Guild Wars 2

Tachenon.5270:

Why shouldn’t it be solo-able? I say make it so that those who prefer running solo and those who prefer running with a group (of 2, 3, 5, 8 players and maybe more!) can both enjoy the content. That would be some innovative stuff.

So basically remove any need whatsoever to ever talk or interact with any other player in the whole game?

lordkrall.7241:

So basically remove any need whatsoever to ever talk or interact with any other player in the whole game?

I wouldn’t be against removing the requirement to communicate with anyone unless I wanted to.

However it’s already mostly fine as it is, I don’t have to communicate with anyone in the open world which suites me just fine. That doesn’t mean I am not interacting with them though.

I don’t think it is worth developer time making some super complicated model for dynamic dungeon scaling from 1 to whatever. Thats already happening in the world, and those encounters are far more simple than what are in dungeons. Dungeons are a different experience that should not be homogenised.

Turgon.8625:

For the same reason, this Molten dungeon frustrates me because it is essential to understanding the solo story I have played so far. No matter how ‘like-minded’ a group of people I find to play it with me, I don’t want them there. I wouldn’t want my best R/L friends there. I want to read my book in isolation thankyou.

Living story isn’t a book and it isn’t a solo story. It’s the story of Rox and Braham, as opposed to personal story where your character’s development is central. As far as it’s needed to understand the story, remains to be seen. If the dungeon is required to see key cinematics, that might be annoying for those who refuse to do dungeon content. But as is said before, nothing is stopping you from simply joining a small group and play through the content with other people, or watch a youtube video of the cinematics.

Perhaps not optimal, but as you simply refuse to play a certain type of content because of some sort of social phobia or god knows what, it might be the only solution.

People will have to deal with other people more. It’s part of life. And it’s part of an MMO.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Turgon.8625:

For the same reason, this Molten dungeon frustrates me because it is essential to understanding the solo story I have played so far. No matter how ‘like-minded’ a group of people I find to play it with me, I don’t want them there. I wouldn’t want my best R/L friends there. I want to read my book in isolation thankyou.

Living story isn’t a book and it isn’t a solo story. It’s the story of Rox and Braham, as opposed to personal story where your character’s development is central. As far as it’s needed to understand the story, remains to be seen. If the dungeon is required to see key cinematics, that might be annoying for those who refuse to do dungeon content. But as is said before, nothing is stopping you from simply joining a small group and play through the content with other people, or watch a youtube video of the cinematics.

Perhaps not optimal, but as you simply refuse to play a certain type of content because of some sort of social phobia or god knows what, it might be the only solution.

People will have to deal with other people more. It’s part of life. And it’s part of an MMO.

Fair points.

To clarify, refusing to do dungeons is due to disliking gameplay not anti-social reasons.
Not wanting to communicate with other people in the open world is definitely down to anti-social reasons. Not sure I’d call it a phobia – probably not too distant though.

I wish they would either scale the content for story dungeons to group size (1 through 5) or give us a few NPC heroes to take with us.

Why not? They gave us Rox and Braham. All they need to do is add add up to 4 NPCs and then everyone would be happy.

In this thread and others I’ve often see the desire to see all of the story played out together with the suggestion of the dungeon part of the story being optional or a side path.

I dont quite understand that because if the dungeon is there and has a development of the story happening inside, then not doing it means you havent seen all of the story – regardless of how the soloable arc concludes.

Alternatively, people are just asking to be able to get all achievements without going into the dungeon, and actually seeing the conclusion or entirety of the story is not their actual concern.

If it is the first, you’re essentially asking for the dungeon to not be there or just be filled with nameless dregde that drop loot. Since we have those in the rest of the world, its like the dungeon isnt there. I dont see an easy solution to that without annyoing other players that actually like the culmination in a dungeon. If it is the latter though , then you might be too obsessed with achievement points but how about these solutions:

• Give the final achievement after you talk to the npcs at the start of the dungeon, even if you dont continue.

