Guild Wars 2

In the old client launcher (in beta) there was an option to log in as invisible. There isn’t any more unfortunately.

While I find the idea of this feature counter to the MMO aspect of the game I feel players should have the choice to be incognito.

With the way the guilds are done and the “represent” feature is used. I feel that a true “invisible” feature would be a very nice addition. Logging in and then clicking “invisible” is somewhat annoying to those of us that would like an occasional break from the guild. It is not like you can hide on an alt or another server for a few hours.

Most MMORPGs don’t allow you to be anon. If there’s such a thing in rift or swtor, I don’t remember it.

If you really want to be anon, log off.

In a massively multiplayer game, there should be no anon, and you shouldn’t exibit any behaviors that make you think you should be anon. If you have stalkers, report them, because companies tend to take that more seriously than a lot of other stuff and will deal with it.

In both RIFT and SWTOR, you could login ‘anonymously’ by merely creating an alt that no one knew about. This is not possible with the way GW2 is set up. And why should there be no way for someone to enjoy the game in solitude? What about when you just want a break from friends or guilds in order to enjoy the world without interruptions?

I completely agree that there should be some way to be truly hidden from your contacts list and guild roster when online, especially since people have the ability to add others to their contacts list without approval. I also think this might belong in the Suggestions forum.

Voqar.2349:

Most MMORPGs don’t allow you to be anon. If there’s such a thing in rift or swtor, I don’t remember it.

If you really want to be anon, log off.

In a massively multiplayer game, there should be no anon, and you shouldn’t exibit any behaviors that make you think you should be anon. If you have stalkers, report them, because companies tend to take that more seriously than a lot of other stuff and will deal with it.

While I understand your hardline approach to the whole “MMORPG” thing. As far back as I can remember in my MMO experience which would be Ultima Online, I was always able to create another alt to play without being worried that my guild would take offense that I am online and not playing with them.

Even the best of friends and most intimate of lovers find it healthy to have some time away from each other now and then. Not everyone is a social butterfly, thankfully – especially in a day and age where the amount of views or ‘friends’ a particular person has on an online profile defines how ‘popular’ or ‘great’ they are.

I don’t care either way, but support the option since it won’t require that much effort to implement.

Beware though you can still find yourself with guildies, I’ve bump into them by coincidence all the time.

I would like an option to be anonymous on alts and it would also be nice if we had to approve anyone that wanted to add us as a friend.

In other games I’m used to having alts that I just play around with on my own, or have a different guild with. Often I have alts I don’t play as often as others, or I’ll have two main characters. What I want to do with them is my own business. I don’t like that my guild can see everything I do, whether I choose to represent them or not.

As far as friend’s list, do it like Aion did and have it be an approval process and once I approve them, we’re both on each other’s friend’s list (and that game also notified you if someone deleted you which I thought was also nice). That way people I don’t know won’t be adding me to their lists, and anyone who does want to be my friend I’m notified about so we can actually chat and group up and you know, be friends. There’s no need for this double friends list where I have my own list and then I have followers. I don’t want freaking followers. Either we’re friends or we aren’t and if you don’t have the guts to just say “Hi, I wanna friend you” than I don’t need you “following” me.

I’d like to see that option also. Sometimes, I just don’t want to talk to anyone. Outside of being outright rude to a guildie(which I won’t do) , there is no way to avoid anyone when signing in.

It would definitely be nice to go incognito once in a while… have guild members constantly pestering your for not representing them gets old kind of fast. There’s always the option of leaving the guild, but despite the pestering, I really do want to stay in them :/

The option to be anon has been in since bwe #1

Go to your contacts list, click on the green square, in the drop down menu pick invisible.

This can also be done from the character select screen via the contacts hotkey or the contacts button in the top left of the screen next to settings.

Teulux.6732:

The option to be anon has been in since bwe #1

Go to your contacts list, click on the green square, in the drop down menu pick invisible.

This can also be done from the character select screen via the contacts hotkey or the contacts button in the top left of the screen next to settings.

