Guild Wars 2

Since the previous post with 57 replies seems to have been deleted (forum search yielded no results and the thread contained a VERY important link that I believe as many people should see as possible), I suppose I’ll risk a ban and repost it because I honestly believe that Arena.net needs to look back at the philosophy it set when it first started announcing all the features in Guild Wars 2.

I would very much like a dev response, because I do want to know why this has strayed so far from their original philosophy.

This quote is taken from PC Gamer: Guild Wars 2: the kitchen sink post (2):
http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/guild-wars-2-the-kitchen-sink-post/2/

“As far as the mechanics of the drop system is concerned, Flannum says “It’s more of a badge system, so this is something that we did in Guild Wars 1 as well. Our basic philosophy is that you should never complete a piece of content and get something you don’t want. So it’s going to be the case where you go through and are guaranteed to get a piece of gear that you didn’t have before, and that you’re going to want.” So, you’re guaranteed to get a piece of gear every time you do a dungeon? “Yes.” Sweet.”

Now, look at how many explorable mode dungeon runs it takes to get even one piece of the “unique dungeon gear” that they tout. It takes an average of 9-13 runs, if not more, depending on the item. Given that there are only 3-4 Explorable mode paths, that is a lot of repetition to obtain, say, a full set of armor.

What happened to your anti-grind philosophy, Arena.net?

I’ve run CoF 30 times now. Will need to run it another 45 or so for my set.

This is not fun and it is not skillful.

Rewards should be based around mastering content not grinding it. The dungeon set should be available to those who have completed all 4 wings of a dungeon. Even make it 2 runs for each run to make sure the first time wasn’t a fluke.

But 70 times, does anyone really think doing the same dungeon 70 times is a test of anything but time?

Yeah, pretty dissapointed here. When I first saw the dungeon armor vendors I felt like it was gonna take just the right amount of time to complete my set then I could start working on some different weapons(which still seemed insanely overpriced)…but then I realized I wasn’t looking at the exotic tab. Wow, that’s ridiculous. I would really appreciate some feedback on what happened here from the dev’s. I have no motivation to attempt exp mode if it’s going to be that much of a grind. I’ve been enjoying this game because it does so many things so well for someone who usually can’t spend hours logged in…the dungeons seem like a giant step backwards.

im tired of typing stuff, but i agree with u all, it just all seems to me as a crapy attempt to keep people busy, dealing with what they r calling as of now there end game till they get done with there “end game” content. I guess all I can say is anet u did such a good job with so much, these other things r soooo noticable, and it just makes u wonder…. WHY????

The topic is still here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Token-and-Reward

And I agree with you. Like I said I only want to know what are the reasons that led to this change so I can “accept” this and move on..

You don’t really NEED to grind them because they are mostly for cosmetic, so the no-grind philosphy still kinda applies.

Still agree the prices are ridiculous, as i said before, they should give a lot of tokens for completing all 3 paths.

Can’t agree more. This system with curent prices is far worst then standard dungeons in other mmos where u have chance to get something in 1st run or do it 50 times.

As matter of fact its even worst. In normal dungeons every time u kill something there is that sweet feeling of excitment when ur opening the loot hoping u will get ur thing. In GW2 u know u will get those boring tokens which drops all the time and u know u wont get anything good beside that…

That “Hard” part what should makes dungeons fun is gone after u do it for 3rd – 4th time. After that is just boring routin w/o rewarding loot.

So as it is now they didnt improve anything, just removed uncertainty and excitment when looting which is one of the key parts in dungeons.

Possible solution to this problem is to add % drop chance on tokens and greatly reduce prices of dungeon armors. That way you would have that excitment when looting chests and u would feel rewarded after killing a boss if u get ur precious tokens.

You -do- get a guaranteed “dungeon” piece of gear per run.

It’s that generic model yellow from story mode.

Yeah, how about we get the rare models reverted back to something other than ugly pieces of crap?

I agree. Grind is bad, better to progress to new content than do the same too many times. Novelty wears off.

They don’t want anyone (reasonable) to have end-game armor within the first few weeks after release.

This is obviously a temporary solution before they figure out a better reward system.

…I hope.

