Guild Wars 2

idk about you guys but lately there have been so many people advertising in LFG tools selling p2 Arah for 4-6g. imo this is not gonna be a very healthy thing for the community, and Anet should intervene. What do you guys think?

What I have read depending on who you ask its not aloud but is aloud. There have been offical anet post that contradict each other. I guess what it boils down to is you hope the gm that reviews the ticket see’s it as a issue. This way you dont get dinged for sending in false reports.

I do agree that selling dungeon’s spots is bad for the community as a hole. I also think the current ad-hoc system that is dungeon finder and dungon instance system is broken and not really repairable in its current state.

Selling “runs” was done in Guild Wars 1 all the time. I don’t think Anet would be in principle against it for that reason.

Obviously if someone is kicking people to have a spot to sell, that should be a bannable offense.

I wrote in a while ago and asked them to clear up the contradictions. It got bumped up the chain to Gaile.

Thanks for pointing out that we seemed to have had a bit of miscommunication about offering “runs” as a service in the game. I can tell you that runs are not disallowed if they do not in some other way form a breach of the User Agreement or Rules of Conduct. We consider such an offer a form of a “gentleman’s agreement” where two parties agree to a specific service for an agreed sum in in-game currency (or in-game items, as the parties decide).

Naturally, if the run itself involves the use of an exploit, that service is strictly and fully disallowed. (And of course we want to hear about any exploiters.) Runs for real-world money or goods are, likewise, strictly prohibited. And if the service ends in a disputed situation — for instance, someone offers a run and then leaves the party, or offers to pay and then declines to do so — then we may take action against a scammer, if an agent is able to confirm what took place. But because the service is a gentleman’s agreement, we do not get in the middle of repayments, re-dos of the run, etc.

Thank you for asking about this. I’ve written and circulated an internal e-mail so that all team members are clear about our policy on this.

Regards,

Gaile Gray
Support Liaison
ArenaNet

TLDR – It’s fine as long as no exploits were used.

Personally, I don’t like it. If you’re just going to pay someone to do content for you, why are you even playing the game? It just reminds me of those guys who pay gold farmers to level up their characters.

And ANet doesn’t really like it either, from past experience. They dislike speed-running (and running in general), given that they attempted several times to stop UW speed clears and other such tactics. However, their fixes only succeeded in making the content hard enough that normal groups stopped trying altogether, leaving the runners and other gimmicky groups the only reliable way to beat the content.

The only other solution is to make the content easy enough to do that even mediocre groups can complete it with some effort. (And honestly, if they go down that route, they should just re-allow res-rushing in dungeons. Would be a simple fix; just throw enough bodies at the problem until it stops being a problem.)

But in the meantime? Yeah, as long as no exploits were used, you’re fine to take runs. You won’t run any risk of being banned for doing it.

Let me make an analogy.

Zaxares.5419:

Personally, I don’t like it. If you’re just going to pay someone to drive you around town, why do you even own a car? It just reminds me of those guys who pay people to fix their cars.

See how that makes no sense at all? Paying a taxi driver when you don’t have a car doesn’t mean that you can’t own a car and drive it on your own time.

Zaxares.5419:

And ANet doesn’t really like it either, from past experience. They dislike speed-running (and running in general), given that they attempted several times to stop UW speed clears and other such tactics. However, their fixes only succeeded in making the content hard enough that normal groups stopped trying altogether, leaving the runners and other gimmicky groups the only reliable way to beat the content.

I don’t see how solo/duo’ing paths and selling them is related to speedclears at all.

But they never said they don’t like path selling. Especially not in GW1, where there was an entire town dedicated to it (Doomlore Shrine) for dungeon runs. Not to mention, I started a 5man DoA service in GW1 once and we had to shut it down because we had so many customers that we couldn’t keep up with them and we barely got time to do casual runs anymore. The money we made doing it was sweet, but it just became stressful at some point.

Also, the fix to UW had absolutely nothing to do with running people. It had to do with the fact that 7-8min UW was totally broken. And the funniest part was how the people crying for SC nerfs were the ones who weren’t able to complete UW after the change.

Zaxares.5419:

The only other solution is to make the content easy enough to do that even mediocre groups can complete it with some effort. (And honestly, if they go down that route, they should just re-allow res-rushing in dungeons. Would be a simple fix; just throw enough bodies at the problem until it stops being a problem.)

No, that’s not a solution, that’s just making the problem worse. One of the reasons why people pay for Arah runs is because they need the tokens but because PUGs are bad, or they know they are bad themselves and can’t complete the content, or it will take them a long time. So they just pay someone else to do it. Making content even easier is just going to enhance that problem.

