Invisible Walls - Not a Solution

What is the point of encouraging open maps with levels of detail and unique movement mechanics if you're just going to put in invisible walls to stop players from getting to hero points and mastery points in fun or interesting (or in the case of Dredgehaunt map, simply walking through a cave like we used to do since launch of the kitten game)?

Its not like these are jumping puzzles that are just being passed by with a few hops on a bunny or flown over with a glider. I'm talking basic map exploration here. What? So we didn't figure out how to get to a place the way the devs wanted us to get there so now we are forced to play a map and run the routes they want us to? Seriously Anet what the actual kitten is up with these invisible walls that serve no purpose but to make us play the game the way you want us to?

They can't really stretch hills and mountains to block people off ;p.I do agree with the blocking off certain areas for map completion. The dredgehaunt map pissed me off to unnecessary limits. Along with a place in bloodtide coast. There is no reason to be kicking people away from map completion. Its like they didn't think and just went with it.If they're bugs, its been over a month now. (Yay priorities)

There's a lot more of that since the mounts were added. My guess would be that some poor souls had to sift through hundreds of bug entries and fix/test/fix every little spot in the maps where someone might be able to exploit with a particular mount combo. They probably said fuck this shit at around the 10/1485 mark and started dumping huge invisible walls everywhere.

Dredgehaunt? Is that the cave in Steelbrachen? I reported an invisible wall there as a bug.

There are so many stupid invisible walls... Joy of movement my ass!I think my griffon needs helmet from all the faceplanting i'm doing while enjoying the movement joy.

There's even one in the Black Citadel that keeps players from being able to interact with two of the three Black Lion Trading Post representatives there.

Madness, I say!

The sad thing is that those invisible walls will never be removed.(Maybe if like 50% of the player base were likely to drop out then Anet might have looked into it more but we know thats not going to happen any time soon)

The reason those invisible walls will never be removed is because there are over 30 maps in core tyria. Thats like 10 expansion worth of maps that they would need to go over to make mounts fit. And they wouldn't make any money from it. So why would they bother?

@Shafi.8952 said:The sad thing is that those invisible walls will never be removed.(Maybe if like 50% of the player base were likely to drop out then Anet might have looked into it more but we know thats not going to happen any time soon)

The reason those invisible walls will never be removed is because there are over 30 maps in core tyria. Thats like 10 expansion worth of maps that they would need to go over to make mounts fit. And they wouldn't make any money from it. So why would they bother?

I might not like it, but i do agree with you, and can totally understand Anet's view on this

I do think it would be nice if they scaled back some of the invisible walls. Obviously in some places they are necessary to prevent map breaking, and I don't need them to go through every map and rebuild the terrain so that it's mount friendly without invisible walls, but some of the invisible walls in the game seem entirely arbitrary, blocking off ledges or other areas that seem perfectly viable terrain. Parts of the upper Library are a simple example of that.

@Shafi.8952 said:The sad thing is that those invisible walls will never be removed.(Maybe if like 50% of the player base were likely to drop out then Anet might have looked into it more but we know thats not going to happen any time soon)

The reason those invisible walls will never be removed is because there are over 30 maps in core tyria. Thats like 10 expansion worth of maps that they would need to go over to make mounts fit. And they wouldn't make any money from it. So why would they bother?

Well, can't say why or when, but I know they've fixed at least one. In Bitterfrost Frontier an invisible wall appeared that blocked off a tree in a corner from being chopped. A couple of weeks after the bug report it was fixed. So have some hope, maybe they will get around to the other bad ones.

But yes, it's frustrating. I forget and go to bounce my bunny up to an ore node on a cliff and hit the invisible wall every time on one map...because it's close to a vista and they don't want people to shortcut.

Yeah, its not the blocking of access to mounts in places that they'd essentially break the game (like JPs or areas linked to story steps like the skritt area in Herathi), its more that cave in Dredge as I mentioned, or a ledge in Tangled Depths I used to glide to to get a hero point, or even more recently the MP in Tomb of the Primeval Kings that with some careful jumps and glides you could get to but now there's an invisible wall blocking that path at the very end. It just feels mean spirited and/or sloppy.

The only invisible walls that should exist in the game are the very edges of each map.

