Suggestion: change solo duties to be doable in party

[odioillatino]

An MMO with so many solo duties, to me, is really strange to think about.

I have nothing at all against people who likes that! It's absolutely understandable that people have different tastes, especially considering the number of people that play this game.
However, given the nature of the genre of the game, it would be nice to be able to complete this kind of duties with friends. I usually do story quests in party with friends, and every time we get a solo duty, we need to disband and wait that everyone finishes by themself before continuing.

So, the question is: would it be possible to change these duties to be completed with a light party? The ideal behaviour would be a scaling depending on how many people are participating to the duty. I think Guild Wars 2 does a great job at this.

[TaleraRistain]

Same problem with hubby and I when he used to play. I wish we could do everything in the MSQ as a duo. Add Trust NPCs for dungeons and trials. And just the MSQ. Let all the optional content have whatever requirements it needs to maintain the challenge for those who do it.

[Eclipse12187]

I would like this as a feature but the solo duties are tuned around being well.. solo. Having 2 people would break that unless they implemented a way to scale the instance based on number of people.

[ItMe]

How would this work for solo duties where you play as another character?

[odioillatino]

I would like this as a feature but the solo duties are tuned around being well.. solo. Having 2 people would break that unless they implemented a way to scale the instance based on number of people.

Yeah it isn't something doable in the short term They need to make a system to scale content based on the number of player, and apply that to a lot of duties. But it would be nice to see it, in the future.

How would this work for solo duties where you play as another character?

That's a good question :P I think it could work in different ways! In WoW, in areas where some NPCs follow you for some quests, you see the name of that character, but when you see the other NPCs following other players, you see them as generic "Member of some order". I guess something similar could work! So, transform the party leader in the main character, and transforming the rest of the party in "random character" to let them have the same special skills.

It would be more complicated in quests where the character is supposed to be alone for some reason. But to be completely honest, in games I would always favour gameplay over narrative coherence, so they could just "be there". Or, I don't know, some narrative trick, like "phantoms" or something like that :P

[Vyrerus]

I understand wanting to do all of the story together with people you like, and how the solo duties interrupt that, but I think in this case they should stay as they are.

Why? Well, they perform the task of being a baseline thing that people have to overcome as individuals, like basic skill checks so that the players can demonstrate, again as individuals, that they CAN and do know how to play before grouped content.

This is important, even more so than before due to the level skip potions.

There's also the fact that scaling the fights for up to even just a light party might make them too hard or braindead easy on release, prompting more problems than we have now with them only solo. I'd rather they put group balancing dev time into dungeons, trials, raids, and other group content.

[odioillatino]

Well, they perform the task of being a baseline thing that people have to overcome as individuals, like basic skill checks so that the players can demonstrate, again as individuals, that they CAN and do know how to play before grouped content.

This is important, even more so than before due to the level skip potions.

I mean, that's fair, but for the first 15 levels! At level 80 quests, I would assume that people already do group content pretty often!


For what concerns the difficulty, I don't know, you can already do them at "very easy" mode... And for the balancing, I'm not asking different mechanics or something like that! They could spawn more mobs or the same mobs with increased health. It isn't that unreasonable as a request

[DPZ2]

At level 80 quests, I would assume that people already do group content pretty often!)

I know players of this game who do not do group content at all if it is not part of the MSQ, so "pretty often" is more like "never". Their focus is not on raiding or gear progression or relic weapons, it is on crafting and gathering and social interactions.

One couple I know would probably welcome a combined single-duty, but those, like every instance in this game, are heavily scripted and there is no good way to accommodate them, short of rewriting every single-duty (cut scenes included) as a second, dual-duty, instance.

SE will need to see a lot more than a single thread on the forums to begin considering the possibility.

[odioillatino]

I know players of this game who do not do group content at all if it is not part of the MSQ, so "pretty often" is more like "never". Their focus is not on raiding or gear progression or relic weapons, it is on crafting and gathering and social interactions.

In that case, they could continue doing solo duty as usual. I'm asking for adding the possibility to do it in a party, not to remove the possibility to do them solo.

SE will need to see a lot more than a single thread on the forums to begin considering the possibility.

You could say the same for every post in this forum. It doesn't hurt to try, I guess.

[DPZ2]

In that case, they could continue doing solo duty as usual. I'm asking for adding the possibility to do it in a party, not to remove the possibility to do them solo.

You appeared to ignore the part of the post that stated "One couple I know would probably welcome a combined single-duty, but those, like every instance in this game, are heavily scripted and there is no good way to accommodate them, short of rewriting every single-duty (cut scenes included) as a second, dual-duty, instance."

Emphasis added in case you missed it previously.