Guild Wars 2

Ive been doing map completing and ive noticed that much of the world requires a party. Events are practically impossible by yourself, and doubly so for skill challenges.

I think it needs to be more content available to the solo player, other wise all it is is questing hearts.

(btw im AP 4k+, with 4 lvl 80’s all specced exotics, almost dungeon master, and have just really started map completing, so im fairly sure i know what im doing)

Please tell me im missing something important

Map completition can be done all by yourself. There are some cases where you need some help, for example there is a skill point in cursed shore that is guarded by a champion, you may need someone to agro the champion while you pick the skill point, but you can try to pick by yourself by using a spy kit.

In Malchor’s leap there is another skill point that is guarded by a flying boss (i forgot the name) that teleports to you when you get close to the skill point. There is one skill point underwater in malchor’s leap that is tricky too, its guarded by a veteran and there is a burrow that keeps poisoning you and they respawn quite fast.

Other than that i dont remember any other examples where i needed someone to help me.

So basicaly you need some spy kits and harpy feathers and you’re done. You can use other consumables like the embers, pet whistles, those sylvari turrets and that boulder consumable that you buy on caledon forest that people used to perma stun bosses in dungeons.

you can do every map completion by yourself. (I have 8 character with 100% map completion).

A few of the harder place just grab a spy kit. The WvW is the tough part.

I’m not trying to be mean, but try to learn your class a bit more. I have 7 level 80s (can’t get around to playing on my ranger more than a minute, so it’s going to take a while for that one) and the only class I had a problem getting map completion by myself was on my elementalist when it wasn’t even level 30, geared with whatever I found and barely knowing how to really play one.

Thief, Necro, Guardian, Warrior have a really easy time doing stuff on their own. Mesmer requires you to be a bit more imaginative and I don’t recall any problem with my Engi.

Be it in Orr or Queensdale (except Southsun) everything that isn’t labeled “group event” can be done on your own. Even some group events can be done by yourself if you have the patience (or because some of them are barely challenging).
As for Skill Challenges, are you talking about the ones where you have to fight ? For which I fail to recall any kind of difficult fight in 60+ zones. And for communing, there are spy kits if you don’t want to lose time.

What is a spy kit? I checked the wiki and cannot find it.

There was recently a post about someone who did nothing but map completion while avoiding any unnecessary xp (including not killing if possible for hearts) to see if they could avoid hitting 80 with map completion. I think they ended up at 60-something.

That’s all of Orr finished at <60-something with bad gear.

Pretty sure this problem isn’t the game’s fault.

Plus, y’know, I’ve done full map completion on two characters and my only annoyance was how long it takes due to the sheer scale.

roperratt.6917:

What is a spy kit? I checked the wiki and cannot find it.

Its the ash legion sky kit, you buy it from a heart in plains of ashford

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ash_Legion_Spy_Kit

It gives 10 secs of stealth if you stand still, if you move you lose the stealth.

There is the harpy feathers, that give 3 secs of stealth and you can move, but it got nerfed and now has a 5 secs cooldown, in the past you could just spam then and skip everything in dungeons easily

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Harpy_Feathers_

Map completition can be done all by yourself. There are some cases where you need some help

Anyone else see the problem here?

Most things required for map competition can be done by yourself, perhaps the exception would be Orr, Frostgorge, and Southsun.

Something you need to keep in mind (this is just my observation), is that Anet I believed had expected more players to be out in the world more instead of sitting in LA. Heck there weren’t even waypoints back in the day, thats why at the order bases you have teleporters to for trinity.

After they realized that the open world wasn’t good enough (90% of the complaints at launch was lack of endgame), they released Fractals (I’m not sure if that started after or prelaunch. The location of the portal is just a bit weird for me) and ascended (people farmed up and got exotic gear way faster than they predicted) to make up for the lack of endgame.

That being said, I’m probably 50% sure that Anet has some projects going on that may help with the open world population problem, so we may see something about it after march.

My personal idea was incorporating guild halls into the open world. Make it so theres some form of upkeep (guild halls are in areas inside a zone. These areas have a stabilization rate. This rate goes down over time, goes down even more when an event fails, and perhaps when an event is up for too long. It goes up upon doing things inside the zone. Unlocks rewards, buffs, bonuses, etc; for the guild in levels). So that endgame players have a reason for going out into the open world and it makes guilds feel more important.

