Guild Wars 2

Why not just give the previous level of reward before you nerfed the poop out of it? 26s and some experience wasn’t really unbalanced especially since you added all the garbage to CM story.

agreed, give us some tokens for story :P

i believe it’s time we get Zaishen Quests in GW2

now the Zaishen are no longer around in Tyria atm however im sure it’s possible to create a lore-friendly equivelant to them, in that we get our daily tasks that give special rewards for completing specific tasks in the game, one such task would be Story Mode.

i do believe when these quests were added to GW1 the game saw growth in it’s activate playerbase as players now had a worthwhile daily task to achieve for substantial rewards.

Yeah I like Lorana’s idea of a daily story dungeon that way you can’t really “farm” it since you get the reward once a day and it would make 1 of the 8 dungeons popular for a day.

I have only been able to do 1 story mode dungeon due to how hard it is to find a pug for story mode. As time goes on it seems much harder to find groups willing to try or do them.

Find yourself a PVE guild that runs dungeons. If you can’t find one on your world transfer to Darkhaven and look me up. We are almost always running dungeons both story and explorable.

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

How about a bunch of XP and gold? I would rerun story dungeons for a bunch of XP and gold.

correct me if i’m wrong, but i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable? that way people head in, do stuff by themselves while enjoying the story, then join a coordinated 5-man group to take down explorable.

that’s how i thought dungeons would function, until i got to play them.

“i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable”

Where did you get this idea?

@Lorana, the Zaishan still exist. You can find some of their followers in the southern parts of Lion’s Arch near the Claw Island Portage Waypoint. Interestingly, they include non-Human members like the Charr and Asura. What their purpose is at the moment is not known, but I suppose it would be nice to bring back the Zaishan bounties and boons that would allow you to accumulate great rewards upon completing specific Story Modes, Explorables, and even certain Champion-killing events.

If at least one party member has not already completed the story mode have those that have already completed sm get double the tokens they would in explore. Older dungeon players would compete to run new players through sm I guess.

I’ve browsed through and not sure if someone has suggested this: If you’re in the instance of somebody doing a story mode for the first time, you get the full initial rewards like 60 tokens and 20 silver of some sort. That’ll help newbies to dungeons.

Haha posts show exact same time. I like the way you think Vradica hehe.

Why not just include completion of all 8 story modes in the monthly achievements?

Dungeons explorable modes already give tokens. Story mode should not give tokens as a reward. If you all thought about it for more than a second you’d realize that. Increasing the token gain per day will just hasten the end of dungeon runs altogether.

Increase the silver reward and throw in some karma for completing it. Say 1.5k karma. (Just a random number).
Sure people could decide to farm storymode for karma but they already do that at Cursed Shore. And they’d make more karma there for the amount of time spent.

1 rare item. 26 silver and 1.5k karma for completing a storymode dungeon. Regardless of whether you’ve completed it that day or if its the very 1st time you’ve done it.

I would like to see some kind of reward for helping “new SM” players. It would be nice to get some karma or at least 60 tokens for helping out someone who hasn’t done SM yet. I don’t see how this would cause a problem, since you would only be able to do it once (with a player who did not do SM before). I can see people spamming the chat in order to find more players who have not done SM, just so they can increase their token’s per day accumulation. But then again, is it really that bad having some people help others?

I haven’t been able to find story runs for any dungeons in any area I’ve passed through the past few days. I now regret waiting until I’ve enjoyed exploring new maps and professions before getting into dungeons, as I fear it’s now impossible.

Erf.7820:

I haven’t been able to find story runs for any dungeons in any area I’ve passed through the past few days. I now regret waiting until I’ve enjoyed exploring new maps and professions before getting into dungeons, as I fear it’s now impossible.

I have alts that are ‘ready’ for most story modes, pm me in game (I’m on most nights/weekends EST).

No tokens for story please. not unless those tokens can be used to create random rare or masterwork at level items. Then yes please.
I spent around 1 gold or more upgrading my level 60 to rare items from the TP which would take 10-20 ac story runs to work up to. which is basically what i did.

The previous reward for story was way too good for me. there was no point in going anywhere else to level.

on the other hand now i can do level 40 content and solo a champion ettin and his two veteran body guards at the same time.

vicwolf.7862:

“i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable”

Where did you get this idea?

from a dev blog. gave the impression that dungeons were something you’d do on your own (party being optional), with the help of the NPCs, like a personal story mission.

You really have to twist people’s arms to get them to do story mode. Doing them for the story and some coin maybe should be reward enough but it clearly isn’t.

