Guild Wars 2

I’m a casual gamer and prefer PvE over PvP. My husband and I have our own guild, and quest by ourselves, mostly. I don’t understand why every holiday or special event has to center around a dungeon where you need to have to engage in another group. I’m not totally anti-social, I enjoy world events. I just don’t enjoy LFG. I know it’s probably just me, but that’s my honest opinion.

Hrm, well, doing today’s dungeon with two people is doable if you’re skilled enough between you two. I managed to do that. Not sure if you’ll be able to get away with it for future ones, though.

My brother and I are in the same boat. We were able to finish the dungeon but it’s tough. I’m worried the others will get too difficult for just the two of us though and we hate LFG too.

The event consists of :

• Decorated LA, heart of the mists and WvW ( partially )
• Snowball fights
• Bell choir minigame
• Wintersday Wonderland JP
• Snowball Mayhem minigame
• Festivity-related items and recipes obtained through basically everything

^^^^^ NO DUNGEONS UP HERE ^^^^^

• A dungeon

So we have 80% of the event pretty much soloable and just a single dungeon ( altough it’s the only way to get the mini pets ) which is easy and if not soloable, almost. I don’t see the reasoning behind your complaint, especially in an MMO.

The event dungeons are designed so that everyone can play them, therefore they have really simple mechanics.

You will need 5 lvl2 people to complete the dungeon, or 1 lvl80. Having more then 2 lvl80 people inside the dungeon is just overkill.

We were two lvl 80, doing the whole dungeon without problem.

I agree. Same thing, husband and wife, our own guild—don’t like PUGs. At least Halloween had the massive realm where everyone was running around and you didn’t need to be in a PUG.

A: So they can avoid massive lag and people getting dced all the time. Last event wasn’t instance based and it crashed and burned PCs as well as Servers. I guess they learned a lesson and made things way easier for everyone by making a small group instances for everyone.
And i guess making instance for every individual would make same problem since too many instances would have been created at the same time hurting the servers just as bad. I believe this is the golden middle and getting 2-3 pugs is really a minute work.

I hate dungeons myself.

Having said that, this plays much more like an outside chain event you happen to be at with 4 other people. That’s it. It’s actually pretty fun. I ran it twice. I regret not doing it more yesterday, but hopefully after Thursday I can find people willing to do the Grove version a few more times so I can get some of the missing materials I might need for a pet.

I don’t own a single pet yet, thought it would be fun just to try to get the 5 you can make from each place.

What is ‘really’ frustrating me is getting the stomping the town achievement. Both times I stuck around and broke ‘everything’ and it didn’t work.

It just makes sense to have instanced group events in an MMO for a variety of reasons. However, dungeon difficulty scaling to the number of players and their levels may be the next evolutionary step.

I don’t know if you were here for Lost Shores, but if you were, remember that?

That is why we have it in a dungeon.

If they made it an open world thing, imagine the lag, disconnects, crashes, etc. Imagine Lost Shores all over again. Thousands of players all in one area spamming every AoE they got just to try and hit something that isn’t even on the screen yet. You could barely see anything, barely anyone was loading in, and good luck finding a mob to attack if you didn’t have an extremely high end system.

It was really a disaster. What should of been awesome, was destroyed by all the lag, disconnects, nothing loading, freezes, crashes, errors, etc etc.

So this time around, they put it in a dungeon. It worked for Mad King, and it works for Tixx. No more massive scale battle to cause all the above. Instead, we got a nice atmosphere that runs smoothly with just the five (or less) of you running around in it.

I feel this is a much better way to do things than having a massive world event.

At least it’s not a forced 5 man dungeon. We did get it done after we figured out doing the second tar machine first made it not reset. We couldn’t kill the tar fast enough for the first machine.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

I don’t know if you were here for Lost Shores, but if you were, remember that?

That is why we have it in a dungeon.

If they made it an open world thing, imagine the lag, disconnects, crashes, etc. Imagine Lost Shores all over again. Thousands of players all in one area spamming every AoE they got just to try and hit something that isn’t even on the screen yet. You could barely see anything, barely anyone was loading in, and good luck finding a mob to attack if you didn’t have an extremely high end system.

It was really a disaster. What should of been awesome, was destroyed by all the lag, disconnects, nothing loading, freezes, crashes, errors, etc etc.

So this time around, they put it in a dungeon. It worked for Mad King, and it works for Tixx. No more massive scale battle to cause all the above. Instead, we got a nice atmosphere that runs smoothly with just the five (or less) of you running around in it.

