Why can't we play with friends in the Halloween events?

I was just wondering if there is solid reasoning behind not letting us easily be in the same instance as our friends during the Halloween events. Is it a technical issue or something else? I run a guild and we would be so absolute happy if we could run guild events centered around these events but as things stand it's too much of a headache. Look, obviously I love this game but it's called guild wars and it's an mmo. Anet should be focusing on letting us play with our friends.

You can play with your friends in some instances; at least one, for sure.

Last I heard it was a technical issue, in the sense that it was a bug that was potentially game breaking, for why people can’t party up in PvP type events in PvE and they weren’t able to fix it.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:You can play with your friends in some instances; at least one, for sure.

newbie question; which Halloween quests are the ones you can play with friends ?

and; Is there guides to these ? it seems confusing with those..

thanks in advance

Well, I've never had trouble playing the Dungeon with my friend, nor the Labyrinth and thus, the Labyrinth Race. There's Mad King Says and the scavenger hunt(s), as well.

Yes, there are guides in the Wiki (link above - search 'Halloween'), and if that does not suit you, there is Dulfy.net.

Good luck.

I think it's only the ones which use PvP maps where you can't easily group with friends - the Clocktower, Lunatic Inquisition, Reaper's Rumble and presumably the new racetrack. It may also be tricky to get into the same Labyrinth map as a friend if they're already in there, because they're likely to be in a full map. But that can be solved by them coming to you and then both of you finding an organised map to join together (or recruiting more people to your map).

I suspect it's already a bit of a jury-rigged system, using the existing PvP matchmaking technology to do something it wasn't really intended for, and may already include some 'interesting' programming tricks to make it work, so changing it further without a complete re-work to build a dedicated system may risk everything falling apart.

But then they have been making adjustments to Halloween over the years, including bringing back modes which were in the first year and then broken by subsequent updates, so maybe this is something they could look at for future years. It would be good for other festivals too since I think they use the same system for mini games like Bell Choir and Sanctum Sprint.

They did change one of the Wintersday events to take parties last year or the year before.Thus, you never know what each year will bring.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:You can play with your friends in some instances; at least one, for sure.

You can play Ascend to Madness with your friends, since you compose the group before entering the instance. Getting a full (possibly large) guild to farm the Labyrinth together, however, is a tough task, because it requires you to change instances multiple times until you find one empty enough for everyone to fit in.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:Last I heard it was a technical issue, in the sense that it was a bug that was potentially game breaking, for why people can’t party up in PvP type events in PvE and they weren’t able to fix it.

Labyrinth is in WvW, but the other maps are in pvp.Same problem exists for wintersday.

What makes me honestly confused is why the maps were attached to pvp and wvw in the first place? I mean, what was the benefit to make that decision? Why not just move the maps to pve engine? If being in pvp is the problem.. just take them out ? ?

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:Last I heard it was a technical issue, in the sense that it was a bug that was potentially game breaking, for why people can’t party up in PvP type events in PvE and they weren’t able to fix it.

Apparently changes to the game broke Toypocalypse and made PvP unstable.

Here’s what they said back in 2014. As to why not move to PvE engine, they didn’t ever say.

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245 QA LeadAfter the 2013 Toypocalypse there were changes to the game that broke the underlying functionality for Toypocalypse. For 2014 the team was trying to fix the bug (and really, they went up past the absolute last second to try and fix it) but ultimately had to decide between the activity working or being cut - it was that unplayable. It wasn't a lightly made decision, especially since it had worked the year before and players liked it. 

The team would still like to fix it but it isn't a simple switch or anything. Reverting the change would break significant other parts of the game. 

Soo.... I would rather queue with friends too, but I'd also like to be able to do the activity. It's a rough tossup..Gaile GrayArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead I just heard from the team about this, and it is an unfortunate but intended change. The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP and some Instance Activities. According to one of our lead designers, the change cannot be revisited for this year’s release. Thanks for your understanding concerning this necessary adjustment.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:You can play with your friends in some instances; at least one, for sure.

The sneaky way is to start the squad in LA and synchronize entry to the lab. The game should try to put everyone in the same instance and there should be one empty enough to accommodate.

@"Ayakaru.6583" said:Labyrinth is in WvW, but the other maps are in pvp.Did you mean that the Labyrinth is PvE? It uses PvE builds and Mounts and you're allowed PvE booster buffs that are removed in WvW.

What makes me honestly confused is why the maps were attached to pvpAll the competitive instances use the PvP engine because that's designed for competition. The PvE subsystems were built with cooperation in mind. So anything which has an "us versus them" aspect uses PvP rules.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:You can play with your friends in some instances; at least one, for sure.

Getting a full (possibly large) guild into any PvE map with a cap of 25 is difficult; the Labyrinth is no different.

I'm not sure 'playing with friends' is the same request as 'getting my whole Guild in'.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:Labyrinth is in WvW, but the other maps are in pvp.Did you mean that the Labyrinth is PvE? It uses PvE builds and Mounts and you're allowed PvE booster buffs that are removed in WvW.

No, the laby really is in WvW, you can see by zooming out and changing layer

Although just the mists could have a broader engine that allow more settings to be controlled, remember that they allowed gliders in wvw, an the boosters are ‘possible’ engine-wise, they’re just manually disabled. And I seem to remember from AMA’s that they tried (or did experiments) with mounts in wvw.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:Labyrinth is in WvW, but the other maps are in pvp.Did you mean that the Labyrinth is PvE? It uses PvE builds and Mounts and you're allowed PvE booster buffs that are removed in WvW.

To return to the actual topic of the thread: Halloween uses PvP rule sets for the competitive games, which is why we can't group using the party or squad system. The cooperative maps don't use a PvP ruleset. There'd be a huge amount of work for ANet to change that aspect.

Regarding the digression about WvW vs PvE: the labyrinth uses PvE skills, that makes it a PvE map for all intents & purposes.

If it were a WvW, ANet would have had to manually adjust each & every WvW feature: the skills used, gliders (without wvw mastery), mounts, boosters (on instead of off), and so on. That seems like an awful lot of trouble, when they could just create the map as PvE in the first place. The only thing that looks WvW is the location of the map, which has no specific bearing about the ruleset used.