Guild Wars 2

its one of the worst mechanics I ever encountered in a mmo, and I play them since Everquest 1.

Anet, you designed plenty of paths in various dungeons and I enjoy the most of them, but for what if you allow players to skip 80% of them, from boss to boss.

Its a major design flaw imho and I couldn’t believe thats the way you want them to be played.

Maybe some paths have to be adjusted in terms of length or mob density, but its not that difficult, isn’kitten

skipping trash isn’t a mechanic, its a choice.

Well if you want to clear the spider room of Arah p2, be my guest.

Don’t worry, I didn’t want to get to Lupi anyway.

It’s a good job I don’t need to eat.

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force everyone to play how I want them to!

Some skip are indeed intended, I’m not sure which one but a Dev replied in a thread that one of the part was meant to be skipped.

also skipping may be faster, but in most case it’s not any easier, every time PuGs players are unable to skip in Arah and we end up 2-3 manning boss to pop a waypoint.

While 99.9% of the time I do skip and prefer skip – this idea would be a welcome change of pace…

I mean, trashes should still be skippable, but mini bosses (ie Kholer) should not be…

knives.6345:

While 99.9% of the time I do skip and prefer skip – this idea would be a welcome change of pace…

I mean, trashes should still be skippable, but mini bosses (ie Kholer) should not be…

Interesting you should bring up Kholer, because this is exactly how I think things should be done right. Let’s roll the clock back a bit to before they introduced champ bags; 99% of AC parties skipped this boss. When that patch hit suddenly people started killing him because it doesn’t take long and there’s an actual incentive for doing so. This is how I believe they should approach things; rather than force people down a certain way, give them an incentive. If your party does kill Kholer, they gain a champ bag, a chest, and a waypoint they can go back to after they’ve done the burrows room / traps room / etc. If they don’t kill him, they save a minimal amount of time; but they are left with a choice, and this is a good thing.

For the most part skipping does require some skill. I think it’s a valid mechanic and an option. If you don’t want skipping, I suggest investing some time into finding people who want to play the same way and playing with them rather than asking ANet to force people to play the way you think it should be played. My dungeon group runs a lot of dungeons on a daily basis – without skips we could run a lot less of them per day since we do have RL as well. And, once you run something many times you kind of “get the point already” and any way to shorten it is welcome.

I get that from a perspective of someone newer to dungeons, who only runs like a path or two a day, skipping can be seen as something bad but it’s really not. I even used to be somewhat against it but as you gain dungeon experience and run them more and more, you kind of start to understand why it’s good to have. And, like I said, it does take a certain amount of skill and knowing your class. For example, players of any profession who can’t even skip to the nightmare vines room in TA without dying do need to learn how to play their classes – and when I see a random die on this bit, in 99% of cases it means he’ll be completely useless in the rest of the path as well, including the parts where we actually fight. More to the point, the entire party shouldn’t be held back killing useless trash because someone doesn’t know how to observe animations on mobs and dodge / pop stability at the appropriate moment.

I agree. If they want to make people clear Arah instead of skip it, they should make the mobs in Arah more profitable. As soon as those mobs drop better loot, doing Arah also becomes more fun. Kind of like how mobs in Underworld dropped ectos, and mobs in FoW dropped Obsidian Shards back in GW1.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I agree. If they want to make people clear Arah instead of skip it, they should make the mobs in Arah more profitable. As soon as those mobs drop better loot, doing Arah also becomes more fun. Kind of like how mobs in Underworld dropped ectos, and mobs in FoW dropped Obsidian Shards back in GW1.

A good example is the second set of stairs in CoE, it can be skipped but it usually isnt because the mobs there give decent loot and more importantly have a reasonable amount of hp.

The “major design flaw” isnt the skipping, its the boringly unrewarding damage sponges constantly thrown at us.

limbeurt.9642:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I agree. If they want to make people clear Arah instead of skip it, they should make the mobs in Arah more profitable. As soon as those mobs drop better loot, doing Arah also becomes more fun. Kind of like how mobs in Underworld dropped ectos, and mobs in FoW dropped Obsidian Shards back in GW1.

