Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why this isn’t party either. sigh Here’s hoping they adjust it.

Metafrank.9017:

~40 Minutes of Tower Defense with some friends? Oh boy, count me in!

~40 Minutes of Tower Defense with random strangers? I’d prefer to ram a screwdriver into my knee.

this.

the moment we’ve realized that there is no way to join as a group, we left this kitten event. not going back till it fixed.

Well … I managed to get a semi -premade together … apparently, only 2 of our party of 5 made it together, while another two appeared in another group, and one got thrown into a bunch of randoms. The original plan was to have everyone queue up at the same time, which we did … but I suppose the huge influx of people trying the event may have caused us to separate.

It does get moderately hectic near the end, but I thought it was more like a miracle that my group managed to get through the entire 10 waves with all the yaks still alive.

However, it is rather lame that we had our original group split over across other groups.

neon.4863:

Just tried it a couple of times. Really hard to coordinate with random strangers. We couldn’t even get past round 6, let alone survive 50 rounds of this.

This requires really intense coordination that you can really only have with a group of people you know (who will take “orders” from a leader) and that is able to develop a strategy for coordination. Frustrating with random PUGs. Will probably not attempt the achievements, doing it solely for the giant gifts.

It’s only 10 rounds. 5 waves per round. Total of 50 waves for the achievement. You can keep failing and doing more waves if you want the achievement. However, the dolyak one will probably require a lot more coordination.

But yes, ANet dropped the ball on this one.

I would rather a PvE LFG tool for this type of event than a reusing of randomized sPvP finder.

Not being able to join as a group for Toypocalypse is probably one of the worst decisions made by Anet. My guild and I have been looking forward to this all week and now, once we found we can’t join together, we could care less. This is an event that I will not be doing unless it is changed.

Well, this toypocalypse is making me reply to now. And I’m not a forum person.

First to be clear: I love the game. I love wintersday, I bought the unbreakable bell just for a friend of mine who wanted it badly. I’m not complaining about nog getting Foostivoo either :P

But Toypocalypse is the biggest dissapointment I have seen. I came online to play with my friends and in stead of that I get teamed up for an hour with strangers. Thank God I have the title, so I never have to play this event again.

And yes, I needed to get this off my chest.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASSSEEEEE fix this. It’s impossible to keep all 5 dolyaks alive when you have random people who get too frustrated and leave, or people who have no idea what to do and just use the rifle without helping build at all. I can beat it, but not with all of them alive.

It’s good to see the autogrouping working… but this should be meant only for people without a party!
So let people join with their own party when they already have one.

I thought this event was a lot of fun. I’d like to be able to do it with guildies/friends, but that didn’t stop our group from having fun.

The only concern I have is I don’t remember a warning that it was hot join or something that made it clear just how long the event might take. We had a lot of people drop as a result.

As a formal protest, join the game and stand still.

Grinch this!

Indeed we had team of 5 all set to go in, and we enter and then all split into diffrent places !!

And thought intially was a pvp thing and was a bit hacked off at that as i dont pvp, but then started seemed to be pve but again not as the team of our guildies jsut a mishmash of folks , wahts the idea behind that id rather be in with friends and folks and have a laugh but not this instance it jsut randomly throws you into areas all split up

Not very team good that

yeah me and my guild were looking forward to running this in packs together, cant do that now

I dont Kitten about much in this game but REALLY REALLY i cant get into a group event with the group i want to play with

I want to bring this up because i dont want to see this happen again in futer content this is just dumb

Well its sad that we cant do it with our friends, but its doable without any lose in here. Thats how we done it:

Dear ArenaNet,

This is the reason why I never sPVP, tournaments are too serious and I just want to hop in for some fun with friends. This is the reason why I don’t do Keg Brawl, why oh why can’t I just play a mini-game with my FRIENDS? This is the reason why, after one game, I skipped the Halloween and Wintersday PVP games, seriously… why won’t you let us play with our friends, this is an MMO!

