Guild Wars 2

hardloop von edgehoven.8512:

Anet should really implement countermeasures against that skipping plague.
theres enough stuff they could do to end this plague.
its just annoying for “new” players or those who enjoy clearing dungeons completely, fully exploring them asf.

hell they even start skipping storymode dungeons…because THEY CAN.

same reason over and over again:
“skip this”
“Y”
“time efficieny”
then same story over and over again:
first one dies on mobs running behind the leading skip/rusher
second one…
and so on.
end of story: time efficiency -100%

if u ask y they skip the boss xy, u almost always end up being told that they NEVER EVER tried to manage him, they just HEARD its hard and EVRYONE is skipping…
people who were running 100 times Ascalons never even heard of special chest after kholer, never figured out burrows tactics and so on…

i t is a painintheass to find proper people taking their time and have fun doing the ONE AND ONLY maximum efficient runs:
clear evrything, get most money out of it, most exp (in points AND knowledge) and most loot in the shortest time possible. oh and most fun for my part
(we managed to clear the “so-called” harder paths of some dungeons even with 4 newbs with subpar equip so noone tell me its too hard)

THATS EFFICIENCY FOLKS.

and dont forget to equip toughness and vitality and use some more skills than the one who make damage…

so please Anet do something to EDUCATE people to play the way it is meant to be done.

thx
end of rant

Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Skipping is simply the result of bad dungeon design. Just lower enemy health in the areas that are typically skipped. Problem solved.

Swagg.9236:

Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Skipping is simply the result of bad dungeon design. Just lower enemy health in the areas that are typically skipped. Problem solved.

Or just add tokens to trash mobs and increase the number of tokens earned by killing some bosses (like Kholer and the troll on AC).
This way, people will love to kill those and also, will reduce the times you need to run a dungeon, hence, reducing you desire to skip (yep, people like OP may want to enjoy the run but most people run for gold and tokens and that require a kittenload of runs and after doing the same over and over, people just want to do it in the fast and easy way).

If you don’t like then find some friends that don’t skip and play with them, no need to force the rest of us to waste our time.

Why do you keep on joining groups that wants to skip? I am puzzled.

Start your own party and dungeons. This way you can play by your rules.
TA: I state ‘Killing hounds and husk’. Gets me a party within 5 mins each time. Those who can’t handle a few puppies, don’t join. Win-win situation.

CoF: I state ‘Killing EVERYTHING’. Those who can’t read my lfg, party kicks. Simple.

Arah: My first time in Arah, the party cleared EVERYTHING outside Lupi’s room. That took about an hour with nothing more than a few piles of incandescent dust. This dungeon’s about picking fights selectively. If I ’m gonna spend more than 2 hrs in a dungeon, I expect more than 60 tokens and 26 silver.

AC: As much as I love Kholer, the post-patched AC is bad. How ironic is it that we can clear SE/HoTW/CoE faster than a level 35 dungeon?

wauwi.9162:

Adam.4103:

I’ll play the way I want thank you very much. By the sounds of things you have too much time on your hands, fighting pointless trash mobs is nothing but a waste of time. Many bosses don’t reward well enough for the time it takes to kill them.

Plus when you’re trying to farm a dungeon doing the same things again and again gets old fast, so any way to speed things up is great.

All in all find a group that thinks the same way as you, just don’t think you can tell others what to do with a game they paid for.

so if i have the rights to play the game as i want, i can now feel free to do the following stuff, according to all those skipper’s “i can play however i want”-logic?
- exploiting (hey, it’s in the game sometimes and until its fixed, i can (ab)use it, right? i mean i can play however i want…)
- cheating (i’ve paid for the game, so lemme cheat plox)
- griefing (my 50 bucks, my game so i do it because i can)