A good example is the second set of stairs in CoE, it can be skipped but it usually isnt because the mobs there give decent loot and more importantly have a reasonable amount of hp.

The “major design flaw” isnt the skipping, its the boringly unrewarding damage sponges constantly thrown at us.

the design flaw definitifly is the skipping. Unrewarding, this is another kind of ‘modern’ mmo behaviour, thanks to WoW. Hell, sometimes i miss the good ol’ times, where rewards were a matter of months.
Now everyone needs rewards just for logging in. Such a shame.

J Eberle.9312:

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force me to play how you want them to!

fixed that for you.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I agree. If they want to make people clear Arah instead of skip it, they should make the mobs in Arah more profitable. As soon as those mobs drop better loot, doing Arah also becomes more fun. Kind of like how mobs in Underworld dropped ectos, and mobs in FoW dropped Obsidian Shards back in GW1.

What? Arah isn’t fun anyway?

The risen elites have fun, interesting mechanics, and bosses like Balthazar, Lupicus, Alphard and Shoggroth add varying mechanics too, Alphard and Lupicus being my favourite by a mile because of the such small room for error.

But guess what? Casuals don’t run it. Interesting mob mechanics are too hard.

But, but random Elite Risen and Spiders aren’t exactly fun. That’s why they are to be skipped ;D.

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force me to play how you want them to!

fixed that for you.

That made no sense. Much like killing every mob in a dungeon.

J Eberle.9312:

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force me to play how you want them to!

fixed that for you.

That made no sense. Much like killing every mob in a dungeon.

yes, why even kill the bosses, just give us the reward for looking at them! At least ascended stuff, pls, because its so difficult to skip the trash to look at the boss!

To be honest, you are the perfect player for the reached bottom of mmo design.

Iris Ng.9845:

But, but random Elite Risen and Spiders aren’t exactly fun. That’s why they are to be skipped ;D.

and the bosses are exactly the fun you need?

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force me to play how you want them to!

fixed that for you.

That made no sense. Much like killing every mob in a dungeon.

yes, why even kill the bosses, just give us the reward for looking at them! At least ascended stuff, pls, because its so difficult to skip the trash to look at the boss!

To be honest, you are the perfect player for the reached bottom of mmo design.

Quick, grab the tinfoil hats, we’re going super irrational!

Yep, I would spent a whole day on Lupi because I love him! Gimme me MOAR.

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

blutstein.2468:

J Eberle.9312:

For the love of kitten! Hurry up and force me to play how you want them to!

fixed that for you.

That made no sense. Much like killing every mob in a dungeon.

yes, why even kill the bosses, just give us the reward for looking at them! At least ascended stuff, pls, because its so difficult to skip the trash to look at the boss!

To be honest, you are the perfect player for the reached bottom of mmo design.

Iris Ng.9845:

But, but random Elite Risen and Spiders aren’t exactly fun. That’s why they are to be skipped ;D.

and the bosses are exactly the fun you need?

If you had any experience with Anet’s franchise and history, you’d know that skipping mobs has been part of their design since GW1.

It’s so strange how selling paths and services, and skipping mobs was the norm in GW1 and I can barely recall any complaining about it, yet it’s so rampant in the GW2 community.

Here is a video of one of the GW1 elite dungeon records. Albeit, this is the most extreme case of skipping you could possibly find in the game, it’s just how it was done. And casual runs were nothing like that either, we usually had a tank that pulled things away and then we skipped it.

I once counted the foes killed in that video, and I think it was 36 or something. The foes skipped is somewhere ranging from 400-800, I can’t be bothered looking it up.

Ironically, when that elite dungeon first came out, a PUG run would range from 2-4 hours and a organized guild run would take about 1h. Funny how that evolved..

EDIT: recounted, it’s 27.

That was beautiful Bright, brings a tear to me eye to remember the good old days T_T

Bright.9160:

If you had any experience with Anet’s franchise and history, you’d know that skipping mobs has been part of their design since GW1.

I don’t think this is an accurate description of what GW1 was like. GW1 had patrols that players were intended to study, and sometimes avoid. But that is different from skipping.

