[SPQR]
Rebalance Dungeon Rewards?
[SPQR]
I play how I want.
Wait you are telling me I have to constantly rewatch the freaking cut scene every time I do a dungeon -_-? How about stop whining and just make your own lfg. Speed runs aren’t hostile to anyone but the few players who decide to join them ignoring the lfg title completely. You can’t be expecting to be carried or what I been seeing more hostile new players getting so kitteny when you tell them how to do something or just ignored till they are kicked out.
(edited by pandas.9450)
Make your own group. Don’t tell others how they should play.
And watching the same cutscenes for the hundredth time isn’t fun.
And new players shouldn’t join a run with the quoted description.
1) That’s my point – if dungeons are nothing but speedruns with fixed rewards, players have to rewatch cutscenes a million times. Rather than making dungeons take 21 speedruns to get a full set of rewards, make it so that if players spend an hour in the dungeon not speedrunning, they get a lot bigger reward than the speedrunners got. Ultimately it takes roughly the same amount of time to get a full set, but you’ve opened up a play style that is currently unavailable.
2) I agree that new players shouldn’t join the run with the quoted description. That description also happens to be the decription for 95% of the pugs for every dungeon, all the time.
There is virtually NO acceptance of new players, and MOST pugs are hostile to someone who doesn’t already know what they’re doing. This needs to change. If you want dungeon speedruns why not go do fractals? Why should new players below 80 be discouraged from participating in roughly 1/4 of the content available to them before they hit 80?
Also, I’m not telling people how to play – with my changes people could still do speedruns, the difference being that right now speedruns ARE the only option, so people ARE being told how to play. My changes would actually open up more options for players, not less.
Nobody is saying you couldn’t still do speedruns, the difference being that they shouldn’t be drastically more profitable than a trip through the dungeon killing everything in sight including optional bosses and mobs.
(edited by Illuminerdi.9153)
Make your own group. Don’t tell others how they should play.
And watching the same cutscenes for the hundredth time isn’t fun.
And new players shouldn’t join a run with the quoted description.1) That’s my point – if dungeons are nothing but speedruns with fixed rewards, players have to rewatch cutscenes a million times. Rather than making dungeons take 21 speedruns to get a full set of rewards, make it so that if players spend an hour in the dungeon not speedrunning, they get a lot bigger reward than the speedrunners got. Ultimately it takes roughly the same amount of time to get a full set, but you’ve opened up a play style that is currently unavailable.
2) I agree that new players shouldn’t join the run with the quoted description. That description also happens to be the decription for 95% of the pugs for every dungeon, all the time.
There is virtually NO acceptance of new players, and MOST pugs are hostile to someone who doesn’t already know what they’re doing. This needs to change. If you want dungeon speedruns why not go do fractals? Why should new players below 80 be discouraged from participating in roughly 1/4 of the content available to them before they hit 80?
Newbies can just as well go do fractals because they scale everyone to lvl 80.
Wait you are telling me I have to constantly rewatch the freaking cut scene every time I do a dungeon -_-? How about stop whining and just make your own lfg. Speed runs aren’t hostile to anyone but the few players who decide to join them ignoring the lfg title completely. You can’t be expecting to be carried or what I been seeing more hostile new players getting so kitteny when you tell them how to do something or just ignored till they are kicked out.
Ok seriously, why is everyone here so hostile? Jeez even in the forums people are rude when you don’t do things their way…
Second – I’m not saying making cutscenes mandatory or something like that, you could still skip them, I’m saying that by allowing speedruns to be drastically more profitable dungeons have become nothing but them. I dare you to try to even find a pug that doesn’t speedrun.
By balancing out the rewards so that non-speedruns are equally as rewarding as speedruns are, you allow for a more “casual” style of dungeon play and open them up to more people, some of which might be new to dungeons, and some of which might actually be willing to watch the cutscenes!
95% of all dungeon groups right now are speedrunners who will roast you if you watch a cutscene whether this is your first or 100th trip through. I’m not saying people can’t speedrun, I’m saying we should open it up to non speedrunners. The idea being that someone who doesn’t know how to speedrun a dungeon can still play through it, since they can just use normal tactics that they use everywhere else in the game.
Right now, dungeons are counterintuitive – players are encouraged by the reward system to skip trash mobs entirely, and to focus on achieving the fastest completion time possible because the reward is fixed.
If I spend an hour with a pug clearing a dungeon, I should get a bigger reward than a speedrun group got. The difference being that I had to spend a hour to get this reward. So I’m not making more tokens than the speedrun group, but I am making them at the same tokens/hour rate that they are.
I play how I want.
And you think it’s OK/fair that some of us can’t play how we want?
Speedruns aren’t bad. Grinding dungeon paths over and over is. Yes even those who were farming CoF P1 all day weren’t doing it because it was fun.
So just ask yourself, why do players want to finish a dungeon as fast as possible? That’s the big problem with the reward system right now, everything is based on gold and players just want to find and abuse the path that offers the most gold per hour.
If you want speedruns to go away you must first deal with the root of the issue, the economy only based around gold.
Watching a cutscene for the 10th time is boring, they’d better implement a way to watch those cutscenes while out of the instance.
If you make dungeon tokens universal it will cause even more people to just overfarm / speedrun a specific dungeon path, players will always run the best gold per hour activity, and who are you (or anyone else) to blame them?
I play how I want.
And you think it’s OK/fair that some of us can’t play how we want?
No one is stopping you. I seen plenty of lfg that say any one welcome and blah blah. The we is just you ignoring the lfg feature that lets you make your own group
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
May I ask why you “enjoy” killing trash mob first?
To me dungeon is fun because of fighting “interesting” encounters. For example interesting boss fight(like legendary imbued shaman).
I don’t mind fighting trash if it is designed to be interesting. Like the cliff fractal where we have to break the seal. Or the harpy fractal where harpies shoot you off the plateform.
I would say many skipping are more interesting than actually fighting trash. To me it is sort of like guild rush where you have to use ability to avoid damage.
If Anet design really hard trash fight, I don’t mind. Else I would say kill a bunch of scavengers is even more boring than trying to use stability to pick up the sceptor in AC path 1.
