Guild Wars 2

It sounds to me, like they’re giving a less RNG dependant way to acquire some materials, so that you can ACTUALLY grind certain materials if you want, while also trying to make the current worthless materials, not worthless.

The game won’t die from these changes, no matter how drastic they might be, or perceived to be. Don’t be a drama queen.

It came out as someone, like everybody else doing those type of post, talking through their hat.

It happen at each freaking time. It’s not only now. The same thing about the ascended in raids. But it’s not only for the expansion. It was the same thing with every freaking news anet did in the last 3 years. And it’s not about GW2, it’s the same freaking thing in every single game.

Step 1) People getting some news
Step 2) People speculation about it even if they have no information whatsoever
Step 3) People pushing the speculation to absurd level
Step 4) People getting angry about those over the top speculation
Step 5) Making thousands of thread about the same things
Step 6) People debating about something nobody know. One side defending something that may never happen, other pushing it to even more extreme.
Step 7) The update finally arrive
Step 99% of the QQ disappear because after all it wasn’t so bad
Step 9) Another news appear, get back to step 1.

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

Lux no drama, I’m with ya. Jump into wvw on a Wednesday morning and tell me the game population is still strong. What has this game sold, 7 million copies? Lucky if a million still play. Not to compare, but WoW had over 10 million subs for what half a decade. Players decide the fate of a game, and if you continually make it harder for them to enjoy your game, then they’ll catch on.
We need changes that IMPROVE the QoL in game. They are a few slips from pushing the players off the ledge.

People seriously put zero thought into things. They see nerfs and scream bloody murder. Heart of thorns is adding a bunch of new content and with that content comes stuff to do that gives rewards. Look at silverwastes, that got added and is now the go to place to make gold. If they just add better and better rewards to new stuff without adjusting rewards of old content you will get a situation like wow where 100g back at launch was a lot, now you need like 10,000g to buy what 100g used to get you. They are preventing inflation, calm down ppl

Thaddeus.4891:

It came out as someone, like everybody else doing those type of post, talking through their hat.

It happen at each freaking time. It’s not only now. The same thing about the ascended in raids. But it’s not only for the expansion. It was the same thing with every freaking news anet did in the last 3 years. And it’s not about GW2, it’s the same freaking thing in every single game.

Step 1) People getting some news
Step 2) People speculation about it even if they have no information whatsoever
Step 3) People pushing the speculation to absurd level
Step 4) People getting angry about those over the top speculation
Step 5) Making thousands of thread about the same things
Step 6) People debating about something nobody know. One side defending something that may never happen, other pushing it to even more extreme.
Step 7) The update finally arrive
Step 99% of the QQ disappear because after all it wasn’t so bad
Step 9) Another news appear, get back to step 1.

^^ This. Many times over. Speculation never ends well.

Dungeon reward nerfs aren’t speculation. They are fact.

While there’s a range of opinions on dungeons, there’s a lot of agreement that they were poorly designed. Rather than spend the time and resources to fix them — which would likely mean starting nearly from scratch — ANet’s choice has been to ignore dungeons. Now, they’re telling players, “You should ignore them as well.”

Dashingsteel.3410:

Dungeon reward nerfs aren’t speculation. They are fact.

The Nerf itself is Fact. But we can only Speculate how much will Anet nerf from Dungeons.

And even then. Point 8 from Thaddeus still applies

I don’t get why they had to be poorly designed in the first place so they’d get to the point of trying to kill the content.

I kind of have to agree, just leave dungeons alone, people will still play raids and fractals. Dungeons are only there for a quick 10 min run to earn some gold. I don’t see how it will effect any of the new parts of the game and tbh its just a waste of time to put devs/programmers on this, why bother ?

The devs know what’s coming, they know the new reward structure – you don’t – just wait and see.

I would rather see them make new activities more interesting and enjoyable as a way of getting people to perform them over running dungeons. I think the nerfing strikes me as an inability to generate more enjoyable content that people will voluntarily want to do even if at a slightly lesser reward. They should aim to make new offerings even more enjoyable from an experience perspective so as to lure people away.

It is salty to go and nerf dugneons because you want people to play the same boring fractal levels we’ve had for years. There are far more dungeons than fractals, so even at equal reward I’d probably spend more of my time in dungeons as it offers more variety.

The are basically compensating for their inability to come up with more accessible and entertaining content.

People are so stupid sometimes…

If you’re refering to me…. PvP is an example of an activity that people choose to do, despite making less profit, because they actually find it more entertaining. There already exists activities with the qualities I describe.

Try making a better game and lure people to places you want rather than prodding them with a stick. You’ll have happier customers.

WOW – why kill the current content/rewards because of the expansion? Sounds like they just trying to push everyone to the expansion. Now it’s buy the expansion or just get left behind, there will be little incentive to stay with GW2 if you don’t get it or like the expansion. So far I’m unsure of the expansion, waiting for it’s release and some reviews.

Other MMO’s had the same stuff, but still, I’m not ok with this especially since we all bought the game and still know nothing from the expansion…

I’m not saying this is the case… it just could turn out to be an “entirely unintentional side-effect”. To early to start conspiracy theories yet.

