Guild Wars 2

Why not make the average elite mob in a dungeon drop at least one random green upon killing it?

That’s really the only reason why people skip dungeon mobs in game, since there really is really no reason to waste effort working for a grey item and a little XP. Maybe this doesn’t need to get added in regular dungeon mode, but at least explorable mode!

Let me know what you guys think!

i don’t think people will stop to kill elites for a green. a rare maybe except that would make elite rewards even better than champs.

Skipping Trash is part of the dungeon.

Paradox.1380:

Skipping Trash is part of the dungeon.

Why even add it in there then? They (ANet) cannot disapprove too much because they have not added anything to prevent it, but I do see it as trivialising content and annoying really. There just doesn’t seem to be a point to killing things.

In GW1 EoTN, you had many mobs that carried keys to the dungeon, which you had to kill in order to open the door to progress, the exact same thing would work here. No stealthing or running, kill the mobs, get the key, move on.

It’d make more sense to force the kills in this respect.

Have a meter that shows (your kills)/(existing monsters). You may not progress to the next location until all the “required” mobs are dead. Problem Solved.

(Too many people will whine and complain that they have to spend 5 more min in a dungeon killing these easy monsters with their Zerk gear – for you I say – "oh i’m so very very sorry… -rolls eyes-)

Or anet could try to focus their attention on creating new interesting content instead of “fixing” old content in ways some people “think” are right.

You like killing trash mobs? Go ahead and group with like minded people and kill away.

Wait, you can’t find enough people who want to kill trash with you? So you want anet to inentionally implement something that would annoy a bigger part of the player base instead of focusing on new fun content? Outch.

Are dungeons in a bad state? Debatable, some like them, some don’t.

Let’s move on and focus on something that needs attention. Maybe learn for future dungeons.

To “fix” something it means it’s a problem that needs fixing. Skipping isn’t a problem

Those dungeons are a joke anyways not seeing Anet making them interesting anytime soon,so its just better having them like they are a easy and only challenge is how fast you can beat them…

Anything that involves trying to force the players to do something in a specific way will always result in the above/below comments.

“Nothing’s wrong / Nothing to fix / It’s fine / Leave it”
or
“More challenging content / Make it harder / Do something about it”

The problem is that the player base is split on what they want.

A large portion want instant gratification and to accomplish goals within the smallest time period possible. Others want balance, fair game play, and non-segregating meta’s.

Each have some merit to be honest. Some players simply don’t have the time to get on and play in a dungeon for hours – so they resort to Zerk gear. Others want to feel useful in any situation playing what they want to play and to be allowed into groups not based on gear or skill requirements, but as simply being needed. Both paid for a game that has made it rather clear as to which side they lean towards of this spectrum.

The common complaint is that speed runners want “new interesting/challenging content”. But how can the devs create this?

Here is an example of how a player can speed run a dungeon solo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gMSucIhDTs

Here is an example of how a player can kill a boss that normally wipes teams solo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DdFLInk888

The point is – players will always want to abuse game mechanics to make things “easier” – so why bother adding “new interesting/challenging content”?

Previously proposed suggestions have been:
1) Make the AI smarter and randomize attack patterns
2) Make the fights harder
3) Change the gear
4) Force kill count > progression

The problem with (1) and (2) is that altering the monsters in anyway will make it harder for players who don’t play meta builds to get through dungeons – yet the change will be less noticeable to speed runners. In (3) we have players wanting to nerf zerk gear feeling it’ll fix the issue. In all honesty – It would by creating a perception of greater balance. Some feel the gear needs more risk, but risk comes from monsters currently who are predictable and controllable. Monsters telegraph skills with more than enough time for players to react in most cases, and thus we have almost no risk for veteran zerk players – especially since the attack patterns aren’t randomized and can be coaxed in some cases. In (4) we see a similar issue as in (1) and (2) – zerk players get an advantage and non-zerk players get penalized by increasing their time in the dungeon.

Since monster loot doesn’t scale with how long it’s been alive there is no incentive to slow the process down. If it did scale in this manner we’d see the zerk players AFK or set bot/macro’s to negate auto-kicking and then just farming the spoils later.

In almost any way you look at it – there is an upside and a downside – and everyone is going to make the downside look far worse than it really is.

Example:
Nerf Zerk Gear – Everyone will freak out saying “you’re penalizing good players and rewarding bad players”. When the reality is that you are balancing the game so that everyone has more worth and contribution to a party. “But this game doesn’t have a Trinity so go back to Gw1.” It’s true we don’t have a Trinity, but the fact remains that some people like being the support character – which they can’t have in this game – and if they try to support a Zerk player who isn’t very good – well, there just isn’t enough fast reaction healing/support that can be offered. In any case there is always a typically selfish rebuttal catering to the ideals of the offended party.