I feel this is a much better way to do things than having a massive world event.

Except the zones only load a certain amount of people and then it makes another instance anyways. This isn’t a one time event either, which forced people to log on at a certain time so that they wouldn’t miss it, it runs for a day and moves on to the next city. No reason this couldn’t have been designed like world dynamic events(or the Halloween maze area), just hope they figured out by now it’s “ok” to spread event areas, no need to jam it into a small area in one zone like they did for the first event on lost shores, spawning all those mobs only at the lighthouse area was a huge mistake.

So what now, we should be expecting them to dump new content into a dungeon and call it day? So much for making use of the dead world zones, let’s just start to stick everything into lion’s arch.

This first dungeon was ezpz. I solo’d on my 80 ranger since none of my friends were on this morning. I’m sure it would have been faster to PUG it, but I wanted to see if I could do it alone. So based on my experience, I’m sure you and your husband could do it just the two of you!

Nesky.1042:

Casuals please go. Is dumbed down jumping puzzle not enough? Now you want to get rid of all group stuff?

Dude… not all of us have time to spend every waking hour in the game after we finish our homework. Some of us have real lives.

Wolfheart.1938:

The event consists of :

• Decorated LA, heart of the mists and WvW ( partially )
• Snowball fights
• Bell choir minigame
• Wintersday Wonderland JP
• Snowball Mayhem minigame
• Festivity-related items and recipes obtained through basically everything

^^^^^ NO DUNGEONS UP HERE ^^^^^

• A dungeon

So we have 80% of the event pretty much soloable and just a single dungeon ( altough it’s the only way to get the mini pets ) which is easy and if not soloable, almost. I don’t see the reasoning behind your complaint, especially in an MMO.

This. People just find excuse to complain nowdays even there are alternatives for them.

EvilStepQueen.1293:

I’m a casual gamer and prefer PvE over PvP. My husband and I have our own guild, and quest by ourselves, mostly. I don’t understand why every holiday or special event has to center around a dungeon where you need to have to engage in another group. I’m not totally anti-social, I enjoy world events. I just don’t enjoy LFG. I know it’s probably just me, but that’s my honest opinion.

My husband and I have our own guild too and we don’t really PUG because we have a young child and need to afk at weird moments.

Our solution has been to just 2 man Tixx- we have done so for all 3 phases so far and it has been a blast.
I was really surprised how much fun it was.

Also there are tons of other stuff you can do in this event- just finding a patch of magic snow and having an impromptu snow ball fight was great.
The choir bell was awesome- I haven’t even got to the other things yet since I don’t have a lot of time to play.

atomicblue.1306:

Nesky.1042:

Casuals please go. Is dumbed down jumping puzzle not enough? Now you want to get rid of all group stuff?

Dude… not all of us have time to spend every waking hour in the game after we finish our homework. Some of us have real lives.

The dungeons take 20 minutes. Hardly ‘spending every waking hour in the game’ is it? I don’t get a great deal of time to play, sometimes only an hour in an evening, but I’ve managed to do all the Tixx events so far. It takes about 1 minute to find a group and as I said, around 20 minutes (maximum) to do the event.

Im with u, i hate dungeons ><
But this is an easy one, u can do it whit any ppl, even the worst players ><
This dungeon is easy, is funny, is short … and cute
Have fun ^^

I dont think it has anything to do with being "casual"or “hardcore”. I consider myself a "hardcore"player because I play ~60 hours a week, which fits the definition. But I don’t like dungeons either. But, I admit, I really just don’t like human beings and prefer not to be forced to engage with them when I don’t have to. I work full time and act like a normal human being around my work mates and treat my family with love and respect, but outside that I don’t think I should be forced to interact with a species I would be more than happy to see become extinct.

Wolfheart.1938:

The event consists of :

• Decorated LA, heart of the mists and WvW ( partially )
• Snowball fights
• Bell choir minigame
• Wintersday Wonderland JP
• Snowball Mayhem minigame
• Festivity-related items and recipes obtained through basically everything

^^^^^ NO DUNGEONS UP HERE ^^^^^

• A dungeon

So we have 80% of the event pretty much soloable and just a single dungeon ( altough it’s the only way to get the mini pets ) which is easy and if not soloable, almost. I don’t see the reasoning behind your complaint, especially in an MMO.

Actually, no.