Now you could probably argue that existing content folks will still have access to fractals (will they get the level 51+ stuff?) So if they do and this is where the balances for the nerf are applied then it would be more fair. If the real monentary balancing is in raids then that would be pretty crap of them.

shion.2084:

I’m not saying this is the case… it just could turn out to be an “entirely unintentional side-effect”. To early to start conspiracy theories yet.

Now you could probably argue that existing content folks will still have access to fractals (will they get the level 51+ stuff?) So if they do and this is where the balances for the nerf are applied then it would be more fair. If the real monentary balancing is in raids then that would be pretty crap of them.

I kinda wondered about the levels above 50 in Fractals, but I think they won’t be able to do these anyway without masteries…

Unfortunately the title and post are both far too dramatic to allow a reasonable discussion.

Try toning it back a little?

Personally, I like these changes.

Dungeon gold nerf makes sense. This should encourage players who want to play the dungeons for the story content or challenge they provide and discourage players who skip through quickly just for gold (which dungeons weren’t designed for). I’m surprised it wasn’t done sooner.

Changes to salvage drop rates sound promising (I’d rather have fewer items that are more valuable than piles of junk), but we won’t know exactly what will happen until after the changes come out. I’m sure the new masteries will affect the economy in different ways, as well.

Let’s give it some time before we bring out the torches and pitchforks.

the real farm is sliverwaste, not dungeon, how dungeon are farm is by selling path, reducing the gold will actually lead to increase demand for people to carry in dungeon.

i carry 2 noob to arah p4 today, u think i will still do it after the nerf? then what will the noob do? pay someone 18g to finish it? this is what people are doing NOW, it will only get worst…

if they balance out the reward, it be more interesting, people will want to do cof p3 then trash cof p1 over and over again, nerfing however is not the solution, BALANCE is.

Prices will come down. Eventually. And then they’ll stabilize. People are freaking out way too much over this. And we’ll actually be able to get mats – reliably – without leaving it to RNG or paying a fortune.

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

Topic’s a month old dude….

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

you could have made a new topic instead of necroing this one… 29 days old

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

Checking the website…finding out the new blogposts, read them, come to the forums baffled by the Economic one, see dozens of threads, read them all and conclude one thing: What the hell is wrong with you people? What were you thinking?

Since there are so many threads and official responses also, the impact this will have will range from loss of players (both active and possible customers) to the nuclear fallout of the economy. Yes, they will be monitoring, but to be honest, they didn’t do nothing with the current one for the past 3 years. I just do not have faith they will be able to contain, especially with these changes.

So let us see what is happening:

- Dungeons are officially (through response and blogpost) killed. Dungeons are a great and fast way to get solid gold for all these inflated mats and items on the TP. The motivation was the initiative to play fractals and raids. Yet fractals will not be getting any new content, and what it gets, more or less should have been here with Fractured patch back in ‘13 that they still haven’t apologize for.

How good can the rewards be in HoT that they need to decapitate the current dungeon gold system. If they were better, then the majority of players would play that content and not dungeons, and the dungeons would still be a good income for the new players and the ones that did not buy HoT. They are fast, easy, they are a farm. Why gut the reward system if you want to put a new, better one that will not overlap? Or will it really be this good?

- Scarcity in materials…in low level ones. Why? In what scenario can this resolve anything? It doesn’t make any sense. You are heavily gutting mats (cloth, silk etc) that are abundant at the moment. It jumps to extremes. What will become of the people that do not have a good amount of money when HoT launches?

Up until today, after the fiasco with “required, no, recommended” for ascended gear, anyone who would cry, I would instantly consider him a troll due to how easy is to craft ascended armor. But with these changes, they will have a gargantuan task on their hand. Since it’s recommended for raids, they will automatically assume it is required. Just think a second at this situation.

- The existing inflated mats/items. What now? Will you do something with them? What? Making mats that can be easily acquired and traded for gold scarce? Nerfing dungeon gold income? Or is it the new better HoT rewards? If they are better why bother destroying everything else? If they are the same, then the whole overhaul will be for nothing except to create unwanted scarcity and nerfs. If they are worse, we all know the outcome of that.

- If in 3 years, inflated mats and items could not be controlled what makes you think all this scenarios can be kept in line? I am assuming they did try to control and regain power over the market as opposed to just watching and slide it under the carpet.

- In what scenario, real life even, can a good outcome result from creating scarcity where there is abundance, gutting the way of earning fast income, everything in an over-inflated economic situations based on the premise of “We will give other, better ways” knowing that nothing could be controlled in the last 3 years.

- Dungeon nerf mean the farming persons will stop playing them and if they do not like the raids and fractals they are lost.
- Ascended just became a gargantuan task and thus casual players will whine which will result in nerfing of the raids. With them nerfed, for the 3rd time, hardcore crowd will be getting a middle finger. They will leave. Raids became a failed experiment yet again and all the people that would want a challenge will leave since a 4th time there won’t be a cater to them.
- Players that do not own HoT yet or just do not want to buy it will have no means of acquiring gold – SW will also be nerfed (forgot where I’ve read), again dungeons. The ones that would possibly buy HoT will see the above mentioned and again will leave.