I fear no matter what anet tries – they will lose players either way due to this unfortunate and typically unfounded mentality. Creating the illusion of balance is the only salvation they have, but this will be very hard to accomplish without making it increasingly obvious that they picked one side and scaled it up or down to do so.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Each have some merit to be honest. Some players simply don’t have the time to get on and play in a dungeon for hours – so they resort to Zerk gear. Others want to feel useful in any situation playing what they want to play and to be allowed into groups not based on gear or skill requirements, but as simply being needed. Both paid for a game that has made it rather clear as to which side they lean towards of this spectrum.

And both sides are able to play with like minded people and create parties with custom demands. It does become a problem when people post for something and others join and hijack the group (both for non zerker geared people joining zerger groups and vice versa). So in essence the lfg system might need to be improved.

Also the way the game is currently designed, “feel useful in any situation” is highly subjective but unfortunately objectively berserker gear is the most useful in any situation (except tequatle or player skill being to low to run full berserker). In case of people being to unskilled to run full zerker the demand for full zerker also works as a player ability check.

Though little of this has to do with the issue at hand. The issue being that dungeons are fine the way they are. And even if they weren’t, anet has way better things to do then polish up 3 year old content.

Easy solution: Bosses do not spawn until every mob leading up to the boss has been killed.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

In GW1 EoTN, you had many mobs that carried keys to the dungeon, which you had to kill in order to open the door to progress, the exact same thing would work here. No stealthing or running, kill the mobs, get the key, move on.

Interestingly, there are a few cases where something akin to this is utilised. For example, the requirement to kill the abominations before the door to Lupicus opens. It’s not a physical key, but they act like gatekeepers. Unfortunately if they were to randomize the key locations, it would completely destroy the speedrunning community owing to another level of unnecessary RNG.

In reply to the OP; personally I have no issues with skipping as it is now, full-clears can be fun for the first time but after that the killing of trash mobs quickly becomes tedious. That said, an increase in the reward for killing them would certainly convince more people to take the time to do it, however it changes little about how dull most of the trash fights are.

rapthorne.7345:

Easy solution: Bosses do not spawn until every mob leading up to the boss has been killed.

Making dungeons take 10 minutes longer for full berserker, and 20 minutes or more for non zerker.

I’m sure that will go well.

I was speed clearing dungeons in GW 1 so im just used with killing only what’s needed to progress. I have enough green poof dropping everywhere and even if they would add yellow ones (which u get faster from doing bosses run) to trash mobs and final box reward won’t give me what i could get in GW 1 the only reason to run them is gold, currency to finish collection (which with PvP is really fast) and fun of learning fastest way to finish them. Give me chance to drop minis, more mats like dust or smth what u can’t get from salvaging and it would alrdy give me reason to kill trash. The only reason to kill trash mobs was UW in GW 1.

I think enemy mobs need more than a loot change to get players interested.

For me, I’d spend time killing enemy mobs if the fights themselves involved enjoyable mechanics based on the use of a variety of things such as improved AI, weapon/skill choices that make a difference, etc. Etc. But high mob hitpoints and 1-shot kills are kitten for brains dead boring. Then finally at the end of each fun fight, an appropriate reward.

Cyninja.2954:

rapthorne.7345:

Easy solution: Bosses do not spawn until every mob leading up to the boss has been killed.

Making dungeons take 10 minutes longer for full berserker, and 20 minutes or more for non zerker.

I’m sure that will go well.

If AI remains the same then it will likely be an even larger difference. One example being the first corridor in CoE, a deep-pull with zerker gear clears the whole room in around a minute. On the flip-side I’ve seen non-optimal groups taking upwards of 10 minutes in there.

As long as skills like sandstorm remain, stacking huge amounts of trash together and bursting them down will be trivial.

Steven.9803:

Why not make the average elite mob in a dungeon drop at least one random green upon killing it?

That’s really the only reason why people skip dungeon mobs in game, since there really is really no reason to waste effort working for a grey item and a little XP. Maybe this doesn’t need to get added in regular dungeon mode, but at least explorable mode!

Let me know what you guys think!

I have an easier fix, take off the leashes. You run by a mob, they will hunt you down unless you kill them.

Behellagh.1468:

Steven.9803:

Why not make the average elite mob in a dungeon drop at least one random green upon killing it?

That’s really the only reason why people skip dungeon mobs in game, since there really is really no reason to waste effort working for a grey item and a little XP. Maybe this doesn’t need to get added in regular dungeon mode, but at least explorable mode!

Let me know what you guys think!

I have an easier fix, take off the leashes. You run by a mob, they will hunt you down unless you kill them.

One word: stealth

People will rationalize on if the random chance of a “good” green is worth the loss in time, and probably still skip.

Skipping should be allowed but also full clears should also be rewarded. So for example having more/rare loot at bosses for clearing the trash before it. Or clearing a trash group has a chance of spawning a rare mob, one that drops unique stuff.

Or just restrict it. Its interesting to me that it seems like those who push for the easiest/quickest route, are the same ones complaining about lack of challenging content. Like Anet can fart out content whenever they please.

BrooksP.4318:

Or just restrict it. Its interesting to me that it seems like those who push for the easiest/quickest route, are the same ones complaining about lack of challenging content. Like Anet can fart out content whenever they please.

