Guild Wars 2

Direngrey.8376:

Then you need to start the instance yourself instead of leeching explorable mode from someone whose completed the story. It isn’t flawed at all.

Then if I leave the party gets kicked. Are you going to say it’s their fault for not starting the dungeon?

It’s a flawed system, it’s that simple.

Direngrey.8376:

I start all my dungeons to avoid being griefed out and having my spot sold. And or network errors.

That’s nice that you found a (bad) work around.
ArenaNet hasn’t fixed it because it’s low on their priority list or they don’t even know about it.
If people don’t complain about it, it won’t get raised on the priority list.

I don’t know why the system is how it is, but my guess is that it requires less stress and resources of the server to have one person be the instance owner. It’s not the first MMO to do this type of thing.

It is indeed a flawed system, if you have Story Mode unlocked already and the party leader leaves you should not get kicked, if no one else has Story Mode then you should be removed from the Dungeon as you should not be there,

In saying that, its beyond bloody stupid that you have to do Story Mode on every toon you own to unlock explorer mode, you already did the dam story once, why do I need to do it multiply times does the story change…….

Direngrey.8376:

Clipbord.8726:

Direngrey.8376:

Then you need to start the instance yourself instead of leeching explorable mode from someone whose completed the story. It isn’t flawed at all.

How would you know if OP hasnt done story? This has nothing to do with that, this is a flawed system because when the instance holder leave, it cause the rest of the party to lose any progress on the dungeon/instance they are doing. How would you feel if you were on your third fractal, and the instance holder leaves, causing you to lose all progress. I agree with OP their should be a system where it can reassign the role to someone else, if the leader leaves.

If they have done story then why not start the instance themselves? The only real reason is. 1: They are too lazy to guest on a different server if whatever dungeon their doing is contested and or does not want to initiate and finish the quest that makes the dungeon uncontested.
Or 2: they have not completed story and are leeching explorable mode off of someone whose done the story.

It is NOT flawed. Otherwise Anet would of fixed the issue months ago, if you want to do a dungeon, start it yourself, it’s that simple. I start all my dungeons to avoid being griefed out and having my spot sold. And or network errors.

I understand where you’re coming from, the safe bet is to start your own group. But in the original post, the OP never mention if the instance was even contestable. Which is where your whole argument is based around. He could be talking about AC or even fractals which you don’t need story to open. And for your reason number one, you have to put into accountability that you can only guest once per day.

Player starts party with lfm stating his desired method of completing the content and enters the dungeon first. kittens join and proceed to do whatever they want. Player who started the party gets to maintain a level of control in the existing system.

Direngrey.8376:

If they have done story then why not start the instance themselves? The only real reason is. 1: They are too lazy to guest on a different server if whatever dungeon their doing is contested and or does not want to initiate and finish the quest that makes the dungeon uncontested.
Or 2: they have not completed story and are leeching explorable mode off of someone whose done the story.

It is NOT flawed. Otherwise Anet would of fixed the issue months ago, if you want to do a dungeon, start it yourself, it’s that simple. I start all my dungeons to avoid being griefed out and having my spot sold. And or network errors.

Hmm.. Lets say the people are running fractals, 5 out of the 5 people have the desired level unlocked – they can’t all start it, but both your points do not apply to those that don’t enter the portal first. Hell, even if they were doing CoF, what if everyone is on a server (different servers even) with the dungeon open, all having done story – still, only one person can open the dungeon. You’re either racing to the door to get yourself in first or taking a 25% chance that the raging noob is going to open it. That sounds a little lame.

Hmm.. Lets say the people are running fractals, 5 out of the 5 people have the desired level unlocked – they can’t all start it, but both your points do not apply to those that don’t enter the portal first. Hell, even if they were doing CoF, what if everyone is on a server (different servers even) with the dungeon open, all having done story – still, only one person can open the dungeon. You’re either racing to the door to get yourself in first or taking a 25% chance that the raging noob is going to open it. That sounds a little lame.The kicking is really stupid, especially with all the pugs we get with gw2lfg now – people dropping on the second or third fractal, people rage quitting half way through final boss of CoF p1 farm because 2 people got downed, w/e – it shouldn’t kick the rest of the party.

Miseris.7498:

Direngrey.8376:

I start all my dungeons to avoid being griefed out and having my spot sold. And or network errors.

That’s nice that you found a (bad) work around.
ArenaNet hasn’t fixed it because it’s low on their priority list or they don’t even know about it.
If people don’t complain about it, it won’t get raised on the priority list.

They certainly know about it since Robert has commented about it. Possibly more than once. It would require rewriting some code. How high a priority would depend on how often it happens. Since they had a way to know how many people were leaving party to kick out everyone to bring in their friends for the end reward(before it was changed to how it is now) I assume they have a way of tracking this as well.

It is a really flawed system and it needs to go. Saying you should open the instance yourself is not a fix. What happens when you get a dc? Everyone should get kicked out because they are not the leader. In Guild Wars I could enter an area as party leader with my heroes and a friend, I leave the area he stays there with the hero’s. They already have this system so they can easily fix this.

