Guild Wars 2

A few minor suggestions, possibly duplicates:

• Guild hall portal: double click on destination to port instead of select destination and click button
• feasts and utility stations should display the buff they provide; suggestion: let them have the buff they provide (i.e. target, mouse over on its buff bar to view buff)
• mystic forge, quick fix: “again” button —> reinserts same ingredients as last transaction (helps a lot plowing through stacks of materials)
• repeatable hearts: different icon for not-done-today and not-done-ever (i.e. still required for map completion)
• guild bank: add to stack instead of having to merge them in one’s own inventory
• gliding in home instance; I understand that it would break story instances, but out of stories it should be fine
• disabling PvP league badge without access to the PvP panel; situations: new character and demo weekends (both!) (only a minor issue)

Retreating to waypoint in WvW could be improved. When trying to get out of fight I can chose to either look at the map and spam click the (spawn) waypoint or see where I’m running and whether someone follows me. Two possible solutions: show the closest open waypoint in the normal UI and/or as a hotkey, or queue the waypoint click and teleport as soon as possible. If queued it should either be possible to cancel or a confirmation dialog should pop up.

Likely a lot more work would be a tonic “wardrobe”: account wide access to (endless) tonics not using up valuable bag space. Combat tonics could have a check box to toggle autoactivation, like minis. Please include pinning my favorites to the top of the list.

And the classic: please add a book shelf into the home instance, where one can store and read all the acquired lore books, esp. from LS3.

Hi.

I may have overlooked something, but as far as I understand /character/…/backstory it only includes the *back*story, i.e. the questions on character creation. Pull request 300 describes a /stories endpoint, but no mention of a connection between character and the story chapters they played.

How can I find out from the API which of my characters is still eligible for rewards of a living story episode?

Hi.

I’m thinking of creating a checklist that gets automatically updated (crossed out) using data from the API. But I quickly noticed that most of the needed data seems to be unavailable.

My entries on the list fall into a few categories:

• daily achievements
  * general (any 3 for 2 gold) -> there’s already a ticket for that
  * sometimes fractals -> there’s a ticket for that, too
  * a selection of LS3 dailies -> i hope above tickets solve this, too
• harvesting
  * 2 guild halls
  * home instance nodes
  * certain fixed nodes or fields, e.g. rich platinum in Rata Pten or seaweed in Ember Bay
• specific world bosses, e.g. Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink
• black lion key for level 10 story (weekly reset)

How much of these information could realistically become part of the API? Are there any workarounds or data that indirectly give me needed information?

Most of fixed nodes farming happens on characters parked there. So a last logged in timestamp per character could be a workaround. On the other hand I have a character parked at a T5 wood farm spot in Orr. I think respawn times there are per map instance and thus never going to be available from the API.

I wouldn’t even necessarily need a catalog of all possibilities in the API for my needs. After seeing once that character X has harvested rich node 42 I’d know to check (X, 42). Likewise observing the list of actually harvested guild and home instance nodes would be good enough. I’m not sure if it makes a difference that rich nodes are per character and guild hall / home instance nodes are per account.

A boss endpoint could be extended to include name, spawn times and position, but as with nodes just knowing an unresolvable ID number is enough to check.

Difficulty level was surprisingly low, compared to HoT, but for a starting area this is good. Just hope later areas are more difficult, but also with matching rewards.

Bounties are not what I thought they would be and are in their current form boring. Probably going to do them once for achievements and then never again.

On that weekend I got a kitten load of loot, esp. materials. Getting loot is fun, but it was so much that I’m afraid that this will lead to inflation and thus much higher crafting costs for future recipes. I also hope most ro all of the new stuff gets a material storage slot on release.

Unidentified items: it feels odd to pay to convert my loot into “real” items. Especially when the identified items typically sell for half of what it costs to identify them. Also if one wants to keep and identify it it might get clunky to always watch out for accidental mass salvage. (Yes, invisible bags. But still must make sure stack of unidentifieds lies in it.) Also wondering about consequences for TP prices when a major source of runes and sigils gets cut.

