Guild Wars 2

The dungeon waypoint change is going to wreak havoc on pugging, I predict. If you don’t go in with an experienced, coordinated group, dungeons are going to take much, much longer.

When someone gets downed next to a boss, attempting to rez them is often suicidal, meaning once that first down happens, everyone else might as well hang it up and run away instead of being able to continue fighting knowing their buddy will soon be back in the fight.

Who was so-called waypoint-rushing hurting? Nobody, that’s who. This is a change tyrannically forced on us because it doesn’t mesh with some peoples’ vision of proper gameplay, but will only add frustration to many players’ game experience without being of real benefit to anyone, because the now-forbidden tactic could always be freely rejected.

This will especially discourage groups from including players without much experience in that particular dungeon, for fear of a drastic increase in the time needed to complete the dungeon. What mechanism will work against this bad result?

How is this a worthy use of development time when the game still includes so many bugs that actually impede players?

Players will be used to it within a month. Guaranteed.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Players will be used to it within a month. Guaranteed.

i agree, nothing to fear…sometimes i play with pugs much more experienced than guildies

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

First thing you should do when a team mate is down and boss isn’t facing you is at least try to revive then, in dungeons ever player counts. If you let them die, you will.

First and foremost, this is the first patch of many in terms of dungeon mechanic changes, given the fact that they literally just posted a new article on the home page talking about Phase 2 of the dungeon changes.

Secondly, rez-rushing is a stupid design and shouldn’t have made it past Beta. The fact is, it kills the entire sense of purpose of dungeons if someone can just run back continuously. It’s a useless mechanic and, in conjunction with the current boss changes (especially the ones that were notorious for rez rushing: Destroyer, Ralena and Vassar, Subject Alpha, etc.), shouldn’t be too much of a problem as long as you take the time to thoroughly explain the boss mechanics to any new players.

Lastly, it’s their game. So for them to “tyrannically” change the way you play is apropos of a new menu at a restaurant “tyrannically” changing the way you order from them. If you don’t like the new menu, leave. Most people tend to try something new.

The fact is the game is in a state where most people don’t even know their classes’ skills, and it’s the ignorance of the players, not the design of the dungeons, that should be taken into question. The sheer number of “Does my class have a combo finisher/field?” in Orr today because of the combo field daily is absolutely ridiculous. People should learn to dodge, to get familiar with their skills, learn to time things, and take the time to explain a bossfight and every single mechanic instead of:

“Boss stands in mid, throws out some aoe. dodge it and be rdy for when he does his breath.” or any other terse explanation for a boss.

Also, this patch was literally intended to fix bugs, fix fights, and alter mechanics. Guess what rez-rushing falls under? Altered mechanics because it was a broken one and had every right to be unceremoniously killed off in a righteous fire.

This is how the majority of other games do this. I mean, GW2 was the first MMO I’ve seen where it was acceptable to die, runback, die, runback without disengaging the boss/battle.

Even in GW1, if you died on a mission, you had to start over.

I am a little hesitant about this, but as long as some of the things are toned down i dont see an issue. Like magg in path 2 of CoF. This part was just too hard for many of the squads i was in and only was actually able to find a squad that could do it a couple times. It says it’s been changed so i hope its a good change

It’ll suck for the next week, but I think it’ll be better in the long run when everyone starts focusing on surviving boss encounters.

I recently did a dungeon run of Ascalonian Catacombs and for several of the fights the only way we got them done was by dying in a rotation, basically, so the boss didn’t reset because someone was always fighting it. Wow, this would make that dungeon run I did take maybe 6 times longer than it already did. Ouch.

Because death zerging was a fantastic mechanic.

I guess that’s another way to get rid of the need for a LFG tool or dungeon finder tool…

make it unbearable for PuGs

What is really amazing is that if you go back to the original written and video design discussions, you will find that Waypointing after being defeated was a highlited FEATURE of dungeons in GW2!