“you can’t tell me what to do so you have no rights to complain if i do one of the above stuff”
#EPICLOGIC

dungeon skipping would be exploiting flawed dungeon design. i guess it’s just easier for a-net to clean up the mess afterwards, because so many (MANY) players are doing speedruns right now. would complicate things to prohibit speedruns until those dungeon design flaws are fixed.
AC and CM are examples of a better, fixed design. (though, they’re still a bit flawed)
CoE is an example of a good dungeon design. (the reason, why it’s the least played dungeon, i guess…)

the rewards at the end are not supposed to be obtained within 5-7 minutes, you know…slashing those “trashmobs” is part of getting those rewards.
fully completing a GW2 dungeon is also not some sort of 6-hour odyssey like in many k-grinders. well, skipping is a major part in many traditional mmorpg’s, considered and intended by developers. [“/say: everybody to the left wall until next room, k”]

tl;dr
a game have rules. dungeons in GW2 have their rules.
flawed dungeon designs making it possible for players to bypass these rules.
conclusion: skippers are exploiting.

it’s quite a shame, that speedruns and skipping strategies are so openly postet and discussed at these forums…not very promising for the future.

You obviously have no idea what an exploit actually is. But whatever you keep on wasting time fighting pointless trash mobs.

wauwi.9162:

Adam.4103:

I’ll play the way I want thank you very much. By the sounds of things you have too much time on your hands, fighting pointless trash mobs is nothing but a waste of time. Many bosses don’t reward well enough for the time it takes to kill them.

Plus when you’re trying to farm a dungeon doing the same things again and again gets old fast, so any way to speed things up is great.

All in all find a group that thinks the same way as you, just don’t think you can tell others what to do with a game they paid for.

so if i have the rights to play the game as i want, i can now feel free to do the following stuff, according to all those skipper’s “i can play however i want”-logic?
- exploiting (hey, it’s in the game sometimes and until its fixed, i can (ab)use it, right? i mean i can play however i want…)
- cheating (i’ve paid for the game, so lemme cheat plox)
- griefing (my 50 bucks, my game so i do it because i can)

“you can’t tell me what to do so you have no rights to complain if i do one of the above stuff”
#EPICLOGIC

dungeon skipping would be exploiting flawed dungeon design. i guess it’s just easier for a-net to clean up the mess afterwards, because so many (MANY) players are doing speedruns right now. would complicate things to prohibit speedruns until those dungeon design flaws are fixed.
AC and CM are examples of a better, fixed design. (though, they’re still a bit flawed)
CoE is an example of a good dungeon design. (the reason, why it’s the least played dungeon, i guess…)

the rewards at the end are not supposed to be obtained within 5-7 minutes, you know…slashing those “trashmobs” is part of getting those rewards.
fully completing a GW2 dungeon is also not some sort of 6-hour odyssey like in many k-grinders. well, skipping is a major part in many traditional mmorpg’s, considered and intended by developers. [“/say: everybody to the left wall until next room, k”]

tl;dr
a game have rules. dungeons in GW2 have their rules.
flawed dungeon designs making it possible for players to bypass these rules.
conclusion: skippers are exploiting.

it’s quite a shame, that speedruns and skipping strategies are so openly postet and discussed at these forums…not very promising for the future.

You obviously didn’t play much GW1 did you? A-Net has always let players speed run through things (even though they obviously didn’t particularly like it) but they resolved that it was better to allow the players to have a choice. You are trying to deny players choice which will not make you very many friends, even among people who also enjoy clearing content.

Yeah, and if they don’t like that you don’t like it, let’s not forget they can just kick you out – all the way outta the dungeon

daimasei.4091:

Swagg.9236:

Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Skipping is simply the result of bad dungeon design. Just lower enemy health in the areas that are typically skipped. Problem solved.

Or just add tokens to trash mobs and increase the number of tokens earned by killing some bosses (like Kholer and the troll on AC).
This way, people will love to kill those and also, will reduce the times you need to run a dungeon, hence, reducing you desire to skip (yep, people like OP may want to enjoy the run but most people run for gold and tokens and that require a kittenload of runs and after doing the same over and over, people just want to do it in the fast and easy way).

They had mid-bosses like Kohler give more tokens just after game release, but then people sometimes only farm the first 1 or 2 bosses for fast tokens and reset the dungeons to repeat. Especially common in Arah where most parties weren’t able to pass through Lupicus.

OP, players like you are the ones doing dungeons wrong. You don’t kill every enemy in mario, or any other game.

