Guild Wars 2

Posted by Hellraiser

some of the claims i’ve seen
#1: One shot mechanics have tells and you can dodge them all
“LIE, out and out lie, trash mobs can one shot you, their cousins that they didn’t bring along to the dungeon that day can one shot you, and in story mode no less. do they have tells? for some attacks yes, if you aren’t dealing with tons of adds that can also one shot you in melee then I’m sure you can competently deal with those one shot ranged mechanics, after all what sort of a lunatic would WANT to be a melee damage dealer in rangedwars2”

My thoughts:

Just ran AC for the first time in Story mode. I loved the game so far, but i play these for dungeon runs and after playing i had to alt-tab to come on here and post my thoughts only to find, all this bashing. I’m so disappointed in the dungeons! They look great, atmosphere is top notch! The boss fights and mobs are terrible. Not fun, not challenging just purely HARD! Melee has no chance, you cant see because of all spells etc and the mobs just hit way too hard.

Story mode needs to be fun, come on ANet! You must realise this! Your going to drive people away. Even if you lower HP and Hit points of mobs though, AC was kinda boring, the lovers required a bit of tactics but the rest is just spank! I hope the rest improve, otherwise your amazingly detailed world will not be visited by me for much longer and that will be a massive shame for me because i love it!

EDITED: Because formatting didn’t work.

There’s an easy solution: stop doing dungeons. I did AC at 30 and haven’t done any other dungeons because the experience was awful. The enemies were overpowered and the final boss was pathetic compared to the lovers. Also I received better rewards from the bosses leading up to the final if you don’t count the XP bonus, which I won’t get again on a second run.

“But I’m level 80… that’s all I can really do…” Stop playing the game if that’s all you can do. I’m not saying “go away, you’re stupid,” but if you can’t earn decent reward for your efforts, stop. That’s Life 101.

If Anet is paying attention, this will have 1000x more impact than talking about it here. Every post you make on this kind of thread buys them time to fart (1) around until their next work cycle. But if people stop doing the dungeons, and the endgamers leave the game completely, Anet will have to fix the issue (2) sooner rather than later. And if enough people abandon the dungeons and/or game, they will simply turn off DR because the cost is too high. That’s Economics 101.

If you play the game in a broken state, you are agreeing the broken state is acceptable by the virtue that you’re still playing. You can kitten about the brokenness all you want, but you’re still playing and as such your words have no effective weight (3). It’s like complaining about being repeatedly punched in the face, yet you haven’t moved away from the person punching you in the face.

I’m not returning to this thread because I have voiced my opinion and discourse on this particular matter is useless other than counting the volume of negative opinion over positive. Thus the following annotations:

(1) To Anet employees: don’t reply simply to assert you guys aren’t “farting” around. That’s a literal waste of time. Most people don’t believe you’re farting around. And those that do won’t be convinced otherwise by a forum post.
(2) Fix, as opposed to comprehensively testing alternatives.
(3) To Anet employees: don’t reply simply to assert you guys do care about the opinions of your players. That’s a literal waste of time. Most people do believe you care. And those that don’t won’t be convinced otherwise by a forum post.

Just ran AC with the guild for explore mode… and will never do it again. The mechanics are terrible, flames that will one shot you when you are clearly out of their range, guild mates getting trapped between doors after destroying the burrows, and finally destroying the master elite to receive several Ascalolian Tears, 1 Ghostly Tonic, Apprentice Gloves, and.. 1 copper! Yes! You heard me right, a whole 1 copper for the 14s+ repair bills.

I like a challenge as much as the next person. But some of the changes you made, to make a dungeon more challenging went way too far and turned something that was already difficult into something else entirely.
Now personally I feel there needs to be a better system for the difficulty of each dungeon. I have a simple idea, that would take a bit of work, but the end result would be much better. It needs to base the difficulty off of the average level of your party, stats, professions and equipment each player is utilising. Once it has calculated this, it would then put the players through a suitable difficulty for the dungeon, to make it challenging for them, but not impossible for a group of players that don’t have top gear etc.

Next the reward system. Lets face it, it blows. You’re going to punish a group by reducing the reward, because they can do well and destroy a dungeon in under 30 minutes? really, you’re really going to do that. The reward system should help compensate those that do poorly and need to repair their armor while rewarding players that do well. Lets say a group has done poorly, it’s cost a person 20 silver to repair their armor by the end of the dungeon. Their should be a set amount of reward say 5 silver (as a reward) if you completed dungeon in over 30 minutes and did poorly (higher reward if you did it under and did well), then it should also supply an amount of cash (based on damage to armor and the repair bill) to allow for players to repair their armor. The better you do, the better the reward basically and if you didn’t need to repair your armor, the dungeon would not give additional cash for the repairing of your armor. Or better yet, remove/ reduce the cost of repairing armor. If removed no need to supply additional cash for repair, if reduced then the amount supplied for repair will be much lower therefore this cannot be exploited to gain additional money.

Next the tokken system. Seeing as you now provide diminished rewards for completing a dungeon over and over etc. you should introduce a universal tokken system. This would mean if I wanted armor from dungeon A. but was completing dungeon B. I could still get the armor I wanted and play any dungeon I wanted in the process. (if anyone is going to argue that this wouldn’t be fair as they would be completing an easier dungeon, please read the first paragraphs as this issues is addressed as the difficulty of that dungeon would scale based on stats, player lvls, professions and equipment).

I don’t mind grinding for the gear at all and the challenge of trying to get said armor, but you need to make it possible to still obtain it if you’re undergeared, completing multiple dungeons and so that you’re still getting a reasonable reward for your efforts. I could add in a few more thing’s, however these are my main suggestions.