These are some possible scenarios. I do not know who why or if they will leave the game, but in theory, there is a huge risk with all these changes.

I just cannot understand what is it to gain that is worth all these risks? It is for the first time that I truly believe the game will “Die” if this backfires. Where did I make the mistakes that will invalidate the post? Someone please correct me, I do not want to be correct!

I bolded the part of your quote where you answer your own question. They don’t want rewards to be good for people that didn’t buy HoT. That’s why Fractal rewards are garbage for people that didn’t buy HoT, and why players like me who have been doing Fractals for years have no access to high-level fractals.

You were right though. It all should have happened with “Fractured”. Instead they threw old content behind a paywall and didn’t bother adding any new content to it at all. Heck, they couldn’t even be bothered to make new skins for the fractals weapons. They just added gold to existing ones.

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

I think what you just said just underlines why Anets decision was right and basically contradicts itself anyways.

You might think of it as teamwork-based content and it even might be on the smallest scale but it doesnt really promote teamwork between veterans and new players.
If they kept dungeon rewards as they were, new players would have a hard time finding a group of veterans that would teach them how to do dungeons.

I dont think that is a state of mind that Anet wants to promote in its player base, old and new alike.

Why should you get handsomely rewarded, when you refuse to mentor newer players?
WvW or PvE Commanders during Map Meta events or the harder boss battles have to coordinate a whole map, which often is full of new players or players new to the content. If they wipe, they also dont get any loot or reward or considerably less but they try anyways to teach everybody on the map and organize events.

You refuse to teach 1 or 2 new players in a game mode that isnt even time sensitive, like the new meta events and complain that you arent handsomely rewarded for it?

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.

And rightly so.

Anet didn’t nerf dungeon loot because vets weren’t teaching new players. They wanted those dungeon runners to transfer to raids. This was just one of a number of things they have done to cajole players into HoT.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Anet didn’t nerf dungeon loot because vets weren’t teaching new players. They wanted those dungeon runners to transfer to raids. This was just one of a number of things they have done to cajole players into HoT.

It was mostly vets in the first place, that asked for a paid expansion. Now they got new instanced group content and dont want to pay for it?

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Lux no drama, I’m with ya. Jump into wvw on a Wednesday morning and tell me the game population is still strong. What has this game sold, 7 million copies? Lucky if a million still play. Not to compare, but WoW had over 10 million subs for what half a decade. Players decide the fate of a game, and if you continually make it harder for them to enjoy your game, then they’ll catch on.
We need changes that IMPROVE the QoL in game. They are a few slips from pushing the players off the ledge.

If a million still play the game would be considered strong. All MMOs experience natural attrition.

That said, WvW is probabliy the slowest and worst upkept area of the game right now, so yeah. They did lose a lot of players, particularly to top tier servers.

On the other hand I’m on TC and I run into players any time I’m in there.

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

- In what scenario, real life even, can a good outcome result from creating scarcity where there is abundance, gutting the way of earning fast income, everything in an over-inflated economic situations based on the premise of “We will give other, better ways” knowing that nothing could be controlled in the last 3 years.

It keeps people farming until the end of time.

Scarcity in general is because they don’t want to repeat the Bloodstone situation with every single item. Sometimes they take it a little too far. It isn’t an exact science.

Imagine this extreme scenario: Every material you can ever want or need drops like Bloodstone Dust and doesn’t even sell for 2 copper a piece on the trading post because there is such an abundance of it. In fact, there are no buy orders because everyone has more than they ever need, with ease.

Now consider, within this scenario, items such as Black Lion weapons. These weapons don’t require dropped materials, so their value is going to go up with the scarcity of them, regardless of the abundance of crafting materials.

So now you’ve got a situation where it’s nearly impossible to make gold off of dropped materials, in any sort of realistic speed, to obtain rare items such as the BL weapons. Or even items such as the cultural armor set, which have a set price that is independent of how easy it is to make money in the economy.

Everybody becomes noticeably poorer in pure numbers of coin, but the cost of the aforementioned items stays the same. It wouldn’t be a pretty scenario on the whole, let’s put it that way.

The point of what I’m saying is, there is a rhyme and reason to it all, even though it isn’t always evident or even beneficial to individuals in the short term.

I’ve said this before, so I will try to keep it brief this time, but the problem is that a lot of people were boasting about their dungeon rewards and/or abusing their dungeon privileges.

A lot of people were claiming to earn 60g per day, from speedrunning dungeons alone.

That kind of income per week obviously means they didn’t really need to use real money to buy anything, ever.

Now, that might have been OK (desirable even) if these people had; a) already spent more than enough, in real money, on the game previously and b) made (or participated in) at least some genuine “everyone welcome” groups.

So, even newer players could experience dungeons in a fun way, without it being a formulaic, skip>permastack>melee nightmare.

Of course, the way dungeons are/were being played is/was at least partly the fault of the fundamental game design.

A good game wouldn’t encourage, or even allow, cheesing like that, but still.

Point is, even though I am very much in favour of preserving the rewards from existing content – especially content they haven’t even bothered to produce a direct replacement for – it is still hard to defend the idea of the previous, very high, rewards being preserved in this particular case.