The average GW2 player base is already terrible at the game because the game doesn’t promote skilled gameplay. When running around a map spamming your autoattack running any throw-on trash build you can come up with is more rewarding than PUGing dungeons and about equally rewarding to running dungeons in an organized group setting, there is no incentive to become a better player. Which is why most people in this game are so bad at it.

Dungeons were meant for organized groups, not for everyday joes. They are easy enough so every day joes can complete them, but they’re going to have a harder time doing so.

Zaxares.5419:

The only other solution is to make the content easy enough to do that even mediocre groups can complete it with some effort. (And honestly, if they go down that route, they should just re-allow res-rushing in dungeons. Would be a simple fix; just throw enough bodies at the problem until it stops being a problem.)

Great idea! I could stop trying to finish writing arah guide in my signature.

The concept alone is perfectly justifiable, but unless they find a way to police this better, I fail to see any reason for them to allow it. Especially when they only make it MORE difficult on the guy getting screwed by needlessly wiping all party chat once you are removed from the group. If anything, they are only supporting this bad behavior by not only turning a blind eye, but giving them the tools to do it by reducing the risk of repercussion.

Bright.9160:

Zaxares.5419:

Personally, I don’t like it. If you’re just going to pay someone to drive you around town, why do you even own a car? It just reminds me of those guys who pay people to fix their cars.

See how that makes no sense at all? Paying a taxi driver when you don’t have a car doesn’t mean that you can’t own a car and drive it on your own time.

Well, if you WERE going to pay someone to drive you around, why DO you own a car? It would just be a waste of money.

Besides, the analogy doesn’t match. You buy a game to play it for the experience. Buying a game and then paying someone to play the game for you defeats that purpose. (And because I know the counter-argument that’s coming is that some people do dungeons to get the dungeon gear, then I say allow dungeon gear to be sold on the TP if you want the look, but don’t like doing dungeons.)

Bright.9160:

I don’t see how solo/duo’ing paths and selling them is related to speedclears at all.

Solo/duo’ing paths and selling runs are two entirely separate things. My post above deals only with the latter. I have no issue with players who like solo’ing content; if they are capable of doing so, all the more power to them. I applaud them for their skill (provided they aren’t using exploits, of course).

However, selling runs is effectively speedclearing. To quote ANet’s reason for attempting to stop speedclears: “we dislike our end-game content being trivialised”. Is that not what selling runs is?

Bright.9160:

But they never said they don’t like path selling. Especially not in GW1, where there was an entire town dedicated to it (Doomlore Shrine) for dungeon runs.

I expect that ANet didn’t take action at that point because GW1 was nearing their end of its lifecycle. GW2 was already well into development; there was no point in pouring more resources into attempting to fix something that players would just find a way to get around again (as shown by UW).

Bright.9160:

Also, the fix to UW had absolutely nothing to do with running people. It had to do with the fact that 7-8min UW was totally broken. And the funniest part was how the people crying for SC nerfs were the ones who weren’t able to complete UW after the change.

Again, it was an attempt to fix speedclears. Which in itself was trying to stop “end-game content being trivialised”. And like I said in my original post, their solution didn’t fix the problem because it did not address the core issue of most players being unable to complete it without resorting to gimmicky builds. It went like this:

1. UW is hard, end-game content. Tough, but doable by standard PUGs if they are decent and know what to do.
2. Players discover a way to farm UW using 55 monks and SS necros. Everybody swarms to this new method because it’s faster and easier.
3. ANet attempts to fix this by making UW harder. They achieve some success, but less-skilled players can no longer complete UW normally.
4. New UW farming methods are discovered. Everybody swarms to this new method, including the previous normal players because they can no longer complete UW.
5. ANet makes UW harder again. Normal players now cannot complete UW at all without using gimmicky builds (which ironically are partially based off the speedclear builds).
6. The farmers find yet more ways around the farm blocks.
7. ANet gives up, leaving speedclears as the only viable way for PUGs to complete UW.

It’s a vicious cycle that just made it worse for normal players each time. What ANet should have done is addressed the core reason of why people were farming UW in the first place, which was that it was one of the best places to earn money.

You can see this happening right now in GW2 too. There’s non-stop zerg trains farming the Champions in Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound. Why? Because it’s one of the easiest and quickest way to earn money. Players automatically gravitate to whatever is the quickest and easiest way of achieving their goals. If ANet wants to avoid that, they need to spread out the rewards enough so that there are many avenues to achieve a player’s end goals, all of which are more or less equal.

