Guild Wars 2

This token system is a great idea but, it needs to be tuned. Honestly if you’re trying an exploration mode aside from CoF (which everyone runs and takes only 20 minutes), you will feel miserable as they can take 2-3 hours

But the problem is you have to run the same place over a dozen times just to get one piece of armor or weapon.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Merge all the tokens into one currency as you will have a variety of doing different dungeons instead of the same one over and over.

2. Decrease the vendor costs as they are too high.

3. Increase the amount earned from running it.

My 2 cents.

I definitely think they should all be merged into 1 token, I was annoyed to learn it wasn’t like that in the first place. The only problem I see with that is that the easiest dungeons will get picked to grind the tokens. And if they make it so that you get more tokens from the harder dungeons, either nobody will do the easy ones or somebody will find the most efficient way to grind them and only that way will be done.

2 and 3 get a little redundant. otherwise, i agree

I agree that they should 2 and/or 3.

Another option: Allow us to use the mystic forge…. lets say I put in 3 tokens of Caudecus’s Manor and 1 token of Ascalon Catacombs and in return I get 2 Ascalon Catacomb tokens. Basically let the mystic forge be away for us to turn tokens into other tokens but a rate of 3 to 1 or something like that.

Really I just don’t understand why someone would run the same dungeon literally a hundred times to get the armor set they want.

Why not just have it be: you complete the dungeon, you get an armor piece? What’s wrong with that system?

It absolutely needs to be brought back down to reality. Having to run the same dungeon a minimum of ten times to get one weapon, or forty times to complete an armour set, is totally out of whack. That’s not even really giving people something to work for; many people will take one look at it, or do one dungeon run, look at the fact that they’ve accumulated somewhere between one and two percent of the tokens they need to get themselves matching equipment, and will simply walk away. Those that are bound and determined to get dungeon equipment, on the other hand, will (and already have) proceed directly to plotting out the best way to not play the dungeon: The most popular dungeon at the moment is Citadel of Flame, because there’s a path where the bulk of the content can be skipped and a run can be completed in about twenty minutes. A significant number of the players in Arah play as far as the first boss, climb on some level geometry to skip their way to the second, and then quit out without completing the rest of the dungeon at all. Even in the Ascalonian Catacombs, many strategies out there look for places where fights and other set pieces can be completely avoided, rather than actually solving the encounter.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the tokens being dungeon-specific. This is, in my opinion, a good way to avoid having ghost town dungeons that nobody ever plays* or, conversely, a single “it” dungeon that everyone plays because it’s the most efficient way to get any dungeon armour.

As for tokens and prices, I would do things a little differently from most suggestions I’ve seen:
As stated here, a player obtains a ‘bonus’ of tokens for completing a particular path in a dungeon that is only available once per day, per path. The stated goal there is to encourage players to play all paths available, rather than sticking to one “easy” path.
The problem with this system, as implemented, is that the ‘bonus’ is only ten tokens – in most cases, it is actually far more efficient to simply clear the first two bosses on the ‘easy’ path for a second time than it is to play through the ‘hard’ version of the dungeon. And since it resets daily, the lack of reward is insufficient motivation for many players to attempt different paths (or indeed, different dungeons).

With that in mind, I think the best solution would be to increase the bonus from ten tokens to 100 tokens, but also increase the reset time to once per week rather than once per day.
I believe that the drastically increased ‘spike’ reward would motivate more players to actually view Explorable dungeons as a worthy use of their time. At the same time, the total ‘bonus’ available per week is not so drastically different – less than twice the (frankly, paltry) current amount – which is unlikely to disturb the ‘economy’ of dungeon tokens to the point where every second player is walking around in a full set. Without hardcore farming, it would still take weeks for a player to have a full set of any particular dungeon’s equipment.

From the perspective of a player, however, the difference would be huge. For players ranging from casual, occasional dungeoneers to regular, several-days-a-week players, every step into a dungeon would feel like actual progress, instead of a Sisyphean struggle against MMORPG grind. The goal structure would become something that seems much more fair to players: The goal for the day is to complete an explorable dungeon, and the reward is a substantial amount of tokens. The goal for the week is to complete each path in that dungeon before the rewards reset, and the reward would be approximately one new piece of equipment. The goal for the month (or so) is to get yourself a nice set of dungeon armour. I don’t think that anyone can honestly argue that requiring a month of regular play to fill out one armour set is making it “too easy” for players to have prestige sets.

(Split into two posts due to character limit:)

(Continued)
For the more hardcore players, the calculus of the rewards would shift; doing partial runs of CoF and Arah might still be the fastest and best way to obtain their particular armour sets, but in terms of overall efficiency, it would almost certainly be more advantageous to play a variety of dungeons throughout the week. As a result, the population would be spread out fairly evenly between most/all dungeons. I think we can all agree that would be a big step up from the current system, where CoF and Arah are hopping at all hours of the day, while HotW is like a frontier town after the gold rush.

