Guild Wars 2

I am probably (yet hope not) in the minority when I say that, but am I the only one who is getting tired of how the community in general has degenerated into nothing more (Dungeon / PVE contentwise) than a “Look for exploits or holes in the design, abuse it, also dulfy.net for everything that requires tasking”?

It’s really such a lame and boring way to do dungeons, all in the name of “farming”, I enjoy farming, but come on, by using every holes in the design? The worst part is when people who exploit then turn around and say content is easy.

Then comes the people who say “Anet’s fault, design flaws everywhere”, while that is partially true, just because the hole in design is there doesn’t mean you have to exploit it again and again.

Personally, this puts me off pugging, when I DO pug for dungeons, I will ask “do we do this the legit way, or the cheap way?” if most of the group says we do it the cheap way, I’ll comply, because I while I’m annoyed at it, I’ll do it their way, if only by respect of their choice, but kitten does it make the whole dungeon boring.

A fine example, other than CoF’s acolyte part or similar moments where you reset the AI by jumping in places they cannot reach, would be AC, notable the Spider Queen and Kholer, the mechanic is clearly here, the fight is not flawed, it’s rather well done, even ikittend of classic, but people just always use the “corner trick” to cheapen the whole thing.

Breaking line of sight is a very important mechanic to learn and use, and know when to use, but it’s such a shame how easily it can be abused when it comes to the PVE in dungeons, another problem is how stacking ontop of a boss seems to suddenly make them unable to use some abilities.

Supposing that A-Net’s dungeon team would add a few (in certain places) invisible walls, in order to preserve how the design of a fight goes, would you be against, or for it? You could still farm a dungeon, the only difference being you’d have to complete each dungeons the way it is intended.

While yes, Anet has a big fault in not trying to fix these holes in design and abuse of certain mechanics (stacking on boss making them forget abilities or outright bugout), the community shouldn’t resort to exploit the crap out of it everytime, and certainly not making it the norm of how to run dungeons.

They don’t have a dungeon team.

First, no to invisible walls. Invisible walls lead to bad camera angles.

Second, dungeons are made boring by lazy devs who think “how can we make this longer and less farmable,” instead of “how can we make this more fun and rewarding.” The new champ bags were actually a decent change to make champs more tempting to kill, but they are trivialized by the sheer number of champs that are farmable in open world zerg (why spend 1-5 minutes killing a dungeon champ when you can just zerg and kill ~5 champs in the same amount of time).

Seriously, I wonder how many of these zerg farmers would still claim it’s “fun” if they got the same reward vs effort as people that run dungeons.

No OP you are not the only one!!!
I am so bored at exploits and glitches too, the ruin everything!
I do not understand why people would want to avoid any kind of challenge when the only rewards you will ever get is the feeling of having overcome something difficult.
I was applying for the DS guild, but after one arah and one AC I was bored to death. Now back to fractals, where the PvE fun resides

I will agree to an extent. Glitching is just not something people should be doing even if it is the easiest. I also do what you do by asking and just going along if they majoriy rules as not to cause waves.

However, I would also say I reside somewhat in the camp of blaming anet. They are so focused on the living story and the gem store, the least they could do is take a little time to fix some of the these major exploits. There are so many bugs and other glitches in fractals and dungeons it’s laughable that they barely have even been acknowledged by anet one year after release. And then when they do “fix” something, it’s not something that really needed it anyway, like the dredge fractal.

I will also say that part of the problem is the level design, or lack thereof, in some cases. Seriously, who wants to kill mob after mob of enemies with enormous health pools in some cases (i.e. hotw) and receive little to no reward for it? To me, that is not fun at all either. I think they need to design some dungeons where you actually need to work as a team and solve puzzles and overcome obstacles or challenges rather than just adding more mobs and/or cutting off skip points.

colesy.8490:

They don’t have a dungeon team.

Yep. No dungeon team.

I’d buy an expansion if it secured us a dungeon team.
And I mean a proper dungeon team, not just one guy focussing solely on how to fit as many Dredge AI into the one instance as he can.

Edit: ^ Yay you fixed it!!! ^-^

I’m not really bored with dungeons, but I also don’t run them to nearly the extent that other people do. A rule of thumb, though, is that everything that doesn’t change gets boring after awhile. When running HotW to get a full set of armor and weapon skins, I had to run HotW path 1 so many times that I actually started to tune out during the runs. I had to keep myself interested for in the dungeon by constantly trying new builds, changing classes, and adapting new tactics. Running the dungeon the same way over and over again 30 times, finding someone who would run it the exact same way each time and not get bored would be difficult. However I digress:

The OP reminds me of an extremely popular thread on another MMO (active, so I won’t say the name) called “there be dragons” or something along those lines. It was years ago. The thread used dragons as a metaphor for the unknown, which was the driving experience for exploration. The game had become formulaic and bland, and there was no true surprise or wonder about the game anymore. This was true, of course. Something interesting one of the developers mentioned in that thread is that, in large part, the a lot of the lost wonder came from the fact that players would default to guides and walkthroughs whenever new content was released (which was 3 times a month or so), and in this fact they weren’t “exploring” anymore. Eventually, they released an area with elaborate randomly generated dungeons, and that is my favorite part of that game.

