Guild Wars 2

This isn’t to ask why people bother to run past mobs in dungeons, but to ask why that has to be the go-to strategy for people playing dungeons? Further, why those of us who -don’t- avoid enemies are treated poorly? I’ve had several parties in which one or more people present became rather rude when it became a question of ‘Wait, why aren’t you all just running past the enemies?’ I’ve even gotten comments like “Did you want to do a fast run or RP PVE with some NPCs?” I mean, really? I’m not the best player in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but I play my class pretty darn well; and I like to make sure that if I or someone else gets defeated, that we/they don’t have to run through a corridor full of enemies because someone was in too much of a rush to kill 8 silver mobs.

I’m sorry if skipping parts of a dungeon became a legitimate strategy and I just didn’t get the memo, but I don’t like to feel ostracized for playing the game I bought in the first place. Honestly, if someone wants to do a speed run and you join a PUG that hasn’t mentioned anything about that, you should ask beforehand and leave if you’re not satisfied. Waiting until mid-dungeon to say “Oh, I skip Kholer” is kind of sucky if other people WANT to kill him for the drops/XP.

Have other people had this issue? Do you default to skipping content unless otherwise asked, or do you enter a dungeon under the assumption that everyone in your party will just run past certain points?

A fun blog:

http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/2012/09/human-nature-and-path-of-least.html

I’ve pugged enough dungeons to feel remotely qualified to answer this so here’s my two cents:

Current dungeon design does not reward clearing trash or completing all encounters. You will make better gold/hour in far less time avoiding mobs and receive far less frustration for doing so. I have yet to see a dungeon where this isn’t the case save FotM. You can argue that this is ‘avoiding the challenge’ of dungeons but dungeons in their current form aren’t remotely challenging for an experienced player or coordinated group. Tedious imo would be a better word to describe them, and skipping lessens the tedium. This isn’t to say however that dungeons are devoid of any potential to challenge experienced groups. They need adjustment.

Until skipping becomes detrimental to a party or an inferior method of clearing the problem will persist and grow. People have had months to learn the ins and outs of encounters and where it’s beneficial to skip. AC can be cleared nearly as fast as CoF, TA is not far behind.

The best solution to this ‘dilemna’ is the advice you’re giving to people who want to rush, which should really be the other way around. I’m going out on a limb when I say that people who rush in pugs are the majority or close to it. If you want to avoid these people you’re going to a) ask before hand or b) stop pugging.

I’ve heard that dungeon encounters are going to be tweaked in the coming month(s); let’s hope this solves the problem.

Nowadays I don’t join or start a run without spelling out what my expectations are. So, for me, there is no unspoken default.

Because of that, outside of forums, I haven’t much had your issue.
But, if the forums are any indication, it’s not any one side that’s oppressing the other, both sides are spewing horrible bile eachother. Skippers get painted as selfish lazy exploiters, non-skippers get painted uncoordinated newbie nolifers. Both of those perspectives are a crock of bull, and the reason you’re hearing any of it at all has got more to do with the tension this unfortunate split creates than any real sentiments to you or your performance.

I love running dungeons (most of them anyway), but the thing for me and my guild is that it’s just not worth the time to kill every single mob. There is almost no reward. And risk is one of two extremes – Mobs that are boring hp sponges, or mobs that will straight up annihilate you in a hit or two (which also often have way too much hp). Then there’s Arah, which just has TOO MANY mobs as it is (of both risk varieties). Some of the trash takes longer to kill than the bosses, and at least the bosses have guaranteed loot of SOME kind. They haven’t found a sweet spot for trash where it just doesn’t feel like a waste of time to me.

And that’s not including the loot, which is for the most part nonexistent. I’m not saying everything has to drop exotics or 50 silver, but I learned real quick that the chances of getting something BAD are enough to make it not worth my time. The chances of getting something even remotely good… yeah… no. And then, there’s the fact that most of the good loot like cores/lodestones don’t even have a chance to drop off of trash at all. I honestly think if say, cores had a chance to drop off of ANYTHING in the dungeon and not just chests, more people would kill more mobs… I would probably still skip it, but at least if there’s a REASONABLE chance of dropping something worthwhile, the devs have presented you with a choice that you feel is valid – is your time worth an x% chance at something of value. Then you could decide, depending on what the value of X is, what the mob is, how long it takes to kill, etc. Right now in most eyes, there really is no choice, X is so small a number and the reward for it is so little in value.

