Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

People are already complaining about how anti-climatic it is that 5 players “easily” can take down an Elder Dragon.

How much more of that wouldn’t we get if we could suddenly do it on our own?

But you don’t do it on your own. You do it with a huge army (the pact), a fleet of airships, a huge battleship and destiny’s edge.

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

XxTAFxX.6741:

Impossible to do this now as no one wants to do it.
It would be better to start as we we mean to go on and able to solo it like the other story modes.

You need to learn to use the lfg tool. I spent every bit of 15 seconds typing in I wanted story mode and had a full party in max of 45 seconds. We ran the entire dungeon, no leavers. I have never once had a problem getting a group for this dungeon. They’ve already nerfed nearly every encounter in this dungeon (some of the airship fights used to actually be semi-challenging, especially the final airship) so asking for even more nerfs on an already faceroll easy dungeon is a terrible idea. It’s the final story it should require some kind of group.

And by “solo the other story modes” I hope you mean personal story and not story dungeons. Cause I’d sure like to see you solo some of them. AC and CM don’t count, anyone can solo those, but you’re not getting through CoF, CoE, ect solo.

Druss.6917:

It’s the final story it should require some kind of group.

Why when the rest of the personal story is soloable?

Agreed, they should add a new tab like Enter The Ruined City of Arah (personal) where Destiny’s Edge is buffed and their AI is upgraded to be on par with Braham, Rox, Marjory, and Kasmeer.

All For One And One For All

LOTRO used to have this problem. The epic story lines were mostly soloable with occasional group-only steps.

At first, things were fine, because everyone was new and most of the player base was leveling up and doing the content together. As time passed, and the majority of players advanced beyond those stages of the story line, fewer players became available to help, even in large guilds, transforming the group-only stages of the story into dead ends for new players.

Eventually, Turbine, which is well-known for its data-mining prowess, dedicated a significant amount of manpower (that could have been used to develop new content instead) to go back and add solo-only options to all the group-only steps of the epic story. But they didn’t stop there; they were apparently so struck by the numbers they saw that they made most of the subsequent epic content solo only. You literally couldn’t do most of it with a group, whether you wanted to or not.

That’s a pretty revealing statement for an MMO developer to make.

Overkill, in my opinion, but a de facto acknowledgement of an often overlooked fact: for all the attention group content gets in MMOs, the majority of players spend the majority of their time quietly doing solo content.

Guild Wars 2, through a variety of clever design choices, has managed to bridge the gap between solo and group content better than any other game I’ve played, and deserves to be commended for that.

Unfortunately, ArenaNet’s spotlight on ever-more-epic massive-group-only now-or-never marquee events ultimately neglects players who would rather relax and play noncommittal soloable content at their own pace. Many gamers, especially adults with jobs and precious little free time, prefer options after a hard day’s work that don’t involve standing around looking/waiting/begging for groups and dealing with sometimes unpleasant strangers.

Some will complain if GW2 doesn’t offer what they want, but most will move on to other games without a word of comment, and with no subscription to cancel or exit interview offered, no feedback as to why they don’t play anymore.

Granted, this observation runs somewhat afield of the specific issue of Zhaitan, but I strongly suspect the final step of the personal story is as much of a dead end for many GW2 players as group-only content was for many LOTRO players, and ArenaNet’s data mining will reflect it.

Given that, I imagine the Zhaitan encounter will eventually be scaled to allow solo completion, though I have no idea how long that will take.

When/if they do open it up, however, then maybe I’ll finally get around to facing Zhaitan myself.

Maybe.

In Age of Conan, all the "personal story" quests were (and may well still be) solo only. Even the epic last dungeon, where you bring a god down, is a solo venture. I recall having the opposite argument - please, I just want to take one other person in with me! Just one!

I absolutely would love having Arah SM soloable. I actually think all dungeon story instances should have a solo variant. I mean, any time I’ve done story dungeons, I never see any story as there’s always rushing ahead. At least in a solo instance, I’m not held up, or holding up, anyone else, and the story content can then be fully enjoyed.