I hadn’t though to say this when mounts leaked, but I love my raptor. Already missed it when just playing a non-demo char. Riding felt a bit laggy at first but after a minute or so of getting used to it it felt very natural.

Random likes: music, sound in general, environment (graphically), the event announcer in Amnoon, Choya on menu

Random dislikes: too easy to lose participation in casino coin event when searching but not finding/reaching coins

Too bad the kitchen mastery point is a mastery point (once per account) and not a hero point (once per character) – it was fun.

Also wondering about the heart in the story instance. He had the heart vendor icon but was no vendor. Either disabled in demo, wrong icon or I missed something. Esp. since I had to re-do the heart in the open world (maybe that was just daily reset).

I like that idea. The books using up inventory (or bank) slots annoys me, too. And a book shelf in our home instance would be the perfect in-universe place to put them. They are ours, personally, so guild hall or Durmand Priory are not really fitting. Additionally this would allow guests in our home instance to read the books, too, even if they don’t have a certain page or nothing at all. (Which would not be a leak or something, since the content is usually in the wiki anyway.)

If a physical representation in-game is not possible at least they should be stored somewhere in the hero panel next to the story journal.

Now that I’ve completed the story and played a bit more on the new map:

• new map is actually quite nice (if you disregard the inventory pressure)
• good density of events
• I like the hidden corners and hidden details
• white mantle mesmers are annoying, especially the invis phase before their second health bar

• I really LOVE all the references to old content, especially to personal story and E
• background story via letters is good, I just wish those books weren’t taking inventory space (possible solution)
• I also liked going back to Caudecus Manor - and the reference to our previous visit (Demmi's dialog)
• same instance: the class limited interactions are a nice touch, though I couldn’t use any (“wrong” class)
• I also like the hidden details in the other instances. tip: try /threaten'ing the kid in the throne room

I wonder though, why Kasmeer wasn’t in the patch. We haven’t seen her for the whole season and from the topic/setting(Queen Jennah -> human nobility) announced in the trailer I would have expected to see this character.

I was also surprised to see who the end boss in this episode is. I wouldn’t have expected this character to be dealt with mid-season.

In the final instance I didn’t like

• Demmi's death… We've been through a lot worse beating just to get to Caudecus and yet she dies so easily on a single bullet. This seems unfitting, though is hard to present cinematic deaths in a world with such powerful healing magic
• Why the kitten is he even at this place!? Sure, it's his home. But isn't he supposed to be on the run?
• the original encounter design… encounters are much more fun if you can actually use a skill between CCs once in a while. Has already been hotfixed, I still wonder, though, how that version got through play tests and QA

About hidden achievements: it feels good to get an unexpected one, but their existance always leaves the doubt whether or not I have gotten them all…

I haven’t completed the story yet, so I can’t comment on it, but I feel the urge to speak up.

Similar to the previous release I find the new map frustrating. I tend to have a filled up inventory with all sorts of items I don’t want to throw away. Yet AGAIN my inventory gets bombed with tons of items from the new map. Take Cin’s stuff as example. There is no clear indication whether I need to keep and deliver it or if I can just throw it away. As my inventory got clogged more and more I was totally stressed out and could not enjoy playing. I’d like to get the tonics, but since that would even worsen my inventory problems that has to wait until a tonic wardrobe is implemented.

More to the point: Both releases feel like they were specifically designed to sell (loot hoarders like) me more bank tabs and bag slots. Needing to expand inventory space for interesting loot, in a sense of progression, is fine. But feeling forced like this is not – and makes me want to rather not play then give in to such tactics! One such release can be considered inconvenient or inconsiderate. Two in a row are a warning signal – thus this post.

Also, I tend to do hearts and events when I run across them. So I did them when I was sent around the map to discover it. When I came back I was sent off to grind some more events to progress the story. That felt liked forced, unnecessary content stretching at that point.

The stuff sold by the heart vendors feels spoilery, esp. a mini of a character I haven’t yet met in this episode.

