Guild Wars 2

I came up with a suggestion in the thread “New Party Kicking Mechanic Is Unfair”- I had a couple of responses there and thought it would be more suitable discussing it on its own thread, rather than going wildly off-topic!

Issues with dungeon rewards:
Currently, the main bulk of a dungeon reward is right at the end. This gives rise to dungeon selling (and consequently instance stealing), so a buyer can avoid the initial tasks and save some time.

Arguably, speed-clearing is another problem that the current system motivates and isn’t the way dungeons were intended to be played.

Proposal:
Milestone “keys” should be given to players throughout the dungeon, as they complete tasks. The keys would drop from the gold “event chests” that appear after an event has been completed. These keys would then be used to open a chest at the very end of the dungeon.

These keys would be specific to the dungeon (and possibly path)- for example “Ferrah’s Key” for CoF P1. The end chest would only be able to be opened a specific number of times, according to how many event chests there are/that have spawned in that dungeon run.

Instead of the current system of a bulk reward from the end chest, dungeon reward and daily reward, the rewards will be divided equally between each opening of the chest.

The keys would be accountbound on acquire and would have a 24 hour timer on them (that starts counting down as soon as it has been looted). After these 24 hours, the key becomes broken, or simply gets removed from your inventory.

Variations:
-Instead of one chest that can be opened e.g. 5 times, there are 5 different chests at the end of the dungeon. These could perhaps scale differently depending on how many previous chests have been opened,

-Instead of having a 24 hour timer, each key that would be dropped throughout the dungeon would be named differently. Similar to how the Matrix Key works, you can only have one of each type in your inventory at any given time. Otherwise, any duplicate keys also get consumed when opening the chest. The only negative implication this might have is on inventory space. (Thank you Palador for this suggestion!)

-There are no keys, the game data keeps tabs on which events a player has completed. Although this means that there are no keys to fill inventory space, simply disconnecting from the game is likely to make the game forget your progress, and thus has an impact on overall dungeon reward.

-Daily reward is kept separate, but all other rewards are combined in the chests.

Implications:
In order for a player to get the full dungeon reward, they must complete all primary objectives through the dungeon, as is intended. This means that end-boss dungeon selling is pointless along with exploitative methods of getting to the end chest.

Consequently, this means instance stealing is also pointless. Overall, this would reduce the number of reports/support tickets sent to A-net about dungeon selling/scamming and instance stealing. Of course, this would be considered “killing two birds with one stone” for A-net, but many players in the community would be upset that their method of earning gold has been removed.

Dungeon selling may still happen, just in smaller quantities. A few people may buy a dungeon spot for dungeon completion, rather than the reward.

New joiners to the instance are only rewarded for the time they have spent in the instance. This could be considered fairer than the current system, but it might mean that some parties will struggle to find a replacement for a lost part member.

By limiting key-use in the instance and key type in the inventory, it would be very difficult for somebody to find an exploitative method of farming them. My primary concern was that people would enter a dungeon instance, complete the first task for the key, leave (rinse and repeat) and then spam all of their keys at the end chest. This is not possible with this suggestion.

There are already features/have been features in game with similar methods. The Matrix Cube Key has already been mentioned (for preventing duplicates of the key). Timers/countdowns on items already exist in-game (Banker Golem, etc). Although I’m not a game designer or programmer, I would imagine that this idea wouldn’t be too difficult to implement considering a lot of the technology is already there.

Thank you for taking the time to read. Feedback and suggestions are more than welcome. If you dislike the idea, please state why

How about just having better rewards from doing the dungeon, rather than from completing it? Put the rewards randomly throughout the dungeon, and have enemies drop good loot, rather than useless junk.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

How about just having better rewards from doing the dungeon, rather than from completing it? Put the rewards randomly throughout the dungeon, and have enemies drop good loot, rather than useless junk.

It certainly would be a simpler solution.

I think the problem there would be that there would be little temptation for players to complete the dungeon then. It could open up to farming, unless there was huge DR or a daily limiter. If good rewards were guaranteed before the end boss, would a player get to the endboss, leave and play through the dungeon again to get more guaranteed loot?

