Guild Wars 2

With the reduced story mode rewards, no one wants to do story mode anymore. Except for people who need it in order to do explorable modes, no one is interested.

I spent an hour and a half today trying to find a group for HoTW story mode, bouncing between Frostgorge and Lion’s Arch a few times just in case anyone else was there. I gave up and did a few CoF runs, since I was lucky enough to complete the story mode before the patch.

I totally agree with Anet’s philosophies regarding dungeons. Exp modes should be difficult, and should require more skill and coordination than story modes. They deserve better rewards as well. But making the rewards completely worthless is not the answer. It makes it incredibly difficult for individuals who have not already done story mode to get anywhere with the dungeon experience.

I LOVE the dungeons! I just want to be able to run them.

Perhaps instead of the 60 tokens you receive on your normal run of an exp mode, you only get 20 for story? That would get people running story modes in order to help out people without feeling like they are wasting their time and money. What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I agree that Story Modes rewarding tokens would be a good idea.

It would have to be less than Explorable modes to promote people doing Explorables, but it shouldn’t be trivial either. You spend a lot of time in Story Modes, and they are quite possibly as hard if not sometimes harder than Explorable.

I think just giving more money and/or karma as a reward would be enough for some people to do story mode dungeons. Tokens wouldn’t be bad either, but I don’t think you’d need that large of a reward to get people to do them. If lots of money and karma was given instead, you would see people running story mode to help level up their crafting and obtain cultural weapons.

A little something something would encourage me to help people out.

I am a very helpful person and like to help whenever I can. I also like dungeons. I love grouping. But when these dungeons take an upwards of an hour or two, I am hesitant to volunteer all the time. Especially when I get nothing out of it.

You heard me. I think of myself too. I will help if it’s something small, but when a lot of people ask for help in 1-2 hour dungeons, I would not mind getting a prize at the end. Think of it as me valuing my time.

I gree 15-20 tokens a day in Story mode will be nice.

yeah I think this is a problem too. so much so that I’ve done explorer mode first on most of the dungeons, due to lack of groups. which bugged my cm completion and I had to do butler path again.

There are no tokens, loot drops literally suck and, in the case of AC, storymode is harder than explorable mode.

Since explorable mode seems to be designed for organized, guild-run, teamspeaking groups, I say let them remain that way, at least in the case of Arah, whilst making story mode a dungeon for the casual PUGs, perhaps giving us 30-35 tokens per day whilst explorable gets 60 tokens per path.

That way, half the endgame content wouldn’t be restricted to hardcore gamers, casuals could still work towards gearing themselves up and the organized groups would still have access to challenging content and rewards at a faster pace.

you shuld absolutly not by any chance what so ever recive tokiens for doing Story mode. I think you fail to see the purpouse with story mode.

Yes you need to complete story mode before you can enter Explorer mode. As A-net wants it. Fact is, that you do not need to complete story mode, as long as one in the group as done story mode, you can still enter explorer mode.

Now as far as I know, story mode is just there to be a taste of what to come in Explorer mode. Story mode should not EVER, and I quote EVER give dunguen tokiens rewards for beeing completed. Otherwise this will just be another farm sink.

The first time I heard about Story Mode and Explore mode I thought to myself “that is a terrible idea”. Looks like I’m right.

I thought exactly about this problem. People will do explore modes over and over, but story mode only once. Eventually people will have a hard time getting story mode groups.

Second, NOBODY reads the story. Everyone skips it. It is obviou that this thing would happen. Even those interested in the story will skip as to not bother other players.

I’m sorry but looks like the people responsible for this decisions didn’t even play online games.

They need allow to explore mode regardless of story mode now to fix what they did, and if they want to keep the story mode thing going on, they’ll need to find a good reward so people do it once.

But this was a messy system to begin with.

I’m loving guild wars 2, level 80 for a while now. But arena net is showing some terrible decisions when it comes to how they tie content with gameplay in my opinion.

I really think a dungeon finder, at least for story mode, would solve this problem. There are probably a lot of people who would run the dungeons in story mode if you make it easy for them. I know when wow implemented their dungeon finder tons of people who had never set foot in a dungeon suddenly started doing them all the time and finding them fun.