Oh and also, test before you introduce the changes, it feels like some of the changes you make aren’t throughly tested before implementation. Not saying you don’t, but that’s just how it feels, especially with some of the changes to the citadel of flame.

Sold Out Activist.1580:

EDITED: Because formatting didn’t work.

There’s an easy solution: stop doing dungeons.

“But I’m level 80… that’s all I can really do…” Stop playing the game if that’s all you can do.

If Anet is paying attention, this will have 1000x more impact than talking about it here. Every post you make on this kind of thread buys them time to fart (1) around until their next work cycle. But if people stop doing the dungeons, and the endgamers leave the game completely, Anet will have to fix the issue (2) sooner rather than later. And if enough people abandon the dungeons and/or game, they will simply turn off DR because the cost is too high. That’s Economics 101.

Speaking for myself here (and likely several others):

I have stopped playing dungeons.

I have stopped playing the game.

I agree that doing so will have more impact than “just a forum post.” However, providing both, especially if the post provides helpful suggestions, or state why we aren’t playing the dungeons/game (instead of just flaming the staff’s and other player’s posts/opinions/prior actions) Anet (if they read the posts, which I truly believe they do, or at least skim the posts) will be able to use such information to fix the problems the dungeons/game are facing. Honestly, posts like yours, IMO, would make them less likely to read the forums, and less likely to post in them.

The option of BOTH never occurred to you, it seems. Leaving AND posting should, or is at least worth a try, draw more attention to the issue. And even better the specific issue. Without posts, they’d see people leaving and have no idea why.

You stated you wouldn’t return to this thread. But for me, the opinion of other players matters. By showing a dedicated passion towards getting this resolved it prevents the thought process of “people complained for a while, but now they’re not posting . . . they must be used to the changes and have accepted them.”

My activity here, on this thread, and a few others in the “Dungeon catagory” should make it clear that I have not been playing the game. In its current state, I actually find the forums to be more entertaining. (Maybe I just like ranting :P)

Kazwazza.7168:

Consider each paragraph from your post numbered.

1. I like this idea, Dynamically scaling dungeons to level definitely seems appropriate.

2. Yes, the rewards system blows. It’s currently bugged. They’ve acknowledged it. They are working on it. Let’s see what happens.

3. Token system should NOT be universal. It encourages players to “take the easy way out” and play only one dungeon. A previous poster (perhaps in this thread, perhaps in another) Suggested spreading the gear so all each dungeon has a different dungeon piece. (i.e. AC has all boots, CM has all gloves, etc.) There are exactly the right number of dungeons (9) for this (but 2h weapons wouldn’t have their own dungeons, just make it so they require an even split of offhand tokens and main hand tokens)

4. Agreed, I suggest a full armor repair at the end of each dungeon. That way they are always profitable (and I’ll play them if I have some guarantee that I, at very least, won’t be losing money.

5. Also, very agreed. very very agreed. I wonder if the in-house testers ever tried pugging story. I wonder if they’ve talked to the dungeon designer (which unless its “hey! Whats up? You check out that coffee place on Elm St. yet?” is definitely an advantage the rest of us don’t have). It would be nice to hear something from the QA team every once in a while. I’m sure they’d have plenty to say, and advice to give.

Thank you for your post. It is constructive & has good points.

Mullian.1862:

Just ran AC with the guild for explore mode… and will never do it again. The mechanics are terrible, flames that will one shot you when you are clearly out of their range, guild mates getting trapped between doors after destroying the burrows, and finally destroying the master elite to receive several Ascalolian Tears, 1 Ghostly Tonic, Apprentice Gloves, and.. 1 copper! Yes! You heard me right, a whole 1 copper for the 14s+ repair bills.

Kill the flame heads, though I agree the hit-box and animation are certainly off. Did you bug report the trapping between doors? If not please post one. type /bug in game. Chests never really dropped much coin, several tokens is good though. The trash gloves, though, I agree is kinda like “really? a white/blue? that’s it?” Coin should come on completion of the dungeon, not from chests. Though it may not seem adequate on completion because the reward system is bugged.

“The Story Mode is designed to be easier than the Explorable Mode. Explorable is also, as it’s name implies… very replayable. One of the things we ran into doing missions, which is very much like this in Guild Wars 1, is that we found that doing a mission multiple times, a lot of story oriented stuff started getting in the way of you having fun. You started, ‘Ok, I’ve seen this cutscene before, skip it.’ Pretty soon this culture of skip the cutscene kinda grew up around Guild Wars 1, and so what we wanted to do was to provide people in that first story mode a linear, lots of cutscenes, lots of story going on, lots of exposition, that experience.

“…for the explorable mode it can be a lot more free-form, where you can just jump in and you’re dealing with something that doesn’t need as much explanation, doesn’t have a lot of exposition, doesn’t have a lot of cutscenes, and it has a lot of replayability built into it because there are different ways to complete it, or different paths to take. We tried to really vary each of them quite a bit so we actually don’t fall into a pattern where it’s like ‘Well, Explorable is like there’s three different paths you can take.’ That is true sometimes, but sometimes there’s three different ways, or sometimes it’s multiple ways, not even three, maybe four ways. Sometimes it branches in the middle, sometimes it branches right at the beginning.”

Although Explorable Mode is designed to be replayable and Story Mode is a more linear experience, both can be replayed as many times as you like. “They are not directly contingent upon each other, so whatever you’ve done in your personal story will not change what happens in the dungeons, or vice versa. But you will get to meet, depending on the branches you pick along your personal story, you may end up meeting some of the same characters, and experience different parts of the same storyline” says Flannum.

