Guild Wars 2

Ok we noticed something!
The person who enters the Instance 1st will be affected by this “downscaling”
I opened our 1st TA run (up) and got 45 badges
I opened our 2nd TA run (forward/forward) and got 30 badges
A friend of mine opened our 3rd TA run (forward/up). I got 15 badges. And he got 45.

I think one u “triggered” this thing by entering the dungeon as the first person you will be affected by this bug

JonPeters.5630:

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the times to complete and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system.

Thanks,

Jon

There is a group of three of us that run dungeons together (last two members are random). We never do any runs without the others so clear times, dungeon choice, and path choice are the same for all of us. One of us always gets full rewards while the other and I always get diminished rewards. This leads me to conclude that there is a bug that is only affecting a portion of the player base which causes them to receive diminished rewards.

So there are DM on tokens now?

Kromica.2831:

So there are DM on tokens now?

Yes. But the system is still not working as it should be. So it’s giving diminished rewards on tokens when it shouldn’t. Basically before the build, we only had to worry about monetary/EXP reward. Now we worry about getting gypped on tokens and monetary/EXP reward.

So let me get this straight the diminished return system is global? so even if someone swapped to another dungeon it will still be in place? This is what it seems like to me, how long does it last?

Sera.6539:

Kromica.2831:

So there are DM on tokens now?

Yes. But the system is still not working as it should be. So it’s giving diminished rewards on tokens when it shouldn’t. Basically before the build, we only had to worry about monetary/EXP reward. Now we worry about getting gypped on tokens and monetary/EXP reward.

So there is still no point in running dungeons. Well I guess I will check back in a few weeks.

Twilight Arborea 2 runs in 2 diffrent modes:
forward+up 45 flowers around 1 hr of time
forward + forward 45 flowers 2 hr of time

….Thanks a lot for spending my time but with the second run i should of bought a piece of my set and guess what now i need to do 1 more run because of the system bugs. Can i have 15 flowers so i can buy my piece of armor?
Here is the ss of the second run.

My group in TA has also been having a lot of issues with this. The first run I got 60 tokens while some others got only 45 and then the results doing the two other paths have been completely random.

I thought diminishing returns was for finishing the same paths over and over, not when people do all different paths just once? At least I hope there is some fix to this soon to make it less random than it is now. Can’t have 5 people that are going there for the first time that day get completely random numbers of tokens.

Just finished my first run through TA explorable mode. Got 30 tokens. This was the first explorable run I’ve done today. I did CoF story over 2 hours ago. No clue why I should have hit the diminishing returns. Another guild mate got 45, also having not run any other explorables today.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

I’m talking about strategies like separating enemies more effectively, LoS the enemies for some attacks, moving enemies into traps, focus shifting the enemy, and many others that don’t revolve around dealing damage for ten minutes and dodge attacks…

But these are also all “deal damage, don’t get hit” strategies. I mean, at some point that’s just going to be part of it, or else you end up with encounters that you only actually play once, until you figure out the ‘solution’, which then basically becomes a key that opens the ‘lock’, exactly the same way, every time.

As I said, in my experience, encounters with Elite enemies in dungeons tends to average out to 20-30 seconds per enemy, in (what I would call) a “good, not great” PUG party. Most encounters are against anywhere from 4 to 6 Elite enemies. Is 1.5~3 minutes really an unreasonable amount of time to spend per encounter? How long do you think it should be taking?

I hope people realize that by “day” the devs mean the game day, which resets at midnight GMT, not your personal time zone. I haven’t seen issues with the DR system yet personally.

@Xorin: Keep in mind they said earlier in this thread the dungeon runs did not reset with the server down last night(see below). What that says to me is when they say run a dungeon in a day they don’t really mean midnight to midnight. I think they mean within a 24 hour period. If that’s the case if you ran a dungeon last night at 11pm, then one this morning at 11am the one this morning would be the second one, and so on.