Kain.9167:

You really have to twist people’s arms to get them to do story mode. Doing them for the story and some coin maybe should be reward enough but it clearly isn’t.

well the coin for rerunners is very small, and you can only hear rytlock whine about logan so many times.

the problem with story dungeons is that they’re designed as a one-time thing, and of course there will always be more veterans than newcomers, and veterans want to do dungeons for the tokens, or paths they have yet to do, not repeat content and get almost no reward.

I do not play dungeons more than one time, there is no reason to. Grinding for pointless gear or items to make weapons, legendary or not is not something i am interested in and a huge reason i will not purchase anything from Anets store, there is simply nothing worth buying. Going through a dungeon shouldbe a unique exciting experience, currently it is not, it is alot of rote action fights, nothing new happens in those dungeons once you finish them one time.

Example, i just finished the Story line for my class for the first time, killing Zaitan, well instead i had to kitten around with a hundred mobs and catch a glimpse from time to time, the end reward sucked so hard i simply could not believe it. 3 trash greens and a worthless seige blueprint for alot of time invested in that line, pretty pitiful Anet.

As for exploration mode i simply cannot see people grinding for tokens for anything to support the current status quo on dungeons. With the money anet has the dungeons need to change, they need to be dynamic in many ways, including how to solve running through them instead of simply killing tougher npc’s, this happens with MMO’s everytime, i remember Anet stating they would be different, they are not.

Anet needs to be different and show it. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out what fans of MMO’s want, a simple interface to choose the dungeon type, puzzle, death puzzle, death mobs, configuration, maze, labrynth, hole in the ground, et, etc, and let the players choose the difficulty and then gauge rewards based on how difficult they made, from 1 person doing this to big groups.

Looks like alot of people in Anet need a class with the imagination engineer.

If you’re looking for groups I suggest you start searching on Saturdays and Sundays when people don’t have school, college, or work (depending on your job). Those times i tend to see a good amount of people doing dungeon runs.

Instead of Tokens, I think what would be a great incentive to run Story Mode versions would be to award a [Hefty Bag of Crafting Materials], which could be obtained for running that particular Story Mode each day. The contents of this bag would scale with the level of the character receiving this item. For example, a level 30 character would receive T2 or T3 materials; while a level 80 character would receive T5 or T6 materials, and even a chance for Ectos or Lodestones. One could potentially earn up to 8 bags per day if one chooses to run the Story Modes of all eight dungeons!

As far as the Story Mode dungeons itself, it might be interesting to tack on random elements, like the Champion Troll in AC for example, or even put random roadblocks that may change the course of the dungeon with a different boss or puzzle that needs to be dealt with before reaching the end. A small taste for Explorable Modes if you will by opening up a section of the dungeon that is normally accessible through Explorable Mode. Maybe it could be like the TA Explorable mode, only without the ability to make a choice between paths. The ending, of course, would have the same final boss as usual for the sake of telling the proposed story, but might adopt different tactics based on the path that the party was forced to take.

Why not make it so if you run someone through Story Mode that hasn’t done it yet each person that helps run someone through gets a nice reward? 60 Tokens should be perfect so it isnt worth it to abuse and would also get everyone caught up fairly quick.

Am i the only one doing Story mode, not knowing what the hell is wrong with the rewards? -_-

The right motivator to do Story mode should be helping others, not tangible rewards.

If you want to put rewards, they should relate to help the others.
So, a good way would be that:

- no group can enter Story mode if at least one player hasn’t done it yet (and if that player is not present at the end, it doesn’t count);
- every complete run of all Story modes (all 8 dungeon, with weekittenimers) could give an achievement chest with something valuable inside, could be a way to get some useful items as Mystic Clovers, Mystic Forge Conduit Pieces, Black Lion Salvage kits, Dungeon Tokens, etc.
- a title (Newbie Helper, or something like that) could be given if you get this achievement a lot of times (30? 50?)

These could give players a reason to do story mode with different players every time.

Of course this could be exploited (i.e.: 4-manning a dungeon with a lvl 1 alt in tow every time), but it will be difficult, much more than farming in speed runs.

If story mode was counted as a separate path, then it could reward its own tokens.

/co-sign on better dungeon rewards for story modes. Nothing ridiculous. Maybe approximately half of what you get for explore-able.

I don’t particularly agree with all of the people that think they should be non-group events or made easier. They are already optional to do as you progress through your story, and the main missions are all solo-able.

The dungeons, explorable and SM, get easier with time. I remember thinking in a BWE that Ascalon Catacombs was brutally difficult. And during the first week or two people were saying the estimated time to complete was 2-3 hours. People are regularly doing story mode of that dungeon now in under 50 minutes. Players just get much much better and seem to not notice since the game-play is reactionary and not stat based.