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/guild-wars-2-the-kitchen-sink-post/2/

What changed from then to now?

im sorry but DR is dumb when you need over 2k tokens <if you get your weps> i know they dont want everyone to get there gear first day but come on this is getting silly. even if it only took 20 min a run just for your gear you would have to run over 22 hours nonstop. im sorry i dont want crafted gear token gear looks so much cooler. for not wanting a grind you guys sure are making us grind alot

@ Azirel

You want everything to be a grindfest? CoF making difficult was the best choice they did. People who walked around with that CoF armor don’t have anything to be proud of. They just farmed it and completed their set in maybe a week or less. Which is NOT the whole point of those dungeons.

Anyways, I have to say, yes, they have to change some mechanics in dungeons. More the Reward system.

Better token rewards and maybe a special reward with a bonus when you clear all 3 paths on a day.

Can someone please give us an update on when the problem will be fix. Would be nice to know what is going on with the progress.

I agree with what zylver has said.
It would be nice for a response to all this.

Is anything going to happen or is it just going to stay as is?
I think the rewards should be increased (coin wise).
I don’t mean like give us a whole bunch of tokens and gear us up within days, but the costs of repairs and then what we get as an end reward is a joke.

Pony.3256:

There have been a couple of updates from one of the devs. Check the dev tracker for more. It would be nice to have more replies/answers from the devs, but then it would take away from them coding. It would be nice of them though to give us some kind of idea on how they think they are going to fix the rewards and difficulties.
About one of the paths in CoF (I believe)

my apologies – I believe I have fixed it, and the fix will be in the next patch.

I was not the only one working on dungeons. I personally worked on CoE, CoF, AC Explorables, and one of the dragon explorables.

More relevant (won’t let me quote/link to it):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeons-and-Dungeon-Reward-System-Overhaul-Needed/193458

If you are level 30 and do the AC story mode dungeon for the first time, then naturally it will be the hardest thing you’ve done in the game. I too thought it was too difficult and impossible for melee, so I proceeded to only use ranged weapons in the entire game. Now I spend most of my time in dungeons as dual dagger thief, and I quite like TA (rally from blossoms = win). All of my dungeon runs, story mode and explorable, have been with pugs. So what I’d want is people to stop saying that dungeons are impossible, instead say they are impossible for them or the group they were with, because clearly they are possible and once you’ve learned enough, some of them become rather easy.

If you want all explorable dungeons to be easy-mode autopilot runs like CoF Magg run used to be, then I guess anet could implement new paths (with much smaller rewards of course), but changing the challenge of the current explorables should be out of the question, especially considering this goes against what they said before launch about dungeons. If you can’t handle the dungeons, then don’t do them, they are not required to advance further in game or to get best gear (meaning they are also not grind). If dungeons are the only thing you feel you’d want to do, but can’t because they are too hard, then stop playing the game. There’s no subscription fee anyway.

Dang, weekends are the only time I can dedicate a solid chunk of time to a dungeon… and the fix is coming right as the work week starts again

Robert Hrouda.1327:

skullmount.1758:

It would be nice of them though to give us some kind of idea on how they think they are going to fix the rewards and difficulties.

As much as I would like to do a “This is what we’re working on” – doing as such hurts iteration. Because if I say something now, and after its focus tested we have to change that system, then I’m considered a liar, and our integrity is diminished as a result.
We play this game too. We know that the dungeon rewards aren’t where they need to be, and we’re going to work on it until we are happy with how it feels. Monday’s patch will be the start of our efforts to correct the problem.

OOHH I got a response
Thanks for the response.
I understand that’s why you don’t say specific examples, especially with all the responses to the other stuff that was changed from how it was supposed/said to be (ie. dyes). I was more looking for VERY generic things, like only token increase/cost decrease, with no specific numbers. Guess we’ll have to wait till Monday.

EDIT: apparently this site hates me (or firefox?). It doesn’t show the two of the items (reply, report) until I actually do a post, and permalink doesn’t do anything at all (at least its shown I guess).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

As much as I would like to do a “This is what we’re working on” – doing as such hurts iteration. Because if I say something now, and after its focus tested we have to change that system, then I’m considered a liar, and our integrity is diminished as a result.
We play this game too. We know that the dungeon rewards aren’t where they need to be, and we’re going to work on it until we are happy with how it feels. Monday’s patch will be the start of our efforts to correct the problem.

Would you recommend that we hold on to the dungeon tokens for now, or can we spend them this weekend?

i dont mind the difficulty its spending too much silver on repairs (say 20s in repairs for hard dungeon) and getting lol 2s or 6s or even 13s for the dungeon that is the problem. since dungeons are supposed to be the best way to earn exp/gold/tokens then if you are spending more money than the dungeon gives u then there is no point to it. difficulty is fine some dungeons should be harder than others but not all should have 1 hit and 15k hp char dies. especially for a lvl 80 doing a lvl 30 dungeon. if there was no repair fees in a dungeon they can reward me with w/e because then i would actually be rewarded for doing the dungeon. for example kill a boss get a free repair for each boss killed to prevent exploiting the free repairs in a dungeon.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

skullmount.1758:

It would be nice of them though to give us some kind of idea on how they think they are going to fix the rewards and difficulties.

As much as I would like to do a “This is what we’re working on” – doing as such hurts iteration. Because if I say something now, and after its focus tested we have to change that system, then I’m considered a liar, and our integrity is diminished as a result.
We play this game too. We know that the dungeon rewards aren’t where they need to be, and we’re going to work on it until we are happy with how it feels. Monday’s patch will be the start of our efforts to correct the problem.