@kurfu.5623 said:The only invisible walls that should exist in the game are the very edges of each map.

I totally agree. Invisiable walls where always a pain in GW2, so if they now got worse that is really bad. Invisible walls is one of those small but huge annoyances in an MMO especially when you like to jump on stuff.

Same is true for objects without collision detection.

It happened so many times I tried to jump on an edge to then fall down (to my death) because the edge was behind an invisible wall, or the edge did not have collision detection. It’s really annoying and really immersion breaking.

Like you say, the only good place for invisible walls are the outer edges of a map. All other invisible walls are easy ways out instead of going for a proper solution.

Because I did always found this such an announce I started recording all those invisible walls and objects without collision detection. My plan was to combine all those little video’s and make one forum post about it. However, at some point I had, so many GB of video’s that I found it too much work to combine them all. (and some maps had changed like the old LA)

I can completely understand the pain, especially if it got so much worse now.

Maybe if people start reporting the more egregious invisible walls as bugs Anet will be less hamfisted about it.

Many of those are there to hide undecorated areas. From what I've seen by accidentally glitching into them, some are just giant pits that cause you to fall off the map; or jagged terrain where you can easily get stuck. And there's no textures for rooftops, etc.

So it's easier said than done. They can't just remove the walls, they'd need to add passable terrain for those (and test it).

I can understand the need to block access to certain areas but it should be minimized and at least be obvious that you can't get to a certain place before you spend five minutes mountain climbing. Like most players I now have a solid idea of what I can and can't do with the mounts and I've frequently been stopped dead in my tracks trying to get to a place that's apparently accessible. You can just as easily remove a visible ledge as put an invisible wall in front of it. Why let me think a Springer can jump up there in the first place?

They even put an invisible wall in the Human Home instance that actually prevents story progress. You can't even take mounts INTO personal stories unless it's a POF one. All these invisible walls are just down right silly. All they had to do was put in a no mount debuff much like they do with the no gliding debuff in certain areas. Instead they put a bunch of invisible walls that ended up breaking some of the game and making players angry. Heck even some areas in POF don't need invisible walls except the edge of the dang map!

So THAT'S what's wrong with the freaking Black Citadel trading post. That's stupid. At first I thought I'd run into a huge lag spike. Then I thought my computer froze. Then I realized that for some weird reason the trading post was blocked by an invisible wall. That's the most infuriating of them, but I've definitely noticed weird, illogical invisible walls that prevent me from walking through a completely reasonable section of map. So what if mounts make map completion easier? I got 100% map completion on TEN CHARACTERS before any gliding OR mounts. Give me a freaking break and let me travel the maps in new ways. Joy of movement my butt.

Please for crying out loud, stop this madness!Please dev.in.charge.of.pissing.off.players.with.invisible.walls, take a vacation.

The invisible walls blocking the Dredgehaunt Cliffs Dissun's Mine tunnel, the Bloodtide Coast Mournful Depths vista, the Human Story Hospital In Jeopardy and some others were all fixed in the October 17th patch - a day before this thread was begun.

Someone is making an effort to compile reports of these issues into one list, and ANet seems to be working their way through that list; they're down to four or five unfixed issues now. Hopefully the patch early next week will fix them. If you have witnessed a blocked location that isn't in that list, please make a new thread about it and post a comment to the compilation list.

Compilation of Locations Blocked by (In)visible Walls (Map Completion/Jump Puzzles/Achievements/Etc)

The invisible walls shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. It clearly caused more problems than solved them.

The cave in dredgehaunt is fixed.

Invisible walls drive me crazy in the game. People know they are in a game map. If they encounter a exterior wall it's not like it's going to be Tyria shattering. They could just add a game mechanic so that when a player hits a map edge that's bounded by another map they get transported to the next map over at approximately the location they exited the previous map. For map edges that aren't bounded by another may they could dropping lighting to zero, have ominous roars followed by fear or blasts of wind.

I wish they would drop the invisible walls blocking the center area of Dry Top. There is a cool canyon in there that would be a good place to explore. To make it more interesting they could add some mineral nodes and maybe a a few creatures to kill.

They did remove a lot of invisible walls on the center of Frostgorge Sound. I just wish they would put a snow truffle farm on the ledge above the grawl at the claw of jormag event.