(edited by laokoko.7403)
I do not speed run dungeons. I run full Berserker on all of my characters. Let people play how they want without being disrespectful to them. No one has told me my play style is wrong, so who am i to say theirs is? It isnt hard
Restore that which was lost. And all shall be as one.”
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
I hope so, if not the OP has alot of bad ideas.
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
Both, I learned ac like 4 weeks ago, I could of learned it sooner if I just bothered making a lfg or even using the lfg that I think the op is ignoring or completely lying. It wasn’t hard to find a AC that accepted newbies. A common dungeon token? Sounds more like skipping a dungeon cause you don’t like it and rather do an easier dungeon for the tokens.
Make your own group and maybe, just maybe less hostile against dungeon runners.
/thread
@op
You do realize that 99% of “L80 Zerk Exp ONLY!™” LFG’s aren’t “hostile” or “elitist” at all.
Unless they gear check or REALLY care to ask your builds you end up with the same people in “everyone welcome” in the party.
FYI: No one is asking you to play how they want. They just don’t want you in their parties.
I know this is extremely hard concept to grasp but I’ll try to explain it.
You can’t force your way into an activity where the organizer demands certain requirements or else you are just being rude and inconsiderate.
If you don’t share the same views as the organizer you can simply organize your own activity.
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
No, it really isn’t, and that’s the saddest part.
I made an honest question asking if I was alone in disliking the current method of dungeon play, with suggestions to change this, and so far the entire response has been “OMG U TROLL” or “kitten and let me play how I want!”
The real irony? I really do want to play through dungeons in a slow, relaxed fashion. That’s how I want to play.
So apparently nobody else wants to change their play style, but it’s totally fine that other poeple can’t do theirs without taking a severe reward penalty. Because that makes perfect sense.
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
No, it really isn’t, and that’s the saddest part.
I made an honest question asking if I was alone in disliking the current method of dungeon play, with suggestions to change this, and so far the entire response has been “OMG U TROLL” or “kitten and let me play how I want!”
The real irony? I really do want to play through dungeons in a slow, relaxed fashion. That’s how I want to play.
So apparently nobody else wants to change their play style, but it’s totally fine that other poeple can’t do theirs without taking a severe reward penalty. Because that makes perfect sense.
The saddest part is you want to force others the way YOU want -_- questions would of been fine but there isn’t really an issue here when you already play the way you want if yku bother making a lfg
If I may ask a question, OP, what is wrong about speedrunning?
So my original title was bad – I shouldn’t have called it “eliminate speedruns” – if that’s what people want to do, they should be allowed to do it. Eliminating them as an option wasn’t really my goal – there’s nothing wrong with speedruns.
I believe that a system where speedruns are heavily encouraged is wrong because it is insular and hostile to new players and also too uniform, resulting in a very grindy experience because if the overwhelming majority of groups/pugs are speedrun-based, it becomes difficult or impossible to experience the content in a different fashion.
I’d love to do a casual, slow dungeon run where I watch the cutscenes and just do things at a “normal” pace, but finding players willing to do this is virtually impossible. It takes an hour or two just to get a group together; most people in LFG will ignore a group advertised as “no speedrun” or “casual group” – even “new” players often want to speedrun.
I’m suggesting a system that makes it equally profitable for “casual” groups to take an hour to clear a dungeon.
This thread is either a troll or a cry for help. I think the solution in either case is the same.
No, it really isn’t, and that’s the saddest part.
I made an honest question asking if I was alone in disliking the current method of dungeon play, with suggestions to change this, and so far the entire response has been “OMG U TROLL” or “kitten and let me play how I want!”
The real irony? I really do want to play through dungeons in a slow, relaxed fashion. That’s how I want to play.
So apparently nobody else wants to change their play style, but it’s totally fine that other poeple can’t do theirs without taking a severe reward penalty. Because that makes perfect sense.
Right, but have you actually think through weather your suggestion really works?
For example universal token = people pick the easiest dungeon. It is bad enough people avoid “dungeon path” like SE path 2. Now they can avoid a whole dungeon whole together. Because quite honestly why bother doing arah when you can get the same thing from cof.
Remove end rewards = People find ways to “not do the whole dungeon”. Anet actually thought through this. Previously people would just farm the first mini boss in arah for tokens instead of doing the whole dungeon. Or people used to farm the first few part of TA instead of doing the whole dungeon. Or some people are farming SE path 1 repeately right now for their champ bags.(havn’t been fixed).
And your last suggestion, you havn’t answered me…. you actually find it fun to kill trash mobs (with very little mechanics)?
And I personally dont’ want to fight dungeon in a relaxing way. Because I find it boring. I like more competitive thing.
May I ask why you “enjoy” killing trash mob first?
To me dungeon is fun because of fighting “interesting” encounters. For example interesting boss fight(like legendary imbued shaman).
I don’t mind fighting trash if it is designed to be interesting. Like the cliff fractal where we have to break the seal. Or the harpy fractal where harpies shoot you off the plateform.
I would say many skipping are more interesting than actually fighting trash. To me it is sort of like guild rush where you have to use ability to avoid damage.
If Anet design really hard trash fight, I don’t mind. Else I would say kill a bunch of scavengers is even more boring than trying to use stability to pick up the sceptor in AC path 1.
I agree with everything in this post. Largely, trash is boring, that’s one of the reasons why we call it trash (the other reason being that it’s generally pointless and just wastes time).
Some fights really are fun, even if they have “trash”. Some bosses are really fun (Imbued Shaman and Mai Trin being my two favourite bosses that are repeated ad infinitum, a lot of the story mode bosses are fun too, even though there is no reason to repeat them).
Skipping is fun sometimes. Pulling off smooth skips, or recovering from botched skips in Arah is one of those fun things to do in this game. Doing Jumping Puzzle skips in dungeons is also really fun (too bad Anet’s stance on fun is “NO FUN ALLOWED”, and they do a hack job at removing this content like in SE P3).
Focusing on treating the symptom is not going to solve anything. Incentivising/forcing people to do boring content is only going to drive people away from the game. The main causes of the problems are that rewards completely out of whack (SE P2 is very long and gives terrible rewards, all Story mode dungeons give terrible rewards), most all rewards are simply the same currency (gold), and almost all new content to the game as far as skins and fun things are in the gemshop (which means that either real money or gold is the only way to access this new content).