If people had behaved more considerately and had let people run as they liked, even if it took a little longer, then I would be all for it.

Fox.3469:

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

You never sold many fractals run did you?
Fractals were one of the best ways to earn gold if you knew what you were doing.

Coulter.2315:

The devs know what’s coming, they know the new reward structure – you don’t – just wait and see.

Except every move they’ve made recently was designed to take gold OUT of the game. I don’t care what they know – if you want to make lots of gold in game good times are not coming.

Wanze.8410:

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

I think what you just said just underlines why Anets decision was right and basically contradicts itself anyways.

You might think of it as teamwork-based content and it even might be on the smallest scale but it doesnt really promote teamwork between veterans and new players.
If they kept dungeon rewards as they were, new players would have a hard time finding a group of veterans that would teach them how to do dungeons.

I dont think that is a state of mind that Anet wants to promote in its player base, old and new alike.

Why should you get handsomely rewarded, when you refuse to mentor newer players?
WvW or PvE Commanders during Map Meta events or the harder boss battles have to coordinate a whole map, which often is full of new players or players new to the content. If they wipe, they also dont get any loot or reward or considerably less but they try anyways to teach everybody on the map and organize events.

You refuse to teach 1 or 2 new players in a game mode that isnt even time sensitive, like the new meta events and complain that you arent handsomely rewarded for it?

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.

And rightly so.

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.
I’m not supposed to be the game’s tutorial system just because I managed to learn how to play it and how to do things.
Some people enjoy teaching and it provides a good experience to them – some don’t.
Some just want to get their stuff done without having to stop, type, explain, convince and so on.

Dungeons did promote teamwork – a veteran party could to amazing things with synergy and competence. This is one of the reasons that dungeons were considered “too easy” and “too farmable”.

Honestly – organizing open world PvE is not something for everyone. Why should some be punished because others enjoy doing something that is hard and unrewarding?
If they want to organize open world PvE – that’s great – but what’s that got to do with me?

What you choose to do in game and how you as a player choose to spend your time is your choice – you make it sound like the developers are entitled to punish players for not wanting to play a certain way – which is frankly absurd.

Each finds enjoyment in his or her own way – I personally enjoy making gold and if I can do that with no words exchanged in chat it’s all the better.

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.
And rightly so.

I have nothing against new players – I dislike playing with bad players and players that don’t listen. Unfortunately most new players are like that.
I think there were also other – bigger – reasons for the dungeon reward nerf – the “meta zerk” mindset had been with the game a good 2+ years before this change came.

They didn’t do it to “correct the community” – they did it because of the game going F2P most likely.
They also did it to make absolutely sure there’s very little (or none) alternative to their new FOTM and Raids.

Harper.4173:

Fox.3469:

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

You never sold many fractals run did you?
Fractals were one of the best ways to earn gold if you knew what you were doing.

Yeah, um, pretty sure most of us don’t even consider selling content to our fellow players.

So, that probably didn’t even enter his, or her, mind.

Harper.4173:

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.

Good, then you shouldn’t mind that you no longer have the option of being paid well to do it.

Harper.4173:

Wanze.8410:

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

I think what you just said just underlines why Anets decision was right and basically contradicts itself anyways.

You might think of it as teamwork-based content and it even might be on the smallest scale but it doesnt really promote teamwork between veterans and new players.
If they kept dungeon rewards as they were, new players would have a hard time finding a group of veterans that would teach them how to do dungeons.

I dont think that is a state of mind that Anet wants to promote in its player base, old and new alike.

Why should you get handsomely rewarded, when you refuse to mentor newer players?
WvW or PvE Commanders during Map Meta events or the harder boss battles have to coordinate a whole map, which often is full of new players or players new to the content. If they wipe, they also dont get any loot or reward or considerably less but they try anyways to teach everybody on the map and organize events.

You refuse to teach 1 or 2 new players in a game mode that isnt even time sensitive, like the new meta events and complain that you arent handsomely rewarded for it?

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.

And rightly so.

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.
I’m not supposed to be the game’s tutorial system just because I managed to learn how to play it and how to do things.
Some people enjoy teaching and it provides a good experience to them – some don’t.
Some just want to get their stuff done without having to stop, type, explain, convince and so on.

Dungeons did promote teamwork – a veteran party could to amazing things with synergy and competence. This is one of the reasons that dungeons were considered “too easy” and “too farmable”.

Honestly – organizing open world PvE is not something for everyone. Why should some be punished because others enjoy doing something that is hard and unrewarding?
If they want to organize open world PvE – that’s great – but what’s that got to do with me?

What you choose to do in game and how you as a player choose to spend your time is your choice – you make it sound like the developers are entitled to punish players for not wanting to play a certain way – which is frankly absurd.

Each finds enjoyment in his or her own way – I personally enjoy making gold and if I can do that with no words exchanged in chat it’s all the better.

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.
And rightly so.

I have nothing against new players – I dislike playing with bad players and players that don’t listen. Unfortunately most new players are like that.
I think there were also other – bigger – reasons for the dungeon reward nerf – the “meta zerk” mindset had been with the game a good 2+ years before this change came.

