Guild Wars 2

So when did dungeons become “Zerg as fast as you can”.

I haven’t played in several months. I just logged on recently and almost every single dungeon group just rushes past the trash so they reset. And people have figured out exploits so they can bypass Boss mechanics entirely.

This is way different from when I played at launch. I just got kicked from a CoF group because I didn’t know the 122 strat (?) from a boss that I have downed multiple times before (and we didn’t even pull it).

I used to lead a lot of dungeons. But now I don’t feel confident in doing so because people know exactly what trash to reset. What exactly changed? Did people just become too familiar with the dungeons??

It’s a whole lot of exploiting mechanics/terrain, skipping mobs/bosses, and cheesing encounters like the 122 strat for CoF.

It’s a mixture of poor dungeon design and a community that, by and large, lives and breathes to blow through dungeons using as many explots as possible.

And for the record, the 122 strat for CoF is basically 1 person runs around in the room kiting mobs, then when he dies, 2 people go in, then when those 2 die, the next 2 go in, all the while the people who die run back to repeat the process. It’s a really cheesy graveyard zerging strat people came up with to complete the encounter when they aren’t good enough to just kill the room.

I stopped doing CoF path 2 because of how tired I got of this silly strat where people would rather remain terrible at the game instead of trying to get better and actually complete one of the few somewhat challenging encounters in the game

Honestly, I have never heard of the “122” strat before, and I have ran CoF paths 1 and 2 almost everyday for the past three weeks with my semi-static group (meaning we would bring a pug or two to fill in).

I do, however, heard of the 3-2 strat for the room where Magg sets up the Kaboomium. Usually involves a lot of kiting, but we usually just muscle through it and kill everything. If your party is geared to the teeth in full exotics, you should be able to kill off the spawns with almost no issues. Almost always, we generally have a Guardian use their pull ability to bunch them up so that it’s easier for multi-target abilities to hit them— I guess that explains one way to muscle through it.

As far as “speed runs” go, I’d say that the line between speed running and exploiting can be a bit fuzzy; and I know my friends often have different views when it comes to it. It usually boils down to determining if there is some kind of reward to be made for doing so. Almost always, there isn’t so pugs will try to find a way to skip them. Before ending up in my static group, I’ve done a lot of pugging and it’s amazing the kind of creativity they have when it comes to “breaking” the system. It blows my mind sometimes.

Based on pre-launch blogs about explorables, I got the impression that the events in the dungeons would vary more. What we have are static dungeons with an event here or there that might spawn, and might not. Though there are three paths, some of the encounters take place in multiple paths (Spider and Kohler in AC for instance).

GW2 dungeons are different in some ways from other games (e.g., no trinity play), but in many ways the dungeons are depressingly similar to a “standard” MMO’s. Of course, speed runs and exploits are rampant in many games, so it should come as no surprise these things are happening here.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Of course, speed runs and exploits are rampant in many games, so it should come as no surprise these things are happening here.

I’ve done dungeons in both WoW, and Rift. Neither had the amount of speed runs, or exploits that I’ve encountered the last two days of playing GW2. The group’s I’m paired with in GW2 skip as much trash as possible (by simply running through it, and hope it resets), and uses terrain exploits to its fullest.

So yes. This does come to some surprise that people are abusing game mechanics this bad.

IIRC, Hrouda said he was working with the dungeon team to re-evaluate and fix dungeons now that he was finished with creating FotM. I have no idea how far they’re attempting to go when it comes down changing dungeons, but my hopes aren’t terribly high.

I think there’s gonna need to be some serious changes to a multitude of aspects regarding dungeons and the way theyre balanced and how players are rewarded if we’re going to see any decrease in the amount of skipping and exploiting that is going on

Why wouldn’t they skip mobs?

The “trash” mobs aren’t very “trashy.” For something that would be considered “trash” they have a lot of health and can take a while to go down. Not to mention there’s a lot of them, and the rewards for killing them are fairly pitiful, their loot tables, quite frankly, suck.

