Guild Wars 2

I think they did it the wrong way. Story mode should be MORE rewarding than explorable – but can only be run by each character once (as the lead). This way people will be jumping to do story mode, and when there’s no one running story they can idle through explorable.

Hope they change it that way anyway.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

I think they did it the wrong way. Story mode should be MORE rewarding than explorable – but can only be run by each character once (as the lead). This way people will be jumping to do story mode, and when there’s no one running story they can idle through explorable.

Hope they change it that way anyway.

Why would something easy reward you better than something harder? Besides, what reward at level 30 (AC) could be better than tokens for 80 lvl exotics?

haviz.1340:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

I think they did it the wrong way. Story mode should be MORE rewarding than explorable – but can only be run by each character once (as the lead). This way people will be jumping to do story mode, and when there’s no one running story they can idle through explorable.

Hope they change it that way anyway.

Why would something easy reward you better than something harder? Besides, what reward at level 30 (AC) could be better than tokens for 80 lvl exotics?

Oh I was just thinking that they might put some import on the Destiny’s Edge “story” but yeah, if that’s not the case then they can just ignore what I said above. :P

haviz.1340:

Why would something easy reward you better than something harder? Besides, what reward at level 30 (AC) could be better than tokens for 80 lvl exotics?

Oh, also because you can only run it ONCE per character as lead. This will encourage people to help out others to re-enter story mode. I can’t really see people churning out alts (to lev 30 no less) simply to be able to get their guildies into AC story once their mains have completed it to have an “easier” time.

While I think the story is its own reward (for those who like the story or want to do 100% dungeon completion) I think story mode play could be more encouraged by the following rewards:

(1) Title for completing all dungeons in story mode at least once (e.g.: Defender of Tyria — or maybe something a little less grand since that’s what the hard to get titles are for)

(2) Tokens equivalent to 1/2 of what they would get doing an explorable run (perhaps to add a little incentive to those who want to replay the story or want to help a friend/guildmate).

(3) Better rewards for some of the higher level story instances (like perhaps Arah story giving a rare-quality accessory like a ‘dragon bone pendant’ or something that’s better than a hat that most people will quickly outgrow once they start doing explorables if they havent already (I was Lv.80 wearing mostly exotics when I did Arah story, mostly because nobody else was LFM for it))

Make them 2-3 man instances focus on lowish DE difficulty. Make mobs die fast and bosses similar to a DE veteran with low damage and mid hp (for 2-3 players). Remove tokens and add random rare once a day that your class can use.

Similar to DCUO’s solo/duo instances.

When I first heard that they’d be increasing story mode rewards, I thought it would be significant. Then I realized it’s just the same as explo for the first day, but without the tokens. =/ Increase rewards for the first time to, say 4.5k and silver to ~50s. That’d make them interesting for people to do.

In my opinion Story Mode should have exactly the same rewards as Explorable because:
1) It’s not easier or shorter than the fastest Explorable path for most dungeons. Also, all explorable paths give you the same amount of tokens, regardless of dificilty, so this wouldn’t break the system, more than it currently is.
2) It makes sense for someone who completed all the paths of a dungeon to have enough tokens to buy an equipment item from that dungeon. Usually the cheapest item costs 210 tokens, requiring repetition of a path.
3) It would help new players get groups for Story Mode and add more options to those who are farming tokens.

Somehow i like the idea of only being able to start story mode if you haven’t
completed it and hand out great rewards so people jump at the chance to do it.

The only problem i see is that the one starting the instance who wants the story done
will be urged to skip all story sequences…

Tottally agree with this suggestion! What a great idea! Hope to see it implemented.

About the proper incentive, i think it should not be about karma. Dungeon lovers want shards for legendaries and skins. And dungeons for karma is just not the best way to get karma. Besides, Anet should not incentive this intensive grinding for shards on the same dungeon, but that’s another issue..

add 60 tokens to story mode. Problems solved:

-people not going story mode
- decreases grinding aspect of the game
- makes low level peoples life easier with the rare equipment.

