Guild Wars 2

Why only five party slots in dungeons/fractals?

I bought copies of the game for myself, fiancé, and two best friends, assuming we’d all be able to enjoy the game together.

Four of us manage fine in the afore mentioned “instances”, but when we try bringing in two more people, somebody has to sit it out.

I don’t want to hear any rubbish about how “eight party slots don’t work with the current system.” Or, “go play WvW.” That’s bullkitten. Not everyone likes WvW. You made eight slots possible with Guild Wars 1. How hard can it possibly be to make this happen in Guild Wars 2?

I expected this kind of back peddling from EA when the new SimCity (smaller city sizes) came out. But not you, ArenaNet. I thought you were better than that.

The game is balanced around 5 players. It is really as simple as that.
The bigger the party-sizes are the harder stuff will be to balance. And it will also mean it takes longer and longer to actually get a group together if you don’t play with guildies/friends.

And this was also rather clear long before launch and have been fully available since then, so it is really your own fault for not reading up on the game before buying it.

They didn’t backpedal.

They looked at the system they had designed and decided that 5 players was a better number than 8 for GW2.

hip.8435:

Why only five party slots in dungeons/fractals?

I bought copies of the game for myself, fiancé, and two best friends, assuming we’d all be able to enjoy the game together.

Four of us manage fine in the afore mentioned “instances”, but when we try bringing in two more people, somebody has to sit it out.

I don’t want to hear any rubbish about how “eight party slots don’t work with the current system.” Or, “go play WvW.” That’s bullkitten. Not everyone likes WvW. You made eight slots possible with Guild Wars 1. How hard can it possibly be to make this happen in Guild Wars 2?

I expected this kind of back peddling from EA when the new SimCity (smaller city sizes) came out. But not you, ArenaNet. I thought you were better than that.

With how the Combat System plays out,
The more players you have, the easier it is.

5 players is the perfect balance for instance because it’s not too many players which makes the dungeon easy, and it’s not a low number of players that makes it almost impossible.

When you got less people, it becomes more challenging because of less screw-ups.
More players means more screw-ups is acceptable.

Early videos with interviews and marketing videos long before release, and before beta explained that ANet felt 8 member groups were too large.

They designed GW2 around 5.

The game was clearly marketed that way.

That was one of 2 reasons why my guild purchased the game. The other was mobile combat.

I am sorry that you missed important information before purchasing the game, and purchased on an assumption. I am really sorry this is not working out well for you and your friends.

Group size is the first thing our guild checks when investigating a new game.

why not 9 people? why not 4? why not 30? It is an arbitrary decision. Once made, it effects game design heavily and you cannot easily change it. Sucks that you are not able to bring all your friends with you, but in this case, it just is the way it is.

Five is a sensible number because it is equal to the number of fingers on one hand.

Above that, the math gets complicated.

“The bigger the party-sizes are the harder stuff will be to balance. And it will also mean it takes longer and longer to actually get a group together if you don’t play with guildies/friends.”

Not really. Scale enemy quantity/difficulty up/down to how many people are in the party.

“And this was also rather clear long before launch and have been fully available since then, so it is really your own fault for not reading up on the game before buying it.”

My apologies for assuming the sequel would be…Oh, I dunno…like the first. Is it my fault that people are leaving the game in droves for not containing key elements of GW1, too?

“They looked at the system they had designed and decided that 5 players was a better number than 8 for GW2.”

“why not 9 people? why not 4? why not 30? It is an arbitrary decision. Once made, it effects game design heavily and you cannot easily change it. Sucks that you are not able to bring all your friends with you, but in this case, it just is the way it is.”

Both of those responses would still be like Nintendo at a press conference saying, “Yeah…we looked at Mario Kart and decided three players would be better than four. You know what? Too many banana peels on the road at one time. Can’t have that. I hope these people at least read up before buying.”

“Five is a sensible number because it is equal to the number of fingers on one hand.”

