Guild Wars 2

What happened to the days where groups actually cleared dungeons as they progressied through them?

I don’t do a lot of instance running in GW2, perhaps only 20 times since game relase, but every experience has contained the following:

- avoiding mobs by the use of terrain

- attacking and eventually burning down bosses from strange places (underwater while boss is on docks, from edge of platform behind pillars, etc.)

- running through great numbers of trash mobs in order to get to remote portions of the dungeon (not always easy to do on every profession)

Everyone of the events above has happened in CM and AC, routinely. In many of the groups, most of us were new to the dungeon and we were being shown this or that procedure.

Does anyone every do a dungeon from start to finish without resorting to shenanigans?

Why is ANet designing their dungeons like this?

Even when some dungeon events can’t be avoided, you almost wish they could be.

Example: The kite fight in the room protecting Hodgins from the gravelings/skelks. I think I’d rather have my finger nails pulled out slowly with pliers. Kiting, ok not too bad but relying on an NPC to stay alive, that’s a bit of a running joke in GW2.

ANet’s traps and environmental interactivity adds a lot to the game, but this is largely spoiled by how players actually play the dungeons.

Players will always choose the path of least resistance unless some gain outweighs the desire for expediency.

“Generations” of GW2 players are learning to run the dungeons this way. The worrisome thing is, in many cases, I can’t always tell if it was in the designer’s intent or not.

I often wondered:

- Did they really want us attacking the boss from underwater while he is stuck up there?

- By standing on this wall and attacking flame turrets, is this how they designed it?

- We’re supposed to run though all these mobs without fighting them?

And sometimes, I think that the player expediency is more a haste makes waste type of situation.

The shortcuts like running through corridors and rooms of mobs is a really great way to have your group strung out and killed off one by one.

The boss fights take an eternity because it’s up to the last remaining group member to DPS the last curly-hair of health down. The boss was mostly, but not altogether successfully, blocked by dungeon terrain.

I wonder, what would the dungeon run be like if we (or the designers?) didn’t resort to such cheap tricks?

Every time I do a dungeon in GW2, I am reminded why I don’t do dungeons in GW2. Which is very strange because I love dungeons and grouping, been doing it in MMO’s for twelve years now, but something is just completely off to me in GW2’s dungeon system.

I wish ANet devs would run dungeons with some random pugs and let us know about it after the fact. I’d be very curious if the dungeon experience lives up to their expectations.

So, does anyone understand where I am coming from concerning dungeons?

Kuldebar.1897:

- running through great numbers of trash mobs in order to get to remote portions of the dungeon (not always easy to do on every profession)

running is easy on EVERY profession. and barely anyone clears trash because… thats exactly what it is; trash, its not worth the time it takes to clear it (- and in most cases players have already cleared it before and cba doing it again – because its not worth it); if something is to be done about it; it has to be Anet; rebalancing it so clearing is actually worth it

though i do wish some of the actual exploits were fixed much much faster (i stopped running CM because EVERY party wanted to exploit over the terrain); and invuln spots suck majorly; its just so boring… like before HK was fixed; standing on the stairs; i remember asking if we could fight it normally because stairs are boring, the reply was ‘you can go down on your own if you want’ – by which time he’d spawned a ton of adds (and doubtful that i could aoe/cleave them down as they spawned on my own anyway) and the breeders hadnt been cleared

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kuldebar.1897:

- running through great numbers of trash mobs in order to get to remote portions of the dungeon (not always easy to do on every profession)

running is easy on EVERY profession. and barely anyone clears trash because… thats exactly what it is; trash, its not worth the time it takes to clear it (- and in most cases players have already cleared it before and cba doing it again – because its not worth it); if something is to be done about it; it has to be Anet; rebalancing it so clearing is actually worth it

though i do wish some of the actual exploits were fixed much much faster (i stopped running CM because EVERY party wanted to exploit over the terrain); and invuln spots suck majorly; its just so boring… like before HK was fixed; standing on the stairs; i remember asking if we could fight it normally because stairs are boring, the reply was ‘you can go down on your own if you want’ – by which time he’d spawned a ton of adds (and doubtful that i could aoe/cleave them down as they spawned on my own anyway) and the breeders hadnt been cleared

Running with a Necro, using Warhorn #4 for speed through mobs which can knock you down and interrupt isn’t especially easy. Nor is it made any easier when you assume that everyone might not know where they are running to in the dungeon.

Skipping trash mobs, sure, every game does it but not to the degree it appears be done in GW2.

Thanks for your observations, besides a few details, you have noticed some of the same things.

You’re complaining about how other people want to play? I suggest you stop worrying about what other people want to do. If you would prefer to sit there and grind through trash mobs which have literally no purpose in the dungeon besides slowing you down, then start your own group and make it clear to people who join you that you want to waste everyone’s time for no reason what-so-ever.

I agree cheesing your way through a boss via exploit is dumb as I get a lot of joy from beating a boss properly, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to sit there and kill no-loot trash mobs for experience I don’t even need.

Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”. Run dungeon.

