Guild Wars 2

Have you guys ever tried to do a dungeon the "right"way. That is, killing all the enemys you come to, not using little safe spots or stack locations to trick the AI into doing what you want. Like 100% legit run it.

Probably not, or if you have you only done it once or twice. The dungeons seem like they are designed to encourage you to, for a lack of a better word “cheat” to the through it.

Now the last time I ran a dungeon was about 8 months ago, so Im sure they have changed a bit from then. But I just did TA with a group and it was basicly the same as back then, run past these enemys, hide in this corner, ect ect.

I would much rather run a dungeon the “right” way, however it doesnt seem like thats a very viable option.

yes i did. even happened in pugs few times in a lifetime

just announce that you want to ‘kill all ze things!’ when you are making/looking for group. tho it often takes a bit longer to find players who wanna play the game, because most of the playerbase are just skirtt who want shinies

So skipping mobs means you’re not doing it right? Wierd. Didn’t know I was supposed to waste my time.

You should try doing the dredge fractal at 48. Not only do the mobs never stop respawning but they even follow you to the spawn area. You COULD spend 4 hours clearing your way to the door only to find the mobs keep respawning. Do you know the best part about those mobs? The new ones introduced don’t even drop loot! Super fun. This isn’t WoW, please stop trying to play it like it is WoW.

So, LoS (line of sight) is doing things the “wrong” way? LoS having the effect of mobs being balled up and closing the gap of projectile users; manipulating positions. Very similar to hiding behind a wall so you don’t get shot.

I guess guardian GS #5 and all pull, push and launch skills are also “wrong”.

1 word: strategy

When someone told me that an AC solo isn’t legit when i skip the spiderqueen, i’ve done it once more, killing each single enemie in the whole dungeon. Wouldn’t call that the “right” way, though…
As mentioned before, LoS’ing mobs, kiting and other mechanics are strategies, the only thing thats probably wrong is using safespots.

XelNigma.6315:

Have you guys ever tried to do a dungeon the "right"way. That is, killing all the enemys you come to, not using little safe spots or stack locations to trick the AI into doing what you want. Like 100% legit run it.

Go to arah….
Tell me you are supposed to clean any area…

Yes i did….many times as anyone who plays dungeons….
Its more fun or more challenging? not at all is just an unnecessary waste of time…
Often is harder to skip trash than fighting them…but it rewards you with time saved…

And not everybody can afford to spend 2-3 hours on a dungeon…..

Skipping is not cheat….do you clean all open pve map to proiceed to next area?
Do you kill any enemy in other games? (there are routes and intended skips)

Example Kohler…the skip is intended.

The problem is that killing trash is unrewarding and time consuming. I would not want a change to be made that you would have to kill them in it’s current iteration.

That said I agree with the OP that skipping trash and hiding in a corner is crap gameplay. LoSing trash to move them into a good position for killing is strategy but running passed them and hiding in a corner until their AI’s break feels like a cheat.

The change I would see is that the amount of trash be reduced, be made more rewarding and make them unskippable. A bit like the molten facility just released.

Maybe, just maybe it is the desginers job to make a dungeon which is not cheatable.

And it is the players job to use “strategy(you call it cheat)” to beat the content.

I have done a couple of dungeons with my guild and some with pug’s. Only last week I skipped for the first time. Hated it.
When mobs don’t continuously respawn I don’t see the need of it.
It’s mostly stressful imo (especially if you’re new to the dungeon it’s just plain confusing. Oke lets kill these mo- where did my party go?)

I don’t know if you’re on a European server XelNigma, but if you ever organize a dungeon run and kill everything, give me a pm. If I got time on my hands I’ll be glad to join in!

laokoko.7403:

Maybe, just maybe it is the desginers job to make a dungeon which is not cheatable.

And it is the players job to use “strategy(you call it cheat)” to beat the content.

They did that with the mobs in the Molten Weapons Facility. Sure you can stand in the corner for the first boss and stack on top of the last boss to be immune to the mechanics, but you have to deal with all the mobs through the dungeon. I didn’t hear outrage over having to actually play the content instead of skipping it nor did the sky fall or the game immediately fail when players couldn’t just run past every mob in the dungeon. It did take people longer to get their shinies though.