Yes super agree, this is how i see it, it would not be so bad if we didn’t have to grind one instance just for that instance gear, you know if we could do different instances and get token that worked for all the vendors then i don’t think it would seem like a grind. I don’t want to be forced to do Honor of the Waves over and over to reach over 1300token of doing one boss and only getting 20tokens, (30 if you are lucky) to get the full set. We are being forced to stay in one area when you have a huge world of dungeons we can be doing. I finally got my Chest from Honor of the waves and it felt good but when i think about having to go back in do the same thing over i am really sick of that place i would like to go to a different dungeon complete it, and use or exchange those tokens to buy what i want. And a dungeon party find system would really help a lot.

Lagg.3960:

They don’t want anyone (reasonable) to have end-game armor within the first few weeks after release.

This is obviously a temporary solution before they figure out a better reward system.

…I hope.

I agree, but having to do the same dungeon over and over again is repetitive. Allow us to do different content that they have and reward us by allowing us to exchange the tokens for the gear we want.

Even though I like dungeons, it’s not fun having to run them like 50+ times just to get a set of gear that looks nice. Especially bad with tokens being soulbound…

That was two years ago. Dungeons were one of the last things they worked on and clearly rushed. Hopefully they will fix it with post release polish so that quote can ring true.

It would certainly help improve player’s incentive to go dungeons and the current perspective on endgame if the rewards and chest drops were tweaked. I don’t mind the difficulty if I have to run it a lot less but the current numbers required to do it are awe-shattering and destroys all incentive for me to do it. That and the promise they made regarding it as well.

Lucky.9421:

That was two years ago. Dungeons were one of the last things they worked on and clearly rushed.

even rushed there is so much idiocy in the reward system that makes me wonder how it ever made it into the live game:

• AC/CM gear not level 80
• 1h weapons almost 3/4 the price of 2h
• soulbound tokens

besides dungeons:

• same price for cultural 1h/2h weapons
• cultural armor costing more than the commander book and not even exotic?

and that’s just the stuff from the top of my head.

They were right back then and are still right now, you can do a dungeon and get a piece of gear you want with only 1 run.

1 run awards ~30 tokens, one piece of RARE armour costs ~30 tokens.

Exotic gear is exactly that, exotic it is meant to take time to get and requires dedication and farming. Nothing is stopping you from farming the required materials for an exotic set and getting them crafted, in most cases it is actually quicker to do so.

I can easily farm enough materials for 2-3 pieces of exotic gear a day and I work full time so anyone who says gear is too hard to obtain are just plain lazy.

MadMossy.8715:

1 run awards ~30 tokens, one piece of level 80 RARE armour costs ~30 tokens.

Exotic gear is exactly that, exotic it is meant to take time to get and requires dedication and farming. Nothing is stopping you from farming the required materials for an exotic set and in most cases it is actually quicker to do so.

I can easily farm enough materials for 2-3 pieces of exotic gear a day and I work full time so anyone who says get is too hard to obtain are just plain lazy.

True, but since the beta weekends, the unique skin was removed from the non-exotic armor.

ArenaNet figured out no one would ever be crazy enough to farm a huge amount of tokens just to get the Exotic version of the armor with the same skin, if you can just get the skin from the cheap Rare armors and then transmute them on (crafted) Exotic armor.

So we have an asset problem here. There needs to be a non-generic skin for the Rare armors, not quite as impressive as the Exotic, but rewarding enough for people not to skip the Rare armor altogether and farm for the Exotic. A bit like 1.5k and 15k armor in Guild Wars 1.

Actually, considering the price of Exotic armor, more along the lines of 15k armor and Obsidian armor in GW1.

MadMossy.8715:

1 run awards ~30 tokens, one piece of level 80 RARE armour costs ~30 tokens.

Exotic gear is exactly that, exotic it is meant to take time to get and requires dedication and farming. Nothing is stopping you from farming the required materials for an exotic set and in most cases it is actually quicker to do so.

I can easily farm enough materials for 2-3 pieces of exotic gear a day and I work full time so anyone who says get is too hard to obtain are just plain lazy.

True, but since the beta weekends, the unique skin was removed from the non-exotic armor.

ArenaNet figured out no one would ever be crazy enough to farm a huge amount of tokens just to get the Exotic version of the armor with the same skin, if you can just get the skin from the cheap Rare armors and then transmute them on (crafted) Exotic armor.

So we have an asset problem here. There needs to be a non-generic skin for the Rare armors, not quite as impressive as the Exotic, but rewarding enough for people not to skip the Rare armor altogether and farm for the Exotic. A bit like 1.5k and 15k armor in Guild Wars 1.