Just let us queue as a group like every other MMO out there that has PVP, this is beyond ridiculous and that it’s forced upon us for a PVE activity has me seriously doubting ArenaNet’s design decisions.

So, I finished Toypocalypse:
1. Received NOTHING! Absolutly NOTHING!
2. 2 party members left game in middle. We were hardly fighting till end (see attachment). One of them wrote to me, that he is sorry, but he had a DC and couldn’t join…

Another problem with random grouping?

You can easily get the “Not Toying Around” achievement. But in order to get “Toypocalypse Canceled”, you need all 5 dolyaks alive. As soon as one dies, people leave. If you join late into one that people left and the dolyaks are nearly dead, people leave. Just to get the other achievement, you are encouraged to leave and try again over and over again. Since there’s no grand reward just for finishing the game even with only 1 dolyak alive, there’s no reason to stay to the end of an instance.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive.

Oh come on.

Do we get anything for having done the achievement the right way? In a complete PUG I got this done in our first full run.

Why do I keep getting sent in as a replacement to games with less than 5 dolyaks left!

Unsat!

I wouldn’t mind being challenged for my achievement, but constantly being sent to an already failed instance is rediculous!

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

why in the world did you guys think it was a good idea to use this systom in the first place

And you mean to tell me i did all that work just to have it get nerfed facepalm Grown UUUUHHHHG!

Kegbrawl has the same problem. The question is: why? You can make Tournament PvP games with a complete premade team. But you can also make a group of 3, and get two randoms from the pool. The system is existing, so why is it not used for all the activities? This is what makes no sense in my point of view

Khunvyel.3972:

Kegbrawl has the same problem. The question is: why? You can make Tournament PvP games with a complete premade team. But you can also make a group of 3, and get two randoms from the pool. The system is existing, so why is it not used for all the activities? This is what makes no sense in my point of view

I’m with you on that buddy.

as much as i enjoy this game this is the ONE thing that really stands out.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

I can’t imagine that it is a surprise to the design team that people are unhappy with this choice of systems. So much for Toypocalypse.

First run, in a pug, got the achievement. Second run, 1 dolyak died. Third run all five lived…and I got the waves achievement. Not really seeing the need for it to be only 1 remaining.

I was shocked when I started reading the posts about this issue, and really hoped it was a bug. My only interest in this content was that it would have been a fun thing to do with my friends. Nothing about it motivates me to want to play it with a random group. So, I’ll skip it, which is no skin off my back, or I guess, of ANet’s but I’m still just amazed that it was designed like this to begin with. What could possibly be the thought process here?

Khunvyel.3972:

Kegbrawl has the same problem. The question is: why? You can make Tournament PvP games with a complete premade team. But you can also make a group of 3, and get two randoms from the pool. The system is existing, so why is it not used for all the activities? This is what makes no sense in my point of view

Agreed. I’m wondering if “can’t fix” is more like a “won’t fix”, since clearly the grouping feature has to be similar to what we see in PvP.

The random teams is what keeps me from playing kegbrawl as well. If they insist on keeping all activities unplayable with friends, then they’ll continue to be unpopular.

I’ve been surprised every time I’ve seen a group event that can’t be done with friends. My wife and I logged in to try Halloween content, and when she saw we couldn’t do it together, that was the end of that event for us. We’ve been enjoying doing the Infinirarium together each night so far. Bummer that this is also PUG only.

I’m baffled as to why you didn’t think going in that it would be important for players to do group events with groups of their choosing. It can hardly be a surprise.

Wow, I’m pleasantly surprised. There have been plenty of things wrong with events before, but for once Anet are actually offering a fix (of sorts). Here’s hoping that future PvE instances will actually be programmed as PvE instances rather than being subject to silly, fun-sapping restrictions because the programmers used the PvP code as a lazy shortcut. Still, this is a Good thing.

Who needs a gamemode that could be lots of fun theoretically to actually BE fun if you can just make some achievement easier.