Sorry for the negativity, but these are the impressions on my first evening on the new map.

First a positive note: with the changes this season the achievement was changed from practically impossible to possible, but impractical. Though not yet good this was a huge step forward!

I can get the daily in DR during one or two dolyak escorts. One trick that helps is standing where the Skritt are going to appear and throwing the snowball at close distance. I haven’t noticed invulnerability, but that may be due to lack of attention. Another tip, iirc from this thread, is hitting Skritt during their despawn animation. It counts and resets this animation, plus kicking players ignore them. But in total due to the problems already mentioned repeatedly in this thread I usually don’t care and just skip this daily.

I have a few more data points to add:

I went and looked for a place with magic snow and Skritt near each other. I found such a place at the moot in Kyesjard, northwest corner of Timberline Falls. I iteracted with magic snow and threw its snowballs at the friendly/green Skritt there. That was a moot point (bad pun totally intended) – it did not count. Neither the first snowball from building the snowman nor the ones spawning around it.

One of my characters chose to help the Skritt in personal story. Some of them now live in my home instance. I tried to throw the fighting cats’ snowball at them – didn’t count.

Btw, hitting Skritt with snowballs at the dolly escort does NOT give event participation. You need to kick them for that.

I also tried two more things, but did not really expect them to work: Throwing snowballs at a mini (Mini Munificent Gift Skritt) or a player using a tonic (Endless Skritt Burglar Tonic). And as expected they did not count. But worth a try anyway.

I haven’t tried the sealed package of snowballs at all. Even if it did work, the cost isn’t worth the gain.

My preferred solution would be bringing back the Skritt snowball fighter. Green/friendly Skritt should count and ideally both red and green ones react. A knockdown may have unwanted side effects, but at least let them /say (+ voice over?) something. Also moving the “snipers” during the escort event on higher ground, as they were in LA, so that they can only be hit with snowballs should help a lot.

Well, other than suggested by the title some of the points are actually valid for other festivals or year round. But these occured to me during this year’s halloween event.

In no particular order:

Bag preview function should be extended to personalized ToT bags. Yes, it’s a new feature which only arrived during halloween. I still wonder, though, why only non-personalized ToT bags got a preview.

Both types of ToT bags: right click -> open all. This also applies to other bags, of course, especially to the Winter’s Day gifts. But while you’re at it, why not slap it on any type of bag? Mass salvage already stops upon inventory overflow, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Limited finishers: right click -> use all.

Also, using limited finishers should not open the hero panel. And I HATE that I have to switch back to my preferred finisher afterwards. Stop messing with that!

Nerf that annoying pay-to-win scythe. Since costume brawl is only a very minor part of the game, especially outside of festivals when there is no daily costume brawl achievement, it is not that much of a problem. But when there is such a daily it is really frustrating to see others press one button hitting me half a dozen times while I have trouble getting enough hits with the free / in-game currency provided transforms.

There’s a bug in the Ascend to Madness instance. Sometimes the mad king teleports back from the lowest to the middle platform. The fight can take annoyingly long if only one or two players can fight him while the rest has to stand around waiting on the lowest platform. Either stop him from teleporting back up or provide a way to return to the fight.

I reported this already in-game. I think it happens when someone walks on the higher part of the middle platform. AFAIK the farm groups triggered this on purpose. If this is not considered bug using but clever use of gameplay mechanic the teleport block could be limited to conditions such as a player being on the lowest platform.

A big wish for the LFG tool: hide or remove squads when their map is already full. Who didn’t have to go through several groups to find one whose map they could actually join?

A small improvement idea for the LFG tool, depending on how easy it is to implement: temporarily add festival categories. Not really important and if it isn’t done by adding a few lines of config it is not worth doing. Just thought I’d mention it anyway.

Also I’d like the rewards of the festival activities to be more equally spread. If you want ToT bags there’s really only the labyrinth. JP and AoM aren’t even close when comparing bags per time – an that’s not even considering the actual drops of the mobs in the lab. I think the rewards for these two could be raised. The don’t need to be above lab, but currently they are way too far behind.