Tedious and/or boring content =/= hard content.

On that note, no content 3 years old will be hard unless it gets reworked massively.

Some mobs are made to skip. Like in CM there is a room in the caves that are filled with enemies. It may not be impossible to kill them but one pull of them and you have alot of work to do. These guys are supposed to be skipped I am pretty sure.

But for example in AC in the end of Path 1 and 3 where we always run through all these gravelings, these are not realy supposed to be skipped I am sure.

You play how you want, but I don’t like skipping content even if I do that myself but that is becouse most others want to skip becouse they can. I agree with OP that skipping is something that has to be “fixed” but the suggestion is not that good. I would more be in favor of what someone else said about GW1 where you had to kill a mob to get a key. I mean it would have been nice to have doors or other obstacles stopping you from skipping until you have defeated a specific Elit mob who will drop a key item just like in TA story where you have to have 3 key items to get to the boss room.

I can tell you how you can fix skipping: don´t do it. But I guess that is not your gripe, right? You dislike OTHER people skipping. How exactly is it your business how other people play dungeons?

The path of least resistance.
It’s a concept in physics, although in this case I’m using it metaphorically.
In essence player will always gravitate toward and take the easiest path. Skipping is that. If they don’t skip they’ll do something else.

GW1 didn’t have the trinity either, but then again, neither did they have 1 bazillion hitpoints mobs all over the place. There were dungeon specific drops (DoA/Deep/Urgoz/FoW/UW) from mobs and even more rare loot at the end of the instance. So you had actually incentive to spend time there, just as you had reason to just rush the important targets in the instance.

GW2 has trash mobs with trash loot and the generic “champion box” that you can get everywhere. No dugeon specific loot/materials/minis. High hp pool’ed mobs. And because of these, adding one “special” mechanic in the instance doesn’t make it more interesting at all. As Krolisia said, the instance gear is better and faster obtained through pvp.

Reworking the game mechanics to lower mobs hitpoints (preventing boredom from setting in after then first 5 elites) won’t happen. The meta in MMOs is “big boss with big hp bar” and Anet followed it with GW2.

Adding checkpoints of sorts will make the majority of the players unhappy.

Making the fights harder would be bad. Anet did that with UW in GW1 to prevent speed clears, but that ended up with adding a few minutes to the run and making it nigh impossible for casual players.

My suggestions would be: add dungeon specific rare loot obtainable from mobs (acc bound, ranging from skins to minis and tonics or really rare ones that could be tp’ed) AND rare/fine mats (8 dungeons – 8 types of mats, hm?! HMMM?!) and maaaaybe instead of enforcing full group needs, have the mob types and content scale with the party numbers (which would kinda require that players can return to the instance on d/c without losing progress and no person would be able to join in after the instace started – pretty much like it was in gw1).

I can’t stand games that make you kill every single trash monster in dungeons before you can progress any further. Skipping has been around as long as there have been instances or dungeons in games. My favorite being FT in Aion.

However, if you want a sure way to make players stop and kill things in dungeons then make it worth their while. It is all about the gold gain in the end.

Just a few ideas:

- much better drop rates in general (T6 mats, etc.)
- add daily quests which makes you kill them (mats, skins, etc)
- add more champions, reverse some changes to the daily gold gain from dungeons

Oh! making things more challenging doesn’t actually mean doing the same skill rotation 10000001 (give or take 1 rotation) while dodging one extra time every now and then. Mobs don’t need more hitpoints, they need lower hitpoints and more brain power – after all, no player in pvp has 100k hitpoints, hm?! And if the skills don’t change there, why give almost mobs 1000 times more?! It’s not fun, it’s not rewarding, it’s not challenging. Quite the opposite – it’s downright boring.

The promise in the MMO Manifesto of not grinding anything landed so far from the expectations when you have to even grind down the hitpoints of one mob. And funny enough, for some of us, it’s still not enough. Swing your sword! Swing your sword again! Till it gets dull, it breaks or you walk away from the fight triumphantly, with the exquisite loot, a dirty old sock.

anabasis.7346:

Skipping is intended.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

That creature was put there specifically to be avoided. It’s on a long patrol path around the temple, and easy to avoid. In a similar fashion, if you stop to fight a patrolling knight, you’re likely to have another one wander in during the fight, then another, etc. Not every story step is “Destroy every enemy on the map”.

No skipping is not inteded either. That isn’t even part of a dungeon but a story.

Mobs are not designed to be skipped or designed to be killed. They are designed to do whatever you want! If you want to skip them (and as long as they don’t require exploiting to skipp them), then go ahead! If you want to kill them all. go ahead too. Just make sure there is concensious in the party bout it and for the rest you are free to do what you want!

to the OP. The crux here is concent of the party. You are free to make party’s that are not skipping. However, this is an MMO and you can’t force people to play the way you feel right. You need to compromise. Most people prefer to skip and not kill every mob. LFG’s that advertise to not skip take a lot longer to fill. So it is up to you to either take the compromise to wait longer or to compromise and skip.