Fixing the rewards and the gemshop, and giving more fun things to do will solve this issue, NOT simply forcing people to do boring things… I think we’ve all sat in enough corners LoSing trash then max DPSing the stack that we don’t need to be incentivized/forced to do this more often every dungeon run.
(edited by Surbrus.6942)
My new plan of action.
1. Go to PvP forum.
2. Explain how I want to radically alter the game so it conforms to exactly what I want it to be regardless of the wishes of anyone else.
3. Expect to be treated with dignity and respect.
4. Express exasperation when my ideas are met with scorn.
I think this plan will work out for me.
If I may ask a question, OP, what is wrong about speedrunning?
So my original title was bad – I shouldn’t have called it “eliminate speedruns” – if that’s what people want to do, they should be allowed to do it. Eliminating them as an option wasn’t really my goal – there’s nothing wrong with speedruns.
I believe that a system where speedruns are heavily encouraged is wrong because it is insular and hostile to new players and also too uniform, resulting in a very grindy experience because if the overwhelming majority of groups/pugs are speedrun-based, it becomes difficult or impossible to experience the content in a different fashion.
I’d love to do a casual, slow dungeon run where I watch the cutscenes and just do things at a “normal” pace, but finding players willing to do this is virtually impossible. It takes an hour or two just to get a group together; most people in LFG will ignore a group advertised as “no speedrun” or “casual group” – even “new” players often want to speedrun.
I’m suggesting a system that makes it equally profitable for “casual” groups to take an hour to clear a dungeon.
I hear what you’re saying. The problem is that most of the people who are interested in dungeons have done them hundreds of times now and seen those cutscenes multiple times. Consider yourself in their shoes, if you’re a veteran dungeon runner who has been running the same dungeons for 2year+ now, how would you react to things like unskippable cutscenes? Sure, they may be nice to see the first or second time around. But what about the 10th, 20th, 50th time? Don’t you think they’ll result in an even grindier experience? Just look at the vista example in open world: How many people running on their 20th alt stop and actually view the vista rather than just skip it for quick experience? Your suggestion about more spread-out loot has been tried before and all it leads to is people farming half the dungeon to get to the most profitable part and repeat the process (à la the SE1 situation that we have today).
As for new people having a hard time finding a group, my experience has been the exact opposite. I’ve seen a myriad of “all welcome” lfg’s all over the place, not to mention the wonderful community initiative we have on our hand in form of the Dungeon Mentors guild: People who have spent 100s of hours in dungeons trying to teach the ropes to newer players. I really don’t get where you’re getting all this toxic thing, sure some people can be kittens but please don’t blame the whole community for it.
This guy actualy isnt dumb, maybe if they changed the end dungeon reward it would help a lot. Basicaly dividing the number of token amonst the bosses and mob would be a + (Doing Cathedral of flame wasnt as rewarding for the end loot as it was for the diessa chalice and golden relic of rin wich paid the run largely). The main issue is all the reward is given when killing the last boss and that encourage skiping etc. While speedrunning a dungeon should still remain viable (faster boss looting) the effectiveness of doing the place in its entirety should be improved (more drops more token etc) so that both option actualy are equal on time and monatary value. You skipping stuff? So why do you get more loot then me who actualy killing everything? Doesnt make any sense as i kill more stuff so i should get more loot as a consequance.
The cutscenes? I dont care about them at this point because once youve seen it one time you likely wont watch them again.
Speedrunning is way over rated.
BM: I want to present you my lovely jingle bear mia
If pet had voices: Mommy, I did it! :3
(edited by kyubi.3620)
Right, but have you actually think through weather your suggestion really works?
For example universal token = people pick the easiest dungeon. It is bad enough people avoid “dungeon path” like SE path 2. Now they can avoid a whole dungeon whole together. Because quite honestly why bother doing arah when you can get the same thing from cof.
Remove end rewards = People find ways to “not do the whole dungeon”. Anet actually thought through this. Previously people would just farm the first mini boss in arah for tokens instead of doing the whole dungeon. Or people used to farm the first few part of TA instead of doing the whole dungeon. Or some people are farming SE path 1 repeately right now for their champ bags.(havn’t been fixed).
And your last suggestion, you havn’t answered me…. you actually find it fun to kill trash mobs (with very little mechanics)?
And I personally dont’ want to fight dungeon in a relaxing way. Because I find it boring. I like more competitive thing.
Yes, people will pick the easiest dungeon. You could still discourage this via (daily) DR after the first run through a particular dungeon path.
People have already found ways to not do the whole dungeon. A speedrun IS “not doing the whole dungeon” – there are plenty of tricks and shortcuts that people are doing to glitch their way through dungeon content by exploiting loopholes. This is why you change to cumulative rewards: farming the first boss in a dungeonstops being rewarding when it purposefully drops little to no (token) reward. By encouraging the killing of trash mobs and giving bigger rewards for cumulative kills you stop players from farming any particular section of content, early or late.
Your last question is more difficult to answer succinctly. No, I don’t find killing trash mobs to be “super fun” or something, but I do find it (only slightly) more enjoyable than speedrunning. The thing is, I see the necessity of trash mobs; they (in theory) exist to serve a function in dungeons. Their function is to help the group coordinate and learn to work together, and to discourage players from skipping content by just running past. They exist to provide an obstacle that the team needs to work together to overcome. Running past trash mobs to unlock a waypoint is not really “working together” – it only takes 1 success to accomplish this, and isn’t the whole point of doing a dungeon to be a team? You’re just gaming the system by increasing the odds, you’re not really encouraging team play or community when you allow content skipping.
The other thing that trash mobs exist for is, well, to deter insular gameplay. Speedrunning exists because people have figured out a very specific and non-intuitive method(s) for skipping dungeon content. I’m not saying that this option should be removed, but the problem is that the alternative (playing intuitively rather than specifically) has been removed. It’s not removed in the sense that it’s disallowed, but it’s removed in a passive sense, since the dungeon rewards system is so heavily skewed in favor of speedruns that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase wants nothing more than to do them that way.