You didn’t read the OP at all. The OP already knows that and actually mentioned it in his very first paragraph. He has other concerns. But thanks for not being helpful and being too lazy to read.

Totally agree, OP. I like to play with others, chat, etc, but I also like to spend time playing by myself, that is, without any sort of social “strings” attached. And being a rather private person, I don’t like the idea of others being able to see everything I do, and every character I have, no matter what!

TBH the social set up in this game has made me rather anti-social. I feel like it is “all or nothing”: have friends and a guild, be social ALL THE TIME, or don’t have friends and a guild, and play alone all the time. :/

I’d like to see the login from the BWE’s come back, so you can log in as invisible instead of changing your status to invisible after everyone already saw you log in. But what I’d really love is a way to create “hidden” alts. Really, I’d be ok with not being able to login as invisible, I am used to that. But no alts that no one knows for when I want to be left alone? It really bugs me.

Thanks for the replies all — I wish there was a way I could move this to the suggestions section without having to make a duplicate post. It is good to see I’m not the only one wishing for a little more privacyv

No reason to be anonymous, anonymity breeds a higher chance you can avoid being held accountable for your actions, if the community decides that you deserve to be blacklisted and to warn other players when you create alts, then if you don’t deserve the treatment you can take it to the staff of the game, if you do then you’ll probably be banned anyways.

Just don’t be a nuisance and you’ll be fine, accountability is important in all mmo’s they removed it for the most part in WoW and the community has never been more full of horrible people.

yes there can be abuse of this system, but generally most won’t stalk you over fear of being banned.

TL;DR:
Why is it an issue :S I don’t get it, just ask people to leave you alone they shouldn’t take offense if you’re tactful and explain to them nicely, it’s a necessary evil tbh

Are you guildies really offended when you tell them not to disturb you? Do they follow your every move? I rarely check upon others what they are up to or what they are doing.

If guilds bother you for not representing but you want to stay with them you should tell them to respect your wishes.

Seems like common sense that when you befriend a stalker you put him on ignore asap

tzko.2370:

Are you guildies really offended when you tell them not to disturb you? Do they follow your every move? I rarely check upon others what they are up to or what they are doing.

If guilds bother you for not representing but you want to stay with them you should tell them to respect your wishes.

Seems like common sense that when you befriend a stalker you put him on ignore asap

“Let’s post random stuff just because I want to talk and I didn’t even bother reading the tread”

I would love to see the option to log in as anonymous. Sometimes you just wanna run around and enjoy some solo PvE.

Well, this thread is awkward. Like Hellkaiser, I don’t see the issue: noone demands your attention at all times. And if they do, they are in fact being rude and you have every right to let them know. Besides, what’s the biggie in just ignoring people and saying you were AFK / missed it due to spam or w/e, should you be confronted with it? Desiring full anonimity really comes from inept social abilities if you ask me. Now if Anet should encourage asocial behaviour through full anonimity as a way to support these kind of players, I’m not sure. However imo I dont think they should, as they very clearly want GW2 to be a social game and doing so would go against their design philosophy. And if you absolutely can’t deal with that, you should play a different game. Or delete all your contacts and leave your guild.

“Play your way…”

That’s the billing.

Not, “play the way other people think you should play…” – and that should include the ability to play alone without anyone else’s knowledge if you so choose. I play with my husband, my two closest friends and my (adult) kids. Fortunately, all of them are used to my own “quirk” of sometimes just wanting to go off by myself and not be disturbed. I can tell them this and, maybe because they’re all adults, they understand.

But not everyone does. They either don’t understand – or don’t respect – that chances are if you’ve set yourself to be “invisible,” it’s because you want to be left alone for a while. They see your location changing on their friend list or on the guild roster and send an IM – and for some completely unknown reason, instead of the system telling them the user is not online – it goes through. What’s up with that?

It’s worth noting, however, that they did not give us the option to log in as offline in GW1 until the last year, year and a half or so. Before then, much like GW2, you logged in and THEN set yourself to offline. I honestly don’t understand why our options in that regard seem to have regressed between the two games.

