFox.6349

Dungeon full of Karkas :d

Judging by existing karkas, it should take roughly… three hours… per veteran mob. Not because they’re difficult, just to get through the hitpoints.

Of course, the small ones will all be easily cleared by putting up a wall of reflection and letting them all kill themselves/eachother.

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Posted by: Tachenon.5270

Tachenon.5270

Did you complete every single dungeon alone in GW1?

I completed most of the EotN dungeons in my main’s Master Dungeon Guide solo (with heroes). I ran a few with a friend, and maybe one or two with a group.

That’s the way I feel dungeons should be here, too.

Dungeons should be optional – bonus content, if you will – and should never be massively multiplayer roadblocks to story/quest completion.

The table is a fable.

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Posted by: panzer.6034

panzer.6034

The real trick if they don’t want to cap a story line with a dungeon is replacing it with something equally epic. So far they haven’t shown us they can do that. We get huge laggy zerg-fest mass events like Lost Shores or anemic, underwhelming solo content. If they are going to make something other than a 5 man dungeon, they’re going to have to do it completely different from what we’ve seen.

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Posted by: derLoko.2185

derLoko.2185

molten facility CAN be soloed if you really want to solo it that badly…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSoOHZ3FCc

edit: and some other dungeons can be soloed as well.

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Posted by: Morrigan.2809

Morrigan.2809

For various reasons my RL does not allow me to spend large chunks of time in a instance without the ability to afk at a moment’s notice, sometimes for an hour at a time.
So I do not group with strangers because it would be extremely unfair to them.

We carried loads of people through MF who were occasionally afk/dc’d, low level, or just inept and frequently dead. One lvl 18 guy we left there for the end half of the dungeon after he dc’d (had been crashing a while, we figured he might at least make it back and get to spectate the boss fight from his back on the floor or something). It’s really not a difficult dungeon at all and I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find some groups who just didn’t care about that.

That is encouraging to hear and I salute you for that, although I do not expect to be carried, be dead etc
My point is still that it is not fair for me to group with a pug and essentially waste their time just because I have to afk.
Scalable dungeons would solve this problem, it is really the best of both worlds and hurts no-one

Gunnar’s Hold

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Posted by: Elric Of Melnibone.4781

Elric Of Melnibone.4781

Yes, this is an MMO, and ArenaNet has done a WONDERFUL job in GW2 fostering player cooperation implicitly with the dynamic events and other open world ’quest’s like Skill Points and the karma hearts, and even WvW. They have not solved that for the instanced events. They did build a grouping mechanism for PvP, but not for dungeons.

Why? Maybe because people want to do dungeons with people they know more often than not. Once you are familiar and comfortable with a dungeon, grouping with randoms is not a problem if they also familiar and comfortable with it. The problem is that there is always a first time and also dungeons require a much higher skill level than the open world.

If I am with my friends, and/or in a voip channel with people I know, learning is not so stressful. Doing that with strangers is a huge turn off because you often end up with people looking to run through the whole thing assuming you know how. The net is that strangers plus stress is NOT a winning combination, and putting 5 man dungeons at the end of a personal story line is not consistent nor a good idea.

I personally have dragged my feet on this dungeon as I have done a number of the other dungeons, but not looking forward to that stress/stranger combo. My guild of personal friends can only come up with 3 players online at any one time, one of which is on vacation for 10 days. I will have to either force myself into it this weekend, assuming I can actually find a group, or leave it as an unchecked box on the achievements panel.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

Yeah nothing about the term Massive Multiplayer Online implies being with groups at times.
Except for the first two words “Massive” and “Multiplayer” being together.

Annnd…what does that have to do with being in groups? Massive refers to the world setting being massive, especially compared to the rather small worlds usually found in any game not made by Bethesda. Multiplayer means there are other players in the world. There’s nothing in either of those words that says a thing about being forced to team up with those other players. For that matter, there’s nothing there that says anything about actually interacting with those other players, just that they’re in the same game world as you are.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

Did you complete every single dungeon alone in GW1?

Who cares about the dungeons? I did, however, complete the entire Factions storyline alone right through beating Shiro (multiple times, actually, since the first time I did it I forgot to bring along my armor materials. :-/), and if I had the desire I could have done the same with the other ones.
This is the point of the OP’s question, really—the F&F story fell on its face in the end because the only option to finish it is a dungeon. I’d like to see an answer to the question myself, and for the same reasons—if all they’re going to do is end it with a dungeon again, I have better things to do with it than waste it (yet again) on a storyline I won’t be allowed to finish, even if the earlier stages are solo content.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

And NOTHING about the term ‘MMO’ implies that you are expected to form a party to complete content.

Except the word “multiplayer” and the fact that every MMO in existence has some form of high-end group content in PvE. Every. Single. One.

