Guild Wars 2

In this case their policy seems somewhat unclear. I suspect that it wouldn’t matter, but at the same time, I don’t know what it looks like from their end; they may not even know what actions it performs, only that it does more than one thing, thus banning all such macros by necessity. Or it could just be when that was written nothing came to mind that would perform multiple actions without granting some sort of advantage.

-Has it actually been verified that it was related to chat? Or is there still no indication of the reason? You should probably submit a support ticket… if it’s meant to notify you why you were banned and hasn’t, either there’s an issue with that function, or perhaps you were banned in error to begin with.

…forgive the jpegness of my images, I still haven’t installed something to convert them to png’s which aren’t huge files and even more weirded.

Last one’s a thief.

Shinya.2598:

This is My Engineer!
Engineer Charr Female in Aurora Coat

Argh… how can you use that coat?! I’d go mental constantly seeing the tail doing its swish thing through the fabric.

Though the shoulders of that set are decent if you’ve got something thick enough under them that they don’t leave too visible of a gap. I think my engineer has a ‘rascal’ coat, with those shoulders and duellist gloves. Looks like either it belongs in WarHammer or is on a trip to Siberia.

I already had a password like that, and had to change mine when they decided it was a good idea, but it was quite a while ago. Have you been away for a while or something?

Do you always use the same name? I’m wondering if maybe the name you used to register GW or contact them in the past was different, like something totally spontaneous, or using your middle name as well as (or instead of) first, or even actual changes to your name if there have been any.

For example my first name is obscure and just confuses people, so I often use my middle name when I’m not dealing with family. Or if I buy a game from retail instead of directly online (in the latter case I want it to match my card, though this isn’t actually necessary) I’ll just make up whatever comes to mind if it even asks for a name.

Huck.1405:

LameFox.6349:

It happens when you click on something to drag your camera, and I’m not sure if it’s really a bug or just extremely myopic design. Unfortunately it’s been pointed out many, many times and is still as present and annoying as ever.

There really needs to be a toggle for target selection on left and right click. It’s hideous trying to manage the camera when you have to consciously avoid selectable objects with your bloody view controls. Not to mention that when the screen is so full of effects you can’t see the cursor, and there are so many selectables you couldn’t avoid them anyway, you’re basically just screwed. Keeping to a single target becomes nigh impossible. Even keeping to an enemy target can be problematic.

…and it would easily have been prevented with two check boxes.

One thing that would help on that would be to have a option to lock the camera view behind your char, so that your view is looking the same way as your char is looking. I’ve had the same thing happen. You’re trying to move the view around to see what you’re char is attacking and you end up targeting something else.

I ‘steer’ exclusively with right click, and even in doing so it’ll still happen. Are you suggesting the mouse not turn anything at all? or like permanently holding right click, so your mouse always steers you? I suppose in theory anything that stopped you clicking in the first place would do it, but I’d find either of those pretty annoying compared to just being able to tell the game ‘<- this button over here selects stuff and turns the camera independently, this button over here turns the camera and steers you if moving, it doesn’t select anything, ever ->’ or vice versa.

The slanty writing in there is copy/pasted directly from their thread about macros so apparently they can.

I want to create a macro that hides the HUD, screencaps via sweetFX, and shows the HUD again. I’m pretty sure I could do it via my mouse’s official software easily enough, but I’m finding the official word on this subject a bit confusing. On the one hand:

“Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”
-nope

“Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?”
-nope

“Does this program allow the user to gain undeserved rewards?”
-nope

Clearly this function is without any impact on gameplay itself, mine or anyone’s. It’s solely a convenience, so I can be in the middle of something awesome and go ‘click’ instead of ‘taptaptap-tap-taptaptap’. However, it would need to press ctrl-shift-h, printscreen, ctrl-shift-h, and accomplish two or three things depending on whether the game pays attention to sweetFX’s screenshot or just the show/hide HUD commands.

So I guess I need to know if ‘You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions.’ applies to any function a key can possibly have in the game, or only ones that have an effect on playing?

I suppose it may actually be a blue (or green – they seem to consider teal/cyan colours ‘green’ for sorting purposes). I’d only checked the greys in my list… bit late for me now but if you have many dyes or are willing to preview them all via the market, maybe checking that sort of thing would yield a more exact result.

Oh, is that why it always gets annihilated in downed state? I’d honestly started to wish it would just skip straight to death and spare me the few seconds of futility.

