Guild Wars 2

Hello to the community! I’m a new player and already a huge fan of Guild Wars 2.

Today I had the urge to writing you about something that has been concerning me. Achievement points.

I think many players are being misjudged by the rest of the community because of them. Being accepted in a dungeon party is plain impossible and I completely gave up the idea to playing in one. And if I decide to try my luck I’m constantly in fear of being kicked again.

I don’t think it’s right that my only way to play in a dungeon is spending months grinding for achievement points. And even when the day comes that I have enough achievement points for doing stuff that has nothing to do with dungeons, guess what: I still never played in one and I will annoy people for not knowing what to do.

I don’t see how achievement points can give a good indication to how well a player can do in a dungeon or anything else for that matter. If someone needs to know whether someone is experienced cannot this person simply ask the player whether he has done the dungeon or not beforehand? It’s more humane and there’d be a conversation, I wouldn’t even mind being kicked then. I’d see it coming and I’d understand.
But joining a party, getting kicked a second later and being flamed and mocked after asking the person who kicked me what I did wrong is horrible. This is not something that has happened only a couple of times.

Why is a player who hit level cap and has the gear needed to play in a dungeon forced to do meaningless tasks over and over again for a long period of time only to finally do what he wanted to do in the first place and have some fun?

Plus from what I understand you can get an endless amount of achievement points by doing dailies. Seems to me like this also makes achievement points less of a valid indicator.

Could players simply not have the option to see other players’ achievement points? Would that be such a big deal for the community? There’s plenty of other ways to show off and I mean this in the good way. I’m all for it. I just don’t think achievement points are the way to do it.

There’s always going to be elitist groups. But there’s also plenty of groups that aren’t looking at AP and even welcoming to new players.

Create your own party for Dungeon runs. Advertise that APs don’t matter. Or, for inexperienced dungeon-runners only.

People actually look at others’ achievement points to decide if they’re ‘worthy’ for a dungeon run? Wow. Now I must say that I’m absolutely inexperienced with the dungeon finder since I mostly only do dungeons with friends, but what you describe is quite a ridiculous behaviour.

I’m really sorry that you’ve unfortunately run across the bad half of the community. But there really are a ton of players who aren’t going to mind that you’re new and don’t have a lot of AP.

Just make sure you don’t join any dungeon groups that are advertising as speed runs, those are the people you want to avoid!

Tip: Don’t join groups that have AP requirements. Those groups usually end up failing miserably.

Zaxares.5419:

Tip: Don’t join groups that have AP requirements. Those groups usually end up failing miserably.

While I haven’t found the second part of this post to be true, I’d endorse the first.

Those LFG ads that state 4k+ AP required? Idiots at the helm.

achievement points dont say much, i would even dare say titles dont say much either.

There arent just speedclears, there are people who do stuff a bit more relaxed to.
If you dont see any in lfg make your own.

In my experience you best run dungeons with friends or guildies.

Either make your own party saying all new players welcome or join a decent guild who won’t judge you based solely on achievement points.

I have 18,000 achievement points and almost never pug dungeons.

Reality is the “percentage” of people with “very low AP” really isn’t as experienced compare to people with “at least moderate AP” in dungeon. There are obviously exception.

I think (totally make up number), 40% of the pug(with low AP) I met in AC are inexperienced, while only 20%(with at least moderate AP) are inexperienced in AC. Obviously those are make up number. But what I’m trying to say is the percentage of people with very low AP that are inexperienced in dungeon are much higher than people with at least moderate amount.

If you can get at least 3000 AP, I think most people stop being discriminate against you as a newbie.

I hate people who discriminate as well but I can see why they do it. Someone can quite easily get 1k AP from just getting to level 80. The thing is, when I hit 80 I genuinely had no idea how to play my class effectively still. I didn’t understand the best runes and sigils, I didn’t understand combo fields (pretty important for an ele), my traits were all bad and my equipment was only Rare’s. I’d never fought dungeon monsters before and was used to the easiness of open-world content. Going into dungeons was quite the culture shock for me and it genuinely opened my eyes a bit on how to play the game.

Now I’m only on just over 3k AP now but I’ve improved immensely since back when I first turned 80. I’m running full exotic zerk with runes of the scholar, I have an Ascended zerk scepter and focus with appropriate sigils, my build is optimised for the current meta, I use the correct slaying potions for that dungeon as well as suitable food and my rotations are pretty much spot on providing perma-fury and 15-25 might from my combo fields as well as some pretty beasty Lightning Hammer damage.

I’m not saying I’m the best player in the world but I’d say I’m likely to be much better than someone with 1k AP even IF they do actually have experience of that dungeon already.

I can only get better the more I play and the more I play the more my AP goes up.

I know you mention you can get AP from dailies but it’s only a very small amount (like 10AP per day?) and I can’t see anybody logging on just to get their daily unless you’re really stuck for time.

