Guild Wars 2

All though I agree the final part of the personal story should be solo only. It is not hard to find a group for Arah Story mode. I can easily find 1 to 5 groups a day looking for members for Arah Story.

If you’re having trouble finding groups near Arah, Lion Arch is the ideal place to go look for dungeon groups because that place is currently the center for trade, dungeon groups, and etc. just like back in GW1 before Factions was released.

If you form a group yourself you can easily find plenty of people wanting to join you. 1 shout out for Arah story members and I was swarmed with 10 whisper requests( with 1 more whisper request to join every 8 seconds)

I just got to Victory or Death, too, & I was very disappointed to find a group quest. I think we all understand that it’s an mmo, but as GW2 was presented, it was a ‘different’ mmo. While we have pvp/etc, & instances, there is also the personal story, which is solo, while allowing you to bring more people if you desire. I don’t understand why it didn’t finish up that way. I don’t enjoy mmos as much as some – I prefer DA-Mass Effect type games, but I tried GW2 because it seemed to offer more. I can’t imagine how annoyed I’d be if I managed to get a group, then had someone else in the story scenes. Weird decision there, and extremely disappointing.

Having leveled to 80 and going solo through the entire story, I now find that the final quest of the story requires a 5-man group in a dungeon? WTF is up with that? Before the naysayers jump in, I’m in a guild (a fairly large one), I do PvP and WvW when I feel like it, and I regularly join in spontaneous group events. So, yeah, I get that MMOs are a ‘social’ thing.

But the story bit…that’s a lot more personal. A lot more, well, solo. I’m severely annoyed at the game right now that I can’t finish it out by myself.

Add one more to the list. My small guild isn’t quite ready for this yet, but I am. It’s a personal story line… should be able to complete it out solo.

Agree with OP.

I’m all for grouping – when I want to. But up to now, I’ve been using the personal story as something to do when others aren’t around. In terms of immersion, you’re bring all your other allies and their army to the fight, why couldn’t you just push on ‘solo’? Not to mention the issue with not appearing in the cut scenes…

I haven’t completed a dungeon quest yet, no matter what profession combo’s we’ve had.
And I’ve spent up to 5 hours trying to.
The other day someone was asking if anyone wanted to do the Arah dungeon. The only response was, “Spend 4.5 hours getting nowhere? I don’t think so.” (I’ll never forget that one.)
Since the “Victory or Death” part of the storyline includes the reformation of “Destiny’s Edge,” and Trahearne is also with you, (making a party of 7) why should I have to drag 4 other players into MY personal story? Not to mention HAVING to complete a dungeon when Dungeons are OPTIONAL!?!!

Just managed to get to the Arah entrance where the personaly quest marker is. Looked around trying to find the instance indicator only to find out it is a dungeon mission and that a group is needed. Very disappointing.

Anet was very foolish in the way they handled the personal story. Either all the story mode dungeons should have been made to be part of the personal story then including the last one would have made a lot more sense or else they should have scrapped the last dungeon from the personal story all together and just made it optional like the rest of the story mode dungeons.

Letting the players skip all the previous dungeons then forcing them to do the last one is just silly.

Chiming in to say I agree with the OP, too. There doesn’t have to be a loss of epic-ness. The personal storyline has already introduced me to a whole band of Heroes who can help to make the battle feel epic. Having random players suddenly show up in the story (by forming a PUG), or even having guildmates suddenly show up will break the continuity and immersion a lot more than having an epic ending with the same folks who have been involved in the last few stories. I love how I can bring along other players into my storyline—or not—before this point. This flexibility has made playing through the story more fun than a one-size-fits-all path.

I’m in a guild, but we’re not all ready to finish our story lines. Apparently, I got lucky and was able to just walk up to the Arah gate / dungeon entrance area on my first try. So, I have the waypoint, but I’m not going to join or form a PUG.