To put things another way – if Anet intended for players to skip trash mobs, why did they even put them in? Why not just put in nothing but traps like the ones in AC instead? Why waste all that time and energy building the enemies with specific skills and creating specific groups of enemies and balancing them if they were meant to just be run past?
I think that’s also a bit of my point here – either we work with Anet to diversify gameplay style, or we wait for them to drop the hammer and disable speedruns entirely through a quick/universal fix – (something like changing leash range on trash mobs or stacking conditions that are only removed via killing trash mobs, etc). I doubt Anet intended dungeons to be this way, and I woud not be surprised if they did eventually address this one way or another…
This guy actualy isnt dumb, maybe if they changed the end dungeon reward it would help a lot. Basicaly dividing the number of token amonst the bosses and mob would be a + (Doing Cathedral of flame wasnt as rewarding for the end loot as it was for the diessa chalice and golden relic of rin wich paid the run largely). The main issue is all the reward is given when killing the last boss and that encourage skiping etc. While speedrunning a dungeon should still remain viable (faster boss looting) the effectiveness of doing the place in its entirety should be improved (more drops more token etc) so that both option actualy are equal on time and monatary value. You skipping stuff? So why do you get more loot then me who actualy killing everything? Doesnt make any sense as i kill more stuff so i should get more loot as a consequance.
The cutscenes? I dont care about them at this point because once youve seen it one time you likely wont watch them again.
Speedrunning is way over rated.
Yeah I’m not saying that people are going to watch any of the cutscenes more than once, but in a speedrun you actually can’t watch the cutscenes even on your first go, you will literally get left behind as people run off without you.
But if you allow for groups that want to kill everything, you also open up the necessity for players to wait for someone who hasn’t seen the cutscene yet, rather than running off without them.
And yes, I know that this means that any group that has a player watching the cutscene will have to wait for that cutscene even if everyone else has already watched it a million times, but I think this could easily be overcome by stating “cutscenes skipped plz” when doing LFG or putting your group together.
Again, the difference being that you’re allowing more variety in the ways that people can do dungeons, and also opening up dungeons to a LOT more players of different levels.
If I may ask a question, OP, what is wrong about speedrunning?
So my original title was bad – I shouldn’t have called it “eliminate speedruns” – if that’s what people want to do, they should be allowed to do it. Eliminating them as an option wasn’t really my goal – there’s nothing wrong with speedruns.
I believe that a system where speedruns are heavily encouraged is wrong because it is insular and hostile to new players and also too uniform, resulting in a very grindy experience because if the overwhelming majority of groups/pugs are speedrun-based, it becomes difficult or impossible to experience the content in a different fashion.
I’d love to do a casual, slow dungeon run where I watch the cutscenes and just do things at a “normal” pace, but finding players willing to do this is virtually impossible. It takes an hour or two just to get a group together; most people in LFG will ignore a group advertised as “no speedrun” or “casual group” – even “new” players often want to speedrun.
I’m suggesting a system that makes it equally profitable for “casual” groups to take an hour to clear a dungeon.
I hear what you’re saying. The problem is that most of the people who are interested in dungeons have done them hundreds of times now and seen those cutscenes multiple times. Consider yourself in their shoes, if you’re a veteran dungeon runner who has been running the same dungeons for 2year+ now, how would you react to things like unskippable cutscenes? Sure, they may be nice to see the first or second time around. But what about the 10th, 20th, 50th time? Don’t you think they’ll result in an even grindier experience? Just look at the vista example in open world: How many people running on their 20th alt stop and actually view the vista rather than just skip it for quick experience? Your suggestion about more spread-out loot has been tried before and all it leads to is people farming half the dungeon to get to the most profitable part and repeat the process (à la the SE1 situation that we have today).
As for new people having a hard time finding a group, my experience has been the exact opposite. I’ve seen a myriad of “all welcome” lfg’s all over the place, not to mention the wonderful community initiative we have on our hand in form of the Dungeon Mentors guild: People who have spent 100s of hours in dungeons trying to teach the ropes to newer players. I really don’t get where you’re getting all this toxic thing, sure some people can be kittens but please don’t blame the whole community for it.
I never suggested unskippable cutscenes. In fact, I am severely against unskippable cutscenes in any game anywhere. I used to make games for a living and I spent a LOT of effort making cutscenes skippable (it’s actually quite hard in some engines) because unskippable cutscenes drive me bonkers.
So no, unskippable cutscenes would never be on the table. I was just pointing out that because everyone these days speedruns, most new dungeon players have never and will never see them, and that is sad. By enabling non-speedruns to be viable you also allow for more casual or new players who DO want to watch the cutscenes.
Is it possible to form a casual group right now and watch the cutscenes? Yes.
Is it really hard to do so and takes forever because 99% of people in LFG are speedrunners? YES.
My new plan of action.
1. Go to PvP forum.
2. Explain how I want to radically alter the game so it conforms to exactly what I want it to be regardless of the wishes of anyone else.
3. Expect to be treated with dignity and respect.
4. Express exasperation when my ideas are met with scorn.I think this plan will work out for me.
I’m pretty sure #3 applies to every scenario everywhere. When did it become ok to be a jerk just because you disagree with someone’s ideas? Politely saying “no, I don’t think that would work, (and maybe: here’s a rational explanation as to why)” would have been just fine.
Oh wait, I’m sorry, did my absurd need to be treated as a normal human being scare you? I thought this was a discussion forum, not a place for everyone to agree on everything all the time and nobody to ever suggest new or different ideas…my bad!
If I may ask a question, OP, what is wrong about speedrunning?
So my original title was bad – I shouldn’t have called it “eliminate speedruns” – if that’s what people want to do, they should be allowed to do it. Eliminating them as an option wasn’t really my goal – there’s nothing wrong with speedruns.
I believe that a system where speedruns are heavily encouraged is wrong because it is insular and hostile to new players and also too uniform, resulting in a very grindy experience because if the overwhelming majority of groups/pugs are speedrun-based, it becomes difficult or impossible to experience the content in a different fashion.