I know most achievements are completely unrelated to dungeons but quite honestly, I’ve only got the standard slaying achievements, crafting achievements, a few dungeon ones and story ones and I’m up to like 3.2k. I haven’t purposely gone out of my way to get AP now, I’ve just played the game for longer.

To summarise, no, people shouldn’t discriminate against low AP people. But if you’re just doing dungeons daily to get your gold for a greater goal in the game and want the run to be no longer than 15min, then someone with 5k AP is going to be able to guarantee that a lot more than someone with 1k, purely because they’re more likely to understand the class, dungeon mechanics, potions/food, combos, etc etc.

If you want to advertise for “All welcome” LFG parties, then be prepared for some long runs.

Best thing to do is join a nice active guild and then it won’t matter

I like to join these kind of runs and see them die in a second.
I fought many times with 1-2k achi ppl and they know better the spots,ways,etc than these with 10k+
Like many classes think they are Gods in pvp with a stolen build+easy class this happens in PvE2 they think too much of themselves and I like to see their faces in the dirt at Spider in AC :-)

Again? How many of these posts will it take to get the message across? I kick people under 5k AP. I kick every Ele who runs d/d, every staff guardian and everyone who does not run full berserker. Why? Because – and now it comes – ON AVERAGE the people who adhere to my LFG rules are better than those who don’t fullfill the requirements. Since most people don’t understand this let me say it again for emphasis and clarity. ON AVERAGE higher AP means better player. I know, I know, just like your uncle who smokes a hundred cigarettes a day and is 90 years old without lung cancer disproves any causal relation between the two, that one guy with 2k AP who was better than that other guy with 19k AP shows that lower ap = more skill all the time…. ><
If I would ask every player if they were “exp” they would just lie to my face. If I ask for full zerk 40% of the guardians who join run healing vit gear.
I don’t trust people since they can’t even understand the LFG message. That’s why some players have these LFG requirements. And if you’re not okay with it, guess what, join a different party. But when will people finally let others play the game like they see fit.

The thing is, it’s easy to stack in a corner and use FGS, no matter your AP’s or you rtime playing the game. The difference is when something different happens, most people can’t react and kitten up the fight. Like in AC P2, when for any reason we can’t kill the boss on the only trap, how many people don’t wipe and can activate a second trap in fight ? It’s not just about the spot and ways, it’s about why you do this, and that a lot of people don’t know that, because they were told to stand here and fight.
And all those things, you get them with time, and the AP thing can be a filter for that, there is not really another thing that can tell you that someone is used to play.
Of course there is 3k Eles that can stack better than other, and you can see a lot of staff guardians with 10k AP too.
I don’t see the 5k AP requirement as a way to get rid of those guys with 3/4k AP, but those with 1k or so, who clearly don’t know a lot about their class and mechanics.

Veydar.5017:

Again? How many of these posts will it take to get the message across? I kick people under 5k AP. I kick every Ele who runs d/d, every staff guardian and everyone who does not run full berserker. Why? Because – and now it comes – ON AVERAGE the people who adhere to my LFG rules are better than those who don’t fullfill the requirements. Since most people don’t understand this let me say it again for emphasis and clarity. ON AVERAGE higher AP means better player. I know, I know, just like your uncle who smokes a hundred cigarettes a day and is 90 years old without lung cancer disproves any causal relation between the two, that one guy with 2k AP who was better than that other guy with 19k AP shows that lower ap = more skill all the time…. ><
If I would ask every player if they were “exp” they would just lie to my face. If I ask for full zerk 40% of the guardians who join run healing vit gear.
I don’t trust people since they can’t even understand the LFG message. That’s why some players have these LFG requirements. And if you’re not okay with it, guess what, join a different party. But when will people finally let others play the game like they see fit.

What better way to understand what weapons work best if not by failing to complete a dungeon?

You say that players who have more AP know the game mechanics better but from what I see someone can go around doing stuff by spamming the first skill over and over again. You would not be punished for doing so or encounter any difficulties.

This example is over the top but explains how there could be someone who keeps on playing with a weapon that is not optimal.

In my opinion spending a week doing dungeons is worth months of experience in going around doing whatever else.

Furthermore, I’ve been told I should join a guild but that would defeat the purpose of the group finder feature. The group finder is a public feature and one should expect to end up with someone who has never done the dungeon before. And like in any other game there’d be that one awesome guy who’d explain everything :P

If an experienced player is not willing to take the risk or can’t be bothered wasting time explaining to someone how things work, which I can totally understand, HE should be the one joining a guild or playing with friends.

I’m pretty sure every player who has started playing on release has been through the experience of failing a dungeon over and over again. Trying to understand what went wrong and adapt. This might be one of the things I find most fun in a game and I don’t understand why it has to be made so difficult for new players to have that same experience.