Just like 99% of the playerbase, I despise the DR system, and I hope that by ‘correcting’ you mean you will remove the DR system entirely, fix grammatical and spelling errors, fix the multitude of personal story, dynamic event, and renown heart quests, and up the dungeon rewards to outweigh the loss.

ArenaNet has already illustrated themselves as self-contradictory, failing to follow “The Golden Rules of Guild Wars 2” in all its entirety. You are not respecting us and you are not doing things well. That is a largely popular outcry which I bear sentiment towards.

Dungeons are not fun when all the designers do is put in high-hp mobs to pester the players and force us to whack them around, all for a sub-par reward chest, a measly amount of gold, and an unsatisfactory amount of EXP. In addition, it’s also not fun when said designers punish us players for discovering ways to circumvent the design in a certain time frame by thinking with portals, figuratively speaking. Too easy, you say? That’s your own fault. Don’t punish us for your own failings.

I’ll be honest here. There are a few instances where certain dungeon machinations are utilized, kind of like a puzzle, where a combination of class skills, dungeon terrain, and dungeon mechanics enable for faster travel. I like those times, and there should be more of them instead of the straight-up skull-bashing that dungeons most often utilize.

So comes to mind the question, what’s wrong with speed-running a dungeon and grinding? It’s not good practice to punish players for setting a goal for themselves and trying to achieve it. In this case, the goal to “attain that which I desire and get my just-reward for my tenacity as soon as possible.” There is absolutely no way to stamp out grinding as there are always be the dedicated players that will make it their goal to obtain that something as soon as possible. …And perhaps maybe even make a profit in the process.

You should instead be raising rewards dependent on how fast you clear it. “But then people will put up guides and everyone will do know how to do it!” is a fair argument, yes, but the beauty that I found in running these dungeons is that events are unpredictable because the ones running the dungeon are humans and not machines. Amusing things can and will happen, we’ll all have a good laugh about it, and continue doing it because we all have a common goal and enjoy working towards it.
The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are. In that respect, to do what you want to do instead of being told what to do and how to do them. Hindering that damages your integrity.

By diminishing the rewards and making the dungeons not fun to go through, it reduces the motivation for the players to continue doing what entertains them. If it worries you that much, implement dynamic battle and event variations dependent on time and situation. Maybe even puzzle sequences. In any case, I have to leave and I hope you take the time to read this block of text.

I leave you with a quote. Take it as you will. “Just as nothing is more foolish than misplaced wisdom, so too, nothing is more imprudent than perverse prudence. And surely it is perverse not to adapt yourself to the prevailing circumstances, to refuse ‘to do as the Romans do,’ to ignore the party-goer’s maxium ‘take a drink or take your leave,’ to insist that the play should not be a play. True prudence, on the other hand, recognizes human limitations and does not strive to leap beyond them; it is willing to run with the herd, to overlook faults tolerantly or to share them in a friendly spirit.
….

—Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Praise of Folly

So, after a couple of a weeks following release, a broken diminishing returns system is placed into the game and is left in the game for a week while you fix it.

I’m sorry, but that’s awful. I understand that this is a persistent and constantly evolving world, so you feel like you have time to tinker with things and get them right. But.. you’re essentially shooting yourself in the foot at the starting gate.

This is about the time a lot of casual players hit 80, and they have a broken dungeon diminishing returns system to play with. Even you see that these rewards are not where you want them to be and players are not adequately rewarded for their time.

The patch should have been tested. It should have been implemented working even roughly as you said it would. As soon as you discovered it was broken and gave players absolutely dismal rewards for their hard work and effort, you should have removed it until you could re-implement it so that it doesn’t feel like you’re punishing your entire player-base.

I am very disappointed in this decision to simply leave a broken system in the game knowingly and repair it at a later date. I understood the Trading Post situation, but this is of your own doing.

Test things, please. You’re only frustrating people.

Edit: I apologize if my posts are becoming more and more pointed. Realize that it’s because I really like Guild Wars 2 and would like it to do well so that my friends can enjoy playing it as well. Currently, of my group of friends, I am the only one to have continued playing (though, with this dungeon patch, I am taking a temporary leave for Borderlands 2). I support you.

“Thanks for your feedback, we really appreciate your desire to help us keep improving on the game.”

So we will be seeing a return to the way it was then? Judging by the feedback here id say 95% of the people here think you have just borked a part of the game many of us enjoyed.

Doing dungeons was actually the first time i teamed up with anyone outside of pvp and WvW and i gotta say i thought it was great.

The rewards for the dungeons werent great but not bad either. Most of the stuff was a level either above or below the stuff i was already using so the main reason i was doing it was the exp and the gold. Lets face it most of the game is a “Grind” most of the events ive come across are the same some way or another and they give very little in the way of rewards that you have to do them over and over and over and over where as the dungeons gave you a way out of having to grind yourkitten off.

Im a little bored tbh im only L56 and ive seen people taking breaks from the game because there bored and sick of grinding to get little rewards and still so far from L80, and now you have taken one of the main pleasures and said no thats too much fun we cant allow that. Now i just pull my hair out and get stressed out because i get 1 shotted by an enemy thats supposed to be the same level as me and at 1 silver plus to repair armor and the reward is going down im actually losing money now.

Get it fixed, put it back the way it was or atleast get rid of the stupid money sink armor repair.

Anet will not go back on anything, they will only push harder against the grinders and those alike. And will keep implementing systems to hinder game play.

Till now they have done all they can to limit any kind of farming in the game, they seem to have done all the can to limit all that we find fun doing by telling us this is not how we should play the game. So i have to ask my self why they make a game like this in the first place if the player is being limited to do only what Anet wants them to do, and in their time frame. What happened to giving players the freedom to do what they want and when?