Looking back, my favorite dungeon runs were within the first two months after launch. Everyone did them blind, and were inexperienced in the game. So, each battle felt like a mountain to climb, and we’d spend time in voice chat just trying to figure out how to beat things. That anticipation of not knowing how to play your class well, and not knowing what was around the next corner… what I wouldn’t give to get that feeling again.

Now, it’s all so routine that voice chat is unnecessary in dungeons.

There is a much better way to fix the monotony. I loved the randomly generated dungeons from that other game, and I would love to see them here. What anet should do is throw in a whole lot more randomly generated content. The enemies shouldn’t always be in the same place, and they shouldn’t always be the same enemies. There should be dynamic events that are truly random and meaningfully impact the dungeon. The troll in AC explorable is a start, but there should be ten times more of that. And no, I don’t mean “giant bag of HP”, but the randomness of it all.

The dungeons were poorly designed from day one, and the fact that people glitch through them, only shows how poor the design really is. It is really easy to prevent players from glitching through walls, it just requires a cleaner way of constructing the dungeons, with build in safety nets. And yes, invisible walls are a good thing, as long as they do not obstruct paths that should seem accessible for the player. If you’ve got an encounter, like for example the Dredge Fractal… then why would you not place ceiling-high invisible walls everywhere where you don’t want players to go? It’s so simple to prevent this sort of glitching, it really is.

A lot of the encounters in dungeons are also poorly set up, using gimmicks that can easily be exploited, and thus that’s what people do. But there’s also various combat mechanics that simply do not work very well. We’ve got a ranged damage system that punishes players if they make use of height differences (makes enemies invulnerable), thus forcing players more towards melee. And we have a trinity that makes DPS the strategy that trumps everything. And since we don’t have a dedicated healing class, and dumb enemy ai, everyone stacks everywhere to make both defense and offense as effective as possible.

Defiant renders control skills useless against bosses, so any boss fight is reduced to simply a game of dodge the red circles, and DPS like crazy.

Skipping most of the mobs should not be possible, if areas in a dungeon were properly gated. And if the rewards were decent, players wouldn’t even want to skip. Alas, mobs have tons of health with very poor rewards, and thus skipping seems actually encouraged.

As for cheap tactics such as the corner trick, I think anything goes when fighting a boss. If you find a strategy that makes the boss fight a joke, then you save time, and you prevent casualties in your team. It’s not our fault as players, that their ai was not designed to work with one of the core design aspects of any square room (a frickin’ corner!). I call that, the “shooting the t-rex from behind the waterfall trick”. If it works, why wouldn’t you do it? Same with the boss at the end of the cliffside Fractal. It’s not our fault that he becomes bugged when you stand too close to him. It is Anet’s responsibility to sort out their boss ai so this doesn’t happen. If a MELEE boss cannot handle players getting too close to him, are the players really to blame?

I agree with OP, but would like to express that most of the dungeons are bugged, and some are outright uninspiring.

AC: Stacking on spider queen is just… ridiculous. However, the Kholer fight is by far the best and I never skip it. Path 1 has bugs like a door that traps you inside when players need to protect npc, path 3 has an unresponsive npc that forgets to put his shield on time, and a boss that knocks you out of that shield constantly, path 2 ghost eater is just a mess and most people don’t even do it.

CM: Ugly… just plain ugly. Mobs have so much bleed stacking attacks is not even funny. Some super duper elite players will tell me to get condition removal, and YES I already have it, and I don’t fail the dungeon at all but seriously their damage is insane. Plus they have large health pools as well.

TA: Another ugly one. Spiders with ridiculous health pools, uninspiring dungeon design with few clever mechanics, and some of the last boss fights in the paths are just terrible.

COE: Perhaps the best dungeon in the game, mostly balance except for that one champion abomination people skip with good reason. The dungeon could use some retouching to make it look more impressive…

COF: This one is actually good, except path 1 is too short and embarrassingly anticlimactic. I particularly love path 3, the last boss is very fun for me.

HOTW: Uggggggh. these mobs wont die, and path 3 is just bad. Please just someone kill this dungeon. Path 1 is alright I guess.

SE: Path 1 is pretty easy, but this entire dungeon feels boring in the sense of design, mechanics and a chore to kill mobs that have immense health pools.

Arah: I love the design of this dungeon, but some paths are just frustrating. Its not as bad kitten though. They need to revise this a bit more.

+1

I miss the good old days of exploring and having fun inside the dungeons instead of trying to get out as soon as possible like if it was full of poisonous gas.

Here’s the deal.

People will ALWAYS skip content in dungeons. People will always go for the speed clear. Why?

1.Dungeons offer nothing new – 1 year after this game has launched i’ve done hundreds of AC/CoF/etc dungeon runs. There’s nothing more in there for me as a player except the reward.

2.The reward system gives you your reward at the end – so you’re always going to have an incentive to get to the end faster.

3.The reward system is static. You complete the dungeon – here’s what you get. So it doesn’t matter that you did or didn’t do all of it. You could have skipped 3/4 of it and it would still give you that gold reward at the end.

Solution? Give proper rewards for different things achieved in the dungeon. Like what you ask?

a)Unbreakable – no player was downed during the entire run – 40s/each.
b)Bloodthirsty – all hostile NPCs killed – 80s/each.
c)Headhunter – all bosses downed in under 2 minutes – 40s/each.

