(edited by Pixels.6532)
Toypacolaypse
We can team up for the Tixx Infinirarium but no Toypacolaypse? It’s the exact same arena.
Oh but blah blah blah PvP so important.
Edit: Locked thread showing that it’s because of PvP: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties
Why is Toypocolapaypse even related to PvP? Why?
We can queue PvP as a team, what went wrong here to mess this up this badly?
Yeah, that’s my favourite part
“You can no longer enter Toypocalypse as a group because it now correctly uses the PvP system. PS: You can enter PvP as a group, but shhhh…”
~ Whips ~ City Minigames ~ City Jumping Puzzles ~
This is by Far the Worse change have I seen in this game so far. 4 times already I have run into the instance expecting to do something but since the instance failed we had to sit there for 20 mins till the zone reset or leave and try to find an active one. please change back to Group
Are you HOLY MOTHER OF INSTANCES serious??????
I will check this today and I hope you’re mistaken, like, really.
This is a disappointing change to me.
Got a thread of this already going. just poorly titled.
I’ve been thoroughly irritated by this from the moment I jumped into it with a team ready to go having then everyone getting scattered into a different instance.
The Stonemouth Keep
Tarnished Coast
I sincerely hope it is just a bug. I want to do this with my friends, I always do stuff with my friends…
Hell I liked to do it alone last year. It’s one of the most fun mini games in GW2.
Hell I liked to do it alone last year. It’s one of the most fun mini games in GW2.
You can always enter instance alone… this change is pointless… guess I’m losing these achievements this time.
Hell I liked to do it alone last year. It’s one of the most fun mini games in GW2.
You can always enter instance alone… this change is pointless… guess I’m losing these achievements this time.
I could not? Not yesterday I think. The NpC did nothing and entering the portal spawned me in an already finished game.
… I like doing stuff with my friends, Anet.
@aspirine, my apologies, I got it all wrong. I thought you couldn’t do with a party, so it’s not as bad as I thought it was, but still. Why kick out friends from my party? Still stands pointless.
… I like doing stuff with my friends, Anet.
NO FRIENDS ALLOWED.
Want to do the jumping puzzle together? DENIED
Bell choir? NOPE
Toypocalypse? LOL NO
Normally I would complain in my native language, but I feel like it’s necessary to bring my opinion unfiltered and in “his full glory” directly to the source. Therefore I hope I won’t make too many mistakes.
I’m not even mad, about not being able to join with a group anymore. My hand is in a permanent state of “facepalming”.
Yesterday (in ts) I laughed at this matter and declared with sincere believe: “ahh nahh it’s a bug. A-Net isn’t that stupid. There was a kittenstorm 2012. 2013 they changed it into partymode and everyone loved the toypacolypse. They wouldn’t change it back!”
I guess I was wrong!
I had a lot of fun with the toypacolypse last year and we all were pretty hyped to play it again this year – together. Sadly this won’t happen. In my opinion it would have been even better, if it wouldn’t have been in the Wintersdaypatch. Toypacolypse at the current state is just a reminder how much fun it was and won’t be this year. That’s nearly worth a “Grinch Award” and I feel kinda stupid for believing that it was just a bug and everything would be fixed.
I can understand, that it might not be possible on the technical side, but if you can’t do it right, please just don’t do it at all and design some other form of content. The way it’s done now it’s only purpose is to leave a bad aftertaste. And I don’t even want to know, what our new players in the guild may think now, after we hyped them for the toypocalypse and all I can say is: “Sorry I guess we won’t be able to play it. A-Net isn’t capable to make it work. I know they did it last year, but I guess they aren’t 100% reliable in their capabilities.”
I really like this game and normally I always find a good point in any decision, that’s been made, but with all this “no friends allowed – yeah friends allowed – no friends allowed” even I can’t find a solution to sugarcoat the bad decision to keep a (in the actual state) disliked activity in the game.
sigh I feel better now and will be able to categorically ignore the toypacolypse this year, like I already did in 2012
This is a disappointing change to me.
Vayne is disappointed, that’s how bad this is!
Why does Toypacolypse have to be an “activity”. Put it on the dungeon side of things like the Infinarium.
I do not accept the “reason” for this change.
I am angry that they’ve ruined this part of Wintersday.
I DO NOT want to join an in-progress match with people who are jumping in and out that I dont’ even know.