Dresden.1736:

If you would prefer to sit there and grind through trash mobs which have literally no purpose in the dungeon besides slowing you down, then start your own group and make it clear to people who join you that you want to waste everyone’s time for no reason what-so-ever.

You don’t see a problem in that? The gimmicks come in all varieties; the trash mob gauntlets just being one of them.

Dresden.1736:

I agree cheesing your way through a boss via exploit is dumb as I get a lot of joy from beating a boss properly, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to sit there and kill no-loot trash mobs for experience I don’t even need.

Fair enough, looks like we are mostly in agreement.

Players are short circuiting/bypassing content in dungeons because the content isn’t fun, it’s tedium.

This is coming from a person who hasn’t ran every dungeon 100 times, it’s fairly tedious from the very first run -which usually isn’t the case when experiencing new content.

mosspit.8936:

Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”. Run dungeon.

Not opposed to that idea, it’s being proactive, that could be a way to mitigate some of the things that perturb me, but not all.

Kuldebar.1897:

Not opposed to that idea, it’s being proactive, that could be a way to mitigate some of the things that perturb me, but not all.

This is to align the expectations of the party. It takes a little effort but it can potential save a lot of negativity so it is worth it. This coming from someone who run dungeons often and mainly skips trash. Remind the party of the circumstances in which the dungeon is run beforehand. Naturally that will also be the advice I’m giving for those who do not skip trash.

mosspit.8936:

Kuldebar.1897:

Not opposed to that idea, it’s being proactive, that could be a way to mitigate some of the things that perturb me, but not all.

This is to align the expectations of the party. It takes a little effort but it can potential save a lot of negativity so it is worth it. This coming from someone who run dungeons often and mainly skips trash. Remind the party of the circumstances in which the dungeon is run beforehand. Naturally that will also be the advice I’m giving for those who do not skip trash.

My only hesitation is that getting groups has already been difficult depending on the time and the dungeon so forth. On Crystal Desert, AC is rather popular, and I think CM would be the 2nd most popular -but of late there’s not always players queuing outside for them. (although Saturday night seemed to be an exception.)

Kuldebar.1897:

mosspit.8936:

Kuldebar.1897:

Not opposed to that idea, it’s being proactive, that could be a way to mitigate some of the things that perturb me, but not all.

This is to align the expectations of the party. It takes a little effort but it can potential save a lot of negativity so it is worth it. This coming from someone who run dungeons often and mainly skips trash. Remind the party of the circumstances in which the dungeon is run beforehand. Naturally that will also be the advice I’m giving for those who do not skip trash.

My only hesitation is that getting groups has already been difficult depending on the time and the dungeon so forth. On Crystal Desert, AC is rather popular, and I think CM would be the 2nd most popular -but of late there’s not always players queuing outside for them. (although Saturday night seemed to be an exception.)

CM is actually not popular. And it affects ppl who kills trash and skips trash. Dungeons are server independent and server diversity is actually better for dungeons with contested gates.

It is up to you to weigh the risk of creating a party under your own expectations and getting into a dungeon that is not popular.

Kuldebar.1897:

Running with a Necro, using Warhorn #4 for speed through mobs which can knock you down and interrupt isn’t especially easy. Nor is it made any easier when you assume that everyone might not know where they are running to in the dungeon.

spectral walk, death shroud, well of darkness, plague (if things get super hairy), reapers mark/chillblains behind you if youre already in combat, in some dungeons (well… TA) necro has an advantage over some other classes
- it may not be as easy as ele or thief; but its still easy

im always baffled when i encounter someone who cant run past mobs, its just dodge the things that try to hit you, cleanse if you get hit by cripple/chill immob and circle around groups

I find that it’s just a pain in the butt to report exploiters themselves— it’s just too much of a hassle; and half the time, they consciously don’t know they’re actually exploiting because “that’s how I learned how to do this dungeon”. Funny thing— I had a guildie admit that two nights ago was the first time he fought Mossman legitimately, and he ’s almost level 40.

So what I’ve been doing is taking pictures and video captures of the actual exploit itself, documenting on how it can be reproduced, and reporting that. So far, most of the exploits I have reported end up being patched in the next major content update. Does Anet ban those who actually exploit in dungeons? First hand experience, I can tell you that my guildmates never told me stories about getting banned for anything over their Mumble server, and half the time, they’re usually present in my video recordings. However, YMMV.

Aside from blatant exploits, there’s also the case of skipping mobs. It’s a controversial note that gets passed around these forums, but skipping (within reason), is legal to do. To what limit is probably what’s still in the air. The way I see it is that if it involves terrain exploitation (eg. The CM Mountain Climb and The Arah Boat Glitch), then it’s a red flag in my books. Otherwise, running past mobs using Swiftness boons, area stealth, and other abilities; and having their aggro resetting back to their original location is okay.