Actually, considering the price of Exotic armor, more along the lines of 15k armor and Obsidian armor in GW1.

one the one hand i agree that it sucks expecially cause i dont want the citadell of flames armor that can be farmed in a few days, but the TA armor that takes quite a while longer to farm.

but on the other hand i think its kinda appropiate cause these armors are f****** awsm and have prestige (except for the citadell of flame-ones cause they’re to easy to farm) and when i wear my armor in two weeks or maybe even longer i can look at it with a satisfying feeling, knowing i’ve achieved something.
it just would be boring to get the full max lvl awsm looking armor after 5 runs…

but in general i think this is all about the attitude. Do i want the cool stuff for free or do i want to do something myself to get this satisfying feeling.
im perfectly fine with the system atm but as this post proves not everybody is, but i guess u cant satisfy everyone unless u give them the option to either get it for free or for 5 runs or for 50+

FrozenDream.1590:

but in general i think this is all about the attitude. Do i want the cool stuff for free or do i want to do something myself to get this satisfying feeling.
im perfectly fine with the system atm but as this post proves not everybody is, but i guess u cant satisfy everyone unless u give them the option to either get it for free or for 5 runs or for 50+

We all want a certain amount of effort to go into acquiring these armors and we want them to be special. I’m more than happy to have to play for weeks if not months to get them.

Just doing the same dungeon 50+ times is unreasonable. Most of all, it’s pure grind and not fun, which goes squarely against Anet’s manifesto. You may end up looking cool on the outside, but seriously, if I see someone with dungeon armor running around right now (not seen anyone so far), all I’ll be thinking is: “get a job”.

And I do realise the irony from posting this while at work…

Vanisher.9216:

You don’t really NEED to grind them because they are mostly for cosmetic, so the no-grind philosphy still kinda applies.

you don’t NEED to lie to sell more neither.

Gray.9650:

even rushed there is so much idiocy in the reward system that makes me wonder how it ever made it into the live game:

• AC/CM gear not level 80
• 1h weapons almost 3/4 the price of 2h
• soulbound tokens

besides dungeons:

• same price for cultural 1h/2h weapons
• cultural armor costing more than the commander book and not even exotic?

and that’s just the stuff from the top of my head.

That sums it up nicely.

A lot of what upsets me, of course, is the fact that they dared to tout this “no-grind” philosophy before release and then upon releasing the game immediately implemented a system that required you to grind dungeons to get the aesthetics you wanted. And the fact that the number of runs needed FAR exceeds the number of unique paths just makes it even more grindy.

I think rewards should be more like:
30 tokens for the boots / gloves / helm
50 tokens for legs / shoulders
80 tokens for chest
270 tokens for the full set

This way you should be able to get at least a single piece of gear from every dungeon run (assuming you don’t run the same thing over again). 2 different paths for the legs and shoulders. And all 3 different paths for the chestpiece.
3 days running all 3 paths once. It’d still be a grind, but much more do-able.

Gray.9650:

even rushed there is so much idiocy in the reward system that makes me wonder how it ever made it into the live game:

• AC/CM gear not level 80

Not true. See the second bag (left side, above selling) when you open the armor vendor tab of the mentioned dungeon vendors. It holds lvl80 stuff for all of the dungeons.

Nevertheless I agree, that getting all those tokens for just one set is kinda boring.

Howgie

what would be fair is the centralize the tokens, essentially you dont need to run the same dungeon to just get that dungeon gear. What they could do with a system like this is have a % chance from each boss to drop like an “essence” or something that is used to purchase the specific gear.

Example-Orrian helmet costs “X tokens and an essence of orr”

If they did that and gave tokens a chance to drop from silvers, then they could consider keeping their prices high.

Just want to throw this tidbit of information in.
In the faster dungeons, assuming nothing goes wrong, a run takes about 30mins.
30mins x 70 runs = 35 hours for a set of armor, in a FAST dungeon.

I know they’re trying to keep everyone from getting everything too fast. But the current way penalizes people with day-jobs.

Unfortunately, this is the one area I feel ANet has really disappointed in. Most of my guildmates and myself love the game, but also most have already written of the dungeons and cultural sets because of the insane costs. No one can figure what ANet was thinking with this grind being so absurdly high. 70 runs of a dungeon is not fun, especially for stuff that is mainly cosmetic. Same goes for the cultural armor sets. A lot of us like some of the looks and the dungeons themselves keep it from being easy mode, but the grind has most of us already saying forget it, not worth the effort more than once to play the content.