Be sure not to join any LFGs that have requirements (e.g: x class only, exp only, speed, rush, zerk, x level+, x AP+, no noobs, etc) and you should be fine, actually. I have newbies in my runs all the time and noone bats an eye. Have you tried joining a dungeon or are you just scared of what you heard about them? Because it’s not as bad as you say.

And if all else fails, make your own LFG and it should fill up in a matter of time.

Achievement points currently are the best metric available for judgement. It’s not perfect, but it’s best because it’s only one of the few available.

If you compared a player with 12 K cheevs against one with 2K cheevs, the probability that the former knows how to play is a lot higher than the latter.

If you need a dungeon guild, the one I’m in has been pretty good as far as I know. It’s smaller, but we probably won’t reject you. If we do, you can come with me as long as you know the dungeon path. (The Guild is The Dungeon Experts, TDE)

Advertise your own group through the LFG tool. Write something like “Relaxed run, any lvl/class welcome.” Doing this my brother and I found team members within two minutes.

Almost all parties I see advertised are for speed runs with very specific class/gear/experience requirements. If you offer something more laid back, people will be happy to join you.

I see posts like these all the time: asking for certain requirements for joining a dungeon group. Sometimes it’s about achievement points, sometimes it’s the zerk only parties, or some other requirement people are asking for. I’m not trying to be an elitist here, but your complaints don’t make any sense.

Mattia.2095:

I think many players are being misjudged by the rest of the community because of them. Being accepted in a dungeon party is plain impossible and I completely gave up the idea to playing in one. And if I decide to try my luck I’m constantly in fear of being kicked again.

Start your own party. In the party advertisement, state requirements that you meet or state that there are no requirements. If I join a party that says, “new players welcome”, I would never vote to kick someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Only a megatroll or griefer would do that.

Mattia.2095:

I don’t see how achievement points can give a good indication to how well a player can do in a dungeon or anything else for that matter. If someone needs to know whether someone is experienced cannot this person simply ask the player whether he has done the dungeon or not beforehand? It’s more humane and there’d be a conversation, I wouldn’t even mind being kicked then. I’d see it coming and I’d understand.

AP is not a perfect system, but it is the only system to get an idea of how experienced someone is. A new player who recently hit level 80 on their first character is usually around 1k AP. Someone who has done some zone exploring, dungeon runs, leveled up another character, etc is usually in the 1k-3k range. People higher than that have played for longer because many achievements are related to time played, such as slayer achievements, dailies, living story, etc.

Asking never works in my experience because either 1) the player lies, out of fear of being kicked; or 2) truthfully says yes, but has only done the run a few times and was carried through it so they have no idea what they are actually supposed to do.

Mattia.2095:

Why is a player who hit level cap and has the gear needed to play in a dungeon forced to do meaningless tasks over and over again for a long period of time only to finally do what he wanted to do in the first place and have some fun?

No one is forcing you to do anything. Again, start your own party, with a description that describes your idea of having fun. I guarantee you that there are others out there that will jump at the chance at joining your party because they, like you, have the same idea of what “fun” is. But don’t pretend it is the same for everyone.

Mattia.2095:

Plus from what I understand you can get an endless amount of achievement points by doing dailies. Seems to me like this also makes achievement points less of a valid indicator.

Someone who has done dailies for an extended period of time has been forced to play their character(s) for an extended period of time. This actually makes it a really good indicator (but again, not perfect).

Mattia.2095:

Could players simply not have the option to see other players’ achievement points? Would that be such a big deal for the community? There’s plenty of other ways to show off and I mean this in the good way. I’m all for it. I just don’t think achievement points are the way to do it.

Again, no one is forcing you to look at other players’ AP. What you are asking for is to have it turned off for all the other people who do care about AP. Which is as selfish as the people you complain about for kicking you due to low AP.

Look, it’s really simple: different people want to run dungeons differently. Some want speedruns, with zero mistakes and zero conversation. Some want super speedruns, with zerks only and the previous two things. Some don’t care. Some want new people to feel welcome joining. Some want to do training runs to improve the community as a whole. And a million other things, too. Depending on my mood and time I want to spend in a dungeon, I have fallen into all those categories at some point.

tl;dr At the end of the day, you have two choices:

1. Make posts on the forum complaining about the way other people want to do dungeon runs, while simultaneously complaining that they don’t want to run a dungeon the way you want to (because, in effect, that is what you are doing)
2. Start your own party, with your own description that fits the party you want to be in. (“AC path 1 all players welcome!” or “CoF path 2. Social run. Watching all cutscenes and making a sandwich after each boss!”)

I was going to reply to you in extent but if what you got out of what I wrote is that I want people to change their way of playing… and you wrote that in bold too!

You missed my point completely. I’m not complaining either but merely sharing thoughts I had as I can’t help but wonder what other people think about this.

Your second suggestion made me smile though and it’s probably one I’ll follow, I have to!

I’m really not accusing or attacking anyone.

