Let’s be clear. We do dungeons because it’s fun, and because we’re here for the rewards. The main incentive to go back to a dungeon is to farm the tokens needed for the associated gear. We do so by running time and time again the explorable mode of the instance we’re interested in.
On the other hand, we have the story mode. Story mode is quite fun on the first try, but we have no incentive to go back there, because, well, no tokens. What doesn’t help either is that it’s quite hard to find a PUG for them.
Then, I’m asking myself, why not give tokens for this path too ? Maybe not the same amount as explorable mode, something along the lines of 30 or 40 tokens on the first daily run and then 10/15 with DR.
Advantages :
- Another path to farm (= some extra daily tokens — yeah!),
- Incentive to veterans to go back there to help rookies get the ropes of dungeon running,
- Incentive to actually run the story mode on alts (not only to unlock explorable),
- Possibility for casual players to work toward their exotic set without having to wipe and wipe again on harder content,
- No downside for hardcore players, that can keep running said harder content.
I’d like to hear your thoughts, dear fellow forumers, on this. Good idea ? Bad idea ? Did I miss some huge drawback ?
You do get small amounts of tokens from story mode, they’re in those bags.
I don’t really think the 6~9 tokens you can get in bags when you re-run enough to actually being considered a sufficient reward for running it. (to be true, I actually forgot about these).
(edited by Geoffroy.3685)
Either make story mode reward tokens upon completion or remove the need for story to be able to enter in explorable.
I get why there is story mode, some people want to learn about the lore in the game. But some people don’t. I did all stories for the achiev, but i skipped all cinematics and just storm through, because all i really wanted was the achiev and to be able to enter in exp mode.
The fact that i need to redo the story mode on every alt, just to be able to start a dungeon in exp mode feels a bit tedious and forced. Remove the requirement for story or give story token rewards in par with a exp path, this way at least i can get something from redoing it over and over.
Content Designer
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
Without considering adding a different, but unique reward to story mode?
:(
It’s been a long time since I’ve done story mode but what if there was a 20 token reward the first time you did it that day and then nothing after that? I can’t imagine myself farming it but I could see myself maybe adding it into the rotation for a few extra tokens and if every group just threw in some low level into their group then everybody wins. Just an idea.
And I agree with Oglaf, what about a unique skin of your choice (new skins added or something) (unique skins based on weapon, as in each weapon has 1 skin for doing story). Or you could throw in some extra currency for 1 run a day. Like 1 ecto each day (would help lower tp cost of ectos), or a laurel, or any other thing people want. It doesn’t have to be a lot because story modes are easier but if you throw in just some small reward and maybe 10-20 tokens per day (1 run) people will do it and not farm it.
(edited by DaedalusDragon.3754)
What about something in same flavor of the new “mentoring” daily? Giving tokens in story mode, but only in a party with some sub-lvl80 characters? I can see it working splendidly, don’t you think?
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
Story mode needs something else to make it palatable to new players who want to learn dungeons, before they in turn get facerolled by explorable :P
I still think putting tokens back in would be fine. I understand the concern when the game first came out, but people have thousands and thousands of these now. Giving out a small amount to help new players learn and gear up without breaking the game.
Robert why not consider giving a considerable amount of coin as the reward? 75s-1g at the end for those who have already cleared it? Award it once per day to discourage repeated farming, but have the reward high enough to entice players to actually run story modes.
This helps people find a way to actually make decent gold and at the same time help out people who just want the story modes done.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
I agree with this in spirit, but isnt this exactly what people are doing in COF path 1 now – afk facerolling easy content to farm tokens.
I agree with this in spirit, but isnt this exactly what people are doing in COF path 1 now – afk facerolling easy content to farm tokens.
I guess they do it for the gold rather than the tokens. With the DR as it is, repeated farming for tokens isn’t that efficient (Cf. “10g/Hr CoFP1Guide Still going strong xD” thread in this forum).