As for being social, I love the fact that I don’t have to group to do epic things. World bosses, dynamic events—I participate in nearly every one of these I see. We help each other out and celebrate a victory with no need to group, and none of the potential baggage and un-fun moments PUGs can bring. One of the best things about the GW2 world for me is that I can be social and helpful and helped without strings attached. With PUGs, there are strings, and handing strings to strangers does not always result in a good time had by all. I’m not intending this to come across in a mean way. Folks with the best intentions but different play styles can make things un-fun for each other. I’d love to see the personal story completion changed to one that I can do on my own terms—with or without other players.

I’m very disappointed about having to form a group to finish my PERSONAL story mission as well. If I wanted to run dungeons, I’d have done more than 1 of them at this point.

I will enjoy grouping for dungeons or grouping anytime when I feel like it, but I dislike to be forced to form a group in order to finish my Personal Story.

Not a slightest desire would I have to finish my Personal Story should it require a group.

It is very strange how you solo up to the last mission then have to get a group of 5. Makes very little sense.

I might finish the Personal Story once enough people in my guild hit 80. So we’re talking months and months after I’ll be ready. PUG? Not likely. In 10 years of MMORPG’s, I’m fed up with L2P noob from kids with curfews who have never heard of The Sleeper. Wouldn’t be so bad if there was a way to DELETE the darned quest, instead of having to stare at it.

Yes, yes and yes to the OP. I haven’t gotten this far but I’ve seen whats in store for me during this whole second part of the storyline via a friend and I can’t say I’m at all impressed. I’m only going to finish the storyline quest for the sake of seeing it thru but on my alts…if I do, I do and if I don’t..oh well. The story stops being about how -I- change Tyria and effect “history” but how I helped the REAL hero do it….like I am merely tagging along as a sidekick. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, is the end where I don’t really do kitten, nor do I even get to be in my own cut-scene, etc. I mean really…how is that “all about you” anyway?

mulch.2586:

I’m actually rather disappointed at the LACK of reasons to interact or behave like a community in GW2. This tiny bit of social engineering, I think you can deal with it.

Really? Have you ever wondered why some of us players seek to solo more than group up? Here is why? Rudness, hatefulness, inconsideration, lack of respect to another human being, insults, verbal abuse, selfish, self serving, and the all around elitist jerk.. Need I say more? The community in this game is no better than the one in world of warcraft… sad to say. Although I know there are some good people, but you don’t hear from them since the vocal minority are the ones I listed. These are the reason I play this game with map chat off. I have no tolerance for jerks period. When I had map chat on there was not a day that didn’t go by where another player was being insulted for some stupid reason. And of course the name calling which I will term as verbal abuse.. mind you if you do this on my server I will report you. Do you people ever remember that old saying if you can’t say nothing nice then don’t say anything at all? Use it. Learn to be nice.. You will draw more flies with honey… There is no camaraderie in this community. Helpfulness? That is an endangered species on it’s way to extinction. So if you want to see more of the community grouping up then the jerks will have to stop being jerks and be more helpful and forgiving and less judgmental. Other wise it will stay the way it is.

I enjoy helping people.

The community in this game is no better than the one in world of warcraft…

Exactly. The same complaining about everything, the same whining when something does not get defeated instantly, the same threats on the developer if content isn’t simplified, the same complaints about others being rude to you, while you are being INCREDIBLY rude yourself (which somehow is okay?).

Pretty much like WoW was.

And I’m a helpful player (ran Arah Story several times now to help people with it, did mad king for lv2s that didn’t get invited, etc). But this behavior that people keep showing is really grating me, I went to GW2 to get away from people like this.

And yet it’s already filled with unthankful, spiteful, antisocial people.

Why play a MMO – a massive MULTIPLAYER title – when you refuse to group even one single time? Just group this one time. It won’t kill you. You might even like it!

darn i have run 2 dungeons in my whole mmo-playing life. not about to run another on to finish my story line

I have no problem grouping…by choice. Being forced to group just to finish my -personal- story line quest is kind of lame.

