Guild Wars 2

Zanshin.5379:

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

Don’t like to group with strangers?
Join an arbitrarily-defined, insular group of strangers!

Totally different.

Atlas.9704:

Vulpis.8063:

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.

True…to a degree. But a trend I’m noticing is that while there’s the group who ‘expect’ that sort of thing (though at least in part this is because one famous 800lb gorilla of a game does it, and people roaming elsewhere start pitching hissies because they want this other game they’re playing to be different and at the same time just the same as that famous one…), there’s a fairly significant group of players out there who are flat-out tired of it (to the point of being varying degrees of irritated when they’re stuck doing it) and instead look for the games that avoid using it as their primary form of content…such as Guild Wars 2. To use your phrasing, I think the ‘deprogramming’ is already happening on it’s own.

Kind of amusing thing—earlier today I was, for lack of a better term, meditating on the history of tabletop RPGs, MMOs, and how they progressed and linked to each other—things like the early text-based MMOs being more geared to individual play…and there being a solution to a lack of other players that, while pretty much a stock thing for CRPG/JRPGs (where you’re running the party as a whole rather than just the lead character), Guild Wars 1 is the only MMO, to my knowledge, that even remotely duplicates it without rather silly degrees of additional hardware and makeshift addons.

GM: “This adventure is too much for Bob the Fighter to take on alone.”
Bob: “It is? Not a problem!” <slaps character sheet on the table> “Here’s Fred the Mage, I’ll be running him, too.”
GM: “Alrighty, then!”

Dark Saviour.9410:

Zanshin.5379:

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

Don’t like to group with strangers?
Join an arbitrarily-defined, insular group of strangers!

Totally different.

Jemmi.6058:

Vulpis.8063:

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.

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.

Hmms. Point—given I’m not overly casual or majorly hardcore, I was counting myself as an ‘average’ player—and I’ve picked up a fairly decent selection of yellows as drops from things like Jumping Puzzles, the chests from Maw and similar group events (wow, things that you do as a group without having to form a 5-man team! The mind boggles!), and sometimes Daily/Monthly achievements (though the Dailies usually only gave Karma Containers, Mystic Coins, and sometimes Keys, rather than equipment). (My favorite pirate hat was a yellow from a Maw chest, and I’ve been transferring the look across my headgear since, even though I did find a higher-level pirate hat…as well as hitting the Trader for the same Divinity…Mark, I think it is (I forget what kind of upgrade goes where, really. :-/ ) that was on it originally. Of course, I’m a far from optimal build, either—I was rather dismayed to finally go looking at the thief forum and learn that the dual-pistol setup that I chose because I’ve had fun with dual-pistol character in multiple other systems and the Signets I chose for the passives rather than active effects I’d keep having to trigger over and over again are generally considered not just one of the worst thief builds, but one of the worst in the game overall. :-/
Come to think of it, building up my crafting levels and looking into what was needed for making exotics and the things needed for the Mystic Forge was one of of the things I was getting ready to work on before this F&F dungeon mess turned me off from playing GW2 entirely. :-/

Edit: D’oh! Went and re-read your post, and realized I probably misunderstood your tone entirely—I thought you meant you were disbelieving that average players were up to rares, when you really meant you were disbelieving that the were only as far as rares, rather than the higher grades of gear. Which would put me at even more of a disadvantage compared to the guy in the video for not having gotten there yet. :-/ I’m more casual than I thought.

Vulpis.8063:

LameFox.6349:

ForAce.1943:

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.

What does that have to do with my ego?

One of the better things about MF is that the content is soloable, it’s just slower and/or harder that way. Even if I end up soloing certain parts while an otherwise dead group watches, it’s still worth having them there just for the extra damage and distraction they provide alive, because when they die it’s just like if I’d decided to go alone. But in the vast majority of runs I made, deaths were relatively few (fewer still, if we don’t count bouncing off the wall jumping down to cross the lava, or players accidentally or intentionally leaping off edges) and even lower level players handled themselves decently.

Apparently this is at odds with most forum-goers’ experiences (in fact often there’d be one or two people even in those groups who said it was one of – if not the – fastest runs they’d done) which amuses me because I’m in a whole 2 person guild, and always have to pick up randoms – which I/we don’t even bother to question the validity of – to do dungeons. Maybe it’s my habit of using magic-find foods before getting around to looking for people…

I hope we get a “Choice”, solo or team play… Like SAB worked..

I honestly like both types content, but the looking for groups, finding guildies that wanna go, not having player drop mid dungeon, disagreements over things in them, different timezones etc etc…

I agree with the OP sometimes Solo is just easier and faster.. or even just two players etc..

“Play the way you want to Play” … Yeah right..

Vulpis.8063:

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.

You’re both using the wrong word anyway… it’s Massively Multiplayer Online- (et cetera).

If everyone would rather do it alone than in a group then what’s the problem. Your saying that a few players want to do dungeons in 5 man groups but that the only way to get enough players to do it that way is to punish everyone else and make them do it in 5 man groups.

Easy mode would be fine, but why not just adjust the dungeon to the amount of players going in. They have the technology or seem to be using it all the time in PvE and other places in the game.

And the question was actually is the new living story going to force group to finish too?
Since I did all the work on the first and won’t get to finish, I’d like to not WASTE my time in this new one too.

Your question is kind of out of place and I hope it is not so! Games like this is about exploring and unlock great adventures in the open world and dungeons. Without dungeons this and all games like this would be very poor. Placing a dungeon in a story line gives a great deal of substance to both the story and the dungeon. I think this was a great thing they did.

Vulpis.8063:

Pifil.5193:

Whattman.5841:

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.

And this exact issue has been brought up time and time again — the concept of scalable content. I don’t believe anyone, myself included, who prefers enjoying content by soloing it, is suggesting that all content be set up so that is mandatory for the player to handle it solo. Much as you said, all of the solo content that currently exists can be done as a group. But the flipside to that is that dungeons cannot be. If DEs and other events can be set to scale to the numbers of players present, there’s really no reason that dungeons can’t be as well. City of Heroes (RIP) handled this perfectly, and even included options for how you wanted to handle an instance — you could set them so that they scaled as if you were a higher level than you were, a lower lever than you were, as if there were several players in group, so that way it could be as challenging as you wanted it to be. And much as other folks have mentioned, the loot could be scaled to drop accordingly as well.

