Guild Wars 2

1) Run the same exact chain over twice in a row
2) Complete multiple dungeons in 30 minutes or less each.

Sorry Jon, but it’s not working as intended. I just did 2 runs of Ascalon Catacombs explorable, the ghost eater (where I got normal rewards, took almost an hour) and then howling king (took more than an hour). On the second run, I got one third of the normal reward (9s, 66k xp).

Alur.7510:

If these changes aren’t undone or fixed, I too will uninstall and quit this game. And my entire guild of 25 have the same sentiments.**

and you think they care HOW , they have your money already, if you are not purchasing Gems from Day 1, at LEAST every week. you are technically a LOSS Customer, they don’t care about you, they are loosing money due to you. they already have your Box $

My group went from doing all the dungeons that we wanted gear from to having 2 or 3 people now saying pretty much “Screw it, there’s no reason to do dungeons that I don’t need tokens from now that they’re worth nothing”. A friend got 13 silver for his first run of the day, then 3 for the one that followed (the second dungeon run took longer than a half hour) while we got 26/13. The half hour listed in the first post is either a flat out lie, or you have to stay out of a dungeon for a half hour (which seems like a terrible approach).

I was under the impression it would be (all on seperate dungeon paths of course)

Get dungeon clear reward A
-30 minutes pass-
Get dungeon clear reward B

Both A and B will be 26s

A
Less than 30 minutes
B
A = 26s, B = 13s

But that’s not the case. Anyway, if it stays like this I know another guild that will pretty much be done with the game. To the person saying that if you don’t buy gems you’re a loss customer, that’s not true. There WILL be expansions/content that you pay for. Alienating players now means less sales of future content.

gg anet. Now that you have our money you can slowly stop working on things and break barely working things so you pay less for servers.

I mean…. the rewards were bad before and they were very grindy. What reasoning was there for this? “Let’s anger the majority of the player base so we can stop this stupid farming thing that we made them do in the first place.” People aren’t going to do dungeons more now that farming isn’t an issue in fact people won’t do it at all without the cruddy rewards we did have. Now you can’t find a party for one at all and if you do you won’t make it through without losing a lot of money.

well we can’t do anything bout it now.. they already have our money we already bought the game… they can do whatever they want with the game now that we have already bought it

very sneaky ANet

My take on completing CM first run today (within 24 hrs) Story mode (as a test).
Increased difficulty:
Acceptable & Necessary

Bug or “increased difficulty”?
The door guard though randomly became invulnerable, moved to the door, and healed from 1/8 to 1/2. This was from the center of the room, by the steps nearer the door.
Also with the door guard, he seems to damage me with non-projectile greatsword attacks from a range larger than my greatsword’s range.
Sniper’s one shot me about 1/5 times. Sniper’s projectiles work through Sanctuary.

Decreased reward:
KITTEN, KITTEN, KITTEN (I typed kitten, this post has not be censored)
I attached my screenshot reward with armor repair cost in background. Yes, I know the repair cost would be less, if my team and I played with more skill. Even still, This is an unacceptable reward. Granted, if I were to merch EVERYTHING that dropped I would get ~5 more silver, profiting ~1 silver but then I’d not gain any mats.

I have not completed any runs since, and assuredly won’t be completing any further. “Rewarding Gameplay” Went right the kitten out the window with this update. Now, with the way this is working, not only are the Dungeon items time consuming to get, but now they ALSO cost money.

@Quiznos, I think your decision to stop running the now-giant-money-sink dungeons is going to be shared by most players after they see the pitiful rewards. As if it weren’t hard enough to get a dungeon group together already, now it’s just 100% pointless.

ill only reply to the first post as i have no time to read peoples opinions on that, need to farm alot more now..

you forget that level 80 exotic gear is a must have to matter in the game, if its dungeon running or pvp.. you should not run arah if you are not full exotic, it will make things unnesseary hard, with exotic gear your able to enjoy the full dungeon.
it still wont be easy.. but its way more comfortable to do.