Talking about the clock tower, could you please stop putting me into instances where I cannot participate? I often get thrown into instances with a bit over 2 minutes left and after the current run there is no next start. So I have to wait for the instance to close standing around doing nothing. Bell choir is another candidate for this improvement. And I think bell choir even threw me out back to DR instead into a fresh instance. At least the clock tower didn’t do that to me this year…

@NotASmurf: As others already pointed out, the feedback in unranked with a mix of achievement hunters and, for lack of a better expression, serious PvPers, is already partially invalidating the feedback. If your strategy is focussed on getting the achievements, e.g. ringing the bell, the match plays out differently then when your focus is on winning, e.g. just stalling the opponent at the bell for a bit but meanwhile decapping/capping the points. (And yes, that’s also an achievement. But you get the idea, I hope…)

@TheGrimm: Ok, valid oppinion. But then please don’t complain when you’re in an unranked match and you get a team mate who prioritises getting achievements over winning the match. THAT is the situation I’d like to avoid.

As in the title, I’d like to ask that the (time limited) achievements for the new PvP map can be earned in custom arenas. I haven’t played much, but the collision of players who mainly care for the achievements, like me, vs. players who take the match more serious leads to a slightly toxic environment.

Would this lead to farm maps in custom arenas? Sure. But the alternative is, that achievement hunters take away the fun from the serious PvPers. I don’t want to reduce other players’ fun, but if I don’t, it takes me even longer to finish those achievements.

And while at it: the wording of the achievements is unclear. “Win a rated match” sounds like “play in ranked arena” – which should be impossible for beta maps.

I have queued solo, got a queue pop, accepted it and waited for the other players. After a while the little window showing how many of the 10 players accepted disappears. Then it takes about 20 seconds and then I get a message box, that one of my party members has rejected and I need to requeue. Strange enough, since i queued solo. The real problem is, that I got dishonor for that. Ok, random problem, kitten happens, whatever. Queued again, same problem. This time 6,5 minutes timeout for no reason instead of 3. After playing some PvE for 20 minutes or so I tried a third time. Again same problem, 13ish minutes waiting. For something that is not my fault.

1. please fix your servers. I still need 2 games for the daily participant
2. please fix dishonor and do not give it to players for server issues

EDIT/UPDATE:
Seems to be fixed. I played PvE for a while, on a different character. After I read in one of my guilds that they were in PvP and had no problems, I tried again. This time I could get into my matches. One time I even had another player reject the pop, but with no backfire on me.

I still ask for a fix to prevent giving dishonor to players for server hiccups (or whatever was affecting me before).

Lawton Campbell.8517:

The API doesn’t talk to any relational databases;

I had almost expected that. But I thought putting it in familiar SQL terms anyway helped me to clarify what I’m asking for and clear up the confusion DarkMagister pointed at.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

This doesn’t really scale in a sane way; it would be ideal to toss all of the data into a more production-ready indexing solution (read: hand-normalize it into SQL, or toss is into an indexed document store ala Lucene) but we don’t really have the resources to set up and maintain additional third-party software solutions.

Ouch. Ok, but since there is an index to find recipes by ingredient and output, at least there was some hope this would be doable.

Arridath.1087:

With regards to OP’s request, the GW2Spidy API might be of use.

Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, this would be another good option.

At the recursion stage I’m already working with IDs. At that time I won’t need (other) search conditions anymore.

Consider the following two questions and how you’d answer them from the API:

• What can I craft from mithril ore?
• What recipes can my Scribe (level xx) craft?

There is already /recipes/search?input=…, which allows to query “What can I craft from the item with ID 1234?” So to find out what I can craft from mithril ore I need to find its ID first. And this is not directly possible via the API, other than loading ALL items and check each item’s name.

Similar for the second question. I can get a list of all recipes and each recipe states its discipline(s). But I cannot query, say, /recipes/search?discipline=Scribe.