Also of interest is that it was acknowledged in the blog for this change that a number of dungeons had to modifed so that they would be able to be completed (maybe) now that a player could not return to the fight from a Waypoint.

And the poster is absolutely correct in saying that for the vast majority of the fights, there is NO opportunity to revive another player. Pulsing AoE, Boss Focus on Downed players, and all that is assured to keep downed players downed until they are defeated.

I think that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived problem that needed a much different solution, if any at all. I also agree that no one is going to want to work innexperienced or low-geared players through dungeons now.

tnarrant.9714:

The dungeon waypoint change is going to wreak havoc on pugging, I predict. If you don’t go in with an experienced, coordinated group, dungeons are going to take much, much longer.

When someone gets downed next to a boss, attempting to rez them is often suicidal, meaning once that first down happens, everyone else might as well hang it up and run away instead of being able to continue fighting knowing their buddy will soon be back in the fight.

Who was so-called waypoint-rushing hurting? Nobody, that’s who. This is a change tyrannically forced on us because it doesn’t mesh with some peoples’ vision of proper gameplay, but will only add frustration to many players’ game experience without being of real benefit to anyone, because the now-forbidden tactic could always be freely rejected.

This will especially discourage groups from including players without much experience in that particular dungeon, for fear of a drastic increase in the time needed to complete the dungeon. What mechanism will work against this bad result?

How is this a worthy use of development time when the game still includes so many bugs that actually impede players?

So you’ve never done fractals then?
It’s the same concept. And they’re very doable with pugs. I don’t see this having too big of an impact to dungeon running. Not any more than fractals does.

fdswer.8695:

lots of stupid threads today

True. kittening about gameplay changes that aren’t new to the game seems to be the usual thing here.

Honestly, as as solution to some of these problems I would like to see the skills that revived downed players also revive the dead ones. Would add a new sense of teamwork and not completely handicap a team that is unable to reach a downed player before some boss takes him out.

“oh noo, a mechanic that in time improves the player play style and self awareness in battle instead of just allowing graveyard rushing, this must be the devils work!!! "
-sarcasm

this system improved player skill in game when playing fractals
after getting past frac30 I know I’m a much much better player because of that and I know many people I’ve played with who have grown insanely just because they cant relay on waypoints.

Sure people will now cry and complain how this is hard, but the same thing was said about dungeons when they first were out and anet said: " no, were not making them more easy, you’ll get how to do then withing a month anyway"
And now all of those dungeons are rushed like nothing. Everything in this game is easy, it just takes the player itself to become of the level, no gear, no build, but the player is the important part.

If my illusion of life was an actual revive skill i might be okay with some of this, but as it stands now in dungeons it’s only good when the mobs/bosses are already close to death and there is no sense in using it because they will rally when it’s dead anyway. Only if they have 10 percent or below health is it even okay to use because then they are just gonna die anyway -_-

whether it improves playstyle is questionable. I’m not saying it won’t but I won’t say it’s definitely going to.

After all, people have been glitching dungeons bosses and mobs for a while now. More people are just going to take the exploit/glitch methods when/if they are found because there’s less reason to take on a boss head on.

Its’a tough balance, I’ll admit, but I don’t think anyone’s quite sure what implications these changes will have had until a month in or so.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Honestly, as as solution to some of these problems I would like to see the skills that revived downed players also revive the dead ones.

I very much agree. There’s an elementalist skill that, I believe, used to revive dead as well as downed. Then it got adjusted to only downed, and off of my skill bar it went. Why was it changed? Why not let them be used for both?

Ac is probably the easiest dungeon but pugs already easily run this without using waypoints during combat. Maybe path 2 when it doesnt go well will bite. Story lovers will be interesting though they have been weakened and players will learn not to stand in the story mode kings easily avoidable aoe’s of death. Kholer may be skipped more Hehe. I gotta see this!

As someone else said. The key here is to revive when a player goes down, then it only takes a second or two to do so. If you let them die then there will likely be a chain reaction of people dying. So revive them.