Lol.

This is something that could be easily fixed with two clicks of a Razer Naga mouse. More players in party = more bad guys in the area you’re in. Or enable henchmen in instanced areas. It would be nice to see what someone from the development team has to say about this. Probably the same, recycled bureaucratic garbage that’s been dished out before. I just want the game to be fun again, and I think eight player parties would do that.

I agree. Lack of choice on this, sadly.

Iirc, most MMO’s keep party sizes around five or six, but allow larger groups (e.g., raid). As far as the tedium of waiting to fill out a party, it’s pretty obvious that smaller is better. The only game I’ve played which had parties of 8 was GW — and in that game, a party could be filled out using Henchmen (and later, heroes).

having a huge train with 30+ players is good even while it ruins it for others but an 8 player party is all of a sudden mind blowing big……sigh

Keep the current instances limited to 5, increase the open world party limit to 8.
No balancing needed whatsoever.

8 seems like a odd number, particularly if the starting point is 5.
Although one area where I think ANet could focus on is difficulty scaling. They sort of have it in world bosses (although imperfectly so since usually all they do is scale hp) so I don’t see why they couldn’t implement similar content scaling in dungeons and fractals (to a certain extent of course, eventually you’d just start crowding too much). But as nice as such a system might be I think ANet would firstly have to play around with world boss scaling (you know looking how you can make the boss challenging for larger mobs but not tedious i.e. more massive hp scaling) since if they don’t do it right we’d probably see a lot of unhappy people.

There has to be a number where they say “enough is enough, and this is your limit”.

If they didn’t say that, why stop at 8? Why not 9 player parties? Or 10? Or 15? or 25? Or even 50? Why not an entire server running COF P1 together?

hip.8435:

This is something that could be easily fixed with two clicks of a Razer Naga mouse. More players in party = more bad guys in the area you’re in. Or enable henchmen in instanced areas. It would be nice to see what someone from the development team has to say about this. Probably the same, recycled bureaucratic garbage that’s been dished out before. I just want the game to be fun again, and I think eight player parties would do that.

Coding to change to the entire game design to allow for a group of 8 instead of 5 would be throwing out the current game that has existed on that design foundation for a year and a half. Anyone care to guess how expensive that would be, or how long that would take in terms of man—hours? Or what that would do to everyone else’s game experience?

The developer created a new game. It made a design decision that is consistent with current games. It tested, marketed, and released said game built on that foundation.

Coming into the game, a year and half later, and demanding the developer respond to a customer failing to understand a basic game mechanic before purchase, then demanding the game be changed to suit them after that failure smacks just a a little bit more of wanting an Oompa Loompa and wanting it “NOW”.

Apologies to those who did understand what they were purchasing and wished the game design was different. Suggestions are always welcome for discussion.

-retired software dev

hip.8435:

My apologies for assuming the sequel would be…Oh, I dunno…like the first. Is it my fault that people are leaving the game in droves for not containing key elements of GW1, too?

The problem with this part is this game plays very differently then in gw1. different skill system, weps, armor, traits, no wvw in gw1, pvp and pve very different. only one playable race. It does not surprise me that with change of combat and gamemodes that they changed party size. (In Gw1 the party size was dependant on the area you were going out in (starting zone was 4, end game zones were 8 ) and not everyone played GW1 as well.

8 player parties were a pain to fill up with players in GW1, that’s why.
In GW1 they had henchmen, and later heroes, to fill up a couple of empty spots, but eventually people didn’t bother grouping with players and just picked full H&H teams. Which gradually made it harder to group with players, so more people would use H&H etc …

lordkrall.7241:

The game is balanced around 5 players. It is really as simple as that.
The bigger the party-sizes are the harder stuff will be to balance. And it will also mean it takes longer and longer to actually get a group together if you don’t play with guildies/friends.

And this was also rather clear long before launch and have been fully available since then, so it is really your own fault for not reading up on the game before buying it.