This is driving me crazy. There is no incentive to do story mode, therefore no one does them. So how are we supposed to unlock explorable mode? I haven’t found a story mode group in almost a month. I’ve been stuck on the arah story quest for over a month.

You don’t even need to do story mode to run exp modes. If people spent time practicing the exp mode then they would see that they are not that bad.

My thought is to give ~30 tokens for the first completion of story-mode each day (and zero for repeats).

That is more tokens than we currently get for repeating an explorable path, so it will encourage people who are very focused on one set of dungeon rewards to run story-mode in addition to the three explorable paths each day. Or if they are just helpful players, it will reward them moderately for helping out others.

However, ~30 is much less than the 60 possible from explorable paths, and it would only be available once a day, so people couldn’t farm the easier story-mode for tokens.

To get me back to story dungeons wouldn’t be the tangible rewards, they could add 1 gold for completion and I still wouldn’t go. It would be reward enough if I had actually fun doing them, which I don’t how they are now, but’s that’s another topic which has been discussed to death in many other places now.

I hope that ArenaNet takes another look at Story Mode, and incentivizes replaying it. The reason being, put simply: The Story Mode paths are often well-designed and a lot of fun in and of themselves, and removing any external incentive to replay them kind of seems like putting them out to pasture prematurely. I think I actually prefer Honor of the Waves’s story mode to any of its explorable paths, but even though I enjoy it, it’s kind of hard to justify repeating without some sort of notable reward.

High amounts of gold and/or experience don’t seem to be the way to go, judging from the changes that ArenaNet have made so far. Maybe they could give a Black Lion Chest Key, claimable only once daily (like the 40 token per explorable path bonus). As far as I’m aware, those keys are largely incapable of impacting the greater game economy if farmed en masse, since they, and everything they can unlock, are account-bound. They’re not directly tradeable for better equipment, money, or experience. And in the… 305 (holy crap) hours I’ve played my main character, I’ve received a grand total of two keys as actual random drops, aside from the handful you get from Personal Story rewards or the keys that are inside of other chests – and I might be imagining getting the second one of those keys.

I don’t know if that’s the specific solution to the problem, but I do think that there is a problem, and I think that the keys are at least along the right lines: Non-transferable, and not a substitute for more ‘tangible’ rewards like tokens, experience, or gold, but with a chance at giving the player something useful, and in the worst-case scenario, still giving the player something silly and unique to have a bit of fun with.

Ansatz.6498:

My thought is to give ~30 tokens for the first completion of story-mode each day (and zero for repeats).

That is more tokens than we currently get for repeating an explorable path, so it will encourage people who are very focused on one set of dungeon rewards to run story-mode in addition to the three explorable paths each day. Or if they are just helpful players, it will reward them moderately for helping out others.

However, ~30 is much less than the 60 possible from explorable paths, and it would only be available once a day, so people couldn’t farm the easier story-mode for tokens.

I do not agree with this …

getting 30 tokens each day means you’ll get 1800 in a month doing easy runs on a daily basis

you need less than 1400 tokens for a full set …

so you get a full set in one month just by doing a 1h easy run per day ???

NO definately NO!!!

I’m farming the hard mode, doing CM explo mode, 3 paths each day from yesterday (did this before but it was so bugged) and now people can get a dungeon set just that SO easily … I DO hope this will never happen

I think it be best if the option to not have to do story to get to explorable

you wouldn’t be able to do the tokens because that’d be abused to the heavens and back…

Now a karma or cash reward increase from the first one a week or day or something would be better, and would incentivize a lot of people…

PS: The reason i say a week is for the mere aspect that if it were daily then a ton of people would be farming it for money, then you get economic problems and blah blah blah.

To get rewards like that in story mode would defeat the purpose of “story” mode. Story mode wasn’t designed to be repeated and as such, the rewards and difficulty reflect this.

Nerf the rewards. Make story mode solo, with NPC group mates.

Then it unlocks explorer mode that you have to find a group for.

Problem solved.