It happens when you click on something to drag your camera, and I’m not sure if it’s really a bug or just extremely myopic design. Unfortunately it’s been pointed out many, many times and is still as present and annoying as ever.

There really needs to be a toggle for target selection on left and right click. It’s hideous trying to manage the camera when you have to consciously avoid selectable objects with your bloody view controls. Not to mention that when the screen is so full of effects you can’t see the cursor, and there are so many selectables you couldn’t avoid them anyway, you’re basically just screwed. Keeping to a single target becomes nigh impossible. Even keeping to an enemy target can be problematic.

…and it would easily have been prevented with two check boxes.

…the aegis shield is not for food!

Do those pauldrons make you look like you’ve been hit in the back of the shoulder with a hammer, or is that only some bodytypes?

Scoobaniec.9561:

LameFox.6349:

Forestgreen.7981:

Sadly unlike an engineer who can just revive themselves twice…

um… what?

Hes talking about tossing elixir r before getting downed i believe. Not sure if that was fixed but engi was able to rez hisself in downed state – just like vengeance but without vengeance debuff at all.

People actually use that in practice? I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard in PvE or maybe on a wall in WvW (though why you’d not back out of incoming damage idk) but otherwise I figured it’d just make whoever killed you wonder what you were doing.

Forestgreen.7981:

Sadly unlike an engineer who can just revive themselves twice…

um… what?

-‘Survivability in zergs’ is a strange thing to aim for. Surviving in yours is easy, and makes so many vitalities seem a tad redundant; surviving in theirs is sketchy at best, and is better performed by avoiding damage than tanking it (the vitality and toughness you can stack really pale in comparison to the potential incoming damage you’ll face when targeted by multiple people, and you don’t seem loaded with escape mechanisms). Not to say you’ll have the same survivability with a glass cannon – unless you went ranged and mostly avoided the part where you’re caught and killed – but soldier’s or knight’s may strike a better balance; if you’ve already got sentinel armour then even just mixing it with some more harmful jewellery could help.

-Sweet revenge? I can see it in PvE easily enough, and maybe PvP since your continued presence in a small team is more significant than a zerg, but unless you’re desperately poor and can’t even repair, it seems pretty meaningless on your build. You’ve only 24% chance to crit even with fury as well, so the trait line in general would only help if you needed to swap weapons a lot.

-All that said, if you did want to have ALL THE LIFE for some reason, you could use a hyper-durable CC build for dislodging attackers from doors, and people from their siege equipment in cases when you can get close enough. Just for fun: desiegificationist (walls are just tall enough to use death from above, just short enough for the damage not to matter). This is pretty excessive, but if you like throwing people around it would be funny. Lots of CC and counter-CC, plus ways to shed conditions, regen endurance handily, and even a little bit of mobility if you do need to follow a zerg around.

There’s enough attacks on here that entering a fight you can probably build up adrenaline and finish with earthshaker rather than needing so many traits dedicated to getting it (really, why do you want to gather so much adrenaline but not reduce the c/d of the burst or use traits/heal that benefit from adrenaline?), and it would be… troublesome... stopping you from getting back through the door to heal and start again (or hopefully from getting back to your zerg to heal and start again).

Roaming you can swap out death from above for other useful things, or just leave it in case of heights.

Well, going by my t1 shoulders (don’t really feel like replacing them just for this ;P) since the plate chestpiece is weirdly shiny and the karma gloves are very light, graphite did seem to be the closest I could get to the metal. Maybe a tiny bit lighter than graphite, if there’s something I don’t have (which isn’t tinted brown) between that and ‘grey’. It’s probably just the different armour though.

What part of it? Do you have any?

Unless it’s been actually announced someplace (doubt it) I’d have to just stand next to him and see if one of my zillion dyes matches, which would be iffy since they’re not always the same on all armours, and there are so many similar ones as well.

From what I recall there’s a metallic one (iron? steel? burnished steel?) and some sort of brown, which didn’t seem very unusual or black/white and therefore probably aren’t terribly expensive.

TBH I find ‘fear me’ and whatever that mark is called (I seriously never remember marks by name, only function) are useful for totally different things. The mark is much more of an interrupt and ‘stop chasing me’ skill due to being up more often and placeable while fear me is better for broader (but less frequent) CC like when you want to stomp/save, need a break (or someone near you does) from incoming attacks, or want to quickly fear someone off a cliff (since no need to target and potentially lasts longer).