Say you do a dungeon run, and you skip all but the necessary mobs (bosses, mobs blocking gates, etc), and it takes 30 minutes (making numbers up) and you get 26 silver plus boss chest loot. In one path of CoE I tend to average 1 rare from the chests, one core, and about 5 greens and 5 blues, give or take, plus usually 3 boss goody bags. There are some paths, where if you stop to clear everything, in that same 30 minutes you are barely halfway done… so your run takes 60 minutes, you get 26 silver, the same boss chest loot, and one extra rare from trash (let’s say worth 35 silver). Per run, yes, you’ve come ahead. But in 60 minutes, I can run twice… so I’ve made double the boss loot, double the boss bags, another 20 tokens, and another 26 silver. Plus, it’s a lot less boring to me.

It’s kind of a broken record to say it, but you do have to seek out like minded people. They are out there. There are a number that seem to post on the forums. Honestly, if you randomly joined my group (say we were looking for one) and you said that you wanted to kill everything, I would probably tell you that it isn’t the right group for you. I’m not going to tell you how to play, but at the same time, I’m not going to let you dictate how I play. Nobody has to get offensive or call either side names. Part ways and go on with life.

If they didn’t want you to skip they wouldn’t have made little ledges for you to jump on and they wouldn’t have made mobs stop chasing you. They have been very direct in saying that they don’t want mobs to keep chasing, so it’s clear to me that skipping is intended.

That’s a bit too blanket.
There are indeed obvious places built into the level design that allows for avoiding aggro entirely, and I do think those specific places are meant to be optionally skippable. But to take that as an indication that any and every instance of skipping was intended? I think that’s a bit much.

I kinda’ think if game developers had a hand in it, there would more actual game to this practice. (like Skyrim). There’s some core things missing here that are pretty important to RPGs; meaningful mob variety, progression, and character building* to name a few.

There’s also alot of value to leashing that has nothing to do with skipping (allows you to retreat and revise your approach to a fight without dying, just for starters). My ultimate desire for dungeon tweaks is that it tapers both extremes of our behavior and makes a more unified dungeon experience for the playerbase as a whole, but despite removing leashing being far and away the easiest method of accomplishing that, even I’m kind of reluctant to axe it. It’s genuinely good stuff.

*(Because of combat slowdown, the 3 S’s are OP to the point of overshadowing other options. Because these exist on utility skills mostly, you don’t have to actually build a skipping character. So there isn’t much build variety or any kind of meta to speak of.)

because they take too long otherwise.

This dead horse has been mercilessly beaten into the ground. It’s dead, stop beating it.

There’s simply no reason not to skip mobs. They have too much health and give terrible drops.

That’s it. Killing them eats up a lot of time with little reward.

If I pug I skip the risk/reward/time relationship doesn’t add up to a favorable out come most days. If I’m running with my guild it varies. Rarely do we skip Kholer as we can dps him down fast enough that the drops and the chance of rares are worth it, same for the troll and champ scavengers. In CoF we skip the bridge even on path 1 still. Much faster just to run by that.

Dyroth.5063:

If I pug I skip the risk/reward/time relationship doesn’t add up to a favorable out come most days. If I’m running with my guild it varies. Rarely do we skip Kholer as we can dps him down fast enough that the drops and the chance of rares are worth it, same for the troll and champ scavengers. In CoF we skip the bridge even on path 1 still. Much faster just to run by that.

Actually it’s beneficial to not skip kholer and troll since they can be turned on each other, both drop loot, and kholer grants you a free waypoint and chest.

I prefer skipping trash, however I ask before the run starts if everyone is on the same page. If a “newbie” is in the group (perfectly okay), I try to lead slower and guide while giving quick boss rundowns.

As to why trash is skipped: Drop Rates. It is not worth the time to kill enemies. Trash rewards should scale with our level, with trash in every dungeon dropping T6 materials. I honestly don’t see why T6 mats are so hard to come by. Blues drop all the time, and fine crafting mats should behave accordingly. Leave the rarity to Cores and Lodestones…you know…RARE quality items. I would never skip trash if they consistenly rewarded my time in doing so.