• Give a potential title or other reward at (fake numbers) 12/14 achievement points instead of 14/14 so you dont have to do everything to be done (as in the holiday events).

ForAce.1943:

This is MMO, not Single Player game! Come on ppl!

(° e °)y

Turgon.8625:

I recognise your goal to create a variety of content to satisfy as many people as possible, which is a good approach in my books. However, do you think that the story completion might be best left to the most accessible of content with a dungeon experience being used as a side story instead?

In general I agree with Turgon – dungeons are extremely difficult for casual players and having a dungeon as a requirement in anything that is essentially a personal story (personal story, living story, etc.) might be a barrier-to-entry for many people. And I like the suggestion to make dungeons optional – people can do them if they like dungeons but are not penalized by not receiving completion on their achievement if they choose not to.

I have not yet reached the end of my Personal Stories because I find just the story part to be too difficult for me. Don’t bother insulting my abilities because if you are the type to do that I don’t care what you have to say.

On the other hand, I found the Wintersday dungeons to be manageable and fun so I can only hope that the F&F dungeon follows in that vein rather than the world dungeons.

If you refuse to run the dungeon I’m sure you can see the story on youtube once it’s been implemented.

I interact with a lot of players almost constantly and I’ve never felt a need to actually group with anyone. There’s very little benefit to it. I’ve already protected towns from being overrun, gone on beer runs with monks, and a host of other things too many to even remember them all.

In some places there were so many people in one place that if the game engine allowed it I would have been tripping over people.

I’ve fought shoulder to shoulder with everything I’ve had with complete and total strangers. I’ve walked onto a battlefield and had to make the choice whether or not to help this group of people or that group of people. These were all real people and not some cpu controlled npcs.

I’ll tell you what I love all of this. Just totally awesome and I want more of it.

As far as I’m concerned I have no desire to play dungeons. I’m here to have fun and the whole dungeon experience is just a painful hassle and I’m not interested in doing them. Same goes for the whole personal story/living story line. All the things I do in game are very social and I’m not all that interested in being locked away in some instance somewhere by myself.

Where does that leave me? Out on the open road doing what comes naturally. All the while having a blast doing it.

This is my personal playstyle. How any of you play the game has no affect on me whatsoever. You like dungeons? Have at it. Have fun. You interested in solo instances? They are out there. Knock yourself out. Everyone gets to do what is fun for them.

The problem is that anet is mixing the 2 playstyles together and at the worst possible place. The personal story/ living story should not have its climax of the story take place in a dungeon when everything leading up to the climax took place in solo instances. It makes no sense at all for anet to do that. Mixing these 2 playstyles are like mixing oil and water. It just doesn’t work well enough for everyone to enjoy themselves.

Me, I would be happier if there was no grouping at all and everything took place in the open world.

Zergs lag and all I would still be happier.

I think it is down to a matter of accessibility.

Implement a LFG tool, make sure the dungeon is free of frustrating mechanics and it would be a much more appropriate environment to finish off a story. Though I still prefer my stories without other people.

Challenge should still be there for those who want it, with appropriate rewards. An extra path, optional bosses, a hardmode, something like that. It’s where fractals nearly worked so well, many levels of difficulty with a forgiving entry level. If it weren’t for annoying gameplay mechanics then they would have been a slam dunk for me.

Seriously??? A dungeon, so its not living story its just another reason to add yet another dungeon. I was looking forward to some story content but its just a dungeon. Cheers

And please don’t try to make out that dungeons have anything to do with story only one that did was Zhaitan rest were just filler.

No worries, it’s gone in 2 weeks.

new dungeons are fine.

But not a living story.

They exclude everyone who does not like getting groups together due to lack of LFG.