Players skipped a lot of enemies in Underworld and Slavers Exile, and that was most definitely not intended. People were abusing an imbalance in the skills, that rendered some classes immune for short periods of time, allowing them to bypass encounters in record time. This is how we got armies of perma-assassins and Obsidian Flesh elementalists, skipping most of the content in a way that negated most of the elite area.

Ironically Anet has made this same design flaw again with GW2.

Here’s a recent video made by someone who totally agrees with the OP (as do I).
The Great Meta – Will this be the end of GW2?
For the sake of the game this needs to be addressed and I have confidence ArenaNet is looking at many ways in which to change this ‘skip-n-stack’ from being the optimal way to complete dungeons.

Haha, this reminds of FFXI when groups were leveling in a zone and then someone would be yelling “GOBLIN TRAIN ZONING TO XYZ EXIT”. Everyone would run out of the way of the mob train. Leashing is good to a point.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. Mostly I have limited time to run dungeons and skipping allows me to get a few in. I love Arah but rarely run it due to the amount of time it takes a non optimal group. I would love to get rid of skipping and have some of the dungeons sizes reduced a bit. It would also be nice to see better rewards for full clears.

IMHO
Blood~

Flissy.4093:

Don’t worry, I didn’t want to get to Lupi anyway.

It’s a good job I don’t need to eat.

Dude your guild should be proud

Edit: Semi on the off-topic- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

haven’t seen one of these in a while it’s usually stack thread, we got a new one of those this week too.

Create a LFG and state you do not wish to skip. Play how want with people that play the same way. Skipping is optional which is good because everyone gets to play their way.

I don’t think you can remove skipping mobs completely without allowing mobs to see invisible units. Also Anet has stated that skipping is ok. I am surprised we don’t have a sticky on the topic yet. (Although I do hear there is very little Dev Activity in this forum)

What they could do, is add more hard stops to the dungeon paths. Like doors that can only be opened by clearing out the baddies guarding it. This would still allow you to skip some mobs, without skipping everything.

The worst boss in arah is Vahid Priest of Melandru in p4, what is more frustrating than a boss with 100000million health with one of the worsts elites mobs that respawns in the entire kittening game, really this fight is not fun at all, don’t even expect PUG’s to do it unless they have already done it before themselves. This is also the reason why most people (if not all xD) use the exploit to unlock the WP from Lyssa in p4, because no one want’s to waste time in this.

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

Mirsa.1628:

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

If you don’t want to skip the mobs, find a group a similarly minded people and clear the content in the manner of your choice.

/thread

Nemesis.8593:

Mirsa.1628:

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

Yes exactly…

It’s really funny how many people simply don’t get that all their achievements in a video game are meaningless. Video games should be played for the experience of playing it.

It seems like so many people are willing to just spend days and months even on activities that they don’t even enjoy just to get a virtual carrot. And then when they get tired of the game and quit, all those carrots turned out to mean absolutely nothing. Maybe this is why so many people are resentful of MMORPGs after quitting them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love accomplishment in games, it definitely adds to the experience. However, once I stop having fun earning the accomplishments, I stop playing.

Nemesis.8593:

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

But to swing to the other end of the spectrum as illogically as you’ve swung your way: why not do all dungeons in white gear with 0 traits spent and dodge unbound? Your struggle would be most epic thus, your “victory” would be most sweet.

Creslin.1758:

It’s really funny how many people simply don’t get that all their achievements in a video game are meaningless. Video games should be played for the experience of playing it.

Other people might value other things… who am I to tell them that what they value is meaningless? Value is something you personally attach to an object, person or idea. Hence the saying of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Personally, for me, I also agree that video games are played for the experience of playing it. But that also means that when I experience something, I don’t just store that experience and do nothing with it. Experience should change you.

One way to demonstrate this is to do thing you weren’t capable of doing before. Being able to skip monsters is a form of demonstrating experience. You understand a monster’s attacks well enough to slip by them.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Nemesis.8593:

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

But to swing to the other end of the spectrum as illogically as you’ve swung your way: why not do all dungeons in white gear with 0 traits spent and dodge unbound? Your struggle would be most epic thus, your “victory” would be most sweet.

