Guild Wars 2

the new dungeon is great, this is the kind of update we need. SAB was the wrong direction to go, making it soloable. this game is an MMO, group play is what these kinds of games are made for. i hope the next living story has more instanced areas like this one

To me:
Jump in and play group content is good.
Content that requires actively forming a group ahead of time = not so much.

These type of things should culminate in areas like the Font of Rhand rather than a traditional dungeon, IMO.

Dr Ritter.1327:

the new dungeon is great, this is the kind of update we need. SAB was the wrong direction to go, making it soloable. this game is an MMO, group play is what these kinds of games are made for. i hope the next living story has more instanced areas like this one

I need a -1 button, here. The entire rest of the storyline is soloable content, at varying levels of difficulty. Instanced areas are nice--but giving you no choice whatsoever but a WoW-raid to progress is definitely a pants-on-head stupid direction to go in. Have the dungeon as one option, but provide some other means for completing the story as well. I certainly don’t appreciate being shafted out of any chance of a reward because of forced-group stupidity. (Sometimes I get annoyed by filters—I certainly understand and agree with the need for them, but on other hand there are times like this one when something is far more easily described with an expletive nondeleted…which here would end up with more kittens than a cat-farm…)

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

Dr Ritter.1327:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

You think in such small terms.

There are people who enjoy seeing other players in the game world but do not enjoy grouping with them. I am one such gamer and there are a great many others like me.

‘MMO’ and ‘Online’ do not automatically mean you are expected to group with others. Go see the first ‘Guild Wars’ for more information.

This isnt GW1. Adding henchmens after finishing the game and engine would cost lots of work and time. GW1 was much much simplier game, this is huge MMO. You could play GW2 before buying it, you could read blogs and reviews about it so dont whine that it isnt what you expected now. I knew well that it wont be like GW1 and everyone else could know it too.

Theres no way to scale dungeon for one player it would be easier and faster so people would stop grouping up and the concept of MMO would die.

Theres no need for loads of solo content in MMO.

EDIT: I enjoy group content in GW2 and I am looking forward to play another awesome content like Molten Facility.

Elbegast.6970:

Dr Ritter.1327:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

You think in such small terms.

There are people who enjoy seeing other players in the game world but do not enjoy grouping with them. I am one such gamer and there are a great many others like me.

‘MMO’ and ‘Online’ do not automatically mean you are expected to group with others. Go see the first ‘Guild Wars’ for more information.

And again in another thread XD. GW1 was CORPG and yeah – it didn’t force You to group. MMO actually do mean you are expected to finish at least some content with necessity of other player help… and guess what. GW2 is a MMO.
Don’t get me wrong – I love GW1, still play it from time to time, but I don’t expect GW2 to be GW1 with better graphics. It was stated long ago that it will be MMO and I treat it as such. And hey – around 95% (if not 98%) content is purely soloable in GW2. Except dungeons I hardly find anything needing grouping. Not WvW, not even tPvP.
But hey I agree – making last mission depending on 5peeps team dungeon was a stupid idea (and one of worst dungeons in gaming history on top of that).

Wizzlock.3492:

Elbegast.6970:

Dr Ritter.1327:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

You think in such small terms.

There are people who enjoy seeing other players in the game world but do not enjoy grouping with them. I am one such gamer and there are a great many others like me.

‘MMO’ and ‘Online’ do not automatically mean you are expected to group with others. Go see the first ‘Guild Wars’ for more information.

And again in another thread XD. GW1 was CORPG and yeah – it didn’t force You to group. MMO actually do mean you are expected to finish at least some content with necessity of other player help… and guess what. GW2 is a MMO.
Don’t get me wrong – I love GW1, still play it from time to time, but I don’t expect GW2 to be GW1 with better graphics. It was stated long ago that it will be MMO and I treat it as such. And hey – around 95% (if not 98%) content is purely soloable in GW2. Except dungeons I hardly find anything needing grouping. Not WvW, not even tPvP.
But hey I agree – making last mission depending on 5peeps team dungeon was a stupid idea (and one of worst dungeons in gaming history on top of that).