What balance, we need party of 8 for best balance.

goldenwing.8473:

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Anyone care to guess how expensive that would be, or how long that would take in terms of man—hours?

[/quote]

Zero dollars? Less than 30 seconds?

goldenwing.8473:

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Or what that would do to everyone else’s game experience?

[/quote]

Make it more enjoyable?

goldenwing.8473:

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The developer created a new game. It made a design decision that is consistent with current games. It tested, marketed, and released said game built on that foundation.

[/quote]

Way to think outside the box, ArenaNet. Maintain that status quo with every other game out there.

goldenwing.8473:

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Coming into the game, a year and half later, and demanding the developer respond to a customer failing to understand a basic game mechanic before purchase, then demanding the game be changed to suit them after that failure smacks just a a little bit more of wanting an Oompa Loompa and wanting it “NOW”.

[/quote]

goldenwing.8473:

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I’ve been playing since Guild Wars 1. Wait, did you just say “basic game mechanic?” You just proved my point that it’s NOT that hard to change then.

goldenwing.8473:

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Apologies to those who did understand what they were purchasing and wished the game design was different. Suggestions are always welcome for discussion.

[/quote]

Look, there’s always room for improvement. If the content were scaled up/down better, the game can still cater to those who wish to go solo or party up with “as many as eight.” (The fact that my suggesting “eight” is causing such a raucous shows how exciting it can be) Some of us would like to engage some of the story/dungeon content with as many friends as possible. I thought “MMO” stood for “Massively Multiplayer On-line”, not “Minimum Multiplayer On-line”.

If you’re happy with party max at five in dungeons/fractals/story, more power to you. As for the rest of us, we’ll just have to keep an eye out for other MMOs to come out to implement what you’ve already proven to the rest of us is, if not reasonable, then realistic, expectation.

As for the rest of you, thank you for reading/commenting. Whether you think I’m right or wrong, say so. As snarky as I might seem towards goldenwing, I think it’s great that people still enjoy the game with five player parties. For me, personally, that’s not reaching the game’s potential. I’m only interested in what’s best for the community and it would be nice to get my monies worth out of the copies I bought. The point of all this is to say that my desire for marathon Guild Wars 2 went away with the reduced party size.

It’s always best to research a game before committing oneself. I hope that happens before the next purchase. We all know what happens when one assumes. It’s too bad one aspect can ruin the whole game. Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

It’s always best to research a game before committing oneself. I hope that happens before the next purchase. We all know what happens when one assumes. It’s too bad one aspect can ruin the whole game. Good luck.

You’re right, Inculpatus! I won’t make THAT mistake again! I’ve got my best crack team of computer scientists researching Elder Scrolls Online and The Stick of Truth as I type this. I wonder how many party slots THEY will have! Will they regress back to FIVE? (like Guild Wars did) Or, will they raise the bar and allow you to play with ALL of your real life friends?

Or….ArenaNet could just tack on three extra party slots on there. No big deal.

well, it seems you are completely oblivious to everything anyone else says. What are you looking for here, great praise for your grand ideas? Pretty unfriendly and antagonizing too. Guess it is pointless to reply to you basically. Have fun dreaming of your great 8 man party game.

You may say that I’m a dreamer, Algreg. But according to some of these replies, I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will be as one.

Oh, wait. I’m sorry, Algreg. You can’t join us. There’s already four people in my party.

Stop thinking of it as a regression to 5, it isn’t.

Just because large numbers work in another MMO does not mean they will work in GW2.

Look at how combat works, look at how combo’s work. There is a balance that Arenanet needed to strike between requiring players to use some skill in battle, and having content that was both slightly challenging, but still easy enough for the average player to complete.

The larger your party the less you have to strategise. Suddenly the chance of an enemy attacking you becomes much smaller and the threat to your party if you die becomes non existent.