Sil.4560:

That, and like was mentioned, the order the conditions are applied messes with what is converted so you’re more likely to have certain ones converted to the crappy ones you don’t need. If they buff warhorn again, I think the next thing they should do is look at the boon duration. I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of daze in there also – might make the weapon a whole lot deeper.

If you’re using shake it off and/or soldier runes you can mitigate that somewhat because shouts happen immediately and can be used during other skills.

BOSSMAN.2647:

But for some reason I have been testing this for a while and noticed that I keep getting the same boons when converted (vigor, regen, swiftness, might, fury) I rarely see protection or might or other boons?

Each condition converts to a specific boon, so if you’re always getting the same conditions you’ll always get the same boons. You could try asking your enemies to use a greater variety I suppose.

AlBundy.7851:

uhhh you don’t take banners for the static stat buff. You take 1 utility banner and the battle standard and when you reach a pve mob that takes more than 15 seconds to kill. You drop the longbow burst fire field and drop all the banners and the longbow 3 skill as fast as you can. You don’t even pick up the banner to blast because it puts your weapon switch on cooldown. But since most warriors don’t even run longbow as their secondary running banners for the static stat boost is pointless. 100blades bro duuurrrr.

Or… not.

AlBundy.7851:

It’s not the reason you take banners but ok

There’s no single reason I take banners (thankfully, as that would be boring), but the fact that with one slot I can buff five people almost as effectively (or more in disc banner’s case) as I can buff myself isn’t exactly discouraging.

Halcyon.7352:

RNG with a definite touch of DR.

If I stop doing dragon chest events for a while, I seem to get a higher incidence of rares when I start again. If I’ve been doing a few, days in a row, I get to the point where I get one rare out of perhaps 3 chests.

Then again, I got a chest yesterday that had three rares, plus the bonus rare inbetween a stretch of four green/blue chests…. Just a lucky anomaly with RNG, I assume.

It’s possible that DR is more complicated than we tend to believe. When players talk about diminishing returns it’s usually because we think of it as a punishment, which kicks in and makes our loot (or other stuff, like karma) worse than normal. But there’s no reason they couldn’t also have it set up so that when you do something you’ve not done in a while, it actually has a better chance than ‘normal’.

AlBundy.7851:

You really think that stat increase to the team is noticeable…

Yes.

JJBigs.8456:

my gardan signet gives me 180 power, i dont need your banner. just bring signet and its way easier, and 100 precent active, no cast time, no carrying, no trying to kite inside the banners magic invisible range to keep buffs up etc.

Traited banners have a cooldown something like 1-2 seconds longer than their lifespan and much greater range (1200 I think). The time spent picking one up to move around is easily made up for by it granting swiftness and having a rush skill.

Of course you can ignore them if you want, but a warrior and guardian using a signet each would have a total 360 extra power, while a guardian with a signet and warrior with strength banner have a total 520 extra power. Or in a dungeon group, maybe you’ll have 5 people each getting their signet’s 180 for a total 900 power, as compared to 4 with signet and 1 with banner, getting 1570 overall.

However, being the guy with the banner you’d have 10 less power than you’d get with a signet. Tough call…

Scoobaniec.9561:

LameFox.6349:

The engineer shield skill doesn’t ‘block’ btw. Reflecting projectiles is its primary function.

Toolkit>Gear shield> block attacks for 3sec (like shield stance)>20cd

Even if we trait for shield we still have it on longer cd.

This isn’t the skill he’s referring to; gear shield does nothing but block.

The engineer shield skill doesn’t ‘block’ btw. Reflecting projectiles is its primary function.

Someone got mad at me once. It really felt like this should be going somewhere for a moment, didn’t it? Well it isn’t, nothing else happened.

Honestly I think you’d end up regretting it if that were to happen. So on one hand people stop scaling up a certain event… on the other hand, events no longer wait around for people to show up, and if you’re ever genuinely having trouble with one but just barely hanging in there – oops! Too late, you’re so slow you might be farming, this event will self-destruct in 3… 2… 1…

Um… so I take it you’re not buffing any allies with your banners? Because their bonuses are probably more meaningful on 2, 3, 4, or 5 people than the very slightly higher stats you get from a signet. And disc banner is still better than signet of fury unless you’re only using that for an adrenaline button. 170 prec and 15% crit damage, with castable fury and swiftness, plus blast finisher is generally > . . . . . . 180 prec, with on-activation adrenaline that removes your 180 prec.