Repeat after me: ‘Playing with others does not exclusively mean forced-grouping.’

There are lots and lots of ways people together and assist each other in GW2, in the forms of open world events (you know, some of those event alerts are labeled ‘Group’ for a reason). ‘WoW does it’ should never be an excuse for making forced-grouping be the only way to complete a storyline, unless that storyline has been told entirely through forced-grouping instances to begin with (Like the Destiny’s Edge side-story).

Edit: BTW, ‘CORPG’..I’m not familiar with that term. And last I checked, GW1 was a MMORPG as well—Massive world, Multiple players, with the rest being pretty self-evident.
And you’re right, 95%-98% is soloable…which isn’t a problem unless you do something incredibly stupid like making the non-soloable content a complete roadblock to completing the soloable, rather than keeping it properly encapsulated from it.

Vulpis.8063:

The entire rest of the storyline is soloable content, at varying levels of difficulty.

MMO’s shouldn’t be about just encountering random people… There should be some reason to group with others. And as you said… Dungeons like Molten Facility is the only reason left.
I do like playing with others. It’s the only reason keeping me playing MMO’s. Making all dungeons soloable would mean a lot of problems with finding other people to play with.

Vulpis.8063:

Repeat after me: ‘Playing with others does not exclusively mean forced-grouping.’

Dungeons are not about playing with others! It’s about cooperation! Content that’s soloable CAN’T BE designed for cooperative play! That’s just not possible!

PS. Playing Rox or Braham mission solo is BORING.

Vulpis.8063:

Wizzlock.3492:

Elbegast.6970:

Dr Ritter.1327:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

You think in such small terms.

There are people who enjoy seeing other players in the game world but do not enjoy grouping with them. I am one such gamer and there are a great many others like me.

‘MMO’ and ‘Online’ do not automatically mean you are expected to group with others. Go see the first ‘Guild Wars’ for more information.

And again in another thread XD. GW1 was CORPG and yeah – it didn’t force You to group. MMO actually do mean you are expected to finish at least some content with necessity of other player help… and guess what. GW2 is a MMO.
Don’t get me wrong – I love GW1, still play it from time to time, but I don’t expect GW2 to be GW1 with better graphics. It was stated long ago that it will be MMO and I treat it as such. And hey – around 95% (if not 98%) content is purely soloable in GW2. Except dungeons I hardly find anything needing grouping. Not WvW, not even tPvP.
But hey I agree – making last mission depending on 5peeps team dungeon was a stupid idea (and one of worst dungeons in gaming history on top of that).

Repeat after me: ‘Playing with others does not exclusively mean forced-grouping.’

There are lots and lots of ways people together and assist each other in GW2, in the forms of open world events (you know, some of those event alerts are labeled ‘Group’ for a reason). ‘WoW does it’ should never be an excuse for making forced-grouping be the only way to complete a storyline, unless that storyline has been told entirely through forced-grouping instances to begin with (Like the Destiny’s Edge side-story).

Edit: BTW, ‘CORPG’..I’m not familiar with that term. And last I checked, GW1 was a MMORPG as well—Massive world, Multiple players, with the rest being pretty self-evident.
And you’re right, 95%-98% is soloable…which isn’t a problem unless you do something incredibly stupid like making the non-soloable content a complete roadblock to completing the soloable, rather than keeping it properly encapsulated from it.

Well check again – GW1 was always CORPG and in matter of fact – still is. People used to call it MMO, to avoid confusion. If You ask me, with every new campaign, GW1 was going towards classic MMO, but it’s my opinion.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/CORPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars – “Because it deviated from traditional MMORPG norms in a number of areas, like instancing all the gameplay areas, and that it focused more on player vs. player (PvP) than most online RPGs, it was marketed as competitive online role-playing game.”
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Competitive_online_role-playing_game
The other term for that is cooperative RPG, since Masive world is illusion (it’s not open like MMO used to have, just a number of instances) and multiplayer is caped at 8 (12 for Deep/Urgoz) players.

