Guild Wars 2

Problem #1: People are (or were) grinding the same path in the same dungeon over and over instead of enjoying other paths and other dungeons.

Problem #2: Not everyone wants rewards from the same dungeon.
With dungeons being as difficult as they are, it’s better to go with a more organized group of friends than it is to pug. However, due to the fact that not everyone in a group of friends will want the same set of dungeon armor, it is very difficult to find a competent group that is willing to repeat the same dungeon long enough to get that armor. Right now, in my guild, nobody ever goes to dungeons anymore because it’s like this: one person wants to do Arah, one wants to do Citadel of Flame, another wants to go to Honor of the Waves, and another wants to do Ascalonian Catacombs. And then you’ve got the guy that just wants to do any dungeon, he doesn’t care which, but there is never a group being formed because of conflicting goals and so he never gets to go. Nobody wants to follow their friend to a dungeon that they don’t want anything from and grind for no reason just so that their friend can save up the 1000+ tokens to get their set.
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With the recent addition of the 2 per hour limit, it is clear that ArenaNet does not want us to grind the same path in the same dungeon. It seems that you would rather have us experience all of the paths in all of the dungeons. Which I think is fine, but when you give us nice armor skins as rewards, of course people are going to want to try to get them. And the big issue is, nobody wants to go to other dungeons until they get their set from that one. But nobody will get their set because their friends won’t go to the dungeon with them. So we sit around, hoping that our friends will change their mind and go to our dungeon instead. But nobody changes their mind.

Proposed solution: Make dungeons all reward the same kind of token that can be cashed in for any reward. This solves both problems, as we can go enjoy all of the dungeons and every path there is to offer without feeling like we are slowing down our progress. I’d be more than happy to go try every path if I feel like I’m still progressing towards the set of skins that I want, and I’ll have much more fun doing so when I’m in a more organized group with my friends. Then I won’t have to feel bad every time the guy that wants to do just any dungeon never gets a group!
- Issue that this raises: What about the current dungeon tokens that people have saved up?
Solution: Put an NPC in Lion’s Arch next to where you buy the dungeon armor that exchanges specific dungeon tokens for the new ones.
– Other issue that this raises: people that have never been into a certain dungeon can buy its armor set.
Possible solution #1: Put the NPC that sells the armor inside that dungeon somewhere in explorable mode, so that people are forced to run the dungeon at least once to get its armor (but if you did this, that area in Lion’s Arch would turn pretty empty… I’m sure there’s other things that they can be replaced with though)
Possible solution #2: Lock the armor vendors from selling you that specific set of armor, until you complete an achievement for the dungeon; perhaps an achievement that requires you to complete each path at least once or something.
Possible solution #3 (thanks Yukishiro!): Make the armor cost dungeon tokens PLUS one token that you can obtain from beating explorable mode. For example, TA top costs a TA badge and 300 dungeon tokens.

^This. Putting a 2 per hour limit on a dungeon is not the best way to go about the grinding issue, because people will always just want to progress. Making dungeons give all the same tokens will definitely give people incentive to want to do other dungeons.

Also, just because you can complete dungeon X in 2 hours doesn’t means everyone can.

What if 1/2 of my party DCs and takes forever to connect again? What if my best friend’s daughter just threw up in her shoes and she not only has to clean it up but determine why it happened and if it is serious?

To be honest, having lvl 80 exotic gear makes a big difference when doing catacombs exploration or any of the other dungeons up to the 70’s. Even though you are scaled down, you still have a good advantage because of the better gear.

While I understand you would like to see 1 token used as general currency among all dungeons, it will most likely not happen as everyone would flock to the lower lvl dungeons in order to get the higher lvl dungeon armor skins.

Anet said from the beginning they wanted dungeons to be hard and challenging. From what you have described, it sounds more like an issue with getting more players into the guild or making new friends on your server who want to run the dungeons you want.

Many groups have their own teamspeak, vent or mumble set up and willing to let you use it when grouping with them as well. I have personally experienced this many times when working with pugs and its a great way to meet new players.

My suggestion, learn these dungeons as best you can, watch some videos if you need to, take notes, etc, and then offer to lead players through them. Everyone had to start new at some point in time, and sometimes a little patience and guidance can go a long way in strengthening your community.

Best of luck!

robinsiebler.3801:

Also, just because you can complete dungeon X in 2 hours doesn’t means everyone can.

What if 1/2 of my party DCs and takes forever to connect again? What if my best friend’s daughter just threw up in her shoes and she not only has to clean it up but determine why it happened and if it is serious?

One of the main issues that I brought up in my post is not the 2 per hour limit. Honestly, I don’t care that they added the limit. The main issue is that there is no incentive for friends to want to do dungeons with each other if each person wants a different set of skins.

Supported. I’d like to experience other dungeons with my friends while still progressing towards my goal without feeling like I either have to sacrifice my progression or have friends sacrifice their progression to help me out.

Edit: In response to Robin, a simple solution would be to let dungeons scale rewards. Level 80s blowing through Catacombs in exotics would give less than 80s running Arah. Not enough to make Catacombs not worth it, but enough to make the net time spent give equal rewards. Anet loves scaling, so this is right up their alley…

robinsiebler.3801:

Also, just because you can complete dungeon X in 2 hours doesn’t means everyone can.