Each chest at the end should give you a token for a certain piece. Since there are six pieces in the set, each leg could give you one of two tokens. Likewise cultural armor sets need to be seriously adjusted. Lastly, the Commander’s Manual at 100 gold is a complete and utter joke (especially since most of the reason for getting it can be accomplished through vent, teamspeak or mumble), especially when everyone in the squad requires it.

It does no good to create content where the grind is so high people just aren’t going to be bothered with it. Honestly, I have to agree it just doesn’t make any sense, both in the last minute change in game design philosophy nor the insane levels of pricing (in karma, gold and/or tokens) that this stuff is at.

I have to say, for a company that said they were against the grind, this is the worst dungeon grind I have ever seen in an MMO – no MMO has ever required 70 runs of a dungeon to collect the gear associated with it, not even close.

It’s gear that you don’t need. I don’t see why it should be nerfed. You can get your max level gear by crafting/TP.

If anything they should add a bonus to complete all three paths in a dungeon. Daily or weekly. +X tokens. It would help curve the grinding of one path multiple times.

Wayshuba.5912:

I have to say, for a company that said they were against the grind, this is the worst dungeon grind I have ever seen in an MMO – no MMO has ever required 70 runs of a dungeon to collect the gear associated with it, not even close.

You haven’t played RuneScape yet…=P

New advert idea

“GW2, at least it’s not runescape”

I’d definitely like to see what a dev has to say about that quote. That direction was GOOD. I mean, it still is! What happened?!

They should NOT fix the token prices until they fix CoF.

Wouldnt it be stupid to let everyone wear exotic lvl 80 armor for a few 15 mins runs?

The game is out there for near a month, you want to have your end game armor completed just now???

if you are tired of running CoF over and over then its nothing but your own fault. There are many other dungeons with many other possible ways to do,… go out and have fun and stop being a loot addict.

The flaws are exacerbated for me by the fact that I have had the TA tokens vanishing from my inventory little by little.

I have done TA exp 3 times and yesterday I had 75 Deadly Blooms. Today I logged on and only had 20. After wondering what happened for a while I started questioning how I had 75 after doing the whole thing 3 times anyway.

I have purchased nothing and this only happens to my Deadly Blooms, every other dungeon I have lost no tokens.

Can we get a response from DEVS about this?

I can’t understand this. Explorable modes were meant to be hard and there’s just no reward.

So I went to my first explorable dungeon yesterday (Twilight Arbor) and we took roughly about 4 hours to clean up everything. No, we are not the top hardcore gamers, we are just 5 friends (casual) trying to beat the content of the game. Yes, we took that long because we had many breaks during that time.

I was shocked to see that I got no rewards whatsoever after staying that much long in the dungeon. Then I realized we will have to do that 80 times to get our set. Seriously, I stopped playing WoW because of the level of time sink, repetitive tasks I had to do. This is seriously worst than that.

If no action is taken, I’m pretty sure a lot of people will go back to WoW when Pandaria comes out, since there will be “Challenge” mode for dungeons which is pretty much more interesting than this. Please, consider and hear the voice of your community. This is a mistake and will lead people away from this amazing game.

Another interesting quote from the article…

“More specifically, we were told that weapons will come from story mode (one run = one weapon) and the rest of your armor will be earned from explorable mode.”

Hmmm…

Mesket.5728:

They should NOT fix the token prices until they fix CoF.

Wouldnt it be stupid to let everyone wear exotic lvl 80 armor for a few 15 mins runs?

The game is out there for near a month, you want to have your end game armor completed just now???

if you are tired of running CoF over and over then its nothing but your own fault. There are many other dungeons with many other possible ways to do,… go out and have fun and stop being a loot addict.

I don’t expect to get my awesome skinned gear in a month, BUT I do expect to be rewarded. You know if you got at least a generic skinned but top tier statted item I’d be fine with that. This game wasn’t supposed to be about grinding to get the best stats, it was supposed to be about side-grades and cosmetic skins. Currently it takes about 12 hours per armor piece of karma gear, way more than that for WvWvW, and a ton of gold to get anything top statted on the TP.

Heaven forbid you want 2 sets of gear for different builds. I don’t care about the skins, if someone wants to grind 100+ hours for a certain armor skin then that’s fine. I do care about stats. ArenaNet did not stick to their philosophy; that is on them, not me.

Distaste.4801:

I don’t expect to get my awesome skinned gear in a month, BUT I do expect to be rewarded.