Quite frankly, there’s no advantage to killing them instead of skipping them whenever skipping them is an option. Killing them takes much longer and doesn’t reward you.

get yourself a guild,never PUG,it will solve all your problems,99% of pugs are really bad players

Xista.7391:

So when did dungeons become “Zerg as fast as you can”.

I haven’t played in several months. I just logged on recently and almost every single dungeon group just rushes past the trash so they reset. And people have figured out exploits so they can bypass Boss mechanics entirely.

This is way different from when I played at launch. I just got kicked from a CoF group because I didn’t know the 122 strat (?) from a boss that I have downed multiple times before (and we didn’t even pull it).

I used to lead a lot of dungeons. But now I don’t feel confident in doing so because people know exactly what trash to reset. What exactly changed? Did people just become too familiar with the dungeons??

It’s been like that since maybe week 6-7 after release.

People rush past trash because the effort required to afk autoattack them to death is not on par with the rewards they receive for doing so. Some boss mechanics are complete and utter kitten and some are fun, no matter which one after running it 10+ times it becomes monotony for the majority of people. I’d like to add that unless people are directly bugging mobs/terrain I wouldn’t count it as an exploit. I’ve had pugs start screaming that I was “ruining the game by exploiting” when I explained how the entire group can avoid Subject Alpha’s AoE’s just by standing together.

Since you haven’t played in a few weeks I’m wondering if you’re aware that for some arbitrary reason Mr Hroudra decided everyone was doing it wrong and kiting the mobs around was bad. So the timer for Magg to explode the door was increased as well as the number of mobs. With the exception of coordinated groups who use certain types of builds (as well as decent equipment) most people lack the power/defense to fight off the mobs away from Magg long enough so they simply suicide kite them.

If your concern is that you do not want to skip trash mobs you’ll have to make that clear when you join a group. The majority of people, in my experience, find killing things that offer little benefit a waste of their limited playing time.

As to what changed there are many things.
1) Fractals Of The Mists – A new dungeon with loot tables that are a dozen heads above everywhere else in the game and also the only place to currently acquire Best in Slot Gear

2) Ascended Gear Fallout – There was a rather large commotion regarding the addition of vertical progression. Don’t be surprised if some of the populace is less friendly or gone all together.

3)Magic Find/Loot Tables – Recently people have been calling into question whether or not Magic Find is working as intended. Some people believe it is in fact having the opposite effect. Loot tables for Champions and higher were supposedly “adjusted” so that they always dropped at least a blue or better, however that update simply did not work, with many people reporting whites, grays or no drops at all from Champions. The chests in dungeons have a MUCH better loot table than normal mobs. Combine those three things together and you may be able to see where players are coming from when they skip past mobs and simply attempt to loot chests as quickly as possible.

What are the boss exploits ? And by exploit I mean something where the boss stops attacking or things like not, not taking advantage of the environment (by making the Boss run around) or what most players do when facing Alpha.

Since you haven’t played in a few weeks I’m wondering if you’re aware that for some arbitrary reason Mr Hroudra decided everyone was doing it wrong and kiting the mobs around was bad. So the timer for Magg to explode the door was increased as well as the number of mobs. With the exception of coordinated groups who use certain types of builds (as well as decent equipment) most people lack the power/defense to fight off the mobs away from Magg long enough so they simply suicide kite them.

When did this happen ?

RedStar.4218:

What are the boss exploits ? And by exploit I mean something where the boss stops attacking or things like not, not taking advantage of the environment (by making the Boss run around) or what most players do when facing Alpha.

Since you haven’t played in a few weeks I’m wondering if you’re aware that for some arbitrary reason Mr Hroudra decided everyone was doing it wrong and kiting the mobs around was bad. So the timer for Magg to explode the door was increased as well as the number of mobs. With the exception of coordinated groups who use certain types of builds (as well as decent equipment) most people lack the power/defense to fight off the mobs away from Magg long enough so they simply suicide kite them.

When did this happen ?

It was one of the first few dungeon balances, around the time they changed the tokens from chest drops to end reward only.

Well the large differences in difficulty of the dungeons cause a lot of the harm I think. Having several different dungeon design teams work individually was a poor choice. Sharing ideas and having a consistent difficulty could have been achieved if they didn’t choose this route.