same with wvw, people now do have exotics, ull have a hard time in wvw if not in a zerg with exotics, because ull get wiped…

so you finally reached level 80, what you now need is exotic gear..
so you have to start farming it…

now i dont see whats wrong with a 15min cof run.
i can make AC in 30 min, but only get level 60 gear.
i always can farm the first boss only wich gives 5 token in 5min

i saw cof as a starter dungeon, everone who reached 80 wanted to run dungeon like arah, get the best things, but nobody was able to defeat lupicus, noone had exotics.. untill we figured the fastest way to farm our first set (to finally matter in the game) it was cof.. 3-4 days, full set… now we could keep on farming it for the money, or anytime we need some cash..

or just concentrate on all the other stuff to do, dungeons to farm and sets to collect, cuz now we are full exotic and only have to worry about looks.

now let me talk about your “fixxes”:

reduce the reward of story modus?
-sorry but the reward of story modus is salvage or vendor material basicly it already was trash, the rare set that you introduced shortly befor launch do suck, i bet noone ever has spent any token on that, i dont know if you noticed, but they all look the same, now you even reduced the rewards? i mean cmon…. you NEED TO make the player want to play the game, give the boss a great sword, at the end of the fight let the player loot the sword, that kind of stuff, make it rewarding to play the game.. currently we dont see any rewards, thats why we speedrun, to get the real rewards which you put a incredible amount of time needed to farm it anyhow..

it is not right to run a dungeon for 3-4h and only get 20-30 token where you need 1300 for a full armor set.. it is just not rewarding enough

too much other things to do in the game, too much other characters to play… so people will always use the fastest way to get what they want..

sure i see your problem, if people farm 1 set in one week, after 3-4 month they got them all.. but i think its up to you then to introduce more set, more weapons, now you can start make them hard/long to get.

stop trying to stop people from shortcutting, work on ways to keep them busy after they reached the goal of the shortcut.

like i looted exactly 1 moten lodestone while farming 1000 token in cof…
and i need how much? 100 stones? now it will take even longer…. i mean cmon, give me a reward for spending the time playing….

The person who said that ArenaNet wants you to farm an armor set over the course of 3 months reminded me of another game that tried to do that.

Final Fantasy XIV tried to tell people how much they should play and how often they should play by having penalties to experience the more you played without taking a break called “Bonus EXP.” You’d eventually stop getting EXP and start racking up the mysterious “Bonus EXP” instead.

That went well for them.

I’m not saying this will end up like FFXIV. I just thought it was amusing.

A lot of rage on these threads. Honestly theres a good reason to be angry about it. I know why they did what they did, but they used a block buster bomb to fix something a bb could have fixed.

Breaking content, or making it 4x harder for little to no reward in the long run does not promote people playing said content. It also does not inspire great confidence in your ability to understand what the majority of your customers want.

In regards to the people saying things like “They already have your money, what do they care?” They may not, and I hope thats not true because in the end ArenaNet, as far as I am aware, does not intend on closing their doors, they plan on making more games. If this recent patch equates to what they will be doing through the life of this game, it will end up making the consumers leery of buying other titles from this company.

Now, to play devils advocate:
The game is new, and they are scrambling to fix a ton of issues they have had since launch. Give it time and they may very well find the happy medium that we need. If not, then I will consider not being a “loyal customer”

As a side note, I have purchased gems, about 30 bucks a week, to purchase gold off the exchange for my guild. I will no longer be doing so, especially until they either roll back these changes and slowly find the happy medium needed, or un-EXPLICATIVE what they messed up this patch.

“Now that -YOU- paid -US- for -OUR PRODUCT-, we now get to tell -YOU- how -YOU’RE- going to like it.”

This is bad business defined.

Derian Gothsend.3928:

Now, to play devils advocate:
The game is new, and they are scrambling to fix a ton of issues they have had since launch. Give it time and they may very well find the happy medium that we need. If not, then I will consider not being a “loyal customer”

That would be good and all but I don’t see bugs getting fixed. Elementalists are in dreadful shape due to all of the broken skills and traits but I haven’t heard a word on what they are doing about that. I guess all of their time is being spent on these poorly thought out changes that aren’t necessary because I (and probably quite a few others) don’t care how fast some guy (or girl) can get it if they don’t do anything else all day. How am I supposed to GRIND for this gear when I can’t dedicate much time to this game, none the less a guild just so I can play any of the end game content?