Yep I agree. Personal story is the single player experience of the game. One should be able to complete it solo.

I’m in the same boat…

I just completed the second to last mission, expecting to be able to continue on… Now I’m just disappointed. I even hoped against the odds that perhaps there was some dialog option with the npc at the entrance or some other entry point that would grant me access to a ‘personal story mode’ as opposed to the ‘dungeon story mode’ but of course that didn’t work out, haha.

The biggest problem I see is that while I can easily fit in little bits of my time to play solo, as someone who works and is enrolled in a Ph. D program I am often unable to find the time to play based on other people’s schedules (guildies), and if I were to PUG it a couple of difficult encounters for the group might make it hard for me to finish on time, which is unfortunate for me and the group I’d be leaving.

This is compounded by the fact that people who are interested enough in the personal story are probably also biased toward wanting to complete the dungeon story as well (myself included)…

I wouldn’t have any trouble doing this leisurely over a long period, but now the last personal story mission is also the last dungeon story mission. Anyone (I assume) who is in this for the story and the lore isn’t going to get through all of the earlier personal story missions just to then skip a large share of other story elements, so someone in my situation probably is not going to be able to complete the story in it’s current state for some time.

And yes, I understand that a lot of these constraints are self imposed, but they are also based on an understanding on how the last 40+ story missions worked… very disappointing.

I loved the personal story it was one of my favorite parts of the game, I can even live with Traherne and his “this will not end well” pessimism.
I really thought that I would be able to finish my personal story alone or at the most with my husband since we have been sharing stories since the start.
When I found out the last mission was inside Arah, I just thought it was a personal instance in a dungeon, a pain sure but not so bad.
I guess my story will have to go unfinished, I have zero desire to group with 4 other people for my personal story.
I don’t do dungeons as it is since after the first time I realized that dungeons and 5 year olds don’t mix well. Especially if you have to tell strangers " excuse me, my kid needs me"

Very disapointed to find out that the last mission of the not so personal storyline is a dungeon. Makes no sense, after every other mission is single player. I know its a MMO, i love to play WvW, joining group events, aiding other players and sometimes even chating with people i dont know. I just dont like to be forced to find ppl people to join my quest. If i want to do a dungeon, wich i already did, i choose to do it. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes a player has to leave, sometimes i have to leave. After 40+ missions why Anet choose to make different?
It would make much more sense to me, if for the final mission i was joined by Destiny’s Edge and Trahearne to slay the Dragon. Story wise, and by what was presented to us players during ALL the other missions, would make much more sense!
And for what i read in the posts above, if i join another party, i wont be able to watch the cutscenes in my last storyline mission!! Very disapointing!

Horribly disappointing, and honestly put such a sour taste in my mouth that I just have lost a lot of interest in GW2 since I hit that last-step roadblock. My motivation is just gone, when I log in, I feel like I’m just going through the motions rather than enjoying it. I don’t do dungeons, but I was really enjoying the personal story. If the personal story gets continued in a content update or expansion, I’m worried I’ll never see any of it due to this one step.
Its bumming me out.

Ghostwind.4380:

They did not specifically advertise story-mode as a solo-feature, but they also didn’t advertise that it WASN’T a solo feature either. Keep in mind – they named this feature of the game a “personal” story. The word personal does indeed imply solo. This idea was also further reinforced by the first 1-80 story missions where no group is required.

“I did 3 epic quests (and parts of a couple others) in EQ1. They required groups and raids, and were effective in getting people together to accomplish goals of individuals. I loved it, and still love that aspect in MMOGs. Same thing with the big quests in other games as well — did the epic lines in Rift most recently.”

