Guild Wars 2

I support this, I think its ridiculous that they took this away from us when we already semi struggle with spaces that are friendly to rp as U. Salma was.

Another TC native once again signing on.

Remember guys~ Constructive not destructive. I know a lot of people are upset, but remember that we’re looking looking for answers politely.

Adding my voice here. Closing off uninstanced Salma was a bad move and very disrespectful towards the considerable, loyal RP community. Please revert this change.

“Adding my voice here. Closing off uninstanced Salma was a bad move and very disrespectful towards the considerable, loyal RP community. Please revert this change.”

“This is a strange turnabout of events, back during the first Server Wide Summit we had an Anet dev said there was no reason to close Salma. Talk about a 180. "

…Positively annoyed.

/signed!

The uninstanced Salma District was a great place for roleplayers to fully use the buildings to their discretion, mainly because almost all the buildings in there are free of NPCs. I know there are buildings in the city we can roleplay in, however, most of them have NPCs standing around, some even have dialogue. That can become distracting, even if we try our best to ignore them.

I can understand that perhaps ANet has ideas/plans in-store for this area, if so, maybe free up some other NPC-free buildings for us?

Either way, I’d like to thank (in advance!) any of the devs who take the time to read our suggestions/opinions!

<3
Miry~

/signed

Yo. I haven’t use it much myself, due to the difficulty of getting there, but it’s got some great scenery in it. It would be nice to have it open.

/signed Plz give back our Rp place, it was not bothering anything

Uninstanced Salma district was a haven for RPers. Due in no small part to the difficulty and knowledge required in getting there, it was essentially reserved for people who had done their research and really wanted to be a part of the vibrant and thriving roleplaying community. It is sometimes difficult to conduct RP in more public settings where people are running around, talking to NPCs, or just casually griefing RPers in the area because they’re bored – and it can be intimidating to new RPers, too. But you could be almost guaranteed that you would find quality people in uninstanced Salma, eager to play the characters they so carefully designed. It was a very nurturing environment for roleplayers new and old.

It’s a shame to see such a staple roleplaying location suddenly closed off. It may not have been the original intention of the Salma district, and accessing it is an exploit, but it encouraged a beautiful community and did a tremendous amount of good.

I hope you’ll consider taking down the invisible walls. If not just because RPers are generally wonderful people and they deserve a little haven, then because they also buy a lot of cosmetic stuff from the gem store and don’t usually PvE enough to pay for it with gold.

/signed

Roleplayer from Piken Square here. All I think about this has already been said, so let me just add my name to this growing list.

/signed

… and the same for the home instances in the other capitals.

There are a lot of spots in the open world that you can visit freely and that only get instanced for the personal story as needed. Why would the home districts have to be treated differently?

Adding my voice here too. And it’s not just Salma, there are plenty of locations only accessible during Personal Story quests that could potentially become RPing spots.

All of this, of course, assuming that the fact that they’re there (i.e. that those zones actually exist in open world too) means they do no harm to the game.

Not much to say that hasn’t already been said. Piken Square RPer here, just to note. I figured this day would come eventually but hoped it wouldn’t. There’ll be a lot of very grateful people if this decision is reversed and these invisible walls are torn back down.

I don’t rolepaly myself, but a Salma District filled with players who give it live just sounds awesome to me. I think i have to visit DR more often to look in on these things

So i’ll add my support for this.

/signed

Tarnished Coast roleplayer! Please open up these instances, or at least give us a choice to go through uninstanced.

We just love them. Can’t you tell?!

:)

Adding my voice to this. Playing on Jade Sea, wanting the re-opening of uninstanced Salma

I support this!
As Part of the Third Seraph Regiment PIken Square, I had fun and good decent Rp in U. Salma.
I hope you reconsider this and open it up again for us Roleplayers.

I agree that a return to an uninstanced Salma would be preferably, but perhaps as a workable alternative, Anet could allow us to invite as many people to the instance as we wished?

With the lack of guild halls, I’d love to be able to invite my guild to my instance of Salma for meetings and guild RP.

I’m signing this for the sake of solidarity, but I don’t believe making uninstanced Salma available again is the big issue here. I believe the issue is that ANet should not be afraid to allow spaces in the world to be open and available, and should reconsider making so much of their content temporary. This affects PvEers and RPers alike.