Recap on Anets development philosophies on this game:
-No grinding EH NOT TRUE
-Play the way you want EH NOT TRUE
-Dungeons will require skill, but not because of mob health/power EH NOT TRUE
…and so many more…

Ok, I understand the game mechanic, and as many other player, Iv’e played Vindictus and also Dragon Nest which had a similar gameplay, in both of them I had to keep on moving dodging attack, and check the boss/enemy to dodge the more powerful attack, it was fun and I was able to beat incredibly hard boss in duo with my brother.

Now in GW2 it just doesn’t feel right, even when I dodge, use my Aegis ( I’m a Guardian ) change weapon set to be able to block more hit, use my party buff, I still get downed.

Dodging : dodge twice every 10 seconds
Aegis : 5 Blocked hits every 30-90 seconds

Now some boss have multi hit attack which make Aegis useless, or even worst long multi hit attack, which also make dodging useless because even if you dodge, the attack is not finished and still get hit.

For almost EVERY fight in dungeon this doesn’t last 5 second, moving around the enemy doesn’t help because he still hit you when you move around him, you absolutely have to dodge or block to avoid being damage, so I just end up staying still and using my dodges every now and then, and use my aegis when he prepare a strong attack.

I know you’re going to tell me it’s my fault and I should keep on moving but really, it doesn’t make any difference, only the dodge and aegis help.

Pretty much all of my friends have quit at this point because there’s nothing to do PvE-wise at 80 after 100% wold completion, and a lot of that has to do with dungeons being horrendously overtuned, tedious and frustrating slogs for nearly no reward. I don’t really care for these dungeons either, and I’m not super interested in playing alone, so I may have to do the same.

I dont mind dungeons being difficult.
The challenge is what makes them fun, but they should not be so hard you cant do them without dying every 15 seconds.

I did CoF a couple days ago, Story mode, and found it to be fun.
Today I decided to get the story mode done for all dungeons so I could start Exploration mode.

I got a group for CM, and found that it waskittennear impossible to kill anything.
1 shot from a mob and you were fighting to survive, 5 seconds later a second shot would kill you.

Its not worth even trying with these kinds of difficulties as you pay more for repairs than you get for doing the run.
So you are not making money, you are losing money on doing it, so whats really the point in doing dungeons then?

kostbabis.8791:

darkehawke.1269:

defi.4127:

Shiren

I suspect that, unfortunately, ArenaNet will dismiss most of the negative feedback as a knee jerk to losing the “easy” rewards

I hope they do, cause that’s exactly what this thread is full of.

How so?
How is increasing Story mode diffilculty to make it comparable to explorable, yet reduce the reward a good thing?

this thread is full of two kinds of people. people who got their stuff from dungeons and dont care about the cahnge because they dont have to be affected. And the peple who have to do twice the work others did for the same reward

Reward which btw is cosmetic :P
I never found cof armor pretty looking anyway so this change is godly for me..
It increases the chanches i found group for the dungeon i want.

Its amusing that you think people will all of a sudden see the light and start doing different dungeons now instead of just not bothering with them altogether.

People did CoF#2 because it was efficient. They don’t do other dungeons because they aren’t. The patch doesn’t change the inefficiency of completing the other dungeons so I’m not sure why you think people are going to all of a sudden want to start their grind over in a different place that takes even longer with even less reward.

At the moment I don’t care about Explorable since I’m just enjoying the game running around, exploring, etc.

But why change Story Mode’s difficulty? Why lock casuals out of what is supposed to be casual-friendly content?

Massively bad decision. People were enjoying themselves. Now they are not. ALL END GAME IS A GRIND. Honestly that’s what end game is. People grinding for new, pretty gear.

Why would you make a manageble, enjoyable experience and destroy it? Please you need to rethink your strategy.

