Guild Wars 2

Problem: PuGs try to speedrun and fail at it, because there’s zero reward for clearing trash and most pugs cannot skip the dangerous trash safely. This results in a more unpleasant general experience as groups splinter between the players who can successfully run past things and the new players who cannot.

Solution: Encourage clearing of trash by giving a bonus modifier at the end based on the % of trash you cleared. Clear 0-50% of trash, get the normal reward, clear 75% of trash, get another 25% bonus xp/gold/karma at the end, clear 100% of trash get another 50% bonus xp/gold/karma. Or, add low-drop-rate unique drops to dungeon trash that drops at random, like unique town clothes or skins.

I have done all the dungeon paths multiple times, in both pugs and teams, but pugs are becoming less and less competent due to the number of silly players obsessively skipping trash. The meta-knowledge of what trash is safe to skip versus what isn’t is creating a higher entrance barrier for new players.

I’ve been in too many runs where someone has seen a video of speedrunning a dungeon, and tries to do it all himself, then either dies halfway through or gets to the end and just sits there, refusing to come back and help. That’s why I always ask whether or not they want to speedrun it

It’s an interesting suggestion. In addition: Bringing in that odd mentality from other MMOs that doing dungeons is for “phat lootz”, what would happen if Magic Find went up by a certain percentage per monster that was killed in the dungeon? Maybe the final boss and/or loot chest could potentially drop an Exotic almost every time the dungeon has been completed. If there was a good thing to suggest for Magic Find, it would be something that benefits everyone in your party, and I think a progressively increasing rate of magic find per kill in a dungeon might a good thing.

I don’t agree, cause bascially you are saying that people try to do something they are really bad at and this “issue” should be adressed by giving advantage to another way to play the game.

In guild wars 1 they had a vanquisher title where if you killed every mob in the map you’d get exp, money, and a little closer to achieving the title based off of different maps.

I think it would be a great idea to add this into dungeons but offer better rewards for killing every living thing in these dungeons to give players a reason to not skip content.

At the same time I think this idea if implemented should be optional, and should not in any way mess with the end reward for actually completing the dungeon but be separate.

nachtnebel hit it on the head. Speedrunning is a risk/reward that allows you to get roughly the same amount of loot in less time by skipping some fights. Adding a system such as yours would encourage EVERYONE to not speedrun at all rather than just the pugs you mention. Why not either, not run with pugs if this is a problem for you or explain to pugs what they need to do better.

I have no problem with speedrunning, having spent considerable effort posting good times (14 minute butcher, 26 minute warden arah, 41 minute human arah, 19 minute frontdoor coe) for fun.

I’m making two points: design guides player actions, and the knowledge required to speedrun creates an additional level of metaknowledge that the average pug is unlikely to know, which will result in more grief and annoyance in dungeons that are otherwise simple and easy to run. Players understand that they’re expected to know dungeon mechanics, but a full knowledge of safe trash vs dangerous trash and skip routes is too high a knowledge threshold for the average pug, and the average pug shouldn’t be skipping trash. The problem is with that very same risk/reward system you mention that gives zero motivation towards clearing trash at all.

If we start from a base assumption that we want dungeon pug runs to be, at a minimum, an enjoyable experience, then we want to encourage design decisions that cause the dungeon to be more enjoyable. If we assume that the average pug player is not great, then we encounter problems. Pugs that flail around and fail at trash skips are not enjoyable, so there should be a design-level encouragement for clearing trash.

Jim Travakh.7495:

If we start from a base assumption that we want dungeon pug runs to be, at a minimum, an enjoyable experience, then we want to encourage design decisions that cause the dungeon to be more enjoyable. If we assume that the average pug player is not great, then we encounter problems. Pugs that flail around and fail at trash skips are not enjoyable, so there should be a design-level encouragement for clearing trash.

My base assumption would be that dungeons in explore mode should be a challenge and, whether this is an enjoyable experience or not, should depend on the people in your group. If they don’t know what they are doing – I’m not talking about knowing the dungeon, I’m talking about knowing your own profession – you probably won’t enjoy the dungeon, but that’s not a bad thing. However, if your group consists of 5 reasonable people a dungeon should be fun, and that’s – at least for me – exactly how it currently is.
In addition, not all dungeons are meant to be doable for absolute newbies. Some are easier than others, and if you haven’t gathered much experience with dungeons yet, you probably should do CoF runs instead of Arah runs – for an instance – until you understand how dungeons work. I mean, come on, last week I had a random Guardian who really thought his class was meant to tank Lupi and that the boss was broken cause he wasn’t able to do so. Of course, the first three tries with that player were not really enjoyable, but after we replaced him, we took down Lupi and had fun with the rest of path 2.

What I’m trying to say here is that of course dugeons should be enjoyable, but that doesn’t meant that every 24-carat idiot should be able to clear them. You can do even more difficult dungeons with the average pug if at least one player steps up, takes the lead and the rest willing follows his orders. You don’t even need to know much about the dungeon, you just need a little common sense to figure out which threat should be addressed first and how you can deal with it.

The only real solution I see necessary for trash skipping and speed running is to make the trash actually worth killing, by offering good chances at rare dungeon specific loot.

Clearing dungeons is fine, and in my opinion the dungeons are comically easy. I’m referring to speedruns in particular, which is a form of dungeon clearing that evolved because there was no particular reason to kill trash and that the only metric for a run is speed. The prevalence of wannabe speedrunners turns pug runs that are otherwise very easy into silly slogs where people do things that are outside design intention and are counterintuitive, namely running past trash until it leashes back.

It creates an unhealthy pug environment when pugs start thinking the ‘speedrun’ clear is the proper way to do dungeons, and they wind up failing because 2/5 can’t skip the trash properly. This is distinct from, for example, 2/5 players causing a fail at simin due to low dps, because that’s an explicit mechanics challenge for the encounter.

Encouraging people to clear trash for a boosted karma/xp/gold reward or the chance at unique drops would alleviate the problem (and yes there is a problem in pugs right now).