Do you get 'differently phased' in this game?

Do you get 'differently phased' in this game?

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

My son (on his account) and I created a Human Ranger each. I’ve done a bit more, though of ‘My Story’ than he has. We thought, though, that we could group and I could give him a hand with catching up. But no – we can’t see each other.

I’ve looked all over for info without success, but wonder if you can be ‘differently phased’ in this game so you never catch up? Can a slightly farther-along character, then, not help another to catch up with him? Or, for that matter, can you boost a lower level character?

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Posted by: Naus the Gobbo.5172

Naus the Gobbo.5172

Perhaps you aren’t playing on the same server.

And to your second question:

In this game you are scaled down to the zone you are in. If you are a level 80 and you go to a level 5 zone, then you will be scaled down to level 5. This way you can always play with your friends no matter what level they are.
So yes, you can help him catch up.
But you can’t boost a low level character.

What we do in life echoes in eternity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6zkT2uZAGA – GW2 – A world of wonder

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Posted by: Khisanth.2948

Khisanth.2948

No.
There are basically only two possible issues here.
1) You are not in the same server. One of you will have to guest over to the other person’s server assuming you are still in the same region(NA/EU).
2) You are both on the same server but one or both are in overflow but not the same overflow. In this case one of you just has to right click the other’s portrait in the party window and select “Join in <name of map>”.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

OK, thanks. We are in the same server, so that’s not the problem. But I’ll try the ‘join in <name of map>’ thing and see what happens.

I’m rather glad about not being able to boost. In WoW I saw people get low level characters to 90 in a twinkling by boosting and it always seemed unfair to me when others were slogging along, doing it solo.

Just one other thing – is the ‘life story’ the same for two characters of the same race and profession? Or do your decisions when creating a character (wish you’d joined the circus, counterattack with ferocity, etc) make for a different life story?

Thanks again.

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

First thing I would suggest is to make sure you form a party. If you are in the same zone on the same server then you will see the other party members portraits coloured in, if they are in a different zone or in an overflow there will just be a silhouette instead.

If you are in a zone which has overflows, (Lion Arch, Gendaren Field etc at the moment) then if one of you goes into it, waits for it to fully load then the other party member goes in it normally seems to pull you into the same overflow. This isn’t garanteeed but has worked several times for myself and my husband to let us play together.

The other one to mention is that you can help in someone else’s personal story as long as you are in a party, they enter the instance normally and you should then get a message box asking if you want to join them, click yes and you will go into there instance, even if you have done that part of the personal story yourself.

The decisions you make when creating the character do have some effect on the personal story, and during the story you have to make choices which can lead you down different routes, however they do all seem to end up in the same place eventually. One other thing to mention, you will have to choose an order during the story and that choice does limit some of the armor skins available as each order has its own distinct look, this may not be important to you depending on how much you care about dressing up your character but I figured it was worth mentioning.

And having played WoW I can say how annoying it was to be in a party with a friend and then see them vanish in front of you just as you reached the part you needed the help with, as they went into a different phase, I hope Anet never introduce it or make it that parties stay together regardless.

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Posted by: Naus the Gobbo.5172

Naus the Gobbo.5172

OK, thanks. We are in the same server, so that’s not the problem. But I’ll try the ‘join in <name of map>’ thing and see what happens.

I’m rather glad about not being able to boost. In WoW I saw people get low level characters to 90 in a twinkling by boosting and it always seemed unfair to me when others were slogging along, doing it solo.

Just one other thing – is the ‘life story’ the same for two characters of the same race and profession? Or do your decisions when creating a character (wish you’d joined the circus, counterattack with ferocity, etc) make for a different life story?

Thanks again.

There are currently two types of ‘stories’ in the game:
1. Personal Story.
2. Living Story.

The Personal Story is what you start when you create a character. The choices you make (joining the circus, never knew your true parents, never recovered your sister’s body) are all about the Personal Story.