Personally, I find that if I’m around new people who aren’t familiar with the dungeon, I’ll just tell everyone to kill what’s in front of them, especially Arah where if you end up with a party-wipe somewhere, running back can be a royal pain in the butt. For experienced groups, or those who don’t mind skipping mobs, then I’ll skip with them … at least until we find that we’re struggling, then I’ll fall back to the previous point.

Overall, I think ArenaNet is still learning about the psychology of today’s dungeon runners as opposed to how it was like running missions in GW1. One key element introduced in GW2 is obviously the capability to jump. That means that players will find creative ways to utilize jumping to expedite their runs. Some MMOs I’ve played usually involved players wall-jumping to odd places in an attempt to speed up the completion of certain content. GW2 seems to encourage massive amounts of jumping, and even have a set of achievements just for “Jumping Puzzles”. Honestly, I’ve always wonder what these dungeons would be like if the mobs also learned how to jump.

If ArenaNet finds skipping to be a big problem (and I mean big), then they could bring back Vanquisher-style objectives to these dungeons. In case you haven’t played GW1, Vanquishing a zone meant scraping and combing through the entirety of a given zone and killing everything! Often times, it would award you with money and skill points. It might still work in GW2.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kuldebar.1897:

Running with a Necro, using Warhorn #4 for speed through mobs which can knock you down and interrupt isn’t especially easy. Nor is it made any easier when you assume that everyone might not know where they are running to in the dungeon.

spectral walk, death shroud, well of darkness, plague (if things get super hairy), reapers mark/chillblains behind you if youre already in combat, in some dungeons (well… TA) necro has an advantage over some other classes
- it may not be as easy as ele or thief; but its still easy

All those things don’t matter when you get knocked on your kitten or interrupted during the casting, additionally the idea is not to pull more mobs on you because that would increase the likelihood you will get knocked down and swarmed. We are not talking about running across a large room here, it’s the catacombs maze tunnel portion of the dungeon

No one is saying it’s impossible, just saying it’s stupid unfun and not a reason I’d want to group with people for such an experience.

If players go to such lengths arms to avoid content, I’d start questioning that “content”.

@Ari Kagura.9182

I don’t wholly blame the players, I consider the blame mostly to be on the very poor designs and dungeon flow. Yes, cheating in the sense of exploits, I think is serious but this is endemic, it’s institutionalized play styles for dungeon running.

I’d be hard pressed to run these dungeons without relying on what I have learned from experienced players having never did it any other way.

Nor do I desire to, it’s not gratifying.

Kuldebar.1897:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kuldebar.1897:

Running with a Necro, using Warhorn #4 for speed through mobs which can knock you down and interrupt isn’t especially easy. Nor is it made any easier when you assume that everyone might not know where they are running to in the dungeon.

spectral walk, death shroud, well of darkness, plague (if things get super hairy), reapers mark/chillblains behind you if youre already in combat, in some dungeons (well… TA) necro has an advantage over some other classes
- it may not be as easy as ele or thief; but its still easy

All those things don’t matter when you get knocked on your kitten or interrupted during the casting, additionally the idea is not to pull more mobs on you because that would increase the likelihood you will get knocked down and swarmed. We are not talking about running across a large room here, it’s the catacombs maze tunnel portion of the dungeon

No one is saying it’s impossible, just saying it’s stupid unfun and not a reason I’d want to group with people for such an experience.

If players go to such lengths arms to avoid content, I’d start questioning that “content”.

everything that tries to knock you down at range is visible though… TA knight have visible leap (if someone jumped at you like that IRL wouldnt you try to dodge out the way?) scavengers have a very visible animation, icebrood wolves… well… just dont get close to them (simples)

my necro skillbar for running is

-staff skills- consume conditions, well of darkness, spectral walk, spectral armour and plague (though i rarely use anything other than spectral walk/consume conditions)

well of darkness doesnt cause damage; so wont put you in combat
spectral walk is for swiftness, though if you’re less confident about your ability to dodge then maybe its better saving it to break a stun
spectral armour is a stun break and protection as an ‘OH kitten’ skill
plague is your ‘OH kitten’ skill if spectral armour failed at saving you
consume conditions to cure any form of snare
deathshroud is another ‘OH kitten’ button (which if youve used spectral armour and taken a few hits youll have atleast a tiny bit of life force)

reapers mark/chillblains are only if youve already entered combat (by something htting you) to put some distance between you and whatever is chasing you

Aha, this thread again. Just stop, make your own group and your own rules problem solved. There are like a million of such threads already.

Maybe i should start a thread about people who complain about things that can be solved by making their own groups?

trash mobs are often harder than bosses and they take too long to kill.

i just want my tokens so i can leave.

mosspit.8936:

Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”. Run dungeon.

You mean:
Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”.
+lfg for about 1-4 hours; depending on dungeon.
Run dungeon.

Jaga.2084:

mosspit.8936:

Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”. Run dungeon.

You mean:
Create a group under the premise of “newcomers welcome”, “no exploits”, “no skipping”.
+lfg for about 1-4 hours; depending on dungeon.
Run dungeon.

The more detailed and demanding your requirements for your group, the longer you have to search/wait. If I wanna skip trash and put in alot of other requirements, it is gonna take longer to find groups too.