Shiren.9532:

laokoko.7403:

Maybe, just maybe it is the desginers job to make a dungeon which is not cheatable.

And it is the players job to use “strategy(you call it cheat)” to beat the content.

They did that with the mobs in the Molten Weapons Facility. Sure you can stand in the corner for the first boss and stack on top of the last boss to be immune to the mechanics, but you have to deal with all the mobs through the dungeon. I didn’t hear outrage over having to actually play the content instead of skipping it nor did the sky fall or the game immediately fail when players couldn’t just run past every mob in the dungeon. It did take people longer to get their shinies though.

Most of the mobs were veterans who have a reasonable amount of hp,unlike every other dungeon which has over 9000 silver mobs that have hp bars comparable to champions and drop crap loot.

Just want to clear up some misconceptions:
Having to LoS every pull to AoE mobs down is not ‘strategy’
Skipping mobs is not ‘strategy’ nor is it ‘intended’. It’s poor effort / reward ratio.

Now, I’m not saying this is the fault of the players nor implying everyone should start clearing all the trash, but there being trash in a dungeon with no reason to engage it, for the preposterous idea that this differentiates GW2 from WoW…..No.
Mobs aren’t put there to skip unless avoiding them is a specific dungeon mechanic. It’s not a matter of ‘play how you want’ either, because nobody wants to kill mobs that ALL CC and ALL have a ton of hp and ALL drop nothing.

What I’m saying is, don’t make excuses for things that are obviously broken, especially by comparing GW2 to another game.

Avylin.2635:

Just want to clear up some misconceptions:
Having to LoS every pull to AoE mobs down is not ‘strategy’.

lolwat. funneling enemies into a tight space is not strategy? HAHAHAHAHAHA
that’s one of the most basic strategies of all time. Watched 300 lately? oh, i guess you want to stand in front and spank and tank? next you recommend not dodging? do you only play mmos or something?

You do realize that LoSing every pull actually minimizes the strategy you can use in an encounter, and trivializes what would otherwise be difficult, right? And that designing things intentionally to require LoS makes the gameplay exceedingly tedious and gimpy.

Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.

Now tell me how having one person pull a mob, with the other 4 stacked behind a wall, waiting to button mash is substantially better than the gasp ‘tank and spank’ stigma that every wannabe pro throws around. I’d even say you’re getting less out of the game by resorting to such a ‘strategy’ every time rather than attempting to engage them normally, trying to manage them with aggro, or use control skills (like the guardian greatsword, mesmer curtain etc). In that case you are at least semi vulnerable, and have to react accordingly.

But then look at CM. Everyone effectively has to go range and stand still in order to not get 2 shot sniped. No, you cannot dodge every shot either. No, having a guardian in your group to reflect stuff isn’t skill either. Of course, you LoS them, but how fast does that get old?

Avylin.2635:

You do realize that LoSing every pull actually minimizes the strategy you can use in an encounter, and trivializes what would otherwise be difficult, right? And that designing things intentionally to require LoS makes the gameplay exceedingly tedious and gimpy.

Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.

Now tell me how having one person pull a mob, with the other 4 stacked behind a wall, waiting to button mash is substantially better than the gasp ‘tank and spank’ stigma that every wannabe pro throws around. I’d even say you’re getting less out of the game by resorting to such a ‘strategy’ every time rather than attempting to engage them normally, trying to manage them with aggro, or use control skills (like the guardian greatsword, mesmer curtain etc). In that case you are at least semi vulnerable, and have to react accordingly.

But then look at CM. Everyone effectively has to go range and stand still in order to not get 2 shot sniped. No, you cannot dodge every shot either. No, having a guardian in your group to reflect stuff isn’t skill either. Of course, you LoS them, but how fast does that get old?