What if 1/2 of my party DCs and takes forever to connect again? What if my best friend’s daughter just threw up in her shoes and she not only has to clean it up but determine why it happened and if it is serious?

I believe that you totally missed the point of this post. You are aware of people doing a certain CoF Path in 15 minutes. But that is beside the point.

The point of the post is to make the dungeon token currency usable for all armor sets. When you have several friends who want to do different dungeons to get those sets of armor, they would want to run those dungeons instead of other dungeons, especially with the cost of armor being as high as it is.

If we make it a common currency, then we would have people being more willing to do another explorable mode dungeon with their friends, since it would not impede their progress toward another dungeon set.

Explorable modes can take a while, so why not make that time count?

Paladin.5268:

To be honest, having lvl 80 exotic gear makes a big difference when doing catacombs exploration or any of the other dungeons up to the 70’s. Even though you are scaled down, you still have a good advantage because of the better gear.

While I understand you would like to see 1 token used as general currency among all dungeons, it will most likely not happen as everyone would flock to the lower lvl dungeons in order to get the higher lvl dungeon armor skins.

Anet said from the beginning they wanted dungeons to be hard and challenging. From what you have described, it sounds more like an issue with getting more players into the guild or making new friends on your server who want to run the dungeons you want.

Many groups have their own teamspeak, vent or mumble set up and willing to let you use it when grouping with them as well. I have personally experienced this many times when working with pugs and its a great way to meet new players.

My suggestion, learn these dungeons as best you can, watch some videos if you need to, take notes, etc, and then offer to lead players through them. Everyone had to start new at some point in time, and sometimes a little patience and guidance can go a long way in strengthening your community.

Best of luck!

I’m not really complaining about the difficulty though, and I don’t mind pugging 1-2 people because as you said it’s nice to meet new people – it’s just that having a full pug group is often a pain, and it’s hard to learn the dungeon well if I can’t get my friends to want to come along and figure it out.

Flocking to the lower level dungeons wouldn’t really be too much of an issue – two reasons.
1) ANet has just implemented something that doesn’t let you grind the same dungeon path.
2) The lower level dungeons aren’t too much easier than the higher level ones anyway. There’s a slight gear advantage, but not everyone has it, especially if you’re taking lower level people in pugs. I mean, of course Arah is still going to be the hardest, but it doesn’t mean that the others aren’t difficult at all. I don’t really go to the low level dungeons anymore and so I don’t know if there’s a huge difference with better gear, but I don’t see it as a big issue.

@ Robin……….what??

Melon is suggesting a fix to allow people (specifically coordinated groups of friends, which Anet has designed explorable modes for [see the dev comments to confirm this statement]) to run a wide variety of Explorable dungeons with each other to achieve all their goals. It would allow them to see all the different content Anet has developed while still allowing them to get the gear/skins they want from the different vendors, rather than farming one specific dungeon for 1000+ tokens for the armors.

I fail to see the point of your post, though I’m really trying hard to connect the dots. I don’t understand what suggesting a universal token for everyone to use has to do with your best friend’s daughter deciding to spontaneously vomit in her shoes. Honestly.

I might add the requirement that a player must complete a minimum of one or two separate explore paths to get access to the armor set for that particular dungeon, combine this with your suggestion of merging the tokens and we encourage people to experience multiple dungeons, allowing for variety, and keeping the sets still actually tied to the dungeon they’re from.

Wraithcaller.2794:

I might add the requirement that a player must complete a minimum of one or two separate explore paths to get access to the armor set for that particular dungeon, combine this with your suggestion of merging the tokens and we encourage people to experience multiple dungeons, allowing for variety, and keeping the sets still actually tied to the dungeon they’re from.

That’s a good idea! I’m not sure how they would enforce that, though… perhaps put the NPCs that sell the armor somewhere inside the dungeon so that you have to clear up to them to be able to buy stuff?

They could just lock the armor vendors from selling you that specific set of armor, until you complete an achievement for the dungeon. Perhaps an achievement that requires you to complete each path at least once or something. Not sure if they have the ability to tie vendors to achievements though, but that’s my 2 cents.

Zadek.3460:

They could just lock the armor vendors from selling you that specific set of armor, until you complete an achievement for the dungeon. Perhaps an achievement that requires you to complete each path at least once or something. Not sure if they have the ability to tie vendors to achievements though, but that’s my 2 cents.

Added that to possible solutions in the first post, along with Yukishiro’s suggestion from their thread.

Hopefully some of these suggestions see the light of day soon, they’d make the end game content so much more enjoyable. And would be nice to hear a few more suggestions from other people too.

There’s some other people suggesting some similar ideas here.

With the reward changes, now you get less tokens now, which are now more difficult, and still not necessarily for the dungeon your wanting, and at least from my experience yesterday, on my FIRST time exploring a specific dungeon, the drops were by far worse then what I could have got just roaming around a typical map. The loot, and the chests, and the completion bonus, literally left me with a profit of mayyyyybe 3-5 silver for 2 hours of dungeon delving. So the next time my friend asks me to help him do that one…I’m going to suggest a rand pug unless he really needs my help. Was totally not worth it to me, but that is my own experience, that the reward did not at all pay for the time invested.