5 is a good number for GW2. Stop complaining. If it was 8 you’d probably complain that it needed to be 10 because not all of your friends fit in the party. They had to pick a number, they picked one, they designed their game around it and it works well.

Just because you want something doesn’t make it correct. Last time I checked they were the developers and had been to University and studied things like game design.

Adding it to existing dungeons at this stage would very likely to be costly as it would impact on their servers – they already changed some pet consumables due to the cumulative impact on servers and the resultant performance issues it was causing. I know zilch about the tech side of things, but I imagine adding 2 extra slots is from a programming POV not as simple as doing just that.

As for the 5-man, well it works rather well right now. I wouldn’t personally object to that changing, but for new content rather than existing. I’d like to see a range – eg 3-mans as well as larger groups (8man? 10 man?), but realistically this is not something I’d expect to be a priority. The game works right now with 5 man instances and then larger groups for open world.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Stop thinking of it as a regression to 5, it isn’t.

I can’t help it.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Just because large numbers work in another MMO does not mean they will work in GW2.

If it ain’t broke, don’t reduce it.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

There is a balance that Arenanet needed to strike between requiring players to use some skill in battle, and having content that was both slightly challenging, but still easy enough for the average player to complete.

Doesn’t matter how skilled or average you are if you have to sit it out.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Suddenly the chance of an enemy attacking you becomes much smaller and the threat to your party if you die becomes non existent.

C’mon! You just took away half the fun!

FlamingFoxx.1305:

5 is a good number for GW2. Stop complaining. If it was 8 you’d probably complain that it needed to be 10 because not all of your friends fit in the party. They had to pick a number, they picked one, they designed their game around it and it works well.

Why is 5 a good number? Because you say so? I’d be perfectly content with 6. 6 is a nice, round number, don’t you suppose?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

They had to pick a number, they picked one, they designed their game around it and it works well.

Not as well as it could.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Just because you want something doesn’t make it correct. Last time I checked they were the developers and had been to University and studied things like game design.

That’s why I’m posting it to the discussion page — to see if anyone else agrees or not. Last time I checked, these developers were rumored to be receptive to community ideas.

C’mon, ANet. I’m willing to meet you less than halfway. Increase it to 6 and see how many people will complain. If it sucks, you can blame me and drop it back down to 5.

Thanks again everyone, for reading and commenting. Don’t let these party poopers ruin your experience by staying silent. Keep the comments rolling. Ask your guildies what they think. It’s better to address this now so we can get back to making fun of other MMOs for having subscription fees.

To me, you see quite desperate in trying to get 8 person parties. Maybe if you weren’t so aggressive and sarcastic to the others on this forum, more people would be willing to reply to your idea positively.

IMO the party limit is fine. I’ve never really thought much about it and it really hasn’t been an issue for me. I imagine that this is the case for most players as well considering most people have replied that there isn’t no need for 8 person parties.

Yes, they would be nice for some, but not for others. I play on a less populated server and don’t always like guesting to other servers. A party limit increase would make it more difficult for me to fill my party with players to do dungeons and fractals.

TBH there is no need for 8 person parties. That fact alone is reason for them to not put them in the game.

This is something that would make it easier for some players. Some players would be happy. Anet wants to please as many people as possible though. So they will add things that make people happy. Like more detailed and better LS and more skills.

Herschie.6380:

To me, you see quite desperate in trying to get 8 person parties. Maybe if you weren’t so aggressive and sarcastic to the others on this forum, more people would be willing to reply to your idea positively.

IMO the party limit is fine. I’ve never really thought much about it and it really hasn’t been an issue for me. I imagine that this is the case for most players as well considering most people have replied that there isn’t no need for 8 person parties.

Yes, they would be nice for some, but not for others. I play on a less populated server and don’t always like guesting to other servers. A party limit increase would make it more difficult for me to fill my party with players to do dungeons and fractals.

TBH there is no need for 8 person parties. That fact alone is reason for them to not put them in the game.