At any rate, I hope that something is done with the token rewards soon. The dungeons are my favourite part of the game, but it’s become a real chore to find people who are willing to actually do them, largely because the rewards are just not in proportion to the difficulty (which I think is mostly at a good level). Even just speaking personally, as someone who enjoys dungeon play for its own sake: The least fun part of a dungeon up until this point is unquestionably the moment just after the final boss drops dead, when there’s no more challenges to overcome, and all that I really have to fill my head is knowing how much time I’ve just spent playing the dungeon, and how impossibly far off it seems to actually be able to get something for my efforts. Changes are needed, whether they be minor fine-tuning or a drastic overhaul.

*As it is, good luck finding people up at Honor of the Waves. But that’s a LFG issue, I think.

Another thing that bugs me with the dungeon tokens is that they are soulbound rahter than accountbound. I’d much more enjoy these dungeons if I knew that I could actually play them with any character I want with the goal in mind to obtain this certain piece of armour or this certain weapon on a specific character.
For example I really want the Armour from Arah for my guardian but I really do not enjoy the thought of playing Arah explorable 40+ times with my guardian. I think it would be mcuh more fun if you could mix it up.

+1 @ Crater’s posts. Brilliantly put.

Merging is cool idea. While i want to get Arah’s set i cannot do it for difficulty.

manwhat.1745:

Really I just don’t understand why someone would run the same dungeon literally a hundred times to get the armor set they want.

Why not just have it be: you complete the dungeon, you get an armor piece? What’s wrong with that system?

That was the original plan ANet had. The Yellows were cheaper as well and actually had the unique skin. Who knows why they changed it. They could’ve added harder prestige armor elsewhere, or perhaps just in the higher level dungeons.

i think this Dungeons set armors arent made to get the easy way..

if u want them.. work for it..

if u’r casual and dont wanna work hard for something.. go get blue/white casual armors.. shouldnt matter to you anyways.. u’r casual.. u shouldn’t care abt getting top notch armor if u’r not gnna REALLY use it..

i come from other games where it was 100 times harder to get sets/farm mats.. 1 hr+ runs to PRAY to god be lucky enough to get at LEAST 1 piece of ur set.. wich would come out like.. 1 every 5 runs or so.. and getting your weapon was at least 50+ runs.. 1hr each..
it would take.. at least.. 1 month of farming to get full set and stuff..

seriously.. you guys complain too much..

seriously.. you guys complain too much..if they made the coins not bound.. people would just do that one dungeon that takes 10 mins for full run and reward 30 tokens per run.. plus 150k+ exp and around 40s each run.. + Drops..
that would make the farmers even richer.. note: gold farmers/botters/etc…

seriously.. you guys complain too much..if they made the coins not bound.. people would just do that one dungeon that takes 10 mins for full run and reward 30 tokens per run.. plus 150k+ exp and around 40s each run.. + Drops..
that would make the farmers even richer.. note: gold farmers/botters/etc…if they fused all the Tokens into 1 currency.. again.. peopl would just pick the easier run from all the dungeons and do it countless times…

seriously.. you guys complain too much..if they made the coins not bound.. people would just do that one dungeon that takes 10 mins for full run and reward 30 tokens per run.. plus 150k+ exp and around 40s each run.. + Drops..
that would make the farmers even richer.. note: gold farmers/botters/etc…if they fused all the Tokens into 1 currency.. again.. peopl would just pick the easier run from all the dungeons and do it countless times…

ConterK.3972:

i think this Dungeons set armors arent made to get the easy way..

if u want them.. work for it..

if u’r casual and dont wanna work hard for something.. go get blue/white casual armors.. shouldnt matter to you anyways.. u’r casual.. u shouldn’t care abt getting top notch armor

seriously.. you guys complain too much..

What you said pretty much sums it up. I think this is the way it’s meant to be.

ConterK.3972:

i come from other games where it was 100 times harder to get sets/farm mats.. 1 hr+ runs to PRAY to god be lucky enough to get at LEAST 1 piece of ur set.. wich would come out like.. 1 every 5 runs or so.. and getting your weapon was at least 50+ runs.. 1hr each..
it would take.. at least.. 1 month of farming to get full set and stuff..

Getting a piece of armour every “5 runs or so” is actually much easier than it is in Guild Wars 2 right now.

When I do the math right you can get the full AC armour set in 14 runs (41tokens/run according to the wiki) (after 13 you are just 2 tokens short! ).
You can get the small armour pieces (headgear) after one run already!

( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Historian_Symon )
41 tokens / run from here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Emblem

So… I don’t think it is really that bad. (please correct me if I’m wrong)
And well, if you want the unique ones.. well, then you really gotta work for it. (I mean, they are called unique for a reason)

Edit: It seems I am wrong, rare is a generic skin I just read :’(

no support. I think its fine. There need to be long term goals.

Hello, Long time lurker, first time poster.

After doing Arah once, and only getting half-way, I’m going to have to agree with 2 or 3 in the OP and to +1 TheFurr for making the tokens account bound not character bound.

Give us unique boss drops, raids and dump the skinhunt idea, skip the idea about not having elitism in the game. Its in humannature.

Please make it account bound. Might also lower the costs a bit. By far too grindy at the moment.