I agree, that the roadblock (if You think about Arah story mode) – it is bullkitten. And yet – I disagree about Your concept of grouping. The idea standing behind dungeons (Arah as a ending to personal story aside) is to do some stuff with well cooperated team. Heck – if You don’t want to find friends in MMO, take a pug and don’t speak with them. It’s the only thing in entire game, that actually need You to click “invite” button. And don’t give me this “WoW does it” bullkitten – I never said GW2 should have team dungeons because WoW have them. Your words, not mine. I think having team in dungeon is logical conclusion of their design. I can agree with that or not play them. Still – 95% content doesn’t need me to even stand near other players (and again – story Arah aside – agree with that being bad idea). Does F&F should have soloable ending? Yeah, I think so (why not if everything was soloable there). Does Dungs should be soloable? Still didn’t seen anything to convince me to change my mind.

I love grouping up to do dungeons, but it is always a good idea to give your players other options. As certain content gets older and less people do it, it becomes harder to find groups. Also as the game gets older and the population dwindles it becomes harder as well.

Might as well do it right the first time and give players options to do content on their own if they choose. Otherwise you may be going back to revamp things at a later date like other games have had to do. LotRO comes to mind.

You have a lot of options in this game:

If you want to play solo, then you can explore the map (hearts, views, etc), do the Jumping Puzzles, advance in your personal story, craft, do “solo” events…

But if you want to play in group, then do dungeons, fractals, group events, fight champions, and so on… You can do it with a group of friends as a guild, or with a group of unknown people.

Is perfectly ok that you can’t beat some of the worst enemies in Tyria all by yourself. afaik, the game offers you a lot of possibilities, and you only need to select those that best suits you and your play style.

Dark Saviour.9410:

To me:
Jump in and play group content is good.
Content that requires actively forming a group ahead of time = not so much.

These type of things should culminate in areas like the Font of Rhand rather than a traditional dungeon, IMO.

I disagree.

You’ll just have a repeat of the Ancient Karka event, and having the facilities move around wouldn’t be possible due to the map. Each facility would have to be made from effective scrap, rather than the same dungeon entered multiple times with new entrances.

Vulpis.8063:

I need a -1 button, here. The ntire rest of the storyline is soloable content, at varying levels of difficulty. Instanced areas are nice--but giving you no choice whatsoever but a WoW-raid to progress is definitely a pants-on-head stupid direction to go in.

Yes, we do need -1 buttons, so I can start doing them to your posts. Do you intend to spam every thread with this? No offense, but I’m getting sick and tired of you calling FIVE man dungeons “WoW-raids” which were done with up to 40 folks in them.

They’re different, you know. And yes, I know that raids could be done with as few as five folks, but by my understanding none were intended to be done with fewer than 10 – little different than how folks can solo dungeons, but they’re intended for 5 players.

And either way, the GW2 dungeons are not all that bad, nor is it so inhumane to just party with 4 friends/guildies/puggers for ONE run. It’s not like it’d kill you. Hell, you may even enjoy it.

I agree with the OP to a degree, I want the future living story chapters to include grouping content that is relevant to and part of the unfolding story, with both achievement and item rewards that are only obtainable through the group content.

That isnt limited to instanced dungeons though, I’m sure you can make story steps like the hatchery with varying difficulty and/or include raid-sized* meta-events like the Karka finale (with better planning like spreading players out, etc).

*Vulpis, that means 10-30 or even more people. It is not the same as a single group. Just sayin’

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Dark Saviour.9410:

To me:
Jump in and play group content is good.
Content that requires actively forming a group ahead of time = not so much.

These type of things should culminate in areas like the Font of Rhand rather than a traditional dungeon, IMO.