If you give us empty space, we will fill it. If you give us content we will use it up. If you keep taking stuff out that people are willing to use and exist in, you’re just going to make the world feel smaller, its buildings mere cardboard cutouts that aren’t good for anything.

If you must get rid of uninstanced Salma, then please make the cities and the world more robust and filled with places to play in, to use, to explore and get lost in. Not just puzzles and instances, and certainly not inaccessible Guild Puzzles and temporary instances. There are so many beautiful cities and towns. Please allow us to use them to their fullest.

I’m with the RP community. Also I would like to see the uninstanced Salma district more accessible again.

Yes please. Bring it back.
/Signed

One more voice of support, this time from Piken Square.
Please, do not take away a great and relatively griefer free RP area!

I would not only want to suggest for them to remove the invisible walls that now bar us out, but for Arena Net to kindly just open the front gates instead. Leave the instance trigger on its doorstep, as was done with each personal story step, and let people explore the gorgeous area behind it as they see fit.

The same goes for all home instances – most are already a part of the existing city, and their textures all load up whenever one enters such a city. There is, by my knowledge, no valid in-game reason for these areas to be sealed off, other than them being devoid of significant (merchant) NPC’s and their scripts.

Fingers crossed for the devs to notice this, either way!

As someone who’s secondary guild used Uninstanced Salma frequently. It is a shame that it was closed.

I would love for it to be opened up again. As it provided a lot of beautiful places to rp in.

/signed

I’ve RPed in uninstanced Salma and found that so many others do too, it being closed off is a real shame. Please reopen it

Zeon here signing up

/sign

/sign
I think that it is a very good idea to bring this back.

/sign
It’s a fair idea to do it this way.

As a RPer who spends upwards of £50 a month on gems I too would like U.Salma and any other great RP places to be opened up to us. Getting into an area without an instance does not detract from anyone elses gameplay. Does not give a monetary or other advantage and does not break anything that I can see.

All above points also valid. Also, I would like to volunteer to talk to Anet devs about doing MORE for the Massive RP Customer Base they already have.

I agree to all of this. /signed

Adding my voice. Please give it back.

A roleplayer.

If the “Uninstanced Salma” will not be made available for role players, then can we at least get a new entrance option into Instanced areas that are called “Role Play Stars”?

Similar to the star that allows you to enter a story area for your home or for a living story quest or for personal story quest, the “Role Play Star” would be something that would basically take players to an instanced location where they would not be alone in the instance – they’d be entering a ‘role play instance’ of an area.

Or perhaps Arena Net is already developing something for role players to make their game more RPer friendly? An area, or perhaps guild halls, or perhaps RPer towns? That would be interesting to see player / guild owned locations in a ‘Role Play Town’.

I don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point. Still, Arena Net, we would greatly appreciate some kind of reason behind the blocking of Salma.

/signed
I’m not a roleplayer, but i’m from TC and i love the server community. Give them more places to RP, ANet!

How Baruch bay’s roleplayer i support this petition.

We used to use this area to don’t disturb in other players in other areas of Divinity’s Reach. This “bug” didn’t stop or be a big problem to play in GW2. The roleplay community isn’t a big percent of gw2 players, but do not use bugs like this to have more “items/gold/exp” in the game, only to chat in other area. Really this is a problem for other gw2 players?.

I suggest making your post, point, and showing your support without the use of “/signed”. They close all petition threads pretty quick.

Having access to un-instanced Salma District wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t giving anyone an unfair advantage, it was accessible to anyone. It wasn’t giving anyone access to anyplace they couldn’t find from instanced Salma – it’s difficult to even call having access to un-instanced Salma an exploit since it didn’t reveal anything, nothing was hidden – since both use the exact same map file.

Yes, it was originally intended to be blocked from players, but some adventurous souls found ways in. And once players found ways in they did something remarkable – they USED it! Players found places they could use as homes. They found an open tavern. They found a hospital (the only real one in the entire game). They found an orphanage. And they USED these places, because un-instanced Salma allowed more than 5 people, because un-instanced Salma allowed people access without needing an invitation. You could find people there constantly. Un-instanced Salma District promoted fun.