And why spend time on dungeons that will be gone in a month? Add more permenant dungeons. and keep the out of livign story

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hello! Thanks for starting this thread. :-)

As one of the designers for the Molten Weapons Facility, I would just like to say that one of our chief concerns throughout the development of Retribution was to address this very issue. We worked hard to ensure that the dungeon experience we have crafted is not simply possible to complete by groups of all different skill levels and compositions, but more importantly that it is lots of fun and rewarding for everyone. I understand the concerns about jumping into a 5-man instance if you’re more accustomed to solo play – in fact as a player I typically share those feelings, so rest assured that such concerns have been and continue to be addressed firsthand by our team!

Flame and Frost has so far made use of many of the different types of content available to players of Guild Wars 2. There have been open world dynamic events, solo instances, scavenger-hunts and achievements. In this case, with the culmination of Flame and Frost, given all the tools in our tool kit as developers, a 5-man instance was really the thing that made the most sense for us to pursue, as it enabled us to best tell the conclusion to this story arc in the way that we wanted.

We’re paying careful attention to this balance of content types, and the Living World teams will always strive to offer a variety of content to our players on a regular basis, and to make that content as compelling, and accessible, as possible.

Speaking personally, I hope you’ll join all of us on the Flame and Frost team and give the Molten Weapons Facility a try when it releases next week!

Sorry, I hate the fact that you ended this with a group content only thing.
do that AFTER you sort out LFG, not before.

As far as I am concened its a total waste of time.

Number of dungeons I’ve run since GW2 went live….1. Why end what was supposed ot be living world with an instanced event that excludes people?

Surely instanced content =/= living world.

Also, its bugged.

Yeah. As a WvW player that literally since BWEs never stepped a step in a dungeon (except sab), with personal story still unfinished since i loath all kind of obligatory group PVE, i am pretty disappointed. I liked the Living Story so far, but …

It seems pretty obvious that anet has its own idea of how this game has to be played. Since I don’t like this decision, I’ll just let it go. I did the same with personal story and jumping puzzles. As soon as I can find a better game, I’ll be gone in a heartbeat.

I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t a situation where you can’t get the final reward without playing the dungeon after dong all the other stuff and there isn’t a LFG tool and they haven’t disabled the “let’s throw the guy who isn’t in our guild out of the group at the last minute” button for the content.

Wished I had gotten the game earlier so I could have played the Flame & Frost parts but since I am a lowly level 31 I would just get killed in seconds in the level 80 lands of Flame & Frost I hope they do something like it some time else.
Since it seems they go away after a certian time.

RuneCrimson.7380:

Wished I had gotten the game earlier so I could have played the Flame & Frost parts but since I am a lowly level 31 I would just get killed in seconds in the level 80 lands of Flame & Frost I hope they do something like it some time else.
Since it seems they go away after a certian time.

You get upscaled to lvl 80.

Dungeon was very, very well made. Wish it was staying longer >.>

How can you be upscaled? even the equipment you have is lower level it would be like walking into a room with millions of poison darts flying at you and told to dodge them all.
I can hardly get past the places that downscale nerf me. lol

Should take your current gear into account, but I’m lvl 80 so I haven’t actually tested out how well it scales. They did a pretty good job with the upscale in the mad king dungeon (MWF is a lot more difficult that Mad King though; not saying it’s super hard though)

To be fair, the dungeon was pretty good. The rewards were kitten and I’ll prolly never go back but, it was more fun than any other dungeon.

HiddenNick.7206:

Turgon.8625:

Just read over at massively that the living story ends with a 5 man instance. What a disappointment for all those out there who won’t go near that sort of content.

This feels exactly like the pain of the personal story.

You could do the entire 1-80 personal story solo except for the final mission where you suddenly had to go into a dungeon. I still don’t know how my story ends….

All the living story content has been doable solo so far, and I have very much enjoyed it – please don’t make this ending a 5 man! I am all for 5 mans being used for content just not for the culmination of a plot line that has been open to everyone so far.

I love GW2 but I would rather just logout then be forced into dungeon play.

What you really ask for is the removal of all cooperative play from the game and that’s the kind of thing that would be a deal breaker for huge majority of people! There needs to be content that REQUIRES cooperative play or only few people will continue to play it! That’s because people need to have reasons to play together. That’s a huge thing for every MMO.