In the end, no one is suggesting that group content be removed, but that a greater degree of flexibility is introduced to accomodate players of all styles.

It’s really very simple.

Start out solo, end solo.
Start out group, end group.

I got a group for both the personal story and the dungeon in flame and frost so no, I didn’t require it to be solo. But, in principle, I agree that if something is solo for all the steps but the end step and suddenly switches to group, it is annoying to many.

Vulpis.8063:

Edit: D’oh! Went and re-read your post, and realized I probably misunderstood your tone entirely—I thought you meant you were disbelieving that average players were up to rares, when you really meant you were disbelieving that the were only as far as rares, rather than the higher grades of gear. Which would put me at even more of a disadvantage compared to the guy in the video for not having gotten there yet. :-/ I’m more casual than I thought.

Hey Vulpis,

Yes, I was definitely in disbelief that average players only wore rares and not exotics. It is clearly the intent of ANet to make max gear easy to obtain.

Might I suggest the following: do what you are doing (maw, JP, other bosses etc), which is easily soloable. Buy a Mystic Salvage Kit (Master + Fine + whatever the other one is called + Mystic Stone into Mysitc Forge). Use Mysitc Salvage kit to salvage all yellows which are worth less than 30s and sell all yellows that are worth more than 30 s on TP. Sell all Ectos you get from salvaging. Within a week you should have enough gold to buy yourself full exotic gear.

Alternatively, you can run the events (meta events and smaller events) and hit up Karma vendors in Orr for Exotic gear. I find this is less desirable, because 1. you do not get the exact stats you want on your armour and 2. it seems slower.

I hope that helps!

Back to the topic about dungeons and non dungeons. We do expect dungeons in a game like this. This, as many MMO games, is based off of DND. In Dungeons and Dragons you team up with a few others and venture into a dungeon. That is where it came from (not WoW, go figure). It’s a lot of fun for some of us, and the entire reason we play the game.

There is waaaaaaaaay more soloable content then there are dungeons, and I appreciate that they added this one. Think of the ratio in living story of solo content vs dungeons. Think of the ratio in personal story. Think of the ratio of number of dynamic events to dungeons. Think of the ratio of number of zones to dungeons. The ratio is clearly in solo plays favour. Let us have our 1 off dungeons and stop trying to ruin the game for others.

Thanks.

Jemmi.6058:

Alternatively, you can run the events (meta events and smaller events) and hit up Karma vendors in Orr for Exotic gear. I find this is less desirable, because 1. you do not get the exact stats you want on your armour and 2. it seems slower.

Some of the sets they sell are actually quite good, PTV in particular. Of course each vendor is different and they don’t have the full set of each stats-type (except jewellery for whatever reason), so you’d certainly get an odd set of stats if you bought the whole suit of armour from just one of them.

Also for some reason there doesn’t seem to be a heavy helmet at any of them in PTV, which is weird, but you can get it from (gasp!) dungeons in only a few runs, or WvW (I don’t know how long that takes, I’ve always gone already equipped).

People make grouped content sound like somethin new lol gw2 was intended for all kinds of gameplay style and grouped dungeons oooo nooo shocker thats part of the game that is INTENDED for the group play like it or dont like it but u should excpect it.

But at least the grouped dungeons are a very small end of the content they toss out.

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Jemmi.6058:

Vulpis.8063:

Edit: D’oh! Went and re-read your post, and realized I probably misunderstood your tone entirely—I thought you meant you were disbelieving that average players were up to rares, when you really meant you were disbelieving that the were only as far as rares, rather than the higher grades of gear. Which would put me at even more of a disadvantage compared to the guy in the video for not having gotten there yet. :-/ I’m more casual than I thought.

Hey Vulpis,

Yes, I was definitely in disbelief that average players only wore rares and not exotics. It is clearly the intent of ANet to make max gear easy to obtain.

Might I suggest the following: do what you are doing (maw, JP, other bosses etc), which is easily soloable. Buy a Mystic Salvage Kit (Master + Fine + whatever the other one is called + Mystic Stone into Mysitc Forge). Use Mysitc Salvage kit to salvage all yellows which are worth less than 30s and sell all yellows that are worth more than 30 s on TP. Sell all Ectos you get from salvaging. Within a week you should have enough gold to buy yourself full exotic gear.

Alternatively, you can run the events (meta events and smaller events) and hit up Karma vendors in Orr for Exotic gear. I find this is less desirable, because 1. you do not get the exact stats you want on your armour and 2. it seems slower.

I hope that helps!

Back to the topic about dungeons and non dungeons. We do expect dungeons in a game like this. This, as many MMO games, is based off of DND. In Dungeons and Dragons you team up with a few others and venture into a dungeon. That is where it came from (not WoW, go figure). It’s a lot of fun for some of us, and the entire reason we play the game.

There is waaaaaaaaay more soloable content then there are dungeons, and I appreciate that they added this one. Think of the ratio in living story of solo content vs dungeons. Think of the ratio in personal story. Think of the ratio of number of dynamic events to dungeons. Think of the ratio of number of zones to dungeons. The ratio is clearly in solo plays favour. Let us have our 1 off dungeons and stop trying to ruin the game for others.

Thanks.

Actually, that info probably will be rather useful as a starting point if i can ever make myself pick up the game again—I’d been zone-clearing the lower-level areas, and hadn’t gone to the level 80 ones yet other than poking my nose in to do the ‘Under New Management’ jumping puzzle (just as well, since I’m even less likely to bother getting their ‘normally’ since there’s no real point in bothering with the Personal Story anymore). I haven’t even looked at Orr yet—though I suspect I’m going to regret spending my karma on ‘cultural’ weapons when I do.

As for the rest of your post—to be honest, I don’t think anyone wants the dungeon removed. In fact, I quite fully support the folks that want it to be kept permanantly in some fashion. The core problem is how it ends up being a complete roadblock (there’s a much more appropriate term, but I don’t think the mods would allow it even if the filter did. ;-) ) to those who can not and/or will not tolerate the forced 5-man grouping (as compared to the open-world ‘show up and do stuff’ sort of thing). What’s desired is the dungeon and some other mission/instance/event that lets the rest of us reach the same goal.

panzer.6034:

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Wait…I set foot in the dungeon, and as far as I know, I did not get the achievement—I thought you only got that for completing the dungeon?
Or has this something that’s been changed in the last few days that I haven’t been playing at all?