Reward the players for playing through the content " as intended ". If you want the dungeons to transition from a speed clear to a challenge situation you have to do one thing. MOTIVATE the players to want that.
Personally I do around 5-6 dungeons per day. I do it for the gold, I don’t really like the experience but if done fast it works for the rewards.

Also another problem with the game in general is that there is no way to gauge exactly how good your teammates are. I can’t inspect them, see their gear,dps output, traits. This means I can’t form a serious team to try to go for a challenge with. I’m stuck with pugs that are always going to range from terrible to alright, and there’s no way to figure who’s who except for the usually imprecise Achievement Point marker.

[Quote of removed posting removed by Moderator]

Any post that is no longer than just one sentence, is not much of a contribution to any discussion. Especially if it’s just an ad hominem attack. The OP tries to spark a discussion, and you basically state you’re not interested in reading the only actual posts in this topic, that go into this discussion in more than just one paragraph. That basically means you’re not interested in discussion at all, in which case, why bother to reply at all?

Mesket.5728:

+1

I miss the good old days of exploring and having fun inside the dungeons instead of trying to get out as soon as possible like if it was full of poisonous gas.

That is indeed something these dungeons are lacking; that feeling of exploration. They are not so much a dungeon crawling experience, as they are a corridor crawling experience. The dungeon run is there for less about the experience of doing the dungeon, and more about “getting it over with”. If there was a lever at the start of the dungeon, that people could pull to get the end reward without doing the dungeon, they would most likely use it.

Harper.4173:

a)Unbreakable – no player was downed during the entire run – 40s/each.
b)Bloodthirsty – all hostile NPCs killed – 80s/each.
c)Headhunter – all bosses downed in under 2 minutes – 40s/each.

Not a bad idea. I like the idea of having better skill-based rewards, although I would rather see them be personal rewards, and not party-wide rewards. Downing the bosses in under 2 minutes hinges on the skill level of your whole team. I can imagine that leading to quite a bit of hostility amongst groups that fail to succeed at that target time. Because then one or two players will get the blame. I think the game should bring players together, not drive them apart.

Harper.4173:

Here’s the deal.

People will ALWAYS skip content in dungeons. People will always go for the speed clear. Why?

1.Dungeons offer nothing new – 1 year after this game has launched i’ve done hundreds of AC/CoF/etc dungeon runs. There’s nothing more in there for me as a player except the reward.

2.The reward system gives you your reward at the end – so you’re always going to have an incentive to get to the end faster.

3.The reward system is static. You complete the dungeon – here’s what you get. So it doesn’t matter that you did or didn’t do all of it. You could have skipped 3/4 of it and it would still give you that gold reward at the end.

Solution? Give proper rewards for different things achieved in the dungeon. Like what you ask?

a)Unbreakable – no player was downed during the entire run – 40s/each.
b)Bloodthirsty – all hostile NPCs killed – 80s/each.
c)Headhunter – all bosses downed in under 2 minutes – 40s/each.

Reward the players for playing through the content " as intended ". If you want the dungeons to transition from a speed clear to a challenge situation you have to do one thing. MOTIVATE the players to want that.
Personally I do around 5-6 dungeons per day. I do it for the gold, I don’t really like the experience but if done fast it works for the rewards.

Also another problem with the game in general is that there is no way to gauge exactly how good your teammates are. I can’t inspect them, see their gear,dps output, traits. This means I can’t form a serious team to try to go for a challenge with. I’m stuck with pugs that are always going to range from terrible to alright, and there’s no way to figure who’s who except for the usually imprecise Achievement Point marker.

Excellent ideas actually, specially the bloodthirsty and unbreakable reward system.

Anet stating that they won’t punish players for skipping dungeons, does not mean dungeons were meant to be skipped. Players are basically ignoring most of the content that was designed to be played. In the true sense of the word, players are not in any violation (unless they are glitching/exploiting). But it’s obviously not the way the dungeons were intended to be played. With the Molten Facility the designers had clearly learned their lesson, and added gating in between the corridors. We can see some gating in Fractals as well.

You can be sure that future dungeons (when ever those may arrive) will have plenty of gating too.

Harper.4173:

Here’s the deal.

People will ALWAYS skip content in dungeons. People will always go for the speed clear. Why?

1.Dungeons offer nothing new – 1 year after this game has launched i’ve done hundreds of AC/CoF/etc dungeon runs. There’s nothing more in there for me as a player except the reward.

2.The reward system gives you your reward at the end – so you’re always going to have an incentive to get to the end faster.

3.The reward system is static. You complete the dungeon – here’s what you get. So it doesn’t matter that you did or didn’t do all of it. You could have skipped 3/4 of it and it would still give you that gold reward at the end.

Solution? Give proper rewards for different things achieved in the dungeon. Like what you ask?

a)Unbreakable – no player was downed during the entire run – 40s/each.
b)Bloodthirsty – all hostile NPCs killed – 80s/each.
c)Headhunter – all bosses downed in under 2 minutes – 40s/each.

Reward the players for playing through the content " as intended ". If you want the dungeons to transition from a speed clear to a challenge situation you have to do one thing. MOTIVATE the players to want that.
Personally I do around 5-6 dungeons per day. I do it for the gold, I don’t really like the experience but if done fast it works for the rewards.

Also another problem with the game in general is that there is no way to gauge exactly how good your teammates are. I can’t inspect them, see their gear,dps output, traits. This means I can’t form a serious team to try to go for a challenge with. I’m stuck with pugs that are always going to range from terrible to alright, and there’s no way to figure who’s who except for the usually imprecise Achievement Point marker.