Bright.9160:

No, that’s not a solution, that’s just making the problem worse. One of the reasons why people pay for Arah runs is because they need the tokens but because PUGs are bad, or they know they are bad themselves and can’t complete the content, or it will take them a long time. So they just pay someone else to do it. Making content even easier is just going to enhance that problem.

These players do it because there’s no other way for them to get the tokens they need. If dungeon gear could be bought/sold on the TP, I’m betting it would almost entirely eliminate the desire for runs altogether. (I say almost because I’m sure there are people who want to get runs for the Dungeon Master title.)

Bright.9160:

The average GW2 player base is already terrible at the game because the game doesn’t promote skilled gameplay. When running around a map spamming your autoattack running any throw-on trash build you can come up with is more rewarding than PUGing dungeons and about equally rewarding to running dungeons in an organized group setting, there is no incentive to become a better player. Which is why most people in this game are so bad at it.

Is that really so bad though? These are players who, like you and me, log on to kill stuff, take their loot and buy shinies. If they paid their $50 entry fee like we did, why should we deny them the chance to have fun too just because they’re not as skilled as us?

Bright.9160:

Dungeons were meant for organized groups, not for everyday joes. They are easy enough so every day joes can complete them, but they’re going to have a harder time doing so.

This I actually agree with you about. Most of the dungeons are perfectly completable by average joes with a basic grasp of GW2 skills. And what do you know, you never see anybody selling runs for AC or CoF! It’s only the harder dungeons like Arah that get the sellers. Doesn’t that say something to you?

Selling dungeon spots is considered okay.
Kicking players to sell their spot is considered griefing and is reportable.
Abusing the LFG tool to advertise their service is reportable.

Zaxares.5419:

Is that really so bad though? These are players who, like you and me, log on to kill stuff, take their loot and buy shinies. If they paid their $50 entry fee like we did, why should we deny them the chance to havekitten

It is bad when you are being rewarded even more than someone who puts some effort. Zerging and afking events give you the same rewards as 2-4 manning it. That is a bad design.

Crying about path selling is so 2012.

What happened Cookie? Are you back in EU?

I’m being punished again

So you are back in EU.
Come do dwayna today with us! Dub has too much lags.

Maybe, if I’m not sleeping

Zaxares.5419:

Well, if you WERE going to pay someone to drive you around, why DO you own a car? It would just be a waste of money.

Okay, consider this. I made a road trip through South Africa and Namibia this summer with a group of friends. Now, what we could have done (and what many people do) is hire a driver/guide to guide them through the trip. In fact, many people gave us really weird looks because we didn’t have a guide (at some point someone even didn’t believe us and thought we were trolling him).

I’m pretty sure that most people that hire a driver in foreign countries know perfectly well how to drive a car. It’s just that in the circumstances, they think it’s more effective to hire someone who knows it better than they do in the designated area.

Should we ‘ban’ hiring drivers because it ‘invalidates’ the experience of your holiday? No, it’s their choice and if they choose to do so, it’s up to them.

Zaxares.5419:

Besides, the analogy doesn’t match. You buy a game to play it for the experience. Buying a game and then paying someone to play the game for you defeats that purpose.

And, this is your opinion. It is not fact. A lot of people that buy runs are for example die-hard WvW’ers or PvP’ers who have not the slightest clue about Arah, but for example want to make a legendary that requires Eyes of Zhaitan. It’s a simple service from one player to the other. It enables them to play the game how they want to (do WvW), without spending a stupid amount of time playing a game mode that they don’t like to get something they want.

Zaxares.5419:

Solo/duo’ing paths and selling runs are two entirely separate things. My post above deals only with the latter. I have no issue with players who like solo’ing content; if they are capable of doing so, all the more power to them. I applaud them for their skill (provided they aren’t using exploits, of course).

Why shouldn’t solo/duo’ers be allowed to sell the extra spots? It’s basically rewarding themselves for the effort/skill they used to clear the path.

Zaxares.5419:

However, selling runs is effectively speedclearing. To quote ANet’s reason for attempting to stop speedclears: “we dislike our end-game content being trivialised”. Is that not what selling runs is?

To be honest, their content is being trivialized by speedrun groups that melt bosses/groups in seconds. It’s not by the solo/duo’ers that sell paths.

Zaxares.5419:

I expect that ANet didn’t take action at that point because GW1 was nearing their end of its lifecycle. GW2 was already well into development; there was no point in pouring more resources into attempting to fix something that players would just find a way to get around again (as shown by UW).