Goldrock.9076:

People make grouped content sound like somethin new lol gw2 was intended for all kinds of gameplay style and grouped dungeons oooo nooo shocker thats part of the game that is INTENDED for the group play like it or dont like it but u should excpect it.

But at least the grouped dungeons are a very small end of the content they toss out.

Kind of the opposite, really—the big thing about GW2 (and 1, or at least the later version of 1 that I saw when I played) is that they’ve gotten nearly completely away from the mandatory grouping model, instead providing content that handles being played solo or in groups. Slapping a mandatory formal-grouping dungeon smack-dab on the end of what has otherwise been nothing of the sort sticks out horribly as bad design.

Like you say, there’s only a couple of spots (currently only the 2, and one of those two is going in the trash can in a few days) where that happens—unfortunately, they happen to be rather critical as the final portion of storyline content.

Vulpis.8063:

Jemmi.6058:

Vulpis.8063:

Edit: D’oh! Went and re-read your post, and realized I probably misunderstood your tone entirely—I thought you meant you were disbelieving that average players were up to rares, when you really meant you were disbelieving that the were only as far as rares, rather than the higher grades of gear. Which would put me at even more of a disadvantage compared to the guy in the video for not having gotten there yet. :-/ I’m more casual than I thought.

Hey Vulpis,

Yes, I was definitely in disbelief that average players only wore rares and not exotics. It is clearly the intent of ANet to make max gear easy to obtain.

Might I suggest the following: do what you are doing (maw, JP, other bosses etc), which is easily soloable. Buy a Mystic Salvage Kit (Master + Fine + whatever the other one is called + Mystic Stone into Mysitc Forge). Use Mysitc Salvage kit to salvage all yellows which are worth less than 30s and sell all yellows that are worth more than 30 s on TP. Sell all Ectos you get from salvaging. Within a week you should have enough gold to buy yourself full exotic gear.

Alternatively, you can run the events (meta events and smaller events) and hit up Karma vendors in Orr for Exotic gear. I find this is less desirable, because 1. you do not get the exact stats you want on your armour and 2. it seems slower.

I hope that helps!

Back to the topic about dungeons and non dungeons. We do expect dungeons in a game like this. This, as many MMO games, is based off of DND. In Dungeons and Dragons you team up with a few others and venture into a dungeon. That is where it came from (not WoW, go figure). It’s a lot of fun for some of us, and the entire reason we play the game.

There is waaaaaaaaay more soloable content then there are dungeons, and I appreciate that they added this one. Think of the ratio in living story of solo content vs dungeons. Think of the ratio in personal story. Think of the ratio of number of dynamic events to dungeons. Think of the ratio of number of zones to dungeons. The ratio is clearly in solo plays favour. Let us have our 1 off dungeons and stop trying to ruin the game for others.

Thanks.

Actually, that info probably will be rather useful as a starting point if i can ever make myself pick up the game again—I’d been zone-clearing the lower-level areas, and hadn’t gone to the level 80 ones yet other than poking my nose in to do the ‘Under New Management’ jumping puzzle (just as well, since I’m even less likely to bother getting their ‘normally’ since there’s no real point in bothering with the Personal Story anymore). I haven’t even looked at Orr yet—though I suspect I’m going to regret spending my karma on ‘cultural’ weapons when I do.

As for the rest of your post—to be honest, I don’t think anyone wants the dungeon removed. In fact, I quite fully support the folks that want it to be kept permanantly in some fashion. The core problem is how it ends up being a complete roadblock (there’s a much more appropriate term, but I don’t think the mods would allow it even if the filter did. ;-) ) to those who can not and/or will not tolerate the forced 5-man grouping (as compared to the open-world ‘show up and do stuff’ sort of thing). What’s desired is the dungeon and some other mission/instance/event that lets the rest of us reach the same goal.

I get your point, but my point is that I prefer these dungeons over the other content. The other content is easy enough that taking others just makes it waaaay to easy. If it were my way, I would have had every single personal story mission and every living story mission as a group event. This is similar to how Guild Wars 1 did it. One advantage is you could get henchmen in Guild Wars 1, so you could solo the group content.

If I were to suggest anything, I’d say keep the idea of grouped events the way they are, but add the ability for those who do not like to group to have an option such as henchmen.

I hope so, the dungeon was the best part of the content. The more dungeons this game can get the better.

This is an MMO, I mean all three letters involve playing with other people.

Vulpis.8063:

panzer.6034:

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Wait…I set foot in the dungeon, and as far as I know, I did not get the achievement—I thought you only got that for completing the dungeon?
Or has this something that’s been changed in the last few days that I haven’t been playing at all?

i got the achievement the moment i loaded into the dungeon.

panzer.6034:

Vulpis.8063:

panzer.6034:

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Wait…I set foot in the dungeon, and as far as I know, I did not get the achievement—I thought you only got that for completing the dungeon?
Or has this something that’s been changed in the last few days that I haven’t been playing at all?

i got the achievement the moment i loaded into the dungeon.

Huh. That…is complete news to me, and if nothing else rather substantially invalidates my reasons for avoiding playing at all the last several days, not to mention most if not all of my reasons for asking for solo content in addition to the dungeon, if it’s true. I’ll have to log in and check to see if it ever ticked for me (I tried it either the first or second day it was in place). If you have the tick and I don’t, I wonder when the behavior got changed, and more importantly why the flaming dolyak droppings noone’s said anything about it before now?

Edit: Not sure if I should ask, or actually log in and check—but it the achievement did tick, did you also get access to story-scene achievement it’s a pre-req for, and the story-scenes themselves, since those are what are actually needed for the overall event completion, not the dungeon achievement? I’m still boggling that, if this is actually true, that noone has said anything about it if for no other reason than to shut up myself and others who have been complaining about it??

panzer.6034:

Vulpis.8063:

panzer.6034:

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Wait…I set foot in the dungeon, and as far as I know, I did not get the achievement—I thought you only got that for completing the dungeon?
Or has this something that’s been changed in the last few days that I haven’t been playing at all?

i got the achievement the moment i loaded into the dungeon.