Once I have recipes I need to find what the item IDs actually represent and possibly how to craft them. This is the recursion step, but this can be done without search but directly querying items by their ID and recipes by /recipes/search?output=…, which exists.

To put it in SQL terms, I’d like to have more options/indexes for WHERE conditions, but my post was not at all about JOIN (i.e. recursion).

And about the server load: well, it’s a trade off. My suggestion would put a bit more load for processing, but take away a lot of load on bandwidth. Unless, of course, high bandwidth sites start to abandon their local caches and start hammering the server.

DarkMagister, you’ve read too much into my post. The API already supports listing recipes by (immediate) ingredient or by result. It takes the item ID as parameter, though. So, what I need is a way to translate the name of an item into its ID, i.e. a search item by name function.

I’d consider recursion through recipes my application’s job anyway.

My problem with with the API as it is now is, that I cannot search an item or a recipe by specific properties directly. For recipes specifically, I can ask by ingredient or result, but I cannot filter by discipline or min-level.

I.e. I CAN ask “show all recipes using item 12345”, but I cannot ask “show all recipes for scribes (using item 12345)”.

The workaround that I can use is pulling ALL items/recipes and filter locally.

Unfortunately this workaround will have to do for the forseeable future. Thanks for the feedback anyway and keep up the nice work.

There are two things I have noticed lately on using the API. I’d like to be able to find an item by its name and the recipes by discipline and possibly min_rating. An example use case: which recipes for scribes use T1 blood?

Of course it would be even better the more general the search options are. Ideally it would be possible to find by every aspect that is included in the result, such as items by type, flags, details, rarity etc. For example: find all level 80 heavy armor boots that give power (and any other stats).

This would rather be a convenience (and performance) feature. To get my list of scribing recipes I just pulled all the recipes and filtered them by discipline. The same approach can be used to find an item by name. And of course I could cache it in a local database. But I think it would be nice if one could just ask the API for it directly.

Oh, and item by name should at least optionally be partial name, just like on the TP.

My tailor has a recipe to craft the item with ID 63366. This is shown as a rune, but it has no name. The link in chat shows as [ ]. The rune also shows no bonuses for using it.

This is consistent both in English and German as well as with what the API reports.

I have not crafted it (and why would I), so I don’t know if the recipe is flawed and would produce a proper item.

Also, I’m not sure why or from where I have the recipe. But I had learned a new recipe, by using a sheet, recently. I don’t remember exactly what the recipe sheet said, though. But it had something to do with upgrading weapons (skins?). (Huh? Armor crafting professions creating weapon upgrades?!)

I was thinking of creating a similar thread before I saw this one. With disconnects, client crashes and client freezes being much more frequent lately I am asking myself why I should even bother doing certain events. Especially Tequatl or the new map metas.

I would not even have that dialog box. If the player involuntarily disconnected (i.e. not quit / Alt-F4 / …) and logs in with the same character he/she should automatically be put on the same map instance. In PvE you are automatically placed in the last known location anyway, that should not change. I totally agree with the 3-5 minute limit. And I totally second the idea to count reconnected players as being there but inactive for purposes of event participation. This is in some situations almost as important as coming to the same map. It won’t help much if I land on the same map but still miss the boss kill.

While this could maybe be abused to circumvent certain death situations, I think the upside of fixing this outweighs the risk by far. Also, the mechanic to count players as inactive but present could be fine tuned to detect such certain death situations and let the character reappear downed or even plain dead.

Yesterday one of my guilds has finished the wood synthesizer. I harvested it while NOT representing the guild. All I got was one snow flake – from using a Winter’s Day axe. No wood at all.

After daily reset I went back and this time DID represent said guild. I could properly harvest the wood and also the (new) ore node.

Not sure if this is a bug or a wanted effect. Many things in the guild hall are on purpose only available to guild members. However, my character did play the tree chopping animation and sounds and I got that snow flake, just no wood. This seems odd. It should either work completely or not at all.