Furthermore they need a lot more QA testing on their dungeons to prevent exploits. In Arah for example, there are a million ways of getting out of, and around the map. I think they need to utilize their community a bit more on this part too. Listen to what they say and have some dungeons be beta tested by actual players. I mean, on my first playthrough of the Grawl fractal I found a way of skipping the jumping puzzle within 2 min of entering the dungeon. Such obvious flaws should not make it into released dungeons.

Brutal Arts.6307:

It was one of the first few dungeon balances, around the time they changed the tokens from chest drops to end reward only.

Oh I see. I didn’t know/notice it because it happened before I ever did CoF path 2.

RedStar.4218:

What are the boss exploits ?

I’m horrible with remembering names. But my last dungeon of the night was TA explorable. At the last boss (I forget which path) everyone climbed this branch, and pulled the boss. This caused the Oakhearts to spawn there, and we all jumped down. The Oakhearts just stayed there and did nothing.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Why wouldn’t they skip mobs?

The problem I’m seeing is with the dungeons, not the players.

I have no problems with people doing speed runs. I took apart of a few CoF speed runs when the game first launched.

I do have a problem though when the dungeon mechanics allow for you to skip the majority of trash in the instance. It wasn’t fun rushing past mobs, hoping you live, and try and leash it far enough so it resets. In some cases this made dungeon runs longer because people kept on dying when they graveyard rezzed and ran back to a boss fight.

It seems like a flawed system that surely the devs did not intend to have happen.

Xista.7391:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Of course, speed runs and exploits are rampant in many games, so it should come as no surprise these things are happening here.

I’ve done dungeons in both WoW, and Rift. Neither had the amount of speed runs, or exploits that I’ve encountered the last two days of playing GW2. The group’s I’m paired with in GW2 skip as much trash as possible (by simply running through it, and hope it resets), and uses terrain exploits to its fullest.

So yes. This does come to some surprise that people are abusing game mechanics this bad.

Is that because people in those games are less inclined to skip trash than in GW2, or because the dungeons are designed to make skipping harder? I don’t know about WoW, but there was plenty of skipping and terrain exploits in Rift at one point.

The endless amount of finding myself in PUGs who exploit and skip trash mobs really ruins my enjoyment of these dungeons. My favorite dungeon runs have been with groups of people who take their time and kill everything; unfortunately in many of these areas the reward does not justify the time-sink and coordination required to properly motivate the player-base at large to run these dungeons without exploiting them does not justify the time and coordination required for a successful run. For me, it’s justified because it’s more fun that way, but try convincing a populace recently migrated from WoW that fun and not loot is what you should be going for. It gets even more difficult when many of these paths are bugged in general, and bosses are poorly designed with this running philosophy that huge health bars make up for lack of damage (a philosophy that also seems to be the cause of the problems with my favorite class, the Necromancer).

The trashmobs need to drop better loot, and do more damage but have lower HP. This would keep the difficulty and require just as much skill but would result in shorter battles and give more player motivation to dispatch these mobs instead of calling on a Thief class to stealth the whole group through. I think one of the best examples of this in-game is the optional boss Lt. Kohler, who not only is a fun and challenging fight, but drops a significant amount of loot, a chest, and a very conveniently placed waypoint.

In fact, earning a waypoint for killing mobs would probably be one of the best incentives for dispatching them, particularly if a hard boss is waiting in the next room. As it is right now, when I get stuck in a PUG, even one person who just wants to skip the trash usually wins the group argument because as the dungeons are right now, I can’t fall back on the “fun is its own reward” argument and if I want the tokens at all from the run, I have to shut my mouth and keep an eye out for the players who like to skip because chances are I’m going to be reviving them quite a bit in the later boss fights.

Dorian Dawes.8769:

The endless amount of finding myself in PUGs who exploit and skip trash mobs really ruins my enjoyment of these dungeons.

Don’t go with PUG’s. If you have no friends/a guild than when you’re organizing a group make your desire’s for the dungeon run clear.

