Guild Wars 2

the past few weeks I’ve been working on running through the various Dungeons and I’d like to make a few suggestions based upon how dungeons are actually being played out – not how they are supposed to be played.

People are skipping dungeon content, all the time. It’s a huge time saving tactic, and is completely logical from a farming tokens point of view. However, i think if it was balanced so that the rewards were more equal to the time and effort put into the dungeon and not just the fact you ‘ran’ and ‘tricked’ your way through it.

I think the revamp would be quite easy, since everyone only wants the tokens or the cash – Give a token / laurel / cash / random / reward for completing the entire zone, clearing it out.

Just give a Bonus for time, if your fast and experienced give a few extra tokens/whatevers (I’m just going to call them tokens)

Also, I’m frustrated that as a newer player trying to experience end game dungeons, because I am not already experienced in the dungeon I don’t get groups, have been kicked out of groups for even saying I’ve not run the instance before, and been rejected from countless groups because people want 3 warriors and nothing else. Just check out gw2lfg.com and you’ll see the pattern of players posting in CoF lfg looking for very specific full warrior groups.

Giving a token bonus for balanced groups would also help support against people constantly stacking classes to exploit a dungeon.

If it’s a first time for someone, there should be a token bonus because it’s the characters first time. This would encourage players to want to take the time to teach new people.

so that way, it’s still the same, and if peopel can coordinate well then all the extra token stacking would put them slightly ahead over just speed clearing the zone 3 times.

players just need a decent incentive for the parties effort of clearing the entire zone and not stacking classes. People who just want to base60 and speed clear can continue to do so, but something would and should promote people actually experiencing the content of the dungeon and not plowing through it.

Again this is just a suggestion as to how to fix what I feel is a big problem with Dungeon crawling in gw2, a lot of the content is decent and I don’t have as many complains over the content as how the players interact with it. any sort of reward or incentive is going to clear this problem up. again, It doesn’t have to be tokens.

I totally agree with most of the things you say.. I want to be able to enjoy dungeons for the content in them, not rush through them for the tokens. And regarding rewarding teams that doesn’t consist of more than 1 of the same classes does sound like a great idea, but an even better idea would be to adress the issue as to why people only want to have warriors.

They already announced that they are working on improving dungeons to make them more “fun”. I hope it involves preventing skipping and rewarding exploration, teamwork and friendliness.

I think what has to happen is you only get the 60 tokens at the end if you finish off ALL the mobs (not talking about ones they got set to side or off the beaten path) make people EARN those points.

Its always annoying when groups suddenly rush ahead and skip something, especially when they don’t tell you or your new and suddenly you find yourself alone with a mob, dead and left behind because they didn’t bother to pay attention. seen it happen several times in CoF path 1 and with the new waypoint system you could be waiting a while for a long enough break in the speed run to rez.

Can’t remember the last nice I took the time to admire the detailed works anet put in for us because its all a running blurr to reach the end. its not like your wasting any real time, 5-6 mins extra?

Totes agree OP. I did TA explorable for the first time today and God forbid I watch the cutscenes to enjoy the content. My whole group ran off without me and skipped all the mobs so I was pretty screwed trying to make my way. The mindset of gamers these days is a little disheartening that they’d sacrifice the journey just to “try” and get the end reward a little faster. I say “try” because our group ended up taking quite a bit longer because they had to do the last bit of the dungeon (including the boss) without me as I was dead along with another player and we couldn’t get past all the mobs that were skipped.

I still say they need to evaluate WHY people skip certain parts or only take certain classes. Or give more incentive to not skipping.

As far as being new to a dungeon, I end up taking new people on runs, I really don’t mind classes or whatever else. My gripe is people who won’t say anything. It takes me like a minute or two to explain how a fight goes or how something works but instead most people will just keep quiet and hope it works out. The way dungeons are currently creates a certain elitist problem, as demonstrated by the 4 warrior one mes runs of CoF. Dungeons need work overall honestly.

poisonedsodapop.9348:

I still say they need to evaluate WHY people skip certain parts or only take certain classes. Or give more incentive to not skipping.

As far as being new to a dungeon, I end up taking new people on runs, I really don’t mind classes or whatever else. My gripe is people who won’t say anything. It takes me like a minute or two to explain how a fight goes or how something works but instead most people will just keep quiet and hope it works out. The way dungeons are currently creates a certain elitist problem, as demonstrated by the 4 warrior one mes runs of CoF. Dungeons need work overall honestly.

haven’t done all the dungeons or paths yet so I can’t be sure but I think its a mix of it being possible to run past and de-agro them and not feeling like its not worth the effort. thats why i feel like that end reward should only be given if people complete the path not half kitten it.

thats a VERY good suggestion there
would need tweak on rewards to work though ^^

think the bonus tokens for bringing first timers through a dungeon would be good.
think bonus for full dungeon clearing is an AWESOME!!! idea which i personally would love to do.