I’m not ok with the fact that any random idiot in the game or from this forum can decide to add me to their friend list and, even if I’m set to invisible, can tell that I’m online because my location changes in their friend list… even though I haven’t added them to mine. I don’t need that information about strangers (and if you’re not mutually on each other’s list, you ARE strangers), and they don’t need it about me.

My activities are none of your (generic “your”) business unless I choose to make them so.

I agree. In WoW they did NOT have an offline/invisible mode, but they also did not make it so everyone in your guild/friends list could see if you where on, what toon you were on, and where you were at if you were on another character. The exception to that would be Battle.net friends list.

I am currently only in a small guild and I play with two friends that migrated to Tyria from Azeroth with me. I don’t mind if these two particular friends know where I am at and if I’m online, they know me well enough to not get offended if I say I want to do something alone. However, I am not really keen on just ANYONE being able to add me on one toon, see my game tag (Branwin.4609 as you all can see) and therefore being able to see me all the time. I personally have nothing to hide but as previously mentioned, what I’m doing, what character I’m doing it on, and where I’m at is no concern to strangers or in-game acquaintances who have me on their friends list, but are not on mine.

I had planned on making a private character to play for some solid me-time but I’m less interested in doing that since the way the friends list/guild tab interferes with that.

I am all for being with your peers but I agree, some alone time/privacy would be nice.

I do not agree that anonymity means you are not held accountable for your actions. By saying that you’re inferring that if someone chooses to be invisible, they are up to no good or have more of an opportunity to harass or annoy other players. In an MMO setting, anyone is fully capable of being a nuisance whether they are anonymous or not, as we are technically anonymous on the internet anyway. No one knows who we are in real life (RL friends excluded obviously) and when we log off, we do not feel the repercussions of our actions in-game.

It also doesn’t mean you are socially inept. If you’re in a flourishing guild or are extremely social and are always doing activities with your peers, sometimes that can become the norm and becomes expected. YES, this IS an MMO, and GW2 emphasizes co-op and group play (our profession abilities mostly shine in group settings after all) but maybe you’re interested in a low-key, stress-free session. “Ignoring” messages is easier said than done, it’s right there in your face. Messages are in an eye-catching color and usually make a sound when they are sent. Yes, if someone is pestering you when you want privacy it can be rude, but does that mean you have to be confrontational about it? Absolutely not. Rude as they may be, these people are probably your friends and guildies and don’t have bad intentions when they want to play with you. By choosing to be under the radar or invisible every now and then you would be taking the path of least resistance and both parties wouldn’t be hurt, offended, or otherwise.

Also, the answer to this particular problem should not be “play a different game, delete all your toons”. I can understand not agreeing but by saying that you’re just being asinine.

This thread certainly highlights the differences between introverts and extraverts. The two rarely are able to fully understand the way the other thinks.

I think having incognito alt characters could potentially be abused, but creating such a system would be unnecessary if we could just appear completely offline when we want to. I don’t see how that could be abused for nefarious purposes.

In GW1, the only way you could track the location of your contacts was if you were mutually on each other’s lists. It’s silly that that didn’t carry over to GW2.

(For that matter, a friend of mine recently told me that I was showing up as online in his GW2 Contact List while I was in GW1…. There’s no escape!)

First of all, your location should only update when you become Online.
It’s kitten that you can show yourself as Offline but the location keeps changing.
That is most certainly either a bug or poor implementation.

As for the rest, I think there should be an options “pane” in the Launcher, where you have a series of rows and collumns, changing the settings with wich you login before you actually login.

Collumns:
- Guild – Friends – Followers

Rows:
- Status (Online/Available, Busy/Unavailable, Offline)
- Show Location (Yes/No) not necessary if they make it only update when you go online
- Block Party Invites (Yes/No)
- Block Whispers (Yes/No)
- Anything else I forget

In WoW I have a guild master who is a wonderful guy. He’s a good leader for guild matter and for raids, a fantastic role-player, devastating in PvP, and everyone loves to have his attention. He cannot log in without at least ten minutes of tell-hell, even when all he wants to do is check his mail or do a daily or just chill out playing the game. For him, invisible log in would be a godsend and he’s been super happy to have it in GW2.