im just wondering how farming a dungeon to get the 1300 tokens for armor plus the 390 for a weapon and actually breaking even on repair costs or making a few silver is circumventing a normal reward. and also how is getting that many tokens not a grind. if it isnt your intention to make it a grind dont diminish returns on dungeon rewards….increase them. take out the crudy repair costs then and the waypoint fees then if you decide to decrease the rewards that would make sense. as of now cannot find a cof dungeon group or any other for that matter. since running dungeons to earn gear or silver is circumventing normal rewards how do we get gold? other than buying it from anet? and dont even say farm events 1 silver per event is stupid. and on top of that if dungeons are part of the natural order of earning experience and gold how do we do that if…
1) dungeon impossible to complete due to KD and 1 shot/2shot
2) repair costs are far higher than dungeon reward
3) no groups due to faulty diminishing return program
4) dungeons require 50+ grinds to get a set
5) with diminishing returns now require 100 times that amount of time to get armor set
6) tokens for legendary require dungeon grinding—nogroups=nolegendaries
7) casual players cant ever complete a dungeon
8) anti event farming bots decrease more rewards
9) bugs or exploits may or may not get players randomly banned
10) programmers and developers obviously never played guild wars 2 in any way shape or form
11) characters take entirely too much damage from enemies due to faulty level scaling and op’d enemies
12) too many enemies with too high hit points fighting 5 people
13) entirely too much dying game sets you up to do nothing except spend silver you earned and die 50 times to complete a “challenging” dungeon
14) dungeons are not challenging just some require repeated dying/respawning and run back due to insufficient healing
15) no straight healing class tank class and dps class like in other mmos

i could go on but i wont. change dungeons back to how they were…increase rewards from dungeons like tokens… get rid of repair and waypoint fees
if you do this then players would be happy
there is no for the player in guild wars 2 and unless something changes there will be no players in guild wars 2

I am sure ANET is reading all the explosive feedback.

I sympathize with the people who hate this patch, and I am sure this upsetting change is only temporary.

C’mon Anet I’m a huge GW2 fanboy and even I am not having fun with the current dungeon set up at all. I can’t even get people to play with me on CoF even if they’re hard im willing to do it but the cost of running dungeons now is just so ridiculous.

Kain Francois.4328:

I am sure ANET is reading all the explosive feedback.

I sympathize with the people who hate this patch, and I am sure this upsetting change is only temporary.

Yeah, my money is a full reversal or an overhaul of the rewards system. Too much hatred flowing as a result of this nonsensical patch.

I haven’t seen “fixes” this bad since Diablo 3. Wait, that wasn’t that long ago… this industry is really going down the chute.

CoF made for a way to earn silver by doing things over and over. It was a method that a lot of people were willing to employ. Grinding for silver via Dungeon runs should be a viable way of earning gold. Tokens should be worth silver if you want us to keep on doing it.

Another thing to note is that this already invalidates the Official Strategy Guide because now we need to use totally different strategies.

They didn’t change Arah Story Mode yet though, did they?

Kain Francois.4328:

They didn’t change Arah Story Mode yet though, did they?

Well they nerfed the kitten out of the gains for it so it’s like 6s and 20k exp

Right now we are working hard to make sure there are not any ways for players to circumvent the normal rewards in the game and then we will be able to look at the actual rewards and make sure they require a reasonable amount of investment.

I’m really enjoying the game right now (as I did when GW1 originally came out), and this isn’t specific to your changes, but is more a comment about your (and in extension ArenaNet’s) mentality -bolded in the quote- for changing the game.

Most of the people I used to talk to about and play with in Guild Wars (1) that left early (mainly around the Factions release) had one major reason behind it – the foremost priority became, it seemed, in Guild Wars 1 was in preventing players from playing in a manner that you had not intended, with the secondary priority being in your war against bots, followed distantly by making the game more enjoyable for players directly. Things that come to mind when Factions was released were gated areas (to prevent runners), heavy emphasis on crippling by PvE mobs (again to slow down or stop runners and explorers), loot scaling (to prevent solo or small group players), and all kinds of things to attempt to stop bots (somewhat understandable).

The problem is that from a normal player standpoint it seemed as though you were worried MORE about people ‘getting one over on you’ or ‘playing some way you didn’t envision’ than making the game better for the average player. You still seem to be in that mentality.

Work on fixing bugs and seeing how you can address issues people have with the game BEFORE you go after stopping the people that (for the most part) seem to be hurting your feelings.

Blockbuster fell into the same trap when its CEO blogged about overhauling their ‘in-the-mail’ return program early on because he waskitten off that a very few people were bragging about how to exploit the system. In effect he cared more about that then taking care of the customers. Obviously he made a bad decision.

Get your priorities straight this time around. It wasn’t until after your two main teams left to work on GW2 that the trends started reversing on GW1, making the game more enjoyable. Don’t take it personally if people are playing a way you don’t like or circumventing something you put in unless it is game-breaking (like the mystic forge exploits) until AFTER you work issues related to your main player-base. This isn’t a war between you and them… Leave your egos at the door. Your player-base will really love you for it.