And isn’t that what Guild Wars 2 is about? The main reason I became interested in GW2 was because, back when the Manifesto Video came out, it seemed like the devs got it! They understood what fun is, what is fun in an MMO and what is not. And it seemed like they wanted to make the most fun game they could.

Accessing un-instanced Salma may have been accident, but it was a good one! People had fun. Taking it away diminishes the fun in GW2.

I don’t RP as much as I could, but I really loved popping into Salma and just wandering around, soaking up the ambiance of other RPers doing what they love. With the loss of Salma, now I have even less of an idea of where to go to get involved with RP in a general sense, and that bums me out.

On another note, you can enter explore mode dungeons and pretty much have the run of them as long as you don’t activate any of the paths. You can run around the bulk of Caudecus’s Manor with impunity using this method, so if you have a group of five or less and need a place with some ambiance, you can definitely go there.

So I sent an email to Anet, sounding like

“So, as I -hope- you’re aware, the recent walling off of uninstanced Salma District in Divinity’s Reach has left -a lot- of previously perfectly happy customers at a bit of a sour disposition, as evidenced by

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Uninstanced-Salma-new-walls/

and

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Uninstanced-Salma-District/

Probably hundreds of your paying customers are waiting for an official response from the ArenaNet team, and hopefully a solution to all our problems, preferably before you start losing active players.

Sincerely
a concerned roleplayer and Guild Wars 2 fan"

-And- I thankfully got a reply that reads

“Hi Katrine!

Thanks for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team.

We understand that you are upset because of the bug located near Salma Distric in Divinitys Reach. We are already working on this issue because as you stated it is affecting a lot of active players and we do not want to lose them. If you have any feed back, concern or doubt please let us now. We are more than happy to receive it and work to solve the issue.

Regards,

GM MadMaster
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://support.guildwars2.com/"

So it seems they’re at least aware of our plight.

I guess there’s just hoping and waiting then.

/signed
I’m a TC Role-Player and I’m still somewhat new. I’ve heard nothing but great stories about the places and people who make Salma District a wonderful, lively place within Divinity’s Reach and I want to experience them myself. I truly think it’s important to have a spot where RPers can visit whenever they feel the need, and most likely find other RPers already there. A community within a community. Thank you in advance!

/sign

And to the previous comment, glad they’re at least aware about the consequences of closing off Salma. Still can’t believe they did it, and it feels as if Anet is punishing RPers, pretty much their most active playerbase… As well as the customers that pretty much pay for a lot more than your standard GW2 player…

Anyway, met’s hope it’ll be opened or something at least.

/signed

One of the biggest barriers to RP at the moment is the lack of suitable places which aren’t filled with non-RPing players and therefore lots of /say chat which is OOC and in which IC chat can get lost very quickly.

With the absence of the (somewhat promised?) Guild Halls and Player Housing, and dearth of buildings which can be entered aside from a very few taverns and the odd building isolate in the rest of the world, blocking off one of the areas which was in regular, active use is a real shame.

We know it was an exploit, no one is disputing that. However, whilst I have never felt the need to use my home instance, the uninstanced version of that area was very popular for the reason that it didn’t get in anyone’s way and had a lot of accessible, empty buildings. No one wanted anything fancier done to it, it was fine just as it had been. Is there really no way that this area could be made accessible to those people who wish to generate their own content within the game?

GW2 is meant to be all about the community, all about fun. All about playing it your own way with your friends. Well, this is the way a lot of people enjoyed the game. Embracing the rich lore of the world and the beauty of the cities and being able to interact with them. Now some of that is being taken away, and it’s a real shame.

Having Salma back, or adding new, relatively unoccupied areas…the RP community is crying out for this. We’re not the loudest lot, but we’re not non-existent either. sPvP, WvW, PvE, all those aspects of the game have gotten their love. Do we get a turn, too?

Hello, yes please, thank you!

Supporting this, for what it’s worth.