I just tried and it didn’t work. You got lucky.

panzer.6034:

Vulpis.8063:

panzer.6034:

People also forget that you don’t have to do the dungeon to see the story wrap up on the 12th. That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon. Getting the finale of the story is completely separate from doing the optional dungeon content.

Wait…I set foot in the dungeon, and as far as I know, I did not get the achievement—I thought you only got that for completing the dungeon?
Or has this something that’s been changed in the last few days that I haven’t been playing at all?

i got the achievement the moment i loaded into the dungeon.

I just checked, and either you hit a very lucky glitch, or you’re lying through your teeth.

NoWo has just smashed out this Molten Facility with 2 veteran members.
I hope southsun shore is by far harder than this MF dungeon was!
I cant wait it either way though!

Bring on the challange and we will bring on the rain!

Pictures will be on our website soon enough!
www.nowo.enjin.com

panzer.6034:

That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon.

This is not true. Well at least in my experience it’s not. I ran the dungeon twice on separate accounts and both times the achievement kicked in after dungeon completion.

As far as the thread topic, I would assume that this trend of concluding story content with dungeons will continue. People have been rather vocal about this since launch when they began noticing the personal story ended in such a way. And since nothing has been done to change that and instead they’ve followed it up with yet another story ending with a dungeon. I’d say the folks at ArenaNet are quite comfortable with their development model.

CalvinHobbes.3541:

panzer.6034:

That, and you get the achievement simply by setting foot in the dungeon.

This is not true. Well at least in my experience it’s not. I ran the dungeon twice on separate accounts and both times the achievement kicked in after dungeon completion.

As far as the thread topic, I would assume that this trend of concluding story content with dungeons will continue. People have been rather vocal about this since launch when they began noticing the personal story ended in such a way. And since nothing has been done to change that and instead they’ve followed it up with yet another story ending with a dungeon. I’d say the folks at ArenaNet are quite comfortable with their development model.

If this is the case, then I quite honestly regret giving them my money—I didn’t pay for uncompletable stories, I paid for ones that end just as playable as they began. Equally, I regret my attempts to defend them to people who resent them being the ones favored over Paragon—they, at least, were consistant with the modes involved in their story arcs, rather than forcing a different one at the very last mission.
If this was a F2P, I’d just shrug my shoulders, write it off, and go off to the competitor. But this isn’t F2P, and there’s really not much excuse for doing this to your paying customers—especially if you’re relying on gaining further money out of them.

To be honest the dungeon doesnt even need 5 people to complete, I did it with 3 because I didnt feel like looking for 2 more people.

NoWo has done this with 2 because we did not want any others all about the glory baby.

Vulpis.8063:

If this is the case, then I quite honestly regret giving them my money—I didn’t pay for uncompletable stories, I paid for ones that end just as playable as they began.

Melodramatic much? If you expect games not to get harder as you progress, games may not be your thing in general. The MF dungeon can and has been done solo, it’s not like CoF with its synchronized switch-flipping that demands more people. Nor do mobs heal themselves in combat, so the DPS requirement is such that you could theoretically have taken days, while much of the incoming damage offers (albeit somewhat buggy) easy ways to avoid it that require little more than opposable thumbs. Maybe you’d get further in stories if you used your time learning to complete them instead of complaining that they aren’t designed to be within your existing ability from start to finish.

You are funny. I assume that this dungeon was soloed by people who are very trained in doing dungeon content which is the complete oposit of those who usually try to avoid them. So advising to do something solo and refering to that kind of people is pretty misleading imo.

Pirlipat.2479:

You are funny. I assume that this dungeon was soloed by people who are very trained in doing dungeon content which is the complete oposit of those who usually try to avoid them. So adivsing to do something solo and refering that kind of people is pretty misleading imo.

lol. It doesn’t just suddenly require hidden secret knowledge because it’s a dungeon. All that separates it from any other instance is the mobs having stats consistent with being designed to engage up to five people. Since it’s a temporary dungeon for a story and scales people up, it’s made so that even five questionably capable players can theoretically get through, and as a side-effect of that, one good player with the patience to knock off the mobs’ hitpoints can also get through.

I hardly do any dungeons at all, because it’s often not worth the bother of doing for me. The only permanent one I’ve repeated all paths of is AC, and the only two (permanent) I’ve completed are AC and CoF (for both all paths, and for any paths save story-mode). When MF came out, my brother and I got to the boss fight with just the two of us, on our first try, on the first day. Didn’t even get much in the way of repair costs (and almost all of them were thanks to those pullback oozes… was not expecting those). Naturally it glitched and we didn’t get in, but we’ve since taken in many groups of randoms, and on several occasions duo’d and solo’d any given encounter it has when the rest of the group died (boss fights included).

Now personally I don’t have any hangup about groups, but if I did and I still really wanted to get to the end for the story’s sake, all I’d have to do is fight each encounter in a row the same way I’ve got through them on-and-off with the others dead (in this case, mostly ranged kiting. My ping is far too high to reliably avoid attacks in melee). The only way it requires being ‘trained’ in anything is practice, which doesn’t require other people to do, but it does require playing rather than waiting around for someone to turn the difficulty down until practice isn’t necessary.

Well, I couldn’t, definitely not. Ofc it depends a big deal on playerskill, but to make it look like everyone can practically do it is assuming that everyone has the same skill. I doubt, people would make such a fuss about having it soloed if it was something that everyone can do.

That dungeon is announced as 5 people content and that is done for a good reason. In fact I find it even more sad because indeed you rather seem to need the five people to have the extra damage and not because you need alot of cooperation. So to scale it in a way that for example 2 “normal” player can do it would not have been to difficult I guess.

Edit: I want to add that I would have expected some rather storywise development instead of some action-combat at the end with two silly talking bosses. For me it looks somehow like they changed their target audience in between.

Edit2: However Molten Facility is over (or running and not gonna be changed) there is no use to cry over spilled milk any further. But we are talking about the next step for the story and I disagree that every story has to finish with some kind of dungeon-content designed for 5 “average” players.

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, I couldn’t, definitely not. Ofc it depends a big deal on playerskill, but to make it look like everyone can practically do it is assuming that everyone has the same skill. I doubt, people would make such a fuss about having it soloed if it was something that everyone can do.