It all gonna depend what you value more. Have a tighter grip of the expectations of the group. Or have a bigger variance on it and shorter waiting time.

Using map features for exploits – yeah this a bad feature of GW2. It’s not a new problem in MMOs and I don’t know why dungeons/mobs/skills were designed with loopholes to allow this. So first responsibility lies with the designers. But I also just don’t understand the the players. Time spent in MMOs is meant to be fun. If you don’t think it’s fun to fight these boss mobs without exploits then just why are you playing the game? The barter tokens and in game stuff is just not worth your time if you’d rather not spend your time within a dungeon doing dungeon activities.

Skipping I see as a risk vs reward issue. The thing you are risking and getting as a reward is your time. You are rewarded by spending less time if you skip well. You risk a lot of time if you skip badly. It’s a player decision and I think designers allow it on purpose. I don’t like skipping much since it does favor experienced players too heavily and there already seems to be a big gap between how difficult dungeons are for beginners compared to experienced players.

“If your not cheating your not trying.” Your doing what ever it takes to get the most accomplished in the amount of time you have. If designers want trash mobs cleared they need to give them real rewards – and make MF effect the drops, when trash groups drop a yellow or 2 each group it will make sense to find efficient ways to kill them rather then skip them. While this can cause problems with trash farming you can counter this by making it only the trash behind “gate” bosses. Another method is 2 part trash drops that would need to be combined with mob drops to be of real value (ie. boss drops necklace missing 3 jewels, 3 different groups of trash have a chance to drop 1 of the jewels, mystic forge and blamo.)
I never try to “cheat,” i only try to win. Designers of MMOs should know by now players will seek any method possible to beat the time/reward meta. They need to either add loot or put in hard counters (ie bosses that call for trash mobs to help,) to stop this natural result of players seeking to maximize their play time dungeons. Until they do you can blame players for playing the game in front of them.

I completely agree with OP. If only the bosses are considered to be the challenge of a dungeon, then in my opinion, it is broken. It is not supposed to be easy to go and just grab tokens. And then people complain when they have gotten their armor set and say there is not enough end game content…

I felt sick when someone showed me how to let two bosses fight each other in AC. What’s the fun in that when you don’t even play the boss fights properly?

I see some people say they should be able to play the game the way they want. And that is fine with me, but I think it is wrong to expect to be rewarded for minimal efforts.

Ballads.2509:

“If your not cheating your not trying.” Your doing what ever it takes to get the most accomplished in the amount of time you have. If designers want trash mobs cleared they need to give them real rewards – and make MF effect the drops, when trash groups drop a yellow or 2 each group it will make sense to find efficient ways to kill them rather then skip them. While this can cause problems with trash farming you can counter this by making it only the trash behind “gate” bosses. Another method is 2 part trash drops that would need to be combined with mob drops to be of real value (ie. boss drops necklace missing 3 jewels, 3 different groups of trash have a chance to drop 1 of the jewels, mystic forge and blamo.)
I never try to “cheat,” i only try to win. Designers of MMOs should know by now players will seek any method possible to beat the time/reward meta. They need to either add loot or put in hard counters (ie bosses that call for trash mobs to help,) to stop this natural result of players seeking to maximize their play time dungeons. Until they do you can blame players for playing the game in front of them.

I completely disagree. Trash mobs shouldn’t have as good drops as bosses and it is working ok already. If anything they could be dropping special crafting materials for dungeon specific craftable armor/weapon sets. Instead I think the mobs should be made nearly unpassable unless killed. Maybe a couple could be skipped with clever tactics, but a whole dungeon is just wrong in my opinion.

Kuldebar.1897:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kuldebar.1897:

Running with a Necro, using Warhorn #4 for speed through mobs which can knock you down and interrupt isn’t especially easy. Nor is it made any easier when you assume that everyone might not know where they are running to in the dungeon.

spectral walk, death shroud, well of darkness, plague (if things get super hairy), reapers mark/chillblains behind you if youre already in combat, in some dungeons (well… TA) necro has an advantage over some other classes
- it may not be as easy as ele or thief; but its still easy

All those things don’t matter when you get knocked on your kitten or interrupted during the casting, additionally the idea is not to pull more mobs on you because that would increase the likelihood you will get knocked down and swarmed. We are not talking about running across a large room here, it’s the catacombs maze tunnel portion of the dungeon

No one is saying it’s impossible, just saying it’s stupid unfun and not a reason I’d want to group with people for such an experience.

If players go to such lengths arms to avoid content, I’d start questioning that “content”.

Problem with what you are asking is that not many people want to do a full dungeon run which can take an hour at least when they know it can be completed within 15 minutes which is also less painful.

Another suggestion at the moment apart from making your own group for dungeon runs is to make your own personal contact list of people are of the same mind with you. Quicker to start a run that way then waiting for a hit from the lfg site.

A little off – topic but i think you are referring to the gravelings knockdowns in AC but
spectral walk and plague provide a necro with stability, and the cast time is immediate.