This is something that would make it easier for some players. Some players would be happy. Anet wants to please as many people as possible though. So they will add things that make people happy. Like more detailed and better LS and more skills.

I agree with this.
+1

Why is 8 a good number? Because you said so?
GW2 is NOT GW1. You can’t say that because there are 8 player parties in GW1 it will work in GW2 because it is a completely different game. The combat is different, and requires different things. Not to mention there are no heroes or henchmen.

GW1 got away with 8 player parties because when there weren’t enough people you had AI to fill the remaining places. GW2 does not have heroes (for obvious reasons, the combat means that AI allies are next to useless) and therefore they dropped the number down to 5 to ensure that throughout the day there would always be enough players to form a party.

Even as it is its sometimes difficult to fill out a party of 5. If it were raised to 8 then we would have a lot of problems.

As soon as the game adds Henchies (unlikely), I will be all for 8-person-party dungeons.

Guild Wars 2 is just a severely dumbed down version of Guild Wars 1.

Dumbed down combat
Dumbed down character customization
Dumbed down mobs
Dumbed down party size

Since the only thing your character can do is DPS and there aren’t really any smart creative character builds out there, or different roles for characters in the party, there’s no real need to have more than 5 people in a party as it’ll just mess all the other dumbed down systems up. Many boons don’t really stack well. You can’t really use more than 1 guy dealing conditions. Boring combo fields is just about all we got in the way of skill syngergies. Etc etc.

5 man parties aren’t the main problem with this game. The stupid dumbed down combat, character and skill mechanics are.

How is the combat dumbed down? GW1 combat was stationary, skill-spam based combat.

How is the character customisation dumbed down? Trait lines function in almost the same way as GW1 AP. The only real difference is that GW2 has fewer skills – which has its benefits.

I’ll give you mobs – but no open world MMO can have what GW1 had. GW1’s mobs were interesting and well-pathed because you could take them out without worrying about where they respawned (because they didn’t).

GW2 is not GW1. GW1 is already a game so of course they didn’t simply remake it.
I absolutely love GW1, I also absolutely love GW2. But seriously people, stop making comparisons. One is a CORPG the other is an MMORPG – they could not have functioned in the same way. GW1 is a unique beast.

I don’t understand the various counter arguments for larger parties, Sure Arenanet doesn’t want to go that route but too state that it would make encounters to easy is completely ridiculous. We’ve had 2 boss’s implemented in the last year that require atleast 80+ people to actually do them how the “Underworld” can’t Arenanet create a instance challenging enough for 10+ people?

I’m not stating that I disagree with Arenanet in their decision, but to state that they can’t create “Large grouped instanced” content which is balanced is absurd. They did it before they can do it now.

My favorite group size so far has been 4 man groups in Swtor. 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 dps.
Quick and easy to get together and go straight to action without waiting anyone going afk and so on. Even pugs worked very well with a group that small.

Lotro has 6 man groups and in my opition they are already too large, but it still works in that game because they kinda have four roles (or had) in there. 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps, 1 support. Yes, support was a real role in there.

What would be the point of 8 man group without roles meaning that there would just be 8 dps? Why would that be better than 5 man dps groups?
I have a feeling that it would just be messy, confusing with lots of downtime and make pugging quite impossible.

There is plenty of open world content to do if you want to run with 8 people. Yes you are locked out of doing dungeons with 8 people but they have been designed and tuned to 5 people, and that’s not going to change.

Martin The Brave.8731:

I don’t understand the various counter arguments for larger parties, Sure Arenanet doesn’t want to go that route but too state that it would make encounters to easy is completely ridiculous. We’ve had 2 boss’s implemented in the last year that require atleast 80+ people to actually do them how the “Underworld” can’t Arenanet create a instance challenging enough for 10+ people?

I’m not stating that I disagree with Arenanet in their decision, but to state that they can’t create “Large grouped instanced” content which is balanced is absurd. They did it before they can do it now.