I’d love to do a casual, slow dungeon run where I watch the cutscenes and just do things at a “normal” pace, but finding players willing to do this is virtually impossible. It takes an hour or two just to get a group together; most people in LFG will ignore a group advertised as “no speedrun” or “casual group” – even “new” players often want to speedrun.
I’m suggesting a system that makes it equally profitable for “casual” groups to take an hour to clear a dungeon.
I hear what you’re saying. The problem is that most of the people who are interested in dungeons have done them hundreds of times now and seen those cutscenes multiple times. Consider yourself in their shoes, if you’re a veteran dungeon runner who has been running the same dungeons for 2year+ now, how would you react to things like unskippable cutscenes? Sure, they may be nice to see the first or second time around. But what about the 10th, 20th, 50th time? Don’t you think they’ll result in an even grindier experience? Just look at the vista example in open world: How many people running on their 20th alt stop and actually view the vista rather than just skip it for quick experience? Your suggestion about more spread-out loot has been tried before and all it leads to is people farming half the dungeon to get to the most profitable part and repeat the process (à la the SE1 situation that we have today).
As for new people having a hard time finding a group, my experience has been the exact opposite. I’ve seen a myriad of “all welcome” lfg’s all over the place, not to mention the wonderful community initiative we have on our hand in form of the Dungeon Mentors guild: People who have spent 100s of hours in dungeons trying to teach the ropes to newer players. I really don’t get where you’re getting all this toxic thing, sure some people can be kittens but please don’t blame the whole community for it.
I never suggested unskippable cutscenes. In fact, I am severely against unskippable cutscenes in any game anywhere. I used to make games for a living and I spent a LOT of effort making cutscenes skippable (it’s actually quite hard in some engines) because unskippable cutscenes drive me bonkers.
So no, unskippable cutscenes would never be on the table. I was just pointing out that because everyone these days speedruns, most new dungeon players have never and will never see them, and that is sad. By enabling non-speedruns to be viable you also allow for more casual or new players who DO want to watch the cutscenes.
Is it possible to form a casual group right now and watch the cutscenes? Yes.
Is it really hard to do so and takes forever because 99% of people in LFG are speedrunners? YES.
If as you say 99% of people want to skip content and cut scenes then you have just admitted that your in the smaller portion of the population.
You also admitted that most of us don’t want this kind of change because we want to speed clear the dungeon. It doesn’t matter how you sugar coat it, you still want to enforce your play style on others.
Anet has said on other post, although I can’t be bothered to look it up. that if they really wanted to stop skipping they could remove the leashes on mobs and let them chase a group all the way to the boss, but that they didn’t feel this was necessary as players will choose what they want to do and what they don’t.
There are players who want to do full clears, if you want do do them. Do it with the players who want this type of run.
If I may ask a question, OP, what is wrong about speedrunning?
So my original title was bad – I shouldn’t have called it “eliminate speedruns” – if that’s what people want to do, they should be allowed to do it. Eliminating them as an option wasn’t really my goal – there’s nothing wrong with speedruns.
I believe that a system where speedruns are heavily encouraged is wrong because it is insular and hostile to new players and also too uniform, resulting in a very grindy experience because if the overwhelming majority of groups/pugs are speedrun-based, it becomes difficult or impossible to experience the content in a different fashion.
I’d love to do a casual, slow dungeon run where I watch the cutscenes and just do things at a “normal” pace, but finding players willing to do this is virtually impossible. It takes an hour or two just to get a group together; most people in LFG will ignore a group advertised as “no speedrun” or “casual group” – even “new” players often want to speedrun.
I’m suggesting a system that makes it equally profitable for “casual” groups to take an hour to clear a dungeon.
I hear what you’re saying. The problem is that most of the people who are interested in dungeons have done them hundreds of times now and seen those cutscenes multiple times. Consider yourself in their shoes, if you’re a veteran dungeon runner who has been running the same dungeons for 2year+ now, how would you react to things like unskippable cutscenes? Sure, they may be nice to see the first or second time around. But what about the 10th, 20th, 50th time? Don’t you think they’ll result in an even grindier experience? Just look at the vista example in open world: How many people running on their 20th alt stop and actually view the vista rather than just skip it for quick experience? Your suggestion about more spread-out loot has been tried before and all it leads to is people farming half the dungeon to get to the most profitable part and repeat the process (à la the SE1 situation that we have today).
As for new people having a hard time finding a group, my experience has been the exact opposite. I’ve seen a myriad of “all welcome” lfg’s all over the place, not to mention the wonderful community initiative we have on our hand in form of the Dungeon Mentors guild: People who have spent 100s of hours in dungeons trying to teach the ropes to newer players. I really don’t get where you’re getting all this toxic thing, sure some people can be kittens but please don’t blame the whole community for it.
I never suggested unskippable cutscenes. In fact, I am severely against unskippable cutscenes in any game anywhere. I used to make games for a living and I spent a LOT of effort making cutscenes skippable (it’s actually quite hard in some engines) because unskippable cutscenes drive me bonkers.
So no, unskippable cutscenes would never be on the table. I was just pointing out that because everyone these days speedruns, most new dungeon players have never and will never see them, and that is sad. By enabling non-speedruns to be viable you also allow for more casual or new players who DO want to watch the cutscenes.
Is it possible to form a casual group right now and watch the cutscenes? Yes.
Is it really hard to do so and takes forever because 99% of people in LFG are speedrunners? YES.
If as you say 99% of people want to skip content and cut scenes then you have just admitted that your in the smaller portion of the population.
You also admitted that most of us don’t want this kind of change because we want to speed clear the dungeon. It doesn’t matter how you sugar coat it, you still want to enforce your play style on others. (This will get you hostility every time, and you should know how that feels because you don’t want speed clears forced on you.)
Anet has said on other post, although I can’t be bothered to look it up. that if they really wanted to stop skipping they could remove the leashes on mobs and let them chase a group all the way to the boss, but that they didn’t feel this was necessary as players will choose what they want to do and what they don’t.
There are players who want to do full clears, if you want do do them. Do it with the players who want this type of run.
I never suggested unskippable cutscenes. In fact, I am severely against unskippable cutscenes in any game anywhere. I used to make games for a living and I spent a LOT of effort making cutscenes skippable (it’s actually quite hard in some engines) because unskippable cutscenes drive me bonkers.