Simply put, my thought was (and I might well be wrong!) that because of some flaws in some of the features in this game new players and experienced players are flung at each other with brute force. Obviously causing distress.

By removing the option of seeing other player’s achievement points I thought that experienced players could no longer have the “certainty” that someone is good. Hence forcing them to play with their guild mates or friends they know are good. They’ve been around longer and should have plenty!

So I’m not asking anyone to change their way of playing, I’m simply wondering whether it’d be possible to put some space between the two groups so both could have their fun.

Sadly APs are the most reliable judge as to if someone is either in enough gear to instakill the content or at least has played enough to bind their dodge button somewhere they can use it in short notice. Just from experience I’d say 7/10 people over 3k AP are at least reasonably competent players and 7/10 people under 1k AP are extremely incompetent players. Just how the math works out, there’s not much getting around it.

But what you must understand about dungeons is there’s two schools of thought on them. There’s people who run them socially and people who run then as a gold farm. If someone’s listing for 5k+ AP zerkers it means they’re on a mission for gold. You joining that group as a 600 ap new player in a buncha green soldiers gear is basically being a troll and impeding other people’s farm work. It’s very easy to list a group as “all welcome” and hook up with like minded people. I join with new players all the time and teach fights, calmly mention what went wrong if we’re having trouble. But if I need gold for something I’m working on it’s ZERKS 5K AP OR KICK, because those groups will 98% of the time steamroll anything. It’s not because I have something against new players, it’s because Anet gives us no other way to get gold besides speed runs and buy low sell high menu watching.

Guild Wars 2 has a relatively friendly community compared to other online games, but even then, the LFG system is still a total mess with players randomly kicking other players at the final boss, party leaders just randomly leaving the dungeon while wasting everyone’s time, flamers, rage quitters, people insta-kicking rangers and necros and non-berserks, and the list goes on and on…

That’s why I always start my own groups, and you should do the same. Trust me, you don’t want to join these ‘40K AP only’ groups. They’re never a pleasant experience unless you like to play with toxic players who will insta kick you just because they don’t like the colour of your hair and blame others when the entire group wipes.

I say get the achievement points if you like doing achievements, but don’t do them just to be able to play with all the other ‘cool kids’, because they have nothing cool about them. AP doesn’t equal to skill at all, and this comes from someone who has 4K AP but has done all the dungeons in this game including fractals. Like others have mentioned, guilds are generally great so you can run dungeons more relaxed without being afraid of someone kicking you just because you failed a dodge.

Davey.7029:

Guild Wars 2 has a relatively friendly community compared to other online games, but even then, the LFG system is still a total mess with players randomly kicking other players at the final boss, party leaders just randomly leaving the dungeon while wasting everyone’s time, flamers, rage quitters, people insta-kicking rangers and necros and non-berserks, and the list goes on and on…

That’s why I always start my own groups, and you should do the same. Trust me, you don’t want to join these ‘40K AP only’ groups. They’re never a pleasant experience unless you like to play with toxic players who will insta kick you just because they don’t like the colour of your hair and blame others when the entire group wipes.

I say get the achievement points if you like doing achievements, but don’t do them just to be able to play with all the other ‘cool kids’, because they have nothing cool about them. AP doesn’t equal to skill at all, and this comes from someone who has 4K AP but has done all the dungeons in this game including fractals. Like others have mentioned, guilds are generally great so you can run dungeons more relaxed without being afraid of someone kicking you just because you failed a dodge.

You know what really funny?
Just did my first dungeon after a long break a few days ago.
It was a CoE fullrun ‘zerk rush’, no ap requirement though.
People were around 10-15k ap and it was the most pleasant dungeon experience i’ve had to date. Everyone was nice and knew exactly what to do.
Bosses were killed in literally seconds and we cleared all three paths without any problems.
If you want to make yourself feel better by telling yourself those groups are all toxic and unfriendly, be my guest, howevery they are not and fact of the matter is: a 10k player is better than a <3k player.

As someone else has stated: if you want to run dungeons for gold, you’ll be looking for experienced players and ap, as unfortunate as it is, is our only measurement of experience.

edit: never join parties wit requirements around 3-4k. those will fail,
howevery 8k+ are 99% pure steamroll.

Actually I really see your point, and I feel sorry for doing this to you.
I’m a achievement lover, always have been in other games, and actually I play to make points. But I would [b]NEVER[/B] reject a player because he don’t have that achieve, specially in dungeons. (And I’ve never been asked for any achievement in a dungeon in my entire dungeon history).
Just join a party in LFG, do the dungeon. If don’t know, ask for help.
In 5 members, some of them will try to explain you the basic concepts of the fights.

Good luck mate (;

• Any help, find me in-game and we do some together.

I have played since headstart, I have over 1000+ hours of experience on Guardian, Warrior and Elementalist. I make use of the meta builds, I run full zerk on them all and I have experience in most (screw CM) dungeons. I still have less than 5k AP.