I love the ideas except the “under 2 minutes”

This game already has enough “rushing things” mentality to actually encourage it.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Also, ANet did in-fact say that they didn’t mind players skipping stuff like Kholer, and that it is perfectly ok. It is there as an optional fight. They only care if players are skipping main content in a path, such as Lupicus in Arah.

Kholer clearly is an optional boss, or they would have added a gate to that room, that only opens if you defeat him. And so is the troll clearly. And general PVE also has plenty of champion bosses that are intended to be avoided. And lets not forget the Champion Risen Giants in Arah, those are also meant to be skipped.

Of course, what players are doing in the Dredge Fractal is obviously not intended (platforming around the cages and skipping the room with the buttons entirely).

I’m not sure if CoF was ever meant to be rushed through so easily, but I think they may have dropped the ball a bit more in their design there.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Also, ANet did in-fact say that they didn’t mind players skipping stuff like Kholer, and that it is perfectly ok. It is there as an optional fight. They only care if players are skipping main content in a path, such as Lupicus in Arah.

Kholer clearly is an optional boss, of they would have added a gate to that room, that only opens if you defeat him. And so is the troll clearly. And general PVE also has plenty of champion bosses that are intended to be avoided. And lets not forget the Champion Risen Giants in Arah, those are also meant to be skipped.

Of course, what players are doing in the Dredge Fractal is obviously not intended (platforming around the cages and skipping the room with the buttons entirely).

I’m not sure if CoF was ever meant to be rushed through so easily, but I think they may have dropped the ball a bit more in their design there.

I can’t tell if your first paragraph is sarcasm or not, I’m not going to assume. I don’t disagree with you about Dredge or CoF, I’m sure most of the people (on forums, at least) who support the idea of skipping ‘optional’ content would also agree about Dredge. There is a clear difference between running through some mobs on the intended path, and jumping over cages which are not only out of the way of the intended path, but also skips the initial little puzzle (which obviously, is expected to be used).

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Mesket.5728:

Bright.9160:

I wonder how many times we’re gonna have to say that the dev’s have officially stated that skipping is a valid, intended tactic in dungeons and some parts of dungeons were specifically designed to be skipped until you guys are going to stop b*tching about it.

And when are you going to understand that saying something is VALID doesn’t mean it is the best practice?

It is valid to stick a carrot up your kitten if that’s what you like BUT its not probably the best way to use a carrot.

How do you determine what the best way to use a dungeon is?

I’d would start by reading the red events on the top right of my screen. Not what I think, but what the designer thought. Since its not stopping you from triggering the next or last event which will in fact trigger the final reward, you can consider it as optional and I’m asume that if ANet didn’t have other priorities they wouldn’t let everyone skip so much content.

If you think about it, and sum all the dungeons, there is more skipped content that is actually played.

Mesket.5728:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Mesket.5728:

Bright.9160:

I wonder how many times we’re gonna have to say that the dev’s have officially stated that skipping is a valid, intended tactic in dungeons and some parts of dungeons were specifically designed to be skipped until you guys are going to stop b*tching about it.

And when are you going to understand that saying something is VALID doesn’t mean it is the best practice?

It is valid to stick a carrot up your kitten if that’s what you like BUT its not probably the best way to use a carrot.

How do you determine what the best way to use a dungeon is?

I’d would start by reading the red events on the top right of my screen. Not what I think, but what the designer thought. Since its not stopping you from triggering the next or last event which will in fact trigger the final reward, you can consider it as optional and I’m asume that if ANet didn’t have other priorities they wouldn’t let everyone skip so much content.

If you think about it, and sum all the dungeons, there is more skipped content that is actually played.

I think I’m probably just bias in my experiences, but I feel like not that many ‘red events’ are actually skipped? I don’t really PUG, could be a big factor there. In terms of just general content, I would agree with you. I imagine more is skipped than actually ‘killed’. I wouldn’t say played, because you’re still interacting with mobs when you run past them.

apparently mesket’s understanding of how to do a dungeons is the “best practice”.

Mesket.5728:

I’m asume that if ANet didn’t have other priorities they wouldn’t let everyone skip so much content.

I don’t agree that we can just blindly assume that. As was pointed out earlier, some dungeons have content that was literally designed to be skipped. In general Anet’s devs haven’t shown them selves to be against skipping.

I get the impression that Anet has simply given up on fixing the dungeons as they are, since they are bad from their very foundations. Some devs have even hinted at the possibility of scratching the existing dungeons, in exchange for completely new dungeons. Perhaps they haven’t reached a decision on this yet, and chose to leave the existing dungeons alone for now.

I think Anet was simply in a hurry to get this game released, and some areas of the game didn’t get the attention they deserved (Zhaitan comes to mind). Hopefully they’ll go back to the drawing board for the dungeons.

There will always be good player and bad players.

This game fails at giving players an option to differentiate and in doing so is creating a poorer PvE and dungeon experience.
Dungeons are designed for 5 people. We should be able to tell exactly how effective each player is. This will in turn create more elitist runs which will actually get players to IMPROVE their game in order to be more successful loot-wise.