That dungeon is announced as 5 people content and that is done for a good reason. In fact I find it even more sad because indeed you rather seem to need the five people to have the extra damage and not because you need alot of cooperation. So to scale it in a way that for example 2 “normal” player can do it would not have been to difficult I guess.

You can’t get around there being a base skill level required of players, even with scaling like an open-world event (in fact I can think of a few events outside of dungeons I’d find harder to complete than MF). If it sees one person and scales accordingly, it doesn’t know if this is one competent person, or someone wearing a rainbow of found gear who decided to ‘save’ their trait points thinking they’d never be able to re-allocate them. If it sees five people, again, they could all be brilliant or terrible – but either way they’ll face the ‘five people’ difficulty.

This is why I suggested just sticking in a mode so easy anyone could get the story out of the way, with accordingly nerfed loot to prevent farming it. It’s a pretty sad thing to do really since it basically removes the incentive for them to improve – you don’t need more skill or better gear if you’ll always just have easymode – and basically separates the playerbase (because likewise, you’ll never need to interact with someone who’s only good for easymode), but if it’s come to the point where people are convinced everything is impossible for them anyway, I guess they’d already resigned themselves to that fate.

BTW – as far as I know every dungeon just says five players are recommended. That isn’t a measure of how hard it is, five is just as many as you can get into the instance. Even if you could do it with one, or two, or three, you could still (theoretically) do it faster/easier with all five, so it wouldn’t really make sense to just arbitrarily recommend two (or so).

LameFox.6349

This is why I suggested just sticking in a mode so easy anyone could get the story out of the way, with accordingly nerfed loot to prevent farming it. It’s a pretty sad thing to do really since it basically removes the incentive for them to improve – you don’t need more skill or better gear if you’ll always just have easymode – and basically separates the playerbase (because likewise, you’ll never need to interact with someone who’s only good for easymode), but if it’s come to the point where people are convinced everything is impossible for them anyway, I guess they’d already resigned themselves to that fate.

I’m sorry to say but tbh the way it is now is seperating even more. I am noone who is asking that all content is nerfed down to my level. I never asked normal dungeon-content to be changed, or stuff like that, but we are talking about some temporary content. I wouldn’t mind if the dungeon was just there but I thought that the idea of that story was to keep people engaged in the content.

The combination of a dungeon and the story in the way it is set-up for several people is just like hitting the wall. That’s why I said it feels like they changed their traget audience in between. Btw I did the dungeon with a group but I personally would have rather liked to spare them my inabilities.

We are also talking about two imo completely different things. That dungeon can be done with five. The difficulty for that amount of people is pretty ok, even though I’m far away to say that it is a piece of cake especially for untrained people like me.

It maybe can be done solo, but then you need a big amount of experience and skill, I would say.

So if you do not have the skill your option is to either leave it completely or to play in a way you do not like. Not everyone who wants to see the story is an uberleet-pro who is doing all sorts of content like nothing. And then again, you are mixing two things imo. Atm someone who wants to play alone needs way more skill than someone who does not mind to group? So how is your proposal to adjust the difficulty for different group-sizes seperating the playerbase in general?

Y’know, the only thing that Anet did to get away from the 5man dungeon model was to defeat the Sinister Triad- Tank, Healer, and DPS. You can have a party of whatever in any dungeon which is the craziest thing ever compared to WoW and just about every other MMO out there.
Wanna do the dungeon but everyone happens to be Rangers? No problem! Let’s go nuts with silly pets and traps and arrows! There’s absolutely no need to have a Warrior/Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer. Don’t even bother trying to ask an Elementalist to sit and heal your party. The only time I can see professions being a problem is if two Necros have the same condition build and that’s a problem in every aspect of the game, solo and group! Only the party dynamic changed, not that you can do it on your own like GW1 with robot buddies.

Dungeons are here to stay in Guild Wars 2 and it won’t be like Guild Wars 1 because these are two separate games. GW2 is for new content, new experiences, new jump button, not a return to how things were back in GW1.

The playerbase will always be separated by the way. Some people don’t touch WvW, others shun PvE and only WvW. Even stranger folk do that sPvP thing! There’s some people who like map completion and wearing a star, others like seeing a billion achievement points. Some enjoy the totally optional Fractals of the Mists to challenge themselves in ever harder dungeons. Why, some people don’t do anything at all but sit in the Busted Flagon and RP! It would be impossible to make everyone happy because everyone likes a different kind of pie and Anet can only bake one pie at a time.

That’s all fine. I agree with you. The thing is that the story-pie seemed to be for me, but in between they changed the recipe so that it’s delicous for some other people but not for me anymore, that’s what I’m critising. If you happen to like both cakes it’s fine, but some do not.

Pirlipat.2479:

I’m sorry to say but tbh the way it is now is seperating even more. I am noone who is asking that all content is nerfed down to my level. I never asked normal dungeon-content to be changed, or stuff like that, but we are talking about some temporary content. I wouldn’t mind if the dungeon was just there but I thought that the idea of that story was to keep people engaged in the content.

The combination of a dungeon and the story in the way it is set-up for several people is just like hitting the wall. That’s why I said it feels like they changed their traget audience in between. Btw I did the dungeon with a group but I personally would have rather liked to spare them my inabilities.

We are also talking about two imo completely different things. That dungeon can be done with five. The difficulty for that amount of people is pretty ok, even though I’m far away to say that it is a piece of cake especially for untrained people like me.

It maybe can be done solo, but then you need a big amount of experience and skill, I would say.

So if you do not have the skill your option is to either leave it completely or to play in a way you do not like. Not everyone who wants to see the story is an uberleet-pro who is doing all sorts of content like nothing. And then again, you are mixing two things imo. Atm someone who wants to play alone needs way more skill than someone who does not mind to group? So how is your proposal to adjust the difficulty for different group-sizes seperating the playerbase in general?

Scaling for group size wasn’t the part I was suggesting, I meant it in the sense that it’d be a selectable option. Not that scaling would be impossible, but I don’t think it would stop the complaints. I mean when you say you did it with a group, but would have preferred to ‘spare them [your] inabilities’, what exactly are you implying? Because it sounds to me like you’re saying you were a burden even with the appropriate number of players, and what does that say for scaling it? Would you be able to complete it alone, or just need to improve anyway? If there are people who fare even worse, do we owe them an option they can complete as well?