You need five people for a dungeon run, and only ONE of them can start the instance. Four of them can’t.

Giving players the advice to always start the instance is dumb.

Had this just now, our instance starter went offline and didn’t come online anymore. We waited for him until we reached the next boss where we did need a 5th player. Proceeded to kick him only for all of us to get kicked out, at the last boss.

Great system you got there, Anet

This must be fixed….

They really need to have a forum feature that automatically closes threads that are more than a couple weeks old and have no current activity.

There are lots of threads on this topic, you don’t need to resurrect a dead one.

It’d be nice to get a “We’re aware of the issue and looking into it” red post

except when moderators are actually the one enforcing the necro as per see in the other 2 threads that were started recently.

And not to be off topic or anything… this has been going on since the start of the game. When is the fix coming ? A simple solution would just be to make the video always show one’s toon and not the “leader”. Or just make the leader toon be a different variable and not link to the dungeon in such a hard link way. If the guy disconnects / quit the groups, just elect a new leader. Or simply rank players by group joining and get the dungeon to follow that order or whatever.

There are so many solutions and, in this case, the code seems overly complicated since it has not been fixed yet.

any official response on this?!…..

In other games I’ve played where the host leaves, the game is programmed to switch to another player and keep the instance. Some will auto choose a host based on connection quality in the first place, you may not even know who the host is. Even of there is loading time for this process it would be much better than the current situation.

I don’t dungeon often, and this system is most of the reason why, I don’t have a guild to run with currently so I always PuG. The last few pug runs I’ve been in, one party leader DC’d and someone voted to kick not realizing the DC’d one was the leader. The other two cried because of some injustice they felt they didn’t deserve (one died in a trash pull and the other died on a boss fight, we “didn’t rez them fast enough omg wtf”) and left the party with some unnecessary words I won’t repeat here. Both left knowing the rest of us would be booted. I loathe running dungeons for the sheer fact that in the last several cases it’s been an enormous waste of my time. The repair bill is barely covered due to the fact I’ve rarely managed to get to a chest let alone the end of a dungeon.

This is ridiculous! The other four in party are being punished for the childish actions of one in the vast majority of cases. Please, find a way to fix this, whatever will solve this infuriating issue.

Hoyvin.3241:

They really need to have a forum feature that automatically closes threads that are more than a couple weeks old and have no current activity.

There are lots of threads on this topic, you don’t need to resurrect a dead one.

Also, as a point of interest, a mod in a couple other threads on this same topic closed those threads and pointed posters here. So this is the relevant thread despite the lack of daily activity.

Hoyvin.3241:

They really need to have a forum feature that automatically closes threads that are more than a couple weeks old and have no current activity.

There are lots of threads on this topic, you don’t need to resurrect a dead one.

Actually our posts got merged into this topic by a mod.

This needs to be fixed. It is beyond comprehension that a system like this made it out of the beta, and defies all human understanding how it has not since been dealt with in a manner befitting the fundamental error of the issue.

No amount of coding necessary to patch this problem is too much, and every passing moment in which this mechanic is not remedied reflects poorly on Arena Net.

This kitten is completely unacceptable. Not only can it degrade into a form of griefing, but it just delivers a terrible experience for the entire group. The only reason this behavior is still in the game is because they coded themselves into this position and now cannot fix it easily. I’m sure it has to do with their stupid story/explorable dungeon types.

I don’t see how you could ever justify just ending the instance and kicking everybody out with no warning.

I have to entirely agree. Some dungeons can take a lot of time, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this happen on high level fractals after completing the Dredge and the Collossus. That’s a hell of a lot of time in a dungeon, and then to get kicked before the main reward. And a lot of the time it’s completely accidental. Guild Member DCs, you don’t hear from them for 10 mins, you go to get another guild member, everyone is kicks.

I would place this issue at the top of my list of things that really need fixing. I can live with the Time/Reward being a bit screwy, I know that doing Arah path 4 is not going to give me as much reward as doing CoF path 1 going into it. What I can not know is that no-one will not have an issue, the PuGs I’m running with won’t rage quit.

It leaves a really bad taste in your mouth when it happens.

This really does need to be fixed, and soon.

What happens if the dungeon leader has to leave because of something? Like he starts lagging like kitten for no reason and wants to get a replacement that would do some more good? Or real life catches up and he has to log off to take care of things? He can’t leave the party, nor can he be kicked, since if he does, the whole team gets booted. Is it too much to ask that party leader get migrated to another person when the party leader is forced out of the game due to outside circumstances or if he’s trying to grief the party?

Just happened to me. Gosh this is frustrating. Whole group just left before final boss in CoF. Just about had 60 Tokens. I can’t put in words the frustration this causes

jpnerd.4258:

Just happened to me. Gosh this is frustrating. Whole group just left before final boss in CoF. Just about had 60 Tokens. I can’t put in words the frustration this causes

But since it was CoF you got those 60 tokens 7 minutes later anyway…

Let’s analyze this a little more carefully. The instance owner is the person who is first to go into the instance. If the owner leaves the party then everyone is kicked from the instance. I’m not sure if it’s just a bug but we can’t say it’s intentional either. There’s definitely something in their architecture that is causing this problem. Otherwise they would have “fixed” it already like with the broken skill points. I would assume that the only way to resolve this is by rebuilding everything, at least for instances, from scratch.