Mmmhmmm. I’m sure they do. Of course, there are also the MMOs that, in addition to this high-end group content, have high-end solo content as well. People like having options, after all.
Interestingly, a lot of people seem to be gravitating towards these these days—a fine example being Trion’s Rift, that made a point of specifically making solo versions of their dungeons be high-end solo content, so that more players could see the effort and rather lovely artwork they had put into them.

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Posted by: Atlas.9704

Atlas.9704

Yeah nothing about the term Massive Multiplayer Online implies being with groups at times.
Except for the first two words “Massive” and “Multiplayer” being together.

Annnd…what does that have to do with being in groups? Massive refers to the world setting being massive, especially compared to the rather small worlds usually found in any game not made by Bethesda. Multiplayer means there are other players in the world. There’s nothing in either of those words that says a thing about being forced to team up with those other players. For that matter, there’s nothing there that says anything about actually interacting with those other players, just that they’re in the same game world as you are.

And yet in gaming culture the term MMO usually refers to games where people come together, solve a problem, and are awarded because of it. The problem could be some big bad AI creature threatening things or another group of humans who need to be stopped because of some goal established by the game.

So once again this game was created for people to come together and complete objectives, thus getting rewards.

You may not like the idea of an instanced 5 man dungeon, for the record I’m never keen it either nor the guild part, but its going to be there. The gaming culture expects it thanks to various titles in the past that supplied such things for Online RPGs.

I love how people try to dissect my quote as if that is going to help combat the fact that we will have group instances. The current gamer mindset practically is indoctrinated to find those kitten things.

What GW2 does well is give others options that are away from it, so maybe it will help ‘deprogram’ folks. However we will still have these things and either must accept this or constantly make topics about how we don’t like them and never face the fact it won’t change.

Now I agree with most of the posts saying it shouldn’t be the main focus for the ending, but considering the alternative was the massive zerg battle with lag and not the Karka I’d say we can’t really win this argument.

Elona, Land of the Golden Sun….and undead…and poison. The travel brochure lied okay?!

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

I hope it ends with something as epic as the Molten Facility dungeon, which was and still is at the moment an amazing dungeon by the way.

Bully on the players that don’t want to group up for dungeons; there is enough content for them to solo already, besides, the only other way I can figure to end an arc on an epic note is a world boss like Tequatl or The Shatterer, and even though you don’t have to group for those kinds of fights, you can’t solo them either.

Ending with a solo dungeon or a personal instance would just feel like a fizzle to me.

Honestly…I’m all for the dungeon-runners getting more content. Just don’t start it as solo, only end it with a dungeon—make it dungeons all the way through (and don’t be upset when all the non-dungeoneers out there who bought GW2 because of the lack of mandatory dungeons largely ignore it).

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

being in an MMO really throws out the point that you should at least make some kind of attempt at some point to do group play…

Hmmm. So I suppose all of those events where groups show up to do them aren’t group play? Or Champions that generally require groups of people in order to take down? Or those events with the big ‘Group’ label in front of them—those obviously aren’t any form of group play, right?
Why do people continue to insist that dungeons are the only form of group play? I’d say the evidence against that idea is pretty overwhelming. If I wanted to keep being stuck in 5-man teams, I’d be playing basketball, not GW2.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

I don’t want to get involved in the whole discussion about group content vs. solo playstyle in an MMO in general all over again, so I’d just like to reply to the original post.

After MF was so much better than the regular dungeons… I HOPE that there will be an equally fun one in the Southsun story. I am not much of a dungeon player at all usually, but I enjoy(ed) MF so much that I am actively looking forward to a Southsun themed one now.

I can’t stand dungeons myself—but I would have no complaint with them having a dungeon as part of the content, as long as it wasn’t mandatory to completing the storyline.
One downside to GW’s payment method, I suppose, despite how much I prefer it over a subscription scheme—it’s a case of ‘Too bad, so sad, we have your money and you’ve been had’ where there’s no equivilent to the subscription-drop stick to prevent them from pulling this sort of thing over and over again.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

Each part of the Southsun story arc should require 5 man groups, so we can stop the whine.

Hee…the whine from the dungeoneers that there should be more content that only they can do? ;-)

Honestly, I would like to see them do this, both to provide another encapsulated storyline like the Destiny’s Edge, and to see see what kind of a minority the pure non-soloists really are, as compared to the ones who just ignore it entirely due to their interest in GW2 being that it’s one of the uncommon games that provide lots of ways to interact other than regimented teams and dungeons.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

It’s a balance between a wide variety of different elements. consider that the flame and frost storyline is told through all of the following methods…

-Massive group events designed for a large base of players
-Solo collection quests and story content designed for one player
-small personal quest-esque instances that are designed simeltaneously for one player and multiple players
-dungeon content designed for five players

It’s not just solo content followed by a sudden slap-in-the-face dungeon, guild wars 2 has an infrastructure made up of a variety of different pieces molded together that are constantly mingling and interacting with one another. This sort of variety allows players to experience the flame and frost story in different ways, without feeling as if the whole experience is homogenized to fit one playstyle. The group dungeon is also tuned to such a difficulty that anyone who is willing to put in minimal effort to find a group can complete it. It’s not a serious roadblock that is preventing people from completing the content at all. It’s an easily surpass-able speed bump that tells a story in a different way.