It’s rare for me to ever waypoint in PUG dungeons. I’m just a casual player though.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

How do you expect that to work when almost all bosses will reset if the party wipes?

You need to kill the boss, in a one-er, legit, to win. I for one applaud ANet. Players are going to need to up their game.

Really? The end of pugging? Melodramatic much?

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Tell that to the Devs who added the “die” part…
This is their issue and we’re penalized for it.

Dungeons

Polished dungeons and removed the ability to use waypoints while any player is in combat.

Many rage players now xD

Comeback Healer Professions from GW1 your been forgotten

Omer.5096:

Really? The end of pugging? Melodramatic much?

Not the end. I have pretty much all the gear I need… nothing to lose… and you know what… tomorrow I’ll be PuGing. It’s gonna be… AMAZING.

The Kape.3672:

Comeback Healer Professions from GW1 your been forgotten

I predict players raging at Guardians and Elementalists for not healing enough!

Sarie.1630:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

How do you expect that to work when almost all bosses will reset if the party wipes?

You need to kill the boss, in a one-er, legit, to win. I for one applaud ANet. Players are going to need to up their game.

Yeah, I was a bit lazy with that.

I personally agree with the change.

Nurse.1085:

This is how the majority of other games do this. I mean, GW2 was the first MMO I’ve seen where it was acceptable to die, runback, die, runback without disengaging the boss/battle.

Even in GW1, if you died on a mission, you had to start over.

GW1 was at least twice as easy as well. At least. The characters played the same everywhere, not like this where in the Open World they are pansies and then in a dungeon they are demi-gods.

As someone mentioned above…. MEDIC!

I’m amazingly impressed with this change. IMO it should have been like this from day 1. There’s no reason you should be able to die and zerg down a boss fight in a dungeon. I’ve never “WIPED” in GW2 in a dungeon.

Now maybe people will take time to learn boss mechanics and not have the “Oh, well if I die I’ll just run back. Ez. GG” mentality.

I hate to sound like an elitist or conformist, but honestly, the change won’t be any sort of problem. If you look at practically every other MMO and its group content, you can’t rez rush. If you fail a boss or a pull, you wipe and restart, it’s part of the challenge. I think that this will help dungeons in the long term though. Players will focus on actually knowing mechanics and ways to overcome them, rather than glass cannon rez rushing content. The same principle applies to fractals, and nobody seems to mind it too much. The only places that fights might be problematic would be Alpha and Lupi. However, Lupi is fairly easy with an experienced group, and Alpha’s AOEs can be blocked, dodged, or invulned through.
It’s a legitimate claim that this increases dungeon difficulty, because it does. But in time, players will get used to it. However, I do believe that a tweak to dungeon rewards would be in order.
And on tough pulls, you can always whittle it down. Try LOTRO. In Tier 2 raids, the trash resets on wipe.
On the other hand, rejoice that fractals are fixed! scurries off to enjoy them without fear of disconnect

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Firstly, that is a sign that the boss encounter wasn’t balanced right since players are dying so much.

Secondly, that is still far better than:

Run in, die, wait for your team to die, START ALL OVER AGAIN and waste a bunch of time, people rage quit, team disbands.

Andenhelm.2681:

I hate to sound like an elitist or conformist, but honestly, the change won’t be any sort of problem. If you look at practically every other MMO and its group content, you can’t rez rush.

I agree, but then I’ve never played a mmo dungeon that are this hard to start out with. The mob on the outside is the same on the inside if you read me correctly. In this game put them in a dungeon and they become supermen.

IMO they should have made their boss fights interesting and challenging before they removed rez rushing. Maybe if they made their dungeon encounters engaging and strategic like some other MMO… I can’t think of the name… People wouldn’t have been laughing at their PVE since launch.

I don’t think people got turned off of GW2 dungeons because of the rez rushing. I think they got tired of snoring through the boring uneventful combat and silly PVE mechanics.

I still remember when i was a GW2 infant and I first encountered the little skelks or whatever they’re called in AC that tackle you to the ground and kill a fully tanked warrior or guardian from 100% to dead unless you have stability on your bar. I thought that was the dumbest mechanic I’d ever seen in a PVE game.