I of course don’t know this for sure but it might explain some of the strangeness you guys are seeing.

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the times to complete and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system.

Thanks,

Jon

EDIT:Bolded important part

It’s a huge mess. We had the same experience running a couple of runs (different paths) in CoE. 1st run everything was fine, 2nd run some party players found themselves with less tokens than the rest. We did NOT speed clear or at least consider our time as speed-clearing (runs were a little above an hour each) and none of us had entered any other explorable mode dungeon that day.

On top of this, I just like to tune in with all the other people considering the DR rewards. Can we have some reasoning (that actually makes sense) behind why exactly is the system punishing efficiency in dungeons. What is so wrong about people wanting to run the same explorable modes ? Aside the obvious fact (that it’s their time), if you really want to encourage people to complete more paths, you should consider offering incentives for it (more/special rewards or interesting mechanics), instead of punishment, punishment and more punishment. We are not idiots. We understand that you are trying hard to battle farming and botting in any form. The thing is, legitimate players are usually caught inbetween. Nothing good will come out of the current system, other than actually discouraging people from running your content, in the long run.

datosh.6275:

Ok we noticed something!
The person who enters the Instance 1st will be affected by this “downscaling”
I opened our 1st TA run (up) and got 45 badges
I opened our 2nd TA run (forward/forward) and got 30 badges
A friend of mine opened our 3rd TA run (forward/up). I got 15 badges. And he got 45.

I think one u “triggered” this thing by entering the dungeon as the first person you will be affected by this bug

Not at all the case. In the three runs my group did, I was the starter of the instance and I always got full reward.

Having a similar problem with dungeons today.

I have done 5 different paths today in 3 different dungeons and got and got 60 twice, 45 twice and 30 once when i should have got 60 every time.

4 other members of the group got 60 every time but one member got 15 less than me each time.

At the moment it seems some people just don’t get the full reward and there is no reason why. Hopefully this gets fixed soon as it is very unfair to the few who get less tokens.

Drintar.1246:

@Xorin: Keep in mind they said earlier in this thread the dungeon runs did not reset with the server down last night(see below). What that says to me is when they say run a dungeon in a day they don’t really mean midnight to midnight. I think they mean within a 24 hour period. If that’s the case if you ran a dungeon last night at 11pm, then one this morning at 11am the one this morning would be the second one, and so on.

I of course don’t know this for sure but it might explain some of the strangeness you guys are seeing.

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the times to complete and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system.

Thanks,

Jon

EDIT:Bolded important part

If its working like before then why is there DR on tokens.

There should NEVER be DR on tokens

JonPeters.5630:

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

Thanks,

Jon

Thanks for the reply Jon, but this is very vague(probably intentional), we don’t know what an extremely high dungeon completion time is. The CoF Maggs run was easily doable prepatch(last night) without exploiting in under 30 minutes, lets call it 20 to 25 minutes for my group of guildies(ele,thief,necro,mesmer,guardian). As you can see its not a bursty group designed for speed clears(5 warriors) and we did every mechanic with no exploiting. Is this too fast? If it is are you suggesting we just stand around for 10 to 20 minutes so we get full rewards?

Lets be honest, we want tokens to buy gear, so we need to do multiple runs and as they say practice makes perfect. It is inevitable that we will get faster and more efficient at completing this dungeon. Why punish us for getting better at the game?

Also since the diminishing returns system was put in place(haven’t run yet today, silly work) myself and the necro have never received more then half credit for any dungeon, even some we have never done before, and the other 3 have gotten full rewards every time. From what i read on the forums i have no reason to doubt that this system is any less buggy post patch. I’m glad that you guys are actively working on bugs but there needs to be far more Quality Assurance testing when patches that affect rewards are involved. Players hate to feel cheated more than anything else.