Points are:

First, the game design allows them do be skipped in first place. If there were some kind of gate that opened just when all mobs were dead, this would never happen.

Second, the so called “trash mobs” can be considered trash, only when you talking about what they drop. Apart from this, they are much, much stronger than most of the veteran mobs in the game. So trying to kill them all, takes too much time, is riskier, more expensive and not fun, and just to get merch food.

So why would anyone care about them?

Possible solutions:

- nerf them down, so becomes fun and quick to mop the ground with them, or..

- add incentives, to say, more tokens, when all the mobs are killed, or, completely get rid of normal drops in dungeons, making all critters drop 1 token each.

Possible arrow-in- the-knee solution:

-Add gates everywhere that open only when all the monsters of the room are down. Dont give anything in return to the players.

Make your own group specifying how you wany the dungeon played. Also go to the guild subsection and search skipping skip. You should turn up a guild or two that have a nonskip policy. You have a different goal then the skippers and you and they can only agree to disagree. Personally I blame legendaries, precursers, and possibly gold farmers.

I can fully understand Mossman cheap tactic killing him to the extent I disgust at debility of legit way of killing lvl40+ fractals. He goes invisibility and can stay that way well over minute if he has aggro on you and you are good at running away. Happaned to me many times, he aggroes on for long periods of times and i run away, to not to get killed, and so whole party just pointlessly jogs around killing wolfs and on being on toes to not to get downed by his agony. Then there is his way of trigering invis, he can go invis at any time in middle of any action he is doing, bam… he disapears, way too often if you ask me. And ofcourse his insane amount of hp comparable to the amount of dmg you can do to him while he is visible to you. I can easily imagine those fights with mossamn taking so long in lvl 50+ that you have to question many things regarding sanity of creators behind that boss event, that fractal turns from short fun fractal to boring time sink AND there is no reward behind it, it can take 30+ minute without good loot to balance it.

SanityAssassin.8795:

If anything they could be dropping special crafting materials for dungeon specific craftable armor/weapon sets.

would love to see that

SanityAssassin.8795:

I see some people say they should be able to play the game the way they want. And that is fine with me, but I think it is wrong to expect to be rewarded for minimal efforts.

As of now, the baseline requirements for all dungeons is to kill compulsory mobs, do events and kill bosses to reach completion and be rewarded as such. Anything you do above and beyond this and how you do it is up to you. If you kill trash, you will get the loot as opposed to someone who skips it. That is your additional reward.

every class can run through trash, some classes have it easier than others. necro for example has it super easy, with stability on demand (cd only ~10 secs), several stunbreakers and ways to get mobs off your back.
the problem most people have is they don’t know what their class is capable of or don’t take the time to switch skills on the run to prepare for different situations. if you fall into this category, please say so if you join a pug. otherwise people will assume you know what a stunbreaker is and when to use it, as it’s generally considered basic knowledge. I prefer clearing a few unnecessary mobs instead of waiting several deaths of a player who just can’t dodge the very prominent red circles on the ground. but I will not start clearing trash just for fun if people don’t ask for it. if you need help, ask for it, don’t expect players to just clear all the trash in a dungeon because you prefer it that way.

Once you’ve ran a dungeon a few times, most people don’t generally retain an interest in killing absolutely everything. They’re not doing it for the content but the reward at the end.

The Champion dog at the start of CoE is a good example of why people skip. It’s not challenging, it’s just a time sink that will reward you with 1-2 under leveled blue pieces. Mix that with say running the dungeon with a sub-optimal group and it becomes a massive time sink for no real reward.

If you want to kill everything every single time, make your own groups with those out lines. Don’t try and force other people to kill stuff that is boring, not challenging, lacks reward and takes to long.

>Don’t try and force other people to kill stuff that is boring, not challenging, lacks reward and takes to long.

That would appear to be ANet’s job, and yes I understand that players like boiling everything down to the bare elements stripping away all that “crap fluff of lore, setting and ambiance” and extruding the game into a stick figured blur of expedient tasks and soulless blather.

And, we wonder why.

the easy solution is just make the trash never breaking aggro and follow you even down hill or in the water.

then people will actually stop to kill trash packs.

on the other hand, such cheap trick on itself will not bring Anet many fans.

they should reward such activity nor coerce it.
I suggested in a different thread to make a kill counter for dungeons and add a reward % (dungeon tokens, karma and XP) for each threshold passed. 75% of the mobs 5% increase, 90% of the mobs 10% increase etc…

My opinion-

-An idea of mine is- Put less HP in trashmobs but add more trash Mobs- (GW1 DOA style.) Killing fast then relies more on skilful pulls and group synergy than just burning down HP. (Probably good reasons why they haven’t done this, but just a thought of mine)

-Add meaningful drops to them, not trash blues/whites and greens. How about some money? Or some skins? Give them a real chance to drop something so people are motivated to kill them.

- Boss mechanics- these are probably getting a rework, I quite like the new AC boss fights, my only issue being the path where the entire fight relies on the NPC warmaster grast. Relying on an NPC is a big no no.