“getting most of the game, how fast it get’s old” that’s not the point of the said strategy, dont deviate from the topic

“strategy is about shaping the future” and is the human attempt to get to “desirable ends with available means”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy

use LoS when it’s more beneficial

LoS in many situation works, it’s fast, gets the job DONE

fyi: stop writing walls of text, no one like reading walls of text unless they’re very informative. management will hate you

I’m saying your concept of it as a strategy is less correct than it being poor game design. By that token, every exploit is also a strategy, which is what this topic was actually about. Taking the path of least resistance is a pretty loose definition of strategy, but whatever, I’m not going to argue over a technicality. The fact of the matter is that you’re giving LoS too much credit if you think it’s a measure of skill and/or strategic gameplay, at least insofar as GW2.

Edit: My posts are always very informative.

I like how you try to claim that LOSing isn’t a valid tactic when, in fact, it’s probably one of the most fundamental tactics of war. . .

It’s just. . . I have to wonder what you were thinking when you typed that.

Avylin.2635:

I’m saying your concept of it as a strategy is less correct than it being poor game design. By that token, every exploit is also a strategy, which is what this topic was actually about. Taking the path of least resistance is a pretty loose definition of strategy, but whatever, I’m not going to argue over a technicality. The fact of the matter is that you’re giving LoS too much credit if you think it’s a measure of skill and/or strategic gameplay, at least insofar as GW2.

I never put skill and strategy in the same boat.

You define LoS as being “Wrong” or “Incorrect/Less Correct” by whose or what standard? not looking at something too specific, more like enlighten me

this isnt LoS but similar: so using guardian GS 5 to pull > hammer 5 to lock > party AoE bombs. this is not strategic gameplay? (as to what definition you refer it to)

Iures.2894:

I like how you try to claim that LOSing isn’t a valid tactic when, in fact, it’s probably one of the most fundamental tactics of war. . .

It’s just. . . I have to wonder what you were thinking when you typed that.

And I qoute:
“Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.”

If you’re going to argue that LoSing doesn’t break/trivialize many pulls, then I’m not going to feel compelled to correct you.

YATAS

Yet Another Thread About Skipping. Nope, these aren’t tiresome.

Only a completely pompous, arrogant know-nothing would even presume to tell people that the way they enjoy the game is “right” and everyone else is thereby wrong.

I don’t understand why this is so difficult to convey, for all the hate ‘tank and spank’ gets, it only makes sense that utilizing something else totally devoid of skill to basically initiate a tank and spank should be equally frowned upon, especially when many of the instances seem to be designed with that in mind. It’s like a big exercise in validation for everyone who wants to put themselves above the ‘casual’ gamer. They go through one extra step of pulling them mobs around a corner, rather than running in and fighting them. I don’t think that one extra step is worthy of being called strategy in any relevant sense.

XelNigma.6315:

Have you guys ever tried to do a dungeon the "right"way. That is, killing all the enemys you come to, not using little safe spots or stack locations to trick the AI into doing what you want. Like 100% legit run it.

Probably not, or if you have you only done it once or twice. The dungeons seem like they are designed to encourage you to, for a lack of a better word “cheat” to the through it.

Now the last time I ran a dungeon was about 8 months ago, so Im sure they have changed a bit from then. But I just did TA with a group and it was basicly the same as back then, run past these enemys, hide in this corner, ect ect.

I would much rather run a dungeon the “right” way, however it doesnt seem like thats a very viable option.

A ) Running a dungeon without skipping mobs isn’t “right”. It’s your preference. It’s fine to have your preference, but asserting that yours is superior here does nothing other than oppose people against you and polarize the thread.

B ) If you want to run a dungeon without skipping, then start the group yourself, announce in your LFG that you’re not skipping and announce to the group once it’s formed that you’re not skipping. Sadly a lot of people really don’t pay attention to LFG requirements, so it’s always good to re-iterate your guidelines before zoning into the dungeon.

Is it okay if we skip bosses too? Actually, could we just get a direct WP to the loot?
But seriously, if you don’t like playing the game by interacting with mobs, what are you even doing dungeons for?

The thing is it doesn’t need to take forever, it doesn’t need to be without incentive, and it doesn’t need to require a bunch of reflect utility skills. There are two very separate parts of the conflict:
1) Whether or not skipping mobs should be allowable in most circumstances
However, a lot of people are only championing this as a necessary choice because-
2) Silver trash having an extremely low effort / reward ratio

Sure, there should be optional side-stuff, but having mobs standing around just to have players equip a stability skill and run past them is silly. Look at an Arah run, how much of that is extraneous skipping? It isn’t some great choice bestowed on you by ArenaNet to be able to skip because there is no reason to clear the (frequently irritating) trash.