IMO it is not a great measurement for experience, but it is the only one available. I generally have to make my own groups as I can’t join the others, I mostly run dungeons for gold so I’m looking for the ‘FULL ZERK BLAH BLAH’ ads so I can get fast and smooth runs, and sadly a large proportion of those have an AP requirement that I don’t meet.

Vol.7601:

Achievement points currently are the best metric available for judgement. It’s not perfect, but it’s best because it’s only one of the few available.

If you compared a player with 12 K cheevs against one with 2K cheevs, the probability that the former knows how to play is a lot higher than the latter.

This (very true statement) gets posted in every thread like this and it should be enough to end any discussions. And yet …

Mattia.2095:

You say that players who have more AP know the game mechanics better but from what I see someone can go around doing stuff by spamming the first skill over and over again. You would not be punished for doing so or encounter any difficulties.

You found the statistical outlier, congratulations.

Mattia.2095:

If an experienced player is not willing to take the risk or can’t be bothered wasting time explaining to someone how things work, which I can totally understand, HE should be the one joining a guild or playing with friends.

This topic is about certain LFG messages. If it’s 2am and there’s only 1 guild mate online we might require a PUG. So we put up a certain LFG message. I can expect a certain level of reading comprehension – or so I thought – so that only those join my party who adhere to the rules. You’re saying that every experienced player who PUGs should expect scrubs and be willing to explain stuff regardless of the LFG message which everyone can blissfully ignore?

Mattia.2095:

I was going to reply to you in extent but if what you got out of what I wrote is that I want people to change their way of playing… and you wrote that in bold too!

You missed my point completely. I’m not complaining either but merely sharing thoughts I had as I can’t help but wonder what other people think about this.

No, I understand your point and I understand your frustration. I was at one point just like you: new to the game, still learning dungeons, with really low AP. Back then I experienced a lot of what you are talking about.

For example, my first character was a thief. Which, back in the day, got me auto-kicked from a lot of dungeons (used to be lots of hate for thieves in dungeons). Then one day I saw a post for a “CM all paths thief needed”. Awesome, I thought, I’m a thief! And this group actually wants me! After joining I’m asked if I can solo the Asuran part. I asked, what’s that?, and boom kicked. Now I know what they are talking about, and what they needed. Which they could have specified in the LFG text, but rather than get upset about it I just moved on with my life. Some of the things that have gotten me kicked from groups when I was relatively new would probably make you laugh.

Mattia.2095:

Your second suggestion made me smile though and it’s probably one I’ll follow, I have to!

Good! That’s what I did, and I’m a better player now for it. Once I posted “LFG AC path 1. Please teach me how to speedrun”. Got invited relatively quick, and had every leg of the dungeon path explained to me. If I see posts like that now, I tend to join them in an effort to pay it forward.

Mattia.2095:

By removing the option of seeing other player’s achievement points I thought that experienced players could no longer have the “certainty” that someone is good. Hence forcing them to play with their guild mates or friends they know are good. They’ve been around longer and should have plenty!

It sounds like a good idea, but if you remove the ability to see AP it will just be replaced by something else. Like, a requirement to ping all your gear on joining (there are already groups like that, too). Or making people cycle through titles. Or a dungeon path trivia quiz before starting. Or a certificate that has been notarized by at least 5 ANet employees stating you know what you are doing. AP is just a quick and dirty way to gauge a player’s ability. Far from perfect, but usually accurate.

If you don’t believe me, work up your AP and join a 10k+ group. Most friendly, social, quickest, and smoothest dungeons runs I have ever done. Once I joined a group that blazed through the AC paths so quick we went on to do the rest of the commonly run dungeons just to continue our conversation.

Achievement Points in general indicate how much you have played the game – and in general :the longer someone playing a game, the better he becomes (i know it’s not exponential or linear).
Noone can argue against the fact that a player that played the game for 4000hours is better than a player that played 20hours.
I always filter people with the achievementpoint indicator, I know it’s not the best filter (there Are people with less points and they are better than people with a lot) , but in most situations it works very well.

As someone who frequently creates his own LFG’s advertising “casual run all welcome” I can tell you that I’ve never once thought to check someone’s AP.

I’ve never had an issue with the caliber of people who join, any honestly most times the PUG players are legitimately good players. It’s like when they see it is a casual run they decide to be extra patient and helpful.

Only time I have to kick someone is when say a level 35 character joins my group for HoTW or something and I have to explain that they aren’t even close to the level requirement.

While AP may not be the best way to judge someone’s skill, it’s the best we have.
And since AP is part of bragging rights which keeps people playing, forget about having the option to hide it.
As for unlimited daily AP, not only it’s time gated, its limited to 10k which is wrong IMO but that’s another argument.

