Guild Wars 2

Okay, I hope this gets ArenaNets attention… it’s something that utterly pisses me off when going for groups in dungeons.

A lot of people ask to “skip” various parts of dungeons for the sake of “saving time”… why do I find this annoying? ArenaNet has made content there for you to enjoy so, how can you enjoy content when you are skipping it? To me it seems dungeons now only have the ultimate goal of obtaining the dungeon tokens, that’s it. For that reason, it’s seems that dungeons are just an obstacle of insane repetitiveness to gain the goodies; dungeon armour.

I am probably a very small minority in the community that has this view, but I certainly hope with the “revamp” of current dungeons that they add something similar to what the “Fractal of the Mists” has to offer… meaning that instead of the same mobs in the same place for P1, P2 and P3… why not have more ‘events’ like the random burrows that pop up in AC Story Mode?

Not only that, but this may be a little excessive to some people, but punish those who attempt to skip, as in the outcome for skipping later down in the path may put you at a disadvantage. If not that, then at least make the dungeons so that skipping is a viable option.

I’ll probably be flamed for this, but it must be said Imo. The problem is skipping mobs, but not in an appropriate manner. There are groups in AC exp that even skip Kholer (not sure why you’d wanna do that to begin with).

My idea to solve this is: Changing the aggro mechanic for dungeons. If you aggro something and continue to skip past it, it should follow you until it’s killed or you die. Lots of MMOs work this way. These mobs are placed in those locations for a reason. This should also get PUG groups on the same page, since not everyone skips past stuff. Dungeons are a group activity, and dropping aggro doesn’t promote group play. It just seems like more and more people don’t want to work for anything at all, even killing a single mob.

Don’t get me wrong, if you can get past the mob without pulling then you should be able to continue. I’m sure I’m not the only one upset about missing potential drops because the party wants to skip all the mobs.

errr why? Some people wanna skip mobs to be faster. Isn’t that generally a good thing? And some people skip kohler because well, chests don’t drop anything good usually, the bag of gems isn’t enough, or people wanna do it faster.

People will always try to find the most efficient way of doing them. I see nothing wrong with it.

Or they could make fighting those mobs rewarding.

don’t see anything wrong with skipping bonus content. tho nowadays kohler gives way too much silvers to skip it

Ritualist.5380:

I’ll probably be flamed for this, but it must be said Imo. The problem is skipping mobs, but not in an appropriate manner. There are groups in AC exp that even skip Kholer (not sure why you’d wanna do that to begin with).

You do a dungeon the first time for exploration, fun, achievement. If you do it again after that, your only reason is farming for tokens and 26s. If you can clear an explorable path in 15-30 minutes and gain 60 tokens, why on earth would you consciously double that time (and potentially increased repair costs) for so little gain? Especially when Kohler is such a terrible fight with bad mechanics to begin with? There’s challenging; and then there’s cheap. Kohler is cheap: not challenging. I’m not going to rehash why, because that argument has been done to death already by the player base.

So why bother with trash mobs and terrible, unfun minibosses like Kohler for a mere 3 extra tokens and “up to” 4s? Not worth the time. In that same amount of time, you could have cleared a different exp path for another 60 tokens and 26s.

It’s that simple.

Are you saying not everyone and their sister Deborah farming FotM now?

shaktiboi.5194:

Ritualist.5380:

I’ll probably be flamed for this, but it must be said Imo. The problem is skipping mobs, but not in an appropriate manner. There are groups in AC exp that even skip Kholer (not sure why you’d wanna do that to begin with).

You do a dungeon the first time for exploration, fun, achievement. If you do it again after that, your only reason is farming for tokens and 26s. If you can clear an explorable path in 15-30 minutes and gain 60 tokens, why on earth would you consciously double that time (and potentially increased repair costs) for so little gain? Especially when Kohler is such a terrible fight with bad mechanics to begin with? There’s challenging; and then there’s cheap. Kohler is cheap: not challenging. I’m not going to rehash why, because that argument has been done to death already by the player base.