Seras.5702:

Is the radius referring to how large the radius of the explosion is or what the radius in degrees the turret has? In other words, if I drop the turret while facing north, and an enemy approaches from directly behind, will it turn to face it? A 240 degree arc would be 120 degrees in both directions from facing straight forward. So basically the turret can peer over its shoulder but spin around to check its behind.

All of them (which rotate at all) can do it 360. Though I don’t think they can tilt. I’ve had a flame turret shoot things above or below it by firing under/over them animation-wise, and I think flamethrower (the auto attack anyway) is a lot like that as well.

Daigle.8497:

I’ve seen enemies in PvE and PvP walk through it without taking their second of burning.

I think it’s due to being so narrow. Since it applies 1s per pulse I assume it’s also one pulse per second, and is probably easily (though completely by chance) crossed between pulses.

They should probably just make it a normal field really. Walls are okay for stuff like reflecting and tripping people over, but ticks of damage/conditions seems poorly thought out. Unless it can just tick faster, but I was under the impression everything updates like that, which would make it potentially very complicated to do.

Did you go to that zone to be alone? :P

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure this is true of all Iron Legion in heavy armour with a sword and shield (though I don’t recall if all ‘soldier[s]’ are that or not). At least, assuming NPC’s even have classes, because I know they do some weird things like mixing light and medium armour on occasion. The shield skills these guys use definitely don’t come from warriors or engineers at any rate.

Judging by past events, I imagine any instanced content will scale you up to 80. As for the rest, it depends. If there’s stuff that only happens there, being an 80 zone, I imagine they’ll just turn on scaling for the whole area. If all but the instances can be completed elsewhere (like all those sonic periscopes) and the instances aren’t hard to reach, then I guess they might not, but I expect it’ll probably happen. They’ve done it before so it’s not like the ability isn’t there.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

A group of 5 people in WvW isn’t going to accomplish anything in the ‘broader objective’ sense anymore than a single person. They can attack camps rather than single guards but for those broader objectives you are now talking about guild content which is a completely different subject.

Not necessarily. 5 people (with siege) can take some bases as well, when nobody’s really cared enough to massively upgrade them or gets to them in time. Flipping camps would certainly be faster though, but that doesn’t take 5 unless people show up, either (in which case 5 may well not be enough, but the camp itself is the easy part).

It’s also enough to mount a defence against a small force in un-upgraded bases, and with upgrades slowing attackers 5 can actually be quite formidable. A few months ago me and one other person decided, for no particular reason except we foresaw attacks and it was defensible but being ignored, to fully upgrade Veloka. For a day we managed to repel or delay long enough anyone who attacked it, then logging in the following day little had changed, so we rebuilt our stuff and kept going. It was the last thing our server owned on EB that day before getting completely overwhelmed (I don’t remember if we were on Piken or GH at the time but it was pretty severely outnumbered) and once everyone had no choice but to fall back to it, we got a pretty impressive final stand for our efforts.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

So are you saying all the dungeons should be designed so that they can conceivably be solo-ed, but won’t that kind of activity be limited only to hardcore players? The hardcores might have figured out how to solo the MF dungeon in less than two weeks but what about the rest of playerbase?

And frankly, I’ve had enough of seeing storylines in other MMOs that start in the open world only to be hidden behind gated content reserved for hardcores. I don’t begrudge these players the tangible (if virtual) rewards of hardcore playing like the gear, titles etc.

Not necessarily to be solo’d, but as far as dungeons go, it’s actually pretty easy, which makes sense for what purpose it serves. Not quite as easy as MK was, but that was for a holiday. If anything I think they need to work on eradicating this notion people have that being in a dungeon it’s necessarily for ‘those people who run dungeons’ and for anyone else to do it is some kind of punishment.

It’s just a terribly silly and self-defeating idea that people seem to have, when it’s not even as hard as some high level events. Especially since as an instance, you can’t have a bunch of people show up, scale it through the roof, then do really badly or die and leave you with the painful version. GW2 appears to have somehow managed to draw in all the people who, while not actually opposed to grouping to complete content, have a phobia of officially being ‘in a group’ and instead go do the same thing all over the world, without a blue chat channel or names on the left side of their screens.