This is Stupid. SO very stupid.
Additionally, for Halloween we got tons of candy corn, and the other candies that are crafting materials and wintersday… want snowflakes? Nope got to wade through the trash. Anything without a vendor value of even 1c is trash…recipes, tonics, major/minor runes & sigils…all trash.
I dont’ mind recycled content. I do mind downgraded recycled content. At least give us what we had last year.
Why would you want to team up with your friends and guildies, in a freaking MMO??
/sarcasm OFF
Madness Rises [Rise] – Banners Hold.
Don’t argue with idiots, they pull you down their level and own you with experience.
This is a disappointing change to me.
Vayne is disappointed, that’s how bad this is!
Haha. It surely is dissappointing.
I just don’t understand half of these changes. It’s like the developers are really stubborn in making this game worse. Yes, they add a lot of visually pleasing things, but otherwise it’s one bad decision after another(except for new maps) and I can’t put my head around it. I’m not sure if they even read the forums, because it’s like every of their decision is completely unrelated to anything anyone wants.
Why would you do this change? Is Guild Wars 2 supposed to be a singleplayer game now?
I have to agree with the sentiments here. A friend and I have been looking so forward to the Wintersday events. Last year we had a blast playing through this together, and this year, we’re not able to do so at all. We can “share” our experience through our frustrations via Skype, but we cannot actually enjoy any of the events together.
This is something that must be changed. One of the reasons that MMORPG’s exist is so that you can play together with friends and make new friends. It’s a social game. That’s like… the entire point of playing MMO’s (and the entire reason I stay away from single player games), but at this point, you’re forcing us into groups with people we don’t know, and who, half the time, don’t even speak they just work on the objective at hand.
Let us play with our friends.
Well, I definitely don’t agree with some people here in this thread about the severity of the issue and its relation to the game overall. I think the game, overall, is very good.
However, by removing all party-based activities from Wintersday, it really goes against Guild Wars 2’s ideals of playing with your friends and making new ones. And, because of that, there is nothing for my friends and I to do together this Wintersday.
(edited by Toroxus.9256)
It’s pretty bad right now, I’d join up with 4 other random people that may or may not have an interest in playing the thing properly. Some just AFK or use the rifle and attack without building anything and most people don’t even talk, it’s just so anti social and depressing playing Toypoc right now.
Even worse is when you’re halfway through and 2-3 people leave, sigh.
Well, I definately don’t agree with some people here in this thread about the severity of the issue and it’s relation to the game overall. I think the game, overall, is very good.
However, by removing all party-based activities from Wintersday, it really goes against Guild Wars 2’s ideals of playing with your friends and making new ones. And, because of that, there is nothing for my friends and I to do together this Wintersday.
The game (GW2) is good overall yes.
The mini-game Toypocalypse…is not. It is buggy beyond imagination. You join in-progress matches or an instance that is completed and nothing is happening.
Why can’t we queue up in order to ensure we start a match (1) together and (2) from the very beginning. Oh I know why…because the person who does the code for this is gone on vacation and no one will bother fixing this.
And I must once again echo what several others (including our French friend) above have said. “The excuse found by developers is so bogus that one wonders why, with a goal of stability, we are left with such a buggy activity.”
Normalement, m’exprimer dans un anglais correct aurais été mieux pour la communauté. Mais comme je suis français et que je suis aussi doué que les développeurs, je vais faire comme il m’arrange et poster ce message en français. De plus, cela me permettra de ne pas perdre mon temps sur une traduction google qui pourrait changer le sens de mes mots. Et en plus, il parait qu’on est des râleurs.
Je trouve vraiment dommage que l’on ne puisse pas faire Joueffervescence en groupe avec nos amis et/ou avec notre guilde. L’excuse trouvé par les développeurs est tellement bidon qu’on se demande pourquoi, avec un objectif de stabilité, on se retrouve avec une activité aussi bogué.
To give a rough translation to those of you who do not speak French,
“Normally, speaking in proper English would have been better for the community. But as I am French and I’m as good as the developers, I will do as suits me and post this message in French.
In addition, it will allow me not to waste my time on a Google translation that could change the meaning of my words. And more, it seems that we are complainers.
I find it a shame that we cannot [group for Wintersday events (this part was hard to translate)] with friends and/or our guild.