I agree that people should be able to speedrun, but that it shouldn’t me a mechanically superior option.

Speeding should be a difficult undertaking that gives equivalent risk/reward to clearing trash. The way it’s set up now, speeding is simply a better value. If nothing but trash drops were changed (I think the T6 mats idea is a really good one) we’d see a dungeon system that made speeding just as viable, but may put clearing on equal footing time/money wise.

Then you’d have really good reasons to do one or the other. Speeding would be ideal for tokens, or just to prove you can (because half the fun of a speed run is trying to shave down the time) while clearing would be more viable for sheer bulk of reward.

To the people who say the trash mobs drop trash loot, I suppose that’s where I differ. I get atrocious drops from bosses and chests – like, drops that would make a weaker person cry. Where do I get my rares and exotics? From the trash mobs. Honest to Grenth, when I get a good drop it’s off a mob most would have skipped, hence why I’ve made it a practice to avoid skipping mobs. It’s not like my time is worth money – I have five minutes to cut down a few grunts along the way without sacrificing anything else.

I may be in the minority with how the trash mobs reward me, but it’s shaped the way I approach the game.

Kill everything.

I avoid the problem by specifically advertising (for example) “LF3M TA U/U killing hounds and 1st husk” or “killing everything”. I don’t like skipping because it feels too much like a grind, and in TA’s case you have to run past everything again if the party wipes.

But for people who are running dungeons just to farm tokens as fast as they can, they’d want to skip everything, and they shouldn’t be punished for that. I don’t know about you but I avoid those ‘LF3M lvl 80 full exotics guards n wars preferdd’ types of parties so to a certain extent you can figure all this stuff out before entering the dungeon to save you a lot of frustration later.

gw2lfg.com supports killing everything as an option. when I don’t want to skip mobs, I look for posts with this option, though there are not too many.

Three words: Champion Destroyer Crab.

I’m a <Dungeon Master> and I really hate skipping stuff unless it’s Arah (Which is long enough with skipping lol). The only time I personally opt for skipping is because the group I’m with can’t handle whatever it is that needs to be passed. If it’s a pug or someone elses group though I just shut up and do as I’m told (Or leave) because it’s not worth the hassle. However really if everyone was playing at peak efficiency and not running bunker builds trying to tank stuff (really isn’t needed whatsoever), the speed at which trash gets killed would be worth the time spent killing, if you take down a bunch of silvers within seconds and some of them drop crappy blues, that’s a couple of silver for a couple of seconds work. Skipping Kohler is just silly btw, I rather think that was mostly started by peoples inability to learn how to combat him properly, people farm dragons to get nothing from chests all the time, I don’t see why you’d avoid this really.

The Blog on humanity posted above is quite amusing and very true. It’s what I’ve come to resign myself about dungeon running, people just want to get to the tokens and 26silver at the end (And sometimes EXP). They’re not THAT interested in playing the dungeon…the game, they just want to get their gear/skins/money NOW and then… and then I don’t know. If you’ve got all the gear, skins and money that you need, what do you do then? You play the game with it right? Or do you keep on playing as if you still need gear/skins/money NOW, until you realise you don’t know why you’re still doing this. Maybe try and get into WvW or PvP because the way you’ve played through the hardest content in PvE now makes all PvE seem trivial, or tedious if you try to play it as was intended. I’ve heard of and seen this happen to people several times and the comments are often then “This game is boring”.

I’ve gone on enough. I’m interested in tokens and gold too. But I’m also interested in playing the game normally without some mad rush to super speed run everything because I can’t possibly bare killing something that isn’t amazingly profitable. And though this post is a bit of a mad rant, I’m actually a pretty happy and positive person most of the time, nor elitist, so feel free to add me if you want a contact who’ll run stuff as was intended.

Edit: One of my groups burned through CoE path 3 in roughly 40 minutes, without skipping anything, including that Champ Destroyer crab. No wipes or anything, just saying lol.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

This dead horse has been mercilessly beaten into the ground. It’s dead, stop beating it.

There’s simply no reason not to skip mobs. They have too much health and give terrible drops.

That’s it. Killing them eats up a lot of time with little reward.

This.