Umm…no. The arbitrary requirement of having five people just turns a lot of people off of “group content” in this game. To assume that players will only group for instances if they are forced to is ludicrous. If dungeons scaled for 1 to 5 people, a lot more people would do them and a lot more people would participate in group activities in this game.

A lot of people who would rather stay away from all the large guild BS play in small guilds, which may often just be made up of a few RL friends. My guild is like this and we would all love to do group content together, but by requiring five players, rather than two, three or four, we have extremely limited opportunities to do group content together.

Forced grouping in a game that so successfully supports scaling every where else is just plain silly and evidence of backwards thinking in an otherwise forward thinking game.

Alphonse.4356:

It seems pretty obvious that anet has its own idea of how this game has to be played. Since I don’t like this decision, I’ll just let it go. I did the same with personal story and jumping puzzles. As soon as I can find a better game, I’ll be gone in a heartbeat.

The one comment I will make is that in a game that is supposed to support “play the way you enjoy to play”, the few stubborn hold outs of old school thinking are just all the more mindless. The game is actually more “play the way you want to play, unless we decide that some content has to be played our way, in which case we will do everything in our power to ensure you play it exactly as intended, because you really shouldn’t be able to play your way all the time, or our game will be seen as easy mode and our egos as game designers will suffer and designers from other companies will make fun of us, which will make us sad, even though those other developers would die to have a game as successful as ours”.

I actually think that should be the official mission statement moving forward…

I take my words back. Just finished a dungeon with a random party on 1st run. For a first ever dungeon run in GW2 its fun expirience.

It was an excellent instance

Wow. This is a crying shame, to be honest—the Flame and Frost has been been an interesting story so far..only to fall on it’s face at the end due to requiring forced grouping content right at the end. There was a reason people loved having Heroes and Henchman in Guild Wars 1, you know—so they didn’t have to put up with the WoW raid garbage. Heck, F&F as it is rather pointedly provides you with a pair of Heroes to travel with—making it impossible to do the mission with just them is a rather poor design decision in an otherwise excellent storyline.
Then again, I’m wondering if Anet was just being lazy and just throwing this in to end things? After all, it’s only going to be there until the 12th, not the full month like the other parts (Basically, what they’re telling is us the last section of Flame and Frost is less important than Super Adventure Box, which was there for a full month? Sad.)

As for the Personal Story…blech, I just ran across that in the wiki—which means I’ll probably get stuck with a full set of characters with 100% exploration, and none of them ever actually finishing the Personal Story. :-/ Sad, especially as this is one of the things I like about how Guild Wars runs things, by not forcing you into a lame raid group in order to progress. Very much dropping the ball here, Anet.

Turgon.8625:

I think it is down to a matter of accessibility.

Implement a LFG tool, make sure the dungeon is free of frustrating mechanics and it would be a much more appropriate environment to finish off a story. Though I still prefer my stories without other people.

Challenge should still be there for those who want it, with appropriate rewards. An extra path, optional bosses, a hardmode, something like that. It’s where fractals nearly worked so well, many levels of difficulty with a forgiving entry level. If it weren’t for annoying gameplay mechanics then they would have been a slam dunk for me.

Better idea. Make it so it can be played with a single player and the two provided NPC Heroes, then scale it upwards for the WoW-clone Raid groups.

Someone else was responding ‘So you want to get rid of all player interaction in the game?’. No—just get rid of it being required, while leaving it in place for the people who want to do missions that way. Anet has already proved that they’re excellent at upscaling and downscaling events for levels and number of players. Why they failed to use that knowledge in the two places it would make the most sense completely escapes me.

Gary Prax.9745:

If you refuse to run the dungeon I’m sure you can see the story on youtube once it’s been implemented.

I don’t refuse to run the dungeon. It’s being forced into a WoW Raid in order to run it that turns my stomach. I took down Shiro back in 1 without needing other players, why would I want to have them here?

hmmm I wasn’t in a WoW Raid to run the Molten Facility, 5 random people… we did it fairly fast and easy, etc… no ending cutscenes etc.