Maybe one tip. Although “no skippers” are a minority, there are a bunch of you. So why not create a non skipping guild. Maybe such thing actually allready exist? Anyways. that can help to find like minded people more quickly.

Omocha.4931:

GW1 didn’t have the trinity either, but then again, neither did they have 1 bazillion hitpoints mobs all over the place. There were dungeon specific drops (DoA/Deep/Urgoz/FoW/UW) from mobs and even more rare loot at the end of the instance. So you had actually incentive to spend time there, just as you had reason to just rush the important targets in the instance.

GW2 has trash mobs with trash loot and the generic “champion box” that you can get everywhere. No dugeon specific loot/materials/minis. High hp pool’ed mobs. And because of these, adding one “special” mechanic in the instance doesn’t make it more interesting at all. As Krolisia said, the instance gear is better and faster obtained through pvp.

Reworking the game mechanics to lower mobs hitpoints (preventing boredom from setting in after then first 5 elites) won’t happen. The meta in MMOs is “big boss with big hp bar” and Anet followed it with GW2.

Adding checkpoints of sorts will make the majority of the players unhappy.

Making the fights harder would be bad. Anet did that with UW in GW1 to prevent speed clears, but that ended up with adding a few minutes to the run and making it nigh impossible for casual players.

My suggestions would be: add dungeon specific rare loot obtainable from mobs (acc bound, ranging from skins to minis and tonics or really rare ones that could be tp’ed) AND rare/fine mats (8 dungeons – 8 types of mats, hm?! HMMM?!) and maaaaybe instead of enforcing full group needs, have the mob types and content scale with the party numbers (which would kinda require that players can return to the instance on d/c without losing progress and no person would be able to join in after the instace started – pretty much like it was in gw1).

I like your ideas making stuff optional. But I have to correct you on GW1. It most certainly had trinity in pve and gvg.

Personally, I’d just make mobs you aggro chase you until either they or you are dead. Full party stealth would still break it but mess ups would happen so often that the majority of the player population would wind up killing the aggro’d mobs as a norm.

Cyninja.2954:

I like your ideas making stuff optional. But I have to correct you on GW1. It most certainly had trinity in pve and gvg.

In gvg and even pvp in general, yes. Otherwise, they did not. Plenty of solo jobs, lots of damage prevention with a very few situations where dedicated healing was mandatory. The multiclass system and low hp pools made that possible.

On the other hand, GW2 has its own, more disastrous trinity War/Ele/Guard. Huge variety of gear to choose from (sigils, runes, stats). High amount of traits. Focus on a just the lucky few who boost the zerk setup. The lineup changed… for the worse. Before you had roles to pick from, swap to. Now?! you swing your sword. (At least the kitten rewards are well justified with such mechanics and brain-usage). From tank&spank we “evolved” to stack&spank.

I support skipping with all my heart in this obnoxious (instance) environment. At least it ends fast.

Gerrand.3085:

Personally, I’d just make mobs you aggro chase you until either they or you are dead.

It didn’t work before, it won’t work now either. Between stealth and running buffs, there’s still room to choose from. Also, instead of enforcing a “desired” behavior, making it more enticing always worked better.
Rethink the loot-tables and overall improve the quality of those grindholes some people like to call “instances”. If I prefer going duo-mode everywhere possible, it’s mostly because I don’t like stacking and I find the speed clears in GW2 to be utterly boring and void of any challenge. Hardly any difference between that and the Cursed’s Champ Trains or, to some extent, SW’s Chest Farm. Herd of people running from A to B, stacking, using 1 item/skill/brain cell.

Increasing drop rates isn’t the answer.. then you just create a farm mentality like exists(ed) in much of open world – which was summarily nerfed…

i.e. LFG – “COE P1. Clearing to Champ.” then all exit and rinse and repeat.

Why bother doing the whole path when fast clears of trash will net more gold per hour then a run. Plus, no diminishing returns. People will get kicked for wanting to finish. Then that whole complete/fail tug of war starts.

And no, tokens are rarely an incentive at all at this point.

For what it’s worth, this once did exist in dungeons like Arah and some Fractals where it was worth killing certain trash, but was summarily nerfed.

Make normal mobs have a reasonable chance to drop something as good as, if not better, than the end-reward.

Though you’ll still get people wanting to move as fast as possible, even if that now involves killing everything.
It’s an unfortunate mentality that’s pretty much wrecked the genre. :-/

mercury ranique.2170:

anabasis.7346:

Skipping is intended.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

That creature was put there specifically to be avoided. It’s on a long patrol path around the temple, and easy to avoid. In a similar fashion, if you stop to fight a patrolling knight, you’re likely to have another one wander in during the fight, then another, etc. Not every story step is “Destroy every enemy on the map”.

No skipping is not inteded either. That isn’t even part of a dungeon but a story.

While that was specifically referring to a mob in a story, Robert Hrouda did say that some mobs/groups were meant to be “traps” and were best avoided in dungeons as well.