I also have a ridiculously hard time getting a party for story mode dungeons. I’m not sure if it really is lack of reward, or lack of the playerbase caring enough to help others. Obviously higher incentives and/or rewards would be helpful, and may fix the lack of willingness to participate in story runs.

man sure is fun doing story dungeons that take forever, give crap loot and are harder than EXP mode dungeons, thanks for this fine experience arenanet you are the best!

This is such an easy solution, make story mode give tokens as if it were a 4th explorable path. Heck, story mode is harder and longer than most of the paths people do.

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

Well, I’m glad about time someone over there notice. It’s the black spot of all mmo. Once the players reach max level, they only do the exp mode for instance grind if not only the popular dungeon say only AC.

I mean, if you guys gonna take out the henchmen from GW1, at least make it easier to find dungeon party (party matching queue?). At this rate, new players won’t be able to find party, while old players only do same old single dungeon say, FOTM, and skip out the rests.

And this is kind of sad cause GW2 is still a new game.

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

Why is it always the people in self denial who deny to others? If you chose the hard way it’s your business and yours alone.
Because I know how people like you think: “If I had to go through a hard time to get my stuff obviously it has to be hard for everyone else too, otherwise the noobs won’t drool over my shiny armor in adoration and then I won’t feel like an elite superior being on an online game.”

Disappointed to see that the new monthly achievement component is just doing the Fractals dungeon even more. It was difficult enough finding people to finish story dungeons with. Apparently I should have finished them all the first few weeks the game was out?

For the time being I don’t really understand the existence of story mode as a separate category. Most of the story modes I know of have been nerfed so much that they are just as hard if not harder than their explorable counterparts. They should just make story dungeons into just another exp path that gives the same rewards.

My idea is to reward people who have already done the storymode with X multiplied by the number of people in the group who haven’t done it. X could be gold, karma, chance of yellows, whatever. The point is that the reward increases depending on the number of new players in the group and decreases to nothing when its just a level 80 farm.

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

Most story mode Dungeons are a nightmare to do (especially when no ones level 80) the reward needs to equal the risk involved or the risk needs to be dramatically lowered.

Personally if rewards were on par with Explore and the dungeons were actually able to be done by the correct level players (not lv80) i think you’d see it open up a lot more..

We took my brothers girlfriend through Ascalonian catacombs today (her first time doing a dungeon she was 55 the req for AC story is 30?) with 4 lv 80’ we wiped countless times, missed chest cause of deaths, bugs and glitches..

When we finished she said she will never do another dungeon again and logged out, is this really how you want you customers to feel about your game angry and frustrated everyday..

If I had it my way I would make story mode bosses net like 50s-1g a piece, but no tokens. Keep explorable the way it is.

Dante.1508:

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

Most story mode Dungeons are a nightmare to do (especially when no ones level 80) the reward needs to equal the risk involved or the risk needs to be dramatically lowered.

Personally if rewards were on par with Explore and the dungeons were actually able to be done by the correct level players (not lv80) i think you’d see it open up a lot more..

We took my brothers girlfriend through Ascalonian catacombs today (her first time doing a dungeon she was 55 the req for AC story is 30?) with 4 lv 80’ we wiped countless times, missed chest cause of deaths, bugs and glitches..

When we finished she said she will never do another dungeon again and logged out, is this really how you want you customers to feel about your game angry and frustrated everyday..

i thought story mode was just for lvling, the exp is a worthy reward in itself. i have completed every story mode / exp mode at the lowest possible lvl with little to few wipes, the whole aim of a dungeon is to be a little bit difficult maybe i would suggest learning your class abit before doing dungeons?

Like what other people have already stated on this topic, i feel story mode so be made solo-able, but like the dynamic events in this game the difficulty should scale with how many players are brought along in the group up to the maximum of 5 players total. rewards i believe should scale similar to dynamic events for your character. that way you don’t get something completely useless, but its not the best either. basically treating the story mode dungeons like the dynamic events, just a series of dynamic events in one go. i’ve done some research but ill be honest, i haven’t gotten a chance to play one dungeon yet. got a group together and someone else was the leader and we went in to explorable mode, but a buddy of mine and myself hadn’t don’t the dungeon yet and we ended up having 2 of our 5 member leave not even 10 minutes into the dungeon.