ATM – once you’ve got your dungeon gear sets and your legendary- no real reason to return to dungeons. I believe more skins should be added to the game to motivate people, and it would be wonderful if the way to attain a bunch of them, was through killing trash mobs in dungeons or achieving extra goals (kinda like the bonus in GW1 missions).

I also believe that open world is still quite empty, many many zones are pretty much dead, and they are beautiful and stunning landscapes and places to be.. but there’s nothing to do, and nothing to lure people there. It would be great if new skins incorporated into the game we also used to lure people out into dead areas.

There will always be a way to optimize runs in terms of risk vs rewards and/or time vs rewards based on what changes are implemented. And someone else might get kitten off.

RNG based dungeon loot has already been implemented in terms of trinket recipes. And imo it was a bad idea in the same way precursors are handled. Bad idea as it is bad RNG. And this is coming someone who HAS successfully looted a recipe and made some profits off it.

Kuldebar.1897:

What happened to the days where groups actually cleared dungeons as they progressied through them?

So, does anyone understand where I am coming from concerning dungeons?

I do, brother… Players are deprived of the joys of a REAL dungeon crawl in a lot of these games. The days of exploring every room, secret door, hatch and wall panel thorough a labyrinthine environment with unexpected dangers around the corner are virtually gone…

Good times…

carabidus.6214:

Kuldebar.1897:

What happened to the days where groups actually cleared dungeons as they progressied through them?

So, does anyone understand where I am coming from concerning dungeons?

I do, brother… Players are deprived of the joys of a REAL dungeon crawl in a lot of these games. The days of exploring every room, secret door, hatch and wall panel thorough a labyrinthine environment with unexpected dangers around the corner are virtually gone…

Good times…

1st Time through dungeon – Sure! Naturally.
10th Time – I guess…
100th Time – errmmm…..

I do, brother… Players are deprived of the joys of a REAL dungeon crawl in a lot of these games. The days of exploring every room, secret door, hatch and wall panel thorough a labyrinthine environment with unexpected dangers around the corner are virtually gone… Good times…

Thats what all dungeons should be – really – about. Entering a dark place, exploring every crevice, finding some good loot, and leaving behind a big fat trail of corpses..

GW2 current design promotes, almost in a mandatory way, skipping.

Agrios.1957:

I do, brother… Players are deprived of the joys of a REAL dungeon crawl in a lot of these games. The days of exploring every room, secret door, hatch and wall panel thorough a labyrinthine environment with unexpected dangers around the corner are virtually gone… Good times…

Thats what all dungeons should be – really – about. Entering a dark place, exploring every crevice, finding some good loot, and leaving behind a big fat trail of corpses..

GW2 current design promotes, almost in a mandatory way, skipping.

Since you have a notion of how dungeons should to you, find like-minded ppl to run dungeons like you want. You say it’s “almost-mandatory”, I say there is a choice.

My main skill for running is “Don’t be the first one to run”. Then the first guy gets all the aggro and I get to run behind him free and clear.

But seriously, I really prefer doing a dungeon legitimately, especially the first time. Every time someone says “Run by” I groan. Every time someone says “Skip by this boss” I get upset over the loss of a waypoint and loot. Every time someone says “Stack here” I sigh. I know people focus on speed and efficiency over completion but come on….

For the most part I tend to just silently follow… though sometimes I suggest fighting anyway or do something slightly different.

mosspit.8936:

Since you have a notion of how dungeons should to you, find like-minded ppl to run dungeons like you want. You say it’s “almost-mandatory”, I say there is a choice.

But is a bad choice, because, as already stated thousands of times:

- trash mobs are not fun (they have loads of HP and damage, cheap CC), and fighting lots of them its dangerous, take too much time, and..what we get in return? Merch food.

Since I believe no human being has infinite time at his disposal, everyone of us will try to get as much as he can from a given period. Efficiency matters.

So, if trash mobs had less HP, so they could be dispatched without loosing the pace and/or give us something in return them..we would have a choice:

- Quick and fun, but less profitable

- Not-so quick, equally fun, but more rewarding.

Right now the so called choices are:

- Boring, long and with no sensible gain (u get tokens only in completion, mobs drop kitten)
- Do the most efficient path, fighting the smaller number of mobs possible so we can get our tokens and GTHO.

If you like to clear the dungs, as they are now, yes its a choice, but a poor one imho..

My solution:
- Lower stats and HP on trash mobs, make all of them drop 1 token (30-50% chance) on death.

Lets see if the playerbase will not promote pixel-massacre in instances..

Agrios.1957:

mosspit.8936:

Since you have a notion of how dungeons should to you, find like-minded ppl to run dungeons like you want. You say it’s “almost-mandatory”, I say there is a choice.

But is a bad choice, because, as already stated thousands of times:

- trash mobs are not fun (they have loads of HP and damage, cheap CC), and fighting lots of them its dangerous, take too much time, and..what we get in return? Merch food.

