Guild Wars 2

I’m very disappointed with a few specific dungeon mechanics in this game that’s allowing players to skip parts of the path. A few players I ran with in this AC party, moments ago, appear to be trolls that I hope does not represent the rest of the dungeon runners around AC.

What am I saying? Well, this is what happened. So apparently…. the AC Dungeon Path 2 no longer spawns the Troll which can be used to fight the Kholer, and it also disallow players to move on to ‘Trap the Graveling Breeder’ without first defeating the Kholer.

Now, I’m okay with that personally…. but what ticked me off was that my party member seemed to think that “that was Anet’s intention by design”, and when we as a party couldn’t neither move on to the next section nor kill the Kholer (because they were all just getting pulled in and dying to Kholer’s spin), long story short – the experience became a painful one & some cussing occured between our party members before we parted our separate ways.

(Now correct me if I’m wrong… but I just assumed Anet has finally fixed these sequential programming bugs so that players now have to run through everything in a dungeon – which IMO has been their real intention all along). My point here is that…. I really dislike Anet for just allowing shortcuts to be left around 2-3 months around the dungeon, like they were actually suppose to be part of the dungeon strats… which at this point thinking about it; it really just makes me confused. It’s like the whole ascended gear thing; one day it seems normal, the next day they said “nope. this is actually what we meant”.

TL; DR – Just mad and confused. Wanted to get that feeling out of my chest & for Anet to see :S

Troll has always had multiple possible spawn locations, it has never been guaranteed to spawn near Kholer. Kholer can also be skipped, as well as the troll if it happens to spawn. Running past them after aggroing won’t affect your ability to finish the path.

iirc, officials mentioned that Kholer is supposed to be an optional boss. which now gives some loot, a chest, as well as the convenience of a central WP. he was never needed to advance any of the paths.

i think in your instance may have been a one time bug? did you report it?
usually you can just run past Kholer and will be fine.

akamon.2769:

iirc, officials mentioned that Kholer is supposed to be an optional boss. which now gives some loot, a chest, as well as the convenience of a central WP. he was never needed to advance any of the paths.

i think in your instance may have been a one time bug? did you report it?
usually you can just run past Kholer and will be fine.

As he said, Kholer has been said to be optional by choice. If there really was no way to advance then this is more then likely a bug.

Kohler is an optional boss the stairway on the left side of the room allows you to bypass him completely without any kind of jumping.

Troll has 4 possible spawn locations that i know of and 1 is always blocked off to you regardless of the path you choose (which is a shame because i would love to fight him everytime for the reward)

1. Kholer is a bonus boss – Dev’s themselves have stated he is optional. It would actually be a bug if he would be required to kill.

2. Troll is random, you might have him there to kill kholer, you might not. Personally I just kill Kholer myself with the group since it is faster than dancing around the troll (not to mention new players to the dungeon don’t know what they hell your doing by pulling X2 bosses and freak out).

Edit: Here is the quote by Robert Hrouda – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/How-logn-until-the-Lt-exploit-is-fixed-in-AC-explorable/first

It’s not an exploit to skip Kholer. He’s a bonus boss that unlocks a central waypoint, drops loot, and also gives a chest…….

If you think the AC “shortcuts” are bad, run SE CoE CM… it is awful and ArenaNet needs to get on the ball fix these short cuts and prevent players from using them. There is nothing wrong with skipping trash but if I can jump over terrain or stand on a box to prevent a boss from attacking, it is a major problem making dungeons unfun.

I wish the Guild Wars 2 team would stop skipping exploits by putting doors and locked invisible walls on top of the mountains in CM for example, instead of making dungeons ridiculously difficult.

I say that because nowadays, if I want to pug a run, all I see is people skipping, and that’s not something I want to do. Some people leave after the first 2 deaths if we kill things as they are supposed to be killed.

I want loot and bosses I can defeat with random people if my friends aren’t online or don’t want to run a dungeon with me.

I wish troll spawned more often, more golds!

As they said above, troll is, sadly, pretty random.

