Guild Wars 2

I do understand why mayhem cannot be joined as a group, but bell choir and wonderland? That’s just… sad.

I will be playing toypocalypse way more this year. I was happy with it last year but it gets boring after a while if you aren’t even talking to your team mates.

I hope that eventually they make it so you can join your friends in mini games =/

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

What better way to celebrate the season than by alienating your friends. =/

ArenaNet, please consider making more inclusive events in the future. Thanks.

So when they said “joining activities with your friends is totally doable” during the Snowball Mayhem, they weren’t actually talking about Snowball Mayhem. Once again, please get demonstrators that actually know what they’re saying.

Why can’t you just temporarily add Mayhem to the PvP Custom Arena options while the event is up? That way those who want to play with their friends can do so and if you don’t have any friends online ATM you can join the regular one o_o

You ruined the jumping puzzle by not allowing people to join as a party. What were we going to do? Give each other tips that were too helpful? Good job Anet. My friends and I were actually looking forward to that.

Thats a bummer.
We should be able to do the jumping puzzle with our party members.
Thats half the fun…

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Why Anet…. I asked you about the JP too… Why? I like playing with my friends! Please lets us play with our friendses!

Seriously? Can’t play with friends on the bell choir and even the jumping puzzle? Wow, was really looking forward to that with my buddies, guess that idea has gone down the drain. Not gonna be as fun

Are there any reasons at all why you won’t let us do any activitys with our guild/party/friends?
Some of them would be great fun, why those restrictions?

Thers great content, yet we don’t get the tools to acctually play it in a fun way.

I don’t mean to be rude but you guys probably shouldn’t post "What good is Wintersday without the opportunity to pelt friends, foes, and total strangers in the face with snowballs? " if we can’t actually play with our friends on the release page.

Zombie.4197:

I don’t mean to be rude but you guys probably shouldn’t post "What good is Wintersday without the opportunity to pelt friends, foes, and total strangers in the face with snowballs? " if we can’t actually play with our friends on the release page.

Except thats not true. You can do exactly as they said. There are snowballs in LA you can use to pelt your friends.

IT’S WINTERSDAY WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

ArenaNet, the grinch that stole the Wintersday fun?

I really get the fact that they want to avoid achievement farming with a guild group in those activities..but seriously..most of them just takes a few runs to do the achievements anyway, simply tune the rewards considering the possibility of farming and let us play with our friends.

This kind of minigames isn’t for the reward nor for the achievement points, we play them because they are funny, different from the routine of the game, not let us do it with friends!

It would resolve a lot of the issue if Wintersday (and other holidays) temporarily added the possibility of playing Snowball Mayhem and the other festival competitive mini-games through the custom arenas.

I guess this will be more content where I hurry to get the achievements and then go back to sitting in la and doing nothing all day. It seems counter productive to create content that is not community (party) friendly.

ANet: could you please stop reminding us that you can’t party up when doing normal and holiday PvP events please? It sucks already that we can’t do it, so there really is no need to clarify this.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

You do realize this already happens in PvP arenas right now (unless you have 5 friends all on TS), happens in WvW, and hell… it happens in every PvP video game ever made. The reason: the benefit of letting us play these games with our friends greatly out-weighs this imbalance. Period. Do a poll Regina, I can guarantee you people would rather have to face 5 coordinated people in a mini-game from time to time if it means they can actually play with their friends as well.

Ohhhh Christmas, the perfect time for everyone to stay together and play together all the greatest new minigame …. ah can not

So is there a chance for next year to implement activity grouping? Or should we not expect that at all because making a general matchmaking system for activities sounds too hard? I’m sure this would be a great addition, especially if 2014 is as filled with minigames like this year was.

I was so psyched to play Bell Choir with my guildies after hearing the Wintersday stuff will allow parties to enter. Cue the nope.

Snowball AT in gw1 was cool. I miss that in gw2 so badly. Wintersday without SAT is just another farm of achivs. No magic

IF it’s running on the PVP servers, couldn’t you make them run through the team queue code branch?

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

I think a system where you can enter as a pre-made duo would be a sound solution for pre-mades while not having to think about a balancing system for matches.
However, I feel that pre-mades should be a system that should exist, maybe in a system where it’s pre-made 5 vs. pre-made 5. Group play and communication should be encouraged.