So no, unskippable cutscenes would never be on the table. I was just pointing out that because everyone these days speedruns, most new dungeon players have never and will never see them, and that is sad. By enabling non-speedruns to be viable you also allow for more casual or new players who DO want to watch the cutscenes.
Is it possible to form a casual group right now and watch the cutscenes? Yes.
Is it really hard to do so and takes forever because 99% of people in LFG are speedrunners? YES.
So you are trying to change the playstyle of the majority to cater for the minority here, why should that be the case?
Again, if they make trashmobs/cutscenes/anything-in-the-middle-of-the-dungeon rewarding then there are two likely scenarios to happen: Either the rewards won’t be worth it and completing the path faster would still be more profitable, hence people would stick with it. Or the rewards will be so great that it is not worth finishing the path, which will lead to players doing half a dungeon, exit, and repeating the process.
[…]
Your last question is more difficult to answer succinctly. No, I don’t find killing trash mobs to be “super fun” or something, but I do find it (only slightly) more enjoyable than speedrunning. The thing is, I see the necessity of trash mobs; they (in theory) exist to serve a function in dungeons. Their function is to help the group coordinate and learn to work together, and to discourage players from skipping content by just running past. They exist to provide an obstacle that the team needs to work together to overcome. Running past trash mobs to unlock a waypoint is not really “working together” – it only takes 1 success to accomplish this, and isn’t the whole point of doing a dungeon to be a team? You’re just gaming the system by increasing the odds, you’re not really encouraging team play or community when you allow content skipping.
The other thing that trash mobs exist for is, well, to deter insular gameplay. Speedrunning exists because people have figured out a very specific and non-intuitive method(s) for skipping dungeon content. I’m not saying that this option should be removed, but the problem is that the alternative (playing intuitively rather than specifically) has been removed. It’s not removed in the sense that it’s disallowed, but it’s removed in a passive sense, since the dungeon rewards system is so heavily skewed in favor of speedruns that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase wants nothing more than to do them that way.
[…]
Oh please. Killing boring enemies with horribly simplified mechanics and terrible AI does not, even in theory provide an obstacle that the party needs to coordinate to overcome. If it did, then dungeon solo and duos would not be a common thing for players in this game to be doing if they are looking for anything near a challenge.
As for why Anet put horribly boring trash into the dungeon, rather than interesting encounters? That is simply laziness, there is no mysterious hidden meaning behind any of this, it’s just a poorly done job, simple as that. If you want to see how to do trash mobs right, there are examples already mentioned in this thread (mostly to do with Fractals), or you could look at Guild Wars 1 (something we’ve been telling Anet to do all this time).
GW1 had a wealth of mechanics, and the “trash” had the same access to them as the players did. The “trash” was put together intelligently into groups (or parties) so that they could work together (just as the player parties had to). GW2 is not only gutted in comparison to GW1 when it comes to mechanics, but GW2 trash is even gutted mechanicswise in comparison to what little the players have to work with… they largely consists of slow auto attacks, and only slow auto attacks. (GW1 AI also wasn’t as primitive as GW2 AI)
(edited by Surbrus.6942)
Your suggestion about more spread-out loot has been tried before and all it leads to is people farming half the dungeon to get to the most profitable part and repeat the process (à la the SE1 situation that we have today).
The difference is that you’re still talking about fixed rewards. Any fixed reward can (and will be) farmed, because it boils down to simple math: find which reward gives the highest payout for the shortest amount of time expressed in terms of reward/time.
By adding a multipliers to reward based on increases in time, you rebalance this equation – farming no longer becomes the “best” option, because you’ve essentially removed time from the equation – up to a certain point, there will, of course, always be optimized ways of doing things, the goal is to close the gap, as currently it is so enormous that virtually no players see the benefit in choosing any other option.
You also enable less “fixed” methods of reward since it becomes incremental. A trip into a dungeon is no longer a complete failure (in terms of tokens, at least) if you don’t manage to get the final chests due to wipe/time constraints/etc.
My new plan of action.
1. Go to PvP forum.
2. Explain how I want to radically alter the game so it conforms to exactly what I want it to be regardless of the wishes of anyone else.
3. Expect to be treated with dignity and respect.
4. Express exasperation when my ideas are met with scorn.I think this plan will work out for me.
I’m pretty sure #3 applies to every scenario everywhere. When did it become ok to be a jerk just because you disagree with someone’s ideas? Politely saying “no, I don’t think that would work, (and maybe: here’s a rational explanation as to why)” would have been just fine.
Oh wait, I’m sorry, did my absurd need to be treated as a normal human being scare you? I thought this was a discussion forum, not a place for everyone to agree on everything all the time and nobody to ever suggest new or different ideas…my bad!
some of the negative response has been in my view you are trying to force a play style while putting down people who play the way they want. You have been changing your wordings constantly on “what” you meant. Universal tokens will just encourage more people to do the same easy dungeons while ignoring others knowing they could just do any dungeon for the same token. Your stance on cut scenes has been changing thru out the thread, bonus chest are placed after defeating a boss in the dungeon or something that requires coordination, don’t see why they should be removed. Dungeon tokens are all mostly earnef at the end which seems proper since you bothered to stay thru it all. Increasing token drops with every mob killed and interchangeable tokens just seems you want more easily available tokens. It is fine to make suggestions for discussions but when you are making a thread putting down a group and telling them how they play is wrong and awful expect awful treatment
The difference is that you’re still talking about fixed rewards. Any fixed reward can (and will be) farmed, because it boils down to simple math: find which reward gives the highest payout for the shortest amount of time expressed in terms of reward/time.
So your “fix” is to just have it so that people will only farm the first half of dungeon path X, Y times a day rather than infinite times a day? How does “just do SE P1 2-3 times a day then move onto another dungeon” fix anything?
Again, you’re solution to “people are avoiding boring content” is to try to force them to do it (by either locking the things people want behind boring content, or just disincentivizing the content people want to do further). This is the opposite of a solution because all your concerned with is treating a symptom.
Oh please. Killing boring enemies with horribly simplified mechanics and terrible AI does not, even in theory provide an obstacle that the party needs to coordinate to overcome. If it did, then dungeon solo and duos would not be a common thing for players in this game to be doing if they are looking for anything near a challenge.