That dungeon is 5 instances. So, you should list it 5 times. (could be 6, we don’t know about that Toypocalipse which will be coming when he reaches LA… at least I presume that’s when that will happen…)

sostronk.8167:

I dont think it has anything to do with being "casual"or “hardcore”. I consider myself a "hardcore"player because I play ~60 hours a week, which fits the definition. But I don’t like dungeons either. But, I admit, I really just don’t like human beings and prefer not to be forced to engage with them when I don’t have to. I work full time and act like a normal human being around my work mates and treat my family with love and respect, but outside that I don’t think I should be forced to interact with a species I would be more than happy to see become extinct.

So why play an MMO?

You don’t have to do them… it’s not mandatory. If you want achievements then I guess you have a point. But nobody is really forcing it on you. There’s plenty to do.

I don’t really do dungeons/fractals, but I had no problems with these mini events. Finding a group literally took less than 5 seconds — /map LFG Tixx, instantly invited… 20 minutes later, it’s done. Quick, and painless.

I’m not a big fan of PUGs, but it’s not like these instances require any sort of co-ordination/teamwork. And if you die, there is a WP.

Personal preference? I simply don’t like dungeons. The ONLY dungeons I ever liked, were the Tier 1 and Tier 2 raid dungeons in Age of Conan. Which is probably an acquired taste. I just don’t think NPCs and their scripted responses are generally all that interesting.

I never liked doing stuff in groups, outside of PVP. Endless waits for bio breaks, crying babies, answering the door, having to bring kids to school… ugh. And I REALLY hate LFG, on those occasions where grouping cannot be avoided. Standing around for 2 hours to find people to group with to finish your PERSONAL story arc… what fun. Or entering an instance with a group, and having someone leave halfway with an ‘oh, I didn’t realise it was going to take that long’.

I know City of Heroes is dead now… but they had a brilliant instancing system, that automatically adapted the difficulty and number of mobs to the number of people who entered the ‘dungeon’. Want to do it solo? Not a problem. Want to go in with a max size group? Totally fine. Want to do it hardmode? You could agree to set the mob level, number of bosses etc etc to max.

So knowing it CAN be done, why don’t more games do this? It saves SO much frustration.

I don’t normally do dungeons either, or even really play PvE much at all, but just suck it up for the event…seriously. It takes 1 second to find a group, no communication is required (you don’t even have to say hello), and it will be over in no time.

i did one dungeon solo with my necro (full exotic) and the others with my brother it was easy.

EvilStepQueen.1293:

I’m a casual gamer and prefer PvE over PvP. My husband and I have our own guild, and quest by ourselves, mostly. I don’t understand why every holiday or special event has to center around a dungeon where you need to have to engage in another group. I’m not totally anti-social, I enjoy world events. I just don’t enjoy LFG. I know it’s probably just me, but that’s my honest opinion.

I honestly am finding these Tixx dungeons more like world events than like standard dungeons. They aren’t that challenging, so you don’t have to coordinate your attacks or your builds – just read the objective and start doing it, and you’ll get it done together without much need to strategize as a team.

As for finding a group, it’s really easy because so many people are wanting to do it. I literally type “LFG” once, get sent an invite, and away we go. It’s not like the regular dungeons where you have to stand around getting enough people; there are already plenty of people waiting.

ETA: I’m also finding this method much more pleasant than the Lost Shores event. Lost Shores was so laggy I could barely participate, and I kept getting disconnected and booted into an overflow where I was no longer at the right stage of progress. With five people in a dungeon rather than dozens in Lion’s Arch, I’m not having these issues. I like the idea of big world events like Lost Shores, but in terms of actual playability? This wins hands down.

EvilStepQueen.1293:

I’m a casual gamer and prefer PvE over PvP. My husband and I have our own guild, and quest by ourselves, mostly. I don’t understand why every holiday or special event has to center around a dungeon where you need to have to engage in another group. I’m not totally anti-social, I enjoy world events. I just don’t enjoy LFG. I know it’s probably just me, but that’s my honest opinion.

Not just you… so far there’s snowball pvp which I don’t like. Jumping puzzles, which I HATE, and bells, which I could not figure out and I have no intent to try again.

The events just aren’t fun like they used to be IMO. (In gw1)

Broom.2561:

I know City of Heroes is dead now… but they had a brilliant instancing system, that automatically adapted the difficulty and number of mobs to the number of people who entered the ‘dungeon’. Want to do it solo? Not a problem. Want to go in with a max size group? Totally fine. Want to do it hardmode? You could agree to set the mob level, number of bosses etc etc to max.