What I find most amusing about your post is when you boil down your suggestion, it amounts to spreading out the reward for completing a dungeon throughout the dungeon itself (i.e. Adding the gold to chests/bosses/etc and removing the 1-3G end gold)

The reason I find this amusing is because it used to be spread out this way. Bosses and chests used to have that end gold that you got an it was affected by gold find %. The best part is, they changed it to the current system because players said that dungeons didn’t feel rewarding and so the response was to move the gold all to the end and increase it a bit. So what I’m reading is a more complicated way to revert the rewards system back to how it use to be.

I hate to say it, but I’m not sure that this will get too much traction without very compelling reasoning and large enough support from the player base as a whole.

I am sure that spreading out rewards through dungeons will help people who get kicked at the end, I really don’t see them changing rewards to dungeons except in new dungeons that they may add in HoT. They have been this way for so long and they work so I don’t think it would be a good decision to change how rewards are attained so much that it may ruin the experience for people who like the current system, like I do. Sure, it does allow selling (which I have absolutely no problem with and think it would probably be worse if it stopped because a lot of people would not be able to do Arah without buying (I certainly wouldn’t)) but it would take away the incentive to finish the dungeon in certain situations if it was changed, for example you are in a group with new players who cannot do a dungeon and the experienced player would be much more likely to help them learn the dungeon if all the rewards are at the end than if this system was implemented.

At launch, dungeon rewards were spread fairly evenly through the dungeon. What happened? Players farmed the first boss over and over. As a result we got end chests. What happened? Players farmed the dungeon via skips and speed runs.

Assume that ANet were to suddenly get an inkling to actually work on dungeons again and decided to return to rewards spread throughout the path. There are two possibilities. No diminishing returns — players will return to farming the 1st boss. Keep the diminishing returns on the rewards, players will speed run and would skip from one reward point to the next. Very little would change.

The only way to prevent skipping is to remove mob leashes. There is no way to prevent players from finding the fastest way to do content. While it would be nice to see some attention given to dungeons, I’m not sure this suggestion is the best use of dev time.

But some skips are intended, even Hrouda said this.

@Hot Sauce

Thanks for the feedback!

I wasn’t really in the dungeon scene before the changes were made to the current system- I didn’t realise that the rewards were originally spread out. I probably should’ve done some research on that :P

I was under the presumption that the reason why the changed dungeon rewards to the current system was that dungeon farming (mainly speed running CoF P1) was undermining the economy.

However, I think the difference with the system I suggested is that reaching the end boss is still rewarding. You are still rewarded at the end, but only proportionately to the effort that you have put in throughout the dungeon.

Ultimately, I don’t think many people will find my suggestion favourable because on the most part, it removes the reason to sell dungeons. But that is partly why I made the idea, because there is a problem with dungeon selling and “instance stealing”, which seems to be an area that A-net has difficulty moderating (from what I’ve read, unofficially, they can’t just outright ban dungeon selling as they do not have the method to reinforce it).

Another major reason behind the idea is so that players are rewarded by thoroughly completing the dungeon instead of just trying to get the boss. Y’know, the whole “playing the game as intended” thing.

On the other hand, I do think you bring up a good point with how rewarding dungeons really are.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Assume that ANet were to suddenly get an inkling to actually work on dungeons again and decided to return to rewards spread throughout the path. There are two possibilities. No diminishing returns — players will return to farming the 1st boss. Keep the diminishing returns on the rewards, players will speed run and would skip from one reward point to the next. Very little would change.
.

In my suggestion, it wouldn’t be worth farming the first boss over and over again for rewards.

The first boss/task drops the same rewards as you currently get AND a key, which is used to unlock some of the final reward at the end of the dungeon.

If there are 5 boss drops/event chests throughout the dungeon, then you would receive 1/5th of the dungeon reward by doing the 1st boss and skipping to the end (without completing any other content).

Sorry if that wasn’t made clear

Anet definetely needs to rework and redesign more of the games overall complete Dungeon System.

The Dungeon System is nothing at all as much fun, as the dungeosn were as much fun to play in GW1.
The rewards of GW2’’s dungeons are boring and nothignj at all, that keeps you wanting to make runs in them, after you unlocked all of the dungeon weapon and armor skins, because there are no useful or really awesome rewards there for tokens, that makes you want to run dungeons.