Xista.7391:

So when did dungeons become “Zerg as fast as you can”.

I haven’t played in several months. I just logged on recently and almost every single dungeon group just rushes past the trash so they reset. And people have figured out exploits so they can bypass Boss mechanics entirely.

This is way different from when I played at launch. I just got kicked from a CoF group because I didn’t know the 122 strat (?) from a boss that I have downed multiple times before (and we didn’t even pull it).

I used to lead a lot of dungeons. But now I don’t feel confident in doing so because people know exactly what trash to reset. What exactly changed? Did people just become too familiar with the dungeons??

Zerg a dungeon don’t zerg a dungeon?! what is it exactly that you want from people?
Most dungeons have mobs that you need to kill, so we kill them, is that zerging? Skipping mobs isn’t zerging either.

You want to kill everything in the dungeon fine, by all means go ahead, most of the mobs wont drop anything anyway so you’re just wasting time.
“Exploits” is finding a short cut really that bad? wouldn’t it be more like flanking the enemy or sneaking in undetected?

People come here and complain about skipping mobs and glitching bosses. Do you know why they do it? They do it because it makes a lot more sense than grinding through most dungeons. Cof is one of the shortest fastest dungeons you can do with out skipping anything. The kiting mob strategy for the room where mag plants his kaboomium works better than going in and trying to fight everything, why because it doesn’t require your party to be tanky and everyone can do it.

As for exploits, so many people have complained about arah farming that they patched it and made farming impossible. I wish I could farm arah for some tokens because getting through an entire path 3 run is too painful if you don’t have a strong party that can dodge because people will die and the lupicus will reset and then if they fail again they will quit.

Guild wars has become a grinding game now. SO go get your grind on

NoodllZ.8376:

Guild wars has become a grinding game now. SO go get your grind on

This is exactly the reason, Grind Wars ^^

Everything in the game (max gear only, Ascended/Legendaries, I never had a problem with the amount of “grinding” needed for Exotics, that was perfectly fine) is acquired by endless grinding/farming because there are no ways for skilled players to get anything so people skip as much as possible. It’s like asking why people skip 90% of events in Cursed Shore and only do a select few, it’s because those few give the most rewards for the minimum time! It’s that simple. Also, trash mobs aren’t worth it, so people either skip as much as they can in an attempt to finish the dungeon quickly, otherwise there is no point doing dungeons, they take too long for terrible rewards, just farm Cursed Shore events, in the same time you will have triple the rewards.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Is that because people in those games are less inclined to skip trash than in GW2, or because the dungeons are designed to make skipping harder? I don’t know about WoW, but there was plenty of skipping and terrain exploits in Rift at one point.

In WoW, trash won’t reset.

NoodllZ.8376:

“Exploits” is finding a short cut really that bad? wouldn’t it be more like flanking the enemy or sneaking in undetected?

Exploits is not finding a shortcut. An exploit is taking advantage of something that is not intended. Purposely pulling a boss in such a way that bypasses his mechanics is an exploit. I find it funny because the bosses people purposely exploit, aren’t even difficult in the first place.

Rushing past trash is not an exploit because it is a game mechanic. But it is poor design because it encourages people to skip the majority of a dungeon. The reason that this arises is because trash has so much health, and little reward.

The entire system needs to be reworked so an appropriate amount of reward is distributed for doing everything in the dungeon. Not the ones who figure out how to cheese mechanics so they can bypass almost most things.

My main point is….. why even have trash if you can just rush past it and have it reset?

when the goal for most people is getting their 60 per path each day, then speed runs are always going to be an option. Check gw2lfg.com and when you post your looking for a group, post the phrase “gold run”or “gold farm.” This will let your partners know you’re looking for a group that’s going to do a lot more killing than skipping. Like the age-old AC question, to kill Kohler or not to kill Kohler.

This is becoming a real pain for me… especially in Fractals.

I’m not opposed to skipping mobs that either are difficult to get past or take too much time, but I’ve seen way too many instances, especially in PUGs, where people skip easy mobs on Fractals like Jade Maw just because they can. I just can’t fathom why, after spending over an hour to get here, they won’t take the 2-3 minutes extra to kill mobs that have some of the best drops in the dungeon. It’s gotten so bad that even though I request beforehand that we kill, they just ignore me and run down anyway, even on 20+ where you can get shards as drops.