The Living Story is Guild Wars 2’s method of delivering new content.
In other MMOs, such as WoW, you would get a big patch every 5-6 months, but in this game we get a small bit of content every 2 weeks instead.

What we do in life echoes in eternity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6zkT2uZAGA – GW2 – A world of wonder

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

Thanks for the really helpful info. I’m sure now we can figure out what’s going on.

And yes, ‘differently phased’ is one thing that started getting me really fed up with WoW. The game has changed a lot and I could accept that, but this thing made it endlessly frustrating when, as you say, all one of you wanted was a little help with a difficult quest. Maddening. And one reason why I gave up the game and came to this one. So far I really like GW2 and am enjoying gameplay. It seems a far more ‘grown up’ game than WoW has become.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

My son’s Human Ranger and mine are on the same realm. So we logged in, I invited him to group and he accepted, but his character’s face was blacked out. I right clicked on that face but only got a menu of things like leaving the party, kicking him out and so on. He tried the same with my character and got the same menu. There seemed to be no way to actually get together. Baffling. So then we created another pair of characters and they grouped perfectly well and shared everything. Any more suggestions, please?

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Posted by: Sobat.8650

Sobat.8650

If there is a black portrait, then it suggests that you two are on different maps (or offline).

Go to the same map as your son and then try to use the Join X option.

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Posted by: Shades.4572

Shades.4572

If he already entered his personal story you can not join him, you both have to enter it at the same time. So you would have to be on the same map like Queensdale in a party together then he enters his personal story and it will give you a pop up notification.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

No, nobody was offline or in a different map. We were (supposedly) standing together in Divinity’s Reach right next to one of the waypoints. He hadn’t started anything, nor had I. We’d just logged on and I’d invited him and he’d accepted when he said ‘Hey, you’re all black’. And his portrait was too. Still baffled but we’ve just decided that for some unfathomable reason we can’t group like our other characters can, so we’ll level independently and not try grouping again..

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

Sorry I wasn’t on the forums yesterday, but I will try and help again if I can.

It does sound like you have ended up on different worlds/servers somehow.

Firstly when you are both on and theoretically at the same point, check around you, you should both be seeing the same player characters running around, if you are seeing different people then you are not on the same server.

Secondly, when at the character select screen check the details. It should list
The character’s name
Level, Race, Profession
Representing: (Guild name) (assuming you are in a guild)
% Map complete
Current Location (the last place you were when you logged out)
Current world (The world your character is on) This can look similar to current location as the worlds are named after places in the GW world.

The last bit of information is the most important as that has to be the same for the two accounts. If somehow you chose different worlds or moved the account then you will not be able to party up and game together until you are on the same world either through moving one of the accounts or by guesting.

Remember that all characters on an account are on the same world unless they guest to a different world. I haven’t tried guesting as I like the server I am on but I will give it a try to see how it appears on the log in screen so I might be able to give you some more pointers later, unless someone else gets in first.

It would be a shame if you can’t group up as part of the fun of the game is being able to play together regardless of levels.

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

Just a quick update as I have had a quick trial at guesting.

When you chose to guest the final part of the character select screen list becomes:
Current world name (guesting in …)
For me it read
Piken Square (guesting in Vabbi)
(My server is Piken square and I had decided to visit Vabbi)

I could still chat with friends and in guild chat and access my guild bank, I just couldn’t party up with someone on my home world.

If you are both in the same guild it is worth mentioning that the location name appears in yellow on the guild list not the normal white.

When you log out you automatically return to your normal world and the message about ‘guesting in’ disappears.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

We’re definitely on the same world (Vabbi) and at the time we grouped there weren’t any other players in that area. We checked everything carefully at the Character Select screen. Grouped and once again we were both blacked out. But……. when I looked at his screen and he looked at mine, we could see the same NPCs and buildings and all. We were at the point where you have to go into the house to find the chained-up friend (Fagen, I think?) and set him free and proceed on from there. Both characters are Human Rangers, same level, same world, same whole thing. We’ve not yet joined a guild because we’d like to get a little more familiar with the game first. And neither of us has guested to another world/realm to play, mainly because we don’t know how to do that! :-))) So I continue to be baffled. But we’re levelling these two separately now and I guess that’s it.