If we should clear the trash, it should be worth our time. It isn’t, so we skip where possible to get the actual rewards (chests, daily tokens etc). If I played a dungeon for the complete dungeon experience, I’d do it with people who don’t care about profit/time. However, I do care about those things.

Simple concept.

Avylin.2635:

Is it okay if we skip bosses too? Actually, could we just get a direct WP to the loot?
But seriously, if you don’t like playing the game by interacting with mobs, what are you even doing dungeons for?

The thing is it doesn’t need to take forever, it doesn’t need to be without incentive, and it doesn’t need to require a bunch of reflect utility skills. There are two very separate parts of the conflict:
1) Whether or not skipping mobs should be allowable in most circumstances
However, a lot of people are only championing this as a necessary choice because-
2) Silver trash having an extremely low effort / reward ratio

Sure, there should be optional side-stuff, but having mobs standing around just to have players equip a stability skill and run past them is silly. Look at an Arah run, how much of that is extraneous skipping? It isn’t some great choice bestowed on you by ArenaNet to be able to skip because there is no reason to clear the (frequently irritating) trash.

So, your issue is the end does not justify the means. in regards of gameplay and “fun” factor of the game.

Well, these LoS using speedrunners (me included), to us a part of the “fun” is from the loot/shiny. Another part of the “fun” factor is doing things as efficient and fast as possible.

You can enjoy your game as you like, and we enjoy it as we like. It does not classify our way of doing it “Wrong”

Even Mario had speed runs

Avylin.2635:

Iures.2894:

I like how you try to claim that LOSing isn’t a valid tactic when, in fact, it’s probably one of the most fundamental tactics of war. . .

It’s just. . . I have to wonder what you were thinking when you typed that.

And I qoute:
“Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.”

If you’re going to argue that LoSing doesn’t break/trivialize many pulls, then I’m not going to feel compelled to correct you.

I’m not arguing that it doesn’t turn potentially difficult encounters into easy encounters. That’s practically the definition of an effective strategy, though.

Avylin.2635:

Is it okay if we skip bosses too? Actually, could we just get a direct WP to the loot?
But seriously, if you don’t like playing the game by interacting with mobs, what are you even doing dungeons for?

Your logic here is flawed.

People don’t necessary skip mobs because they don’t want to interact with mobs. They do it because trash mobs aren’t the mobs they want to interact with.

Personally, I enjoy boss fights much more than trash mobs.

Also, you don’t have to kill a mob to engage with it. Finding ways to run past mobs, use stability to prevent knockdowns, use abilities to break snares, and stealth to leash mobs is fun for a lot of people. Not fun for you? That’s cool. Different strokes for different folks.

But that doesn’t mean you have to hate on people just because they enjoy playing the game differently. Also, just because someone plays the game differently than you doesn’t mean that they’re somehow playing the game in a lesser manner or are not enjoying what they are doing.

Speed running happens in virtually every video game. It’s been around for a very long time. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t make it wrong. Many gamers like speed and efficiency. Believe it or not, that is a big part of the game.

You’re disregarding valid strategies and saying they’re wrong, while saying the only true strategy is to have someone stand there and take all the hits. Maybe you haven’t played many dungeons in the game, but you can’t tank like it’s WoW.

OP and Avylin have a very self centered view on dungeoning. If it’s not done the way you want it, then it’s wrong. No one here is telling you you’re playing wrong. You just have a different playstyle, and that’s fine. Now get off your high horse, do some dungeons with like-minded people and stop telling everyone else they’re doing it wrong.

It’s just bad design for most dungeons.