So why bother with trash mobs and terrible, unfun minibosses like Kohler for a mere 3 extra tokens and “up to” 4s? Not worth the time. In that same amount of time, you could have cleared a different exp path for another 60 tokens and 26s.

It’s that simple.

Just want to say that bosses leave about 11s PLUS bag of goods containing up to 4s. Killing him is quite profitable atm, especially considering the fact how cheap he is.

Iehova.9518:

Are you saying not everyone and their sister Deborah farming FotM now?

can’t. unstable internet connection >_>

People are still complaining about the Lt?

He’s a really easy fight and I skipped him all the time unless troll spawned. However, since the patch hit, the rewards ARE ample incentive to kill him.

You know before his pull, he actually charges it and it’s captain obvious if you have a shred of situational awareness. Any sort of projectile reflection will also negate it, hell Aegis or LoSing it will also negate it too if you’re out of dodge roll. Even if you get pulled in, pop a stun break/invul right away and move your way to victory.

I regularly skip crap that is just tedious and not rewarding in dungeons and cannot picture why you’d want to kill everything every time but to each and his own i guess.

However Kohler a cheap fight? How is it? It doesn’t one shot you out of nowhere.. it kitten telegraphs it. Cheap mechanics are unavoidable one shots, that’s not what we’re dealing with here. Fault sits with you completely if you can’t deal with it. There’s a serious lack of challenging encounters as is in this game.

You have a point but so do the people that would prefer to skip. Majority rules in the party so if most want to skip then you have to go along with that or drop group.

In order to do this then you should form the group and inform in chat when looking for others that you wish to do a full clear so everyone is on the same page.

Changing a mechanic to suit just your preferred playstyle isn’t the answer. Just as valid for skippers to ask for the mechanics to be changed to make it easier to skip direct to the boss.

I am not being sarcastic when I say that communication resolves most party problems. Best to get things clear BEFORE you start your run. You can always drop or kick with no harm done and only a few minutes wasted.

I am new to mmo’s and lvl 50’s. I have done AC a couple of times with different parties. We only did couple paths. I know they know what they are doing and where they are running to, but I don’t. It gets confusing and if I have to go back to waypoint, it was easy to get lost to rejoin the group. I think it would be nice to take some time to see and do all the dungeon has to offer sometime.

Have fun doing Arah

the worst part is that doing this in pugs guarantees wipes and longer times than doing it normally, especially AC. want to skip graveling scavengers, die on every boss fight that isn’t skiped…have to run through them again(from the entrances since you skip kholer) and people always die to them. or the burrow in the very beginning that takes 5 min to spawn sometimes….someone dies on spider and runs back….they actually try to fight the burrow alone for some reason and get killed again.

these speed runs are never, ever saving you time as long as one person gets killed, which will ALWAYS happen in pugs due to glass cannon/no teamwork/no warning of what’s being skipped or pulled/no revives.

Because some dungeons take too long to complete and mostly casuals do not want to spend hours of their time just to complete one.

shaktiboi.5194:

Ritualist.5380:

I’ll probably be flamed for this, but it must be said Imo. The problem is skipping mobs, but not in an appropriate manner. There are groups in AC exp that even skip Kholer (not sure why you’d wanna do that to begin with).

You do a dungeon the first time for exploration, fun, achievement. If you do it again after that, your only reason is farming for tokens and 26s. If you can clear an explorable path in 15-30 minutes and gain 60 tokens, why on earth would you consciously double that time (and potentially increased repair costs) for so little gain? Especially when Kohler is such a terrible fight with bad mechanics to begin with? There’s challenging; and then there’s cheap. Kohler is cheap: not challenging. I’m not going to rehash why, because that argument has been done to death already by the player base.

So why bother with trash mobs and terrible, unfun minibosses like Kohler for a mere 3 extra tokens and “up to” 4s? Not worth the time. In that same amount of time, you could have cleared a different exp path for another 60 tokens and 26s.