the class issue is a balance issue due to the nature of no “holy trinity” you will have ONE CLASS TO RULE THEM ALL!!!! and right now thats the warrior which is basicly the best at everything in dungeons due to its extremely high dps and its VERY high base survivability, high movability and good utility.
the only way to fix this is to change the class system in a way where the “trinity” shines through and anet doesnt want this, so if you want to be effective you make a warrior instead of anything else for dungeons (not saying others can’t work but will be much less efficient/harder to use, in comparison)

Yesterday, I got myself into a group for CoE. We ran path 2 very smoothly, without skipping anything and enjoyed it so much that we decided to clean up and run the other paths too. No skipping, no warriors and, at least in my case, no repair bills.

We played for the content, for the fun and challenge, and that’s a great thing to do… but not all of the dungeons are as enjoyable to me as CoE. CoE has a wide variety of enemy types, several boss fights with unique mechanics, an engaging end boss who forces you to pay attention to your surroundings and even a little jumping puzzle section. You’re never stuck fighting so many of the same thing, in the same way, never stuck wading through roads of high-health monsters and so CoE doesn’t become nearly as tedious as, say, Honour of the Waves path 3.

See, the biggest issue with doing content for content’s sake is that the content has to be good. Genuinely good. A lot of the dungeons aren’t rewarding enough in the ‘fun stakes’ to warrant spending too much time on. There are a couple that I’d never go back to if not for the token reward and that’s sad. Extra rewards would just make certain tasks feel more like chores than they already do.

Warriors are a seperate issue, and definitely need to be looked at in terms of balance. Introducing a trinity-style of gameplay wouldn’t work with the aggro mechanics or level and skill design of this game and would only force people into bringing Warriors/Guardians and whatever became the healer all the darn time – and when your max party size is five, you can say goodbye to Necros, Thieves, Engis, Rangers and PvE Elementalists.

I’ve always been an avid supporter of taking new people through dungeons. But there is a point where some people are just not worth it.

We were in Arah path 1 with this guy, idk how he survived to level 80 let alone to the cursed shore but he could not understand what we’d say. Sometimes we’d tell him to stand on a tar spout, and he would stand on it for all of 2 seconds. Sometimes he wouldn’t stand on it and just be silent. Then he’d run ahead and aggro the mobs, dying as he stood on it, then he couldn’t see it… worst of all, he was the dungeon host.

So, I would like the ability for people to be inclined to show people the ropes. If fractals under 10 didn’t give a daily, anyone who hasn’t done it before would not be able to do it now. Maybe you could select an MFP (Most friendly player) after a dungeon. People would then compete to be the most friendly guy.

totally agree, there is no balance, there is problems.
I have run ton of dungeons from beta times, i saw how it changed , evolved. And i think skipping should not be an option. Dungeon should not get too long when you do it without skipping. there should be protections from just runing past through important parts, like in cof path where you have to rescue iron legion engineer and there is bridge before apocalyte part , people jsut run to apocalyte part.

There is problem with random party comunication, some people just dont want to comunicate, and think that others should know what to do them selfs. And if you get party where nobody talks about tactics and what they gona do – its no fun at all. Its bigest problem with randoms. Especialy when skiping mobs.

There should be awarding system for team members who control all team, help them, pull them out of trouble. Even if just a fame O_o there is some hard desitions for arenanet to do. and its hard to make all sort of people happy.

remis.6381:

totally agree, there is no balance, there is problems.
I have run ton of dungeons from beta times, i saw how it changed , evolved. And i think skipping should not be an option. Dungeon should not get too long when you do it without skipping. there should be protections from just runing past through important parts, like in cof path where you have to rescue iron legion engineer and there is bridge before apocalyte part , people jsut run to apocalyte part.

There is problem with random party comunication, some people just dont want to comunicate, and think that others should know what to do them selfs. And if you get party where nobody talks about tactics and what they gona do – its no fun at all. Its bigest problem with randoms. Especialy when skiping mobs.

There should be awarding system for team members who control all team, help them, pull them out of trouble. Even if just a fame O_o there is some hard desitions for arenanet to do. and its hard to make all sort of people happy.

Arenanet have said in the past that skipping is an acceptable dungeon tactic so I doubt they’ll do a 180 on the topic at any point. And there’s certain things that it’s impossible to skip due to protections like the ones you mention. Using your CoF example for instance, you can’t really “skip” the save Crea part. She can however die but you don’t get the loot. I’m excited to see their dungeon overhaul and see if they can address any of the complaints towards dungeons.

perhaps a vanquisher reward for dungeons
As a new mode or just a bonus when you do it

For now, when you go to gw2lfg.com to find a group, be sure to check the box ‘doing everything’. I also specify ‘be competent and polite’. I just completed dungeon master and had very pleasant runs through all the dungeons when I made these expectations known.