And he’s an extrovert.

Me, I’m an introvert. I just happen to like hanging out with good people, which abound in GW2, and I have a different sense of what’s private. I don’t mind people tracking who I’m playing and where. I don’t mind them being able to contact me to ask for RP or dungeon runs or PS aid. I -do- mind random “cold-calls” like spam guild invites or other intrusions on my time if I’m not feeling like chatting. So far I haven’t had anyone bothering me in whispers that wouldn’t listen to “I’m fighting, can’t talk” responses. But if that becomes an issue, it’s nice to know the invisible option is there.

Someone mentioned blocking the particular annoyance. That works in some situations. However, some “stalkers” aren’t bad people, they’re just so clingy that you want to get away from them but not be mean to them. One of those drove me from Alliance to Horde in WoW … if I could have been invisible and just told the ones I wanted to talk with I was on, life would have been improved.

Passiflora.2047:

TBH the social set up in this game has made me rather anti-social. I feel like it is “all or nothing”: have friends and a guild, be social ALL THE TIME, or don’t have friends and a guild, and play alone all the time. :/

I’m the same way. The way they linked all social connections to your account rather than to your individual characters is one of the handful of ways that ANet’s design philosophy completely disagrees with me. All of my family and friends passed on GW2 and were happy to go back to WoW, so I don’t play with anyone I actually know, and because I don’t like that account-wide friends/multi-guild design, I’m level 38 and unguilded with nobody on my friends list. One could argue that the events and PvP are still social gameplay, but the only talking I do with other players is in map chat or the rare /say. I joined a party for a few heart quests the first week I was playing, and when I realized that our account names & 4-digit numbers actually showed in the party frames, I was really turned off by that, for whatever reason.

Being part of more than one guild (as in the very common situation from other games where I would like to have one character in guild X, and a different character in guild Y) only makes the problem worse. If the characters are of widely different levels, expect to be bugged to get on your higher level character to be able to do higher level content with one or the other guild, even if what you really want to do is play the lower level character because you enjoy its mechanics more. I would greatly prefer if guild membership were character based instead of account based. Sure, you could be part of all the same guilds with all characters if you wanted to, but you shouldn’t HAVE to.

To the person who said to delete all chars and leave guilds, I think many others on here have said more succinctly what I meant in my OP. I am actually an extrovert according to the Myers-Briggs test, but it is sometimes extroverts who need to have ‘alone time’ the most. My own list of followers is pretty big, and I honestly only remember one of them, and this only because they told me they added me. As someone above stated, having what are essentially complete strangers being able to ‘follow’ me and know my location even if I am ‘invisible’ seems a little bit like invasion of privacy. And before people say ‘It is an MMO — there should be no expectation of privacy’ — by that same theory, people shouldn’t mind if every single /tell they send is open to public scrutiny. Thanks all for the great discussion this post at least has brought about. Hopefully a dev or so can at least see it as a suggestion.

If they won’t let us log in invisibly, it would at least be nice if we could separate our characters. Right now, you can’t even log onto an alt to get away from persistent people. If someone friends you, they can find you. There are a couple of guys who hit me with a party invite the second I log in. I would love to be able to just log on at least on an alt and just quietly quest when I need a break. I deal with people all day long.

i second the request for true invisible login. +1

It would be nice to be able to log on anonymously. I mean sometimes its just nice to want to play and not be bothered or have to respond to others questions or comments.

Yes it’s an MMO. But not every time I log in do I want to be whispered for help or wondering what I’m doing. Some days I’m just not in an interactive mood and I’d rather farm and gather in peace. Or just practice pvp without having people questioning me the whole time, only to be offended bc I’m not replying due to pvp.

We should have the option to remain truly hidden. A little peace and quiet is nice every once in awhile.

I agree with this. Sometimes i don’t want people pestering me about stuff.

This is one reason why I restrict my friends list to people I know in real life and why I never follow back randoms who choose to follow me. In fact, I hate the “follow” system altogether because unlike a friend invite setup in other games, you cannot stop other people from following you unless you block them completely.