AFAIK additional material drops coming from the guild hall nodes are required for the hall specific new guild weapons and IIRC it was said in a PoI or GC that one can harvest the other material in a friend’s guild hall. Following this it shouldn’t even be needed to be IN that guild, much less representing it.

As far as I could see it, we actually get to play two story instances. The part in Silver Wastes counts as “old world” and advances a core game mastery – fractal by default. The second instance in the new map then advances a HoT mastery – gliding.

The build itself (i.e. selection of traits), especially after the upcoming patch, would probably not be that problematic. But I foresee the meta zerker elite kittens in LFG tool will start with gear checks before running even the simplest dungeon. As long as they need to ask for an API key I can just laught at them and leave. If everyone can always check everyone else I am afraid mandatory gear checks will become commonplace.

I’ve played WoW and have seen how the community became after the rise of GearScore (and similar addons). I do not want to see this happening in GW2, too. Many LFG tool listings already look discouraging. I don’t want to see support for this behaviour by granting access to data.

This is pretty much along the same line why I don’t want to see damage meters in GW2. That is another topic, but many of the reasons against them apply here too.

As for what you can do when the API is private: almost everything you can do if it was public. As long as each player agrees and voluntarily gives you a key to access his or her data. You can still pull up a GW2 equivalent of the WoW armory, but only list players agreeing to the service. You just can’t spy on or stalk people, who don’t opt-in.

You seem to be thinking about SPvP builds, though. I see those a bit less strict, as they can already be inspected by spectators in game and I haven’t seen the PvP players as elitist about builds as the PvE’ers and PvP gear is a non-issue anyway.

Also remember that API access can be easily automated. You can track my online times manually via the friend list, but this is quite cumbersome. A service that tracks online times of every player would just be spooky.

No. Just no. Yes, you can see if someone is online (unless invisible). But you cannot see their equipment or build. You can – if you manage to find that character in the world – see the SKINS one is wearing, but not the actual items.

Unlike in a certain competing game you cannot right-click “inspect” characters. GW2 does not have its own armory. And this is something I like.

Please Anet, don’t make GearScore a thing in GW2! EVER!

If anything the API needs MORE fine grained permissions rather than less.

I noticed the same problem. I found out, that if I disable auto-loot and non-AOE loot mobs I still get the window with unclaimed loot. I hope this is a bug and not an intentional change, since I liked the old behaviour better.

Same here. Killed shatterer in the 21:00 CEST spawn, got dc’ed and have lost both loot and daily achievement. And after logging back in appeared at a waypoint very far away from my last position, but still on the same map.

However, while typing an in-game bug report I got the request to volunteer to join a different instance of the map. So those still work.

The problem is not the really the scaling or difficulty most of that can be countered with practice. The problem is that some dungeons have to have 4 or 5 people to unlock a path. An example is CoF where 4 people stand in the fire bubble while 1 guy takes out the guard watching the door.

EXACTLY my point. This is all I ask for to be changed.

I just want it to be possible to run all paths with groups of 1-4. Scaling the whole dungeon down to be of roughly equal difficulty for 1-5 players is a completely different topic. Unfortunately still most discussion in this thread circles around that instead, though.

To clarify, again, what I meant with my post:

“So you want GW2 to be focused on solo players? " — No! All I’m asking is that artificial barriers in group content are removed. Design dungeon encounters for a full group of five. Balance them for a full group of five. But please invest a few thoughts whether smaller groups of 1-4 are locked out due to some mechanics and how this may be prevented.

A dungeon would and should still be easier for a group of five, since you have five times the damage and five times the support compared to solo. And since loot is personal in GW2 anyway, it’s not like there is the same total loot divided through less players. I.e. you need more time and more effort for the same loot.

Don’t even incentivise soloing. There should be no additional benefit for doing the dungeon with less than five players. Don’t make it the easier option. Just make it possible.

Is my wish likely to be fulfilled soon? Probably not. Dungeon reworks or new dungeons in HoT are not off the table, since nothing ever is, but also not anything to expect soon. But if noone asks for it it is almost certain to never happen.