If they managed to make dungeons that didn’t look like dungeons, I doubt they’d get nearly as many complaints about it. The hitch I guess is that solo story instances are pretty much a sign saying ‘five players would make this easier’ away from looking exactly like a dungeon. On the other hand, that karka world-event-thing was hilariously fatal to so many people, even besides the spectacular performance issues. The few times I managed to get in at all, there were players dropping left right and centre. Of course the part that gets complaints is (deservedly, at that) the horrible performance.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I have played lone-wolf countless times in WvW. If you played WvW at all then you must have been ganked by a solo thief more than once. You can play WvW entirely by yourself, that’s actually a very interesting change of pace from following the zerg.

So have I, but while it’s viable in an ‘I can run around and kill/annoy things’ sense, the broader objectives aren’t really going to happen if there aren’t a few other players on your side to help fight against the swarm (unless you wait until most of them get bored of it and leave, I guess).

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I won’t address your other points because I think there is a communication issue here.

MF in particular can be done with 1-5,

You’re saying this hypothetical thing can be done with 1-5 people? You need to clarify what exactly are you talking about, because it is nothing like the 5-man dungeons that are the topic of this thread. You said that this thing would bring in people in groups of 5. Again what happens to people if you don’t have mutiples of 5?

Both the hypothetical and actual MF can be done with no less than one, and no more than five. The pop-up saying five are recommended is not actually binding. Not only will it let you inside alone or with a small group, but if you’re the sort of person who felt Diablo 3 was too easy pre-Inferno (and it kinda was), you can even finish it alone.

Some dungeons do need you to do things one person literally cannot complete though, like in CoF where you all flip separate switches simultaneously. It’ll still let you in though, you’ll just have some issues being in so many places at once. Or be frustrated at the stupidity of your mesmer clones.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

What do you mean by ‘Ready-up checkbox’? You need to go into more details about what you’re talking about.

Suppose you’re on a dead server at a dead time of day: you enter the queue, and there are three other people. Nothing changes for a bit. You figure you might as well give it a shot, since anything is better than sitting at the door, so you click ‘ready’ on the ‘would you like to enter blah blah blah’ context window. The others see a green tick next to ‘player 4’ or your name, depending how much detail it wants to go into, and two of them also click ‘ready’. A short timer counts down, and the three of you are warped in, while the last guy sits outside using his keyboard as a pillow.

It actually seems convenient for completely unrelated reasons to me, not sure why they don’t have such a thing.

Vulpis.8063:

LameFox.6349:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

…Dynamic events can be done without forced grouping. WvW can be done without forced grouping. Our Personal Story can be done without forced grouping.

Hypothetically speaking… suppose you had alternate-reality MF, with the sole difference being that to get in people walk up to the door, enter a queue, and are teleported into the instance 5 at a time.

Forced grouping, or ‘event’?

Honestly…it would at least help a little. By no means perfect, as you’re still stuck in a 5-man instance with it being a carp-shoot whether the others are competant or completely worthless, but it’d help. Combine this with a checkpoint for each room (not necessarily a respawn point, but a checkpoint), so that whenever someone drops out, you’ll immediately have someone else dropped near the group with a minimum of wait for them to catch up.
One of the big strengths of GW2 as far as multiplayer goes is their open-world events, where people can drop in and leave as they choose (and as they realize they’re in over their heads, or don’t have enough time, or whatever), with no need of tired old formal partying and all the problems that go along with it. As few or as many people can participate at a time as feel like it, without feeling forced to join in just because you were in the vicinity. Options, and choice, where the current story-enders take away any choice other than ‘party up or get nothing at all’.

The waypoints already allow pretty much that same function: if you replace someone they’ll come in the door, then (when nobody is in combat, which… oddly enough… includes fighting the ground with their face, or stomping environmental fire to death) they can teleport to the latest waypoint. Not sure if that’s just for MF, or dungeon wp’s in general don’t activate on a per-person basis now. If I remember maybe I’ll see if one activates when people run to it ahead of me next time I do AC or something (not that I’m likely to remember). So really all that’s missing is the queue.

As for the difficulty… I’m not sure how well shooting carp actually works, but don’t go to Orr.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

And what happens if you don’t have exactly multiple of 5 of playerstrying to get in? Or you only have 3 players? Are those 3 players left outside the door wasting their time and needing to spam LFG to start the content?

Ready-up checkbox.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Do Dynamic events require 4 other people to start one?

Is that a trick question? Of course they don’t require that enough people be there to start… but on the other hand, you may need a minimum >1 to finish (successfully).

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Does WvW completely stop unless you have 4 other people with you?