I’ve only done one dungeon. The first lvl 30 one. I won’t waste my time for more than one run thru a story mode dungeon again.

I was so unimpressed with the first one, I have yet to do any others. If I could just run solo and not wait around to find a group for the story mode I may do it.

Bullwinkel.7839:

To get rewards like that in story mode would defeat the purpose of “story” mode. Story mode wasn’t designed to be repeated and as such, the rewards and difficulty reflect this.

The story mode itself already defeats the purpose of “story” mode how the difficulty just slaps you in the face when you first go try them. The difficulty of exploration dungeons should reflect that they aren’t for everyone and this leaves the story dungeons for those who aren’t interested with exploration.

At most 20 tokens should be given, or else people who can’t do the explorable paths would farm the easier modes for the prestige gear.

cybermaohi.4310:

Ansatz.6498:

My thought is to give ~30 tokens for the first completion of story-mode each day (and zero for repeats).

That is more tokens than we currently get for repeating an explorable path, so it will encourage people who are very focused on one set of dungeon rewards to run story-mode in addition to the three explorable paths each day. Or if they are just helpful players, it will reward them moderately for helping out others.

However, ~30 is much less than the 60 possible from explorable paths, and it would only be available once a day, so people couldn’t farm the easier story-mode for tokens.

I do not agree with this …

getting 30 tokens each day means you’ll get 1800 in a month doing easy runs on a daily basis

you need less than 1400 tokens for a full set …

so you get a full set in one month just by doing a 1h easy run per day ???

NO definately NO!!!

I’m farming the hard mode, doing CM explo mode, 3 paths each day from yesterday (did this before but it was so bugged) and now people can get a dungeon set just that SO easily … I DO hope this will never happen

30*30 = 900 and also who cares, if I can farm an entire dungeon set in a week doing explorables then its fine for some bad to farm that set in a month doing story quests.

Why not just give 60 tokens for story quest too, gives people one more path for people who wanna farm the dungeon hard, gives incentive for people to actually do them so you get people there.

I’ve played the game almost 400 hours already I have an 80 and a level 65, prolly gonna be 80 by the end of today, and I do mostly dungeons on both of them now. I wouldn’t mind at all if they did this.

^ @Jon

That is gonna be hard. I run explorable and even at 20 tokens I would pass on SM. Most people doing SM are either new to dungeons or have never that particular dungeon so each time it is a new fight for a lot of people. Just helped Arah SM yesterday and was surprised when I was the only who had ran it before. It is simply too long/too difficult compared to path 1/2 which reward 120 tokens.

When I am done with HoTW we usually just jump to another easy instance and run that for tokens to get the daily reward out of it.

My goodness people, just be happy that this company has already made a great game and is trying their best to make it even more enjoyable for everyone, and be patient. Of course they intend to resolve any problems just give them time. Just say what you feel they might should look at , but don’t sound like you are in despair lol.

Kiyoki Yamata.7986:

My goodness people, just be happy that this company has already made a great game and is trying their best to make it even more enjoyable for everyone, and be patient.

Well the problem is Story mode is targetted at the wrong playerbase. Those that are 100% interested in story and lore aren’t going to want to LFG for hours, or learn boss mechanics (which is an even smaller playerbase within dungeon running community), and die over and over in bad PuGs. I am fine with learning boss mechanics and dying (because who really cares it isn’t like the game has any real Death Penalty), but a lot of more casual players just aren’t.

They should have made SM solo instances tied to the personal story rather than crafted “intro” dungeons to that are sometimes longer/harder than some explorable paths itself.

Story Mode: 2 silver + ~10s from vendor trash, 30 minutes, can’t afk-watch a movie, isn’t fun
Farming @CS: 8 silver + ~60s from gathers + green/yellows, 30 minutes, can afk-watch a movie, isn’t fun

12s vs 68s while watching a movie

And they’re both not fun to do.

I took a group of new players through CM Story and one of them (it was his first dungeon) has pretty much written off dungeons altogether as being too frustrating. This type of experience could be avoided if more experienced players were encouraged to show new players the ropes in these dungeons, but this type of mentoring is not really encouraged by the current reward system.