PaxTheGreatOne, I think our opinions are not that different. It seems I haven’t expressed mine clearly enough:

I do NOT want the dungeons to change much. I do NOT want the difficulty level to adapt to the number of players. I do NOT want mob HP or damage to scale with the number of players. I do NOT want to change ALLmechanics generally to adapt to the number of players. I do NOT want dungeons to be the place-to-go for solo play.

So your Lupi example is off. For those who already solo him now nothing would change at all.

What I DO want to change are mechanics that make encounters for 1-4 players theoretically impossible. The example I’ve used before is the need for four players to stand in the flame domes and a fifth to destroy some object. You wrote “as long as: MECHANICS ALLOW IT”. I say: change the mechanics slightly(!) to allow it. And only those that make it impossible. Keep those that make it difficult but not impossible just as they are now.

Lupi is obviously soloable, so there is no mechanic for him to be changed. The tar boss cannot be summoned with less than four players. This I’m asking to be changed.

And please don’t hang too much on the CoF example. This is one well known path with a mechanic that makes it impossible to complete a dungeon in a group with less than 5 players. I’ve done this path before in a LFG tool group and would do so again, if there was an incentive. I just don’t know that many dungeon paths and couldn’t come up with another example. But I do know they exist.

Also you got the comment with the meta the wrong way. My guild plays in a rather relaxed way. This includes dungeons. Not zerker but fun with your build? Great! Why skip when a mob can potentially drop a precursor and is not so hard to kill anyway? So the meta zerker speed runner would not have fun with us. And we would constantly be wondering where (s)he runs off now. ^^

I’m not going to buy such offers anyway. I just happen to have an interest in this particular dungeon path for …. some reason, and thus know about the tar boss supposedly not being soloable. Just good to know that those offers are probably not by cheaters even if they seem impossible.

Thanks for the answer.

@nachtnebel: You may be right, but I can’t think of a mechanic that would be limited. As I keep emphasizing: I’m NOT asking it to be balanced for 1-4 players. The mobs should be exactly as they are for 5 players. If the boss throws 5 fire balls, he shall throw them all five at me (or my minions/illusions/…) instead of scaling down to one.

There are just a few mechanics currently in place that need 3-5 players to trigger. Four flame domes to stand in and a fifth player to destroy an object elsewhere. Four spots to stand on to summon the boss. Things like that. And those I can think of can easily be scaled to trigger with n or n-1 instead of hardcoded n=5 players. In a few cases a replacement mechanic may be needed if that makes the encounter too trivial.

And it is not only for not wanting to search for a group. You can also solo/duo dungeons as a challenge. Or, as mentioned before, we were lacking a fifth player and that limited US in our choice of dungeon. We knew we could not complete CoF P1, even if we were easily able to defeat all encounters in it, we had no way to get to the final boss. (Or we could have picked up a player via LFG tool or asking in map chat, which none of us wanted.)

Opening my own group via LFG tool may be the option I’m ending up with, though, to get my last missing dungeon path…

“Massive MULTIplayer Online” — you could also turn that argument around and say “MASSIVE multiplayer” and claim dungeons need to scale up to be run with dozens of players.

“It’s the death of PvE” — I disagree. Some paths are already soloable. Yet GW2 still lives.

And I rather (try to) solo the dungeon than buy it. Even if it is less effective.

And my request is not only about soloing. I’d also like the mechanics to scale down, so that groups with 2-4 can theoretically complete all dungeons.

Also, I do NOT want the dungeons to scale down in a way, that makes solo running a good or – worse – ideal option. Do not scale down the number of mobs you need to kill. Do not scale down their HP, level or rank. Neither trash mobs nor boss encounters. I’d just like to see the blockers gone that make it theoretically impossible to solo the dungeon. It SHOULD be hard to do it. It SHOULD ALWAYS be the better option to run with friends.

Also, I have a nice guild. I really like them. But it’s not always easy to recruit a group of guild mates to run a (specific) dungeon. Lacking a fifth player? So no CoF P1 for us today.