Seems to me like if we accept that people are owed story completion in spite of not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it might as well have an option to be trivially completed by anyone regardless of whether they can handle… well, much of anything. They all paid for it. Is it any worse to draw the line above ‘average player by itself’ than ‘slightly below average player by itself’?

As for separating people, what I mean is that deciding that no content will be released which requires co-operation in order to be completed, or crosses different kinds of gameplay (instance, group instance, open world event, etc), seems fated to create very insular little segments of the game world, where people never go out of their habitual thing at all.

Not that there’s any point in forcing them to, but this isn’t, it’s just offering a reward if you come play a different way for a while. Interactions between the different aspects of gameplay is very important in games that aren’t specialised into one particular thing, because that’s all that sets them apart from a collection of mini-games. And if you only play one mini-game from a collection of mini-games, sooner or later it’s going to dawn on you that you could find a whole game dedicated to this one little thing you do, which will go into far more detail and provide a much better experience than a small segment of a broader game does.

*edited because I left half of a deleted paragraph in here and it made no sense.

You are posing some black and white decissions and pretend that there is no in between. There are several different game aspects which are not directly connected to each other.

I for my part feel very uncomfortable in groups with people I don’t know. And if you go down in a dungeon you are always a “burden” for the group no matter which size it is having. So there is no question about “even with”.

But I’m tired to explain myself over and over again. I said what I said…

At the beginning of this year they were stating that they wanted to bring back people into the open world by a series of features. I was under the impression that they ment the living story, which led me to believe this could be something I enjoy. Well obviously they did not.

Edit: And like I said before, there is no use to discuss Molten Facility in it’s current state any further, but I disagree that this way of setup has to be the role-model for all further story-parts.

LameFox.6349:

Pirlipat.2479:

I’m sorry to say but tbh the way it is now is seperating even more. I am noone who is asking that all content is nerfed down to my level. I never asked normal dungeon-content to be changed, or stuff like that, but we are talking about some temporary content. I wouldn’t mind if the dungeon was just there but I thought that the idea of that story was to keep people engaged in the content.

The combination of a dungeon and the story in the way it is set-up for several people is just like hitting the wall. That’s why I said it feels like they changed their traget audience in between. Btw I did the dungeon with a group but I personally would have rather liked to spare them my inabilities.

We are also talking about two imo completely different things. That dungeon can be done with five. The difficulty for that amount of people is pretty ok, even though I’m far away to say that it is a piece of cake especially for untrained people like me.

It maybe can be done solo, but then you need a big amount of experience and skill, I would say.

So if you do not have the skill your option is to either leave it completely or to play in a way you do not like. Not everyone who wants to see the story is an uberleet-pro who is doing all sorts of content like nothing. And then again, you are mixing two things imo. Atm someone who wants to play alone needs way more skill than someone who does not mind to group? So how is your proposal to adjust the difficulty for different group-sizes seperating the playerbase in general?

Scaling for group size wasn’t the part I was suggesting, I meant it in the sense that it’d be a selectable option. Not that scaling would be impossible, but I don’t think it would stop the complaints. I mean when you say you did it with a group, but would have preferred to ‘spare them [your] inabilities’, what exactly are you implying? Because it sounds to me like you’re saying you were a burden even with the appropriate number of players, and what does that say for scaling it? Would you be able to complete it alone, or just need to improve anyway? If there are people who fare even worse, do we owe them an option they can complete as well?

Seems to me like if we accept that people are owed story completion in spite of not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it might as well have an option to be trivially completed by anyone regardless of whether they can handle… well, much of anything. They all paid for it. Is it any worse to draw the line above ‘average player by itself’ than ‘slightly below average player by itself’?

As for separating people, what I mean is that deciding that no content will be released which requires co-operation in order to be completed, or crosses different kinds of gameplay (instance, group instance, open world event, etc), seems fated to create very insular little segments of the game world, where people never go out of their habitual thing at all.

Not that there’s any point in forcing them to, but this isn’t, it’s just offering a reward if you come play a different way for a while. Interactions between the different aspects of gameplay is very important in games that aren’t specialised into one particular thing, because that’s all that sets them apart from a collection of mini-games. And if you only play one mini-game from a collection of mini-games, sooner or later it’s going to dawn on you that you could find a whole game dedicated to this one little thing you do, which will go into far more detail and provide a much better experience than a small segment of a broader game does.

*edited because I left half of a deleted paragraph in here and it made no sense.

It’s ok if you don’t understand what the other players are trying to communicate here. Really, it is. You are not the target audience. The main point of this thread (and the two others) is to have the designers from ANET, who are making this content, hear the voices of their customers that object to being funneled into one playstyle to see Story completion.

I made a post regarding the Living Story and Personal Story here that you may find worthwhile to read.

Pirlipat.2479:

That’s all fine. I agree with you. The thing is that the story-pie seemed to be for me, but in between they changed the recipe so that it’s delicous for some other people but not for me anymore, that’s what I’m critising. If you happen to like both cakes it’s fine, but some do not.

The story pie is actually a lot of small pies, or should we call them tarts? Yes, I will call them tarts. Story missions are pie tarts, fairly easy to complete solo and you get to have your fun with them with learning what’s going on. Some pie tarts are bigger and tastier than others while some are small and sometimes stale.

But all these pie tarts build towards the big entree pie because only having small pies doesn’t really lead into any kind of special tart if they’re all the same size. And boy, it’s a really big pie! Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen! So big, it’s too much to eat on your own. It’s so massive, you just gotta share this giant pie with others. So you gather some friends or just hungry pie eaters and then dive right in to the big pie! Celebrations are had all around the empty tin of the big entree pie.

Tawa.3180:

Pirlipat.2479:

That’s all fine. I agree with you. The thing is that the story-pie seemed to be for me, but in between they changed the recipe so that it’s delicous for some other people but not for me anymore, that’s what I’m critising. If you happen to like both cakes it’s fine, but some do not.

The story pie is actually a lot of small pies, or should we call them tarts? Yes, I will call them tarts. Story missions are pie tarts, fairly easy to complete solo and you get to have your fun with them with learning what’s going on. Some pie tarts are bigger and tastier than others while some are small and sometimes stale.