It’s something I hope is addressed soon, I don’t want too many people to have frustrating experiences finding groups and running story mode dungeons when so much work has gone into making them.

Maybe the Story Mode rewards could be increased for everyone in the group if at least one group member has never completed it before?

I haven’t read the entire thread, so forgive me if someone already mentioned it; I’ve seen a few comments about “unlocking” Explorer Mode. You don’t need to complete Story Mode in order to do Explorer Mode. Only the leader of the party needs to have done SM before.

I have the Kodan Shield and a couple hundred more tokens, yet i’ve never completed HotW SM. I also ran AC EM multiple times before running SM (since then, I’ve ran SM). I’ve also never run TA SM, yet I have 240+ tokens from there.

You never want to do a story mode more than once. Despite the post above, ANet made it clear they don’t want repeat story-runners.

My first CM story-mode run after the patch on my lvl 44 I got 72 copper pieces and 1340 xp. Not even good loot at 14, let alone lvl 44.

Don’t do it at all unless you want explore. Don’t do it again unless it’s a guildmate or personal friend. My usually cooperative guild is turning deaf ears to story-mode requests.

The suggestion of adding tokens for story mode — sure that’d be fun, and we’d all maybe get back to answering LFG calls. But they didn’t just reduce the rewards, they completely totally obliterated them. That’s a powerful message. Don’t see them back-tracking.

As best I can tell it’s 2^-n that you get for story runs, where n is the number of times you’ve done it before.

It may sound silly, ,but giving players who have already completed a dungeon a worthwhile reward when they are playing with players who have not completed a dungeon, making the reward scale the more players they play with who have not completed a dungeon. so playing with 1 new to the dungeon player would be 2x the reward? and 2 would be 3x etc…

Ominous Anonymous.6029:

With the reduced story mode rewards, no one wants to do story mode anymore. Except for people who need it in order to do explorable modes, no one is interested.

I spent an hour and a half today trying to find a group for HoTW story mode, bouncing between Frostgorge and Lion’s Arch a few times just in case anyone else was there. I gave up and did a few CoF runs, since I was lucky enough to complete the story mode before the patch.

I totally agree with Anet’s philosophies regarding dungeons. Exp modes should be difficult, and should require more skill and coordination than story modes. They deserve better rewards as well. But making the rewards completely worthless is not the answer. It makes it incredibly difficult for individuals who have not already done story mode to get anywhere with the dungeon experience.

I LOVE the dungeons! I just want to be able to run them.

Perhaps instead of the 60 tokens you receive on your normal run of an exp mode, you only get 20 for story? That would get people running story modes in order to help out people without feeling like they are wasting their time and money. What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I think part of the problem lies in HotW itself. The story mode is probably harder than all three explore modes put together. That last boss…. yikes…..

I think story mode should provide enough tokens that with 1-2 runs you could pick up a rare item from the token vendor instead of the exotics.

In my opinion Story Mode should focus on story; not on bosses/trash/traps that can almost (if not always) oneshot you.

Where Explorer Mode should focus on challenge, coordination and potentially deadly encounters; Story Mode should have a much more forgiving and ‘casual’ nature where they can be seen as a string of ‘dynamic events’ that are tuned for 5 average players in terms of difficulty.

I don’t agree with making them soloable (that’s what personal story is for), nor them giving tokens.

What they SHOULD do is increase chances for decent loot (or coin) rewards and reduce the time they take to complete (trash HP, mainly), and introduce an LFG tool.
The way it is now, I can level faster, get more cash, and probably find better loot while questing, and while some instances (and running stuff with friends) is fun, I cannot see myself repeating things like CM or SE SM. Ever.

mulch.2586:

You never want to do a story mode more than once. Despite the post above, ANet made it clear they don’t want repeat story-runners.

The suggestion of adding tokens for story mode — sure that’d be fun, and we’d all maybe get back to answering LFG calls. But they didn’t just reduce the rewards, they completely totally obliterated them. That’s a powerful message. Don’t see them back-tracking.