In the sense that the server closes? No. In the sense that doing anything meaningful becomes impossible? Well, if you count enemies amongst the 4, it’ll stop a lot sooner than that, since they’re the whole basis of the content. If those are still plentiful… well, do you feel lucky?

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Do you have to wait for 4 other people to walk up to the door and teleport into your Personal Story instance to start it?

That would be silly. Only one of us needs walk to the door, then the rest get a confirmation message.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

You are talking about forced grouping. It requires a set number of people. If one of those people has to leave the group because the cat just got caught in the dryer, you can’t go on with the content.

Are you assuming this because it’s a hypothetical situation, or are you under the impression it actually enforces that five-person thing? ‘Cause… it doesn’t. MF in particular can be done with 1-5, completely. Those with mechanics that require more will still let you in, even then. If you really desperately need to replace someone dislodging their cat, you can even send someone out to find a replacement and return, or invite someone from your contacts list (they get the prompt to join you there upon entering the appropriate zone).

DoctorOverlord.8620:

None of the other systems I’ve mention have those limitations and it is brilliant of ArenaNet to have expanded on way to let people play together without forcing them to play together. Unfortunately, that innovative thinking has been abandoned when it comes to their storylines for some unfathomable reason.

You include events in this? And WvW?

What actually constitutes being forced together, if things like being unable to finish (or progress in WvW’s case, since it can’t be ended early by victory conditions) don’t count?

DoctorOverlord.8620:

…Dynamic events can be done without forced grouping. WvW can be done without forced grouping. Our Personal Story can be done without forced grouping.

Hypothetically speaking… suppose you had alternate-reality MF, with the sole difference being that to get in people walk up to the door, enter a queue, and are teleported into the instance 5 at a time.

Forced grouping, or ‘event’?

Xalugami.2096:

I know The Herald sends a message before the Ascalonian Catacombs intro about the inclusion of dungeons to your story, although I can’t find any direct text (I have my character slots full so I can’t speed to 20 to check) of the message. So due to my lack of resources I’ll drop this point since I lack the facts. If anyone per chance has this message from The Herald, it would be nice to clear up what it says.

After consulting with the alt-fleet I did manage to find one where I hadn’t been cleaning the inbox, which contained this. AFAIK it’s the earliest thing they send you.

Bonus content from the screencap folder (apparently you can’t copy/paste in-game mail): Is it slanty in here or is it just me?

Vulpis.8063:

Flat out honestly here? I think you have the situation backwards. Yes, we’re owed story completion, because that was what we’ve paid Arenanet to provide for us.

How exactly did you arrive at that conclusion? You paid for a game; you received a game. Buggy though it often is, as far as I’m aware it can be completed if it’s played as it was designed to be, and often even when it’s (seemingly) not.

It’s one thing to say there were parts of a game you didn’t like, would have preferred to be different, et cetera, – and really, when isn’t this the case? – but now you think that because the game’s campaign requires you to do a certain thing you’d rather not, you’ve been deprived of something you were owed? Like… really?

Vulpis.8063:

And it’s not people not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it’s purposely designing it so that the only way to finish it is completely counter to the entire rest of the story. I’m sure Arah is a fine end to the Destiny’s Edge story told in dungeons from beginning to end—but for a Personal story, which in it’s very name says it’s something for the individual, it’s a horrible and nonsensical way to end it.

Except it’s not ‘counter’ to it. There are remarkably few differences between a solo instance and a group instance (i.e. dungeon), you’re just treating it as being totally contrary because you happen to take exception to one of those differences. For the most part it’s just a bigger, tougher version of the same thing.

Vulpis.8063:

And what is with this ‘easy mode’ and ‘trivially completed’ manure? Absolutely no one is wanting that—just something that’s a difficult but reasonably completable challenge, without being dragged into the very content they’ve been doing this story to get away from?

Hrm… can you be owed completion, in the manner and difficulty of your choosing, but not allow for it to be completed trivially? I mean that’s not really consistent, is it? Or would you stop caring so long as they added an option easy enough for you, personally, to complete?

Illysharia.7286:

It’s ok if you don’t understand what the other players are trying to communicate here. Really, it is. You are not the target audience. The main point of this thread (and the two others) is to have the designers from ANET, who are making this content, hear the voices of their customers that object to being funneled into one playstyle to see Story completion.