I’m not really sure how to feel on this one. How would you like it if you were running a guild group through a dungeon and you had to say “Good job guys but slow it down we are too good at teamwork and killing we better take 5 after every boss”. Running at a good clip in a dungeon is fun, everything is clicking, people are calling stuff out and pulling off some clutch rezzes, you don’t want to ruin that momentum.

Honestly when i read Robert Hrouda’s patch notes thread today i understood it as: I get 60(20 + 40) tokens for the first clear of every path no matter how fast i do it. Then i get 20 tokens for any subsequent clears of the same path no matter how fast i clear it. I was fine with this, it promotes trying new dungeons and still gives you 20 token if you just like running one path over and over prepatch. Now it sounds like you can get diminished returns down to zero tokens? That is not OK. Of course this is all speculation because it has not, and from the tone of Robert Hrouda’s post, will not be spelled out for us.

I have more to say but this is getting long. I will end by saying thank you for reading and continuing to work hard, i know fixing bugs and introducing new systems is not easy. But i would rather see exploits fixed(clearwalls, mob leashes, etc) rather then very vague systems put in place, I love playing the game I don’t want to have to play a mini-game of dodging a buggy anti-farming system.

@Drintar: I hadn’t really considered it, mostly because yesterday I did a story TA run, and that was it. Unless I’m overlooking something about how the diminishing returns works, something definitely seems bugged.

I believe the DR on tokens may be a side effect/bug due to them now being rewarded completely at the end as a completion award.

Kromica.2831:

Drintar.1246:

@Xorin: Keep in mind they said earlier in this thread the dungeon runs did not reset with the server down last night(see below). What that says to me is when they say run a dungeon in a day they don’t really mean midnight to midnight. I think they mean within a 24 hour period. If that’s the case if you ran a dungeon last night at 11pm, then one this morning at 11am the one this morning would be the second one, and so on.

I of course don’t know this for sure but it might explain some of the strangeness you guys are seeing.

All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high. This did not get reset with the patch.

If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the times to complete and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system.

Thanks,

Jon

EDIT:Bolded important part

If its working like before then why is there DR on tokens.

There should NEVER be DR on tokens

there should be one for completing the same path back to back

i hope there’ll be a compensation…

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I feel the same way. I am in a large guild and people rarely organize for these dungeons, and most players pugging them cant even accomplish completions for most of the paths so I am feeling like my dungeon running experiences are over for the time being.

It all goes back to how they like to motivate their players. They don’t want us running the same paths over and over again. One way to fix that is to destroy any semblance of rewards the more you play it (what they are doing now). Another way is to make your other dungeon paths/dungeons more fun and worth playing (the smart way). Sure, you shouldn’t just leave one path as exploitable or even almost exploitable, but there needs to be balance between the dungeons if you want others to play them all. This all seems like really poor methods for solving their issues with their content.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

It all goes back to how they like to motivate their players. They don’t want us running the same paths over and over again. One way to fix that is to destroy any semblance of rewards the more you play it (what they are doing now). Another way is to make your other dungeon paths/dungeons more fun and worth playing (the smart way). Sure, you shouldn’t just leave one path as exploitable or even almost exploitable, but there needs to be balance between the dungeons if you want others to play them all. This all seems like really poor methods for solving their issues with their content.

All they are doing now is motivating me to never run dungeons again.

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

Even the name of that system makes me sick: “Diminished Returns system.”

They should make that at A.Net payment:

“Oh, you worked hard this month, Here, take half payment, if you keep progressing you will make it a quarter next month! Keep going!”

Why is there even DM on stuff thats only sodding cosmetic anyways. Let people play the game as they like.

If you are going to do a DM system make its crystal clear and most of all. WORK PROPERLY

Makera.5723:

Twilight Arborea 2 runs in 2 diffrent modes:
forward+up 45 flowers around 1 hr of time
forward + forward 45 flowers 2 hr of time

….Thanks a lot for spending my time but with the second run i should of bought a piece of my set and guess what now i need to do 1 more run because of the system bugs. Can i have 15 flowers so i can buy my piece of armor?
Here is the ss of the second run.