If you think they are too hard now, just move on and come back to it a bit later. You might find that you can effortlessly make it through parts that were previously making you want to smash your keyboard.

Just another instance where a LFG tool would be godly. Just queue and continue with other game activities. Amazingly good if you are leveling up, you keep playing and having fun until the group is formed.

Like the idea with 20 badges for story mode , would gladly do that , getting badges while helping lowbies.

Went with a friend today to do the CoF story mode. She loves it apparently so we partied up and got a couple more to do it.
Wipe wipe wipe wipe… where was the story? Get to a chest after continuous running from the nearest waypoint to tick down the health of XYZ OP Boss and it’s got blue. Go for another boss, blue, another blue…. GRRRRR.
The last boss is really easy but fire is not a squishies friend. Open that chest and guess what?!! blue. And I’m not sure but was there a dungeon story completion achievement thingy? something popped up with some level 70(wtf I’ve got 129 extra skill points) orange that I couldn’t use.

So, after about an hour of running from waypoint to waypoint just for Mats I’m kinda hoping that the explorable dungeons give better loot than whatever-the-hell the story mode was supposed to be.

I think some NPC’s were with us talking the whole time but as for ‘story’ it’s too hard, too long, and the ‘OP boss’ paradigm is getting old for video games.

I’m not saying that it wasn’t an interesting journey – for a party of 6 or more because 1-shotting is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fun and innovative.
I remember bosses in GW1 were hard because they used skills, knew what AOE was, and didn’t necessarily have 10,000,000 hp because they’re healing skills were better than yours. Then we take a step back in GW2, they might have 3 skills; an AOE that you can’t escape, a 30 second cooldown on their ONE SHOT skill, and then one that will continually just tick down your health faster than you can deal with all while having several million HP, armor that makes yours look like toilet paper, and a very limited range of pull at which time they will disengage and regen their health to full in 30 seconds. sweet.

I understand world bosses having all those things, but this is an instance. It shouldn’t be the same thing as a world boss by any means, you’re supposed to be telling me a story and sucking me into that story so I understand that I’m not fighting for loot but for a purpose.

But if you’re going to give me loot, match my level, don’t soulbound or account bound it either. WTF is my necro going to do with soulbound level 70 orange medium armor? salvage some leather? yay.

Rant over
Story modes need some work obviously, it also needs to be worth my time to do them. If I do a story, does it change my world? Did it have any kind of impact at all to my story world? Did doing CoF get me a “Master of the Flame” achievement?(no), Helping guildies, ok, but I’m not pugging story mode, it’s nowhere near worth the time investment at all.

Help someone with story when it is the same difficulty as exploration, takes just as long, doesn’t give a reward that isn’t even a fourth of what I would make in exploration (Which isn’t even much to begin with there), and with people who don’t know what they’re doing? Please.

Junglist.4069:

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.

Exactly, Its very poor the way that this has been Implemented. I’m at the Arah dungeon In my story & I have no one to do It with. Ive maxed out my 2 crafting disciplines, made my exotic weapon & armor. I have also done Karma runs & got my full set of Aurora armor with all the runes.
Last night (Friday) I actually switched the game off, I’m bored & annoyed so I won’t be playing nearly as much anymore.

Eyevan.6027:

Help someone with story when it is the same difficulty as exploration, takes just as long, doesn’t give a reward that isn’t even a fourth of what I would make in exploration (Which isn’t even much to begin with there), and with people who don’t know what they’re doing? Please.

That about sums it up. I did TA for the first time this week. They promised a “quick” 1.5 hr run. After about 4.5 hours of wipe/run back people left before we killed the last boss. Nearly 30s in repairs.

That was a bad introduction to dungeons.

Eyevan.6027:

Help someone with story when it is the same difficulty as exploration, takes just as long, doesn’t give a reward that isn’t even a fourth of what I would make in exploration (Which isn’t even much to begin with there), and with people who don’t know what they’re doing? Please.

+1.

Just make SM soloable and let those who want to run dungeons in 5 mans with wipes and repair costs (Like me) do that in explorable. This game has a slightly higher curve for dungeons if you have no clue because…well there is no tank to “eat” dmg for you, nor pure blooded healer to mitigate it. It is basically your skill at knowing what to do (What to stand in, what weapons to use when, when to dodge, when to save dodge, what combo’s can do what, (Ranger Spring + Banner = AoE heal etc) and thats it. If you have no clue than you will die, especially if you go DPS DPS DPS thought process.

They don’t teach you and people already running explorables on super farm mode don’t want to bother running dungeons we already have that take (as he stated) longer to run + longer to describe each fight + risk of death MUCH higher on newer players vs Established groups that can breeze through AC/CM/CoF/HoTW etc in about 20/30 mins per path.