My advice to you use fill up your guild roster with as many guilds as you can. Don’t have to rep or get involved, but just be in one. Then when you encounter something that you need help for you have 5 guilds to ask in.

I like roaming the world personally. I just do some random build that would normally suck in the rest of the game (like turrets for engineers) and roam around. Talking to new players, answer questions about the game, helping with events, etc.

Deified.7520:

That being said, I’m probably 50% sure that Anet has some projects going on that may help with the open world population problem, so we may see something about it after march.

They could solve the problem quite easily by having a common “underflow” system shared by all the servers. The technology is already in place.

I think that would be the simplest way to handle it, but I can understand why they are reluctant to do something that might look like instancing. We’ll see.

As for map completion, I have found GW2State.com to be very handy for locating servers to guest to with temples open, which makes Orr completion a LOT easier. There are some skill point communes in Orr that cannot be completed unless certain temples are player-controlled, which is rare on less active servers (i.e., most of them).

Also, though I find the need for it annoying, it’s possible to commune with almost all skill points guarded by champs with careful timing and without spy kits.

If you’re level 80 and have trouble with regular events and skillpoints, then unfortunately this seems like an L2P issue. What’s your profession?

Paul.4081:

Map completition can be done all by yourself. There are some cases where you need some help

Anyone else see the problem here?

By design. People always conveniently ignore the northmost Sylvari scout’s telling comment at Straits of Devastation (close to the North entrance to the map): “You will need allies to survive.” While truly I have little problem in these areas even leveling, I have been playing for long now and enjoy doing these particular zones repeatedly (never related to “Orr hate”, though the constant “death… good”, “return… die”, “join us!”, “everyone… come!” sound comical over time.) But when I was a new player, these zones felt difficult, and probably were (especially considering the made it quite a bit easier for a time, before they buffed the nobles… for me I actually liked old, “difficult” Orr.) It was expected to tackle the place with friends, and way more fun done that way-my feeling is that it was expected for you to group up with randoms or friends to help each other out, matching the atmosphere of such a dangerous area.

In short, PvE mapping is fun to many players including me, whether soloing it or with friends, so I would answer this thread this way: “it is just you and a few.”

(BTW, for those who hate Thieves because Warriors are "the most powerful “Profession”, they have it the easiest time to complete the whole PvE map solo with almost no hkitteno Thieves do have advantages that no other Profession have despite the tradeoffs.)

no the point of all of this is that just regular events late game require insane amounts of time, or are simply pointlessly impossible. for example, killing a champion and adds.

When i play my warrior none of this is a problem, because warriors are rediculous. But im trying it on a zerk mes. But his has always applied to all classes.

The hearts are fine. those dont need to be tweaked, just events.

It kills alot of game content if you have to have a party to play non end game

If its a l2p issue like everyone says then this is a problem doubly so. how is a player who is decent not able to do it, vs someone who just started the game.

Noobs should be able to beat events. Ya starter area events are simple enough, but when you get to about 20 or 30 they get very difficult for a noob. Without this the game loses play ability, story, and content

Actually, i just realize theres no reason for me to post this. Players who have been at this for a while are just going to suggest meta exploits that fix the problem in no way, and anet is more worried about keeping the end game going.

Sorry to bug you guys. Thanks for the tips

Why should noobs = idiots ? We were all new at this game and unfortunately some people never learn to play their class.
GW2 is easy if you know how to read and think for a few seconds. But if you want to “play how you want” then be ready to face the consequences.

How about you give us a few example of those events that “noobs” won’t be able to beat ? Ignoring of course group events because, like their name suggest, aren’t tailored for only 1 player.

You can’t really play an MMO and then complain about having to play with other people.

GWII has the best open world content of any MMO currently on the market, as far as I’m concerned, and if you can’t stomach it then I’d say MMOs aren’t for you.

Plus, if you are having trouble then it may, as others suggested, be a L2P issue.
Take me for example: I don’t do builds; I pick whatever traits and spells I like. I don’t care much for gear, mostly greens, rares and a few excotics.
I am able to play most of the game like this, but I can’t do some skill points in Orr. That’s my fault, not the game’s.

Don’t get scared away by the forum talk. The gap in competency between an experienced player and a new player is massive in GW2, more than in an other MMO I’ve seen. You needn’t be ashamed of being inexperienced because everyone was there once. If you’re playing a squishy class like a thief or elementalist you need to learn where your defenses are and what they’re good for because you do need active defense. You can’t just soak the hits and heal through, particularly when there are multiple enemies.