Hehe funny, but I don’t think you got what we was saying.

The value of anything is partially defined by its cost…in essence, how difficult it is to obtain. For example, truffles are valuable, they are difficult to obtain…corn is not valuable and is easy to obtain.

The same principle applies to GW2. If a dungeon reward is easily obtainable, the value of it will go down. It doesn’t matter if you put yourself personally through hell to get the reward…if everyone else can get it easily, it will still be worth crap.

It’s kind of like, if you won first place in an Olympic event and your prize was a $20 Starbucks gift card. It doesn’t matter that you “won” the gift card by completing an incredibly difficult olympic event, it’s still only worth $20.

Skipping huge parts of a dungeon is an intended mechanic. Back on the CoF P1 farm days there were a lot of discussion on how to nerf that kitten, i remember reading a post from a dev thinking about making the bridge event mandatory, but of course they never made that.

If ANet really wanted to make skipping impossible it should add more barriers like that one in SE p1. I think another way to force players to kill trash mobs is to remove wp from the dungeon, like in Arah p1 where if your group wipe at lupicus you need to run again by half of the path’s trash mobs if you want to skip.

Creslin.1758:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Nemesis.8593:

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

But to swing to the other end of the spectrum as illogically as you’ve swung your way: why not do all dungeons in white gear with 0 traits spent and dodge unbound? Your struggle would be most epic thus, your “victory” would be most sweet.

Hehe funny, but I don’t think you got what we was saying.

The value of anything is partially defined by its cost…in essence, how difficult it is to obtain. For example, truffles are valuable, they are difficult to obtain…corn is not valuable and is easy to obtain.

The same principle applies to GW2. If a dungeon reward is easily obtainable, the value of it will go down. It doesn’t matter if you put yourself personally through hell to get the reward…if everyone else can get it easily, it will still be worth crap.

It’s kind of like, if you won first place in an Olympic event and your prize was a $20 Starbucks gift card. It doesn’t matter that you “won” the gift card by completing an incredibly difficult olympic event, it’s still only worth $20.

My point was that his example (an item dispenser in lieu of a dungeon run) is as illogical as making a task unreasonably difficult on yourself.
———————————
I do find it interesting that you’re a strong proponent of the experience of the dungeon and yet have come with this argument with a monetary/extrinsic basis. If anything, the saying Nemesis used, “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory,” is entirely intrinsic. It means that I will gain that much more satisfaction even as more obstacles come my way because I will have overcome them.

If you were truly only concerned with the experience of doing a dungeon, the argument of monetary function shouldn’t come into it.

Skipping – (Working as intended)

Nemesis.8593:

Mirsa.1628:

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

I get 3g out of an Arah path whether it takes me 15 minutes or an hour.

I’d rather take 15 minutes to do that Arah path and the rest to WvW.

I would like to see more “full clears” of dungeons, but in order for that to happen, we’d need to make it more worthwhile to players from a time and loot perspective. I’d personally look at the following:

1. Currently, most enemies in dungeons tend to be Elites, which take a fair amount of time to kill for not necessarily better loot. Perhaps ANet can look at scaling down most of these enemies to Veterans, and most of the Champions to Elites (except for named foes, which always remain Champion or higher). Legendary foes in a dungeon (like Kholer) also get bumped down to Champion status unless they are particularly noteworthy foes from a lore or gameplay perspective. The boss at the end of dungeons is always a Legendary foe.

As a side benefit, this also makes foes less dangerous so there isn’t as much focus on “killing the enemy before they kill us” strategy which is why the Zerker meta is so powerful.

2. To buff the loot from foes, Veterans now always drop a Loot Bag appropriate for their race/type, plus possible additional loot. Elites will always drop a non-Exotic Champ bag, plus possible additional loot. (These changes apply to the open world too.)

3. Players can still “skip” dungeon events (I’m talking about bonus events as well as main events like fighting Kholer) if they really want to, but if they complete all of the dungeon’s events, they get a bonus daily chest containing 1+ Rares (with a chance for it to be an Exotic), coin and tokens. This chest is given out once per path per account per day.