Selling dungeon paths started in 2007, basically when EoTN launched. It didn’t happen often before that, because clearing UW and DoA wasn’t trivialized quite enough yet to warrant selling the paths. You’re not going to tell me that 2 years is ‘nearing the end of its life cycle’ and GW2 most certainly wasn’t ‘well into development’.

Zaxares.5419:

It’s a vicious cycle that just made it worse for normal players each time. What ANet should have done is addressed the core reason of why people were farming UW in the first place, which was that it was one of the best places to earn money.

Actually, fun fact, UW was one of the worst places to earn money, and if the drops you got at the end chest were bad, you almost lost money doing it. In fact, I made more money chest running in HM than the average UW player did. Especially taking into account the chance of failure etc.

Zaxares.5419:

You can see this happening right now in GW2 too. There’s non-stop zerg trains farming the Champions in Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound. Why? Because it’s one of the easiest and quickest way to earn money. Players automatically gravitate to whatever is the quickest and easiest way of achieving their goals. If ANet wants to avoid that, they need to spread out the rewards enough so that there are many avenues to achieve a player’s end goals, all of which are more or less equal.

No, what they actually should do is make dungeons and especially higher level Fractals rewarding according to the skill they take. Because that way, new/bad players can aspire to become good at said content and make money. Right now, the average baddy has absolutely no incentive to improve as a player, because they can just afk zerg train and make equal amounts of money as the people that speedclear dungeons and even triple or quadruple amounts as the people doing high level Fractals. That’s why dungeons are so dead. No one cares about skilled game play because it doesn’t reward you.

Selling your skills for faster dungeon running is not a bad thing. However what is happening at the moment with Arah has nothing to do with skills. Almost all the selling is based on the exploit of skipping lupicus.

But even if that is fixed, the fact that people can get the whole rewards for a dungeon in 10 seconds while completely doing nothing is just bad design. This way no one outside sellers would want to do the dungeon, and becomes just another part of the game turned into nothing but a cash farm for a small subset of people.

It was supposed to mean that having the tokens you actually were skilled enough to finish the dungeon, now every ranger and his bear who couldn’t even get to the first boss is fully decked in arah items. And to think arah was considered once the hardest dungeon, now has become a joke.

Everything would be fixed if they just spread the rewards across all the bosses in the dungeon. You then can pay people to carry you and finish the dungeon for you, but it still takes time and require some input.

P.S. I wish the mods would remove the completely off-topic replies from the trolls who want to derail the thread.

Aberrant.6749:

I wrote in a while ago and asked them to clear up the contradictions. It got bumped up the chain to Gaile.

Thanks for pointing out that we seemed to have had a bit of miscommunication about offering “runs” as a service in the game. I can tell you that runs are not disallowed if they do not in some other way form a breach of the User Agreement or Rules of Conduct. We consider such an offer a form of a “gentleman’s agreement” where two parties agree to a specific service for an agreed sum in in-game currency (or in-game items, as the parties decide).

Naturally, if the run itself involves the use of an exploit, that service is strictly and fully disallowed. (And of course we want to hear about any exploiters.) Runs for real-world money or goods are, likewise, strictly prohibited. And if the service ends in a disputed situation — for instance, someone offers a run and then leaves the party, or offers to pay and then declines to do so — then we may take action against a scammer, if an agent is able to confirm what took place. But because the service is a gentleman’s agreement, we do not get in the middle of repayments, re-dos of the run, etc.

Thank you for asking about this. I’ve written and circulated an internal e-mail so that all team members are clear about our policy on this.

Regards,

Gaile Gray
Support Liaison
ArenaNet

TLDR – It’s fine as long as no exploits were used.

They are selling Arah P2. There is a known glitch on asura abomination that allows you to bypass it and open the doors.

supergica.8652:

Selling your skills for faster dungeon running is not a bad thing. However what is happening at the moment with Arah has nothing to do with skills. Almost all the selling is based on the exploit of skipping lupicus.

But even if that is fixed, the fact that people can get the whole rewards for a dungeon in 10 seconds while completely doing nothing is just bad design. This way no one outside sellers would want to do the dungeon, and becomes just another part of the game turned into nothing but a cash farm for a small subset of people.

It was supposed to mean that having the tokens you actually were skilled enough to finish the dungeon, now every ranger and his bear who couldn’t even get to the first boss is fully decked in arah items. And to think arah was considered once the hardest dungeon, now has become a joke.

Everything would be fixed if they just spread the rewards across all the bosses in the dungeon. You then can pay people to carry you and finish the dungeon for you, but it still takes time and require some input.

P.S. I wish the mods would remove the completely off-topic replies from the trolls who want to derail the thread.