Once you have got the play style sorted out though you can carve through enemies. Most events can be done solo and the group events often attract at least one other player, even if there’s almost nobody else in the zone.

the point is that if no non experienced player can start to play one because its designed to be for only mmo players then the game is a nitch that no one will be able to get into. which makes it an awful game for new to comp players. Im great at dodging and aoe and i still get ganked while kiting.

If the game is only built to cater to the meta then its a very poor design.

Dont get me wrong, im not saying that gw isnt a great game, because it really is, but its just to geared towards players with high level equipment now, and has too ridiculous of a learning curve.

Regular events that you find should be complete able for a regular casual player. not for a dungeon farming ascended gear warrior. other wise it is a very poor design, and almost all content is lost. they took a very very good idea and tweaked it into an unusable game mechanic.

As for forum talk, half of the people on here have been ‘l2p’ people who have no real advice to give. This game is now all about meta and that spills over into the regular content of the game such as map completion

even dungeons have become stupid. All of them are filled with exploits that anet barely keeps up with fixing and instead of fixing things like path finding, they just buff basic damage. The queen spider in AC for example, and the door they added in COF p1. Lame fixes that just force players to find other exploits.

The worst part is that it forces out newbies from, being to learn dungeons because the farmers just want in and out and dont want to teach new people. Especially people under 80

Im just complaining at this point. Its just going to invite more l2p players. Anet will never get off their butts and fix world map stuff. they just want people to keep playing end game stuff to keep them busy so they will spend real $. They have suceeded at much, and many of the things that made this a great game have become lost

I got a really hard time understanding what map completion part you mean needs a group.
Sure there are some events on certain maps that are a hassle to complete solo, not many but some, but they are not a requirement for map completion.

Not even the hardest ones in orr really demands a group, its just a challenge to do it alone. And this is perfectly fine by my standards, that the High lvl maps needs some sort of group play or cunning play, since you should have learned the class/skill sets etc etc on the lover lvls.

If anything this just points out one big problem that is growing in gw2, and that is that AP should somehow be tied in player skill or class knowledge wich this topic clearly state is not the case.

You could have 5k AP by just doing dailies/monthlies/jumping puzzles and speed clearing dungeons, nothing that speaks of how good you are at solving a problem or playing your character.

My wife have 100 map completion and the only thing she ever voiced a concern with was Eternal battleground points.
And this is her first MMO, GW2 is very very newbie friendly.

Ps.
If I missed the point and you meant that you think the map events are to hard to do for a casual player and they demand fully geared experienced groups I have an even harder time understanding you.
Almost every map is about 90% solo friendly scalable events and the last 10% being some cool boss or event chain that needs a group of 5 players.
Again the big exception of all this is the world bosses, or “end game” zones and events.

Guild Wars 2 has my first MMO. I got to about level 10 or so on a warrior in beta. But when the game launched, I decided to play elementalist. Because squishy and new. But I soon learned. Water helps me heal. Earth helps me take hits. Air and fire are for damage dealing.

I soloed probably around 95% of the PvE map. Of the remaining 5%, only about 10% of that was me needing help. The other 90% of the map I didn’t solo was due to me just playing with others and being in an area I had not been in before.

And my elementalist is not geared in meta. She’s been in clerics since she hit 80 and she was mix and match before. And clerics is not a high dps build at all. It’s a high healing power build and I’m still squishy as can be. I just have more effective heals, but I only have so many.

So soloing the map does take knowing how many of what type of enemy you can take on, skill in fighting so that you may live if you get swarmed, and patience because avoiding enemies in Orr to get to a skill point or vista is probably the long way around. So of youbare having problems with a majority of areas, then it is a matter of learning your class better and/or playing smarter.

Syviren.7086:

If its a l2p issue like everyone says then this is a problem doubly so. how is a player who is decent not able to do it, vs someone who just started the game.

Noobs should be able to beat events. Ya starter area events are simple enough, but when you get to about 20 or 30 they get very difficult for a noob. Without this the game loses play ability, story, and content

Imo if you exclude Group Events, with the right tactics you can beat any skill challenge and basically complete everything else for the map exploration, but you need the right level and equip to do so (even if some zones/events are more forgiving than others).

Syviren.7086:

even dungeons have become stupid. All of them are filled with exploits that anet barely keeps up with fixing and instead of fixing things like path finding, they just buff basic damage. The queen spider in AC for example, and the door they added in COF p1. Lame fixes that just force players to find other exploits.