Make the story mode soloable.

Finding players to do Story with is hard unless you give a huge reward. Finding players which are willing and actually have an interest in the story instead of just rushing through for the reward will be impossible.

I just started doing dungeons myself at around level 55 and I noticed a few things. The first was how clueless people were to the game mechanics and how poor a job the PvE environment did to help them in a dungeon. Honestly you wanna be prepared for the skills you need in dungeons go do some PvP. Dodging the right things, quick reactions for resses, correct positioning and things of that nature are all things that are common place in any PvP match. You find these elements no where in the PvE leveling process and it shows when you get into dungeons.

The second thing I noticed is when I ran my first explorable dungeon. It was TA and I was kinda shocked at how much easier it was then the SM especially the last boss, you could afk that thing if you wanted to. I thought maybe it was just the players because the SM group was a bun ch of players in the 50s and the exp group was my silly level 56 and 4 80s.

Went back and did TA SM again which lead me to the third thing, which is the main element of the discussion in this topic, I got one pull into the dungeon, people had no idea what was going on and we wiped to the flowers of poisony death. I almost quit the group right there because there was no incentive to stay, I didnt, I nice guyed it up and finished the run. Essentially soloing the third boss (guy that summons the spiders) because everyone kept dying to a boss that involves either to much coordination for pugs (stacking a burning down the spiders before they reach you) or to much skill to kite everything for 5 min. You dont have to do anything like that on TA exp. Think I made some silver and I pretty much never plan on going back.

Also there is no real reason to not have a dungeon finder system, everything else in this game is cross server so why not dungeons?

well… i see there are a lot of strongly felt responses and i hope i can help you guys out with some of your problems with story mode. i have story mode finished on most dungeons. how did i do this? ez. my guild.

my guild helped me run through most of them and we learned how to beat most of the story modes together. and now the people that did it the first time through are able to help new members complete their story modes in turn. i am not saying this to troll or to be a jerk but if your guild is not helping you or other members run them consider switching guilds or at least spending more time in another guild that actually does things together. else what would be the point of a joining a guild?

you really cant expect pugs to go out of their way to help you complete something necessary for your character development because to be honest they just dont care about you or your progress. your guild however, should.

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

For one, you could try making story modes easier than explorable. HotW story is far, far, harder than any of the explorable paths, even with 80% of it being a trivial snoozefest.

I think that a Daily reward of say, 30 tokens, would be an appropriate motivator for running Story Modes. The Daily token reward should be greater than the diminished reward from running an Explore path a second time. Maybe have a 10 token bonus that boosts the total to 40 tokens if at least one party member is completing it for the first time. Toss in a Weekly or Monthly achievement chest for running all of the dungeons’ Story Modes, and I think you would see an increase in people running Story Modes multiple times.

I have been looking for a story mode group for SE for an hour now, also looking in the makeshift “LFG” guild someone created. For one thing, this game needs a functional LFG tool. You don’t have to port me there or anything like that, but anything would be better than the current implementation. It would also be nice if you either didn’t have to run story mode to get into explorable or it unlocked account-wide for those of us who ran it on an alt at release. I tend to skip the Destiny’s Edge teen-drama cut scenes anyway.

Dungeons are an important aspect of MMO gaming for me and I am quickly losing my patience with sitting around forever lfg.

Looking for story mode groups is like pulling teeth.

easy answer. 60 tokens for 1st run of story mode each day. this gets it working again and all it will basically mean is that people can do each dungeon up to 1+3 times per day… big woop de doo.

Question: Why would I do story mode for dungeons if there are better paths available, even if it gives 60 tokens per path? Would anyone really want to do story mode again for CoF over path 1,2 even if it did give tokens?

Give story mode the exact same reward as explorables (tokens and all that) with the same diminishing returns and that’s all.

If that’s “too easy” for you, let me point you to the Ascended grind. And if that’s still too easy in your opinion, only got the explorables reward if at least one person in the group is doing the story mode for the first time.

I have bypassed story mode on some dungeons because I could not get a story mode group happening, instead tagging along to do one of the explore mode paths. I have done most dungeons in atleast 1 explore mode path, and only done 4 in story mode.

Gave up on even attempting story mode dungeons, nobody wants to do them, only one I have done is Arah SM.

The implementation of story mode sounds good on paper but in practice doesn’t work for those that didn’t rush through content.

support, make it soloable please. Its stopping my progress to leg dagger.

Nobody is running explorables now either as fractals are far more profitable anyways and the only medium for getting ascended gear with better stats.