As for why Anet put horribly boring trash into the dungeon, rather than interesting encounters? That is simply laziness, there is no mysterious hidden meaning behind any of this, it’s just a poorly done job, simple as that. If you want to see how to do trash mobs right, there are examples already mentioned in this thread (mostly to do with Fractals), or you could look at Guild Wars 1 (something we’ve been telling Anet to do all this time).
GW1 had a wealth of mechanics, and the “trash” had the same access to them as the players did. The “trash” was put together intelligently into groups (or parties) so that they could work together (just as the player parties had to). GW2 is not only gutted in comparison to GW1 when it comes to mechanics, but GW2 trash is even gutted mechanicswise in comparison to what little the players have to work with… they largely consists of slow auto attacks, and only slow auto attacks. (GW1 AI also wasn’t as primitive as GW2 AI)
I fail to see how a party of 5 people killing a group of enemies that none of them could kill individually does not count as coordinating together.
Dungeon solos and duos are still reliant on skipping enemies – they are still using what amounts to “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
I’m not going to disagree about enemies – I would love to see trash mobs be more complex and require more tactical gameplay, but that’s a pretty big double-edged sword; that can also discourage new players if done wrong, but in this case I would be willing to risk that, because it would ultimately serve my stated goal of getting parties to coordinate better.
I think though that much of that also boils down to enabling more defined combat roles than GW2 currently does. I’m not saying we should go back to Tank/Healer/DPS like other games, but I think current combat roles in GW2 are far not strongly defined enough and something in the middle would work better than where we’re at currently. But that’s a whole different discussion…
Dungeon solos and duos are still reliant on skipping enemies – they are still using what amounts to “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
I disagree with this. Just because your not good enough to Duo or Solo something doesn’t mean its a only possible to do by “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
The difference is that you’re still talking about fixed rewards. Any fixed reward can (and will be) farmed, because it boils down to simple math: find which reward gives the highest payout for the shortest amount of time expressed in terms of reward/time.
So your “fix” is to just have it so that people will only farm the first half of dungeon path X, Y times a day rather than infinite times a day? How does “just do SE P1 2-3 times a day then move onto another dungeon” fix anything?
Again, you’re solution to “people are avoiding boring content” is to try to force them to do it (by either locking the things people want behind boring content, or just disincentivizing the content people want to do further). This is the opposite of a solution because all your concerned with is treating a symptom.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here; how did you come to the conclusion that my suggestions would enable farming the first half of path X, Y times a day? I suggested (daily) diminishing returns for return trips through a specific path, which is exactly the same as what is already in place.
And nowhere do I say that people have to do boring content – doesn’t converting to a universal token mean that people can AVOID content they find boring? If you really hate all 3 paths of CM, you don’t ever have to do CM to get the CM gear, for example. If the only path of the entire set you like doing in the whole game is P1 CoF, congratulations, you can do P1 CoF every day for a year and get enough tokens to buy every single piece of gear in the whole dungeon set! ANet is all about letting people do things their way; if anything this would help them to see which paths people weren’t doing and give them the incentive to redo sections of those paths to make them less boring and more enticing, right?
But at the same time, I do think there should be rewards for the very first run through a dungeon path – sorta like eating your veggies, you don’t know if you like it until you try it, so there needs to be encouragement to get players to do so at least once.
I disagree with this. Just because your not good enough to Duo or Solo something doesn’t mean its a only possible to do by “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
You’ve got to be kidding me! The very first video I found on Youtube for how to solo Arah P2 says “go here to get out of combat when you’re low on health without resetting [the boss’s] health”
You’re telling me that’s not a glitch? That you’re supposed to be able to run from a boss, drop aggro, refill your health, and then resume the battle without her resetting??
And she doesn’t port anymore… naah I think ,I said sth. I shouldn’t have said…..
I disagree with this. Just because your not good enough to Duo or Solo something doesn’t mean its a only possible to do by “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
You’ve got to be kidding me! The very first video I found on Youtube for how to solo Arah P2 says “go here to get out of combat when you’re low on health without resetting [the boss’s] health”
You’re telling me that’s not a glitch? That you’re supposed to be able to run from a boss, drop aggro, refill your health, and then resume the battle without her resetting??
Read what I said.Many players are able to solo and duo content because they know their jobs well and are good at avoiding attacks. (Which not everyone who uploads a video on youtube is this good)
Just because you can’t doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
1. “You dont have the option to watch cut scene in a speed run your first time.”
Guess what: if its your first time in a dungeon and youre trying to do a speed run, you are doing something wrong. Speedrun groups advertise themselves as such on the LFG, newbie groups do the same. If you voluntarily join a newbie group and start yelling at people to follow speed run strategies, you’re a jerk. If you voluntarily join a speed run group and watch the cutscenes you’re a jerk. Use the LFG tool properly and quit trying to fix what isn’t broken.
The solution you’ve come up with, a radical redesign of the game in order to facilitate better grouping is incredibly inefficient and frankly indicative of someone who has never engineered anything or been manager of any kind of complicated project. If the problem is a grouping issue, you solve that by putting development time into the grouping tool. What you don’t do is try to redesign the thing people are grouping for in order to socially engineer some kind of result that probably won’t happen due to the law of unintended consequences.
2. “dignity and respect.”
People do indeed deserve to be treated with dignity from the start up to the point where they reveal themselves to be undignified. I would say based on the lack of flaming responses and the minimal amount of sarcasm (frankly less reverse trolling than you probably deserved) you got dignity. However, respect is something that is earned and cultivated, not given freely.
I fail to see how a party of 5 people killing a group of enemies that none of them could kill individually does not count as coordinating together.
Dungeon solos and duos are still reliant on skipping enemies – they are still using what amounts to “glitches” and “gaming the system”.
[…]
I think though that much of that also boils down to enabling more defined combat roles than GW2 currently does. I’m not saying we should go back to Tank/Healer/DPS like other games, but I think current combat roles in GW2 are far not strongly defined enough and something in the middle would work better than where we’re at currently. But that’s a whole different discussion…
So your response to “Solo and Duos” is to basically call me (and everyone else that does undermanned dungeons all the time) a glitcher/hacker? You’ve demonstrated with that statement that you don’t know what you’re talking about, why should anyone take anything else you’re saying seriously now?