I disagree.

You’ll just have a repeat of the Ancient Karka event, and having the facilities move around wouldn’t be possible due to the map. Each facility would have to be made from effective scrap, rather than the same dungeon entered multiple times with new entrances.

Vulpis.8063:

I need a -1 button, here. The ntire rest of the storyline is soloable content, at varying levels of difficulty. Instanced areas are nice--but giving you no choice whatsoever but a WoW-raid to progress is definitely a pants-on-head stupid direction to go in.

Yes, we do need -1 buttons, so I can start doing them to your posts. Do you intend to spam every thread with this? No offense, but I’m getting sick and tired of you calling FIVE man dungeons “WoW-raids” which were done with up to 40 folks in them.

They’re different, you know. And yes, I know that raids could be done with as few as five folks, but by my understanding none were intended to be done with fewer than 10 – little different than how folks can solo dungeons, but they’re intended for 5 players.

And either way, the GW2 dungeons are not all that bad, nor is it so inhumane to just party with 4 friends/guildies/puggers for ONE run. It’s not like it’d kill you. Hell, you may even enjoy it.

Equally, I might learn to enjoy stabbing my eye with a stick under the idea that one of these times it’ll suddenly be rainbows and lollipops—there’s a reason why I have such a strong aversion to forced-group activities specficially filter my MMO choices for the ones that (seemingly, anyway—-wish I’d learned about the bait-and-switch here before I spent my money) don’t require it for the main content line. I’ve tried it before, and in all my years dealing with it both on and offline (where it’s refered to as ‘team sports’), I don’t think I’ve ever had a reaction that was more favorable than ‘Heavily annoyed at having to be stuck with these people’. One of the few times I actually enjoyed a phys-ed class was when my middle school offered the choice between Team Sports (the classic football/baseball/basketball trifecta) and one on Individual Sports, among which was Archery—I had a blast in that class, learning to do a fun individual sport alongside the rest of the class who was learning that same thing.

I keep hearing about this Ancient Karka event ending—I’m guessing from the descriptions, it was basically like the Maw, Fire Elemental, and similar events, cranked up to 11? If so, that I’d loved to have seen and been in, as that sounds like a properly epic way to end a storyline—or the life of an MMO, since it also sounds like what Paragon did on CoH’s last day.
Maybe Arenanet should quit wasting their money on this content that they’re just going to throw away, or worse only a small portion of the player base is going to get to see, and instead spend it on upgrading their hardware so that it can handle such an event without issue (or figuring out how to upgrade/streamline the client end of things so that it can, if that’s the problem).

I actually miss events that end like the Karka event, it gave me a true sensation of working together. It is very different than a dungeon, I think even more social. I understand that there will be issues with it, but it was a great thing in my eyes and I loved it.

I love dungeons less. Even if I still like them, I feel like I’m depending on my guild to do dungeons. Mainly because I’m not a zerker.

Im a big fan of the dungeon climax, but there are other options for those who prefer to solo.

The dungeon is about destroying a facility and yes that’s a group thing, however an alternative quest line for solo players could be optioned. In this instance, maybe recon or disruption or rescuing a high profile npc prisoner. 2 arching story lines depending on how you play.

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are not the same game. They are two separate entities being handled just as differently.

I honestly feel as though ArenaNet should not have called this Game “Guild Wars 2” because of comments like this… :/

(Not a personal attack mind you, it’s just that this gets tossed around WAY too much by people)

They advertised the dragon fights and Orr as something similar to the karka encounter, but delivered a luke-warm shadow of what I expected. Unfortunately instead of tuning towards the goal of Orr requiring players to strategize and work together to take the island, they nerfed it to easy because the solo ori farmers complained loud enough they could not travel unhindered. It’s really a shame. Outdoor content areas (not only single specific events that get zerged for the big loot) that are challenging for small numbers of people would be my wish for game additions. Right now its either easy to solo or it is a big raid (meta events with bonus loot), no in-between.