It comes down to a matter of rewards. A simple green is not enough to be worth clearing a large amount of trash in most dungeons. However, in CM, several groups ARE worth it because the bags they drop give large amounts of cotton, wool, and linen. An extra 2-4 minutes of killing time over 3 paths for 1-2g worth of extra cloth mats can be worth it.

Places like GW1 Urgoz, Deep, and parts of the Underworld and DoA were worth it because of the chance of valuable mats. Even then, it mattered what you skipped and what you killed, for time and safety reasons.

An equivalent to that in GW2 would be things like:

• “Vanquisher” rewards for clearing a whole dungeon – though this would need proper balancing which is not even the case for dungeon gold rewards. This would also have to be very lucrative to full clear some dungeons (Arah especially, but also CM and TA forward).
• Mobs in dungeons that would normally be skipped would have to have higher chances to drop rares or valuable mats. Again, it’ll come down to a time vs. reward ratio as to whether it’s worth it or not.
• Dungeon mobs that can drop loot all have a chance to drop extra tokens, like mobs in Urgoz that could all drop Amber. The rate would have to be pretty good to be worth it.
• Make sure all dungeon mobs had worthwhile bags or materials drops. Much of the CM trash (but again, not that huge room past Victoria) is worth it because of how much valuable cloth materials are available in the bags.

Why not make each mob (that counts as a mob, e.g. gives stacking sigil stacks, has a chance of loot) in a dungeon drop a small amount of dungeon specific tokens? Let’s say 1. This way, there is incentive for people to kill them, without killing skipping and speedrunning. And it wouldn’t lead to the “Let’s just farm the trash, because best rewards.” approach.

Sarisa.4731:

mercury ranique.2170:

anabasis.7346:

Skipping is intended.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

That creature was put there specifically to be avoided. It’s on a long patrol path around the temple, and easy to avoid. In a similar fashion, if you stop to fight a patrolling knight, you’re likely to have another one wander in during the fight, then another, etc. Not every story step is “Destroy every enemy on the map”.

No skipping is not inteded either. That isn’t even part of a dungeon but a story.

While that was specifically referring to a mob in a story, Robert Hrouda did say that some mobs/groups were meant to be “traps” and were best avoided in dungeons as well.

---

It comes down to a matter of rewards. A simple green is not enough to be worth clearing a large amount of trash in most dungeons. However, in CM, several groups ARE worth it because the bags they drop give large amounts of cotton, wool, and linen. An extra 2-4 minutes of killing time over 3 paths for 1-2g worth of extra cloth mats can be worth it.

Places like GW1 Urgoz, Deep, and parts of the Underworld and DoA were worth it because of the chance of valuable mats. Even then, it mattered what you skipped and what you killed, for time and safety reasons.

An equivalent to that in GW2 would be things like:

• “Vanquisher” rewards for clearing a whole dungeon – though this would need proper balancing which is not even the case for dungeon gold rewards. This would also have to be very lucrative to full clear some dungeons (Arah especially, but also CM and TA forward).
• Mobs in dungeons that would normally be skipped would have to have higher chances to drop rares or valuable mats. Again, it’ll come down to a time vs. reward ratio as to whether it’s worth it or not.
• Dungeon mobs that can drop loot all have a chance to drop extra tokens, like mobs in Urgoz that could all drop Amber. The rate would have to be pretty good to be worth it.
• Make sure all dungeon mobs had worthwhile bags or materials drops. Much of the CM trash (but again, not that huge room past Victoria) is worth it because of how much valuable cloth materials are available in the bags.

It has nothing to do with rewards, but with freedom, if you would have quoted me correctly and read my entire post (instead of quoting totally out of content and showing you didn’t even took the time to read what I sad beyond that one line), you would have known that.

It is not designed to be skipped just as much as it isn’t designed to be killed. It is there to do with them whatever we want. If you (and your party) wants to kill them all, go ahead. If you don’t and want to skip, go ahead too. We aren’t supposed to do anything in the game, we have the freedom to do stuff the way we want to do it.

changing droprates would only shift the “most profitable and therefor most commonly followed” concensus, even to the point that people don’t even bother bout end rewards in dungeons anymore.

As said by others, there is nothing broken, so don’t fix it.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Example:
Nerf Zerk Gear – Everyone will freak out saying “you’re penalizing good players and rewarding bad players”. When the reality is that you are balancing the game so that everyone has more worth and contribution to a party. “But this game doesn’t have a Trinity so go back to Gw1.” It’s true we don’t have a Trinity, but the fact remains that some people like being the support character – which they can’t have in this game – and if they try to support a Zerk player who isn’t very good – well, there just isn’t enough fast reaction healing/support that can be offered. In any case there is always a typically selfish rebuttal catering to the ideals of the offended party.

You can’t nerf zerk, if you made zerk worse than a different gear type it would be the new meta. You can focus on support too, by bringing utilities and talents that support your group and still doing damage. On my guardian I will run full damage gs/sw/focus, and bring the minimum support skills required, but if my pug is struggling I switch to hammer and more support utilities. I still deal okay damage with this build, but my group is much more survivable. That is all in zerk gear, the stats shouldn’t make your role, except for your damage type (Direct/condi/hybrid).