But all these pie tarts build towards the big entree pie because only having small pies doesn’t really lead into any kind of special tart if they’re all the same size. And boy, it’s a really big pie! Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen! So big, it’s too much to eat on your own. It’s so massive, you just gotta share this giant pie with others. So you gather some friends or just hungry pie eaters and then dive right in to the big pie! Celebrations are had all around the empty tin of the big entree pie.

Analogies ahoy!

A lot of people think the giant pie doesn’t taste good and it gives them indigestion, they’re disappointed that the pie doesn’t scale back down to where it tasted good to them. Or, like me, they got a little more than halfway through the pie by themselves until they got to a really lame part where the bits of pie in their hand wandered back into the pie and regenerated as they were eating them.

Now they’re wary of starting to eat more of the tarts they find because they’re worried it’ll just take them to another large, unpalatable pie containing more disappointment.

I would really hope this Living Story segment ends in a dungeon at least half as good as the Molten Weapons Facility (because it’ll still be better than most of the permanent dungeons). Of course, they best not add that cancerous RNG garbage like they did for the Jetpack (I quit after 40 runs, screw you RNG).

To the people concerned about group content in an online game with a ton of people playing, I honestly can’t see whats wrong with playing in a team. From the sounds of it, you have the time necessary (unlike a few people I read from, I feel bad for them but you can always plan a weekend around it too if time is an issue). It seems you just don’t like… the layout of the party window? I’m not sure, honestly.
If you don’t mind tagging along with others for skill points and events, that’s literally the same thing as being in a party, just without the party window (and blue text). I feel sorry for not being able to understand where you guys are coming from…

Seriously though, at level 20 or 25 you get in-game mail telling you “oh hey dude, you need to start doing 5-man content because its part of the storyline”, so seeing the last quest take place in Arah is not even remotely surprising; unless you don’t care about the story enough to read the texts, in which case why worry about the story?
It’s not ANet’s fault you guys want to be hermits and stick to a ridiculous solo-only vow in the complete opposite of a single player game. There’s tons & tons of people running dungeons every single day, and so far no one has received fatal physical harm for joining a party, so there’s many opportunities to join on in.

Single party-based instances are practically required due to the fact that Dynamic Event scaling in the open world can’t be tailored to challenge a bunch of groups of players all at the same time. Thanks to the open world, the dragon champions are just absolutely pathetic since there’s too many players (well, given ANet’s current record for dragons in a dungeon, they can’t even do that right either so its still up in the air).

Anyways, if you guys feel the need to call team-play in a massively multiplayer game a “bait & switch” and then completely give up on playing content, that’s your choice (and a rather silly, extreme one at that). However as dungeons provide a great way to challenge the players while delivering vital story bits (and can even be fun, if the temporary dungeons are proof enough), it would be rather silly to not have one here.

Speaking of temporary dungeons… Mad King’s Day bore a dungeon, Lost Shores released with a permanent dungeon, Wintersday had 5 dungeons, and Flame & Frost has a dungeon. I think a reasonable expectation would be Secret of Southsun ending with a dungeon, but it’s never been said outright (for anything) “everything is a group/solo instance” so it’s best not to assume either.

Xalugami.2096:

I would really hope this Living Story segment ends in a dungeon at least half as good as the Molten Weapons Facility (because it’ll still be better than most of the permanent dungeons). Of course, they best not add that cancerous RNG garbage like they did for the Jetpack (I quit after 40 runs, screw you RNG).

To the people concerned about group content in an online game with a ton of people playing, I honestly can’t see whats wrong with playing in a team. From the sounds of it, you have the time necessary (unlike a few people I read from, I feel bad for them but you can always plan a weekend around it too if time is an issue). It seems you just don’t like… the layout of the party window? I’m not sure, honestly.
If you don’t mind tagging along with others for skill points and events, that’s literally the same thing as being in a party, just without the party window (and blue text). I feel sorry for not being able to understand where you guys are coming from…

Seriously though, at level 20 or 25 you get in-game mail telling you “oh hey dude, you need to start doing 5-man content because its part of the storyline”, so seeing the last quest take place in Arah is not even remotely surprising; unless you don’t care about the story enough to read the texts, in which case why worry about the story?
It’s not ANet’s fault you guys want to be hermits and stick to a ridiculous solo-only vow in the complete opposite of a single player game. There’s tons & tons of people running dungeons every single day, and so far no one has received fatal physical harm for joining a party, so there’s many opportunities to join on in.

Single party-based instances are practically required due to the fact that Dynamic Event scaling in the open world can’t be tailored to challenge a bunch of groups of players all at the same time. Thanks to the open world, the dragon champions are just absolutely pathetic since there’s too many players (well, given ANet’s current record for dragons in a dungeon, they can’t even do that right either so its still up in the air).

Anyways, if you guys feel the need to call team-play in a massively multiplayer game a “bait & switch” and then completely give up on playing content, that’s your choice (and a rather silly, extreme one at that). However as dungeons provide a great way to challenge the players while delivering vital story bits (and can even be fun, if the temporary dungeons are proof enough), it would be rather silly to not have one here.

Speaking of temporary dungeons… Mad King’s Day bore a dungeon, Lost Shores released with a permanent dungeon, Wintersday had 5 dungeons, and Flame & Frost has a dungeon. I think a reasonable expectation would be Secret of Southsun ending with a dungeon, but it’s never been said outright (for anything) “everything is a group/solo instance” so it’s best not to assume either.

Its rare that I get to read such a long-winded post from someone who:

a) Utterly fails to understand what is being talked about

b) Baits the people who are voicing their criticism and suggestions to improve the game

Non-constructive posts like that really muddy this discussion.

LameFox.6349:

Vulpis.8063:

If this is the case, then I quite honestly regret giving them my money—I didn’t pay for uncompletable stories, I paid for ones that end just as playable as they began.

Melodramatic much? If you expect games not to get harder as you progress, games may not be your thing in general. The MF dungeon can and has been done solo, it’s not like CoF with its synchronized switch-flipping that demands more people. Nor do mobs heal themselves in combat, so the DPS requirement is such that you could theoretically have taken days, while much of the incoming damage offers (albeit somewhat buggy) easy ways to avoid it that require little more than opposable thumbs. Maybe you’d get further in stories if you used your time learning to complete them instead of complaining that they aren’t designed to be within your existing ability from start to finish.