Part of their design decision was, I believe, to have more folks out in the open world (community play). Fits with the DE’s and with the continued addition of large open world encounters. There is some consistency there.

I do not personally have a problem with 8 man play.

DAoC had 8-man groups, which meant I was playing on 3 accounts at the same time, manually, reaching over and using multiple keyboards, multiple mice, multiple monitors. Was some of the best play I have ever had. (GW2 is the first game I have played in 14 years where I am not at least 2-boxing.)

DAoC, however, had about 52 classes spread between 3 realms. So an 8-man group allowed for the necessary size to fit what each of those (mostly specialized) classes brought.

I would enjoy 8 player content. I would not want it to replace 5 man content entirely. I’d like to see a range between 5-20. Most of the content being 5 mans. A few 10 mans. and 1 or 2 20 mans. Just for variety. I agree 5 man content works well in most scenarios but there are somethings that can’t be done with 5 man content and there’s no reason to limit themselves to one type of dungeon.

CursedShaitan.9720:

I would enjoy 8 player content. I would not want it to replace 5 man content entirely.

That’s precisely what I was trying to get at. Thank you.

Only a couple days left to see if the party size will be increased to six or eight with the April feature pack.

I just don’t see how re-balancing for one more slot is so difficult. It feels like they scaled down to 5 just to emulate WoW and LoL. It’s just sad that I have to revert back to GW1 if I want 6-8 party sizes.

There’s no denying from a pure entertainment standpoint, 6-8 would be more enjoyable than 5. I highly doubt there would be an outcry to go back to 5 if the limits were increased.

hip.8435:

Only a couple days left to see if the party size will be increased to six or eight with the April feature pack.

I just don’t see how re-balancing for one more slot is so difficult. It feels like they scaled down to 5 just to emulate WoW and LoL. It’s just sad that I have to revert back to GW1 if I want 6-8 party sizes.

There’s no denying from a pure entertainment standpoint, 6-8 would be more enjoyable than 5. I highly doubt there would be an outcry to go back to 5 if the limits were increased.

It might not be difficult. But it will take a rather large amount of time and resources, since they will basically need to rework more or less every single path of every dungeon in the game.

There is also the issue with the AoE-cap, which is 5 atm. If you could suddenly run around with more people than that in Dungeons you would be able to basically ignore AoE completely if you were the lucky one.

8 man parties would be such a great improvement.

Perhaps the Team system would be better to take advantage of in Pve

Granted there are no PvE restrictions and nobody wants to make a guild just for friends..

How about a second party like system called group or utalize team in PvE
It would act like Party but without showing the player tabs
each player would be able to use the teamchat or a new groupchat tab
you can see all your members on the map

granted this would not effect and of the games current mechanics but it would allow you to play with larger groups of friends in PvE without needing to use any local chats or spam guild chat

+1’ed you both.

When the party limit was eight like in it was in GW1, my buddies and I would slay baddies until the sun came out. There were some Friday-Saturdays where we didn’t sleep at all.

I miss the days when Guild Wars used to remind you: “You have been playing for 5 hours please take a break.” and you were like, “NOOOOOO!!!”

With 5 player party limits, it’s like, “I’ve been playing an hour? Oh, I’m good for the day. I should probably log off, anyway.”

hip.8435:

Only a couple days left to see if the party size will be increased to six or eight with the April feature pack.

If you keep creating things to be disappointed in, you won’t be disappointed… No, wait, if you keep creating things to be disappointed in, you will be disappointed… Hm…

hip.8435:

I just don’t see how re-balancing for one more slot is so difficult.

That’s obvious.

hip.8435:

There’s no denying from a pure entertainment standpoint,

There is.

hip.8435:

I highly doubt there would be an outcry to go back to 5 if the limits were increased.

There would be, and some of them even feature in the posts you quote and fail to comprehend in this very thread.

Im Mudbone.1437:

8 man parties would be such a great improvement.