Have you tried using the looking for group tool? I did the dungeon with a friend at 1am on a wednesday night and found 3 other people in 10 minutes

Ceridwen.6703:

In Age of Conan, all the “personal story” quests were (and may well still be) solo only. Even the epic last dungeon, where you bring a god down, is a solo venture. I recall having the opposite argument – please, I just want to take one other person in with me! Just one!

I absolutely would love having Arah SM soloable. I actually think all dungeon story instances should have a solo variant. I mean, any time I’ve done story dungeons, I never see any story as there’s always rushing ahead. At least in a solo instance, I’m not held up, or holding up, anyone else, and the story content can then be fully enjoyed.

lfg ~want to watch story~ .. there.

My guild does story mode with anyone new, no bother.. and we just wait/let them enjoy the cut scenes.
In fact I got “boo’d” for not watching it :P .. (I find the story incredibly boring).

Find a similar friendly guild, …it doesn’t need to be rushed. You just need to find a group who wants to watch it/doesn’t mind waiting.

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

If anything it should become a 100 man raid instance. Taking down an elder dragon with such small manpower is terrible.

I think the gate part right at the start is the only part of the dungeon that requires more than one player. Just delete that gate, problem solved.

While they’re at it they should also just end the dungeon after you kill the mouth of zhaitan because everything after that is essentially just a really long cutscene.

I posted this over 11 months ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/story/Forced-from-solo-to-group-for-final-story/first#post1674529

So what has changed since then?

I now have 5 L80 characters NONE of which have finished the Last Personal Story Mission.

Totally agree that Arah story mode needs to become a soloable mission like every single other personal story missions. I was away from the game for a LONG time, then finally came back, leveled my Guard from 55-80 having lots of fun with the Personal Story. That is, until getting to the end and seeing that I needed to battle my way to the instance gate to finish the story.

Today, I finally saw some people in the Cursed Shore doing the events leading up to the dungeon so I hopprf in, enjoying the “epicness” of it all. We finally kill the High Wizard and…….. no story modes in LFG. /sob

I think having the final PS mission take place in the Arah story-mode 5-man was a cool idea and can see how it probably made sense to do it when GW2 first dropped, but now, more than a year after release, there’s just no draw to the Arah Story dungeon anymore because so many have done it, are not interested, and because of the lead-work you need to do to un-contest the area.

Some suggestions:
- make the waypoint/dungeon non-contested
- tune down the lead-in events for less players to succeed or ramp up the spawn time of the events so it’s more available.
- improve the rewards for doing story mode (badges, skins, achievement points, etc)

what reason does Anet have to go back and fix this now? There are a lot of things that didn’t make it to the launch version, but the game is successfully generating revenue with the LS, without having to entirely revamp old content that very well could have been designed by people that don’t work there any more, so no one knows how to fix it.

executive 1
“hey i got an idea, lets spend a little extra money this quarter to fix the old issues from our launch to do list. We may not make as much revenue as we have, but it will work out in the long run!”

executive 2
“or how bout instead, we keep up the momentum with our immediate revenue generating LS, keep selling skins and items based around each patch, because people are guaranteed to buy that stuff RIGHT NOW. They’re still playing and buying the game so the launch issues can’t be that big a deal!”

stockholders/board of directors
“I don’t know exactly what you are talking about, since i don’t play the game, but i want to see our revenues maintained through each quarter and would like to avoid losses if possible. I think executive 2 has the right idea!”

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

I posted this over 11 months ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/story/Forced-from-solo-to-group-for-final-story/first#post1674529

So what has changed since then?

I now have 5 L80 characters NONE of which have finished the Last Personal Story Mission.

I have 11 80s and none has finished the last part. However i also bothered less and less about the story since i knew i will never finished it, and my last 80 already abandoned it at lvl 16.

Now if there would be at least an option to hide the stuff in the top right corner of the window ..

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

ya take 10 minutes at 2 pm to fill the party. I’ll get another character to lvl80 and try again. I have 8 character which complete personal story by the way.

beside you guys complaining can fill a party already. Base on the complaint.