Also, like the first game, ANet for some reason went for an account-based friends system rather than a per-character system which makes it difficult to play a different character without all your friends knowing. In GW1 this was all the more frustrating because I had all the EPs whereas most people on my list only had Prophecies and unless I logged in as invisible (or completely forgot to), It often meant several minutes of sifting through whispers and copy-pasting the same message over and over again.

Then how will they know you are playing even though you have an addiction problem so they can help you?

It’s better to let them know. There’s no reason to hide from friends in a game.

I want the option to be invisible, but I want selective invisibility:

I want to be able to see gchat. If I chose to type there when I am invisible, I should be allowed to do so.

I don’t want my location to be posted at all or even my char name to show.
I want to be able to whisper to someone and anyone I whisper to should be able to respond.

This message was brought to you by a Kitten with a Keyboard

As others have said, sometimes you want quiet time or to level an alt without getting nagged to jump on your main. If you go invisible, anyone following you will see “X is now Online” immediately followed by “X is now Offline” and then your location changing on their friends list as you play. I want to be able to log on as invisible and not have to manually set it after I’ve logged in. I believe that’s a modest request.

Hellkaiser.6025:

……..
TL;DR:
Why is it an issue :S I don’t get it, just ask people to leave you alone they shouldn’t take offense if you’re tactful and explain to them nicely, it’s a necessary evil tbh

After interacting with people all day long at work, constant talk talk talk, I need some alone time to recharge my energy. Having to explain to people that you want to mindlessly kill mobs and harvest to wind down after the day postpones your energy recovery.

Think of it as every interaction resetting your progress to zero.

If you can be invisible, you can recharge your energy in let’s say 30 minutes. If on the other hand, you have to reset to zero every five minutes, it can take forever.

It is nigh on impossible for some people to understand this but just take our word for it. Some people need peace and quiet just for a little while before they are ready to jump back into interaction with others.

I have MMO’d for about12 years. I have always had these options: (1) to play on multiple servers so that if I needed some me-tiime away from guild and groups, I could have it. To you people who will say “well, log off, then”…No. Sorry, but not. Sometimes I want me-time to grind or bash things. (2) to play on the same server, but have a private alt that no one knows about.

Both those options are unavailable to me in GW2. As a female, in the 12 years I’ve MMO’d, and, well, lived in the world, I can tell you from a female perspective that the transparency in GW2 is uncomfortable. I’m very careful with my online personas. I don’t think that I should be forced by a game to be so transparent that every single character I play is tied to one account that every single person who decides, unbeknownst to me, to add to a friends list, should be able to see.

I’ve also been hacked in MMOs. I don’t need hackers to friend me and see that I have four level 80 characters so my account must be “worth hacking”…or whatever. (I don’t have four level 80s, btw…I’ve only been playing for a week)

To the people who have said the only reason to want to be anonymous sometimes is to be a raging b*tch on one char and nice on another, or because I must have some nefarious griefing reason to want to hide…I say no. I’m just an intelligent, cautious individual who knows that TMI on an MMO is a safety issue. To the devs, might I suggest you investigate a police-taught course in online safety, and you might end up agreeing. There are, unfortunately, severely disturbed people in the world and yes, some of them do MMO. I can’t stress enough that the reason for this post has to do with the fact that I /deserve/ the right to be able to guard, monitor and protect my own online safety. You have removed part of my ability to do that with the level of transparency in this game. For those of you who say, “well, don’t play then”? I just might not, wabbit, I just might not. But my not playing won’t potentially stop someone else from having a bad experience.

In the end, grief players can still be identified at a business level by ID. Every player on the server doesn’t need to know all my alts.

GW1 allowed Invisible log in. The fabric of the gaming world universe did not unravel.

Since my characters are by acct, and not allowed to be separate, yes, at times I wish to be invisible.
As the above poster, in other games I also had chars on separate servers, and also alts I never told anyone were me. Also female. At times I just want to get away from the attention of some, and still be able to play without rudely telling people to just go away. It avoids Drama.