And right there you don’t see the other problem ? You wrote it yourself : Anet fixes something, people find another way to break. They prefer to exploit than to finally learn how to play this game.

If your whole party wipes at the spider queen then you did a terrible job. (But we are talking about dungeons, were every single wipe cannot be blamed on a single player. If you were that good, someone’s else mistake would only slow you down and not kill your whole team).

My question was : show me a non-group event/SP too hard for a single player in regular gear to do by himself.

Perhaps if the OP or others in the thread listed a few examples of what they consider non-soloable (or very hard) events/skillpoints, we can give some suggestions.

You all are missing the point. map completion isnt that hard. Its the events that are too difficult to solo

if an even t happens then you just ignore it and move on most of the time. 90% of the time i see one i dont even bother because it will escalate into a larger and larger event chain

and obviously you havent played the spider queen recently. Ive had full teams with all ascended/legendary items wipe over and over again. Used to beat easy till anet changed it

You make it seem that most events are hard. Please name some. And which spider queen are you talking about (there’s a whole bunch)?

Syviren.7086:

You all are missing the point. map completion isnt that hard. Its the events that are too difficult to solo

Yes, please tell us which events you have trouble with and where they are in the world.

I personally haven’t had an issue with any event short of the ones in Orr but that’s to be expected since was balanced around group events.

And some group events are soloable. There’s a solo event in one of the snowy areas of the world where dredge attack a fort. It took me about 15 minutes each time I did it. And I didn’t go down once.

I also spent 10 or so minutes in Caledon Forest killing a champion krait. Underwater on an elementalist. Level 80. There were a number of close calls as I kept agroing other things but I was never downed.

Map cpmpletion is painful, but this is a MMO… you are sort of supposed to meet and team up with other people for the full experience. I am doing map completion for 2nd time now, and i HATE Kessex Hills, Dredgehaunt Cliffs and Timberline Falls.. they are just painful to do. The living story added hoards of overpowered enemies that are no chance you can take down by yourself if you are a lvl 45 out and exploring. The main map and mini map are also very unclear, nearly impossible to see cave entrances for some points of ineterests and many vistas are places in the same areas over and over with little variation on how to reach them.

Bredegi.1943:

The living story added hoards of overpowered enemies that are no chance you can take down by yourself if you are a lvl 45 out and exploring.

I can see how being low level can be more difficult, but OP says he’s level 80 with full exotics.

Oh please…I’m completing map on my 5th character (99% if it wasn’t for kitten ed colour swapping always on the same two colour in WvW I would be done ages ago), always did it ALL alone, never needed to ask anyone to help. Think of some strategy, don’t always claim others to help at the first, slight difficulty and you’ll see it can be done!

Syviren.7086:

and obviously you havent played the spider queen recently. Ive had full teams with all ascended/legendary items wipe over and over again. Used to beat easy till anet changed it

The Spider queen ? The AC spider queen ? I’m sorry but it’s your full ascended/legendary team that is bad, not the encounter that is too hard.

And once again, that has nothing to do with map completion.

Casmurro.9046:

roperratt.6917:

What is a spy kit? I checked the wiki and cannot find it.

Its the ash legion sky kit, you buy it from a heart in plains of ashford

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ash_Legion_Spy_Kit

It gives 10 secs of stealth if you stand still, if you move you lose the stealth.

There is the harpy feathers, that give 3 secs of stealth and you can move, but it got nerfed and now has a 5 secs cooldown, in the past you could just spam then and skip everything in dungeons easily

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Harpy_Feathers_

There’s also the Order of Whispers Spy Kit (which I only recently discovered, even though I’d completed Caledon Forest).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Order_of_Whispers_Spy_Kit

To get back to the main point, more or less:

There is a lot of world out there. It is not the OP’s fault that people do not want to go explore it.

@the OP:
Most hearts and small DEs can be soloed, however anything that says “Group Event” is going to require a few more people, as is most champ fights once you get out of the level 15-25 areas.

If you’re going for map completion, most waypoints and POI’s can be done without engaging in any real fights, but some vistas and most skill points are guarded by “something or other.” Even so, most can be gained solo, if you take your time, and don’t aggro the whole map in the process.

As far as “sucking,” I don’t think it does. It’s only an opinion, but I’m having a ball out in the world rather than standing around in (insert city here) waiting for a zerg event to pop.

Good luck to you!