With the bad reputation that dungeons have, my Guild has been avoiding them altogether, so far. And my own efforts to spark interest in dungeon runs have been coming up empty. Hopefully the cryptically referenced upcoming changes will fix them. But, I still think there are some obvious solutions that should be considered.

That having been said, it seems that almost everyone is agreeing with three basic points:

1. Dungeons are too hard to be fun.
2. Dungeon rewards-drops are both very low and require oppressive grinding to obtain the skins that serve as the primary rewards.
3. Dungeons create a significant financial drain due to travel and armor-repair costs.

Meanwhile, ArenaNet wants to insure that individuals are not abusing or over-farming dungeons, as such allows people to get ahead by “grinding,” a GW2 taboo.

Before I even begin to present my solution, I want to state that I completely agree with ArenaNet’s anti-grind philosophy. My primary objection to the current state of affairs is that the current state of dungeons is that, rather than eliminating grinding, they simply punish fast grinding, while mandating slow grinding. You still have to do the dungeon hundreds of times to get the tokens for gear-skins, just now you can’t do them all at once. I don’t think that solution is helpful.

Instead, I have a three part solution to the problems that should also meet ArenaNet’s desire to prevent speed farming. All numbers are approximate only.

1. Storyline dungeon difficulty should be dropped significantly and explore mode as well. Story-mode should be difficult, but allow for mistakes. Explore-mode will remain extremely difficult at 1.5 to 2 times harder, but yield both twice the drops and five times the tokens. (E.g. 2 tokens for Story-mode, 10 tokens Explore-mode)
2. Rewards: (A) Tokens – Each successful completion of Explore mode should reward the victorious player with a number of tokens equal to a two pieces of rare armor, a single piece of exotic armor, or half of what is needed for an exotic weapon. (E.g. 5t = rare armor piece, 10t = exotic armor piece, 20t=exotic weapon.) Thus, when taken with the above point, the Story-mode dungeon would require 5 runs make enough tokens for one exotic armor piece. To prevent out-right token farming, however, no more than 10 tokens will drop, per dungeon, per player, per day. (B) Drops: The average remuneration in silver and drops for completing 1/2 of the dungeon should be the same as a distant travel for a level 80 character. (See alternate idea below.) This way, it is always worth it for a high level character to drop what they are doing and join their guildies on a dungeon run – provided that they can at least make it halfway, the rest of the dungeon is profit. Again, Story-mode should only make 1/2 these drops. Will people farm it? Yes. Thus, drops should decrease with repeat play.
3. Armor-wreckage problem – the easiest solution is that armor does not get damaged in dungeons (or that it damages at a greatly reduced rate.) Every part of game-play should serve a particular function. Typically, armor destruction’s function is as the indicator that you are not ready for a zone. In a dungeon, however, that is function is already served by the party-wipe. GW1 didn’t need breaking armor because all missions were instance based. Getting wiped was the “we should come back when we are stronger indicator.” Dungeons should be treated like that. There is no reason for armor to take damage in a dungeon. Meanwhile, any drop that repairs armor would be farmed.

With the downward scaling of dungeons drops and the token cap it would encourage would-be farmers to instead do runs in several different dungeons in a night, rather than just a single dungeon a dozen times, thus breaking away from the dreaded grind. Further, dungeons would remain a difficult challenge, but they would be more rewarding for the casual player. Story-mode would not be a waste of time, but tackling the greater challenge of Explore-mode would be well worth the effort.

As a quasi-serious player, I can say, for certain, that no matter the difficulty, I will not ever play one of these dungeons 200 times. Can anyone else say boring? But, if I get one armor piece a trip, or 1/2 a new weapon, I can see myself returning to a dungeon enough times (if I like the skins…) to completely equip my Mes or even my Guardian.

As I frequently note: I am sure this is not the only, and perhaps not even the best way to fix the dungeon issues. I am sure several of you will like some of my ideas but want to tweak, perfect, or outright change some of the others. Please feel free to share your ideas, changes, etc. Also, if you disagree, please state why you disagree. ArenaNet has given us a magnificent game. The least we can do is give them ideas how to polish it.

Just a note: as mentioned above there is another solution to fixing the heavy dungeon travel costs: drop travel costs entirely. As I noted earlier, every part of a game must serve a purpose: challenge, boundary, balance, or direct enjoyment. Which does map-travel costs serve? As far as I can see, (and admittedly I don’t see everything) map travel tax serves as a penalty for leveling up, to ensure higher level characters think twice before coughing up enough of their hard-earned silver to join lower level friends doing a poorly rewarded task. Further, it effectively keeps the races separate, making it much more costly for a new asuran to play with a new human. The map-travel-tax discourages distant exploration and group play to favor playing alone in the same area. I was always under the impression that was the last thing ArenaNet wanted: players ignoring their friends to play in a single area because that’s the smartest thing to do to save money. Although argued by some people, map travel costs does not promote overland movement. If I can’t afford to go to where a guildie is having trouble in the Maguma jungle, I am not going to “run” there over the course of the next hour. What good would that do him? Instead I will just wish him luck and stay where I am.
Again, I’m not sure how many people agree with me.

Travel costs are there to encourage people to walk instead of teleporting everywhere.

Jack Angelfoot.2697:

The map-travel-tax discourages distant exploration and group play to favor playing alone in the same area. I was always under the impression that was the last thing ArenaNet wanted: players ignoring their friends to play in a single area because that’s the smartest thing to do to save money. Although argued by some people, map travel costs does not promote overland movement. If I can’t afford to go to where a guildie is having trouble in the Maguma jungle, I am not going to “run” there over the course of the next hour. What good would that do him? Instead I will just wish him luck and stay where I am.
Again, I’m not sure how many people agree with me.