And it’s worse now with no WP rezzing because every time you attempt unnecessary fights you take a chance someone will cause a delay by being defeated and you either have to all back out of combat and let them rez or carry on the fight more slowly with fewer people. All while getting insufficient reward for that effort.

tnarrant.9714:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

This dead horse has been mercilessly beaten into the ground. It’s dead, stop beating it.

There’s simply no reason not to skip mobs. They have too much health and give terrible drops.

That’s it. Killing them eats up a lot of time with little reward.

This.

And it’s worse now with no WP rezzing because every time you attempt unnecessary fights you take a chance someone will cause a delay by being defeated and you either have to all back out of combat and let them rez or carry on the fight more slowly with fewer people. All while getting insufficient reward for that effort.

Depends on the mobs. Many can be difficult for single players to bypass if they need to run solo because they died. It is for this reason that I recommend against skipping in most cases.

I personaly see skipping mobs as a valid srategy, if it only involves taking advantage of terrain to bypass the trash.

What i dont see as valid, and even borders exploitation, is using mesmer portals to bypass gates in crucible of eternity for instance.

Ofcourse, if end chests actually dropped something highly desirable, like unique skins (why dont we have those from dungeon end chest?) i’m all in favor in changing dungeons so to make them unskipable, either by adding closed gates or by adding some type of checklist in which you either killed all bosses or there will be no hest (kinda like FoW and UW clearing of quests for end chest)

…or add rewards for killing trash mobs – (1-2) tokens or (5-10)karma?

Why ppl are rude? It’s simple, they don’t want to waste time… but it isn’t a justification.
Solution: Before going in you should ask if it is a “fast run” where ppl skip as much as possible or just a simple run (for newbies etc.). That solves everything.

I skip almost everything becouse it’s a waste of time for me if im farming lots of gold for kitten precursor…

Oh, it’s this thread again.
Also:

I’m sorry if skipping parts of a dungeon became a legitimate strategy and I just didn’t get the memo, but I don’t like to feel ostracized for playing the game

People that are skipping are also playing the game, your argument is invalid.

I’m a <Dungeon Master>

Who isn’t? Also what does being Dungeon Master mean when we talk about skipping?

Good idea before running a dungeon, discuss what you’re doing, and what they are doing, come to an agreement, or compromise to make an agreement. Or the least you can do is not run with those people. But you can’t assume that people are going to automatically play to your standard. Gotta quickly and calmly discuss things. Again if you’re not comfortable with that party, walk away is better than regret.

Firstly I did a search for a thread that touched on this subject and didn’t see one.

Oh, it’s this thread again.
Also:

I’m sorry if skipping parts of a dungeon became a legitimate strategy and I just didn’t get the memo, but I don’t like to feel ostracized for playing the game

People that are skipping are also playing the game, your argument is invalid.

Secondly, that wasn’t an argument but an observation. You coming in here with some one liners is really just unhelpful. People in-game have been unnecessarily rude for no good reason and that shouldn’t be ignored.

When my guildmates bring a rando along to a dungeon, 2/3 times the rando is running ahead skipping stuff, and only bothers to ask some two minutes later if we’re fighting things – at which point they can no longer help because they’ve gone ahead and aggroed the next group of mobs. And we do not advertise “skipping mobs” or “speed clear” on LFG. But we also do not patronize the rando for making the assumption; we don’t ask him if he’s RPing or make snide comments.

The point I was trying to make is that skipping things shouldn’t be the default strategy. It becomes much more problematic later in the dungeon if you’ve got mobs between your current spot and the previous waypoint. People seem confused when we tell them we’re killing all the enemies and that seems wrong, somehow. Maybe I should keep a detailed log about my experiences running with dungeon groups and see how often this behavior occurs. In fact I think I will start to do that.

When I join or make a group, I ask/tell beforehand whether I feel like skipping or killing. I’d advise you do the same and if you don’t like the response, join another group. Easy.

People skip, because trash doesn’t drop appropriate rewards for the time invested. They just want the end-reward: 60 tokens and 26 silver.

Like people have said It’s not worth the time since the rewards for killing trash is just bad. I remember the days when I was raiding in another MMO WoW and the trash was always what almost every person hated the most, and it took some time before they finally reduced the trash amount in there.