It’s that simple.

Kohler gives 10 silver now, plus a bag. He’s worth doing. Most people don’t realize he drops 10 silver in addition to the bag.

The problem with pub groups is they want to skip too much stuff because they are bad. They ending up slowing themselves down in many cases, especially if a player dies at a later point. If you have good players killing stuff is fairly quick.

I dont get why we have to set up restrictions or even put up “punishments” for skipping mobs? Right now you have the CHOICE to skip trash mobs or otherwise. Why do you want to control how ppl play that much? If you want to engage all mobs, by all means communicate that during the group forming stage and go at it. Moreover, there are some dungeons where there are inherently little skipping like CoF and CM (little skipping NOT absolutely no skipping). You can try those dungeons instead.

I am genuinely curious for those who are strongly against skipping, how often do you run dungeons? For some, dungeons are a long-time aspect in the game because they enjoy it and are generally more involved than the events in the overworld. For others, it might be something to dabble for things like token equipment and achievements and move on later.

Instead of nerfing and punishing, why can’t it be the opposite which is creating more incentives?

Our group has started 4 manning content due to everyone wanting to skip(we have a solid 4 on at all times and have to pug a fifth). In our experience it is usually faster to just kill everything. Like in AC heading toward the last boss in P1 and 3. Running all the way around and skipping packs of gravelings that take about 45 seconds to kill is just asking for someone to get pounced on and murdered, then you have to either run back and rez or wait for them to try run the gauntlet again, alone.

Plus, we 4 man and kill all packs(even the “pieces of the scepter” packs in AC) and we still do dungeons too fast and get hit with DR after 4 or 5 dungeons….why hit DR faster?

The problem with skipping is that some people skip the wrong things. I prefer to clear, but some fights are reasonably skippable. Others are not. Such as the ones where if you die, you respawn right in the middle of mobs. Can’t win that way, and skipping it ends up costing you much more than killing those 3-5 mobs would have.

TLDR, bad skip is bad.

SirMirex.8543:

Okay, I hope this gets ArenaNets attention… it’s something that utterly pisses me off when going for groups in dungeons.

A lot of people ask to “skip” various parts of dungeons for the sake of “saving time”… why do I find this annoying? ArenaNet has made content there for you to enjoy so, how can you enjoy content when you are skipping it? To me it seems dungeons now only have the ultimate goal of obtaining the dungeon tokens, that’s it. For that reason, it’s seems that dungeons are just an obstacle of insane repetitiveness to gain the goodies; dungeon armor.

That happened a lot in DDO to. It all became about XP/min and loot. So for many only a very small % of content would be played, all max, all the time to them. I think you get that when you have 24/7 servers and some people that are obsessed with playing hours per day, year after year.

Neverwinter is now struggling with this in development to, how to make all the rewards equal so there isn’t a reason to only do A and B and never C and D.

Personally I will never be a maxer, I don’t veg in a game, I have much smaller gaming windows, get bored hammering the same thing over and over. I’m for the status quo, but in addition to… if there were some way to add server instances that run a few hours per day a few times per week, boy would I be there. That would be a huge huge step forward for games like this and players like me. Who plays monopoly, goes to work while others continue playing, then come home to find out they’ve been lapped 10 times and feel ok with it? No traditional gaming is based on that gross imbalance.

So when people state, the community doesn’t talk much, support much. Well… we are all on different levels. Since it never stops, I get my own little band together and play these huge open worlds like a small coop game, which breeds the lack of community to some level. Why do I do this? Because there is too much everything else going on that I can’t put my arms around it all. So we just go on our little way as if others are nothing more than smarter NPC’s.