Guys don’t get from guys what we do. You don’t get the “knight in shining armor” syndrome in which some otherwise Nice guy starts showing up to hold your lil helpless hand through the bad monstas. I don’t want or need help, but Knights take it very hard when told to go away.

I’ve played MMOs for 10 years, and learned some hard lessons re privacy and transparency.

Tying friends and followers to the account is something I really dislike too. No one should be able to see you before you even pick a toon to play either – I would love to know why that was thought to be a good idea!

This matters!

Wrote a support ticket. And they suggested to be in public with this here. So they do the typical IT thing.
FINE.

Searching for “login invisible” and this post and a 3 message post in another thread popped up.

the context.
here’s my ticket:

their response to my ticket:

This is templating buis talk. Been there done that. Not good.

To be fair I didn’t put much effort in my wording. English, as you will probably notice now, isn’t my native language. It’s not a “kind of feature request” on my part. AND. It’s not “to gauge something here” on Anet part.

The “invisible” usecase for the “appear as” and “contact UI” does fail. Just delete it. think about it how it doesn’t matter as long as the login puts everyone into global “online” state. Right there. It’s not a feature. It’s just garbage ready to be cleaned or moved away.

Delete it or fix it.

You asked for it to put my time into it. So I did. GW2 is a game worth all the time!

It’s simple if auth game server parts are coded with this in mind. You did have this in mind. And you did have it working.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MM7sb.jpg[/img]
(img tags seem not to work. Added the screen from the link as attachment.)

In beta.
And got rid of it round about 2012-08-21 stresstest.

So if the old code/api is still supported. Great!!! If it would break the new launcher-auth-bridge-to-gameserver code/api. How expensive would it be to put it back in? 10people/h? 20? 50? Is the person/team that coded this still on payroll or gone? Why do you hassle?

Who decided to get rid of this? Or refaktored it all out? And put the “semi broken invisible” thing in there?

Till than sincere regards from a Gamer that strugles to adept to this.

By the way:
I simply could just ignore it and move on -.-

There are people that don’t want to write. Like me. I’m bad at grammar and words overall. Or there are people wo don’t want to read forums. They will simply ignore the game/company over little and big things like this, w/o noticing them. Gamedesign or UI fail .. if you played enough games you know what I mean and you didn’t touch the game since.

So again delete it or fix it. Right now it’s plain fake …

Regards

+1 to allowing us to LOG IN anonymously.

+1 for a confirmation pop up when someone wants to add you to friends. I want to be able to accept or deny friend invites. I hate that anyone can add me and see all my alts and where I am in the world without my knowledge. It is FAR too easy to stalk people.

Also, when you block a guildy, you can still see them talking in g chat. Fix that!

Snow White.9680:

+1 to allowing us to LOG IN anonymously.

+1 for a confirmation pop up when someone wants to add you to friends. I want to be able to accept or deny friend invites. I hate that anyone can add me and see all my alts and where I am in the world without my knowledge. It is FAR too easy to stalk people.

Also, when you block a guildy, you can still see them talking in g chat. Fix that!

That’s a nice idea too. I noticed you can just add who you want without them having to confirm it. I know a lot of people like this but it shouldn’t be that hard for you to confirm or deny someone who’s adding you, that way you won’t let your friends list expand that much.

I sometimes enter sPvP as ‘invisible’ to others because when I want to test things out I hate it when a lot of my friends and guildies join my sPvP match and start ganking me for fun. Even when I entered a match as invisible 2 of my friends joined that match too. Not sure if it was a coincidence or if they were put in the same match by the game itself. They should work on that too.

I bought 2 accounts for exactly this reason. But if your afraid of bumping into guild mates or friends guest to another server. The only thing you couldn’t do is dub v dub. If that is point then buy a second account. I would also like the option of toggling sign in between the two accounts. If you have computers shared by all, it is a pain to pull down you account among the others.

Completely agree. It’s ridiculous that this feature doesn’t already exist.

-bump-

When you block someone they can still see if you’re online via their friends list. It tells them what toon you’re on and where you are in the world. This needs to be corrected as well.