If you want to build a pure support character though you can, banner regen war, altruistuc guardian, healing ele are all examples. What you want is to make something that is rightly inferior at killing things worse or equal to the way you play. Playing support is not optimal and shouldn’t deal more damage than someone in zerker, but you can still play that way and complete all the content. Just make a All welcome dungeon group and do your thing. LFG zerkers hurt no one, you only hurt yourself by being unwilling to start a group doing what you like.

Zerker isn’t a problem and killing things fast isn’t a problem. Anet could certainly make dungeons more challenging and then for many pick up groups alternative styles could become more desireable, but it shouldn’t be made so difficult that it is impossible to complete in all zerker, there should never be an arbitrary amount of toughness and or vitality to survive an encounter. Gameplay is built around dodging and other acrive defenses. This game was not meant to be played passively with a dependence on passive defenses to carry one to victory. They can be helpful, but shouldn’t be required if we truly want all types of gear to be viable. Right now everything works and trying to eliminate zerker is a step backwards in diversity. I’ll take active gameplay over passive defenses being so strong they are required to facetank otherwise unsurvivable attacks.l or strings of attacks that not enough active defense exist to survive.

Based on your agruments you are even more guilty of being selfish than zerk players, in the current system zerk works along with every other stat combo, yet you wish to eliminate damage based builds in favor of passive stats.

Aireroth.7596:

Why not make each mob (that counts as a mob, e.g. gives stacking sigil stacks, has a chance of loot) in a dungeon drop a small amount of dungeon specific tokens? Let’s say 1. This way, there is incentive for people to kill them, without killing skipping and speedrunning. And it wouldn’t lead to the “Let’s just farm the trash, because best rewards.” approach.

Just tokens won’t be enough simply because PvP reward track gives you more and if someone who don’t play much will pick self a task to finish collection he will just do it faster by going unranked PvP, it is more interesting fighting players than swing ur sword once again vs brainless mob if u don’t wanna turn into zombie farmer and let’s not forget PvP track gives more useful stuff next to dungeon. So better approach would be to give something what players can’t get from different places, that is minis and rare mats, like Omo said: (8 dungeons – 8 types of mats, hm?! HMMM?!)

And nope, it wouldn’t lead to “lets just farm the trash” if it would be like so: AC = dust drop from mobs, minis chance drop from bosses (mini ghosts, mini king, all what reminds ac) and chance for both at last box.

Aireroth.7596:

Why not make each mob (that counts as a mob, e.g. gives stacking sigil stacks, has a chance of loot) in a dungeon drop a small amount of dungeon specific tokens? Let’s say 1. This way, there is incentive for people to kill them, without killing skipping and speedrunning. And it wouldn’t lead to the “Let’s just farm the trash, because best rewards.” approach.

Because once you complete the collection (imagining you cba to actually do that through pvp), you’ll end up with stacks of tokens. Which you you’ll exchange for gear, which you’ll toss down the toilet. Incentive to play them?! Still lower than a CF in SW. Not to mention Arah would probably give you a whole armor set or two in 1 day.

I’d call incentives the Froggy Scepter, the BDS, VS, DSR, Mini Dhuum, Chaos Axe, Mini Polar Bear and so on. Rare, dungeon specific drops. I’d call incentive to kill trash mobs in Arah a higher chance of dropping T5 and T6 bones, for example (along with T3 – T4) Putrid Essence from Elites and above.

It’s not a question of farming. Everyone’s farming something in GW2. We also did that in GW1. If we no longer have a goal that would require that farming, we’d probably stop visiting that part of Tyria. The difference between full run and just clearing to 1st champ would be big though. Like farming UW on a SoS build vs doing the whole run in a timely fashion. 3+ hours of clearing every mob for 6+ ectos vs ~30 minutes of putting Dhuum to sleep for a chance at higher quality (thus more valuable) loot.

That ^ takes us back to “Champion Boxes aren’t dungeon loot” problem. 3 tokes/boss killed aren’t incentive. Random trash dropping random loot isn’t incentive.
So how about:
> AC mobs give dust (scaled with player’s level, not dungeon’s, so T5-T6 and T3-T4 Charged Rares. A decent chance of T5 from end boss) along with a rare mini graveling/troll/Foefire’s Essence and very rare chance for acc bound “http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ascalon_armor”

> CM would give blood and onyx. End bosses would have again, very rare chance for “http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Krytan_armor” and some minis Victoria/Salma/

> TA would certainly give poison and maybe crystal, again some good old fashion very rare armor set and some minis
…
> Arah would drop bones, putrid essence a mini “tail of Zhaitan” and how about Obsidian armor?

Bottom line, instead of reworking the dungeons into prisons, rework them loot tables. Rare and unachieavable by other means loot that looks good will give good reason to run-spam them, useful drops from trash mobs will make players think twice if to skip or kill.