Anyway, just my two cents in a hopefully helpful manner. Either you’ll listen or you won’t. At the worst we can look forward to your current GW1 team moving to GW2 down the road and fixing it if you decide not to listen.

Right now we are working hard to make sure there are not any ways for players to circumvent the normal rewards in the game and then we will be able to look at the actual rewards and make sure they require a reasonable amount of investment.

In other words, I think ANET is still balancing things out and this is only temporary?

Looking forward to the real fixes, but I am curious to see how ANET calms the crowd.

I understand what they are trying to do with the change in exp/gold/drops however they are really trying to block what players do with this update. The reason this game is such a hit is because we have freedom do play the way we like, we are populated with players that rather dungeon grind to 80, enjoy farming events for exp, going out and doing quests, full map exploration and or leveling off of just WvW. With this update they are taking away what makes guild wars 2 special and smacking us in the face with it.

Now the real question is how do they fix this horrible update?
I think the best way they can fix it is by reverting STORY back to what it was. Make story mode a place where you can grind exp to level but your rewards aren’t as amazing. Instead of 12 silver? from CM drop it by half that way you can still repair and have money to spare.

What about explorable mode?
I think they should focus more on rewards instead of limiting what you can do, boost the gold on explorable and lower the exp. That way it is more about the reward and less about the exp farm. To make different trees more appealing you should give a quest outside or when entering it that gives a boosted token reward when all 3 roads are done. The reward would have to be significantly higher then farming to make it worth it ofcourse but that interest tons.

Ok we just did 2 hour run at crucible of eternity explorable.

Second path – experimental teleporter

We had to call off the run because last boss was unkillable (literally bugged out on us and was talking no damage at all from our abilities/auto attacks)

So 2 hours wasted.

Our team decided to do an honor of the waves runs.

Path – butcher

run was going pretty well till we got to the last boss and every one of us was falling through the world.

Ok so instead of fixing these dungeons they nerf (and i am not saying speed runs where ever a good idea) the viable routes and still leave the broken ones so you have broken on broken.

miya.5160:

The person who said that ArenaNet wants you to farm an armor set over the course of 3 months reminded me of another game that tried to do that.

Final Fantasy XIV tried to tell people how much they should play and how often they should play by having penalties to experience the more you played without taking a break called “Bonus EXP.” You’d eventually stop getting EXP and start racking up the mysterious “Bonus EXP” instead.

That went well for them.

I’m not saying this will end up like FFXIV. I just thought it was amusing.

The guys at the top realized they made a huge mistake, fired their entire development team and worked for years to bring the game up to a decent standard, I don’t think that needs to happen here but I wouldn’t feel so bad if someone came out and said this game was going in the wrong direction and took drastic proactive measures to prevent the game from tanking.

Right now Arenanet is just reacting to everything we do, probably without testing anything, so we get these hamfisted solutions that solve an underlying problem but essentially ruin part of the game. It’s like that time people were exploiting tier 1 rare cultural weapons by salvaging them for ectos so arenanet decided multiply the price by 9, now no one in their right mind would ever spend karma on those weapons.

“hamfisted solutions” can’t be worded any better

I stopped playing Diablo 3 when they released a patch that more than tripled the repair costs of gear from death. Running a class that was in the thick of fighting, I was always assured of at least a few deaths per gaming session, and seeing my hard-won gold handed over to a blacksmith who would likely use it to fund his gambling habit was frustrating. It was at that point that the reward-to-risk ratio, or my experience of it at least, dipped so low that I figured it simply was not worth my time to continue playing.

The dungeon fixes feel quite like that for me. I want to enjoy the game, but don’t have the endless hours to sink into it. What really attracted me to this game was the design philosophy I heard espoused in many previews and interviews, particularly the bits that claimed nerfs would be done only when completely necessary, such as when a particular player’s or group of players’ led to the detriment of other players’ gaming experience. I could spend my time in Krytia the way I wanted to spend it. I never ran the dungeons exclusively, but I would do speed runs for some quick cash to buy crafting materials. The alternative would be to search and salvage for every scrap of jute I could get my hands on day in and day out. Not fun. With dungeon runs, I could do whatever I wanted without the fear that I’d get left too far behind by more hardcore players. I could play WvW, and even if I wiped I could recoup my expenses. If my World needed siege plans, I could be the one to purchase them without fear of going bankrupt. If I just wanted to PK, I could join sPvP, earn absolutely nothing of value in PvE, but it’s okay…I can grind a little and catch up.