I made a post regarding the Living Story and Personal Story here that you may find worthwhile to read.

lol. Do you feel better when you pretend people only disagree with you because they’re not in on your secret knowledge or something? It’s not that I don’t understand the complaint, more that I think the complaint is being laughably over-dramatised by people who got the majority of the content how they wanted it, then reached a stage where it ventured into another type of gameplay for a brief moment – about 40 minutes, in this case – and suddenly had an epiphany: that actually, in spite of how it seemed before it affected them, you can’t complete whatever aspect of the game you like by mere coincidence.

Only… almost all of it. That is, if the part you like happens to be solo instances and strictly non-committed cooperation. Should you exclusively favour the playstyle WvW, PvP, or dungeons offer, naturally you just have to deal with it and do something else for… let me check your notes here… ‘Weeks, and sometimes months, of working away at these Stories’. Yikes! I guess it’s lucky ‘If you don’t want to, or dislike, one aspect of the game you don’t even have to go near it’. …unless you want to go through the majority of any story at all, of course.

Please, do explain more about your plight…

Incidentally:

Illysharia.7286:

Look at the Daily and Monthly achievements. After sufficient feedback, the Devs changed them so they weren’t so rigid in what you had to do to complete them. Now you get to choose 5 out of a list of tasks and you don’t have to do any you don’t like. It was an immensely fair change that acknowledged there is a wide spectrum of their playerbase who all don’t do the same things.

This is great… for daily and monthly achievements. I can’t help but wonder though… would you rather occasionally have to do something you normally wouldn’t in order to complete a story, or get painfully slow to release (or maybe worse: rushed) stories because they were busy filling in ‘options’ for it to be completed in any type of gameplay? Somebody out there does have to make these things, you know. I have a feeling tracking your stats for a monthly or daily is less intensive by comparison.

Somebody probably just pressed 0 by accident. What they meant to convey was that if you hit between the target’s feet, you’ll probably set at least one boot on fire! :o

Well I for one expect my belief that the consortium are wilfully ‘evil’ to be confirmed.

Pirlipat.2479:

I’m sorry to say but tbh the way it is now is seperating even more. I am noone who is asking that all content is nerfed down to my level. I never asked normal dungeon-content to be changed, or stuff like that, but we are talking about some temporary content. I wouldn’t mind if the dungeon was just there but I thought that the idea of that story was to keep people engaged in the content.

The combination of a dungeon and the story in the way it is set-up for several people is just like hitting the wall. That’s why I said it feels like they changed their traget audience in between. Btw I did the dungeon with a group but I personally would have rather liked to spare them my inabilities.

We are also talking about two imo completely different things. That dungeon can be done with five. The difficulty for that amount of people is pretty ok, even though I’m far away to say that it is a piece of cake especially for untrained people like me.

It maybe can be done solo, but then you need a big amount of experience and skill, I would say.

So if you do not have the skill your option is to either leave it completely or to play in a way you do not like. Not everyone who wants to see the story is an uberleet-pro who is doing all sorts of content like nothing. And then again, you are mixing two things imo. Atm someone who wants to play alone needs way more skill than someone who does not mind to group? So how is your proposal to adjust the difficulty for different group-sizes seperating the playerbase in general?

Scaling for group size wasn’t the part I was suggesting, I meant it in the sense that it’d be a selectable option. Not that scaling would be impossible, but I don’t think it would stop the complaints. I mean when you say you did it with a group, but would have preferred to ‘spare them [your] inabilities’, what exactly are you implying? Because it sounds to me like you’re saying you were a burden even with the appropriate number of players, and what does that say for scaling it? Would you be able to complete it alone, or just need to improve anyway? If there are people who fare even worse, do we owe them an option they can complete as well?

Seems to me like if we accept that people are owed story completion in spite of not wanting to do things the way they’re designed to be done, it might as well have an option to be trivially completed by anyone regardless of whether they can handle… well, much of anything. They all paid for it. Is it any worse to draw the line above ‘average player by itself’ than ‘slightly below average player by itself’?

As for separating people, what I mean is that deciding that no content will be released which requires co-operation in order to be completed, or crosses different kinds of gameplay (instance, group instance, open world event, etc), seems fated to create very insular little segments of the game world, where people never go out of their habitual thing at all.

Not that there’s any point in forcing them to, but this isn’t, it’s just offering a reward if you come play a different way for a while. Interactions between the different aspects of gameplay is very important in games that aren’t specialised into one particular thing, because that’s all that sets them apart from a collection of mini-games. And if you only play one mini-game from a collection of mini-games, sooner or later it’s going to dawn on you that you could find a whole game dedicated to this one little thing you do, which will go into far more detail and provide a much better experience than a small segment of a broader game does.

