Guild Wars 2

2 years ago toypocalypse was just like now. People didn’t like it and 1 year ago you changed it and made it possible to join with party, which made it more fun and overall liked by the community. This year you went back to toypocalypse we’ve seen 2 years ago.

What’s the point of going back to something people didn’t like? I HOPE it’s only a bug and not intended change.

I’m thinking its a bug also.

Could we pretty please do it with parties again. It was kinda fun =)

It seems like a bug. I would prefer to be able to party. It made everything much more fun last year, having a group of guildmates instead of random groups.

Sorry Gaile, I don’t have any understanding for this stupid change. Two years ago there was a lot of complaining about this and now you changed it back. If you had put this in the patch notes I would have had some understanding but not now.

Oh, and you don’t want to know the reaction from my guild mates when I read your post on TeamSpeak

No Toypocalypse for me this year.

This is an horrible change. All activities should be switch to party joins…

fooooooooooooo

No worries, it’s only another tick on ‘ruined things’ list

Someone will be getting Coal this year.

This was such a laugh last year. We tried walking through the portal at the same time while grouped but were (quite deliberately?) split into 3 completely separate instances, all three of which had less than the recommended 5 players.

We promptly exited and smashed everything up in Tixx’s Infinirarium instead and then logged off.

What a shame

This is one instance where I will lean with the crowd here. Gaile, I cannot agree with the Anet. team on this one.

Because it is NOT COMPETITIVE. You’re not competing against other players for prestige or glory or other nonsense. You’re grouping up with friends to smash presents. Last year was perfect fun doing silly stuff. You’re playing against the AI.

Personally, I have zero interest in grouping up with complete randoms where NOBODY makes any effort to talk in /p, and a high probability of people taking themselves way too seriously.

Last year was good, this year, no toypocalypse for me.

Count me as another who may “understand” the technical reason for this change but most certainly does not like or encourage it. This event was lots of fun last year, particularly because you could go in with friends. Now this year I’m unable to take new guildies (for whose first Wintersday this is) in to show them the fun because it’s been changed to throw us with randoms.

What I don’t understand is why there is this insistence that things designated as “activities” cannot be done with parties. They are precisely the sort of thing you should want to do with your guild or with friends. Being tossed in with random people who have different motivations and intentions for participating in the activity decreases the fun of the activity. Personally, I will only be participating in Toypocalypse this year to get the needed achievements and nothing more because this change to the activity directly makes it less appealing. From what I’ve seen in guild and map chat so far today I’m not the only one who feels this way, with some even ignoring the activity this year entirely. This is really unfortunate because there are so many other areas where the game does a good job of letting you play with who you want to.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I just heard from the team about this, and it is an unfortunate but intended change. The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP and some Instance Activities. According to one of our lead designers, the change cannot be revisited for this year’s release. Thanks for your understanding concerning this necessary adjustment.

This is a joke right? We can’t play with our own friends and are forced to play with random people who are unreliable and come and go as they please because somebody made a mistake and loaded the wrong version of the code and now they’re unwilling to admit it. “Code changes”? That is the vaguest and most unreasnable response I’ve ever seen.

Year 1 – No parties, major complaints.
Year 2 – Anet acknowledges the problem and fixes it.
Year 3 – Anet says screw you and changes it back without a care in the world.

As time goes on we learn more and more how little anet cares about it’s playerbase.

It’s bad enough that you already can’t do most activities with YOUR friends. But to take something amazing like this, one of the few activities that we could enjoy with our friends. I’m sorry, but this is a TERRIBLE choice for your player base.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think perhaps you misunderstand. The code that is used for this event is code that also is used for PvP. The code that allowed party joins for Toypocalypse was changed — by necessity — in order to stablize PvP as a whole. This wasn’t a design decision, this was a necessary change.

I’m sure if you look at this objectively, it makes sense to set a short-time event for single enters in order to stabilize all of PvP, which is a permanent element of the game.

I’ll ask the designers if they have more insight, but what I was told indicates that “we had to do this change in the short term in order to make PvP more stable” which applies to the permanent game mode.

You can take parties into PvP, so I am misunderstanding? I can party up with 1,2,3 or even 4 of my friends and join a PvP matchup. So if all “PvP” maps are now on the same system it still makes no sense that I cannot party up with my friends for toypocalypse. The same toypocalypse I could party up with friends last year.