If you want trash to drop something that is worth stopping and killing them, you will have to change whole dungeon/fractal “reward” system. And no one got time for that because after they NPE’d everything I am dropping more random lvl 30-40 rares than exotics in arah and level 50 fractals.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

“Nothing’s wrong / Nothing to fix / It’s fine / Leave it”
or
“More challenging content / Make it harder / Do something about it”

Do not make the mistake of assuming that forcing players to kill trash will make anything harder than it already is. They’re called trash mobs for a reason; they’re essentially worthless cannon fodder. Truthfully, skipping the mobs instead of fighting them actually makes the clear itself tougher because being snared, CC’d, or even put in combat at all threatens to kill you.

People skip mobs because it’s faster, and speed is all that matters in a back-loaded rewards system. “Fixing” this, as someone noted before, makes the presumption that something is wrong in the first place, when in-fact it is functioning as designed. Someone earlier in this thread referenced GW1 elite runs as an example of good design, yet apparently they missed the speed clears of Urgoz and The Deep which performed just as much if not far more skipping than GW2 dungeons use. Back then you skipped absolutely everything except the one mob that, when killed, opened the door.

All that said, the argument that skipping is ‘bad’ in a dungeon or really any instanced content is one founded on the desire for more tedium. Literally all that removing skipping would do is make all paths take exponentially longer. If you truly want legitimately harder content, forcing players to kill every mob is not going to achieve that.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Someone earlier in this thread referenced GW1 elite runs as an example of good design, yet apparently they missed the speed clears of Urgoz and The Deep which performed just as much if not far more skipping than GW2 dungeons use. Back then you skipped absolutely everything except the one mob that, when killed, opened the door.

Krolisia wasn’t supporting the non-skipping I think. But rather pointing out the uselessness of enforcing it, with the current rewards system.

Krolisia.6102:

I was speed clearing dungeons in GW 1 so im just used with killing only what’s needed to progress. […] Give me chance to drop minis, more mats like dust or smth what u can’t get from salvaging and it would alrdy give me reason to kill trash. The only reason to kill trash mobs was UW in GW 1.

I will always skip, I have stop playing for gold a long time ago.

Sigh. Time for a history lesson.

Anet says the trinity in GW2 will be DPS, Control, Support. And so it is.

People play 4 warrior 1 mesmer groups because its easy to farm the easiest dungeon with. People complain there is no control and no support. They QQ that “dps is all that matters.” Players say that DPS is overpowered.

The meta shifts as players improve. People utilize Deep Freeze and Defiant stripping to strongly CC bosses. Players complain that CC is overpowered.

The meta shift also includes and emphasis on defensive support in the form of Blinds, Stealth and Reflects to neutralize enemy attacks. People complain these support skills are overpowered.

So now we are at a point where people say that DPS, CC and Support are overpowered because… they work as their roles are intended to work. Actually it’s not true, some of the complainers still deny CC and Support are in the game but those people are truly ignorant we can ignore them.

We have finally reached a point in the development of the community playskill where most decent pug groups are utilizing the actual intended GW2 trinity of DPS, Control and Support and the predictable result is: these things are too good. In a little under 6 months the crybaby community went from “Control and Support don’t exist” to “Control and Support so powerful they are exploits.” It’s truly remarkable in a way.

I am really sad for the developers that they have a sizeable chunk of the player base who barely understand the game, barely understand that the developers said “DPS, support and control are our trinity” years and years ago, and cry to this day about Healers and Tanks. It must be deflating to deal with that. I only hope the devs know how to see the signal through the noise and phase out these sad people.

NikeEU.7690:

Sigh. Time for a history lesson.

Anet says the trinity in GW2 will be DPS, Control, Support. And so it is.

People play 4 warrior 1 mesmer groups because its easy to farm the easiest dungeon with. People complain there is no control and no support. They QQ that “dps is all that matters.” Players say that DPS is overpowered.

The meta shifts as players improve. People utilize Deep Freeze and Defiant stripping to strongly CC bosses. Players complain that CC is overpowered.

The meta shift also includes and emphasis on defensive support in the form of Blinds, Stealth and Reflects to neutralize enemy attacks. People complain these support skills are overpowered.

So now we are at a point where people say that DPS, CC and Support are overpowered because… they work as their roles are intended to work. Actually it’s not true, some of the complainers still deny CC and Support are in the game but those people are truly ignorant we can ignore them.

We have finally reached a point in the development of the community playskill where most decent pug groups are utilizing the actual intended GW2 trinity of DPS, Control and Support and the predictable result is: these things are too good. In a little under 6 months the crybaby community went from “Control and Support don’t exist” to “Control and Support so powerful they are exploits.” It’s truly remarkable in a way.

I am really sad for the developers that they have a sizeable chunk of the player base who barely understand the game, barely understand that the developers said “DPS, support and control are our trinity” years and years ago, and cry to this day about Healers and Tanks. It must be deflating to deal with that. I only hope the devs know how to see the signal through the noise and phase out these sad people.

Exactly, would be so much better if all the people who QQ over the loss of their old trinity would, oh I don’t know, actually go play a game where that trinity exist, rather then set around here demanding changes to this game.