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

ya take 10 minutes at 2 pm to fill the party. I’ll get another character to lvl80 and try again. I have 8 character which complete personal story by the way.

beside you guys complaining can fill a party already. Base on the complaint.

What—makes no sense what so ever and has nothing to do with the op request or with what i said.

I’d like to see this happen, a lot.

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

ya take 10 minutes at 2 pm to fill the party. I’ll get another character to lvl80 and try again. I have 8 character which complete personal story by the way.

beside you guys complaining can fill a party already. Base on the complaint.

What—makes no sense what so ever and has nothing to do with the op request or with what i said.

I’m not sure what the topic is about.

I thought people are saying they can’t find a party for arah story. Which I have no problem finding party.

So if you want to do arah story, it shouldn’t be hard to find a party, at least on NA server. But if you insist that the personal story should be soloable, that’s fine, that’s your opinion.

I’ve just go to this point for the first time. being a new player I had no idea a group was needed until i gave it a go. I really was disappointed that I couldn’t do it on my own as all of my previous personal story was done on my own.

Please change this.

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

ya take 10 minutes at 2 pm to fill the party. I’ll get another character to lvl80 and try again. I have 8 character which complete personal story by the way.

beside you guys complaining can fill a party already. Base on the complaint.

What—makes no sense what so ever and has nothing to do with the op request or with what i said.

I’m not sure what the topic is about.

I thought people are saying they can’t find a party for arah story. Which I have no problem finding party.

So if you want to do arah story, it shouldn’t be hard to find a party, at least on NA server. But if you insist that the personal story should be soloable, that’s fine, that’s your opinion.

Yes that’s what this is all about—the entire story is soloable. Then you get to the last instance and the rules are changed by someone’s arbitrary (and very poor) decision. Anet should change the last instance to be line with the rest of the personal story.

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

Blude.6812:

laokoko.7403:

AesirValkyr.7418:

I’ve tried sitting in LFG for “a few hours” for a group to form, but by then, my few hours of game time are up and I have real life to take care of.

It’s weird because I just tried the lfg tool. It’s filled in 10 minutes. 2pm server time USA.

I tried 4 am server time. Give up after 10 minutes because no one joins.

I’m not sure how bad the problem is on EU server. What time you play probably make a big difference.

It’s like people telling me they can’t find a party for AC. I can afk for 1 hour and there are 60 AC listing.

Sure lfg works for SOME events and a group can be formed fairly fast—-your response says it can work/ but are you talking about this specific event??? or just in general?
2nd—lfg has nothing at all to do with the topic. Which is why the devs changed the rules of the story for the last instance? And asking them to consider changing it at very least respond.

ya take 10 minutes at 2 pm to fill the party. I’ll get another character to lvl80 and try again. I have 8 character which complete personal story by the way.

beside you guys complaining can fill a party already. Base on the complaint.

What—makes no sense what so ever and has nothing to do with the op request or with what i said.

I’m not sure what the topic is about.

I thought people are saying they can’t find a party for arah story. Which I have no problem finding party.

So if you want to do arah story, it shouldn’t be hard to find a party, at least on NA server. But if you insist that the personal story should be soloable, that’s fine, that’s your opinion.

Yes that’s what this is all about—the entire story is soloable. Then you get to the last instance and the rules are changed by someone’s arbitrary (and very poor) decision. Anet should change the last instance to be line with the rest of the personal story.