*edited because I left half of a deleted paragraph in here and it made no sense.

Pirlipat.2479:

Well, I couldn’t, definitely not. Ofc it depends a big deal on playerskill, but to make it look like everyone can practically do it is assuming that everyone has the same skill. I doubt, people would make such a fuss about having it soloed if it was something that everyone can do.

That dungeon is announced as 5 people content and that is done for a good reason. In fact I find it even more sad because indeed you rather seem to need the five people to have the extra damage and not because you need alot of cooperation. So to scale it in a way that for example 2 “normal” player can do it would not have been to difficult I guess.

You can’t get around there being a base skill level required of players, even with scaling like an open-world event (in fact I can think of a few events outside of dungeons I’d find harder to complete than MF). If it sees one person and scales accordingly, it doesn’t know if this is one competent person, or someone wearing a rainbow of found gear who decided to ‘save’ their trait points thinking they’d never be able to re-allocate them. If it sees five people, again, they could all be brilliant or terrible – but either way they’ll face the ‘five people’ difficulty.

This is why I suggested just sticking in a mode so easy anyone could get the story out of the way, with accordingly nerfed loot to prevent farming it. It’s a pretty sad thing to do really since it basically removes the incentive for them to improve – you don’t need more skill or better gear if you’ll always just have easymode – and basically separates the playerbase (because likewise, you’ll never need to interact with someone who’s only good for easymode), but if it’s come to the point where people are convinced everything is impossible for them anyway, I guess they’d already resigned themselves to that fate.

BTW – as far as I know every dungeon just says five players are recommended. That isn’t a measure of how hard it is, five is just as many as you can get into the instance. Even if you could do it with one, or two, or three, you could still (theoretically) do it faster/easier with all five, so it wouldn’t really make sense to just arbitrarily recommend two (or so).

Pirlipat.2479:

You are funny. I assume that this dungeon was soloed by people who are very trained in doing dungeon content which is the complete oposit of those who usually try to avoid them. So adivsing to do something solo and refering that kind of people is pretty misleading imo.

lol. It doesn’t just suddenly require hidden secret knowledge because it’s a dungeon. All that separates it from any other instance is the mobs having stats consistent with being designed to engage up to five people. Since it’s a temporary dungeon for a story and scales people up, it’s made so that even five questionably capable players can theoretically get through, and as a side-effect of that, one good player with the patience to knock off the mobs’ hitpoints can also get through.

I hardly do any dungeons at all, because it’s often not worth the bother of doing for me. The only permanent one I’ve repeated all paths of is AC, and the only two (permanent) I’ve completed are AC and CoF (for both all paths, and for any paths save story-mode). When MF came out, my brother and I got to the boss fight with just the two of us, on our first try, on the first day. Didn’t even get much in the way of repair costs (and almost all of them were thanks to those pullback oozes… was not expecting those). Naturally it glitched and we didn’t get in, but we’ve since taken in many groups of randoms, and on several occasions duo’d and solo’d any given encounter it has when the rest of the group died (boss fights included).

Now personally I don’t have any hangup about groups, but if I did and I still really wanted to get to the end for the story’s sake, all I’d have to do is fight each encounter in a row the same way I’ve got through them on-and-off with the others dead (in this case, mostly ranged kiting. My ping is far too high to reliably avoid attacks in melee). The only way it requires being ‘trained’ in anything is practice, which doesn’t require other people to do, but it does require playing rather than waiting around for someone to turn the difficulty down until practice isn’t necessary.

Vulpis.8063:

If this is the case, then I quite honestly regret giving them my money—I didn’t pay for uncompletable stories, I paid for ones that end just as playable as they began.

Melodramatic much? If you expect games not to get harder as you progress, games may not be your thing in general. The MF dungeon can and has been done solo, it’s not like CoF with its synchronized switch-flipping that demands more people. Nor do mobs heal themselves in combat, so the DPS requirement is such that you could theoretically have taken days, while much of the incoming damage offers (albeit somewhat buggy) easy ways to avoid it that require little more than opposable thumbs. Maybe you’d get further in stories if you used your time learning to complete them instead of complaining that they aren’t designed to be within your existing ability from start to finish.

No idea. I submitted an in-game bug report explaining that I think they forgot that version of the skill, but there are still bugs around I reported months ago, so…