Please change "Playable area"

The "Playable Area" is in my opinion one of the most frustrating things in the game. I don't step out of bounds that often however it's always just one ill-timed raptor jump away. I think the quality of the game in PS instances especially would be drastically improved if it didn't kick you out after spending 20 minutes of effort just to make you have to start over. When i'm immersed in content the last thing I want to do is be constantly checking my mini map to make sure I don't step over an imaginary line.

i do agree that they could make the area a bit less restricted, anyone can make a mistake and if they really don't want ppl outside the maps they could just as easily make invisible walls.

I found this particularly frustrating in season 4 episode 3 when you have to infiltrate the village and plant mines. Its way too easy to teleport out of bounds when you have a 5000 range teleport. And even before you unlock the teleport you have to sit there and wait for Blish to slowly explain the stealth technology. If you get bored and run ahead you get kicked out and have to start all over again. Very frustrating when trying to do the achievements.

I don't know why they don't just rubber band you like they do under the ocean at map boundaries. If you really wanted to leave the instance, there are lots of better ways to do it.

Rubber banding at the instance edges sounds like the best functionality because it also prevents people cheesing or skipping content which I'd bet is the reason why they have this functionality at all.

Episode 4 Spoiler:

! It would have completely trivialised the Sniper mission if you could have ran around the outside of the fortress and I'm sure that's not the only place.

If they can't to that then I'd prefer if it reset you to your checkpoint or the instance start point rather than kick you.

Thumbs up to rubber banding.

! The Mists instance in the latest episode just resolved this by defeating you, and made you carry on from a checkpoint. This was the case atleast before they made some kind of a fix to it. Not sure how it changed, haven't re-played it yet.

Agreed. Normally I really don't like invisible walls. But in this case they'd be a good thing. Instead of being kicked, just have an invisible wall around the instance area. If you bump up against the invisible wall, a message could appear such as "you've reached the boundary of the playable area".

also when the boundaries resize as the mission progresses. areas that were safe later become unplayable. so when you return to previous areas you thought were fine, but you find yourself ejected.

@"Muusic.2967" said:The "Playable Area" is in my opinion one of the most frustrating things in the game. I don't step out of bounds that often however it's always just one ill-timed raptor jump away.

Forget about raptors. Often, a dodge roll is enough to get you a warning pop-up message. It is especially problematic when the enemies stand in that area and range-attack you, so you have to take them down somehow without stepping into oblivion. ;)

Or just, again, have you die and re-spawn at a set location.

It's not ideal but better than restarting. And designating areas of instant death and re-spawn locations seem fairly fundamental.

It would be cool if Anet added something like the ocean barriers (you don't feel you need to go any further in this direction). Being kicked for one raptor jump too many is kind of annoying.

@"Scud.5067" said:Or just, again, have you die and re-spawn at a set location.

It's not ideal but better than restarting. And designating areas of instant death and re-spawn locations seem fairly fundamental.

A death means for some ppl the dreadful loading screen because it spawns you earlier in the story, respawning enemies the game unloaded because it isn't "needed" anymore.

I wasn't expecting this much support for my frustrations however thanks everyone for making it clear that this is something that needs to be addressed. I'm not a dev but I know they are clever enough to come up with a solution and hopefully after reading this thread they will have motivation to do so.

I don't even know why there needs to be such drastic action taken when leaving the area. The maps used as far as I could tell are regular game maps, which just have most of the areas not filled with mobs/npcs, nodes, portals and whatever would be in the regular map. So those "outside" areas are basically ghost towns. There certainly is no real harm done when entering this "ghost town" zone, you will just have nothing to do. One could argue that they did it to "not destroy the immersion" but is it really more immersive to be struck by an instant death out of nowhere, than to enter an area where everybody just happens to be not there?

I would really like to relive the old lion's arch map, which still exists in the game as it is used for story quests. You just cannot wander around the old town because of the "leaving the area" thing :(

It didn't happen this episode, though I had some very close to kick-out areas. They really need to improve this system. You sometimes just are in the heat of battle and don't notice that you are leaving the area. This shouldn't happen.

The game restarted me 3 times on the first mission from the current EP 4, because I was exploring ways to best move the people around the rooms. The warnings lasted as long as half second, then insta-restart.SUPER ANNOYING, please improve it, Anet.

When I tried to complete the story instance where you raptor-jump on floating rocks in space, I died multiple times because I supposedly left the playable area, even when all I did was to land on a rock that had the light/buff marker on it. It was extremely frustrating as I was considered 'outside' when clearly still interacting with the depicted landscape.

@"Shikigami.4013" said:

I would really like to relive the old lion's arch map, which still exists in the game as it is used for story quests. You just cannot wander around the old town because of the "leaving the area" thing :(

I agree completely with this. I replay the old story sometimes just to remember what LA used to be before becoming the monstrosity it is now.

What would be even more amazing is if they incorporated some form of Chrono-portal story line which would allow us to travel back in time and battle Scarlet again in LA, of all the experiences I've had in GW2 my most fond memories are of that point in the game.

This is even more valid today than ever, with many of the LS5 personal story instances having extremely small playable areas as the story progresses.

ArenaNet - Please listen to your customers and invest a few dev cycles in making sure this Personal Story "Playable Area" mechanic is fixed before a ton of new Steam players have to experience it and rage quit.