I often wonder if its just that WoW is still subscription based, and if it went buy to play like guild wars 2 if all those people complaining would go there and leave us alone.

Anet themselves stated if they wanted to remove skipping they could remove the leash. However they don’t mind it. Now if people would just stop joining the wrong groups maybe these un-needed threads would go away.

but they are adding trinity to gw2 with the ventari legend

youll see, its gonna be gamechanging

as for skipping ya rob said its ok but arenanet got rid of him so they obviosly dont liike the content he made and that includes skippping.

There are mobs that I enjoy killing, mainly because they drop good loot. CoE p3 destroyer crablings with them guaranteed vicious claws <3.

EcoRI.9273:

There are mobs that I enjoy killing, mainly because they drop good loot. CoE p3 destroyer crablings with them guaranteed vicious claws <3.

inb4 nurf

NikeEU.7690:

Sigh. Time for a history lesson.

Anet says the trinity in GW2 will be DPS, Control, Support. And so it is.

People play 4 warrior 1 mesmer groups because its easy to farm the easiest dungeon with. People complain there is no control and no support. They QQ that “dps is all that matters.” Players say that DPS is overpowered.

The meta shifts as players improve. People utilize Deep Freeze and Defiant stripping to strongly CC bosses. Players complain that CC is overpowered.

The meta shift also includes and emphasis on defensive support in the form of Blinds, Stealth and Reflects to neutralize enemy attacks. People complain these support skills are overpowered.

So now we are at a point where people say that DPS, CC and Support are overpowered because… they work as their roles are intended to work. Actually it’s not true, some of the complainers still deny CC and Support are in the game but those people are truly ignorant we can ignore them.

We have finally reached a point in the development of the community playskill where most decent pug groups are utilizing the actual intended GW2 trinity of DPS, Control and Support and the predictable result is: these things are too good. In a little under 6 months the crybaby community went from “Control and Support don’t exist” to “Control and Support so powerful they are exploits.” It’s truly remarkable in a way.

I am really sad for the developers that they have a sizeable chunk of the player base who barely understand the game, barely understand that the developers said “DPS, support and control are our trinity” years and years ago, and cry to this day about Healers and Tanks. It must be deflating to deal with that. I only hope the devs know how to see the signal through the noise and phase out these sad people.

Aye, players have grown to understand the game pretty well, too bad there isn’t new stuff to use that knowledge on.

It’s kinda funny that many players are just recently fully utilizing the strength of CC and it’s completely changing on bosses soon >.<

Rising Dusk.2408:

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

“Nothing’s wrong / Nothing to fix / It’s fine / Leave it”
or
“More challenging content / Make it harder / Do something about it”

Do not make the mistake of assuming that forcing players to kill trash will make anything harder than it already is. They’re called trash mobs for a reason; they’re essentially worthless cannon fodder. Truthfully, skipping the mobs instead of fighting them actually makes the clear itself tougher because being snared, CC’d, or even put in combat at all threatens to kill you.

People skip mobs because it’s faster, and speed is all that matters in a back-loaded rewards system. “Fixing” this, as someone noted before, makes the presumption that something is wrong in the first place, when in-fact it is functioning as designed. Someone earlier in this thread referenced GW1 elite runs as an example of good design, yet apparently they missed the speed clears of Urgoz and The Deep which performed just as much if not far more skipping than GW2 dungeons use. Back then you skipped absolutely everything except the one mob that, when killed, opened the door.

All that said, the argument that skipping is ‘bad’ in a dungeon or really any instanced content is one founded on the desire for more tedium. Literally all that removing skipping would do is make all paths take exponentially longer. If you truly want legitimately harder content, forcing players to kill every mob is not going to achieve that.

not all fights in the dungeon are that easy, not all fights were made to be skipped. They have some enemy encounters that are trickier than some bosses.

Some are however meant to be skipped.

A dungeon/instance as an overall experience, and not a collection of boss fights, includes the challenges on the way to the boss. If they have a good design, some of these battles are somewhat engaging. In other games, dungeons were partially a question of resource management, and attrition.

Anyhow point is, trash isnt made to be skipped all the time, and creating interesting content around non boss encounters or rewarding or encouraging people to explore/kill in an instance wouldnt be a bad idea.

however, i wouldnt require it, other than general dunegeon mechanics.

I think the discussion here was more centered on mobs skipping and the incentives the dungeons are offering to revisit them. Tactics can change (even if mostly it’s a “Zerk or gtfo” approach). People who don’t like the zerk, the rush (btw, not everyone liked speed clears in GW1 either) or the loot – all have voiced their opinions here. And a few came too to say “I’m so pro, you all are squatters”, but it’s again part of the system: even if you don’t have something nice to say, you have to say something…
No reason to bother with instances, with all the bugs all over the place, from mechanics to mobs. No incentive to go there with the average loot being worse than a chest farm. And not many nice people to make the run fun lately, ’cause of the elitism suffering from full stacks of skyrocketing.