They didn’t do it to “correct the community” – they did it because of the game going F2P most likely.
They also did it to make absolutely sure there’s very little (or none) alternative to their new FOTM and Raids.

I am not saying the way you used to play this game is wrong, everybody is entitled to his opinion and you can play the game the way you want.
I also agree that dungeons are a great tool to promote teamplay, for example to those skilled players that break speed records or find the most synergetic group compositions after balance updates for example.

Personally, I played over 9k hours since launch, i got my dungeon master title during the first 6 months, did plenty of cof1 farming before i started trading and anet restructured dungeon rewards but since then, i didnt run much dungeons. Occasionally i would farm a couple of pathes, if I needed tokens for a legendary or something else, when the new aetherpath came out or i just filled in, if a guild party was looking for a 5th.
But as i am pretty active on the forums and look into the LFG tool form time to time, I look at dungeons as a not very inviting content for new players.
And i have the feeling that Anet had the same opinion.
I dont want to blame you or anybody else for it, it was just the way it was.
I think initially dungeons were meant for players like the ones you described but soon after launch, you had most players only farming 1 path. Its hard to justify developing and maintaining game content of which less than 3% are being actively played. So they reworked dungeon rewards because they want to promote players playing a variety of game content. But the relatively high rewards now meant that veteran players put too much emphasis on time, which kinda created this kind of dungeon community that didnt seem very inviting to me as a casual dungeon runner and i think for new players as well.
Anet is always very vocal about how proud they are to have a great game community in general, some new features in HoT are a directing result of that train of thought.
It seems they care a great deal about veteran players mentoring new players, so they promote those players that are willing to do that.
IF you choose that i not your cup of tea, thats fine also.
If you want to break speed records or want to find the best party synergy, you can still do so, they didnt disable that content.

But as a game company, I think it makes more sense to reward those players that play the game the way they intended it and to those that are willing to promote teamwork and teach gameplay to the masses.
While you say you are getting punished for the way you play the game, I think they are just not rewarding you anymore as handsomely as before for the way you play the game because they are not satisfied with the general conduct of and feedback for that game content.

By that logic they should nerf pvp….. Competitive pvpers don’t want noobs joining their parties.

It wasn’t about community friendliness and teaching. It was about selling HoT.

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

Fox.3469:

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

You never sold many fractals run did you?
Fractals were one of the best ways to earn gold if you knew what you were doing.

Yeah, um, pretty sure most of us don’t even consider selling content to our fellow players.

So, that probably didn’t even enter his, or her, mind.

Harper.4173:

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.

Good, then you shouldn’t mind that you no longer have the option of being paid well to do it.

1.So selling something that people want is a problem now? If I choose to sell something and someone wants to buy it – that’s perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
I’m looking forward to seeing people’s reactions when Raid spots begin to sell for a lot of money. And trust me – there will be buyers.

2.Dungeon rewards were never buffed in order for veterans to mentor other players. That’s just absurd to believe. Dungeon rewards were buffed because of public outcry that there’s no way to make money combined with the fact that dungeons were becoming a ghost town with the exception of CoF p1.

It was their attempt to spread people out across more dungeons while preventing them from farming just one of them – and it worked.

There was never an expressed developer intention that veterans should carry and teach new players in exchange for better dungeon rewards being part of the game.
What fantasy realm did you pull that thought from?

Rewards were buffed in an attempt to salvage dungeons – in a way it worked and in another way it failed. Don’t try to spin the narrative to suit you.

Dungeon rewards being nerfed affect newer players more than veterans who by now have thousands of gold. Newer players back when dungeon rewards were what they used to be could easily learn what to do and farm good amounts of gold fast. Today they don’t have that option.

Wanze.8410:

I am not saying the way you used to play this game is wrong, everybody is entitled to his opinion and you can play the game the way you want.
I also agree that dungeons are a great tool to promote teamplay, for example to those skilled players that break speed records or find the most synergetic group compositions after balance updates for example.

Personally, I played over 9k hours since launch, i got my dungeon master title during the first 6 months, did plenty of cof1 farming before i started trading and anet restructured dungeon rewards but since then, i didnt run much dungeons. Occasionally i would farm a couple of pathes, if I needed tokens for a legendary or something else, when the new aetherpath came out or i just filled in, if a guild party was looking for a 5th.
But as i am pretty active on the forums and look into the LFG tool form time to time, I look at dungeons as a not very inviting content for new players.
And i have the feeling that Anet had the same opinion.
I dont want to blame you or anybody else for it, it was just the way it was.
I think initially dungeons were meant for players like the ones you described but soon after launch, you had most players only farming 1 path. Its hard to justify developing and maintaining game content of which less than 3% are being actively played. So they reworked dungeon rewards because they want to promote players playing a variety of game content. But the relatively high rewards now meant that veteran players put too much emphasis on time, which kinda created this kind of dungeon community that didnt seem very inviting to me as a casual dungeon runner and i think for new players as well.
Anet is always very vocal about how proud they are to have a great game community in general, some new features in HoT are a directing result of that train of thought.
It seems they care a great deal about veteran players mentoring new players, so they promote those players that are willing to do that.
IF you choose that i not your cup of tea, thats fine also.
If you want to break speed records or want to find the best party synergy, you can still do so, they didnt disable that content.