I wouldn’t call it easily surpassible, nor would I necessarily not call it a slap in the face, but otherwise you raise some very valid points.

Honestly, I think the fundamental problem was that F&F was only doing one of these things at a given time, providing no options (and the dungeoneers do have as valid an argument about being forced to do the solo collect-a-thons as the rest of us do about getting roadblocked by a dungeon).
What needs to happen is that at any given stage of an event, all of these need to be in play, giving players the choice of which tasks to do, all culminating in the final reward for participating. After all, despite these arguments tending to polarize around dungeoneer vs. non-dungeoneer (come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen any pure solos—those who won’t even do the open-world group content—at all), there are those who like both—and this would give to do one kind of task in one stage, do a different type in another, and run the dungeon in a third, as they choose, rather than being railroaded into one or the other.
And if Arenanet can’t be bothered to put in enough design effort to cover all the bases—they probably shouldn’t be running this content at all, instead putting the effort and money into permanant expansions.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

When AN will bring this feature of ‘easymode’, many ppl will never join party, coz they can do this alone.

Hence it should only be useful for story completion. Then it can just serve to filter out the people who would have been dead weight anyway.

Hate to bruise your ego, but in a lot of cases that tends to be one of the reasons why people would rather run an instance alone, because of the dead weight they end up carrying. This is also part of the reason why more than a few MMOs have been adding soloable content of late—to let them go ahead and do the content, instead of dealing with an endless stream of fail-groups.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

All I can say is that I am glad that the non-dungeon people seem to be a distinct minority. If you want a game that you play by yourself, then by definition an MMO is not for you. Play a single-player game like the Witcher or something. I hope they have a dungeon in this storyline and all of the others….the more the merrier.

What makes you think they’re a distinct minority? I don’t know what gave you that idea. Wishful thinking I suspect. Only ArenaNet will know if they’re a minority or the majority as they’re the ones who have the figures (or at least I hope they have).

If most of the people who completed the previous part of the Living Story completed the Dungeon then that’s fine but if most of the people who completed the rest of the Living Story didn’t complete the dungeon and most of the people who completed the dungeon didn’t complete the rest of the Living Story then they would do well to ensure that any future dungeons are not required to “finish” the story or if they are required that they scale or at least offer soloable story and a five man dungeon modes. Then everyone would be happy.

Personally, I did the Molten Facility dungeon once with a guild group for the story and I felt no need to repeat it, I would have preferred if it was an optional extra or (preferably) if there was a soloable mode. And I play with others all the time, in open world PVE, in WvW, I just don’t enjoy the five man dungeon model that much.

Indeed. I really do wonder just how much of the player base has never finished a Personal Storyline—and how many hit that last mission and haven’t ever logged into the game again.
And I’m quite in agreement with you—provide solo and group content..though I am compelled to point out that the vast majority of the ‘solo’ content is quite easily done as a group—formal 5-squads or not—as well. The reverse can’t be said about the dungeons, unfortunately.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

This is a MMO. Anet’s devs can’t waste time working on soloable content just for a few people.

Join a guild. You won’t have to group with strangers anymore.

This is a MMO. Anet’s devs can’t waste time working on dungeons just for a few people who can’t grasp the idea that there are other ways for players to interact than being shoved into 5-man teams.

Join a guild. Unless you’re lucky, you won’t be lacking for people you increasingly despise anymore.
(Admittedly, that last is a bit of a stretch—there are a lot of decent guilds around here, though there are bad ones as well—this is true of any MMO. But personally, if I wanted to join a clique I’d have brought my own to start with. I get plenty of social interaction via casual chatting, I have no use for a buddy-circle.)

(edited by Vulpis.8063)

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

molten facility CAN be soloed if you really want to solo it that badly…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSoOHZ3FCc

edit: and some other dungeons can be soloed as well.

Sorry—spending $100 or so (gems → gold → Purples) to get uber-geared like this guy (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he earned either the items themselves or the gold to buy them from the Trader, as opposed to buying it indirectly with RL cash) isn’t a particularly viable--or palatable—option.
Show an average player being able to do it with just rares and maybe a few exotics, then we’ll be getting somewhere. Nice try, though.

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Posted by: Jemmi.6058

Jemmi.6058

molten facility CAN be soloed if you really want to solo it that badly…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSoOHZ3FCc

edit: and some other dungeons can be soloed as well.