I can understand and respect if you’re the type that enjoys grouping up to complete parts of quests that you need. It’s totally up to you – I personally don’t like to have grouping forced on me to move forward, but whatever. The problem however is one of precedence, which (respectfully) I don’t think you are grasping. All the story mission quests up to the last did not require you to do any of the dungeons related to the story along the way. What occurred is that you got emails at certain points from your original contact showing you the various dungeon and location on the map, and asking you to check it out, but it was NOT mandatory or required to move forward. You could move right on to the next story part and do the dungeon when you felt like it. The fact that they started off in this pattern and kept it almost the entire way sets a precedent and assumption by the player that dungeons and grouping are indeed not required to move forward. If they had made those other dungeons required as well throughout the story mission process, well then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.

As someone else said, it feels like the last solo-able mission with the Eye was probably originally intended to be the last story mission overall (it sure felt that way given the cut-scenes and build up and long battle), and just like the other missions afterwards you would have received an email giving you the location to Arah dungeon and option to kill Zhaitan (if you wanted), but in regards to your personal story it would have ended there. But it seems like they decided the Eye battle was not a fitting enough conclusion and added going to the Zhaitan dungeon afterwards as a requirement (or they ran out of time and couldn’t make another solo-able instance to kill Zhaitain). This can also explain some of the problems I have been reading about regarding odd behavior for the personal story in the Arah dungeon (too easy to kill Zhaitan with mashing single button but everything before that difficult, only one person being able to see their own final dialog and story conclusion, etc), since it was probably first built to be a standard dungeon but then had to bolt on the story conclusion part when it was never really intended to have that element. It sounds like they did the best they could trying to jam the two different streams together, but doing so came at a cost.

“There are single-player games. The stories in them are 10-times better than GW2’s, too.”

Totally agree there are single player games that may have better stories. I’ve played quite a few. But there are also now MMO’s (swtor being the prime example, and this one another) that are adding more of a personal solo story aspect. Trying to say an MMO is not a single story game is not a valid excuse anymore for finding a place to introduce a good solo story feature, since it’s been done already and was done in this game on missions 1-80.

“Having to attempt dungeon content is hard the first time. I could totally see that as a valid complaint. But getting tweaked cuz a MMO requires you to group to accomplish the pinnacle achievement in a basic aspect of the game — I think it’s misguided.”

Actually dungeon difficulty is not the core complaint here, nor have I seen anyone say that. Finding a group and being forced to group to complete your personal story when every mission before it did not follow that pattern is the core complaint.

The bottom line is this is an issue of choice and expectation. Anet set the expectation with calling it a “personal” story and gave choice with solo-able missions from 1-80. Then the choice and expectation was suddenly taken away at the very end of the cycle. Maybe you think we are “misguided” for feeling that way, but I don’t think as an experienced MMO player that I’m in the minority by feeling something went wrong with the design here. As more and more of the medium to casual players get to this point in their personal stories I think you are going to hear more complaints regarding this.

Everything i wanted to say. I think those who came from GW1 are the ones most outraged by this last mission.

Cleftjaw.9287:

And for what i read in the posts above, if i join another party, i wont be able to watch the cutscenes in my last storyline mission!! Very disapointing!

You will see the cutsceens but when the player speaks, you will see the party leader instead. Same as dungeons.

It really is a bizarre choice on ArenaNet’s part and seems to go against their stated goals.

I totally agree with OP. Being forced to group to complete your personal story after having done every mission of the storyline solo is completely disappointing. Makes no sense.

i dont have a problem grouping up with people to finish the game the problem i have is finding people to go with me to finish it i took the advice of going to lions arch to announce lfg arah found a group thing is none of us did the mission before so it was a failure

i came, i saw, i … dithered about at the gate all confused expression and disbelief before turning around and going to see if i couldn’t track down that one pair of gloves i need to get the full set of armor while i waited to see if i’d be any more inclined to finish later. a bit anticlimactic really. its been a few weeks now and i’m no more motivated to than i was before, although i did finally find those gloves. i give Arah the evil eye from time to time when i see it on the map, smug as you please, a yet to be completed quest line but that’s about the limit of my interaction with it. yeah its not “impossible” in the way that most unpleasant things aren’t impossible but it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to do them either. Taking nothing away from the rest of the game, which is on the whole fairly decent (that’s a compliment btw) this last bit of the “personal story” left me deflated.