This is my feelings on the cost of map travel. It was supposed to be a negligible cost, whereas it is now a significant cost to try to map travel to do stuff.

I have to say, I still stand firm on a few of the things I’ve been fervent about
for example

1: I don’t believe Cm needed the buff to story mode, for one second I found it to be aside from the silly pseudo pickup quest portions to be fairly decent for a small scale dungeon. I don’t need grand scale I just need entertainment and a lil challenge. It, much like some of my mistaken assumption seem to have been tuned up too quickly in a panic and may require some other things to keep it fun for pugs. It feels quite close to if not worse than the cm exploration mode which cannot be intended.

If there was one gripe I can honestly hold on to, that cannot be debunked or explained by “adaptation is required” it would be that alone because it harms and is off putting for new players instead of encouraging them to challenge themselves in dungeons.

2: I still stand by the fact that melee combat is much harder in dungeons, I still think it requires a lot more work and that loading the debuffing skills on the BACK end of their #1 combination only serves to add to the feeling that every second you’re too close to a monster is skating the line between life and death

3: the defend the npc segments are probably, THE worst tuned aspects of exploration mode dungeons, this is NOT to say the entire dungeon is horrendous, yes I feel mobs have bloated hp pools, but ultimately it’s NOT the aspect I loathe the most. But, if we combine high hp pools to monsters on spawns that can overwhelm you in these segments then we get a glorified gear check, not a skill check. I honestly hate seeing gear checks, they’re never, ever fun it’s just a “come back when you’re equally skilled but have grinded out more exotic gear”

Can we get by them with teamplay?
perhaps, but then again perhaps not. many times the second dungeon knee jerk buffed segment to defend magg ends up with many players dead or on their back, this wouldn’t take much tuning to get right and still be rewarding, but it’s always that combination of enclosed space, a squishy npc the need to kill while avoiding things often badly telegraphed or that deal large unforgiving damage can quite often be irritating, and if tuned right, I believe can be challenging without being so.

I think quite easily, I can be a bit wordy, or “soap boxy” to murder the English language there, but It’s not ALL bad, when things are going nicely, when a group is supporting each other there is a beautiful ballet of skills, and it’s SKILLS not just EFFECTS, the thief class is far from the semi useless rogue of WoW or other mmo’s, he blinds, he steals he poisons, he covers teammates in stealth and allows for some darn sneak rezzing action that saves teams from wipes, the rangers and necro’s offer us some beefy damage action from ranged with the added bonus of a meat shield pet and some fantastic combo fields. The guardians and warriors offer us boons and shields that help deal with some heavy fire from enemies, they offer us sanctuary under their bubbles of win and even turn enemy ranged to our own advantage, as well as keep us all condition free and working at our full potential an so forth. Classes are really really really really well made and combat feels fantasic. It’s just that it feels like, and it’s weird to think highly of the combat on a lot of levels and at the same time think this.
IT COULD ACTUALLY BE BETTER.

That’s not a harsh critique, that’s a compliment, because it means it easily has the potential to be REALLY even more amazing.

So, no :P I’m not all mr anti gw2, i’m not all mr anti gw2 dungeons, and certainly I’m not all mr negativity, there is a lot I love about gw2, but I just hate to gush all the time like a lovelorn schoolgirl :P

Do you guys plan on fixing the fricken spawn timer on the event where Magg blows up the door? That part so isn’t very doable with 2 rangers, 2 thiefs and an elementalist. The silver reward I’m going to get at the end isn’t going to even cover my repair bills.

Increasing the time it took him to blow up the door to 200 seconds was not a smart move. What you should have done is fix how fast the mobs spawn so we can actually kill them like you want us to.

So my guild just finished running TA explo that we recently decided to put on “farm” and last week there was no problems with re-running it but a few days ago we noticed that we got diminished rewards. So I went here to check and figures – we couldn’t run the same path anymore according to notes and not within 30 mins of eachother so we’re like “Alright, sounds fine mang”. Today we went back to farm all night but after 3 runs (we swapped between two paths in TA, fw/up and up, so we went like fw/up then up then fw/up again) we started seeing diminished rewards and in particular less tokens, so I went back to the forums and saw that the diminished rewards system is actually broken!

Anyway that’s the story, now for the question. I’m just wondering if it will be possible to take two paths like in TA forward/up and then up and then forward/up repeat process for eg or will you no matter what see diminished rewards when it comes to tokens if you do the path chosen more then 1 in Explo or will you be able to actually do fw/up, up, fw/up repeat and still see 15 tokens or will we see 5 tokens per completion for that entire day if we repeat like I mentioned?

lol all I know is that Anet wanted to make a game where people could play it anyway they want. They have contradicted themselves by implementing this nerf on the dungeon grinders… Some people enjoy seeing how fast they can get through dungeons to get the rewards they want quicker than other people, because this is how they want to play, it doesn’t really imbalance anything. I personally like grinding events and exploring and finishing out other zones. I have found some really efficient ways to do this quickly. So will this be nerfed? (For the record I have not once grinded a dungeon in this game, i have only done like 5 of them, its not my thing. Before someone says im only saying this cause i was doing dungeons lol…)

I feel sad with the majority of the opinions on the dungeon forums, and I feel with the majority I really don’t want to leave the game but unfortunately the game has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was pumped leveling my first 80 and even more so for my 2nd one and I was going for a 3rd and 4th but my second one is now stuck at 71 and I have no more motivation to playing it through.

I guess I was too blinded by all the new visuals and new game mechanics that I did not see that there is a lot wrong in this game, from broken events, TP going down so often, dungeon encounters and rewards, bugged quests and so on and so forth, at my 2nd play through you start noticing all these.