AC, for example, has a fairly good design and most runs should remind that “right” way.
You still can skip a lot of things, but they have much more reasonable HP pools and many of them (Troll, Kholer, most graveling packs including a champion) had guaranteed loot. If you think on the things that don’t offer anything at all, you have the first mound (which I think is there just to introduce players what a graveling mound is), the first graveling pack (on a path which is filled with traps, so it’s a much trickier skip than usual), and maybe a couple of veteran groups (oozes, spiders, gravelings without champion) per path.
You have mostly mandatory bosses/events and optional encounters with guaranteed reward. The amount of pure trash is actually really small.
People will still skip as much as possible because, having that aberration known as COF1, they are probably going to be only interested in tokens, but this is a completely different story.

On Arah, on the other hand, maybe 90% (or even more) of the dungeon is pure trash. All the dungeon is filled with silvers with huge HP pools, even a good amount of champions, with no loot at all. Cleansing everything take ages and is just an annoying huge waste of time.

Glitches on bosses, like safe spots, are much more annoying than skipping to me.
I stopped doing CM with all the mountain climbing, I stopped doing TA with the safe spots on wurm and final boss, I stopped doing Arah P3 with the safe spots on the first two bosses … I pretty much stopped running dungeons with PUGs because of how many encounters were glitched/exploited.
For someone that runs dungeons just for fun, dungeons consisting on a sequence of skips and exploits is extremely depressing and I’m really worried on how long is taking to shutdown those things.

Bread.7516:

lolwat. funneling enemies into a tight space is not strategy? HAHAHAHAHAHA
that’s one of the most basic strategies of all time. Watched 300 lately? oh, i guess you want to stand in front and spank and tank? next you recommend not dodging? do you only play mmos or something?

Funneling enemies into a narrow space is indeed strategy, but a defensive one.
On a dungeon we are the attackers, we are the ones who want to cross the Thermopylae pass. The foes that guard a room we want to cross don’t have any reason to do us a favor and give up their terrain advantage.
I can accept LoS as strategy against gravelings or briar dogs, but it has no sense against any intelligent enemy.
LoS is closer to an AI exploit than a real strategy. However, it was already used in GW1 and since doesn’t seem that ANet had put much effort on avoiding it, I guess it’s intended.
I honestly think that getting rid of LoS tactics we could get much more interesting combats, but that’s just my opinion.

As several people has posted. Even if you had a team willing to cut a path through the dungeon it would take forever due to the enemies having such huge HP pools and when they are defeated they drop only trash making it not very rewarding to boot. MF did a good job of not giving every enemy massive HP allowing each fight to last as long as a fight should last.

With my run in TA it felt like the dungeon was designed around people just running past, with almost very enemy having knockback/knockdown, cripple and/or immobilized in addition to the large aoe poison from all the blooms. Its like there abilities where hand picked to slow people down rather than fight them head on.

I dont blame people for taking shortcuts and cheap “tactics” to get through a dungeon when the dungeon itself is so badly designed that it makes such thing almost necessary.

Cheap tactics are great and all, but in all my days of skipping content I’ve yet to see any.

8 months ago? You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.

I’m not arguing against speed runs. Efficiency, knowing exactly how to complete the run as fast as possible, are legitimate ways to enjoy a dungeon experience be it for loot or whatever.

The problem is as XelNigma is saying, there isn’t really an alternative to doing that. The way the trash is designed encourages every pull to be either LoS’d or skipped. Not to mention the rewards you get for doing so, as you say, people don’t do completion runs out of the virtue in their hearts.

In most games the trash is less an ordeal, not everyone has to be a speed runner regardless of preference. So if the current design was intentional, wouldn’t it actually be better just to give access to the boss WPs by default? Because as a speed runner, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys running past mobs they’ll never fight. There is also the matter of where you draw the line in an MMO, like the CM mountain climbing skip. I’d say that goes a little too far beyond speed running into a loot bandwagon.

Indeed I know Mario has speed runs, I’ve watched siglemic break the world record! But Mario isn’t an MMO, and you’ve got a choice.

GW2 Dungeons are all about glitching/skipping stuff. However, if the dungeons were not so poorly designed the glaring flaw in the game mechanics would be too obvious. Sure people will defend this as legitimate game play, but lets face it it’s little more than an exploit fest. The problem is a core concept of the game though, so it will never be “fixed”, just exploit with everyone else and try to ignore it.