I do miss the “phasing” trick in the Dredge fractals though…

If you can’t kill Kholer without the aid of the Troll then just uninstall because you’re a bad. He drops 15s (with Omnom bar), a chance at a wonder bag (with 3 badges and ~3s), a chest and the WP and only takes like 5 minutes. The same speed obsessed elitists that skip Kholer and the Troll also skip the two lizard champs that drop 7s each (w/ bar). That is 45s, a chest and a chance for two wonder bags, pass that up to get badges of which I already have like 1,000+ in my bank.

To be fair, I don’t think it’s good to tell anyone how to play a dungeon. if people want to skip, and you don’t, don’t party with them. Same vice versa. If you really hate people skipping, a simple LFG “no skipping please” would work.

People who like to skip are either
1) Bad pugs who can’t lead and have been carried and do not know how to coordinate/work with a team to finish a dungeon
or
2) Efficient pugs who know how to work with their members and speed through skippable content just to make monies/tokens or gain exp

People who do not skip are either
1) Totally new and don’t know how to
or
2) Even more efficient pugs who have confidence in their party and dps/tactics to kill bosses for even more loot (and know exactly which bosses to loot/are worth looting)

It seems to me a lot of people get the people who like to skip and assumes everyone knows how to skip and doesn’t know how to work with all professions and coordinate them per event in the dungeon. In which case, they are bad.

Generally most good pugs ask if anyone has done this before.

Generally most bad pugs never speak.

Kohler is skippable in all paths, even without troll. There is a stairs on the left side of the room that will allow you to bypass center platform. Or you can just walk up the middle stairs, on the edge.

FluffyDoe.7539:

…. but what ticked me off was that my party member seemed to think that “that was Anet’s intention by design”, and when we as a party couldn’t neither move on to the next section nor kill the Kholer (because they were all just getting pulled in and dying to Kholer’s spin), long story short – the experience became a painful one & some cussing occured between our party members before we parted our separate ways.

Just wanted to say that if your party get stuck on the path by not be able to finish Kholer, then why wouldn’t it be fair that your party work on the dodges and finish it. Mostly we skip only to save time. And IMO Kholer is a good yet simple dodge exercise which will be needed in the dungeons everywhere.
I mean… I would consider it as a “basic skill sets” for a player to be able to progress into later dungeons. Won’t u agree?

@ArcTheFallen: I agree most parts. Ppl should have a choice of doing dungeons they wish. It just takes a bit of effort notifying ppl during group forming of whether the leader wants to skip or not.

For the reason of ppl who do not want to skip, I can think of 1 more reason which they had a bad experience of skipping in dungeons that make them avoid doing the same thing.

There is a difference between skipping bosses and skipping trash mob. Silver dropping champs aside, trash mobs give really poor returns.

For me personally, I generally know which are the parts that can be skipped or fought so I will ask for a party decision. But if the group is not that good, I will always opt to fight to facilitate running back. Having for 1 member to run back from the wp as he/she got killed in mid journey is a waste of time.

As for newcomers, I would prefer them to voice out the fact that they are new. Personally, there are some tell-tale signs if a person is new and I will ask. And if I am leading the dungeon, so far I have given the necessary tips along the way to help them. But the signs are not 100% accurate and its when they are confused during the puzzle segments that I know they are new. They are even some newcomers that blatantly refused to acknowledge being new despite being asked. And when they do not know what to do when the time comes, ppl tend to get negative. Newcomers only have to be new 1 time and frankly speaking, it takes more effort for someone to explain the necessary parts than a newcomer to state that they are new.

After playing this game for two months and getting two 80s, I’m coming to the conclusion that most PVE in this game is generally a waste of time.

You feel like all the ‘behind the scenes’ mechanics like DR are working against you.
There’s little reward for it even without DR.
Too many players with no skill and or actually trolling your group with bad behavior.
Every instance/event seems to have a glitch everyone ‘in the know’ exploits.

Jericho.5940:

FluffyDoe.7539:

…. but what ticked me off was that my party member seemed to think that “that was Anet’s intention by design”, and when we as a party couldn’t neither move on to the next section nor kill the Kholer (because they were all just getting pulled in and dying to Kholer’s spin), long story short – the experience became a painful one & some cussing occured between our party members before we parted our separate ways.