The path system of the dungeons limits way to much the depth dungeons could have.
Dungeons need to be bigger, they need to get more depth, making usage of the Z-Achsis, so that we can see for example also something like a really high floored tower dungeon or a really deep cave dungeon that leeds deep into the underground somewhere

How awesome wopuld it be, if there would be some kinmd of elite tower dungeon with like 50 floors, where the dungeon becoems from floor to floor more and more dangerous that isn’t just something ythat you can do in like 30 minutes, what is someething where you would need to play like 4+ hours to reach the top to get at the end then some really awesoem and valuable rewards that make such a long dungeon trip at the end a really awesoem and rewardign feeling, that you achieved somethign really great in teh game by successfulyl doing that dungeon

GW2 needs more dungeons and more new dungeon types.

The current Dungeons shoudl get redesigned more and should count only as “Story Dungeons”
Then there should be also Zelda Like more difficult and challenging “Solo Dungeons”.
ANd then there should be Raid Dungeon Crawlers in which you can raid with larger groups in radomly created Dungeon Crawls which feel everytime you enter them different, where dynamically could happen everytime then different things in them.

Anet should also brign back all of the old GW1 dungeons back as good as possible, because they should all still exist even 250 years later, maybe now much more beign ruins, than in the past, but alot of them should still exist and be explorable, plus it would bring so much good and needed nostalgia back into GW2 and surely would bring alot of old gw1 veterans to gw2 if we would get to see in GW2 more gw1 nostalgia that we adore all so much.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Assume that ANet were to suddenly get an inkling to actually work on dungeons again and decided to return to rewards spread throughout the path. There are two possibilities. No diminishing returns — players will return to farming the 1st boss. Keep the diminishing returns on the rewards, players will speed run and would skip from one reward point to the next. Very little would change.
.

In my suggestion, it wouldn’t be worth farming the first boss over and over again for rewards.

The first boss/task drops the same rewards as you currently get AND a key, which is used to unlock some of the final reward at the end of the dungeon.

If there are 5 boss drops/event chests throughout the dungeon, then you would receive 1/5th of the dungeon reward by doing the 1st boss and skipping to the end (without completing any other content).

Sorry if that wasn’t made clear

I’ll give you that again. Players will speed run and would skip from one key acquisition point to the next. Very little would change. You’re trying to target player preferences with game design changes. This only works if the changes are so draconian that those choices are removed entirely (e.g., remove skipping by removing leashes). Once dungeon content has been done a few times, it ceases to be interesting, and all that’s left as interesting is the rewards. Players will find ways to get the rewards as fast as they can.

There’s nothing wrong with the key idea (except ANet would make us carry them in our inventory, and there’s already a ton of that going on). It just won’t do what you intend — unless I’m misreading your intent being to disincentive skipping and speed running.

Please don’t forget some skips are intended.
E.G. cof p1 bridge or AC p1 a tunnel after second scepter collection

Those places are designed as “trap rooms” with mobs to run past them, the true encounters are bosses. The worst things in dungeons are time gated events, like ac burrows or grenth at arah p4. Skipping is a challenge of it’s own kind.

I gave the suggestion of having the keys work like the Matrix Keys from the reactor for a reason that actually has nothing to do with the dungeons themselves, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

In a dungeon, there’s some fights that are just not worth it right now, and are better off skipped. By making the fight drop an end chest key, they can adjust the rewards of that fight by improving just that chest’s rewards, and still require you to clear the dungeon to get the reward. It will allow a better fine tuning of the risk vs reward on major fights.

Now, as for outside of the dungeon, let’s replace “fight” with “pre-event”. I’m sure we’ve all run into the big event chains where people descend into the area just in time for the final fight and the big reward. And it can be frustrating to do all the extra work, and get very little extra reward for it. So, we apply the same system here. Do a pre-event, get a key for it. After the final, big event, you can use your keys. Suddenly, there’s a reason to want to do the entire chain, or at least as much of it as you can.

Dungeons would be a good place to test this system. They’re cut off from the rest of the game world events, and it will be easy to track how much it changes player behavior and rewards. If the idea looks viable, then before it moves out into the world at large, the keys in inventory can be moved to a “key ring” of sorts, that keeps a simple “have/don’t have” record on all the keys rather than taking up inventory space.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Snip

I’ll give you that again. Players will speed run and would skip from one key acquisition point to the next. Very little would change. You’re trying to target player preferences with game design changes. This only works if the changes are so draconian that those choices are removed entirely (e.g., remove skipping by removing leashes). Once dungeon content has been done a few times, it ceases to be interesting, and all that’s left as interesting is the rewards. Players will find ways to get the rewards as fast as they can.