Since I believe no human being has infinite time at his disposal, everyone of will try to get as much as he can from a given period. Efficiency matters.

So, if trash mobs had less HP, so they could be dispatched without loosing the pace and/or give us something in return them..we would have a choice:

- Quick and fun, but less profitable

- Not-so quick, equally fun, but more rewarding.

Right now the so called choices are:

- Boring, long and with no sensible gain (u get tokens only in completion, mobs drop kitten)
- Do the most efficient path, fighting the smaller number of mobs possible so we can get our tokens and GTHO.

If you like to clear the dungs, as they are now, yes its a choice, but a poor one imho..

Then it depends what you value more: your time or the notion of how you think dungeons should be.

mosspit.8936:

Then it depends what you value more: your time or the notion of how you think dungeons should be.

That’s a weak and cheap trash answer.

The game itself is optional, so let’s put that matter aside because it fails to acknowledge that there is a party involved in this relationship that has the power to change the situation.

It’s not the player, they can only choose to walk away; but ANet has the power to adapt their game in order to make it more appealing without going against any of their core game concepts.

I am beginning to find GW2 to be a very “dry” experience as a player. ANet has a bad habit of taking away or proscribing player choice within their game. Even when player choice is allowed to remain, it is in such a narrowly defined field that it matters little to the outcome.

The dungeons show this proscription in their design:

- oh, you want to skip the boring parts/non-rewarding parts? Why not, it’s all about playing your way!

Giving players a choice to bypass crappy content isn’t a great design feature, it’s a surrender to failure.

ANet, why are players wanting to skip content?

Hey Kuldebar – although I don’t agree with many of your points – particularly with trash mobs and terrain use – I see your POV. I only minorly disagree with terrain tanking a boss (engies, rangers, and eles benefit from being smart about terrain placement).

I’d like to play your advocate here and suggest ways ANET can fix them.

Trash mobs in dungeons – Yes they are harder to kill than vets and give little to no loot. To solve this issue ANET can award tokens at the end of a dungeon run based on what events the group did, how many mobs were killed by each player ect. This would be amazing in that the more you kill the more tokens you get. I’d say a full clear should award around 120-200 tokens, where as a bare minimum should award 20 tokens. Bringing in a “dungeon reward counter” could help, with each point corresponding to 1 additional token above the base 20, optional events giving 10-20 more points, trash mobs giving 1-5 points per clear. This will also help stem the “kick at last minute” issue where some guilds kick PUGs for thier guild mates (it will reduce the guildies’ rewards to a minimum, or nothing at all depending on the counter system).

Trash mobs being terrain tanked – Terrain is very very important in an open world environment for ranged characters or high CD summoning classes (such as engies). To solve the issue where an entire team can use a simple rock they jump up on to avoid melee mobs ANET could make the mobs first regen and then camp where the players are at (with the invuln tag on them so the players can’t kill them). If the mobs are engaged in player to mob fighting (not NPC / turret / pet / summon) then they will maintain the ability to take damage.

Bosses being terrain tanked – Some dungeons allow you to use a wall to block Line of sight attacks from bosses which in turn reduces the damage your team takes. Others have small rocks which you can jump onto from above or below which the boss can’t access. ANET could solve this in the same way as suggested above for trash mobs being terrian tanked. Additionally to deter use of walls ANET can make the boss melee a bit bigger or ignore walls as well.

For all terrain points I’d temper it with the ability for players to reach invuln ledges so that the main classes which benefit from them have more options to fight – I’d hate to tell rangers eles and engies off to “L2P” when ledges and ranged is a viable strategy in both game and RL.

the dungeons in this game are really poorly designed. It’s a shame that they dont actually have to be cleared and have pretty much 0 meaningful rewards. I got really bored of the no challenge, stale fight mechanics, and skip everything mentality the game has fallen into.

Kuldebar.1897:

mosspit.8936:

Then it depends what you value more: your time or the notion of how you think dungeons should be.

That’s a weak and cheap trash answer.

The game itself is optional, so let’s put that matter aside because it fails to acknowledge that there is a party involved in this relationship that has the power to change the situation.

It’s not the player, they can only choose to walk away; but ANet has the power to adapt their game in order to make it more appealing without going against any of their core game concepts.

I am beginning to find GW2 to be a very “dry” experience as a player. ANet has a bad habit of taking away or proscribing player choice within their game. Even when player choice is allowed to remain, it is in such a narrowly defined field that it matters little to the outcome.

The dungeons show this proscription in their design:

- oh, you want to skip the boring parts/non-rewarding parts? Why not, it’s all about playing your way!

Giving players a choice to bypass crappy content isn’t a great design feature, it’s a surrender to failure.

ANet, why are players wanting to skip content?

Lol it is not weak and cheap. It is a throwback to the time vs reward and/or risk vs reward balance. And I didn’t actually decide it that way. It is the state of the game as of now and I am saying as it is.