But as a game company, I think it makes more sense to reward those players that play the game the way they intended it and to those that are willing to promote teamwork and teach gameplay to the masses.
While you say you are getting punished for the way you play the game, I think they are just not rewarding you anymore as handsomely as before for the way you play the game because they are not satisfied with the general conduct of and feedback for that game content.

Inviting for new players? yeah – it wasn’t. But then again no other form of content was “more inviting” by comparison.
We all know how PvP players react to new players. WvW can be the same.
And open world PvE? that’s welcoming because there’s no effective way to get new players out of your maps – which highly organized guilds and groups already did by the time Teq came out.

So yes – I see what you’re saying but I don’t see how dungeons were more unwelcoming than the rest of the game.

I get what you’re saying as to why dungeon rewards shifted – but that was bad design – and an amateur mistake.
To assume players won’t farm CoF p1 over and over again was very odd considering Anet had previously produced another game where people farmed using speed clear tactics and speed clearing was a known thing.

In fact it was such a big thing that sometimes PvE skills got adjusted accordingly.

So they did know this existed – how did they not realize this would happen?

A personal question – did any community in GW2 seem particularly inviting? ( with exception of the “open world” community that doesn’t really exist because open world). Maybe your experiences differ – but I don’t see much difference.

As I mentioned in a post above – I feel the nerfed dungeon rewards are a much bigger hit on newer players than on veterans.

I still don’t see how nerfing dungeons can be associated with “punishing the meta zerkers and promoting the teamwork loving”.
I clearly see it as a move to make the meta zerkers move into FOTM and Raids because that’s where they want their people to be.

I don’t expect the Raid community to have a more teaching or inclusive attitude than that of the old dungeon community – in fact it will be worse.
In dungeons people wanted to shave minutes and make more gold – there was no real threat of failure and thus toxicity ( as high as some people say it was) was fairly minimal – people didn’t run with new players because they didn’t like it – but it wouldn’t have made them lose the encounter.

Look at Raids – where if you mess up you fail and have to restart. Now your rewards are actually on the line – I’m looking forward to see how the community approaches this.

Harper.4173:

Look at Raids – where if you mess up you fail and have to restart. Now your rewards are actually on the line – I’m looking forward to see how the community approaches this.

Well most people are gonna do Raids with an organized guild group, I can tell you that. There will no doubt be some pug raids and their toxicity levels will range from welcoming and patient to frustrated and hateful. A lot of it depends on who is running the thing. In open world, you can’t shut out the ones who constantly put people down and say that [insert thing group is struggling with] is going to fail and is too hard. In a raid, you can and there’s pretty strong motivation to do so.

Dungeons are a bit different because the skill ceiling isn’t that high and they’re short enough that you kinda just want to power through it as quick as you can, even if it means dealing with some whining. Raids are long enough (or at least will be, in theory) that you aren’t really going to “power through it” unless you’ve got an organized, skilled group who knows the fights well.

Harper.4173:

Inviting for new players? yeah – it wasn’t. But then again no other form of content was “more inviting” by comparison.
We all know how PvP players react to new players. WvW can be the same.
And open world PvE? that’s welcoming because there’s no effective way to get new players out of your maps – which highly organized guilds and groups already did by the time Teq came out.

So yes – I see what you’re saying but I don’t see how dungeons were more unwelcoming than the rest of the game.

A personal question – did any community in GW2 seem particularly inviting? ( with exception of the “open world” community that doesn’t really exist because open world). Maybe your experiences differ – but I don’t see much difference.

As I mentioned in a post above – I feel the nerfed dungeon rewards are a much bigger hit on newer players than on veterans.

I still don’t see how nerfing dungeons can be associated with “punishing the meta zerkers and promoting the teamwork loving”.
I clearly see it as a move to make the meta zerkers move into FOTM and Raids because that’s where they want their people to be.

I don’t expect the Raid community to have a more teaching or inclusive attitude than that of the old dungeon community – in fact it will be worse.
In dungeons people wanted to shave minutes and make more gold – there was no real threat of failure and thus toxicity ( as high as some people say it was) was fairly minimal – people didn’t run with new players because they didn’t like it – but it wouldn’t have made them lose the encounter.

Look at Raids – where if you mess up you fail and have to restart. Now your rewards are actually on the line – I’m looking forward to see how the community approaches this.

You´re right, pvp seems to be quite toxic as well (i dont play that much either) and i partly agree on wvw not being too noob friendly either.

But both game modes have never been as rewarding as dungeons have been, thats why i think the nerf to dungeon rewards is justified.

Personally, i have seen many great communities in GW2. I think i have been playing on 7 or 8 EU servers, on some of them twice.

I have been a member of great guilds with very different foci and playstyles and I have been part of some great wvw communities in my time. Most of them go down the drain at some point but most of them pick themselves up again and evolve.

I dont neccessarily blame the veteran dungeon runners for the nerf or their perceived bad behaviour, bad dungeon design from Anet probably also played its part.
But they tried to “fix” dungeons several times with some mayor updates and it simply didnt work out.
They said that they envision gw2 as a living, breathing world, where lots of players play huge events together. Instanced 5 man content simply doesnt fit that bill.
You cant completely abandon it because some parts of the player base really like that kind of content but thats why they put ressources into fractals, as it seems easier to incorporate current rewards and progression structures into it, while also providing a skill curve.
The same probably goes for raids, we will see.