To Guild Wars credit, they really did something right with Open World venturing that has made me take notice. It does allow strangers to play a much more real part in our own group when venturing the open lands. I hope other dev teams see it and this becomes the new norm with then their own spin on it. How this game is designed and how it executes, dungeons aren’t even needed and perhaps more trouble then their worth. This game would be just as healthy if not more if there weren’t dungeons, just continuous improvements to open world.

mosspit.8936:

I dont get why we have to set up restrictions or even put up “punishments” for skipping mobs? Right now you have the CHOICE to skip trash mobs or otherwise. Why do you want to control how ppl play that much?

It’s up to the devs. If they really meant or wanted you to do everything to get credit, they should add those requirements to completion of a dungeon. DDO struggled with this, people would find ways around everything, exploit. They started making quests have to kill at least X, put in alerts that if you skipped baddies, the dungeon level would heighten and toughen. In the end they have all types of dungeons now, and thee top players will always look for the edge to take advantage of any slip up.

So to answer you, if the game doesn’t stop you, then what can anyone even do? For every flower sniffer there is a max’er. The two don’t mix well.

The dungeon has been done enough to where the skipping in pugs is pretty standardized. Skip the 1st mound…kill the spider…..see if troll spawns…if yes lure and kill both…if no skip…then skip all mobs that are not part of mini events. Most pugs now have it down now and don’t fail. They are only in it for the 3 paths once per day…so they r not worried about dr. They actually want the troll to spawn.

If pugging it now it’s expected to skip. Much like how in gw1 for fow or uw you were expected to sc in a pug. Trying to find a non-skipping group will take a horribly long time, which in itself is not worth it.

It’s not quite fair at the moment, for those who do enjoy taking on all of the content. The best way I handle it is by making the group myself. I tell every person up front that we’re not skipping anything and no exploits. Most of the time people will stay. Although, this usually does take a long time to get a good group running.

Why not have a bonus chest similar to finishing an even run in FotM? So if your group killed every enemy for the path they chose, then they’ll get something extra on the side – something worth it, of course.

Horrorscope.7632:

mosspit.8936:

I dont get why we have to set up restrictions or even put up “punishments” for skipping mobs? Right now you have the CHOICE to skip trash mobs or otherwise. Why do you want to control how ppl play that much?

It’s up to the devs. If they really meant or wanted you to do everything to get credit, they should add those requirements to completion of a dungeon. DDO struggled with this, people would find ways around everything, exploit. They started making quests have to kill at least X, put in alerts that if you skipped baddies, the dungeon level would heighten and toughen. In the end they have all types of dungeons now, and thee top players will always look for the edge to take advantage of any slip up.

So to answer you, if the game doesn’t stop you, then what can anyone even do? For every flower sniffer there is a max’er. The two don’t mix well.

You left the most important part of my quote out. Which is choice. FYI previously there was already a round of fixes that made it to stop the skipping of segments containing bosses eg. TA. That was around same time that runs started giving 60 tokens.

I don’t really skip bosses like Kholer since they now have better drops. However, I don’t see why trash mobs absolutely need to be defeated for dungeon progression. As I said, if you wanna fight absolutely everything, made known to others during the group forming stage. To suggest punishing others for skipping makes me wonder what if the trigger for even suggesting it? Maybe a bad dungeon encounter centered around skipping and became the source of negativity.

I still wonder how many of those who are supportive of these drastic measures really run dungeons frequently. If they just dabble dungeons to get achievements and get token equipments and move on to other aspect of the game, they should not be suggesting long term changes to dungeons.

If the fights were interesting maybe more people would fight.

Take the colossus in the FoTM. That whole “boss” is incredibly interesting. He’s chained up. Why? Who is he? Who are these cultists? Add to that the hammer mechanic, which requires everyone to share the load. This is both interesting and rewarding as the final treat is the Colossus walking off into the mists.

Its not a matter of loot. Theyre addressing that. Its not a matter of time (the fights dont really take all that long in reality).

It’s a matter of YAWN.

Kohler?

He’s just a pissed off ghost who spins. Neat.

Anet needs to make these fights more interesting. That will be a reward in and of itself.

Why?