Can you please point out where they have expressed clear indication where story was intended for only single use? Also did you not see reply from JonPeters? They know it’s an issue and things need to change. As far as I know the rewards were reduced to stop farming them for gold with little effort and big returns, correct me if I’m wrong here. There are also some those that the rewards itself, current and past, isn’t the reason for not doing them.

This is an easy fix… make it so nobody can do exp mode unless they do story mode. That would screw people like me over but make me do story mode.

Hidon.4680:

I think part of the problem lies in HotW itself. The story mode is probably harder than all three explore modes put together. That last boss…. yikes…..

I think story mode should provide enough tokens that with 1-2 runs you could pick up a rare item from the token vendor instead of the exotics.

Yeah the story mode should definitely be the easier ones, nothing that makes an expert player panic at the thought of doing one. I mean still challenging but tune it down a few notches and up the notch on the free explore mode. But the explore modes should be more rewarding or at least equally rewarding, cause after all the only reason people would do those is purely for the rewards.

that would maybe alleviate the LFG groups – those p[layers will be able to go in with the help of players that have completed it, and in turn those will hopefully do the same. Everyone gets to finish, and you cannot really complain with that.

now the multiplier might need to be tweaked, maybe keep the max rate (and make it worthwhile), so there’s just enough incentive to help others (as this is i suppose, a group effort).

i would agree to this way, because at the moment, i just sit out front Arah and do the event, and ignore most LFG Story. maybe when more of my guild players get to arah, we can make a guild party out of it, but i do not see that happening for a long time.

Chidawg.6315:

This is an easy fix… make it so nobody can do exp mode unless they do story mode. That would screw people like me over but make me do story mode.

That does nothing but delay the problem by a couple of weeks.

Okay so people start running story mode for the next 2 weeks. Then when this new population of players has finished, no one runs story mode again. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard for new players or alts to find groups once the major population has completed story mode, whether that is today or 1 month from now.

The only way you will get people to run story mode long-term is to reward them for their time and/or greatly reduce the annoyance/time it takes to complete story mode (i.e. lots of things aren’t hard, but have mobs that have insane health and have you sitting there for 5 min just attacking with no challenge).

The upped difficulty and reduced rewards for CM story is a good example. No one wants to waste an hour, have the possibility of high repair bills as a risk to running with a bad pug group, and deal with tedious content after they have done it once already. Now that there is no reward to deal with the above changes, no one runs it. And you have to waste time searching for a potential long period of time to hopefully find 4 other people in the same boat as you because there is no unified /lfg tool outside of the one that is only specific to the zone you’re in.

I do think the 30 token first day bonus + 0 for any subsequent runs per day is a good solution.

It cannot be exploited, you get 30 tokens a day, that’s it. For anyone whining, it takes 1500 tokens for a full armor setup and 390 tokens for a 2-handed weapon. Running story mode for 13 days in a row for a casual to get a weapon or 50 days for an armor setup doesn’t seem like an issue. And as someone who runs a few specific em paths a day, there are a bunch of paths that are easier/faster then the story mode for the 60 token bonus. So if you’re complaining about casuals getting rewarded by doing easier content, you obviously don’t dungeon run daily.

Hidon.4680:

Ominous Anonymous.6029:

With the reduced story mode rewards, no one wants to do story mode anymore. Except for people who need it in order to do explorable modes, no one is interested.

I spent an hour and a half today trying to find a group for HoTW story mode, bouncing between Frostgorge and Lion’s Arch a few times just in case anyone else was there. I gave up and did a few CoF runs, since I was lucky enough to complete the story mode before the patch.

I totally agree with Anet’s philosophies regarding dungeons. Exp modes should be difficult, and should require more skill and coordination than story modes. They deserve better rewards as well. But making the rewards completely worthless is not the answer. It makes it incredibly difficult for individuals who have not already done story mode to get anywhere with the dungeon experience.

I LOVE the dungeons! I just want to be able to run them.

Perhaps instead of the 60 tokens you receive on your normal run of an exp mode, you only get 20 for story? That would get people running story modes in order to help out people without feeling like they are wasting their time and money. What do you guys think?

Thanks.