A one time award per character of 60 tokens for story mode would seem appropriate. It wets the appetite for explorable mode and because it’s one time, can’t be farmed. I would probably be more likely to take alts and help guildies in story mode.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
With the current DR system, it cant be farmed more than an expl path. Adding the fact that most story modes are a bit longer than the exp ones, i can’t see them being over farmed.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
I don’t know about that. I was running CoF explorable with some people over the weekend, and we had issues getting back in because most of the team it turns out had never completed story mode, and those of us who had were on servers where the gate was locked, so we figured “what the hell, let’s do Story” so we did. Even though most of us had done Story at least once on different characters, we still died several times more often playing through CoF Story than we ever did on the explorable mode, and it took as twice as long to finish. I wouldn’t say it’s at all “easier,” it’s just less rewarding and more time consuming.
At the very least get rid of those stupid hats that you can’t do anything with. I mean, they are almost always underleveled for you unless you drop what you’re doing and run the dungeons as soon as you possibly can (which is unlikely), and you can’t sell them or even salvage them, so they always just end up destroyed. At the very least they should have a unique look for each dungeon, or they should scale in strength to the level you are when you get them (rather than the level of the dungeon), or maybe have it so that each story mode dungeon rewards a different piece of armor that you can assemble into a single unified style, like those little “bonus” pieces that come with some action figures that you can assemble into a single larger figure. Have AC reward a hat, then CM reward boots, then TA reward gloves, etc., to form a costume style you can’t get anywhere else.
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
Ohoni nailed it.
Story is an unrewarding chore you do once to unlock Exploration and then to be ignored forever more. It is also not easier than Exploration.
I actually like CoF story quite a bit, it’s fun and the story itself is good, not too long, not too annoying. I do it often to help guildies unlock CoF Exp. and don’t mind it at all.
I haven’t ran across a story mode that I would say was easier than explore mode. I have gone back and done story mode a few times for AC, CM, and HOTW. I would say that story mode is just as difficult but more time consuming than an explore path.
As it stands, story mode gives very little reward for repeating. There is no incentive for me to go back and help out a group trying to do story mode for the first time.
Story modes I have done take just as long and usually longer than associated explore paths. Why not give the same token reward at the end of story mode?
I totally agree. They take just as long if not longer than Explorable, so I can’t see people farming them unless they gave over 40 tokens. Heck I don’t think people would farm them any more than explorable even if they got 60 tokens.
But what tokens would do is mean low level characters would be able to get Story teams. I know I’ve always had issues getting it on each of my alts, because there truly is no reason to do it more than once.
Possibly give standard rewards the first time, and some tokens the second time.
Story is comparable to exp. So many ppl run exp that they are down to a science. I hopped on an AC story run and we got clobbered. It was harder than ac p1.
Please add full token rewards to story mode. I’d love to have a 4th path to run.
I agree that something should be done to make revisiting story mode more palatable. If only for the sake of newer players being able to convince experienced players to help them complete the story.
If not dungeon tokens, extra karma or maybe a chance for a special item could be reasons to explore story again.
Am I the only one who considers several explorable paths in different dungeons far easier (and less time consuming) than the storymode of several dungeons? (yes, AC, I’m looking at you – as well as TA…)
Some sort of unique reward for the really really time consuming storymodes would be kind of nice.
A one time award per character of 60 tokens for story mode would seem appropriate. It wets the appetite for explorable mode and because it’s one time, can’t be farmed. I would probably be more likely to take alts and help guildies in story mode.
I don’t think a one time reward would solve the problem of not being able to find groups for SM; many players would still have no incentive to return to SM to help others complete it. Perhaps a daily reward might help, though: complete story mode once a day and receive a fixed amount of tokens that can’t be rewarded again for 24 hours.
Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount.
This is ironic because for many dungeons, the story modes are more difficult and more tedious than the explorable modes.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
I find hotw story mode harder than the explorable atm, just saying.
I honestly think they should all at least give 30-40 tokens ONCE per day. They take far enough time to at least give a small reward, even if they are indeed faceroll.