Now I’ve been playing since launch and I go back to that dungeon and the fights are easy as all hell. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I get hit by one and pop balanced stance. Only to get hit by another one later when balanced stance is on CD and it’s an automatic death.

These dungeons have wayyyyyyyy too much CC and insta death mechanics. That is not entertaining content. There is a difference between a challenge that entertains and something that is made intentionally difficult that just angers the majority. And when a player loses control of his character for a long period of time because of enemies firing off long CC’s with minimal cooldowns the game goes from challenging fun to just frustrating and stupid.

I like the fractal fights for the most post. I think that was a step in the right direction. Hopefully that is the flow they put in to the regular full length dungeons. But where they are now something needs to change.

“When we were making this change, we looked at the events and encounters where our data showed players being encouraged to res-rush and re-balanced them to allow for the safe removal of res-rushing. There are a few standout examples of this, and our patch notes will include a full list of changes we are making to existing dungeon content.”

When thinking about the changes they made and the areas they altered or left the same, this is actually consistent with my dungeon experiences. There were four areas I frequently saw res rushing as the chosen dungeon mechanic. One was the wurm fight in TA, one was Lupicus in Arah, one was Mag in CoF and the other was Kholer. Of these four, only two were altered, although I still agree with the decision.

I never tried Mag without the res rush strategy. I exclusively pug and trying to get a pug to do anything but the favoured strategy is like trying to herd cats. I can’t say if it was possible or fair to expect completion without WPs, but they did alter the event in response to players avoiding the original design. They reacted to WP rushing instead of just removing the WPs so that’s fair enough to me, I still haven’t tried the current design, but I can see they’ve tried here.

I agree with not changing Kholer despite it being an area where I constantly see res rushing. Kholer is optional, so if you can’t beat him, you can just skip him. This doesn’t prevent people from completing the dungeon, although I am strongly concerned about the likelihood of pugs ever doing him now that you can’t res rush him. Previously, he was a very hit or miss encounter. Some pugs mastered him with ease (which is why I agree with leaving it as is, the cues for when to dodge are clear and simple to follow, it’s a matter of co-ordination under pressure once you’ve learned that) while others will be defeated several times. When the success of a group varies so dramatically on player skill, I suspect the norm will be to avoid the possibility of failure and skip him altogether, this saddens me and I hope it won’t be the case but I suspect it will be the end consequence of this change. I suspect Lupicus falls into a similair category, although I personally don’t run that dungeon, it’s also allowed to be more difficult as it’s a level 80 dungeon. Getting people to do Kholer will be much harder than before. Kholer is also notorious for being one of the most dangerous bosses to res during. The horrible design decision to have reviving take priority over dodging will often result in people being revive locked when they see the dodge cue and ultimately be pulled to their deaths. Hint: make dodge roll take priority and cancel a revive.

The wurm fight in TA is similair to Kholer but it was actually changed. I agree with this. Even once you learn this fight, there is a lot more to look out for. Multiple wurms create multiple AoEs, the poison blossoms have an awkward balance of risk vs reward, on one hand killing them gives you much more room to strafe and dodge the wurm AoEs, on the other hand, if you are downed the blossoms are your primary means of a rally. Being downed in AoEs usually results in death (especially if they stack on top of each other) but the blossoms will help. This encounter needs to be more doable than Kholer because it is not optional and it’s the gateway to all three TA paths. I suspect this change will kill off the dungeon for people doing it for the first time (there is a lot of stuff to learn with this encounter, the removal of res rushing is going to discourage these people) and that’s my biggest concern with this change, but for experience TA groups (people who have done this boss ten times or more) I suspect they will be fine with this change. I still don’t plan to res people very often during this fight, it’s another encounter which usually results in a reviver getting killed too. The AoEs do too much damage, they are often followed by a second AoE and if a blossom spawns on top of you, you are screwed.