You got 30 more tokens than you would have yesterday and you still manage to complain? Outstanding.

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Why is doing a different path such a huge problem? Do you not want variety in your games?

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

If they want people to be doing all 3 routes, they need to make all 3 routes as equally as interesting/fun, which is not the case, as it stands with many dungeons. Given the choice and considering equal rewards, people will usually opt for the path of least resistance. There is no rocket science involved in this conclusion. Incentive (not always in the form of a reward) is always more attractive than punishment.

Tristanian.6084:

If they want people to be doing all 3 routes, they need to make all 3 routes as equally as interesting/fun, which is not the case, as it stands with many dungeons. Given the choice and considering equal rewards, people will usually opt for the path of least resistance. There is no rocket science involved in this conclusion. Incentive (not always in the form of a reward) is always more attractive than punishment.

It’s really hard to make them all equal though

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Makera.5723:

Twilight Arborea 2 runs in 2 diffrent modes:
forward+up 45 flowers around 1 hr of time
forward + forward 45 flowers 2 hr of time

….Thanks a lot for spending my time but with the second run i should of bought a piece of my set and guess what now i need to do 1 more run because of the system bugs. Can i have 15 flowers so i can buy my piece of armor?
Here is the ss of the second run.

You got 30 more tokens than you would have yesterday and you still manage to complain? Outstanding.

Ok, dude. Should we be content with bugged patches? Why not just leave it like it is but give us even more tokens per run so they equal out to what we would have gotten. Don’t you think it would be the same thing if they just gave us 180 tokens for the first run and let us do the others on good faith? I won’t be content just because they raised the amount just to get less than they are advertising. If you want that then don’t worry about it.

Just because making all paths equal is hard, does not mean they should go ahead and force us to do all of the not-so-fun content so that we may continue to be rewarded. I am NOT ok with a lazy developer philosophy such as that. What is it Anet? Do you want us to play with a func-centric view of the game, or a reward-centric? You treat us pretty badly in both respects.

I have not received a full reward for dungeon completion in over a week. Meanwhile one of my group-mates that always runs with me receives full reward every run.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Makera.5723:

Twilight Arborea 2 runs in 2 diffrent modes:
forward+up 45 flowers around 1 hr of time
forward + forward 45 flowers 2 hr of time

….Thanks a lot for spending my time but with the second run i should of bought a piece of my set and guess what now i need to do 1 more run because of the system bugs. Can i have 15 flowers so i can buy my piece of armor?
Here is the ss of the second run.

You got 30 more tokens than you would have yesterday and you still manage to complain? Outstanding.

Ok, dude. Should we be content with bugged patches? Why not just leave it like it is but give us even more tokens per run so they equal out to what we would have gotten. Don’t you think it would be the same thing* if they just gave us 180 tokens for the first run *and let us do the others on good faith? I won’t be content just because they raised the amount just to get less than they are advertising. If you want that then don’t worry about it.

Just because making all paths equal is hard, does not mean they should go ahead and force us to do all of the not-so-fun content so that we may continue to be rewarded. What is it Anet? Do you want us to play with a func-centric view of the game, or a reward-centric? You treat us pretty badly in both respects.

why would they do that?

@ref You have to be more specific as I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m not actually suggesting that they give us all of our tokens up front, if that is what you are referring to. That was just sarcasm.

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

Yes encouraging me by taking away my choice of how I want to get the tokens.