I agree. I entered p2 with exp team. We don’t speed run perse’, but we very rarely get downed either. We play casually, but can still drop lupi in a 5ish minutes through timed reflects in phase 3. We exited dungeon and the same ‘vendor’ had already come out before us, even though they entered at the same time. How does one solo lupi and path 2 faster than an exp team that rarely gets downed and can handle lupi considerably faster than your average PuG? I smell a rat, but can’t prove it because I am not with them whilst they do the run. It maybe 5 of them run it and 4 of them leave so the final person nets optimal cash and then divides it afterwards.

I did a legitimate ~20 minute duo p2, and I died running to belka

How long does it take you to 5 man it o.O?

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I agree. I entered p2 with exp team. We don’t speed run perse’, but we very rarely get downed either. We play casually, but can still drop lupi in a 5ish minutes through timed reflects in phase 3. We exited dungeon and the same ‘vendor’ had already come out before us, even though they entered at the same time. How does one solo lupi and path 2 faster than an exp team that rarely gets downed and can handle lupi considerably faster than your average PuG? I smell a rat, but can’t prove it because I am not with them whilst they do the run. It maybe 5 of them run it and 4 of them leave so the final person nets optimal cash and then divides it afterwards.

You realize people have solo’ed lupi in under 5 minutes right? This means that your party of ‘experienced’ people does equal damage to a person on his own. And you’re surprised that someone can solo the path equally fast as you can run it with a full team? In fact, technically, that makes total sense.

Bright.9160:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I agree. I entered p2 with exp team. We don’t speed run perse’, but we very rarely get downed either. We play casually, but can still drop lupi in a 5ish minutes through timed reflects in phase 3. We exited dungeon and the same ‘vendor’ had already come out before us, even though they entered at the same time. How does one solo lupi and path 2 faster than an exp team that rarely gets downed and can handle lupi considerably faster than your average PuG? I smell a rat, but can’t prove it because I am not with them whilst they do the run. It maybe 5 of them run it and 4 of them leave so the final person nets optimal cash and then divides it afterwards.

You realize people have solo’ed lupi in under 5 minutes right? This means that your party of ‘experienced’ people does equal damage to a person on his own. And you’re surprised that someone can solo the path equally fast as you can run it with a full team? In fact, technically, that makes total sense.

Not to mention running tactics. If you have a necro/mesmer, unless you also have an ele passing them off a FGS you’ll be stuck waiting for them to catch up to the faster classes.

Solo/duo clears are normally going to be composed of those faster classes, so not only are they going to be killing almost twice as fast (based on 5 min of your 5 man clears versus them running builds that have soloed in sub 5) but they’ll also be completing the running parts quicker.

In solo/duo runs its the kill times which slow you down the most. In 5 man groups it should be the running sections. But you certainly shouldnt be that much slower in running sections. Mesmer and necro are slow, but they arent so slow that they would add an extra 5mins onto a run.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

supergica.8652:

Selling your skills for faster dungeon running is not a bad thing. However what is happening at the moment with Arah has nothing to do with skills. Almost all the selling is based on the exploit of skipping lupicus.

But even if that is fixed, the fact that people can get the whole rewards for a dungeon in 10 seconds while completely doing nothing is just bad design. This way no one outside sellers would want to do the dungeon, and becomes just another part of the game turned into nothing but a cash farm for a small subset of people.

It was supposed to mean that having the tokens you actually were skilled enough to finish the dungeon, now every ranger and his bear who couldn’t even get to the first boss is fully decked in arah items. And to think arah was considered once the hardest dungeon, now has become a joke.

Everything would be fixed if they just spread the rewards across all the bosses in the dungeon. You then can pay people to carry you and finish the dungeon for you, but it still takes time and require some input.

P.S. I wish the mods would remove the completely off-topic replies from the trolls who want to derail the thread.

I agree. I entered p2 with exp team. We don’t speed run perse’, but we very rarely get downed either. We play casually, but can still drop lupi in a 5ish minutes through timed reflects in phase 3. We exited dungeon and the same ‘vendor’ had already come out before us, even though they entered at the same time. How does one solo lupi and path 2 faster than an exp team that rarely gets downed and can handle lupi considerably faster than your average PuG? I smell a rat, but can’t prove it because I am not with them whilst they do the run. It maybe 5 of them run it and 4 of them leave so the final person nets optimal cash and then divides it afterwards.

You’re right, if you guys are killing lupi in 5 minutes then it’s almost inconceivable that someone could duo the path faster than you… Oh wait there are currently 3 people who have killed lupi in under 5 minutes solo…

This thread is awesome.