Just chuck in 20 Tokens as a final reward.

Problem solved.

Hi Ominous Anonymous, my suggestion for you is to get in to a helpful guild which you could rely on in situations like the one you are in now. Or just create/join a so called constant group for every day dungeon runs.

I wouldn’t mind the tokens from story mode BUT the only reason I’ve ever run story mode is…

1. I really hate it when your in a group ready to run a dungeon explore and nobody in group has done story so you sit there trying to sort it out. When your running a particular dungeon for tokens this gets a bit annoying after the 5th or 6th time!

2. I like the dungeons. Its a nice diversion from wvw’ing all the time. I like seeing them and its nice to run story once in awhile. Besides I never run story mode more than once. And its because I am normally farming tokens like everybody else is.

My tip for finding a group is be flexible and use gw2lfg. You can stand at your soapbox all day and say “well I’m not going to do it because Anet should put something like that in the game!” or you can take a step back and realize you just want to run whatever dungeon and there is a great tool that you can use. I use it a lot and have rarely had to wait too long to get a group. And its cross server access gives you better odds when your trying to do CoF but the gate is contested on you server.

Best of luck with your dungeons!

bringing back daily zaishen quest can solve this problem.

well since they already give you a random rare the first run….make them give you a random rare on every run + 5 T6 mats?

In the same bag as everyone. No one is doing Arah story on my server, I know it’s wintersday event but seriously ? Are the players supposed to wait for weeks before they might get the slightest chance at finishing their story ?

I’m actually lucky that I already did it on my main ( finishing storyline on my alt now).

Back in october when I first did Arah story for the first time I had no issues finding a group, of course I know it was because a lot of other people were at the same stage and the game was still new.

But does this mean that for anyone who didn’t start playing back when the game came out doesn’t deserve to finish their story ? Or having to wait like second class citizens ?

I tried gw2lfg.com, tried LA, tried CS (obviously), tried guild ( when someone is up for it, there isn’t enough of them, and when we try to find a PUG we come back empty handed).

I can live with it since I finished the game on another toon already, but i DO feel bad for the newcomers who haven’t.

I hop ANet is aware of how certain zones/dungeons can feel deserted or unfriendly for first timers/alt people because these are the people who are going to carry your game when some of the early players flock away (migration always happens in every game).

It is weird that ANet thought it’d be a good decision to suddenly make the solo story require to finish a DE group chain and on the top of that a dungeon. I know it sounds great on paper, but in practice what we are left with spamming desperately or seeking help on 3rd party website.

I remember them saying something about how they value their players time, no matter when they log in, etc… I do wonder what happened to that.

Currently waiting for the message suppressing to turn off…kinda feel like you got no choice to spam since the devs made it unappealing for anyone to run storymodes more than once, and then punished for trying to find a group. I hardly find asking for a group in general in LA 5 times in 5 minutes excessive considering the crazy amount of fractals spam.

/rant over

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 saw that a mod/designer replied to this thread.

Any words of progress on this issue since it’s been over two months now?
For players like me who make alts, the absence of solution on this front is kind of worrying. Are we just to play one character for the entire duration of GW2’s lifespan and be thankful that we managed to finish the story just even once ?

Right now it feels like I am more likely to ask for 10golds for free in general chat and get it …than complete the story arc of the game you designed. That is seriously flawed.

Some kind of answer would really be appreciated…

They can simply add more reward for Story Mode, this would be the quickest simple way without any brain power.

Currently Story Mode does not give Trophy, so no reason for people like me who finish it do it again.

Make Story Mode reward more gold, that way people who want to do gold farm can do Story

People who want Trophy for gear can do Explorable. It’s a win-win.

this seems like a simple fix. you get full credit tokens if your group has at least:

1 story mode only character.
said character is (the right lvl or above) say… lvl 30 for AC

i don’t see how that’s exploitable.

in fact, even for haters this is just a “4th path” i don’t think anyone would be opposed to broadening the dungeon available pool?

Easy fix, just make it a STORY cut scene
Then make the story mode dungeon into the forth explorable path.