I did AC today with a group of people that were beyond terrible. I don’t even know why i bothered to stick around. The point is this : The game has been out for one year – if you’re still terrible at AC ( the first dungeon in this game) then it means there’s no real incentive for you to get any better. How can we have a good dungeon experience with bad players?
If players want to be bad- they can go ahead but they should accept the fact that good parties won’t have them and that overall they’ll get LESS rewards if they play badly. They still get some basic reward but in more time without bonuses.

Remember GW1’s hardcore mission modes? Remember the timed missions in Factions? The bonus objectives?
That meant that a good party would always get more out of the same content.

I miss that design philosophy. If good parties were encouraged, if design-wise end-game elite areas were improved and players were encouraged to go there then it WOULD make all the difference.

Want people to stop skipping bosses in dungeons? – make them drop special tokens- get 50 speical tokens from a dungeon – boom – 10 gold loot bag.

Want people to stop killing trash in dungeons? – special achievement for trash killing – 500 trash kills – 5 gold.

Want people to play the content " the way it’s intended " instead of speeding through it? The bottom line is MAKE IT WORTH THEIR WHILE.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Mesket.5728:

I’m asume that if ANet didn’t have other priorities they wouldn’t let everyone skip so much content.

I don’t agree that we can just blindly assume that. As was pointed out earlier, some dungeons have content that was literally designed to be skipped. In general Anet’s devs haven’t shown them selves to be against skipping.

I get the impression that Anet has simply given up on fixing the dungeons as they are, since they are bad from their very foundations. Some devs have even hinted at the possibility of scratching the existing dungeons, in exchange for completely new dungeons. Perhaps they haven’t reached a decision on this yet, and chose to leave the existing dungeons alone for now.

I think Anet was simply in a hurry to get this game released, and some areas of the game didn’t get the attention they deserved (Zhaitan comes to mind). Hopefully they’ll go back to the drawing board for the dungeons.

I’m not blindly assuming it. I’m basing my opinions on their reaction to CoF runs and how they tried to stop players from doing it.

Yes, I agree, I also get the impression that at some point ANet gave up on fixing the rest of the “wasted/skipped content”.

Bread.7516:

apparently mesket’s understanding of how to do a dungeons is the “best practice”.

If you are going to answer in a hostile and sarcastic way, at least have the decency to read the whole thread. i stated before that is not only my personal opinion but I’m taking what I see in the game (such as red events on screen) as data.

Answer this to me please (and no, because you find it annoying is not a very smart answer):

Why would ANet place an event that says “Kill Kholer” if the best practice is to skip it?

(actually is funny using Kholer as example, if you the math the extra champ bag, chest and silver for event completed, it is totally worth it to kill instead of skip it; unless bad players don’t want to be exposed failing at this fight).

Mesket.5728:

Bread.7516:

apparently mesket’s understanding of how to do a dungeons is the “best practice”.

If you are going to answer in a hostile and sarcastic way, at least have the decency to read the whole thread. i stated before that is not only my personal opinion but I’m taking what I see in the game (such as red events on screen) as data.

Answer this to me please (and no, because you find it annoying is not a very smart answer):

Why would ANet place an event that says “Kill Kholer” if the best practice is to skip it?

(actually is funny using Kholer as example, if you the math the extra champ bag, chest and silver for event completed, it is totally worth it to kill instead of skip it; unless bad players don’t want to be exposed failing at this fight).

kill kohler > get the reward (champ box)

skip kohler (buffer) > bad player/cater for new players because its the first dungeon.

did that answer your question?

off the top of my head i don’t know any red events/major events people skip in a speedrun.

Mesket.5728:

I miss the good old days of exploring and having fun inside the dungeons instead of trying to get out as soon as possible like if it was full of poisonous gas.

Exploration is usually first few times in an area, not the next thousand.

The good old days still had speed runs, even in offline gaming era. For some doing exceptionally well is fun, we don’t like to be sub-standard.

Mesket.5728:

And when are you going to understand that saying something is VALID doesn’t mean it is the best practice?

1 word, efficiency.

As cookie said, skipping/running past mobs is still an interaction. they’re not useless, they add flavor; Having the choice on how to handle an encounter.

Your way of understanding what intended gameplay would be is not what others understand it to be.

Don’t put words in Anet’s mouth by preaching your interpretation as their intentions.

Playing 100% as intended = sheep

I have a real job to be efficient at, this is recreation for me. I will not stress out in a game even thought I give the best of myself while playing, they are both different things. Fine if you want to do it, but I wont.

For me, efficiency in a game is what grants me the most fun, and fun for me its not another digit in my gold but the quality time I have while playing.

Bread.7516:

Mesket.5728:

Bread.7516:

apparently mesket’s understanding of how to do a dungeons is the “best practice”.

If you are going to answer in a hostile and sarcastic way, at least have the decency to read the whole thread. i stated before that is not only my personal opinion but I’m taking what I see in the game (such as red events on screen) as data.

Answer this to me please (and no, because you find it annoying is not a very smart answer):

Why would ANet place an event that says “Kill Kholer” if the best practice is to skip it?

(actually is funny using Kholer as example, if you the math the extra champ bag, chest and silver for event completed, it is totally worth it to kill instead of skip it; unless bad players don’t want to be exposed failing at this fight).

kill kohler > get the reward (champ box)

skip kohler (buffer) > bad player/cater for new players because its the first dungeon.

did that answer your question?

off the top of my head i don’t know any red events/major events people skip in a speedrun.