Because when Kholer falls dead, i want to remember the fight for what it was. Right now bosses arent much different from the mobs thst precede them.

Hopefully these dungeon revamps add some new tricks.

Two things.

1. Path of least resistance.
2. The kitteny reward for killing trash mobs and minibosses isn’t worth the effort.

If they make people do the same content repeatedly (grinding), people are going to find ways to shorten the process. Especially when the time/difficulty/reward do not match.

An even better example are the Lovers in AC story. Unlike Kholer, where the only strat is to time a dodge, The Lovers actuslly require a legit bit of teamwork.

I just ran it with my guild last night. Im a hammer guardian so I took on the role of preoccupying hubby while the rest of my group wailed on wifey. Theres a dynamic there. I had a job. I did my job and everything went smoothly. Wifey went down and hubby was dead 2 min later.

That fight was rewarding becausing TEAMWORK prevailed beyond the idea of just placing boons and heals on each other.

Here’s the reason people skip trash in dungeons, plain and simple.

Trash is often times more difficult and more damaging than the actual bosses of a dungeon, and far less rewarding. The bosses themselves are for the most part fine in terms of difficulty and can sometimes be enjoyable/memorable. The trash on the other hand hits nearly as hard, comes in larger groups, and generally annoys the kitten out of the people running the dungeon.

So if the option to skip the terribly tuned trash and go straight for the boss is available, people will likely take it.

As for skipping bosses, some of them such as the Bonus events offer little to no reward, the same reward that can be obtained from joining any event outside the dungeon. While others like Kohler, aren’t enjoyable or rewarding enough. Even after the patch, that measly few silver from him and the crap loot from his chest aren’t worth the extra time it takes to kill him regardless of whether the group can do it efficiently or not.

I don’t have an issue with skipping trash or certain bosses/events in a dungeon. What I loathe is all the glitches people do in dungeons to more easily kill a boss or a trash pull, which leads to Anet redesigning the encounter in a way that negatively effects that boss or path of a dungeon. Such as all the people that pulled Giganticus back closer to the waypoint and how Anet stopped that by changing his aggro leash, which now causes him to reset often.

Skipping is fine, Glitching is not.

if loots were better people wouldnt skip, for example arah is doable in 35min if u skip all the trash mobs and only do the bosses, and ikittenill the trash mobs itll take an extra 35min for no rewards? why in the world wouldnt u skip it? all mobs should be skipped in dungeons only thing you should do are the bosses and even then the bosses arnt really worth the time and effort for what 5 or 10 silver n some blues? reward system in dungeons is a joke

Oreoz.2573:

If the fights were interesting maybe more people would fight.

Take the colossus in the FoTM. That whole “boss” is incredibly interesting. He’s chained up. Why? Who is he? Who are these cultists? Add to that the hammer mechanic, which requires everyone to share the load. This is both interesting and rewarding as the final treat is the Colossus walking off into the mists.

Its not a matter of loot. Theyre addressing that. Its not a matter of time (the fights dont really take all that long in reality).

It’s a matter of YAWN.

Kohler?

He’s just a pissed off ghost who spins. Neat.

Anet needs to make these fights more interesting. That will be a reward in and of itself.

Why?

Because when Kholer falls dead, i want to remember the fight for what it was. Right now bosses arent much different from the mobs thst precede them.

Hopefully these dungeon revamps add some new tricks.

I agree with this, make more mobs like Lupicus. Sure, it’s a pain to beat the first few times, but after that, it’s really easy and somewhat refreshing realizing you have a group of competent people who can understand simple mechanics put together to form a large-scale boss fight.

However, AC should stay as it is in difficulty as the FIRST dungeon should not be as hard as the FINAL dungeon. (As it stands, AC Story is harder than Arah Story, so… please make Zaitan more interesting… please…)

Right now i only do FoTM and i skip all the mobs i can, you know why?
Because the longer the time im in that dungeon the higher the chances to get dc and not being able to get back in.