Avylin.2635:

I don’t understand why this is so difficult to convey, for all the hate ‘tank and spank’ gets, it only makes sense that utilizing something else totally devoid of skill to basically initiate a tank and spank should be equally frowned upon, especially when many of the instances seem to be designed with that in mind. It’s like a big exercise in validation for everyone who wants to put themselves above the ‘casual’ gamer. They go through one extra step of pulling them mobs around a corner, rather than running in and fighting them. I don’t think that one extra step is worthy of being called strategy in any relevant sense.

I’m curious if you played Warcraft during Burning Crusade and after. If so, how did you feel about the AoE tanking that became prevalent?

In the original WoW, you marked targets as priority and various CC. Warriors were the main go to tanks and they would use rifles to LOS pull around corners. In BC, Paladins became popular as it was discovered you could use their mechanics to just pull groups en masse and outlast them. I leveled solo like that. In Lich King this tactic became even more popular and viable with all the tank classes – I leveled a Warrior and Druid solely in dungeons just because it was fun.

Come Cataclysm, same deal outside of raids – LOS, group ’em up, burn ’em down. Sure, it helps to have a priority of burning (and GW2 has that if someone is playing target caller), but it was still pretty mindless and not that strategic once you learned the dungeons.

MF really reminded me of those days more than any other dungeon in GW2. You can’t skip trash, but you can still stack and massacre. I think it provides a nice balance between what I knew in other MMOs (WoW and CoX mainly) and GW2 Explorables – you still function as a team, you can’t really skip and exploit, but stacking and LOS are still strategic choices if you want to make things easier.

Avylin.2635:

In most games the trash is less an ordeal, not everyone has to be a speed runner regardless of preference. So if the current design was intentional, wouldn’t it actually be better just to give access to the boss WPs by default? Because as a speed runner, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys running past mobs they’ll never fight.

Hmm. . .Yes and no. I wouldn’t be opposed to a dungeon with extremely few mobs between you and the boss being unskippable. That’s pretty much what we have with the beginning of CoF P1, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone complain about the first encounter, it’s just a thing that’s there that you have to kill. Very little reward, but it’s easy and over fast (barring those freak runs where 2+ people decide to get downed for no reason).

Compare that to, say, Arah P3’s beginning. I get downed more often against the Risen Mages in the first pull (stupid AoE spam) than I do to the boss Crusher (strafe2win /yawn). But, then, right after that boring boss encounter comes a skip sequence. It’s getting to the point where I’m less likely to die to the run, but it requires paying more attention than the boss does, because I actually have to dodge in order to survive. So, I’d say that in some places, the skip sequences are actually more challenging than the bosses on either end (and this is ignoring that the second boss in P3 can be afk-fought).

There is also the matter of where you draw the line in an MMO, like the CM mountain climbing skip. I’d say that goes a little too far beyond speed running into a loot bandwagon.

That I’ll agree is purely an exploit, and is a better example (to me, anyway) of your earlier point about real world tactics not always being valid/“right” for a video game.

Iures.2894:

Avylin.2635:

In most games the trash is less an ordeal, not everyone has to be a speed runner regardless of preference. So if the current design was intentional, wouldn’t it actually be better just to give access to the boss WPs by default? Because as a speed runner, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys running past mobs they’ll never fight.

Hmm. . .Yes and no. I wouldn’t be opposed to a dungeon with extremely few mobs between you and the boss being unskippable. That’s pretty much what we have with the beginning of CoF P1, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone complain about the first encounter, it’s just a thing that’s there that you have to kill. Very little reward, but it’s easy and over fast (barring those freak runs where 2+ people decide to get downed for no reason).

Compare that to, say, Arah P3’s beginning. I get downed more often against the Risen Mages in the first pull (stupid AoE spam) than I do to the boss Crusher (strafe2win /yawn). But, then, right after that boring boss encounter comes a skip sequence. It’s getting to the point where I’m less likely to die to the run, but it requires paying more attention than the boss does, because I actually have to dodge in order to survive. So, I’d say that in some places, the skip sequences are actually more challenging than the bosses on either end (and this is ignoring that the second boss in P3 can be afk-fought).