TL;DR I haven’t tested these changes in the game yet, but reading through the reasoning and reflecting on my experiences in the past, my familiarity with the encounters and comparing ones which were tweaked and ones which weren’t, it feels like they are on the right track at least. There is still a cost to pugs, especially on encounters which are not optional, but I think they are making adjustments on encounters which need them and leaving others alone which are fine. Hopefully they continue to monitor this and make further changes/nerfs if necessary. I hope they are making dungeon participation a priority, I’d hate to see them make them more difficult at the cost of participation, I want a healthy puging population, not an elite handful of players in content too difficult for everyone else.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Now its
Run in>Die>Boss Reset>Run in>Die>Boss Reset…

Not a great mechanic either..

Dante.1508:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Now its
Run in>Die>Boss Reset>Run in>Die>Boss Reset…

Not a great mechanic either..

Now it’s:

Run in> Die >Boss Reset >Get better at the game> Run in > Kill Boss > Profit

It’s only “not a great mechanic” if you and your team aren’t very good at the game. Sorry, that’s the simple truth.

I consider myself a pug I enjoy mmo as a past time work / family and all like a lot of other companion players and this update make it too hard for me….and too long.

Iplay gw to ENJOY IT not make myself mad and waste my time like i just did with cof path 2… i wont quit gw but i wont do dongeon anymore so…for all the hardcore player outthere that dont like pug and that mmo are their life: be happy i wont tr8uble your dongeon run anymore…

“WIPE IT UP”. Start again. “WIPE IT UP”. Start again.

Frustrated party member leaves.

Group falls apart.

Back to spamming /m “LF1M XXX”

Begin to start spamming “NEED GOOD HEALER” ??

Having just gone through TA with a pug, I think the changes made are big enough difference that I’m okay with it. I don’t think people will stop pugging over this but I do expect the success rate to decrease – at least at first. I’m cautiously optimistic however.

This is a huge step that essentially says dungeons are not for casuals. So casuals will leave, the people left, the elite, with Voip and can play 24/7, will stay and crow about how pro they are. Anet will pat themselves on the back for ‘fixing’ dungeons by simply making them too hard for casuals to venture forth, so casuals won’t be around to QQ about it.

I think it is really really rich that the developer who designed the system such that waypoint rushing was possible, has the gaul to riducule players who simply took advantage of poor design. It is becoming obvious that the games coders have always really despised the ‘fun’ casual friendly ideas put forth in the manifesto, and they have had a bad case of elitism envy of a certain much more successful MMO’s that are built around elite raiding.

So one more of many to come bricks in the wall to keep casuals out and prevent them from sullying the game experience of the elite.

You can see it already in this thread, the elite bragging about how ‘easy’ the dungeons are and they never wipe, and how everyone just needs to learn to play or go away.

Wiping on bosses is NOT an improvement.

Seriously, besides Arah I don’t think any bosses need to be res-rushed.

Auesis.7301:

Dante.1508:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Now its
Run in>Die>Boss Reset>Run in>Die>Boss Reset…

Not a great mechanic either..

Now it’s:

Run in> Die >Boss Reset >Get better at the game> Run in > Kill Boss > Profit

It’s only “not a great mechanic” if you and your team aren’t very good at the game. Sorry, that’s the simple truth.

Though I don’t mind the change that was made for the most part.
Being “good” at this game was never apart of anything that was said by anet. It was actually something that drew me to the game, I am fairly decent probably above average, but what I like about the game is that I could explore all of the game without the need to be very good.
I understand that it’s a learning process I used to be terrible at dungeons until I ran them for 2 months straight, now I’m “good” I suppose. I just feel that making the group either risk themselves to res, or to start completely over is a bit knee jerk.

I like how all the self-crowned elites seem to have amnesia about the fact that they sucked and died on their first few dungeon runs too.
I’m sure there’ll be people going “I’ve always been able to do every dungeon without dying a single time from the very start.”
Sure guys, we believe you.
What this means is that the people that are already good at dungeons will continue running them, and people who’ve only run them 1-2 times each like me wont have the chance to learn how to do them properly.