This.

howgie.8156:

Gray.9650:

even rushed there is so much idiocy in the reward system that makes me wonder how it ever made it into the live game:

• AC/CM gear not level 80

Not true. See the second bag (left side, above selling) when you open the armor vendor tab of the mentioned dungeon vendors. It holds lvl80 stuff for all of the dungeons.

this is true for every vendor except AC/CM. AC has lvl60 exotics, CM lvl70. the icing on the cake is that weapon cost the same number of tokens like the rest, only AC armor is a bit cheaper.

oh, and did I mention a potion is 400 tokens? that’s more than a 2h or a third of a complete armor.

There is no incentive to complete dungeons the way the reward system works right now, completing a dungeon should have value, maybe enough tokens to afford one piece of the armor set, or a special token that can be traded for a weapon or armor piece, right now no one is gonna care to try and complete as farming a couple bosses quickly give the very same benefit.

Xista.7391:

If anything they should add a bonus to complete all three paths in a dungeon. Daily or weekly. +X tokens. It would help curve the grinding of one path multiple times.

you already get 10 bonus tokens for the first run per day per route.

EricGORE.7896:

Another interesting quote from the article…

“More specifically, we were told that weapons will come from story mode (one run = one weapon) and the rest of your armor will be earned from explorable mode.”

Hmmm…

tbh I wouldn’t count on anything official older than 2 months. I guess people already forgot about this:

I think its really important to emphasize how much fun is being lost here.

It doesn’t matter so much of what you think the problem is our what you think the solution is. It matters if you are having fun or not.

From that perspective it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand well enough to be having fun or there is some driving philosophy i don’t understand. It only matters that i am not having fun.

when you see that you have to run the dungeon 10 times to get a piece of armor what does that feel like?

Does the token armor match well with conventional armor? I mean do you really need a full set to be satisfied with the look?

I feel this pain as well since im doing EXP ac in PUGs and i need about 8 more runs to get a single piece and so far i am 1 of 4 for a good run and 2 of 4 making it through.

So far i can say the dungeons are cool. the tokens are a let down. The dungeon would be more fun without them as its demoralizing to see that i have to do that 8 more times for 1 piece. I feel like its basically out of my reach. maybe that is intended…

I think that there should be a dungeon award for PUG folks that make it through this as the tokens are not really an award i think i can bear to reach… i dont know maybe that will make achieving it that much sweeter…. but currently the tears have no value for me.

Reward ideas:

- Black Lion Key (PLEASE!!!!)
- Obsidian Shards
- Philosopher stone / Crystals (or just 1 skill point)
- Glob of Ectoplasm
- Bag of gold (seriously, wipe = cost. I want to get out of the dungeon with positive outcome if I successfully completed it)
- Gems
- Random skin armor
- Crafting materials
- etc

The token system is fine. If you want cosmetic gear, then working toward sit okay.

What’s not okay is the lack of rewards for each dungeon. Come on, throw us a bone here. Reshima has a great list of things that can be added, maybe in a random loot chest at the end.

maybe the tokens could be thrown into the forge?

Token system isn’t ok because it forces you to run the same dungeon for 50+ times, while keeping you away from all of the other instanced PVE content (this is a REALLY an awful design decision). It needs a 2 token system, one specific per dungeon and a generic one. Tier sets should be bought with a combination of both so that you still need to run a particular dungeon multiple times (1 per item) and then “farm” the generic tokens from any other one.

The biggest issue with the token system is that it does not reward at all for dungeon completion. there is really no incentive to complete a dungeon at all, just find the easiest and fastest way to gain tokens. There needs to be a higher token currency tier than is awarded at dungeon completion or, special skins for each dungeon path.

The dungeon reward npcs should have been placed at the end of each dungeon path, in homage to the craft npcs that we needed to unlock in gw1.

As i said before, One token system for all the vendors or and exchange policy. Keep the Prices and allow us (the players) to experience all the dungeons you have to offer. Reward us with that and I know for a fact that i would be 10times happier.

howgie.8156:

Gray.9650:

even rushed there is so much idiocy in the reward system that makes me wonder how it ever made it into the live game:

• AC/CM gear not level 80

Not true. See the second bag (left side, above selling) when you open the armor vendor tab of the mentioned dungeon vendors. It holds lvl80 stuff for all of the dungeons.

Nevertheless I agree, that getting all those tokens for just one set is kinda boring.

Howgie

Actually, I already knew about this, and there is no level 80 gear for AC and CM.

AC Exotic Gear caps at level 60.
CM Exotic Gear caps at level 70.

You can check for yourself if you want.