4. Introduce a “Dungeon Conqueror” title for killing every single enemy in a dungeon path in a single run (aka “vanquishing” for you GW1 vets. ). You have to vanquish all paths in each of the dungeons to get this title. (Since enemies in dungeons do not respawn, this should be feasible where it wouldn’t be in the open world.)

^ This is one rare good post in a while.

Not a design flaw. If Anet wanted you to kill all mobs, they’d force you to do it before letting you pass to the next part of the path.

Instead, you get a choice of how you wish to play — wipe all mobs or skip them. Having a choice is always better.

If you want to wipe all mobs make your own LFG stating exactly that instead of asking the devs to force others to play the way you want.

if they fix skipping (and I doubt they are able to, since we saw what their limits are) who will want to spend 1h in a dungeon for 1g and 60 tokens?

if they made most mobs champions speedruns would be even faster. have you seen how quickly champions instadie in decent parties? not that I’m complaining, but zerk gear would still be as good if the intention was to reduce its centralisation (which I think is unneeded but whatever)

elite mobs dropping good loot is a $$$good idea$$$

also, while almost every dungeon but arah has no respawning mobs, there are a number of mobs that are in very isolated areas with no accompanying events. have you killed the champ destroyer harpy in SE P3? I suppose it could be part of the “challenge”.

I think he wants to give incentives to not skipping mobs, nothing about nerfing berzerker or speedclear though :p. It is good for both slow and fast groups, and fix the mediocre tryhards as well.

Yeah, I wanted to give more incentive for players to not skip mobs and complete all events in a dungeon. Ideally, I want a situation where the speedclearers can earn X gold/tokens in 15 mins and then go do other stuff, while the vanquishers can earn 4X gold/tokens in 60 mins. The end result is the same, but both groups get to play the way they find most enjoyable.

While I do not like the dominance of the Berzerker meta (I am an ardent supporter of the “play how you want” ideal), I also acknowledge that it is extremely effective and the natural result of the rules that ANet created. I’d prefer to see ANet make other builds more attractive rather than just outright nerfing of Zerkers, because there ARE players who enjoy being in healer/supporter/shutdown roles as opposed to straight DPS. ANet wanted to break the trinity so players didn’t have to spend hours begging for a tank/healer (I remember the “LFG 2 Monks to GOOOO!!!” days from GW1 all too well, before Heroes were introduced), but unfortunately the design made it so that characters who were geared towards a heal/support/shutdown role were completely unnecessary or inferior to a pure damage spike team.

Nemesis.8593:

Mirsa.1628:

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

exactly this. And even then the people would complain.

to clarify: I have no problems skipping a group of trash here and there, but skipping 90% of the dungeon doesn’t seem right to me.

Zaxares.5419:

While I do not like the dominance of the Berzerker meta (I am an ardent supporter of the “play how you want” ideal), I also acknowledge that it is extremely effective and the natural result of the rules that ANet created. I’d prefer to see ANet make other builds more attractive rather than just outright nerfing of Zerkers, because there ARE players who enjoy being in healer/supporter/shutdown roles as opposed to straight DPS. ANet wanted to break the trinity so players didn’t have to spend hours begging for a tank/healer (I remember the “LFG 2 Monks to GOOOO!!!” days from GW1 all too well, before Heroes were introduced), but unfortunately the design made it so that characters who were geared towards a heal/support/shutdown role were completely unnecessary or inferior to a pure damage spike team.

Why those people are trying to play dedicated healers in a game that was advertised with their removal?

Nemesis.8593:

Mirsa.1628:

I never understood why people want to spend more time in a dungeon for the same reward.

The reward is usually as meaningful as the struggle/journey to obtain that reward… Ever heard the saying “the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory” ?

If you put it like that… why would you even want to spend any time in a dungeon, just have a starting vendor with all best gear in the game…

Well… GW1 was like that. Everyone was equal stat-wise and only grinded for cooler looking gear.

Also, no one really cares about the struggle/journey after the first few times you do it. It then just becomes farm to grind for the next legendary, cash shop item or piece of ascended gear.