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

I see this reply was 6onths ago as I did my search. Not sure if anything has changed since I’m somewhat new? Having said that, it still seems like no one wants to do story mode, and I must do it to get to the others. I’ve been asking in Lion’s arch or the respective dungeon’s zone for 4 days now, and no one wants to do them. Something has to be done to make it worth while, because people don’t seem like they want to be bothered doing the story mode when the current system seems weighted to reward the EXP versions.

Lakland.8102:

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

I see this reply was 6onths ago as I did my search. Not sure if anything has changed since I’m somewhat new? Having said that, it still seems like no one wants to do story mode, and I must do it to get to the others. I’ve been asking in Lion’s arch or the respective dungeon’s zone for 4 days now, and no one wants to do them. Something has to be done to make it worth while, because people don’t seem like they want to be bothered doing the story mode when the current system seems weighted to reward the EXP versions.

Agreed. I read the message and got excited, then saw who wrote it. As a ranger in a previous life, I’ve lost respect for that employee =(

I know robert said one issue they had with story in beta was that, even though there were less rewards, they saw tons of “pro” teams running story over and over again for the rewards, instead of doing exp. I don’t think that’s a very good excuse, I just think it’s interesting.

I noticed they put story mode dungeon completion into dailies…. yeah lol, that will work well =(

I like the idea of having a reward if you completed to run with those who havnt and the more who havnt completed it the better the reward.

Also please make story mode completes account wide.

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

any update on this?

Lakland.8102:

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

I see this reply was 6onths ago as I did my search. Not sure if anything has changed since I’m somewhat new? Having said that, it still seems like no one wants to do story mode, and I must do it to get to the others. I’ve been asking in Lion’s arch or the respective dungeon’s zone for 4 days now, and no one wants to do them. Something has to be done to make it worth while, because people don’t seem like they want to be bothered doing the story mode when the current system seems weighted to reward the EXP versions.

Use gw2lfg.com and you will find parties for story modes rather fast.

How about this. Make all the story mode dungeons completely soloable. Another words scale the story dungeon difficulty with the amount of players in the party rather than 5 automatically. This would solve a few problems -

• people will have no excuse not to do story
• you can watch the story cutscenes without annoying other players.
  *Make the story dungeons like the actual personal story.

Just keep the story loot the way it is now (garbage). Now this may cause some other problems like particular story mechanics that need all 5 people but I’m sure there’s a workaround for that

Red SuperGiant.8653:

How about this. Make all the story mode dungeons completely soloable. Another words scale the story dungeon difficulty with the amount of players in the party rather than 5 automatically. This would solve a few problems -

• people will have no excuse not to do story
• you can watch the story cutscenes without annoying other players.
  *Make the story dungeons like the actual personal story.

Just keep the story loot the way it is now (garbage). Now this may cause some other problems like particular story mechanics that need all 5 people but I’m sure there’s a workaround for that

They should have done this in the first place. I doubt they’re ever going to come up with a balanced motivator for players to repeat story mode dungeons. In lieu of other players Anet could simply give the player more allies and buff the Destiny Edge members who accompany you. There, easily solved!

While there at it, they should make Story Mode Account bound, I do not wish to do every dungeon in story mode on every char I create.

I think a simple first step is offering 60 tokens for first time story completion per character. It motivates the first time player to try explorable paths in order to collect enough tokens for gear and it also will motivate people to consider helping others by using alts.

The harder issue is what to offer for completion after the first time in story mode. Perhaps story mode works just like any other explorable mode with 60 tokens per character the first run per day with DR setting in after.

I really don’t think people will exploit story mode to the point it was necessary to remove the token rewards. I have yet to be in a dungeon where the story path was shorter than the explorable paths (or at least one of them).

Speaking as a very casual player who doesn’t have time to wait for PUGs, soloable story mode for dungeons is a necessity for me. The dungeons take long enough for a family man who’s able to get online sparingly, I can’t afford to wait a 1/2 hour for the PUG to fill up.

I haven’t completed a single dungeon yet and am at the end of my personal story (finally). I’d prefer to see the Destiny’s Edge story from the beginning if possible, but I guess I’m willing to run Arah with a PUG just to finish the personal story and maybe start leveling an alt.

Please, Anet, fix this soon. You said you’d make the game everyone could play their own way.