Now let me share a true story, a few months ago I pug’ed CE and one of the guys was one of the top AP leaderboards.
Front page, top half, not gonna say the name for obvious reasons, what I’ll say is the guy was playing a Mesmer and dying all over the place.
Don’t know if he was new to the class, having a bad day or what, I just know in that day on that run he was playing like he was right off the boat.
Maybe he spends so much time after AP he forgets that he has to learn to play.

For the OP, the solution has been presented, create your own party so you can play it your way.

I usually land up making my own groups because I have encountered many toxic players… also the whole “2 people to kick” system is a little silly to me (WAY too easy to abuse).

That said, I did a “LFG, first time on path x, all welcome, all cinematics”… got a good group, except 1 guy.. who started complaining : “Do any of you even HAVE full exo?! why aren’t you doing x or y” etc.. I see kick notice, and then see that guy suddenly disappear… I didn’t even get a chance to react….

4 manning that same spot without him, suddenly we are doing well………

got a 5th player who was like “hey you’re pretty far already!” :P

Crovax.7854:

Davey.7029:

Guild Wars 2 has a relatively friendly community compared to other online games, but even then, the LFG system is still a total mess with players randomly kicking other players at the final boss, party leaders just randomly leaving the dungeon while wasting everyone’s time, flamers, rage quitters, people insta-kicking rangers and necros and non-berserks, and the list goes on and on…

That’s why I always start my own groups, and you should do the same. Trust me, you don’t want to join these ‘40K AP only’ groups. They’re never a pleasant experience unless you like to play with toxic players who will insta kick you just because they don’t like the colour of your hair and blame others when the entire group wipes.

I say get the achievement points if you like doing achievements, but don’t do them just to be able to play with all the other ‘cool kids’, because they have nothing cool about them. AP doesn’t equal to skill at all, and this comes from someone who has 4K AP but has done all the dungeons in this game including fractals. Like others have mentioned, guilds are generally great so you can run dungeons more relaxed without being afraid of someone kicking you just because you failed a dodge.

You know what really funny?
Just did my first dungeon after a long break a few days ago.
It was a CoE fullrun ‘zerk rush’, no ap requirement though.
People were around 10-15k ap and it was the most pleasant dungeon experience i’ve had to date. Everyone was nice and knew exactly what to do.
Bosses were killed in literally seconds and we cleared all three paths without any problems.
If you want to make yourself feel better by telling yourself those groups are all toxic and unfriendly, be my guest, howevery they are not and fact of the matter is: a 10k player is better than a <3k player.

As someone else has stated: if you want to run dungeons for gold, you’ll be looking for experienced players and ap, as unfortunate as it is, is our only measurement of experience.

edit: never join parties wit requirements around 3-4k. those will fail,
howevery 8k+ are 99% pure steamroll.

Well my post was obviously a generalisation since not every person is the same, but in my experience in MMO’s/online games, the hardcore crowd always seems to less friendly or talkative than the casual/midde-ground players. It has to do with people feeling like they’re better than everyone else and making fun of “noobs”, but yea like I said, this doesn’t apply to every single individual.

When I want to do a speed run I just ask for lvl 80 experienced players and normally it works well. I just started playing this game like 3 or so months ago, so I know how new players feel when they look at the LFG window and only see it full of 5K AP-only groups, they feel hopeless and sad.

LFG is to help people find like minded individuals to run with. I have no requirements when I run my group because I like it care free and sometimes an additional challenge of shouldering the load or not stacking.

There is nothing wrong for a speed run player or anyone for that matter to form a group with their own specifications. If he wants to kick you because he hates you name..that is totally fine.

The elitest are not preventing you from running a dungeon, they are just preventing you from running in their group which is fine.

I only see this argument valid if there is a lfg just saying p1 with no written requirements as that can be annoying..but again their choice and it is your choice to start a group or try to join one.

AP doesn’t signify skill. All it does is show that you likely have an understanding of basic mechanics.

Ayrilana.1396:

AP doesn’t signify skill. All it does is show that you likely have an understanding of basic mechanics.

Players with high AP are either:
- hunting achievements (i.e living world completionist and regular completionist)
- Playing all aspects of the game on a regular basis
- Play much more than they should one single aspect of the game (grind AP though one single activity)

As far as I can see, nobody can conclude ANYTHING about dungeon running skill from the level of AP. AP is earned everwhere in this game, so high level of AP means you play a lot. That’s it.

It’s a bad habit of elite wannabe who want to ape recordmen speed clearers and try to feel good by imposing AP requirements on the LFG. They are just too lazy to teach people how to do dungeons so they are filtering.

as a new player, one thing this thread has done was curb my enthusiasm for trying out dungeons.

Long story short, you don’t want to play with the kinds of people who have AP requirements any more than people who have AP requirements want to play with you.

Join a different group, or make your own LFG listing. I’ve never listed an AP requirement and my LFG listings fill up almost instantly (and never longer than a minute).