This may sound like a silly suggestion, but since getting the player base to change their tactics is near impossible, why not introduce a reward for killing mobs in situations like this? You could have a small chest similar to the Volcano fractal on the platform before the boss for killing all the mobs (not crabs like the achiev) and drop loot based upon your dungeon level. Maybe make a new chest called a fractal chest that has a very small chance to drop essence or weapons skins?

Xista.7391:

My main point is….. why even have trash if you can just rush past it and have it reset?

Perhaps that is exactly the reason. There are a lot of dungeons that disallow you from skipping trash mobs, but there are also a lot of dungeons that allow you to skip. It is my opinion that if they wanted to disallow skipping, it’d be trivial to do, and thus they must support it. Just like in GW1, where skipping enemies was a critical part of many end-game runs, GW2 endorses the “kill what you want, all that matters is that you achieve your goal” philosophy. I don’t think that’s a problem, personally. If it changes at some point, I won’t mind then either.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Xista.7391:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Of course, speed runs and exploits are rampant in many games, so it should come as no surprise these things are happening here.

I’ve done dungeons in both WoW, and Rift. Neither had the amount of speed runs, or exploits that I’ve encountered the last two days of playing GW2. The group’s I’m paired with in GW2 skip as much trash as possible (by simply running through it, and hope it resets), and uses terrain exploits to its fullest.

So yes. This does come to some surprise that people are abusing game mechanics this bad.

Is that because people in those games are less inclined to skip trash than in GW2, or because the dungeons are designed to make skipping harder? I don’t know about WoW, but there was plenty of skipping and terrain exploits in Rift at one point.

no one used to skip dungeon trash in WoW because once aggroed, the mobs would chase you through the dungeon until you’re dead. there was no way of resetting them other then certain class mechanics like hunter’s Feign Death and rogue’s Vanish.
I’m not sure if it changed, haven’t played that game in years.

Twill.6217:

no one used to skip dungeon trash in WoW because once aggroed, the mobs would chase you through the dungeon until you’re dead. there was no way of resetting them other then certain class mechanics like hunter’s Feign Death and rogue’s Vanish.
I’m not sure if it changed, haven’t played that game in years.

I don’t know if that would be a good idea in GW2 (mobs never letting you go).
First they would have to make it not affect bosses because players will pull certain bosses to easy to fight places.
Then how problematic will it be to implement ? NPCs only walk on more or less flat terrain. If there is a barely steep slope, they’ll walk around it if they have to. If NPCs behavior is changed, players could simply trap NPCs by making them fall down a slope they won’t be able to come back up.
Speaking of which, since you have WP in dungeons, a team member could simply get the aggro, put monsters in a far away corner for the rest of the team to pass without problem.
Or use stealth (skills or items).

If Anet has no issues with running/skipping groups of trash, then neither do I. The problem I am running into is that many groups I get into end up wasting a lot of time trying to skip these large groups of trash, and end up dying. A lot. Inevitably, someone leaves, and often this causes the group to fall apart.

A typical scenario is that 1-2 of the players has not done the skip sequence, or is not familiar with the idea. Someone runs ahead and types ‘keep up’ and then everyone runs like a bunch of lemmings. Sometimes it works out and we can resurrect anyone who died. Other times it just spirals out of control. If set to some Benny Hill music, it might be amusing. Might.

I have started using gw2lfg.com recently, and it has been suggested I use the comment section to let others know that I’m interested only in runs that do not skip trash. Seems logical, on the face of it.

However, this will also likely increase the difficulty of finding groups. Time will tell.

It has also been pointed out that Anet essentially embraces this option, and thus it will invariably become an ingrained part of the general populace’s skill set. Add to this that there is no real argument to counter the risk vs reward of trash mobs, and it becomes evident that the dungeon runners creed must be Skip or die, or rather, Skip or die, or die skipping.