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

There was also some debate about GW1 being an MMO, as per definition.
- You were required to have Henchmen with you at the very least.

Making an MMO means making a game where players needs to be working together.
- If one individual is not able to do so then he/she should not be playing an MMO in the first place.

MMO game design is for players to be playing together. Massive Multiplayer Online, not Massive Single Player Online with a bunch of people who bugs you.
- Single player games are made for that, whereas the emphasis in any MMO is that the last epic battle against pure evil (and the lieutenants along the way) cannot be done by one person alone. Your character is not a raid boss in an on itself. We just don’t have that kind of power.

I think that if one person can state that an MMO shouldn’t be about Multiplayer content, when that is exactly what an MMO is for, then he/she shouldn’t be playing an MMO.
- I don’t say that as a “Leave us, mortal!” but merely “You will have to accept that Massively Multiplayer content is an essential part of an MMO. If such gameplay design bothers you to the extent that it can ruin the entire game for you, then you should consider whether or not MMO as a genre is your thing.” (and I mean that in the most friendly way possible)

The people that dont want to do the dungeons are (hopefully) willing to accept that they are not getting the rewards (be it items or achievements) for free.

So Anet just needs to anchor the final achievement differently. Wintersday did that pretty well, you had an achievement track that gave a title at 12 but there were I think 15-15 achievements in total. That way people can skip the parts they dont like (be it dungeons, JPs, grinding something or silly mini-games) and still get the final achievement for the story arc.

I think that suggestion is very reasonable. There will still be people complaining that they cant get all achievements or cant get the dungeon or JP rewards without doing that content, but you’ll always have those no matter what you do.

Sinifair.1026:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

There was also some debate about GW1 being an MMO, as per definition.
- You were required to have Henchmen with you at the very least.

Making an MMO means making a game where players needs to be working together.
- If one individual is not able to do so then he/she should not be playing an MMO in the first place.

MMO game design is for players to be playing together. Massive Multiplayer Online, not Massive Single Player Online with a bunch of people who bugs you.
- Single player games are made for that, whereas the emphasis in any MMO is that the last epic battle against pure evil (and the lieutenants along the way) cannot be done by one person alone. Your character is not a raid boss in an on itself. We just don’t have that kind of power.

I think that if one person can state that an MMO shouldn’t be about Multiplayer content, when that is exactly what an MMO is for, then he/she shouldn’t be playing an MMO.
- I don’t say that as a “Leave us, mortal!” but merely “You will have to accept that Massively Multiplayer content is an essential part of an MMO. If such gameplay design bothers you to the extent that it can ruin the entire game for you, then you should consider whether or not MMO as a genre is your thing.” (and I mean that in the most friendly way possible)

Simple question—why does ‘multiplayer content’ automatically have to mean ‘5/10/15/whatever formal group dungeon’? I keep seeing, over, and over, people posting this trite little ‘If you don’t want to do a dungeon, you shouldn’t be playing MMOs’, totally ignoring all the large body of groupable content in GW2 that doesn’t require a formal group in the slightest unless the participants want to do so. I’m torn between wondering if they’re trolling just to make people mad, or if they really are that completely and utterly ignorant.

Mastruq.2463:

The people that dont want to do the dungeons are (hopefully) willing to accept that they are not getting the rewards (be it items or achievements) for free.

So Anet just needs to anchor the final achievement differently. Wintersday did that pretty well, you had an achievement track that gave a title at 12 but there were I think 15-15 achievements in total. That way people can skip the parts they dont like (be it dungeons, JPs, grinding something or silly mini-games) and still get the final achievement for the story arc.

I think that suggestion is very reasonable. There will still be people complaining that they cant get all achievements or cant get the dungeon or JP rewards without doing that content, but you’ll always have those no matter what you do.

This is another comment I wish I could give more than a single +1 to.