LostInSmoke.2590:

OP, players like you are the ones doing dungeons wrong. You don’t kill every enemy in mario, or any other game.

every enemy in mario doesn’t have a chance to give you good loot.

It’s the dungeon design. There should be rewards for people that fully clear a dungeon. I remember in GW1 there were achievements and titles called Vanquisher titles that granted you extra bonuses, why not bring this to GW2? I’d love to get me a Vanquisher Title, or a special bonus like increased drops/exp/karma. Or extra tokens/items for vanquishing a dungeon. Say a special dungeon token that buys you ascended accessories for that specific dungeon for vanquishing a path. Of course there will be limits/DR associated but a system needs to be in place for example increased number of enemies in paths will grant more rewards, Say Arah path 4 vanquishing reward is far more superior than Cof path 1 vanquishing reward.

The way Vanquisher worked on GW1 was, there was a bar on top that filled as you defeat enemies, when you defeated all enemies you’ve Vanquished the instance, and you’d get bonuses/extra rewards.

Rewards for speed runners maybe? Daily, Weekly and Monthly, Yearly speed records of the dungeon are recorded and if you beat a specific you get a reward? Say you beat last months speed record you get an ascended item + goodies. Last weeks record? An exotic + goods and so on. By goods i mean, tokens/karma/exp/minis/black lion keys/items etc.

How about a Hard Mode also with it’s own vanquisher and speed achievements. Where rather mobs don’t have more HP but additional attacks. Lupicus single target bolt and siphon attacks inflict agony, he could also summon wells on phase 3, he spawns grubs on 2 people instead of 1, etc.. The abomination on arah path 2 inflicts agony if it knocks you down. Extra rewards for increased difficulty.

Just some ideas off the top of my head. I think things like these would make dungeons more appealing to all kinds of players.

OP, players like you are the ones doing dungeons wrong. You don’t kill every enemy in mario, or any other game.

That’s an apples to oranges comparison.

If anything’s comparable to Mario in this game, it’s Super Adventure Box. You notice how nobody ever talks about skipping or speedrunning or fullclearing in Super Adventure Box? Same playerbase, same basic rewards system as dungeons with tokens at the end for purchasing unique skins, no base-breaking culture divide to be seen for miles.

hardloop von edgehoven.8512:

Anet should really implement countermeasures against that skipping plague.
theres enough stuff they could do to end this plague.
its just annoying for “new” players or those who enjoy clearing dungeons completely, fully exploring them asf.

hell they even start skipping storymode dungeons…because THEY CAN.

same reason over and over again:
“skip this”
“Y”
“time efficieny”
then same story over and over again:
first one dies on mobs running behind the leading skip/rusher
second one…
and so on.
end of story: time efficiency -100%

if u ask y they skip the boss xy, u almost always end up being told that they NEVER EVER tried to manage him, they just HEARD its hard and EVRYONE is skipping…
people who were running 100 times Ascalons never even heard of special chest after kholer, never figured out burrows tactics and so on…

i t is a painintheass to find proper people taking their time and have fun doing the ONE AND ONLY maximum efficient runs:
clear evrything, get most money out of it, most exp (in points AND knowledge) and most loot in the shortest time possible. oh and most fun for my part
(we managed to clear the “so-called” harder paths of some dungeons even with 4 newbs with subpar equip so noone tell me its too hard)

THATS EFFICIENCY FOLKS.

and dont forget to equip toughness and vitality and use some more skills than the one who make damage…

so please Anet do something to EDUCATE people to play the way it is meant to be done.

thx
end of rant

Plague of non skipper posts, ugh! so old

Vox Hollow.2736:

That’s an apples to oranges comparison.