There is also the matter of where you draw the line in an MMO, like the CM mountain climbing skip. I’d say that goes a little too far beyond speed running into a loot bandwagon.

That I’ll agree is purely an exploit, and is a better example (to me, anyway) of your earlier point about real world tactics not always being valid/“right” for a video game.

Not to bring it back to WoW, but hey, it’s the only game I really put my heart into dungeons on. Your examples remind of the way their dungeons matured: they were originally large, trash populated ordeals. And some were fun, but time consuming. They began getting shorter, more strategic pulls than just filler, and interesting fight mechanics. Some even became glorified set pieces, but were satisfying.

MF from the GW2 launch dungeons reminds me of that streamlining and honing in on how to make dungeons fun and worthwhile without that min/max elitist gating.

I hope future content takes notes.

Vargamonth.2047:

Glitches on bosses, like safe spots, are much more annoying than skipping to me.
I stopped doing CM with all the mountain climbing, I stopped doing TA with the safe spots on wurm and final boss, I stopped doing Arah P3 with the safe spots on the first two bosses … I pretty much stopped running dungeons with PUGs because of how many encounters were glitched/exploited.
For someone that runs dungeons just for fun, dungeons consisting on a sequence of skips and exploits is extremely depressing and I’m really worried on how long is taking to shutdown those things.

Seconding this sentiment. While I’m 50/50 on skipping mobs (Mostly I’m against it because people do it to ‘save time’ even when the group is not actually capable of creating a safe skipping run, and decides Every Man For Themselves is a legit group tactic that will totally work on the fifth attempt) I am 100% against the way bosses are trivialized. I can’t really blame the players for this: taking the easy / safe route makes sense, even if it is a slightly slower, boring choice. This is especially true because the alternative can be very difficult and no faster. Plus, if it requires too many attempts it often becomes even less fun.

What I’m trying to get at is, if doing a dungeon the ‘right’ way is difficult and painful, then maybe I don’t want to be right and will settle for just being wrong and bored.

Let peeps run dungeon how they want, if they wish to skip then fine, if they want to kill em all then that’s cool too. Try to kill EVERY encounter in arah and see if your mind changes. Instead of venting, just do dungeons with peeps that are in the same mindset as you. If you enjoy to do dungeons “the right way” then fine. The way.most peeps just want to get a dungeon done in reasonable time and not waste 3 to 4 hrs on 1 path so they use the same tactics that get the job done in the fastest way posible, even if that is skipping.

Avylin.2635:

I’m not arguing against speed runs. Efficiency, knowing exactly how to complete the run as fast as possible, are legitimate ways to enjoy a dungeon experience be it for loot or whatever.

The problem is as XelNigma is saying, there isn’t really an alternative to doing that. The way the trash is designed encourages every pull to be either LoS’d or skipped. Not to mention the rewards you get for doing so, as you say, people don’t do completion runs out of the virtue in their hearts.

In most games the trash is less an ordeal, not everyone has to be a speed runner regardless of preference. So if the current design was intentional, wouldn’t it actually be better just to give access to the boss WPs by default? Because as a speed runner, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys running past mobs they’ll never fight. There is also the matter of where you draw the line in an MMO, like the CM mountain climbing skip. I’d say that goes a little too far beyond speed running into a loot bandwagon.

Indeed I know Mario has speed runs, I’ve watched siglemic break the world record! But Mario isn’t an MMO, and you’ve got a choice.

To set the context, basically it’s not being “right” or “wrong” it’s an issue of variety/alternate ways. Though i think the OP labeled using LoS tactics as “wrong” in original post.

In regards to alternatives, you believe that there should be ways on tackling mobs that can be just as efficient as current strategies. I completely agree to this but of course it will involve a lot of dev costs.

In regards to skipping mobs, I remember a post where dev said it’s easy to force players to fight mobs though chooses not to do so with every trash mob because that’s just not right. (forgot his justification and don’t quote me on this).

Overall youre looking at creative content and solutions to current existing problems of game mechanics which are difficult to do because creative ideas don’t just simply manifest at will, I believe anet has been trying to improve the game a lot and is already preparing to redo the existing dungeons.