I just hope arenanet will realize that most people don’t do dungeons to be busy with trash for an hour or 2 with no rewards and let us just do the challenging boss fights with easy trash and here and there a silver enemy but not all of them.

It’s really just a choice of: is this an obstacle to remove, or an obstacle to avoid. Need to communicate this to your party. Don’t assume really.

MagnumOpus.5469:

This isn’t to ask why people bother to run past mobs in dungeons, but to ask why that has to be the go-to strategy for people playing dungeons?

It looks like people can’t read, especially not the first line of the post (there should be a study on this)

On an explanation of the actual question, I assume you tend to use things like LFG.com or reading lfXm for path whatever in map chat. It is a form of selection bias. Because people who do dungeons more often (ie. they do it for rewards) tend to want to skip less rewarding activities (ie. killing trash). Hence you tend to get these people more as they will be in dungeons more, effectively over-representing their numbers.

For example you would see that if you asked a sample of random dungeon goers, 90% will say they want to skip trash where if you asked every gw2 player you may get something like 50% (completely made up numbers) .

(If you don’t get it, think of the best way to estimate average hospital stay, is it best to ask all the people currently staying how long they have been here?)

Once this is in effect, the norm becomes skipping while full clears tends to be the odd, this is not always the case, if you do story mode, you tend to kill most if not all mobs and watch all stories. So don’t complain if you want something different, just ask for it.

MagnumOpus.5469:

Firstly I did a search for a thread that touched on this subject and didn’t see one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Please-make-the-trashmobs-not-skippeable/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/stop-speed-runs/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Skipping-and-zerking-the-new-cool/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeons-Cheating-Skipping-and-Glitching/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Skipping-getting-out-of-hand/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/How-to-fix-skipping-dungeons/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/People-who-skip-dungeon-content/first

Secondly, that wasn’t an argument but an observation.

Then you had me confused, maybe because most people use it as an argument. Because they think that killing everything is playing the game and skipping isn’t.

You coming in here with some one liners is really just unhelpful.

As is creating another thread about skipping. Why is it unhelpful? Maybe because every other thread didn’t stop skipping and this one won’t do it as well.

The point I was trying to make is that skipping things shouldn’t be the default strategy. It becomes much more problematic later in the dungeon if you’ve got mobs between your current spot and the previous waypoint.

This is a problem with players skill, not with skipping itself, so I see no reason why it shouldn’t be default strategy.

jROON.7501:

MagnumOpus.5469:

This isn’t to ask why people bother to run past mobs in dungeons, but to ask why that has to be the go-to strategy for people playing dungeons?

It looks like people can’t read, especially not the first line of the post (there should be a study on this)

I thought similarly at first… but the two questions aren’t exclusive. The reason skipping is the norm is because of the reasons outlined in “why people do it”. If most people find it boring/tedious/unrewarding, then that’s my skipping is the main strategy.

That said, I’m inclined to agree that it’s probably not as extreme as the forums lead you to believe. Most of the forum posters are going to be the extremes on either side. I’m guessing a large number of people fall somewhere in the middle, or don’t care either way, or kill some things but not every thing, or will do whatever depending on the group.

MagnumOpus.5469:

To the people who say the trash mobs drop trash loot, I suppose that’s where I differ. I get atrocious drops from bosses and chests – like, drops that would make a weaker person cry. Where do I get my rares and exotics? From the trash mobs. Honest to Grenth, when I get a good drop it’s off a mob most would have skipped, hence why I’ve made it a practice to avoid skipping mobs. It’s not like my time is worth money – I have five minutes to cut down a few grunts along the way without sacrificing anything else.

I may be in the minority with how the trash mobs reward me, but it’s shaped the way I approach the game.

Kill everything.

Same here! We usually kill everything and also tell people so in advance (which sometimes results in whining but hey if you don’t like it, you are free to leave).

A few days ago a guildie dropped a set of 3 miniatures and a Black Lion key off two trash mobs in a single CM run.
I didn’t even know it was possible to drop shop items…

I’m the type that likes to kill things, and while getting people with gw2lfg I noticed there are plenty out there, they just feel like no one else likes to.

So I few days ago I started a guild for people who like to kill things in dungeons. Go ahead and read more here if you’re interested.