Greetings all,

Up until this point, I have been playing both GW2 and SWTOR. For me personally, I only have time to devote to one mmo and immerse myself in its universe and lore to the extent that I’m happy with. The developers at ArenaNet have crafted an absolutely gorgeous and detailed online world! Yesterday, I made the decision to uninstall GW2 and continue my adventures in Bioware’s Star Wars universe.

My decision was made, in part, because of the issue being discussed here. I felt like I could not make significant achievements in Tyria as a solo player. I was unable to complete my character’s personal story and was unable to bring my living story to its conclusion. I love exploration, but was unable to explore completely because the availability of some locations was dependent on the actions of other players.

I recently completed the new “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” expansion for swtor and was very satisfied to bring a new chapter in my character’s story to its conclusion, as others were enjoying group content present as separate adventures.

I have no issue with the presence of group content and recognize its importance. I have decided to go where I feel that all playstlyes are rewarded. I also realize that my views are only my own! Just wanted to add to the discussion and I will be keeping an eye on upcoming content in GW2 in case something strikes my fancy.

Cheers,
Skade Thordottir

Wouldn’t be so bad if they had a kitten group finder ~_~

Brian.1496:

Wouldn’t be so bad if they had a kitten group finder ~_~

It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d have it properly downscale for a solo. I miss my GW1 Heroes—I didn’t need other players to take down Shiro, just my Heroes and henchies. :-/

A couple of things that attracted me to GW2 was the open living world, and this is instanced content (like personal story dungeon requirement!) and the fact that it was supposed to not require organised groups…and this does.

This goes against many of the reasons people were excited about this game. I’m not sure I like the way Anet is headed with this, and also with ranks=power in wvwvw.

Lol yet again Anet is finishing a story part of the game with a 5 man dungeon, congratz Anet, you guys really rock !!!

I was so totally sacastic back there >.>

Really Anet, is that all you can do ? end stuff we try to finish ’’solo’’ or with a friend so ’’duo’’ into a forced party dungeon of 5 players…

And it doesnt matter if it is easy or not. Is the fact it cant be done alone, and so far until that part in the story, we could so just fine, so why force us again at the end ? it make no sense at all.

Is just laziness if you ask me, 2 mode could of have been added, Easy and Normal. Like the easy cloud mode in SAB.

Ramurak.8501:

Lol yet again Anet is finishing a story part of the game with a 5 man dungeon, congratz Anet, you guys really rock !!!

I was so totally sacastic back there >.>

Really Anet, is that all you can do ? end stuff we try to finish ’’solo’’ or with a friend so ’’duo’’ into a forced party dungeon of 5 players…

And it doesnt matter if it is easy or not. Is the fact it cant be done alone, and so far until that part in the story, we could so just fine, so why force us again at the end ? it make no sense at all.

Is just laziness if you ask me, 2 mode could of have been added, Easy and Normal. Like the easy cloud mode in SAB.

That’s the worst part of it, really—more effort was put into making SAB, which is supposedly a joke, playable by either solo or groups (notice that in SAB, you’re ‘supposed’ to be grouping it?) than was put into the end content for a multi-month arc. It could, and should have been properly epic—but instead gets pants-on-head stupid 2 steps from the finish line. Then again, looking ahead in the wiki tells me the Personal Story does the same thing. Very…depressing, since it means that once I complete the map on this character, my only real option is to start another character who’ll never be able to finsih their story, either.

Vulpis.8063:

I don’t refuse to run the dungeon. It’s being forced into a WoW Raid in order to run it that turns my stomach. I took down Shiro back in 1 without needing other players, why would I want to have them here?

Quoted for truth!

The biggest problem I am having is that people get mad at me for actually wanting to watch the videos. Or for wanting to explore a bit or enjoy the scenery… So I cannot play how I want to play in forced 5 man instances aka dungeons.