How about next time you make Snowball Mayhem like Random Arenas and Team Arenas in GW1?

As in
If a random group of people win 10 consecutive matches, they get bumped against pre-made team. If they lose, they get shuffled.

Team Arenas would just consist of pre-made groups. For the competitive snowball fighting.

ArkAngel.7940:

How about next time you make Snowball Mayhem like Random Arenas and Team Arenas in GW1?

As in
If a random group of people win 10 consecutive matches, they get bumped against pre-made team. If they lose, they get shuffled.

Team Arenas would just consist of pre-made groups. For the competitive snowball fighting.

I support this.

Too bad it’s not a team achievement. Even if it is only 1 time you need to return present yourself(and not more than once and even more achievements than last year) I don’t like this. I would prefer if it were more than 1 stuff but always team stuff. 3 or 5 wins of your team.

Still a nice thing. So much better than sPvP Spirit Watch because here is no conquest stuff to cap points and only capture the present and return it.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

This poses the question of how far ahead you really are in planning content, especially content themes that repeat (ie holidays). From the player standpoint, you had nearly a full year to work in group join. It’s not like this wasn’t a complaint back at last year’s Wintersday.

I fail to see how you can use one existing system to make things easier for you (ref preview video on why the JP is a PvP map now), yet not continue to use the same system to make it easier for us.

I’ll agree with adding these PvP event activities to the custom arenas in SPvP. You can disable achievements or whatever, we really just want to play the mode together.

Holiday events should be fun things that you do with friends. Even the pvp part.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

Hi Regina. It seems like you only answered a fraction of Amar’s concerns. It is completely understandable why the Snowball Mayhem could not be preformed as a group as it causes balance issues. But what about the choir and jumping puzzle? I would like an explanation from any one staff member telling us why we can’t join with friends. Just last night, I wanted to play together with two other friends. We had to resort to continuously joining the choir game and hope we get lucky to be in the same room for at least 20 minutes. This also applied for the jumping puzzle. So please give us a reason why the choir and jumping puzzle cannot be preformed as a party. Thanks

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

I think this misses the point. People don’t want to join as groups so much as they want to play with their friends. By ‘with their friends’ I mean in the same instance as their friends, but not necessarily on the same team. I still don’t see why a version of the sPvP browser hasn’t been adapted for all the minigames and activities (both the permanent ones and the seasonal ones).

^ This. I absolutely understand not having the ability to automatically join the same side in something that is sPvP, but a way of joining the same instance of an sPvP activity as the friend (or two) you’re grouped with would be excellent. I enjoy pelting my friends in the face with snowballs as much as I enjoy partnering with them — if not more. To be fair, I’ve had pretty good success re-joining the activity and ending up in the same instance as a friend I’m grouped with… but that’s not altogether fair to the people in the instances I join-and-ditch. A few times it has been a serious headache. Something that makes you able to join the same instance as a grouped friend, while still being subject to the sPvP team assignment and team shuffling rules would be nice.

So, Anet is spending their time shoving out mediocre and repeated content twice a month instead of focusing on quality content like creating different servers for PVP games like Snowball Mayhem—one where players can join as groups and one where users can join as individuals. It’s ridiculous all these games that come out and we can’t play with our friends and family, and there hasn’t even been an attempt to remedy it.

I hate arenas in this game and I hate WvWvW, but things like Snowball Mayhem and the labyrinth PVP game during Halloween are the only PVP I really enjoy in this game and I have to play it completely alone…during the holidays.

How hard is it to match teams with groups with times with similar sized groups?

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Amar.1547:

I can see why they wont let you join mayem with a group, easy to dominate and becomes to competitive. But the bell one would be cool, same with the puzzle, set up a group race thing!

Correct. Specifically for Snowball Mayhem (a PvP activity), allowing group join would allow pre-made parties to face-off against random match-ups, which would result in very lopsided matches. While a matchmaking system for Snowball Mayhem would be nice, it was outside the scope for this release.

To be somewhat fair here, you guys had a whole year to create a system (read: use an already existing system) that allowed for “premade” setups, so players could play with their friends. The mini-game is the exact same as it was last year. It wouldn’t be all that different from Team- and Solo Queue in sPvP. Not sure why you’re not using your already existing frameworks to accommodate for players wanting to play with their friends. It’s already using the hotjoins framework, is it not?