I haven’t ran across a story mode that I would say was easier than explore mode. I have gone back and done story mode a few times for AC, CM, and HOTW. I would say that story mode is just as difficult but more time consuming than an explore path.
I find hotw story mode harder than the explorable atm, just saying.
HotW story end boss blows all the Exploration bosses out of the water in terms of difficulty. His bird call ability one-shots most professions, and on top of that he has a Champion pet with him!
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
Can I just say that there is not a single story mode in this game that I would repeat, they are more difficult and far longer than any exp in the dungeons. Even with paths as short as 15 mins I do not bother repeating them in a day other than my 60 tokens. I doubt anyone would bother facerolling story modes :/ There may be an uneven balance but I think it is the other way around rob.
I’ve done three stories and all of them were either harder or at least longer than exp paths so statement about balance issue doesn’t make sense to me.
(of course, this was before they nerfed Arah story to oblivion in latest patches, making Arah story one of the easiest dungeons out there, one guy quit at the beginning of it and we had no problem completing it anyways)
The problem is they are continually increasing the difficulties of Explorable mode to the point they are shutting out casual players and PUGs and then at the same time telling people that if its too hard then do story mode. So apparently only the hardcore are meant to be able to get the necessary tokens for the dungeon gear. Because getting 1800 tokens at 6 to 9 per run in story mode is utterly laughable to expect of the casual players. I guess we are just meant to be shut out of the dungeons.
Thanks for responding, Robert. We really appreciate it.
I understand the logic and guessed that that was the reason before, but now I know for sure. That said, I don’t like to do story dungeons more than once because the rewards are so much lower than exp.
I guess there is a cost to every decision. But I do wish there was a little more incentive to do story mode.
Storymode is stated to be for story only. You want story acheivement you have to do it. Plus it still helps during monthly dungeons too. But explorable should be only for tokens because people would just do story.
The least they could have done is give Story Mode a one-time reward of say 100 or so tokens when it is completed, that way some of the exp mode grind is reduced and players cannot exploit it.
At the very least you could add a bunch of exotics as drops from the mobs in story mode. Aidan’s Bow, Ralena’s Staff, Caderyn’s… whatever weapon he uses. Make some level 80 exotics with decent drop chances as an incentive to get people to run the story versions. I’ve done TA story mode three times since launch and every time I’m amazed at all the diverse environments in the dungeon that simply aren’t used in explorable mode.
The least they could have done is give Story Mode a one-time reward of say 100 or so tokens when it is completed, that way some of the exp mode grind is reduced and players cannot exploit it.
This seems like a good idea as there is ZERO incentive to do the story mode, if nobody has explorable open then I switch to a character that has done all story modes, at the end I get the tokens so it does not matter too much. I’ll do anything to pretty much avoid story mode in dungeons, I do not want to sit in AC for 1-2 hours helping newbies for their first time in a dungeon trying to explain every dungeon mechanic to them along the way and at the end all I get is a hat 55 levels lower than me. ZERO incentive. I mean I am a helpful player but even a guildie would have to convince me to go back in to story mode with them. Arah story I believe is the easiest also, you could sleep during it and still finish it, every other story mode is painful to play, but then again Arah is part of the Personal Story and there is no redeeming factor about that, ugh.
You can’t do something like 10 tokens for the first initial run and zero for any other run?
The issue it’s once you have done it once, no-one has a reason to go back to help new people. Making it really hard for a new player to get a team. A first time reward doesn’t help this. An ongoing daily that gave some kind of reward would.
Tokens could definitely help, though I’m not sure I would give them for Arah as the Story and Exploration might as well be different dungeons.
Wow that’s a lazy reason. You’re telling me ‘Pro-elite’ groups would run story over and over again even if there were 10 tokens, 8 tokens, 5 tokens, etc.? As somebody else mentioned, you couldn’t scale the tokens per level? Maybe a level 35 gets 30 tokens from story in AC, but a level 80 gets 5? You couldn’t add another unique award other than a silly hat that nobody uses?