The excuse given by the developers is so bogus that one wonders why, with a goal of stability, we are left with such a buggy activity."
Hope you don’t mind that I translated that for you buddy, but I felt like what you had to say was important, and that it should be voiced in English as well as French, so that the masses can understand and hear your thoughts, thoughts in which I agree with.
We had a staff member reply to us in a previous topic (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties/first#post4629767) that has since been locked – which is, honestly, a terrible thing to do when things were not getting out of hand, no one was being disrespectful, and the explanation provided was not suficient by any criteria. That last point is actually what I wanted to expand on.
Anet, and the developers speaking behind Gaile Gray, don’t seem to be aware of how inadequate their excuse is. Mostly because they forget that we (most of us) are not developers or coders. A proper explanation for something that was “unfortunate but intended change” can’t be a general statement that has absolutely no meaning to us:
“The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP”
What does this mean? I read this sentence and I continue to be absolutely clueless as to what happened. This explanation is not only broad and general, it is counterintuitive and goes against what this game leads us to believe in the first place: that PvP and PvE are two neatly separated dimensions. It is also counterintuitive because:
a) every other instance in PvE works fine with your party without PvP being affected, and
b) one of those other PvE instances happens to use the same arena and parties are fine.
This said, when Anet throws “in order to stablize PvP as a whole”, they are basically saying nothing. Don’t ask us to understand, because we don’t. Quite literally.
And then Gaile, who I accept might be as lost as we are and just replicating the words of the developing team, builds his logic on top of that empty sentence he gave us before:
“I’m sure if you look at this objectively, it makes sense to set a short-time event for single enters in order to stabilize all of PvP, which is a permanent element of the game.”
Yes, objectively that makes sense. Objectively, the starting argument wasn’t even an argument but a sentence that’s completely devoid of any meaning. Logical steps are as valid as their first statement, which remains a random combination of words for most of us. There might be a logic, but we can’t grasp it.
On top of this, I felt the need to ask: Couldn’t this change have waited a month? Has PvP been so unstable that you needed to do this NOW, harming one of the central activities of a whole celebratory update that people love and excitedly await? But the topic had been closed – something I’ll mention again at the end of the post.
And while I’m at it, how has PvP been stabilized, namely regarding matchmaking? Has anyone noticed any difference? I went to the patch notes looking for these new stabilizing strategies Gaile mentions but there was nothing in it. Which leads me to the question:
What big stabilization in PvP justified amputating the Wintersday update like this? What was the “too significant cost” to letting us enjoy Toypocalipse as we did last year? Really, I’m just asking for the same objectivity that was required of us in the above linked thread.
I’m also not a fan of “this was not a choice”. Again, I’m not a developer, but I understand that Anet is a company, players are clients, the game is their product. Therefore, the following applies: you can’t give your clients something that’s widely appreciated and then take it back. If you’ve done something right before, you now need to go around it to make other things better, not trample over it and take it back from the hands of the community you gave it to in the first place. This isn’t about coding, developing, gaming – it’s about businesses, clients, and products. What Anet has done here is idiotic in videogames, as it is if they were selling apples. Would you go to people’s houses and take their apples back if suddenly you realized you could make your business more streamlined and efficient by selling oranges instead?
At Anet’s level, it is legitimate to complain about decisions like this. They’re a team of many many people, they’ve had significant experience in this business, plus the two years the game’s been up, plus the fact that they’ve tried both sides of Toypocalipse – the parties, and the randoms. That they couldn’t foresee the impact of this decision is not forgivable. Anet, you should have known – that’s all there is to it.
Finally, back to their comunication strategy. While I’ve mentioned most of what bothers me, I’d like to bring up how tasteless it is to lock the thread I linked before. Like I said, we didn’t get a good reason. No one was at peace, no one read it and said “Oh, ok. I can understand, when you put it like that”. The reasonable action in a conversation that hasn’t reached that point is to try and communicate. What Gaile (by himself or under orders) did was walk out, shut the door, or worse: played his authority and told us “This conversation is over because I said so”.
While I was almost ready to accept a random combination of words that mean nothing (“The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP and some Instance Activities”) I am definitely not forgiving that closing of the thread like we are six year olds. With due respect to toddlers.
“I’m sure if you look at this objectively, it makes sense to set a short-time event for single enters in order to stabilize all of PvP, which is a permanent element of the game.”