If anything’s comparable to Mario in this game, it’s Super Adventure Box. You notice how nobody ever talks about skipping or speedrunning or fullclearing in Super Adventure Box? Same playerbase, same basic rewards system as dungeons with tokens at the end for purchasing unique skins, no base-breaking culture divide to be seen for miles.

uh actually the rewards are pretty different

the adventure box primarily rewards skins and items that can only be used in adventure box, those that aren’t are
obsidian shards (account bound)
crystals/ philosophers stones ( soul bound equivalent to xp )
adventure box of fun. (account bound consumable toy)

dungeons reward
(fractals)
tokens for BIS gear or obsidian shards/ skillpoints / 20 slot bags
(non fractals)
tokens for consumable: tonics/ runes /potions/recipes rare/exotic armour / weapons karma (bag of wondrous goods)
(both)
tokens for gifts
rares, exotics, exp, coin

so yeah apples to oranges
items that give no advantage outside the instance to tradable goods and stat increasing items

anyway the problem imo is not so much skipping but that its usually done using exploits

you can watch CM solo to see them exploit on pretty much every boss using bugs in the environment to avoid attacks/aggro and to skip past lots of mobs, this has been going on for months, the devs are well aware. so either exploiting in dungeons is OK or they’re monitoring it and bans are incoming once they have fixes ready to deploy.

anything that allows you to completely bypass/ignore an intended mechanic is an exploit and you should get banned for it.

‘with tokens’, not ‘and tokens’. As in, tokens are the part that is the same, not tokens additionally are the same on top of other similarities.

But, it’s not like you don’t have a good point. “You don’t see a base breaking culture split in SAB because it’s a self-enclosed system, and by virtue of giving you access to gold directly or indirectly dungeons aren’t.” People can just have fun with SAB because there aren’t any stakes, and running a dungeon is ‘profitable’.

But, what do you actually spend your profits on?
Blueprints? Crafting? Gemstore Items? Sure, you can use the excess financial gains for more than just funding a legendary or toying around with builds.
But, do you?

If you’re running dungeons and getting money so that you can either do better or look better while running dungeons, then gold may as well be baubles for you in how much of a self-enclosed currency it ends up being in practice. And when you stop to think about it, it’s really not so strange that a Dungeoneer could get like that. Other formats either don’t use gold (sPvP), don’t need much gold (Open World PvE), or don’t necessarily have a demographic overlap so the people who run dungeons don’t spend their gold on things in it (WvW).

Now, there probably are a few hardcore WvW/Dungeoneers out there, a number of people running dungeons and working their way through alot of Crafting, and at least one poor sucker who runs dungeons to feed his Gemstore habit. So I’m not saying gold is baubles for everybody. But I am saying gold can be baubles for anybody and might be for more people than we may realize just by virtue of not having much else to spend it on.

“What makes you think people too terrible to skip trash are going to be good enough not to wipe repeatedly doing a full clear?”

others who also started like evry player with knowing nothing about dungeon xy, incl myself.
getting nervous the first times and checking nothing is a very normal process u know.
nothing to worry about.

but all those team-gimps out there only playin for their own pocket and their own fun without caring about others pocket and others fun destroying evryones learning process at all when forcing evry new one to play the skipping bullkitten.

we met dozens of players with even full exotics skipping kholer e.g., when u ask them, almost all didnt even kill him once in their player career. its hilarious.
those are the ones spamming the forums, those are the ones spamming the game and destroying the gameplay and gaming culture within gw2.

i dont like it, its asocial, like it would be in real life. i will fight this forever.

if i only count the last 6 days we met a dozen new players who never did a full ac run before, didnt know nohting about some bosses, or how loot u can get out of it.
now theyre askin regularly for runs and spreading the word to their companions that its possible to make a full clear run in no time.

and yes there are always players who dont learn nothing even after playing for month and weeks, but with 4 decent players u even can pull this ones thru these dungeons unless he dont force wipes regularly.
at least he can do some damage on top, cos thats all most people can do: some damage.

I am soon going to make a thread called “Plague of people complaining about how others play the game”. Never have I played an mmo with this many people complaining about how other people play. If you don’t want to skip, make your own group and specify that you don’t want to skip anything. Or maybe we should start making threads complaining about how many people don’t want to skip and how it’s ruining the community that they are stopping to kill trash for no reward. Seriously, play the game how you want, no one is complaining about how you play so how about you give us the same courtesy?

A fix for this could be. Points needed for completion of the dungeon. Each monster awards a certain amount of points for completion.