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Posted by: Ameepa.6793

Ameepa.6793

Finding chained-up Faren, hmm.. are you on this quest?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Welcome_Home

It is happening in Salma District which is actually part of personal quest chain and a personal home zone. So you both probably are in different “instances”. You might have started a part of a quest without realizing it.

Try to leave Salma Disctrict and see what happens? And when you have to go to Salma again, group up somewhere else in the city before entering the district.

More info about your personal home instace:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Home_instance

(edited by Ameepa.6793)

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

Thanks to all of you for the helpful suggestions. But no, we hadn’t started that Faren thing independently. We went there to begin it (I knew how it all went from another character). The two low-level Rangers had been out in the country together, sorting out crab traps and finding Moas and whatnot. Anyhow, we won’t worry about it. Gives each of us a character we can play independently for the times we can’t both login due to the interference of real life. :-))

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Posted by: FrozenStarRo.7240

FrozenStarRo.7240

I’ve had friends and guildies help with Personal Story while I was leveling fresh alts and they brought 80s to help with the tougher ones like Claw Island.

When your son opts to start his Personal Story you have to be on the same map and world in order to get invited along. So if his next quest starts in Divinity Reach, you need to be somewhere/anywhere in Divinity Reach for the invite. You’ll get a pop-up which gives you about 10 seconds to click to accept to go in with him, otherwise the timer runs out and your son will be ported to the instance alone. If he’s in DR and you’re on a different map, say Queensdale, there’s no pop-up nor timer, he’ll just instantly start alone.

If the above still doesn’t work there may be the possibility this quest in particular needs to be soloed, I haven’t done Faren/noble story since August so a little foggy on how it’s designed. Maybe he can finish it alone and see if you can team up for the rest?!

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Posted by: Melanie.1240

Melanie.1240

I’m on an EU server and wouldn’t mind guesting over to Vabbi tonight to see if I can sort out what the issue is. There is no reason why those two characters should not be able toplay together.

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

If you are happy leveling separately then it isn’t a problem but you should be able to team up and help each other and I am terrible at leaving a puzzle unsolved (which is why the jumping puzzles are so frustrating to me).

One thought I have had is that you mention you are just about to go into the house to rescue Faren. The house he is chained in is in the Salma district which is an instanced area of the city, every character has their own version of it depending on what you have done in your personal story.

If you both meet up somewhere else, say outside the bank at Ministers waypoint and try and party there this might work, and then when one goes in to the Salma District the other should get the option to join them there (if you are both at the green star outside the Salma district gate you will both get the enter instance option and if you accept you will end up separated, you must chose to join the other player in their instance). Even though you are doing the same personal story it only counts for one character, you will have to do it twice once for each to actually move along the story line.

I would also like to find the answer to this problem, not only so you can play together but in case anyone in the future has a similar problem (and can find the thread). I recently had issues with another game with meant I could not even log in to it. Several other people on the forum were having a similar issue and eventually I came across a link to a post that was over a year old that gave a solution, I followed its advise and the problem was solved.

There is no reason you should just accept that you can not play together, choosing not to is different, but as you can see there are plenty of us willing to try and help find a solution.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

Sorry I haven’t been playing tonight to accept the offer of help. That would have been great. And when I say we were just about to go into the house to save Faren, sorry – what we were actually both supposed to do is kill the various bandits that had made off with him. I knew, though, that the house/rescue would come next.