Not really, I can’t form a straight answer there. You just pointed out 2 scenarios that not neccesarily answer what I said.

There are other red events like the Troll when it pops, the burrow (i agree this feels quite useless), the bridge at COF, I don’t know… its been a while since I don’t run many dungeons but there’ve always been ways to skip content (like jumping the rocky wall on Arah and skip half the dungeon) and there was a time when ANet tried to fix them.

When they wanted you to avoid content they were very explicit about it: CoF 3, ninja the mobs or fight your path through?

And…

Bread.7516:

apparently mesket’s understanding of how to do a dungeons is the “best practice”.

If you are going to call my nick name, do it talking to me; don’t be a kid trying to look cool

Mesket.5728:

Answer this to me please (and no, because you find it annoying is not a very smart answer):

Why would ANet place an event that says “Kill Kholer” if the best practice is to skip it?

(actually is funny using Kholer as example, if you the math the extra champ bag, chest and silver for event completed, it is totally worth it to kill instead of skip it; unless bad players don’t want to be exposed failing at this fight).

Killing Kholer is literally called a “Bonus event”.

You could not have picked a worse example.

Bright.9160:

Mesket.5728:

Answer this to me please (and no, because you find it annoying is not a very smart answer):

Why would ANet place an event that says “Kill Kholer” if the best practice is to skip it?

(actually is funny using Kholer as example, if you the math the extra champ bag, chest and silver for event completed, it is totally worth it to kill instead of skip it; unless bad players don’t want to be exposed failing at this fight).

Killing Kholer is literally called a “Bonus event”.

You could not have picked a worse example.

The only bonus event in AC is the Troll.

It is a fine example, even thought you don’t like it. It’s actually considered a regular boss of the dungeon by dulfy’s guide.

Mesket.5728:

I have a real job to be efficient at, this is recreation for me.

you have a real job, i own a real business. what’s the point in mentioning unless it’s some sort of peen comparison?

You want to play casual fine im not telling you how to play it, but you are telling us how to play with your “best practice” standards. Some of us unwind with challenging/hard/stressful content and some people like increasing their net worth (gold or w/e).

Kohler in AC is a bonus. “best practice” according to your standard or not.
clearly outline/define what “best practice” is because you alone know what this so called standard is about. Bottom line, it is intended, it is valid. if it is profitable for time spent – I didn’t bother to do the numbers because it is negligible.

Bread.7516:

Mesket.5728:

I have a real job to be efficient at, this is recreation for me.

you have a real job, i own a real business. what’s the point in mentioning unless it’s some sort of peen comparison?

You want to play casual fine I’m not telling you how to play it, but you are telling us how to play. Some of us unwind with challenging/hard/stressful content.

There are valid reasons pointing out what someone does besides playing video games when you are discussing something such as time taken for something.

I don’t consider myself casual… I play almost everyday if not everyday and when I play, I play. I don’t follow commands nor give myself up to the mass hysteria of completing a dungeon in 2 less minutes (unless you tell me you sport it like Cookie and do it with people that are fond with it).

I do love hard content, though I don’t think hard means doing it fast or don’t doing it at all. My definition of hard means more clever strategic wise without making mistakes;… I’m definitely starting to think this is not the game for that.

How about people stop judging anet by their “intentions” and judge them by their actions? If you can run past from mobs and they leash, then it is pretty clear what is and isn’t optional. And you don’t have to play junior psychologist guessing games to figure it out.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

How about people stop judging anet by their “intentions” and judge them by their actions? If you can run past from mobs and they leash, then it is pretty clear what is and isn’t optional. And you don’t have to play junior psychologist guessing games to figure it out.

Because what you call actions can also be unexpected results. They are adding content every 2 weeks and some of them are here to stay. I want to express my opinion as other players do with naive hope that it would be read by a designer.

Personally what little enjoyment the dungeons provide for me is seeing that gold number in my inventory going from x to x+1. That’s it.

Mesket – in your desire to change the game and make it more like what you want and like you’d be ruining it for me and others like me.
To me dungeons are a chore. There are other aspects of the game that I enjoy. These aspects cost MONEY. If I don’t farm/do dungeons I’ll never have that money to be able to get what I want and play what I want.

There’s too little content in this game for it not to be considered a chore. Not enough new stuff, to keep you busy and having fun with something new and shiny.

So why not keep things as they are instead of making them worse?
Casuals play the way they want to . roleplayers the way they want to and speedclearers the way they want to. Is it that hard?

Mesket.5728:

I don’t follow commands nor give myself up to the mass hysteria of completing a dungeon in 2 less minutes (unless you tell me you sport it like Cookie and do it with people that are fond with it).

I only do dungeons with friends that have been tried and tested.

In this thread I never implied for everyone to follow the meta. If a lot of people in the community wants to achieve a fast time of completion, who are you to say that they should not?

You have implied for people to follow your “best practice” standard on how to complete dungeons.

Mesket.5728:

I don’t follow commands nor give myself up to the mass hysteria of completing a dungeon in 2 less minutes (unless you tell me you sport it like Cookie and do it with people that are fond with it)..

That’s funny, nor do I, nor did I ever imply such a thing. If a dungeon run goes bad, it goes bad. kitten happens. All I care about that people learned from their mistakes and try not to make them again.

You pretend like we treat every run like a record run, which we don’t. I just don’t see why I should run a subpar teambuild and why people judge me for wanting to run decent builds.