Though, to give even the worst of the pro-dungeon types around here credit, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a whinefest based around ‘You just want everything given to you for free!’, like I’ve seen on…just about every other MMO when content that’s only suitable for one play type is wedged where it’s not particularly appropriate.

This is why I keep wanting a solable version of the dungeon—I want to have a reasonable challenge (and no, decking myself out in purples to work my way through 5-man content is a rather well above ‘reasonable’. ;-) ), especially if it shows off the design and effort that was put into the instance. I’ve done my best to avoid the really easy solution, which is to trip the completion flag for everyone and let them continue on to the followup scenes (Though…someone in another thread has claimed that that flag gets tripped just by entering the dungeon—I think they’re wrong, but I may have to go check this. If it’s true, it’s kind of a pathetic way to handle the situation.)
Getting handed something like this on a silver platter is nearly as distasteful as not being allowed to get it at all. :-/ I mean yeah, you get the stuff—but you don’t feel like you earned it.

After seeing Vulpis pop up on so many threads, I clicked out of curiosity and holy crap! It looks like hundreds of posts complaining on this subject!

I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

After seeing Vulpis pop up on so many threads, I clicked out of curiosity and holy crap! It looks like hundreds of posts complaining on this subject!

I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive.

yeah i guess hes trying to give the effect that the majority of players hate dungeons by posting everywhere, meanwhile its the opposite

hoping anet listens to the right players

Dr Ritter.1327:

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

After seeing Vulpis pop up on so many threads, I clicked out of curiosity and holy crap! It looks like hundreds of posts complaining on this subject!

I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive.

yeah i guess hes trying to give the effect that the majority of players hate dungeons by posting everywhere, meanwhile its the opposite

hoping anet listens to the right players

Well to be fair posting hundreds of walls of complaints is far easier than, say, spending 45-60 minutes playing a very enjoyable piece of content…

The problem is, a whole lot of people left Guild Wars 1 because of heroes. When you make it so everyone can solo, it becomes harder and harder to find groups, which is bad for other types of players.

Making stuff soloable isn’t the answer in an MMO.

Having some or even most content soloable is fine, but there needs to be some grouping, or the playbase will suffer, just as it eventually did in Guild Wars 1.

This is a clash of perspectives that’s not going to be solved, Vayne. Vul kitten ees the development GW1 experienced with almost everything becoming solo content a good thing, he wants a total seperation of solo content and group content.

Me for example I’d like it both to be interwoven. That are really opposed views where you might get a solution that’s “good enough” for both sides at best. See my suggestion above for such a solution as it pertains to F&F.

But ultimately he would be happiest with everything being soloable or a clear division without any overlap, not even in the achievement list. I would dislike such a solution or maybe even lose interest in the game. How does a developer keep both parties happy enough to stick with the game? Or do you write one off and focus on pleasing the other? That’s not even accounting for other interest groups like those that want more vertical progression or instanced raids added to the game (as opposed to the open world raids we already have).

GW2 needs more group content and harder content too. Its too easy for an experienced group of players.

Imho future group content should follow the same lines as Open world and WvW group content. You don’t need to form a party just jump in and contribute. Forming a party at times can be pain and progression needs to keep multiple tracks.

You have to remember that solo players are part of the population. Many players enjoy the challenge of handling content meant for multiple people by themselves. While not all content needs to be the lenient the story line should be.

Also harder content does not necessarily have to mean group content. There should be more solo, group, and soloable group content and it should prove more challenging then current content.

If Anet finds creative ways to break up the zerg sure, but open world content that is attractive to the playerbase have a tendency to become boring zerg fests.

I’d love for open world dungeons that arent instanced or limited to 5 players, but you would literally have to teleport players into random spots in a labyrinth to break up the zerg. Come to think of it that sounds like a fun maze area. Just make it big with many arrival points and old school rpg traps like invisible teleporters, illusionary pit traps and walls, hidden triggers etc.