Arena Net did state in one of their PR videos that solo play was a valid form of play style that they are happy to support. Forcing players to group for the final piece of the personal story is not reinforcing their statement.

I agree that a Dragon should be hard but their is no reason a solo player should suffer. Arena Net demonstrated they are quite capable at Ai for NPC characters with Guild Wars I, all they would have to do is have the player character join with various personal story specific NPC’s for the final mission.

I have not even made the attempt to do any dungeons, not even the Mad King, I enjoy jumping into dynamic events and helping people, but I detest forced groups for missions, especially when it is meant to be personal story based content. So to this day my personal story is stuck one mission for the end.

The Personal Story is meant to be the single player content, I think we are right to want this oversight fixed.

Given how good NPCs were in GW1 to the point that whole builds were based on using them it is very strange how utterly useless they are in GW2. Very strange.

I wish Anet would make an option to play the last mission with NPCs and level the dificulty curve accordingly. But i dont think its gonna happen…
And it wouldnt be stupid, because we played all the other missions that way.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Cleftjaw.9287:

And for what i read in the posts above, if i join another party, i wont be able to watch the cutscenes in my last storyline mission!! Very disapointing!

You will see the cutsceens but when the player speaks, you will see the party leader instead. Same as dungeons.

No different than Guild Wars 1 than, it was always the party leader in the cutscene.

The final quest ends in the dungeon? I thought you’d do the dungeon then return to Fort Trinity for the final cut scene.

i was at cursed shore when i happen to look at the messages and found people needing people to fight zhaitan i went with them and they helped me defeat zhaitan there are nice people in the game to help u but they are few i hope in the future gw2 will be more solo friendly so i dont have to rely on real people because it is easier to find a million exotic items than it is to find nice people to help u or thats how it feels when u need help and cant find it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/agree with the Op

I have no desire to do stupid 5 man dungeons, and the idea that I need to in order to complete my “personal” story is total nonsense.

And no, the 10 year old excuse that “it’s an MMO you should group” is NOT valid.

The fact that it’s an MMO has not effected my enjoyment of playing it SOLO for the past 80 levels… why in the hell should I be forced to play a game I WAS enjoying in a way I dislike now? Because it’s labeled an “MMO” and no other reason than that? Ridiculous.

+1 / agree

Well now I’m just shattered, here I am Lvl 80 feeling confident and I have thoroughly enjoyed GW2 to date, like the others I have enjoyed my personal story and I was looking forward to completing it.

I somehow breezed through from 70 – 80 (well dragged to a couple of the dragon fights + crafting saw to that), and I was really looking forward to putting a ‘tick’ next to the invisible “My Personal Story complete”. However, I then heard in chat what this thread is discussing; you HAVE to group to finish it.

What a let down – I haven’t had much luck grouping to date and my experiences have been the negative that is often talked about, call it karma, or bad luck, whatever (e.g. LTP noob, gawd ur an 80???, people leaving, etc, etc). My timezone is heavily influenced by non-english (not a problem just makes communications extremely difficult at times), and guilds that I’ve run with are in a TZ that is 3 hours ahead, so when I get on their going to bed.

I’ve tried those other MMO’s and one thing that always cheesed me was the ‘forced grouping’ to complete a narrative that moved you on. some of these stories are trite and some are downright entertaining (ever check out the option of “I always wanted to be in the Circus”?), but as has been repeated numerous times “personal”.

I guess it’s just one more thing to leave in the ‘incomplete’ basket.

I’ll add my voice of disappointment to the decision of making the final dungeon a forced group. As someone else mentioned, it’s all about expectations. Why would I expect to group at that point when every single previous mission did not require me to do so? Add in a bugged quest to even get access to the dungeon, and it causes me to leave GW2 with an awfully sour taste after what had previously been a fantastic experience.