Also try other products of Anet’s new “Who cares if something is fun, as long as it’s rewarding”-way of thinking: The Karka event and ascended gear.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

lmao what a joke, now the achievements will have the exact same requirements, just survive wave 50 at all

Metafrank.9017:

Who needs a gamemode that could be lots of fun theoretically to actually BE fun if you can just make some achievement easier.

Also try other products Anet’s new “Who cares if something is fun, as long as it’s rewarding”-way of thinking: The Karka event and ascended gear.

The Karka event would have been fun if they’d bothered to rent enough server capacity (see also game launch, see also Halloween launch, see also Wintersday launch). I got in on one of the ’late-running instances (by then it was early morning in Europe so the server load was lighter) and it was actually pretty fun to do.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

So the answer is to make the game easy, instead of providing a fun challenge for groups of friends and guilds to use teamwork to complete? Is this really the right direction?

Utterly useless. Its things like this, including the whole overflows and parties mess which really make gw2 seems like a second rate MMO.

Remember in gw1, where joining your friends in an overflow was as easy as asking the district number and porting there, where you could easily join a friend in any mission or event? Instead we now have this complete mess of people being separated, and now it’s by design, apparently.

WHAT ?!

You cant change the friggin achievment now -.-

keeping 1 alive is to easy.

EZ Mode nerfs again i c .. for crying out loud …

Latorn.4209:

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

So the answer is to make the game easy, instead of providing a fun challenge for groups of friends and guilds to use teamwork to complete? Is this really the right direction?

From what I understand, this is not a “direction” they are going, but rather an emergency fix. By “direction” he most likely means trying to find an alternative to using the sPvP system for events like these in the future…?

For God’s sake, it’s not THAT hard of an achievement. My group did it without saying a word to each other until it was done. And that say, basically, “Good job.”

Once you’ve identified that you’ve randomly grouped with idiots . . . leave that group and try for another one.

Please don’t reward stupid.

I don’t want the achievement to get a nerf, I wanna do it as it is, but in a party with friends.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

For God’s sake, it’s not THAT hard of an achievement.

The achievement doesn’t really matter, it’s not the main issue. The problem is that this is an MMO which is forcing people to play with random strangers and not their friends and guild mates, which for many people is the whole point of playing an MMO.

This is a PvE instance, there is no reason not to allow parties, other than lazy or stupid design, which are not good excuses.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it.

“When it’s ready”. Lol.

It’s not about how hard the achievement is to get, it’s how a group activity in a multiplayer game cannot be done with your friends. Really poor show.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

For God’s sake, it’s not THAT hard of an achievement. My group did it without saying a word to each other until it was done. And that say, basically, “Good job.”

Once you’ve identified that you’ve randomly grouped with idiots . . . leave that group and try for another one.

Please don’t reward stupid.

It is an impossible achievement if the game keeps sending you in as a replacement to instances with less than 5 dolyaks alive as has been my misfortune today.

Best fun I’ve had in the game to date.

1st run: My group and I didn’t have much of a clue and wiped during the second 3rd wave. I’d figured out the building was key, and a few hurried suggestions were thrown around before the next run

2nd run: We built a lot more. One unfortunate miniboss spawn wiped out two of our donkeys in one swoop. We survived all 10 rounds, but it was hectic right to the last

3rd run: By the 7th wave, our base was a sight to behold. Inner keep was fully walled, and had a secondary outer keep of basic walls encasing the base, as well as chole points on every entrance to the dias. Balistas and Catapults everywhere, and a few out in the field to delay and distract. For the final two waves, nothing even got close. We could’ve survived another 10 I think lol.

The one suggestion I’d make is to award for building and not just killshots

It’ll be a shame if you reduced the full 5 donkey requirement. I’m hardly ‘elite skilled’, but found it enjoyable, tactical and gave a great sense of accomplishment when we got the achievement. If I’d got the achievement with just 1 donkey, I wouldn’t of bothered going again, refining the strategy and eventually overcoming the event.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

If we already finished all 10 rounds with 1 or 2 dolyaks alive, will we have to do it again?