Elbegast.6970:

Dr Ritter.1327:

Elbegast.6970:

GW1 was completely soloable. GW2 should be as well.

I say a hearty “Nay!” to grouped content. This isn’t 2004. It’s time MMOs moved on.

go play a single player game if you don’t like playing with others

You think in such small terms.

There are people who enjoy seeing other players in the game world but do not enjoy grouping with them. I am one such gamer and there are a great many others like me.

‘MMO’ and ‘Online’ do not automatically mean you are expected to group with others. Go see the first ‘Guild Wars’ for more information.

And you could solo what required 12 man groups in GW1? Tell me more.

Vulpis.8063:

I keep hearing about this Ancient Karka event ending—I’m guessing from the descriptions, it was basically like the Maw, Fire Elemental, and similar events, cranked up to 11? If so, that I’d loved to have seen and been in, as that sounds like a properly epic way to end a storyline—or the life of an MMO, since it also sounds like what Paragon did on CoH’s last day.

If by “like the Maw […] cranked up to 11?” you mean in terms of lag and length, where populated dragon events are merely 2 in the scale, then yes.

The lag was so terrible that at times it took a full minute to use skill 1. Numerous people got kicked from all the lag at the end, missing the chest (though I’m told that Anet mended this by sending the kicked folks chest-like items).

Not only this, but due to the sheer huge amount of players, the scaling was ridiculously to the point where a single step (there were, what, 6 steps in the event?) took over 30 minutes. Didn’t help when folks wouldn’t listen to what needed to be done, since during certain steps the Ancient Karka was invulnerable.

The ending cinematic was epic, as well as the fact it ended in a cinematic, but the fight to that end was a grueling dull snorefest of a task that strained hundreds of computers across the globe. It may not have been if the scaling wasn’t brought up to such ridiculous levels or the lag was only half as bad (or less), or if people could be properly directed (there was about no one listening to those who knew wtf to do or when folks figured out what to do). Not to mention some steps were rather repetative – kill swarm, use boulders to weaken shell, attack karka, kill swarm, use boulders to weaken shell, attack karka, rinse repeat until its pushed to in front of the cannons.

It’s not really just Anet’s equipment, by the way, but that the computers in our own homes too – even good ones like mine had problems at minumum graphic settings.

DistantStatic.6098:

And you could solo what required 12 man groups in GW1? Tell me more.

Misinformed much? Two entirely optional elite missions had 12 man teams. That was how GW1 handled it’s team-only content. It was just there if you wanted it – much like PvP. No pressure.

Raire.7983:

DistantStatic.6098:

And you could solo what required 12 man groups in GW1? Tell me more.

Misinformed much? Two entirely optional elite missions had 12 man teams. That was how GW1 handled it’s team-only content. It was just there if you wanted it – much like PvP. No pressure.

I couldnt solo the whole Prophecies campaign when it came out. Much of it was group content that also gated access to later soloable areas, plain and simple. GW1 storyline content when it came out was difficult to impossible with the henchmen, they werent even close to as capable or useful as the latter heroes.

Now we have people here that bought GW1 4 years after it came out, with tons of additions that made the old content easy and soloable and claim it was always that way and designed for it. That’s just false, and still it is repeated over and over here.

Mastruq.2463:

Raire.7983:

DistantStatic.6098:

And you could solo what required 12 man groups in GW1? Tell me more.

Misinformed much? Two entirely optional elite missions had 12 man teams. That was how GW1 handled it’s team-only content. It was just there if you wanted it – much like PvP. No pressure.

I couldnt solo the whole Prophecies campaign when it came out. Much of it was group content that also gated access to later soloable areas, plain and simple. GW1 storyline content when it came out was difficult to impossible with the henchmen, they werent even close to as capable or useful as the latter heroes.