If you run dungeons enough, the exploratory and RP aspect of the dungeons dies down unless new content is added. Some will move on. Others who treats dungeons as an acceptable way to gain in-game wealth, the reward aspect of gameplay will come in. Even ppl who are bored with dungeons will do things like solo. But I digress for the solo part.

I have no fixed notion of how dungeons should be for most parts. The exploratory and RP aspect existed for me. But it died down after multiple runs. I know my point of the whole risk-and-time vs reward in which I’m comfortable with. So much so if ANet decides to make changes, the decision point will not change for me and I will adjust the way I run dungeons as such.

I am just saying you find your own decision point. If you still hold on to the notion of how dungeons should be for you, then it is your choice but at the same time you also need to weigh out what is important to you. And the problem that help blow this up is ppl forming parties with different expectations. In the end, you look to developers to change the way the game is that will impact others. The kicker is no one is stopping you from playing dungeons the way you want since the choice exists. You just want others to play the same way you do.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Kuldebar.1897:

- running through great numbers of trash mobs in order to get to remote portions of the dungeon (not always easy to do on every profession)

running is easy on EVERY profession.

That’s nonsense. Some professions and builds require a great deal of skill to complete a run due to being a glass cannon, having limited options to heal or remove condition and without access to a large amount of swiftness or a speed signet. Other runs becoming far harder for people without access stability (a lot of the TA runs are like this) and can be failed simply due to bad luck if you don’t have the right boons and durability or stealth. It’s not fair to say running is easy on every profession, it’s not and there are some professions (guardians being at the top of the list due to multiple heals, protective boons, high up time on swiftness, aegis preventing you from going into combat – necros will do this with their swiftness skill, not to mention one of the best on demand stun breakers and sources of stability) which will find running much easier.

The risks can be minimised a great deal on all classes through careful selection of traits or skills, but a lot of classes won’t be able to accommodate this in their normal dungeon build and swapping out skills and traits isn’t always ideal (cooldowns and time/effort when you consider skipping is an efficiency thing).

Personally I’m in favour of making every boss required and leashing dungeon mobs like they do in WoW so that they don’t lose aggro. I’m sick of people skipping mobs, I’m sick of not getting to fight Kholer (and have parties learn the basics of dungeon boss encounters from him), I’m sick of waiting 10 minutes longer because people skipped the wolves at the beginning in TA and that one dude can’t make it past and we sit around waiting for him to arrive. Then we fight the wolves after the bubble room and the group has no clue how to make the fight simple and easy because they never do it.

I don’t play GW2 to run past stuff. I don’t play GW2 to learn how to platform or avoid mobs like some kind of Mario Brothers speed run. I join dungeon groups to fight mobs, to complete content in a group as part of a team. Skipping offers me none of the things I want out of group content. It actually takes away from what I want out of group content and I believe the game and the dungeon community are worse off because of it.

Simple things like CC skills (the wolves are very easy to handle if your party uses AoE skills and CC skills such as Barrage, Frozen Ground, Static Field, Unsteady Ground etc) or even calling and focusing targets. Other skills such as a guardian using greatsword five to bunch of mobs so AoE can hit them all (and so they aren’t focused on the rest of the party) all these kinds of gameplay tricks which I find incredibly rewarding are being completely bypassed by most parties.This is the kind of stuff I play dungeon content for (and most of it isn’t anywhere near as viable during boss encounters) and people are removing it from the game by skipping stuff.

I think the game suffers with a skipping meta, I know the devs want to be innovative, but I think this is one area where the old way of doing things (perma leashing) is superior (the cost of not having it isn’t worth what you get from it). The other problems (is it worth killing them) can still be solved in addition to perma leashing. Unless the trash comes close to dropping boss like loot, people are going to skip them, you can make them less of a pain to kill and make them required to kill at the same time. Boost overall dungeon loot to compensate (honestly, sitting AFK at an open world boss is far more profitable in terms of time and effort vs reward than dungeon crawling these days).

Skipping is a blight on the community and it cheapens dungeons overall.

Join parties that do not skip content?

Guys, stop complaining, start suggesting. Posting here to rage about meta is very ineffective and a waste of everyones time.

WE as gamers should be coming up with some solutions as to solve issues we see in game-play.

So again since no one likes to read my long text – I will summarize.

Dungeon awards should take in effect events and trash mobs killed and reward more tokens for doing them.

Tanking anything on terrain not reachable by bosses or mobs should make the mobs camp at thier current spot invuln and regened until aggroed by a player who can be reached.

Shiren.9532:

-snip-

no; it most certainly isnt nonsense; if a player is having trouble skipping its because they suck at skipping, and the only way i can understand that is if the player has no ingame spacial awareness of mobs, is blind to any windups and/or sucks so bad at dodging (ive actually seen people who try to run and seem completely oblivious to the dodge function)

ive ran effectively on 7/8 professions (though i dont see why engi would be hard)
2 of those (thief and guard) ive ran past the hounds, blossoms (which are alot more annoying on a level 20) and husks in ta 20+ levels underlevel; and on a particularily early swap i managed to get my guard to fiona (i think thats her name; icr) before the group finished killing the boss