Nope. they do heal/reset when you get knocked out, though. I tried the dungeon again last night, due to some lying scum claiming they got the achievement just by going into the instance. Ended up with pretty much exactly the same situation as I did before—manage to take one veteran down, and finally caught the others in a position where I could lure off another one without getting the whole pack on me—got him to about half health before I got KOed, hit the respawn…and all of the mobs were at full health again, instead of there being one at half.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m by no means expecting a cakewalk—I am, however, expecting reasonably possible rather than impossible.

Ezor.7382:

Your question is kind of out of place and I hope it is not so! Games like this is about exploring and unlock great adventures in the open world and dungeons. Without dungeons this and all games like this would be very poor. Placing a dungeon in a story line gives a great deal of substance to both the story and the dungeon. I think this was a great thing they did.

did u beat the last dungeon’s last boss yeah it had a great “deal of substance”

for me the 5 mans are a waste of dev time, so much OPEN WORLD to explore make new DE events, phase area’s during LS bring the world to life more than funnelling ppl into a cave(dungeon) that’s a disconnect from the world, GW2 best asset is its DE events and its easy gameplay lends its self to CO-OP MMO experience than the old Dungeons crawler made for EQ/WoW fans.

No mob stealing No node stealing = big community that helps out each other = great
5 mans = turns ppl into elitest and turns the community on itself = bad, look at WoW

I think GW2 would be in an even better place if it was just to focus on the unique play style they have made and keep to OPEN WORLD stuff and drop the dungeons, legendary quest lines for armor sets or grind out dungeons ? I know what sounds better

Illysharia.7286:

Its rare that I get to read such a long-winded post from someone who:

a) Utterly fails to understand what is being talked about

b) Baits the people who are voicing their criticism and suggestions to improve the game

Non-constructive posts like that really muddy this discussion.

By responding to the OP’s question and is genuinely curious as to what’s the matter with team content in a multiplayer game?

ANet already stated that the challenging/ending PvE focus would be through the dungeons and not the open world, as to give groups something to work on doing. So making them solo-able would pretty much strike that idea down (granted they already changed a bunch of their concepts since launch).
People who only play one way can’t have access to everything. Such as if a player doesn’t want to PvP, they shouldn’t have all the PvP skins unlocked. If a player doesn’t want to group up, they shouldn’t (though still can for the few rare ones) be able to do the group-based content. There’s still the entire rest of the game out there to enjoy.

My previous post seems to touch on the OP’s question by including previous examples of temporary events, as to hopefully make a based guess on the odds of this one ending in a dungeon. I also mention that the game tells you early on that group content is required for the storyline. I then proceed to ask for the side of why they dislike group content.
Seems to me like my response was on-topic in regards to the question being asked, as well as providing some examples from what the past holds.

Technically the only constructive post to OP’s question would be the exact answer, but since no one here knows, we can’t really be constructive on that regard.

LameFox.6349:

Seems to me like if we accept that people are owed story completion in spite of not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it might as well have an option to be trivially completed by anyone regardless of whether they can handle… well, much of anything. They all paid for it. Is it any worse to draw the line above ‘average player by itself’ than ‘slightly below average player by itself’?

Flat out honestly here? I think you have the situation backwards. Yes, we’re owed story completion, because that was what we’ve paid Arenanet to provide for us.
And it’s not people not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it’s purposely designing it so that the only way to finish it is completely counter to the entire rest of the story. I’m sure Arah is a fine end to the Destiny’s Edge story told in dungeons from beginning to end—but for a Personal story, which in it’s very name says it’s something for the individual, it’s a horrible and nonsensical way to end it.

And what is with this ‘easy mode’ and ‘trivially completed’ manure? Absolutely no one is wanting that—just something that’s a difficult but reasonably completable challenge, without being dragged into the very content they’ve been doing this story to get away from?

Illysharia.7286:

Its rare that I get to read such a long-winded post from someone who:

a) Utterly fails to understand what is being talked about

b) Baits the people who are voicing their criticism and suggestions to improve the game

Non-constructive posts like that really muddy this discussion.

Funny, I liked his post so much I gave it a +1. He is right on the money and doesn’t fail to understand what is being talked about.

Funny also because your post is both Non-constructive and also baits people who are voicing their opinions.

I would add something more to stick on topic, but I feel that he hit the nail on the head.

Xalugami.2096:

Seriously though, at level 20 or 25 you get in-game mail telling you “oh hey dude, you need to start doing 5-man content because its part of the storyline”, so seeing the last quest take place in Arah is not even remotely surprising; unless you don’t care about the story enough to read the texts, in which case why worry about the story?

Huh—the one’s I got were basically ‘Those losers from Destiny’s Edge are begging for you and 4 other people to go help them in their own splinter story, if you feel like taking the time out of your own story to go help them. No ‘need’ involved in it whatsoever.

Xalugami.2096:

It’s not ANet’s fault you guys want to be hermits and stick to a ridiculous solo-only vow in the complete opposite of a single player game. There’s tons & tons of people running dungeons every single day, and so far no one has received fatal physical harm for joining a party, so there’s many opportunities to join on in.

Once again, repeat after me:
There are more ways to have multiplayer interaction in this game other than 5-man teams.
I mean, really—we keep hearing this over and over again—are you that blind to all the other content that can be either soloed or grouped, as well as the ones that are designed for multiple players participating without needing for make a formal group?

Xalugami.2096:

Anyways, if you guys feel the need to call team-play in a massively multiplayer game a “bait & switch” and then completely give up on playing content, that’s your choice (and a rather silly, extreme one at that). However as dungeons provide a great way to challenge the players while delivering vital story bits (and can even be fun, if the temporary dungeons are proof enough), it would be rather silly to not have one here.

Reading comprehension please—the bait-and-switch doesn’t refer to there being dungeons in a MMO, it’s the problem that a dungeon is suddenly tacked on to the end of what up until then has been entirely soloable, and even the very name of the content indicates that it should be soloable from beginning to end. The Living story, you could barely justify by it not being a ‘story’ as such, but a ‘Some from column A, some from column B’ (amusingly the ‘collection of pies’ analogy fits better here—there actually is no big pie here, just a collection of small ones—with the problem that the event requires you to choke down the flavor that makes you vomit in order to complete it—whatever that flavor may be). The ‘Personal’ story has no such excuse, whatsoever.