Just wanted to say that if your party get stuck on the path by not be able to finish Kholer, then why wouldn’t it be fair that your party work on the dodges and finish it. Mostly we skip only to save time. And IMO Kholer is a good yet simple dodge exercise which will be needed in the dungeons everywhere.
I mean… I would consider it as a “basic skill sets” for a player to be able to progress into later dungeons. Won’t u agree?

Naw. I don’t assume the best of people; having the basic skills required to proceed, since Anet pointed out that they want to be inclusive of every player of every skill level. It be dumb to take that for granted.

Secondly, what I was irritated about was that my party members blamed me for aggroing Kholer, and they assumed that’s why it bugged out. I honestly don’t really care whether the boss is skippable or not (but they do obviously).

Ultimately though, players would be mad if they don’t do dungeons their way (ie. like they think knowing dungeon shortcuts has something to do with skills, which obvious doesn’t and I got no idea why they just taunted me for it).

I run dungeons on a super casual bases… but I’d expect that at around lvl 80 players know that having a solid combat skill in GW2 allows you to play the game anyway you want. But obvs many people in PvE doesn’t seem to see it that way; even though they’ve run easier dungeons like ACs multiple times before. And I don’t really care to judge people of their skill level… but when they do something stupid and think it’s the smart thing to do, IMO that’s what ticks me off; like you tell them “GW2 combat requires understanding of skills and not just content shortcuts”, but they just don’t bother to think that that’s an important point to keep in-mind.

IMO, rushing dungeon is a waste of time for myself, because I play a game if I ‘enjoy its play experience’. I don’t see how if you don’t like doing something every second, why you are wasting your free time doing it. And wanting to skip dungeon parts simply proves you don’t really like the combat, because every dungeon is 90% combat progression.

I enjoy certain aspects of dungeon which give me opportunities to reach a personal achievement. Some examples are:

1. kholer: kill him without getting pulled once
2. burrows (AC path 3) eliminate burrows as fast as possible (record atm is 87% i think)
3. path 2 COF suicide train: Solo the start, reach the highest percentage before dying (my record atm is 48%)

So yeah stuff like that entertain me especially when doing a dungeon I have 5000+ tokens from

PUG groups are such a roll of the dice. I’ve run a lot of dungeons recently and found that the majority of the players want it quick and easy. They dont group well or use there group benefitting abilities at all. They dont know the dungeons and they want to skip content a lot. And some are just plain rude.

Then every once in awhile I have a fantastic group and it makes me wish I could run everything with them. They are polite, they revive, they know how the play their profession and they know the dungeons.

As someone who has PUG’d a lot over the years in different MMO’s my only advice is dont let it aggrevate you when you get a bad group. Keep quiet, dont get engaged in a battle of words, finish up the dungeon if you think its possible with that group and move on as quickly as possible. Dwelling on a bad experience just makes things more sour.

@FluffyDoe: The way I see it is you are being affected by that bad PUG experience due to the party having bad mannerisms, playing the blame game and what not. The premise just happens to relate to skipping dungeon parts. If something else went wrong in that same dungeon that isn’t triggered by skipping, chances are you will still have a bad experience.

I pretty much agree with Kumakichi’s advice with regards to PUG dungeoning.

Kumakichi.2583:

PUG groups are such a roll of the dice. I’ve run a lot of dungeons recently and found that the majority of the players want it quick and easy. They dont group well or use there group benefitting abilities at all. They dont know the dungeons and they want to skip content a lot. And some are just plain rude.

Then every once in awhile I have a fantastic group and it makes me wish I could run everything with them. They are polite, they revive, they know how the play their profession and they know the dungeons.

As someone who has PUG’d a lot over the years in different MMO’s my only advice is dont let it aggrevate you when you get a bad group. Keep quiet, dont get engaged in a battle of words, finish up the dungeon if you think its possible with that group and move on as quickly as possible. Dwelling on a bad experience just makes things more sour.

agreed