Now we have people here that bought GW1 4 years after it came out, with tons of additions that made the old content easy and soloable and claim it was always that way and designed for it. That’s just false, and still it is repeated over and over here.

yes this is so true, most people never played gw1 in its prime when everyone actually helped each other instead of just running heroes

I think it’s weird how a lot of you think henchman and heroes still is solo-ing anything. Just because we had the ability to fill party slots with AI doesn’t mean that the game was a solo game.

Aside from farming and running builds, no player could solo level-appropriate content.

Also, agreed that the AI spoiled a lot of people. While it’s true that often I was able to complete missions faster and with more success with my heroes than with people (so many bad builds out there), it’s difficult to argue that more AI teammate options didn’t ruin the more social aspects of missions.

While I liked the MF dungeon from the F&F arc, I would like to make it a ‘group optional’ kind of dungeon. Before you all go batty on me, here’s my thoughts:

I generally play with my husband. We bought GW1, and then GW2 as a game we could play together. Not head to head. Not FPS. An rpg type game with co-op capability. Other avid gaming couples will probably share my sentiment that there aren’t a heck of a lot of options out there for people like us. Console games? Mainly single player. Multiplayer are generally FPS and/or head to head combat. Not co-op. Other computer games? Not a ton of LAN based games out there that you can co-op, not rpg with storyline anyway. MMOs are usually a solidly viable option.

That being said, when I did the F&F dungeon the first time, it was just me. So I had no issue joining some randoms and getting through it. I’m a social person usually, I just tend to have kitten luck with people…. A couple days later, I gather a group and take my husband through it. He is not social. He has a very hard time trying to play and chat. We’re about half way through the dungeon and 1 of my teammates wspers me ‘You know, your husband sucks’ Yeah…how am I supposed to respond to that? Instantly POed, that’s how.

I would MUCH prefer if we could have just done it ourselves, but no it was a 5 man dungeon and we didn’t have a choice. It was…take randoms…or don’t do it. Doesn’t really sound like any option at all. As I said in another post, I’m not saying to make the final content solo-able, but I am saying make it group optional, or give us heroes at the very least.

(and before someone says ‘take your guildies’ my husband and i ARE our guild, just the two of us)

Any concerns against that apply equally to the other eight dungeons in the game, though. And fractals, too. MF wasnt any special there, if anything it was treated as less then a full dungeon due to the temporary nature and not having specific armor and weapon sets.

So is your concern with dungeons requiring a party of 5 players, or is it with not getting to do all the living story content of the F&F arc ‘your way’ because part of it was a dungeon? I’ll say do it with 5 or dont do it, those were the options. You did it but ended up with jerks, thats unfortunate. Maybe connect with a larger circle of people in-game for such occasions?

The dungeon was for people that like that kind of content, they deserve a bone from time to time. Therefore solutions that turn it into solo content arent solutions for the design, which is to make a 5 player dungeon, they are suggestions that let solo player have their way by changing the design goal. The thing is the solo player gets the lion share of attention already, with a total of 2 additions (only 1 permanent) for group players since release. Let those poor dungeon players have their dungeon once in a while, will ya?

P.S. I’d love for this game to add content tailored to 2-4 players because from my RL friends at best 1-2 are available at a time, so I’m in a similar situation. But a dungeon instance made for 5 people is not the right point to anchor such requests.

Then give us heroes. In GW1 all of the main content was designed for groups of 8. However, those that chose not to PuG or just couldn’t find enough to fill out their group (how many hours did people sit spamming ‘lg monk to go’ ?), had the option to take hench and eventually heroes so that they could complete it too.

If you are in a larger guild, or have enough ingame friends to fill out a 5-man dungeon group, kudos for you. We’re glad. We shouldn’t be excluded simply because we don’t.

And it some cases, it has nothing to do with ‘not wanting’ to make new friends. Or with not being social. Some people have no luck finding groups. Others dont like having to deal with kittens (and more often than not, my pug experiences have been nightmares, which really turns off the desire to play with randoms).

At the risk of sounding cliche here….equal rights between the play styles. Options are a GOOD thing.