Dempsey.8760:

Auesis.7301:

Dante.1508:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Now its
Run in>Die>Boss Reset>Run in>Die>Boss Reset…

Not a great mechanic either..

Now it’s:

Run in> Die >Boss Reset >Get better at the game> Run in > Kill Boss > Profit

It’s only “not a great mechanic” if you and your team aren’t very good at the game. Sorry, that’s the simple truth.

Though I don’t mind the change that was made for the most part.
Being “good” at this game was never apart of anything that was said by anet. It was actually something that drew me to the game, I am fairly decent probably above average, but what I like about the game is that I could explore all of the game without the need to be very good.
I understand that it’s a learning process I used to be terrible at dungeons until I ran them for 2 months straight, now I’m “good” I suppose. I just feel that making the group either risk themselves to res, or to start completely over is a bit knee jerk.

On the contrary, Arenanet have said in every single interview and preview event that Explorable Dungeons were intended to be the most difficult content in the game designed around players with VOIP communication. If anything, this is the first step is actually affirming what they intended to begin with.

Sure, nobody is immediately good at the game, but death-zerging certainly is not the best way to beat the learning curve. This way, you’re forced to actually adapt your playing style within your team to survive rather than play the waypoints in a cheap way to reach the end goal.

I was purposefully melodramatic in the overstatement of PuGs being soon extinct.

However, I just had quite a bad night with PuGs, with three runs ruined by rage quitters (where the rest of us were booted from the dungeon when they left and had to start all over) and one salvaged by kind joiners after two people quit while we were nearly finished. This does not bode well.

I’m wondering whether this difficulty tuning is more for the purpose of increasing frustration to the point where people break down and buy gems to gear up, as opposed to a sincere effort to enhance enjoyment. I get that sense with far too many changes they make.

If you die, what happens if you logout? Say, close the whole game then reload it and log in? Will it stop you entering the dungeon? Does it bypass the no-res whilst in combat?

Dungeons (Besides Arah) are difficult?

Auesis.7301:

Dempsey.8760:

Auesis.7301:

Dante.1508:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Run in > Die > Come back > Run in > Die > Come back

Rinse and repeat until the boss is dead, with no need to take note of mechanics of the fight.

How is that a good mechanic exactly?

Now its
Run in>Die>Boss Reset>Run in>Die>Boss Reset…

Not a great mechanic either..

Now it’s:

Run in> Die >Boss Reset >Get better at the game> Run in > Kill Boss > Profit

It’s only “not a great mechanic” if you and your team aren’t very good at the game. Sorry, that’s the simple truth.

Though I don’t mind the change that was made for the most part.
Being “good” at this game was never apart of anything that was said by anet. It was actually something that drew me to the game, I am fairly decent probably above average, but what I like about the game is that I could explore all of the game without the need to be very good.
I understand that it’s a learning process I used to be terrible at dungeons until I ran them for 2 months straight, now I’m “good” I suppose. I just feel that making the group either risk themselves to res, or to start completely over is a bit knee jerk.

On the contrary, Arenanet have said in every single interview and preview event that Explorable Dungeons were intended to be the most difficult content in the game designed around players with VOIP communication. If anything, this is the first step is actually affirming what they intended to begin with.

Sure, nobody is immediately good at the game, but death-zerging certainly is not the best way to beat the learning curve. This way, you’re forced to actually adapt your playing style within your team to survive rather than play the waypoints in a cheap way to reach the end goal.

but the whole no cheap waypoint thing defeats the idea of earning tokens to get the gears.
at this point players might as well craft their own gears or buy them from trading post. for me the gameplay is already hard as it is since we have no potions or dedicated healer profession. yes we have a down state for ress but ressing someone isnt easy and could backfire instead of helping which happens alot. supportive proffession will also become less supportive since they are usually the first one to die excluding guardians.
if dungeons are only for elite then they should make the rewards only for elite.