Puzzling that once again today we could not group with two Necromancers we’d created (I know – so many characters, but my son wanted one, so I created one too), both human, both not having done any of the personal stories together and oops, they were both blacked out. It turned out to be what had been said, one or the other or both was in a sort of ‘holding place’ because the realm was busy. It wasn’t, though – it was the lowest populated of the EU places. Tried everything to fetch one or both out of the nether somewhere and nothing would happen.

Then, just for the heck of it, we created two Guardians. And, in total opposite something or other to the Necromancers, could group them instantly and make our way through many of those heart things (can I call them quests?) and then start on our personal stories. Baffling, absolutely baffling. There was maybe five minutes tops between our playing both sets of characters.

All of the ungroupable characters have been in the same world/realm, the same level, had about the same amount of personal story to do, and just didn’t seem to be able to group and function.

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Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475

Jornophelanthas.1475

It sounds to me like during some of your attempts, the characters happened to end up in different overflows, while on other attempts, they happened to end up in the same overflow.

This can happen even in low-populated servers, because Queensdale happens to be a very popular area.

If you are in different overflow servers, you have to party up, right-click on the other person’s portrait in the top left of your screen and select “join in [area]”, where [area] can be Queensdale, Divinity’s Reach, or any other open world zone. This should bring you together with the other player.
If it does not work, then that means that you are either not in the same zone (e.g. you are in Queensdale, while he is in Divinity’s Reach), one of you is in an instance, or you do not share the same home server (e.g. you are on Vabbi while he is in Devona’s Rest).

Note that Salma District and the area where your Personal Story plays out do NOT work this way. These zones are called instances, and you can only enter these together under the following circumstances:
1. You are already in a party with each other.
2. You are both already in the same zone (e.g. Queensdale) from where you will enter the instance, though not necessarily in the same version of that zone.
3. One of you (the one whose Personal Story gets played) chooses to enter the instance.
4. The other should get a pop-up window with a timer and a request to join and accepts before the timer runs out (or the first player cancels the invitation).

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

Glad you managed to get together with some characters at least and don’t worry about it being a lot of characters it really isn’t, I am up to 19 characters now, even doubling up on race and class. Altoholisism isn’t dangerous and give plenty of choice.

It’s also worth remembering that while you are keeping the characters at the same level at the moment the down leveling system does mean that one can play their favourite level 80 and help the other out on a starter character with out totally over shadowing them.

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Posted by: Vegetation.6419

Vegetation.6419

I’m not sure if it could help, but I’ve had a similar issue once. I could not see my friend’s character. So I checked my options and noticed that I had selected the lowest number of characters displayed on my screen. You could check your options out just to make sure it’s not part of your problem

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

If I click on the other blacked out portrait, I get nothing about ‘join in (area) – I just get things about leaving the party or kicking him. And it works both ways like that – whether I invite him or he invites me. And it still fails totally even if the two are standing right next to each other. But maybe that’s the overflow thing, although if it is, then right-clicking on his portrait ought to work as you said, right?

Also. I went through ‘options just a couple of minutes ago, line by line, and couldn’t find anything about how many characters could be displayed on screen.

I remain baffled, but still able to play and group sometimes, so I guess that’s ‘it’.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

Sorry – did find number of players thing, but mine’s set at ‘high’, so I guess that’s not it.

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Posted by: Oenanthe.6549

Oenanthe.6549

I’m going to be adding you to my friends list which means I should appear on the followers section of your friends list, you can then decide if you want to change that to your friends list. If you notice that I am on line when you are having problems please feel free to contact me, and unless I am in the middle of something I can guest over to Vabbi and see if I can spot the problem from there. (I hadn’t even tried guesting until this so I have learn something too).

I am normally on line between 7.00 and 10.00 (UK time) weekdays and at various points through out most week ends.

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Posted by: Abeezil.2936

Abeezil.2936

Thanks very much. We tend to be online in the afternoons on weekdays (real life always does intrude somehow!) but yep, probably we can all get together weekends. Loving the game and really having fun in it and keen to proceed further.