My position on skipping is simple: Don’t do it in a pug unless you marked the pug as a speed run. When you are in a pug, assume you are NOT running. Not the other way around. This is not because there’s some moral objection to skipping things, it’s about results. It’s a bad idea to skip while pugging because you can’t guarantee everyone knows how to skip every encounter. Time and time again I pug it up with people who give no warning that they’re about to run past this encounter (but not that one immediately before) and don’t spend 10 seconds communicating their intentions, preferring to simply assume. When the dust settles, me and one other have made it to the other side. One guy made it through the mass but is lost because he can’t find the jumping exploit we’re using and is stuck in combat, one guy is downed in the middle of the vat and one guy didn’t make it through and is stuck on the far side and is stuck in combat. Result: you’ve lost all the time that could have been gained and more. “But they should be less noobish and learn how to skip!” you say. Well it’s too bloody late isn’t it? You think they’ve wasted everyone’s time and they think you’ve wasted everyone’s time and your precious speed run turns into a slog.

The problem isn’t skipping in itself, it’s all the folks skipping blindly. You aren’t skipping because skipping is fun, you’re doing it because you’re looking for results. Blind rushing in a pug more often than not does not net you results, it just frustrates people who want to skip and frustrates people who don’t want to skip. If as a pug you approach every encounter with the intent to fight, you hedge against that chance (likelihood) of failure and downtime. The vast majority of drama delays or failures-to-complete I’ve experienced pugging every bloody dungeon come when groups are divided about skipping, or when all agree to rush but then fail to do it when they could have just spent a couple minutes kicking the dogs over. The average pug is not going to have the skill level of even a mediocre guild group with any experience working together and communicating by voice. Strategies (because yes, skipping things is your strategy) that works under those conditions will not work all the time in a pug.

And then you get to the old excuse that “this is what everyone does”. It’s not. There’s no basis or evidence that most players prefer to skip. What’s probably true is that the great majority of runs completed involve rushing or skipping but the vast majority of runs are completed by a small percentage of people. Most people – the ones who pug now and again rather than run 3 or 4 a day every day, are much more amenable to killing things, both because they aren’t jaded and because it’s not going to work for them.

So please, remember that your objective is to be efficient and don’t skip unless you’re absolutely bloody certain the entire party is on the same page.

Skipping content in dungeons has become the norm for most parties.

The reasons for skipping can be that the content is too hard, or time consuming.

There needs to be certain ways to lock players from skipping a part such as doorways that don’t open until the latest objective is complete.

Skipping content is a possibility and it could be totally prevented if Anet wanted (mobs could not reset aggro for example). Anet has already said there was optional content in dungeons and that skipping is fine (I remember a post about Kholer being optional).
There are already some places where you can’t skip.
If you don’t want to skip content, then say so when you’re looking for a group. I do see some post on lfg site specifically saying they do not want to skip.
Most people tend to skip content because they’re time consuming and not rewarding and/or not fun either.

There are multiple things brought up here, but I think they come into general catagories.

1. Enjoyment: Different people enjoy different things, I personally really enjoy some of the places where you can Skip mobs, TA for example. I enjoy and run TA far more than CoF. If I was doing it because I wanted the most rewards in the fastest time I would do CoF. But I’m doing TA because I really enjoy dodging knock down attacks, triggering the right abilities at the right time to avoid dying etc. For me the enjoyment comes from the challenge and I find a good rat run far more fun than fighting multiple groups of trash mobs.

2. Exploitation: Running past mobs, skipping Kholer are not exploitation, it’s even being stated as such by the creators. Walking through a wall, jumping over a door, or falling through a ceiling that is not actually there is not the same as skipping a mob, and really shouldn’t come into this conversation.

3. Truthfulness: A lot of the time I see new players join a team, say nothing to suggest they have never run a path before. Then when it comes to a section and someone says Skip, they die multiple times because they don’t know how. All it takes for me to change how I run a dungeons is for someone to actually go “Hey this is my first time” or “Can we clear these dogs as I have a real issue running past this”. This is equally true for ads on LFG. if you don’t like skipping be truthful about it. It’s obvious from this post that a lot of people don’t like doing it so it’s very possible that you can get a team together if you put up an advertisement for “looking for a team for X, killing all bosses and most mobs”. You may even get people that normally skip, if you just advertise for CoF path 1, you have got to accept that people will probably run past the boss on the bridge or get annoyed if you start demanding to fight it.