There’s nothing wrong with the key idea (except ANet would make us carry them in our inventory, and there’s already a ton of that going on). It just won’t do what you intend — unless I’m misreading your intent being to disincentive skipping and speed running.

Ah, I see what you’re getting at now.

The suggestion wasn’t directly targetted towards speed-running and skipping, necessarily. It was more actioned towards dungeon selling and people only thinking of dungeons as an endboss with a chest.

I understand that where people can speed-clear, they will. Where there’s a way of mastering something down to the finest details for efficiency, players will find out how to do it.

The change would incentivise doing all events throughout the dungeon.

Sure, if some “trap rooms” give a reward chest from being cleared, you can still skip it, but you’ll lose a portion of the total reward for skipping it. I guess the disadvantage here would be a party could be split whether to spend the time for the extra portion of the reward, or to run past it. This could be a problem.

Dungeon reward chests (at least end-boss chests) only appear if you completed the task whilst you were in the instance. This means a potential dungeon path buyer wouldn’t be able to access the majority of the completion reward if ported in before the end-boss, considering they wouldn’t have obtained the reward keys.

@Palador, again, I love your idea! I really like how it could be stretched beyond just dungeons. Event chains certainly need to be more rewarding.

• If the rewards are better earlier, then people will farm the earlier parts (as happens now in AC story).
• If the rewards are randomly dropped, then people will be frustrated by the variance across players and between runs (as happened before ANet offered guaranteed rewards).

There is some precedent for the OP’s suggestion when we look at the newer world boss and LS-related events:

• Silverwastes offers rewards at each milestone, but better rewards for people at the end.
• Tequatl (and to a lesser extent, triple-headed) offer rewards for participation, but much better rewards for seeing the entire chain through.

I’d like to see this concept extended to all chains and I could see ANet following it for dungeons/fractals, too, albeit with some difficulty. I don’t think I’m in favor of the OP’s specifics, but I do hope ANet considers the concept.

@Na

Thanks for your input! I agree once more, it’d be nice to see all event chains revolutionised in such a way. I think we will see this when HoT releases, with what was mentioned about map/zone rewards (for example, getting T6 materials whilst completing events/tasks in a map). I hope that this is released well balanced. It’d be unfortunate if there was one specific zone that had an obvious advantage because of comparitvely easy event chains/poor scaling/expensive reward.

Currently dungeons do reward for each milestone- do you think the rewards need to be better and become better as you advance through the dungeon?

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Arguably, speed-clearing is another problem that the current system motivates and isn’t the way dungeons were intended to be played.

You are developer? Last time i checked anet gave gems for speed clearing and said that trash skipping is ok.

IndigoSundown.5419:

At launch, dungeon rewards were spread fairly evenly through the dungeon. What happened? Players farmed the first boss over and over. As a result we got end chests. What happened? Players farmed the dungeon via skips and speed runs.

Assume that ANet were to suddenly get an inkling to actually work on dungeons again and decided to return to rewards spread throughout the path. There are two possibilities. No diminishing returns — players will return to farming the 1st boss. Keep the diminishing returns on the rewards, players will speed run and would skip from one reward point to the next. Very little would change.

The only way to prevent skipping is to remove mob leashes. There is no way to prevent players from finding the fastest way to do content. While it would be nice to see some attention given to dungeons, I’m not sure this suggestion is the best use of dev time.

Why not both? Add better rewards through out the dungeon, improve the dungeon experience in general (as in none-linear and making them fun to do), and make the end reward scale based on your participation during the dungeon.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Arguably, speed-clearing is another problem that the current system motivates and isn’t the way dungeons were intended to be played.

You are developer? Last time i checked anet gave gems for speed clearing and said that trash skipping is ok.

“Arguably”. I wrote the sentence to pose an extra dimension to the post. I chose to use the word “arguably” because I was posing an opinion rather than a supported fact. A lot of people don’t like speed clearing because it encourages a “zerker only” “elitist” and “exploitative” mindset.

Either way, I’m on the fence about speed-clearing. A lot of people think it breeds toxicity. I like how it encourages a challenge and somewhat of an end-game for guildies and friends, but don’t like how the mentality seeps into regular LFG and pugging.

EDIT: I forgot to add that I also don’t like speed-clearing as imo it dilutes the dungeon experience. Of course, this is the player’s own choice to do so.
… However, a lot of people say that they would prefer that their favourite farms didn’t exist as it pulls them away from other aspects of the game and it reduces immersion. They feel that they don’t have a choice but to farm or else they’ll fall behind other people earning gold, and thus the economy.