Bread.7516:

Mesket.5728:

I don’t follow commands nor give myself up to the mass hysteria of completing a dungeon in 2 less minutes (unless you tell me you sport it like Cookie and do it with people that are fond with it).

I only do dungeons with friends that have been tried and tested.

In this thread I never implied for everyone to follow the meta. If a lot of people in the community wants to achieve a fast time of completion, who are you to say that they should not?

You have implied for people to follow your “best practice” standard on how to complete dungeons.

I never defined a “best practice” nor did I impose it:

Quoting myself: And when are you going to understand that saying something is VALID doesn’t mean it is the best practice?

For some reason you got sticky with the words “best practice” (my english is limited so I couldn’t find better ones)

Bright.9160:

Mesket.5728:

I don’t follow commands nor give myself up to the mass hysteria of completing a dungeon in 2 less minutes (unless you tell me you sport it like Cookie and do it with people that are fond with it)..

That’s funny, nor do I, nor did I ever imply such a thing. If a dungeon run goes bad, it goes bad. kitten happens. All I care about that people learned from their mistakes and try not to make them again.

You pretend like we treat every run like a record run, which we don’t. I just don’t see why I should run a subpar teambuild and why people judge me for wanting to run decent builds.

no, I discuss calling out other ways of running it subpar and your decent cause that is in a way telling people how to do it.

Is this a racing game? are we here to compete on speed? or are we here to actually kill things?

Then its perfectly fine for other players to run things the way they like. The thread was simple, Are dungeons made boring by the community? I answer yes, why? because for me it is boring to pass through things without killing when I’m here to kill things. I think its a simple and straight answer. I’m sorry you have so much troubles with such a simple concept.

Harper.4173:

Personally what little enjoyment the dungeons provide for me is seeing that gold number in my inventory going from x to x+1. That’s it.

Mesket – in your desire to change the game and make it more like what you want and like you’d be ruining it for me and others like me.
To me dungeons are a chore. There are other aspects of the game that I enjoy. These aspects cost MONEY. If I don’t farm/do dungeons I’ll never have that money to be able to get what I want and play what I want.

There’s too little content in this game for it not to be considered a chore. Not enough new stuff, to keep you busy and having fun with something new and shiny.

So why not keep things as they are instead of making them worse?
Casuals play the way they want to . roleplayers the way they want to and speedclearers the way they want to. Is it that hard?

There are plenty of places where you can make that happen if that is what makes you have fun but few to no places where you can “explore a dangerous zone”. This is why I answer that dungeons are boredom for me. It is a personal answer and I don’t expect you (or anyone) to share my opinion.

Mesket.5728:

no, I discuss calling out other ways of running it subpar and your decent cause that is in a way telling people how to do it.

Is this a racing game? are we here to compete on speed? or are we here to actually kill things?

Then its perfectly fine for other players to run things the way they like. The thread was simple, Are dungeons made boring by the community? I answer yes, why? because for me it is boring to pass through things without killing when I’m here to kill things. I think its a simple and straight answer. I’m sorry you have so much troubles with such a simple concept.

This is not a racing game no. But part of my fun in this game is doing dungeons fast. Who are you to tell me that’s the wrong way to play the game.

It is perfectly fine for other players to run things the way they like, this is very true. But people that apply to our guild know that they will have to run our builds and our tactics, because we have dungeon experience and knowledge. If they can show us how their builds and/or tactics are better, we’ll adapt to the best thing on the market.

This is not a difficult concept. It was the same in GW1 as well. We used to be a hardcore DoASC guild, and we ran very specific bars and tactics. It’s part of joining such a guild that says you’ll have to run their builds. Anyone that joins and refuses to do so is welcome to join some “play the way you want guild”. If someone applied in GW1 and told us he didn’t like playing mesmer as a spiker, but wanted to run as an Elementalist spiker, we would kindly tell him to find another guild or run our builds, because that’s the way it is.

I do not however go around telling random people what builds they should run.

I think it’s a matter of respect that you adjust to the guild you are running with. If I get invited on a run with another guild and someone tells me to run a certain profession and/or build, I will respect their request because I’m their guest. It’s called common courtesy.

Unless I knew the build they asked me to run is absolute trash and I know the area better than they do, but this basically only reflects some situations I had in GW1 where certain guilds would run terrible setups. But then again, after one too many bad runs, I only agreed to go on their runs if I was a tank, because I didn’t trust their tanks.

Bright.9160:

Mesket.5728:

no, I discuss calling out other ways of running it subpar and your decent cause that is in a way telling people how to do it.

Is this a racing game? are we here to compete on speed? or are we here to actually kill things?

Then its perfectly fine for other players to run things the way they like. The thread was simple, Are dungeons made boring by the community? I answer yes, why? because for me it is boring to pass through things without killing when I’m here to kill things. I think its a simple and straight answer. I’m sorry you have so much troubles with such a simple concept.

This is not a racing game no. But part of my fun in this game is doing dungeons fast. Who are you to tell me that’s the wrong way to play the game.

yara yara

I never told you how you should do it. I simply stated how I feel about dungeons and how I THINK it was planned (using dungeon events and first atemps to stop spped clears by ANet as arguments. It seems they gave up, and yes they said it was fine because not being fine might be interpreted as reportable). You are picking up a fight because someone thinks different or have a different concept of fun,

Mesket.5728:

They don’t need to be more difficult, just not skipable.