According to my understanding, story mode is supposed to be part of the personal story. Story mode is not supposed to be run regularly for challenge, tokens or money. So I would not suggest adding tokens to story mode because people will then speed run the story mode skipping all the story inside it.

However, the reward needs to be improved since the reward you get in doing story mode is even worse than that in doing the personal story. Doing the personal story gives you good weapon skin (T3 human cultural weapon skin) and black lion keys. So I think it would be nice if, for example, completing TA story mode for the first time (per character) gives you a weapon with T3 sylvari weapon skin according to your profession and a random booster. I think this would be a good enough motivation especially for new players or players leveling their alts.

And I hope Anet can scale down the difficulty for story mode according to the number of people inside so that people don’t need a full five people group to complete it. Finding 1-2 ppl would be much easier than finding 4 ppl.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

Speaking as a very casual player who doesn’t have time to wait for PUGs, soloable story mode for dungeons is a necessity for me. The dungeons take long enough for a family man who’s able to get online sparingly, I can’t afford to wait a 1/2 hour for the PUG to fill up.

I haven’t completed a single dungeon yet and am at the end of my personal story (finally). I’d prefer to see the Destiny’s Edge story from the beginning if possible, but I guess I’m willing to run Arah with a PUG just to finish the personal story and maybe start leveling an alt.

Please, Anet, fix this soon. You said you’d make the game everyone could play their own way.

Hey, try gw2lfg.com, really, it doesn’t take that long to get a group running. Sometimes in the ones people rarely do it may be half an hour or a bit more, but it’s possible to get a group easily with it and with luck you may even get inside a LF1M group and get it straight away.

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

Why not just make it where you have a LFG system and that is an option.

I have thought of a couple reward solutions.
20 tokens once per day only. (only once per day to avoid speedruns but encourage daily runs in general)
1(5?) potions of x slaying dungeon specific (maybe in addition to the armor component?)
choice of armor component (ie 6 options; get to pick one – NOT exp armor set, basic world armor set)
1 blacklion key per ACCOUNT per day. (not per character). OR
1 blacklion key per account per <b>month</b>.
If you want to get really strict on BL key distribution; perhaps one per account regardless of which dungeon. (So CM story grants you a key; AC story that month wont).

Even with a monthly reward like a BL key per month; you will still see a significant rise in Story mode participation. (obvious bumps at the start and end of the month).

I fully support soloable story modes.

I thought that adding story mode completion into the daily was a small step forward, but it’s clearly not enough. I helped a guildmate complete his personal storyline by doing Arah story with him.

1. What reward do I get from doing Arah story again? Next to nothing.

2. Do you know how long Arah story takes? By the time you’re on the second Disneyland boat ride getting kitten from behind by zombie gorillas you just want it to end.

3. Do I have enough time to run Arah story with 300 guild members? No.

4. Maybe adding tokens as a story mode completion reward isn’t ideal, but would anyone in their right minds choose to re-run Arah story rather than Arah path 3 if you added 20 tokens as a reward to complete Arah story? Would anyone re-run CoF story rather than CoF path 1 for 20 tokens? Hell no. I could do Arah path 1, 2 and 3 in the time it takes to do Arah story for 180 tokens. As for CoF, we’ve got so many CoF tokens and salvaged so many CoF rares that anything that takes longer than 10 minutes is a waste of omnomberry bars.

I’m all for more gold and karma rewards, or something similar to the daily chest where you have a chance of getting a little something from the gem store like a basic transmutation stone or a repair cannister or a Black Lion Salvage Kit or something. As it is I’d rather kill 30 ambient creatures than sit around on gw2lfg.com bumping up my LFG post trying to assemble a story mode team together.

I don’t think adding tokens to story mode dungeons is really conducive to the point of story mode. You play story mode for the story, you play explorer mode to explore. or grind…Honestly, people who run story mode with their friends helping them through it should get alternate currency than EM currency. People will then optimize which is more efficient to farm and you’ll have an imbalance of groups. If you’re helping someone out in story mode, do it like they do in Fractals, reward Karma. There’s plenty of things that still require karma, and nice people should receive nice things in return