I for one will not be playing anymore and be moving on, its sad because I really believed in this game but from the comments and posts by Anet it seems they will be making a stand in the way they cater the dungeons to a minor “elite group” and I will not be wasting anymore hours knowing that because of my schedule and the amount of people I can play with that are not the “hardcore gamers” I am denied certain content and certain rewards, although I did purchase this game because of the advertised casual factor but it really is not for casuals after all

From the responses in game and in forums I think majority of the player base does not approve of the changes made and are very unhappy with the current state of the game, I have already seen a steady decline in population in game and it is very sad to see, I hope Anet all the best and luck and hopefully the game does not turn out to be like SWTOR (had lots of potential but failed to deliver)

This is simply broken. It’s simply not possible that this was tested at all.

Quiznos.4296:

Mullian.1862:

Just ran AC with the guild for explore mode… and will never do it again. The mechanics are terrible, flames that will one shot you when you are clearly out of their range, guild mates getting trapped between doors after destroying the burrows, and finally destroying the master elite to receive several Ascalolian Tears, 1 Ghostly Tonic, Apprentice Gloves, and.. 1 copper! Yes! You heard me right, a whole 1 copper for the 14s+ repair bills.

Kill the flame heads, though I agree the hit-box and animation are certainly off. Did you bug report the trapping between doors? If not please post one. type /bug in game. Chests never really dropped much coin, several tokens is good though. The trash gloves, though, I agree is kinda like “really? a white/blue? that’s it?” Coin should come on completion of the dungeon, not from chests. Though it may not seem adequate on completion because the reward system is bugged.

Yea, I just bugged it just now.

I agree with most of what was said so far, but I am getting the impression that AreneNet does not seem to care otherwise we would have seen an update or rollback by now. This patch reminds me so much of a SW:TOR patches that were untested disaster with no ETA on a fix. These content designers said it these dungeons were internally tested, so how about we name a dungeon and your group testers could show us how’s it done without a single death in a nice video?

Some observations:

a) Does equipment do anything? From my end, the equipment or scaling does not see to be working correctly, having 4 80s in Exotic/Rares go down in one, two hits is not fun nor exciting, it’s is.. complete and utter disgusting. How does a party of lessor geared players fair in dungeons? I would imagine they are in a similar boat.

b) I applaud the designers with the Dungeons visuals, but the dungeons are unforgiving and require* distinct professions to be successful. It’s quite apparent that some dungeons are not meant to be played with just any profession makeup.

c) Mechanics are buggy (not just dungeons, events, skill points), repair costs are too high (Even at 80 – I have a hard maintaining a few gold), rewards of lacking, magic find needs to be swappable or removed entirely, and the grind to obtain items is well a grind (every game has grind, but this game seems right up there, if not more than others I have played).

On an side note:
I have seen the same bots in every zone I been to, grinding for weeks now, the exact same ones. Does the report method work? Are there any plans on hiring a Game Master and go around start laying down the hammer instead of punishing those who are actually supporting this game?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

skullmount.1758:

It would be nice of them though to give us some kind of idea on how they think they are going to fix the rewards and difficulties.

As much as I would like to do a “This is what we’re working on” – doing as such hurts iteration. Because if I say something now, and after its focus tested we have to change that system, then I’m considered a liar, and our integrity is diminished as a result.
We play this game too. We know that the dungeon rewards aren’t where they need to be, and we’re going to work on it until we are happy with how it feels. Monday’s patch will be the start of our efforts to correct the problem.

So why leave the broken system in place until the true fix is ready? All you are doing is alienating your player base and acting like stuck up brats by keeping it as is. You are literally punishing your players for playing the game.

folks….and this is hypocritical of me to say but I have to… calm….down…

let’s first of all ascertain some of the claims.

1: I go down in one or two hits:
Yes, I don’t like this either in any sense BUT there is telegraphed (albeit not greatly) skills, that will show you when you’re about to be one shot by a powerskill from an enemy, does he power up and freeze while showing an animation effect around their top/mid? then it’s coming, and the timing is up to you to get right to avoid it. I know snipers in cm explorable leave a animation of a circle on you before they one shot you (near one shot mostly) at this point, wait a mo and dodge. use a reflecting or anti ranged skill, blind the mob, interrupt them, use a shielding skill (sanctuary etc), a blocking skill,use the terrain to obstruct it etc.

Those if sufficiently telegraphed aren’t TOO cheesy, annoying and anti-fun kinda yeah. But bearable, you also need your team to be able to play their profession with others, that means maximising synergy and offsetting shortcomings.

as for the claim that 2 thieves an ele and 2 rangers couldn’t do the magg spawn bit, while I won’t claim it’s not a bit borked up, where you all doing everything you could to stop the cheese powershots and lock enemies down? I know a guardian helps a ton for the aegis, but thieves have ways of cheesing up enemy mobs with black powder and smokescreen etc

We play this game too. We know that the dungeon rewards aren’t where they need to be, and we’re going to work on it until we are happy with how it feels. Monday’s patch will be the start of our efforts to correct the problem.

What boggles me is that it seems you guys never tested the Diminishing Returns patch and dungeon buffs patch before it went out, now we are stuck with it till you guys fix it.

More testing needs to be done, and if it does not work it needs to get rolled back.

I think its pretty sad that ArenaNet left it “as is” till the fix comes out.
Getting 6 silver for a exploration dungeon run is stupid.

I was having a lot of fun with the dungeons before, and now I can’t even seem to find a group. All incentives to even run a story mode at all are gone now, and not one seems to be interested in exploring.

I understand the rewards were too high, but now the seem non-existent. Maybe some nice middle ground would be helpful?