The problem with dungeons is, you can skip over the majority of it without being punished for it. A lot of monsters are on a tight leash. If you tried to do this in any other MMO, you would get a huge mob chasing after you in mere seconds, and they would clubber you into a bloody pile of pulp. With the rubbish rewards, the only decent reward is at the end, so there is no reason not to skip over it. And since all the dungeons are basically just long corridors, with no reason to explore anything, that’s what you tend to do: Run to the end of the godawful boring mess.

But speed clearing is not very enjoyable in my opinion. You are not really experiencing the dungeon, or dungeon-crawling. I always thought that was the purpose of dungeons: To explore an underground maze, solve puzzles, navigate rooms, overcome obstacles, avoid traps, and defeat foes, while hunting for treasure. When you speed clear, you don’t do any of that.

But the real problem here, is that even if you play through the dungeon at a normal pace, you don’t do any of that either. This is because the dungeons are RUBBISH in GW2 . They are godawful, poorly designed, and rushed along with the rest of the game. GW2 was not finished when they released it, despite their sales pitch that “it’s done when it’s done”. That was a lie, they rushed it. And the poor state of the dungeons are a sign of that.

There is NOTHING in the dungeons that would make you want to explore at a normal pace, nor is there anything TO explore. So rushing through them is the only sensible thing to do. It is however frustrating, if you loose your way, or are the one that dies while the rest is more competent at skipping it. Sadly, the game encourages this behavior. I can’t fault speed clearers for skipping everything. They are saving themselves from a big boring waste of time, to get to the end reward as quick as possible. Smart people.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Snip.

Why not both? Add better rewards through out the dungeon, improve the dungeon experience in general (as in none-linear and making them fun to do), and make the end reward scale based on your participation during the dungeon.

Nice idea, Malafide. I’d certainly like to see more interesting mechanics in dungeons. A game series that springs to mind is The Legend of Zelda. Having more puzzles would be a cool thing to see- I always found the LoZ dungeons very immersive and thought-provoking.

Obviously it wouldn’t take long for people to work out the solution and remember them, so I was wondering if there was some way to randomise an answer and solution for certain elements.

We already see some puzzle aspects in-game, for instance Swampland Fractal (where you have to run through the maze with the wisps) and the part in Thaumanova Fractal with the energy shields/cannons to open the last control panel. There are also some mini-dungeons and JPs with similar ideas, but for the most part A-net keep puzzles away from regular dungeons.. I wonder why?

I kinda understand what you mean with “non-linear” but I can’t imagine it.
Orpheal (I think) had a really awesome idea for an “infinite” dungeon.You’d complete one dungeon “floor” and proceed to the next, with slightly more difficult foes as you go (and obviously better rewards). From what I understood, the foes and dungeon mechanics would be randomised. You wouldn’t be able to repair armour in the dungeon, so parties would have to be self sufficient and prepared for anything. It would encourage competitive play- I could imagine this dungeon being part of the Adventure/Leaderboard feature in HoT.

Is this the kind of thing you mean?

Crimson Clouds.4853:

I kinda understand what you mean with “non-linear” but I can’t imagine it.
Orpheal (I think) had a really awesome idea for an “infinite” dungeon.You’d complete one dungeon “floor” and proceed to the next, with slightly more difficult foes as you go (and obviously better rewards). From what I understood, the foes and dungeon mechanics would be randomised. You wouldn’t be able to repair armour in the dungeon, so parties would have to be self sufficient and prepared for anything. It would encourage competitive play- I could imagine this dungeon being part of the Adventure/Leaderboard feature in HoT.[

That is one way to do it. But more realistic would be the Zelda approach: Just have different routes and rooms to explore, and place the rewards and extra bosses randomly in different rooms.

So instead of going from A to B (A being the start, and B being the end of the dungeon), you travel from A to either B or C, then to D and E, and eventually to the end. (F).

@Malafide: this would be perfect! Not only would dungeons be more immersive, they’d reward you for taking your time in them. Nice diagram, btw

Whatever it’s done, dungeon rewards must scale to personal progress and participation on the dungeon path, so hitting once the last boss isn’t as rewarding as being in the dungeon from the start, and skipping stuff isn’t as rewarding as ‘vanquishing’ the dungeon.