Actually they should change all story mode dungeons to be solo-able.
but Arah is the very least

Guys, it is soloable.
Read Gw2dungeons.net for boss info, and do it yourself.
Its no free reward ofc, and u may have to improve yourself, change weapons and maybe change gear, but its rly not that hard at all.
Just the part with the dragons is tricky, and long.

but it is soloable.
OP asked to make it soloable..
It is. Soloable.
HF

btw: it was the first dungeon ive ever solo’ed , with my engineer
very fun, even it took quite long

EDIT: i forgot, the door at the beginning isnt soloable. sry for that, but its duo’able

Ram Banson.4081:

Guys, it is soloable.
Read Gw2dungeons.net for boss info, and do it yourself.
Its no free reward ofc, and u may have to improve yourself, change weapons and maybe change gear, but its rly not that hard at all.
Just the part with the dragons is tricky, and long.

but it is soloable.
OP asked to make it soloable..
It is. Soloable.
HF

btw: it was the first dungeon ive ever solo’ed , with my engineer
very fun, even it took quite long

you are missing the point- we want to finish the personal story- not qualify for the Olympics :P

Morrigan.2809:

Ram Banson.4081:

Guys, it is soloable.
Read Gw2dungeons.net for boss info, and do it yourself.
Its no free reward ofc, and u may have to improve yourself, change weapons and maybe change gear, but its rly not that hard at all.
Just the part with the dragons is tricky, and long.

but it is soloable.
OP asked to make it soloable..
It is. Soloable.
HF

btw: it was the first dungeon ive ever solo’ed , with my engineer
very fun, even it took quite long

you are missing the point- we want to finish the personal story- not qualify for the Olympics :P

There are Gw2 olympics? :O

I’d quite like to see this change put in. I haven’t finished the main story yet on any character and this is the primary reason. That and the fact that the missions that preceed it are mostly awful, tedious slogs through drab environments with bad supporting NPCs, endless terrible dialogue from that dreadful, constant pain-in-the-side tre-hernia the dull, fighting endless waves of the same enemy, over and over and over and over again, for hours at a time….A shame really because the early level missions are pretty good and the paths are nicely diverse.

There are huge parts of teh PS I never want to see again. A dungeon slog at the end is the poisoned icing on a vomit-flavoured cake.

I would love to see this as well, I understand the lead in to the group setting but it is something I have never done despite having a level 80 of each class. It never made any sense to me that it ended up being a 5 man when it’s my personal story? The new LFG tool will help but since it is supposed to be personnel, in effect it should end that way not with a group of strangers joining in, imo.

wolfyrik.2017:

There are huge parts of teh PS I never want to see again. A dungeon slog at the end is the poisoned icing on a vomit-flavoured cake.

Yeah .. i think i have 2 or 3 chars that are at the last step, but on later chars i stopped at least when i should again go to Claw Island .. and mostly ignored Orr also complete.

They did say in the past that they wanted to redo the Zhaitan fight because it was basically rushed to make it in time for release.

Xae Isareth.1364:

They did say in the past that they wanted to redo the Zhaitan fight because it was basically rushed to make it in time for release.

Yeah .. make it need 150 people for the hardcore crowd i suspect.

It would probably be more interesting as a solo dungeon actually. Make Destiny Edge and pact NPCs more useful and help you fight. :P

Beldin.5498:

Xae Isareth.1364:

They did say in the past that they wanted to redo the Zhaitan fight because it was basically rushed to make it in time for release.

Yeah .. make it need 150 people for the hardcore crowd i suspect.

I’d very much favor making Zhaitan into a raid (not 150, a 15-man raid), but give the option to view the end cutscene without beating him.

I agree as well. I still need to do this instance but nobody wants to do it. This quest has been in limbo for me for months.

Ram Banson.4081:

Morrigan.2809:

you are missing the point- we want to finish the personal story- not qualify for the Olympics :P

There are Gw2 olympics? :O

Yeah but they’re special.

I’ve done it 3 times, each time to help out guildies. It took sooooo LONG and the ingame rewards were not proportionate for the time So now I have 8 level 80 that could do it and not only do I cringe at doing this last section of the personal story because of the length of it, I also cringe at the thought of asking the guild I’m in now (my old guild with friends went bye bye months ago) to do it, taking so much of their time AND for such meager rewards for the time spent. It would be bad enough asking once. It’s worse asking 8 times. I’m not a dungeon person. I hate pugging and haven’t even done all the dungeons in game. If I could solo it like the rest of the personal story, then it would be worth trying.