I completely support the opening of all instanced locations within all the cities as uninstanced. There is no reason for them to be instance only when the instance is only used a couple times for personal story stuff. Let us go in any time we want. I’m certain all of the instanced locations exist as actual physical locations in the world at large, just open the doors to them and let us do as we please with them. If there is something specific that is supposed to happen there for a story, then place a marker in front of it, like you do, and have us instance for that. Otherwise let us just interact with it in the world.

We’re not the loudest lot, but we’re not non-existent either. sPvP, WvW, PvE, all those aspects of the game have gotten their love. Do we get a turn, too?
- Tottwriter

I agree with this statement. We keep seeing new sPvP, PvE and WvW changes, but the RP community keeps getting pushed aside by the other player types. As has been said a few times already, we don’t voice our opinions very often here on the forum because generally we’re capable of ensuring we have fun in our own way. It’s when these sudden changes pop up that make us speak out. sPvP players, PvE players and WvW players are gaining things while the RP community is losing things? As Tott said, when do we get our share of the love?

Instanced 5-player versions of home locations (EG: Salma District, Asura home lab instance, Charr home instance, etc.) are fun and all if you’re looking for a small group of players to role play without any kind of an interruption… but having more than 5 players in an area really makes a location feel alive. Having a few NPCs around talking just doesn’t cut it. We NEED to have players around us who are talking because we feel like if we were to, say, start a bar fight and throw a bottle at someone, they would actually react and we wouldn’t need to type a reaction for an NPC.

So… yeah, this thread here just goes to show that the role players are content at being quiet and letting the PvE, PvP and WvW players get their new updates until something like this happens.

Don’t provoke the wrath of the role players.

Role players have always been a neglected group when it comes to MMOs and honestly it is understandable, we are a much smaller demographic compared to the PVEers and the PVPers towards which most content is aimed at. We are the ginger-haired cousin that is often overlooked. Despite this RPers rarely ask for much and make due with that is given to them and I really think that is the beauty of it, to take something so small (whether it be a small abandoned house or an underwater cavern) and be able to immerse one’s self into it. Problem is when things such as U. Salma blocked the amount of space RPers have to work with is diminished even further, and this is not some small house in the wilds, this is an entire district located smack dab in RP central.
Personally I never role played in U. Salma much so the fact that barriers have been erected affect me little and while I would normally give a dismissive shrug in this case I feel the need to add my voice to the masses simply on principle and because I know this change will inconvenience quite a few RPers.

I’m personally not a role player, but I encourage ArenaNet to provide the in game tools needed to help sub-sections of the GW2 community enjoy the game as they wish.

Just a heads up, there’s an Anet response in another thread.

/signed a TC native. I don’t RP but I sure enjoy our community and think the RPers add that much more depth to the game.

Celena.3187:

/signed

As Mokzie said, please open up the other instanced areas while you’re at it. No NPCs, nothing. Just space to RP in and explore, Uninstanced Salma was fantastic because it required a special technique to get in; perhaps something similar could be implemented for the other areas? People won’t miss anything if they’re not interested in being there, but for those who are, they’ll be surrounded by many other individuals excited to explore the world in a more open state.

Agreed. 100%

• Note: This might be my fault. I posted a YouTube video on this erm “glitch”.
  So I’m almost positive it was my fault ANet found out about this! SORRY TC!!! *

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We’re listening. That area was never intended to be accessible, but we’re looking at other changes we can make that won’t confuse players trying to visit their home instance or continue their story, and won’t get in the way of RPers. I don’t have an ETA for when a change will go in, though, sorry!

From here

I’m unsure of how difficult this would be to code, but seeing as how (at least in the case of the Salma District) the area already exists as part of the map, it might be an elegant solution to simply add another option to the dialogue box that pops up when you try to enter an instanced area.

When selected, the uninstanced option would simply teleport you across the gate without loading you into the instanced version, similar to how the Briarthorn Den heart functions. The end result would look rather like the dungeon options, which allow you to select between Story and Explorable modes. Perhaps something like this:

Option 1: Enter Instanced
Option 2: Enter Uninstanced
Option 3: Stay where you are

If confusion for people trying to continue their personal story is an issue, you could even add a green starburst and/or highlight to the instanced option, making it even clearer which one those players are after. Personally, I’d love to see such an option added to all the home instances, and not just Salma.