Harper.4173:

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

Fox.3469:

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

You never sold many fractals run did you?
Fractals were one of the best ways to earn gold if you knew what you were doing.

Yeah, um, pretty sure most of us don’t even consider selling content to our fellow players.

So, that probably didn’t even enter his, or her, mind.

Harper.4173:

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.

Good, then you shouldn’t mind that you no longer have the option of being paid well to do it.

1.So selling something that people want is a problem now? If I choose to sell something and someone wants to buy it – that’s perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
I’m looking forward to seeing people’s reactions when Raid spots begin to sell for a lot of money. And trust me – there will be buyers.

2.Dungeon rewards were never buffed in order for veterans to mentor other players. That’s just absurd to believe. Dungeon rewards were buffed because of public outcry that there’s no way to make money combined with the fact that dungeons were becoming a ghost town with the exception of CoF p1.

It was their attempt to spread people out across more dungeons while preventing them from farming just one of them – and it worked.

There was never an expressed developer intention that veterans should carry and teach new players in exchange for better dungeon rewards being part of the game.
What fantasy realm did you pull that thought from?

Rewards were buffed in an attempt to salvage dungeons – in a way it worked and in another way it failed. Don’t try to spin the narrative to suit you.

Dungeon rewards being nerfed affect newer players more than veterans who by now have thousands of gold. Newer players back when dungeon rewards were what they used to be could easily learn what to do and farm good amounts of gold fast. Today they don’t have that option.

I’m not getting into all this with you, again, Harper.

I’ve made my opinions on this subject pretty clear, both here and in the past.

No point in repeating myself.

In the same way that many players don’t do dungeons or fractals, I’m pretty sure many players won’t do raids.
That whole style of gameplay just feels so outdated these days. Gamers that used to be big on doing difficult PVE dungeons/raids seem to be moving on to playing dedicated MOBA style games. You get the same team dynamics/tactics challenge but a more interesting and less predictable enemy.

MMORPG raids are a long way from dead but it does seem that they are fading a little.

Labjax.2465:

Harper.4173:

Look at Raids – where if you mess up you fail and have to restart. Now your rewards are actually on the line – I’m looking forward to see how the community approaches this.

Well most people are gonna do Raids with an organized guild group, I can tell you that. There will no doubt be some pug raids and their toxicity levels will range from welcoming and patient to frustrated and hateful. A lot of it depends on who is running the thing. In open world, you can’t shut out the ones who constantly put people down and say that [insert thing group is struggling with] is going to fail and is too hard. In a raid, you can and there’s pretty strong motivation to do so.

Dungeons are a bit different because the skill ceiling isn’t that high and they’re short enough that you kinda just want to power through it as quick as you can, even if it means dealing with some whining. Raids are long enough (or at least will be, in theory) that you aren’t really going to “power through it” unless you’ve got an organized, skilled group who knows the fights well.

I am fairly certain the forums will be flooded with the tears of people that can’t join communities and actually pull their weight in raids.
Also – most people who will be running raids are the same people who ran dungeons as “meta zerk” – the reward-oriented players will flock to this new content immediately.
Sure – there will also be others attracted but this type of content will attract the “metazerk” player above all others.

On the other hand Raids having a high skill ceiling will mean parties are less tolerant on new/unskilled players.
You know that guy who died 2-3 times per dungeon and made it take a few minutes later but it was fine because it didn’t mean much?

That guy is going to get booted very quickly once it becomes apparent that he’s costing the group success at various encounter and making things take much much longer.

Wanze.8410:

You´re right, pvp seems to be quite toxic as well (i dont play that much either) and i partly agree on wvw not being too noob friendly either.
But both game modes have never been as rewarding as dungeons have been, thats why i think the nerf to dungeon rewards is justified.

Except if this philosophy of nerfing and not catering to toxic communities were real then why did PvP get improved rewards via reward tracks?
PvP rewards have been buffed despite how toxic the community has been – heck – they’re getting a PvP only legendary backpiece now.

I dont neccessarily blame the veteran dungeon runners for the nerf or their perceived bad behaviour, bad dungeon design from Anet probably also played its part.

They dropped the ball with dungeons and it was pretty apparent from day one. I’m not sure why they didn’t understand that speed clears would be a thing – they had been a thing in GW1 as well – a game they made and designed.

They said that they envision gw2 as a living, breathing world, where lots of players play huge events together. Instanced 5 man content simply doesnt fit that bill.
You cant completely abandon it because some parts of the player base really like that kind of content but thats why they put ressources into fractals, as it seems easier to incorporate current rewards and progression structures into it, while also providing a skill curve.

And I would accept that if they had done what they did to dungeons and not pushed towards other 5 man and 10 man instanced content.

They too realize that the open world is not enough to keep the game going and will never suffice – their vision of a “living breathing world with lots of players playing huge events” is not enough – they understand that now.
That’s why they made fractals and raids – to offer instanced group experiences.