Sorry—spending $100 or so (gems -> gold -> Purples) to get uber-geared like this guy (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he earned either the items themselves or the gold to buy them from the Trader, as opposed to buying it indirectly with RL cash) isn’t a particularly viable--or palatable—option.
Show an average player being able to do it with just rares and maybe a few exotics, then we’ll be getting somewhere. Nice try, though.

The average player runs around in rares? That is news to me. :| It literally takes 12-15 gold to deck out in exotic gear from TP, or 250k Karma, or a bunch of dungeon runs (or a combination of the 3).. It shouldn’t take you more than a week to get fully in exotics after you hit 80. To give casual players the benefit of the doubt, this should most definitely not take more than a month. On my last 2 characters, it takes me 30 seconds to gear my character in exotics upon hitting 80. The first took about 2 weeks and the 2nd took about 2 days.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

I have mixed feelings about the last dungeon. On one hand it was incredibly fun, but on the other I know I could only have completed it by being there during the initial day or two. I don’t have a guild, and hate spamming for a pug, so I needed that crush of people standing around looking for a group.

Honestly e best option would be to have a solo option, with greatly reduced rewards, and a group option that has all the goodies. Reward people for playing in groups instead of punishing people for being solo.

I could certainly get behind that. The gold and karma rewards for something like this are pretty much meaningless anyway—and if you make it Tradable, having special rewards like the Jetpack in the dungeon but not the solo would be a decent tradeoff (and making it tradable would ward off the inevitable complaint about it only being in the dungeon—non-dungeoneers could still get it, they’d just have to pay an arm, a leg, both ears, and their genitals on the Trader to do so. The line for this is always between possible and impossible, never between impossible and easy. ;-) )

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Posted by: Arcturus.5846

Arcturus.5846

I think the problem is shift in requirements between audience. MMO doesnt mean you need to do dungeons. It just means there will be other players playing with you be it direct like grouping up or socializing. I know alot of people who plays MMO for one specific content (like PvP) and refuses to PvE. In my case, I refuse to to Dungeons but enjoy the story content of it. Why do I have dungeons? blame it on dull mechanics with little rewads. I still enjoy grouping up and in fact prefer it but I am not interested in dunegons period.

So what happens if you force people to do dungeons for story? Well you get GW1. The last few missions are ALWAYS empty with maybe 1-2 people. Only way you would even have any chance to finish it would be with heroes and hecnhies.

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Posted by: Vulpis.8063

Vulpis.8063

@Mojowalker:
For your RL comparison, think of dungeons as your actual job, assuming you work in a place that is a team effort – for example, my last job I was part of an assembly line. I was, in fact in that situation, forced to work with 4-5 other people.

<snippage>

For the argument of it being an MMO – its a stupid argument on both sides. Yes, there are tons of players, and no it isn’t a requirement of to force them to play together. On the other hand, the title is Guild Wars, and it would be silly to think that you would never need at one point or another to be in a guild that had other people. The entire personal story is just one big build up about how the races and people have to combine forces to fight the evil dragon superpower, and I can understand why people hate the idea of doing a dungeon (or aren’t able to for outside-reasons), but I’m sure you would also hate it if you’re final story quest was a zerg tank-n-spank that was boring. Could they have made it an instanced quest, where there was just tons and tons of NPCs in there to give it that feeling of massivity? Probably, but they didn’t. Doesn’t mean they aren’t going to keep experimenting and trying new things.

One final note: the AI hero’s in the original guild wars was a late addition through an expansion – they were not always there. The henchmen used to also be near useless, and could not be taken everywhere. Trying to use them as a basis in reference to gw2 (where mechanics are much more complex) is just as annoying an argument as all the people telling you that “Its an MMO!”

Using RL jobs is probably a not the best example to defend your point, I think—especially for people like me who get stuck with me doing the bulk of the work while the rest of the ‘team’ stand around gossiping or playing with their cell phones. If anything, it reinforces not wanting to be stuck with that in the time you’re supposed to be enjoying recreation. :-)

As far as the GW1 thing goes…hmm. My view there is primarily a side-effect of me having been a latecomer to the game—when I started, I was given the Trilogy set and the EotN expansion by a friend, so my entire gameplay experience (and a good portion of why I enjoyed it so much) involved having access to the henchmen and Heroes, rather than having to hunt down and shanghai other players to get through the missions. As you point out, what I was seeing was quite different from what someone from before those were in place would have seen.

And yeah, the ‘Because it’s an MMO’ thing is getting really annoying, especially since the people who keep using it seem to be fixated on the idea that 5-man teams are the only player interaction in the game. Meanwhile, from my persepective (as far as PvE goes, anyway—I’m not likely to touch PvP in any of the flavors any time soon, if ever) there’s tons of different means of player interaction with the forced-group dungeons being the only one of those I can’t stomach.