I’m not a big MMO guy in general, mainly because I generally don’t enjoy gaming with others. GW2 is the only MMO that has ever grabbed me, and it was because I was never forced to group with other people if I didn’t want to. I LOVE the fact that I can go through my personal story by myself, and not be dependent on other people. To change that entire paradigm on the very last mission – after I’ve put in hundreds of hours to get to that point – is incredibly disappointing.

ARENANET MAKE IT SOLO FAST. I won’t complete the game with a party of people that already made it and will run to the end like they’re the ones in charge. Its my personal story I want to play it as I please. I’ve paid for this game so I should be able to play it my way, not other players ways.

I just want them to fix the kitten dungeon so it can actually be cleared reliably. I’ve had groups in Arah, and NONE OF THEM HAVE EVER FINISHED THE kitten INSTANCE BECAUSE IT BUGS OUT.

To all you people whining about having to form a group:

In GW1, it was REQUIRED for you to have 6-8 people for every mission. (You could fill the party with NPC henchmen, but you’d fail high level missions miserably with them). If you couldn’t complete the missions, there was NO WAY to progress without paying a runner 3k+ to run you to Droknar’s Forge.

GW2 requires only 5 players for the last mission. This is less than the requirements at any point for the GW1 story, which was considerably more limiting (and bugged, in many cases). I don’t understand the griping. GW2 is a MASSIVE step forwards for the genre.

And finally, my server is filled with people like you (posting in this thread), who never participate or want to form groups for anything. (Understandably, we always lose in WvW…). All they care about is “completing their personal story” like this was a single-player game and then once they finish, they start playing a different RPG. GW2 is NOT an RPG. It is an MMORPG, which is an entirely separate genre.

You might actually learn to enjoy the game if you simply played WvW, did a dungeon, or chatted with the other gamers you’re with every time you log online (it’s pretty easy to make small talk about anything with random strangers). Try it, then come back to this thread.

/end rant

@kazi

1. i did all the GW1 missions with npc (except kill shiro). Didn’t fail.

2. Grouping in GW1 is easier than GW2.

3. Opening the gates of Arah to access the dungeon requires +30 people.(or it cant open because its bugged)

4. Did a couple of dungeons, not my thing.

Argument is that dungeons and story should be separate. Not suddenly thrown in without warning.

@Orion

1. I’m impressed. You’re obviously a much better player than me.

2. True, but only because the GW1 missions made group participation almost mandatory (you seem to be the exception). The biggest problem with GW2 is that too many people are approaching the game as a purely single-player RPG. I’m saying that this is the wrong approach. If you look at GW2 as only a single-player RPG, it’s not that amazing of a game. The game’s strengths are in WvW, guilds, the ease of use of the combat system, and the fact that it can actually be played (for the most part) solo. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first MMO ever to be solo-able. Solo play is a feature, and is not the best way to play.

Granted, ANet probably should have expected people to only play single player and planned accordingly. My pet theory is that all story mode dungeons were mandatory for story progression at one point and were later changed to be optional with the exception of the final battle (the fact that the Destiny’s Edge characters have voice acting on-par with, or better than the main story characters supports this). It might have been easier to get players involved in group play by offering huge incentives instead of forcing the issue (as in give players signifcantly better loot when playing as a party or something…).

3. & 4. This doesn’t address my point. I agree with you on these. The majority of posts on this thread seem to be about how people simply don’t want to play with others online. To them I say, maybe if you tried it, you might actually like it.

@Kazi

1. nah, i did them so many times. i have 5 characters with full story. And being impatient + different timezone didnt help. If i group, im usually (not always) carrying the rest anyways. I couldn’t do Shiro alone because he had a skill that healed if i hit him and i couldn’t get the AI to stop. Im so full of kitten that i tried to do the “hard mode” alone. Failed with 10% remaining because i had a -75% hp penalty and no penalty removers.