Why is it always “Tank/Healer?DPS like other games”?… why not the variety or roles that were present in GW1? That was far more diverse and flexible than any boring trinity game. As for GW2 roles being expanded, that is something that Anet has demonstrated that they are very hostile to. Everything but straight up DPS has been nerfed ever since launch, when something new and interesting comes up it is usually an unintentional bug and fixed with more haste than any of the numerous infuriating bugs that simply break skills (Power Block initially allowed for interrupts to bypass Defiant, meaning that if built accordingly, the GW1 role of interrupt/lockdown finally made it’s glorious arrival in GW2, making for much excitement and hope for the future of GW2’s future mechanics… then that trait was Smiter’s Booned and forgotten three days later).
You’ve got to be kidding me! The very first video I found on Youtube for how to solo Arah P2 says “go here to get out of combat when you’re low on health without resetting [the boss’s] health”
You’re telling me that’s not a glitch? That you’re supposed to be able to run from a boss, drop aggro, refill your health, and then resume the battle without her resetting??
And some people “solo” bosses AFK from under the map. Just because there are glitches that allow for bad players to do content undermanned doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who can’t do the content legitimately while undermanned. The mechanics are so basic in almost all of the content here that it is more than possible, and no not everyone who does undermanned content feels the need to brag about it on youtube for everyone to see.
(edited by Surbrus.6942)
Read what I said.Many players are able to solo and duo content because they know their jobs well and are good at avoiding attacks. (Which not everyone who uploads a video on youtube is this good)
Just because you can’t doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
Then tell me, do you have any videos of YOU doing a solo run through any/all of the game’s dungeons that don’t rely on exploits such as this?
Also, I have no idea what a “White Knight Routine” is. I must be getting old…
Bingo!
Won’t bother giving a rational answer as this is just a " qq those guys are elitists because they can duo a path and they wear a more offensive gear than me/ use the game mechanics like stealth to kill respawning mobs"
Please. Stop.
some of the negative response has been in my view you are trying to force a play style while putting down people who play the way they want. You have been changing your wordings constantly on “what” you meant. Universal tokens will just encourage more people to do the same easy dungeons while ignoring others knowing they could just do any dungeon for the same token. Your stance on cut scenes has been changing thru out the thread, bonus chest are placed after defeating a boss in the dungeon or something that requires coordination, don’t see why they should be removed. Dungeon tokens are all mostly earnef at the end which seems proper since you bothered to stay thru it all. Increasing token drops with every mob killed and interchangeable tokens just seems you want more easily available tokens. It is fine to make suggestions for discussions but when you are making a thread putting down a group and telling them how they play is wrong and awful expect awful treatment
Yes, I changed my initial wording on eliminating speedruns – that was stupid of me to suggest eliminating them, I don’t know why I did it, and I never intended to force people to do things “my way”. I was operating under the assumption that most people also disliked speedruns and were doing them out of necessity not out of enjoyment – that was shortsighted of me to assume that, hence I changed my wording and my view on that.
I still feel that a harsh reaction is uncalled for – I never intended to insult speedrunners, my intentions were to start a conversation on whether or not people wanted to see changes made to the current way dungeon rewards are handled, any insult towards speedrunners was unintentional and I’m sorry if any offense was taken – none was intended.
And lastly: I never said cutscenes should be unskippable. Show me the post where I said that. It never existed, ever. I said that nobody ever watches them, but I never said that they should be unskippable. I despise unskippable cutscenes.
The only edit I have made that removed wording was to change the title of this post – as far as I can recall no other edits removed any significant wording, only added wording to clarify my position on certain things that were ambiguous/potentially negative.
Read what I said.Many players are able to solo and duo content because they know their jobs well and are good at avoiding attacks. (Which not everyone who uploads a video on youtube is this good)
Just because you can’t doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
Then tell me, do you have any videos of YOU doing a solo run through any/all of the game’s dungeons that don’t rely on exploits such as this?
Also, I have no idea what a “White Knight Routine” is. I must be getting old…
I don’t record my runs. Even if I did, I don’t have to prove anything to you. You have came into the dungeon forms, and stood on your soap box. You have called many people who solo and duo content exploiters. You have claimed we have been hostile to you, when in fact you started that ball rolling.
I don’t foresee you getting any support for your ideas. So have fun!
Cheers.
Bingo!
Won’t bother giving a rational answer as this is just a " qq those guys are elitists because they can duo a path and they wear a more offensive gear than me/ use the game mechanics like stealth to kill respawning mobs"
Please. Stop.
I said “glitch” and “gaming the system” – I never said people couldn’t use legit game mechanics to duo/solo. If someone can stealth their way to victory, good for them.
BUT: as far as I know when players leave combat mobs are supposed to regen, so unless ANet has stated otherwise my assumption is that leaving combat and a mob not regenerating is a “glitch”, hence why I’m pretty certain that 90% of all “solos” are using glitches to bypass the expectation that they will be handled by a group.
Read what I said.Many players are able to solo and duo content because they know their jobs well and are good at avoiding attacks. (Which not everyone who uploads a video on youtube is this good)
Just because you can’t doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
Then tell me, do you have any videos of YOU doing a solo run through any/all of the game’s dungeons that don’t rely on exploits such as this?
Also, I have no idea what a “White Knight Routine” is. I must be getting old…
most paths are soloable legit, including arah path 2. I’m not recording my runs myself, see, for exemple, Joey TheCreator ( exemple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF4GHxEfIR0)
All in all, you’re just jealous because there’s better players than yourself, and you expect sympathy for that. You’re the elitist there, as you feel like a so called elite ( the “playing how it’s meant to be played” group, basically a random list of made rules you agree with) deserves more attention than other players ( be it meta players or pugs skipping mobs because they don’t want to clean them) for no reasons.
I’m pretty certain that 90% of all “solos” are using glitches to bypass the expectation that they will be handled by a group.
And I’m pretty sure that 90% of people don’t know what they’re talking about, but I’ll hear them out first before I tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about.