It almost seems as if the instance owner is actually hosting the instance. That’s not to say that he/she is actually providing the service like a web host would or a game server for that matter. It’s just that the game is treating the owner as a host and if the host leaves, but not disconnects, then the service (the instance) is stopped.

Now I don’t really know how they built their system but the reason nothing has been done to address this might indicate a serious design flaw. Now don’t worry if you’re not familiar with databases. I’ll try to explain this in a simple way. I’m only speculating but to elaborate, I think that that they are creating a new record in their temporary instance database table for every new instance of a dungeon being created.

So the following probably happens when the first person to enter the dungeon enters the dungeon.
*A new record is created in the data table that contains a list of all active instances (dungeons)
*This new record is given a unique identifier (a primary key) like an instance ID or something
*Another ID is also added to this record and it’s the player ID (a foreign key) of the player who owns the instance
*The record is populated with relevant information
The purpose of storing this information at all is to help the server keep track of what is happening. Starting up an instance no doubt takes up resources so ANet wants to preserve as much resources as possible. Resources would include CPU cycles, memory, bandwidth, and storage. So if the party is finished with the dungeon, ANet wants the instance to close in order to free up all the resources that were used.

Now in addition to a data table for instances there’s probably one for parties too. The party data table should work the same as the instance data table but instead of an instance ID it would have a group ID. This is probably what happens when the instance owner leaves the group.
*A script is generated that tells the server to modify the temporary record in the party data table to signify that the party has lost a member or delete the record entirely if the party completely disbands
*The same script or maybe a different one tells the server to delete the temporary record in the instance data table as well because the owner has left
*The instance service is stopped to free up resources and everyone left behind is removed from the instance
So why stop the instance based on the owner leaving the party and not any other factor(s)? Well, if the instance stopped because the owner decides to leave the dungeon then that means he/she is trapped inside for the duration of the run. If the instance stops because he/she goes offline then what happens if he/she disconnects?

ANet saw that the best way to determine when to stop the instance was when the owner leaves the group. So why not automatically pass ownership to another player once the original owner leaves? People could potentially squat inside the instance and keep it running indefinitely. ANet, although they rarely talk about this side of things, wants to free up resources because they cost money. Subscription-based developers don’t care as much. Maybe that’s not the case though.

See, the instance record is associated only with the owner’s player ID and no one else’s. A lot of people have mentioned a implementing function that lets the current owner pass on the ownership (leadership) to another player but the game doesn’t actually have an owner system in place. Yes, you still have the owner identified in the instance data table but that’s it. The owner actually only owns the instance as far as everything else is concerned but as far as the instance data table is concerned he/she owns the party as well. I honestly can’t think of a way around that.

I did this yesterday. I was in a pug for AR and we wiped on the last boss twice (three people always died on the final barrage part), but we also had a ranger who was having connection problems so she was practically AFK the entire fight (it became frustrating when others would res her first despite her not doing anything). I was tired and had a headache after the second wipe. I forgot that I had started the instance and when I left the party after the second wipe, they all got kicked. Honestly, I probably would have left it any way, there was no guarantee it was going to end any time soon, we had to replace the AFK person and I was playing a game out of obligation at that point, not because I was enjoying it.

I don’t feel like bumping this thread is much use at this point. The only reason why a problem like this wouldn’t be fixed is if ArenaNet was working on it and couldn’t solve it yet (similair to how we don’t have a dungeon finder yet). I’d be amazed (and I’m very cynical about ArenaNet) if they weren’t actively working on solving this, assuming they thought it was possible to solve it.

Still, it’s amusing to know this is still an issue and this thread started seven months ago.

So this has been complained about for a very long time and yet Anet refuses to fix it? Great

I feel terrible and am so frustrated with this. Like this morning I was doing fractals with a pug group I started and they were nice and we were getting through pretty smooth. Then on the 3rd fractal I got the graphic card crash and everyone got kicked from the dungeon. All I can do is promise not to start any instances until this gets fixed but it’s still not fair for the other group members.

Krosan.2890:

Its only been 5 months of us asking for this change…

This issue has been known since the launch of the game. Scarlet is much too important for any real bug fixes.

Source? Go to the very firsts posts and look at all the red posts that are still problems today.

this is an issue and im begging you to fix it!……my dungeon leader got DC….so we kicked him and then BOOM whole story reset. what a joke, cant finish it 1 man short and cant kick to get a new man.

Today at last boss in Fractal after all are dead, the leader of party leave it and we lost 1 hour without complete it.
FIX IT!!!!

Unfortunately, you’ll have to live with the fact that losing your progress is a core feature of this game. Especially when it comes to Fractals.