I did the story modes of every dungeon because I wanted to know the story. I hated playing all of them. Not for their design but because I have to wait for hours and hours to get a group, then I have to rush through the dungeon because of said group and read most of the dialogue after I completed the dungeon and my party left…

MatthewMedina.5419:

With all due respect, balancing content like a story instance is completely different than balancing an enhanced jumping puzzle like Super Adventure Box, so for us it just wasn’t feasible to consider doing an “easy” and “hard” mode in this particular case.

Instead we focused our time and energy into making a really unique, polished and hopefully memorable encounter that enables any group of five to complete in roughly an hour. I understand that there are players who will simply object philosophically to this direction, and wish that all the content we create to be solo-friendly, but our company has always been focused around building an online world that encourages our players to play our game together.

For those of you who have taken the plunge and shut down one of the Molten Facilities, thank you so much for giving it a try and giving us your feedback. Hope to see you on the front lines!

With all due respect in return—one of the great skills that Arenanet has displayed in the past has been the ability to balance their instances and encounters to allow enjoyable play for both solo and group players. With the exception of the single, very final mission of the Personal Story, and the handful of non-required side-story Dungeons, every other encounter, instance, and event in GW2 reflects this. In GW1, you made your job even simpler to the point that these things didn’t even need to have different balance settings by providing an alternative to other players in the form of of Heroes and Henchman—it was harder to fight the final boss in a mission arc this way compared to having a well-coordinated group of other players (as it should be—you should never discourage grouping, either), but it was doable. Similarly, the two instances in the Living Story arc were obviously designed for groups, but were doable as a hard challenge by an average solo player.
So, I still fail to see why there was a need to ruin what has been an otherwise enjoyable and entertaining storyline by capping it with content that can not be run at all without a group, when you’ve shown over and over that you could have done otherwise.

I actually liked the dungeon. It was a nice change of pace and was fun. I am wondering tho why I would want to run it again?
What is the “special” reward that people are going to want to do the run again?

This is an EASY and enjoiable 5 players instance. You don’t need a fractal team to complete it. Planning to re try it to get my rocket backpack

Just do the instance.

Eddard.2930:

I wish they would either scale the content for story dungeons to group size (1 through 5) or give us a few NPC heroes to take with us.

Why not? They gave us Rox and Braham. All they need to do is add add up to 4 NPCs and then everyone would be happy.

Yup! It worked great for GW1, after all—I miss MOX, and the crew that I took in to take down Shiro before I left for GW2 pastures (though how an Asura is a decendant of my GW1 character…I’m not sure I wanna know. ;-) )
I mean, all that really needs to be done is to make Rox and Braham be competent Hero NPCs, and add in an additional set that are either spawned or not depending on group size, to fill in for missing PCs…the same way they did it in GW1. Instead, I try to run the thing, and the entire roomful of NPCs and Rox and Braham get flattened like they were nothing, while barely manage to take out one of the 4 Veterans that show up. :-/

I think that’s what annoys, depresses and somewhat disgusts me about this whole situation—Arenanet’s proved that they can do this, and do it quite well (Competent Hero NPCs. Competant Henchman NPCs. Heck, competent completely uncontrolled NPCs, like good old Togo and crew.), yet for some reason want to make a plain raid instead of showing their strengths. I keep hearing about a great boss fight at the end of this instance—shame I can’t see it except on YouTube. Not really in the mood to keep paying repair costs to see if I can get past the first room (especially when the repair person gets flattened with everyone else).

Wow, are you that unsure of your party’s skills that you can’t trust them for the first room?

I pugged it and wiped 4 times, 3 of them at the final boss due to not knowing mechanics or knowing which one to kill first but we worked through it with simple communication. Have a little faith! A couple silver to buff the dings out of your armor isn’t the end of the world.

The dungeons very enjoyable…just run it…its quite a bit different from the other dungeons…

Tawa.3180:

Wow, are you that unsure of your party’s skills that you can’t trust them for the first room?