If the goal is to cut back on speed-running, why not just disable monster tethering in dungeons?

Dungeons.. The one thing in this amazing game that hasn’t lived up to the rest of it. They are not evolutionary. Everything about their mechanics is as archaic as archaic has ever been. It’s like playing one of those bullet hell games instead it’s an action rpg and has huge two legged tigers.

I mean really, players can’t even react to what is going on and actually enjoy playing with others because oops, you’re dead. Oops, your friend is dead. Oops, your next two friends are dead. It’s so cheap and kind of beneath you, Anet, to call this the next evolution in game play. It’s not evolutionary, it’s actually as archaic as the first video game boss was made, before they developed those guys to give them I dunno different phases. (Yes, I know bosses have different phases here too. But it’s not enough to be enough of a change from their previous phase which generally seems to involve one shotting you to death, and apparently the more this is done, the harder and more appealing the dungeon becomes. For some reason.)

Let people work off each other and actually figure out how to combo with others in order to succeed at dungeons, not in a time frame of a, one shot you’re dead. You can’t learn anything that way, anyway. The only thing you learn is that you don’t like dungeons. I think prior to this last dungeon patch, things were ‘okay’. I mean I wasn’t thrilled or anything but I had some runs where I actually was starting to have fun in AC story mode. Not AC explores mind you, those are on a ‘did not happen!’ basis.

Just fun, not a whole lotta fun, but was pleased with them in following the story, the cut scenes and ironically trying to survive. But there comes a limit to that, when you are no longer ‘trying’ to survive, the balancing act has been fumbled, and death is a near certainty. You can’t avoid, and can’t do anything about. That’s where I fear dungeons are headed and that’s not a good place at all to be…

Poor Rytlock…. That’s all I have to say.
grabs tissue box

It would work better imho if there was some sort of visual indicator prior to a new one shot mechanic being thrown at you, a Small cutscene could show them using said skill on someone, and this being clearly dangerous the player could plan ahead, without ending up with a huge repair bill.

Failing that, a small text popup would be JUST as good, yes it’s a lot of work, and I’d be happy with any alternative that works, but trial and error, is only ok up until the costs of the trial outweigh the feeling of accomplishment when you figure things out.

Yes it’s early days, and yes people will get better at them, but I don’t think anyone will enjoy being cheesed from offscreen :P

Cool – I hope they keep increasing the difficulty. If I can pay half attention and complete a dungeon in explorer mode its not really worth it to run.

Hellkaiser.6025:

It would work better imho if there was some sort of visual indicator prior to a new one shot mechanic being thrown at you, a Small cutscene could show them using said skill on someone, and this being clearly dangerous the player could plan ahead, without ending up with a huge repair bill.

you mean like in other games where you have the boss says something or you see his emote in the chat (BIG BOSS grabs a boulder – “uhoh, better watch for that flying boulder now”)?

so when you die afterwards you know “hm, there was something happening” and look for it the next time. in gw2 you open the combat log and see “boss ability XY has hit you for 40k damage”). it’s like someone in a dim-lit room throws a ball as hard as he can without even shouting catch

don’t forget this game is a REVOLUTION! hiding stuff is revolutionary!

as for the cutscene etc: you have all that. you even have npcs with you most of the time (as useless as they are) that could say something. I would expect to run a story mode, see a boss and the npc telling me what to look for (watch out he will pull you!) – and then in explorable this would be used among others in more involved mechanics. this way there would be a progression and learning curve.

with more accessibility and proper handholding (inb4 casuals, but not everybody wants to look up strats and read wikis) I bet a lot less people would have issues with the dungeons

So, you’re one of the people who create the dungeons in this game? Just tried CM explorer mode…and these are a few word to describe it for you:
Flagrant, Uneconomical, Ceaseless, Kooky, Invidious, Nefarious, Godawful……Shameful, Horrible, Iniquitous, Terrible!!!

But, that’s just me.

Just to let you know I ran CM explore 3 times since patch. First time I got 2 silver! two days later I ran it first time got 6 silver! Then second time 2 silver!

I should have at least 72 silver from all of that and I only got 10 silver….really? Ripped off 62 silver, and I get ripped off EVERYTIME I run the dungeon. This is crazy.

You can take your dungeons and eat them – what comes out the other end will be more fun to play through than Caudecus’ Manor currently is.

CM needed to be updated, absolutely. No question.

But now it’s been made ridiculously, stupidly, hard.

I don’t see a bunch of people, having hit 40, giving this a go and getting through it. Especially not without massive repair bills and a huge time investment.

This is now way beyond a challenge; this has now entered the realm of “not fun”.

And isn’t the whole ANet ethos built around fun?

.I was going to do a post but looks like apart from my warrior rifle not being able to shoot blosoms in TA explorer most of the issues are covered.

I do feel dynamic events need to be communicated to the whole zone ,I love taking part they are fantastic ,but hate roaming around a densely mob infested area trying to find one to enjoy .
I also think general mobs going invulnerable while you are attacking them and their health rebuilding and then them coming immediately back and attacking you while you are half health is a little unfair seems especially bad underwater .

just a suggestion…why not make it a 24 hour turn around?…where players can’t re-enter dungeons more than once a day….or even if they can the reward for the 2nd+ time will be diminished as you guys say it…this will fix the dungeon grinders/farmers and would still give a good enough reward for every other players…

Completed AC exp this afternoon, first time i’ve seen it.

Was an interesting strategy to wall hug, jump over boulders, and run through 90% of mobs until they reset. Only the bosses had to be fought really.

Not sure if it’s intended to be done that way, it was certainly quick. Lot easier than storymode