4. Immersion. Just because for you immersion is killing every mob in a dungeon it might not be for everyone else. For example CoF path 1, Ferrah is obviously distraught because her friend is being sacrificed. To me the goal is to get there as fast as possible before she is killed, so it feels totally right to skip past the boss on the bridge whose only job it is too slow you down so they can complete the ritual and try to get her friend out ASAP. Likewise in AC, the Priory are getting overwhelmed by Gravelings so you are hired to take out one of the Breeders as quickly as possible before they all get eaten. Stopping halfway to beat up a Human that is too stupid to know he’s dead is not part of the mission brief so I have no issue skipping it.

5. Reason for doing Dungeons. To me the reason to do dungeons is because they are NOT grinding mobs for XP. So why would I go into a Dungeon and grind trash mobs? Now this is me. Other people might do them for different reasons. But for me it’s interesting boss mechanics, dodging through running parts, those cool missions like protect Maggs that keep me interested, not grinding trash mobs.

SO TLDR: People do dungeons for different reasons. Respect that reason and try not to ruin it for people that enjoy them in different ways.

It does make sense from a lore standpoint you want to help your NPC hero as fast as possible, and not be delayed in fighting unnecessary monsters if it can be avoided

I love skipping, OP and other like him act as though they have never done a dungeon before, once you have played a few MMO’s all dungeons are basically the same, my goal is to get my tokens, faster the better.

I love skipping, OP and other like him act as though they have never done a dungeon before, once you have played a few MMO’s all dungeons are basically the same, my goal is to get my tokens, faster the better.

That’s like saying Greifers exist in every game so EVE Online has a friendly community.
There’s a difference between something existing, and being so pronounced and over-the-top it’s a defining characteristic of the game.

What blows my mind about skippers is that they skip mobs that are actually MORE difficult to skip than just to kill normally. For example, the Deadeyes in Arah can be easily killed by pulling one and then Line-of-Sighting them to get them in close. One less mob to worry about for the trek, and no one risks getting one-shotted and slowing the run down, and less crap to run back through in the event of a wipe. And yet hardly anyone does this simple task that shouldn’t take longer than 15 seconds to do with a competent group.

It’s no wonder every party has to have a Mesmer in it for mass invis, since people have just gotten so lazy they don’t even know basic MMORPG dungeon tactics, and instead just try to marathon run everything without even thinking.

PolishSausage.1279:

What blows my mind about skippers is that they skip mobs that are actually MORE difficult to skip than just to kill normally. For example, the Deadeyes in Arah can be easily killed by pulling one and then Line-of-Sighting them to get them in close. One less mob to worry about for the trek, and no one risks getting one-shotted and slowing the run down, and less crap to run back through in the event of a wipe. And yet hardly anyone does this simple task that shouldn’t take longer than 15 seconds to do with a competent group.

It’s no wonder every party has to have a Mesmer in it for mass invis, since people have just gotten so lazy they don’t even know basic MMORPG dungeon tactics, and instead just try to marathon run everything without even thinking.

deadeyes aren’t hard to skip… you know there’s a big timer that pops up on your buff bar that lets you know exactly when to dodge. And why do you think people need a mesmer to get people past? A competent group really doesn’t need one. Mesmers are pretty bad at running and if people need one to get past something, that just means it’s the rest of the team that’s bad. If you REALLY need a mass invis, a thief can keep you invis indefinitely.

Wethospu.6437:

I can’t run from Alphard to Brie when drunk.

You should try your jumping skills by doing the super secret jumping puzzle

I like getting shot at.

Skippin requires communication in a game with no built in VOIP. I’ve been in groups with a theif where we skipped, decided to run another path, theif had to leave, but the players still thought we could skip like we did before. Usually you can do “ok” but this team wasn’t up for the challenge. But it was impossible to convince them that “look, we aren’t configured for this because we die every time”. Being able to skip skippable mobs generally requires practice and communication, two things many PUGs struggle with.

So for me, the problem isn’t skipping per se, rather, it’s a lack of communication when doing content intended for good team work and communication.