2. “My pet theory is that all story mode dungeons were mandatory for story progression at one point and were later changed to be optional with the exception of the final battle (the fact that the Destiny’s Edge characters have voice acting on-par with, or better than the main story characters supports this).” ~ Felicia Day FTW. I guess i played with the expectation of an story experience similar to GW1.

3. & 4. Its easier for people to enjoy things if they didnt feel like they were forced to do it. ANet has their reasons i guess, i just disagree that it is the best course. Right now, i finished the story once but i will probably leave it unfinished for my secondaries. I’m also voicing my opinion because i dont want them to repeat it.

Edit: so thats why people keep saying “kitten”. I didnt know its auto censor :p

Haha when I figured out what “kitten” meant, I laughed pretty hard… Turning @#!$ into kittens… brilliant.

I wouldn’t cae so much if my character actually had a part in the cutscenes instead of other party members….

We should have each gotten our own cutscenes.

Being very new to GW2, I also have wondered why @ times you would need to group.. when it IS supposed to be YOUR story?!
My opinion is to either quit the whole thing, or re-vamp this so a player can be the HERO, not him and 4 or 5 others to complete.
Just has never made sense to me is all.

I wouldn’t mind if Destiny’s Edge were the hero’s. Story should have focused on you reuniting them instead of whats-his-name. He didn’t seem like much of a leader, didn’t even help out against the elder dragon.

Agree with OP. We have fought Claw Island and Fort of Trinity all by ourselves as the hero of the story and then in the finale, we are just like one of the NPCs. Besides, you don’t need a party to defeat Zaithan if you are only to spam one button for 5-10 minutes in the boss fight. A bad ending ruins so much of the whole story.

I love the level 60 story that leads you to the vision of ruins of Arah, where I can walk around taking my time to look at the whole place, where you can hardly do this in the real Cursed Shore because of all the nasty mobs around. If it is not solo, I won’t be able to do that. In fact, I never have a chance to look around for all the story mode dungeon runs. Every time it is just rush through the mobs, killing them or not. Besides, those stories in the story mode dungeons are part of the whole story that you definitely don’t want to miss, but unfortunately having to run as a group simply ruin everything and fail your immersion.

I think all story mode dungeons should be solo instance. I never have a chance to watch any cinematic in the explore mode because everyone is skipping and you don’t want to fall behind. It is also happening in story mode now with alts or players who don’t really care. I don’t feel like being in a story, but in a bot run.

GW1 handled this really well. You could choose to go through your story either with a group or with henchmen. The big end boss battle of each campaign was thus up to you how you wanted to complete it. I remember using a solo build on my assassin to fight Shiro 1-on-1 at the end of factions, and that felt much more epic than I’d imagine spamming 22222 vs Zhaitan will be (whenever I get there).

There is something to be said about the incredibility of beating an elder dragon all by oneself, sure. But doesn’t the final mission already come with the entirety of Destiny’s Edge and some other NPC’s? I don’t see how 4 random people would make the change from ‘epic’ to ‘so silly that you beat up a dragon on your own’. Also, if you’re unlucky one of those 4 people will be the one who get all the cutscenes, so you were basically a guest all along.

I’d personally be fine with the thought that the personal story ended with fighting the eye. But what bugs me is that the green story text will always be in the corner of my screen, reminding me that I haven’t finished off the threat against Tyria yet. And even if I wanted, half the time Arah is bugged and locked and the other half nobody wants to join me when I search in mapchat. I don’t have the time to sit and wait for Arah to open and then hoping to get lucky enough to get a group that a) can manage the dungeon and b) won’t ragequit because “omg noob party”.

I have a group of friends who play with me a lot, but our dungeon runs are few and two of us rarely level (they’re around lvl 30-40). If I want to complete the story before getting bored enough to stop caring about it, I’ll have to pug.

Right now I just sort of wish they could remove that green story text for me.