So knowing it CAN be done, why don’t more games do this? It saves SO much frustration.

OMG that is EXACTLY what I was wanting for dungeons in GW2.

It’s more like a story instance than a dungeon. There are no traps, corridors, sub-bosses, cut-scenes, paths, giant health pool bosses, multiple way points, tokens, or anything else that makes the dungeons…dungeons.

The entire thing is just an open area with a few dynamic events and then you’re done.

If it makes you feel better, jump in a group and just treat the other players like NPCs. They will run around and work towards the objectives on their own and there really isn’t a need to interact with them at all. That’s pretty much what I have done all three days so far. I jump in the first group that is LFM, enter the instance, finish it in 10 minutes or less and then go on my merry way.

I personally think the Tixx dungeon would work just fine as an open world explorable area. Limit the number of people who can be in the instance and have all the events become DEs. In some ways I think the experience would be less (because DEs all tend to turn into zergy clusterkittens which are no fun and your contribution doesn’t matter) and the daily reward would become seemingly harder to implement (whereas the current design is fairly clean and simple to understand and “complete”).

Having said all that I’m pretty dissapointed in the dungeon. It is simply a collection of very ordinary DEs, it really isn’t up to the standard of a dundeon. Every single experience offered by the “dungeon” has an equivalent DE in the explorable world (collection DEs, the defend control point DEs, the defend NPC DEs, the destroy object DEs, even the princess spray event is the same as an asuran event where you turn “mosquitoes” back into students).

I haven’t tried the dungeon on my own, but it seems as though it would be easily possible to do solo, so it’s more like a personal story than it is a true dungeon. Unless the scaling assumes multiple people, I don’t think there is anything in there that is truly like a real dungeon.

I actually think holiday events should be fun and not very hard to do. I have been able to do every dungeon this time solo but it took me a long time. This one with the griffon nests was a challenge to figure out but finally had a strategy that worked. Lot of casual players come back for the holiday events so if you need to finish the dungeon just join a group. The hardcore players are a lot more friendly and accepting of others who like to have fun and willing to learn. I personally think it would be better for these events to form a group automatically like the pvp events. These dungeons are not hard to do so don’t need a list of instructions to do at a certain time.

So go ahead and try it solo, duo or find a group. All are fun and challenging. Just because someone likes playing solo or duo doesn’t mean they should play a single player game. Most MMO’s are solo friendly and I play them because I LOVE to help others out but not forced to help out or interact with rude people.

Broom.2561:

I know City of Heroes is dead now… but they had a brilliant instancing system, that automatically adapted the difficulty and number of mobs to the number of people who entered the ‘dungeon’. Want to do it solo? Not a problem. Want to go in with a max size group? Totally fine. Want to do it hardmode? You could agree to set the mob level, number of bosses etc etc to max.

Sounds awesome. I really do wish these zones could scale better to how many players are present. I haven’t seen any gameplay mechanic that requires multiple players – it’s just the size, strength and re-spawn rates of the mobs that make the Tixx stuff frustrating for duos, and I imagine quite taxing for single players.

sostronk.8167:

I dont think it has anything to do with being "casual"or “hardcore”. I consider myself a "hardcore"player because I play ~60 hours a week, which fits the definition. But I don’t like dungeons either. But, I admit, I really just don’t like human beings and prefer not to be forced to engage with them when I don’t have to. I work full time and act like a normal human being around my work mates and treat my family with love and respect, but outside that I don’t think I should be forced to interact with a species I would be more than happy to see become extinct.

Then you are playing the wrong game.
Anet always intended that they wanted to make the game more social.

I’ve soloed every single one of the events so far except the Grove’s, and that’s only because of Toxx’s incredible healing skill that you can’t out-dps with certain classes solo. That said, it’s much more fun doing it with other people; I recommend exploring the social side of the game and meeting some friends.

I love the open world stuff but do not care for the instanced content and it has nothing to do with being social/anti social it is more about playstyle and preference vs “forced” grouping without a LFG tool for instanced dungeons..

Others may love doing the instanced holiday content and i hope they enjoy it but i prefer being “genuinely” social without being forced so i stay and play in the big beautiful non instanced world anet has given us..

I am disappointed that anet has decided to use forced group instancing almost exclusively for anything and everything they have added thusfar and would love to see more open world stuff added to the game..

Wasnt this game suppose to be as much if not more about natural grouping than forced?