Granted there will always be paths that are slightly more attractive in terms of difficulty but at the moment, there are prime examples of imbalance between paths that need to be looked at, for instance the effigy in CoF, compared to the other paths etc.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

@ref You have to be more specific as I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m not actually suggesting that they give us all of our tokens up front, if that is what you are referring to. That was just sarcasm.

sorry, formatting error

DaedalusDragon.3754:

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Makera.5723:

Twilight Arborea 2 runs in 2 diffrent modes:
forward+up 45 flowers around 1 hr of time
forward + forward 45 flowers 2 hr of time

….Thanks a lot for spending my time but with the second run i should of bought a piece of my set and guess what now i need to do 1 more run because of the system bugs. Can i have 15 flowers so i can buy my piece of armor?
Here is the ss of the second run.

You got 30 more tokens than you would have yesterday and you still manage to complain? Outstanding.

Ok, dude. Should we be content with bugged patches? Why not just leave it like it is but give us even more tokens per run so they equal out to what we would have gotten. Don’t you think it would be the same thing if they just gave us 180 tokens for the first run and let us do the others on good faith? I won’t be content just because they raised the amount just to get less than they are advertising. If you want that then don’t worry about it.

Just because making all paths equal is hard, does not mean they should go ahead and force us to do all of the not-so-fun content so that we may continue to be rewarded. I am NOT ok with a lazy developer philosophy such as that. What is it Anet? Do you want us to play with a func-centric view of the game, or a reward-centric? You treat us pretty badly in both respects.

what do you mean by this?

Robert, “Diminished Returns” you say? Please explain to me how diminished returns work on your FIRST dungeon of the day.

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

Yes encouraging me by taking away my choice of how I want to get the tokens.

+1
They aren’t “forcing” us. They are just trying to say “Our dungeons aren’t good enough to attract attention (positive, that is) on their own merit so we had to hustle you into doing the ones you don’t do often to get that gear we told you you wouldn’t have to grind for but in fact you do.” They are very long winded evidently.

@Ref I’m still confused by what part you mean. I guess my summation would be that Anet tells us that all of this content should be about having fun and grinding is bad because it is more about getting some reward for a lot of effort. But now we not only have some hefty grinding for dungeon gear but now if you want to play it fast you will get diminishing returns on your rewards. That aspect of any game is a huge contributor to grinds and lengthening the time that you play the game. It is comparable to raid locking for a week after you do it once. This is a bit more relaxed but it feels much worse because the rest of the game is built around a completely different concept.

i just did AC exp for the first time in a week and only got 30tokens + 12s

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

Yes encouraging me by taking away my choice of how I want to get the tokens.

you still have a choice

Ok so suppose there is a set of armor you want, and in that dungeon there are 3 paths, one is super easy, one is medium, and one is very hard.

Which one are you going to do?

The “choice” that you have is fake. If you aren’t doing it exactly as they are suggesting with their patches then you are being MUCH less efficient which is a deciding factor when you are essentially grinding.

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

Yes encouraging me by taking away my choice of how I want to get the tokens.

you still have a choice

Anet had a choice to not be like every other mmo company out there, but so far they are walking the same path.

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831:

@ref

Why? They already took away the gold and xp, taking the tokens just makes me not want to even run them.

I am running the dungeons for the gear not for the crappy stories.

Because they want people to do all 3 routes not just 1.

But there shouldn’t be DR on doing different routes, no matter how long it takes.

Forcing things that are not fun on players seems like a great business decision

They are not forcing anyone to do anything, they are just encouraging people to try the more challenging parts.

Yes encouraging me by taking away my choice of how I want to get the tokens.

you still have a choice

Anet had a choice to not be like every other mmo company out there, but so far they are walking the same path.

Well that’s just complete crap.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

The “choice” that you have is fake. If you aren’t doing it exactly as they are suggesting with their patches then you are being MUCH less efficient which is a deciding factor when you are essentially grinding.

Well ok as I see it:

Before, 30 tokens per run. If you do the same run back to back, you get less. So just do all 3 paths and you will get 90, nothing wrong with that.

Now if you do all 3 in 1 day you get 180.

The only problem I see is for when people want to grind it out the whole day. You will get less, but probably you will still get more than before this patch.