Their original vision of a “living world” also included the living world updates – and look how that turned out – it got scrapped and they had to do a “traditional expansion”.

Their visions for this game although revolutionary and unique failed because of two things mostly:

1.Poor implementation.
2.Player reaction to bold new ideas that had never been tried before.

In both cases things that work on paper don’t necessarily translate into success when attempted in reality.

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

Fox.3469:

Am i the only person that thinks this is normal? No offense but dungeons were by far the best way to earn gold, topping fractals and open world content, and they were easy as kitten compared to fractals.

This is a good thing and can only be good for the game in the long run.

You never sold many fractals run did you?
Fractals were one of the best ways to earn gold if you knew what you were doing.

Yeah, um, pretty sure most of us don’t even consider selling content to our fellow players.

So, that probably didn’t even enter his, or her, mind.

Harper.4173:

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.

Good, then you shouldn’t mind that you no longer have the option of being paid well to do it.

1.So selling something that people want is a problem now? If I choose to sell something and someone wants to buy it – that’s perfectly acceptable in my opinion.
I’m looking forward to seeing people’s reactions when Raid spots begin to sell for a lot of money. And trust me – there will be buyers.

2.Dungeon rewards were never buffed in order for veterans to mentor other players. That’s just absurd to believe. Dungeon rewards were buffed because of public outcry that there’s no way to make money combined with the fact that dungeons were becoming a ghost town with the exception of CoF p1.

It was their attempt to spread people out across more dungeons while preventing them from farming just one of them – and it worked.

There was never an expressed developer intention that veterans should carry and teach new players in exchange for better dungeon rewards being part of the game.
What fantasy realm did you pull that thought from?

Rewards were buffed in an attempt to salvage dungeons – in a way it worked and in another way it failed. Don’t try to spin the narrative to suit you.

Dungeon rewards being nerfed affect newer players more than veterans who by now have thousands of gold. Newer players back when dungeon rewards were what they used to be could easily learn what to do and farm good amounts of gold fast. Today they don’t have that option.

I’m not getting into all this with you, again, Harper.

I’ve made my opinions on this subject pretty clear, both here and in the past.

No point in repeating myself.

But I thought we had something going on here – it’s pretty sad to see you won’t debate me anymore. You had your fun and now you’re throwing me away!

Harper.4173:

Wanze.8410:

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I like dungeons. They’re fun, they really encourage teamwork, and I’m a collector so I enjoy buying all the gear with dungeon tokens. I’ve noticed that, lately, there are no experienced 80s doing dungeons anymore, and so I always get stuck with low level characters with <500 achievement points who don’t know what they’re doing, and the margin of error is so huge that it becomes a never-ending wipe-fest. I’d like to see more attention given to dungeons, please!

I think what you just said just underlines why Anets decision was right and basically contradicts itself anyways.

You might think of it as teamwork-based content and it even might be on the smallest scale but it doesnt really promote teamwork between veterans and new players.
If they kept dungeon rewards as they were, new players would have a hard time finding a group of veterans that would teach them how to do dungeons.

I dont think that is a state of mind that Anet wants to promote in its player base, old and new alike.

Why should you get handsomely rewarded, when you refuse to mentor newer players?
WvW or PvE Commanders during Map Meta events or the harder boss battles have to coordinate a whole map, which often is full of new players or players new to the content. If they wipe, they also dont get any loot or reward or considerably less but they try anyways to teach everybody on the map and organize events.

You refuse to teach 1 or 2 new players in a game mode that isnt even time sensitive, like the new meta events and complain that you arent handsomely rewarded for it?

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.

And rightly so.

Because mentoring players isn’t my job as a veteran player.
I’m not supposed to be the game’s tutorial system just because I managed to learn how to play it and how to do things.
Some people enjoy teaching and it provides a good experience to them – some don’t.
Some just want to get their stuff done without having to stop, type, explain, convince and so on.

Dungeons did promote teamwork – a veteran party could to amazing things with synergy and competence. This is one of the reasons that dungeons were considered “too easy” and “too farmable”.

Honestly – organizing open world PvE is not something for everyone. Why should some be punished because others enjoy doing something that is hard and unrewarding?
If they want to organize open world PvE – that’s great – but what’s that got to do with me?

What you choose to do in game and how you as a player choose to spend your time is your choice – you make it sound like the developers are entitled to punish players for not wanting to play a certain way – which is frankly absurd.

Each finds enjoyment in his or her own way – I personally enjoy making gold and if I can do that with no words exchanged in chat it’s all the better.

I guess the general mindset of dungeon runners simply refusing to play with new players and mentoring them played a big part in Anets decision to nerf rewards and stop developing for it.
And rightly so.

I have nothing against new players – I dislike playing with bad players and players that don’t listen. Unfortunately most new players are like that.
I think there were also other – bigger – reasons for the dungeon reward nerf – the “meta zerk” mindset had been with the game a good 2+ years before this change came.

They didn’t do it to “correct the community” – they did it because of the game going F2P most likely.
They also did it to make absolutely sure there’s very little (or none) alternative to their new FOTM and Raids.

Stop reading my mind! Seriously though…all of this ^ is exactly what I was thinking.