I pugged it and wiped 4 times, 3 of them at the final boss due to not knowing mechanics or knowing which one to kill first but we worked through it with simple communication. Have a little faith! A couple silver to buff the dings out of your armor isn’t the end of the world.

Rox and Braham, you mean? They have no skill at all, that I can tell, as I said before they get flattened along with the rest of the NPCs. I managed to take down one of the veterans, but even peeling them off one at a time, I couldn’t manage a second one (I’m wondering if that one guy is actually a Champion rather than an Veteran, though).
Given that I couldn’t get in to revive the in-instance repair person without several more trips to the respawn point, I gave up before things started getting completely broken rather than just damaged. Annoying—Rox and Braham’s instances in the last F&F update were a nice challenge, but this is just undoable without having to Raid-Group. I bought this game because it didn’t require that. :-/

MatthewMedina.5419:

With all due respect, balancing content like a story instance is completely different than balancing an enhanced jumping puzzle like Super Adventure Box, so for us it just wasn’t feasible to consider doing an “easy” and “hard” mode in this particular case.

Instead we focused our time and energy into making a really unique, polished and hopefully memorable encounter that enables any group of five to complete in roughly an hour. I understand that there are players who will simply object philosophically to this direction, and wish that all the content we create to be solo-friendly, but our company has always been focused around building an online world that encourages our players to play our game together.

For those of you who have taken the plunge and shut down one of the Molten Facilities, thank you so much for giving it a try and giving us your feedback. Hope to see you on the front lines!

Translation:

We haven’t figured out how to cap story content in any manner other than forced dungeon play. Expect all future content to be handled the same and shame on you for expecting otherwise. We recognize that like the personal story finale, there will be players who object philosophically to this inconsistency but balancing is hard. Besides, nothing helps build an online world that encourages people to play together more than forcing them to.

CalvinHobbes.3541:

MatthewMedina.5419:

With all due respect, balancing content like a story instance is completely different than balancing an enhanced jumping puzzle like Super Adventure Box, so for us it just wasn’t feasible to consider doing an “easy” and “hard” mode in this particular case.

Instead we focused our time and energy into making a really unique, polished and hopefully memorable encounter that enables any group of five to complete in roughly an hour. I understand that there are players who will simply object philosophically to this direction, and wish that all the content we create to be solo-friendly, but our company has always been focused around building an online world that encourages our players to play our game together.

For those of you who have taken the plunge and shut down one of the Molten Facilities, thank you so much for giving it a try and giving us your feedback. Hope to see you on the front lines!

Translation:

We haven’t figured out how to cap story content in any manner other than forced dungeon play. Expect all future content to be handled the same and shame on you for expecting otherwise. We recognize that like the personal story finale, there will be players who object philosophically to this inconsistency but balancing is hard. Besides, nothing helps build an online world that encourages people to play together more than forcing them to.

Feel free to stop playing MMOs…

KjarlSeaspite.9573:

CalvinHobbes.3541:

MatthewMedina.5419:

With all due respect, balancing content like a story instance is completely different than balancing an enhanced jumping puzzle like Super Adventure Box, so for us it just wasn’t feasible to consider doing an “easy” and “hard” mode in this particular case.

Instead we focused our time and energy into making a really unique, polished and hopefully memorable encounter that enables any group of five to complete in roughly an hour. I understand that there are players who will simply object philosophically to this direction, and wish that all the content we create to be solo-friendly, but our company has always been focused around building an online world that encourages our players to play our game together.

For those of you who have taken the plunge and shut down one of the Molten Facilities, thank you so much for giving it a try and giving us your feedback. Hope to see you on the front lines!

Translation:

We haven’t figured out how to cap story content in any manner other than forced dungeon play. Expect all future content to be handled the same and shame on you for expecting otherwise. We recognize that like the personal story finale, there will be players who object philosophically to this inconsistency but balancing is hard. Besides, nothing helps build an online world that encourages people to play together more than forcing them to.

Feel free to stop playing MMOs…

Oh boy you got me with that one. How ever will I go on?