Were speed runs really affecting the game as a whole? I’d like to understand, because pre-patch I was enjoying myself and now I’m starting to ask myself if I can really spend time doing what I want to do.

Same way rewards.

26s 26s 13s 6s 4s 13s 6s 4s

The fun thing is that not all ppl in party got same while they didnt do any succesfull runs previously.

“At this time, dungeons should one of the most efficient ways to level and get gold, and it is not our intention to make them feel like a grind.”

Played last night from 8 pm till 12pm and in that time i got 3 runs in of those 3 only 1 complete, (just dungeon run, no other part of story line or questing was done.) The other 2 runs the group just gave up at the door due to the massive mob that insta pops you, so now to get the gear i want have to grind but now with upgrade on the insta pop mob i have to grind for even longer to only get 30 tokens a night playing on section of the world, so at this pace ill get the gear i want in about 59 days at this rate, but i feel better now that you saying in your post that its not a grind but to do the same run for 2 months to get the gear i want kinda feels like Diablo 3 all over again.
Well im still going to “NOT GRIND” and grind to get the gear.

I really don’t want to see this game fail so lets get it together GW2/A-Net. As i said before in a different thread and i am not sure if you check them but if you saying this game is so huge with different content that you want us to see, then you need to change your token system. Cause what you have in right now is stupid.

I’m pretty scared of what is going to happen to this game. These are the same knee-jerk reactions we were told they would avoid and over a stupid issue like some people getting stuff faster than they intended. If this priority is higher than the game breaking ones then I’m afraid I won’t play much longer. It looks like they don’t even care about their player base all of the sudden. Anybody else remember when they used to be transparent? That was what? 5 or 6 weeks ago? Now we are lucky if anything they ever do is even posted in a patch notes, none the less actually justified. I’m a logical guy and I realize that I don’t know how games are developed so if we get a good explanation and the direction of these changes then I can change the way I think about this, but right now we know nothing.

Are these changes temporary until they find a better solution that doesn’t affect every player whether they were botting/farming or not? Will I ever be able to get my CoF armor now without practicing until I fail college and become super 1337 at my class (which is broken btw, the ele) OR joining a highly organized super guild?

Bedevere.9128:

Yes, the dungeons are possible to do, some of them with out even dying a single time, but
I shouldn’t have to kitten number crunch to just be able to complete a dungeon!!! I should be able to get a pug and go run the dungeon! We wont be able to do it with out dying but we should at least be able to complete it without dying 20+ times! Also a lot of people are saying that we just need to learn how to dodge, I’m all for that, there is a game called Vindictus where if you don’t know how to dodge you’re kitten. However they have some things GW2 doesn’t have at the moment, and that includes being able to actually see your enemy when your in melee combat, and being able to dodge more than just twice in a row before having to wait 5+ seconds to dodge a second time.

What part of “explorables are hard and are meant to be completed by skilled and organized players” don’t you understand?

So, yesterday I did only CoF explorable once. I understand the rewards get cut off after doing it multiple times, but I received only 2 silver and 5 tokens from the end reward, after doing it ONLY once in the whole day?! Not to mention I broke ALL my equipment till the NPC set the Kaboomium (timer was twice as long). Could you at least put some time in between the spawns so we can actually kill them instead of just running around? I don’t mind difficulty so long as the reward matches it, but I’m coming out with losses after doing CoF.

Make all dungeons have the same tokens for godsakenis it that hard of a concept!

the amount of whining here is incredible
the dungeon wasnt meant to be 4times more rewarding than any other dungeon.

if you think it cost too much token for a piece of gear than comlplain about that.
im glad they fixed that kitten

ledzep.9504:

the amount of whining here is incredible
the dungeon wasnt meant to be 4times more rewarding than any other dungeon.

if you think it cost too much token for a piece of gear than comlplain about that.
im glad they fixed that kitten

Was it meant to be 4 times more costly compared to rewards then?

When the repair bill for a run cost 4 times as much as you gain from the run, and the mobs kill you in 1-2 shots every single time, then there is something very wrong.

Perhaps you could share with us your uber invincible spec so we can have a chance at actually earning a few silver as well?