As an aside, people who list an AP requirement clearly don’t have a guild that wants to play with them either, so why should you?

I’ve seen one person act like that in my dungeons since the past month that I returned to the game. Someone mentioned a guardian on our team had 900 AP, the rest of the party including me then told him we don’t care and the guy left. After replacing him we all cleared the dungeon just fine. Now I wonder, how often have you encountered this issue? I also think it’s a stupid way to measure players and I never look at people’s AP myself. If it happened once, I’d say get over it and try again. If it happens more often, perhaps try to set up your own groups? Whenever you get through a dungeon with a good group, ask if they would mind if you add them. You can always ask those people if they want to join a dungeon with you later.

@mulzi From what I can tell this isn’t the majority. I would really recommend you to just advertise your own party or try map chat etc. It may still happen on occasion but I doubt it’s as widespread as it may sound.

Man, using AP’s for a marker is the stupidest thing in this game. I see the elitest jerks in this thread talking about it.

I run dungeon all the time. I also have a decent amount of AP’s. But the guild I am in has people with way more AP’s then me and when I take them on dungeon runs it can be a challenge. AP"s by no means, mean anything. Yeah it is the only thing currently that gives us to gauge someone but in my opinion it is stupid.

I also here people talking about their LFG messages. I have a second account that I play on also. I haven’t even broke 1000 AP yet. But I have two 80s on there. I use it for when I just want to play something different. I have joined LFG that didn’t have any requirements, which could be what the OP is talking about, then being kicked right out. I have asked the same as the OP why I was kicked and it was because of my low AP. Now that is plain stupid. The LFG doesn’t state that AP is required but still getting kicked. I never join a LFG that has requirements that I don’t meet. Everyone is allowed to play how they choose and if they want their group setup one way then that is fine and their choose. But the ones that don’t specify something and then kicking people because of AP is just stupid.

mulzi.8273:

as a new player, one thing this thread has done was curb my enthusiasm for trying out dungeons.

Honestly don’t let it discourage you. Find a good guild and you will have a blast. I take anyone in my guild on dungeon runs when I am doing them and I don’t care how good they are or how many AP’s they have. There are a lot of good guilds and good people in this game that aren’t elitest that will be happy to show you the ropes so you can enjoy the dungeons too.

They don’t give a good indication (at best they give an extremely rough estimate) but elitists will always find a way to discriminate. Though as long as people list their requirements it doesn’t seem worth complaining about to me. If they don’t list any requirements and kick people anyway then yeah, they should do that differently.

It’s probably best not to join any groups with requirements. And if anyone flames you: right-click the name, select report player, choose verbal abuse, send, there is really no reason to accept that.

I have over 18,000 HP, I doubt very much anyone would consider me pro.

mulzi.8273:

as a new player, one thing this thread has done was curb my enthusiasm for trying out dungeons.

Try out the dungeons, just be honest and speak up that you don’t know the dungeon. People are willing to offer help and direct the group if people admit they are rusty and don’t remember the dungeon or are just new to it.

Random guy and myself led three new players in the CM story when I was leveling an alt. We explained the dungeon and progressed, some hiccups but other then that it was fun to lead people who wanted to be educated and improve their game play.

AP is a very good indication of how much you’ve played the game. This doesn’t translate directly into skill, but 9 times out of 10 someone with 6-8k AP knows what they’re doing, whereas I often see 1-3999 AP players struggling, getting downed, not knowing certain things, etc. etc.

Of course everyone will say the opposite and probably flame this post and go on and on about how I’m satan incarnate. Such is this forum.

Vakrir.4829:

AP is a very good indication of how much you’ve played the game. This doesn’t translate directly into skill, but 9 times out of 10 someone with 6-8k AP knows what they’re doing, whereas I often see 1-3999 AP players struggling, getting downed, not knowing certain things, etc. etc.

Of course everyone will say the opposite and probably flame this post and go on and on about how I’m satan incarnate. Such is this forum.

No actually you stated it very well. AP isn’t an indicator of skill. Now your 9 out 10 times might be off some but no reason to flame your post imo.

The way I have looked at AP, someone has been playing for a good amount of time if they have a high number. But that could be accomplished just doing PvE stuff with no dungeons or WvW or PvP included in there. There are a lot of those people in this game. Some may be able to jump in a dungeon and figure things out quick where as other may not. This same thing goes for people with lower AP scores as well.

VodCom.6924:

Ayrilana.1396:

AP doesn’t signify skill. All it does is show that you likely have an understanding of basic mechanics.

Players with high AP are either:
- hunting achievements (i.e living world completionist and regular completionist)
- Playing all aspects of the game on a regular basis
- Play much more than they should one single aspect of the game (grind AP though one single activity)

As far as I can see, nobody can conclude ANYTHING about dungeon running skill from the level of AP. AP is earned everwhere in this game, so high level of AP means you play a lot. That’s it.