Dunno about you, but this sure as hell sounds like imposing your will on others/telling people how to run dungeons.

You aren’t physically doing it, but if given the opportunity, you would do it.

Mesket.5728:

The only bonus event in AC is the Troll.

There is actually another bonus event in that dungeon, although I never hear anyone talk about it. After the path is chosen, at the bottom of the spiral staircase you can head backward instead of through the door to the spiders. At the base of the staircase is a torch that, if interacted with, will spawn an additional event where ghosts ambush you.

Kholer is most definitely optional. There is no gate that prevents you from continuing the dungeon until you kill them. There is plenty of space to go around him, without getting aggro from him or his minions. In other words, he was intended to be optional. The event might say “Kill Kholer” but that doesn’t mean it is a requirement. The entire encounter was set up in a way that players could skip him.

And there are good reasons to skip him. For one, he’s a much tougher opponent than most of the bosses in the dungeon. So if you’re helping newb guildies through the dungeon, they might not be ready to fight him.

Dolan.3071:

Tl;dr this whole thread and assume its a pile of garbage judging from the wall/s of text from Arachnid, Mad Queen, and to a lesser extent, Mesket. This thread was doomed from the get go.

Thanks for your contribution to the thread. I’m sorry reading text is difficult for you. We’ll try to keep out text in easily readable single sentences.

I know what you’re getting at, OP.

Yeah, this sort of…I don’t know….ennui?…is kind of unusual. It’s not just how quickly and fiercely older players get to that point of ‘been there done that’. Everyone reaches that feeling eventually, although better designed encounters can prolong the journey. The real dazzlingly bizarre part of this is how new players are sauntering out of the gate and behaving like haggard and jaded veterans. They’re sick to death of things they’ve never even really bothered to try.

I’m familiar with simple good old fashioned lazy, I’ve played games with far worse exploitation potential, but I’ve never seen an MMO culture with such a widespread epidemic of complete disinterest in the content.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I’m familiar with simple good old fashioned lazy, I’ve played games with far worse exploitation potential, but I’ve never seen an MMO culture with such a widespread epidemic of complete disinterest in the content.

Thank you and your better than mine english.

Vox Hollow.2736:

They’re sick to death of things they’ve never even really bothered to try.

Remember in September 2012, a month after launch, when every forum post in the general game forum was “there is no end-game”? I wonder, in retrospect, how many of the people making those posts had their DM title already. I like your quote very much in this regard. Obviously there are veteran players who I wouldn’t hold burn-out against. but there are complete newbies who complain about dungeons being boring when a good deal of them may only have run each path once at most, and in a pug at that.

Every time I even suggest to do a dungeon legit or suggest not exploiting on some boss, I get people calling me names, going overboard on trying to justify or try to alter my perspective on what exploiting is. In the end, I cave. I pretty much have too else I would never beable to do a dungeon run.

When I was farming for the jetpack (that I never got) back in the Molten Factory the 2 most common exploits was standing in the corner during the trap room and stacking under the berserker boss so his attacks wouldnt hit you and he wouldnt teleport.
Run after run after run I would be the only guy standing out in the middle of the trap room, even when we had new people thats never dont the run before. “Stand in the corner, its safe.” they say every time and the new people would. Once at the end, after exploiting on both the trap room and the boss, one new guy actually said “Well, that was easy.” kitten ed me off so much.
But oh man did I love it when they all died on that boss because none of them knew how to avoid his attack once some one like me refused to exploit. Sure the fight was alot longer, but as long as I was having fun it didnt matter.
Fun > Saving Time
I even managed to get a few comments how people didnt expect an engi to be good.

I miss that dungeon. enemys with unique skills, manageable hp pools and a boss fight that was more than just avoid the red circles and DPS! well, its a boss so there was still alot of avoid the attacks and DPS but it was different!

XelNigma.6315:

Every time I even suggest to do a dungeon legit or suggest not exploiting on some boss, I get people calling me names, going overboard on trying to justify or try to alter my perspective on what exploiting is. In the end, I cave. I pretty much have too else I would never beable to do a dungeon run.

When I was farming for the jetpack (that I never got) back in the Molten Factory the 2 most common exploits was standing in the corner during the trap room and stacking under the berserker boss so his attacks wouldnt hit you and he wouldnt teleport.
Run after run after run I would be the only guy standing out in the middle of the trap room, even when we had new people thats never dont the run before. “Stand in the corner, its safe.” they say every time and the new people would. Once at the end, after exploiting on both the trap room and the boss, one new guy actually said “Well, that was easy.” kitten ed me off so much.
But oh man did I love it when they all died on that boss because none of them knew how to avoid his attack once some one like me refused to exploit. Sure the fight was alot longer, but as long as I was having fun it didnt matter.
Fun > Saving Time
I even managed to get a few comments how people didnt expect an engi to be good.

I miss that dungeon. enemys with unique skills, manageable hp pools and a boss fight that was more than just avoid the red circles and DPS! well, its a boss so there was still alot of avoid the attacks and DPS but it was different!

I would drop out of the party and look for like minded individuals, or look for contents I can solo if the issue is that bad. You are as bad as those exploiting because you forced your will on others.

You want non exploited dungeons? Come with my guild sometime, feel free to add me.