In the end, it is frustrating for players like myself who just want to run a good old dungeon. Many of them looks awesome, and the ones I’ve done have been, for the most part, fun.

Never thought I’d say this but I almost miss the reputation grind for dungeons from WoW. The mobs didn’t leash so skipping was never an option, but we got a reward for cleaning up anyways.

The answer is simple.

Since they became tedious and boring, with some disconnect issues and bugs.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Why wouldn’t they skip mobs?

The “trash” mobs aren’t very “trashy.” For something that would be considered “trash” they have a lot of health and can take a while to go down. Not to mention there’s a lot of them, and the rewards for killing them are fairly pitiful, their loot tables, quite frankly, suck.

Quite frankly, there’s no advantage to killing them instead of skipping them whenever skipping them is an option. Killing them takes much longer and doesn’t reward you.

make mobs not leash! and make boss drops better to compensate! problem solved

People run dungeons for 2 reasons. For FUN + for LOOT and GOLD

Does anyone run by mobs and think “this is fun”.

Running by mobs is not fun. If they are non essential, remove them from the dungeon all together!

Anet has already mentioned about “phase 2” for dungeons. Making them more enjoyable,more time revarding, and perhaps less skipping too.

Let’s just hope things get better after this “phase 2”. Atleast they couldn’t make it any worse now…

Xista.7391:

So when did dungeons become “Zerg as fast as you can”.

I haven’t played in several months. I just logged on recently and almost every single dungeon group just rushes past the trash so they reset. And people have figured out exploits so they can bypass Boss mechanics entirely.

This is way different from when I played at launch. I just got kicked from a CoF group because I didn’t know the 122 strat (?) from a boss that I have downed multiple times before (and we didn’t even pull it).

I used to lead a lot of dungeons. But now I don’t feel confident in doing so because people know exactly what trash to reset. What exactly changed? Did people just become too familiar with the dungeons??

Because the trash mob is not worth wasting time to kill.

People go to dungeon for a purpose, whether it be tokens, loot and/or coins.

Wasting time on trash mobs that don’t reward you with anything is not in that calculation.

Timze.7980:

Anet has already mentioned about “phase 2” for dungeons. Making them more enjoyable,more time revarding, and perhaps less skipping too.

Let’s just hope things get better after this “phase 2”. Atleast they couldn’t make it any worse now…

Wrong, it could get a lot worse.

If they aren’t careful and up the mob loot tables then all you will see is more teams that farm up to a certain point in dungeon and reset. (It’s already happening in a certain dungeon.)

I’m perfectly fine with the current way, maybe wish they toned down some paths a little so it’s easier to farm certain tokens with pug.

Dungeons are a means to an end, not where you should be spending your leisure time anyway. No matter how well a dungeon is built you get tired of it after the 100th run.

DeathPanel.8362:

Wrong, it could get a lot worse.

You mean like HotW? It already did.

If they aren’t careful and up the mob loot tables then all you will see is more teams that farm up to a certain point in dungeon and reset. (It’s already happening in a certain dungeon.)

There have been many suggestions how to adjust mob loot tables and token vendors to encourage dungeon completion.

Iehova.9518:

DeathPanel.8362:

Wrong, it could get a lot worse.

You mean like HotW? It already did.

If they aren’t careful and up the mob loot tables then all you will see is more teams that farm up to a certain point in dungeon and reset. (It’s already happening in a certain dungeon.)

There have been many suggestions how to adjust mob loot tables and token vendors to encourage dungeon completion.

Currently there’s sufficient encouragement for dungeon completion. (At least for most dungeons) My worry is that any change to the loot tables for trash mobs might discourage that as an unintended side effect.

DeathPanel.8362:

Currently there’s sufficient encouragement for dungeon completion. (At least for most dungeons) My worry is that any change to the loot tables for trash mobs might discourage that as an unintended side effect.

True, there’s sufficient encouragement for dungeon completion with skipping everything you can. They need to adjust loot tables to incentive people to actually kill mobs. And to avoid situation like arah p3 boss runs they should improve those loot tables the further you are in dungeon/the more mobs you killed already.