Guild Wars 2

After playing the story of the demo yesterday with two people, I noticed how (again) it’s not really finely tuned for playing with multiple people. Other than the party leader, other party members often are left out, excluded.
From really minor things like not being able to interact with an NPC to not being able to interact with turrets and objects, to straight out put into a box where they can’t even move a muscle, and just have to wait it out. (Seriously Anet? A warning would be nice)

While I do understand that the story is supposed to be “your story” and technically aimed as a solo story experience, I can’t imagine that people don’t also like doing these with multiple people. And while it often enough works out just fine, lately I noticed a minor trend where this experience is becoming less than ideal. It is starting to feel just like a less optimal experience to do story instances with other people, if you’re just in it for the story experience.

First of all, in Living Story Season 2 (I think, would need to check), HoT and Living Story Season 3, party members other than the leader cannot engage dialogue or interact with with NPCs. Even for minor flavour text and dialogue. Sometimes it’s shown for your party members, and other times it’s just not shown and it has to be typed out to keep everyone in the loop. It’s not always happening but it is often the case. It is fairly minor, and can be worked around. Like whenever we have a friend who hasn’t done it yet, I usually say that they should open the story rather than one of the others who have already done it. Just because it’s a better experience.

Second, interacting with story relevant objects. This became more obvious to me when I played the demo yesterday with my girlfriend. We always do story together, and usually enjoy it. Sometimes party members can’t even interact with a turret, or read a book or activate a switch, where you just feel dumb standing there, because the party leader needs to be called over to press a button or flip a switch. Sometimes it makes sense, because you’re initiating the next big step, other times it doesn’t really matter who presses the button, So to speak.
In the example with the demo, other than the party leader, you can’t get an extinguisher, and you can’t “try out” the raptor mounts. You simply get ignored, and you can’t interact with the raptors in it. (Yes I reported both as bugs separately) In the case of the extinguisher, you at least can get a bucket of water. Kind of sad still, but alright.

Third are the more glaring issues, like penalty boxes where your party members cannot move at all, get forcibly separated from the group. Like the many threads about Mordremoths last encounter penalty box. Like the Shining blade instance your party members literally get put in a penalty box or position, and can’t even move. Sure, in one occasion you can throw a grenade that literally does 1/10th of any original damage and maybe 2 seconds of freezing. If you could actually hit something, as you can’t really throw them at the enemies because they spawn just outside of your range/view.
Also putting players off to the side of the last ritual instead of including them in it or closer to it, is just rude. Like you guys stand over here and don’t get to properly watch this.
Ofcourse, this instance should just be labeled solo instead. It’s perfectly fine for there to be solo instances, but do consider that people might want to enter with multiple players, and the experience they get when there is no such warning and basically entails standing around and waiting without as much as a warning, that just is a recipe for a bad experience.
And yes, there are solo experiences in the core personal storyline, the difference there being, they are relatively short, and often enough you do get some skills if not all of your own skills. Living story season 2, seeds of truth (?) With the memory seed instances are a perfect example.

In conclusion, Story instances have a worse experience when you’re not the party leader, than when you are. Some cases are designed like that for story, but don’t do any effort to keep it fun for all, and others are minor annoyances where the experience isn’t as uniform as possible. It would be very nice if ArenaNet also considers (in the future) to make sure that story in a party is as fun as it can be for everyone in the party.

TL;DR: The point is that the game could improve on this aspect, not that the game is bad because of it. Because the story instances are usually great fun to play through.