Someone said something about 1 laurel a day for a storymode, seems like a nice idea to create some interest for any storymode. (Only get a laurel a day per storymode so people dont keep running a specific storymode over another).
Translated into numbers it means that a player could earn 8 laurels a day from the 8 storymodes in the game and 1 more laurel for completing the daily for a grandtotal of 9 laurels a day.
This means a player could earn an ascended amulet in 4 days assuming (s)he plays like 8h+ a day or about 30hours total for such an amulet.
I took 1 hour time per laurel earned.
Assuming most people average 2h/day on the game at most then it would take those people about 2 weeks for 1 ascended amulet.
Question is: what do you people think about this?
Someone said something about 1 laurel a day for a storymode, seems like a nice idea to create some interest for any storymode. (Only get a laurel a day per storymode so people dont keep running a specific storymode over another).
Translated into numbers it means that a player could earn 8 laurels a day from the 8 storymodes in the game and 1 more laurel for completing the daily for a grandtotal of 9 laurels a day.
This means a player could earn an ascended amulet in 4 days assuming (s)he plays like 8h+ a day or about 30hours total for such an amulet.
I took 1 hour time per laurel earned.
Assuming most people average 2h/day on the game at most then it would take those people about 2 weeks for 1 ascended amulet.Question is: what do you people think about this?
Yes a thousand times. They need more ways to get laurels as there is currently only one way to get ascended necklace and earrings, which goes counter to everything that anet has said in the past.
Laurels per day is a great idea in my opinion. Right now it will take way too long to gear up more than one character, so more laurel methods (especially tied to something that is currently rarely done more than once per account total) is a good idea.
As for people saying that they get 6-9 tokens in story mode, I either call you out as liars or entitled. I get nada for tokens in story mode. I’ve run AC story twice after my own run to help guildies through it (mainly so they would stop whining about how impossible it was to get a group) Absolutely 0 tokens from those Bags of Wondrous Goods.
You know what my guild routinely said after finishing every story/explorable mode after we’d done AC story?
“Still wasnt as bad as the Lovers.” (granted, this was pre-nerf)
Story modes just aren’t easier than explorables at all. For all the reward you get from Story mode, they ought to be soloable.
I was actually considering this exact same issue yesterday. One of the problems that people are having with the new AC is that the paths are now much for difficult for PUGs to complete. As it stands, I can understand this opinion because many people without access to reliable groups want the tokens to buy dungeon items and explorable mode is the only way to obtain them.
I heartily agree with the direction that dungeons are taking right now. Explorable mode has been billed as the “hard mode” of dungeons, requiring coordination and teamwork to complete; both things that are often difficult (but not impossible) to find in a standard PUG. Offering tokens in story mode would placate some of the more casual players upset by the new direction.
Consider this: During story mode, Bags of Wondrous Goods would drop 1-3 tokens and completion would offer 5 tokens, dropping by one each subsequent run. In this way, casual players would be easily able to obtain the rare equipment to either skin or drop into forge, but the exotics would remain very rare since story mode only drops at most 14 tokens per run. In this way, it encourages players to group up to run explorables but doesn’t severely punish them if they do not want or are unable to group. In addition, the numbers are too low to really encourage farming for the exotic gear.
I really like the new AC (except p2, very buggy as-is but likely to be very fun when fixed. <3 Ghostbusters) and my guild had a blast running through the paths yesterday. I’m really looking forward to what they do next (I’m hoping CoF) but I feel that a happy medium needs to be struck and the OPs suggestion is the best idea I can see.
Some story modes are harder, longer and much more tedious than explorable modes.
It doesn’t make much sense that they are at the same time less rewarding.
In my opinion, they should give tokens just to be more consistent with dungeons as a whole.
It doesnt really matter if X story its a bit easier than their explorable… it goes the same way with dungeons like COF, where Story Mode is actually fun and, not really hard but has its challenges and then you do Path 1 or 2 and its simply a joke. Why would explorables there provide tokens and story mode wouldn’t is inconsistent.