How about we look at this logically?
There is an instance for a PERMANENT holiday that occurs once a year. That occurs at a time that is a surprise to no one. With various activities and instances that many people love…and do with their friends and guildmates. While it is only here for a short time shouldn’t you make every effort to make sure people can enjoy this time limited content as a group. The same way we were able to enjoy it last year.
Instead we get PvP is here all the time so we’re not going to bother with fixing this limited time content. Enjoy your bugs, we’re not fixing it.
They have no excuse really. They tried to make Toypoc. a PvP-event, with hotjoining or whatever, which was, IMO, a dumb idea between 5-players being too easy and the LFG existing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good change, once it’s completed, but there are more pressing things to do for Wintersday, AND they didn’t finish it in time this year.
We know the Infinirarium is working on the old system of parties, so, there doesn’t seem like a valid reason why the Toypoc. couldn’t be reverted to use the old system.
(edited by Toroxus.9256)
This was far and away the main draw for the guildies and me regarding the Wintersday event. Massively disappointed with this change.
Hopefully they can make the necessary changes to revert it back to last year’s format.
Thanks to everyone posting here, please keep it respectful!
It is an MMO. You are not supposed to team up with people….
This was far and away the main draw for the guildies and me regarding the Wintersday event. Massively disappointed with this change.
It was the main draw for my friends as well. Being able to play together in groups of 2-4 (make it harder) this Wintersday. So, now, there’s nothing for us to do together for the holiday. It’s okay though, other games have Wintersday-esque activities going on in which we can play together, we’ll just play those games instead.
And, for me, the main draw for Wintersday was Snowball Mayhem, I was looking forward to having a system that allowed you to pair with a friend in the arena. Well, I was heartbroken it wasn’t implemented, but I’m not very surprised, so I wasn’t too upset. However, riding on the wave of that disappointment came the Toypocalypse screw-up. Anet needs to own up to this mistake, and needs to correct it. (IE: Revert it to the old system/the system the Infinirarium uses currently.)
One more reason to finally bury sPvP and free up valuable dev time for more sensible improvements.
This needs to be fixed really.. cant be i have to zone in and out 20-30 times to get in a map where actually not everything is over…
I will never understand why I have to join an instance in progress. This is the hot-join of wintersday and needs to be fixed.
They likely changed it because last year it was difficult to find a group for it after a week or so. This is also probably why they made it so you need to do 15 full runs to max the achievement.
Anet design philosophy 101:
- Is change needed to the part of the game? If not, then change it completely. If yes, then keep it as it is.
- Is the part of the game working smoothly? If yes, then change it completely. If not, then keep it as it is.
- Is the part of the game currently bugged? If yes, then keep it as it is. If not, then change it a lot.
- Have players requested any change to the part of the game? If not, then change that part completely. If yes, then keep it as it is.
- Are players happy with activity? If yes, then make it a lot worse! If not, then make it slightly worse.
- Are players neutral with activity? If yes, make it worse! If not, then make slightly worse.
- Are players unhappy with activity? If yes, then make it slightly worse. If not, then make it worse.
- Are players writing to forums and express their unhappines? If yes, then keep it as it is. If not, then make it worse.
- Has the change we’re going to introduce been asked by players? If yes, then scrap the change completely. If not, then make the change as fast as possible.
- Is the new change probably fun for majority of players? If yes, then redesign the change. If not, then make it as fast as possible.
Thus, this change to Toypocalypyse makes perfect sense. It fits to their design philosophy perfectly, just like most of the other changes.
They likely changed it because last year it was difficult to find a group for it after a week or so. This is also probably why they made it so you need to do 15 full runs to max the achievement.
#1: The LFG exists
#2: Some groups don’t want 5 players. I know I did Toypocalypse with two players in total, it’s a lot more fun for a wide variety of players when you can adjust the difficulty in a way (based on # of players if nothing else).
#3: They didn’t finish the hot-join system, so now we’re stuck in between and screwed either way.
It was still time consuming to get a group last year after a week or two into the release. I ended up having to solo two sessions.
It was still time consuming to get a group last year after a week or two into the release. I ended up having to solo two sessions.
So if lack of attendance is the issue, how will the current system, in its current state, help affairs? I don’t know ANYONE who does Toypoc now that we can’t do it with friends.