And I don’t like LFG tool groups. If I look into it and see “selling”, “exp only”, “ping equip” and so on I just close the window again. Especially for dungons, I’m not famililar with.

Edit:
“It would severely limit the devs” — not necessarily. They don’t need to plan to make it easily soloable. They would just need to find a way to trigger certain events with less than 5 players.

Another edit:
Some mechanics may need a slight rework for soloing. The flame domes (CoF P1) could e.g. work so that you need to stay 30 seconds below one and then the door opens for 30 seconds. Or something like that.

Is there a legit trick I don’t know? AFAIK the tar boss in Arah P1 cannot even be summoned with less than four players. How can then people claim to sell it “legit solo”?

Do they just don’t mention for brevity, that they had help of friends to summon the boss and then continued solo or can I always assume those to be cheaters? And should I report them? Or IS there a legit but barely known way to solo it?

Making dungeons soloable has been discussed last year already. However, I have a different take on it.

Currently some dungeons cannot be completed solo or even with a group of four, because some dungeon mechanic needs all five players to fill some designated roles. Two examples are CoF path 1, where four players need to stand in the flame domes to open a door and the fifth one needs to destroy something in the chamber behind it. The other example is Arah path 1, where at least four players are needed to summon the tar boss.

What I’d like to see is, that those mechanics scale down with the number of players in the dungeon. A good example could be seen in the SAB, where all 1-5 members of the party need to stand on the pipe organ thingies to activate them. In CoF you would then just need to activate n-1 domes to open the door and in Arah n tar springs blocked.

What I don’t expect and don’t even want is scaling the enemies down. Neither amount, level, HP nor damage. If this became an option that would be nice, but this is not what I’m after.

And yes, dungeons are considered group activity. I’d just like to have the possibility to try this as a challenge or when I can’t find a full group of friends/guildies. (I dislike random groups.) This is why enemies should not scale, so soloing does not become the better option of running dungeons. It should still be difficult and take longer than in a group, but not mechanically impossible.

The same applies to fractals and possible event dungoens as well.

I understand the fear of shocking new players with the gem store option. Maybe there really should be a barrier before the exclusive options are shown. This barrier could be tied into the leveling system. So the options would only be shown after the first character on that account reached a certain level, e.g. the level when the BLTC is introduced. Or analog to PvP/WvW being unlocked upon entering the mists, when the player obtains a kit, if that happens first.

A preview before obtaining a kit would be nice, too. I just happened to have one available anyway, probably from a BL chest.

@Sankofa Jimiyu: That is the main mode of what I thought. Using up a kit from the bank during character creation to enable the exclusive hair styles and faces. Having gem shop access would be just the next step, but it might be a bit too much. Further, gender change is not the only lost feature. Makeover kits allow to change the character appearance long long after the character creation. This is lost, too, when using it during or a few minutes after character creation. But the kits are currently the only possibility to gain access to a few exclusive faces and hair styles. And those are what I’d like to see included in the character creation process.

@Chameleon Dude: I understand that. Maybe then the exclusive options should only be visible with the second character or without the gem shop integration and then only if the player actually has a kit in his/her bank?

I recently created a new character and wanted to use one of the exclusive hair styles. I had to create the character with a “wrong” hair style and “repair” it after playing the tutorial. This feels broken.

My suggestion is: The exclusive hair styles, eye colors and faces should be integrated into character creation. I don’t even ask for those options to come for free. If a player decides to use one of the exclusive choices a self-style hair or total makeover kit, depending on chosen options, could be used up from the account bank. Even buying one from the gem store could be integrated, though that might be a bit too disruptive.

I also had to hope that the face I chose suited the hair style I was going to change to. It would have been nice to see the combination right at the start.

There is also benefit for ArenaNet to change this. It would better advertise these options in the game and thus probably more players may want to use (read: buy) those kits. And it removes a barrier for players like me, who don’t like to modify their characters after creation, to use these kits.