Dear Anet,
I agree with most of the replies. I just want to add another angry letter to the pile. Your newest changes have clearly ruined the gaming experience for your fans and every casual player of Guild Wars 2. I believe that you owe us a patch that adjusts the dungeons’ monetary rewards back to reasonable levels. However, I don’t think you’ll give us that. I think you’ll ruin the game along with your reputation. I won’t buy your expansions or your future products now – how could I trust your company when it makes such stupid adjustments.

I’m going to throw a phrase out there…. cognitive dissonance. Here’s the thing. "At this time, dungeons should one of the most efficient ways to level and get gold, and it is not our intention to make them feel like a grind. "

I’d considered railing against the establishment to describe why explorable modes aren’t worth it.

I want to describe story mode CoF for you. I did NOT ENJOY doing it. It was annoying. It was frustrating. With the reduced gold rewards it would not be worth doing. It is a grind. I’ve got no interest as a level 80 in dumping 5 silver to repair armor going forward. Not frigging worth it. I get more money for less time investment running around Orr.

And then, fun is not a variable to be thrown by the wayside in favor of hard. Challenging is good. It’s not challenging.

CoF story mode has been the best dungeon in Story Mode for me. It is very simple and great fun, especially the last part where SPOILERS some story characters are finally useful.

CoF in Explorer Mode is a very very different subject.

Explorer mode is meant to be difficult and for skilled and organized groups, so let me get that point out of the way. The problem is the lack of incentive to actually do a run in 1-2hrs when you get 30 tokens total, when you need a minimum of 180 for the cheapest armor piece. Nobody would have a problem buying the rares that are at 30 tokens for one piece even if their aesthetics look bad, but they are inferior pieces of armor (stat-wise) when compared to exotics. So what do people do? Completely ignore the “garbage” rares and try to get exotics. The problem? The insane amount of grind to get said pieces of armor. So if a “real run” takes 1 hr for 30 tokens, you would need to do 6hrs of grinding in 1 dungeon to even buy the cheapest piece* if Anet cannot understand how grindy this is, then this game will fail soon.

The changes are fine, for the most part. The major issue is that the system they put in is broken. Almost everyone is seeing diminished returns for no reason (completely different dungeons, hours apart, getting 7s or 2s even). I never got more than 20s today. I ran a dungeon last night, before patch. Ran one today 3 hours after reset (8pm pst). I got 7s and 17k experience for my first run in ~10 hours (CoF 2nd path). An hour after that I did Twilight Arbor and got 2s. Something ain’t workin’ quite right.

I just got a patch update and now an error 42 :|

“So now we have:

1. No gold from dungeons
2. No exp from dungeons
3. No fun from dungeons
4. No drop from dungeons
5. Ugly skins from tokens

nothing to do here."

They are killing it for me.

I suppose I could just request a refund and head on over to “Panda Town”.

For the record :

Exotic armor in general is around 3.5g a piece
So that’s around 14 runs of CoF @ 26s per run, but you can easily get 3.5g @ 10-12 runs including drops and Gate of Flame event.
For a full set, you’d need ~60 runs

Lowest piece of exotic armor (Flame Legion) is 180 tokens which is 9 runs of CoF @ 20 tokens per run. You need 1380 for a full set which is ~70 runs.

Now take into account Armor repair. Let’s say ~3-4 runs you need to repair @ ~10.5s per repair.

If you are going for Exotic Gear:( (350s x 6 ) + (10.5s x 15)) / 26 = ~90 runs @ 26s
If you are going for Flame Legion Exotic in tokens: 1380/20 = ~70 runs @ 20 token
Flame Legion set effectively costs : 70 × 26s = 18.2g
In terns of gold, Flame Legion average per piece would then be : 18.2g/6 = 3g
However, including repair costs, Flame Legion set would then be : 18.2g + (10.5s x 18) = 20g 9s
Then the average Flame Legion piece would be : 20g 9s / 6 = 3.35g

Flame Legion exotic set : 20g 9s
General exotic set : 21g

Why don’t you keep the dungeons like they were let ppl farm up tokens to get gear and add another part to the dungeon that requires you to have the top items to stand a chance in, then you are making the ppl that want hard dungeons happy and making the ppl that want to grind for items happy.

Just a small idea but summing on those lines maby?