Chopps.5047:

Skippin requires communication in a game with no built in VOIP. I’ve been in groups with a theif where we skipped, decided to run another path, theif had to leave, but the players still thought we could skip like we did before. Usually you can do “ok” but this team wasn’t up for the challenge. But it was impossible to convince them that “look, we aren’t configured for this because we die every time”.

What amazes me in the few pugs I’ve been in is the people who continue to try the exact same things that failed before, and expect different results.

I keep on trying until i make it.
I wish more pugs would do that instead of ragequitting at the 4th fail.
Probanly people would also learn that they are responsable for their surviving instead of saying “you group suck, cant even run closed so ‘we’ die!”.

So, I just made an Arah Path 2 group with a focus on actually killing stuff instead of just blindly running through everything, and because I was getting tired of elitist jerks running their mouths all the time.

Basically, we actually took our time, pulled mobs carefully, LoSed the deadeyes, AoEd the grubs after baiting the kamikazes to explode, etc etc. the only quick route we used was the ship shortcut, which was only because none of us actually knew the path to the final boss because the boat route was all anyone ever did. Not only did we get a lot of loot from the mobs we killed, I even got a couple rares, and we all actually had a good time. Even Lupi ended up being semi manageable. This is compared to pretty much every other group I get into that just tries to barrel through everything as fast as possible, which generally ends up being a frustrating mess because at least one or more person are being massive kitten, or someone else keeps getting killed on one of the runs because the group didn’t bother killing any of the mobs en route. Sure it took a bit longer, but the actual time spent wasn’t really that much different from groups I normally have, only without the frustration and questioning of humanity.

Moral of the story: actually doing the content is more satisfying and less of a pain than blindly running through everything like a pack of kittenes and hoping for the best.

I wouldn’t talk about doing content if you use ship.

The first time I ever did Arah part two was with a group of four friends with one pick-up addition to fill out our party.

The experience highlighted to me, at least, the biggest problem with skipping.

The four of us had zero idea what we were doing and just plowed through the dungeon for the most part just killing everything in our way. Our pick-up guy was trying to lead us on the path of usual exploits to get around things and it failed rather spectacularly on a few occasions. In the ensuing argument about why the heck we were wasting time trying to exploit stuff when we could just smash it flat for the same time cost as our first failure, the question came up about what exactly we were trying to skip over and what it was saving.

The pick-up guy who was trying to skip everything didn’t know. Farmed arah dozens of times. Not ONCE had the guy actually done the dungeon the straightforward way. The skipping was just the way it was done, the way he had been taught to do it, and the way he repeated by rote every time. I assuming this is rather common for Arah groups given the ‘Be Experienced11!!21!’ note most of them put on.

That is what’s wrong.

Skipping stuff in dungeons is not normally about using your class and skills to avoid fighting or to make things to faster. Throwing on swiftness and running through mobs until they drop requires the very least amount of skill. Getting up on a ledge or a rock so the boss can’t hit you isn’t a great feat either. In most cases it’s about making the dungeon run more mechanical – more mindless, so it requires less coordination and skill to get to the end result.

For example the wall exploit in the Butcher fight in HotW, or fighting from ledges where they couldn’t get hit. People would pile into the hole in the wall there just so they could shoot the boss with ranged weapons without getting hit. It doesn’t make it go any faster. It just makes it so players have to execute the very minimum of effort.

Fark, that sort of thing is boring.

There are some things I legitimately understand people skipping. For example the big bandit clusters in the caves in Caudecus manor that come at you as a group. If you fight them, it’s very punishing. It’s punishing and there’s nothing to be really gained. That much seems to be bad design.

I think what dungeons really need is scaled rewards and alternative ways to reach the end goal. Things like running through mobs aren’t tactics. The fact it works is no less part of the problem than the fact people don’t see it as worth the effort. If reward scales with effort then you’ll encourage more people to do complete clears. More importantly I think, if there really were alternative approaches that allowed people who could handle harder content to do the dungeon faster, it would cut down on skipping. Having alternative approaches that makes fights harder, but shorter, would also be another thing to try. Is it as simple as giving trash enemies less health and making them do more damage so they go down faster while still offering some challenge?