I always wondered why it wasn’t set up so that story mode rewarded tokens (to all members) if and only if the dungeon starter had not previously completed it.
This would make it easier to find a group for new players, but experienced players would not be able to consistently take advantage of it (sure they would once per alt, or once if they haven’t previously done it).
It would also make the experienced players a bit more supportive of the new one: if the new one leaves, then the group disbands due to the dungeon owner feature. Knowing this, experienced players who don’t want to be patient with newplayers, would be less likely to join the new player than those who really want to help.
Story modes are currently frequently much more difficult than explorables because average dungeon experience within the group is usually much lower. This makes them a very different experience from explorable dungeons, and not in a starter experience sort of way. Giving rewards to those helping first timers would improve both the starter experience aspect of story mode, as well as increasing the options in terms of dungeons to run for experienced runners who are willing to help out a player who might lack experience.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
Thanks for the explaination, Robert. It’s always nice to see that staff members have an interest in the issues that concern players.
Though, as others have pointed out CoF1 is clearly unbalanced and gives the best token and gold rewards of any dungeon by an extremely large margin and requires a minimum level of skill, at that. Getting tokens is one thing but a farmable (you can switch characters and do one other path to avoid DR) minimum 50 silver per run is a bit overboard. I won’t dwell on this point because I am sure there is a nerf incoming.
Storymode is something players should play when they want to see the story again and it is neat that you can see it again if you forget. Maybe you guys could reintroduce the tokens but only the first time the account/character completes the story mode? Something like 60-180 tokens if the bonus is account wide or 30 if it is character bound would be very nice since they usually take quit a bit of time to accomplish and this would prevent people from farming storymode altogether.
Lots of good ideas here, like the laurels one very much.
Heck, even if it would be just once a week.
But the “stupid hat” issue really irks me. Why the Kitten is that thing not scaled to level?!
A first run only sure rare(maybe even exotic?) hat drop would at least alleviate many issues people have with story mode.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
I’m sure you agree that, if you could find additional means to encourage higher level players to help lower level players run through story mode dungeons, it would be better for the game overall.
You may have not revisited this in some time, but there are alternatives.
– small number of tokens + large XP boost at the end
– small number of tokens + bag of crafting gear at the end
– small number of tokens + guild xp at the end
– small number of tokens + level-appropriate rare (or chance of rarer) at the end
Or:
– small number of tokens + your choice of :
– large XP boost
– bag of crafting gear
– guild xp
– rare (or chance of better) item
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
That was back then, as you stated in another thread, new content always seem harder because there’s a multitude of new inputs. I think this guy puts out a very solid argument that is much more relevant now that most view the majority of exploration paths are manageable and the smaller guaranteed gain has become a smaller gain.
As long as you keep the token/hour lower in story modes I don’t see how skilled people would spent their time “afk faceroll-ing” through storymode and then face severe DR when they could easily do all 3 paths and have more gain.
You do get small amounts of tokens from story mode, they’re in those bags.
I have never received tokens from doing story mode, in the bags you get coins and 400 Karma vial.
We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.
I’m sure you agree that, if you could find additional means to encourage higher level players to help lower level players run through story mode dungeons, it would be better for the game overall.
I did five different story mode dungeons yesterday to complete the monthly, we always had at least three level 80 players in our group. The rest knew the dungeon but played twinks. I severely doubt you’ll have a problem finding a group for any story dungeon using http://gw2lfg.com, and I doubt even more that even the most random low level group will fail to complete any of the story modes; I really don’t see any reason for a special reward, you already get one at the end of the dungeon and those are really easy and short in story mode. I’ve never been in a dungeon before and I didn’t die except when we hit the random troll in AC and the first golem boss in CM as I wasn’t aware of their mechanics and they hit pretty hard. Any death after that was caused by heavy lag (up to ten seconds).
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.