This activity is horribly designed.

- Enemies take too long to kill and hit too hard. You are there mashing skills like crazy while they have lots of time to kill a dolyak.
- Recovery around the center takes too long.
- Players have to run around all the time gathering stuff.
- You can’t join with parties and coordinate a strategy beforehand.
- Walls are pointless as enemies can go right past them.
- You can’t force enemies into a path.
- You are not given time between waves, not even a timer telling you how much until next wave.

Now, what I am getting?
- Players running around like headless chickens.
- Player standing still doing nothing.
- Players kittening about what you are doing when it doesn’t follow some stupid bad strategy they had in their minds.
- People leaving as soon as one dolyak dies, because they want the achievement.
- Not a snowball’s chance in the Fissure of Woe of getting the last achievement.
- Frustration where there should be fun.

These guys should have checked games like Dungeon Defenders or Orc Must Die before doing this.
- First and most important of all, you should have been allowed to enter in a party.
- Enemies should have scaled with number of players, allowing you to go solo if you want.
- The bundles should have provided stacking effects you get when you pick stuff instead bundles, and they should have been shared across all players.
- The structures you build should have been skills in the utility and elite slots, that consume those stacks.
- They should have dropped from enemies too, not just from destructibles.
- There should have been a healing skill that also uses stacks of a pickup, starting with one and getting +1 per wave, or the healing effect in the middle, should have been way faster.
- Switching weapons should have been with a few weapon racks around the circle instead items in the ground near the center.
- The environment should have been harder to traverse for enemies, so they have to end up following several paths instead roaming with total freedom.
- There should have been a timer with a ‘ready’ system like in the fractals. The more people hit ready, the less time is left until the start.

Great game but this is a sad move Anet. Let’s put people in random groups so communication becomes a chaos, oh oh and let them rejoin the event 7 times before they have a group that starts from the beginning. Come on.

Cosine.1786:

It’s not about how hard the achievement is to get, it’s how a group activity in a multiplayer game cannot be done with your friends. Really poor show.

Demorgoth.1205:

Oh, and it’s a MMO, not a LAN party. Stick your head out of the safety of your circle and you might find new friends

Being able to choose to group with new people (as with the Infinirarium events) is fine. Being forced out of the party you’d formed and put into a group with random halfwits isn’t.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Swizzle.7982:

The achievement doesn’t really matter, it’s not the main issue. The problem is that this is an MMO which is forcing people to play with random strangers and not their friends and guild mates, which for many people is the whole point of playing an MMO.

This is a PvE instance, there is no reason not to allow parties, other than lazy or stupid design, which are not good excuses.

I’m sorry you cannot play with a random group on a common goal, that should be fun, for less than thirty minutes or so. God forbid, you might make new friends while you’re at it.

My girlfriend and I purchased this game to play together, and with our friends. We are sitting at our computers in the same room, and yet we can’t participate in the same event, with each other, or any of our friends.

Let’s just be honest here, ANet knew this would happen, but instead of fixing it, they just decided to weather the storm and hope people would forget.

I try so hard to like this game, I really do. I spent weeks researching and convincing everyone I knew to out their time and money into Guild Wars 2, but when simple things like this, are screwed up so badly, it’s not going to be long before we move onto something else.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Respectfully, you’re blowing this way out of proportion.

^^

I don’t start crying that it takes ages to level up in SPvP or that it takes ages to get a Legendary weapon, or in my particular case even a decent amount of gold.

You just got to act like adults and finally accept, that there are things that you won’t get right now or even ever.

I’m heavily opposed to Arenanet changing this achievement. It’s an ACHIEVEMENT.
If you change it to 1 Dolyak you could also give them an achievement of being able to breathe.
It shouldn’t be asked too much of someone, to coordinate their action with random other people, once or twice a year, to achieve a common goal.