Last year I had an argument with a friend. It went
“come play toypocalypse with us”
“No dungeon defenders is a better game i’d rather play that”
“It’s not about whats better. It’s about fooling around and bashing things with candy canes and holidays.”
This year I have to agree with him. Why would we play winters day when we can log off and ACTUALLY play a co-op tower defense game? There is a reason Mario Kart, Mario Party and Smash Bros are so successful. Imagine running GW2 dungeons completely with randoms every time.
What I want is a statement from anet that sympathizes and indicates that they understand why we’re upset.
If toypocalypse can’t be co-op because of the game mode, then it SHOULD NOT be in that game mode. And as I said before. Letting parties play together gives no advantage because toypocalypse is NOT competitive. I cannot see activities surviving without a co-op option
It was still time consuming to get a group last year after a week or two into the release. I ended up having to solo two sessions.
So if lack of attendance is the issue, how will the current system, in its current state, help affairs? I don’t know ANYONE who does Toypoc now that we can’t do it with friends.
Longer requirement to complete the achievement and insta-join (once fixed).
“Who wants to do stuff with friends anyway? Time-consuming activities are best done with strangers.” – Nobody ever… and then came Anet.
Last year I had an argument with a friend. It went
“come play toypocalypse with us”
“No dungeon defenders is a better game i’d rather play that”
“It’s not about whats better. It’s about fooling around and bashing things with candy canes and holidays.”This year I have to agree with him. Why would we play winters day when we can log off and ACTUALLY play a co-op tower defense game? There is a reason Mario Kart, Mario Party and Smash Bros are so successful. Imagine running GW2 dungeons completely with randoms every time.
What I want is a statement from anet that sympathizes and indicates that they understand why we’re upset.
If toypocalypse can’t be co-op because of the game mode, then it SHOULD NOT be in that game mode. And as I said before. Letting parties play together gives no advantage because toypocalypse is NOT competitive. I cannot see activities surviving without a co-op option
I will add something else. If someone hits 500 points before the entire activity completes, it fails and you have to start over.
Last year I had an argument with a friend. It went
“come play toypocalypse with us”
“No dungeon defenders is a better game i’d rather play that”
“It’s not about whats better. It’s about fooling around and bashing things with candy canes and holidays.”This year I have to agree with him. Why would we play winters day when we can log off and ACTUALLY play a co-op tower defense game? There is a reason Mario Kart, Mario Party and Smash Bros are so successful. Imagine running GW2 dungeons completely with randoms every time.
What I want is a statement from anet that sympathizes and indicates that they understand why we’re upset.
If toypocalypse can’t be co-op because of the game mode, then it SHOULD NOT be in that game mode. And as I said before. Letting parties play together gives no advantage because toypocalypse is NOT competitive. I cannot see activities surviving without a co-op option
BINGO.
Based on Gaile’s response.
Think its safe to say someone screwed up and doesn’t know how to fix it without risking screwing other things up more. So we got a very vague and half kittened excuse because they don’t plan on expending the resources to fix it.
http://xunlaiheroes.wix.com/xhsa
Also why did toypocalypse use an arena in the first place? It makes no sense!!!! If anything it should have been based on the Tixx instance.
This was far and away the main draw for the guildies and me regarding the Wintersday event. Massively disappointed with this change.
Hopefully they can make the necessary changes to revert it back to last year’s format.
Thanks to everyone posting here, please keep it respectful!
As one of said friends of Pixels, I totally agree. This is a terrible change. You guys dropped the ball with this big time.
Wintersday is probably the only PvE patch I personally like to date. And After ANet making it so good last year I was ready for toypocalypse and to show my girlfriend how fun it is and play it with our friends. This one “Minor Inconvenience” in ANets eyes made this patch go from 8/10 to 2/10. Saved by Snowball Mayhem at least.
Based on Gaile’s response.
Think its safe to say someone screwed up and doesn’t know how to fix it without risking screwing other things up more. So we got a very vague and half kittened excuse because they don’t plan on expending the resources to fix it.
That’s my understanding, too.
Someone programming this new sPvP backend implementation, and then quickly fled the company before they find out just how terrible the implementation is. Now, anything which is supposed to be based on temporarily instances has to either use the dungeon system or the sPvP system, and both are terribly unsuited.