So yeah in FotM i will skip everything and use all the bugs i know for my advantage so i can finish it fast, because last time i wasted 1h 30min in FoTM i got dc in jade maw.

SirMirex.8543:

Okay, I hope this gets ArenaNets attention… it’s something that utterly pisses me off when going for groups in dungeons.

A lot of people ask to “skip” various parts of dungeons for the sake of “saving time”… why do I find this annoying? ArenaNet has made content there for you to enjoy so, how can you enjoy content when you are skipping it?

You enjoy killing trash mobs? Well I don’t so therefore I do NOT enjoy the trash mob content they provide. What I do enjoy is finding the most efficient way to bypass them.

I have done hundreds of dungeon runs by now and killing more trash for absolutely no reward is not on my top of the list.

It’s simple: No incentive to kill means no kill. Give us a REASON to kill it. Make the trash WORTH killing.

Either remove the stupid trash or give us an incentive to kill like the scavengers in AC (i.e. 5s). Make them drop silver, tokens, loot, SOMETHING to give groups an incentive to kill them, something worth 1 minute of time. I’m sure all the genius ANet devs can think of something….

If the last mob of every trash pack you killed granted 5-10 silver or had increased chances to drop exotics or even offered a measly token for killing them (maybe 5-8 extra tokens in a run) then you’d see a lot less trash skipping.

I mean, if ANet is REALLY REALLY REALLY interested in people not skipping trash, then give trash packs a chance to drop one wonderous bag per pack and a small, known, set quantity of silver.

It becomes a gray area when there are some mobs that seem to be designed as something groups should run past such as mobs in the rooms with the flame throwers in CM or the Archers close to the last boss in TA.

mosspit.8936:

Instead of nerfing and punishing, why can’t it be the opposite which is creating more incentives?

This. When I learned that Queen Spider, Kholer, and Troll drops 10 silver each, I told the group to slow down and kill everything on sight. I will still skip trash mobs because of their kitteny loot.

I gotta throw my hat in with the “Don’t skip stuff” lot. As such, I am totally in favor with the ‘not resetting mobs’ suggestion above. And to clarify; I’m not talking about the ones you can sneak around. I’m meaning the ones people specifically just run THROUGH.

Hate it.

Group is more than powerful enough to clear this stuff properly. Nine times out of ten the mobs skipped will cause a headache later when someone dies, gets caught, falls behind or whatever and then the group waits for them to attempt to leg it through.

I’m no genius, but I know which one saves more money, more enjoyable, less frustrating and much less time consuming… For everyone involved.

And related to this, I like to think there is a special place in hell for the person who calls for the skipping, and then complains when it later comes back to bite him in the kitten

May be a month late to post this, but the topic is related.

I am both ways about this; I do not like it when they skip things and made things harder for themselves, yet I do not condone limiting options where you can skip and waste more time and money.

Look at it this way; I have been through Ascalonian Catacomb recently and the group I’m in skips the Ascalonian Ghosts that guards the Tomb of the Lovers, which leaves me getting wiped out by them because I do not have the sprinting skill that I used to have (traded the warhorn for an additional sword.) Along the way, the party are trying to take on the boss with the breeders around. It took me a while and some help from two nice warriors to get the party in order to take out breeders and start taking down the big bad boss.

People do not often have time because of real life ordeals like family, education, occupation and provision. As others suggested; we should not promote a vendetta on the skippers for something they are given little choice about. Instead, we should give them something to promote them to balance with their real life ordeals with game life ordeals. Increasing loot ratio will not help because it will only increase the difficulty of the situation. How about we just make a fifth path called a Vanquishing Dungeon, which is like exploration, but without objectives or non-player characters to defend as the only objective is to kill all the monsters in the dungeon. Not only that, a token is rewarded for each kill on top of doubled rewards (like Hard Mode Missions in Guild Wars 1.) For the working folks, they can drop in and out at anytime and not lose their progression as it only restarts when completed. How does that sound?

People will just do that 5th path then because rewards are double…