It’s a bad habit of elite wannabe who want to ape recordmen speed clearers and try to feel good by imposing AP requirements on the LFG. They are just too lazy to teach people how to do dungeons so they are filtering.

I bolded my post. Please read it again.

any group that discriminates is a group you are betting off not being a part of. Players like that are more likely to kick you and invite their guildie at last boss, or leave just for giggles, or intentionally ruin a strategy, etc.. If a player feels strongly enough that their dungeon runs are not going so well that they try discrimination, they are obviously the problem and not everyone else.
personally, I only ever even notice someone’s AP if someone points it out in chat. usually something like “wow, gj at 15k AP!” For a dungeon group, I would say anything above 2,000 AP is capable of being a efficient group. If someone is below 2,000, they will not know the game well enough to pull their weight. The run will probably still turn out well, because 4-player dungeon runs are still easy, which is why I just don’t care. It would be challenging for an expert to not have 2,000 AP, it’s just so easy to get.

Vakrir.4829:

AP is a very good indication of how much you’ve played the game. This doesn’t translate directly into skill, but 9 times out of 10 someone with 6-8k AP knows what they’re doing, whereas I often see 1-3999 AP players struggling, getting downed, not knowing certain things, etc. etc.

I think this is pretty much the experience of players who have been running dungeons for awhile, which newer players don’t seem to understand. From what I have noticed (disclaimer: personal experience only):

• <1k AP: Might know parts of the dungeon, but that’s about it. Also, gear is probably underlevel.
• 1k-2k AP: Might not know certain mechanics, but gear is probably at least 80 rares.
• 2k-5k AP: Likely to know all the mechanics.
• 5k-8k AP: Would be shocked if they did anything wrong.
• 8k+ AP: Expecting flawless performance. Also, will readily admit if they haven’t run the dungeon in awhile.

Again, these don’t apply 100% of the time. Just my anecdotal observation. But from reading other people’s posts, I think this is a similar experience to what they have had.

Hjorje.9453:

Man, using AP’s for a marker is the stupidest thing in this game. I see the elitest jerks in this thread talking about it.

VodCom.6924:

It’s a bad habit of elite wannabe who want to ape recordmen speed clearers and try to feel good by imposing AP requirements on the LFG. They are just too lazy to teach people how to do dungeons so they are filtering.

Etienne.3049:

They don’t give a good indication (at best they give an extremely rough estimate) but elitists will always find a way to discriminate.

This seems to be the argument here against people who filter by AP: they are elitist, uncaring jerks. It just doesn’t make sense to me. No one is forcing you to join their party. And how does it make them elitist? Because they are asking for people similar to them? Isn’t asking for a social run the same thing?

elitist (adjective): favoring, advocating, or restricted to an elite.
elite (noun): a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities.

If a posting in a LFG asks for a certain AP requirement, because those players believe that AP = superior ability, then sure, they are being elitist. But if you believe that people who do not rely on AP to judge ability are of superior quality, then you are being just as elitist as they are.

As for me, I don’t use AP requirements when I post, but I have joined parties that have them. But if I made a posting that asked for “experienced 80s only”, “speed run”, or “must know x fight”, and someone joins with less than 1k AP, I am going to politely ask if they do, indeed, know the dungeon well.

Ayrilana.1396:

AP doesn’t signify skill. All it does is show that you likely have an understanding of basic mechanics.

This

Vayne.8563:

I have over 18,000 HP, I doubt very much anyone would consider me pro.

AP, not HP… Lord…

VodCom.6924:

Players with high AP are either:
- hunting achievements (i.e living world completionist and regular completionist)
- Playing all aspects of the game on a regular basis
- Play much more than they should one single aspect of the game (grind AP though one single activity)

As far as I can see, nobody can conclude ANYTHING about dungeon running skill from the level of AP. AP is earned everwhere in this game, so high level of AP means you play a lot. That’s it.

It’s a bad habit of elite wannabe who want to ape recordmen speed clearers and try to feel good by imposing AP requirements on the LFG. They are just too lazy to teach people how to do dungeons so they are filtering.

No. You might get surprised but the highest source of AP is getting your Daily done and playing the game over time. Players with high AP, as said before, have been around enough time to understand basics and know what to do in most dungeons paths.

Problem with new players is that they don’t say they’re new and they might be lvl 80 but don’t know what’s going on around them and don’t ask for directions/instructions because they’re afraid of being kicked out. This results in a slow/painful experience in dungeons where you must have a basic understanding and a minimum concentration. Also, being under lvl 80 will always mean lack of dps.

What you can do is join/create parties where you specify “No speed – First timers – All lvls welcome- Learning”. Or just run with friends/guildies, with no presure.

If you’re not willing to do this please go and watch one of the hundreds of youtube guides that are made for EVERY dungeon path and keep getting updated.