I think part of the problem lies in HotW itself. The story mode is probably harder than all three explore modes put together. That last boss…. yikes…..

I think story mode should provide enough tokens that with 1-2 runs you could pick up a rare item from the token vendor instead of the exotics.

It’s not just Hotw. It’s similar for AC, CoF, and TA as well. It could be an issue with other dungeons as well, those are just the 4 I run usually.

Each of those dungeons has at least one path that is just as easy or way faster then story mode.

All 4 of those dungeons have one path I run daily that I can finish in under 25 minutes.

And until they balance (increase) rewards, I hope they stay easy because doing the hardest path in most dungeons is just not worth the time and headache with the current rewards.

Award tokens for story mode.

Problem solved!

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely an issue as the game matures and we are working on ways to make running story mode with someone worthwhile even if you have already run it so players just reaching these dungeons can more easily find groups to play with. It will probably take some experimentation before we find the right motivator.

Jon

Just make the mobs give tons of experience that way level 80’s have an effective way to farm skill points end game and lower levels actually have incentive to do story-mode instead of doing it just as a stepping stone to explorable. This would also cure some of the backlash from story rewards getting nerfed, since the experience comes from kills players would be encouraged to clear out areas thoroughly instead of just speed running.

I’d ask to not just focus on making repeated play more attractive, but also do something to encourage initial play. I haven’t done anything except storymode AC and CM, and am loathe to set foot into any dungeon ever again. My reluctance to be confronted with another slap-in-the-face generically skinned story mode reward hat with useless stats, far outweighs any desire to be dragged along Destiny’s Edge’s entirely uninteresting reunion story while slogging it out with unfun enemies.

As dungeons are instanced, there is nothing preventing ArenaNet from introducing some form of Dungeon Finder that spans all Worlds, except where World bonuses are taken into account. Even this can be applied on a user by user basis.

Add to this a “Sidekick”-type achievement or title for aiding others in dungeon Story mode. You could gain one rank per dungeon for aiding others (to completion) 5 times.

how about: don’t change much, but let story modes drop companion pets (chance to something like 5%).

bam, lots of people running them.

Sheppard bonus for people that have already done SM, which scales with the number of people in the group that haven’t run SM mode yet.

Have some gear NPC sell stuff for that sheppard bonus.. or give a chance at some drops people might be interested in.

I can already imagine the /M spam… Looking for Sheep!

(it’s actually what daoc did for ToA Master Levels)

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely an issue as the game matures and we are working on ways to make running story mode with someone worthwhile even if you have already run it so players just reaching these dungeons can more easily find groups to play with. It will probably take some experimentation before we find the right motivator.

Jon

Here is a good idea jon for people that already ran story mode. Give karma to them. Like 3k for completing the dungeon at end. Also to prevent abuse, just make it that you will only win the karma rewards if one of the group haven’t done story mode before. This way, people are always helping others that need story mode or have never done

Can’t quote cuz forums only rarely gives those buttons for me.

Reply to Berries question:
Yes I saw Jon Peter’s post above. But actions speak louder than words, especially louder than words being spoken on the forum tryin to quell the discord and put on a good customer rep face.

At level 44 I got less than a silver to run a repeat story-mode. Less xp than a simple DE or renown heart, yet with the massive increase in trash, the run takes most of an hour. Obviously at 44 I hadn’t farmed it exploitatively or anything like that.

So what’s that mean to a player? If you run this more than once or twice, you will likely lose more coin than you gain, and certainly would get better return (xp/karma/coin/loot) if you did anything else there is in the game than re-running a story-mode dungeon.

So yeah, he can say as the game matures they’ll need to find the right motivator. But the folks who made the actual changes to the game did so emphatically. It’s not cut in half — I earned over 10 times as much the time I ran it before the nerf.

So all this talk about getting good karma or tokens, just doesn’t match up with ANet’s actions.

If I were designing things, I’d want people to go to their dungeon NOT with 5 newbies, if possible. Because they’re different from other PVE in GW2 and if you play them like other content, they are brutal. But look at their actions — ANet wants you to be making a big sacrifice if you’re helping a guildmate with story mode.